In a quiet corner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the violinist Johnny Gandelsman took a few deep breaths and began to play.
“Sky above us,” he sang, with the cellist and songwriter Marika Hughes. “Ground below us; 360 support around us. Cut discursive thought.”
It was Wednesday morning, the day after the presidential election, and Gandelsman, 46, a recent recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, was rehearsing “This Is America.” He will bring this project, a collection of 28 pieces he has commissioned and begun to record since 2020, to the Met’s American Wing for a marathon performance spread over Friday and Saturday, with the aim to capture the modern American spirit: its love and hope, but also its inequality and injustice.
“This Is America” began four years ago, but, Gandelsman said: “The rhetoric is still the same; the injustices are still the same. I am doing everything I can to represent these voices and support them and uplift them.”
For the project, Gandelsman, who was born in Moscow and grew up in Israel before coming to the United States at 17, provided composers with $5,000 and simple instructions: to write a piece for solo violin that responds to the times we are living in. They responded with a variety of styles, including contemporary classical music, jazz, world music and electronics.
“There are women, there are people of color, there’s a composer from Puerto Rico, there’s a trans composer, there are immigrants,” he said. “To me, that is America. This is what makes America great: the diversity of people and cultures and ideas.”
Rhiannon Giddens created a fiddle piece called “New to the Session.” Angélica Negrón wrote “A Través del Manto Luminoso,” inspired by dark sky photographs taken in Puerto Rico. Conrad Tao’s “Stones” pays tribute to the so-called Sisyphus Stones, a collection of rocks arranged by Uliks Gryka on the banks of the Hudson River.
In an interview, Gandelsman discussed the role of music in divisive moments; getting out of his artistic comfort zone; and his hopes to bring together Israeli and Palestinian voices. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Your performances at the Met come at a heated time. What do you think America feels like and sounds like in this moment?
There’s been so much anxiety leading up to this election. There is so much hot rhetoric out there right now. The other day I was listening to snippets of the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, and it struck me that the communities that were being vilified very openly were communities that are very much represented in this commissioning project.
What can music accomplish right now?
Music can’t stop a bullet, like my friend, the clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh, often says. And it can’t change the results of an election. But it can present an opportunity for someone who is unfamiliar with a person or a community or an idea to just experience it. And just that act can be powerful. It can move the needle in someone’s mind or heart.
How does your own experience as an immigrant affect how you approach “This Is America”?
The conversation about immigration in this country right now feels like it’s just not honest. Immigrants, whether legal or not, are the people who literally make this place go. And I want to protect those people — people who want to be in a place that is better than where they come from. Can music do that? I don’t know. But I’m going to try.
Some of these pieces bring you out of your comfort zone, asking you to sing, improvise and play guitar.
I think of myself as a pretty open-minded person. But I also realized through this process that I had some prejudices. When faced with things that are unfamiliar, my first reaction was fear, and a kind of rejection. That was eye-opening for me, and a little bit terrifying.
How would you describe this collection of music?
It’s just a very small sliver of the creativity that is out there. Not every piece is for everybody, but that’s not the point. The point is to be exposed to something new.
What is it like to return to these pieces over the past few years?
The more I’ve had a chance to play them, the more I find my way into them and I find new things inside the scores. I feel a bit parental; I feel I want to take care of these pieces. And one of the ways to do that is to perform them.
You grew up in Russia and Israel. What has it been like to watch the fighting in Ukraine and in parts of the Middle East?
I left Russia when it was the Soviet Union, in July 1990. I have not been back and my connection feels like it’s faded.
But Israel is a place where a lot of my family lives, and I care deeply about what’s happening in the region. It’s devastating to see so much loss of life. The temperature of the rhetoric is extremely hot. There’s just an incredible lack of imagination on the part of the leaders, who are supposed to have the most imagination. It seems like the voices of the people who are actually living there are not as loud as the people who live outside the place.
Do you see a way for music to help address that?
I’m thinking of asking Israeli and Palestinian composers to write new works — people who are on the ground and living this daily. Just as in “This Is America,” it’s really hard to sit on the sidelines. You have to try to figure out if there’s anything you can do to effect any kind of change in the world.
In the album notes for “This Is America,” you write, “Amplifying the voices of others, whether it’s those of centuries past or ones of today, is an essential part of being a classical musician.”
Mahler said that tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. Every time somebody performs a piece by Mozart or Bach, they are bringing to life their voices. It just doesn’t make sense to me to make some kind of separation between that body of work and what’s happening today.
What have you learned from “This Is America”?
I’m now able to be more thoughtful and temper my feelings of fear or discomfort with curiosity and discovery. Fear and curiosity are not that far from each other; it’s just a shift of focus or perspective. Being part of the new music community is something that I expect to be doing for the rest of my time as a musician. So that is a good skill to have.
What do you hope to bring to the Met on Friday and Saturday?
After this week, I’m just hoping that this music might offer some much-needed relief and help take the stress and tension level down a bit. I don’t know what to expect — how long people will stay, or how it’s going to feel. But hearing music in these rooms, where the resonance is so beautiful, that will be wonderful. That will be illuminating.
The post A Violinist on a Mission to Capture America, Division and All appeared first on New York Times.
