Queeries for cellist Eric Edberg

Cellist Eric Edberg trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Juilliard School, SUNY Stony Brook, and Florida State University and is a faculty member at the DePauw University School of Music in Greencastle, Indiana.

He writes a marvelous blog about whatever musical matters are on his mind and sometimes they also involve being gay. That caught My Big Gay Eye and I reached out to him by email. Little did I know we’d met almost 20 years ago through a mutual dear friend, Mary Ellen Cohn.  Eric told me that when came out, Mary Ellen sent him a copy of my production, “Gay American Composers.” (I wonder how many times I can mention that CD on this site.  But it does my heart good every time I hear that that disc means something to people.)

If Eric’s performance style is as big hearted and generous as his responses to the Queeries column, then I bet he gives a damn good concert.

What are you working on these days?
We have Joan Tower coming to DePauw for a concert Friday, and I’m playing her “Tres Lent (Hommage a Messiaen)” for cello and piano, with my colleague May Phang.  I was going to be performing one of her piano trios, but the violinist developed tendinitis.  I love the piece;  the score just came yesterday. (Oh, FedEx, how did we get along without you?)  Learning pieces at the last minute is always exciting.

After a long stretch of not improvising much, I’m improvising daily, which really frees something up inside me.  I’ve got some ideas going for a CD project.  And I’m rethinking the summer concert series I organize at a lovely church here in Greencastle, Indiana in the summers.  It’s been a totally conventional, if informal, classical series, where at 51 I’m younger than the 95% of the audience by quite a bit.  I want to find a way to get teenagers and young adults to come. So we’re going to try some crazy stuff this summer.

I follow Greg Sandow’s blog and am one of a group of people giving him feedback on the book he’s writing on the rebirth of classical music. I did a faculty concert a few years ago where we eliminated all the rules of concert etiquette and invited people to clap anytime they wanted, including during the music, and to get up and dance if they wanted.  When I used to go to dance clubs, I’d think how great it would be if we could dance to Mozart. I want to do more unconventional stuff, and I feel something coming.

Do you have a workspace in your home or do you need to leave the house?
Living in a small town in rural Indiana is a blessing and a curse.  The curse is being in the middle of nowhere.  The blessing is that being in the middle of nowhere, the cost of living is low.  My house has almost 3,000 square feet, so I have a nice big (messy) music room with room for multiple cellos, recording equipment, etc.

Have you ever experienced discrimination in the music business because of your sexuality?
When my then-wife and I separated, very amicably, most of the Indianapolis-area freelance music community couldn’t understand or believe that she knew I was bisexual before we got married.  People assumed I’d been hiding a secret from her and cheating on her, and took sides, with her, even though there were no actual sides to take. My freelance work, especially recording at a studio that did a lot of Christian pop, dried up for a while.  I did not miss the Christian pop, though–ick.

Ever gotten any advantages because of your sexuality?  How about being invited onto “the casting couch”?
Actually, at DePauw I became a kind of minor folk hero when I came out in the early 1990s.  I went through what I call my “gay avenger” phase and was a public and sometimes very angry advocate for LGBTQ rights on campus.  For quite a while I was the only out gay man on the faculty.  It all definitely helped when my review for promotion to full professor came along.

No casting-couch experiences.  Hans Werner Henze did spend an entire orchestra rehearsal staring at me.  I was 17, playing in an orchestra on tour in Italy. It was in the basillica in Marino, near Castel Gandolfo, and he actually took a chair and put it about 6 feet from me and just stared.  It was a bit unnerving. (Ha!  What if he was staring at my stand partner?  No, I’m sure it was me.) But he didn’t hit on me.

Neither did Leonard Bernstein.  When I had a fellowship at Tanglewood, Lenny kissed me on the cheek and called me “sweetie,” but nothing further than that.  He was much more interested in the composer who was fucking me. I was both disappointed (hey, am I not hot enough for him to hit on?) and relieved (I wasn’t attracted to older guys then).

Are you single or coupled?
Single.

Do you give PDAs? (public displays of affection)
Absolutely, and very purposefully, in a political-gesture kind of way. I remember Ned Rorem giving a friendly kiss to one of my teachers in a hallway at Peabody.  It made a big impression on me.  He was cool with being gay, with being open, and I think that sort of thing makes the world a better place.  I want to be Glinda, singing “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” to everyone, so I kiss and hug as much as I can.

Is there a relationship between your sexuality and your creativity?
Absolutely.  How can there not be?

When I was studying at Juilliard I had a boyfriend who had amazingly detailed erotic programs he’d thought up for just about every piece he played.  He was a pianist, and I remember listening with him to the Masselos (his teacher) recording of the Schumann Davidsbündlertänze.  We were stoned and he narrated the whole thing;  what incredible porn starts Florestan and Eusebius would have been, as he imagined them in his rather incestuous fanatsy.  It thrilled and slightly scared me;  I was so ambivalent about my attraction to men.

