Immersive Dance Experiments Meet Three Companies Leading the Immersive Dance Revolution WORDS BY NICOLE DECSEY | DANCE IN MOTION NOV 14, 2022 | ISSUE 9 Blink Dance Theatre: Heart of Glass - Photo by Jane Acopian ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Hit & Run Dance Productions: Jennifer Nichols (L) and Anisa Tejpar (R) Blink Dance Theatre by Marcus Struzina Imagine a night out to the theatre where you don’t sit on cushioned chairs, separated from the performers by a framework stage. Rather, you are completely immersed in the action, a movie happening all around you, where everything hinges on your reactions. This is the reality that immersive dance has created for audiences around the world. From outdoor site-specific pieces in every place imaginable, to virtual reality performances delivered digitally so everyone can enjoy them. Immersive art has found its footing in the dance scene. As this type of work becomes more mainstream, there are many companies dabbling in its inner workings. smART Magazine welcomes three companies tinkering in this dynamic space: Hit & Run Dance Productions, based in Toronto, who started their immersive creations in 2004; Blink Dance Theatre, based in Geelong, Australia, creating immersive pieces since 2013; and Cie Gilles Jobin, a Swiss company that began experimenting with virtual reality work in 2017. Hit & Run Dance Productions Anisa Tejpar and Jennifer Nichols have been creating immersive work for almost 20 years via Hit & Run Dance Productions, a company whose mission is to bring dance right to your doorstep. Hit & Run’s most recent and largest production, Haunted Cinema , was a live immersive drive-in experience combining theatrical and cinematic elements. Anisa and Jennifer share how they bring consistency to innovation and create opportunities for performers and audiences alike. sM | What inspired your combination of dance and the immersive arts originally? AT ── Dance is so three dimensional, and Jennifer and I always felt that dance could be presented more dynamically than just on proscenium stages. Hit & Run began with our desire to create our own opportunities and to be the agents of our own careers and creations. We cultivated our audience, one event or activation at a time, all the while tailoring a unique experience for our audience. Being up close and personal with our audience is important to us. It allows us to see performance and art-making through an intimate and joyous lens. Dance can be an escape, something beautiful, something thought-provoking, something fabulous, and what better way to showcase a medium that we love so much than by constantly engaging new audiences, and surprising them when they don’t expect it. JN ── I think we could say that our work has always been built upon the premise of ‘immersive’ presentation simply by virtue of where and how we perform, which is site-specific and uniquely adapted to each space. Shifting performance out of traditional venues not only enabled us to create and present more consistently, but we also discovered that we could offer audiences a more textured, visceral experience. Immersive works offer an intimacy and immediacy that cannot be replicated in a theatre. Dance in particular lends itself to an ‘enveloped’ state, an opportunity for the audience to not merely view, but actually reside within the work. Dance, when presented from every angle and in various degrees of proximity to the audience, can provide a transcendent state for the viewer, a sense that their own body is a part of, or even facilitating, the movement in front, behind, above, or beside them! An immersive show is a collaboration between performer, viewer, and location. All of these moving parts have an equal contribution and stake in the final performance of an immersive work. Blink Dance Theatre Lyndel Quick, the Artistic Director of Blink Dance Theatre, talks about creating immersive pieces that grow within the space they are situated, and take into account the input of performer, viewer, and location. sM | How does the space and audience-interaction inform your immersive work? LQ ── We make mostly devised theatre with a humanistic approach to movement. Works are often structured in a montage style: a series of overlapping images, weaving dance with gesture, story, text, image, and sound. Performances and workshops are often situated in alternative spaces. We tend to avoid traditional theatres and prioritize site specificity, always considering the design of the space, how that affects the power balance between audience and performers, and the notions of intimacy within that space. We also like to work with ‘untrained bodies’ alongside trained movers, helping to disrupt preconceived ideas about who has the right to dance. We begin in the studio with some movement phrases and improvisation tasks, then transpose the material into found spaces, utilizing the specific architecture to give further shape to the work. And sometimes we do the whole thing in reverse too; start in the space, find out its history and allow the texture and stories of the space to inform the concept. Humans have always craved experiences that enable us to enter into spaces of transformation. And perhaps the tradition of the theatre curtain rising at the start of a performance was once a signifier for audiences to enter into the story. But more often in modern Western culture and traditional theatre models, there’s this perception of audiences as passive observers; the idea that audiences watch but do not do, is still very prevalent. Immersive performance can challenge the nature of dance spectatorship, offering agency and greater investment from audiences. Cie Gilles Jobin Geneva’s Gilles Jobin talks about travelling into uncharted territory to transition his self-titled contemporary dance company into a digitally immersive dance company. Gilles Jobin: DT Sundance 2020 Egyptian sM | How does your multi-user VR work, and live motion capture equipment, deliver an immersive and global dance experience? GJ ── My interest in the 3D world is the multiplicity of access into the digital space. I like the Sundance Chief Programmer Shari Frilot‘s concept of the biodigital continuum, which suggests that we are connected on a daily basis, in and out of the virtual world, through many different doors. When the pandemic lockdowns began in March 2020, we decided to transform our stage company into a digital company and develop our own digital tools for real-time performances. Acquiring our own motion capture equipment, and the diligent work of our team, allowed us to create with total liberty. We are a contemporary dance company and for us the immediate solution to the crisis was digital. In June 2020 we presented a prototype for a live multi-user show in virtual reality, La Comédie Virtuelle . We performed the piece in front of a global audience, and some days we had 14 different countries simultaneously watching the piece in real time. Our latest project, Cosmogony, which has been selected for Sundance 2022, is an attempt at live cinema. It can be a 2D projection on a screen or video mapping on a building. The dancers perform live from our Geneva studio and the spectators are together, in real time, in a cinema or outdoors. As a director, I control the framing and the movement of the camera and, unlike in VR or on a stage, I control what the audience sees. In this sense, Cosmogony is different from my previous creations where the spectators can choose their point of view. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Reflections with Timo Andres The pianist and composer on bring the latest release by Sufjan Stevens to life WORDS BY ZOE CLELAND THE smART Ensemble JULY 30, 2023 | ISSUE 12 Timo Andres - Photo by Michael Wilson "Reflections" Album cover ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Timo Andres - Photo by Michael Wilson Sufjan Stevens by Dawn Miller With a multiplicity of possibilities expanded by the technological advancements now at our disposal, more and more artists are collaborating across traditional industry boundaries. One such exciting crossover is celebrated indie singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens ’s foray into the world of ballet. Stevens, who has been nominated for both Academy and Grammy awards for his work, began collaborating with choreographer Justin Peck in 2012 to adapt his music for the dance. Their creative partnership has produced numerous scores, including Year of the Rabbit (2012), Everywhere We Go (2014), In the Countenance of Kings (2016), The Decalogue (2017), and Principia (2019). Stevens says that their latest collaboration, Reflections , written for two pianos and eleven dancers, is about “energy, light, and duality.” Released through Asthmatic Kitty Records and produced by Ryan Streber, it sees the return of pianist and composer Timo Andres performing alongside fellow pianist Conor Hanick . Although Stevens is that magical breed of self-taught musician who learned his considerable skill by ear, Andres’s proficiency in orchestral music composition and performance has bridged the necessary gap between artificial in-studio orchestras and real ones. Reflections is a distillation of Stevens’s expansive electronica and orchestral pop, and is electrifying in its condensed, two-instrument expression of the artist’s original sound. Their connection dates back to 2017 when Andres recorded music for The Decalogue, fresh off its premiere at the New York City Ballet. Reflections was the third collaboration between Andres, Stevens, and Peck, recently followed by Illinois (2023) — a theatrical performance based on Stevens’s much-loved concept album of the same name — performed at New York’s Bard College. Andres’s interpretation of Stevens’s essence embraces the inherent, defining aspects of his work while gently transitioning it to the new context of dance , one that has the potential to uplift both forms of art. SUFJAN sM | You’ve worked with Sufjan Stevens before. How did this creative partnership begin? TA ─ It was really a spur-of-the-moment thing. I jumped in at the last minute to record some promo audio for a ballet of Sufjan’s called The Decalogue , another Justin Peck ballet at the New York City Ballet. A mutual friend connected us. They said, “Oh, you need someone to learn some thorny new piano music quickly? My friend Timo is just the guy.” After it premiered, Sufjan got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to record the whole ballet. In the world of freelance artists and musicians, there’s no HR department. There’s no formal hiring process. It’s all just: “Oh, I know a guy who would be perfect for this.” Mutual trust. INCIDENTAL MUSIC sM | Reflections is incidental music for a ballet choreographed by Justin Peck for the Houston Ballet. To what extent did the