Former Marine Anthony Swofford
He served on the front line in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. He's written the new memoir, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. Journalist Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk Down) writes of the memoir, "Jarhead is some kind of classic, a bracing memoir of the 1991 Persian Gulf War that will go down with the best books ever written about military life." Swofford attended the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient.
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DATE March 4, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Anthony Swofford discusses his book "Jarhead" and hisâ¨experiences in the Gulf Warâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.â¨â¨In August 1990, Anthony Swofford was deployed to Saudi Arabia as a lanceâ¨corporal in a US Marine Corps sniper platoon. He'd just turned 20. In hisâ¨new memoir "Jarhead," about his experience during the Gulf War, Swoffordâ¨describes the tedium and the absurdity and the loneliness of waiting in theâ¨desert for the ground war to begin. He writes of the relentless sand andâ¨heat, of blood lust and the devastation of war. In a review, Mark Bowdenâ¨called "Jarhead" a classic that will go down with the best books ever writtenâ¨about military life. He writes, `As Swofford moves through a nightmareâ¨landscape of exploding ordnance, raining petroleum, the threat of invisibleâ¨killing gases and death, his terror and his joy are one.'â¨â¨Swofford's fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Harper'sâ¨and The Iowa Review. "Jarhead" is his first book. We begin with a reading.â¨In this passage, Swofford comes upon a group of dead Iraqi soldiers, stillâ¨arranged in a circle around a campfire, where they had been surprised byâ¨American bombs.â¨â¨Mr. ANTHONY SWOFFORD (Author): `Six tin coffee cups sit among the remains ofâ¨the fire. The men's boots are cooked to their feet. The man to my right hasâ¨no head. To my left, the man's head is between his legs and his arms hang atâ¨his sides like the burnt flags of defeated countries. The insects of the deadâ¨are swarming. Though I can make out no insignia, I imagine that the manâ¨across from me commanded the unit, and that when the bombs landed, he was inâ¨the middle of issuing a patrol order, "Tomorrow we will kick some Americanâ¨ass." It would be silly to speak, but I'd like to. I want to ask the deadâ¨men their names and identification numbers, and tell them this will soon end.â¨They must have questions for me, but the distance between the living and theâ¨dead is too immense to breach. I could bend at the waist, close my eyes andâ¨try to join these men in their tight, dead circle, but I am not yet one ofâ¨them. I must not close my eyes.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: What made you go down there and sit with those corpses?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Oh, fascination, wanting to become closer, more intimate withâ¨the devastation, perhaps a hope that moving into that tight, dead circle thatâ¨I would kind of find some distance between me and my own possible death thatâ¨was forthcoming maybe to the north, which is where we were heading to fight.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Were you told anything about how to prepare for combat or possibleâ¨death? For instance--I don't know--to clean up your stuff in case you'reâ¨killed and there might be something among your effects that would beâ¨embarrassing to your family.â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: It was probably a few days before ground combat began, and aâ¨few days prior to that, my platoon started running missions across the border.â¨There was a big berm that had been built between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, andâ¨we were right up at the berm for a few days and running missions across in theâ¨evening. But our staff sergeant directed us to get rid of, oh, say, you know,â¨any Marine letters that weren't from your girlfriend or your wife orâ¨pornography. Essentially it was anything that your wife or your girlfriend orâ¨your mother would rather not see. There was word that a few guys who died inâ¨a friendly-fire incident--an A-10 had dropped a rather devastating bomb on aâ¨troop carrier, and there was word that among the effects of one of these guysâ¨who was married, there were--oh, I don't know--half a dozen photos and lettersâ¨from various people that, you know, may have been nothing serious and simply aâ¨way of finding solace over there for him. But, yeah, the word was get thatâ¨stuff out of your ruck, out of your sea bag, bury it, burn it, get rid of it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: When you did first engage the enemy in combat, what happened?