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Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

MSO concert set as goal as composer battles brain tumor

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Since Michigan composer Alexander Miller had brain surgery to remove a benign tumor this month, one main thing has kept him going through recovery.

He's looked forward to his trip next week to the Gallo Center for the Arts where the Modesto Symphony Orchestra will premiere his new piece "Remix in D" (Inspired by Pachelbel's Canon in D).

But a few days ago, he found out he needs another surgery and now he doesn't know if he can attend the program.

"That's been my motivation," Miller, 41, said in a phone interview from his Grand Rapids home. "Now I have that sense of being derailed."

He hasn't given up hope yet and thinks the doctors may be able to reschedule the surgery for after the performance.

The work will be played as part of the "Premiere Percussion" concert, which also features Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 and another piece by a living composer.

Colorado resident/percussionist William Hill will play his "Seven Abstract Miniatures," which is inspired by ink drawings that he created and will show in slides during the concert.

Miller's piece was commissioned by the orchestra from conductor David Lockington, who is a long-time friend.

Miller said it's not a new arrangement of the Pachelbel Canon but is a new work inspired by the familiar piece.

"Imagine that I'm a photographer and I'm taking a picture of an abstract idea of the Pachelbel Canon. Let's say I put a filter in front of the lens and it's some kind of crazy filter that only I would choose and then I put another one and another one and I change the angle and I change the lens. Now it's more my piece than it is his piece."

The "remix" part of the title was inspired by a National Public Radio interview he heard about a rap technique used by Houston DJs called "chopped and screwed." It involved chopping up a familiar melody and then slowing it down, something that Miller does with the canon.

Miller received the assignment to compose the piece almost a year ago and was in good health until mid-September, when he started experiencing troubling symptoms.

"I noticed ringing in my ears and headaches were coming on," he said. "Most noticeably my left eye started dimming out."

Miller, who is assistant principal oboist at the Grand Rapids Symphony, had to wear an eye patch at a concert to be able to focus to read the music. It was especially strange because he had always had perfect vision and had just aced his pilot license exam.

He was referred to a neuro opthamologist, who sent him for an MRI which revealed a tumor. Adding extra stress and worries was the fact that his mother had just died two years earlier of brain cancer. Fortunately, doctors determined his tumor wasn't life-threatening and he was able to get most of it removed in surgery a few days later.

Afterward, he had to spend most of his time lying down under the care of his wife and adjusting to his "rebooted" brain. It was frustrating because he couldn't move around the way he would like. He couldn't even think about playing his oboe.

"I was trying to do things but there was a strong sense of dizziness and disorientation," he said.

On the other hand, his vision came back in just a few days. He felt a new sense of aliveness in the world. He movingly wrote about the experience in the entry "I Can Do This" on his blog at www.husbandamused.com.

Before the brain surgery, he wrote that he felt like a "fax copy of a person" who figured out what to do from watching others.

"Now that my tumor is gone," he wrote, "I feel real and it is overwhelming. Whereas things before seemed like a series of corridors and familiar doors I had set up, now it is like swimming in an ocean with possibilities in every direction."

Miller said he has received hundreds of emails from people who were touched by what he wrote or had gone through similar experiences. He said he's glad that people connect with what he wrote.

"My main therapy is through blogging," he said. "That's the one way I've found I can focus."

Recently, his symptoms came back — the ringing in his ears and the dulled vision. Miller just found out that the tumor has returned and that he will need to undergo surgery again.

"Don't think for one moment that I have been dealt a bum hand in life, because I have not," he wrote on his blog Wednesday. "I am blessed. If there is one thing I am taking away from this experience (and it is not even half over, or a quarter over), it is the confidence that I matter in this world, that I matter to the people around me, that I am worth something, and — most of all — that I am loved by the people I feel love for."