choreography inform your approach to your work? TA ─ Actually, I have seen none of it. Playing for dance is its own kind of special thing that demands a very collaborative form of interpretation on the musician’s part. I think part of why Sufjan wanted to record these scores separately and release them on their own was so that the music could speak for itself and be a little freer to do so. I think there were interpretive choices that my co-pianist Conor Hanick and I took that might have made things more difficult for the dancers, or might not have meshed with their rhythmic agenda.There was no specific dance in my mind that said, the music itself is extremely athletic─it suggests movement at all times. If I can presume to speak for Sufjan for a second, I think what attracts him to doing this sort of composition is making himself subservient in a way to this other artform, giving them something that feels really good to move to. Timo Andres - Photo by Michael Wilson NOVEL & UNTETHERED sM | On his general approach to composing music, Stevens has said, “A lot of the work that I compose is anachronistic as it doesn’t follow a genealogy of aesthetic. It can be a cornucopia of styles.” Aside from the challenge inherent in performing a new work, how are you able to pin down a work that is both novel and untethered? TA ─ I would say that we’re living in an age where many composers, myself included, feel more or less untethered from any need to have an aesthetic agenda, or any need to fit oneself into a chronology of music history or style of music. And even when I interpret older music – say music from the classical canon – I’m trying to trace their lineage, their influences, and the circumstances of their lives that went into their work. I think all composers throughout history have fundamentally had an acquisitive ear, where you can’t help but go through life hearing all this different music and think, “What can I pick up from that? What can I draw from that’s useful to me, either interpretively or compositionally?” We’re like these magpies collecting beautiful objects to furnish our nests. Sufjan’s music is really no different. Even if you look at his so-called pop albums, it’s always a carnival of references. When I heard his album Illinois (2005) in college, that was one of the things that made me think it’s okay to throw all these ingredients in the pot, even though they may not on the surface seem to have much to do with each other. Your music ends up all the richer for it. We all bring our own musical histories and baggage with us when we come to interpret a new piece. Timo Andres - Photo by Michael Wilson SELF-TAUGHT sM | Stevens is also a self-taught composer. How does this self-training show up in the score? TA ─ In a way, it makes it clear what my job is. Sufjan thinks orchestrally. There’s so much going on in the production, in the instrumentation, but it’s all a studio product. It’s all multi-tracked (instrument by instrument) in a recording studio and then balanced in the studio. Essentially that’s what you’re doing when you’re orchestrating something, except you’re doing it live in real time with 60 or 80 players all on the clock. So it was very interesting to go back and forth with Sufjan and take these sketches and say, “Okay, what is the sound quality, what’s the rhetoric of this music?” and then connect that to orchestral ideas in my head. ILLINOIS sM | The collaborative triangle between you, Stevens, and choreographer Justin Peck continues with transcriptions for the album Illinois for another dance theatre piece for New York’s Bard College. Unlike Reflections , this work is incredibly familiar to an entire generation of listeners. What was your approach to preserving the atmosphere of this album while translating it in a new way for choreography? TA ─ It was not a task I approached lightly by any means. The first several months of the process were discussing a general approach with Justin and trying to think: What are the aspects of this music that are inseparable from what makes the songs themselves? I think a lot of the songs are strong enough to stand on their own in a lot of different contexts. We wanted to retain the grandeur and the orchestral outrageousness of a lot of those arrangements on the album – which are so colourful – and the group sing-along aspect, the communal spirit. A lot of it was me sitting there and really listening to bits of these songs over and over. I’d slow them down and take them apart and try to separate the layers. There were a lot of things on that album that were not practical to do in a live setting, like multi-tracking four oboe parts. We’re not going to hire four oboe players for this touring theatre production, so I needed to find ways to recreate the richness of that sound with a more limited personnel. We have a 13-piece band of instrumentalists who sometimes sing and singers who also play instruments─everyone does a bit of everything. It’s true to the spirit of the album and of the songs, and there’s a real joy and a richness there that I’m excited for everyone to hear. ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

ON THE SET: Women Talking Actor Sheila McCarthy on the Oscar-nominated film’s work culture WORDS BY MILES FORRESTER | TORONTO | VISUAL ARTS IN FOCUS FEB 27, 2023 | ISSUE 11 "Women Talking" ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ Continue reading in Issue 11 Sheila McCarthy first came to international attention starring in the 1987 Canadian indie dramedy, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. It was the first English-language Canadian feature to be awarded at Cannes and, domestically, earned McCarthy her first Genie for Best Actress. With two Genie Awards, two Doras, two Geminis, and an ACTRA Award, she is one of the most decorated Canadian actors working on stage and screen. In Women Talking , an adaptation of the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, McCarthy plays Greta, the matriarch of a community of Mennonite women who must decide how they’ll respond to systematic abuse. Miriam Toews has described her novel as “a reaction through fiction” to a campaign of sexual assaults spanning from 2005 to 2009 in the Manitoba Mennonite Colony in Bolivia. Both Toews’s novel and the film adaptation by Sarah Polley — Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay — dramatise a debate between eight women who have 48 hours to choose their course of action, weighing their faith, community, and... ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

1, 2, TEAM WITH JENN WASNER On Flock of Dimes, Bon Iver, and Wye Oak’s Every Day Like the Last smART MAGAZINE | DURHAM | ALT.ITUDE ALT.ITUDE JUL 04, 2023 | ISSUE 12 Jenn Wasner - Photo by Graham Tolbert “The rub is that nothing activates our shit and pushes our buttons more than being in a relationship.” Jenn Wasner LISTEN TO EVERY DAY LIKE THE LAST www.wyeoakmusic.com Every Day Like the Last Album Cover Jenn Wasner Varsity Jacket - Designed by Jaden Tsan for smART Magazine Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Jenn Wasner - By Ella Mazur for smART Magazine ​ 1: FLOCK OF DIMES IDEATION sM | What was the creative space you were inhabiting around the time you created the Flock of Dimes project? JW ─ Not only do I remember it, but I am in the thick of it once again. It’s so funny, I’ve been doing this for long enough that I’m starting to be humbled by how much having a creative practice is just forgetting and relearning things you thought you already knew. I had never really experienced the freedom of being outside of Wye Oak and understand a little better who I am and what I have to say, so I felt this call to step outside of that. And in the process of making that first Flock of Dimes record, If You See Me Say Yes , I had a total fucking meltdown. That was the first time in my career that I felt like I learned a lesson that I’m learning again now. Being alone, you have all this power, this autonomy, this freedom. But you forget, or I forgot, all of the support, assistance, and inspiration that comes from being in a relationship. There has to be space for you to be this separate autonomous artist, but to try and create in a vacuum forever and to try and hold the reins too tightly is doing your art and yourself a great disservice. CONNECTION BARRIERS sM | You said previously that, “music is a force that is capable of circumventing the barriers we create to connection.” What do you think those barriers are, and how is music uniquely capable of breaking them down? JW ─ I think people, all across generations, have used the act of singing, or the feeling of creating vibration in the body, as this way of soothing the nervous system. I know that I’ve done that without necessarily realizing that that was something I was doing my whole life. A barrier for me has been just not understanding how to have boundaries, so my only option at that time feels like a cutting off or a separation. Knowing how to say “no” is really important. That’s also a reason why I am really particular about who I can collaborate with because if I don’t feel comfortable enough with you to be able to say “no,” then I’m not gonna feel like I’m in a position to put myself on board behind whatever’s being created in that space. “AWAKE FOR THE SUNRISE” sM | “Awake for the Sunrise” is a cathartic song to listen to, and cathartic things tend to be cathartic for the creator. You wrote this in the morning after a sleepless night; what do you recall about that morning? JW ─ It was the beginning of April of 2020, it was just sort of a crisis on every level of my existence, and I decided that I was gonna do this song-a-day club. The body sensation that I associate with that time is this constant clawing in my chest, like there was a thing inside of my heart space that was trying to get out. It was unrelenting. And I wasn’t sleeping. The song itself happened really fast. It came, not from an intellectual place, but very much from a “I need to sing something that’s gonna make my body feel better.” Jenn Wasner in Flock of Dimes - Photo by Shervin Lainez SOLO sM | What do you find to be the most challenging aspects of solo creation? JW ─ It sounds really good on paper to just be like, “I can do whatever I want!” It sounds great to be completely in control of your domain, and there is a peace that comes with that. But we’re built to relate to one another. We’re built for collaboration. We’re built to connect, and that comes at a cost, and that cost is worth it. Compromise is essential. Also, it doesn’t really feel good as a person or as a creator to exist totally in a vacuum. I think that there’s this weird cultural myth of the creative genius who just is pulling all the strings and has all the ideas. I love to push back against that idea as much as I can because no one exists