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Well, the first time, we were in sort of a high spot in theâ¨desert, and our communication shop was setting up in an area where they wouldâ¨get the best reception, but where it also made us visible to an enemyâ¨observation post that was across the border and in a bit of a range, and soâ¨that first event was artillery rounds that were incoming on our position. Weâ¨were just beginning to dig in around the battalion command post when theâ¨rounds came in, and at first, you know, I didn't believe that they wereâ¨artillery rounds exploding in front of me.â¨â¨BOGAEV: When the rounds hit the sand, what did it look like?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Well, for me, it looked like a flower blooming, exploding and,â¨you know, the sand is burnt a bit black and, yeah, there's a little explosion,â¨so it's the burnt munitions, along with the beige of the sand combining, andâ¨then kind of raining down after the explosion.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Now after the all-clear was called, what did you and the rest of yourâ¨unit do? Did you set up to attack the enemy position?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Well, as the, you know, forward observers for the battalion,â¨that was our mission, and my partner Johnny was the first to gain visual onâ¨the enemy observation post. And with his guidance, along with another Marine,â¨I gathered the map location of the enemy position and prepared a call for fireâ¨to put into the fire center. I was going to be asking for bombs from a plane,â¨probably a Harrier. But just as I was about to make that call, a captainâ¨arrived who thought it best if he called the mission in, and so the handset ofâ¨the radio was taken from my hands and handed off to this captain, who, indeed,â¨made the call, and the bombs were impacting shortly thereafter on this enemyâ¨position across the way.â¨â¨BOGAEV: During your time in the Gulf War, did you train your sniper's rifleâ¨at a living being and did you fire?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: I did train my rifle on a few living beings. I never did fire.â¨Johnny and I were deployed with another battalion that was fighting at the Alâ¨Jabar airfield in southern Kuwait, and there were enemy officers in the airâ¨control tower on the airfield, which all the glass was shot out, and they wereâ¨rather prime targets. We asked to take shots, asked for permission. We wereâ¨in our position and prepared to shoot, but we were asked to hold off.â¨â¨And then later in the day, as the infantry did their work on the airfield, aâ¨group of Iraqis--probably a little less than a platoon--they were attemptingâ¨to surrender, but there was no one near to surrender to. They had their bootsâ¨off and strung around their necks and were waving T-shirts or underwear,â¨whatever kind of white material they'd found. And eventually, they sat downâ¨and began eating their rations, and I guess they assumed that someone wouldâ¨come along that they could surrender to. And I was somewhat frustrated withâ¨those men because, you know, I obviously couldn't shoot them, but I poppedâ¨around from head to head, pretending that I might have.â¨â¨BOGAEV: You did that in your mind's eye, you mean. No?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: I did that with my rifle, with my scope.â¨â¨BOGAEV: And then you took them prisoner or what happened then?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Someone else took them prisoner.â¨â¨BOGAEV: How did you find out the war was over?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Well, in a rather peculiar way. My partner Johnny and I hadâ¨been on a mission, and over the course of the mission, which was about a day,â¨we'd seen a lot of retreating Iraqi vehicles, and over the radio frequenciesâ¨we heard of an occasional fight, an occasional skirmish with troops, but weâ¨weren't picked up the next morning when we were supposed to be, which causedâ¨us a bit of concern, and we decided to hike our way back to what we knew wasâ¨supposed to be the last position of our unit, and as we made the rise that wasâ¨just our side of the flat where our unit was supposed to be, we heard musicâ¨and we were kind of concerned. We thought it was a trick. We didn't knowâ¨really what was happening because the war was still on, and we slowly climbedâ¨up this rise, our bellies in the sand, and on the other side of it, there wereâ¨men from our battalion with their shirts off playing football. You know, Jimiâ¨Hendrix, I think, was piping through the com towers. The first sergeant who'dâ¨played the game with a kazoo was handing out cigars, and everyone was happyâ¨because the war was over, and that's how Johnny and I had found out thatâ¨things had ended.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Now after the war was declared over, you took part in the cleanupâ¨operation, and you went through Iraqi bunkers, and you write that you allâ¨gleefully ran through the enemy positions and noting the hundreds of differentâ¨ways a man might die when 500-pound bombs are dropped on a weakly fortifiedâ¨position. And a Marine in your battalion became obsessed with one of theâ¨Iraqi corpses. What was the nature of his obsession?