Interviews
Lewis Pesacov and Elizabeth Cline on The Edge of Forever – with an exclusive stream!
The Edge of Forever is Lewis Pesacov and Elizabeth Cline’s opera for the end of the most recent cycle of the Mayan Long Count, though to hear them tell it the piece may have already existed for a few thousand years before they showed up. Performed by wild Up on the evening of December 21, 2012, the recording is finally making its way to the public via The Industry Records this week, with a release party on Friday, June 24, at 365 Mission. Better yet, you can hear the finale right here, in this post, today! We’ll let Lewis and Elizabeth explain. The track, and info on the show, are at the end.
The Edge of Forever is, as I understand it, only the third act of this opera, the first two acts of which happened in 830 CE. Being that time is cyclical, will those first two acts be taking place again in roughly 2,280 years?
Elizabeth: That would be interesting! I believe that the cyclical nature of time means that when one cycle ends another begins, not that it repeats itself. For the Maya, the most fundamental aspect of their belief structure is that time is without end or beginning; the end of one cycle simply allows for the dawn of the next. And this is exactly what happened on December 21, 2012.
I was under the impression the performance could only happen once, on that date. Are you considering this recording almost as a document of what happened that night, more than a piece of art on its own? Or have your views of the work changed since then?
Elizabeth: We wrote an opera for an exact moment in time and it was our intention that the opera would be performed in that exact moment – December 21, 2012 from 8:30-9:15pm PST. The scenes before that moment exist and the scenes after that moment exist, unwritten, and the story itself stretches infinitely far into the past and future. It was a conscious effort to be of and in the moment. The recording documents that moment but also serves as an archive for a work that will never be realized as a whole again. However, we will be performing the final aria from the opera live at our record release show on June 24th, an exception to the rule because this aria has been modified specifically for this concert event.
Lewis: The three middle scenes of the five on the album are live recordings from the one-time only performance. I would certainly consider these as the documentation of the original event. A few unfortunate technical difficulties made for the first and final scene unusable for an album so I decided to make studio recordings to complete the documentation. Although the studio recordings were not captured at that specific moment in time, they are still very much artifacts of the event. Moreover, this unintended outcome led to the opportunity to record the first scene in the studio, a creative turn on the original music in the decision to use just one voice, the luminous Abby Fischer, to play the role of all of the 4 scribes. This allowed us to represent the many in the one, which in turn helped us go deeper into the message of Non-duality already embedded in the story. So in a way, through accidents, we arrived at an even tighter version of the work.
Librettist Elizabeth Cline. Photo by Suzy Poling.
What attracted you both to this material? Was the interest in these Mayan culture already there, or was it spurred by the wide interest in their calendar leading up to 12/21/12? I know you are both interested in meditation, and it seems like some of the philosophy of TM and oneness made it into the work as well.
Elizabeth: As December 2012 drew near there was a huge upswell in interest in the Mayan calendar and the false “doomsday” prophesy that when the calendar ends so does the world. Even before this widespread public obsession we were fascinated by Mayan cosmology, having visited ancient Mayan temples in the Yucatan Peninsula, and started a deep dive into the ancient texts like the Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam. But really, what is more operatic than “the end” having been foretold in stone engravings since the 9th century? It is both historic and mythic which is very fertile ground for opera!
Our meditation practice and inquiry into the nature of self and consciousness is the biggest influence on our work together. Through studying and practicing meditation, I’m naturally drawn to thinking about time and perception verses presence and states of being, which like love are spaces outside of time where we connect to the infinite. This idea of connection and oneness is where this opera ends and where our next opera (in progress), Out There, begins.
It seems like, by taking native traditions and beliefs (and even instruments) and putting them into the western context of opera, you might be skirting on some questions of appropriation. I don’t mean that in at all an accusatory way, because obviously there’s such a richness of material here, but is that something that concerned you when approaching this project? How did you deal with those issues?
Elizabeth: This is such an important question to be writing and thinking about as it relates to who is telling what story in what context. In opera there is a long history of dominate cultures perpetuating their values and practices through operas that represent other cultures or intercultural exchange, we consciously tried to avoid that. The story and characters are completely unique but inspired by Mayan texts, folklore and engravings. However, New Age Philosophy, Indian philosophy, Transcendentalism, the multiverse, epic love stories, and our own experiences with meditation equally influenced the story.
Lewis: My decision to write for the primordial end-blown conch shell trumpet in the context of a more traditional Western opera ensemble stemmed from its ancient origins and deep elemental connection to the water and earth. Conch shell trumpets have been used as instruments since Neolithic times and are not only found in Mesoamerican cultures. They are found in almost every part of the world from Central Europe to India, Tibet, Korea, Japan, the Caribbean, Melanesian, and Polynesian cultures; The mythological Greek god Triton also blew a conch shell to calm the seas. The conch shell trumpet produces a beautifully pure tone, very close to a sine wave.
To balance this historic instrument the ensemble also consisted of 8 sine tone oscillators, each of which produces a single sine wave. Sinusoidal sound waves consist of a smooth, repeating oscillation of a single frequency. Unlike other sound waves, sine waves are self-identical at any moment in time, without fluctuating harmonic content, or an initial transient/final decay. In this way, sine waves seem to exist outside of time itself and are to me, a sonic representation of the infinite.
Composer Lewis Pesacov. Photo by Michael Leviton.
Lewis, in the liner notes you talk a bit about exploring ancient music and constructing an imagined future music, and of the ratio 13:20 informing a lot of your process. The vocal writing in the opening reminds me a lot of the Notre Dame School composers and music from the Ars Antiqua, who also had an obsession with ratios. Is that something you were actively seeking to channel?
