A Conversation with Matthew Lyons, composer
Jacob Schnitzer, co-Artistic Director of Density512: Your new piece, The Portal, is based off of an essay by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy; what did it bring up with you when you read her essay?
Matthew Lyons, composer: I think like many of us, especially in April 2020, I was feeling this sense of disorientation and kind of hopelessness, not feeling like there was a sense of a future or an end in sight. Reading her essay really resonated with that feeling, but also gave me this sense of conviction and agency in imagining a new way to move forward and how to work towards that.
Jacob: That's lovely. And why is it that you wanted to transform that feeling into music for people to listen to?
Matthew: I felt that I couldn't not engage with what was happening. It’s not that I thought I was the best person to do so, but I thought “I need to find some way to engage with this present moment”. And I felt like this essay was a really great way to do so just because of how powerful her words were, and how many seeds of ideas were in there that I felt that I could expand on in each song.
Jacob: What I'm hearing is that you feel as an artist, it's important to not only to write music that you love, but also write music that speaks to the world we live in. What role do you think art has in speaking to the present moment?
Matthew: It’s a privilege to create art during this time, and I think art itself isn't necessarily enough. It doesn't typically enact change on its own, but I think it is a way of capturing and distilling a thought or emotion that can resonate with the audience which they can use to build on, to actually enact change. And I also think it can be a way of encapsulating a moment in time, something that we can look back on and really feel that moment. Every time I go back and reread this essay, even over a year afterwards, I'm just struck by how immediate it still feels, and I think when art really captures a moment like that, it always feels that way.
Jacob: The essay almost seems to be a prophecy into the world we're beginning to live now. I'm curious, what are the major takeaways or themes that you pull from Arundhati Roy's words?
Matthew: That line of hers, “Nothing could be worse than a return to normality” is sort of a refrain - if not a literal refrain, then an emotional refrain throughout the piece. I think it's so important because following this sort of large-scale societal trauma it can be easy to want to just return to a sense of how it was before. We're still in the middle of it, of course, but as things start to feel a little more normal, it's important to not lose that fire that we found and this moment of reflection.
Jacob: What is it that you're most looking forward to about the upcoming concert?
Matthew: Playing with musicians, at the same moment in time, making sounds together. These are incredible musicians and colleagues and I just can't wait to work with them. I've been recording this project remotely as an album, where everyone sends me their parts separately and I edit them together. And that's great. But now that we can all make those sounds at the same time and hear each other and feed off of each other's energy — that's what I'm looking forward to.
Jacob: Wonderful. I'm really looking forward to both sharing that feeling of connection and liveliness, not only with the musicians, but with the audience in the room and for the folks who are going to be watching on the live stream at home.
Matthew: Yes. I think they'll feel it too.
Jacob: Yes. And something that I think is interesting about your work, is that it was originally written to be put together digitally. So for the people who will be watching from home, they'll be getting just as authentic an experience of your music as the people in the room.
Matthew: Exactly.
