Teagan Faran
Below is the transcript of my interview with Teagan Faran. The button link takes you to the video and podcast versions, as well as the show notes with links to Teagan, ways to support this series and other suggested episodes.
Teagan Faran:
That project actually in particular was very fascinating because I think I was approaching these violins that we literally pulled out of the trash. We were given a trash bag of violins. They were not usable and wouldn't actually support anybody's education. But I still had this sort of tenderness of this violin shaped object, and she was able to come in without the baggage of having held an instrument that looked like that for 20 years.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with musicians with Leah Roseman, which I hope inspires you through the personal stories of a fascinating diversity of musical guests.
Teagan Faran is a remarkable violinist known for her versatility as a performer, composer, and improviser. In this episode, you'll hear selections from her album Middle Child, a compelling and genre spanning musical journey featuring works by claimed contemporary composers as well as Teagan's own re-imagining of Brahms's beloved Intermezzo. A Fulbright grant recipient, Tegan spent nine months in Argentina delving into the rich traditions of tango and regional folk music. She shared insights about her time there, along with stories of collaboration and mentorship, including her work with the Grammy-nominated ensemble, Palaver Strings and the electro-acoustic duo Persephone & the Phoenix. Tegan has also built a dynamic career as an educator and has studied under renowned teachers like Danielle Belen. In our conversation, we touched on her diverse teaching experiences, the importance of injury prevention and her parallel path as a certified personal trainer.
Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast, and I've also linked the transcript. It's a joy to bring these inspiring episodes to every week, and I do all the many jobs of research production and publicity. Have a look at the show notes of this episode where you'll find all the links, including different ways to support this podcast.
Hi, Tegan, thanks so much for joining me here today. Thanks so much for having me. I've been listening to your album Middle Child, which we're going to focus on today over a period of many weeks and many times, but I was listening to it again this morning and there's so much there. So I'm hoping we can do a deep dive, but I'm curious, when did this project get started?
Teagan Faran:
I think in many ways this project started when I was growing up in Buffalo. I have two brothers, so I am literally the middle child, and so I've spent decades at this point thinking about that sort of status in family, but also status in community. I have always felt sort of like a chameleon in many social settings. And so in a broader philosophical sense, this project has been something I've been orbiting around for many years. But the actual work for the recording and the production of the music started maybe about three years ago where I started to really put together the ideas of who I wanted to collaborate with and how I wanted to share this intentionality in a sonic setting.
Leah Roseman:
Now this Brahms Intermezzo, which is the sort anchor point.
Teagan Faran:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Did you grow up listening to this? What's your connection with this?
Teagan Faran:
I did. It was a piece I sort of kept interacting with and kept finding at different points in my life. I had heard it in high school, and there is a Mendelssohn Quartet that uses a sort of similar structure. The A minor begins with this beautiful chorale opening that always sort of struck me as the closest thing that we as string players got to the beauty of the Intermezzo, and then I think it was maybe even the first concert of undergrad of we played an orchestration of the Intermezzo by Bright Sheng that was called Black Swan, and that was just amazing to me to hear sort of the full actualization of what the different colors could be. And I did my piano class in undergrad, and I play enough that my Suzuki students I can accompany through Book one, book two, but I didn't have the wherewithal, and so I always had this desire to try to embody this music, and so I figured what better than through violin choir and being able to literally play with other versions of myself.
Leah Roseman:
So on this, you're playing viola violin and bass violin.
Teagan Faran:
So there is a track with Viola, that's the koʻu inoa with singing as well. And then the Brahms Intermezzo is four violins. And then yes, that bass violin, which is an octave and a step below standard violin tuning.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah, it took me a while to wrap my head around this album. I have to say there's a lot there. And I was really curious about these collaborators. First of all, was anything composed or co improvised on this album
Teagan Faran:
In the sense of showing many friends various aspects of both the Laurie Anderson arrangement and the Brahms arrangement? That was definitely a community work in terms of getting feedback, but I think the most distinct thing is that there's three of these remixes of the Intermezzo, and that was maybe more of a game of telephone than necessarily directly. But that was a lot of fun for me because what I got to do is record the stems of the Brahms and then send each individual bit to these three remixers who then could layer on top of their own things and manipulate the audio that I had sent them and create something completely new and completely theirs. But that I still got to hear myself being a part of in a really special way.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Yes. Very, very interesting to hear that. I think at this point, it'd be good if people heard a clip of the Brahms Intermezzo.
Teagan Faran:
Absolutely.(Music)
Now let's talk about Davis West's Outermezzo. So you have a jazz education as well as classical?
I do, yes. I spent a good amount of time. Growing up in Buffalo is just a really wonderful way to learn a lot about a lot of different kinds of musics. And so I took that energy into school afterwards as well. And I was at the University of Michigan, which has a wonderful jazz program, and its proximity to Detroit is really special in terms of access to that music. And Davis, I always tell people he was like my violin older brother at school. He was the other jazz violinist in the program when I was there, and that's how we met. (music)
Leah Roseman:
And you also attended Dee Dee Bridgewater's, the Woodshed Network for Women in Jazz?
