Tasha Warren Interview
Below is the transcript of my interview with clarinetist Tasha Warren. The podcast and video versions are linked along with the show notes and important links.
Tasha Warren is an acclaimed clarinetist who has premiered over one hundred solo clarinet and chamber works. In this podcast you’ll hear excerpts from her album “Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed” a fantastic collaboration with cellist Dave Eggar of newly commissioned and premiered Bass Clarinet and Cello works, which earned two Grammy nominations. If you listened to my episode with Meg Okura last year, you heard a bit about this project, and Meg’s episode is linked in the show notes if you missed it. Dr. Warren is Assistant Professor of Chamber Music at Michigan State University and the principal clarinet faculty of Mostly Modern Festival and you’ll hear her valuable and candid perspectives on a life as an educator, concert presenter and also the challenges of balancing such a full professional life with that of being a mom. You’ll also hear about her unique musical trip to India sponsored by Pitch Pipe organized by Jennifer Heemstra, among several inspiring projects in this wide-ranging episode. In this episode you’ll be hearing music by Nathalie Joachim, Paquito D’rivera, Martha Redbone Pascal Le Boeuf and Cornelius Boots. One of the wonderful surprises for me as a podcaster has been getting to know composers new to me and I encourage you to listen to Tasha and Dave’s recording which is linked in the show notes.
Tasha Warren:
You're paying a price for living two lives, 100% or three. If you're a teacher and you're a performer and you're a mom, you don't do any of those things halfheartedly. You do them all. So you are three people all the time.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you’re listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman, which I hope inspires you through the personal stories of a fascinating diversity of musical guests. Tasha Warren is an acclaimed clarinettist who has premiered over one hundred solo clarinet and chamber works. In this podcast you’ll hear excerpts from her album “Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed” a fantastic collaboration with cellist Dave Eggar of newly commissioned and premiered Bass Clarinet and Cello works, which earned two Grammy nominations. If you listened to my episode with Meg Okura last year, you heard a bit about this project, and Meg’s episode is linked in the show notes if you missed it. Dr. Warren is Assistant Professor of Chamber Music at Michigan State University and the principal clarinet faculty of Mostly Modern Festival and you’ll hear her valuable and candid perspectives on a life as an educator, concert presenter and also the challenges of balancing such a full professional life with that of being a mom. You’ll also hear about her unique musical trip to India sponsored by Pitch Pipe organized by Jennifer Heemstra, among several inspiring projects in this wide-ranging episode. You’ll be hearing music by Nathalie Joachim, Paquito D’Rivera, Martha Redbone, Pascal Le Boeuf and Cornelius Boots. One of the wonderful surprises for me as a podcaster has been getting to know composers new to me and I encourage you to listen to Tasha and Dave’s recording which is linked for you in the show notes. I’m privileged to be able to bring these inspiring episodes to you every week, but I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. Have a look at the description of this episode, where you’ll find all the links, including timestamps and different ways to support this podcast! Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I’ve also linked the transcript to my website Leahroseman.com
Hey Tasha, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Tasha Warren:
Hi, thanks for having me. This is great.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I discovered you through Meg Okura because when I was researching her many months ago for this podcast, I discovered Phantasmagoria and I'd reached out to you to say, Hey, could we include a clip of that? So we won't be including a clip of that particular piece on this podcast, but I'll be linking Meg's episode directly to this one. People should check it out. So you have premiered over 100 new works for clarinet, solo and chamber music, right?
Tasha Warren:
Yeah
Leah Roseman:
Concertos
Tasha Warren:
I'm not keeping track anymore, but at some point I was like, oh my gosh, that really is a lot. But yeah, I've been doing this for a while now.
Leah Roseman:
When I found out about you, of course I loved your playing. I loved the whole concept of bass clarinet with cello, which we're going to dig into, but also I noticed this, what a incredible champion of new music and finding different voices. It's so great what you do.
Tasha Warren:
Well, thank you. I love, I think it's very exciting to bring to life work, and I think it helps me approach the classic repertoire as well in a different way as if that was just handed to me by the composer.
Leah Roseman:
Now, do you compose it all?
Tasha Warren:
Just recently? I've started, but historically, no. But I've thought about it for quite some time and finally have decided there's all kinds of excuses for why we don't do things that we think we might want to do someday. And one of those excuses for me is I just don't have the time, and so I will never have the time if that's going to be my excuse. So I just decided to go ahead little by little and start to write my ideas down. We'll see where that goes.
Leah Roseman:
That's really great. And do you think it could also be a product of our education system in that it's kind of siloed when you do a performance major, you're not encouraged to take composition or think of yourself in that way?
Tasha Warren:
I do think there is a bit of that. I think it depends on what your environment is like in your school and your particular school, and I do think that different schools vary. In my case at Indiana, I really did have every opportunity to take a composition class if I wanted to, but it was more my own, I think upbringing before I went to college, or was it the conservatory age? There were other people that were composers and other people were instrumentalists. And it was either or in my mind, and since I hadn't ever had any experience, I felt like I didn't really, it wasn't my place to try that, and so I really resisted doing that at that age.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, this recording, Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed is the title of your album.
Tasha Warren:
That's correct.
Leah Roseman:
It's from a poem.
