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Glenn Kotche COURTESY OF TONY MARGHERITA MANAGEMENT
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During our commissions workshop in January, the Silk Road Ensemble will develop new music by composers Glenn Kotche, David Bruce (interviewed in our April issue), Vijay Iyer and Kojiro Umezaki, who will all join us at Harvard University.
For a preview of his new piece "Mille Etoiles," we reached Glenn Kotche in Minneapolis, where he was on tour with the pioneering rock band Wilco. Glenn's piece is scored for Chinese pipa and sheng, Japanese shakuhachi, Indian tabla, string quartet, contrabass, and world percussion. It also has a part for our sound engineer, who will take an active role in performing along with the musicians.
Chicago-based percussionist and composer Glenn Kotche has been heralded as one of the most exciting, creative and promising composers and performers in modern music. His eclectic works have focused on the creative use of rhythm and space. Recognized for his "unfailing taste, technique and discipline," (Chicago Tribune), Glenn has been commissioned to write pieces for Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, So Percussion, and Eighth Blackbird. His participation with various groups has resulted in more than 90 albums to date. In addition to his work as a solo percussionist, Glenn is a member of the ground-breaking American rock band Wilco, with whom he has played since 2001. He also records and performs regularly with the jazz experimental duo On Fillmore.
SRP: Is this your first time writing for any of these instruments?
GK: Yes, besides the strings and percussion, it's all new to me. Although indigenous music from Africa and Southeast Asia influences some of my solo pieces, I haven't previously tapped into traditional Chinese, Indian or Japanese music, other than as a listener. So for this piece I reached out to Kojiro Umezaki, Wu Man and Sandeep Das for insights into their instruments.
SRP: What was your starting point for this piece?
GK: I started by thinking about Sandeep, knowing that he is trained in an oral tradition and doesn't read music. I wanted to integrate him throughout the piece, instead of just giving him opportunities to solo. No one in the piece is featured exclusively; sometimes everyone plays the melody, but everyone also plays accompaniment.
I know enough about the tabla tradition to assume Sandeep will have no problem with compound time signatures. I wanted to give him a solid musical road map to follow, while also allowing myself to work a little more directly and intricately with the tabla's voice. The concept of rhythmic cells is fundamental to a lot of non-Western music, as well as a lot of percussion music, so it was something I knew most of the Ensemble would be comfortable with.
SRP: What kind of structure do the rhythmic cells provide?
GK: They are they sole determinant of the form; they specify the length of each section, when key changes occur, and the length of the overall piece. As soon as I had set the numbers for each section, I knew the piece was going to be 17 minutes long. Each section is divided into micro-rhythms that occur over set numbers of measures. They combine in a way similar to fractals, so the same ideas that take place in miniature are also replicated in the structure overall.
SRP: What do you think it will sound like?
GK: I tried to make this piece something that was unique to this ensemble, something original. I didn't want a hybrid of classical and world music or an arrangement of a traditional non-Western piece. Those aren't my forte. I wanted a full piece thats sounds, well, like the Silk Road Ensemble—all of these disparate instruments that make perfect sense when played together.
The Ensemble members who approached me also wanted to have technology be part of this piece, so we'll have delays and other effects on the instruments. It will all be done live. It's exciting, because it's the first time I've written live sound tech into a composition.
SRP: What about the title, "Mille Etoiles"?
GK: I like to start a piece conceptually and let the music follow. The concept informs all of the decisions I make along the way about how the piece will unfold. Around the time I was wrestling with concepts for this pice, I was watching and reading Silk Road Ensemble interviews. The musicians all talked so glowingly about each other and about being part of the Project—it was like a big love-fest.
I happened to be camping with my dear friends and family in France at the time, so I naturally equated the two. The notion of love became my starting point, so the time signatures are taken from the birthdates of my family members. I remember, while camping in Mille Etoiles, looking up at all of those stars and thinking of loved ones past and present, how they all inform who we are—like the stars, regardless of whether it's night or day, whether we see them or not, they're always there.
SRP: Our artistic director Yo-Yo Ma often talks about the fluid dynamic between tradition and innovation. What do you make of that relationship?
GK: I build on tradition in everything I do. My instrument, the drum kit, dates back a century or so to theater and vaudeville drummers, who would assemble multi-percussion sets. Configurations changed for blues, jazz, and R&B and became codified in what we now consider a standard setup: two or three drums and a couple of cymbals. In my own drumming, I look back to the drum set's origins as a multi-percussion instrument. That's where both my work with Wilco and my compositions come from. So tradition has been a blueprint for me. It's been in looking back to orchestral techniques that I have stumbled on new ideas.
SRP: What perspective do you, as a percussionist, bring to composing?
GK: I'm lucky, because I don't make my living from composing. I'm lucky enough to treat composing as a bit of a purist, choosing projects that I know I'll grow from in the process. I've been fortunate to have only worked with virtuosos so far—with adventurous musicians who can handle anything I throw at them.
I do compose from a drummer's perspective, though. I didn't study composition, but I've performed in orchestral and pop settings my whole life. So much focus, over the centuries, has gone into melody and harmony, but I write to investigate rhythmic ideas, concepts that aren't really feasible to explore on the drums alone. Rhythm is my frontier.
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