Interview - Jachin Pousson

It is time for another interview, the second in my collection. Jachin Pousson is a composer who has fascinated since I met him in 2014. I had the priviledge of being his 'teacher' in the Palendriai composer course, I also had the joy of conducting his work which was premiered in the course. Beyond the sheer joy I found within his music, I am particular curious about Jachin because of the fact that, like myself, he is someone who came to the Baltic looking for a musical alternative and has resided in his cosy dwelling in the Latvian captial of Riga.

The work his I premiered was a curious piece indeed, for accordions and two string instruments. Cirqitri (2014) had this wonderful rolling harmonies which pulsated and shimmered, there was a glorious pull in the work; especially as it was quite so hypnotising. Cirqitri can be heard here. 

When I mentioned this process to Jachin, I asked for him to recommend a particular work to portray his output. Mostly from my point of view, every piece of his is full of curious nuances and details which gives each of them a certain glorious necessity to them; so I simply could not choose for myself. Jachin pointed me towards his Tides and Shadows for chamber orchestra as it is a good example of where his music is now, regardless of whether it is his strongest work or not. Tides and Shadows is full of that same richness and rolling harmonies that could be heard in Cirqitri but, due to the expanse of the orchestral pallete, it has a much larger array of colours and gestures. The flowing melodic line is coloured beautiful and always manages to avoid turning into something rather sacarin or self indulgent. A really wonderful work indeed. 

So here is the interview I had with the composer regarding his work and his life in Riga:

Hello Jachin, thank you for agreeing to let me interview you for the blog. Firstly, as a fellow foreigner in the Baltic, could you describe what lead you to Riga?

Hello Ben, and thank you for having me. The simple answer is the music. I began formal music education in Copenhagen under Hans Abrahamsen, who introduced me to composers from the Baltics. He gave me a few references to listen to with scores from the library and I began to discover treasure after treasure from this part of the world. The music was intriguing, boldly designed, and resonated on a deeper spiritual level to me. It contained to me a particular, novel combination of modern ideas, but with a solid foundation. At the time I was looking for a way out from what I perceived as fluffy, self-indulged, overtly intellectual or downright slapstick reactional output in the contemporary academic sphere. I began to explore the possibility of moving to the Baltics in my 2nd year of a Bachelors degree in composition, and managed to find a place as an exchange student at Jāzep Vītols Latvian Music Academy in late 2012. When the year was up, I realised I’d only scratched the surface and decided to continue my education as a Masters student in Riga. I’m still discovering great music here in Latvia, as well as music from Lithuania and Estonia.

And for those unfamiliar with your work, could you describe your concerns and obsessions as a composer?

I could say that early on I was obsessed with the schools of sacred minimalism, impressionism and spectralism. Much of my output has attempted to manifest at the intersection of these over the years. I’m thoroughly obsessed with the sculpting of texture, and places where individual melodies reach a speed or rhythm where they begin to be perceived as texture. The line where the threads becomes fabric, which can then be treated and transformed on a different material level. I’m also obsessed with large scale patterns and behaviours observable in nature. I like making musical analogies from these,  for example, music that describes the morphing shapes in starling murmurations, or the refraction of light through amber, or looking further outward, the chaotic orbit of Pluto and its phase-locked moon Charon. As a student I was motivated to find my own way of abstracting these in a perceivable, enjoyable way. There was poetry in the math that described the phenomena that captivated me, but it wasn’t easy to turn the math into music that produced a vivid impression of the source. However as I began to find my own way, I became more motivated to be honest with my output. It wasn’t enough to write a successful abstraction of a natural phenomenon. Today I want to communicate something more personal, and this calls for honesty.

I am concerned with objectivity. Hans Abrahamsen used to say to me that as a composer it is very important to be objective. Over time I think I’ve come to understand what he meant. Music is a subjective and emotional experience, no matter what role you play. To be objective is to be able to see a thing for what it really is and grasp the value of the elements important to it, whether or not it appeals to you personally. In retrospect, the academic composition exercises that were the most painful to the ear and mind initially, truly unlocked the doors of perception that allowed for deep appreciation of music I’d never have naturally selected for myself. There’s no two composers exactly alike, and for an environment to be supportive of explorers, contemplators, and those more aligned with tradition, I think objectivity is key.

Within your work, I often see attempts to connect to the ancient as well as connecting to the very new. How do you juggle this conundrum of ancient and modern? Where do you think, you achieved this balance best?