Lewis: In contemplating the cyclical nature of time I kept coming back to this idea of the resultant blurring of the lines of the ancient and the future. I wasn’t interested in exploring ancient music per se, but more specifically, imagining my own creative interpretation of an ancient/future music. The music of the opening scene invokes a sacred song and is certainly influenced by the Western tradition of polyphonic vocal writing. The rhythmic structure uses an isorhythm with it’s talea and color based on the ratio of 13:20, respectively. Each of the 4 voices sing rounds of the isorhythm in some form of augmentation or diminution. Good ear Nick! But I do believe the isorhythm was an invention of the Ars Nova school, just after the Ars Antiqua… [Ed: Lewis is correct about this] That said, I did not intend to blatantly allude to Medieval music as much as to unfold out from their rarefied formal practices.
What was the back and forth like while working on the libretto and music? As a couple, do you try to draw a line between the project and your home life, or does working on it get into everything you do together?
Elizabeth: Creating opera with my husband is the ultimate expression of love – it is merging together to create something bigger than our two egos. I feel really lucky that our relationship has found this expression so naturally. We wrote the piece together and produced the live performance ourselves, so there were no boundaries, everything was The Edge of Forever all the time leading up to December 2012. Having a creative practice that is naturally woven into everyday life is something that artists do and certainly something Lewis does, so I followed his lead while writing with him. I wrote all the text, he started composing and wanted to cut half of my words, I fiercely guarded those words until I realized he was right, let go word by word, and he helped me shape a libretto that was so much more abstract, poetic and fit our deepest intentions for the piece.
We have an exclusive stream of the Finale. What can you tell us about it?
Elizabeth: In the final aria the scribes announce to our ancient astronomer that the time for realizing his destiny has arrived. In this scene he moves darkness to light – from a space of desire to a space of illumination where he can see the his true nature and that of the world. By the end of the aria he is released from his cave, a metaphor for his mind and thoughts, and in doing so he has attained freedom from the illusion of the self. He can now embrace the One.
Lewis: From a musical perspective, there’s a shift in the tonal content of the piece at the Finale. The music in the prior scenes consists of non-tempered microtonal inflections that create beating between the pitches, furthering an unresolved feeling of tension. However, in the finale, inspired by the image of the turning of the great cosmic clock, the ensemble locks into 5-limit just intonation. I intended the harmonies (consisting of pure, non-beating primary harmonics of the overtone series) to act as a metaphor for the moment in which the ancient astronomer merges with it all.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Lewis: Time is shaped by our own perceptions so it is deeply personal, but it is also something universal that defines us as humans. My hope is that The Edge of Forever creates conditions for the audience to reflect on the nature of time. That perhaps the past and the future are not the truth or even reality, but instead one can find the entirety of human experience in each moment.
For more information about The Edge of Forever record release party & concert on June 24, visit 356mission.tumblr.com/post/145921957755/the-edge-of-forever-a-chamber-opera-in-five-scenes
To purchase The Edge of Forever from The Industry Records, visit records.theindustryla.org/album/the-edge-of-forever
Autoduplicity talks ahead of Ablinger and Machaut
Tonight! Come one and all to Mor York Gallery at 8 for the next installment of Dog Star 12, Autoduplicity, a project of flutist Rachel Beetz and cellist Jennifer Bewerse. Amid their preparations (and moving New Classic LA headquarters to a new house – hence the down to the wire interview), Jennifer and Rachel had time to talk about their project.
How did this band get started? Was it a mutual interest in the works you explore, or did one of you invite the other?
Jennifer: Rachel and I had had the chance to play Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Crumb’s Vox Balaenae together, and I felt like we had great performance chemistry and similar working habits.
Rachel: Jen was interested in exploring performance without the cello and she invited me to join her.
Jennifer: We were both really interested in what would happen in that context. As an instrumentalist, you often identify yourself so strongly with your instrument. What would happen when we didn’t have that?
Rachel: Together, we negotiated a program for this exploration that was neither fully myself (long, dark, tiring) or Jen (bright, light, short). Working on the program together was so rewarding for both of us that the project stuck.
Jennifer: Right, we actually started very much as NOT a band – the title of the duo was the title of our first concert. But the collaboration makes a lot of sense for both of our artistic interests and has grown to include other concert projects.
The first time I saw you you put on a phenomenal performance with almost no playing of your instruments in the traditional sense. As “musicians,” how does your performance training translate into these works for your bodies/you as humans. Seems like acting and stagecraft would be big for you.
Rachel: A lot of people brought up terminology relating to theater when we were presenting our first concert. It was interesting, because we weren’t thinking about the program in those terms at all. A lot of people thought that because we no longer had instruments in our hands, it meant that we were using other types of tools of the stage, mostly involving theater, acting, and such. However, this was not the case AT ALL.
Jennifer: Our mode of working so far has been to look at very targeted questions or materials then explore them in our concerts. So, this concert was very specifically about our interest in a negative space – music without our instruments. The rest really emerged from that spot – issues of feminism, identity, physical relationships…
Rachel: All of the musical decisions for that first performance were made as if our bodies replaced the external instrument. In a way, we translated the practice of performing on an instrument to our bodies, employing the same modes of questioning and thought as an instrumentalist would.
Jennifer: Honestly, these terms were really tricky for us. When does a score (music) become a script (theater)? In some ways the differences between our performing Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls and Vinko Globokar’s ?Corporel are a matter of the composer/author’s preferred notation. But we’re also not interested in “tearing down the boundaries between the arts” or anything like that. This concert was very much in a grey area and that’s an interesting space to inhabit.
Does this week’s concert follow that exploration (body/music), or is it a new direction for you?
Rachel: This concert was one I was really interested in – combining Peter Ablinger’s Instrumente und Rauschen with music by Machaut. In a way, it’s a very simple juxtaposition, but as we dug into the music – moving from single tones, the “everything always” of white noise – we found beautiful paradoxes between the ideas of “simple” or “complex.” At its core, the concert is really about audibility.
Jennifer: So in relation to body/music, the answer is no and yes. No, because this is a very sonic concert – we play our instruments and all of the pieces explore sound. But also yes, because we’ve constructed the concert in a way that ended up shaping sound into a very tangible, physical, object. The sonic extremes – soft/loud, high/low, simple/complex – create a field of listening that situates the body in space.
