Travis Just
hi christian.
Christian Kesten
hi travis.
TJ
glad we could find a time, i guess it is late over there.
CK
well it's ok. i'm a bit exhausted from last preparations before leaving for a month, but i'm in good mood.
TJ
well what shall we talk about? what is the climate in the berlin new music world like these days?
CK
there are the big festivals like UltraSchall and MaerzMusik, they're still existing, people go there, but besides places like Tesla got closed and nobody really cared, there was no big protest against it. Money gets less and less. There are scenes which try to get acquainted with this "post-economic" situation, like the very vivid scene of Labor Sonor or ausland or similar places, no-money series, but a very good exchange. We started Labor Diskurs, a talk among musicians, improvisers, composers, also theorists, and it seemed there was a big need for that.
TJ
yes, I have heard about all of the closings. it seems quite difficult (from a distance). of course there are still so many artists so that is hopeful. Is Labor Diskurs an event at KuLe? who has been appearing there if so?
(ballhaus naunynstrasse should be mentioned as well...)
CK
Right, I was just thinking about Ballhaus... We were trying to do our annual "maulwerker performing music" at Ballhaus, since Tesla doesn't exist anymore (where it happened before). Now we're searching desperately for another place, and it's not easy. Right now, we don't know where it will happen, and July is coming soon… - Labor Diskurs was started by Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins and me plus Arthur Rother and Fernanda Farah. We had the desire to talk more theoretically about certain issues in the music which is played at Labor Sonor, and invited people from the "scene". It has a good resonance. After first more general discussions about topics like "the union of composer and performer", "notation and non-notation", etc., musicians introduced their works more specifically. So far Kai Fagaschinski, Burkhard Beins presented their works (in a talk), and a duo work of Andrea Neumann and Sabine Ercklentz has been discussed.
TJ
it's interesting how these topics and these scenes are so linked to issues of space. obviously one of the things that everyone was so excited about berlin was the abundance of space for work.
CK
that's maybe true. there are a lot of small no-budget places, yes.
TJ
do you find a different kind of work being presented in these venues (Labor Sonor, etc) in comparison to the larger festivals?
CK
definitely. on the one hand it's more "improvised" music [this term is discussed heavily at Labor Diskurs...], or "echtzeitmusik" (real time music), which is maybe a bit presented at MaerzMusik, but not at all at other festivals. Or it's simply called "Jazz" like in donaueschingen. at labor sonor and ausland, we also try to present performance art or art which is between music and performance art, or works for music and video etc.
TJ
do you find that your work as a composer is separate from the work as a performer (or organizer)? do the processes interact at all?
CK
yes they do interact. sometimes it's weird being both or all of this. but being also a "composer-performer", meaning, performing my own work, or composing for myself, has its certain qualities. only composing can be quite theoretical. performing brings it down to earth.
how is that for yourself?
TJ
similar. sometimes one takes precedence out of necessity. an interesting thing about at least some of your music is the emphasis of the body. of course since you are such a compelling performer, the music is related closely to your, CK's, body. but one of the things I love about the pieces is that they work for other performers as well.
CK
interesting. i always try to make them performable for others. although they are maybe developed through my body (tongue piece, breath piece), i try to fix them in scores, which are readable and performable for everyone. kai fagaschinski for example is the opposite: he only composes for himself, his sounds are his own, and he never tells any composer how he creates his amazing clarinet sounds.
it depends if you understand yourself as a "band" or as a score composer, i'd say.
TJ
yes there is this intense involvement with one's own physicality, certainly in improvisation. when that translates to a score in your case there seems to be a real intimacy present in the music. maybe another way of putting it is that your willingness to see the performing body as one that goes out and lives a life (has a drink, sneezes, gets into bed) after the performance is a different approach to other composers that work with concepts of 'performance'.
CK
yes i see a necessity to keep it permeable.
TJ
permeable in what sense?
CK
i mean life and art can interpenetrate.
for me it's as you already noticed the body which makes it necessary to integrate different ways of perception - acoustic, visual, spatial, physical … - in one piece or one work.
TJ
and these ways of perception are then put through the prism of the body?
CK
yes, one perceives through the body. the listener/spectator as well as the performer.
TJ
yes and this feels like a difference to me, for example, with cage. where the physicality of the performer is de-emphasized in favor of abstraction. your music still retains this abstraction but engages the meat-muscle-blood of the body in a way that is unique I think.
conducted online, 2.27.08
2.11.2008
Jennifer Walshe interview 2.6.2008
Travis Just
good morning jenny
Jennifer Walshe
ok!
TJ
this is a continuing adventure getting this to work
JW
well seems to be going now!
TJ
so...what shall we talk about? i guess a good first question last time was: is there anything that is on your mind (musically or otherwise) these days?
JW
well at the moment i'm in the midst of this big alter ego project, so i suppose what is on my mind a lot is trying to get away from habit.
TJ
yeah, it's interesting that you created 11 non-existent entities to get away from habit. (can we refer to them without giving anything away?)
JW
yes we can refer to them, that's fine. i think part of the issue for me is that i think even with free improvisation (or sometimes especially with free improvisation) there is this problem of falling back on habits, of tricks to get out of certain situations, of certain sounds and sound spaces....
TJ
how do you differentiate those habits from the compositional ones? is it just a question of time/consideration?
JW
what do you mean?
TJ
well there are physical/reactive habits in improvisation and composition doesn't happen on the fly (for me anyway...)
JW
yes, certainly i think that there are physical/reactive habits in improvisation, i also think that when you play with different people more and more you discover that there are compositional or what you might even call structural habits, or developmental habits to do with the material that everyone has, and so i can understand from this perspective why cage was against improvisation, because while opening yourself up to everything allows for the possibility of something you've never heard/done before, it also allows for the possibility of you to keep doing what is comfortable/habitual.
