Interview: Justin Urcis, Executive Director of Monday Evening Concerts
If it weren’t for Justin Urcis and Monday Evening Concerts, I may never have found a way in to the new music scene in LA. Way back when I finished college, before the scene was as healthy and open as it is today, I was networking like crazy to find a job in music and largely getting ignored. Justin was kind enough to write back to me one day, and invited me to meet with him and, ultimately, intern with MEC. And let me tell you: if you want to meet a guy who can tackle an unbelievably gigantic task, running a season just as busy as those of many orchestras with large staffs, on his own, in what little extra time he has, then you want to meet Justin. I’m glad he had time to answer some questions.
Monday Evening Concerts has an enormous history, going straight back to Stravinsky in the 1930s, and getting to today by way of Boulez, the Arditti Quartet, and right up through Salonen and Stucky. Was taking charge of such a prestigious organization a few years ago, well, intimidating?
I suppose I was / have been too busy organizing things to worry about being intimidated. Someone had to keep the series going and somehow it ended up being me. That said, I do take the responsibility of running the series seriously and strive to present concerts of the quality and import that have made the series known and respected throughout the world.
With your series’ tradition of premieres from both luminaries of the avant-garde and up-and-comers, as well as performances of important pieces from the modernist and post-modern repertory, programming must be a bit tricky. What’s your approach?
The first consideration is that I will only program a concert that I would pay, and travel a reasonable distance, to hear. If a program does not meet that criteria, I cannot in good conscience ask an audience to buy a ticket or donate to support the event.
There are a lot of concerts I would pay and travel to hear but that are not appropriate for Monday Evening Concerts, such as a string quartet recital with works by Haydn and Schubert. I love those composers but the idea of presenting a traditional string quartet recital isn’t consistent with our mission.
A second consideration is whether anyone else in Los Angeles will present this program if we don’t; i.e. are we providing an experience that other organizations won’t. Obviously we don’t want to let other organization define us, but I think that MEC has always promoted concerts and events that are unique to Southern California. Last season REDCAT did a large Xenakis festival, so that seems less of a pressing concern for us in the near future. However, should a Xenakis piece fit just perfectly into a program or should we have an opportunity to present a special performer or ensemble playing Xenakis then we’d still do it. Last year the JACK Quartet played some short Webern pieces in between two quartets by Aaron Cassidy. The Cassidy quartets were classic MEC fare and it was the first time his music had even been heard on the West Coast. But I’m sure several string quartets each year play these short pieces of Webern in LA. So it’s not like audiences wouldn’t have had the chance to hear these pieces if we hadn’t presented them. However, the Webern fit just perfectly in this context so we presented it.
Clearly a lot of the programming reflects my personal tastes. That’s obvious from my first consideration. It’s difficult for me to articulate what qualities I’m looking for in music since there are so many. However, I do feel strongly that a concert should be something transcendent and spiritual, as vague and loaded as those terms may be. In a film we showed on Salvatore Sciarrino, Sciarrino said something like (I’m paraphrasing here), “When you go to a concert, it should really be a transformative experience. You should be transformed. Otherwise, what’s the point?” And I think he’s fundamentally right. There are a lot of options for entertainment nowadays. Life is short, and so while I have fun, I also take it seriously, knowing that we may not be around very long. And so, when an organization like MEC has really limited resources, and individuals decide to trust us with their money and generosity, we have an obligation to really do something that’s special and important for our culture. And each season, I feel this more strongly: that the concert has to be something special, that it can really change someone’s life, someone’s perspective on music, art, and humanity. And this can all be pleasurable (although at times it may not be, since it may also be disorienting, confusing, challenging, ugly, etc.). But it’s from this fundamental impulse that my desire for quality emerges. We certainly may not succeed all the time, but we need to keep trying.
