CMC Prairie Director Janna Sailor sits down with Czech-Canadian pianist Zuzana Šimurdová to discuss her new album that features all-Canadian female composers, Vertical Landscapes!
Zuzana Šimurdová: I was born in the Czech Republic and before Vertical Landscapes, I made another CD which was dedicated to the Czech composer, Luboš Fišer. And when you’re in Europe, you’re walking on the streets and you see lots of churches, architecture, sculptures and all the paintings. That’s really overwhelming, and I just wanted to stop and to reflect on what’s going on. I felt like I should find compositions which are closer to Canada. I wanted to know how Canadian composers feel: if they grew up here, if they came from a different province or even came from a different country. I was looking for the pieces which are expressing heritage, different emotions, up and downs, and, sometimes not very comfortable emotions.
Janna Sailor: Beautiful, I love that! Remind me, when did you come to Canada?
Zuzana Šimurdová: It was in 2007. I was studying in Montreal, so I arrived as as Québécois. I’m fascinated by cultures. I love to learn different languages, observe what’s going on in their music, and collect all the emotions, which I can then put into the compositions.
After seven years in Montreal with my husband, we spent two years teaching at the university in South Korea. That was another culture shock, but in a positive way. So I learned a lot there and after that, we were just thinking what’s the next
step? We came back to Edmonton, and have been here for 10 years now.
The Creation of Vertical Landscapes
Janna Sailor: Your latest solo album for piano, Vertical Landscapes is truly extraordinary and is receiving some well-deserved recognition, which I’m really thrilled to see.
Zuzana Šimurdová: I didn’t expect it. I was looking for a CD where I can use the piano as a tool. As a pianist, I was looking for different textures and thinking, where should I go? Should I go to the library? But the Centrediscs
streaming library was online, so that was amazing.
Janna Sailor: Yes, we’ve got so many albums available to listen to!
Zuzana Šimurdová: It really helped a lot. I was opening the scores, and it’s good to have those samples, like a sample of the first page, because I was checking the title and how it was written. Based on my experience as a musician, you can tell whether that is a fit or not. I was imagining in my mind how I wanted to express Canadian heritage, and I asked myself “what is it? What’s going on?” I was looking for pieces about nature, like when you stand in front of a mountain, and it’s just reflecting, it’s almost pulling out your emotions. So I found Joan Hansen’s Vertical Landscapes, and when I played the first page, I was blown away by the colors from that piece and from the depth of the bass notes. I thought it was amazing, so I started diving in more and more. And because I’m also a piano teacher, I teach lots of RCM songs, and there’s lots of Canadian music inside. I found a Christine Donkin piece, and I was looking to see if Christine had something not for intermediate-level, but for advanced piano, and I found these amazing pieces, including Snowstorm.
Janna Sailor: Nothing more Canadian then that!
Zuzana Šimurdová: Exactly. So it started from Joan Hansen’s Vertical Landscapes, followed by Christine’s Donkin’s Snowstorm. Then, a friend of mine, Terri Hron, who has Czech heritage, asked to write a song for me, and wrote Memories of Trees. I was going through it and I was like, “Oh my goodness, that’s a difficult song!”. It took me six months to find the DNA of the composition, because I just wanted to feel the song, find the colours for the particular song and to be able to express it.
Janna Sailor: I love how you say the DNA of the composition. Perhaps some of the DNA is more akin to our own, so it might be easier to understand in the form or in the musical language. And then others, it stretches us, makes us really think differently, and explore new things. That’s amazing, but also challenging.
Zuzana Šimurdová: Yeah, exactly, because some of the songs are very challenging. For example, with Ana Sokolovich’s Prelude and Fugue for GG, I was fascinated by how she’s using the piano keyboard. Not a lot of composers are going towards the upper keyboard, towards almost the end of the keys. When I was working as an accompanist for saxophones, there was lots of French music, and I was fascinated by that, because I felt I could play the last note on the keyboard, or I could play the first note! So I was happy for the prelude, which really goes through the whole keyboard. It’s like you’re almost falling down at the end.
Exploring Colours of the Piano
Janna Sailor: Something about this album is, I feel it really shows off the best things that the piano can do, like the warmest and the most intimate sounds, and but then also very percussive and abrasive when needed. It’s a wonderful exploration of the piano and what it’s capable of.
Zuzana Šimurdová: Oh, thank you so much! Before I had the experience, I had an album based on one composer, and once you discover the style, it’s almost repetitive. So I wanted to go and grasp different compositions and different moods. I was thinking after such a happy, very emotional song, I just wanted you to cool down and just play with the vibes and colors, because you will not stay in one emotional zone, you cross different layers of sound. From the pianistic perspective, there’s so much to discover and so much to stretch, like all the technical elements, but also like psychological elements, playing with time, the atmosphere and the air, just to create something scary as well.
Janna Sailor: Yes! There’s so many things right at our fingertips as musicians,
literally.
Zuzana Šimurdová: Exactly, and if the piano can deliver that, it’s wonderful.
Programming Female Composers
Janna Sailor: So something else that’s really extraordinary about this project is that it’s all female composers. Tell me more about that.