TJ
that's true, the interesting thing for me in that was the pseudo-moral stance that came with it. I mean it's a very human thing to do and it isn't clear that one way of working (composition/improvisation) results in greater changeability. But we don't have to turn this into a “C” vs. “I” discussion...although you are uniquely qualified for such a discussion...
JW
no, i think i share your view also, in that when i first read cage talking about improvisation i thought the same thing, that it seemed a bit patronizing or moralist, but then after a few years of improvising and getting to understand more how the process happens in the moment you start to realize that it is a trap that is sometimes easy to fall into. and also i must say that going to performances of cage's music can also cause this problem - if you leave your score open to chance, if you offer the performer that power, you can often end up with the exact same problem. i've sat through many a cage concert where the performance had the same quality as a bad improvisation concert....
TJ
that's true. I sometimes feel that way listening to Sciarrino or something, even when I like the music.
JW
why do you say sciarrino?
TJ
dunno, a widely performed modern composer with an established performance practice I suppose?
could have been anyone, even myself
JW
i see what you mean. at the moment i'm listening to sciarrino's lohengrin and i just think it is stunningly beautiful...
TJ
what is it that appeals to you?
JW
in the lohengrin i think it's this sense of being inside somebody's head. it's this opera that seems utterly private and close to you.
TJ
that's a unique quality for something that uses such large forces and that kind of cultural arena.
what do you think about the term "opera", you've used it a couple of times.
JW
i think opera is a grand term, and i mean that in the sense of largesse. when you go to an opera at an opera house, you feel like you're watching a hollywood film - they have all the money, power, talent to put on this huge show. but because of the nature of the opera house, the performers are usually miles away from you (i am presuming here i'm in the cheap seats). and so there is this distance. and i know they can try and get around that with video, amplification, etc, but what i like about the lohengrin is that it feels close to you, which is a very special quality. opera i think is an interesting term. i've written 3 operas [XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, set phasers on kill! and Motel Abandon], and i call them all operas, but sometimes i do think are they better termed as music theatre pieces...
TJ
yeah, this difference I'm not sure has been made clear here in the States.
JW
where do you draw the line though? when i wrote the barbie opera [XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!I], i was very consciously placing it in the context of opera history. it's a marionette opera - mozart and haydn wrote them - it has characters, a story with a clear classical narrative arc, is in three acts. and of course it takes that and messes around with it by using barbie dolls instead of singers, but it was important to me to think of it as an opera rather than a music theatre piece.
TJ
yeah, sometimes the terminology doesn't reflect the ideas we're working on at the moment of course. There is something about the term 'opera' that just screams "the Past" to me though. And I say this as I am working on my first. It was hard to decide to use that word for me.
JW
that's exactly why i wanted to use it, because it is so loaded. and that's why i have pieces which i call operas and other pieces which i call music theatre pieces. when it's an opera, it knows it's "An Opera" and it's aware of what's going on by being called an opera, and dealing with the past. because if you run away completely from opera, to me that seems a little like a film-maker running away from film and calling all their films videos. also maybe on one level it has to do with who commissions it and where it is being performed - the second opera i wrote [set phasers on kill!] was commissioned by an opera production company and premiered in the hamburg staatsoper, so there was never any question at any point about whether it was an opera or not. we had the full opera house treatment with all the trimmings (people to help us get dressed). but the opera i wrote after that [Motel Abandon] was for three people and it was dogme 95 style opera in an apartment in berlin, and it was important to me to still call it opera. otherwise it's like saying that you can never write one, that it opera is always in the hands of these massively-funded organizations.
TJ
that's true. i mean it's already an act of outrageous insolence in our culture to call oneself an artist. the decision to define these terms for ourselves as composers isn't that much further along that road.
JW
i think you just have to decide to use the terms and not let them be taken away from you.
TJ
how does the music-theater idea work itself into your music? does that mean something in particular in your thinking?
JW
music theatre is just how i think. the cage quote which i use again and again is "what next? theatre. because we have eyes as well as ears." you can't divorce the theatrical/scenic element from the sonic in a performance unless you are brought to the theatre in a hermetically sealed car, manage not to see/hear/smell/touch anything prior to the concert, and then leave immediately without even listening to the applause. you listen to mahler 2 on CD, and it's great. then you go to carnegie hall and you see all the brass players shuffling and re-arranging themselves just before they come crashing in with a huge chord, you see the choir sitting there all quietly waiting til they come in, and it's amazing and exciting. i think a lot of the interest in the theatrical and visual elements comes from two sources for me - one is that my mother is a writer, and when i was growing up she considered beckett, pinter, tennessee williams and other playwrights an important part of my education. another important factor for me is that i was a trumpet player for a long time, and when you play in an orchestras a lot, you look around constantly, you are very aware of what is going on visually. you know when people are nervous, you know when they're about to play loud or soft, you know when they haven't practiced, you know when they are nailing it, you know how different it can sound in heldenleben when the first violinist is having an affair with the first horn.
TJ
right, the difference seems to be that now we work with those ideas directly in the score. instead of having those be (probably undesired) accidents or exceptions, they become specified material that is written in or given explicit space. At some point, something changed.
JW
i make a differentiation in my work - there's the type of music theatre pieces where people are doing certain theatrical things, along a continuum from explicitly playing a role through to perhaps making simple scenic gestures like building blocks in between phrases. then there's instrumental theatre, which is very involved with the performers being performers. and so i end up in these situations where i write scores which are very complex, where the notation of everything from breathing, gesture, when the pages of the part are turned, when a brass-player releases their spit valve is all locked down. [they could laugh smile]
TJ
i guess one question is, what keeps it music as opposed to performance or text? does it matter even? at what point could you simply take away the brass-player and still have a music-piece?
i mean, musicians aren't the best actors always...
