Paola Prestini Is Forming a Piece of the Solution
Paola Prestini, Credit: Caroline Tompkins
How do artists work within the parameters of the pandemic and how can organizations support artists in this moment of crisis? These are the questions that composer and National Sawdust’s artistic director, Paola Prestini, is asking. Prestini joined Classical Post for an interview on May 19 to discuss.
National Sawdust
National Sawdust is a staple of Brooklyn’s contemporary music scene. Due to COVID-19, they had to let go of the majority of their staff and cut the National Sawdust Log. This thriving live venue has pivoted into an online home for the music and art community which is home to their Digital Discovery Festival, Masterclass Series, and The New Works Commission. The entire Digital Discovery Festival is underwritten by the Alphadyne Foundation.
Working in the Livestream Medium
High quality audio is imperative to livestreams and creating this content requires training and money. “In this phase in the Digital Discovery Festival we’re trying to make it look good and focusing on sound. Our technical engineer Charles is letting artists know that we have grants for mics and is training musicians on how to use zoom and mics,” says Prestini. “You don’t train as an instrumentalist your whole life to be compressed into single channel audio. We’re doing the best with the technologies we have knowing that they will likely be improving.”
One might imagine that Prestini would be more comfortable than most working with Zoom as her Hubble Cantata currently stands as the largest shared virtual reality experience to date. But creating works intended for livestream as a medium sets up completely different parameters. “When you’re creating in those parameters of VR you’re not creating a choir out of a single feed,” says Prestini. “This has set up a completely different parameter: how do you make chamber music when you’re all in different places?”
The Hubble Cantata at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
Adapting Large-Scale Works
Prestini has a large work titled Old Man and the Sea for a huge choir and doesn’t know when it will be performed in person. So she’s adapting the work to fit the current situation. “I’m wondering if there’s a way for me to create a multi-platform piece: one in which I use electronics and the other where a fabulous choir sings it knowing that it might not get done for 5 years. Now economically also, things are different. I think large-scale form will be suffering for a while and that’s too bad because I love and create in that medium.”
International Collaboration
Working with livestream could provide some benefits when collaborating internationally. “People want to connect. We’re looking through this time to see what we’re going to look like on the other side of this, if we’ll have a career, and wondering what that career will look like,” says Prestini. “One of the directors that I’m working with lives in Slovenia, our meetings will now all be digital. It actually makes things easier.”
Livestream Works As A Historical Snapshot
Composers writing specifically for livestream, and getting good at working in that medium, is one artistic trend that Prestini predicts. “I think that the work that’s coming out is going to be an artifact of this period and an important historical snapshot of what we’re going through. There will be elements of it that remain, I think composers will ask themselves if they really need to be there for rehearsals and administrators will ask themselves if they really need to work in an office,” says Prestini. “I do think we’re going to look back on these works and they will be documenting our time in a really cool way. Outdated maybe too, absolutely. Maybe in the way that some 80s music is outdated and fabulous.”
Digital Discovery Festival
Paying artists and giving them a platform on the Digital Discovery Festival is a chance for the venue to help those whose concerts were cancelled and expected income disappeared. “When this first happened it was shocking and we had to let go of a huge part of our team, I had no idea how we were going to survive this. Then very fortunately we got a specific angel grant meant to help artists,” says Prestini. “We can’t help everybody, but even if you help a hundred artists that’s a hundred artists who have a platform and money.”
New Works Commission
Another way that National Sawdust is paying artists is through their New Works Commission, which will select 20 emerging artists through an application process to receive a $3,000 commission to write for the JACK Quartet or members from the National Sawdust Ensemble. In addition to the commission, artists will receive mentorship from Prestini, Marcos Balter, Ellen Reid, Pamela Z, Steve Smith, Jeffrey Zeigler and JACK Quartet.
