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Jennifer Koh, page 2

BD: How do you divide your career these days between concerto appearances and solo recitals?

JK: I try to do a lot of recital programs. I think there’s something very intimate with doing a recital because you have the artistic freedom to create an entire evening of music, for an hour and a half or however long you want to make your recital program. You can create an arch in the program. There’s something so intimate and so special about playing a recital and being at a recital! I’ve been an audience member at recitals so many times as well, so that’s always very special to me. Of course, concertos are always fun because you get to play with lots of people that are very nice! There’s something amazing about having a hundred people onstage with a similar goal, which is to play well together. There’s something very exciting about that, and being able to communicate so intimately with those a hundred people onstage is an amazing thing! That’s kind of the macro amazing thing, and then the recital is kind of a micro amazing thing.

BD: You’re communicating with the hundred people that are behind you. Are you also communicating with the thousand or two thousand people in front of you?

JK: Absolutely, absolutely!

BD: Are you aware of them every moment, or are they just sort of there?

JK: I think of the audience, definitely. When I’ve been an audience member, you feel that you are a part of the evening; there’s no question about that. And in the same way, I feel that as a performer when I am onstage. It is a direct communication. It’s a very visceral kind of experience.

BD: Does that help, then, when the recording is made with the live audience, as opposed to being in a studio where there’s just a few engineers and that’s it?

JK: Absolutely! I think that the recording process of working in studio is very unnatural. You can create magical moments in a studio, but it’s much harder to do that because the audience is an essential part of the performance.

BD: And the audience, a little bit removed by time, doesn’t enter into your mind?

JK: No. You just stare at the little microphones and wish they weren’t so close to you! [Laughs]

BD: Should you perhaps invite twenty-five of your closest friends to the recording?

JK: That would be too much to ask of anybody, I’m afraid.

BD: Because of the various takes and retakes and everything?

JK: Yeah, yeah.

BD: Is there ever a chance that the recording becomes too perfect?

JK: I was just on this panel at the American Symphony Orchestra League in Pittsburgh, and we were talking about historical recordings and why performance practice has changed so drastically. One of the points that one of the members of this panel brought up was that it’s because everybody expects perfection. Then another panel member said, “But you know they’d be crucified if it wasn’t perfect!”

BD: These are professionals who are working to bring more orchestral concerts to more people?

JK: Yes, these are orchestra managers, mostly management and administration.

BD: Do they have the right slant on performing, or is it a little bit skewed because they are trying to present rather than enjoy?

JK: I think they definitely enjoy it. No one can be in the classical music world without loving music, because if they don’t love classical music, I’m sure they could make a better living doing something else!

BD: I assume this is something that you’ve always wanted to do?

JK: It was something that I always knew, that I wanted music in my life. When I was young I never really dreamed that I’d actually be able to make my life as a performing musician.

BD: You could just buy a CD player.

JK: No, I think I knew I always wanted to be playing in some form. Whether it would become a career, I wasn’t sure. I don’t even think I knew what careers were when I realized that I always wanted music in my life. But I feel very fortunate.

BD: So then you really didn’t select it; it selected you?

JK: I think that’s usually the way it goes, many times.

BD: Are you pleased that you’re music’s victim?

JK: I’m very, very happy. Very happy.

* * * * *

BD: Let me ask the real easy question — what’s the purpose of music?

JK: One of the most amazing concerts that I did was a couple days after September 11th, 2001. The National Symphony in Washington D.C. decided to still present a concert. I think it was on a Friday, and September 11th was on a Tuesday. I went there, and part of the reason that I felt that I could do this was because it was an all-Beethoven concert, so I was doing the Beethoven Concerto with them. It was the kind of music that I felt was, in a way, the most appropriate for this time.
So we had rehearsals and it was still very chaotic at that time. People were calling in all these bomb threats, and the Kennedy Center is across the street from the Saudi Arabian Embassy. They’d see a paper bag and they’d think it’s a bomb, so the Kennedy Center would lock down, rehearsal would stop and everybody would vacate the building. So it wasn’t the most ideal rehearsal situation. When the concert came, it was amazing. It was completely sold out, and after I finished playing, people were just weeping! Music is about communicating when you can’t find the words. It’s about spirituality, in a sense. It’s about the human soul. It’s about seeing the worst in people and the best in people, and being able to take all the sides of humanity and turn it into something amazingly beautiful and profound. I think that’s the function of music, and I felt that more strongly than ever after that experience.

BD: Now, of course, we collectively carry September 11th with us, perhaps for the rest of our lives, and maybe even for generations to come. Is that going to affect the way music is felt, or does it just become a distant memory?

JK: I don’t know. I don’t think we know yet what the effect of it will be. I think we have no idea. It was interesting because I played at the memorial service on September 11th of this season, 2003, in New York. That was two years afterward, and it was funny — I felt that more profoundly in remembrance than I did even the previous year. So I have no idea what this will come to mean for anybody.

BD: I guess we have to let it sit, and we’ll remember it the way our parents remember World War Two, or things like that which have happened, good things and bad things, in our consciousness.

JK: Yeah. One of the lucky things we have in the States, which a lot of people don’t have, is not to have these attacks happen on a daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly basis. I think we’re extremely fortunate. It was a horrible, horrible, terrible thing that happened, but we’re also very lucky that it hasn’t happened again in the last two years.

BD: Sure. I hope that it continues that way. Music, of course, brings out and can demonstrate the worst and the best in all of us. When you’re looking at a score, do you look only for the best, or do you also look for the less-than-best in it?

JK: In score, you try to find the composer’s voice and what the composer is trying to say. It ultimately becomes a conversation with the other musicians as well as the composer. In terms of saying, “Is this a good part, or is this a bad part” I don’t know how that necessarily translates, but it’s all in the music.

BD: You need to find it in the music because you don’t have text. A singer has a linguistic text, so do you feel that as you’re playing, you’re playing a different kind of text?

JK: I think that music is a language. It’s slightly reductive to call it a language; it’s a lot more than just a language. But in the sense that we have words or we have letters or we have sentences or we have phrases, it is very similar to a language. But it is more than just a language.