in a vacuum, and everyone’s picking up inspiration from everyone around them all the time. Jenn Wasner in Wye Oak - Photo by Spence Kelly 2: WYE OAK BACK TO BASICS sM | Every Day Like the Last returns to more acoustic grounds in a way that sharply contrasts the ideation of Shriek, for example. There seems to be this consistent return to more a certain acoustic connectedness in mid-to-post-pandemic albums; how did that period foster this desire to return the kind of music where you need to inhabit the same space in order to create it? JW ─ Pre-pandemic, there was a lot of getting in my own way. I really empathise with that version of myself because it’s such a mindfuck being perceived by other people. The act of creating something... anytime it actually happens, it’s a fucking miracle. It is hard and vulnerable and weird and scary. All of a sudden you’re with all of these thoughts and ideas about who you are and what you make. It can be a shit-ton to process. So in a lot of ways I feel really proud of Shriek because it was an act of defiance of expectations, and I stand by that. I spent the day earlier today with an acoustic guitar, playing through acoustic versions of Shriek . The songs and the way they’re arranged are two different things, and a song can be arranged in a number of ways. I am excited about being able to defy my own expectations of how a song can be performed, because it’s a way of defying expectations of who I get to be or how I get to manifest in the world. ​ “WALK SOFT” sM | You’ve described uncertainty as the thread that ties all the songs on Every Day Like the Last together, and the song “Walk Soft” captures that really well in an incredibly tender letter to a companion. What do you struggle with the most when it comes to navigating the sometimes difficult terrain of discovering another person? JW ─ The rub is that nothing activates our shit and pushes our buttons more than being in a relationship. Everybody has their truth and everybody is making all these assumptions about other people based on their truth and not necessarily the other person’s truth. Or to put it a different way: the same action means two different things to two different people. But everybody does it and, boy howdy , does it take a lot of work to not do it. That’s something reminiscent of this song because it is about just taking care not to make assumptions, taking care to inquire what other people are experiencing and feeling, rather than just assuming that you know. And what a vulnerable thing it is to offer up your honest to god emotional experience to another person. But I feel like when you meet someone who’s able to make room and honour your experience in that way, it’s the best thing that can happen in the world. Jenn Wasner in Bon Iver - Photo by Graham Tolbert TEAM: BON IVER HELL YEAH! sM | Similar to actualizing the desire for solo creation in Flock of Dimes, you probably gave a lot of thought to how you wanted to actualize the opposite of that, and be carried by the current of an ensemble. It’d be crazy to turn down an invitation from Bon Iver, but why did that feel like a great fit for you musically and communally? JW ─ It kind of happened in this very unexpected, surprising way. It wasn’t something I sought out and I really didn’t see it coming. I just went down to Sonic Ranch outside of El Paso and I just hung out and got in the mix and made some music and just kind of did whatever. And at one point Justin [Vernon] and Sean [Carey] took me aside like, “Hey, what would you think about joining our band?” And I was pretty flabbergasted. ( Laughs ) It was not even remotely on my radar. I like to think of myself as a pretty thoughtful person, but it was very easy for me to say yes on the spot. In part because part of his pitch was like, “We know you do other stuff and we’re not gonna make you not do them. There will always be space for you to do all the things you do in addition to this, so it’s not like you have to choose.” So in that scenario, it’s just like, “Hell yeah! Of course!” Bon Iver - Photo by Graham Tolbert NETWORK MAKE THE DREAMWORK sM | One of the unique aspects of Bon Iver is that they are part of this vast network of music-makers (Big Red Machine; the record label PEOPLE; S. Carey; DeYarmond Edison and so on). How has being enmeshed in this network changed the way you think musically and the connections you want to make with people who are tuning into your other projects? JW ─ I have such a really personal, emotional way of connecting to music in general. I didn’t go to music school. I don’t have the same vocabulary or the same method as some of these guys, so I had a lot of anxiety about trying to hang in that space. It’s been really transformative for me, for my confidence as a person, and as a musician to be held in esteem by those folks because I do operate differently. The fact that the methods that I use are respected and regarded, that I’m able to be in that space and feel like an equal, and contribute, has just been a really incredible thing for me. It’s just an incredible confidence boost to be like, “Shit. I guess I can do some of the things that I didn’t think that I was actually capable of,” and really all it takes sometimes is someone just believing in you and telling you that they know that you can do it. Jenn Wasner at Sonic Ranch - Photo by Graham Tolbert CHAOS MODE sM | What’s next creatively? JW ─ I’ve been prose-writing a lot more. I don’t even really necessarily know what it is but I really love to write. Everything that I’ve written has always sort of been vaguely autobiographical or autofiction-y, but it’s not something I’ve ever considered sharing. But the more I do it, the more I’m like, “Oh god dammit. I might have to figure out what this is.” It’s really scary because all of the “What gives you the right? Who do you think you are?” immediately starts coming into play. It’s an act of giving myself permission to do a thing that I don’t consider myself allowed to do. I’m at a point right now where I’m in full-on chaos mode. I frequently wish that I could be more concise. There’s a lot of times where I’m just like, “I’m spread in too many different directions and I don’t know how to manage it.” But writing’s something that I’m interested in exploring, although I don’t really know how or when or where. It’s like the little bug in my ear now: “You wanna write, you wanna write. Maybe you’re writing a book.” I don’t fucking know if that’s true, and I can’t promise anything, but that seems like the most honest answer at this moment in time. FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

COLLAGE: Hanoch Piven “To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.” WORDS BY REBECCA LASHMAR | TEL AVIV | VISUAL ARTS MATERIALS FEB 24, 2023 | ISSUE 11 KM by Hanoch Piven ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ Continue reading in Issue 11 For artist, educator, and creative investigator Hanoch Piven, art is an unmatchable means of communication. This belief in art as a vehicle for dialogue is reflected variously in his collages, caricatures, and workshops. By engaging with people who are new or “inexperienced” in the world of art creation, Piven’s work opens the opportunity for difficult dialogues among and between communities. From a genie lamp for a nose to a delicious bread beard, his style frees observers and creators alike from traditional art aesthetics, while fostering a joyful sense of wonder and newfound perspectives on everyday objects. In conversation with Piven, he shares how his work and practice as a creator, and as a Seeds of Peace fellow, has evolved from a place of self-rigidity and expectation to openness and freedom. Meditating perpetually on connecting and communicating beyond the written word, Piven likewise speaks to how creative work is an exercise in observation, and art is an open invitation to play, feel, and simply be human together... ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Magical Bones Celebrating Black Magic WORDS BY CAMILLA MIKOLAJEWKA | PEFORMANCE FOURTH WALL APR 03, 2023 | ISSUE 5 Magical Bones by Ella Mazur ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ Richard Essien—who goes by Magical Bones on stage—is considered to be one of the most exciting talents to emerge from the UK magic scene and has been entertaining audiences globally for over a decade. He was a finalist on Britain's Got Talent , with his audition tape alone gaining over 10 million views online. With the creation of his show Black Magic , Essien goes into the history of magic within the Black community and sheds light on the magicians whose stories have been neglected. On stage, Magical Bones breaks down the barriers of what it means to be a Black magician, sharing other peoples stories while creating his own. Essien joins smART Magazine to discuss his background and the reality of being a Black magician. sM | How do you think the magic industry compares to other performing arts industries when it comes to diversity? MB — To give some context and background as to why I decided to begin exploring Henry Brown, magic was just a hobby for me. I was always interested in this kind of separation where magic in the Black community has this sort of taboo while, in white or Western societies, it seems like pure entertainment. So from that context alone I always had a weird relationship with being a Black magician, and growing up I never knew any Black magicians or their history. With that being said, a lot of Black history is hidden. In the magic community we hear of Harry Houdini, David Copperfield, and more of the greats; however, there are quite a few people of colour in the magic industry who have done some amazing things but it hasn’t really come to light. So I had a show called Black Magic in Edinburgh and it was sort of an exploration of what Black magic is, and what the relationship is in regards to conjuring magic within the community. I came across the story of Henry Brown, as I was writing Black Magic and I was fascinated by someone whose magic is more powerful than anything I ever heard of. In my opinion, his escape act is one of the greatest escape acts of all time. He wasn’t just doing this for recognition from his peers like Houdini, he was doing it to liberate people. The fact that he then came to the UK and worked as a magician for 25 years, all these stories really resonated with me on a personal level. For starters, I didn’t know there was a Black magician touring across the UK and also didn’t realize that he was the first recognized Black American magician who was seen as a celebrity. He was the David Blaine of his time, despite racism. I find these things quite fascinating and I just want to explore them. These things for me are very nurturing. I’ve learned a lot about myself as a magician and bringing these