>> David Plylar:
Good evening, everybody. It's really good to see you. My name is David Plylar. I'm one of the concert producers
at the Library of Congress in the Music Division, and I'm really excited
about tonight's program because we've been--
I was thinking, we're going to have to wait
till the sesquicentennial of Ligeti to actually get to do the
Ligeti Centennial Project here. But we're, we're finally--
things kind of, the stars aligned and we're able to do this.
So I'm joined tonight by Austin Wulliman with the
Takt Trio and Marcos Balter, who was commissioned by the
Verna and Irving Fine Foundation at the Library of Congress, Endowment at the Library
of Congress. Excuse me. And for a new piece
for Horn Trio tonight. And so this is-- I don't know
how many of you are really familiar with the horn trio
repertoire, but kind of one of the foundational
ones is the Brahms' trio that was written in 1865. There weren't a ton, I think,
that were written before that, even though I'm sure there's
somebody out there who was saying. I was the before Brahms,
but I'm not getting the credit. [Laughing] But in any case,
we've got a program that's going to include-- Tomorrow
we're going to hear the Brahms, but we're going to hear,
tonight, we're going to hear Marcos's piece, a piece by
Hilda Paredes who almost was able to come out. But unfortunately wasn't
able to work out a piece by her that was commissioned by the
Koussevitzky Music Foundation and then also the
Ligeti Horn Trio, which is kind of one of the foundational
20th century great pieces that-- So I'm extremely excited. I'm like busting over here with
how much I really love this music. So welcome. And I'm looking forward just to
kind of chat about the music you're going to be
playing and whatnot. So welcome. Thank you. Yeah. >> Marcos Balter: Thank you
so much. And it's a pleasure. It's an honor to be put in
a program with Ligeti, who is one of my personal heroes. But it's also-- I'm
doomed to look bad. So, you know, you forget. [Laughing] I mean, it's a little bit
better than the usual. Because Balter,
people love to do like the Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms, Balter. I'm like, no, I always lose. So, you know, so this one, I've
stayed away from any kind of homage or comparison as much
as I could, because I knew that it wasn't going to be
a good look for me. But I'm glad to be here. >> David Plylar: Well, I got to
hear a little bit of your piece, but I haven't heard
the whole thing, and I'm really excited
about what I've heard. And maybe you could
just say a bit about, the piece is called Atlas, and
maybe you could say a bit about what prompted you to
write this music this way. >> Marcos Balter:
Yeah, I mean, I love Brahms and I love Ligeti and
I love their horn trios. Those are my two
favorite horn trios. And, but I knew it was going
to be a challenge because it's a tricky instrumentation
for many, many reasons. And it's a piece that I started. I have about like 6 or 7 different horn trios that
never came to exist. And I kept abandoning ideas
until I got to this one, and I felt good about it and
pursued it, a little too late, but I did. Austin is amazing and
very accommodating. But what I tried to do was
to do a piece that was not an homage by being an homage. So the idea of Atlas is this
sort of groups of islands, almost like arch bells, that
you only start to realize that they are objects that have
this affinity to one another as the piece unfolds and as the
piece unfolds, that degree of affinity also gets to be
manipulated by the musicians, because the piece is primarily
fully written, but there is a lot of improvisation that
happens through the piece at different times, with different
improvisatory windows. It's kind of a juggling
exercise in many ways for musicians, because they have to
keep track of where they are and also allow themselves
a degree of freedom to play with the material. So that's the idea of Atlas,
sort of like remapping things. And the hidden quasi
homage too is that the mountain formation atlas
is the formation that kind of divides Africa from Europe. So I kind of wanted to, you know, do a little hat tip to
Ligeti's interest in sub-Saharan music, and also
this idea of Eurocentric music that is fully written in
