Full Transcript for Daniel Asia: Beauty, Ideology, and the Crisis of Classical Music

three years. I spent a year at the San Francisco Conservatory and I studied one of the great things about Hampshire. It's in the five college area. So I was able to study also at Smith College and at Amherst College. And I had wonderful professors at both places as well as at Hampshire. Orlando: My brother went to Yale School of Music as well. And I remember visiting him from New Daniel Asia: Yes, I saw that. Orlando: York. And I was always so envious because I was stuck at Manhattan School of Music. mean, you know, we barely had any pianos to practice there. We had to do a line of an hour at seven o'clock in the morning to find a piano out of tune that we could practice on in the afternoon for an hour. And my brother had one beautiful new Stamway piano. all to himself in a gorgeous campus surrounded by people that have interest in a multitude of other things, not only music. And I mean, I just was so envious. Daniel Asia: Mmm. Orlando: I always loved visiting him there. And that was a great experience for him. it as good for you? mean, Other time you were there? Daniel Asia: Well, that's an interesting question. Yes. Look, I spent my time writing a lot of music. That was my goal. I thought that's what I should be doing as a composer. So, and I learned a lot more about electroacoustic music there, which had already been exploring at Hampshire a good bit. And with a professor at Hampshire with a fellow named Randall McClellan, who wrote some beautiful electroacoustic pieces, and then with a fellow named Ron Pereira at Smith College. And at Yale, Yale had a studio that was almost commensurate, a level as what we had in Hampshire. And I did some nice pieces there. I studied with Jacob Druckmann, and that was fine. But Jacob was really at the height of his career. And I'll be very frank, you know, we worked well together, but he didn't have a lot to offer me, quite frankly, except as a mentor and as a exemplar in certain ways. I had a few other professors there who commented decently, I suppose, on my work, but... You know, a composer really has to find themselves and their own voice, it seems to me. And nobody can provide that. Orlando: Do you agree with Bartok's opinion on that matter that he was reluctant to teach composition because he considered himself a piano teacher but not a composition teacher and he didn't believe that composition should be taught? I don't know if you agree with that opinion. But Daniel Asia: Well, that's it. Orlando: I remember talking to a friend of mine, composer once, and he said, well, I believe that the greatest thing that happened to me is that I had teachers that taught me the tools to compose, harmony, theory, piano, all these other things that were sort of outside of composing that then I could bring into my own world. Whereas if you have a composition teacher trying to impose a language, I guess that's more. difficult for the young composer to find his own voice. I don't know. That was his opinion on the matter,

and I find it quite interesting. Daniel Asia: It's an interesting one, I find. Now I've spent a large part of my career teaching composition, so to speak. So in Europe, of course, it's a master apprenticeship system and you're supposed to learn essentially the language of your teacher. I don't think that's very effective at all. I think the best composition teachers I had, mean, one, for example, a wonderful person, but all of them. mean, Randall directed me, Randall McClellan, for example, his first exercise for me was, why don't you write a piece of music and start with a few notes and don't add any more notes until you actually need to. Well, that's an interesting way of thinking about writing music. And I wrote a piece for Solo Oboe and it became my first published piece. And I wrote it when I was 18. And it's still a good piece. It's called Alex and it became part of the Alex set. That's another story. And other composers and what I tend to do is say, well, look, you know, this is interesting, but then you get off track here. How about figuring out why we got off track or why the piece got off track, it seems to me. Now, somebody could always say to me, screw you, I think you're wrong. I'd say, okay, that's fine. You know, go ahead and see where you end up. The other thing that I find very useful as a teacher and found with someone like Steven Albert, another wonderful composer that I worked with, he didn't like to teach composition, but we'd study scores together. And I'd get into his mind of how he understood a Bartok string quartet, how he understood the macrocosmos of George Crumb, you know, and what George was thinking or what Bartok was thinking or how they worked or how did they pace certain movements. For example, Bartok was very much in the Fibonacci series. So he'd Orlando: Right. Daniel Asia: We'd look at that and say, okay, you know, how did that affect this piece? How was, how was that interesting as a compositional tool in terms of creating larger structures or Steve and looking at again, macro cosmos of crumb, you know, how does he put together a larger piece out of small bits, somewhat similar to Bartok looking at small segments that are of Fibonacci coordinates and Crumb looking at, okay, I'm going to write 12 movements according to the zodiac and it's going to be four movements and four movements and four movements. And what's the relationship when he repeats materials and brings them back? mean, Orlando: Mm-hmm. Daniel Asia: that sort of compositional thinking I think is incredibly useful. I don't know if that's Orlando: Yeah. Daniel Asia: teaching and that's not teaching someone how to write music. It's teaching someone how to think about writing music. Cause the only way to write music is by actually doing it. It's like you playing the piano. You got to sit in your rear end and sit at the piano for hour after hour and get the technique and figure out what the composer is trying to say and what you want to want to highlight and what that composer is saying. Orlando: Right. I've been listening to a lot of your music in preparation to this interview. And I wanted to mention your piano concerto, which is Daniel Asia: Hmm. Orlando: a lovely piece. Lovely piece. I think it's great. I love the, who is the pianist that was playing? I was trying to look on the recording credits. Daniel Asia: Well, the pianist is one of our great pianists, André-Michel Schub, Orlando: Okay, okay. Daniel Asia: who now teaches at the Manhattan School. Orlando: OK. OK. I haven't been allowed to get in in a long time since I'm not a student anymore. you know. Daniel Asia: Yeah. You... I'm sorry. Orlando: But yes, it's such a it's so wonderfully played and also Ivory, the album Ivory, the first and second album, just beautiful piece and gateways also the symphonic work and. your symphonies also, I've been listening to them. I've been going down the Daniel Asia rabbit hole and just have enjoyed it tremendously. And since we are talking about your process as a composer, and I know that you are someone that is, you know, one of those rare kind of artists that feels very much at home, equally at home. composing and writing. So how did that happen in your life? I know it's just very difficult to find musicians or artists in general that can be so multifaceted and can write and play and compose. And you seem to be one of those artists that, you you're a conductor, you are a composer, you're a teacher, you're a writer. How did the writing come into your life? Daniel Asia: It was really happenstance. So let me explain. I was always for some reason somewhat fearful of writing. And I think that goes back. My mother, God rest her soul, was wonderful and aided my studies as a child, taking me back and forth from the lessons and all of the rest. But her mother was a Russian immigrant who, believe this or not, became an English teacher in New York City. So she had such great precision of language. Plus my mother and father were lawyers. So I would essentially be quizzed at the dining room table every night at dinner about what I thought about this, about what I thought of that. And precision of language was always, I think, expected. And when I began to write, I didn't write much in high school. I did in college, but it was a. Not a difficult task, but I held myself to such a high standard, I think, that it was difficult for me. Let's put it that way. I wrote very few papers at Yale. I avoided them like the plague. I wanted to conduct, and I played trombone, and I wrote music, and I took the courses that were necessary. Even when I started my career, I had my agent write my program notes or review my program notes because I wasn't sure that I was good enough at them. So in the middle of my career, I've always been involved in things related to my being Jewish and Judaism. So you'll see that a large part of my output, probably a third or so is based on, well, the poetry of a I think one of the great

