“People talk about identity and how to show different parts of it at different times in different ways. I think that for me, it’s a bit more about containing multitudes: I’m interested in exploring and sitting with the complexity and interactions where things don’t necessarily combine.”
Marisse Cato
Marisse Cato is a London-born composer and violinist whose work and research focuses on entrancing sound worlds, decolonial musicology practices, and Afro-diasporic sound knowledges. Recent accolates include commissions and performances from the Holst Singers, Siglo de Oro, JAM, Devon Philharmonic Orchestra in partnership with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, and Cambridge New Music Group, among others; she has worked collaboratively with artists from disciplines including dance, film, visual art, and fashion, including performances at Tate Britain, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, and most recently Wandsworth Arts Fringe 2024, showcasing her installation ‘The Alchemy of Heritage’ at 575 Wandsworth Road in association with the National Trust. Marisse studied Music at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, researching listening practices to approach the work of Julius Eastman; she is currently pursuing a PhD at Harvard University.
Finn Mattingly caught up with Marisse Cato over Zoom to discuss identity, installations, Julius Eastman, the ontology of Blackness, and more…
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Finn/PRXLUDES: How did you first discover composition, and where has this led you to today as both a musician and scholar?
Marisse Cato: This is a silly, fun, cutesy story. My older sister started piano lessons before me, and we had this book that came with the electric keyboard. It was a compilation of “classics”, like Für Elise. At the back, it had empty staves. I would overhear my sister talking about the lettered notes of the piano, and I would hear that and think “okay, this is what.” So I’d go to this empty stave (I was four, five, or six), and I would write letter names in the stave and ask my sister to play it for me. But I’d go all the way to “Z”, and despite her telling me “Z” doesn’t exist, I’d ask her to play it anyway.
I think in that very informal way, I started exploring composition throughout my upbringing. I went through my little emo phase, where I was listening to a lot of bands, and then I wrote songs as a teenager that should never see the light of day. When it comes to what we think of in terms of “academy” composition, Trinity was really influential in my formation. I had amazing teachers (shout out Liz Partridge, Ed Henderson, Leo Geyer and Darren Bloom just to name a few!) who really created a space that encouraged me to run with my ideas. I did my music GCSE and A level there, and had composition lessons through that. That’s when I really started getting into “composition” in the way that the term is commonly used. In that sense, Trinity was really where I began composing.
What does that term — “composition” — mean to you? How do you see composition as a practice?
Mine is just one of a myriad of voices. In many ways, it’s made easy for me to self-identify and move through the world as a composer, because I’m classically trained and have that almost “formalist” background. But the term and the way it’s being used continuously evolves and it’s not limited to that. I think that especially now, there’s a discordance about what it means to be a composer, and you can see some people get upset about whether someone should call themselves a composer because they’re in this realm or this genre or haven’t done x, y, or z — or may not have these institutional badges of honour in this hybrid, superimposed, postmodern musical arrangement that we’re experiencing now. Which I think may be partly a marketing thing as people don’t want audiences to die out.
I think the range of people who are being included in the term is a way to also sustain the legacy of the practice itself. The word “composer” is no longer functioning as a descriptor to do with the means you work with. To some degree, yes, you work with sound, but more so: it functions as an invitation to align yourself within a certain canon.
Do you see your artistic voice as something that stems from, in your words, the academy of “capital-C Composition” that you were trained in? Or do you see it as output that’s developed across your scholarly work and external influences?
I think it’s in fashion to say “the academy is always 50 years behind and that’s so old and I don’t want to be aligned with them.” But for me, working in the institution, it’s about the ways in which I function through those structures: they can facilitate me to show that voice in different ways, at the same time. Everyone wants to be a rebel, but at the same time, I am the institution; graduating from Cambridge and now a PhD student at Harvard. I am part of the academy, so it really is more about the ways in which I function through those structures. -laughs- They can and do show their faces in different ways at the same time. I think my artistry is driven by my research and things I’m interested in — in terms of the ontology of Blackness, how Blackness is imagined, how it’s aligned with certain sonic signifiers, how it’s then remade through different people’s agencies. It’s something I continuously think about now in my work as I try to theorise about that on a large scale.
