Q&A with Sugar Vendil: Deconstruct, Construct, Repeat
I met Sugar Vendil when I started college at NYU and I thought she was the coolest musician I’d ever met. She had just founded The Nouveau Classical Project (NCP), a contemporary classical music ensemble that collaborated with fashion designers for its concerts, and I was mesmerized by musicians entering the stage runway-style in clothes inspired by the music that flowed with the wall art. NCP would later be mentioned in the New York Times as an “unlikely intersection of classical music and fashion” and described by VICE as “bringing a refreshing edge to the widely conservative genre.” Now over a decade old, NCP’s projects are supported by prestigious organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs—and this is only one of Sugar’s projects.
Sugar is a New York City-based composer, pianist, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist who, in addition to her work as Founder/Executive Director of NCP, performs her own solo music for piano and electronics and has a keyboard/synth duo with composer Trevor Gureckis. Sugar and her work have been featured at a variety of venues including BAM Fisher, MoMa PS1, and Milk Studios, and she’s been an artist-in-residence at places like Yaddo, Marble House Project, and Summer Labs at National Sawdust. Sugar is a proud second generation Filipinx American, and it’s through this lens that her music and movement suite Islander examines the residue colonialism has left behind. She was recently awarded a 2021 MAPFund grant to support her performance memoir Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia.
There’s that wonderfully straightforward Thoreau quote, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,” and Sugar is a living, breathing, super down-to-earth embodiment of this advice. It was a creative treat to catch up over Zoom and learn about Sugar’s processes of trial and error, self-critique, and the ongoing learning that is necessary to art-making.
Q&A with Sugar Vendil, composer/pianist/choreographer/interdisciplinary artist
Photo by Julia Comita
Q: You started your career as a classical pianist and it evolved from there. What compelled you to explore other ways of performing, and what was it like to venture away from a more traditional career?
A: I was totally clueless. There wasn’t as much information out there. Now I feel like you can find a step-by-step manual about how to launch your own thing—it seems to be what everyone does. But back then—I don’t know, I just wanted to do something creative and incorporate my interests. I really, really loved fashion back then. I wanted to maybe go to Gallatin [NYU’s School of Individualized Study] and double major in fashion design and classical piano, which I kind of wish I did—not so I could be a designer, but I think it would’ve been a really interesting experience. And I’ll be really honest, it was not the most inspiring way to start something. I heard that somebody had won a grant for an idea and I was like, “Wait, what is the grant?” It would be like five years before I actually won a grant, but I was like, “I want to do something creative. How do you combine fashion and visual art?” It’s almost lucky that I was so naïve back then because, yeah, of course the idea existed. Any idea you think of has probably existed. I’m so glad that I didn’t just dismiss my idea. I thought it was the best idea in the world, you know? So that’s how I started off. I wanted to combine my interests—visual art and fashion and performance.
Q: What is your creative process like? In Islander, for example, there are so many things going on. How do the sound and the movement and the visuals all come together in your brain before you can really see it on a stage?
A: With Islander, I came up with a general structure first. Then I distill and deconstruct a lot of ideas and concepts, and try to shape them into some musical thing if that makes sense. Things that we normally verbalize or describe, or think of or see—you can construct that into some musical idea. And then the movement, too—sometimes a movement’s on its own, but sometimes it’s with an instrument. So, a lot of it is trial and error and just trying things out. Sometimes things are stupid and that’s okay, you have to let that happen. I work a lot with impulse—I think a lot of artists do. Like, thinking about an idea or a concept and what impulse I get physically in order to express that idea. But the more I’ve done it—it’s so funny, it’s like, “I’m not really a composer, I just want to do this one piece Islander because I really have to make it” and then the more you do it then you’re like, “Wait, but I want to make this other thing” and “I want to approach this with more rigor” so you start studying. I do dance class twice a week. In music, I wasn’t a composer but I was a musician for so long so you basically have compositional tools. But with movement—a lot of it is natural, but the more you learn the more tools you have.
Q: In your 2019 essay about getting over your fear of composing, you wrote that a lot of that process was about “dismantling the perfectionist mentality.” Do you still consider yourself a perfectionist?
A: I don’t know if there is such a thing as “perfect,” but I’m definitely—I don’t know if the word is “anal retentive”—but I’m very self-critical, hyper-critical for sure. I don’t believe in the idea of “perfect” but I do believe in doing your very best, so that’s all I try to do. I’m so hypercritical. I’ll look at the last thing I made and try to learn from it. I’m constantly trying to learn from something I’ve done. I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but I am very critical.
