Part 2 of Season 4 Episode 15: Danny Holt - Pianist, Percussionist, Composer, and Producer

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I am clear about the things that matter to me. The most important thing is performing. I'd always juggled performing and teaching and, you know, wearing lots of different hats, but I've always been really passionate about performance. I need to be in a room with other people making music. I actually love it when I see and hear the audience's engagement. I feed off of that, and that combined with whatever kind of nervous excitement I'm already feeling will often inspire me in the moment to do something, to take a risk, to do something maybe that I don't normally do.

Hello, piano enthusiasts!

Welcome back to The Piano Pod with me, Yukimi Song. Today, we're diving deeper into the second installment of this season's 15th episode with pianist, percussionist, composer, and producer Danny Holt. In case you missed part 1 of this exciting episode, exploring Danny's conviction in the irreplaceable magic of live performance, don't worry, you can catch up on all the excitement on your favorite podcasting platform right now. A warm welcome to all our new listeners! This podcast is your all-access pass to the captivating world of piano. In each episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, I interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the industry. Please rate the show and review it on your favorite podcasting platform because every rating and review will help people find my show. And as for our faithful listeners, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude for your loyal listenership. Since 2020, we've been exploring how to make classical music resonate in fresh ways with today's audience. To keep bringing you these episodes, my show relies on your support. Every contribution aids in covering essential podcast expenses, so click the PayPal link in the show notes or visit thepianopod.com to donate. I will personally mail you The Piano Pod's logo sticker as a token of gratitude. So my friends, here is part 2 of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Danny Holt. Please enjoy the show.

You have such an interesting, really eclectic, unconventional career as an artist, and there's none like you, you know. And so I'm curious to find out your origin story. How— oh sure, yeah, how you discover the love for music.

Yeah, I'll try to give you the bullet points, you know. I don't need to start on, you know, on my birthday in 1981. Um, I had very supportive, nurturing parents who always encouraged us to, you know, try and do different things. And so I did not come from a musical household, but, um, when I expressed an interest in music, my parents were happy to sign me up for piano lessons. I actually took Suzuki piano lessons for the first 6 or 7 years. And, um, it worked well for me because I did have a pretty good ear. So for folks who might not be familiar with the Suzuki Method, it really emphasizes at first, especially mostly learning by ear. So your teacher will demonstrate something, but you don't necessarily learn notation at first. Every Suzuki teacher is a little different in terms of how and when they end up integrating that really crucial skill. You know, I think it worked well for me because I I think if I had started with a teacher who had me learn notation, I think I would have easily gotten frustrated because there was, there was so much like musical energy in me already, like bursting to get out. So Suzuki was kind of cool because it was like the quickest path for me to like start playing piano. And then of course I was, I'm sure I was so obnoxious when my teacher finally tried to teach me notation because it's like, why do I need to learn this? And of course, now in my own teaching, I'm such a hypocrite because in my own teaching, I emphasize notation from the beginning because I feel like once you learn that language of music notation, it opens up this whole world of possibility. You know, what an amazing skill to have for someone to put a piece of music in front of you that you've never seen or heard and to be able to play it, right? It's so liberating once you develop that skill. Anyway, so yeah, I did years of Suzuki piano lessons and I also, the public schools in the town where I grew up had a really great music program. So I had a chance to play viola and play in the string orchestra. And like I said, eventually played percussion in the band. I eventually started, I switched from the Suzuki method and started studying with a Russian teacher and she was not the kind of like quintessential, like strict Russian teacher, but she was very intense. And we would have 2 lessons a week. And we would have like an entire hour-long lesson working on like, you know, one measure. You know, it was one of those.

It was intense.

It was great. It was great for me. And I went from, you know, a lot of the Suzuki repertoire really emphasizes like Baroque and classical music. It's kind of small. And then like, I was like, I discovered Pictures at an Exhibition. I was like, whoa, where has this music been hiding? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I tried to, you know, I tried to make the jump from like playing, you know, Haydn to, you know, playing like really big romantic music.

Oh, wow.

