Interview with Paula Matthusen

Paula Matthusen is a composer currently based in Miami and Brooklyn. She writes both electro-acoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies.  Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. On Saturday June 13th at 8:30pm,  she presents a collection of older works as well as premieres with performances by James Moore, Jody Redhage, Todd Reynolds, Kathryn Woodard, and Dither.

Roulete: Do you consider yourself more a composer or a performer?

Paula Matthusen: I consider myself more of a composer, though I enjoy and benefit from blurred boundaries between the two.   I’ve had the incredible fortune to work very closely with a number of the performers I write for.  Each one of them often has a large role in the development of the work, and a stake in the compositional process.  I really enjoy this exchange.  I very much enjoy working on other composers’ projects through live electronics as well.

R: Are there any people you see as instrumental in your development as an artist?

PM: There are so many who at different points have been enormously impactful towards my development.  The nature of influence is an odd and rarely linear relationship I find.  Often times I find approaches to sound and different forms of music making as influential as the music itself. My teachers have been highly influential—Elizabeth Hoffman, Louis Karchin, Martin Supper, Steve Dembski, Joel Naumann, Tom Zelle, Suzanne G. Cusick, Douglas Repetto. Being able to work at the Bang On A Can Summer Institute with David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon and with Eve Beglarian at Atlantic Center for the Arts was profoundly enriching.  Part of what was instrumental in these environments was being able to work with amazing performers and fellow composers in a variety of different contexts.  Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Lucier,  Laurie Anderson—all heroes as well.

R: Chocolate or Vanilla?

PM: I’m more of a fruit person.

R: How did you get into music?

PM: Music was always in the house for my sister and me.  My mother is a cellist and string teacher, and my father works in radio.  I grew up playing the violin (studying formally) and pounding away on the piano (informally).   I was fascinated with how sound works, and the potential for exploration in music. I was also excited by the potential for interacting with other musicians and people in general through sound.

R: Is there an event or experience that led you to start in experimental media?

PM: I first heard electroacoustic music when I was 17, studying with Michael Czajkowski and Paul Rudy.  I was immediately excited by the possibility of rearranging recorded sounds, and being able to manipulate a waveform directly.  When I then went to college, I began studying composition and highly enjoyed being able to engage with a wide variety of scores and analytical tools.  At the same time, I started a performance art group with some friends—Jeff Snyder, Ryan Smith, Morgan Luker, Christian Zamora, Brian Honermann, Sarah Florino, Adrian Thalasinos, and Teresa Campbell.  It was stimulating to go between more conventional music study and being able to try out ways of interacting with sound directly in highly experimental manners.  I enjoyed to go from analyzing a score one day, and then the next be involved in a piece for live-sampling, vocalist, and someone breaking glass and taping it to himself.  The group is inactive now, but it remains a strong influence in terms of being open to trying really new and different ways of working with sound and other art forms.

R: What is it that you want people to hear/think about/be tuned into in your work?

PM: I wouldn’t want to necessarily focus peoples’ attention in any specific direction.  I enjoy leaving room open for interpretation.

R: Tell us as about the work you’ll be doing at Roulette.

PM: I’ll be presenting a series of different pieces, some of which have been developed over a long period of time, and others which have come into being very recently.  I’m excited to be working with performers that I’ve had long relationships with such as Jody Redhage, James Moore, and Kathryn Woodard.  The newest element to the program is a piece for live electronics and violin written specifically for Todd Reynolds.

R: Describe, if you can, the cloud of ideas that you’re making work under these days.

PM: I’ve always been curious about sound in space, and how people can have an impact on that sound and one another through shared space. I’m also curious about how our experience of sound is mediated.   I’ve become much more interested lately in older forms of technology, and their historical impact on the way we engage with sound.  I’m also highly interested in self-organizing systems.