Tasha Warren:
Yes, from a Emily Dickinson poem, "But One Not Need Be a Chamber to Be Haunted". And so it's a really beautiful poem, and I thought at the time it just really resonated with me, especially because this was a project that we conceived well before the pandemic, but then received funding through a grant through Michigan State University. I got notified about that grant just days before everything shut down. And so we were very excited, but at the same time, it was like a one by one at the same time. All of our future performance opportunities were getting canceled, and then it really started to sink in that we didn't know when the next time was that we would even be together or be in the same place. And so approaching the composers to write their works at that time took on a whole new meaning. And so we were all sequestered into our own little chambers and at a time when I think there was a lot of existential sort of questioning from everyone, but particularly artists and musicians wondering what was next and what is our place and what do we do with our time right now?
How do we make music together, particularly chamber music? How do you make chamber music if you're not even in the same chamber? And so just the idea of what do you want to say for the composers? What do you want to say right now in this point in time? What is it that you feel you need to express to the world right now? Those were the only parameters that we gave to the composers, and so the title of it I think just really reflected that spirit
Leah Roseman:
And I have to say bass clarinet with cello, it's such a beautiful combination. Had you done work with Dave before?
Tasha Warren:
Yes. So we play together in American Modern Ensemble and every summer we teach at a festival called Mostly Modern Festival. And in that festival we work with composers to premiere their works and they just hand it to us very shortly before, and then we work with them with very little rehearsal time to bring them to life on the stage. And so the work that we do together as an ensemble is pretty intense. We have to be very efficient and I think we bond pretty quickly because of that. And Dave and I very early on talked about wanting to do something together, and I wasn't doing a whole lot of bass clarinet playing when we started to talk about it, but the more I started to examine the range of my instrument versus the range of his instrument, I thought that was the perfect pairing rather than just clarinet. But bass clarinet I think is the perfect pairing. There's just such an, not only just range of notes and octaves range, that kind of thing, but the expressive range, range of color, just there's so many varieties, both instruments can bring out of their instruments and when you put them together, it's interesting. I often feel like it doesn't sound like two instruments. It sounds like much more than that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, I really love this album. I've listened to it many times, and I'm hoping we can include clips from various of the compositions and talk about some of the composers, but I want to intersperse that with some other stories from your life and music for people. So just a look ahead at what they're going to be hearing. Now, you've got two Grammy nominations for this album and Snapshots with Pascal Le Boeuf, so it's a great piece and he's playing on it. Do you want to talk about that?
Tasha Warren:
Sure. And just while we're bringing this up, it's just really recent. The Grammys were two days ago, and he got nominated again for the same category and he won. So it's really very exciting time. He is a fabulous composer and person, and it was so fun to collaborate with him on this. Yeah, that was one other option for the composers that we spoke to. Would you like to play with us? It doesn't have to just be a duo. That's why Meg played on Phantasmagoria. That was a trio because it just worked out so well to have the three of us playing together. And Pascal being such a fantastic pianist and that being so much of what he does was so great to have that option to have the three of us. I don't know what to say except that it's such a celebration of friendship.
Well, I guess I will talk about the process a little bit because I didn't know Pascal, Dave and I, when we were talking about who to approach to write for us, we both went off into our own brains and thought of people that we thought would be amazing. We both came together with our lists of names of people. Some of those names were on both of our lists, so that was really easy and really fun. But Dave was friends with Pascal, and so introduced me to Pascal. And so when we started to work together on this via Zoom, that's how I met him. And it was so fun to meet him and to work with him on that process in a time not only of so much change in the world, but there was so much change going on in his life and in our life.
But he got married and then he had a child and got a new job and moved, and just all these things that happened throughout the course of us working through conversations on this. And so he would sit down at the piano and kind of play some stuff. What do you think about this? I kind of play on my bass clarinet, and so this is a really cool thing to do here. And so those ideas coming together, he referenced some of that in his notes about the piece Snapshots, because like I said to you, that I hoped that the composers would write what they wanted to write at that time. And to him, I said sort of like a snapshot, a snapshot of what this is to you. And so he really liked that and he used that as the title, but he was composing that work at Aaron Copland's home because he had the residency for the Copland residency, and there were just so many threads moving, weaving together, his friendship with Dave, an old friendship. My friendship with him was a new friendship, him being in the place where Copland wrote and being inspired by that and so many other inspirations for him, one of those also being that Dave took piano lessons with Aaron Copland in that house when he was a child.
And so there was just all these threads of friendship and past and present and future weaving that all together. And I think you can really hear that in the piece. I feel so joyous when I play that piece and when I hear it, it's just really, it feels like a celebration.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. Thanks. Now you'll hear a clip of Snapshots by Pascal Le Boeuf.(Music)
You did choose composers that weren't strictly in the classical realm. It was a very conscious choice.
Tasha Warren:
That's correct, yeah. There's not a whole lot of repertoire for bass clarinet and cello or clarinet and cello. And that was one of the inspirations for this was to build repertoire. That's why being nominated for best instrumental composition for that repertoire was really just a huge honor and just felt so good. Meg's piece has been awarded many awards for the piece that she wrote for us. When we were thinking of the names, like I said before, we had kind of gone off and this process took a while for us to narrow down the names and us being in different places, having to come together and talk. Also scheduling wise was kind of tricky, but both of us also wanted to reflect some part of ourselves in it. And that part of ourselves is that, yes, we do play classical music, but we have interests that extend far beyond classical music.
