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Beyond the Stage
“Human and Machine”: Technology and Creative Expression
“Human and Machine”: Technology and Creative Expression
The machines that have worked with—and against—artistic expression and communication.
Featuring 2022/23 Illuminations artists Steve Reich, Sō Percussion, and Michel van der Aa, plus Kinetech Arts.
In this first of three videos expounding on the 2022/23 “Human and Machine” Illuminations theme, we asked Illuminations artists and thought leaders about how technology has and continues to shape their artistic process, output, and creativity.
Transcript
Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion):
These drum machines get faster and faster and faster, and the drummer’s job is to play with them until it’s just physically impossible.
Steve Reich:
But what’s amazing is this process, this journey of starting in unison and then gradually coming apart, informing these all kinds of counterpointed relations, some of which are rational, some of which are very irrational.
Michel van der Aa:
There’s so much technology around us, you know, on our phones and our watches, and for me, it would feel very artificial to not allow that on stage.
Daiane Lopes da Silva (Kinetech Arts):
I always joke that I’m the human and he’s the machine.
Weidong Yang (Kinetech Arts):
What can I do? Yeah.
Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion):
I feel like Dan Trueman’s “neither Anvil nor Pulley” encapsulates so many of the ways we think about the kind of organic approach and the technology approach. This piece is in five movements and the first, third, and fifth are these folk songs. And Dan’s a hardanger fiddle player, and they’re very organic and very fluid. We have choices over what sounds we’re playing, and in the two and four slot are these large pieces that are really technology driven. I’ve started to think about them as the second one is a little bit like humans with technology, you know, we are in control of this technology and using it to play music together and it’s helping us do some things that we couldn’t do. Otherwise, we’re also responding to it. It’s really kind of fluid. The fourth one, I feel like that gets more into a human against technology and, depending on the night, it’s hard to know who wins. I think the humans win in the end, you know, but these drum machines get faster and faster and faster and the drummer’s job is to play with them until it’s just physically impossible. And so then you have a choice. Are you gonna try to keep playing with this machine, or are you gonna just do your own thing and, for me sitting in the drummer spot, if I have the energy, I try to do my own thing and come out, you know, come out on top.
Eric Cha-Beach (Sō Percussion):
What I was thinking about in terms of maybe one of the times where we did a little bit more exploration of what the boundary was was in Nathalie Joachim’s piece because the samples we’re playing on the sampler pad are her voice. So, hypothetically, she could sing all of those things; or, hypothetically, you could program them all and just have the computer play it back perfectly; or someone could play it at a MIDI keyboard.
And I think the reason we settled on the SPD is that it was a combination of her sound world in her head and then our skills as percussionists. So we’ve just trained to move our hands in a particular way and we can trigger those samples using the skills that we have as percussionists, and what, we what we get to actually does sound different than triggering those samples on a keyboard or just having it MIDI-mapped.
We start to drum and we start to groove with the way that we drum, and now her voice samples are coming out in a, in a groove that’s just different because it’s being played by drummers. So that, to me, was sort of letting the technology and the execution of that technology find a different musical end result. Not that, you know, very similar, but different feeling results could have been done in other ways.
Daiane Lopes da Silva (Kinetech Arts):
There’s some things that I did with technology that I couldn’t just do myself. It really opens up your brain to many different possibilities. And this happened many, you know, many, many years ago. Already Cunningham was doing that. He was using technology to create movement that he wasn’t, he would never ever thought about. And I think that technology does that a lot.
Weidong Yang (Kinetech Arts):
Like we joke about before we start, that she’s the human, I’m the machine; and when we work together, I often come up with the technologies, so the things that we want to explore. As an engineer, as a scientist, I often get carried away with those gadgets, but it’s usually, it’s the have to wait to get to her hands, and then I start to say, ‘Oh, that’s kind of a nuts’.
Daiane Lopes da Silva (Kinetech Arts):
In the beginning when we started Kinetech Arts in 2013, we were also excited about these new toys, these new gadgets, and everything became about the technology, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we are all like—I’m looking from the outside in the lab, and we’re all like a zombies,’ like I was like, this doesn’t feel right. This is not—you feel like we need to really go deeper into, ‘What is that about the technology?’ I’m always thinking about, ‘Where is the poetry?’
Michel van der Aa:
So I started as a composer, but my works became more and more visual; there were more and more things that I couldn’t express with just sound or with music, and I started making notes in my scores about the way the musicians should look, that they should mind movements, that they should play back and notice what lighting, about staging, so my scores began more and more visual in a way.
And I thought, okay, I’m gonna take a year off in 2002 and study film in New York at the Film Academy so I can, I can sort of add that visual layer to my work and in order to say things that I can’t say with my music.
Technology always should be a tool to express, you know, the core idea of the piece. Then I started thinking about what kind of vocabulary do I need to bring this piece across to the audience? And do I need it, you know, multimedia or can I just use a string quartet and a voice, you know? So it really depends on the idea and not the other way around. That’s a very important point for me.
So I think what’s really interesting in Blank Out is that there’s a scaled model of a house on stage. This model is filmed by a small 3D camera rig and the woman sort of moves objects around, changes walls, and kind of deconstructs the house while she’s deconstructing the memory of that particular day in the 1970s that the opera centers around. What I really like about that is that the audience understands it’s a very high-tech opera in a way, but it’s also very—you kind of look behind the screen. You see the, you look behind the technology, you see how the film is made, and this is really what I like, that the film itself becomes the protagonist in the piece.
Steve Reich:
In 1965, I was and a lot of people were working with tape loops, tape—physical loops that went around plastic loops of tape. They went around and around and around repeated. Instead of using electronic sources for music, I’m interested in human speech because it’s human and because it’s melodic occasionally—“it’s going to rain”—and if you loop it, if you repeat it, that becomes clearer. And the meaning doesn’t really disappear. Actually, it gets intensified.
I had been told by a friend, ‘There’s an incredible Black Pentecostal preacher preaching on Sundays at Union Square in San Francisco. Why don’t you come down and record him?’ ‘Okay.’ And indeed it was incredible, and he was preaching about Noah and the flood.