Tell us about your recent installation ‘The Alchemy of Heritage’ in one of Wandsworth’s National Trust houses. What was the inspiration for this installation? How did you navigate incorporating other artists, working simultaneously as composer and curator?
In my earlier works, I’d already been incorporating spatialisation with instrumentation. ‘Asteria’ is one, performed in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, as part of a creative collection called DISRUPTION. I’m curious [about] how sound can reconfigure space, especially spaces that we’re taught to interact with in certain ways. There’s certain etiquette that comes with being in a museum, in a concert hall, etcetera. So this had been on my mind for a while.
I had an unperformed short opera originally written for Cambridge University Opera Society. I was looking for somewhere to put on this opera, and I came across Wandsworth Arts Fringe Festival — anyone can basically go and put something on. They have a set number of venues, and the only contingency is that it needs to be in Wandsworth. I came across this incredibly beautiful, overwhelmingly composite house that was curated by Khadambi Asalache (poet, author and artist). It had all of these different bits, but made such unified sense.
I think increasingly, I’ve been thinking about pluriversality, and it’s definitely inside this house. He’s [Asalache] of Kenyan descent, eventually settling in London after studying fine art in Europe. He curated the interior of this house — essentially bringing all the different cultural lineages that he experienced along the way with him, in a way that was personalised, but made a symbiosis. There was a wholeness, but it wasn’t a synthesis; it was this larger structural whole through the arrangement of things next to each other, as if each individual item was reshaped by the thing next to it.
The house was too small to stage my opera, but I was so overwhelmed with the feeling of being in a space in which every single tiny detail has been thought about. At the same time, it was someone’s home and there was a liveness that was missing. Asalache’s passed now — the house is now more of a museum — and I thought that through sound, I could reinvigorate the space. This kind of approach made collaborating with 575 Wandsworth Road and the incredible team (shout out House and Gardens Manager Laura Hussey) so incredibly special. It was someone’s home where they laughed, they cried, they experienced a whole variety of things there — and they made their sanctuary there, too.
The installation essentially had four different electronic speakers in different rooms, all playing music of different genres, and it makes one piece altogether. So it’s like four pieces in one. It’s supposed to sonically demonstrate this rhizomatic arrangement of culture that we’re experiencing in an increasingly globalised society — especially in London, where you can go to Royal Opera House, Ronnie Scott’s, Hackney Empire, and Soho all in the same day.
Is this idea of synthesis (or lack thereof) and conglomeration something that plays a role in your broader artistic work? Or is it an aspect that was a pinpoint in this installation in particular?
A lot of time, people talk about identity and how to show different parts of it at different times in different ways. I think that for me, it’s a bit more about containing multitudes: I’m interested in exploring and sitting with the complexity and interactions where things don’t necessarily combine. I’m not as much interested in synthesis; but more so in things running in parallel, rubbing up against each other, creating friction, splitting off, and getting lost. Aspects like that don’t have to exist in a warring way either. It’s not about coming together in harmony, it’s not about bouncing off of each other like they’re opposing forces. They’re just coming in at different planes — as if one lies on a z axis and one on a y axis — skirting past each other in a very dynamic way.
In another realm, you maintain a strong passion for research in what you call Afro-diasporic sound knowledges. What do you mean by this, and what inspired you to explore this field? Are there any subsequent research interests?
Even more recently, I think the way I would phrase my interests have changed. “Diaspora” or the “West African diaspora” implies a lineage, as if there’s one place that is home to everything spreading off of it. Harking back or tending towards a linear arrangement isn’t an appropriate way of thinking through living diasporic communities — the word implies that you came from somewhere, and while it is easy to conceptualise, interpersonally, it’s not that simple.
I’m interested in Blackness as an ideology — how it shows up in different spaces, what it means on international and localised levels, and how it has been exported from America to the rest of the world. I was thinking about this in terms of the Jazz Ambassadors programme, in which Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were sent out from America — among other artists — in the Cold War to improve American diplomacy and advocate that African Americans have reached a height of musical mastery. We have jazz, and it embodies freedom and democracy.
