Welcome back to Big Ears conversations about music.
I'm your host Sarah Gilletti. In this episode, composer,
vocalist and project maker Lisa Bilava sits down with a renowned
classical and new music journalist, Steve Smith, whose
writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time Out, New York,
New Music Box, and who now publishes the insightful
newsletter Night After Night. Together they explore Bilava's
extraordinary broadcast works, focusing on Knoxville broadcast
massive site specific spatial Symphony commissioned by Big
Ears Festival. Bilava also reflects on the
origins of the broadcast model, her ethos of community
participation, and her multifaceted career, from
touring the world with the Philip Glass Ensemble to forging
her own voice as a composer who bridges traditions and
rearranges hierarchies. Have a listen.
Hi, my name is Steve Smith. I'm a writer and editor based in
New York City, and I've been covering music in the city for
around 30 years or so. I have the great pleasure of
speaking with composer Lisa Biloa.
Lisa, would you like to tell us something about yourself?
Sure. Nice to see you, Steve.
My name is Lisa Bilawa and I am a composer and a project maker
and a singer also, and I'm coming to you from Knoxville,
TN. Which is appropriate because we
are chatting about your work in advance of Knoxville broadcast
new site specific spatial Symphony that you'll be
presenting at World's Fair Park in Knoxville on October 17th and
18th in collaboration with Big Ears.
And I would like to start with something you posted on
Instagram in late July. It was a photograph of a
computer screen filled with color-coded spreadsheets,
similar printouts on the desk, and a collection of colored pens
and pencils. And beside the photo you wrote,
it must be broadcast time. Every time I begin the mapping
and planning stages for a large scale urban broadcast, it's time
for the color pencils, maps, and color-coded macro scores.
Every color represents a unique ensemble ranging in size from 20
to over 150 people. So my first question is
straightforward, if perhaps not simple.
What is a broadcast and how does it work?
Sure, thank you. Well, a broadcast it it
obviously is a word that has existed in relation to radio for
a long time, but it pre existed radio.
It's etymology includes just the simple broadcast to cast and or
scatter in all directions. So to broadcast means and that's
what sounds does. Of course, when there is a
broadcast podcast is, you know, a portmanteau made from
broadcast and pod, right? So broadcast, when I do a
broadcast, it's sort of taken on a number of meetings over over
the years. But the original and one of the
most sort of fundamental reasons I use the word broadcast is that
the performance of the piece in public space actually does
broadcast. Meaning that all of the groups
that participate in their multiple ensembles, multiple
music ensembles that participate, and they all start
in the central location in a big public space.
And over the course of the 45 minute or so composition, the
groups move away from each other.
They broadcast from the center out and fill the space with
sound. So it's sort of like a slow Big
Bang of like community sound. That's kind of the idea.
Oh, that's, that's, that's a very, very vivid impression.
Are, are, were there specific precedents you were thinking of
when you developed this form? I mean, I, I, I think in terms
of historic spatialized compositions by people like Carl
Heinz Stockhausen or Henry Grant or, or certainly Anthony
Braxton. And I wondered, did you have any
of that in mind when you were developing?
You know, I that's an excellent question, and it's one that I
could answer only circuitously because I'm find that I'm much
smarter afterwards about where the work comes from than I am in
the midst of it. Because if I try to
contextualize myself as I'm working, it's sort of like
trying to look at the back of your head in a mirror or
something. And I actually find that others,
as you've just demonstrated, who know the field are actually
better at contextualizing my work within the field than I am.
I will say though, that I do believe that everything we
experience as as humans and therefore as artists and and
music makers is influenced by what we encounter.
And I did work with Anthony Braxton.
I was, I sang, I sang the role of Shala and his Shala appears
for the Poor Opera back in 1996. And I also met Henry Brandt.
I had the pleasure of going to his house and seeing his piano
that was up on stilts and like, you know, so these are, you've
mentioned a couple people that I admire and, and knew and know.
So I'm sure that got in there, but it never occurred to me
before what you just said. So.
Amazing. Well, the, the initial
broadcasts that you presented happened just over a decade ago.
They were in 2013 the airfield broadcasts at Tempelhof Airport
near Berlin and then at Chrissy Field near San Francisco.