And then, yeah, I left home when I was, I think, 15, so that I could attend the last 3 years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, where, you know, as I mentioned, I studied with Michael Kunrod, who you've had on your show. And he was the piano teacher who often taught slightly less conventional students. So, you know, I was a— I was a composition and a piano major. And, you know, like I said, because I was a composition major and I was really interested in 20th century music and experimental music, I wouldn't have been the best fit for some of the other piano teachers who were much more traditional. So I'm very grateful that I had the chance to study with a teacher who was more open-minded. So after Interlochen, I made a choice that concerned Michael and some of my other students. I decided not to attend a conservatory. It was totally the right decision. Although I appreciate that my teachers were concerned, I'm glad that they, you know, I'm glad that they cared about me and that they expressed that, you know, like, are you sure you're making the right decision? But I was sure it was the right thing for me. I feel very grateful that I had the conservatory experience in those 3 years at Interlochen. And I'm not saying that doing 3 years of high school at Interlochen is equivalent to getting an undergraduate degree at Juilliard. I'm not saying that. But I got enough of a taste of that conservatory experience to realize as a senior in high school that if I went to a conservatory for undergrad and I went to another conservatory for master's and then went to another conservatory for doctoral degree, that I'd be in my late 20s or early 30s and I would know like everything there is about this tiny, tiny slice of the world. I wouldn't know shit about anything else. And I really didn't like that thought. And I am, every time I tell this story, I'm always kind of amazed. Like I look back at my like 17-year-old self and I can't believe I had that like foresight. But when I started applying for colleges, I was like, you know, not sure I want to go to a conservatory. I think I might want to learn about the world more broadly. So I ended up going to Hampshire College, which is this wonderful kind of hippie, very small liberal arts college on a farm in western Massachusetts. And it was founded in the late '60s. So it opened in 1970. It was founded in the late '60s by the other colleges in the area, Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and UMass Amherst. Part of what they call the Five College Consortium. And it was created as kind of a radical experiment in higher education. And the idea at Hampshire is that you are there because you are genuinely motivated to learn and you're intellectually curious. And there are no grades and there are no tests and there are no majors per se. You work with a committee of faculty advisors to create your own course of study. And then everyone in their final year or so, 'cause you can structure it in lots of different ways, does a major project, you know, essentially it's a senior thesis.

Really? Wow, that's cool.

This was great for me because I've always been very self-motivated and self-directed, and Hampshire creates this framework where a student like myself can come in and say, all right, here's my vision of what my undergraduate education is going to look like, and then I have these amazing teachers who can help me realize that. So I didn't have to just fit into the box of like, oh, I'm a piano major, or I'm a philosophy major or whatever. So I was able to get a liberal arts education and continue studying music very seriously, pre-professional training as a performer, but within this broader intellectual and cultural and historical context. So in addition to continuing to hone my skills as a pianist, I got really interested in ethnomusicology, so studying music in culture or music as culture. I worked with an ethnomusicologist, I worked with a cultural anthropologist. I also was really interested in music cognition. And you know, that's a field that's advanced a lot since I was in college 25 years ago. And at the time, one of the people teaching in the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College was one of the pioneers in that field of music cognition. I became really interested in like looking at musical cultures from around the world and noticing similarities and differences and trying to understand asking big questions about like those, some of those similarities and some of those differences and whether there was something kind of like, whether there was something fundamental about our humanity or about like how our brains work that would explain some of those similarities and then asking interesting questions about the differences. And so that was kind of the background of my undergraduate experience was continuing to study, essentially being a classical pianist, but learning about music from around the world and, and learning to think about music much more critically. And because Hampshire is so flexible in its design, I was actually able to complete my undergrad in 3 years, and then I had a chance to get a master's degree and teach at Smith College nearby. So I kind of think about the 5-year experience at Hampshire and Smith as kind of one continuous experience, and I wrote my undergraduate thesis and my master's thesis about the country music industry in Nashville. Which has absolutely no connection to my artistic life. Why? Why?

Why?

Yeah, well, you know, my mom moved— when I was in high school, my mom moved from Massachusetts, where I grew up, to Nashville, Tennessee, to run the public television station there, the PBS station. And so I started spending some time in Nashville, and I knew nothing about country music. And traditionally, in the discipline of ethnomusicology, like old-school ethnomusicology, it was kind of problematic because it really was about this Western gaze toward the other and studying, you know, essentially like music from, you know, third world countries. It's changed, it's changed a lot, but it is still a little bit of a problematic discipline in that way. So a lot of ethnomusicology was about, had that kind of dynamic. And so I wanted to choose as a subject of my research, I wanted to choose something that would kind of shine a spotlight like in our own backyard, so to speak, because my mom was living in Nashville and I had a chance to start meeting some people there and I knew nothing about country music. So I could go in tabula rasa, you know, a blank slate and just immerse myself in this particular musical culture that I didn't know anything about, but I'm a musician. So like, you know, there's a certain kind of, you know, I can speak the language to some extent. And ethnographic research was something I really enjoyed as an extrovert. Uh, I loved just meeting people, uh, songwriters, musicians, producers, people involved in all aspects of the music industry there. And just basically asking them to explain to me, like, explain this music to me, explain to me how your business works. And then, you know, in the kind of like geeky academic way, I, you know, I wrote a thesis about how everything I learned ties into, uh, kind of intellectual and cultural arguments about like globalization and capitalism. And, um, I mean, I don't need to, I don't need to geek out about all this academic stuff, but, and it was, it was fun for me because like I said, I, I didn't actually know anything about country music. So it was as if I was going to a foreign country and studying some totally foreign foreign music, you know. But yeah, I had so much material from my, my final project at Hampshire that it was great when I had the opportunity to go to Smith College, who had recently hired a popular music studies scholar, which at the time was a pretty forward-thinking thing to do. It's a little more common now. And he's someone who had actually written a wonderful book about kind of like a cultural history of the electric guitar and had spent some time in Nashville doing research for that book. So whereas at Hampshire, my advisors were an ethnomusicologist and a cultural anthropologist, at Smith, I had the chance to work with someone who was really immersed fully in American popular music. So he was able to give me all sorts of insights and perspective on that research. So I went back to Nashville and did more research and basically wrote like, I kind of envisioned like my thesis at Hampshire as like one chapter, one third of a book, and my master's thesis at Smith as another third. And if I had decided to continue that research, I might have finished and it might have been like a big book about kind of like a cultural historical examination of country music.