topics to the UK really opens people’s eyes and I think this is really a story that hasn’t been told. You don’t want to keep hearing the same old stories, I want something new. I want to talk about the female magicians, or Black female magicians. Ellen Armstrong, for example, was the first female magician to have her own touring show in America in the 1900s, which was unheard of as a Black female. These are the stories I’m looking to share. sM | What would you say remains unique and relevant about the magical experience in a world where CGI and visual editing has desensitized our capacity for wonder and pleasant surprise? MB — That’s a very interesting question, and the reason that it’s interesting is because we have this debate in magic on how much editing can be used in TV or social media magic. What’s fair and what isn’t fair? This conversation is ongoing between magicians. There is a sort of level of trust that if you say something is done genuinely, meaning you haven’t just used CGI to make things appear or disappear, then that’s impressive. The truth is that magic is an experience, and my personal belief is that it’s the experience of astonishment and wonder and that doesn’t only relate to just magicians, it can be to anyone. Anyone who can give you an experience of wonder, whether it’s a movie with an amazing CGI effect, or Whitney Houston belting out a note—once you get that feeling of astonishment, that’s magic. So I’m not threatened by technology because, as a performer, I believe magicians should be making people experience that regardless of how they do it. Two of my favourite movies are The Prestige and Now You See Me , and there is an illusion they do in Now You See Me that I have yet to see a real world magician do, but I still love the idea. There is a moment where she [Isla Fisher] floats in the air in a bubble and it was just a beautiful effect, and that was magic to me. I love that film because the effects are not outside the realms of possibility; a magician could conceivably create these effects so I enjoyed that. I don’t care about the CGI, the results were magical and astonishing. I am fully engrossed in the storytelling. sM | How did you make the transition from dance to magic, and what aspects of your personality as a dancer translates to your personality as a magician? MB — The transition was a natural evolution as a performer. I was working as a dancer for 15 years, and I would always be making card tricks on the set, messing around, showing people stuff—it was just a hobby and people were saying, “Oh, you should do this,” so naturally I combined these ideas. I also used to dance in the street, which allows you to be really expressive, and there are no rules, you just engage a crowd and try new things out. So it was a natural progression from dance to magic. My name as a dancer was Bones, and then I just transitioned into Magical Bones . It gives me a certain rhythm in my performance and I love to incorporate my music in my work. I do a song called “Hip Hop Story,” which is about cards, so even the way I use cards or roll out my coins, I follow a rhythm. I call it soulful magic. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Erik Schlobohm DENVER — AiR TOUR — Issue 8 “Starry Night” by Erik Schlobohm Erik Schlobohm sM | One social issue that your art speaks to the most? ES ── I believe the social issue my art speaks to the most is depression. Having worked in mental health for 20 years, I try to help people by creating art that makes them happy. I utilize bright colors and try to create a beautiful world on my canvases that provides the viewer with a sort of sanctum from their stressful existence; thus, providing a visual vacation. I like to paint colorful scenes from the world that surrounds us, while incorporating the natural world to make the viewers of my art feel more connected to the earth, which, I feel, increases joy. I feel that my art is therapeutic. Continue the AiR tour in print: ISSUE 9 | ISSUE 10 Sign Up to K eep Up! Our newsletter brings you the best in the visual and performing arts. Exclusive interviews. Global coverage. Local perspectves. sM | What is your takeaway from the experience of working in-studio at Immersive Van Gogh Denver? ES ── My takeaway is that once people experience being immersed in beautiful artistic masterpieces, it invigorates their interest in the creative process to a higher degree. As a resident artist at the exhibition, I have had a lot of people show interest in my artistic process. People will stop for extended periods just to watch me paint, or to ask questions about the process. For children especially, witnessing an actual artist at work connects them with what they just observed in the exhibition. Having this direct interaction with the community also motivates me to continue creating art that can be enjoyed by all. The art residency, in conjunction with the Immersive Van Gogh experience, is a wonderful idea not just for the artist, but for the patrons. sM | What inspiration do you get from artists around you? ES ── The inspiration I get from other artists is when someone creates a piece that changes my perception of what is possible; I enjoy being surprised when viewing art. When I view work that just floors me, I try to imagine how much personal sacrifice, blood, and sweat must have gone into creating it. I’m also inspired by hard work. I know that I’m not alone when I become tired and frustrated with a piece that is challenging me, I know another artist somewhere else is going through this same thing. Great art inspires me to be a more creative artist. PREVIOUS NEXT

Paola Prestini On Collaboration, Community, and Technology WORDS BY ARLAN VRIENS | NEW YORK | MUSIC THE smART Ensemble NOV 15, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Paola Prestini by Marco Valentin ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Paola Prestini by Erika Harrsch ​ On top of her busy life as an in-demand composer, Paola Prestini is a committed collaborator and arts leader; in her capacities as Co-Founder and Artistic Director, she steers the trendy performing arts incubator National Sawdust in Brooklyn. During the uncertainty of the pandemic, she began work on Houses of Zodiac, an album of solo cello music performed by her husband, Jeffrey Zeigler. Inspired by collaborative instinct and an enviable roster of skilled colleagues, Prestini expanded the project into an interdisciplinary multi-platform work knitting together music, dance, poetry, and film. Joining smART Magazine from Rome, Prestini reflects on the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, the increasing artistic possibilities of technology, and the opportunities awaiting the performing arts in coming years. sM | With the multimedia and multidisciplinary Houses of Zodiac in mind, why is interdisciplinarity important to you, and how does it play a role in 21st-century composition? PP — As composers, we need to collaborate in order for our music to come to fruition. Not only is collaboration part of our art form, but when I emerged into the world as a practicing artist, I found that working with other artists and thinkers unlocked a new way for me to look at my process. For example, the work that I've done with scientists or the environment has been profoundly rewarding. Not only for what I’ve learned as an artist but also to learn more about the work that exists out in the world and the kinds of learning which that work brings to others. Houses of Zodiac definitely became more than an album. I always think about projects as an arc from incubation to dissemination, and I also think a lot about multi-platform work. This work really started as just a kernel of an idea during the pandemic. My husband Jeffrey Zeigler is an amazing cellist and said he wanted to play more of my cello works. I’ve written a lot of cello music, and some of it was written for him, but most of it was for others. Now he jokes that what began as a solo album has become a massive collaboration! But collaboration is just the way my mind works. I can't help it. I thought, “oh, but this is really a collaboration with poets, and these are living poets. So what if I just ask Natasha Trethewey, Maria Popova, and Brenda Shaughnessy to actually read?” Then to underscore that, I thought, “I have these amazing idea-stems with Tanya Tagaq and Nels Cline; why don’t we use those? And what about our friend Murat Eyuboglu—what would he do with this as a filmmaker?” What began as a solo album became the ultimate family album for me. Here we were in the pandemic, unable to see anybody, and it came together organically as we tried to learn how to communicate in this particular moment. Houses of Zodiac is still an album, though, and I hope people experience it that way because it's quite profound. But now it's also going to the Broad Museum in LA in May 2022, and it's going to be a film installation that lives in the Oculus Theatre there. The other importance of multi-platform dissemination for me is that different audiences access different works because of their personal preferences. So a poet might enter because of Natasha or Brenda or Maria and fall in love with music. Or maybe someone enters because they love our Butoh dancer Dai Matsuoka or our ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin. Or maybe they love film. I’ve always loved interdisciplinarity because, to me, it’s a key to audience building. That's not the sole reason why I do it, but I love creating different entry points for audiences. sM | What artistic uses of technology are catching your attention right now? PP — Technology and multimedia are some of my greatest passions right now! At the moment, one of the projects I'm working on is called Sensorium Ex . It's an opera, but it's also exploring multiple platforms of dissemination; it’s likewise a documentary and a community impact project. One of the main characters in the opera is a robot that’s essentially being built through an international research culture and technology project. Our aim is to democratize the development of inclusive voice recognition AI, placing this work at the intersection of disability and AI. One of our main goals is to build a data aggregation of atypical voice patterns. That will build my own part in the opera but will hopefully go forward as an open-source tech project that can help develop more democratized speech recognition software. Although I’m super interested in technology, I’m personally not a technology expert. I think where my expertise lies is that I'm really good at thinking out of the box to connect, collaborate, and learn. You don't have to be an expert to begin something, but you gain expertise by going through the process, and I think that’s the beauty of what we do. If I think about my earliest multimedia works compared