Below is the transcript of the above audio interview performed by KALX DJ Velvet Einstein with pianist Gloria Cheng ahead of her show at Mills College on March 26, 2025.
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Velvet Einstein: You’re tuned to KALX Berkeley. I’m very excited to be joined by pianist Gloria Chang. You have a wonderful new album out called “Root Progressions”. I thought we could start by talking about the origins of this album.
Gloria Cheng: All my life I’ve wished I could be a jazz pianist. I just adored listening to it as long as I can remember, and envied so much their freedom and their brilliance at composing these amazing riffs and licks and, in real time. I was not brought up to do that. I was classically trained. I grew up on my Hanon and Czerny and my, my Chopin etudes, my Beethoven and Haydn sonatas. And that was my upbringing. And I never really was encouraged to improvise. I did spend a year in Paris where I would wander into cathedrals and I’d always hear some organist doing brilliant things on the organ.
It wasn’t something that I ever felt comfortable doing. I don’t think I’m atypical in that regard.
A lot of classical pianists just shy away from it. It’s not part of their training.
So I was just really jealous that I was unable to do that. And fast forward into to more recent times, I’ve played a number of pieces by James Newton, who was a colleague of mine at UCLA. He’s now retired, but I’d see him in the hallways and he’d have some new piece and I would work my tail off to get it learned. It’s always very complex and especially metrically, lots of uplits against other uplits. And I just loved playing his music. I just felt like, whoa, this is what it must feel like, because his music is so inflected with jazz idioms. He’s a former flutist, jazz flutist. Flutist of the year by Downbeat for I think 20 something years in a row. So that sound is very much in his music. So a lot of right hand runs that are just incredible. And I just felt like I was soaring. And so I asked him for some guidance. I said, I want to play more of your music and I think I want to do a project. Who do you think I should ask?
So he, in many ways, was the godfather of this project. I knew, of course, of Anthony Davis, but I didn’t have a personal connection to him. So I said, okay, James, would you help me get to Anthony? And then Jon Jang was someone that I had had my eye on for a long time. I didn’t know him personally, but James did. James also suggested Linda May Han Oh, whose work I did not know, and she is not a pianist, but she works with her husband, who is, and he’s remarkable, Fabian Almazan, who also runs the record label Biophilia, that this album is on. So I asked her. Arturo O’Farrill is also a UCLA colleague of mine, incredible pianist, and also I don’t know how many Grammys he’s won for his work. And he’s also remarkable. And then Gernot Wolfgang, a longtime friend who started out as a jazz guitarist. He’s written a number of pieces for me and I played his chamber music as well. And his music is always very jazz inflected. So I wanted to have him on the project as well. So that’s how it all lined up.
Velvet Einstein: And then as you got the pieces back, how much back and forth was there with the composers?
Gloria Cheng: Well, the first step with them was editing their notation, because they’re not used to writing it down as much because they know what they want, and they’re more often than not just reading off of charts. And in this case, I needed them to actually notate every note and every rest and every meter for me. So it was just working on, oh gosh, this would be easier if you put it in bass clef and this phrase with this big rest of, a rest of a 7/8 bar followed by a 7/16 bar by a 5/8 bar and that’s just a long rest. Could we just put in a fermata instead so I don’t have to count?
So things like that, but then the back and forth with them was, I would say there was a lot of it. It was more me really trying to get inside the character of the music, trying to adopt the actual technique of…
I’m going to back up because one of the things that I enjoyed so much working with this batch of composers was their humility and how every single one of them, unbidden, shared with me that, oh, yeah, I was thinking about McCoy Tyner’s album, and if you listen to this track, that’s what I was thinking. Okay, what I was thinking in Linda’s case, I was thinking about Geri Allen, and she has this track called Feed the Fire, and that was the inspiration for the opening of her piece. And James Newton would say, yeah, man, listen to…
Actually, in his case a Marc Andre Hamelin’s recording of Jeu d’Eau, and Anthony’s case, yeah, Ellington, The Clothed Woman, and you know, every single one of them was feeding me ideas and almost giving me a little history course in, in jazz piano. And I listened to everything that they asked me to listen to. And when they are inspired by a pianist like Geri Allen or Duke Ellington or, Thelonious Monk, you have to play sort of like Geri Allen or Thelonious Monk. You can’t play the idioms of a Thelonious Monk filtered through Anthony Davis and not try to sound a little bit like Thelonious Monk. Adopt his touch and his physical approach to the piano. So that, for me, was a challenge, but a really fun one to try to sound like the pianists that they were referring to.
Velvet Einstein: And so was that a lot of research on your part then? Would you go and listen to the Thelonious Monk records and, and try and copy that style?
Gloria Cheng: I’ve heard a lot of Monk in my past, you know, but, and Cecil Taylor. I know those people, but for them to refer me to specific songs or specific tracks on specific albums was really fun for me. So, okay, I’ll go listen to track seven on, you know, The adapting the technique, the pianism of these pianists who were referred to in the music. That was fun, really fun, you know, not what I was brought up to do, you know, sometimes Thelonious touch is a little bit harsher than my piano teacher would have preferred. But you have to do that in order for it to sound authentic.
