Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Music


​Veery:
What musicians and composers do you respect?

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich:
Well, again I have a lot of respect for the people who are the practictioners of music like your own wonderful Chicago Symphony and Sir George Solti. The people there have been perfect to work with, Jay Friedman and Charlie Vernon. I think that between the composer and performer, to my mind, there’s a kind of mutual respect that sort of borders on love. I think that’s a very strong element in my relationship to my work. Another thing is that I think if a person is a composer as I am, you respond very strongly to music, not just of our own time but also of the past and to the tradition of music. I enjoy jazz also, and I think you might hear that for example in my works for the tenor bass trombone - there’s certainly some, at least technical influence, from the great jazz players, somebody like Big Bill Watrous, for example.


Veery
1991