Kondonassis plays Reena Esmail

Michael Keelan: This is KBACH’s First Take and I’m Michael Keelan. I’m talking with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis about her new album Terra Inferma. That’s a concerto written for her by Reena Esmail, and the album also includes a couple of other pieces by Esmail. Thanks for joining us today, Yolanda.

Yolanda Kondonassis: Well, thank you so much for having me.

Michael Keelan: This is a harp concerto, but it is not just any harp concerto. It’s very unconventional in some ways. Could we start with sort of the philosophical underpinnings of it, depicting this time of the fires in Los Angeles and particularly the spiritual response to that?

Yolanda Kondonassis: Well, that’s a great intro to the piece because mostly what I do these days in terms of commissioning and projects and my non-profit, Earth’s Heart, is involve myself in music that in some way inspires us to think about this amazing planet that we live on and what we need to do to really sustain it and care for it. And Terra Inferma is based on a wonderful poem by Robert Walters.

Initially, the piece was kind of a creative blizzard between the two of us. We’re dear friends and we really wanted to do something really interesting and unusual and maybe just a tiny bit groundbreaking with this concerto because I’ve done a lot of concerto commissions. I’ve spent many decades playing the standard repertoire and really what excites me right now is doing things that perhaps haven’t been done many times before.

And this piece is actually for harp and percussion, and I function as both soloists at the same time. During the course of the piece, I play all sorts of percussion instruments that are arranged around the harp and I literally shove the harp through several stations of percussion during the course of the piece. And the harp and perhaps I represent kind of the protagonist in the story of this piece. You might even say I represent Earth, and the harp in its—all its sort of fragility and power represents Earth as well.

And so when we began formulating a concept for the piece, we had certainly the poem in mind, which really addresses many aspects of our fragile planet. But Reena then found herself in the middle of the Los Angeles fires a little over a year ago, and her home is actually in Altadena. And the month that she was planning to really get down into the meat of writing this piece happened to be the month that fires ravaged the Los Angeles area, and Altadena was kind of ground zero for a lot of it, and she was evacuated. And so some of the concepts of this piece formulated for her when she didn’t even know if she had a home to go back to. So I think that when artists actually experience things, there’s a whole next level of expression and subtext in what they do.

Michael Keelan: Did you always know there would be a percussion element to it?

Yolanda Kondonassis: Well, that’s a funny question because we rolled around lots of different ideas. But what we did know is that we wanted another sonic layer in this piece. I’ve commissioned a number of harp concertos, and one of the last concertos that I premiered and recorded was Jennifer Higdon’s harp concerto. And her last movement of that concerto, the fourth movement, is entitled "Rap Knock," and she takes advantage of the fact that the harp is indeed a percussion instrument itself, and I’ve done a lot of that kind of extended technique in—especially in recent years—on the harp.

And so I’ve had to kind of become a little bit—I’ve had to develop a little bit of dexterity in the percussion department. And that kind of got me thinking about it enough to suggest to Reena, "Well, what about percussion? What if we just surrounded me with cool percussion instruments that would completely expand the sonic zone of this piece?" And of course, as things tend to do, it kind of grew one head after another.

And honestly, it was really wonderful that we had that concept early enough for me to really kind of immerse myself in the percussion world and practice my drum roll and work on beat patterns and stick control and all of that kind of stuff. Now, I didn’t use absolutely everything that I tried to at least familiarize myself with during the last year and a half or so. But I think it was just an incredible experience for me to take a skillset that I’ve pretty much mastered in the last four decades on the harp and expand that to the similar control, similar trajectory, bounce, physics that it takes to play percussion instruments and combine them all together.

At one point in the piece, she has me playing a sort of a complex, hoppy figure in my left hand while I’m playing a combination of crotales and almglocken, or cowbells, in my right hand. And the effect is really, really something. And I suppose one might ask, "Well, why not just make it a double concerto? Hire a really elite percussionist and you do this together?" And the reason for that really is that in my career I have done pieces where there is intricate interplay between harp and percussion, but there really is stuff that if you want complete and utter precision, you kind of have to have one person doing it. And that was the case in many sections of this piece where I have to be in the same place with myself—no acoustic delay—in order for things to be completely synchronized and coordinated. So it was a really, really cool challenge, and I think the results are pretty extraordinary, I must say.

Michael Keelan: Just to go back a bit, that intermediary step of percussion on the harp was the fact, for listeners who aren’t familiar, that you can tap on the soundboard and make sounds other than plucking the strings on the harp itself.

Yolanda Kondonassis: Oh yes, I’ve hit the harp with all sorts of stuff beyond my hand—all sorts of kitchen tools. And the harp can be prepared with paper and all sorts of different materials. So usually harpists are no stranger to that extended world of articulated, struck sound. But this, I must say, was kind of next level for me. It was really fun.

