JAMES STRECKER: If you were asked for 50 words for an encyclopedia to summarize what you do, or have done, in the arts, what would you say?
GARY KULESHA: Gary Kulesha is a composer, conductor, pianist, and educator who has been active for almost 50 years. His works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded throughout the world. As a conductor, he has premiered literally hundreds of works by his colleagues. He has been an important mentor to many younger artists.
JS: What important beliefs do you express in or through your work?
GK: Great art changes people. Art serves two important functions: it helps us understand ourselves, and it creates order in chaos. If I do my job correctly, by the end of my piece, you should understand, at least at the unconscious level, something that you did not understand before you heard it. Art externalizes the confusing and unintelligible in our souls and allows us to examine it. It organizes a mindlessly violent and chaotic universe into a human-sized microcosm.
JS: Name two people, living or dead, whom you admire a great deal and tell us why for each one.
GK: I can’t really be this specific because I’m too critical to believe that anyone is without foibles. The good things about each person are usually balanced by the not-so-good things. I really admire Elon Musk, for example, for changing the automotive world and having the commitment to release his patents for free to help others make the change, but I can’t shake the feeling that he is an ego maniac who runs a cult and that he may have some ulterior motive, like controlling battery production for the whole world. I admire and respect anyone who is good at what they do and yet remain self-aware– not exactly humble, but fully aware of what they are and are not good at. I admire committed people whose actions demonstrate that commitment. I admire and respect people who are humane. And I definitely do not like people who don’t like animals.
JS: How have you changed since you began to do creative work?
GK: Oddly enough, I’m not sure that I have changed very much. I started doing creative work at the age of 8 or 9. Even as a teenager, I was very self-directed and self-sufficient. I never responded to peer pressure, I never caved in to the expectations of my teachers, and I did not care about being part of an artistic “club.” These are the same traits I have now. I never cared what anyone thought about me, and I still don’t. I suppose I have, like most people my age, mellowed somewhat in that I no longer engage in arguments about anything, especially aesthetics. Arguing always ends up being “yes, it is, no it isn’t” and I don’t have the time to waste going in circles.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
GK: Writing better music. I always quote Lutoslawski quoting Bartok: when I was young, I wrote the music I could write, not the music I wanted to write. I think we all do this. There is never a point when a good composer is fully satisfied with what they are writing. There is a psychological term, “presque vue”, which refers the experience of feeling that something is about to be revealed, but it never is. I have this about my music. There is a kind of music I want to write, but I don’t know what it is. I had this feeling when I was young, and gradually wrote works which fulfilled what I had been feeling, but I still feel it.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life.
GK: In 2000, I had been working as a sessional teacher at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music for about 10 years. The Dean, David Beach, got special permission to appoint me to a full-time position. This must have been a colossal undertaking, because I never went to university and have no degrees. But he believed in me, and got me the appointment, and then made me the Coordinator of the Theory and Composition division. I want to point out that David was American. If you look at job posting for Canadian and American universities, the Canadian ones all say “Doctorate required.” The American ones say “Doctorate or career equivalent required.” Americans are better at recognizing special abilities than Canadians. Or perhaps we recognize them, and just don’t want to admit it.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about what you do?
GK: Probably everything. I don’t understand a lot of it myself. Every time I start a new work, I think “How do I do this, again?” Conducting, too, is a mystical thing. Why will professional musicians follow one person, and just grudgingly tolerate another? Why can even the finest and most skilled musician be a terrible conductor? Most people can at least grasp what a composer does, even if they have trouble understanding “where you get your ideas from.” Most people, even wonderful musicians, don’t have a clue why some conductors are great and others, who are perfectly capable, are dull and uninteresting.
JS: How and why did you begin to do creative work in the first place?
