An American Mosaic: an interview with Grammy-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour
I’ve had three times when a piece of music reduced to tears the first time I heard it; An American Mosaic by Richard Danielpour was one of them. Many words have been written about the pandemic and all that we’ve gone through the past couple of years, but even the best writers can’t capture the experience the way Richard Danielpour does in this composition. I felt as if he knew me—that he knew how much I’ve worried about my aging parents, grieved the loss of loved ones, raged against those who chose to put everyone else’s lives at risk, celebrated society’s heroes, and mourned a loss of faith in people and institutions. Somehow, in this 50-minute composition, Danielpour captures it all: communal isolation, anger, fear, grief, beauty, heroism, frustration—it’s all present in this 15-segment work for solo piano.
Grammy-Award nominated An American Mosaic is both personal and universal. Through Danielpour’s notes and pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s sensitive playing, I know that on the deepest possible level, none of us is going through this time alone. The music is universal in that it takes us on a journey that visits the many faces of the pandemic. It is personal in that it invites the listener to experience the feelings and faces of their own stories in the context of the communal experience. It is cathartic in that the journey through the segments brings us back to a knowledge of the eternal, bedrock reality that transcends events, politics, disease, grief, and fear. It’s music for our time that resides in a timeless place.
When Danielpour graciously agreed to be interviewed for No Dead Guys, the most difficult thing wasn’t coming up with questions, it was limiting them to a manageable number. I wanted to ask him about everything—from music, to religion, to politics—and I wanted to thank him for reminding me, through his music, that no matter how challenging things may seem, at the core level, all will be well. It’s an honor to feature him in this post.
How old were you when you first started music lessons, and when did you know you wanted to become a composer?
I actually taught myself how to play the piano from the age of 11 and didn’t start formal lessons until I was 16. Until that point I was learning classical music by ear from recordings, like a jazz performer. By the time I was 19 I knew the reason I was put on this earth was to write music.
You’ve spoken and written of your deep connection to the music of J.S. Bach. How did you come to develop your love of his music, and how has this passion influenced your own compositions?
When I began my formal studies at the age of 16, I had a piano teacher and a composition teacher, and Bach was at the root of most of what I was learning. When I heard the St. Matthew Passion for the first time at the age of 18 I knew I was going to be a composer. And I thought to myself, as early as my 20s, wouldn’t it are nice to write a story like the St. Matthew Passion? But I wanted to write it without the German. And I thought, wouldn’t be great to see it from the original Jewish perspective, without all the European influences that have shaped our understanding of Jesus and the crucifixion? All those years later it came together and I wrote The Passion of Yeshua.
Tell me about how your Middle Eastern and Iranian parentage influenced your compositional approach, especially in your Grammy-Award winning composition, The Passion of Yeshua, which tells the story of the crucifixion of Christ from a Jewish perspective?
My father’s side is completely Jewish and my mother’s side is Jewish laced with Christian. I never saw the two as separate. Most of the world sees Jewish people over here, Christian people over there, but I’m like those early Christians who lived before the Council of Nicaea, when you could be both Jewish and Christian. After that date, Christianity became an institutionalized religion. I’ve never been fond of institutionalized religion. Original Christianity and the message of Jesus is about love, but the Roman Catholic Church became contaminated by the love of power. One of the things that has always attracted me to the person of Jesus as a teacher is that, unlike organized religion in general, no one was ever excluded; he welcomed people from all walks of life. This can also be said to be true about music itself: with music no one is excluded, and all are invited.
Christian, Jewish—I’m “Letter D”—all of the above. I studied Eastern Philosophy as well. It’s very much a part of how I think of things. My mother said to me one day when I was in my early 20s, “You’ll never find God in a building. You’ll find Him here (pointing to her head) and here (pointing to her heart).” And recently, I had a conversation with a brilliant woman who was president of a Catholic University. She told me, “Jesus said, the temple of God is within you. You took it literally.” By this I mean that my spiritual metabolism has always been braided with my musical metabolism. I never felt I belonged in a synagog or a church. Instead, over these last 41 years, I’ve built my temple or cathedral in sound. Within this sound cathedral, I have my own trinity of musical prophets: Bach (for counterpoint and structure) Mozart (for voice), Beethoven (for emotional freedom). I’ve stood on the shoulders of these giants for my entire life.
