Interview, Randall Goosby on Roots (transcript)

Released last week on Decca Classics, 24-year-old American violinist Randall Goosby's brilliantly-performed and conceived debut album Roots explores the influence which Black composers and Black culture had on American music from the late nineteenth century through to the present day, featuring works by Florence Price, George Gershwin, William Grant Still, Antonín Dvořák, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and Goosby's friend and contemporary Xavier Dubois Foley.

Earlier this week I spoke to Randall over Zoom about how the #BlackLivesMatter movement inspired him to launch his recording career by 'sharing the stories and voices of some very important and prolific composers who haven't found their way into the traditional canon', the influence of his mentor Sanford Allen (who was the first Black violinist in the New York Philharmonic), and how the magical summers which he spent on Shelter Island whilst studying on the Perlman Music Program spawned both a long-standing friendship and the 'delicious' opening piece on the album...

Tell me a little about the story you wanted to tell with your first album – did you always have a clear idea of what direction you wanted to take?

As soon as we started thinking about what the story would be, I think the idea was very clear in my head – it was a pretty immediate reaction from me. I quite honestly didn’t think that we’d get the ball rolling with the debut album process as soon as I signed, but that’s pretty much what happened! This was the end of summer 2020 and here in the US we were still very much in the thick of the resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement; we were seeing a new story every day about a Black person who’d been killed at the hands of the police. I was trying to manage a lot of emotions – I was angry, I was sad, I was frustrated, I was confused – and I couldn’t shake this thought of ‘I have to do something: what can I possibly do to make any sort of a difference, so that we can start to take more steps (and bigger steps) towards a truly equitable and inclusive environment for everybody?’.

Obviously my MO is classical music, and that of all fields feels like the one that’s most behind or at the bottom of the pack in terms of really celebrating and promoting diversity and inclusion and accessibility - all of these things that are very important in what we do. And I very quickly realised that this album was an incredible opportunity for me to share stories and experiences and voices of some very prolific composers who haven’t found their way into the traditional canon as we know it.

This is just a little slice, as far as I’m concerned, of what it is that we really need to bring our awareness to in terms of what composers have really made valuable contributions to this art-form. When we talk about American classical music we tend to think about people like John Adams, John Corigliano and John Williams, but we don’t really look at the birthplace of American music itself – and I don’t just mean classical music. It’s all trickled down, as far I can see, from Black music and culture: spirituals, jazz, blues…all of these things have found their ways into pretty much any style of pop music that we know. And this influence what I wanted to highlight and bring to people’s attention, which is actually why composers like Dvořák and Gershwin were included: these are people that we know and love as classical composers, but we never actually credit the people and the music and the voices that allowed them to create the music that they did and the music that we love.

And finally I wanted to pay homage in some way to these artists who in my mind really have paved the way for myself and other young artists like myself to do what we do, freely and without fear in many cases. I look at a lot of the composers on this album – Florence Price, William Grant Still, even Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, who was alive later into the twentieth century – and I always think about how they had to navigate this world of classical music at a time when racism was completely normal. Nobody was batting an eye if Black people weren’t allowed in, or couldn’t go here or couldn’t do this: I’m blessed that’s not my experience today, but I have someone to thank for that, and the composers on the album are some of these people. So that’s the general idea in so many words!

Growing up, how much have the opportunity did you have to hear these composers’ music live or on recordings?

It’s funny to say, but I didn’t actually know that the word ‘composer’ meant anything other than ‘Old Dead White Guy’ till I was thirteen or fourteen. That was the first time that I became associated with the Sphinx Foundation, and suddenly I realised that there was this whole other world that I was not privy to: there were Black classical musicians that I did not know about, there were Black composers of classical music that I didn’t even know existed. So that was my first foray into some of the music of these composers, and I think it’s just a testament to the fact that – and this applies to so many other professions outside of music – the contributions of Black people have been historically diminished, or forgotten or almost erased sometimes from history. And that’s hurtful, as a Black person who loves this art and before the age of 14 or 15 didn’t even think about the fact that I was only playing music by people I can’t really relate to beyond human emotions: I can’t relate to the experiences that they went through, I can’t relate to what it is that was inspiring their music.

And with these composers obviously it’s very different: the Black experience here in the United States is obviously as widely varied as any human experience, but there are aspects that are shared, through generations and throughout different communities on either end of the country. And I think that is something that speaks to me very powerfully in this music – it’s a story and an experience that I want to share, that I want to interpret myself and make available and accessible to as many people as I can. So to have the opportunity to do so in such a big and such a special way with this album is really a blessing for me.

