Robert McClure brings new celestial composition home in an award-winning year

In his 11th year of teaching, OHIO Associate Professor of Composition/Theory Chair Robert McClure is just picking up steam. This has been a year of accolades and new works for McClure, and his interest in teaching and composition that first began as a Toledo high school student only continues to grow. 

As a young musician, McClure had dreams of playing jazz guitar with his school’s jazz group but discovered that this required him to also play in the symphony. Without much need for jazz guitar in that capacity, he found himself instead discovering an affinity for percussion that sparked a growing interest in composition. 

This talent was encouraged by his band director, whose untimely passing in McClure’s senior year of school inspired him to write a piece to be played at a memorial concert. Members of the Toledo Symphony were present and invited him to submit to a new work for an anniversary concert of local composers, becoming McClure’s first commissioned work, “Fanfare for Orchestra.”

Following his undergraduate career at Bowling Green and graduate school at Rice University, McClure spent several years teaching at Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Soochow University in Suzhou, China before returning in 2017 to join OHIO’s School of Music. 

Since joining OHIO’s faculty, McClure has the distinct honor of winning Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards for composition, three cycles in a row, including this year for the song “Bloom,” from the album “Electroacoustic.” These awards are competitively judged based on the outstanding nature of the work, with three consecutive wins speaking to the level of respect his work has earned from peer judges.

Additionally, McClure has collaborated regularly with OHIO faculty member and pianist Emely Phelps, with Phelps performing McClure’s work at the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Ohio conference in October and most recently this month at the national MTNA conference in Atlanta. 

“I find his music incredibly compelling, sonically imaginative, and thrilling to perform,” Phelps said. “Rob’s music encapsulates so much of what I admire in him: boundless energy, purposeful turns of phrase, and a fantastic and immediately engaging mix of clarity and creativity.” 

McClure was also awarded the MTNA’s Distinguished Composer of the Year in Atlanta. To win this award, composers must first be individually nominated, win at their local state level, and then again at the national level. McClure’s win marks the first time that an Ohio composer has been awarded this honor. 

In addition to these recent honors, McClure’s composing has also come full circle as a collaborator on a new work based on the solar system commissioned by his hometown orchestra, the Toledo Symphony. 

Stemming from connections built while a student at Bowling Green, McClure is a member of ADJective New Music Composers Collective, where he was asked by the Toledo Symphony to compose “The Planets: the Orchestra’s Guide to the Galaxy” which will be paired with Gustav Holst’s piece titled “Planets.”

The Toledo Symphony will premiere this new work on March 22. The title of McClure’s movement is “Earth, the Spark,” a fitting choice for McClure as his work often draws from the natural world, science and other art forms while embracing unique electronic instruments and bold choices. 

McClure explains that he drew inspiration for this movement from elemental factors.

“What makes Earth so unique? Obviously, it's life. What is necessary to support life? You have to have water. So, the first part of the piece is about water… very fluid, flowing sonority. To contrast that, what has been most important to human development? Fire… it allowed us to develop but also [can] kill us,” McClure explained.

Water as the spark of life and fire as the spark of creativity are the underlying themes throughout “Earth, the Spark,” with additional inspiration drawn from Stravinsky’s “Sacrificial Dance” from “Rites of Spring.” “The Rites of Spring” was the most modern piece of classical music chosen to be included on the Voyager 1 spacecraft when it was originally launched in 1977, and McClure connects Stravinsky’s work in the second, fiery half of his work of “Earth, the Spark.”

“This music is representational of what we are doing to ourselves right now,” said McClure, connecting the message we send out into space five decades ago with current climate change concerns. “We are performing our own sacrificial dance.” 

As cinematic, immersive and atmospheric as his music is, McClure is very grounded when considering his current student’s trajectory and what is important to him as he mentors the next generation of composers. A call back to his own experience with jazz and symphony interests in high school, he cautions students against specializing too quickly. 

“I want to make you as good of a composer as you can be… I want to give you as many tools as possible… the collaborative aspect is always going to be there,” he said.

Some of those tools he provides students with are opportunities to work on unique electronic music compositions in the School of Music’s CLICK: Electroacoustic Group or through multidisciplinary collaborations with other artists, such as filmmakers and writers. 

McClure further explains that he works to avoid overspecialization in one area so that students leave with the most useful, well-rounded education of transferrable skills. 

“We give students a wide breadth of knowledge and understanding so that they can go out into the world and anything that comes at them, whether it be film scoring or writing a commission for ensembles, whatever the case may be…you're good enough to do any of that. And we want to get you to that point,” he added.

For more information on Robert McClure and to stay connected with his upcoming work, visit his website at https://www.robertwmcclure.com/.