Episode 26
Gil Shaham and Scott Wheeler
Interplay this week, a Conversation in Music, was with violinist Gil Shaham and composer Scott Wheeler. What could be better than a composer talking about his work with a great musician, and the musician talking about the work the great composer gifted to him. And it's called *The Singing Turk*, which has to be one of the best titles one has ever heard! I so enjoyed this trio talk of wit, grace, and Baroque homage and am sure you will also.
Find out more at www.michaelshapiro.com
Gil's website: www.gilshaham.com
Scott's website: www.scottwheeler.org
Transcript
Michael Shapiro:
Welcome to Interplay, conversations in music. This is Michael Shapiro, your host, with special guests violinist Gil Shaham in Boston, Scott Wheeler, also in Boston, and Michael Shapiro in Chappaqua, as always. Welcome, gentlemen.
Gil Shaham:
So good to be with you.
Michael Shapiro:
Great to see you. I've been so touched by the wonderful, burgeoning friendship, musical and personal, between Gil Shaham and Scott Wheeler. I first learned about your relationship, which is fabulously fruitful and wonderful, when I met Scott a few years back in a chamber series we did here in Chappaqua. And then we got to know each other very well through song and then talking about The Singing Turk, which I will get to shortly. But... (laughs) I'm very curious... You know, Gil, you have played everything with everyone in every place from the Berlin Philharmonic on down. You're even in the Boston Symphony virtual world right now, where you are in the middle of a burgeoning—I'm using burgeoning a lot—snowstorm.
Gil Shaham:
That's right. I'm usually in New York, but you're you're catching me in a hotel room in Boston. I'm here to um, um, join the BSO for their virtual series.
Michael Shapiro:
And you were just in Philadelphia doing the same thing with Yannick, I think, right?
Gil Shaham:
Yes, that's correct. Actually, Yannick wasn't there this time. I was very lucky to be with David Robertson.
Michael Shapiro:
Oh, very nice.
Gil Shaham:
Um, who is a wonderful conductor, and also brother-in-law, so it was very special.
Michael Shapiro:
That's right.
Gil Shaham:
Special experience.
Michael Shapiro:
That's right. I heard him conduct Porgy last year. In a different area.
Gil Shaham:
So did I. Yes, I saw that production. I loved that.
Michael Shapiro:
Absolutely. But you know, composer Scott Wheeler, we sit alone, we write our pieces. You're not a violinist, but you certainly write like you know the violin. So tell me the story first of your Second Violin Sonata, which follows by many years, I think, your First Violin Sonata.
Scott Wheeler:
My First Violin Sonata is the earliest piece of chamber music that I acknowledge, that I say, "This is not exactly a student piece." And it's from 1985. And it was written for Sharon Leventhal, who is a Boston-based violinist, still teaches at Boston Conservatory. And I was so scared of writing for the violin. It is such a a wildly different thing to do. So that I took every note to her and checked everything out, and she was sort of my violin whisperer. And she actually then commissioned my my first Violin Concerto and The Singing Turk. And so I've worked with her a lot on this, and that's where I get my sense of of that instrument. How the left hand works, how the right hand works, and everything about it. I was really thinking about hard that way. And guess who the pianist was when for the first sonata in 1985—a guy named Tony Tommasini.
Michael Shapiro:
He writes for the Times, right?
Scott Wheeler:
He played with—he played the premiere. So I rehearsed with Tony and Sharon, and we we put it on a few times. They did a great job on it.
Michael Shapiro:
And more recently, you wrote The Singing Turk, which Gil has taken up. Now Gil, this composer gets in touch with you, right? And he says, "I've got this piece." (Laughs) So how did you two meet and then why did you—why did you have that chemical reaction? Because you had to have been, as we used to say in the jazz world, "sent" in order to play this piece. Don't you think?
Gil Shaham:
Well, as I heard you guys speaking, I guess I had a couple of thoughts. One is, Michael, you also write very fluently for the violin. And do you play violin?
Michael Shapiro:
No way. Um... no. No.
