EPISODE 17
Why Does Bach Still Matter?
Relevance, Cancel Culture & the Power of Art
with Albert Imperato | managing director & founding partner, 21C Media Group
In this episode of BACH 52, I sit down with Albert Imperato, a classical music publicist who’s spent 35 years making the case that Bach and classical music still matter in America today.
Albert came to classical music as a complete outsider. He taught himself piano by ear, had his road-to-Damascus moment hearing the Vienna Philharmonic in college, and started throwing listening parties in his Stanford dorm room. That generous, infectious enthusiasm for sharing Bach’s cantatas and classical music has defined his career ever since.
We explore what “relevance” really means and why it’s something we actively create rather than discover. Albert argues that Bach’s music serves as evidence of the human capacity for order—especially important when everything around us seems to be falling apart. We discuss the St. John Passion as a story about mob mentality and cancel culture, Virgil Thomson’s observation that Bach sounds like 20th-century American swing music, and why art might be the last thing that hasn’t divided us in our current moment.
This conversation gets into why the person who cries hearing a Bach melody might understand the music more deeply than the jaded expert, how Albert brings first-time listeners to Carnegie Hall, and what it means to wake up every morning choosing enthusiasm for the things you love.
The episode closes with the aria “Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe” from Cantata BWV 167—a direct invitation to all of humanity to celebrate divine love.
What we discuss: Why “relevance” is what we make of it • Bach’s music as a reminder of human capacity for order • The St. John Passion, mob mentality, and cancel culture today • Virgil Thomson comparing Bach to swing music • Who really “knows” Bach—the expert or the person who cries? • Albert’s morning ritual with Haydn quartets and Bach keyboard works • Why art is the last hope when politics and religion fail us • Taking people to their first Carnegie Hall concert • Alisa Weilerstein’s 36 Days of Bach during the pandemic
ARIAS
Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe from BWV 167
PERFORMERS
San Francisco Conservatory of Music Baroque Ensemble | Elisabeth Reed & Corey Jamason, directors
Violin 1: Carla Moore (leader), Annemarie Schubert, Eliana Estrada, Cynthia Black
Violin 2: Pauline Kempf, Luke Chiang, Alexandra Santon
Violins: Jennifer Redondas, Caitlin Keen
Cello: Elisabeth Reed, Hasan Abualhaj
Violone: Farley Pearce
Organ: Yunyi Ji
SOUND (BWV 167 only): Chanho Han | VIDEO (aria & student interviews only): Clubsoda Productions
This project is a fiscally sponsored project of FRACTURED ATLAS.
To find our more information and to make a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donation to support the continuation of this project please click the button below
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] STUDENT 1: Yeah, a lot of, um, classical musicians I encounter, like around my age, they, I think it doesn't resonate with them. I'm, I've been thinking about that and how to kind of bridge that gap, but I'm not quite sure. 'cause I, I think that, um, playing it for like my mother or people who aren't in the discipline, they tend to be more, um, reciprocal or, uh, more, uh, like interested in it than, yeah, some of my peers.
[00:00:25] STUDENT 2: There's a lot of emotion and history and all sorts of other things. Shoved in there that makes Bach, you know, a man, not the guy with the wig. And that's something that a lot of people I think, don't really understand or kind of overlook
[00:00:40] STUDENT 1: when you start with it. You're immediately presented with a lot of, I don't wanna say rules, but you know, practices.
[00:00:46] I think that's kind of off putting to a lot of a lot of musicians.
[00:00:49] STUDENT 2: It's kind of like when you go to a museum. Where on the surface it's all these fancy things and they're polished up and it shows kind of the peak of this culture or or whatever, or this section of time. But really the message that, at least that I've come to learn pretty quickly is that people are the same and have been for tens of thousands of years.
[00:01:13] And that the emotions that we feel, the emotions that we express are same across history. And that's something I really feel with his music.
[00:01:24] STUDENT 1: I mean, I've played Bach in like hospitals or in, um, you know, community settings like that, like for community concerts. And it always seems to be the most well received.
[00:01:33] So, yeah.
[00:01:35] PHAN: Why do you think that is?
[00:01:37] STUDENT 1: I think it's, I'm not sure, but I think the, there's something so simple about it. A lot of it, a lot of the box suites also box cell suites. I mean, of course very complex music and there's so much that can be done with it, but I think it's very. I think it's something simple and something that speaks universally to people.
[00:01:55] STUDENT 2: I think taking a look back and taking a look at different people over the years is absolutely crucial to who we are, especially right now. Um, and Bach obviously has had not only the music of his day, but how his music has transcended time. And that the kind of different paths it's taken, that's really important to learn about, I think.
[00:02:28] PHAN: Hi, I'm Nick Phan, and this is Bach 52.
[00:02:36] Albert Imperato has been promoting classical music for over three decades, and he is a founder of 21 C Media Group. And full disclosure, he's also my publicist. I had the pleasure of flipping the tables on Albert for this episode and getting to hear him talk about his life in classical music and his work, and it was a fascinating conversation.
[00:02:59] Something I really treasure about Albert. Is his boundless enthusiasm for classical music. So it was really exciting to hear his thoughts on Box specifically and how that spreads out into just about everything in classical music. Albert came to classical music after hearing the Vienna Phil Harmonic perform when he was in college.