What excites you about this material?
Rachel: The sound as object in connection to the body’s reaction to it as such is what excites me in this program.
Jennifer: I’m also really excited about the focus of the concert. We’ve worked really hard to construct a continuous listening experience where the pieces can come together and make a larger narrative. It feels like the performer’s version of composing, and it’s very satisfying.
What are your favorite ensembles/series/composers/whatever else in town to go see and hear?
Jennifer: Dog Star Orchestra! This concert is part of the Dog Star Orchestra Volume 12 Festival that’s happening between June 4th – 18th.
Rachel: The concerts are excellent and it’s a great way to see what’s happening in the experimental community around Los Angeles. You can see all of the concerts at www.dogstarorchestra.com.
Aperture Duo on WORK
This Friday night, June 3, Aperture Duo, the violin/viola duo project of Adrianne Pope and Linnea Powell takes the stage at Boston Court for the next installment of wild Up!’s WORK series. Thankfully, Linnea and Adrianne found time between rehearsals to answer a few questions about the show and the duo. Enjoy, and see you Friday!
So, tell me a bit about Friday.
Adrianne: Po Pow!!
Linnea: On Friday night Adrianne and I are featured on a double bill for wild Up’s WORK series. WORK concerts highlight the influences and passions of members of the band and we’re excited to bring our chamber music project Aperture Duo to the series. This concert is a huge honor for both of us and we took the opportunity to bring some friends along and play some larger ensemble pieces.
A: It’s going to be a raucous show: we’re playing duos by George Aperghis, W.A. Mozart, Nicholas Deyoe, and a world premiere by Chris Rountree with our good friend and collaborator, Jodie Landau. We’re finishing the concert with a Julia Wolfe piece for 5 singing, stomping violins. Prepping for this concert with Maiani da Silva, Mona Tian, and Nicole Sauder has been a total blast.
Aperture Duo: Adrianne Pope and Linnea Powell
What inspired you to start this duo? Were you friends before and wanted to do something together, or was it a specific body of work you wanted to explore and develop?
L: I moved to LA in 2013 and was pretty hungry for chamber music opportunities in town. A year later Adrianne showed up at a wild Up planning meeting and I basically accosted her to read through some duos.
A: I had no idea what I was getting into, but once we started reading Mozart, I was amazed at how well we clicked musically. Then we discovered a ton of similarities….both native surf-town-hippie-ville Californians, University of Michigan alums, amino acid fans, etc. We decided to set a goal for our reading rehearsals by preparing a full concert. We found a recently written duo by Clara Ianotta that we both loved and added it to the Mozart and Martinu.
L: I think we were both surprised at how well that first concert went. It’s a goal of every chamber musician to to be spontaneous and completely present on stage, and it definitely was the case for this show. We had so much fun performing and our audience loved it. After that we were hooked. Knowing that there was limited existing rep for violin and viola duo made it all the more enticing since we were both excited to commission new works.
We know each other through the new music scene, and I’ve of course seen you play with wild Up! and program works by local composers. So, imagine my surprise when a friend’s first comment after seeing Aperture Duo was about the Mozart – he said “that was the best Mozart K. 423 I’ve ever heard.” Is your interest in “the rep” similar to your interest in new music?
A: Absolutely. I love looking at a piece written today, then looking back at Mozart and realizing that badassery is timeless. Composers have always been and will always be breaking, rewriting, then breaking rules over and over again. Our focus is definitely on new music, but by performing music from multiple genres we become better interpreters and musicians. The styles inform each other.
L: It’s all there, no matter when a piece was written: form, contrast, phrasing, communication, sound-world, intent. Working with a composer on these concepts can make it easier because they can give us specific ideas, but we still do a lot of our own interpretation on every piece. And sometimes it’s really fun to say “they’re dead! let’s do what we want.”
Have you found any sticking points on the sort of genre-mixing you program? Or are you finding audiences to be as open minded as you are?
L: In general, the response to our programming has been super positive. With such closely related instruments, the common misconception is that all pieces programmed on a violin and viola duo concert will sound the same. We see this as a fun challenge, and we strive to program contrasting works.
A: We also put a lot of thought into the audience experience. We want our programs to hold the audience’s attention and we want them to actually feel things during our concerts…whether it’s bliss, curiosity, or total discomfort to the point of wanting to pull their hair out. We also like to ask the question of “what is beautiful?” This allows us to be creative with pushing the limits of our instruments’ sounds.
Who do you like to go hear in town?
L: There’s so much happening all the time! It’s super inspiring to see our friends in the new music scene putting themselves out there and programing shows with so much intent. We both try to see as many concerts as we can to support the thriving scene.
A: Besides local groups, I love to go to all kinds of different concerts…from Lila Downs to Andrew Bird to Patti Smith.
L: When my ears need a break I love seeing independent theater and dance.
What’s next for Aperture Duo?
A: This summer, we are excited to be in residence at Avaloch Farm, where we will work on rep for next season and workshop a commission with Noah Meites. In August, we’ll be performing at the Carlsbad Music Festival. We have lots of shows in the works for next season including an Aperture Duo and Friends concert with Richard Valitutto and some exciting commissions.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks Nick!
Tickets for this Friday’s concert are available at bostoncourt.com/events/278/wild-up. More info on Aperture Duo is at apertureduo.com.
People Inside Electronics interviews the Friction Quartet
This Saturday evening People Inside Electronics bring San Francisco’s Friction Quartet to LA for a program of works by Ian Dicke, Adam Cuthbert, Missy Mazzoli, Skrillex, Diplo, and PIE director Isaac Schankler. Tickets and more info are available at peopleinsideelectronics.com/friction-quartet.
Ahead of the show, Isaac has had a chance to sit down with the quartet’s cellist, Doug Machiz, for an interview.
How did Friction Quartet form? What’s the history of the group?
