Part 1 of Season 2 Episode 13: Dr. Marilyn Nonken--Concert Pianist, Steinway Artist, Musicologist, & Educator

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Hello everyone, welcome back to the PianoPod. I'm Yuki Miisong. I'm Clara Zhang.
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For anyone listening or watching our show for the first time, welcome!
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Clara and I are both classical pianists and piano teachers from New York City.
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This podcast is for anyone who plays the piano for fun, loves listening to the piano music,
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or for someone who is currently pursuing a career in piano, works in the industry professionally,
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or anyone who is simply curious about the world of piano music.
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In each episode, we interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the music industry.
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Before getting started, we want to thank our listeners for tuning in.
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Please read our show and review on Apple Podcasts because every reading and review will help people find our show.
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So our guest of today's episode is Dr. Marilyn Nanken, pianist, Steinway artist, musicologist,
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and director of piano studies at New York University, Steinhardt.
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My alma mater, actually. I attended there around 2007-2008 and I already had my undergraduate and
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master's degree in Florida and I was working as a college professor in Florida, but I just decided to
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pack up and put everything in my Honda Accord and then with the U-Haul trailer in the back and
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decided to drive. It took me two days to get to New York City just because I couldn't speed up so much
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with the U-Haul and then I got to New York in January, the coldest time of the month of the year
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and it was like really shocking, you know, coming from really relaxed Florida, sunshine Florida,
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and then getting into New York City in such a cold day, but the experiences, the classes I took,
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and then the classes I took, and then the piano lessons I got, and then all the other training I
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received from NYU was just so priceless and especially with the people I met and so I'm
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very, very excited to be able to interview Dr. Nanken after, gosh, 15-16 years. So I'm so excited
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to be able to reconnect with her. Yeah, and you have also, you've known Dr. Nanken, right?
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That's right. I met Dr. Nanken once in person about I think 2008, 2009, you know, it's just like you,
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I actually, I had this fascination of studying at NYU for some reason when I was young, maybe I was
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watching too much Friends, you know, so I just, I almost like wasn't like particularly thinking,
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oh, Juilliard or Mahanet School, obviously those are beautiful schools, but when I was in Kansas,
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I really just, so I emailed Mr. Samuel Bernstein at the time and actually came to study with him,
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2005 audition there and got in and they hired me as an adult faculty, but I was very young. I was
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like just a little over 20, 21 years old and my teacher in Kansas felt that if I came to New York
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by myself alone at that time, I would get lost. So I went to UMass first and then I came back
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to New York and I met up with Dr. Nanken to discuss further on the PhD program and so since then,
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I've been following her journey and she's such an inspirational pianist and teacher, mentor,
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you know, and a professor. So yeah, I'm very excited. Yeah, same here. Yeah. And then as we
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were learning about her for this episode, like, oh my gosh, she is, she is just an amazing woman. So
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so I can't wait to reconnect with her after over a decade and since I graduated from NYU, so
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to end to hear her personal stories, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, she is here. So let's
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get the show started. You're listening to the piano part where we talk to the brightest minds
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in the industry about how they're bringing the piano into the 21st century. We are delighted to
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introduce our guest of season two, episode 13, Dr. Marilyn Nanken, pianist, recording artist,
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Steinway artist, musicologist, and educator. Dr. Nanken has regarded as quote, a determined
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protector of important music end quote by the New York Times and quote, one of the greatest
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greatest interpreters of new music end quote by American record guide. She has performed at the
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world's most prestigious concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim
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Museum, and the Theater Booth du Nord in Paris and Chicago Symphony Center. The composers who have
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written music for her include Michael Byron, Richard Carrick, Priya Chia, Jason Ecker,
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and many others. Dr. Nanken is the author of the Spectral Piano, published in 2015,
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and Identity and Diversity in New Music, which was published in 2019. She has recorded more
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than 30 discs and has published articles on various topics regarding 20th century music.
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Dr. Nanken is also an educator since 2006. She has been a distinguished faculty member
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and director of piano studies at New York University's Steinhardt School. So today we're
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going to cover the topics including Dr. Nanken's early years as a student pianist, her career as a
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recording artist, educator, musicologist, and we also talk about her latest projects and so much
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more. So Marilyn, we're so honored to have you today on our show and being able to interview you
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during this, especially this special month, the Women's History Month, and personally I'm so happy
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to reconnect with you after 15 years since I graduated from NYU. It's wonderful to see you
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and to be speaking with you. Thank you so much for having me. Welcome to my world. Thank you.
