Facing the music

Were you always interested in music?

Oh yes. I started playing violin when I was four. My parents didn’t actually want to start me on violin, but apparently I pestered them non-stop for six months.

What instruments do you play?

Besides the violin, I play a little piano, and I sing halfway decently. I played violin in rock bands and played some jazz; then I discovered how much I enjoy folk music. As an adult I began to play the Norwegian folk fiddle.

Can you tell me a little bit about your band, QQQ?

It’s one of my bands that I’m super excited about. It is comprised of me playing the Norwegian fiddle, my wife as the guitarist and two musicians from New York. We’ve been working together for the last three years.

The band is hard to describe — it’s instrumental, with no singing. It’s melodic, energetic, buoyant music. Some of it is influenced by composers like Steve Rice, and a lot of it by folk music — American or Scandinavian. There’s also some Radiohead in there.

We just released our first CD last week with a release party in New York City. The CD is called “Unpacking the Trailer,” partly because the group has listened to all different kinds of music: classical, electronic, folk. Basically we just pull it all out; whatever we’re feeling at any moment, we use it.

I hear you guys have a show coming up in Princeton soon?

Yes: Whitman [College] this Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

You also direct the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), along with computer science professor Perry Cook. Can you tell me a little more about that?

The idea there is to explore making music together with other people using laptops in some way or another. Until very recently, electronic music has always been taught in a studio where you work alone for the most part and make something you put on a CD. It hasn’t traditionally been a social activity.

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Where did the inspiration for the class come from? I know it started as a freshman seminar, but why did you choose to expand on it?

It actually started before the freshman seminar. The project came out of what Perry Cook and I were doing. As a graduate student, I would build electronic instruments based around the speaker, where the sound was right next to me, like with the fiddle, and have it fill the room the way a fiddle does. This was actually a radical idea at the time; not the way computer or electronic music operated at all. It kind of rocked our world. I performed with the instrument a lot, still have it, and play it often.

Then, we thought about a bunch of people with similar instruments. What musical ideas emerge when you combine a lot of people with own musical personalities and bring all those people together responding to each other?

A freshman seminar proved to be perfect starting point for the first run at it.

When can we see a performance?

There’s going to be a couple things this semester. There will be a big performance with a number of guest artists, including the electronic duo Matmos on May 16th in Richardson [Auditorium]. There will be a few other performers and composers working together. And on March 24th, there will be a midterm project showing at Terrace [Club] in evening.

Besides PLOrk, what else do you teach?

I teach music composition courses, including a core requirement for music majors [on] 16th-century counterpoint. In that course we’re basically trying to learn how music was put together back in the 16th century in Europe, since that’s really the basis for all the music we hear today.

Do you have a particular teaching style?

I’m a big fan of hands-on work. In the [counterpoint] class, there are two compositions a week. It’s important to actually try to make music and see how it comes out. It’s the most direct way to learn.

In fact, I have never given an exam. Ever. I don’t even know how to write one. My classes are very project-oriented. I don’t know if that makes it sound that they’re easy, but they’re actually quite hard. The [counterpoint] class is notoriously difficult, and the same with laptop orchestra classes. I’m not that interested in what people are able to reproduce in an exam situation; it’s just not applicable to most music.

If you could teach Princeton students one thing that would remain with them after graduation, what would it be?

Wow. I guess one of the things I feel important is that we don’t always know what it is we really want to do our lives. The process of continually learning and following noses and ears is really important. This is based on my own experiences — I was a physics major as an undergrad and ended up a professional musician. I was lucky in a lot of ways, but at some point along the way I learned to follow my instincts a bit. For me it’s always just been making music, making new things. You find you don’t always make what you think you’re going to make.

— Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Tara Knoll '12.