Exclusive Interview with Henning Sieverts
Listening to music and watching a concert is not new for us. But what if you listen to a music in a concert while looking at a painting, listening to the melody inspired by the picture you are staring at? That must be something. And that was what Henning Sieverts Quartett delivered to both Bandung (Jazz Break Revival XV at Bumi Sangkuriang) and Jakarta (GoetheHaus Jakarta) in his performances. It’s the state of enjoying art from two medias, audio and visual. It’s the combination between musics and paintings. While both are believed are equivalence to reach one’s soul, this time it’s not only one, but they both go deep to reach our soul, reaching one destination from two different ways.
What Henning Sieverts and his quartet gave was a set of musical interpretation from painting collections that belong to a group of artists from 100 years ago who established themselves as “Der Blaue Reiter” or in English known as “The Blue Rider”. Der Blaue Reiter was outstanding by creating a revolution in color, shapes and textures. They believed that paintings and musics are equivalent to reach one’s soul, even the ability to purify it, and Henning gloriously proved it through “Blauer Reiter”, his concept , all packed in one album.
Right after his performance at BP Bumi Sangkuriang, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, we managed an interview and asked him many stories behind this unique concept. Let’s get deep with Henning Sieverts and his stunning concept.
Hi Henning, Is this your first time to Indonesia?
Yes it is!
Then welcome to Indonesia. How do you like being here?
Thank you. I like it very much. we didn’t see so much yet, but what we saw was very nice. Yesterday we went to the tea plantation.. maybe there’s nothing new about it for you, but we don’t see it everyday in Germany.. we also went to the angklung instrument school (angklung is the traditional instrument originated from Indonesia made from bamboo tubes attached to a bamboo frame). It’s like a social project where people from the area learn there in the afternoon, it was so nice to see.. then I got the chance to hear Indonesian music, that was also very nice.
How about the people, also the audience?
They are very,very friendly
from left to right: Hugo Siegmeth, Bastian Jutte, Henning Sieverts, Till Martin
Der Blaue Reiter is a “movement” made by a group of painting artists 100 years ago, and it turned out to be a revolution in colors, shapes and textures.. what do you think about this movement?
For me it’s very interesting, because I like paintings and I like to go to museums anyway. Since I was a kid I always go to the museums..and these paintings (from Der Blaue Reiter group) are all in the museum in Munich, so I really can see them in the original, and they are much, much nicer than the one you see tonight through my laptop. It’s also interesting because I know the landscape. You can see the church from this last painting (the “Murnau mit Kirche” or “Murnau with Church”, painted by Kandinski in 1910), or all the special buildings.. I like the way what they did to the reality. For me, I like paintings very much when they are not too abstract..sometimes when something is too abstract I don’t understand, but when it’s too real it’s not interesting anymore, because then you can have a photo instead..so that has to be in between which I like.
So you can imagine something in it right?
Yeah! You can imagine something, you can even imagine different things. Everybody can imagine something different. That’s why I like it this way, in this concert, the audience can see one picture for five or six minutes, while normally if you are in a museum, you only see for two seconds, and then you go on to the next one. In here you can meditate on one painting longer and listen to the music at the same time. Sometimes in the concert people are more interested in art, not so much as jazz fans but more as art fans, but then they got interested in our music sound.
One important statement from “Der Blaue Reiter” is that paintings and musics are equivalent to touch and purify one’s soul. How do you comment to that statement?
Yes it’s very true. Also I feel really close to these painters. You know, Arnold Schoenberg was a famous composer from modern music and he was also a painter. And also Paul Klee as I mentioned on stage (Paul Klee is a painter that “marginally” involved with “Der Blaue Reiter”, one of his paintings “Street Corner” is used in Sieverts’ album), he was a great violist as well. So all these people like music and art altogether. And that’s nice.
It’s always about the same thing. In music I always try to put some feelings out and when people listen to it, they can feel different things, and it’s okay. I mean, sometimes people came to me and said, “oh this was a really sad piece”, I said “oh okay.. but actually for me it was happy. But if it’s sad for you it’s okay.” (laugh)
It’s a very interesting concept for you to “translate” these legendary paintings into musics. How did you get the idea first of all to combine these two forms of art in a very unique concept?
I got this idea because I went to this museum a few times. And then I got an invitation for festival in the south of Munich which was called “Alps Jazz Festival”. You know, Alps is a mountain lies between Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and they were presenting groups from these three nations, and we got to play there too. Then we went under this program to play somewhere else too. We played in January for Goethe Institut in Zagreb, Croatia, and they had exhibition from this paintings. We played at the last day of the exhibition, and it was very nice, because we saw the paintings and people that were from the exhibition came to the concert, that was perfect.
That’s cool. How about the copyright thingy to use these paintings?
