From Concert Halls to House Concerts

By Jessica Rath​​

​Maybe you’ve attended one of concert violist John Graham’s performances at his spacious house up on a mesa in Abiquiú, or maybe you remember him from the Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival where he was featured for several seasons. Or maybe his music isn’t your cup of tea… Either way, here is another artist who chose the breath-taking scenery of northern New Mexico because it enhances his creativity and innovative skills. John is not only a stellar, award-winning  solo violist whose career took him to Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and other places around the world, but he also played a significant role in establishing the viola as a solo instrument. He incorporates electronic technology and has inspired new music for the instrument.

John Graham, viola. Image credit: John Graham website

I was present at a few of John’s performances in Abiquiú, and thus was familiar with his outstanding musicianship and innovative techniques. But when I met with John to interview him for the Abiquiú News, I got a rare glimpse into the mind of an artist and performer,  learning about his relationship with his instrument and with the audience.
 
John grew up in California and got his first violin when he was seven years old. He found a little black case tucked away on one of the shelves in the house of his grandfather who played folk music with his guitar and harmonica. When John asked what it was, his grandfather showed him the child-sized violin inside and told him that he had been waiting for one of his grandchildren to ask about it. “It’s yours, John!”, he said.
 
That was the beginning. His parents found a teacher, and John started taking lessons – everything about music was fascinating and entrancing to him.
 
When he was in eighth grade, John was studying with a woman who had been a professional player. She introduced him to the idea of pursuing a career as a performing artist. “But you’ll have to practice more”, she told him. His fellow classmates spent after-school hours playing tennis or football or chess, joining clubs according to their interests, working on the year-book – social activities where kids do something together. Practicing a musical instrument for several hours a day wouldn’t allow any of this. John’s teacher had a suggestion: the summer before his freshman year she wanted him to prepare a recital program, and in the fall he should perform in public what he had practiced. John accepted the challenge, and the performance was a sound success. It taught John to be disciplined and focused, to practice regularly, and to follow the allure of music: “It draws you in to go further and further”, he said.
 
He started college at the San Francisco Conservatory and finished at U.C.Berkeley. It was a time of growth for John: he felt that some of the other students had more experience and were ahead of him. But he always took this and music itself as a challenge which would drive him further on his adventurous journey. For all his life, challenges would spurn him on to go deeper, to discover more.

John Graham, with Madeine Williamson, performing at the Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival. Image credit: Jessica Rath.

“In the classical music world there is a very traditional hierarchy of instruments for what is considered great music, what is almost great music, what is just sort of mediocre music. Everything is being graded all the time, and that part of it never appealed to me. I never felt challenged to be the next best or something else. I was on my own pathway, and my teachers understood that.  I was really fortunate to have teachers who understood me.  I think they respected the journey I was on and that was fortunate; they never said, ‘You're good enough to do this, but maybe not that’.”

 I was curious: “First you started with the violin, but then you turned to the viola, why?”, I asked John. Here is what he told me:

“When I was a teenager, Columbia Artists Management offered community concerts in small towns. They had a nationwide program featuring their artists and other well known performers. If one of them was coming to perform in Oakland or Berkeley or San Francisco, the community concert organizers would get in touch with the performers’ managers and ask if they could play in a smaller town, such as Walnut Creek where I heard concerts. That’s where I heard William Primrose, who was one of the first people ever to make a career as a solo violist. I remember being very excited about the concert, but I didn't think of it as being any different than the violin, because I'd never held a viola or even seen a viola”.

“But during my first year at the Conservatory, I was playing in an orchestra for the first time, and also doing chamber music, playing in a string quartet. I would listen to the viola part as we were playing, and I really liked the deeper, more mellow sound of the viola. During  breaks I would ask the viola player if I could try the instrument. And there was just something about that sound that clicked with me”.

John is tall – 6’2” – and his chamber music coach suggested that the viola might fit better with his height and his hands. So John started to take lessons with the viola, and he immediately felt at home with the instrument and has loved the sound of it ever since.

My next question was: Is there any music written particularly for the viola, or is it all transcribed from music for other instruments?

“Up until the end of the 19th century and even into the beginning of the 20th century, the viola wasn't considered to be a solo instrument”, John told me. “There were exceptions: Mozart wrote a Double Concerto for violin and viola, which is one of the first concertos for viola. And Berlioz, in the 19th century, wrote a symphony that has a large solo viola part. And then Brahms wrote two sonatas for clarinet later in his life, and then made a transcription for the viola”.

“But in the 20th century, a number of violinists started asking composers of their time to write music for the viola. This happened in many places around the world, it was one of those magical synchronicities. These people, just like me, loved the sound of the viola and wanted more music for its unique qualities.”

John continued: “Now there's lots of music for the viola, and that is because of one of those first musicians like Lionel Tertis in England who asked for more viola music and who was the teacher of my principal viola teacher, Philip Burton, and an inspiration to William Primrose with whom I took some lessons as a student in the Aspen Music Festival. They were all a part of that movement to create a solo contemporary repertoire for the viola. While in college, I was also introduced to playing all kinds of contemporary music that's in the classical genre. I was just open to everything. And so a large portion of my professional life has been spent playing the viola in music written in our time. Especially in my New York days, I played a lot of premiere pieces, not only for viola, but also for ensembles. And that was a big, fascinating portion of my career”.

