Frank Horvat

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Frank Horvat is a celebrated Toronto-based composer and pianist who for decades has written and performed music across genres, from contemporary classical to musical theater and electronica. In 2017 he was the inaugural recipient of the Kathleen McMorrow Music Award which recognizes outstanding work by Ontario composers.

Frank is devoted to using his creative platform to support and bring awareness to causes about which he is passionate: the environment, human rights and mental health. Examples of his artivism include his album “For Those Who Died Trying” that memorializes the lives of murdered environmental activists and the “Piano Therapy” concert, a performance he developed and continues to tour in order to share his own mental health journey and to end the stigma around mental illness, particularly in the world of classical music.

His upcoming projects include “Fractures,” a song cycle of 13 pieces commissioned by acclaimed soprano Meredith Hall on the subject of the environmental impact of fracking, and a brand-new commission from pianist Kara Huber, a suite of solo piano pieces about the hiking paths in and around the beautiful mountain town of Banff, Alberta. In fact, shortly after this interview was completed, Frank traveled to Banff for a month-long residency during which he hiked the area’s most spectacular trails and started composing pieces inspired by his mountain peregrinations.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Frank describes why and how he went about creating “Music for Self-Isolation,” his response to the pandemic lockdown that threatened the careers of so many of his musician colleagues. “Music for Self-Isolation” became an international phenomenon, has since been recorded as an album and is the focus of a documentary film. He also explains why being candid about his own mental illness — to himself, his loved ones and his audience — allowed his creativity to flourish in ways he couldn’t have foreseen.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

Pier Carlo Talenti: Could you describe how “Music for Self-Isolation” came about and how the project developed or grew as you kept composing?

Frank Horvat: Yeah, absolutely. It was back in March 2020, when everything started to shut down across North America. It felt like it was an overnight, smashed-you-in-the head type of thing, out of nowhere. Everything was just shutting down. I had all these concerts and residencies lined up, and just one by one, day by day, everything just fell and was canceled or postponed. Being on social media and having conversations with colleagues, musician colleagues, I just realized, “Wow, this is very serious.” My heart especially went out to my friends who are performers because if you earn your bread and butter as a professional musician, as a performer specifically, it’s very challenging. In my case as a composer and teacher, I have other things I can fall back on.

But still at that moment I just had this sense of helplessness, and it just sort of popped into my head one early Sunday morning. I was walking alongside a creek beside where I live here in Toronto. It just popped into my head, and I said, “Well, everything’s been canceled. Nobody has anything to play.” I said, “Why don’t I just start writing some short pieces for my friends who play various instruments or sing?” These are little pieces they could play at home that were inspired by the very time we were living in. I just started sharing this on social media, and it’s just one of these things that I was just sort of dumbstruck by. It just started flowing. I blinked, and I was connecting with musicians all around the world who were posting videos of themselves performing these “Music for Self-Isolation” pieces.

It was quite poignant because they were all by themselves in their home, or some people got into a church, an empty church, to do these things. It was very powerful, and people started sharing stories about how the pandemic was impacting them and how they were still trying to use music, a thing that is their everyday source, they were still trying to use that as a power to keep their spirits up. It just became this snowball effect, and it was so moving and so inspiring.

Pier Carlo: Once we can return to a semblance of normalcy in which musicians no longer need to perform in isolation and audiences can gather, what lesson from “Music for Self-Isolation” do you think will last for you?

Frank: Well, what you just said there, there’s a lot that you can decipher. First of all, that’s been a big conversation I’ve had over the last one and a half years with a lot of people: Will it ever return to normal? But that maybe is another discussion for another time.

I think we haven’t, our world hasn’t experienced something like this ever. I mean, I grew up in a beautiful, comfortable middle-class family in Ottawa. Everything was comfortable; I had food; I had any opportunity I wanted to happen. You just grow up as a person in this generation of being a white straight male in this world, and you just naturally assume anything is possible and “I can do anything I want in life.” This whole thing just reminded many, many people, including myself, that anything can stop dead in its tracks like it has in the last year.

The whole thing the pandemic has reminded me of as a musician is that nobody can take that away from us.

That being said, no matter how bad things get, the whole thing the pandemic has reminded me of as a musician is that nobody can take that away from us. If you’re a musician, if you’re an artist, especially a professional musician, just because the checks stop rolling in and the gigs stop and you can’t play for a live audience anymore doesn’t mean that you’re not a musician. That’s why I’ve had a lot of conversations with people where for some it’s reinvigorated them about their musical life. It’s like asking, “Why am I a musician? Why am I an artist? What about this specifically brings me joy?” For some people, it reinvigorated them, and they became more emboldened and passionate about their music-making and not worrying about those capitalist, superfluous things in life that tell us that’s how we do things.