Gil Shaham:
But do you consult with violinists or how how do you—
Michael Shapiro:
Well, surely I do. But I, you know, the most thing, I don't play tuba either. But... (laughs) I listen to everything all the time, and have for my entire life. Right. Um, my first violinist was my Uncle Charlie, who studied violin—he's a dentist—but he studied violin in the '20s when he was suffering from polio. So he'd come over to the house and bring a piano book, piano—a violin book—and we'd sit and we'd read through all the concerti. So before I conducted the Mendelssohn Concerto many years later, I'd already memorized it because I played the piano part. So that's how I started, hearing my Uncle Charlie. So Gil, um, what is in the writing of Scott Wheeler that is so immensely pleasurable?
Gil Shaham:
Yes, well...
Michael Shapiro:
That's what we're talking about, for the violin.
Gil Shaham:
Scott always asks, he says, "Look, maybe the violin part might not be—oh, it's awkward," or... It's always flawless. There's never any question, you know. And I don't think there's ever—there were a couple of places where where Scott said, "Look, Gil, you should feel free to, um, uh, improvise or or swing in the in the rag or something." So, you know, maybe we made some changes that way, you know, or or maybe I I read some wrong accidentals or something, but the violin writing is always flawless. And he did—he does ask, but I I feel like he he asks and knows the answer in advance. And that now—I don't—how did it happen with The Singing Turk? Did we meet before—
Scott Wheeler:
We talked about the piece in progress as I was working on it and I sent it to you. That—that was—I I did send it to you. You know, um... it was actually Edgar Vincent who introduced us, Gil.
Gil Shaham:
Yes, right.
Scott Wheeler:
Edgar Vincent was Gil's PR person. And—but he was—he was really a kind of a guru to many of us. I I went to Edgar for all kinds of advice and miss him very much. He must have died about 10 years ago?
Gil Shaham:
Something like that. Very, very, old-world impresario, man of music.
Scott Wheeler:
Yeah, he had been back from from the '50s and Beverly Sills, you know, managing people like that, um, from long ago. And he took up Placido and he had you. I—I was at his memorial service and I met Baryshnikov—he had worked for Baryshnikov. Anyway, so by lucking out and hanging out with Edgar, I I got in touch with you and I sent you a concerto, and we got talking, and we continued to correspond. And suddenly you're doing this sonata of mine all over the world, my friend. So then we—you skipped ahead when you talk about the rag, but then I did write the rag just for you.
Gil Shaham:
Right, that's true. That was sort of this year. But I don't know if Scott, if you know that um, when we first got the music for Singing Turk, I uh, I had a rehearsal with my good friend and wonderful pianist Akira Eguchi, and uh, we played through it, and we loved it, and we were like, we have to start programming the piece, you know. And and you you were asking, Michael, before, Scott just has a sense for violin, for the sound of the violin, for the colors. Um, when I think of that of that sonata, it goes through so many different um voices of the violin, you know, low register, um high register, many notes, single notes, you know, a whole range of violin expression. And uh, and Scott just has a a feel for the violin that that I love that, you know, lets us sing. It's it's not a very precise, uh, you know, my English isn't describing this very precisely.
Michael Shapiro:
Okay, be'Ivrit, be'Ivrit.
Gil Shaham:
Be'Ivrit? Be'Ivrit, he makes the violin sing. Hu noten la-kinor lashir.
Michael Shapiro:
Toda. So, let's talk—Wheeler, did you get that? (Laughs) Sorry. In any event...
Scott Wheeler:
I think I got what I need about that, that's—I'm I'm in I'm I'm embarrassed and flattered.
Michael Shapiro:
You got what you needed.
Scott Wheeler:
I... you know, there there is the aspect, too, of the singing that's in the title and that relates to the opera excerpts that are embedded in that sonata. And I think of the fact that Gil has an entire CD of opera paraphrases, so that he is also an opera singer through the violin, and I think there's a—there's some kind of connection going on there.
Michael Shapiro:
Let's talk, if we might, about the inner workings of The Singing Turk, Scott Wheeler's Second Violin and Piano Sonata, as played by Gil Shaham so brilliantly. There are elements of Scott Wheeler, there are elements of pastiche, of opera, all in this kind of mixed salad. So Gil, first, what's going on in this piece and how were you attracted to it as a performer of opera pieces?
Gil Shaham:
Well, I I think that that Scott is much um better equipped at discussing the um breakdown of the piece. But it it's what's incredible for me is um the versatility of the writing, you know. The the first movement—and please jump in if I'm saying the wrong thing—is is loosely based on Handel. Is that—is that fair?
