Waites first recorded Price’s music in 1987. When she takes to the stage of CAP UCLA’s The Nimoy on January 16th, she will perform work by both women and will be offering the first-ever performances of newly discovered and edited music by Price. The concert is called Momentum: Time and Space.

Momentum indeed. Last September Waites released her fourth album, Reflections in Time which found her performing music by Bonds, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Jeremy Siskind.

Last week I spoke with Waites about her passion for this music, the current embrace of music – particularly Price’s, and about whether or not she considers herself a trailblazer. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Waites, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: You were one of the earliest proponents of the music of Florence Price, recording her work, I believe, in 1987. Did you imagine all that time ago that Florence Price would become one of the most performed composers in this decade? 

I really did not. You start out on a project, but you don’t really know how it’s all going to end. I did a cassette recording. A friend of mine, who did the first biography on Price, sent me a copy of the manuscript from the Library of Congress. She said, Althea, this would be a wonderful piece for you to learn. I didn’t know anything about the Price sonata or any of the other music. So I got the manuscript and started working on it. I was in Switzerland at the time and when I got back to the States, I made that a primary project. Then in 1993 I did the first commercial recording of the sonata along with some other short pieces that Price had composed.

Why do you think now is the time that Price has suddenly been embraced by major orchestras around the world and also soloists?

We’ve been talking a lot and experiencing a lot about diversity and inclusion. I’m old enough to remember growing up in the segregated South where music was being performed and it was a part of the cultural landscape. But certainly Black composers, performers were relegated to very limited kinds of opportunities. With the civil rights movement, all of the LGBTQ actions that are taking place now, there is interest in Florence Price’s music. 

In 2021, Classic FM had a list of the ten most important Black composers who changed the course of classical music history. There were only two women on the list: Florence Price and Margaret Bonds. What do you think their greatest contribution to classical music is?

They paved the way for traditional folk music that had been part of the Black experience to be included and to be recognized as a major component of that particular type [of music]. They were not away from doing European classical music or art music or the music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc. because they were classically trained. They incorporated all of that into their music. Price used the dances that came out of slavery and out of the music of the plantations in the South. Bonds did the same thing. Because of their classical experience, they also merged that particular form with everything else that they were doing. I think that that was their major contribution.

They paved the way for other women. They opened doors really for women at that time – even in my generation – to get out and play and perform and teach a lot of this music. Both Price and Bonds were teachers and fierce advocates for inclusion at a time when it was hardly popular.

You’re also a teacher. Do you think the act of performance is a lesson in teaching for anybody who gets to hear it? 

I totally agree. You can learn a lot, as I did just from listening to great artists and, of course, listening to it on the radio or television. A lot of my education, besides going to an academic institution, I went to concerts. My mother was a fierce advocate for having me experience all of that music.

We went to concerts in New Orleans, despite the fact that the large halls were not open to us. We heard the Met Opera every Saturday afternoon at 1:00. When I was old enough to read I would get the scores and follow along with whatever was going on. So teaching can happen in many ways, not just in a classroom. A lot of my education happened that way. 

You can’t find a lot of quotes by Margaret Bonds. But I did find one where she is quoted as having said, “Music has to be human and people have to like it. It has to move them spiritually and intellectually.” Do you agree with her and how does her music move you? 

I do agree. The whole idea is that people want to be moved by whatever it is that you do, whether you’re a pianist or if you play anything or if you’re a singer or whatever. If you cannot bring the emotional content to the experience that you have with your instrument, then I’ll say that you’ve fallen short of what your mission is. I think the primary mission is to move people emotionally so that when they walk out of the space, they say, wow, I heard something that really was special. I was really touched by that.

Does the music need to move you in order for you to play it?