[00:03:17] The minute he got back to Stanford where he was a student, he started hosting listening parties for classical music that hosted 20, 30, 40 people in his dorm room. All to spread the word for this thing that he had discovered after going to this concert. That concert flipped a switch inside of him and opened the gates to a boundless curiosity and passion for classical music that has led to a really rich career promoting the art form beyond his boundless enthusiasm for classical music.
[00:03:46] Something that makes Albert really special is that he's so generous with his enthusiasm for it. He doesn't have any time for elitist trappings around classical music, and in fact, he believes it's for everyone, and he will take it to absolutely anyone because he knows that it can be relevant to them, and he knows that it will have an impact on a life.
[00:04:08] It's like he's never forgotten what it was like for him to fall in love with it for the first time, and he's eager to share that experience with just about anybody he encounters.
[00:04:20] Just to start off kind of, basically, let's start off with your journey in music, like how you got into the music industry and like what led you here and what part Bach played in that journey, if at all. Hmm.
[00:04:32] IMPERATO: Good question. Yeah. I was not trained at all in music. I never took music lessons and, but we had a piano in the house.
[00:04:42] My brother loved to sing. And I would just listen with my ear, learn how to play. Elton John and Broadway shows, and Billy Joel and I would basically play the piano for my brother and entertain the family. You know, Italian families, they always have a grandma around who wants you to put on a show for them, and that's literally how I taught myself to play the piano.
[00:05:05] I think one day I sort of heard the Bach Minuet, the G, you know, the very simple Minuet, right? And I think I was like, oh, this is how you play it. Oh, it's just G. And I just figured out. I had never, you know, never read music, but I figured out how to noodle through it and I thought, oh, that's cool. Why is that pretty?
[00:05:21] Blah, blah, blah. Fast forward many years later, I went to college. I went to Stanford.
[00:05:27] PHAN: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:27] IMPERATO: Where I studied history, American Studies, it was called. And they sent me to Vienna my sophomore year just to take a break in my studies and try new things. And that was where I walked into a concert, heard the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven.
[00:05:44] Discovered, you know, the classic St. Paul moment, road to Damascus moment of, oh my God, this music is amazing. Hearing a Beethoven Symphony. Almost immediately I heard Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven in Vienna with some of my earliest experiences. So I came back a changed man to Stanford and became the, the guy in the campus who was always playing symphonies really loud in his room and, and we had parties, we had, I would have.
[00:06:14] 20, 30, 40 people in a dorm, uh, lounge listening to a Beethoven Symphony or a MA Symphony. Uh, it was a kind of a famous thing to come to these listening parties. And so music got sort of filed into my, my soul at that time in college. Years later, I never thought you could be in music, in the music biz. Uh, having not been trained as a musician, so I never thought, oh, maybe I'll be in music when I get outta college.
[00:06:42] So I went into journalism.
[00:06:44] STUDENT 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:45] IMPERATO: And in 1986, um, I by then developed quite a little collection of, of, uh, recordings and I went and heard Leonard Bernstein conduct Mahler's 2nd Symphony, and I completely lost my mind. It was the single best concert I've ever heard. It was the single most powerful artistic experience in my life.
[00:07:04] Hearing him do Mahler two, of course, it's out. Bradley Cooper's like living my dream right now. Um, so anyway, I set my resume to Dots Gramophone and they, six months later got me a basic entry level job, putting up posters and count records, uh, in stores. So that started my career. I worked at Deutsche Gramophone, which had this Archie label, the, the, uh, original instruments label.
[00:07:29] And there I started listening to a lot of quintessential b. Uh, music Brandenburg Concertos or, uh, John Lee Gardner doing, um, the, the B minor mass and the Matthew Passion. So it became a larger part of my life, my professional life, but my actual very first like Bach moment really came when I started getting into the music in college.
[00:07:56] And I went to a record store having just the memory of what I had heard so far and just wanted to buy some, some new stuff. And it was my first set of things that I bought. And one of the very first five recordings I bought was a Bach recording. It was Academy of St. Martin in the field playing Bach oboe concertos.
[00:08:18] It was just, it had a pretty package. I was like, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven. I was Mozart. I was trying to have a little spread of things. That was the Bach thing that I pulled out. I have to say, I, I obsessively listened to, first of all, it was the first time I really heard the oboe and like obsessed about what an incredible instrument is.
[00:08:37] I think Bach wrote for it particularly beautifully, but I loved, I loved the energy of that album, the slow movements. Just were are just so ravishing. They're sometimes sensual, they're sometimes just genic. Sometimes they're, they're just tender and intimate and I just thought, wow, he's using a very small little ensemble and a soloist and creating so many different feelings.
[00:09:10] And so that was when I began to clue into the special. The specialness of, of Bach. And professionally, I was very lucky because over the years, I, I simply got to work with one after the other great artists, some of whom were really known for, for their Bach. So I've, I've, I've experienced Bach as a complete and total novice with no knowledge and now working with, for years with really great artists, including yourself.
[00:09:39] I mean, my first Matthew passion was. You at Carnegie Hall doing the evangelist. Oh my God. Which is like watching, it was like watching, uh, Michael Jordan play basketball. It's like you're watching the person do the thing they were born to do. That's how I really felt, you know, just the way you walked out there and the way you meet everybody tune into that story, you know?
[00:10:00] I know there's been other treatments of, of the piece that, that play up on the, the theatrical element due to Peter Seller's approach, but just hearing that in the concert all that time. I was like, wow, that's the other side of Bach. That's, that's Bach taking us to a world that is kind of really distant from ours in so many ways.
