“I always describe the viola as something that is kind of the wrong size for its body. It sounds like a man singing very high or a woman singing very low. And there’s something about that in-between-ness that is very attractive to me and the challenge of overcoming the fact that, physics-wise, it’s actually proportioned incorrectly, in other words, for a viola to be the right size for the length of its strings to play very easily, it would be something like the size of a small cello…There’s something about reaching in and having to get around that imperfection that really appeals to me, honestly.”

Those are Nadia Sirota’s thoughts on her instrument, the viola, the same instrument through which her wonderful gifts as an artist are brought forth and richly interpreted in such a passionate and thoughtful way. Nadia, who is the daughter of Robert Sirota (composer and conductor), Victoria Sirota (minister and organist) and sister to Jonah Sirota (another violist and a member of the Chiara Quartet) is very busy these days taking on work the likes of which Hercules would faint at the sight of. Nadia works and collaborates with various composers like Nico Muhly and Missy Mazzoli; she has a solo album titled First Things First; she can be seen in various ensembles such as American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME for short), Wordless Music, and yMusic, which is appearing this Sunday at Rockwood Music Hall in NYC for a launch party for their CD Beautiful Mechanical (btw, both ACME and yMusic also feature cellist Clarice Jensen). You can also catch her hosting each weekday afternoon streaming live (and in podcast form) on Q2, the internet’s best place for new classical music. And believe it or not, she also is an instructor at Manhattan School of Music (part of the Master’s Program in contemporary performance). Nadia had a little time to stop and talk to us via Skype.

CM: There’s the issue about the way that you breathe when you play. I remember when we first met you said that people have tried to get you to correct it. It seems that there are many musicians that are known for idiosyncratic habits during their performances–Glenn Gould being the most classic example, but yours is not so distracting, at least not for me.

NS: All along the way, I’ve heard that it can be a distraction, I get that. However, to me it’s more distracting not to do that, and it gets in the way of my music thinking more to try to sort of prevent that. I actually was just talking to a wonderful choreographer that I have incredible respect for who was saying that’s his least favorite thing about classical music ever that he bought an entire recording of all the Haydn String Quartets and literally couldn’t listen to it because he was so distracted by the breathing of the string quartet players, so I totally get that point of view, but for me, it’s just not something I can divorce myself from. I do feel like it helps me embody maybe exactly where I am in performance. It helps my brain be in the same place as my physical body.

CM: What’s also interesting is when you were playing with ACME [at the Sequenza 21 Joe's Pub concert], there was a lot of seat-of-your-pants kind of intensity during some of those pieces–It looked like there was a lot of dependence on one another’s queues because these pieces are so new.

NS: Sure, sure!

CM: And it was really interesting to see because I was like “Wow! It could unravel any second if somebody blows a note!” [both laughing]

NS: Hopefully that gave it some good energy, not stressful energy. I do find that the main job of an interpreter is to take the composer’s intent and try to just translate that to the audience as much as possible and that’s the entire point. Basically we’re kind of taking the listener by the hand and saying “This is where this piece is going, this is where we are right now, this is the architecture”, and you know the thing about music is that it exists in time, you have one shot. You can’t go back and re-read something, or go back and look at the upper-left corner of a painting again, you have to sort of figure it out in time and follow it in time. So, with any hope, these are things that help translate that kind of architecture to a listener.

CM: What is the story with yMusic? It is both a wonderful stand-alone group as well as a group that plays chamber arrangements with indie bands like The National, Grizzly Bear and My Brightest Diamond.

