Fifth of an eight-part interview by YoWangdu’s Yolanda O’Bannon
Copyright Gabriela Lena Frank
YO: You’ve mentioned career pressures. What are they?
GLF: A successful composer is one who is played at Carnegie Hall all the time, is getting the top commissions in major orchestras, major awards, a lot of recordings. I don’t think it’s that much different than any other field. As many reviews as possible, never out of the limelight. All of that stuff strikes fear in me, you know. I find the limelight really exhausting for the most part. I’m totally comfortable with talking in front of large groups of people – that has never been a problem. It’s not that. I’m a little wary of the media in general – though there have been some reporters that I think are very good. I’m a little wary because they reduce you down to this very convenient sound bite and it’s like they write what they would have written anyway if they hadn’t even met you. For me, it’s always the deaf Latina/Gringa composer. And it’s like augggghhhhhh. The same old thing.
YO: They saw that in your file…
GLF: Yeah, the problem is that there is a lot of false information out there, so they repeat this stuff, so they will say for example I’m born in Peru. I’m not, I’m born here. They’ll say I’m completely deaf. I’m not – there’s a huge difference. I’m not completely deaf. Oh, my father likes to collect all the bad things, mistakes like that. Like I’m Japanese-Peruvian. Well my great-grandfather is Chinese, he’s not Japanese. Like my first language is Cantonese…
YO: Of course it is. [laughing]
GLF: Yeah, or that I was born in Cypress. There’s another one that says I dedicated the piece to my new-born son Aaron [both laughing]. When I saw that one…I said where did that come from?! My mother called me up, “Gabriela! You didn’t tell me you had a new born son!”
YO: Does having a public life make it hard to connect to people? Are you still able to connect in an authentic way?
GLF: That’s my job. That’s my job, you know. I have to get over it. I can bitch and complain, but that’s my job and that’s the nature of putting it out there. I’m in the business of subjecting what I do for other people to consider, and I could find ways to protect myself, which is turn down some travel. So that I can recover at home with really good friends. You have to be very honest, and not try to claim more expertise than you have, or more glamour than you have. With the ISO thing, the Indianapolis Symphony thing, I was getting a lot of press outside Indianapolis for how daring I was for going in to talk to undocumented people and I was like… it’s not like a safari hunt. And I get that for my time in Peru, it’s like glamourized, and I have to lay that to rest right away, saying, all I’m doing is getting on a plane, hanging out with my cousins, that’s it! It’s not exotic, it’s nothing more than that. Don’t tell people I’m traipsing in jungles, I’m not. So it’s very important for me to always be very honest about it. The thing I get a lot is — oh, she’s so down-to-earth, she’s so this, and I’m like, I could see why you would say that, you’re used to “successful people” not being down to earth, but I have to do this to survive, that’s my main reason. The other thing also to keep in mind is that it’s success in the minds of a very few people. For the most part I’m just some Joe Schmoe, you know, walking down the street. It’s not this big thing. Only a few people in classical music have gotten onto the radar generally speaking. Pavarotti, Yo Yo Ma, maybe, just a few people. Composers? I can’t think of one. So it’s performers: Joshua Bell, maybe Midori, other people.
YO: How do you deal with being in the public eye at the level that you are?
GLF: Oh my god. At this middling level, I’m having a lot of dilemmas with it. But it comes with responsibility, you know, if people are listening to you. Now this is all recent, all in the last 5 years or so, so I have five years at this kind of level, where I struggled a lot to learn about how to become a better writer and composer and musician. Tons to learn. I don’t know if anything I’ve done yet has a shot of sticking around, and that’s an honest appraisal of the stuff. Maybe one piece. There’s one piece that I think might stick around. [Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, premiered by the Chiara String Quartet, see the video below] But that’s a pretty ballsy thing to even think. And I have maybe 60 works now in my catalogue.
YO: What do you like about that one piece?
GLF: Well, there’s another piece I like better, but one of the reasons why I’m scoring that other piece [Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout] higher is by virtue of the fact of how it’s being played. It got picked up. So I hear about it being played in South Africa, or around the world. It has to have legs, like your kids, so they can survive without you. And even without somebody knowing Peruvian music — it has very strong overtones of Peruvian culture, and Peruvian sounds as well — without my having to be there, they can get it. That means I tapped something very deep in there, in the language.
Some pieces I have an affection for because of what I learned. Maybe even because of what I was going through at that time, as a little mark. You know, like looking at old photographs, and suddenly your head feels tight because you remember the braids that you used to wear at that time, you know, just the rich associations that you have, and I have that with certain pieces.
YO: What’s the one that you like the best?
GLF: It’s kind of a toss up between a few. I like this string quartet that I did a couple of years ago [Quijotadas, premiered by the Brentano Quartet]. That was hard. Whew! That was hard to do because I was really trying to do something new, not done before. It was – how do you even explain something that was hard like that? It was like writing a college paper and you’re just trying to get the best idea and you keep reworking stuff? It’s not that you’re reworking what you have – you’re trying to think of more ideas, things you haven’t imagined yet. What are your arguments for it? And I was working on new skills in terms of trying to find new chords on the violin that would work. So there are certain finger positions that are very natural that I have in my vocab, and I know I can just pop ‘em out. Are there new things that can be done, new sounds? I’m not a violinist, so how do you work with a medium you don’t know? It’s the difference between painting with watercolors and oils, so all these new things came into that piece.