But that is fascinating. You seems like you want to be different, but even within that sort of different, you know, group of people, even then you want to be different. Is that what it is?

I just, I mean, I'm just, I'm just really interested in a lot of different things. And but, you know, I mean, in terms of the trajectory of my artistic life and my career, I definitely got to a point after finishing those degrees and doing those big research writing projects, I definitely realized like, okay, like that was really interesting. I'm glad I did that. But like, this is not my life. Like, I don't want to be an academic, you know, because all the time I've been doing this, I was also still very seriously playing the piano. But yeah, I definitely realized this academia is not for me, this kind of insular world of academia. And, you know, while I enjoyed especially the ethnographic research part of it, like I said, the part that had to do with interacting with people, the intense amounts of reading and writing that are required when you're doing that, that part didn't excite me as much. So that's how I finally ended up out in Southern California to get a master's, a second master's degree at CalArts. So that was kind of my return to the conservatory, although CalArts is like the anti-conservatory conservatory. CalArts emphasizes every— I'm so proud of CalArts. It's such an interesting music school. They emphasize everything that is neglected by the traditional conservatory model, right? So emphasizing 20th century music, contemporary music, experimental music, music from non-Western traditions. I mean, increasingly they're doing really interesting things with like, you know, more very broadly defined, you know, pop music, but like really smart, creative, innovative approaches to that. People doing all sorts of interesting things with electronics and technology that are like way over my head. So yeah, CalArts was a really wonderful place for me to be. And that's where I finally felt like, okay, now I'm finally where I really belong. And because I did my master's at CalArts and had started performing professionally in LA, it made sense to make a life and a career for myself there. So not long after graduating, I ended up teaching at CalArts for years, and I had a busy studio of private students, juggled as, as, as freelancers do, juggled a number of different part-time jobs, had some, some wonderful residencies at some private high schools in LA that were really rewarding and fun and teaching teaching and co-teaching courses about like Michael Jackson and the Star Wars films. And like, yeah, I'm really— do lots of different things.

Wow. Then is that where you decided to start this Desert Hot Springs Classic Classical Concert Series?

Oh yeah, that's a whole nother story.

