"Ray Charles and Me" an essay by Victoria Bond

RAY CHARLES AND ME
By Victoria Bond

It all started with Quincy Jones. He was composing an immense oratorio called “A Black Requiem” for full orchestra and chorus, with Ray Charles as featured soloist. He was working on it with my composition teacher, Paul Glass.  Quincy’s lessons each week were right before mine, and Paul introduced us. As we became better acquainted, I followed his progress on the work with great interest.

The Requiem was powerful and traced the history of black slaves coming to America, beginning with slave ships coming to America and continued through the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Ray was narrator, preacher, storyteller, and participant. When the work was premiered with the Houston Symphony, Quincy invited both Paul Glass and me to attend the rehearsals and premiere.

During rehearsals, when not onstage, Ray and Paul whiled away the time playing chess backstage.. Taking the opportunity to get to know Ray, I sat in as an observer on their games.  Ray was curious about me and my work, and when I told him I was a composer, he quipped “If you are a legitimate composer that makes me an out of wedlock composer!” Ray was funny and witty and loved a good joke. He had an acute sense of hearing that allowed him to be aware of everything around him, and he was endlessly curious and inquisitive.  Quincy had structured the Requiem with  Ray’s talents in mind, and being close friends since their childhood in Seattle, he knew every nuance of Ray’s personality and musicianship.  He created room for Ray to improvise and be spontaneous, and the orchestral and choral portions of the Requiem were organized around this.

However, during the rehearsals, Quincy made changes to the orchestral parts.  His work in film and recording allowed him the freedom to change things on the spot, and he applied that experience to the less flexible world of the symphony orchestra.  These musicians were accustomed to playing the repertory of composer long dead, who could not interrupt with any remarks or criticisms, and conductors rarely, if ever, changed the notes in the score unless there were errors.  For Quincy to edit his music as the rehearsal progressed and to make changes to the musician’s parts as he discovered a better version than what was on the page, violated the norm. The players were not shy with expressing their displeasure, and Quincy was frustrated with their lack of flexibility. He was able to make some changes, but I am sure he would have wanted more had he not encountered such resistance.

The concert was a tremendous success and Ray’s part was so skillfully written that he appeared to be making it up on the spot. The choral and instrumental writing was powerful and the audience cheered and rose in a standing ovation at the conclusion.

Conducting Ray Charles in Richmond

That was the last time I saw Ray for several years.  The next occasion was when I was invited to conduct the Richmond Symphony in a pops concert featuring Ray. The music consisted of his normal repertoire of rhythm and blues, country and western and standards. I expected to receive the kind of scores I was accustomed to using for a symphonic concert, with all of the parts notated. Instead, I received either a piano part with no indication of any other instruments, or worse, just one instrumental part. Standing on the podium in front of the orchestra with so little information was an exercise in Zen, and I had to recreate the score in my head as we played and I could hear what each instrument was doing.

Being someone who conducts a lot of opera, I was accustomed to working closely with singers and adjusting my tempos to their breath and the ebb and flow of the music. Few operas have steady tempos for long periods of time. Flexibility of the beat, known as “rubato,” is the hallmark of the romantic nature of opera, and allows the music to either hold back or rush forward as the emotion being expressed dictates.  So when the first rehearsal began, I watched Ray and slowed down and speeded up when he did, matching the tempo of the accompaniment to his voice as I would do in opera.  He stopped me and said, “No, no!  You keep going and I will catch up with the bus.” This was completely new to me. I did what he wanted and held the tempo steady as he wove around it. Sometimes he was so far behind the beat that I thought he had forgotten what came next, but in an instant, he was right there, synchronized perfectly. This was one of Ray’s signature abilities. His voice had the natural flow of speech. It was never mechanical or stiff, but dipped, dived and vaulted around the beat, surprising the listener with the revelation that this music was alive, vibrant and spontaneous.

I was told that at the end of one of the pieces, Ray would improvise for a long time as the orchestra held the final notes, and I was to wait until a movement of his shoulder gave me the signal to stop. Anyone familiar with Ray’s playing style knows that he famously swayed from side to side, leaning left and right. We were in performance, at the end of the piece in question, and Ray was wailing on the keyboard, swaying back and forth.  This went on for what seemed like an eternity and I watched his shoulder like a hawk to try and discover when I was to cut off. Just then, his left shoulder went down with a decisive motion and I thought this must be the signal, so I cut off the orchestra.  Thankfully the audience cheered and applauded noisily afterwards, because Ray was furious.  He started yelling at me right on stage because I had obviously mistaken his signal and should have continued to hold.  I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me.  Here was my opportunity to work with the legendary Ray Charles, and I had blown it.  I would surely never work with him again. I was shamed in front of the orchestra and was completely humiliated. 

After the concert I slunk back to his dressing room to apologize, expecting him to fly into a rage for ruining the performance.  He was, on the contrary, cheerful and forgiving. “Don’t worry,” he said, “You’ll get it right the next time!”  The next time? I thought in disbelief. He actually wanted me to conduct for him again even after what I did?  I had to be sure where to cut the orchestra off if there was to be a next time, so I checked with the drummer, perhaps the most important musician of the hand-picked soloists who traveled with Ray to each of his orchestral engagements. The drummer looked at me, knowing what had happened at the concert, and said “Watch the right shoulder, not the left one.” So that was it. I never made the same mistake again.

Recording A Black Requiem

After the concert I reminded Ray that we first met when I had attended the rehearsals and concert of “A Black Requiem” and asked him if he had performed it since then. He told me that Quincy had been so upset with the orchestra’s behavior and never wanted to have it performed again.  I asked Ray if HE would want to do the work again if I could program it on a concert, and he assured me that he would. “You’ll have to convince Quincy first,” he warned me, skeptical that Quincy would budge from his position. I told Ray that at the time I was the Music Director and Conductor of the Roanoke Symphony in Virginia and was sure that the orchestra would be thrilled to perform the work. Now my challenge was to convince Quincy.

I contacted him, explained the situation and emphasized that Ray was eager to do the Requiem again, and that I had an orchestra ready and willing to perform it. As is turned out, Quincy lived a short walking distance from my mother’s house in Los Angeles, and several months later, when I was visiting my mother, he invited my husband Stephan Peskin and I to lunch at his home. He met us at the door, casually dressed and elegant. He had a full-time cook and we ate a delicious lunch, listening to stories about his many projects.  After lunch I finally broached the subject of the Requiem. “There’s no score,” he said. “It’s all little bits and pieces in a big box. Nothing has been touched since the premiere.”  I asked if there was a recording, and there was an archival one made at the concert. I explained that I could match up the bits and pieces of the puzzle to the recording and create a score. I told him that Ray was eager to do it again and that I had an orchestra and chorus eager to present it, and I was eager to conduct it.  I pleaded with him to let me try to put it all together. Reluctantly he agreed, not certain that I could decipher his scattered notes and make sense of them.

He went over to a cupboard and started to pull things out of it.  “Come here and help me, Steve,” he said to my husband.  As the two of them sat on the floor, Quincy began to hand him statues and plaques, one after another. It was an amazing sight – Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards, Academy Awards and Tony Awards – all hidden away in a cupboard!  Finally he found the box he was looking for and dragged it out.  It was piled high with loose pages and bits of paper, scraps of music and assorted messages – a real mess!  “Here it is” he said, looking at me with an “I told you so” expression that challenged me to make some semblance of order out of this chaos. “Do you think you can do it?” he said. “If I can have the recording, I KNOW I can do it” I confidently replied, all the while wondering if I actually could.

That was the beginning of the great adventure. The bits and pieces were not as disorganized as I had feared, and once I was familiar with the recording, I was able to put them together into a cohesive score. The set of parts followed and after a Herculean effort, the work was ready for performance.  Ray was excited. The Roanoke Symphony was ecstatic. Gospel choirs from local churches rehearsed for months to learn the choral portions of the Requiem. The community was at fever pitch. To have Ray Charles in person performing with their orchestra, conductor and choirs was nothing short of a miracle. 

Ray arrived and immediately everyone wanted to have their picture taken with him.  He was courteous and generous, and very patient. The first rehearsal went smoothly and the minute I got home, there was a message on my phone from Quincy. I called him back immediately and he was as excited as kid, wanting to know how it went, and if there were there any problems, and asking me how did it sound, etc. I reassured him that it was a brilliant work and the orchestra and the choir loved it, and that Ray was as pleased as could be. “You know he can be the Ayatollah” Quincy warned me.  “Look out for his temper. It is fierce!” I assured him that Ray had been a perfect gentleman and hadn’t yelled at me once, remembering the dressing down I had received years earlier.

The performance was a sensational success, and Ray was so impressed with the performance of the orchestra, the choir and me, that he told me he wanted to return with a recording crew and record the work!  This was a heady prospect. The date was set, the orchestra and choir rehearsed again, and Ray arranged for an enormous truck, filled with recording equipment to park in front of the Roanoke Civic Center.  There were cables everywhere and technical crew rushing about adjusting microphones and rearranging the stage.  Ray flew in and supervised the setup, listening with superhuman precision to the takes as we recorded them.  At one point when the orchestra was playing a particularly complex passage, layered with contrapuntal textures and thick harmonies, Ray shouted “Where’s the harp?  I don’t hear the harp!”  How anyone could possibly hear such a soft instrument in the midst of that din was unbelievable. Sure enough, the harpist had lost her place and was not playing.  What an ear! I was impressed. We all were impressed except Ray. That was how he heard. It was just normal for him to hear every detail.    

On Tour with Ray

After that recording session, I became Ray’s regular conductor for his orchestral concerts and traveled all over the country and even to Poland with him.  It was what I called my post-doctorate musical training, as I learned so much from working with him that I had never learned at Juilliard.  The schedule generally consisted of flying to the location, having one rehearsal and a concert and flying back the next day.  Very often Ray would not show up for the rehearsal, and I attributed this to his confidence in me.  I must confess, however, that the first time this happened, I was surprised and concerned, never having done a performance without the soloist being at the rehearsal. Ray, of course, had performed thousands of times, knew his repertoire and was the consummate showman in front of an audience.  He was always on the road and hardly ever stayed at his Los Angeles studio and home for very long.  The audiences gave him energy, and he loved them and needed his intense schedule for sustenance.

He always stayed at Holiday Inns because he knew the configuration of the rooms, which were always identical, and he could maneuver them without assistance.  He did have someone who was always with him, guiding him onto the stage and helping him with the everyday assistance a blind person would need.  I remember walking through the airport with Ray and his assistant.  I was a few steps behind them and as they walked, I saw people do a double take once they realized who he was.

In September of 2000, I was in the midst of rehearsals for an opera in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when I got a call from my husband.  “Ray just called and he said he needs you right away!” I called Ray’s manager Joe Adams who said yes, Ray wanted me to conduct his 70th birthday concert and he needed me to come the next day.  “Where is the concert?” I asked. “In Warsaw, Poland” was the surprising answer. “We have a first-class ticket waiting for you.  Just get to JFK tomorrow. This was a real challenge. Of course I was honored to be asked to conduct Ray’s special birthday concert and I wanted to go, but I did have an obligation to the opera company and I would need to get their permission to leave the rehearsal for a few days.  I spoke to the director. “Are you kidding?” he said. “Of course you should go.  This is a historic moment. We are OK managing the staging rehearsals without you.  Just let us know when you will be back.” The schedule was tight: I would fly overnight to Warsaw, rehearse that afternoon, perform the concert that evening and I would fly back the next day. There would be no problem missing two days of rehearsal.

The last concert I conducted with Ray was at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.  As we were about to go onstage, Ray said to me “You play piano, don’t you?” I confirmed that I did. “At the end of the concert you and I are going to play a little duet!” I gasped. I was going to play a duet with Ray Charles? Where was the music? How could I do this? But Ray was off, walking onstage to the huge ovation of the thousands of fans in the audience.  I panicked. Was I about to crash and burn in front of thousands of people? Maybe Ray was only kidding. Maybe he would forget.  Throughout the concert I was praying that he would forget. 

