Daniel Asia Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . . .

Composer Daniel Asia

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

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Daniel Asia (born June 27, 1953) is an American composer. Born in Seattle, Washington, he received a B.A. degree from Hampshire College and a M.M. from the Yale School of Music. His major teachers include Jacob Druckman, Stephen Albert, Gunther Schuller, and Isang Yun in composition, and Arthur Weisberg in conducting. Asia's works ranges from solo pieces to large-scale multi-movement works for orchestra, including five symphonies.

He served on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Contemporary Music and Wind Ensemble from 1981 to 1986. In 1986–88, a UK Fulbright Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship enabled him to work in London as a visiting lecturer at City University. Since 1988, he has been Professor of Composition and head of the composition department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He conducts the New York-based contemporary chamber ensemble The Musical Elements, which he co-founded in 1977. Asia founded and directs the American Culture and Ideas Initiative. Asia contributes articles on music and culture to The Huffington Post.

His orchestral works have been commissioned or performed by the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Seattle, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Phoeniz, American Composers Orchestra (New York City, Columbus (Ohio), Grand Rapids, Jacksonville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Tucson, Knoxville, Greensboro, Seattle Youth, Brookly, Colorado, and Pilsen (Czech Republic). Conductors include Zdenek Macal, Jesús López-Cobos, Eiji Oue, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Hermann Michael, Carl St. Clair, James Sedares, Stuart Malina, Robert Bernhardt, George Hanson, Jonathan Shames, Odaline de la Martinez, Kirk Trevor, Koji Kawamoto, and Christopher Kendall.

From 1991-1994, Asia was the Meet the Composer/Composer In Residence with the Phoenix Symphony. He has been the recipient of a Meet The Composer/Reader's Digest Consortium Commission, United Kingdom Fulbright Arts Award Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four NEA Composers Grants, a M. B. Rockefeller Grant, an Aaron Copland Fund for Music Grant, MacDowell Colony and Tanglewood Fellowships, ASCAP and BMI composition prizes, and a DAAD Fellowship for study in the Federal Republic of Germany. Asia is the 2010 recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award (2010).

== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

Living all my life in and around Chicago, I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing (and later interviewing!) many of the great performers of the time. Once in awhile, someone of interest would appear in Milwaukee, and if that person was not coming to the Windy City, I would arrange to drive 90 miles north and meet them at the venue or their hotel. As it happened, in April of 1996, two such luminaries were scheduled, and I was fortunate to be able to speak with both of them (separately) on the same day.

Lawrence Leighton Smith was conducting the Milwaukee Symphony, and the program included the recent Piano Concerto by Daniel Asia. As you can see by the link in the box above, my interview with the maestro has been transcribed and posted on this website. Now, the composer’s remarks are presented on this webpage.

I am here in Milwaukee, and this is an all-American program, and it’s pretty tough. The Samuel Barber Essay for Orchestra, most orchestras know well, but Daniel Asia’s Piano Concerto is a brand new piece, and it’s long. It’s not terribly hard for the orchestra, but it’s very hard for the pianist. Our pianist, André-Michel Schub, is wonderful. He plays non-stop practically for the whole piece. The orchestra backs him more than actually having many tuttis. But it is long, about forty-five minutes. Then, the Aaron Copland Third is one of the most difficult in the repertory.

== From my interview with Lawrence Leighton Smith

When Asia and I sat down to begin our conversation, my guest expressed a bit of surprise at being interviewed for a program on Chicago radio . . . . .

Bruce Duffie: As a living composer, does it surprise you to have your music played on broadcast stations?
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Daniel Asia:   Yes, but I love it! [Both laugh]

BD:   Why is it surprising?

Asia:   Because there aren’t that many stations that actually play much contemporary music. Even our station in Tucson, Arizona, doesn’t play that much new music. There is some, but it’s generally reserved for a few nighttime slots, or when the music is included in broadcast concerts that they pick up, as with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, or Music from St. Paul.

BD:   Is there anything you, as a composer, can do to get more music played, or is it up to the broadcasters and the public to make the demand?

Asia:   I suppose composers could do more, and that means I could do more as well. But given that there’s only a limited amount of time during the day, and I have to write some music (!), you have to rely on the good offices of broadcasters to listen to some of the discs that are coming through, and then put the music on. There’s a lot of good new music today that isn’t off-putting, and that the regular radio listeners could be delighted to hear.

BD:   When did we get away from new music that was off-putting?

Asia:   I would say fifteen years ago is probably when it started, so probably the beginning of the 1980s, or maybe even earlier. But it has probably taken the musical community and listeners this long to start to realize that there has been a strong shift.

