The Classical Encyclopedia

If you need to learn the ins and outs of a classical concerto, there are two sources you could start with: Wikipedia or Garrick Ohlsson. The man knows his stuff.

Whenever I interview a musician or composer for InSymphony, I usually start by asking them discuss the piece they’ll be playing with the Oregon Symphony. It’s a good way to warm them up and make small talk before the interview really begins.

But Ohlsson surprised me. “Oh. Well. There’s a lot to say,” he replied, and then launched into a 10-minute dissertation of Mozart Piano Concerto No. 9 (or 271, as it’s known), serving as a tour guide of sorts by breaking down several passages and putting the whole work in specific historical context. Now, consider that Ohlsson has about 90 concertos in his repertoire and that he could probably give one each the same treatment. The man’s a classical music encyclopedia.

Here’s the full transcript of our conversation, which was published in the March issue of InSymphony.

The Natural

Garrick Ohlsson’s mind was built to master the piano.

By Matt Williams

Attention parents: if you’d like to sire a classical virtuoso but don’t know your forté from your fortissimo, there’s still hope. Take pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who grew into one of classical music’s living icons in a family without any musical background. When he was 8, Ohlsson’s parents decided he should have piano lessons “because that’s what they did when they were that age,” he says. After two weeks, “I took to it like a bird to the air. I was addicted. When I was 8 or 9 my mother would make me go outside and play with the kids. All I wanted to do was play the piano.”

Ohlsson is known for his flawless technique and his vast repertoire, which covers around 90 concertos and almost immeasurable solo work. “I don’t even know how we’d figure that out,” he says, “but for starters, Chopin has 16 CDs of music altogether, and I’ve played all of that.”

On March 31-April 2, Portland audiences will enjoy Ohlsson’s rendition of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, a work he first played at age 18 and can deconstruct with professorial precision. (So much so that you’ll have to read the web version of this article to absorb his 10-minute breakdown of the piece.) Clearly, the man relates to music in a way few can truly understand. We caught up with Ohlsson in a hotel room in Tennessee after a 3.5-hour practice session and before a performance with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. The busy day didn’t prevent him from enthusing about Mozart, the four facets of his memory, and why he feels he’s “not good enough” to even try playing jazz.

InSymphony: You’ll be playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9. What is your history of the piece, and thoughts on what the audience can expect? 

Garrick Ohlsson: Mozart’s 271 is his first full-blown, absolute masterpiece. Not to say that the pieces before aren’t wonderful, but this is a world-changing piece, or at least a Mozart-changing piece.

He does a lot of things in this piece that nobody did before. But the trouble is we’ve had more than 240 years or so since it was written, and we’re no longer astonished by those things. For example, in Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, he starts with a piano for several bars before the orchestra comes in. Today, we consider that charming. But it had never happened before. And the educated Viennese public was shocked when they heard it.

As were they shocked when they heard this piece, because normally in a concerto, the orchestra plays for a while, and then the soloist comes in. And that’s called the “concerto principle.” One of the most exciting moments in the concerto is the first entrance of the soloist: Will the soloist try to play the same things as the orchestra, or will he go somewhere else? Will he comment, will he try to compete, will he try to charm?

In this piece, the orchestra starts a phrase, but the piano doesn’t even let them finish – the piano finishes the phrase. That had never happened in the history of music before. So he’s already put you on alert that something different is happening.

And then, at the end of the introduction, after the orchestra has presented all the themes, it sounds like the orchestra is about to finish what it’s going to say, but the piano starts trilling. In other words, it comes in a little before it’s supposed to, and then sings a few bars of something we haven’t heard before. This is all very music-analysis oriented, but it shows you that Mozart was in a challenging and inventive mood. And he continues that way.

At the recapitulation – that’s the point in a classical first movement where we have all the themes and everything’s laid out, and you get a section started again – Mozart turns it around. Instead of the orchestra starting it again, the piano starts it again, and the orchestra answers like the piano had previously. Like I said, 240 years later that’s not a big deal, but at the time it really was. And it’s incredibly charming, even today.

What really makes the piece great is the quality of the materials and the interaction between the orchestra and piano, like any great piece. But much more specifically, the second movement is the first time he wrote a concerto in a slow movement in the minor. It’s a dark and tragic slow movement, incredibly so, in which the two violins play in canon; they imitate each other. It’s just an unbelievably beautiful, tragic and furious piece.

The cadenzas in this piece are all by Mozart, and they’re all quite elaborate. His cadenzas are sometimes quite perfunctory, but obviously he cared very much about this piece, and wrote elaborate cadenzas. Matter of fact, the slow movement cadenza is almost like Beethoven; it’s like a second development of old themes. It’s not like a decoration and a trill—it’s a fleshed out movement of composition.

Then, in the third movement, Mozart writes a rollicking opera finale, in his normal style, in theme after theme after theme. Everything’s going along marvelously and suddenly in the proceedings he’s interrupted by an E-flat 7 chord, with a trill on D-flat. And the soloist has a little cadenza, and then there’s a pause, and the soloist plays a minuetto in A Flat, which is on a different tempo and a different meter. It’s all different. Total interruption. This music has nothing to do with what came before. And then the orchestra accompanies the soloist and develops it into a really amorous little interlude. Once again, we’re not shocked and surprised by this, but at the time it would have been unusual.

It’s so interesting that he’s wanting to break his own forms, in that he’s not proceeding with business as usual. So you can see, compared to what might be normal at the time – or even normal to him – he’s up to a lot of mischief. Also, it’s also a little bit longer than most pieces. It goes to about 30 to 32 minutes, which for a Mozart concerto is pretty long. So you can tell it’s a pretty special deal for him.

InSymphony: After studying their music your entire life, do you feel like you truly know these composers, maybe even moreso than their friends did at the time?

Ohlsson: Well, yes and no. In certain respects, we’ve had their music for a long time, and even their friends didn’t have the benefit of that. Maybe I’m speaking too familiarly with them, but when I do, I’m trying, in objective terms, to explain what’s going on and what’s unusual about this stuff. Yes, I’ve played this piece since I was 18, and I’ve played it many, many times. I do have a feeling of having lived with him; I know his language, and I know his musical procedures and I know what he’s up to when he inserts a surprise chord or when he inserts an extra melody.

But I can’t say I know what he’s up to psychologically. Mozart wrote his saddest string quartet during the joyous and uncomplicated birth of his first child. The happiest moment of his life, and then he went upstairs and wrote the most tragic string quartet he ever wrote. I don’t think composers have a good day and write a happy piece, or have a bad day and write a sad piece. It’s really not that simple, as we know.

That being said, if you find a particularly interesting passage do you take it upon yourself to do some historical research and try to see what was going on? 

I’m always interested in it. I don’t think knowing the composer’s bio helps you directly, but it gives you a feeling for the time, what’s going on in their lives. I think it’s useful, yeah. Having said all this about the 271, I can’t tell you who this lady Mozart dedicated it to was all about. She must have been a good pianist, and I don’t know what got him so fired up.

But there’s a certain level of maturity and mastery in this piece, and it’s a point where he can’t take a wrong step. Not that Mozart ever takes a wrong step, but if all the other works before this period disappeared and we started with this one, or if we just had this one, we’d have a pretty good picture of who he was. This is the whole composer.

So, back to the bio question, I don’t make correlations, but I definitely have a feeling for him. Of course, there are some quite simple things. Knowing about the tragedy of his mother’s death and how it affected him, that just touches one on a human level and makes you understand the kind of emotional suffering he had. But I can’t say that does much for me interpretively. So I don’t know the answer. I think all knowledge is good, and I think for every interpreter, it helps to know more.

InSymphony: You’re known for your vast repertoire. I’m curious if you just picked one work out of a hat, how long it would it take to get it ready for performance? 

Ohlsson: I wish I could give you a concrete answer. I could play them without incredibly lengthy preparation. Once you learn a piece and have to play it in public, it’s kind of in your hard drive. For example, I’m playing this concerto next week with the San Francisco Symphony, so I’ve been dusting it off and doing housekeeping for the last week and a half, about an hour and a half a day.

People say, how do you memorize all that? That’s the easy part. You work on it so much that the memory comes, usually. First of all, the pieces are hard, and for some of the passages, you have to repeat them a thousand times before you get them right, so you know what the next note is. But what we do is more akin to what actors do. An actor who does Hamlet absorbs it to the point where it’s his own, and when he speaks the words, he’s not speaking the words of somebody else. He makes you feel that he’s the character. So I think we have to do the same thing. We have to have our own emotional identification of what we play. Otherwise we’re just giving you a reading of something. You, the public, need more than that from us.

InSymphony: I’m curious if your ability to learn such a vast amount of material manifests in other areas in your life? Can you recall an article you read seven years ago, word for word? 

Ohlsson: Oh, no, absolutely not. I have trouble with names, and I don’t have anything like a photographic memory. Not even remotely.

There are basically four memories. There’s visual, or photographic. Then there’s aural, which is very important for music – I do remember how things sound. There’s analytical, so I remember that OK, the second D goes into D-Flat now, and it modulates up to D.

And then, one of the most important memories for a performer is the physical memory. In other words, it gets wired into your nervous system. It’s no longer thought of consciously. It’s a little bit like if you’re serving in tennis: You throw the ball up in the air, you bring your racquet up the right way, and you don’t look up at it and say now what do I do? It’s a complete thing.

