New Mexico Women in Music; 3; Magdaline Luki and Robyn Schulkowsky

Albuquerque Action Radio presents New Mexico Women in Music, Part Three. Magdalene Luki, pianist. Writing a piece or just being a musician. It's a long discipline process that you have to keep it up, you know, even if you have a bad day, you do it and maybe the next time you go and you have a good day, but it's just something you have to, it gives you continuity to your life. I've had these feelings about music for a long time, it's like, it's everything that you can't experience any other way, that's maybe, that's, for me, that's why it's been

around so long, that's why it will always be around, because you can't get that kind of a high anywhere else, as a listener or as a performer, there are other things that make you feel that good, but I don't think there's anything that does exactly to you what music can do to you. Magdalene Luki and Robin Schokowski are guests tonight on the final segment of New Mexico Women in Music, a three-part series highlighting the talents of New Mexico's finest women composers, musicians and vocalists. I'm Marilyn Pitvin, your host, and in the first half hour of our show, we're listening to Magdalene Luki, a contemporary pianist whose musical focus is on composition and performance. She's a graduating senior at UNM's Department of Music and an accomplished musician, playing piano for many theater and dance events, as well as music concerts in New Mexico. As a good representation of Magdalene's current performing interests and talents, we have an excerpt from a recent performance of Paul's Piece by composer Charles Eakins, Paul's piece, with Magdalene Luki on piano.

I hope you are enjoying it. .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . Paul's piece. Tell me some of the ideas behind that piece. Well, I don't know exactly what the composer's ideas were behind it, but it's very fast. It goes into some slow sections. It's very syncopated. Wait, was it all composed or was it how much was it? Okay, a lot of it. Okay. When the three of us, the percussionists and the violinists and I, the pianists were all playing together, that was all written out in the rhythm and the notes. At the slower sections, where we solo, we each tend to solo. He'll just say, play it as slowly as you can or take your time and he'll give you a certain

specified notes to play and you can take your time at that and it'll go back into . So it's sort of a structured improvisation? No. Well, it's structured piece with certain places in it where the performer is free to interpret it as fast or as slow as she or he may want to. What it does is it gives the performers more power and more creativity, doesn't it? Yeah. It's more of a performer's piece. It's also in a composer's, okay, play it here exactly this way, all the way through, kind of the thing. Right. It's also a big relief because the piece goes like a bad out of hell and when you get to those places in the piece, it's a relief because then you go, oh, here I can just, I can just relax with it. Yeah. What did you feel about that particular piece, Paul's piece? I liked it a lot. Every time I played it, I was scared.

I mean, the piece goes so fast and you have to count very meticulously and some of the counting's real tricky. So I liked the piece but it also, it scared me a lot. Even when we rehearsed it, it was like I had to be more than completely aware all the time, you know, and it was nerve-wracking but I liked the piece a lot. Did you always know you wanted to be an artist? Yes. I did. From a very young age? Yes. Yes. My parents convinced me of that. And you always knew it was going to be music? It was painting for up until I was about 16. I was into art. How about piano? Why did you choose the piano? I chose the piano because there was always one in the house and my mother used to play it a lot and I always wanted to play it. She taught you, right? She gave you lessons. You didn't resist, obviously.

No, I didn't. Can you describe what that feeling is when you're playing music? That attracts you too at time and time again in your life? Oh, God. I guess there's the combination of getting something right and then the possibility of having an accident that sounds good. The best things happen in accidents sometimes, mistakes. Yes. You stumble on something in that moment and you thought it was wrong when you did it but you discovered that it's right. Right. And that's what's still frustrating about writing music, about trying to compose music because you're putting yourself in a position to where you're supposed to have total control over everything and you can sit there for hours and never make up your mind. Whereas if you just, you know, let things happen, if they happen, sometimes it comes out better than you thought it was. Right. When you're composing, you have such an opportunity to analyze, I would guess, to overthink it. Right.

