Hilary Hahn. Photo: Peter Miller

We all know Hilary Hahn as Sequenza 21′s resident video blogger; oh, and she’s a world class violinist and DG recording artist.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wearing both of those hats simultaneously, Hilary had a video chat via Skype with composer Max Richter earlier this week. Richter is one of 27 composers commissioned to write an encore for Hahn; she begins debuting the pieces this coming October. In order to spotlight the featured composers, Hilary’s planning to release a video interview with one each month. It makes us here at Sequenza 21 feel kind of special. After all, how many other websites have their video blogger booked two years out?

The BSO plans to keep its season underway with minimal changes apart from substitute conductors. They’re even going to premiere a new work this week under the baton of Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger. In Boston’s Symphony Hall on March 3,4,5, and 8, and at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 15, the orchestra and soloist Christian Tetzlaff will be giving the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s Violin Concerto.

It’s bittersweet that Levine is stepping down during a week when an important commission, one of several during his tenure, is seeing its premiere. I made a number of pilgrimages from New York to Boston (thank goodness for Bolt Bus!) to hear him conduct contemporary music with the BSO,  including pieces by Harbison, Wuorinen, Babbitt, and Carter. He helped a great American orchestra (with a somewhat conservative curatorial direction) to make the leap into 21st century repertoire and was a terrific advocate for living composers.

Many in Boston and elsewhere have complained that by taking on the BSO, while still keeping his job at the Met, Levine overreached and overcommitted himself. Further, when his health deteriorated, some suggest that he should have stepped aside sooner.

I’ll not argue those points. But I will add that, when he was well, Levine helped to create some glorious nights of music-making in Boston that I’ll never forget. And for that, I’m extraordinarily grateful.

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I’ll admit that I was a bit surprised to hear that Birtwistle was composing a violin concerto, as it seemed to me an uncharacteristic choice of solo instrument for him. After all, the composer of Panic and Cry of Anubis isn’t a likely candidate for the genre that’s brought us concerti by Brahms and Sibelius (and even Bartok and Schoenberg!).

But then I thought again. Having heard his Pulse Shadows and the recent Tree of Strings for quartet, both extraordinary pieces, I can see why he might want to explore another work that spotlights strings. Perhaps his approach to the violin concerto will bring the sense of theatricality, innovative scoring, and imaginative approach to form that he’s offered in so many other pieces.

I’m hoping to get a chance to hear it when it the orchestra comes to New York. No pilgrimage this time. My next Bolt Bus trip to Boston will likely have to wait ’til next season to hear the BSO in its post-Levine incarnation.

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part 2 is here. Both Hilary and Nico have CDs dropping officially tomorrow (Tuesday Sep 21); Nico’s A Good Understanding is a compilation of choral works, while Hilary’s couples the Tchaikovsky concerto with Jennifer Higdon’s 2010 Pulitzer-Prize-winner. (For the early-birds, follow that last link and see that Hilary also just happens to be doing a live web-chat today (Monday) at 12PM ET. Hop to it, chop chop!)

Composer, violinist, and performance/video artist Laurie Anderson has never been one to rest on her laurels. But Homeland, her latest project for Nonesuch takes her farther afield than she’s previously been.

Rather than staying at home to record, Anderson developed the album’s songs over a two year period of touring. And, for the first time, she’s involved her partner Lou Reed in a collaborative recording process (he receives a co-producer credit). The results sound recognizable as songs by Laurie Anderson; but the sonic formula has been tweaked – indeed, refreshed – by the risks taken and departures made during the recording process.

A recurring character is Fenway Bergamot, Anderson’s “male alter-ego,” who graces the album cover and performs on the recording.

Below are a couple of “making of” videos Nonesuch has posted to YouTube.