When I had seen John perform, I had noticed that he sometimes used electronic devices and a computer. I asked him about this.

John explained: “A composer can write a score that is like a concerto for viola and orchestra, but the orchestra part is all the electronic sounds. That's one of the best ways to describe it. Or, instead of a viola and piano, you're playing viola and electronic sounds. So, those electronic sounds could be just one line of someone singing, or it could be sounding like an orchestra of electronic sounds, or like a bunch of percussion instruments. It's fascinating to work with electronics, and one of the best parts is that, if it's a complicated score of electronic sounds, I don't have to be asked by an orchestra to play it. I can rehearse it all by myself, I can make the electronic part stop and go. So it's been a wonderful experience for me”.

What is it like to switch from big concert halls to small chamber settings, from an audience of close to a thousand people to just fifty or seventy, I wanted to know.
 
“One of the things I've been enjoying with my house concerts is that I don't feel the audience here can be defined, or wants to be defined. I'm not interested in whether they go to every classical music concert in Santa Fe. At this point in my life I have been just enjoying this close contact with this audience”, John explained.
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“People's first reaction after a concert is, ‘it's so wonderful to be up close’, because they are just a few feet away. They can hear the effort. They can hear the bow crossing the strings. They can hear the hammers of the piano. They are aware of the physical production of the music, they have a more immediate emotional response to music when they’re up close. This has been a very gratifying part of my career”.

A recent photo. Image credit: John Graham.

​ He continued: “One of the interesting things about playing in different halls is in  sensing  the differences in dimensions. You feel them as being an extension of your instrument. And so when you're in a concert hall and the audience is out there in the hall, after a few minutes, you sense how they're hearing you:  your sound becomes the space that you and they are in”.
So, after years and years of traveling and performing all over the world, with big audiences, John performs now in a more intimate setting, which is more personable, more personal in a way. John agreed.

 “In this journey, music was the impetus and the reward. When you enter school, there’s a large apparatus that is providing your education. Then when you get into the profession, there are managers, contractors, concert presenters and colleagues involved in how and where you will perform, providing a world of discussion and business that's all around this personal thing of wanting to express music. You become involved  in a world of discussion and business, and that's all around this very personal thing of wanting to play music. It has seemed quite natural to retire some of those dimensions of a career hovering around this ‘personal thing’.”

Georgia o’Keeffe poster. Image credit: MutualArt.com.

​And then John told me a lovely anecdote.

“In the 70s, I played  in the first three summers of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Georgia O'Keeffe let them use her images for their posters. They're gorgeous.”

“The gym that she built for the village was finished in one of those years, and she asked if some of the musicians could come up and play for the village to celebrate its opening. So three of us came up and played a Beethoven string trio. And afterwards she had us over to her house with our spouses for a reception. I remember going out to her backyard which overlooks the valley. I remembered that view so vividly. And then all these years later, when Cinda and I were talking about coming to New Mexico, I said, ‘What about Abiquiú?’”

I wonder if any of our Abiquiú readers might remember this performance from about fifty years ago? If so, please leave a comment!

“Cinda is a New Yorker, born and bred, she's a real urban woman. She isn't naturally given to ‘Let's go on a hike’ or anything like that. But this land and sky have become a real thing for both of us, it’s such a beautiful place in which to be”.

John continued: “We never thought about our home being a concert place until maybe the second year we were here. People had been so kind and helpful when we moved in so we thought that, in thanks, we would invite some people over and I would play some solo viola music”.
 
“Well, immediately we got some calls from other friends saying, ‘Oh, I hear you're giving a little concert in your house. Could we come?’ This is a small town, after all. So there were more and more people, but we did it. And then we thought, ‘Well, we could do this every year, just have our own concert here’, and that's what we started doing”.

In addition to the concerts at his home, John also performs occasionally in Santa Fe and Albuquerque  (watch the Abiquiú News for announcements). It’s not often that one gets the chance to listen to a world-famous performer who significantly contributed to the establishment of the viola as a solo instrument, inspiring a number of new compositions.
For a short taste, listen to John playing a traditional Irish tune at the 2009 Aspen Music Festival.

As we neared the end of our interview, John summarized his career:
“When you tell the story of your life, it sounds like you went from A to B to C to D, up the ladder to success. I felt so confined in the small town where I grew up, and those first years in San Francisco were explosive for me! When I look back on my career  I am amazed, the way it unfolded and developed. At each step it was like, ‘Oh, now I can stand, oh now I can walk’. You just learn how to do it”.​

John Graham performing with Scott Ney at the Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival. Image credit: Jessica Rath

“And now I’m just in a really great place – it has been wonderful to be out of some of the former constructs, to be me with my wonderful partner, daughter, grandson, and in this beautiful land and sky”.

Thank you, John, for sharing with me how and why you love your music and your instrument. What a wonderful, prodigious career and life you have.