TSO premiering piece
Long before C.F. Kip Winger could bring himself to fully immerse himself in classical music, he poked a toe or two into the genre.
He penned a stirring string quartet to open his namesake glam rock band's 1989 monster ballad "Hungry" and infused a classically informed arrangement on 1990's "Rainbow in the Rose."
"Every record I'll put something on there where I'm really blowing out the composition," he said in a phone interview from Nashville last week to talk about his first full-drawn classical work, "Ghosts." The Tucson Symphony Orchestra will give it its world premiere in concerts this weekend.
"For years I was sneaking in classical bits and pieces in my rock stuff, planting seeds of my path, leaving bread crumbs to where I was going," he said.
Winger's journey from glam rocker to classical composer did not include time spent in classrooms studying music theory and counterpoint. He did not have that luxury with his full-throttled rock music career.
"I suffer from impostor syndrome: 'Oh my God, what are they going to think of my music?' So I have probably read more books on composition, theory and counterpoint than anybody in the world because I'm so freaked out that I won't know what I'm doing," said Winger, 48, with a quiet chuckle.
The closest he came to formal studies was working with New Mexico University composition professor Richard Hermann and Nashville composer Michael Kurek, who teaches at Vanderbilt University.
He counts Hermann and Kurek among his growing circle of classical friends, which includes TSO Composer in Residence Dan Coleman.
Winger had given Coleman a recording of the first movement of "Ghosts," a piece he wrote on commission for a Christopher Wheeldon ballet that San Francisco Ballet will premiere in February. Coleman liked the 20-minute piece, which opens with an extended violin credenza and weaves in heavenly harps and slightly dissonant keyboards, and suggested the TSO give its world premiere.
Winger had never heard the TSO live, although he's very familiar with Tucson: His mother and stepfather have lived here for about 20 years. But he researched the orchestra and found a kinship with conductor George Hanson because of Hanson's experience with the rock band R.E.M. (Hanson was the conductor for R.E.M.'s multiplatinum record "Automatic For the People.")
"If Kip Winger were 24 years old and graduated from Juilliard, he would be performed by all the big orchestras and there would be articles about him being one of the next great things," said Hanson, reached on his cell phone last week at a guest- conducting gig in Arkansas. "I don't know if he's the next big thing, but this piece is really attractive in many, many ways."
"It will be very satisfying to have achieved a goal I've been dreaming of for 20 years," Winger said.
Meanwhile, Winger heads out on a European tour with his band the day after he returns from Tucson. The band is touring in support of its just-released album, "Karma," which he described as a full-tilt rocker with "really cool riffs, good melodies, big choruses" and fast guitar solos.
"On this record, I really went back to my roots and did like an AC/DC record because the classical thing has shifted over to the real deal now," he said.