GK: I was very young and had a brother who was 4 years older. He began piano lessons and immediately developed an interest in composing his own music. At the same time, our uncle was living with us on and off between marriages and jobs, and he had a passion for boogie woogie and country music. The boogie woogie really rubbed off on me. Between my brother’s love of Mozart and Schubert and my uncle’s love of ostinato-driven piano music, and my own adoration of Chopin, and at least partly because anything my brother could do I was sure I could better, I began writing music.
JS: What haven’t you attempted as yet that you would like to do and please tell us why?
GK: I want to create an opera for orchestra. By this I mean a full-length work that does not rely on staging per se, but rather uses singers, video, dance, and sound track to tell a story. This may sound like a lot of what is going on right now, but my intention is to make it quite literally an opera, with a clearly linear story line and sharply defined characters who sing their roles. I am stymied by money. Because no one sees me as being a media composer, no one will even talk to me about this. It is true that I do not have a great deal of experience in media, but I did “electronic music” in the 80s and 90s, and even taught it, and I made movies when I was a student. I could learn fast.
JS: What are your most meaningful achievements?
GK: Marrying the woman of my life, paying off a home, writing the music I believe in, and teaching young artists I believe in. Also, co-creating and co-directing two important new music festivals, the Massey Hall New Music Festival and the New Creations Festival. And bringing the music of my colleagues to audiences, either by directly performing them or by managing to place them on programmes somehow.
JS: What advice would you give a young person who would like to do what you do?
GK: Music is a calling, not a profession. It is a calling just as surely as the priesthood is a calling. If you are not called, do not enter the profession. Your passion for music must irrationally outweigh every other consideration, and you must be prepared to do what you have to do to be an artist. If something dissuades you from composing or conducting, you are not a composer or a conductor. Learn. There is no freedom without discipline, and there is no creativity without knowledge. Learn everything. Be interested in everything, music, film, philosophy, art, books, everything. Be a human being first and a musician second and a composer or a conductor third. Contain your passion in professionalism. Remember courtesy and self-discipline.
JS: Of what value are critics?
GK: Maureen Forrester once told me “Listen darling, it doesn’t matter what they write about you as long as they write about you.” I suppose an argument can be made that it is professionally valuable to keep your name in the media. A good critic can also illuminate things for audiences. But remember, no one, not even a professional musician, can be absolutely certain about the value of something they have heard only once. Art is in the details. Works that can initially seem unimpressive can slowly reveal themselves to be much deeper than they appeared. Incredibly, Moby Dick was so poorly received it literally ruined Melville’s career, and yet we now know that it may well be the greatest book in the English language. The problem with most contemporary criticism is that it isn’t really criticism, it’s journalism. I remember Robert Everett Green once writing a review of a work of mine that was so intelligent I had to write him a note expressing my thanks. He was mostly positive but questioned the inclusion of the middle movement, articulately and analytically wondering about the structural integrity. That kind of critical writing is very, very rare.
JS: What do you ask of your audience?
GK: That they be like me. I am my own best audience. I hope my real audience wants to hear what I want to hear.
JS: What specifically would you change about what goes on in the world and the arts?
GK: Obviously, I would want the things we all want– peace, equality, breathable air, etc. – but the truth is that these things are unlikely to happen. Humans are consumers, of the things around them and of other humans. When we get to Mars, we’ll consume that too. In the music world, people are still people. It is astounding how small and petty people can be in this business. But then, it’s a business built on ego. Not only do we tolerate the ego of artists, we encourage it and call it “artistic vision.” I would certainly not change this. But an artistic world in which even the biggest narcissists accommodate other people’s ideas and opinions would be better. The politicization of ego is a serious impediment to artistic prosperity. And ego is everywhere. Composers in particular lead such internal lives that they tend to be unable to allow for other people’s opinions.
JS: If you could relive one experience from your creative life, what would it be and why would you do so?