But sure enough, at the end of the concert Ray made an announcement. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have a little surprise for you.  The Maestro and I are going to play a duet.  Come on over to the piano bench, Victoria,” he commanded.  What was I to do? Shaking all over, I walked like a condemned woman to the guillotine. “Sit down beside me, Victoria,” and I obeyed.  Then he whispered in my ear “just follow me. The song has only three chords. It’s very easy.” And so it was. Ray was as relaxed as though he was entertaining a few friends at his house.  His relaxation infused me and calmed my agitation. He began alone so that I could hear and see the chords and what he was doing, and then I joined him.  This was fun! It was such an exhilarating feeling that I didn’t want it to end, but finally we had to, and the crowd went wild!

Ray’s Final Years

A couple of years later, I saw Ray in New York where he had invited my husband and me to attend a performance with his big band at a jazz club. At the end of his set, he announced that his favorite conductor was in the audience and asked me to stand. People looked around in amazement to see a petite, white woman. “Come backstage and say hello” he said as he left the stage. My husband has been with me to many concerts where I go backstage to congratulate the artist, particularly when it is someone I know. He hates this ritual, which he calls “kissing the ring” as though the artist in question were royalty, expecting a sign of obsequious fealty from his subject. So when I dashed back to see Ray and was met by him giving me a huge hug that lifted me clear off the floor, Stephan hung back. “Where is that man of yours?” he bellowed.  “Or is he too proud to come backstage to see me?” Stephan heard this, as did everyone in a 10 block radius, and he came backstage where he and Ray embraced warmly.

 The last time I saw Ray was at his studio in Los Angeles.  My husband and I drove there at his invitation. He was very sick, and had not been performing for some time.  We were met by his manager, Joe Adams, who brought us inside.  “Look out!” Joe shouted, “Blind man driving!” and just then, Ray sped towards us in an electric wheelchair.  He was thinner and frailer than I remembered him being, but his robust personality was undiminished. He laughed and joked with my husband and me, and although we did notice a large number of medications covering his desk, he seemed his old self.  I was devastated by the news of Ray’s death in June 2004.  We knew it was coming when we saw him, but wanted to hope that somehow he would charm even death and live many more years.

Conducting Ray Charles’ Music with Stockton Symphony and Billy Valentine

I am grateful for this opportunity in February 2023 to bring Ray’s music to a new audience at Atherton Auditorium with the Stockton Symphony and with the brilliant singer/songwriter Billy Valentine. Billy knows Ray’s style so intimately, and he brings an impressive background of his own accomplishments to the program. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio where his parents owned a nightclub, Club Faces, where his five brothers and seven sisters worked. “We had people lined up around the block to get in because my mother and father greeted you at the front door,” Valentine recalls. “And my sisters would work the cash register while brother and I worked the stage. When there was a break, we would call our sisters to come up on stage to sing with us as well. It was a family operation.” His skills as a song writer allowed him to collaborate with greats like Will Jennings, the Neville Bros. and the immortal Ray Charles. 

It is a privilege to work with Billy Valentine and the Stockton Symphony, and we both look forward to bringing Ray Charles’ songs to life at Atherton Auditorium.

Insider Interview with Pianist Orli Shaham

On January 27, 2023 Orli Shaham makes her Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra debut performing John Adams’ piano concerto “Why Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” with David Robertson conducting. In this Insider Interview with Classical Music Communications, Shaham talks about the “gnarly,” aspects of the work, Martin Luther, working with the FRSO for the first time and more.

Please give us some insight into the composer John Adams, and this piece, “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?”

The style of “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” is classic Adams. It has a great deal of rhythmic drive and intensity, and thick and rich harmonies that are quite gnarly. In fact, he uses the word “gritty” to describe the sound of the first movement. There are some beautiful moments of repose where he sets the scene for lovely reflection, almost meditative kinds of sounds. The piano becomes part of the orchestra in those moments, for example, in the second movement. In the third movement, the overflowing rhythmic joy is similar to the qualities in "Hallelujah Junction," (one of my favorites of John Adams’, which I recorded with Jon Kimura Parker on my album “American Grace”).

Can you explain the title of the piece? 

The phrase has been attributed to Martin Luther, the 16th century theologian. This was one of those situations like "Hallelujah Junction" - John Adams thought that it was a title just waiting for a piece. He had the line first, and then conceived of the composition. There's a lot of devilish influences, just like in Lizst’s Totentanz, or the devilishly difficult writing of Paganini, who was himself considered a devilish virtuoso. And there are references to gospel, which are also related to the theme.

This is your debut performance in Finland. You're familiar with the composer John Adams, and the conductor, David Robertson, of course. What about the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra?

I've heard so many great recordings from this orchestra, and I've known many wonderful Finnish musicians. I'm very excited to actually go to Finland to work with some of those same musicians.

Gramophone Review: Mozart Piano Sonatas Vol. 2 & 3

GRAMOPHONE Review

MOZART Piano Sonatas Vols 2 & 3 (Orli Shaham)
By Jed Distler

The following is an excerpt. To read the full review, visit Gramophone.co.uk

The stylish intelligence and pianistic refinement distinguishing the first volume in Orli Shaham’s Mozart piano sonata cycle (released in 2020) continues into Vols 2 and 3. She rightly brings out the operatic subtext of the A minor Sonata, K310, probing the Allegro maestoso’s gnawing dissonances and generating tension through dynamic understatement in the Presto finale. Her beautifully sung-out Andante cantabile manages to be expansive and flexible without losing shape or continuity. In the opening Allegro of the F major Sonata, K332, Shaham gives distinct character and breathing room to each theme, and astutely brings out the composer’s cross-rhythmic phrase groupings. The Allegro assai’s vertiginous runs truly scintillate yet never lapse into square regularity; sophisticated accent placement and subtle elongations keep the listener guessing, so to speak.

Insider Interview with Composer Mark Abel

Two song cycles form the cornerstone of “Spectrum” (Delos, DE 3592) by acclaimed composer Mark Abel, which features some of the most outstanding voices on stage today: Hila Plitmann, Isabel Bayrakdarian, and Kindra Scharich. Trois Femmes du Cinema (Three Women of Cinema) is about cult figures Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko. Two Scenes from “The Book of Esther” is a provocative excerpt from an opera in development. The album’s impressive array of instrumentalists includes pianist Carol Rosenberger; fellow pianists Dominic Cheli, Sean Kennard and Jeffrey LaDeur; Alexander String Quartet violist David Samuel; Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim and cello star Jonah Kim.

Despite starting your classical music career while still involved in a different line of work (journalism), you have made an impressive mark with critical acclaim and six albums (!) under your belt. What made you want to write concert music? 

Classical has been my principal interest for many years, though initially it was as a fan only. For a good portion of my 21-year journalism career, I wasn’t certain I’d be able to raise the quality of my spare-time composing to clear the invisible bar of credibility that would result in my work being taken seriously. But I kept at it, juggling creative breakthroughs with strong doses of self-criticism. Finally, by the early 2000s, I felt confident I’d developed my own voice. Getting the music heard, recorded and performed since then is another story, of course.

Tell us about how your background prepared you for this path?  

My father was quite a devotee of pre-20th century music – Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms in particular. So in my childhood I got meaningful exposure to classical on a high aesthetic plane. But I began rebelling in my early teens, abandoning it in favor of the innovative modern jazz of the era. I did understand jazz deeply enough to realize I lacked the discipline to master it as a player. The best rock of the ‘60s, however, proved a viable entry point. I quit college after two years and went hard at this music for an extended period. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that I began facing the hard truth that rock is quite a limiting medium and further creative growth in that context would be impossible for me. With hindsight, it now seems inevitable that I would make my way back to classical, starting with a long period of catch-up to learn about the many composers I wasn’t familiar with. Happily, I was ready and eager to sink my teeth into this – but as a fan, not a composer. That came later.  

How would you describe your compositional voice or style?  

There’s a strong streak of lyricism in my work, in both the music and words (which I often write myself). The melodic component is important to me, and it’s never far off -- probably ingrained due to my prolific songwriting in the rock field. But I’m not a neo-Romantic. I’ve listened to a lot of progressive and avant-garde music over the years and elements of this can be heard in my output. Put simply, I’ve absorbed a lot of musical styles over time and it’s always been my goal to synthesize them into a cohesive – and hopefully seamless – original style.   

How has that voice evolved over the course of the six albums and your years of composing?  

Good question. Lately I’ve been re-listening to some of my earlier “serious” compositions and am getting some fresh perspective. It’s clear that the basic shape of my style has been set for some time. In the last six years or so I’ve been experimenting with differing iterations of a fully formed identity – a 100 minutes-plus opera (something I didn’t think I’d ever attempt), expanding my range of expression in song cycles and lyric writing, and, perhaps most significant, becoming comfortable writing chamber music. This last element has definitely stretched my horizons. One always wants to make every note count but chamber music is in many ways the ultimate test.      

You’ve collaborated with many brilliant performers across the albums, some of whom are featured on Spectrum. Tell us about how you got to know one or two of them, and how working together came about.  

The one I’ve worked with most extensively is the soprano Hila Plitmann – best known for her collaborations with John Corigliano, David Del Tredici and Richard Danielpour. She’s an absolutely fabulous and unique artist, dedicated from the start of her career to being a vessel for new music. Hila has very much inspired me to forge ahead and be more daring. I was very little known when I came cold calling in the summer of 2014, but that didn’t matter to her. What did was my song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, the first of what has grown into a sheaf of six projects together. I’ve also been blessed and am proud to have attracted such eminent musicians as David Shifrin, Fred Sherry, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Carol Rosenberger. But I find a special gratification in working with people on the way up, like pianist Dominic Cheli and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich; I’ll be very happy if their fine work on Spectrum helps boost their profiles.        

What do you hope listeners take away from Spectrum?  

I’m self-taught and didn’t come up through the familiar academic routes. This sets me apart in some respects from most composers; for example, very few write their own texts. I consider my composing an authentic reflection of who I am from an artistic and intellectual standpoint. And I think most people sense that after spending some time with my work. Spectrum is the broadest survey to date of what I do, and I hope listeners find the “content” resonating with them on more than one level.   

Insider Interview with Organist David Enlow

In honor of the 200th anniversary of composer César Franck’s birth, the organist David Enlow presents an all-Franck recital November 17, 2022 at The Church of the Ascension in New York City. Enlow is uniquely poised for such a commemoration. His recording of the complete organ works by Franck (Pro Organo, 2012) received critical acclaim, with l'Orgue praising his “perfect technique, inventive, flexible, vigorous musicality.” In this insider interview, we speak to Enlow about Franck, his place in the organ repertoire, and what makes this recital so special.

How and when did you get interested in playing organ?  

My grandmother (like a lot of grandmothers!) had a small electronic house organ, and when I was five years old, my idea of fun was to play Christmas carols when different family members would arrive – the only thing that has changed is that it’s now the arrival of a procession with incense and clergy!

What is Franck’s place/role as a composer in organ repertoire?  

Franck is called the ‘Father of the Symphonic School’ but in many ways that is organ world jargon – Franck was a great Romantic, a spiritual and introspective composer with great personal burdens who created beautiful soundscapes on a colossal scale.  Franck is a greater composer, in skill, inspiration, and craftsmanship, than the generations of organist-composers who followed, those who wrote principally for the organ.  Franck should really be considered a singular figure in organ music, and if organists will treat his music as Romantic music, in the way pianists approach the accompaniment to the violin sonata, all will become clear. 

What has drawn you to Cesar Franck’s compositions?  

