About LURA

ESSAYS BY THE ARTIST

Lura On Connection Through Music

I have long been fascinated with connection as an intellectual concept. As an undergraduate music student at Rice University, I took a class in Romanticism that surveyed the movement as it manifested across the fields of visual art, music, literature, and philosophy. I was particularly captivated by the writing of Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment, in which he described the definition of beauty as the interplay between observer and object considered beautiful. This interplay, this connection, has become what I seek in every area of life. Connection leads to engagement and to inspiration. Connection leads to a sense of togetherness, of community. As a performer, connecting and communicating are my aspiration.

In this fractious and divisive cultural moment, my ability to connect through music serves me and others even more profoundly.

Who Is Your Favorite Composer?

This is the question I am asked by audience members more than any other. For decades, my answer was that I couldn't possibly choose. And then came an extraordinary six-month period during which I was invited, by pure coincidence, to play the Piano Quintet by Johannes Brahms, a Brahms Trio, one of his quartets, a viola sonata, two of the violin sonatas, and one of the cello sonatas. At the end of this experience of compressed immersion in the chamber music of Brahms, I realized that I finally knew the answer to that popular question. Brahms biographer Jan Swafford writes of his subject's music that it contains "the counterpoint of Bach, the architecture of Beethoven, the gentle lyricism of Schubert…" and yet the music does not sound like those composers mixed together in some sort of musical blender: rather, it sounds singularly Brahmsian.

Nine years later, I discovered that there existed a competition for the thing I love most in life, the chamber music of Brahms. The contest is held in Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a tiny berg nestled amidst the Austrian Alps, where Brahms spent the summers of  1887-1889. There he wrote some of that very music that has grown so important to me. I immediately contacted one of the chamber music partners with whom I have the strongest sense of musical connection: cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn had been the principal cellist of the Baltimore Symphony from 2002-2009, during which time we had played together extensively and with great joy. Ilya agreed that going to Austria to compete in the International Johannes  Brahms Competition's Chamber Music division was something that we should do. We applied, were accepted, and began working in earnest on our program, which included both Cello Sonatas by  Brahms, in addition to works by Schumann, Bolcom, Beethoven, Debussy, and Piazzolla.

We arrived in Pörtschach on September 4, 2015. From then until our departure 10 days later we were completely immersed in the music of Brahms. We spent every day focused on phrasing, color, articulation, pacing, and structure, diverted only momentarily by needs for food, drink, and sleep. We won the Second Prize, and the experience was life changing for me; I now seek that experience of depth and concentrated engagement whenever possible.

I have returned to the Brahms competition four times since then: in September of 2016, 2017, and 2018 I was official pianist for the competition, playing chamber music in the semi-final round of the cello division; in 2019 I served as a member of the jury in the Piano Competition.  My travels in Austria in 2017 included two solo piano recitals, one in Vienna and one in Salzburg, where I performed all-Mozart programs in cathedrals that dated from the 900's A.D.

I have been surprised by how much my connection to the classical music of Austria has been augmented by spending time there. I have always loved the music of Austrian composers Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, Bruckner, Haydn, Mahler, and many others.  But to see the natural beauty they saw, to walk through the homes where they lived, and to breathe the air they breathed has changed my relationship to the music in a vivid way.

Music By Living Composers

Classical music hallows its past. We cherish our heritage, revere the great composers who founded and fostered our tradition, and consequently create the impression that we function as a museum that presents only old works by composers who have been gone from us for hundreds of years. In fact, classical music is alive and teeming with exciting music that represents our time. This music of now has diverged quite far, in many cases, from the style of the old beloved masters, and for some performers it lies outside their comfort zone. Since my early teens when I was first exposed to freshly composed works, I have been attracted to and comfortable in this medium. Rather than connecting with just a musical text, the performance of new music offers performers the opportunity to connect directly with its author, to receive suggestions and feedback straight from the horse's mouth, to learn the composer's intentions from the source. How many times do musicians long for the opportunity to ask Beethoven a question about tempo, or Bach a question about articulation? In the world of new music, all such questions can be answered.

My work as a performer of new music connects me not just to individual composers but to the musical and artistic landscape of my society as an integral and vibrant member of its arts community.

On Orchestral Playing

Pianists who can grasp and master the particular challenges of orchestral piano playing are uncommon.  Stellar soloists and even accomplished chamber musicians often have difficulty with the very unique ensemble skills that are required. Furthermore, everything an orchestral pianist plays is a solo, making the position a unique nexus point between finely honed ensemble skills and soloistic virtuosity. 