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Well, for this Marine, I think the corpse both signified hope,â¨because he was alive, and also maybe despair, because the war had ended andâ¨he'd been looking for more of a fight, and perhaps he was already havingâ¨trouble with the issue of having not really been involved in a long war.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What did he do to the corpse?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Well, he desecrated the corpse. He took his E-tool to it,â¨which is a small folding shovel, and he made this corpse his kind of specialâ¨project and went at it daily until it was buried.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Who buried it?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: I did. I was tired of knowing that that was happening. It wasâ¨sickening and troubling, though this Marine probably, you know, went on toâ¨another corpse to do the same and, you know, he had his reasons for doing thatâ¨that are probably not acceptable to anyone.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did you take anything from these Iraqi bunkers with you?â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Yeah, I did. I took some dog tags off of a few corpses. Theirâ¨dog tags were rather crude things, whereas in the US, we use a press, andâ¨their dog tags are just on thin sheets of metal and the information isâ¨scrawled in with an awl. And I still have those dog tagsâ¨â¨BOGAEV: Yeah. There's a lot of mythology about dog tags. I think you writeâ¨in the book that people would order tons of them to surround themselves withâ¨as many pairs as possible, as if that would be a talisman against death.â¨â¨Mr. SWOFFORD: Yeah, absolutely, the idea that, you know, your mother has aâ¨pair and your little brother and your girlfriend, and you nail them to theâ¨wall in some bar in the Philippines, and you've spread yourself so far andâ¨wide that there's no way you can die because your dog tags are out there,â¨pulsing, you know, around the globe.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Anthony Swofford's new memoir is "Jarhead."â¨â¨Coming up, we remember singer and songwriter Hank Ballard. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and hasâ¨been omitted from this transcriptâ¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Interview: Gidon Kremer discusses his family and his musicalâ¨careerâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.â¨â¨The next time it's your birthday, instead of listening to friends sing to youâ¨off-key, you could play one of the variations of "Happy Birthday" from the newâ¨album by my guest, Gidon Kremer and his KREMERata Baltica orchestra.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: And that's "Happy Birthday" in the style of Dvorak. Gidon Kremer isâ¨an internationally renowned violinist. This is how Yo-Yo Ma describesâ¨Kremer's playing: `It's as if he's creating the music at that moment, thatâ¨he's organically part of the composer's mind, and the notes are passingâ¨through him.' Kremer is also known as a musician who takes risks. Throughoutâ¨his career in post-Stalinist Russia, he championed contemporary composers whoâ¨were out of favor with the Soviet leadership. After emigrating to the West,â¨Kremer became enthralled with the music of Astor Piazzolla, before the tangoâ¨was widely accepted in the classical repertoire. In 1996 he founded theâ¨KREMERata Baltica, a chamber orchestra made up of young musicians from threeâ¨Baltic states--Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Let's hear some more "Happyâ¨Birthday" variations from their new CD.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: I asked Gidon Kremer how he put the chamber orchestra together.â¨â¨Mr. GIDON KREMER: It was just a couple of weeks before I celebrated my 50thâ¨birthday and I had this idea to give myself a present by organizing anâ¨orchestra, but I intended to assemble the musicians only for a summertime, forâ¨the 1997 festival in Lockenhaus, a festival which I do run now already for 22â¨years. So around my 50th birthday I wanted to assemble musicians from theâ¨countries I was in my youth the closest to, since I am a native of Latvia.â¨But once I got to know these people, once I started to work with them, itâ¨became evident to me that I can't part from them, and I just want to maintainâ¨this wonderful atmosphere of cooperating with these musicians.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Now you were born in 1947 in Riga, Latvia, and your parents were bothâ¨violinists, also your grandfather, right?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: That's correct.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did they all play in the state orchestra?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: My grandfather was a professor at the Academy of Music in Riga,â¨and both my parents played in the National Radio Orchestra. My mother workedâ¨there for 27 years as a violinist.