Now, this is 1965, not too long after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when I and millions of other Americans were afraid that they might just all go up in radioactive smoke. So the idea of national disaster was hovering like a cloud at that, at that period in time. So to hear about Noah just, you couldn’t avoid making associations between the story of Noah and the end of the world at that point.
I brought the tapes home and I listened to them and I started actually going to piano and trying to write down as if I was taking notation at a music school of the melodies of the preacher’s voice, Brother Walter’s voice. I thought, ‘Oh, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to create a loop situation where you’re going to have two loops and it’s gonna go ‘it’s gonna it’s gonna it’s gonna it’s gonna rain rain rain.’’
So I had two inexpensive tape recorders on my studio in San Francisco. And I made two of these loops as exact as I could make them, and I put them on the two machines, and I just happened to press the start button simultaneously and I had headphones on. And miraculously, and you could say by chance, and you could say by divine gift, I would say the latter, but you know, I’m not going to argue about that. The sound was exactly in the center of my head.They were exactly lined up.
Now, mathematically, the odds are against that, staggeringly so. And I just paused, and all of a sudden I began—the sound began as it was going, and then it started moving to the left, and then down my left arm and then down my left leg and then of course the floor, and pretty soon there’s a reverberation and then there’s a kind of various cans, and finally ‘it’s gonna, it’s gonna, it’s gonna, it’s gonna.’
I’m thinking, ‘Well, that’s nice.’ But what’s amazing is this process, this journey of starting in unison and then gradually coming apart and forming these all kinds of counterpointal relations, some of which are rational and some of which are very irrational.
So I proceeded to finish the piece and the crucial question was, ‘Okay, it’s a process. How long does it take?’ Too long, it’s a bore; too short, you don’t hear it. You’ve got to get it just right. So there’s always some aesthetic judgment that enters into even something that’s strict process.
‘It’s Gonna Rain’ created a new technique for making music which I call phasing. You can call it constantly variable canons, too. And I did another piece called “Come Out” and then I thought, ‘I’m not going to spend the rest of my life like a mad scientist trapped in a laboratory making phase pieces, and people can’t do this, but it’s so great, but people can’t do this, but it’s so great—and I went back and forth like that for months.
And finally I said, ‘I’m going to be the second machine. And I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to get it in unison with the tape recorder. And then I’m going to try to move ever so slowly—and that’s the virtuosity is to do it slowly. One sixteenth note ahead, hold, second sixteenth note ahead, until I finally get back into unison.’
And I tried it and I found, ‘Wow, I’m not like the second tape recorder, but I can do it, and doing it is a whole new way of performing.’ And the question was, ‘Can there be another player instead of another tape loop?’ And I was fortunate with being able to work with Arthur Murphy who’s no longer with us who was a friend of mine from Juilliard where I studied, and we found two pianos and ‘Look, Ma! No tape.’ This can be done by musicians.
And that piano phase in 1967 is the first piece in my experience that is completely modeled on a machine technique where two tape recorders or any other motors that are not locked together simply drift apart. And you’re trying to create that situation with two people, which is not, has no musical history of trying to do that before.
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“Human and Machine”: Beyond Our Hopes and Fears
“Human and Machine”: Beyond Our Hopes and Fears
Should society fear what’s to come?
Featuring computer scientist, composter, artist, and author Jaron Lanier; Head of Growth at Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Cal Performances’ Illuminations “Human and Machine” Artist Partner, Colm Ó Riain; and UC Berkeley Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Visual Artist, Ken Goldberg. Video created by Cal Performances’ Director of Education, Campus & Community Engagement, Mina Girgis.
In this third video expounding on the 2022/23 “Human and Machine” Illuminations theme, subject matter experts discuss our history with technological evolution as well as the potential risks and benefits of technology that increasingly exhibits human-like characteristics.
Transcript
Jaron Lanier:
Scientific progress can only happen from humility. Like, if you can’t see your ignorance, you have no hope of being a scientist because obviously you’ve just absolutely shot yourself in the foot.
Colm Ó Riain:
As we progress, we should consider perhaps expose, make it more transparent the level of agency that we’re willing to give to our technology.
Ken Goldberg:
Essentially, he or she achieves the goal, which is to create something autonomous. At that exact moment, that autonomy also creates a dynamic for the creator where there’s a loss of control.
Colm Ó Riain:
I think considering technology and machines through a lens of hopes and fears may not be the most useful. But if we go up another level, I think it’s useful to consider what we’re fearful of and many people are. When the car came in originally, we were a horse-riding society and people were scared. Arguably the internal combustion engine was as opaque to those people, to that society, as machine learning algorithms are art to ours, and then society had to adapt. How do they adapt? They adapted with various coordination technologies and arguably we have to have another technology to respond to that one.
And always we’re concerned, are we giving away control or is this something positive? And then what are we fearful of? Are we fearful about the right things, or the right set of things? So, overall, the fear is very useful if we can get above it and not react to it is my, I would claim.
Jaron Lanier:
I mean we have to remember that science is not done and might never be done, that the part of the world that we can describe scientifically is significant and important. We can use it to make technologies, that’s wonderful.
If we really understood the world scientifically, there would be no disease. If we really understood the world scientifically, there would be no global warming, you know. Our ignorance is profound as well. And and we have to remain honest about that. And I’m a little puzzled by how difficult it is often for people to accept that, and I think it’s just because we have too much ego in science.
Ken Goldberg:
Now, the question you just asked about why do we have machines, why do we want machines, is really ancient. And I mean, when I hear that, I think back to the very earliest machines of using a rock to be able to basically, you know, kill something, to, you know, to hunt. And it’s also true for pounding and preparing food for the most part and scraping bark off of things, right, throwing, throwing stones at things. Those are all machines in some form and then you evolve that up through levers and wheels and all these things, and they’re all to enhance our reach, our ability to do more and achieve more.
Jaron Lanier:
There’s a perennial debate about whether musical instruments or weapons have served more as drivers of basic technologies. The cliche is that it’s weapons, but that might be a bit too dark. There are a lot of examples where musical instruments seem to have come first. Bells were cast before the technology was turned to the use of cannons and then guns. Silicon Valley was founded by the company Hewlett Packard, and its first product was actually a music synthesizer for Walt Disney’s Fantasia. So Silicon Valley actually started as an instrument town.