American poets, Paul Pines, who is also a New York Jewish poet. So his subject matter relates to that in some respects. Yehuda Amichai, E.E. Cummings, definitely not Jewish. And Jewish texts, so sacred texts, Psalms and Biblical Orlando: Well, you talk a lot about Abraham Heschel, the Rabbi Heschel, which is one of my Daniel Asia: Yes. Yes. Orlando: favorite writers. I love reading him. is actually one of the things he said that always has stuck with me, which when he talks about faith as an act of remembering and faith as an act of honoring the memory of that first time when you felt deep connection to God. So I always thought like, what an incredible and simple way of describing or defining faith as an act of remembering a sensation you had when you felt connected to God. And it doesn't happen often. So when you forget about it, just please try to remember what that first experience was like. And he talks about the sort of echoes of your soul that you're constantly forgetting, but you come back and remember those moments when you had that connection with the transcendental, with God. I love that kind of definition of faith, of his. love his writings in general. I try to read as much as possible of his things. He wrote so many books. so yeah, I saw that Judaism and spirituality as being also a part of your life as a composer and as a writer. You write a lot about that. Daniel Asia: Yes, very much so. Another aspect of existence that he talks about, of course, he says the Sabbath, of course, is being a celebration architecture of time, Orlando: Mm-hmm. Daniel Asia: which relates to me as a composer, because we talk about music being has some sort of architecture. It has to, but by definition, by being something that happens. Well, it happens over time, but it also happens over space. But he also says that he thinks a primary way of reaching God and the transcendental is through musical experience. So I Orlando: I agree more. Daniel Asia: love that about him and I couldn't agree more either. So... Orlando: Yes. Yes. I wanted to get to that part of our conversation. I wanted to leave it for actually for the end. Talk about your experience with the transcendental and how that affects your music. But I wanted to start to kind of connect your education to your writings in education. I've had so much fun and I've loved reading your book, Observations of Music, Culture and Politics. And I want to get to the book also, but before we get there, I want to talk about your experience in Berlin when you were studying there. You mentioned that somewhere in an interview that I heard you say that it was the first, when you were in Berlin, you saw the Berlin Wall and you saw that people that were going... from west to east were fine. They were not shot for doing that. But then the people that were going from east to west could die or could get shot from crossing the wall. So now, when you were describing that, was, again, a very simple way of explaining why things are not the same for one culture and another. And what were you doing in Berlin and how Was that experience something that informed your political thinking, your philosophical thinking? Why did you mention that? Because as a Cuban, I find that very, very interesting. This is a conversation that I have with people all the time. I'm a political refugee. I arrived here with my parents. And we have experienced a lot of what it is to live in a communist regime. live in the US and experience the world from a completely different perspective. But a lot of people never had the opportunity to experience the differences between these regimes. And now we are living in a world, in a culture that is back to kind of toying with this idea of communism and elevating these ideologies to the places of importance that I haven't seen in a long time. But what happened in Berlin? What were you doing there? Daniel Asia: I received a Deutsche Akademische Austauschstienst grant, also commonly known as a, yes, yes, also Orlando: That sounds very important. Daniel Asia: known as a DAAD, so you don't have to pronounce it. But since I learned German, I had to show you, you see, that I could pronounce it in German. Orlando: That's incredible. Daniel Asia: But it's the German equivalent of a Fulbright grant. Orlando: Right, which you have already the fault, you had a fault writer as well, right? Okay. Daniel Asia: No, this was the first. This was the first equivalent. The next we can talk about if we get to, but it's not such a big deal. Anyway, and I thought this is great. I'd like to go study with Georgie Ligeti in Hamburg. So I wrote to Ligeti and he said, you know, I'd love to have you as student, I've got a three year waiting list of people who want to come study. So I can't accept you and I couldn't wait three years. So I called my good friend Earl Brown and I said, Earl, come on, you know Germany, you spent a lot of your career in Germany and in Europe. You know anybody that I can go study with? And he said, you know, let me talk to my good friend, Lee Song-Yoon, who's a Korean composer who teaches at the Musiho Schoolyn in West Berlin. and see if he'll take you. So he called Isang and Isang said, yeah, sure. That'll be great. You know, I'm open for students. So. Orlando: Was this before you went to Yale or right or after Yale? Okay. Daniel Asia: After Yale, I finished Yale in 1977 and went to New York to find my way and create a career in New York. And then got married there to my wife, Carol E. Asia in 79. And then in the summer and a few months later, we went off to Berlin, to West Berlin in November. Orlando: at the height of the Cold War. Daniel Asia: At the height of the Cold War, you bet. So, and I had been on the left. was a vociferous anti-Vietnam war guy. I, at Hampshire, I had worked for McGovern to get him elected and he was the only, Massachusetts was the only state that went for McGovern. And we got to a little town called Schwabish Hall near