So how did those projects, how were they initiated in the first
place? I had the Rome Prize and, and in
like 20, 2009, 2010 and it was awesome.
But there's no air conditioning where there is now.
There wasn't back then. So it was like summer, the end
of my time there, June maybe. I thought, man, I had to get out
of the city. So I went to, I went to Berlin
to visit friends. And I remember that it was at
that particular time they were very excited to show me
Tempelhof Airfield because I had been to West Berlin as a member
of the San Francisco Girls course as a teenager.
You. Know.
And so I knew about Tempelhof when it was an airport, although
I think at the time I flew to table, but it had just been
opened up to the public as a as in certain urban space.
And I went there with these friends of mine.
It it really was still very much runways and a terminal building.
I mean, it had not yet been sort of, it hadn't taken on a park
like aspect yet at all. Walked out on the on the runway
and I realized that I could hear like a small dog yapping or a
child, you know, like 500 meters away.
And I thought, man, that is unbelievable.
Wouldn't it be amazing because I had already started to do work
in public space at that point. I did chance encounter with the
Knights and Susan Aruki. We did that in several cities,
you know, this piece with in smaller forces, but using sort
of spatialized sound in parks spaces where people can kind of
don't even know that there's going to be a performance.
And then all of a sudden it would see what's happening,
which, you know, was, was really just around a little bit before
a lot of these kinds of like, you know, flash mob, musical
flash mobs. It was a little before that
actually. So I thought of that because we
had just done Chance Encounter in Rome.
And so I was thinking along the lines of staging and sort of
hearing musical kind of interpretations of cities.
We had just done Chance Encounter on the Tiber River, on
the banks of the Tiber River. And that was really traumatic,
and it left me yearning for just more people because in order to
make sound in the big world without technology, without
amplification, you need just the amplification of humans.
You need lots of people. So I thought, what if I got
hundreds of people out here on this runway like making music?
Wouldn't that be awesome? So that's how it happened.
And was it from from the very beginning, did you conceive this
as something that would be accessible to and performable by
amateur musicians? Or did it start out as a more
professional model and then evolve?
I think once I got inspired by the fact that Berlin had taken
this former military airfield with such a history, right, and
just sort of turned it over to the people to use it.
It, it seemed like it was in keeping with that to also open
up the piece, to have it be something that could be
participatory, the spirit of the park itself.
And then, you know, I was living in New York during this whole
time, but I was at that point working in San Francisco.
And also I grew up there. So I would visit and I was
trying to get my head around these kinds of huge spaces with,
you know, so I would go to San Francisco, to Chrissy Field,
which is near where I was, where I was staying, and just try to
get a sense of the vastness of the scale, right.
And while I was there, I started hearing fog horns and I started
writing, I tried transcribing the fog horns.
So the beginning actual the, the, the first section of the
piece is transcription of the San Francisco fog horns.
So I sort of bring, you know, anyway, that's not really an
answer to your question about whether, you know, sort of
amateur or vocational music makers are part of it.
But it has this sort of vastness of scale that if you
professionalize the vastness of scale, then you're kind of
making a different statement. That's right.
Well, and that's that's an
interesting point about this entire model and about the
locations that it's been. Would you say that there is a
sort of social or political aspect to the broadcast model,
the idea of sort of democratizing the process where
anybody can can be a part of it and even those who are
spectators are also, in a way, participants?
Well, I think it's very hard to politicize music, you know,
because music is not a denotative form.
Like music is bad at saying this is a glass, you know, doesn't
say that very well. I mean, you can maybe think
that's, you know, if you attach words to it, then then it can
seem to mean what the words are saying, right?
Tin pan Ally songwriters knew that, you know, because they
wrote melodies and put them on the shelf to wait to see whether
they were going to be rousing anti war songs or rousing pro
war songs. So do you see what I'm saying?
So in a way, as a composer, I would say, I mean, like this is
music, right? I, I guess the fact that it is
sort of can it can include anybody, anybody could
participate. Is that a, is that a, a stance?
You know, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a structural reality
piece. Does it create joy?
Yeah, You know, is that my hope? I mean, sure, you know I am
inspired by that, right? But whether or not you interpret
it that way is kind of not up to me.
You've since done, you've done choral broadcasts, virtual
reality broadcasts, A pandemic era broadcast involving online
participants around the world. Is there to use something common
to all of these varied pieces other than participation?
