Less perfection, more space. Ellie Consta.
Inspiring a younger generation to feel safe with self-expression and still be taken seriously. Her Ensemble - created by violinist Ellie Consta - is a space where authenticity reigns. Beautiful music is the result.
Who are you?
Oh God, I’m still working that out. I’m Ellie Consta. I’m a violinist. Actually, I just changed my Instagram bio to ‘violinist/arranger/director’, which I never imagined. I run Her Ensemble and I also arrange stuff for people sometimes. I do whatever violin-related stuff anyone will pay me for basically.
It all started during that first lockdown. I was having quite a tough time, like so many others - all my work stopped very suddenly, I didn’t know how I was going to pay my rent and I was also really questioning if I even wanted to pursue a career in music. Was it all really worth it? So I was literally open to trying anything at this point – I even started giving my neighbours stick n’ poke tattoos. Maybe I could just do that for a living?
think I had a lot of creative energy and I didn’t really know where to put it. But it always came back to art or music, in some form. I realised that I do love classical music, I do love playing the violin. I love playing with others, but I didn’t like all aspects of the scene I was in. It wasn’t to do with the content, it was to do with the context.
I was living with my friends who are singers/songwriters and artists in the pop world and I started writing string parts for their songs for fun. I started working in a completely different way to what I had been used to in the classical world. It was so different on so many levels and that made me question why we do things so differently. Is there a reason, or is it just tradition? I realised I wanted to take the bits that I loved from both worlds, combine them and put my own spin on things.
Around the same time, I stumbled across this statistic - just 3.6% of the classical music pieces performed worldwide in 2019 were written by women. In 2020, it rose to 5%, which is the highest percentage ever recorded. I was like, ”Woah…!” And also - “how have I never realised that?” I’d been through music school, music college, the profession…yet I could only name a handful of female composers. How many classical gigs had I done and never questioned why none of the music I was playing was written by women? Pretty much everything I’d played was written by dead white men.
I guess all these things combined lit a fire in me. I felt like I’d been incredibly passive without even realising and I didn’t want to continue just floating by. I think that played a big part in it. And combined with working in this new way, writing string parts and improvising as well, I was like - fuck it. I don’t want to be passive for fear of making mistakes. That was a big part of it. Then I just asked my friends if they were interested!
So, your primary aim is to highlight women composers?
That’s where it all stemmed from. Then, I was comparing aspects of the pop and classical industry. I was thinking about things like - why is the concert dress gendered in orchestra? How does this uphold the patriarchy? What would I do if I were non-binary? Why have I never thought of that? Why are women not allowed to show their shoulders or ankles? - I’ve been told numerous times throughout both my studies, and in the profession that it looked bad on stage or it was inappropriate. That I didn’t look professional.
Can you imagine someone telling Dua Lipa that showing her shoulders is unprofessional?! I’ve never been told off for wearing trousers, but I have been told that my skirt or trousers are inappropriate because they weren’t long enough. Unsurprisingly, I still feel self conscious showing body hair in orchestra.
Quite recently I got told off because my heeled shoes were not elegant enough for the stage. Women often have to wear pop socks, to hide bare skin. It sounds so ridiculous when you say it out loud, but I just used to think it was normal and “that’s just the way things are” without really thinking about why.
Did you ever as a kid do a ‘go to work with your parents’ day? I tried imagining what it would be like to take one of my non-classical friends to orchestra with me. Even just trying to explain orchestral etiquette is so weird and ridiculous. It’s hard to zoom out and see the bigger picture whilst you’re in it though.
Having the ability to express your authentic self is another of the main aspect of Her Ensemble. Creating a space for people to be able to do that is fundamental. I wanted to create a space where people could take up space and be ‘too much’ and flourish. The thing with the dress code - it’s still in lots of places. Tails for men and formal/long black for women. One of my friends has just got a job in a really big orchestra and they’re having these conversations now, but it must be really tiring having to explain the need for visibility the whole time.
Just basic things like the importance of de-gendering dress codes. I can’t imagine having to do a trial or going in as a freelancer and having raise these issues. A lot of people are worried about making a fuss and not being asked back. It’s a real issue. I think as a group, we’ve come into our own over the past year. I had lots of ideas that have changed over time. I think at the beginning I found it challenging to verbalise everything that I was thinking or questing, concisely. I think I was worried about having all the ideas clear and perfect, but we are all constantly evolving and changing and actually I think it’s a good thing for ideas to change.
