>> Jennifer Koh: Hi, George. So nice to see you. >> George Lewis: Hey. Hi. How are you? Great. >> Jennifer Koh: I
know you're in Berlin. >> George Lewis: Right. >> Jennifer Koh: And I'm -- I
was so excited to have a chance to play your piece,
"Mangle of Practice," for Library of Congress. And I know it was premiered
there and commissioned by the McKim Foundation, and I was hoping you could tell
me a little bit about the piece. >> George Lewis: Well, you
know, it's a funny title, "The Mangle of Practice." It sort of started at a
conference that I went to, a sort of a 10-day conference
at University of Oxford, and -- convened by the sociologist
Georgina Born, and one of the people
who I really resonated with was the sociologist of
science, Andrew Pickering, who is a real music-head. And in his talk, he referenced
people like Alvin Lucier, and Philip Glass, and I go,
wow, this is very interesting. So we got to talking more. Then I started reading his
work, his work on agency, and performativity, and how -- and so, I felt these were
pretty important concepts, and he has a very important book
called "The Cybernetic Brain," which, of course,
resonates with a lot of things I do with technology. But the essay -- the -- his essay, "The Mangle
of Practice" -- he's talking about
the word "mangle" in two senses, you know. The first sense is like
this idea of resistance and accommodation,
as he calls it. You know, human purposes,
agencies, aspirations, you know, interact with the
material world. So you can't really draw a
bright line between human and material agency, and that's
something you also find in, like, Bruno Latour's kind
of ideas, and the idea of actor-network theory. So I think that the piece is
sensitive to those dynamics of human and material
expressions of agency, which I think comes up
whenever you play an instrument, particularly when you're
playing it in the ways that you are playing
it in this piece. But the other way,
the other notion of the mangle --
it's a British thing. It refers to -- I don't
know if you had these things when you were a kid, but I did. You know, they called them
wringers on the washing machine. So what happens is, it's
-- as you crank this thing, and it's these two rollers. And it's a way of drying --
near-drying your clothes, but it also destroys your
clothes, because it presses them into this really flat thing. It mangles them [laughter]. And so, a lot of the
sounds in the piece refer to that sense of
mangling as well. >> Jennifer Koh:
Oh, interesting. I thought it was because it
was really a difficult piece, and that the expectation was that the instrumentalists
would -- the performers would
mangle the piece [laughter]. >> George Lewis: Or that the
performers would be mangled by the piece [laughter]. >> Jennifer Koh: But I -- you know, one of the
things that I kind of love about the piece is that it
works a lot going back and forth between -- well, first of all,
it's very specific with pitches, and I feel like you've -- or, personally, I felt
like that shape macro ways and in micro ways. But the interesting thing to
me is also how they're treated, not only rhythmically, but
a lot in terms of sound, like with sul tasto or
ponticello, so that kind of framework of pitch
is both compressed and expanded rhythmically,
but in a sense, also, in terms of sound waves, in
terms of the different kind of extended techniques
used on the violin. >> George Lewis: Yeah. I mean, another aspect
of the piece -- and I don't know if I've talked
about with people, because a lot of the writing is
really high, right? And so, what you wind up with --
it reminds me of that generation of basketball players who they
said played above the rim -- you know, Michael Jordan -- I think Dominique
Wilkins was one of them. The first one maybe was
Dr. J, Julius Erving. I'm not a real big basketball
fan, but at that time, I was really influenced by that
legacy of players who did that. And so, it always
seemed as though -- so that's where you are, is way
above the rim, and occasionally, you do a slam dunk, by
going to a lower register and playing some crunchy
sounds or something. It's very -- if you listen to it
that way, it becomes, you know, very much a material
moment, you know. It's not conceptual. It's supposed to be crunchy,
and punchy, and noisy. And so, that's the sense in
which I think you were doing it, at least when I heard you
play it the other day. You know, it's intense, and
it should be like, you know, biting this -- biting into some
huge sandwich, and just kind of -- with big teeth,
and crunching into it. >> Jennifer Koh: It
was great to have a -- I mean, I know everything is
