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Locrian pianist Emily Wong likes the idea of the consummate performer. Her
doctoral thesis at The Juilliard School was a sort of treatise on the role of
the pianist, and, sitting in a coffee shop in Mount Kisco recently, she had
plenty to say on the subject.
"A lot of new music suffers when the performer has not experienced an
in-depth living with the piece," she says. "When you're trained as a pianist
of the great piano literature of the 19th century and before, you learn to
bring things up to a certain level of depth with your interpretation." She
is partly referring to the culture in music conservatories like Juilliard
where the students practically breathe 19th century air. Four years spent
there is in-and-of-itself an"in-depth living with" the works of Beethoven and
Chopin. But Ms. Wong, whose experience in the classic piano literature is
extensive, feels that contemporary music suffers when it is not explored with
a comparable intensity.
Her attitude towards performance was reinforced through her studies with the
legendary pianist John Browning. He premiered several new works, including
the Barber Piano Concerto, and recognized the unique demands tht each new
piece places on the performer. Once when she was asked to perform the
Copland Piano Sonata at a Juilliard dance concert at the end of the month,
she brought the music to her lesson. Browning refused to let her learn it.
"He actually got quite angry, because he thought that it was impossible to
bring the necessary level of perfection to a piece in such a short time."
Emily had her way and subsequently added the piece to her repertoire, but
Browning's criticism was not lost on her.
A native of San Francisco, she started playing the piano at age three. Her
elder brothers were already studying the piano, and the precocious youngster
shocked her parents by going to the piano and picking out their songs by ear.
Fifteen years of formal training at the San Francisco Conservatory followed
after which she attended college at the California Institute of the Arts.
Cal Arts is well known as a hotbed of redical new music. Its composers have
always displayed a spirit of independence from the conventional orthodoxies
of the ivory tower, and her fellow students there included such mavericks as
Dean Drummond and Peter Garland. Although her studies there with Leonid
Hambro were strictly classical, she warmed to the school's unconventional
curriculum. Immersing herself in world music, she took classes from the East
Indian faculty and studied African dance.
After her graduation, she returned to the Bay Area and spent several years
freelancing with various new ensembles, worked as a pianist for the San
Francisco Symphony and taught at Mills College.
In 1986 she came to New York and entered the Master's program of The
Juilliard School where she studied with Herbert Stessin and later with
Browning. Juilliard, with its conservative, rigorous atmosphere, is about as
far as you can get from the more relaxed atmosphere of Cal Arts, but she
benefitted by the contrast, filling in the gaps in her knowledge of
traditional Western theory.
In her doctoral thesis, she examined the artistry of four contemporary
composer/performers: Frederic Rzewski, Bill Douglas, Rodney Jones and David
Amram. She examined how each of these very different musicians embodies a
musician's ideal that has largely disappeared: they combine the two jobs of
performer and composer.
Ms. Wong believes that the division of labor between composer and performer
that has widened in this century has led to the contemporary rift between
audience and composer. "The relationship between composer and audience is
once removed, where the performer becomes the spokesperson for the composer.
At times, the composer is unfamiliar with the natural capabilities of an
instrument and/or a performer, and at the extreme we have evidence of music
composed with little consideration for the sensibilities of the audience,
where chaotic complexity dulls even the most educated ears. Conversely,
performers will take things into their own hands, and may or may not convey
'the depth' of that which was intended by the composer."
Ms. Wong takes the task of the consummate musician seriously, being a
composer herself. On the August 15 Locrian concert, she performed her own
Circle Dance, for solo piano. The piece is at first shocking in its utter
simplicity. As one listens further, however, a warmth and honesty emerges.
She describes her music, at times, as an attempt to "create an inocent,
child-like state in the listener" and her simple harmonies are nurturing and
gentle.
Ms. Wong will be busy as composer and pianist with the Locrian Chamber
Players this season. On Friday, January 24th, she will join the Locrian
string quartet in a performance of Olivier Messiaen's Piece for String
Quartet and Piano at the Greenwich House Music School.
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