Stuttgart. where we studied German for four months. And while we were there, the Russians invaded Afghanistan. And then we traveled from Schwäbisch Hall to Berlin. drove, I rented a car. We rented a car and we drove to West Berlin. Now that meant that you were driving through East Germany, of course, since Berlin was an island in East Germany. And when you drive on the road, there is barbed wire. along the road so that you can't get off. Nobody can get off and nobody can get on. And every half mile there are guard towers. Now, I'd already had been experienced misgivings about my position against the war in Vietnam because I saw that what we said wouldn't happen, in fact, did happen. And what was that? That people were put into re-education camps, that there were boat people who died in the hundreds of thousands trying to escape and get out. Everything that the anti-war movement had said wouldn't happen because, of course, the communists were such sweet people. Did in fact happen. OK, so I'm going through we're driving through this barbed wire corridor to get to West Berlin. We get to West Berlin. And I start studying with Yi Song-Yuan. That's an interesting story. We can talk about that a little bit, if you'd like. Orlando: Yes, please. Daniel Asia: Okay. But the more important point is, okay, so we're living in West Berlin, which is a nice capitalist island in the midst of a sea of repressive and the most repressive communism. My wife ends up doing a special education program on the US base because she has a degree in museum studies and She decides it'd be great to set up something for the kids to see museums in all of West Berlin for some of the more gifted students. So that gave us the allowance, the permission to go with other people on the base on a bus to East Berlin because they, according to the agreements that had been made between East and West Berlin, there was supposed to be access and people would go shopping because it was so much cheaper. Well, West Berlin was a pretty gray place, but it was a modern city that had been redeveloped after the war. Well, when you got into East Berlin and you got off the main street, nothing had been developed. Nothing had been reworked or modernized. All of the buildings were still pockmarked with artillery shells. If you thought West Berlin was somewhat drab in comparison, it was multicolored in comparison to what the East Berliners lived. And their standard of living was impossibly low, because of course it was a communist country where you couldn't get food and you couldn't get goods or merchandise. Okay, so then we'd come back, having seen this and think about the differences between the two. And then I would have conversations with my friends in the arts community. And we'd talk about geopolitics, and they'd say, well, you know, there's really no difference between you Americans and the Russians. You're both just big superpowers who throw your weight around and want to control the world. And that's when I looked at them and finally said, look, you're living a really good life here in West Berlin. They're living really poor lives over there in East Berlin. Why is it that you guys here in West Berlin aren't walking over to East Berlin and deciding to live over there? And why is it that when they want to come over here to West Berlin, they get shot by their countrymen? Explain that to me. And of course, presented with a simply a stark question like that, that puts the reality of the situation into a pretty clear perspective. They had no response. And the problem, of course, is that most of those many people are very willing to look at the world with blinkers on like horses wear so that they can't see what they're not supposed to see. So when I came back to this country and then we'll get to Yi Song Yun maybe, you know, I started rethinking and doing a lot of reading that I hadn't done before. I don't think I was willing. I was very well versed in the Holocaust because I'd spent a year studying that at Hampshire college in all of its depths and complexity. And, but it hadn't occurred to me to say, so Hitler killed 6 million Jews. how many people did Stalin kill? You know, what was, I didn't know anything about the Ukrainian, Orlando: Famine. Daniel Asia: famine. So, you know, all of my friends thought Castor was a pretty cool dude, you know, and that Che was a nice guy of rebellion, you know. Then I, you know, did more reading and discovered, not exactly, you know, Che really liked just to watch people get killed or killed them himself. You know, what's so glorious about that? What's so glorious about starving the Cuban people? Anyway, I'm telling you things that you know very, very well. So that became for me a beginning of a migration away from leftism. I was never particularly interested in socialism, but discovering how communism worked in reality. Of course, those who are Marxists or believe in the chivalrous of the left. will always say that real communism and socialism has never been tried. Ha. Yeah, Orlando: Yes, I find that very funny. Daniel Asia: it is very funny. And of course, we know that capitalism has freed billions and billions of people from poverty and that socialism and communism has only brought people into poverty and a life of miseration and unfreeness. So. I've spent the last 30 years or so trying to educate myself. I wouldn't say my education was broad. I didn't know anything about economics. I didn't know much about philosophy, even though I did take a philosophy course in high school, but I think I was too young for it, quite frankly. And certainly trying to understand history and political philosophy and politics better. I'm no scholar in any of those areas, but at least now I'm decently educated in them. Yi Sang-Yoon, that's kind of an interesting story. I this was a first coming to grips with a European maestro. No, I'd confronted one at Yale. And since he's now dead, I can mention his name. And his name was

Otto Werner Müller. And a wonderful conductor named John Macerian, I had the same experience. And Müller... may have been a wonderful teacher for certain people, but he was of the Maestro syndrome and an uptight German. And I'd come from Hampshire college and I was told when I got to Yale, you know, I had to tone it down a bit because at Hampshire we were taught to be very outgoing, very forthright, very go-getter. That's what you had to be at Hampshire. And Mueller, you know, was a guy who pontificated and I got into trouble because nobody would answer questions in his class. And I thought, well, what's the point of being here if you're not going to engage? Cause that was the way I had been taught was to engage with professors and dialogue and argue. And, you know, he did something, he asked about Beethoven symphonies and he said, you know, what's the tempo mark of each Beethoven symphony? gave it to him pretty well until I got to one where I gave you know the wrong quotient for the particular metronome number. said, you know, that's so stupid. It's not a quarter note equals it's a half note equals this. Of course it was the basic pulse, but blah, blah, blah. And then we got to the first time of being before the orchestra to conduct. And he said, you know, well, who wants to go first? And nobody would. Nobody would. I mean, they were scared shitless. Excuse my French. You know, nobody. And I thought, you know, what the hell? I'm not going to learn anything unless I get up there. Orlando: Mm-hmm. Daniel Asia: So I went up and I started to conduct and got to a certain point and somebody came in wrong or did something. And I stopped and I said, I'm sorry that that wasn't correct. Let's let's start again. And he screamed. Who told you to stop the orchestra? Get off of the podium. So I decided I wasn't gonna study with Otto Werner Mueh. And I studied with Arthur Weisberg, who was one of the great conductors of contemporary literature. So that's what I did. Probably for the best, maybe not. I'm sure I could have learned a lot from Otto, but it was clear that this was not going to be an easy relationship or I didn't understand what the relationship was to be. Back to Lee Sang-Yoon. So Lee Sang-Yoon grew up in South Korea, which was a rather doctrinaire society of quasi democracy, but speech wasn't quite completely free, I don't think. But he was teaching at the conservatory and I came to him you'll like this story and I can tell this now. We arrived and I called him and I said, we've arrived. He said, why don't you come out to my house and we can talk. I said, OK, not knowing what that meant. So he lived on the other side of the Vonse. The Vonse is a big lake on the, as I remember, northwestern side of West Berlin. It took us about three hours for my wife and I to get there on the various buses. And we got there. And this must have been... maybe February or March, and it was unseasonably warm, unseasonably warm. And we got there and he didn't offer us

