Performing with Ellen Frances at Beckett’s, March 2023, photo by Matt Street.
Interpolations (2023)
For solo piano
Duration: 5.5 minutes, incorporating a Mozart fragment
For multidisciplinary artist Ellen Frances
World premiere: March 18, 2023
Beckett’s (NYC)
Ellen Frances, performance; Jonathan Howard Katz, piano
This was my second collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Ellen Frances, and the first for which I wrote new music. Her piece “Little Bird, Broken Wing, Mozart’s Dead Starling,” part of her Poetry of Gesture series, wove together stories of Mozart and his pet starling with a bird story of her own, and included ballet pantomime, shadow puppetry, painted backdrops, a handmade costume, and more. (You can find more detail about Ellen’s work and its various components and influences here.)
My contribution was a musical work that incorporated two Mozart fragments—a C-minor fantasy (K396) written for violin and piano but with an extended section of piano solo, and a brief transcription of his own starling’s song, modeled after a theme from his K453 piano concerto—as well as original, imagined birdsong based on Ellen’s name and material to follow the narrative of the pantomime. Integrating these disparate elements within a fairly brief runtime while offering Ellen the approrpriate musical support for her concept became the unique challenge of creating this piece.
The world premiere took place at Beckett Rosset’s underground performance space on a March 2023 program featured in the New York Times as the venue’s farewell event (though there were numerous other “final” events through July).