In terms of Black performers, who were the people who inspired and mentored you?

Not many. Growing up I don’t think I heard a single recording by a Black violinist or of music by a Black composer until I was a teenager. At that point, once I was introduced to Sphinx and became a part of the Sphinx Foundation, one of the first mentors that I gained from that community was Sanford Allen, who’s the dedicatee of Perkinson’s Blues Forms which appears on the album. He was the first Black violinist in the New York Philharmonic; he was part of the inaugural class of Young Concert Artists which is a transitional management agency that I’ve been part of for the past couple of years, and he worked with me on a movement of Blues Forms which I ended up performing at Carnegie Hall for the Sphinx Virtuosi’s annual tour.

It was really eye-opening for me to learn about his experience in this field, to understand what he had to go through and the challenges that he had to face - the voices that he may have had to keep out of his head at almost every turn, being the ‘token’ Black person almost anywhere he went. And for me to know that it’s because of his life and because of his efforts and his determination that I don’t really have to experience that, or at least to as extreme of a degree, was always incredibly inspiring for me.

The first time I heard this piece it was his recording – it was honestly a little intimidating at first, because I thought ‘Wow this sounds incredibly difficult, and he’s absolutely nailed it on this recording!’. So he’s been one of my biggest inspirations in this regard, and it really wasn’t until I was introduced to Sphinx that I felt a real sense of community, at least in terms of how that pertains to Black musicians and Black composers.

How did the commission from Xavier Dubois Foley, which opens the album, come about?

Xavier and I are old friends by this point. I mentioned my first introduction to the Sphinx Organisation – that was in the 2010 competition, and that’s where I met Xavier. We were both competing in the Junior Division, and with it being a competition (although Sphinx really does a fantastic job of promoting a familial atmosphere even among competitors) we didn’t get to spend much time together because obviously we were both focusing on competing, focusing on the music and making sure that we were as prepared as possible.

But fortunately the following year we met again and had a longer-standing chance to hang out and get to know each other a little bit; that was at the Perlman Music Program, Itzhak Perlman’s six– now seven-week intensive summer music school for young string-players under the age of eighteen, and this is where Xavier and I became friends. The Program takes place on Shelter Island, which is where the piece gets its name – Shelter Island is just on the very tip of Long Island New York, and as the name suggests it’s a sort of paradise-place for me. It’s my second home at this point: I think I’ve been back to Shelter Island for the Perlman Program every year since 2011, with the exception of last year.

That was Xavier’s only year at the Perlman Music Program, but we kept in touch and over the past couple of years I’ve had several opportunities to play his music: he’s written a concerto for violin and double-bass which was performed with the Sphinx Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. I’ve heard so many of his own compositions on double-bass, and I’ve always been captivated by his incredible technique – honestly, I’ve never seen anyone play a double-bass like that! – but also by his artistic and compositional voice. It’s so unique and so satisfying for me: there’s so much rhythm in the music, and so much funk in the harmonies. It was always something that I was drawn to, and when I had the chance to put this album together and we were looking through history and finding all of these possibilities for programming it wasn’t long before we realised we need to include someone who’s alive, who’s the product of this lineage that we’ve been exploring, and Xavier was the first person who came to mind.

So I asked him to write something: I didn’t give him very much input or instructions, simply because I wanted it to be as organic and natural a representation of his voice as possible; I didn’t want to put too many ideas into his head, besides the fact that I love everything that he’s written! He took that and he ran with it, and once he sent me the score of this piece that is the score that we recorded off of, so there weren’t that many iterations of it – we were sort of on a time-crunch from the beginning, with deadlines and all of that! The piece is obviously inspired by our time together on Shelter Island: that middle section where Xavier starts the walking bass-line is obviously joyous music, but for me it always sparks a sense of nostalgia for those younger carefree days on this beautiful island just making music day-in day-out.

Similarly to someone like Florence Price who takes influences from so many different places and puts them together so artfully in her music, Xavier takes influence from bluegrass music, solo Bach, popular music…It’s all sort of wrapped up into this one thing, and there’s so much – I think ‘delicious’ is a good word! –interplay between violin and double-bass, like we’re just talking to each other and reminiscing about those days. It’s a really cool piece: I think it’s very different from anything else on the album, and I’m just so grateful that Xavier was willing to lend his voice to this project.