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Photo by Karya Schanilec

Thomas Dausgaard on finding inspiration in stillness and silence

Thomas Dausgaard hasn’t stepped onto a concert hall in stage 18 months. The Seattle Symphony Music Director last performed in the Emerald City on February 1, 2020, to a packed Benaroya Hall. While a forced sabbatical of such length might have dampened the spirits of others, Dausgaard resolved to view the pandemic as a chance for reflection and determined to remain optimistic.

With his last concert in Paris, he initially reveled at playing tourist and taking in Monet’s famed Water Lilies completely undisturbed in an empty Musée de l’Orangerie. Then the Louvre closed, and concerts halted.

“I never wanted to be governed by fear,” Dausgaard said, “but soon I realized the world was turning upside down.”

Dausgaard returned to his home in Denmark to shelter in place along with much of the rest of world. “I constantly had hope that we would round the corner,” he said. But week after week, careful preparation gave way to disappointment. “All the programs we had planned, especially new works we commissioned in Seattle with the community [for the Beethoven Festival]... they were taken off (out of necessity), and it was painful.”

For Dausgaard, the past year and a half has been marked by the global catastrophe of the pandemic as well as personal turmoil. “This period has been, above all, very tragic, but in some ways, it has been a gift to me,” Dausgaard said.

With the regular routine of music-making – flights, rehearsals, concerts – stripped away, the Dane was left to examine how he wanted to be in the world. “I always dreamt of a life in balance with nature, and I feel I have been brought closer to that,” he said. What remained laid bare for Dausgaard sources of inspiration in their purest forms.

He now seeks solace in the natural world around him. At his home, they grow their own vegetables. He’s befriended a deer, who comes to visit daily, and admires its calm majesty. He’s especially attached to blackbirds and their improvised song. The dolphins he sees on his walks remind him of Seattle.

Dausgaard’s reverence for the environment is clear in the season ahead, as the Symphony is set to embark on a multi-year Sibelius Cycle starting in February – many of the composer’s most well-known works were inspired by Finland’s natural wonders that mirror our own Pacific Northwest. What sets this cycle apart is what it creates anew: Thomas and the Seattle Symphony have invited the leading composers of today, like Angélica Negrón and Ellen Reid, to respond to one of seven Sibelius symphonies, with each new commission receiving its world premiere alongside the work it is paired with.

“Deepening our relationship with existing music by exploring it through a contemporary lens and helping to prompt the creation of new works – this is how our artform lives and grows!” said Dausgaard. “What does music now sound like? We are bringing audiences something special and new.”

In the meantime, he’s turned to other creative outlets while travel from his home country has been restricted, from curating playlists for organizations with whom he regularly collaborates, to launching the Seattle Symphony’s first-ever podcast On a High Note with Thomas Dausgaard, to reconfiguring what was to be live performances into radio programs.

“It almost feels like stepping back in time, and it’s reminded me of what it was like to be a child in love with music,” said Dausgaard. “Then I think about what it is like to be a child right now, with the pandemic and the world looking as it does.”

Engaging young audiences has always been something Dausgaard has been particularly keen on devoting his creative energies to. He often cites a study that notes that the majority of concertgoers have had first-hand experience with music.

“The classical music world is not eye-level with children,” Dausgaard said. “Are we giving them a platform, an opportunity to be creative? Or are we just showing them what we can do?”

It is this spirit that has Dausgaard wanting not only to invite young audiences back to Benaroya Hall but also to share the stage with them. He recently launched “Thomas’ Music Room” on YouTube, which invites viewers to participate in “musical discoveries for children and other childlike souls.” A recent episode with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has already reached 100,000 views.

Despite this new and necessary reliance on technology to connect via music, it is perhaps the absence of the bustle of a city that now provides Dausgaard with an inspirational outlet, and he basks in silence and dark skies.

“Like music, against stillness and silence so complete, the smallest change can be the most dramatic when you are tuned into it,” Dausgaard said. “Then when dusk falls and you can’t quite discern what’s just beyond the edge of your vision in the darkness, that’s when imagination takes over and inspiration rises.”

Dausgaard is eager to bring that inspiration and imagination to Seattle. After a year of socially distanced concerts, the Symphony’s 2021/2022 season steadily builds toward the unmissable sound of large-scale works created for the full orchestra, in what Dausgaard refers to as “the crescendo of the season.”

“Already I am wildly looking forward to the finale of the crescendo, when we will have the entire orchestra and the Seattle Symphony Chorale onstage together for Verdi’s Requiem,” he said. And as his return to Benaroya Hall nears, Dausgaard dwells on returning to something that is no longer the same.

“What is the end of one phrase is the beginning of the next breath. However hard and brutal it has been, I hope we find a way to embrace it and somehow find beauty in it, too,” Dausgaard said. “We have all changed. What it will sound like, what it will feel like, I don’t think I can imagine. But I am fantastically excited for us to experience it together.”