Philip Cashian's music has been commissioned, performed and broadcast worldwide - recent performances have included the Ojai Festival (California), Musikmonat (Basle), Cleveland Performing Arts Series, the St.Paul Chamber Orchestra, BCMG, Aldeburgh Festival, Spitalfields Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the BBC Proms as well as performances in Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Hungary,
Romania, Holland, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand and China. Philip Cashian’s Dark Inventions will be performed by the ensemble Dark Inventions at the next Late Music concert, Saturday 2nd May at the National for Centre for Early Music.
Steve Crowther:
Can you describe the work to us?
Philip Cashian: It’s in five sections;
the first is a solo for alto flute, the second, waves of minimalistic-like
textures, the next section is a low line that slowly rises, growing all the
time, then a cello and piano duo and finally a dark coda built around the
amazing sound of a low 5 octave marimba.
SC: Do you write at the piano, do you pre-plan? Can you describe the compositional process?
PC: I write mainly at the piano
but, since Gary Carpenter told me about Wallander Note Performer (which is
superb), increasingly also on the computer using playback. I pre-plan to the
extent that I know the overall feel and character of a piece - like a snapshot-
before starting it. I accumulate lots of sketches and fragments before actually
starting to write. I hate scratching around for ideas once I’m writing a piece.
SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a sound in mind?
SC: Is it important to know the performers? Do you write with a sound in mind?
PC: I’m writing a piano concerto
for my friend Huw Watkins at the moment. If it was for another pianist the
piece would be completely different. Of course once the piece is written any
pianist could perform it but thinking about Huw’s playing whilst I’m writing it
directly affects the choices I’m making. Yes, I always write with a sound in
mind.
SC: How would you describe your individual ‘sound world’?
PC: Last year I had a review in
Tempo magazine for the recent House of Night CD and there’s a paragraph which I
think describes my music very well: Several Cashian hallmarks emerge in the
course of this CD: bold melodic gestures for instruments in unison; a kind of
'broken machine' texture in which uneven rhythms lumber almost out of control;
motor rhythm sections pointing up a relationship with minimalism; and
contemplative passages, akin to Morton Feldman, in which musical objects are
carefully placed in 'static fields'. Above all there is a brisk intelligence
behind the music, unsentimental certainly, but never arid.
SC: What motivates you to compose?
PC: That’s very difficult to answer.
I’ve accumulated lots of ideas that I want to hear and articulate in all sorts
of different ways and contexts. Also, trying to correct the errors I can hear
in previous pieces. I can’t not compose - which I can’t explain.
SC: Which living composers do you identify with or simply admire?
PC: Harrison Birtwistle
SC: If you could have a beer and a chat with any composer from the past, who would it be and why?
PC: Stravinsky, do I really need to
explain why?
SC: Now for some desert island
discery – please name eight pieces of music you could not be without, and then
select just one.
PC: Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring,
Birtwistle: Silbury Air, Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5,
Schubert: Death and the Maiden Quartet, Bach: Goldberg Variations, Ligeti:
Violin Concerto, Radiohead: Kid A (the whole album)
Stravinsky:
The Rite of Spring
SC: …and a book?
PC: Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s
Children
SC: …a
film?
PC: Pulp
Fiction
SC: … and a
luxury item?