JW
i'll answer your questions in order - the first one is what i think people find very problematic. is it still music if the performer doesn't play for a while and reads text? it is if it's called music. is it still music if the trombonist makes air sounds instead of pitched sounds? is it still music if the piano is prepared? i think if you call it music it is, otherwise we'd all be writing for classical ensembles, with no microphones, pitched and traditionally notated music. with the instrumental theatre pieces i write, i'm not trying to get the performers to act, which gets around the problem of musicians not always being actors. i'm just bringing gestures that are a part of performing for them into the piece. it's very normal when you're a brass player to position and re-position your mutes on the floor next to your chair. but when you get someone to do that over and over in a performance, it becomes something else.
TJ
one of the things that I find so interesting in your work is that there isn't an insistence that all of the music necessarily have a sonic element. meaning it can be the re-positioning of mutes for 2 minutes or something. and yet, there is never a question to me that it is an extraordinarily musical situation. (and of course there are all of those pieces that DO work with pitches/rhythms/etc...)
JW
well it makes sense to me that a musician will reposition mutes, and that watching that is a musical experience!
TJ
i don't know if this will be off-topic, or interesting, but how are you finding it spending all of this time in...perhaps even becoming a resident of, New York and the States? Of course you studied in Chicago, but a great deal of your work has been over in Europe.
JW
it's interesting being here. i see the same people i see in europe, everybody seems to pass through new york at one time or another. the funding structure is very different to europe, and a lot of people here have to be very focused on getting their work out because it's not quite as easy as europe (not that its easy anywhere). there's good and bad things about this...
TJ
i suppose 'europe' is a bit reductive, it's a big place...
JW
it is, and it's very different wherever you go...
i mean, how do you find the shuttling back and forth between berlin and here? what would make you go/stay?
TJ
it's hard to say for myself. i go where there is work and interest. right now there are more opportunities for me in new york so I am here more. the lifestyle question is another thing. also, it's hard to be a perpetual outsider for me, sometimes I just really really want to talk about the Mets.
do you find a different audience or different set of expectations for your work? from the musicians even?
JW
i can understand the not wanting to feel like an outsider! i think for me i just want space to work, and that involves a lot of factors. at the moment it's great living here, and in doing concerts in the city it's nice not to have to travel or get on a plane to do them. but i think wherever i go it's the same community to a large extent - there are always new people that you meet but you end up working with people that you will have something in common with, and that usually means that it's part of the community. we're not such a huge global community that everyone is still hidden, and that's great because you always feels connected. i think i would have to go to somewhere very remote like patagonia or borneo to feel that i was meeting people i didn't already know, hadn't already heard their music or even played with them. especially now with the web people have more and more access to what is going on.
TJ
that's true, but there is something different between the web-world and actually being on the street, dealing with the venues, rehearsing with musicians from different places. I find that places are actually quite different and that the world isn't as flat as it's supposed to be. I mean loading into a gig in New York is quite different than loading in to a gig in Berlin. This maybe ties into the extra-sonic elements you were describing earlier in reference to music-theater.
JW
you're right, it is completely different, and the people are different and the streets, the smells, the light are completely different. i find here in new york there are lots of possibilities to play, often for little or no money, and that does change the way i work. it's quite liberating because you view the experience differently - i view it as a chance to try out new works, to try new things, experiment. i don't mean that i don't give time and thought to what i'm doing, but instead that the gigs can become absorbed into the larger compositional process. most of the concerts i do in europe are of commissions, where everything needs to be very polished and so you do not try out things in the incubative phase, you want the end product. incidentally, i was talking to a friend last night who told me a story about a swiss composer who was here on a grant booking a gig in philadelphia at a place that wasn't actually a proper venue - they had a fake web site which made them sound like a university-affiliated institute. he was saying how if the swiss composer had lived in philly or had friends there he would have known what the story was. instead he turned up and was completely shocked to be playing for 5 people in an unheated garage in the middle of winter. so knowing the context is always important!
TJ
i think i might know those guys in philly...context is indeed important
JW
at the end of the day you just want to be somewhere with space and time to work, with an environment that is conducive to that...
TJ
yeah, well we're glad to have you on our turf for a while.
thanks very much for the conversation
JW
thanks to you too!
conducted online, 2.6.2008
good morning jenny
Jennifer Walshe
ok!
TJ
this is a continuing adventure getting this to work
JW
well seems to be going now!
TJ
so...what shall we talk about? i guess a good first question last time was: is there anything that is on your mind (musically or otherwise) these days?
JW
well at the moment i'm in the midst of this big alter ego project, so i suppose what is on my mind a lot is trying to get away from habit.
TJ
yeah, it's interesting that you created 11 non-existent entities to get away from habit. (can we refer to them without giving anything away?)
JW
yes we can refer to them, that's fine. i think part of the issue for me is that i think even with free improvisation (or sometimes especially with free improvisation) there is this problem of falling back on habits, of tricks to get out of certain situations, of certain sounds and sound spaces....
TJ
how do you differentiate those habits from the compositional ones? is it just a question of time/consideration?
JW
what do you mean?
TJ
well there are physical/reactive habits in improvisation and composition doesn't happen on the fly (for me anyway...)
JW
yes, certainly i think that there are physical/reactive habits in improvisation, i also think that when you play with different people more and more you discover that there are compositional or what you might even call structural habits, or developmental habits to do with the material that everyone has, and so i can understand from this perspective why cage was against improvisation, because while opening yourself up to everything allows for the possibility of something you've never heard/done before, it also allows for the possibility of you to keep doing what is comfortable/habitual.
TJ
that's true, the interesting thing for me in that was the pseudo-moral stance that came with it. I mean it's a very human thing to do and it isn't clear that one way of working (composition/improvisation) results in greater changeability. But we don't have to turn this into a “C” vs. “I” discussion...although you are uniquely qualified for such a discussion...
