An Exclusive Interview with Misha
Segal
By The Hollywood Sentinel
Misha Segal: When a culture gets degraded,
the standard for everything, education, arts, social behavior
etc., also degrade with it. Any music that can be understood can
be enjoyed. The same goes for any field of endeavor. When I first
came to the U.S. and saw the first football game I asked my
friends – what the hell kind of a game is this, nobody does
anything at all, they talk and talk and then they jump on each
other looking for the ball and that goes on for two hours.
Obviously, I did not understand the game and could not appreciate
it. Americans never understood why the whole world was excited
about soccer – well, now they get it. So if you stop
educating people and the big corporations are in it only for the
money and keep lowering the standards so that they can sell -
sell - sell, then any art form goes down the chute to the lowest
common denominator and people get to enjoy only four letter
words, sex and booties... Well, that level can be understood very
easily by anyone. Rhymes in songs used to have rules, which
coincided with knowing the language. “Down” and
“Ground” don’t rhyme but tell that to Akon. So
classical music is so far off now. But it’s the same in
jazz. People used to enjoy Coltrane and he was very complex. Then
came Kenny G. I rest my case. No education equals
degradation.
The Hollywood Sentinel: Haha. I won’t tell
Kenny you said that! What motivated you to become a pianist and
composer? Were there many times you wanted to just give up and
quit, and if so why and how do you overcome these feelings?
Misha Segal: I did not need to be motivated. I
knew I had to do music since I could think independently. I
always asked to go where there was a piano. Unfortunately I was
not encouraged at home and wound up starting late. I never felt
like quitting because I never had a “plan B”. I never
did anything but music and never will.
The Hollywood Sentinel: We often hear about the
artist or musician feeling so called ‘divine
inspiration,’ as if their creative flow is coming from an
other worldly source outside of their own being. Do you believe
in a spiritual essence greater than yourself that ever touches
you and infuses your work, and if so how and why?
Misha Segal: Well, I would not argue with
someone who thinks it’s coming from “someplace
else.” I personally believe that “all those
places” are still our places. I sometimes wake up in the
middle of the night and hear an entire piece, complete. Well, it
can seem as though it “came from another place” but I
know (at least for me) that whatever universe it came from , it
is still my own universe. It is very spiritual in essence –
of course but for me the field of spirituality does not have to
mean necessarily that “other universes” come into
play. If I want to I can experiences other universes, I believe
we do this all the time. But when I create, I believe that it
comes from my experience and from my own universe. There are
influences which I accept very affectionately but I never confuse
them with “it came from someplace else...” To me, if
it feels like it comes from “another place” I believe
that it is still my own universe except – maybe long, long
ago.
The Hollywood Sentinel- Bruce Edwin: I have
minimally studied how certain scientists are utilizing quantum
physics to discover how charging different molecules of water
with sound for example, or color can alter the energy flow of
those molecules. My question is, aside from tone and melody and
the like, are you ever conscious of attempting to create deeper
infusions of energy in to your music on a quantum level, and if
so how and why?
Misha Segal: The answer is no. for me music is
an individual expression that can influence physical phenomena
but whatever it affects or whatever it is constructed from, it is
still the magnitude of the artist’s talent, his
‘beingness’, his scope of expression, education and
ultimately genius which are the driving forces. Maybe a good
analogy (albeit a simpler one) would be to ask an opera singer if
they intend to break glass with their voice. I don't think that
is what is intended when one learns to become a singer. But if
Caruso or Domingo or Pavarotti inadvertently crack a glass, that
is something for scientists to figure out and possibly
admire.
So in short, any accompanying phenomenon to me is incidental. The
main point is that the artist has a message and can communicate
it. How great it is, or how well all peripheral phenomena can be
measured is only a test of the size of the artist. Beethoven,
probably one of the top five most important artists of all time,
evolved like no other composer. I went with two friends to listen
to Andras Schiff play his last three piano sonatas. It took about
two hours to complete. When he finished there was a huge moment
of silence in the audience at Disney Hall. I think that no one of
those two to three thousand people in the hall had any physical
sensation of chair, pants, body or anything else. Time froze and
space was infinite. The lights were not even the actual lights.
Is there deeper infusion of energy on quantum levels – oh
boy, I would be surprised if a black hole might not have been
created as a result. But Beethoven just wrote a sonata for
piano.
Hollywood Sentinel- Bruce Edwin: Amazing. The first video played
on MTV was a song called “Video Killed the Radio
Star” by a band called The Buggles. It could be said today
perhaps that “You Tube Killed the Video Star.” Where
do you think the music industry as a whole is headed with regard
to concerns such as piracy, the Internet, you tube, shows like
American Idol, and the like? Are these changes as important to
consider for classical artists as yourself as they are for rock
or pop artists?