Yeah, yeah. Can we, can we talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, yeah. So after, after living in Los Angeles for most of my 20s, I gradually realized that I wasn't really a big city person. LA is a very exciting place to live. It's an exciting city, and I'm definitely more of an LA person than a New York person. Okay. I learned that about myself a long time ago. I need, I need, I need some space. Okay. But yeah, I went out to the desert, the Palm Springs area, which is like a 2-hour drive east of Los Angeles, and I completely fell in love with the desert. Like, it blew me away. It actually, like, I I'd never had this experience before, but it was like calling to me. It was like, "You need to come here. You must come live in the desert." So I ended up buying my first home in Desert Hot Springs, which is a small city north of Palm Springs. And for a few years, I was mostly living in LA and then basically going out to the desert on the weekends. A lot of people in LA do this. They have like a place in the desert that they go to you know, on weekends and holidays, 'cause it's the relatively quick, easy drive and it's just, it's much quieter and slower there and it's just, the desert just has this awesome natural beauty. So, I really fell in love with the desert and ultimately after splitting my time for a few years, I ended up moving full-time to the desert and that's when I started thinking about, you know, okay, well, if I'm really gonna live here, like, you know, what kind of, How could I get involved in the community? What kind of contribution could I make to the community? And I was like, I don't know if anyone here is really interested in classical music, but like, that's what I have to offer. So let's see what happens. So one day it was actually, it's kind of funny how this transpired. Some, some friends from New York were visiting, a wonderful pianist and cellist. And, but it was August and like August in the desert is miserable. It's like really, really hot and everyone just wants to stay home in their air conditioning. And also a lot of the population of the Palm Springs area is seasonal. A lot of people only live there. For 4 to 6 months out of the year. But these amazing musicians were here and I was like, I don't know if anyone's gonna come to this, but I really feel like we should put on a concert, you know? 'Cause people around here don't usually have a chance to hear like musicians of your caliber and you're here. If you're willing to play a concert, let's do this. Let's try a little experiment. Sunday afternoon, found a church, uh, in Desert Hot Springs where we were able to put on this concert. And sure enough, people came and they really liked it. And people were asking, you know, when's the next concert? So I got a tiny, I got a tiny grant from the city. It was $1,000. And for the first season, I managed to squeeze 3 concerts out of that $1,000, mostly by just calling in favors from friends. And then, you know, long story short, it just grew and grew from there. I was able to get a little bit more of a grant every year, and I was able to start soliciting donations and being able to have more musicians perform. But especially in those early years, I really was leaning on friends and friends of friends. And the conversation would go something like this. It's like, You know, it's like we're musicians, so we speak the same language. It's like, hey, I run this little concert series. You know, I know that you're already doing this really cool program in the LA area. Is there a Sunday afternoon around the same time when you might be able to come out here? You know, I can only offer you this really small, like, token honorarium. I'm so sorry. Like, you are worth so much more than that. I wish I could pay you more, but like, that's what I can offer. If you'd like to stay with me for a couple nights, I'm happy to give you a place to stay. I'm happy to feed you. I'm happy to, you know, take you on some hikes. You know, you can make it into a little, like, working vacation. And people were usually really happy to do that. So especially in those early years, I was really relying on, on friends and friends of friends who I could have those kinds of conversations with. Thankfully, now we're in our 10th season, a milestone I'm very proud of because a lot of small organizations like this, uh, don't make it that far, uh, or, or didn't recover from 2020 and 2021. Um, so I'm really happy that we're in our 10th year, and now I have the budget and the resources to really do it right and and I can pay musicians, I mean, I'd still always like to pay musicians more, but I'm able to offer them less insultingly small sums of money. And because of our proximity to the greater LA area, we have access to this amazing talent pool, essentially. And I make it as easy as possible for the musicians because I'm a musician, so I understand what you, you know, I understand what a musician wants when they show up to play a gig. And I know how to make the process as smooth and efficient and easy as possible. And because we mostly do our concerts Sunday afternoons and most of our performers are coming in from the LA area, they don't even need to spend the night. You know, you can wake up at home, do your morning thing, do that 2-hour drive out to the desert, have time to grab lunch, warm up. You play a 4 o'clock concert, it's done at 5. You can be back home for a late dinner if you want, or back home to tuck the kids into bed or, you know, whatever. But I've also been able to have some friends come from from out of state. In fact, Michael Kunrod has come down a couple times from Michigan, and we recently had a pianist come, uh, fly down from the Bay Area. I've had a pianist friend of mine come down from Washington State, a few other places as well. So, um, each year I try to do a little bit more, have more musicians, more musicians from outside of Southern California. What started really as just this kind of side kind of passion project of mine, uh, oh well, let's put on some concerts and see what happens, it's become a real staple in the community that people rely on. And it's become a bigger and bigger part of my artistic and professional kind of like portfolio. And I have to remind myself about that because in the early years it was like, okay, well, I'm just kind of putting together a couple concerts, no big deal. But it's really gotten to the point where it is a— it takes up a considerable amount of my time and my energy. And I am—

I am—

it's a one-man operation.

Does it last certain amount of period of—

We typically do 5 main concerts and sometimes 2 or 3 smaller satellite events, usually between January and late March or early April, because that's prime time in the desert. Like I said, so much of the population there is seasonal. People only live there for the winter. So everything is jam-packed into a roughly 3-month period. And all of our concerts are just by donation only, so we don't sell tickets. Which means it puts the pressure on me to raise the money because the money we get from those donations doesn't come close to covering the actual costs. But it all works out, you know, thanks to the generosity of some donors and the people who make those small cash donations at the door. We're able to keep things going and keep the concerts open and accessible to everyone because, you know, not everyone can afford to pay $20, $25, $30, $40 for concert tickets, especially like, you know, I really want to see people bringing, you know, families coming as a family. And, you know, not every family can afford to pay those kinds of prices for concert tickets.

So I'm glad that currently right now— is it still going on right now? Because it's February, right?