You compose a lot of music? I have been, recently. I've been spending a lot of time writing and I haven't necessarily gotten anything written. What does that mean? It means that you can sit there for a whole afternoon and maybe get a measure. Play around and finally you get a phrase of music that you like and you say, okay, I can live with that but the rest of it can go. Right. Is that why it's such a long process? Yeah, it's a real long process. Usually towards the unknown when the deadline comes along, I pull everything together. You work best under pressure. Yeah. I work only under pressure. Only under pressure. I think this is a part of what a lot of artists experience. So when the pressure is finally on, what happens? What happens? What happens if the adrenaline just charges you up and all that intuitive force comes through? What happens? Well, sort of. I stop trying to make it perfect, wanting to have it perfect and I just do it and however it comes out. No. Not necessarily, but it's good. Right.

And people don't know the difference anyway. So it's thriving for perfection as a composer is that it's probably a very anxiety-producing kind of thing because it's never right, it's never the perfect, it's never what it always could be better. Yeah. I suppose so it could always be better. What do you like more performing or composing or how do you like them differently? Well that's why I like to improvise is because it's sort of both happening at the same time. You're performing it, you're composing as you're performing. Right. It's a chancey. Yeah. What if you're not really tuned in and you just start going off on some tangent, that's dangerous huh? Well, not necessarily. Sometimes it's really good. Uh-huh. You don't know what's going to happen and what happens happens. Great risk in that too. Yeah. You're hanging yourself out of the line for what about when you're playing with other people in an improvisational kind of way. Is that sometimes easier than if you're playing alone because other people can bring you back in to the theme or if you go out on a tangent, they'll let you take that space and then they'll be that kind of backbone for your fall back with.

Well, that depends on the nature of the piece that you're doing. If you're improv, usually in jazz, you improvise over a number of chord changes and everybody, you know, somebody will take a solo and then somebody else will take a solo and there's more. But there's a structure to it. Then there's improvising that has no structure to it, which is what I do when I'm just improvising on the piano. Yeah. I just want you to know, you know, you know, I just want you to know.

All right. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Righting a piece or just being a musician, it's a long discipline process that you have

to keep. You have to keep it up. You know, even if you have a bad day, you do it and maybe the next time you go and you have a good day. But it's just something you have to, it gives you continuity to your life. What about inspiration? Hearing other musicians and composers has inspired me, you know, going to a good concert or listening to something that's surprisingly good, you know, is always inspiring to me. Do you forget any other kind of arts and get inspiration in that way, as it goes? Yes. That's something visual stimuli you're hearing.

Right now I'm very into that aspect of music or having a piece performed. I think that and a lot of new music is that way today. It's not just the sound and it's not just the musicians playing the notes on the page, but it's also being aware that you are visual as well as oral to those people. And so that a lot of new music has visual things written into it. You know, a lot of it's humorous. More performance oriented than music has been of that nature. Jazz music. Like the work you're working, the work you have been working on recently, the Lucas Foss piece in particular. That's very visual. Well, when Lucas Foss was here, I asked him, the first thing I asked him was about Blackbird and I asked him how he came to choose the poem that he chose for. And he said that the poem is so visual itself, the words and everything that's happening is very visual itself and that's why he chose it. And it could be interpreted musically very well.

And visual also. It's a well as Stephen's poem, right? Some kinds of things go on in that. Visually. From the pianist's point of view, I'm playing inside of the piano a lot. So you get lots of arms moving in opposite symmetrical directions. You get sort of almost like dancing. It's very expressive with your hands and your arms. I mean, when you say inside the piano, what does that mean? Just with your arms standing outside with your arms down in the piano. Standing up at the keyboard and leaning over the piano strings. And then there's another percussionist who plays inside the piano at the same time. With mallets or something? Yeah, with mallets and triangle beaters and cowbells and does all sorts of other things. You know, plays all sorts of other little percussion instruments at the same time. So it's very active in terms of its visual. For the audience watching it, it's like they're watching it happen as opposed to as opposed to having something. I mean, music written in the 19th, 18th century, it