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On Thursday, May 20th, Metropolis Ensemble will present Home Stretch, in two performances featuring the compositions of composer/pianist Timothy Andres presented alongside two composers who have inspired his unique style: Wolfgang Mozart, and the father of ambient music, Brian Eno.  Also featured will be the New York Premiere of Anna Clyne’s elegiac work for string orchestra, Within Her Arms. In keeping with Metropolis Ensemble’s mission to re-imagine the concert experience, each audience member will be handed a chair as they enter the Angel Orensanz Center and will be allowed to seat themselves where they like, giving them the opportunity to control their concert experience and to create a more social and interactive environment.

Andres‘ piano concerto, Home Stretch, was written as a companion piece to Mozart’s K. 465. He explains that, “My last attempt at a piano concerto was when I was 15, and since then, I’ve mostly lost interest in the typical “virtuosity for its own sake” soloist versus orchestra dynamic of the genre. Luckily, the Mozart-sized forces led me to approach Home Stretch as chamber music, allowing for more subtle gestures and interplay between musicians.”

For the concert Andrew Cyr, Metropolis Ensemble’s Artistic Director/Conductor, asked Andres to write music to pair with Home Stretch, which led to Brian Eno: Paraphrase on themes of Brian Eno. Andres remarks that, “I immediately thought of the spacious, static opening section of Home Stretch and the huge debt it owes to Eno’s harmonies and timbres. The result is a 19th-century style “orchestral paraphrase” on the subject of Eno’s music, focusing on the albums Before and After Science and Another Green World, with some Apollo by means of an introduction.

Much of the solo part of, Piano Concerto No. 26 “Coronation”, one of Mozart’s most popular concertos, was left unfinished by the composer. Inspired by the conception of music as a living art form, Metropolis Ensemble has commissioned Andres to compose new music for the left hand part as well as an entirely new solo cadenza to be performed on the evening concert by Andres.

Anna Clyne‘s Within Her Arms was a 2009 commission from Esa-Pekka Salonen as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series. Metropolis Ensemble presents the New York Premiere of this work for string orchestra. Within Her Arms, dedicated to Clyne’s mother, brings to mind the English Renaissance masterpieces of Thomas Tallis and John Dowland.

Also, only on the afternoon concert’s bill, Andrew Norman‘s work for eight virtuoso violins, Gran Turismo.  Norman writes: “Rewind my life a bit and you might find a particular week in 2003. I was researching the art of italian Futurist Giacomo Balla for a term paper, watching my roommates play a car racing video game called Gran Turismo, and thinking about the legacy of Baroque string virtuosity as a point of departure for my next project. It didn’t take long before I felt the resonances between these different activities, and it was out of their unexpected convergence that this piece was born.”

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Remember now, we’re talking two concerts, both on Thursday, May 20: at 1pm, Trinity Wall Street (79 Broadway), and again at 8pm at the Angel Orensanz Center (172 Norfolk Street). The afternoon gig is FREE, but click here for an RSVP or tickets to the evening gig.  And that’s not all, folks: “This project has been in the works for two years and coincides with the Nonesuch release of Andres’ new CD Shy & Mighty. We will be running a promotion at Timo’s CD launch event at Le Poisson Rouge on Monday, May 17. Anyone who buys a ticket for the Thursday night concert at the event on Monday will receive a free copy of Shy and Mighty. We would also like to extend a special offer to readers of Sequenza21: we would like to offer 2 for 1 general seating tickets with the code sequenza21“.

Despite her whirlwind schedule leading up to the festival, Lisa was able to take time out to answer a few of my questions.

S21:  During your student years, did you ever feel pressure to become exclusively a composer, or exclusively a performer?

LB:  Since I received musical training at home as a child (my parents are both musicians as well), in college I decided to major in French literature, not music. I didn’t think of myself as either a performer or a composer really until later, when I was trying to figure out how to make a living.

S21:  What parameters have you set up for yourself for allotting time and energy to composing, versus performing?