Teagan Faran:
Yes. That was just maybe one of the most beautiful things that happened during the pandemic shutdown of just people coming together. Dee Dee Bridgewater, of course, is a legendary matriarch in the world of improvised musics. And I believe I was part of, not the inaugural session, but one of the earlier sessions where about a dozen women and gender queer folk would gather on Zoom and talk about the various aspects, not just the musical content, but how we're pitching ourselves and how to take care of your body on tour. And that was a huge influence on the way that I approach my teaching these days.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Now you are focused on social change through the arts, and I know a big part of this is Palaver Strings, which you helped to found.
Teagan Faran:
Actually, I was lucky enough to come in around the 10 year mark of Palaver Strings.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, really?
Teagan Faran:
Yeah. It was some amazing, amazing people in Boston founded it. Now, if I'm doing my math correctly, about 12 years ago. But I was able to come in. I met them and I officially joined the 10th anniversary season, and that was a lot of fun to be able to just pour energy into a machine that's already chugging in a beautiful way. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So can you tell us about what you guys do?
Teagan Faran:
Absolutely. So Palaver Strings is a musician led ensemble based in Portland, Maine. There are 13 of us making up a string orchestra, and we're all about practicing democracy as much as we can in the relative space, safe setting of a musical rehearsal and performances, but then using those as ways to start conversations in the community. And so I am actually getting ready, we have a beautiful sort of Palaver-only program coming up next week that I'm preparing for where we're playing the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony and some Yoshimatsu and John Corigliano. But the other aspect that I really love is that it's very, very collaborator focused. We have commissioned work from Kinan Azmeh and have a music video coming out there. And we just recently finished a tour with the South African jazz singer Vuyo Sotashe and pianist, Chris Pattishall. And so there's this ability of being able to step deeply into a space and explore that vernacular and translate it to a body like a violin that is familiar and be able to have this sort of cross-cultural exchange in that setting.
Leah Roseman:
And members of the group also compose?
Teagan Faran:
Sometimes they do, yes. And we're trying to do more and more of that just when you can compose specifically for people that deeply, it makes that much more of a special connection. And it's been wonderful too, because everybody in the group is coming from slightly different backgrounds. Most of us are classically trained through the sort of traditional institutional realms, but people are also coming in with a lot of fiddle background, old time music background. We have a violist who is just an amazing global voice expert. I'm able to bring my tango training in. And so it creates this really fun blend.
Leah Roseman:
So I'm guessing it wasn't a traditional audition to join the group?
Teagan Faran:
It wasn't because it is so, so much getting to know each other that is part of that process. So I actually subbed with the group for about two years and just getting to know the way that they ran the rehearsals, how they do their programming. They got to know how I interacted with the group. And then we had just a very open conversation about what the goals of the ensemble were and what my goals were and how they aligned. And both the time that I felt I could give to the group and also the resources that they felt they could give to support my interests. And it was very nice to have that sort of clarity and transparency in the process too. I think the unique thing about the group is that all 13 of us are co-artistic directors, and so there's as much as we can having equal voice in all things, which as you can imagine, there's a lot of discussion and there's a lot of talking and things move slowly. But I also am given the confidence that every action is done with intention and thought.
Leah Roseman:
So is there consensus building or do you sometimes have to go with majority opinion?
Teagan Faran:
Depending on the particular setting will either do a majority or consensus building, but I think philosophically we try to go for consensus building just so that everyone truly feels on board. And even if it's not your first choice, feeling like you understand the reason behind it, I think is our M.O.
Leah Roseman:
So I guess it's been a few years now since you joined them, but when you were getting to know them and you said you expressed your interests and they saw how they could support them, have those changed over time? And what were those interests at the time?
Teagan Faran:
For sure. I mean, I think coming into the group as a guest, I was definitely more focused on the what's happening on the concert stage side of things. The first tour I did with them was this beautiful program called Welcome Here, where we worked with immigrant and refugee communities and also Indigenous communities of Maine to tell stories. And so we had these musical settings and these three wonderful storytellers on stage, and we were able to discuss different styles and experimentation and how to do that idea of translating one musical idiom that might use instruments that we're not playing into a space with instruments that we are trained in. And so that was maybe my primary focus was like, how do we do more of this? How do we cultivate these kinds of collaborations? And since I've gotten to know even just the community of Portland, Maine more from being there as well as the tour paths that we go on, I feel like I've been more empowered to get involved in the education side of Palor.
In addition to the touring ensemble, there is an afterschool music program that has been growing. I think it's almost at a hundred students now. And so I've been able to work with the education director to create curriculum for those students that mirror what we're doing with the touring ensemble. For instance, we're doing a 12 bar Blues project right now that was going along with the South African jazz singer that we worked with on tour. And so that's been really fun to get more into the behind the scenes and a wider age demographic working with some of these young students.
Leah Roseman:
So you mentioned this program where you guys were playing
Teagan Faran:
Instruments that weren't your
Leah Roseman:
Primary instrument.
Teagan Faran:
Oh, I just translating music from the berimbau of Brazil and how do we make a viola sound like that.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, got it. How far is it a commute for you from Ithaca where you're based to Portland?
Teagan Faran:
Yes. This weekend I will be driving, and so it's about eight hours with some good podcasts. It's never too bad. Sometimes I'll fly and it actually doesn't save that much time, but you can take a nap on the airplane.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Do you happen to know the mandolinist Joe K. Walsh?
Teagan Faran:
I don't think I do.