precise, and the tradition of the African diaspora of
improvisation and freedom with fixed material. >> David Plylar:
That's wonderful. Austin, maybe, can you say a bit about what that's like to
put that together? Like it sounds really
good, like in concept, but how does it come to you? [Laughing] >> Austin Wulliman: Yeah. It's
a really wonderful challenge to put together, actually, because
what it does is it draws on our ability as a trio to do these
complex webs of rhythmic material. There's these really
beautiful kind of hocketing stuff happening between us. And before Marcos came to
rehearse with us, we were very focused on the precision of
how that was coming together rhythmically and getting
everything to really sound like clocks, which comes to
mind for me with Ligeti. And I feel that in the piece still. But now it's as if, after
working on it together, we realized more of
this archipelago feeling. Maybe clouds are also
a part of this clock. The clock is behind a cloud,
and so we get to explore gesture as well as the
rhythmic nature of it. So as we found that kind of
shaping and the world that it lives in, which is a little
more ineffable, a little less hammer precision, I think
also that led us to where starting to be able to improvise
over it made more sense, because it's like there is a
web of this gestural material that then we can kind of
emerge from as soloists. And so parts of it will be
repeated, and then one of us will diverge, or two
of us will diverge, but one will stay the same. And so, you know, you come
up with different systems of how to do different
parts of the piece. Each part has its own kind of
dynamic between a soloist and somebody who's fixed on the score. And for me as a musician, the
way I'm trained, mostly from the very eurocentric background,
it's a great way for me to enter something that's fixed that
I've been able to sink my teeth into as a score, but then
beyond that, I can start to let my imagination take a
little more flight with some guidance from Marcos as far as
what materials are making sense when we rehearsed it. >> David Plylar:
That's wonderful. I mean, I feel badly going
into this next topic that's related to this,
but without David here, to speak to the part of the horn. But what makes a
horn trio in particular, I think a difficult situation
is that you have to-- It's usually difficult to balance a
single brass instrument with strings and piano. And I'm just wondering how
you both kind of have dealt. We were talking-- Austin and
I were talking earlier about the dynamics mean a different thing
when you're in a different context, and maybe you could
speak to that a bit. >> Austin Wulliman: Yeah. Well,
just from a performance standpoint, I normally play in
a string quartet. So a lot of my life is spent
like really honing these textures that are unified,
super homogenous, and our sense of what the bottom and top is,
is of our range is very co decided over many years
and because of that, it starts to push further and further
because you got to stay interested over
hundreds of concerts. And so my sense of what
pianissimo meant in a score or what mezzo forte meant, has
changed in a lovely way because of working with Connor and David. This is, you know, a little bit
of a side project for all of us and coming together and playing
with strings that are so long on the piano. And not that the
quartet never plays with piano, but not as much. And thinking about the
resonance of the horn, the different kind of resonance
that comes from it has been eye opening for me personally. But then in addition to that,
you know, you might think, well, the horns loud, but also David's
incredible and can play very soft. So there's some
malleability there as far as the sound. >> David Plylar:
Marcos, what's it like to write for such performers,
especially with that aspect? >> Marcos Balter:
Well, I mean, it's-- My practice really is centered
at working with people that I know really
well as much as I can. You know, sometimes I work
with, you know, musicians that I'm just getting to know. But most of the time, you
know, I seek out, you know, projects that involve friends. Austin and I have known each other. Now, it's it's sad. Right? >> 20 years.