[00:10:21] Uh, you just feel there's a society he was, he was bringing in for that experience. That's radically different than our own. I have, I'll just confess it. When people say, who are my favorite composers, he doesn't come in in my top three. He doesn't come in in my top five. Now I know most. Academics say Bach's number one, but from my own life experience, Bach is hovering.
[00:10:47] Hovering in the top 10, hovering the top 20. But you know, when I'm what for me and who, who I am, it's, you know, Beethoven, it's. WC, it's Mahler and my top, my top three. And of course who know, I mean, all of them owed a debt to Bach. Everyone who came after Bach owed some sort of debt, uh, to Bach. Yeah. So Bach's been there, but I'm, it's just not been the thing that, uh, that it is to other people.
[00:11:15] PHAN: Right. It's sort of like the thing that buttresses all the rest of your passions though.
[00:11:19] IMPERATO: Yes. And, and you know, you. You asked me about re relevance of Bach, that was something that you said this series is about, and honestly, since the day you asked me that, I've been thinking about it. And the reason is because as a music promoter, I'm promoting classical music in America.
[00:11:39] Which there's a little bit of a disconnect when I tell most people who are not classical music lovers, what, you know, they ask me what I do and I tell them, they're like, you can make a living doing that. Like there's so little sense of classical music playing this large presence in the life of people in America.
[00:11:55] And then of course I have to tell them, well, that's not true. There's plenty of people who care deeply about it. There's a lot more people in church singing some Bach on the weekends, and we realize. There's more people crying to, you know, joy, a man's desiring. When they hear it, they don't realize sometimes that they're even hearing Bach.
[00:12:14] They're not here maybe noticing that they're hearing it in a, in a movie. But my, my whole career I've had to sort of fight for the idea of the relevance of classical music. And it, I, I think on kind of on the way over, I, I came up with this idea finally distilling this, all that. Relevance is kind of what we make of it.
[00:12:36] I think there's this idea that relevance is some universal value and I don't think it is at all. I think relevance is what we believe in, what speaks to us, what we think should matter to others, what should matter in the carrying on of our daily lives and the, and what we share with others. And I think relevance is a moving target and we have, we find ways to make.
[00:13:01] Things more or less relevant. And depending on how good we are at our jobs, we maybe make Bach more relevant today than people, uh, even might expect it to be. And you know, I was thinking also on a broader scale at a time where like the number one message in the air is everything's falling apart.
[00:13:24] American society, politics, you name it, what's not falling apart,
[00:13:27] PHAN: right?
[00:13:27] IMPERATO: There's war in the Middle East, there's war in the Ukraine, brother against brother. There's really not a lot of obvious hope Bach, to me, the relevance of Bach is reminding us of the human capacity for order. That in his music was a kind of order.
[00:13:44] That to me, is there as evidence, as evidence speaking across time. Uh, while we continue to perform this music in various guises, it's, it's speaking across time too. Human, the human capacity for order. And once again, I think we, we choose whether we embrace that and encourage it and bring, encourage, that idea of bringing things together or we fuel, its opposite.
[00:14:10] It's as relevant as we want it to be. And I think for that reason I just mentioned, I think Bach is kind of more relevant than ever reminding us of what we need to be reminded of right now.
[00:14:19] PHAN: Right. I mean it's, it, it makes sense that you say that because I mean the music was created in a really chaotic time.
[00:14:27] There was a lot of war in the region that he, during his childhood and lifetime and you know, he was creating order out of chaos in a way. I mean, I think that's why it's kind of compelling. It's interesting, I was talking to somebody else, I think it was Jeremy Dank. He was saying that another reason people find it relevant these days, or like he thinks young people are drawn to it or he notices that young people are drawn to it.
[00:14:49] Is that it's also sort of like very, like digital in the way it's, and sort of formulaic and mathematical in the way that it's, it's it's constructed. It's almost like algorithmic and so like in this time of algorithm. Algorithm, yeah. And kind of advanced math and technology, like it seems to resonate too.
[00:15:08] There's a lot of reasons why it continue. We continue to make it relevant or it can seems to be. Something that resonates with today. So you're a classical music pro promoter in the United States, which you say is, can be, you know, it seems kind of strange to a lot of people and sort of like a surprise that you can do that.
[00:15:26] I mean,
[00:15:27] IMPERATO: yeah. I'm not promoting, uh, basketball.
[00:15:30] PHAN: Yeah.
[00:15:30] IMPERATO: I'm not promoting football. Right. You know, it's, it's not a mainstream American pastime every week. It, it, it might be hidden in the, in the crack, but it's not. It's not obviously that here. Yeah,
[00:15:41] PHAN: certainly not like it used to be, like in the time of Leonard Bernstein.
[00:15:43] IMPERATO: Yeah. And even then you, you go back and do the study, just, you know, yeah. He was on the radio and his debut at Carnegie Hall was, uh, tele, you know, on the radio and became a national sensation and in the news. But you could also go down and just say, how, how prevalent was it in in our culture? You could, you know, write plenty of books about the subject.
[00:16:03] PHAN: Right. So why do you think it's important though? I mean, you've, you've made this really bold choice the way you describe it. I mean, why is it important to promote classical music in a, in a place like the United States?
[00:16:14] IMPERATO: Well, I mean, first of all, I mean, we, we inherited a lot of our cultural heritage from Europe.
[00:16:20] We brought Europe with us,
[00:16:22] PHAN: right?