The combination of beautiful melodies, soulful, moving harmony, intelligent voice leading and counterpoint, and the grand scale of the pieces, all contributing to a dramatic arc in each piece. 

What revelations did you have about Franck in the process of recording all of his organ music?  

I found the pieces that are regarded as “lesser Franck” can polish up really well with a few thoughtful interpretative decisions.  The ‘Final’ for example – it’s carnival music, but carnival does not mean unsophisticated, especially in 19th-century France.   

The Grande Pièce Symphonique is criticized for being sprawling and incoherent, but if you had only heard goofy renderings, Berlioz’ works would face the same judgement.  And of course, when I learned the works of his that I didn’t already know, it informed my existing interpretations of the works I had lived with since teenage years.  I was able to notice more common patterns in Franck’s compositions, devices that he loves to use and harmonies that recur, which make us more aware of which are his most special moments. 

What’s special about the organ at Church of the Ascension? 

I’ve made much of the fact that it was made in France, as opposed to American organs built in a French style by Americans who have studied that style.  It’s like the difference between champagne and a sparkling white wine from our country – the champagne doesn’t have to prove its French-ness, it just is.  So, when I am drawing stops at this organ, everything I need to play Franck is present and ready to go.  I don’t have to say “well, there is no French trompette, so I’ll make do with so-and-so.”  That French-ness aside, this is also a beautiful instrument with the scale, color, and variety to make Franck’s music come alive.  Not to discount our own native instruments -- that same level of scale, beauty, and color are also present in many American organs (otherwise I wouldn’t have recorded the Franck works at St Mary the Virgin in Times Square!)  

What are one or two of the most important things that listeners should know about Franck and his work?   

The most important thing to know is that this music comes from a time when spirituality and spectacle were aligned.  Franck prays quietly, and then moments later, he summons the titanic resources of the pipe organ to rend the heavens. There is virtuosity, kindness, intimacy, grandeur – so much is contained and expressed in this music. 

Insider Interview with Momenta Quartet (new dates)

Momenta Quartet presents its annual Momenta Festival September 15-18, 2022 (rescheduled from June). All four concerts will be at the Broadway Presbyterian Church (601 W 114th St. New York, NY), and admission is free.The seventh edition of the festival features four diverse chamber music programs each curated by a different member of the quartet. In this insider interview, we spoke with two members the quartet about their unique programs.

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The September 17 program is curated by violinist Alex Shiozaki and features special guests Nana Shi (piano) and David Byrd-Marro (horn) with works by Hiroumi Mogi, Brahms, and Grażyna Bacewicz.

Could you tell us about the music of Grażyna Bacewicz? 

The Polish composer and violinist Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) reminds me of quite a few mid-20th century composers who balanced an advanced sense of tonality--bordering on atonality--with great emotional content. Many of Bacewicz’s earlier works leaned more in the Romantic direction. I was already familiar with the relatively early Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano as well as the Quartet for Four Violins, both of which were written in a more romantic and almost neo-Classical idiom.  

Her music hits all the right buttons with me: some drama, some dissonance, some classicism, all in a well-balanced and well-written package. Certainly it helps that she was an accomplished violinist as well as a composer, and the notes lie well under the fingers. As a relatively late work, the Piano Quintet No. 2 leans farther away from familiar harmonies while raising the drama and suspense. The fiery virtuosity and tense melodies will keep you on the edge of your seat--as it does for us, too! I am ecstatic that we will be joined by pianist Nana Shi (who is also my wife), who will be making her third appearance on the Momenta Festival. 

The program includes a piece you recently premiered – In Memory of Perky Pat. How did this piece come about? 

In addition to playing great works from the distant and recent past, Momenta is all about discovering the music of today and giving it several hearings.  

We premiered Hirofumi Mogi’s In Memory of Perky Pat (for horn and string quartet) at Music From Japan’s 2022 Festival concert in New York City. We were joined by the terrific horn player David Byrd-Marrow, and had such a good time performing the piece that we decided to do it again! Inspired by the Philip K. Dick short story “The Days of Perky Pat”, this piece also reignited my interest in classic science fiction and led to an all-night binge of a collection of PKD short stories.  

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The September 18th program is curated by violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron and includes works by Mario Davidvosky, Julian Carillo, Beethoven, and the world premiere of a quartet by David Glaser written in memoriam Davidovsky.

What did Mario Davidovsky mean to you and the quartet? 

Mario Davidovsky’s music figures prominently in creation of Momenta Quartet. In 2004, the composer Matthew Greenbaum invited our violist Stephanie to put together a group that would perform Davidovsky’s String Trio for events celebrating Judaism and Culture at Symphony Space and at Temple University. This proto-Momenta, as it were, so enjoyed playing together that they decided to add another violinist and form a quartet. From then the group’s evolution was set into motion: a few member changes later (as is common and natural in the vast majority of groups) and here we are.   

I never had the chance to meet Mario Davidovsky before his passing in the summer of 2019, but I knew of him as one of the compositional giants of our time.  

My own first experience playing Davidovsky’s music arose during the very strange summer of 2020. I had recently become associated with the annual Composers Conference, a summer festival devoted in large part to embracing contemporary music and emerging composers (and which Davidovsky directed for 50 years). In August 2020, the Conference planned a Mario Davidovsky virtual memorial concert consisting of his complete set of Synchronisms. (The “Synchronisms” series consists of 12 independent works composed over 40 years for various combinations of acoustic instruments and tape. The pieces are particularly visionary for their exploration of melding such disparate sound worlds.)   

I was invited to be one of the performers for his Synchronisms No. 2 for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and tape. With COVID still very much disrupting in-person work, my collaborators and I met via Zoom to discuss matters of interpretation, practiced our parts individually with the tape and a click track, recorded each of our parts separately (with the conductor tuning in on Zoom to oversee and unify each performance)—after which our tracks were all overlaid and stitched together to form the virtual concert. Despite all the disconnection, the experience sticks in my mind fondly as being one of my first “real” projects to arise post-lockdown, indicating hope that we might one day be performing again. I was intrigued by the color, variety, whimsy, and sheer imagination of the Synchronisms. Synchronisms No. 9 (for solo violin and tape) was on my repertoire wish-list, and I am looking forward to performing it on this year’s Momenta Festival.  

The other Davidovsky-related strand: The New York-based composer David Glaser had agreed to write a new quartet for the Momenta Festival. I had no idea until seeing the finished score a few months ago that David decided to dedicate this work in memory of his teacher and mentor Mario Davidovsky. In the spirit of honoring the various past influences that go into forming what we are today, it seemed only natural to program a Davidovsky piece alongside David’s quartet, hence the inclusion of Synchronisms No. 9 on my concert. 

What’s the significance of ending the program with Beethoven’s “Serioso” Quartet? (Why Beethoven? Why this quartet?) 

The short answer as to “why Beethoven?” and “why this quartet?”: practicality. Perhaps I shouldn’t be revealing how the sausage is made, so to speak—but when it comes to programming decisions, not all of our reasons are highbrow! Sometimes it’s just because we happen to have been playing a piece we love recently, and so it’s logical to include it on a festival program – particularly one on which there are several less familiar works we are preparing with finite rehearsal time. Also, as a quartet that frequently focuses on new works and premieres, we savor any chance we get to delve into standard-repertoire pieces via repeated performances. 

The “Serioso” has been on our quartet’s wish-list for as long as I can remember. Originally, our violist Stephanie had conceived of a festival program for Fall 2020 on which “Serioso” would be juxtaposed with avant-garde German-Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel’s surrealist 1971 film “Ludwig van,” and featuring a top-notch lineup of improvisers who would collaborate with Momenta. With that in mind, we even began rehearsing the “Serioso” in early 2020, but of course, the pandemic threw all sorts of future planning into disarray. As the pandemic progressed, our programming timelines naturally fluctuated. The subsequent Momenta Festival ended up taking place virtually in June of 2021 (thanks to the generous assistance of the Americas Society) but for that one, we had already decided to program another Beethoven work, the monumental Grosse Fuge, for Alex’s program. We finally reprised “Serioso” for the 2021-22 season and had a pretty good idea that it would go on this festival. As various ideas were thrown around, and as guest artists and aesthetic considerations gradually fell into place, for a while it spent time on each of our programs. In the end, my colleagues generously let me have it, but the truth is that each one of us could (and did) come up with some version of a program that interestingly juxtaposed the Beethoven with contemporary and lesser-known works (a hallmark of a typical Momenta concert). 

As for why it ends the program: despite its condensed length, this piece is an emotional heavyweight. It is brusque, restless, tense, emotionally raw, and often violent. 

Other than the coda, which is disarmingly fleet and joyful, the vast majority of the work feels like an existential scream into the void—after which, what more can possibly be uttered?  

Insider Interview with Sarah Plum

The ever-adventurous violinist Sarah Plum has long been a champion of contemporary music. Her latest release, Personal Noise (BGR 619, rel. June 2022), features new music for violin and electronics by living composers, many of which were written especially for Ms. Plum. The collection includes works by Mari Takano, Mari Kimura, Kyong Mee Choi, Jeff Herriot, Charles Nichols, Eric Moe and Eric Lyon. We recently spoke to her about electro-acoustic music, improvisation in Classical music, the new album, and more.

When did you know you wanted to focus your performance career on contemporary music?  

It wasn’t  ever a conscious decision,  but I have always been interested in contemporary music and modernism.   After the release of my first solo CD Absconditus, the new music part of my life went into overdrive, with more concerts, residencies, commissions and collaborations.  It was a lot of fun and I also felt a sense of a mission to get music created, played and heard.   

And I think my background has contributed to this focus : I grew up with artist parents (my Dad was a painter and my Mom was a potter) in a contemporary house that was designed by a friend of theirs.  So from an early age I was exposed to people creating contemporary art and collaborating on creative projects as a way of life. I never imagined a musical life without playing new music and working closely with living composers.  

I moved to Europe after I completed my DMA at Stony Brook and had the good fortune to take part in historic concerts and premieres of new music, playing with groups like Ensemble Moderne, Musik Fabrik, Ensemble Contrechamps, Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam, on tour and at prominent festivals and venues.  I liked the people and the music and wanted to continue to be a part of this world, which felt very sympathetic to me. 

Also in Germany I met Sidney Corbett.  He asked me to premiere his solo sonata Archipel: Chagall  at the Landesmuseum Mainz in a gallery full of Chagall’s prints. This was the start of a long and productive collaborative friendship that persists to this day. Most recently Sidney wrote me a solo sonata based on Bach’s Sonata No. 2 in a minor for solo violin (the first in a series of commissions for works based on each of Bach’s 6 solo Sonatas and Partitas).  I played part of it in Mannheim, Germany before the pandemic but it hasn’t had its full premiere yet. 

This collaboration also gave me a template for what I wanted to do: work closely with composers with lots of repeat performances of their works.  I am an advocate for composers and their pieces.  For the most part I am not going to add pieces to my repertoire that are played and recorded a lot already.   All the composers I play are quite successful, they have good teaching jobs, get commissions, have gotten Guggenheims and Fulbrights and Barlows etc.,  but they are not household names.  It is important to me to bring these works to a larger audience and give them many repeat performances.     

Your new album, “Personal Noise” is entirely music for violin and electronics. Tell me about “electronics” as a “duo partner”. How is it to play along with, react to and interact with electronically-generated sounds? 

It can be difficult with what we call “fixed media”  - which is a  multi layered recording created by the composer.  It is fixed and unresponsive so I have to make sure I match and line up with this unyielding duo partner! On the positive side it is reliable and easier to do in the sense that it is always the same.   

Live electronics is a much more fluid experience with flexibility, which opens up all sorts of possibilities.  It is much more like working with a person as a partner, but it sometimes can be unreliable, and there is more set up and the sound check,  and sometimes things malfunction. I love working with MAX and other live electronic programs and it has been exciting to play these pieces.  