to now, I think the biggest evolution has been my increasing focus on the community aspects of technology. Over the last five years, I’ve continued to refine and develop the community-building potentials of technology more and more. sM | In the wake of the pandemic and social movements like #metoo and Black Lives Matter, do you feel like there's a new interest in contemporary over traditional music? PP — Performers are very resilient, but the pandemic has had a huge effect on the arts community. There's been a great loss for people who couldn't afford to continue creating, either for emotional or socio-economic reasons. That’s something really hard, and it needs to be looked at with care. There’s also been the question of “what does it mean to create art no matter what?” A lot of people have looked really deep into why they're creating, how they're creating, who their audiences are, and how to learn new things immediately out of necessity. Those are skills that everyone has had to come to terms with during this time, and we’ll bring those ways of being forward with us. Audiences, I think, are desperately hungry for human connection. I'll be really interested to see—not even in the next year, but in the next three to four years—how the virtual landscape coincides with the real landscape of face-to-face human interaction. I'm really curious about that, because right now I don't want to do another Zoom thing. I want to be in person, and I think everyone's feeling that way. But still, there are a lot of interesting and complex things that this way of communicating through technology has brought about. I’ll be curious to see how that all works together. At this moment, though, I think people are really excited to live and share space again. As far as receptiveness to contemporary music goes, whether we're talking about something like European serialism or extraordinary jazz performances, I think that a lot of it has to do with storytelling and how people bring audiences into the story that they're telling. I often find that when people say they don't like something, it's just because they haven't been brought in. And that might be because they've never heard something before or because they associate it with something else. I'm hopeful that people will be more open now. The arts have taken a massive hit over the last two years. My hopes are that there's compassion, empathy, and curiosity to see how the arts, in general, are coming out of this time. But a lot of it still comes down to asking: what is your story? What is your voice? And how can you be as confident as you can in what you have to give? When you're that confident, direct, and transparent in your communication, I think it connects in a more visceral way and people become more curious and more open to learning about your voice. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Victoria Kagalovska Before the Invasion WORDS BY AMELIA JOHANNSEN | BARCELONA | VISUAL ARTS STUDIO SESSIONS MAR 03, 2023 | ISSUE 6 Illustration by Victoria Kagalovska ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Illustration by Victoria Kagalovska Illustration by Victoria Kagalovska Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, smART Magazine reached out to Victoria Kagalovska — a painter, fashion designer, and creative entrepreneur based in Kyiv. She has since left the city and has been a relentless and passionate advocate for the plight of her country on social media. Kagalovska joined us to talk about the tense atmosphere preceding the invasion — reminding us that the invasion started many years ago — as well as her motivations as an artist. sM | How is the artistic community responding to the current situation in Ukraine with solidarity? VK ── We’ve been living in this political environment since the beginning of the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. There is constant stress and fear of a full-scale war. I know it sounds weird, but we are used to living with it. When you’re hearing every day about the losses at the frontline, you cannot react every time as strongly as the first time. That said, the informational escalation of the conflict has recently had a very negative effect on the mood and economy of the entire country. Artists, like all people, are united in Ukraine now. We will continue to create and mould a good image for our country. Life (war) is short — art is eternal. Vita brévis, ars lónga . sM | How do you hope to challenge historical depictions of women and subvert the “male gaze” in your work? VK ── I’m not trying to engage the “male gaze” in my paintings or compete with men in my art. The heroes of my paintings are always women for one simple reason: they inspire me. These are portraits of other women, but they express my own emotions and feelings. The world is changing and developing. It is not always necessary to fight and protest to change the mind of the public. Sometimes you just need to do your job well, which is what I aspire to. sM | Where do you often find your inspiration for the subjects of your painting? VK ── It’s always different each time. I try to surround myself with people and information that inspires me. There are many creatives among my friends, and my Instagram followers are mostly art bloggers, photographers, models, galleries, and so on. Sometimes I find a photo that I want to draw, so I reach out to the photographer and then draw it. Sometimes I can look at a photo, video, or film, see a beautiful pose, a glare in someone’s eyes, or beautiful lips, and start drawing. In this way, the people I draw don’t exist — I conceive them. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

The Hours at The Met Composer Kevin Puts Weaves a Tapestry of Possibilities for Mrs. Dalloway WORDS BY MILES FORRESTER | NEW YORK | MUSIC THE smART Ensemble MAR 13, 2023 | ISSUE 10 Kevin Puts by David White ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Kelli O'Hara as Laura Brown, Renée Fleming as Clarissa Vaughan, and Joyce DiDonato as Virginia Woolf in Kevin Puts's "The Hours." Photo: Paola Kudacki / Met Opera Kevin Puts by David White The way Kevin Puts describes the possibilities unlocked in opera, it seems only inevitable that Virginia Woolf's landmark novel Mrs. Dalloway would be a perfect fit for this powerful genre. Woolf's novel of a day in the emotionally resonant interior lives of strangers—aging socialite, Clarissa Dalloway, and "shell shocked" veteran, Septimus Smith—challenged London’s notions of time and the individual. Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel, The Hours , interpolated Woolf herself into a story of three women living in three separate cities and generations. The 2002 film adaptation, directed by Stephen Daldry and scored by Philip Glass, won an Oscar for Nicole Kidman as Woolf. Twenty years later, another adaptation commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, composed by Puts and his librettist, Greg Pierce, will be staged at The Met this November. This premiere will be a few months shy of a century-long journey from Mrs. Dalloway’s dramatized composition in 1923. Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato will play Woolf and sopranos Kelli O'Hara and Renée Fleming—who collaborated with Puts in Letters From Georgia— play Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan. Earlier this year, the opera was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, also under Nézet-Séguin's baton. We speak to Puts about how his fifth opera introduces a new perspective to this story of a very long day. sM | This new opera was performed earlier this year by the Philadelphia Orchestra. What did you learn from that premiere and seeing the music come to life? KP ─ It's unusual for a composer to have an opportunity like that. Comparing opera to musical theatre, they undergo all kinds of scrutiny and trial and revision before they go on Broadway. In classical opera, we almost never have that. Sometimes there are workshops in the years preceding, but for the most part, everything happens a few weeks before the premiere with little time to separate the different aspects of the production. To think about the music without worrying about how the staging, lighting, sets, costumes, and so on, would play into it was extremely useful. To have the great Yannick [Nézet-Séguin] conduct such an amazing orchestra and take ownership of the piece, and for me to hear the balance of the singers with the orchestra and get to make adjustments a good half a year before the premiere, was invaluable for me. It's hard to imagine going into November without that. sM | This opera is only the latest layer to the story of The Hours . At its core you have Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway , then there’s Woolf’s life itself, then there’s Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours , then Stephen Daldry's film, and then Phillip Glass's score for that film. Composing this, how did you not feel suffocated by all the artists and art forms that have engaged with this storyline? KP ─ Every opera I've done is based on something else. There's always something else in the room with you as you're writing. But there's something about addressing the libretto on its own terms. The book is incredible. I've known it for many years. I saw the film somewhere thereafter. Both are just beautiful creations. What's beautiful about Philip Glass's score is how he embraces the quotidian, the hours. My score delves more into the mystical nature and intersection of the three stories. How is it exactly that they're all connected? Is Clarissa being operated by Virginia Woolf as she writes this novel that's about her? What you can do in opera that you can't do on the screen or on a written page, is you can introduce these three stories separately (Virginia Woolf in the 20s, Laura Brown living outside of LA after the Second World War with her family, and then Clarissa in, let's say, 1990s New York) and begin to blur the lines between them until they're simultaneous. You can transcend time. And what allows for that is music, is harmony. I remember in the film Amadeus —which I saw when I was in seventh or eighth grade—there's a scene where Mozart's talking about how you can have six or seven people singing at the same time and it makes perfect sense. You can't have them speaking. But on the operatic stage, you can see them. They can sing duets which are separated by 40 years of time. Especially if they're singing something where there's a common overriding emotion to the scene. To plan the pace of that overlap was a great joy. By the end of the opera, time and space have cleared away entirely. We're living in a realm where everything is in the same space. I think the biggest lesson of loss and grief is that it forces you to face your own mortality. There’s a huge blessing that comes after the grieving part. You get to look at life like it matters again. Everything matters a little bit more and not in a bad way. I was on TV with bands a few weeks ago, and I remember cracking jokes with the host and I was thinking, “Why am I so unafraid right now?” And I think part of it is, we’re all going to die. Might as well have fun. Might as well be real. Don’t be afraid of the status or the situation. Talk to people, find out about them, learn about them. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Anthony Barfield The Invictus composer discusses barriers, collaborators, and his earned ambition WORDS BY MILES FORRESTER & MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK | NEW YORK | MUSIC THE smART Ensemble NOV 15, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Anthony Barfield Courtesy of the Artist ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Anthony Barfield Courtesy of the Artist Anthony Barfield Courtesy of the Artist One of the things composer Anthony Barfield loves about New York is that when a guy in a dinosaur costume sits next to you on the New York subway, the question asked is, “What else? Is that all you’re going to do?” He’s the kind of person that gets excited by the world around him, the political moment, and music. But he doesn’t want people to be comfortable when he knows they’re ready for something better. His orchestral music draws on jazz, gospel, and hip-hop, as well as the Western classical tradition—a combination that isn’t often included or taken seriously in classical spaces. Now, however, that combination is not only an especially relevant approach to a world reckoning with systemic racism, it’s a sound he knows audiences, both inside and outside of the recital hall, are eager to hear. sM | How have the last 18 months—the pandemic, the political climate, and the social movements—informed your artistry? AB — I think, first and foremost, that the pandemic has helped shape me as an artist. We have realized that life is so much deeper, and more meaningful, than we have given it credit to be. We’ve learned to have a deeper appreciation for family, and the day-to-day experiences that we love. Thinking about the fact that we have lost so much throughout the pandemic—time, energy, family, friends—it has personally made me more aware of how important it actually is to spread love through my music and to be true to who I am as an artist. We are all aware of the Black Lives Matter protests, the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery—I’m sure you saw the news that the three white men who murdered him were convicted, which is, you know, really, really great. I grew up in Collinsville, Mississippi. My mom’s family is from Philadelphia, Mississippi, which is right next door. I went to elementary, middle school, and high school in Philadelphia. In 1964, there were these three civil-rights workers who were killed in my hometown, two guys from New York—two Jewish men—and then one Black guy from Meridian, Mississippi. They came down in 1964 as part of the Freedom Riders. They were killed by the KKK. I grew up having a very deep understanding of what happened, hearing the stories from my family members who knew the family of the guy from Meridian. I grew up a few miles away from the Baptist church that was burned to the ground. The craziest thing is that when I left Mississippi and moved to New York in 2005, that was the year that the head Klansmen was actually convicted for those murders. That type of ‘racial energy’ and bigotry really ran deep in that area. Thinking about all of the events that have happened recently, as well as my childhood, I feel that it is extremely important to stay true to my inner voice. I grew up listening to soul, gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Classical audiences tend to think of classical music as being completely separate from those genres. But I feel that it is very important, as a Black composer, to show that there is another perspective on this thing that we call ‘classical music.’ The more optimistic side of me thinks that classical music has always encompassed a great deal of variety, in terms of expression. In a non-political sense, it’s the conservative forces within orchestral music that want to make it something specifically this or that. sM | How do you define the barriers existing for people of colour in orchestral spaces? And who are some of the forces for good? That is a hard question to answer. It’s interesting hearing that even at the Toronto Symphony, you know, you do have— more-or-less—a white audience. In my experience of American orchestras: the symphonies are mainly white musicians playing the music of dead white men [laughs], playing mainly to white audiences of an orchestra that is mainly comprised of white, middle-aged to older, board members. You know, it’s okay. But I think when it comes to the thought of bringing in people of colour to audiences, for me personally, I think that orchestras should simply just program the kind of music I grew up with more. Even if it is somebody like a Jon Batiste or whomever, promote that music in a way that would be a little bit new and fresh. And hip! Because the thing is, we’re living in a society where people are starting to sniff the wind a little bit to see that what’s been inside of this typical box really doesn’t work anymore. I don’t really have a specific answer to that question. I think that exposure, to me, is the most important thing. Speaking of white people: in my experience, one of the reasons why they haven’t necessarily been as open to accepting Black music or Black classical music, is that they’re ignorant to not just Black music, but ignorant to things that are within our culture. Of course, the Lincoln Center has been very good about trying to spread the gospel, so to speak. One of the things that I appreciate, and have appreciated, about certain organizations are the ones consistently displaying works by people of colour. When the pandemic happened and Black Lives Matter started, you had people that would say, “Ok, it’s time we program this work,” or, “We’re going to put out a statement to say we support Black Lives Matter. We support X, Y, Z.” And then it just fell off. Fortunately, a few organizations have shown that this is not a momentary movement. This is something that we have to once-and-for-all incorporate into the arts. A colleague of mine—the composer Jessie Montgomery—pardon my French, but she is kicking ass! There are a bunch of people that I can mention of course, but she is one of those people who has been able to just stick the knife in there and just go with whatever she feels. She’s forging a path that will help a lot of younger composers be able to feel comfortable enough that they can actually survive in that space. I’ve had a lot of white people actually come up to me and say, “I had no idea this was happening.” That’s okay, but I had tried to explain to them that we’ve been preaching the same thing for decades now. But the thing that George Floyd’s death allowed to happen—as well as the pandemic—was for people’s lives to slow down enough so that they could actually be able to listen. Specifically non-Black audiences, because they’d been ready to listen in terms of police brutality and stuff like that, and now their ears are ready to hear the artistic side of it. I think that younger audience members are ready, but I also think that the older ones are ready too, I really do. Anthony Barfield by Ella Mazur sM | What does 2022 look like for you as an artist in terms of projects, collaborations, and other intersections of music? AB — I’m very fortunate to be one of the musicians who, throughout the pandemic, was able to sustain work. Oddly enough, my work actually picked up throughout that time. My plate is quite full at the moment. I recently had an orchestral premiere of an euphonium concerto that I wrote—in Bozeman, Montana. It is still a predominantly white place, but when I went there, the soloist was a Black musician (Demondrae Thurman). Between him and myself, the thing was a hit! Literally to the point where, people were like, “Oh my gosh! We want you to come back!” That was the first thing that was exciting going into 2022. I do have a small music production company that I started in 2016. It’s called Velocity Music. We have a bunch of music production contracts coming up: corporate gigs, straight-up production contracts, as well as hip-hop production. In the classical world, I have a new piece that I’m working on, a new trumpet concerto for Christopher Martin, who is the principal trumpet player of the New York Philharmonic. We’re putting together a consortium of about, hopefully, 30 different ensembles to perform all over the U.S. and abroad. I have more brassworks coming out: a new brass quintet that I wrote for The American Brass Quintet, which is in residence at the Juilliard School. On the teaching side, I’ve actually officially joined the faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, to teach a music production course. In terms of cross-disciplinary, if you will—this is something I maybe shouldn’t be saying, but I’m going to put it out there because this is great. Considering I do a lot of electronic music production, my next goal is to win a Grammy [laughs] writing orchestral pieces or wind ensemble pieces that will be classically informed—classical instrumentation, classical motifs—but also with hip-hop rhythms in the drum section and trap beats over those orchestral sounds. I’ve admired Mason Bates for a while; this guy wrote a lot of stuff for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was composer-in-residence there for a while. The way that he does electronics, small drum beats under film-score rhythms, I think that’s cool. But, I don’t really see too many people occupying the space that are literally, straight-up, combining classical with what we know as the hip-hop idiom. So that’s my thing. I’m going to put it out there and I’m going to win a Grammy for it. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Collins Obijiaku An emerging portraitist in search of new postures and perspectives on the African continent WORDS BY NAVYA POTHAMSETTY | ABUJA | VISUAL ARTS STUDIO SESSIONS FEB 23, 2023 | ISSUE 11 Collins Obijiaku in studio - Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE ​ ​ Continue reading in Issue 11 Collins Obijiaku’s portraits are relatively simple: a profile of a single person against a simple background. Born in the Kaduna region in northern Nigeria, the internationally-exhibited, self-taught artist is now based just north of Abuja─the strategically central capital of the nation. The deceptively simplified surfaces of Obijiaku’s creations belie miles of depth beneath the facade of their sartorial expression, and the identities assumed in their skin complexion. Captivated at first glance, the Obijiaku viewer is invited to observe, on closer inspection, how small differences in clothing, posture, and gaze animate two-dimensional portraits to vivid life. Obijiaku’s stock has been slowly rising in recent years and across the international circuit of galleries that regularly host diasporic portraitists, such as Kehinde Wiley. In 2020, Obijiaku was invited to participate in the second year of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock artist residency program in Dakar, Senegal, a placement that further contributed to his acclaim as one... ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

COMPOSER: Bryce Dessner On composing the music for Alejandro Iñárritu’s Bardo , Yale residency, and upcoming projects WORDS BY LAUREN VELVICK | PARIS | THE smART ENESEMBLE THE smART Ensemble JUN 12, 2023 | ISSUE 11 Bryce Dessner - Illustration by Ella Mazur “If I’m pointing at the moon, don’t draw my finger.” Bryce Dessner Artists can approach their field of work with a honed specificity, nearing virtuosity in their command of a particular instrument or medium. Many of Bryce Dessner’s collaborators — Alejandro Iñárritu, Katia and Marielle Labèque, and Anne Carson among them — might fit neatly into this bracket. However, his expansive and cooperative practice seeks the passageways that can be found between art forms and, in turn, art worlds. On the occasion of taking up residence at Yale University’s newly-opened Schwartzman Center, Dessner discusses the push and pull inherent in a collaborative artistic process, particularly the nuances of composing for cinema, and how this can be mapped onto the complementary roles taken within a band. For Dessner, chamber music and classical composition followed playing in a band, and now the immersive sound environment found in film and installation is a source of insight. In the trajectory of Dessner’s journey, the interplay between classical music and visual art appears with film as an intermediary but, interestingly, opera also plays an important role. It makes sense, given his origins, that the spoken or sung word would be a meaningful consideration. His latest film project seems to bring this full circle─composing for Rebecca Miller’s She Came to Me , a film partly about a composer finding his way back to music. While Dessner describes his time at Yale in almost entirely positive terms, the Schwartzman Center residency will serve as a way to address what he describes as a “walled elite institution.” Despite all its attending privilege and inequality, the residency nonetheless exists within different intersecting communities, not the least being the city that the school is based in. Drawing on the way his own practice in composition has progressed, but also morphed to accommodate the ideas of others and entirely different forms of performance and experience, Dessner seeks to foster an interdisciplinary atmosphere, creating space for practitioners to reach outside of the potentially narrow confines of their graduate studies. Also important to him is the richness to be found in an instinctively open-minded approach to the artistry of others, finding value both in the “Juilliard-trained polymaths” and “self-taught amateur musicians” that he has encountered throughout his varied career. Now, Dressner enjoys a newfound opportunity to communicate this approach to another generation of artists. Poster for BARDO ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Bryce Dessner - Photo by Anne Mie Dreves Cover art for Complete Mountain Almanac BARDO sM | BARDO is your second time collaborating with Alejandro Iñárritu, what do you enjoy the most about this creative partnership? BD ── Alejandro is really one of the great living artists. He’s a very generous, curious, and open-hearted person─working with him is one of the best things I get to do. He always says, “If I'm pointing at the moon, don't draw my finger,” which I think is a good indicator of his approach. Alejandro also assembles an amazing group of creative people around him. He works really closely with his sound design team — Nicholas Becker on this film — who is a really exceptional artist. There are also quite a few pieces of music Alejandro and I did together, including the main theme. He would whistle melodies, and then I arranged them. It's a little like being in a band and he's the lead singer, I would say. It's that kind of feeling of collaboration. BARDO is, in a way, kind of a Buddhist film about the sense of self and removing the self. That’s also what it’s like to write for a film project: you don’t carry your artistic ego out in front. You have to be open to hearing other voices in collaboration. sM | As a composer who creates for a variety of formats, how is writing for cinema different from others? BD ── Writing film music is very different; it's more like creating music for an installation or immersive experience. Not only are you working with images, but you're working with a surround-sound environment. And Alejandro, because of the types of films he's making, requires an unparalleled level of detail. You're never just making a piece of music, because it will be very carefully interwoven with sound design, dialogue, and ambient space. It’s like writing for a new form. Maybe this is how it felt when opera or the fortepiano were invented; it’s a new environment. I used to avoid working on films. I had a bad experience coming out of college with a student filmmaker, and I was busy: I was playing in a band, coming out of a classical conservatory, playing chamber music, and writing my own music. I felt, at the time, that film was one step too far. It's also very difficult to start in film and then to move to making other music. For many major film composers, you've never heard their music in a concert hall. I personally wanted to develop my work elsewhere for a time, and then eventually Alejandro asked me to work on The Revenant , and that was really the first big film I worked on. sM | Your latest film score, for She Came To Me, is notable because the story centres around a composer. Did your approach to this particular soundscape feel more personal? BD ── It's a beautiful, very special film. It’s about an opera composer who’s experiencing writer’s block, so there are two on-screen operas in the film that I was commissioned to write scores for. I also produced a brand-new Bruce Springsteen song that was written for the film. Writer and Director Rebecca Miller is incredible and extremely open-minded. We became very good friends and she treated me like an artist, with total respect and agency. I just made the music that I wanted to make, and so it’s the first film where the music really resembles my music for the concert hall. We recorded the score in Paris, and it features pianist Katia Labèque, who I work with a lot, and she’s also close friends with Rebecca Miller. It was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime scenario for me. RESIDENCY AT YALE’S SCHWARZMAN CENTER sM | How does it feel to be back at Yale, 28 years after you first stepped foot there as an undergrad? BD ── I had a really good experience at Yale, as a kid from suburban Ohio. It was amazing to meet so many creative, intelligent people, and to have access to incredible libraries and facilities. It's a kind of fairy land concentration of brilliant minds. But Yale has also grown; they've grappled with their past and are making new motions towards the future. The Schwarzman Center is new and, in a way, kind of independent from other parts of the university. It’s an honour to be part of the early group of people that are defining what that place is going to be. sM | What are some of your priorities in commissioning new works in this residency? BD ── There are two things that I missed on some level when I was a student at Yale, but which later became really important to me. Firstly, I want to create a multidisciplinary environment. A lot of what I’m doing with the Schwarzman Center is music based, but I'm encouraging artists to really think outside of just music. The university is so rich with artists in other media, and the Center can be a kind of incubator for work that can then go and have a life elsewhere. Typically when you’re in music graduate school, you’re focusing on a narrow topic because you have to─but I’m encouraging artists to think beyond what’s in their immediate back yard. My second priority is creating a better connection with the wider New Haven community. Yale, for a long time, has been a kind of walled elite institution, but I think that the New Haven community itself has so much to offer and so many incredible people, artists, and resources; so some of the projects we’re developing are aiming to connect with that broader community. NEW PROJECTS sM | The Dream House Quartet is a fairly unorthodox conception of the quartet format─how was this project conceived? BD ── The Dream House Quartet is a very exciting project for me on many levels. On a personal level, it involves three of my closest friends. Katia and Marielle Labèque are very famous classical pianists in their own right. I wrote them a concerto before, and other music for two pianos, and selfishly, this was my excuse to actually get on stage and play with them. David Chalmin is also an amazing composer/electric guitarist/producer/engineer, and he’s someone I also work with a lot. We all live in France near each other, so it came together organically, and now we’re developing repertoire for this instrumentation. sM | What’s in store for the spring concerts? BD ── It turns out that the idea of two electric guitars and two pianos is pretty exciting for composers. We play music composed by myself and Chalmin, but also pair it with what we jokingly call “historical music” by older living composers, like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and David Lang. Then also some more recent work, like a set of pieces by Thom Yorke, and a piece by Icelandic composer Anna Þorvaldsdóttir. Katia and Marielle make us look really good because they’re insanely virtuosic. Being up there next to them is pretty flattering. sM | It seems the operatic format is one that you’re increasingly interested in, what’s your next venture in this genre? BD ── I’m working on a big opera called H of H for Chicago Lyric Opera. It has a full orchestra and chorus, plus six primary soloists; and it’s written by Canadian poet Anne Carson, one of the great living English language writers. She had been developing this text for quite a long time, as a play based on the Heracles story, and she’s adapted it into a libretto for this project. It also involves our mutual friend, Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who will co-direct it along with Elkhanah Pulitzer, who herself just directed John Adams’ new opera Antony and Cleopatra , among tons of other amazing pieces of work. It's definitely the biggest thing I've done, and the libretto itself is just stunning. The end of it reads: “As we go in grief, we go in tears. So many swift and dirty years, we've lost a man of greatest merit. Truly a devil of spirit, our greatest and most legendary friend.” You can almost hear these words sung. I’m still figuring out what this opera is going to be, basically, but I’m really excited. Dream House Quartet sM | You collaborated on the recent album, Complete Mountain Almanac , with your sister. Where did this familial appreciation for music come from? BD ── I think my sister Jessica is really the muse of the family, or maybe she’s really the artist among us, and Aaron and I just follow in her footsteps. She was a ballet dancer growing up, then started writing poetry and did an MFA in poetry, and later she developed this incredible talent for pencil drawings. She was like a pole star pointing the way forward. My dad was a musician, too, so we grew up with music in the house. During the first year of her ongoing struggle with breast cancer, Jessica wrote Complete Mountain Almanac as a book of poems, one for each month. Norwegian singer Rebekka Karijord set that text to music, and then we recorded the album with my brother and I in Paris just before the pandemic lockdowns. It was really beautiful to work with Jessica in this capacity, and the album is really gorgeous. sM | How do you contend with the notion that composers who can tune into different genres are somehow regarded less seriously by critics of classical music and simultaneously as too serious by listeners of contemporary/more popularly-oriented genres? BD ── I try to be pretty humble about what I'm doing, which is just making music that's personally interesting to me. I'm a product of my education and my curiosity. I was a classical musician first, but I try not to spend too much time searching the universe for where I fit. There are musicians from all backgrounds that interest me, whether they’re Juilliard-trained polymaths, or the self-taught amateur musicians I work with all the time. Thom Yorke and Paul Simon aren’t people who communicate through musical manuscripts, but they’re probably the two most brilliant composers I’ve worked with. Somebody like Nina Simone, who I think is the greatest musical artist of the 20th century, was rejected from the Curtis Institute of Music. I’ve had people say my music is too avant-garde or too “crossover,” but as an artist, if you get lost in the weeds with that, you'll never find your own voice. Now, of course, as a middle-aged white man, I’ve been privileged and people have helped me to do exceptional things in my life, so I can’t really complain. The next phase of classical music is now opening its doors and starting to provide more diverse opportunities ; it’s becoming less blindly elitist for performers, composers, and audiences alike, and I’m thrilled to see that happening. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture

Nils Frahm’s Music For Animal “When you have animals, you probably know that they react to music.” WORDS BY REBECCA LASHMAR | BERLIN | MUSIC THE smART Ensemble MAR 13, 2023 | ISSUE 10 Nils Frahm ©LEITER ​ ​ Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily LISTEN NOW https://loveinexile.lnk.to/preorder Cody Fry LISTEN NOW www.codyfry.com Víkingur Ólafsson ON TOUR NOW www.vikingurolafsson.com Samara Joy LISTEN NOW www.samarajoy.com Bruce Liu ON TOUR NOW www.bruce-liu.com Disney Animation: Immersive Experience TICKETS ON SALE NOW CLICK HERE Nils Frahm in the Studio ©LEITER Nils Frahm German musician and composer Nils Frahm is known for combining classical piano with electric experimentation and beyond. From his vivid scoring for cinematic experiences like Victoria (2015) , to multi-artist collaborations like Piano Day Volume 1 , his career continues to expand outward. Nils opens up about the artistic challenges of touring, giving undiscovered artists a platform, and why his latest album, Music for Animals , is perfect for both you and your canine companions to chill out to. sM | How did the concept for Music for Animals begin for you, and when did you know it was something you wanted to expand into a full-length recording? NF ─ It began with the purchase of an instrument, which is an odd one, called the glass harmonica. Just imagine wine glasses tuned chromatically and put together on one metal axis, and they rotate. You can wet your hands and touch these glasses with your fingers. And that was a wonderful starting point for a new record. My wife came to the studio one day. She saw the instrument and played a couple notes. It sounded beautiful. She’s not a musician at all. I was recording what she was playing and made it into a droney song. I showed it to her, and I told her, “This is your first recording you’ve ever made.” That was the beginning point for our collaboration on this. Improvising with somebody else is really like a conversation. You have a conversation when you play with the instrument, a dialogue. And if there’s another person involved, it becomes a much larger conversation. sM | The album is three hours long. Without a piano, and at this length, how do you plan to translate this album in a concert setting when you are on tour? NF ─ Yeah, that’s my usual problem. I realise that, for live performances, the songs need to be changed or altered in a certain way in order for them to make sense, which in its own way becomes a song writing process. I usually take some of these album ideas or songs as a starting point for some live reinterpretation. And in the case of Music for Animals , the live versions will differ quite a lot from the album because the album is intended to be a home listening experience. And you need to listen to the album to understand that in detail, the album is long. It has tensongs. The songs are often 20 to 30 minutes long, and they’re very repetitive. Your consciousness will go in and out of focus so that you lose the overview of the music, and you start experiencing the music almost like when you stare into a fire. Similarly, it’s very interesting for me also to just watch the river flow or watch the waterfall because it's always the same but always different. And cloud formations work like that too. And I wanted to make music in a similar style so that you are not experiencing the music as something human-made, which I would say could be a little bit artificial. Nils Frahm ©LEITER sM | You’ve said that the animals you spent time with over the last few months have really liked the album — what kind of animals? NF ─ I've only played it for two dogs and cats. Some of my friends had the album earlier, they also have a dog, and they gave me feedback similar to what I've experienced. The dogs really liked to relax to the record or hang out and sleep around the music. When you have animals, you probably know that they react to music. They have their own taste. They might not be great music critics, but at least the material resonated with them. sM | You founded International Piano Day seven years ago — what’s surprised you the most about the growth of this holiday? NF ─ It is incredible to see the positive reaction from the whole piano community to this idea, which started a bit as a joke. Honestly, I was just in my car, listening to talk radio similar to NPR, and there was news about some international flower day or the international day for this and that. And I always thought that was funny to make an international day for something. Some days have serious origins, and I don't wanna make fun of that because, obviously it’s a good way to give things visibility. And on the other hand, it's also a little bit unoriginal to make an international piano day, so I was like being half serious about it and half joking. That is why I feel like it is a great success because it was never something we tried with great ambition. We always felt very light about the idea. But it became quite a big event. Every year there are more people hearing about it. And when Paul McCartney sent a photo of him sitting at his piano and said, “Happy International Piano Day, guys.” I was really feeling like, wow, this is going somewhere. "Music for the Motion Picture Victoria" Cover Art sM | For this year’s Piano Day, you released a double LP entitled “Piano Day Volume 1” — what was the selection process for the 32 songs and artists on the album? NF ── I never felt like I needed to curate too much. I also never wanted to feel like Piano Day is about me, or is through me, or is something I did for me. Piano Day has its own thing. It is free. Nobody can own it. I also didn’t want to curate the record by myself. We did it with the team at our label, and I love the people who work there. The selection was not about what I wanted to have on that record, but it was about who cared the most to contribute and get in touch with us first and be a driving force. We had to choose certain things because we had way more requests than we could deal with, but it was very important to us that people who have great talent and no career yet would end up there because it needs to be a platform for exploration. sM | Speaking of the record length of Music For Animals , you wrote the score for the film Victoria (2015), which holds the world record for the longest single shot in cinema at 138 minutes. How did you get involved in that project and what caught your ear about the story it was trying to tell? NF ─ I remember the time, around 2014 when Director Sebastian Schipper got in touch and asked us to come for coffee to talk about a film project. He’s a guy from Hamburg, the city I was born in, and he did some smaller films about Hamburg, which I think are fantastic. He showed the whole shot to us without treatment. No after effects, no sound effects, almost no music, but yet the film had strength and power. There’s some real emotion in that movie, and I was so in love with the film, but yet terrified too. As a composer, I felt I could only water it down. I was almost wanting to tell them: “You don’t need music.” And yet he was convinced it needed music, and it was good that he convinced me too. When you make music for film, when the image cuts, you can also start and stop the music. In Victoria , it was very difficult because there’s no cut in the image, but the music stops. I had a hard time bringing out the music in moments of the film. Bringing in something was always easy but then turning down the score and leaving the movie alone without music, that was something we worked quite hard on. ​ ​ ​ ​ FIND US IN PRINT 2-ISSUE PACKAGE | 3-ISSUE PACKAGE | 5-ISSUE PACKAGE Supported by Nominated for Best Magazine: Art, Literary, & Culture