by Aly Muilenburg (@purityolympics)
If you’ve ever gotten lost, you can likely find yourself in MIZU’s music. The New York-based composer excavates hidden feelings and lush, unknown gardens of sound in every aspect of her work. The ephemeral beauty of her cello is a guiding hand through the sonic and cerebral. Forest Scenes, her latest full-length, is a journey of discovery, reclamation, and experimentation. Inspired in equal measure by Robert Schumann, New York City’s dancefloors, minimalism and maximalism, and nature itself, the music articulates itself fully in her distinct voice, removing any literal or metaphysical constraints, shifting like prismatic light.
After performing at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis earlier this month, MIZU took time to talk about classical music, continuity, freedom, performance, and The Music Man.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
photo credit: Parcifal Werkman
Aly Muilenburg: I’ve found that anyone who writes and composes has a deep relationship with music as both a listener and performer. Do you have clear memories of when you first connected with the art form?
Mizu Issei: I fell in love with performance first. I grew up in New York and when I was five, my parents took me to see The Music Man on Broadway on the closing night of that revival. It was my first show and I was so entranced by everything — the colors, the dancing, the singing. I became obsessed with musicals.
AM: Did you dive into performing onstage right away?
MI: I started playing piano first. My mother is Japanese and while she was raising me, she wanted me to be exposed to the language. She found a piano teacher who taught in Japanese, so it was a bit of both music and language.
Around the same time, I fell in love with theater. I would listen to cast recordings on CDs borrowed from the library, singing along and putting on my own little productions. The next year, I was actually in The Music Man as a kid from the town. We played in Rock Island two nights ago, which is funny, since that’s where the musical starts.
AM: Thinking about growing up in New York and eventually playing all over the world, does your environment inform what you’re making and thinking about? Is it unconscious or is there a palpable energy in different locations?
MI: A lot of it is unconscious. With Forest Scenes, I was inspired by Schumann’s Waldszenen, a piece that is dear to me. I loved the idea of going into an unexplored space and experiencing all of that magic. For a while, I wanted to write my version of a “forest scene” and I happened to be traveling to São Paulo, which felt like its own forest despite being a very urban space. I was going through a lot of changes musically and personally while writing the album.
AM: How did your first record, Distant Intervals, come together as a continuous piece of music? It feels intentionally crafted to be a single experience with sonic evolutions and subtle division of movements.
MI: Maybe due to my theatrical background, where music helps tell the full story. In a lot of classical music, there are multi-movement journeys. For example, Waldszenen is divided into nine movements, starting with an entry and moving to a farewell. In between, there are very light places and very dark places. I want to take the listener and myself on a path and chart the changes that occur within.
With Distant Intervals, I had a loose map as I was starting. The first song I wrote was “Prelude” and I was thinking about how that could lead to something more internal, going from a bright wash of sound that expands and grows to a darker, more intimate place. I’m interested in that journey; it’s almost like composing for ballet or a musical.
AM: It guides you along that path. On Forest Scenes, it feels more purely musical, with only sound and texture to guide you. It evolves and transforms the ideas while still following a throughline.
MI: I wanted the record to be something for the listener to explore on their own, while still being very personal.
AM: How did you infuse the music with what inspired you while writing the record? How did those things reveal themselves during that stage? You want to build an open space while still evoking certain things and communicating what you want to communicate.
MI: Each piece starts with something very simple, often a musical idea born out of improvisation. It’s usually on my cello, but with Forest Scenes especially it came through digital processing. I would put samples into a granulator to see what sounds or loops came out, or take something and stretch it out and warp it. If I find something that catches me, it becomes the song’s seed.
I was aiming for cohesive sound worlds with each one, the through line being the cello as everything transforms. From there, it builds and I think about how I can take the idea down unexpected paths. With the final track, “Realms of Possibility,” I was trying to challenge myself to move through a lot of different feelings on top of a grounding rhythmic pattern, to see how we could change it.
AM: A song like “prphtbrd” combines techno and classical with the sense of the unexpected you’ve been exploring throughout.
