BD: Let me ask the easy question — what is the purpose of music?
AJK: That is the easy question??? The purpose of music? [Thinks for a long moment] The first thing, I think, is just to provide joy, but it’s much more than that. Is music to do anything? There are so many things... [Pauses again] To bring about ideas that can’t be expressed in any other way; to bring us into greater awareness of emotions and feelings and thoughts that we wouldn’t be conscious of in any other way because of the non-verbal nature of it. If one is sensitive to the physical properties of sound — and we all are whether we know it or not — music changes the boy; it changes the psyche. So there’s no single purpose; it’s multi-purpose.
BD: Do you try to hit some of those purposes all the time?
AJK: Oh, yeah! The emotional aspect really has been central to be able to transform things I feel into the language of music. That’s really a lot of the way I feel I communicate what’s most important to me.
BD: When we, the audience, experience a piece of music, are we looking directly into your soul?
AJK: That’s a hard question. You may be right. It’s hard to say, because certainly when I hear the pieces, I feel like I’m looking back at myself.
BD: Do you like what you see?
AJK: Sometimes I do, and sometimes it’s a little scary! And sometimes, when I haven’t got it right, it’s a disaster. It depends, because during the composition process I’m very, very self-critical. But that doesn’t stop when it goes to performance! It just continues. The most pleasurable part for me is when a piece is done and I really feel at home with it, and know that it’s really finished and that I’ve done my best and I can go on. There are only a handful of pieces that I just feel pleasure hearing, and have a sense that I accomplished what I had set out to do.
BD: When you’re writing these pieces, you’re obviously looking inward. Do you also have any impression of the audience that’s going to be hearing it?
AJK: [Sighs] Well, yes and no. Typically when I’m writing music, I’m sitting in the audience. I’m acting as the audience member and I have to be happy with it. I have to be happy myself as an audience member, not just myself as a composer.
BD: Are there times when those two fight a little bit?
AJK: Yeah, a little bit, yeah. But typically I try to write music that I’m interested in and compels me and expresses me.
BD: But I trust you want more than just an audience of bearded, slightly balding forty-year-olds out there.
AJK: Yeah. I’m not sure how much control I have over that. Sometimes I feel frustrated and wish I were doing a film score. I’ve made a few attempts to put electronic instruments in pieces — electric guitar in an orchestra, electric bass, or synthesizer. I’ve done this repeatedly and I like very much the sound that that adds to the orchestra world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the complexion of the audience that’s coming to that concert’s going to change. There are much larger issues that I can only hope to chip away at by occasionally involving myself in educational efforts; trying to help next generations of composers, so that they will go out and they’ll be inspired to try to reach younger audiences. But we’re in real dilemma. We’re in a real problem about our audiences, though I continue to go back to something [conductor] Gerry Schwarz said to me, which is that first of all, young audiences can’t afford to go to the concert hall very often. The next generation, in their thirties to forties, often are raising families and they don’t have time to come. It’s only when many people have enough leisure time, which is after the families are raised, or if the kids are interested in the music and they bring the parents to it.
BD: But by then, they’re not in the habit of doing it.
AJK: That’s right, unless they had done something a long time before that. That’s what’s been missing — that stuff much earlier when they were going to school or were in college or whatever. If you get people excited at that point, it’s something that they’ll find a way to continue — whether it’s buying recordings or the occasional concert — and then come back to later on in life.
* * * * *
BD: Are you optimistic about the future of music, either composition or performance?
AJK: I’m optimistic about composition and quality performance, definitely. I’m very confused about what the landscape is going to look like. I don’t want to see orchestras going bankrupt. Do we have too many of them? Are the administrative ends of the orchestras out of balance — in size and in budget — with the musicians? The musicians are definitely being paid what they’re worth, but is that too much? Is it enough? Is it the right amount?
BD: Is that something that you as the composer should be involved with, or should you just be involved with the music?
AJK: Because I work at Minnesota Orchestra in this position as New Music Advisor, I’ve found myself fascinated to learn to be involved in planning discussions and future programming.
BD: So that’s your other hat?
AJK: Yeah, a bit, and it’s very interesting to me. I would certainly like to see more groups. [The ensemble] “Bang on a Can” and composers that are working in alternative mediums, I find a lot of their work very interesting, very compelling. Some days I wish I was writing for an ensemble of electric guitars and drums. Is that really me? Is that really what I hear? I don’t think so, but sometimes I wish it was because I’d like to find my way in that medium, too! But I think it’s more than just what are the instruments and what are the sounds? I think it’s the experience of going to concerts. Can that change? Couldn’t it become more easygoing, a little more friendly, a little less formalized?
BD: Back to rock concerts?
AJK: I thought rock concerts were great! I actually didn’t really experience them, except a couple at the very end of my teen years. But why not? I prefer that young audiences don’t feel a forbidding sense when coming to the concert hall. I think music should be inclusive and all-embracing, while of course keeping the patrons and keeping the donor base. The formality is a very attractive thing, and that sense of religious rite or religious experience is something that we can definitely have in the concert hall if we’re in tune with it. It’s a wonderful thing and somehow I don’t care whether I’m in a tee shirt. I’m very uncomfortable whenever I wear a tux in a concert. [Both laugh]
BD: Me, too! I hate to do that! Well, is the music you write for everyone?
AJK: No. No, I can’t imagine it’s for everyone. I don’t think any kind of music is for everyone. I think there are just too many different kinds of tastes and kinds of music out there, and so many kinds of audiences that it would be very hard to touch all of them. My audience seems to be a classical audience mixed with a new music audience mixed with a younger audience that is curious to hear new things.
BD: You’re in your early forties right now. Are you pleased with where you are at this point in your career?
AJK: For the most part, yes.
BD: In the end, is it all worth it?
AJK: Yeah. Yeah, it’s worth it. The stress and the pain of creating, of just finding the stuff that’s deep inside and then finding a way to translate that out onto the page is a very difficult process. It’s staring yourself in the face and dealing with all those things you don’t like to. That’s really the part that’s hard. Some days it goes well and other days it doesn’t, so it’s like anything.
BD: Thank you so much for the time today. I appreciate it.
AJK: Sure. You’re welcome.
© 1998 Bruce Duffie
This interview was recorded at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, on November 15, 2002. Portions (along with recordings) were used on WNUR in 2003, 2008 and 2009.
Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
Used by permission.
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