Coming up on State of the Arts, violinist and violist Yura Lee, joins us in the AZPM Studios, photographing extraordinary individuals and a Danish artist builds trolls around the world.

We'll explore what's happening in the art world across the Southwest and across the country on State of the Arts.

Hello, I'm Mary Paul.

Thank you for joining us.

Multi-instrumentalist Yura Lee performs around the world on both violin and viola and teaches as an associate professor of practice at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.

Before her recent debut with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, she sat down in the AZPM Radio Studios to speak with our own James Reel on Classical Extempore, touching on her philosophies as a performer and educator.

I'm James Reel for Extempore.

Yura Lee has performed in Tucson several times, mostly as a featured artist in the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival.

Yura, are you a violinist who also plays the viola, or are you a violist who also plays the violin, or something else entirely?

I really do think of myself as a musician, and if the voice is sort of like having another limb at my disposal, the joke that's actually not a joke is that I've always wanted to play cello and piano all my life, but my hands didn't grow past a certain point.

So my dreams quickly got crushed at around age eight or nine, and violin and viola became my voice.

But having identity as a musician, I think it means that the emotional expression is not limited by your instrument.

The technical abilities are just a box that arbitrarily is set for you.

I feel a lot of freedom with the instruments that I get to play.

What happens when you want something to be happening that the composer is holding back on?

To what extent do you have to be faithful to the score, and how much freedom do you have as an interpreter?

That's a really good question.

I'll answer it in two parts, one more macro and one more micro.

The macro answer is, being a musician really teaches me, whether I like it or not, to be a better person, to be a better person to myself, and to perceive life more organically, because all the traits, positive and negative, that I have as a person comes out in my playing through the eyes of the composer that wrote them, because I'm a re-creator.

I'm mostly recreating somebody else's blood, sweat, and tears.

And very oftentimes people who are from completely different backgrounds from me, so I have to not only empathize, but sometimes sympathize with their background and their emotional context.

And I think there are some music that I can completely just latch onto, as if I wrote it.

And those composers include Bartók, Kodály, a lot of, actually, or I'll take kind of language migration route.

A lot of, like Finnish music is also in that same vein for me, where I just, when I hear it, it's like, "Oh, I know exactly how it sits in my body."

It's interesting that you feel that affinity for Finnish and Hungarian music, because Finnish and Hungarian are members of the same language family.

Exactly.

Finno-Ugric, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

There must be some sort of connection.

And there is a myth that's sometimes scientifically debunked, but sometimes also scientifically proven, that Korean, which is my first language, is part of that migration and route.

And the first time I heard Finnish, I was like, "Why is this Korean that I can't understand?"

So there is a little bit of that too.

Let's talk about some comments that I think you've made in the past about how music can help with healing.

And I think you posted on Instagram once, a performance you gave the same day that you received some very bad news.

And yet you were there, you came up and you performed up to your usual standard.

And did you find that a sort of therapy?

Can music be therapy, or is that insulting its power in a way, talking about music as therapy?

Oh, it's not insulting at all.

However, it's a dichotomy that I think about a lot, which is being a musician means that I have the privilege of giving something to someone.

If I was just playing music for myself, you know, the tree falls into the forest and nobody heard it, you know, that's that scenario.

And it's immensely joyful to play music for myself, just for myself.

And that's, you know, practice is probably the most fun thing that, you know, I wouldn't I would have never said that as a child.

But now looking back, those were the times of creativity and discovery and freedom.

Not that concerts aren't free, but being a musician that as a profession you're giving.

Yes, you are also receiving.

But what you're giving and what you're receiving are two different contexts and two different it's not quantitative.

So you can't say you're receiving as much as you're giving or vice versa.

But I'll tell you this, I feel both very full and very empty after concerts.

And it's something that I don't think it's talked about enough.

But it does make me sympathize with the idea that artists often struggle with emotional difficulties, mental difficulties, substance abuse, and you name it.

We are always we're expected to give.

And it's so wonderful that people get to receive receive that and it's a privilege.

And I want to stress that again.

But then the recharging part, the healing part for our own self, the players, I think that's something that is so much more difficult to do than to say, for example, the concert that you mentioned, I remember until 5pm that day, the concert was at 7:30, I was debating, am I up for this?

Is my heart up for this?

Because if my heart is not up for this, my body is not up for this, and then my brain is not up for this in that order.

And autopilot is not something that I can allow myself to go to, even though I probably could have.