InSymphony: I read a quote from you that I’d like you to elaborate on. You said, “The piano is the most intimate of instruments, and also the most complete of instruments.”

Ohlsson: Well, the intimacy and completeness have to be related. Because on the piano you have the range of the 88 notes, but you have the power to have melody and accompaniment together. So therefore, a piano can suggest – and does suggest – an orchestral texture, or a singer with a piano, or a violin with a piano. In other words, you can have complete pieces that really need no other reference point.

It’s true that Bach wrote some suites for violin and cello, and some others have done some other unaccompanied string music, but that’s a virtuosic, compositional and performer feat, right? Those are peak, Himalayan kinds of challenges. Whereas to play a simple Schubert waltz is in the grasp of many decent or amateur pianists. I don’t know if there’s an unaccompanied violin piece that’s relatively simple to play, and that pleasurable. In other words, a violin generally needs something else with it, and so does a flute, and so does a singer.

InSymphony: To me, an instrument’s “completeness” includes its versatility. And it makes me wonder if you’ve ever gotten into jazz, trying to play like a Thelonious Monk or someone like that. 

Ohlsson: I never get into it. But it’s because I don’t know how. I’m not good enough! The training is so different.

It doesn’t happen so much now, but when I was a kid growing up there was an assumption that in the heart of every classical musician there was a jazz musician who was really longing to let his hair down and get out, and vice versa. They’d ask me if I like jazz and I’d say sure, and they’d say, “Well, you must like Bill Evans, because he was classically trained.” And I like Bill Evans, but I don’t care about his training, frankly. That’s not why I like him. And he’s not necessarily my favorite. I think Art Tatum is dandy too, and I think Oscar Peterson is too. Somehow this idea that we classical people think that we know more, or we’re better than other people – not at all. It’s a different discipline.

I have a friend who is not a very accomplished pianist, but who plays good, amateur home jazz piano. And when she plays sometimes after dinner, all the people in the room know the songs that she’s riffing on. And I don’t even know them! Their faces light up they hum along, and it’s like, that’s cool, I wonder how they know that?

InSymphony: I wonder if when she’s playing, everyone’s looking around the room and thinking, “OK, now Garrick’s going to play some jazz next.”

Ohlsson: Oh, no. I make it very clear that’s not possible!

 By Matt Williams

When I was preparing to interview violinist Pinchas Zukerman, I expected us to cover the standard “classical musician interview” topics: his long and storied artistic biography, his thoughts on conducting vs. performing, who he likes coming up today. Little did I know that Zukerman had larger issues on his mind. A few minutes into the interview—at the first of several profanities—it was clear that age hasn’t mellowed the 63-year-old legend one bit. With strong opinions on where our society’s headed (down) and what musicians need to be professional (focus), Zukerman remains one of classical music’s most outspoken personalities.

Here’s the full interview, which includes a few extras that weren’t included in the October issue of InSymphony. It was, in a word, fun:

Sounding Off

Pinchas Zukerman is as old school as they come. The violinist and conductor has soared with classical music aristocracy for generations – since 1962, to be specific, when he moved from his native Israel to study at The Juilliard School with the support of classical luminaries like Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals. Ever since, he has graced the world’s best concert halls, regularly receiving the frothiest of critical praise, amassing a discography of more than 100 recordings and taking lofty positions such as his current turn as principal guest conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Zukerman was last seen in Portland in 2010, playing Brahms with his wife, cellist Amanda Forsyth, and will return as both a soloist and conductor on Dec. 3-5. While he has fond memories of his trip (“It’s a wonderful orchestra, and we both had a fabulous time last time we were there,” he says), it was clear early in our conversation he wasn’t in the mood to reminisce.

Zukerman’s candor is as legendary as his talent, and it was on full display during our chat from his flat in Ottawa, where he serves as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra. He has opinions on the state of our society and classical music, and his voice, tinged with a soft Israeli accent, rose to a lecture at times to express them. (Colorful language has been changed to protect the innocent.) “If for one minute you think you are better than you are, ooh la la, change that mirror in hurry!” he said. “When I hear somebody say that was really a beautiful performance, I say, ‘Thank you very much, but I’m going to try to do it better next time.’ The minute I can’t do this well, I know for myself, it’s all over. I’m just going to go out to oblivion.”

Luckily for classical music fans (and reporters looking for a good interview) that isn’t happening anytime soon. We chatted for a lively half hour before Forsyth returned home and kindly asked that he wrap it up.

InSymphony: You’ve been doing this for so long, I wonder if you can even remember a time when you weren’t sure how things were going to work out for you?

Pinchas Zukerman: Not to sound arrogant in any way, but I’ve never had that “What am I going to be doing next?” thing come my way. First of all, I don’t look at it that way. I’ve always seen my life in music and the arts as an extension – one thing leads to the next.

That comes from two things: value and standards. And the reason I am so adamant about the highest values and standards of performance, preparation, practice and so on, is because of my upbringing in music and generally in life. I had tremendous preparation for this journey, which is now over 50 years old. From the beginning, being in Israel, a country that was just being rebuilt after the Second World War, and coming to America and having the mentorship of the Isaac Sterns and all of those people around – well, I’ve been very fortunate.

You believe your early mentors instilled much more in you than the proper way to play a violin?

Right. Life values, my friend, life values. I control that value system every day, literally 365 days a year. I don’t sway from that one minute. And if I see something going the wrong direction, I oppose it, change it, or throw it away.

You know, on Thursday I’m playing in Merano, Italy, with the Royal Philharmonic. We leave tonight. You know what I did this morning when I woke up? I had a cup of coffee, I took a shower, and I practiced. And I did that yesterday. And I do that every day. Unfortunately with the flight and time change I won’t be able to do that tomorrow, but I might just take it out of the box when I arrive in Italy, just because I’m curious if it’s OK, after a long flight. And I will try to play as well as I know how, and hopefully better.

So that’s what the value system is about. It comes from a very deep, deep belief in the arts. If we don’t sustain that and [provide it] for young people, society’s going to go in the ocean. And I mean in a tsunami. And that’s what we’re all fighting for.

When you sit down with a student, what specifically do you try to impart? 

Number one are the notes written down. You gotta know what the hell you’re doing. When somebody writes an A flat, you don’t play an A natural. That’s very important. I’m oversimplifying it, of course.

The other one, is when you go in front of the public, and you’ve been playing in Berlin, and the next day you play in Oshkosh, if you think you’re good enough not to play the same in Oshkosh as you do in Berlin, then you’re dead in the water. Don’t touch it again. Because you’re cheating. And when you cheat, you cheat yourself, first and foremost. The minute you cheat on those notes, your best friend is going to know it, as will your wife, you husband, your lover…and boy, by the third day, so will the audience. You’re finished. So don’t go there. That’s a hard one for today’s generation, when a quick fix is really what they’re about.

Do you feel like you’re carrying a torch for your generation?

I’m afraid there are very few of us left. Our society has changed so much. It has given us a communication format never before even dreamt about, called the Internet. We see a huge acquisition of knowledge that is basically superficial. And the proof of that is the rock and roll groups, and the kind of music that is not historically proven.

At the end of the day, Fritz Kreisler was a symbol for all of us. So was [Eugene] Ysaye. So was [Carl] Flesch. So was Ivan Galamian. [Jascha] Heifetz. These are the people of value and standards, but they are far gone and we don’t even talk about them. I’m sure that if Kreisler or Maria Callas came back today and saw what’s happening, they’d say, “Ah, [forget] this, I’m going back. Too much trouble.” I’m serious!

We have a plethora of mediocrity. And as the great Sergiu Celibidache said, mediocrity is a poison. Be careful. And if you don’t have that curiosity of knowledge, then who the hell are you? Why don’t you get into your Mercedes and leave me alone? Don’t even talk to me. And, frankly, I don’t want you in the concert hall. Or, for that matter, going to a museum, or an opera, or a ballet. Or a new play. Or an old play. If you don’t have that curiosity, get out of my life. I don’t want to know you.

And that’s what I’ve been doing for all of my life. I can’t change.

A final question: We’d all like to master one thing, whether it’s an instrument, drawing, whatever it may be. As someone who is considered a master of his craft, can you relay how that feels?

That’s an interesting question. Again, if you think you’ve mastered something…if you can do it the way you did it the day before, then you are some kind of a ghost.

But you learn with time what you need to do for yourself to master that passage or that phrase or that feeling, better. It’s a bit like driving – you see more and more peripherally. But you still keep your stupid head in front of you, otherwise, you’re going to be in an accident! Same thing.

How does it feel? It only feels good when it’s right. When it’s good; when it plays well. And it could be at home, it could be on the stage, it could be anywhere. When you take out the instrument, and you’re playing well, that moment, that feels great. That’s like walking on a beautiful, white, sandy beach, or feeling a beautiful breeze on a hot day. That kind of feeling. That feels very good.

I assume these days you see many more sandy beaches than you do hurricanes.

I hope so. It’s not something that comes easy, that’s all I have to say. It’s a dedicated profession, a dedicated life. I don’t do anything else. That’s all I do, all I think about—I listen, and play, and conduct, music, music, music.

You know, humility only plays a role if you believe in it, and I believe in it. Sometimes it doesn’t look like I am, but I tell you, I am. The people who really know me feel like god, this guy’s unreal. I don’t take it as a compliment, I take it as something that I do because that’s what I really believe in. And if someone doesn’t do something properly in a piece, you have two choices. Tell them you’re full of [crap], or walk away. There’s no other way to do it.