And Dave plays music of every genre and every style. And so wanting to bring that element of ourselves to the classical stage via the musicians that we so admire and love was really important. But beyond that, there is such a thinning line between what a classical composer and what is classical music and what those lines are blurred because we have cross pollinization all the time. We are representing new voices, different voices that when I was growing up, those were not the voices that we heard on the classical stage. And so when everybody that's part of the project brings something that is part of themselves to that piece, I do think it's an interesting question to ask. Well, what then is classical? What do we define as classical? And so that was just sort of a, we weren't intending to answer that question. We were just intending to ask it.
Leah Roseman:
And I like your expression saying a thinning line, because I do think we're in a process of positive evolution, and that's a whole other conversation we could get into.
But I did want to mention your trip to India because that was right before the shutdown. I read your beautiful blog post and maybe you do want to talk about Jennifer Heemstra and how it's a very unique trip that you took.
Tasha Warren:
Yeah. Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity and thanks for taking the time to read, that is a long blog post! There was a lot that happened on that trip, and the timing of it was also really weird. Right before the pandemic, like you said it, we left at the end of February in 2020 and got back, I think March 9th, 2020 and literally got back off the train and the other students that, so I teach chamber music here at Michigan State, and the students that came were getting chamber music credit and were sharing their experience. So the students that were behind kind of vicariously got to experience this. But when we all connected the next day, the students were saying, well, I think the university's going to shut down tomorrow. It was just such a surreal thing, but so wonderful. The experience was just once in a lifetime and really impactful for all of us.
So Jennifer Heemstra is a Michigan State grad pianist, and she is just a very interesting and amazing person. She does work all around the world. She travels with her husband every four years. They basically move to a new part of the world, and, for her husband's work. It's her dream to share classical music and create classical music in places where it actually isn't really happening very much. And so she starts concert series and invites her friends from all over the world to come and play with her. And when she was living in India, because she was living in India, she established the Kolcata Classics Chamber Music series and just organized partnerships as she does everywhere that she lives organized partnerships with organizations in so many different walks of life, connecting with so many different people, always people in need, and often connecting medical care or social service needs to the audiences.
And so sometimes the music is just a way to get together. Sometimes. It's also literally just a way to share, so you have shared experience where the audience that you're playing for then plays for you or vice versa. And we had a lot of those experiences for the students. We were on the move constantly. We had a couple concerts a day, and like I said, in so many different areas of Kolkata, we were in the city. City is enormous, so that doesn't really mean a whole lot. We were in so many different types of places within city, but also in remote villages and playing for children and playing for other musicians, playing for adults, dancers, we learned so much. And it was, yeah, an incredible experience. But Jennifer runs a nonprofit organization called Pitch Pipe, and that's the mission is to connect artists with those in need, connecting great artists with great need and finding a mutually rewarding experience for all. And that's tricky In some places it's tricky because you don't want to be inflicting your music on people. There's a finesse to finding a way that that is mutually appreciated.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, and I mean you used the term classical music, but it is western classical music, especially when you go to place in India.
Tasha Warren:
Thank you. Exactly. Yes, exactly. And so when I say sharing music, one of our experiences was really cool. It was at a school, and the school actually hosted us, but at the end of our visit was our experience with the school, and that was with the classical Indian music teachers there who actually gave us some lessons and taught us some things about modality and ornamentation. And that was definitely a really special shared musical experience where we even talked about as music teachers similarities and differences. How do we approach that with our different music and backgrounds?
Leah Roseman:
And I believe you played at a school that has children with cerebral palsy and integrates them with other kids, and it was quite a moving experience you had there.
Tasha Warren:
It was
Leah Roseman:
Them performing for you.
Tasha Warren:
It was overwhelming, honestly, the whole day when you're traveling around India or anywhere, you just have to get used to the fact that things don't go as planned. And the day started off oddly because we thought we were getting a ride on a bus and we had been on a little nice bus with air conditioning and just a regular bus. But then what shows up is people that we've never seen before driving a huge school bus with very brightly colored curtains and all these things. But they were like, I think two hours late or something. And so we knew this whole school was waiting for us, and we just felt horrible that we were late. And then we took a route that was too long, and anyway, it just was a fiasco to arrive. But when we arrived, they were all, the entire school was still sitting there waiting for us.
They had waited the whole time quietly. I mean, they were waiting quietly for us. And they had prepared a welcome ceremony for us that they proceeded to share with us and these kids singing the songs that they had prepared and dancing for us, it was truly, I'm even getting emotional thinking about it because then we were like, how are we supposed to play our instruments? We're all like, oh, it was just so beautiful. And then we did perform, and when we performed, one of the teachers there was a classical Indian dancer and she started to improvise dance. And then there was all this dance and movement component that came into it. And yeah, I think for many of us that was really a highlight, if not the highlight. It was such an honor.
Leah Roseman:
So you had two students with you who are clarinetists as well, and presumably Jennifer played piano at some of these venues just in terms of instrumentation to how you managed to put together a program to tour with.
