Fanfare Magazine Mar-Apr/23 edition: cover, feature interview ‘Creative Together’ by Jacqueline Kharouf

This article originally appeared in Issue 46:4 (Mar/Apr 2023) of Fanfare Magazine.

Creative Together:

An Interview with Suzanne Shulman and Erica Goodman

Suzanne Shulman and Erica Goodman have performed and collaborated together for 50 years. Their friendship—both personal and musical—is evident from the very first note of their latest album, Being Golden. I asked them about their working relationship as well as their collaborative efforts to bring out the best of their dynamic duo sound.

Suzanne Shulman is an internationally recognized flutist who has appeared with orchestras both from her native Canada and internationally. She has made more than 30 recordings and has collaborated with pianist Glenn Gould, among other chamber musicians and ensembles. Shulman is the founding member of ensembles Camerata Canada, Trio Lyra, and ChamberWORKS. Currently, she performs with pianist Valerie Tryon, harpist Erica Goodman, and ensemble Festival of the Sound.

Harpist Erica Goodman is also a native of Canada. She has been a performer since she was a teenager, was a concert soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and even played under the baton of Igor Stravinsky. Currently, Goodman is a member of Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra and plays in the Hamilton Philharmonic. As a chamber musician, she has performed with flutist Robert Aitken, oboist Lawrence Cherney, Trio Lyra, Tapestry New Opera Works, and Trio Désirée. Goodman has also collaborated and recorded with horn virtuoso Sören Hermansson.

I wonder if you would tell me a little bit about how you first met each other and how you began your collaborative work. Did you know right away that you would work well together?

Suzanne Shulman: Although Erica and I both lived in Toronto, we had not actually met in person until 1973. During my earlier studies in Paris I had formed a duo with French harpist Catherine Michel. One of my teachers there was Christian Lardé, who was married to the harpist Marie-Claire Jamet. Her father, Pierre Jamet, was Catherine’s teacher. Catherine and I had toured together in Europe in the early 1970s and we had another tour planned for Canada. However, she injured her wrist and had to cancel. I knew that Erica played with my former Toronto teacher, Robert Aitken, so I asked her if she would be able to do some concerts on short notice. All the music on our first program was by French composers, and from our initial rehearsal together I knew that Erica was perfectly at home with this repertoire. She has often said that while she does not speak French, she plays the harp in French! Thus began a close musical and personal friendship that blossomed when I returned to live in Canada.

This album is not only a beautiful showcase of your work as world-class performers, but it also commemorates your 50 years of collaboration. Congratulations on this extraordinary achievement! What do you think has been the most rewarding or perhaps the most surprising lesson that you’ve learned from each other during this time working and performing together? Is there something that your musical partner does really well that you wish to imitate or adopt? Is there anything left to still change or things that could be improved in your collaborative partnership?

SS: Erica has a vast experience in all aspects of music-making, from solo to chamber music to orchestra to studio recordings. Her sensitivity and professionalism allow her to adapt quickly to any situation. I have an absolute trust in her musicality and persistence to cope with multiple challenges, whether interpreting new musical commissions or surviving the rigors of transporting her instrument on tour. Enjoying her musical and personal support and loyalty has been extremely meaningful to me. I know that with every new opportunity we will find ways to evolve and maintain our creativity together.

Erica Goodman: The most rewarding thing is that we have developed a close personal friendship as well as a professional one, and that we have endured and supported each other throughout the challenges and joys of our individual personal lives. My approach is rather intuitive, whereas Suzanne is scholarly and analytical. She is a voracious reader and I am literarily challenged! Surprisingly, our different approaches enhance one another through mutual respect and a willingness occasionally to compromise in order to find a positive solution to disagreements. Knowing each other’s technical strengths and weaknesses so well enables us to sometimes devise unexpected musical discoveries to solve problems. I admire Suzanne for being very brave at soldiering on through adversity. And she is a fantastic chamber musician, consistent and always listening for surprise subtleties. What is left to achieve would be learning more repertoire that has been on the back burner and commissioning more pieces for our combination.

This album is also a great compilation of works for the magical combination of flute and harp. You’ve included pieces from Debussy and Ravel (which seem like they must be included in such an album), but also a commissioned piece written by Eric Robertson. I really love the back story of this commission. Suzanne asked Eric to write a piece for flute and harp in commemoration of her golden wedding anniversary, and Eric in turn asked his own collaborator, Gary Dault, to write accompanying poems (which are also included in the album notes). I wonder if you might tell me a little more about how the cycle came together. Did you collaborate with Eric in terms of the shape or style of the piece? And Suzanne, how did your husband Peter react when he heard you and Erica perform this piece?