Kevin and I were working on Philip Glass’ third quartet at the Zephyr Chamber Music Festival in the Italian Alps. The experience was incredibly moving and Kevin and I really enjoyed working on this non-traditional classical music together. I had recently had my first experience playing contemporary classical music and I found that my background in improvised music made for a smooth transition into performing music that had not been performed before. I was deciding in real time what something should sound like and that was exhilarating.
I was studying at UT Austin and became close friends with the Miro and Aeolus Quartets. There was something special and family like about their dynamic. I spontaneously decided that I could devote my life to performing string quartets that had never been played before and also that I could have Kevin as my partner in this endeavor. I also knew from being at BU with Ari from JACK quartet that this could be a viable career option. So I asked Kevin if he wanted to do this and he said he has always wanted to do this. So we decided that if I ended up in SF that we would go for it. A year later I was accepted to SF Conservatory of Music and Friction was born. Otis joined half a year after our formation and Taija joined 2 1/2 years ago. Now we have that stable familial feeling that I loved about the Miro and Aeolus Quartets and we are deciding what new string quartets can sound like.
Can you tell us a little about the program you’ll be performing?
We will be performing some of our favorite works we have commissioned that also happen to be electro-acoustic. Ian Dicke’s Unmanned was one of the first pieces we commissioned and really became a flagship piece for us. Adam Cuthbert’s Universe Explosion exists because I met Adam at the Bang on a Can Festival and played his Universe Explosion for large chamber ensemble. I loved the piece so much and we collaboratively came up with the idea to have Adam arrange it for double quartet. Isaac Schankler’s Hagiography is one of our recent commissions and this will be the world premiere. It’s a stunning, ambitious work and we can’t wait to share it. We will close the program with two of my own arrangements of music by Skrillex.
Friction Quartet is known for championing new music — was that part of the quartet’s mission from the beginning? What made you want to focus on new music, and especially commissioning new music? There’s no shortage of string quartet music already out there, after all.
As I mentioned before, the quartet formed with the intention of specializing in new music. Old music is fantastic, but it can’t possibly address what is happening in our lives and what we are feeling the way new music can. We also believe in pushing the boundaries of what sound can do. We want to share new sound worlds with people and move them in ways they never thought possible. To quote the great Living Earth Show, we want to be a “megaphone for composers” who have important things to say about the world right now.
Initially we planned to only play music written after 1900 (we couldn’t possibly exclude our favorite 20th century giants). But over the years we decided to bring the old stuff into our repertoire because it’s too good not to. Also we don’t believe in excluding any music from our possible repertoire because we would just be missing out on potentially great music and new audiences. There is something to learn from and enjoy in music of all styles and time periods.
I’m curious about your pop covers. A lot of quartets have taken stabs at covering pop music, but it seems to me there’s something special about the way you approach it, both in terms of the music you chose to cover, and the care and creativity that go into your arrangements. How do you decide what songs to cover, and what’s your thought process in terms of how to arrange them?
I try to find a balance between songs that I like and songs that are going to resonate with new audiences. All of the songs I arrange fall somewhere on that spectrum. I’m on a mission to recruit new audiences simply because I don’t want anyone to miss out on how fucking awesome classical music can be. But the arrangements are also self-serving. I want to provide extremely fun repertoire for the quartet to play and I want a creative outlet for myself as a performer of music written by other people. I’ve dabbled in free improv, jazz, electronic compositions and playing in bands. These arrangements let me explore all of my musical interests in the context of my main project.
The most amazing and unintended consequence of making these arrangements is consistently getting huge crowds of young children to go absolutely ape shit. It’s like we’re the fucking Beatles all of a sudden when we play Michael Jackson’s Thriller (check out our documentary, Friction, by Meridian Hill Pictures). And this makes no sense because Michael Jackson’s career was all but over when these kids were born. I feel confident that a lot of these kids are going to find more ways to be creative through music because of our performances. I also think some of these kids will become fans of music when they otherwise may not have.
What’s next up for the Friction Quartet? Any upcoming projects you’re particularly excited about?
After our So-Cal tour we head to NYC for a performance of a favorite commission of ours, Juiced by Brendon Randall-Myers, at Roulette. We will also make our Carnegie Hall debut as part of the Kronos Quartet Workshop performing classic and new Kronos commissions. Then we head to Seattle to shoot a video, produced by Second Inversion, of In/Exchange for Steel Pan and Quartet by Andy Akiho with Andy himself on steel pan. We have residencies at Cornish College and Western Washington University. At WWU we are premiering a new string quartet concerto by Roger Briggs. After returning to SF we have an onslaught of various awesome projects that all happen before we head back east to Detroit in June for the Shouse Institute at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. I’m most excited about our SF Jazz debut in August with Fabian Almazan’s trio.
Tickets for the Friction Quartet show are available at peopleinsideelectronics.com/friction-quartet
The B Band interviews Invisible Anatomy
Invisible Anatomy
On Monday Night, the composer-performers of Invisible Anatomy are bringing their unique take on the new music experience to The Blue Whale in Little Tokyo, in a concert with the Ben Phelps’ new project, The B Band. Ben had a chance to sit down with two members of Invisible Anatomy, Dan Schlosberg and Brendon Randall-Myers, and interview them about the “slash” (composer / performer), and how that does or doesn’t fit into the modern classical music model. Here’s Ben with Dan and Brendon:
So you are all composers from Yale. Why start your own group? What does Invisible Anatomy do differently?
DS: IA grew out of the time we spent at Yale performing each other’s music. We found that, as time went by, we increasingly chose the music of other composer colleagues who were also performers to play our music in the new music concerts. The system at Yale was such that it required all instrumentalists to perform in those concerts, which can and does have huge benefits but also some drawbacks relating to the extent of certain players’ passion to play new work. We found that, when we worked with each other, everything just clicked. We instinctively knew how to inhabit each others’ music, so to speak, which made for thrilling performances and just overall an intense joy.