>> 20? Perhaps. Yeah. >> Austin Wulliman:
Working together for 20 years. >> Marcos Balter:
We went to school together. And David, I've known David
since the formation of the International Contemporary
Ensemble, which was 22 years ago. Connor is the youngest kid. And this is our
third project together. And I've known Connor now
for almost a decade now. A little less perhaps. And there is a beauty of
not writing for instruments, but writing for people,
understanding who they are behind their instruments and
what they do well, what is peculiar about their sounds,
and really being able to hone a piece based on who they are,
which rather than limiting having to create something that
is like bespoke to someone, to me at least, it frees me to
visualize colors and sounds in very specific ways, because
I know the folks, you know, so I don't have to
imagine that much. I can just close my eyes and
hear Austin's playing and know what kind of part would sound
good for Austin, which is any part. [Laughing] >> Austin Wulliman:
Well, but it's a two way street, I think, too, for me,
when I pick up the score, then it's just a much
shorter journey from the seeing to the knowing
what the sound quality is. There's still a journey there,
and we took working together to find the sound, but especially
with some of the more virtuosic passages in this, I could basically
just sit down and play them as opposed to like composers
I've never worked with before, especially if I'm not
familiar with a lot of their pieces, it takes me a
while sitting with the notes, kind of like playing them a lot,
getting to know the harmony and like getting in there. It's just such a different thing
when you know each other. Yeah. >> David Plylar:
Well, speaking of that, you know, how did
this group come to be about the Takt Trio? I had this image in my mind
that it was just that you met in a bar, talked. >> Austin Wulliman: We've all
met different places over time. I actually don't know where
we all met for the first time. It's one of those things, you
know, we've been around each other's kind of
ambitious for a long time. and Connor-- >> Marcos Balter:
Probably right. >> Austin Wulliman: I'm sure I met
Burt in Chicago at some point at a night show but, Connor, I think I didn't meet until
I moved to New York in 2016. But Connor and I have been
talking about violin piano stuff for a while. But then with the
Ligeti centenary coming up, this was two years ago now,
I guess, two and a half years. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what time.
What time? Yeah. I brought up to him that I
really wanted to be playing the horn trio in that year and commissioned some
pieces to go with it to keep the tradition going. To me, it's it's just such an
important piece in my life. I've been playing it
since I was a student. It's so meaningful and so deep. Both the Brahms and the Ligeti
are pieces about family to me and about, like, really about
life, not just about music, which I also love, but those
pieces just resonate with me in such a deep way that I just
really felt this need to do it and keep building that
repertoire. So yeah, Connor and I talked about
whether we could do that. And of course, the first person
that came to mind for us was Burt, because he's phenomenal
and we both know him and love him. So yeah, that's
basically how it started. And then we were like,
let's make it happen. >> David Plylar: That's wonderful.
I mean, that was kind of how we I knew all these musicians
individually, but I figure that the concoction would be something
that's worth seeing for sure and hearing. Maybe
could you say a bit about Hilda's piece? Because she wasn't able
to be here tonight, but, I'm curious because I
haven't heard any of it yet. She's always got a lot to
say, so I'm very curious. >> Austin Wulliman: Yeah.
I won't try to speak for her because she's very eloquent and
has a lot to say about her music. But I will say what I feel
about the piece, which is that it's a quite a statement,
very poetic piece. It's called Koan. And you, I think, will feel
that kind of like succinct, poetic nature of it, even
though it's kind of a long piece. It might feel contradictory,
but somehow the material is very focused. And what it's trying
to say is very focused. But it also, like, draws on
an incredible number of instrumental techniques to say it. It's very vivid.
It's very coloristic. It has both sections of
incredible introspection and wild virtuosity honestly,
stuff where when I first got it, I was like, hoo boy, are we
going to be able to do this? And it took a couple
shows to get it there. But I love that journey. I love being pushed
in certain ways. There's for the violin. There's these passages of very
fast pizzicati for the piano. There's incredible leaping
gestures of chords. And the horn has a beautiful
reference to the Brahms that's kind of set against this
modernist accompaniment, with a reference to the Brahms. If you catch it, I'm
proud of you. But... [Laughter] You still hear the melody,
like, but maybe it takes a couple of times to hear
the piece to catch it. It's beautifully hidden in there. The reason I immediately
thought of commissioning Hilda when we were thinking of
composers to commission for this project is because of the
way that I feel like her innate style speaks to Ligeti
and the way that rhythmic layers can become texture and
atmosphere in her music, the way that things are drawn out of
instrumental sound and into an affable, rhythmic, melodic domain. There are certain techniques
that I think you'll have seen before, but the
way that they're drawn into something melodic and harmonic
in this music is very special. >> David Plylar: That's wonderful.