JW
no, i think i share your view also, in that when i first read cage talking about improvisation i thought the same thing, that it seemed a bit patronizing or moralist, but then after a few years of improvising and getting to understand more how the process happens in the moment you start to realize that it is a trap that is sometimes easy to fall into. and also i must say that going to performances of cage's music can also cause this problem - if you leave your score open to chance, if you offer the performer that power, you can often end up with the exact same problem. i've sat through many a cage concert where the performance had the same quality as a bad improvisation concert....
TJ
that's true. I sometimes feel that way listening to Sciarrino or something, even when I like the music.
JW
why do you say sciarrino?
TJ
dunno, a widely performed modern composer with an established performance practice I suppose?
could have been anyone, even myself
JW
i see what you mean. at the moment i'm listening to sciarrino's lohengrin and i just think it is stunningly beautiful...
TJ
what is it that appeals to you?
JW
in the lohengrin i think it's this sense of being inside somebody's head. it's this opera that seems utterly private and close to you.
TJ
that's a unique quality for something that uses such large forces and that kind of cultural arena.
what do you think about the term "opera", you've used it a couple of times.
JW
i think opera is a grand term, and i mean that in the sense of largesse. when you go to an opera at an opera house, you feel like you're watching a hollywood film - they have all the money, power, talent to put on this huge show. but because of the nature of the opera house, the performers are usually miles away from you (i am presuming here i'm in the cheap seats). and so there is this distance. and i know they can try and get around that with video, amplification, etc, but what i like about the lohengrin is that it feels close to you, which is a very special quality. opera i think is an interesting term. i've written 3 operas [XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, set phasers on kill! and Motel Abandon], and i call them all operas, but sometimes i do think are they better termed as music theatre pieces...
TJ
yeah, this difference I'm not sure has been made clear here in the States.
JW
where do you draw the line though? when i wrote the barbie opera [XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!I], i was very consciously placing it in the context of opera history. it's a marionette opera - mozart and haydn wrote them - it has characters, a story with a clear classical narrative arc, is in three acts. and of course it takes that and messes around with it by using barbie dolls instead of singers, but it was important to me to think of it as an opera rather than a music theatre piece.
TJ
yeah, sometimes the terminology doesn't reflect the ideas we're working on at the moment of course. There is something about the term 'opera' that just screams "the Past" to me though. And I say this as I am working on my first. It was hard to decide to use that word for me.
JW
that's exactly why i wanted to use it, because it is so loaded. and that's why i have pieces which i call operas and other pieces which i call music theatre pieces. when it's an opera, it knows it's "An Opera" and it's aware of what's going on by being called an opera, and dealing with the past. because if you run away completely from opera, to me that seems a little like a film-maker running away from film and calling all their films videos. also maybe on one level it has to do with who commissions it and where it is being performed - the second opera i wrote [set phasers on kill!] was commissioned by an opera production company and premiered in the hamburg staatsoper, so there was never any question at any point about whether it was an opera or not. we had the full opera house treatment with all the trimmings (people to help us get dressed). but the opera i wrote after that [Motel Abandon] was for three people and it was dogme 95 style opera in an apartment in berlin, and it was important to me to still call it opera. otherwise it's like saying that you can never write one, that it opera is always in the hands of these massively-funded organizations.
TJ
that's true. i mean it's already an act of outrageous insolence in our culture to call oneself an artist. the decision to define these terms for ourselves as composers isn't that much further along that road.
JW
i think you just have to decide to use the terms and not let them be taken away from you.
TJ
how does the music-theater idea work itself into your music? does that mean something in particular in your thinking?
JW
music theatre is just how i think. the cage quote which i use again and again is "what next? theatre. because we have eyes as well as ears." you can't divorce the theatrical/scenic element from the sonic in a performance unless you are brought to the theatre in a hermetically sealed car, manage not to see/hear/smell/touch anything prior to the concert, and then leave immediately without even listening to the applause. you listen to mahler 2 on CD, and it's great. then you go to carnegie hall and you see all the brass players shuffling and re-arranging themselves just before they come crashing in with a huge chord, you see the choir sitting there all quietly waiting til they come in, and it's amazing and exciting. i think a lot of the interest in the theatrical and visual elements comes from two sources for me - one is that my mother is a writer, and when i was growing up she considered beckett, pinter, tennessee williams and other playwrights an important part of my education. another important factor for me is that i was a trumpet player for a long time, and when you play in an orchestras a lot, you look around constantly, you are very aware of what is going on visually. you know when people are nervous, you know when they're about to play loud or soft, you know when they haven't practiced, you know when they are nailing it, you know how different it can sound in heldenleben when the first violinist is having an affair with the first horn.
TJ
right, the difference seems to be that now we work with those ideas directly in the score. instead of having those be (probably undesired) accidents or exceptions, they become specified material that is written in or given explicit space. At some point, something changed.
JW
i make a differentiation in my work - there's the type of music theatre pieces where people are doing certain theatrical things, along a continuum from explicitly playing a role through to perhaps making simple scenic gestures like building blocks in between phrases. then there's instrumental theatre, which is very involved with the performers being performers. and so i end up in these situations where i write scores which are very complex, where the notation of everything from breathing, gesture, when the pages of the part are turned, when a brass-player releases their spit valve is all locked down. [they could laugh smile]
TJ
i guess one question is, what keeps it music as opposed to performance or text? does it matter even? at what point could you simply take away the brass-player and still have a music-piece?
i mean, musicians aren't the best actors always...
