Keith Kirchoff is a pianist and composer whose work navigate crossroads between classical and modern music. His recordings have been released on Thinking outLOUD Records, New World, SEAMUS, and Zerx labels. He has premiered more than 100 new works, and has performed extensively in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

     Kirchoff will be performing in Chicago soon -- with Chicago Scratch Orchestra at Heaven Gallery on Friday, January 7; during a double-bill concert with Eric Glick Rieman, as part of the Experimental Piano Series at PianoForte on Saturday, January 8; and in a double-bill concert with Eric Glick Rieman at the Experimental Sound Studio on Sunday, January 9. Recently I spoke with Keith about his musical influences, the Electro-Acoustic Piano, and his ongoing projects. 

Dan: How did you first get interested in the arts?

Keith: I have been interested in the arts and the piano for as long as I can remember.  From as early as three, I decided that I would make a career as a composer and pianist.  I've had a rather one-track mind ever since.

Dan: What is an early memory you have of playing the piano?

Keith: When I was little, I used to participate in the MMTA piano competitions.  All of the winners would always perform together in huge piano ensemble pieces in Minneapolis.  The rehearsals were held in the Twin Cities, and, as my family lived in St. Cloud (90 minutes north), my dad and I would have to drive down every Saturday for these rehearsals.  I always enjoyed these little road trips with Dad; we'd do trivia in the car, listen to music, and always catch up on things.  It was a very special time that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Dan: When did you first get interested in new music? 

Keith: By late middle school -- I always hated performing works that other people played, and the older I got, the more pronounced this became.  Thus, if I had to perform a baroque work, I would choose to play Scarlatti instead of Bach, or if I had to play a classical sonata, I would choose Haydn or Dussek instead of Mozart or Beethoven.  It really wasn't until rather late into college that I began going back and learning some more traditional works; and even then, it was for my private study, not for public performance.

Dan: What would you say are the types of music that you find the most exciting and compelling? 

Keith: I have always been drawn to whatever seemed to me at the time to be the most abstract music.  I remember when I first heard Bartók, I was completely blown away.  My teacher in high school used to caution me against Schönberg, and when I first heard Schönberg's Piano Concerto in tenth or eleventh grade, I was so moved I marched right in his studio and argued the merits of this music.  Then, when I first heard Cage when I was 15, it was a life changer.

Dan: Who are some of your favorite composers?

Keith: I absolutely love the early 20th century American Ultra-Modernists, primarily Cowell, Ives, and Antheil.  I think Antheil especially was about a century ahead of his time; his first two violin sonatas are so similar in aesthetic to John Zorn it's quite startling.  And his approach to structure and form is one I have learned a great deal from.  

Dan: What do you like about Charles Ive's music? 

Keith: Well, he's simply one of the greatest composers of all time.  His music is moving on every level -- intellectually, spiritually, emotionally -- and very few composers in the 20th century were able to do that.  

Dan: Earlier you mentioned Henry Cowell. What do you like so much about his music?  

Keith: Cowell changed how I viewed the piano: he was one of the first to really open up the world of possibility in piano composition.  

Dan: I enjoyed watching a video of you playing Henry Cowell’s “Tiger.” What are some things you like about his work?

Keith: Cowell really knew how to think outside the box.  I don't think any single composer has ever done so much to radically alter the perceived capabilities of an instrument.  Prior to Cowell, one only played upon the keyboard with your fingers.  After Cowell, it was accepted that one could also play with your forearms, elbows, or fists on the keyboard and/or play inside the piano by plucking, stoping, muting, or scratching strings.  He was the first to really explore the use of overtones in the piano by silently depressing and holding keys.  I am always drawn to radical thinkers, and Cowell was among the most singularly creative ever.

Dan: Who are some other composers who have influenced you? 

Keith: Two other major influences have been Ligeti and Rzewski.  Ligeti is a master of rhythm; I have often been drawn to rhythmic complexity, but Ligeti's work demonstrated how something as simple as solid 16th notes could be some of the most complex music imaginable.  

Dan: What do you like about Frederic Rzewski's music? 

Keith: Rzewski has been something of a mentor of sorts: I have played much of his music (and love it a great deal), and I have gotten the opportunity to work with him on several occasions and really get to know him better.  He was actually the man most responsible for getting me to write music for myself to play.  Several years ago, I was participating in a composition festival in Cincinnati.  I was there as a composer, not a pianist, and Rzewski could not understand why I wasn't playing my own work; he really heavily chided me for it.  He continued to tell me later that he has always been his own biggest supporter: he knows his work is guaranteed performances if he is going to play it.  I really took that to heart, and the very next year I began programming my own work in every recital and have continued to do so since.

My last major influence has been, oddly enough, the later music of Franz Liszt.  While I have little love of his early virtuosic music, I find his later work to be among the most sublime music ever written. The fact that he was writing atonal and 12-tone music decades before anyone else is astounding.  This music is a model of simplicity and never does too much.  I still have much to learn from this profound music.

Dan: What are some interesting things that you like about composing?

Keith: Although I enjoy performing my own works, I really enjoy hearing other people interpret and perform my music.  Even though I always try to clearly notate what I intend, it is inevitable that the performer will make a decision very different from what I expected; despite it's often radical departure from what I hear in my head, I usually find these changes and differences quite enlightening and wonderful.  I love to know what other people hear in my work: on one occasion, I was told by several people that my political message really came through to them.  This was very startling as I had absolutely no intention of communicating any political message of any kind.  And many people have commented that they feel The Adventures of Norby is a very angry piece which baffles me, because I conceived of it as a humorous and fun piece.  But that is the great thing about art: everything is open to personal interpretation, and there is no right or wrong answer.

