00:00

[SOUND EFFECT]

 

Terrance McKnight: This is the Open Ears Project.

 

0:15

Natalie Joachim: For probably two or three years, it was like the thing I listened to. It was the soundtrack of my life for a good handful of years, and I just feel such a wave of joy come over me at the first notes of it.

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Third movement from Brahms’ Symphony no. 3]

 

0:57

My name is Natalie Joachim and I'm a flutist, a composer and a vocalist. We are listening to the third movement of Brahms’ Symphony Number Three.

 

The first time that I heard this, for those of you who are old school New Yorkers, you may remember there was a Tower Records that used to be right on the corner of 66th and Broadway, right outside the doors of Juilliard. And I started going to Juilliard actually in their Music Advancement program when I was 10 years old and stayed there through college, so I grew up in that Tower records.

 

1:39

So I would finish my flute lessons and run over to the tower records and they used to have these listening stations. I remember that this was on one of those listening stations one day and I listened to the entire symphony all the way through and my heart just swelled.

 

2:06

It's just this moment of stillness that's also really moving in this beautiful flowing way.

 

2:26

I started playing instruments when I was four, I started playing piano when I was four, singing in choirs, started playing flute when I was nine. You know, I've been writing songs with my grandmother since I was a child. I have been experimenting with electronic music since high school. I have been practicing my skill as a composer for a very long time. But it took me a very long time to be able to feel comfortable claiming that title, because the people who occupied that space, the people who got those titles were not people who looked like me, were not people who thought about music in the same way that I did, were not people who lived like me.

 

3:18

And I think that that has been a struggle in my adult professional life to be able to come out and say, you know, for 15 years now, I've been really actively writing music that other people have been playing, that I've been playing, and that is, there's a lot to that this oral tradition of my grandmother's stems back hundreds of years as well. It's also a tradition and it's also valid.

 

Maybe she was nobody in anybody's eyes, but it also deserves to be respected because it has been a musical tradition that has withstood the test of time.

 

And now I feel really amazing to be able to stand in my own identity as an artist, as a black woman, as a Haitian American, as a composer, as a vocalist.

 

4:48

I feel that I've come to this place of recognizing - it's like the moment in your life when you realize that your parents or your parents, but they're also regular people who make mistakes and are just as flawed as you are and I love you and I forgive you and I still cherish every part of you.

 

I feel that way about classical music a little bit where you're like, ok, there were these mistakes made in this upbringing, but I also now can stand in my own truth deeply enough and proudly enough to say that, like, I accept you as a part of entirely who I am.

 

But I think most of my Haitian family thinks it's funny that I'm a professional musician because they're like, everybody makes music [laughs].

 

5:57

I feel like if you can listen to Brahms and you don't feel anything, something's - something's going on there, something is going on there, you know, like there's a part of your heart that's missing.

 

I mean, who could listen to these swells? I mean, it’s so beautiful! 

 

You just feel these waves coming at you. It feels like it's constructed in a 3D way, you know what I mean? You feel deep in the piece.

 

He really knew how to wield an orchestra. As a composer, I respect that. It's not an easy task. And I think he just does a beautiful job of giving the music a sense of motion that not everybody can do.

 

Beethoven moves in a very different way. You feel this, like, colossal structure moving at you, and Brahms seems to give this massive group of people a sense of lightness. It's like watching Fred Astaire Dance or something, you know?

 

7:10

You know, I think this piece exemplifies beautiful form and structure in classical music. It is obviously a symphony. You can't get more, sort of, traditional in terms of form and structure, but I will say that Brahms has a beautiful way of playing with rhythm.

 

When you think of something that happens in three, we're always thinking that the one is the strong beat, right? That's sort of what we're taught generally. And he does this thing where he begins to play with the three as the strong beat in a way that if you're not looking at the score, you're not sure, really, is this the one, is this the three? How am I supposed to be feeling this?

 

7:50

Here we go. Here he begins to play with you.

 

Three, one, two, three, one, two

 

And if you're not paying attention or if you're not reading a score, you might think it was one, two, three, one, two, three, right? But it's not actually!

 

Me, I was always like, “amazing no longer the one, totally the three, this is fantastic!”

 

It's driving so many people who are so attached to the waltz crazy and I love that.

 

It's like Brahms is just playing a little bit of a joke on all of us and I like that he plays with rhythm in that way.

 

And then seamlessly we're back into the one, two, three.

 

One, two, three, one, two, three, one… two, three,

 

Three, one, two, three, one, two

 

It's beautiful, I love it.

 

9:38

Haitian music, the core of it is a sort of giving of oneself. It's sort of ever present in our culture. I think. It's a really communal practice.

 

So going back and really listening to a lot of Haitian music and understanding its roots in Africa, you know, that a lot of these drum patterns that are tied to a practice of storytelling are rather complex.

 

So much of my attraction to rhythm within music is really related to this sort of deeply rooted history that is not just living in me currently, but has deep ties to my ancestry. And I think that, you know, coming from a classical realm, we are taught a lot about form. You're really sort of attached to form, you're attached to structure, and the Haitian music tradition sort of turns that on its head and says, even if it's chaos, all of this is form.

 

And so, that has been very beautiful, to bring that Haitian spirit into my classical training, and… you start to analyze Western classical music, I think in a very different way, and it's brought my approach to my practice into a space of openness.

 

11:20

I will say right now in this moment, it feels really beautiful to revisit this piece in this way now, because I get a deep sense of nostalgia like, as you're studying it, you're so deep in it that sometimes it's hard to appreciate the beauty of it.

 

Brahms, he does a really beautiful job of transporting us.

 

It's minimalist in a way. He really uses very few pieces to create something sort of huge in its own right, but very simple. 

 

12:06

And I think it is a reminder that it doesn't take much to get at people's heart with music.

 

[OPEN EARS THEME MUSIC: Philip Glass’s Piano Etude No. 2]

 

Terrance McKnight: That was flutist and composer Nathalie Joachim, talking to us about the third movement from Brahmss’ Third Symphony. It’s coming up just after the break. Stay with us. 

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Third movement from Brahms’ Symphony no. 3]

 

19:12

 

[OPEN EARS THEME MUSIC: Philip Glass’s Piano Etude No. 2]

 

Terrance McKnight: This is The Open Ears Project. Coming up next week… It’s conductor Marin Alsop, who’s gonna tell us just what she finds so inspiring about Beethoven. 

 

Marin Alsop: I think of him often, not just in terms of music, but in terms of, of just living on the planet as a human being.

 

Terrance McKnight: The Open Ears project was conceived and created by Clemency Burton Hill. I’m Terrance McKnight and I'm just delighted to present season two of this podcast to you.

 

If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform and, if you’ve got a story about a piece of classical music, we want to know. Email us at openears@wqxr.org. You can also head to our website, wqxr.org, to check out our other podcasts about classical music.

 

Season two of The Open Ears Project was produced by Clemency Burton-Hill and Rosa Gollan. Our technical director is Sapir Rosenblatt, and our project manager is Natalia Ramirez. Elizabeth Nonemaker is the executive producer of podcasts at WQXR, and Ed Yim is our chief content officer. I’m Terrance McKnight. Thanks so much for listening.

 

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