was more like through composed. You had the beginning and the middle and the end of a song. Whereas this sort of music takes you through a story. And it's something interesting happens after something else. And so it keeps going as opposed to always giving you something to relate back to saying, oh yes, well, that's what they did. That's more like life, too. Right. And it's in that improvisational kind of ways. And one thing happens after another. And it's not necessarily connected, but yet you probably could connect it if you wanted to. It leaves it open for audience interpretation, maybe. Right, right. Would you say you're the most active part of it? I would say the percussionist, the percussionist and I are the most active part of it. It's pretty unorthodox to have a pianist get up and jump in, I mean, sort of not jump into the piano, but get up and be over it playing it. Right. It's kind of sensational. Mm-hmm. Well, in this past century, a lot of composers have who are interested in the piano, which tried to see how much can be done with the piano. It sounds just

like playing the keys. Right. And is what you do in this Lucas Foss piece? Is that sort of, is that a lot of what you can do with it? Is that sort of reach a lot of the possibilities of what a piano can sound like? Yes. It really explores it to its maximum. Well, not necessarily to its maximum, I mean, there's always a lot more that you can do, but it does a lot. And you'll hear how much the piano can do in these excerpts from the Lucas Foss piece, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird, with Magdalene Luki on piano. The blackbird world. The blackbird world in the hotness of the world. The blackbird world. The blackbird world in the hotness of the world.

I can feel the song with Gilbert Glock. The shudder of the black bird frosting. Even the birds on your feet would cry sharply.

He wrote all the Connecticut Connecticut. He wrote all the Connecticut in our last culture. He wrote all the Connecticut Connecticut. He wrote all the Connecticut in our last culture. Once a fear, a fear pierced him. In that he mistook the shadow of the everyone who planned the birds. He mistook the shadow of his people. He mistook the shadow of his people for black birds.

It was evenly. It was evenly. It was snowing. And it was going to snow.

The black birds that lived the siblings. The black birds that lived the siblings. The black birds that lived the siblings. The black birds that lived the siblings. The black birds that lived the siblings.

The black birds that lived the siblings. The black birds that lived the siblings. That's basically what I'm working on. Quite a lot of stuff. That's what you also do besides doing straight music. You also get involved in theatre arts and creating music for the kinds of performance. Don't you play for dancers? Yes. have a real wide range of experience as a musician in the arts. Probably each thing serves each other, right? Yeah. You learn a little bit from each thing and that all goes into Magdalene's vision. Yeah, I guess. Which is what? Oh, well, I don't know. I don't know if that's my vision sort of just happens as it happens. I think one reason

I've worked with other groups in the arts like theater and dance is because it gives you a reason. I mean, it's like if you're being part of a production, it gives you a reason to do it rather than just sitting there and saying, well, I'm going to write a flute concerto. You know, I mean, it helps to have a purpose to write for. What kinds of things do you envision for yourself in the future? Recording as an obvious. Yeah. I would like to learn more about electronic recording techniques because I think a lot of today's music is made that way and there's lots of interesting things that you can do. I'd like to possibly write music for television or short film things. I really can't say. You know, I just try to be as versatile as I can and I hope that it will be able to be used somewhere.

Magdalene Luky, pianist and composer. Our guest tonight on New Mexico Women in Music Part 3. Our second guest tonight is a distinguished percussionist who teaches at UNM's Department

of Music and performs regularly all over the country. Her name is Robin Scholkowski. I remember the first meeting that I went to when every kid decided if they wanted to be in the band and what they wanted to play. And that was it. That was just it. The band tried to want me to play the oboe. And I said, no, I will play the drums so I won't play in the band. So I started with throughout a snare drum. Yeah. And then I played drum set like in junior high and part of high school played in the stage band, you know. But then I started dabbling in timpani at the same time. And I dug timpani a lot. And the school had a xylophone. So that's how I got into mallets was on the xylophone. And that's primarily what I do now. So you primarily write it into playing xylophone now. Which is. I have a phone in Marimba. Now probably those are, that is what I do. I still play percussion in the symphony of like timpani and santa-thing and do things like that. But the things that I feel that I practice that's the mallet instruments. I had to learn music in order to do that. What I mean is musical notes as opposed to with drums you just sang with them.

