Slicing through Silence: A Conversation with Jessica Pavone

Pablo Picasso once noted that “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” In music, artists can converse in ways often words alone cannot. But there is also a great power in being alone. This power is known well by Jessica Pavone. Across her two decades of live performances and unaccompanied albums, the violist has mined the depths of solo string performance. Part of her mastery in the area has been her ability to utilize electronics and extended techniques to provide a second voice – albeit one controlled by her – with which she can interact. She can essentially clone her artistic ingenuity, even on different instruments. In a sense, her fifth solo record, What Happens Has Become Now (Relative Pitch, 2024), follows this lineage of her own output. But it does so while chiseling out a space never before explored.

Each of the four tracks on What Happens is built around lists of timestamps and words. Their core lies in notes that make sense to the artist but would be cryptic to most outsiders. In discarding traditional notation, Pavone finds a way to write that is seemingly closer to the heart than one would find by imposing somewhat artificial standards of Western composition. The result is an idiosyncratic sound not replicable by anyone else.

This is especially true on the album’s centerpiece, “What Worked That Way, and It Worked Good” where Pavone puts her instrument aside to use a bow on the Sword Viola. A bricolagic hybrid, the Sword Viola is one of the many inventions of Ken Butler, an expert in creating original instruments out of “non-musical” objects. In this case, a dagger with a chin strap attached which, through the power of amplification, can create tones alien to most listeners. In Pavone’s hands, the instrument slices through silence to create an exotic world of sound. The stroke of her bow sometimes sounds like an infernal machine in its last gasps. At other moments, it recalls a cat fervently purring or perhaps a cassowary’s call. And at yet others one experiences a cross between a traditional string instrument and the shifting frequencies one encounters while turning a radio dial. It all seems very familiar, yet impossible to place. The piece is incredibly compelling as contrasting – sometimes even incompatible – ideas combine.

We sat down with Pavone to discuss her solo technique, playing the Sword Viola, working with Anthony Braxton, and more.

PostGenre: Where did the title What Happens Becomes Now come from?

Jessica Pavone: I’ve got lots of journals and notebooks. Every once in a while, I write things that come to mind. I read a lot. Often, when looking for titles, I flip through my old journals to see if I’ve written anything that could be a title. I saw the title of this album in one of my journals. I don’t even remember when I wrote it. I don’t remember what I was thinking when I wrote it. But I saw it in one of my journals, and I was like, “Holy shit, I like that.” I created the record’s title before I even wrote the music. I knew it was going to be the title of the record. 

PG: The record is your fifth solo album. What do you enjoy most about solo performances? 

JP: Playing solo connects me to my initial relationship with music, which was playing my instrument. That’s how I started; by taking lessons on my instrument. I oscillate between being an instrumentalist and a composer, even though I perform in all my composition projects. Playing solo is the one time I get to be with my instrument, by itself. 

There are logistical things about playing solo that make it easier. Not depending on anyone else means I can rehearse whenever I want, say yes to whichever shows I want, and tour in whatever time frame is good for me. I can rehearse whatever I want. I can tour wherever and whenever I want. I just returned from a solo tour and have two more coming up. When touring solo, I can do whatever I want during the downtime. I appreciate that part of playing solo as well.

PG: So, is it entirely freeing to play solo, or do you find it more restrictive to not have another voice to bounce off of?

JP: It’s both. I wouldn’t want to play entirely solo viola. I think that’s why I started incorporating electronic effects. I don’t always use them. But I started using them because I felt I needed a partner to play with. Electronic effects provide additional compositional elements. That’s the primary reason I use effects when I do. There’s only so much you can do with an instrument. However, I also enjoy the challenge of exhausting possibilities and seeing what else is out there.

PG: When incorporating electronics, what’s your process for figuring out how to best fit them into a piece? 

