YouSaid · the spoken record

Max Richter

lines on the record: 44
first: 2025-01-22
most recent: 2025-01-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Based on the Man Adam trilogy of Margaret Atwood. So, this is a piece which had a long gestation. We started it before the pandemic, and then ironically, because actually the subject matter is the pandemic, it got cancelled because of the pandemic. But we picked it up again afterwards and we premiered in Toronto. Last year, I guess. And now it's coming to London. So we've done a little bit of nip and tuck to it and revisited some things and this new version has come to London. Yeah, really exciting. So that happens next month. And then next year I'm looking at some film projects. So yeah, a lot of different things going on.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After I recover, well, I have a new ballet which is just starting in Covent Garden. So this is a collaboration with Wayne McGregor again. It's a piece called Mad Adam.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On this tour, we're playing the new record in a landscape complete, and then we're connecting that with the Blue Notebooks, so two halves of a show, played straight through. It's very simply done, just focusing on the music itself. And I'm really looking forward to it.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love playing music in real time, in a real place with real people. It is the best thing. It's a community experience. There we are on the stage. There's a community of players and then the greater community of us and the audience. We're going on this journey and it's unique. It's this time it will never happen again exactly this way. This is it. And it's really special. Yeah, it's a great privilege to be able to play the music in front of people. I mean, it's wonderful.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've tried to keep it relatively sane, the Turing age. Not too bad Have it under control yet. It's me. It's five string players, a string or some five players, and I'm playing the piano and some keyboard. So it's fine.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the record in a landscape, this was made recorded on tape. All the instrumental music was recorded on tape, all the synthesizers and processing is analog of the composed music, as well as the composed music. There is also, there are 10 life studies. Those are recorded on the phone, me just walking around recording on the phone.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, if we're looking over there at that little synthesizer there, that's a mini-Mogue, Model D, and next to it is a. Mog system 55 Those are from the early 70s. So they're like at the birth of the synthesizer What was happening? So I see those a little bit like the equivalent of old Italian violins, Stradivarius, Guaneric. It's the same. It's like this is the kind of authentic. So they really are special and they've got very special personalities because of that. You know, we've got the computer now, and it can do everything and all kinds of things, those instruments can't do, but they are very special and they've got very distinctive voices.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's yours I think it is. But yeah, I mean, a lot of the kind of earlier analog equipment, it has special characteristics, right?”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it has. I mean, I think now everyone's got a laptop. You just download a couple of apps and they are making music, right? I mean, it's crazy. I mean, this little laptop I'm talking to you on has got more, okay, so see that gray box over there. Okay, so that's an E mu sampler. And that was, this is about 90, it's old. I mean, it's 25 years old. But that could place 16 notes. And it cost about £4,000 in the 90s. And if you wanted to make orchestral music, you needed about 10 of those. So, you know, that's a problem. Big, big problem. Whereas now this little laptop can do all of that. And I think there's like a sound app on there for free. So, you know, it's different.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's so many. I think one thing that's happened right now, and I think this is, you know, if there has been a benefit from streaming. Is that while streaming is obviously caused a lot of financial challenges for artists? The one benefit of it is the fact that people can just kind of explore their enthusiasms. So there's no risk. You don't have to put your money down to hear a record. You can just click. And that means people can follow the material. And that applies to composers too. So genre definitions and sort of boundaries have just kind of melted away. And I think you hear that now in a lot of contemporary composers. They've just got this kind of open-eared sort of dogmatic. Sound world, which is really, really exciting. So, yeah, I mean, there's some wonderful stuff around.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do listen to a lot of music. I listen to music as much as possible. The only thing that I sort of don't like about composing is the fact that you can't listen to other music while you're actually writing music, which Frustrating. Frustrating, but yeah, I listen to a lot of different things. Obviously, I'm sort of deeply connected to classical music, Western classical music. That's my sort of my kind of home base, I guess. That's kind of where it all starts for me. But a lot of other things, you know, electronic music, yeah, you know, you name it.