Is there a theme that runs throughout the series?
Yes, I think there is. I think broad based, broad based
participation is the theme. So when you know, and, and it's
interesting, we were talking just a moment ago about text and
you said that I had choral done choral broadcast, which is true.
And I'm, I'm continuing to, to develop some of those as well.
But the first two broadcasts in 2013 in Berlin and San Francisco
were wordless. There were choirs, but they're
saying ba ba ba or da da or La La Luke.
And then I did Mauer broadcast in in Berlin, which is the
second Berlin based sort of project.
And that was actually based on text collected by artist Cheryl
Oering. It was for the 30th anniversary
of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And these texts were from the
20th, I guess it was the, the 25th people's people's memories
of the wall. So I learned through that
process, and especially when you're working with a vocational
singers, words are helpful because they sing better and
they make more sound when they're singing words than if
you just give them blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it was really a Sonic decision to start incorporating
words. But at this point, I would say,
yes, you know, it became a way to even further advance these
sort of the inclusivity of participation by crowdsourcing
words that are sung from the community in which they're sung.
Right, right. Exactly.
And that it is definitely broadcast from home.
My pandemic era one, which obviously couldn't broadcast in
a strict sense because people were all trapped at home and
couldn't broadcast themselves anywhere except through their
computers. So it took on a new meaning
there. But I think it it has become a
part of it. For me.
This is a very important part of a broadcast now is to also
Crowdsource sort of the words of the community that I'm making
the project in. And and that beautifully sets up
my next question, which is how did Knoxville Broadcast come to
be and can you walk us through the project a bit?
Sure. Yeah, I, I was at Long Haven
Artist Residency a year ago, which is a wonderful artist
residency program here in, in Knoxville.
And while I was here, I was I had just finished Louisville
broadcasts, which was the third of the big city broadcasts in
partnership with the Louisville Orchestra and their creators
core program. So I had done that program.
I mean that that that iteration of broadcast at that time, I was
just coming off of that and I had was turning my attentions to
working with Appalachian traditional musicians.
And when I came here to Eastern Tennessee, I spent a lot of my
time kind of going around and hearing traditional music
making. And I started to get a sense for
what a powerful, not just in traditional music making.
And we will have that represented and that's what
broadcast that that particular kind of very distinctive sound.
But I became aware of how broad and vital and, and like really
exciting the music making kind of the, the ethos of music
making is to Knoxville culture. And of course, I, you know, I
had coffee with Ashley Capps at that time and he, you know, who
is founder of the big years festival.
And we were talking about a number of things, but he had
seen the Louisville broadcast, you know, documentation and we
got to talking about that. And I was like, you know, I
mean, we both basically said this would be a perfect town for
that. This would be a really, really
great way to do it. So, and that was just a little
over a year ago. It used to take 3 or 4 years to
put a broadcast together, but I'm getting a little faster.
Did you? Do you have any significant
personal links to Knoxville or to Big Ears predating this
encounter with Ashley? You know, my first time ever in
Knoxville was when I came, you know, to log Haven a year and a
half ago, which I applied for and, you know, came here.
But I will say that, you know, I I arrived in in Louisville, KY
in 2022, you know, for the 2223 season I lived in in Louisville.
And because of the way this program is designed, this is
Teddy Abrams, you know, creators core program, the composers who
who are in residence are living in Kentucky.
And I also went on tour with the orchestra all over and got to
know Appalachian musicians and collaborate with them.
And so it is that was over. You know, that was almost three
years ago now. So this has been one of my deep
dives. I tend to do sort of like, you
know, Berlin was one of them. And I mean, I've had these sort
of cultural deep dives. I, I transport myself someplace
and make a, make myself a sort of a second home citizen and
I've done that with this part of the country for the last few
years so. I see.
I, I, I guess I would have just assumed that at some point you
would have ended up at Big Ears. But I think even for for artists
who have not performed there and, and even for audience
members who have not been there, I think the Big Ears ethos of,
of a city full of music has sort of become something that we're
all very aware of now. Well, I was on the Big Years
festival this year with the Philip Glass Ensemble, but that
our planning for Knoxville broadcast predated predated my
coming here, you know, for that. But, you know, obviously Big
Years is something I've always known about.