Scott Wheeler:
Of course.
Gil Shaham:
Is it right? The aria is is from—the aria is is is from Handel, although the opening—I don't know, how would you describe it? It's um—
Scott Wheeler:
It's a wildly abstracted bit of that aria which only slowly assembles itself.
Michael Shapiro:
That's an interesting way of putting it.
Scott Wheeler:
That's what happens. Throughout the first half of the piece, we we find out, "Oh, this Handel was actually going on there, that's what what this was about." And then it departs and briefly returns at the end. That's the shape of the first piece—of the first movement. You know, I as far as Michael's question, what's Wheeler and what's say Handel, I used to be so concerned when I started writing, how could I write that something that's my music? And I find more and more that the more I look at somebody else's music, like Handel, the more it becomes me. The more I'm open to allowing the Handel in, the more my own actual voice seems to emerge. I don't know what what's that's about. I guess I'm just older and I don't care.
Michael Shapiro:
I want to answer to that, that a French philosopher once said—and I don't remember his last name—that we forget things so that we can remember them. But in this case, it does come through. Now Gil, it's very interesting because I've been listening to many of your recent videotapes that you've done throughout the world. You're very much drawn, I think, to the structure and sound of Baroque music, am I right?
Gil Shaham:
You know, the older I get, the more I am. It's true. You're absolutely right. I I don't know that I've ever said it out loud the way you just did, but I think I think that's probably true. I think the violin is a Baroque instrument, you know. Um, and and I love that era and that feeling of experimentation, you know. Th- This was the time when when violins were not quite formed, you know. The the tuning wasn't uniform, the size wasn't—many things weren't uniform. And then they came up upon this violin, and and everything was experimental, everything was new. And um, yeah, and and so I I feel as a violinist somehow particularly drawn drawn to that. Um, yeah, there's something about Baroque bowings that are are very comfortable, you know. Later, later, even even in the Classical era or or certainly by the time you get to the 19th century, composers write very long notes for instruments, and and I do love that, you know. It does—that gives us a chance to sing in a in a certain way.
Michael Shapiro:
Yeah.
Gil Shaham:
But it's not quite as natural as those short Baroque, um, Baroque things on the on the—I I don't—yeah, it's very hard to um to say, but but it's true. I am always always drawn, and and the Baroque composers experimented with violin duets and violin trios and violin as accompaniments and violins as uh as solo instruments, and uh... yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
Always the progress—the progress from the viola da gamba, suddenly the violin's coming in, the cello's coming in, the other instruments are following. I spoke to a cellist recently and she said that Bach wrote cello pieces, not not necessarily for the gamba, you know? Because it was the new instrument in a way. Um. Now, this...
Gil Shaham:
I think of those Tanzmeisters—you know, those Tanzmeisters, they had their pochettes, the little violins in their pockets. And they would go and teach, you know, they would teach the dances, and and the violin was the vehicle by which they would teach the dances. They would arrive and then they would take out their pochette, their violin from their pocket, and um and play a gavotte or a bourrée or whatever it would be.
Scott Wheeler:
You know, I know I've heard you often play Bach as an encore, but you introduced me just recently to a Baroque composer or late Baroque, Leclair.
Gil Shaham:
Yeah. What did—what do you think, Scott?
Scott Wheeler:
I—well, I find it is is—it's very inspiring. Those those Leclair duets, and that's not a Baroque composer that I even knew. I don't know how how much—I mean, of course, it's a well-known composer, just as a name to me though, but I've been exploring them with great interest with, and with purpose, of course, because I'm writing a duet for for Gil and his wife Adele Anthony. And and I'm using Leclair in some sense as an oral model.
Gil Shaham:
Although there is an incredible story about Jean-Marie Leclair. I don't know if—tell us. I I don't want to take too much time, and and I'm I'm probably going to get this wrong, you know. I'm probably not going to say the correct story.
Michael Shapiro:
Short version.
Gil Shaham:
But what I remember is that um Jean-Marie Leclair was a virtuoso violinist living in Paris, and uh he ended up marrying a lady of the aristocracy who was very much involved in um musical engraving at the time, you know. And uh, then Jean-Marie Leclair was found murdered outside their estate um and uh, th- there—I think there was a police case that's—all that was opened, where they couldn't um they they never found out what the—who who the murderer was or something, but it appeared to have been caused by a blunt trauma to the head, perhaps from an instrument used for musical engraving. (Laughs) And and of course, Madame Leclair was never charged or investigated as she was a member of the aristocracy.
Michael Shapiro:
God, I would recommend that we pay our copyists, okay? (Laughs) You know, I never knew that story, Gil. This is m- fabulous. This th- this—we add this to uh the story of Gesualdo, you know, stabbing his wife and her boyfriend on the—in the bed. And also the story of the French composer on the bicycle, who crashed. We won't have to go into all of this, but this is crazy stuff.
Gil Shaham:
And what was—wasn't there a Haydn Haydn in the—the Haydn skull? Somebody just told me. Wh- What is this story?
Michael Shapiro:
It was a Shakespeare skull, I can't keep them straight. One of them was stolen, I know that.
Gil Shaham:
I think his skull was stolen from his grave or something, yeah.
Michael Shapiro:
Crazy stuff. All right, we're going to get off the macabre and go back to The Singing Turk, because the feature of our discussion today is played by Gil Shaham, our guest, and written by Scott Wheeler, our guest. Scott, the second movement of The Singing Turk, talk about it just briefly. It's so different, isn't it?
Scott Wheeler:
Oh. The composer is Gibert. The composer whose sources is is embedded there is Gibert, and you know, he was—he's not known as a composer, and in fact what he gave us is something like a lead sheet. It really isn't the proper aria. But it was a—an opera about a a woman in a Turkish harem, uh, and a an European woman, a French woman. And the star of the opera was Madame Favart. And Favart was the librettist, and his wife was the star, and she sang and she accompanied herself on the harp.
Michael Shapiro:
Wow.
Scott Wheeler:
Famously. So that was what it was, so it's this famous harp aria for her. And we just have the melody, so I just took the melody and I gave it my own chords.
Michael Shapiro:
Beautiful.
Scott Wheeler:
So, da-da-da-da-da-da. That's what you're—you're doing, Gil, is taking her aria which says, "You may be the the the man in charge here, but he—I—it—I own your heart. You cannot escape, (laughs) because I I—you're in love with me." Uh, so that's the meaning of of that aria. So the second—the slow movement is is all about love.
Michael Shapiro:
It's lovely. And it has the Baroque flavor, but it has the the Wheeler touch. Now, um, Gil, I'm very interested about the third movement, which is takes off. Talk about that, would you?
Gil Shaham:
Well, I think really we we cover so many styles and and so fluently. I think, you know, maybe, I don't know if you would say the second movement has some sort of impressionist or um s- s- s- something like that. Th- The third movement is Rossini and joyous, you know, and and very—and th- they really work beautifully as a sonata that way, you know. And um, yeah, you know, th- this is more um virtuosic vio- violin. I mean, you do you do get to to sing, but I feel like um maybe the violinist in in the in the Rossini orchestra playing playing their 16th notes. S- Something like that?
Scott Wheeler:
Well, it's also coloratura, you see, the singers da-da-da-da-da-da, they do actually those arpeggios, singers do them, and what happens is that you and the piano duet in a way that hasn't been true in the other movements, so that it becomes uh not just a—an aria, but a duet in the last movement. So that the the the joyousness comes in part from the trade-offs.
Michael Shapiro:
What comes through—it comes through. It's very effective and the the difference between the three movements is striking, but it all hangs together because it's in your voice, as played by Gil Shaham. Now,...
Gil Shaham:
And Akira Eguchi really—he does such a wonderful—
Michael Shapiro:
I'm sorry, say again?
Gil Shaham:
Th- Th- The pianist, Akira Eguchi, he's so wonderful. Longtime friend and and he really plays it so beautifully.
Michael Shapiro:
He does, he does. Um, so, we're living through this period of isolation, as it were, and with three people in three different places, although you're both in Boston for a while. You wrote a rag, you call it Isolation Rag, and you wrote it for Gil Shaham, our guest. So Scott Wheeler, talk about Isolation Rag, and then, Gil, I'm very curious to hear how you reacted to it during this period.