BRM: Many aspects of the group also grew out of a project of (member) Fay Wang’s through Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts in 2014. She was commissioned to write a piece after observing members of the microbiology department over the course of a year, and basically had free reign to make her own ensemble and hire whoever she wanted. That group ended up including almost all of the future members of IA, and she wrote this huge 30-minute piece that we performed wearing lab coats with props and lighting and projections. So that ended up kind of being a template for what a lot of what we’re doing now.
Do you feel like you have a “musical style” that unites you? Or is it something else?
BRM: I think our music all sounds really different, but we do all work with aspects of tonal harmony, and we all have performing backgrounds in music other than classical in addition to our classical training. We’re all interested in altered states and narrative, and making vivid and direct music. As a composer/performer ensemble, we’re fascinated by the weirdness and amazingness of performing bodies, and our first couple shows have dealt explicitly with the mind/body relationship.
When you design a program like Dissections, what ties it all together? Where does it start?
BRM: Dissections grew out of the idea of digging deeper into things, of examining and questioning and looking below the surface. Ha, honestly all these things start with a lot of late-night hangs over dinner and booze. We kind of just get together and throw ideas around until we start zeroing in on something that’s interesting to all of us, then flesh out the concept over the course of months of conversations, Skype sessions, and group emails. We’re checking in with each other at every step of the writing process and talking about ideas and writing/revising even through the rehearsal process (which was a little bit of a problem this time around). We also are incredibly lucky to collaborate with two amazing lighting designers – Solomon Weisbard and Daisy Long – and an awesome director in Dustin Wills – that help us tease out the arc of the show and make visual sense of it.
How long have you been working on this then?
BRM: Both Dissections and our first program Body Parts had 8-10 month gestation periods culminating in frantic 3-4 week periods of writing and rehearsing.
Seems like you have some ideas on what the composer’s job is today. How do you see yourself as “composers” fitting into classical music and modern American culture?
DS: It’s hard for me to say what the job of “composers” as a whole is. I am a firm believer in what Hans Eisler and Theodor Adorno called “railing against the cult of unobtrusiveness,” which is a fancy way of saying never giving people what they think they want, what they’ve been conditioned to want. I think part of an artist’s goal should be to bring people up short, to expose things that reach into the deepest parts of our psychosis, things that may be (very) uncomfortable to confront. After all, if we’re just following the norms laid out for us by society or, in this case, the music or new-music establishment, is that truly art?
BRM: Oh god, I have way too many thoughts on this, but I’ll try to stay focused.
As a composer, my job is to make people think about and feel something that’s unfamiliar and challenging, but also provide moments of beauty and catharsis. This is what music has always been to me – at its best it can create a space outside our routines where there’s a window between minds and worlds. I also view it at as my job to create music that I want to listen to, that’s interesting and meaningful to me, that reflects the world I live in, interacts with all the traditions I grew up with, and can speak to a lot of different people.
In terms of modern American culture, who knows. Now that Kanye West has collaborated with Caroline Shaw, all bets are pretty much off.
Invisible Anatomy joins The B Band monday night at The Blue Whale in Little Tokyo. $10.
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 4: Alex Weiser
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET has been interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s final interview with Alex Weiser where they discuss his piece water hollows stone.
Tell us about water hollows stone.
water hollows stone is a three movement work for four hand piano. The four hand piano repertoire is largely known for modest pieces, often written for amateurs, but for this work (in no small part inspired by the virtuosity you guys, HOCKET, bring to the table), I went for something much more ambitious. I thought of having four hands instead of two as magnifying the possibilities of the solo piano, almost akin to having a player piano. The result is some incredibly challenging and intricately interlocking passagework. The first movement explores the resonance of the piano with huge waves of sound, bell-like interjections, and harmonies and textures emerging from misty resonance, the second movement saturates the keyboard in a breakneck scherzo of cascading canons, and the final movement offers a wistful goodbye song exploring the sonic world inside decaying resonance.
What does the title mean and what is its significance in the piece?
The name water hollows stone comes from an ancient Latin proverb found in Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto, which reads “gutta cavat lapidem” – “a drop of water hollows a stone.” Later it was expanded: “non vi, sed saepe cadendo” – “not by force, but by continuously dripping.” Through its quiet persistence water does the seemingly impossible. My piece seeks to work in the same way, building up its material through insistent waves of sound, changing gradually but ultimately, I hope, making a big impact.
The second movement of water hollows stone, is a series of complex interlocking canons that literally covers the entire range of the piano. What was the inspiration for this movement?
Michael Gordon, one of my favorite composers and one of my teachers, wrote an incredible solo piano piece called, “Sonatra” which is built out of these incessant arpeggios up and down the whole piano. In the program note he said, “I wanted to use all of the keys on the piano and use them often,” and I just love this idea of maximizing the sonic possibilities by using all of the keys. Along those lines I was also inspired by the genre of “black midi” wherein popular songs are arranged for midi piano to use the maximum number of notes possible, saturating the score and turning it black. With these ideas in the back of my mind I revisited Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and was totally floored by this incredible canonic arpeggio that bursts out in the 19th variation. For the second movement of water hollows stone I took this material as a launching pad, changed the harmony, expanded the canon from two voices to four, and then hit the ground running, leaving Beethoven behind and developing the material as if it were my own.
The third movement explores dissipating resonances in the piano. What drew you to this technique?
I first encountered this technique when I heard Helmut Lachenmann’s delightful set of pieces Kinderspiel, and I loved it as a way of reimagining the sounds possible with the piano. In the final movement of water hollows stone I use this technique as a metaphor for fading away. After having built up a big mass of sound in the first movement and played with super saturated interlocking canons in the second movement, the piece bids a farewell song as its sound evaporates, and fades away with each successive chord.
We spent time together in residence at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute workshopping and putting this piece together. Can you talk about our collaborative process, and how it affected the piece?
