inti figgis-vizueta: I put so much energy into what I do like. It is what I think about. It's what I dream about. It's what I read about. I think just being hungry and optimistic, I think is enough to keep me going for a long time.
[Theme Music starts: “We Need a Room,” Sky Creature]
Majel Connery: From CapRadio, this is A Music of Their Own, an interview podcast about women in music. We hear stories of survival and perseverance, and we explore why being a woman in music is so different from being a man. The women I interview here are extraordinary because they are making it, and as a woman in music myself, I want to understand what they are doing that is different, that makes them stand out. I'm your host, Majel Connery. And in this first season, we're meeting women in classical music where the number of men vastly exceeds the number of women. This is A Music of Their Own. We'll be right back.
[Theme Music ends: “We Need a Room,” Sky Creature]
Majel Connery: Welcome back to A Music of Their Own from CapRadio. I'm Majel Connery.
[Music starts: “Imago”]
Majel Connery: My guest on this podcast is inti figgis-vizueta. She's been commissioned by the L.A. Philharmonic, the Ithaca Quartet and JACK Quartet. And her music has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Ojai Music Festival, and at Aspen Music Festival. She holds a 2020-23 music fellowship from the City Tyler Ranieri Foundation and has upcoming projects with Kronos Quartet and Roomful of Teeth. You're listening right now to inti's piece, Imago for the Ithaca Quartet.
[Music up in full and continues under narration: "Imago"]
Majel Connery: A recurring topic on this podcast is, does music have a sex or can music in some way reveal the sex of its creator during the pandemic? inti wrote a piece that very cleverly captures something about transness, both musically and visually. It's called "Music for Transitions," and it's a solo cello piece she created with and for Andrew Yi of the Ithaca Quartet. P.S. The video for this piece is really important to the discussion that follows. So you can find the link to it in our show notes.
[Music: “Imago”]
Majel Connery: When you look at this video, you will see four stacked horizontal bars. Each bar is a different view of Andrew from head to feet. Each bar is also a separate take of the performance. The bars don't really line up with each other, but they're not supposed to. So it creates the sensation of a body out of joint, but also a body that is more than the sum of its parts. Here's inti.
inti figgis-vizueta: It is deeply related to queerness and transience in general and bodies and just all this stuff where I really wanted to make a playground for Andrew. I had been in love with their playing since first seeing them. They have this way of kind of cradling the cello almost like a wheel, right? The score itself ended up being, I think, 24 different modules. Every time I had a new composition like, you know, hot off the press, like I would just send it to Andrew and I would send the recording and we would talk about it a little bit. And Andrew ended up playing four at a time and then sending it to me, and then we would talk about it. We'd be like, Oh, you know, this feels like this could be a love longer. This could be a lot shorter. So this very kind of like workshoppingy feel and you have been playing with the I think it's like the a cappella app, the one where you can kind of make recordings and then sing with yourself. And I know again, this is kind of early in the pandemic before a lot of these new things came out. So we were kind of relying on.
Majel Connery: Just ad hoc invention.
inti figgis-vizueta: Ad hoc phone recording, you know, kind of stuff, you know, demos back and forth.
Majel Connery: So it sounds like really.
Majel Connery: From the very beginning of the conception of this piece, it was about layers and layers of music and layers and layers of Andrew's.
inti figgis-vizueta: Yeah. And so the, you know, the final version was this four Andrew's and I, you know, kind of came up with the idea of, of layering them. I don't know ever how to describe this super well with words, but something that I'm a little obsessed with is just the idea that when you have multiple voices touching the same material, it creates kind of self-referential structures that we can kind of hear. And so I felt like a kind of visual representation of that could be the way in which we kind of try and perceive bodies.
