Q: Do you and New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones have a rivalry going?
A: Oh, no, no. I wouldn’t say it’s a rivalry. We just
have our different beats, and occasionally cross over into each other’s
territory.
So you’re saying you could take him.
Basically, yeah.
What did you make of his essay last year claiming that indie rock is
too white?
I’m working on my own essay on how classical music is too black.
Is it just hopeless, the idea that any concentration of people under
age 50 will get interested in classical music?
It has been an old audience for several generational turnovers now.
Classical music has this self-generated image problem because it has
advertised itself as the music of the past, emphasizing Beethoven and
Mozart over living composers.
At the same time, people have to put
in a little effort.
Two weeks ago there was a crossover concert in Seattle put
together by a cellist playing Messiaen and Radiohead. Hasn’t it become
a cliché to use Radiohead for classical recruitment? You’ve
written great profiles of Björk and Radiohead, exploring their
classical influences. But it’s starting to feel like these artists are
the beginning and end of the connection between classical and
pop.
It’s a little bit of a cliché, definitely. There’s a lot more
there, but the artists are just not as well known.
Like who?
Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens. They have strong interests in
classical and 20th-century music. Joanna Newsom trained as a composer;
you wouldn’t guess that, but once you factor that in, it actually makes
sense—the long structures and the ornate harmonies. With Sufjan
Stevens, you have these long-form minimalist things protruding on the
ends of his records, and his instrumentations, well, he has these
little orchestras.
The Dillinger Escape Plan, too—the meter keeps changing, the
rhythm is intricate, the harmonies are out there, and I assume the
people in that band must have come up against some 20th-century music.
There’s this resemblance to [the classical modernist] Elliott Carter
sometimes. Why not have a festival where you listen to noise bands
against Elliott Carter or Carl Ruggles—the very dissonant end of
the 20th-century spectrum?
But something great has happened in the last 10 years where people
are pushing back against that standoff between classical music and the
mainstream. It’s something that got rolling on the West Coast,
especially with Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco and Esa-Pekka
Salonen in L.A.
Maybe Seattle will join the West Coast at some
point.
Yes. I think there could be an amazing effect if Seattle had a music
director who was following that same kind of recipe. Gerard Schwarz
doesn’t seem to be on the cutting edge of anything. I can just imagine
a whole lot more energy and conviction in that direction, and I think
Seattle instantly could become one of the leading orchestras in terms
of setting the agenda for classical music, because I think there’s this
great potential audience there.
The program that you’re in town for this weekend is called
Icebreaker Festival, with two evening concerts featuring nine world
premieres by composers including Mason Bates, Anna Clyne, Alexandra
Gardner, Judd Greenstein, Nico Muhly, Janice Giteck, William Duckworth,
and Kyle Gann, another writer, formerly of the Village
Voice. Kyle’s description of the music in the festival
includes influences from minimalism to go-go, hiphop, Javanese gamelan,
Jewish cantillation, Indian raga, medieval music, bluegrass guitar,
Jerry Lee Lewis, American Indian chant, East European dance, and the
detonation of the first atomic bomb. Anything you want to
add?
DJ culture, incomprehensible subway announcements, 16th-century
English Renaissance church music, Missy Elliott, and “Milkshake.”
To me, it resembles what’s been going on in New York at institutions
like BAM [Brooklyn Academy of Music] and now in more uptown places like
Zankel Hall [on the lower level of Carnegie Hall], where the style is
not to separate classical music but just to throw it into the mix. I
think it’s happening in every city, actually.
But there’s a huge music audience in Seattle, with this tradition of
taking pop music seriously. Whenever you have people who are thinking
deeply about pop music and its history—where it comes from and
where it’s going, and the pop music conference [at EMP] is a great
symbol of that—then you will sooner or later find people curious
about 20th-century classical. And this is a great goal for classical
music: just to get back on the menu of what intelligent people consider
what’s worth paying attention to.
Last question. Have you ever been accosted by
Björk?
That really pisses me off. Björk got mad 15 years ago at the
paparazzi and then there’s this recent event, and she’s gotten defined
as crazy. Everyone flips out every once in a while, especially with
cameras following them around, and people forget that she was actually
stalked by an insane person—a guy ended up committing suicide
after trying to send a mail bomb to her. From my acquaintance with her,
she’s not like that at all. She’s not confrontational or crazy; she’s
the opposite, the kind of person who’s remarkably easy to spend time
with and to talk to.
Short answer: Björk has never accosted
you.
Only with weird Icelandic music. 
Icebreaker IV: The American Future is Fri Jan 25 and Sat Jan 26
at On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 217-9888, 8 pm, $20/$36 for both shows,
all ages.