Tell us some of the different kinds of electronics used in the works on “Personal Noise.”  

Eric Moe, Mari Takano and Kyong Mee Choi’s pieces are with fixed media. Each tape that the composers made is super rich, full of different recorded and electric sounds and quite gorgeous.  I love playing these pieces in concert because it is like having an orchestra in your back pocket.   Mari Kimura, Jeff Herriott and Charles Nichols’ piecesare with MAX msp.  In Mari’s piece the electronics react to my and Yvonne’s pitches, so whatever we do, certain sounds come out of the electronics in a really lush and beautiful way.   Jeff’s piece has a variety of things going on - loops and some chance elements, which I love.  In concert it is different every time;  for the CD we chose the versions we liked the most.  Charles’ piece is, in many ways, the most ambitious.  It is made of recorded sounds, and my playing is also recorded and processed in real time.  So it is me recorded, me live and me processed - and affected by the motion sensor on my hand.  Really cool! 

How did you start playing electronic music? 

For the release of my first solo CD Absconditus, I had a concert on a series at the Berlin main train station.  Sidney  Corbett introduced me to his friend Mari Takano, whom he met when they both studied with Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg in the 80’s. She sent me the piece and a CD of the audio track that I played with.  I really liked the piece and liked the variety it gave me on programs of music for violin alone - I performed it over 50 times.  Then I played a piece by Matthew Burtner (my first Max piece) and fell in love with live electronics, the freedom and the potential for unusual sounds.  Next, Jeff Herriot wrote me the piece that is on “Personal Noise”.  At each step I learned more about the technology and was continually challenged with new technology and techniques.    

How much room is there, within the works on this album, for improvisation and/or variation between performances?  

 For the CD it is only Jeff Herriott’s piece that  has some choice elements and improvisation. At the concert I gave at Constellation in Chicago in May 2022 ( on Youtube), Laurie Schwartz’ss work was improvisatory.  The rest are all notated, or things happen in a chance way based on the program, but not related to what I am doing.    

What do you hope listeners take away from the album; and/or the art and craft of performing a live instrument with electronics? 

I hope listeners enjoy it and  have their perspective expanded, perhaps even have their mind blown a bit.  It’s an opportunity to learn about some composers new to them, and possibly inspired them to experience more of their music.  I hope I can give them a sense of the breadth of what is out there and an openness to explore further.   

Insider Interview with Andrew Garland and Eapen Leubner of Art Song Colorado

The acclaimed baritone Andrew Garland is front and center on a new album of songs by Gabriela Lena Frank, and Dmitri Shostakovich on Art Song Colorado’s label (DASP 005, release date August 5, 2022). “El Rebelde” (“The Rebel”) brings together the vocal compositions of Frank and Shostakovich, two composers who transformed Spanish language song through their innovative settings. In this insider interview, we spoke with Mr. Garland and Art Song Colorado founder Eapen Leubner about the new recording. 

Why did you want to record / produce a recording of / this particular repertoire? 

ANDREW GARLAND: I have been in love with Gabriela’s music since 2006 when I first met her and the Songs of Cifar [a collection of songs by Frank, two of which were premiered by Mr. Garland]. The driving rhythms, the jazz harmonies, the non-classical vocal techniques, the Spanish language, the high F#s and Gs. I feel that all of these are my strengths. And let’s be honest: any performer chooses a piece partly because they can sound good doing it. And besides her innovative music-making, I adore Gabi’s philosophy: when western “classical music” assimilates another culture, it must make both cultures equal: one culture can’t dominate the other.  

EAPEN LEUBNER: It is sometimes a challenge to decide what to produce. In this case, Andy's passion for the music of Gabriela Frank shone through. I was new to the music but hearing the repertoire made me made the decision easy. 

What do you think makes this music distinctive? 

EL: Gabriela's compositional voice merges many regional styles but still frames the music in the traditional art song format of piano and voice. The music plays around the edges of the genre by using some sprech-stimme techniques and spoken word, longer piano solos and a musical language that pairs with the poetry like a fine wine with a beautiful dinner.  

AG: To start, the poetry sources are a little off-the-beaten path, even for 21st century “art song”. 

For centuries, composers have written music that has the piano imitate other instruments. Songs of Cifar will someday be a cycle for orchestra including Nicaraguan marimba (the Nicaraguan marimba has reeds hanging from the bars that add a buzzing sound) and charango (a small guitar after which an entire Pan-American genre is named). In the second song, “Me diste ¡oh Dios! una hija,” the piano imitates both these instruments at the same time. And Jeremy Reger, our pianist, is on fire when he plays this. This song more than any has the driving rhythms I was talking about. 

And the vocal score. I mentioned the high notes. I when I first started working with Gabi I mentioned to her that F# was my favorite high note. There are a few juicy ones in the first song (“El nacimeiento de cifar”) and she wrote in several more for the premiere of “Eufemia.”   

By the way, I put “art song” in quotations above because there needs to be a better name for the genre. Most people I know - including other musicians - are put off by the term. Other people ask what “art song” is, I tell them, and then they’re put off by the term. I heard an anecdote: once Samuel Ramey bumped into Barbara Streisand in an apartment building in New York. A mutual friend introduced them and said that Sam is a singer. She asked him “Oh, what tunes do you sing?” They’re all tunes (provided they have a melody which all of these songs do, thank goodness. 

How does this repertoire resonate with Art Song Colorado’s mission? 

EL: Art Song Colorado (ASC) is dedicated to introducing new audiences to the art song genre. Our projects have included video, puppets, live performance and albums that focus on a theme. Our secondary mission is to support the artistic vision of Colorado artists. "El Rebelde" spoke to me because we hadn’t yet seriously delved into new Spanish-language music and I've admired Andy's career and musicality from a far. This was a two-fer for me. 

What does Gabriela Frank’s music mean to you? 

EL: I've only known Gabriela's music for the past year and yet, I frequently find myself humming fragments of melody and thinking about lines from the recording session. Her music is, for me, a beginning. I've been given a gift to produce this inaugural set of pieces. If you notice the numbering on the Cifar songs, there will eventually be thirty of them. If fate is kind, I want to be a part of this all the way through to a complete recording that will tell the Cifar songs from beginning to end. 

AG: I love sharing music that I love with an audience. I love introducing audiences to new music that makes them think and feel. I love giving audiences renditions of songs they love. In the past 15 years, Songs of Cifar have gone from being one to the other. 

Why was music by Shostakovich chosen for this album, and why this particular set of songs? What makes it a good pairing with Frank’s songs? 

EL: The idea of the album title "El Rebelde" came from the third Cifar song. We knew that we wanted to pair this music and contrast Gabriela's music with music that would be similarly grounded, yet profoundly different. The Shostakovich had the similarities of the Spanish melodies but, unlike Frank's music, these songs were connected to Russia by both language and harmonics. Both composers show a rebellious streak by remixing the classical art song from a mono-culture (think German Lieder or French Chanson) into a blending of cultures. The result is something that is Russian or Spanish or Nicaraguan and is more than the sum of the parts because they have been so seamlessly combined. 

AG: Including the Shostakovich Spanish Songs was Jeremy’s idea. He first suggested it because of the Spanish language connection: these are Spanish folk songs originally in Spanish, translated to Russian. These are a composer writing about another place and all of the mixed, conflicting feelings he has for that place. As we got to know the songs better we discovered that these songs also bring together two cultures seamlessly with both at the fore, neither behind the other. 

Insider Interview with Momenta Quartet

Momenta Quartet presents its annual Momenta Festival June 14-17, 2022. All four concerts will be at the Broadway Presbyterian Church (601 W 114th St. New York, NY), and admission is free.The seventh edition of the festival features four diverse chamber music programs each curated by a different member of the quartet. In this insider interview, we spoke with each member of the quartet about their unique programs.

Note: Moments Festival VII has been re-scheduled for September 15-18, 2022. The section about the June 17th program (which happened as scheduled) is below. For info on the forthcoming programs click here.

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Momenta Festival VII closes out on June 17 with a “Juneteenth Celebration” curated by violist Stephanie Griffin. Her program includes a world premiere by Jazz bassist and compsoer HIlliard Greene, alongside works by Alvin Singleton (whose complete string quartets were just recorded by Momenta) and Yusef Lateef.

Momenta Quartet just released a recording of Singleton’s complete String Quartets. What compositional style through-lines do you see in these works, and what makes them stand apart?  

It was quite a journey to learn, perform and eventually record all four string quartets by the esteemed African American composer Alvin Singleton. Delving into his complete works (so far!) for this medium gave us all deeper insights into the development of his musical language.  

Interestingly, the last quartet we learned was his first, which he composed in 1967, which we are featuring on our Momenta Festival Juneteenth celebration concert on June 17th. Cast as a Passacaglia and Fugue, it is the most “traditional” of the four pieces on its surface. It opens with a lyrical cello solo in a somewhat expressionist vein. The viola joins – followed by second and first violins, engendering soulful free atonal counterpoint. Variations ensue – building up to the whirlwind of activity, which will be the fugue. I introduce the fugue subject on the viola – and what a subject it is! It is unusually long for a fugue subject and it abounds in jagged rhythms and wild turns of phrase. Not your mother’s fugue – or maybe it is – depending on who your mother is! This quartet seems so different from the other three, but if you isolate the solo lines, Alvin’s distinctive melodic style is already apparent.  

I think the main way in which he changed stylistically between this first quartet and the other three was adopting his own distinctive brand of “minimalism.” I hesitate to even use that word, since it has the connotations of Philip Glass and Steve Reich – or even Feldman, on the other side of the minimalist spectrum. Getting past those conceptions of what “minimalism” is – I think it applies to Alvin’s music in his use of repetition, large-scale sections of rhythmic and even pitch unisons (especially apparent in String Quartet no. 4 “Hallelujah Anyhow”) and his signature use of silence.  

You will not hear this in String Quartet no. 1, but a hallmark of Alvin’s compositional style is the way he juxtaposes wildly different sections with long silences in between. It’s as if, after String Quartet no. 1, he replaced the traditional idea of “development” with an almost Zen-like approach of letting the listener experience sections of music with wildly different expressions and giving them the silences in between to draw their own connections. 

One of the quartets was written for Momenta. How does this work stand out, and is there any particular traits the group has that the composer incorporated into the work?  

String Quartet no. 4 “Hallelujah Anyhow” was commissioned for Momenta by Chamber Music America, and we had the joy of premiering it on our last in-person Momenta Festival before the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019.  

It stands out in its bold and uncompromising use of unisons. Like his string quartets Nos. 2 and 3, it shows Alvin using his signature technique of juxtaposing contrasting sections with dramatic silences in between. But while those pieces have extended sections in rhythmic unison, “Hallelujah Anyhow” starts with a long and arresting passage with all four of us in pitch and rhythmic unison – and that material keeps recurring throughout the piece. It’s brash, bright and rhythmic. To me it evokes the feeling of a big band at times. The unisons are broken up by glimmers of slow, dark harmonies, which will later take more prominence in the piece.  

One would have to ask Alvin himself (but he probably won’t tell you!) if he factored in the personality of Momenta itself in this commission. If I may blow Momenta’s horn for a moment, though, I think this kind of writing shows that, based on his extensive experience with us in our performances of his second and third quartets, he knew he could trust us to be able to play this! It is no small feat to pull off a performance with all the pitch unisons and jagged rhythms. Out of all of his pieces, this was by far the most challenging in the recording session. (Alvin Singleton: Four String Quartets available for purchase here)  

How did you get to know Alvin Singleton and what attracts you to his music?  

We first met Alvin Singleton when Tom Buckner invited us to play his second and third quartets on Alvin’s 75th birthday concert on the Interpretations series at Roulette. On that same concert I played his solo viola piece “Argoru” and his graphic score piece “Be Natural” (1974), which I will be playing with Michael and guest bassist Hilliard Greene on the June 17th Momenta Festival program.  