â¨â¨BOGAEV: And your mother was--spoke German, your grandfather was Swedish andâ¨your father was from--was a Baltic Jew. So it's really a very mixedâ¨ethnicity. Did you fit in?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Exactly. Yeah. Recently I had to think about my father becauseâ¨seeing the movie "The Pianist," by Roman Polanski, such a strong and strikingâ¨movie which impressed me a lot as well everyone that is going to see it. Iâ¨had to think about my father because, in fact, the story, the plot of theâ¨movie, is exactly the story of my father, who escaped and survived the ghettoâ¨in Riga, where 35 relatives of his were killed, including his wife and hisâ¨little daughter.â¨â¨BOGAEV: How did he survive? People hid him? He hid in apartments, he hid inâ¨cellars?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Yeah, he hid in cellars and in an apartment which one Latvianâ¨lady--not an apartment, but in a little back room off an apartment which aâ¨Latvian lady gave him to hide--in cellars, but he did hide for two years and Iâ¨think now I can much better understand what it meant to him.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So how early did they begin to groom you as a part of the familyâ¨violin dynasty?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: In fact, I started to play violin when I was four and a halfâ¨years old, and I'm still playing it.~â¨â¨BOGAEV: That sounds as if there must have been a lot of pressures, a lot ofâ¨dreams that your parents had had that they invested in you.â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: For sure. I even wrote in my book called "Splinters ofâ¨Childhood"--I wrote about the pressures of my encounters with my father, forâ¨whom I became his second life, because after such a tragedy that happened toâ¨him, he still had the ambition and the patience to make his son a musician.â¨â¨BOGAEV: You studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and this is in the '60s andâ¨the '70s, the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, and it was really very bleak timesâ¨economically and politically. What were your circumstances as a musicâ¨student? What was that time like for you?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: It's very difficult for me to answer it in a few words, but itâ¨was a tough time in Moscow. You had to be very careful what you play, whatâ¨you say, with whom you associate, who are your friends. And I rather earlyâ¨understood that I can't give in to all the expectations of a governmentalâ¨system, that I want to live my own life, and I want to choose myself what toâ¨do, what to play, with whom to be friends. And so pretty easy and pretty soonâ¨I got into conflicts with the state system.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Can you give me an example?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: As a result of this conflict, I didn't belong for many years toâ¨those of us who were sent as representatives of the country, asâ¨representatives of the Soviet Union abroad. Even more, I was literallyâ¨stopped from traveling for many years abroad. I was not allowed to go toâ¨foreign countries, except in the very beginning, when I succeeded to winâ¨certain competitions. But after I won my main competition and very recognizedâ¨competition, the Tchaikovsky competition 1917, after that for a number ofâ¨years I was not allowed to travel at all, except within the Soviet Unionâ¨itself.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What then did music mean for you during that time? Was it a safeâ¨place to express yourself and your individuality or the tensions that you wereâ¨suffering from, or did you always feel that music was subjected to theseâ¨political and these conformist pressures and that there was tension thereâ¨also?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: I always felt like the music was subjected to these tensions andâ¨to this pressure, but at the same time, I did fight for my own freedom, and Iâ¨still, already at that time when I was not allowed to travel, enlargedâ¨immensely my repertoire and got associated with people that I valued a lot,â¨like Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Part, Sophia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisou, allâ¨those composers who did work, live under the same pressure as all of us.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Violinist Gidon Kremer. Kremer is currently performing on a US tourâ¨with Canadian pianist Naida Cole.â¨â¨We'll continue our conversation after the break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Back with violinist Gidon Kremer. He's known as the founder ofâ¨KREMERata Baltica, a chamber orchestra made up of musicians from the Balticâ¨states. Their new CD is called "Happy Birthday."â¨â¨Throughout your career you've championed the music of Alfred Schnittke, and heâ¨was not considered acceptable in the time that you were playing him in theâ¨Soviet Union. Can you tell us about him? And what drew you to his music?