LB:  Decisions about which projects to do, whether composing or performing, have to be made very carefully. Above all, I want every musical experience I have, no matter what form my participation takes, to expand my own awareness, make me grow in some way. It is also wonderful if it can provide a focused inquiry for me around some particular musical issue I am fascinated by or grappling with at the moment in my compositional work. I suppose this is the ultimate test for me: if involvement in some project will result in making me better able to accomplish/address the things I want to accomplish/address in my composing (thereby making my work communicate better and clearer), then I will make the time to do this. Many performing experiences have done this for me, so I do not begrudge the time I invest in them, even though in the short term they may “take me away” from composing.

S21:  Having grown up steeped in the San Francisco arts community, did you experience culture shock when you moved to New York in 1990?

LB:  I had 4 years at Yale in between, which were really important ones for me. Although I wasn’t majoring in music, I was involved in vocal music and jazz through various student-run groups, and these experiences were an important transition time for me. Many of the musical friends I made at Yale came to New York as well, so the transition was rather smooth, under the circumstances. Of course there was the shock of being an adult and needing to figure out how to earn money and live a real life.  These things were much more challenging than any cultural differences.

S21:  The Time Out New York review praised your “organic experimentation”.  Can the organic aspect of your work be identified, and how does it manifest?

LB:  I suppose (I hope!) this writer could have been responding to my practice of making work about and on people. I am not so interested in experimentation as an abstract value, as much as I am interested in how one might use “experimental” or creative, unexpected ways to celebrate and heighten awareness of a particular performance experience, involving specific people in a specific place and time. This means that if I am writing for one unique performer who sings and plays the violin at the same time (that’s Carla), I will experiment with ways to celebrate and heighten the awesome strangeness and wonder of this act, whereas if I am writing for a 70-member volunteer orchestra of community music lovers (as I happen to be doing at the moment, for the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra), I will experiment with ways to heighten their experience of music-making in a community with intense musical passion and a broad range of abilities.

S21:  What do you look for in a collaborator?  Is there a type of creative partner that especially suits you?

LB:  It’s like any intimate relationship – there needs to be a spark, enough in common, trust, mutual admiration, the ability to follow through. I proceed quite confidently in the time-honored “artistic crush” model.

S21:  Has Kafka Songs changed over the course of years, through its many performances?

LB:  Carla has taken these songs with her through so many twists and turns of life, they really do just keep growing and deepening. It is truly amazing. I think this is the only piece of mine that has had such a luxurious process of evolution.

S21:  Can you give our readers a sense of life and work at the American Academy in Rome?  How is your Brooklyn Rider String Quartet piece progressing?

LB:  The Brooklyn Rider piece is designed to keep growing, adding modular sections that can be performed in various combinations and orders, but the world premiere of its first version (c. 18 minutes) was last week in Harrisburg, PA at Market Square Concerts (one of the commissioners of the piece). It was a very special night! I love singing with these guys – I’ve written around six other pieces that have involved one or several of these magnificent players, in the last 7 years or so. They were the ones who asked me to put myself, my own voice, in the piece. It’s been nine years since I wrote any music for myself to sing!

The community at the Academy is an unusual mix of rome-specialist scholars and artists from various media (visual artists, architects, writers, plus Don Byron and myself). I am really enjoying learning about the Eternal City from these new friends who know so much about it already! A private tour around the Olympic Park with an expert on fascist architecture, or an exploration of the multi-layered churches of the Caelian Hill with a bona fide classical art historian – these are the kinds of people experiences I am having, that go way beyond the social.

Because of the Brooklyn Rider piece, and because I was invited to perform an important work by Luigi Nono last month at the Villa Medici, I have been doing a lot of singing there too. I have rediscovered the pleasure of singing for people in informal settings, and I’ve done a couple of little pre-dinner mini-recitals of Monteverdi and other music from the library there, with accompaniment by arts director/composer colleague Martin Brody and some surprise guest performers – a medieval art historian fellow who just happens to be a violinist, for example!

It is a rare and wonderful way to live, for a necessarily limited time. I know that many of my colleagues have come back to their lives here recharged, reinvigorated and rested. I think this year is doing the same for me – the food program is spectacular, the city itself is endlessly inspiring, the ready, intelligent social company is both comforting and intellectually provocative.