[00:16:22] IMPERATO: Whether we like it or not, that's, you know, we impose European Western ideas on the world. So, uh, we certainly impose some bad ideas. Why not impose some beautiful art? So I say, go for it. I, I think all of us are, are enriched by the context. That we, that we live in and we're, we're enriched by the things we are and the things that make us who we are.
[00:16:45] And also by all the things that we don't know and that we need to know and that we need to find out. And I think there's something kind of wonderful and crazy and fabulous that a guy born in Germany in what, 16, what year was it? 85?
[00:17:00] PHAN: Yeah, something like that.
[00:17:01] IMPERATO: Born in Germany, writing music for the church, like jamming on his Lutheran faith that that is speaking to us today across the centuries in this totally different culture that we.
[00:17:14] That we live in, but yet also, how different is it? Bach was a father. He lost pe uh, loved ones. He lost a wife, and he lost children who died. He experienced terrible sadness and loss and tragedy. You pointed out. He lived at a time of terrible upheaval, so much as his world was utterly different. His world was very, very much like ours.
[00:17:37] In in its fundamental outline. It's so funny, we, we don't feel funny quoting. A Greek philosopher without thinking we need to wear a toga. And yet somehow when we approach Bach, we feel somehow like we are supposed to be in a different kind of awe. And that it's, it's somehow some, some divine thing that we're, we're, we have to wrestle with somehow.
[00:18:00] And what, what actually made you start thinking about the relevance thing? Is it about some of the. The politics in the air and the talk that we're doing now about inclusion and everything else. Did that get you going on the idea? We should talk about box relevance?
[00:18:13] PHAN: You know, I actually have been having this question float around in my mind for a little bit longer than that.
[00:18:19] I mean, I feel like this conversation has sort of entered the mainstream about inclusion and sort of equity issues around western classical composers. A little bit more recently, but I actually have been thinking about this since I think 2017 or 2016, so for a long time now.
[00:18:36] IMPERATO: Oh, wow.
[00:18:37] PHAN: I was singing Cantatas in Weimar, which is where Bach used to work before he moved to Zi and.
[00:18:44] It was this Bach Academy that was being led by Helmut Rillling. There were people, young musicians, instrumentalists and singers, uh, coming to study with Helmut and study Bach music through these tatas. And we would tour around going to the various churches. Bach worked at stopping finally in life sake and doing the final concert and either the Thomas Church in life sink or the church where he was baptized in Eisenach.
[00:19:08] Ah. Where you would be singing right next to like the font where he was, you know, baptized.
[00:19:13] IMPERATO: I've still not been to Leipzig. I feel criminally negligent for that.
[00:19:17] PHAN: I, I think you'd love it. So it's an amazing city.
[00:19:20] IMPERATO: Yeah, that's what I've heard.
[00:19:21] PHAN: So it's like Bach, Epcot Center. But one of the, that summer in particular, they were doing a documentary about helmet really?
[00:19:31] And they were interviewing all of us, kind of asking how this work has impacted our lives. And the journalist asked me. In the interview. So do you think the music of Bach is for everyone? And I was like, oh yes, of course. And the minute that came outta my mouth, I thought that is a really unexamined answer.
[00:19:51] And it's interesting, you know, the thing that really popped into my head was, as I said it, I could like picture the album covers of John Elliot Gardiner's Bach. Pilgrimage or whatever that he was doing where he was travel.
[00:20:02] IMPERATO: Yeah. But the National Geographic photos.
[00:20:04] PHAN: Yes. And
[00:20:05] IMPERATO: yeah, we were working together in the year 2000 when they were touring that whole project.
[00:20:09] PHAN: And I mean, you know, the project's amazing and, but I could, I thought of those images and I thought, is it really for everybody? You know? And I ended up coming back to the answer. I, I have, I continually come back to the answer yes. As a base. Answer because I just think about the way the music has changed my life and saved my life in many times.
[00:20:33] And you know, it's music that I'm extraordinarily passionate about. I find really important meaning and even works that are deeply religious and seem very much dogmatic and in a box like the passions. I think there are messages in there that really should and could resonate with everybody. You know? I mean the John Passion for instance.
[00:20:53] It's really all about cancel culture, you know? I mean you have like, and it's about mob mentality and there are totally valid conversations about is the peace anti-Semitic? Yes, most likely. Certainly the source material is anti-Semitic. I mean there, one of the agendas that John, whoever John was writing the gospel, was to differentiate Christians from Jews.
[00:21:14] So there is inherently some sort of antisemitism in there, but looking at box treatment of that story. I'm not convinced musically that that's really what's on his mind. I think really what he sees in that story is a mob that is so consumed by their passion and anger and just the, their inability to think for themselves and think critically and to have compassion.
[00:21:42] And so they end up crucifying their own savior, who's one of them. They end up scapegoating somebody. We do that all the time in society. I mean, I think that. You know, you look at like the era of McCarthyism. I mean, these are stories that continually come back and I think there are things that we can think about.
[00:22:01] I mean, we're talking about cancel culture now in today's cultural zeist and like, you know, it,
[00:22:07] IMPERATO: I mean now more than ever, I mean, really you're, you've just. Laid out the argument further of the relevance of the music now more than ever.
[00:22:15] PHAN: Yeah,
[00:22:16] IMPERATO: so I mean, 'cause I, I have to admit, when I heard it, I heard a really gorgeous performance of the Matthew Passion last spring with Orchestra St.