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: I was lucky to be befriended with Alfred Schnittke. He was myâ¨friend for almost 30 years. Unfortunately, he passed away now already fiveâ¨years ago. One should not forget that the '70s were not the same time as theâ¨'30s or the 50s in the Soviet Union. Nobody was killed or put into a laborâ¨camp for not conforming to the regime, not writing political music, music ofâ¨socialist realism as the regime maybe wanted. But still, hindrances forâ¨performances existed, and most of the composers like Alfred Schnittke, Sophiaâ¨Gubaidulina, Edison Denisou, Valentin Silvestrov were not subject to manyâ¨performances. Their work would sound here and there on occasion.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, what was Schnittke's life like then in the Soviet Union? Didâ¨he earn a wage with his composing?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Luckily, as in many countries, and I guess in the United Statesâ¨as well, the cinema helped a lot. You must know how many composers in theâ¨'30s emigrated, went to LA and worked for the film industry, so many giftedâ¨composers among them like Bernard Herrmann or Michelot Gosh(ph), just naming aâ¨couple of them. The same thing happened somehow, as well, in Russia or in theâ¨Soviet Union, composers like Denisou, Alfred Schnittke, Sophia Gubaidulinaâ¨earned their living by writing film music or occasionally music for theater,â¨but the real compositions they often had to keep in their tables.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, you have a polka from Alfred Schnittke on your new album,â¨"Happy Birthday," with the KREMERata Baltica orchestra. Let's listen to it.â¨â¨(Soundbite of polka number from "Happy Birthday")â¨â¨BOGAEV: A polka from Alfred Schnittke performed by my guest, Gidon Kremer,â¨and his orchestra, KREMERata Baltica, from their new CD, "Happy Birthday."â¨â¨You left the Soviet Union eventually in 1980. What kind of break was that?â¨Was that a gradual or a dramatic one for you?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Any break, even a very soft one, was a dramatical one at thatâ¨time. In fact, I did stay abroad during one of the tours, this particularâ¨tour when I brought Alfred to the West in 1977, and I demanded at the sameâ¨time from the authorities to be a free man. I asked them to allow me for twoâ¨years to follow my commitments and concerts in the West. It was a formulaâ¨which some musicians like Slovas Dipovich(ph) used to articulate no return toâ¨the native country, but at the same time I didn't want to cut my ties with theâ¨Soviet Union and with my friends and with my audiences. And that's why Iâ¨enlarged my statement, saying, `I'd like to stay in the West, but I want toâ¨follow up also all my commitments which I have with my concert activities inâ¨the Soviet Union.' For two years, like a miracle, I was allowed to have aâ¨passport, which gave me such a privilege, a privilege among most of theâ¨musicians living in Russia at that time. But after two years, in 1980, theâ¨authorities said, `This is enough and you have to return.'â¨â¨And then I decided not to return consciously, and I had to face another kindâ¨of punishment for about eight years before the perestroika, in fact, started.â¨I was not anymore considered to be a Soviet artist, to be an artist that canâ¨perform in the Soviet Union.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did you have visiting privileges?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Yeah. I was allowed to visit, and I did visit my daughter, whoâ¨lived in Moscow, and my friends during this year here and there, but just as aâ¨tourist. I was never allowed to perform. Before my return in 1988, when I,â¨for the first time, played again on a stage in Moscow in St. Petersburg, atâ¨that time still Leningrad, and this was probably the first case of someoneâ¨that left the Soviet Union for good returned, like many of the Russianâ¨musicians that emigrated returned. But I was probably the only case of aâ¨Soviet musician with a Soviet passport that was not allowed to play on theâ¨Soviet stage for eight years, and then returned as a Soviet artist livingâ¨abroad.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Violinist Gidon Kremer. He's currently on a US tour. We'll hearâ¨more of our interview after this break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'm talking with Gidon Kremer. He has a new CD of music recordedâ¨with his chamber orchestra, KREMERata Baltica. He's currently on a US tour.â¨â¨Another composer that you're known for your interpretations of is Astorâ¨Piazzolla, and his tangos you've played long before he became as popular as heâ¨is now. You've recorded--What?--six albums of his music. When did you firstâ¨hear his work?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Falling in love with Astor Piazzolla was a very unexpected thingâ¨for me. I never thought that I would play a tango. Even I knew from my youthâ¨already what tango means.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So when you were young, you had heard tangos.