That’s an example where someone’s creativity is about sexuality, which is different than my own experience. If I’m blocked sexually I tend to be blocked creatively, because in both cases it has to do with being honest.  It’s always been a difficult dance for me, getting caught up in who I think I should be or how I think someone else might think I should play, and who I actually am and what the music I really want to make is.  I’d be much more accomplished if I hadn’t spent so much of my life paralyzed by self doubt.

What’s the gayest musical thing you’ve ever done?
Improvising in services at the Jesus Metropolitan Community Church in Indianapolis.  The first time I went there, I got lost and arrived late for the service.  Just barely in time for my “special music” slot.  I took out the cello, had the congregation sing a drone, and improvised over it.  It was overtly gay, in that look-at-me-I’m-a-gay-cellist way.  More deeply, it was genuine bonding and being a voice for the energy I sensed with this large congregation of LGBT people.

Playing a faculty recital wearing an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt and jeans (the choice of my students) and subverting all the norms of established classical music concert behavior would be the queerist (is that a word?) thing I’ve done musicially.  I’d like to see my work get both gayer and queerer.

Was coming out tough or a pleasure?  Sudden or gradual?
Coming out in gay-supportive contexts was a joy;  coming out to my horribly homophobic parents was nightmarish and I wish I’d waited longer. But my internalized homophobia was extraordinarily intense and had a resurgence, even after I came out, that led to me getting married.  And later to more coming out.  My parents eventually became very supportive, but not until after I got divorced.

One of the absolute best moments of my life, maybe the best was when I came out to myself as a freshman in college.  I had been fighting it really, really hard.  I’d repressed all my gay thoughts.  Then I saw this beautiful dancer (I was at the North Carolina School of the Arts) and it was like when Michael gets hit by “the thunderbolt” in The Godfather. I said to myself, “That’s it. I’m gay.” And it turned out my beautiful dancer was attracted to a shy cellist, who happened to be me.  We quickly lost interest in each other (I found him really boring in bed), but it gave me a brief period of self-acceptance.

Do you have a spiritual life?
Absolutely. I dated a guy for a while who is a Spirtualist minister. We’d been to a Jesus MCC service in Indy, and I told him I didn’t quite understand why I could feel so moved there when the theology was much more traditionally Christian than my own–very conservative/evangelical Christian, except progressive on gender and sexuality issues.  John said, “Oh, you’re just a Sufi, and you go where the spiritual energy is.”  And he was right. There is extraordinary spiritual energy in that church.  The theology and the Christian traditions of the service provide a vehicle for that energy, which is shaped by its container.  The container is not the source.  The source transcends any one faith.  I’ve spent a lot of time at the Abode of the Message, a retreat center and community in New Lebanon, New York.  They’re rather liberal Sufis, celebrate all faith traditions, and I just love them.  I’m an unofficial Sufi.  And love Rumi.

Right now I’m very involved with the Episcopal Church in Greencastle.  I’m ambivalent about Episcopalianism. I do love this group of people and they love me and my kids and my ex-wife.  There’s a deep spiritual connection, and all sorts of “good deed doers” who attend the church–people who make a real difference in the community and world.  People tend to think of spirituality as meditation and prayer and other individual practices. I do those things, and making music, especially free improvisation, can be both. Being there for people, being committed to a group of people, taking care of people, allowing people to take care of you when you need to be–that’s a form of spirituality that isn’t always emphasized or acknowledged by some I’m-spiritual-but-not-religious people.  Which is not to say that you need to participate in organized religion to be connected with and serving others. The traditional Episcopal service is, to me, often even more boring than a traditional classical music concert.  Which is one of the reasons the Episcopal church, like traditional classical music concerts, is declining in attendance.

Do you like to collaborate or be the boss?
Yes.  Either role, top or bottom, I’m versatile.  As with sex, it depends on whom I’m with.  I’m one of those people who ends up being the chair of whatever committee I’m on, and I absolutely love facilitating people working together.  I’ve single-handedly run a low-budget summer concert series for over five years, and what I like is being able to just get things done without a lot of bullshit.  I need partners, though, for the thing to grow and to get more flexibility in my summers. It’s very hard for me to give up total control.

What’s the last thing that scared you?
Not knowing how to deal with my mother, who has mild dementia, now that my father has died.  I’m living with her right now, hopefully temporarily, and learning to manage her investments, and figure out how to have my own life, too.  It’s enormous and ‘m scared.  But also trusting that things will work out.  Get scared, then let go and trust in the process of life.  I’m glad I’m already an improviser.

What’s the last thing that made you cry?
Sitting with my father’s body the night he died.