I discovered your piano music through Simone Dinnerstein’s beautiful recording of An American Mosaic, your 15-segment work about the global pandemic. Tell me about how the piece came to be, and why you chose Dinnerstein to record it?
In April 2020, during the first wave of the COVID pandemic in America, I was informed by my pulmonologist that because of my asthma, my chances of surviving COVID-19 were about 30% if I were to contract the virus. I barely slept in that month. In those early hours of the morning, I managed to write the first draft of a libretto for a new opera. The only thing that was able to relax me enough to sleep (no amount of medication would do the trick) was listening to Simone Dinnerstein’s Bach recordings. Later in May, having witnessed the extraordinary heroism of so many valiant Americans who had struggled to combat this “invisible enemy”, which was the coronavirus, I thought it fitting at some point to compose a 15-movement cycle for solo piano that would be live streamed by the end of 2020. At that moment, I knew that the end of 2020 would be a challenging and terrible time in America, and my hope was that I could write a work that would somehow give comfort to those who had suffered and struggled through this unprecedented crisis. By mid-May, I was still listening to the recordings of Simone’s Bach to alleviate my anxieties, but I had also begun to think seriously about this new work that I hoped to compose for solo piano.
I eventually spoke with Simone Dinnerstein, thanking her for the therapeutic effect of her playing and also mentioning my idea to her. She was enthusiastic, and a week later the Oregon Bach Festival, through the kindness and industry of their Director of Artistic Administration, Michael Anderson, commissioned the work which I titled An American Mosaic for a livestream premiere performance that would eventually take place on December 6th, 2020. I began work on An American Mosaic on June 5th, 2020 and completed the 15-movement cycle on August 6th of that summer.
Why did you choose the intimacy of the solo piano to tell the stories of An American Mosaic?
I chose the piano primarily because I knew that we needed one person to livestream a concert last December at the most difficult time of the crisis thus far. And Simone was the only pianist to do this. Do you know how when you go to a great restaurant and you can taste the love in the food? When I listen to Simone’s playing, I can hear the love in the sound. My most intimate personal writing tends to be revealed through my solo piano. It’s like my journal, but everybody gets to read it.
The pandemic has left no-one unscathed. Many have attempted to write about the experience, but most of those words fall short. An American Mosaic captured it all—the fear, the anger, the heroism, the grief, the isolation, and the need for consolation. What allowed you to transcend your own isolation and find common ground in our experiences?
My life has been about taking challenges and difficulties and transforming them into things of beauty. That has been my entire life—to take moments of difficulty and challenge and hopefully turn them into things of beauty and of lasting value. I strive to write memorable music, because that’s the key to creating a composition of lasting value.
Tell me about the structure of An American Mosaic. Why did you choose to create a 15-segment work, and how did you choose which faces of the pandemic to represent in notes?
Interspersed throughout the 15 movements of An American Mosaic are four “Consolations.” The first one, which is the Prologue that begins the piece, involves a monodic theme; the second Consolation, which is 1/3 of the way through the piece, is a two-part invention — a variation on the theme from the Prologue. The third Consolation is a three-voiced fugue, and the last Consolation, which is the Epilogue and coda for the entire work, is a four-part chorale. These four movements are a piece within a piece; the other movements cite pairs of heroic individuals who have displayed extraordinary strength and courage during this difficult time. The dedicatees of those works are representative of those who are singled out as the heroes of our time. Whether they are caretakers and research physicians, parents and children, rabbis and ministers, doctors and interns, or teachers and students, these individuals are the face of America. They comprise a mosaic of heroes that we will never forget. The 14th movement is titled “Prophets & Martyrs” and is dedicated to the black lives lost during this pandemic. There is also a movement titled “The Invisible Enemy” about the virus itself and another one titled “The Visible Enemy” which refers to the Trump administration that existed between 2017 and 2020 in Washington. I believe that the passage of time will reveal those four years to be one of the darkest periods in our American history.
I chose the “heroes” from reading the New York Times. It wasn’t preplanned. All the stories came together in my mind and I knew which groups of people I needed to honor. I’ve learned that when you’re in the zone, the ideas come to you. You don’t need to reach for the music. Surrender yourself. Become empty and receive what feels true. That’s how I wrote this.
Bracketing the dedicated segments with “Consolations” gave a sense of timelessness and structure to the work. Tell me about these 4 segments and what they represent in this piece.