I'm looking forward to that. You know, I'm thinking
about some of the connections. I mean, Ligeti had some things
to say where he felt that his piece was more about Beethoven
than it was about Brahms. But I think that maybe he was
pushing that a bit hard, because there are certain
similarities, of course, that are there
between those pieces. But one of them that kind of
comes up just to bring it up, just as something we
could talk about briefly is there's an element of
something unstable with this music that with where most of the
material is on the off beat and it takes a long time
for it to stabilize. And even then, when it does,
the tempo is just there's something odd about it that
makes it just so that it has this tension there that is really
kind of different for Brahms. And I think that maybe some
people were critical of this, but I find it fascinating,
and I find that same sort of tension in the
Ligeti with the way that he deals with things
that line up or don't and purposefully, you know, manipulates
those in different ways. But I'm just kind of wondering
if, as you're playing these pieces and or listening
to these pieces, do they have, you mentioned that you've
done the Ligeti since you were younger. Does it have this
feeling of a naturalness or does it still kind of
keep that edge to it? >> Austin Wulliman: That's a
really interesting question. To me, I guess I would frame
it more as like that both of those pieces are about
emotions that are hard to hold. And so some of that stuff
that's a little bit more ineffable or a little less put
into the four square kind of feelings that we're used to. To me is about how once you
look really close at something that's very close to your heart,
you can kind of come undone. and so, like the opening
of the Brahms, for instance, he has I feel like there's
a seeking, a searching for, like, how can I say
something about my mother that's just like, what I hear
in that piece is like, really, you know, his very close
relationship with his mother and the desire to say something in
the time after her passing. And to me, death and
disintegration of things also looms very large in Ligeti's
piece, the way that things come undone in various ways, that he
unravels threads that seem like they're going to be
very clear and then come spin, spin apart very quickly. But that also happens
emotionally. I think in the first movement
it's it's a little bit more wistful or nostalgic,
but by the end, I think everything is kind of
death is staring us in the face. >> Devastating.
>> Yeah. It's very devastating. Yeah. >> David Plylar:
That's-- I feel very similarly with
respect to all these things that you're mentioning. I wonder, Marcos, if you
could tell us a little bit more about any other aspects
of these kind of pivotal trios from the past,
whether there were other certain ways that those resonated with
your own work, with the-- >> Marcos Balter:
I mean, those are two composers that I absolutely adore. In terms
of 20th century composers, I would put Ligeti as
my biggest influence. I've been a fan since I was a
kid, and I grew up on Brahms. My instrument is piano, so I
grew up playing, you know, 117, 118 and all those things. A lot of Brahms chamber music
as an accompanist with singers, you know, playing Brahms, you
know, chamber music in general. The piano trios are fun,
very difficult. I don't play that anymore. And Ligeti, you know,
has been sort of my standard in many ways
for composers that think creatively yet very
structurally and rhythm, the attention of both to rhythm
is something that has always captivated me. I mean, Brahms is like
the king of Hemiola, right? That you can listen to
something be like, is this in three or is this in four? You know, and Ligeti is like,
well, this is in three and four and five and seven at the same
time, you know, so there's this idea of layers and
perhaps not confusion, but, you know, sort of like
minimalism, you know, kind of living in
between the states that you can choose
where to follow, you know, that adventure
at any given time. And then there are portals that you
can feel things in different ways. Brahms is also
the king of-- >> Austin Wulliman: Dangerous.
The portals are dangerous. You have to avoid the
portals. >> Marcos Balter:
The dark portals? Yes. But, you know, there's
this idea of inner voices that are not just, you know,
fillers, but are fully independent. There's counterpoint that is really important
for all of them. So I see a lot of similarities,
even though Ligeti like to, you know, diss on Brahms here
and there, I can see how Ligeti also grew up on Brahms, you know,
and I grew up on both of them very proudly. >> David Plylar: You know, my
brain went dead a moment ago. It was because I was thinking
about this one aspect of Ligeti that you brought up
and that's that there's all these elements that are always
there's a purpose to them, a purpose to the lines. I think
that another thing about it is that this particular piece is
situated at a time in Ligeti's life when it is a kind of
a meeting place for the past with elements from his past
as early as 1953 and before. And then it explodes
outward into the-- especially in the early '90s with
pieces like the Violin Concerto, the Viola Sonata, other
pieces like that where the same type of material or a
variation on a micro polyphonic idea becomes a-- It's a piece
that is already beyond itself. And he knew it like,
it feels like he knew it. I don't speak for Ligeti,
but it just sounds like it feels like he knew it. And then he
was like, willing to go with it and allow himself
to keep exploring that. And I think that was a good
thing for him at that point, to allow himself that freedom. >> Marcos Balter: Absolutely.