Leah Roseman:
He's based in Portland. He was on this podcast, so I
Teagan Faran:
I'll have to look him up.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, he's really great. I mean, he's on the road a lot, but yeah,
Teagan Faran:
I can empathize. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. The Grammy nomination, I am guessing you weren't part of that album with Palaver Strings?
Teagan Faran:
I was, yes. We recorded that last, my years are going to get funky. We recorded it in a September, I think it was two Septembers ago, and that came out almost a year ago now. But that was a really fun project.
Leah Roseman:
So protest songs,
Teagan Faran:
Protest songs, and we were able to work with Tenor Nicholas Phan and record this music. And I think we didn't realize, maybe we did realize, but I certainly personally didn't realize how much I would need protest music in my life right now. And so it feels very apropos, I guess is the word that comes to mind.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Let's talk about some of the remixing on Middle Child. So FARAHMS, I really enjoyed that with Misha Vayman. So how do you know Misha and what was this process like?
Teagan Faran:
Absolutely. So Misha is actually, it's fun. Another person that I originally met through Zoom and sort of distance learning together at the Banff Center, they have a program called Evolution Classical that brings in groups that are again, traditionally classically trained, but pushing that boundary. And Misha and I were just sort of immediately on the same wavelength in terms of the music that we like to listen to. And then eventually, we did actually get to meet in Banff a year, a year later, and Misha was my hiking buddy. And we would just go and look at the lakes and look at the trees and talk about electronic music, which was a perfect blend of nature and machine. He immediately sprung to mind as a person that who is an amazing violinist, him himself based in Los Angeles and just technically and musically a master in so many ways, but is also the person that I go to and I want to talk about plugins. Yeah.(Music)
Leah Roseman:
Now Persephone and Phoenix Duo. Yes. Talking about electronics. So with Nicole Brancato. So you guys do have an album coming out later this year?
Teagan Faran:
We are hoping soon. Currently we have a single that we released last fall. And in many fortunate ways, Nicole and I are both been pretty busy this year, and so the album's a little bit on hold, but it's something that is of interest and in the works.
Leah Roseman:
So do you want to tell us more about this duo?
Teagan Faran:
Absolutely. So Nicole and I were both at the Manhattan School of Music at the same time, and we started there in 2020. I had the brilliant idea in April when I was making grad school decisions April, 2020, that this was going to go away in about a month, and I would be in New York and ready to hit the ground running as everything reopened. And instead, we were still wearing masks and we had to be 15 feet apart from each other. And so really the most we could fit into a room was four people with the COVID precautions that were in place at the time. And so Nicole and I just had this hunger to be making music together, and again, just sort of found each other in this magnetic way. And we really try to push each other in terms of composing together and using improvised or frameworks for improvisation as the basis for the way that we communicate with each other on stage.
A lot of our work has been very environmentally focused. We were at Banff together, that's where I met Visha, was being at Banff with Nicole and under our geo capacity, where we were looking a lot at the role that fire plays in our environment. And then the year after, we did a performance art piece in Chelsea, a neighborhood in New York, looking at sort of the planned obsolescence of student violins and the idea of how an instrument can be made where it's cheaper to just replace it than it is to repair it. And I think that's a metaphor for a lot of aspects of life these days. But Nicole is always pushing me and the most beautiful ways to extend my ears and extend my curiosity about the sonic worlds that can be made. And that project actually in particular was very fascinating because I think I was approaching these violins that we literally pulled out of the trash. We were given a trash bag of violins, and I knew that they were goners. They might've all been in the landfill if we hadn't gotten there and they were not usable and wouldn't actually support anybody's education. But I still had this sort of tenderness of this violin shaped object, and she was able to come in without the baggage of having hold an instrument that looked like that for 20 years. And so that was a really fun push and pull.
Leah Roseman:
How did you use these instruments?
Teagan Faran:
So the project was called Nine Ways to Destroy a Violin, which I think alludes to how we ended up using them. And what we did is we had sort of a gallery space at the Cell theater, and we had nine different stations, and there was various ways that the audience could interact with the violins, including we had some hooked up to a circuit board so you could sort of play the violin by picking it up and getting this bow controller so that anyone could play the violin, even if in the shambles state, we had a couple of performances built into the gallery as well. So there was one where we filled a violin with concrete and then let it dry where we slowly started taking apart a violin as it was being played. So I'm playing some excerpts from the Bach Chaconne, and Nicole is detuning the pegs, and we're just letting it sort of fall into its individual pieces and show all those components that make it up. But it was very, the emphasis was on audience interaction.
Leah Roseman:
And there's a reel on your Instagram where you're playing a violin with no neck and two strings.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. That was part of, I love that violin so much. That was part of our experimentation phase where we were trying to figure out, I think we had about 30 of these violins in various states. I mean, some of them were just the ribs, and I had a couple of fingerboards, but this was a violin that had no neck and it felt so special. So we wanted to figure out what we could do with this. And this is where Nicole's ingenious comes in and she's like, well, why don't we just screw the strings onto the violin? You're talking about how they need these contact points so that there's tension and you can make pitch. I have this drill, let's just screw them in. And this was an idea that would've never occurred to me, but indeed, we got a couple of strings into just the body of the violin directly. I got a bridge up so that we could mess around with the pitch, and it created this sort of alien instrument that was vaguely violin shaped.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, very cool. Now you mentioned your tango work, and of course, I want to talk about your time in Argentina, but actually before we get there, the last track on middle child is Casimiro by Julián Graciano.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. And Julian was a great mentor of mine when I was living in Argentina, but Casimiro is really special to me, especially as part of this idea of the middle child. Casimiro Alcorta is the violinist that the piece is named for. And he was born into slavery in Argentina in the 18 hundreds and was emancipated because his captors sort of recognized this talent that he had on the instrument. And so he was given social status so that he could then further serve the interest of the people who held power over him. But he is the one that is credited as creating many of the extended techniques that we use in tango. Tango notably is one of the few Latin musics that does not have drums as one of its sort of base instruments. And so a lot of that role is distributed around the band, but much of it to the violin.
