"Rupture Was the Only Exit"
On the release of his second solo album While Whirling, Frantz Loriot speaks with Andrew Choate about "unlearning" classical music, making drastic decisions and the origins and evolution of his artistic philosophies and making "extreme" music.
Frantz Loriot is a French-Japanese musician born in France in 1980. After having lived in Paris and New York City, he now resides in Zürich, where he is doing a master in Transdisciplinary studies at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He studied classical violin with Mari Yasuda-Raclot, the Pons brothers, Nicolas Dupin and Yukari Tate. He attended masterclasses with Ivry Gitlis in Pont Saint-Esprit and Pascal Robault's chamber music class at the Conservatoire National Regional of Créteil in France.
In the early 2000s, Loriot definitively switched to the practice of viola. In the meantime, he has studied musicology at Université Paris 8 – Saint-Denis and started the practice of improvisation. He attended extensive workshops by Régis Huby, Hugues Vincent, Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips, David S.Ware and Marc Ducret. Loriot also toured in Europe for a decade with the ska-rock band le Pélican frisé.
While living in New York City in the late 2000's, Loriot created and co-curated two musical series dedicated to avant-garde and experimental music: Ze couch, an apartment series in different locations in Brooklyn and the Avant Post in Harlem. Both series were dedicated to avant-garde and experimental music. In 2021, he launched Recordedness, an online writing project centered on the nature of recordings in music.
Loriot's first solo album, Reflections On An Introspective Path was released by Neither/Nor Records in 2015. He has released twenty-five collaborative albums as well. His new album, While Whirling, is his second solo album and his first with Thin Wrist Recordings.
The following interview was conducted over several sessions from 2020-21.
Andrew: How do you describe your relationship to your music to your family?
Frantz: Coming from a classical musician family (I am the third generation) and originally trained as a classical musician, I had a rupture with this education and practice. I had too much pressure, and I had to free myself from that environment. From a young age, I was always attracted by other musics. Basically, I was listening to everything except what I was actually playing on my instrument. I also had a serious issue with the hierarchical relations within classical structures. The ceremony, the dress code, the chiefs, the blames, the institutions. I couldn’t really relate to my colleagues either. I felt disconnected and unhappy with the music I was playing then. The audience as well was a problem for me - distanced, mainly white, and/or bourgeois social class.
I had to make a decision. Rupture was the only exit so I took another chance and tried something else. I didn’t want to force myself to fit into something I was fed up with. So, the way I‘d describe my relationship to my music is that it is for me a necessity. I hear and feel the music this way and I won’t make any compromises. At least, not on music!
You moved to New York on an emotional conviction, and you left New York because of a different kind of emotional conviction - can you compare how you experienced those emotions and what it felt like to turn those emotions into actions?
There is something very satisfying about taking action. Even if you would fail, at least you would try. When I decided to move to NYC, there was an emergency for me to move forward. In Paris, I felt stuck. I left everything behind and there was no return possible for me - I didn’t want it. When I arrived in NYC, I had this huge feeling of satisfaction and fear. Satisfaction because I took action but fear because I was in front of a completely blank page I would have to fill up. It was also very exciting! The rest of my time in NYC was definitely an adventure! No regrets!
Moving back to Europe was different than going to NYC. I had another emergency I had to take care of - fatherhood. It took me to another level of life. It is exciting and an everyday wonder. The existential questions became different and the decisions and actions too. There is less time for myself, so I have to go quickly to the essential, and my decisions and actions are more sharpened.
How do you think your family and friends would describe you?
People see me as a shy and/or calm person. It is true that I am not the most demonstrative and talkative person, at first. I might seem unconfident since I constantly question myself, but my actual feeling is that people feel and see my listening. People would say I am honest and frank - I can’t lie or pretend. I sometimes make drastic decisions because I hate to get stuck in mitigated situations.
Or how do you think they would describe the relationship between you and your music?
