Yuja Wang in Her Own Words: “I Didn’t Change Direction, I Just Expanded”

Yuja Wang © Julia Wesely

12 August, pianist Yuja Wang made her debut with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) at the Edinburgh International Festival, in a world premiere. The programme was jointly curated and selected by Wang and Wynton Marsalis, with ten arrangers reworking jazz classics by Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck and others. Wang performed transcriptions of works by these jazz piano titans, accompanied by newly commissioned band arrangements created specifically for each transcription.

What captivated Yuja was not simply the jazz, but its sense of community and play. Classical music, she says, is usually centred on a soloist, or a soloist with an orchestra, and as a solo musician there can be a certain sense of solitude. This was different: “We rehearse together, everyone writes music together, everyone arranges together.” There is a sense of everyone participating, she says, rather than striving for perfect precision. “Good music is a sense of play.”

This is my third interview with Yuja. When I first met her in 2009, she was 22 and had just stepped into the international spotlight. When we met again in 2014, she had already begun talking about jazz and contemporary art. More than a decade later, she has gone much further: collaborating with jazz musicians, exploring conducting, taking part in Latin music projects, working with David Hockney on an immersive art experience two years ago, and more recently bringing her playing into a VR project now being presented internationally.

Yet classical music still makes up the majority of her more than 100 performances around the world each year. From this autumn, she will also be an artist in residence at Vienna’s Musikverein, performing a series of concerts. She continues to admire pianists such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who combine deep musical study with an open mind. “I didn’t change direction, I just expanded.” She does not like looking back at who she was ten years ago. Everything that happened simply brought her to where she is today. What interests her now is what she can do with everything she has accumulated along the way — and where it might take her next.

We also talked about her teacher Gary Graffman and her friend and mentor Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), both of whom passed away over the past year. MTT was part of Wang’s life from the age of 17 into her 30s. “He could understand me without saying anything,” she says. People like that, she feels, are increasingly difficult to find. She has also come to understand that life outside music matters: the richer her life is, the more she has to express when she sits at the piano.

Our conversation therefore began with jazz and ended with music and life — and with the question of where a pianist who has spent more than two decades at the very top of her profession might want to go next.

Good music is a sense of play

Music is still what gives me the greatest pleasure. A while ago I played some Latin music. Two years ago, my friend Teddy Abrams — we have been very close friends since our days at the Curtis Institute of Music — took me to hear Latin music one summer. I felt that the musicians on stage had such a love for music and for life. Everything came through the music — very directly, very naturally, and with such infectious energy. I was completely drawn in, and I thought, I wish I could play with them one day. And eventually I did.

We have four concerts this summer, all at fairly big music festivals, but in smaller venues. A lot of things are different from what I am used to. We need amplification; two trumpets and two percussionists can already be very loud. There is also improvisation, although most of it is written out, and I have one improvisational section too, which is mostly written down beforehand.

It is completely different from classical music. I have played the piano since I was a child, and before I play, I read the score, so my music is very visual. Theirs is very auditory. I have to turn off the visual first and then listen. It is completely different. I don’t have that experience, but I also don’t think I necessarily need to. I just want to be immersed in it, to be with them. For me, there is only good music and bad music. There are no boundaries between genres.

Listening to jazz is a little like reading Haruki Murakami. It takes me somewhere else. I don’t know if you would call it escape, because it takes me somewhere else, where I don’t have to think about my own life for a while. There is something deep in it that speaks directly to the soul.

I never really separated jazz and classical music, because my father used to be a percussionist and played jazz. So I was exposed to these things from an early age, and I have always liked them. To me, they were never two completely different worlds.

On stage, it is not about everything having to be perfectly precise. It is just that everyone is playing around together. Classical music is usually a solo recital or a concerto, and as a solo musician myself, I sometimes feel a little isolated. This is different. There is a real sense of participation: we rehearse together, everyone writes music together, everyone arranges together. I like that.

I started conducting around 2018, when I began working with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. It feels like a community, with everyone serving the music together. I think there is a misunderstanding about conducting: people think the conductor is standing in front and leading everyone. But I’m not a leader. It’s just like chamber music with a bigger group. The cello, the violin, and the piano should be in the middle. It is a sense of community, everyone playing the score together.