We immediately loved Alvin both as a human being and a composer. Many things attract me to his music  - above all its freshness, originality and sense of spontaneity. As an improviser myself, I feel a kinship between Alvin’s aesthetic and the world of avant-garde jazz. And it turns out that Alvin is not directly trying to mimic jazz in any way, but he had tried his hand at it on the piano many years ago and has deep friendships with some of today’s leading figures in avant-garde jazz, including Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Threadgill. We will honor that by including the great jazz bassist Hilliard Greene in our interpretation of “Be Natural.” 

Insider Interview with Violinist Maya Magub

During the global pandemic, the British-American violinist Maya Magub – like so many others – turned to music for solace. Her recording of Six Consolations by Franz Liszt (five of which were arranged by her, and recorded here for the first time), with the pianist Hsin-I Huang is on a new album, “Consolations” (CRD 3540, release date June 3, 2022). In anticipation of the June 3 album release, singles are released on April 22 (Consolation No. 5) and May 13 (Consolation No. 3).. We recently spoke with the violinist and asked her about her arranging these iconic works, the recording process, her career in Hollywood, and more!

You’ve said that, because the album was made during the pandemic, you had quite a unique recording process - and that sometimes it was a more “democratic” process. How did that work? 

Yes. Hsin-I and I had been playing together before the pandemic, and one of the things I was most sad about losing out on at the beginning of it all (alongside the global toilet paper shortage anxiety!!) was the ability to play chamber music. The idea for this project came to me very early on, and I think it was my way of feeling connected. I never feel isolated if I have my violin with me! So, after recording several film scores from my newly-assembled home studio, I realized it could be possible to make a violin and piano album this way, with lots of discussion and collaboration but recording separately. 

Of course it is always ideal to play together in the same space, but we did find some really surprising silver linings in the process of recording remotely. We couldn't begin by playing through the music, but in the early stages of rehearsal that often results in one person imposing their vision on the other (ok, yes, often the violinist...!!). This time we had to begin with discussion.  

Before any recording could happen, it was necessary to map out which of us had the part with the most momentum at any point (either a whole piece or sometimes sections within a piece) and let that person record first. In the transcriptions of piano pieces, it sometimes felt right to give Hsin-I the freedom to record first without any prior discussion, as she would choose to play the solo piano version. There were times when her recording would be a surprise to me, because I had envisioned an entirely different tempo.  

With the Bach/Gounod ‘Ave Maria’, for example, I had imagined playing it slower with long drawn out legato lines, suited to the violin’s greater ability to sustain. If we had been rehearsing in a conventional way I would probably have stopped early on and suggested a slower tempo, and she instinctively would have followed my rubato in certain places. In this case, her recording was so beautiful, sincere and profound that, though I had imagined it differently, I hated the idea of changing anything. Because of our unusual recording process, I had the chance to listen and play through with it many times and, over time, I found small ways to use rubato in its original definition - robbing time but then giving it back. I found that it was possible to feel free enough without stretching the overall tempo, and came to feel that I had made it 'my own'.  

Later, I discovered that the piece first came to life while Gounod was improvising over someone else’s rendition of the Bach (the piano line). So perhaps this unusual process had actually allowed us to approach the music in the same way, by honoring the Bach and adapting to that rather than treating it as an accompaniment.  

We had a similar experience with one of the Liszt Consolations - No. 5. Again, Hsin-I's vision was faster than I had imagined, but sounded beautiful. I just had to rethink and keep an open mind. After living with her recording for a while I realized that slurring more notes together made a huge difference, and I now can't imagine the piece any other way!  

Of course there were also times when one of us felt strongly about a passage after it had been recorded, and that we couldn’t play it that way with enough conviction to make it our own. These were times to take advantage of the ability to re-record after more discussion (without needing to rebook a studio!). All in all it took a LOT of time, but was very much a musical collaboration, just as it would have been recording conventionally.   

How did you approach creating the arrangements of Lizst’s Consolations for violin and piano? How are they different from the original score for piano solo? 

In thinking about music as consolation, I remembered that Milstein had transcribed the wonderful ‘Lento Placido’, Liszt’s Consolation No 3, and I wondered what the other 'Consolations' would sound like for violin and piano. It was so exciting listening to them, because it was so easy to imagine them this way, and that's how this whole project evolved. 

Much of Liszt's Consolations have obvious melody lines perfectly suited to the violin, and there are often musical echos that work well as a piano ‘answering phrase’. Tempting as it was to steal all the best melodies for the violin(!), an important part of the transcription process was to find moments where the violin should rest and the piano answer. After that, it was a question of making the new piano part flow logically in its own right, sometimes adding and sometimes  taking away so that the voice-leading made sense in its own right. 

I was lucky with the keys: The set of six Consolations oscillate between the contrasting keys of D flat and E major, both of which lie very well on the violin. The key of E major uses the brightness and natural resonance of the E string, and D flat has a contrasting richness. In Consolation No. 4, which has a prayer-like quality, I realized I could introduce another color by introducing the mute - 'con sordino'. 

It felt important to make use of the full pitch range of the violin, and it was natural to use two different registers for a repeated melody, or to play in octaves. Liszt uses a lot of thirds and sixths in the melody of Consolation No. 5, and they translated well. Occasionally the original voicing felt awkward on the violin, and it was fun to find the most violinistic way to keep the original harmonies by inverting some of the intervals. This one felt a lot like a Kreisler encore by the time I'd finished!  

The mini 'cadenza' in Consolation No. 6 was another fun moment to transcribe: the notes had to be changed to make them lie well on the violin, but within Liszt's original contours, and it was exciting experimenting with different patterns until it felt 'right'. I tried to think about what Milstein may have done, an my inspiration was his transcription of No. 3 with it's mini cadenzas. 

The album is aptly titled Consolations – not just because the works by Liszt are the focal point of the album, but the whole collection is meant to console. What music did you listen to during the last two years when you needed consolation? 

Like so many people, I found myself listening to all sorts of different music during the pandemic. And sadly, with war and inequality rife in the world today, we are no less in need of consolation now. Sometimes we need upbeat music to cheer us up, but I often find that slower, more nostalgic music brings consolation by making me feel understood, in a way that more precise verbal language can’t.  

The other pieces on the program came from piles of my father's old albums for violin and piano, full of the best loved tunes - some written for violin and piano, and others transcribed from operas or the piano repertoire. I had performed many of these over the years for the wonderful UK charity, 'Everyone Matters', which brings concerts to care homes and hospices. The audiences there are so appreciative of a really great melody, especially one they remember from their past; but these short pieces are so well known that musicians tend to look down on them.  

Somehow the pandemic gave me back the ability to appreciate them for what they really are and draw on them for my own consolation. Choosing the selections for the album was a great opportunity to frame every piece within this theme of consolation, and I realized afterwards that this had made me approach and play them differently. Certainly listening to them as a collection feels very different from hearing one in isolation as an encore, and gives them an extra weight and profundity. I hope that's something that other listeners will feel on some level and take away from the album. 

In addition to your own albums, you have a career in Hollywood, featured on countless movie soundtracks and pop recordings. Out of all these projects, are there any that stand out from the others as favorites, or ones you were most excited to take a part in? 

Oh so many...! I really feel so lucky to be doing what I do, and to be immersed in it here where it all happens. I love walking into a studio - Fox, or Warner’s or Sony - where they are busy building sets for a movie, and knowing that Clint Eastwood can just wander into our recording at any moment! Every time we play for John Williams is a dream: the music is sublime and he hears everything. From Star Wars to his solo violin album with the wonderful Anne Sophie Mutter, it has been amazing just to be in the same room as him. I've had many exciting moments with icons like Burt Bacharach; Bono at the Hollywood Bowl (where Bill and Hillary Clinton asked to meet the musicians afterwards!); and Adele at the Grammys. We have worked with Alan Menken, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman... many legends and many exciting times! 

Insider Interview with Variant 6

On May 20, the vocal ensemble Variant 6 releases New Suns (Open G). The Philadelphia-based group’s debut full-length album celebrates a widely diverse range of styles and sounds of 21st century vocal music, with works by Joanne Metcalf, Jeremy Gill, Bruno Bettinelli, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, and Gabriel Jackson. We spoke Variant 6’s Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano, about the album, choosing repertoire, collaborating with composers, and so much more.

How did you all meet, and at what point did you know you wanted to pursue a path forward as the ensemble Variant 6?

I met James Reese at Northwestern University - I was in my fifth year of a double degree program, voice and poetry, and he was a freshman voice major. I met the rest of the members of Variant 6 when I started singing with The Crossing in 2014. It was only a year and a half later, in the fall of 2015, that the six of us decided to form a one-on-a-part vocal ensemble. At that time, we had no idea what this ensemble would become; our only goal was to program and plan for one concert, and as soon as it was over, start planning for the next. 

Vocal ensembles of your size seem to either be specialists in contemporary music, or early music – and you seem to have your feet squarely in both worlds. Why is this? What is the throughline between the two periods and chamber-sized vocal ensembles? 

Our love of both early and contemporary music stems from the wide range of specialization that each of our singers has. James Reese and Jessica Beebe both have degrees in early music, and Rebecca Myers is becoming very well known across the country as a Bach interpreter. I have always loved complicated contemporary music, and I frequently perform solo chamber contemporary music, as well as with my other vocal sextet, Ekmeles, which specializes in microtonal tuning. We all bring our own interests and skill sets, and because we are all encouraged to put forward ideas, Variant 6’s programming reflects this. 

What qualities do you look for in a composer when searching for potential collaborators to commission?

I personally look for someone who is going to be interested in learning how our ensemble sings together. We have a unique voicing - we have two high sopranos, and two very high tenors, as well as an alto and a bass who are comfortable in their higher registers. We love singing music that allows us to use the meat of our voices – much of the music on New Suns features our bright, ringing singing. 

What do you hope listeners take away from the album? 

I’m excited for listeners to hear the complexity and beauty of one-on-a-part a cappella singing. I’m also interested to hear people’s reactions about the recording style; we purposely chose a closer, intimate sound, as opposed to a roomy, super reverberant aura. Our recording engineer used close mics to record us, and at any point during the recording you can pick out all six of our individual voices. You feel very exposed, but I also think listeners will feel like they get to know us individually over the course of the album!

Composer Margaret Brouwer's new album featured in Gramophone

Gramophone Review: BROUWER Reactions: Songs and Chamber Music

By Donald Rosenberg

Margaret Brouwer covers a lot of emotional territory in the music on her new CD, ‘Reactions’, which comprises works composed between 2005 and 2020, including one written in the throes of the pandemic. The American composer has the expressive skills to evoke the passions she sets out to describe – love, ecology, racism, even being trapped in telephone hell.

Read the full review HERE

Variant 6 in Philadelphia Inquirer: "No conductor. Few tuning forks. A sound all their own."

No conductor. Few tuning forks. A sound all their own. Philly’s Variant 6 choir is breaking out.

By David Patrick Stearns

Variant 6, Philadelphia’s emerging, enterprising chamber choir, is best defined by what it doesn’t do — or have. No leader. No conductor saying what to sing. Or how to sing it. Or where: Traditional concert halls aren’t among their favorite things. 

None of the six members in this ensemble of busy Philadelphia freelance singers has perfect pitch. Tuning forks are seldom used. Yet chords are so perfectly tuned that their blends almost sound electronic on the group’s first full-length album New Suns, which is being released in conjunction with its concert 8 p.m. May 21 at University Lutheran Church and shows what, amid so many “nots”, Variant 6 does do.

Read the full article here.

