True Story: I’m A Composer

When I picture a composer, I picture an old white dude in a powdery wig or that Sesame Street muppet. But Dale Trumbore is a smile-y, 30-year old woman, living in L.A. and writing classical compositions. Like, for her whole job. This is her story. 

Tell us a bit about yourself! 

I’m a Los Angeles-based composer, although I was born and raised in New Jersey. I moved to LA for grad school at USC, accidentally fell in love with this city, and have been here for going on eight years! I turn 30 this year, and I’ve written music for practically my entire life. I read a lot when I have free time, and I live about 15 minutes from excellent hiking, although I don’t go quite as often as I’d like.

Obviously, there are many different kinds of music. What kind do you compose?

I write contemporary classical music. A lot of people think of old, dead white guys when they think of classical music (Mozart, Beethoven) but there’s actually a really diverse group of composers writing music now. I’ve written music for singers, chamber ensembles, and orchestras; lately, a lot of my commissions have been for chorus. I love setting contemporary poetry to music, and am always looking for new poems to set.

Do you remember your first interaction with music? 

My aunt gave me a little electronic keyboard when I was just a year old, and she likes to joke that she gets credit for my composing career! I started taking piano lessons at age 7, and I grew up singing in choirs from a pretty young age, so I’ve been surrounded by music my whole life.

Even though no one in my family is a professional musician—nearly everyone in my extended family is a writer or an editor—my parents and my brother love music. My mom used to play musical theater songs on the piano a lot when I was little, so I grew up loving music by George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers.

I imagine a composer needs to understand the nuances of pretty much every instrument and vocal range to compose effectively. How many instruments do you play? And what part do you sing?  

I play piano and sing as a low Soprano or a high Alto. I played violin in elementary and middle school, but I was forced to choose between chorus and orchestra in 8th grade. I picked chorus, and obviously that worked out okay, but I still wish I hadn’t been asked to choose!

As a composer, you need to understand the strengths and technical challenges of each instrument you write for, but thankfully you don’t have to play all of them. That said, I’d love to learn how to play more instruments, especially cello or clarinet.

Most musicians are happy to just perform music. What made you interested in composing it?

I first heard a chorus sing my music when I was 16, and although I’d been composing little pieces since I was 7, that experience made me realize that composing was what I wanted to do with my life. I don’t know exactly how to describe that feeling, but it’s tremendously fulfilling to hear your music exist outside of you.

I love the act of writing music, too: all of the little decisions about how to structure the form of a piece, how to evoke a specific emotion, or how to translate the words and meaning of a poem into a musical language. 

What sort of training or education have you gone through to learn how to do this?

I have two bachelor’s degrees (one in Music Composition and one in English) from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a master’s degree in Composition from the University of Southern California. In grad school and undergrad, I took private composing lessons, as well as classes in music theory, music history, musical form, and orchestration.

But the most valuable training I’ve gotten is writing over a hundred pieces and rehearsing directly with musicians to figure out what is and isn’t working in each piece.

Could you walk us through the process of composing a song? 

I usually compose in the afternoon, after spending the morning taking care of business-related things (sending emails to groups that are performing my music, updating my website with new recordings, etc.). I usually handwrite music at the piano, and when a piece is almost finished, I enter it into a software program called Sibelius that generates a legible, professional-looking score.

This software also plays back the music you’re notating in it, so if I’m writing for a big ensemble, like an orchestra, I’ll sometimes do my composing right in that program instead of first writing that music by hand. Even when writing a piece goes quickly, the entire process of notating, proofreading, and editing it can take a while.

In 2017, how do composers typically earn a living? 

I make the majority of my living from commissions, where an ensemble pays me to write a new piece specifically for them. A smaller percentage of my income comes from performance royalties, sales of my published and self-published pieces, and recording royalties. Sometimes the recording royalties are hilariously low; once, I got a very official email saying that I’d made exactly $0.12 that year.

I also make money speaking about my work. If a high school or college ensemble is performing my music, they might offer me a stipend to fly out to rehearse my music with their group and speak to students about making a living in music.

A lot of composers teach privately or at the university level, because it’s a steady source of income. I teach a handful of young students piano and composition privately, so that I still have a small, dependable source of income from month to month as my composing income fluctuates. Somehow, all of this adds up to making a living!

How much do composers make? 

There’s a really big range in what composers usually make; if you’re someone really successful, you could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in commissions and royalties, or if you’re writing mostly for fun and not really pursuing score sales or performance royalties, you might be making a couple thousand dollars a year, or even a couple hundred. Some years are better than others, too; this can be an unpredictable, fickle career in that way.

For me, between commissions, royalties, and teaching a few students privately, it’s not hard to piece together a living. In 2015, I made $40,000 from composing and teaching piano part-time; I have no student loan debt, so it’s enough to live comfortably on, even in Los Angeles! I’ve had to train myself to quote slightly higher rates for commissions each year; I work for myself, so no one else is going to give me a raise. I’ve been steadily making more each year.

Of all your compositions, do you have a favorite? 

Usually, my favorite piece is whatever I’ve just finished working on. Right now, it’s a 35-minute piece for a cappella chorus called How to Go On. It’s one of the most personally meaningful pieces I’ve written, a meditation on how we cope with grief and mortality and find peace within our everyday lives.

How to Go On was just recorded on an album of my music by a group called Choral Arts Initiative, and the entire process of writing the piece and then co-producing the CD with them took over two years!

Have you ever heard a performance of one of your compositions and thought “Well, that’s certainly not what I intended”?