JAMES STRECKER: If you were asked for 50 words for an encyclopedia to summarize what you do, or have done, in the arts, what would you say?
ABIGAIL RICHARDSON-SCHULTE: Abigail Richardson-Schulte is a Canadian composer of orchestral music, chamber music and opera with a narrative and inherently Canadian style. She is a composer-in-residence, educator, presenter, host, and curator of new music festivals. Her best-known work, The Hockey Sweater, was performed over 100 times in its first five years.
JS: What important beliefs do you express in or through your work?
A R-S: I don’t express beliefs through my music but I do write music with awareness of important composers and works of the past, particularly those of my own country.
JS: Name two people, living or dead, whom you admire a great deal and tell us why for each one.
A R-S: Ludwig van Beethoven: Firstly, his music is brilliant. Secondly, he impacted the way composers and artists were seen in society, challenging the assumption of the greatness of royals over artists simply due to their rank.
Sir Ernest MacMillan: Aside from his remarkable WWI story, his commitment to establishing and developing the Canadian music scene allowed us to move forward quite quickly. His influence on orchestral and choral performance and programming, education at all levels, ethnomusicology and the importance of Canadian music became a foundation for Canada’s burgeoning music scene. See an article I wrote about him: http://hpo.org/a-what-next-festival-feature-canadas-musical-hero/
JS: How have you changed since you began to do creative work?
A R-S: I can’t answer that since I started composing as a teenager and never stopped. I can say that since becoming a professional composer in 2004, I have had to widen my focus to include business matters. Making a living in the arts has forced me to become more diverse and practical.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
A R-S: Juggling work. A life in the arts usually includes a number of positions. I have four positions aside from composing, plus being an active board member in two important music organizations. My struggle is to preserve my creative time even though I may have other pressing work.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life.
A R-S: After a couple of weeks in first year science, I suddenly, and I mean suddenly, knew I had to be in music and I never looked back. I ran out of my biology class at 3:17pm, phoned my parents to tell them the news, dropped a few classes, and turned my focus towards practicing piano. I stayed in university music for 10 years after that, finishing my doctorate in 2004.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about what you do?
A R-S: Some people just can’t understand how anyone can write music. The most common phrase I get is, “I don’t know how you do it!”. It’s a bit like learning a foreign language. You learn the vocabulary, the grammar and you soon try putting short sentences together. After a while, the sentences get longer and more complex. People don’t understand how we write for the different instruments. I tell them it’s a bit like colouring. I create the black and white sketch at the piano and from there, I think about what lines are best suited for which colour.
JS: How and why did you begin to do creative work in the first place?
A R-S: I loved the emotion and expression in the music I played at the piano as a teenager. Soon enough, I started writing my own music in the attempt of creating that emotion. I also started writing music to short stories I was reading and realized that I loved musical storytelling.
JS: What haven’t you attempted as yet that you would like to do and please tell us why?
A R-S: I’d love to write a ballet but it’s not like there are many ballet companies commissioning…
JS: What are your most meaningful achievements?
A R-S: Winning the UNESCO Rostrum of Composers Competition with broadcasts in 35 countries and a resulting commission from Radio France.
Being Affiliate Composer with Toronto Symphony Orchestra and now for the past six years: Composer-in-Residence with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra.
Winning a Dora Award for Best New Opera.
Writing The Hockey Sweater in 2012, which has taken off like I could never have believed.
JS: What advice would you give a young person who would like to do what you do?
A R-S: Is there anything else you would like to do for a living? That sounds terrible, but being a composer is uncertain work if you can get any at all. I know many good, highly educated composers who barely write because they don’t get commissions. If this young person is committed, well then, I would encourage them to get all the experience in workshops they can. There are so many programs for young composers these days. It takes a while to find your voice, so get started. And make friends with performers. Fellow composers don’t commission pieces but performers do!
JS: Of what value are critics?
A R-S: The role of the critic has changed in recent years. Today, the critic is often less of a critic but more of a previewer. I consider that to be a useful role in encouraging interest in concert music.
JS: What do you ask of your audience?