Yes, I think so. I’m having that experience now with a couple of the things that I’m doing. There was a piece by Frederic Rzewski who was one of the primary exponents of social justice. He used a lot of those themes in his work. He wrote a piece called Down by the Riverside starting with [she sings] “I’m going to lay down my burden” and so on. Then in the middle of the piece it goes south. He takes a radical departure from the the tune that you’ve heard, which is very peaceful. All of a sudden you’re thrown into another world. That was the way he thought about it. At the end he brings all of that material back to the traditional tune. So, yeah, there must something in it, in any piece, that has to resonate with me. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Do you consider yourself a trailblazer? Somebody who has made it possible for younger generations who come up behind you to explore and make discoveries on their own of music, whether known or unknown?

I don’t want to pin any bouquets on myself. I mean, a lot of people have called me that. I say thank you. I appreciate that. What I believe is that whatever I have done in some small way, I’ll keep doing that. Whatever time I have left on the planet, I’m going to continue to support the younger generation. I don’t know if I would call myself a trailblazer. It’s nice to be thought of in that context, but, for me, it’s basically just doing the work. Doing some good work.

Quite some time ago there was a major discovery in Chicago in an apartment building that was being remodeled or a house that was being remodeled where they found a lot of Florence Price’s music, which helped further people’s awareness of Florence Price. Do you have optimism that maybe another miracle can occur and that we can find a lot more of this lost work somehow, somewhere?

I would think so, because people are really interested in it now. I do have to bring up at this juncture some work that a friend of mine, Michael Cooper [Professor of Music at Southwestern University], is now completing the first biography on Margaret Bonds. It was through him that I got these pieces that I’m going to premiere for The Nimoy concert.

Now he is a real trailblazer because Bonds lived in Los Angeles during the last 6 or 7 years of her life after Langston Hughes passed away. Michael has been doing research on where some of this music was. And I have a feeling that it’s going to happen with Price. He is also editing a lot of the music of Florence Price and he sends me things all the time about what he is working on. I owe him a great debt of gratitude because had it not been for him, I would not have known that these pieces exist.

What do you think the most important thing we as an audience can get from opening ourselves up to music? 

I think what has to happen with audiences is let’s get rid of the fear, if you will. Or the apprehension that you may have in your mind about, well, I’m not going to like this. You don’t know until you try and until you actually have the experience. Audiences have to really, I think, do more. And I think we should do more as artists to make that case to say, here is something new. It’s not going to attack you. I feel that’s part of my mission – to get people in the space. That’s where I am. A lot of the people that I work with are trying to get people out to listen.

How does the music you’ve recorded and the music you are now playing reflect where you are in your life today and the journey you’ve taken to get here?

I’m not getting any younger. I was telling my daughter that I’m never going to be 25 again, and that’s okay. I have to do a lot of things now that reflect where I am. I’ll be 85 at the end of this month. I’m grateful to be able to still go on. My body is changing and I have to do more now to stay in good shape. So I walk and I have a lot of exercises that I do. I don’t sit at the piano for ten hours! I practice, but I do get up and take my breaks and with tea and things like that. The exercises really help because if you’re not doing anything like that, then you really can’t present your best self to an audience.

I would also argue that music is a really great way of staying alive.

Oh goodness, yes. We need it now more than ever. The whole world is in a very agitated state. There’s a lot of horrible stuff that’s going on. Music is, I think, probably one of the most important tools. You can bring people together with that. It’s not that you have to say anything, but you can speak through your music. I think that that’s what Price and Bonds attempted to do.

That’s what you are able to do by performing the music.

I feel very, very grateful now to still be able to do this at this point in my life. Anybody else would be sitting in a rocking chair watching soap operas. But not me. 

To see the full interview with Althea Waites, please go here.

The post Pianist Althea Waites Has Bonds with Black Female Composers appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Every performing arts venue likes to advertise what’s new and exciting for their season launch. For CAP UCLA, they truly had a lot to crow about. Their new performing arts space in Westwood, The Nimoy, opened in September. They are also starting the 2023-2024 with their new Executive and Artistic Director Edgar Miramontes. He replaces Kristy Edmunds who left in 2021 for Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. It was Edmunds who first came up with the idea of buying the former Crest Theater in 2018 and turning it into a performing arts venue.

