Click here to learn more about the Kingston Chamber Music Festival. Composer Tina Davidson will be at a “Meet the Artist event” on Friday, Aug. 4 at 6:30 p.m., followed by Concert 5: One of a Kind at 7:30 p.m. Concert 7: Past & Present, featuring Davidson’s work, “I Hear the Mermaids Singing,” takes place Sunday, Aug. 6, at 4 p.m. All events are at Edwards Auditorium on the University of Rhode Island campus.
TRANSCRIPT:
James Baumgartner: The title, “I Hear The Mermaids Singing” – it evokes a certain image, maybe even a story. Do you hope for the audience to hear a story in the music?
Tina Davidson: So I’ve always loved the poem, “I have heard the mermaids singing each to each, they do not sing for me.” … I’ve always loved that sense of sort of going down into the water and like a lake, and sort of sitting there for a minute, and opening my eyes. And there is this whole world down there that is insulated from our living world, or outside world or in-air world. So sounds are kind of muffled, and you can’t really see. And I really had a sense that there is a part of me that’s innately in tune with that kind of flowing and a water-like world. That’s what I was thinking about as I composed.
Baumgartner: One detail about the piece: it’s for viola, cello and piano, which is a slightly unusual instrumentation. You usually hear violin, cello and piano. Why this particular group of instruments?
Davidson: I have no idea. I have a feeling this was the group that was offered to me and that’s, you know, I have very sort of flexible ideas of, “you want to play my music, I will write you a piece.” And it’s a wonderful combination, because the viola has a very, [it’s] sort of what I call a throaty instrument. It has a kind of a wonderful depth, a width to its sound. And viola gets such a bad rap. I never understand it. When I write string quartets – I have written a lot for strings – I always feel that the viola is the heart of the string quartet. It’s the, sort of the motor. It keeps everybody alive.
Baumgartner: “I Hear the Mermaids Singing” will be on Sunday afternoon. But you’ll be at the festival to give a pre-concert “meet the artist” event on Friday. What do you have planned for that?
Davidson: I will be reading from my new memoir “Let Your Heart be Broken: Life and Music from a Classical Composer,” and talking about my creative process. So I always feel that when I compose music, I am in an act of collaboration, I am first sort of collaborating with the actual notes themselves. And sometimes the notes are very pliable, and they will stay where I asked them to. And sometimes they won’t, and I have to make bargains with them. And then my music collaborates with the musicians.. From my personal view, I think in classical music we sometimes think of always trying to personify or portray exactly what the composer wants. But for me, I want the performers to own the music, and maybe not change it but live in it. And just by that process of living in it they’re putting themselves, it’s a collaboration between them. And then when it comes to performance, I think that the performers collaborate with the audience, because the music wouldn’t exist if the audience wasn’t there in some sort of way. And I always hope that, not that the audience gets me, but that when they hear the music it resonates something in them that they understand about themselves or their lives. It’s not about trying to understand, what was the composer trying to do? But how am I in this moment and receiving this music? And to me, that’s super exciting.
Baumgartner: Tina Davidson, thank you for talking with me today.
Davidson: My total pleasure.
Baumgartner: The “meet the artist” event with Tina Davidson is Friday night at 6:30. Sunday’s concert featuring her piece, “I Hear The Mermaids Singing” is at 4 p.m. Both concerts are at Edwards Hall on the URI campus. For The Public’s Radio, I’m James Baumgartner.
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