Zuzana Šimurdová: When I was teaching and learning about different composers, I would consider these “masculine elements”. There’s a certain structure that professors were always showing us – the phrase, the climax, or all the harmonic aspects. I started thinking “how do women approach this?” How do they see the structure? How do they feel? Do they need more time for expressing one thought, or the phrase? I decided to observe the construction of the phrase: how it’s expressed, what’s the division between the hands, how much pedal is used to express the frames, different timings. And I cannot say if, that’s particular for women, but I found lots of fugues when I went through the [CMC’s] database.
Janna Sailor: That’s interesting, because it’s a very technical form that we traditionally associate with Bach and very masculine composers.
Zuzana Šimurdová: I felt that because women manage so many tasks at once, maybe that’s also expressed in music because we like the polyphony, different voices. So that was interesting to see. I also saw fugues, but no preludes, nothing really dreamy.
Janna Sailor: Tell us about this journey that you had to go on, both personally and artistically, as you went through the process of preparing and living with these works over a profound period of time.
Zuzana Šimurdová: When I went through the Joan Hansen piece, I understood it right away. With Kristin Flores’ Remembrance, I sat with it for about two months before coming back to it, and let the sound grow in my mind. It’s also pragmatic aspects too, like, I’ve seen the score, how it’s written, all the different articulations and styles and if I’m satisfied with the sounds. It’s the tone quality, and if there’s enough emotions that reflect the tone. It really depends from piece to piece. For example, with Terri Hron’s The Memories of Trees, it doesn’t sound difficult, but it was the most difficult one for me to learn, because of the Gamelan rhythms she uses, and I wanted to feel the rhythms, not just sound like I learned them, as if a tree really is moving. I wanted to have fun, but sometimes it will not feel that way while getting there. It’s a process and sometimes it’s painful, but now it’s one of my favourites.
With Alexina Louie’s Music for Piano, it reminded me of how I didn’t ask the composers initially. I was just going through the title, through the harmonies and through the score, seeing how it’s written, and imagining the sound. After the songs were written, I asked them for their input and inspiration. But I didn’t want to be influenced by that. For example, Wilful Ignorance is a very rhythmic piece, but it has a rallentando for two measures, and it completely changes the story. So I’m looking for those moments which if you are not really patient enough, we might forget them. It helps push the song to the next dimension, and were fun to discover. Those tiny moments really matter a lot.
Janna Sailor: You worked with 11 very different and distinct composers, in creating this album. What makes for a successful, artist composer collaboration
Zuzana Šimurdová: It really goes down to the art of composition, how well it’s written, and that it’s really possible to almost decode it.
Janna Sailor: How well they’re able to capture their ideas and convey them through the page.
Zuzana Šimurdová: Exactly! It’s also the articulation details, different characters, different compositional styles. It’s asking “how can I use the piano?” Can I use it with a different style of technique? Can I breathe with the sound? How long does the sound travel? So yeah, these different structures. There were so many compositions that I wanted to pick, and I feel I should make five CDs.
Janna Sailor: Is a second Vertical Landscapes in the works?
Zuzana Šimurdová: That would be great, because I wanted to record Christine Donkin’s whole suite, but I could only choose Snowstorm, because I felt like there’s a contrast. Sometimes it’s really painful just to choose a few songs. I had this project in my mind for so long, and thought it would never happen. It just took one sentence from a colleague who told me of a grant deadline with the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I never would. It was just exactly everything that I needed to make it happen. So I’m really thankful, as sometimes it can be hard to find these partnerships.
Janna Sailor: And the best things always happened at the last minute, so we need that extra push to get it over the line.
Zuzana Šimurdová: Exactly, and because it was crystallizing already, I had the time to sit down and write everything. It was a very smooth and easy process.
Promoting Contemporary Music
Janna Sailor: Now that you’ve released the CD out into the wild, and you’ve performed the pieces, what has the personal response been that you’ve received to the work as a whole, and the pieces you are performing?
Zuzana Šimurdová: From the audience they’re mentioning “I didn’t expect this, like, it’s beautiful music. It’s piano, but it’s contemporary”. I think that the word contemporary, sometimes scares people, so I would call it like “the music nowadays”.
Janna Sailor: Music of our time.
Zuzana Šimurdová: Yes, music of our time, which feels a bit more approachable. But I didn’t want to be approachable, I wanted to just express everything I could. And some of those works are not easy. But the audience was purchasing my CD and told me how beautiful my music was. Some of them only go for music of the Classical and Romantic eras, and they just came for the concert to support me, but were surprised. So I think music is not aging. If you will find the right expressions, it can be one month or 300 years old. It takes time, research, and being critical. Not letting go of the piece, or thinking it’s “just” an easy piece. It’s really being respectful of the composer. Let it goes because you cannot influence it further.
Janna Sailor: What do you hope that the listener will take away from their experience with the CD?
Zuzana Šimurdová: That there’s future, and that there’s amazing composers that should be recognized. And when people are searching for new repertoire and also pianists. There’s so much to discover, and what we are learning as classically trained pianists is that we can just push it towards the next level and have fun with that. Put all our emotions and perception of colours in there.
Check out the entire conversation on our weekly podcast, Musing! Available on podcast streaming platforms and YouTube!
To purchase Vertical Landscapes, click HERE