Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?
I’ll start with the fact that I don’t know where my music comes from. I most often feel like a vessel more than a craftsman. School and teachers often bawk at this answer and I wish it was different for me, but my original music has most often just happened out of a spur of the moment idea or improvisation. I’m constantly trying to learn anything through podcasts, YouTube videos, cooking, talking with friends, listening to all sorts of music so that when the time comes I have everything I need at my fingertips. I find surrounding myself with as many enriching things that I can brings out the best of my muse. Having said that, I tend to find the “clave” is always in my music and I love 12/8 and making music that sounds very simple but is quite syncopated if you actually know where the beat is…much like music of the African-Diaspora, India, and all the great folkloric music.
I can say Bach has had a profound effect on me, along with the sound of Philip Glass and cinematic music. Studying Afro-Caribbean, Brazilian, Colombian, and the various West-African music and sounds have been crucial to my love of music, improvisation, and turning those into “compositions”. Before I started playing classical music, I was taking doumbek lessons, so I must state the importance of Arabic music to my understanding of music, sound, and rhythm. Personally, I struggle to narrow it down because I’m quite self-taught when it comes to composition, and I truly try to just trust the music I make and bring in great people around me to make it come to life on recordings. It feels so complicated and so simple simultaneously.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
I struggle a lot with confidence while also being quite fearless a lot of the time. I struggle with imposter syndrome especially as a composer and pianist, though I hope in time that will fade. I struggle with balancing ambition with patience and trust. When I’m in the thick of it, I can swing from feeling like someday I’ll make it to feeling like studying music has been a complete waste of money, time and who am I kidding…how would a kid from St. Louis who started playing in late-high school going to become anything. A career in music is hard and gruelling. With streaming paying nothing and the whole industry is basically pay to be featured or recognized while it being expensive to make great sounding music…it’s hard in a way only other musicians, artists and entrepreneurs really understand.
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?
For me, what comes to mind first is the pleasure of someone trusting you and your sound to create something for them to play – that is nice. I think someone giving you a goal, objective, deadline can be helpful to get yourself in the zone. Challenges for me are wondering whether they will like it, whether you can adjust it to their feedback, and whether you will like it in the end after the collaboration has ended. I haven’t been commissioned much, I mostly write music and then go out and perform it, record it, and recently tried to get a label behind it…I’m rarely asked to write something, usually I write it and then people want to play it with me.
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?
I love working with collaborators, that’s a real awesome experience. I love to be surprised by collaborators, I love to see what they bring, what their point of view is, what their ideas are, where their taste takes a piece and all of that. It’s very exciting and I’m just so curious to hear how other people hear my work. When you click with a collaborator, it feels like meeting a friend from a previous lifetime, really special.
Of which works are you most proud?
I really am always soothed by playing my piece Absent and it’s a piece I’ve played with the most people and in the most different settings. It’s a very simple yet complex piece that has a sound bath, meditative and healing quality that I think slows down the heart rate of anyone who has ever heard it. It’s just so nice, easy to learn but has a high ceiling of how far you can take it. My recent piece Giverny feels like a real gift given to me. I remember playing it for the first time and just being amazed by what I was hearing and how much I was moved by it…it felt so personal yet like someone else was speaking through me, like a future self was giving me a peak at who I might be in the years to come.
How would you characterise your compositional language?
I work a lot with cells, ostinatos, and sound worlds. I often for the piano or vibraphone create textures and sound spaces to live in, escape to and heal in. I love to create work that has many ways to interpret and experience the beat giving each listen possibly their own personal experience of the music and sound.
How do you work?
Well, I work all the time. I’m working on working less and giving myself more time to get back into studying and deep practice, but having the money to fund my projects means I take a lot of gigs, work multiple jobs in the arts and I’m basically constantly fund-raising through my limited salaries and freelancing. I tend to have periods where I am writing more music and improvising more in which I take video recordings on my phone and then try to play the piece over and over until it’s engrained. Then, I perform it for a while and then record it and continue to find more things the piece wants to tell me, where it wants to go, where it can go and what it can be. I try to constantly listen to what the piece wants.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
Oof, my ego says it’s being as big as Brian Eno or Nils Frahm, but I know that I’m already successful, that I’m respected by people I deeply respect, and that I’ve already lived my dream. Success is making music that moves another person.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring composers?
Trust yourself, write the music you want to listen to, make music for yourself and trust that if it excites or moves you, it will move others.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
Tell genuine stories of genuinely great musicians who don’t come from money, privilege or have been well known for decades. I think having older people step aside and step down and showcase the working-class musicians more than the glamorous celebrity artists. I think more human stories…and a tv show that was made by musicians for musicians could be helpful in reaching a broad audience…but honestly I have no idea.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about, but you think we should be?
…there are still layers of toxicity in the music industry, and we’re not taking about it enough. Even from schools to organisations, venues and even sometimes the audience that feeds it. Artists should not have to constantly shy away from telling the truth out of fear that they will not be believed and lose lots of essential work from the outcomes of the truth.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
Oof, my ego says it’s being as big as Brian Eno or Nils Frahm, but I know that I’m already successful, that I’m respected by people I deeply respect, and that I’ve already lived my dream. Success is making music that moves another person.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring composers?
Trust yourself, write the music you want to listen to, make music for yourself and trust that if it excites or moves you, it will move others.
Composer, percussionist and pianist Julian Loida’s new album ‘Giverny’ was released on 19 May 2023 with Gratitude Sound. The pieces included on this album were fine-tuned during the pandemic, when Julian revisited various tracks during lockdown, reinvigorating his music with the emotions and experiences that were felt for the first time throughout this tense and unusual time.
Called “one of the Boston music scene’s most valuable players” by The Art Fuse, Julian Loida is a percussionist, composer, and producer. Loida’s musical curiosity and open-mindedness has propelled him towards a wide-range of sounds, genres, and artistic endeavors. He’s performed jazz, folk, and classical, collaborating with dancers, visual artists, songwriters/composers, and musicians of all stripes. The thirst to participate in and experience this range of sounds is partly a product of Loida’s synaesthesia. Music is a full- body experience for him, with sounds often invoking involuntary sensations of colour, texture, or even taste.
MEET THE ARTIST 