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Thank you. So you know, because I graduated from NYU, so we have to talk about NYU. We have to start
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with this COVID. So it must have been such a challenging two years for you. Well, I think
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so many people have suffered during the last few years and it's been, I think, very difficult for
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those of us involved in the performing arts for whom live performance is so important and I've
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always, always been a performer who treasured really meeting audiences and playing for people
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and playing on particular pianos in particular spaces and that form of connection with the
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audience. So I personally have found it very difficult. I've never become a big fan of
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listening online and remotely. I think that's been the whole art of live performance has taken on a
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different meaning over the last few years. And I also think as a teacher, all of us who teach
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students have really missed that connection with students and hearing people working with them and
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being sort of bodies in real spaces. You know, thank goodness things are changing and opening up.
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Actually at NYU, we have been in person for piano lessons for most of the pandemic.
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Facilities were open and because it's just two people in a very large room, we were able with a
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lot of health protocols to continue a little bit of in-person work. But I think the whole landscape
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for performance and teaching has been really altered over the past two years and many of us
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would like to see things go back the way they were. But of course we have learned a lot over the last
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two years and that's really transformed the way we see what we do. Yeah, it's so as much as we
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reminisce about our past, but things happen and but sometimes these challenges bring us something
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of course beneficial to us too. So we can talk about more about that. And also I want to talk
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about this new building where you are right now. Beautiful building of this piano department at NYU,
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which was not the case during my time. So I'm actually really proud and I got to visit so many
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times at this beautiful building that you're in. Just especially downstairs when you go,
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the state of the art practice rooms. So tell us like when did that happen? Oh my, it's hard to say
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exactly when that happened. I would say probably maybe seven or six or seven years ago. But already
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it's been a while, but we are here at Third Avenue, East 11th Street. It's a facility that
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piano studies shares with the jazz program. So we really are very, it's very exclusive in terms of
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making sure that it's very limited in terms of who has access to the pianos. And as a result,
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we can take really good care of them, really control the humidity and the exciting things
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like HVAC to make sure that the pianos are really cared for and protected and that the people who
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are playing on them are really respecting the pianos and using them in a way that's beneficial
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to the pianos, which so often at institutions are inadvertently abused or neglected. So it's a little,
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it's a very special place here. I should add that opening next year at NYU is a huge new performance
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facility at 181th Street. And that has been under construction for the last probably four years,
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but that will have a full theater with fly space, practice rooms, I believe a swimming pool.
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Enormous building, which also have public space, be open to the public, but it's a huge project.
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And that provides also for NYU students and for the community, what will probably be, you know,
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a very big center for culture and performance here in Greenwich Village. And I believe we're
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purchasing something like 75 pianos for that space. Wow. Amazing. That is so incredible.
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That kind of thing has the capacity really also to change the neighborhood, right,
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to transform the cultural life of this area. So it'll be really exciting to see performances
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beginning again. And that project has been delayed a little bit because of the pandemic.
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But if anyone is driving around the neighborhood of Houston and Mercer, you'll see this enormous
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building that has gone up and it's pretty incredible. Wow. So but are you, the NYU is
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going to keeping the current? Yeah, we will be sharing that facility with the Tishville for the
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Arts and of course the University of Health Access, but a lot of our musicians, our ensembles, orchestra
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and musical theater, some of that will move into that bigger space, which also then will open up
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other theaters, smaller spaces, like the Low Theatre on West Fortescue to pianists and things
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like that. I hope. Wow, that is so exciting. And it's actually really fitting for that,
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the characteristic of NYU, the state of the art and also the community-based
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culture that I got to experience. I think NYU is always struggling with the neighborhood,
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the historic neighborhood village and reaching out. There's always that bit of tension I think
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you have in a lot of places where you have a university and the sort of bone and gown,
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the idea of how can we serve the community better. But I think this facility has the potential for
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bringing the arts to a lot more, a lot more people. Oh, wonderful. It's so great to hear and it's so
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great to catch up after so many years. As we were learning about you more through this, to prepare
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this interview, I got to know so much about you and you're just an incredible artist. And the one
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thing is you just never talk about yourself so much. So we really want to know about you. For
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our show, we usually start from the early days because we're very interested in you as a person,
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as an artist, how you became who you are. So what was that childhood like? Did you grow up in musical
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family or what was that first piano lesson like? Wow, I don't come from a family that's music,
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I think, musical in a professional or a serious sense. I started taking piano when I was five
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years old from just the woman around the corner from my grandparents. It was not a serious or
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disciplined kind of teaching. And I think that reflects the belief in my family. We also lived
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in a small, in a village in a small town in the Midwest. I think it just reflected the belief that
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as part of your education or as part of being a well-rounded person, you would learn how to play
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an instrument. My dad played the accordion when he was a kid and had stories about playing accordion
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for his mother's friends. Or my great uncle was a very enthusiastic amateur pianist who
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taught neighborhood kids. My great uncle, I think played the clarinet when he was military. But
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it was very much a playing music just for the fun of it and not to be serious. And so I enjoyed
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playing a lot, but I also was not, I didn't have to be asked to practice. I liked to play,
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but I was never in a situation where I had a lot of quality control or telling me this is the right
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way to practice or this would be the right way to hold your hand or something like that. So I think
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it was a case of just sheer sort of love of playing that got me to a point where my teacher
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would just sort of give me music like, oh, why don't you play this? Why don't you play this? I
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think we see this sometimes when we're teaching talented kids, oh, can you play this or give this
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a try, check this out. And so I developed to a certain point where people say, oh, this is a
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talent tile. Why don't you start doing competitions or why don't you learn pieces and give little
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recitals or things like that. But it was always very, I think, in the spirit of just exploring
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whatever talent or love I had for the instrument without an idea of being professional in any way.
