John Psathas on Live Art, AI, and why the Concert Hall matters more than ever

Many of the world’s greatest contemporary composers including Philip Glass and Steve Reich have ensembles dedicated to their music.

It is a great honour for Chamber Music New Zealand to now usher the John Psathas Group into the world as this remarkable new ensemble prepares for its first-ever tour.

“I was asked a number of times over the last ten years or so why there was no such thing as the John Psathas Group … by musicians who have played my music a lot,” says John. John was initially unsure that his work warranted a dedicated ensemble. With the encouragement of friends and collaborators – including Welsh pianist Dawn Hardwick, now a member of the group and its artistic director – the idea gradually took shape.

Now that it’s reality, John can’t wait to take the group on the road.

Comprising four musicians, the group features Dawn Hardwick and Stephen Gosling on piano, and Katarzyna Myćka and Fabian Ziegler on percussion, with John joining them on stage as keyboardist for half of the pieces in the programme.​

“They’re all virtuosi and they’re all incredibly exciting, dynamic musicians. I feel very honoured that they’ve agreed to be part of this ensemble.”

While its instrumentation is unusual, John’s vision for the group is one of great flexibility. Depending on the work being performed, it could become a piano trio or even an ensemble of eleven percussionists – the name acting as an umbrella for all its possibilities.

For this tour with Chamber Music New Zealand, John has created a programme of twelve pieces with a unified thread, feel and sound.

“The concert feels like one large work. It’s like you’re going in and hearing a massive meta composition of some kind, but the pieces are incredibly varied in nature and energy and levels of virtuosity.”

He describes the experience as “the listening equivalent of an action movie.”

The musicians remain at the centre of the performance, but this is much more than a traditional concert. Cinematic audio and video elements are projected onto a large screen, creating an integrated, three-dimensional experience.

John’s goal has always been to create work that affects the mind, heart and body. “What I have worked towards in my journey is to create music that hits you, impacts on you equally in terms of concepts and ideas, but also emotions, which is the heart, and also a kind of physicality, which is… just feeling the rhythm in such a way that your body is activated.

“It will be a big experience [for the audience] and they will be moved and excited and they will feel wonder. So that when you walk out of this concert, you have things to think about and you have things to talk about.”

The programme includes works such as Relentless, Predator, and Ave Noir, which will premiere during the tour. His work often comments on the pressing issues of our time, from nuclear war threatening human civilisation, runaway economic models, and the infiltration of digital technology into daily life. However, the music itself always comes first.

“[It’s] always the music first, every single time,” he explains. “To write the work, I need to be completely free of anything else. I can’t have anything else hovering over me. That freedom while creating is paramount. But then, as I’m writing the work, often something unanticipated seems to emerge.

“You have to remember, anybody that’s doing anything creative is also, at the same time, reading, having conversations, absorbing content. I’ve let myself be extremely open to those things weaving around each other.”

The question of how we live with digital technology comes into focus in John’s new work Ave Noir, created in collaboration with AI film creator Kelly Green.

“If you look at the really amazing AI video that’s been created – it’s all over TikTok and Instagram and the movies now as well – it feels to me there is a ratio between the presence of the human and the ability of the AI generator –​and the AI software is often really dominant, so it produces things that the human mind probably wouldn’t.

“What I’ve done with this video is create a deliberately basic animation style because then what happens is you get more of Kelly’s creative voice in there. He is more present because AI doesn’t take over and turn it into this multi-million dollar looking movie.

“For me, it’s a very interesting concept right now, the collaboration between the human artist and AI software. What is our sense of the presence of the human being behind the work?”

For John, these questions only reinforce the value of gathering for a live performance: “Because that’s the one thing technology can’t offer us – the analogue experience of humans communicating with humans through art in a shared space, in real time.”

The John Psathas Group will tour Aotearoa New Zealand with CMNZ, 4-15 August.