I almost went when I was in Louisville that had conflicts
and you know, yeah, before this year I had never performed on
the festival, so it was great to be part of it.
I want to turn now to your musical background.
You you grew up in a musical household.
Certainly your father is a well known composer.
What was your early exposure to music like and when did you
determine you would be a composer?
I don't know if I've determined that yet.
I, my brother and I were, you know, it was sort of
unavoidable. And we started on Suzuki violin.
I was three years old. And when he was three, he
started a violin. And I had this little plastic,
you know, whatever, when I was 2 trying to make it because I
wanted to do everything he did. You know, my mother is an early
music performance practice scholar.
So I was also, by the time I was 8 or 9, I was singing, you know,
doctoral recitals at Stanford, you know, as in sort of early
Italian Renaissance, you know, whatever baroque music.
I mean, this was a sort of part of what I was doing.
And my father was had had started the electronic music
studio at San Francisco State University.
I was born in 68. So this was like, you know, in
the 70s, it was this huge time for experimental innovation, you
know, in, in the Bay Area and. I got to know just, I, I
remember when I was really small, just kind of being in,
you know, in the electronic music studio for lack of a
babysitter, I suppose, you know, on the, on the floor playing
with like synthesizer parts and stuff.
So my upbringing was I was playing the violin, playing
piano. I was singing in my mother's
church choir because she's an organist as well.
Was very, sort of was very stratified, right?
Like I was either in sort of Bach and before or I was in like
the mid 20th century or later, you know, and one of the things
that I didn't really know that much about was classic romantic
music. Like I kind of skipped that.
I didn't know about like, you know, Mozart didn't really, you
know, I didn't. I didn't know that Like, I
thought that Cooper Amp was a major composer, but I didn't
know about like Beethoven necessarily.
And that gap in my education, I mean, it's since been filled in.
But I'll never be somebody who built out from it.
I'll always be somebody who found my way towards it by
crawling either from historically before it or
crawling back to it. I still have soft spots in there
like stuff I don't get. Sure.
You know, like, what is that stuff?
The late 19th century? I can't make any sense of that
music, you know? Well, you know, neither could
they. That's kind of the point.
We we needed a revolution to come along and sweep it all
away. But I mean, what you're saying
is actually it's, it's very sympathetic to what we all read
about Steve Reich being a modern musician who was completely
swept up in just Scan and Paratan and that very, very
early music. So I think having that doughnut
hole in the middle is pretty common.
And I, I share that as a percussionist, I learned music
history completely backwards. So were there certain composers
who were especially influential to you as you came up?
Were, were there composers who you said, hmm, that's
interesting. I want to move toward that.
I, I, I would say there are people who are interesting, but
I've never sort of seen myself in a kind of a mentor protege
relationship. I've never, I've never slotted
myself into, I don't know, like a a historical chain of, of
composerly fellows. There's.
There's not an. There's not an ISM for you.
Well, you know, I mean, somebody else could come up with it.
I mean, like Philip, that that's, you know, minimalism is
something somebody else said about, you know, whatever works
for you. You know, I'm not.
Again, if you hear my music as being related to certain things,
then you're never wrong because it's your head that's hearing it
you. Know.
I mean, I do remember as a child, you know, via Donna, you
know, singing the via Donna when I was, you know, who's Ludovico,
via Donna, who's an early, thank you Venetian.
And then also my brother and I used to dance around the living
room to Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon, you
know, like she's just, you know, like we had some, I loved Frank
Zappa, the Mothers of Invention, you know, I got like video and
it was kind of great because later on, like some of the
people I admired, like Laurie Anderson, I got to work with
her. I got to tour with her later,
you know, I know her now. And, you know, John Zorn is like
a friend and, you know, toured all over the world with his
music, you know, and I've gotten a chance as a singer too.
I've gotten a chance to sort of sing at a professional level and
record Peritan, you know, you know, all of this sort of all
this early stuff. I mean, that to me has had and
Bach, of course, I got to be the soloist with the Bach the the
Vespers series in New York for several years.
And, you know, these things came through me because of my active
music making. So it wasn't as a problem sort
of sitting there listening, thinking I want to do that,
right? It was that everything I got
involved in left its imprint on me.