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And when I was about, I don't know, it must've been about 14, I had changed to a different teacher
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and she recorded one of my lessons sort of secretly, like I was doing a run through of
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something, I don't even know the piece, and she recorded it and sent it to Interlochen music camp.
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I guess they were looking for students who might want to apply for a scholarship or maybe to play
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for some master class or something. And so it turned out I was accepted to play in a master
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class with Leon Fleischer. I didn't know who Leon Fleischer was and packing up the car, you know,
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the middle of winter and driving up through Wisconsin up to Michigan. It's a totally different
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world. And suddenly realizing there are all these serious musicians, you know, my age,
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people who were really, you know, they were there going to boarding school, really practicing,
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really taking it seriously and looking at brochures for conservatories. And so for me that was very
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eye opening because I think I just sort of got there by the skin of my teeth, you know, really
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whatever, you know, I hate to use the word talent because it's very much a commodity that we deal
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with in music, but you know, basically just on talent managed to get that far. And then I realized,
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wow, maybe if I get disciplined and I actually learn what I'm doing and maybe I could do this,
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maybe I could go to school for music. So I was at that point really, I would say 14 years old,
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I think. And I went to Interlochen for one summer, to the summer camp and found that quite a culture
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shock. And I still do a little bit in that I was just suddenly surrounded by so many people who
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had been serious for such a long time, had been trained for really early age and, you know, really
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to me, it seemed so knowledgeable and confident and refined. And I was really, you know,
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I was really, really awestruck by that. And I did not feel particularly comfortable in that environment.
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Really? Oh my goodness.
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It's strange because I think when you are, there's, I think many of us love playing and there's a point
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when that enthusiasm and that passion becomes more about how hard are you willing to work
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and becomes more about comparing yourself to other people and concerns about preparing audition
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material or concerns about competitions. And that sometimes, you know, it infringes a little bit
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on that early love we have for what we're doing. And I definitely sense that kind of conflict
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between doing something you really enjoy, like a hobby, something which is more like your life is
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going to be, your career is going to rely on this. And are those things compatible or not? So I think
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I was very aware of that when I got serious about music. But sounds like it just comes from in the
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organic way that you reached your, let's say career and career path. I think it was very organic.
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It's a good word. But I also think, you know, when you, when I meet people who've had a more
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disciplined teaching, upbringing as a musician, of course, I went down a lot of blind alleys. I
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overcome technical issues, you know, having a less disciplined path to where I am. I think I was
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always very aware of things that perhaps were missing or things that I needed to take care of
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or something like that. So I think I always have a slight bit of envy for people who had a more
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rigorous. Right. Really? Wow. I mean, I think especially at that age, right? You know, this is
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actually quite unique, right? Because like today, you know, all of your students, I'm sure a lot of
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the students you meet that they start training, you know, such early on, right? Like in my generation,
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the long, long age, you know, everybody started training when we were like two years old. So
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I think sometimes that organic, you know, vibe, it's actually missing. Right. So this is beautiful.
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It's strange though, because also even I have such wonderful colleagues here at NYU, but of course,
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they've come through very different educational systems as well. You have my colleague, Jeffrey
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Swann, you know, plays a complete Beethoven sonatas or, you know, my colleague and Terry
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Antiparizzo, who comes from the real Georgian tradition and the training she received in
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Eastern Europe in that time. So you see people who come from very different pedagogical backgrounds.
