University of Chicago Presents | Clarice assad |

Clarice Assad | University of Chicago Presents

12/2/15, 10:28 PM

CLARICE ASSAD UChicago Presents: You’ve said as a child, you began singing as a form of escapism. You ended up making up musical “themes” for members of the family. Was that the first time you remember consciously “composing”?

Clarice Assad: Yeah, I guess so. I was making up lots of little songs at the time, especially with my father, who encouraged me a lot. I think that was more the beginning of my improvisation, because most of the things I did with my family were totally on-the-spot. It’s such a shame that we don’t have recordings of [those]!

UCP: You mention your father’s influence. Since your father is a composer and musician as well, would you consider him to have also been your first teacher?

CA: He was. It wasn’t something that he did because he wanted me to have a musical career or anything like that, but because he enjoyed it so much, and because it was a great way for us to spend time together and share that passion he had for music. So I have an emotional attachment to it. Because of that, music is something I associate more with warmth and family than practicing an instrument for five hours!

UCP: Did your siblings share that affinity for music?

CA: Well, they’re both very, very musical, and very talented, but they chose different paths. My brother has a beautiful singing voice and is a songwriter, but he became a filmmaker. And my sister used to play amazing classical piano.

UCP: You started off in the jazz program at Berklee, but transferred to Roosevelt University, here in Chicago. Why? CA: At the time, I was so young, and Berklee felt like a huge place. Back then, I didn’t speak English very well, and I felt that I needed to be in a smaller environment in order to communicate. Also, though I grew up improvising, I realized I wasn’t going to learn [at Berklee] what I really wanted to learn, which was how to write for orchestra. At the time, Berklee didn’t even have an orchestra—they do now, but they didn’t then. So I felt like I really needed to be at a conservatory, and my stepmom, Angela [Olinto, of the University’s Astronomy & Astrophysics Department], and my dad lived in Chicago. It felt like a natural step to [go to school there], and I ended up at Roosevelt.

UCP: What did Roosevelt offer you musically during that time?

CA: It was great for me because teachers were coming in from the Chicago Symphony, so it was becoming more and more https://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/media/artists/clarice-assad-0

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Clarice Assad | University of Chicago Presents

12/2/15, 10:28 PM

CA: It was great for me because teachers were coming in from the Chicago Symphony, so it was becoming more and more established for music. And it was a small school, so people knew who you were. I also got a lot of personal help and attention from some of the professors—that was a very important thing to get as young student, because you have so many doubts! You’re learning, so you have to make a lot of mistakes. It was really good for me to be in a school like that.

UCP: Something I’m always interested in asking composers is what their experience was like formally studying composition in a university setting. Did you find that academia created new possibilities for you, or did it sometimes feel restrictive?

CA: I never really thought about that… I just assumed it was something everyone did; everybody studied with somebody at some point! I didn’t think of composition as something you can’t teach, though I understand why people would think that. It’s such a creative and solitary process—it’s coming from your head. But you can be given a lot of guidance, suggestions, and tools to enrich your [musical] vocabulary, and I think that’s what school is great for.

I also had a lot of opportunities to get my music performed, and that was the best teacher I’ve ever had. Hearing your arrangements and compositions performed by real musicians instead of just in your own head—that is probably one of the best things I got out of the school.

UCP: When do you think you developed your own voice as a composer?

CA: It’s a quest for life! I went through so many phases. But when I write and perform something with all these crazy [vocal] effects that I like to do, I think that’s something that’s very unique to me, because I’m using my own voice. So that’s literally my own voice coming through, when I write for myself! It’s really personal.

UCP: What is the composing process like for you? Is it usually feverish (happens in bursts) or slower and more measured?

CA: It depends—it depends on the project and on so many things. But I usually like to have a visual picture of what it is that I’m trying to say, as though I’m telling a story. So with that as a guideline, it’s easier for me to know where to go. And if I don’t have that, it becomes impossible to create. So once I hit that place, I can write pretty fast.

UCP: What advice would you give someone who might be interested in composing but doesn’t know where to begin?

CA: I’d say to follow your intuition. Because a lot of time, when you go into the community, you have a lot of people telling you things and you can get lost. That happened to me: When I went to school, I was so young, and I started listening to all this music I’d never heard in my life, and of course I was influenced by all these people who had come before me. It’s very common to copy and imitate [them]. Along the way, there’s got to be something that’s you, and that’s so important not to lose, no matter what.

That’s what I’d call your intuition—it’s really important, because only you can tell what that is.

UCP: I also wanted to ask you about what it’s like being a female composer. Do you still feel like it’s a boy’s world out there?

CA: When I went to the University of Michigan [for graduate school], I was one of maybe two or three women in a class of 50!

That was really interesting, especially being at bigger school. I didn’t feel as much that way at Roosevelt, because there was so few of us by comparison, anyway.

But now, I see a lot more woman composers than when I was going to school. They’re doing very well. So it’s a good time to take advantage of that. There’s room for more music than ever before—music of different styles, too. These days, I don’t think there’s as much tension [between styles]; you can pursue more than one style of music, and have it be your own style of music. It’s not like we have to write atonal music anymore, but if you want to write atonal music, go right ahead!

UCP: Speaking of combining styles: Your compositions amalgamate many different styles and idioms, from the symphonic tradition to Brazilian music to scat singing. When did you realize that you could combine all of these existing elements to forge your own style?

CA: I think it happened unconsciously and very naturally. Growing up listening to so many different types of music, music just became like a language—actually, like many languages combined. [Like language], music is all about sound and how you internalize it. You can emulate [that], I think. There’s things that are so foreign to me, and that don’t come naturally to me. And when I try https://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/media/artists/clarice-assad-0

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Clarice Assad | University of Chicago Presents

12/2/15, 10:28 PM

it. You can emulate [that], I think. There’s things that are so foreign to me, and that don’t come naturally to me. And when I try to do that and I hear it, I think, “That doesn’t sound natural.”

UCP: I guess it makes sense that it would seem unnatural to limit yourself to one genre or idiom when you grew up hearing so many around the house. Then, on the other hand, Brazil itself is so diverse—culturally, ethnically, musically.

CA: It is, it is. I mean, my father was playing classical guitar, and his father was playing choro music on the mandolin, so I had a lot of different things. Also, don’t forget the radio, so we were listening to American music all day long! So it’s amazing all the music that I got from an early age.

UCP: You also have a piece premiering at Ravinia this summer, Sephardic Suite. Mind telling us a little about that?

CA: It’s a string quartet plus the Cavatina Duo [a classical guitar-flute duo based in Chicago]. They commissioned four composers to write arrangements for them based on Sephardic music. It’s already been recorded, and it’s great, because I wasn’t familiar with some of the music they sent me.

UCP: And will we hear any of your compositions on this program?

CA: Oh yes, of course: some of my works, and some of my father’s works, also arrangements of Brazilian music. But mostly, I think we’re going to be performing our own music this time.

Interview conducted by Hannah Edgar (UChicago '18)

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https://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/media/artists/clarice-assad-0

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