Call it good timing or a lucky alignment of circumstances. But given that very little is just pure luck anymore, I’ll suggest that composer/pianist Timo Andres and his team knew exactly what they were doing when they lined up the release of a new album on Nonesuch Records, the world premiere of his fifth piano concerto, Made of Tunes, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and his perform with five other pianists at Walt Disney Concert Hall of the 20 etudes by Philip Glass. All in one week.

On March 19th, Andres joins fellow pianists Anton Batagov, Lara Downes, Jenny Lin and Maki Namekawa to perform Glass’ Etudes 1-20. On March 22nd, Nonesuch Records releases The Blind Banister. That’s Andres’ recording of his third piano concerto. it also includes his Colorful History and Upstate Obscura. That same day the Los Angeles Philharmonic will give the world premiere of Made of Tunes which Andres composed for pianist Aaron Diehl. John Adams conducts all three performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

That gave me plenty to discuss with Andres when we spoke last week. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To watch the full interview with Timo Andres, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Made of Tunes was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and you composed it with Aaron Diehl in mind as the soloist. What are the qualities that Aaron Diehl possesses as a pianist that most influenced how and what you composed for him? 

That’s a great question. Whenever I write a piece for anyone, I’m trying to think of their specific qualities as a performer and how I can sort of highlight those and work with those and bring them out. In the case of Aaron, I’ve known him about a decade now. I’ve heard him play many, many times. His sound and his style was very much in my ear. And also his repertoire, because I think the music that he chooses to play and that he engages with has been as much a part of his voice as anything.

That really is kind of a broad history of American piano music going back to the earliest ragtime and the stuff that we would pinpoint as saying, this music sounds American for the first time as opposed to European. That whole tradition is very inspiring to me as well. I’ve always felt myself to be specifically an American composer.

On your website, you wrote that “Aaron’s part includes opportunities for improvisation, sections in which I pass him a tune or rhythm or harmony, and he responds with something I wouldn’t have thought of.” How much freedom does he have to improvise? Which I guess is in the tradition of cadenzas going back to Beethoven’s day.

What I’ve tried to do is a little bit trickier and a little bit, certainly rarer, in that I don’t actually have an improvised cadenza. The section that you would maybe call a cadenza is completely written out. And the improvised sections are actually playing with the orchestra. That, to me, was more interesting in a way, because it’s very much what one hears Aaron do when he’s playing with a singer or a trio or in an ensemble. It’s that responding to the other people. Not just responding to the musical cues, but responding to what else is going on in the room.

The orchestra part is totally written out. I had an idea that I would maybe be able to incorporate some improvised or aleatoric bits in the orchestra part, but it’s really just too risky in terms of portability.

The orchestra is remaining on course with the notated music. Then Aaron, I always pass him something, whether that’s a chord or a series of chords or a melodic motif or literally just verbal instructions. I’m always giving him something to go on and that is very much how improvisation typically works. It’s not this idea of total freedom. You’re using certain frameworks and then replacing the things on top of those frameworks with your own ideas. That’s the skill of a great jazz improviser and that’s what I wanted to give Aaron the opportunity to do. 

As you were composing the piece, were you allowing yourself to play with some improvisations you might come up with if you were the soloist? 

I’m not an improviser. I do improvise as part of my compositional process sometimes, but it’s not a huge part of it. I think that’s one of the things that fascinates me and that I’m slightly in awe of with Aaron and people who can who can really do that on such a high level.

Maybe one day down the road I will end up performing this piece myself. In that case, I’m not quite sure what I’ll do in those sections. I may give myself a little bit more of a written framework; leaving some flexibility for what may happen in performance. But I don’t have that kind of confidence to give myself that total freedom in front of other people.

Do you have the confidence to add sociopolitical statements in your work? The reason I ask is in the description of Made of Tunes on your website you talk about the second movement, American Nocturnal, having six variations of original theme. That was all taken from a mishmash of the notes used in “the hokey patriotic song America the Beautiful.” Is that something that allows you to hold a mirror up to who we are as a country, by taking those notes so closely associated with how we present ourselves patriotically?

It’s not something that I want to make explicit. I would say that the whole piece sounds very American to me. I think the way that the piece ends, perhaps, says more than I want to say in words about that. When you hear what happens in the end, you can draw your own conclusions. I think the final orchestral gesture basically feels apocalyptic.

I read an article an interview that you gave the L.A. Times in 2009 when the L.A. Philharmonic was giving the premiere of Nightjar. You mentioned that you were obsessed with John Adams. The title for Made of Tunes is derived from a lyric in a Charles Ives song (The Things Our Fathers Loved). Adams, who is conducting the premiere, wrote a piano concerto called Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? Is there a wink and a nod to John Adams built into the title? 

Absolutely. Of course, John has a piece called My Father Knew Charles Ives and I know [him] as an admirer of Ives’ songs. John’s music was, and is, a huge influence on me. We’ve both developed and changed so much as composers even over the past 15 years. I think there is an aspect that we share in this sense of Americanness and this sense of a fluidity between all of these different kinds of music that make up the American identity. I think maintaining that fluidity is very important to both of us. I think you’ll hear a kind of rhythmic drive, especially in the first movement, that I very much think of as being something I learned from John’s music.

As we’ve been working on the piece together he actually told me yesterday that there’s something in it that reminded him of a song of his called I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. Which is a little bit of what you might call a cult classic among John’s works. 

I that same story in the LA Times you said about the LA Phil’s commission of Nightjar, “If you would ask me what my absolute dream commission would be, I probably would have said something along those lines. I mean, it’s Los Angeles. They’re pretty much where it’s at in terms of good music.” How has your perspective evolved since that time and where you are today with this new commission from the LA Phil?

It really feels like part of the same journey in a way. That Green Umbrella commission was one of my first commissions period – from anyone. It happened when I was still in grad school which was a vote of confidence in a way.

With everything that’s happened in the past few years, it seems like orchestras might be having a little bit of a tougher time. In general I see a kind of retrenchment into a kind of artistic conservatism.

For someone like me who’s a composer and an enthusiast of anything that’s new, that can be a little bit discouraging. But I do see the commission of this new concerto as kind of bucking that trend.

It’s actually my first subscription series appearance with the Phil. And my first piece that I’ve written for the full orchestra. It’s still a dream ensemble. They’re the the most new music friendly of the major American orchestras by far, and I think the most comfortable with a lot of the more demanding things that new music in general, and my piece particularly, asks of them.

Nonesuch Records is releasing your new album, The Blind Bannister on the same day that this concerto is having its world premiere. That’s a concerto that had its world premiere in 2016. How has your relationship with that piece evolved? How did that influence how you chose to perform it?

The Blind Banister is my third piano concerto and Made of Tunes is my fifth. So it’s kind of a week of piano concertos here. The Blind Banister was also a piece that was written specifically for Jonathan Bis. I think that piece has much more to do with a kind of classical romantic lineage and how I place myself in that as a 21st century American. I just performed the piece last month; four times in Oregon.

It’s still, I think, a piece where I figured out certain things compositionally that I can mark as a tent pole in my catalog in a way. I think formally I tried some things in that piece that I had never tried before. It’s this continuous 20 minute stretch of music, which I think at the time was the longest continuous stretch of music that I had attempted to write. I think, in general, it succeeds at articulating that amount of time in a way that’s compelling and that leads the listener through a kind of journey. It has its particular demands and difficulties and sections that are tricky to put together and balance. But the rhetoric of the piece and the formal journey of it kind of explain themselves.

During your recent NPR Tiny Desk concert of Philip Glass’ Etudes you performed etudes six and five in that order. On March 19th you’re going to be performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall as one of five pianists doing Philip Glass’ Complete Etudes 1 – 20. You edited the published edition that recently came out. When you’re working on something from an editorial perspective are there new discoveries that you were able to make, new understandings, that are separate from what you understand as you’re playing a piece of music?

I’m someone who’s very grounded in notation. I think already that puts me in the minority of musicians in the world. Most music is not made via notation. Notation is not only how I deal with music most of the time, but it’s inescapably how I think about it. Like when I hear music, I’d see notation and vice versa. All the music that I interface with I understand something more of it by seeing the notation. Very often, especially when I’m playing new work, I will actually go and re-notate certain things. Not because it’s notated wrong. It’s just there’s certain opinions that I hold, esthetically or taste wise, or just from a practicality standpoint that are sort of the differential between how a composer might think of a piece, might conceive music and then the ways that a pianist might approach that music. 

With Philip, I think his notation always has a wonderful kind of clarity to it. So it wasn’t so much about clarifying anything in particular. You can read these pieces off his hand-notated manuscripts, pretty much with no problem. This was more about meeting somewhere in the middle between a totally liberalized, typesetting of those manuscripts and then reading from the manuscripts. I think there are aspects of both documents that are useful.

You posted on your website on January 4th of 2023, “Thanks to all the artists and record labels who asked me to write about their recordings. Doing so always teaches me new ways to listen and think about music.” If we fast forward 30 or 40 years and somebody is editing your work or asking to comment on them, what would you like them most to know about who you were at this particular time in your life as a person, a composer and an artist?

I’m not really someone who likes to self-mythologize. I don’t think autobiographically. It’s not really a question I’m prepared to answer. And I don’t think it’s my job to answer it. I think of myself as someone who works very hard. My life is really about all the different aspects of the work that I do. Whether it’s writing a piano concerto or playing the work of another composer, or writing about the work of other musicians, arranging the work of other musicians. All of these different ways that I can get my hands dirty with music, so to speak. I’m up for it and I don’t stop to really interrogate what my project is in a sense for or even who I am. Do any of us really know who we are?