BD:   Is this a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing?

Asia:   I think it’s a good thing. We went through a difficult period in the 1950s and 1960s when it was hard for the audience to respond in meaningful ways to a lot of music they were hearing. There’s now a rapprochement between composers, performers, and the audience.

BD:   Without mentioning any specific names, do you think that the composer was writing to be off-putting, or were they writing because it’s what they wanted to write, or perhaps what they felt compelled to write?

Asia:   All of those! It was a difficult period where many composers indeed felt obligated to write a certain kind of music, and other composers wanted to write something different, but they didn’t have the fortitude to go ahead and write that. Still others were writing different music, but were compelled to go to the back of the bus, and their music didn’t get out. Somebody, for example, like Samuel Barber, who, towards the end of his life, was made to feel irrelevant.

BD:   Because he was writing tonal music?

Asia:   Because he was writing the music the way he’d always written it, but he’d gone out of fashion.

BD:   What about Gian Carlo Menotti, or Ned Rorem, who have continued to write tunes?

Asia:   They were out of fashion for a long time. Menotti may have had difficulties at certain periods in his career, and felt under the gun in many respects, but he’s been able to continue. Barber had a much more difficult time with the failure of his opera at the Met. That, coupled with the change and the tenor of the times, perhaps caused him to lose heart, and that’s too bad when a composer spends his life creating a voice and then, at a certain point, is told his voice doesn’t matter any longer.

BD:   Are you the beneficiary of the pendulum coming back?

Asia:   I suppose so. I think so! I am also the beneficiary of the fact that the music scene now has opened up. In other words, we’re not in that straight-jacketed frame of mind. We recognize that music can be created in many different languages, in many different voices, and it can equally say important things in all of those different ways. We don’t have to feel that music is going along in only one direction. We’re beyond that. We understand that there are many different ways of looking at the world, and that it’s up to the listener to find which ones appeal most to him or her.

BD:   Doesn’t that continue to re-fragment an already fragmented audience?

Asia:   [Sighs] That’s a tough question. The audience is somewhat fragmented. My hope and my feeling is that ultimately all of these tributaries will finally come into one large stream again. It may not happen. It may be that the world is such a complex place at this point, and we’re so interconnected, but there are so many different influences. Here in America, we can easily call Japan. We’re in touch with our compatriots in South America and in Europe, and so there are all sorts of influences coming to bear on our music. Whether that will create an international style again, I don’t know. We went through essentially the creation of an international style where everybody had to write in a certain way, and we found that wasn’t to our liking. What I hope will happen is that listeners will eagerly await good music no matter what the voice is.

BD:   The musical community is diverse, and it reflects that diversity?

Asia:   I think so.

BD:   Then are we losing our specific heritages?

Asia:   I hope not! In fact, we’re finding a way back to that, which I feel very positive about. There are certain composers of the last twenty and thirty and forty years that were instrumental in their own development, but I’ve really been getting back to the old guys, and trying to understand and absorb that repertoire. It has certainly been part of my task to re-absorb those composers.

* * * * *

BD: When you’re writing a piece, are you writing for the occasion, or for the piece, or for yourself, or for posterity?
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Asia:   I am doing all of that. One is I’m writing to find out more about my relationship to music and what it means to me, and to write the music that I want to hear. Two is to write the music that I love. If I write the music that I love, if I feel passionately about what I’m writing, and if I’ve written the best thing I can possibly write, my feelings are that an audience will understand that and feel that. Do I write for posterity? The answer is I do that, too! I don’t just write what I think somebody now is going to like... although I don’t know what somebody is going to like, so that is immaterial to the whole process. But I certainly hope, and any composer worth his or her salt, has to feel that they are writing great music, and they have to hope that it’s going to last the way the music of other great composers has lasted. If you don’t, how can you put notes down on the page? You have to feel that strongly, or else why do it?

BD:   What are some of the threads that contribute to making a piece of music great?

Asia:   [Thinks a moment] Personality in the music. This means where you know that this is somebody who has something to say. This is somebody who staking out some territory, and is going to tell you something about this musical landscape. The second thing is where the musical materials partake of that personality, and are finally etched. There’s a certain inevitability about their progression, about the way you first encounter them, about the journey that they take, and about the place that they finally take you. Having said that, the shape of the music, the architecture of the music, and the way that those ideas are expressed carries you through, and you get a sense of a beautiful object in space.

BD:   Is there any chance that a piece then becomes too autobiographical?