SS: Most of Eric’s piece was composed during the pandemic lockdowns. With no particular deadline in mind he sent us music over a number of months. We really did not know what to expect, perhaps just one short piece. When we saw Gary’s poetry, so rich in contrasting moods and subtlety, we knew that we could expect something very special from Eric. The first movement to arrive was “Being Golden,” a Romanza that Eric said would be the musical heart of the cycle. Then over the winter seven additional movements arrived!

The official premiere performance was last July at the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ontario. It received a standing ovation, so we chose to play the “Seasons” movement, “Ae Fond Kiss,” as an encore. I looked up at Peter sitting in the balcony and could see that he was moved and delighted.

EG: Suzanne played a chamber work by Eric Robertson at the Festival of the Sound and was so impressed with the beauty of it that she asked him if he might consider writing something for flute and harp. To her surprise, he agreed to do it. What Suzanne didn’t know is that Eric and I had worked together for years in Toronto recording studios. He was Canada’s top arranger for instrumentalists and singers, as well as the composer of countless soundtracks of TV shows and films. I was fortunate to be his harpist of choice. At the same time, Eric was music director and brilliant organist of a church in Toronto. So he would switch from church music on Sundays to jazz, funk, country, and every other kind of music going during the week. I think that J. S. Bach would have had a similar career to Eric’s if he were alive today. As you can imagine, Eric learned a lot through the years about writing for harp and became very expert at it. No, I didn’t collaborate with him at all, but did some editing and worked out some of the harmonic modulations. I think his inner soul, which remains in Scotland and thrives on British music tradition, is reflected in this piece, and I feel very honored that he wrote it for us.

The highlight of the album is most definitely Robertson’s composition, The Rings, a cycle of eight connected pieces. Robertson’s Scottish style and influence is evident in the first few bars of the first piece, “Flame,” with its lilting and dance-like structure, and each of the subsequent parts. In each part of the cycle, Robertson seems to really play to the strengths of each instrument—the lyricism of Suzanne’s flute, the variety of colors from Erica’s harp—as well as the unique qualities of your collective duo sound. I wonder if you could speak a little to your approach in terms of crafting your performance of the cycle. Did you perform each piece with an eye toward the overarching feel of the sequence? Or, perhaps to ask this in another way, what are the unique challenges when performing a cycle of linked pieces, which also form a narrative sequence, versus crafting a performance that seems to express different musical colors, such as the vignette style of a sequence like Jean Françaix’s Cinque piccoli duetti?

SS: Each movement of the Robertson has a distinct character and mood. Some are more closely linked to the individual poems than others. The opening movement is like the raising of the curtain. The story continues with the Romanza, and so on. One could imagine a wedding ceremony with the subsequent movements highlighting different moments of the service, ending with the bells. You can certainly hear that Eric has played many weddings in his role as an organist!

The Rings is as expansive as the Cinque piccoli duetti is epigrammatic. The brevity of each movement of the Françaix pieces allowed us to focus on the ironic playfulness of the fast movements and the static coolness of the slower ones.

EG: I defer to Suzanne’s scholarly approach on this question. I will add that we generally tried to convey the contrasting intent of both pieces: earnestness and dreaminess like a fog on the Scottish Highlands in the Robertson piece, then Gallic humor and wit tinged with a bit of satirical sarcasm in Françaix.

One of my favorite tracks on the album is the first, Swing No. 1 composed by Jacques Bondon. The piece is so lively and modern, and at times feels almost improvisational. I especially like that the parts seem equally paired and that the piece itself feels more like a dialogue between the harp and the flute. Erica, I used to think of the harp as a standing piano, but perhaps it is more akin to a guitar or other strung and strummed instruments. In Swing No. 1, especially, I thought that the harp sounded very much like a guitar. Do harp and flute duo pieces often relegate the harp to the role of accompaniment to the soloist role of the flute? Or, to ask in another way, has the repertoire for harp and flute duo changed to offer performers a better variety in terms of styles or expression?