I think when you start to think about that, you’re becoming your own publicist. In a way you’re marketing yourself. Which is a necessity in the modern world of constant pressure to be sharing content and sharing yourself online and simultaneously the complete destruction of any kind of critical apparatus in the mainstream press or any real critical discourse that goes on in the mainstream. In the field that I work in it’s tempting to try to pick up the pieces and try to do it yourself. I have a website. I have Instagram. I have Twitter. I do all these things. But I also don’t know if they truly say anything about who I am as an artist. I think I would rather leave it to the professionals to come to their own conclusions. 

Or let the music speak for itself.

It’s a little bit cliche to say, I guess, but yeah, listen to the music. If you’re curious, it’s all in there. I don’t think it says particularly anything autobiographical. I’m not that kind of composer. But, I think you can connect the dots if you really listen.

To watch the full interview with Timo Andres, please go here.

Main Photo: Composer/Pianist Timo Andres (Courtesy Colbert Artists Management)

The post Composer/Pianist Timo Andres Is Having a Week appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

My top choice is:

CLASSICAL: COCTEAU TRILOGY – Katia Labèque, Marielle Labèque – Deutsche Grammophon

Filmmaker/poet/playwright Jean Cocteau directed six films. Arguably the best known of them were La Belle et la Běte (Beauty and the Beast) from 1946 and Orphée (Orpheus) from 1950. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1950 film Les Enfants terribles (The Terrible Children) directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, which was based on his novel.

Philip Glass composed three operas based on these three films. His music is performed by sisters/pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. Tjhey have long been incredible interpreters of Glass’ music and this album is no exception. The faster paced compositions are played with incredible precision. The softer, quieter pieces are given the full emotion that Glass possesses and imbues these compositions with so beautifully.

Michael Riesman, who serves as music director for Glass, wrote the piano arrangements for this recording. There are thirty tracks with over 90 minutes of music. 

Any Philip Glass fan will want to have Cocteau Trilogy. For those of you who aren’t necessarily Glass fans, I strongly recommend this recording. You just might be after listening to it.

The rest of my selections for New In Music this Week: February 26^th are:

CLASSICAL: GERSHWIN RHAPSODY – Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Michael Feinstein – Deutsche Grammophon

I was a little puzzled when I started listening to this album. The first cue is Rhapsody in Blue, but it runs only 65 seconds. As this album by pianist Thibaudet and pianist/vocalist Feinstein continued I realized this is a mostly continuous suite of music for two pianos and sometimes Feinstein’s vocals.

Not all of it is Gershwin’s music (Tea for Two is included), but many of the usual suspects are arranged in unique ways that will definitely entertain any listener. Feinstein worked with Ira Gershwin for years. The result of that relationship are a couple rarities I hadn’t heard before: Sutton Place and Under the Cinnamon Tree.

Thibaudet has long performed Gershwin’s music. Feinstein has spent his life as an advocate for the Great American Songbook. Gershwin Rhapsody makes them perfect ambassadors for two-piano arrangements of his music.

JAZZ:  GUARDIANS – Annie Chen – JZ Music

Composer/vocalist Chen does an incredible job of writing and performing avant-garde jazz that perfectly blends Western traditions with Eastern sounds and influences. Guardians is her musical call to action for better care of the environment.

Born in Beijing, Chen brings an international ensemble together for this fascinating album:  Marius Duboule on guitar; Victor Gonçalves on piano and accordion; Fung Chern Hwei on violin and viola; Alex LoRe on alto sax, flute and bass clarinet; Matthew Muntz on bass; and Satoshi Takeishi on drums and percussion. They hail from Switzerland, Brazil, Malaysia, the USA and Japan respectively.

Chen has created an album that shuttles amongst multiple styles of music rewarding adventurous listeners richly.

JAZZ:  PSA – PSA – PSA Records

When an album shares its name with the artist and the record label, it would make sense that your first question would be who is PSA. The P is guitarist Pritesh Walia. The S is keyboardist Sharik Hasan. The A is drummer Avery Logan. (Consider that my public service announcement.)

These three make up an organ trio unlike any you’ve ever heard. The music absolutely has nods to a traditional organ trio, but it also has a boldness and a spirit that is far edgier. Take for example the opening track Circle Around which immediately lets you know you’re in for something different.

Hymn, sounds like it came straight out of a church. By the end the church has acquired an electric guitar, but it is no-less holy for having done so.

This is PSA’s debut album. It will be exciting to see what they do next.

JAZZ:  FAMILIA – Rodrigo Recabarren, Pablo Menares, Yago Vazquez – Greenleaf Music

Drummer Recabarren, bassist Menares and pianist Vazquez pay tribute to their families and their upbringing in this trio album with a twist. Vazquez is from Spain and the other two are Chilean. Familia incorporates traditional rhythms and musical styles from those countries.

Vazquez composed five of the nine tracks on Familia. Recabarren and Menares wrote two each. What becomes clear early on in the album is that they are not just writing about their personal families, but writing and playing as a family themselves. This is a beautifully performed album filled with tons of emotion and, most importantly, good music.

JAZZ:  STANDARDS – Yotam Silberstein – Jojo Records

The first thing that stands out to me on this album is that the standards guitarist Silberstein has chosen are not the usual suspects. Sure, Stella by Starlight and If I Loved You are titles instantly recognizable to fans of standards. But the rest of the album has equally great music and this album makes an argument for them to be considered standards, too.

Silberstein includes music by Leroy Anderson, Nelson Cavaquinho, Miles Davis, Tommy Flanagan, Jay Livingston and Wes Montgomery.  

The core trio on this recording are Silberstein, drummer Billy Hart and bassist John Patitucci. Joining for two tracks (including his own composition Lo-Joe) is saxophonist George Coleman.

Guitar trios are not usually my go-to choice, but this album inspires me to seriously re-think that opinion. 

JAZZ:  BEING GUIDED BY THE LIGHT – Mamiko Watanabe – Jojo Records

There are only three original compositions by pianist Watanabe on this trio record. That’s my only complaint. After hearing the title track, Atomic Space and The Music Game, I wanted more.

Joined by bassist Santi Debriano and drummer Billy Hart, this is a tight trio record. This is her fifth album, but sadly my first exposure to her. In addition to her own compositions I was particularly impressed with Pas De Trois by John Hicks, The Scene is Clean by Tadd Dameron and McCoy Tyner’s Island Birdie.

MUSICALS:  WHISPER DARKLY- Concept Album – TBIC Music Group

Composer/Lyricist Andrew Gerle and book writer DJ Salisbury teamed up for this musical they call part of the retro-inspired genre. What is that? To paraphrase their own words: 20s and 30s jazz/vaudeville combined with EDM beats.

Whisper Darkly tells the story of a speakeasy whose world is turned upside down with the arrival of an African-American singer who sends shockwaves through the owner, the performers and the audience.

Performing the songs are Alistair Brammer (Miss Saigon); Kayla Davion (Tina); Claybourne Elder (Company); Keri René Fuller (Six: The Musical), Alli Mauzey (Kimberly Akimbo); Howard McGillin (The Phantom of the Opera); Brad Oscar (The Producers); Aléna Watters (The Cher Show) and more.

I have to admit to thinking in advance that I was going to be listening to a 2024 version of Taco’s Putting on the Ritz from the 1980s. In fact, I almost gave up when I finished The Top Dug Strut, the second song on the recording. But I continued and found myself enjoying the rest of the recording. There’s really good material here! Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

That’s it for New In Music This Week: February 23^rd.

Enjoy the music!

Enjoy your weekend!

Main Photo: Part of the album art from Cocteau Trilogy

The post New In Music This Week: February 23rd appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

The slow start to the year is finally over and there are a lot of new releases to explore. Here are my favorites!

My top pick for New In Music This Week: January 26^th is:

CLASSICAL:  PHILIP GLASS SOLO – Philip Glass – Orange Mountain Music

Two years ago with the pandemic still an issue, Glass revisited his music and recorded new solo piano versions of those works. There’s a quietness to this album and given that many of the same compositions are found on his 1989 album Philip Glass: Solo Piano, this album gives you an opportunity to compare and contrast Glass at age 52 and again 32 years later.

The compositions he selected are Opening, Mad Rush, Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II, Metamorphosis IIi, Metamorphosis V and Truman Sleeps. The latter is from his score for The Truman Show. That, along with Opening, did not appear on the earlier Solo Piano album.

Most of the new performances are a bit slower in tempo and feel more contemplative than their earlier predecessors. I’ve always found Glass’s music, for the most part, deeply emotional. This album (also available on vinyl) confirms the emotional wallop his music possesses.

Here is the rest of New In Music This Week: January 26th

CLASSICAL:  LA DANSE – Martin James Bartlett – Warner Classics

If you like solo piano performances of works by French composers, this album by Bartlett is for you.

He performs works by François Couperin, Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Maurice Ravel.

I’m not familiar with Hahn but will certainly explore more after hearing two of his waltzes for two pianos on this recording. Alexandre Tharaud joins Bartlett for those two tracks.

My favorite track is also the most ambitious of the album, a piano transcription of Ravel’s La Valse. This waltz is a great way to end the dance.

CLASICAL: MORE STORIES – Anneleen Lenaerts – Warner Classics  

This EP features nearly 19 minutes of solo harp music. Lenaerts has transcribed works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold; Wolfang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert and  Richard Struass for this album.