Tasha Warren:
Well, we had four clarinetists actually.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, okay!
Tasha Warren:
That is another thing that's important to me is I do run concert series here in our community too. And I think it's really important to, like I said, I don't think, it doesn't ever feel good to feel that you're inflicting your music on people in any place. I think it's really good to know who your audience is and to think, well, what would they like to hear? What kind of music do they, what is exciting to them? And that's at the very beginning stages of programming. You try to think about those things. And so we developed a menu of pieces and we prepared those pieces. Some of them were written for clarinet or clarinet and piano or two clarinets and piano. Some of them were written for clarinet quartet, but then, or quintet and others, we just arranged when we knew what kind of things our audiences were interested in, then we tried to fashion something that would be appealing to all of them. And then when we had this menu, then we decided really while we were there, what do they want to hear from that menu that we prepared? So we'd have a pretty good outline idea for each concert of what we were going to do, but we had to be very flexible too, to say, well, what should we play next? But we had it ready for them.
Leah Roseman:
So in your role as a mentor with students teaching chamber music, do you have them go out into the community?
Tasha Warren:
Yeah, well, I teach well, so I've been doing this for a while and started some series a while ago and then am joined with my colleague Yvonne Lamb, who is a violinist and teaches violin here. And the two of us run the chamber music program. And we both do that, and we both think that that is really important. And so we have between the two of us, quite a variety of concerts that are out in the community that gives the students who, we have a pretty robust program here. I think there's 150 something students in the Chamber of Music class. We have like 58 ensembles and they all need a public performance. And so we provide these opportunities so that they can choose which one that they want to do. But I do a sensory friendly concert, and that is, it started out really being for kids, but it's for anyone of any age who just wants to enjoy music and not follow those rules, who it might be more enjoyable to get up and move around or to sing along or to leave halfway through or come back.
That's a really special concert series for me. We do musical pop-ups and children's science museums and then kind of integrate some kind of music is actually a science science of sound, and you can relate a lot of things to scientifically to the music that we play. For a while we were doing residencies with memory care residents at a retirement residence nearby fashion and concerts with the memory care residents. And that was really, really special and very personal if on does one that is If Music be the Food, which is a food drive. And so there's just a lot of ways to connect with the community to feel like you're connected, but still preparing the music to the highest professional level so that it's the same performance that you would have in the concert hall.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I think there's been a change. I've been working professionally for over 30 years, but certainly when I was in school as students playing chamber music, no one suggested there was opportunities to play outside of the school, in fact, and I did two performance degrees, but there wasn't much performance. And certainly you had your juries, but you know what I mean? I think that's changed with the younger generation.
Tasha Warren:
Well, I am a huge proponent, and as musicians, we have to know how to practice and we think of practice as being by ourselves in a room, practicing, but you have to practice performing, performing as something that you have to practice. And a lot of these opportunities that I just mentioned to you provide easy, I shouldn't say easy, but a little bit more approachable ways to get out and to perform. I think it's also really important to know that your audience is there because they want to be there. And when we are performing in our academic settings or in school, we're performing for our teachers or for other students who there's a lot of support in our studios. We have a lot of supportive colleagues and peers, and they're there because they want to be there, but a lot of times we feel like we're performing. We have to or for audiences that have to be there. So it's really important to remember that this is a shared experience. It's a two-way street.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, beautifully put.
I'd written in my notes value of journaling, and I think I was thinking about the fact of your blog post about your trip to India, and I was curious if you normally journal and do you journal related to your clarinet practice and teaching practice at all?
Tasha Warren:
That is great, bringing out so many great questions that I never even think about talking about, but I think journaling is extremely, it's been very important to me. I do journal when I don't journal as much as a daily thing anymore, but when I was younger, I certainly did, especially as a student, I really did. And that helped me tremendously. There's just so many different reasons to journal. When I was in India, I was journaling because it was such an unforgettable experience that I didn't want to forget it. And I was noticing so many things and nuances every single day that I really just wanted to keep as fresh in my mind as possible. So I write those things down. Sometimes I write 'em on an envelope, I write on my phone, not when I was younger, where I actually had journals that I kept and I would very, very studiously write in those.
And so I kept personal journals, but I also kept musical journals. And part of the reason that I started the musical part of it was because I was spending so much time wasted time practicing, and I wasn't really feeling like I was progressing and I wasn't progressing because I was just spending tons of time practicing the wrong things. And so using journaling to really keep clear goals and to just keep track of what is it that I'm sitting down to do, what did I actually accomplish? What were the obstacles that I face or continue to face? What are things that worked for me that really helped economize my time and make me a lot more goal oriented in my practice and what I do? So that approach then just became sort of part of me and I don't feel like I need to continue to write those things anymore.
But I do feel that it's important to share with students. And so I do often have students journal journaling isn't for everybody, and so some people don't take to it as well, but for the most part, I have found that students really do benefit from getting out that notebook and just writing things down. And I'm not talking about a page entry, I'm just talking a couple lines. And then you can also keep track of how much you really practiced because you could think, oh, I practice every day this week, but then you look back and you're like, oh no, actually I practiced three days and I really didn't tackle that one thing that I thought I was going to tackle. And so I think it's really, really important.