And so Casimiro Alcorta is the one that we credit with creating that sort of chicharra, the cricket effect behind the bridge, and a lot of the body taps and some of the scoops and the wails that have become very characteristic for tango. And the more I think about this idea of taking, again, a body that you're familiar with, a violin that is usually you're taught in one way that it's a melodic instrument and it has this very specific role in society of your musical ensemble, but that you can also take that same body and completely translate what its role is and expand it. And it doesn't in any way limit its melodic capabilities. In fact, it probably enhances it because you're able to then self accompany and explore. But this idea of being able to code switch and play multiple purposes in the ensemble just speaks so strongly to me.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.(music)
Now, how was your Spanish before you went to Argentina?
Teagan Faran:
I told people that I was really good at living in the moment because I could speak in present tense Spanish. I had the opportunity to do a little teaching in Detroit, Michigan when I lived there, and there was a very strong Mexican community there. So I had some practice, luckily with some music specific vocabulary, but there was a real just learn out of necessity of living there, and especially living in Argentina. I'd previously been in Mexico and my teachers in high school were from Spain, so I had those accents in my head. And then going to Argentina, even the Spanish I thought I knew, I felt like I didn't recognize at first.
Leah Roseman:
And you spent a full year there?
Teagan Faran:
I was there nine months total. I got back just in time for the COVID shutdown, but I was there for almost all of 20.
Leah Roseman:
So you left a little early because of COVID.
Teagan Faran:
It ended up being just a coincidence. I left to go home and see my family for the holidays and then stayed there, had planned to go back, but didn't.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Did you leave stuff there?
Teagan Faran:
Fortunately, I did not. I think I'm a little pack rat tendencies, and so I just brought everything with me, which ended up working out.
Leah Roseman:
That must have been hard emotionally. I mean, you had planned to go back.
Teagan Faran:
It was incredibly hard. And I think there was the two aspects of I'm going to stay in touch with as many people as I can, and also the, I'm not going to talk to anyone because it is too intense and I'm too sad to even see what's happening that I would sort of oscillate between. And certainly there was moments where the orchestra that I was playing with played in these beautiful theaters that were the end of our training program. And there's a lot of just so much happiness for my cohort and so much sadness to not be on the stage with them, but also just a lot of good reminders. I think as I was seeing the way that my friends in Argentina were being given or not given resources to handle what was happening in March, 2020 versus I was living in relative luxury in Southeast Michigan and quite comfortable in terms of resources. And so it was a very helpful just sort of grounding and also keeping my awareness global in that setting.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I just started to study Spanish at that time, and my teacher lives in Buenos Aires.
Teagan Faran:
Oh, amazing.
Leah Roseman:
So I was talking to her. Yeah. Brings me back. Well, let's talk about your Tango album of solo violin music.
Teagan Faran:
Oh, thank you. Yes. Little things.
Leah Roseman:
Well, for one thing, I was curious to get some of this music.
Teagan Faran:
Thank you for checking that out. And that is a huge component of that project was sort of the distribution and the making available of this music. And so Little Things is a set of what I think of as musical postcards from my time in Argentina. And it's different music that I've either arranged myself or somebody that I was working with when I lived there wrote for me. And it's this idea of how has it been globalized and how does it intersect with different musics that we play? And so there's one that is very inspired by the Bach Chaconne and uses that sort of Passacaglia. There's another that I arranged that takes the bassline from the Biber Passacaglia, which is just a favorite of mine and combines it with a tango melody called Bandon Arrabalero. And so then I use some techniques from Bach's second Sonata and that sort of pulsing bass, but was able to arrange it. And actually it turned out to be a really good companion coming back to the States because a lot of that music was trying to fit as much of what we might consider to be tango sound into the single instrument of a violin, which of course, one of the great things about Tango is all of the different people that come together to make it up. So it was a really interesting study and something that was nice to sort of have as I was quarantining.
Leah Roseman:
So you're the primary composer, but you're arranging traditional tango melodies in comedy?
Teagan Faran:
Yes. And original tango melodies, and then also distinctly one of them on their, maybe my favorite is El Silbador, which translates to the whistler. And that is borrowing from the, I don't even want to say Argentine, but sort of the western part of South America, but Argentina, Chile, that folk music tradition. When I went down to Argentina, I went there under the auspices of studying music and national identity and looking at how music and the performing arts can bring together communities. How do we form a group consensus of who we are through the performing arts? And I wanted to study more tango. I'd been playing since I was a teenager in Buffalo, but wanted to really dive in. And I got down there and was immediately told that Tango was not in fact the national music of Argentina. And that was a very urbanized Buenos specific music, but it in no way represents the country. And so I was taken aback and had to really examine what I knew about the country that was now hosting me and my awareness of how music worked. And so I was able to spend some time in the provinces learning more about the folk music of Argentina, which really has sort of a different way of representing the people that enjoy it, and it's another way of bringing people together. And so that was a great opportunity to even just learn about urban rural relations and what makes it beyond the borders of a country into the global awareness of what we think the country is.
