decorahnews.com's interview with Professor Kubinek

decorahnews.com's Paul Scott got a chance to visit with performer Tomas Kubinek about Saturday night's Iowa premiere of 'Professor Kubínek Meets the Symphony'

Paul Scott: You were born in Czechoslovakia.  Our county is home to Spillville, where Dvorak once lived for a summer, so we know all about Czech culture.  Will you somehow work a kolache into Saturday's performance??

Tomas Kubinek: "No kolaches but there will be some Czech beer between the conductor and me at the very end."

PS: You spent time as a street performer and as a circus performer.  How do those experiences affect the performances you give now?

TK: I've 'paid my dues' - big time. I did every sort of performing gig you can imagine.  I made a deal with myself at age 17 that if I couldn't support myself and had to get a regular job I would give up performing altogether and I didn't want to do that.. I've learned so much from playing in street performances, comedy clubs, circuses, cabarets, television, film, theater plays, biker bars, barmitzvahs, line-ups, improv nights, hospitals, jails, and endless other situations.  I knew that all of this variety would give me a very strong foundation.  Each situation taught me qualities of creating focus, connecting with people and capturing their imaginations.  It's really been a 30 year study in the secrets of mass hypnosis and artistic expression.  When I look back on it all it seems like such an epic journey and a bit crazy.

PS: What's it like to work with a symphony orchestra?

TK: It's like being the flying canada goose at the apex of our huge chevron in the air with me leading the whole flock in energy and spirit.  I'm the pilot - and the conductor is my navigator and I'd be lost without him.  We are all flying to South America with all the others carrying their instruments of expertise in their beaks.  The audience is the landscape we are causing ripples in with our passing shadows.

PS: How do you carry over your "certified lunatic" style to a classical music setting?

TK: It's a perfect fit.  From the standpoint of a comic performer there's a wonderfully incongruous status relationship--the orchestra onstage prim and proper with their finest clothes, gleaming instruments--all tradition and etiquette--and then, standing in front of it all, a scruffy little lunatic who thinks he can stop the rotation of the earth.  It's almost a mythological dialectic. The orchestra is the best 'straight-man' you could ever hope for and in addition the music goes to all of the amazing magical, emotional places that any other art-form can.  So the orchestra is like a huge dragon that is both foil and flying-machine.

PS: How does it make you feel when you get an audience to laugh with you?
 
TK: It is fantastic, like a gift that I enjoy and they enjoy and that makes me feel deep spiritual satisfaction in my life and work.  The same way a great chef enjoys seeing people empty a plate.