The New Works Commission is also an opportunity for writer Steve Smith to become involved in National Sawdust after they had to cut the National Sawdust Log. “If you don’t have critics and people writing about music, then you don’t have a whole system. That is one of the saddest things that’s come out of this. I don’t want to paint a rosy picture,” says Prestini. “We had to let go of most of our team, I went off salary. It’s the reality to survive this. I’m heartbroken but hopeful that as we stitch back up we’ll be able to integrate these brilliant minds in a different way. Steve being part of the Composers Competition is an attempt to get him back. The service he was doing in terms of mentoring our artists was huge.”
Masterclass Series
While the New Works Commission is based on a selection process, the Masterclass series is open to whoever wishes to join. “I’ve started a masterclass series with Helga Davis on unpacking the moment and understanding what artists are going through,” says Prestini. “That’s been helpful to me on a personal level to hear techniques from other artists and hear how they’re doing. We’re all needing each other right now more than ever. It’s going to be up to artists to define our way forward, which is scary and empowering.”
Hildegard Competition
The question that Prestini is asking is, “What can we do that is encompassing all of our communities and that puts some right into the world?” New Works Commission isn’t National Sawdust’s first initiative, they also hold the Hildegard Competition annually which commissions and provides mentorships for selected non-binary, trans, and female artists. National Sawdust will be releasing the first two volumes of recordings from the Hildegard Competition in late June. “I never think about what we’re doing at Sawdust as THE solution, because anybody could look at it and make valid suggestions,” says Prestini. “I’m one person, we have this specific team, I know and am active in many communities but not every community, so how do we form a piece of a solution? Hopefully others do that as well so that as a totality we listen and we heal a system together. Because there’s no way that Sawdust, with as little money as we have, could make a real impact alone.”
National Sawdust premiere of Excellent Sheep by Alexis Bacon, Hildegard Competition Finalist
When National Sawdust first launched the Hildegard Competition, they didn’t specify that the competition was open to trans and non-binary composers. “We realized that it was necessary to name the fact that it was for non-binary, trans and female composers,” says Prestini. “The reason for that is by not naming that, we were excluding people. I know that everything I do is not right, but it’s coming from trying to make more space.”
Adaptability as a Composer and Leader
Adaptability is part of Prestini’s artistic practice, and it extends to how she leads National Sawdust. “What we do as composers in general is take something abstract from the ether and work on it until it slowly comes to life,” says Prestini. “We’re on constantly shifting ground with a lot of judgement around us and so you make do with what you have.” National Sawdust has brought to life an entire digital platform for artists.
Paola Prestini
Through an illustrious career being equal parts creator and connector, composer Paola Prestini is known both for her “otherworldly…outright gorgeous” music (The New York Times), as well as the “visionary-in-chief” (Time Out New York) and Co-Founder/Artistic Director of the non-profit music organization National Sawdust, based in Brooklyn NY. Born in Italy, and raised on the Arizona/Mexico border, her music has focused on the human voice, with influences of folk mixed with electronic resonance that has created a singular storytelling style in both narrative and abstract and interdisciplinary forms. The Wall Street Journal recognized Prestini for “pushing the boundaries of classical music through collaborations.” Over 25 large scale artistic works are the result of Prestini joining forces with conservationists, poets, virtual reality film directors, astrophysicists, and puppeteers. Her independent streak was forged by creating her own multimedia visions during her early days with VisionIntoArt, the collective she co-founded while at the Juilliard School. Through VisionIntoArt, many iconic works emerged, among them: The Colorado, a multi platform music eco-documentary by Murat Eyuboglu for Roomful of Teeth and Mark Rylance; her opera theater work Aging Magician with Julian Crouch and Rinde Eckert premiered on Broadway at the New Victory Theater after a run at the Walker Art Center, ASU, and the Krannert Center; and The Hubble Cantata, the largest to date communal VR operatic experience premiered at SXSW, Los Angeles Opera, and Bric’s Celebrate Brooklyn to an audience of over 7,000. Now, she balances co-creating independent dream projects with a stream of unique commissions completing her mission to keep her curiosity and learning a constant and evolving force. The values and processes in her daily work as an artist are at the heart of the regenerative systems she has put in place at National Sawdust.
