Dr. Anthony Trecek-King on Music, Emotion, and AI in Artistic Creation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/04/28

Dr. Anthony Trecek-King is an internationally active conductor, educator, and interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges choral and orchestral traditions, music technology, and cultural inquiry. Beginning as a cellist, he pursued dual studies in music and engineering before committing fully to a musical career, later integrating computational and technical expertise into creative practice. He has held academic appointments combining computer science and music, and has collaborated with elite ensembles such as the Netherlands Chamber Choir. His work spans six continents, emphasizing precision, emotional depth, and music as a vehicle for social reflection.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Dr. Anthony Trecek-King on where music moves from structure into art, why emotional communication matters more than technical perfection, and how performers internalize form to create meaning. Trecek-King argues that audiences seek human connection, not mechanical accuracy, and sees AI as a limited but useful assistant for idea generation, research, and artistic exploration. He maintains that live performance and human-made music will remain essential in an increasingly algorithmic age today globally. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There are the technical aspects to music, structure and all the elements of structure. At what point does that structure move from a technical, scientific framework of music into an art? What is the dividing line?

Dr. Anthony Trecek-King: Yes, that is a great question, because you are right. When I sit down to study a score, the first thing that I try to do is ask, ” What is the structure like? How is this thing put together? I look at it from a very high level, from the 10,000-foot view, and here are the general sections that exist in this piece of music.

Then I start to go into the granular level and look at the structure of each chord and the rhythm that goes with it. It is very technical, lots of writing things down, inscribing things, identifying motivic ideas and where they show up, even if they have been augmented, and so on.

Then you begin to lift yourself back out of it, and it is in that process of lifting yourself back out that the structure starts to disappear because it has been internalized. Then the real art-making happens.

That is an oversimplification of the process, because sometimes the piece itself dictates that you do not look at the structure first. Instead, you go after the emotional content, and by understanding the emotional journey you are on, the structure reveals itself.

So it really depends on the piece of music, as far as my process goes. Then, in rehearsals, as long as I have it clear, the people in front of me do not necessarily need another structural explanation. They need to understand what we are trying to communicate.

Ultimately, when people come to a performance, whether it is impromptu or highly formalized, they are not coming to hear the structure, the right notes, or the right rhythms. They are there to be moved. They want to have some emotional connection to what you are doing.

So it is more useful to talk to singers about that. Last night at MIT, when I was talking about these spirituals with the singers, I did not once mention any technical details. It was all about the emotion, where this music comes from, what we are trying to say with it, and why Tippett used it, what he was trying to do in that moment.

That is a much more powerful way to approach rehearsals, and it also yields much deeper results in performance.

Jacobsen: With the audience that is there, can you over-practice in the wrong way so that the technical mastery of the physical elements of performing does not connect with your emotion and becomes rote? For instance, there is a stereotype that many Asian pianists face: they do not want to be seen as playing robotically. Does this play out, on a more analytical note?

Trecek-King: That is a great question. It certainly does not with me, because I get bored easily.

It is not true that you can spend too much time on the technical side and never get to the other side. The reality is that the best performances are technically mastered, but also layer in emotion. You need both.

If you are emotionally giving your all and completely in it, mistakes are more easily forgiven, and people notice them less. But the idea is not to make mistakes.

There is no 100 percent score in a concert, ever. Some of the greatest of the greats have occasionally hit that, but generally it is more like 98 or 99. That one note was not perfectly in tune, but sometimes being slightly out of tune is exactly what you need in that moment to deliver the emotional impact.

Some people have a harder time with this approach and have to work a bit harder, particularly younger people, because they do not necessarily have the same emotional experiences as someone older. But that said, they can still do it if you teach them how.

That is the issue. We do not really teach that. School is often about solving the math problem, but not about asking why we are doing it or how it connects to feeling or meaning. We could be doing that more now; I don’t know. But it certainly was not the case when I was younger.

Jacobsen: It is really a point where life is richer after it is hard, yes? And how people experience “hard” differs. 

We have a lot of very rich people making commentaries about the place of the arts and the power of “power,” meaning more computing, more energy, and more sophisticated algorithms around what we are calling artificial intelligence.

There are claims about copyright and about systems that vacuum up the internet to build weights for neural networks and deep learning models. Based on that, fine.

My question is: Does this change the role of the music artist in the time of artificial intelligence, particularly in terms of generativity? Or does it change the richness of the tools that music artists have to express themselves?

Trecek-King: The AI question, that is a good one.

I will say that people will always crave human connection and human-generated art. One way to guarantee that you have human-generated art is to go to a concert and watch somebody do it in front of you.

So that is not going to go away. In some ways, it may be amplified, and more people may begin to crave that. I was speaking with Chorus America this morning, and they found that people are flocking to join choirs. Audition rates are up.

There is something about that. Do we know why? No, I do not know. So this is me speculating as to the reason.

Jacobsen: Neither do I.

Trecek-King: So this is all my speculating as to the why.

Jacobsen: Well, you know what? Neither do I. That is fair. But what about experts? They may not know, but their not knowing is grounded in more knowledge.

Trecek-King: Yeah, that is fair. What I am seeing is that not all “unknowns” are the same. What I am seeing is that people are missing that human connection, and one way to get it is through a chorus that comes together.

The entry level is so low. You do not have to be able to play an instrument. You bring yourself in and get going. It is something that you have experienced.

That said, we have to be careful with AI and not let it take over completely. But there are tools within AI. I have leveraged AI to begin the thought process. That is where it can be good.

Even with programming politically, if you are an expert in an area, it is easier to use AI in that area. When I ask it a question about music, composers, and pieces, I can look at it and say, “You are completely wrong. I know you are wrong, and here is proof. I do not know where you came up with that information.”

So if musicians and experts are using it within their own domain, it can be useful to generate ideas, especially when you are stuck. But at some point, for me as an artist, as a composer, someone who has written and arranged music, I need to get away from it and not have anything cloud my internal processing for the creative process.

It is good for idea generation, but when it comes to the actual work, it gets in my way. It will produce something, and while it might be something I would not have produced, and that is good, I still want my own brain to do it, to formulate the ideas fully, then sit down and make it work from there.

I used it the other day while doing some graphic design. I fed something into ChatGPT and asked for feedback. It gave me feedback, and I thought, “That is interesting.” I did not have it produce anything, but it gave feedback. Then I iterated, fed it back in, and asked again. That back-and-forth, getting an unvarnished opinion, even though it is not human, was helpful.

But I would never use it to produce what I am trying to create. That is just in the graphics world. In music, I would use it even less. Maybe it would be helpful for formal analysis, like asking, “Is this balanced?” or “What do you think of this?” It might give you perspectives you do not see.

Jacobsen: Biological evolution is much slower than current technological evolution. So what is the trajectory of the eventual differentiation between what we term natural intelligence and what we term artificial intelligence?

Trecek-King: Boy. You are certainly getting me outside of my area.

Jacobsen: You are the computer science guy.

Trecek-King: Yes, but I am not a computer scientist in artificial intelligence. That is a great question, actually. We are the ones programming the AI, so at some point… I do not have an answer for this one. I am sorry. I need to think about that.

Jacobsen: A really powerful system, even with contemporary algorithms and weights, could produce convincing outputs and simulacra. A significant portion of the population would say, and some already do, that something was written by a person, meaning natural intelligence, when it was actually produced by artificial intelligence.

And so the line, in that case, is based on the ability to deceive without the intent to deceive on the part of the AI.

In some sense, we may never know. It comes up in the literature all the time. They talk about neural correlates, meaning we do not know what is inside the black box. We know what it is like to be a person; we have our qualia, the “redness” of red, the “anger” of anger, and so on, but we only have neural correlates to those.

We may get very high-fidelity readings of that, but it is still just a higher-resolution version of the same idea of neural correlates. So, in some sense, internal experience is a black box when directed at another person, and similarly with these systems. So, it is like an intersubjective contract that we are applying.

Do you see AI’s future as a reasonable assistive agent for people who have relevant experience?

Trecek-King: Yes, I definitely do. As I mentioned before, I absolutely use AI as an assistant, as long as I do not do all my work there. More people probably do more with it, but you should use the tools and resources available to you.

If you are not using them, or at least understanding how they can be useful, then you are probably leaving something on the table. AI is here; it is not going away. You could leverage it to amplify the work that you are already doing.

Just be careful not to have it produce all of your work because it is deficient, at least for now. It can help you get things started, evaluate what you are doing, and act as a research assistant.

That said, you definitely have to be careful with that, because it will make up sources, as some have found out. So you need depth of knowledge in the area and an understanding of what you are asking it to do. That way, it is easier to spot the mistakes it is making.

Jacobsen: Are any AI music programs producing decent music, some minimum bar of enjoyability?

Trecek-King: To be honest, I do not use them, so I have stayed away a little bit. But from what I have heard, yes, there is some baseline level of music.

If you want something in the background, it is great. If you want something quick and entertaining, you can do that. I do not know if you would want it at the forefront.

Jacobsen: It is white bread. It is saltine crackers.

Trecek-King: Exactly.

Jacobsen: Have you used AI to help search obscure or unconventional avenues, places where you could explore, presenting different types of music, things you might not otherwise think of?

Trecek-King: Yes, certainly. Right now, I am looking at choral and orchestral music written by composers who primarily lived or were born in South Africa, outside the traditional South African choral singing tradition.

Trecek-King: It is in an area where my doctorate did not provide me with any basis to know anything about, so I need somewhere to start. I have asked friends who are there to send me resources, and that is great, it is a good place to start, but I need more. It is not enough.

So I asked AI, and the very first thing it generated was interesting. It pointed me to a piece written for the Cape Town Philharmonic and chorus. I am not sure I will program it or use that piece, but it pointed me to a composer and an ensemble that I can now explore more deeply on my own.

Could I have found that on my own? Yes, but I had tried, and I did not find that piece. So here is AI providing something useful. Now, the second piece it gave me was not real. You look it up and realize it does not exist. It is hallucinating. But the first one was genuinely useful and a great avenue for further exploration.

Jacobsen: What is your favourite one-line from a piece of music?

Trecek-King: That is the question I hate the most. It is like asking for a favourite piece of music or what moves you the most. It is like picking your favourite child. I know parents may have one, but they will not admit it.

What comes to mind right now is My Lord, What a Morning, in Hall Johnson’s arrangement for a cappella chorus. It is a phenomenal piece of music. The text is: “My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.”

It is sung so beautifully, “My Lord, what a morning, oh my Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.” I am paraphrasing, but that is the essence of it. It is such a beautiful piece, but it is about Revelation and the end of the world.

So you ask: how bad do things have to be for you to sing something so hopeful that you want the world to end? The complexity in that piece is profound. If you are enslaved, one way it all ends is that it ends for everyone. That is what you are hoping for, and you are singing about it joyfully.

It is such a powerful piece, created by a community of people in similar conditions, preserved and carried forward by those who heard it passed down, an ancestor who heard these songs from his grandfather and then put them into written form, carrying them into the 20th century.

Jacobsen: The only sentiment of equality is mutual, complete annihilation.

Trecek-King: That is it. But what a morning it would be.

Jacobsen: What a morning. Thank you very much for your time today. It was very nice to meet you.

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