[00:22:23] Luke's. And it was a very powerful, really powerful performance. And depending on the news cycle and what you saw on the news that morning, that crowd getting riled up. And blood thirsty, uh, is so like, oh, I, I saw those people on the news earlier and now they're, they're up to no good again. So, yeah. That, that's not going anywhere.
[00:22:44] And, and that question, how do, how do we retain our compassion? And once again, I think this is another value of listening to music, is that it asks us, first of all, it asks us to slow down. Pay attention to someone else's work. Really, in a way, there's nothing greater that we do as human beings than give our attention to others.
[00:23:06] Whether it's just a person that you talk to or listening to that music. Think about it like when you sit and listen to the Matthew Passion. How many minutes of music?
[00:23:16] PHAN: It's three and a half hours.
[00:23:17] IMPERATO: Yeah. You give three and a half hours. You are giving a gift just as much as he's giving you a gift. You're giving him a gift of three and a half hours of, of your.
[00:23:25] Soul, your experience, your, and having that impact your life. So it's, it's a, it is a two-way street. And, you know, not to get too dramatic about it, I have to say, you know, politics and religion are getting, like really not doing very well in managing our current human crises. And I, I think honestly over and over again, I think over and over again, art is, is the last hope.
[00:23:48] I think it's the only thing that still hasn't divided. Like, you don't meet that many people, like, oh. I'm against art. No art. I mean that that's a pretty far out there. Maybe they're against certain types of art,
[00:24:00] PHAN: right?
[00:24:00] IMPERATO: But they're not against art. That's a thing. And I'm just thinking that's what's gonna get us through the next, the next round of storms and earthquakes and everything else that we're gonna No doubt experience.
[00:24:12] PHAN: Yeah,
[00:24:13] IMPERATO: I agree. Especially in that. I think about it in box time. You know, people walking, wandering off into the forest. Getting rather lost without their maps app, you know, and divining, you know, the power of nature on their own. They, they had no choice. You know, we're, we're gonna live in a world where nature is the thing that we have to preserve.
[00:24:32] Think about that rev role reversal,
[00:24:34] PHAN: right?
[00:24:34] IMPERATO: To go from the thing that used to hold the eternal mystery to the thing that we're determining whether it's gonna continue to function properly. That does change the order of the universe, you know? Yeah. Uh, and I think that's another reason to listen. Listen to Bach.
[00:24:49] To hear the world when it was oriented different
[00:24:53] PHAN: Yeah.
[00:24:53] IMPERATO: To when it had a different structure. It have d had a different focus. Oh. Actually, one of the, one of my jobs at at, at Universal, at Deutsche Gramophone, when I was running the label here in America, I always was asked, how do you translate this very serious German record label to the American market?
[00:25:09] So we, we'd come up with all kinds of compilations and one of them, I'm gonna, if you don't mind the prop.
[00:25:14] PHAN: No. We love props.
[00:25:16] IMPERATO: One one of the, um. Compilations we came up with, was mad about the classics and, uh, we put out a whole series of mad about the classics in the, I think the late nineties. And we, we hired Roz Chast, the, um, new Yorker cartoonist, and we did a series of mad about the classics releases.
[00:25:37] And my job was to write notes for the man about series. And I, I found this in my old, you know, my old draw of work stuff that I did.
[00:25:47] PHAN: That's amazing.
[00:25:48] IMPERATO: And I had to write about Bach in three paragraphs. I had to just, wow. I had to write. Yeah. Should I read it?
[00:25:53] PHAN: Yes.
[00:25:54] IMPERATO: Okay. Uh, Bach status today as one of the towering figures in music history seems somehow out of sync with his reputation during his lifetime as a humble, extremely practical organist slash composer.
[00:26:05] He wrote almost all of his works for specific commissions or for teaching purposes, and expected to be paid for his efforts. But despite his astute business sense, the noble tone and impeccable craftsmanship of his compositions convey his strong Lutheran faith and deep, almost mythical, mystical belief in the power of music.
[00:26:24] Bach wrote well over a thousand works for just about every musical form, including solo instruments such as organ, violin, cello, harpsichord. Various concertos and grand masses in Oratorios for Soul of Voices, chorus, et cetera. In each of the areas of composition, Bach raised music to a higher level of technical perfection.
[00:26:41] The composer, Richard Wagner once said, what world? The Unfathomably great Johann Sebastian constructed. So that is what this compilation was all about. And the other. Trying to take a page from popular culture. I did the, the five did you know facts about every composer that we focused on and you know, you wanna put on things people could relate to.
[00:27:03] Like this crazy young 20-year-old walking 200 miles to hear another organist, to hear Buck Studio play the organ. Like really think if you told your friends you're gonna walk 200 miles to hear a musician do something, you know you're gonna be possibly committed. But the last one was really the one that really, uh.
[00:27:21] Uh, spoke to me, the American composer and, uh, writer Virgil Thompson wrote that box, concert music if played in the style of box time, sounded remarkably like 20th American, 20th century American swing quote, the exactitude with which a minimum time unit is kept. The omnipresence of the harpsichords ping, like a brush on a symbol, all make it a matter of preference whether one puts it that Bach has gone to town, or that some of the more scholarly jitterbugs of the town have wandered into a church, which I love that one.
