Interview with Gabriela Lena Frank
Part Four: On the Creative Life Span, and the Fear of Repeating Herself

Fourth of an eight-part interview by YoWangdu’s Yolanda O’Bannon

YO: I'm surprised to hear how much focus you have on doing new things, learning new skills for yourself. It sounds like it’s really key.

GLF: I noticed exactly that about myself too – I have this great fear of repeating myself. If I did something already in one piece – someone can just go to that piece and play it to get it. Why do I have to write the second piece? Why is there a reason for that to exist? To make money? To get paid again?

YO: What’s your great fear, though? Being boring?

GLF:  It seems dishonest.

YO:  Oh, dishonest.

GLF:  Cheating.

YO:  Cheating by using the same thing?

GLF:  Yeah, I’m cheating.

YO:  You lazy dog.

GLF:  I’m lazy. I’m a bad, sneaky person.

YO:   Gabriela Lena Frank, bad…

GLF:  Bad, sneaky composer! [laughing]…I feel terrible.

YO:  That’s hilarious.

GLF:  Privately, I’m very hard on other composers – I look at their stuff, and I’m like, that’s the same piece.

YO & GLF:  Bad, sneaky composer! [laughing]

GLF:  But, you know, that’s different from knowingly making arrangements. I have a violin piano piece. A Brazilian flutist friend heard it and said that would work great for flute. Can you make an arrangement for flute and piano? I was like, what? But I did, and now I don’t know which version I like better. And, ironically, in that violin/piano piece, I was trying to make a violin sound like a flute. And so it was like in many ways returning it to its original idea. I don’t feel sneaky for that, I mean, making an arrangement.

Other instrumentalists might be, oh, I want to get my hands on that. It’s coming from a good place. They just want to play it, too. Guitarists make arrangements of piano pieces all the time. Harp, with guitar and piano music. I mean, like instruments are often arranged. To me it’s like spreading the wealth a bit. But, mining from something because you couldn’t go through the pain of coming up with something new. To me, that’s cheating. So I am always trying to do new stuff. One of the reasons I have problems with procrastinating, is that I’m like, god, I just finished that piece, I need to decompress. I need to do some others things that will get me new ideas again. I’m gonna repeat myself. It’s also a dilemma I have when a piece that I’ve written 10 years ago is being played today by somebody, and it’s so new for them, but for me it’s not new anymore.