Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music and who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
When I was a child I was good, average piano student growing up in northern Michigan and later California and didn’t have much exposure to concerts. Then I started playing recordings (LP’s at the time) that my mother had, became hooked, and decided to make piano my career, much to the confusion of my father. When I studied first at Juilliard and later at Indiana University, one of my teachers was John Ogdon. I’d say he has been the greatest influence on me. His iconoclastic yet gentle personality and limitless curiosity and interests inspired me greatly.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Well, the usual ones for sure, monitoring how many projects I take on at a time without getting overwhelmed, and frustration at how it’s often easier to make a living doing things you’re not as good at and not so much doing what you love the most.
Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?
In 2015 I released the complete piano works of R. Nathaniel Dett on the Navona label – 2 discs worth. It got a Critics Choice nod by Gramophone UK and gets played on radio quite a lot, especially in the US and UK. Dett was a marvelous African descent composer in the early 20th century who I got to know in the 90’s and was always attracted to the beauty and meaning in his work. He was known more in black musician’s circles, but I felt that he really should be appreciated by a much wider audience. So I’ve become a sort of expert on his piano music and often give talks and performances on it. Most of my programs include one of his works.
Which particular works/composers do you think you perform best?
Really all over the place, but somehow I always end up going back to Beethoven. He lives with me through all the stages of life – it grows and changes with me. I also do a lot of new music – I really enjoy the experience of working with composers and bringing new music to life and making a new creation in sound. Lately I’ve become more attracted to Schumann and Chopin. Very different from each other but the immediacy and honesty of their music speaks to me more than Rachmaninoff, for instance.
What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?
I have many non-musical interests – sciences, history, the history of science, the natural world. Walking, meditating, reading – all of these keep my mind going and somehow inform what I do when I’m playing.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
I have a strong interest in music that others don’t play. There’s a big tendency in the classical music world, and getting worse, of playing the same works over and over, perhaps in hopes that more tickets will get sold. But there is so much marvelous music written that people don’t hear. And that’s especially so with composers that don’t fit the stereotypes we have, women, composers of color. So I’m searching and curious, like my teacher John Ogdon was. I started a series during the pandemic, Music for the Soul, that combines lesser-known works, often by women or black composers, with more famous works. It was online at the beginning, now we are live, which of course is much better. There’s information about it on my website.
I like having collaborators that share my interests – one of my conductor friends asked me to do the Amy Beach concerto this spring – really looking forward to getting to know this!
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
I always like spaces where there’s more chance to interact with the audience, like churches, which often have great acoustics. The home for the Music for the Soul series is in a church that now exists as an event venue called 1867 Sanctuary. Since I play unusual repertoire a lot, it needs some introduction to the audience and the more intimate that is the better.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
Well, that’s a question that animates so many of us! I think the more musicians are involved in the community the more people will be interested in what they do. Don’t just do music, become involved in other things and people will be curious about this crazy thing you do!
What is your most memorable concert experience?
One of them has to be at Symphony Space in NYC – the theater the recital was in was founded by Leonard Nimoy. The Trekkie in me was in awe!
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
If I move my listeners, then I am successful, if not then I am not. Money and fame are so capricious that one cannot measure success on them – be careful for what you wish for. If you’re doing something that brings you and others joy, then that’s successful. You define it for yourself.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring musicians?
Be curious and adventurous. Develop interests in things outside of music. They feed your soul, and that’s what music is – the expression of lived experience. Don’t be obsessed with fame or follow what others define as success. Question everything you learn and come to your own understanding. Above all, get out of the practice room sometimes and find beauty everywhere.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?
Musicians, especially in the piano world, are maddeningly competitive. The world often doesn’t value what we do enough and we all need to support each other. For example, I think of church musicians, whose rights as providers of beauty are astonishingly lacking. We all need to organize better.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
I’d say a whole year living in national parks. There is so much spectacular beauty that changes every day and with the seasons. Endless renewal and wonder. Like being in God’s lap.
DIS/ENTANGLEMENTS Music by Randy Bauer performed by pianist Clipper Erickson is released on 13 October 2023 on the Navona Records label
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