In the middle of all this came her newest CD on Cedille, Rhapsodic Musings, a collection of solo violin music almost all composed within the last ten years: Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Lachen Verlernt (2002), Elliott Carter’s Four Lauds (1984-2000), Augusta Read Thomas’ Pulsar (2003), and John Zorn’s Goetia (2002). It’s an intensely involving and personal listen, definitely not simple showy fare, and the recording is close and crystalline. Here’s a short video of Jennifer talking about the genesis of the CD:

I recently had the chance to ask Jennifer a few questions via e-mail, and her answers follow:

S21: You’ve got quite a wide repertoire at your command, but when it’s come to recordings you haven’t gone with much in the way of the grand war-horses. The Szymanowski 1st is about as close as you’ve come, the rest delving back into lesser-known gems by Menotti, Martinu, Bartok… And then most recently lots of contemporary (and usually living) American and European composers. The pieces you choose — Higdon, Ruggles, Harrison, Salonen, Carter, Zorn — while often incredibly beautiful aren’t the stuff of easy crowd-pleasers. I get a bit of this feeling of you truly being taken deeply by something in each of these works, and bringing them to people almost like an excited kid shares their latest amazing discovery to their friends or parents. Am I getting warm here? …

JK: I just want to play music that I believe in!  This is true for music that is known or unknown, new or old.  When I play a piece, it means I will have lived with it in a very intimate and intense way for a long time and ultimately, I want to spend my life with music that I love and find meaningful.  If I discover a piece of music that I think is incredible but is not very well known, I do become fervently dedicated to it because I think it SHOULD be known to everyone and I want to share it with as many people as possible!  In the end, I don’t think I’m that different from the next person.  I’m just another member of society and I hope that if I find a piece of music to be compelling and interesting, then it will speak to other people as well.

S21:  These past few CDs you’ve gone from violin and orchestra, to violin and piano, to just solo violin. I know this can’t go much further (unless you toss the violin and just clap and sing!), but was that increasing intimacy and focus at all intentional? Does it feel any different when you make a CD where you know you’re responsible for every moment of sound on there?

JK: Everything about “Rhapsodic Musings” was intense and personal for me from the initial inspiration point for the program to the recording process to the actual compositions on this CD.  The idea for this CD came from a collective time of  shock and loss and I wanted to focus the CD into a personal  journey out of that collective experience.  During this same period of time, I saw the violin that one of my mentors, Felix Galimir played while he was alive.  Felix was a huge influence on me in so many ways especially because of the passionate relationship he had with the music that he worked on with the composers of his time which included Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.   When I played on Felix’s violin in the shop, I felt he was back with me because I heard him in that violin.  Violinists have very intense and intimate relationships with their instruments and it is almost impossible to separate the identity between violin and violinist because each lives in the other. I feel like my violin  is a part of me and I chose a solo violin program for “Rhapsodic Musings” because I wanted to express that personal relationship between violin and violinist.

Listening to solo violin in concert or recording means that every sound and gesture is intensified because of the nature of the focus on the one instrument.  I was inspired by each composer’s ability to expand upon the violin’s preconceived capacities.  The pieces on this CD really capture what the violin can do in everything from counterpoint, pitch, harmony and dynamic range to color.  Judith Sherman (my producer) and I wanted to capture that broader dynamic color palette but it also meant during the recording sessions, the microphones picked up every little sound like the strings sticking to my fingers when I lifted them to play another note!

After all of this, my next CD won’t be 4’33″!   I just finished recording Jennifer Higdon’s Singing Rooms with Bob Spano and Atlanta Symphony and Atlanta Symphony Chorus.  The piece uses huge forces with solo violin combined with full chorus and orchestra so I’m moving from small to big!

S21: I see that somewhere in the middle of all that intense study and practice with the violin, you actually received a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature! Do you feel some of that literary implulse in how you come to some of the work that most attracts you, and/or in how you approach and project a piece, or your own interpretation?