JW
i'll answer your questions in order - the first one is what i think people find very problematic. is it still music if the performer doesn't play for a while and reads text? it is if it's called music. is it still music if the trombonist makes air sounds instead of pitched sounds? is it still music if the piano is prepared? i think if you call it music it is, otherwise we'd all be writing for classical ensembles, with no microphones, pitched and traditionally notated music. with the instrumental theatre pieces i write, i'm not trying to get the performers to act, which gets around the problem of musicians not always being actors. i'm just bringing gestures that are a part of performing for them into the piece. it's very normal when you're a brass player to position and re-position your mutes on the floor next to your chair. but when you get someone to do that over and over in a performance, it becomes something else.
TJ
one of the things that I find so interesting in your work is that there isn't an insistence that all of the music necessarily have a sonic element. meaning it can be the re-positioning of mutes for 2 minutes or something. and yet, there is never a question to me that it is an extraordinarily musical situation. (and of course there are all of those pieces that DO work with pitches/rhythms/etc...)
JW
well it makes sense to me that a musician will reposition mutes, and that watching that is a musical experience!
TJ
i don't know if this will be off-topic, or interesting, but how are you finding it spending all of this time in...perhaps even becoming a resident of, New York and the States? Of course you studied in Chicago, but a great deal of your work has been over in Europe.
JW
it's interesting being here. i see the same people i see in europe, everybody seems to pass through new york at one time or another. the funding structure is very different to europe, and a lot of people here have to be very focused on getting their work out because it's not quite as easy as europe (not that its easy anywhere). there's good and bad things about this...
TJ
i suppose 'europe' is a bit reductive, it's a big place...
JW
it is, and it's very different wherever you go...
i mean, how do you find the shuttling back and forth between berlin and here? what would make you go/stay?
TJ
it's hard to say for myself. i go where there is work and interest. right now there are more opportunities for me in new york so I am here more. the lifestyle question is another thing. also, it's hard to be a perpetual outsider for me, sometimes I just really really want to talk about the Mets.
do you find a different audience or different set of expectations for your work? from the musicians even?
JW
i can understand the not wanting to feel like an outsider! i think for me i just want space to work, and that involves a lot of factors. at the moment it's great living here, and in doing concerts in the city it's nice not to have to travel or get on a plane to do them. but i think wherever i go it's the same community to a large extent - there are always new people that you meet but you end up working with people that you will have something in common with, and that usually means that it's part of the community. we're not such a huge global community that everyone is still hidden, and that's great because you always feels connected. i think i would have to go to somewhere very remote like patagonia or borneo to feel that i was meeting people i didn't already know, hadn't already heard their music or even played with them. especially now with the web people have more and more access to what is going on.
TJ
that's true, but there is something different between the web-world and actually being on the street, dealing with the venues, rehearsing with musicians from different places. I find that places are actually quite different and that the world isn't as flat as it's supposed to be. I mean loading into a gig in New York is quite different than loading in to a gig in Berlin. This maybe ties into the extra-sonic elements you were describing earlier in reference to music-theater.
JW
you're right, it is completely different, and the people are different and the streets, the smells, the light are completely different. i find here in new york there are lots of possibilities to play, often for little or no money, and that does change the way i work. it's quite liberating because you view the experience differently - i view it as a chance to try out new works, to try new things, experiment. i don't mean that i don't give time and thought to what i'm doing, but instead that the gigs can become absorbed into the larger compositional process. most of the concerts i do in europe are of commissions, where everything needs to be very polished and so you do not try out things in the incubative phase, you want the end product. incidentally, i was talking to a friend last night who told me a story about a swiss composer who was here on a grant booking a gig in philadelphia at a place that wasn't actually a proper venue - they had a fake web site which made them sound like a university-affiliated institute. he was saying how if the swiss composer had lived in philly or had friends there he would have known what the story was. instead he turned up and was completely shocked to be playing for 5 people in an unheated garage in the middle of winter. so knowing the context is always important!
TJ
i think i might know those guys in philly...context is indeed important
JW
at the end of the day you just want to be somewhere with space and time to work, with an environment that is conducive to that...
TJ
yeah, well we're glad to have you on our turf for a while.
thanks very much for the conversation
JW
thanks to you too!
conducted online, 2.6.2008
1.13.2008
Michael Pisaro interview 1.13.2008
Object Collection performed nachtstimmung with Michael Pisaro Friday 1/25, 10pm at the Ontological Theater as a part of the Experimental Music series.
------------------------
Michael Pisaro
OK, I'm online.
Travis Just
so now that that is sorted out we can have a technologically mediated human-interface (conversation)
MP
I'm ready for that, I think.
TJ
so where should we begin...? any thoughts music or otherwise that have been on your mind recently?
MP
Hmm. Let's see. I've been starting to acquaint myself with the vast network of bedroom experimental-pop composers in LA. Maybe there's something like that in NY as well?
TJ
quite a lot actually. are you finding affinities with their work? or perhaps their methods (social, organizational)?
MP
I of course learned about all this through my students. And at first it was the network itself, in its quasi-conspiracy formation that fascinated me. But in the meantime, I've found a fair amount of interesting music there, and some really great music. Sometimes I wonder if this is where experimental music is going now.
TJ
the network has a real allure of course. i guess one question would be experimental music in what sense...most of my contemporaries are drifting into bands of some sort or another if they continue doing music at all.
MP
I mean experimental music as a network that does not try too hard to articulate what it’s doing before it does it. I should immediately say that what's most encouraging about this is the sense that there are many such networks, operating more or less independently, unaware of their (cumulative, additive) power. We'll see.
TJ
this is true, though at some point the product needs to be addressed I think, not just the method. i guess there is a parallel to political systems/resistances that are displaced and in theory have a cumulative power. but I wonder. where is that cumulative power, i've hardly seen it realized in a tangible way. sometimes it feels a bit 'pie in the sky when you die'.
what i mean is what if we've all just been successfully fractured/splintered.