Leah Roseman:
Would you mind sharing some of the ways you think your practicing was bad back then? Like you said, you're practicing the wrong things.
Tasha Warren:
I was going for quantity over quality, and I had the approach as many of us do that if we just do it again, we'll do it better. And if we don't do it better the next time there's something wrong with us. I must not be a very good player. I can't get that. But over time, keeping track of what those things are, you start to notice that any big problem that you have this passage or this introduction or whatever the segment is that gives you problems, if you look at it close enough with a magnifying glass, you find it's actually probably just two or three little things you're doing. And then you can focus in on those things and kind of smooth them out and work on them, and then that helps the greater good. But only in being diligent and looking at it that way and making yourself look at it that way, can you really start to solve those problems for yourself? And so I was just doing a lot of repetitive going over and over and over again. And in the process, of course, really solidifying those bad habits.
I was just reinforcing them constantly. And I also had injuries. I was practicing too much, so getting all kinds of issues with my thumb and my hand, and then those things lead to emotional frustration. And some people call it burnout. You just feel like you've gotten to a point where I hit a wall and I'm not getting any better and I'm not getting any better. So for me, being accountable for the small goals and actually really having small goals, like I am only going to practice this for three to five minutes and then I'm going to move on to this other thing. If you only give yourself three to five minutes to practice something, you really pay attention to what's happening.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Wonderful advice.
Let's go back to this album we started talking about. So Martha Redbone's, Black Mountain Calling, really special and she sings on the end of it as well. So I thought if we were going to include a clip maybe towards the end, it's kind of interesting.
Tasha Warren:
Oh, I love that. Yeah, that piece is very, very special to both Dave and I and I think to Martha too. And it was the first time that a stomp dance was written for instruments that's not sung. And so we felt a responsibility in that to keep a vocal quality and to work really closely with Martha on how she wanted that represented. But she was just so fantastic and easy to work with that it wasn't a problem to do that. It just came very naturally. And so in fact, we have are working on another album right now, and we commissioned her to write a work for us on that album. But what's really special about this album is that it's highly collaborative. And so rather than, and the last one was highly collaborative too, but this one just goes a different to the higher level of collaboration. So collaboration in real time where there's ideas and then we explore those ideas together with the composers in a very real time back and forth. And so it's a very organic and evolving process with each piece. And so the next one that we're working on with Martha, there's quite a bit more of her singing in it and it's beautiful.
Leah Roseman:
So can you speak to what a stomp dance is in her background a little bit?
Tasha Warren:
Well, she is of Cherokee descent, and this is from her, she's from the Appalachia Mountains, so this is from the mountain region in Kentucky. And this is a ceremony basically that would kind of go on all night and there's just kind of call and response and lots of dancing and movement, and these are what she calls the vocables. And so they're just very traditional motives that would be sung in this call and response that again, would just really go on and on evolving through the whole process through the night. And when she sent us, that's how the process unfolded with Martha that she recorded these vocables and then those became seeds. Then she explored in different layers so that there's the bass clarinet one and then there's the cello one, and how we interacted and tried to represent that process with the two of us, but we really did, it was very important for us to include her actual vocables in that. And so that you can hear that, and I think it happens twice. And those are my favorite points of the piece.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. You're about to hear an excerpt from the end of Martha Redbone's Black Mountain Calling. (Music)
Now the first score that came in I understand was Paquito D'Rivera's, African Tales and Dave Improvises on that. And it's the opening track on the album, and you have a great bass clarinet solo, and he really uses the range of the instrument I found.
Tasha Warren:
He really does, and I love that. That's what I love about the bass clarinet and boom, first thing, it's right there. It was such an honor that he agreed to write for us. We were thrilled when he said yes. And then we were also just so amazed that he just sent it to us so quick. It was the first piece that we got, like you said, it was the first one that we received back and with such excitement, and then just to have so much represented in that piece. So like you said, it starts off with this very almost kind of distant sounding bass clarinet introduction, which is really kind of a journey. It is introducing us to a journey, and it's a journey through basically through the Afro, Africa to Afro-Cuban Jazz to New York. It ends up in New York. And so we go through this journey and it does sound very distant, and then there's this rhythmic quality that comes in between the dialogue between the bass clarinet and the cello, and then the cello takes off with this solo, and he's given complete freedom to do whatever he wants. And I love Dave's solo is I think, amazing on that. And then there's a change to, as we enter back or come around back here to the states, come to the New York scene, I switched to the B flat clarinet and have my kind of Paquito D'Rivera impression that he wrote in there for me, which it is just a blast. It's really a blast to play.
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip from the end of African Tales by Paquito D'Rivera.(Music)
Now, Dave does quite a bit of improv, like you said, he plays in all kinds of different styles. And at the beginning of this episode, you mentioned you've started to compose, you must improvise a little bit.