Leah Roseman:
From what I understand, the indigenous people are kind of wiped out down there, but is there still some people that have that heritage?
Teagan Faran:
There are, and a lot of people also who are doing work to make sure or try to revitalize and keep those traditions alive so that we don't lose that sort of depth of culture and that experience either in the narrative that it's something that we are aware has existed, does exist, will continue to exist if we cultivate it.
Leah Roseman:
So could we use a clip maybe from El Silbador?
Teagan Faran:
That would be great.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's one of my favorites as well. And
Teagan Faran:
Oh, I'm glad it spoke to you.
Leah Roseman:
And I'll just say that people can buy the music for that one and a couple others on your Bandcamp.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. And I will make sure that Bandcamp is actually distributing them.(Music)
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I wanted to let you know about some other episodes I’ve linked directly to this one, which I think may interest you, with Julie Lyonn Lieberman, Meg Okura, Martha Mooke, bad snacks, and Margaret Maria among so many! It’s a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time; please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page; you’ll find the links in the show notes. For the merch, it features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly and you can browse clothes, notebooks, mubs and more, everything printed on demand. On my Ko-fi page you can buy me one coffee, or every month. You’ll also find the link to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Finally, if you’re finding this episode interesting, please text it to a friend. Thanks.
If we can go back to Middle Child. So stir crazy by Carlos Simon.
Teagan Faran:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
That was a pandemic experience piece. It's very good. And it's recorded with Leo Sussman on flute. Who's your partner?
Teagan Faran:
Yes, yes. Leo is the person who keeps me grounded, but also helps me reach for the stars. And so it was really special to be able to have him on the album in this capacity. And we were talking about this stir crazy think is maybe the piece that both of us have performed the most in our lives at this point. It's fast and it's quick, and it's a good way to start a concert. And we both used to teach at DePauw University in Indiana, and so that was always our way of welcoming new students to campus was this sort of like, oh, the winds and the strings are coming together and we can shout at each other on stage and get out our frustration. But it's a lot of fun. And I think it's also fun because to me, it's such a distinct piece in Carlos's compositional output too, that it's fun to see that side of him as in light of all of his beautiful symphonic folk works.(Music)
Leah Roseman:
On Middle Child, one of the producers is Matt Albert, who's a violinist and is also a mentor to you.
Teagan Faran:
He is, yes. I tell everyone I want to be Matt Albert when I grow up, but I first interacted with him when he came to the University of Michigan as their new chamber chair, and I had sort of known of him through his work with Eighth Blackbird and other ensembles. But he, to me, is just really the model of someone who is able to make space and bring in new voices and also demand high artistic standards while creating environments that are welcoming. And it's this magical experience every time I get to work with him. And so bringing him on was just a dream, because I think this work is something that I was like, oh, I think this is music that I would imagine Matt would I want his input in all of the production of this.
Leah Roseman:
He got you involved with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music as well?
Teagan Faran:
Yes. Yeah. He has been Principal Second Violin there. I'm not sure how long, but he is an institution himself in that orchestra. And so now I've been playing with the group, this will be my fourth summer this coming year. And that's been amazing to be in a section with Matt, because you do as a section violinist, there's this wonderful opportunity of being able to fully embody the person at the front of the section and then look across at the other strings and just kind of create this hive mind blend of everyone together. That's so powerful. And so to do that in a section led by Matt Albert is very dreamy. And then I also get to, as a second violinist, sit right in front of the winds and hear the way that they blend together. But Cabrillo is really special because of how they always, most of the time they bring in the composers that we're working with. I think it's something like 90% of the time the composer is there in the room with us. But I've just met some of my closest friends and influences through that orchestra.
Leah Roseman:
And I'm curious, when you were doing your undergrad at University of Michigan and was Matt, was your chamber music coach, was he encouraging you to play contemporary music?
Teagan Faran:
He was, and I think in the senses that I was curious about it and bringing things up and that he fully supported that, I've been actually very lucky that throughout my entire life I've been, the path to contemporary music has always just felt pretty synonymous with the path to music performance in general. And so I think Matt facilitated that. I was definitely interested in playing in a Pierrot sextet sort of modeled after eighth Blackbird. That was really nice to work with him in that setting. But I also had a great studio teacher, Andrew Jennings, who was violinist in the Concord Quartet for a while. And then again, growing up in Buffalo, we have the influences of John Cage and Charles Warren and still at the university. And so this idea of working with composers felt always like something that was just part of playing violin.
Leah Roseman:
Tegan, you said playing in a Perot sextet I missed what that was.
Teagan Faran:
Oh, yes. So the Pierrot Sextet modeled after the Shoenberg Pierrot Lunaire instrumentation. I always tell composers it's my favorite instrumentation because it's your pocket orchestra. You get your violin often doubling on viola cello, get your flute, your clarinet with all of the clarinets that come with that piano. And then these days, pretty much everyone throws in percussion because that will just take care of the rest.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, we haven't really, at the very beginning, you talked a little bit about being a middle child, but in terms of your identity, there's more to that in terms of what you're exploring.