I don’t think there’s a specific end goal, I just want to explore and perform more music written by women that’s been overlooked and make a positive impact on the gender gap in the industry by making space for people of marginalised genders. Also, I want to make all this incredible music more accessible to people, because it’s often really hard to find as the same amount of time/energy/money/research hasn’t been invested, so the sheet music’s really expensive or hard to find or it’s not been published or there aren’t many or any recordings etc.
So I just want to make it easily accessible, and more accessible to a wider audience. Not just to a niche group of people. The way that music is programmed in a lot of orchestras is - they’ll have the main bit like a big Mahler symphony (which is obviously amazing), but then if a piece written by a woman is programmed, it will often feel like the token bit on the side, and more often than not it’ll also be a contemporary work, which feeds into this false impression that: 1. There just weren’t many female composers before the 1900s, and 2. That there just isn’t much music. But, the reality is that there is a plethora of music written by women, dating all the way back to 450 BC.
I’d love to see more large scale works by women being the main focus point. I’ve heard people make comments like ‘ugh..another atonal thing, written by a woman’.
Through creating this, I think I’ve definitely gained confidence. Before this, I was scared of doing things wrong (still am to be fair) - I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but I can see how this can limit me. You don’t play music to - the aim isn’t to be perfect. It’s to share a story or connect. It does all really stem back to working with my friends in the pop industry. The majority of them haven’t had the same classical training, or any training at all. I was taken aback by the amazing musicality, the love and how much energy they put into their work.
What has the reception been like?
Really nice. Surprisingly supportive. The majority of our audience is between 18-30 which is really cool. It’s also a much more diverse audience than your standard orchestral gig which is like, white and over 50. I’d like to reach the more traditional audience too of course, but a big part of the group is about creating hope for a better future.
I really hope to inspire a younger generation to feel like they can express their authentic selves and still be taken seriously in the industry. I want to show that classical music is for everyone, and you don’t need to look a certain way to fit in. And of course I hope that in the future people will be like “duh, obviously there have been loads of female composers” and we won’t have to push for equality.
What changes would you like to see happening within the profession?
Having more of a gender balance in the programming of concerts and the people we see on stage would be amazing. But also more women leading projects and generally we need more of a mix in genders behind the scenes too. Also, obviously less harassment.
We recently asked our followers on Instagram if and how they change their appearance to fit into the classical scene. The majority of replies were from women. It ranged from covering skin, hiding tattoos and piercings. One woman was asked to dye their hair back to a more ‘natural’ colour. Someone got told that their hair was too big. People are worried about speaking up, because they’re scared they won’t be asked back and lose out on work.
You shouldn’t have to choose between feeling uncomfortable and losing out on work. There are so many things. Just to create more space for people to be themselves, not to suppress parts of themselves.
Who are you?
I don’t know. I’m just fumbling around, trying to find meaning. God, that’s so hard. We’re all art, aren’t we? Art is life and I guess I’m part of that, on a very micro micro level.
Sometimes, when I feel that everything’s too much, I just remember that we are a tiny part of a constantly expanding universe and we are actually the constant, and time is just passing through us. So… that’s quite nice I guess?
photo: shane benson
It’s that time…
We made it. We’re in one piece and we hope you are too. This pandemic is kicking our collective butts and we are planning to take a moment (or two) (or three) to sit down and breathe.
Thank you to all of our amazing interviewees and a special thanks to JAZZ.FM91. Talking to their wonderful hosts has shown us that the special magic that is radio still exists. Their ability to hold us, safe and sound, is priceless.
Now - go! Eat, drink, be merry. Repeat. Endlessly. You deserve it. See you in the new year.
I’m the man on the radio. Danny Marks.
It’s safe to say that Danny Marks is much more than just a voice on the radio. In our eighth post in association with JAZZ.FM91, Danny - program host of ‘bluz.fm’ - spoke to us about his path to radio, his path to performance and how playing what feels right - in person and over the airwaves - allows him to continually reach an ever-appreciative audience.