The way I see it, there are many powerful and ancient archetypes we carry in our collective human consciousness. The image that came to mind was that opening chapter in 2001 A Space Odyssey where prehistoric primates gathered curiously around the black rectangular alien monolith to the soundtrack of Ligeti’s Requiem. The combination so spellbindingly captivates and spurs the imagination! Of course, composers embed symbols within music all the time. I suppose in my own work I’ve simply decided to reach further back and further forward, attempting to embody the ancient within the forward-looking, or vice-versa. I don’t know where the balance or rather the contrast was achieved best, but my most recent attempt was in a work called Rituals for mixed choir, piano and percussion last Spring. I incorporated singing techniques from Inuit and Mongolian throat singing with melismatic material culminating in spectral clusters with evolving forments. This was accompanied by timpani, tom-toms, sleigh bells, and a piano playing mostly rhythmically within the body of the instrument. I chose to write the text in Japanese, as I felt it to be a suitable language to capture the ancient past and the distant future poetically. I was happy with what emerged from this combination, and must credit the conductor Krišs Pozomkovskis for his outstanding interpretation.

As you have been living in Riga for quite some time now, how connected do you feel to the contemporary music scene? Do you feel like an outsider looking in or are you completely adopted into the scene?

Good question. How do you measure a feeling of connection? I’ve been an outsider all my life, having lived rootless and restless in many places. Riga was perhaps the first and only place I’ve sensed what home must feel like in terms of a physical location. I’m a local in the sense that this is where I’ve made music and bought my bread for the last 4 years, but I recognise there are many things I will simply never understand. The contemporary scene in Riga is wonderfully active and inclusive, and it’s been an enormous privilege to be able to grow and contribute within it. But it has its inner workings which are still mysterious to me. Sometimes I’ve felt passed over in favour of a local colleague. But other times I’ve been given opportunities I would say I scarcely deserved. In short I have somewhat stopped pondering this issue of how connected I feel to the scene and rather focused on how can I best contribute to it and build it up together with my esteemed colleagues in our time.

How do you think your studies have affected this?

Well, studies were essentially the platform for entering the scene. As a student, most opportunities to have your work realised came from within the academy. Post graduation, most opportunities come from people you’ve developed personal relationships with during studies. I suppose it’s the natural order of things. It’s all about who you know. It’s great to be able to revisit say, an ensemble or a solo musician and collaborate outside the walls of the academy. I believe this continuity is meaningful and propels the scene forward.

From your point of observation, who would you say are the most notable and interesting composers working in Riga today?

There are several generations of composers working in Riga, and there are notable and interesting ones within each. Though it may be obvious, I must mention Pēteris Vasks, since his music called to me the most when I was first drawn to Baltic music. He, Pēteris Plakidis and Selga Mence perhaps represent the most notable from the older generation from the point of view of my experience so far. From the middle generation, I must mention Rolands Kronlaks, Jānis Petraškevičs and Ēriks Ešenvalds. Each pushed the envelope of modern ideas and techniques along vectors of their individual interests, and all are in positions to influence and inspire the younger generation. The younger generation is harder to pinpoint as it is less consistent - that is, it is the most spontaneous and adventurous. But from my point of observation, I could mention that I keep an ear tuned carefully to Madara Pētersone, Evija Skuķe, Linda Leimane and Platons Buravickis.

And finally, like I did in my last interview, let’s do the desert island discs and which 5 pieces would you want with you if you were stranded on a desert island?

Perhaps a mix of things that have always managed to move and intrigue me - and have important memories attached. Tomorrow I’ll likely have changed my mind on one or two of these, but if I were leaving today, I’d take Arvo Part’s ‘Tabula Rasa’, Peteris Vasks’ symphony for strings ‘Voices’, Georg Friedrich Haas’s ‘In Vain’, Toru Takemitsu’s ‘In An Autumn Garden’, and… Miles Davis’s ‘Flamenco Sketches’.

So to close here is a wonderful rendition of Voices by Peteris Vasks.

Veljo Tormis (1930-2017)

Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) photo by Tonu Tormis

The death of a composer is always a poignantly sad moment, as a person who gave life to such a creative expanse will no longer produce again. The passing is made all the more significant when the composer in question was such a vital figure for their nation and for music internationally. 

This is definitively true of Veljo Tormis. Throughout his life, Veljo Tormis's music has been distinctive, unique, and Estonian to its core. A pupil of Visarion Sheblain in the Moscow Conservatoire, Tormis's early works were preoccupied with neoclassicism, his Overture No. 2, which was performed in the Warsaw Autumn Festival 1961, is a perfect example of this. 

