Pianist Eliza Garth has spent much of her career in terrain that many listeners still approach with caution: contemporary music shaped by the complexities of the mid- and late-twentieth century. Yet in conversation, she resists the familiar framing of that repertoire as difficult, alienating, or disconnected from audiences. Instead, she situates it within a broader and more continuous musical landscape, one that stretches naturally from the past into the present.
Her most recent recording, By the River, offers a particularly clear lens into that perspective. Built around hymn tunes and chorale-based works, the album might at first seem like a departure from the modernist repertoire she has long championed. Garth does not see it that way. “I think it’s fed by old traditions,” she explains. “It’s just that sometimes the language on the surface is something a little different from what people are accustomed to. They may not recognize immediately that it’s not a break from the past, it’s a continuation of what came before.”
That idea of continuity becomes a through-line in her thinking. The divide often drawn between older and newer music, or between accessible and complex styles, is for her less a structural reality than a matter of perception. As a performer, she has always approached contemporary works with the same interpretive grounding she would bring to canonical repertoire. “I always tried to bring to that music the same sensibility I would have brought to a Chopin scherzo or a Beethoven sonata,” she says, a statement that reframes modern music not as an exception, but as part of a unified artistic practice.
What changes, in her view, is not the underlying continuity of the tradition, but the listener’s familiarity with its language. That distinction leads to one of the most compelling ideas in the conversation: that listening itself is a learned process that unfolds over time. When audiences encounter unfamiliar music, she suggests, the difficulty often lies not in the music’s construction but in the immediacy of expectation. “When you encounter a language that is really unfamiliar to you,” she says, “it’s a little bit like taking a transatlantic flight and landing in a country where you don’t speak the language… at first it’s alienating… and then you start to hear the cadences.”
The analogy is simple but effective, shifting the burden away from the music and toward the conditions of listening. Understanding does not arrive instantly; it develops through exposure, repetition, and attention. This perspective also clarifies a structural challenge within contemporary music: many new works are heard only once. Without the opportunity for repeated listening, the process she describes is cut short. As Garth acknowledges, “the craft deserves more hearing, and unfortunately most of the time it doesn’t happen.”
Her reflections on modernism follow the same pattern of nuance. While she concedes that some composers may have become absorbed in insular creative circles, she resists reducing an entire period to that tendency. “The 20th and 21st centuries are a big wide world,” she notes, emphasizing the diversity of approaches that existed alongside more academically oriented styles. More fundamentally, she reframes the question of intention. “In my experience, composers write what they want to hear,” she says, a statement that cuts through the assumption that music is primarily written for audiences or institutions.
Within that landscape, she points to composers who were able to reconcile complexity with expressive immediacy. Donald Martino, in particular, stands out in her experience as someone who “found a way to express his own very expressive sensibility in this intellectually very demanding language,” creating music that carries both structural rigor and emotional tension. The implication is not that complexity must be simplified, but that it can be integrated into a broader expressive framework that remains perceptible to listeners over time.
The repertoire on By the River reflects that same integration. The inclusion of Brahms’ chorale preludes, particularly in Busoni’s piano transcriptions, serves as a historical bridge between traditions. Composed at the end of Brahms’ life, these works carry a sense of reflection shaped by personal loss and mortality. Garth hears them as “very stately… introspective… almost atmospheric,” emphasizing their restraint and depth rather than their technical demands. The music, in her interpretation, is not driven forward so much as it unfolds, creating space for contemplation.
At the same time, the newer works on the album draw from similar sources, using hymnody and spiritual melodies as points of departure. These are not quotations meant to preserve the past intact, but materials to be transformed. Garth connects this process to earlier models, invoking Copland’s Appalachian Spring as an example of how a traditional melody can be reimagined within a modern framework. The result is not a break in the tradition, but a continuation that operates through reinterpretation.
One of the most unexpected aspects of the conversation extends this idea beyond the concert hall. Garth describes a film project that emerged from performing Frederick Tillis’ Spiritual Fantasy in a historic church built by enslaved people. The setting prompted a deeper engagement with the historical and cultural context of the music, leading to a collaborative project involving community members, clergy, and historians. What began as a performance became a broader inquiry into memory and history, using music as a point of entry.
Reflecting on that experience, she speaks less about artistic outcomes than about what she learned from the people involved. The stories she encountered revealed both the daily realities of segregation and the resilience of those who lived through it. The response of one interview subject remained particularly striking: when asked about anger, the answer was simple—“No, because I knew they were wrong.” That clarity, grounded in lived experience, mirrors the kind of directness Garth values in music itself.
Taken together, the conversation suggests a shift away from polarized views of musical culture. Rather than positioning modernism against tradition, or complexity against accessibility, Garth presents a model in which these elements coexist within a continuous and evolving framework. The challenge, for listeners, is not to resolve those tensions immediately, but to remain open long enough for understanding to develop.
In that sense, her work as a performer becomes less about advocacy for a particular repertoire and more about creating the conditions for listening. Music, in her view, does not demand instant comprehension. It asks for time.
Highlights from the Interview
“It’s not a break from the past, it’s a continuation of what came before.”
“I always tried to bring the same sensibility I would have brought to Chopin or Beethoven.”
“It’s like landing in a country where you don’t speak the language… you begin to hear the cadences.”
“The craft deserves more hearing, and unfortunately most of the time it doesn’t happen.”
“Composers write what they want to hear.”
“There was a real tension and excitement in Martino’s music.”
“These Brahms pieces are very stately… introspective… almost atmospheric.
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