As things turn out, Eve Egoyan’s latest recording, Thought and Desire (Earwitness Editions EE2015, eveegoyan.com), is reviewed elsewhere in this issue, so I will dwell less on the specifics of it in this story than I otherwise might. But with post-production on the disc, minimal as it was, only recently wrapped when Egoyan and I chatted last May, it was very much in mind, so perhaps unavoidably, our conversation started there.
“It’s interesting when you hear a disc in its entirety how satisfying that is, because before then it’s only imagined. It’s a very important disc for me. Beyond that it’s by one composer [Linda Catlin Smith] who is a woman, which is important to me, it’s just gorgeous. And it was recorded at the Banff Centre which is my first time recording there and it was an exquisite experience ... between the location and the pianos and the people we were working with ... just the focus of time there. So the clarity, the fluidity of the experience – everything just fell into place and I think you can hear that ease in the sound of the recording because we were all very happy there.”
The fact that Catlin Smith was there for the whole session was pivotal. “We received a Canada Council grant and decided that it was actually quite cost effective to go there and be there and do it very quickly,” Egoyan says, “because they offered everything. Also because of the kind of music that it is. We decided from the start that it wouldn’t be heavily edited, that it needn’t be, so, you know, it’s full takes with the occasional insert. We actually walked away from four or five days basically with a complete master. So we recorded it and edited it within the time we were there, which was so wonderful; because often, you know, with things you have recorded you sit with them for months.”
Egoyan’s musical relationship with Catlin Smith goes back a long way. “Actually my very first disc and my very first commission was a work by Linda. We have had this relationship working together for a very long time and we’ve also released a disc of a work by her for cello and piano, Ballad. I know her; I love how she writes for the piano; and I wanted to document, as a disc, her piano music.”
Egoyan’s pleasure at the two Steinways available for the project at Banff is palpable. “I was using their more recent Steinway, which was lovely for the quality of sound for Linda’s music. I’ve actually been very lucky with pianos recently. I’ve just come back from a tour where I have had two Faziolis and two Steinways.” An embarrassment of riches? I offer. “Totally,” she replies. “In Regina it was the best Fazioli ever. It was really lovely. Now, with tours, I’m treated very well, I even get the better pianos.”
It wan’t always that way for a practitioner of new music on tour. “It used to be that when people knew I was playing new music I was not given the better piano, because the assumption was that I would be abusing the piano, going inside the piano and detuning it.”
Thought and Desire involves Egoyan’s own Earwitness label, as many of her ten solo recordings have done. But this one is not a completely solo venture. “This one actually is a mixture,” she says. “It’s a double release with a European label [World Edition (Germany)]. I’ve done this before and this seems to be the best way. I mean, for me to be actually on a label means....” She pauses for the right words. “Well, it’s almost like labels don’t have a lot of money to put towards the release of your disc, so it’s as though they take on a ton, and then they benefit if a disc does well. And I am not sure where the artist benefits, if the disc is not reviewed, or whatever. At this point in my career I don’t feel as though I need to be part of ... I don’t – I never did actually – understand the function of a label unless they go behind a disc, and very few labels will actually go behind a contemporary disc. For them it’s like the curator of an art gallery who takes on a ton of artists and is ok if, you know, they sell one show a lot. So that’s how I see it.”
This is not sour grapes. Egoyan knows whereof she speaks. “I was on CBC Records; I was on Mode Records; I was on Artifact (my first label). And Centrediscs for three, the Ann Southam discs. Of course, if you do go with a label there are expenses that the artist doesn’t have to assume; [but] if sales go well, their cut is huge. So, for example, if this disc does get a great review then I would benefit. And you know, as an independent artist who makes a living through bits and pieces, that’s important to me; and so rather than getting 50 percent ... I’ll have distribution through a distributor, options for retail sales, as opposed to digital and show sales.”
It’s like a small business, she concludes. “I think contemporary music is, for most, a small business.”
Fifty people in 100 towns, not 5,000 in one arena, I say.
“It’s a poetic world,” she says. “A world of poetry, and I don’t belittle it. It’s very important, and how it resonates with other art forms. My dialogue with other artists and art forms through what I produce is very important to me. It’s a ground from which a lot springs forth. It really feeds other artists, so if you take away the experimental, the explorative ...” The thought tails off into silence.
Egoyan’s connection to The WholeNote goes back to the early days of this publication and I remind her that back then she was carrying more works in the standard symphonic repertoire in her portfolio. I ask if she still does. “Not really,” she replies. “Although I probably should. I realize that I went from mixed recitals to only contemporary, to right now, what you are seeing on this disc, one composer. But you know my career has been very very supported through certain levels of Councils, Toronto Arts, Ontario, Canada, which support artists in exploration and in generating and supporting new Canadian works. So I have been very much a product, a happy product, of bringing new work to life. As for the comfort of playing standard repertoire alongside, I think I lost that – partly because so many others do it so much better than me – but I think maybe my audiences miss that a little in terms of the context that mixed repertoire can bring.”
