Pianist Alice Sarah Ott, barefoot and wearing a silver bracelet, smiled and sang to herself as she practiced a jazzy passage by Ravel at Steinway Hall in midtown Manhattan on a recent day. . Her Nintendo Switch, which she uses to warm her hands, was next to her (her other favorite tool is her Rubik's Cube). The espresso shot was sitting on the floor.
“I feel like I finally found my voice,” Ott said during a break. “I finally feel like I can be myself.”
Ott, 35, who will make his New York Philharmonic debut this week, has carved out an international career that includes recording more than a dozen albums and performing with top ensembles. She changes to classical music by embracing new approaches (playing Chopin on a battered piano in Iceland) and slamming stifling concert culture (she feels more comfortable performing without shoes). It became a force that brought about.
And Ott, who lives in Munich and has roots in Germany and Japan, did it while battling illness. In 2019, at the age of 30, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Although she hasn't had any symptoms since starting her treatment, she said the disorder has made her think about the music industry's harsh work culture.
“I've learned to accept that there are limits and not to go beyond them,” she said. “Everyone knows how to ignore their body and just carry on. But there's always a payoff.”
Ott has used his platform to dispel myths about multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system that can cause a variety of symptoms, including muscle spasms, numbness, and vision problems. . She detailed her own struggles on social media and challenged those who suggested her illness was affecting her play.
She said she felt she had no choice but to be transparent and said it was important to show that people with multiple sclerosis can live fulfilling lives.
“I don't see it as a weakness,” she said. “That's a fact. I live with it. And I don't want to make a big drama out of it.”
Ott's colleagues have encouraged her to pursue adventurous endeavors through experiments such as “Echoes of Life,” a project that fuses Chopin's Preludes with contemporary works, videos, and Ott's reflections on life and music. As a musician, he is credited with helping bring in a new audience to classical music.
Composer and guitarist Bryce Dessner, who wrote the concerto for Ott and premiered it in Zurich this year, said, “What she brings on stage is very special to her, and each song she faces… It's like opening some kind of hidden door inside.” Or interpret. ”
Elim Chan, a conductor who performed with Ott a few months after he began treatment, said Ott had a “don't get me wrong'' attitude about his illness from the beginning.
“She's able to go to very beautiful and vulnerable places, but at the same time she's very honest and has an integrity in that,” Chan said. “And she took off from there. And I think that's a very beautiful thing to me.”
Ott was born in Munich to a Japanese mother, a piano teacher, and a German father, an electrician. Attracted by her musical expressiveness, she began piano lessons at the age of four, and at the age of twelve she began attending school in Salzburg, Austria, where she began studying with the renowned teacher Karl-Heinz Kemmerling. It is said that
After winning a series of awards, her career took off and at the age of 19 she was signed to the prestigious label Deutsche Grammophon. Still, she began to feel uneasy about classical music's emphasis on tradition in programming, concert format, and dress. She sometimes faced sexism. She says her colleagues once told her to play a Beethoven passage like a “cute little Japanese woman.'' And her hectic touring schedule was taking its toll on her as a musician, she said.
“I felt like people were expecting something from me that I couldn't provide,” she said. “I was floating, and I wasn't stable as an artist.”
She collaborated with artists like experimental composer Ólafur Arnalds, recorded reimagined versions of Chopin, and began carving out her own path. In search of a wilder sound, they sought out out-of-tune pianos in bars in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In 2014, together with pianist and composer Francesco Tristano, she presented Scandal, a homage to the Ballets Russes, featuring works by Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Tristano. During the tour, they decorated the stage with magenta duct tape and encouraged the audience to clap along with the music.
“The intelligence really comes through in her performance,” Tristano said. “She leaves nothing to chance or pure craft. She's beyond that. She really wants to make a statement about the music she's making, that it's relevant today. ”
During a tour of Japan in 2018, Ott began having health problems, feeling numbness in her lips and subsequently having difficulty walking.
Doctors said her symptoms were probably caused by stress. But a few months later, when she returned to her home in Munich after another tour, half of her body was numb. After getting her tested, she received a diagnosis of “relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.” This is the most common form, and symptoms may flare up or go away.
Ott said she was “so scared” and panicked at first. But she was also worried about upsetting her family. “There were many times when she locked herself somewhere and cried,” she said.
Her only knowledge of the disease came from the story of British cellist Jacqueline du Pré, who died in 1987 at the age of 42 from complications from multiple sclerosis. The day Ott was diagnosed, she lost control of her left hand while performing Chopin's Nocturne at a recital in Munich. She ran from the stage, sat on the floor and cried, and canceled her remaining concerts.
But as Ott read about the latest treatments, he became more optimistic, especially since the disease was in its early stages. In February 2019, about a month after her diagnosis, she posted about it on Instagram.
“Admission is not a weakness; it is a way to protect yourself and those around you and gain strength,” she wrote.
Ott was praised for her courage. When she toured, her musicians approached her to share her experience with multiple sclerosis. However, she also attracted attention for her health issues.
Last fall, when a critic reviewing one of Ott's albums suggested that the album's inclusion of some easier songs was related to her multiple sclerosis, she I objected. She explained her repertoire choices on Instagram and said she has plans for more albums. She said such reductive labels are “the very reason why it remains so difficult for many people to come out and talk about their condition.”
In New York, Ott will perform Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major with conductor Karina Kanellakis, also making her Philharmonic debut, in a program that includes works by Webern, Strauss and Scriabin. (Last year, the pair were featured playing Beethoven in an ad for the tech giant's streaming service, Apple Music Classical.)
Canellakis said Ott has a “contagious calm.”
“There's a sense of pure focus,” she said. “And she encourages everyone around her to assume that condition.”
Ott is refining his interpretation of the Ravel Concerto, which he first performed at age 17, and is working on imitating the sounds of jazz instruments in the piano part.
On a recent evening, she went to Manhattan's Blue Note Jazz Club to hear Japanese composer and pianist Hiromi play. She said the concert had an intimate and relaxed feel. People freely cheered, laughed, talked, and shared food and drink.
Ott said she strives to create a similar connection with her viewers.
“Music itself can only fully blossom when we come together,” she said. “We must be vulnerable. It is one of the most beautiful sources of unity and strength.”