Who are you?
I am a lifetime music person. Music – and humour – are what make me work. That’s what I try to contribute. Do contribute. Music and humour. I’m the man on the radio. ‘Take my hand, understand – I’m the man on the radio. You’re just in time for the show and I wouldn’t start without you. One by one, that’s how it’s done. We’ll have fun together. You and me – the sweet frequency. Good company, whatever the weather. I’m the man on the radio.’
That’s in my nature – to write and sing and entertain people. It’s always been.
When did it start?
I think when I was a very young lad. I remember seeing a fellow on TV – a very stiff guy (Ed Sullivan), come out and introduce another man who did some scat singing (Louis Armstrong – my first musical hero). I said to my mom – ‘this is it!”. One year I dreamt that BB King died. It was 1970, I think. I woke up feeling terrible. We were on the road and I saw the newspaper headlines – “Satchel – dead” – and I thought ‘I had a dream, like a premonition, but – wrong person! What is this telling me? Same spirit! My god!”
I’d just read this book: BB King – The Rise and Fall – and it said that BB King and Satchel were the same in their respective genres. They superseded the music that they were supposed to be limited to. They connected the world with love. That’s why I dreamt that in 1970. I’m a dreamer!
What’s it been like for you, as an entertainer, during this time?
It used to be that, if I went a week without playing, I felt like I did not know who I was. Now it’s been almost a year and a half of maybe three performances. The things that have saved me in that area are radio – I’ve put much more into thinking about it, being there and I see how important it is. I feel that my purpose with radio is to reach so many people through JAZZFM91.
The freedom I have to pick any song! A while ago, they gave me an extra hour. My radio model was going to be ‘All the blues and nothing but the blues!’ I noticed that the station’s model at the time was ‘The colour of jazz’ – what about ‘All the colours of the blues’? That’s me! So, they gave me an extra hour. I call it ‘Beyond the Fringe’. I play music from around the world and identify where it came from, like Algeria or Zimbabwe or Cuba or Memphis… I’m having a ball with that and people are responding like – ‘wow! Music beyond borders!’
The other thing that’s been important to me is my personal relationship with the woman who came into my life. I’m not sure what brought us together. She’s from the other side of the world. She was born into a great heritage and traditions. She was a big person in her homeland in Sri Lanka.
We found some commonalities which has been wonderful. We perform for each other but her love and support is what has kept me from going off the rails. It’s not easy to be a person who is paid to speak and then know when they have to keep their mouth shut!
How did you get into radio?
Radio was in my blood, because my dad, as a kid (I still have a diploma of his that says ‘Master Scientist’!), was often told off by his mother – ‘Ben! Stop playing that boogie-woogie and get back to…!’ Dad would get a crystal set, in the 1920s, and listen to the Cotton Club with Cab Calloway. He passed along that love to us, with a short wave radio and the art of radio.
Imagine, as a kid, you have your transistor radio with you, hidden under your pillow. ‘Goodnight everybody” and then you’ve got “This is 77 WABC, this is Cousin Brucie comin’ at you! And here’s the latest two-sided hit from the Beatles!” When I was twelve years old, I was part of a radio play at the national broadcaster, CBC. They had crinkled up stuff to make it sound like a fire, coconut shells for the horses’ hooves. a little funny door on a platform to open and close. We gathered around the mic and the performers had their arms around each other’s shoulders. I’d been to drama school, but radio – it seemed so intimate.
Being on that side of the mic – I always wanted to.
Then I was discovered by CBC, in 1987, by David Malahoff, my mentor there. He brought me into a radio show called “Basic Black” with Arthur Black and Shelagh Rogers (one of the greatest voices in Canadian radio). They taught me. We had beautiful programming together. One day, one of the producers gave me a peck on the cheek and I got a call from CJRT (that was about to become JAZZFM91), twenty years ago, this past September. They said ‘you can have your own program’. It was such a wonderful blessing.
That’s how I got started, but that’s also how I got started at JAZZFM91.
What is it about being a broadcaster – a program host? What does that do for you?
Well, the idea that you can tell a story through a succession of songs on the radio, is not unlike how I would work a set at my performances. Except I do write them down (on the radio) after I choose them. At the gig, I just play whatever feels right. It’s so beautiful to hear one song dovetail into another and the mood shift. What you look for in joining music to tell a story.