Colm Ó Riain:
So one question I hear a lot is ‘Can machines be creative?’ And it brings us to, ‘What is human?’ ‘What is the human machine interface?’ ‘Where is that border?’ The institute with which I worked, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, has for many many years talked about the need for human-aligned AI and exploring what alignment looks like. How do we produce a smarter-than-human AI that has a positive benefit on humanity and the world?
Ken Goldberg:
The interesting promise of artificial intelligence and robotics is that those are the most lifelike of our machines. Those are machines—rather than just a wheel or a lever, this is something that actually starts to take on humanlike characteristics, it behaves like we do, thinks like we do. And those, that ability is both very compelling—for the same reason, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have something that could think and solve these problems that we face? But at the same time, the consequences can be enormous if those things got out of hand.
Colm Ó Riain:
If we have this, if we can successfully insert creativity into the algorithm or into our technology or into our hybrid, I think it would have to have a significant amount of hope programmed in. What does that look like?I think it would be have to be massively open to diversity, to ideas to come from all corners.
One of the problems with our current machine learning algorithm is that it doubles down on ideas that work initially, so all the other ideas get pruned away. That’s not a great scenario for creative solutions to problems down the line that we haven’t imagined. So one of the ways that we could be more creative is to bring that along with us, bring all the other ideas, don’t prune them away, bring on the different voices, the different ideas with us as we go forward into humanity. And my feeling is that using the arts, integrating arts into the center is vital to that.
Jaron Lanier:
I still, I still feel a sense of hope. I don’t think it’s fully rational to succumb to cynicism despite everything. I actually think that there are a lot—most people, not all but most people, are reasonably sane, reasonably well-intentioned, reasonably competent, and just caught up in crap that’s overcomeable.I think most of us are like that. None of us are perfect, but I think most of us have hope. It’s hard to remember that when you look at some of the events in the world. But I still feel that, in balance, one can be hopeful, and so if one can be hopeful, then one should be. And then, you know, you just try to do your best and I think it makes sense. I’m not ready to hang it up yet.
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“Human and Machine”: The Instrumentalist & the Instrument Maker
“Human and Machine”: The Instrumentalist & the Instrument Maker
“The instrument becomes a channel, too, and that’s the sense in which it’s alive.”
Featuring computer scientist, composter, artist, and author Jaron Lanier; and Cal Performances 2022/23 Illuminations artists Sō Percussion and Kristian Bezuidenhout. Video created by Cal Performances’ Director of Education, Campus & Community Engagement, Mina Girgis.
In this second video expounding on the 2022/23 “Human and Machine” Illuminations theme, we asked Illuminations artists and thought leaders about their relationships with the makers of their instruments.
Transcript
Jaron Lanier:
I sort of feel like if instrument makers ran the world, everything would just be smooth and it would be like, everything would make sense.
Adam Sliwinski (Sō Percussion):
I think the audiences at Cal performances will see how, for us, technology is part of a fluid spectrum of soundmaking and experimentation.
Kristian Bezuidenhout:
He says famously, ‘The piano should break,’ you know… Beethoven was wanting to sort of stretch the instrument to its maximum capacity and limits.
Jaron Lanier:
Well, so this is a question: ‘Why are we not just singing?’ ‘Why do we have instruments?’ And there are a few reasons for that. I mean, in a way you could say instruments are the ancient autotune because people don’t sing that well, that’s one. And I think, in a sense, we can think of musical instruments as being like masks in that if the voice would be the fully unmasked person then the instrument is the masked version, which takes away and gives at the same time.
Adam Sliwinski (Sō Percussion):
The way that we think about expanding the color palette of sound through percussion, I would say for all of us comes from two things: One, which is just the sort of natural experimentation that we all intuitively go about. When audiences come in to hear our shows, they immediately relate to the idea of ‘oh, you can try doing this with that, you can try doing that with it.’
The other thing for us is that our lineage as a percussion ensemble is not only to play drums and those kinds of instruments together, but it comes from artists like John Cage and Pauline Oliveros and many others who explicitly—Edgar Varèse—explicitly wanted to expand the resources of music coming out of the concert hall and orchestra culture and those things using percussion to just explore all kinds of ways of making sound—intuitive playfulness, the kind that anybody who’s never even heard of John Cage could get excited about.
Kristian Bezuidenhout:
Does Mozart invent this or does the piano tell him to do this. And when does he change that? Does he change it? Is he happy with it for 15 years? Mozart sets the piano on this path of incredible explosive change. I think arguably one of the most remarkable moments of the stars aligning for Mozart is the E-flat major piano concerto K271, the ‘Jenamy’ or ‘Jeunehomme,’ and this is a piece I think is a fantastic example of Mozart realizing the sort of unfulfilled potential of every element in the recipe: the piano, the orchestra, the kind of stylistic aesthetic language that he sort of transcends and uniquely invents overnight in the concerto form as well.
And I think it’s safe to say that the Stein piano of the late 1770s—that is the source of inspiration for this—unlocks a kind of unparalleled new level of creativity in Mozart. And it’s really fascinating to see that in a piece like the C Minor “Fantasy” of Mozart, he unlocks kind of coloristics, sonic potentials in the instrument that were undreamt of I think and that really appealed to Beethoven.
I think probably people felt that Mozart was onto something and then Beethoven, in his kind of eccentricity and madness, takes it so many steps further, you know. He says famously, ‘The piano should break’…. Beethoven was wanting to sort of stretch the instrument to its maximum capacity and limits, almost to the point of grotesque ugliness, something that Mozart never really ever does.
What is the relationship between the instrument builder and the composer?
Jaron Lanier:
Musicians will talk among ourselves and say, ‘Oh my God, this maker of whatever it is, drums or guitars or something, they’re so amazing!’ Like, ‘Here,’ you know, ‘try this thing like, oh my God, this is incredible. This goes beyond anything I’ve ever played.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh my God, this person must be like some sacred guru or something.’ Then you go visit them and not always but almost always, the attitude of the instrument maker is kind of like very workaday and concrete, like they’re car mechanics. Like, ‘I just want to make things work here. This is a job. I’m gonna do the job well,’ and that’s it, you know, end of story.
