JAVS Summer 2001

29

AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN R. GERBER

by jeffrey james

Steven R. Gerber's music is known for its emotional directness, textural clarity, meticulous crafts manship, and avoidance of both flashiness and academicism. Recent works of Gerber's include a Viola Concerto written for Yuri Bashmet and premiered by Bashmet at his summer festival in Tours in 1997; String Quartet #4 for the Fine Arts Quartet, premiered by them in Milwaukee in 1996; two works for Tatyana Grindenko, who has given numerous performances of Gerber's Violin Concerto in the U.S., Russia, and Estonia; and two works for the London-based Bekova Sisters Trio. Concertante Chamber Players has com missioned Steven Gerber to write a new work for them for clarinet and string quartet. In addition to his success in the United States, Mr. Gerber has become perhaps the most often-played living American composer in the former Soviet Union, which he has toured 10 times since 1990, and where he has received literally dozens of orchestral performances and numerous concerts of his solo and chamber music. Gerber was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C., received degrees from Haverford College and from Princeton University, where he received a 4-year fellowship, and now lives in New York City. His composition teachers included Robert Parris, J. K. Randall, Earl Kim, and Milton Babbitt. Over the years, his harmonic language has changed-from the chromatic, dissonant intensity of his early Trio for violin, cello, and piano {commissioned by the Kindler Foundation when he was only 19), through the austerity of such serial works from the 70s as Dylan Thomas Settings and Illuminations, to the tonality of much of his recent music, beginning with the Piano Sonata (1981-82). He is a member of BMI and a board member of the American Composers Alliance. ]]' For over a decade, you've received a great deal ofexposure in Russia, which eventually led to your meeting with Yuri Bashmet. How didyou get involved in that scene? SRG: That happened just by chance. I have a cousin, Sam Teitel, who is a Russian emigre. He was the executive director of the opera and ballet house in Kishinev, the capital of Moldova, for about twenty years. He emigrated to the United States around 1973. We are second cousins; we never really met for a long time. He knew of me and my work, but we didn't meet until 1989. Things were opening up in the Soviet Union. He was working at a bank in New York for a long time, where he had a colleague whose wife was a singer. He arranged a tour for her in Russia, and he renewed a lot of his old contacts with musicians over there. He then started to arrange a tour for me. ]]: Let's talk about the various tours that you've had in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. What goes on? SRG: At the beginning I went to a lot of provincial cities, which are quite fascinating. I went to places like Rostov, Yaroslavl, and Saratov. I did a concert in a beautiful 14th-century hall in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, with a violinist, Anna Rabinova, now a member of the New York Philharmonic. That was actually the only concert I played over there with some music that wasn't by me. I also did some Copland and Prokofiev, mistakenly think ing they would love an American playing a Russian composer over there. But of course they weren't that enthusiastic about it. The audience was made up mostly of Estonians, who had been oppressed by Russia, and Finns who didn't care. Also, it was better when I started talking about each piece in English, rather than somebody speaking to them in Russian. ]]' So your first concert in Russia was when?