KGNU’s Sanford Baran interviews Gabriela Lena Frank, a composer and pianist known for blending classical music with Latin American influences, drawing from her Peruvian, Chinese, Lithuanian, and Jewish heritage. Her work Kachkaniraqmi will premiere on July 21st at the Colorado Music Festival, performed by the Takács Quartet and the Colorado Music Festival String Orchestra.
Sanford Baran: I’m very excited to be speaking with acclaimed composer and pianist Gabriella Lena Frank, known for her unique blending of classical music with Latin American influences. She draws heavily from her Peruvian, Chinese, Lithuanian, and Jewish heritage in her compositions. Her work often incorporates elements of Latin American folklore, mythology, and indigenous music, resulting in a distinctive and evocative sound.
On July 21st, her work Kachkaniraqmi will have its world premiere, performed by the Takács Quartet, along with the Colorado Music Festival String Orchestra, under the direction of Peter Oundjian. Welcome Gabriela. Thank you so much for being with us.
Gabriela Lena Frank: Thank you, Samford. I’m so glad to be here.
Sanford Baran: To get us started, I thought I would ask about how you first became interested in music. Who were some of the key figures that influenced you during your musical journey?
Gabriela Lena Frank: I have to begin by saying that music has been floating around in my father’s side of the family since they were still servants in Russia and Eastern Europe before coming over to the United States. There’s a lot of Frank family lore about people with perfect pitch and being able to improvise at the piano at parties. My grandmother, my father’s mother, had it. It skipped a generation, skipped my older brother. Then when it showed up in me when I was about three or four years old, she was very quick to pounce and say, there it is, that’s the music gene. And sure enough, I was very attracted to the piano.
A little after that, while I was in kindergarten, I started piano lessons. My parents responded very quickly. My first influence was my piano teacher, who became a second mother to me. She was a refugee from South Africa, a soft spoken Afrikaner woman that would give me songs from Africa and countries that don’t exist anymore, like Transylvania, alongside Haydn and early Beethoven. At the same time, in the 70s and 80s in California and in the Bay Area where I grew up, because of all the turmoil that was happening in Latin America, we had a lot of musicians that were coming up from places like Chile and Argentina and Peru and Bolivia, and they were bringing their music with them. And so I actually was exposed to the music of my mother’s country, which is that of Peru. I had this rich musical immersion between all of this, including my father’s love of Gershwin and jazz. I didn’t think I was gonna become a professional musician because nobody in my family became a professional and I didn’t hear orchestra music. My musical world within classical music was very deep, but it was narrow.
My teacher used to bring me to her house several times a week just to listen to music, not just for the piano lessons. So I would sit for two hours and just listen to Schnabel or Claudio Arrau, some of the great pianists of that era, play through Beethoven and Chopin. And nothing after 1880 because her husband hated anything contemporary and modern. So although I got a world premiere every June at the studio recital, I would just sit and improvise something for the audience. I didn’t see myself participating in a modern music movement or being a creator of it until my last year in high school, the summer when I was thinking about how to bolster my college applications. I took a music program in composing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which I had never heard of. That just blew my mind, and within a couple of days of that program, I came home and announced to my parents that I’m going to be a composer. This is what I want to do. They said, OK, if you’re going to do this, you’re going to need to go deep.
Sanford Baran: It’s so interesting how, almost out of the blue, you were drawn to the composition program at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and you found your calling almost immediately.
Gabriela Lena Frank: I found it early. Some people would say it found me as a little girl before I had all my sensory faculties working. The exposure that I had through my childhood put me on that path. Then seeing the pursuit of excellence in storytelling was something that was so clear to me in this conservatory. So when I went for my undergrad at Rice University in Houston, and subsequently at University of Michigan for my doctorate in composition, I began to understand more of the classical music world and the traditions of it and the conservatory training and how one shines in that.