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And so I often feel that I, yeah, it's not there. Well, I'd say it's one of many ways to become a
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pianist. You mentioned about technique, you know, around that time when you were a teenager,
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you know, maybe you felt a little insecure. But to me, when I heard your recordings for the last
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few days, I mean, I've been listening to your recordings pretty much every day. I love the
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tone production. I don't know how you do it, the crystal like, but it's not cold. It's just something
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warm about it. I don't know how to describe, but it's just so comforting as well. At the same time,
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very specific technique that you have, how did you develop that? Is there, was there any
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method you encountered or teacher? You know, it's funny that you use that word crystal. And I
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share a tiny anecdote, but my very first mention ever in a newspaper for a review was when I was
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in school and I played as well as the Eastman and performed on some student recital, Luigi Della
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Piccola's Quaderno Musicale di Anlibra, which is a beautiful set of miniatures from 1955. And the
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reviewer used the word crystalline to describe my playing. And I was so touched. And I thought,
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that's such a wonderful word because it is kind of the sound I would hope to have. Something that's
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very clear and etched, but yet at the same time have a kind of shimmer to it. What was so
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disappointing was when I first came to New York, my first New York review, the reviewer for the
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New York Times also used the word crystalline. I was just crushed because to get two press quotes,
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which is the same word is absolutely useless. And so it was a word that I, I really liked being
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applied to my playing. And yet when I first was starting out, I was just crushed that the word
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was used more than once because it would have been so useful to have more than one word to use for my
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talk about the press quotes. But, but you know, it's funny because I tend not to like a lot of
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piano playing and I'm not a pianist that loves to listen to recordings of piano music. I find a lot
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of piano playing quite ugly. And I find writing for the piano quite ugly. And I think that
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having a beautiful tone is not that easy on our instrument. I find, I didn't like to go to a lot
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of piano concerts. My inspirations for how piano sounds maybe come from very few recordings, you
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know, very few recordings, very few instances, and maybe even more of an ideal sound that I want to
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have more than a sound I've really heard. I know my, my teacher, my main teacher, David Burge,
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who is a great mentor to me, he very much believed that the sound a person has comes from
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either their body, their, their physicality, their anatomy, that a big, big man is going to have a
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very different sound than a smaller man or somebody with a certain kind of anatomy and approach to
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sitting at the piano. That's where that individual sound comes from. And he really believed that,
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and I do too, that if a person is, is relaxed and playing naturally, they will have a natural sound
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that is theirs. And no matter how much you want to sound like someone else, I mean, you, if you're
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playing the piano in a natural way, you're going to sound like yourself. And the goal is not to
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develop someone else's sound, but to find, you know, your own sound as a musician. So I think
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for me personally, trying to find beauty and balance and a kind of softness, a soft, a soft
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feel in an instrument, which is inherently percussive is always a, a, always my goal,
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and always to find a kind of beautiful resonance has been something I'm very interested in, in the
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piano, not so much a lyricism or a melodic, like not so much the singing quality, but the quality
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of, of resonating, vibrating, and the sense of that instrument really being alive and being able
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to somehow convey that to the audience. Do you receive these inspiration, let's say,
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tone production from different, listening to different instruments? I suppose there is
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something to that, different, maybe not so much instruments, but different kinds of music. I
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remember being very influenced by when I heard Skriyaben's poem of ecstasy with the orchestra
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playing that, the tremendous kind of lush quality and, you know, feeling a little sorry that my
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instrument maybe doesn't have that, but trying to get that, or to hear something like the cello solo
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in Messiaen's quartet for the other time, a wonderful kind of vibrating quality that a
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beautiful cello has, or an incredible singer, you know, somebody like, I don't know,
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something like this, or even, I love to listen to music of other cultures, listening to gamelan,
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and wonderful kind of shimmering sound, gamelan, or listening to, I don't know, gagaku, Japanese
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gagaku, or something like this, or Korean pansori music, or listening to these different kinds of
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timbres, and realizing how there's that kind of richness, and trying to get that richness and
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variety out of the instrument that, you know, I happen to know how to play. I think that also
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just comes back to this organic, you know, idea that we were talking about, it really, it seems
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to me, and also when I listen to your music, it's just so different sometimes, you know, you can
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feel the music comes from the heart, it's very genuine, it's very, you know, real, and I think
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that there's something really very different in this day and age we live in, right? So you are the,
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I'd say, champion or queen of contemporary music. So when did you discover your love for
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the music of living composers? I suppose a very early example of it, which is a little strange,
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is my, I had this great uncle Milton, who, as I said, was very passionate amateur player,
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and he had hoped, so he was my grandfather's brother. So he was a young man in the
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40s, 30s, and 40s, and he had a real passion for the music that was new at that time,
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he gave me some bar talk, early Elliott Carter, anything atonal, he was really, he was really
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interested in that, and he would give these little concerts at his home, because he was not a
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professional musician, like Sunday afternoon, and he had some friends, he'd play a little solo music,
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and maybe some chamber music, and have a singer, and kind of these crazy concerts,
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Zemlinsky, and Schoenberg, and I do remember bar talk, and all kinds of stuff that to him,
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that was new to him when he was young. So this was in the 1970s and 80s, now when I was hearing it,
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and so those composers were no longer alive, but he had a real passion for this stuff that somehow
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nobody really knew anything about. It was all new to everyone. Our family is not musical family, so
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here's my uncle, very enthusiastically churning away at some atonal music, and I was like our
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crazy uncle Milton, but he was very enthusiastic about it, so I think early on I had a sense that
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there were these types of music that were out there that other people didn't know about,
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that weren't part of the classical world, and they could be a lot of fun to listen to, sometimes
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they were strange, sometimes didn't make sense, especially when he played it, it was never
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note perfect, and I used to sometimes turn pages for these little musical performances in his living
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room, and it was so hard to follow what was going on. That's very difficult. Turn pages for contemporary music.
