Intimes exubérances: an interview with pianist Cheryl Duvall
There are few things more artistically satisfying for a pianist than collaborating with a composer on the birth of brand new music. A fruitful partnership makes the composition and the performer better, and the warmth of the shared journey to completion translates into the finished performance or recording.
Intimes exubérances, featuring the music of composer Patrick Giguère and the sensitive playing of pianist Cheryl Duvall is one such collaboration. In this single 4-movement composition, their shared musical journey invites the listener to explore the outer reaches of the piano, stretches the ear, and opens us to a wide range of sounds and emotions.
Cheryl Duvall is one of the leading Canadian interpreters of new classical piano music. In this recording she exploits the limits of the piano while showcasing the depth of her interpretive abilities, and in this interview she shares her passion for this music and the creative process. It is an honor to feature Intimes exubérances and Cheryl Duvall on No Dead Guys.
What first drew you to the piano and at what age did you begin formal lessons?
Some of my earliest memories are of the piano. My parents inherited a piano from my great-grandmother’s farm, and I apparently went to it all the time. I remember trying to open the lid and watch how the hammers would work by resting it on my head for as long as I could stand it. It would be quite a feat as I was under 4 years old and that lid was heavy! My grandmother would also sit with me and play different songs, like “Clair de Lune” and popular waltzes from her time. My parents eventually put me in piano lessons when I was 5 years old.
When did you become interested in new music and what piece or composer first drew you in?
I was really drawn to more contemporary pieces when I was growing up and studying the different grades through the Royal Conservatory of Music. I loved pieces with 2nds and 7ths, or character pieces – a 2 line etude called “The Porcupine” and a short character work called “Rag Doll” stick out in my childhood memories. Eventually, works by Shostakovich, Ravel and Debussy would get all my focus, while the Beethoven or Mozart sonatas would be the bane of my teacher’s existence!
When I was heading to university for music, my teacher told me to say yes to any opportunity to perform, so in my first year, I agreed to play a piece by a student composer in a composition seminar. After this, I was playing biweekly in every student composer concert through my undergraduate degree. I met some amazing composers and other instrumentalists interested in contemporary music at this time and the professors and dean of music pointed out to me that I had a particular affinity for performing contemporary works.
The first major contemporary work I performed was Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Chaconne,” though I had played a number of shorter works prior to this. I loved this work as it was quite virtuosic, while also leaving so much room for the imagination—creating new colours and atmospheres for each variation really gave me an opportunity to explore what is possible on the instrument when I was studying.
Congratulations on creating a successful career as an interpreter of the music of living composers. When did you choose to specialize in new music and why do you feel it is the perfect match for your expressive playing?
Thank you—it has been a really fascinating and simultaneously challenging path! I was in my mid/late 20s when I decided to specialize in contemporary music, though it had always been a big part of my repertoire choices. It was kind of a natural progression really! I completed my Masters degree at a more traditional university and never quite felt happy there. I was trying to fit a mold of what I had been led to believe was the path to take to become a successful performer—learning traditional repertoire, chamber music and aiming to be a collaborative pianist and teacher was what was expected and allowed at this school. Contemporary music was not considered a serious avenue of study at the time. I didn’t realize I could create my own path until after I had graduated.
I find the huge scope of contemporary sounds and styles to be a fascinating place to explore my creativity and push boundaries in my personal practice. Music is constantly evolving, and living composers are writing music that truly reflects contemporary thoughts and themes. Not only can I empathize with and understand where the music is being created from, I often can have conversations with the composer to create an even deeper connection with the works. I am now at a point where I am mostly commissioning new works to perform, which adds another layer of connection to the music. Often my incredible composer collaborators know and understand my playing, and I ask them to challenge me in some way with these new works. Playing contemporary music in an expressive way is how I hear it—it gives me a place to emote and process my own experiences, which are just as multifaceted as the many nuances in the music.
What can you tell me about Thin Edge New Music Collective (TENMC) which you co-founded in 2011. What kinds of works do you commission and what are some of the ways you’ve introduced this music to audiences?