The transcriptions are smart and beautiful and allow for a transformation of music we’ve known into a wonderful showcase for her talent.  Perhaps the best known is Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor, K. 397. My personal favorite is a transcription from Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt.

CLASSICAL:  ECHOES OF LIFE (Deluxe Edition) – Alice Sara Ott – Deutsche Grammophon

Pianist Ott’s Echoes of Life was released in 2021. With 31 tracks and a 64-minute runtime, it was a full meal of music, predominantly Chopin’s Preludes op.28, an Ott favorite and specialty mixed with music by Chilly Gonzales, György Ligeti, Arvo Pärt, Nino Rota and Toru Takemitsu.

This deluxe edition adds 11 more tracks and 25 more minutes of music. She includes a little more Chopin, plus compositions by Bach, John Field and Valentine Silvestrov. 

At the time of the original album’s release Ott said that the album “portrays how I see myself as a classical musician today.” Ott was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2019, so this is a welcome release of additional material she recorded – one assumes at the time of the original recording.

JAZZ:  THE BLUE LAND – Matthieu Bordenave – ECM Records

If you don’t know saxophonist Bordenave, this album is a terrific introduction. The Blue Land is a mostly quiet and contemplative recording that features eight original compositions by Bordenave and a cover of John Coltrane’s Compassion.

Joining him on this album are drummer James Maddren who joins his usual trio of bass player Patrice Moret and pianist Florian Weber.

JAZZ:  JET BLACK – Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio – Libra Records

Just when you think you know what a piano, bass and drums trio is going to be along comes Fujii and her trio offering wild changes of instrumentation, tempo while keeping the music wholly original and surprising.

Fujii plays piano and is joined by Takashi Sugawa on bass and Ittetsu Takemura on drums in this live recording which forces listeners to fully accept the combination of improvisation within fully composed music. 

Her music cannot be easy to play, but it is certainly well worth your time listening to it.

JAZZ:  TOUCH OF TIME – Arve Henriksen/Harmen Fraanje – ECM Records

This seems to be a week in which a lot of improvised music is being released. Case-in-point is this album by trumpeter Henriksen (who also plays electronics) and pianist Fraanje. Not that everything is improvised on this album, but a good portion of it is yielding beautiful results.

The album opens with Melancholia and includes tracks such sa The Dark Light, Winter Haze, the title track and Passing on the Past. This quietly powerful album struck me as one contemplating life in our truly chaotic world.

JAZZ:  IN DUO – Dave Liebman & Jeff Williams – Whirlwind Recordings

This is another album for those who like their jazz fully improvised. This recording comes from a 1991 performance at Bar Room 432 in New York City. It finds saxophonist Liebman and drummer Williams freely exploring their music in an exact time and place without restrictions.

There are two tracks on the album:  First Set and Second Set. This is jazz improvisation from start to finish by two musicians who are fully in synch with one another and in that moment in time. It’s truly fascinating to listen to.

JAZZ:  SHOOTING STAR – ÉTOILE FILANTE – Reverso – Alternate Side Records                   

This wonderful album was actually released last week, but I didn’t know about it until after already publishing New In Music This Week.

Reverso is a collaboration amongst cellist Vincent Courtois, trombonist Ryan Keberle and pianist Frank Woeste. With their previous they have created albums in response to work of important French composers including Milhaud, Poulenc and Ravel.

This album is inspired by the work of Lil Boulanger. Her last name may be familiar as she was the younger sister of Nadia Boulanger.  Lil wrote extensively until her death from intestinal tuberculosis at the age of 24.

All ten songs on Shooting Star were composed by each of the musicians. 

From my first track of the album, La Muse, I was excited by this music. I continue to be excited by it and have listened to the album at least six times this week. Do check it out.

VOCALS:  REVISITING ELIS REGINA – Darwin Del Fabro – Madalena Music

The non-binary Del Fabro is an actor who has appeared in stage in plays and musicals (including the original Brazilian production of Fiddler on the Roof). This new recording celebrates Elis Regina, a Brazilian singer who rocketed to fame in 1965, but who died tragically in 1982 of a drug overdose.

This hauntingly beautiful album accomplished two great things: I started exploring Elis Regina and want to hear more from Del Fabro. Their voice is one that once heard is not going to be easily forgotten.

VOCALS:  TAMMY GRIMES – Tammy Grimes – Kritzerland 

You have to be of a certain age to know or remember Tammy Grimes. She was a Tony Award-winner for her performance in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Featured Actress in a Musical) and Private Lives (Best Actress in a Play.)

This recording comes from early in her career when she appeared as Julius Monk’s Downstairs at the Upstairs and finds Grimes performing with pianists Carl Norman and Stan Keen.  

I’ll be honest, I haven’t heard the whole album, but the excerpts I’ve heard make this a must-have for anyone interested in hearing one of the most unique and talented women to grace a Broadway stage. 

My favorite excerpt is of Oscar Levant and Edward Heyman’s Blame It On My Youth.

This album is only available through Kritzerland and can be ordered here.

That’s it for New In Music This Week: January 26th.

Enjoy the music!

Enjoy your weekend!

Main Photo: Part of Luis Alvarez Roure’s painting for the cover of Philip Glass Solo

The post New In Music This Week: January 26th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

On Sunday, November 12th, McVinnie will perform a recital on both the organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the piano. That concert will feature works by Johann Sebastian Bach, inti Figgis-Vizueta, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly and Gabriella Smith.

On Tuesday, November 14th, McVinnie will give the world premiere performance of Samuel Adams’ Eden Interstates as part of the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series. This concert is also at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

On Friday, November 17th and Saturday, November 18th, he joins the San Francisco Symphony where he will perform Smith’s Breathing Forests. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts those concerts.

With an upcoming repertoire that covers over three centuries of music, McVinnie and I had plenty to talk about when we spoke on Halloween. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with McVinnie, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Robert Schumann is quoted as having said about the organ, “No other instrument takes such an immediate revenge on sloppiness in composition and playing.” As a performer, how do you determine what music won’t allow sloppiness from you and does not represent sloppiness from a composer?

The organ had its zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries when music was all about counterpoint. That was the high point of that style of music making and there’s a kind of utopian ideal to counterpoint that always appealed to me. You have music made up of voices and the music works on these horizontal axes and the voices interact to create the piece of music, and there’s absolute equality of importance. You could play a Bach figure, for instance, and you take out one note and the whole artifice of the expedition falls apart. The organ’s an ideal instrument for counterpoint. You have this incredibly uniform quality to the sound across the range so you can hear every voice as clearly as the other.

That’s the compositional side. From the playing side there’s really nowhere to hide on the organ. Even if you think acoustics will cover you up, you’re perhaps on the wrong track there.

These concerts that you’re doing with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and with the San Francisco Symphony are a part of the California Festival, which is showcasing works by composers primarily written within the last five years. How do you know if most of the recent compositions that would qualify for inclusion in this festival – whether or not they are being performed by you or anyone else – represent the future you would like to see in contemporary classical music?

The composer whose work I’ve loved getting to know most recently is Gabriella Smith. Her music has this incredible immediacy to it. Her music hits a very deep note in how I think about what music should be and how immediate and how accessible music should be to everyone. 

Her work is predominantly preoccupied with the climate crisis. Humanity and the arts have been going hand-in-hand since the year dot. Gabriella has always been very keen that her music is a call to arms, really, and a way of making these issues that we’re faced with very prescient and very immediate.

This organ concerto I’m playing, Breathing Forests, is about the life cycle of a forest. It’s in three contiguous movements. Grow, Breathe and Burn are the three movement’s names. It’s about the natural lifecycle of the forest and forest fire is a natural part of what happens. This is a commentary on when fire becomes an unnatural part. I can think of no better way than to ignite imagination in listener and performer alike.

You gave the world premiere in February a year ago with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The climate crisis has gotten worse since then. As somebody who cares about the environment and who cares about music, how has your relationship to this particular piece and its message changed since you gave that first performance?

It’s just much more immediate. I’m sitting here in Devon, England, and there’s a storm happening outside. September was the hottest on record. I mean, it really is changing month by month. I’m 40. I don’t have kids. But, I fear for the kids that I see around and what kind of experiences they will have to endure as they grow older. It is something that I feel is growing in proportion in people’s general consciousness over here. Of course, that will be the case in the States as well. So it’s very urgent. 

You’re going to be doing Imaginary Pancake by Gabriella Smith in Los Angeles, which is a piano work that was commissioned for Timo Andres. Unless people are at both concerts, they aren’t going to know if there’s a conversation that happens between those two works. From a performer’s perspective, is there a dialog that you can see between the solo work of Imaginary Pancake and the robust relationship that the organ has with the orchestra in Breathing Forests?

One of the interesting things about music is that there are often seemingly simple cycles and progressions that repeat over time, which I guess has been the way most music has been put together. But her version is incredibly vital. That’s one of the reasons why I think the music is incredibly approachable from a layperson’s perspective. There are these moments in Imaginary Pancake that use exactly the same kind of grammar and the same kind of language. So yeah, definitely they’re kind of companion pieces. But that’s true of a lot of her music.

How important is it for you as a listener, or for you as an artist, that the music being composed today has that approachability?

It is important. You can have in MoMA a CRU modernist chair that’s beautiful to look at, but not terribly comfortable to sit on. We’ve gotten to the point in music where we can have an approachability and an intellectual element to it that can sit by, for want of a better kind of terminology, a prettiness to the music. Nico Muhly’s music does all of those things. It’s very beautiful music to listen to, but it’s acutely complex as well. Gabriela’s music as well. We have to remember as classical musicians that most people on the street say their idea of music is so different from mine or yours. Not that we should ever dumb ourselves down, but you have to give people a way in.

