I met the soprano Kristine Opolais for this interview at her hotel in Leipzig. It was a hot, overcast day, so we sat outside. A few drops of rain fell periodically. When she laughed, she’d lean forward and create a triangle from her shoulder to her hand with her left arm, bending her wrist. We […]
Category: Interview
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Aware Awareness
I met the composer Yair Klartag in 2011, when I moved into an apartment he was renting in the Swiss city of Basel. We studied composition there together under Georg Friedrich Haas. Even then, his music seemed lightyears ahead in its beauty—“a hard word,” he says—and sophistication. Recently, we met up in the VAN office […]
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Medieval Time
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Kristina Wolfe spent her formative years wandering the forests of Denmark, listening and cultivating her love of the soundscapes of space and place. This environment focused her imagination and creativity on spirits of the past and continues to inspire her work to the present day. I talked to her about European bells, […]
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Burdens of Expectation
In July of 2016, Jay Campbell replaced Kevin MacFarland as the cellist of the JACK Quartet. In the meantime, he’s already shown himself to be an enthusiastic participant in the quartet’s extended technique social media videos. I met him on a sunny day at the bar of the Westin Hotel attached to the Elbphilharmonie. VAN: […]
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Snow and Granite
As part of the preparations for this year’s St. Magnus International Festival, I interviewed the Scottish-born pianist Steven Osborne. His connection to the place is deep: he loves its “few trees” and “barrenness,” he told me. Recently, we met up in his Edinburgh home to discuss performance anxiety, his own unlovely piano, and the struggle […]
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Insularities
Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani was born in Tehran in 1984. Known increasingly for his dynamic programs combining 20th and 21st century works with music from the 16th-18th centuries, his approach to the instrument stands out in contrast to the traditional associations of the harpsichord with the historical performance movement. But that’s not all he talked […]
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Lyric Engine
The American composer Ashley Fure writes music of a flickering and gorgeous intensity. Recently, she was in Marseille doing research for an upcoming work. We chatted via Skype about happy sonic accidents, alternative careers, and the state of diversity activism in new music. VAN: What are you up to in Marseille right now? Ashley Fure: […]
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Moderate Anarchy
The Belgian baroque violinist, violoncello da spalla player, and conductor Sigiswald Kuijken was born in 1944 near Brussels. His way of playing early music makes the continuing modern-style performances of many works seem, at least to my ears, completely irrelevant.When I reached out to Kuijken to ask if he’d like to be interviewed, he wrote […]
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I’m Not Hiding Anything
Over the last four years, I’ve heard about half a dozen concerts of music by the composer Alvin Lucier in New York City. I have often begun listening to a piece with skepticism and left astonished. On March 25, Alvin Lucier will perform two of his works, “I Am Sitting in a Room” and “Vespers,” […]
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Liquid Modernity
In his first book, Music After the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture Since 1989 (University of California Press), Tim Rutherford-Johnson writes: “Searching for or describing unities in the present age, which is usually described as fragmentary, may be foolhardy. But as economic, political, and technological forces conspire to create a world that is more homogenous […]