By David Templeton <\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cL<\/span>ive performance is like a triangle.\u201d Violist Kim Kashkashian\u2014a gentle murmur of laughter frequently underscoring her sometimes intricate wordplay\u2014has named her favorite three-sided geometrical construct as the perfect metaphor for the complex system she sees at work whenever a group of musicians take the stage to perform a piece of music live for an audience.<\/p>\n \u201cPerformance is often described as a dialogue between the performers and the audience, and I agree with that, but it\u2019s much more complicated and ever changing than a simple dialogue,\u201d she says. \u201cIt really is a triangle, actually. It\u2019s a three-way relationship between the performer, the audience, and the composer.\u201d<\/p>\n Kashkashian, who resides in Boston, is a Grammy-winning violist (2012\u2019s Kurtag\/Ligeti: Music for Viola<\/i>) and recent inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. One of the nation\u2019s oldest champions of scholarship and knowledge, the Academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams with the motto, \u201cTo cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.\u201d<\/p>\n On October 8, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kashkashian was inducted along with more than 200 new fellows, including pianist Jeremy Denk, author-poet Diane Ackerman, saxophonist-composer Wayne Shorter, photographer Lorna Simpson, and livestock expert Temple Grandin.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an intense weekend, and the wonderful Temple Grandin was absolutely inspiring,\u201d Kashkashian says. \u201cGetting to listen to so many brilliant people talking about possibilities and progress, it was overwhelming, and gave me a strong feeling of hope for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n That experience follows the release of Kashkashian\u2019s new album, Arcanum<\/i>, from ECM Records, created with pianist-composer Lera Auerbach. The gorgeously haunting and somewhat addictive recording begins with Auerbach\u2019s 2010 transcriptions, for piano and viola, of Dmitri Shostakovich\u2019s piano preludes, and concludes with her own composition, the remarkably maze-like four-movement \u201cArcanum,\u201d the musical equivalent of wandering through a hall of mirrors. \u201cI wrote \u2018Arcanum\u2019 with Kim in mind,\u201d says Auerbach. \u201cWhen I write for a specific performer, I always try to listen to their playing as much as possible. In the case of Kim, I was already familiar with her recordings. When I met her for the first time, I felt like we\u2019d known each other for many years\u2014and in a way, we had.\u201d<\/p>\n The piece originally premiered in 2013, at the Municipal Theater of Vevey, in Switzerland. The composition was immediately described\u2014by music aficionados and critics alike\u2014as one of the most important and significant new compositions for piano and viola to come along in years.<\/p>\n \u201cWith \u2018Arcanum,\u2019\u201d Auerbach explains, \u201csince I know Kim to be a performer who never stops growing and searching, who is not afraid of intensity and deep emotion, I wanted to write a piece that would connect Kim\u2019s passion and intensity to my own examination of the tension between the powers of darkness and the powers of light. I think that\u2019s what is so special about this piece\u2014and why it affects people so deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what took so long for the piece to be recorded, Kashkashian describes a long process of performing the piece in public several times, before feeling ready to record and release it on CD.<\/p>\n \u201cI prefer to work that way,\u201d she says, \u201cto let a piece of music\u2014whether it is brand new or just new to me\u2014to let it mature through the understanding and self-feedback one gets from performance.\u201d<\/p>\n This brings her back to the notion of dialogues and relationships.<\/p>\n \u201cThe relationship between musician and audience, that\u2019s part of the unique magic that comes from performance, but does not come when you listen to a CD,\u201d she says. \u201cRecording is a different kind of relationship. The energy is flowing a different way. When you are in a live-performance space, there is that three-way dialogue going on, that triangle. It begins, of course, as a different kind of triangle, a conversation between the composer\u2019s intentions, the piece of paper you are looking at\u2014which supposedly expresses the composer\u2019s intentions\u2014and you, the musician, trying to execute all of that. That triangle always exists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the other triangle. <\/span><\/p>\n The one that makes live performance exciting.<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u2018triangle\u2019 I\u2019m talking about is the person performing\u2014the one making the sound, expressing something\u2014and the space itself, which is filled with people who are giving you feedback. The people are the third side of the triangle. They all give you energy and feedback. It\u2019s what I experience as a three-way triangle of energy, similar to the other triangle, overlapping this one in amazing ways.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAm I making any sense?\u201d she says with a laugh. <\/span><\/p>\n Complex geometric philosophies aside, Kashkashian adds that\u2014simply put\u2014she really does enjoy the lengthy process of public performance, primarily because she learns so much from it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs a performer, each time you play a composition,\u201d she says, \u201cyou gain a little more understanding as to what that piece is, and what it can mean\u2014to you as a musician, to the audience giving you their emotions, and to the world, a world that is now a little different when all of those people walk back out into it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Kashkashian laughs again.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s another triangle, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By David Templeton \u201cLive performance is like a triangle.\u201d Violist Kim Kashkashian\u2014a gentle murmur of laughter frequently underscoring her sometimes intricate wordplay\u2014has named her favorite three-sided geometrical construct as the perfect metaphor for the complex system she sees at work whenever a group of musicians take the stage to perform a piece of music live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":11311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[506],"ppma_author":[1687],"class_list":["post-11310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-february-2017"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/kim.jpg?fit=1077%2C719&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p77Kt7-2Wq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1687,"user_id":16,"is_guest":0,"slug":"oliviastringletter-com","display_name":"Olivia Wise","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f89e747a214fe295ca651259c5604a27c20d8b1474cdafe9419d7f3bafe814b3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11366,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310\/revisions\/11366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11310"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}