Many pianists are unused to following a conductor's beat patterns, particularly when they can change so dramatically from one conductor to the next.  

Another challenge is the difference in sound production between the piano and  the other instruments in the orchestra - the piano produces immediate and instantaneous sound, while wind and string instruments have more cushion and delay to the beginning of their sound, as the breath or the bow connect with the air column or string. These differences in sound production result in necessary adjustments on the part of the orchestral pianist, so as to play in perfect synchronicity with the ensemble. 

Another issue is distance: since light travels faster than sound, and the piano is normally placed physically in the back of the orchestra, playing directly with the beat one sees can cause a pianist to sound ahead of the other instruments. All of these issues combine to create a musical puzzle that is always different and always has a different solution. 

Furthermore, pianists do not train for these challenges. Since any given orchestra generally has need for only one pianist, most don’t even consider orchestral playing in the constellation of activities they might pursue as a professional musician. I was fortunate to discover, about fifteen years ago, that I have a particular knack for this kind of adaptive, flexible, connective playing. Marin Alsop's first day on the job at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was my first as well. The challenge has been remarkable and rewarding.

Connection Through Musical Conversation

I learned at the age of 15, in a barn in the Berkshires of New England, what chamber music is. It is spontaneous communication, openness, vulnerability. The moments when I am fully engaged with chamber music partners who are also listening intently, ready to respond, and ready to support at any moment have been the most fulfilling of my life. For me, chamber music is one of the most powerful ways to experience human connection.

I have had an affinity for chamber music from a young age. The partnerships I find most fulfilling are those which generate an atmosphere of discipline during the rehearsal process and spontaneous creation and innovation in performance. My penchant for communication with my instrument, the composer, my fellow musicians, and my audience has found fulfillment in my duo with violinist Netanel Draiblate. Times Two Duo concertizes regularly together and released a recording, Perspectives, in 2013. They embarked on a tour throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota in January 2020.

My First Duo and My First Recording

One of my first significant chamber music collaborations, and my first commercially released recording, arose from a relationship that began when I was 15 years old. As a teenager growing up in northeastern Ohio, I learned from my piano teacher about a chamber music camp called Greenwood, nestled in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. This place sounded no less than heaven on earth - a small group of musically precocious and highly motivated young people, a place of breathtaking natural beauty, an impressive and committed music faculty, and a rustic barn in which concerts were performed, barefoot. These elements combined for me in an explosive and powerful way in the summer of 1990 and opened up a new world in which I knew that music-making and its power to communicate and create connection were to be a motivating force in my life. That summer the older sister of one of my fellow campers attended a concert at Greenwood. She wrote me a note later, remarking on the beauty of my playing and how she could "listen to me play that Raindrop Prelude of Chopin for hours." Later I grew very close to her family and spent time at their house in Hudson, Ohio. And even later, we found ourselves attending the same Shepherd School of Music at Rice University for our graduate degrees in music performance. This was Christina Jennings, by that time an award-winning flutist, and in 1998 we finally began playing together.

The partnership began with a recording made in 2005 and released in 2006, which we titled The Jennings-Johnson Duo. The Duo spent 2003-2009 traveling on multiple tours, playing recitals all across America, from Boston to Iowa, New York to Alabama. Almost ten years later, we recorded George Rochberg's work "Between Two Worlds" on an album dedicated to the complete flute works of George Rochberg. The duo was active, productive, and seminal in the lives of both members, and it had its roots in our childhood.

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“Composers pray for players that are this imaginative and intelligent, this risk-taking and expressive. Christina Jennings and Lura Johnson not only bring already composed works of mine to renewed life, but actually feed my fancy new ideas and sounds. Add to this the duo’s power and virtuosity and you have every composer’s dream.”
-Gabriela Lena Frank, composer

Founded in 2002, the Jennings-Johnson Duo is a musical partnership celebrating the true spirit of collaboration. Inspired to explore all the combinations of the duo repertoire, they are challenging the traditional hierarchy of soloist and accompanist with performances that include solo works for each individual instrument, transcriptions, and music of today. Each a virtuoso in her own right, their combined synergy attracts new audiences to the flute and piano medium.

They have released two recordings: The Jennings-Johnson Duo in 2006 and The Complete Flute Music of George Rochberg, Vol. 1 in 2015.