By Matt Williams

Put two harried choreographers in a room and you’re never quite sure what you’ll get. That was my concern when preparing for a joint interview with OBT’s Christopher Stowell and Guest Choreographer Nicolo Fonte. Both were finalizing their interpretations of Carmen and Petrouchka, and had carved out an hour during the final rush of choreography and creation. Would they be distracted, hurried, frazzled? On the contrary, the energy was great, no doubt thanks to the “always-on” vibe at OBT as a show approaches. Both guys are talkers, which is always good, and by the end they were interrupting each other to get a point across. Definitely a problem a reporter likes to have.

Here’s the full interview, which ran in an abridged form in the Carmen/Petrouchka program:

Double Dare

At first glance, they have nothing in common. One tells the tale of a Russian puppet who comes to life and discovers his soul. The other is an opera set in Spain, about a fiery gypsy who seduces, steals and is eventually stabbed to death.

So what prompted OBT artistic director Christopher Stowell to stage Petrouchka and Carmen on the same bill? The answer, in fact, lies in their similarities. “From the beginning I really liked that Petrouchka had a male protagonist, and Carmen a female one, and there was a love triangle or tension with both scenarios,” he says. Taking things further, Stowell and guest choreographer Nicolo Fonte made drastic reinterpretations, stripping the works of any geographic identities and instead focusing on larger questions of destiny and control.

When we spoke, both ballets were still in, shall we say, the formative phase. That morning, Stowell had successfully killed Carmen (“I got her dead!” he said excitedly), while during Petrouchka rehearsal, Lucas Threefoot flung Yuka Iino into a stage door, sending poles and draperies crashing to the floor. But that’s the creative process for you. It was one of the subjects Stowell and Fonte were eager to discuss in a chat that veered from the evening’s bill to the “energy” of OBT, and thoughts on if an artist can – or should – reinvent himself.

Let’s start by talking about how you approached taking on these two works. 

Christopher Stowell: First of all, we are not interested in looking at these stories in their absolute and traditional settings, because I don’t think where they happened, in either place or time, is the point of either of them. And just from a practical standpoint, it felt cliché to put a girl in a red dress with a mantilla and say we’re doing Carmen. If I’m doing this, there needs to be a deeper reason why.

Carmen is a character that most people have an idea of what she might be, and that makes people feel comfortable about going to the theater. They might turn around and hate me, and say they expected the girl in the red dress with the mantilla and they’re not getting it, but I think they know there’s going to be a sense of passion and abandon and danger in the story. And that’s what I wanted to boil it down to, without it being set in Seville, and all those details. Because it’s the interaction between the characters that I think is the important part.

Nicolo, how much guidance did Christopher give you in terms of what you could do with Petrouchka?

Nicolo Fonte: There was no guidance. We talked about things we wanted to explore mutually, and things we wanted to explore exclusively in each of the ballets, but no guidelines as to anything I could or couldn’t do. For me, a lot of Petrouchka is spectacle. It has to do with big crowd scenes and a lot of color, and in 1911 it was a huge success because of that. It’s a fair, with people running around . . . there’s a dancing bear, yada, yada, yada.

But inside of that there is a complex little triangle of relationships, plus the magician – the manipulator. And I was interested in exploring that triumvirate – plus one – and how that would manifest itself in a completely different context. And that was my point of departure. That was enough of a reference to the original to satisfy me and sort of move forward into the 21st century.

Was it hard to set off in your own direction, or did you feel like you had free rein to do what you wanted?

Fonte: Personally, I felt I had free rein. The challenge then was, is my story clear enough? Is my narrative coming across? But that’s a choreographic challenge, and that’s my job. But to re-interpret the story? That was easy for me. I had to reinvent it a little, because I didn’t follow the storyline. I preserved the central characters, but mostly the relationships have been altered.

Petrouchka turns 100 this year – do you feel the weight of a century on your shoulders?

Fonte: Oh yeah. I do. But I’m not interested in preserving it, and I don’t think Christopher is interested in having me preserve it in any way. The point was to take this magnificent score and modernize it choreographically.

Stowell: I think that we’ve been experiencing the same challenge, in that we do not want to have the choreographic vocabulary take a back seat to telling a story, but still we need to have a story come through. We want the relationship between the main characters to be clear to the audience, but we’re not going to tell that story with any kind of literal devices. We want the choreography to have layers of both movement and drama to it, and just getting all of those layers in there is a complicated task.

Fonte: For example, in the original Petrouchka the role of the Moor is this sort of big, dumb guy who can’t figure out how to open a coconut, but he’s burly and intimidates Petrouchka. That’s just easy to convey. You have giant guy, small puppet, go. So in my version, there’s still that trio, of Petrouchka, the girl and the other boy, but they’re all equals. So now what happens? And how do I convey a new story while preserving something about that trio? So that is the challenge there. And again, it’s not pantomimic in any way.

How much of that work do you try to get done before you get in the studio with the dancers?

Stowell: I’m terrible at choreographing on myself at home. I try. But using the same phrase Nicky used – a point of departure – it’s usually terrible, so the point of departure is, “Let’s depart from that!” Because it’s just not the same as having bodies in front of you. And not just the actual bodies and their abilities, but the imaginations of the artists as well. If you’re working with interesting artists, they don’t just do what you’ve told them. They riff on it, and they see how they can develop that theme.

Fonte: There’s nothing that can replace being in the studio with dancers. Of course we’re prepared and we have it all schematically ready to go, but you go in the studio and it’s like oh, this is far more interesting than what I thought, or you’re really stuck and you hit a wall and you have to work it out. But you have to work it out with the bodies in front of you. That’s how it starts to manifest into something that has potential, and then from that potential, it becomes expressive. And then from expression it gets into a narrative that we’re able to follow, so it goes incrementally. But you can’t do it before you do it. You can be as prepared as you want, but it doesn’t really happen until it happens.

Stowell: I think a sign of maturity I’m just beginning to develop as a choreographer is the understanding that, and the lack of disappointment that, you didn’t choreograph the ballet you imagined. That’s OK. Because it’s not going to come out the way you planned it at home. You don’t want any insecurities in the studio to take you far, far away from your original plan, but at the same time, you need to be open to what is happening in the studio, taking you to a much better place than you originally thought.

Both of you have been doing this for 10-plus years. Do you ever find yourself becoming derivative of what you’ve done before, and feel the need to re-invent what you do or how you do it? 

Stowell: I’ve thought about this in the past. Do I try to become a different choreographer for every ballet? It’s actually impossible. In the end you have to trust that the musical situation, the dancers in the room, the narrative and the design aesthetic are going to push you in a different direction. But you can’t suddenly be a different choreographer.

Fonte: It’s impossible. And I also think it really interrupts a creative process and flow, and it’s an arbitrary, artificial challenge that you impose on yourself for no real reason. And like Christopher said, if you’re already choosing different music or have a different setup, it’s enough. But you can call it revisiting material, you can call it re-hashing, you can call it what you want to call it . . . it’s going to happen. A radical change? I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.

Stowell: What we try to avoid is being backed into a corner and saying, “Shit, let’s do this finale stuff from before.”

Fonte: Right. “But do it to the left instead of the right.”

Stowell: “This was a big hit last time! And it was in Tucson, so they won’t know!”

Fonte: Exactly. You do avoid that, when you’re stuck in a corner and can’t get out.

Stowell: Of course, neither of us have finished our ballets yet, either. (Laughs.)

Fonte: But I also think [embracing previous work] is a sign of maturity. And usually it creates a kind of calmness, and you’re able to move forward in a healthy way.

Stowell: Being a choreographer is no different from being a dancer in some respects, in that you have to stay in shape. So, just making sure you’re exercising and flexing your artistic muscles is more important than trying to reinvent yourself.

Fonte: And also, I mean philosophically, do people really change? Or do we develop? Is change really possible? I wonder.

Nicolo, can you speak to your experiences working with OBT compared to other companies around the country? 

Fonte: First of all, there’s a wonderful familiarity with the company, and that’s always an advantage. When you’ve been working with a company on repeated visits, they’re already going to know what you’re looking for, which helps a lot in getting things done.

Also, I think the company is really fabulously versatile. They’re very good at classical and contemporary work, and they don’t seem uncomfortable in either one of those genres. So for me that’s great, because I work in a way that’s a riff off classical ballet and has a very contemporary feeling and aesthetic to it, and I think the company is very, very great at that.

I also think there’s a great energy here – if it’s the combination of Christopher, the dancers, Portland – just somehow, there’s a really great energy, and it’s conducive to being creative. And I like that. It’s not the same everywhere you go. Sometimes you’re thinking, does this place have bad karma? Is that what it is? You wonder about the energy. And I don’t feel that at all here. I feel like I’m home, in a way.

Stowell: The organization has never settled into deciding, this is who we are, we have arrived: we know our aesthetic, our approach, our identity. There’s been a constant shift, change, and new challenges that I’ve tried to bring to the organization to keep it from sort of sinking into any complacency.

Lastly, can each of you talk about what you expect the audience to come away with when they’re sitting in their seats for the show? 

Stowell: Up until now we haven’t done a lot of pieces that are designed to be theatrical and dramatic. What I mean by that is the music, the movement and the moment coming together for great moments of theater.