I was thinking the other day – it’s a forest of trees. You get those things in succession and they tell a story that leads the listener on. You don’t have to say, “coming up!...” on the program, because they’ve been drawn along. You feel the forward movement.
That’s a lot of what music is like, too. You feel the forward movement. There’s so much to programming and hosting and listening. When I’m interviewing, when I’m done talking, I back off the mic and show them, physically, that they’re clear to have their time and state their idea. And then, when I’m done talking, I’ll make it wrap so that it’s more seamless.
In these past 18 months or so, have you felt any responsibility to your listeners?
I’ve felt that I’ve had to keep a lot of things under wraps, to look at the big picture. I feel that a lot of things aren’t adding up properly, to my critical thinking. I don’t trust the way the world is being handled because of all the terrible news stories and the willingness to focus on the negativity from people who are often charged with looking after us, so to speak.
There are times when we really need to help each other. I have some friends that are going through so much heartbreak, right now. And I’ve seen so many people lose friendships because they can’t agree to disagree. Let’s say we don’t agree on this, but how can we move forward?
As a host, in this period, have you received anything back from your listeners?
I want everyone who contacts me to feel that they have a personal, one-on-one relationship. Quite a lot of people have contacted me, and I know it’s the same for my colleagues at JAZZFM91. I have people that ask me all kinds of things and also tell me that I’ve been an island in the storm.
That’s what radio is – a personal connection with anybody. It’s not a bunch of people, together at a concert, holding their Bic lighters up. It’s somebody in the safety of their room. I’m in the safety, on the other end of the mic, where I love to be, just imagining that I’m reaching somebody. And that the music is making a positive difference. The companionship – it’s a lifeline.
What has the ‘magic of the pandemic’ brought to you?
I think it’s brought me a renewed sense of purpose, to try and bring a message that we unite people. Or, at least, reach them, individually, where they are. To do that calming, reassuring thing. Life is just a blink of an eye, with an eternity on either side.
I think about what the end of life is going to be like and I don’t think there’s much on the other side, so, it’s making me really appreciate the relationships with the special people who are closest to me. Also, my special part in life, through the radio. Being able to reach people, because I can no longer go out on stages.
Radio is that one beautiful place where, sure – it’s always changing, but it’s a moment where we share.
When everything can be accessed at any time, there’s nothing that’s really a destination. I’d like to be the destination-station. “This train leaves the station at 7. Back at midnight. You won’t catch this train again.”
It’s really made me realize the importance of the moment because, boy, there’s a lot of down time, now. For everyone. To walk around streets where everybody’s masked is a sad sight.
Who are you?
I’m the man on the radio.
I’m Daniel Shalom Marks. Daniel means ‘God is my judge’. Shalom was given to me by mother who told me – “I want you to bring peace to the world”. Marks comes from Markovici, I believe. Or Mars – the Roman god of war. That was the name given to my ancestors, I believe in Romania. I’m named after the god of war and my middle name is peace. So, I’m quite a novel person. War and peace. And God is my judge.
Like an onion, you could keep unwrapping me and I’d keep going for quite a while. There are a lot of layers to who I am.
Take my hand,
Understand
That I’m the man
On the radio.
You’re just in time
For the show.
I wouldn’t start
Without you.
Come with me,
And we shall see.
We can go
Where you want to go.
The man on the radio
Will take you there.
©Danny Marks
Always something to love. Ella Taylor.
“I’m just finding myself unable or unwilling to accept anything less than what I need to be nourished and what I deserve.” That. Ella Taylor, soprano (there’s a joke in there - you’ll have to read the post!) is in the room - to sing, to be respected, like everybody else. Our chat with them gave us the artist, the human, the soul. And some rather fine zoom etiquette. Enjoy!
photo: emma brown photography
Who are you?
I’m Ella Taylor. My pronouns are they/them. I’m a freelance classical soprano.
Why singing?
