Michael Quinn: Karen, on your MySpace page you describe yourself as a composer based somewhere between Cork and Limerick, who also spends some time in Belfast, while all the time dreaming of moving to somewhere in Australia. Is composition for you a search for stillness, for a home or for a place where you feel you belong?

Karen Power: Oh, I thought you were going to start off easy! Is composition a search for stillness? I think in some ways it probably is. It's something that I'm only beginning to realise. Certainly, at the moment my life is quite chaotic and I love nothing more than to be able to sit down for a few hours uninterrupted and just play the sound. So it is [a search for stillness]. I suppose I treat it as my time and the time when nobody will disturb me.

MQ: Having a peripatetic life -- recently it's been very busy for you; you're just back from Italy -- does the sense of always being somewhere else rather than where you feel you emotionally ought to be or need to be, inform the music that you write?

KP: The music that I write is constantly searching, yes. A few months ago I was asked to write one of those [biographical] captions for the CMC, and one of these things was if somebody is reading this 50-word description of you and they don't know you, that it gives them a good idea of who you are. I found that the most difficult thing ever to try and do because I'm not quite sure, and I'm very happy with that. I don't think I want to be sure.

MQ: Do you fight shy of the notion of a Karen Power signature in your music?

KP: Not deliberately. When I first started writing I think I did actually have a very strong signature. I was hugely influenced by the Dutch school -- Andriessen, Wagennar -- and my music was extremely complex, very rhythmic, practically unplayable.

MQ: It's interesting that four years ago, 2004, something happened so that where previously you were writing predominantly instrumental music, you moved into the electro-acoustic world, which is now, I think, what many people would associate you with. What happened at that point?

KP: I would say that after my Masters [in University College, Cork] I spent a lot of time not writing but thinking about composition and whether it was something that I wanted to continue, because I love writing but I find it a chore having to sell yourself and having to convince other people that they should play your music when sometimes you're not even sure yourself -- it's all new, it's so personal. I think it's really underrated how difficult that is for a composer to do. For a while I thought I couldn't do it. Then I started working and I thought, OK, I have to get writing again. I was always interested in electro-acoustic music and I suppose I treated it as a way to find space in my music because the instrumental stuff had been so intense. Anybody who looks at those early scores would say, 'Karen you could have made a 40-minute piece out of that!'. So much material, just so big, and I was very aware of that. Obviously, I was younger and I was very enthusiastic and of course I'm still enthusiastic, but I saw electro-acoustic composition as a new way of listening.

MQ: It seems to me that you are a composer who welcomes collaboration and participation and commentary by the musicians who are going to play your music. So the notion of ownership becomes slightly more diffused.

KP: Well, I've just been very lucky with the people that I have collaborated with. I suppose the first real collaboration was with two visual artists and that was an amazing experience because they're both very, very open minded and very creative people. And we really did collaborate from the very beginning. Although they admit to knowing nothing about music and I likewise admit to knowing very, very little about what the eye sees and what captures it for somebody in the eye. We just arrived at this piece that we all gave equal input into. That got me thinking, if you pick the right people it can be a truly magnificent experience, and so I'm careful about who I collaborate with; as long as they're as interested and as open minded and it's 50/50.

MQ: I was going to ask you to describe the process of collaboration and what that means for you because on the recent CMC sample disc you had a piece played by the cellist Kate Ellis, just one girl playin' around. Was she there from the beginning and part of the process? At what point did she come into it and start to effect the way the piece developed?

KP: She was there from the very beginning. That piece emerged I think from a conversation in a pub where we had been talking and I said, 'Well what do you think? Fancy a piece?' I mean I've known her playing for a long time and she's one of these players that's just alive on stage and off stage and that's rare. So we did a lot of talking about what the piece would be like and I said to her from the beginning, 'This is your piece, so I really want to bring out you in it as much as your cello'. So we basically had a series of recording sessions with her and her cello doing everything that she couldn't do with a cello on stage. For example, some of the actual range of the glissandi is up to her. Just simple things like that but it was actually written, the score of it was written in about a day and a half because the piece was practically done at that stage, thanks to the collaboration, which had never happened before.

MQ: It seems to strive for a singularity of source. There's the live cello, obviously, and the pre-recorded, a considerable amount of which is recorded from the cello. That coming together of these two elements, the live and the electronic, seems to be something that's at the heart of what you've been doing very recently and for some time.

KP: I'm certainly very interested in that. I suppose in terms of collecting sound samples for an electro-acoustic piece, instruments are such an obvious but in some cases overlooked source; they are just sound boards in every sense of the word. Collecting sound samples for an electro-acoustic piece can sometimes be a daunting task: everything is sound, how do you possibly filter what you want and what you want to turn it into from just sounds that might not turn into anything in the end? So I started looking at individual instruments.The piece before Kate's used the bass clarinet [An Alsatian Ate My Dog] and Paul Roe was great. Again, we spent an afternoon with him just taking apart the instrument, explaining different parts of it and just playing with the instrument. It is a very organic thing to do and the potential is huge.