For example, I killed Carmen this morning. I got her dead! The dancers need to rehearse the scene so they don’t bump into each other, but they also know it needs to look completely spontaneous and somewhat haphazard, and there’s a tension and a stress and an abandon to the moment. I don’t want them to rehearse that too much, because I don’t want that to go away. And this is all to say, there hasn’t been a lot of that in the repertoire yet. So I think we are adding a new dimension with these works.

Fonte: What I want to say overall, and I don’t want to bad-mouth anyone, but I think the overall program is very ambitious, and it’s very different. There is a kind of sameness everywhere, and as a choreographer, as an artist and as an audience member, I find that troubling. And I like that this program, where we’re expected to make something contemporary, something relevant today, but it uses real music – it has some real value. Some relationship to tradition, but somehow new. And that to me is actually quite innovative. It’s not following a trend, and I love that. I really do. I think that’s bold.

Any time I’m interviewing a celebrity of any sort, I assume that a touch of ego will come up during the conversation. And I’m fine with that. After all, whether you’re a professional athlete or classical musician, if you’ve reached the point where people want to read about you, you probably have a bit of hubris ingrained in your personality. It’s just human nature.

But once in a while you get someone like violinist James Ehnes, who begins the interview by apologizing if his cell phone cuts out (he’s calling from northern Wisconsin) and promising to call right back if it does. Ehnes turned out to be the most humble and gracious musician I’ve talked in InSymphony’s three seasons of Q & As, responding to every question with thoughtful and self-deprecating answers. It made my job a breeze.

Here’s the interview that ran in the March issue:

James Ehnes is living the life. He gets gushing praise in classical music circles around the world, he lives in sunny Florida, is married to a ballet dancer and has a ’71 Corvette and a ’79 Ferrari in the garage.

But if you think the trappings of success have gone to his head, think again. A conversation with the 35-year-old reveals a distinctly down-to-earth personality forged by humble Canadian roots. Ehnes fondly recalls falling in love with music when his parents plunked him on the radiator near the record player to stay warm in chilly Brandon, Manitoba. He talks about having a few beers and playing whiffle ball in the backyard. And the cars? They’re simply a manifestation of every 14-year-old boy’s dream. “You know, I could sell that Ferrari and not have enough to buy a Toyota,” he says with a laugh.

Ehnes, the son of a trumpet player and ballet dancer, grew from a promising prodigy to Juilliard School standout to heralded soloist, inspiring quotes from the likes of the Times of London, which asked, “Is there a creamier, more ravishing violin timbre in the world today than that from Ehnes’s Strad?” He’ll make his Portland debut Apr. 16-18, playing Max Bruch’s melodic Violin Concerto No. 1. InSymphony recently talked with Ehnes about his instrument of choice, the perils of the music business and, of course, how tracking slugging percentages can help with your violin playing.

You have said that you were confident even as teenager you would grow up to be a soloist. Can you explain that?

JAMES EHNES: Well, I knew what I wanted, and I knew that it was at least a possibility of a profession, because of the people I was around. I think music is a hobby for a lot of people from the time they start, because the only people they know who play music play it as a hobby. Whereas, for me, pretty much all the people I knew who played music were professional musicians. So it was like, well, what can you do for a living? You can be a schoolteacher or a policeman or an insurance salesman or a professional violin player. It was a very legitimate choice, as I knew.

Was there a moment when you realized you were in the club — that the future was going to come to pass?

(Pauses). That’s a really interesting question, and I don’t want to just say something, I want to think about it. I think there were various steps along the way that made me feel that I was on the right path to achieving whatever goals I had. But at the same time, I think one of the most important lessons that was always sort of banged into me was that as a performer, you don’t have any real security in your job. The only security you have is the signed contracts in your files. I look at the accomplishments I’ve had and things that ensure me future opportunities, but they don’t ensure me any future stability. That’s up to me every time I go out there.

You’ve played your Stradivarius for 11 years. Describe the relationship you have with something that is your constant travel companion and, I would assume, your most precious item.

One of the more interesting things about violins is that they’re works of art that help create works of art. It’s as if you had a Rembrandt that could paint a Rembrandt. It’s a very unusual thing. I feel fortunate that the people I was around from a very young age instilled in me feelings about these instruments. I mean, my first violin was probably worth $150. But that just seemed like an unbelievable amount of money to me. It was more money than I could process. And then as I got a violin that was worth $500 or $1000, and these figures … I think they put in me this reverential respect for instruments so that as the stakes got higher, I’m not sure my attitude towards the instrument changed.

I remember one of my old violins dated from the early 1800s. It was just a three-quarter violin, but I could tell that this instrument had been through a lot of hands. When my dad bought it for me, he explained to me that the only reason I have this is because generations of other lucky young people loved it and took care of it and made sure that I would be able to have it someday. And certainly when you get to an instrument like a Strad, you’re just upping the ante there. Because it would be really a tragedy if something happens to one of these violins. The only reason that there are any left at all is because people appreciated them enough to take care of them.

Music isn’t your only passion. Can you describe how involved you are with the Boston Red Sox?

Well, it’s not how much I’m involved with the Red Sox, but how much they’re involved with me! My grandparents lived in New England, and every summer we’d go to visit them, and the highlight was the trip to Fenway Park.

I think that being a sports fan is very therapeutic for me in a sense, because when you’re dealing with music, you might think you’ve hit a home run, and someone else might think you’ve popped out to the catcher. But in baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out, and whoever scores the most runs wins the game. It’s fun to get passionate about something that’s just very straightforward. It’s just black and white. Not that I want music to be that way, but it’s a nice foil in a certain sense.

Have you ever met a person with whom you can go deep in classical violin repertoire as well as arcane Red Sox history?

(Laughs.) You know, yeah. I find that a lot of musicians are big sports fans. My best friend in the Sarasota Orchestra is from Wisconsin, and we spend much more time talking about football than we do talking about Beethoven’s symphonies. It’s easier to talk about, frankly. What do you talk about with music? “Boy that piece is really …” Really what? If you could describe it, you wouldn’t need the music itself.

As much as this guy loves the Packers, and as much as I love the Red Sox, it’s not like it means as much to me as music, but it’s a lot easier to talk about. Also, playing music is work. I can have a couple of beers and play whiffle ball with my friends, and if I strike out every time I don’t really mind. But this is something that I don’t think amateurs or the public understands: Every time I pick up my violin I want to play really well. And I’m going to be really disappointed with myself if I don’t play really well, and that doesn’t matter if I’m playing Carnegie Hall or if I’m playing somebody’s birthday party. And I don’t think people get that.

Photo by Brian Hatton

Conductor Alondra de la Parra is one of those people who force you to re-evaluate your own accomplishments in this world. And I mean that in the nicest way. After all, by the time she was 25—when I was still trying to figure out how buy groceries on a regular basis—she had created the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, shouldering big decisions like choosing the musicians, assembling a board of directors, raising funding, overseeing marketing and handling the thousands of nitty gritty details that went into every step. “I honestly had no idea I was going to found an orchestra,” she told me during our chat. “All I thought I was going to do was put together one concert. And then it was like, ‘OK, when’s the next concert?’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

It turns out she was the perfect person for the job. I had read that the Mexican conductor was down to earth and full of energy, which turned out to be very much the case. In fact, the conversation was so animated we found room to make this the longest Q&A we’ve ran in InSymphony since we started doing them more than two years ago. Here’s the interview, which ran in the February issue.

In Command

From forming an orchestra to leading a new generation of conductors, one thing’s for sure: Alondra de la Parra gets things done.

A warning: if you’re going to ask conductor Alondra de la Parra about her craft, be prepared. You’re likely to hear a 10-minute soliloquy, both exuberant and poignant, which fully complements her fiery onstage demeanor. “It’s a great challenge, and most of the time you fail,” she says of life on the podium. “It’s not automatic. It’s absolutely human, and that’s what’s beautiful.”

De la Parra, 30, fell in love with classical music as a child in Mexico City, and traveled to New York and Europe to see world-class orchestras on family vacations. “I was taken to the Salzburg Festival by my parents when I was like 10, and I was probably the only kid there,” she says.

After honing her craft in England and Mexico, de la Parra’s Type A personality emerged at age 23, when she shouldered logistical, marketing, fundraising, scheduling and – oh, yes – musical challenges to form the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. Since then, the orchestra has emerged as a leading voice for Latin American composers and performers, and de la Parra has been dubbed a “Young Rockstar of the Conducting World” by the likes of the Daily Beast.

When we talked to de la Parra, who makes her Oregon Symphony debut at our Classical concerts on Feb. 26-28, she was taking some time off. It only gave her more time and energy to philosophize, much to our delight.

Here’s the interview:

How did you decide to make the move into conducting as opposed to playing music?

Well, I was always a curious girl, and in school I was always leading groups – making a rock band here and a chamber group there. I had a rock band by the time I was 9, and we would play at recess, and at the end-of-the-year parties and assemblies. By high school I had six different groups: progressive rock, electronic music, rock ‘n’ roll, and I also played in two orchestras and recorded cello with a rock band and did backup singing for bands. And at the same time I was playing classical piano and cello.

When I was 15 I went to a boarding school in England to study music for a year, and there I started conducting students and assisting the conductor. So it was just a natural thing. I thought yeah, I could be good at that. I had had good ears since I was very young – I would go to a concert, and immediately I would hear everything that was out of tune, everything that’s not together, and I was like, “Ah, this is killing me!” (Laughs.) But instinctively, I could hear things, and I was able to solve problems. So it was very natural.