More specifically, I spend a lot of time focusing on the pacing and contrasts in each program. I try to find compositions that will sound “just right” to follow another composition, even if they may seem unrelated. For the sake of our audience, I also try to provide a variety of styles throughout the season. I’m not in favor of presenting a series which clings to one type of aesthetic (i.e. only American experimental tradition, only Lachenmann and his descendants, only minimalism and its followers, etc). I think there are really great works in all of these traditions. Recently the series has presented a fair amount of recent European music. That’s probably because I’m finding a lot of that music interesting and because a lot of it is underrepresented here, so I feel more compelled to present it.
Every so often we’ll do something that may not seem especially new, but is unfamiliar. Last season we presented a 35 minute long a cappella passion by Heinrich Schutz. I happen to love Schutz, and especially his passions, but I quickly realized that these late works simply are not performed in LA. So we decided to present this sizable piece. Why not? I think MEC exists to take on projects like this. This meets the second consideration. We paired it with a very contemporary piece by Rolf Riehm which placed the Schutz in a contemporary context. I think this Riehm-Schutz combination is a good example of a Monday Evening Concerts program. Last month we paired organ works of Frescobaldi and Pasquini with a major piece by Klaus Lang. I’m sure the organ pieces were discoveries for much of the audience; I’m fairly familiar with Renaissance keyboard music and I had only known one of these three works before the concert.
Monday Evening Concerts has a distinguished history and I do consider this history when programming. I have my own interpretation of MEC’s history which may differ from others, but I see the organization as one that is constantly evolving and changing.
It’s important to state that I’m not coming up with all these programs on my own. On the contrary, I think our “secret” is that I rely heavily on friends, composers, performers, and anyone I can talk to for advice. Ultimately the programming is filtered through my sensibility, but I’m always speaking with people to get ideas and learn what’s out there. I’m not afraid to ask for help when I need it, and ask people to critique my ideas. It’s a constant process of refining and editing, and hopefully I do a good job, although I’m always nervous about the results.
Finally, none of the programming will work without great performers. All great music requires great performances. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Bach, John Cage, or Gerard Pesson. So we spend a lot of time trying to find the right performers for each piece and each concert. We have many really wonderful musicians based in Southern California and we invite them to perform frequently. (Composers from around the world have remarked on how well their music is performed here in Los Angeles). There are also marvelous performers elsewhere in the US and around the world, and we like to invite them as well, especially when they have special experience with a particular composer or tradition (i.e. Vincent Royer to play Radulescu, Mario Caroli for Sciarrino, JACK Quartet for Aaron Cassidy, Natalia Pschenitschnikova for Klaus Lang, etc, etc…). I think our audience enjoys hearing this combination of local and visiting performers which keeps the series lively and unpredictable. It’s also gratifying to watch local and visiting performers play together, which is an enriching experience for both and has the potential to foster new collaborations amongst them.
Tell me a bit about this season.
We’re midway into our 2011-2012 season. In December we presented the United States premiere of Gyorgy Kurtag’s major song cycle “…pas a pas…nulle part” which really had a major impact on our audience. Last month we presented the United States premiere of Klaus Lang’s “einfalt. stille.” for soprano, percussion, flute and viola which was particularly magical, and I marveled at the composer’s ability to create an incredibly rich sound world with such limited resources. Coming up is the United States debut of the Norwegian new music ensemble “asamisimasa.” Aside from being fantastic musicians, the group has developed a personal and idiosyncratic (in the best sense) repertoire which is quite refreshing. The music of Stefan Wolpe, Peter Ablinger, and Evan Johnson is featured in March, while our April concert highlights the many talents of Steven Schick, who will perform as a percussionist, speaker/actor and conductor in a program of Helmut Lachenmann, Kurt Schwitters and Aldo Clementi.
It must be very different to run a concert series than it is to run an ensemble or a venue. Can you talk about some of the work that goes into presenting this, and some of the differences?