Asia:   I don’t know that music is autobiographical. There are certainly things going on in my life which are, in some way projected into my music. I don’t expect the listener to hear those. What I do expect is that they will know that the sincerity I’ve brought to my life and the way I experience my life is expressed in the music. I’m not sure that music carries meaning beyond the strength and character of the sound itself. I’m not sure that you can associate things with it by necessity. We can place programs with the music, but I don’t think there’s a one-to-one correspondence. Music is too strong for that, and it says something beyond those relationships.

BD:   Then let me hit the question straight on. What’s the purpose of music?

Asia:   [Thinks a moment] The purpose of music is to lead us to understand things about the world that can only be said in music. I just gave a talk at a synagogue about the relationship between music and, in that case, Judaism. There’s a strong relationship there. Music has often been associated with religious things and ideas. Music is a vehicle, or a way of connecting us to something beyond ourselves. If you are a religious person, you call that God. If you’re not, you call it something that is beyond ourselves that we don’t understand, and we want to hook into. It is something that leads us to understand our place in the universe that we can’t do with anything else. That’s all. It takes us to another place, and great pieces of music do that for me, and I hope that it does this for other people. Ultimately, that’s what a lot of composers are trying to do whether they know it or not.

BD:   Now because your music speaks from your heritage, does the music then resonate more clearly with the Jewish community than it would with, say, the Catholic community, or the Buddhist community, or some other community?

Asia:   I don’t think so. As a Jew, I can partake of the greatness of the St. John Passion, or the St. Matthew Passion, or the cantatas of Bach. Yes, these are pieces that speak about a particular person’s relationship to their religious ideology, but they also transcend that ideology because it is music. That’s one of the great and fascinating things about it, and I would hope that is found in my music, in the same way that Leonard Bernstein tried to express in his music his relationship to the world as a musician, as a Jew, and as a human being. It is through a certain Jewish perception of the world, but it is susceptible to universal interpretation, and is available to everybody. The greatest art is produced out of a particular vision, but what it does is that it says something strong that is open and available to anybody to understand.

BD:   Is the strength of the inner vision of the composer something that contributes to the strength of a piece?

Asia:   It has to be. If a composer doesn’t have a strong of view of himself, and a strong view of his relationship to the world, how can he write music? If you’re not struggling with those issues, what’s the point? What’s in the music? Is it just a game? Is it simply a demonstration of craft?

BD:   Then where is the balance between the inspiration and the craft?

Asia:   There obviously has to be craft... don’t get me wrong, but there has to be something more than craft, or else it’s simply empty virtuosity, and we’ve heard enough of that. Music, whether it’s performers or the music itself, has to be something beyond that. Clearly, we learn the craft so that we are at ease, so that inspiration can flow through us most directly, and make the music that we want to make. The intent of all study in that respect is to free us up so that we can say exactly what it is we’re trying to say.

* * * * *

BD:   You’re combining the careers of teacher and composer. How do you divide your time between those two very taxing activities?

Asia:   Just about half and half. Generally, I spend my mornings writing in my studio, and then my afternoons are at the university teaching.

BD:   So, the creative comes first and then the mundane?
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Asia:   No, no, no, it’s not mundane at all! It’s just that I find my best creative period is the morning when I’m still in some senses tied to sleep time, to dream time. I’m not completely out of that state, and am able to plug into that subconscious reservoir more easily. Then, in the afternoon I’m looking and going through the more intellectual process of discerning what my students are doing, and dissecting their scores. That’s a different kind of focus that doesn’t work as well in the morning.

BD:   Do you ever find ideas that you see on your students’ scores permeating some of your own scores?

Asia:   There are often times that I find things in some of my students’ works which I find quite intriguing. I don’t generally act directly upon them, although occasionally there may be not a motivic idea or something like that, but simply a way of looking at it that I had never thought about. I then plug that into my mental sketch book, and who knows where it gets pulled out down the road? I find that the student had a good idea, and this is a place to apply that principle that he came up with. So yes, I learn from my students. That’s one of the great things about having good students. You’re not just in a teacher-student relationship, but you’re studying music together. You’re looking at this world of sound and trying to understand it.

BD:   Do they also learn from you?

Asia:   I hope so! I think so! In all honesty, and with all self-deprecation, I’m a pretty good teacher. I’m able to look at pieces and pretty much zero in on where the weak spots are, and describe pretty accurately what those are. Not all good composers necessarily can do that.

BD:   I trust you don’t want to turn out lots of little Daniel Asias.

Asia:   That’s correct, and I don’t do that. All of my students write in very different styles from each other, and I’m proud of that. As a matter of fact, I don’t give them my way of writing music in part because I don’t know how I write my music. That’s a process I go through every time I sit down to write. But I’m much more intrigued and interested in trying to help them find their own voice, and find the craft that’s most appropriate for that voice, and to make that voice come out and flower.