Then for other people I’ve talked to, it’s made them realize, “Wow, this is not right for me. I’ve got to get out of here because maybe I was doing this for all the wrong reasons. I wanted the accolades. I was just seeing this as a job.” That type of thing. It’s been very fascinating to hear about how many people have changed careers in the past year and a half. They’ve had this awakening, this catharsis: “Who am I? And what do I want to be?” I think that’s so cool.

But for me first and foremost as somebody who’s passionate about music-making, it’s made me realize that there’s really a lot worse that’s going to have to happen — and it’s been pretty bad in the past year and a half —for me to stop making music. I’m even more passionate now about making music that I was before, even though the future is still uncertain moving forward.

Pier Carlo: In the Kenan Institute’s “Creative, Vulnerable and Well” salon that you took part in, you described the biggest shift in your professional and personal life as being when you decided to use your composition — I’m paraphrasing — as the language with which to talk about your own struggles with mental illness. I wonder if you can take us to that moment. The first time you sat down to compose a piece that you felt was such an expression, did you know that’s what you were doing? Or did that realization come about as you were composing?

Frank: Oh, that’s a great question. I love your question because it does resonate with me a lot about my composition process. Often as I’m composing a piece, especially if I’m composing instrumental music where there’s literally no words associated, if it’s not a vocal piece, I often think about — especially those opening moments of composing something — what is this all about? I find that for me, composing a piece of music, especially instrumental music, is a very subconscious out-of-body experience. Sometimes it takes a lot longer for my conscious side to catch up with it.

I explain that only because of the direct relation to mental health because about 15 years ago ... I’ll be blunt: I was in denial. There was something definitely not right with me that needed to be better when it came to issues around depression and anxiety. But I was just, “Deny, deny, deny.”

Pier Carlo: Did you also feel at the time that the denial was affecting your art?

Frank: Yes, absolutely! Because I was not productive; I was doubtful; I was doubting myself. I would ask questions like, “Who will want to listen to this? Am I good enough? I am not good enough. Look at all these people that are winning awards and getting accolades and stuff. I’ve never won anything.” Even though I had. But I was like, “Oh, I never won something of that caliber, so obviously, obviously I’m not good enough.” And so I just wouldn’t write. I would doubt myself. I would sporadically write.

You know what’s funny is I had talked with that tone so confidently, with such vigor, that of course, if you tell your brain anything, your brain will think that’s the truth. If you tell your brain enough times, “The sky is green,” then your brain’s going to say, “OK, the sky’s green.” Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. And I became belligerent about it too. I remember in those days I would actually tell my wife — I would talk to her with such vigor and passion — why I wasn’t good enough, why I wasn’t a musician. Every negative thought, I would frame it as “the reality.” I lived for so many years where, A, I don’t have a problem, even though I did have a problem; it was sort of like this vicious cycle. And then B, meanwhile I’m struggling and I’m complaining about my music career and that type of thing, but still it’s nothing to do with me. It’s the outside world, and my negative thoughts and my depression have nothing to do with it.

Of course, like most illnesses it starts gradually, and it starts to get worse. When it became so paralyzing that I couldn’t do many things — I would cancel engagements; I would be paralyzed; I wouldn’t go anywhere; I wouldn’t do anything; I couldn’t talk to anybody — it just became enough. I saw the impact it was making on my loved ones so that, “OK, I need to do something about it.” I finally admitted it by going to the doctor and starting psychotherapy. What I’m describing here is years and years and years.

I wasn’t really consciously thinking of that, but what did emerge after I started to get enough of a collection … when you sit back, you can objectively look at your work, and you can say, 'Wow, yeah, this is who I am!'

So were the few compositions that I was composing in those early years reflective of that? Most likely, but I definitely wasn’t admitting it. Even when I started to admit to myself and my loved ones that this was what was going on and I was getting help for it and I was going through a process of therapy, it took years before I started to finally say, “OK, let’s just compose what feels right, what feels like me. This is who I am.” That kind of thing. Some of those pieces did reflect that, because each human being on this planet is a complex individual. It’s not like, “Well, I just started composing mental health pieces, and this is who I am.” I wasn’t really consciously thinking of that, but what did emerge after I started to get enough of a collection … when you sit back, you can objectively look at your work, and you can say, “Wow, yeah, this is who I am!”

It’s like someone who grabs a photo album of pictures of themselves and they look at the pictures like, “Wow, that’s who I was? That’s what I was thinking?” The whole picture tells a thousand words. Well, for me I was listening and perceiving my own music and the results of my efforts to compose, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is exactly what was going on there.” That’s such an interesting process because it’s almost like you’re observing yourself from afar.

