Kevin Germain

What does music mean to you personally?
Music for me personally is a dialog with the living landscape of my interior being.
Do you agree that music is all about fantasy?
The interior world seems ephemeral but has its own rules and regulations that are often unlike ones found in our outer experience. It is not a fantasy to feel love or fear. It was no fantasy that Robert Schumann wrote his love of Clara into his E Flat Piano Quartet. It is delusion though when we imagine something in our outer world that is not present. Art is real because our interiors are real, it is just that the subjective experience does not always translate the same for everyone of us.


If you were not a professional musician, what would you have been?

I would have liked to have been an entomologist or an astronomer.

The classical music audience is getting old, are you worried about the future?
Not really. Good music is still being written and played. Young people are writing and playing wonderful music. The context has changed, some might say for the better. The venues and styles are just much different than in the past. This idea that only old people are in the audience stems from the fact that only old people go to concert style performances. Younger people are listening to music, not just pop music, all the time. I have always appreciated Satie’s notion about furniture music. I think it is showing up in video game music.


What do you envision the role of music to be in the 21st century? Do you see that there is a transformation of this role?
I don’t think its role will change much than what it already is. The question is who is writing it and why. When I write I am having a dialog with some other interior part of myself, an aspect of myself I am trying to share more accurately with the world. When a perfume company creates an advertisement the music fulfills the role of manipulation. These things I doubt will change.


Do you think that the musician today needs to be more creative? What is the role of creativity in the musical process for you?
Oh ya! Definitely. All the new technologies demand a new approach. Social media and AI offer up new ways of doing things. Some will see it as a threat to prior conventions, some will see the challenges and opportunities. The role of creativity in my musical process? I think it is radical form of listening into the subconscious, radical because it is different every time. With every new piece I have to remake myself and struggle to honor what my interior is asking of me. Radical because it can arise from unexpected sources. My mentor may mention something, or a discussion online with someone might inform a piece I am working on in an unexpected way; either through feedback or something even more non sequitur. That is the beauty. All of existence is alive.


Do you think we as musicians can do something to attract the younger generation to music concerts? How would you do this?
By including them and not creating barriers. Music concerts implies we want them to sit and watch. Most want to participate. Why not let them.


Tell us about your creative process. What is your favorite piece (written by you) and how did you start working on it?
During the pandemic I went for long walks in the forest, I wrote a series of string quartets honoring that time. I would walk and hum tunes which I later would come up with four part harmonies. I then spent time finding textures that I could make out of that. It was nice to have long stretches of time where I could envelope myself in the process. Now I mostly find an hour here and there between other work. But, the process still remains somewhat the some.


Can you give some advice for young people who want to discover classical music for themselves?
Listen! Listen to everything! Anything! Don’t close yourself off to any music. There is classical music in your films and video games, enjoy that and find it else where. Just enjoy the experience of reveling in pure sound, forget the history and the do’s and don’ts… Listen to Mahler at full volume, let it shake the house. Wake the neighbors. Turn off the lights and play Rothko Chapel in the dark. Find a broken piano and play with the strings.


Do you think about the audience when composing?
Yes, I try to check and ask the question: “How will this be heard?”


What projects are coming up? Do you experiment in your projects?
I am currently working on a song cycle for soprano and piano based off of alchemical texts. It is very much an experiment, in that it is almost theatrical in scope. I want to express a wide range of emotion and feeling, there is lot of spoken text juxtaposed with lyrical melodies. br/>