Composer: Sheila Firestone

1. When was your first experience with music you can remember?

I remember going to a music teacher as a very young child for beginning keyboard and reading skills. I believe I begged for a piano and got one in fourth grade. I continued studying with different teachers from that time until I was married at age 19.

• Who has influenced, motivated, and inspired you in your music?

Mrs. Michaels was a great motivator and my first real teacher. In retrospect, I wish I could have studied with her longer, but we moved out of that area. When we moved during my first year of junior high school to another town in Brooklyn, New York, I applied and was accepted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music which Mrs. Michaels had suggested I attend. I studied for one year at the Academy. I began private study again after that year, as my parents didn’t like my traveling on the subway to get to lessons.

• What role has music played in your life?

I am grateful for a lifetime of study and for the melodies and works I have been inspired to write. Though I often used music in my classroom—I taught Communications in a gifted program—once I began to compose, I began to study again.

• When did you first realize that you wanted to focus on music?

I began composing when I was 45 years old. About a year or two earlier I had joined a local temple where I was invited to join the choir. I was learning the most beautiful Jewish choral music under the direction of Cantor Irving Shulkes. A choir member named William Winnick started a sight-singing class. I was happy to be involved in that group and later studied privately with William.

5. When did you begin to hear melodies?

I believe I began to hear melodies about a year or two later; at 45 years of age, I heard my first melody. It happened while I was at a teacher-training session in the Everglades where I planned to bring my students for a camping experience. The teachers participated in all the activities that the students would do when camping under the ranger’s guidance.

We went for a sunrise walk around 6 a.m. to a place called Hidden Lake in Everglades National Park. Armed with watercolors, pencil, a clipboard, and some paper, we sat on the shore watching the spectacular red sky and golden sunrise over the lake. I heard the bushes rustling. It seemed that the bushes were singing a melody and lyrics to me.

6.  What did you do with the melodies you heard in your head?

Let me start with the backstory: I was about to start studying for a doctorate degree as more melodies came to me—melodies I could hear inside of my head. I realized I had to learn how to notate what I was hearing. After beginning to study with William Winnick, I was grateful to have met a very gifted composer named Joseph Dillon Ford. I heard him demonstrate the use of MIDI keyboards and notation in a workshop on creating MIDI music. He had recently returned from Harvard with a degree in musicology. His beautiful work drew me to study with him, though he lived an hour’s drive from my home. I studied privately in his studio for about 15 years, until I retired and moved to Boca Raton, Florida, and he moved to Gainesville, Florida.

Thanks to Mrs. Roberta Balfe, during that time I was trained to use a method called Music! Words! Opera! to help my students create their own musicals. Simultaneously, I was the chairperson for the Very Special Arts Festival in Dade County. This was an annual event. My students would research a topic and would write one musical per year during our elective period. We decided to share and create these works for the children attending the festival. Among the titles were “The Endangered Crusaders,” “Let’s Build a Garden,” and “The Opera Lady,” which turned into a two-year project as we added additional songs the second year.

• Tell me about your compositional process. 

I’ve written hundreds of songs, an opera, and instrumental works, including one symphony, a rhapsody, a chaconne, several sonatas, many suites, and piano works too many to mention. There is a catalog of my works at sheilafirestone.com or songsforanewday.com.

I generally start with a tune or lyrics that jump into my head and heart.  Sometimes an idea begins when I am noodling on the piano. At times an idea begins when I learn a new scale, mode, or modern technique for composition.

I remember being in a torrential downpour on my way to a wedding. I had to pull over and wait for the rain to quiet down. The words and melody for “Oh Lord How Will I Know You?” came to me. I wrote the words down and kept humming the melody. That night after returning from the wedding, I was able to notate the song. I had the lyrics to keep the melody flowing, and I used manuscript paper as I recreated the song. Later, I transferred that into Finale, the notation program I use.

Once a theme begins, I complete a section, decide on a form, and then begin to shape the work. I’ve always had a mentor who reviews the work with me. I’ve written works from simple dances to complete symphonies and rhapsodies. My symphonies are taken from developed sonatas and then orchestrated. I’ve written two symphonies, two rhapsodies, and many suites.