NS: yMusic sort of evolved from the fact that a lot of us–I mean, we have very catholic, and I mean “catholic” in the broad sense–a lot of us have very catholic taste, and like a lot of different types of music, and I have been discovering that I don’t really care where people come from, if the music’s awesome I want to support it, I want to get involved in it, and there were several of us that went to school together that found ourselves in these gigs backing different indie rock acts over and over again, and the quality of players in these gigs would vary immensely. You’d have the best violin player ever and then a really crappy violinist next to him ’cause that was just the way that the non-classical people finding their players. We discovered that we really wanted to be making this music on a level just as high as the classical and new music performances that we were involved in. So we very quickly sort of decided hey, what if we just kind of bound together and said “These are the excellent players that are interested in a lot of this stuff that you should totally hire for your classical gig”, and that’s what yMusic did. It was just like “If you’re gonna hire people, hire these people, here we are”. And then we soon discovered that not only are we lovely at this, but this is one of the most wonderful assemblages of performers that I can think of. Not only did we ask Judd Greenstein, Sarah Snider, people that are really comfortable [composing] classical concert music, but we figured we are already working with these unbelievably talented songwriters who are basically composers in and of themselves. What would happen if we gave them the task of writing concert music? And the result was something that was pretty shocking in that the quality is so high. You expect composers to need more of the 6-10 years of conservatory training in order to understand how to write for a chamber ensemble, and yet we had people that had been writing for decades anyway, just not for our particular [kind of] group. So the level at which we worked with often varied from composer to composer–Some people we were really, really involved with, and some just handed us a finished score and we performed it, but, we were really excited to continue to do this and work with all the different creators on the creation of music, whether it be songs or concert music. So that’s where that group evolved from, out of a sort of a concert-y necessity, and now it’s become sort of a fun project for us.

CM: How excited are you that you worked with Arcade Fire and you appeared on the album that won them the Grammy for Album of The Year?

NS: That’s great! Another thing about the music world is that it is based so much on relationships and wonderful people that you meet that you want to hang out with, and the Arcade Fire thing is such a good example. I got involved with them through Owen Pallett, whom I met through Nico–All of these relationships are very much friend relationships where you’re like, if you like this person, they’re a good musician, then you’re probably going to have something to say to each other artistically, which is pretty cool.

CM: And then there’s Wordless Music, another great group.

NS: That’s Ronin Givony’s brainchild. I am involved with several of their projects. A lot of these–We can treat this as the antecedent to sort of the current cultural climate, or one of the instigators of the current cultural climate. The nice thing about Ronin was that he came to New York as a non-musician, non-classical musician with no real knowledge of classical music, and he started working for Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and was like “Hi! Chamber music! That’s what I like!”, except he was applying that term to a lot of non-classical works, and I think one of the reasons his series took off so beautifully was he was able to develop an excitement for classical music from a non-insider-y viewpoint, which is so translatable to those people who don’t exist within the classical elite already, and that is I think the biggest issue for classical music for the past 40 years or so, which is that those on the inside tend to have very specific tastes and the entire classical community tends to cater exclusively to them or at least try to, whereas millions and millions of people who’ve never experienced this stuff before should know it’s an awesome product and we get it to them. So I think he was one the people to really first successfully export classical music to audiences of very sophisticated ambient music or indie rock or whatever, and he was able to present it to them in a way that really resounded and made sense, and in a lot of ways I feel like he’s precipitated a lot of what’s happening in New York right now in terms of expanding audiences.

CM: It’s hard to get people who are in their 50′s perhaps who have probably not heard anything by Nico Muhly to suddenly hear his music or any music from his generation when they’re so used to “Ride of the Valkyries” or something. I think there’s probably some new music that speaks to that taste.

NS: Here’s the thing–I was raised in a very modernist-friendly way. I grew up completely idolizing Berg and Webern and all of those wonderful composers. However, for the uninitiated, that music can be stressful or difficult to understand. There’s a lot of music that’s being written right now which I feel has a surface appeal in the same way that a lot of older romantic music does, as does a lot of contemporary popular music. I feel like it really also stands up to academic debate and further looks, but at first blush, a lot of what’s going on right now in classical music is far more appealing for the uninitiated than a lot of modernist music from the 1950s through 1970s was. And in that way, it’s sort of a more accessible moment for the uninitiated than it has been in America especially in the past 40 years or so. A lot of the people I hear say “I don’t like modern music”, it’s kind of like them saying “I don’t like modern architecture” or “I don’t like modern art”–In other words, they’re responding to a movement, which is maybe done. What’s happening now, Post-modernist music doesn’t sound like that. What’s happening now in art is not necessarily the same thing as in [music] or in architecture, or whatever. So say what you want about that movement, now that’s an historical movement and we’re in a different place.

