Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Erika Oba and Caleb Palka

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 196: Da Capo Conversations 2.0 with Erika Oba and Caleb Palka

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 Erika Oba’s and Caleb Palka’s perspectives on who or what inspires them. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Erika Oba and Caleb Palka, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered in May 2022, click here, and March 2025, 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/18678426

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 Erika Oba's and Caleb Palka's perspectives on who or what inspires them. Here's what Erika Oba had to say.

Erika Oba  00:40

I would say that my first major musical influence was Peter Apfelbaum, who's originally from the Bay Area and is now a New York-based artist, composer, saxophone player, multi-instrumentalist. He I met him when I was 12, and he was one of my first, like, serious music mentors. And I remember going to see a live show of his at a very, you know, impressionable pre-teen age, and just being like, so blown away with the music that his ensemble is doing, and getting so excited for the first time, like, thinking, like, oh, like, I might want to do this with my life. Like, that feeling was great. This live music thing is amazing. And he's continued to be an influence on me, like I try to listen to everything he puts out, and I've got, I've had the good fortune of getting to perform with him as an adult. He has a band that's based in New York, but sometimes comes out here and plays, and he's let me, like, sit in on some of his gigs with his band, and yeah, so in that way, I think he continues to influence me and other musical influences. Myra definitely, like some of you know, like she's coming from a more experimental tradition, which, like, actually Peter is too they have some overlap in their mentorship, but when I met Myra, I hadn't done too much of like the experimental improvised side of jazz. And she just opened up my world to, you know, that whole world, and she's part of the reason why I ended up going to Mills. Because I was like, oh, like, I like, what Myra is doing, and, like, I guess some people are doing and experimenting with that, you know, in this scene over here. And maybe I can expand what I'm doing that way. So, yeah, Myra is definitely musical influence. And I guess, like, in terms of, like, conceptually, artistically, the work of Fred Ho has had a big influence on me, and the work of, you know, all the other artists at Asian Improv Arts, like Jon Jang and Francis Wong. Yeah, I just, I just, I didn't know about them growing up, even though I grew up in the Bay Area. So I, you know, I met Francis sometime in my 20s and became more familiar with his body of work and Jon Jang's body of work, and Fred Ho's body of work. And, you know, listen to their records, and read a lot of Fred Ho's writings in particular, that I think had a pretty big influence on, like, my thoughts on, oh, like, what am I doing here? And, like, what, why am I doing this? And why do I want to do this? So, yeah, those are, those are some that I think continue to inform me, I've had the good fortune of being able to work with a lot of different types of performing artists, dancers, like, actors, playwrights, in addition to, you know, all the fabulous musicians I'm surrounded by. And I feel like, you know, the Bay Area has a really rich scene for people working in different cultural practices and kind of exploring how to, I don't know, create new things, drawing on different traditions. And there's a couple choreographers in particular who I feel like really influenced how I think about my own creative process and the kind of things I might want to make. So there's a wonderful choreographer, Sammay Dizon, who is a Filipina choreographer, who I've gotten to work with a couple times, and she's done some incredible like, deep, deep work drawing on different spiritual cultural traditions from her heritage and but like, kind of setting them in a modern dance context, and creating kind of these, like new ritual spaces, and just seeing how she worked was pretty transformative for me, and seeing the effect that that, like deep intentional practice could have on the people she's performing with, and also the audiences and kind of like the community space, she's spaces that she's building through that work. And then another choreographer I've gotten to work with is Byb Chanel Bibene, who is a Congolese choreographer, and he also, I mean, in some ways, similar to Sammay, drawing on some like various spiritual. Cultural, different traditions from his own heritage, and then kind of putting them in a more modern dance context, but, but still very, very different, like, only similar in that they're like, kind of exploring these, like some of the similar questions, but, you know, the way it manifests. You know, they each have their own practice that is deep and involved in their own ways, but I've gotten to play with him a little bit, and, yeah, just seeing like the communities he's building out of these things, and kind of exploring how to, you know, create something new that has deep relevance for the people who are participating it, either as performers or audience members, was just like deeply moving to me to be able to see that, and I feel like there are other musicians and composers also exploring some of these similar threads. So that's been really stimulating and interesting for me, and something that I'm continuing to think about how to integrate into my own work.

Nanette McGuinness  06:04

Here's what Caleb Palka had to say.

Caleb Palka  06:07

Well, I think, like, probably my biggest like, inspiration is nature. I love reading a lot about, like, you know, just reading a lot of nature, writing a lot of nature, poets like Mary Oliver or, or like nature essayists, like Brian Doyle. There's a lot of authors who I really enjoy. I really love Ross Gay, his like writings about nature, and I think that just sort of going for a walk in nature and noticing little things often helps me get unstuck when I'm working on a piece. I think that the kind of like sense of time that I feel when I'm walking in the woods is often the kind of sense of time that I be want to bring the audience to in a piece, and the sense of awareness of all the sort of aliveness around me in the woods, and the kind of connection is something that the kind of connection that I think I want to kind of like cultivate in my music as well so.

Nanette McGuinness  07:26

Yeah, there are a number of composers over the centuries who have found that to be an inspirational panacea if you want to combine two words unusually.

Caleb Palka  07:38

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  07:39

But yeah, what about, do you enjoy reading, like, Thoreau and those not quite back that far?

Caleb Palka  07:48

I haven't read that much Thoreau. I think primarily I read a lot of like, like science writers, like, think of like Ed Yong has a book recently about, like, how animal senses work. Or there's this book by, I think, Jennifer Ackerman about, like, owls and sort of new science on them and stuff.

Nanette McGuinness  08:17

So more recent than like Jared,

Caleb Palka  08:18

like reading a lot of like, I guess, like popular science, like, writing that kind of discusses things in detail that way as well as I like to sort of more like lyrical side of like, like lyrical essays or poems that are, like approaching nature In that different way, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  08:38

Right, right, modern Walt Whitmans, as it were. Yeah. What about mentors? 

Caleb Palka  08:47

Yeah. Well, I've been really fortunate to participate in, like the Young Composers Project, as I mentioned, and also, like Luna Composition Lab. It's been really amazing. Like, the piece that I wrote when I was a fellow for them was also very inspired by nature, like looking at birds that I observed, like in Oregon, and connecting those birds to like memories of my late father, who I enjoyed bird watching with, and using those bird calls as a kind of like way into the piece. So I think I've always been very inspired by nature and kind of the deeper symbolism that I can sometimes find in it as well. And, yeah, it's also been really amazing going to USC and studying with all of my teachers there. I really love that we rotate from teacher to teacher each year. So I get a lot of different perspectives on things, which I really value.

Nanette McGuinness  09:47

That's really nice. I'm sorry about your father, though you said you're late father. Who was your mentor at Luna?

Caleb Palka  09:54

Ellen Reid. Yeah. 

Nanette McGuinness  09:56

Oh, nice. Nice. Okay, 

Caleb Palka  09:57

I really love working with her. 

Nanette McGuinness  09:59

[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 Measures 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]