And how Ligeti's harmonic language also changed quite a lot at that
period that he, you know, he had approached Microtonality
in other pieces before, but as a gestural element. And when you get to that
specific phase and a little bit later on, micro tonality
becomes structural, you know, really thinking in terms of tonal dependency within, you
know, something outside of the chromatic scale for
which, you know, both the violin and the horn are amazing
instruments to explore because they, you know, they
have microtonality, you know, innate to them.
It's built within them. So it's a great formation to
explore microtonality, which I've used in my work
quite a lot, as you hear. But that particular period
of Ligeti, that's what I think, you know, that sort of
stands out the most for me. It's really the structural
approach to rhythm as it relates to microtonality. >> David Plylar:
Well, thank you for that. >> Austin Wulliman:
Yeah. I would just like, add to that that I
think you'll be able to hear it really clearly
in the concert. Like the way pitch is more
of an issue for this in Marcos. And like these pieces,
not so much in Brahms is traditionally harmonic,
obviously, but the way that our foundational perception of what
a note is being brought to bear in those pieces, I think
is really critical for perceiving them with the maximal
kind of effect that they have which is I think can give
us a kind of new vision of what the piano is
doing in that context. >> David Plylar: You know one
other thing I should just mention, because David isn't here, is
that one of the fascinating correspondences between these
pieces and perhaps between Marcos's and Hilda's too, I'm
not sure is the fact that Brahms had written
for the natural horn. And so he had in particular
E-flat horn and Ligeti in his basically he has brackets
over sections where he wants the horn player to
basically pretend like it's a natural horn in that key. And so he labels what that key
is, and it gives you a period where it's emulating
that in that sort of way. It just occurs to me that is exactly what they're doing.
They're playing with that. And it's a very different thing
to hear the Brahms done on a natural horn versus a valved horn. But I think we're going to
hear the valve horn. >> Austin Wulliman: Actually,
this is really making me realize something that I kind of wasn't thinking about super clearly
was like a sort of innate choice that I made or
an instinctual choice that I made because of the way
Hilda's piece is and because of the way your pieces with the
natural harmonics and quarter tones as well. And the Ligeti, in the
Ligeti, there's a lot of harmonics in the violin that
are written as like the finger false harmonics that
seem to correspond with notes of the overtone series
that just in that era, when he wrote that piece, not many
people were playing those harmonics, natural harmonics. And probably players were like,
nah, dude, we don't do that. I've started doing a lot of
those as natural harmonics, and I think it sounds really cool with
the textures that Ligeti wrote. So that's something that
I think because of Hilda's piece, you'll hear really heavily
utilizes harmonics up to the 12th partial
in the violin part. And the horn is always
playing super high partials. So I think you'll hear
really interesting intonations that come out from that
and a little different in the Ligeti maybe than
you've heard before, if you're familiar with the piece. >> David Plylar:
Well, I want to make sure that there's time for people to
ask questions if they want to. But before we do that, maybe
you could just tell us what you're up to right now. Like,
what's the next thing for-- Is the horn trio going to kind
of continue on, or is it going to reconstitute at some point? Marcos, what's your next
piece you're working on or next concert? >> Marcos Balter: Right now I am
working on an orchestral piece for the Sao Paulo
Symphony Orchestra. It's my first piece for them. So I'm very excited. I consider them not only one of
the best orchestras in my country, but one of the best orchestras
in general nowadays playing new music. And then after that, I am
doing this big project with Connor and Jake Campbell,
who plays at Austin's quartet and for electronic musicians,
