Influenced by New York School composers, Fluxus, Oliveros Sonic Meditations, and Wandelweiser, Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein's fascinating scores take unique and experimental approaches to composition, heard here in three chamber works, two recorded by London's Apartment House, and a live recording from a concert in Berlin, "sounds for Berlin".
As a child, new music was a regular part of the sound world of my house, since my father's new music ensemble rehearsed in our basement. Early on in my studies I was drawn to the New York School composers. Over the years, at festivals like Ostrava Days, I worked with a lot of composers who fostered the notational, indeterminate, and aesthetic inquiries I was interested in. When I arrived at Northwestern for my grad program, I'd heard that I had just missed studying with a few experimental music faculty who'd recently left, and my classmates and I found a shared interest in these kinds of works, ideas, types of listening.
In the years after my grad program, I started performing, discussing, curating, and working with a lot of these text scores, some Fluxus, some Oliveros Sonic Meditations, and some Wandelweiser scores. But as it continued it broadened out and became more about a commitment to a particular listening and ensemble performance practice that I was enamoured with, and that really feeds my soul.
I know that you teach as well as perform. Do you feel that that assists your work as a composer, or does it sometimes get in the way? At the moment in my current professorship, teaching doesn't quite communicate with my artistic practice, but in past positions there has certainly been more connection or relationship between these parts of my work.
Over the last few years, I've been able to channel and focus my Deep Listening work into becoming a certified practitioner and this sort of "teaching" leading workshops - although we use the term "facilitating" - fosters a more reciprocal relationship with my artistic practice, so it's been very meaningful for me. For this, I wrote one new work, 'sounds for Berlin' for the ensemble they'd put together for me which was such a complete joy to work with - Christian Kesten Joseph Houston, Michiko Ogawa, and Miako Klein, and we rehearsed daily in preparation for the KM28 concert.