anything to drink. And he said, please come into my come into my room here, come into my room. And we went into his room and he took my scores and I'll show you. He went like this. went Orlando: Okay. Daniel Asia: the fastest sight reading I've ever seen in my life. Orlando: Yeah, that's... Daniel Asia: And he said, I see that you a very good composer. I see that you are a very good composer. aber. But, Sie haben ein große Problem. But you have one big. Orlando: Big problem. Daniel Asia: said, so tell me this big problem. And he said, that's can you need there. I can't say it. You have to study with me for three or four years before the revelation. Orlando: boy. Daniel Asia: So you must Orlando: Guru. Daniel Asia: go to the Fulbright office and tell them that you're going to stay here and study with me for three or four. So my wife and I left. We didn't talk for about 10 or 15 minutes. I said, what do we do? You know, we're not staying here for that long. And this guy's clearly nuts. Orlando: Bye bye. Daniel Asia: You know, what are we going to do? And we talked about it we said, well, why don't we enjoy Berlin for a year and get as much as we can from it. And I'll see what he does as a teacher. And that'll be that. So that's what we did. That's what we did. And look, I don't know if you know E-song's music. It's OK. It combines. Orlando: I'm familiar with some of the music, but not much. Daniel Asia: Yeah, yeah, it's okay music. As Stravinsky said, I'm sorry he got kidnapped by the North Koreans. And of course I'll support that he be released, but he's not a great composer. He's okay, he's okay. I think Stravinsky was right. And he wanted me to write like him. And he wanted me to start a new piece so that I could be... writing just like him and he could teach me how to write like him. And I said, no way, you know, I'm in the middle of this piece that I think is really good. And I'm going to work on this piece and I'll be happy to take your advice on this piece. there's more. It's a piece called Rivalries for Chamber Orchestra. And it ended up getting me after five years. to London for two years. And I can explain that story maybe when we get to there. So that's what happened in Berlin. And I met some interesting people and I went to lots of concerts and I went to the Deutsche Oper once a week and to the Berlin Philharmonie. And we went to museums and took advantage of what Berlin has to offer and had to offer as one of Orlando: Right. Daniel Asia: the great cities. Orlando: Great city. I had the opportunity to live there for almost half a year a few years ago and enjoy the Daniel Asia: Did you? Orlando: city. I was in that area of Mitte, which was East Berlin. And Daniel Asia: Yeah. Orlando: it's very different now, but you could still see some of the Soviet-looking buildings. But the cultural life is so vibrant, and I enjoyed it. Daniel Asia: sure is. Were you studying there or just working? Orlando: being there, living there. just working and

studying and I was going to these rehearsals and collaboration with Berlin Philharmonic that they Daniel Asia: Hmm. Orlando: got to see a lot of their rehearsals and their work and learn a lot from that experience. Just close connection with the orchestra and the musicians. That was quite something. It's such a great orchestra, think, in my opinion, the greatest orchestra in the world by far. But the whole experience in Berlin was really very, very unique, a very dark place because I was there in the winter. So I never saw the sun in Daniel Asia: Yeah, right. Orlando: months. But it was really quite the experience. I Daniel Asia: huh. Orlando: had... I was confronted constantly with that, with the demons of the past. For sure, you're part of that environment when you're in Berlin. Daniel Asia: Yes, you can't, you can't not be. Orlando: You cannot not be. Yeah, exactly. Daniel Asia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Orlando: And how does that, you're an educator. And you're a teacher now at the University of Arizona. you, I'm married to, so you're not, you retired two years ago, okay. Daniel Asia: Emeritus. I retired two years ago. I did. Orlando: But in your book, you write a lot about how, you know, the crisis of the academy, but also how different the education of these kids that you started teaching when you became a, a professor when you started teaching yourself how different that education was from the education you had and how so many of these kids didn't even know who Bach or Stravinsky were and had not heard any of the seminal works of the classical music canon. Yet they were more fluid in the language of popular music and you were surprised of of how the education up to that point was so lacking in that way. this sort of takes place in the first part of your book and you talk about high art and why we consider high art and how the meaning of high art has been completely erased from the curriculum. You also talk about Heather McDonald and some of her, this was in 2021, I think your book came out in 2021, and Daniel Asia: Mm. Orlando: you also sort of analyze some of her writings and disagree with some of the things she says there and some of the things that you think are right in terms of... attendance to concert halls and but but you have been very outspoken about what is happening not only in in concert halls but also what is happening in the academy in general. So how how was that experience going in there starting your career as a teacher and being confronted with this with this reality and did that have an effect on you also in the way you you you were thinking about? politics and ideology in the working place. Daniel Asia: So this takes us back to the question of my writing. So for a long time, and I did it recently for the first time in a long time, I gave talks in various synagogues and religious institutions called Breath and a Ram Horn, the relationship between Judaism and classical music. So I see strong similarities between them as systems of engaging with the world, let's put it like that, and or for it would seem you and me for engaging with what we consider to be the transcendent and the capability of transcendence. So my daughter, God bless her, had a friend whose boyfriend at the time was writing for the Huffington Post or was an editor for the Huffington Post. And we got together and he said, you know, what you do sounds really interesting because he was engaged in things Jewish as well. said, and the high holidays are coming up, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are coming up in about four months. Would you be interested in writing an article for the Huffington Post about this? And I said, gee, yeah, that sounds interesting. What the hell, why not? I'll do that. So I did, and he published it. And he said, okay, it's published, you know, and I'm sure people will enjoy hearing it. And by the way, You know, if you ever want to write anything again, now that you've written for HuffPo, you can write again anytime you want for us, because it's been accepted. You've been accepted as a writer for us. And I said, OK, that's great. And I never thought of. Years later, I went to a concert of a colleague of mine who's a wonderful pianist named John Milbauer. He's now the Dean at DePaul or DePaul, the School of Music in Chicago. And he was doing a concert that included John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes or Interludes and Sonatas or whatever they are for prepared piano. And this was part of the celebration of the centenary of John Cage of his birthday. I think it was around 2013. That makes sense. It was also the centenary of the Rite of Spring or thereabouts. And I noticed that in the New York Times, there was a review almost every day or every other day of a concert celebrating John Cage's music. There was nothing having to do with Stravinsky. Nobody was celebrating Stravinsky. So I went to this concert and I listened, you know, Sonata and interludes. I hadn't heard it for a long time. And for the first 10 minutes, you know, I said, yeah, you know, John was, was doing some cool stuff. Not, not bad. And after 20 minutes, I was saying, you know, it's enough already. This is getting really boring. And by the end, I was ready. to not only shoot John Milbauer, but to shoot myself. Okay. I mean, I just, I just couldn't Orlando: I know the feeling. I know the feeling. Daniel Asia: believe this, this was going on and on and on and nothing was changing. It was the same crap and the same ridiculous sounds getting repeated over and over again. And now I liked some of John's early music. I liked the construction and metal, but I was never a big fan of his later stuff after he discovered that he was a Zen Buddhist and wanting to express that through his relationship to the I Ching. And I never knew a composer. You know, the joke was, you if you went to a concert that included John's music, all the composers would meet out in the, in the foyer because nobody could stand to listen to it. You just can't