Majel Connery: Right, So if I can just sum up what you're saying, you are interested in a compositional process where there are multiple voices, not as some unitary block of sound, but voices that are in conversation with each other. And that, to you, is also an interesting way of representing a body, because a body is not a unitary block of information. It is a dialog, it is a conversation.
inti figgis-vizueta: I think this is also related to transness as well. What are bodies and like what is the kind of relationship of self and experience to the body that you're in? And of course, that also has in our engagements with conversations in the disability community and ways of kind of self referencing folks calling themselves cyborgs and like the way in which there is this kind of interplay of language. And that's that's another, that's another long topic to talk about.
Majel Connery: Yeah. But that the body is itself a creative outcome rather than like a set thing that lives in the world.
inti figgis-vizueta: And that I think when I was seeing these people trying their very best to make music out of these apps and trying to like, you know, layer themselves and make choirs of themselves and all the stuff they were limitations that were kind of pop through. And one of the limitations was my interest and and I was trying to figure out how can I kind, you know, how can a parameter of production itself be a kind of peek hole into what you're hearing? You know, part of that was, you know, the idea that the fourth to the bottom panel where you're only seeing feet and peg and and the cello body moving itself is like an entire part. It could be where the melody is but we're not seeing the hands. We're not seeing the strings vibrating. We're not seeing Andrew's expression that there could be this kind of way in which time felt layered in the way that it's actually like technically layered as a piece of music that we could feel this kind of incidental warping in and out. This core part of Andrew's performance is that there is this in and out quality like Andrew when shredding versus Andrew at rest. Sometimes they're different, but sometimes they are the same if that energy is being maintained or it's about to reappear.
[Music up and in the clear: “Music for Transitions”]
Majel Connery: When we return, more of my conversation with inti figgis-vizueta. We'll be right back.
[Music ends: “Music for Transitions”]
Majel Connery: This is A Music of Their Own from CapRadio. I'm Majel Connery.
[Music starts: “Music for Transitions”]
Majel Connery: You're hearing inti's "Music for Transitions" played by Andrew Yee. This piece is really striking because from moment to moment, the transitions are so unexpected and abrupt. The way that he starts the piece can knock you over. But then just as suddenly, there will come an incredible calm. And this is just my reading. But I feel that something is being proposed here, which is that this music is not one unitary, definable thing. And neither are bodies like this music. We are many. We contain multitudes. With every one of my guests there's always a moment in our conversations where we have to hit pause because we run into territory that the guest doesn't want to talk about. And this is an interesting professional dilemma for me, because my job is to dig up what inti calls spicy stuff. But it's a more important professional dilemma for the guest. How do you, as a woman, choose what goes on the public record and what stays off? Sometimes sharing negative information publicly is really necessary. But oftentimes, and I hate to say this, sometimes it doesn't create the opportunity for good. We saw this over and over again in #MeToo with women getting dragged down into the dirt for telling truths. Where this conversation opens into you and I have been speaking about her decision to omit certain things from her bio. Please know that she is very careful with what she shares on purpose. So you will not learn everything you want to know about her. And that is what the rest of this episode is about. When to share and when not to.
Majel Connery: Can I take you back to this intentional omission of schooling from not just biography, but the way that you think of who you are and how you present that, what you encountered in school, and why it has been so important to you to set that aside when you narrate your story of self.
inti figgis-vizueta: Yeah. So that there are a few specific experiences that kind of kept telling me that where I was or who I was or where I came from or how I spoke or, you know, me just kind of wasn't wasn't correct. You know, all the ways in which says hetero white patriarchy, you know, kind of creates a sense of kind of a standard of quality. So, for example, I think in my undergrad department, I felt like kind of strangely snubbed in a lot of ways, like the head composition faculty of this tiny program that only had, I think one registered composer told me that I needed to do something else, that I had no talent, yadda, yadda. I kept on going. You know, there were professional opportunities that were given to the school that were supposedly for the composers, but they were kind of never given to me or given to people who weren't even majors. Eight years later, when I was doing something really cool, having that same professor reach out and be like, Oh my God, you're doing so well. Congrats. Da da da. And I'm like, What are you doing? Do you not remember this? Like, do you not remember how you were and or like, I don't know. It's this dissonance between how people act when you have no power versus when they act when they perceive you to have power. And that was, you know, this thing that kind of recurred I was fairly out about like pronouns and about where I was coming from and what I was interested in and like being misgendered all the time, having really anti-indigenous kind of art being made as well as being celebrated kind of around me was, was really dissonant, you know, like how can you say that you're providing a space for people of various backgrounds when you kind of allow that to happen in the music itself as being made.
