Jay Reise: an Interview by Tom Moore
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Opera Today Interviews Recently in Interviews HOME COMMENTARY FEATURED Connections Across Time: OPERAS Sholto Kynoch on the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival NEWS ‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 REPERTOIRE Oxford Lieder Festival (10th- REVIEWS 17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse ABOUT and imaginative programme of 40 performances and CONTACT events. LINKS Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic 28 Jun 2010 SEARCH Fantasies (Vol.2) - in SITE conversation with Adrian Jay Reise: An Interview by Tom Moore Bradbury ‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on Jay Reise is one of the senior musical figures in Philadelphia, themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. serving on the composition faculty of the University of Enter KeywordsDifculties, declared to be insuperable, were Pennsylvania since 1980. Search vanquished by him with consummate skill and His opera Rasputin, originally precision. He certainly is commissioned by Beverly Sills and the Jay Reise: An amazing, his tone Subscribe to magnificent, and his style New York City Opera, was revived in Interview by excellent. His resources 2008-09 by the Helikon Opera in Opera Today appear to be inexhaustible; Tom Moore Receive and altogether for variety, it Moscow. Rasputin will be given its Paris articles and is the greatest specimen of premiere by Opéra de Massy in Above: Jay Reise news via RSS violoncello playing that has November 2010. A new opera, based on feeds or been heard in this country.’ [Photo by Cecilia email the famous Strindberg play The Ghost Paredes] subscription. Eboracum Baroque - Heroic Sonata, is under way. His violin concerto Feature Handel The River Within was premiered in 2008 Articles Eboracum Baroque is a by Maria Bachmann and Orchestra 2001 flexible period instrument and is scheduled for release on Innova Email Address ensemble, comprising singers and instrumentalists, Recordings later this year. We talked by Printer Version Subscribe which was founded in York - phone on January 20, 2010 with an as its name suggests, Send to a Eboracum being the name of email follow-up in June. the Roman fort on the site of Friend present-day York - while artistic director Chris Parsons TM: Please talk about the musical was at York University. background in your family. Schubert 200 : in JR: Both of my parents were very musical though neither was a conversation with Tom professional musician. My mother was my first piano teacher Guthrie when I was five and then my father started teaching me. He had ‘There could be no happier studied with Rudolf Ganz at Chicago Musical College, and then existence. Each morning he composed something subsequently with Eric Itor Kahn and Irma Wolpe in New York. beautiful and each evening All three were quite formidable teachers: Ganz had studied with he found the most enthusiastic admirers. We Busoni and is the dedicatee of Ravel’s Scarbo as well as Griffes’ gathered in his room - he The White Peacock and piano sonata; Kahn was a student of played and sang to us - we Schoenberg and had given the world premiere of Klavierstücke were enthusiastic and afterwards we went to the Op. 33a; and Wolpe, one of the most celebrated teachers at that tavern. We hadn’t a penny time, had worked with Cortot and was of course Stefan Wolpe’s but were blissfully happy.’ first wife. That’s quite a mixture of national musical cultures to Soprano Eleanor Dennis introduce to a kid from Sparks, Nevada in the late 1940s! And I performs Beethoven and was fortunate to have something of it passed down to me. My Schubert at the 2019 dad eventually went on in business but is still an accomplished and enthusiastic amateur pianist. Highgate International Chamber Music Festival The main focus of my parents was on classical music but they When soprano Eleanor Dennis was asked - by Ashok were also involved in jazz in the early 1950’s. My father was good Klouda, one of the founders friends with composer George Russell and copied music for and co-directors of the Highgate International George at the time when he was formulating what became his Chamber Music Festival - to Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. So my perform some of Beethoven’s parents were wonderful mentors, embracing both the classical Scottish Songs Op.108 at this year’s Festival, as she leafed and jazz worlds. through the score to make her selection the first thing that struck her was the I was, however, always most taken with classical music. I feel beauty of the poetry. that I have known some of it all my life — which I guess I have since my Dad was always practicing it. I can’t remember when I Mark Padmore reflects