"This is actually the idea of a team - that people inspire each other"
A jazz musician seduced by theatre, Vlaicu Golcea was awarded the UNITER Prize for Music Theatre. Together with Radu-Alexandru Nica (direction), Dragos Buhagiar (scenography), Florin Fieroiu (choreography) and the team of actors at the German State Theatre in Timisoara, he signed the project “Shaking Shakespeare” – to be premiered this week in Timisoara.
What were the early ideas for the music in "Shaking Shakespeare" and how did you get to the final version?
I relied on the fact that I know very well those I worked with. This is the third performance that I’m working on together with Radu Nica, Dragos Buhagiar and Fieroiu Florin - of which I am related by a long artistic and human friendship. I stepped on a secure empathetic field. Relying on the confidence which I hope I earned from Radu, I came up with a quite radical proposal for the sound. I was thinking at a certain stage music that - beyond the fact that it would be consistent with the performance stylistics – was supposed to be the result of my searches right now: how to do art in 2010, how should a performance look and sound in 2010. etc. Moreover, I knew that I was coming to a German theatre after just having seen "Hamlet" by Thomas Ostermeier in Bucharest, a performance which I liked a lot as it was perfectly round, including from the musical perspective - the kind of performance that you either like or you don’t. My radical proposal would have placed the performance into this area. In Timisoara, having to adapt to the technical possibilities of the theatre, I realized that I can not in any way do something like that, and in addition to that, after watching the first rehearsals, I realized that what I first thought of was not necessarily the best solution for this formula. Much of the performance music was made while Florin was rehearsing with the actors. It has an aesthetic of the present year, but not necessarily something to make you say that it is modern. I think it was a solution strictly related to the structure of the play, to that there are several stories in it, with also makes the music impossible to label and not to the least monochrome.
Vlaicu Golcea, Foto de Cosmin Bumbut
To what extent are you influenced by scenography, choreography or even the actors when composing music for a theatre performance?
To a large extent. But I can not express how I am influenced. It's an unconscious input that I receive. A certain atmosphere is created. And This is actually the idea of a team - that people inspire each other. That's why I work so well with Florin - because we relate to one another, but we give strength to one another.
You also composed the music for the "Hamlet" by Radu Nica, in Sibiu. In what key did you work then - given that it was also Shakespeare and also Nica?
There, to be honest, there was much more negotiating involved, as it was our first collaboration. It was a project where we got to know each other, and I went more on proposals which I made to Radu. But I don’t know if the fact that you are working on Shakespeare should be like a sword you’re your head. "Hamlet" is so great that I do not think you can still get something that was not got already from the text. You can only exercise your mastery, imagination, so as to use it as a source of inspiration in a contemporary approach. Universally accepted ideas that are present there, said in that specific style, in the given historical conditions, talk of course about basic human truths and needs, but today you must see to what extent you can resonate with these issues, as they try to present them to the audience, how to have the viewer participate in a specific type of presentation of the issue. But I think there must be a lot of pressure. I mean, you can’t do Shakespeare any wrong. In the worst case, you may look like a sad amateur who tried to seem interesting. I think that beyond this milestone, to do Shakespeare today you must commit yourself one hundred percent. To go back to Shakespeare, from the tons of plays that are written today, you must have a very deep motivation. Therefore, not even with "Hamlet" was I distressed with the authorship of the text - more so since it was a dramatization. There, the music is not about the Shakespeare world or the mark those times, and it is only contemporary language attempting, together with the video projections, to complete what is happening on stage, in a new accessible aesthetics.
Foto din spectacolul Shaking Shakespeare
You opened the door to theatre collaborations with Radu Afrim. How did you meet him?
Yes, “A Paris Attic Overlooking Death” was my first theatre collaboration. I met Radu at the Green Hours, where I went to see Kinky ZoOne, which I liked a lot. Radu simply came up to me – he knew the music that I did - and told me that he would like to work with me. I told myself that it can only be very interesting. So this is how I did "A Paris Attic ...", with music composed exclusively "by mail "- I only got to see the performance at the premiere. At that time I thought it was the director including the music in the performance; some directors still believe this. With Radu this is justified one thousand percent. Of all directors I worked with, he’s the one I’d still trust to send the music and let him do whatever he wants with it, because he knows what he’s doing. Although I feel free, I feel much more obliged to his projects, because I resonate very well with his style, and then let the guard extremely down.
