An interview with violinist Miranda Cuckson who will perform in Anthony Cheung’s the echoing of tenses at New York’s Alice Tully Hall on 16 July
New York-based violinist Miranda Cuckson is known for her vast knowledge and admirable interpretations of modern and contemporary works. It is no wonder that she is one of the busiest, most sought-after musicians at this summer’s Lincoln Center RUN AMOC Festival of new music which started mid-June and runs for a month. Given her busy rehearsal, recording and performance schedule, I was lucky to have a chance to sit down and chat with her about the anticipated closing work, the echoing of tenses (information here). The work’s composer is Anthony Cheung, but Cuckson initiated the idea for this large-scale song cycle centered on the poetry of living Asian-American poets. Ahead of the 16 July performance, we spoke about how performers are catalysts for new work, the artistic process and the personal meaning that the echoing of tenses holds for her.
Daniele Sahr: Miranda, let’s start with how you were involved in the realization of Anthony Cheung’s the echoing of tenses for AMOC [American Modern Opera Company]. What was your role in the conception? Would you take us through that initial creative process?
Miranda Cuckson: A pretty special thing about AMOC is that it is built around the projects we members dream up. It is there to make those things happen. It’s an interdisciplinary group by definition as well: dancers, opera singers and musicians, and they have a lot of other interests too, whether writing or film. All the arts are involved.
I was thinking about things I’d like to do with them and the kind of resources we might be able to find for it. Anthony [Cheung] is someone whose music I have really come to love and admire. Just before this, I had recorded [on New Focus Recordings] a duo with him, ‘Elective Memory’, a piece for violin and piano. He’s a wonderful pianist himself, and that was an inspiring collaboration. I also did a solo piece called ‘Character Studies’ for his album. From that immersion in the music, I felt it would be great to work more with him. I found, from talking with him, that he hadn’t written much vocal music and was interested in expanding into that area. I showed him AMOC’s roster of people, and he spent time getting to know everybody’s work to see who it would be interesting to involve.
I wanted to see where he would be drawn for the kind of piece it would become. I was imagining voice, some satisfying text and violin – a chamber piece. We came to feel Paul Appleby would be a great collaborator as well as the tenor voice with the violin. And Anthony was interested in working with electronics because he has been using quite a bit of microtonality in his language – using that to expand the piano palette outward as well as real-world sampled sounds used in an imaginative way.
The next step was deciding what the piece would be about. We talked about a few poets, and pretty soon it started to focus on Asian-American writers. This was during the [COVID] pandemic. And, you will remember, there was anti-Asian sentiment. That was something of a motivator. He knew a few of the poets personally, and it was a nice way to include friends as well. I was basically involved in imagining something at the beginning, bringing Anthony into it and then getting all the gears working with AMOC.
How long was the process?
This was about five years ago. At first it was quick. We gave it a big push thinking it would be cool to be able to do this at the Ojai Festival in California (2022). Then we talked about what the role of each of the performers would be. It’s unusual to have a song cycle with a violin in it. What is the violin there for?
Yes! That leapt out at me when seeing the instrumentation it. How do you perceive the unusual role of the violin in this genre?
I didn’t want it to be a song cycle with a violin and pianist in the usual way with the violin just playing little things here and there. It was interesting to think of it as another conversation partner: how can the violin, just as much as the piano, be creating the soundworld? Anthony came up with a special soundworld. Between the violin’s voice-like quality and the sounds it can make which the piano cannot, it makes the music a big part of what it is. There are parts where the violin has a more lyrical dialogue with the tenor, Paul, and then more gestural parts going on. It’s quite an active part for the violin. There are interludes where the singer drops out, and we [piano and violin] are creating something of a soundscape more in dialogue with the readings by the poets or the recorded narration as well as with the electronics.
In the performance, it’s also unusual to have a few live readings by some of the poets themselves along with Paul, the tenor. How will that play out in the structure and textures of the piece?
With Paul, who is always singing, the words get transmuted into a musical expression in contrast to having the directness of the actual poet who wrote these words standing there and sharing a personal experience firsthand on the stage. Another thing Anthony and I talked about was that he and I could speak a bit.
In the video of the Ojai performance, I could see that you have a mic as well [link here].
Yes, we do talk, and there is one movement in particular where Anthony and I speak the words of the poem back and forth. It’s about blurring the roles – who is a musician, who is a speaker. In that movement, the words are not meant to be synchronized, exactly, but to go with the phrasing of the music as well, to deliver them with a musical quality.
You’ve pointed out the soundscape. This must also create another element in the rich layering through the expression of words in different ways.
There are all these different things. There’s Paul singing, us speaking, recorded speaking of the poets who aren’t present and, of course, the live poets. It becomes four different ways of sharing the words.
In writing about the piece, Anthony explains that there is a dialogue between generations of Asian-Americans that is reflected in the writing and in his composition. As a player in the piece, how do you see this idea manifesting itself?
I think there are a lot of musical ideas and elements in it that get transformed over the hour – they return in a different kind of soundscape. There are many elements in the poetry about memory: individual memory and across generations in family memory. There is a quality about some of the music that has a longing to it and is dreamy, like somebody who is either thinking back on something they miss or imagining ‘What must it be like, now, over there?’ Also, the sense of time in some of the movements doesn’t come across as concrete.
You have many writers involved in the project.
Yeah, they were very happy to be involved – some more actively. Most of them have been present at some point. It is interesting how in the poetry world they are performers too. There are poets who really write for the page, and poets who write with the performance in their imagination. And part of the job is to read it! It’s interesting to engage with them as people on stage and have different ways of going about it.
