Here is the transcript:
PK: yeah, it's now kind of located just near VCA where I was studying when I was writing that piece, and it just seemed to connect to - somehow, I kind of made that connection in my mind, and it seemed to also relate to my reading of the Calvino text, but look - the connections that I make with literary references in my work, it's always a pretty - it's more about just a source of inspiration...
CB: A starting point.
PK:.... rather than trying to make it a representation, or some kind of programmatic thing.
CB: That would be boring.
PK: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, cool. Well I can really see that in the opening chords of Vault - the stark, angular, monumental fanfare at the beginning.
PK: Yeah...
CB: And I actually stumbled across a picture of that sculpture, out of the blue, not connected to all of this, and I wondered if there was a connection there, so there you go.
PK: Yeah - well that's well picked.
CB: (laughs) yeah, well that's quite a coincidence. Anyway - fantastic - so - within the whole work Cities and Signs, I'm just wondering why “Vault” was the only one that was published, and not the other ones, or are the other ones on their way out - in sheet music form I mean.
PK: Ah - hmm. I don't know. So is “Vault” the only one that's on the AMC site?
CB: That's right.
PK: That's probably just an oversight. They should all be up. Yeah, there's no rhyme or reason to that really. It's probably about me editing the scores and getting them on there (laughs).
CB: Well this one also seems to have the most actual dots in it, compared to the other ones - I guess a lot of the other ones would have been a bit freer in scoring to allow for more improvisation than this one?
PK: Yeah well the opening piece is “Cities and Desire”, and that’s pretty detailed scoring actually.
PK: I kind of have pretty specific sorts of
instructions for the use of specific textures that belong to players – I knid
of wrote a bit about that in my doctorate in relation to Fish
Boast of Fishing [score sample here]
– there’s stuff in there, you know, little notations that I come up with for
specific players – things that they do. And so I can put those notations in
there with a little instruction like “quiet” or “dense” or “sparse” or whatever
– so it’s a pretty specific sort of sound – but it’s up to the player how they
actually execute it.
CB: Thanks so much for giving up your time to
talk to me.
PK: No worries.
CB: It's fantastic for the girls to be able to understand a bit more about your music, and if we could get a couple more insights from you that would be wonderful.
PK: Sure, a pleasure.
CB: I've just got some sort of general questions about your approach and about your background, musically speaking, and some quite specific questions about the piece we've looked at, which is “Vault” from Cities and Signs.
PK: No worries.
CB: It's fantastic for the girls to be able to understand a bit more about your music, and if we could get a couple more insights from you that would be wonderful.
PK: Sure, a pleasure.
CB: I've just got some sort of general questions about your approach and about your background, musically speaking, and some quite specific questions about the piece we've looked at, which is “Vault” from Cities and Signs.
PK: Mmhmm.
CB: Firstly, I had a read of the whole novel of Italo Calvino - it's a fascinating book - and I could see some of the connections with some of the other movements, like “Hypatia” and “Cities and Desire”, but with “Vault”, I was just wondering where the title came from - cause I couldn't see any references to vaults in it.
PK: It's kind of a bit of an oblique reference, it's actually - there's a sculpture in Melbourne called Vault which...
CB: A-ha. I was wondering that.
CB: Firstly, I had a read of the whole novel of Italo Calvino - it's a fascinating book - and I could see some of the connections with some of the other movements, like “Hypatia” and “Cities and Desire”, but with “Vault”, I was just wondering where the title came from - cause I couldn't see any references to vaults in it.
PK: It's kind of a bit of an oblique reference, it's actually - there's a sculpture in Melbourne called Vault which...
CB: A-ha. I was wondering that.
PK: yeah, it's now kind of located just near VCA where I was studying when I was writing that piece, and it just seemed to connect to - somehow, I kind of made that connection in my mind, and it seemed to also relate to my reading of the Calvino text, but look - the connections that I make with literary references in my work, it's always a pretty - it's more about just a source of inspiration...
CB: A starting point.
PK:.... rather than trying to make it a representation, or some kind of programmatic thing.
CB: That would be boring.
PK: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, cool. Well I can really see that in the opening chords of Vault - the stark, angular, monumental fanfare at the beginning.
PK: Yeah...
CB: And I actually stumbled across a picture of that sculpture, out of the blue, not connected to all of this, and I wondered if there was a connection there, so there you go.