GK: The premiere of my first symphony, conducted by Jukka Pekka Saraste, with me as the second conductor, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1998. There are many reasons why. I still consider this work to be one of my best. It was surprising to me, and to everyone else. It was hugely successful, despite its astonishing technical demands. The orchestra totally rallied around me, and I could not have felt more supported by my musical colleagues. It was one of those rare occasions when you know you have done something very good, and everyone else knows it as well.
JS: Tell us what it feels like to be a figure who is presented somehow in the media. What effect does this presence have on you?
GK: I couldn’t honestly say that I’m very aware of this. I know objectively that I am somewhat well known in the musical world, that my name appears in newspapers, online, and in books, that I have a listing in a few encyclopedias, that people recognize me, etc., but I couldn’t say that I “feel” it. I’m not famous enough for it to change my life. The effect of what fame I have is that people I don’t know want to talk to me, which I don’t mind. The downside is that anyone in the public eye is reviled by someone, usually irrationally. I remember being with a young composer who had just had some public success when he got his first piece of out-of-the-blue hate mail. He was devastated and upset that someone he had never met took the time to write him a really vicious piece of email. This kind of thing happens to anyone who has a public presence.
JS: Name two places you would like to visit, one you haven’t been to and one to experience again and briefly tell us why.
GK: I don’t have any idea why, but I am obsessed with Tristan de Cunha, the main island of the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world. It is in the south Atlantic and is part of a British protectorate that includes Ascension Island and Saint Helena. I think it seized my imagination when I was 7 years old, in 1961, when the local volcano erupted and all 200 inhabitants had to get into boats and get off the island. I must have Google-Earthed this island 20 times at this point. It’s so remote, though, that getting there is a massive undertaking. I would like to return to two places, Iceland, where I have already been twice, and Scotland. My wife and I were in Iceland for a week last summer and will very likely go again this summer. I love Iceland because of its remoteness and grandeur. Photos and video cannot even slightly capture the massive scale of the distances and mountains. I am told only the outback of Australia comes even close to this amazing experience. My wife has never been to Scotland, perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever been, so we may plan a trip there sometime soon. Scotland also has a craggy beauty but is more pastoral and has a more human scale than Iceland.
JS: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on, are preparing, or have recently completed. Why do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
GK: A few days ago (March 10,) the Toronto Symphony, Peter Oundjian, violinist Jonathan Crow, and violist Teng Li premiered my Double Concerto at Roy Thomson Hall here in Toronto. This was another experience like the premiere of my first symphony, which I talk about above. Everything just clicked into place with this work and this premiere. The performance was nothing short of astonishing, the audience reaction was spectacular, and the support from the orchestra was inspiring. Why should it matter to you? Because, for better or for worse, whether or not you think we’re successful, we are working hard to make good art, to make Canada a more civilized country, and to become part of the greater international artistic world.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
GK: I find it depressing that the education system has lost sight of the fact that the arts are an important part of education. We have become a society of trade schools. The raw value of arts training is no longer understood. You don’t have to go on to be an artist to benefit from arts education. You don’t even have to become a regular consumer of art. The discipline of art at a young age changes you, for the better. I find it depressing that, because of the lack of arts training in general schools, there are now two or three generations who don’t know anything about traditional art. We are even seeing this in music at the university, where young composers don’t know anything about music, they are interested only in what they are doing, and in the people who are doing the same things as them. I am encouraged that there are so many young people interested in art, even if they are not that well informed. I am encouraged that new music continues to find listeners, despite the timidity of administrators. I am encouraged by all the experimentation and creativity going on. I am hopeful that, because of the interest of young people in new and fresh things, we may return to a time when people go to symphony orchestra concerts specifically to hear the new thing on the programme, not despite it.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising thing about you?
GK: Nothing intrigues or surprises me about myself. Other people are usually surprised to find that I adore cats, have an expansive knowledge of movies ranging from utter schlock to art films, listen to a lot of pop music, and play fps video games almost every evening I am free. They also surprised that my favourite novelist is Virginia Woolf, and that I am a fanatic about James Bond, the only thing I am fanatical about.