I have never run an ensemble or a venue, but I believe I have enough of an understanding of the issues involved in administering both that I can accurately characterize some of the differences. An ensemble will have a fixed roster of performers and they will have a strong voice in determining the repertoire for the group. It is rare to have an outside party determine the repertoire for an ensemble unless it’s a music director, but even the music director will / should consider the desires of his / her performers in determining repertoire. The musicians should be enthusiastic about playing whichever music they are performing and not do it out of a sense of duty or obligation. Ensembles are also limited by their instrumentation. Because we do not have a fixed ensemble, I believe we have more opportunities available to us. Back to the Riehm / Schutz concert we did last season; I don’t think there are any ensembles out there that have 12 singers who sing Baroque music in addition to piano, violin, viola, cello, percussion, oboe, piccolo flute and contrabass clarinet! That said, I do regret that our concerts are often one-time affairs. The performers often put in an unbelievable amount of effort and time into learning and rehearsing demanding new scores only to play them once. This is not an ideal situation for them, but we don’t have the capacity to present multiple performances. Performers need to live with great music for many years to deepen their interpretations and an ensemble can provide this opportunity which we cannot (which is why we sometimes present ensembles or performers that have experience with certain pieces).
A venue has certain limitations as well. Our main venue is Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School although we do not use it for all of our productions It is a wonderful concert hall with superb acoustics and is an appropriate size for our events. However we do find occasions when we another venue is necessary. For example we presented Charlemagne Palestine several years ago in the First Congregational Church which has a monster pipe organ. This would simply not be possible in Zipper. So MEC has the flexibility of choosing venues based on their suitability for a given production.
Is there something that you are most proud of? I particularly remember when you managed to shut down a stretch of Grand Avenue for a performance of Ein Brise…
I am proud of introducing new music to our audiences and providing performers with opportunities to become more searching and creative musicians. I hope that we have done this on a number of occasions. It is especially gratifying when we have presented composers whose music should be better known, such as Frank Denyer, Horatiu Radulescu, Rolf Riehm and many many others.
From a logistical standpoint, shutting down Grand Avenue or obtaining 100% total darkness for our Georg Friedrich Haas concert were accomplishments, but I suppose the satisfaction would be no greater if I had shut down Grand Avenue for a rock concert or a random parade. Ultimately what’s important is the artistic experience. I’m always pleased when I’m told by a performer or audience member that a concert provided a lasting impression.
What’s something you’d like to work on, improve, or add, for the future of MEC?
There are an infinite number of possibilities, but they require funding. So the first answer to your question is that we’d like to increase the size of our budget. This would allow us to present more concerts and/or works with greater numbers of performers. I feel that our Sunday morning educational series at the Goethe Institut has been really wonderful and it would be great to begin recording these as they are a great introduction to composers and themes in contemporary music. I’ve thought about publishing short books on the work of various composers or producing documentaries. Collaborations with educational institutions are possible, as well as programs that introduce new music to younger audiences (i.e. under 18 years of age). There are also plenty of performers of early music and traditional repertoire that don’t get presented here in LA. It would be great to branch out and fill in some of these gaps. Opera, installations, and multiple performances of works are also dreams.
Being that you and your series are LA institutions, what is your favorite:
1. Neighborhood
While there are a number of neighborhoods I like for various reasons, I have to pick Vauban (It’s not in LA, but it’s the most intriguing neighborhood I’ve recently encountered and deserves to be recognized for its realization of some utopian ideals). Worth checking out!
2. Place to hear music
Anywhere that’s quiet and has decent acoustics.
3. Restaurant
Inaka
4. Bar/hang out
I like hanging out at home.
5. Store
Amazon.com
6. Thing to do/see
Practice piano.
Is there anything you would like to add?
Thank you for your interest in Monday Evening Concerts.
“Jazz Encounters,” the next Monday Evening Concert, is on March 26 at Zipper Hall. For details, visit mondayeveningconcerts.org.
Calling all writers
You may have noticed that updates to the blog have been gradually slowing as of late. That’s not because I’m backing out in any way, but because my own musical activity has increased quite a bit lately. I just got back from a week in Montreal for shows (instead of updates), have three pieces to finish on my plate right now (instead of updates), and a proposal to write to the American Composers Orchestra (instead of updates). I’m in no way complaining. I love doing this blog, and I love being as busy with music as I am.
