Guitar
innovator Kevin Kastning may be best known for his modern approach
to acoustic, ambient guitar instrumental music, yet hes also
gaining acclaim for his mesmerizing piano albums. That piano side
of Kevin Kastning is best explored on Ethereal III,
the 2019 album by Kevin and fellow guitarist Sándor
Szabó. Compared to Piano I, the early 2019 album
of solo piano music by Kevin, the May 2019 release of Ethereal
III features Kevins acoustic piano enhanced by computerized
orchestrations by Sándor. The computerized orchestral sounds
by Sándor is a great way to frame Kevins experimental
acoustic piano music. Eschewing the popular orchestral software, on
Ethereal III, Sándor incorporates recorded samples from
real string instruments, which werent modified. Even though
these string sounds are sampled, the idea seems to get around the
idea of assembling various violins, cellos and double bass played
by live musicians in the same room. Commenting on the unique approach
of the entire Ethereal series, and especially this third installment,
Kevin explains, "When Sándor and I were discussing
and formulating the concepts for the Ethereal album series, one thing
upon which we both agreed was that each record in the series must
be different than the others in the series. We didnt want to
repeat ourselves, and wanted the Ethereal series to be something apart
and perhaps even partitioned off from our acoustic guitar duo works.
This direction provided Sándor with the freedom to explore
our music using electric guitar and placing its environment within
the context of my acoustic environment. That alone set us off into
an entirely new direction." Classical music purists may rebuff
it at first, even though the modern day technology of editing samples
into recordings is expedient and the net result, in this case, sounds
quite excellent. Kevin and Sándor are true pioneers of the
guitar world and on the release of Ethereal III, they also
establish themselves as trendsetters in the world of 21st century
recording technology. www.kevinkastning.com
/ www.sandorszabo.com
mwe3.com presents an interview with
Kevin Kastning and Sándor Szabó
The Ethereal III interview
mwe3:
With such a depth of experience between the two of you, did you seek
to create Ethereal III as a 21st century crossover classical
masterpiece? Although Ethereal II sounded very avant-garde
and experimental in the best sense of the word, is Ethereal III
the album to bring you to the attention of the serious classical
music listener?
Kevin Kastning: Thank you for the kind words, Robert. I had
nothing regarding classical crossover in mind when I proposed the
concept to Sándor. I do not think in terms of categories of
music or how to label a project. I can only follow where the music
needs to go. I think Ethereal III was the next compositional
level of evolution of some of the work on which Sándor and
I have been working over the past couple of years in this series.
Sándor Szabó: To be honest we did not have intention
to do some kind of dedicated music for the classical listeners. We
do not think in styles as crossover or something. If we have a musical
idea we try to find the devices to make it happen. Of course there
was a compositional reason why we created the Ethereal III
with this kind of sound. Both as a composer and guitar player I have
always felt the limitations of the guitar. This might be one of the
reasons why classical guitar occupies a lonely place within the classical
music world. Not everyone can compose for guitar; only those who intimately
know the limitations and possibilities of the instrument. Even if
someone knows the guitar well, the instrument does not offer the necessary
levels of polyphony and tonal ranges. Since the beginning of my career
I have had my own compositional concept to create music. The guitar
proved to be unsuitable to achieve them. This is why I started to
use more strings, to use special tunings, etc., to extend the possibilities
of the instrument. I tried to follow the way others compose for guitar;
however, I encountered new obstacles. As a composer, I decided to
suspend composing using only guitar. Instead, I wanted to compose
in a different way to avoid the limitations of guitar. Ethereal
III is my first attempt in composing for a chamber orchestra,
and also the very first album where I do not play guitar and I appear
only as a composer creating the orchestration behind Kevin Kastnings
piano pieces.
mwe3:
In his Ethereal III liner notes, Sándor expressed the
need to build upon and go beyond the guitar-centric based ideas that
are featured on your earlier works. How and in what ways, melodically
and harmonically, do the orchestral string sounds accentuate and enhance
the piano-based ideas on Ethereal III? The album is truly an
orchestral sounding masterpiece.
Kevin Kastning: Sándor articulated it very well, but
I dont see or hear our previous work as being guitar-centric,
other than the fact that our guitar-family instruments were the vehicles
for the realization of those compositions and settings. Its
all just compositions. In other words, I wouldnt describe Mahlers
work as being orchestra-centric. He was a composer, and his compositions
were orchestrally realized. It is the same for the work of Sándor
and I.
Sándor Szabó: I cannot go into deep details of
the compositional process but the main difference is that there was
not a guitar in my hands when I composed. Some parts were in my head,
some were written down on a manuscript, some parts were just born
in front of the computer seeing the editor window of my ProTools.
