new music director at Greenwich House Music School influenced by FZ
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Menon Dwarka is the new music director at Greenwich House Music School.
Music director�s influences range from Bach to Zappa
By Albert Amateau
The journey that brought Menon Dwarka to Greenwich House Music School as
director earlier this month started in Toronto with a teenage interest
in rock guitar and Frank Zappa that grew into a passion for modern
classical music. Along the way, he composed electronic music and sound
design for TV commercials and then directed music education at the 92nd
St. Y and later at the Harlem School of the Arts.
For Dwarka, born in Georgetown, Guyana, into an Indian family that moved
when he was a baby to Toronto, music is a unique way to connect with
world culture over the ages.
�It�s really about integrating music into a broad survey of what the
world has to offer,� he told a visitor to the school at 46 Barrow St.
two weeks ago. �If you study most other arts, you don�t really have the
hand of the master guiding you. But if you study music, you could be
playing pieces by the great masters. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven wrote
pieces that a one-year piano student could play. All you have to do is
spend some time at a place like Greenwich House Music School,� he said.
With a faculty of about 50 instructors, Greenwich House Music School has
520 students ranging in ages from 3 years old to seniors � from beginner
to advanced � in classes and private lessons, in piano, voice, violin
and viola, cello, clarinet, flute, guitar, five-string banjo, saxophone,
trumpet, trombone, harp and the Chinese qin, a seven-string plucked
instrument.
When he was in the ninth grade, Dwarka recalled, he had read in a rock
magazine that Frank Zappa�s favorite music was something called �The
Rite of Spring,� so he asked his music teacher if she knew about it.
�She asked me if I could read music, and I said, yes. She gave me the
score of Stravinsky�s �Rite of Spring� � schools in Toronto had music
that students could borrow � and she told me to go home and listen to it
and follow the score. I did, and I knew that I wanted to be a composer,�
he said.
Dwarka went to the University of Toronto where he earned his bachelor�s
and master�s degrees. He then went to SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island to
study electronic music. But before he finished his Ph.D., Rocket Music,
which produced electronic music and sound designs for commercials,
offered him a job. Someone in the company had heard a piece he composed
at Stony Brook and the job was too intriguing to pass up.
�They gave me a studio with all this equipment and told me I�d have to
learn it on my own and that I would be competing with other people on
the staff,� Dwarka said. �I won my first spot, but there were a lot of
misses,� he said. Among his �hits� were a sound design for a Pepsi
commercial and music for a Super Bowl spot.
Some of the work involved electronic versions of orchestral music with
real acoustic instruments.
�The sound of the instruments is not the problem,� he said. �But it�s
hard to make it sound like it�s being played by real musicians and not
like a computer with just the right pitch and tempo. Your ears get tuned
to the subtleties and you have to keep adjusting the sound until it
tastes right.�
But after Sept. 11, 2001, the business market declined and so did
advertising budgets, and Rocket Music petered out.
In 2003, Dwarka got a job directing music technology at the 92nd St. Y,
and in 2004 became director of music education at the great Upper East
Side cultural institution. Dwarka said that he became frustrated
because, while the Y emphasized its renowned lecture and concert
programs, it did not seem serious about teaching music to children.
Dwarka accepted an offer from the Harlem School of the Arts to direct
its music program in 2006.
Organized in 1964, the Harlem school was a beloved institution in the
community and had a great faculty, Dwarka said. Unfortunately, the
school began showing financial weakness and frequently delayed making
its payroll; Dwarka reluctantly decided to leave after three years.
Earlier this year, a friend told him about the Greenwich House Music
School opening and he got the job.
�Being here at Greenwich House in the Village with its great tradition
as a center of the arts is wonderful,� he told The Villager. �We�re
living in a time of change in technology, the arts and education and
this is a great place to meet the future.�
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