Frances-Marie Uitti

By Keith McMullen

11 March 2001

When and how did you first come to realize that music was important to you?

When I heard my father and my aunt playing Beethoven sonatas. I must have been four or five. I remember because of the house we lived in at that time. My mother came into the room and asked why I was crying, and was very surprised to hear me say, "The music." I had never experienced anything so moving and so beautiful. It was the Spring Sonata, and it still gives me a very special strange feeling to hear it.

There was always music in our house, and my two sisters played instruments as well. We were supposed to be 'well rounded,' not artists. I had one tumultuous year when it became clear to me that I couldn't not play.

Music was/is my oxygen. I cannot live without it.

Have you read Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet?

It's next on my list after finishing Roberto Capasso's Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony.

When did you first start playing an instrument or singing, and what was the evolution of your artistry?

I started and quit piano when I was about 4 and had a serious credibility problem with my father when I begged him for a string instrument. I was fascinated by the bow on the string and knew that I would love having one. He broke down and got me a cello which I was happy with. I guess the real addiction happened around puberty. We've become inseparable ever since.

Of course I had a heavy training in the classical repertoire. The sonatas, concerti, etc. with top teachers such as Andre Navarra, Leslie Parnas, and George Neikrug. But I was always fascinated by new music. Again a challenge: they all said that it'd ruin my technique, distort my sound, etc. etc. Of course, if you know what you are doing, playing microtones and bringing out more timbres of the instrument only increases control and thereby expression. Although I am known for new music, I have a full season in Europe playing the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas, Bach suites, and the occasional classical concerto. Still, that is for my pleasure. I think my real work is in developing my own voice as a composer as well as performing new interesting works of living composers.

Singing? Funny you ask. Just recently several singers have said that there is a disguised voice in me. I use it in its rough form, but don't consider myself to be a singer.

Where did you first encounter new music?

I must have first heard it in concerts when I was quite little. Also the radio. Only much later did I dare to dive into those intrepid waters.

When and where did you take your first plunge into the performance of new music, and what has been the course of that development?

Rome. I was asked to play Webern pieces with piano. During the dress rehearsal, I saw a large coat with a huge fur collar walk onstage. Bright blue eyes piercing over the top. Miciko whispered, "That's Scelsi." He approached me and asked, "Do you play well?" to which I could only reply, "Maestro, you have about 1 1/2 minutes to hear and then decide for yourself." I soon became a frequent visitor to Via San Teodoro 8 where Giacinto Scelsi lived, and I ventured to play his first most difficult work from what was to become the massive Trilogy for solo cello. It didn't take long for the word to get out that someone was taking new music seriously, and soon I had many new scores arriving in the mail from all the Italian composers.

I had always envisioned the cello on stage alone, that wonderful voice in all its colors unencumbered by other instruments. Soon I was able to convince organizers that it was attractive enough, and I began playing in this form all over Europe.

What are some of your most memorable experiences as a performer?

One of the peak moments I've had was while premiering the Jonathan Harvey cello concerto in Albert Hall, London. It is a lyrical work using the entire range of the instrument set against high metallic percussion in the front of the orchestra. At one moment early on, I felt as if I'd lost my body; that my playing was suddenly taken over by 'the flow.' All those pyrotechnical difficulties I'd struggled with in the practice room disappeared, and the work played me. It felt that all I had to do was to wish the singing lines, and they happened perfectly. Even stranger was the concentrated energy of the audience giving me a sort of 'power' to stay in this state. I was high for days.

My trip to Mongolia must rate near the top for spiritual experiences. I was invited to an East-meets-West Festival there where concerts of Western contemporary music were mixed with the wonderful throat singing of the monks, the folk singers, and the bands of Horsehead fiddles. It was challenging to play for these people who were so curious and so trained in their own music.

Do you use any particular spiritual or psychological or philosophical perspective or framework to think and talk about what music is for you?

No, although music has all of these elements, I think it is a superior form which speaks eloquently for itself.

What contemporary music moves you the most?

That which moves me the most isn't particularly that which interests me or has power over me. I can have an affectionate 'one night stand' with lots of different music that I don't even respect, and find tears flowing from eyes that must not be connected with the critical brain...

I find Scelsi's music powerful, much in the same way as Xenakis'. And I love the spare beauty of Takemitsu, with each note perfectly in place, or Feldman who had an intuition that was Schubertian in lyricism and classic in form. Both of the latter composers I both respect and am moved by.

Elliott Carter's music is always interesting and fascinating; not a comment I could make about the majority of music I hear. But it doesn't move me emotionally.

Mahler manipulates and twists me (or is the term 'getting jerked around?'). I don't enjoy, respect, or see the value of someone's 'tragic music' with unexpected chordal knives being thrust into my side for a tearjerk reaction. He gets the reaction, and I avoid him like the plague.