The first of your two concerts in Los Angeles is a recital where you’re going to be playing both the monster organ that is at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the piano. What’s the conversation that you want to create between the music that you choose to play on each instrument? 

What I have done in putting together this program is the music has the most important thread through the recital and have a sequence in program of music, irrespective of the instrument that I’m playing on. I’m actually playing an organ piece on the piano and I’m playing a piano piece by Meredith Monk on the organ. So I want to play around with this idea of what we think of as being the idealized instruments for the music.

In the second half, I’m playing music entirely by Philip Glass. There I’m using the organ rather like a synthesizer. I’m playing Music in Fifths, which is a piece that dates from the 1960s that he wrote for his ensemble. It’s possible to play that piece of music as a soloist on the organ, but use the organ in a way which is a nod to the sound of that very austere world. There are lots of ways of circumnavigating people’s expectations, which I try to do with my programing and the instruments that I play.

I like Counterpoint, the album you released where you went back and forth between Glass and Bach, because I thought that it was easy to see a throughline between the two of them.

Definitely. Philip’s music has the same kind of economy I was talking about at the beginning about counterpoint. I called the record Counterpoint for that reason. If you take one of the tunes on the piano by Glass and you take one note away, it’s the same kind of effect that the artifice of the music completely disintegrates. It has a real integrity to it. I chose for that recording movements from Art of Fugue and the C Minor Prelude and Fugue. It’s that kind of intensity to that music and that immediacy and austerity, for want of a better way of describing that music, which is shared by lots of this music from the 1960s by Glass as well.

In a 2021 column for the New York Times, you were asked about the five minutes that will make you love the organ. You said, “Bach is the ultimate composer for this extraordinary, timeless instrument.” If you were to posit who, amongst composers writing for the organ today, is at the top of their game, who would you say it would be and why?

Nico Muhly’s music for the organ is incredibly natural. He understands how the organ works. It’s been very interesting working with other composers who are perhaps less familiar with the way in which you write in the compass of the instrument and the registration of possibilities.

The other people that I work with…Tom Jenkinson is on the other end of the spectrum. He’s an amazing musician who works and releases music under the name of Squarepusher. So if you’re into nineties electronic music, he’s absolutely a cult household name. Cecilia McDowall over here is a wonderful composer for the organ. I admire her music hugely. There’s Judith Bingham who has a huge catalog for the organ, a slightly different musical ecosystem to the one I work in. Her music is very well worth checking out. And then, of course, there are a few pieces by Arvo Pärt’s that I love playing.

French organist composer Charles-Marie Widor is quoted as having said, “Organ playing is the manifestation of a will filled with the vision of eternity.” How would you define your will when you are sitting at the organ bench and what visions do you have while you’re playing about what eternity might be? 

Wow, what a question. It sounds like Widor’s talking about his religious faith. I don’t know whether he was, but I think it’s safe to assume that he was a religious man. Most organists in the 19th century were. I like liturgy and I like church music. Where I stand on the spectrum of faith is a complex issue. I guess the only thing I can say is the organ is definitely the most transcendental instrument that you could possibly play – whether you’re in a cathedral or in a concert hall or a tiny room playing to your friends on a two-stop chamber organ. To those who have religious faith, obviously it has huge implications. For those who don’t, it’s still an extraordinary instrument that goes to the very heart of who I am as feeling as I could have a vocation to do what I do. It’s a wonderful thing.

To see the full interview with James McVinnie, please go here.

Main Photo: James McVinnie (Photo by Graham Lacadao/Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic)

The post James McVinnie Discusses Three Centuries of Music appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

An Alpine Symphony with Salonen – October 27^th – October 29^th

Any concert that offers a world premiere of a new composition by Esa-Pekka Salonen (particularly one he conducts) is definitely one to see.

Salonen’s Tiu opens the concert. It is then followed by Nico Muhly’s Shrink which is a 2019 violin concerto written for Pekka Kuusisto who performs it at these three concerts.

The program closes with Richard Strauss’ tone poem from 1915. It’s a very large work employing close to 125 musicians and runs 45-50 minutes.

Photo of Esa-Pekka Salonen by Andrew Eccles (Courtesy SF Symphony)

Dudamel Leads Khachaturian – November 4^th – November 5^th

The music of Aram Khachaturian doesn’t often get performed in concert halls. So this concert that features both his piano concerto (performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and music from his ballet music for Spartacus is a welcome part of the season. 

The second half of the program includes Tower for Frank Gehry by Thomas Adés. (Much of the season is dedicated to Gehry.)

This will be the U.S. Premiere of Tower. The concert closes with Leos Janacek’s Sinfonietta.

Dudamel Leads Das Rheingold – January 18^th – January 21^st

Another program in this season’s celebration of Frank Gehry is this concert performance of the first opera in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. 

As with many concert performances of operas at the LA Phil, this will be more than just people standing up and singing. Gehry is the scenic designer for the concerts; Alberto Arvelo is the director and Cindy Figueroa is the costume designer.

The cast include Ryan Speedo Green as Wotan; Raehann Bryce-Davis as Fricka; Jochen Schmeckenbecher as Alberich; Simon O’Neill as Loge; Barry Banks as Mime and the always reliable and copelling Morris Robinson as Fasolt.

Last Days – February 6^th

The last days of Kurt Cobain, as loosely presented in Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film, are the focus of this opera by composer Oliver Leith and librettist Matt Copson (who co-directs and is the art director for this concert). 

Last Days received a 4-star review from Andrew Clements of The Guardian in October of 2022 upon its premiere at the Royal Opera House in London.

As with that production, Anna Morrisey is co-director here. Also cast members Agathe Rousselle, Mimi Doulton, Henry Jenkinson and Patricia Auchterlonie return to sing their roles of Blake, Delivery Driver and Housemate; Magician and Superfan, respectively.

Most excitingly, composer Thomas Adés conducts this one-night only performance.

Ravel and Adés – February 9^th – February 11^th

If you like Adés as much as I do, you will also want to attend one of these three concerts which finds the work of Maurice Ravel paired with two works by Adés.

The program opens with The Tempest Symphony which is a 22-minute piece he created based on music from his opera, The Tempest. The work had its world premiere in Dresden in June of 2022.

That is followed by Ravel’s Piano Concert for the Left Hand with Kirill Gerstein

The second half opens with the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by Ades also with Gerstein as the soloist. The concert closes with Ravel’s La valse. Best of all you get to hear Adés conduct his own music.

Mälkki Conducts Brahms – February 23^rd – February 25^th

Two of these three concerts will feature the U.S. Premiere of Fett by Enno Poppe (the “Casual Friday” concert does not include this work). Susanna Mälkki conducted the world premiere with the Helsinki Philharmonic in May of 2019. It’s a 25-minute work and is at the podium for these concerts.

Each program opens with the Academic Festival Overture by Brahms and it closes with the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Daniil Trifonov at the piano. (Reason enough to see this program if you ask me!)

Philip Glass: The Complete Etudes, 1-20 – March 19^th

Four pianists team up to perform all 20 etudes by composer Glass. They are Timo Andres, Anton Batagov, Jenny Lin and Maki Namekawa. What else do you need to know? 

John Adams’ City Noir – March 22^nd – March 24^th

John Adams will be leading the LA Phil in this concert that opens with Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingaleand closes with Adams’ City Noir which was commissioned by the LA Phil. The 35-minute work had its world premiere with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil on October 8, 2009.

In between these two pieces is the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Timo Andres. It was composed specifically for pianist Aaron Diehl.

This is certain to be a fascinating performance.

Recitals – various dates

Okay, so this is probably cheating a little bit. But there are three recitals (even though they are all good this year) well-worth your time and money.

James McVinnie, an amazingly talented musician, has a solo recital playing the organ and piano on November 12^th. He’ll be performing works by Bach, inti Figgis-Vizueta, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly and Gabriella Smith.

On May 1^st Víkingur Ólafsson will perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations. His long-anticipated recording of this work is being released on Deutsche Grammophon on Friday, October 6^th.

A solo recital by Yuja Wang is something I won’t miss and neither should you. She performs on May 12^th. The program hasn’t yet been announced.

Dudamel Leads Mozart and Strauss  – May 2^nd – May 5^th

These performances (except the Casual Friday date) begin with the world premiere of a new work by Andreia Pinto Correia. The concerts all feature pianist Maria João Pires performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, “Jeunehomme.” Pires doesn’t often perform in Los Angeles, so this is a great opportunity to see one of the world’s best.

The last composition on the program in Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote. It’s a 40-minute work inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ 17^th-century novel.

There’s plenty more to choose from throughout the season. These are my picks of the 10 LA Philharmonic concerts not to be miss during the 2023-2024 season.

Main Photo: Gustavo Dudamel (Photo ©Stephan Rabold/Courtesy Fidelio Arts)

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My Top Pick:

Contemporary Classical:  JULIUS EASTMAN VOL. 3: IF YOU’RE SO SMART, WHY AREN’T YOU RICH – Wild Up (New Amsterdam Records)

Wild Up continues their multi-album series of recordings exploring and celebrating the music of Julius Eastman. Joining Wild Up for this recording are Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange) and Adam Tendler. 

Three of Eastman’s works are performed on this album: the title track, the Moon’s Silent Modulation and Evil N–. Since so much of Eastman’s work was thrown out after his untimely death, these recordings are essential in bringing into focus what Eastman was doing. This is another fine series of performances by Wild Up of his music.