it's going to be Sin Perla, Ikue Mori, Gladstone
Butler and who am I-- And Maria Chavez. And it's a piece for piano,
cello, and for electronic improvisers that it's going to
be an evening length piece that we're going to premiere at the
end of the year in New York. >> David Plylar:
Exciting. Wow. >> Austin Wulliman: And that
includes the parts of that violin, the cello and piano piece
that I've heard before? >> Marcos Balter:
Exactly. >> Austin Wulliman: It's beautiful
music. Really, really beautiful. >> Marcos Balter:
It's a partnership with the 92Y that we've been
developing that for a while. Yeah. >> David Plylar:
And Austin? >> Austin Wulliman:
Yeah, well, for the trio, I think the next thing
for us is to work towards a recording of this new
stuff that we have together. Yeah. And I think there
will be a little break from concerts. We just had a nice
little burst of activity here. But yeah, for me, it's
back to the string quartet. A lot of touring with
Jack this summer. X festival, Spoleto festival. Working with one of our idols
and close collaborators, George Lewis, in
Ticino this summer. And working towards a
recording of our bigger project that we're calling Modern
Medieval, where we've both commissioned and myself and
Chris of the quartet have made kind of adaptations and
reimaginings of medieval music along with contemporary music. So that's that's what's next. >> David Plylar:
Awesome. Any questions? We have a microphone that
is ready for you if you have any. Here we go. >> Hey, Marcos.
Quick question. As you know, I was
here recently in D.C. just about a few weeks
ago for one of another premiere of your own. And I'm wondering
if you could talk-- So in that piece, which was
performed by the Shanghai String Quartet and >> Marcos Balter:
Anthony Roth Costanzo. >> Thank you. That was a very
introspective piece for yourself that dealt a lot with, you know,
in relation to an artwork, but for you, it had a lot to do
with the pandemic and how that affected you as a composer. I'm wondering if you could talk
a little bit about this piece in comparison to that, where you are
in time with how you compose this work and-- Sorry, I don't know if anyone here
was here for that one as well, but so maybe this is a little
bit of a personal question. >> Marcos Balter: So I mean, there
are very different I should say. The piece that that Zack
is referring to is, it's a half hour piece for
countertenor and string quartet with text by Gertrude Stein. I got, like, selections from
Tender Buttons, and it's all about being in a room
and acknowledging a room, and it's very, very small in
many ways, and it's sort of structural scope, very
intimate, slow in general. And I came out of the
pandemic wanting to be as anti-pandemic as I possibly could. So I'm going to kick
now off many, many notes and very fast music and-- [Laughing] >> Austin Wulliman: Cool. [Laughing] I love that. You know I love
that. You know I love that. >> Marcos Balter: So the energy
is completely different. The the energy itself is
completely different. And I've been really
sort of wanting to address the idea of rhythm, you know,
microtonality and rhythm in my music for a very long time
because I do think that one of the least really looked on
parameters in contemporary music these days, to me, has been
rhythm and rhythmic complexity in different ways. So I'm
very focused on that. So this piece is a bucket of very cold water,
you know, thrown at the musicians and hopefully a fun journey. [Laughing] >> David Plylar: We have
another one up here. One moment. >> Marcos Balter: There are some
slow moments there too though. >> Okay, so since I'm going
to follow up on that, because that's exactly where I was
thinking with the discussion about the Ligeti rhythms. And we were talking before, I don't know whether you were
at the opening of the Whitney where they had this Nancarrow fest. >> Marcos Balter:
I was there. >> And I was-- >> Marcos Balter:
I was with the player piano. >> I was sitting behind the player
piano with my back to the soundboard because Ligeti
was all through that, and I sat through the whole concert
with my back to the soundboard all of those days, just
feeling those vibes. So I'm just really excited to hear
you talk about rhythms being kind of interwoven.