Velvet Einstein: And one of the pieces that I’m super curious about now would be the Jon Jang piece, “Ancestors and Sisters” where I know he was trying to simulate the sound of the guzheng and the yangqin. And, and how did that play into this? Did you listen to those instruments to try and copy their sound as well?
Gloria Cheng: I kind of know the sounds of those instruments too. So it didn’t take additional listening research or anything like that. But what I really loved about Jon’s piece is that he turns those glissandi that you’d get from those stringed instruments, those Chinese traditional instruments. He turned it into a McCoy Tyner run, you know, and he just transformed it. It’s just kind of the same notes in the same pitches, but completely transformed it from the yangqin or the guzheng into a McCoy Tyner lick.
== Music Interlude – “Ancestors & Sisters” composed by Jon Jang ==
Gloria Cheng: So that was really fun. And Jon’s piece is such a loving evocation of the folk songs that he grew up hearing.
Velvet Einstein: Reading the notes here that he dedicated to four unique Chinese American women. The Guzheng player Zhang Jian, yourself, San Francisco’s current Poet Laureate Genny Lim, and the late educator activist Alice Fong Yu. Did you feel humbled by those statements?
Gloria Cheng: It’s an honor to have any piece dedicated to me. So, yes, I’m happy to share it with those three others.
Velvet Einstein: I was curious, what sort of differences do you see when the commission comes from a pianist versus somebody who’s not a pianist? Do you find a lot of non pianists just don’t get things or do things that are impossible?
Gloria Cheng: Yeah. The way a pianist writes for piano though, is not necessarily more pianistic than a non pianist writing for piano. I think that composers, they write what they want to hear, and they don’t really think about is this playable? That’s been my experience. Let’s leave that to someone else, you know. They’ve got other things on their minds. They’re trying to create music out of thin air.
So whether it’s pianistic or not, I don’t think it’s necessarily a concern. But what I did do, or what I do regularly, If there is a passage and the composer is just a phone call away, I will say, you know, well, this lick is just killing me. And if we put that one note down an octave, I could nail it. So that I do enjoy doing. And, the composers are usually adaptable that way and they. I think they welcome it because they don’t want to make our lives difficult and they want other pianists to play it too. So it’s in their interests to listen to what a pianist is actually down in the trenches and really trying to just get it into our system, under our fingers. They’re usually very welcoming about those sorts of things.
Velvet Einstein: Coming back to jazz and the notion of improvisation, I was curious if, as you’ve done this, have you been encouraged to do more improvisation in your piano playing?
Gloria Cheng: There are two places in Anthony Davis piece where I am invited to improvise. And I’ve done it in live performance, but I did not do it on the recording.
Because improvisation is not something I’ve engaged with much. And I don’t find my own inventions to be particularly fascinating. And I have so much respect for the practice of improvisation and for people who really devote their lives to it. For me to splash around and… it’s not something that’s authentic for me. I have done it when asked to, or when, I’ve taken up the challenge. But, It’s a little bit highly charged for me because I don’t really feel like it’s me. I prefer working with a grid and finding expression in there rather than making it up by myself to spur the moment.
== Music Interlude – “Piano Heaven – II. Turquoise” composed by Anthony Davis
Velvet Einstein: So your expression is within the grid?
Gloria Cheng: Yeah. And I just try to see what’s between the lines, you know, what’s inside of their time signatures, their phrase markings, and those bar lines. There comes a point where I’m not doing strictly what’s on the page. Otherwise, that would be the MIDI rendition, right? So, no, there’s a point, there’s a point after getting the notes learned, well, while getting the notes learned, that I’m coming up with what I feel the music is truly expressing. It’s then that bar lines and meter and metronome markings go out the window. And when you know the composer also, I try to see the personality. What is my friend here trying to convey in sound, that’s the really fun and very fulfilling part of it is that their thumbprints are all over it. It’s just that sometimes I have to work really hard to see through the notation and get to it.
Velvet Einstein: Do you remember any particular commission where somebody, there was a disconnect where you played it for the composer and they’re like, well, that’s not what I meant. Try it this way.
Gloria Cheng: Oh yeah, Terry. Terry Riley.
Yeah, it was for the Heaven Letter Book 7, and I had commissioned it along with Kathy Supové, Stephen Drury, and one other pianist, and it was a Meet the Composer commission back in the 90s. And I was the first to get my hands on it because I’m in California, and Terry was just a nine hour drive away. So I made the nine hour drive, and I remember he said, his directions for me to get to his house from LA were, Oh, just turn right on Moonshine Road.
So, so I somehow found my way there. So, the street sign was down, and I finally found the house, and Ann said, Oh yeah, people always steal that street sign, so glad you made it. Anyway, Terry, as an improviser, and the incredible pianist that he is, had a certain take on what he had written, and it was not mine. And so it was a fairly, you know, I actually have a tape recording. I taped it. I taped our session together, and it got a little heated at times, as I recall, because I had really worked hard to learn the notes, of course, and come up with the sensibility that I had seen in it. And it just was so different, and I think he was really disappointed. So I went home and I just tried to, I tried to bring myself around to seeing it from his point of view. And, I don’t know how far I got. I’m just, I’m not objective about it. But it did take around 10 years for Terry to say, I listened to that again recently, you did a good job with it.
