bluelobster.art/kunal-lahiry-interview/journey-to-softness

IN CONVERSATION WITH

KUNAL LAHIRY

"They couldn’t take that away.
So now I could stop pretending."

Interview by Ligia Falcão Boueres,
Founder of BlueLobster Art

Kunal Lahiry is an Indian-American pianist, former BBC New Generation Artist, and one of the most compelling voices in contemporary classical music. On April 25, he makes his solo recital debut at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, in collaboration with TRAUMA, bringing together dancer Rubén Nsue and poet Nadia Marcus for Journey to Softness.

On music, identity, and the journey to the stage

You grew up in the US, your father is from India, and your classical training brought you to Berlin. How did it all begin?
My mother got a keyboard from my father for Christmas when I was about ten years old. She didn’t have time to play it — she was raising four of us — so I started playing instead. That’s really how simply it began. Neither of my parents was trained in Western classical music. I just asked for lessons at some point, and it became a process of finding the right teacher and getting the first piano.

And the path to Berlin?
I started college in Chicago doing a double degree in political science and piano performance, because I thought I’d become a lawyer. After my first political science class, I decided that was a waste of time and I’d try to be a concert pianist first. I transferred to McGill in Montreal, where I met a piano teacher who really opened my ears to harmony and gesture — everything that made me fall in love with classical music even more. Then I didn’t get into Juilliard, moved to Berlin, and got into the school here. And that’s where everything started to shift.

When did questions of identity start entering your music?
It was not always there. It was something dormant that I had to wake up, and then figure out how to translate onto the stage. As I was discovering my own identity through Berlin, I became increasingly curious about how that interacted with my artistic expression. And then, honestly, during COVID — it was also the moment I finished my degree and was asked to be the first collaborative pianist on the BBC New Generation scheme — something shifted. It felt like an ‘I made it’ moment. They couldn’t take that away. So now I could stop pretending.

©Justin Bach

"Each performance I would add a new risk. Am I going to wear a little more eyeliner this time? Am I going to put on my heeled boots for the first time? Small steps like that. And then feeling that self-awareness on stage, and actually being met with grace and acceptance, that gave me the courage to just focus on what's authentic for me."
— Kunal Lahiry

On Journey to Softness and the programme

The programme moves from Ligeti and Beethoven all the way through to Philip Glass and Radiohead. What’s the arc?

The journey happens in two major pillars — Ligeti and Beethoven — and three chapters. The Ligeti is the staircase: this patriarchal, rigid, relentless structure that goes nowhere. It’s based on Escher’s drawing of a staircase that loops back into itself. That’s the cyclical trap that I, and I think many people around me, often feel stuck in. The Beethoven is the fugue — one piece of material explored from all angles, all directions. For me, the journey to softness is finding the paradigm shift from that rigid staircase to the multiplicity of the fugue. And then there’s a kind of odyssey in the middle, through Ravel and Debussy, before coming back to rebuild.

What does ‘softness’ actually mean to you in this context?
We project a lot onto the word ‘soft’. There’s shame and resistance attached to it. For me it’s more about multiplicity — something less easy to digest, but that allows for presence and understanding. It’s been healing, at least for me. It’s not the finished concept. This is a first iteration, a presentation of the work so far. We’ll keep reflecting and building after this.

The programme is built entirely from white male composers. Was that a conscious choice?

I normally program with a lot more diversity. But when I came to solo piano, I found some resistance in myself, because this is the music I knew and related to most — and on a very queer level, actually. I feel this music is queer in essence. Sound itself is queer, regardless of the identity of the composer. And Nadia said something that really crystallised it for me: the fact that three queer, mostly POC artists are coming together to tell their stories through this music is a reclaiming of the sounds as our own. That is something in itself to experience.

Meet the Artists

Kunal Lahiry
Former BBC New Generation Artist known for reimagining the classical recital. Recent highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Carnegie Hall, and Pierre Boulez Saal.