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you just mentioned Anne Carson. I think Anne Carson is the most amazing multidimensional. Intellect, incredible writing, extraordinary. And what I love about her work is that kind of deep connection into, obviously, in her case, you know, ancient Greek literature and classical literature. And the way that she, her work is, although her work is completely modern and of the minute, it still has this kind of deep root into a kind of a cultural legacy. And that for me is a wonderful kind of model of creativity, something which is engaging with what's gone before. I mean, all music is about other music in a way. but something which is also of the here and now.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He says the world is too much with us. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Then he talks about how he would rather be this sort of pagan who knows nothing because he'd be more in touch with. The natural world with reality rather than a constructed world. He was talking, I guess, you know, about the industrial revolution and the coming of mechanization and all that stuff. But I thought he's talking about social media. So that really spoke to me. I mean, Keitsa, I've kind of always loved Keats, but actually living out here now where we do, seeing the sort of the way that the kind of cycles of nature are sort of very present for me. It's made me sort of go back to it and appreciate it in a different way.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think it's probably all of those things. Yeah, I've been going back to the romantics because, I mean, Keats and Wordsworth kind of sit a little bit in the hinterland of this new record because... Well, first of all, there's a specific Wordsworth poem, which is a sort of critique of social media, which I think is rather amazing, which you wrote in 1800.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, for me, literature has always been a great companion, inspiration, solace, stimulus, everything. All those wonderful people who came before us who thought all these things. And one of the things that's so beautiful about creative work is it allows us to experience how somebody else felt being alive, how somebody else felt, you know, walking on the earth, how it is for them. And so it's, yeah, it's exciting to be able to experience that. Piece of writing gives us a little glimpse into that, doesn't it? Same way as a piece of music does or piece of theatre or whatever.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do work a lot, but I do sleep a lot. I work and sleep For me, sleep has always been. Almost like my religion. I'm really, really appreciate it so much. And I'm very fortunate in that I've always slept well. But I absolutely don't take that for granted and I see that as being really fundamental to... My ability to do anything else really.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it can be slept through, or just used as a kind of environment, an opportunity or kind of invitation, I guess, to kind of switch off. So that was really the beginnings of that project.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, significant psychological load, right? A lot of psychological pressure to be kind of on all the time. And as we know, that leads to exhaustion. So we're thinking about maybe creative works can act as a sort of roadblock to that kind of a process or like a mini holiday or a pause button. And I think they can, you know, a big novel transports you takes you out of the everyday and presents a kind of alternate reality. It's a place to rest actually in a way. Or, you know, a big painting, a Roscos say, you know, you stand in front of it and the rest of the world just sort of recedes into the distance, doesn't it? And a piece of music can do that too. So sleep is functional music. It is a kind of a place to rest. It can be listened to. But in a sense, it's more to be inhabited.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this project is a little over 10 years old now. This was really catalyzed by a couple of things. First of all, Yulia and I were talking about how at that time 4G internet had suddenly moved into our pockets. So we had the entire world's information on tap constantly. And that was new. So obviously, yeah, that's kind of fun and exciting, but also”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some bit of Beethoven or something that I love. That makes my day a tiny bit better. You know, it's like 1% better, but that 1%, you know, that's very valuable I do believe in that.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for us, actually, this building in a way is part of our response to that. So this building is recycled from an old farm building. Solar powered, we grow the food that we feed that we eat in the cafe in the garden. It's sort of got, we're using heat pumps and all of these kind of latest tech really to try and minimize the impact of the work we do. And that is something that's very important for us. It's very important for us to kind of express our aspirations and our values in a concrete way. Beyond that, I think Yeah, creativity itself. I think it can have an elevating effect on interpersonally, just on a kind of personal level and societally. I mean, for me. I sort of deeply believe that. If I wake up in the morning And first thing I do is make a cup of tea, stick the radio on, and on comes, you know.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say is, you know, composing is my way of talking. I'm better with the. Notes than I am with words. And, you know, like everyone, we talk about the world, right? We talk about the world to one another, about things that mean something to us or that we feel are important. And I'm really no different. It's just that for me, my sort of first language is music. So just like everyone talks about what's going on, so do I. And I think that's quite natural for an artist, really, I have to say.