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All the players would be in a different bar, you don't know when to turn, but there was a very
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exciting, adventurous spirit to that, which I think when I went to conservatory, I definitely
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didn't get that impression on a lot of performances. Obviously, in a conservatory, a very competitive
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environment, nobody is going to be laughing when people are in different places in the score, and
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that sort of, even the sense of adventure and discovering something new is not always what a
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conservatory is about. Conservatory is about conserving a tradition and discovering older
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traditions and learning about them. And so I, for myself, discovered playing music of contemporary
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music at my own time when I was at Eastman, and there were friends of mine who were composers in
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my class, and they could not get anyone to play their music, because in that environment at that
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time, which is the late 1980s, the students are practicing for auditions, they're practicing for
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juries, they're practicing for lessons, and they did not have time or any motivation in general to
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pick up a piece of new music written by a friend of theirs to play for a concert. There just wasn't
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that sense that that was anything that was worth spending time on. They could not bring it to their
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lessons, their teachers wouldn't teach it to them, there wasn't this promise of what will playing
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this piece get me. And so I began to play some of these pieces, and I found that I really enjoyed
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working with the scores. I thought it was exciting to look at, and I really liked working with my,
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I don't know how to say peers, my friends, working with people my own age to ask them questions
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about the score, and I liked the feedback, because what I was doing was very valuable to them.
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That was, I think, maybe more than anything, the sense of having a purpose, that my performance of
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these works was really important. It didn't really matter if I played Beethoven's first piano
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concerto, no one was waiting for me to play that piece, or I was in the studio at that time when I
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started, where all the students were playing the same pieces. They were assigned the students the
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same places, and I thought, well, what does it matter if I play this piece? I didn't understand,
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you know, these were obviously learning pieces, or pedagogical pieces, or pieces to learn because
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if you play this piece, you learn how to do certain things. But I found myself learning to do
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different things, and play and develop a technique by playing pieces written by people my own age.
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And I think maybe one of the most important moments was I had learned a piece, I think this is,
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and I think my recording of it helped this young composer win an international, get a prize.
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And I thought, wow, you know, it changed his life, for a young composer to get a spot on an
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international world music days, or I can't remember exactly now the prize, but it was a performance
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which really made a difference to that composer in terms of setting him on a career path. And
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yeah, and so then suddenly it was like, wow, a performance from somebody like myself could
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change someone's life. And I was never going to change Chopin's life, or Beethoven's life.
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Those are already composers with, it's a different kind of activity to play their music. And so I
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suddenly realized that by taking whatever gifts I had and applying them towards, you know,
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living composers, it's like a whole different kind of ripple effect. So that's where that sense of
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wanting to do that came from.
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Wow, thank you. Yeah, I never thought of that way, but it's true, huh? Wow. Yeah. And then also,
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you get to learn the piece from the composer, like living composer.
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It's, when you ask, you know, about developing a technique, I have to say I've learned my,
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most of my technique on pieces by either composers who are still living or composers who used to be
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living. You know, one of the early pieces, big pieces I learned with David Burgess, for Sonata.
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And I learned to do a lot of things on that piece. When I came to New York in the early 90s,
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I, with two composers, started a contemporary music ensemble. We just wanted to play music.