CM: Okay, so, you play the viola, and besides solo and session projects you are active in so many groups, plus you teach at Manhattan School of Music, and you are a radio host on Q2! How many seconds of sleep do you manage to get?

NS: I enjoy sleep, man! I don’t get it all the time, but when I can, I go for it! I don’t know! It’s really complicated, and I feel like a lot of people in my position which is to say people trying to make it as musicians have to stitch together these really weird careers, and right now, I feel like, I’m 28, I can do it physically, I can run around and do all this stuff trying to do as much as humanly possible right now because it’s not going to be possible forever. And eventually, maybe, I’ll have freedom to breathe a little bit but right now it’s all about 5th gear, just go go go go go, as much as possible!
The thing that I have sort of figured out at this point in the game is that ALL the projects that I do really do have to do with this goal that I have which is getting new music out to new audiences. Every single thing sort of fits into that particular brick, which is not always true. I did weddings for a long time and stuff like that, and now I’m sort of lucky to not have to do that!

CM: As long as you’ve mentioned that, what was the cheesiest thing you’ve ever had to play at a wedding?

NS: Oh man! Cheesy things at weddings? A string quartet arrangement of The Bittersweet Symphony, the same wedding where we had to play a quartet arrangment of “Heart-Shaped Box”, which is the same wedding where the bride said to the groom that she would have him “for richer or for richer”, which is the worst thing I have heard in my life! I think that’s actually the last wedding I played, I just decided that I had enough of that entire genre! [both laughing] Weddings are a time for cheese!

Nadia Sirota.com
Nadia’s official website

yMusic
yMusic page

Clarice Jensen and Nadia Sirota

Clarice: So, ahem, Nadia it was pretty remarkable when we switched from reading from the score to parts when we were working on Hayes’ piece (ed.: Steal Away by Hayes Biggs). It’s like the music took on a different meaning.

Nadia: I know!! I find that stuff so incredible. Sometimes I forget that a massive portion of our jobs as musicians (especially of the new music persuasion) is essentially translating visual material into sound. We’re kind of like professional map-readers. Do you have any notational pet peeves?

Clarice: Page turns of course… But other than that, just spacing in general. If notes look all bunched up, then it’s hard not to make them sound that way! What about you?

Nadia: My super-dork pet peeve is spelling; I hate it when chords are spelled out in ways that have little regard for traditional chord structures. It’s sometimes really hard to wrap your brain around a whole bunch of sharps and flats living together all higgledy-piggledy without regard for implied harmony. I know I know: super-dork. That having been said, I kind of love how notation is a kind of personal, no two alike sort of thing. It gives the performer so much insight as to how the composer may be thinking. Oh! And I can get kinda frustrated with things that are notated with very small durations (64th and 128th notes) which are then in a super-slow tempo. I understand a kind of freneticism may be what the composer is going for, but it just seems to add so much time to the rehearsal/parsing process.

Clarice: Totally agree on that one. Pretty amazing how this abstract system of symbols and lines and dots can be subject to so much scrutiny and discussion regarding interpretation. And how dots and lines paired with scrutiny and discussion results in beautiful music! Amazing!

Nadia: Yay! So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the type of music and programming that translates well live vs. that which is great to listen to on the radio or on a recording. There are so many types of gestures which are fascinating to watch people achieve, which cannot be really understood in a recording. Like even a pregnant pause, for example.

