Thomas Kotcheff - Artist Statement
The inspiration for Between Systems grew out of my collaboration with composer and electronic artist Bryan Curt Kostors, where we delved into the question: What does it mean to interpret music in the context of modern classical performance?
In many other musical genres, interpretation is expected to be transformative, a performer takes an existing piece and makes it entirely their own. Think of Tony Bennett’ s rendition of The Beatles“ ’Eleanor Rigby,” which reimagines the song through a completely different artistic lens. In contrast, the convention in modern classical music tends to favor fidelity the performer’ s role is often seen as one of precision, aiming to recreate the original score as accurately as possible. Between Systems challenges that norm. This album is about expanding the role of the ‘classical interpreter ’ shifting expectations and embracing a broader, more fluid definition of interpretation.
Bryan Curt Kostors and I began working on this album in 2021 during a weeklong residency at the University of Montana School of Music, where Bryan is on faculty. Over the course of that week, we composed two original works for piano, synthesizers, and live audio processing an exploration of how these sound worlds could interact and expand each other.
We were immediately captivated by the colors and textures that emerged, and our early conversations about potential repertoire for the album were wide-ranging. One piece we knew we wanted to include from the start was John Cage’ s In a Landscape, which seemed to bloom effortlessly within our synth-based orchestration.
That led us to Morton Feldman, whose music is often paired with Cage’ s due to their lifelong friendship, and whose centennial is being celebrated this concert season. We were drawn to the musical spaciousness of his scores, which seemed to invite both extrapolation and interpretation. The more we experimented with his early piano works, the more we fell in love with the possibilities. In the end, the album’ s repertoire came together organically, centered on the early piano music of Cage and Feldman, refracted through our evolving sound palette.