Composer and multimedia artist Alisa Kobzar views audio, imagery, and the human body as a universal meta-instrument. In this interview, she shares the story of her journey, including her studies in Kyiv, Kraków, and Graz, and how she creates a musical universe in each work from hundreds of ideas all designed to resonate with her audience.
Alisa Kobzar: I started working with electronic music while studying in Alla Zagaykevych’s class (at the National Music Academy of Ukraine—D. S.). At the same time, I worked with Svyatoslav Lunyov and Ihor Stetsiuk in group lessons. Even before entering the music academy, I was already interested in expanding the possibilities of instrumental timbre, working with recorded material, and exploring the sound wave.
My interest in composition developed naturally. I was a pianist in music school, and I entered the music college as both a theorist and a pianist. I was unsure which faculty to choose at the conservatory, but someone advised me that studying composition would never interfere with academic research—whether on my own work or that of others. At first, my composition teacher at the conservatory was Artem Roschenko, but since he had additional work commitments, he was sometimes replaced by Alla Zagaykevych. As a result, I was introduced to two polar opposite approaches to composition.
Roschenko was a young teacher, around 36 years old. He enjoyed working with computers, engaged in coding, and wrote plugins for Finale. Thanks to him, at the very start of my studies at the conservatory, I realized that it was possible to combine my compositional priorities with ideas from programming.
He often said, “Try to use this time for experimentation—do everything you’ve always dreamed of. After the conservatory, it will be harder to write radically different music.”
With Alla Zagaykevych, on the other hand, we focused on the “kitchen” of composition: analyzing musical scores and concepts, and exploring the aesthetics of new music. Of course, combining these two approaches was challenging, but it proved to be an incredibly productive learning experience. Since then, I have always followed this path: I do what I want and refuse to conform to what other teachers tell me. I am a composer, and I want to make my own decisions. As a result, I often had conflicts with the department.
At the beginning of your studies at the conservatory, you wanted to expand your range of possibilities in working with timbre. But what was your listening experience like before the conservatory, in Kherson? How did it differ from what you heard in Kyiv?
Alisa Kobzar: Everything I knew in Kherson was Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Myaskovsky. I played some pieces by Skoryk, so I could understand certain things as a pianist, but in terms of listening experience… I wouldn’t say I really had much. That’s why I went to Kyiv—to gain that experience. Right from the entrance exams, I met Anna Arkushyna. We had already crossed paths at some composer competitions, where we also got to know Ira Berintseva—they were both from the Kyiv Specialized Music School.
Together, we started regularly attending Nostri Temporis concerts. For the first few years, I tried to understand what good new music meant to me and what bad music was. I sought to gradually incorporate the good into my own creative work. I studied new notation methods, approaches to music, and principles of musical development as thoroughly as possible so that they would become organically my own. I tried to be everywhere, take part in everything, and travel to various masterclasses abroad—whenever the budget allowed.
Which events, individual works, or composers became particularly significant to you?
Alisa Kobzar: I can’t say that I immediately understood the music of Boulez or Stockhausen… In the context of new music, I was particularly interested in a project between Poland and Ukraine, organized by the Nostri Temporis ensemble, during my first or second year of studies. Composers were writing new works inspired by Chopin’s preludes. I thought to myself, “Here are these new themes, these experiments that I can generate on my own as well.”
I was most drawn to Varèse, Xenakis, and Dufourt… Their influence was reflected in my diploma work, a piano concerto. I focused specifically on writing good instrumental music—the kind I would want to hear myself.
The process of writing this diploma work was a complicated period. In the first semester, my supervisor was Roschenko; in the second semester, it was Zagaykevych. I struggled to understand the true goal of my diploma work—was it about a high-quality performance or high-quality music? Many of my colleagues sacrificed the music itself for the sake of performance, and during the first semester, I also thought that what I wanted most was a good recording with an orchestra. But after the winter break, I began orchestrating, and in May, Zagaykevych told me: “Okay, up to this point” (referring to the first minute of a ten-minute piece), “you stayed true to your musical priorities. But after that, you decided that performance was more important to you. If I were you, I would rewrite everything.” So, in short, I rewrote my entire diploma piece in two weeks.
I never regretted it—it was an experience that stayed with me for a long time. In life, I often found myself rewriting things at the last minute. Since there wasn’t enough time to find a pianist, I also had to learn the piano part myself. Despite that, it seemed that this still wasn’t the kind of music the orchestra under Lysenko’s direction wanted to perform, so I received many comments, like “You might as well throw paint at a white wall.”