Miramontes, who had previously served as deputy executive director and curator at REDCAT since 2019, inherits a lot of firsts and a lot of challenges. The performing arts haven’t fully recovered from the COVID crisis and audiences haven’t returned in anywhere near the same numbers as before the pandemic. Accessibility in the arts has become a big issue as has representation.

This gave us a lot to talk about when I spoke with Miramontes in mid-October. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How much does your experience at REDCAT inform what you want to bring to CAP UCLA?

REDCAT was incredibly formative in terms of the kind of artistic, adventurous kind of programing that is the ethos of my own interests and supporting artists. It is, and has been. an artist-centered space. Seeing what artists are doing to say a story a different way using interdisciplinary approaches is something that I’m still interested quite a bit to think about.

CAP UCLA is a larger platform for the kinds of work, just given the size of the stage and the limitations and the types of spaces that CAP UCLA has. So to think about the kind of ethos for me to develop artists from just out of school and into kind of their professional careers, that continues to interest me. The more artists stay in Los Angeles, the better.

Is there more pressure to be successful at CAP UCLA than there was at REDCAT? Are the standards of what defines success different between the two venues?

It depends, really, how one defines success. There’s a lot of incredible support that the School of Arts and Architecture, which is where CAP UCLA sits under, for me and my ideas thinking about how a public institution has a responsibility to expand and serve different publics. Including, of course, the the L.A. area and beyond.

With The Nimoy in particular, I think it does offer additional support towards that vision. I’m quite excited to think about The Nimoy as a pilot for how a center for art and creation and for artists can be utilized to think broadly about the arts and culture that UCLA as a system can affect. 

The biggest challenge every arts institution faces right now is getting people back into the theater. One argument that I’ve made for quite some time is that accessibility is a key factor in that. It isn’t just getting beyond COVID. It’s making it accessible to people who can’t afford to pay hundreds of dollars for an evening of theater. What impresses me the most about The Nimoy is that a single person can go see a show and park at The Nimoy for $35.

That’s absolutely right. A lot of that was set up with the wonderful team that I get to work with now. Who comes and parks for $3 in Los Angeles? Tickets are $32, a little less than that.

Accessibility to me is also beyond just tickets. What does it look like to be accessible for others who may have been hearing-impaired? How does one actually think about accessibility as we move forward? As we re-enter these spaces?

I am dealing with the three spaces that we program at CAP UCLA. [Royce Hall, The Theatre at the Ace Hotel, The Nimoy] All historic theaters, all built within a certain time. Physical accessibility was really different. That’s a line of thinking which I’m approaching programing in general to think about what that might look like in terms of accessibility.

What’s the conversation that you and your team has to have with an artist or their representatives that says there’s this theater and it has this price point model and it’s smaller so you’ll probably can fill it? Or there’s this theater that has a broader price point that we can do, but you may not necessarily fill it. What is the power of persuasion that you employ to convince somebody that doing something on a smaller scale may actually be more interesting, more rewarding, if not necessarily more economically rewarding?

I’ve yet to move into those negotiations. I start programing now for the fall of ’24. It’s a lot of leading with the artist’s interests. I’m pursuing work that I think would be able to fit multiple spaces in different ways, but also developing an artist that can work in multiple spaces. 

I think artists can find ways to work in multiple ways. With The Nimoy what’s really interesting to me is to think about that you can experiment more. Some of the artists who are working on these larger scale [works] can test out an idea at The Nimoy that then moves potentially into Royce Hall. I think artists are always happy to think about ways of moving their art in a different direction or being pushed to a limitation where limitation becomes the opportunity to think about their work a different way.

You’re obviously establishing a new brand as part of CAP UCLA with The Nimoy. Does that mean that The Nimoy is front and center and takes priority over programing that might take place at the other venues?

Certainly I feel like this is the year of The Nimoy. I think a lot of artists are really curious to see what it can do. It’s a space that CAP UCLA has much more of control over. Royce and ACE are really great partnerships. We can think about The Nimoy as the space for much more development of new work. We can do a lot more with access to it, as ours, in a different way than these other two venues. 

