(Soundbite of song, “Tennis Court Light, Snow” by Lia Kohl)
Matthew Motley: I am joined today by cellist, composer, and sound artist Lia Kohl . She just got back stateside after a tour in Europe and her new duo record with violist and fellow sound artist Whitney Johnson is coming out this Friday. Lia will be performing several times at Big Ears this weekend, including a solo set Saturday at 3:30 in the Sanctuary at First Presbyterian. Lia Kohl, welcome.
Lia Kohl: Hi. Thanks.
So you've said that playing at Big Ears has been a dream of yours. What makes it a dream festival for you?
I think Big Ears is just really special because it combines a lot of different kinds of new and exciting experimental music. There's jazz, there's classical music, there's ambient music; you name it. It's really kind of exciting to me to be in that company. I was there a couple of years ago playing with Makaya McCraven in his band, so I got a little taste of what the festival is like. I'm really super excited to be back as a soloist and also with Macie.
With that, you'll be performing alongside two longtime collaborators of yours: Macie Stewart and Whitney Johnson. You've worked with both of them on Macie's When the Distance is Blue, which released just a few days ago and is spectacular, and your duo record with Whitney is set to come out this Friday. Does this feel like a culmination of a period? Do you feel like you're capping off a period? Do you feel like you're launching into a new one? Is it just another day in the life of Lia Kohl ?
I think it always feels like both. Definitely March was pretty intense. As you mentioned I just got back from a European tour and Big Ears is the end of a run of shows almost every day. So yes, it feels a little bit like a culmination. I'm really excited about the duo record with Whitney coming out ‘cause we've been working together for a long time and this is the first actual record that we're putting out. But you know, the collaborations that you mentioned live on and have new life. There's some trio stuff coming up with those two also, which is really exciting. So yeah, everything always feels like a beginning and an ending.
Let's start with your solo set. What do you have lined up?
Yeah, so I'm performing material from my last solo album, which is called Normal Sounds and the material for the album is drawn from field recordings of kind of mundane human sounds, anthropogenic sounds, if you want a long word for it. Car horns, self-checkout, beeps, fridge drones, uh, light drones. Lots of drones.
So there are a lot of field recordings, which I then kind of orchestrate with cello and synthesizers. And I use the radio a lot in the set, which is something that I have been doing for the last few years. It's kind of a soundscape. This is the material that I was performing in Europe and I'm really excited to bring it to Big Ears.
With field recordings and found sounds, our mind can immediately go to how we can transform a recording into music or how it can be processed. I really admire the way with this project that you draw listeners into these places that are mundane – It's an album that convinced me that car alarms and buzzing lights get a bad rap. I'd love it if you would speak to your compositional process and how you went about showing how much there is to love in these mundane sounds.
Yeah. We live in a pretty sonically overwhelming environment, especially those of us who live in cities. As a person who has trouble ignoring that, I made this album partly as a way of leaning into my own way of listening. Which is, you know, all the time. It's hard for me to turn my ears off. So instead of trying to do that with these sounds that we often ignore, I kind of leaned into them and tried to listen to them more and made this collection of field recordings.
Field recordings are really fun because I think they're a way of capturing not only a sound, but also a time and a place. So I think this album is kind of also a collection of times and places, and my interactions with those memories, as mundane as they are.
I'm curious too, about how you went about collecting these recordings. Do you keep a field recorder on you at all times? Do you go out with searching for sounds in mind?
I wish I did that more, but a lot of these recordings are actually iPhone recordings. I have a field recorder. Which I should carry around with me more, but my iPhone is just what I have on me all the time.
A lot of them are just voice memos that I've sort of EQ’d and tried to make them sound better.
Super cool. I didn't notice.
Good, good. You work with what you have, you know?
Absolutely. It's normal sounds.
Yes. Everything about it is very, very normal and also I think extraordinary. Not to say my work is extraordinary, but more to say that I think there's a lot that's profound or extraordinary in everyday life, and I like to kind of try to look at that.
I would say your work is extraordinary.
Thank you.
You've written some about resisting the urge to optimize everything in day-to-day lives. I was wondering if, in that same vein, if the deep appreciation you have for the mundane is something you felt like you've had to actively cultivate?
Hmm. Yeah, I do feel like there's a lot of pressure just in the way that our society is structured and our culture is structured to do everything as fast as possible or as efficiently as possible.
I think the best way to fight against that is to try to pay attention. Making music is a wonderful practice of attention, I think, especially making music with these mundane sounds - definitely has that quality for me.
You've spoken about classical training as a very specific and athletic practice, and Whitney as well has talked about how it took some time to regain confidence in her own ability to create after finishing her classical training. It's a very specific thing and teaches you how to perform music in a particular way, and it's perhaps different from your practice now as you've reached this maturity as an artist. I'm not sure if you felt or saw any parallels between that pressure towards efficiency and your relationship with your training as a classical musician?