I was able to use that vocabulary, the things that did give me, but also the things that it could not give me: to figure out how I was going to build a life after the conservatory. Conservatory training basically takes a composer, if they’re going to go all the way into training, through their 20s. I began traveling while I was in the conservatory in Latin America, because as deep as the conservatory was, I was getting restless. And I didn’t just want to delve into European classical music as much as I loved it. I was beginning to see, even if I couldn’t articulate, that the conservatory didn’t necessarily have a commensurate level of love back for my culture that I did for its culture. It felt very daring, even sacrilegious to feel dissatisfied, but I did and I listened to it. Thank goodness. This is in the nineties. We weren’t talking about diversity in the classical music world the way that we are now. I began to largely self-fund trips to Latin America. And my mother would go with me and I would meet my very large family. She comes from a family of 14 brothers and sisters. So I had a lot of people to meet. We had people that could host us with pleasure in different parts of Peru. My story started to come together at that point with some of the technique and craft that I was learning.
Sanford Baran: So let’s dive right in and talk about this brand new composition, Kachkaniraqmi. They’ll be having its world premiere on July 21st at the Colorado Music Festival. To start, What does the title Kachkaniraqmi refer to?
Gabriela Lena Frank: Yeah, Kachkaniraqmi is from the indigenous language of Peru that is widely spoken throughout the country. It means “I still exist”. It’s a pretty profound philosophical assertion. This is a culture and a people that have historically been under great duress, societal duress, political duress, economic duress. When you look at the poetry and the songs and the artistry of these cultures, they are just stunning, and profound, and sophisticated, and still surviving, sometimes even thriving, among great hardships. That has come through me now, as a mestiza, a mixed race woman, one in the diaspora of mixed heritage. I find great meaning in that, and I feel like the ancestors are in many ways encouraging me to do this type of work of storytelling, and I take that responsibility very seriously.
Sanford Baran: When you say, “I still exist”, Who is that “I” that you’re referring to?
Gabriela Lena Frank: That’s an excellent question. I think the “I” is whoever one needs it to be. If this is within a song that is sung by somebody, that person may be a representative of a whole community or a whole culture. As a composer, I navigate this fine line between trying to establish a universe with the program note, or with the music, or motifs that might be inspired by a specific culture. I don’t want to overly prescribe or overly dictate. I don’t want to insist that people read the program note, everybody needs their own listening experience. I do think performers should research and get as many ideas as they can because that’s their job. But if somebody has a different take on who is the person asserting it? They belong. They exist, they are here and now. I love the broad interpretation. You look at Shakespeare, we keep performing his plays because everybody has their own take on it. That is a testament to its richness and meaning centuries later. So I aspire to that and I think the eye in Kachkaniraqmi still exists. It can shift and change as needed.
Sanford Baran: What would you say are the underlying themes of the work? Would you say that there’s a distinct storyline? Or is it more, let’s say, atmospheric? How would you characterize it?
Gabriela Lena Frank: That’s a great question. I always have a story in my head, whether I will prescribe it very specifically to the performers or the audience members is another matter. Most of my work is multi movement because I like that sense of something developing and taking you on a journey. So we do think like a novelist in some ways, where we’re thinking about the pacing of the whole thing. And have I done a soulful portrayal of this culture that may not necessarily be discussed that much here in the United States, here in California or in Colorado. Do we really talk about Peru that much? And I think that’s some of the spirit of “I still exist”, that the breadth of humanity on this planet is stunning. And our role as artists is to preserve all the corners of our earth in this way. It’s a little bit irresistible when I have somebody like the Takács Quartet that can help me get this story out. So that’s what this is about.
Sanford Baran: So this piece is a commission written specifically for the Takács Quartet and the Colorado Music Festival. Was this a work that already was percolating before you were approached or maybe the other way around? You were approached with a commission, and this became the point of inception.
Gabriela Lena Frank: I think by this point in my life, because I’m known for the certain universe that I like to go into and the kinds of stories that I like to tell that if somebody’s going to approach me with a commission offer, they probably know something of my work so far. If it’s a performer, they might have even played some of it, which is the case of Harumi. If it’s a performer that I’ve hung out with, we might even reach out to each other and try to find another circumstance in which We can bring our families together. One example of that is Harumi is a very dedicated teacher. I’m a dedicated teacher. Her violinists have met my composers. We oversaw the making of violin pieces for her performers to premiere. We were actually introduced to one another by a very dear mutual friend, a pianist in New York City named Molly Murkowski. Molly introduced us saying, you guys are the best friends you don’t know yet. And so when a trusted friend does that, you just elevate or accelerate the speed in which you befriend one another.