Teagan Faran:
Yes, absolutely. And so I mean, I think on the most basic, I'm coming at this from this idea of feeling caught between genres. I grew up in a Suzuki program and it was wonderful. And then I started to explore jazz, and that was empowering, but I didn't necessarily find myself there. And then Tango has been a huge component. And so there's this idea of genre blend, but then the more I've gotten to know myself, there's this exploration that feels very driving to me of just what is self. And so having my maternal family is ethnically Chinese. We've been in Hawaii for many generations, and then my father is English Irish. And so we have all of these different influences that I don't see modeled anywhere else. I'm like, the only other people I know that are going through this sort of identity grapple are my two brothers, because otherwise this is the one place where we have this specific mix.
And then also just the opportunity to be able to explore ideas of gender identity and what that means and how we define that. And so feeling the sort of empowered-ness that being in the middle can be, and also the opportunity for connection of like, okay, I might be the only one experiencing my specific blend or mix or question, but actually look, I can see all of these other people who they themselves are caught in their own middles, and we can have this conversation about what that means. My master's thesis project was called Negative Space, and I think that was maybe the first attempt at answering this question, but it was very much looking at the idea of defining yourself by what you are not, and this idea of like, okay, I know where the borders of these different aspects are, and so therefore I can define myself by those borders. And that was, I think, a helpful step in the process. But middle child to me is much more a reflection of where are the overlaps and where are the borders permeable, and how do things intersect to create something that is new? And this idea of being half of something, not actually being the truth of the matter, that I'm not half one thing, but I'm fully many things, and that I can utilize that for different means of expression.
Leah Roseman:
The history of Chinese immigration to Hawaii, that goes way back where they brought as laborers, or?
Teagan Faran:
Still doing my own research too, to find more about my family's history and why we came to China. And I know there was a little bit of back and forth across the generations to stories of
Leah Roseman:
You mean came to Hawaii?
Teagan Faran:
Came to Hawaii, yes. Yeah. So I'm still uncovering exactly what the reasons are and trying to find out why.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just curious. In Canada, men were brought to work on the railroad, but there were all these racist laws that they couldn't bring any family members or women for generations.
Teagan Faran:
So it's something in, I think there's tenderness too in talking about and trying to find out more. And now being that far away from family, just physically being in New York rather than being in the state of Hawaii, it feels like every time I go back I'm like, I'm hungry and I want to find out this information. But I also want to ask the person today how they're doing
Leah Roseman:
Now terms of your, we talked a little bit about your time at University of Michigan. I was curious about Danielle Belen, how does she pronounce her name?
Teagan Faran:
Belen.
Leah Roseman:
Belen, yes. Yeah. She seems like a great teacher and somebody I didn't know about.
Teagan Faran:
Oh my gosh. Incredible mentor. Yes. That school was just amazing for me also in the sense that I was able to have so many different figures in my life. I started studying with Danielle my sophomore year because I went in freshman year studying with Andy Jennings, and it was wonderful and amazing, and we had these great musical conversations and sort of broad view. And I was also hungry for this opportunity to have someone just really pick apart my technique and talk about my pinky. And so I was able to work with both Danielle and Andy in tandem, which was a really important lesson for me too, I think at 18 of how to take in different advice and balance it and make my own decisions. But I was able to first work with Danielle through her program Center Stage Strings, which is all about how do you present yourself, how do you bring yourself onto stage, both in the consistency of your playing and the excellence of your stage presence, but also how do you address an audience? How do you speak from the stage eloquently? And she is my pedagogical idol in many ways. I was actually just on a call with her last night where we're talking about plans. I now teach at Center Stage, which is a really fun sort of full circle opportunity. And I get to work with students about their speaking from the stage and how to prepare concerts for non-traditional spaces, but she has so many creative ways that she engages her students in the community that I am shamelessly just copying in my own pedagogical work.
Leah Roseman:
So what kind of advice do you give to students about non-traditional spaces and presentation?
Teagan Faran:
So I always like to start from a place of what is our shared knowledge when we're going into a space, often we're going into a space like a pre-K program or maybe a public school music program, a library for story time is one that we often go to. And so with that, I try to think, brainstorm with the students, what is the shared language that we have with this age group? If it's a music class, what have they been talking about? What vocab do they know that you can tie into? But also attention span. If we're going to a classroom of five-year-olds, we might not play your entire Purcell, but let's pick a couple of sections and talk about each section and explain sort of what makes you excited about it. And then we also work a lot on this idea of speaking slowly and enunciating and feeling calm and smiling and enjoying yourself so that the people there are also enjoying themselves.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's great. And in terms of realistically, what do you think you learned the most from Danielle?
