George Steel Interview

Classical Domain: In the visual arts you now have a divide between a Modernist audience, one that focuses on work from Impressionism through Matisse and Picasso; and a Contemporary audience that begins with Abstraction Expressionism, champions Pop and current art trends.

Do you think that we are beginning to see something similar New Music audiences as something separate from the modernist audience that we knew from decades past, and do you think that programming is changing for this new audience?

George Steel: Well I approach the question differently.  I think if traditional concert hall music extending from around 1770 to about 1900 and into the beginning of the 20th Century extending to the beautiful Rite of Spring and pieces like that.  That is a repertoire that we don't do, it has a traditional audience, an aging audience — which is one of the problems across the country.

We are interested in trying to generate a new group of cultural aware young audiences for the future.  At the same time we're also interested in returning music to public conversation. You think of things you talk about at a cocktail party, it's new books, new movies and two hundred year old music — it doesn't make any sense.  So we are trying to make people talk about current music.

In a way, I guess I am envious of the visual arts, which have a better history of keeping what's current in the visual art as a part of what people are talking about.  Jackson Pollock gets a lot air time, much more than Milton Babbitt or Morton Feldman.

CD:    Well the two are consumed differently....

GS:    Yes, music is much more invasive.  It's abstract music or difficult music has in the past been harder to listen to. Now I think young people are really open to all of this kind of stuff.  As long as you are honest about what the music is about. there was a lot of dissembling in the 50's, 60's and 70's about what New Music was like, audiences said: “Gee, there's no melody” and they got sort of scorned.  Instead “Yeah, well it's true, this piece doesn't have what you think of as melody, this piece has this other thing...”

CD:   Just to back track a bit.  People feel comfortable, standing in front of a cubist Picasso for instance, they are comfortable looking at modern paintings.  People don't feel they have to be art scholars to get something out of the work.  The same doesn't seem true for modern music?

GS:    Right, because they think they can naively go up to something and appreciate it.  Music can be a lot more visceral - and that visceral response can be a negative one as well. I think one way is present music in a context that makes sense.  That is usually in a one-composer program.  In New Music, it's the best way to explain to some one: “Here's a composer who matters.”  Like going to a Matisse retrospective — then you'd learn that Matisse did more than make those cut out posters you had in your dorm room. The guy was serious, there's a huge range of work.  Even if you go to a gallery show of an artist, you feel you have a foot hold, even if it's only one artist, you sort of understand what the conversation is about by seeing those few pieces.

So our composer portrait programming is the same way, by seeing one composer you suddenly feel like you have some sense of involvement with what's going on.

CD:   What is the audience for the New Music programming?

GS:    We have huge young audiences, we have the most envied audience in New York I would say. People between the ages of 18 and 35. We sell out a Ligeti concert to people in their 20's.

CD: This is sort of what I was getting at earlier.  These are not the people who grew up with Babbitt, these are not the people that knew Boulez was famous for saying nasty things about “Old Music”......

GS:    Right, and they are ideal listeners, when they come to a concert they are there to listen. They don't have any baggage.  I mean, classical music is the land of baggage, whether it's Pierre Boulez saying one kind of music is crap and their kind of music is great — which is of course nothing but wasteful baggage.  Or if you decide to buy a ticket to the opera and you ask the person next to you if they've seen in before and they say: (with a grand gesture)“Ahh, I have twenty recordings of it, and I've seen Schmeckstata perform this role in the thing with the substitute aria....” and you're feeling profoundly unwelcome before the thing even begins.

By doing all this music nobody knows everyone is on equal footing.  Young people can come in and there's no one sitting next to them bragging about how many recordings they have, everyone's there to hear the music.  The concerts have a huge advantage, all the baggage is put aside, and listeners stand in front of the canvas, as you say.

So, we still have a group of modernist, Elliot Carter has an amazing fan base, I mean the guy is 90-whatever so you could sell out 700 tickets with just his friends.  He's a hugely popular composer, we'll sell out a concert and you see the old school modernists.

There are people who loved Babbitt — when Babbitt was writing in the 50's. There were people who loved it, a lot of people hated it, but there were those that loved it; and those people who love it are still around, still going to concerts and they're wonderful people.

For the new audience for the future, we've found, that the way to build that audience, for any kind of concert hall music, is with recent music.  Exciting, challenging music, not powdered wig music, drawing room music.  There's nothing wrong with that music, ironically that's the more rarified music.  New Music can be thrilling and has first person impact the way that 18th century Viennese music which requires a lot more “apparatus” to understand.

CD:   I did love reading, particularly being from Brooklyn that one of your composers was a “downtown” composer — now you're on 116th Street so actually that would include a lot.

GS:   (laughs) It's true.  Actually I always say that this Theatre is the Theatre that gave the name Uptown to “Uptown Music.” Babbitt, Wuorinen, those guys.  It was this actual Theatre that was the navel of “Uptown Music.”  But at the same time John Zorn gave the first performance of Archery at Miller Theatre when it was Macmillan Theatre back in the 70's.  So a lot of downtown music had it's birth here.

CD:   I do want to talk about the early music programming before we move to the
Pocket Concertos.