It’s very simple and we’re like, ‘Wait a second, but you’re this transcendent guru and you’re just talking like you’re like a mechanic.’ It’s almost always the case that the best instrument makers are incredibly humble and incredibly workaday. I tend to think they just don’t realize how special they are.
Kristian Bezuidenhout:
Part of the sort of einsteilung of the best builders, the sort of mindset of these people in the 1780s, 1770s, especially, is they’re going to bed at night thinking, ‘Okay, what’s going on now? What is it that my instrument needs to offer that’s gonna really set it apart from the competitors? And what if Mozart—I’ve heard he’s really good—what if he walks in the door tomorrow and comes to my workshop? What do I need to impress him with?’ And I think these people like Stein at that point in the 1770s, they just have a sense of what’s in the air and the kind of zeitgeist and the demands for a piece of equipment that’s going to be on the best level for portraying and bringing this new music to life.
Jaron Lanier:
I have always wanted computers to get as good as instruments, you know. You’d like a computer to have this feeling of transcending what it is and most people in computer culture want that to happen, but they want it in the sense that they want the computers to come alive and become creatures. The way they wanted to happen, it’s sort of like womb envy where it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re creating life,’ and the way it happens with instruments is different.
Most great musicians come to believe that they aren’t like sort of ego sources of music, but rather they’re channels. And in that sense, the channel—the instrument becomes a channel too, and that’s the sense in which it’s alive. Whereas I think there’s too much of a problem in technology of like, ‘I’m the inventor. I’m the great entrepreneur. I’m this. I’m the great scientist. I’m the great hacker,’ or whatever and so there’s this ego in it, and then they want the computers to have egos too, which is I think exactly the wrong thing. That’s really not not what you want.
And I think it’s been a bit of a problem in a lot of music technology lately where, at least to my ears and to my sensibility, a lot of the tools people used to make music are a little too imposing where it’s like, well, this is the way you do loops and this is how you autocorrect this and this is where you get your library of sounds, and it’s almost like the musician becomes a consumer of a product instead of a creator or it gets to be an awfully blurry distinction.
And I know, you know, it’s not my job to be just judgmental about how other people make music, so in a way I immediately feel that I shouldn’t have said that, but there is this kind of weird thing of like, do you want your instruments to come alive as he goes or as channels? Right? And I think channels is the better way and that’s what we’re missing in the digital world.
Jason Treuting (Sō Percussion):
If I really like thinking of this triangle, this instrument maker-composer-performer triangle, and one thing I feel like we try to complicate in that relationship is the way ideas are transmitted from composer to performer. I think oftentimes when a technology is made, let’s say the piano as a technology, you kind of define a way that that music is notated, and then the composer can transmit those ideas to a performer, and it’s a really elegant language and a really deep language and a really facile and fast language, but it’s also not the only language, and as soon as you make a language, you kind of inherently leave out all these other ideas.
And so, in the music that we’re playing in Cal Performances next season, of the five or six different composers we’re working with, all of that music was transmitted in all different ways. Even within a piece of music, there are different ways that an idea is transmitted. Of course, we read notated music in a Western classical tradition, but orally transmitting ideas, talking about trial and error, the workshop process, all kinds of different notated processes—for me as a composer, I try when possible to say things like, ‘Let’s have a sound that sustains’ as opposed to saying, ‘I need an organ,’ or, ‘I need a string quartet,’ you know; or, ‘Let’s have a bright sound,’ which could mean symbol or pipe or triangle or, you know, harp. Like, trying to open up the way you classify instruments feels like it’s a really easy way to open doors, and actually the array of music we’re playing next year is really wonderful like that.
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Behind the Scenes With Cal Performances’ Head Carpenter
Behind the Scenes With Cal Performances’ Head Carpenter
With a season this varied, every day on stage is different.
Interview of Kevin Riggall, Cal Performances’ Head Carpenter. Interviewing, video filming and editing by Tiffany Valvo, Cal Performances’ Social Media and Digital Content Specialist.
Do you ever wonder how the sets change out between show to show, or even how the sets move around during a performance? How pianos come in and out for various performances? In this video, Cal Performances’ Head Carpenter, Kevin Riggall, shares (and demonstrates!) what our stage crew does to prepare for each performance, and provides some fun context on his own background as well!
Transcript
Kevin Riggall:
My name is Kevin Riggall and I’m the Head Carpenter from the production team at Cal Performances.
My primary responsibilities are to prepare for any show that we have in this building and in the Playhouse, at Hertz Hall, or in any of our other theaters—anything related to the carpentry, scenic properties, elements of a show.
Tiffany Valvo:
I guess this is pretty involved because we have such a variety of things happening at Cal Performances, right? So, like, every day is pretty different?
Kevin Riggall:
Every day is absolutely different. No two shows are the same. Even if we may have two recitals back to back, they’re not both gonna be the same thing. So something is always going to be changing, whether it’s we have a piano for one and then we have four chairs and a quartet the next day, so all of that—the pianos are gonna go away and we’re gonna bring out chairs and music stands and relight everything for that next show.
Tiffany Valvo:
So, do pianists bring their own pianos?
Kevin Riggall:
Nope. We have three grand pianos in-house that we use. We have a primary piano, our newest piano that we use for most classical-type recitals; and then we have two other pianos, one that’s more kind of tailored towards jazz shows, and then a third piano for smaller student groups, anyone who might not need anything super fancy.
Tiffany Valvo:
Okay, so, Kevin, tell us a little bit about yourself before you ended up here at Cal Performances.
Kevin Riggall:
I have been doing theater for about 15 years. I started doing theater in middle school. I moved into the technical side of theater in high school.
I went to the University of Northern Colorado where I got my degree, my Bachelor of Arts in Technical Direction. I then went out and toured for about eight years with a whole number of different Broadway tours, and then I came here in 2019—2018, and I’ve been here for just under four years now.
Tiffany Valvo:
Wow. So what do you learn when you’re doing a degree like that?
