Ljova answers questions on "Vjola: World on Four Strings"

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Q: What was your main inspiration for the album?
A: The album came together over a period of about five years, and each track has its own story... But primarily the idea was to try more things with my instrument, the viola, to push it to places it hasn’t been, push myself to places I haven’t been.

Q: What does this album say to the listener? 
A: I think this album announces possibilities of achieving many different musical colors with strings - and particularly with the viola. Unlike the violin, which has well travelled in jazz and folk circles, the viola has -- with the major exception of John Cale's work in the Velvet Underground -- largely remained a "classical" instrument. As a student, I was frustrated by the scope of the repertoire, and sought to expand it on my own terms.

Q:How did the sound you capture on this album develop? 
A: The multi-viola concept developed out of a musical accident. During my senior year at Juilliard, I was involved in several collaborations with artists whom I met on the internet site mp3.com. (A very different mp3.com exists today.) One of these projects resulted in me recording improvised viola lines to a synthesized version of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" by an artist curiously named Lorin Swelk. I recorded one take, then recorded another one just to have more options for editing. Just for fun, I decided to play the two tracks together - and out came the greatest riot I ever recorded. (You can still find it online, on Garageband.com)

I can propose a fairly sophisticated account of my efforts, but in truth -- I never really knew what I was doing. Nor did I want to - I was just going after new sounds.

Q: What’s your approach to composing and arranging these pieces?
A: Most of these pieces were recorded as directly as possibly after a vague sketch.  Nothing more than a lead sheet was ever written out.   I tried to stick to basics.  I record an idea, and build on top of it - 3,4,5,6 tracks. I’m driven to rhythms that are on the verge of boiling over – they don’t necessarily groove, but keep changing. Like “Bagel” or “Crosstown” - those pieces keep switching, sometimes in 13 and 14. 

Q:How did you know you were done with a track? 
A: When it felt right...What’s interesting is that none of these pieces were ever played live. Generally, you take a band, play with it, rehearse them, finesse them, see audience reaction, and only THEN you go to the studio and record. None of these pieces had the benefit of that.  At best, Collage had the benefit of 1.5 live performances, but the end result is a combination of two performances that were mixed and remixed into a shorter piece.

Q:How different would the pieces be if you had to write them out first? 
A: I would miss a lot of possibilities, I would miss being careless, spontaneous. When I’m recording and not looking at sheet music, I’m always like a kid at controls, thinking, ‘what does this button do?” while arranging the piece.  

Q:What would you gain from perhaps more deliberate composing? 
A: When I’m arranging for the Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, I have to write everything out more or less because that’s their preference.  You'd think the arrangements get more refined, but even in this situation, I try to bring a lot of my improvising skills – sometimes when I have to write out a solo for Yo-Yo, I try it out on the viola first, see if it fits my hand.

Q: If you could pick a Grammy category to nominate your recording, which would it be?
A: Best instrumental inspirational empowerment album, folk or classical --? Essentially, it’s a folk album, folk/classical.  Not really jazz, more or less inspired by folk music with the exception of 2-3 pieces in the back of the album. "Collage", "Four", and "O’er" are  more minimalist, classical/new music. . Best Good Music album?

Q: Who inspires you the most?
A: I listen to everything – it’s my job to listen to everything, to assimilate styles into my own vocabulary.   I'm inspired by people who crave to learn and try new things, in music and elsewhere. My parents are beacons of this, in their own way. I’m drawn to folk music,  I feel there’s a certain rawness and lack of polish that makes it wholesome and beautiful.

But for that matter, I’m also a fan of a lot of pop music producers – Guy Sigsworth whom I had the chance to collaborate with, Ryuichi Sakamoto, A.R. Rahman, Björk.  My mentor, Osvaldo Golijov, has often said that "the laptop is the folk instrument of the 21st century" - and he uses it prominently in his latest works. And it's true – you can polish things but you also don’t have to.  Laptop is an instrument that’s globally available, kids use it, programs like Garageband get you going and you can do a lot more. My parents gave me a violin and said “practice”, these days you give a kid a laptop and say “do your homework and have fun” and 10 min later they have a symphony.

Q:What do you want people to do while listening to your album? 
A: I want them to sit in a nail salon and get a foot massage. I want them not to be crossing the street while listening to it.  But seriously, I’ve given it a car test – it works in cars, and that accounts for most of the western world. It might work on bikes, too.

Q:How do you maintain the freshness of the arrangements when you perform the pieces on the album?
A: For live performances, we’ll have to go back to raw sketches, feelings, ideas. For example, when performing "Crosstown," we’ll have to go back to 4 bar sketch and 2 phrases. With "Bagel" there’s more of an elaborate form. The live performances will be quite different from the album. It’ll be good to do with musicians that don’t necessarily read music or play my way. At one point, I swore myself that I’d never want to write down my own improvisations – but I'll cave in, if only to create arrangements, primary for the use of students who want to get together, a departure point for standard repertoire for strings.  But personally, I hope to always keep the interpretations as fresh and dynamic as they were when I first recorded them. 

Q:If you had to teach your approach someone, how would you go about it? 
A: My method happened by accident, and the opportunity to have that accident with your instrument/SW is more important than any lessons I have learned.  The multi-viola approach might be fun for an album or two, but it’s really just a tool to sketch as fast as possible… record bass first, melody second, but that might not get you anywhere. The primary thing you can learn is how to use your software and play your instrument.

Q: If you had to tag the album, what would be your tags?
A: viola folk music latin gypsy assymetrical rhythms indie crossover classical minimalist strings European cinematic... violas on parade 

Q: How important is it to make music that's "listenable" for an average music listener?

A: I think of listenability when I work with films, but when I make my "stand-alone" music it’s not really a concern.  Everything is listenable, some things just require more time and attention.   I’ve always tried to do both – write music that interests me intellectually and captivates me spiritually. Sometimes that happens in the same piece, sometimes it doesn’t.

Q:You're releasing this record independently, on your own label, Kapustnik Records. Did you ever try to shop it around for a record deal?
A: Not at all - didn't shop it around in the least. I may have fantasized about a major record label deal 10 years ago, but the more I learned and thought about it, the less I wanted one.  These days, many of my friends are major-label exiles, and many of those who stayed are next-to-miserable.

I had offers from smaller (indie) labels. But in the end, I didn't want to be bound to a release schedule, to a certain label mold, or to a certain strategy - musical or otherwise.  My music is fairly untested and my performance history is far too sparse to offer any kind of comfort to a bond company.

Most of all, I just wanted to release the album *NOW* - and not a year from now.  I want to maintain fairly close contact with my fanbase, and hopefully get to work on my next album project shortly. 

©2006