Yeah. My mother made all of us start piano when we were six. Well, when you were young and you get into playing the drums, did you feel that that was a boys instrument or did other people make you feel that way? I never felt that way. I was raising this tiny little town though in South Dakota where I guess I just never came into it for some reason. All music was considered feminine maybe in a town or something. I was a real macho athletic town. And I wonder if maybe if people who played music weren't just, it wasn't the macho thing to do or something. So they didn't do it. And that's probably part of it. But half of our percussion section in the high school band was girls. Wasn't even guys. And that's weird. And the girls had played drum set in the stage band since I was remembered what the stage band looked like. That had been a female, female drummer in the back of the band. How about today do you experience strange looks or strange attitudes towards you as a percussionist? As a female percussionist?

Shall I say? Yeah. Someone, the weirdest comment I ever got happened about a year and a half ago where I just played something. And this person came up to me and told me that I didn't look at all like a woman when I played. What do you mean? Well, it's just that he would imagine that a female who played music and got into it would look a lot different than I did. And I was, I thought this guy is really. I don't want to talk to this person anymore. But it came out that his feelings were that maybe music can transcend any kind of a sexual image. I liked it after that, you know, because I think that's what it has to do become androgenous. Yeah. It was just zapped. So it's just there without any sex attached to it. Because that's how I think about it, you know. And when I play with musicians, it's the same way. And so I always say, you know, it's a neuter experience maybe. Not, yeah. For me, myself, maybe both. I sometimes feel neuter

about it. And maybe that's because I can call it, which I tried to be, I thought maybe I should be more masculine because obviously by the time I got to college, I was around a lot of men, drummers. And so I thought, yep, you got to, you got to learn how to be a lot more masculine. So I practiced at it. And then all of a sudden I thought, boy, that's dumb. Why don't I just play the music? Yeah. What do you feel when you're playing it? Everything. Nothing. I, gosh, it's something I've had these feelings about music for a long time. It was like, it's everything that you can't experience any other way. That's maybe that's, for me, that's why it's been around so long. That's why it will always be around because you can't get that kind of a high anywhere else as a listener or as a performer. There are other things that make you feel that good. But I don't think there's anything that does exactly to you what music can

do to you. And that's why I keep beating my head against the wall with it, hitting your mallets against the keys. The piece you've just heard is entitled Image Re for Marimba by Benel Shibato. It was performed

in concert in Keller Hall in August of 1978 by our guest tonight, Robin Shokoski. And now back to our interview with Robin in which she's talking about herself as an artist. There's nothing else as important to me as doing that. Everything else that I've ever done in my life has been secondary to the fact that I'm a musician and that I have to keep pursuing music. It's not just I want to be a musician. It's something that just it grabbed me and I just keep grabbing after it. And I think maybe I will always be grabbing after it. And that's scary because you don't know it's going to happen next. And I can't be bothered by a lot of things that a lot of people are bothered by. So it makes me not maybe not the kind of person that a lot of people want to know.

Maybe other artists who are looking for that same thing, right? Yeah, maybe. I'm also obsessed at the moment. I don't know if this is going to be an ongoing thing, but by some kind of a perfection in the art. It's not a tangible thing that I want to get to. It's not a plan that I'll get to and stay there. It's this little bouncing light that plops around all the time. And that's the thing that I'm really trying for. Maybe no end to the searching for that. I'm sure there's not and it's okay. I'll just follow it around. The process is fun. Yeah, the process is wonderful. And to reach that moment once in your life or twice in your life where everything worked. That's it for me. I'll die then. It's okay. I don't care. I mean, you haven't reached that yet. No, no, no. I've had little glimpses of it, which is like teasing the dog with a bone or something, but I haven't had it yet. What inspires you? Everything.

