well very excited to be part of the uh Festival presence um I've known about this festival for a long time actually the first time I played in preson was a festival devoted to the music of Hans verer hensa uh which must have been about 20 years ago and he was still alive and he was here so that was my first um introduction to presence and of course the world of contemporary music sees presence as a big important event uh International Event of course always in Paris but somehow a very uh world W
orld Wide event in terms of its importance so we're very pleased to be here of course as a Steve Rice Festival we didn't want to miss it and uh very happy to be here the first time I encountered Steve's Music uh would just actually be one page of Music the printed music for clapping music uh and someone brought this into a Youth Orchestra that I was playing in so I would be 12 or 13 years old and I remember trying to perform this with a A friend of mine uh from that era so must have been very di
fficult and also probably obviously not very good but that was my introduction to the name at least and then I became interested in him because of course he wrote so much for percussion and when I was a young percussionist I was just looking for anything everything that was was percussion oriented ated um and I quickly found pieces like music for 18 musicians but I'm very grateful to that Discovery because of course you realize very quickly it's about much more than just percussion it's a genius
composer using so many different sounds and using them so beautifully so an early introduction and a very important one for me well it's been absolutely amazing aming to have known Steve R for quite a long time now I mean we first met in 2011 um I started my Ensemble the col and Curry group in 2006 and so already we were communicating them and then a few years later I got to meet him but his encouragement and support for the group has been absolutely amazing not only has he written two pieces f
or us quartet and travelers prayer uh but we have performed with him we travel with him an awful lot we' been to Japan uh on more than one occasion all around Europe USA we we just saw him in carnegi Hall um and he is there for us and he loves seeing his music done differently I mean my group just plays music with a slightly different Edge and I think it makes him happy it is different but he really enjoys it and he's also known many of the people in my group for a very long time so it's it's a
become a family affair it's it's beautiful [Music] drumming is a very interesting piece of his because it does give a lot of initiative to the performers the score leaves a lot of decisions open to how you will actually play this music I mean I wouldn't go as far as to say uh it's improvised but there are many elements that are improvisatory so they they involve making decisions in the moment and making up patterns and moving according to the the shape what you're hearing every performance of dr
umming we can guarantee will be different no two can be the same not possible uh so of course we have our principles and our ideas about the piece but every time we play it it feels like a new event so it's incredibly exciting everything hangs on this this absolute razor sharp energy this intensity of the piece and not only is it uh mathematically beautiful and not only is the sound very very beautiful but the collective whole is something very much like a ritual this piece is very ritualized it
's very profound very big very energizing and very beautiful well I'm very lucky with with my group what the group thrives on is the the people in The Ensemble an absolutely brilliant collection of musicians but really fine people who enjoy being together we like each other's company we can have fun uh we push each other everyone contributes we always want to add to the group people bring ideas repertoire suggestions Concepts so it's it's a lovely place to be and I just try and make things uh po
ssible for people to come in and to to be themselves and be part of this adventure uh I I absolutely have a great time with it myself well again with my record label a bit like my group the main impetus to get the thing launched was or or is the music of Steve Rice so the first album we made was drumming and actually to be honest we didn't have the label then we made the recording and then we decided because the time was right it has to be now it just was a moment where we decided okay this is r
eady to to to commit to a record so we made the recording and then we had some wonderful uh assistance and collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra who have run a few labels as well as their own they have a great infrastructure and they were very interested in Steve's Music they want to support me because I have history with the orchestra and now we have a real Adventure on our hands because we have at this point uh I think six releases and many projects planned and a whole Steve Reich c
at log with three Steve Rice albums so far and more coming so it's a it's a big one well like a lot of people in my group we have uh quite a broad Taste of music I mean we we listen to a lot of different types of music from pop rock uh Jazz experimental quite a lot of us like I mean I'm born in 1976 quite a lot of us like pop music from the'80s a lot of synth let's go with Gary Newman um groups like The Human League very very good and from more recent times I I really love uh British band everyt
hing everything uh really really good and of course we all love radio head I mean you have to well the collaboration with Danny Elfman was was fascinating because it this concerto worked like none other in my repertoire I I've premiered almost 40 conerts at this point but none of them came to life this way with uh a lot of sketches and a lot of sound files being sent but no actual music just a lot of ideas sounds and then a lot of lot of phone calls spoke to him a lot over uh FaceTime and he wou
ld do a tour for me of his percussion collection he has a massive instrument collection so we were choosing sounds together and talking about how the piece would work and influences and he was incredibly humble very very interested in all of uh the things that I had done I went to meet him at a film session and before I met him I I said to him well I don't want to give you too many should I just bring two or three of my albums he said no bring everything bring as much as you can so I brought him
a huge stack of of recording things and he went through them all I mean he's someone who just devours music and is very interested by music and uh is at the service of the art wonderful man and the concerto is is brilliant I love it I I'm very pleased with some of my recent premieres um obviously they're the ones that are most present in my mind I've had wonderful new concertos from Helen grime Scottish composer absolutely beautiful and here in Paris I gave the world premiere of of a real dream
come true piece by Bruno mantoani the Allegro Barbaro with the orchestra fonque and that was a brilliant experience such a strong powerful piece and kind of brutal but really really exciting and magnificent magical at the same time um and I'm also really enjoying getting to know and work with American composer Andy AKO who also wrote me a Cho which I would love to play a lot more it's quite a new piece and very unusual setup the first movement I just play one octave of uh ceramic rice bowls wit
h four Chopsticks and uh very virtuosic piece but really shocking and surprising and uh fantastic so I have many pieces to share that's for sure it's very clear to me that the best thing we can do uh for what we maybe are supposed to call or have to call classical contemporary music right now is to break the the barriers and also the labels putting music into one category and categorization in music is not helpful it's not interesting it's not inspiring and I think what something like Steve rit'
s music can do is that it can Inspire everyone to see that music is indeed music and it doesn't need to be put into a box and that's what we need more of or rather we need less or fewer [Music] boxes uh nowadays I'm a streamer uh although I do have some vinyl in my collection but I don't have a record player so I'm looking to get a record player at some point in the future and at that time I really look forward to doing more listening to albums because I do like streaming but the Temptation is t
o be listening you keep changing everything too quickly but I think a vinyl sitting down with a nice LP put it on listen to the whole thing read the notes is a nice thing and I think that's important I will get back to that i' like to take the time to listen to things uh in detail and often with headphones so I like to have good quality headphones and I like to listen to music quite loudly I would say try not to hurt my ears and uh also shut my eyes so I I don't we when I'm out and about don't w
orry
Comments