JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about a creation of yours featured at this year’s Toronto Summer Music Festival. Why exactly does it matter to you and why should it matter to your listeners?
DINUK WIJERATNE: The Isidore String Quartet will be performing my 2nd string quartet, entitled ‘The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini’ – a 10-min work inspired by the real-life theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. The piece is a virtuoso showpiece for string quartet, and I do hope that the TSM audience gets swept up in its escapism. At the same time, I hope they feel my empathy for Lisa herself – the mysterious subject of the portrait we know so well.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your creations?
DW: I strive to be as authentic as possible in my creativity, and I believe that every artist views the world through a very personal lens shaped by his/her own experience. I find that I am always preoccupied by the meeting of cultures, the boundary between composition and improvisation, and by the tension between tradition and innovation.
JS: What causes you to compose or create as you do? Is it because you play a specific instrument, for instance?
DW: Not because of a specific instrument, no; although I confess that my obsession with the tabla is a constant source of inspiration, and always in the background of my musical language. I am motivated to take on a compositional project when I am inspired by the musicians I get to work with, and when I find the right kind of concept to explore or story to tell. Often, I wait for months until I’m convinced I have found the right story/concept for the right people/project.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
DW: Now that I am in a brand new and exciting chapter of fatherhood, the challenge is finding enough time to compose!
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person working in the arts?
DW: It’s a tough life in the sense that you’re pretty much creating (or thinking about creating) 24/7. I am a performer too, and the rewards of performance are much more immediate than those of composition, in the sense that it takes much less time for me to get ready for a performance than it does to create a piece from scratch. The latter takes several months and is terribly labour-intensive. But ultimately, one could argue that the rewards of art-making are some of the richest human experiences.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you create. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
DW: The only thing I find depressing is when kids don’t have sufficient access to the arts due to unfortunate policies or to inadequate funding, etc. On the positive side, I think we’re at an exciting time for the arts in the sense that the forum is becoming increasingly more inclusive; which is to say that a great diversity of people are now able – and indeed are being invited – to tell their stories through the arts.
JS: What new works are you working on at present?
DW: I am working on a large-scale, cross-genre song cycle called IDENTITY for Against the Grain Theatre, featuring the amazing Canadian baritone, Elliot Madore. I myself will be playing piano in the project, and I look forward to sharing the stage with Elliot and our two outstanding colleagues: Tyler Emond (bass) and Nick Halley (percussion). The cycle explores the notion that a lot of us have multiple concepts of personal identity that we are trying to reconcile within ourselves.
JS: What do you yourself like about the music you create?
DW: I love the fact that my music has allowed me the immense pleasure and privilege of meeting inspiring musicians all over the world. I feel blessed to be able to call these people my friends, and being with them on stage is an eternal blessing.