take it seriously. Anyway, so I was so pissed off. I wrote an article. called, I don't remember what I called it or what they called it, but it was simply saying, look, Cage was an interesting guy. He was an interesting thinker, but nobody can stand to listen to the music. So as a musician and a composer, he's a failure. The real important composer of the 20th century was Stravinsky. I mean, what Stravinsky did with the Rite of Spring set up the the course of development of the 20th century without a doubt. And there are pieces that are part of the repertoire. mean, his three Russian ballets and then the neoclassical period, Symphony of Psalms and the symphonies themselves. And then Agon, when you get into the serial period. I think the serial period is less successful. I think most people agree. But you can't equate the musical results of those two composers in any way. Well, you can go on the internet and see the record of response Orlando: Yeah, yes. Daniel Asia: where I was called, who is this guy? what kind of, what gives him the Orlando: the right. Daniel Asia: right to say such outlandish things? I must admit, I thought I knew my contemporaries, but I didn't know my younger contemporaries well enough. I hadn't realized that they had imbibed what I would call the Kool-Aid, that John Cage was the composer of the century and not Stravinsky or Ligeti or somebody else. But that to somehow suggest that he was less than the greatest composer or the most influential composer was to express a heresy that demanded that I be branded a heretic in essence. So great, I was a heretic starting about 13 years ago and not written out of the compositional community. I mean, there are people who agreed with me, but we'll get to this. As you know, the orthodoxy that has descended upon the arts community made me a pariah, certainly for many people. And at that point I realized, we're in a very complicated situation in the musical culture if my views are considered to be so outside of the mainstream. And then I just started writing articles for the Huffington Post. and decided I needed to do something about this. So initially I wrote articles that were in opposition to most of the music that was being written. And then our mutual now good friend, Jan Swafford said, you know, it's easy to bash people. Easy to bash. Yeah, why Orlando: Yes. Write something nice. Daniel Asia: don't you write something that's positive? So I wrote a... a whole series called Music That I Mostly Like or Music That I Mostly Find of Interest. And I did that for a while and then I Orlando: That's hilarious. Daniel Asia: don't remember what happened. And then I started spreading my wings more and writing on things that are a little bit more outside of just the walls about music itself and about the larger cultural issues that we're facing. And at that point, I just couldn't stop. became really interested in relating to all of the reading that I was doing about these various issues. So that's resulted in articles, oh, that were in the Huffington Post and then Academic Questions, a journal published by the National Association of Scholars with whom I've been associated for probably 30, 35 years. and then other journals that I wrote for also. And that I decided to put them in a book at a certain point because I thought they represented... important musings on issues that are important for all of us now as musicians and participants in the artistic and general culture of our country and world. Orlando: This book came out in 2021 at the height of the cancel culture, so to speak. Daniel Asia: Yeah. Orlando: what was the reception of this book? I cannot imagine it was any good. Daniel Asia: Well, that's an interesting question. It was put out by a small publisher, so I don't think it got lots of publicity. There were a couple of reviews, as I remember, but I think by and large it was ignored, which is what I would have expected and would still expect because it's so, excuse me, counter-cultural that it's not surprising it wouldn't show up or be reviewed by the New York Times or the New Yorker. Orlando: But you write also for the New Criterion. And the book has a wonderful introduction by Jay Norlinger. Am I pronouncing Norlinger? Or Norlinger? Norlinger, yeah. Daniel Asia: Yes, Nordlinger, Nordlinger, yeah, yeah. Orlando: I mean, your voice is recognized out there by a lot of intellectuals and people that I definitely. would recommend everybody to read this book of yours because I think it's as relevant now as it was when it was published, you know, five years ago. And at the same time that you were publishing this, Heather MacDonald was publishing also another article called or two articles called Classical Music Suicide Pact. And Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: I think maybe that came after your book. That's why perhaps there's no reference there in your book to that particular article. You may reference to other articles of hers, but Daniel Asia: That's correct. Orlando: not this one in particular. And I had the opportunity to talk to Jan Swaford about this particular article in our last interview. And this is very interesting that we continue. to experience these same problems in the world of music, of classical music. It's a very interesting. Why do you think Heather McDonald says something there in the article that is very interesting and it connects to what you're saying now? She contacted so many people, so many conductors, and I think with the exception of Emanuel Axe, no one wanted to talk to her about No one wanted to respond to her article. No one wanted to say something about some of the things that have been, some of the ideology that has been taken over the classical music world. And I'm not surprised that your book was sort of perhaps quietly sort of ignored because no one wants to talk about this. And still today, no one wants to talk about this. Why do you think that is? Daniel Asia: Well, I think it's fairly simple,

I think. One, most artists, be they musical, visual, theatrical, have generally tended to be on the left. tend to have. gently socialist leaning. in our day and age tend to be vehemently secular. and finally are susceptible with the gentlest of political pressure by their peers to accept whatever the dominant cultural perspective is. which is to say they tend to run with the herd because the herd generally controls access to those things that matter. they Orlando: Yes. Daniel Asia: music festivals, be they orchestras, be they schools of music. So To go against that is to threaten your entire career, not Orlando: Livelihood, yeah. Daniel Asia: to mention your standing in the society of your peers. And most of us don't have the backbone or the willingness to go against that. That's first of The second is, in dealing with this now, this is not a rational argument with people. This is an ideological argument that is of religious proportions. So those who disagree are not simply people who disagree, but they are essentially religious heretics that have to be hounded out. of the society of all good people. That too is something that most people are not willing to deal with. And finally, what does this mean for us? And I'm sure Jan and I are in complete agreement about this. We don't disagree with the proposition that all people should be treated equally. We don't disagree with the proposition that all people should have equal access to institutions of music. We only say it can't be done at the expense of quality. And that is not an aspect that is determined by something other than an absolute awareness of what the beautiful is now. That begs the question, begs the question, because of course in the academy, beauty is now only... what the powerful say it is. And we're now going to say that something is different and therefore beautiful. And this will pass. It's going to take a long time and it's going to take its toll. already has. Orchestral audiences are being subjected to massively bad and ugly music because it's being written by politically correct people according to their color or sexual persuasion. My view of the matter is I could give a shit about whether somebody is blue, green, black, white, short, tall, gay, straight, whatever. I just want to hear good music. But it's hard for people to know what good music is. And our gatekeepers, by and large, don't know. They have no idea what good music is. And the qualifications, therefore, of music getting played has nothing to do anymore with quality. So that's a problem for us. And it's a case of classical music cutting off its nose despite its face. At a time when we're facing the most serious decline in listenership. You wanna play bad music for people. It's something I can't comprehend, but that's what's Orlando: You're touching on something that I know in your book you mentioned, Sir Roger Scruton, which is one of my favorite authors. And I love a program that he made for BBC, I think it was, called Why Beauty Matters. And sort of how our Western civilization has engaged in a battle against beauty for for decades now. He traces it back to Duchamp's urinal, as he calls it. Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orlando: And at the time, guess one of the things he says is like, it was kind of similar to what you're saying about Carter. It's kind of cool. Some of this stuff is so new that why not? mean, you put the urinal there, and it's interesting. And then you fast forward. decades to today, and we're still fighting the same battle. I know you're saying that, well, this will pass, but I'm not so sure. I mean, I'm not so sure things pass. I think we are engaged in a constant battle. That I think it will last for eternity. Maybe I'm getting too mystical here, but Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orlando: what I think has happened in the past, 20 years or so is that one side of that, the people on the one side of that camp that is battling the other side has diminished tremendously because we don't have the same education, we don't have the same appreciation for beauty. So a lot of people are more engaged with entertainment. You talk about that in your book as well. People Daniel Asia: Hmm. Orlando: are more engaged with things that are trivial. So they really don't have the bandwidth, as they say nowadays. to engage in battles of good versus evil, or who cares about Beethoven? We don't even know what that is, so why am I going to even talk about that? And I understand that when you engage in this kind of conversation, people are like, my god, are we going to start talking about this again? So there is a of a laziness. And I'm not so sure it will pass. And the reason why it continues to to grow is because the other camp, the camp that is ideologically possessed, the camp that is taking over the academy, and is taking over the concert halls, this camp is very militant. This is the camp that is constantly reinvigorated with an energy that the other side do not possess anymore. And so I don't know. I'm not so. I am not so optimistic about that. We are seeing what is happening at the Met now, Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: where they had to cut the programming to 17 operas, is, know, 100 years ago they were doing more than that. So, and we see that the engagement from the culture at large is less and less. And I don't know if it's gonna get any better. And you have a mayor now in New York City that is talking about the, know, frigidity of individualism and the warmth of collectivism. I don't even think Marx would have agreed with that. You know, it just sounds so stupid. you know, Marx would have been like appalled. But, you know, I've never heard anything so stupid in my entire life. And I had to read Karl Marx, you know. for my entire adolescence in Cuba. And I never read anything or heard anything that's stupid in my life. But yeah, this is where we are. And Daniel Asia: Yes. Orlando: it doesn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, it's getting