I don’t think I’ve ever thought of doing anything else. I’ve been singing in church choirs since I was ten. One of my parents is a freelance professional musician, the other one is head of music at a secondary school. My grandad studied music at university, builds his own viola da gambas (or, he used to). My uncle plays recorders (don’t ask me why)…
So, I didn’t stand a super good chance of not being in music at all. It turns out I’m pretty good at it and I really like doing it.
If I start a project or I start learning something and I think ‘this is going to be awful’, I find that there’s always something to love that makes me love the whole thing. Even if it’s just one bar, you can find a way.
If your path was predestined, did it ever occur to you to step out of line?
I would say that, just around now, I’ve realized that you don’t have to do what everybody else does. In the strictest sense. Recently, I was filming an improvised piece, with a bunch of singers, who were from gospel to musical theatre to house. And they were all trans. And, really, our voices had nothing in common, apart from the fact that we wanted to come together and do some cool stuff.
If you’d had told me, when I went to music college, that that would have been something that I would get paid for, I would have probably said, ‘No. I only want to do contemporary classical music. I like singing stupid hard notes.” But you know what? Sometimes, when you’re improvising and you land on a major chord and you just vibe that major chord out for the whole thing. And you just create something beautiful.
I think if you don’t try and forge your own path, you’ll never be satisfied.
Was this a conscious choice or ‘I found myself here, it’s kind of cool, I’ll just keep doing it’?
I’d say that I discovered that there was more music that I liked singing - even if it was merely Mozart (!). As for where I landed with this filming – I know a lot of classical musicians because I’ve been surrounded by them my whole life. I didn’t feel like I knew anybody trans and I was deeply feeling that loneliness. I know a few people, and they’re brilliant. But I wanted that community. And I really wanted it in a way that was making music, because that’s what I love to do most. And I love being trans, so…
That wasn’t really a conscious decision. There was a call out for it and I thought - that could be fun. It would be something completely different. and I’d get paid doing it, which is kind of a nice bonus.
Every year of my life that passes, I’m just finding myself unable or unwilling to accept anything less than what I need to be nourished and what I deserve.
As you go forward in your career, how many decisions about what you do and with whom, are informed by ‘we’ll have Ella, because Ella is the poster child for trans musicians/it will make our production look really cool”?
First of all, I would say (completely without ego), is that I’m aware of the position that I’m in and the person that I am and the responsibility that that holds and the poser that that could have. Therefore, I do think that it’s very important that the work that I will take on in the future (or – am taking on now) is done with the knowledge that those thoughts about being the first trans whatever or whoever (which probably isn’t true half the time) – those thoughts will be put on to me by other people. I won’t be putting those thoughts onto myself.
I’m very proud of what I’m trying to do in this industry and I think people put a lot on that sole part of my identity without considering who I am, as an artist, as a whole. the work that I’ve been trying to create for myself – that’s great. I do that to uplift that trans part of myself, I do that to uplift other trans voices. But the more ‘traditional’ work that I do, where I’m just being hired to go and sing something that is already pre-existing or I can’t curate – I’m just there to sing it.
I’m in the room, to be respected, just like everybody else. If you really think you’re going to sell more tickets to a show by having a trans person in it, then you have not taken stock of the hostile environment towards trans people in 2021 in the UK. Is what I think.
I just can’t help but feel like - maybe performers who are also minorities will always have this complex around this. It would be all well and good to say (and maybe it should be) that “I’m Ella and I just sing.” That would be lovely. But, until the Royal Opera House hires any other trans singers, if you’re the only one on the stage, that automatically becomes a message. Partly because of how lacking the rest of the stage is. I notice it. Mostly with how white most castings are, to be honest.
It becomes a political choice because you’re othering them because you’re the only one person. There’s also a sense of ‘yeah, I want to make it better’. I want more people to be able to do that.
How much of this is your responsibility?
I don’t know – is the honest answer.
How much of the responsibility are you willing to take on?
I’m definitely not willing to take on as much as it takes. I’m not a selfless enough person for that act. If all I did was be an activist to get more trans people in opera, I wouldn’t do any singing. I’d just be an activist. And I like singing, so I’d like to do that as well.
I you didn’t sing, what would you be doing?
I cannot even imagine. I wouldn’t live in London if I wasn’t singing. I wouldn’t have met my partner if I wasn’t singing, so I wouldn’t be with her. I wouldn’t have studied music – no, I probably would have studied music! (I was never good at anything else!)