So yeah, yeah, yeah, I just got back. I just got back from a 2.5-week trip there because now that I don't live in California anymore, now that I live in Maine, I moved from one corner of the country to the other corner, but I'm still fully committed to the concert series and the desert still still has a very special place in my heart. So I'm not letting go of the concert series anytime soon. And there's no one I could just hand it off to. It's like, this concert series will exist as long as I am making it happen. And if someday it doesn't make sense for me to do it anymore, then that's when we'll call it quits. But yeah, it's great for me. I love living here in Maine, where it's even quieter and a slower pace of life than the desert was. But I love that I'm able to go back to Southern California because I still have so many professional and personal ties to Southern California, both Los Angeles and the desert. But the desert especially is a place that's always very, very special to me. So I'm glad I can keep the concert series going. And the way I'm making it work now is I'll typically go out for, like I said, this recent trip was about 2.5 weeks. And one of the first things was a concert on the concert series. And then a couple days later, we did a special event to honor my composer friend whose album I produced. And then I went to Arizona for a week and played concerts with my violist friend Molly Gebrian, because we've got a new album that just came out. And then I came back to the desert, and we have one more concert on the concert series. And now I'm home for like 10 days, and then I go back and I do another similar trip, where it's a combination of concerts on the concert series, Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts, and then also some of my unrelated performances. Although actually, I'll be performing on the next concert. Which I'm usually, I'm just behind the scenes, but because, you know, the concert series is not, it's not a vanity project. It's not, it's not about me. But I've learned over the years that the audience does kind of expect to see me on stage every once in a while. So I'm actually performing on the next concert in March.

Oh, how exciting. You have so much to offer. But before I forget, we have to talk about your latest album called Trailblazers with the violist Molly How do you pronounce her last name?

Yes, good for you for asking because people usually don't get it right the first time. It's Molly Gebrian.

Gebrian. Okay, beautiful last name. Now, uh, so with her you have created this album and then 3 female unknown— I, I know Ethel Smith. I mean, I've known of, but, um, I don't— I did not know other composers, so this is great. So other 2 are Henrietta Božman and then Dora Pejáčević.

We're pretty sure that's the correct pronunciation, but maybe, maybe one of your viewers or listeners who's Czech will write in to tell us that we were getting that wrong.

But they're all viola, you know, sonatas, pieces, right?

Well, they're not actually. So let me tell you the story. So this new album with my violist friend Molly Gebrian, and I mentioned her previously because we were talking about an offshoot of my solo piano percussion project is this project called Trios for Two. That's with the same violist. Molly and I met when we were like 15 at a summer music camp, um, so we've been friends forever and we have very rarely actually been in the same place at the same time, but we really like collaborating, so we've created a couple projects as an excuse to work together. And this most recent project, um, the album that was just released called Trailblazers is, uh, no percussion on this one, just viola and piano, but they actually aren't viola sonatas. They are cello sonatas that Molly has transcribed for viola. And the genesis of the project is kind of funny. Molly was cleaning her house and listening to something on YouTube. And then when the piece she was done listening to finished, YouTube autoplay started playing one of these cello sonatas. I don't remember which one was the first one, but— and she was listening. She's like, wow, this is a really cool cello piece. Like, and then she went and looked at the composers, like, I've never heard of this composer. And then the autoplay feature played another one of these cello sonatas. By this, you know, not very well-known female composers from the late 19th and early 20th century. And again, so she had— so these 3 pieces came on back to back, and it was the same reaction every time. It's like, why haven't I heard these pieces? And these composers are amazing. And like, I think these would work well on viola, maybe. And, you know, violists frequently steal repertoire from other instruments. You know, pianists, we're so lucky, like, no shortage of piano repertoire, right? But violists violas, they don't have a lot of amazing repertoire that was written for them, especially not in that Romantic time period. You know, there's some great 20th century repertoire for sure, but in this late 19th, early 20th century kind of transitional period, kind of late Romantic, early modernist style, there's not a lot of viola repertoire. So Molly took it upon herself to transcribe these works for viola. And it's not as simple as just, you know, for your listeners or viewers who might not know the difference, the viola is one octave higher than the cello, but it's not as simple as just saying, oh, okay, I'll just play it up an octave. It's not that simple. It's a much more involved process of making very careful, deliberate decisions about which octave to play certain passages in, and then sometimes having to make compromises based on the nature of the instrument. So she really invested her time and put a lot of thought into making these transcriptions. And then she asked me if I'd be interested in performing and recording them with her, which of course I wanted to because it's right up my alley. You know, I love being able to showcase composers like this who have mostly been, you know, in obscurity. And the Bosmans in particular is a piece that really, really spoke to me. It's got that great early 20th century energy, and all of this music is very accessible. Even though two of the pieces are from the early 20th century, they're more backwards looking stylistically. They're more more romantic, but The Bosmans in particular has a little bit of that. It kind of reminds me— it's written around the same time as The Planets by Holst, and, uh, yeah, there are, there are a lot of moments in The Bosmans that remind me of, uh, of that piece in particular, but nothing nearly as radical as like The Rite of Spring or, you know, or Schoenberg or anything like that, even though it was that same time period, you know, the first couple decades of the 20th century. Well, this project was going to take place in 2020. Molly made the transcriptions and we, you know, had the scores and I started— we all started learning the music. And then of course it was not going to happen in 2020. And the hope was that we would learn and rehearse the repertoire and then perform it a bunch of times before we went into the studio to record it, but that didn't end up being possible. But by 2022, we were finally able to make the recording, although we'd only had a chance to perform the music a little bit. So we've actually performed the music more since we made the recording. And, you know, things always end up taking longer than you think. I think recording projects, it's kind of like home renovation projects, you know, you start that bathroom renovation thinking, oh yeah, we're gonna get this done in 3 weeks, and then, you know, 3 months later it's still going on. Well, sometimes albums are like too, especially when because of geography and also caution around COVID risk, a lot of the post-production work ended up being done remotely. So that added kind of an extra layer of complication. So yeah, things dragged on for a while, but this album that we recorded toward the end of 2022 was finally just released now in the beginning of 2024. And, you know, March, I believe, is International Women's History Month. So it's kind of a good time for this album to be out there. And, you know, we're really excited to have a chance to introduce this music to folks who haven't heard it before. I think Molly's transcriptions are great. You know, I think a lot of people are like, who wants to listen to the viola? Who wants to listen to a viola sonata? You should hear Molly play because this sounds really, really great. Listen to a really good violist. It's an awesome instrument.