MQ: You use the word 'sound' to denote or describe the building blocks of the piece, but what kind of sound becomes music for you? Or is that a distinction that doesn't need to be made? Are they both one and the same thing?

KP: They kind of are. I suppose sound for me is when it can live on its own, that it's just sound that you're happy to be in. Whereas music -- I'm not even sure I like that distinction but it's the closest I can come to -- music implies something else, implies some kind of forward motion or it implies a motion.

MQ: Is it a way of giving yourself freedom? By not using the word music, is it a way of removing yourself from all the associations with music and all the assumptions of what music is?

KP: I think it's more likely that it's because of the act of collecting sound. That's what I spend a lot of time doing. I spend a few hours with a microphone, the sound source and just collecting. So from the root up it's sound and I'm not quite sure if I'm interested in turning it into "music" music because that's not its function.

MQ: Tell me a little bit about that process. Is it a fixed process? Do you set time aside to do it or can you just get up in the morning and sit down and write? Or do you need to wait for inspiration or a divine light?

KP: Oh, if only it was that easy! If only I could sit around and wait for inspiration. No, my composing life is very strange due to circumstances. I work a full-time job and I travel quite a lot while I'm at work. Then [there's] the PhD. An awful lot of my composition actually gets done in the car on the way to work and back, in my head. So the result is that I've found that my method of composing has completely shifted from what it was. Before I would sit in a room with a computer or on the desk, things sprawled out and just sit there and just work really hard, not waiting for inspiration but forcing it. But now I actually find by the time I get to the computer or the piece of paper or whatever it is, very little time is spent thinking about the piece anymore. The time is spent in the sound world and just creating a piece. So I'm not quite sure when that change happened. Very recently, I've kind of looked up and thought, wow, OK, how did I get here?

MQ: Has it changed your music at all? Do you see any difference in that? Has it acquired a different accent or a different sense of compulsion or something else?

KP: I know a lot of people would argue with me on this one, but I think my music has become calmer. I say that because an awful lot of people don't think it's calm, but I feel it's calmer. It's more direct, or there is more space in it. Sometimes you can't hear the space but it's there. That sounds bizarre but I feel it's there and it's something that I've spent a lot of time trying to work on. I'm not there yet but something has definitely changed. Maybe it's just confidence. I suspect part of it is, and the other side is I'm working to deadlines. So that could be the hard nail, I've never missed a deadline and I don't ever, ever want to but equally I don't ever want to just produce something for a deadline.

MQ: That process of filtering, the imaginative filtering that goes on while you're travelling, it seems to me, was also going on at University College Cork where you did your first degree [and exhibited an] almost magpie-like inquisitiveness or acquisitiveness for music and you were drinking things in as and when you found them.

KP: In a lot of ways I was just very lucky to be a student there at that time. I remember making a decision to go to UCC and in the first two years I'd go to every concert I could possibly get into. Luckily most of them were for free! When I was in third year I was studying jazz piano, jazz harmony, traditional singing, and it was just this bizarre mix, and of course I was introduced to minimalism. The very first piece of music I wrote was toward the end of third year. I had never studied composition. I don't know why it hadn't dawned on me but it didn't.

MQ: Do you know what triggered that?

KP: I think it was just the listening experiences and the musical experiences around me. Suddenly it was, 'OK, there's something that I want to put down now'. When I think back it was a very bizarre piece. It was only five minutes. It was great!

MQ: You are studying now for your doctorate at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast.

KP: Yes.

MQ: Clearly a significant step from UCC to Belfast, but do you consider it a big step for you as well? More than mere geography and more change of direction for you?

KP: I do. My original plan when I finished my Masters was to go to the US straight after and do a doctorate. I'm so glad I didn't. I don't think I'd have finished if I had. So I spent a lot of time after that wondering whether I would go back. I had been to the Composition Summer School in '99, I had done a two-week intensive C-sound course with Michael Alcorn and there were four of us doing this course. It was one of the most memorable two weeks possibly of my life. But at the time I was halfway through my Masters and so I kind of shelved it for a while and always meant to go back and look. I really liked Michael's teaching approach. I figured at the time that he could sense the space that I'm taking about. That's something that Michael has in abundance, his sense of timing is really quite something.

MQ: He also has a very clear sense of the application of electronic music principles and techniques.

KP: Yes.

MQ: It's not a pure pursuit or academic pursuit for him.

KP: No. So that was a big decision, when I said, 'OK, I think I'm ready to do a PhD now'. I rang up and I spoke to him and he said, we'd be delighted. And the fact that the Sonic Arts was just kicking off, it was -- and still is -- a very exciting place to be.

MQ: It's an interesting time in Ireland for electro-acoustic music and electro-acoustic composers. Why do you think that is?