Insider Interview with Pianist Ana-Marija Markovina

On January 7, 2022, Pianist Ana-Marija Markovina released a massive and comprehensive set of solo piano works by Felix Mendelssohn (Hänssler Classic, HC18043), twelve discs in all. In this insider interview, we spoke to the pianist about embarking on such a task, why the composer is underrated, her love for literature, and so much more!

What inspired you to record the complete solo works for Mendelssohn?  

Mendelssohn is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated composers ever. Some pieces, such as the Variations Sérieuses, have become quite famous and are present on concert stages and in musical institutions. The Songs without Words - Lieder ohne Worte - also enjoy great popularity. But otherwise? One knows hardly anything about Mendelssohn's vast oeuvre. I was interested in the reason for this lack of presence in people's consciousness. One of the reasons is certainly to be found in the dark times when Jewish music was forbidden or at least frowned upon. And it wasn't just the 12 Nazi years here. There were always anti-Semitic attitudes, just think of Wagner. Wagner despised Mendelssohn because he was Jewish. He wrote nasty things about him, what was terrible.  This attitude is certainly one reason why Mendelssohn could not occupy the same space in the general consciousness as, say, Chopin or Brahms. I find that tragic and want to change it. 

And the reason why it is a complete recording is that I am trying to make only complete recordings. I'm always interested in wholeness in every sense. I am more fascinated by becoming than by being. The fascination for me is the path of life, the development, the growth. And I experience that only if I identify completely with the work, get to know everything, explore every corner of a composer’s life and work, and don't "cherry-pick".  

What does your box set bring to the Mendelssohn canon that was previously missing? 

First and foremost, I would like to mention the sketches, the fragments. They give us an important new insight into Mendelssohn's working methods. It is more exciting for me to see what he discarded than what he published. And, what is also a novelty: I have recorded the different versions whenever I could find them. From this it is evident that Mendelssohn very consciously edited his works when he was to publish them. The thing he lacked most in life was: Time. He had no time. He worked incredibly hard, was a successful music manager, a family man, and a helpful friend. This led to the fact that he wrote down, for example, a small song without words quite inspired but quickly, and he did not write it down exactly. When it came to publication, however, he wanted to go back to work, because he was seldom satisfied with his results. And this revising was particularly interesting for me. One can then best sense how he thought and what musical conception he had. 

In addition, there are some works that have never appeared in the context of a complete recording such as the solo version of the Capriccio MWV U 87, some songs newly added by Larry Todd and smaller works. 

If you could single out just one or two, what solo piano works do you wish the world knew about? In other words, are there any pieces that you wish were just as well-known as the composer’s “greatest hits”? 

Yes, of course. First of all, there are the early sonatas. I appreciate them all, but especially the Sonata in C minor. The beginning of the first movement is strongly reminiscent of Beethoven's "Pathetique" and is very impressive. But also the F minor Sonata MWV U 23 - inconceivable that an 11 year old child wrote this! We think first of Mozart when it comes to the subject of child prodigies, but Mendelssohn is at least as great a phenomenon. I am also particularly enthusiastic about some less know later piece, the etudes e.g,, especially B flat minor MWV U 117 and A minor MWV U 142. 

You’ve made a name for yourself recording the complete works for piano of a few composers now. With each of these sets, how do you begin the process of such a massive undertaking? 

That's quite simple: I read. I read as much literature as I can. That helps me to immerse myself in the composer's world. Into his or her everyday life, their relationships with other people. I try to understand how he or she grew up, what the upbringing was like, whether the parents were loving, nurturing and understanding or punitive and destructive. In Mendelssohn's case, the family history is particularly exciting because of the great Moses Mendelssohn, who shaped the family for generations, indeed who shaped his entire era and humanity to this day as a humanist philosopher.  

Furthermore here is the fact that the family was very rich. Felix and Fanny never had financial worries, that was not an issue at all. On the contrary: they rather tried to hide their wealth and therefore worked all the more diligently. I internalise all this before I start practicing. The atmosphere, the spirit of the works is then much closer and easier for me to grasp. 

What insights about Mendelssohn did you gain in the process of recording the album? 

His life itself. The essence of his being! He was a very generous man - one experiences this above all in the infinite wealth of ideas of his melodies. And in what he did not publish. He did not have to carry out every idea, that is also a sign of a gigantic talent, a sign of his modesty, his seriousness and just his generosity. I can talk about that now with greater certainty, with a certain clarity. And I could not do that before. Before, before the recording, I knew his music, but now it flows through my veins, so to speak. 

What do you hope listeners take away from the album?  

First of all, many hours of beautiful music. And then the realization that even the greatest talent in the cosmos must work hard, because otherwise the talent is worthless. Mendelssohn, with all the privileges in his life, wealth and talent, was hardworking and modest. He was a wonderful character, everyone loved him. I think, I hope, you can hear that. And that's a beautiful contribution to a happy life, isn't it? 

Insider Interview with Jeremy Gill

For his new work for the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet, Jeremy Gill drew inspiration from a book described as a “kaleidoscope of postmodern fairy tales.” Motherwhere is a concerto grosso for the Parkers and New York Classical Players, who perform the world premiere on April 1, 2022.

In our insider interview with Jeremy, we spoke about his love for reading, collaborating with the Parkers and NY Classical Players, and writing for string quartet and orchestra.

Tell us a little about Night School: A Reader for Grownups, the book which your composition Motherwhere is based on. How did you come across this fascinating collection of stories? What gripped or fascinated you about it?

My wife and I are both avid readers, and a couple of years ago we decided that we would try something new: we would each read an author we had never read before whose last name began with A, B, C, etc., through Z. We chose our books (mostly) from the shelves of the McNally Jackson on Prince Street, in Greenwich Village, one of our favorite local bookstores.

My “B” author was Zsófia Bán, and I loved her book from the very first reading, for so many reasons. Firstly, her language itself is wonderfully musical – its rhythms and cadences – despite the fact that I was reading her in translation! (This is a great credit to her translator, Jim Tucker, who managers to translate her Hungarian into a wonderfully idiosyncratic, though natural-sounding English.) Secondly, she manages to perfectly balance whimsy and wisdom, such that one’s never entirely sure if she’s being serious or having a laugh; in this way, she recalls Italo Calvino (one of my favorite writers). Thirdly, she often allows the reader to watch her think “on the page” – we get to follow her train of thought and thrill at her obviously quick wit and sharp, sharp mind (here she recalls Anne Carson to me, another favorite). Fourthly (I could go on and on), she manages somehow to create a unity of twenty-one distinct and seemingly unrelated tales.

There is a magical through-line that runs from the first tale (depicting the surprising disappearance of “Motherwhere” – a kind of Ur-mother – all the way to the last tale titled “The Miraculous Return of Laughter,” in which a (maybe) post-Soviet “thaw” is translated into the contagious spread of existential merriment. My subsequent readings revealed many more layers, and unearthed unexpected connections between tales, sometimes via seemingly insignificant details. This, like her language, is very musical – as when a melodic fragment turns up much later in a work, in an entirely different context…

You’ve said “I wanted to evoke, musically, the experience of reading [Night School]. What was your experience reading it, and how does that translate to your composition?

Ultimately, I felt most strongly that the book is somehow many wildly, beautifully varied expressions of a few simple themes or ideas. Absence is one theme – this is obviously Motherwhere’s “condition,” but most of the characters that appear in the book are profoundly alone, and many of them are acutely aware of being so. One of the funniest stories is “Mrs. Longfellow Burns,” a campy, mocking quasi-biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in which Mrs. Longfellow – who ends in ashes – is somehow the lonely heart of “his” story. Another theme is the feminine perspective, which for me as a male reader made each character freshly “Other”, and had me constantly reevaluating my assumptions about motivation and desire.

My work – a concerto for string quartet and string orchestra – takes the form of twenty-one bagatelles, with each bagatelle corresponding to one story (in the order in which they appear in the book). In order to translate her use of “themes” into musical ideas, I came up with some very basic musical conceits that run throughout all the bagatelles. These are purely musical (not correlated to her literary themes) – symmetry (primarily pitch-based, with the D above middle C acting as fulcrum), the open strings, and the exploration of like-interval sonorities (sections based mostly on seconds, thirds, fourths, etc.).

Having these abstract musical anchors allowed me then to “react,” compositionally, to each of her tales. Sometimes, I made a very detailed reflection of her story in the music. One example is “What Is This Thing Called the Exchange Reaction,” which depicts a love quadrangle told through the guise of a couples ping-pong match: my four quartet members each assume a specific character in the story, and musically play out their shifting relationships. It’s a literal transposition of the story into music. When the (spoiler alert!) two female characters wind up going off together, they transform into the “Two Fridas” of the ensuing story. Other times, my musical reflections are more circumspect: “How I Didn’t” gives six parodic accounts of how and when the author did not meet a literary personage she admires, but my music is entirely concerned with only the final non-meeting, which takes place at the edge of the North Sea (the sea as Ur-mother is another of her important themes). Most often, though, my musical reflections of Bán’s tales are more purely emotional – music is, literally, non-narrative, so the best way I could find to encapsulate the experience of reading her was to try to match up the emotional evocations of the music and the tale – what was the emotional residue left by the tale? This was probably my most typical approach to writing each bagatelle.

The work features the award-winning Parker Quartet, a group with whom you’ve collaborated numerous times. Tell about the collaborative process of writing music for them.

I love the Parker Quartet – I first wrote for them in 2006, when they were relatively newly minted. I had received a commission from Market Square Concerts (Harrisburg, PA) to compose a 25th anniversary piece and I had my pick of the artists appearing that season. I responded deeply to the Parker Quartet’s playing and I wrote them a letter, included some of my music, and told them that I wanted to write for them but ONLY if they wanted a piece from me. In their typical, thoughtful and thorough way, they took the requisite time to get to know my music. They responded well to it, and said they’d love a piece from me. We had a wonderful first collaboration.

Over the ensuing years I’ve gone to hear them whenever we’re in the same general area, and we’ve worked together on other projects – I produced their wonderful recording of Mendelssohn quartets, for example. The last piece I wrote for them was Capriccio, an hour-long quartet in 27 movements commissioned by Chamber Music America. Capriccio felt like the ultimate string quartet composition for me (in that piece, I wrote that I aimed “to encapsulate, technically, expressively, and texturally, all that is possible for the string quartet”), so a next work for them would have to be completely different. Enter Motherwhere, a concerto for string quartet with string orchestra…

Writing for the Parkers is every composer’s dream: I feel like they “get me” completely, and always find in my music exactly what I hoped they would find (and often pleasantly surprise me by amplifying things I only partially realized myself). They are technically perfect, but go so far beyond that in their understanding and sense of the music. They complement one another perfectly – I feel like they are THE string quartet of today, and I’m lucky to have worked with them so often and for so long.

Motherwhere is scored for string quartet and string orchestra. You don’t see that every day! Which compositions for this instrumentation inspired you? How does the quartet’s solo part stand apart from the string orchestra accompaniment?

There is one great work for string quartet and string orchestra that I know – Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro – but there are many wonderful works for string orchestra that make incidental use of a solo quartet: Bartók’s Divertimento, Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Vaughan-Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. These are a few of the nearly two dozen works I repeatedly revisited while composing Motherwhere. My solo quartet stands apart from the ensemble in its musical function – it is the primary source of musical material, and usually carries the expressive weight of each bagatelle.

The last concerto I wrote before Motherwhere was Concerto d’avorio for four-hands piano and orchestra, and I learned in that piece that a chamber music “soloist” is quite different from a solitary soloist. Throughout, the chamber music soloist needs to function as a chamber group – not as a collection of independent soloists. This might seem obvious (or inconsequential), but this way of thinking about the soloists was crucial for me. It also makes rehearsing the piece a (hopefully) more pleasant task – the quartet will spend a lot of time learning the piece away from the orchestra, and that learning process would be dreadful if the four parts only made sense in the context of the orchestra – they need to have their own, chamber identity that feels compelling on its own.