SS: To me any duo is chamber music, not solo/accompaniment. One or the other instrument may have more of the melody at a given time, but the overall harmony, texture, color, and mood are always a blend and a responsibility of both players. The Bondon is quite challenging technically for the flute, so I relied on Erica’s unfailing sense of rhythmic drive to keep the tempo and sense of “swing.” I have heard some flute and harp recordings where the flute has much the louder voice, and I strongly disagree with that approach.

EG: Perhaps as the standard of harp playing rises, each generation of composers writes more complex harp parts. Frankly, I never think of myself as an accompanist, more as an equal partner. (I like the current phrase “collaborative pianist”!) Every piece has give and take, and each of us becomes a soloist or accompanist at times. I try to sound not only like a guitar but an entire orchestra. The harp has an endless palette of tone colors, it’s just a question of discovering them and using them to greatest effect. We played another piece by Jacques Bondon with our Trio Lyra group [with Mark Childs, viola], which was one of our favorites, so we decided to play this duo. The interesting thing about Bondon to me is that he is the unacknowledged father of Minimalism. There is something haunting and earthy about repetitiveness that appeals to our basic instincts! And he does it in a very effective way.

I also adore your rendition of Debussy’s La plus que lente, which I had only previously heard as a solo piano piece. As a duet, your performance reveals more of the flow and fluidity of the piece’s rhythm, as well as the relaxed pacing. The piece circles a repetitive theme, but in your performance you never seem to repeat that theme in quite the same way each time that it recurs. How do you negotiate the type of sound—volume changes or dynamics—together and overcome or offset the differences between your instruments? For Suzanne, I imagine breathing is such a huge factor, especially when you are trying to maintain a certain speed and volume—or, indeed, finding a speed and volume that is fluid, as in this particular piece. As a duo, is it more important to focus on listening and reacting to your partner than to following all the details and direction of the composition?

SS: This Debussy was a special request from Erica as it is one of her favorites. I had never played this piece before. The first thing she said was that if we get it right every bar should sound in a slightly different tempo! Debussy was being ironic here, never intending for this piece to be played too slowly. I loved trying to find new colors together as well as the feeling of seductive abandon throughout. Color involves more than changing the shade of the sound by adding or subtracting harmonic resonance. What are we trying to express? I remember with fondness and admiration how Marcel Moyse would appeal to one’s imagination to teach expression, with poetic images such as: “Send warm air into your flute, like giving breath to a dying bird, with love….” The ending of this piece becomes quite serious and special as the final note in the harp blows out the candle.

EG: La plus que lente has always been a favorite piece of mine. It is like eating bittersweet chocolate. It can’t decide whether to be in major or minor; it’s enigmatic, a fleeting passion that is snuffed out like a candle at the end. It is moody—sarcastic and confident, then searching, unsure and achingly sad. And all of this happens in three minutes. The flute part is very challenging, but Suzanne found solutions, and I did my best to help them to sound organic and natural. Suzanne found a recording of Debussy himself playing this piece on the piano and we were both fascinated with the freedom and abandon with which he played. We tried to incorporate that into our interpretation, and she was amazing at following me all over the place tempo-wise.

The album concludes with four pieces from Ravel: Pièce en forme de Habanera, which reveals the rounded, deeper hues of the flute and harp; Pavane pour une infante défunte, which almost has a renaissance kind of feel, very lyrical and emotional; and Deux mélodies hébraïques, which feel haunting and ancient, and are quite dissonant compared to the rest of the album. These pieces seem to offer a more unique color palette, more at the dark extremes of both instruments. As a duo, how do you know when your collective sound is the color or the shape you need for the performance? Is it a matter of recording yourselves and listening together to find the right tones, or have you learned to listen to your own sound and make adjustments as necessary?

SS: Color, resonance, and blend can vary from day to day even in the same acoustical space. Changes in humidity, room temperature, even lighting affect us, so we often need playing time to settle in (and give the impression of playing in tune)! When we are in a new performance or recording space we must reinvent ourselves, constantly adapting. For example, if the harp is on a carpet, compared to a riser, it can be like night and day. For recording we take even more time to find the ideal microphone placement. Trusting our spectacular sound engineer helps create the conditions to play our best. The process evolves as we listen back. Musicians devote much time and effort to create magic in the sound. We worry that listeners who rely on their cell phones to experience music might miss the opportunity to enjoy music in a room with great speakers.

Similarly we put a lot of thought into the order of the pieces on the CD. You perceptively point out that the Ravel pieces become darker. There is a subtext to our order that is not described in the booklet notes. The Bondon begins with the energy of a toddler, the Françaix continues with the mood swings of the adolescent. Debussy is falling in love, Robertson is marriage. With Ravel the dancing becomes slower, then with the Hebraic melodies we encounter the inevitable mourning and the final philosophical questioning.