Here are our other selections of the best New In Music This Week: June 16^th

Classical Music: BEETHOVEN: EMPEROR CONCERTO – Daniel Barenboim and New Philarmonia Orchestra (Warner Classics)

This is a vinyl only release of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with Otto Klemperer conducting. Warner Classics is honoring Klemperer on the 50^th anniversary of his death. Digitally this album is being released today with Beethoven’s 2^nd piano concerto as well.

Recorded in the late 1960s, this album reflects Barenboim’s youthful energy and Klemperer’s more studied approach. Simply put, the pairing works beautifully.  It’s as if the competing styles challenged everyone involved and the end result is terrific.

Contemporary Classical:  CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN COMPOSERS – Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO Resound Label)

Riccardo Muti leads the CSO in performances of works by Philip Glass, Jessie Montgomery and Max Raimi. Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone opens the album. That is followed by Three Lisel Mutter Settings by Raimi and closes with Symphony No. 11 by Glass.

Hymn for Everyone and Three Lisel Mueller Settings were both commissioned by Muti. Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong is the soloist for Raimi’s song cycle. When the CSO first performed Glass’s symphony in 2022 it was the first-ever performance of any of his symphonies by the orchestra. 

Jazz:  A TIME TO REMEMBER – Elina Duni (ECM Records)

If you ike your music beautiful and unconvenontial at the same time, you’ll want to check out this album that features the Swiss-Albanian jazz vocalist joined by guitarist Rob Luft, Flugelhorn musicians Matthieu Michel and percussionist/pianist Fred Thomas.

There are several original songs amongst the 12 tracks on A Time to Remember. There are a few traditional songs. Plus there are covers of songs by Abbey Lincoln, Sammy Fain and Stephen Sondheim.

All are beautifully sung and arranged. The simplicity with which each song reveals itself is amazing.

Jazz:  ANYONE IS BETTER THAN HERE – Jeremy Dutton

My first exposure to this incredible drummer was seeing him as part of Vijay Iyer’s group at a 2019 concert. Simply put, I was blown away. Clearly others have been two given the artists he has assembled for his debut album: trumpeter Ambrose Akiknmusire, bassists Matt Brewer and Daryl Johns, guitarist Mike Moreno, vibraphonist Joel Ross and saxophonist Ben Wendell.

Dutton composed the 12 tracks on this terrific album which further cements my belief that he’s a force to be reckoned with. I strongly recommend Anyone Is Better Than Here.

Jazz: WITH PETER BRADLEY – Javon Jackson (Solid Jackson Records)

This is the soundtrack for the documentary of the same name about abstract artist Peter Bradley. Jackson, who plays saxophone, composed the score for Alex Rappoport’s 2023 film about the abstract artist who continues to paint every day even though he hasn’t had a major show in over 40 years.

The genius of what Jackson has done with this moving score is offer tributes to many of the jazz artists who inspired Bradley: Art Blakey, John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

Jackson is joined on the album by trumpeter Greg glassman, drummers Charles Goold and McClenty Hunter, pianist Jeremy Manasia and bassist David Williams.

Jazz: THE OMNICHORD REAL BOOK – Meshell Ndegeocello (Blue Note Records)

This isn’t strictly speaking a jazz album, but the depth of jazz influences on it makes it worthy of attention from jazz fans. Ndegeocello first gained prominence with her 1993 album Plantation Lullabies which featured the hit song If That’s your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night). 

Since then her work has explored a variety of styles and has always been interesting. This album is no exception. As is the impressive list of guest artists who join for the 18 original songs on The Omnichord Real Book: Ambrose Akinmusire, Jason Moran, Jeff Parker, Julius Rodriguez, Joel Ross and more.

Fans of her previous work will like this as will those who don’t know her previous work.

Jazz:  LEROY WALKS! – The Leroy Vinnegar Sextet  (Craft Recordings)

I wasn’t familiar with bassist Leroy Vinnegar until I heard this album and now I can’t stop playing it. Leroy Walks! Was originally released in 1957 and was his debut album. From the opening walking bass line of the album, you know you’re in for some great music.

The seven tracks are: Walk On, Would You Like to Take A Walk, On the Sunny Side of the Street, Walkin’, Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, I’ll Walk Alone and Walkin’ By the River. Do you see a theme there?

MUSICAL THEATER: OTHER LIVES: THE STORY SONGS OF MICHAEL COLBY (Jay Records)

Lyricist Michael Colby’s work was celebrated in a benefit revue off-Broadway at Urban Stages in New York last December. This is the cast album of that show.

The album features 22 songs with music written by an array of composers including Andrea Colby, Ned Paul Ginsberg, Larry Hochman, Paul Katz, Peter Millrose, Gerald Jay Markoe, Alex Rybeck, Steven Silverstein, Joseph Thalken and Herman Yabaloff.

The cast of 22 includes Klea Blackhurst, Steven Bogardus, Sean McDermott and more. Michael Lavine is the music director.

Other Lives is a great way to get introduced to Colby’s work (and some composers you may not be familiar with).

That’s our list of New In Music This Week: June 16th. What are you listening to? Let us know.

Enjoy the weekend and enjoy the music.

Main Photo: Art from Jeremy Dutton’s “Anyone Is Better Than Here”

The post New In Music This Week: June 16th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Composer Dylan Mattingly and librettist Thomas Bartscherer didn’t set out to create an opera that runs nearly six hours. That just is what happened. It’s a project they’ve been working on for 11 years. In 2018, as part of the Prototype Festival in New York, there were two concert performances of the first act. When the Los Angeles Philharmonic presents Stranger Love on Saturday it will be the world premiere production of the entire work. There is just one performance.

Lileana Blain-Cruz directs. David Bloom conducts the ensemble Contemporaneous. Mattingly and Bloom are Co-Artistic Directors of Contemporaneous.

Earlier this week I spoke with Mattingly and Bartscherer about Stranger Love, the experience they’ve had creating it and the inspiration they found in John Coltrane. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: You reference Octavio Paz in Scene 12C: Lullaby. Paz wrote, in An Alternating Current in 1967, “Art is an invention of aesthetics, which is which in turn is an invention of philosophers. What we call art is a game.” Do you agree with him and what is your view of art as evidenced by the work each of you do in general and have done specifically with Stranger Love?

Bartscherer: Without the context, it’s difficult to jump in immediately. What first comes to mind is that there is something really interesting about thinking about games. There are two kinds of games: games that are solved, like tic tac toe, where once the first move is made, if you know the game, you know what all the alternatives are. Then there are unsolved games like chess. I know how to play the game, but I don’t know what all the options are.

I do like to think that work like this is an open and unsolved game. There’s something that’s necessarily undetermined at the beginning – both in terms of the making of it and the experiencing of it. What Paz might be getting at there is if you have a certain conception of art that emerges from a philosophical or a theoretical perspective, it might be more like a closed game. Whereas for him, if I’m reading that correctly, it doesn’t have that closed nature. It isn’t a theoretical construct, but is rather an opening or a way of being open to possibilities. And it’s certainly felt in creating this work that there was an openness to what would come.

Mattingly: I’ll tell you, I have no idea what art is. It’s a total mystery to me. There are a lot of things that I feel like I have some handle on of what they are and what they do in the world. I cannot tell you with any certainty what I think art is or does. In some way that’s probably why I’m so drawn to it. But I think that the impossibility of it, the indescribable nature of of art, or at least of my favorite art, is the thing that pulls me. Part of my response to that quote is that it’s hard for me to imagine art as the object, as the thing that gets created or gets described.

The world is a place where, among other things, we get to experience art. Finding ways to to be able to have that joy, which is sometimes a game, is kind of the greatest thing that exists on this planet.

Q: In the first sentence of your artist statement on the Stranger Love website, you say “Stranger Love is not practical.” It strikes me that art isn’t in and of itself practical and really shouldn’t be practical. But is there a practicality that is required to create art? 

Mattingly: The pursuit of art is not a practical pursuit. As an artist, I’ve chosen to spend my life doing this one very impractical thing. If I was trying to do something practical, I would choose to do just about anything else in the world. Going into it with that mindset, it doesn’t feel right to be thinking about the practicality of the thing I’m creating at the beginning. Because the whole point is that I’m doing something that’s after beauty and joy. The experience of the world in ways that live outside of that day-to-day experience: the things that are practical, things that are often necessities of the world. Devoting my life to trying to create something that’s outside of that.

Q: I would assume this is the kind of project for both of you that many people would ask why would you do something like this? It’s never going to get performed. How do you move forward when a lot of the world is telling you what not to do, when this is what you want to do? 

Mattingly: It’s really, really, really, really hard is the answer to that question. I feel like this life that I’ve chosen is the the best thing that I could possibly do, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it to anybody else. It’s extremely difficult to want something to exist in the world that doesn’t or to want the world to exist in a way that it doesn’t quite. To try and change everything into the shape that would make that happen, it’s so difficult. It really shows me how small I am as a human being against the forces of the world and the universe in a way that I felt that in an ecstatic way. When I look at the stars, I feel gloriously happy to be so tiny in the universe. But it’s also something that’s very terrifying in another way to see how strong the rest of the world is if you want it to be different at all. 

Bartscherer: I think to a large extent, at least in my experience, it’s beyond my decision or control in certain ways. The beauty and the goodness of the thing you’re making draws you on and inspires you. The joy and the thrill of seeing it come into being is so sustaining even with the onslaught of doubt or criticism or being told that’s impossible. But it’s so beautiful. It has to be. Where that comes from is a mystery to me.