Being alive, what you see, what you hear, I get excited by everything. And that I don't know. It's all something. Yeah, everything. That's it. Any given moment, it could be anything. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes I dig everything. I look out my window. Or you meet someone who says something and you get inspired. And it doesn't always directly happen. Like, I don't go, wow, I said that before, wow, I need to write a piece or wow, I need to go play the vibes. But just anything does, particularly art, art things. Like, I'll go to the museum and look at visual art. Other forms of art. That has more direct inspiration, maybe, because you can make little lessons out of it if an artist did a painting. What does it look like? And what was he thinking? And what was

happening with the painting? And then I'll try to make lessons for myself, maybe, so I can try to do similar things, not the same, but similar. To use it. Yeah, right. Right. What do you enjoy about performance? That's it. That's what I made it for. That's what I do music for. It's to perform. There's nothing else matters then. That's what I do. In the next few minutes, we're going to be listening to several percussion pieces from concerts performed in Keller Hall over the last two years, performed, of course, by Robin Shokowsky. Robin Shokowsky for Cushionist. And now back to the final part of our interview, we're sitting

in Robin's office talking about humor and how it affects her work and her life. I'm really cynical. I think a lot of things are funny that most people don't. A lot of times I don't plan to play a humorous lick or plan to play a humorous piece, but sometimes it happens and it's sort of funny. And then I just have to smile, you know, but no one else probably thought it was funny, and very personal for yourself. Back there, entertaining yourself. But it was I didn't start out to entertain, but I did. And humor is real important to everything for me. People think that I don't ever think of anything seriously because I have this reputation around here, but it's smiling and being happier. That has nothing to do with humor. It just has to do with getting by, getting around. But real humor is where it's at for a lot of things. Say, cynical. I don't see

you as cynical. That's because you don't know me. Point in your mind, we're just sort of twists, right? You know, wraps itself around a corner. Nasty, I guess. Is your serious side like that? If everybody thinks you're so jolly, but that's not true, then what is that darker side? That's because it's serious. That's why it doesn't get out too often. I think those are things you don't always want to share. I'm not determined and not deeper than anyone that I know or anything like that. It's nothing like that. It's just that I take a lot of things seriously. And when I decide to give something of myself to something, then it's serious. And then I don't mess around. Maybe that's my serious side.

But until I decide that it's worth my time, then I mess around. Maybe. A real private person. Pretty private. I get along with everyone, I think. And I can talk to people and hang out and do all that stuff. And I let a lot of information leave me, you know, freely. But I think that real important things I don't. No one knows those, maybe, or a few people know those for sure. When it's time to do something, all the arrows will point in that direction and you won't be able to make a decision. You'll just have to do it. And for me, that's how most of my life has been. And because I believe that, whether it's two or not, because I believe that, I have no room to feel bad about anything. Because I've done everything that I've done, I've done because I've

had to do it at the time. There was just no other alternative. And so maybe I'm taking an easy way out by feeling that way. I don't know. But no matter how much I agonize over decisions, it quite often just comes down, why are you? Because you can't do anything else. This is it. Do you think artists have to suffer more than everybody else or to be artists? I think they like to think so. You know, it's part of paying your dues. And about a month ago, I was talking to some friends of mine who have really paid some dues. And all of a sudden, it's paid off. They're doing well at what they had paid their dues for. It's working. And they've put in some hard times. They all did. I think I have to, but I haven't ever thought of it as paying my dues. I've just put in some hard times. And I think an artist, well, from my standpoint, I guess, the way that

I'm looking at things now is that if you pay your dues who put in the hard times, you're not just sitting somewhere thinking, I got a star for two years. It's another one of the, it's just a pursuit. It's whatever it is, wherever it is that you're that you're trying to get. It's the dedication to your contribution to art or to music or to the world or whatever you want to call it. It's, it's your contribution and it won't let you do anything else. Robin Shokoski and Magdalen Lugi, two of New Mexico's most talented musicians at our guest tonight on the third and final part of New Mexico Women in Music. This program is introduced to you six women artists living and performing in the Land of Enchantment, Joanne Foreman, Sue Young, Bonnie Bloom, Susan Patrick, Magdalen Lugi and Robin Shokoski. I'm Marilyn Pittman your host and it's been my pleasure to bring these artists to the airwaves

of KUNM. This program is funded by a grant from the New Mexico Arts Division. This has been an Albuquerque Action Radio presentation. New Mexico Women in Music was created, written and produced by Marilyn Pittman.