Misha Segal: This is a very tough question.
First of all, I am not really a ‘classical artist.’ I
wrote some classical pieces and I am an educated musician but I
do not engage in classical music as my main field of activity in
music. There was an era before radio and recordings, when the
world was silent. I mean literally silent. Other than the sound
of horse carriages and the sound of the horseshoes being nailed
to the hooves, there were no sounds. Maybe baby cries, rain or
two men fighting. The only way to listen to music was to go to
somebody’s home or to a concert hall, or church and listen
to musicians play music. There were no elevators and supermarkets
that played music all day long. Mankind has long forgotten the
experience of listening to music out of total silence.
The day when music was recorded was the end of the art form
because there is no art in a piece of vinyl or CD. There is no
art in listening to the exact same performance of a piece for a
hundred years. This is why Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, one of
the greatest pianist’s of the 20th century, refused for
years and years to sign a record deal and did not allow
recordings of his performances. Paintings are forever but not
music. Music is for the time of the performance when a real
musician communicates with real public. So the question of how
the new changes impact music is no longer of any importance.
Anthony Hopkins (the musicologist, not the actor) stated in his
work “Book of Composers’ that music has been degraded
to being ‘wall paper.’ This was written in 1986 and
it is as valid now as it was then and it will continue to be
valid for a long, long time.
We have entered the dark ages of art unfortunately. And this is
not surprising. If you want to suppress a society and bring it to
its knees and control and enslave it, it you can do it very
simply by introducing both street drugs and psychiatric drugs to
every citizen on the planet -this is not a far off reality- you
make sure education standards get lower each passing year until
people can barely read or write, you can scare a population with
horrible news on T.V. and radio all day long, you can make sure
the economy is never stable, you can create many wars and –
last but not least, you can make sure that artists and the arts
are so suppressed and so degraded until they lose the power to
inspire and remind people what they were living for. And this
phase has begun a long time ago and is continuing as we speak
with tremendous force. Every decade the technology for producing
and distributing music changes only to help degrade the art more
and more. MTV was one phase, the computers, which allow anyone to
produce (what sounds like) music, YouTube, well, there is no
reason to continue along this line. It will take a huge counter
force, this is not a one-man-job (although it could be) to turn
things around. But that would mean eradicating
‘Prozac’ and ‘Ritalin’ too. It would mean
a huge shift in society’s education and thinking. And right
now we are not even close. People ask “what is the state of
music today?” and I ask “what music?”
The Hollywood Sentinel- Bruce Edwin: Wow Misha.
That’s heavy. You have been public about your religion as a
Scientologist. How has Scientology helped you as a person and as
an artist? Has it helped improve your playing piano and composing
and if so how?
Misha Segal: Scientology has trained me and
educated me about life in general and about people and
relationships with people in particular. It also expanded my
horizons spiritually which is to say, it opened windows for me to
see and experience parts of me and my world, which would have
stayed “asleep” had I not taken this path. When one
grows more aware and becomes more alive and sharp, his creativity
benefits markedly. That is how one’s playing and composing
improves, by improving one’s existence and expanding
one’s ability to be more alive.
The Hollywood Sentinel – Bruce Edwin: I see. Your music has
been cited as having given many experiences that were considered
spiritual, in a sense. Have you ever had a spiritual experience
listening to another musicians work? If so please explain who it
was and what happened.
Misha Segal: Every time I listen to a master at
work, be it a jazz musician like John Coltrane, a grand composer
like Gustav Mahler, an R&B singer like Aretha Franklin or an
Irish singer singing Celtic music honestly and soulfully I go
through spiritual experiences. That is what true art and true
expressions are. They are spiritual journeys through the realm of
the highest form of aesthetics offered on this planet. That is
why art needs to be supported, sponsored and encouraged.
It’s the only thing other than Scientology that gives
mankind freedoms he normally does not have.
The Hollywood Sentinel- Bruce Edwin: What is the
greatest thing you intend to create on this planet that you have
not yet created?
Misha Segal: I am working on a new concept as an
artist, which is most important to me right now. It is a project
of mammoth proportions and only time will tell whether it will be
possible to accomplish. It is an expensive endeavor but that is
my calling now and that is what I must do as an artist.
The Hollywood Sentinel- Bruce Edwin: Well that
sounds exciting! I guess we’ll have to wait and find out
what that is! We wish you the best on that Misha, and with all.
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
www.mishasegal.com
© 2011, The Hollywood Sentinel.