Tasha Warren:
Yeah, well, that project did incorporate improvisation in some of the works and some of the collaborations that we've had recently since then have explored that more between the two of us. And that is not, as a classical musician, you don't improvise very often. And sort of like when you asked me the question about composing, if you're a classical musician, you don't often also feel like you have permission to improvise because, well, there's also the classical, but there's also the jazz, and those jazz guys really know how to improvise. And it's a language of its own. It's a practice that you really need to immerse yourself in and become more comfortable taking those chances and thinking ahead quickly. And so I just really embraced that risk. And so every project that we have since then actually has included a lot of improvisation.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I wanted to let you know about some other episodes I’ve linked directly to this one, which I think may interest you, with Meg Okura, Katherine Needleman, Anthony Brandt, Naomi Moon Siegel, and Sarah Jeffery of Team Recorder. It’s a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time; please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page; you’ll find the links in the show notes. For the merch, it features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly and you can browse clothes, notebooks, mugs and more, everything printed on demand. On my Ko-fi page you can buy me one coffee, or every month. You’ll also find the links to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Finally, if you’re finding this episode interesting, please text it to a friend. Thanks.
Fantastic. Yeah, I improvise as well, and it's a more recent thing for me. And yeah, we have so many hangups with the classical training. It's very freeing, I find.
Tasha Warren:
So you mentioned the trip to India. So I have done other study abroad programs. Actually, the one to India sort of was intended to be a pilot program that I would then take that outline and apply it to different places. And my husband is from Israel, and I decided that the next one we would do would be in Israel. And so we did a study abroad in Israel two years ago, so I'm trying to remember what year that was, that 2023. Three. And so as part of that, we took a bunch of wind students and took them all across the country and sharing same sort of idea where getting to understand so many different layers of Israeli culture through a shared musical experience in different places. And one of those experiences was actually a Klezmer workshop, and it was an all day Klezmer workshop where the inspiration behind everything was the improvisation and the taking risks and the communicating when to come off the drone or trade the drone and then improvise on top of that.
It was very uncomfortable for the students right away, but the more they did it, the more you could see them sort of come out of their shells and start to close their eyes and start to think and communicate that way. And then that was one of our early experiences, and so we decided to incorporate that in every concert after that. So there was a Klezmer improvisational aspect to every concert after that, but it is really, it just feels like you're about to jump off a cliff if you're a classical musician and you haven't improvised, you feel like there must be so many rules that I am violating here by what's right, what's the right way to do this? And yeah, I think it is a very, very important skill to have for every musician.
Leah Roseman:
So Guy Yehuda is also a clarinetist, so what's that for you guys?
Tasha Warren:
I don't know if you can, I tried to mask my camera so you couldn't see the mess of reeds in our little room here. But yeah, we have tons of clarinet related instruments and reeds everywhere in our house. I mean, we've been together for a long time, so I think we're kind of used to it. We do play together a lot. We like playing together. We play in orchestras together, and so instead of going on dates, we just have orchestra week. But I guess the challenge is when it comes to finding practice time and being parents and musicians and finding employment in the same place as musicians of the same instrument can really, really be challenging. But we've been fortunate to find jobs that we both love and that let us do the things that we've wanted to do. And so that's really been great.
It was really challenging for a while though, when we were teaching in different places, commutes that for me were like a 20 hour, 10 hours one way and then 10 hours the other way. Trying to make those long distance job commutes really work. And if there's classical musicians, couples listening to this podcast, they can I'm sure relate to those struggles. It doesn't even have to be limited to people playing the same instrument. It can just, we're always on the road anyway. There's a lot of travel to be a musician, but that can be really challenging. But having kids, being musicians who are performers who have rehearsals at night and concerts on the weekends and raising kids who might want to do soccer on the weekends, and how do you juggle all of that? I think that's more the challenge for us than both being musicians of the same instrument.
Leah Roseman:
And you have five children?
Tasha Warren:
I have five children, Guy and I have three together, and I have two older kids who are enjoying their careers and living their lives in different places now. But yeah, five kids.
Leah Roseman:
And so when you were younger, did you feel there was some sexism towards you being a mom and being a serious clarinettist?
Tasha Warren:
So I'm just circling back to the question you asked about being a mom and being a musician and obstacles that I might have faced in terms of maybe discrimination or if there's gender bias or anything like that. And I wasn't really happy with the answer that I gave you, and I don't know that I'm going to be happy with any answer that I give you to be honest, because there are a lot of moms in music, there are a lot of performing instrumentalists or musicians of any kind that are balancing their professional life with being a mom, which is a whole other layer of being a woman. It's not just being a woman, it's also being a mom and being a wife. And I'm a wife of a musician who's also known. And so it's very hard for me to articulate out loud or coherently how that affects my life, but it really does.
It really, really does. And my husband and I both feel it. I mean, we both acknowledge that this happens and it's a challenge, and I don't know what the answer or the remedy is, but I do know that I feel assumptions made around me all the time, and I've been, most of what I've done that I'm really proud of as a musician, I've done since being a mom. So I can't say I haven't done what I want to do because I'm a mom or because I wasn't given these opportunities or whatever. But I can say that there are a lot of opportunities that I wasn't given. And just because I refuse to be put in a particular place by anyone else, it's only because of that I have done anything. And so I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that I haven't experienced discrimination or not been considered for things that has happened, and it happens all the time, and it doesn't stop happening just because I'm older. Maybe it's going to happen in different ways because I'm older. I don't know. But I just have to say that I've had to be incredibly creative and persistent. And when says, well, you can't do that, I just am like, well, okay, well then how am I going to do it? It's not like, okay, I can't do it. Well, how am I going to do it? It's just going to be a different way. I'm going to have to figure out a different way to do this.