Tormis's music gained its unique twist after he began to drawn on the Estonian folk tradition of regilaul which shaped the composer into building a musical language which drew upon ancient constructive ideals and fusing them with modern techniques. The result, is simply powerful. His large works like Eesti Ballaardid (1980) is like a kaleidoscope of rituals and reflections, blurring together producing a hypnotic and beautiful musical display. Other works like Raua Needmine (1985) is raw, and intensive (Stravinsky would have killed to make a choir sound this ritualistic and potent). The work is simply for two male soloists, choir, and drum, which feels like we have excavated a lost tribe enacting a ritual. 

His works, were not solely defined by Estonian traditions, he often drew upon other cultures or on other musical traditions from pre-Christian eras; including Livonian, Setus, Finns, Ingrians, and Bulgarians, to name a few. The approach and result, never turned into mere exoticism or fetishism, but through principled composing and an elegant sincerity led to the production of truly original works. 

A composer who will be sorely missed, both for his wonderful music and for his impact on the Baltic as a whole. As I never had the priviledge to meet him, all I can do is rave about how wonderful his music is, so here are some more wonderful examples of works by the great and dearly departed Veljo Tormis.

Bronius Kutavicius: The Gates of Jerusalem

Momentum is really picking up here in Vilnius, and I have gathered so many gems to discuss I've struggled to work out the order to present them in. But when I woke up today I had to discuss Bronius Kutavicius. It would be impossible to discuss the world of Lithuanian music, without looking at Kutavicius. Born in 1932, Kutavicius has been a prominent figure for an incredible amount of time. In the 1960s he was dabbling with the same kind of experiments many other composers were tackling, but he soon turned to a different standpoint. His fascination with language, ritual, and ancient architecture led him to create a music which emulated these factors, because of this many commentators on his work often refer to him as an archaeologist. Similarly to composers like Montvila or Juzeliunas, Kutavicius draws a lot from Lithuania's ancient folklore, mythology and folk music; but in comparison to Montvila or Juzeliunas, the desire is to tap into this musical world entirely, instead of translating it for classical audiences. This gives Kutavicius's music a brutal and archaic landscape, which still hypnotises, much like sutartines or Tibetan monastic music.


Commentators on Kutavicius try to pigeon hole him into either 'minimalism' or 'new spirituality'. Both of these labels ultimately miss the point entirely, simply because the motivations are almost completely separate. 'Minimalism' as a way of describing Kutavicius, is flawed in the basic fact that the music isn't repetitive to make it simple or approachable, the repetitions in Kutavicius's work are for ritualistic purposes, just like sutartines isn't minimalism, Kutavicius isn't minimalism. The issue with 'new spirituality' as a term is it either implies a 'new age' spiritual thinking, or treating spirituality as a novelty or musical niche. This is quite degrading to all composers who get that label slapped onto their work. Spirituality has been linked to the development of music for over one thousand years, so to draw on spirituality is simply traditional. Also by the kind of logic, shouldn't Kutavicius be 'old spirituality'? as he draws on pre-Christian religions.


I digress, the piece in question I want to focus on is his large scale work 'Gates of Jerusalem'. Written in 1995 the piece reflects a quotation from Revelations, 21:9-13:

Then one of the seven angels(...)showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. (...) It has a great, high wall, with twelve gates (...) on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates

The work is a four movement work, for each major point on the compass, and each movement divides into three sections. So there is a definitive musical section for each of the twelve gates. The work was originally conceived for piano, but the composer felt a single piano ultimately lacked what needed to be created, so a work for orchestra and choir was born. 

The first movement is the Eastern Gates. Musically it references Japan, with its echos of Gagaku (Japanese traditional music) and imitations of traditional instruments like piano strings being struck to emulate the koto. The movement also references the importance of Zen Buddhism and Haiku by quoting Buson's haiku:

To the west will spread the moonlight, and the shadows of flowers - to the East.

The next movement is the Northern Gates. Which references two major elements, Shamanism and Northern European composers like Sibelius or Nielsen. The reflection on Shamanism is revealed through the use of large drum and chanting. And the references to Sibelius and Nielsen come in the form of a 'Northern Fugue'. 

The Southern Gates is an extreme juxtaposition to the previous movement. The use of layered polyphonic rhythms and melodies drawing on African or Oceanic tribes makes this an extremely exciting movement. The drive and pulsations are as hypnotic as they are energetic. 

The final movement the Western Gates looks to Western Europe. The movement is subtitled Stabat Mater and it is based on the canonical text. The conclusion of the movement and the work on the  word Amen, has the overtly spiritual overtone of almost having prayers answered.