I wouldn’t have lived my entire adult life if I wasn’t singing. So it’s hard to know. Also, I have no memory of my childhood. that whole thing with trauma where you block out years of your life. So there’s that. I don’t know. Maybe I’d just be in a regressive teenage state…
This past year and a bit of pandemic – what did it give you?
The first part of it gave me zoom etiquette.
There was just a lot of silence. I didn’t really do anything. I won’t say it’s the first time in my life I’ve been unmotivated to sing. I really, really just couldn’t and didn’t want to. Everyone was like – “I’m going to learn SEVEN operas.” Why??? Why would you?! why do that, when you could not?!
I don’t know how I got started again. I had the National Opera Studio still in my life. That thing that you find so annoying at the time – having to be somewhere at a certain time and do a certain thing, is actually a very good structure when, suddenly you look out your window and you can’t do anything.
Honestly? The rest of the pandemic – it gave me work. Here’s the caveat – I’m very grateful for it. I’m less grateful that I have to say that I’m grateful. It’s good to have work. And I’m sorry for people that don’t have work. But work is very tiring. Let’s not pretend that work isn’t annoying, sometimes.
In that silence, before you got the work, was there a reflection on this path that you’ve taken and where you’ve ended up?
Definitely. If you’re a performing artist, who performs to people, who are you when that audience goes away? Who are you performing for? Like I said, why are you learning seven operas, when you could just not? Some people were working on the craft of what we do. But I feel like there’s only so much of that. You can only ‘craft’ yourself so much before you just have to be thrown out to wolves and do it.
Who were you when the performing went away?
I think I was a naïve, young artist at an opera studio. Who thought their path had been laid out before them and that everything would be fine. And then, I was still a young artist at an opera studio, but I was having zoom coachings on repertoire, that I was learning for, seemingly, no reason and I didn’t know what to do.
I auditioned for the 2020 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, maybe four days before everything shut down. I forgot about it. I thought I’d sung terribly, anyway. I told my pianist to fly home to New Zealand. And then, I got into the semi-finals and suddenly I had something to think about that wasn’t - ‘what happens next’.
It became the way I like to work (which is probably not the best) – slightly rushed, lots of stuff to learn, just get it done and it will all turn out alright in the end. It worked, so that was good!
I think if I hadn’t had that opportunity, I really don’t know where I’d be now.
Who are you?
Whenever my friend Richard sees me, he always says, “It’s Ella Taylor, soprano!” I am a person who likes to sing, who like to cook, who doesn’t like when people don’t understand what it means to be an intersectional feminist. Until people understand that and get their ass in gear, I’m just going to have to keep being a soprano who also has to call people out for their bullshit.
It’s time for the happy music. Glen Woodcock
Glen Woodcock has been hosting The Big Band Show on JAZZFM.91 for 45 years. Forty. Five. Years. His knowledge, appreciation and continual curiosity of this genre is boundless. In our seventh post in association with JAZZFM.91, we chatted to Glen about his journey to this point. There were a few stops along the way - his storytelling is THAT GOOD. Enjoy!
Who are you?
I’m a Canadian. Older. I have been a journalist all of my adult life and a broadcaster for about three-quarters of that.
I started off, post high school, at the Ryerson Institute’s Radio and Television Arts program. It was common course, first year, with the journalism department. So, you got a little taste of everything.
Towards the end of the year, the head of the department (in one of his lecture labs) grabbed me by the elbow and said “I want you to switch to journalism from RTA. Take a look at your marks. All of your really good marks are in journalism.” So, I switched.
When I got through the three year course at Ryerson, I got a job with the newspaper I had learned to read on, in Toronto – the old Toronto Telegram. I had the very job that I wanted. Seven or eight of us from the graduating class got jobs at the Telegram that spring.
I started in the sports department and did a number of other things – I was the entertainment editor when I was 25 years old. I had about 20 people working for me (they were all older!). I guess I did okay as the entertainment editor. Then I was made associate editor of a new magazine we had started. And then the paper folded.