JK: I have always been drawn to literature and writing and I’ve always felt a strong connection between that art form and music.  Both have always created an organic relationship in me – literature can inspire musical programming ideas and music can create an impetus in me to read certain authors.  It’s all part of a larger cycle of where I find points of inspiration.

In college I would do exercises in analyzing one work through several different schools of literary criticism and sometimes I think that approach is similar to what I do as a performer.  As long as one’s “thesis” towards a work is logical and supported, one can make a valid “argument” or interpretation for a piece of music.  Ultimately, I do not believe that there is only one valid interpretation of a great work of music or literature.  The nature of great art means that there are a myriad of interpretations and those interpretations are always evolving.  From my experience as a writer, I feel an incredible empathy towards composers and I have great respect for their work and the courage it takes to create an individual work of art from a blank sheet of paper.

S21: Given your strong commitment to living composers, I expect there are some new pieces/commissions in the works? Care to dish on names and potential dates?

JK: I am very excited about a number of projects but I’ll try to limit myself to the ones that are “official”!  I launched “Bach and Beyond” this season to celebrate Bach’s 325th birthday in 2010.  I wanted to create a project exploring the significance of the Six Solo Sonatas and Partitas of Bach and I felt this was only possible by creating three programs in which Bach would begin and end each program.  I hope each program will strengthen the tie between Bach to our present time by traveling through solo violin works from the past to the very newest works of today which will be commissioned specially for this project.   But I did not want to create a single line towards the present and instead wanted to create a circular program that begins and ends with Bach because I wanted to also show how new compositions and voices of our present day change the way we perceive and listen (and play) Bach and music of the past.  Contemporary music creates a thread to music of the past and my idea of celebrating Bach is to understand the monumental influence his music has had 300 years later but to also understand that the composers of today influence how we perceive his music now.  The first program (for 09/10 and 10/11) consists of works ranging from Bach, Ysaye, Carter, Salonen and Saariaho with a new video commission for the Salonen by Tal Rosner.  The second program (11/12 and 12/13) will feature two commissioned works for solo violin written by Phil Kline and Anna Clyne in addition to Bach and Berio.  The third program will consist of music by Bach, Bartok, and a newly commissioned solo violin work by John Harbison.

Another confirmed project that I am very much looking forward to is a new work by Mark Grey for solo violin, chorus and chamber orchestra being written for me and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.  It will premiere in March 2011. My mother is originally from North Korea and was seven years old when the Korean War broke out.  My grandfather learned of the invasion (of N. Korea into S. Korea) literally the night before it happened.  This began three years of walking south for my grandparents and my mother and my aunts and uncles.  During the course of the war, my mother’s family walked down the entire length of the Korean peninsula.  As a child born and raised in the American Midwest, I was  far removed from any Korean community and the pull to assimilate was strong enough for me to disassociate from my Korean heritage and my family’s history.  It was when my mother fell ill in 2007 (she is fully recovered now) that I was overwhelmed with a sense of urgency to uncover my mother’s experiences, my family’s experiences and Korean literature, history and cultural history.

I first met Mark through his “Navajo Oratorio” and spoke with Mark about doing a project together because I was impressed by his abilities as a composer to work within the parameters of classical music (orchestra and chorus), be true to his voice and yet be able to give voice to another culture through his music. I wanted to have a work of art that could be a reference point for my own experience.  As a child, I always looked to music and literature to understand and distill my life and yet, I could not find translated Korean literature or even Korean-American literature.  I instead looked to Holocaust-Survivor writings and even second-generation Holocaust survivor writings as a way to understand some of the qualities that existed in my parents as war survivors.   And now, with Mark, he is writing the music which I felt I needed as a child and still need as an adult.  The philosophy behind the birth of this piece was about exploring the effects of war on generations removed from the actual conflict and confronting that which we all face citizens of this world – valuing and learning the experiences, cultures and heritages of our fellow human beings and acting accordingly.