But the ways that it has affected me in ways that are very frustrating to me is that when you are a mom, I mean when you're a woman, first of all, but if you're also a wife and a mom and you are living the day to day of cleaning everything at home, of making all the doctor's appointments and going to the school when the kids are sick and you're the one doing that day to day, you'll know that, well, maybe I didn't get to practice as much as so-and-so who didn't have to do all that. Or maybe I have to go to bed at 3:00 AM I have to practice, so I have to figure out how to do this. Either way, I don't feel like I'm in optimal shape all the time. Either it's mentally or physically or whatever. You're paying a price for living two lives, 100% or three. If you're a teacher and you're a performer and you're a mom, you don't do any of those things half-heartedly. You do them all. So you are three people all the time. And sometimes it even feels like more than that because you have to figure out how to help your kids who are struggling with it, whatever. So maybe you have to be your kid's brain for a minute too. All these things. So when you put on top of that, there's the sort of assumptions that, well, maybe she can't do that because she's a mom or she's a wife, or maybe she can't do that because she didn't win such and such competition, or she wasn't in whatever job for a long enough time, whatever. Maybe she's not good enough because she doesn't have those things on her resume. What's frustrating to me is that as much as you try to ignore those voices that you hear, they're there. And sometimes they come up in inconvenient times. They come up when you really need to believe in yourself. And sometimes you just have that shred of doubt because of that. And that's some, I would love to be in a world that celebrated the resiliency and the creativity and the persistence and the success of a person who is able to raise children, solve problems, clean the house, go to the doctor, be several different people than the one person. I would love to live in a world where that was celebrated and honored and not dismissed.
Leah Roseman:
Thank you for that. I did want to touch on a couple of other tracks from your album with Dave, because I had discovered people I didn't know about Cornelius Boots, like what an interesting musician. I hadn't heard about him. So Crow Cavern has a almost like a heavy metal feel at times, right?
Tasha Warren:
Yeah. Crow Cavern. So Cornelius, he started a bass clarinet quartet years ago called Edmund Welles, and they played his own compositions. They played some covers of metal stuff and other Radiohead and stuff like that, but he wrote the music, those recordings. And so if anyone listening to this is ever able to check out Edmund Welles, I highly, highly recommend it. I loved his music on those. I actually went to school with Cornelius, and so we had that connection, and it's because I loved that there's just a depth of sound and expression that he brings out of the instrument that I really wanted to see what would happen if he added cello to that and if we had something original for us. And it being the pandemic, he was taking all kinds of walks and hikes with all that time and would see these crows on his daily walk and became inspired by their behaviors and just watching them every day. So yeah, that's the inspiration for Crow Cavern.
Leah Roseman:
This is an excerpt from one of the middle sections of Crow Cavern by Cornelius Boots.(Music)
And he himself stopped playing bass clarinet.
Tasha Warren:
He did. He stopped playing bass clarinet and plays shakuhachi, and he's writing a lot for shakuhachi, a lot that's actually quite in, I wouldn't say it's similar to Edmund Welles because they're such different instruments and they command different approaches, but there is still that same really depth of expression and energy in his shakuhachi writing as well. So that's what he plays and he writes a lot for, but he has returned to writing for bass clarinet and is writing a lot more for bass clarinet these days.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, very cool. Well, yeah, Lalin by Nathalie Joachim. I didn't know her either. And she's a flute player, right? And she straddles like the pop world, such interesting musicians.
Tasha Warren:
So Nathalie was the flute player in Eighth Blackbird for a long time, and now she's pursuing composing and playing her own music and is wildly successful for doing that. She got a Grammy nomination a couple of years ago too for her album, which was inspired by her Haitian upbringing and roots, and she sings on that and plays the flute as well. And when she was writing this work for us, so the work is actually pronounced Lalin and that's how she's phonetically written it out in the score, which means moon. And that was inspired by during the pandemic visiting her family in Haiti and every night having this ritual of going outside and talking about their day and just kind of gazing up at the sky. And throughout the course of that, everyone sharing about their day and kind of talking about things, the whole kind of world that they were in would change under the moon.
And so by the end of it, you hear the little insects, you hear the life when the rest of the world has kind of gone to bed. Then you hear the life that is kind of percolating under that's waiting to come out. And so there's two sections where this beautiful clarinet solo in the beginning, and then the second half is a lot of that activity that you hear and you can hear too. We think you can hear there's a lot of this sort of beatbox, kind of electro acoustic kind of rhythmic reference to Nathalie's own playing in that. So yeah, it was a really fun piece to record, and she articulated how much she enjoyed writing that at that time too.
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip from Lalin by Nathalie Joachim.(Music)
Let's talk about adjudicating competitions because you've done quite a bit of that. What do you think about the competition world and how it can help or hinder players?
Tasha Warren:
I like to encourage my students to do competitions. I think that whether I expect or they expect to win the competition isn't the point. The point is that I think that we always need to be putting on a personal level. I mean, this isn't from the competition standpoint, this is from a player's standpoint. I think we are always needing to find things that challenge us so that we are forced to grow. Whether that means you try to always aspire to play with people who are better than you. That's one aspect, that's one part of it. But the other thing is if you have a competition to prepare for, you might have fixed repertoire that's really difficult that you might not have thought you were at the level to play, and suddenly now you know how to play that repertoire. So that's at the very minimum.