â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Of course. And I even tried at that time--probably this was theâ¨last time, and then I gave up--tried to dance some tangos. But Astorâ¨Piazzolla was introduced to me by a friend in Germany on a videotape, and itâ¨was striking to see him play, and his music was striking as well. Every timeâ¨I went to Argentina, I visited many nightclubs, tango clubs, and heard musicâ¨which was different from all the other, and this was always recognizable thatâ¨it was the handwriting, the tunes of Astor Piazzolla. And so step by step Iâ¨tried to figure out if there is something for violin and included a couple ofâ¨anchors into my repertoire.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, what did you love about it? It's very passionate. It's alsoâ¨very nostalgic music.â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: What is striking, that his music is as sincere, as nostalgic, asâ¨dramatic as the music by Franz Schubert. To me, they go kind of together.â¨Even Piazzolla never wrote symphonies and never wrote piano sonatas, but theâ¨tone of the statement is set on the same dramatic note. It is alwaysâ¨incredibly focused and it's always incredibly powerful. I like Piazzolla forâ¨his ability to reach our souls and to speak directly to our hearts.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, let's play one of your Piazzolla pieces. This is "Le Grandâ¨Tango" from your first Piazzolla album, "Omaga Piazzolla."(ph)â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Le Grand Tango")â¨â¨BOGAEV: And that's my guest, violinist Gidon Kremer playing Astor Piazzolla'sâ¨"Le Grand Tango" from his album "Omaga Piazzolla."â¨â¨I love those swooping high notes you get out of your violin in this piece andâ¨also how it moves from very passionate to a kind of tense mournfulness andâ¨then back again to a heated tango. Is that the challenge for you inâ¨navigating the emotional arc of Piazzolla's music?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: I don't think Piazzolla's about embellishment. I don't thinkâ¨Piazzolla can be expressed rightly just gliding on the surface of convenientâ¨rhythms. This music can't be, in fact, performed. It has to be lived. And Iâ¨always can distinguish if someone is flirting with Piazzolla as a convenientâ¨item of our commercial industry or someone really lives the life or theâ¨heartbeat of the music of this great composer.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So what does that mean musically, to live it?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: To live it, to allow oneself to be burnt by it. I saw a numberâ¨of artists in my life that went on stage and were burning, so to say, were notâ¨pretending to be big performers or pretending to be big virtuosos, but reallyâ¨were the expression itself. Such artists like Maria Callus or Jacques Brelâ¨left a mark in my understanding what a stage presence is, and among them I canâ¨also name an artist like Leonard Bernstein, who many described as a showman,â¨but I have collaborated with him so much that I know that whatever he did heâ¨meant seriously.â¨â¨BOGAEV: You've written three books. Your third book, "Between the Worlds,"â¨is due out soon. Your second book--you had a beautiful dedication. It wasâ¨dedicated to all those who are searching for quietness, because that's whereâ¨the most beautiful music is born. What does that mean to you, this search forâ¨quietness?â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: It means search for meditation, it means listening to your innerâ¨voice, and distracted by all the noises which nowadays surround us. We allâ¨suffer from the tendency to promote stars, from the tendency to put starsâ¨before the music, from the tendency to be easy listening or easy digesting toâ¨the bias or listeners. We all suffer from it. And I'm trying, as much as Iâ¨can, to follow my own tastes, my own projects and my own visions, but it'sâ¨constantly a fight. It's a fight against promoters, fight against labels.â¨And you find collaborators, and I'm very happy to have found a number of them,â¨but here and there it becomes quite dramatic, this fight.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, I'd like to end with some more music, perhaps something thatâ¨you'd suggest for us, a favorite of yours that we haven't gotten to yet.â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: It's hard for me to choose something because each recording isâ¨very dear to me. But maybe we should visit the CD of the beginning ofâ¨KREMERata Baltica, the CD of "Eight Seasons," which combines music by Vivaldiâ¨and Piazzolla.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Very good. Let's listen. And thank you so much, Gidon Kremer, forâ¨joining us today.â¨â¨Mr. KREMER: Thank you for talking to me.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Gidon Kremer's new CD with his KREMERata Baltica orchestra is "Happyâ¨Birthday." He performs this week in Philadelphia and New York.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.