That said, I’d love to recruit a few people who might like to review shows, write features, interview people, etc. It’s unpaid, but often involves free tickets to things, which is nice, and you do get to meet a lot of cool people.
If you’d like to write for NewClassic.LA, please drop me a line using the contact form on the About page, and we’ll get something set up.
If you’re curious and would like to hear the piece we premiered in Montreal (and what’s been keeping me so busy), you can check out a recording and the score over on my own website, nickwritesmusic.com.
Free Show Alert: David Lang at CLU today
Yesterday my mom called to ask if I’d heard of a guy named David Lang (hint: I have), because she had read in the paper that a) his dad lives in Thousand Oaks (where I grew up/she lives) and b) a bunch of ensembles at CLU are doing a bunch of his pieces today, at 2, for free.
There’s not much available about it online, but I’m getting in my car right now to go check it out.
Interview: Composer Daníel Bjarnason on The Isle is Full of Noises
On Sunday, March 4, the American Youth Symphony and the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus will jointly premiere Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason’s The Isle is Full of Noises at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Bjarnason’s music is, if I do say so myself, damn amazing (scroll down to the video below for proof).
AYS just sent out a newsletter with an interview with Bjarnason about the new piece. They also very kindly gave me permission to reprint it here. Enjoy!
Did you play in a youth orchestra growing up or sing in a children’s chorus?
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much experience with youth orchestras as a kid, since my main instrument was piano. However I managed to sneak into the school orchestra sometimes when they needed extra percussion. My main instrument on those occasions was the bass drum, and I consider the highlight of my percussion career playing Tchaikovsky 4 on the bass drum. Later, when I was studying conducting in Freiburg, Germany, I got to play a lot of piano and celeste in the university orchestra, which was great for me, both as conductor and as a composer. I have a great deal of experience with choir singing, and sang in a chorus both as a kid and as a teenager. There is a rich choir tradition in Iceland and many people who are not musicians sing in choirs.
Please tell us about some of your recent projects.
I recently released an album called Sólaris, which is a piece of music that I wrote with Ben Frost. We performed and recorded Sólaris with the Sinfonietta Cracovia from Krakow, Poland. It is a piece based on the original story of Stanislav Lem and the movie by Andrei Tarkovsky (some people might recognize the Hollywood remake by Soderbergh).
Is this your first premiere in the United States?
This is my first large scale premiere in the US. I believe my only other US premiere was when I played a small piano piece that I had written on John Schaefer’s radio show in New York City a couple of years ago.
What would you say about The Isle Is Full of Noises to the orchestra, to introduce them to your work, before the first read through?
I would talk about the words of Shakespeare, and tell them how when I was writing this I imagined the orchestra to be the Island on which The Tempest happens, this enchanted island that has many sounds and moods and atmospheres, from very gentle and beautiful to the most violent and raging.
What is the audience going to experience?
One of the things that I find wonderful about music is that everyone can experience it in their own way, and a piece of music can have many different meanings to many different people. I don’t want to say what is right or wrong and I don’t even believe there is such a thing. This is also the reason why I usually don’t write program notes.
Now, if you could invite anyone you like to this concert, who would you invite?
Shakespeare. And my grandfather.
What is next on your calendar? What other commissions are you working on?
I am working on a piece for the LA Phil that will be premiered in October, conducted by John Adams as part of the Green Umbrella series. Then there is a new chamber opera on the horizon, my first opera. But currently I am rehearsing La Bohème at the Icelandic Opera, which opens on March 16th.
For complete details, and to order tickets, to the March 4 concert, visit aysymphony.org/concert-calendar/current-season/march-4-2012.
Free Show Alert: TOP this Saturday at Intelligentsia in Pasadena
In a shallow attempt to remain neutral, I’ve refrained from pushing this concert too hard, because they’re playing some of my music. But if you’re around Pasadena this Saturday at 8, come on by and say hello.
Free Show Alert: Classical Revolution LA Founder’s Jam is tonight!