Hopefully, they would say that in a way, one portrays the other and inversely.
Can you describe the process of studying with Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips, David S. Ware. How was each experience different? What kinds of things did you do with each/ learn from each of them? Anything especially pertinent in your university studies or with other teachers that had an impact?
Meeting and working with Joëlle was a real stimulation. I was pretty young when I met her, just starting the practice of musical improvisation. She brought me to a political consciousness of our practice. What would it mean/ what does it mean to do such a music, and why? Let’s say she showed me a possible path to take, aesthetically and politically - but I must say I do not agree with everything she says and does. She is a very strong character and figure, and she has her own way, and her own fights, which are totally respectable, but not mine. Nonetheless, she was a very important person for me. Her generosity really touched me, and she really tried to help me in moments of my life which were not easy.
Was this when you were getting started?
I had already been improvising since a couple of years. But I was still studying and playing classical music and playing in various classical music projects and a rock band. It was a period where I was open and ready to step in new fields that were not as steep, hierarchical, and competitive. I just didn’t feel at the right place, I guess. Attending improv music workshops was definitely a very good way to meet new people who would potentially be interested in the same things that I was. This is where I’ve met some of my best friends and regular collaborators.
I met Barre after I encountered Joëlle. His approach was totally different. Barre has something very airy. Grounded but airy. Pretty sanguine, I’d say. Less “serious” than Joëlle maybe in his discourse, but nevertheless radical and powerful. You could feel he really didn’t have the need to prove anything. A big lesson I learned from him is to always challenge yourself, be in movement, and go into uncomfortable zones, putting yourself at risk. I remember a solo concert of his in Berlin. I didn’t hear him for a while and a solo he played in a cathedral in Bordeaux a few years back came into my mind. This other solo had a lot of beautiful “classical” double bass playing. In Berlin, the room was sounding great as well, but he only played “noise.” It was just another world or field and I found that statement to be very strong. For me it was like “Don’t stick to one thing/genre! Be in movement!” I had a few opportunities to play with him later, through one of his large ensembles, EMIR, and also his trio with Urs Leimgruber and Jacques Demierre. Every time I got to play with him, I always felt his grounding, his large calm energy. It always felt like having someone pushing you confidently forward. Barre has this very strong listening you can literally feel. He also communicates a lot through sight. Energetically speaking, a powerful musician and man!
With David S. Ware, the experience was in a way quite “brutal.” David was this amazing, tall, extremely charismatic Afro-American saxophonist. He came to Paris for a residency and asked to work with string players. We were a little group of white western string players. It was brutal in the sense that he literally kicked our butts. We were never loud enough for him. Not powerful enough. He was screaming at us “Louder!” “Down bow!” We were not allowed to play in lower registers (of volume) – it had to constantly be full blast. Once, during a concert, some musicians tried to bring the music to a lower level, playing softer, trying other sounds, but David didn’t let it happen. He yelled at them, on stage! For David, that was his way of expression. It had to be loud, dense, and powerful. The rest wasn’t relevant or valuable to him. It was also somehow a matter of life and death.
He also confronted us to another political reality – we were white western folks, and the meaning of playing “free” music meant something else to us. We were from another generation, from European cultures, playing classical instruments, with all the occidental tradition and culture, most of us freshly out of conservatories even if some of us had studied jazz at music schools. You could definitely feel that David had experienced another story. He had that power and strength in him, like a lion. David is the one who showed me the capacity of power and resistance within us, he pushed us to seek and draw this power and endurance deep inside ourselves. He had this very esoteric and spiritual approach to music. He is the one who taught me the most about Coltrane’s music, I believe – and this was a very privileged moment. He was sometimes really rude to us. But he gave himself entirely, honestly, and that was a gift.