In order for me to play the composer's intentions as purely as I could with all those contextual baggage that I was living with that day, which we all do, you know, everybody's living their life.

And one more day means one more joy lived, one more baggage acquired.

Day was worth of baggage acquired rather.

On stage, I had to ask myself, forgive yourself for feeling this way so that I could let go of my pain.

Because you can't reject your pain because that's energy spent.

You can't forget about your pain because that's not reality.

But somehow I had to let my pain connect to the composer's pain.

And in order to do that, my ego, my survival instinct couldn't get in the way.

And the only way that I could personally get there was to ask myself to forgive myself for allowing myself to feel those pains.

And for me, that was a really vulnerable experience, but I'm really thankful to have experienced it.

I don't know if I would volunteer to experience it, as, you know, we feel many times in life, but if it happens again, I think I would embrace it just a little bit more easier than the last time because I've now experienced it once.

And I remember, not the whole recital was up to my standards because I was in a very vulnerable emotional state.

And when you're in a vulnerable emotional state, the classical music, especially violin playing, we're working with such minute muscular training and dexterity.

And I remember I messed up this one passage that was already precarious to begin with.

Schubert writes things that are basically impossible for violin, and he doesn't care, not because he's mean, but he thinks harmonically and pianistically, and that's who he is.

I respect that.

But that mistake was also counterbalanced by, I remember this one passage that I played, and it was as close as I got to sounding like a singer, which is something that I always think about because our body knows instinctively best what music needs.

And I'm very proud of that.

And I think to myself, could I have got to that moment without the pain that I experienced that day?

I'm not so sure, probably not, I don't think, at least for myself.

But then I asked myself, do I want to experience that pain again so that I could play like that again?

Also probably not.

But I probably will feel that pain again because life is life.

And hopefully I'll get to be lucky to play with those qualities again.

But I said all of this melancholically.

You've been in the public eye as a performer for a very long time, since a very early age.

I think you were 12 and you became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today Awards, and you went on to guest host that a couple of times.

So now that you're a mature and established artist, is there any particular outreach that you do with young musicians, aside from what you do as a professor at USC?

The most important "outreach" that I do, I would do for young people and that I love doing.

And it's something that I didn't come across enough when I was younger.

I always joke that I wish the adults when I was younger around me told me how complicated life was.

It doesn't mean that it has to be difficult, but how complex and multilayered everything becomes the more you live.

And I'm, as a 40-year-old person, having been a professional musician for 31 years now, I know more than when I was 9 years old when I first started, but there's so much for me to learn.

I get that.

Every time I know one thing, there's three things I realize I don't know.

But so far, in my experience, what I find young people, younger people, are not encouraged enough is the idea that... Theoretically, we understand that perfection doesn't have to exist in life or in music, that the process is more important than the result.

We theoretically understand that, but what we don't quite understandas a musician, and it's kind of related to what we talked about earlier, I think it's very hard when you're younger because things are a little bit more, well, generally speaking, a little bit more black and white, and you're more goal-oriented, and you're planning your life ahead with tangible goals in front of you, that both the positive and the negative experiences, and it could be as banal as getting a job or not getting a job or getting a first prize instead of the last prize in a competition or something banal or as simple as that, to waking up and realizing you have all the doubts of who you are, of self-identity, but also as a musician, like, "Who am I?

Why am I doing this?"

All this struggle that we constantly go through.

The so-called negative parts, how much they can benefit your art and your creativity and your journey as an artist.

And I think not only with my students at USC, but when I have the privilege of mentoring young people from all parts of their life, the biggest importance that I put in, I would describe it as having enough grace to know yourself really well, all parts of yourself, so that you're not turning back to the self that you're not so happy with, because even that, especially that, is going to be the food for soul for your music and for your art, should you choose to be an artist continuously.

And I think it's a very courageous thing to be able to face that when you're younger, because you have all those tangible goals that you have to achieve in order to make a living as an artist, which is a radio precarious thing.

But the more I play and the more I live as an artist, I realize how much it's the moments of struggle or moments of doubt or moments of searching, moments of just complete lack of clarity even.

All these qualities are expressed in music.

Music is not just a beginning and an end, but the climax.

Music is how we get from beginning to the climax or maybe lack of climax to the end.

So in order to understand that, we actually have to understand how we as people, human beings, not only what, you know, all the landmark places that we mentally want to reach, but how we get there and how we fail to get there sometimes.