If you’re anywhere near Echo Park/Silverlake/Downtown/Highland Park/etc. over on that side of town, I highly recommend heading over to Tribal Cafe on Temple Street at 7 pm tonight. Classical Revolution LA will be running a free show there, and Charith Premawardhana, the founder of the original Classical Revolution series up in the bay area, will be there to jam with a bunch of special guests.
Complete details are on classicalrevolutionla.org. I’ve been trying to get an interview together with the guys running it here, but it’s been an insanely hectic week. As such, a post-concert follow-up kind of thing will be posted in the very near future.
Interview: Isaac Schankler on People Inside Electronics
This Saturday night, People Inside Electronics present Nothing is Real: psychedelia for piano and electronics at Pierre’s Fine Pianos in Westwood. Amid preparations for the show, artistic director and founder Isaac Schankler managed to find a moment for an interview.
Tell me a bit about this weekend’s concert. You’ve got a ton of pianists on it, and what looks like a cool mix of pieces by local (Shaun Naidoo) and seriously established (Alvin Lucier) composers.
Yes! We’re really happy to have a bunch of amazing pianists involved: Vicki Ray, Vatche Mankerian, Genevieve Feiwen Lee, Louise Thomas, Aron of course, and Rafael Liebich, who also happens to be our new assistant director.
As far as the music goes, part of our mission all along has been to program works by established composers alongside newer works, to show that there’s a kind of history that’s there that people are continuing to build on. For this concert the classic pieces are Alvin Lucier’s Nothing Is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) and Charles Dodge’s Any Resemblance Is Purely Coincidental. Lucier’s piece is a kind of stripped-down arrangement of the Beatles tune, which you hear first from the piano and then emerging from a teapot, which the performer is able to play with onstage to control the resonance of the sound. Dodge’s piece takes an old recording of the tenor Enrique Caruso and digitally manipulates it — it was one of the first pieces to use digital manipulation in this way.
One of the things that these pieces have in common, we realized, was the illusory nature of the electronics. There’s this idea that, once you record something, it becomes detached from our ordinary reality and becomes this kind of putty that can be shaped at will. A liberating and scary thought! Hence the “psychedelic” theme that the concert is loosely organized around, though the selection is pretty diverse within that. Linda Bouchard’s Gassho is very meditative, and Mike McFerron’s Torrid Mix is inspired by hip-hop. Pierre Jodlowski’s Serie Noire is based on clips from old noir films, and Shaun Naidoo’s Voices of Time is based conceptually on a J.G. Ballard story. Those last two are quite virtuosic, by the way.
Oh! And I should mention that we just added yet another piece to the program, Benjamin Broening’s Nocturne/Doubles.
How did People Inside Electronics get started?
PIE got started in 2009, when Aron Kallay and I were both graduate students at USC, and we noticed that while there was a lot of new music in LA, there wasn’t a whole lot of electroacoustic music being performed (aside from the efforts of a few groups like SCREAM and Sonic Odyssey). And we had the thought, well, if the venue doesn’t exist, why not create one?
You’ve collaborated not only with artists working in other mediums, but with scientists and engineers as well. Could you discuss some of your collaborative efforts, how you got people involved, and what the reaction was like?
Sure, I can give a couple examples. In 2010 we worked with Alexandre François and Elaine Chew, who were both engineering professors at USC at the time and part of a research group called MuCoaCo (Music Computation and Cognition Laboratory). Alex designed this really cool piece of software called Mimi (Multimodal Interaction for Musical Improvisation). Mimi is a kind of improvisational partner, and there’s also a visualization aspect to it that allows you to see what Mimi is up to. I was really taken with the software, and performed with it at our June 2010 concert. The reaction was great, because it piqued the interest of science-minded people beyond the usual new music crowd. I think it’s exciting for people to see unusual and artistic uses of technology — even though they work with it day in and day out they don’t necessarily know what it’s really capable of.
Then there’s our collaborations with other artists. For example, on that same concert we presented Veronika Krausas’ Waterland, which included video by Quintan Ana Wikswo and text by Andre Alexis. Veronika is curating a concert in April that we’re co-presenting with the interdisciplinary arts organization Catalysis Projects, so you can expect a lot more of that in the future.