Pier Carlo: What I’m hearing also is that through your music, your subconscious was finally having a direct conversation with the conscious mind, which had been lying to you in many ways, as it can do. It was recognizing that there was a different self than what your conscious mind was trying to convince you was there. I love that.

Frank: I agree. I completely agree with that. I think part of the turmoil and the battle in those years was that. I’m still working on that to his day: How do I go with the gut? Everyone talks about the gut, you know what I mean? How do you go with your intuition to know what’s right and what’s wrong? How do we know? Am I talking this way or making decisions this way because of a reflection of the issues I have related to depression or mental health issues? Or am I being realistic here to what’s the best way to move forward? There’s really no answer to that question. It’s sort of blurred a bit. But I am getting better because I work at it.

Pier Carlo: Can you describe how your composition style has changed as a result of this shift?

Frank: When I first started composing in earnest, especially when I was in university, I felt like I had to prove myself. Proving myself as a composer of modern classical music means coming up with something elaborate, technical, something that will catch attention just for the sake of catching attention and showcase the technical aspects. For anybody who’s an aficionado of classical music, we still live in this world where classical music is treated as a sport, as an Olympic sport! How fast somebody can play a run on a violin or a cadenza for a piano concerto, that physical pursuit is what we often hum and haw about as far as being this amazing thing. I just naturally went into that line, and especially because of my insecurities, I felt like I really had to compose very technical music. And as a pianist composer, I felt like I had to showcase that.

If you listen to my very first album that I put out in about 2007, which was a collection of solo piano piece, or compositions of my own that I performed, it is so freaking intense, you know what I mean? It’s just like, “How many notes can I fit into X amount of minutes?” It felt a bit like that. Now that being said, I’m proud of that album, and I’m proud of that album because that reflected where my mindset was at that particular moment and there are a lot of really interesting compositional musical things going on there.

But as the years went on, what I ended up realizing is the more I started to get my mental health under control, the more I realized that the only thing that I have to prove to anybody is that I’m being myself. So if being myself means I’m going to choose to show different versions of me through my music — what things I believe in, things that are close to my heart, different aspects of my moods and my personalities — then I could be vulnerable enough to share that in music.

It’s been an awesome experience because the moment I stopped caring what people think of my music and just composed the music that feels true to me, the moment I stopped worrying about how the outside world might perceive that, ironically what’s happened is more people are way more interested in what I do.

Those years after I graduated from university, where I felt I had to fit a certain mold of what a successful composer is or the type of music that a successful composer composes, that’s what I think I gradually veered away from. And it’s awesome. It’s been an awesome experience because — I think I mentioned this in our salon talk recently — the moment I stopped caring what people think of my music and just composed the music that feels true to me, the moment I stopped worrying about how the outside world might perceive that, ironically what’s happened is more people are way more interested in what I do.

Pier Carlo: Right, because they can see an authentic person. They know what they’re getting. They’re getting the fullness of you when they hear your work.

Frank: I guess so, I guess so. As a composer of modern art music, I’m not exactly the type of person that’s best in the music business to gauge, “OK, well, what kind of music will really resonate with people?” That’s not my thing. But I think you’re right. I think it’s no coincidence that in the recent years some of my most successful projects were the ones where I just said, “Oh, this is really touching me. This is really engaging me and close to my heart. And I’m just going to do it. And even though it might be a little ridiculous structurally or the way I might share it or that kind of thing might be a little ridiculous, I’m going to do it anyway.” People seem to be interested now, which is great, and I love it because I love connecting with people about music and that type of thing.

But you’re right, I mean, any time you’re just true to yourself, then somehow I think there’s this sixth sense when we interact with fellow human beings that they can just sense it. “Wow, there’s something cool here!” And there’s no other way to be than that.

Pier Carlo: How would you like to see conservatories prepare their students for professional success while also tending to their overall wellbeing? Or I guess another way to ask this is, what would have been most helpful for you when you were a student?

Frank: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’ve been teaching music and conducting workshops and working with young musicians for decades now and seen private students. That’s been one aspect of my music career that’s been so gratifying. But one of the things that I have struggled with in this system that I work within and the culture of music education — especially the culture around education of specifically classical music, the classical music tradition — is, just like I was talking about earlier for myself, what defines success? What defines a great, well-honed classical musician? I personally don’t have an answer for that, but I think the problem with the decades and centuries of the classical music tradition is they have tried to make that defined.

