DT: When I make an album, it’s usually not only the artistic appeal, but also because I want an excuse to work with the collaborators on that project. Was that a factor for you and Bryan?

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Thomas Kotcheff: Definitely a factor. Bryan [Curt Kostors] brought a level of technique to the table which could help build our imaginations together. We’ve been cooking this idea up and trying to find different avenues to do it since 2018. It began with writing duo works for each other, and then it progressed to us trying to do some Bach and Philip Glass together. And then we landed on the Cage and the Feldman.

 

DT: I know you got the one bad review about the album, and I’d love to hear your perspective on that. [Ed. note: The album is great.] How do you cope with—or actually, do you even need to cope with getting a bad review?

 

Thomas Kotcheff: What I look for [in a reviewer] is someone who understands what we’re doing and can criticize it. And oftentimes I find when I read a negative review, my first thought is, “They didn’t quite understand it.” That’s not unusual in our world of modern music. I really enjoy heated discussion when it feels like the person understands what I’m up to and wants to challenge me, and I think being challenged is really good for what we do. So that’s where I draw the line.

 

DT: That’s a great framework. I heard you perform this amazing concert with Piano Spheres where you performed some of the songs from the album with Bryan, and you also performed these pop-remix piano or snare drum pieces. I want to hear about how those came to be. Do you just love Cher and Celine?

 

Thomas Kotcheff: I mean, the short answer is yes. You know, the pop pieces that I end up bringing into my practice are ones that are so deeply lingering in my head that it’s almost like I have to do something with them. I cannot escape these pieces.

 

DT: They’re part of the millennial canon.

 

Thomas Kotcheff: To me it’s no different than wanting to interact with John Cage and Morton Feldman. It’s the same impetus, the same love. It’s the same wanting to understand these pieces that are so deeply embedded in my heart and make them my own, even more than they already are. I don’t know if I understand them any better, but I know I see it more as a display of my affection.

 

DT: After the concert, you mentioned the physicality of performing your new piano accompaniment to Alex Weiser’s 13-minute “Love on Top excerpt in 36 transpositions.” You just kind of go the whole time. I’m curious how you approach composing for yourself as a performer.

 

Thomas Kotcheff: You know, it’s an interesting thing. In one regard, I don’t just want to write what I know I can do really well, because that wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be a challenge. Oftentimes, when I’m writing a hard piece—and I would consider the Beyonce a hard piece for many reasons—my first draft might include a [piano] run that I’ve been writing a lot and playing a lot in my life. I have a few atonal runs that I do a lot. Then as I practice the piece, I’ll start to change the run to make it easier or to make it harder.

 

As I’m practicing, I’m trying to balance, “What’s the result? Do I want it to sound hard, or do I want to sound fluid?” Then I start changing the run to get it to where I want to land on that spectrum. In the end, I want to sound fluid. I don’t want people to really care if it’s hard for me or not. 

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So I end up with a different version of the run, and then once I have the version I like, I start doing scales on it. I begin every practice session doing every single run that I’ve written as a scale up and down the piano. And that really helps the run become, like I said, fluid for me, so that when I play it, it sounds like I’m just making it up, or it sounds like something I do all the time.

 

DT: I’m curious how you think about programming a concert as a whole, and pacing that on a piece-by-piece level. When you’re not only programming but also composing for yourself to play, you need to build in these micro breaks within the piece and also within the concert as a whole. How does that come about?

 

Thomas Kotcheff: There is a part of me that—when I’m playing a piece where I believe the intention of the work is for people to hear it and to wonder how I’m able to do it, or how long it’s going to be going on for—that has to live over the edge. The impetus to want to do that is no different than wanting to run a marathon or an ultramarathon. It’s because I want to live over the edge for a second, and I want to see what is possible and if I can do it.

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When I wrote the Beyonce, I did have a feeling deep down—and it’s a good feeling—but a feeling of a bit of fear. I was like, “This is too long, where you’re just playing fast notes. You can’t do this. Your hand’s going to be tired, your arm’s going to be tired. You won’t be able to do this.”