Clarice: For sure – the physicality of achieving a musical gesture just can’t be heard in a recording, and sometimes seeing that gesture is what makes the music translate to the audience. However, would you say that there is any music that makes more sense recorded rather than live? What about music in the rock/pop world?

Nadia: Oh decidedly. Stylistically that’s an idea Classical peeps kind of “borrowed” from the pop world to begin with, even going so far back as Musique Concrète territory. Like, think about how many times we’ve heard the exact same performance of a song like “Louie Louie.” That performance IS the work itself. Everything else is a “cover.” This can seem like a weird, alien counterpart to the Classical model (like, do I only do covers???), but yeah, there’s a lot more of that type of thinking these days, from things like John Adams Light Over Water to Nico Muhly’s The Only Tune, a piece I’ve performed a lot. When that piece was conceived it was as a recorded collage. When we play it, we are trying our damnedest to approximate the recording. It’s sort of the opposite type of problem from what we were talking about above, the “why does this music lack the visceral impact it had live on this record” type of problem.

Well, I’m super into the diversity of voices on this program. I get to wear a lot of different hats! (Jagged hat, lyrical hat.)

Clarice: Yes, I think the variety of pieces we ended up with is pretty emblematic of the wide range of excellent writing and composition that’s happening now. And as a performer, it really is rewarding to wear all of these hats! I mean, I’ve always considered lyrical playing to be a personal strength of mine, but over the years I’ve worked so hard on rhythmic accuracy through playing intricate music, and now I consider that to be a strength as well. It’s amazing how all of this diverse writing is in fact shaping the performers who are often playing music in the contemporary world. Do you think your focus on new music has changed you intrinsically as a performer?

Nadia: Oh, totally. Whenever you work on some weird skill, it changes the kind of mental space in which you think about everything else, really. The rhythmic idea you bring up is super apropos; I also kind of came from a lyrical place as a kind of a default, but the more I work on concepts of groove and flow, the more these ideas end up creeping their way into even the most lyrical stuff. Knowing more things as time goes on rules.

Well, lovely to chat with you, C, I can’t wait for the show!!

Clarice: Yep yep, it’s gonna be a good one!

_______________________

Tickets to the Sequenza 21 Concert are free (the venue charges a $12 food/drink minimum).

October 25 at 7 PM

Joe’s Pub in NYC

Tickets and Tables are still available by phone.

Call 212.539.8778 to make your reservation

Presented in the interior of Rothko Chapel, the Music for Rothko program includes piano works by John Cage and Erik Satie, Tagh for the Funeral of the Lord for viola and percussion by Tigran Mansurian, and choral compositions by John Cage including Four. Feldman’s Rothko Chapel for soprano, alto, choir, celesta, and percussion, is the centerpiece of the program. The performers include the Houston Chamber Choir conducted by Robert Simpson, pianist Sarah Rothenberg, percussionist Brian Del Signore, and violist Kim Kashkashian in her first Houston appearance in more than 20 years.

New Yorker Magazine music critic Alex Ross recently tweeted: “It’s Rothko Chapel week” in reference to several performances taking place this week across the country of Feldman’s elegy for his friend painter Mark Rothko. It is exciting to find out via Twitter that this piece is receiving so much well deserved attention. Last Fall on Sequenza 21, I wrote about the Houston Chamber Choir and this upcoming concert. But I didn’t know at the time that several other performances of the piece would take place within a short span of time. And now I’m interested in contemplating what will set the Houston performance of Rothko Chapel apart from those taking place in other cities?

In his wonderful collection of writings Give My Regards to Eighth Street, Feldman describes Rothko’s paintings as “…an experience in depth…not a surface to be seen on a wall.” Music for Rothko will be complimented by the fourteen paintings Rothko painted for Rothko Chapel; and this setting is one that venues in other cities will not be able to approximate. Rothko’s paintings seem to move beyond the edges of the canvases, their surface appearances changing constantly thanks to the light coming through the chapel’s skylight and Houston’s unpredictable weather patterns. A fusion between the paintings, the architecture of the octagonal room, AND the live music is in store for the chapel’s capacity audiences.