All three were very generous and I realize how much I owe them for sharing their knowledge and humanity. But after a time, I also had to detach myself from their visions in order to become myself. It is not that we have to erase or forget what we have been taught, it would be more about uniting all these different influences, put them in movement and make them, turn them into your own. Try to go beyond…I am a mixture of all of them, in a way. I would relate this sense to the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, who talked about and defined the concepts of Creolity and Relation (in Poétique de la Relation among others). I think we could all be creole in a way: we absorb and become by putting in movement all the different knowledges and influences we have been through and carry in and with us.
In another interview, you said "I have a great experience almost every time I play a concert or on tour. It is a timeout from normal life." How is music a "timeout?" What is the relation between music and normal life for you?
Haha! Maybe the term timeout is not the right one. I am not sure… And it also happens that I have ended up in very uncomfortable and overwhelming situations while performing music. But I must admit that this hasn’t happened for quite a while – and I am really glad!
I believe music is part of our everyday life, and so is “improvisation.” In the sense of timeout, maybe I wanted to tell that the moment I am performing (and on tour) is just completely different from my “regular” life with its routine - not that my life is the most settled, but I have and need my moments of stability let’s say. The moment I am performing is when I am totally doing what I am doing. Nothing can really disturb me. I am not thinking. I AM - in the moment – in a deep listening state. It is a moment where I am trying to be completely connected to everything and to everybody. I relate this state to meditation somehow. One of the deepest experiences I had once was when I went listening to a solo piece for bass clarinet by Eliane Radigue, performed by Carol Robinson in New York City. I was in such a deep listening state that I felt everything was connected – the noise from the audience, the person breathing next to me, the traffic outside the venue, the planes flying above us, people talking on the street, etc. It was something I never experienced that deeply before. There were no hierarchies; things were individual but also connected, participating in a whole - not intentionally, but, nevertheless: whole, unconscious participation. Afterwards, I couldn’t touch my instrument for a while. That experience moved me so much and I had to let it flow.
I experienced this feeling a few times while performing afterwards. Of course, it wasn’t as strong as the first time but nevertheless, it is a good feeling when you attend that state. Everything is where it belongs. So, is it a timeout or is it an all-togetherness. Or like a rhizome, with all these little and bigger individual things happening at the same time, things which seem not related, but which actually are or can be? Or is there some kind of acceptance involved? I am not sure.
“There are certain percussive or organic sounds going on which can't be easily explained since several sounds are going on simultaneously. In the future, scientists will look back... and question what Mr. Loriot is doing or if he has gone too far. Hear this music now so you can enter the discussion and be prepared.”
- Bruce Lee Gallanter on Frant Loriot, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter, 2015.
Your music has been described with phrases like “gut wrenching intensity,” and “unwilling[ness] to compromise.” Bruce Lee Gallanter says that scientists in the future will look at your music and say that you were “going too far” – is your music extreme? If so, how so? Is your music extreme to perform? If so, what makes it so?
I don’t believe my music is extreme. It might sound different and unusual. It is true that I go for the “forbidden” sounds in the classical formal way of playing and hearing string instruments. But I wouldn’t qualify my music as extreme. It is in movement and it is pushing away the borders, somehow beyond the usual practice. I would actually consider the traditional way of playing extreme, in the sense of its inertia and conservatism. I wouldn’t say traditional/conventional playing is forbidden to me of course (I love a lot of it) but why would it be considered extreme when it is only different? I do admit I do not compromise. Because I believe compromises do not help to push and go beyond boundaries. I find it interesting to see that frozen visions of things (conservatism) are never considered to be extreme. I think it should be the other way around, actually. Whatever would be frozen would be extreme, in my opinion. It is like in our world, with the institutions. Being a good citizen with bourgeois values is not considered to be extreme; it is considered a goal to achieve. It is the norm, this vision of stability (a skewed vision in my opinion) based on compromises. But if you’re out of these norms, living another way, or thinking differently than these norms as defined by capitalism, you’re considered to be extreme. If we would stop, consider, and look at the consequences of this way of thinking about life - in terms of values, the style of living that this way of thinking encourages/demands, which is based on consuming not living - I would qualify that as extreme. We are now deep into the neo-liberal system, which is probably the biggest totalitarian system we live in, but it is considered to be the “right, stable and sane” norm – or, at best, the least-worst. We are in an era that uses Newspeak to express the old form of exploitation. The aspects have changed but not the substance, and I find that seriously questionable.