The “Consolations” are the 4 “Angels” of the piece. They are the presence of the Divine and are the pillars that hold the entire 15-segment work together. The “Heroes” are about the human element. The three movements in the middle—The “Invisible Enemy,” “Elegy for Our Time,” and “The Visible Enemy”—are the centerpiece of the work. “The Invisible Enemy” is the virus itself. “The Visible Enemy” is the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself. Both of these movements are the diabolical elements of the piece. Sandwiched between them is the one stand-alone movement of the piece: “An Elegy for Our Time.” This movement represents the blend of human and Divine.
Pairing An American Mosaic with Bach transcriptions was an inspired choice. It linked the sense of timelessness and perspective to your composition. Whose idea was it, and how did you choose which Bach pieces to include?
The J.S. Bach transcriptions that I composed for Simone were my gift to her for sharing her wonderful artistry with me and with the many others who heard the premiere. The idea of the transcriptions was Simone’s idea, knowing that 50 minutes would not be quite enough for a CD. I wanted to choose a “Choral” from the St. Matthew Passion, I wanted the “Agnus Dei”, and the “Epilogue” is the final chorus from the St. Matthew Passion. Simone told me later I had a lot of chutzpah to do that final chorus. No one has ever done that. I did it because I felt it was what had to be done. I didn’t realize until after I sent it to her that it was one of her favorite pieces.
Will sheet music be available for An American Mosaic? If so, where might it be purchased?
Yes! It is published by Lean Kat Music and can be purchased through Bill Holab Music.
It has been a year since An American Mosaic was released, and in that time, the album has been listened to hundreds of thousands of times on streaming platforms and was recently nominated for a Grammy-Award. Why do you think this music speaks so strongly to listeners, and what do you hope we’ll hear in this composition five years from now?
I wrote this to help give comfort for others who were suffering and as a therapeutic vehicle to help me get through. It is ultimately my hope that the recording of this work and of the Bach transcriptions brings solace, healing, and comfort to those who have suffered and struggled in these terrible times. But it is also about more than the pandemic. It is a document about humanity and about how humanity commingles with the Divine. The pandemic was the landscape upon which this was written.
Grammy-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour has established himself as one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation. His music has attracted an international and illustrious array of champions, and, as a devoted mentor and educator, he has also had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers. His list of commissions include some of the most celebrated artists of our day including Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Susan Graham, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, Anthony McGill, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the New York City, Pacific Northwest and Nashville Ballets, and institutions such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Maryinsky and Vienna Chamber Orchestras, Orchestre National de France, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and many more. With Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Danielpour created Margaret Garner, his first opera, which premiered in 2005 and had a second production with New York City Opera. He has received two awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, a Guggenheim Award, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, two Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, and The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. He served on the composition faculty of Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017. Danielpour recently relocated to Los Angeles where he has accepted the position of Professor of Music at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. He is also a member of the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music where he has taught since 1997.
In July of 2018, Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua, a 100 minute passion oratorio in Hebrew and English, commissioned by the Oregon Bach Festival, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the SDG Foundation, was premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival with JoAnn Faletta conducting. The work was then performed in December at Royce Hall in Los Angeles with the UCLA Philharmonia and Chorus led by music director Neal Stulberg and choral director James Bass. Finally, in April 2019, JoAnn Faletta lead the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in performances of The Passion of Yeshua, where it was recorded by Naxos. The album was released in March of 2020 to critical acclaim and is currently considered for three separate GRAMMYs, including best contemporary classical composition. 2020 ended with the premiere of An American Mosaic with pianist Simone Dinnerstein. The piece, which consists of 15 miniatures, pays homage to groups effected by the pandemic in unique ways and was virtually premiered in connection with the Oregon Bach Festival. 2021 will once again see new and innovative works, the most significant of them being A Standing Witness, a series of 14 songs which are settings of poems written by celebrated poet Rita Dove. Composed for mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and Music from Copland House, this one-hour work which witnesses the last 50 years of our American history will be premiered in several cities beginning in the summer of 2021.
Danielpour is one of the most recorded composers of his generation; many of his recordings can be found on the Naxos of America and Sony Classical labels. Danielpour's music is published by Lean Kat Music and Associated Music Publishers. For more information about Richard Danielpour, please visit his website at: www.Richard-Danielpour.com.