Paul Haas Conductor
Paul Haas was at the start of a promising conducting career when he devised and produced a concert project called REWIND in 2006, featuring composer and musician colleagues and violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers. REWIND was a reaction against the staid nature of the standard classical music performance: audience members surrounded the performers, then left and started playing behind the audience on all sides. There were mirrored sculptures by Kate Raudenbush hanging from the ceiling, interacting in multifaceted ways with the subtle theatrical lighting design. Music started before the audience arrived, and it continued without pause –even between pieces –until after the audience left. A laptop artist injected samples of the orchestra and the audience into the texture.
REWIND had great success, prompting Haas to found Sympho, an organization devoted to the creation and performance of symphonic experiences in unusual venues. One critic, writing in TimeOut NY, even called Haas ‘visionary.’ But what touched Haas more were comments from those involved in the performance, from musicians and members of the audience. “I cannot remember a night at the symphony that was so transcendently beautiful. It was the kind of experience one hopes comes in the hereafter,” said one audience member after Sympho’s second concert, TRACES. Another said, “Although I get to enjoy live music on occasion, it is never with the intimacy, originality, and fervor that we saw last night.”
“As I reflected on these various creations, I found they went far beyond novelty, resonating deeply with my own ideas, with my search for meaning,” Haas says. The inspiration for Haas’ work comes from a wide array of spiritual and ecological sources, including a longstanding meditation practice and a deep connection to the earth that finds Haas, along with his wife Suzette and two young girls, in the process of beginning an organic homestead that aims eventually to be self-sustaining. His deep concern for the land, for the Earth, and for all its inhabitants, have led him to create art where, as Haas says, “beauty is the only artistic choice: not saccharine, sometimes painful, but always immediate and always real. I’m always striving to connect deep within to that place in each of us that craves beauty, that craves love.”
One result of Haas’ immersion in this creative process is his emergence as a composer: over the last decade, fifteen commissions have come in from a wide variety of iconic venues, including the Park Avenue Armory, Rubin Museum of Art in New York, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Anchorage Museum of Art in Alaska, and the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design in Arkansas. Haas is the first artist ever to receive two separate commissions from the Oliver Ranch Foundation in Sonoma County, California, creating installations for Ann Hamilton’s groundbreaking Tower, an 80-foot-tall concrete tower with interior double-helix staircases. Haas explains why unusual venues figure so prominently in his output: “My work always celebrates space and our place within it. So many of us are disconnected from our surroundings, and it can be profoundly healing to become aware of –and even celebrate –where we are and how we fit in.”
Paul Haas conducts music by Beethoven and Prokofiev, plus Jessie Montgomery’s Rounds with pianist Awadagin Pratt on October 8 & 9, 2022.
An equally rich part of Haas’ professional life is his service as Music Director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas (SoNA) since 2010 and of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra since 2017. In Northwest Arkansas, an extraordinarily supportive community and the orchestra’s connection with an appreciative and faithful audience have allowed SoNA to grow its operations substantially. “I’m so proud of all we’re accomplishing,” says Haas. “When you look at the orchestral landscape across the country, it’s heartening to see examples of success – of true community engagement – like this one. It really is a unique situation.” SoNA’s fans are equally proud; one wrote to Haas, “You are truly a breath of fresh air – I love your youthful exuberance, and it’s easy to see that your players are really joining you in true music-making. That, my friend, is not so easy to do these days. So many professional orchestras tend to leave me, on one hand, very impressed with their impeccable intonation and their impressive ensemble playing, but on the other hand it seems as though many have played the standard literature so much that they have lost their love, true love for inspired playing. I haven’t really seen that before here until your arrival.” Haas looks forward to a transformational tenure with the TBSO, which is considered one of Canada’s best regional orchestras and is noted for its history of innovative programming and important premieres.