Rothko Chapel

Music for Rothko takes place February 25th and 26th at 8pm and February 27th at 2:30pm at Rothko Chapel. All three Music for Rothko concerts are sold out.

A standby list will be created beginning one hour before the performances, and if there are unoccupied seats, ticket will be sold for $35 at the door beginning about 10 minutes before the concert begins.

Strata

Phase one of Strata’s “demystification” of contemporary fare involves presenting a new piece by Stephen Paulus on a concert this weekend at Merkin Hall (details below). Paulus is certainly a composer who fits their mission statement: an artist who doesn’t water down his language (and can indeed sound quite ‘modern’ in places) but has managed to craft a body of work that speaks to many “mainstream” classical listeners.

Alongside Paulus’ Trio Concertant, Strata will present works by Robert Maggio, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Béla Bartók’s Contrasts. I recently caught up with Stern to discuss the concert, as well as Strata’s future plans for the Metaclassical Music project.

Sequenza 21: Tell me a bit about the background and formation of Strata.

Stern: Strata is an ensemble that grew out of friendships formed at the Juilliard School. Audrey and I began dating while we were both graduate students there, and then Audrey met Nathan in a doctoral seminar they were both taking after I had moved away to take a job at the Cleveland Institute. So far we’ve never all three lived in the same city, but Audrey and I got married a few years later, while Nathan’s career was taking him all over the world with a succession of teaching positions and performing. Despite the geographical obstacles, the three of us got serious about developing a repertoire and performing throughout the North American continent. I also got serious about playing viola so as to augment our repertoire possibilities. We chose the name “Strata” (layers) in recognition of a fondness that we all share for the intricacies of counterpoint (many-layered music), as well as a commitment to uncovering many layers of meaning in what we play.

Sequenza 21: What’s the concept behind your new commissioning project?

Stern: The Metaclassical Music Project began with the idea that a composer might be able to facilitate the educational outreach presentations that we do. What if, for example, a single melody could be cast successively in monophonic, homophonic and then polyphonic textures of gradually increasing complexity? Then we would have an array of examples to explain these ideas to a young audience and this would, in turn, help to illuminate other standard repertoire we play for them. Next, what if such an array of musical demonstrations actually formed part of a large-scale concert piece; that is what if, in addition to their educational function, they created a coherent emotional trajectory that added up to an intense concert experience? This is where the idea started. But it evolved into something more general: what happens to an artist’s self-expression when she or he takes on the commitment to instruct? I actually believe that composers like Shostakovich, and writers like Milan Kundera and Herman Melville have done this: they write in what I like to call the “didactic voice,” and that this is part of the key to the immense power they achieve.

Sequenza 21: How did you decide to commission Stephen Paulus?

Stern: Nathan first encountered Paulus when he participated in a performance of one of Paulus’s operas. He was deeply struck by the color and imagination of the writing. Somewhat later I performed Paulus’s Partita Appassionata, at the Cosmos Club of Washington D.C., with my University of Maryland colleague, pianist Bradford Gowen. Paulus was being inducted into the Cosmos Club, which was described by the late Wallace Stegner as “the closest thing to a social headquarters for Washington’s intellectual elite.” Their website goes on to report: “Among its members, over the years, have been three Presidents, two Vice Presidents, a dozen Supreme Court justices, 32 Nobel Prize winners, 56 Pulitzer Prize winners and 45 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.” Strata has also performed there. Two things struck me on this occasion. One was how easy Paulus’s music made it for us, as performers, to connect with an audience. The energy in the room was wonderful. The other was hearing Paulus speak about his music. With regard to a song cycle that was being performed that evening he described, with evident enjoyment, how he had deliberately written one of the songs using the twelve-tone technique, just to prove that it could be done in a way that was attractive and not intimidating. This was the kind of creativity and exuberance we were looking for with the Metaclassical Music Project.