And the question is, from your compositional perspective and the players that
you're composing for, because at the time he was
doing player piano because he thought human beings
can't do those polyrhythms. And now different groups are,
you know, using click tracks or whatever to start
doing the polyrhythms. And I'm just curious how
you're exploring that with the musicians that you're composing for without resorting
to those electronics? >> Marcos Balter:
Absolutely. I mean, we are-- I mean, I love Nancarrow,
I love Conlon Nancarrow. And for those of you
who are unfamiliar with Nancarrow's music, you know,
he left the U.S. because he didn't want to go to the war and he
fled to Mexico and he had no access to performers. So he started like punching
cards in a player piano. And when he started doing that,
he freed himself also from the responsibility of
"doing playable music," rhythmically speaking. And that was a huge influence
on Ligeti, by the way. Ligeti loved Nancarrow's music. But nowadays we have
amazing people that can actually do transcriptions of
Nancarrow's music and play it beautifully, including a fantastic
pianist composer that both of us have a very
close relationship with. Amy Williams, who was
my composition teacher at northwestern and who has
composed for jazz quartet. They just did an amazing
concert of Amy's music, and I think that Amy's
music is full of that. Right? I mean, it's-- >> Austin Wulliman: Yeah. I feel
like it's one of the big, just kind of like current
things for performers to be able to explore this and to learn how to
embody these things. Rhythmic pedagogy really
fell out of the conservatories. I don't know when that
happened, because if you look back at, I don't know, like
British texts, that they would have taught to the choir boys
of England back in the day, they were learning tuplets up past what I can do
comfortably right now. So it's it's really a lost art. And something that I think is
really important because the more that we're able to embody
different times, I think we're able to say more
things in the music. I think we're able to see
different counterpoints of ideas that have a very different lens. So, yeah, I think it's a huge
point of interest and a critical problem in musical
education that needs to be addressed. The people who
are mostly focused on it now have taught ourselves because
there's really no education of it. Not none. But like almost
nowhere is rhythm taught, even in a basic sense. You
can run into amazing, amazing performers who don't even
really understand the way a triplet functions. They just know
by ear the way that goes. So when that's the mode
of teaching, is by listening and relating, which is so important,
you have to be able to hear it and hear style. But if there's not a
relationship with like pure kind of ratios or abstract
relationships between things as a way of being able to engage
with musical idea, then I think there's a big limitation to how
we're able to explore new style. >> Marcos Balter: Plus, I think
that talking about education, I mean, I'm also an educator,
very passionate about how music is taught in general. We have other cultures that
have a hugely complex way of approaching, pedagogically
speaking rhythms. So South Indian music with its
taka-dimi system that kids can do seven against 13 without even
blinking, you know, and, things that actually have been
removed from the European style of study music also are
interesting to notice. For instance, improvisation. Improvisation was essential to
every single performer and composer until the end
of the 19th century. When you have a Beethoven
concerto and there is a cadenza, the soloist was expected to
improvise, you know, so you couldn't really think of,
you know, training yourself as a musician without delving really
seriously into improvisation. It was not until the 20th
century that improvisation started to disappear from
music, for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with
sound and music, but with, you know, different things. And now I'm very glad to see
that we are much more aware of, you know, world cultures
that have this pluses that perhaps Western music doesn't
quite, you know, have or hasn't quite pursued and that this
old traditions that have been abandoned are coming back. >> Austin Wulliman: Absolutely.
And I just want to add to that, that something you said is so
important in that to highlight which is like that it was about
deeply exploring that as a part of your practice. I think
it's so easy for people to very mistakenly think of improvisation as
simply a playground, and it's so much more than that, and that does an
incredible disservice to what people are engaging with when they go into
improvisatory practices. So as this world
of European concert music extended here to the U.S. starts
to re-engage with these ideas, I think there's a real urgency to
find a depth of that engagement. >> Marcos Balter: Yeah. I
have a friend who says that improvisation is anything
but anything, and I like that. [Laughter] >> David Plylar:
Well, on that note, let's thank our guests for
giving us all their time. [Applause]