Q: What was the original impetus for this project? Was it always something you both envisioned as having a serious length as it does? 

Bartscherer: This is the sort of thing one has been preparing for all one’s life. Of course, everything that you do in a way, you’ve been preparing for it all your life. But with this I felt that so much of things that Dylan and I’d been thinking about for a very long time really came together in this. We first started talking about it in April of 2012.

I remember coming out of a concert that Dylan had performed in with a musical idea that might make sense with some voices. It had a specific structure and I shared that idea with Dylan. 

Mattingly: I feel like going back further for me makes sense. I was six years old when I knew that I wanted to be a composer and very quickly was introduced to the magic of creating something out of nothing in that way. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. I have spent most of my life with that certainty of knowing this is the life that I want. I had spent my whole life on that path and I had done all the things that it seems to make sense to do to become a composer. [It was] around that time in 2012 when I realized that the things I really, really wanted to create were not really accessible on that path.

I realized that what I wanted to create were worlds that people could live in for as long as possible. It wasn’t necessarily a realization that I wanted to write long music, but it was the realization that I wanted to write things that would change your life from the moment when you stepped into it to the moment you left. Because those were my favorite things. It really required taking a huge leap into the unknown in order to carve out a different life for myself.

So when Thomas had this idea, it was right around the same point in my life where I was realizing that I felt like I had the capacity to do it. I could make the things that I felt were my favorite things in the world, but it would necessitate me giving everything to doing it. It took a couple of years from that moment to really make that decision and saying this is what I’m going to do. 

Q: Did the work tell you that it needed to be 6 hours?

Mattingly: That’s exactly right. We did not go into this saying let’s write a six hour piece. I think the initial vision that Thomas had was thinking maybe an hour.

Bartscherer: There are these great messages between us where one of us says, “Wait a sec, you know, this is getting very long.” And the other one says, “That’s okay. Let’s just do what we need to do and worry about it later.”

Mattingly: We kept coming back and asking ourselves it’s going to be over 3 hours now. I don’t think it makes sense to write this totally wild thing that can never exist. We just kept following it wherever it seemed like it was supposed to go and it ended up at the length that it is. 

Q: I feel like there’s a lot of work that’s being done at this time in our lives that is asking us to cut out the noise and the distractions. Why is that important to both of you because I assume that is an ultimate goal for what this work accomplishes?

Bartscherer: I think that one of the reasons why it’s so important and so valuable is because there’s a way of stepping out of our normal experience of time which increasingly is fragmented. Slowing down. One way to talk about it is for the imagination to dilate, to expand. That’s not just the creative or the artistic imagination. It’s also the ethical imagination, the political imagination to be able to think about things that move at a different time scale. A kind of thinking that is not instantaneous, that requires that you dwell for a while, that you move slowly.

Mattingly: So much of this music is also wanting to give us access to the things that we love so much about being alive. To just live in a world that’s made up of those things to remind us of what’s beautiful about being in this world. In order to do that, I think it is necessary to be able to to push out the noise to some degree and to live in a slower time.

Q: Your director, Lilliana Blain-Cruz, was quoted in the New York Times interview with Zachary Wolfe as saying, “I also think the dedication to joy is an interesting politics.” I’ve long thought the creation of art is a political act, but have we gotten to the point where joy itself is a political act?

Mattingly: I think the answer is yes. I don’t know about joy itself. Hopefully that’s something that we still always have. But certainly creating something that is so committed to joy, I do think it is. 

Bartscherer: The piece really does reject cynicism completely, but it doesn’t reject pain or suffering or difficulty. For me, it’s also related to the question of imagination. If there’s not a moment that you can affirm and say, yes, this is worth it, how can you imagine a world different and better than the one you’re in?

Mattingly: Life is very difficult in a lot of ways. It is easy to be cynical and it’s hard at times to love the world. It does feel like a very important political experience to find ways in spite of, and in its totality and because of all the things within it, to love the world. I think this piece is really committed to that.

Q: I’m also assuming that it’s no accident that there is a reference to John Coltrane and A Love Supreme on the first page of the opera’s website. I think that what you’re trying to do is a lot of what Coltrane was trying to do. This is how Coltrane described it for himself in the year 1957. “I experienced, by by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” Are you guys on that same journey?

Mattingly: Absolutely. That’s exactly the space that I want to be in. A Love Supreme is crucial to the piece in a lot of ways. He’s invoking something in that quote that there’s something more than this that he has access to and something mysterious that he wants to share. That’s a big part of it as well. 

Q: Is there a responsibility with having access to that?

Mattingly: I think responsibility is the exact right word. That’s what it really feels like to me. I don’t know exactly why it feels like I’ve had access to this thing. It doesn’t feel like it makes me any better, a more worthwhile person. It’s just like something that happens to align with the weird, strange nature of who I am. Because of that, it has set me on a path that gives me a really, really heavy feeling of responsibility. 

Bartscherer: Don’t take our word for it. I want to do everything I can to make it possible for people to hear it. And I want to make the next thing, too. It feels like a responsibility, but a joyful one.

Mattingly: I don’t know if anybody else can create Stranger Life. But what I do know is that nobody else is going to. To be able to see it, what it could be like, it’s worth my life to make sure that happens. I’ve spent my life to make sure that it happens. And it’s really difficult. But it is a really important responsibility, I think, because I think it’s worth it.

To see the full Stranger Love interview with Dylan Mattingly and Thomas Bartscherer, please go here.

Main Photo: Artwork for Stranger Love (Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic)

The post Stranger Love: The Six Hour Opera Experience appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

To be fair, it is a little limiting to refer to Marc Lowenstein as just as composer. He’s also a music director (with The Industry and others) and conductor. He’s a singer and also an educator. But since we’re staying in the present, today we’ll talk about his work as a composer and also the most recent one to be a part of LACO’s Sound Investment Commission.

On Saturday, May 20th at the Alex Theatre in Glendale and Sunday, May 21st at UCLA’s Royce Hall, LACO will present the world premiere of HaZ’man HaZeh. I’ll allow Lowenstein to share details about the piece in the following excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview please go to our YouTube channel.

LACO’s Sound Investment Commission works a little bit differently than if you had gotten a commission from another performing arts organization in that the people who who donate into this program get to have a number of meetings with you, progress reports, hearing bits and pieces of a work in progress. I assume that’s very different than with any other institution.

It is very different. Although having said that, in my work in The Industry, we did do something similar in that we do workshops and we have our donors come to the workshops and we have meet and greets with them. But that’s not formalized in the way the Sound Investment program is. And it’s really formalized in a good sense: first I met and talked about my initial ideas, then I met and I had a small group of musicians play some excerpts just to check them out and to see if I could coerce one of the violinists into singing, which is a whole other issue. But I’ll tell you about that later. Then there’s one more meeting with donors right after one of the dress rehearsals. So they get to see the evolution from idea to piece and to performance.

One of the benefits of this program is the creation of modern classical works. If we don’t have contemporary works, how many Beethoven cycles can someone sit through? 

Oh, my goodness, no. I’m slightly older, shall we say. So I don’t I don’t think people realize what a renaissance of modern orchestral music there is going on now today, and such a broad array of composers, different styles. 30 years ago you just couldn’t get your music performed by any orchestra. Their idea of modern music was one piece by an extremely famous person and that would anchor the season. Now it seems like almost every concert by every major orchestra has a really interesting piece. Even if it’s not successful, it’s fabulous to hear. 

So I think we’re really in a tremendous renaissance of hearing a broad array of new voices of all ages and backgrounds and all musical styles. I think that’s crucial.

Of course, if we’re talking 30 years ago by one famous composer, it was either Philip Glass or John Adams.

I remember talking to my peers. All of us essentially made our own groups and our own orchestras to play the works. But there was still a barrier. It wasn’t necessarily a lack of awareness. It was sort of a blinkered mindset on the boards of all those institutions. The boards have changed and they realize that there’s all this great music out there. There’s a lot of great young composers out there.

I’m thrilled because the Sound Investment program isn’t just for young composers. I’m not exactly a young composer. I joke I’m sort of a mid-career despite my age, because of all these three different aspects that I do all the time. So I haven’t written as much as many other composers my age. But at the same time it’s refreshing that Sound Investment will have very young and untried composers with tremendous amount of promise and then somewhat older, more experienced ones. Just whoever they find interesting. 

What can you tell me about HaZ’man HaZeh?

It’s about the battle, the internal struggle, between nostalgia and sort of overt futurism. So I try to reach that through a dialectic between song and dance, and then something that’s neither song nor dance.

What inspired the work and its title?

I’m not that religious, but when I am, I feel marginally drawn to the sort of the Jewish mysticism tradition and where it intersects with Buddhism. It’s not very original of me, but it’s just sort of where I sit.

My roots, in terms of what I heard as a young person, [were] romantic chamber music and classical orchestra. Then I moved into jazz. So the beginning is sort of Schumann meets Sibelius meets Charles Mingus and this sort of wild party. Then I realized that in writing all these nostalgic styles, in some ways nostalgia is a beautiful thing. In another way, nostalgia is the enemy because you can drown in nostalgia unless you make something new out of nostalgia. It can really hold you back. 

Also I think if you worry too much about the future, you’re also holding yourself back. You’re not living in the present in that sense. So it’s this weird search for honesty between nostalgia and this sort of attempt to be new. I wanted to have some title that would evoke the present time, that overused word mindfulness of the present.