That piece is called Quijotadas, which means Quixoticisms, from Don Quixote. I had just finished reading both of the novels and I just said I wanted to take five pictures and write a movement based on each one. When you do them and you write programmatic music like that, it has to work without anybody knowing what the program is too. They can imagine their own feelings and their own story, and then when they hear yours, it completes it, but they didn’t realize it needed to be completed. That has to feel like that.
That piece got a dynamic performance. It came out sounding so much more muscular and craggy and dissonate, than I had expected. That’s the other thing when you write, you don’t learn unless you’re doing something you’ve never done before, so you’re not gonna know exactly how it sounds. You can have an idea, a pretty good idea, but it could shock you, and sometimes that shock – you have to not react and go, NOoooo! That sounds terrible! You just have to wait. Pant, pant. And breathe and rewire your brain and let it be. Let it be what’s gonna be, and the performers are not sure yet. It’s new for everybody, and they want you to reassure them. You’re like, you’re not sure. Nobody’s sure! I remember when I heard it for the first time by the Brentano Quartet, one of our top quartets right now, and they’re incredible, incredible. I was so shocked I was speechless, and I remember what went through my head, was, god I don’t have any kids, but this must be the feeling that moms have when their sons are about 13, 14…Suddenly…
YO: It’s like who the hell is that?
GLF: [laughing] he’s beginning to turn into a man, and his voice is breaking. He’s getting kind of lanky, he’s getting kind of…. You’re a little uncomfortable. Yeah, and that was the feeling. It was like, God, who is this man? It just really kind of shocked me. That was the feeling that I had. And I was a little embarassed by the piece. It was more macho than I had expected. And it’s really tightly constructed. There’s nothing wasted in it, which I really like. Every note belongs, I think, yeah, I would say like 99%. And that one is still new enough where it hasn’t been picked up a lot – it’s also hard.
The other piece, that has been picked up [Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout], was a turning point piece – it was the first piece, well, I would say second, where I really in an expert way welded Peruvian music with western string quartet. Hard core string quartet, as-venerated-as-they-come form, into one medium. I really just went off a cliff, and said I have no idea if this is gonna work, I had no idea, no history of really doing it yet. And for me the piece was going to be played at what for me was the highest venue yet, so there was a lot riding on it. I kind of miss those days, when it mattered so much more in that way. I felt such a reward when it came together so brilliantly. It was played by another great, devoted quartet (Chiara String Quartet). Performers make or break you. I remember I saw my vision of my future just go Voooom! It just opened up – stuff wasn’t so murky. I didn’t know what it would be, just the sunlight had come in, and I was seeing that. And that piece has been arranged for string orchestra, so I’ve heard it big and I’ve heard it small, just for four players. They both have their pro’s and con’s in terms of comparing what you like.
YO: Right when you’re done making a piece, how do you feel about it? Is it like, Ughh!?
GLF: Usually, it’s exhaustion. Sometimes a great amount of uncertainty. And, between the time I turn in my piece and the actual performance, as much as 6 to 9 months, you’re just waiting, during that time. Meanwhile moving on to other things. Then you have to go back to where you were. Most of the time, my premieres have been really positive experiences. I will do a little rewriting sometimes — I’ve never done anything I would say is a rewrite. I’ve done little fixes. That needs to be a little louder, little things like that, little adjustments that are done in rehearsal, the normal things. I like it when performers put in their markings. I might mark something to be bowed a certain way, so I want on one bow, we call this a one bow, you can play several notes on that by dampening the strings, so it might go da da dad a dad dum. But the players say, how about dat dat dat dad a dum – give it a little bit of edge on each one, make it pop out more. That’s when they put their editings in it, they don’t change the notes, they just change the delivery of the music to the audience. I love that because they live in their instruments. I don’t.
I try to hit it into the ballpark as accurately as possible. So you want performers that keep educating you. I have to steal my moments to be educated, though, now. When I was in school they were all around me. I’d just grab my friend in a practice room, and say can you do this? What if it was this? Or, maybe that? And I’d get my answer [snapping her fingers]. I don’t have that so easy any more. I’m very good at grabbing those moments, like if I have an orchestra rehearsal. I notice that I’m getting along really well with the principal violist, and I say, hey, Joe, can I take you out to coffee? We go out to coffee, and we’re getting to know each other, and I say, “What do you think about this? And this? And I’ll just grab a moment.
I’ll do other things, like in a new piece, I’ll stick in something that lasts maybe 2 seconds. I’m just curious if that sounds good or not. I want to use it for another piece, but I’ll stick it in here, you know, and in rehearsal, I’ll listen, ah! It sounds good! Or, never again! And sometimes conductors will notice and say, ‘why do you have that…?’ and “what is this?” The music all of a sudden goes “Blick- A!” and it’s never anywhere else, it’s just like an inkblot. “What is that in the score?” and they caught it, with their good eye, and I’ll be “all right, you know, just have them do it, I have to hear it. I’m gonna probably take it out later, but I have to hear it, and I just wanna know if that works or not. So I have moments like that buried in, I’m just kinda trying to snatch at something that will help me for the next piece.
In Part Six of this interview, Gabriela discusses her residency with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
