How can classical musicians balance their identities as people and as musicians? with Lainie Fefferman

Loving the idiosyncratic and the zany, Lainie Fefferman is a composer, performer, and experimenter in the performative application of emergent music technologies. Her most recent commissions have been from Tenth Intervention, So Percussion, Make Music NY, Experiments in Opera, ETHEL, Kathleen Supové, TILT Brass, James Moore, Eleonore Oppenheim, JACK Quartet, and Dither. Her one-woman voice & electronics feminist song performance project "White Fire," an electroacoustic meditation on the heroines of the Hebrew Bible, premiered at Merkin Hall in 2016 and she has been touring it internationally ever since. She is a co-founder and director of New Music Gathering, an annual conference/festival hybrid event for the international New Music Community. She got her doctorate in composition from Princeton University and is a programming/performing member of Princeton-based laptop ensemble Sideband. She is currently a professor of Music & Technology at Stevens Institute of Technology and recently concluded her time as artist in residence at Nokia Bell Labs.The Question of the Week is, "How can classical musicians balance their identities as people and as musicians?" Lainie and I discuss the dichotomy of living in the classical music world during the twenty-first century, why she likes to include fun facts about herself in her biography, how she thinks about audiences during her compositional process, and how she would define a happy, healthy, and balanced musician. You can find out more about Lainie on her website, lainiefefferman.com, and on Instagram @lainiebobainie.

Om Podcasten

Con Fuoco is a podcast about the field of classical music and its future. The objective of the podcast is to discuss the current state of the field of classical music and where it is headed in the future. Each episode will center around one question regarding our world of classical music, which I discuss with a guest who I believe can offer insight and answers into each subject and its future. The aim of this podcast is not to answer these questions, but to spark conversations about who we are. This podcast is meant to utilize our greatest strength as human beings - the ability to share and discuss information and use our unified ideas to better our communities. Con Fuoco can be found on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. This podcast is hosted by conductor and violinist, Daniel Cho. Daniel is currently based in Oregon and serves as Conducting Fellow of the Eugene Symphony and Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Mozart Players and Eugene Opera. If there is a question you would like to submit, a guest you would like to see on the show, or if you would like to discuss anything on the show, please email at [email protected] Thank you for listening!