Conversation with Michael Poll

Colette Copeland
March 2021

Photo by Jakub Dobkiewicz

Conversation with  classical guitarist, conductor and producer Michael Poll.

CC: I first met you at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003, when you took my critical writing course about Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. I remember I first heard you play a year later at the Amado Recital Hall in Irvine Auditorium as part of your coursework in performance. Tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in music.

MP: I don’t really remember a time before music, which I have recently discovered makes sense: I had a chance to look at some of the notes that my parents made about me as a small child. When I was about 18 months old, I was involved in a study about musical acquisition in children. I remember being shocked later on in elementary school when my classmates knew nothing of ‘ta’ and ‘ti-ti’, which are syllables assigned to rhythmic units. I also had a grandmother who did nothing but sing to me for years and parents who are musical as well.

I also remember being transfixed by the guitar very early—I must have been about four or five—and refused to play any other instrument. In retrospect it would have been great for me to play the piano and the violin, as these are both such useful instruments. Violinists have such an innate sense of musical line because of the natural legato of the bow, and they refine their ears because they need to tune every note. The topography of the keyboard—each musical key has a distinct look and feel—makes the musical landscape of key a visceral experience. Furthermore, that you can always play four sustained musical parts makes the keyboard an essential tool for understanding harmony.

For me, though, there was something about the sound of the guitar that was just so alluring—so delicate and so intimate—and I had no concept that it might be possible to play multiple instruments in one’s life. I’m now just starting to make up for lost time and have been learning piano and violin on my own as an adult. I have had great success teaching adults to play the guitar, so I figure why not become one of those adult learners myself?

CC: I read that when you were 14, you began to notice special patterns in Bach music, noting how his approach to composition mimics nature, using the Golden Ratio, Phi as a guiding structure. Most of us are busy worrying about being liked, having friends, finding a boyfriend/girlfriend and you are studying the correlation between Bach and mathematics. How did that come about?

MP: I didn’t have very many friends growing up and I think if I had been better at finding someone to date, I would have spent less time alone with the guitar.

I didn’t have a mature way of studying form and proportion in Bach in high school, it was more that I began to feel that there was something special going on that could be illuminated in a performance of that music that engaged me. I had a sense of balance and proportion alongside a sneaking feeling that there was something behind it. Of course, knowing what I know now, it is apocryphal to think of Bach as mathematical (his music is rhetorical—mathematics as the guiding principle of music left fashion with the start of the secunda prattica at least a generation before his birth).

It’s only now with the luxury of hindsight that I realize I was onto something about Bach’s rhetoric. I was 13 when I found both of Glen Gould’s recordings of the Goldberg variations at a used CD store in Keene, NH and bought them. My dad was very curious as to why I needed both. I didn’t really know it at the time, but I was intuiting that in music of Bach’s time, which has been described as a kind of speech, the orator, the performer, is a partner in the co-creation of that music. And when the orator speaks differently, the music means something different. And I think it’s true to this day that Gould’s different interpretations give a very different experience of the music. We see this in language all the time: ‘Why don’t you do that’, ‘Why don’t you do that’, and ‘Why don’t you do that’ all use the same words to communicate very different meanings based on emphasis and articulation.

CC: In 2016-2017, you undertook an ambitious project funded by a kickstarter campaign recording Bach’s Lute music on a 7-string guitar in 3-D sound. What was the significance of this project and how did it benefit schools and the community?

MP: This project allowed me to remove the financial barrier to entry to a project that I could otherwise only dream about. I had two goals–to put the best guitar sound that I was able to on record, and second to transmit some of the work that I was doing to the community.

For the first goal– one of my favorite recordings of a classical guitar is Manuel Barrueco’s Sometime Ago, and I found out that he had recorded it in studio 3 at abbey road. So that was an easy thing to aim for, but expensive—so kickstarter made that possible.

For the second goal– I wanted to use the support of all of my backers to make sure that music was getting out into the community. Using a portion of the money to cover my costs, (strings, insurance, a sandwich for lunch) I was able to perform 10 concerts in the community, and the results were staggering for me. I had music teachers’ eyes light up, students’ jaws drop, and administrators in rapture at rooms full of hundreds of school children in thrall. On the back of the success of these concerts I have received fiscal sponsorship and 501c3 status to expand the initiative in the US.