remote, so to have that chance to do a rehearsal with you. And I -- and you gave us a
little bit of the genesis of some of the extended
techniques in the piano, but I was hoping
you could kind of -- I mean, I know people will
hear it in the performance, and we did do some
shots inside the piano so people could actually see
what Tom Sauer, the pianist, is doing inside the piano. But could you kind of --
I guess I'm just curious. How did you first hear this -- it's not even about when did
you first hear the sound, but when did you hear the sound,
and then feel like you wanted to incorporate that into a kind of larger piece,
with multiple sounds? Like, I guess one would call
it traditional piano playing, and how -- so what made you kind of connect those two
things together, I guess? >> George Lewis: Yeah, well,
you know, this allows me -- that question allows
me to give a shout-out to the great pianist,
another great pianist, Richard Valitutto, and he was -- we were teaching
together in Los Angeles. And just in between sessions, I think Anne LeBaron had showed
us how to do certain kinds of harp glissandi and
things of that sort. And so, I just -- he just
started saying, "Well, here's something
cool you could do," and he pulled out
this ceramic cup. And he started making
this glissandi, and these glassy sounds. And I just said, "Well,
let me film this," right? So I took out my phone
and sort of filmed it. And so, when people ask me,
like, how they -- how to -- how that's supposed to sound, I usually send them
a copy of the film. Maybe I shouldn't have
admitted that, but [laughter] -- but it's been quite a while
since that's happened. And so, that film is
probably all over the world. So maybe it helped them. But hey, it's really helped me. And so, the first time I
actually was able to use that idea, because I usually
used -- I sort of reuse things, you know, like [inaudible] -- you know, things aren't
unique to a certain piece. I say, "Well, maybe how would
that look in this context?" So I think it was
2012, "Mnemosis," a chamber piece, was using that. That's two years
before your piece. And so, now, I'm
out of the period. So I'm not doing it now, but it
might come back some other time, if I feel it's really necessary. Because it blends really
well with the high notes -- with the high notes on the
violin, as well as other sounds on harp, things -- certain
kinds of percussion, like bowed crotales --
it's a very useful thing. It's indeterminate, and
it's very beautiful. And then, the other thing
that Tom is doing, I think, the plucking, which at first
looks like you can't do it, but then I think he
figured out how to do it. >> Jennifer Koh: Well, he was really stressed
about it [laughter]. >> George Lewis: But he
figured out how to do it, so he's one of the two people
in the world who have done that, you know, him and Winston Choi ,
whom -- along with Minghuan Xu, their's was -- the piece
was written for them. So you all are the only -- I think you all are only
the second duo to play this. >> Jennifer Koh: Oh, really? >> George Lewis:
Yeah, I think, though, it's a real achievement,
you know. >> Jennifer Koh: I feel
honored [laughter]. >> George Lewis: And I
really appreciate it, very happy you're doing it. >> Jennifer Koh:
Yes, absolutely. Let's see. I don't know. I guess maybe that's it. Is there anything else that
I should ask you about? >> George Lewis: I don't know. I'd have to say that
I was just -- this piece was made for
the Ensemble Dal Niente, with whom I've had a very
special relationship, and -- but it also works
very well with you, and in part because you have
the temperament for this piece. You know, I've seen you
play, and it's like -- on stage, at like Miller Theater
or somewhere, it's a combination of being a whirling dervish,
and, like, super virtuosic fire, and all these kinds of things. So that's why it worked so
well, and I'm really happy that you're doing it, and
especially doing it there. Because this piece was premiered
at the Library of Congress, and since then, I've gotten
chance to go back, and, you know, David Plylar has
been particularly supportive. And I got a chance to give
a lecture there recently, so I kind of feel at home there, so I kind of feel my
music is at home there. And so, thank you for
bringing it back home. That's what I would say. >> Jennifer Koh: Thank you. Well, we're all there remotely. I had to record it in a separate
studio, but it will be -- the performance is
streaming on November 19th, so I hope everybody
can join that concert and hear George's piece. >> George Lewis: I'm
going to be there. >> Jennifer Koh: Yay [laughter].