We workshopped the piece at Avaloch making dozens of fine-tuned adjustments to get all of the pacing just right, and to finesse the intricate choreography of the four hand interplay. The opportunity to tweak details like this over the course of a week together is something I have never experienced before, but I can’t imagine how we could have put this piece together without it. I’m very grateful to Avaloch for allowing us to have that time together.
As a New York based composer, do feel that this piece is a representative of the kind of music coming out the New York right now?
One of the things I love about New York City is the incredible diversity of activity – people here are writing complex music, simple music, music that looks forward imagining a new future, music that looks backward reimagining the past. I’d like to think that my music does a bit of all that.
Anything else you would like to add?
I’m coming out for this show and it’ll be my first time in Los Angeles. Come say hello and tell me where I should visit! I hope this is my first trip of many; there seems to be a lot of exciting new music happening in LA.
[editor’s note: damn right there is!]
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 3: Ryan Harper
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with Ryan Harper where they discuss his piece A 19.
Tell us about A 19.
A 19, for two toy pianos, takes its name from a work by the artist László Moholy-NagyThe piece explores a sustained gesture in which the melodic range and rhythmic structures are gradually constricted, leading both the performers and audience inexorably toward a single point.
László Moholy-Nagy: A 19
What about the painting by László Moholy-Nagy inspired you?
I was intrigued by the fact that no matter how I looked at A 19, I found my eyes drawn to a point of convergence. There’s a translucent circle hovering over the intersecting lines, but like the audience it seems to be a spectator to the events occurring below it.
How do you feel this painting is represented in your piece?
The painting and the piece both maintain a formal detachment to the depicted gesture that nevertheless is the reason for the work’s being. I think structure is paramount in both.
What drew you to two toy pianos as the instrumentation for this piece?
In addition to the fact that it’s not everyday you get to write for a group like you guys on the Schoenhut Piano Company Artist Roster, I looked at the limited melodic and tonal range of the toy piano as a kind of challenge. I was interested in exploring how to portray extremes within a narrow set of parameters.
You have lived in both New York and Los Angeles, two major cities with very different musical scenes right now, how has this affected your music?
I think the longer I spend in New York the more I become drawn to the idea of an economy of means. It’s impossible to yell longer or louder than the city, so you have to figure out how to make what you say count in some other way. There’s definitely some great music happening in both cities right now though.
Anything else you would like to add?
Have a good concert! I wish I could be there.
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 2: Emily Cooley
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with Emily Cooley where they discuss her piece Phoria.
Tell us about Phoria.
It’s a single-movement piece that is about seven minutes long and commissioned by you guys, HOCKET, who are great friends and colleagues of mine. It contains a little nugget of musical material that has appeared in several of my recent pieces. You can hear it most clearly at the end of the piece, when it’s repeated over and over by Sarah on the piano 1 part. The whole piece basically grew out of that singsong-y, music-box-like melody. But the way it appears in the piece, I ended up putting everything else first – every variation on that little idea occurs before the original idea, which is only heard towards the end. So in a sense, the events of the piece reveal what the piece is actually about.
“Phoria” is when two eyes are unable to look at the same object. How is this represented in your piece?
That’s the technical definition of the word, and it plays out in my piece in the sense that the two players are often doing slightly different things. The musical material they play is related, but in an unbalanced, off-kilter way; during the fast music in the middle of the piece, they’re literally playing in two different keys. But beyond the word “phoria” as a noun, I was also thinking of it as a suffix – as in the words “euphoria” and “dysphoria.” To me, different moments in my piece embody each of those words. There is some joy, but also some deep unease. And at the end of the piece, maybe some sadness at the fact that joy is often inhibited by unease. A lot of my work has to do with language and identity, and with trying to musically express some of the emotions surrounding those things.
How does writing for piano-four hands differ from writing for solo piano or any other chamber ensemble at that?
This was my first piece for piano-four hands, and actually my first piece in a while that involves piano at all. I had been writing mostly for strings, so it was fun to dive back into keyboard writing. Obviously there are some technical challenges, in the sense that the keyboard can get pretty crowded with four hands on it. You guys helped me work through some of that by finding really ingenious ways to avoid hand collisions in what I had written – so I was very lucky in this collaboration.
We spent time together in residence at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute workshopping and putting this piece together. Can you talk about our collaborative process and how it affected the piece.
I loved our time together at Avaloch – what a perfect working environment! It allowed us to workshop and experiment with the really fine details of the piece. I remember us doing a ton of work with pedaling – not the first element of the music a listener might notice, but in four-hands writing and in this piece I think it was really critical. You guys had so many useful things to suggest and contribute, and I loved that all of us in the room were both composers and pianists (although I’m a very bad pianist).
You, Alex Weiser, and Ryan Harper are three of the five composers of Kettle Corn New Music. How do these colleagues inspire your music and is there a unifying element to the music you guys compose?
I don’t think there’s one unifying element to our music, although I know we all have some common influences. I think we all produce very distinct music from one another. The great thing about Kettle Corn New Music is that although we’re primarily a presenting organization, we’re also all composers and we have certain common perspectives. As the youngest in the group, I feel as though I’ve literally come of age, musically, with the other members of Kettle Corn by my side. Alex and I have been trading music and giving each other feedback for almost 7 years now. It’s incredibly rewarding. We have such vastly different musical tastes and sensibilities, and yet we’re able to help each other too.
HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 1: Aaron Holloway-Nahum
HOCKET
On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with London based composer Aaron Holloway-Nahum where they discuss his piece Remember Me?.
Tell us about Remember Me?
Remember Me? is a forty-minute extravaganza for two pianists, one piano, two toy pianos and an array of other toys and props. It’s a set of variations on Dido’s Lament, broken up into four parts that can each be played individually, or together in one sweep as half of a concert. The first part takes place entirely on the keys of the piano, ending with the slamming of the piano lid. The second part is played on and in the piano, but the pianists never touch the keys. The third part is a kind of mirror set of variations to the first part, but here its distorted because the music is played on one piano and one toy piano. The fourth part (which was the first to be performed, as is the part you can currently hear on HOCKET’s Soundcloud page) is for two toy pianos.