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But then there’s a part of me that just goes, “Well, would it be any fun if you knew you could do it? You’re doing a concert, and you only do so many per year. Do you want to do something that feels safe, or that feels a bit wild and scary?” And I’m always going to choose “a bit wild and scary” and see where that takes me.

 

So that is where I begin, but I am trying to find moments where the distance can be relaxed. It’s both mental and physical: trying to bake in parts where I feel like I can take my hands and my arms and my brain down for a second, even though maybe it doesn’t sound that way.

 

DT: You mentioned running an ultramarathon later the same week as this marathon of a concert. I’m guessing the appeal was the same wild-and-scary, don’t-know-if-you-can-do-it feeling.

 

Thomas Kotcheff: The race was the Mammoth Mountain Trail Festival 50k, and it was my first attempt at a high altitude ultramarathon. And the why? The why is a good question.

As a freelance artist, I feel like a lot of what I am trying to do is give my life some structure, some large brushstrokes and small brushstrokes: the one-day view, the one-year view, the one-month view, the five-year view. Putting together projects large and small, including an ultra marathon, helped me look ahead and think, “Here’s how my year’s going to go.”

 

DT: There’s so much work in preparing for a big concert where you’re playing almost the entire time and a lot of it is your new music or arrangements. I imagine running an ultramarathon at a high altitude requires a similar kind of planning.

 

Thomas Kotcheff: The planning is so important, but almost equally as important is the adjusting. You have this idea and this vision of how you want the project to go. I’m using the word “project” for both running a marathon and putting together a big concert or big album or a big composition. You have a vision and you have a timeline, and as the timeline moves through, you have to adjust everything you do, including the goal.

 

I think to be goal-oriented is so important for me and to many freelance artists. But having that goal be a beautifully moving target—making sure that the project can end in a way that you feel good about—is really important too. 

 

DT: You had some moments in the ultramarathon where it was a really steep uphill and your per mile pace was not what you had wanted it to be. Is that accurate to say?

Thomas Kotcheff: Well, the per mile pace was way slower in general, cause we’re at 11,000- or 10,000-foot altitude. So I would say it was unexpectedly slow throughout, but I knew it was going to be slower. I just didn’t understand how it would be slow because it was hard. It wasn’t slow because I made a choice to go slower—I was being forced to go slower by oxygen levels that weren’t there.

 

DT: And what do you do in those moments? Do you have mental tricks you use to keep going? I don’t know if you experience that while you’re performing, too. Sometimes I have intrusive thoughts while I’m performing, and I have to acknowledge them and then quickly dismiss them.

 

Thomas Kotcheff: Intrusive thoughts really used to really affect me badly. When I do have a negative thought in performance, which is not unusual, I’ve trained myself just to let it be.

 

You know, so much of practicing for a concert is also practicing the way you’re going to think through the piece. If I know a part is really hard and will cause me a lot of pre-concert negative thinking, like, “You’re always going to mess up measure 10 of that section like you always do,” I will bake into my thought process something to say that combats that at measure 9. Usually it’s like, “Slow down here,” because slowing down for the performer is usually imperceptible to the audience. 

 

When you run a long distance, the thoughts are a lot longer and slower, and they linger in a different way. It feels more like when you’re battling long bouts of depression: You’re aware of it, and you want yourself out of it, but you’re not always sure how to do it. Sometimes if you’re in a really dark place, you can’t just jump your way out of it. There’s just not a solution like that. 

 

That’s something I didn’t really understand before. I’m a very proactive person. I always want solutions and answers. And I realized—and I can say it now because I’ve found my way out of some bad places—that I just needed to know it would pass eventually. You know, it’s really hard. 

 

That’s more the kind of mental stuff that happens in a long-distance race, where you’re like, “I feel bad, and I’m going to feel bad for a long time. What do I do?” I’m not really sure, other than I just figure out a way to keep going. I don’t know what I say to myself; I just know I’m not going to give up on it. I’m not going to give up on myself.