The careful consideration of many different spiritualities, cultures, and musical idioms in this work make it quite a powerful poly-religious oratorio. In much the same way John Taverner or Arvo Part's music tries to bring others to spirituality through crystalline music, Kutavicius brings the audience to spirituality by simply addressing all peoples.

This wonderful piece can be heard here on spotify performed by Donata Katkus and his St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Aidija Chamber Choir under the guidance of Romualdas Grazinis. And thankfully now more and more recordings of Kutavicius's work are appearing like the recently released Hyperion recording of Kutavicius's 'The Seasons'.



Information gathered from

Music Information Centre Lithuania

Sleeve notes on The Gates of Jerusalem CD by Linas Paulauskis

Dabbling with Sutartines

A lot has has happened since my last post, Firstly my sister got married and I moved into my new flat in Seskines (on the outskirts of Vilnius). Hence why it has been quite a bit here. On the plus side, I have managed to grab a good stash of scores and recordings from the Music Information Centre in Vilnius; so I will be talking about each of them over the coming weeks. But I wanted to start off dabbling with Lithuanian folk music first. At first I can imagine this is a confusing jump, considering my last articles have been about composers still alive and kicking, but it is with good reasoning. Because of the demands from the Soviets for 'social realism' in art and music, many Baltic composers resorted to exploring their countries folk music.On top of this composers like Juzeliunas, Montvila, and Kutavicius approached their national folk music in a process a kin to the early works of Peter Maxwell Davies or Harrison Birtwistle, who looked at Britain's ancient music for a fragment of 'tradition' to draw upon. 

So what is sutartines?  In a brief manner of speaking, surtatines is a Lithuanian folk music which is traditionally sung by women in groups of three or four. Sutartines translated into English essentially means 'singing together or in accordance with each other.'  The music becomes very fascinating, firstly the jarring dissonance.  The music is heavily focused around the interval of a second and a third false (a third of Halfway Between a major and a minor third).  On top of this it is structurally rather interesting, the nature of the text and the music means there is no naturally occurring cadence, in theory sutartines could last forever. As can been seen from the video below, the structure is as follows: 

Beginning (Leader starts) --------- Collecting (other sings join in) -------- Ending (Which is mad by a hoot or -ooh sound)

This structuring gives great importance to the lead singer or the rinkeja (Which literally means collector). The rinkeja will ultimately define the mood, speed, and overall character of the sutartines;  as well as bringing in the other musicians and concluding the piece. But why would a folk tune need a leader? Ultimately this links back to original sutartines function, work music. Sutartines, when originally sung, were folk melodies to accompany everyone's work; this obviously was not the case with all sutartines, some were for celebration, war or mourning, but a significant amount were. 

Sutartines also makes many cosmic references. As Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė points out in her wonderful book Sutartines: Lithuanian polyphonic music; 'The structure of sutartines is best expressed by the symbol of a wheel'. As mentioned earlier, sutartines effectively is continuous. This roundness links back to folk symbolism where the wheel depicts the Sun, the Universe and the Universal Tree. So the music is one with the universe. To expand this further a Lithuanian riddle suddenly draws an interesting comparison: "Where is the centre of the Earth? - In the centre of the wheel". This can instantly be compared with the Buddhist ideals of 'finding the centre' but it also  highlights the curious similarity in function of sutartines and Tibetan ritual music, which also has a leader co-ordinating everything to prepare all for meditation. It is a curious similarity, but I will not go on to try and prove sutartines singers are like Buddhist monks chanting while they work, it is just always nice to reflect on interesting coincidence.

Earlier you said composers drew on sutartines, how else is the tradition being kept alive? Well ultimately sutartines enjoyed quite a remarkable renaissance in the seventies and eighties, as it became a symbol of national identity against the Soviets. Today many Lithuanians are very proud of this heritage. Ensembles like Trys Keturiose perform sutartines  in a traditional manner but still experiment by performing with many other musicians like Abraham Brody (see below). Alternatively bands like Zalvarinis bring elements of sutartines and other Lithuanian folk music into their heavy metal music. 

So as can been seen from this brief introduction, sutartines is as pinnacle to Lithuanian music as Mozart is to western classical music; it exists as it is, because of it. As for the future of sutartines, its future seems bright and will continue to be so as long as it is seen as a symbol of Lithuanian identity, but as the world becomes more globalised how will it affect its national identity?



Sources from

Daiva Raciunaite-Vyciniene - Sutartines: Lithuanian Polyphonic Music - A Cosmic Explanation of the Role of the Sutartines and the Lead Singer

Youtube for recordings of Trys Keturiose and Zalvarinis.