The Willpower of Notes: A Conversation with Eyvind Kang on ‘Riparian’

Over the last half-century, a growing number of artists and theorists have explored the concept of ecomusicology, a theoretical approach to music that emphasizes the relationship between man and nature as manifested through sound. Initially developed from the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, ecomusicology focuses less on whether a particular sound comes from environmental or human endeavors but rather examines the intersection between the two. However, because the relationship between humanity and the natural world has existed throughout history, the pathways of ecomusicology also flow deep into the interhuman communications that constitute the social sciences and ethnomusicology. Hence, as defined by the Grove Dictionary of American Music (Oxford University Press, 2014), ecomusicology is more fully defined as “the study of music, culture, and nature in all the complexities of those terms.” Taking the concept in its broadest sense, Eyvind Kang’s Riparian (Kou, 2025) is an expert treatise on ecomusicology and its possibilities.

​First, there are the ways in which Kang’s latest offering reflects the natural environment more generally. Of course, the title Riparian itself reflects the space where water and land meet. But the word’s use is more than merely symbolic. And while certain versions of the record include the artist’s photography on similar subjects, the connection is also deeper than mere visuals. The fact that Riparian is an unaccompanied solo recording tells perhaps more than anything one can glean with the naked eye. Kang is perhaps best known for his work with Bill Frisell or Secret Chiefs 3, in which he is one in a larger ensemble. Recordings under his own name are equally compelling and often require fairly large ensembles. The Story of Iceland (Tzadik, 2000), for instance, finds him joined by thirteen collaborators. The Yelm Sessions (Tzadik, 2007) presents even larger configurations. That is not to say that Kang has never worked solo; he has actually done many live solo performances in his career. But Riparian stands out as the first fully solo recording by the multi-instrumentalist. Further, due to his talents, it is not uncommon for Kang to fill multiple parts. For 7 NADEs (Tzadik, 1996), for instance, he plays eleven different instruments. With Riparian, he sticks to only one. In short, the new album finds him pairing his sound and ideas back from the largesse of his other projects. He’s more fully allowing subtle ambiance and relative silence to fill the space between his notes in a way not fully possible in his other projects. In our conversation, Kang states that for the album, he largely plays in a way he would if he were to go out alone – strings in hand – into a forest, and a careful listener can fully hear it. The album’s two fully improvised tracks are deeply contemplative and meditative, even in moments of intensity.

​However, Riparian also encompasses ecomusicality’s dives into cross-cultural communications. For the album, Kang’s instrument of choice is viola d’amore. Since reaching prominence in the late Seventeenth Century, the viola d’amore has largely fallen out of favor in contemporary music. In large part, that is due to the unique nature of the instrument. While sharing many features with the modern violin or viola, the instrument stands out for its use of additional non-bowed sympathetic strings. These additional strings give the instrument a resonant tone, some have referred to as “silverly.” Sympathetic strings are rather unusual in Western music but common in other cultures. The Persian/Iranian dutar, the Russian Gudok, and several Indian/Hindustani instruments – including the sitar, tambura, and sarod – use them. In choosing to forego the traditional Western viola, Kang is essentially examining – intentionally or otherwise – the connections between his training and career in Western improvised music and sounds from Eastern cultures to express a shared humanity. His training with the legendary Indian violinist N. Rajam also provides this space for cross-cultural expression, allowing him to better approach the long-form tracks from the perspective that they are like ragas. So, too, does Kang’s choice to follow his own system of graphical scoring, a system a bit more removed from the weight of Western influences.

​Riparian is ultimately a beautiful recording that leaves much terrain for the listener to navigate. We sat down with Kang to discuss the album’s origins and what sets the viola d’amore apart from its more modern counterparts.  

PostGenre: Riparian is tied to your work in ecomusicology. Could you provide a little more background on the concept?

Eyvind Kang: Well, it’s actually a class that I teach. It focuses on how musicians can think about ecology or adopt an ecological approach. As for Riparian, the album is related to ecomusicology in the fact that I have done a lot of solo improvisation, as on the record, when outdoors. I have played outdoors many times – in forests, for one – for many years, and it’s something I enjoy. Even though Riparian was recorded in the studio, it’s the kind of music that I would do out in nature.