I liked the idea of being part of this energy and this exchange of ideas, and being this kind of vehicle in the middle that’s just passing energy from the score to the musicians, from the musicians to the audience, between and among the musicians, and also receiving. I like that. It’s fascinating.

What do you think a conductor needs to have in their personality to be successful?

I think you have to be brave, more than anything. To throw yourself out there. Because it’s a huge responsibility.

You need to know the score inside out. That’s rule number one. Don’t step on the podium if you don’t know the score. And once you do, you create your own vision of it. It’s like if you construct a sonic model of what it’s supposed to sound like, and you put whatever the orchestra plays in rehearsal against that model, you try to change things to fit that model, or adjust your model to fit what’s happening in the room. It’s a process.

I was very lucky because my teacher, Ken Kiesler, always explained to me from the beginning that I’m a servant to the music and the musicians. So, it’s actually quite a humble thing. We’re just there to help, to connect, to aid, to suggest. To create an atmosphere that is comfortable and makes them the greatest artists they can possibly be. It’s not about me being a great artist. It’s about them being great artists.

I get the feeling that someone could be proficient at every instrument, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be any good at conducting, because there are so many qualities you need to have as a person, not as a musician.

I think that’s absolutely right. Someone who knows everything could be a very good musicologist or a very good lecturer, but I think there are a lot of other ingredients. There’s the knowledge, the ear, the ability to organize in an efficient way, because you have three hours, and you have to use them wisely.

But also, it’s empathy. It’s really understanding where the musician is coming from and why you’re getting the sound you’re getting from them. And if you want to change it, finding the easiest, fastest, most effective way to change that, and to act on it. And a lot of that is verbal, a lot of that is physical, through gestures and motions, and in others it’s simply by understanding where to push and where to back off, and where to confront, where to suggest. How to get in. I think you have to break into the people you’re working with. You have to find a way into their hearts and into their will to make music, somehow. And you have 100 people you have to find that with, pretty fast.

You formed the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas at age 23, which you’ve said was the most overwhelming process imaginable. Can you think of a specific moment when you thought things might just come crashing down?

I can think of about 100 moments like that. Really. Seriously. Maybe not 100, but at least 20 times where I thought, OK, I’m going to have to just go to a hospital and sleep there for two months, and someone wake me up when I’ve recovered. Because it was just really exhausting, and there were a lot of moments when I just didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel at all, and it was like, how are we going to do this?

But somehow this project, and this orchestra, had some kind of magic of its own, and when that happened and I was about to give up, something came up. Somebody called. Somebody showed up. Some wonderful thing happens, and it’s like a little more gas comes into the fuel pump, and boom – and you go, all right, and you go forward again.

It’s like when you’re walking up a big, big mountain, and you don’t look up or down, you’re just walking, looking at the ground, going step-by-step, and then suddenly you look back and you’re like, Oh my god, how did I get up here? And you almost get vertigo, because you’re like, Uh, how am I going to get down from here?

I’m sure that wherever you go, you’re asked to play a Mexican or Latin American piece. Has that become a blessing because it means your mission is taking root, or is it a curse, because you don’t want to get pigeonholed?

Well, I think it is great, because I really believe in spreading this music and sharing it with as many people as possible. And I think when people realize the musical wealth that is coming from the Latin American countries, they’re surprised and they’re excited about it.

I would love to see this music simply be part of a standard repertoire, and I think the program we’re doing in Oregon is a good example, because you have one Mexican piece, but it also has three other pieces from different countries. They all can live together in a program, and it’s going to be fun. And that’s how it should be. It shouldn’t be a Mexican program, or a French program, or a Russian program. It should just be a program of music that tells a story and builds a good experience for the listeners.

So I’m happy to do Latin American music, but it’s just not the only thing I want it to do. I want it to be part of the menu, but not the main and only thing.

Photo by Brian Hatton

Talk about the piece you’ll play with the Oregon Symphony. I’m sure our readers aren’t too familiar with Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez.

We just recorded our CD, Mi Alma Mexicana, and that’s the hit song, I would say. Everybody loves it. It’s a wonderful piece, based on a typical Mexican dance, called danzón, which used to be a Cuban dance but was inherited by Mexicans on the east coast of Mexico. It’s really flavorful, wonderfully orchestrated, and it’s just amazing. It’s a gem.

You seem very mission-driven, like you’ll do anything to get the job done. I’m curious if that mentality comes out in other areas of your life? Can you turn that off?

(Laughs) Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s hard for me to turn it off. Because I’ve learned to figure out how things work. And that doesn’t mean I know how things work – I just figure it out, you know? For example, I just produced a CD with three singers from Mexico and my orchestra, and I produced it, doing everything from obviously the conducting, to producing, organizing the sessions, all that. And while I’m doing that, I’m like, why exactly am I producing this? Why? (Laughs) I’m like, someone else should be doing this, but nobody decides when it is, so I’m like, OK, so I’m the executive producer! Nobody told me!

So that’s even true in planning nights out? Like, I’ll handle the reservations tonight?

Well, in my personal life, my deal is that I don’t have to do that. So I love it when my friends or my family are like, it’s all taken care of. You can just come. I’m like, Oh! Great! That’s wonderful! So I try to turn it off, and I love when I can turn it off. But, you know, it’s just how I am.

At 23, Yuja Wang is one of classical music’s fresh faces, which means that unlike most of her peers, she’s just as interested in chatting about Facebook and tennis as she is the master works she plays on a regular basis. Perhaps even more so.

But just before we were set to talk, her PR person asked to reschedule, reporting that Wang had come down with a nasty headcold. We couldn’t come up with a better time, however, so we went for it anyway. Wang’s fever—and the spotty cell reception—made establishing a rapport difficult, but she was a gamer, keeping upbeat throughout the 15 minute conversation even though she sounded well south of 100%. Evidently, when you’re in a different city nearly every week of your life, you learn to just roll with the punches. Here’s the interview, which appears in the Oregon Symphony’s January program.

On the Rise

Chinese piano phenom Yuja Wang is the talk of the music world. Next month Oregon Symphony audiences get to see for themselves what’s behind all the buzz.

It’s good Yuja Wang is only 23, because these days, the pianist is tapping into every particle of her youthful energy. Wang has created quite a stir in her short career. In June the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “She seems to be redefining what is possible with the instrument,” but when we talked to her, she seemed to be redefining what is possible with a calendar. She was about to leave for a five-week European tour, and her scarce downtime had been cut short after she agreed to be a last-minute substitution in a concert in New Jersey. “I guess I’m not free anymore!” she says. “I mean, I’m not complaining at all. It’s awesome.”

Wang has been on the move since she started playing at age 6 in her native Beijing. At 14 she moved to Calgary to study at the Mount Royal College Conservatory, and a year later to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute of Music, all the while filling concert halls around the world. Says Wang: “It’s kind of weird, because I’ve been busy for so long I feel like I’m just playing all the time, and when I don’t have a concert I enjoy it. But sometimes I’m like, man, I’m really bored. I don’t know what to do.”

Wang – who makes her Oregon Symphony debut Feb. 5-7, performing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s fiery, fiendishly difficult Third Piano Concerto – is clearly a classical music star, version 2.0. She’s as excited about Lady Gaga as Edvard Grieg, and when she talked to InSymphony the conversation covered everything from cooking to shopping to the next generation of Chinese pianists already nipping at her heels.

As a youngster you created a sensation on YouTube with your blazing rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee.” As you’ve aged have you purposefully tried to distance yourself from that?

Oh, god. I never thought it would be such a hit. I played it for fun, and everywhere now people are like, can you play the “Bumblebee” for an encore? I’m just like, I don’t usually play that. But because I am petite, when I go on stage people think I’m still 15, and they expect those fast fingers, and I’m just so tired of people having those opinions about me.

Actually, this year is great, because I’m totally changing my repertoire, to do Bartok and Brahms 1, and for recitals I’m doing Schubert and Beethoven. So I’m going to the other extreme, to try it out and see what it’s like to be in a new

territory.

You’ve said that you don’t have a lot of time to practice, but that’s OK because most of your work is mental. Can you tell me what that means?

Well, it’s different if I’m learning a new repertoire and need time to practice. With pieces I know are in my fingers, it’s more about how I think about the music, the direction of the piece or the overall structure. As long as I’m clear in the head, I know my fingers can do it. But that’s for pieces that I’ve played forever. For new pieces, I still need to practice, unfortunately.

Do you remember a moment when you realized you were better than everyone else around you?

(Pauses) No. It’s just kind of natural for me to play the piano. Of course I’m better because I’ve been practicing since I was like 6, but I actually never thought about it that way. It’s like, this is what I do. But now I see these younger Asian kids and I’m like, damn, they play better than me!

You once said that the Chinese look at classical music the way Westerners look at sports. What did you mean by that?

The popularity. In America, parents get really excited to let their kids practice sports, like Tiger Woods or whatever – well, not him anymore! So it’s the same in China, but with classical music. It’s almost like classical music is a way to get famous, to get rich, all of that. The enthusiastic feelings are definitely there, but I’m not sure it’s the right way of thinking about it, of course.

Looking at your own childhood, do you feel that you missed anything?

Definitely, because I was quite focused. So yeah, sometimes I want to get balanced, and do things I’ve never done before, things that for other people, it’s like, really? You think that’s interesting to do? For me, cooking is totally awesome, because I’ve never done that before, because my parents are great cooks. I never had the chance. Or shopping. Those things that normal people do, I find super fun. Since I got here, it feels like my life is much more relaxed, and there’s lots more time on the internet, and my life is more balanced rather than more focused.