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I find personally, I mean, I know some artists really like to take sort of big breaks between things, but actually I find that the starting of a new project sort of erases the previous one pretty much immediately. It's almost like... It's like having a glass of water after a meal. It's just like immediately there's something, there's like a new space opens up. Each project has its own little world.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the world of that film in this kind of inevitable way. So there's a kind of a process of integrating music within the kind of overall language of the film, which is super satisfying. And it's technically quite challenging. You have a Q and that Q has to go from one person's point of view to another person's point of view and then make time pass more quickly for a bit and then it's very technical. And you can do that, then you're getting a sort of lot of technical training for free.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, for me, I really appreciate the particular properties of the different disciplines. You know, our solo project, that's just me, you know, just trying to sort of follow the material. A concert music commission, if somebody commissions a violin concerto, they're not going to want a brass band piece. They're just not going to want that. So there are parameters. And with a piece of cinema, the parameters are relatively speaking more narrow, more constricted. A film score is not a symphony. It's not the whole game. It's part of the game. And actually, you know, part of the kind of pleasure and excitement of working in film is sort of discovering the kinds of relationships, the kinds of musical objects that can feel like they belong in the world of that film.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there was definitely a moment, maybe, I don't know, 15, 20, 30 years ago, where a film composer was a film composer, and that was that. Now I think particularly maybe with the emergence of online media and the online space generally, there's been a kind of a blurring of borders and boundaries. Someone like me who's maybe starts in concert music and making records can also do film. and vice versa. And I think that's cool, actually. I also think, you know, directors are a bit more maybe a bit bolder with their decision making. They want artists whose records they love to do their... That's what they want. Why not? It's cool”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think for me. If I'm watching a movie, then I always, I'm always sort of rooting for the composer inside some level, you know. I want that composer to have like... You know, absolutely smashed it out of the park. That's what I'm hoping for. And, you know, very often the standard of filmmaking now is very high. So very often it does happen. Occasionally, you know, if there's a bit of a miss for whatever reason, then... Maybe I noticed the music more in maybe not a good way. But now we're all human, aren't we?”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean. Are so many Knowing all the way back to classic like NORACONI's work or all those Segi Leone films. Films of Robert Aldman, you know, like there's so much, isn't there? Yeah, I mean, it's impossible to begin.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, That's a really interesting question I mean, I guess the films. That I really love have mostly got amazing scores. So you kind of wouldn't want to.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, it's very similar to all my other collaborations. You know, I mean, Kim is obviously a brilliant artist and a visionary. And he works exactly like other artists. You know, it's a sort of incremental searching and discovery process, incredibly high level of sort of craft and attention to the aesthetics. And yeah, the musical grammar, the way the music is interacting with the other materials. Honestly, we treat it exactly as we do a piece of cinema or a ballet or with just the same level of seriousness and thoughtfulness.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I mean, I suppose. I mean, I'm very fortunate, but I probably only take things on that really get me excited that I fall in love with. I think that's really the best way to sort of go about it. Because unless there's a kind of immediate sympathy with the material in some way, then it's going to be difficult.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it sometimes happens that one of us will think, no, this is how it should be. And actually, that's really useful information. You're learning a lot about the situation, about intentions, about what the potential of a moment might be. And then it's worth trying it, right? So let's try it. And then let's see. And we sort of test. All of these different ways of assembling and connecting materials until it all starts to feel inevitable. It starts to feel like it could only be that way. And that's really the test”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's super exciting, isn't it? That's a really super exciting thing because, you know, I mean, a big project like Wolf Works or like Mad Adam, which we've been working on recently, I mean, this is a big thing. It's an hour and a half of music, right? It's a lot of material. So at the beginning of a project like that, you're standing at the foot of this enormous mountain. And what's worse is it's a mountain you can't even see. You have to climb it, but you don't even know what it is. So as you start to sort of put energy and thought and material into this space, you start to discover its properties. Yeah, it's super satisfying to work in that way.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it starts to do things, that's very much the case with music too. You know, you start to feel like you're on to something. You've got something going on. You know, suddenly this sort of object just starts to develop properties and intentions. And yeah, you can discover that in collaboration with other creative partners. And that's kind of what we how we work.