It was a very time consuming and complicated process. I used dozens
of compositional tools to create special harmony textures which was
impossible to create with a guitar in my hands. I had to open my ears
and imagination and the music started to be born. I worked with in
4-5 melody voices to create canons, small fugue structures and the
harmonies are only the consequences of this polyphony. As working
materials I used exotic tonal scales, modern pentonal scales.
mwe3:
Why was the decision made to only feature piano-based orchestrations
on Ethereal III? Did you feel that Kevins piano was more
suited towards the orchestrations Sándor had in mind to frame
Kevins piano compared to the guitar-based compositions on your
other albums? Will you be featuring the orchestrations more in the
future on the guitar compositions as well? Will the orchestrations
feature even different string combinations?
Kevin
Kastning: When Sándor and I were discussing and formulating
the concepts for the Ethereal album series, one thing upon which we
both agreed was that each record in the series must be different than
the others in the series. We didnt want to repeat ourselves,
and wanted the Ethereal series to be something apart and perhaps even
partitioned off from our acoustic guitar duo works. This direction
provided Sándor with the freedom to explore our music using
electric guitar and placing its environment within the context of
my acoustic environment. That alone set us off into an entirely new
direction. Ethereal I and II were examples of this new
direction. During the recording sessions of some of the early pieces
for my record Piano I, Sándor asked me to compose and
record a set of five short piano pieces using specific guidelines,
which I did. I sent those pieces off to him, and totally forgot all
about it. Then at one point on the 2018 European tour, Sándor
played a recording for me; it was a piece for piano and cellos. I
really liked it, and asked him who it was. He told me it was my set
of five short piano pieces and his cello overdubbing. This made a
very strong impression on me. A few months later when we were discussing
the direction for Ethereal III, I suggested that I limit myself
to all piano for the record. He agreed, and I started work on some
new piano pieces. As I was recording the new pieces, I kept thinking
about the piano and cello piece from the tour. It was a strong piece,
and very different from anything wed ever done. So I proposed
to Sándor that instead of piano and electric guitar that this
record be piano and orchestrations. It was a pretty bold move, and
I didnt know what Sándor would say. Fortunately, he liked
the idea, and so we set off in that direction. Yes, we are planning
to do some orchestrational recordings with me on my acoustic guitar
family instruments. That will be a future entry in the Ethereal series
for certain.
Sándor
Szabó: I always loved Kevins piano pieces and one
day I showed him a version where I added 4 cellos. It was possible,
because Kevin composes sparse structures, which lets me compose and
add further layers to it. After he heard it he suggested me to go
ahead with this idea, so I started to compose on his piano pieces.
Piano and string orchestra sounds beautifully together so I started
to think in cellos, because it is my favorite string instrument and
I see more sounding possibility in than it was achieved in the classical
music so far. We are planning to combine cello orchestra with two
guitars, so somewhere in the future we come out with a very special
album.
mwe3: I wasnt that familiar with the computerized orchestral
software used in coloring music on the new album. Sándor said
that the popular software he knew of wasnt good enough. I must
say that the orchestrations make this album a highly unusual though
quite rewarding listening experience. Can you say something about
the strings software that is featured on the album and how does it
compare to other software as well as say how it would compare to using
actual string instruments or even venerable string based instruments
like the mellotron or chamberlain? I guess using real strings is impossible
for this album but also true in most albums being released these days.
Sándor
Szabó: Yes, the sound is unusual, mostly because I used
4-8 cellos, 1 violin and 2 double basses to create this sound. This
setup is not typical at all in even in the contemporary classical
music, so it cannot sound very familiar, but I wanted to do something
unusual and this is why I used this instrument setup. I did not use
computerized orchestral software. Maybe it is strange, but I have
chosen a quite old method to build the music and the sound. I worked
with a cello player and I recorded many hundreds of differently played
notes as samples. These were recorded by microphones and I used those
sound samples as sound files in my ProTools just like the recorded
piano sounds. The cello sounds were not modified or optimized. To
work with these samples demanded much more work and time, but the
sound has been individually unique; for example, containing random
sound elements naturally occurring in live playing. So all what you
hear on the recording is played notes without using orchestral software.
This can be a ridiculous working method for a professional composer
who composes for example sound tracks for movie using developed orchestral
software, but this made me different options. I pulled the notes each
by each to the editor window because I wanted to avoid the options
which are readily offered by orchestral software, and in this way
I was guided only by my imagination. As a result my orchestration
sounds more organic and less uniform than the software orchestration.