Kevin Riggall:
Anything and everything to the theater world, technically. I had to take classes in lighting and sound and costume design, costume technology, scenic construction, computer-aided drafting. And then just all the practical running shows that we would do at our university.
Tiffany Valvo:
So, this is a two-part question. What’s the most exciting part of your job, and what’s the most challenging part of your job?
Kevin Riggall:
The variety. Having different shows come in every week, it’s a lot of fun because we get to see and experience so many different things. But, at the same time, because of that variety, that means we have to change things so often that it can be, it can become a little—it can become a little tiresome to constantly move the same things back and forth.
But that’s the industry we live in and that’s why we do what we do, because the arts is—we wouldn’t enjoy life without the arts.
Tiffany Valvo:
Can you talk about that a little more? Why do you like working in the Performing Arts? What feels rewarding about it?
Kevin Riggall:
The arts—theater, music, Broadway, dance, all of those things, they allow someone to escape reality for an hour, two hours, whatever it is. They come, they watch some other world, and they can forget about life, and some of those, some of those experiences can be uplifting and super fun; others can be a little more serious and thought-invoking, but, either way, take someone out of their daily life for a few hours, which can be extremely refreshing to those people who don’t get to do that very often.
Tiffany Valvo:
Totally. It makes all the chair-moving worth it, right?
Kevin Riggall:
We are standing at the fly rail system of Zellerbach Hall. And what this whole system of ropes allows us to do is to hang any drops, any lighting, any overhead equipment that a show might come in with.
And how this is set up is it’s a single purchase counterweight system. So, when we bring a pipe into the ground to hang something, we have to add an equal amount of weight to one of these carriages so that the system is in balance. And once we take something out to a position over the performers’ heads, it stays in place because gravity works that way.
Tiffany Valvo:
That is so fun. Okay, can you show us how it works?
Kevin Riggall:
Sure. Let me find something again that’s not going to move something.
Tiffany Valvo:
So fun. And I assume that it’s pretty complicated actually to learn how to run these things?
Kevin Riggall:
Yes, it is. This is one of the most dangerous things we do in the building because we’re moving sometimes very heavy things over performers, over technicians’ heads, that if people aren’t paying attention, it’s the easiest way to get hit by something in the theater.
Tiffany Valvo:
Kevin, we are going to do a rapid fire question round. Are you ready? Okay.
The first question is: What performance are you most looking forward to in the 22/23 season?
Kevin Riggall:
Everyone’s favorite at Zellerbach, Alvin Ailey.
Tiffany Valvo:
Amazing. Why do you love them?
Kevin Riggall:
Because their crew is great to work with and their shows are always gorgeous.
Tiffany Valvo:
Totally agree. Okay, hometown?
Kevin Riggall:
Lone Tree, Colorado.
Tiffany Valvo:
Favorite food?
Kevin Riggall:
Spaghetti.
Tiffany Valvo:
Would you rather read a book or watch a movie?
Kevin Riggall:
Watch a movie.
Tiffany Valvo:
Do you have a favorite movie?
Kevin Riggall:
Harry Potter series.
Tiffany Valvo:
Oh, good, good. Favorite place in the Bay Area?
Kevin Riggall:
Jack London Square.
Tiffany Valvo:
Nice. Dogs or cats?
Kevin Riggall:
Cats.
Tiffany Valvo:
Favorite color?
Kevin Riggall:
Dark red.
Tiffany Valvo:
Cookie or cake?
Kevin Riggall:
Depends on, the depends on the cookie, but cookies.
Tiffany Valvo:
Okay, great. And the toughest one is last: Music, dance, or theater?
Kevin Riggall:
Musical theater.
Tiffany Valvo:
Perfect. Thanks, Kevin! We had so much fun!
Kevin Riggall:
You’re very welcome. It was fun to do this.
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Georgian Cinema: Highlights from the BAMPFA Collection
Georgian Cinema: Highlights from the BAMPFA Collection
In conjunction with Cal Performances’ Ensemble Basiani concert
BAMPFA presents a special film series that showcases a selection of works from its archive. Among the organization’s treasured special collections are the rare and distinctive holdings of Georgian cinema produced during the Soviet era and since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Georgian cinema is rich in tradition, song, history, love of the arts, and literature. Filmmakers have often focused on the country’s remarkable and varied landscape and on the centrality of the family in Georgian culture. We hope that fans of Ensemble Basiani and the musical tradition of traditional polyphony will take an interest in the noteworthy and beloved cinema tradition from the Caucasus.
The film series runs Oct 29–Nov 27, 2022.
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Classical Post Podcast: Jeremy Geffen on Building Community
Classical Post Podcast: Jeremy Geffen on Building Community
“Building Community and Making Introductions Through the Performing Arts”
Interview of Jeremy Geffen, Cal Performances’ Executive and Artistic Director, by Jonathan Eifert, publisher and editor of Classical Post. This content is provided by Classical Post.
In August 2022, Jeremy Geffen was featured on Classical Post, a podcast, digital editorial platform, and newsletter run by the brilliant mind of Jonathan Eifert to “uncover the creativity behind exceptional music.” Other episodes feature leaders and music directors, composers, conductors, musicians, and more. You can view the article written about Jeremy’s interview on Eifert’s digital platform.
Transcript
Jonathan Eifert:
Music is central to our wellbeing. If you’re listening here, chances are you feel the same. The Classical Post podcast uncovers the creativity that exists behind great music. We believe music is interconnected with other art forms and life experiences. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is often influenced by other sources. No matter who you are, cultivating your creativity is fundamental to being better in business and living a more holistic life. Discover more on this podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Eifert. Thanks for joining me today, and I hope you find something valuable in this episode.
For Jeremy Geffen, Executive and Artistic Director of Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, bringing to life all of the organization’s artistic and educational activities, about 80 events per season, centers around ideas of building and serving communities across the Bay Area. Since arriving on the Berkeley campus in 2019, and during his 12-year tenure as Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall, Geffen has worked tirelessly to transform the people he serves through the power of the performing arts. That means first and foremost, making introductions to emerging artists whose new ideas can spark meaningful conversations. As Geffen points out, even the biggest artists with the longest relationships with Cal Performances, including Yo-Yo Ma, Jordi Savall, and the Mark Morris Dance Group, weren’t always stars. When they were just starting out, it was Cal Performances that helped to give them a toehold. And Geffen sees fostering growth in the artistic powerhouses of tomorrow as one of the most gratifying aspects of his role.