You've raised some aspect of your playing, but I think it's also important to acknowledge the vast amount of talent and highly skilled players that are out there in the world. We get pretty used to our own bubbles that we live in. And so it might be easy to think that whatever semblance of greatness that is around us in that bubble is the ceiling of that. And I think it's really important to, when you engage in a competition, whether it's local, national, or international, in any of those spheres, you see what probably that ceiling really is. And I think it's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to realize that you always are growing as a musician and you always are trying to be better. I do think it's important to acknowledge though that we're, while those are competitions against other people, we're really trying to improve ourselves against our own selves. And so that's the first hurdle. And then beyond that, if you are recognized for that by the judging panel, if you're recognized for that, then it's encouraging. Also, it can be motivating if you place in one of those competitions that can be motivating to want to do the next thing, what's the next thing then, what's the next way? So even if you do place, it's not like you've won and you've arrived at a level of achievement that then you can stop. You'll constantly be wanting to improve and see what that next thing is.
Leah Roseman:
And it's about performance opportunity, but also the winners often have more performance opportunities,
Tasha Warren:
Right? Right. And so one of the benefits of that acknowledgement is, well, we'd like to see you perform more. And so then you get to practice that more, and there's a great confidence that comes with that.
Leah Roseman:
Now, I also really enjoyed your solo album, the Naked Clarinet, which you put out a number of years ago.
Tasha Warren:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Really, really beautiful, powerful playing. And I'm curious, do you play a lot of that repertoire currently or?
Tasha Warren:
I played them all together after making the album. I had a solo recital where I played all of them, which was quite exhausting, I'll be honest. Those are really tiring pieces to play, but I play them more sporadically now, so they're beautiful pieces, and each one of them is so expressive for the clarinet and fits in a different way. And so every once in a while I'll have a program where one of those pieces will fit just perfectly in the mix. And they also, there are a lot of pieces by women on that, and those women have written so many other wonderful, amazing works. And so I think it's really great thematically to tie some of those works into a work, into a recital where you're trying to thread that a little bit.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I'd been hoping to include an excerpt of Wings by Joan Tower from the Naked Clarinet album, but as it out, this wasn't possible. However, I wanted to include Tasha's reflections and associations with it. You can listen to the Naked Clarinet on several streaming platforms, and it's linked on Tasha's website.
Wings by Joan Tower.
Tasha Warren:
Oh, yeah, I love that piece. That is an amazing piece. And I will say that these are all pretty difficult pieces too. They're quite challenging to play Wings. What I loved about that piece is that, but what is also very challenging is what I love about it, and that is that, but it's an awakening. It's an awakening of a falcon. And so you go through this journey of this bird coming to life and then flying at great speeds and up and down and dips and all this whimsical virtuo stuff, and then comes back down to rest at the end. And creating that momentum and telling that story is just really fun to do. But it's also really difficult physically because you're doing it all with your air as a wind player and just physically, it's a lot to control. And so at the very end when you have to just be completely still and not let the audience hear your heart going because you've been working so hard, that's definitely, it's a skill.
But that piece, I'm glad you mentioned that piece because that was one when my kids were younger, my older kids, my daughter is a writer and she's written ever since she could start reading, she was kind of writing. And so I would help out in the kids' creative writing and English classes when they were in elementary school. So I would go in a lot and help them or just help the teacher help them. And one of the things that I loved to do was to take my clarinet in and I would play, and they would come up and it was a narrative or a writing prompt. And so what I would do is we'd have a huge board behind me and I would play parts of a piece and the kids would construct a story based on what they heard. So I would stop a little bit and someone would say something we'd add, and then at the end we would read the story of what the music had created. And that was one of my favorite pieces to do that with. It got so many really interesting responses.
Leah Roseman:
Now in terms of presenting music to audiences, you said earlier you don't want to impose your music on people, but certainly we have to engage with audiences with new and unfamiliar music ,narratives make it easier. But what other ways do you have of presenting the music other than just playing it?
Tasha Warren:
Well, I mean, I think about where I'm playing music and how I am presenting it. And so for example, I much prefer something like when I said the musical memories engagement where, and this was with students, but with the students getting to know the audience or the individual residents and taking notes and then fashioning a program that would not only interest them, but also maybe involve them in some way, whether it's through playing along or there was one where some art paintings were really important to somebody, and so we put a big display behind of those paintings and just a personal connection, some sort of personal connection. I think you can't do that in every concert that you go to, but you can pay attention to setting the stage for your audience and talking to them. I mean, it's just as simple too, as just talking to the audience and explaining why it is that you like that piece. Give a little bit of who I am, breaking down those barriers a little bit, I think are really important things to do. We make a lot of assumptions as performers, and that's one the assumptions that is dangerous to make, is that the audience should like the music because it's good music.
And that's what I meant by imposing the music because I think that it's not the music that's imposing, it's how we're presenting it to our audience that can be imposing and really just being aware and thoughtful in how you do so I think goes a long way.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for this today. I really appreciated it.
Tasha Warren:
Thank you. Thanks for this conversation.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at LeahRoseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Kold. Have a wonderful week.