I, I think the reason that I brought it up is just because,
OK, you, you, you think about a geographic area and then you
think, well, there are these people who represent that area.
And so you mentioned Subotnick, who was certainly emblematic of
a time in San Francisco. And I was also thinking about
guru like figures like Terry Riley.
But I I like the way you sort of described that it was all in the
atmosphere and you breathed it in, but what came out was your
own right? Your own idiom.
Yeah, I'm not really a guru follower.
I mean, I have plenty of colleagues who are older than I
am and further along, you know, chief among them is Philip
Glass. I mean, I've been working with
him for decades now. But he's a friend, you know,
and, and I have a job to do for him, you know, I mean, and he's
a job to do for me. Like when he writes new stuff,
like, you know, I'd have to make it work, you know, and we have
to make, we were making work together.
And, and, you know, of course I admire him, but I also admire a
bunch of musicians I know who are 20 years old.
So I think, you know, it's a very rich field.
And as long as I'm in the deep end of it, which I hope to be,
you know, so I can't swim anymore, actually can't swim,
which is kind of funny. But you know, I, I feel like
that admiration, it's, it's more of a, like a, a network of, of
kinds of influences and relationships that that goes in
all directions. You know, as you were just
saying, your personal musical style, or perhaps that is styles
and we'll get to that. It's not easily boiled down to a
slogan that fits on a name tag or even really a bumper sticker.
I mean, you've you've composed for Symphony orchestras and
coral ensembles and chamber groups in what could be
construed as conventional concert music idioms.
You've, you've had multiple residencies with orchestras that
have been both that and other very disparate things.
You've composed multiple operas and you've written rather
eclectic works as in the type that we were just talking about
a few moments ago involving improvisers and people who come
from outside of the so-called classical music tradition.
I mean, I think about your Kafka songs for Carla Kilstadt, who is
tasked to sing and play at the same time, and also hear the the
piece you wrote for for Lindsey Branson, the singer-songwriter
with the bluegrass trio and the Louisville.
Orcas, but I wrote that with her.
Right. With her it was.
Co composed with her, yeah. Taking all of this into account,
how would you describe what you set out to do as a composer?
What's your motivation for bet for lack of a better?
Food. Well, at the moment I'll say
like, I can only answer at the moment because I don't remember,
I started writing music when I was like 7, you know, So like, I
don't remember what I was trying to do back then.
But I at the moment I'm particularly interested in sort
of problematizing like hierarchies within, in the sort
of the music fields and the music fox.
You know, we call it a singership.
What's your fock, right? I like the idea of meshing with
a tradition of music making that's outside my own training,
right? In a way that is not appropriate
to the in a way that sort of meets it where it is that, you
know, like with Lindsey Branson, she and I like found, you know,
we're just kind of bashing around trying to find a way to
work so that she could bring her musicians in.
She worked with a bunch of people from the the bluegrass
school that's up there at near Hazard, KY, and I brought in the
little orchestra and they're trying to find ways for a non
hierarchical what to to, you know, to create work together
and each each circumstances different.
Like here. I've just learned last week the
Nashville numbers for music, you know, because I'm going to be
working with traditional musicians here in Eastern
Tennessee. I didn't know this system in San
Francisco. I had to learn a notation system
for the Chinese instrument ensemble like I didn't, you
know, so I'm, you know, Alfenhorn's in Berlin or
whatever. I'm, I'm really hungry for, to,
to find traditions of music making because it is, of course,
universal, right? And interact with that in a way
that doesn't tug at it and it doesn't Take Me Out of who I am
either. So I liken this.
Lately I've been likening it to the medical from, from Japanese
traditional cuisine. Japanese traditional cuisine.
The philosophy is that you have different things that are
beautiful tasting together on a plate, but they're not allowed
to touch. So every group I bring into a
broadcast, for example, that's sort of that has their own
strong tradition. I, I make a way, I find a way
with them to create a vessel in the peace such that they can be
in it as themselves. And I don't, I don't like, I, I
try to find those ways. I mean, it's a, it's constantly
shifting learning, you know, a lesson for me, but I, I find it
really exciting right now. Operating within what somebody
might call the classical music world that that also requires
you to have some very open minded collaborators to put on
big pieces like this. I mean, I'm thinking about Teddy
Abrams, as you mentioned in, in Louisville or, you know, Gil
Rose in Boston. And, and so do those
collaborators are are you finding them easier to find?
