Carter Larsen in China
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
Malibu composer and resident Carter Larsen, whose expansive vision of a never-ending performance of neo-classical music crystallized into his cyclic opus “Fantasia Suite,” has gone international.
Larsen returned from his first tour of China last May, dazzled with the inspiration of a new classical music market 1.3 billion strong.
“China is piano crazy now,” Larsen said from his home studio overlooking Zuma Beach. “The numbers are staggering. Seventy percent of global audiences for classical music are found in China and in Pacific Rim countries and something like 100 million Chinese children are studying piano and violin.”
Such numbers are exactly the kind of audience Larsen would like to reach and underscore the appetite for Western classical music that is raging through this country that represents one-sixth of the world population.
“At the Shanghai Airport, 80 percent of the music for sale in the shops is classical,” Larsen said. “The Chinese have a culture that embraces the intellectual discipline of classical music. But they don’t have a history of the improvisational composing that came with European Romantic composers like Liszt. So they are proficient at absorbing discipline and have an imitative nature. Now they seek authenticity.”
Larsen’s career as a concert pianist, classical composer and writer of film scores has led him from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with John Adams, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of “Nixon in China,” to performance halls in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
In recent years, Larsen has developed a piece of compositional performing art designed to bridge the musical chasm between classical romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries to a 21st century mindset that demands freer form. Ultimately, a concert that employs symphonic music, dancers, light shows and multimedia, “Fantasia Suite” will be “sort of like a constantly evolving Cirque du Soleil experience,” he said.
With his opus, Larsen wants to bring classical music alive to contemporary audiences by creating a new musical form that borrows improvisational theory from early 20th century American jazz roots, but with the musical virtuosity of the more distant past.
“Improvisational composing is what all the Romantic pianists did,” Larsen said. “But improvising is not natural to the Chinese, so to draw elements from Ravel and throw them in with New Age and create a new sound on the spot is a challenge to them.”
In a county that may well produce 100 million, mostly classically oriented pianists within a couple decades, according to The New Yorker magazine, Larsen turned down several offers to compose in China, in order to concentrate on a new venture-a digitally-driven, mega social network for classical music fans.
“It will be a FaceBook for Fantasia Suite,” Larsen said. “For every million pianists in China, they have 10 friends to introduce to new music. The Chinese have redefined what popular music is and it’s Western classical music they want, whether podcasts or digital downloads to their iPods.”
Accordingly, Larsen is retrofitting his studio to become a classical digital media kingdom. With the support of huge corporate sponsors like Hines (an American real estate firm), Larsen expects to hit the ground running with a wealth of digital media.
Sheryl Carlin is director of music licensing for Paramount and Larsen’s producer. After touring China with Larsen, she believes that the composer and his “Fantasia Suite” will fulfill a gaping musical niche in the Far East.
“I think Carter is the Chopin of our age,” Carlin said. “And China is just this huge, untapped market for his kind of music.”
To capitalize on the new enthusiasm for his music, Larsen is working with Yamaha to build a special piano that will record everything he plays; so that, while on tour he can return to his hotel room, compose the next movement in the musical suite and upload it immediately to a subscription-based podcast.
“Imagine,” Larsen said. “Classical music finding an audience that could exceed a billion people.”
Carter Larsen will be performing “Fantasia Suite” at Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue Nov. 22, and at Pepperdine University’s Smother’s Theater Dec. 20. More information can be obtained by calling 310.804.9720.