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
