Kirin McElwain's music acts as an interesting bridge between worlds: classical and modern, lyrical and instrumental. While established as a classically trained cellist, having performed on film and television scores for HBO and PBS as well as at Carnegie Hall, McElwain has also been wooed by the more freeform, contemporary approach that synths invite into one's musical practice. Unique electronic instruments such as the cello-like halldorophone have also found their way into McElwain's compositions through a residency at EMS in Stockholm, creating sounds at once familiar and distinct.
Per my own observations listening to McElwain's latest release, Youth, there are soothing cello lines, stunning vocal harmonies, and evocative lyrics that seem to be occasionally invaded by noise, at times even harsh, bug-like sounds. This is all intentional. McElwain is okay with creating moments of discomfort for the listener. It's all part of creating something true and layered, of contending with the non-binary nature of desire and shame, and the ways they are actually interwoven and often occupy the same cognitive space.
McElwain and I conversed virtually on a bright Wednesday afternoon, the sunlight flooding in from the broad windows behind her onto the warm, wood floor.
Meredith Hobbs Coons: So you teach cello as well as work on your own recording projects. How does that inform your practice?
Kirin McElwain: It reminds me that, ultimately, I'm making music as a means of connecting with myself, connecting with other people.
Meredith: What are your values around music?
Kirin: My relationship to the cello—and coming from very standard, Western classical training—first comes to mind, because I spent so much of my early musical life adhering to a specific aesthetic and set of values without understanding that that's what I was being taught to do. No one really explains to you when you're learning how to play the cello that you're being taught to adhere to a specific aesthetic of what was popular in Western Europe in the 17th-19th centuries, and that you're being taught to uphold certain values that are implied in that aesthetic, namely around what is considered 'best' or 'correct.' And the issue that I take with this approach to instrumental pedagogy and playing music is that often, instead of music being about connecting more deeply with ourselves or as a means of creating a space to witness the experience of another person, music becomes about intellect and saying that doing things in a certain way is better because it's the 'right' or the 'best' way, which just isn't true.
So when it comes to my values around music, it took me a long time to disentangle myself from automatically adhering to an entire aesthetic and set of values that I ultimately don't agree with. While I love playing Bach, I don't love Bach because I think it's 'better' than any other kind of music—I love it because of the emotional relationship I have to that music, and because of how each time I play that music I hear it differently and discover something new about the physical act of playing it. To me, music is my most direct means of engaging with and processing my own experience, and of connecting with other people and their experiences. And it's extremely important for me to have some sort of emotional response to music, regardless of whether I'm playing or if I go to a show or if I'm listening to a recording—I don't want to forget that.
Meredith: Yeah, it is a means of connection, for sure. That's sort of oversimplifying your answer, but it was interesting to hear you talk about this system of hierarchies versus this more immediate sense of expression and accessibility.
Kirin: Music is definitely a means of expression and a means of self-understanding. And when it comes to accessibility, music and art shouldn't be about "we need to explain this and intellectualize it so that people can understand it and then they'll be able to appreciate it." Having context can, of course, be helpful and give us more insight, but experiencing an art form and having an immediate response to it is just as legitimate an experience as being more 'informed' about what you're experiencing.
Meredith: In your description of the work that you're making, I saw the phrase "turning toward the uncomfortable." In what ways were you engaging with that as you created this album?
Kirin: I still feel new to writing music. It's only been in the last few years that I've been making my own work, and—I don't think I'm the only one—but I find creative work very uncomfortable. There is an inherent discomfort that comes with continuing to keep pulling a thread, to keep turning towards something. Doing so often brings up feelings that you don't want to engage with, or maybe you're having to sift through a lot of uncertainty or frustration, and you want to put the work away and not have to look at it anymore. But over time, you start to notice how you drift away from the work, and you continuously practice bringing yourself back in.
Meredith: That's such a good point, because re-engaging with work is often uncomfortable, like you said. What was that experience like for you, bodily, in a sensory sort of way, composing this work?
Kirin: Can I ask why you're asking this question?
Meredith: Because I felt that I was engaging with it in a sensory way as I was listening to it. There are certain sounds that bring back sense memories. There are sounds that kind of hit the ear like an insect or an alarm. And then other sounds are very droning and kind of comforting—and beautiful vocals. You have some amazing choral sensibilities woven in. It had this effect on me as the listener, of experiencing it in a corporeal way.
Kirin: Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. My basic process for composing is to sit at the cello or the synth and to notice what's happening for me in the moment, either emotionally or physically, and record whatever sound comes out as a result of sitting there and staying present as I play that instrument. Most of the time, I have gigabytes and gigabytes of things that I don't use. But I do think a lot about body sensation as I am composing work.
Also, when I go to a show, I'm looking to have some sort of visceral experience and, like I was saying a little while ago, I want to have an emotional response. And for me, having an emotional response can mean any number of things, but I want to have a different experience of my body. When I walk outside the venue or leave my studio, I want to hear the world a little differently. I want something to be altered. So I'm happy to hear that you had that experience listening to this. That's not a goal that I necessarily have for listeners, but it's cool to hear this, because that was also my experience making this work.
Meredith: It sounds like you're composing with that in mind, at least for yourself, not necessarily for the listener, but for the experience you want to have making it.