Furthermore, I really appreciate his generosity towards his colleagues.  One of his primary goals in life was to support American music, and he went well out of his way to promote, distribute, perform, and finance the work of his fellow American composers.  He truly was one of the most selfless composers in recent history, and I think we all stand to learn much from his model.

Dan: How would you say you approach composing for piano differently from how you approach working with electronics, or something that’s electro-acoustic?

Keith: Writing solo piano music may be the hardest thing for me to compose.  I know I'm not the only composer to argue this, but it is still hard for me to pinpoint why that is.  Perhaps it's because I know the solo piano repertoire better than any other genre, and thus the bar is set much higher.  

Dan: Would you say the method you use to compose both solo instrumental or electro-acoustic music have similarities?

Keith: Yes, I'd say the method is fairly similar.  I spend weeks or sometimes even months (or more), brainstorming the basic ideas of a piece: the general sound world, the themes or motifs, and the form.  Form is very important to me and all my works; I need to feel that I have been taken on a cohesive - though possibly unexpected - journey by work's end.  When I have the basic principles of the piece laid out, I set about writing the piece.

I almost always write acoustic music at the piano; I like to confirm what I hear in my head with actual sounds.  Obviously, electronic music must be written at the computer.  Because of this, acoustic music is in many ways easier to write: I can take my acoustic music manuscripts with me everywhere!

Acoustic music has other compositional advantages: although one hopes to make the score as clear as possible, the actual execution of the music is out of the composer's hands.  We have to trust a performer to practice and present the work in a convincing manner.  Electronic composition is completely different, though, because the composer must write all of the fine-tuned details and nuances directly into the sound waves.  For example, if I want a certain sound to be louder, I need to spend hours mastering that and the surrounding sounds until they are exactly right.  In acoustic music, this attention to sonic detail is the job of the performer.  

Dan: How did you come up with the idea for the Electro-Acoustic Piano?

Keith: I began playing with electronics in college.  I took classes in electronic music composition and also began playing "classics" like Davidowsky's Synchronisms No. 6 (still, I believe, the benchmark for great electro-acoustic music).  A few years after graduation, I was invited by Jeffrey Stolet at the University of Oregon to be the guest pianist at SEAMUS.  While there, I met many of the nation's prominent electronic music composers and really fell in love with the genre.  I began to feel that this was a genre that was going to shape the 21st century, and I wanted to be a part of it.  So I began building a network of composers whom I could ask to write music for this tour.

Although I am certainly not the only pianist specializing in this music, far fewer artists are focussing upon this than acoustic new music.  Because of this - and the physical limitations of needing to own a lot of equipment - this music tends to get less distribution in live settings.  While there are several electronic music conferences, outside of the academic seminar this music wasn't getting heard.  I felt that if this music was, as I suspected, among the freshest, most creative, and most important music being composed today, I needed to help these composers get heard by as wide an audience as possible.

Dan: The video for “praya dubia” is great. How would you describe how you performed that?

Keith: Of all the pieces in the Electro-Acoustic piano tour, this was among the hardest to learn.  It is an amazing work, but so complex, with so many independent contrapuntal lines happening simultaneously, that it was very, very challenging to learn.  The hardest part was hearing how my part fit in with the electronic part; so many events happened very quickly and were very difficult for me to hear at first.  

Thus, after spending a lot of time with the piano part independent of the electronics, I built a click-track and slowed the electronics down by about 50%.  I then continued to play it, section by section, at this speed until I could hear and internally feel how this music fit together.  Then I'd up it to 55%, and so on.  Although I now know how it fits together, I still use a click track in performance; this way I can be 100% sure that all of the motifs and little details are exactly in the right place.

Dan: Are you performing the Electro-Acoustic piano soon? 

The electro-acoustic piano tour will continue in January at a new music festival in Toronto.  There I will be premiering, among other things, Medusa in Fragments by composer Steven Ricks.  It's an amazing 25 minute work for speaking pianist, video, sampler, and surround sound.  Its been a very collaborative work: author Stephen Tuttle wrote the libretto which casts Medusa in a sympathetic light. Medusa is sung/played by soprano Jennifer Welch-Babidge, and filmmaker Ethan Vincent created the video. Video/design/text artist Brent Barson created the titles and animated text which occurs throughout the piece, and composer Per Bloland also assisted Ricks with some of the electronic manipulation of the Welch-Babidge's songs.  I intend to play it for several years as it promises to really be a pretty outstanding work.

Dan: What are your plans for your stay in Chicago?  

Keith: NI'm looking forward to those three upcoming concerts -- I'll be playing solo piano and electronics, and then with Chicago Scratch Orchestra too. We'll be doing a Q&A after the concert at the Experimental Sound Studio. Beyond that, I'm not really sure! There are some friends I would like to catch up with.  Otherwise, probably just walk around, maybe go visit the Art Institute. 

Dan: What other ongoing projects have you been working on? 

Keith: For the past few years, I have been working on a four volume recording project of the music of Leo Ornstein.  With cellist Nick Alvarez I recorded the complete works for cello, and with violinist Gabriel Boyers I will be recording the complete works for violin this summer.  I am also working on an album of his complete songs and a collection of his least known piano pieces.  He's a fascinating composer: living to be 108, he was among the most important musicians in early 20th century America.  His piano compositions are extremely radical and way before their time (he was actually composing tonal clusters before either Ives or Cowell).  Gabriel and myself just premiered Ornstein's Third Violin Sonata - a work only recently discovered.  I am also working on a similar project on the music of John J. Becker (another overlooked composer from the same era).

I also regularly play with a couple of new-music chamber groups: ECCE (based in Boston and NYC) and Electric Noise (with Canadian flutist Solomiya Moroz).  It is plenty to keep me busy!

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