I co-founded Thin Edge in 2011 with my dear friend, violinist Ilana Waniuk. She is actually one of the many friends I met in my undergraduate degree who was working with student composers and improvisation—we were paired together as a violin and piano duo in our chamber music class. When we both moved to Toronto after doing our Masters degrees in different places, we decided to play music together again, but we only wanted to focus on contemporary works. A few other friends from our undergraduate degree asked if they could join us and all of a sudden, we had a quartet of violin, piano, oboe and percussion with no repertoire! We commissioned 4 works from our young composer friends and the ensemble kind of evolved from there. We have since commissioned over 80 chamber works and premiered even more.
Our tastes are very eclectic, so we commission and program works that range from super intricate and complex chamber works, all the way to improvised works, audio scores, works based on video games and rollercoasters, and works with electroacoustic and even interactive video elements. We often create large-scale multi-disciplinary projects, such as our contemporary music and contemporary circus project, Balancing on the Edge, and have recorded a few albums and toured. We are always trying to find ways to introduce contemporary music to new audiences and to support composers as best as we can, so we have created a variety of programs, such as our Reverb series, which supports composers through either commissions or programming pre-existing works for a 2nd time. We make professional video/audio recordings of these works that are released on Bandcamp and YouTube in the months following the performance. This allows audiences to engage or re-engage with works after the performance or premiere, and gives composers a chance to share these works with their communities outside of Toronto.
We just released an album of the works of composer, Linda Catlin Smith, which has been featured on the BBC and CBC Radios, among many others and was chosen as one of the top 10 Modern Recordings of 2023 by The Wire Magazine – Linda was my composition teacher in my undergrad and she has been incredibly supportive of TENMC since our inception, so it was a truly special experience to record this album of her stunning chamber works.
Congratulations on the release of your latest project, Intimes exubérances! I understand that this recording was a true partnership between you and the composer, Patrick Giguère. In what ways did you two collaborate?
Thank you so much. This recording has really meant a lot to Patrick and me and our collaboration was so interesting! He wrote the first movement of Intimes exubérances in 2017, and from there realized that the piece needed to be expanded. We did quite a few workshops on the material over all the years we developed this piece. He would send me sketches, and then we would find an excuse to visit (he lives in Montreal and I live in Toronto) where we would explore the material he had produced. We would decide quite a few things together, such as dynamics, tempo, and even in some cases would abandon the rhythms he had written for a more free and flexible approach to the timing. He got to know my playing quite well through this and I think his writing became more and more personal as we became better friends through the process. He was in the recording studio with me and our wonderful producer David Jaeger and recording engineer Dennis Patterson, taking copious notes on how things went. We collaborated as well in choosing the final takes and ultimately all aspects of the album, from artwork to fonts!
When did you first encounter Giguère’s music and what prompted you to partner with him on this album?
I met Patrick through a mutual friend,Jeff Stonehouse, the artistic director of Montreal’s Ensemble Paramirabo (EP). Thin Edge and Paramirabo have had a long-term collaborative project where we both bring ensembles together to perform large scale chamber works, unconducted. For the first iteration of this project, we wanted to do a knowledge exchange, so we recommended a Toronto based composer for EP to commission, and they recommended a Montreal based composer for us to work with. Jeff introduced Patrick to TENMC and beside becoming fast friends, Patrick wrote the piece, Le sel de la terre for TENMC. It was a wild program, which included Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, Louis Andreissen’s Workers’ Union, and a joint commission, Hum by Brian Harman for the double sextet, as well as two works that just featured the individual ensembles. We recommended composer Anna Höstman for EP and we were so lucky to work with Patrick. I loved his original concept, and the thoughtful and expressive music he wove together for each member of our group. We toured this program across Canada and recorded the album of these works in 2016. Shortly thereafter, I approached 6 Canadian composers to work with me for my first solo commissioning project. Patrick was one of these composers and he wrote the first movement of Intimes exubérance for this project.
When writing about the pieces on this album, Giguère stated, “In order to express it fully and freely, I tried to let go of systems and filters as much as I could, and to be as direct and unpretentious as possible.” How did this translate into what he included (or didn’t include) in the score?