I actually like what Bruce Gallanter says about going too far. I’d rather go too far than stay in an enclosed and confined perimeter. I find it way more exciting to try an adventure than to stay in safe and comfortable zones. Getting out of these zones feels alive. Saying this, I also know that the space I am creating is also somehow becoming afterwards an enclosed space I will have to get out of to be in movement.
My performances are not at all extreme, I would say. Physically speaking, I am trying to avoid any kind of visual attention. I would rather that people focus on the sound more than the visual aspect of my work. I try to condense and minimize my gestures to put the attention beyond my person. I want to bring the spectator into my sonic dimension, the physical and visual aspects are secondary.
The only thing which I would consider extreme would be my commitment in the performance moment, to keep the energy and attention from the beginning to the end. But this would include all types of performance.
I genuinely think both the kind of music you make, and the content of what you make, in particular, are totally accessible to anyone that has an honest passion for music, even if they have no experience with it. In the same way that conservatism is actually the extreme, how possible is it that free improvisation is accessible and not “difficult” to listen to - just a different kind of engaging?
I agree. I guess it is a matter of a relation between the performer and the spectator. Both have to engage and commit to the experience. The rejection comes usually because our minds are structured by institutionalized visions, mainly transmitted through education, about what is right or wrong. There would maybe also be a lack of curiosity and to question a practice (I think of classical music but I guess this would be true with other genres and fields). It is not that you would have to radically change your practice, but to be aware and, if not, at least open. Then, you like or you don’t, but I would say this is not really the question here. I often realized that people who like this kind of music are non-musicians!
What do you feel when you perform? Describe the experience of musical space for you, and does it relate to how you felt listening to Carol Robinson play Radigue.
When I perform, there are different states. First, there is the “before” - before the first sound from the performers appear. It is the moment everybody in the room, audience included, understands we all have to commit. I’d say music starts already there, in this “quiet” moment which is before the first played sound. The room is already playing. What’s happening outside the room is already playing and once we all have listened to that, we can integrate and play with the space. For me, there are different ways to fill up a space. You have to keep the tension, even in a silence. There is no such thing as emptiness; or it would have to be played somehow and be a strong moment. It feels like we are just some medium through which some energy is passing. There is no desire for control. Things are where they belong to and we are just here to get them out. When this happens, I feel connected to everything: the room, its surrounding, the audience, the collaborators. It is like concentric circles which would all be connected and participating in this act, or this act would be related to the rest. Like ripples.
It is obviously not always happening, but this is a state I am always trying to attain. So, I guess, this is pretty close to what I’ve experienced with Radigue’s music.
You talk about “attempts to unlearn” things on your first solo record. What about on the new one?
Do you have exercises you do to “get rid of your habits”?
For my first solo recording, I indeed really tried on purpose to “unlearn”. What I mean by that is that I am coming from this very strong classical, trained background - which I felt I needed to surpass. Before I released that record, I played for over ten years in solo, but I was never really satisfied by what I was ending up with. Somehow, the music always referred to some idioms and some influences I had back then. I had to go beyond to make something of my own. I finally found a direction and a way to express my own language. For this second record, the situation is different. I have gained in experience and I would say this solo record is a continuity, a development, of what I started a few years ago. I didn’t feel the necessity of getting rid of my new language yet, but I felt I had to bring and search for new elements. They could be sonic material, it could be formal, it could be in the recording’s technical approaches and processes, etc. Here I would say I put myself in position/in movement