Elana Hedrych November 2015
Interview of composer and educator, Marti Epstein Elana Hedrych: Thank you for being a part of this interview. I’m interviewing you today to learn about your experience and history of being a composer and an educator. Can you tell me a little about who you are and what you do? Big question… Marti Epstein: My name’s Marti Epstein and I’m a composer, pianist, teacher, hockey mom… that might be it. EH: What are your philosophies on teaching in a classroom setting or one-on-one? ME: Because I teach music, it’s important to me to have the students hear music. I teach a lot of music theory related classes and it’s very important to me that the students hear music that the theory comes from instead of teaching theory as theory. Because theory comes from music. When I teach composition, it’s important for me to try to find who my students are, and try to get them to express or find their compositional voice but still get them to learn about as many kinds of music as possible. And get them to try different things because that’s how they’ll discover their voice. EH: What are your philosophies on composing, for you? ME: I would like to, as a composer, obviously express who I am as a composer. But I don’t ever want to get stuck into a comfort zone, into doing the same thing over and over again. So I’m always trying to challenge myself, and give myself “problems,” basically, when composing. Things I’ve never done before, or trying to do things in a way I’ve never done them before. Personally, I’m interested in trying to find beauty in music. But beauty can be different in every piece, and sometimes incorporates things that aren’t beautiful. I’m interested in trying to create a sound environment in every piece, and hopefully there will be people who want to listen to it. EH: What kind of music do you think you compose? ME: I hope that I write really good music! I would say that my music is post-20th century, post-classical, post-tonal, lots of posts… it’s very spacious. It takes a long time to unfold. It tends to be very quiet. It’s not tonal but it’s not-not tonal, not atonal. I’m interested in sound and constructing a piece of music with sound. I’m not interested in traditional melody-harmony constructs. EH: Piano is your primary instrument?
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ME: Yes. I also can play clarinet. I played clarinet all through elementary and high school. I still play it sometimes for fun, but I’m terrible. I learned how to play harp so I could learn how to write for harp. I’ve been told my harp writing is excellent, so that’s good! I played viola in high school, and I was the original “bad violist” that they made all the jokes about. But I know how to write for string instruments pretty well! EH: Can you tell me about your background as a pianist? ME: I started playing piano when I was really, really young. (Marti showed me a picture on the wall of the office where she’s playing piano at 2 years old.) You can see my hand position is not anything that anyone would ever admit to. Even at that early age I was always attracted to going to the piano and plunking out sounds. I started playing by ear, picking things out by ear when I was 3 or 4. I started taking lessons when I was 6. When I was a kid, I mostly played pop songs. I can play the entire output of Elton John! Since high school I’ve been mostly a classical pianist. I do a lot of accompanying, I play a lot of modern music, I play my own music. EH: Do you prefer to play your own music or do you prefer to have someone else perform it? ME: I prefer to have someone else perform it. It’s more interesting to me to hear what other people’s interpretations would be. Having said that, if I play my own music I know for sure that I’m going to get a performance, you know. I have played my own music a lot, but it’s more interesting to me to write for other instruments, and it’s more interesting to me to hear others perform my music. EH: Can you talk to me about your education? ME: I went to public high school. I was very lucky in that there was a great music program at my high school, so I played clarinet in band and wind ensemble and I played viola in orchestra, piano in orchestra, accompanied the chorus, sang in chorus, I played harp in orchestra, and all that. I went to college at the University of Iowa as a Composition major and Piano major. And then I transferred to the University of Colorado for the second half, and was just a Composition major. I got my Masters Degree and Doctorate at Boston University in Composition. EH: How did you begin working at Berklee? ME: The year after I graduated from BU with my Doctorate, one of my professors called me and said “hey, there’s a job opening at Berklee, it’s a part time job but you should apply for it!” One of my best friends – Rick Applin, who just passed away recently, he was teaching here, he said I should apply. And so I did. There was an internal candidate that they wanted but they hired me. That was in 1991. EH: What were your first experiences with teaching?