Teagan Faran:
Oh my goodness. I think consistency is the largest one. And there's so much I can point to in terms of, again, the way that I think about my pinky, the way that I think about my bow hold. But there is a predictability and a comfort that Danielle has in her playing and in what she imparts to students. And this idea of being able to control as many of the variables as possible going into a performance so that you have the capacity for the improvisation in the moment to have musical inspiration because you have this foundation that is just comfortable and there for you.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's great. Well, we talked a little bit about concert presentation. I think I was reading something about how you'd like to welcome the audience into a space in different ways, maybe even in terms of configuration.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. I really do enjoy playing with the boundary or no boundary between stage and audience. For instance, later today, I'm taking my studio here at Ithaca College. We're going over to the art gallery on campus for our end of semester studio recital. And the way that we're setting it up is that it's going to be a gallery walk. And so each violinist has chosen a piece of art in the gallery that they believe represents their piece in some way. And so they're going to give an introduction and then play their music in front of the artwork that they've chosen, and the audience gets to walk through the gallery and sort of experience this rather than a more traditional seated, even speaking from the stage, but just seated one place sort of concert. And I think that came from, in many ways, work that I had done with Danielle, but also from that Persephone & the Phoenix performance of being able to have a mobile audience and this idea of being able to drift as part of a musical experience and get different vantage points.
Leah Roseman:
That's a really beautiful idea. But I'm curious, are they all playing unaccompanied works or
Teagan Faran:
They are, or there's a couple of duos in there, but yes, it was a very strategic programming aspect to make sure that we could do this without the support of a pianist.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So you're teaching Ithaca College and you also teach younger kids like Suzuki, you sort mentioned?
Teagan Faran:
Yeah, so less so these days. This is my first year at Ithaca, so I'm definitely letting myself sort of ease in and learn more about the community. But a lot of Suzuki inspired and El sistema inspired teaching made up sort of the bulk of my pedagogical work when I was living in New York City.
Leah Roseman:
I think of Ithaca, I think of Moosewood, vegetarian restaurant.
Teagan Faran:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Is it still there?
Teagan Faran:
It is still there. I've got three of their cookbooks. It's delicious. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I grew up, I think with maybe their, oh, I know what it was. I went to Ithaca. Okay. I'm 56, and I think I went there when I was maybe seven to do the Suzuki summer thing.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. Suzuki. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And if I'm not mistaken, Moosewood might've been even around then, and my mom might've bought a cookbook and then cooked from it. This is my memory.
Teagan Faran:
I love that. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And then I never went there again until I was on tour when Pinchas Zukerman was music director of our orchestra. We played a concert in Ithaca randomly, and I went and ate at Moosewood.
Teagan Faran:
Yes, it's, it's a very comforting place.
Leah Roseman:
In terms of other teaching you've done, like you mentioned briefly in Detroit, was that through the Sphinx organization?
Teagan Faran:
It was, yes. Yeah. And there was an El Sistema program at the University of Michigan that I also taught through, but my primary teaching in Michigan was through Sphinx, and I was able to go to Flint for a few years as well through that Overture program.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I've talked to a couple of people on this podcast who taught through them, and sometimes it was a little chaotic, like they were teaching at different schools, different days, and they had this schedule. Did you have to contend with that
Teagan Faran:
A little bit? I mean, it was definitely a good learning process on my end of just like, okay, how do I stay organized so that I'm coming to the classroom, my best self for these students that need me to be able to teach violin well? But it's also been amazing to see the trajectory of the program. I've been able to stay in touch with them even after leaving Michigan. And so I think I've seen some of that growth from the chaotic good to now just this well-oiled machine.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. What are some ways of dealing with a group of children like that it worked the best for you, especially since you were a young person at the time?
Teagan Faran:
Yes. I was fortunate where we always had at least two teachers in the room. And so that was very helpful, where the ratio student to teacher was quite small. And then I think just having routine and shared expectations of each other made such a big difference, where I could come in and we would know that we would start the same way every day, and that we always would be in a specific place, but then we would have elements of choice built in as well of like, okay, now we're going to do our bow exercise. Here's the three that we have, which one do we want to do today? And so being able to both define parameters, but allow for agency made for, I hope, the most enjoyable education experience. But having the two teachers there as well was extremely helpful because it did give me the opportunity to then, if a student just really needed that one-on-one attention, one of us could go into another room and have that moment with the student so that even in a group setting, we're able to check in individually with students regularly.
Leah Roseman:
And in your teaching now with the college students, I am guessing you're incorporating some creative time and improvisation with them.
Teagan Faran:
Definitely. And again, trying to do that same sort of idea of here's the parameters that we're trying to fit, but within each of these parameters, there's agency and there's choice. And trying to be able to speak to all of the different ways that you can be a violinist and prepare students. What I see as the most, employability is not the word I want to use, but this idea of how is violin going to continue to exist in your life? Do you want it to be an income source? And if so, what are the ways that you can make income with violin? Just even being able to say that there's options out there that include improvisation, that include being able to arrange and create your own music. So that's been a big part for me, is having some basic facility in a digital audio workstation, can you record yourself and layer yourself so that if you're teaching in a public school and you want to create practice tracks for your students, that's something that you know how to do. Can you read off of a lead sheet? So if you're at a wedding and the bride requests something, you can pull it up and it's there and you know how to facilitate that. But even aspects of being able to, at the beginning of the semester, say, we're doing this recital in the art gallery, there's no piano. Everybody has to be able to play something by themselves, and that's an aspect of violin playing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Teagan Faran:
Wonderful.
Leah Roseman:
Now, another thing I read about you is that you like to work with violin makers in terms of what's the definition of a violin and pushing boundaries.