BD:   Are you more sympathetic with some styles than others?

Asia:   I’m not, and that’s the interesting thing.

BD:   It sounds like you have an amazing degree of flexibility.

Asia:   I’m not a hardcore serialist, that’s for certain, and I’m not a hardcore post-Cage-ian, which is to say I’m least sympathetic to those who are hardcore serialists and those who are hardcore post-Cage-ians! I’m interested in musicians as composers, and students who are trying to find a personal language that expresses something they want to say. It doesn’t mean that one can’t take those two styles that I’ve just described and find a personal idiom. If a student comes with me using those principles, but in a way that is very personal and very direct, I’m delighted to have them work with me, and I’ll try to help them as best I can to find their voice within that idiom. So, I have students who are writing essentially post-minimalist work, and students who are writing post-Morton Feldman pieces.

BD:   Might there come a time when you would encourage them to go to some other teacher who’d be better equipped to handle those styles?

Asia:   I’ve never done that, at least not yet. What I do is encourage students not to stay with me longer than a couple of years. There are some composers who retain students from a master’s program into a doctoral program. If somebody studies with me at the master’s level, I don’t recommend they stay with me for a doctorate. They should move on and get a different perspective. As for students who work with me as undergraduates, I don’t take them for their master’s. They’ve worked with me for a couple of years, and they should go to somebody else to get their ideas on what they’re doing. I’m only one composer with my own views.

BD:   Might you be willing to see them again five or six years down the line, just to see how they’re doing?

Asia:   Oh sure, and I certainly keep in touch with my students and support them. I’m very curious to see how they develop, and what happens to them.

BD:   Without mentioning any names, are you generally pleased with what you see coming off the pages of your students?

Asia:   Yes, I am! Even if I’m not at the start, I’m hopeful that their work with me progresses, and it usually does. I’m pleased by that as well. Very few students are going to write masterworks in their student years. I certainly didn’t, so what any teacher of music composition is looking for is simply to see that a composer is attaining a larger degree of sophistication and depth in their music.

BD:   Is it right that we, as the public, expect masterworks so often on concerts with new music?

Asia:   It’s somewhat unfair to expect masterworks all the time. At the same time, it is fair to expect professional pieces that are put together competently, that show a high degree of craft, and yes, that stake out a certain musical terrain, and then says something with vigor and energy and a degree of seriousness. Unfortunately, there is never going to be a large number of pieces that do that, nor a large number of composers that do that. What listeners have to be wary of is pre-judging, and judging too harshly, because you have to give composers time to learn, and time to develop. This is true even of the best!

BD:   Is there any chance we’re turning out too many composers?

Asia:   No question about it! There are far too many composers and, at the same time, the more composers there are, perhaps the more will actually rise to the top. It might be that we aren’t actually in a very productive and fruitful period right now, and there may be four or five composers whose music is actually going to last. When you look at the music from previous periods, how much is there? How many great composers are there in the time of Mozart and Haydn? There’s Mozart and Haydn! [Both laugh] Maybe it is that there are only one or two composers who define a period of music, but it may be that because our world is so bizarre, so multi-dimensional, and so exquisitely frenetic that we’re actually going to get three or four or five composers whose music is going to last. It might be very interesting. Who knows? We don’t know, but it’s important for listeners to be excited about experiencing these things. They might be hearing the next great piece from the next great composer. When you go to an art gallery, you never know if you’re seeing the next Picasso, or the next Motherwell, but you go hoping to experience, and to find out, and to be excited in seeking the pleasure of being one of the first to be there.

BD:   Rather than just enjoying what’s there, masterwork or not?

Asia: To be part of a living culture, you should want to hear what people are saying about the world in which we live, whether it’s through poetry, or drama, or film, or music. Why is it that so many people who want to partake in our culture, will go down to an art gallery to see somebody’s new work, or see a new dance that somebody’s just created, knowing that it might not be the greatest piece, but they’ll enjoy participating in the experience. They will want to go and see the newest film, but for some reason they’re frightened by the experience of hearing a new piece! I don’t quite understand it.

BD:   Maybe too many of these new pieces of music were off-putting.
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Asia: That’s the point, and what composers of my generation are now saying is to please give us a chance again! We went through a difficult time, and now there’s just some beautiful stuff. Come and hear it!

* * * * *

BD:   Let me ask another balance question. In music that you write, or music in general, where is the balance between the artistic achievement and the entertainment value?

