INTERVIEW // Zachary Good

Comfort Music’s Ian Mahanpour sat down with Zachary Good to talk about their upcoming Quiet Comfort show on 5/10/24.

What are you planning on bringing to Quiet Comfort?

Zachary Good: I will play an extended solo clarinet set of exclusively quiet multiphonics known as close dyads: two–note “chords” that straddle the lowest two registers of the clarinet. If I balance the chords just right, it almost sounds like there are two clarinetists playing simultaneously. I organize these two–note multiphonics to create counterpoint; I like to think of the clarinet as being akin to a box organ or a small pipe organ—but one that you can just fit in your bag and take wherever you go.

What's really special about these sounds is there's a max volume. I can't really play these sounds louder than mezzo piano, so I’m limited to a very quiet dynamic range. Comfort Station’s cozy, intimate, yet reverberant space lends itself well to such quiet music. 

I am also super excited to share the stage with Ruby Que, who will provide live projections for the evening. This will be our first time collaborating together. I’m not sure what they will do for this set, but I have admired how they unabashedly layer/traverse various modes of digital and analogue projection in past live performances. 

How did you become interested in close dyad multiphonics on the clarinet?

photo by Deidre Huckabay

ZG: It began during my undergrad studies while working on Luciano Berio’s Sequenza IXa for solo clarinet. In the middle of this composition, there’s a quiet, climactic moment where Berio oscillates between two close dyad multiphonics: a whole step and a major third. I was so stoked that the clarinet could do something like that! But, unfortunately, Berio wrote this piece for a rather rare and slightly longer clarinet, which meant that these multiphonics did not work for my instrument. In trying to find a satisfying solution to this moment in the Sequenza, I began to obsessively research these sounds. 

In my quest, I’ve unearthed many fingerings and possibilities for close dyads—but, ironically, not those fingerings for the two multiphonics in the Berio (although recently I have proposed several creative solutions in my dissertation). Since my undergrad studies, I've written a dissertation about close dyad multiphonics and have explored their implementations extensively through improvisation and composition. 

I feel so grateful for the excitement that grew out of learning the Berio Sequenza. I think I would have burned out years ago otherwise. That introduction into multiphonics kept me excited about playing clarinet—something I've done since I was a child—and fueled me through my DMA pursuits at Northwestern. Even though my degree was in traditional clarinet performance, multiphonics were a through line and focus of my dissertation. These sounds keep me going. 

What is it exactly that is so exciting about these close dyads for you?

ZG: The whole appeal is about creating an aural illusion—that's where the literal magic is for me. I appear to play the clarinet ordinarily but, through unique clarinet fingerings and fine embouchure/air control, I create an aural sleight-of-hand. By making counterpoint with consecutive multiphonics, and therefore several melodic voices simultaneously, I strive to make it seem like there are one or two other clarinet players in the room! 

My current downstairs neighbor is actually a magician, and while I’ll never be a real magician, I like to think that we share a kinship of sorts. I’ve loved magic ever since I was a kid but never took any serious steps towards practicing it. So, my multiphonic practice on the clarinet is my way of creating magic.

What are some challenges that come up when performing these dyads?

ZG: Multiphonics are generally awkward to play, which makes sense—the clarinet wasn’t specifically designed to produce multiphonics. The main challenge when playing is that the sounds themselves—the response, my control of them, their intonation, etc—are constantly changing. I think that's actually the beauty of these sounds, at least on a philosophical level. I take pleasure in living with each multiphonic while I can, enjoying their fleeting nature. Just because a dyad works for me now doesn't mean it's going to work for me next week. It’s beautiful—they’re there for a time, then they’re not.

But, on a more practical level, this fickleness is also a big challenge when writing music with multiphonics for others to play. Just because a multiphonic works for me now, also doesn't mean it will work for the next person. I've been writing études and solo pieces with multiphonics and I've gotten a variety of responses from other players—some of them work great, some of them don't, many need to be adjusted for the individual player. It's a very delicate practice in that it’s so tied to the specific instrument, player, and even time of year/season. 

A good number of the projects you’ve been involved in, especially your pieces involving close dyads, often include long, droning textures. Do you think the close dyads lend themselves well to this type of music?

ZG: I'm definitely drawn to long forms of music. I think part of this interest is inspired by the limitations of breath and an interest in turning the clarinet into something that it’s not—again, creating a kind of aural sleight-of-hand. I feel like close dyads specifically lend themselves well to droney music as they’re satisfying and therapeutic to play and experience.

I’ve explored long forms in my solo practice as well as with collaborators. Standing Lenticular, a duo album I did with Lia Kohl, is a very droney album, albeit a somewhat short one. I also have an album with Ben Roidl-Ward called Arb and a piece that I co-wrote with Tonia Ko called Up High: both similarly explore long forms. 

My clarinet quartet Lake Heritage, inspired by the stagnant and rippling textures of water, is an hour-long exploration of over 65 unique close dyad multiphonics across four players. There is so much to perceive in this static music because there’s a lot happening within these sounds, including difference tones, overtones, and some summation tones. All of which you can only really hear if you spend a lot of time listening to and playing them. So I think it's necessary to explore long duration in my work so that myself and listeners have a chance to slowly enjoy the full experience of these multiphonics. 

How did you start composing?

ZG: In high school I thought I wanted to be a composer but was shy about it like a lot of things back then. When I tried to get into it in college I just kept getting discouraged by the people I'd show my music to. They would say “Oh that sounds like jazz” or “That sounds like Steve Reich.” They didn’t get what I was doing, but neither did I just yet.

Then, coming to Chicago, I realized that I could really just do whatever I wanted. And that I didn’t need to go to school for composition in order to be a composer. Fortunately, I was surrounded by a lot of really creative people, and was co-creating a lot with Mocrep and my trio with Lia Kohl and Ryan Packard called ZRL. 

Through those experiences I became emboldened in pursuing a more intentional solo practice. Eventually, I was asked to do a solo set at this venue called Slate Arts & Performance (which no longer exists). So I sketched out a piece to improvise for this set that would eventually become my composition for solo clarinet called Add dye.

Around that time, I performed a sketch of Add dye a lot, including in a studio class I was leading at Northwestern. A couple students were excited about my performance and asked if they could play it. I didn't think of it as being a composition that other people would play—it was just sort of a thing that I was doing. I sent a rough sketch to one of the interested clarinet players and they were just like, “How do you do this…??” So I ended up writing out a fully realized version of that initial, improvised score which became what Add dye is now. I’ve been writing out my music with other people in mind ever since then.

With such an eclectic musical practice such as yours, how do you see yourself evolving artistically?  

ZG: I want to achieve a couple things: I’d like to build out a catalog of multiphonic works for clarinet, including an étude book. I also want to release a recording of my clarinet quartet Lake Heritage and another album that I've recorded even before that. All these things are a result of exploring multiphonics for over 10 years and I want to share what I’ve done.

But honestly, I feel like I’ve regressed in a lot of ways recently; not in a bad way, just in a more genuine and wholesome way. For several years, I was doing a lot of wild, but beautiful, experimentation, where my clarinet playing really slowed down to focus on other elements of performance. All the music I was making then was really “out-there,” and now I find that the music I make now is so simple. I am totally satisfied oscillating between two multiphonic chords for an hour—I might even do that at Comfort Station this Friday. But over the past several years, I’ve definitely returned to the clarinet in a rigorous way.

I’ll say this, I don’t think you ever lose anything musically. Experience is transformed and molded over time. It's like going out, seeing the world, then coming back to focus-in on the things that give you purpose and joy while carrying all of those past adventures with you.