Sequenza 21: What’s his Trio Concertant like?

Stern: Trio Concertant is in seven movements, totaling about a half hour. It bears the subtitle “An Archipelago of Moods,” making it ideal for Strata’s educational outreach presentations: we often devote a large part of such presentations to discussions of moods—the virtually infinite variety of moods that can be conveyed through music and the mechanisms by which this is done. Paulus’s work really does help us by laying bear those mechanisms. Elements of tempo, dynamics, articulation, tonality and the spatial relationships between the instruments—all these contribute to the mood identified by the title of the movement in which they occur, in a way that is easy for us to point to and in a way that anyone can hear.

I am also reminded though of Leonard Bernstein’s description of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony as a great “surprise package” (because of the way its somber introduction belies the exuberant main body of the first movement). Each of Paulus’s movements contains a kind of surprise like this. The third movement, for example, is entitled “restless; agitated” and begins with a kind of fitful and fragmented texture that almost recalls German expressionism. Halfway through though, it kind of takes off in a soaringly ecstatic song, growing out of the earlier material in a way that is totally organic and inevitable. Paulus strikes me as a very intuitive composer. If his process does involve posing a problem for himself and then solving it, I see no evidence of this in the finished product. But these things can be deceptive.

Sequenza 21: What other pieces are on the program? How do they ‘fit’ with the Paulus piece?

The one piece of standard repertoire on our program, Bartók’s Contrasts, resonates well with Trio Concertant, in that it shares those elements Paulus prides himself on: that quality of guiding the listener along, always making sure that virtually any listener can connect elements with one another and make sense out of them as the music unfolds. In the case of the Bartók, this quality comes from the natural phrasing of folk music that he employs.

The other two pieces on the program (both also written for Strata) employ an opposing or complementary tactic, depending upon how you want to look at it. Both contain what I like to think of as secrets, or elements that are actually inaudible, yet connected to the audible by a logical thread such that they influence the listener’s subconscious perception, and the sufficiently assiduous listener can discover them. In Robert Maggio’s Riddle, the familiar tune, “I gave my love a cherry,” is clearly audible, but it is also worked into the textures in ways that are either too fast, too slow or too fragmented for immediate discernment—it becomes part of the DNA as it were.

Maggio: “A Ring that Has no End”

In Leshnoff’s Seven Glances at a Mirage, it is the element of meter that is present for the performers (indeed, they absolutely need it in order to end at the same time!)  yet often inaudible to the listener. The listener is left grappling for a sense of meter and is periodically gratified, then confounded again, exactly in the way one might experience a mirage.

Sequenza 21: Any idea who you might commission next?

Stern: We are in the process of deciding who to approach next for this project. Because this project is, above all, a kind of aesthetic experiment and an attempt to articulate aesthetic values for the future of classical music, we are looking forward to enjoying a kind of intellectual engagement with whoever is the next person to write for us. I now have posted, at stratamusic.org, a vision statement for the project. Cast in the unusual form of an interview with an unidentified interviewer, it fully articulates an aesthetic vision. I’m intending to encourage composers to read it, and I hope to be able to discern, in an informal way from their reactions, which among today’s top composers would approach this project with the kind of depth and passion we’re looking for. Of course, once our Merkin concert is over, we’ll be sitting down and listening to a whole lot of the great music that’s out there to determine which voices move us the most.

THE METACLASSICAL MUSIC PROJECT: STRATA AND PAULUS

Sunday, November 21, 2010 8:00 pm

Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Center

129 W. 67th Street, NYC

Tickets: $33 – $9 students/seniors

purchase tickets or call 212 501 3330

I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that tonight in Chicago the International Contemporary Ensemble will be paying tribute to an amazing violist, Omar Hernández-Hidalgo.  They have commissioned three new pieces in his honor which will be premiered at 7:30 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.  Back in early June, Steve made us all aware of what happened and the response from the community was quick and memorable.