S21: How’s hotel and airport life treating you? (I can always tell a great player by their schedule, and yours seems to have been particularly non-stop these past few months, with lots of hither-yon-and-back!) How do you keep your energy up and your musical focus clear through all this endless travel? Routines? Tricks? Major pet peeve?

JK: When I’m on the road, I think that it is the music itself that keeps my energy up.  And it’s always inspiring to meet people and musicians that I connect to.   In terms of keeping musical focus clear, I think musicians have a great responsibility to the composers we play (dead or alive!) so all of my energy goes towards working so that the performance can be only about the music-making and there is no separation between listening and playing and responding.  In concert, one always hopes to reach that magical place where the composer, the musicians, and the audience all become one entity in the music.  That’s what I work for as a performing musician and I live for those moments as an audience member.  Finding that focus to reach those moments  in concert can be a long process.  Playing concerts is probably the most tangible part of being a musician but I think that the longer journey to grow as a musician is the less tangible but more important part.  Each concert is a chance to share my belief in the music with other people but it is also part of a longer learning process.  And I’m actually most content when I am burrowed in the work process because it is a total immersion in discovering and exploring and understanding a composer and his/her music.  It is oftentimes a painful process but I actually enjoy being in that vulnerable place – I might feel completely ignorant and incapable of climbing that musical mountain but I am living in a space that opens me to seeing every possible path that can be taken.

I do find that taking time off from traveling and performing is important to me because I get to do the things I love — reading, spending time with friends, poring through scores and discovering new works and composers, going to concerts, opera and theatre.  I find inspiration from all these things and I also have the space to think creatively about programs and projects.

If I do have a pet peeve, it is delayed flights. The actual traveling part of being on the road is not my favorite activity – Spending hours in airports and airplanes is not my idea of fun and it takes time away from all the parts of life that I do like!

Austin’s episode is worth listening to just to hear him say, “I love me some Scelsi”.  You don’t hear that very often, but it’s true, oh so true.  Shanna talks a little in her episode about interesting experiences with composers, but the real value is in the seemingly endless list of resources she mentions if you are writing for flute, or are just thinking about writing for flute.

Listen to Austin’s interview here and Shanna’s here.  Subscribe to the podcast here.

Ensemble dal niente begins their season on Friday with what they are calling OKTOBERFest.  You can find all the details on their website.  How many groups are pairing Franco Donatoni with John Luther Adams, or Bach with Rihm, or Helmut Lachenmann one week and Arvo Pärt the next week?  They are doing it all in October – I wish I could be there!

Friday, October 2 – 7:30pm ($10/5)
Columbia College Concert Hall, 1014 S. Michigan Ave.

Sunday, October 4 – 3 pm ($5)
Sherwood Conservatory of Music at Columbia College, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

Sunday, October 18 – 2:00pm ($5)
Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, 4802 N. Broadway Ave.

Sunday, October 25 – 3:00pm (FREE!)
Preston Bradley Hall at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.

I am excited to say that this month on the podcast I am featuring all four members ETHEL. I was able to spend some time with the band before their performance at the Bang on a Can Marathon and would like to thank them for being so generous with their time. It was difficult to decide who should go first, so I’ve decided to go alphabetical by last name (brilliant, right?!), which means that we’ll begin with violinist, Cornelius Dufallo.

If you want to keep up with this series, I’d recommend subscribing in iTunes or through your blog-reader. Or, you can listen to this week’s episode now by clicking here.

Check back on July 16 (for violist, Ralph Farris), July 21 (for cellist, Dorothy Lawson), and July 26 (for violinist, Mary Rowell).

And before I go, I just want to mention that I’ve had a chance to listen to Cornelius’ new CD, Dream Streets, which you can find on iTunes or Amazon, and is well worth spending some time with. If you are into the whole amplified-violin-looping-thing then you’ll love this recording. He has an original voice in this genre and I really love that when I’m done listening I don’t feel like he was just showing off or trying to impress someone.