Tortoiseshell Music Home of composer Nathan Curtis

I was born in Manhattan in 1979, but my family moved to northern Virginia when I was two, so I can’t really claim to be a New Yorker. In middle school, I found my calling — not music, but mathematics. I devoured textbooks, took advanced courses at an academic summer program, and excelled at various math competitions, at regional, national, and international levels. Back when I started out on the competition circuit in seventh grade, I was also playing trombone in the school band, but that was just a hobby.

Then marching band came along in high school, and music became a time-consuming hobby. Also, I switched to bass trombone in concert band, and as I qualified for better bands, I was exposed to better music, and better music-making, both in the classical microcosm of concert band music and in the world of big-band jazz. And I really got into the music. From my seat at the end of the trombone section, I could see almost everyone else in the band, and I became fascinated with how all the different instrumental parts came together. Sometimes I got frustrated when the music didn’t come together the way I knew it should; I wanted to play everyone’s parts so they could be up to my standards. I knew that was impossible, but that didn’t stop me from teaching myself to play piano, flute, tuba, and clarinet on the side. But if I wanted to make the music bend to my whim, I figured I’d have to be either a composer or a conductor. Conducting seemed like a job, but composing was something I could do in my spare time when I wasn’t doing whatever I should end up doing as a mathematician.

When I went off to college in North Carolina, I knew for certain I was going to double-major in mathematics and music. Unfortunately, I had bad luck with the first math class I took as a freshman — not that it was a class I did poorly in, but that it was a class I found dull. I went on an extended medical leave the semester after that, and I decided that maybe upper-level research mathematics just wasn’t as interesting to me as the sort of problems I had to solve in competitions. At the same time, the more I studied music, the more I was fascinated by it. When I resumed classes, math was no longer my top priority. I didn’t get to start taking composition lessons for another year, but I built up my chops by arranging jazz charts for big band. I was then quite lucky to have a composition teacher who was supportive, insightful, and who shared my love for jazz and didn’t mind seeing it spill over into my compositions. Most importantly, he made me want to keep writing more.

At that point, I knew enough about composition to know that I didn’t know enough about composition, (though now I know that a composer never knows enough about composition, at least, not enough to stop learning) so I went the to Boston area to study composition for a couple of years in grad school. Again, I was fortunately to have a really great teacher, who helped me deal with compositional challenges and creative droughts without being judgmental or meddling. I also further expanded my performing horizons to include small-ensemble jazz and experimental music, and I played a lot of new compositions, both by my peers and by my own hand. And I wound up enjoying it so much in Massachusetts, despite the nasty winters, that I decided to stay.

Now I live in Cambridge, and I write music and I play music. Apart from that, I’m a geek. I love learning about the world, being surprised by it and giving others surprises. I am perhaps obsessed with puzzles — both word puzzles and really complex, unclassifiable puzzle…things. And, as an indulgence to the past that I never left behind, I always make time to go teach advanced math classes at a familiar academic summer program.