MI: That one’s a crazy child of mine. I was on a plane and obviously couldn’t play my cello, so I put these classical samples into the granulator and all this wild stuff started coming out, which I layered together. Initially, it was nine minutes long, making it difficult to condense into a finalized piece. The drums became pillars of its structure.
AM: Do you often find yourself editing ideas down, carving or sculpting them?
MI: I usually end up trimming. I try to get everything out in the initial experimentation.
AM: Was the time you spent in Brazil where a lot of that experimentation happened? That seems like a significant period in the record’s genesis.
MI: I didn’t have my cello, so I was only working with what I had recorded earlier for other things. I spent a lot of time making loops and field recordings, like footsteps and bird sounds. I was sitting in cafes working with these sounds digitally.
AM: Do you find anything freeing about working without your cello, which is such an integral part of your music?
MI: Working on a computer feels more architectural, like sculpting. I’m thinking about the composition’s structure and sections, the textures and sounds, EQing and putting effects on different things. With cello, it’s much more instinctual — I don’t think about anything. At this point, it feels more like my voice than my actual voice. A lot of what I record is improvised. I don’t notate my music, it just kind of comes out. Sometimes I come up with a melody and try to re-record it, but it’s hard to capture the initial magic.
AM: As a fellow trans person, how has the process of transitioning changed the way you approach making music and the way you understand your art? Conversely, has being a musician for years affected your experience of queerness?
MI: It’s a constant looping cycle; the changes go hand-in-hand. I came from a classical background, with written scores and rigidity, and I was struggling to find my voice within those constraints. Coming into new communities and new ways of connecting with my body has been so different. It’s been so freeing and I feel the possibilities are endless. It’s a dream.
AM: There’s no easy way to articulate something so nebulous yet personal. The change is non-stop.
MI: I try to find ways to keep pushing myself to improve as a composer and performer, asking how I can start to use other instruments or even my voice in working on new music.
AM: Have some of those things begun to manifest themselves already, even with how prolific you’ve been over the last couple of years? What new ideas are exciting you?
MI: I used my voice very shyly on Forest Scenes but I’m exploring that more. It’s been hard. I think a lot of trans people have tricky relationships with their voices. Starting to sing, recording myself, and transforming it through the magic of software has been an interesting way to both confront and accept my voice. I’m still discovering what to leave raw and what feelings can be found in something so intimate. There are so many ways to make it sound perfect and packaged, but I’m interested in what I can express.
AM: Have you worked on anything more score-oriented, either vocal or instrumental, arrangements for others or yourself?
MI: I haven’t yet, but I would love to. I’ve played on others’ recordings before, but I didn’t start composing until Distant Intervals.
AM: Thinking of the collaborations you’ve done with artists like Maria BC, Rachika Nayar, and Concrete Husband, what has it been like to bring others into the fold of your music compared to entering their worlds?
MI: It’s been so magical and inspiring. I started writing my own music after working with Rachika and with her help. We performed together after she released her first album, Our Hands Against the Dusk. It goes beyond a musical connection, like family. Playing on Spike Field [Maria BC’s latest record] was so exciting because our worlds are so different. How can I add to what feelings already exist? It felt like weaving spiderwebs or vapor.
I’ve made music with Concrete Husband before as Princess Princess. With “prphtbrd,” he sent me a package of drum samples and I twisted them apart. I’m so inspired by all of my friends and how they approach and connect with their instruments and voices, creating their own stories through their albums.
AM: What is something you love about your art and your creative process?
MI: It’s always been the cello. I’ve started to perform more and incorporate elements of movement and costume into my live set, laying down and all that, which can feel scary a lot of the time. When I don’t know anyone in the city or what’s happening with the lights and sound, the instrument is like a shield.
No matter how I’m pushing myself to experiment, the cello remains my home base. I borrow instruments when I’m on the road in each city, so I’m playing a cello that I’ve never used before. There are a lot of unknowns. Even just having a cello in my hands grounds me. Despite all the ways that I’m trying to change everything around me, the cello is at the center.
Forest Scenes is out now via NNA Tapes.