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We just wanted to play music of our friends and people we knew or composers we thought,
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you know, should be heard that nobody was playing. And I learned most of my technique,
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if you call it a technique, way of learning the piano, way of from playing things, whether it's
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Frenny Ho or Milton Babbitt or Schoenberg or people who are teaching in New York or young
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composers. I think that's most of how I learned to play was confronting new scores and also,
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like you just mentioned, working with composers. So saying, you know, I, how do I play this or how
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do you want this? I remember very clearly, I worked with a composer, Joshua Feinberg, who's
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my own age, who now teaches at Boston University. And then he's also, I think, in Berlin. But I
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remember playing some of his music, which I recorded and playing something. And he was like,
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that's not mezzoforte. You know, having this sense of, or playing for composer Jonathan Harvey,
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having grace notes in his score. And you say, well, those grace notes are too fast. You know,
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I can't hear them. And, you know, they're having composers express really personal thoughts about,
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no, do this, do this, try this. I don't like that. The way you want to play that, that's not what I
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meant. Try to get what I'm after here with that kind of specificity. Really, I think,
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helped me learn different ways of approaching how to play the piano, how to interpret things.
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I think also just for the younger pianists, when we are, this reading is like changing my mind so
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much. I'm so inspired. I remember when I was first arrived in Kansas, when I went there when I was a
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teenager by myself and didn't speak language. And I had this friend who was a cellist, but then he
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decided to make this piece where, you know, we had to play a little and we had to speak in Chinese.
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And then my friend and I were just speaking whatever we were deciding, but it was a very
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contemporary piece, you know, for me, like growing up in China, I've never had experience with that.
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So I think that now looking back, it kind of even boosted my confidence a little, you know, because
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since language was not like, you know, entirely there yet and having this experience, I, yeah,
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this is a really, and then, you know, fast forward recently when I was working with, so we interviewed
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some of my good friend, my friend, Paulo, at the Manhattan School. And, you know, I remember we were
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playing this piece that he wrote not too long ago and that the really just the whole detailed
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oriented, you know, he, and it was really such a beautiful learning experience. So, wow.
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What you say about confidence, you know, when you have to do something for which there, there
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isn't a performance practice, there's no one saying this is how it's done or here are these recordings,
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you know, here's what you are after when you have to make those decisions. It's scary. But when you've
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made your decision, you know, you, you own it, you know, it's your version of that piece. And I think,
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you know, I was able to develop more of a sense of confidence from developing a way that I began
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to interpret things. We've been listening to your pieces, your recordings over the week and my,
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personally, my favorite is the Tristan Muraes, the Complete Piano Music. And actually, it just turned
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out that this album earned the record label company Divine Arts best-selling title. That's,
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that's amazing. But could you tell us more about that? Pieces are really, of course, he's, he's a
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French composer, so has this Debussy, like Ravel, like French school. But at the same time, there
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were at times that was just startling, like, totally, like, out of nowhere comes this harmony
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or something just scared me almost. So could you tell us more about the album? Maybe you got to
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know the composer. That's a, that's a great, great question. It's actually one of my favorite, yeah,
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hard to pick favorite, but probably one of my absolute best experiences making that. Although
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I have to say it's, it's the Complete Piano Music and Tristan Muraes. And Tristan, his birthday is
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today, actually. Happy birthday, Tristan. Oh, my goodness. One of the ironic things about playing
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living composers is he has written over the last few years, like four more piano pieces. So sadly,
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it is no longer the complete music of Tristan Muraes. It's a two CD set, but I have just recently
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gotten these new pieces from his publisher and look forward to learning them. He's also written
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since then a piano concerto as well. So there's a lot music, but Tristan Muraes is a fascinating
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composer. I did not know his music at all. And in about, must have been 1999, I was running this
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chamber music performance group, Ensemble 21 here in New York. And we were asked by the Guggenheim
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Museum to do a concert of contemporary French music. And we were grad students at the time,
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and myself and two composers that ran the group. And we were like, wow, you know, what's, what's
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going on in France? So I really didn't, that really wasn't the kind of music I knew much about. I was
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playing mostly American, very difficult American music, kind of associated with Milton Babbitt,
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or Eliot Carter, you know, very atonal, virtuosic music. And I was playing a lot of maybe British,
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what they call the new complexity, a really complicated, virtual, so atonal music, which I
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love. But that was what, that was sort of my thing when I was in grad school. So exploring my technique,
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and that's what people thought I was good at. And so we found this group of French composers,
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and it was called Spectralism, it was a movement, it kind of started in the late 1970s
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in France, but it was this kind of return to very romantic kind of music, return to almost the feel
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of Impressionism with a new focus on harmony, right? So after, after so many years of atonal
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music, or music that was more about sensing the complexity and virtuosity, music would just kind