You’re definitely not the type to live and breathe classical full time.

No, I love Lady Gaga and Rihanna. I was very depressed, because I read that Rihanna’s two years younger than me! When I’m on the road, when I’m playing, I don’t really listen to music. I just want silence. Because too much music is not good. Sometimes you need to clear your head from all the sound. But I love classical music. I love symphonies and operas. Lady Gaga is more for shower music.

Photo by William Ellis

Talk about timing. After a guest artist (who will remain nameless) who was to be interviewed for the Oregon Symphony’s December program seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, we were left with about three days to find and research another subject, get the Q&A designed and get the book off to the printers. Enter percussionist Colin Currie, who knows nothing if not timing. He was happy to talk with literally a day’s notice, taking my call on a Tuesday evening in Amsterdam, where he was serving as a judge for a percussion festival called TROMP.

Currie was great: articulate, friendly, and, surprisingly, a hardcore basketball fan—definitely a first for a classical musician I’ve interviewed. He was pretty pumped that he’d be catching a game during his Portland visit. Here’s the interview:

Colin Currie, with a bang

When one of the world’s top percussionists comes to Portland next month, he plans on taking Oregon Symphony listeners on “the ride of their life.”

Most Oregon Symphony guest artists talk about our fair city in glowing terms, and Scottish percussionist Colin Currie is no exception. “I’m a massive fan of Portland,” he says. “It’s one of my favorite cities in the USA.” But Currie is excited to fly west for another reason. “I support the Trail Blazers,” he says. “Go, Brandon Roy, go. The Celtics are in town when I am there, and I already have tickets. It’s all organized.”

When he’s not in his Rose Garden seats in late January, Currie will be playing a concerto that was written specifically for him by composer Jennifer Higdon, for which he won a Grammy this year. It’s just one of 10-plus works that have been written for Currie; such is your fate when you’re one of the world’s elite classical percussionists.

Currie started like any typical British youngster obsessed with the drums: banging along to the likes of The Cure, New Order and Duran Duran. But at about age 13 he entered the classical realm and two years later won a prestigious competition with the London Symphony Orchestra, which launched his career and sharpened his gaze. “The thing is, as a percussionist it’s an embarrassment of riches, and you certainly have options open to you,” he says. “You can play in any style of music, but you can’t master many over the course of one life.” InSymphony recently chatted with Currie from Amsterdam about his love of classical rhythms, the state of percussion today and how physically demanding it is to play 25 instruments (or more) in any given evening.

How many instruments do you own? I’m picturing a house overflowing with drums of every shape and size.

Yeah, I own probably several dozen instruments. I have gone in search of various drums of different ethnicities. On one trip, I went to Bali for the world’s greatest gong, and I found it in a village, which was simply named Gong. And there, in Gong, was a factory that made all the gamelan for the entire island of Bali. I chose this gong, and it’s one of my favorite instruments.

So do you travel with stuff from your personal collection?

I seldom travel with the big things, but I’ll be turning up in Oregon with about two suitcases full of smaller things to plug into the equipment provided by the orchestra. It’s part of the job. I do have to get used to different marimbas wherever I go, but the import of the art form has increased so much that schools and orchestras tend to have larger arrangements of instruments now. When I started going abroad in the mid-’90s, we would have to be quite careful about trying to find out whether or not people had a five-octave marimba, for example. But now there’s a choice, even in the smallest towns. It’s really amazing.

That goes along with what I’ve heard you say in interviews, that percussion has completely matured, particularly from a technical standpoint.

Very much so. Right now I’m on the jury at in an international percussion competition in Holland called the TROMP, and it’s just totally stunning to hear the youngsters. The standard is just sky-high. I’m certainly thrilled.

The technical progression has gotten to an extremely high level, and going forward it will be a less alarming rate of change. We’ll be talking just nuance. It’s gone from naught to 60 in a very short length of time, and maybe we’ll get to 61 or 62, but I think the technical transformation has basically happened.
Musically, of course, there’s no limitations, and that’s where I think the focus must be. For a while there was a novelty value with an accelerated technical progress, but now that’s even worn off, so it’s back to the music.

Growing up, I presume you just naturally responded to rhythm over melody?

I was just fascinated by the drums. I think the sound of the snare drum was so exciting to me, even at a basic, early level. I remember being totally thrilled with getting a sound and rhythm going. And I don’t remember life without that.

At about 13 you made the switch from the pop world to classical, which is unusual for a drummer of that age. What did classical music offer to you that pop didn’t?

It offered me all the emotion of pop music – all the sort of visceral connection and enjoyment of just getting on down to some great music – but offered me this new realm of depth, a cerebral side, an intellectual side. And it just seemed to be totally endless. Pop music always seemed to have a limit. No matter how cool a pop tune was, in the end it always seemed to be more about fashion.

I found that pop music was just ephemeral to me, versus these classics that have survived from the 18th, 19th, 20th centuries. And they’re not wrong. They’re classics for a reason. I feel that very strongly. Of course it’s not the only way, and I still love certain pop tunes. I don’t want to come across as a snob or one-sided. But I find that typical canon of works, for me, goes one notch higher.

You’ll be playing Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto on Jan. 29 and 31. What can audiences expect?

They can expect the ride of their life. This thing is high octane, passionate, exuberant music that speaks direct from the heart and just absolutely steamrolls off the stage into the audience. And it’s not without moments of great poetry and reflection, so as well as all the fireworks you might expect, there’s a great sense of poignancy and reflection in the music as well. Whatever happens in the work, it speaks extremely directly, and it’s very, very beautiful. Even when it’s fast and loud, it’s beautiful.

It’s obviously a piece with which you’re very familiar. Do you just have it completely dialed in, or does it change from performance to performance?

The exciting thing about this piece is that I get to collaborate very closely with the percussionists in the orchestra. There are very big parts for the orchestral percussionists and timpanists. So wherever I go, we have to be very close colleagues. And that always affects the way I play it. Depending on who’s playing, I will play a little bit differently and make some adjustments, so I’m blending with my colleagues and we’re working as a team.

Lastly, I’m curious: Is your line of work physically demanding? Are you sore after a performance?

No. I’m quite careful with that. And I’ve been well taught from an early age, so my technique’s quite loose. I take care with warming up, so I’ve never had a problem.

So as you’ve aged, your body hasn’t broken down at all?

Mercifully no, I think I have a few years left in me. Certainly till next January, so you’re OK!

Photo: William Ellis - Colin Currie

As I mentioned in the Q&A’s intro, I could talk to Hough for hours and never bring up music—the man is one of the most intellectually curious people I’ve ever met. This interview appeared in the October issue of InSymphony, but I’ve included extra discourse we had about the state of Catholicism and his faith, particularly in terms of his sexual orientation—something I’m betting you won’t find in other symphony programs! Click here for the story.

Renaissance Man

For most people, being one of the world’s top pianists would be accomplishment enough. But not for Stephen Hough.

When Stephen Hough takes the Arlene Schnitzer stage Nov. 20-22, concertgoers will witness a pianist who has reached ethereal levels. But Hough’s attention spans far beyond the piano. He regularly composes music, writes a wide-ranging blog for London’s The Daily Telegraph, has written extensively on matters of faith and homosexuality for print publications (including a book, The Bible as Prayer, a compendium of what he calls “highlights” from the Old and New Testaments) and obsessively updates his Twitter feed on matters ranging from theology to bacon.

Hough was recently identified by The Economist as one of 20 living examples of a polymath: an individual who excels in a variety of fields. As a pianist, composer, author, writer and professor, he easily qualifies. Not that being in distinguished company is anything new; In 2001, Hough won a MacArthur “genius” grant, and in 2008 readers of Gramophone magazine voted his recording of the five Saint-Saëns Piano Concertos as the best classical CD of the past 30 years.

What does all this mean? Of all the guest musicians the Oregon Symphony has hosted in recent years, Hough is the only one you could talk with for days and never bring up music. When InSymphony chatted with the London-based intellectual recently, we nearly succeeded in doing just that.

With all that you do, do you consider yourself a writer who plays piano, or a pianist who writes on the side?

Well, my profession, where I actually earn my living, is playing the piano. And that is central to my life, and I love doing it. But I couldn’t just stop there. I would find that I just wouldn’t be satisfied enough. And so writing music comes very much out of playing the piano, and then writing words comes out of all that I do that doesn’t engage directly with music. If I see something on the news, I instantly feel like I want to analyze it or think it through. I particularly like to find angles that I haven’t seen other people explore about political or religious or social issues. So often you’ll get a black against a white, and I love to look at the grays, or the areas where it’s not so easy to draw those lines.

One of those areas has been your blog, on which you’re extremely active.

It’s been great fun. I never thought I could keep it going. When [the Telegraph] approached me, I thought I could do about 10, and then I’d run out of things to say. But things spin off into one thing or another, and then you get used to the style of writing it – it’s not quite like writing an article for a newspaper. It’s a little bit more informal, and it can be a little bit shorter.

Have you ever had concerns that all this might cut into your time in front of the piano?