For me, music is art. I love sports, and there’s definitely a lot of similarity between the discipline of being an athlete and the discipline of being a performing artist like a musician or a dancer. For sure, there are so many similarities. But the one thing where there is no similarity is, how do you define success? With an athlete — and maybe some people might argue with this — it’s pretty black-and-white. If I’m an athlete in an Olympic sport, I know I will have really reached the pinnacle of success if I’m able to qualify for an Olympic Games, if I’m able to place, if I get a top 10, or a gold, silver or bronze medal. These are black-and-white, easy things to gauge, for an athlete to say, “OK, well, it’s pretty obvious where I’m at. These are the rules of my sport.”

Now, we’ve tried to do that same type of thing in music. We’ve tried to say that if you are a great piano student, you need to play everything exceptionally well. You need to be proficient at playing a Bach prelude and fugue, a Beethoven sonata, a Chopin ballade, a Debussy nocturne or prelude and a certain amount of modern works, and if you can’t fit those criteria, then somehow you’re flawed, you’re not an artist, you don’t earn the right to call yourself that. For me, that’s the starting problem with the system, especially in this day and age where we are trying to live in a world, as we should be, of being more inclusive, trying to break away from the traditions that we should only revere old, dead European white guys. It’s just stunning that we still live in a world like that.

Now, does that mean that I’m saying that we revere Bach or Beethoven too much or that people shouldn’t aspire to learn that music? Absolutely not. I love Bach. I love Beethoven. I wouldn’t be where I was as a composer, my craft as a composer and my pianist training, if I didn’t get exposed to that. But who’s to say with a mark, with a winning of a competition or a festival, that so-and-so is not a musician because they are not able to do these things? We need to figure out, how do we nurture and help young people develop their talents without pigeonholing them and saying, “Well, if you don’t fit into this mold, you’re a lesser musician or a lesser artist than others”? That for me is the fundamental problem.

If we solve that and come up with a more nurturing system to let people blossom in their talent from where they’re at, then I think we’d be heading in the right direction. I think some institutions are definitely starting to do that, which is awesome, but I still think we have a long way to go.

Pier Carlo: If you were running a conservatory, what would be the first system you would change? What would be your first fix toward that goal?

Frank: So I should make it very clear that I have never worked for a post-secondary institution or a conservatory or even a music school, for that matter. When I graduated from university many years ago in music, I instantly opened up my own private teaching practice. What I’ve been blessed with, being a private teacher, is nobody’s telling me what I should or shouldn’t teach.

Basically my attitude about teaching is I look at every single student and I say, “Now what makes them tick?” I literally ask them, “What would you like to learn? What are you passionate about?” And then I construct a pedagogical plan in order to help that student get to that point while exposing them to certain things. So if I have a student who’s like, “I just want to play pop music. I want to be the best pop piano player I can be,” well, does that mean, “Oh, well, we’re just playing pop pieces, and we don’t do any ear training or musicianship exercises or technique exercises or theory?” Of course not! But it’s all designed around what their goal is.

... first and foremost an institution’s power or greatness is based on their faculty and their giving them the ability to be creative with their students in deciding what kind of program is right for them.

So to answer your question, what I think institutions should do is let their teachers be more creative. Yes, OK, the institution might have underlying fundamental principles that sort of connect everybody together and that type of thing, but honestly first and foremost an institution’s power or greatness is based on their faculty and their giving them the ability to be creative with their students in deciding what kind of program is right for them. So if a school has an end-of-the-year jury — I remember they used to call them juries when I was in university or end-of-year recital — and the school says, “Everybody who does this kind of thing, in order to pass that part of their degree, they have to present all of this different type of repertoire,” well, for me, like I said earlier: Why? Why does everyone have to do that?

Pier Carlo: Also it must be so excruciatingly boring to the jury, right?

Frank: I know! I mean, you can see the cobwebs just growing on the people just sitting there. It’s just, “Oh, I’m going to hear the same prelude and fugue again for the thousandth time in my many years of teaching in this institution.” Where’s the inspiration for both the student and the teacher just to change things up a bit if it does that? Now I’m not saying that traditional type of approach is bad if that’s what the student’s goals are, to be the most well-rounded pianist, if that is their goal and they’re passionate about it and they enjoy that challenge. Good for them! I think that’s wonderful, and maybe institutions, if they’re really focused on that, then they have to brand themselves as that. But I think we need more institutions to give the faculty freedom to help students become the best artists we can.

There’s a reason why so many drop out. There’s too much pressure of having to work with students to help them through all this pressure. There’s so much pressure. There’s going to be pressure. I feel pressure in my life to be the best artist I can be. And guess what? I’m doing everything I love! I’m composing the pieces I think that are a true meaning of myself. I can’t imagine having to get yourself pumped up to do something when you’re playing repertoire that you really don’t care about, that doesn’t resonate with you. We want people to be artists, not just teach them skills but teach them how to be artists, not robots.

October 04, 2021