worse and worse. And then I don't know what the solution is for that. mean, as you said, if you speak against the system, you are ostracized or excommunicated. I mean, Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: I've never cared about that because of where I came from. I came from a place Daniel Asia: Hmm. Orlando: where I couldn't say what I wanted to say because I saw my family members being put in prison. saw so many people suffer because of that. So I didn't come to this country to be told what to say and what not to say. Career be damned. So for me to speak and to say what I think is the most important thing. You know, I love when people say and speak what they believe or what they think, even if I oppose Daniel Asia: disagree. Orlando: it or I think is not what I believe. I think that's totally fine. But more and more, I see that one side is not allowed to express disagreement. And that's something Daniel Asia: Mm. Orlando: that I see it in not only in classical music, but in pop music. And I'm sorry I'm talking too much, but just speaking about your Huffington Post writings and Daniel Asia: Hmm. Orlando: your comments about, negative comments about people that you mentioned. Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: I recently wrote an article for the Miami Herald on the halftime show of Bad Bunny. Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: And I... wrote an article saying that to me it was a failure because it did not represent me as a Latin American person or an artist or I didn't see the artistic value in it. And basically I wrote that I saw the entertainment value of it and I understand that popular music is about mainly entertaining people and if that's the case, fine. But the politics... The way we are looking at things through the lens of politics constantly is what I'm in disagreement with. And then because we are judging things from that lens of politics, we are saying, well, this is good and that is bad. And I got so much hate from writing this article. Because how they're, the same thing you're saying, who the hell is this guy? He's a classical, you should have seen that, it was very funny. Who the hell is this guy? He's a classical musician, he's an elitist, he's a Eurocentric. He only cares about music that nobody listens to anymore. Bad Bunny is a superstar. He doesn't care what this guy thinks. And so we're not allowed anymore even to criticize. And I get criticized even by classical musicians, friends of mine who say, well, you know, in a time where Latin people are being mistreated, the politics are, we have eyes and deportations. And like, what does that have to do with my criticism of the artistic value of something? I'm just judging things on artistic merits. And I'm not even allowed to do that anymore. And also, sorry. Daniel Asia: So I'll give you another example of that. And shortly before I retired from the university, it was decided that we would teach a course in hip hop music at the request of the African American studies department who has the only minor in the country in what is labeled hip hop culture. So first of all, what does that mean? Hip hop culture. We can ask that question, I suppose. Then we can ask the question of what is hip hop music and or is that oxymoronic in some sense. And there I'm being really contentious, right? Really contentious. And I said, you know, Look, we already have a course in Frank Sinatra. We already have a course in the Beatles. We have a course in popular music. Why do you want to go down as you expressed the phrase, the rabbit hole of hip hop music? For what purpose? Well, because it's going to bring in lots of students who will make more money. And I said rather offhandly, well, we could also just open a meth lab in the basement of the music building and make a lot more money. you know, if you're going to, if it's all about the money. And I said, okay, you know, I'll do a little due diligence and, and research this. It happens that the guy who would teach the class, his office was directly across from mine. We were in a small outline building together. And I went into him and I said, look, you know, so we're going to have this discussion at the faculty, uh, faculty meeting. And we'll talk about whether this course is to be approved or not. And I said, look, I listened to the top 10 songs on the billboard charts of hip hop music. There are four words that are used in all 10 songs. They are pussy, hoe, nigger, and Bitch. I said, you think that's worth studying at a university? That kind of language is somehow representative of somebody's culture. And he said, you can't use the word nigger. I said, well, how do you read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn? And he said, well, you can't use that word. I said, well, I have to, because that's the word that's being displayed. He said, if you do, I will stop the discussion. It'll be finished. And I said, well, that's highly inappropriate in university where you want to, you have established a curriculum that uses these words and we can't use those words. So this is echoing your comment about living in a free society as opposed to a communist one like Cuba's. But yes, this is what academia has descended to. I felt I won a victory when a third of my faculty rejected the course. But two thirds of course said, the hell, it's going to make us money. Let's do it. So I guess what I'm what I'm saying is, yes, we're in a very serious position. But you know what? I'm Jewish. The Jews have been in a serious position for about 2000 years. And guess what? We're still here. And we're still fighting and we're not going anyplace. And if classical music establishes or is pushed into an even smaller corner in the larger culture, there will always be those. always, who will want to listen to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Bernstein, Stravinsky. Okay? It may be a smaller group. By the way, it always was a small group. It became Orlando: It always was as well. Yes. Daniel Asia: larger during the middle brow period in our history of the 50s