In this conversation, we discussed Cal Performances’ upcoming season and how its marquee Illuminations series will explore technology’s many roles in creative expression and human communication. Plus, Geffen opens up about why he sees classical music “as a type of regenerative spiritual health,” how therapy has helped him tap into the creativity of the subconscious mind, and why he heads to Manhattan’s East Village when it’s time to celebrate with sake in New York City.
Jeremy Geffen:
My name is Jeremy Geffen. I am the Executive and Artistic Director for Cal Performances, which is the presenting organization on the campus of UC Berkeley in California. We present music, dance, and drama from around the world, and have about 80 events from August until the beginning of May every season.
Jonathan Eifert:
Where do you find inspiration as a leader in the arts?
Jeremy Geffen:
So, I feel very fortunate to work in the arts because the performances that we hear and see, what we experience in the arts are in themselves the inspiration for leadership. I was a violist and I stopped playing because I had problems with my right hand. But I think about the different roles that I had as a musician, that there are performances in which you are part of a chamber ensemble, small ensemble on stage, and there is no specific, no defined leader for that event. It’s a shared leadership model like a string quartet. And there are performances where there is a conductor before you that is responsible for balancing all the elements simultaneously. So the responsibility is much more entrusted to a single individual.
And even within those performances, with different types of models, there are moments that you step out of those models. That one individual in the ensemble has a moment in the sun and takes on greater weight within the work, and then recedes the next moment to allow someone else that same opportunity. So I really feel that the types of performances that we enjoy as entertainment, or even transcendental spiritual nourishment, give us a lot of the templates that we need for leadership off the stage.
Jonathan Eifert:
And when you think about your, I guess, external things that are shaping your approach to leading an arts organization, is there, I don’t know, various things that you can point to?
Jeremy Geffen:
Well, certainly the thing that I can point to most over the past two-and-a-half years is COVID. Whether or not we wanted it to be part of the factors that determine our course, it is. And I think we’ve all, within the performing arts and just within the world in general, have had to give over levels of agency, and be more fluid with and flexible in the way that we operate. It’s been a constant exercise in determining how to serve and maintain public trust, what constitutes an acceptable risk, and what success looks like under vastly different circumstances than we would’ve had pre-pandemic. So that’s one of the factors that has shaped my approach to leading Cal Performances.
But the others, and this is not pandemic dependent: It’s building community, or actually, it’s probably more accurate to say, for an organization that presents the variety of work that we do, building communities. We need to lead in a way that reflects the needs of our communities and speak to the many different constituencies in languages that they’ll understand. Cal Performances, as I mentioned before, is part of UC Berkeley, and the greater campus community is about 60,000 people, maybe a little bit more, between students, faculty, and administrative staff. And we definitely have a portion of our mission that is geared specifically towards the campus and particularly towards students, but we’re also a public institution. Over half of our audiences have no relationship at all with UC Berkeley, other than coming to Cal Performances. So we speak to the greater Bay Area and the cultural scene within it.
Jonathan Eifert:
When—and, actually, to follow up on that question—do you find that area, being in the Bay Area and that kind of local culture, if you will, is shaping your artistic leadership or influences, or doesn’t it play a role? I’m curious to hear more as it relates to the local area.
Jeremy Geffen:
Absolutely. I mean, I think no two groups of people behave exactly the same. They may be similar. So what works well in New York may not work well in the Bay Area, and may not work well in Billings, Montana, just to choose another place, market at random—one, by the way, that I don’t understand at all or claim no understanding of. So absolutely, one has to be aware of patterns within your constituency, within the communities, what they seem to respond to and what they seem to want more of. And you have to balance that with your own artistic instincts as to what to introduce to a community.
It doesn’t take a lot of artistic administration chops to book a major superstar. They’re absolutely important in this, into the season, and they bring a lot of artistic value. But the bigger risk, and where I think one demonstrates the level of connection that one has to one’s community, is which artists you are going to introduce. And when I say introduce, I mean artists who are at the beginnings of their careers or may not have had exposure in the Bay Area. Because who you choose to present is what defines you as a presenter. So there have been artists who have been coming to Cal Performances since long before I arrived, like Jordi Savall, Yo-Yo Ma, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Mark Morris Dance Group, that are really part of who Cal Performances is. And I think our audience members feel that they have very close relationships with those artists, but it’s really important to remember that those artists at one point in their career were not superstars. They were just starting out and it was Cal Performances who gave them a toehold.
And as a presenter, as a programmer, as an administrator, some of the moments that have given me the greatest career satisfaction have been those in which I’ve given an artist I believe in a shot. And more often than not, those artists have knocked the ball out of the park. And that’s as far into sports metaphor as I’m going to go because I’m really terrible at it. But if you demonstrate confidence in someone, more often than not, that confidence will be reciprocated and expectations will be exceeded. So it gives me great gratification to watch artists I saw something in early on grow into their full potential.
Jonathan Eifert:
It’s very interesting for you to frame it that way. It’s really noble because I know a lot of people do want to break into the market and you’re right, it is easy to get the superstars, but then how do you really choose and bet on the right horse, if you will, so that everyone wins? And yeah, no, it’s an interesting process for sure.
Describe a routine you have in place that helps you live a healthier life.
Jeremy Geffen:
I’m laughing at this because I’m not sure that I lead the healthiest life. I don’t have the best work-life balance, so I’m going to discourage anyone listening to this from trying to replicate what I do. But I do believe in the value of exercise, and I love high intensity cardio. High enough intensity that you don’t really, you’re unable to think about anything else. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I have so many things on my mind at any one time, that those moments when you really are forced to concentrate on something else are so valuable, and that they give me the liminal space that I need to be able to let my subconscious take over and start to solve problems on its own.