Well, there are times when I’d love to sit down and write more, and I simply don’t have the time. For instance, today one of the Telegraph editors sent me a link to a piece about Stephen Hawking, who wrote about how in the past he thought that whatever you called God might have been behind the first moments of the universe, and he now doesn’t feel that was true – would I like to write about this? Well, it’s a very interesting topic, and I can’t do it in eight minutes. To do justice to as brilliant a man as that, I would have to think about it and read more. So I had to call him back and say I have too much on. And I just ended up doing a couple of tweets that came to my mind.

The same goes with composition. There are times when I sit down at the piano and say, “Oh, I wish I could spend the whole day composing, but I just can’t, I’ve got to get on,” whether it’s to Liszt’s First Concerto or a new recital program. It’s a creative frustration, in a way. In some ways, if I didn’t have anything to do and sat at home, I’m not sure if the inspiration would come. It comes because there is a pressure cooker and ideas bubbling away all the time.

Your faith informs everything you do. I understand you almost entered the priesthood not once, but twice?

Yes. Looking back, the first time wasn’t so serious. It was after I became a Catholic, and I was intoxicated with the whole idea, and looking back it was a rather immature way of looking at the priesthood. I saw it, not in a glamorous way, but in an idealistic way, which I think I would have had a rude shock had I gone through. The second time was more serious, but I’m glad I didn’t go through with it now – I don’t think it would have been the right thing.

I think that the priesthood itself is in a moment of change. It’s been fixed with a certain kind of image and style and pattern since the Counter-Reformation period; this idea that priests are separate from everyone else, living in a separate place and looking different. And I think that a lot of that is changing on the ground, and it’s only going to continue. Eventually, I’m sure we’re going to have married priests. That will change.

Would you like to see yourself as a leader in those changes?

I think it’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime. The church is rather slow, and also having written quite a lot about gay issues, I think that is something that will take the church a while to sort through. Although I have a sort of basic confidence that it will eventually, as we discover more about psychology and the facts of homosexuality in the animal world and in the human person. As the genetic side of it is explored more and more, I think it will be unavoidable in a way.

I’m friendly with [the church]. I just had an invitation a couple of days ago to go to a meeting at the house of the archbishop of Westminster, who is the main bishop of the English Catholic church, just to discuss matters of faith. So I’m obviously not blacklisted, but I wouldn’t presume to have too much of an inner circle.

I have a few devout Catholic friends who are also quite liberal, and I’ve always been curious how they reconcile their faith against the Church’s more conservative positions on social issues. As a gay man, how do you reconcile your views with those of your church?

I think in some ways what attracts me to Catholicism is the big picture. It’s a mess, of course, historically. There are all sorts of terrible mistakes, not only in the distant past, but the recent past, as we know over the last decade.

But the bigger picture is the root of Christianity. It’s the original community of people who believed in this man called Jesus and in the message that he brought, and the way he taught people to live together. And I think in some ways, though I may not get on with the people in the community, I don’t feel it’s the need to say, well, I’m going to leave you and set up my own church. I think in some ways it’s like a family. You may not get on at all, but it is the family, and to work within that seems the best thing to do.

I think another bigger picture of Catholicism which I value is its real understanding of the value of creation. In the past, when different groups have left the main body of the church, they had extremely important things to say. I think that Martin Luther had incredibly valuable insights, and now they’re pretty much welcomed in mainstream Catholicism. With Luther, the great insight was that faith is everything, but he dropped other things. And then you get the idea from someone like Calvin that God chooses things from the beginning of the world, and therefore if there is a hell he mustn’t have chosen these people. And then you get one group set up against another, and all of these insights tend to get hardened, and these are things which are exaggerated.

I think Catholicism, and actually in some ways the Orthodox, and the Episcopal church in other ways – these three have kept the broader kind of picture, the important understanding that creation is basically something good. That God works within creation rather than outside it. So to me, those bigger things are worth holding on to, even though many of the smaller things in Catholicism I do find frustrating and annoying.

There are so many good things out there. We hear about the bad ones, and we should hear about them. The cover-up that seems to be going on is as bad as the crimes that were covered up. But there are a tremendous number of hard working, good people I’ve met over the years and as I come across them, they sort of reassure me – I want to be with these people. These people are good and these are people I would aim to be as good as.

Does your faith inform your composition? If so, how?

It’s there in everything I do, really, whether it’s doing the dishes, which I don’t do very often, or practicing or writing. For instance, the piano piece I’m finishing now has something of a religious dimension. It’s 16 very small fragments, which sort of fit together in one piece. I find the idea of faith broken down as kind of an interesting thing. What does it mean to lose faith, or get to that point of abandonment that you have in the gospel, and in Christ—why have you foresaken me? So that is something which I have incorporated into this piece. Some of the scenes come from one of one my passions as well. What does it mean to believe these things? Do we really believe? What if we lose those beliefs?

But I really hate people who preach. And I get really annoyed with self satisfied and smug people with any type of belief, particularly religious, so I’d hate to feel that my music was some kind of spiritual message that I’d want to impart, because I’d run a mile from that myself.

When you’re here, you’ll be playing Franz Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. What can audiences expect?

It’s a white-hot piece. It’s not very long, it’s about 20 minutes, but it’s one of the most virtuosic in the whole repertoire. It’s full of fireworks, and it also has a lot of wonderful lyrical things as well. It’s just Liszt at the full height of his virtuoso powers, having fun and hoping the audience will too. I have played it a lot, but not for many years. I played it a huge amount about 20 years ago, and I haven’t played it very much since.

One last question: Your world revolves around very big ideas: theology, social issues and the like. But what are small pleasures you enjoy? What cracks you up?

I don’t find comedy very funny – things that are meant to make me laugh. I don’t like comic movies. I like movies that are tragic, or thrillers, or whatever. But I hope I have a good sense of humor, and I certainly laugh with my friends a lot about silly things that happen.

I’m expecting to have an enjoyable evening tonight, because we’re going to this very old-fashioned, sort of 1970s restaurant. Everything’s in pink and there are lots of women in there with very obvious wigs, and it’s all a very old style menu – I know we’re going to have lots of fun. There’s a very strange waiter who has been there for the last 40 years.

So it’s more circumstances that I find myself in that make me laugh. Shamefully, I’ve even been thrown out of a concert once when I was a student for laughing with friends at a rather eccentric performer. I can find things funny – I enjoy the TV show Frasier, for instance, because Miles is a good friend of mine – but it doesn’t actually make me laugh out loud in a way, even though I can smile and I can enjoy the humor.

So, I guess I’ll hold back on sending you that Three Stooges DVD.

Who knows, there could be a first!

Skies America / Renata Kosina

Here’s a secret—even though I’ve been editing the Oregon Ballet Theatre’s program for a few years now, I couldn’t tell you a brisé from a glissade to save my life. So it was enlightening for me (and, hopefully, the readers) to write this feature on the physical rigors the dancers go through. My favorite quote came from dancer Lucas Threefoot, who talked about his friend who threw up every night he performed the role that Threefoot was taking on.

The dancers work just as hard as the Blazers, but they obviously enjoy a fraction of the exposure. But that’s fine with them—to a person, each dancer said they’re in ballet for themselves more so than anything else.

This feature was included in The Sleeping Beauty program, but it could run anywhere—so we’re happy to give it more life online.

Bodies of Work

Think OBT’s dancers don’t sweat and strain as much as other pro athletes?

Try spending a day in their pointe shoes.

When the Keller Auditorium’s curtain opens and the lights go down, principal dancer Yuka Iino comes alive. Even at 5’4” and 105 pounds, she commands attention. With a gifted athleticism that reviewers have called “impeccable” and “radiant,” Iino soars above the stage and effortlessly prances through a thicket of complex and elegant moves, showing a talent that has propelled her to the top rung of OBT’s company.

But that’s the Yuka Iino audiences see—not the one across from me now. On this day, after a recent rehearsal for The Sleeping Beauty, Iino sits in a cramped massage room with an icepack the size of a grocery bag slumped over her elevated left knee, a consequence of the meniscus tear she suffered back in May. Cheerful but weary, Iino has a flushed post-marathon look about her as she picks at bruised toes wrapped in frayed athletic tape. “For me, my body is not meant to do ballet,” she says. “It is not naturally turned out, and I don’t have longer legs. I have a lot to work on.”

Work, that she has done. And will continue to do. It’s the kind of work that the Keller Auditorium audience never sees, the kind that few can fully appreciate. Five days a week, from 9:00 to 5:30, Iino and the rest of OBT’s cadre of dancers are either warming up, in class or rehearsing—repeatedly and forcefully stretching their limbs into positions the body isn’t designed to go. “It’s a full workday, but it’s not mental, it’s physical,” says dancer Lucas Threefoot.

Ballet is the most unusual of physical activities. Like most sports, it involves a combination of aerobic and anaerobic power. But it also requires a level of precision and composure unmatched in basketball, football, or essentially any other physical pursuit. “A lot of sports require a lot of gross explosive movement, but [ballet dancers] also have to have the fine-tuned balance, and balance takes a lot of strength,” says Jonathan Lohnes, LMT. “And they have to look effortless at the same time they’re exerting themselves in a physical and demanding way.”

Skies America / Renata Kosina

Lohnes is one of OBT’s massage therapists—a member of the small army of physical therapists, acupuncturists, massage therapists and chiropractors enlisted to help dancers recover from the day’s work. Without them, OBT wouldn’t exist. “Have you seen a dancer’s feet? There’s corns, blisters all over the place,” says Threefoot. “That’s just something they have to live with.”