JP: I use a very simple setup. There are three basic pedals that I’ve been using for over ten years. I primarily think of electronics as another instrument. When I started working with pedals, I approached them as a completely different instrument with which I was learning to play and interact. I was not just clicking on a pedal to make whatever I was playing sound affected. That’s not the point. The point, for me, is to use the electronics more compositionally. So, there has been a lot of trial and error.” I have been using the same setup for so long that, at this point, I have a good idea of what the setup is capable of. But when I started working with it over ten years ago, I would practice the pedals for hours as if they were a new instrument I was learning to play.

PG: Since you have been doing solo performances for many years, how do you feel your solo performances have changed the most over time? 

JP: They do change. With my solo records, I generally have a formula where I always have an all-acoustic piece, one with heavy effects and some that combine the two. I feel that what changes the most is actually in my live performances and which pieces I decide to play on a given tour. I am not always playing from the most recent album. On these tours, I am only playing acoustic. On other tours, when I feel like I want to use the pedals, the set will be completely different. I primarily write pieces based on the open strings because that’s where the instrument resonates. I’ve been working with those parameters forever. I guess my solo performances are like a diary in the sense that they will change based on where I’m at. But there’s some consistency even as the music has changed because I’ve changed. 

PG: You mentioned how you play with open strings on these pieces. How did that idea come together?

JP: I first did that in 2002. When you play a note – a pitch – on the viola that is the same as one of the open strings, it will make that string ring. It’s a sympathetic vibration, something I’ve always been interested in. If I play pieces based on the open string, it will make my viola sound kind of crazy because it will ring and add another layer to whatever I’m playing. That’s a decision I made a very long time ago, and I stuck with it. 

PG: In an interview with Zeena Parkins you mention how you like to open up musical notations and not be confined to Western notions of notation. Is that true even when doing a solo piece and you are the only person performing it? 

JP: When playing a solo piece, I don’t write notation because it does not need to be communicated to anyone else. I only write down words. Just a list of timestamps and words to describe the sounds I’m going to move through. These are notes that only I would understand. They’re typed out like a setlist. It’s just abbreviated little notes to myself that probably wouldn’t even make sense to anyone else, and that’s kind of the point of this music. Nobody else is going to play these pieces. It’s almost like folk music in that way. 

PG: So, you would not share those notes with someone else and see if you could use them in a duo setting?

JP: No, no, no, no. However, the things I discover in these solo sets and solo pieces I will often use when I write for a string group. There might be a texture I’m working with in a solo performance that I then see how I can notate it in order for an ensemble to understand it. 

PG: The most striking piece on What Happens Becomes Now is “Wrong Worked That Way, and It Worked Good,” where you are playing a sword viola instead of a traditional one. Was it different creating music with that instrument compared to a regular viola?

JP: Yeah, it’s a different instrument. I play it while holding it like a viola at times, but mostly, I’m bending the sword against the floor. Also, the sword needs to be amplified to make a sound, so I am playing it through my effects.

PG: It is literally a sword?

JP: Yes. Did you see the picture of it? 

PG: No.

JP: I’ll send it to you right now.

PG: Oh, wow. Do you still put it on your shoulder and use a bow on it? It seems to have a chin rest.

JP: Yeah, I played it two different ways. I played it like a viola. But I also would bend it back and forth. I think I might have stood it up. I can’t remember if I did that because I haven’t played it since I recorded it back in January. But I mostly played it on my shoulder. I might have also stood it up to bend it more. 

PG: It looks like a real sword. It’s not sharp though right?

JP: Right, it’s dull. It’s dull. 

It’s funny. I just finished a solo tour. It was only a few shows, but every venue I performed in posted a picture of the sword viola on their website. They assumed I was bringing it with me, but I didn’t want to use effects. But when I was going to record the album in January, I was sitting in the subway wondering if it was okay to have it with me. Even though it was dull, I was still carrying a weapon. Fortunately, nobody saw it. 

PG: How did you first find out about the Sword Viola? 