Asia:   All great music has a certain entertainment value, so let’s try and find the difference between great art and simple entertainment that might be useful for the moment, or for the decade, or for the year, but isn’t going to last twenty-five years. The answer is that entertainment has a gorgeous surface, or a facile interesting surface, but upon repetition you don’t find anything more beyond that facile surface. Great art and great music has a surface that pulls you along. You might not understand everything that you hear the first time, and perhaps you shouldn’t, but you are pulled into this current of the art, and taken to the end, and thrown against the beach at the end, wondering what was that? What happened? That was something! I don’t understand it all, but I want to hear that again. I want to come back to it, and when you come back to it you discover even more about it, and hopefully you’re able to come back to it a third, and a fourth and a fifth time.

BD:   So, there’s depth underneath the familiarity?

Asia:   Exactly. What makes a great piece of art is when you know there is something there that you find overwhelming on the first time around, and you’re willing to go back again and again, and discover there’s more. The relationships in that piece are so multi-dimensional that you can experience it a different way each time, and at different points in your life.

BD:   Can you write that into your score, or do you just have to hope that it’s there because of your experience, and knowledge, and creativity?

Asia:   I don’t think any composer tries to do that. Either you do it or you don’t, and you have it or you don’t. Yes, a composer tries to forge relationships in a piece, but I don’t think they’re all done on a conscious level. I don’t think they can be done on a conscious level, but there’s something to be said for this idea of the vision of the Great Artist being able somehow to see the relationships from from inside. As an artist, I can say I’ve been at that point. You sort of swing in and out of it. It’s pretty amazing when you’re inside the piece, and you can see it from backwards, and forwards, and the sides, and then you know that you’re at the right place.

BD:   Is the music of Daniel Asia great?

Asia:   I’ll have to leave that for others to determine. [Pauses a moment] Let me approach that question with a little bit of humility, which is to say nobody knows. You hope! One would certainly like to have great success during one’s lifetime, and then great success thereafter, but one never knows.

BD:   It’s almost too much to hope for, isn’t it?

Asia:   That’s right. What I can hope for, and what I would hope for is to be able to steadily write the music that I want to write, to have people who want me to write music ask me to write music, and to have steady work. Then the music will have to find its own place, and we’ll see what happens. I hope that a hundred years from now people will speak of Daniel Asia’s music, and say that’s music which really helped define an age, along with other people like John Adams, or Steve Reich, or William Bolcom, or Jacob Druckman. We’ll just have to see...

BD:   When you get a commission, how do you decide yes or no?

Asia:   [Laughs] I should be so fortunate as to be in the position where I can reject lots of commissions. There are some composers who have many, many commissions lined up waiting to be done.

BD:   Am I wrong in assuming that even if you have only one commission, you have to decide to accept it or reject it?

Asia:   That’s true, but there have not been many commissions that I’ve rejected, because nobody has asked me to write a piece that didn’t present issues and musical problems that I found of interest.

BD:   So that’s how you decide?

Asia:   Sure! Synagogues have commissioned me, cantors have commissioned me, orchestras have commissioned me, pianists have commissioned me, string quartets have commissioned me, a flute and bassoon duo has commissioned me, a solo flute player has commissioned me... Each of these different scenarios or situations presents different musical questions, and I’ve looked at all of them, and thought they would be interesting. I wondered how I would write a piece for that combination, so sure, I’ll do that.

BD:   Then you figure it out?

Asia:   Then I figure it out. There are certain things that I don’t think I would do, such as a kazoo quartet, or a balalaika orchestra.

BD:   [Thinking of something particularly preposterous] How about a trio of ocarina, accordion and tuba?

Asia:   Unlikely! [Both laugh] Yes, there are certain far-fetched combinations that actually exist where there are groups that do that, and I tend to want to write for fairly standard instruments. [Musing] If a synthesizer ensemble came to me and asked for a piece, I don’t know if I would do it. I’d have to think about it... and I might.

BD:   Do you do anything with electronics?

Asia:   I did early on as a student, and a number of those pieces appear on discs. I’m very glad that I did that, because it opened me up to a very different way of looking at music that I found fascinating. It certainly informed a lot of my early instrumental music. It has become less influential in my latter music, but I’m delighted that I had them, and I might at some point get back to that medium. I’ve been thinking that maybe, after almost twenty years, it would be really intriguing now, with some of the new equipment and the new computer materials, to go and see what I can do... particularly because I haven’t heard that much good computer music that I found particularly interesting. So, it offers a lot of intriguing possibilities.
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* * * * *

BD:   When you’re working on a piece, and you’re making all the decisions, and getting everything set, you come to the end and put in the double bar. I assume you go back and tinker with it. How do you know when it’s finished?

Asia:   I tinker with pieces often going from performance to performance. For example, this piano concerto is one of my more recent pieces that has been played now by five or six orchestras. Every time I came to a performance, I have adjusted something.

