Interview Series

During the 2020 pandemic season, host Antonio Celaya (“Tony”) shared insight into both the personalities and compositional philosophies and methods of Mike Hsu, Cynthia Gerdes, and the recently deceased David Bernstein.

Still highly relevant to today’s composers and new music aficionados, these interviews demonstrate how pop music’s layering technique and classical music’s highly integrated structures inform Hsu‘s work; how Gerdes pulled out all the compositional stops in her lively, fun and clever piece, Idaho Toccata Trio (with a nod to Charles Ives); and how Bernstein, Cascadia’s founder, owed much in his compositional craft to Beethoven, Stravinsky and Bartok. Plus… find out what his first instrument was!

Each of Tony’s interviews ends with video of a live performance of the composer’s works.