Eugene Friesen Interview
KITTY CAPARELLA LAURA SCHWARTZ ellist Eugene Friesen—artist, musician, educa- tor, collaborator, improviser—has been a musi- C cal idol of mine since I "rst heard him perform, Field Music, 2019 in 1989, at the Davies Symphony Hall in my hometown Yellow, gray, and cream encaustic paint-stick on wood, 12 x 12 in. A COVID-19 of San Francisco, California. That evening, I watched the Paul Winter Consort, Friesen’s artistic home for over four Conversation decades, perform with the Russian folk ensemble the Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble: American contemporary meets Rus- in B Minor sian traditional folk, in what could only be described as a supernatural metamorphosis of sound. An interview with I can still vividly recall seeing the consort members, Eu- gene Friesen on stage right in front of me, as they watched Eugene Friesen their Russian collaborators, colorful in their traditional peasant regalia, #ow down the aisles from the back of the music hall and onto the stage to join them—swirling, throat singing, smashing tambourines, clanging "nger cymbals, mixing all forms of percussion wildly and raucously with the consort’s smooth, contemporary jazz tones of saxophone, piano, cello, and drums. The consort members themselves appeared as trans"xed as I was: in this transcendent mo- ment, shared between performers and audience, the music itself was the star. COVID-19 led me to Friesen’s virtual door. I wanted to know what his work brought to him at this moment in time where every profession—and most profoundly, the perform- ing arts—had been leveled and brought to its knees.
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