Bumping Into... is a series of mini-chats with a variety of peeps that you might run into in some of our local music communities. (There's a bit of an intro and my thoughts behind the series here.)
How are you? Where are you?
Hello, friend. I'm well... I think? This is such a strange context for that question, Pandemic Reality. Dealing with a lot of anxiety, as I think many of us are. But I'm also very aware of my privilege in all of this. All things considered, I'm well. I'm in Toronto with my family. How are you doing?
What have you been up to since March or so?
We've been pretty thoroughly "locked down" since this all started. My partner is a midwife who has continued to work in community supporting folx through their pregnancies in different ways, so the rest of us have been extra careful in support of her work. Everyone working in health care needs some extra love in the best of times, of course, but right now... it's pretty intense.
Among the most memorable things of this whole time was marching in the Black Lives Matter protest with my family in May. What an extraordinary thing it was to be among all of those people, especially so early on in the pandemic, and feel safe. It would seem that I've contradicted my claim to being "extra careful" right away, but that actually wasn't the case at all. Seeing my kids take part in protests has been among the most inspiring things I've been able to witness as a parent and they all resonate deeply, but this one has a special place in my heart because of the amazing circumstances.
Beyond caring for my family, though, and going for walks with friends, I've actually managed to do a lot. I feel so lucky in so many ways. I was able to make some music with real live humans a few times during the summer months, which was good for my soul. I played an improvised duet in my backyard with my friend François Houle in June. He played with different folx as he drove across the country from Montréal to Vancouver raising money for some worthwhile charities. And then the good folx at Zula Presents in Hamilton presented the Imaginary Percussion Ensemble--Germaine Liu, Mark Zurawinski, and I--along with Nilan Perera and Fahmid Nibesh in September. That was in a gorgeous gazebo in Bayfront Park which was also the site of a beautiful project I got to work on around the same time with Donna Akrey and Megan English called Transistor. We had a grid set out in the park with audience members sitting at specific points, all properly distanced and safe. Folx on SoBi bikes rode choreographed pathways through the grid. The basket of each bike had a wonderful sculpture in it holding a speaker that sounded different loops that I had designed. The interactions of the different loops as the bikes moved around and through the audience was fantastic. And then just watching the bikes move together like that... it was wonderful. I love the combination of the profoundly beautiful with the properly silly. The plan is to work on the project some more in the near future and I'm really looking forward to it.
I also released a pair of albums in October with Alien Radio, a trio with James Meger on bass and François Houle on clarinet. They were recorded by my friend Jared Burrows in Vancouver before I moved back to Toronto at the end of 2019. Both of the albums end with a version of Steve Lacy's "Clichés," so we released Clichés vol I: Trio Music on my label, Oval Window Records and Clichés vol II: Trio Axiums on François' label, Afterday Audio. It's a great trio that I hope can work a lot "after this is all over".
I was also able to get into the studio when things were at their most open to record some duo music with Steve Sladkowski. Very safely. The last time we had played together was in 2017 at Track Could Bend, so this was a long-awaited treat. There's one more musical story you've played a part in. Thank you. for all of it.
Let's see... I'm bouncing around a bit here, but... I also made a fun thing for a festival called IF back in June. It was a 24-hour online festival that featured short videos that improvisers from all over the place sent in. The folks at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation put it all together. It was really a great thing. You can see my submission and read about how I made here:
There's another Guelph-based project I've been involved in with the folks at Silence--specifically Daniel Fischlin, Lewis Melville, Gary Diggins, Jeff Bird--making music about water. I contributed some recordings very early on in the pandemic playing drum set and percussion and then more recently I got to play and record with a new instrument designed especially for the project, basically a very convoluted set of dripping taps. I hope I get to play that thing again. You should see and hear it!
And I've been working, very slowly, toward getting Ken Aldcroft's Trio Records catalogue collected and up on Bandcamp for people to engage with. This will include a new double album called Selections from the Wire Cutter Suite that we recorded with the Convergence Ensemble back in 2016. I'm really excited for people to hear this music that I wrote for that band, but really for people to dig into all of Ken's music.