When I was at Ryerson, I had worked for most of my years there, part time for a Toronto radio station. They called me and said “What are you going to do, now that you don’t have a job?”. I said “Look for one!” They invited me in and said, ”We’ve always liked you, we’ve always kept our eye on you. We’d like you to do a couple of audition tapes. If we like what we hear, we’d like to hire you as our news director.”
I came out of that radio station, just off Yonge Street. I just felt so good. I had a job! I wasn’t going to be unemployed! I hailed a cab, got in and the cab driver said “Hey man - what happened to you? I see you walking down the street, and you’re walking on air!” I told him I worked at the Telegram and it looked like my future was going to be secure. He drove me back to the newspaper and refused to take any money.
We had talked about this for a long time – just amongst ourselves at the Telegram. Our managing editor was instrumental in getting the financing together to start a new tabloid paper in place of the Telegram. He offered me a job. So now, I’m torn. Radio versus newspaper. An opportunity to start a new daily newspaper from scratch, in 1971. I guess I had ink in my veins – I went with the offer from the Sun and worked there for most of the rest of my career.
In 1976, not-for-profit radio station CJRT-FM, which at one time had been the Ryerson station I trained on, offered me the big band show and I’ve been doing it ever since, for 46 years.
Why Big Band?
Well, it’s a long story. It’s 1958. I’m 15 years old. My sister, who is three years older, is going skiing with the young people from her church. They invited me to come along. On the way home, the guy who was driving the car, asked me what kind of music I liked. It’s 1958. I’m 15 years old. I like rock ‘n’ roll.
He had the radio on and it was a Glenn Miller tune – I think it was ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. He asked if I liked Glenn Miller. Of course, everybody’s heard of Glenn Miller. So I said, yes. He asked if I’d ever really listened to the music. I had to admit that I hadn’t. It was just kind of background music. So, he said, “Listen right now. With all your ears.”
I was hooked. From that moment on. I didn’t have a record player at home. I got a part time job and saved my money until I could buy one. The first album I bought was ‘Glenn Miller in Hollywood’. I would save up and buy big band albums and read about it and learn about it.
So, when I heard from CJRT, asking if I could do this, I had a pretty good record collection of my own to draw from. I didn’t just need the station’s albums. I learned so much from my listeners in those first couple of years. There were bands that I’d never heard of, songs that I’d never heard of. It really opened my ears.
I was, I guess, 31 when I started doing the show. I started hosting station events – big band dances and things like that and people would ask me, “How does a kid like you know so much about this music?” I followed my Uncle Harry’s advice: ‘always have a hobby where you can make money’. I took that advice to heart.
What is the age range of your audience?
Younger than it used to be. 46 years ago, most of my listeners had grown up with this music – they’d grown up with Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. My audience has gotten younger and the music that I play has changed – because of them. I play an awful lot of modern big bands that I didn’t play, back at the beginning.
The CD revolutionized everything. Bands that couldn’t afford to make a record, now could.
The audience has changed. I now have the third generation of listener. “I listen to this and I’m hearing what my grandfather would tune in to, every weekend. And now my kids are listening, too!” I think that’s just so wonderful.
I had one woman write in during a fundraising campaign – “I listen with my small children and they bug me all Sunday afternoon, saying ‘when is it time for the happy music?’” For the most part, it is happy music. For the most part, swing is happy.
As a broadcaster, especially through this pandemic, did you experience any responsibility towards your audience? Did your audience response change to what you were putting out and, in turn, did you have a different ‘job’?
No. At one time, I had politicized some comments on my show, which I stopped doing. Nobody wanted that. And that was a result of my being the associate editor at the Toronto Sun – in my last years there we always put answers on our letters to the editor. I was just used to adding my two cents to something, even when it wasn’t called for.
I stopped doing that. I didn’t think anybody wanted to hear about the pandemic or to have me put my two cents worth in about something that was already in the news. So, it became much more focused on the music.
The only time that I moved away from that was last year – 2020, when my wife was very ill. I told my audience. They’ve been with me for so long, we’re like family. The response from them was absolutely overwhelming. I still get emails today asking how she’s doing. (She’s doing very well!)
I just thought that that was something that I had to share with them, because I’d shared so many other things. They responded overwhelmingly. It was quite moving. I was very touched.