MP
Or maybe we just have to imagine other ways of being together?
TJ
perhaps.
MP
Having said all this, it's probably clear that as a composer, I remain dedicated to the possibilities of live performance. That's not a virtual community (even if its a small one).
TJ
yes, that seems to be something about composers. a reliance on live performance, or the construction of fixed tape pieces (we need a new contemporary term for 'tape pieces'...) that retain the quality of a live performance.
an object-quality perhaps?
MP
Do you think a live performance produces an object quality, or did I misunderstand? I'd say it disperses this quality. A good live performance is more about subjectivity, I think.
TJ
well my definitions are never accurate, but I'd say it allows for the audience members to engage the work in unique ways, that is, it is an unobtrusive object that can be observed. but that is all after brecht, like everything.
MP
george brecht you mean? (sorry I know you mean the other one.)
TJ
ha, yes. well either I suppose in different epochal ways.
MP
Concerning 'product', I don't in any sense have an overview of what's going on. I'm sure there's a lot of unconsidered under-the-covers ramblings and puerile teen-folk. But that's not all. I allow myself the luxury of liking what I like, wherever it comes from. Don't you get the feeling that there is a lot of interesting music out there that you'd like to know more about? I haven't felt that for a while.
TJ
well I don't know about too far back in an actual personal/visceral way. I do think that this is an incredibly rich and varied artistic time right now. you won't get any 60's/70's/80's nostalgia from me. (the hits of the....).
do you think this is a new climate?
MP
No. I think it's been around a while in a semi-frozen state and that it's taking a long time to thaw.
TJ
that's interesting, so when do you see this thaw as having begun? or can you place a moment when you felt a critical mass?
MP
As I think I've told you before, I think people your age and younger are responsible. Many of you seem to have a healthier mistrust of authority then people of my generation did. And many of you are acting on it. It's incredible to think about how many concert series and performance venues, etc. have sprung up in the last 5 or 6 years.
TJ
well I can't say beyond my own experience, but there just don't seem to be any other options. if you want the music to happen, that's how it has to happen. was this not the case further back do you think?
MP
Just thinking about my time in school and in my twenties, the modus operandi seemed to be to wait until Rostropovich commissioned you. If this did not happen before you were 30, you became a stockbroker or a professor.
TJ
well the stockbroker/professor model holds for my generation too. there aren't financial opportunities in this line of work.
MP
Maybe we don't see them yet (the financial opportunities). However, and this I know is presumptuous for me to say, but the poverty aesthetic seems to be about the healthiest and most artistically satisfying way of continuing. I'm thinking, for instance, about how many great films James Benning has made -- where his sum total budget for all his films is but a fraction of a single standard hollywood flick.
TJ
well sure, but we all still have to make rent. that said, I think this is a perfectly fine way to operate. there are a couple of problems that enter into it however such as the glamourization of a lack of means (artistic-production means anyway) and an establishment of that m.o. which is a blanket permit for institutions/governments to not support artwork. since the performance world will almost certainly never experience a market-boom like the visual art world did, this creates a tough climate. there was a nice john jasperse piece that dealt with this last year. (misuse liable to prosecution)
MP
You're right. One should not idealize the methods. If we could figure out a way to earn or steal enough money we'd be better off. Maybe that's where this growing network comes in. Could that be an alternate economy of some kind?
TJ
hard to say. while I am excited by all of the band-postpop activity I see, I think most of them would be quite happy to be picked up by warner brothers. and i fear a co-opting of those methods (or at least the image of those methods) by, oh i don't know, radiohead.
and of course what about those of us who don't have guitars or 3-minute songs, noisy or otherwise?
MP
I suppose I harbor some kind of a dream that one day the newest 10-hour piece by Manfred Werder will enter the top 40 (as we used to call it). strange things have happened.
TJ
but never that strange...
MP
"God Save the Queen, she ain't no human bein', we love our queen." OK, that's a clichéd reference. But: Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Merce Cunningham, Sun Ra all made it work, no? We're talking about new methods of political organization and I feel I'm getting out of my depth, theoretically. Let's keep going and see what happens.
Maybe you know one of Deleuze's last articles about societies of control : which says more about all this than I ever could. (Postscript on Control Societies)
TJ
yes but i wonder about the aesthetic application of this. does it mean something that composers can't talk about music for more than 2 minutes without getting into bands and guitars? do we just want to be a part of a thriving culture? does that culture have any legitimate interest in music that uses different reference points?
MP
I have no problem with bands, but haven't been in one (unless that's what you call wandelweiser) for about 30 years. but, no, I agree with you. it's good to keep the options open ... writing two hour pieces for non-bands (even non-musicians) ... insisting that this is possible (and important and enjoyable) too.
TJ
i guess i should try and tie this in to what we will be doing in a couple of weeks. what are your thoughts on the piece you are working on for the 25th?
MP
I'm thinking a lot about the details now, since I'm finishing the piece. In general it's something like an hour and half of sustained murmuring.
TJ
vocal and otherwise I think, yes? there is something about murmuring that attracts me too, what is it about it that is interesting for you?
MP
Another word for murmuring might be silence: I love these silences that are full of sound -- something that seems to lie on the border between the all or the nothing (as if you could tip from one to the other with passing any of the stages between).
TJ
does this apply to the edge of rhetorical content as well?
MP
rhetorical content? do you mean the words I'm using or something else?
TJ
yes, the presence (or near-presence) of meaning, of linguistic content.
MP
OK. Oswald Egger says that in literature, in order to have silence, you have to fill the page (or the time) with words. There's so much in one of his works that you find yourself adrift in the sea of words, and the content (or meaning) is curiously, profoundly, beautifully empty.
TJ
there is something about the physical actuality of murmuring that renders some of these words unintelligible of course. the method of production blurs what might otherwise be a stable text. is this an element of your work?