[00:27:56] And I think the breakthrough for me when I was researching the series when I read that quote was that as much as B Bach is monumental. Uh, as much as he'd be on our comprehension in certain ways as individuals, he's also someone writing for real people. They're getting, they're getting this music and you could just picture the luxuries, uh, little luxuries they were taking, trying to, to get, bring that spirit of that music to life.
[00:28:24] And just reading that quote, suddenly you're like, you know, even his most abstract pieces. You think of of some of his p, like his, his Bach, his solo suites for cello.
[00:28:35] PHAN: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:35] IMPERATO: And you're realizing the inspiration is dance, the form is from dance.
[00:28:40] PHAN: Yeah.
[00:28:40] IMPERATO: How it's not just intellectual and it's not just spiritual, it's, it's also, it's visceral.
[00:28:47] It's also physical. It's also based on something everyone does. Everyone. Everyone's got a little dance in them. So anyway, doing this project, which was about promoting. You know, music on to the masses also, you know, taught me things that humanized Bach for me. And I think that's kind of stuck with me ever since.
[00:29:07] Even with thinking, who knows more about Bach, the person who never studied it, who cries when they hear that melody? Or is it the expert who's so jaded that they don't actually cry anymore? Who really knows more about Bach at that point?
[00:29:20] PHAN: Right.
[00:29:22] IMPERATO: Anyway, one more quote, uh, in the did you knows here. These are still available, by the way.
[00:29:27] Uh, Bach is the German word for Brooke or Stream. Beethoven once wrote to a friend. His name ought not to be Bach, but ocean because of his infinite harmonies and inexhaustible wealth of combinations. So anyway, that's my little plug for my old series.
[00:29:45] PHAN: I love it.
[00:29:45] IMPERATO: Yeah. I don't think I've ever asked you, do you actually remember what the very, very first piece of B.
[00:29:51] That entered your brain?
[00:29:52] PHAN: I mean, I think I certainly played like some of those mints and whatnot when I was as a solo violin, like a violinist and a violin student in the early Suzuki books. But the first thing that really resonated was the Bach Double Concerto, because when you're a Suzuki student, you hit that in book four, you hit the second violin, but part in book four, and you play the first violin part in Book five.
[00:30:12] And I remember hearing it for the first time in a group class, and I thought, that is a cool piece. I wanna play that. And it was really like the first musical goal that I. 'cause you know, before that I was just like doing violin lessons because my parents made me. But that was one of the turning points where I started to have a real passion for music.
[00:30:30] So yeah, the double concerto is like the thing that really was the first thing to turn my crank.
[00:30:34] IMPERATO: I would love to hear that music in, in a club atmosphere. Maybe not, you know, we don't wanna make too many clinking sounds with the cocktails, but I wouldn't mind a drink and I would love to be able to clap after some of the solos.
[00:30:45] Maybe they're not likeable, they're not that long and they're not that. Virtuosic really there, there's something very swinging. I think Virgil Thompson's use of the word swing was very apropos, but I can never hear jazz the same way. Now I hear so much more J of Bach when I hear jazz. And I'm sure, I mean, obviously there were jazz musicians who famously, uh, advocated Bach and played Bach and thought a lot about Bach.
[00:31:10] And I just love that connection. Nothing. Brings you more up to date with the relevance of, of, uh, Bach as an American than to understand the, the connection with jazz and the way that they're similar and the way that they've, you know, the way the, the former influenced the latter.
[00:31:25] PHAN: Yeah. There's so many options when you're playing it because it's, I mean, the baselines and the harmonies that go above them in the, in the harpsichord and everything, it's meant to be improvised.
[00:31:35] And he was a master improviser. It's interesting, a lot of people in these interviews have been talking about how he was such a great improviser. It's one of the first. Things they mention and you know, we think of him, I think cultural, like in the larger cultural zeitgeist. He's been put on this pedestal and we think of him as like this very serious, erudite person who created this tome of unalterable things, when actually everything he was creating was kind of just a starting place for your own creativity.
[00:32:02] IMPERATO: My, my most recent Bach experience with a great artist is Alisa Wilerstein,
[00:32:07] PHAN: right?
[00:32:08] IMPERATO: She recorded. All of the Bach, um, cello suites and, you know, she recorded them before the pandemic and then their album came out during the pandemic and she couldn't perform this music live. This is like a dream to make this project suddenly it's out and she can't perform it for people live.
[00:32:28] And so she started doing, just setting up from her Instagram account, doing, we called it 36 Days of Bach, and she played a, a movement of a suite for 36 days. And, you know, I, I really felt just what an earthquake it was in her life that this artist couldn't perform.
[00:32:46] PHAN: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:47] IMPERATO: She said she was really having troubles practicing.
[00:32:51] She was just really in pain, frankly, from not being able to share this music. And, and that really, that took me down into the music with her. That was the first, really, the first time that I was really living. And, and working with, with my own relationship with that music. And, and now she's doing this project called Fragments, where the Bach movements are part of this theatrical evening where there's works by contemporary composers.
[00:33:19] There's no notes. You just go in and you're hearing music that you're, it is an hour long and it's got lighting and sets and. You know that that music box music holds its own perfectly fine even out of order. Those movements on their own are, are incredibly resonant. And when you're in, in that hall, hearing all this music that you've never heard before, all the world premieres.
[00:33:43] You get to those islands of Bach, it's like you're, you're swimming out there and you find the island to rest on and take, you know, take your breath. Once again, I, I, it's an example of how. Every generation of artists finds their way to make the music, uh, relevant and, and bring it to life in the way they believe was is important.
