Eighth of an eight-part interview by YoWangdu’s Yolanda O’Bannon
Gabriela Lena Frank
GLF: I do now… because I’ve made the effort to be here more. For a while I was very quiet in the musical community around here, because I worked so much on the road that I wanted to come home and be quiet. I didn’t want to be going out to a lot of concerts here even though it’s a great scene. But, I mean, I was played by the San Francisco Symphony already, the Kronos Quartet, which is based here, Chanticleer, a San Francisco-based male vocal ensemble, so I’ve been very honored to be played by great local groups. I’m going to be more involved now, coming up, because I’ve decided that I want to travel less.
YO: Are there musicians around here you can just like call and…
GLF: Yeah, I do now. I’m even orienting my future projects around my resources, which I really like. A conductor I’m really looking forward to working with is Joana Carneiro – she’s going to be the new conductor of the Berkeley Symphony actually, taking over after Kent Nagano. She premiered a work of mine last year at the Los Angeles Philharmonic with their new music group . And it was not an orchestra work, it was a smaller work that she conducted [Gabriela's New Andean Songs]. She did a great job – had two singers, a very evocative, dramatic piece. Beautiful poetry from Peru — indigenous poetry, very nature inspired, but haunting stories, also, behind it. I really like stories. I like abstract ideas when it’s still under the guise of a story. I’m still Mark Twainish in that way, going back to my father’s lifelong work at the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley. This guy could talk about deep themes of life in a good ol’ story. I love that.
Anyway, the Berkeley Symphony had a job search last year. Nagano, who was our conductor for the last 30 years, really shot to international fame in the last 15 years , so he is now the new conductor at Montreal Symphony. Joana Carneiro is a young Portuguese woman, 33-34. She’s a dynamo, intense, huge heart. She’s deeply honorable. And the orchestra loved her.
And she’s giving me some sort of position with the orchestra, which will be very interesting, because I’m such a freelancer and a nomad. I’ve worked with a bunch of organizations but I’ve never taken a position before. We are calling it Creative Advisor at the moment. But I won’t deal with the nitty-gritty of the admin stuff. That stuff’s not in my purview. But, she’s a conductor I would write for, the same way I would write for a violinist. And the way she can interpret the music and convey it. She is playing the violin the way she conducts, she is playing the flute – she is playing all those instruments. She knows how to convey it in her gestures.
We’ve talked about a lot of different things that we’d like to do, and some of it is study. It’s not actual projects, it’s getting together to just listen to this music, getting to know it. Like a study partner in college, we just go through the score, and have very honest opinions about it. It can be very touchy as well, when you’re talking about someone’s deepest core, their beliefs. It’s also maybe about a colleague, the way they play, the way they write. And so when you can find partners – they’re very few and far between – that you can really trust and speak your mind. So she’s somebody that I’m looking forward to writing new things for. She’s gonna play something of mine at the Berkeley Symphony, at the first opening concert. Actually, she’s playing the Indianapolis Symphony piece.
Again, even though she’s gonna maintain her home base in Portugal, and she’s all over the world conducting, it feels like she lives here, so every time I see her will be when she is conducting my hometown orchestra. So that’s another reason why I’m looking forward to working with her, and developing the arts in my hometown, which I love so much. [Gabriela was named the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra's Creative Advisor in August, 2009, and Joana Carneiro premiered Gabriela's Peregrinos (Pilgrims) with the Berkeley Symphony on October 15.] I should also mention that I’ll be working as the composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, a position that will carry much importance for me, too. So, yes, there is more involvement now in the Bay Area, long overdue.
Gabriela Lena Frank with Joana Carneiro and the BSO ©Paul Marshall