CC: How has the pandemic affected your work this past year?

MP: Everything live has been cancelled which has been a challenge, and the trauma that is all around us makes it emotionally difficult to work on making music.

As President Obama once said, however, it would be a shame to throw away a perfectly good crisis, and I didn’t want to be complacent, so I used some of the time to submit a doctoral thesis to the Guildhall School on applied rhetoric (think applied aesthetics) in musical arrangement. It’s an oversimplification, but I think there are two broad ways of approaching music: in the context of what came before it and in the context of what came after it. I am much more interested in the former, and I wanted to see how my arrangements of Bach would change if I used ideas from the time the music was written to drive my creative practice.

I have also been studying orchestral scores and operas as a conductor and working on further developing my ear and the speed with which I can read an orchestral score. The best part of music is that one can always learn more!

CC: Tell us about your new initiative with the 7 String Bach Community Program.

MP: When the pandemic is under control, we are going to need live music more than ever. Because of existing asymmetries in access to music and art, some of the people who would most benefit are the least likely to have live music in their lives. That’s not the kind of community I want to live in, so I have dedicated myself to providing infrastructure to make sure that I can be part of the solution to that problem. I also know a lot of out of work artists (like, everyone), who will need more gigs than the industry will be able to provide and giving artists a bit of money to play in the community seems like a no-brainer.

CC: Why is live music so crucial to education? How does it benefit youth in underserved communities?

MP: Live music does so many things:
1. It is one of the only truly transportive experiences in life. We can learn about history in school or on television in an historical drama, but these are ultimately cold media in the sense that we are witnessing someone else’s experience. When we hear old music live, we have the opportunity to feel, to occupy, the foreign land that is the past.

2. Coming together for live music is the last true forum in modern life. We have lost a unified political forum to the internet’s back rooms, and the US has always been religiously pluralistic, so live music is our only chance to gather together with everyone for a shared emotional experience.

3. In a great live performance, we all breathe together.

4. In addition to the benefits you mention, practicing an instrument increases critical thinking, discipline, focus, and memory.

5. Music in school is inspiring. It makes the other subjects worth doing, which is why everyone should have the chance to hear some. I still remember Sarah Chang coming to play once a year at my school—it was the highlight of my year!

CC: Why is Bach relevant today?

MP: Bach’s music speaks to us in a direct way. I didn’t need to learn to love Bach’s music—I don’t think anyone does. This is not to say that I love everything he has ever written, but I think that the unaccompanied instrumental works in particular have a unique combination of depth and charm that makes them irresistible and resonant across time.

In a postmodern world we are privileged to have so much art and music at our disposal, and yet there is something special about Bach’s virtuosity of technique and expression that is combined with a directness and an elegance that is unparalleled before or since.

I also think that Bach’s music is an essential link for us to a very enlightened time, one that appreciated both the power of rhetoric and the danger of it, just as Cicero and Catullus did in their times. Understanding what Bach and his epoch have to teach us about the danger of powerful rhetorical tools in the hands of people who are not civic-minded could be very useful for our present moment.

CC: Congratulations on becoming a father! What is the musical legacy you’d like to leave for your child?

MP: Thank you! In some ways I’m still processing that this new string to my guitar exists as it were. I hope that the music that 
I make can play a part in increased equity, justice, and quality-of-life in the world. I think that when we all have access to 
great music, played live and in intimate settings, our humanity is increased, as is our sense of majesty. For me that’s the point of art,
and I hope something that I can leave behind.

You can listen to excerpts from Michael Poll’s Tapestry→

To learn more about Michael Poll and his music→

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Inspired by Dada, and Situationist Theater, Colette Copeland is a multi-media visual artist whose work examines issues surrounding gender, death and contemporary culture. Sourcing personal narratives and popular media, she utilizes video, photography, performance and sculptural installation to question societal roles and the pervasive influence of media, and technology on our communal enculturation. Her videos employ experimental narrative techniques, and absurdist humor to explore the landscape of human relationships. Currently she teaches art and digital media at University of Texas, and Collin Colleges in Dallas, Texas. website →

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