An Interview With Dennis Shafer
2008 Legacy Prize Winner Dennis Shafer (biography) believes in bringing music alive through connections with poetry, dance, study of traditional music, work with composers, and improvising. This year he has engagements in New England, France, Thailand, and Australia. At right is a concert Dennis performed recently in Kansas at Stan Herd’s Art Studio (www.stanherdart.com), combining classical, contemporary, and folk music.
In this interview we explored topics of his teaching and performance.
Susan Centofanti: Given the type of music you perform, how do you like to change the aesthetic of performance from the usual classical recital or concert?
Dennis Shafer: I enjoy interdisciplinary performances because of all the possibility that arises from collaboration with other musicians, poets, dancers, visual artists, and videographers. I spend hours thinking about how a space is used and the order and content of the program to best transmit my art to the audience. I like having the audience participate and become part of the space we’re in, which means listening to recordings of the music won’t ever be the same as being there.
SC: You also like to study and transcribe many forms of traditional music: Egyptian, Hungarian, Serbian, and now Turkish music. Why not stick to just one?
DS: I feel a tremendous amount of energy and life coming from traditional art, that I just can’t resist learning. When I travel to another country and I cannot understand the language, I feel connected to the culture when I transcribe their folk melodies. I make wonderful connections with people there, too, playing in their living rooms or out on the street! I met one of my dearest friends and Egyptian percussionists Hussein El Azab while playing in the Metro in Paris. We formed an Egyptian dance ensemble together, and have played on numerous occasions, sharing melodies and rhythms.
Traditional music also enriches my knowledge and interpretation of classical and modern music. I have come to a better understanding of Bela Bartok’s Mikrokosmos and Brahms’ Hungarian Dances through my studies of Gypsy and Hungarian melodies, for example.
SC: Do you like to improvise?
DS: Yes! I feel very strongly that improvising—not just jazz, but improvising in every style of music is essential to playing something well. If you cannot improvise in the style of the music you are playing, then you will never perform it well. You have to put yourself in the composer’s frame of mind, and try to understand the story behind the music. When I ask my students to forget the notes in front of them and make something up in the same style, they play with much more character and musicality.
SC: What do you enjoy most about teaching?
DS: I love seeing my students give well-prepared performances with and for others. It is a joy to see a performer gradually build confidence, presence, and listening for other performers on stage. For these reasons, I arrange for my students to perform as much as possible.
One highly memorable student performance was a concert in Paris, when my students, ranging in age from 11 to 45, all played an arrangement I made of Watermelon Man on stage with piano, bass, and drums. They also played smaller arrangements and solos in a small theater in Montmartre. At another performance in the U.S., my students performed at the town hall for a Christmas tree lighting.
SC: What did you like the most about your conservatory studies in France?
DS: I was fascinated by their system of pedagogy. In order to become a teacher in a conservatory in France, a teacher needs to have many hours of teaching observed and critiqued by a qualified professor, which I haven’t seen at the university level in the same way in the United States. In America a teacher does “student teaching,” or professional development, but usually in a group teaching setting. I learned so much from teaching a private lesson in front of my professor, who then critiqued my teaching. In France, a teacher then needs to pass a final exam where he teaches lessons in front of a jury panel of professionals and government officials. The conservatory system works quite differently—private lessons are usually observed constantly by all students in the studio, drifting in and out of the room, watching important repertoire be played and critiqued by their teacher.
Dennis is currently an Artist Diploma candidate at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. More of his work can be found online at www.dennisshafer.com.