What has the reaction to your concerts been like in general? Do you feel that there’s a strong and supportive scene for electroacoustic composition here, or is it something that could use some improvement?
Yes, I would say people have been very supportive! For example, we’ve started to have funding campaigns for our last couple of concerts, and raised over $2000 total through that, so that’s been really encouraging. (You can still donate to our current fundraiser at indiegogo, actually.) We pour a lot of time and energy and money into making these concerts happen, and it would be really hard to do that if people hadn’t responded in the way they have. So if you’re reading this and you’re one of those people who has donated or come to our concerts in the past, thank you!
What do you see as the challenges to running a concert series here and now?
LA presents some unique challenges for a concert series because of the size of the city and the fact that there’s always so much going on. You have to present a really compelling reason for people to come out, especially if they’re driving across town! But I think in the long run it’s actually helped us by pushing us to really finely hone what we do, both in terms of the quality of the music and in how we present it.
I have to say that I think LA is a really fantastic place for new music right now. I’ve seen so many great concerts in the past year, and I’ve missed so many more. I feel terrible every time I miss a concert I want to see, but it’s practically unavoidable.
This is a big question, but it often feels like electroacoustic music somehow gets separated from other genres in an almost unfair way. As in, symphonic or traditional concert music connoisseurs seem to see it as novelty, whereas listeners more familiar with popular electronic music tend to think of it as a separate, experimental thing. Do you perceive that at all? And if so, is it something that concerns you?
I don’t particularly see this kind of thing happening, at least not any more than with other kinds of new music. It may be that I’m just insulated from this kind of talk. But electronics have played such an important role in the development of new music, and so many great 20th and 21st century composers have at least dabbled in the medium, that I think most people who at least know about it don’t view it as a niche at all. It’s been with us almost a century, after all, so it’s not really a novelty at this point.
The exception to this might be those people who view classical music as some kind of final stronghold, the only place where “real” music is still made with “real” instruments. They might say that technology is slowly chipping away at that. But every musical instrument was new technology at some point. Or, to shamelessly quote Brian Eno, “technology is just the name we give to things that don’t work yet.”
I think that’s why PIE has been focused on pieces that just work, pieces that are aesthetically compelling regardless of the technology involved. That’s what’s really striking to me about those pieces by Lucier and Dodge. Whether or not they were technically innovative at the time they were composed, that’s not really why we programmed them or what you notice when you hear them. The technological medium almost melts away, and you’re just listening to a beautifully constructed piece of music.
I’m very curious about your take on electronic performance practice, especially since it says in your biography that you’re interested in how people interact with electronics. Let’s be blunt: watching people press buttons is pretty boring. Having the live pianist and visual elements helps immensely, but are you also pushing new modes of performance for the electronic portions of these concerts?
Well, performance with electronics can be frustrating to watch because it’s kind of a black box; the performance isn’t really visible in the same way it is with an expressive instrumentalist (despite the best efforts of head-bobbing DJs everywhere). It’s a kind of disembodied performance. I think putting live instrumentalists front and center helps, as you said. And when programming newer works, we try as much as possible to incorporate live electronics that react to what the performers are doing, so the electronics become a kind of extension of the instrument. The electronics in Shaun Naidoo’s piece that Aron is premiering, for example, are incredibly responsive to what Aron’s doing at the piano. It just looks and feels like a natural extension of his performance, and it’s really fun to watch.
I also think we can still learn a lot from Lucier, the oldest composer on the program. The lifting of the teapot lid is such a straightforward action, but you immediately understand what it means sonically; you know exactly what the performer is doing to manipulate the sound, and that’s one of the simple joys of experiencing that piece.
I can’t help but notice that People Inside Electronics only puts on one or two shows a year. I’m sure you and your partners are quite busy with other projects. As such, have you hit a happy frequency with that, or are you hoping to increase the number of shows you do?
