Sacramento Bee Interview

In the open air
Composer hopes his work creates a sense of affirmation

By Patricia Beach Smith Bee Arts Critic, June 23, 2002

Howard Hersh plays a keen game of musical hats. He's a composer of note(s), a concert producer, a champion of "new" music for the past 40-plus years, and a mentor to fellow composers - no matter what their ages.

As a part of the Music in the Mountains Summer Festival of Classics in Grass Valley, he's wearing all the hats.

Composer Hersh's Concerto for violin and orchestra will be given its premiere performance Friday by the Festival Orchestra and soloist Robin Mayforth.

Concert producer Hersh helped stage the Third Annual Festival of New Music earlier this month. The June 7 and 8 concerts showcased the work of the Nevada County Composers' Cooperative, of which Hersh, a Nevada City resident, is music director.

Mentor Hersh for the past six months has been encouraging six junior and senior high school students to work on their compositions. The program was funded by a grant from the American Symphony Orchestra Association. Their efforts culminated in a concert of the students' work June 12 at the festival's first Bach's Lunch symposium of the summer season.

"When I was young, there were no musicians at our disposal to play our work, so we made our own performances," said Hersh, 62. "But that got me on to a good track, and subsequently I became a music producer and performer. For these young people, it was a marvelous opportunity. And personally, it was a great experience. I am really happy being around young people - I like their energy and spontaneity."

Hersh's constant problem, he implied, is balancing all the varied activities in his life.

"I need to be sure to schedule time to compose," said Hersh, who has been writing music since he was about 5 years old. "I started playing piano when I was about 4 or 5, and did a lot of improvisation at the piano. I really wanted to be a composer. I had the bug even then. My parents were very supportive even though they were not involved in music themselves."

Hersh, a native Californian, studied composition at Stanford University both as an undergrad and graduate student. After graduation, he did all sorts of things.

"When I lived in the Bay Area, I had full-time jobs at KPFA (a progressive, listener-supported Berkeley FM radio station); wrote program notes for the (San Francisco) Symphony, and was always putting on concerts of new music. Eventually, I started the New Music Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory," he said.

Currently, his efforts center on his own composing and running his nearly 12-year-old Music Now series, whose home is California State University, Sacramento.

"It may not be a living, but it's living," Hersh said. Adding to his general good humor, composing often involves his writer/daughter Francesca, 24, with whom he has collaborated on two compositions, and his son Justin, 37, who has helped him with technical concert production.

"My wife, Jill, is a music lover, not a musician. Her passion is gardening," he said. His two other children are Sarah, 19, a college student, and Gilian, 34, a graphic designer who plays piano. "They are all very sophisticated listeners."

His quick answer to the question of how he defines his work is usually "it's contemporary concert music."

"That puts it in a classical mode rather than pops, but the longer definition is that I really like to seek that place where music connects with the social consciousness...I like to write music that has a sense of drama to it. My music is about the human spirit and it should reach out and touch the spirit of the listener.

"I want my music to move people onto another plane; to remind them that there is another plane... The social connection isn't made in every piece, but it is an important aspect of my music. I think it's what music is all about - art and music in a difficult world give us a sense of affirmation," Hersh said.

Among his works with a social conscience are "History Lesson," a piece about violence among youths and the need for people to respect one another, and "Early Harvest."

"I like writing works that touch on people in extreme experiences," he said. "I don't mean it in the sense of tragedy, which it often is, but something that shows the strength of the human spirit. Francesca and I collaborated on the recollections of a Holocaust survivor. I didn't have as much interest in the tragedy as I did in showing the imperishable quality of the spirit of the survivors."

He also composed "Schrapnel of the Heart," based on letters left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Despite such seriousness, fun is another component Hersh promotes in his work.

"I like to have fun things in my music. But even if it's fun, it should be exhilarating to create a sense of joy. This new piece, the violin concerto, is straight-ahead energy. The opening movement is slow and melodic and the second movement, with all the dances, is just, well, a (study in) triumph," he said.

When he composed it, he said, he wasn't thinking specifically of the events of Sept. 11.

"I didn't set out to write something about those events, but that kind of thing gets absorbed into your consciousness and it will come out in some aspect," he said. "My new violin concerto was [in part] inspired by that sense of unease the country was feeling. The piece sort of fluctuates between unease and comfort. I saw the violinist - since she's the soloist and all alone - as a singular figure having to deal with the kind of fright people were feeling. And then being comforted by the orchestra and vice versa."