GS:   Yes, I mean our Contemporary concerts vary widely, but our Early Music series is pretty fixed.  It's usually Renaissance polyphony, though we're branching out to instrumental music.  We had Jordi Savall, next year we will have Fretwork.  I will say the early programs are not about one composer, we generally find that it is a better model.  People usually have some historical peg to hang the program on that fills out the meaning of the concert.  Even if they don't know much about the reign of Mary Tudor, they feel pretty sure that we're going to tell them what they need to know.  Historical hooks are a little more effective I think.

The kindred spirit with early music and new music is that people expect to hear music they don't know.  Maybe there are a few greatest hits, Spem in Alium Tallis' 40 part motet.  People may come and say, “ Now I have to here your Spem in Alium.” Some may have heard it, most may have heard of it. That's more like ant music program, doing some big crazy piece you never get to hear.  But in general it's a total universe that people don't know anything about.

CD:   OK, so finally the Pocket Concertos — which came first: the idea to start a series of commissions, or the desire to highlight a form, contemporary large-scale chamber work or concerti — that lead to the decision on commissioning the works.

GS:    The commissioning, we have always commissioned pieces, they tend to be little pieces, and they are sort of brought up as projects arise.  A performer will want to do a piece with a certain composer and they will ask us if we can commission the work.  One of the things I've noticed, so many new music concerts are “Pierrot + percussion“ ensembles, that is, the number of players Schönberg used for Pierrot lunaire: which consists of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano plus the addition of a percussionist.  The Pierrot ensemble has become the de-facto new music grouping for the 20th century.

People get together to play Pierrot and they need something else to play so somebody writes another piece.  There are lots of pieces written for this kind of ensemble.  But there is another kind of 20th Century ensemble, one that was also coined by Schönberg, the Chamber Symphony.  Which is a “one of everything” ensemble.  It's also called a Sinfonietta for want of a better word.

Part of our programing strategy here is to take groups that are Pierrot ensembles or smaller and say you're going to play those Pierrot concerts anyway, we want to take you and help get you from playing your regular concerts to playing these big pieces you want to play but can't afford.  So we want to help pay for the extra fourteen player to get to twenty.

The pieces we found that people really stretch for were the Ligeti Piano Concerto, the John Adams Chamber Symphony, the Clarinet Concerto, pieces like that.  They make a terrific impact on people, the players are so excited to play them. The variety of sound and color for the composers is exciting.  Audience really respond to see a stage full of people, it's a really great instrumentation.

In other countries ensembles exist to play this music, the Ensemble Contemporain, The Ensemble Moderne, the London Symphonietta.  So we were working with a couple of young groups that are working with that sort of stuff. We decided to commission these sort of pieces — these are exciting pieces.  When we put together the composer portraits these are the kind of pieces I'm looking for, the fifteen to twenty player pieces that will make a big impact.  We decided to make a commissioning project out of it, and we wrote down the names of composers we really wanted to work with.  It did not take long before we had twelve pieces over three years.

CD:   You're making a big commitment.

GS:    It is a big commitment — not only are we paying these twelve commissions, we are also rehearsing these pieces adequately, so there are ample rehearsal schedules.  A very expensive project.

CD:   How did you chose the groups of composers for each year?

GS:    We did shape the years to a degree for variety.  There are composers from all walks of life, American and non-American, old — young, downtown — uptown.  We wanted to keep cohesion in the programs, it also depends on who's available, they are busy composers.

CD:   Some of them have been performed here before, are any of them out of the blue?

Ichizo Okashiro

GS:    I think we have done music by all of them.  The big surprise for New York audiences will be someone like Ichizo Okashiro's Piano Concerto.  I'm absolutely crazy about hi music.  Ichizo's sister, Chitose Okashiro, is a wonderful pianist and she sent me a CD of her playing a great combination of Scriabin, Takemitsu, Debussy, Messiaen — and last a little encore of a work by her brother. I played that and I loved it.  I called her up and told her, “You can play a recital, you're terrific, but you have to play this piece on the CD and something else by your brother.“  So she played two pieces by her brother, and I loved the second piece.  I asked her to send me everything he had, this all takes place over many years, I looked over all his piano music.  I asked him if there was anything larger he like to write, and he said yes. So we made him part of the project.  It's a delicious piece.

There's also a woman named Laura Schwendinge in the last year of the project.   We have had some of her piano music here, but never a bigger piece, she's an amazing composer.

CD:   What is the Benedict Mason piece?

GS:    Ahh — I can disclose only limited amounts of information..... he wants it to be a surprise.  But if you know anything about his music, there will be an unending stream of surprises in this piece.  It's a Double Concerto for Tuba and Double Bass, that's his choice, all of the instruments are the choices of the composers.

What can I tell you...

Benedict Mason

CD:   I don't want to pry, I'm not that kind of journalist....

GS:   Benedict's piece has no conductor — if you can imagine. I can tell you that much.

With Mason, what can people expect.... they can expect a theatrical element to the piece, I mean it is a theatrical piece.  People will be moving, he likes to use space, people inside outside of the Theatre.  He's a disciple of Nancarrow, he likes playing in different tempos, like ten and eleven different tempos simultaneously.  There will be extended techniques, people will be playing all kind of instruments they are not normally playing.