This is a good question for Patrick, but I will try and explain what I think happened for him while composing this work. He spoke to me about how often composition training can teach a composer how to create music based on how other people will perceive the music, so there is this sense of needing to live up to many things: the entire classical canon, not alienating the audience, creating something new and ingenious that has never been done, or gaining the respect of your teacher or colleagues. I believe this creates a situation where a composer can become quite judgmental of the material they produce, worrying if it will be ‘good enough’, ‘innovative enough’, ‘contemporary enough’. For this process, Patrick spent a lot of time alone, just improvising music and notating without judgment. He then would see if he could develop these improvisations in a way that spoke to him without thinking if others would ‘approve’. He hadn’t written for the piano in 15 years and this was his first major work for the instrument. A conversation that almost always comes up when I’m working with composers is the huge history of piano music and how to face it when writing something new. I think it can be a daunting task! I am glad that Patrick made this a personal work as it was that much easier for me to connect with it on an emotional level since it came from his heart and was exactly what he wanted to say.
I understand that Giguère asked you to improvise in these pieces. How challenging did you find it to shift between playing what was written to choosing your own notes?
I actually did not improvise any pitch material in the work. In the original score (which is the first movement only), there are bracketed sections that Patrick instructed that I could repeat, omit or play in any order. When he began writing the next few sections, the improvisation became more rhythmic in nature. There are a number of sections where we decided to abandon his written rhythms and for me to interpret the notes freely. He also did not include any dynamics into the 3rd movement, asking me to improvise a dynamic scheme until I was happy with the outcome. I was much more comfortable improvising these aspects than I would have been if I had to provide pitch material in Patrick’s world as well!
Intimes exubérances consists of a single four movement composition. To me the piece felt more like an exploration of different states of being rather than a work with a clear linear progression. As a performer, how challenging was it to keep this music from becoming static?
Yes, interestingly enough, Intimes exubérances is actually 19 movements that flow together, so you are correct in your feeling of the work being an exploration of states of being—I feel similarly when I am performing the work! Patrick did not write the piece with a narrative in mind, but one has definitely emerged for me which is one way to avoid stasis in the performance. Structurally, there are also various arcs and climactic moments that help keep the performance from becoming static.
I think one of my personal approaches when interpreting contemporary music is to remember some of the principles of interpretation we learn when we are studying the old repertoire and apply it to the language of the composition: find the tension and release to create phrases, understand the overall structure (even if it not a familiar structure like a Sonata-Allegro form), create layers in the sound, search for interesting colours through the combination of touch and pedal, find the tempo that allows the music to feel alive, and explore what momentum and taking time can do to help create affect and the emotional qualities in the music.
This piece is so well written that these aspects were quite easy for me to connect with. Perhaps the 2nd movement posed the most challenges, as it is almost all steady quarter note chords, but here I aimed to create a touch that was buoyant – pulling the sound out of the keys rather than pushing it down – and visualized water, either floating upon it, or the constant ebb and flow from calm to relentless to keep the music from becoming stagnant. I think the title also helps create a space for the imagination – if you think of the ideas of ‘intimacy’ and ‘exuberance’ as separate ideas and also what it means when put together, and then infuse the music with the abundance of feelings these words evoke, it is impossible for the music to become static!
What do you feel forms the thread that ties the movements together?
There are two unique features that I believe unify the piece. One is quite easy to explain – there is a descending minor third that is present in the very first movement of the work that continuously reappears throughout all the movements. The 2nd is what I personally call a ‘ghost melody’ that is present and recurring throughout the entire piece, outside of the 3rd movement. Patrick actually colour coded the score – there are regular notes with black note heads, but also there are notes printed in blue that are often stemless interspersed though the score. He indicates that the blue and black material should have a very distinct articulation and feel. In our workshops, we worked towards finding a very warm, pillowy, intimate touch that is as soft as possible before the note risks not speaking for the blue notes. This material floats within the more structured melodic material creating two very distinct characters in the music. To me, the ‘ghost melody’ could be referred to as one’s innermost thoughts, feelings or reactions to the music that is most present on the surface—the ‘intimes’ aspect of the title of the work.