A R-S: I think my answer is fairly typical. I ask that they come with open minds rather than preconceived ideas of what contemporary music is. Since much of my music is narrative in nature, I hope they will actively listen and attempt to engage in the story I am telling.
JS: What specifically would you change about what goes on in the world and the arts?
A R-S: I feel very lucky to live in Canada where we have funding for the arts at the national, provincial and municipal levels, but there are still far too many people who would like to be involved in this very small field. I recognize that Canada has had some pretty serious catch up to do. We have constructed a fairly robust music scene considering we didn’t really get started until the 20th century. We used to have no university programs for music study, but soon enough there were plenty. Today, too many people train and study to become performers, composers, musicologists and theorists with comparatively few job opportunities. Perhaps we could update our teaching practices and course design to create graduates who look less towards academia upon graduation but more towards practical and varied ways of making a living in the arts and other fields.
JS: If you could relive one experience from your creative life, what would it be and why would you do so?
A R-S: I don’t actually want to relive an experience but there is one experience that should have been mine and wasn’t. I’d like to attend an important premiere I missed due to bad winter weather. I’d like to go back and first of all, book a direct ticket to Paris instead of going through Chicago. That way, I wouldn’t have had to spend the night in the Chicago airport on a cot surrounded by heavily armed police, all the while knowing that this would lead to missing the premiere of my Radio France commissioned string quartet for performance at the Festival Présences in Paris. I did actually make it to Paris but my plane landed at about the same time my piece ended.
JS: Tell us what it feels like to be a figure who is presented somehow in the media. What effect does this presence have on you?
A R-S: I’m in the media at certain times with certain premieres or festivals. This really has had little impact on me. Of course, I’ll be upset if a reporter gets some facts mixed up but it hasn’t had a lasted impact on me. I enjoy doing interviews and feel little stress over them. One time I was on a good number of bus stops in my city. That was strange I have to say.
JS: Name two places you would like to visit, one you haven’t been to and one to experience again and briefly tell us why
A R-S: I’d like to go back to Germany again soon. My husband is German and I attend a weekly German class. The immersive experience is invaluable and encourages me to keep up the German studies. I’d actually like to check out the new concert hall in Hamburg. We saw it being built last time we were in Hamburg and would love to see the finished hall, inside and out.
As for somewhere I’ve never been – that would have to be Africa. It’s always captured my imagination somehow. I’m a huge animal lover and I’d love to see these big animals in their natural habitats. I actually wrote an opera about a true and dramatic story of an elephant…
JS: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on, are preparing, or have recently completed. Why do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
A R-S: I just finished an arrangement of my piece The Hockey Sweater for an orchestra in Paris that is presenting a concert to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. I’m proud to represent my country in that way.
I just completed a tiny (2 minute) “Sesquie” commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in partnership with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. TSO commissioned 38 composers to write these tiny celebratory pieces of Canada in partnership with orchestras across the country. It’s quite interesting to look at what other composers write with the exact same guidelines.
I’m just writing a 30-minute chamber opera on one of our Canadian Fathers of Confederation, D’Arcy McGee, for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s 2017 and all of my projects are so Canadian!
After that, I start work on a holiday piece for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s a work that highlights different cultural traditions, something which I hope will be a useful addition to orchestra holiday concerts.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
A R-S: What gives me hope is that contemporary composers are getting a better reputation amongst concert goers. Audience members are increasingly approaching new music with an open mind. The modernism of the past calls composers less today than it did in previous decades and today we are striving to connect with our audience. I’m encouraged that strong work in the community can help people become dedicated concert goers. I’ve seen this first hand at the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. What concerns me is pop culture replacing the arts as culture, the decline of music education in schools, and the aging of classical music audiences.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising thing about you?
A R-S: I guess since I’m a composer, the most surprising thing people find about me is that I used to be deaf. I had so many ear infections as a child in England, that the scar tissue built up to a point of no return. No operation could solve it and I was lip-reading by the time I was 4. A move to the dry climate of Calgary a few years later cured me forever. The thing I find most surprising (annoying) about me? Even though I do all this work on stage, I’m actually an introvert and pretty shy. Strangely enough, I’d rather talk to a concert hall full of people than ask a stranger for directions.