Perhaps my ideals lean towards clear Apollonian aesthetics over turgid dark curves?

Jeff Kaiser interjects: Hmmmm....Very interesting! At times, your music, specifically on Uitti Two Bows, seems to lean towards the Romantic...(not in the emotionally manipulative sense, but more in the flowing gesture)....

Perhaps, but I don't hear my own music that way. Then again, I cannot really see myself in the mirror as others do. Schizophrenia? How about multiphrenia...?

How did you come to perform with Elliot Sharp?

We'd known each other and were mutually fascinated with each other's aesthetics from the days that he studied with Morton Feldman, and I was a Creative Associate at the SUNY Buffalo. Then we both developed our individual styles and met again in Amsterdam years later. I enjoyed playing acoustic (but amplified, of course) while he was very much into sound processing. We will play together at the Tonic in New York in March, and I am curious what the new match will be as I am now Max-ed.

What is "Max-ed?"

A facetious way of saying I use the Max software program.

Where are you headed musically? What do you envision for yourself as a musician over the next 5 to 10 years?

I envision more time for composing music. That has become ever more important these last years. As an interpreter of classical (yes, I play a lot of Beethoven and Bach, too) and contemporary scores, I am a perfectionist, and that doesn't leave me with as much time for my own music as I would like.

Which classical pieces are your favorites to perform?

I perform the Bach suites regularly; they are my oxygen. I love doing the 5th in the original scordatura with the A string tuned down to G as it gives a wonderfully somber dark timbre to the majestic C minor tonality. I have a wonderful pianist for chamber music, and often program the Beethoven Sonatas as well as the Brahms and Debussy sonatas. Our repertoire is small but of very high quality. I like doing concerti with orchestra but am much more attracted to the concerti of the last 50 years, for example the Lutoslawski, or the Harvey (which was written for me). I find the expression of the new works avoid the machismo trap that so many of the 19th century compositions fall into. Virtuosity for its own sake is so boring.

Who are your favorite cellists?

Some of my heroes in cello playing include classical players. Of course, Feuermann tops the list as the perfect Mozartian sort of cellist, a pure classical approach that was dignified, and astounding in technical clarity. No one has matched what Feuermann achieved. As an instrumentalist I also admire George Neikrug, my former teacher. As musical 'beast' Leslie Parnas, an intuitive player who could leave an audience in a hot melt. Rohan de Saram is also one of my favorite players for his completely original approach to the instrument and music making. Ralph Kirshbaum for beauty of tone. All magnificent classically trained players, by the way. hmmm.

Are there particular recordings of these cellists you would recommend?

All Feuermann is nothing less than amazing music making. Neikrug is best at the virtuoso pieces: Scherzo Tarantelle (orig. violin) Katz concerto. Parnas: Beethoven triple concerto. Rohan's Xenakis is superb. Kirshbaum's Elgar will make you weep.

How did you come to study under George Neikrug? How in particular did his guidance impact you?

I first heard and later studied with Leslie Parnas who came from a Dounis background. Dounis was a doctor who could analyze the physical problems of musicians (many of them with top careers) and help them. He later developed a theory of playing which both Parnas and Neikrug used. As Parnas is an amazing player, but mainly an intuitive one who seemed born with a cello in his hands, he couldn't really explain what he was doing. Neikrug, a great virtuoso player could explain everything in great detail. This seemed to me to be the way to play. And working with Neikrug changed my mental picture of the instrument and transformed my playing in the process.

When did the idea of the double bow strike you? How is this technique important for what you want to express musically?

The idea of chordal playing obsessed me during the early seventies when I frequently improvised alone: the need for explicit rather that implied harmony becoming ever stronger.

I commissioned a curved bow from a local Roman luthier so that I could access all the strings simultaneously. Much to my surprise l found this solution quite limited, for one could only play adjacent strings. Given the richness of overtones inherent in the cello sound, it was, to my ears, oppressively thick, and lacking in possibility of variety. I felt a musical (polyphonic) need to be able to play any string of my choice in combinations with any other, to be able to control the timbre of each voice, to have independent dynamic ranges for each string as well as independent articulations.

After months of pondering, the solution came to me. I proceeded to develop a way of using two bows in the right hand. In 1976 I premiered works of my own at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, and in the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. Since that time I have pioneered scores of different tuning systems to enlarge the timbral range of the instrument as well as harmonic possibilities of the left hand. Luigi Nono, Gyˆrgy Kurtag, Giacinto Scelsi, Jonathan Harvey, Guus Janssen, Jay Alan Yim, Richard Barrett, Vinko Globokar, Clarence Barlow, James Clarke, David Dramm, Geoffrey King, Martijn Padding, Horazio Radulescu, and others have written for me using this technique.

The above answer is taken from Ms. Uitti's website. The page includes the above, plus more details about the two bow technique: http://radiantslab.com/Uitti/twobows.htm