Teagan Faran:
And so that, a lot of that stemmed out of the nine ways to destroy a violin project and just getting to know the creative work that's happening in Lutherie. I'm really inspired by this group, women in Lutherie, which is addressing the gender disparity in instrument making. And so there's some beautiful creative work happening where people are trying different F hole shapes and different corners, and that's a lot of fun. But also talking with creatives around the country, I dunno if you can see behind me, but there's a 3D printed hard angerer fiddle that I was able to pick up from a maker in Portland, Oregon. And it's this really fascinating blend of diving into Nordic folk tradition, but through this instrument that is in no way traditional, it's this sort of shockingly metal looking violin that has eight pegs and sympathetic strings. And so this idea of if something is violin shaped, is that enough to call it a violin or is it the way that it's played or yeah, what is the violin as a vehicle for expression, and where do we draw those boundaries?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I had Sara Caswell on this series last year who plays Hardanger Violin, but that's not the same maker.
Teagan Faran:
I don't believe so. I'm not familiar with Sara's violin, but I don't think it is. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
I should remember we talked about the maker, but so many interviews, it's gone.
Teagan Faran:
So yes.
Leah Roseman:
No,
Teagan Faran:
But the person who does these 3D prints is really fascinating too. I haven't delved into this side with him yet, but he does these sort of light responsive violins. I mean, this is the beauty of A 3D build is that you can embed LEDs and things that then respond to midi. And so it's a different experience, of course, playing a wooden instrument, but I think it kind of opens up creativity in that way too.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Now in terms of exploring non-traditional sounds and finding beauty that's not pretty, Temptress is a really powerful track.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, speaking of metal music, Jens Ibsen is a great friend, and I think maybe the first person I thought of when I was thinking of this album concept and that piece was the first one I recorded. I recorded it about six months before everything else because it just deserved its own session. But I think Jen's described that piece to me once as what would Paganini have written if he was a metal fan? And I think that's a pretty apt description. And so there's effects in there where Jens was sending me videos of guitarists doing palm muting, and it's like, okay, how do we do this on the violin and how do we get these harmonics? But also this palm muting and this sort of swirling sense of controlled chaos. And I think Jens is really sort of exploding musically in many ways.
And he has just this demand for excellence that I really appreciate, where I have some friends who are composing and they very much have the mindset of like, okay, I know that I only have this time with the orchestra. I'm going to make this piece as palatable as possible for the one hour of rehearsal that I get so that I'm getting my musical intention out with the least amount of rehearsal, which I think is super strategic. And Jens completely approaches it in the opposite direction where he's like, if you want to know my musical intention, you have to spend time and you have to invest, and you have to give yourself to the project too. And I think that's what Temptress is, and it still runs in my head. Every once in a while, I'll realize that there's a fragment floating around in there just because of the time that I've spent with it.
Leah Roseman:
Now, people are just going to hear a short clip, but it's almost 12 minute solo piece.
Teagan Faran:
Yes. I think he refers to it now as his solo violin sonata, which I think is a apt title.(Music)
Leah Roseman:
And I should have said right off the bat, you're playing a so brilliant and expressive Oh, thank you. Throughout the whole album. It's really wonderful.
Teagan Faran:
I appreciate, and I really appreciate you taking the time to sit with it and visit it multiple times too.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, well, it needed that. Now, I did want to ask you, another strand is I know you're a certified personal trainer, and that came out of, maybe just tell us about
Teagan Faran:
That. Absolutely. So maybe the theme of this conversation too, but this was another thing that I did during the initial pandemic shutdown, but it was something that I had been interested in, and I as a violinist have unfortunately had a number of different injuries. I had some tendonitis issues, and then senior year of high school, I strained my back, which is just kind of an absurd thing for a teenager to do. And so I've been really cautious and very have to be very proactive about taking care of my body in order to be able to tour and perform. And I think I grew up in a time where it was almost fashionable to have a performance injury. I was at Meadowmount, and if you weren't sore, you weren't practicing enough. And this sort of competition of like, oh, but my elbow hurts, but I'm still going to play my concerto.
And now being on the other side of the studio trying to pave the path for my students to not only be able to recover from injury, but how do we prevent it? And so that was my inspiration for getting the personal trainer certification was like, how do I speak in an informed and authoritative way to students that, I mean, especially in undergrad, our bodies are changing so much that you just have to figure out how your body works, and then you have to figure out how to take care of it. But it actually was also a very nice sort of second source of income when I was in grad school, and that was a nice way to, I think, further develop pedagogical skills. I was working one-on-one in a gym with adults who had fitness goals, and so it was a completely different creative educational setting. But those same principles of the improvisation, the meeting people where they are trying to give people things that they could do on their own so that they can progress even when I'm not there. I think there's a lot of parallels with studio teaching.
Leah Roseman:
And what do you do now in terms of your balancing strengths and all of that?
Teagan Faran:
Yeah, so on my best day, or on my best weeks I should say, I'm running and I'm going to the gym. I'm stretching often. That will vary week to week depending on the schedule. But I always travel with my exercise bands in my violin case and make sure that there is some aspect of warmup and cool down at the very least for each session. And when I can, I try to incorporate that into studio class and chamber coachings.
Leah Roseman:
Oh,
Teagan Faran:
Fantastic.
Leah Roseman:
Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you'd like to talk about?
Teagan Faran:
I think this was very wonderful. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Thanks so much for this today. It was really great. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at Leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Cold. Have a wonderful week.