[00:34:04] I mean, we think when I was a kid, I think there was, you know, there was Bach electrified, probably some Bach and some disco.
[00:34:11] PHAN: Yeah. Like Nina Simone quoting Bach.
[00:34:13] IMPERATO: Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
[00:34:14] PHAN: I mean,
[00:34:15] IMPERATO: been a while.
[00:34:15] PHAN: Yeah. But it still resonates.
[00:34:18] IMPERATO: But we should have heard a lot more, you know, Simone playing Buck.
[00:34:23] PHAN: Indeed.
[00:34:25] IMPERATO: And talking about it. Oh my God, we, we need to hear more of Nina Simone talking about everything.
[00:34:30] PHAN: No, that's true. She's shockingly prescient.
[00:34:33] IMPERATO: I did begin my morning listening to the entire be minor mess. My brother sang in a choir back in in the day. He was in the St. Patrick's Choir on Fifth Avenue
[00:34:42] PHAN: Uhhuh,
[00:34:42] IMPERATO: and I just remember him coming home singing the Gloria from the Beat Minor Massett, and I'd get that in my head.
[00:34:50] Years later to actually then hear the whole work. And when the Gloria came, I mean, to this day, nothing brings my brother, you know, who's gone, departed from this world, unfortunately, but brings him back to me and thinking of those pieces of music that just, it lit him up, it lit up the memory of our time together.
[00:35:08] Especially, especially, you know, we're talking right before Christmas, you know, when those advent cantatas hit, you know, Wachet auf and all that stuff. Yeah, I, that's another thing I do love about Bach, the seasonality of it. I mean, he rode for every, every week, right? Yes. Every Sunday. Three times, three complete cycles of Sundays.
[00:35:25] I mean, let's all relate to that. The idea of remaining, uh, kind of turned on and focused on our passion for three straight years. Every weekend, you know, we lose our attention in a half hour. I mean, this, that's a, that's that timeframe's a lot longer than, again, he wasn't sitting around with his clicker, looking at, at cable tv or.
[00:35:46] Uh, you know, cruising the internet. Yeah. I wanna learn, I wanna learn more. If anything, more learn, learn more about Bach. I think I'm coming late in my life to the passions. I true confession. I've never really listened to the John Passion, which everyone who knows it says is their, their favorite of the, of the passion.
[00:36:04] So I've got a ways to go early in my career. There were a couple snobby people around who didn't exactly help me in, in my pursuit of this knowledge about the music. There was a certain snobbiness about it. Uh, sort of like, Hey, look, you know, I'm real busy. I can't really explain this to you and, or even I'm, you know, I'm gonna keep you at arms length.
[00:36:26] I don't think you should talk to that conductor yet or talk to that. Oh, yeah, I got a little snootiness in the beginning and I, that was something I was very aware of. In my, in my, uh, work, especially now owning my own company, no employee's ever gonna feel like I'm looking down at them because they don't know something about music.
[00:36:44] That's, that's an absolute that cannot happen. And, and I will never make a, a person feel self-conscious that they don't know something. Right? What do I know about water polo? Like, I mean, what right do I have to think that like me not knowing about something isn't? I like, teach me, make me learn,
[00:37:01] PHAN: right?
[00:37:01] IMPERATO: You know, there's plenty of things I don't know about.
[00:37:03] Um, I just would love to abandon that tone.
[00:37:07] PHAN: The thing that inspires me the most about you is just how you have such an amazing enthusiasm for this music and you will take it to anybody. And I mean, your stories about your, your dorm parties in Stanford, that seems like so quintessential.
[00:37:23] IMPERATO: You people come, come, have reached out to me 30 years later and say.
[00:37:26] I heard, I heard a symphony the first time in that room in Stanford, and now I give a lot of money to the LA Phil. I just want you to know that was because of that concert you took me to, or that was because you, you know, whatever. It's amazing to me how many pe be. It is. It's, it's a, it's a very it fun thing to introduce someone to something.
[00:37:45] It's the funnest thing in the world. Like, it's so cool. I, I mean, maybe if I had been a teacher. I would've had the chance to, to turn people on in a, in a group. I think because I'm not a teacher, I, I've used whatever, whatever I've been given, uh, to spread the word on things that I love. And I was very fortunate that that job, uh, working for a record company changed my life.
[00:38:08] I would've not known. I mean, I can't even believe who I've met and worked with in my lifetime and how their voices and their takes on music. Are in my head. I can't even before the, the phones, I don't even have pictures of these people that I met and talked about music with.
[00:38:23] PHAN: I mean, so you have your side hobby, right, of the fashion blog and you like, it's hugely popular,
[00:38:30] IMPERATO: which I don't feel, I don't feel, uh, self-conscious about with you.
[00:38:33] PHAN: Well, you shouldn't feel self-conscious about it at all. Everybody has hobbies also. I mean you, what you've done with it is amazing. You have an amazing following. Something that I really love seeing on it is the way you are. Like introducing people you would never think would be interested in classical music into it.
[00:38:48] Like you're, you know, you bring some of these people to concerts that you know, you've met through this whole experiment and certainly a lot of your followers are like going to check stuff out from time to time. A
[00:38:58] IMPERATO: row of guys in denim at a performance of Rafael Payare in the San Diego Symphony. I got a block of tickets.