But the ecomusicality concept is also much broader. There are many ways to be ecological in music. I don’t actually dig the word “ecomusicology” itself that much. I’m not trying to push that term. But there is something to the concept. I also feel it’s connected to spiritual jazz, the cosmic jazz of Sun R, and John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space (Impulse!,1974). Maybe that music is ecological too. Maybe the interplanetary and outer space conversations in jazz come into it all.

PG: Do you see music itself as coming from nature?

EK: Yeah. Or at least a part of it. Notes have their own willpower, and there is a nature in that too. With ecology, the focus is not on whether something is or is not natural but on the relationships of the things that do exist. I’m interested in the dynamics of them because they do have dynamics. forces, and drives.

PG: Is it easier to explore something like that in a solo performance, as you do not need to respond to other musicians?

EK: I think it’s harder to do it solo because you can repeat habits. It becomes difficult to fully convince yourself that something is coming from the reality of the moment and not your habits.

PG: On Riparian, you play the viola d’amore. How did you start playing the instrument?

EK: I haven’t been playing it very long. I started during the [Coronavirus] pandemic. It has always been more of my solo practice or part of my duo with my partner, Jessika [Kenney].

PG: What got you inspired to start playing it during the pandemic? Many musicians started exploring new instruments during that period, but why the viola d’amore specifically?

EK: I have actually wanted to play the instrument for a long time. About twenty years ago, I was on tour with Bill Frisell in Italy somewhere. I walked down the street and saw a viola d’amore in a violin shop. The instrument caught my eye. So, I went in and asked the person working there what it was. They told me it was a viola d’amore. I asked if I could play it, and they let me. Once I did, I quickly realized it was the instrument I’d been seeking. But I couldn’t afford it at the time. So, I made a mental note of the viola d’amore, and never forgot it.  

When the pandemic came around, it felt like it was finally the right time to explore the instrument. I started talking with people who play the viola d’amore and tried to locate an instrument. Fortunately, I did find one, played it, and fell in love with it.

PG: So, it sounds like you were not too familiar with the use of the viola d’amore during the Baroque era?

EK: I almost intentionally remained unaware of the instrument’s history. I wanted to form my own relationship with the artifact – with the physical instrument – on my own musical terms. I wanted to leave the burden of music history behind. But many contemporary musicians have played it, as well. Paul Hindemith, for one, has composed works for the viola d’amore. I think between people who focus on early music, people who focus on the Baroque period, and people who focus on contemporary music, they all seem to reach similar sounds on the instrument.

PG: Though you are probably one of the few to approach the instrument from an improvisatory perspective.

EK: Probably so. There are not many people playing it in general. There is a Viola D’Amore Society. I follow them online and see many people doing interesting things with the instrument. However, they heavily emphasize its use in early music or the Baroque. Actually, Jessika pointed out to me that there is a Bach work, “St. John Passion (Johannes-Passion), BWV 245” that uses two viola d’amores and a singer. So, even Bach used the instrument a little. But I play it totally differently, in a style closer to North Indian violin music.  

PG: You have explored ragas in your music for a while now, having also studied with Dr. N. Rajam. Is it easier to play ragas on the viola d’amore than the traditional viola?

EK: They’re both good for ragas. I was inspired by ragas early on in my music and remain so. Right now, even more than ever. I continue to get inspiration from them. Actually, oddly enough, I’m playing more regular viola in raga music in my home practice right now. The viola d’amore is one of the only European instruments with sympathetic strings; resonant strings. There are seven playing strings and seven tunable resonant strings that lie underneath the fingerboard. In Indian instruments, sympathetic strings are incredibly common. The sitar, for example, has a ton of resonant strings, and the sarangi has like a hundred resonant strings. Like both, the viola d’amore is rich in resonant string instruments, so the viola d’amore could be really good for Indian music, for sure.

PG: Riparian is your first solo instrumental release. However, you have had many live  solo performances. Why did you wait until now to come out with such an album?

EK: Well, it is my first solo improvised melodic album, for sure. Previously, I just didn’t feel up to it. I needed more structure or foundation to fall back on, whereas Riparian is a melodic storytelling type of album.

PG: What do you enjoy most about playing solo?