My favorite track on the album is “Part IV— lueres en voix” which was an intriguing blend of movement within an envelope of stillness. What mindset were you as the performer required to adopt in order to capture both states so well?
I’m so glad you connect with this section - the first movement of ‘lueres en voix’ is actually one of the parts of the piece that was almost cut in our workshops! Originally Patrick had written this first section with the high runs written forte, with an indication of ‘bright, like the feeling of coming out of a dark room to a sunny day’. When we workshopped this part, it just wasn’t working and he almost cut it. I had played with it quite a bit in my personal practice and felt like we needed to explore the high runs in a softer, icy piano dynamic. This was the change that made the entire section ‘work’.
This is another place where Patrick utilizes the blue notes, though this time he uses rhythmic notation. There is a lonely, meandering quality to the blue notes, which are set amidst the warmer harmonies and the icy 32nd note gestures. The mindset I adopted was mostly just to maintain the three layers simultaneously or you could even equate them to emotional states of being that we can actually experience simultaneously – the warm chords being quite comforting like being wrapped in a warm blanket, the blue melody notes melancholy and nostalgic, and the 32nd note gestures as fleeting thoughts or memories. This of course evolves as there are four distinct movements in the fourth section, but one of the most intriguing mindsets I had to adopt for really the entire piece was maintaining the two very distinct layers in the music for the entire hour.
Another favorite is “Part I—à la frontière de l’intangible”. I was particularly impressed with how you allowed direction to emerge from open randomness. How challenging was it to find your narrative in such a spacious piece?
Thank you for your kind words! The opening is probably one of the most challenging parts of the piece…depending on the piano of course! The dynamic indications are ppp-pppp, with notes across all registers and sometimes with fast gestures. I think the direction sort of emerged simply because I had to practice it so much to find the softest possible touches while the notes would still speak. In this section black notes are ppp and blue notes are pppp, so there still has to be the two distinct layers. Luckily there are no rhythmic indications other than a loose temporal approach to notation until the 2nd movement, which allows the pianist to feel the music more than aim for rhythmic precision. I personally enjoy when I have the opportunity to create floating, spacious gestures in piano music. I love listening to the resonances and decay and finding the right time to place the next musical idea, so outside of the dynamic challenges, I really enjoyed this part.
If we are looking at the entire scope of Part I, Patrick’s writing moves from completely free rhythms, to more dense, complex rhythmic notation, with cross rhythms, grace note gestures and a variety of note groupings, so in a way, the writing also aids in crystalizing and focusing the narrative as it moves from free to strict, and back to free (-ish). The evolution of the rhythmic and dynamic activity in tandem with the title helped guide the narrative – exploring different ideas of intimacy and exuberance allowed me to share a little bit of my soul with the audience as I am feeling these different states—of peace, hope, excitement, loss, catharsis, calm, fury, clarity, nostalgia, etc. (not in that order!)— as I am playing. I hope the listener can connect with these different emotions and many more in their own way as well.
Will sheet music for Intimes exubérances be available for purchase? If so, where might we find it?
Yes, you will be able to find it through the Canadian Music Centre catalogue – just search for Patrick Giguère! He will most likely have it submitted in the coming months.
What current and future projects are you most excited about?
Intimes exubérances is actually part of a larger commissioning project that I conceived of throughout 2019. I commissioned seven Canadian composers to write hour long/concert length pieces for me with the generous assistance of a Canada Council for the Arts Concept to Realization grant. I received the grant a few weeks before the pandemic, so the project has taken some detours! I have premiered three out of seven of these works and in the process, another composer who I adore and mentioned above, Linda Catlin Smith, gifted me with another hour-long piano solo to add to this collection of works.
My composer collaborators are: Anna Höstman, James O’Callaghan, Patrick Giguère, Daryl Jamieson, Lieke Van Der Voort, Jason Doell and Keiko Devaux and each person has truly infused their work with such ingenuity, creativity and individuality. I am thrilled with all of the pieces. Once I have finished premiering the other five works, my lofty goal is to perform them all in a one day marathon performance, and then go into the studio and record all of these works. This project will definitely be taking me a few more years into the future!