From Hockney to VR: finding new medium to experience music

For many years, I have been thinking about whether there are new ways for me to express myself through music, and whether there are new media through which music can be experienced. I recently did a VR project, Playing with Fire. A lot of people said, “Oh, artificial intelligence.” But it had nothing to do with artificial intelligence.

I spent a very long time recording on site. First, I played every piece live and recorded it in full. Then I played it again based on those live performances and recorded footage of how I played. So it really took me a very long time. The “me” in it is always really me. There was no machine involved, and we kept adjusting things and trying to make everything as good as possible. It is just that the music was eventually put into another medium: you have to put on the glasses to enter that world.

I really liked the immersive project I did with David Hockney at Lightroom in London. That was very inspiring to me. I feel that after playing the piano for so long, I really need to absorb nourishment from other art forms, otherwise my playing might lose its soul. Playing with Fire took that one step further. With Hockney, I was there and Hockney was there. This time, I had already recorded everything and then went back to see it.

Later I wanted to add smell as well, so I found a perfumer who works for Dior. He is also interested in music, so we recorded a video together. There are about seven or eight pieces in it. He first had me smell several different scents, and then I chose one for each piece. The theme was fire, but fire can be bright, or a little frightening, or warm, like a fireplace. For each piece I used a more abstract feeling, and chose it together with the director.

There was also an Icelandic artist I had never met before. He listened to my music and then painted what he heard. The first time I put on the glasses and saw the finished project, I had something close to an out-of-body experience: seeing myself seeing myself, and it felt very real, while I could also see other people. I think it is at least quite creative. It is like combining a music video with immersive art.

The classical music world has changed generations now. In terms of age, I used to look up, and now I look down. These new concerts and new things are very easy to misunderstand. People always seem to want to define something first, as if they need to define it before they can understand it. But if you don’t understand it, I think you should just enjoy it first. There is no need to define it.

Yuja Wang with JCLO at Edinburgh International Festival © Andrew Perry

I never set out to break the rules

I never deliberately wanted to break the rules, but sometimes I really feel constrained. I never deliberately set out to do these things, but somehow I always end up doing them. I’m really only thinking about the music. I’m on my own all the time. I have to prepare musically, and before I travel I have to pack. I pack smaller dresses, because it’s easier, I can bring more dresses, and I am visually creative, so I don’t want to wear the same dresses all the time. And I do think about acoustics, how the hall is, the walls, how the piano is. There are so many things to think about on site, but in the end, it all gets reduced.

Sometimes I wonder if it is because I am a woman, and this is all people can remember. If that is really the case, it is very sad. They remember the way I bow, how I wear heels, but that has nothing to do with what I am trying to do.

I want people to be moved by the music

I want people to come to the concert and be moved by the music, even have their souls touched by it. And then I walk off stage and they say, “Oh, she dressed in a really short dress.” That is really soul-crushing.

I don’t know if it is because I am a little older now and everything is more easily accepted, but these things do take time. Now, when I do recitals, I am actually influenced by jazz. Like these two concerts in Edinburgh, each one an hour: Wynton warned me in advance that we might change the order of the programme on stage. We have a set of pieces, but we don’t know how many we will play, or in what order.

What’s funny is that he only told me this yesterday, but this is exactly how I have been designing my own recitals this year. I say, 60 to 70 minutes, and I don’t want the audience to clap in the middle, because that breaks the concentration. My programme has a structure. The piece before affects how you hear the piece after it; they are actually connected. For me, it is a little like a film director building the structure of a programme. But I don’t want to do it the same way every time.

So I said: 60 to 70 minutes, no applause in the middle. The first reaction is usually, “What? Then how are we going to print the programme?” I say, you don’t need to print it. The tickets are already sold. People are coming to hear me, and I promise them good music. And afterwards, people really liked it. I did it this way in China and Japan, and just now in Boston. After tomorrow’s concert, I am going to Salzburg. As soon as they hear Salzburg, they say, “Oh my God, Salzburg! We need to print the programme!” As soon as you are not completely following the usual way of doing things, as soon as you are a little flexible, there is so much unnecessary noise around it. But if I believe this is the way I can make music, now I can actually do it.