We’re having this conversation on the heels of of really horrific events taking place in the Middle East. We’re also doing it on the cusp of an election cycle. What do you think from your personal perspective is the role of the arts in troubled times like these?

If anything, the arts and culture have the power to really to provide multiple perspectives on what is happening. I think it also has the ability to inspire action. I think artists have a history of participating and making work that is directly pointing to, or at least addressing, some of these issues that I think are quite important. I’m interested in thinking quite a bit about the kinds of voices that have not been necessarily at the center and to think about different perspectives that address some of these things.

More and more I find that the work needs to connect what it’s saying and who is saying it to how do you provide an additional platform for conversation to happen right after that. We need artists as leaders, as catalysts, to make work that is entertaining, but also you see something that you’ve never seen before that actually does shift something for you and for those who are experiencing it. On an intellectual level, on an emotional level, but also has a social impact perspective.

I spoke to Kristy Edmunds in January of 2021. She talked about how she felt like it had been her role to keep artists strong and inspired during the pandemic. I asked her what she did to keep herself strong and inspired. She said, “Artists are finding these places where somehow the glue in the cracks is a kind of kindness and compassion and a willingness to manifest some form of connection. That is ultimately what is going to be what the tail end of this is.”

We don’t know where we are now, but what do you see as the North Star for you in keeping yourself and artists strong and inspired as we move through whatever the next five years is going to throw at us?

I think that we need to think about ourselves as being interconnected to all things. I think that we need to think outside of our silos to be much more like artists: take risks, learn new ideas, research the things that you’re interested in, taking time to see that idea in multiple ways. It means that we need to find ways to redefine collaboration so that it’s, to some degree, less competitive. To think about an ethos of artists, producers, presenters, imagining a new way of working together. Also thinking about what are those values that we can set so that we can build something together. Artists have been doing that for a long time. It’s also leaning in for people who are producers or presenters to think with artistic practice and that means administratively.

I would love to see a festival for two weeks with a vibrancy that you see across the city. That we have multiple connections and in which artists are moving through a different way through these particular spaces. It’s international, it’s local, it’s national; all of these things. And it’s incredibly inclusive. That’s my aspiration of the North Star. But certainly that’s what keeps me going.

Main Photo: The Nimoy Theatre (Photo by Jason Williams/Courtesy CAP UCLA)

The post Edgar Miramontes: New Job/New Theater appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

During a 70-minute performance Tao is at the piano playing music by Bach, Arnold Schoenberg, Art Tatum, George Gershwin and more while Teicher dances – most of it improvised. They will perform Counterpoint at The Nimoy Theatre, CAP UCLA’s newly opened theater in Westwood on Saturday, September 30th. They will also perform the show on October 6th at Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Both Teicher and Tao do a fair amount of improvisation as I learned when I spoke with Teicher earlier this week. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Teicher, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Tap dancer Dianne Walker said in a story that she wrote for Dance Magazine in 2022 that when Tina Pratt introduced her to jazz pianist Barry Harris she really “got the improvisational connection between musician and dancer.” What was the process by which you got the improvisational connection between dancer and musician?

When I went to the New York City Tap Festival for the first time I met a teacher whose name was David Rider. And David was, for lack of a better way to describe it, very much in the modern day tap dance scene. Being in the modern day tap dance scene usually involves being very connected to the history, to the lineage, to the roots of this dance. And by that I mean I came into the dance a little bit late to meet a lot of the folks who had passed away.

The teachers who were at these festivals had a direct connection to the jazz tap tradition. That’s to say, the Black elders and the white elders of this dance form. When I started working with [David], I became aware of the importance of improvisation historically. Then as I started to tap dance more amongst the present day type community, I became aware of just how important it was to be an improviser and a good one.

What role do you allow or want improvisation to be part of what you do generally and specifically what you do with Conrad?

For what I do with Conrad, it’s mostly improvisation. Mostly because I want to feel really present with Conrad. We’ve played now the same set a number of times, and we both do different things to provoke each other to play, to show that we hear each other, to show that we’re in conversation. What is the point of gathering in person? To me, improvisation answers one aspect of that, which is to say, if it’s happening live, then you have to see it live.