What advice can you offer young musicians seeking to establish careers for themselves in music.
I have to say it is a tough path! This might seem like a strange piece of advice, but besides really honing your craft, building genuine musical partnerships and collaborations, learning how to teach and being your own biggest advocate, I think making sure you understand that social media and algorithms are actually a really important things for musicians right now (I struggle with this, but see how important it actually has become)! Also, I believe that eventually, live performances will become really important to people as AI continues to evolve and take over many jobs in the world. Even the creation of art and music for marketing and other purposes is being done by AI at this point and it's really becoming ingrained in our world. I think people will really start searching for the ‘humanness’ in the arts, the small imperfections, spontaneity and depth that is part of the human experience. So use the arts as a vehicle for human experiences, put your heart and soul into what you do and let that guide your performance practice, shape your pedagogical philosophy or infuse your arts leadership.
Thanks so much for these thoughtful questions and the opportunity to share more about Intimes exubérances and my musical practice!
Toronto-based pianist Cheryl Duvall has established herself as one of Canada’s foremost contemporary music interpreters, immersing herself in a wide variety of compositional aesthetics and collaborative endeavours. Her lucid sense of contour, evocative sonic and emotional presence, and boundless versatility make her both a dynamic soloist and in-demand collaborator. Duvall's has been presented as a solo performer by the likes of Innovations en concert, Suoni per il Popolo, The National Arts Centre, Bang On A Can, MTU Cork School Of Music (Ireland) University of Huddersfeld (UK), and has toured and performed throughout Canada, Japan, Europe, Argentina and the U.S. In 2016 Duvall's artistry was recognized with a nomination for the KM Hunter Award.
She co-founded the “adventurous and smartly programmed” (Musicworks Magazine) chamber group Thin Edge New Music Collective alongside Ilana Waniuk in 2011. Since their inception, they’ve commissioned over 80+ works, mounting lavish multidisciplinary productions while collaborating with leading performers like Charlotte Mundy, Jason Sharp, Ensemble Paramirabo (with whom they recorded an album.) They’re also widely noted for their direct engagement with composers, among them Maria De Alvear, Allison Cameron, Sarah Hennies, Mick Barr, Elliott Sharp, James O'Callaghan, Anahita Abbasi, Barbara Monk Feldman, Jessie Cox, Anthony Tan and Anna Höstman Their tours and residencies across Europe, and in Japan and Argentina have positioned them as ambassadors for Canadian music abroad. TENMC was awarded the 2020 Friends of Canadian Music Award from the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre for being ‘an important musical innovator, working creatively across disciplines with an unwavering commitment to diverse and equitable programming. Last year their album of Linda Catlin Smith's music,Dark Flower received numerous accolades including appearances on year-end lists from tastemakers like the Wire and Bandcamp Daily.
"Fragmented motifs repeatedly echoed in a colourful backdrop of a bell-rung texture, as music shimmered from its angular inception. “Understatement and touching modesty” was [Giguère's] description of the piece, and indeed the work was less intended for theatrics than a scene of motions. A somewhat accessible piece, it had a feel of an exposition of a lengthier work, however; certainly the work betrayed the physicality of Feldman’s calm monumentalism in its abrupt conclusion after approximately 6 minutes." — Young-Jin Hur, Bachtrack
"Indeed [Giguère's] music doesn’t sound quite like anyone else’s. [...] There is little dynamic contrast, just a modest increase in volume as fractured, surprisingly tonal ideas pulse gently towards fulfllment. The sonority is impressive with increasingly warm textures fecked by bells and rippling low-decibel timpani." — David Gutman, Classical Source
"Duvall nurtures the intrinsic suppleness and buoyancy of each of these six alluring pieces, their melodic trails that seem to wander yet never appear directionless, and yielding harmonies that suggest dappled light and ventilation, even amid the pensive shadows of darkness ... pines or the austere clarity of late winter (written for left hand only)." — Julian Cowley, Musicworks
"Duvall’s sensitive, nuanced playing is superb." — Graham Rickson, The ArtsDesk