So I was like, Oh, thank God. But, I think if I were to pick up the piece, I have picked up the piece in more recent years. And I think I’d probably see what Terry found in my original effort that he didn’t like because I’ve loosened up over the years also. And I understand him and I’ve listened to more music over the years, so I think I get it better now, but one could say that about anything. I think I play a Chopin Nocturne better now than I did 30 years ago also. Just living helps.
Velvet Einstein: I often think that there’s not necessarily a right or a wrong, right? Because it’s just like with fashion, some things come in and come out. I mean, do you think that, that there was something that was actually off about it?
Gloria Cheng: I don’t know if off is quite the right word, but it was just, it didn’t sound like Terry. And it needs to sound like Terry. And I was coming, I didn’t know him very well yet. You know, it was my first time working with him. And I think it just, it helps to get to know him over the years. And understand what he’s about, you know, and to not be so I think what I had my original effort was probably was very strict, played the notes and stuff. He probably wanted it a little looser.
And in fact, I’m sure, yeah, he wanted to be a little looser and groove a little more.
Velvet Einstein: So you are coming back to San Francisco or the Bay Area, at least you’re going to be performing over at Mills College at Northeastern University on March 26, part of Boulez at 100. Can you talk a little bit about like how this project got started?
Gloria Cheng: Actually, the actual day, that’s the actual 100th birthday of Pierre Boulez. Ralph van Raat, who’s a very known to contemporary music fans because he’s made so many recordings on Naxos, of the complete Lindberg, the complete Magnus Lindberg, the complete John Adams. He’s recorded so much of contemporary piano music. And he just emailed me one day and said that he likes to collaborate with other pianists and would I like to do something with him? So I thought, well, gee, you know, you live in Amsterdam and I live in LA. Don’t know how this is going to work, but yes, I’d love to.
So when we started discussing what would we do, I knew that the 2025 was coming up and that, that it would be Boulez’s 100th and in many ways, it’s very personal for me because I’d worked with Boulez many, many times when it came to work with the LA Phil and Ojai Festival. And I really wanted to do something to honor his centennial. So, I proposed, why don’t we do the Structures, which, you know, the iconic piece that everyone is terrified of, and we’re gonna do just the first chapter of the first book, and then we’re gonna skip to the last chapter of the second book of Structures. And it’s been wonderful to get inside of that piece. And then the rest of the program is some Magnus Lindberg, an open form piece that is modeled on Boulez’s open form works, some John Cage because of the unlikely friendship between John Cage and Pierre Boulez, but the strong influence of Cage on Boulez.
And then some Stravinsky, the Sonata for Two Pianos, and Frank Zappa because Frank Zappa and Boulez had a rather notorious conversation in Los Angeles when I was working with him, it was 1989. It was one of the first times I worked with Boulez. I was home practicing, but a lot of my friends went, Zappa was being Zappa and Boulez was being Boulez. It was moderated by David Raksin, of all people, who was a friend of mine. And then, long story short, Boulez ends up recording a whole Zappa album with the ensemble. So that connection, I thought was important to highlight.
Velvet Einstein: And what is it that’s so terrifying about Structures?
Gloria Cheng: Well, the one thing that everyone knows about it is that it’s a fully serialized piece. It’s based on a row, a tone row, by Olivier Messian, who was Boulez’s teacher and it’s again a very, very highly structured piece. Everyone studies that piece in music theory class. The pitches, the dynamics, the articulations, all of that are serialized.
And so Boulez took that row and used that as the basis for Structures Book 1. And so it’s rather alienating. And so… But I knew Boulez as a person, and he’s a sweetheart, and I knew that there was music in there that maybe people were overlooking. And I wanted to get inside of it.
The second book is much more florid and he had evolved a lot… there were 11 years between the book one and the book two. And so Boulez had really matured and become much more free in his composition, his approaches. And so, by doing the first chapter of book one and the last chapter of book two, we show his evolution.
Velvet Einstein: So again, yeah, that’s coming up on, it’s Wednesday, March 26th, over at Mills College at Northeastern University with Ralph van Raat and Gloria Cheng.
Gloria Cheng: This will be part of the Other Minds series in some way. It’ll be an offshoot of the Other Minds Festival. I’m just really glad that Charles Amirkhanian understood where we were coming from with this kind of highly eclectic program. And of course, Charles has interviewed just about everybody on this program. He’s interviewed John Cage. He interviewed Pierre Boulez. Is there anyone that Charles has not interviewed? Including Frank Zappa. So, I was just happy that Charles took a liking to this program.
Velvet Einstein: Gloria, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
Gloria Cheng: Hi, this is pianist Gloria Cheng. You are listening to KALX Berkeley, where music is music and genre labels don’t exist.
== Music Outro – “Two Movements II. Shift” by Gernot Wolfgang ==
