Live blog: Talking About Creativity with MTT, John Adams, Mason Bates
2:18pm – For his new piece, Mason Bates came across this very direct personal story of a mother/daughter conversation across radio lines. It had a certain mystery to it. Mason Bates likes to think about the form, the way to do something different is often in the form. The time of the piece.
2:12pm – John Adams: They say when composers reach their late period, they get involved in counterpoint. [audience laughs] The very old Schubert in his late period (his mid thirties?) sought out a counterpoint teacher. For Beethoven, it was the Grosse Fugue. Adams says he adores the SFS, more now that ever, could never refuse a commission from them, even though he had no idea what he was going to write. A tough feeling.
2:09pm – Advice from John Adams to Mason Bates on finding a text for his new piece: go far afield. Go past the obvious.
Live Blog – Keynote
2:04pm – Brent Assink asks, “why is innovation important in the orchestral world?” MTT: Because we are the chief partisans of a great tradition. It’s a way of thinking sound can be used, it goes back 1200 years. Classical music abstracts and distills the music of all sorts of primal peoples. Life itself is preserved, condensed and abstracted by this musical tradition.
2:00pm – MTT: In the future all the arts will be much more melded together. Experimental things will become commonplace
1:58pm – Even having lived with a lot of the American Mavericks music for many years, it still has so many new things to say to MTT. Ives represents so many things: sentimental music, aggressive music, but it was all part of bigger world view, that music can exist beyond the concept of it being pretty.
1:56pm – Notation can only take you so far. Hearing a composer sing a line to you tells you so much more. MTT gives an example of a piece by Copland, to the great amusement of the audience.
1:49pm – MTT: I try to get people to go beyond limits. But you don’t know the limit unless you go TOO far. It’s faster to go out too far and then take it back, then it is to go forward incrementally.
1:53pm – MTT talks about the American Mavericks festival. There is a world of music beyond what the symphony orchestra can do. It’s good for orchestras to look at what else is out there and what they might undertake.
1:46pm – MTT, “I could not live my life without Walt Whitman.” He quotes Song of the Broad Ax: “Nothing endures but personal qualities.” The spirit in which work is done permeates everything.
1:44pm – Brent Assink asks about the creativity of orchestral players. MTT says musicians have to be character actors in a way. The life experience of live musicians comes across in the performance. This is what makes the music comprehensible to us. MTT: my job is to make that happen.
1:42pm – Brent Assink comments that the New World Symphony offered MTT a blank slate for thinking about where the modern American orchestra could go. What was that like? MTT – the focus at NWS was always on the young artists, to see it as a launching pad for young musicians’ careers, a training ground for where to go next. Also, encouraging them to explore the relationship between the artist and the audience, especially exploring new media. And the construction of the new building expanded on this. MTT: I am so interested in giving young musicians a sense of mission and a sense of context. At my age, probably the best thing I can contribute is a sense of context. It’s clear to me what it meant to be an artist through the centuries, I want to pass this along and have people spin this out in ways I can’t imagine.
1:35pm – MTT says he was raised to see and live a connection between all the arts. There is also a real communal aspect to it. It’s important that those who participate in the programs are encourage to bring their own spin and personality to the process.
1:30pm – Brent Assink welcomes the audience and introduces today’s program.
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