Software is useful for working fast, but the sounding result is always
the same, kind of sterile and digital.
mwe3:
Can you tell us when the music on Ethereal III was recorded
and how the project evolved from when Kevin recorded his tracks and
when Sándor took the tracks and added the orchestral parts?
What was discussed when the idea first came up to record an album
of this scope and dimension? I know its nearly impossible for
independent musicians to travel thousands of miles to record music
and the internet has not only made that so much easier but advancements
in the high tech world has also made the end results near fastidious
in its pursuit of sonic perfection.
Kevin Kastning: It was recorded in December 2018. When we started
on this project, we both thought it would be a very long-term project,
possibly requiring a full year of composing and recording sessions.
But after I recorded the first piano piece and sent it to Sándor,
something happened. Something just took over and within a couple of
weeks, all the piano pieces were completed. As I worked on the next
piano piece, Sándor would be working on the previous one, so
he was one piece behind me. It didnt take him long at all to
finish the orchestrations. So this massive recording project that
we thought would be a full year was actually completed in about three
weeks.
Sándor Szabó: How we collaborate with Kevin is
not so typical. We send recorded parts to each other and we do overdubs
to develop the pieces. We know and accept that the result can be very
different what we imagined in the beginning, but we really like it.
This working way has a special excitement of the unpredictable result
which is great and inspiring. We started this kind of remote
working because we live in different continents and economically
it is impossible to make such a project only this way. This is the
blessing of the internet.
mwe3:
What do you think the reaction will be by not only long time fans
of your music but also to classical radio stations and classical music
review magazines and web sites? Do you feel that Ethereal III
be accepted by 21st century classical music aficionados even more
so than your earlier album releases and have you gotten any feedback
on the album yet?
Kevin Kastning: The reviews and emails Ive received from
listeners thus far have been very positive, and it is receiving airplay
in the US. I dont know if the hardcore classical community will
embrace it, but how a new record will be received is never a consideration
for me. This music needed to happen, it needed to be; that was my
only consideration. There is a sizable audience in the US that follows
modern and contemporary classical music; perhaps Ethereal III
will find a home with them going forward.
Sándor Szabó: I was not thinking in reactions,
I just wanted to bring out this music of myself. The classical listeners
it seems to be very traditional for me in Hungary where I live, but
I do not know how is it in the US. I guess it is similar. We would
be outsiders in that circle, so we did not want to correspond to it.
There is a small audience for modern classical and avant-garde music,
they might like this music. I can also imagine listeners who like
movie soundtracks they would probably like these special pieces.
mwe3: The Ethereal III song titles are very unusual
sounding. Can you explain the meanings behind the song titles? Most
people think of Latin as in Spanish but its mostly like ancient
languages right?
Kevin
Kastning: The titles for Ethereal III are all in Latin.
Latin is a classical language, and dates back to the Roman republic
in pre-BC times. I used it to obfuscate the meanings behind the titles,
as I want the listener to find their own meanings, their own messages
in the music and not rely upon or be influenced by preconceptions
that could be imposed by compositional titles.
mwe3: The cover art of all your albums are great but Ethereal
III is truly spectacular and the colors are great. Is there a
story behind the cover art?
Kevin Kastning: The cover art of the Ethereal series were all
done by Tim Paulvé, a French artist. Sándor and I both
felt that Tims highly unique and individualistic work really
fit the Ethereal series; the more electric aspect of the series. Specifically
for Ethereal III, the main colors in the cover art are deep
blue and purple. I felt that the two colors represented Sándor
and I, and the way those two colors strand together is a good metaphor
or analog of the compositions on this record, and how our two compositional
halves melded into a singularity, culminating in something greater
than the two individual halves.
mwe3: So will you follow up with Ethereal IV next time,
maybe featuring the orchestrations with guitars and even percussion?
What plans do you both have for 2019 as far as new recordings and
how about future Greydisc albums being planned for 2019 and beyond?
Kevin Kastning: Ethereal IV is in the can, and will
be released in 2020. It is different from any of the extant Ethereal
series. It does not include orchestrations. For upcoming recordings
in 2019, Mark Wingfield and I are in post-production with our next
album. I will be in the studio this year with Carl Clements to work
on our next projects. Im also working on the next two solo albums;
both of those will be pretty different from the previous solo works.
There are also a few album projects planned with some new collaborators,
so hopefully some surprises coming over the next year or two. Sándor
and I are also mapping out our next two or three projects; both in
the Ethereal series and in our long-running acoustic duo projects.
Sándor Szabó: As much as I know from the release
plan of the Greydisc Records the Ethereal IV would be a special
trio recording with electric and acoustic guitars, percussions and
some oriental instruments.