TRANSCRIPT
The Vermont Symphony Orchestra lands on the Flynn mainstage this weekend with a program titled Pastoral Symphony. The concert features Beethoven’s beloved Sixth Symphony as well as William Grant Still’s atmospheric Wood Notes. Also included is an exciting new piece titled Mycelialore receiving its Vermont premiere by American composer Chelsea Komschlies. I spoke with VSO Music Director Andrew Crust as well as Chelsea Komschlies, to find out more about Saturday’s performance.
ANDREW CRUST: Well, the whole program is sort of centered around the woods in a sense, and what we can learn from them and how they recharge our batteries. William Grant Still was born in the American South and spent a lot of time there, and he has such a distinct sound as an American composer. There's no one else that really matched his sound and his way of blending European elements with American elements with jazz and his own sound, and it's really just such a beautiful celebration of nature.
HELEN LYONS: And it wouldn’t be a program about the great outdoors without Beethoven’s beloved 6th on it.
ANDREW: I think the orchestra just loves to play it, so that's a great reason to program such a piece.The orchestra is having a great time. My personal approach to Beethoven is not really that personal. I try to find what Beethoven wanted, exactly what he wanted, and trust him. It's just so full of singing, and it gives us still the feeling today, that feeling of first entering the countryside after being in the city. that's an eternal feeling. And for Beethoven, it was vital. He had to escape the city to, to be reinvigorated by nature, and that's where he did so much of his composing actually, on the walk.
HELEN: And as is the VSO’s practice, you have a work by a living composer on the program as well, Chelsea Komschlies.
ANDREW: I've known Chelsea for about 12 years. Not only is she my friend, I think she's one of the most interesting composers around. She has such an eclectic style.
CHELSEA KOMSCHLIES: Hi, I'm Chelsea Komschlies, and I'm a composer who is recently based in Louisville, Kentucky and working with the Louisville Orchestra.
HELEN: Your piece, Mycelialore, has a curious title, what does it mean, what was the inspiration?
CHELSEA:The title Mycelialore is a mashup of the word ‘mycelium’ and ‘lore’ as in folklore and mushrooms. So mycelium is the branching underground network of mushrooms.So we see the fruiting bodies, the stems and caps. But underneath the ground is a much larger network. They're almost nerve-like structures and they do transmit messages. They not only connect the mushrooms themselves and allow them to communicate with each other, but they also connect other species’ roots, like trees. So somebody coined the term the ‘wood wide web.’ I took that idea, which is science, and took it into fantasy and asked like this, this structure is almost like a brain. So if it is like a brain, what if it had its own sentience and then its own history and stories and folklore, you know, mushrooms being so connected to folklore, sort of Celtic, otherworld and fairy rings.So I thought it would be cool if the mushrooms themselves had the history so that they like awakening in the forest and telling each other or itself, whatever their their their stories, their myths.
HELEN: And how would you describe your approach to the writing of this piece?
CHELSEA: I like to mix things that aren't supposed to be together, especially in a way that makes something that should be familiar feel really strange in a wonderful way. So I like to unsettle people, but in a way that feels good. I know for Mycelialore, I was listening to some prog rock, Celtic folk…There were a lot of brooding walks in the forest, you know, amongst the real mushrooms and, and thinking, and eventually I came up with this, this text that the mushrooms eventually realized that the human audience was eavesdropping and then they begin to speak to the human audience and they're rebuking them for their actions on earth...both in their destruction of earth, but also of each other.
ANDREW: And it has really interesting electronics where Chelsea has actually given voice to the mushrooms. She just brilliantly creates a text which, really does sound like these, these mushrooms are speaking to us.. And she actually also used vegetables and different plant matter in the studio, which she would tear apart in front of a microphone and then put those sounds through a human voice filter to create sort of gibberish noise. It's really fascinating and unlike any piece I've heard…and Chelsea's ideas about what's happening in the world of ecology and conservationism and so I think it's sometimes not just about music, we have the chance to open people's minds about other issues as well.
HELEN: Andrew, Mycelialore is receiving premieres all over the country this year, and you conducted a recent one in Ohio. What is it like getting to work with a living composer on a piece, especially on a brand new work?
ANDREW: Well, it's really exciting, because when I perform a Beethoven symphony, there's no chance that my collaboration and my interpretation is going to change the work in the future, right? It already exists, it's sort of set in stone, but, when I just performed Myceliaore in Ohio last week, Chelsea was there, and she's making revisions as she's hearing the piece. It's a live collaboration, and by the end of her season of having this piece performed, it actually has changed, and there will be new revisions added to the score. So it's exciting to sort of be a part of that.
HELEN: Chelsea, what do you hope listeners will come away with having experienced Mycelialore?
CHELSEA: I hope that they come away thinking of contemporary classical composition in a broader way than maybe they had before. One of the most important things to me is the way that each listener's human mind reacts to the music. I'm very fascinated with what it conjures up, maybe imagery, it may be memories or nostalgic moments. Or weirder kinds of thoughts that they can't put into words, but the music unlocks something that they didn't have access to otherwise. I think that is where the magic lies in my composition, and that's really kind of the ultimate reason I do it. And I hope they just have a fun and maybe mind-opening time.
HELEN: Fantastic. Chelsea, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me and Vermont Public Classical’s listeners.
CHELSEA: Thank you so much, Helen. It was a pleasure to talk to you and a big thanks to Andrew Crust. I hope Vermont audiences enjoy Mycelialore.
HELEN: My thanks to both Chelsea Komschlies and Andrew Crust. Enter the wild world of Mycelialore and bask in the beauty of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony and William Grant Still’s Wood Notes with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Saturday October 25 at 7:30 at the Flynn in Burlington, with a pre-concert talk at 6:30. For more information head to vso.org.