Maybe when this disc is out, she says, she’ll give it some more thought. By then the upcoming Subtle Technologies fundraiser will be over, as will her recording of Maria de Alvear’s two-hour diptych De amor puro and En amor duro (which will be released in 2016). But by then planning for her 2016 Earwitness Tour of works for disklavier and image will be in high gear – a tour which will include, among others, venues such as the Other Minds Festival (San Francisco), Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre (Los Angeles), University of California Santa Barbara, University of California Irvine, Stanford University and the Musée des beaux arts de Montréal at Bourgie Hall. So maybe the thought will have to wait.
Next spring’s Earwitness tour is a clear indicator of some of the directions Egoyan’s passionate exploration of her art is taking her. “It’s an exploration of how music can intersect with visual arts in such a way that they are truly married,” she says. There was an early incarnation of the idea for disklavier and image at Koerner Hall during the 2013 inaugural 21C Festival. But it has grown by leaps and bounds since then, to include pieces by John Oswald, Nicole Lizée, Michael Snow and, hopefully Chiyoko Szlavnics, with two of the works being for disklavier, but also one for amplified piano, one for piano and sine tones and one for acoustic piano.
“It’s a project that’s just growing and growing” she says. “But it is a very delicate project, because the music and the image have to blend. It’s not just music accompanying a visual narrative; it’s not just patterns you are seeing visually to mimic the music. It’s actually quite rigorous. And so people who are working with this, because Canada has a richness of them, are usually artists who are not only musicians but also visual artists. So the mandate is to see if there can truly be a new – I don’t want to call it a new art form – but yeah, how much success can one have in bringing the two art forms into a closer relationship?”
As if all this were not enough, she reveals that for the past two years she has also been trying to eke out enough time to explore composition, under the terms of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. “I didn’t realize until I started taking time away from my interpretive practice how different they were. I mean with interpretation you have a score, there’s always an end point to move towards. An hour, two hours. But with creation it’s not at all like that. But it’s something that I passionately want to explore.”
Fully expecting an affirmative response, I ask if improvisation has been a useful bridge for her between the two. “ I had thought it would be,” she says. “I actually started there but it became very unsatisfying. In my project as originally proposed, I was going to – because I work in ProTools for my rough editing as well – I thought I would be able to pick my way through improvisations creating a collage, but that just fell apart. So I feel like I am just teaching myself the very basics of the craft. Slowly. Whether anything gets performed, ever, right now I don’t know.”
As we talk I remark that it is fascinating to observe how she is able in the same instant to open herself to new ideas while at the same time managing not to be distracted by them from the task at hand.
“There’s an energy issue involved,” she says, “because I also self–administrate, doing all the grant writing, all the tour arrangements, stuff like that, and I have to keep time for my creative work. So as far as developing other creative projects, I have to be able to say that’s enough. And I’m a mother (we’re going to Barber of Seville tomorrow, by the way) and there’s a birthday party in two weeks ... and I have aging parents. As far as sanity and quality of the work go, that’s the picture for now. But that being said, I’m in discussion for 2017 for a possible commission for a very interesting concerto – I have my fingers crossed. It would mean a huge deal if it happens (and I can’t talk about it yet). In fact there’s a lot of things I can’t talk about yet. So many exciting ideas and so many people. I can’t shut myself down creatively. But I have learned how to parcel things off into the future so I can do my best work in the present with what I already have to do. So that’s what I do.”
As for remaining in the present, as of writing this, the CD launch concert for Thought and Desire is now only a few weeks away (October 16, 17, 18 at 8pm). In the choice of venue and the program for the evening it is in and of itself a microcosm of the mix of thought and desire that infuse Egoyan’s artistic praxis.
Take the venue, for example: “I decided for the release concert, because it’s very quiet music, to bring it to a space I have never used, Small World Music at Artscape, which seats about 60 people. I’m bringing a piano in and I’m going to do it for multiple nights, so that people can be close to the quiet. I would usually do things at the Gould or the St. Lawrence Centre (and they are lovely and the pianos are lovely). In fact the only thing I am giving up here is the piano. A nine-foot won’t fit in the elevator and to get it up the stairs would be really expensive. But the size of the space is lovely and, as a self-presenting artist, to have to blow such a huge part of the budget on a hall is always tough. Here people have the opportunity to go more than once or to pick a day.... And I like that it’s somewhere between super casual and super formal, and it’s raked, and has a tiny stage, so there’s that balance between separation and closeness. I am trying to find a place that has a balance between slightly formal but also intimate.”
It’s a description that speaks to the striving for a balance between adventure and equilibrium in this always interesting artist’s life.
David Perlman is the publisher and editor-in-chief of The WholeNote. He can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com