What do you hope audiences get from hearing this music?

I want the audience to feel – in so far as this is possible – my love and admiration for Night School, Bán’s wonderfully fun, inventive, witty, touching, thrilling book. If I managed to capture half of her infectious spirit and can translate that to the audience, this will be a great success! I hope, too, that the audience senses some of the affection I have for the Parker Quartet: writing for them is such a joy, and I hope that joy is manifest in the notes I wrote for them.

This is my first time working with New York Classical Players; they are fantastic, and Dongmin Kim is a wonderful conductor and – from everything I’ve heard – an ideal collaborator. The string orchestra is one of the most mind-bogglingly varied and malleable ensembles, and my approach to writing for the string orchestra throughout is to let it sound well. This, again, may seem obvious, but the older I get, the more I find myself focusing on creating the ideal musical environment in which musicians can sound and play their best. Musicians play the music they love because it gives them great pleasure to do so, and my aim is to afford them the kind of pleasure that draws them back to the work for repeated doses. When that mutual affection comes off the stage and makes its way into the audience – that’s when everything is working as it should.

Insider Interview with Andy Teirstein

Composer Andy Teirstein's work is inspired by the rich and diverse folk roots of modern culture. His music has been described by The New York Times and The Village Voice as "magical," "ingenious," and "superbly crafted." His new album, Restless Nation, out February 4, 2022 on Navona Records, celebrates the composer’s works inspired by world music traditions, featuring oud, nyckelharpa, and dulcimer with string quartet and features guest artists Mivos Quartet, Cassatt Quartet, Marco Ambronsini, Yair Dalal, and the Janacek Philharmonic.

We could fill up this page just listing the different instruments you play – banjo, harmonica, dulcimer – to name a few. What first grabbed your attention in music, and which instrument did you gravitate toward first?  

My grandmother was a pianist in theaters for early movies. And she was deaf since the age of 17. I remember her sitting at the piano and merrily tinkering away; she said she could feel the vibrations. I must have been four. Whenever I had a chance I would go to the piano and just mash around with the keys, pretending to play like her. But when I was in first grade in public school in New York City, they paraded a few instruments on stage in assembly, and we could choose which ones to take lessons on. I chose the violin, and played in school orchestras.  

Later, I began playing blues and bluegrass with friends. My brother taught me some basic guitar chords. Since the mandolin is tuned like a violin, it was easy to add that on. I picked up Pete Seeger’s book, How to Play the 5-String Banjo, never dreaming that one day I would be playing folk festivals onstage with Pete.  

In college I came to appreciate the viola, loving the inner voices. I studied with Jacob Glick, a real master, and the viola became my primary instrument. Some familiarity with piano has unlocked the accordion for me, and through the accordion, the concertina. I think, to be a true instrumentalist, it’s best to choose one instrument and stick to it, but as a composer, I have found it deliciously rewarding to keep an open mind instrumentally, and see how the instruments connect one to another.  

Your new album, Restless Nation, is entirely instrumental concert music written by you. You’ve spent a good deal of your career writing music for theater, dance and film. What are the challenges – and the rewards – of writing music that is intended to stand on its own? 

Yes, I do love to create music for theater and dance, but there’s something liberating about entering the world of instrumental music, letting go of words and theatrical concepts to communicate only in the language of music. If you’ve ever been in an Irish pub during a traditional seisún, then you know what it means to let the instrument take over, and give the fingers free reign. The challenge of creating “absolute” music is that you bring yourself face to face with the blank manuscript; there is no roadmap in poem, story, or lyric. And so, you begin to ask the really fruitful musical questions: what am I exploring in purely musical terms? Is there a DNA to this piece I’m composing, to this series of movements, and to my own signature style?  

There are things I find myself much freer to explore in non-theatrical music. In “Restless Nation,” this has to do with rhythmic intensity in asymmetrical meters. In “Azazme Songs,” it concerns the microtonality of the Arab Maqam system, and also how to take the simple Bedouin tunes and make them meaningful in a longer context. The orchestral piece, “Letter from Woody,” is particularly interesting in this context, since it alludes to some of the iconic American balladeer Woody Guthrie’s songs.  Again, my affinity for asymmetrical meter removes these songs from their original, eight-bar settings.  But in this case, a longer version of the piece exists (unrecorded) as a dramatic work for orchestra, actor/folksinger and dancer.  

The compositions on Restless Nation include the Oud, a non-western instrument, and folk instruments including the Nyckelharpa, bringing sonorities and tunings that are not typically part of “traditional” classical music. How do you mesh these contrasting sounds together, without the music becoming a “melting pot” of styles?  

This has been a key question for me for several years now.  As both a folk musician and a composer of new music, my model has always been Béla Bartók, who collected and revered folk music and also created groundbreaking new music. The issue of retaining the integrity of the folk influences while creating something new that is infused with the energy of this music is fascinating.   

While I don’t have a clear answer in words, I can say that this requires the work of going deep into the folk tradition, not just learning a little about it. So it’s a long process of exploration that continues in each new piece. Also, as a professor in the NYU Tisch Dance Department, I find this question increasingly of interest to students, who are more and more striving to bring their own cultural roots into their music and dance.   

For four years, I directed an NYU research Working Group, Translucent Borders, which brought contemporary composers and choreographers to Cuba, Ghana and the Middle East (www.translucentborders.com).  We found that the disparity between the group identity of traditional folk arts and the individual expression of the contemporary composer or choreographer affects everything from music and dance vocabulary to perceptions of time. “The Ghanaian drummer and dancer Sulley Imoro told me “In our music there is no beginning or ending,” and Adel Al-Walidi, an Azazme Bedouin near the Israeli border with Egypt shared a similar thought: “All these songs are connected, the song never stops.”   

But in the world of new classical music, development and form dominate training and creative process. In America and Western Europe, the pioneering artistic trends through most of the twentieth century usually distanced themselves from ethnicity or ancestral tradition, viewed as antithetical to innovative work. As I mentioned, Bartók ingeniously brought these two seemingly opposing viewpoints to resolution, making this question the crux of his work, and I take him to be an illuminating model. He believed that one should become so imbued with the folk influence that it pervades the new music and becomes the composer’s “mother tongue.”  

With the rising consciousness of cultural identity and global equanimity, it’s time that composers, without neglecting the remarkable innovations of modernism and abstraction, learn to speak in their mother-tongue. I feel this is a life-long pursuit, and this album, with new compositions based on several folk traditions I’ve been learning over the years, is, for me, a big step in that direction. 

In the liner notes, you mention that Azazme Songs were inspired by a trip across the desert with a Bedouin family and the oud player Yair Dalal. How did you get invited to travel with this group? Can you share a highlight or anecdote or two from this journey that was expressed in the music? 

Yair Dalal is one of the great Israeli leaders in music. As an Iraqi Jew, he has also been at the forefront of Israeli/Arab musical dialogue. I’ve always admired his music, and I interviewed him as part of my Translucent Borders project, which looked at the role of music and dance at borders. After the interview, he invited me on this journey.  

The trek was the dream-child of Yair and his Bedouin friend, Adel al-Walidi. Yair told me they had the idea of making a hike to “fill the desert with music.” Our group was made up of musicians drawn from Israel, many of them long-time students of Yair’s, and the local Bedouin community. I joined the journey from Ezuz, at the Israeli-Egyptian border, to Mitzpeh Ramon, Israel’s Grand Canyon, across the Aravah Valley of the Negev Desert.  

We were about fifteen people and several sherpa camels. The desert is a marvelous place to let go of everything—there’s no cell service, just open space; you’re nowhere and yet you’re in the center.  

Musically, our evenings were unforgettable.  I’ll paint the scene: Tea and coffee are brewing; people are cooking. Music begins, ouds and violins, made up of one short repeating phrase, lyrical and endearing. I hear something that sounds very much like an Appalachian lap dulcimer. It’s a strummed instrument called a sumsumia that looks like a small harp, played by a man named Anad. I lie down in the sand close to the fire. My horizontal pose induces a feeling of both release and connection. My eyes are filled with more stars than I ever imagined one could see, with an occasional spark from the fire entering my field of vision. And the music’s sweet phrase turns over and over, the melodic equivalent of patience, of understanding, of companionship.  

Over the next few days this music becomes a colored thread that weaves everything together. I try to learn what it is that makes this music so compelling to me, beginning with the sense of time. The sumsumia lays down an underpinning of constant eighth-note chords. Around the fire, people sing, often in even half-notes, a simple melody. I learn that this kind of Bedouin tune is called a Hjennie, a song of the camel drivers. The easy tempo of the singing is like someone walking, while the instrumental accompaniment is fast and patterned, as if carrying the singing. I can imagine camel drivers making up these tunes, singing them over and over on their desert crossings, for comfort. It brings to mind the American nature writer Edward Abby describing how he would sometimes make a small “comfort” fire in the desert.  

The concept of maqam is more fluid than that of the scale. It’s not limited to the equal-tempered tones of Western music that developed to serve a keyboard-centered musical culture. Rather, the maqam tradition reflects the prevalence of the human voice, flutes, and bowed or unfretted string instruments such as the ouds played here. The maqam is a pan-Arab cultural phenomenon, found throughout the Mideastern nations and in many other places across the globe. The concept is historically resonant in this spot we were hiking, a point of nexus between the Persian musical culture to the east (and further, the ragas of India), and the African cultures to the west.   

It may seem strange that I used the Appalachian dulcimer in Azazme Songs, bringing together these two far-flung instruments, oud and dulcimer. But the sound is very much like the sumsumia, and gives the piece its rhythmic flavor. Also, the clapping in the piece is reminiscent of the dance the Bedouins did around the fire, linking elbows and clapping their hands on each downbeat.  

Similarly, you mentioned that Restless Nation was inspired by a yearlong journey with your young family. Can you share a highlight or anecdote or two from this journey that you express in the music? 

We picked up a pop-up camper on Ebay and began going across the country through the state and national parks, homeschooling along the way. At one point we found a campsite with a laundry cabin, and I remember one night spreading my score sheets across the washer and drier and working through the early morning while my family slept in the camper. 

There are some specific associations in the piece; The first movement, “My Eyes Were Hungry,” is titled by my son. When we hiked into the Grand Canyon, he said, “Papa, my eyes were hungry…and I didn’t know it.”  The second movement is very much a reflection on the Smoky Mountains, beginning and ending with the late-evening rhythms of crickets and katydids. And the slow fifth movement, “Of Rocks and Rivers,” brings to mind our time hiking in the Big Bend National Park, on the Rio Grande in Texas.  

I tried to bring some of the sense of awe to this music that one feels only after spending a long time in nature, whether wading through shimmering river canyons or coming upon an expansive view from a cliff. The final movement, “Finding Our Way Home,” takes all that restless energy we felt on the open road and directs it toward the road home, like when horses head back to the barn. It uses a scordatura tuning in the first violin, where the E string is tuned down to a C#, in the style of the old-time Southern fiddlers.  

Insider Interview with Shea-Kim Duo

The award-winning Shea-Kim duo - violinist Brendan Shea and pianist Yerin Kim - have been performing together for over a decade. They have toured across North America, Europe and South Korea, and have won gold medals at the Manhattan International Music Competition and the Ackerman Chamber Music Competition. On November 12, 2021 their new album, The Sound and the Fury, was released on Blue Griffin Recording. We spoke to them about the album, the changing role of pianist as accompanist, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and so much more.

You’ve been living together as a married couple, and playing together for many years. How and when did you decide to form the Shea-Kim duo?

Brendan: Yerin and I have been in trios since we were undergraduates at Oberlin and have always enjoyed playing together. When I was accepted to the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Yerin agreed to play with me since there was so much repertoire to learn and it was very difficult. We realized we actually really enjoyed learning duo repertoire and that there was a lot of depth to the process.