BD:   [With a wink] That must make your publisher really happy!

Asia:   [Laughs] Yes, they’re not so excited by that process, but in this case, I have held on to the materials, and I’ll send them to them when I’ve finished adjusting. But the result is I’ve had to pay for the changes, which is even worse, but you’re right, it’s a complicated procedure. However, this piece presented so many different problems that I’d never confronted before. I’d written four symphonies, so I knew what the orchestral medium was like, and if I need to adjust something, I adjusted something. But I also write fairly slowly, and I orchestrate fairly slowly, and I try and refine my ideas pretty well and very clearly. In the symphonies, I didn’t change terribly much, but getting the balances right between the piano as a soloist and the orchestra was not something I had confronted. In all the study of Beethoven concertos and Prokofiev concertos, and Shostakovich concertos, it doesn’t tell you what yours has to be, and making sure the balances were right has been the most complicated procedure.

BD:   Are you a keyboard player yourself?

Asia:   No, I’m terribly poor.

BD:   I just wondered if that had any influence on this work.

Asia:   On the piece itself, no. I’ve written numerous pieces for piano, and I write in a non-digital way. This is to say I don’t imagine where the fingers go. Therefore I don’t imagine it as a person who plays the instrument with great capability. In some respects I treat it like any other instrument.

BD:   I trust you don’t make it technically impossible.

Asia:   That’s correct, I don’t make it technically impossible. I know what the limitations of the instrument are, because I’ve studied the literature well enough. Plus, I’ve worked with enough pianists to know what the possibilities are. Whether I’m writing for the piano or any other instrument, my intent is not to write beyond the capabilities of the instrumentalist, but rather simply to write to the fullest extent of the capabilities of the player and the instrument itself.

BD:   Is it necessary to make each piece a hugely virtuoso piece?

Asia:   No it’s not, but the Piano Concerto certainly is, because it seems to me that part of the definition of a concerto is that it is a virtuoso vehicle. Much to André-Michel Schub’s chagrin, I wrote as difficult as I thought the material necessitated, and I pushed him.

BD:   Did he ever come to you and say a certain phrase just can’t be done?

Asia:   There are few places where he has said he was getting as close as he can, and I told him that if he really felt that it was going to be beyond his capability forever, I’d change it, because he’s one of the greatest pianists I know.

BD:   Do you want to change it, or do you want to just let him make a modification, and leave it so somebody else could play it?

Asia:   Precisely. There are a couple of places where he simply made a modification, and then there are other places where he said it was physically impossible, and he couldn’t do it. He also didn’t think anybody ever would be able to do it, so I said let’s change it!

BD:   A hundred years from now, should someone go back into your waste basket and dig up the original score and actually be able to do it as you first had it?

Asia:   They might! You never know.

BD:   What about putting it together artificially with multi-tracking?

Asia:   I’m not a believer to allowing technology to create the art object.

BD:   [Gently protesting] But your art object could be created by a further technology.

Asia:   I understand that, but in this case, where the piece is not being created with the technology as an equal partner, I’d rather have the technology used solely as a reproductive device, preserving what the human is capable of, rather than adding something on. It doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate Glenn Gould’s sessions in the recording studio. That’s a different matter. That’s creating a precision of sound, but not allowing the technology to define what sounds should actually be there if it is inhumanly possible to create them.

BD:   Is there such a thing as a perfect performance either technically or musically?
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Asia: I don’t think so, in the same way that there isn’t the perfect piece. There’s no real masterpiece... at least there isn’t for me. There are great weaknesses in what other people have written. I’m not saying anything new, and I don’t think that idea is revolutionary. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a marvelous piece, but what’s great about it is that it’s striving for something even beyond its capability to say, and it over-reaches sometimes. All great pieces over-reach. They try to climb the last rung, and don’t quite get there. It’s like a great jazz soloist is always trying to say something, and it’s the process of trying to say it, whether he actually achieves the final shape or definition of the idea. You go through the process of that soloist etching out that idea and getting as close as he can to it, and the great piece of music is doing the same thing. It’s trying to define this musical idea and take it on a journey, and when it actually reaches its destination and has said all it has to say, is immaterial. It’s somehow the blazing force behind the process of doing so. Part of the great thing about great music is that it doesn’t quite make it sometimes.

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BD:   Have you basically been pleased with the performances you’ve heard of your music?

Asia:   Oh, very much so. To have a soloist like André-Michel Schub is unbelievable. In my estimation, this guy can do it all, and I love him dearly. I love his playing.

BD:   But you don’t get him every week.

Asia:   With this concerto, I have so far, and what has been fascinating is to hear different orchestras do it with different conductors.

