Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Juhi Bansal and Sage Shurman

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 194: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Juhi Bansal and Sage Shurman

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Juhi Bansal’s and Sage Shurman’s perspectives on who or what inspires them. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Juhi Bansal and Sage Shurman, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in February 2021, click here, and November 2024, click here.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/18608917

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Christy Xu

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today we revisit Juhi Bansal's and Sage Shurman's perspectives on who or what inspires them. Here's what Juhi Bansal had to say.

Juhi Bansal  00:39

That's a huge question, because I feel like it's kind of like the earlier there's so many women. I mean, there's just so many inspiring women. I almost I hesitate to start listing names, because I know I'll leave out names that are really and truly important to me. I mean, I will say this actually, so without specifically naming names, one of the things I find really fascinating about listening to women's stories is that you there are stories of strength and courage and fighting for opportunities and making opportunities at like every level, from like, you know, big names that everybody will recognize, to your neighbor, to your aunt, to your Mom's best friend's cousin. You know, that's one of the things that always has fascinated me. Like, I remember my mom telling not only her own stories of when she was a child and kind of what it meant to to be a girl, as far as the opportunities that she was given, and the things she had to fight, to do, and then thinking about, like her, one of her best friends. And this is a woman I've never met, but I remember hearing about her from my mother, about in the 70s in India, this young woman had a child out of wedlock, and what that meant in India in the 70s, at that time, and, you know, one of the things that I find really, really poignant about that is that it's, it's kind of every woman's experience, like I can talk about finding, you know, Malala and Jane Goodall and All these people who I think are just like fascinating role models and huge names that have contributed so much that I find truly inspiring. But I actually think there is something about these kind of smaller human stories, about what it means to be a woman that almost speaks to me more, because that is everybody's experience. It's not the same experience. But, you know, everybody has their own version of that experience that I think it's, there's a lot, a lot of weight to so for me, I don't know. I think, when I think about women's stories, it really is both of that. I have a long list of women who I admire, who are, you know, big names that I think everybody would recognize. But I actually think I find more weight in the stories of average women, or perhaps average is a wrong word, average. Or those, you know, their stories are not told in the same way. They're not celebrities, they're not big names and kind of things that they have had to overcome just to be, to survive, to work, to live their lives. I've always found those particularly interesting. In terms of my music, of course, I have a number of projects that do take stories of very specific women and try to tell those but even in a kind of more general sense, I think, where I can find a way to use women's words, for example, rather than men's words. Not that there's anything wrong with men's words, we're having the opportunity to do that. I like to do that just as an homage to not even necessarily a specific woman, but to every woman.

Nanette McGuinness  04:05

Mmhmm. Shining light on those who aren't getting light and who haven't gotten light in the past.

Juhi Bansal  04:10

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  04:11

Here's what Sage Shurman had to say.

Sage Shurman  04:14

I think someone that had a big influence on me, both, I guess, musically and then also as a mentor, was Andrew Norman, I've always, like, I was really liked his music before the LA Phil composer fellowship program, and then I was applying to that, and I was like, No way. He's like, he runs the program. That's amazing. And one thing that, like, he told me that really stuck out to me was I was in the habit of making these like pieces that were like, consistently, like, I would say fairly good. But nothing was like, you know, nothing like, made them really special, or like, great. And he was just like, you need to write some bad music stage, like, you need to like, you're not gonna get something like, really good until you write things. That are, like, actively bad. And it's like you have this fear of, like, oh, like, it needs to hit a certain level of good for it to be able to, like, be performed and, and I think, like him telling me that, and just, like, truly accepting, like, it is okay to be out on a limb and try something totally random. And, like, in fact, like, you need to do that if you're gonna, you know, get somewhere new. Was very helpful for me. And I, like, I try to think about that. Like, if I'm, if I'm making too many consistently, like, I don't know, seven out of 10 level pieces. I'm like, All right. Like, we probably need a three out of 10 in here so that we could get a 10 out of 10, right? Not that these things can be graphed like quantifiably, but...

Nanette McGuinness  05:44

Right. But if your stuff is consistently vanilla, let's just Yeah, yeah, acceptable vanilla. You haven't taken enough risks, and you've been playing it too safe, so you want to dive bomb a few times to confirm that you're taking those risks. In taking those risks, you give yourself the opportunity to take wing. Yeah, yeah. Now, that's fabulous advice. And did that change your composing style?

Sage Shurman  06:13

Yeah. For... it just made me branch out more and, like, try new things without, I guess, the fear of like, well, what if this doesn't work? I feel like that almost, the idea of like, what if this doesn't work, almost becomes more of a good thing, because then it's like, oh yeah. That means that I'm doing something that, like, you know, at least like, I haven't done before, or not enough people on the internet have done before where I could look it up and be sure that it's gonna work.

Nanette McGuinness  06:41

Right exactly, because, you know, how can you develop your own unique compositional voice if you're just playing it safe?

Sage Shurman  06:49

Yeah. Exactly.

Nanette McGuinness  06:50

Yeah, that's true.

Nanette McGuinness  06:53

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations, and a special thank you to our guests for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to Co-producer and Audio Engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]