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of return to Impressionism as a great reference, because there is the sense of sonority and color,
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and the joy in sound. And for this concert, we ensemble the music of Tristan Muraille, who's a
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a one of the main figures in this movement of Spectralism, and Gerard Grissé, Muraille's good
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friend, and they were sort of really associated with the beginnings of this kind of music. And
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when I started playing Muraille's music, we played, I played a solo piece, one solo piece of his,
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called La Mangere Gore, and one chamber piece for like five or six players, five players,
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I think, called the Le Barque Mystique, the Mysteries of Hope. And I was just blown away by the
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writing. It's like you, you put it under your hands, and you hear what comes out of the instrument,
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and I was just, I just fell in love with it. And I think it's that sense of recognition, like, wow,
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this is a person who knows how to write for my instrument. We have this feeling on different
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composers, like it just, everything seems to work, the resonance, the harmony, the beauty, the
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registers. I think all of us have played pieces where it's hard to get them to sound good. And
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this is like, wow, it just, he knew how to work the piano, to play the piano, to make the piano
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vibrate and resonate in a way that was so attractive. And I think we love this in
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romantic music, right? I think a lot of us love to play romantic repertoire because it uses the
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piano in such a beautiful way, with the use of the pedal, and really the kind of effects, and the
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joy in the sound, and the beauty of the sound, which is different than playing, let's say Bach,
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where it's a beauty of the music, but maybe it will work on other instruments. You can take a
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Bach piece and play it with orchestra, string quartet, or marimba, and we still hear the beauty
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of the music. But this was really music that was so specifically written for the piano. I was like,
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what else has this composer written? You know, how can I learn more about this? And one of my
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composer friends was like, well, you know, he's got a fair amount of piano music, but not that
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much. Maybe you should ask him for a piece, and then you could try to record his piano music.
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So it was really like a pie in the sky, kind of. Maybe he'll write something for you, and then there
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might be enough for a recording in the old days. Maybe there's enough for a compact disc. Maybe
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there's 65 minutes of music. That's true. And so I applied, I started to learn the rest of his pieces,
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and applied for a grant, was able to commission him to write a piece called Les Travaux Les Quir,
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which ended up being a massive piece, ended up being a 35-minute piece. And then for the recording,
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Christian, who I was not super friendly with at all, I hadn't known him at all,
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he found a piece he wrote when he was like 17 years old and auditioning for the Paris
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Conservatoire to work with Olivier Messiaen. And he's like, well, this has never been recorded,
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so maybe you'd like this too. So then it became this quite a large recording, including early
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pieces that had never been recorded or even published at that point. And then going up until
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a piece which had been just completed that year, really covering the scope of his career from about
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1967 until maybe 2000 or something. So his career up until that point. It was a great big project.
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I did work with him. He came to New York. He was at Columbia University teaching for a while.
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I still do not have a super close friendly relationship with him, but pretty much a
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relationship of interpreter and composer. And I found it incredible to coach with him because
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Murai is so specific about what he does. He's just so, and I respect that tremendously. We
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could look at scores of Beethoven and we look at those articulations and dynamic markings and
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rhythm. How do you do that? How do you do that? With a composer like Tristan, he's so specific
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about what he wants. And it's always been great. He plays piano okay, but for him to sit down and
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try to show you what he wants is very revealing. And I've certainly become more specific in how I
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play for working with a composer like that who's so demanding. And people who do not like to work
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with Tristan Murai don't like, as he can also just be so relentlessly specific. And many composers
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are like that. If they're alive and they're working with a performer, they want to get what they want
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to get. And it was a fantastic experience to have. I was just finishing grad school at the time. And
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it was, I suppose for me personally, it was also a career making recording in that it captured
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people's attention a certain way, that music. And it helped me define a bit more what kind of
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repertoire I want. Although I play lots of different kinds of repertoire, but I think
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factual music and composers influenced it, influenced by that music. I love to play that kind of repertoire.
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You mentioned so about grad school now and Columbia, you meant just I heard. So I hear that
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you got your PhD in musicology from Columbia University. And what was the reason, like you
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are already have this extensive work with as a solo pianist, a recording artist. I'm very curious
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to know what was the reason of pursuing musicology and specifically what area of musicology you got
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into? It's a little bit of a skeleton in my closet, but I am when I was in my undergraduate,
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I think I was saying I was not entirely comfortable in that world of creating pianists.
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Right. And I was not a good fit. And I left the piano program when I was an undergraduate halfway
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through my undergraduate degree. I have a degree in theory, but I don't have a degree in performance
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because I thought, well, I'm interested in so many composers. This is me thinking as a college
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student, I don't want to leave music. I want to be able to play and teach and work with people. So
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I thought maybe I'll go into theory because I'm not a composer. So I couldn't go into composition.
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It's very unusual. I was one of two theory majors at Eastman that year. And I did work with a
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performance teacher, but I thought, well, at least I'll be able to study music and teach about music,
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write about music and play music, have a career as a musician. And because I think at that time,
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in that environment, what I was thinking of doing as a performance artist was not considered like a
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legitimate career path. It is hard enough to be a musician. It is hard enough to provide work as a
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musician about saying, I'm going to play this kind of music that nobody knows, by composers no one's
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ever heard. And so the advice really was like, leave music or this is not the career for you.
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And I thought, well, maybe I'll become a theorist and I can make this work. And then when I went to
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Columbia theory and musicology were actually in the same program at that time. And so I went to,
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as a theorist to Columbia, the idea of being able to study music and write about music and teach,
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you know, teach, I guess, like teach ear training and teach analysis or something like this. And so
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my dissertation is actually more of an analytical dissertation. And I was interested in looking at
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psychology when we hear music that we don't know, what do we do? How do we understand it?
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And it was looking at really complicated, atonal music. And when we hear pieces that just
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don't resemble music to us, when we hear something like Sinakis or Ferney or something really, you
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know, really out there, what do we do? For people, and I was mostly interested in that question, for
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people that enjoy that experience, you know, what are they doing that people who don't like that,
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what's going on in some people's minds? How do some people come to understand what is going on
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with the piece when it's written in an entirely unfamiliar language? You know, I was sort of
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looking at what had been written, you know, in psychology, cognitive psychology, about maybe what
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are the processes people go through to understand music they've never heard before. There's actually
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been a lot written about tonal music. And when we hear a piece and we find, let's say we're listening
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to a Mozart sonata, and we find something surprising in it, you know, there's a funny moment in Haydn,
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and we say, what was that? You know, what was that great guest? Or what the, you know, in Beethoven,
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something comes back in the wrong key. Or, you know, there's a lot of studies about expectation
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and how we learn musical patterns and how a lot of music we love plays with that knowledge
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that we acquire. And so much of the interest of listening to tonal music is that there are a lot
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of models we understand, but what's interesting is how different composers writing in different
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ways, sheet sonatas or nocturnes or fugues or things like this. But I thought, well, what do
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people do in an environment where it's not tonal and we don't have familiar patterns and models?
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So that was my, that's where I was looking as a musician and as a potential teacher to talk about
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that. How do we come to works we don't know to different musical environments? And how do we learn
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to make sense of them? Or how do people learn, learn to understand new kinds of music written in
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different musical languages?
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Doesn't that give you very different perspective in terms of being as a performer, right? Because
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you're thinking music from very different perspective. I'm sure that really is enhancing
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and helping your performance.
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I think it was very tight, you know, I think it was very tight. My work is a performer because
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what do you do? How do you make a piece make sense when you look at it? What is the, what is the
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story of the piece? What are the, I mean, in many ways, it's not that different than what we do in
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a tonal piece, but what's the theme? You know, what is the idea? What is the emotion? What's the
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character? What's the texture? What's the quality of the sound? What are the interesting harmonies?
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What, when you hear a piece that is, that's going to make sense, what are those things that we need
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to hear that will help us make sense? One of the great things about my teacher, David Burge, was
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he had this wonderful ability to play just the most adventurous, strange, unfamiliar music. And
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somehow he always made, always made sense. He always could sense him guiding you, you know,
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listen to this, or this is important. This is what's beautiful. This is, this is the expressive
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quality of this music. He was able to really do that in such a wonderful way that even when you
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heard something very unusual, like Stalkhausen or whatever, it had, you sensed you knew, you were
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being guided through the piece. And I was sort of interested in, you know, what are those guide
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posts? What are the sign posts that help you make sense of newer and unfamiliar kinds of music?
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So the degree is, the musicology degree, I started as a theorist, but I've become a historical
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musicologist in my, since graduating my, as a performer, I've just always become interested,
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now less in analyzing pieces, but more in looking at the piano repertoire and finding these
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through lines and narratives that chase back from very contemporary composers back to the
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Romantic era, but beyond really looking at this full history where there isn't such a separation
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between what is old and what is new, but what are the bridges, the things that relate newer music
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to more traditional music.
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This concludes part one of the interview with Dr. Marilyn Nuncan. Tune in next time for part two,
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where we focus more on philosophical topics, advice for young artists, and more. If you liked
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this episode, don't forget to give us five stars and review on Apple podcasts.