I I think what I'm trying to say is, is the world of classical
music evolving to accommodate a creator like yourself?
Wow, I, I, I think those are two different questions you.
Know. You say, are they easier to
find? I mean, I was, I'm thinking
about I had copy the other day with Jacob Gottlieb, who's the
the the program manager for the creators core program and at
Louisville Orchestra for Teddy Teddy's program.
And I was, I can't remember what we were talking about, but he
said something like, yeah, well, you know, you can, you know, you
can, you can find geniuses anywhere.
You can, you know, but you can't find open hearted people very
often among them, you know, because we were talking about I
don't can't remember what it was, but I and he said it better
than I just did, but I just was so touched that by that.
I think, you know, geniuses. I've known a lot of geniuses.
I've worked with a lot of geniuses.
I'm selective, actually, about the geniuses I want to work
with, you know, because I need people to have an open heart.
You know, I think of Colin and Eric Jacobson, who, you know, at
the nightside, you know, I'm the book and writer.
I work with them for decades. Gil Rose, I started working with
him in 2003, you know, and here we are heading into another
season. You know, I was just, I just
think I would not say they're easier to find, but I would say
that I have had already, by having found my handful of them,
like, you know, 10 or so, you know, I feel like I have have
riches beyond one lifetime. So that's the first answer.
The second answer is, you know, I mean, obviously it's easier
now that I have, I've done this before.
It's easier for somebody like Ashley Capps, you know, who's a
visionary behind big ears. It's easier for him to find me
now, you know, like, in other words, I don't have to kind of
knock on doors and say like, I'm, you know, when I went to
the Tempelhof, the Cumberland, which is the the green, you
know, the, the Parks Department of Berlin to try to introduce
myself. I mean, that was crazy.
I had no documentation of other projects, similar projects to
show them or anything. I mean, it has taken a certain
kind of partner along the way to, you know, to step up.
But also I've been willing to do a lot of these things myself.
I mean, Christo, you know, once said when they interviewed him
about one of his big projects, you know, isn't it, wouldn't it
be great if you had more support for what you're doing so that
you wouldn't have to do all these town meetings and, you
know, on permits and stuff like that and you could just do the
work. And he said, well, but that is
the work, you know, which I think is, which is how I feel
too. You know, I, I, I always have to
get in there and like and want to get in there.
I'm an executive producer as well as a composer.
I'm a producer as well as a composer because this is
something I had to be willing to do.
I can't expect people, no matter how many times I've missed, no
matter where I am in my career, you know, you've got to, to, to
lift a whole wall like this. You know you've got to.
Everyone has to be pulling. That's that's beautiful.
I almost want to clam up and not say anything else and just put a
period. You've been, as you said, you've
been performing with Philip Glass and the Philip Glass
Ensemble Beyond for more than 30 years now, and you've sung in
vocal ensembles that John Zorn has taken all over the world.
How does your life as a performer impact your work as a
composer, as a creator for other performers?
Oh, it absolutely does. I mean, I don't, you know, I
absolutely stand by my decision to keep performing
professionally throughout the whole sort of, you know, the arc
of my composing career because I got a big break by getting the
glass ensemble job when I was 2223 years old, you know, and I
really didn't have any compositional career to speak up
yet, right? So the singing happened 1st.
And I remember people saying to me, look, you know, you're going
to have to make a decision at some point.
You know, you're going to have to decide whether you're a
singer or a composer. And I thought, well, who says I
have to decide? I don't want to.
I mean, I don't know. I don't think I ever decided is
what I'm saying. But the, the balance shifts.
And the reason I think it's important is that I'm asking
people to do things often that are outside their comfort zone.
And if I don't also get out on stage still in front of
thousands of people like I do all the time and get outside my
own comfort zone, then why am I asking other people to do that?
You know, again, it's a hierarchical thing.
It's like, what am I willing to, you know?
I mean, there has to be not just I, I have to not just be making
demands on people, but making loving demands on them because I
know what the rewards are of meeting those kinds of demands,
right. So I think, I mean, there's
still, I don't often write music for myself to perform, but this
season I'm going to be, there are a couple times when
commissioners actually request me as a performer in my own
music. And there's a piece that was
commissioned by Hadio France for the group ensemble Variance in
Rouen and called Inchesavi Volche.