MP
Yes, absolutely. The half-said is important to me. Mal vu mal dit.
TJ
is there an equivalent in the instrumental parts as well? or perhaps a parallel between notation and performance?
MP
Yes. The intrumental parts are more indicated, hinted at, suggested than truly given. Whatever it is that I want to happen, will take place below (or beyond) the level of notation. There is therefore a danger in giving too much information.
TJ
how do you negotiate things like precision and accuracy (either in this work or in general)? both in methods of sound production (or action/text etc..) and in relation to form?
MP
I'm not worried about either precision or accuracy (strange as this may sound). I want to give very strong suggestions for how something might be, and then see what develops when we start to play it.
TJ
both in individual performance methods and the piece as a whole?
MP
yes, both, more or less. of course, I write notes. give timings. take care that the thing is shaped in some way. select words, instruments, staging. you know, composition. but all of this is for me like a well-prepared canvas, waiting for color. sometimes I think this is the way things have always been. for Ockeghem: (who sings?) for Beethoven: (who plays?)
TJ
and for you, how would you phrase that question? "who ____?"
MP
who is there.
TJ
this is the strategy that perhaps does relate to bands and improvisers. i remember talking to jürg frey and he was so fascinated that people my age were so involved in improvisation as a matter-of-course. the old battles of composition vs. improvisation just seemed to not apply anymore (at least outside of the grant arenas).
MP
I think I know what you mean. I've been thinking a lot about where our work is. It's the sum of what we do isn't it? The decision to write something or not (or to find something in between). The decisions about when, where, who and how to make music.
There is a difference between having a score and not of course, (just look at the difference between the things that Radu does in the two realms), but I don't see this as an ideological question.
TJ
yeah the ideology question is (hopefully) exhausted. though I understand the suspicion each side had, it should be over now. i mean who has the time for those arguments when there is so much to be done?
MP
There's no substitute for listening. I think that this ideology was a way of not listening.
TJ
yeah. well in honor of one of our themes today I am off to earn some scratch.
thanks so much for your time.
MP
good luck. nice talking with you. look forward to seeing you soon!
conducted online 01.13.2008
------------------------
Michael Pisaro
OK, I'm online.
Travis Just
so now that that is sorted out we can have a technologically mediated human-interface (conversation)
MP
I'm ready for that, I think.
TJ
so where should we begin...? any thoughts music or otherwise that have been on your mind recently?
MP
Hmm. Let's see. I've been starting to acquaint myself with the vast network of bedroom experimental-pop composers in LA. Maybe there's something like that in NY as well?
TJ
quite a lot actually. are you finding affinities with their work? or perhaps their methods (social, organizational)?
MP
I of course learned about all this through my students. And at first it was the network itself, in its quasi-conspiracy formation that fascinated me. But in the meantime, I've found a fair amount of interesting music there, and some really great music. Sometimes I wonder if this is where experimental music is going now.
TJ
the network has a real allure of course. i guess one question would be experimental music in what sense...most of my contemporaries are drifting into bands of some sort or another if they continue doing music at all.
MP
I mean experimental music as a network that does not try too hard to articulate what it’s doing before it does it. I should immediately say that what's most encouraging about this is the sense that there are many such networks, operating more or less independently, unaware of their (cumulative, additive) power. We'll see.
TJ
this is true, though at some point the product needs to be addressed I think, not just the method. i guess there is a parallel to political systems/resistances that are displaced and in theory have a cumulative power. but I wonder. where is that cumulative power, i've hardly seen it realized in a tangible way. sometimes it feels a bit 'pie in the sky when you die'.
what i mean is what if we've all just been successfully fractured/splintered.
MP
Or maybe we just have to imagine other ways of being together?
TJ
perhaps.
MP
Having said all this, it's probably clear that as a composer, I remain dedicated to the possibilities of live performance. That's not a virtual community (even if its a small one).
TJ
yes, that seems to be something about composers. a reliance on live performance, or the construction of fixed tape pieces (we need a new contemporary term for 'tape pieces'...) that retain the quality of a live performance.
an object-quality perhaps?
MP
Do you think a live performance produces an object quality, or did I misunderstand? I'd say it disperses this quality. A good live performance is more about subjectivity, I think.
TJ
well my definitions are never accurate, but I'd say it allows for the audience members to engage the work in unique ways, that is, it is an unobtrusive object that can be observed. but that is all after brecht, like everything.
MP
george brecht you mean? (sorry I know you mean the other one.)
TJ
ha, yes. well either I suppose in different epochal ways.
MP
Concerning 'product', I don't in any sense have an overview of what's going on. I'm sure there's a lot of unconsidered under-the-covers ramblings and puerile teen-folk. But that's not all. I allow myself the luxury of liking what I like, wherever it comes from. Don't you get the feeling that there is a lot of interesting music out there that you'd like to know more about? I haven't felt that for a while.
TJ
well I don't know about too far back in an actual personal/visceral way. I do think that this is an incredibly rich and varied artistic time right now. you won't get any 60's/70's/80's nostalgia from me. (the hits of the....).
do you think this is a new climate?
MP
No. I think it's been around a while in a semi-frozen state and that it's taking a long time to thaw.
TJ
that's interesting, so when do you see this thaw as having begun? or can you place a moment when you felt a critical mass?
MP
As I think I've told you before, I think people your age and younger are responsible. Many of you seem to have a healthier mistrust of authority then people of my generation did. And many of you are acting on it. It's incredible to think about how many concert series and performance venues, etc. have sprung up in the last 5 or 6 years.
TJ
well I can't say beyond my own experience, but there just don't seem to be any other options. if you want the music to happen, that's how it has to happen. was this not the case further back do you think?