But after years at the conservatory—where we had conflicts at nearly every exam—I had already built up immunity to such criticism. Overall, I’m satisfied with the orchestral combinations I explored in that piece. At the same time, I was working on electronic compositions. I ended up with a lot of drafts and experiments, but I wasn’t yet able to fully think like an electroacoustic composer.
Thinking like an electronic music composer—what does that mean? How is it different from acoustic composition?
Alisa Kobzar: First and foremost, it’s about a completely different listening experience. Everything depends on knowledge. For example, my current master’s thesis—and likely my doctoral research later on—focuses on how software for creating electronic or electroacoustic music influences the way composers think. If you study Max/MSP, Open Music, or work in Logic, all of that leaves a mark on your music. Software steers your thinking in a certain direction, and typically, if you’re a beginner in electroacoustic composition, you simply adapt to the existing functions. Every program has developers who either have their own aesthetic priorities or aim to market their software to a specific audience.
So, thinking like an electroacoustic composer means not just relying on the libraries of sounds, techniques, and approaches you know from acoustic music or limiting yourself to what the software offers. On the other hand, we are more productive when working within constraints.
From my years of experience, the best practice is to create both the instrumental and electronic parts simultaneously so that they influence each other. Of course, for technical reasons, many composers first write the score and then develop the electronic part. Often, we need to send the score to the instrumentalist first and add the electronics later. This approach, however, creates an issue in how electronic music is perceived—many instrumentalists believe that working with electronics means two days of rehearsal and then, “That’s it, we’re ready to perform.” It depends on the piece, but if it involves real-time sound processing, an instrumentalist who approaches it this way will never fully grasp what is happening and won’t be able to interact with it organically.
Electronic music invites the instrumentalist to respond in real time to how the timbre is being transformed. It’s frustrating to spend months working on electronic elements only to have just two rehearsals. You’re lucky if you can collaborate with a computer music performer—not just someone pressing fade-in & fade-out, not a mere technical assistant, but someone who can truly engage with the audio input from the instrumentalist in real time.
Is this what your experience performing with the airborne extended ensemble is actually like?
Alisa Kobzar: I have been working with them since 2017. I combine two roles in their projects: sound engineer and computer music performer. This is a common practice, but not ideal. It’s usually stressful—sometimes composers think they’re writing for two different people and plan a certain number of movements. But I’m the only one who has to analyze the patches, how they are made, and sometimes I have to correspond and meet with composers. Often, it’s just working with samples, although I remember complex scores where I had to make many changes while balancing the sound. I really want the attitude toward this particular role to change over time.
Here, we have briefly touched upon the topic of the artist’s creative process and the influence of software. What is a priority for you: the sound result, or the creation of a beautiful (complex, multi-layered) algorithm?
Alisa Kobzar: One of the challenges faced by budding electronic music composers is the composer-turned-programmer. When you try to solve all the planned tasks through electronics, you can get so absorbed in the algorithms that you end up focusing on them rather than the music, which was the original goal. I explore this as one of the sub-themes of my work: every software has its own bias, and the extent to which it imposes its limits on you affects the final result.
When I started studying serious electronic music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Austria), I became deeply involved in algorithms and processes. For me, creating an algorithm was already partly a composition. Trying to work through 100 options… While searching for the 101st, you can forget what the starting point was. The process itself shapes the next iteration of your idea. At some point, this became an interesting way of working for me. Of course, if you want to remain a composer, not a programmer, then technology must not outweigh creativity. You should always return to the point where you’re thinking as a composer.
People don’t care how difficult your path to the result was. Additionally, things don’t always work out as planned. As a composer or performer, you must be 200% sure that your ideas will be read by the audience.
Before your studies in Graz, after Kyiv, there was Poland and the Gaude Polonia scholarship. What was your path to get there?
Alisa Kobzar: Poland became a turning point for me. After graduating from the conservatory, I simultaneously taught composition, piano, theory, and music history… At the same time, I worked at several schools and also gave private lessons.
It was a necessity at the time. At the same time, I enjoyed it, and now I also work with children, but this time with Austrian children. Teaching is about passing on experience to others and making room for new things within yourself, so that I can also learn better.
But teaching doesn’t have to be the main focus of my life, so I applied for a Gaude Polonia scholarship after one of the workshops. I didn’t expect to be selected the first time, so it was quite stressful for me: I had to learn Polish in a month.
Many people use these scholarships to take a break and create one piece of work over six months. I, on the other hand, wrote a new composition every month, which led to a significant increase in productivity. I also had excellent teachers: I studied with Marcin Strzelecki, and I frequently worked with Marek Chołoniewski, as it’s easy to communicate with everyone, share your work, and exchange ideas. It seems that during these six months, I absorbed the maximum amount of knowledge I needed. My goal was to understand how important electronics are to me—whether they are an integral part of my composer’s identity or just an added value.