What lead you towards Dido’s Lament from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as the source material for this large-scale variations?
There are some technical things about the piece that make it very good source material (the passacaglia, the familiarity, the rich variety within the already repetitive structure, etc…) but it’s hard to say exactly what drew me to this music because I wasn’t really thinking about those things at the time. I think I just found I’d often get the music stuck in my head and had found myself daydreaming variations on it in the past.
The history of the large-scale variations for piano is such a strong tradition – – Bach’s Goldberg Variations,
I’ve heard from a lot of composers that when they’re composing a certain kind of work (like a string quartet, say) they avoid listening to any other pieces like that because it makes it impossible for them to work. I’m exactly the opposite of this. It’s more like a writer who, when writing an essay on a particular topic will read loads of other things on that topic, looking for interesting tidbits, seeing what people have said already, etc…
I include score study in my daily routine of composing and I literally had all three of the scores you mention here (along with many others) on my desk while I was writing Remember Me? Another book that lives (always) on my composing desk is Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. One of my favourite quotes in it is this:
“If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone say you’re so original!” (Attributed to cartoonist Gary Panter)
So all this score study is about soaking in the sum-total of what’s been made and said in this genre so far. Sometimes this leads to something like a direct homage (there is one in Remember Me? to Rzewski, and one to Beethoven) but more often I’m trying to steal loads and loads of little things that I stack up in new ways that are interesting to me.
Part II of Remember Me? doesn’t touch a note of the piano and is an incredible exploration of extended techniques. How did you go about discovering and creating the sound world for this section of the piece?
So part of this is wrapped up in the previous question. I listened to a lot of music that used a lot of really varied extended techniques. When I heard things I liked, I would find a score and make a note in my notebook of how the composer had done this. Many of these sounds, though, are now found in contemporary piano music so often that they really sound like cliches to my ears. So I’d try layering up two or three ideas together, or to reimagine how I could get a similar sound in a different way. I think the most unusual thing to know about the second movement – for me as a composer anyway – is that I wrote it without ever actually going to a piano and trying to make these sounds myself. I wanted to be led by my imagination rather than what I could physically accomplish on the instrument.
Part III and Part IV or your piece feature the toy pianos and push these instruments to previously unexplored areas. What drew you to the toy piano?
To be honest it was your passion for the instruments that did this. All of my music is really inspired by and about specific musicians whom I respect and adore, and many of my pieces just begin as conversations where I’m asking “what do you like to play?” and “what do you wish composers would do more often?” We were putting on a sort of “extra-curricular” concert at the Aspen Music Festival where we played Rzewski’s Coming Together and Thomas brought along a toy piano (and a melodica, which also makes an appearance in Remember Me?) And I saw the instrument there through his eyes and the possibilities were so wonderful I just felt I would be foolish to leave it out.
We have worked very closely with you on putting this piece together, can you talk about the process of collaboration with us.
Well, what I’d really say is that working with the two of you has firstly been a lot of fun: you’ve been so open to any idea, and so helpful in thinking about how to accomplish something. Let me give you a really specific example: I had been in NYC working with ICE Ensemble and seen them perform with Pauline Oliveros, and there was this great concert filled with great music but there was this one thing that totally blew me away: at one point as she was improvising she let all the music die down and was just running her hands over the keys of the accordion. And I thought: that is a sound I have to put into the piece. But I had no idea how to write it down, or even how to describe it. So I wrote something approximate and then ended up sending Thomas a video and literally just said this is the sort of sound I want, what is the best way to make it on the Toy Piano?
And there’s loads of things like that in this piece. From working out the best place to make a sound, or how long the resonance of the toy piano lasts, or whatever. The collaboration has been totally built on this joy we all share in making music and the piece is so much stronger for that.
Anything else you would like to add?
Well I’d just like to say thank you to both of you for the countless hours of practice you’ve put in on the piece. I’m so, so sorry I won’t be there for these premieres because I just know how wonderfully you play every single bar of it and I can’t wait to get together and work on the recording in June. All power to your fingers, HOCKET!
Interview: Nadia Shpachenko on her Piano Spheres debut
Dr. Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman is associate professor of music at Cal Poly Pomona. Photo by Tom Zasadzonski.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) night, pianist Nadia Shpachenko has her Piano Spheres Satellite Series debut at REDCAT. Tickets are available at redcat.org/event/piano-spheres-nadia-shpachenko. We reviewed Nadia’s last album here a few months back, and are stoked both for this concert and the fact that she had a minute to answer some questions about the program via email. Here’s Nadia.
So tell me about your Satellite Series show.
Tomorrow I will be performing a recital that features music written for me by six very talented composers with whom I worked closely on the interpretation of the works. It is an incredibly personal program that I can’t wait to share with LA audiences! The second half of the program will present the world premieres of two architecture-inspired works commissioned by Piano Spheres. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan’s Bangladesh conveys the transformative hope of Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Buildings in Dhaka. Annie Gosfield, whom the New Yorker called “The Carl Nielsen of Second Avenue,” wrote The Dybbuk on Second Avenue for this recital. Annie’s piece reflects the changing mix of influences in one theater in the Lower East Side’s “Jewish Rialto” over the years: from Yiddish theater to burlesque, from Chekhov to William Burroughs. These are the first two works of a project I am completing, to commission and record works inspired by architectural settings. In 2016 I will premiere four more new works by Amy Beth Kirsten, Hannah Lash, James Matheson, and Harold Meltzer at the Piano Spheres series at Boston Court, all illuminating particular architectural phenomena. The first half of the program will include works written for my albumWoman at the New Piano by Tom Flaherty, James Matheson, Adam Schoenberg, and Peter Yates. I like to humorously call that program Music for a New B’ak’tun, that is music for a newly transformed world, the new 5,125 year cycle according to the Mayan Calendar, which began in 2013 when all those works were written. I will note that the pieces all touch on the themes of transformation, of resonances across time, of cycles of rebirth. Cretic Variations by James Matheson emphasizes lengthy resonances, how momentary events persist, shape new events, and how our memory of the past is revised by events of the now. Whereas Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Etudes take us through a variety of worlds, from placid to energetic, Peter Yates’ Finger Songs take us on a journey through time, playing on our sentiments with flashes and resonances of musics past. Whereas Tom Flaherty’s Airdancing (for which the wonderful Genevieve Feiwen Lee will join me on toy piano) and Adam’s Picture Etudes introduce novel combinations of sound sources, Peter’s Finger Songs feature novel combinations of musical forms and genres. A number of the pieces feature descent into true musical chaos, and emergence into the new – whether momentous, as in the thunder and dawn of Cretic Variations, or thrilling, as in whoops and swirls of Airdancing. I am very excited to perform this program tomorrow!