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the work I do with Wayne is. Has always been really fantastic fun. I mean, he's just such a bright mind, you know, so thoughtful and kind of playful and very open to experiment and that sort of voyage of discovery quality that he brings to everything. So we have always just worked on a very informal conversational process, really. We just push ideas around until things start to stick. And this wonderful feeling that probably novelists talk about often is that the material starts to take on a sense of intention.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, obviously the solo projects are mean just sitting in a room. That's it. But yeah, ballet, film, installation projects, these things are fundamentally collaborative. They're collective puzzle-solving, collective experimentation. And that's very different. So you have a kind of a conversational process with your creative partners, you know, whether that's a director in the case of a film or choreographer for a ballet. So you get a kind of a series of feedback processes which are just really fascinating to be around.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, this project for me, it feels like quite a sort of first person project over the last few years. I've been working on kind of bigger Canvas projects, you know, voices. It's a 70-piece orchestra recomposed this orchestral excellence, it's a symphony orchestra wolf works. These are large scale projects. In a landscape returns to the kind of smaller canvas solo strings, solo piano. It's a process of like really reducing to the fundamentals and trying to rediscover my relationship with those fundamentals, bit of a reset in a way. The Blue Notebooks, which is maybe the first of those small scale projects, that's 20 years old. So it's going back to that palette and seeing what those colors mean to be now.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think the new record definitely has the sonic fingerprint of the room that it was recorded in. You know, it's a very woody sounding, sort of quite dark sounding record. And that's to do with the space. I think beyond that, working in your own space, it has a kind of... Transparency, maybe the space sort of doesn't get in the way of the material quite as much as it often does if you're kind of having to adapt to a space which you're not so familiar with. So yeah, it's like learning an instrument, right? So we've built a new instrument. And learning how to play it and discovering its properties.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a big space. It's, I guess, the impetus behind that is. We're trying to make a creative space which felt good to be in. This comes from me having spent years and years in lots of recording studios, which are, you know, maybe they sound great, but they sort of forget that we're organic living creatures. So they don't have nice air, there's no natural light, all these kinds of things. And actually, we wanted to make a space which had a kind of a more maybe a more complete vision of what a person is or what a creative person is. you know, we've got a kind of a space here which just feels nice to be in.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we've kept the outside that way because we had to really for regulations. But so the inside has all been completely transformed. So it has a really beautiful acoustic actually.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was formerly an alpaca farm, and it's just one of those big metal sheds that you see all over the countryside full of tractors or bales of hay. And we just scooped the inside out and replaced it with a bunch of studios. It's a recording studio. We've got a cafe, a few edit rooms, my room where we are now, Julia, my partner's art studios. And yeah, a whole collection of things.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has in a way, I mean, every piece of writing really joins up with every other piece of writing, I think. The individual projects really only have sort of dotted lines around them. I'm always writing, you know, every day I'm in the studio, I'm making something. Sometimes things have a long gestation and there are certainly things in this project which have, you know, they've been sort of kicking around in my mind for years. And then there are other things which come very fast and which feel like a kind of a moment-to-moment response to things that are happening around us. So it's a mixture of things, I think, in this case.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I guess this project comes out of a period of thinking and writing over the last couple of years. And reflecting on the world that we find ourselves living in. The world is very polarized right now. So I wanted to try and make a piece which speaks to the potential to reconcile dualities and to try and do that musically. So I take a lot of elements which appear to be different maybe like electronic music, instrumental music, natural sounds, composed sounds, human sounds and the sounds of the natural world to try to put these into a kind of a fruitful relationship. And the title of the record maybe hints at that a little bit in a landscape. You can hear it both as in a landscape and in a landscape. And that sort of interior, exterior is another of those dualities. So, yeah, that's the sort of overall picture of the project.”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“La Cerie de Houlu Original Furiers Arives, Avoc Amy Rossum, Furieus Suilagent du FBI, Alice Black, a la Portie, Mysterious, Ecalculatris, Vera Justice Mesa Musur colour ventrome la frontier entroposes,”
2025-01-22 · Intelligence Squared · Max Richter on Finding Inspiration, with Shahidha Bari · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT