Pianist Jonathan Biss appears in several concerts and mental health-related discussions organized by Princeton University Concerts. Photo by Benjamin Ealovega.
Growing up in Bloomington, Indiana, in a house full of music, Jonathan Biss has been playing the piano since childhood. Both his mother (Miriam Fried) and father (Paul Biss) played the violin, dividing their time between teaching, performing solo, and in chamber groups — sometimes with young Biss contributing.
He began his piano studies at age six, with Karen Taylor and Evelyne Brancart at Indiana University’s Jacob’s School of Music, where both of his parents taught. At age 17, Biss entered the Curtis Institute of Music to study with Leon Fleisher.
Biss evolved into a renowned concert pianist who now performs with orchestras around the nation — including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Boston, Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, and Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Internationally, Biss has appeared as a soloist with the London Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, among many other ensembles.
It was in 2011 when Biss tackled a monumental musical project — to record and perform all 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Unfortunately, after about nine years of total immersion in “Ludwig Van,” he came to a point of feeling imprisoned.
The arduous schedule, the pressure of executing this demanding music, and maybe even the spirit of Beethoven whispering in his ear, brought Biss to a point of near collapse.
The anxiety that he experienced around performing music became so extreme that it made him forget the core of who he was, and was even threatening to interfere with his love of music.
“I was ashamed of it,” Biss says. “I felt that either not having bad anxiety or at least knowing how to manage it was a prerequisite for being good at my job. To admit that I had this problem felt, very, very much for years, like admitting to failure.”
He was even considering early retirement when fate stepped in: around the world, the COVID19 pandemic shut down just about everything, including live concert performances. Biss was able to step back, take a deep breath, and rediscover his core being — and his love for music.
One creative project that emerged from this time was Biss’ audiobook, “Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven.” Published by Audible in 2021 “Unquiet” sees Biss exploring his battle with clinical anxiety throughout his performance career, finally coming to terms with it.
On Wednesday April 10, at 7 p.m., over Zoom Biss will co-lead a free book group discussion hosted by the Princeton Public Library, and focus on “Unquiet.” In addition to the pianist, the session welcomes Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Adam Haslett, discussing his book “Imagine Me Gone” (Little, Brown and Company, 2016), a novel about a family dealing with the grips of mental illness.
Author Adam Haslett joins Biss for a discussion at Princeton Public Library and on Zoom featuring Haslett’s book ‘Imagine Me Gone’ and Biss’ ‘Unquiet.’ Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.
This is just one of the special, free events presented by Princeton University Concerts in partnership with local organizations, where Biss will perform and speak about his journey through anxiety.
Also on April 10, at 3 p.m., Biss will participate in a PUC Live Music Meditation event at Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute for Advanced Study campus. Meditation instruction will be provided by Matthew Weiner, associate dean in the Princeton University Office of Religious Life. This is an opportunity to take part in attentive, focused, and mindful listening.
Biss will return to Princeton again on Wednesday evening, April 24, appearing with Haslett for a PUC Healing with Music event at Richardson Auditorium, exploring the intersection of anxiety, depression, and music.
Biss is also performing alongside pianist Mitsuko Uchida on Wednesday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium. That event is sold out, but turned back tickets will be made available at 11 a.m. daily from April 1 as well as 45 minutes prior to the concert.
The pianist first encountered Beethoven’s music as a boy, quickly becoming obsessed. He admits that Beethoven is “an intensely powerful figure, confrontational to the core, and that intensity finds its way into the music. You don’t ever feel that you’re free of Beethoven. He doesn’t give you a lot of space.”
Biss reflects that he had already been dealing with anxiety, but undertaking all 32 piano sonatas “was the hardest possible thing I could have done,” he says. He originally expected the project to be the most fulfilling experience of his life, but he didn’t anticipate the latent anxieties that his journey would uncover.
“The problem was internal in the end, it was my own expectations of myself, the desire and need to live up to some impossible standard,” Biss says, speaking by phone from his home in Philadelphia. “There’s always inherent pressure in performing, but the audience became a mirror for my internal sense that I was not living up (to expectations).”
“I think much like any hardship or addiction — anything that’s a challenge — I reached a point where I said to myself, ‘I can’t live with this anymore,’” he says. “I was just muscling through, not acknowledging my anxiety. It wasn’t working and the cost felt much too high.”
In other words, he was handling his anxiety until he wasn’t. “I had been quietly falling apart,” he says.
Biss talks about his multi-faceted road to healing, singling out the incorporation of mindfulness into daily life. It has probably been the most important element of his restoration to good mental health.
He hesitates to say that the COVID-19 lockdown was a gift but adds that the time away from the touring road was greatly healing.
“I needed many thing to get well, and time was the biggest one of these,” Biss says. “This was the first time in my life that there were no concerts and therefore no deadlines. I was able to really nurture my relationship with music, which is impossible when you’re focusing on performing.”
Biss reflects that if he didn’t have a certain innate anxiety, he might not be as sensitive to music.
“In a way, anxiety enhances your art,” he says. “Just by nature I have an intense and anxious character, and that’s one of the reasons I talk about it. It’s not good or bad, it just is.”
“When you acknowledge (anxiety), it’s not crippling,” he adds. “I find that not turning away from any feeling or experience, however threatening, has been the way forward for me.”
Another aspect of healing was working on the audio book, which illuminated some of the questions and unscrambled the jumbled thoughts that were knocking around in his head, and proved invaluable to Biss’ road to wellness.
“Writing was cathartic and also useful,” Biss says. “I had been writing about music for quite a few years. There’s something about the process of trying to find the precise words to describe something so that it feels fundamentally true: when you go through this process you understand more clearly.”
The conversation takes a bit of a detour when Biss ponders about Beethoven himself, his own mental state, and what kind of mental health issues the great composer might have been diagnosed with in the modern age of psychology.
“There are lots of theories,” Biss says. “There’s no question that Beethoven was not socially adept whatsoever. He was self-centered, and he didn’t understand the point of niceties.”
“But music was his solace and also his reason for being,” Biss adds. “All of the things that were unfulfilled in Beethoven were expressed through his music. Even though he was a pretty miserable human being, the music is so idealistic. It expresses what life can and could be and should be. Even more than his genius, it’s the vision and idealism of Beethoven’s music that is unique.”
Unlike the solitary Beethoven, Biss has a devoted partner in his life, Christopher Biss-Brown, the curator of children’s literature at The Free Library of Philadelphia. “My husband was very helpful in seeing me through, helping me deal with things,” Biss says.
He says that, although the anxiety may never disappear completely, he will make an effort to take it easier on himself, to be more accepting.
“That’s the only way forward,” Biss says. “What’s amazing is that I have much more room in my life, so that I don’t feel ruled by this beast. It means I get to inhabit music much more fully, and that’s one of the greatest gifts of this whole experience. There isn’t anything in between me and my love of music, and my ability to communicate this love.”
“I make a real point of being open about (the anxiety), I talk about this whenever it comes about in interviews,” he continues. “We have a long way to go, and there’s still plenty of stigma around mental health. If I can be one tiny part of the process of tearing this down, I will be very pleased.”
Pianist Jonathan Biss, live Music Meditation, Wednesday, April 10, 3 p.m., at Wolfensohn Hall at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton. Free and open to the public. Pre-registration is required. puc.princeton.edu or 609-258-2800.
Book group discussion featuring Biss and Adam Haslett, hosted by the Princeton Public Library, Wednesday, April 10, via Zoom at 7 p.m. Free and open to the public. Registration is required. www.princetonlibrary.org
Healing with Music: Anxiety, Depression, and Music, featuring Biss and Haslett at Richardson Auditorium on the campus of Princeton University, Wednesday, April 24, 7:30 p.m. $25 general admission; $10 for students. puc.princeton.edu or 609-258-9220.
Jonathan Biss on the web: www.jonathanbiss.com.