I’m happy to say I have a great therapist. I recommend having a therapist to anyone who has the opportunity to have one. And one of the things that she underlines to me is that she raises questions for me, not necessarily for me to actively consider, but to get my subconscious working on them. And I really do believe that things are humming in the background, and there’s a reason why we have those ‘aha’ moments in the shower. It is a space where we’re concentrated on something else and you’re in sort of a state of relaxation, and that just allows something that has not yet jumped through the other side of the membrane to permeate.
So I really do believe in creating the sort of space to allow for ideas to germinate, whether that’s through exercise or through meditation, or through taking walks or through social experiences. I think for everyone, it’s going to be slightly different, but that’s where the breakthrough moments happen for me. I think I really consider myself very fortunate to be working in an area that I am personally very passionate about. And I do recognize in conversation with people of other types of jobs, and to express a sort of wonder that once the workday has ended, that this is what I’m still thinking about. That the performing arts for me, especially music, give me a type of regenerative spiritual health.
They even me out, and with certain pieces of music that I’ve had a relationship with for most of my life, I find that at different times in my life, they have meant something different to me that had not revealed itself previously. And I know that’s about me, as much as it is about the work itself being great, but the work is a mirror.
Jonathan Eifert:
It’s so interesting. I actually want to go back to this idea of the therapist and planting ideas. That’s really fascinating. I totally get the idea of a therapist and how wonderful it is, but I’m not sure if I had heard the concept of this kind of planting ideas and then going forth in your life. And then later on, some great idea appears. I love that idea. And specifically though, having a therapist to almost plant ideas, that’s brilliant.
Jeremy Geffen:
Oh, no. Again, this is her. She is wonderful. If this weren’t a public podcast, I would remember—I would reveal her name, but I want to be able to get appointments with her in the future.
Jonathan Eifert:
But no, it’s a really cool concept on that specifically. Have you, I mean in terms of, I guess this is just can be for life at large, just personal and professional, but for your professional life, have you… I don’t know if she ever had planted a huge, fabulous idea and then later on it came to fruition, and then you executed it and it was a success. I don’t know if you want to talk about, and if that even happened or not.
Jeremy Geffen:
I think when the pandemic began, we were all faced with the question as to how we were going to allow the performing arts to still thrive in circumstances in which we weren’t able to gather together for in-person performances. And although we have, with the common element has been digital performances, the way in which we chose to frame those performances, in fact, the way that we chose to film them—were they being, were they live events that were streamed live and ceased to exist the moment the performance itself was over? Were they edited performances that were treated as one would treat a live performance, or were they edited performances that were treated much more as one would treat a recording? I think we all had to determine a path for our organizations that made sense in that moment.
And I certainly didn’t do this on my own. There is an incredible team of people working at Cal Performances who all have really specialized strengths that allow us to be greater than the sum of our parts. But I think we arrived at a result or a template for results that was successful, and that reached many more people than we were able to reach with in-person operations. We had subscribers and viewers in 36 countries on six continents and had no marketing budget to support that. So that was all through word of mouth.
So as difficult a moment as that was for all sorts of reasons, not just, let’s take the business model question now, but just the basic human questions of existence and health, and how you worry about one’s loved ones. There were so many factors that needed to be considered. An overwhelming number of factors that I think at a certain point, you have to let your tummy guide you.
Jonathan Eifert:
What is one specific product you highly recommend? And a really open-ended question here.
Jeremy Geffen:
I’m going to give you a very—I think this answer here is not going to be very satisfying to you. But I think the most critical product is a scale. And when I say a scale, not the sort of scale [where] the readout that tells you how many grams or how many ounces something weighs, but it’s actually the image of a scale that’s really important to me, because it is about balance. No matter how much you enjoy doing something, you can’t do it all the time or else you’ll cease to enjoy it. So we, in programming, balance is incredibly important. But in life, balance is really important as well. I mean, I love watching performances on at home. I love being in performances live, of course, but if I’m just speaking about home right now. But I also love The Real Housewives. They’re a constant. You have to balance the high and the low. And by the way, what you define as high and low in that with between those two could be completely different.
But swimming pools have shallow ends and they have deep ends, but the pool is still the pool. That’s its identity. So I sort of view myself as the pool and all of these things that I enjoy doing makeup who I am, even if I might be a little bit embarrassed to admit that I watch The Real Housewives of Orange County.
Jonathan Eifert:
I was just going to ask you, which series, so Orange County? Not any of the other ones or that’s your favorite?
Jeremy Geffen:
I started with Orange County because I grew up there, and at the time that it started, I was living in New York and it was a reminder of California. And then I got a little sucked in. That was, let’s say it was a gateway drug to Below Deck.
Jonathan Eifert:
What restaurant or bar do you love to eat at when you’re in New York City? And then the follow-up obviously is what do you order there?
Jeremy Geffen:
Well, let’s start with one that doesn’t exist anymore. It was a sad casualty of the pandemic, but The NoMad at the NoMad Hotel was one of my favorite places to eat. And they made this chicken. Everyone that—people think chicken is boring, but what they did, it was anything but. You know what, I’m not going to do it justice by trying to describe it. So, I loved that place.
My favorite place in New York is Gramercy Tavern. And I eat, I need to eat. I watch the passion that other people have for food, and I realize I’m not a foodie on that level. But what makes a restaurant meaningful, attractive to me is actually the atmosphere. I just love the room at Gramercy Tavern, it’s so comfortable. It’s quiet enough that you can hear your neighbor, hear the people at your table, and you’re not competing with the other tables, which is a big problem in New York. So, people will definitely have more sophisticated food answers than anything I’ll give, but I’m just going to go with a room.
And then for on the occasion that I had, that I stayed out late, I can’t believe I used to stay out past midnight. That’s all really changed since moving to the West Coast and certainly through the pandemic. The rhythm of the West Coast is, in general, much earlier than in New York City, but there was a place in the East Village called Decibel, which was a sake bar. And I think it was around East 10th Street. It was this magical underground place, where I swear I was in a labyrinth and that new rooms were being created as I walked through them. But, it’s one of those things that if I were to try to diagram it, I would never be able to get it right.
Jonathan Eifert:
Let’s take a quick break.