Remembering MTT: “It was almost like telepathy”

My teacher Gary Graffman passed around last Christmas. Then MTT left us, and David Hockney passed away. It really feels like a generational change. Before, if I had something going on in my life, something about the human side of being a person, I would talk to them about it. But one by one, they are gone.

Those people accompanied you through the first half of your life, and then suddenly all those shared memories and shared experiences are gone. MTT was with me from the age of 17 into my 30s. He watched me grow up. He could understand me without saying anything, almost as if there was some kind of telepathy. It is harder and harder to find people like that now.

MTT’s teacher was Bernstein. When I was 11, I watched Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts and felt that he could make classical music so interesting. Later, MTT had Keeping Score, talking about Mahler and Beethoven, explaining the logic and emotion of the music so that you could understand it both intuitively and rationally.

Learning music with him was like that too. I remember the first time I played Ravel with him. When we got to this part, he started singing jazz. Then when we got to this part, it was the Can-Can, and he started dancing. He made the music so vivid. So they connect music with everything in life, and make you feel that music is an expression of life. That is why I also want to have a very rich life, with many things that I can express through music.

I learned all my concertos with him. He didn’t just talk to you about music; he connected music with life. Touring can be very boring, but he and his husband Joshua would take me to the Grand Canyon, to the San Diego Zoo. What he left me was not just music, but a way of life. Otherwise, you just sit at the piano in a little dark room, and you never know what is happening in the world outside.

Later, MTT developed a brain tumour, and in his final years it became difficult to talk to him. So over roughly the past five years, I have also slowly learned to rely on myself. I have been playing for such a long time. Before, I was always absorbing so much nourishment from music, but now I need to absorb things from other art forms, from film, from other areas. I feel that Latin music, jazz, Hockney and VR will all stay with me and eventually become part of my music.

Yuja Wang © Rolex / Christopher Anderson

Open-mindedness and deep study go hand in hand

Of course I still like pianists such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard. That hasn’t changed. It is completely different; it is just expanding. I really like his state of mind. He is always open-minded, and he studies everything he does very deeply. Open-mindedness and deep study are really two sides of the same coin.

I still play classical music, and classical music still makes up a large part of my performances. I live in New York now, but next year I will be an artist in residence at the Musikverein; in fact, it starts this autumn. I will play Barber, Bartók and Prokofiev. So the things I liked before are still continuing. I haven’t thrown them away. I just want to keep expanding.

I still love Schubert, as always. And I still love listening to Chopin. I like listening to Schubert and I like playing Chopin. But if you see me in ten years, please don’t quote me on this. Because I am not a fixed person. Ten years ago feels like another lifetime. I change every day. Every morning I look forward, not back.

I don’t really understand the concept of a “vacation”

What happened in the past has happened. It brought me here. What I need to focus on is: now that I have all these resources, what can I do with them going forward? If you keep looking back and comparing yourself with who you were ten years ago, you fall into a very big black hole.

I like Paris, I like museums, I like absorbing things, and I like walking in parks and looking at the city. I have been to Edinburgh several times. This time I stayed the longest, but had the least time to myself.

When I go back to China and I’m not performing, I like shopping and going to the cinema. I also like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Every city in China is so different. There are still many places I haven’t been to. I have never been to Sichuan. I would also like to see Xi’an; it is so fascinating. Tang poetry and Song poetry are also very fascinating to me. There are so many treasures in China.

I have been living and performing outside China since I was 16, so it has been more than 20 years. I feel a little tired of Europe and America. I have been to most of the cities in Europe and America. I would like to go to New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Egypt, Africa — places I haven’t really been to. I want to eat Chinese food every day. I love it so much, but Chinese food abroad is still different from Chinese food in China.

I don’t really understand the concept of a “vacation”. If I’m in a good place, not performing every day and not too busy, that’s fine, because I need music to survive. If I had 20 days of vacation, I would go crazy. I would think, what am I going to do?

Of course I want a vacation, but how do I know whether three years from now I will want to perform? That’s the crazy thing about classical music: you may have to start preparing for a concert two years in advance. The stressful part is really the travelling — going through security, dealing with so many people. It is really stressful.

But I don’t usually think of playing the piano as work. So why do I need a vacation? I hope my love of music will never change. That is the most important thing.