You said in an interview that although you have a jazz background, you no longer do jazz. Were you irreversibly seduced by theatre?
I hope to have detailed in that interview that the mainstream jazz is something I longer believe in. And, on the other hand, I rarely play at all. Lately I don’t go for more than five or six concerts a year. Because I am very much concerned with stage music, but at the same time because I ask all sorts of questions about my person - why am I on stage when I am on stage, if I have something to say, how am I interesting for the people who come to see me. As it is music with no social message it is like an act of exhibitionism, an absolutely uncontrollable need to play in front of other people. And then I question myself - why do people come, what do they see, am I or not able to practice a kind of musical honesty that I would like to reach. That is precisely why I quit jazz - because for two or three times, on stage, I got bored while playing. I realized at that moment that I have to stop everything. Also, I no longer wanted to work with music that preaches freedom, but it is stylistically closed and manneristic. Jazz has become a manner of making music, It is scholastic music, which is taught, learnt, and sung by a lot people, but this is another issue. In the passing years and concerts, I realized that jazz is essentially Afro-American music, which was born in a certain social, historical and political background that I have nothing in common with, as I was born in 1974, and lived for 15 years under communism and then under capitalism. I can not reproduce the type of experience this music was born out of. Sure you can play it; after all you can play anything, but it seems just as absurd - and I’m exaggerating things now – for a Japanese to play music from Oas, it seems absurd to me for a white European to play music born out of reasons he did not experience. Looking back at everything that I like, I never listened to any music later than the ‘70s to convince me that jazz has gone further and preserved the same consistency. I think somehow that is lived its times.
Foto din spectacolul Shaking Shakespeare
Still, you have not given up music, only jazz. How many albums did you record lately?
Before I was recording more, but now I stopped because I no longer have the time. I have three projects in parallel. One is called Aievea and it is the product that I am most proud. Music is for free download on the website www.aievea.ro. It includes jazz, and pop, and a feeling of rock, and a part of us. It is not easy to label it. The second project is also a fusion, but with classical musicians. We had several concerts in this formula, it is true, mostly abroad, and we recorded together with some Poles, on the works of Karol Szymanowski. Now I want to focus on the generation of Romanian composers after George Enescu – they, the acoustic musicians will play exactly what Enescu composed, and I will come over with an electronic comment. The project is called Bucharest AV. And the third project, MIDI Overdose, includes Tavi Scurtu and Utu Pascu, with whom I played the other day at Street Delivery, in Timisoara. It is a project that places three stage people in a situation of musical empathy, which never repeat themselves and go head first.
Foto din proiectul Aievea, foto de Camil Dumitrescu
Have you never thought of recording a disc of you theatre music?
Last year I had the idea of a music theatre CD, shortly after I was awarded the UNITER Prize. I thought that in a way or other, in this small world, where nothing matters anyway, maybe an object like that would somehow validate the jury's decision to award me the prize. But I made strict selection of what I considered to be representative and it resulted in two CDs, so I gave up. But last week I met a nice lady who works as a PR and who thought that the idea of making such a disc is very good; with her help I might however - maybe even for the World Theatre Day, produce this soundtrack album.
Foto din proiectul Bucharest AV
What new project are you working at?
Something that I am daydreaming of. The "Public Opinion" by Aurel Baranga, at the National Theatre "Radu Stanca". With Theodor Cristian Popescu and Dragos Buhagiar, a performance that I am convinced that we need. It's an excellently written ply and I am enormously intrigued by this Baranga character. The play was staged during Communism and was always fully booked, as it is at all times is a grim satire on the regime. Cristi came up with the idea of staging it in the documentary theatre genre – as the performance is part of an installation including pictures and interviews with Baranga, a brief recording of the play staged in the old times, etc. We will do this performance in the deepest respect for what was then, without letting to understanding that we are being nostalgic. I am looking forward to this project, because Sibiu is one of the few cities where I can work exactly how I want to in terms of the sound - there they have the required equipment, the required willingness, there are sound two operators who are artists themselves. I hope that I will eventually manage to materialize my ideas for the creation to be seen in the end and not the obstruction of means.