EK: For the viola d’amore specifically, there is a problem with playing in a larger group because of how the sympathetic strings that reverberate out might clash with other musicians. It’s fine to play with other musicians, but playing solo gives me the opportunity to really tune the sympathetic strings to the notes that I know I will play. The instrument doesn’t get in the way when I play with other people, but it’s l better if everyone agrees to play a certain seven notes so the instrument can fully ring.

But in terms of solo performance more generally, playing solo allows me to focus more on the psychological part of performance. Playing solo is more about an internal relationship with different aspects of yourself. Different memories. Different emotions. Obviously, playing with people, especially improvising with them, is totally social. It’s relational, and a group thing emerges from it. When I go solo, I know what areas I want to focus on. When working with them, other musicians might not be as interested in those spaces, and I go with them or modulate. I like how playing solo allows me to stay in one tonality and go deeper into it.

PG: Do you see a huge difference between improvisation and composition?

EK: No, I don’t actually. I feel those terms are not usually helpful for my research process. They’re conflated with larger subjects. Improvisation is often conflated with the idea that the artist is just doing something. Composition is conflated with the idea of writing a lot. I don’t really work that way. I don’t want to work that way. I feel the music itself is what matters most. I’m more interested in the life of sounds and of music. And that’s something else I enjoy about solo performance. Playing solo, the notes that I play have a will of their own. I’m able to pay more attention to that willpower. Morton Feldman said that “Most composers think that composing is a way of pushing notes around.” I don’t want to push notes around.

In terms of classical and jazz, those labels are also often unfairly mapped onto composition and improvisation too. I’m classically trained, but I’m not really a classical musician. I started learning classical, but I don’t really play much of it, other than some contemporary music. Instead, the composers that I play and have worked with all seem to be improvisers too.

PG: And you are not alone in that regard. There are many great string players who are classically trained and use improvisation, but do not fully adopt the labels “classical” or “jazz” to describe their music.

EK: Yeah, totally. It’s interesting because my teacher was the great violinist Michael White, and he had the same story. He came from classical, but got alienated from it. And at the same time, he was into jazz, but when he was coming up, the violin was not really an accepted instrument in jazz. There were only a few people – Stuff Smith, for one – that he could look to as mentors. And even those mentors were doing something different than Michael. Stuff focused on bebop and Michael came into his own with free jazz, or so-called spiritual jazz, which is a lot more suited to the violin in a way.

You also have to contend with the violin string education industry, through which many young musicians start playing the violin and at some point are made to feel as if they are limited to classical music if they plan to keep playing. But the reality is that there’s not that much room for classical musicians. There aren’t that many gigs. Plus, if someone is creative, why would they want to just stay in one space, with a limited repertoire, anyway?

PG: One of those more freeing things comes in the use of graphic notation instead of using entirely Western notation.

EK: Oh yeah. It is kind of a rite of passage for composers to make up their own notation. As for me, my graphic scores aren’t really graphic scores, in a way. I call them tablatures and signatures. Basically, tablatures are like diagrams, and signatures are codes. I combine the two to make notation that’s functional for what I want to do musically and am interested in at the moment. For a while, I was interested in time and space; in the notation of durations and spatial locations.

But I took a very different approach with the improvised melodic music on Riparian. For the album, I’m not moving around in space, and I’m also not planted on the ground doing one thing in one temporality.

PG: Your approach to graphic notation seems more functional than visual. In other words, you are not painting a picture as a score as some musicians do.

EK: Yes, I try to use the most effective notation to express a musical idea. I don’t want my notation to exceed its usefulness by being spectacular or colorful. But that’s just my approach so far. Some day, I might like to go more into using a score as visual art.

I have been doing some work in photography. Actually, some of the versions of Riparian include a little photo book with it. And those photos reflect the same frame of mind as the music. There is so much artistry involved in photography. I’m very interested in the relationship between photography and music, especially in jazz, because I feel jazz photography has had a huge influence on the sound of the music. The photographer is not an innocent documentarian but instead part of the discourse on the identity of jazz.

PG: So, you think the photography of someone like Lee Friedlander shaped the music?

EK: Yeah. His work shaped the way people heard the music, at least, if not the way musicians themselves presented music. I think the way musicians posed for the photos put up a certain kind of posture that you can hear too. Sound is only part if the story.

‘Riparian’ is out now on Kou Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.

Photo credit: Charmaine Lee