And those poignant moments, I think, give the music so much back as an artist.

One last question that will circle back to our first topic.

At USC, are your students violinists or are they violists or are you trying to create a whole generation of switch hitters?

My dream is to, for a school, are you listening, music schools, to recognize that, especially now with classical music, it's the identity of the musician that matters.

It's not the instrument that matters.

So, oh, I would love to see a whole generation of, I guess it's a limited way of saying multidisciplinary, but I'm just musicians that want to make music no matter what instrument it is.

At USC, for better or for worse, I'm limited to viola at the moment, but I am looking forward for the world to not think of it as a novelty, but think of it as a newfound voice that younger people can really discover.

Thank you.

You can listen to Yura Lee's full conversation with James Reel on Classical Extempore, where they take a deeper dive on performance and how she interprets composers.

It's available at radio.azpm.org/extempore In Northeast Ohio, photographer Barbara Pennington enjoys capturing the older generation.

In 2021, she released her first photography book, Extraordinary Women from an Ordinary Place, which features portraits and biographies of women ages 60 through 94.

Let's take a look.

Photographer Barbara Pennington felt like no one paid attention to people age 60 and on, but she's paying attention.

Her first book, Extraordinary Women from an Ordinary Place, showcases portraits and a short biography of 52 women Pennington formerly worked with, met at the Peninsula Art Academy, or knew through mutual friends.

She's now on to her next book with men, Not So Ordinary.

She says this idea started 20 years ago.

I like that one with the eggs.

I worked as a director of patient and volunteer services at Euclid Hospital, and at that time I had 240 volunteers.

Most of them were female, and most of them were women in their 70s and even a few in their 80s.

Many of them were retired professionals, and many of them were women that went door to door in the 50s to collect money to build that hospital.

I thought someday I want to write a story or do a book or something about women of age because women of age are oftentimes overlooked.

My own mother, when she turned 80, said, "I am insignificant."

And I said, "Mom, what do you mean?"

She said, "Because when you get to be my age, nobody looks at you anymore."

And that statement stuck with me, and now that I am her age, 81, it's so true, and I find that in restaurants.

If two old ladies go into a restaurant, they seat you near the kitchen or something.

[music] So I asked them to bring a prop.

It was something significant of their hobby, their lifestyle, their profession.

When she was in high school, they said, "You're not college material."

She's a PhD.

She traveled all over the world and taught it at Case.

She flew airplanes.

Another very interesting woman, Tina, graphic artist, who was an alcoholic all her life and is now sober.

Wanda Hansler, 94 years old, she's still teaching watercolor classes.

When I finished with the Extraordinary Women, the publisher said, "Barb, who do you want on the cover?"

I thought, "Oh my God, I can't.

How can I possibly?"

And I would page through, I would look through each page of the photos.

My dining room table was laid out with every woman's picture of their story, and I would walk along and look at each one, and I think maybe her, well, maybe her, "Oh, I can't do that."

[music] One day, I was wandering around Peninsula and wandered into the Peninsula Art Academy.

At the desk, I looked at this woman, this elegant woman, and when she was sitting like a profile, she had this gray bun pulled tight back and just this beautiful face.

And all those memories of that idea about doing a book about women came back to me.

I left there and I couldn't get her out of my head, and so the following week I went back again, and I mentioned this book to her, this idea that I wanted to do and to photograph her, and she, "Oh my dear," and she just kind of waved me off in her sweet, gentle way, but I don't give up.

And so I went back again, and I approached her again, and I said, "Edna, I'm serious.

Get your calendar out.

I want to photograph you."

And she did, and that's how it started.

Perfect.

Good.

Good.

When I retired from Euclid Hospital, those wonderful volunteers collected money, and they knew that I always had an interest in photography, and bought me a Nikon film camera, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it, and I bought a digital camera.

And then in 2004, I joined the Cleveland Photographic Society, and that was a big life changer for me.

You watch our students grow and our members grow, so when someone like Barb gets to the point where she's actually successfully publishing books, we really take pride in that too, because it's one of our own, and we know we've all had a little hand in that.

And so I started taking classes there.

I started a mentoring program there to be supportive, to help new members as I needed help when I was starting out.

Now that I've completed the one about women, I decided that I was going to do another one, because I was into this now, and I really enjoyed it, and portraits and people are what I'm most happy doing, and that's where I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing photography.