Two per year (one in the fall and one in the spring) seemed ideal in the past, but lately we’ve had a hankering to do more, which is one of the reasons we asked Rafael to be a part of PIE. We actually have 3 concerts this season: the one with Eclipse Quartet last fall, the one coming up on February 11th, and the one on April 28th called “Misfits and Hooligans” that’s being co-presented with Catalysis Projects. And we already have something in the works for this fall that I’m very anxious to talk about when it’s finalized!
Find more information or purchase tickets to this weekend’s concert at peopleinsideelectronics.com/nothing-real-psychedelia-piano-and-electronics, and donate to the fundraising campaign at indiegogo.com/People-Inside-Electronics.
Free Show Alert: Quartet for the End of Time (!!!!) in Long Beach on Sunday, February 5
I just received an invitation on Facebook to a neat looking event that’s part of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra’s Sounds and Spaces series. As you may have guessed from the title, they play music in cool places.
For this one, musicians from the LBSO will be performing Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at Belmont Heights United Methodist Church this Sunday at 4. There will also be a presentation on the space by architectural historian Timothy Kent Parker.
It’s a free show, but you do have to RSVP on their website at http://www.lbso.org/special-events/view/id/7/-/sounds-and-spaces. If you’ve never heard Quartet for the End of time performed live, all the way through, at least once, then you’re seriously missing out.
Conveniently, somehow, my family is all meeting up for lunch that day like two blocks from there, so if you see me at the show please do come say hello.
Interview: Andrew and Andrew of populist records
Last Monday populist records held the release party for Nicholas Deyoe’s album with throbbing eyes at Machine Project in Echo Park. It’s a significant event not only because we’ve got a sweet new album to listen to, but because it marks the new label’s first release. We managed to catch up with founders/owners/operators Andrew McIntosh and Andrew Tholl to discuss plans for the label and all of the stuff coming up that we get to be excited about.
First off, how was the release party? I’m sorry I had to miss it.
The release show was very successful. You can’t really go wrong with beer, cupcakes, live performance, and a bunch of people who are excited to hear some new music.
Ha, agreed. It seems like there’s been a serious groundswell of new classical and experimental music coming out of LA, and specifically Echo Park, in just the last couple of years. Is that the case, or is something that’s always been there just gaining more exposure lately?
Los Angeles and the West Coast in general have traditionally been places of great creativity and experimentalism. In the earlier part of the last century we had Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and John Cage. Other composers like Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Harold Budd, and James Tenney chose to make this area their home as well. The West has an iconic history of being an enclave for free spirits and rogue thinkers, while on the East Coast there seems to be much more infrastructure and a more clearly defined concept for how music is made.
[See: this cell phone video of Nicholas Deyoe and Clint McCallum playing at the release party]
That being said, it is hard for us to speak for LA’s more recent history since we both have only been here for the last six years, but it seems that right now there is a whole community of exciting musicians who are choosing to make a place for themselves in this city. Many of us come from elsewhere, but a connective thread in the community that we’re referring to is that many of us came to LA for CalArts at some point. What we like about the community here is that it is not clearly defined and has many faces, but it seems to be made up of people who really believe in what they are doing, do it well, and are committed to presenting a wide range of music in a compelling and often slightly unusual manner.
One might think that by starting a label at this moment, you’d be perfectly poised to capture what’s been going on (and I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough references to what New Amsterdam is doing in Brooklyn). At the same time, with all of the developments over downloading, minuscule payments from streaming royalties, and so forth, this is a pretty rough time for labels, perhaps even more so than artists. Could you discuss your thoughts on going into this business side of the scene?
Well, I don’t think either of us ever really thought we should start a record label because it would be a great way to make money. We probably won’t…at least not for quite a while. But it still seemed worthwhile for us to start the label anyway. While it might seem like we’re suddenly jumping into the music business, both of us have been working as freelance musicians for years – which is very much a kind of business that you run for yourself; starting a label is just another aspect of that. As far as the comparisons to New Amsterdam go, we haven’t really heard many…we’re just starting out and I don’t think too many people are aware of us yet. But we are very aware of New Amsterdam and think the community they’ve created is pretty amazing. If we could do the same out here, we’d be pleased.
