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Interview with Karen
FitzGerald
by
Edward Weiss
Contemporary instrumental performing and
recording artist Karen FitzGerald brings together a classically
trained technique with a deeply personal musical intuition that
comes straight from the heart.
Her solo piano compositions range from delicate and soothing
to passionate and soul-stirring, evoking the beauty of nature, the
subtle shades of human emotion and a longing for spiritual
wholeness. More info
below.
Edward: How Did
You Get Started Playing New Age Piano?
Karen: I've been studying piano
all my life, probably even before I was born because my mother loved
to play classical music on our family's baby grand piano. As a
small child I used to sit underneath the piano and listen, or climb
up and watch as the hammers and dampers danced on the
strings.
At age five I begged for piano lessons, and my wish
was granted. I studied classical piano for the next twelve
years, including additional classes in music theory and composition
during my high school years. But in addition to my formal
studies, I was also interested in popular music. I had several
books of popular songs that I spent lots of time just messing around
with. Most popular music books include both a piano score and
chord symbols for guitar players. Since I knew music theory, I
could use the chord symbols to create my own arrangements of the
songs. Sometimes my arrangements were a blend of the provided
piano score and other things I thought up based on the chord
symbols.
It wasn't too big of a leap from there to
start creating my own musical ideas. For many years I just
fooled around with creating different ideas, but never actually
wrote a finished piece. Most of my ideas had a soft rock or a
boogie-woogie flavor. In the early 1980's I discovered the
improvisational music of Keith Jarrett, and was absolutely blown
away by what he was doing. This fueled my fire, and I started
experimenting with free improvisation as well as composing. As
infatuated as I was with Jarrett's music, though, it seemed to be on
a level of genius I could never dream of attaining myself.
Soon thereafter I
heard George Winston's music for the first time, and had an
epiphany. This music was beautiful, lyrical and moving, yet
much less complicated than Jarrett's wild jazz explorations.
It was something I could actually see myself doing. Winston's
flowing, relaxing nature-inspired style struck a deep chord in
me. I had never heard this type of music before, but I knew it
was what I was meant to do. I took off in this new musical
direction, and soon found myself actually writing complete
compositions!
Edward: What Inspires and
Informs Your Music?
Karen: I grew up surrounded by
beautiful woods, and have a very deep connection with the natural
world. This is where I go to find spiritual solace, as well as
inspiration for my music. Also, I am a very emotional
person. All the emotions, from the beautiful ones like love and
joy, to the more difficult ones like sorrow and anger, are
expressible in music. Playing the piano can help me get in
touch with my emotions and express them in a constructive, helpful
way. Musical expressions of emotion very naturally find their
way into my compositions.
Edward: What Is
Your Method for Composing a Piano Piece?
Karen: Musical ideas come to me as a result of just sitting at
the piano and seeing what comes. In other words,
improvising. But I don't usually improvise with the goal of
playing non-stop performance quality music. It's more just
enjoying time at the piano playing with ideas, stopping and
starting, playing them again, embellishing them. I make
extensive use of a dual cassette tape recorder.
It sits on my piano all the time so it's right
there whenever a good musical idea comes to me. I record the
ideas and my revisions and embellishments, then try to come up with
related but different ideas and record them too. Eventually I
have a tape full of related ideas and variations. Then I rewind
that tape and put it into the "play" side of the cassette deck, and
pop a blank tape into the record side. I listen the ideas on
the tape, and rehearse them so I can play them then continue
improvising to see what might come next, recording the results on
the new tape. After doing this process several times, I have a
collection of good related ideas and some vague notions of how to
put them together into a complete composition.
I name the ideas things like "A theme", "B
theme", and so on, and sometimes write my thoughts about them in a
notebook, along with tape counter numbers so I can go back and find
them. The hardest part of composing for me is the final stage
of putting all the pieces together into a composition that makes
sense as a whole. It's like having a pile of beautiful gems,
and then trying to figure out how to string them together to make a
necklace that is also beautiful, and not just a jumble of
parts.
Occasionally this process happens quickly, like over a
period of several days. But more often than not, the pieces
remain incomplete for a long time. I have a shoe box full of
cassettes filled with musical ideas. Some are single ideas, and
others are collections of related ideas. If I want to compose
but no new ideas are coming to me, I dig into the box of tapes to
see if there's an old idea I want to work with some
more.
Edward: Do You
Get Blocked Creatively, and If So, How Do You Get Past
It?
Karen: Yes, I do get blocked
creatively! As I mentioned above, going into my collection of
old ideas for inspiration often works. Sometimes it helps to
just sit down at the piano and improvise without any goal of writing
a new piece. I pop in a cassette and record
myself. Sometimes nothing new or interesting emerges, just
re-hashing of old ideas. Sometimes I can click into something
new. Often nothing works, and I just get depressed about
it.
Edward: What
Advice Would You Give To Aspiring New Age
Pianists?
Karen: Go to
the piano often. Regard it as play, not work. Don't
compare yourself to others. There are probably plenty of
pianists who can play better than you can right now, but no one else
can play the unique and special music that comes out of you. If
you just keep at it you WILL get better and better. It can't
happen any other way. Maybe you don't like what you're
composing just yet, but don't worry about it. Just consider
those as "practice" compositions. You don't have to play them
for anyone else if you don't want to. Eventually you'll be
writing stuff you feel happy with and would like to share with
others. Then maybe the next step will be the recording
studio!
Contemporary
instrumental performing and recording artist Karen
FitzGerald brings together a classically trained technique with a
deeply personal musical intuition that comes straight from the
heart. Her solo piano
compositions range from delicate and soothing to passionate and
soul-stirring, evoking the beauty of nature, the subtle shades of
human emotion and a longing for spiritual wholeness.
Learn more about Karen's music at http://www.karenfitzgerald.com
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