[00:39:04] I asked the orchestra, can you please gimme a block of tickets? 'cause whenever someone says, I've never been to Carnegie Hall. I say, I will get you your first ticket there. I'll find a way to get you a ticket into Carnegie Hall. Uh, either I'll buy you a hard to get ticket or I'll get, I'll get you a comp.
[00:39:19] And San Diego gave 10 comps, and that was one of my happiest days, was watching my, my row of my friends who had never been to Carnegie Hall. They are together. One of them like writing to me afterwards, like, oh my God, I gotta go back there. Oh. Uh, that was incredible. Is it okay if I post a picture and I'm like, wow, check it out.
[00:39:37] All right. It's the, it's, it's just a, an amazing thing to, to, to share with people. I, I also make the comparison. It's, it's like a really great, uh, very rich and satisfying meal, a very nutritious sounds. You know, uh, pop music is fantastic. I love pop music,
[00:39:55] PHAN: of course.
[00:39:56] IMPERATO: But every once in a while when I listen to pop music that used to make me crazy with enthusiasm, I'm like, not as enthusiastic today about it.
[00:40:03] And I wanna be
[00:40:04] MUSIC: right.
[00:40:04] IMPERATO: I want, you know, I wanna put on the killers and think Mr. Brightside is just as good today as I thought when I first heard it, um, on the radio. But it doesn't have quite the same staying power, uh, sometimes in me years later. Sometimes you rediscover it, and that's a whole. Different thing, but I love that.
[00:40:23] My first symphony I really fell in love with is Beethoven seven and I still listen to that thing and I still can't help but get up and air conduct.
[00:40:32] PHAN: Well I think it's amazing 'cause I, it seems to like just watching it from afar, it looks like you're getting to provide that transformational experience that you had for.
[00:40:42] Other people.
[00:40:43] IMPERATO: That's exactly, that's exactly right. Every, every day I wake up, I make my coffee, and then I choose my first listen of the day. And it's almost always a, a Haydn quartet is often my, my morning, first piece of morning music. It's, or a bach, uh, often a, a keyboard work. I think my worst dread in life is waking up and not feeling enthusiastic about the things that I love.
[00:41:10] PHAN: Hmm.
[00:41:11] IMPERATO: Music people taking a jog. I mean, the things that I love, you know, I played a ravioli, a bubble bath, Agin martini. I mean, you know, we could write a Gershwin song. I don't, that's my dread is wake up one day and not be excited about the things that I'm excited about and wanting to share them. 'cause that's, I mean, that's really what we're here on this earth.
[00:41:36] PHAN: Right
[00:41:36] IMPERATO: to do is to share. Even if we share nothing besides each other's company, we've shared something fantastic. But I, when I, that's what I love about our friendship. You and I could be goofballs and go out on the street and take hammy Instagram photos and not be ashamed. Yes. And then we can talk really seriously about music, even talk very seriously about life when one of us is faced with issues.
[00:42:03] A family member who's going through something, a loss, a setback. Yeah. So that, I love that kind of idea that that every, every single thing in our life is, is fueling, um, our sense of, of this life, having been eventful of it, meaning something. And that's where I, I, I go back to the relevance thing again. I just had to learn a little bit with my career that even if I can't.
[00:42:30] Pick up the phone and get my artist on the Today Show. Uh, that doesn't mean that the music's not important. Popular popularity is just a thing. It's a, it's another adjective we use. Mozart's very popular. It's not the most obvious kind of popularity, unfortunately, we equate popularity with, it's on television.
[00:42:49] It's, you know, in our face, uh, in a visual format. But there's a lot of, a lot of people streaming classical music these days. Huge. The numbers are huge. It's kind of saving classical a little bit. On, on, on the, on the streaming apps, classical music, a very popular genre. I mean, relative to what it was, maybe just when there were selling records in stores,
[00:43:10] PHAN: right?
[00:43:11] IMPERATO: So I don't know what makes a person enthusiastic. I don't even know what it is. I maybe, 'cause I'm not a musician. I, that's my skill is being enthusiastic. You know what? That's the way I could share music is my enthusiasm for it.
[00:43:34] PHAN: The aria for this episode is taken from Cantata 167. Ihr Menschen rühmet Gottes Liebe you people praise God's love. This aria is all about spreading the word "Ihr Menschen" means you people. It means everybody. It means humanity. Spread the word about God's love to humanity, and thinking about what Albert was saying about how his life's work has been devoted to spreading the word about how wonderful and impactful and transformative and amazing classical music is.
[00:44:08] It made me think that this would be a great pairing with this interview. This aria is a direct invitation to all of humanity. It doesn't say you faithful. It says. You people, the mention humanity, and it's an invitation to celebrate love, divine love, God's love, love that encompasses everything. You'll hear Bach paint this in the long mesas that I have to sing a couple of times in this that seem to encompass absolutely every single note of the scale.
[00:44:40] This aria brims with boundless enthusiasm just like Albert. And when I was listening to Albert talk about how he loved. Being able to get people their first ticket to Carnegie Hall and the ways in which he brings classical music to absolutely everybody. It made me think this would be a good pairing.
[00:44:58] Albert's work is not unlike the work that this Aria extols us to perform. When you listen to this aria, you'll hear that there's a generosity to this music. It's warm, it's inviting, it's music that says, this is for you. It's for all of you. It reminds me a lot of Albert's boundless enthusiasm and his.
[00:45:17] Excitement to share classical music with just about anybody who crosses his path.
[00:45:23] MUSIC: BWV 167