I'm going to be doing it twice this coming season, once at
Eastman and I once at the Miller Theatre.
It's part of their composer portrait series.
So I'm going to be back sort of on stage.
That's going to be with Contemporaneous I'm going to be
back on stage like and I'm going to have to get my all myself
together for that, you know, like I do for the for the glass.
I know it's like, oh, I have a kind of skatsie coming up.
I've got to, you know, no matter what it is I'm doing with all my
crazy, you know, composing deadlines, I have to sing every
day to get ready for that stuff. You know, it's a physical
practice and I think it's really healthy.
It keeps keeps things in a certain, it gives things a
certain integrity for me. Final question for me is kind of
a philosophical thing that has literally just occurred to me as
we were talking, which has to do with the idea of history and
legacy and preservation. Because, you know, you coming up
working alongside Philip Glass, you would know this especially
well, but a lot of composers of his generation or around his
generation that ran their own bands like Meredith Muck, like
Steve Reich, are now in a process of finding ways to score
or preserve their work so that it can be carried forward.
And you are part of a way of exemplifying that because you're
now working with the Philip Glass Ensemble, in which Glass
is not generally an active participant anymore, but it's
keeping that music alive. So I come to think of this in
the context of the broadcast model and in context of the old
saying that music is something that only exists in the air and
that it's gone what it is. Yeah, Exactly.
So then what is the future history slash legacy of these
broadcast pieces? Are they something that only
exists in the moment that they're happening, or is there a
way to document them sufficiently so that they get
carried on and perhaps repeated? Again, I mean, I think that's
several questions, so I'll give you 3 answers.
One of them is I love the ephemeral.
I love it. I think that people who are
there are special. The moment is special.
I like the fact that there's no footprint, you know, there's
because there's no tech, there's no electricity, there's no
stage, there's no production. Thousand, you know, 1000 people
come together, they make music. They're gone.
It's gone. It's over.
I love that. How many things are like that in
our world, right? Think about Generation Z, how
hungry they are for things that are IRL.
Know things that I mean, they had their education, you know,
interrupted by this entirely remote experience and now
they're in the world and they want to just come together and
do things that are real, that are, you know, and maybe that
maybe not be so focused on having to document everything
all the time. I celebrate that that's answer
one answer 2 is it's got to be documented.
It is also I do also have a very good I mean, we have good camera
crews and and audio and, you know, video capture.
There's been drone and crane footage everywhere.
There's been, you know, we've had great teams.
And so all of the other broad large city broadcasts that, you
know, Temple Hoff and San Francisco and also and also
Louisville have been there are there are short films that can't
actually recreate the whole experience but are designed to
give a very good kind of, you know, feeling of what happened
there. And there are, you know,
broadcasts from home, for example, is assiduously
documented at the Library of Congress.
Like they own everything now, all of the source recordings,
everything, all the documentations, all the, all
that, which is great because, you know, I think that's really,
that's really important part of the process.
If somebody were to dive into that collection, they would,
they would, if they were nerdy enough, they'd figure out how I
did it. And I am organized.
I mean, you brought up this kind of, you know, this is if someone
really knew, I mean, someone could decipher this, they could
decipher this, you know? It's not anybody else's job
right now but mine because, you know, they went, they're
supposed to be joyful and carefree and make music
together. But yeah, it's, it's definitely
I'm, I'm because of the way I, I do my own process just for my
own self. I think it would be possible to,
to follow it up, but it's not actually my primary concern.
Like my mother says, you know, I'm not going to be here anyway,
you know? Which I think is kind of
healthy, right? Right.
Big Ears Conversations about Music is a production of Big
Ears Festival. I'm your host Sarah Gilletti.
The show is produced by Matt Marowitz.
This episode was edited by Trevor Smith with Delilah Ryder.
Ashley Capps is the executive and artistic director of Big
Ears. Big Ears 2026 will take place
March 26th through 29th, 2026 in Knoxville, TN.
For more information and festival updates, visit
bigearsfestival.org. Thanks for listening and until
next time, keep those ears wide open.