In 2017, after a master class at the Kyiv Contemporary Music Days, which became a defining moment in my life, I decided to apply to Graz. In fact, I knew very little about it, despite having read all the information available online. Once I was accepted, I realized how right that choice was.
Which three works by Alisa Kobzar do you feel best represent your creative output?
Alisa Kobzar: For a project in Munich, my duet for French horn and bass trombone, As Soon as (Paradise). The piece has taken on a life of its own and is frequently performed in Germany. This music was one of my first serious experiments. At the time, I was still working extensively with texts, writing poetry, but I eventually put that aspect of my creativity on hold. Perhaps I will return to it soon.
I wrote my next piece, Prism, before studying in Graz, for a performance in Odesa by the airborne extended ensemble. We later played it in Lviv and in various European countries. This is a piece I rewrote multiple times due to objective reasons for changing the software. The methods of interacting with electronics have evolved since then, but with the latest version, I feel much more at ease.
One of my newest pieces, Echo and N.N., is composed for cello, double bass (which functions as an interactive object), electronics, and performance. The instruments and performance incorporate conductive threads—threads that transmit electrical impulses or respond to the electrodermal activity of the human body. I purchased these threads online and connected them to a handmade pedal that processes the signals generated through skin contact. Since human skin has electrical properties, additional static electricity can influence interactions—when you touch something, it alters the characteristics of that object. Each touch transforms the sound.
You always have a clear idea that you articulate through sound, but what experiments do you conduct while integrating it into a piece?
Alisa Kobzar: I never work with just one theme. In a single piece, I need to solve dozens of different tasks that I set for myself to fully develop the idea. This limited space is what makes the piece successful. I want the listener to have a different experience each time they engage with it, exploring this space of ideas anew.
Over the years, I’ve worked extensively with instrumental improvisation and created instruments with controllers to collaborate with choreographers. I am a co-founder of the rotkaeppchen duo, where we have long been developing a non-verbal mode of communication between different media. The choreographer hears what I do with the sound and responds, while I continuously observe her movements, playing the controllers blindly, as her movements dictate corresponding changes in my parameters. As a result, we develop a unique vocabulary for each piece, defining which movements or reactions can trigger specific changes in the performance.
So, each of our pieces is an experiment within the framework of guided improvisation, as there is always a broader narrative or time structure in which we explore a particular theme, experimenting with different combinations. Interestingly, in this duo, I control both the sound and the visuals. At the same time, I am the only one who sees the full result, allowing me to shape the experience on both a visual and acoustic level, finding intersections between them for the listener and viewer. Since we always perform live, for me, the experiment exists both as improvisation and as the outcome of interaction.
The interaction of different arts, real-time interaction—there are so many possibilities. Can something truly new emerge from this moment? And what holds the most promise for the future?
Alisa Kobzar: Back in Kyiv, when I was working on video editing, color grading, and postproduction, I noticed many parallels with the composition process. At the time, combining different arts in my work felt very organic. Now, of course, multimedia has become mainstream—the more multimedia, the better; the newer the experience, the more appealing and marketable it is. As a result, there are now many competitions exploring new formats, where it’s not just about what you create but how you present it. Multimedia, cross-media, intermedia—all these hyper-concepts, where different media merge, push you to think beyond Beethoven’s sonata and consider all possible variations of a single measure, actively engaging with them. It’s a fascinating experience.
What holds the most promise for the future? It’s about finding a balance between what is important to the composer in terms of sound and how it is presented. Today, there is a serious imbalance. The better you present a work, the more financial support it will receive; the more interesting the text you write in your research, and the more complex your topic, the more likely you are to gain support from the scholarly community, because your research will generate novelty and make a global contribution to society.
It is extremely important to consider how much of what you have in mind the public will perceive correctly. A lot depends on the program notes. For example, with the choreography, we performed 45 minutes of completely improvised, highly complicated movements, but we didn’t mention in the program notes that the performance was happening in real time… People thought we had simply learned it really well.
Organizers often ask for the program notes before the piece is ready, and then, at the concert, critics say, “I didn’t understand anything,” because the program notes were inaccurate.
In Ukraine, there is also the issue of the listening experience and the tradition of attending concerts of living composers. I see many older people attending concerts here in Austria… for me, it’s the perfect place. People aged 70 and above go to contemporary music concerts to keep up with new trends in art.
I also had the impression that an older audience still dominates in Europe.
Alisa Kobzar: I have a similar observation. If it’s not in a university context or at major festivals that attract everyone, then yes, older people likely have more time, or young people may have different priorities at this stage.
This material was created and published thanks to a grant from Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA.
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