How do you manage balancing the different components of your life as musical partners, life partners and parents of two young children?

Brendan: Our kids have already spent much of their life backstage, or playing while mom and dad rehearse. We can thankfully rehearse and record very late (2-3 am sometimes) without waking them. That being said, it takes careful and meticulous schedule planning when we have concert tours, as well as ability to improvise when needed. It is definitely difficult to separate work from life sometimes, but luckily we love our work and feel privileged to be able to spend so much time together and as a family.

Yerin: Brendan and I have known each other for 16 years now. We met as young college kids and have had the luxury of dreaming and building our lives together. I am very grateful for that and all the steps that come with it. It’s definitely challenging to balance so many components in life that we share but I think the sense of partnership over ownership allows us to balance things with more serenity and ease. Both Brendan and I also have full time university jobs which makes figuring out schedules even more complicated but we are lucky that we love what we do, love our jobs, and have wonderful children who seem to not mind their parents playing music all the time.

The fact that you chose to call your collaboration a ‘duo’ points to the role of the piano as an equal partner. How do you, as an ensemble, approach the repertoire differently than a solo instrument with piano accompaniment?

Brendan: Certainly the past century has treated sonatas and other repertoire for violin and piano as a soloist with an accompanist. I think this attitude has been steadily changing, especially recently. The truth is the composers of this incredible music were primarily pianists, and the music must be learned and understood from the piano score to be played to their full effectiveness.

Yerin: We played in a trio for many years before playing our first sonata together so our approach to working together was largely influenced by our chamber music experience before we started playing as a duo. There is such a rich body of duo works, old and new, that we love playing so it’s fun choosing repertoire that speaks to us. Usually those works tend to have an equal partnership and create synergy. We also both tend to get obsessive over what we like so inevitably everything we play becomes very personal. There’s not much opportunity for one of us to be “accompanimental” for the better or for the worse...both in music and in life!

In the liner notes you write “this recording is a reflection of our personalities and character through the great works of [Grieg, Janacek, and Dvorak]”. Tell us a little more about that.

Brendan: Picking repertoire for a concert is very difficult, and picking repertoire for our inaugural studio recording was even more so. There is so much great music, and music that feels personal. Yerin and I are opposite in many ways, which makes for intense and passionate rehearsals. I also think it makes us better musicians; that the intensity of the process creates a product greater than the sum of its parts. What these pieces have in common is that they are full of color, contrast, and passion. They are works that have come in and out of our repertoire since we formed, and have stuck out as works we feel reflect our energy on stage.

Yerin: One of the things that I love most about playing with Brendan is listening to how he expresses things so differently even when we feel similarly. Brendan and I have very different tastes in style, personality, character, and yet we somehow think and feel alike. 

It’s quite amusing to me. When we can’t come to an agreement in rehearsals, we try going back to understanding the composer as our third partner. That usually does the trick. These works that we chose in our first album highlighted these differences and similarities of our colors, emotions, and also our love for these great works.

Each of the works on this program incorporate folk melodies in some form. Tell us about the different styles and ways that Janacek, Grieg, and Dvorak incorporate the folk melodies.

Brendan: Each composer lived during a time when national and individual identity were intertwined in a very substantial way. Using folk, or common melodies had been around for centuries earlier, but these composers opted to actually make these folk traditions an important part of their musical language. Janacek’s language feels more connected to linguistic syntax, a musical reflection of spoken word. Dvorak takes his folk melodies and dresses them down to motivic size so they are well camouflaged in his harmonic language. Grieg will often use a direct quote, somewhat closer to the way Bruch might, and then allows it to germinate and fill out.

Yerin: Now that I have children and have heard more children's songs than I had ever imagined I would, I fully understand the power of an earworm. It’s wonderful how all three composers incorporate folk melodies as ingredients that we can easily taste and transform them into a totally different pallet.

What non-musical activities/hobbies do you do to unwind?

Brendan: I would say most of our time not being spent on our work is spent with our kids. I’ve grown to really enjoy cooking in the past few years, although cooking for kids is an exercise in futility (the better the food, the less they like it).

Yerin: I remember having hobbies!! Now I just really enjoy cooking and eating with the kids and Brendan. It’s so satisfying seeing your family devour your food. I’m not much of a baker though so whenever I bake, the kids have a really entertaining time being amused at my creations that are barely edible. We also just moved to Washington state where we are surrounded by mountains. It’s so beautiful and I love staring at them! Brendan and kids like to hike.but I grew up in Seoul, Korea, so hiking is still pretty foreign to me.

Where can audiences see you next? Tell us about the duo’s plans for 2022.

Brendan: We have an East Coast tour in March 2022, as well as summer festivals and concerts in the Seattle area. For the most recent information you can follow us on Facebook or check out shea-kimduo.com!

Yerin: We have our solo concerts and projects throughout the year but as a duo we will be in the East Coast in Spring.

Insider Interview with Mathilde Handelsman

French-American pianist Mathilde Handelsman released, Debussy: Images on the label Sheva Collection. The debut album contains Claude Debussy's complete works for piano from 1903-07, including Images Books I and II, Estampes, Masques, D'un cahier d'esquiesses, and L'isle joyeuse. In our insider interview with her, she talks about what makes these works so unique, life lessons from the legendary Menahem Pressler, and more.

You came to from France to the U.S. in 2015 to study with Menahem Pressler at Indiana University. Of all the excellent teachers in the world, why did you choose him specifically?

There were many reasons! First of all, Menahem Pressler and the Beaux-Arts Trio are very well-known in France. Until recently, Mr. Pressler came to perform in Paris regularly and maintained a great relationship with Parisian audiences. That is to say that I, as a Parisian, knew of him early on. I admired his playing – his beautiful and delicate touch, his incomparable way of making a piano sing – and also the specific career that he led, with this very big emphasis on chamber music as well as a solo career, not to mention an active teaching schedule throughout most of his life. To me, that was really unique and incredible, and I was very drawn to his musical personality.

The second important factor that played a huge role in my decision was that Bloomington itself has an important reputation in France. Many French pianists in the 1970-80s went there to study with Gyorgy Sebok – in fact, one of my own teachers in France was a Sebok disciple. So I grew up hearing about Bloomington, and Pressler, and Beaux-Arts, and Sebok... I also knew that the cellist Janos Starker had taught there, as well as the violinist Dubinsky from the Borodin quartet whom I had grown up listening to. To me as a teenager, all these things gave Bloomington a certain mystique, it was a place with a very special history.

I also want to mention that before entering Mr. Pressler’s studio, I studied six months under another extraordinary pianist and teacher at Indiana University, Edmund Battersby. Prof. Battersby tragically passed away during my first year, and immediately after that I auditioned for Mr Pressler and became his student. Needless to say, it was a very intense and conflicted time for me, as I was grieving yet also starting one of the most exciting and inspiring periods in my musical education.

What was the biggest take-away from studying with Pressler?

Preparing a lesson with Menahem Pressler is like preparing for the most important performance of your life. His standards are incredibly high. When I started studying with him, he was already 94 but even at that age nothing escaped him. If my mental focus and musical commitment were not at 100%, he would instantly hear it and have me stop and try again. There was never any room for mindless playing – not even one bar! That meant that in the practice room beforehand, I also had to prepare myself mentally. My musical ideas had to be absolutely clear in my mind before playing for him. It could never just be about fingers. In fact, something Pressler could always catch right away, and that he really disliked, was a student trying to demonstrate technique without any artistic purpose, or playing with an inflated sense of ego. I learned a lot from that.

Mr. Pressler also frequently talks about love and beauty in his lessons. He infuses to his students a high sense of discipline and work ethic, combined with a deep and sincere love for the music we are playing. There is a somewhat spiritual dimension to it. To me, that was the greatest musical lesson possible. I will never forget it, and I carry his teaching with me every day.

Is there a noticeable difference or “style” between what you learned studying in France and the U.S.?

No, at least not from a purely musical standpoint. Music is music, and the piano teachers I encountered in America had often studied abroad or were not even American themselves. Of course, there were important differences which I felt mainly in how music schools are organized and structured in America versus France. In a way, this was more poignant for me as a teacher than as a student. When I had to teach piano or music theory for the first time in the US, the differences between two specific music school systems really hit me and it was a big adjustment. I have come to appreciate the pros and cons of both systems now, and I think that this awareness strengthens my teaching.

Why did you choose to record an all-Debussy album for your debut recording?

By the time I started thinking about recording a debut album, there was never any doubt as to what the repertoire would be. It was what felt the most personal and natural. Debussy had been one of my very favorite composers since I was child. I played a lot of selections from the Preludes and The Children’s Corner while growing up, and some of the repertoire featured on the album I played when I was fifteen. I was always drawn to both books of Images in particular and their evocative sound world, and L’Isle Joyeuse became my favorite “war horse” and featured on many of my recital programs for several years.

I focused on this repertoire during my studies in Strasbourg – during which I also wrote a Masters thesis on the same topic, “Debussy’s complete piano works of 1903-1907” – and it took a good five years of planning before I could finally go forward with a concrete recording project. And then of course, symbolically, playing this repertoire also made me feel even more connected to my teacher, since Pressler’s own career was launched at the Casadesus competition with an all-Debussy program.

In the liner notes of your album, you write that these works represent a turning point for Debussy. In what ways does his writing style change in this period?

Yes, to me, Estampes really marks the beginning of Debussy’s “second period” in his compositions for solo piano. I think one of the details that really stood out to me in all the pieces in this period 1903-1907 was, first and foremost, Debussy’s choice of titles.

Before Estampes, and with the exception of the Verlaine-ian title “Clair de Lune,” all of Debussy’s piano pieces bore names inherited from the Classical-Romantic era (Nocturne, Ballade, Valse, Mazurka, Tarentelle…), and his suites like the Suite Bergamasque and Pour le Piano seemed to allude to the Baroque period. But with Estampes and Images, we are suddenly transported into a new poetic landscape and sound world, with vivid and expressive titles like “Reflections in the water,” “Bells through the leaves,” or the long, beautiful and Haiku-esque “… And the moon descends on the old temple.”

I think the titles are already an indicator that Debussy is no longer nodding to the past, but looking toward a new century and inventing his own musical language – and, of course, I think you can hear it in the music. We are no longer in the Chabrier-inspired accompanied melodies and dances. Now we have pieces inspired by Asian and Spanish music, with floating, abstract motifs one could barely qualify as “themes”; long, sustained harmonies, the use of pentatonic and other modes; tremolo effects to emulate the sound of water… It’s a true revolution!

Tell me about the piano you recorded on. It’s incredible to hear the timbre of the instrument, which is noticeably different from a modern grand piano, and not quite the sound of the fortepianos of the mid 19th-century.

-How did you come across the piano?

At the time my mother was teaching in this little French town, Chateau-Thierry, and so that was how I came across the piano. The Steinway in question – an 1875 instrument – is in the chapel of the music conservatoire in Chateau-Thierry, northeast of Paris. It originally belonged to the French pianist Jean Wiéner. Chateau-Thierry is a very picturesque place, with the ruins of an old castle at the top of a hill.

An historical anecdote: an important battle took place there during World War I, which the French won with the help of the Americans. For that reason, the town still holds important ties with the United States. It was an interesting coincidence for a French-American such as myself.

-How is it different from a 21st century Steinway (in terms of playing, structure, etc.)

It was quite different. I loved the unique character of the instrument, its warmth and its depth. To me, the piano had a “soul,” and a sound that was less uniform perhaps than what a modern instrument would have offered. That being said, this Steinway could be very capricious (especially at the end of a long day of recording!) which required extra concentration from me in terms of evenness and overall control. It wasn’t a piano that would do that part for you, like most modern instruments can. But I think the sonic result was worth the challenge!