Nicholas Deyoe’s with throbbing eyes is one hell of an aesthetic statement for a label’s first release. Do you see yourself as representing the whole of this music that’s being made in and around LA, or do you have a sound in particular that you’re hoping to cover? Perhaps something akin to the more drastic side of modernism featured here?
Well we had to put something out first, but I don’t think that our first release should necessarily be taken as a statement towards what “kind” of music we intend to continue putting out. We put out Nick’s music because we like it and think it’s really good and deserves to be heard, which is probably the biggest criteria for anything we will put out in the future – we have to like it. But there’s a lot of different kinds of music that we like. While we both live Southern California and want to put out projects from our community and invest in the people around us, we don’t really have a goal of representing the entirety of the Los Angeles music scene…it’s just too big.
How hands on are you with production? I know that sounds like a silly question, but I’m curious…I know some label heads who are check in on their artists every day in the studio, while others, in a sense, foot the bill and wait for a recording to be delivered for them to take to the market. I know this first release had been previously recorded. Is that the plan?
Well, we had been talking about starting a label for at least the last year, maybe two, and we had already played on half of the works on with throbbing eyes, so we were already pretty involved before anything official happened. The album needed a home so it motivated us to actually get things going and start the label. While the album was Nick’s project, there was still a strong collaborative effort between ourselves and him throughout much of the production process. For now, I can’t really see us putting anything out where we don’t already have some sort of relationship with the composers or artists involved. Also, the way an album is put together – the space it’s recorded in, the musicians, the mixing, the track order, the album cover, etc. – is very important to us and is something we are very consciously crafting for each project.
What’s next for the label?
Our second release comes out on March 13 and will be a mostly solo album of music by minimalist composer Tom Johnson that Andrew McIntosh is recording and organizing. It also features local musicians Brian Walsh on clarinet, composer Douglas Wadle as a narrator, and is being recorded and mastered by Nicolas Tipp, who has very much been a part of the creative process for that project. It’s also interesting that both Tom Johnson and Nicholas Deyoe are originally from Colorado.
After that things are a little open, but we have several projects in the works. It is extremely likely that we will put out an album with wild Up (in collaboration with Chris Rountree and again, Nicolas Tipp). Also, we will at some point put out a duo CD of the two of us featuring composers who have come out of the CalArts community, a CD of Andrew Tholl’s experimental/improv ensemble touchy-feely, maybe a full length from the Formalist Quartet, and possibly some Morton Feldman. Oh, and in the indie label tradition, we’re toying with the idea of a single of the month club that would allow us to put out some shorter things that we think should be heard but don’t necessarily work on a whole album.
That would be amazing, please do that. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
We’re really thrilled at the response we’ve had to the label so far. It’s encouraging that so many people are interested in what we’re trying to do. We hope you’ll check out our first release, enjoy it, and continue to follow us as we try to build something great.
You can check out all that populist records has coming up at populistrecords.com, and order (or download) a copy of with throbbing eyes here.
wild Up and Listening Alive Kickstarter appeals
Two local groups have kickstarter projects that are wrapping up this week, and I thought it would be good to give them a shout.
First off, wild Up have 25 hours to go on their Shostakovich/Rzewski split limited edition vinyl release, and just today announced that if they hit $5,000 by the close of the campaign, they’ll release digitally release four tracks from their last concert. I missed that one and really wanted to go, so you should back it so that we can hear the awesomeness that we missed. Link is here.
Then, this coming Friday and Saturday, Music on Argyle, Synchromy, and the Symbiosis Chamber Orchestra are all collaborating on a concert of premieres by LA composers entitled Listening Alive. Yours truly has a piece on the concert, as do Jason Barabba, Daniel Gall, Vera Ivanova, George Gianopoulos, and Damjan Rakonjac. They’re raising funds to cover costs of putting on two shows. Two days to go, and complete details are here.
Support your scene. If one group does well, we all do well.