and 60s. and was supported by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller and others who then expanded schools of music into every university, expanded orchestras all around the country. Orchestras used to have seasons of 20 weeks. Then they expanded to 52 weeks. I don't know about you, but I can't listen to classical music 24 hours a day. My Orlando: Right. Daniel Asia: mind can't take it. I can't be Orlando: Right. Daniel Asia: in a sacred space that much. Right? It's meant for particular times, particular places, for particular people who know that there's something beyond the profaneness of most of our world who are seeking something more. That's just, and if it becomes somewhat smaller, so be it. But I want you and your generation not to feel because I think I truly believe this. It's never going to disappear. It's going to be harder to make a living because there way too many people now trying to make a living Orlando: Yeah. Daniel Asia: playing classical music or too many composers who think that they're going to make a career as a composer. I mean, let's think about this really seriously for a minute. How many great composers have there been in musical history? In any period? Orlando: handful. Daniel Asia: A handful at most. That's the way it's been. So what do you do when music schools are graduating composers with doctorates at a rate of, let's say at a minimum, 200 a year? What does that mean? And they think that they're composers and they think that they're going to make a living and they think that they're going to write music that people want to listen to? Impossible. You know, I joke with people. say, look, I'm the last of my species. I only got a master's from Yale. I didn't go back and get a doctorate like Jan did or like my colleague Robert Beezer. Why? Because I was having too much fun in New York conducting musical elements. The contemporary ensemble that I'd established and writing music. I was learning by doing it, by being with my people. I don't think Beethoven had a doctorate. I don't even think Liszt did. I'm being a little facetious here. You know, they wrote really great music and they played the bejesus out of the piano, right? So to have a degree doesn't, none of my teachers, one teacher had a doctorate. The others had masters or bachelor of arts. You know, I don't think Bernard Rans, my close friend, had a master's or a doctorate. He went and he studied with Moderna and and Berio and Boulez. know, degrees weren't what made you supposedly fit to have a career as a composer. It was whether you could do it or not. Now, do I, I don't decry that there are schools of music or people who are studying composition. Don't get me wrong. I think it's valid, but we have to understand that it doesn't change the basic factor that some people really have the talent and the capability to do something. And they've been doing it from the time they were four. And some people do not. I'm not Mozart. And I'm not Beethoven, you know? I'm more like Stravinsky, and yeah, more like Beethoven than I am like Mozart. I mean, Mozart, the music just flowed out of him. It just did, right? Now, as he got older, I think he had to think about it a little more, and had he lived into his 40s and 50s, he might've thought about it more. Beethoven wasn't willing to sort of keep writing the same piece. He stopped that after the Second Symphony. He said, wait a minute. And it became harder and he had to work his butt off to get it done. And that's all I meant. I'm not Beethoven, but I work my butt off to write what I hope is the best music I can possibly write. And I don't let it out of my studio unless I'm in love with every note at the time. And I've done the very best I can do. I can't say that for most composers' music that I hear now. I think most of it's not particularly interesting and not particularly good. It's just... Orlando: Well, you mentioned the word beauty, that dirty word. Daniel Asia: Yeah. Orlando: It's just that's out of the equation. mean, we see Roger Daniel Asia: Screen. Orlando: Scruton said that we lose our when we the reason why he believes that we have lost our love for beauty is because we have lost our sense of our ideals somehow and our spiritual connection and all of these things that you're talking about. And you're right, I mean, there is no connection that is encouraged by the institutions, by the teachers to reach into the world of beauty, the spiritual. spiritual world. And composers are, hands are tight somehow, you know, behind their back. I was talking to a friend about recent concert with Duda Mel, Gustavo Duda Mel, who is going to be now the new conductor of the New York Philharmonic. And he put a concert in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States and the piece that he put on the program was The People United Will Never Be Defeated, that famous Schesky piece. And which I hate, just the title alone gives me, it makes me itch. But I never thought it was a particularly good piece to begin with and is a kind of a ideological piece is a hymn to the Latin American communist left and is a highly anti-American hymn. So I thought it was kind of interesting that you will pick that piece to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. But nevertheless, there are friends that love that piece and I have pianist friends that love playing that piece and it's still very popular with the Young musicians and young composers and okay fine, whatever but the idea was to Commission 18 composers some of them people that I really like and and composers that I respect to write variations New variations on this theme Which I thought it was a little bit too on the nose if you ask me, you know Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: First of all, why didn't you ask these 18 composers to write? their own music, know, but perhaps give them an opportunity to express themselves and the audience an opportunity to hear what they had to say. When will you get the money to

commission 18 people, you know, at once like that for a celebration like this that everybody's sort of paying attention to. But instead, what happened was that these musicians, these composers were sort of... given a political sort of lens or an idea to develop. So perhaps some of them just developed that theme, which is not an ugly theme, that famous anthem. But the idea was political at heart. And Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orlando: that then I questioned because some of the critics after that said like, well, know, we didn't feel, I didn't feel that the variations really carry the same level of intensity and the power of the original piece. So I guess it was just kind of like a missed opportunity and it didn't really work. And then the piece was also paired with Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. which I guess I was telling a friend as a joke, I hope that they reinstated the Napoleon title to the piece because otherwise what's the point? If you're going Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Orlando: to have the people united, we'll never be defeated and then you have the Napoleon symphony to make the whole thing very political. So Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orlando: again, what are people that are coming to the concert hall are going to listen? Who are these people that are going to sit there and listen to these variations? 18 composers. All of them were very happy to be there and to be invited to such an occasion. And I understand. think it's, like you said, we're all looking for opportunities to perform. And they are so rare opportunities to be seen. And no one talked about the political element of this kind of programming. No one. You read any of the reviews, you read any of the critics, and the complaints have been about, did it work? It didn't work? were the variations as good as the original piece? But nothing on the, OK, so what's the, what are you trying to say here? Because I am here in a cloud and clear. I grew up with that anthem. It was played in Cuba constantly in every Daniel Asia: Was it? Orlando: anti. Yeah, of course, every anti-American rally, workers rallies, and that was like the people united will never be defeated. My God, that was anti-Pinochet, anti-US, anti all of those things. So it Daniel Asia: Share, share. Orlando: was very much linked to the communist left. And yet here we are again talking about these things. It was a little too much on the nose for me, particularly, to have that piece in what is supposed to be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. And it didn't sit very well with me. Daniel Asia: I couldn't agree with you more about most of what you've said. But you have to remember that most people don't know its association. They just know it's kind of a soft peon to some kind of gentle comment on bringing people together. Orlando: Yeah. Daniel Asia: They have no idea that this was played in Cuba. They have no idea that Jefsky was an ardent communist. They have no idea that Jefsky made a living off