The numbers back up Threefoot’s claims, and go far beyond blisters and bruises. A 2003 German study found that among 77 professional ballet dancers, 88% experienced some degree of pain in the lumbar spine. “The demands on their body are tremendous,” says Lohnes. “They work in pain but they never let the audience know that.”

One of OBT Artistic Director Christopher Stowell’s many responsibilities is to manage those demands. He must balance a choreographer’s desire to work dancers to perfection with an artistic director’s responsibility to think long term and avoid injuries. “I pay attention to what I’m seeing,” he says. “I can tell if someone is nursing something but they don’t want to tell me.”

Stowell stresses communication with his dancers, putting it on them to know their bodies and keep him apprised of what’s going on. “One of the responsibilities of being a professional dancer is taking responsibility for your body being healthy, and not giving 200% one day and then you can only give 8% the next day,” he says. “That’s not useful to anyone.”

At the same time, Stowell says he feels the need to push dancers more often than not. It’s not out of some hard-edged, old school mentality, but simply due to ballet’s unique characteristics. “Ballet is unlike some forms of athleticism,” he says. “Working really hard and then relaxing just as much might be right for some athletes, but it does not work with dance. Ballet is multitasking; everything has to be happening at the same time—coordination, musicality, artistry, remembering which muscles to fire for maximum impact—all of this stuff. Everything about your body has to be sensitive all the time. So if you rest a lot, you feel really good, but you’re not sensitive anymore.”

Which means the dancers are always going at full steam, making injuries a constant threat. The most common injuries for men are those sustained by landing jumps (in the ankles and knees) as well as back injuries after repeated lifts. (Stowell says he suffered a few herniated discs over his years as a dancer.) For women, the danger is mainly in the ankles and feet, thanks to ballet’s most grueling position: being on pointe. Iino says that dancers at this level are used to standing on their toes, but after an extended break, that familiar feeling of searing pain returns quickly. “The toenails are so sore, I can’t even touch them,” she says. “I have to wear really soft shoes. It’s hard.” Growing up, she tried anything to help alleviate the pain, including wrapping her toes in bubblewrap inside her pointe shoes. “It didn’t work,” she says.

Skies America / Renata Kosina

With aches and pains a constant partner in their lives, the dancers can’t afford to focus beyond doing everything possible to keep their bodies in peak condition. “To a person they’re so dedicated to their profession,” says Lohnes of OBT’s dancers. “Their whole life is basically geared around preparing to do what they’re supposed to do. After class, they go home, shower, eat, and go to bed. Then it’s breakfast and a warmup, then to the studio to warm up, and then class.”

Iino agrees. “It’s so much work, mentally, physically,” she says. “So many sacrifices. People go out during the week and drink, and enjoy life, but I need a lot of sleep to recover my muscles, and our work is so physical, the first priority is my physique.”

That is as true as ever for this performance of The Sleeping Beauty, which is one of the most difficult ballets ever written. Asked which parts are the most physically grueling, Stowell identifies Princess Aurora’s responsibility in the first act, as well as the Prince’s solo in the third act. He also says that the role of Bluebird, with its unending array of brisés (quick jumps) is “famous for being taxing. Let me rephrase that,” he says smiling. “Famous for being very exciting. But taxing.”

Threefoot, one of the lucky souls assigned to play the role, says he knew he’d have his work cut out for him early on in rehearsal. “I just talked to a buddy of mine last night who used to be a dancer and he said he threw up every time after dancing Bluebird,” says Threefoot with a grin. “Every single time.”

It’s just one more reason Threefoot and his peers bristle at the notion that ballet is “soft” when compared to basketball, football, running or, really, anything else. “I feel like ballet is harder than all of those,” he says. “I always say, it’s great to come watch. But you really want to experience it? You really want to know how hard it is? You’ve got to take a class. You have no idea until then.”

Photos: Skies America / Renata Kosina

Photo by Mathias Bothor

I’ve been interviewing the Oregon Symphony’s guest artists for two years, but no one has matched Hilary Hahn’s enthusiasm and personality. Hahn is super-accessible—she takes fan questions on her own You Tube channel, blogs constantly about the minutia a traveling musician faces and tweets like crazy. During the interview I found myself almost having to cut her off to get to the next question—definitely a problem an interviewer likes to have.

Here’s a story that didn’t make it to print: At one point, the conversation turned to performing on the street, and Hahn revealed she busked on a Seattle sidewalk 4 to 5 years ago, and wanted to do it again. “Why not Portland?” I asked. The idea germinated, and when she arrived in early October, she carried her violin to Portland’s Saturday Market and played anonymously. She played for two hours, and the experiment definitely showed how Portlanders value their pocket change. During the first hour she set up a sign that said all donations would go to Mercy Corps, but took it down after getting next to nothing. It was only then that the money started to flow. I guess we’d rather support a supposed struggling artist than an international aid group! Anyway, Hahn made $45, and donated it to Mercy Corps.

Here is our conversation, which was published in our September issue of InSymphony. Click here for the story.

First Impressions

With 12 albums, two Grammy Awards and a mantel full of other honors, violinist Hilary Hahn has achieved genuine superstar status. What better time for her Oregon Symphony debut?

They’ll never say Hilary Hahn lacks energy.

The 30-year-old violinist, a two-time Grammy winner and Gramophone magazine’s 2008 Artist of the Year, tours constantly, blogs obsessively, interviews classical music figures on her own You Tube channel and this month will release her 12th album, on Deutsche Grammophone. It features the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, the same work she’ll play with the Oregon Symphony when she visits Portland on Oct. 2-4 (and Salem on the 5th). “I like playing things after I’ve recorded them,” she says. “You’d think there’d be saturation, but it’s the opposite. That’s because I’ve discovered all these things in the recording session, so it’s fun to come back with a new orchestra and conductor and see what new ideas from them you can incorporate.”

But Hahn is more than one of the world’s best (and busiest) violinists – she’s one of classical music’s biggest personalities. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she doesn’t take herself seriously whatsoever. She’s recorded with an art rock band called …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, lists the MSN gossip page among her favorite links and runs an entertaining Twitter feed of random thoughts from her violin case. (One favorite: “I wonder what it’s like to eat food.”) A couple of years ago, she appeared on a Danish TV show and played bluegrass while the TV host perfected his hula-hoop skills.

Hahn answers questions in paragraphs, with the energy befitting someone who loves life. She recently chatted with InSymphony about how she interprets masterworks and crowed about the only video game she’s really tried. “I kick butt at Guitar Hero,” she says. That might be true, but it’s her violin prowess that the Los Angeles Times described as “technically immaculate, musically magisterial and in every moment communicative.”

This will be your debut with the Oregon Symphony, but from what I understand, you’ve been to Portland before?

Is it? I guess you’re right! I have friends in Portland, so I’ve been to Portland probably four times in the past five years. I like the Chinese Garden – it’s nice to sit in the teahouse and look out at the gardens and people-watch.

Portland is such an interesting, and wacky, and eccentric – in a good way – kind of town. It has the convenience of a big city, but it doesn’t feel like a big city. And it has a pretty strong artistic community too, and I’ve met a lot of interesting artists through just visiting.

Photo by Nader Rezvani

When I go to a new place, I’m usually just surprised that I haven’t been there before. (Laughs.) I don’t try to play differently, I just find myself on stage thinking, gosh, how did I get to this point and not have played here before?

What I always try to do before a concert, no matter what the situation, is to be as prepared as I can be so the concert is as good for the audience as possible. It’s also a gesture of respect to my colleagues, because the more you’re ready for something, the more spontaneity you can have.

I think with classical interpretations, people forget you have a lot of freedom. Because while it seems like the notes are all written down, the rhythms are written down, and the composer told you how fast to play, so what can you change? But it’s like speech. If you give the same line with the same general instructions to a bunch of different people, it’ll come out completely different.

It’s like applying improvisation to a well-rehearsed lecture.

Exactly. A lot of it has to do with inflection, intention, emotion, tone, tone of voice, tone of your instrument, how much intensity you put in particular notes. It’s amazing how much flexibility you actually have with rhythm and speed when you have the context of all of this inflection and emotion.

Often what is written as the tempo or the speed is a feeling. So it can be absolute, but you can also play something not so fast and have it feel really fast. Or you can play something really quickly, and have it feel kind of moderate. The feeling is really important. So what seems absolute is actually kind of liberating.

It’s long been said that classical music needs to catch the ears of a younger generation, and you’re right in the middle of all that. But I’m curious if you’ve ever encountered a backlash in the classical music world for not taking things seriously enough?

No, I think I have a reputation for taking things über seriously – in music. I think as long as you do your work and show up responsibly, and give your best and have standards for yourself as a player, that’s all you can really do. I mean, my image has never been a separate image. I’ve never put anything out there that’s not consistent with me. And that doesn’t work for some people. Some people need to separate it.

So I think what we can all offer is what we’re good at. What are our strengths outside of music? What do we enjoy doing? What can we bring to the table that is different from our colleagues? And you can’t worry about whether other people are OK with that or not, you just have to do what you enjoy and make the career fun for yourself.

For me, I like to write, I like to meet the audience and kind of offer a resource online for people who are curious about what’s going on behind the scenes – not in a gossipy way, but just what the music world is like. What’s it like to be a traveling musician? And also for young students, or even conservatory students, trying to figure out what direction to go. So that’s what I do.

Photo: Mathias Bother - Cover Photo

Photo: Nader Rezvani - Under The Bridge