That's interesting. I don't know that I experienced classical training as particularly efficiency focused when I was studying cello in school, and even after that. I would practice for five or six hours a day, which maybe has a quality of efficiency. I actually kind of miss that Intense practice. It's pretty wonderful to enter a space day after day and do the same thing over and over again.
It's meditative, in a way.
Yeah, it's very meditative, especially the parts that are more technical, you know, playing all your scales or long tones. So I think actually that part of being a classical musician is very related to the kind of work that I do now. That kind of reentering a space and encountering yourself over and over again. I think there are other parts of that world that maybe are.
With that concept of reentering a space and encountering oneself, improvisation is a large part of your practice in general. It was pretty central to the creation of Normal Sounds. So with this solo set, what role does improvisation play?
I mean, everything that I do is improvised at some point. Even Normal Sounds, I would say, is an improvised piece of music, even though many of the parts of it I improvised and then put together in a very intentional, kind of compositional way.
This set, it's pretty structured in certain ways. I think when I play by myself, I like to set up structures to kind of push against and improvise with. I think of it as kind of like an architecture that I'm then moving through in an improvised way. A lot of the cello is very improvised or I'll have a sort of a harmonic language that's always the same, but within that, it's very improvised.
(Soundbite of song, “Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New” by Macie Stewart)
Let's talk about the other performances you'll be a part of. We'll start with Macie Stewart's concert on Sunday. Like we mentioned at the top, you've worked with her on the album when the Distance is Blue, which was just released and is absolutely captivating. Will attendees of that concert get to hear any of anything off the album?
Yes. Yes, absolutely. And again, that's a really fun translation of material that's partially improvised and partially written. Some of the tracks on the album were improvisations between all of us. So the things that you'll hear on Sunday will be new improvisations in the same format with the same people.
But yeah, it's really, it's neat what Macie's come up with.
I'm a little curious about the prepared piano. I believe there were two separate prepared piano sessions, with two discrete prepared pianos. And are you doing creative things with that for the performance?
I think she is preparing the piano. Yeah. That's a big part of it. It just sounds so cool. prepared piano, I never get tired of it.
I feel like piano as an instrument is such a familiar instrument. It's kind of the instrument for a lot of people. And so the different timbres you can create with a prepared piano is always so fascinating to me, because it can feel so alien to what is, in some people's minds, the platonic ideal of that instrument.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
I don't know if this is a secret or if it's been formally announced yet, but I saw on your website that Friday you'll be doing a trio performance with Macie and Whitney. That will be in Boyd’s Jig and Reel, which is a 100 person venue, so I was wondering what that’s all about?
Yeah, so International Anthem has a series of little showcase concerts celebrating just some of the artists that are on the label. And again, I'm not sure if this is a secret, but I don't think it is. We do have a trio record coming out on International Anthem next year. Which we're in the process of working on. So part of the celebration of that is to do a little preview show. We did a show last night [March 24th] at Thalia Hall, which is a big rock venue here in Chicago, opening for Yasuaki Shimizu, which was really fun. So we've been doing these little one-off gigs and developing that practice as a trio. That is three voices: Viola, cello, and violin.
I'm sure you're very busy with all the performances you have going on, but I was wondering if you'll get a chance to hear any other performances and which ones you're excited about, if that's the case.
Definitely. I mean, I think that we all have to sort of regulate the amount that we can actually see, but I do have some things that I have on my list.
Several people on my European tour told me to go see this band, Ahmed. So I'm definitely gonna go see them. I don't actually know anything about them, but I think it was three or four different people from different scenes who were like “you gotta go see this band.” So I believe them.
I'm also really excited to see Eiko Ishibashi . She's doing a score for a short film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who's a director that I really love. She works with him a lot, so I'm excited to see that too. And there are a lot of friends playing at Big Ears. I’m thinking about More Eaze or Wendy Eisenberg. I'm excited to see them.
I've been obsessed with More Eaze’s “Adagio for pedal steel ensemble and overdubbed room” lately.
Yeah. She's amazing. She’s amazing.
Lots to look forward to, lots of opportunities to see you and your friends, and also many other great artists who will be there. Lia, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
I really appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. It's really a pleasure.
Cellist composer and sound artist, Leah Cole. You can catch her at three different performances this weekend at Big Years. Friday, March 28th at 11:11 AM she'll be performing with her new trio project with Macie Stewart and Whitney Johnson and Boyd's Jig and Reel. Saturday March 29th at 3:30PM in the First Presbyterian Sanctuary, she'll do her solo set and Sunday March 30th and she'll be playing at 4:30PM with Macie Stewart at Regas Square.
(Soundbite of song, “Airport Fridge, Self Checkout” by Lia Kohl)
[This transcript has been edited for clarity]