MP
Just thinking about my time in school and in my twenties, the modus operandi seemed to be to wait until Rostropovich commissioned you. If this did not happen before you were 30, you became a stockbroker or a professor.
TJ
well the stockbroker/professor model holds for my generation too. there aren't financial opportunities in this line of work.
MP
Maybe we don't see them yet (the financial opportunities). However, and this I know is presumptuous for me to say, but the poverty aesthetic seems to be about the healthiest and most artistically satisfying way of continuing. I'm thinking, for instance, about how many great films James Benning has made -- where his sum total budget for all his films is but a fraction of a single standard hollywood flick.
TJ
well sure, but we all still have to make rent. that said, I think this is a perfectly fine way to operate. there are a couple of problems that enter into it however such as the glamourization of a lack of means (artistic-production means anyway) and an establishment of that m.o. which is a blanket permit for institutions/governments to not support artwork. since the performance world will almost certainly never experience a market-boom like the visual art world did, this creates a tough climate. there was a nice john jasperse piece that dealt with this last year. (misuse liable to prosecution)
MP
You're right. One should not idealize the methods. If we could figure out a way to earn or steal enough money we'd be better off. Maybe that's where this growing network comes in. Could that be an alternate economy of some kind?
TJ
hard to say. while I am excited by all of the band-postpop activity I see, I think most of them would be quite happy to be picked up by warner brothers. and i fear a co-opting of those methods (or at least the image of those methods) by, oh i don't know, radiohead.
and of course what about those of us who don't have guitars or 3-minute songs, noisy or otherwise?
MP
I suppose I harbor some kind of a dream that one day the newest 10-hour piece by Manfred Werder will enter the top 40 (as we used to call it). strange things have happened.
TJ
but never that strange...
MP
"God Save the Queen, she ain't no human bein', we love our queen." OK, that's a clichéd reference. But: Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Merce Cunningham, Sun Ra all made it work, no? We're talking about new methods of political organization and I feel I'm getting out of my depth, theoretically. Let's keep going and see what happens.
Maybe you know one of Deleuze's last articles about societies of control : which says more about all this than I ever could. (Postscript on Control Societies)
TJ
yes but i wonder about the aesthetic application of this. does it mean something that composers can't talk about music for more than 2 minutes without getting into bands and guitars? do we just want to be a part of a thriving culture? does that culture have any legitimate interest in music that uses different reference points?
MP
I have no problem with bands, but haven't been in one (unless that's what you call wandelweiser) for about 30 years. but, no, I agree with you. it's good to keep the options open ... writing two hour pieces for non-bands (even non-musicians) ... insisting that this is possible (and important and enjoyable) too.
TJ
i guess i should try and tie this in to what we will be doing in a couple of weeks. what are your thoughts on the piece you are working on for the 25th?
MP
I'm thinking a lot about the details now, since I'm finishing the piece. In general it's something like an hour and half of sustained murmuring.
TJ
vocal and otherwise I think, yes? there is something about murmuring that attracts me too, what is it about it that is interesting for you?
MP
Another word for murmuring might be silence: I love these silences that are full of sound -- something that seems to lie on the border between the all or the nothing (as if you could tip from one to the other with passing any of the stages between).
TJ
does this apply to the edge of rhetorical content as well?
MP
rhetorical content? do you mean the words I'm using or something else?
TJ
yes, the presence (or near-presence) of meaning, of linguistic content.
MP
OK. Oswald Egger says that in literature, in order to have silence, you have to fill the page (or the time) with words. There's so much in one of his works that you find yourself adrift in the sea of words, and the content (or meaning) is curiously, profoundly, beautifully empty.
TJ
there is something about the physical actuality of murmuring that renders some of these words unintelligible of course. the method of production blurs what might otherwise be a stable text. is this an element of your work?
MP
Yes, absolutely. The half-said is important to me. Mal vu mal dit.
TJ
is there an equivalent in the instrumental parts as well? or perhaps a parallel between notation and performance?
MP
Yes. The intrumental parts are more indicated, hinted at, suggested than truly given. Whatever it is that I want to happen, will take place below (or beyond) the level of notation. There is therefore a danger in giving too much information.
TJ
how do you negotiate things like precision and accuracy (either in this work or in general)? both in methods of sound production (or action/text etc..) and in relation to form?
MP
I'm not worried about either precision or accuracy (strange as this may sound). I want to give very strong suggestions for how something might be, and then see what develops when we start to play it.
TJ
both in individual performance methods and the piece as a whole?
MP
yes, both, more or less. of course, I write notes. give timings. take care that the thing is shaped in some way. select words, instruments, staging. you know, composition. but all of this is for me like a well-prepared canvas, waiting for color. sometimes I think this is the way things have always been. for Ockeghem: (who sings?) for Beethoven: (who plays?)
TJ
and for you, how would you phrase that question? "who ____?"
MP
who is there.
TJ
this is the strategy that perhaps does relate to bands and improvisers. i remember talking to jürg frey and he was so fascinated that people my age were so involved in improvisation as a matter-of-course. the old battles of composition vs. improvisation just seemed to not apply anymore (at least outside of the grant arenas).
MP
I think I know what you mean. I've been thinking a lot about where our work is. It's the sum of what we do isn't it? The decision to write something or not (or to find something in between). The decisions about when, where, who and how to make music.
There is a difference between having a score and not of course, (just look at the difference between the things that Radu does in the two realms), but I don't see this as an ideological question.
TJ
yeah the ideology question is (hopefully) exhausted. though I understand the suspicion each side had, it should be over now. i mean who has the time for those arguments when there is so much to be done?
MP
There's no substitute for listening. I think that this ideology was a way of not listening.
TJ
yeah. well in honor of one of our themes today I am off to earn some scratch.
thanks so much for your time.
MP
good luck. nice talking with you. look forward to seeing you soon!
conducted online 01.13.2008
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