Has it been the same four readers for the previous concerts? At Alice Tully Hall, the poets Arthur Sze, Victoria Chang, Jenny Xie and Monica Youn will be participating.
A couple have been consistent: Victoria Chang and Arthur Sze. At the 92nd Street Y, we had Monica Youn and Jenny Xie, and they are coming again. It has been changing. We would love to continue to perform this as much as we can, so it is flexible in terms of who might be available. Even if we had to play it without any live poets, we could with recorded voices or do it ourselves. We do love having them, though!
Then the piece is quite malleable and adaptable.
Yes, it is. And the pacing would be affected.
I think readers and listeners would be interested to hear about connections you felt with your own family story through this experience.
My mother is from Taiwan. She has quite a large family – I have a gazillion cousins. Many of them are still back there, or they have been back and forth as I have. And this piece is a lot about that back and forth. I related to that.
It’s interesting when you talk about Asian composers of ‘classical’ music and Asian elements of music. Anthony’s music is not particularly overt in references to his Chinese background …but in his music and the poetry, I know what those elements are right away. In the poetry, the little mundane things in life – the way a grandma cooks, for example, or objects around the house – struck me in such a familiar way. And certain things in the music are gestures from Chinese music which, if you do know them, are quite recognizable: like Huang Ruo’s music or Tan Dun’s, for instance.
But Anthony is encyclopedic: he knows a tremendous amount. There are so many sources that he drawings from: French music, German music and American. While this piece is exploring something culturally specific, the complexity of all that is also something I relate to. Because I’m part Asian, it resonates a lot …I understand the tug, the feeling Asian-Americans have for their home country or the feelings of hardship and isolation they experience here. But it’s not fully my experience; partly because I’m a child of the immigrant experience but also being only half. My father is also an immigrant. He’s European, and that’s another story.
Your interpretation is important to the performance of the echoing of tenses. The Ojai Festival premiere was in 2022, and this is the fourth time you will be performing it. It’s unique for large-scale contemporary pieces to be performed so many times. Has anything in the interpretation changed for you with getting to know the piece over time?
A couple of things come to mind. I have gotten more of a sense of the trajectory as one poem, one state of mind, leads to the next. It’s a beautiful journey that it goes through, and I have more of a sense of the big picture. We played it a few times, but we never had a lot of rehearsal time. Now I’m feeling like we really know it and can play around, like a painter, and try new things to be creative as an interpreter.
When we were first learning the piece, musically, there was a lot to absorb. Now I’ve been spending more time just putting the music away and looking at the poems and seeing what they mean. Then I go back to the piece and notice more in Anthony’s tone painting, which I will talk to him about when we start [laughs] rehearsing. There are things happening in the music and text that I would love to play around with in terms of conveying what’s happening. And there is a tremendous amount happening. In the poems, all the surprising imagery or twists and turns are thought provoking. I’m excited to get into that now.
The Lincoln Center Run AMOC festival started on 18 June with The Comet/Poppea, an operatic work by George Lewis, in which you also performed. Since then, a variety of works have populated the festival – in many of which you’ve performed. Why do you think the echoing of tenses was chosen to close the festival? Is there a significance?
I was thrilled and honored by that decision. The piece is touching, intimate and personal. Many of the works in this festival are on a larger scale and involve a lot of people and resources. Some are outspoken, bold and celebratory. This piece, first of all, is exquisite and people have witnessed how special it is before. It is a lovely decision to end on a note that’s more pared down. You see the dynamic of collaboration in a clearer, distilled way. In larger pieces, there is so much collaboration going on with a whole web of people. But in this, you see the composer right there and me, who started the project. It’s very clear who these collaborators are.
Also, it’s a timely subject – the whole question of immigrants in this country [United States]. And there is a certain wistful quality about the music …it doesn’t end on a terribly sad note, but it’s heartfelt. It draws you in and you want to engage with it – to spend time with the stories.
I was surprised that this was their choice and thought, ‘Wow!’ But it is a nice invitation to people to sit there and see what it makes them feel and think about.
I’d love to know if you have a favorite part of this piece or something you’d want someone to know about before they hear the work.
We all love the last movement because it’s very beautiful. But there is a movement in the middle – as much as I love the electronics and the piano part – that is just Paul and me. The poem by Li-Young Lee is about a young boy whose father is pulling a splinter out of his thumb, and he is narrating the story. It’s an intimate little movement – sweet and tender, but you know how young boys like to make things super-dramatic! The boy turns it into a huge heroic thing he was undergoing, so it sounds funny. And Anthony’s music is really wonderful with it, with the gestures and lines telling a story that is both touching and dramatic. I love that movement.
It’s been insightful hearing from you about the richness and possibilities in the work. Is there anything you’d like to close with about the festival as a whole? Or what you’d like listeners to go away feeling for this piece?
It’s been a great joy for all of us, getting to share what we’ve been developing over the last few years. I think it communicates feelings everybody experiences, wherever they are from or whatever journeys they may have taken in their lives, whether they are young or older. Your ties to your family which absolutely everybody has in some form. And then your sense of place and context: where do you belong or not belong, what are you tied to or not tied to. With all these connections in the poetry, even the objects around you, it’s about real life that everyone goes through to some degree. It’s an Asian-American story, but it’s also just very human.
Thank you for talking to me this evening and showing us how this upcoming performance of the echoing of tenses is one not to miss at Alice Tully Hall. I was already eager to hear it but now, with your commentary, it’s even more enticing to be able to experience it live.
Daniele Sahr