Q: Do you have performance anxiety?
A: Not anymore, but I remember that I did all throughout grad school. It was kind of crazy how I was at like 5%. But I don’t anymore because I know how to prepare, and I just held onto the love of it. I had experienced feeling good after a performance so I thought, “I can experience that again, I just have to figure this thing out” and what I thought I had to figure out was becoming amazing, and that’s not what it is. It’s such a mental game.
Q: Do you have any rituals or things in your creative process that help you get into the zone?
A: I’m a little sloppy. I guess that’s part of it. I procrastinate a little bit in the morning. I need to have a really free morning. Obviously, coffee first thing. Right now I only get three days and sort of Saturday to work but I’m so tired on Saturdays. But he’s [the adorable baby sharing the Zoom screen] in daycare three days a week so I get those three days, and if I don’t get one of those days I am like, “God, I am in a mood.” But yeah, coffee, and I do write every morning. Just like a page in my Hobonichi planner. It’s a planner but it also has diary pages, one for each day of the year. I used to just doodle, but now I’m like, “Oh, this is a really great way to have a journal and not let notebooks pile up one page a day,” right? So, I write in the morning. And I have a to do list every day of what I’m going to do, and I try not to make that crazy. You can really only do one or two things really well, other than little tasks, but for creative stuff and practicing it’s like one or two.
Q: Any insights for newbies about the artist residency experience?
A: It’s pretty amazing. Ideally you have all your meals cooked for you and also paid for. It feels like you’re on—I mean that’s why they call them artist “colonies”—it’s just like a dream. You feel like you’re at Hogwarts. You figure it out. And that’s what’s great is you really have the whole day, so you’re able to structure it how you want. And there are different types. Some of them you have to pay for. I don’t really do those anymore. I paid for my first residency but it was reasonable. Sometimes it’s good, if you can, to get one under your belt, but it doesn’t even matter—I don’t think it’s like residencies beget residencies. Making the work is really what gets you the residencies.
Q: Do you ever feel writer’s block or creator’s block? It seems like you’re constantly working on cool things so I’m curious to know if you ever feel stumped.
A: It’s all an illusion. I think everyone has a block, you know, and at that point it means you need to take a break and stop. You have to get comfortable with that. Sometimes you have a really serious deadline and, yeah, you might not yield really good work—you’re not going to always yield good work—so there’s something to learn from it. It really means your brain needs rest, you gotta go out and see some stuff, read, or even just come up with almost a sterile structure. Maybe I don’t need to call it sterile, but something you might think is so rigid and rudimentary. That could really help, too. But I think the best thing to do honestly is to take a break.
Q: What is the role of collaboration in your process?
A: I got off to a rough start with collaboration. I was awful at it. I would even call myself toxic at the beginning. I’m just very honest and again it’s all about learning and thank god those people don’t hate me and they’re so generous for that, but, you know, you gotta be really clear about what you want from a collaboration. Collaborating doesn’t mean people don’t have roles. Some people do that where there’s no hierarchy, but it doesn’t work for everybody. I think for me, collaboration needs to be a thing where everyone feels safe. And I don’t just mean a safe space—that is a given—but a space where people feel like their ideas are being respected. I also think credit is a huge part. I don’t want people to feel like they’re being taken for granted. I think that’s really important. And then being clear about what everyone’s doing is really important. For me, collaboration means I need people in a room to see what this dance looks like, you know, or how this is going to come off. That’s where the collaborative process for me is essential—it’s actually trying the thing out, and then editing and making changes from there.
Feeling inspired to check out Hobonichi planners for the new year? (Me too.)
Check out Sugar’s upcoming concert at Brooklyn Public Library on December 11th! She’ll be premiering Sugar by Pamela Z as well as her new work ooh wo ah oo wa o for vocalizing ensemble with The Nouveau Classical Project. Not in New York? Visit Sugar’s website or follow her on Instagram to stay in the loop.
Re: Sugar’s daily writing practice, here’s the great Julia Cameron on Morning Pages.
Oh, and one more thing: Wild Minds is taking a lil’ holiday break. Have a restful & magical holiday season and I’ll see you all in the new year! xo, Lillie
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