Then I realized there is something in the Jewish liturgy. There’s a very common prayer every time you reach a milestone, whether it’s just a happy day, a holiday, there’s a blessing. You thank God for bringing you the moment of this moment. And in Hebrew, the words are HaZ’man HaZeh, which literally means this time or the present time.

Where does a singing violinist fit into this picture?

I think one way to really live in the present is to dance. In all my music there is this binary between song and dance, and they sort of fuse together. There’s actually a song I had been working on at the same time. I didn’t think it was part of this piece. I had been setting this meditation on one of the Dalai Lama’s sayings, which is “My religion is kindness.” I’m working on the song. Can I take this block and just move it right here? 

I called up the orchestra manager and I said, “Is there someone in the violin section who wouldn’t mind just getting up doing this intonation, reciting?” At our last donor salon, one of the violinists, Sarah Thornblade, stood up and she just sang. She’s breathtakingly beautiful.

How important is it for an audience to understand what a composer is trying to get across versus just listening and enjoying it?

At its best there’s no difference. I think a lot of composers would say the same thing. We hope that there’s explanation beneath it, but we certainly hope that explanation is not necessary. Having said that, a certain amount of linguistic fluency helps, or familiarity, let me put it that way. 

Just as composers can get lost in the many styles that are around today, audiences, for their own good, might want to become a little fluent in things that they like. Which is just to say, if you like something, listen to it and try to figure it out. You might not. The first listen might not be as rewarding as the fourth or the fifth. Or maybe it’s not linear or something like that.

How much does working within an organization like The Industry, which has presented operas in a train station (Invisible Cities), in cars moving throughout the city (Hopscotch) and other unique locations, make you feel that we are moving in a direction where traditional expectations of how art is to be presented or consumed and genres are becoming passé? 

I would rephrase it slightly with your permission. I think they’re being expanded beyond that which is passé. Let’s talk about opera, not just symphonic music for a second. I want to look at traditional opera as sort of like those Civil War reenactments. There’s a place for it and people like that. It’s a history and a culture and it’s a deep part of us. It might be a little passé, but it’s deeply important. There’s a real place for the Met and for LA Opera and Chicago Lyric and all those places. At the same time, we can’t live in the past.

Whatever the words: problematize, interrogate, question the relationship between the audience member and the work. It’s very set. If you think about going into an opera house, you know what your relationship to the work is.

Yuval Sharon, Founder and Co-Artistic Director of The Industry told me that “The inner life of the piece of music has to be made manifest on a stage.” He was talking about Invisible Cities. Does that same thought process become part of what you think about when you’re composing something for a concert hall?

I love site specific concert music that doesn’t have voices. So I think there’s always going to be a home for these really beautifully acoustically tuned halls that allow you to immerse yourself in either electronic, acoustic or some kind of sound world so that you can project yourself into the sound. I think that’s fundamentally different than what happens in opera, where it’s a story and you project yourself into the story, the narrative or the scenario. Even with music that’s programmatic, I just think it’s a fundamental difference. So when you try to problematize the symphony hall, it’s going to be different.

I think you can listen to an opera in a recording, and I think you only really get it if you’ve seen it on the stage. But that’s not true of orchestra music. You can listen to wonderful orchestra music in a recording and really get it. And really get it in a way that you just can’t get up.

Almost anyone who listens to opera, which is probably not a lot of people, have almost always seen the work before. Or have seen a video of it. It’s always marketed with visuals in a way to bring you into that story. This isn’t arguing for one form over the other. I just think we have to recognize the fundamental difference, which, of course, will have blurred lines in between it. But I think they are different. And it was very challenging to me. 

I found a quote by Ray Bradbury where he said, “No sound, once made, is ever truly lost. In electric clouds, all are safely trapped, and with a touch, if we find them, we can recapture those echoes of sad, forgotten wars, long summers and sweet autumns.” How would you like your music, and this work in particular, once safely trapped, to help listeners recapture their own memories and experiences? 

I read Ray Bradbury obsessively when I was 14, and he’s definitely steeped in that same sort of nostalgia that I talked about. I don’t know. I don’t know that the music has a message that it wants to give out. I hope it’s successful on its own terms. I would almost unask that question. You tell me.

I’m much more interested in how other people react to it. I know what the sounds are. I know how it sounds. I cannot predict whether it’s even partially universal in expressing what I’m trying to express or if other people get other things from it. That’s always the case.

There have been many pieces that people interpret as one thing and that the composer meant something else. So I have no good answer. I hope it’s successful. I hope people hear it. I hope it’s successful on its own terms if that means something. I’m still kind of discovering what those own terms are.

Is this work finished in your heart and in your mind? 

Yes. I’m very good at saying, “Okay, let’s do the next best thing after that.” That is living in the present. The message of this piece is, in fact, to let it go and to just to do the next thing and to find your next mantra and to live in the next moment. Because that’s literally all that there is. It’s only by letting go and having a tremendous amount of throughput, I think, that you can really find the meaning in the moments.

To see the full interview with Marc Lowenstein, please go here.

Photo: Marc Lowenstein (Courtesy Marc Lowenstein and LACO)

The post Marc Lowenstein Lives in This Present Time appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

The four artists first collaborated together on the 2019 album El Chan. Six years earlier the Labèque Sisters and Chalmin recorded 2013’s Minimalist Dream House – an album of music by John Cage, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley and more. The newly named Dream House Quartet released their first album under that name earlier this month. It features works written by Chalmin, Dessner and Meredith Monk. They are now on tour with a performance on Sunday at Royce Hall with CAP UCLA; Wednesday, May 3rd at Toronto’s Meridian Arts Center and concluding on May 5th at Yale’s Schwarzman Center.

Late last week I spoke with Chalmin about the Dream House Quartet, his musical partners (one of whom, Katia, has been his life partner for 20 years) and Thom Yorke of Radiohead whose Don’t Fear the Light, Part 1 & 2 is being performed on their tour. What follows are excerpts from my conversation with Chalmin that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Dream House Quartet is performing music by Meredith Monk on this tour. She is quoted as having said, “The more I go through life, I realize that there’s really no separation between practice and art at all. The two things, more and more, become one rather than two different aspects of my life.” Do you feel the same way and how much do you feel like your art and your practice are on parallel paths?

I totally agree. Passion is the main thing with music. In my case it comes with playing the guitar, some piano first, then the guitar, then discovering about electronics and all the mess you see around me. [Best experienced in our video.] You never feel like you’re making art. You actually always think you’re practicing and trying to make something better. To me it’s a craft also. I love thinking of myself as a craftsman. To me it’s a very noble thing. We have this word in French artisan and I like to think of this because after years of practice of many different things you create your own musical personality. My experience is also working with sound and manipulating sound, recording and mixing, so it’s all of these practices that actually make my art, if you want to call it that.

Do you feel like you live your life the way you create your art? Are those two similar for you?

It’s totally the same thing. Actually it’s continuous. It’s not a job. It’s not work. It’s making music, being with people I love. I admire trying to improve on my knowledge and in my instrument experience. It’s only one thing. Totally.

Your first collaboration with the Labèque Sisters was on 2013’s Minimalist Dream House, which obviously shares a bit of the ensemble’s name. That album shares two thirds of the ensemble that became Dream House Quartet. Are there any similarities or differences, or was it merely the introduction of Bryce Dessner as a fourth member?

It was definitely the beginning of that adventure. It was a huge thing for Katia, Marielle and I starting this project. We had other projects before that, but that one in 2013, that’s really when we discovered all the minimalist music. Of course we knew some of it… We were introduced to all these amazing composers and actually that was the moment where everything connected because Katia and I were coming from different backgrounds. [She’s] a classical musician and she’s played a lot of contemporary music and I come from rock/electronic music. Our goal was always to find something to do together. So for years we were looking. In the minimalist movement from the second half of the 20th century, we really found something that made sense for both of us. Because this is the moment when classical musicians decided to do something different and reconnect with folk music, with music from all around the world, and get out of the little elite genre that the contemporary music was finding itself. So that was the beginning of research and assimilation of this music.

Years after, after meeting Bryce Dessner, we became the Dream House Quartet. When we did the first Minimalist Dream House project, we played a lot of existing music and some re-interpretations. But now with the Dream House Quartet, we think more like a band. We play Bryce’s music, my music, and still, of course, some Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Meredith Monk – the big composers of that musical genre. But now it’s become a band.

In a 2019 conversation I had with Katia and Marielle, we discussed their performing music by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. She said, “What is really interesting with Thom is he thinks about atmosphere and mystery and it’s really good for us to work with a musician like that.” What are your thoughts about the role of atmosphere in relation to, or in the absence of, melody in a modern work? 

To me it’s essential because in the music I’m make, in the music I love, it’s a lot about that. I listen to a lot of ambient music or drone music where you can really get lost in one chord for 15 minutes. It’s actually very hard to reproduce, I think, in written music. But it’s a very interesting challenge. That’s why I believe our meeting, our encounter, is interesting because I can try to make that happen, to create atmosphere with my electronics using their sound. 

In the piece Thom Yorke wrote for the quartet [Katia and Marielle] use some electronics and that brings their craft to another level. Those mixes are really interesting. Of course Thom Yorke can play piano and he can program a synthesizer, but he will never be able to do what Katia and Marielle do to bring their hands to his brain and his music. That makes something really unique. 

What impresses you most about what Thom Yorke is able to accomplish with his compositional skills?

