{"id":5043,"date":"2022-08-28T21:26:58","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T02:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2022-08-28T21:27:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T02:27:02","slug":"veer-bernstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/veer-bernstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Veer: A Conversation with Sarah Bernstein"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you want to make a career in contemporary creative music, you could do worse than use the Projects page on Sarah Bernstein’s website as your guide. You\u2019ll find entries for solo processed violin and voice; noise drums, violin, and vocals; minimalist experimental poetry performance; experimental synth-pop; a string quartet; and even a catalogue raisonn\u00e9 of compositions and film scores. And those are just the violinist\u2019s own projects. Bernstein has been an essential contributor to chamber ensembles, orchestras, improvising groups, and unclassifiable formations since she arrived in New York in 1996. A career as varied as Bernstein\u2019s resists easy summary, but VEER Quartet<\/em> (New Focus, 2022) is a congenial and instructive point of departure. An improvising quartet that brings jazz freedom to the venerable chamber-music formation, VEER\u2019s music overflows with sonic and structural invention while being highly readable, even for those listeners with a fear of new music. How Bernstein arrived at this music and her quintessentially post-genre music career is the subject of the interview conducted by phone in August 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PostGenre: Tell us a bit about your early life, the music that you heard, and how you came to the violin.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Bernstein: In the house, Bach was very present. So were blues recordings. And, from my own radio, listening, to all types of rock and pop from all eras. rowing up in San Francisco in the 80s, the \u201870s loomed large, everything from rock and soul and funk. Even salsa recordings and this kind of stuff were in the mix in my neighborhood.<\/em><\/p>

My picking up the violin was public school-driven. I was five, I think, when I had a few years of piano lessons. At about seven or eight, I had the opportunity to play in school. We actually had good music programs at that time. By middle school, I began learning music theory and chamber music. We had summer programs as well, and I pretty much just played music all the time, not thinking about whether I was serious about it or not. I think it surprised some people when I later decided to pursue it as my major in college. And that’s really when I started practicing.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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