EG: The biggest adjustment I have to make in combining our individual sounds is that I often must play quieter than my intuition directs, especially when Suzanne is playing in the lower register. Sometimes, I even have to support her in the upper register when she has to play louder than we would like. And playing with someone who must breathe is a real lesson in phrasing for those of us who only need to breathe musically. I think Suzanne is more aware of balance, as the harp can actually overpower the flute at times when the resonating strings tend to build the overall volume. Regarding the emotional “darkening” as the album progresses, we thought a lot about the order of the pieces, and Suzanne had a definite message in mind which she will convey to you.

Finally, I’ll ask you both about your next projects. What’s next for each of you individually and what is next for the Shulman-Goodman duo?

SS: Now that live concerts are returning after a long break, I am looking forward to playing some orchestra performances in Toronto and Hamilton over the New Year, as well as beginning to learn music for spring and summer festival series.

As a duo we are continuing to launch Being Golden in concerts this season, including some house concerts, which we really enjoy. We are also planning our next CD recording featuring a newly commissioned piece. It is a privilege to help create original music for our combination of instruments, thus expanding the repertoire and documenting our artistic vision together.

EG: As a duo, we are hoping to record another album which will include a newly commissioned work, as we have been doing lately. We are also hoping to play more live concerts showcasing our recorded repertoire. Personally, I am still freelancing in the Toronto and surrounding area, and will be playing in a musical called A Grand Time for Singing this summer (2023) at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.

REVIEW 2023…BEING GOLDEN • Suzanne Shulman (fl); Erica Goodman (hp) • WOLFTONE 22061 (63:04) Also available from major digital retailers

BONDON Swing No. 1. FRANÇAIX Cinque piccoli duetti. DEBUSSY La plus que lente. ERIC ROBERTSON The Rings. RAVEL Pièce en forme de Habanera. Pavane pour une infante défunte. Deux mélodies hébraïque

As a partnership that has endured for 50 years, the Shulman-Goodman duo is one that other ensembles should strive to emulate. For a partnership like this to endure requires not only the excitement and drive to perform together, but a continuing effort to build a relationship based on mutual respect and communication. The results of such a relationship are clearly evident in this beautiful album, a culmination and celebration of their work together. With selections from several French composers, along with a commissioned piece by composer Eric Robertson, Being Golden is an artistic expression of friendship and musical appreciation. Plus, the combination of the flute—and Suzanne Shulman’s seemingly endless supply of breath and dynamic range—and the harp—with Erica Goodman’s sharp articulation and reflexive magnitude—is utterly incandescent.

It is difficult to pick favorite pieces here. From the very first track, Swing No. 1, a modern and almost improvisational-sounding piece from Jacques Bondon, Shulman and Goodman perform with an almost preternatural sense of each other’s reactions and tonalities. I particularly love the duo’s rendition of Debussy’s La plus que lente, which is so fluid and interpreted with such a brightness and hopefulness.

The Rings is the most interesting and compelling piece on the album. It is a series of eight pieces specially written for the duo on the occasion of Suzanne’s golden wedding anniversary. It is a celebration of not only a marriage, but also the complementary and multifaceted similarities between the flute and the harp. Shulman’s steady breath gives her flute such a full-ranging and soaring sound; while Goodman’s harp is as finely articulate as a classical guitar and hums with the same kind of presence as a piano. These songs are so expressive, giving the performers room to explore a narrative about love and the changing seasons of marriage. One of the most beautiful of these pieces is Walking on Water, which gives the harp far more notes, very tight and quickly paced, while the flute sings above in elongated and simple tones, perhaps representing the paradox of walking on water, an impossible and yet beautiful image.

The album also explores other palates of colors available to these generally bright-sounding instruments. Ravel’s Deux mélodies hébraïques explores more of the dissonant and darker tones of the flute and harp. The Shulman-Goodman Duo performs these pieces with a kind of haunting tone and deliberate pacing that gives these pieces weight without being overly dramatic. It gives the complete picture of being golden, showcasing the darkness that makes the brightness all the more brilliant. Such a gorgeous and intriguing album! 

Jacqueline Kharouf: This article originally appeared in Issue 46:4 (Mar/Apr 2023) of Fanfare Magazine.

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