John Psathas says immigrants try harder and deal with disappointment better. Photo / Gareth Watkins
John Psathas says immigrants try harder and deal with disappointment better. Photo / Gareth Watkins
John Psathas ONZM is an internationally renowned composer whose works are regularly performed by the world’s top musicians. He wrote much of the ceremonial music for the 2004 Athens Olympics Games. His latest composition, Between Zero and One, comes to Auckland’s Q Theatre in April.
1. What was your earliest musical memory? My parents were Greek immigrants who owned a restaurant in Taumarunui called the Golden Kiwi. I was unsupervised a lot in the flat above while they were working. At 2 and 3 years old I would play records all day on our old valve record player. Eventually my dad bought me this tiny 45 player and he got so worried about me being electrocuted that he had a battery pack made specially. My sister started working at 5, taking orders, running the till. I started working a bit later because I was a bit lazier.
2. When did you decide to become a composer? When I was 11, we'd moved to Napier by then, our restaurant was one of the first to open late. My sister and I worked from 5pm till 2am, often on school nights. Seeing the behaviour that comes after pubs close, I'd be too wired to sleep when we got home. So once everybody else was in bed, I would lie down next to our stereo in the dark and put the headphones on and just listen to music. The great thing about being young is you're not discriminatory. I'd just listen to what was there - opera, classical, pop, jazz, Greek music, I'd just keep chucking on the records. I started having these quite profound listening experiences - utterly immersive, overwhelming, transcendental experiences. I thought there was nothing better than this and decided that I wanted to be on the other side of that equation. It was a kind of revelation. I still don't know of anything that's more amazing.
3. Not even sex? That's a good question. They're just so, so different.
4. As a teenager, did you feel like a freak? Definitely. My sister and I would be serving our actual friends when they came in on their nights out. When they got the munchies, basically. It was terrible. But it's paid a lot of dividends. We learned at a young age that we were capable of a lot. Immigrant is often another word for underdog. You work harder, try harder, you deal with disappointment better.
Another thing is, I didn't drink alcohol until I was 25. Now that I've got teenagers and see their social world, it's so accepted to get wasted and binge drink.
5. What is the best and worst of Kiwi culture? I think the way we deal with achievement and success is really difficult here. It's hard to feel good about what you do. I'll go overseas to a premiere and get received in a way that I get to think "oh okay, well maybe I am a bit special because there's this big event happening because I created this music and it's not bad to feel okay about that". And then I come back and it's like, "well yeah and so what?".
Composer John Psathas says he doesn't believe in an afterlife and music is his spirituality.
6. What's different overseas? Well they pick you up from the airport. That's one thing. There's just a kind of acknowledgment or respect. There's no way of saying it here without sounding precious. But the tall poppy syndrome is also the best part of the culture. Because you see careers where the person has become more important than their work. So it's a kind of sugar-coated bitter pill - you're forced to focus on the quality of the work. That's very healthy.
7. What are you listening to now? I go through tons of music. It's important to remain responsive to new things. I know career composers who long outgrew their connection to music. My listening is really broad. For instance our son is an up and coming rapper - "nameUL" - he's opened for big international names like Pharcyde. And people say, "oh, he must've really opened you up to hip hop". But he actually got into it through my hip hop library.
8. What have you done differently to your own parents? For all the immigrants I knew, it was about making their kids' lives better than theirs. And so a by-product was they didn't have much time to just hang out. All of my choices have been about "how do I remain available for my kids?". I walk my daughter to school at least once a week. We'll leave early, grab a coffee and walk for about 40 minutes and we just talk. And if you don't talk at the beginning, they start talking and they start telling you stuff that you wouldn't hear otherwise. Also we've travelled a lot with both kids. We've blown all of our disposable income on travel.
9. When have you been at your lowest? I had a really big premiere at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester 12 years ago. The royal family were there. My family and friends had come from all over the world to hear this piece of music I'd spent a whole year writing - View from Olympus. And the performance was an absolute train wreck. It was horrific. Because of one musician. The thing is, with a completely new piece of music, the audience assumes they're hearing what the composer intended. So that was devastating, debilitating.
It took me at least 12 to 18 months to recover. Five years later the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra played the hell out of that piece and as soon as they played the last note, the whole audience was on its feet going nuts. If it had've been great at Manchester it would've got played straight away all over the place.
10. What is your opinion of reviewers? I'm really lucky because I have an international career, but for local artists a bad review can be catastrophic. A lot of those reviews are unjustified. I think reviewers have this thing of, "I'm not going to be sucked in by this. I can see the audience is going nuts, but I'm above it. I'm smarter". They don't allow themselves to be seduced by the work.
11. Describe your typical day. If it's a composing day, I'll try not to talk to anyone before heading straight to my studio. It's a little standalone room outside our home in Wellington. It used to be in the laundry. And I'll come out 12 hours later when my family bangs on the door saying it's dinner. For me, composing is a bit like gaming. I've always got to keep going to the next note, the next bar, the next few seconds. I want to know what happens next. I could do that for weeks and months in a row.
12. Your music has been described as intense, complex, frantic and extreme. Is that how you'd describe yourself? Intense, yes. To the point where I don't get invited to parties. I can't do small talk. But I don't get angry, I don't argue, shout, dance or sing. It's like all my internal energy comes out through this tiny pinprick hole in a really controlled way and becomes music. I don't think there's anything afterlife, so my time here has to matter. Music is my spirituality.
