interview with mike vargas by asimplesound.com
(paintings: robert motherwell, mark rothko. image: nancy stark smith, photo: carolyn lee)
where are you from and how did you get here?
Born New York City. Raised Colorado. I trust you, Michael Wall, because I've heard your music. So I'm joining you in this internet adventure! That's how I got here. I am a curious man, and you are pushing into new territory and it interests me. Ever since I started actively researching unusual music (in the late 70's), I have been fascinated with the mysterious and the unfamiliar in man-made sound art. This eventually led me to working in the dance world, where I was allowed, and encouraged, to improvise and investigate these things.
how did you start working with dance?
I was improvising piano music in a dorm lounge on the University of Colorado campus, and a dancer walked through the room and asked me if I would be interested in playing music for her dance class. I said yes.
what has inspired you to play using concepts like "stripes"?
The realization that painters like Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko had managed to find very restrictive and specific formal strategies for containing and organizing their ideas and their physical/instinctive choices of color, proportion, gesture, etc. At that point, I started looking for ways to do that for myself. It was somehow clear to me at that time that I had to figure out a way to insure that when I improvised or composed on the piano, I wouldn't be playing the things that I didn't want to be playing. I ended up starting to do this by making rules for myself. I don't know if those painters thought of their procedural and/or compositional limitations as rules. For me the goal was simply to eliminate as many cliches and as many recognizable influences and familiar pianistic associations with past composers and styles as possible. It's always been important to me to make music that is unfamiliar or mysterious in at least in a few ways.
do you remember your first piano teacher?
No. I have a mimeographed sheet from those days that lists me as one of the students presenting a piece or two at one of her recitals for the parents, but I can't picture her face, or remember her name.
describe the improvising you do with dance these days?
Oh, boy. That's a big question. I'm going to limit my answer to a few thoughts about my improvising within situations like workshops or performances with Nancy Stark Smith and Olivier Besson, and I'm not going to get into my playing for dance classes. When I am playing in a room full of dancers who are improvising, the best way I've found to describe what I'm doing is to say that I'm doing Contact Improvisation with the whole room. In a nutshell, this means that I am listening very carefully to my "partner", i.e. all the movement and all the energies I can keep track of in the space. It means I have to rotate through paying attention to different individuals and/or groups of individuals quite often - the dancers. I also have to maintain the integrity of my own musical "body's" trajectory and motivations/impulses. What this really means is that I am doing my best to support the dancing in every way I can, while nevertheless managing to make the best music I can at the same time... This is only possible now, after almost 30 years of playing with dancers, because I have begun to understand a little about what dancers (particularly improvising dancers) need and like to have happening in their environment. Their environment consists not only of my intentions and energies and choices with respect to the sounds I'm making, but it also includes the intentions and energies and choices of all the other dancers, the nature of the space, the light, etc., etc., and the combination of all of the above. Another part of the Contact Improvisation analogy is that it is essential to a successful colaboration between two improvisors that they share more or less a similar degree of curiosity and passion for what you might call learning-while-doing. I believe it has to do with some kind of desire to research and evolve a deep capacity to experience, appreciate and create beauty. In this case, I would say that we are not talking about a kind of beauty that is dependent on the image the movements or the sounds create. We're talking about a kind of beauty that inspires us. And by "us", I mean the members of the community that are improvising together, and perhaps other members of the same community that are observing if there are any present.
if you had to listen to 4 records at the same time, what would they be?
let's see...today why don't we try Pan Sonic's "A" album, plus Tod Dockstader's "8 Electronic Pieces", plus Klaus Schulze's "Cyborg..."Synphara" perhaps (- but very quiet compared to the others!), plus...hmmm: getting pretty dense here...maybe some Robert Ashley text?...from his "Improvement" opera?
what type of music are you working on?
I'm trying to figure out how to make music that has just the right proportions of exertion (physical, intellectual, intuitive), eye-opening surprise and provocation, delight and inspiration...and ease and enthusiasm in myself as I make it, which for me means a lack of hesitation, self-consciousness and doubt. I'm also working on continuing to find and develop a community in which to do this. It looks likely that this will continue to be a community that includes dancers. It is a bit harder for me these days to imagine music for a seated audience. I would like to make more music that is really appropriate and fun for listening in the car for example, but I need to practice.