For our listeners, please check out Danny's latest album Trailblazers on, uh, AssistProductions.com, and then I will obviously leave the link in our bio or in the description. So I mean, we can talk forever, Danny. You are such a— you have so many wonderful stories, and I can't— I can spend one more, two more hours No problem. But, you know, it's, it's almost close to the end of our conversation, so I have just one or two philosophical questions. So first one is, we are all aware of the stereotype or preconceived idea of classical musicians merely following the score, what's on the score, you know, acting as if we were cover artists. But however, you are a very creative person, such a creative artist, so you know that classical musicians are indeed a collective of creative minds. So in your perspective, how does classical music training contribute to fostering creativity?

Yeah, well, I do find sometimes I have to remind people that as performers that we are creative, that we are not just passive conduits. It's not, you know, there's a— it's interesting because historically, you know, if you look back at most of the composers from the, you know, 18th and 19th century who we kind of revere most of them were composers, improvisers, performers. Those three things were tied together. And it was only later in the 19th century and into the 20th century that those three things started to become separate. And improvisation in particularly became the realm of jazz, something totally separate from classical music. And then there became this real separation of the composer and the performer. So yeah, there is this kind of old-fashioned notion, although like I said, said it. I think it's important to recognize it's actually not— it's not the way that a lot of the composers we love were actually living their lives and being artists. But it is the way in more recent memory that the relationship is thought of. It's this idea that like, the work of music exists kind of like, in this almost like, otherworldly place. And the composer is the one who kind of like, brings that into reality by writing notes on a piece of paper. And then the performer just like plays those notes and brings it to life, you know? But, you know, as all of us who actually do this know, it's not so simple. There's only so much that music notation can convey. Even composers in the 20th century start to be much more precise about their notation and use lots of very specific expressive markings or metronome markings and all sorts of things to try to convey as specifically as possible what they're hearing in their head. No matter how precise the notation is, There's so much that can't really be conveyed. And that's where, you know, studying with really excellent teachers comes into play because we owe this amazing debt to generations of teachers. It's really, it's a teacher-student, you know, or master-apprentice relationship going back, you know, and all of us in one way or another can trace our pedagogical lineage back to, you know, some really famous pianists and composers.

Yeah.