JP: Ken [Butler] and I ran into each other at a show. We knew of each other and had crossed paths but did not know each other well. Ken approached me and told me he had instruments he created himself and invited me to his studio to check them out. I went to his studio, and he had thousands of handmade instruments in his loft. Most are violin or guitar types, but he has some handmade keyboards. I quickly realized that more people needed to know about Ted because the instruments he has made are incredible. I feel like he needs to be more recognized.  

I thought about maybe doing the whole record on his instruments. But when it came down to it, after playing several instruments, the sword viola was the only one I felt deeply connected with and enjoyed playing. Some of Ken’s instruments I find more visually stunning than how I sounded on them. But if you watch Ken on his instruments, he plays them like nobody else. He knows them inside and out and can get more out of them than I ever could. 

PG: A nontraditional instrument like the sword viola would also seem quite a step away from your classical training. What initially opened you up to creative music or avant-garde, whatever, you would like to call it, was seeing [Anthony] Braxton perform. Do you feel like your classical background made things more difficult in exploring things more removed from very structured music? 

JP: I think my music is far away from my training now, where my background doesn’t hinder anything. I can appreciate it. The technique I have came because of it and my understanding of tonal harmony, whether I decide to use it or not. I’m happy I have those skills. I don’t think that background is hindering me at this point. 

Before I found my voice on my instrument? Yes, it probably did hold me back a bit. But I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am without that background. It’s funny. I met up with an old college friend recently. We went to music school together and hadn’t seen each other in probably twenty years.  We were talking about playing in an orchestra together in college and how much it didn’t identify or resonate with me when I went to college. I liked playing music. But I didn’t know that when you went to music school as a string player, you were only going to be trained to be an orchestral musician. I had no idea it was going to be like that. In one sense, it was a privilege to get the opportunity to learn classical music, even if just to know that it was something I didn’t want to pursue. Not everyone gets to. In some ways, I consider that opportunity a gift. 

But I also think that background hindered me because it made it so that growing up, I didn’t learn to play music by ear. I can read anything musically.  I can read every clef – treble, alto, bass, tenor – every clef. I’m extremely musically literate. But when I have to transcribe – something I didn’t start working on until I was in my early twenties and out of music school- I wanted to learn things by ear and couldn’t do it. I can do it now, but it’s not as second nature to me as reading music. I wish my ear was developed that way, but it probably never will be, no matter how much I work on it.

PG: In terms of composing, since Braxton opened your perspectives musically and he is such an acclaimed composer, did you learn anything from him about composition when you later worked with him?

JP: I feel the lessons from him are more present when I’m leading and running bands. My work in those areas is deeply informed by him. For one thing, he developed his musical language from his solo music. Honestly, I didn’t even initially think about how developing my solo music as a basis for my compositional language was influenced by him. It was so subconsciously happening. But, looking back, It’s so clear to me it was directly influenced by Braxton. It was so subconscious when it was happening to me. But now, through all these years, I realize that is something I learned from Braxton. 

Also, when you play in Braxton’s ensemble, you’re given the agency to make choices and to be part of the process within his musical system. He would have us all play his music. The music was undeniably Braxton’s sound because of how he constructed pieces, but we had so much freedom to choose within it. And that’s wholly how my string groups work. There’s a lot of indeterminacy in the music, but it is still going to sound like my music because of the parameters I’ve established. That’s true, even with the other musicians I am working with being part of the process. They’re going to make choices. I very much want the other musicians to have agency in the creative process. 

That model of a composer writing for an ensemble who then sits in the audience and listens to the piece is not what I do. I think he was probably my role model for not doing that.  Coming from the classical tradition initially, then working more as someone leading a jazz or rock band where you’re in the band is a big adjustment. I think his most significant influence on me was how to function as a bandleader. He works hard to ensure everyone, and everything, functions as a whole organic unit.

‘What Happens has Become Now’ is now available on Relative Pitch Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information on Jessica Pavone can be found on her website.

Photo credit: Shawn Poynter