Majel Connery: Do you feel inti that you are doomed to a future of being a permanent ambassador on behalf of the enlightened like. I mean, it just strikes me as a burden. Are you tired and are you prepared to do this for a very long time?
inti figgis-vizueta: I put so much energy into what I do. Like it is what I think about. It's what I dream about. It's what I read about. I think just like being hungry and optimistic, I think is, like, enough to keep me going for a long time. I really like these things spoken about privately. You know, when something horrible happened and I would try to speak about it, you know, I felt like every time I spoke, it would just be kind of like dog piling. Speaking quietly, but clearly and directly about stuff is easier then easier than the blow out of calling something out directly.
Majel Connery: Yeah. Well, so. Okay, so we're describing a lot of situations where in some cases the stated goal of a school or a foundation or grant giving organization or something is different from what comes across in practice. But it also sounds like you've had some positive experiences where that wasn't the case. Maybe there are some other organizations that you're aware of that you think are a model for actually enacting the right kind of behavior, in addition to just saying that you're doing the right things.
inti figgis-vizueta: One group in particular really gave me all the tools and connections I asked for when I asked for them. And that was the Jack Quartet, where they had a new program that started in 2019 called the Jack Studio, which is basically a paid commission and two year mentorship program with a, I think, a class of five other people. And for that program, they let us ask for anyone that they knew to mentor us, to teach us, to take private lessons with. And that was an incredibly formative experience with a cohort of folks who are practicing musicians, folks who do like incredible performance art. But the ability to learn next to people who are coming from vastly different places is just incredible.
[Music starts: "Open Work, Knotted Object"]
Majel Connery: This piece is called "Open Work, Knotted Object.” And what I hear when I listen is a gradual coming together of all these disparate elements in a very, very spacious, permissive environment. There's a kind of cooperation happening, but it feels more like randomized energy, like an orchestra tuning itself to get ready to play a piece.
[Music up and ends: Open Work, Knotted Object"]
Majel Connery: In this last short segment of the episode, inti and I continue the discussion about the dilemma of public sharing, but with a focus on strategy and a really hopeful story.
Majel Connery: I would like to have a meta conversation with you about our conversation. Last time we talked, we got into this very interesting place where, When there was this sort of post-recording moment, you opened up to me more as a buddy in a space where we were sharing, you know, experiences and failings and risks taken and things that didn't go well. And at the end of this, I was like, Hey, everything you just said was really great, And this is such an important conversation for us to be putting out on the airwaves. Could we do that? And you were like, No, because. It is important to say the negative stuff and it is important to sometimes call people out for things that have happened but the problem is, it only does bad things for you personally and professionally to be the name caller or to be the teller of the bad tale. How does this get dealt with? How do people like you and me have a conversation that is meaningful and specific enough without it coming back to haunt you?
inti figgis-vizueta: I think of this maybe abstractly and interestingly as like also maybe part of growing up on the Internet of going through these multiple iterations of like Tumblr wars to Facebook wars, you know, where, where comment threads were hundreds of comments long and nothing ever changed to eventually being kind of in a in a few different spaces in the role of administrator where part of a job was parsing through the complexities of these things with other people and kind of trying to figure out, you know, where harm was happening or if it was happening or you know, how to respond to it. All this kind of stuff.