Kirin: Well, I think that it's gratifying if someone listens to anything I've made, but my practice is first and foremost for myself, because it is my way of processing my experience, and it is the best and most direct way that I know how to do that. If you're doing that, maybe others will notice too.
Meredith: You were able to translate that to me, so probably others, too. So, harsh tones; that was an element that you wanted to incorporate into these compositions. That's an interesting vehicle through which to explore desires and shame—the pleasing versus the harsh. Can you speak a bit about that?
Kirin: Sure. I think in our culture, we're encouraged to have goals for ourselves. And I think that, oftentimes, what we say our goals are is actually a sanitized or edited version of our true desires. Especially in our culture, there's a lot of shame around being honest with the things that we really want for ourselves that we wouldn't necessarily put on our list of goals. I also think that following through on what our desires for ourselves are requires an enormous amount of honesty, and honesty is often uncomfortable. There's this idea that identifying desire would be something easy, and shame is just this bad thing. I think they're both very wound up in each other, and it requires an enormous amount of self-trust and honesty with ourselves to untangle some of those knots.
I've always been drawn to what some people describe as harsher sounds. I remember when I was in college, discovering Pan Sonic through some electro-acoustic pieces for cello that I was playing at the time. I remember just being like, "Oh my God, what is this?" I didn't understand it, kind of like what we were talking about earlier. I didn't know what was going on. I found it so interesting and compelling, and it's not separate from the question of shame or desire. As I have gone down this path of exploring the electronic realm, those are just the sounds that I've naturally gravitated toward, as opposed to the lusher electronic textures. I love those textures as well, but with harshness, I was always like, "What's going on here? What happens if I do this thing that feels completely in opposition to what I have been told is the correct thing to do? What happens when I put those things together?"
Meredith: It sounds like a real process of discovery for you.
Kirin: Yeah, for sure. Working with electronics should be about just following curiosity, like, "Oh, I have this thread. What happens if I continue to pull this thread?" The oscillator I used for a lot of this music is a chaotic oscillator. You literally cannot go back and find the same sound again. And that's really exciting to me. I like that.
Meredith: What was that oscillator?
Kirin: It's called a Benjolin. It's, like, completely the opposite of the cello. I mean, with cello, as much as we work, there is always going to be this element of intention setting and then just kind of leaping toward that intention to make that intention come into existence through the instrument.
Meredith: Some of the other instruments that are listed as being used on this album are the viola da gamba, which I'm actually familiar with; I have a friend who plays that.
Kirin: Oh, amazing.
Meredith: There aren't a lot of you! And you use feedback, voice, modular synth, and the halldorophone. Can you speak about that one? It's self-feedbacking, I read.
Kirin: Yeah. It's a cello-like instrument designed by Halldór Úlfarsson, who is an instrument builder based in Iceland. I got to work with this instrument at a residency at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm back in May of 2023. It has four strings, with a set of sympathetic strings beneath the original string. If you're familiar with a viola d'amore or a baritone, some of these earlier instruments that had sympathetic strings that would also vibrate as you bowed the primary set of strings, it's somewhat similar to that, but there is a panel of two sets of sliders on the front of the instrument as well. There are two speakers in the back of the instrument, and when you bow the halldorophone or, depending on the level of each of the sliders (there are eight sliders, one for each string), there is a pickup attached to each string, so these feedback loops are created. You bow the instrument as you would a viola da gamba or a cello, but you can also just work with the feedback itself, and you get some incredibly complex and wild sounds out of it.
So at the beginning of "Closer," probably for the first minute or so, all you're hearing is these beautiful, crystalline feedback sounds. Or at the beginning of "Softer, still," wilder, more explosive, noisier feedback. Then "Pony," the last track on the the record, begins with bowed halldorophone that I kind of repitched and EQed; and then it's just feedback in the middle of that, but sort of like this pure, more crystalline sound; and then at the very end of it, most people think I'm playing viola da gamba, but it's actually the halldorophone that I had, and I'm bowing it.
Meredith: That's really cool. What an interesting instrument to get to encounter there. Did you know about it before you did that?
Kirin: Yeah, that was the whole reason I applied for the residency, because someone I know was working with it there. I saw the instrument, and I was like, "I must know about this." And when I found out about the residency, I was like, "I need to go see." (laughter) So the whole point of my doing that residency was to work with this instrument, and I have a bunch of other recordings that didn't make it onto this record that I might do something with at some point. Hours and hours of recording. It was really fun to work with this instrument that combined the ways I like to work with electronics and the cello.
Meredith: I love that you have a treasure trove of halldorophone sounds that you can incorporate into future recordings. That's very special. Do you have anything else that you wanted to share that you haven't had a chance to in the context of my questions?
Kirin: The thing that I'm just so grateful for in making this music is the incredible people who have either come into my life through the making of Youth or who have collaborated with me on music. I can't speak highly enough of the music community that I'm lucky to be a part of here in New York. I'm constantly inspired by going to a show and seeing what people are doing. It always gives me new ways to think about how I'm approaching my practice. It's so easy to think that you should be making your own work in isolation—and I mean, sure, that is part of it, too. But I think just as important as that is doing that in the context of other people who are also doing this weird, uncomfortable thing that goes very counter to what we're taught we should prioritize, what we're taught we should spend our time and attention engaging with, and that does play such a vital role in the context of society, in shaping society, and, hopefully, offering people—all of us—a more direct way to engage with our experience.
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