Now, we’ve never lived in the same city, which is something that’s very common with musicians that will meet just as ships pass on a gig. Sometimes we’re just thrown together. Some of them you take with you, and some of them you don’t. And Harumi is one where we just got stuck on each other like fuzz. I think what preceded this was her knowledge of my music, my knowledge of her beautiful playing, the friendship, the mutual dedication we have to the next generation of artists. It’s not so new anymore, but her gig with Takács Quartet. She wanted to introduce me to the quartet in this way. And then this idea that, okay, I could write a quartet. I have a lot of quartets, or I could do something I’ve never done before. I don’t have a quartet leading a string orchestra. And that made it really exciting to me. It still honors Takács as this individual, amazing historic voice that they are, and then changes the landscape that’s around them so that they have the string orchestra that they also must attend to. So I think we’re all on the same page, remarkably, too, as we were evolving what this commission could be for Kachkaniraqmi.
Sanford Baran: What’s it like to finally hear the work for the first time yourself with real live musicians? Once you get here to Boulder.
Gabriela Lena Frank: I’ve been doing it for a long time and it never gets old. The whole journey of it. There’s a life cycle to each piece that you write and from the moment that you know it’s going to happen, but maybe two, three years down the line, it’s in the back of your head clicking away. Kinda like what a writer will do. You start taking little notes and things that come to you and you don’t use all the ideas. You save those that just don’t fit this work. But unlike a writer, like you were alluding to, we will actually hear the music many steps ahead, or very far along in a process.
I liken it to a skilled chef that can build a recipe without tasting anything. They can just sit and they probably will get the quantities of spice and salt right. But there will be some mystery to it. Say if I actually use creme fraiche instead of sour cream, then it will rise this much or not that much. If you’re just repeating yourself exactly, and there’s no mystery, then you really are just repeating yourself. You only grow when you grow from a base of knowledge and experience, but you try new things, and that could be scary, because we can’t change very much at that point, and the tickets are sold, and it’s like cooking a dish with your new recipe, but you can only adjust it once the guests have showed up, and everybody’s gonna eat it at dinner. So that is very obvious. Okay, of course we need more salt. I shouldn’t use red pepper. I should have used tomato. And you can adjust it. But that’s the nature of being an artist is you have to be okay with that risk and learn the strategies necessary to tell your stories, but not actually get to hear them until shortly before the premiere.
Sanford Baran: Yeah, but then when you do hear them, I would think that would be in a very exciting moment. Probably a scary moment.
Gabriela Lena Frank: It’s incredibly addictive. I don’t know, catching a wave at the beach or the fish tugging on your line the first time or all those experiences that are so specific that are just a little bit of terror, but a lot of joy and a lot of, Oh my God. And then a lot of humility. You look at the fish and it is just brilliant and it’s huge. And you feel like you shouldn’t have landed it, or you survived that wave or the players are just playing their hearts out for you and more than you could ever ask for. And that’s the greatest validation – when it’s not your piece anymore and you step back and they are just bringing it to life with everything they have. And they may have a few questions for you. Sometimes they will toss a couple questions to the composer out of respect to the composer, but they don’t need to, they just know what to do with the music. The whole thing is just wonderfully addictive and humbling at the same time too.
Sanford Baran: Gabriela, thank you so much for joining us today and giving us a deeper understanding of your creative process and the inspiration behind Kachkaniraqmi. It’s been a true pleasure hearing your insights and we’re all eagerly anticipating the world premiere of your piece with the Takács Quartet and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra on July 21st. Best of luck with the performance, and thank you again for sharing your time with us.
Gabriela Lena Frank: Thank you so much Sanford, and it’s been lovely to have this time with you.