Scott Wheeler:
Well, I I just—I just woke up one day hearing this melody and saying, "That's what this is. This is a little ragtime piece that's a little bit sad and it's in major, but it's a little bit haunted or or or wistful." Uh, and you see, the last concert I went to, live concert, was in March, and it was Gil and Akira in Los Alamos, and their encore was The Graceful Ghost Rag of William Bolcom. And I love, love the feeling that he gave, and although that's a minor key one, I thought of something a little bit like that to give to Gil as a solo. And then in the midst of it, what sort of emerges are little bits of the concertos that Gil plays all over the time with orchestras that he can't play with now.
Michael Shapiro:
You layered that in there. Gil, what did you—what was your reaction when you got it?
Gil Shaham:
Well, Scott sent it in an email and very sort of uh quiet, unassuming, you know, um, "Hey, you know, have a look at this," you know, (laughs) s- something like that. And I was very honored, and I um I opened it up and I started playing it. And I love it, and and th- you know, it it's very it's subtle, you know. It's it's it really captures the feeling of our time perfectly. Th- There's something about uh about Scott's subconscious that uh really honed in on s- on something. O- On the top of the page, I think you write the word "cheerfully."
Michael Shapiro:
Yeah, I find that very funny in a piece that's totally bittersweet. But thank you, Scott, for combining different things all at once, because that's the way—that's what we do.
Gil Shaham:
But that is what I was doing. I was in my room cheerfully reading through this, and underneath it there is an undertone of, "Well, when can I see my friends? When can I, you know, join an orchestra? When will I play Brahms' Violin Concerto, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto?" And um, and somehow that—the piece captures that that blend perfectly.
Michael Shapiro:
It does. I want to talk to, just to end our conversation just very briefly, Scott's mentor in many ways was Virgil Thomson, who I only met briefly and had a wonderful conversation on the phone with him about Preciocilla, his piece for—uh, s- vocal piece, which he told me the derivation of, in only a way Virgil could. But in Virgil's—one of his books, he talks about a kind of circle in the middle, which—who is the composer, and surrounded by the instrumentalists, surrounding by the orchestra, surrounding by the—he put—I think he puts agents way up here. (Laughs) Or Sol Hurok is nowhere there or Arthur Judson, you know, it's... Don't want to know from them. But the the point of the matter is, he felt as a composer, of course, that we—we, we create the ripples that go out to people like you, Gil. So it's obvious that there's a ripple that has been sent from Scott Wheeler to you, which has been very meaningful, and I think it has enriched your life. Talk about about that a little, please, and then I'd like to hear what Scott feels about going the opposite direction. Very quickly.
Gil Shaham:
Well, I do love that and and I I feel like I guess I always say that's that is our job. We're we're like we're like actors, you know, we we're wh- instrumentalist, that is, we we are um people who read something on the page and then we try to bring it to life for for our audience. And I and I do love this and this um image, this analogy of of, you know, th- the pebble drops and then, you know, th- th- the waves start resonating, and it really is a ripple.
Michael Shapiro:
It's in circles, it's in—and he—I think there's even a drawing in the book about it. Scott, speak to this. Now you go—you're going from the opposite direction that Gil is.
Scott Wheeler:
Well, I... yeah, but it is—it's that's that is the direct connection, because you see, if I'm—when I'm writing for Gil, as I am now in this duet and as I am in a concerto, uh, the concerto is going to be called Birds of America. Um...
Gil Shaham:
Wait, I can't wait.
Scott Wheeler:
Um, the the thing is, people always ask me as a composer, "Who are you writing for? Do you write for yourself or do you write for the audience?" And I always say, "I write for the performer." Because only the performer is going to reach the audience. If I don't reach the performer, then there's no way it's going to get through to the audience. Uh, i- it has to be through through that. So, I'm listening to Gil, but of course Gil, I've been watching him, and if you've ever watched Gil Shaham perform, okay, the vivid changes of expression and the th- the way that he coordinates and relates to his pianist or his orchestra or his conductor or other soloists, it's amazing. He's so present that there—there's this electricity. So, I'm trying to tap into some of that.
Michael Shapiro:
Well, you certainly have, and and you know, there's a joy coming from both of you, which is obvious in this only half-hour conversation that we can have today. But I want to thank uh my guests, Gil Shaham and Scott Wheeler, for joining me. Thank you.
Gil Shaham:
It's a pleasure.
Scott Wheeler:
Thank you so much, Michael.
Michael Shapiro:
And I'm Michael Shapiro on Interplay: Conversations in Music. Thank you for joining us.