It's all, we're all this kind of like one big family and it's, This came up in one of our earlier conversations too, you know, when you're, as a teacher, when you're dealing with, you know, an advanced student, when you're not dealing so much with like the nuts and bolts of like actually just like the technique or understanding the music, a lot of it really does come down to these really abstract concepts and a lot of the communication has to do with metaphor. And it's all of that kind of like ephemeral stuff that's difficult to find words to describe it, that it's not, it's not, that information isn't on the page. There are certain performance practices that have just been passed down over hundreds of years from student to, from teacher to student. So I think it's important to recognize that aspect of it. There's a lot that's part of the tradition that's not on the page. And you learn that by, you know, thankfully we're lucky now to have, you know, over 100 years of recordings that we can study. So we can, we can study how other people interpreted the music that we're looking at. But we also learn a lot from our teachers. And we also learn a lot from, like, a lot of the scores on the shelf behind me are urtext editions, you know? And even today, sometimes we're still learning things. I mean, like, really getting into the weeds, but like, you know, a great clean urtext edition that's been thoroughly researched where we've got footnotes and sometimes places where it's like, oh, well, in previous editions, this was a B natural, but actually now we're pretty sure it should be a B flat. Or some places where it's like, well, you know, you can kind of go either way, with this little nuance. We're not really sure what the composer meant. So even today with really old music, sometimes because of people, you know, musicologists doing really careful research and publishers publishing really good new editions of pieces, sometimes we're still learning, we're still learning details. So that's all kind of the backdrop. And then for me personally, the way I approach it is I'm really trying to first start by understanding the composer's intention as much as possible. But I also want to make the music my own. And, you know, there are some different philosophies about this. I'll never forget, I remember one of my teachers, one of my teachers thought I was putting too much of myself into this Brahms piece that I was playing. And so we just had a slightly different approach. And I remember, I think I still have this score actually. He took my score and the COVID you know, it had Brahms and he wrote, you know, it's not Brahms like slash hold, and he like crossed it out. But I don't know, to me, the most interesting performers are the performers who find something new and interesting in a piece of classical music and really like make it their own. And so that's always what I've been interested in doing in my own interpretive process. And I think I've been pretty successful with that because I'll have people come up to me after a concert where I'm playing like familiar music. And so I played Mozart and they'll say things like, "I know that's Mozart, but it's almost like you wrote that yourself." And to me, that's like the highest praise because they clearly picked up on the fact that I have really delved deeply into the music and found, again, it's hard to use words to describe this stuff, but I've just found certain things in it that resonate with me in a certain way. And I'm going with that and I'm kind of taking those ideas and running with them. But like I said, it's also when we're dealing with classical repertoire, it's also always grounded in understanding the composer's intentions. So for instance, like if I'm playing Haydn or Mozart or Beethoven, like right off the bat, we just have to recognize this instrument that I'm playing is totally different from the instrument that they were playing and that was their frame of reference. So like already this is like, it's essentially a transcription. So there's no way you can be like a purist about that repertoire when you're playing it on a modern piano. So that's an important acknowledgement. But that said, there are still things, you know, thankfully we've got a lot of scholars and performers who have done a lot of work studying performance practice. And so we do have a pretty good idea of some of these little subtle nuances of articulation and timing that these composers didn't notate, but we're pretty sure that that's what they wanted. And some of that can translate to modern piano. So like, I'm not an advocate of just like ignoring all of that. Definitely want to start with that, but also acknowledge like, okay, I am in the 21st century and I'm playing a totally different instrument than this music was written for, you know? Or like sometimes I'm playing a piece like totally decontextualized. Like I like putting together, like one of the programs I've done is called Eclectic Miniatures. And I'll, I put together like a set of music that's like 12 to 20 minutes long. Of completely unrelated pieces, but that I find kind of interesting connections. And I like, I like interesting juxtaposition, like unexpected juxtapositions, you know? And so the way I approach a given piece might be informed by the context of how, of how it sits on a program too, you know? So yeah, I don't know. Those are just my kind of preliminary thoughts, but I hope, I hope all of that conveys to folks that it's not like we just get the music and we practice and we learn to play it and then boom, we perform. It's, it's, it's a much more, at least for me, it's a much more subtle and nuanced and complex process that unfolds over, over months and years in terms of, you know, constantly developing and fine-tuning and changing my, my approach to a particular piece.

Thank you for clarifying.

I don't know if that clarifies anything.

It does. So what's your next move? I mean, how do you like to see yourself in Let's say 3 years, because usually I would say 5 years, but lately, you know, our lives changed so much and then things just changed so quick in this, you know, 2020s. So I think 3 is a good number. So how do you see yourself in 3 years?

Well, I'm definitely in a big transitional period in my life. I'm in my early 40s, and after spending 20 years in Southern California, I did, you know, recently decided I was kind of ready for the next adventure in life. As I mentioned, I feel incredibly lucky that I am able to live in this quiet, beautiful place, but still travel to a place like Los Angeles, kind of take advantage of everything that a city like that has to offer and maintain the personal and professional and artistic ties that I have to that place. Um, so I feel really fortunate. I feel really fortunate to be in a place in my life. Where I have almost total control over what I do with my life on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. I've worked very hard to get to that point. I've made a lot of difficult decisions along the way, but I am clear about the things that matter to me. And as we discussed earlier, you know, the most important thing is performing. And in order to perform, I need to practice. And for the first half of my career, the last 25 years, it was a constant juggling act of lots of different teaching commitments that I thoroughly enjoyed and which happened to be a pretty convenient and steady way to earn a living. By the way, that's a whole separate conversation. You know, being a gigging musician is a stressful way of life. For years, I really struggled to feel like I was able to practice consistently, to be able to play at the level that I expect of myself, to be able to reach those kinds of like transcendent moments in live performance that I talked about kind of craving. And so a year and a half ago when I made the decision to make this big move, this big change in my life, part of that was that I really wanted to leave behind the busy teaching career that I had had for so long. I still love teaching. But I am happy to be in a place now where instead of having ongoing regular weekly teaching commitments, I can teach master classes and be a guest artist, but I can spend more of my time just focusing on performing and also frankly on being my own booking agent, manager, publicist. You know, it's like if I want to perform, I mean, I appreciate that people do call me and ask me to play concerts, but you know, Mostly it's, you know, it's me sending emails and getting on the phone and introducing myself to people, especially being in a new place here. I'm really excited about connecting with audiences in my new home state. So yeah, the driving force is, is, is really about, you know, being able to have the large uninterrupted chunks of time in my daily life when I can practice, ideally free of other distractions. It's easier to do that living in a beautiful remote place like this. Rural Maine.