PK: Yeah - well that's well picked.
CB: (laughs) yeah, well that's quite a coincidence. Anyway - fantastic - so - within the whole work Cities and Signs, I'm just wondering why “Vault” was the only one that was published, and not the other ones, or are the other ones on their way out - in sheet music form I mean.
PK: Ah - hmm. I don't know. So is “Vault” the only one that's on the AMC site?
CB: That's right.
PK: That's probably just an oversight. They should all be up. Yeah, there's no rhyme or reason to that really. It's probably about me editing the scores and getting them on there (laughs).
CB: Well this one also seems to have the most actual dots in it, compared to the other ones - I guess a lot of the other ones would have been a bit freer in scoring to allow for more improvisation than this one?
PK: Yeah well the opening piece is “Cities and Desire”, and that’s pretty detailed scoring actually.
CB: All those… breathing and whispering [bits]
and all that, they’re all planned out?
PK: Yep. They’re all scored. There’s not much
improvisation in that. There’s some sort of aleatoric kind of
content, but not much improvisation.
CB: How do you go about doing that aleatoric sort
of stuff – do you do things randomly, or just kind of intuitively?
CB: Right, so it’s very interesting looking at Fish Boast of Fishing – getting away
from Vault for a sec – the amount of detail that’s actually in there – and do
you do that to sort of get away from players’ intuitive… things that they would
do if you just told them “play”? I mean, do you feel like you have to distance
people from their impulses, in a John Cage sort
of way?
PK: Well, um… I don’t know if it’s about
distancing them from their impulses, it’s more about channelling them. Yeah,
and it’s also… I suppose Cage was trying to separate the… performer and the
idea, or the artwork, […] whereas in jazz the improviser, the artist is always
central to the performance as well, and the transmission of the art, and that’s
something that Cage found a bit problematic, along with others.
CB: Yeah, he never really got into jazz.
PK: But I mean, I don’t think that’s what I’m
trying to achieve, I think that it’s more about just trying to use people’s
idiosyncratic improvising language as a compositional element. So there are
certain things that I know that Vanessa Tomlinson [percussionist] for instance
likes to do – and if I say, “you know that thing with the bowls, can you do a
bit of that here?” you know, and find a way to try to notate that, then she
does her bowl thing, and I’ve got a sense of how that might work in terms of a
larger compositional framework. Whereas with improvising you’re kind of
thinking more in the moment, as a composer you step back a little bit and try
to guide some sort of larger structures.
CB: Yep, yep sure.
PK: So that’s what it is, so it’s kind of a bit
of both, in a way. Yeah. So John
Zorn did that a lot of that too.
CB: Yeah, yeah, sure. So, I can see a lot of that
in Vault – there’s definitely some structural things being worked out in the
musical material. There seems to be a couple of almost conflicting ideas in it
that sort of get juxtaposed against each other and then rub up against each
other and compete, and then work themselves out. The modal sort of idea –
[sings]
and all that sort of stuff which is all white
notes, and then you’ve got the [sings]
that sort of really angular –
PK: chromatic…
CB: idea – is that […] symbolic of something, or
is it just […] what came out?
PK: No, not really symbolic at all. It’s…[…] what
I kind of started with with “Vault” was this idea of moving a voicing around –
so that, you know, at the beginning you’ve got that voicing in the fourths…
CB: The “So What” chord?
PK: Yeah. And so it’s moving that…
CB: Like open guitar strings?
PK: Yeah – yeah exactly.
CB: There’s a third in there as well, isn’t
there.
PK: Probably…
CB: The two trumpets are in thirds at the top
then it’s all fourths underneath, it’s like the open guitar strings.
PK: Yeah right. Well that’s good that you’ve
picked that out.
CB: Yeah.
PK: But whatever voicing it is, I guess I just
started with this kind of sound, and then moved that around in parallel, and I
kind of liked that, and that sort of reminded me a bit of the sort of planes of
the sculpture that seemed to relate to … the Calvino sort of sense. And I
suppose with the Calvino, you know, what I was really aiming for, was music of
great contrasts. You know, like those short stories, you go from one to the
other, and you really, you have this kind of – each one has a really different
sort of feeling and sense about it. So I was kind of aiming to try to… try to
tap into that a little bit, but, um…
CB: Yeah – I can see that.
