Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?
Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?
Playing a concerto with Zubin is like being surrounded by a well-loved, cashmere-lined silk glove.
The way it works: The orchestra plays a few selections of its own and I terminate the first part of the programme on piano, usually with a movement from a Mozart concerto.
I wanted a trumpet concerto that reflected Native American music because, well, there aren't any. I looked around for one but couldn't find anything. So it's a wide-open field.
[Miranda Hentoff] was teaching once at Lincoln Center, and the hall was full of other professionals - musicians, professors, teachers. And she was explaining how [Béla] Bartok composed his second piano concerto. And she explained how the music was interwoven with the rhythms and what he had in his mind. And I was just stunned. This is a kid who used to work - on a piano with a cracked keyboard.
I shift between mediums very frequently. Instead of taking a break from writing, I just write in a different medium or in a different way or for a different purpose, so that I don't actually stop writing - I just go to something else. Like going from a big symphony to a piano piece is great and very refreshing, I find. And then going from that to a big concerto, and then having to go out and play.
My life is a creative act--like a painting, or a concerto.
Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession.
I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.
Being a classical musician, you're doing many things anyway. One day you're doing Bach concerto and the next you're doing some avant-garde thing. It's just another hat that I'm allowed to wear.
There are many collaborations I'd like to explore. One is to co-write a rap concerto with Eminem.
Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there.