of that piece, a really good one, for probably a decade. Orlando: Yeah. Daniel Asia: So what the hell did he care? He was making a lot of money. mean, Fred was a... Fred, if nothing else, went where the money was and where the opportunity was. And he was a good commie. He just was. mean, Fred was a friend with I disagreed violently, you know, on politics, but we could talk to each other. I happened to think that what he did compositionally in the piece is quite extraordinary. you're saying, given your background, I can't separate the political commentary from the music. So I, for example, Orlando: Right, right. But I do see why people like that piece. And yes, no argument there. Daniel Asia: There you go. There you go. There you go. Now, I, you know, I went in my middle fifties to see the ring cycle in Seattle for the first time. Because I thought, God damn it, I should hear the ring cycle once in my life live. I couldn't listen to it on recording. I mean, it'd be impossible for me to do that. So I went and I listened to it. And at the end, I said, they're right. This. is an extraordinary piece of music and music theater. It's unbelievable. And guess what? The guy still is an anti-Semite and an asshole and I can't stand him. Can't stand him. And I realized at that point, okay, I have to separate composers politics, their cultural thinking, from the music, I have to accept that there can be that contradiction in human beings, that somebody can be a phenomenal artist and as a human being be among the worst of the worst. Caravaggio was a murderer. He was a pretty great painter. He just is. Picasso was one of the great philanders and misogynists, probably in all of history. He still is one of the greatest artists that has ever lived. Okay, so I have to live. It wasn't scrutin that somebody else, I love scrutin. I've read almost all of his books, except he was way too Orlando: Yes, it's great. Daniel Asia: prolific towards the end. So I couldn't keep up, can't keep Orlando: Yeah. Daniel Asia: up, but he had to make a living. Okay. You have to understand he had to make a living. But one of the things that yeah. And one of the Orlando: Right. Yeah. No, I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you about that. And I can, by the way, I do have, I can separate that very well. don't, like I said, you know, even with Shetsky or even Garcia Marquez, which was intimate friend of Fidel Castro. I still read all of his works. I still loved a lot of them. And Daniel Asia: Yep. Right. Right. Orlando: the same, you know, with Wagner or with any other despicable character. Daniel Asia: Exactly. Exactly. Orlando: Because there is no such thing as a holy human being that happened to be also an incredible artist. It just isn't. It doesn't work like that. Daniel Asia: That's correct. We have to live with that paradox and part of being human and part of what I've been doing a lot of reading of a guy named McGilchrist. I don't know if you've ever read the Matter

with Things, but you Orlando: No, I haven't. Daniel Asia: might want to try it or the emissary Orlando: Yes. Daniel Asia: and the servant. Anyway, he says, look, part of what we have to live with is the paradox of being human and Orlando: Yes. Daniel Asia: that things You can't resolve paradoxes, that's part of it. And for him, that's part of left and right brain understanding of the world and trying to bring that into balance. The right hemisphere is one of flow and one of transcendence and seeing the world as a totality. The left hemisphere is one that's very rational, sees time in small little bits. And the problem is when one usurps the other. And he says we're now in a time, his concern, the materialist time that we're in, the time of science is the left brain has taken control. And the right brain, the right hemisphere is the one that should be in. And the part of being this human is having these two hemispheres, which give us different ways of looking at the world that we have to find a way of creating a symbiosis and a... Sorry, what's the Marxist term? I'm not coming up with it. That's OK. But yes, he was. He was. He was. You read them all. I fortunately didn't have Orlando: He had many. He was a very prolific maker of slogans and terminologies and the best at that. Yes, it's just... Daniel Asia: to read them all. Dialectic, of resolution of Orlando: Dialect is, yeah. Daniel Asia: the dialectic. In any event, Look, Orlando: So we'll... Daniel Asia: you and I have already talked about the soul and used that word. That's not a word that you can even use in academia. It's not a word that you can really use in artistic circles anymore. Orlando: Well, the soul has been sort of supplanted by identity. We had the soul sort of supplanted by the self during the Freudian era and Daniel Asia: Yes. Orlando: the Jungians and the psychoanalysis. And now even the self has fallen into oblivion somehow and replaced by identity. You are what your identity is. And that's sort of like the latest sort of metamorphosis of the soul in our current society. So Daniel Asia: Yes. Yeah. Orlando: that's why everything that, know, artistic manifestation or artistic output needs to be sort of connected to identity, which is sort of like we're still living in the profane, but still they're very much religious fervor, which is the funny thing. reading this book of Mircea Eliade. I don't know if you know Eliade. Mircea Eliade is just an incredible philosopher. He wrote a book called The Sacred and the Profane. And he talks about a lot of these things that we live in in society. We're still practicing some kind of profane sort of lifestyle and doing all these things. thinking they are not engaged in some religious activity. It's just the wrong kind of religious activity. it's Daniel Asia: Mm. Orlando: really a very interesting thing that is happening to our society. have a kind of, as you said before, religious fervor pushing these ideologies to levels of moral purity. If

you're not perfect, if you're not morally pure, you're canceled. You cannot be represented by institutions. You cannot be represented by... the presenters in concert halls and you're eventually canceled or you need to be sort of like. put away. Daniel Asia: That's right. That's right. Orlando: I don't know if we are, I think I go back to Chesterton's, one of my favorite philosophers, I've been reading so much of him, you're talking about that kind of, you know, battle between the left brain and the right brain and he said something Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orlando: that's, that always resonates with me. We are suffering from an abundance of too much goodness somehow. We wanna be so good that we are just, are not allowing any middle ground. We are not allowing for anything other than the perfection of our highest standards, whatever, however misguided they are. So yeah, I mean, it's... He's always good at this kind of like living in between those two worlds, the left and the right brain, and reconciling them together. He's Daniel Asia: That's correct. Orlando: one of the guys who said about Christianity. I he was a very Catholic and Christian man, Daniel Asia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Orlando: but he talks about that kind of reconciliation of Christianity and atheism. and how atheism is sort of born from that religious fervor, from that kind of moral questioning. And Daniel Asia: Mm. Orlando: we think as atheists that we are not engaged in a religious practice. And we don't know that the Romans and Greeks did not have that kind of problems with atheism. They didn't consider themselves atheists. It comes out of this religious world we live in. Daniel Asia: That's right. That's fine. Their hatred of God is with the same fervor of a Christian's love for God. And Orlando: Exactly, exactly. Daniel Asia: they won't look at science to show them, by the way. I mean, if you look at Flew's book, Why I'm Now Not an Atheist, he was the greatest philosophical proponent of atheism. And then he Orlando: Yes, yes. Daniel Asia: looked at the facts more recently. And he looked at things and he said, science is now telling us there is a God. And here's what it's telling us. and by the way, all of the early quantum physicists all believed that they were looking at the mind of God. So if there's a mind of God, there has to be a God whose mind you're looking at. So Orlando: Right, right. Daniel Asia: these questions are complex and complicated. Orlando: Well, Maestro, I think this would be a great place to finish our conversation. I've already taken. too much of your time. And I want to leave it, I wanted to get to this point at the end of our conversation and the miracle of music and the miracle of life. And I think we arrived there and it would be my honor and my pleasure to continue this conversation again at another time. I hope it's the first of many. Daniel Asia: Anytime. Orlando: I am very grateful for your time, for your patience, and for your wisdom. And I encourage everybody listening to this to go and listen to your music and to go and read your writings and especially the observations of music culture and politics is a book I've enjoyed tremendously. So thank you Maestro Daniel Asia: Wonderful. Orlando: so much. And I hope we can do this again sometime soon.