He has something really special and amazing in the way he uses harmony, I think, because he uses the canvas of normal songs. I mean, they’re never normal and they’re never standard form, but still it feels like a song. But there is always a twist somewhere. There is no Radiohead song that is like a normal folk song. The way that he manages to make that sound normal, natural and beautiful to me, it’s the ultimate goal. It’s the same for any kind of modern music. Like making something weird, new with a twist, but making it feel not simple at the same time is the ultimate and beautiful. Aways there’s like the strange chromatic chord sometimes or the way he uses the melody to make things seem simple when actually it’s all weird in the back.

When you’re curating this tour with Dream House Quartet, what is the conversation that you would like to have with your work, Bryce Dessner’s and Thom Yorke’s works to have with older works by Philip Glass and Meredith Monk and Steve Reich?

I think we’d like the audience to feel that it’s the same musical realm. That there is a sense of all these musicians being on the same program and that it’s not weird; that there is not the classical one and the popular one. That’s the way to tell people it should be less classified and we’re more diverse than when people are seeing music as just one thing. 

When I listen to your EP Innocence I get the feeling that there is somehow an examination of how technology encroaches on our daily lives. You have these beautiful melodies and then there’s the technology, there’s the distortion, etc. I don’t know if that was your point, but I find it interesting that you’re using the same technology to express that sentiment. What was that your goal with these five songs?

It was not really conscious, but I’m glad you felt that. To me they’re my tools. I feel as touched by the small keyboard and the upright piano or my electric guitar. They’re just tools and I try to use them in a soothing way for me. The kind of music I make I like is indeed something that I try to cut out from the craziness and puts you more in a calming state. I like to take the time and use repetition to force you into relaxing. Taking a step back to just relax. It’s true we’re always like acting crazy to what’s around us.

What concerns do you have now with all the conversations that are going on about what AI can create and what AI can do and whether that’s going to encroach on originality and creativity?

As far as music is concerned, I’m really not worried at all. I find it’s a very interesting tool and a very scary one at the same time for many different uses. But it’s what people are going to do with it that will make it a problem or not. I guess we’ll have to find out. But as far as music is concerned, I don’t think it’s a problem because the kind of music I listen to or I like or the people I love who make music, they bring something that no machine will ever be able to to recreate. And if the machine starts making the hits of tomorrow, it won’t bother me. It can totally happen. It’s already something like that with 16 guys who know how to do certain things. So to me it’s a bit soulless already. What I like in music is the opposite. It’s where something magical happens and where there is soul and a life behind that’s never going to be predictable.

Philip Glass said, “The past is reinvented and becomes the future, but the lineage is everything.” What do you feel your lineage is as a composer to the past and what would you like others who will compose 30, 40 or 50 years from now to see in your work?

That’s really interesting because I think as composers we have to be humble and know that we are reassembling knowledge and using our heart to put it together and make something unique. Some people may like it or not. In my case it’s really a sum of a lot of different influences.

In terms of lineage, I’m very linked to Baroque music. My parents organized concerts. My father plays the organ and the harpsichord and he also builds harpsichord and organs. So I grew up listening to a lot of Baroque music. Even though as a teenager I got bored by it, I quickly came back to it. It’s a huge influence in my musical life.

Then there is rock; sixties/seventies rock mainly from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin. Then the era I grew up in the nineties with grunge, Nirvana and then Radiohead and then electronic music. It’s so many different things. People can grab sometimes the little things. Or listen to a piece I wrote for a Baroque ensemble which sounds like maybe minimalist music, but it’s played by Baroque instruments. Or in my songs sometimes find that there is very Baroque harmony. Or they use a sound that is similar to something Thom Yorke did. It’s all in there. But I like this idea that we’re just rebuilding and reassembling the parts that the authors have left us.

To see the full interview with David Chalmin, please go here.

All photos: Dream House Quartet (Photo by Graham Macindoe/Courtesy CAP UCLA)

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Bridges sang the role of Queen Nefertiti in the Metropolitan Opera production of Ahknahten by Philip Glass. The recording of that production won a Grammy Award earlier this year. She created the role of Josefa Segovia in the world premiere of John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West at San Francisco Opera and has appeared in productions of Carmen, Samson et Dalil and Satyagraha.

It should be noted that just over a year after Lorraine Hunt Lieberson debuted Neruda Songs she passed away following a battle with breast cancer. Peter faced his own battle with lymphoma and passed away five years later. Thankfully they were able to record Neruda Songs. It was that recording that Bridges first heard as a grad student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia as she told me when we spoke earlier this month.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. I urge you to go to our YouTube channel to see the full interview.

What was your first reaction when you discovered Neruda Songs?

I remember hearing a recording and going down the rabbit hole of YouTube and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. I was obsessed with her. I still am. I think that her voice and her artistry is of the utmost importance. The first song actually that I happened upon was Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres [My love, if I die and you don’t], the final song in the set. I just was so captured by that song and I was waiting for the moment to be able to sing it with the orchestra. That actually happened with Maestro Dudamel over the pandemic. So that really kind of wet my palate and I said I have to do all of them with him specifically.

When you enter into something that was so deeply personal for these two do you feel like you’re entering into a private moment of their lives? 

An interesting question. Yes, absolutely. That’s the beauty of these particular songs. It’s like you’re there with them almost. This is extremely intimate. For them to be as vulnerable as they were, and I think outward in their love, it’s such a gift to be able to enter their world. I think many artists will agree that the goal is to really tap into the mind and the heart and the spirit of the composer and the librettist. So it’s made especially, I wouldn’t say easy, but Lieberson has afforded the singer to enter their worlds without much confusion. He lays it all out there. He predicted things in a way, but it doesn’t feel at all sad. It’s just like this eternal love that will be there through life and through death. There’s no beginning. There’s no ending. It’s really special. I’ve learned a lot about life through these particular songs.

In 2007, Peter Lieberson was asked his thoughts about other singers singing Neruda Songs. And he said, “I think it might be more difficult for the singer than for me.” What do you think?

I agree. First of all, if we just speak musically, there are some twists and turns that are not so straight forward. But it actually just makes beautiful sense. But the subject matter, of course, it’s like you have to dig deep and that’s not easy. I have yet to experience a love like theirs. But that’s the beauty of being a singing actress. I’m tapping into that and I honestly feel like I’m manifesting something through through these poems. But yes, he is correct in that I think it’s probably more difficult for the singer on a plethora of levels.

How much of your personal background informs your approach to this song cycle about love and loss? 

Hmm. Wow. Well, yeah, you’re right. As an artist I want to bring bring my life and my experiences into everything that I sing and communicate. I’ve experienced love. I’ve experienced loss. And I do have a subtext for every piece. Neruda has written the poetry and Lieberson has set it so beautifully. But I always ask myself who is J’Nai in this? I try to attach different experiences to different moments in the cycle and that really helps it be authentic to me.

What Lorraine Lieberson did was mind-blowing. That was authentic to her and to their love. So while I definitely admire and actually study her very closely, I do things differently because I’m different and my experience of life is different. I think the tricky part is facing myself in in these poems and having to unearth different experiences and loss and remember certain loves that are actually still there, but they’ve just transformed.

Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that “There is a dimension to these songs which is especially moving and almost too much to take at times.” He was speaking from the audience perspective, what’s your perspective from the stage?

Wow. That’s really brilliant. My goal is to actually, at times, make the audience feel as if it’s too much because it’s a lot. Every single emotion is being captured in these poems and it’s not always easy. I go through that same process in the practice room. I can’t necessarily do that on stage or else I won’t get through the songs. But I do have to be in a place in which I’ve dug deep and have been vulnerable so that the audience can then come there with me. I agree that expressing that sometimes is too much. But what is too much? It’s necessary. This is life. And I think these poems really bring up so many themes that we need to focus on. I feel like they’re actually, in the end, very spiritual and healing.

I love what Lieberson does with Neruda Songs because he makes melody front and center. What role does melody play in the pieces of music, particularly contemporary music, that you choose to perform?

Interesting. Never been asked that, but I love that. That’s a great question. I love melody. I don’t really know any singer that doesn’t love melody. But in terms of contemporary music Lieberson has a way of, like you said, putting the melody upfront and forward. Yet there are these moments that are extremely intellectual and complex, but somehow it just makes so much sense. I’m in the practice room and I play the piano. So I’m just figuring out the chord progressions and it’s actually still a melody. He has a seamless way of aligning what we know as a traditional melody and the more complex phrases and linking them up in a way that is just like, wow, what just happened? I don’t know, but I feel very satisfied and it feels physically really natural on the chords. This is really such a pleasure to sing. 

I want to close by asking you about something that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson told The Boston Globe in 2005. She said, “Music is a vehicle that can transport very high levels of energy. It’s something that can lift you out of a narrow little place and out of everyday existence.” What does music in general and singing Neruda Songs do for you, and by extension, the musicians around you and the audience in the hall? 

These songs give me hope. They really do. It’s not always easy being an opera singer and someone that is basically nomadic and on the road all the time. Sometimes these dark thoughts come in and I think I’m never going to find love or this world is just crumbling. But these songs really present the gift of eternal life and hope. It’s always such a blessing to sing pieces that really have such a profound effect on me. I feel changed. I really do from these poems. I just wish that I could speak to [the Liebersons] directly. But I feel that their spirit is definitely shining down and through me. I do hope that the audience also will feel some healing and a sense of hope. I think we all could use that.

To see the full interview with J’Nai Bridges, please go here.

Main Photo: J’Nai Bridges (Photo by Dario Acosta/Courtesy Unison Media)

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