PK: I
started off with those voicings, and then, I mean… I just kind of really go
from there and try and find things that sound good. It’s a very intuitive
process, really.
CB: Working out the… did you workshop it with the
band to see how it sounded with instruments, or do you just work it out on
Sibelius, or…how do you go about doing it?
PK: I do, I do workshop with the band, and so, I
mean, most often what I do is I start off with a very bare-bones idea, and then
I play that with people and hear what it sounds like, and then kind of go from
there. And then go back and refine, and work, and develop. I think with Vault,
I mean I started off with that initial kind of idea the kind of opening, I
think maybe we played it at a rehearsal and then I write the rest of it from
there. And I mean it’s kind of essentially – it’s kind of a jazz tune, it’s
got, you know, a bit of a melody and then a solo over an ostinato and then…
CB: Yeah, head – solo – head.
PK: Yeah, it’s a fairly conventional sort of form.
CB: But there’s a lot of very unconventional
atonal sort of bits…
PK: Yeah, yeah that’s right yeah.
CB: …which go beyond what you would hear in most
jazz.
PK: Yep.
CB: And I can see that you’re using motifs in a
way that… that’s sometimes very hidden under the surface?
PK: Yep.
CB: Like that [sings]
reappears in the bass later on, and it’s
covered over, hidden and extended in various ways, that was interesting for us
to find.
PK: Yeah, and I often do that, like I try and
find, you know, ways of reworking the same material. And I do that all through
everything I do, really.
CB: Right. So it’s something you can do
composing, and not really improvising…
PK: Well I think as an improviser I kind of do
that too.
CB: Yeah… sure, yeah, actually we can hear that
in your solo, what am I saying.
PK: Yeah. But you know, it’s always good if you
can kind of… rather than adding another idea to a piece, if you can actually
find a way of, you know, reinterpreting…
CB: Making the most out of what you’ve got.
PK: Mmm.
CB: Cool. Well that brings me to your solo. We had
a really good look at your solo – I transcribed the whole thing…
PK: My solo in “Vault”?
CB: Yeah. Great solo –
PK: Oh thankyou.
CB: and I really loved the particular sort of
scale you used at the beginning there, and on the score it says “solo over E flat
major” and there’s no way you’re doing E flat major in there! Do you sort of
think about scales – I mean it sounds almost like an Indian scale, and in fact
I’ve found an Indian scale that’s kind of similar – it’s a – D flat Lydian
diminished – I’ve got a piano over here – hang on, something like this – (plays
Db Eb Fb G Ab Bb C Db) – that scale is what you’re using?
PK: Yep. I don’t know…
CB: Would you have had any idea, that that’s what
you did?
PK: Mmm – no.
CB: Haha, OK that’s interesting.
PK: I’m just trying to think…. of that solo… I
think, probably, um…
CB: [helpfully (?) tries to sing solo in
falsetto]
PK: Yeah… I’ll have to have a little listen to
it. I’m trying to see if I’ve got a copy of it here.
CB: It just opens with this really calm, beautiful,
restrained feeling and then it gradually grows and grows and you move into
something more bluesy (sings) a bit after that.
PK: That’s right…
CB: with the change in harmony.
PK: … and we start playing the sevenths.
CB: Yeah, yeah so it started off with the C
natural and then it goes to the B.
PK: Yeah when the rest of the band comes in. […]
You know… I don’t really think in terms of …. the names of scales or modes,
although I do know all that stuff pretty well.
CB: I’m sure you do. But it’s just internalised,
so you don’t have to… you don’t have to think about it.
PK: But also I think, when I play – when we
recorded that, I kind of worked on an approach to soloing over it quite a lot.
I mean I didn’t just – it’s not completely different every time, and it’s got a
particular sound, and I think probably what I was doing is when I was you know
rehearsing with the band was I was trying to find sounds that seemed to suit
the sound of the piece, and when, you know, when I wrote those chromatic
harmonies and uh… I don’t really think of it so much in theoretical terms, um,
often.
CB: Sure – thinking about pure sound.
PK: I mean, what I tend to do is… I tend to
improvise… I kind of call it “fishing” actually, I just sort of… I set up, you
know, I set up that bassline –
CB: Yep.
