Five Questions with Russell Podgorsek and Hermes Camacho

This interview is part of Issue 9.1’s Sehr Flash feature. Click here for more details.

Kirby Johnson: Tell us a bit how your personal practices. What type of music do the both of you usually write, and have you ever incorporated literature in your work before?

Russell Podgorsek: At the risk of sounding overly simplistic, I try to write good music. By that I mean music that has an effect on the listener both emotionally and intellectually, and that is fun, challenging, and rewarding for the performers. I’ve written a number of pieces inspired by literature: a large chamber work based on Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler…,” a saxophone quartet after Calvino’s “Six Memos for the Next Millennium,” another shorter sax quartet based on a poem and three pieces of flash fiction, and the scholarly portion of my doctoral dissertation was essentially a piece of fiction in dissertation form. In other words, a connection with literature has been a defining element in my music for the last several years.

Hermes Camacho: Hopefully, I’m writing good music — really that’s all a composer can ask for. I absolutely consider the audience—the performers as well as the listeners—throughout the whole process. I’m not just writing for myself, but for all of them. The chamber works I wrote for this collaboration were first I’ve composed in some time. Over the last few years, I’ve focused primarily on writing for wind ensemble and youth orchestras.

I’m by no means even mildly well-read, so I usually tap the expertise of friends and colleagues for poetry, but I have definitely drawn on imagery that poetry provides to “generate” the music on several projects over the years. I’m attracted mostly to works that employ a purposeful vagueness that challenges and entices the reader to conjure the scene more vividly than even the most detailed description could achieve probably achieve. I love this as a composer, because it allows me the freedom to explore and take chances musically on aspects that aren’t necessarily implicit in the writing itself.

KJ: Russell–Mid-way through your process, I asked you how things were going. At the time I had provided you with the stories and recordings of the authors reading them, and you told me something funny–to paraphrase–you said, all of the readers sounded the same! Us writers know this sort of meter and pacing of a reading as Poet Voice. One critic has even described it this way, “The voice flattens the musicality and tonal drama inherent within the language of the poem and it also sounds overly stuffy and learned. In this way, Poet Voice does a disservice to the poem, the poet and poetry. It must be stopped.” Those are some strong words. How did reading the stories in the series differ from listening to them, and how did the two experiences change the way the both of you wrote? 

RP: “Poet Voice” is such a funny label since there’s so much history of performance in storytelling that was dynamic and musical. Listening to them in that style of recitation did limit the stories in much the same way as the critic mentioned. When I read them to myself I had a fine time exploring the rhythmic and tonal possibilities, and the psychological insights that manipulating those elements might bring to light. I think my pieces would’ve been less dynamic had I only had the recordings…or I would’ve ended up transcribing them.

HC: I actually made the decision not to listen to the recordings but certainly not out of disrespect to the authors. The readers experience these stories in their own voice, inside their head, so I wanted to write the music with that same consideration. If we had been tasked with writing music to accompany a recitation of the story, the approach would have been completely different. But I felt that if I listened to the authors reading their stories, I’d be given more than what the readers would be getting, or be challenged to do, chancing a disconnect unfair to both the authors and the listeners.

KJ: Can you tell us a little bit about your process? How did you choose each piece you would work with and how, narratively, did that piece influence your work?

RP: Hermes and I had what was essentially a story “draft.” We’d each read all of them and met to sort out who would get which. We did massage the results a little bit though: we each agreed to take an epistolary story, and ultimately ended up each taking one story by the authors that contributed two. Our “draft boards” came about based on the connections we felt with each piece. For example, Hermes is a big baseball fan so “Oliver Cromwell” was one he had some insight on while the opening of “Regarding the Owls” really resonated with me so I chose that one early in the process. The challenge with a project like this is to retain the mood or tone of the story while making the musical pieces successful on their own–and maybe even incorporating some text painting along the way (like in “Inside,” my counter-piece to Kelly Luce’s “Outside,” where the violist and cellist put on then remove mutes to create a kind of in-the-womb and out-of-the-womb aural experience).

HC: I read these stories over and over and over. I’m not the strongest reader or writer, in that I’m not very patient and try to get through things quickly, so I really slowed my brain down and breathed through all these stories many times. From there, I’d take out my violin or sit at the piano and just start to “noodle” (the not-so-technical term for improvised sketching and idea generating). At some point I’ll probably start to sing aloud, which is not the greatest experience for people around me, so I try to do that at home. After that, everything else is quite literally iterative: trying multiple ideas out, revising, re-hashing, editing, etc.

KJ: In what ways does the work you’ve written here serve as a translation, addition, or response to the written pieces? How do you guys feel the music adds meaning to the written word?

RP: Anytime you “translate” something into another medium you gain and you lose. In this case, I hope that our music makes explicit some emotional coloring that’s implicit in the stories. I’m also very sensitive to structure and so I hope that the musical architecture can help illuminate how I felt the stories I wrote for worked in terms of organization. Ultimately though, seeing or hearing different iterations of the same idea only gives listeners/readers a better understanding of it. It’s like looking at something from multiple viewpoints.

HC: I definitely feel the I’m writing a response to the stories. It’s very difficult to translate and far be it from me to suggest that I added something of value to another artist’s work. More than simply adding a soundtrack to a story, I think my musical response to the author’s words hopefully helps challenge and engage the reader/listener Socratically, either reinforcing their experience with the text or rethinking it in a way they otherwise wouldn’t have.

KJ: What is next for the both of you? What projects are you working on now, and where can readers find more of your work?

RP: Hermes and I run a series of events under the name “Pale Blue.”. Readers can check out upcoming concert information at www.pale-blue.us.

Personally, I’ve just finished a recording of my recent saxophone music, including a piece called “Translations,” and I’m currently working on a new piece for steel drums to be premiered in the spring. I’ve got plenty of information on my website and work samples on my soundcloud page.

HC: I keep really busy teaching with and composing music for Austin Soundwaves, a youth music program that serves the underrepresented community of East Austin, inspired by the values of El Sistema, as well as serving a Lectureship in music theory/comp at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. I’m also Co-founder and Content Lead with Picardy, a music tech platform for students to build and develop musicianship skills inside and outside the classroom.

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