Interview
Q.What are your origins as composer?
A. I really started composing when I was six. I remember making the audition tape for the summer program at Aspen performing my own pieces. They came back and offered me a scholarship. I believe I was Aspen’s youngest composition student that year.
Q.What part did the legendary John Adams play in your career?
A. It wasn’t until John heard my audition for the San Francisco Conservatory that I really was made aware of my composing abilities. Adams seemed quite impressed (with my) “extraordinary ability to improvise”. As a mentor and advisor he really believed my true calling was as a composer.
Toward the end of my Conservatory years, I was called to Europe to pursue a career as a concert pianist. I wrestled with this decision, went to London, and as my career took off, the acclaim received as a performer reinforced my resolve in that arena.
Q.Describe your renaissance as a composer
A. I was inspired to compose again while working in the Alps near Gstaad in Switzerland. There was a lot of fun introducing these new pieces into my concerts as encores, with the audiences trying to guess who the composer was. I can remember sitting at the piano of one of Europe’s top concert impresarios, asking him to guess the composer — He shouted out: “Copeland, Brahms, Bernstein!” Later, by popular demand, I started incorporating (Larsen) in my programs. Soon I was performing entire second halves of my music. Now I’ll perform concert programs entirely of Fantasia Suite.
Q.Describe your composing process
A. I usually begin with improvisation, which is natural for me. I listen to an inner voice that delineates the direction and ideas and continue with composition long before it’s written down. I’ll work with the piece until it’s entirely completed then walk away from the piano and write down the piece by hand. It’s a unique process, but training as a concert pianist has given me a fairly developed memory.
Q.What are your ideals for the direction of music in the 21st Century?
A. To me, classical music is striving for a larger audience — music with more accessibility than the 20th century allowed. I feel art needs to be a positive influence for mankind. There also seems a correlation between the devaluing of art in education and the surge of violence in schools, broken homes, loss of moral integrity, etc. It could be time for a break — away from the fashion of continual commentary on violence in art — to an art that moves forward in a positive direction. Southern California seems a natural center for that progression.