on didn’t know some pieces. They became a part of me. In a certain Britten's Death in Venice sense I sometimes feel like some of those composers are “At the start, one knows ‘bits’ of it,” says tenor Mark members of my family, like uncles. When I hear certain pieces Padmore, somewhat wryly, ♭ when I meet him at the Stage by Schumann or, say, the Brahms B minor Intermezzo (Op. Door of the Royal Opera 117 No. 2) it sort of feels like a dear relative is back visiting again. House where the tenor has I was an only-child so maybe that’s what gives me a peculiar just begun rehearsals for David McVicar’s new sense of who my relatives are! production of Death in Venice, which in November will return Britten’s opera to TM: You grew up in New York City? the ROH stage for the first time since 1992. JR: I grew up in Queens and then Staten Island but visited Manhattan all the time. Even though I was quite smitten with An interview with Cheryl classical music as a teenager - listening constantly, studying Frances-Hoad, Oxford scores and I even took a few piano lessons with Irma Wolpe — Lieder Festival's first my heart was in literature. I was more interested in becoming a Associate Composer writer, a dramatist in particular. In high school I was especially “Trust me, I’m telling you stories …” taken with the Theater of the Absurd, which was very big in the sixties. I read all of Beckett’s works, Ionesco, Pinter — the whole In conversation with Nina lot — I really thought I would go into literature at that point. I Brazier guess writing my own librettos is where that interest finally led. When British opera director Nina Brazier tries to I went to Hamilton College in upstate New York and was an telephone me from Frankfurt, where she is in the middle of English major, still pursuing the literary idea. At that time, again rehearsals for a revival of through my parents, I also became very good friends with jazz Florentine Klepper’s 2015 production of Martinů’s clarinetist and composer Jimmy Giuffre. Jimmy is of course one Julietta, she finds herself - to of the great legends of jazz — he passed on about two years ago. my embarrassment - ‘blocked’ by my telephone He was a remarkable fellow — candid and subtle, kind, complex, preference settings. The a splendid teacher and mentor, and a musician whose lyrical technical hitch is soon voice I think is unsurpassed. solved; but doors, in the UK and Europe, are certainly very much wide open for Nina, It was in my junior year in college, during summer vacations and who has been described by The Observer as ‘one of holidays that I began to study composition with Jimmy at his Britain’s leading young loft on West 15th street. Though I continued to be quite directors of opera’. passionate about literature, I was spending more and more time Bill Bankes-Jones on the on music. When I told Jimmy about this, he said in his quiet wise way, “Well…music chooses you.” It’s an insightful twelfth Tête à Tête Opera statement, one that I have passed on to many aspiring-but-not- Festival quite-certain student composers. I studied with him for about “We need to stop talking about ‘diversity’ and think two years, mainly doing counterpoint. instead about ‘inclusivity’,” says Bill Bankes-Jones, when we meet to talk about the In my senior year at Hamilton I met Canadian composer Hugh forthcoming twelfth Tête à Hartwell who was newly appointed to the faculty at sister school Tête Opera Festival which Kirkland College. He became a very significant mentor. He had runs from 24th July to 10th August. studied with George Crumb, George Rochberg and Richard Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania and is also an An interview with excellent jazz pianist. We had many fascinating discussions on composer Dani Howard all sorts of things ranging from voice leading in Monteverdi to The young Hong Kong-born harmonic rhythm in Debussy to melodic development in Miles British composer Dani Howard is having quite a Davis. My musical horizons kept expanding. Hugh introduced busy year. me to George Crumb and Neva Pilgrim. Neva is a wonderful soprano who is a major champion of new music. She was a Irish mezzo-soprano Paula founder of the Syracuse Society for new Music, a leading new Murrihy on Salzburg, music ensemble which was just honored with an American Sellars and Singing Music Center Founders Award. Neva later sang the vocal part in For Peter Sellars, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a ‘visionary’ my Symphony of Voices which was premiered at the Monadnock work, a utopian opera Festival in 1978. centred on a classic struggle between a father and a son written by an angry 25-year- After I graduated Hamilton I turned my goals towards a career old composer who wanted to in composition and went to McGill University in Canada.