BD:   Is this the ideal way to launch a new work, especially a big work, to take it around and have it performed by half a dozen different orchestras?

Asia:   It’s every composer’s dream! I should have been this lucky with every piece, and have every symphony give ten performances within a year.

BD:   Are you going to go out and try to get more of these co-commissions?

Asia:   Sure, and we’re working on that right now with a cello concerto. It’s really the best thing for the piece, and it’s the best thing for the soloist. The most difficult thing for any soloist is to play a piece once. You only really learn about the piece once you’ve played it.

BD:   If five orchestras commission a piece, should they be asking for the third performance rather than the first one?

Asia:   [Laughs] There’s something exciting about that first performance, and while they’re nerve-wracking and anxiety-producing for everybody, they’re rarely perfect. How can they be? There are mistakes in the parts; you never have enough time to rehearse the piece; it’s new for everybody and they’re trying to figure out what it is at the first rehearsals. But there’s a certainly electricity about that first performance as well, which makes up for the fact that it might be a little bit more raw than the later performances. It’s the first performance, and everybody is hearing something for the first time. That’s an exciting prospect for a composer as well. This is the newest baby that’s just being born!

BD:   Are you ever surprised by what you hear?

Asia:   [Thinks a moment] No, I’m never surprised. I’m always anxious and I’m always nervous. Will it actually work as I think it’s going to work, and generally they do.

BD:   You’re pleased with the performances. Are you also pleased with the recordings, because they have much more lasting value since they’ll be on the shelf presumably forever?

Asia:   Sure. I’m very excited by the performances that are on discs so far. One of the things about recordings that I always have to remember is that they are in, some sense, a snapshot of where the piece was at a particular time.

BD:   Do you get frustrated at pieces which have been recorded, but then you made those little tinkerings so that the next performance is better than the record?
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Asia:   No question about it, and that’s the case with the Piano Conecrto. We recorded it a few months ago in New Zealand, and it will be out on a Koch disc in the fall or winter. But we’ve done three performances since then, and André-Michel wishes we could have waited, but we couldn’t. For various reasons, it had to be done then.

BD:   But if you did it a year from now you’d again wish you had been able to wait.

Asia:   Exactly, but then it wouldn’t have been played for six or seven months, and André-Michel might have been a bit more cold with the piece. Then it wouldn’t have been quite as fresh for him. Plus you also have to hope that maybe ten years down the road, we’ll record it again.

BD:   [Optimistically] Or somebody else will record it.

Asia:   Yes, and André-Michel has made it very clear that his greatest delight would be that another pianist or two would hear this disc and want to learn it. They would want to add that piece to their repertoire, and, God-willing, play it two years down the road with another orchestra. He has said he’d love to have somebody else bring their insights to the piece.

BD:   Would it be distressing to you to have your music played all over the world, all the time, in all kinds of places, and all kind of venues, or even in elevators?

Asia:   Distressing??? If that’s the price of fame, the answer is no! I’d be delighted! Obviously I would love to have my pieces get picked up by lots of conductors who would play it with lots of different orchestras, and that chamber musicians and soloists would also pick up my music and say that it means something to them. They would want to learn it and see what insights they can bring to it. That’s every composer’s dream.

BD:   You seem to be getting there slowly but surely.

Asia:   Slowly but surely, and I’m happy with that sort of progress. I much prefer the way I’ve done it, rather than to have been wildly successful five years ago, and then have nobody take any particular interest now. It’s been a slow steady growth curve, and I feel my music has grown and gotten better and better and better. That’s a very good feeling.

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BD:   Is composing fun?

Asia:   Composing is alternately nerve-wracking and wildly exciting. ‘Fun’ is not an adjective that I would use to describe the process. It’s exhilarating, it’s depressing, it’s overwhelming, it’s frustrating, it’s nerve-wracking, but for anybody who has to do it, it’s what they have to do. It’s the only thing that gives their life meaning. It’s the only way they can justify their existence. So ‘fun’ doesn’t even enter into the picture.

BD:   You’re in Arizona these days. Is that Muczynski’s old position?

Asia:   It is indeed.

BD:   We had a nice interview a few years ago. How is he these days, or do you see him?

Asia:   I don’t see him much. He’s somewhat of a recluse. We have met just once, and that was in Santa Fe, but his music is getting played more and more now. There was a period when it wasn’t getting played that much. Now, I see it being programmed more, and I hear it on the radio more, and I’m delighted that’s happening for him.

BD:   Is it at all off-putting to be out in the middle of the desert?