• Have you changed the way you teach and compose music during Covid-19?

No, not really. I was inspired to write a 12-tone row piece for violin and piano called “8’46’’ early in the pandemic. In my mind I visualize the work being danced. It is divided loosely into sections such as: The Pandemic Spreads, Searching for Cures, Prayers, Protests, and in the last segment, I envisioned a dance company on its knees. The work refers to the terrible murder of George Floyd. (I later learned it took not eight minutes and 46 seconds but almost ten minutes for him to die.) I had begun learning the technique of using a 12-tone row to develop motifs. This work encompasses both the 12-tone row and traditional tonal music.

That work was followed by a work that I call “Restoring Balance” in which I composed a seven-movement piece utilizing seven different rows. During Covid, I had hoped the world could come together to counterbalance the negative consequences of the disease and its effects.

Every year, I participate in a religious practice which is 49 days long, called the Counting of the Omer. It is a practice developed by the kabbalists to improve particular aspects of the self, prior to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The piece is a choral work featuring two different voice combinations in each movement, with all four voices coming together during the seventh movement.

• How has Covid-19 changed your life?

Life is fragile. It makes me more aware that there is just today, so one must live each day fully. My newest work is called “Building Bridges of Love.” It reflects my desire to see all people connect with each other with kindness and respect—by building bridges of love.

1. How did you feel when you published your first compositions?

Some of my first compositions were performed by the University of Miami Sigma Chi and Sigma Alpha Iota fraternities. It was a great thrill to have them perform my works at their Vesper Concerts, and one year they dedicated a full concert to my work. These were my first public performances. The Greater Miami Youth Symphony also performed several of my pieces, and a song called “The Special Child”was sung at a state conference for Special Olympics.

I have had work accepted by oySongs (religious-related works), Sheet Music Plus, and the National League of American Pen Women (their anthology Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln included my choral work). Every publication is thrilling, knowing that others will be enjoying the music and giving it new life.

1. Why do you write music or do any of the things you do in the field of music? 

It is my passion. Since retiring from teaching, I love learning and I continue to study in the studio of Dr. Tom McKinley, a theory and composition professor at the Lynn University Conservatory of Music.

1. Do you have a favorite genre or type of musical group to work with or write for?

I like writing for every kind of instrument but must admit that I spend more of my time creating piano works, unless I have a specific group that will perform a work. Sometimes a work starts out as a piano piece and later I orchestrate it or arrange it for a different ensemble.

As a member of the Delian Society—composers from around the globe who contribute a movement to an agreed-upon theme—we create for groups who agree to perform our collective suites. A flute/guitar duo, trios, quartets, and even some chamber orchestras have performed our works in France, Japan, Seattle, and many other locations around the world.

1. Do you use technology in your compositions, teaching, business? If so, how?

I use the program Finale to create my scores. I use the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Logic for recording.

1. Do you have any upcoming CDs or projects?  

I have too many to even decide where to start the next project! I would like to re-release a CD of earlier works which are classically styled piano pieces. A problem is that as I begin work on new music, it diverts me from projects I have on hold, such as an educational program I created called Sing and Think with songs which include dawn-to-dusk activities.

I created an opera called Miriam and the Women of the Desert, which tells the story of the Exodus of the Hebrew people from the perspective of the women. I continue to search for venues to have this work performed.

(Miriam and the Women of the Desert had its first performance at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, Florida, February 24, 2019, as a staged reading. It was performed in a small black box theater, the Empire Stage, in Ft. Lauderdale on various dates between March 28 and April 7, 2019.)

1. How do you promote your music?

I promote my work on my website sheilafirestone.com, LinkedIn, through interviews on blogs like Creating Music Joy and in magazines such as Musicwoman Magazine (Spring 2020) and the National League of American Pen Women’s The Pen Woman.

Much of my music is for sale and can be ordered directly from me, from oySongs, or from Sheet Music Plus. Some of my CDs are available on Amazon.

1. Do you have any advice for composers today?  

Have a way to support your art. It is difficult to have new music accepted unless you have the right connections, etc. Do work that allows you to follow your passion and be able to live. When you find someone you’d like to study with, ask that person to teach you and help you grow professionally.