I had to pay for them. I can’t do it just like this, it’s dangerous. If I wanted to use them for the CD, I had to pay for them, which wasn’t cheap actually..
But then it’s easier for the listeners to see where you got your inspiration from right?
Yeah. That’s why it’s important to have them in the booklet, so people can see them at home when they had bought the CD.
For most of us it’s difficult to understand abstract paintings. How did you interpret these paintings into music?
Well, sometimes I think maybe some of the music is also abstract for some people, but with the combination with a painting, maybe it’s easier to get the insight. Anyway, abstract is really an individual thing, for some might think it’s too abstract but the other might not think so. For most paintings I had special ideas, sometimes I had also ideas which more about numbers. For example for birth date. In one painting (Kandinsky’s “Murnau mit Kirche”) I took the birth date of Wassily Kandinsky for the idea. (Kandinsky was born on December 4, 1866). I use 1 as a half tone, 2 for the whole tone and so on, so I had to do the right melody out of the notes which were not too easy because it were just some numbers. It might sound stupid if you don’t try around. So it’s harder to have an idea like this, it’d be more easier not to have an idea but just to compose normally, but I like that I have to make an effort to make something nice out of the complicated ideas.
So, basically the ideas came from everywhere, not only by looking at the paintings..
No, sometimes about the biography of the painters also..
I think the case of “Die Gelbe Kuh” (“The Yellow Cow”) is interesting. For the painter Franz Marc, Yellow stood for “femine and gentle”, but for Kandinsky it stood for something agressive and sharp. To which one you based your idea from?
Yes, that’s right! I didn’t mention it on the stage but it was very interesting. I’m basically more to general type. For me it’s not that agressive. But sometimes you can also make an agressive yellow, like maybe a really bright yellow, but not this yellow used in this painting. Also the cow for me, she’s crazy but she’s friendly. But not dangerous at all.
So that’s why I heard in your composition that you started calm, slow, and then you went a bit hectic in the middle.. that way you combined both ideas.
Yeah, that’s right
Another interesting thing is the “Sankt Georg” painting. I saw the other version of this painting before, it was picturing the moment when Saint George successfully slayed a dragon. From what I heard, I think you capture a very tense situation in your interpretation..
Yeah, you can see in the beginning it was started with this (mimicking a tense-ticking melody). It was very fast like a wild ride. It was a dramatic situation to kill a dragon. I’m sure you also have a dragon in your mythical stories, there are dragons everywhere (laugh)
With many shapes of jazz found in your music and many genres exist today, how do you basically call your music as?
Well I don’t know.. I don’t like to narrowed the music. For me it’s just new composed music. It’s jazz, it’s improvised, I mean, what’s modern jazz? For some people Charlie Parker is modern jazz, while he died 50 years ago. But some people think modern jazz is only today’s music. It’s hard to say. But it’s not be bop, for be bop is very specific, it’s not swing, it’s not cool jazz, it’s not fusion jazz, maybe you could say contemporary jazz, that’s more like it.
You mentioned about improvisation. In your compositions, do you make some rooms for improvisations or you make everything based on written notations in partitures, like impromptu for example?
Well, we always have some written parts, with notes, but there are also parts which are really free, where everybody can try something new. Some parts are really free, that it always sound different everytime we play, which is also interesting for us to see. For example, I’m curious what Hugo would play, and then I had to react trying something else and so on. It’s always a risk, because sometimes it’s not so good, sometimes you’re not in the good mood, you’re tired or you have no idea, but that’s all about jazz. You have to really awake and dare to try something new.
Except for “Saint-Séverin nr 2″, it was completely composed. Only the introduction from the saxophone was improvised, he does something new everytime. But when we all play it’s completely composed.
How long have you been playing together with Hugo, Till and Bastian?
It’s already for some years now..
No wonder you all have really nice chemistry with each other
Yeah, over the years we found our sounds, found the chemistry as we keep going together
How important do you think this program Serambi Jazz is for Germany?
I didn’t know about this program before, because we don’t know so much about Indonesian jazz, in Germany we don’t know so much about Indonesia in general, I have to say. So it’s really great to have an organization like Goethe Institut that brings German artists to other countries and also good for an exchange. Now I know very well about this program and I will tell all my friends in Germany about this.
I hope this program would be beneficial for both countries especially in establishing a harmonious friendship.
Yeah sure. It’s good if we work together. It’s really a great program. As I said on stage I was really honored to play here. Very good organized here, good equipment, people here are very professional.
Interviewed by: Riandy Kurniawan
Popularity: 2% [?]
Loading ...
[...] Sieverts got the idea after looking at these paintings in a museum for a few times. (Check out the exclusive interview with Henning Sieverts). Sieverts is an outstanding cellist, composer and also a journalist from Munich that has achieved [...]