If you had to sum up your collaboration on this world premiere in three words, what would they be?
Alexandre Kantorow: “Exciting, simple (not the piece!), and fun.”
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What should the audience listen for — or take away — above all?
Alexandre Kantorow “I think the way the music transitions and flows. There are always callbacks to themes heard earlier, which creates a beautiful sense of structure, even though each musical section is very distinct. It starts with the simplicity of one line and slowly unfolds into the beauty of melodies and harmonies that bubble up.”
Anders Hillborg: “The audience should go with the flow—the ‘Kalamazoo flow’. Like Alexandre said, it starts very unassumingly with a simple melody, almost like a nursery rhyme. Then it moves into different aural landscapes. Keep your mind open and just listen.”
World premiere of The Kalamazoo Flow
Does this work enter into dialogue with the repertoire?
Anders Hillborg: “As Stravinsky said, ‘tradition is a living organism’. Old and new are always connected.”
Is creating a new work always a risk?
Anders Hillborg: “Of course. You never know. When I start writing a piece, it’s horror vacui—the horror of the white paper. There’s nothing there. What should I do? You never know the fate of a piece—whether it will be successful, whether it will have a life, whether it will be performed again. So much new music is performed once and then vanishes. It’s in the stars. We just hope.”
At what point will you (or did you!) know that the piece “works”?
Alexandre Kantorow: “With most repertoire pieces, we always have something in the back of our minds—a recording, an idea. It’s rare to open a score and truly dive into the text fresh. For me, it was when I started understanding the structure and how it was written that I realized how alive it feels. You can sink your teeth into it. There are great lines and harmonic logic—a beautiful balance between head and heart.
I’m also happy to realize that most composers like when interpreters take the music into their own hands. With 21st and even 20th-century scores, there are so many indications that we tend to stick to what’s written and not explore what’s not written—something we naturally do with dead composers. There’s a kind of blockage, and it’s liberating when composers unlock that and let you really take ownership of the piece.”