PK: And I’ll play it on the piano, or I’ll play
it on the guitar, or program it into Sibelius, and then I will play it, and
record myself onto mobile phone, improvising with it, either on the piano or
the trumpet, and I’ll just do, like four or five passes of improvising, and
record that, and then I just go away and forget about it. And then I come back
a day later, and play what I’ve recorded, and try to see if there’s any, or try
to hear if there’s any, you know, little nuggets of interesting material. And
then I work the composition from those. That’s often the process that I use,
cause I’m trying to find a way of … of bringing to bear instinct, and just the
physical kind of moment of inspiration when something just kind of takes you,
and you’re not thinking too much.
CB: Yeah I can see that in Fish Boast of Fishing,
the way that you’re cutting up the improvisations and stuff, it’s a really
interesting way of working.
PK: Yeah.
CB: It reminds me strangely enough of – I don’t
know if you’ve ever heard any Captain Beefheart, from
the late 60s, his approach.
PK: Yeah, I have heard – I mean, I haven’t really
studied Captain Beefheart, but I know, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.
CB: He used to just go and bang away on the
piano, record it and then chop it up.
PK: Oh did he? I didn’t know that.
CB: Yeah – it was all improvisations, and then –
separate things, some on white notes, some on black notes, some in different
time signatures, and they’d all get crammed in together in the one piece, and
then he’d shout over the top.
PK: Did he – did he physically cut up tape, did
he?
CB: Nah, he recorded them, and he gave them to
the drummer in the band and said “I want the band to play this, oh, and a bit
of this and a bit of this” and they’d have to figure out how it all worked
together, so it’s really…
PK: Really?
CB: A bit more ad-hoc than your process, but
similar sort of… improvisation being turned into structure.
PK: Yeah.
CB: So it’s an interesting way to go.
PK: Yeah and so sometimes I’ll kind of analyse it
in retrospect, so I’ll go “I’m liking this sound, so what’s actually going on
here?” and then I’ll realise, “Oh OK – I’m using this kind of scale or this
idea”, and so sometimes that’s important for thinking about how to rework that
material, and sometimes it’s very conscious, so like with the Fish Boast of
Fishing thing I started off with an all-interval chord,
you know, so I just thought, OK, well what would that sound like if we had one
of those chords, and so [we] found sound, you know, using that as a starting
point.
CB: Yeah. Cool.
PK: Yeah, and you know… I think I said in the
doctorate, I found a clarinet and started playing the clarinet and recording
that and, you know… it’s a pretty laborious process, and actually… allowing my
compositional processes to be laborious was actually quite a liberating thing
for me. When I was younger, and I was studying at undergraduate, I actually
really had the feeling that I couldn’t compose. And I was just convinced that I
didn’t have whatever it was that it took to compose, because… I never felt that
I had inspiration or ideas just popping into my mind, and they didn’t flow easily
when I tried to compose, and so I kind of thought, oh well, I’m just not a
composer. And I didn’t actually really write very much at all until I was about
30. And then I got so frustrated, you know, playing in the jazz scene, that I
just sort of decided that I actually just need to write some music, somehow
I’ve gotta work out a way, and I read an article by Kenny Wheeler
when he was taught, and he was talking about how long it takes him to write
things, and how laborious it is, and how uninspired he feels, and I actually,
it was like a lightbulb moment, it was like, OK! It’s OK to be a real, I don’t
know, it’s OK to plod. You know, it’s OK to do it however you need to do it, you’ve
just got to find a process that works, and, yeah…
CB: So recording for you is a big part of it?
PK: Recording, improvising, I just....[…] I just
do whatever I need to do, really. And often it does involve recording and
playing back, and thinking, and … I do kind of crazy things, like I’ll go and
walk in the park with my phone and just sing into my phone, or, you know,
record stuff and walk around listening to it on my phone and then singing along
to it and writing notes and, I mean it’s kind of like, whatever it takes, I
just do it, you know.
CB: Yeah. Great.
PK: And I think that’s really important for
students too, to … just to know that … you’ve gotta find a process that works
for you, and often, that will take a lot of time, and it will be intensely
frustrating, and you know, often, you’ll feel like it’s a complete waste of
time. But if you’re willing to really stick with it and allow it to be all of
those things that you wish it wasn’t (laughs) … then you’ll get somewhere! You
really will.
CB: Yeah. You’ve got to make all the mistakes
before you work out the right way to do it.