Did you know Classical Post is a brand built for your pleasure by Gold Sound Media, a New York creative studio, developing content for music lovers around the United States? We’re always looking for new opportunities to partner with music presenters, artists, and record labels. If you’re interested in content to build your community, please get in touch. Head to goldsoundmedia.com. Now, back to the show.
Now let’s talk about Cal Performances. So tell us about Illuminations specifically at Cal Performances, and what’s coming up this season.
Jeremy Geffen:
So, Illuminations is an initiative that we began shortly after I arrived. One of the things that distinguishes Cal Performances from other presenting groups, either within the Bay Area or beyond, is that it is our context on the campus of one of the great universities of the world, and a great public university at that. And there is so much fascinating research and thought leadership taking place on this campus that it seemed what was missing was an opportunity to bring all of that research together into a marketplace, where it could be met with by other units on campus, but also by the general public. So Illuminations focuses on one theme, generally a pressing issue of our time, or an idea worth exploring for an entire season. And we invite other units on campus into that exploration to present their own public-facing events, which Cal Performances, as an organization that is very oriented towards the general public, can actually help in getting the word out about.
And this season’s theme is ‘Human and Machine,’ and that’s about how humans have always relied on tools to communicate with each other, but also to amplify and more fully express their ideas, their creative potential. So under this theme this year, we have events that range from a performance on multiple forte pianos by Kristian Bezuidenhout, that shows the evolution of the—we tend to think of the forte piano as a fixed instrument, but it actually, it’s a catchall term for a lot of instruments that represent different phases of musical instrument technology that was dependent on what composers wanted to write for it. Beethoven’s Hamer, Clavier Sonata, I mean, it gives away in the subtitle of the piece, Hamer Clavier. It was subtitled for the name of the instrument for which he was writing it—an instrument that had expanded and dynamic ranges, and actually the base to treble range of the instrument was expanded as well.
So this is an opportunity to think about musical instruments as technology, but then also through some of the other works in the series, like a tribute to Steve Reich, a birthday celebration. Steve incorporated machines and even emulations of machines in his early works and continues to write for electronics today, but he combines them with acoustic instruments as well. And there is what I think is one of the highlights of the season, what William Kentridge’s SIBYL, which has his most recent, what he calls it, a ‘chamber opera,’ ‘Waiting for the Sibyl,’ which is a piece that is about a relationship with technology and the human desire to know our fates in advance, and how that desire meets up with the reality. Kentridge said that if the Sibyl—the Sibyl was the name for a prophetess in the ancient world, and he’s actually referring to a very specific sibyl. But let’s for the moment just say a general sibyl. If the sibyl were alive today, she would be an algorithm; that’s the predictor that tells us our future.
Then Toshi Reagon and her mother, Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in The Rock, have a work that is based on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which is a work of science fiction from the 1990s that unfortunately pretty accurately depicts what happens if we rely a little bit too heavily on technology, and the darker side of technology, and how there is perhaps a trade-off between our reliance on, our interest in an alternate world or a technological world, and the destruction of the physical world.
Jonathan Eifert:
Yeah, it’s a really profound way to present a series, I think, to kind of frame it like a human and machine. I think it’s really, yeah, I could see the kind of huge implications of that for people who are attending these various events, and then coming away and pondering this viewpoint or the viewpoints of the different events. Would you say, obviously, I know it’s all connected, but it sounds like you’re kind of talking about different topics, shall we say, or different viewpoints throughout the whole season, even though it’s all under this one theme. Is there a particular message that, one message that is stitching this all together that’s not just like a theme, but more of a message to people who are hearing all of this?
Jeremy Geffen:
I think the message that people are going to take away will be different for each of them, based on what they’ve heard and seen. And I think that that’s by design. One of the things that I value so much about live performance is that you can be sitting next to someone you’ve never met, and you may never see in your life again, but based on the information that you have received together, that experience that you’ve received together, you’re forever bound. And yet, your understanding or what you took away from that performance could be so drastically different from the person next to you. And that is the beauty of live performance, that from the same experience, we get a diversity of reaction and a diversity of thought. And that’s really powerful. So, no, again, there’s no explicit conclusion that we’re asking audiences to draw. That’s why we’re presenting the information, so that they can go on the journey for themselves.
Jonathan Eifert:
Yeah, no, it’s excellent. Yeah, well done with curating all of that because I think that’s, and especially it’s so timely right now as the world grapples with, I don’t know, internet privacy issues and data breaches, and that the numerous other things of the algorithm gods, and the rise of TikTok and that list goes on. So yeah, it’s very fascinating. One last question. In terms of success, it’s personal for everyone. What does it mean to you?
Jeremy Geffen:
I think, in short, success to me looks like connection. It’s going to, it’s sort of like the way I just described what I hope audience members take away from performances. The type of connection is going to be different every time. But the common thread is that one, that a connection has been established between audience and stage, and performer, between audience members and neighbors—in this specific case, between university and broader community. When I lie in bed at the end of the day and feel like I’ve had satisfaction because of something that is accomplished that has happened during the day, it’s generally because I have had some meaningful connection. That something that was not just, that wasn’t transactional.
And just to expand that a little further, the superpower that lies at the center of the performing arts is that they are a moment through which we get to experience the world through another person’s eyes. Whether that’s the author, the composer, or the performer, you’re actually directly receiving emotional information on a non-didactic, completely direct level. And as a result, I think the performing arts are unrivaled in their capacity to build empathy. And that’s what we need more than ever.
So that is the greatest success. And just on it, going back to something that we talked about earlier, it’s also success to me means introducing and creating bonds where there weren’t before. We have some wonderful debut artists coming up this season, soprano Ying Fang and violinist Alexi Kenney, and actually, violinist Rachell Ellen Wong. And this is the first time they will have performed for our audiences. And I know that the audiences are going to love them and that they’re going to be, these artists are going to be part of the future of Cal Performances.
Jonathan Eifert:
Thanks for listening to the Classical Post podcast. I hope you have found it meaningful and that it gave you new ideas to cultivate your creativity, to be better in business and life. So let’s stay in touch. Remember to follow this podcast to get notified of new episodes, and sign up for our monthly newsletter for album recommendations and editorial on leading artists. Just head to classicalpost.com/subscribe.