I've tried everything else.

I've done macro.

I've done all of it.

And now I want to focus on doing these books with portraits of different people and different subjects.

Which one do you like the best?

I like that one better.

Yep, that's it.

Perfect.

You're in the book.

Barb and I used to work together many years ago at the Beachwood Marriott.

Barb was a salesman, and I was the banquet manager, and Barb and I became friends.

And then she heard about me, and so she contacted me a few months ago and said, "Would you like to be in the book?"

And I said, "Sure, why not?"

I was very honored, like, "Wow, somebody's writing about me after all these years."

Now we take a trip to Wisconsin, where an internationally renowned artist has installed an eye-catching piece, a 25-foot tall wooden troll.

Danish artist Thomas Dambo builds trolls all over the world, spreading a message of conservation and togetherness.

Here's the story.

Today we're doing one of my favorite things, which is touring the park and kind of showing off some of its amenities.

We'll be starting at the Willow Hut.

It's a play feature within our nature play elements of our playground.

It was designed by one of our staff members, Gus, and she also built it.

The sensory walk is a series of stones designed to get increasingly difficult as you traverse the path, and the intent is to challenge people's balance and fine motor skills.

And from there, we'll move over to the foundation of our Thomas Dambo troll.

The Wauwatosa Tourism Commission has commissioned Thomas Dambo, who is an internationally renowned artist, to bring one of his whimsical troll sculptures to the city of Wauwatosa.

Thomas Dambo is internationally recognized.

He has followers all over the world.

He has sculptures in more than 20 U.S.

states.

He has sculptures in numerous countries around the world.

You can find his followers online, on social media.

They travel from location to location and document their journeys to see his trolls.

[music] Thomas Dambo is the world's leading recycle artist.

He builds art out of recycled materials, and so our Wauwatosa sculpture will be built from trees that have come from Wauwatosa's urban forest, as well as other recycled materials from the city.

Thank you all for coming out despite the conditions this morning, because it truly is a joy to welcome you here today as we celebrate something that's special for our city.

We are so excited for the opportunity to bring nature, play, art, and adventure together in Wauwatosa's new park, Firefly Grove.

[cheers] I'll introduce a few speakers today who can tell the story of how this park came to be, but the one I'm sure you're almost likely interested in seeing is standing right behind me.

It's been a long time dream of mine to get to do a sculpture like this, and now it's here and I'm so proud of it, I really think it looks awesome.

[music] It's the first one in Wisconsin.

I have a vision for putting one in each state.

Actually, I have a vision for putting one in each country, but my part goal is one in each state now, it's my 20th state.

I hope that people see it that they will just get a sense of wonder, get a joyful feeling, and then also get that, "Aha!"

You can build something that big and some magnificent out of something that you just had laying around, and then understand that you should treat our trash like a treasure, because the sky is really the limit for what we can create out of our resources that we just need like trash.

All the wood here, in this case, it comes from all the city street trees from Wauwatosa.

So this is, for example, elm trees that has been cut down because they have elm disease.

It is oak trees that maybe were rotten or brands had grown so big, so it was leaning in over residential households for different reasons they were cut down.

Those light poles, they used to be on old village street here in Wauwatosa.

Six light poles it says in its one hand and the one pole in the other hand.

I love to come in, find something that has no value, and then give it some value.

What would a troll think that a light pole would think that it was like a flower that some crazy humans have cast like black magic over and now it lights up at night?

Like there is some small half picked off light poles, so there are several of these ones through the park that is kind of like where my troll, where she picked her bouquet from.

So that's why they are missing and are only like four feet, five feet long, some of it.

My troll is called Mama Rosa, it's here in Wauwatosa, it rhymes so nice.

I write poems for these trolls, I can see if I can remember the poem.

There is something funny with these flowers, some of them have special powers.

There is no roots beneath these flowers, rain don't rain upon these flowers, something is funny with these flowers.

They come from nothing in an hour.

There is no honey bees, these flowers has no honey in these flowers, something is funny with these flowers.

They stand all summer and won't go sour, and when the sun is asleep these flowers glow, I wonder how these flowers grow.

My trolls, they are afraid of humans and they like to hide inside the forest, so the only thing that can bring them out is like, for example, to go out and pick like, what is this weird illuminating flower?

All right, say Rosa on two: One, two, Rosa!

We look forward to seeing you next week with more stories from the art world.

I'm Mary Paul.

Thank you for watching.