Through that exploration on the world stage, ideas of what Blackness meant sonically gets coupled with freedom, and gets politicised into a medium like jazz. Then it happens again when hip-hop gets reused in different localised contexts — as a metonym for freedom protest resistance as a sonic signature — without having to articulate itself in that way. So my research focuses on Blackness ideologised with sonic meaning; how music has been repurposed in localised contexts that remake what Blackness means in a new space — as it gets constantly redefined as more and more people engage with it. Jazz as the music of the people, for example, is a common association that I would argue has come out of the Cold War Jazz Ambassadors programme, in a way. And then, it’s co-opted in so many different locales. We have access to so many different musical cultures; we can’t undo the means through which we now have access, so it’s more relevant now, too.
Based on that, I’m curious in your research into the lenses through which we can listen to this music, such as your case study in Julius Eastman. What cultural elements are symbolised within the music that we’re listening to? How do you think a listener can approach hearing something through the lens of these culturally weighted sound practices?
There’s so many worlds that Julius Eastman and his music inhabit. I don’t think there is any universal lens through which we can read things; I think there needs to be this multiperspective engagement. To some people, in some contexts, it may carry an entirely separate significance than in others. Because of this increased globalisation of cultural approaches — that leads us to naturally read things within their local context — I think there needs to be a multiperspective engagement where it’s acknowledged that to certain people, in certain contexts, Julius Eastman’s music sounds like this. Again, it goes back to a z and y plane dynamic.
With the study, I proposed on [a] lens that makes sense to me, in which I approached it from sonic analysis. Eastman’s use of notation was a means to an end: his scores were sometimes incomplete, or he would just write them at the last minute so that the players had something. But that was not how he was thinking through the music. Some recordings of his work are clearly dedicated to the score, but I think we need to lean towards the faithfulness of the composer’s intent. I think Eastman’s essay ‘The Composer as Weakling’ is so revealing — everyone should read that before they play any of his music.
It’s hard because we’re conditioned to listen and interact with music [in] certain ways: I think that listeners should do what they can to be open minded.
As with Eastman’s writing as an influence on his artistry and its interpretation — to what extent do you see your two fields, composition and musicology, as two different facets in your creative outlook? Or are they more one in the same? To what level does one influence the other?
For me, they are just two different ways of expressing what I’m curious about. I’m sitting with these sets of questions that come from all different aspects of my life — and the two fields are just two options through which to articulate them. When I have these curiosities, I ask myself: Am I going to make a sound installation or write a piece, or am I going to write a paper or do a presentation? A paper allows me to disseminate that information in a linear fashion, whereas sound gives me the option for people to live in and experience the liveliness of the questions I’m contending with. I’m interested in finding a way to live in something that’s imagined; like an alternate experience of, or an intensified, curated experience of, a set of questions.
What’s next for you? Any projects coming up?
I’m working on an architectural installation at the moment called HOLD; it’s really exciting because I’m working with a lot of new materials and creating a film element. My practice is proliferating into many different directions. I’m working with field recordings, doing audio processing, learning how to mix, and involving visual arts — which I then upload into a gaming engine to create virtual worlds based on my art. The film puts together clips of me navigating this virtual world as another way to experience the sound. I’m also interested in multiple points of entry to work. Maybe that’s why I pursue both scholarship and composition: because not every form is going to suit everyone. If you can give multiple points of contact, it allows for more chances to connect.
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Learn more about Marisse and her practice at:
- https://www.marissecato.com/
- https://soundcloud.com/marisse-cato
- https://www.instagram.com/marissecatomusic
References/Links:
- National Trust, ‘The Home and Legacy of Khadalambi Asalache’
- Sunsariay Cox and J.P. Jenks, ‘Jazz Diplomacy: Then and Now’ (2021), U.S. Department of State
- Julius Eastman, ‘The Composer as Weakling’ (1979), Ear Magazine