Rubén Nsue
Dancer and choreographer. Berlin-based performer of African descent whose movement practice bridges contemporary technique with powerful narrative expression.

Nadia Marcus
Berlin-based poet, designer, and DJ whose work navigates memory, architecture, and identity. Co-editor of TABLOID Press.

On collaboration, TRAUMA and the Boulez Saal

How did the collaboration with TRAUMA come together?

I met Troels, the creative director of TRAUMA, at a party in Berlin. We connected over Beethoven and Rachmaninoff — he plays piano himself. When I was building this solo programme, I saw TRAUMA’s audience — artists, musicians, creatives, people my age, diverse, from all over the world — and I thought, I want to perform for them. The question was: how do we bridge these two communities? Create an evening that’s both for the Boulez Saal audience and the TRAUMA audience, both experiencing something familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, doing that together.

What do you love about working with TRAUMA?
Their sense of provocation and their deep respect for the art. They’re not afraid to make bold statements or poke at something. We are using the space in a way that has never been done before in the Boulez Saal — even their own team said, we didn’t know we could do that. That’s so TRAUMA. They’re like a Michelin-star chef: they take what’s freshest and do exactly what’s needed to bring out that ingredient — and then do something you’d think completely opposite, which somehow brings it out even more.

And how did the Boulez Saal come into the picture?

I've known the Boulez Saal for six or seven years, since I did a young artist programme there. I've had a habit of meeting with Kirsten, their director, for coffee every few months, talking about classical music, accessibility, and programming. When I was developing this solo programme, I told her about this dream I had. And she said, 'there's a date left for the next season — do you want it?' I never imagined debuting it on such a platform, but you can't really say no to that.

How does the intimacy of the Boulez Saal — its in-the-round format — influence your performance?
The very first time I performed there, I was extremely intimidated. I thought having eyes coming at me from all directions would feel too exposing. But what I experienced on stage was the complete opposite — an incredible embrace, 360 degrees. That resonated deeply with how I perform. And for a show like this, where everyone is drawn into the journey so directly and so intimately because of the nature of the hall, it becomes interactive without any interaction being asked.

On unlearning and the future of classical music

The concert is described as an ‘unlearning’. What does that mean?
We’ve been set into structures that serve capitalism and patriarchy — structures that inform our identity, how we interact with others, how we relate to the world. Unlearning is stepping to the side of all that and having to reimagine ourselves. It’s not really unlearning — it’s relearning. But you have to unlearn a lot in order to learn again in a different way. There’s a piece in the middle of the programme, Debussy's L'Isle Joyeuse, which I’ve been playing since I was sixteen. It’s about imagining this mystical island — you don’t know if the people are arriving or departing. I relate that so much to the club spaces in Berlin: how queer people find themselves and their community in these spaces, how liberating and also how entrapping that can be. The big unlearning, for me, is: how do we take what we feel in the club and build a life outside of it that emulates that freedom?

You mentioned you experienced burnout a few years ago. Looking back, what was really behind it?
Burnout has nothing to do with the rigour of the lifestyle. It has more to do with the inauthenticity we feel when we engage with it. The more authentic and the more agency I have over what I’m sharing, the more it feeds back into me rather than taking from me. Classical music trained us to be a clean glass through which people see the past — never with our own ego attached. But as identity politics has entered that conversation, more young classical musicians are reclaiming what made them fall in love with it in the first place. It’s less about perfection, more about integrity, commitment, and authenticity.

Where do you see the future of classical music going?
More co-productions, more collaborations — where we’re both learning new ways to interact with these art forms and gaining our audience at the same time. Classical music isn’t hard to sell, actually. When people walk into Pierre Boulez Saal for the first time, they’re immediately taken aback. I think our generation is increasingly understanding the importance of disconnecting and unplugging — and classical music is always in their toolbox for that. People just need to realise that it’s not supposed to only be relaxing. It’s reinvigorating.

Join the Experience

"Classical music is not supposed to only be relaxing.
It's reinvigorating."

- Kunal Lahiry