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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > April > 04 > Entry
Three questions with P. Kellach Waddle, composer and bassist
Composer and bassist P. Kellach Waddle is a flurry of musical activity. Whether writing new pieces (he’s penned more 300 separate works of music) or concertizing with every group from the Austin Symphony Orchestra to a multitude of chamber groups, Waddle and his bass are perpetually on the go.
Last year his String Quartet #2, commissioned by the Miro Quartemt won the 2008 Austin Critic’s Table award for Outstanding Original Composition.
Through his presenting efforts, PKW Productions, Waddle has also created the wildly popular “Music and a Movie” series at the Alamo Drafthouse cinema. Waddle’s assembled ensembles to play pre- and post-movie concerts for films as diverse as “Amadeus” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” always attracting a packed house.
In his more than two decades in Austin, the ever-eclectic Waddle, a major advocate for new approaches to new classical music, sees Austin as a hub for change that nevertheless needs more support.
How could Austin’s classical music scene be improved?
Classical music, much less new classical music, is still the stepchild in the Austin music scene. Classical music is in general totally off the radar here in a city so known for music being in it’s everyday life.
Will anyone ever not ask me when I tell them I am a musician “what band are you in?”
[I have to wonder] if the folks at the Live Music Task Force have any clue who [we classical and indie classical musicians are.] I don’’t think it’s any malicious intent to exclude us, but music that doesn’t get heard in a bar at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night isn’t on Austin’s music scene radar. Do the Austin Music Awards even have a classical category?
This is something that needs to be continually addressed and we all need to do our part to change.
What do you like about Austin’s classical music scene?
I have a gargantuan amount of music performed and premiered here on a regular basis in all of my own series under the PKW Productions umbrella but I also get to have music on so many other of my colleagues’ series and projects and vice versa
Right now Austin has so much new classical music heard in venues that continue to tear down the stereotype of what people consider the “normal ” or perhaps, more bluntly, the “Intimidating or segregated” world of “new classical music.” I now have at least half if not more of my premieres at a book store (Book People on the “Music and Literature” series) and a movie theater (Alamo Drafthouse.)
That is what I think is so beautiful about what we have going in new classical music in Austin. While other cities have people valiantly trying to do these things, they still are seen as anomalies. Yet what so many of us are doing here — giving audiences new classical music - new audiences at that, that that’s something I really don’t think you find anywhere elsewhere. The kind of things we do are now a regular part of Austin’s classical music landscape and I think we are very blessed to have manifested this situation here.
What are you working on right now?
It’s been a busy few months with more than two dozen new pieces being premiered.
For my “Music and Literature” series at Book People, I’m finishing up pieces on books by F. Scott Fitzgerald including a quartet for three cellos and bass, a sonata for two basses, a solo bass piece and a violin/cello/bass trio.
In late May it’s new works for “The Violin According to PKW ” featuring Austin Symphony concertmistress Jessica Mathaes. And to continue the series, in early summer it’s “The Sound of the Bass and Cello According to PKW” and “The Sound of Two Basses According to PKW.”
The Austin Chamber Ensemble commissioned a new major work which will premier in May 14-15. And for the Balcones Chamber Orchestra I am completing work on a short ” symphony” of three intermezzos.
For my own upcoming solo concerts at Central Presbyterian Church, I just finished one set of three nocturnes.
Also for these concerts, I am, as always, practicing Bach solo movements and three pieces that were written for me by other composers
Listen to a sample of Waddle music:
Photo: Benjamin Sklar for the American-Statesman.
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