Feature Stories

Musical Challenges

For Michael McGraw, challenging piano music has always motivated him as a musician. Company Pianist for San Francisco Ballet since 1986, McGraw has in recent years added a number of difficult piano pieces to his repertoire.

Musical Challenges

A few summers ago, when Christopher Wheeldon arrived to choreograph what would become Continuum (world premiere, 2002), he gave McGraw a long list of works by composer György Ligeti. “Can you learn them?” Wheeldon asked. After listening to recordings of the rhythmically complex works, McGraw decided that the task wasn’t beyond him, but he knew they would take a good deal of time. “Ever since I was a piano and organ student in college, I’ve loved the challenge of learning new work.” He says, laughing, “I have a short attention span so working on new pieces has always appealed to me.”

THE FORSYTHE CHALLENGE
Last season, McGraw was faced with another musical challenge. The score was by American pianist/composer Eva Crossman Hecht (1930–1989), and was specifically composed for the second movement of William Forsythe’s Artifact Suite. Part of the challenge was that the score was based on improvising in the character of the music’s style. Furthermore, Margot Kazimirska, the only pianist trained to play the piece, was unavailable to play when the ballet had its SF Ballet premiere in April. Martin West, who had just assumed his role as music director and principal conductor asked McGraw if he could do it. “I wasn’t going to tell my new music director ‘no,’” says McGraw.

When Jodie Gates (who staged Artifact Suite along with Amy Raymond) finished her first round of rehearsals in the fall, she informed McGraw that when she returned in a few weeks to continue staging, she hoped that he would be able to begin contributing to rehearsals.

The score, “a little more than a basic outline,” McGraw explains, was based on Bach’s Chaconne. The abbreviated score serves as a guidepost on which the pianist must improvise. In the end, each time the work is performed, the music and dance steps, both improvised within a specific style, are never quite the same. With eight different sections, McGraw knew the ballet was going to rest on how well he could play the music.

FROM NOTES TO IMPROV
After Gates left, McGraw listened to the performance tape, noting that much of what Kazimirska was improvising was obviously not contained in the score. “I didn’t want Jodie to feel that I couldn’t do it,” says McGraw. “If it meant only being able to parrot Margot’s recording when Jodie returned, then I was going to do just that.” Listening to the music over and over again, McGraw painfully transcribed each note by ear. The process took him three weeks. When Gates returned, McGraw was playing.

Though Gates was thoroughly pleased with McGraw’s evolving command of the music, Forsythe still wanted McGraw to spend a week in London where Kazimirska lives. At first, McGraw wasn’t too enthused about traveling overseas in January right before the season began in a few weeks. But when he returned, he had learned much more about the origin of the ballet and working with Kazimirska for five hours each day provided him with a new commitment to the work. When the work premiered on program six, McGraw was in full improv mode.

As company pianist, McGraw illustrates that his commitment to playing runs parallel to Tomasson’s commitment to world-class dance. Says McGraw, “I don’t play unless I give it my all. Each performance or rehearsal has to be its best. When anyone’s listening to you, you have a captive audience. That makes you concentrate on what you’re doing. Suddenly you’re doing things you never thought you could do.”

Image above: Company Pianist Michael McGraw (© Erik Tomasson)