On a personal note, I was fortunate to be part of the Indiana University New Music Ensemble while Omar was there and I’ll always remember the day he walked in to the first rehearsal of Berio’s Chemins II for Viola and Ensemble – everyone in that room was completely speechless.  So amazing and so inspiring.  Of course every time he played this was the reaction.

Thanks to ICE for making this concert happen.  If you can get to Chicago tonight go to this concert.  More info here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As promised, today is Part II in my series of podcast interviews with the members of ETHEL. I’m happy to announce that violist Ralph Farris gets the My Ears Are Open “prize” for not only providing us with the longest episode to date, but I think it’s fair to say that he also has the most opinionated episode to date. It will be a 30-minutes well spent.

If you would like to subscribe to the series you can do so here and/or here. And, as always, feel free to send comments, suggestions, and recipes to podcast@jamesholt.net

If you missed Part I with violinist Cornelius Dufallo you can listen now by clicking here. Next up is Part III with cellist Dorothy Lawson on July 21 and Part IV with violinist Mary Rowell on July 26.

Is there a person or ensemble you’d like me to interview for the show? Over the next several months I’ll be featuring more musicians from places OTHER than New York so please send along your wish lists and don’t be shy.

Click here to subscribe through iTunes. Click here to add it to your RSS.

I wish I could tell all of you how excited I am about the interviews lined up for the summer, but I need to keep a few of them a secret until I actually finalize and record them. For now, I will just mention that July is devoted to the members of a certain unique string quartet, and August and September will feature musicians from outside New York (and even a few from outside the US).  In the meantime, check back in June for my interviews with Seda Röder and Brad Lubman. And thanks again to Beth, Nadia and John.

For those of you in NYC, I’ll see you today at the Bang on a Can Marathon!

For those of you keeping track, this week’s episode is the second of three highlighting violists. Last week, Elizabeth Weisser; this week, Nadia Sirota. Nadia has some good advice for musicians: it may sound obvious, but that thing that makes you unique is the thing that makes you special. Not only is this good advice for performers but it’s good for composers to remember as well. The more we can embrace our “craziness”, the more comfortable we can be with ourselves. Musicians on the podcast talk a lot about working and collaborating with composers, but Nadia actually has some suggestions for making these relationships work in mutually respectful ways. Nadia also has a new CD, first things first, which will be released on New Amsterdam Records on Tuesday, May 19 (Steve had a nice pre-release-party-post last week).

Looking ahead, the week of May 31 will feature violist John Pickford Richards, and during the month of June I’ll be talking with pianist Seda Röder and conductor/composer Brad Lubman.

May 31 also happens to be the annual Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City– are there any musicians you would like me to try and track down for an interview? I will also be in Chicago in early June – is there anyone in the second-city I should be in touch with? If you have suggestions please email them to:

podcast@jamesholt.net

And for those of you new to the show, you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking here, point your blog-readers here, or find it on InstantEncore by clicking here.

As promised, during the month of May I’ll be talking exclusively with violists, beginning with Elizabeth Weisser of the iO Quartet. I swear it’s a total coincidence that, two weeks in a row, I’ve talked with musicians who had great experiences with Helmut Lachenmann (and I already know there will be one more mention this month). Elizabeth does have lots of other things for us to think about, though, for instance: when a composer brings material to a musician, the musician improvises, and the composer notates the improvisation, then whose music is it? She also asks, “What’s the core of what we do? What’s the main thing we are trying to get across? And, why?”

Looking ahead, the week of May 17 will be my interview with violist Nadia Sirota and the week of May 31 will be violist John Pickford Richards.

Want to take a listen? Subscribe in iTunes here, or point your blog-readers here. You can also find it on instantencore by clicking here.