Oh, how nice.

Uh, than in a city where there's all this hustle and bustle. Um, yeah. And you know, outside of, outside of practicing and preparing for performances, um, keeping my concert series going is really important to me because even though I'm not the one who's usually performing, I, I really get a lot of satisfaction from being the one who's, who's facilitating that. Again, you know, just getting people in a room to share a real experience. So much of our lives now are mediated through mediated through screens, mediated through social media that, you know, where algorithms and the format of social media is kind of dictating like what we experience and how we experience it. So just really prioritizing real life experience. Like, I wish I could be in New York and we could be having this conversation face to face. I know.

Maybe next time. I know. Yeah.

And so, so yeah. So aside from my, you know, from the work, the actual artistic work and the administrative and professional work, you know, the other things that are important to me are spending time outdoors in beautiful and inspiring places and spending quality time with beautiful, interesting, smart people.

Wow, that's great.

I feel very lucky that I get to do that every day.

Well, Danny, this has been a fun and inspiring conversation. But before I let you go, we have one more thing to do. Uh-oh. It's called the rapid fire questions. So this is part of the show where I get to ask fun questions to each guest. But now here's a little twist. As silly as these questions may sound, your answers may reveal who you truly are. So I just want you to answer them with the shortest responses possible. No explanation is necessary. Okay.

No explanation. Oh my gosh. I struggle with that.

Okay. Okay. That's the whole point of rapid fire, right? So, okay. Question number 1. What's your comfort food?

My comfort food? Soup.

Okay. How do you like your coffee?

Blended with MCT oil, vanilla, and maybe some Maine maple syrup.

Wow, that sounds amazing.

I'll make you some sometime.

Oh yeah, yeah. Cats or dogs?

Cats, but I'm allergic, unfortunately.

Oh, okay. Sunrise or sunset?

Sunset.

Now, next question is a little bit more difficult. What skill have you always wanted to learn but haven't had the chance to?

Right now, I'd like to make— I'd like to be able to make my own pesto.

Okay. That's simple. Yes.

Yeah, it's really not that complicated, but for some reason I haven't gotten around to doing it.

Okay. What is your word or words to live by?

Right now, gratitude.

What is the most important quality you look for in other people?

Openness.

Good one. Name 3 people who you Inspire you, living or dead?

Michael Jackson.

Yes, same.

Nigel Kennedy and John Cage.

Okay. Wow, Michael Jackson. Me too. We have so much to talk about.

I'm a child of the '80s. What can I say? And, uh, yeah, I mean, what an incredible performer.

Oh yeah, incredible artist. So unique. Anyway, all right, two more questions. Name one piece in your current playlist.

Hmm. Well, I can't name a piece, but I would say an album that has been with me for a while now is an album by Canadian Indigenous artist Jeremy Dutcher.

Okay, I need to check that out.

Yeah, he has a new album that just recently came out, but he has an album from several years ago that blew my mind.

Wow.

He's a classically trained vocalist and composer. Who has gone back and reconnected with his cultural roots and recorded this amazing album where he takes songs from his people that were preserved on wax cylinder recordings. And he reimagines the songs and arranges them for a kind of like chamber ensemble/rock pop ensemble and also integrates those actual wax cylinder recordings. And the music is— the music and the arrangements are just amazing, and it's beautiful, and, and it's been really fascinating for me to hear this totally unfamiliar language. And, you know, unfortunately a lot of these languages are dying, um, so it's a really important— it's really important work that he's doing. Yeah, really interesting, really interesting artist, Jeremy Dutcher.

Jeremy Dutcher. Okay, I will look him up. Great. So the last question: fill in the blank, music is blank.

Everything.

Everything. Great.

I don't know, that's an oversimplification, but for me in my life right now, maybe. Yeah.

Wow, wonderful. So this concludes this episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Danny Pugh. Thank you, Danny, for joining my show today and sharing your stories and insights and expertise. So For The Piano Pod listeners and viewers, please visit DannyHolt.net to learn more about his career and connect him on social media like Instagram @DannyHoltMusic, I think. Yeah. And then also don't forget to check out his latest album Trailblazers with a violist Molly Gibrian, as well as his solo album Piano Music of Mike Garson on all major music streaming courses. All the links are listed in the show notes. Thank you to my wonderful audience and fans for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it on wherever you get your podcast. Remember to hit the thumbs up button if you're watching this episode on YouTube. Follow The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song on social media to get the latest piano news via Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Bye everyone. Thank you, Danny.

Of course. Thank you.

Thank you so much.