Michael Keelan: You mentioned a couple of the percussion instruments that you play. What are crotales and can you name a couple of the other things that you play in this concerto?

Yolanda Kondonassis: Yeah, crotales are those little round discs that when you tap them they sound like bells. And they were kind of perhaps the most precision element I had to master because I was reaching as far as my right arm would reach to the edge of the line of crotales while I was playing the harp with my left hand. So I think I’m probably very fortunate that I have really, really long arms and for that matter legs because I was also using a drum kick with my left foot during the movement called "Immolation" that was mounted with a seed pod shaker, which gives everything sort of a sizzly kind of a sound and adds a different texture.

I played a thunder sheet, which was just about the most fun thing I’ve ever done. And kind of the culmination of the piece happens after I have shoved my harp rhythmically while playing it across the stage in the longest move. I do about six moves, five moves with the harp, and I just literally shove it from one station to the next. When the harp is moved, it’s done very choreographically. And I go through these kind of various stages of almost realization, grief, anger.

And that pinnacle of the piece is in a movement called "Swallowed," where I’ve just made the longest journey with the harp—eight beats of harp shoving. And I’m playing the harp at the same time I’m shoving it. And I land at this spot between a bass drum and a tom-tom and I literally kind of lose it. I kind of joke that I’ve waited my whole life to lose it on stage, and it’s a very dramatic pinnacle after kind of a reflective theatrical movement. And I actually coached with a theater specialist who helped me really make it as impactful as I can. I’m not an actor, but as artists, I think all of us know that when we play an instrument we are kind of creating a character through our instrument. And this was sort of next level on that front.

But once I get to this final spot, I am striking the harp and playing the bass drum and the tom-tom in this very kind of potent climax of the piece that leads to this gorgeous cadenza when I push my harp into its last position facing the audience for the movement called "Facing the Flame". And play this cadenza that I just adore, and I actually affix a light to my left hand, one of my fingers, and the piece ends not with acceptance but with hope. After kind of that crazy movement where I lose it, then it’s like coming into this feeling of, "Alright, but somewhere on this earth right now everything is as it should be," and embracing that and the hope that we can spread that condition to other parts of the earth. And the light is really a wonderful symbol as well. It’s actually a dollhouse light that I found and I affixed it to a big chunky ring, and I play the last movement of the piece with that ring on and the light on, and at the end of the piece, that’s the only light on the stage.

Michael Keelan: When you describe the choreography and the dramatic elements of this, it seems to imply that to get the full experience you would need to see the performance as well as hear it. Is that fair?

Yolanda Kondonassis: Well, you know, I kind of worried about that. I wondered if this is going to be something so theatrically dependent that that might be the case. But you know, when I was dealing with the post-production of all of this, I was absolutely flored that this piece really, really works without any of it. I think that’s because the music is just so good. The music holds up. The music is not depending on the theatrics; the theatrics are more depending on the music. So the theatrics would not mean nearly as much without that incredible music behind it, so I think it really holds up.

And the one thing I would say is we made the decision in this day of digital-only—we made the decision to do a physical release. The digital release was April 17th and the physical release is May 15th. And we made that decision because, you know, there is just no substitute for listening to something on CD where you don’t get the compression, where everything is just surrounding you. And you know, there’s no comparison. When I listen to this project on big speakers, it’s like an immersive experience.

Michael Keelan: You are performing this piece with the Interlochen Orchestra and Chorus. For folks who aren’t musical, what is that place, Interlochen, and what was your experience there before?

Yolanda Kondonassis: Well, Interlochen Center for the Arts is just an incredible place on this earth. And I went there for four years of high school. It’s a boarding school for—for those who remember that movie Fame, it’s very much a school like that; it’s a performing arts high school. And it’s also an incredibly world-renowned summer program for young artists of all disciplines.

And it was an incredible experience for me to go back there having graduated several decades ago from high school there and really realize that there has been, of course, progress, but not change. The place is the same. You have the freedom and the mentorship to develop whatever it is you are. And to play this piece and to develop this piece—it was a series of three residencies of workshopping, working with the students, and really helping immerse them in the world of Indian classical music, which informs Reena’s compositional world.

The piece is built around rāgas, which are kind of the Indian classical music version of Western keys. And it was just amazing to have the luxury of time to really develop a piece and lay it down on recording in a way that really does justice to everything and everyone. When I’ve recorded things in the past, you know, it’s usually with an orchestra—certainly, it’s a much quicker "time is money" kind of affair. And this just feels like it was a fully realized artistic process, and those Interlochen students just sound like pros. I think many folks would be hard-pressed to discern that these are students, much less high school students. It’s kind of incredible.

Michael Keelan: The album is The Terra Inferma Project, and the music is by Reena Esmail. Yolanda Kondonassis, thanks very much for talking with us on First Take today.

Yolanda Kondonassis: Thank you so much for having me.