Asia:   No, it’s not off-putting. There are certain times when I feel somewhat disconnected or distant from the larger musical scene, but the benefits often outweigh the debits. When I lived in New York, I found it very difficult to disconnect from the almost frenetic energy that simply pierces through the atmosphere, and to separate and get the mental calm to focus on what it was I wanted to say. That’s not a problem in Arizona, and it’s been a very, very productive time for me.

BD:   You travel a lot, so you probably have the best of both.

Asia:   I travel a good bit, so I can plug in again and reconnect when I want. I can meet people, say hello, see what’s going on, and then go back and write my music.

BD:   Are you able to keep up with things by broadcasts and recordings?
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Asia:   Oh sure, very much so. I listen to a lot of things that are on the radio. I get to performances in New York and San Francisco and Boston, and I listen to a lot of CDs... I’ll rephrase that... I listen to some CDs! As a young composer, I wanted to go to every concert and hear everything that was going on. Now there’s less music that I hear that actually interests me, or that I wish to hear.

BD:   Do you still go to concerts of standard repertoire?

Asia:   Oh, I do very much. That’s what I end up going to, more than concerts of new music. But I also spend more time trying to find my own music than listening to other people’s music. Sometimes one’s brain can almost be clouded by other people’s perceptions. Plus there’s so much music that I hear simply on a daily basis by working as a professional musician. So in my off time, I want to be off, and the last thing I want to do is go hear a concert of music, no matter how great the performer. The ears can only take so much, and the brain stops processing it.

BD:   Go bowling, or take a walk in the desert.

Asia:   Exactly, or partake of another art form. I like to go to plays, and see good movies, and I like visual art a lot. I’m a photography collector, and I like painting a lot.

BD:   That would complement the purely aural music.

Asia:   That’s right. It gives a different way of understanding the world.

BD:   [Noting that he was 43...] Are you at the point in your career that you want to be at this age?

Asia:   Yes, I am. I’m not sure that I could ask for much more other than the aforementioned. I wouldn’t mind having four commissions lined up rather than one or two. That would be less worrisome in some respects, but I’m pleased with the music I’m writing, and I’m pleased with the way my music is developing. A career in music composition is almost an oxymoron. It’s not clear to me, even at this point, what a career is. I’m told indeed I have a career as a composer. Could I live on my music? The answer is no. There aren’t many composers who could make a living on the music that they write. At the same time, I’m very excited by the kind of music I am writing, the pieces I am writing, and by the reception that those pieces are getting, which, I can happily say, is, by and large, quite positive, whether it’s the CDs that are selling quite well and getting good reviews, or new pieces that are doing well.

BD:   These things all feed on each other.

Asia:   That’s right, and there’s a certain synergy in all of that. I’m hoping that it becomes ever stronger, and gives me the possibility to keep writing the music that I want to write. That’s the most important thing to me.

BD:   Let me ask you about your name. You’re not from Asia!

Asia:   I’m not from Asia. I’m Jewish, and the family comes from an area in the part of Europe which kept getting bounced back and forth between ownership of Russia, and Germany, and Austro-Hungary, and Poland. The Pale Area of Settlement is what it was called, where the majority of the Jewish population of Europe lived. That population was completely destroyed in the War by and large, and by some stroke of luck, my grandparents decided to come to this country. We think the name was pronounced AH-see-uh, but it was always spelled Asia, even in the old country. In Aramaic the name means physician, so somewhere back there we assume there must have been a long line of physicians. In this country they all became lawyers.

BD: [At this point we briefly discussed the recordings which were available, and others that were in the works, including a song-cycle disc.] What are the joys and sorrows for writing for the human voice?

Asia:   One is that you never know what notes the vocalists are going to hit, but the joy is that it’s the most immediate instrument we have in a great singer, and I’ve got two great singers on the voice disc. One is John Shirley-Quirk and his wife Sarah Watkins, who is an oboist, and they are doing a piece that I wrote for them.

BD:   I met them in New York, and they’re very nice.

Asia:   Oh, they’re just fantastic. Nobody delivers texts better than John. There may be his equal, but the way he gets the intent of the text across and the instrument is so terrific. The other singer is Carmen Pelton, and she is a joy. She is sort of Dawn Upshaw’s second, in the same way that Faye Robinson, who is a singer with us at the University of Arizona, is for Jessye Norman. Whenever Jessye can’t do something, or cancels, Faye comes in and does it. Carmen is just a beautiful singer, with a pure gorgeous voice, and she sings two song cycles on this disc.

BD:   Thank you for the conversation.

Asia:   Sure. This has been a pleasure.

This conversation was recorded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 12, 1996. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1998, and on WNUR in 2002, 2006, and 2017. This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he continued his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.