I guess the other thing is that I bit the bullet and bought some recording gear when this all came down the pipe. It was easy to see that this is where a lot of my energy was going to go while we were all locked down. It's been so much fun learning how to use it all. The IF thing was made with a ZOOM recorder and an aging digital SLR camera, but after that I started working with some microphones and an audio interface. I sent some tracks out to Jared Burrows in Vancouver for his album, Souvenirs de la Seine and then there is a duo recording that François Houle and I have been making remotely where I recorded all of the percussion tracks on my own. So much fun. And so much to learn!! The folx in Never Was--a quartet with Reknee Harrett, Madeleine Ertel, and Naomi McCarroll-Butler, and I--have been working on a sort of "exquisite corpse" recording project lately, too; passing tracks around. And there are a few more of these kinds of things in process with Friendly Rich, Andrew Furlong, Michael Herring, and Rebecca Hennessey. We're all trying.
As a composer, I've been working on a solo cello piece for Marina Hasselberg with the support of the Canada Council. That's been fascinating. Another huge learning curve. And then Germaine Liu and I have been commissioned to make a large ensemble piece together. The commission is a collaboration among GGRIL in Rimouski, Québec as well as ONCEIM in Paris, France and Mark Laver's student jazz ensemble at Grinnell College in Iowa. It's called "Quarantine Playground" and it's designed to be played in Zoom, which is a horrible place to make music together with other people. The piece uses all of the obnoxious things about Zoom as filters that play on the interactions the musicians can have in the music and turns all of that frustration on its head. Hopefully.
Perhaps the biggest thing of all is that I've started working toward a PhD through the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph. So I've also been studying a great deal and meeting online with a small group of brilliant and inspiring people to talk about improvisation in different ways. It's been heart-warming, to say the least, realising that deep friendships can develop even when conversations are mediated by computer screens.
I guess it's been a busy time, huh?
Have you found any new ways to do old things? How are you feeling about the shifts in how music is being made/shared/listened to?
Any works of art that have been a light for you in these times? Anything that's just been a good diversion?
I've been revisiting many of the albums that most inspired me when I was a younger human and playing along with them. That's been a trip.
And I've gotten pretty lost in the world of television, too. Like you, my partner and I fell in love with The Detectorists. What an extraordinary thing. We started re-watching Schitt's Creek, too. It's even more brilliant the second time through.
I've also been feeding my love for all things Star Trek, including Discovery (which is astonishingly good) and Picard (...), but also re-watching lots of the older shows. The re-watching has been good on anxious days when half-assed multi-tasking helps to occupy my wandering brain. Are you a Star Trek person?
And then before class started in September I read a bunch of Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemison, Zadie Smith, some Langston Hughes. There won't be much fiction reading in my life for a few years now, though, I fear. We listen to audiobooks in the car with the kids, so all my fiction will likely come that way.
How are you feeling about 2021?
I have a lot of hope for 2021. I don't know how else to feel, really. Without hope for a better world what have we got? As things start to turn I hope that we can get back out there, set aside so many of the worries that stopped us from connecting with one another more deeply before, and get down to the work of making things better. Together. I'm so fed up with the hatred and the fear, Joe. And I'm so inspired by #blacklivesmatter and #landback, so energised by the work being done in queer and trans communities all over the place to open up space for people to be themselves, so inspired by my own kids and their hunger for social justice, their openness and curiosity, the ways that they celebrate difference so naturally. I definitely have hope for the future.
Anything else we'd chat about if we bumped into each other?
Well, I'd ask you about all the things, of course. But that's not really possible in this format. I'd really like to thank you for this "Bumping into..." project, though. It's been a lot of fun reading people's submissions. I was reticent to send anything in, honestly, but the joy I've experienced reading what other people contributed inspired me to sit down and write something. You have a real knack for bringing people together, friend. I'm so grateful to you for all that you do.
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