PK: Yeah because we’re all – everybody’s creative
process is different, I reckon. You know? I’ve got friends who can just sit
down, and write a score straight out of their heads, and straight onto the
page, they don’t need to go to an instrument, or anything like that – and I’ve
got friends who just sit on the tram and a whole tune will just pop into their
heads and it’ll all happen like that, and… I have to say also, sometimes those
people with - you know - gifts like that, don’t always produce the most
interesting music. You know?
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
PK: Because there is less struggle. You know? And
they have a way that works. And it’s reliable and they can do it, so they keep
doing it. I can think of – I won’t mention any names – but I can think of some
really gifted people, who I know well, and I think, well, actually, the music
isn’t that interesting, somehow, in my feeling, so…
CB: Like Haydn vs Beethoven, or something.
PK: Well, you know, it’s not a bad thought, I
mean, you know, Beethoven struggled all his life, you know.
CB: Everything he came out with was the product
of a lot of hard work.
PK: Mm.
CB: OK, well thanks, that’s some really great
advice for our composers, I’ll pass that on. Just before we leave “Vault”, we’ve
got one student who’s going to playing that for her piece next year, we’re
getting a little ensemble together. What advice would you give her, if she’s
going to play the Trumpet 2, what advice would you give her in playing it?
PK: Um… hmm… [long pause] I don’t know! [laughs]
I mean, it’s kind of about time, you know, I mean you know, you’ve gotta get
the time happening, really. So you’ve got to – everybody’s got to be feeling it
rhythmically… in a way that works, and is… you know, that’s groovy. I guess.
Cause it could be a bit stiff – if it isn’t grooving it could be a bit stiff.
CB: So you’ve gotta listen.
PK: Yeah, and how’s she doing it? She’s getting a
band together?
CB: Yep. We’re just playing it as written on the
page. So…
PK: Yeah. So working with the bass and drums a
lot and getting that really happening…
CB: Interaction.
PK: And then – don’t play too loud. You know – it
doesn’t have to be… it’s the blend that’ll give it the power, not the volume, yeah?
CB: That’s great advice. Thanks a lot. Just in
general – just two more questions, if I can keep you a little bit longer – your
music seems to have a little bit of interest in place and space, would you say
that’s true?
PK: Yep.
CB: Looking at your last release, Allotrope,
it’s got those Florence St
ones which – I really love that first one by the way –
PK: Oh thanks.
CB: Is that a constant theme in your music?
PK: Yeah I like the idea of finding something
that really expresses something about time and place. So… I think it’s a bit of
a reaction to working with American jazz forms for so long and going, well,
actually, you know, I love this music, but it’s not me. And who am I, and what
is it to be an improvising musician in 2013 in Melbourne, having grown up in
country Victoria, and listened to rock’n’roll music when I was a kid, and… It’s
about specificity of moment and place and context, yeah, for sure.
CB: Great. How do you think your stuff fits into
Australian music more broadly, is that a conscious thing for you, or do you
think we’ve moved beyond the need for Australian music to have its own
identity, or is that a big thing that we need to work towards getting better
at?
PK: Yeah, that’s a good question, I mean, it’s a
hard thing to work towards, isn’t it?
CB: Yeah, how do you do it – put some didgeridoos
in the piece…
PK: Look, I’m really – I think it’s really
important that we do find ways of expressing the here and now, and I suppose,
you know, with the Australian Art Orchestra too, I mean, that’s been a big
thing for me to become a part of that and that’s always been about trying to
find some sort of unique modes of expression that say something about being
Australian but at the same time, it’s kinda like, if that’s the – if you worry
too much about it, it can be kind of paralysing, I think. I think most
important is we’ve just gotta get on and make some good music, and try to
engage with the things around us that are inspiring, and interesting, and
perhaps things around us that are sort of unique, I mean one of the things we
have here is this proximity to Asia, and the extraordinary mix of cultures
right on our doorstep, I mean – if you engage with those things I think it’s
kind of inevitable that something unusual is going to emerge. Yeah?
CB: Yeah, yeah. Well that answers my question
really well. Thankyou very much for your time and
PK: No worries. It’s a pleasure.
CB: And I’ll give you a link to the blog we’ve
done, we’ve done analysis and discussion of your piece, and I’ll put a
transcript of this interview up there as well, so.. thanks so much and good
luck with the Australian Art Orchestra and whatever’s coming up for you.
PK: Thanks, I really appreciate your interest,
and your thoughtful questions, it’s great.