Elana Hedrych November 2015 ME: Complete terror. You mean here, or anywhere? EH: Anywhere? ME: I taught piano and music theory at the Rivers Music School in Weston. In high school I taught a few piano students. When I was getting my Doctorate at BU I taught Ear Training as a teaching assistantship. I would say I’ve been teaching a long time, more than 30 years. But I feel like I’m always learning how to do it. I get to the end of every class and I think “what grade would I give myself today?” It’s hard to know if what you’re telling people gets through. Sometimes years and years go by before you realize you had any impact at all. I’m always thinking about how I can do it better… with varying degrees of success. EH: What were your first experiences with composing? ME: The very first piece I wrote was a clarinet quartet when I was in 5th grade. I didn’t write another piece until I started taking lessons when I was in high school. I wrote a piece for piano and vibraphone because I had a crush on this vibraphone player. He brought his vibraphone over to my house and I recorded it on my little cassette recorder. I got bitten by the bug right away. It was so fun to write pieces and give music to people and have them play it. It was an immediate love affair which hasn’t stopped. EH: Do you have any kind of process in composing? ME: I get my ideas for pieces when I’m out walking, swimming… they often take the form of visual ideas. I usually draw a picture of the piece before I figure out what the pitches and rhythms are going to be. I do a lot of thinking away from the desk. I do not use a computer in any way, shape, or form in my composing. And I only use the piano to make sure the sonorities are what I think they are. Everything is in my head. EH: Do you mentor composers or teach private piano lessons right now? ME: I do not teach private piano lessons; I stopped doing that in 1998 and will probably never do it again. I do teach private composition lessons. I have 5 students at Boston Conservatory, I have 2 directed study students here (Berklee), next semester I think I have 5 slots, I teach a high school kid, I’m comfortable teaching composition lessons. EH: Do you have any particular piece of yours or series of pieces that you’re proud of? ME: Most of them, but in particular… I’m going to have a CD of my music that’s coming out in a month. And there’s a piece on there that’s one movement, 50 minutes. It’s called
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Hypnagogia. I’m especially proud of that piece because I had never done anything like that before – have a one movement piece that lasts for a long time that is coherent from start to finish. There’s another large ensemble piece called Troubled Queen. Also a concerto for English horn and wind ensemble called Bloom. I’m especially proud of those. EH: Troubled Queen was inspired by the painting? ME: Jackson Pollock painting at the MFA. EH: Are the other two pieces that are going to be on this record inspired by something in particular? ME: Hypnagogia is the state you’re in right before you fall asleep. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, where a solution to a problem you’ve been working on suddenly is revealed to you in that state – or you come up with some really creative idea in that state – that’s what this piece is about. A lot of my pieces are about flowers or vegetation, and that’s what Bloom is tangentially about. Tuesday, November 24th is the concert at Boston Conservatory. It’s a free concert and we’re playing two of the pieces that are on the CD. EH: How do you go about getting your compositions performed in different parts of the world? ME: Now, it’s usually that people ask me. They commission a piece for me and then the commission always involves a performance. Either people hear about my music and they ask me if they can perform a piece, or I will sometimes send things around. That doesn’t actually work that well, to just sort of send someone something cold. It’s usually that people contact me. So my advice to younger composers is to befriend performers because they will be the ones who will play your music. EH: Can you talk to me about the pieces you’ve written that are commissioned, and explain the experience of writing a commissioned piece versus one that comes out of your own fruition? ME: First of all, I won’t take a commission if it’s not artistically interesting to me. Having said that, I haven’t written a piece that was not a commission in a long time but I’ve been thinking lately that I really would like to write a large-scale orchestra piece, and it’s almost impossible to get a commission for that. So if I don’t have any specific projects over the summer I’m going to do something like that, because I feel like I have that kind of a piece in me. The problem is if it’s not a commission, I don’t know how I’ll get it performed, but I might cross that bridge when I come to it because I know that there’s something I want to say.
Elana Hedrych November 2015 EH: Do you have anything else you want to say about educating or composing, anything in general about you? ME: I think when you’re educating artists, you have to make sure they have a lot of craft and discipline. Everyone wants to be creative, everyone here at Berklee is creative. I don’t need to do anything as a teacher to foster my students’ creativity, but I do need to make sure that they have discipline and craft. A lot of students sometimes think that discipline and craft destroys creativity, but in fact the opposite is true. Discipline and craft set creativity free. I know this because I’ve tried to paint. I’m stuck painting the same things because I have no craft. And so my creativity as a visual artist is completely stunted. When I retire, in 30 years or whenever, I’m going to really learn the craft of painting so my creativity can be released. EH: You’re saying that creativity can’t truly be released unless it has craft behind it, some sort of system that it comes through? ME: Exactly, exactly.