Part 1

Name: Samuel Andreyev
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: composer/youtube presenter/podcaster
Current release: In Glow of Like Seclusion on Métier
Recommendations: the paintings of Bram van Velde / the British poet JH Prynne strikes me as someone who should be more widely-read / the music of Carl Ruggles, his series of piano pieces, Evocations is a good place to start.

 If you enjoyed this interview with Samuel Andreyev visit his website for news on music and video releases.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

You are asking about the phenomenology of listening. This is a very interesting subject because it’s surprisingly difficult to describe. Music is at once very abstract, and also a somatic experience. I tend to close my eyes, and my physical environment falls away as I am listening. I don’t experience music as a succession of objects or shapes, but rather in terms of a trajectory. As such, I am experiencing patterns, their transformations, and their disruptions. Even if the music does not conspicuously feature any kind of discernible patterns, I am experiencing phenomena of consistency and transformation.

As much as every kind of music has its appeal, entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted the strongest pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

Meaning. The spontaneous appearance of significance, of a concentration of value that pulls you in. Rather than escapism, this seems to me to draw us further into the unfathomable complexity of the reality that surrounds us at all times.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

The first step was a profound and involuntary responsiveness to the musical phenomenon that manifested itself very early in my development. Certainly by the time I was 5 years old it was very clear. Then I had to do the work of learning to sharpen and to channel this responsiveness. It was a long road, in part because I am exceedingly open to new experience and deeply curious by nature. So I learned to play many instruments throughout my childhood and adolescence, and also gradually learned how to write music. It actually took considerable effort to narrow my focus, as I inevitably had to do in order to progress. Much later came the more pragmatic skills that allow one to exist within a professional environment. I would say that nothing trumps the experience of playing with other musicians. It is irreplaceable. I often wonder at composers, and there are many of them, who seem to have little to no experience with performance, or even playing an instrument at a decent level; that would seem to be a quite massive lacuna.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

It was a portal into a kingdom ruled by the imagination. And nothing has fundamentally changed since then.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

It took me at least a couple of decades to learn how to work optimally. Today, my equipment is extremely basic. I write at a desk and the things I need to do my work could easily fit inside a small bag. I use paper, two small rulers, a metronome, pencils, a pencil sharpener and an eraser. That’s it. My overhead is basically nonexistent. I rule my staff paper myself, so there is no expense there. I have a small upright piano in my studio that I try things out on, but I do not write at the keyboard; I’ve never done that. I do try hard to spend as little time sitting at the desk as possible, though. I take a break every day at mid-day and cycle across the border into Germany, where I have lunch or coffee, and I regularly go on walks throughout the day in order to mitigate the dangers of a sedentary profession.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

The impulse to create is hard-wired in me and manifests as a basic drive, like hunger or the need to sleep. I think of it as something I need to do to satisfy my limbic system. I never quite know what is meant by ‘inspiration’. Creativity is a faculty of the human spirit, and it has its own appetites, which can be more or less reinforced or frustrated depending on how carefully one is paying attention. Of course, like any artist, I am besieged with sensations and perceptions at all times, and any one of these may find their way, more or less transformed, into my artistic practice.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

If there’s a meaningful distinction between my life and work, I am not able to find it. The attitudes that guide my decisions in private life, and those that orient the direction of my creative work, are one and the same, for better or for worse. Which, of course, gets me into trouble sometimes.

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

Music is only metaphorically a language. Actual languages require stable references and common understandings in order to be able to transmit messages from person A to person B. Music cannot do this. The substance of music is inherently ambiguous and unstable, making it an exceedingly poor option for getting precise messages across to people. Expression is not the same thing as communication. I don’t believe music can communicate anything at all, but it can fill a function of some kind, much like how we don’t typically communicate through our furniture—but that doesn’t mean our furniture is useless.