For example, like a word that gets strange, they overuse is like the word policing, where like policing is a visceral material experiential thing that that minorities and marginalized peoples and communities go through. To say that someone is policing you on like your taste in clothes is like, you know, not the same thing, but like, you know, when, when I witness someone misusing that word, I don't kind of go in and explain for five comments why they are wrong in using that word. You know, for example, even yesterday there was a piece that I saw by someone who I knew kind of indirectly, like we had been part of the same program before. And I had noticed that the title of one of the compositions looked to be almost mistakenly in reference to a very sacred indigenous ritual, especially in North American on Turtle Island indigenous ritual. But I kind of had a sense that this person didn't know that. And I kind of talked to my partner. I was like, do I write a snappy status about this? Like, could we stop doing this? Or do I just message this person and say, hey, I don't know if you know this, but like this is in reference to this thing. Here's a link. You know, I would really encourage you to change this. But the person responded and was like, Hey, I had no idea. I'm so sorry. I'm going to change this to this note. That doesn't work. I'm going to change it to this. Wow. Yeah. And like. Yeah, wow. Because, like, I think and maybe this is just growing up like, again, like growing up a little bit of just kind of like I can vaguely talk about this. I can directly engage the person. And in this case, this person had given me enough kinds of signals that I knew that they could receive that information.
[Music starts: “Caradh”]
Majel Connery: This is an excerpt midway through inti's piece “Caradh” for flexible ensemble and singing audience, meaning it's open. Any number of people can participate and any number of instruments. There's a lot of emphasis on unison and octaves in this piece, which means a lot of the same note is played or sung. But the goal isn't to blend perfectly. The goal? This is just me guessing here to sound like oneself, but in a context of togetherness. In an earlier part of our conversation that you didn't hear. I asked iInti whether her music was feminine, and she told me that she often gets the comment that her music is generous. I think what people mean by that is that often in inti's music there's no perfect delivery or right or wrong way to make a sound. It's not about perfection. It's about individuals making the sounds that are most of them.
[Music in the clear and fades under narration: "Caradh"]
Majel Connery: One of the things that I did not want this podcast to be about was women getting together to complain about how hard it is to be a woman. But I did not have to worry about this because my guests weren't interested in this either. All of these women are relentlessly positive. They are moving forward so fast that they don't have time to dwell on the negative. They celebrate the successes and discard the rest. I'm not suggesting that speaking out isn't really important, because sometimes it really is, and we've run into this in earlier episodes. But for Inti, speaking out is a last resort. Her preferred strategy is to move past the events and the encounters that don't work for her and get on with the more important and more exciting business of killing it at her career. A good friend of mine has this great saying 'Hug the radiators and avoid the drains,' which means cling to the people and the places that give you warmth and encouragement and avoid the ones that pull you down. The lesson I take from it is when you are thinking about how to respond to something difficult in your life, make the decisions that will allow you to go forward, not the ones that will keep you stuck in place.
[Music up and ends: "Imago"]
[Music starts: “In C Too”]
Majel Connery: Next time on A Music of Their Own. Sarah Cahill talks about her Future is Female project and her thoughts on the phrase 'artists who happen to be women.'
Sarah Cahill: I actually went to a little library recently and found a book by Willa Cather and brought it home and then read the back cover and it says, you know, one of the foremost women writers of the 20th century and I, I threw the book across the room, I was so mad.
Majel Connery: Next time on A Music of Their Own.
[Music ends: “In C Too”]
[Theme Music starts: “We Need a Room,” Sky Creature]
Majel Connery: A Music of Their Own is a CapRadio production. Interviews were engineered and produced by me, Majel Connery, and edited by Kevin Doherty. Paul Conley mastered the mix. Sally Schilling is our executive producer with production assistance from Jen Picard. Chris Hagan is our digital editor. Chris Bruno is in charge of marketing. Our designs were created by Marissa Espiritu. Renee Thompson is our digital projects manager and our social media is run by Emmy Gilbert and Emily Zentner. The theme song for A Music of Their Own is called “We Need a Room,” and it's by my band Sky Creature. You can find the song and Sky Creature on all major audio platforms. Don't forget to follow a music of their own wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you're hearing, please leave us a rating and a review so others can find this podcast, too. To find out more about the guests on our podcast, go to the show notes or visit capradio.org/amusicoftheirown. Thanks for listening.
[Theme Music ends: “We Need a Room,” Sky Creature]
