WHAT’S SO GRIPPING ABOUT THE MUSIC OF TAREK YAMANI IS HOW INEVITABLE IT SOUNDS – THAT HIS RHYTHMS AND HARMONIC LANGUAGE COULD ALMOST ONLY EXIST WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF JAZZ.

It requires freedom to thrive, it is exacting, and it swings…hard. Microtonal melodies and rhythmic patterns hailing from the Arab Peninsula are not simply juxtaposed with jazz forms. He instead devises a new idiom, with jazz as its stimulant, and classical Arab music as its native tongue.

Tarek recently moved to Berlin, which prompted us to speak at an…unusual…hour for an interview. Know that what you will read below is merely 1/5 of our entire conversation. It’s what happens – and this is somewhat rare – when you have the opportunity to mix it up with an artist as insightful, curious, and purely creative as Tarek Yamani.

I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did…despite the hour.

Tarek Yamani: Hello?

Doyle Armbrust: Hey Tarek!

TY: How are you?

DA: Well, it’s 5 am here.

TY: Oh no. Why would you choose this time?

DA: Time zones. I need to ask for a raise…

Doyle Armbrust (DA): When I first encountered the programming for this record, I thought, “Oh, this is intriguing,” and then the more deeply I considered it I thought, “Wow, this is actually amazing.” There’s this incredible Venn diagram of the pieces that you’ve selected that are tightly interconnected and yet, on a deeper level than, “Here’s an album of French music,” or, “Here’s an album of music from the 20th century.” It’s really quite profound, I think, the pieces that you’ve chosen.

Louis Langrée (LL): Well maybe it’s because I’m the opposite of “an American in Paris.” I’m a Parisian in America. I really think that right now there is so much fascination, misunderstanding, and tension. Definitely, this is a country which has built more bridges than walls in its history and this openness is part of the richness of the American culture.

Doyle Armbrust: You strike me as someone whose sights are set in front of you, so I’m wondering how it feels when the occasion calls for looking back.

Leonard Slatkin: I tend not to look back – I guess when you’ve been doing this job as long as I have, you tend to focus on what you did right versus what you did wrong. Especially the years in St. Louis – it was a remarkable time – which was one reason my wife and I decided to move back to the city. It’s where my career started, and it’s even where my family started, when they came over from Russia in 1913. There are four generations of Slatkins that have St. Louis ties.

When the world feels chaotic, I find myself often tilting toward cynicism. Then, out of the blue, a pair of conversations revitalizes my hope for the future of music and the future of communities coming together. The St. Louis Symphony IN UNISON Chorus is an expected element of the SLSO season by now for you, but take it from an outsider...this is one extraordinary ensemble.

Doyle Armbrust: When you landed this job in 2011, what went through your head?

Kevin McBeth: It was a combination of “that’s unexpected,” to “this is a full-circle moment for me.” When I applied, I was thinking this was a long shot because, after all, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is one of the greatest orchestras in the world. What made it a full-circle moment was that when I moved to St. Louis 24 years ago, I wanted to be involved in the community while working full-time in church music, and I auditioned and became a member of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus where I sang for seven seasons and did some assistant conducting.

I’ve interviewed Renée Fleming, Arnold Steinhardt, and the like, but the time I spent talking with IN UNISON Chorus director Kevin McBeth and veteran chorus member Harry Moppins has quickly moved into my Top 10 interview experiences as a writer. My most sincere congratulations to the Symphony, IN UNISON Chorus, and you, the audience, during this 25th anniversary season.

Something peculiar has been incubating here in Chicago for decades now, something that doesn’t look or sound quite like any other new music community. And it is, at long last, getting top billing. One of our champions here is composer Augusta Read Thomas, who with the help of an army of volunteers is about to unleash Ear Taxi Festival 2016, a city-wide series in which virtually every local new-music-identifying ensemble will participate, offering 54 world premieres and a total of 88 recent works by Chicago-based or Chicago-affiliated composers. We are a DIY music scene, and Ear Taxi Festival is an extension of that dynamic, assembled piece by piece.

“Gusty,” as she’s known to all of us, is one of those composers whose volume of output makes one’s brain do somersaults. The term “Energizer Bunny” pops up frequently when performers talk about her. An email from Gusty will almost always include personal praise that would make your mom jealous, and an affirming preponderance of exclamation points. This is all to say that she is an unshakably positive advocate for us here in Chicago…and that I have zero journalistic distance from my interviewee (Spektral Quartet performs on three of the festival’s concerts).

Traditional newspaper and magazine interviews of the Ear Taxi originator have been copious, so our intention here was to have a more spontaneous conversation, to move beyond the talking points that are admittedly necessary when promoting an endeavor of this scope. The decision to launch something this audacious – essentially from a living room – is nothing short of preposterous. It is also the most highly-anticipated celebration of new music in Chicago history, and, in a way, an opportunity for the city to be introduced to itself.

DOYLE ARMBRUST: I want to start out with a question that is as much to satisfy my own curiosity as it is for this piece, but in terms of the drive necessary to get something like this festival off the ground, what did middle school or high school Gusty’s motivation look like?

AUGUSTA READ THOMAS: I fear that speaking about my past can come across as immodest, but I will say that even in day school, I was incredibly focused and super-energized. I always tried to be nice, to be reliable, and to go out of my way to help someone out.