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The open approach of Jiri Kaderabek.

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Composer Jiri Kaderabek is an essentially creative man of many talents, wide interests and the unusual ability to keep aiming beyond himself. Never content to stick with what he has achieved, he is more willing than most to keep striking out into uncharted territory. It may be a bit of a cliche to say that someone is one of those young composers about whom we shall definitely be hearing a lot more. But I am certain that in Jiri Kaderabek's case, it is fully justified.

Tell us something about the path that took you from your first "opus" pieces to your interests today.

First and foremost, I don't feel I really have any opus pieces. On the contrary, I'm still waiting for something like that to come, and for my music to be in perfect accord with my idea of my music. That idea is itself developing, of course, but some parts of it stay the same. It's impossible to describe it in detail in words, but I can say that it includes the perfect application and mutual harmony of elements taken from music of different genres and non-musical sounds, freedom from dependency on overly explicit formal arrangement of a piece (parts, blocks, sections), and emancipation from a certain "concert" form of composition, possibly even the purely musical form.

Could you be a little more specific about your ideas--the adoption of elements from different genres could mean all kinds of things, as could an attempt to go beyond the format of the standard concert. What does it mean in your case?

From childhood I've had a quite intense active interest in art, and in writing play and film scripts, and I even sometimes got as far as realising some of these projects with friends. As time went by, my work narrowed down to music of its own accord, which suits me best and it's probably my strongest side. But for all that, the idea of a more comprehensive approach has essentially stayed with me, and in my head I automatically work with music in a graphic way, using the methods of film editing and being very concerned with the dramatic or rather the psychological side of music--as if the different elements of a piece were characters on the stage. So using elements from music of different genres, whether in the form of direct quotes or in the form of particular principles and techniques, is just a further expansion and refinement of this "open" approach, just like the use of all kinds of non-musical sounds, directly or indirectly--in this case mainly through spectral analysis. In my mind's eye I often sec my pieces as polygons with internal side mirrors that make it possible to look at each side again and again but always from...

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