A Conversation with Zachary James Watkins
Zachary James Watkins studied composition with Janice Giteck, Jarrad Powell, Robin Holcomb and Jovino Santos Neto at Cornish College. In 2006, Zachary received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where he studied with Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. Zachary has received commissions from Documenta 14, the Kronos Quartet, The Living Earth Ensemble, sfsound and the Seattle Chamber Players among others.. In 2008, Zachary premiered a new multi-media work entitled Country Western as part of the Meridian Gallery's Composers in Performance Series. Zachary completed Documentado / Undocumentado (Moving Parts Press, 2017) a multimedia interactive book in collaboration with Guillermo Gómez Peña, Gustavo Vasquez, Jennifer Gonzalez and Felicia Rice.
Jacob Schnitzer: Could you just tell us a little bit about who you are?
Zachary James Watkins: My name is Zachary Watkins and I am an improviser, composer, educator and engineer living in Oakland, CA. I grew up in Lubbock, TX. My parents are both artists — ceramics, painting, sculpture and music — so I grew up in a really creative house. I knew early on that I liked sound. I would create drum sets out of objects in the kitchen and I would also sing and make noisey rhythms with my voice. My parents gave me piano lessons with a really eccentric woman in Lubbock — praise be Marihelen Snow. I went to record engineering school at 18 in Levelland, TX, then I earned my BFA from Cornish College in Seattle, where [John] Cage invented the prepared piano, and finally received an MFA from Mills College in Oakland.
JS: How does being a native Texan play out in your music?
ZJW: I think that it makes me really aware of the stakes; in [west] Texas a musician is a person who plays at the bar, and they can play any song that a bar patron asks them to play within pop genres. Texas taught me the importance of creating local independent scenes and that I'm actually going somewhere else.
But I noticed in Texas that the music was ultimately meant to “heal” “each other” through song, and musicians are playing 'because of love and drive.’ We’re digging deep and having fun and you can see it resonate from our bodies. I come from a place where Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings, the Flatlanders, Terry Allen, and my mother cut their chops. The original Stubbs Bar B Que was founded in Lubbock and nurtured a rich local music scene. Producer Lloyd Maines worked at the local Broadway Recording Studio and his daughter is one of the Dixie Chicks, so we're talking heavy songwriting communities, and I was into that, but I could tell pretty early on that I was also into experimentation and invention. I need to explore, collaborate and learn in diverse spaces.
JS: And you had the opportunity to work with (American microtonal composer) James Tenney?
ZJW: James Tenney was a visiting professor for a couple weeks while attending Mills and I took lessons with him. I remember bringing him a score that I was working on and asking him to analyze it using his Meta Meta Hodos approach. He looked at me with these eyes like “man, that's a boring question! Ask me something more interesting!" But either way, he sat down and looked at the piece and breaking down the physical / objective experience he believed one might have. In Levelland, I learned how to record mostly country music and Maggie Payne— a great musician, great teacher, great composer and engineer — knowing my love for engineering and Tenney’s work, emailed me and asked if I would record James Tenney playing the [Cage] Sonatas and Interludes in the Mills concert hall. So we met one day, just he and I. I put two mics on the piano, set the levels and listened to him play it live, alone. Powerful!
JS: Amazing. You have an open and curious ear for sounds around you. What are you trying to channel and bring together in your music?
ZJW: My first goal is to try and translate a musical idea into the hands of others, with the intent to inspire and engage the musicians which then resonates out into the audience. What I do like to see is the musicians working it out in real-time creating space for listening, feeling and support.
JS: What do you hope that the audience will take away from hearing your new work for Density512, Night Train?
They'll hopefully get goosebumps, think about something in their memory, maybe imagine something in their future, be still and present, groove a little, maybe even dance, feel like they're hearing and supporting a human being and other human beings in a room of other human beings together after a weird couple years.
JS: That's beautiful.
