The Amazing Ms. J

I first met her when she was twenty-two years old. She came to a New York City Ballet rehearsal I was conducting of “Harmonielehre.” I’d heard her name before and knew that she was a young rising star in the virtuoso violin world, one of generation of technically polished American artists, glamorous and highly motivated, whose pictures were popping up everywhere in those tedious glossy classical music publications. There was a rumor, unsubstantiated, that she wanted to play my violin concerto.

Ten years ago rising superstars didn’t mess with contemporary repertory much. Their managers would likely go into a fetal position and suck their thumbs in denial at the mention of replacing the Mendelssohn, the “Tchai,” or the Bruch with some edgy, dangerous unknown concerto by a (gasp) living composer. (“You want to play WHAT? Oh geeze…. maybe the Samuel Barber concerto would be OK, but nothing more unfamiliar than that please!”)

Leila, when I met her, turned out to be ingenuous, presenting right off the bat an open, generous and utterly charming manner. And of course she was film star gorgeous. If my memory is right she was pregnant with her son Lucas at the time, and she told me that indeed she wanted to learn my concerto, and her plan was to memorize it during the months of her pregnancy.

And learn it she did. A very wise pro for her young age, she made sure her first outing was somewhat off the map—a performance in Burlington, Vermont. Then she planned more performances, among them a high profile, high-pressure live telecast on the BBC, which I conducted as part of a festival at London’s Barbican Theater. (The BBC later released a live recording of that performance, but alas you have to have serious disposable income if you want to buy it from Amazon, a measure of the album’s obscurity).

For that performance Leila wore a gown of black and silver checkers. And she was strapless wonder indeed! Her playing was unbelievably thrilling. Still relatively new to the piece back then, she played with an intensity of concentration that was palpable throughout the theater. Standing only a few feet away from her on the podium, I felt like I was in a magnetic field of high energy, something her physicist father might be able to explain to me.

When it was done, and while the applause was still petering off, Leila, still in her gorgeous dress, flopped down on the floor of the backstage area, lying on her back, holding her Strad in one hand, and let out a series of wild high-pitched whoops like a whinnying young colt or one of those triumphant female soccer champs who’d just scored an overtime goal. The BBC musicians were royally amused and entertained. Leila instantly became one of their favorites.

To this day Leila still ramps up her concentration in the moments before going onstage with an outburst of noises: “brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, OK, Johnnie, let’s go doooooooooooo it!!!!!”

Esa-Pekka Salonen told me that on the night of the first performance of his new concerto, she was so ramped up that her pre-stage entrance routine included some purple language that shocked this modest Finn. I can imagine.

I should ask Leila how many times she has played my concerto since that first night in Vermont. I can name a long list of cities, but it’s probably the tip of the iceberg: London, New York, Paris, Brussels, Los Angeles, Seattle, Salzburg, Munich, Philadelphia, San Juan, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Miami, Montreal, Saint Louis, Saint Paul, Baltimore, Portland, Amsterdam, and on and on. And inevitably she brings the house down. Audiences probably start out wondering if they can tolerate this unfamiliar piece of “contemporary” music only to be drawn in and enchanted by the charisma of her personality and the total command she has of the music.

And I’m not the only one who has benefited from her energy and commitment. Stimulated by the idea of collaboration and very much her own person, not to be pushed around by the drones who think they run the classical music industry, Leila has since then taken up concertos by Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès, Steven Mackey, Colin Matthews and Mark Grey. She always does them from memory.

In the space of five weeks last spring Leila played performances of “The Dharma at Big Sur” with me in Montreal and Pittsburgh. Then she played the mind-bogglingly difficult Adès concerto with the San Francisco Symphony. All the while she was going back to her hotel room and learning Esa Pekka’s wonderful new concerto, which she then introduced at Disney Hall. I am glad I am not a violinist. I would be completely intimidated by what she does.

Several years ago she heard a recording of “The Dharma at Big Sur” and called me one night. “Yo Johnnie…. We’re gonna do that piece! You better get ready.” When I reminded her that I’d composed it for an electric fiddle with six strings that could only sound if it were plugged into a guitar amplifier, she said “Yeah!!” She went to Birmingham, England, and had measurements of the dimensions of her Strad painstakingly recorded. Then an instrument builder created an electric violin corresponding to her acoustic one that she now uses in her performances of “Dharma.” Her way with the piece is very different from that Tracy Silverman’s for whom I composed it. Tracy digs and chops at the string, producing a marvelously funky, purposefully “unpolished” sound, his unique signature style that first suggested the piece to me. Leila’s way with the music is more serpentine, more blindingly emotional. In the final moments, while the orchestra bounces like a giant throbbing tabla, she goes into hyperspace. It’s been one of the privileges of my life as a composer to hear these two very different interpreters take on this piece.

She wants a new piece, a new concerto. I’m almost afraid to contemplate it, because the chances of matching the hand-in-glove rightness of the original concerto (and of “Dharma”) are so slim. But I have a hunch I’ve got to take the risk. I know it with be worth the effort even if it doesn’t match up.