MEGHAN GUATTERY
Assistant News Editor
If you had asked college-aged Rob Deemer what he thought he would do when he finished his studies, he would have told you he would be teaching band at a suburban Chicago high school.
College-aged Deemer could not have been more wrong.
Today, he is Dr. Rob Deemer, associate professor and head of composition for the Fredonia School of Music; and on March 13, he had his second composition performed in Weill Recital Hall, one of three performance spaces in New York City’s historic Carnegie Hall.
Originally from DeKalb, Illinois, Deemer received his undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University (NIU) in music education. He then, as many students do, made a pit stop before heading to graduate school. He spent one year playing saxophone on a cruise ship before heading to the University of Southern California to study film scoring.
After exploring the west coast, Deemer went back to NIU for his master’s degree in composition and a performer’s certificate in conducting. He then traveled south to receive his doctorate in composition from the University of Texas.
Deemer began his teaching career at the University of Oklahoma, where he stayed for just one year. He then taught for one year at Oklahoma City University before moving east to instruct at Fredonia in the School of Music, which he has called home for the last eight years.
Shortly after moving to New York to begin his work at Fredonia, Deemer discovered Harmonia Chamber Singers, an a cappella group based out of Buffalo. Deemer contacted the singers about collaborating for a piece. In 2010, the group presented the world premiere of Deemer’s “Sonnetryptich,” a piece he had written several years prior.
This past summer, Deemer was asked by Harmonia to compose a piece for its concert to be held in late May. He accepted the offer, only to receive another call from the group’s conductor two weeks later.
“He called back and said, ‘Actually, in addition to that piece, we also were just notified that we’ve been accepted into this special concert along with two other a cappella choirs at Carnegie Hall. Would you be interested in writing another piece for that?’” said Deemer.
The “special concert” the group had been invited to perform in was Distinguished Concerts International New York’s A Cappella Next, a chamber choral ensemble concert featuring contemporary a cappella music.
All of the pieces being performed were to be centered on the theme of life and death. While Deemer has several other go-to poets when it comes to choosing poetry to set to music, including E. E. Cummings and Carl Sandburg, his first thought is almost always to Brian Turner.
Around eight years ago, Deemer had the opportunity to collaborate with Turner after the two had been brought together by a third party. He fell in love with Turner’s poetry, specifically the writings in ‘Here, Bullet,’ a book of poetry regarding his time as an infantryman in the first Iraq War.
“I subsequently have written several works that were either inspired by or that set poetry from that book,” said Deemer. “I love his language, his use of imagery and the way in which it is both emotional and detached at the same time, so it allows for someone to see the reality of what was happening over there but, at the same time, still get an emotional attachment to whatever his subject was.”
“Eulogy,” a poem describing the environment within which a soldier commits suicide, was the work that Deemer chose to set for his composition for Harmonia.
“It is both very emotional in its content, but, at the same time, it is described from an omniscient view where you get the sense that the person who is describing it is not someone who is connected with the character in the poem,” said Deemer. “The imagery of it and the words that he uses are very lyrical and very descriptive and very colorful but, at the same time, are also horrible and like a punch in the gut when you’re reading it.”
Deemer’s setting of “Eulogy” made its premiere at Harmonia’s “Into Light,” the group’s spring concert held in early March, just one week prior to its Carnegie Hall debut.
“A lot of people don’t realize that any group, if they pay the fee, can have a performance at Carnegie Hall,” said Deemer. “Any group can do this, but the nice thing about this particular performance is that Harmonia was invited to come, and then they invited me to write a piece for it. So, as a composer, that does carry more weight, the fact that it wasn’t just me paying a bunch of money to have a piece performed.”
For not having formally studied composition until the age of 27, Deemer has led what many would consider a successful career in the field. In addition to his teaching position, Deemer has had his work performed by countless groups across the country, including “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, Chicago Trombone Consort, Washington Trombone Ensemble and the Quintet of the Americas.
While the professional path he has taken is far from his original intentions, the experiences Deemer has had — such as his time spent working in Los Angeles with twentieth-century film composers such as Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith and David Raksin — have helped immensely in the path he has followed.
“It [allowed] me to gain experience in collaborating with others and writing dramatic music,” said Deemer. “That has helped me both as a composer and as an educator because so many of the students we have coming in are interested in writing film music, music for video games, stuff like that, so I can help them with that.”
Deemer uses his experiences and compositions to influence his students without being too strong of a force on their talent.
“Of course my students should be aware of the music that I am writing, that’s why they came to study [at Fredonia],” said Deemer. “But at the same time, I do try and make sure that they are aware of it, but they are not using it as a crutch or as a strong model. I am trying very hard to make sure that none of my students basically leave being a clone.”