Here is a sneak peak into the first half repertoire:
Had you selected the In Full Sail piece to begin with, or does the theme really encompass the whole program?
In Full Sail to me means sailing towards my dreams, taking chances and going for it all the way. In Full Sail is also the title of a piece Harold Meltzer is writing for my architecture-inspired program. In Full Sail won’t be premiered until May 2016, but Harold was the first composer I approached for the project and the first one to come up with a title. And thoughIn Full Sail is a critic’s description in particular of the Frank Gehry building to which Harold is responding, the title seems to describe well the theme of the first concert that will feature works from this project (but will also feature works fromWoman at the New Piano), given its wide meaning.
What’s it like being a Satellite Series artist? I’ve heard there’s a bit of mentoring and support from the long-term Piano Spheres mainstays.
I am honored and excited to join Piano Spheres as a Satellite Artist! Vicki Ray has been a wonderful mentor, giving me great advice about programming and career building and I am looking forward to presenting a composition workshop with Vicki this afternoon at Boston Court, together with composers Lewis Spratlan (who just got into town from Massachusetts) and Adam Schoenberg. Vicki’s sparkly personality and infectious energy definitely have a way of rubbing off on me, and all the other Piano Spheres pianists and staff have been very supportive, making my Piano Spheres experience superb!
We’re lucky in LA to have a lot of fantastic pianists. Who else in town inspires you?
I agree, the Los Angeles new music (and older music) scene is thriving! When I go to concerts of new music, I see enthusiastic people of all ages in the audience. There is great appreciation in LA for all things avant-garde, outside the box, with too many wonderful new music ensembles and solo artists to list. Since my twin boys were born 5 years ago, my concert going experience slowed down a bit for a few years, but last year I was able to attend many incredible, inspiring concerts featuring adventurous, innovative music, much of which was actually written by local composers. Since I can’t list everyone who inspires me in town, I would like to focus on the Piano Spheres pianists, who inspire me beyond words. I was fortunate to be able to attend most Piano Spheres concerts last season (and of course the fantastic season opener with Gloria Cheng and Thomas Adès in September). Each of the principal artists, Gloria Cheng, Vicki Ray, Mark Robson and Susan Svrček, presented cohesive, exciting, beautifully-themed programs that featured their exceptional pianism and great imagination in interpreting new works. I was also very impressed by the inaugural Satellite Series last season and still remember vividly Nic Gerpe’s powerful Crumb performance and Aron Kallay’s unforgettable program, which included a piece for speaking pianist and electronics by Vykintas Baltakas, for which Aron recited a text in Lithuanian! I also frequently collaborate with the adventurous pianist Genevieve Feiwen Lee, with whom I recorded two works for my album (Airdancing by Tom Flaherty and Bounce by Adam Schoenberg), and who will be airdancing with me on Tuesdayat REDCAT. I would just like to mention one more pianist who to this day continues to inspire me, my wonderful teacher John Perry, with whom I completed my graduate studies during the late 1990s through mid 2000s. Perry is turning eighty in February and has not slowed down a bit with his teaching and performances, which are moving, powerful and deeply felt. And he just presented a recital at Carnegie Hall to celebrate his 80th birthday!
What’s next after this show?
I have a very exciting season planned, with numerous premieres and exciting collaborations! I will be focusing on two brand new solo programs this season, which I will touring and recording in the near future. One of the programs, which I will start calling The Poetry of Places once it starts presenting only the architecture-inspired works in one recital, will feature six new compositions written for my project mentioned above (two of which I will be premiering). I will be performing these works more than a dozen times this season in California, New York, and Baltimore. For this project I will also be recording Andrew Norman’s Frank’s House for two pianists and two percussionists. Andrew and I were classmates at USC and I am thrilled to collaborate with him on this project! My other program, which I like to call Quotations and Homages will feature new and very recent musical homages by Matthew Elgart, Daniel Felsenfeld, Tom Flaherty, Vera Ivanova, James Matheson, Missy Mazzoli, Nick Norton (you!) and Peter Yates, five of which I will be premiering at Spectrum in New York on December 13. I am also very excited about my upcoming collaborations with Los Angeles Philharmonic’s violinist Vijay Gupta, with whom I will be performing a few local concerts in January, and with Kathleen Supové, with whom I will be performing concerts in three states in December, January and February, including the premiere of Jack Van Zandt’s Regular Division of the Plane for two pianos and a piece selected from ACFLA’s call for scores.
Anything else to add?
For this concert I had the privilege of choosing a beautiful Steinway & Sons concert grand that will be delivered to REDCAT tomorrow! I became a Steinway Artist last February and this was the first time since becoming a Steinway Artist that I had the opportunity to choose an instrument for a specific performance, an instrument that I felt would be a great match for the program on Tuesday. Adam Borecki beautifully filmed the Steinway Selection process, during which I discussed the differences between the instruments and performed short sections from some of the pieces on each piano. You can watch the clip, which was just finished this morning, here: