Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Jonathan Bailey Holland and Isabelle Tseng

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 198: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Jonathan Bailey Holland and Isabelle Tseng

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Jonathan Bailey Holland’s and Isabelle Tseng’s perspectives on who or what inspires them. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Jonathan Bailey Holland and Isabelle Tseng, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in January 2021, click here, and February 2025, click here.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/18679929

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Christy Xu

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today, we revisit Jonathan Bailey Holland's and Isabelle Tseng's perspectives on who or what inspires them. Here's what Jonathan Bailey Holland had to say.

Jonathan Bailey Holland  00:40

In my opinion, all artists respond to the world in terms of how they experience it. Artists may be doing other things, but that is often what artists do, perhaps it's what we're supposed to do. In terms of synchrony, and when it was written and recorded, I wanted to convey the economy of being African American and watching all of the events unfolding that drove the Black Lives Matter movement at that time. The work incorporates both optimistic messages and tragic and unfortunately still relevant messages from that time of individuals who I think you know, even though they're not identified explicitly in the music, we know who they are. And I decided to include audio clips in the work, because I think experiencing these events, we can listen to things on the news, we can read a headline and only partially engage, but when you're in a concert hall, you go to a concert to sit and listen and pay attention and hear what's being presented to you. And so to experience these words in that context, you don't have a choice but to pay attention and be affected by it.

Nanette McGuinness  02:22

Here's what Isabelle Tseng had to say.

Isabelle Tseng  02:23

I play in the orchestra, but I also compose, but I recently feel like genre wise, I have found a lot of like inspiration because I recently took this class called "The Tonality of Music" with Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton. And it's like a class that walks through, like music theory in a bit of a different lens. I wouldn't , yeah, I think it's like a different approach to, a different approach to kind of viewing music, analyzing music. And we went through a lot of different genres, even like jazz and like rock even. And I think, personally, as a person who was classically trained as a kid, at the, at first, I feel like my ear was, like, untrained in this angle. I could not, like analyze it properly. But like, taking a closer look at a lot of this type of music that's a bit more, I think improvisational, I think was important, and kind of like showing me that, like, there are a lot more facets to kind of composition, not just like sitting down and like writing. And I thought that, like the improvisational idea and kind of manipulating like shapes in the most like present form, like right in front of an audience, is something that I really think is really inspirational in a way, and freeing in another way. Like, while it looks like, kind of like regulated on paper, it's like, very, just very free, like I read, of course, like heard a lot of Debussy, and then I was like, wow, this is kind of like how it was created in a way, and I found it really cool. So I think recently, musically speaking, I've kind of unlocked the door to a little bit more of like the flowy, flowy, flowy vibe of music, and I think that's something I'll definitely explore.

Nanette McGuinness  04:30

Yeah, no, I see what you're saying, that you were trained in what we think of as the classical, which is, it's on the paper. We write it on the paper, and we do our best to do exactly what's on the paper, but that's more a modern, in my opinion, construct of what classical music is, because if you look at the Baroque, there was all sorts of improvisation going on all around in ornamentation and a number of directions. But even if you look at the concerti with and the cadenzas in the classical period and so forth. There was all sorts of stuff going on for people to do that wasn't written on the paper. So it's good that you got that freeing experience, because there is space for that in classical music. So yeah, but okay, so it blew your mind and opened your horizons. 

Isabelle Tseng  05:21

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  05:21

Very cool, and that's good. That's what a teacher is supposed to do in a good way. So that's nice.

Nanette McGuinness  05:27

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations, and a special thank you to our guests for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to Co-producer and Audio Engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]