What are the discoveries in that process that you’ve made about Conrad?

This is not a show I would do with any other pianist other than Conrad. It’s not I’m a tap dancer looking to do a show with a pianist. It’s I am myself, a dancer, looking to do a show with my friends and collaborators and someone who I’ve forged a long-lasting connection with. That’s Conrad.

Conrad and I met for the first time when we were teenagers and collaborated together for the first time when we were 19. Over the years we have become friends. I’ve seen so many of his shows and he’s seen so many of mine. This is not something that we’ve kind of put together just to make a show. This is something that came out of a shared respect and admiration for each other that led to something where it says, well, maybe we should share this connection that we have.

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is a huge component of Counterpoint. Can you break down in a basic manner how you came up with where each of you would take solos and particularly where the solo would become, in your case, the notes played with your feet?

I should say that while it’s improvised, every time we get to that particular section, Conrad does not play. That is something that is relatively set amongst this improvisation. My memory tells me that was Conrad’s idea and I just sort of humored him. I said, sure, I’ll try it. It was something that we always discussed doing together because it was such a fun piece and I had never danced it. Conrad had played Rhapsody quite a bit, but had never done it in a duo capacity

I think there are a lot of people who have very meaningful connections to Rhapsody. So it’s a relatively easy win. But also to both of us. I do feel like it goes through so many emotions, so many colors and textures and shapes. As I dance, I feel like in that 16-and-a-half minute experience I get to live such a full life. I get to do all these different things and explore my dancing in so many different ways. If it’s the thing that we are doing the most these days in terms of a piece, it continues to be a really fertile ground for our conversation.

You’ve been doing this show with Conrad for the past few years, do you want to expand it beyond what you’re doing now?

We just thought we were doing it once or twice. We had these three gigs back-to-back and we said if we don’t feel great about it after those three gigs, we’ll stop doing it. It turns out it was show two or something. We got to the dressing room and Conrad said that was really fun. The audience really took to it. So we said if people are willing to pay us to hang out and play music together that we enjoy, then who are we to argue?

The set has more or less stayed the same over the past couple of years. We don’t do this program every week. If we do six or eight engagements a year, that’s a lot. I’m happy to keep it as is for now. But we are performing it at the Gilmore in Kalamazoo, Michigan this year which has a piano festival. I believe they’ve commissioned a new piece for Counterpoint as part of that. So we will create one new piece for our duo this year, which is fun. We’ve discussed if maybe someday we really feel like a piece has seen the end of its time, then we’ll take it out. And if we’re excited about something new, then we’ll put it in. That is on the table.

There’s a composer named Jonny Greenwood whom I like very much. I like his work for film. I obviously like his work in the band Radiohead. When he was told that Radiohead is innovative and there are all these things that are great about Radiohead, he’s quoted as saying in response, “When people say you’re doing something radical in rock or dance music, I’m not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It’s like trying to do something innovative in tap dancing.” What would you say to someone who thinks that tap dancing is old-fashioned, whether it’s a rock star or somebody that you meet at a local store?

This is the nature of us, of our limited capacity to become familiar with the intricacies of things. Every community, every subculture, every genre of dance and music has a dense and rich and textured and complex history. It’s not uncommon for me to experience what I might be so bold as to call a sort of ignorance around the depth of tap dance.

Some of that is because tap dance has been historically marginalized because it came from Black culture and a lot of things that come from Black culture have been diminished in terms of understanding their complexity. But the truth is, I think everything is as beautiful or as rich as we make it. If someone thinks that something is simple, they’re just maybe not trying hard enough to see how beautiful something is.

To see the full interview with Caleb Teicher, please go here.

Main Photo: Conrad Tao and Caleb Teicher in Counterpoint (Photo by Em Watson/Courtesy CAP UCLA)

The post Choreographer/Dancer Caleb Teicher Redefines Counterpoint appeared first on Cultural Attaché.