KP: I suppose a very practical reason might be that the courses that were developed, the offspring from those courses are now at a level where the music that's coming out is fantastic. I mean the quality in this country is actually astounding.

MQ: Do you think it's possible to talk of a generation of Irish composers? Do you feel a part of it, if there is one?

KP: I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that question. Do I? I do from the sense that I'm very fortunate and this generation is very fortunate. There is finally money there and there is some hope of an existence as a composer and as a female composer and that wasn't there 20 years ago. I mean some people would say, yes, but the amount of composers weren't there. Was it the chicken or the egg? But right now the different types of composers, everybody just doing what interests them, and what's coming out is music that's been the result of very open ears.

MQ: There's a very strong hook I think in your music, to give people something to grab onto and that's this sense of humour that seems to be ingrained there. Not just in titles like, Are You Sure You're Hearing What's Written, Fried Rice Curry, Chip and a Coke and An Alsatian Ate My Dog. Is the humour intended and is it an essential part of what you're about, what you're trying to communicate?

KP: Is the humour intended? It's always interesting to me that people find my music humorous. One of the reasons for the titles is a very big thing for me, and always has been, although the reasons have changed. In the beginning it was part of the Dutch School, breaking from tradition, breaking from the symphony orchestra, the titles that mean something. But actually as I came along I found because very few people wanted to listen to my music I had to rely on friends and family to go to concerts. I thought, 'I should give them something to amuse them.' So the titles were sort of, yes the music is serious music but the titles aren't.

MQ: So the pieces don't start with the titles.

KP: No, very definitely not! That's very important to me. As a listener I don't like going into a concert or going into anything with a sense of expectation. That sounds very vague but what I mean is, if you have a strong enough sense of expectation you are already listening in a particular way. So your ears are already partially closed to something interesting and to me that's what it's all about, having a reaction to something, and on a very basic level it could be hate, it could just as likely be overwhelming but just having a reaction. If you go in with a title in mind that tells you something about the piece then you're lessening your chance of hearing the extra bit. But I will say that my titles, they are humorous but there is always something in there that means something to me. Whether it's something that happened while the piece was being written or something that has a little bit of me in it. That's also important.

MQ: The pieces also sound organic (a very lazy word), but they do seem to be pieces that have flesh and blood and bone within them. When you construct a piece do you try and guess what the audience will think about it or how they will react? Where does the audience figure in the equation for you?

KP: I try not to think of the audience. I find it too difficult. Recently, I suppose, I've become more aware that there will be an audience. But what you have to remember is up until recently a lot of the stuff I was writing just wasn't being performed. So it was just for me. I don't think you can think about the audience because how can you possibly think about 100 individuals? I suppose the only thing I think about is that I will get a reaction. Like the worst thing you could possibly say to me -- and I've said this from the very beginning-- is at the end of a piece, 'Oh that was nice'. If you say that to me then I know I have done something very, very badly wrong.

MQ: Or 'That's interesting'?

KP: Well that's not so bad, but the word 'nice' is contrary to everything that I try to do.

MQ: Audiences are clearly finding your music now, not just in Ireland but in several places in Europe. You've just come back from Italy where you've had a piece for trumpet and tape performed. You're just finishing a piece for the Ulster Orchestra, a piece on an entirely different scale altogether. Do you enjoy or do you find it difficult moving between something as concentrated as the work of trumpet and tape and a work for something as large as a symphony orchestra?

KP: I actually really enjoy it. I think it keeps what I do fresh and that's very important to me. So to be able to move between such extremes like that, it's like emptying the recycle bin on your computer. It's like washout and then you just start again. Often times the thought process for one piece will be going on while another piece is being written. I think that's really goes back to the different way that I'm kind of writing now, in that I can do that because if you're actually writing then it takes a different part of you to realise ideas than it does to come up with them. So it actually seems to work quite well. It means that I'm constantly thinking music.

MQ: What about the challenge of working for a large-scale force like an orchestra? Was that any less concentrated a process or an experience for you?

KP: The process is completely different. The challenge I found with that was in maintaining my -- I can't put a word on this, concentration is the wrong word -- but because it takes so much time to actually write for such a large scale -- all the instruments! -- it was quite difficult to maintain the passion or the original driving force for the piece because it can sometimes get lost in the detail. So you're working on four bars for something like two hours just to notate them and suddenly you pull yourself back out of that and you try to look at the big piece again and you're saying 'Hang on a second…' So it is a very, very different process. And of course just the physical act of extracting parts; I'm not used to having to spend that amount of time when I consider a piece to be finished, to then have to turn around and do all of that. So I think in future I will allow myself more time for it.

MQ: So, a while before we see your opera.

KP: Yes, yes, might be a while. It might be an opera for one person.

MQ: Well we look forward to that. Karen, thank you very much.

Karen Power was interviewed on video by Michael Quinn in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 29 May 2008.

The views expressed in this interview are those of the persons concerned and are not necessarily those of the Contemporary Music Centre.