CD:   Do I have to hang on to my coat or ticket stub....?

GS:    I can't say, he told me not to give away any of the surprises, and there will be many surprises. It will be extraordinary.

CD:   Now Julia Wolfe, an accordion concerto by someone who is not from Finland....

Julia Wolfe

GS:    Good point. Now Julia is my favorite of the three Bang On a Can composers, I love them all equally, except I love her more.  She is a sensational composer, I love the intensity of her music and I knew pretty early that she was one of the composers that I wanted to commission.  She picked an accordion concerto, she said early on that she wanted a total babe running around the stage with an accordion.  Of course now the babe is Guy Klucevsek who is a fantastic accordion player. It's typically witty, it's exactly what she wanted; it's jokey thing about the accordion, but at the same time, it turns out that the accordion is the exact instrument for her music.  It's intense, and kind of unrelenting. It a good piece, hardcore and intense.

CD:   I'm always open to accordion concerti, what about John Musto?

GS:   John Musto is a New York pianist and composer, he's sort of in the Bernstein school. Very New York, jazz influenced.  He's an extremely talented composer and he is also a very good pianist.  He first became known as a song composer, I think partly because his wife is a fantastic opera singer, but his first pieces to get done were done by singers.  He has not written songs for awhile, he is focusing on chamber music, he also wrote an opera.  It's wonderful New York music. He appropriates different sounds.  There's a latin thing, there's an almost TV theme song thing.  Kojack music, bongos, muted brass and stuff.

CD:   The Mancicni feeling....

GS:    Yes there's an affectionate tip of the hat to that kind of music, but mostly it's extremely contrapuntal.  He's manic about writing contrapuntal music, so there are fugues through out it, and even when it's not strictly a fugue, it contrapuntally conceived.

CD:   After this you have two Pocket Concerto concerts planned, same time next year?

John Musto

GS:    Yes, but I'm only kicking off the project by conducting.  For the second year we'll have a Violin Concerto by Charles Wuorinen. Actually Jennifer Koh came to me and said. “I've got to have a violin concerto by Charles Wuorinen.”  At the same time I saw Charles's Opera.  I know Charles’ music very well, but I was not thinking about him as a composer for the project, until I heard saw the opera Haroun.  The music is fantastic, the story's OK, the staging's OK — but the music was amazing. That was two, three years ago.  It's very theatrical, and of course Charles pretends to be this “above the fray” composer.   He'd never write theater music, he writes music that's constructed, it's determined by pitch collections etc... etc... and it's total showman's music.  Fantastic music, so I said I want that music.

Sebastian Currier is writing a piano concerto for Emma Tahmizian, to whom he was married actually, though not any more, he's writing a piano concerto for his ex-wife.

CD:   I can't imagine what it will sound like...

GS:   Yes I know, It'll be extra cruel. No, he asked to do it, they get along very well.

CD:   I'm not going to quiz you about the rest of the composers, people are probably going to be calling up any way wondering when you'll be doing the Zorn piece, why make trouble?  But you mentioned opera, do you ever think about moving to bigger projects?

GS:   All the time. I think about little else.  We have plans; when I first arrived we did three a season, we really had no money at all, it meant that the music was excellent, but the staging was undernourished.  It was very difficult to raise the money for opera from scratch, we had to focus on our music programming.  This year we introduced dance, we did the Ligeti ballet evening, next year we plan to do two nights of dance, and next year we're adding opera back in.  We are going to do a new Opera by Olga Neuwirth, an Austrian composer.  She has an opera based on David Lynch's Lost Highway. It's a co-presentation with Oberlin, it's their staging and the student ensemble will perform, they're great.  We are hoping to produce operas on our own in the subsequent season, then the one after that without a doubt.

CD:   I would really like to get into next season, but I'll save that for next season, it's time for my end of interview softball question.

GS:   Softball question?

CD:   That's when you are with knowledgeable interesting people and you ask them something ridiculous, like if the prefer plain pizza or a topping... but I couldn't think of a dumb one for you.....

GS:    ...I like sausage over plain....

CD:   ...Usually if it's a conductor I'll ask Furtwängler or Toscanini... not necessarily pizza questions...

GS:    Furtwängler....

CD:    ...but that's not your question.... My question to you is: Since you spend an intense amount of time with Contemporary Music and an intense amount of time with Early Music — do you relax with like, Bruckner and Mahler?

GS:   Fascinating, I adore Mahler. My wife and I are actually working our way through the symphonies together. Studying them and watching them. Actually, next year on October 13th I am conducting a concert of 19th and early 20th Century French music as a part of Miller Theatre's season which will be called the Promenade Concerts. I am constantly planning concerts that aren't going to be programmed or not programmed yet — Wolf, Brahms, Mahler.... I'm doing a French program, this might be the German one, there's an American one, an English one.

CD:    Last year Miller theatre had some of the most fascinating programs, and definitely the greatest variety of programs in the City. I am looking forward to seeing what's planed for next year as well as hearing the first season of Pocket Concertos. Thank you very much...