As far as working remotely, I had been doing the show from home for a couple of years, when the pandemic hit. We had moved just outside of Ottawa and I was used to doing the show from home because it was too far to drive in. I was used to doing the show from home, in my little studio, all by myself, with the door shut!
I did miss going into the station to see the people and the only time we could do that was when we were doing fundraising campaigns. I couldn’t have guest hosts – and I want to. I used to have band leaders or singers to come in and co-host with me. We’ll get back to it some day.
Broadcasting from home – broadcasting, full stop – who are you talking to?
On the Sunday show (five hours) – in the first hour, I’m talking to you, because you’re listening in your kitchen, preparing dinner. Or the whole family is sitting at the kitchen table, listening as they eat that dinner. I’ve had so many people tell me over the years that that’s how they listen. That was fixed in my mind. I was talking to you while you were doing something else, and I had to do things that would grab your attention.
I’ve never played anything that I didn’t like. So, it’s a great privilege to be able to inflict my taste in music on an unwary public.
Toronto has changed in the 46 years I’ve been doing it. The population of Toronto has changed. There are things I have never played and never will. I’m more sensitive to the listening audience. The demographic has changed.
The ability to adapt in this particular profession is important – not only in embracing the new, but being to discard what doesn’t work anymore.
You have to change. I’ve changed. The music that I play has to change. I can’t just play the music that was made in the 30s and the 40s. there are far more Canadian bands that are recording than ever before. And they’re good. And they deserve to be heard. I love finding new bands. New stuff. New material.
I’ve never played anything I didn’t like. I go back to what Duke Ellington said – it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. I met Duke Ellington once. He was playing at the Royal York Hotel in the Imperial Room for a week. He invited me and my girlfriend at the time up to his suite, after his last set. Just a charming man. He convinced me that I should try the drink that he credited with his longevity: a real Coke, poured into a tall glass with four or five heaping teaspoons of sugar. I pretended to like it…
When I was a 25 year old entertainment editor, Toronto’s best known publicist (who had the Royal York Hotel as an account) would come into my office and try to sell me a story on whatever failed Las Vegas act they were bringing in – I would say I’m not interested. “What the **** do I have to do to get you to cover and act in the Imperial Room?” I said, “Here’s what you have to do: you have to bring in Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald…” He went back to the hotel and they bought the idea.
That was the policy in the Imperial Room for about ten years. I never had to pay to go. I was always given a seat. In the front row. It was a very successful policy! I got to meet these people. I had some of my reporters do interviews with Count Basie. I did Buddy DeFranco, myself (he was leading the Glenn Miller orchestra at the time).
I’m quite proud of that. This kid editor – what was I supposed to know about big band? Well, I’d been listening to it since I was about 15. I knew what I wanted to hear. I was never going to go or send one of my reporters to cover these second rate Las Vegas acts at a first rate hotel. Maybe somebody there had been thinking along the same lines.
I met Ella Fitzgerald. The acts at the Imperial Room opened on a Monday night. I couldn’t go to her opening, so I thought, I know what time they rehearse, I’ll just go along to her rehearsal. So I went along, into the Imperial Room and sat down, inconspicuously.
When they finished their number, she walked over and said “I’m sorry, but I just don’t let anyone sit in and listen to my rehearsals.” I told her that I couldn’t come to her opening that night, so she forgave me and let me stay. I’m probably the only person who Ella allowed to stay at her rehearsal, from the media.
Today’s younger musicians – especially Canadians – they’re playing music that they love, just as I did. Not necessarily popular with the record buying public, but with the listening public. They’re so appreciative of what we do at JAZZFM.91. We put their music on the radio. For anyone around the world to hear.
That’s part of our mandate. We have to keep education our listeners that there is stuff out there, beyond what they know. If it’s good, I’ll play it. If I don’t like it, I won’t!
it is part of our mandate at the radio station, to introduce the public to very talented musicians, who they might otherwise never hear. They were thinking, a little while ago, of changing our slogan “Canada’s jazz station” to something else. I said – how can you? That says it all. That’s what we are. Why would you want to change? And we didn’t. And I hope we won’t. Everybody across the country and around the world can hear us. One way or another.
That’s the modern beauty of radio. When I was a kid, I was in love with radio. My mom always told this story: when I was two years old, she couldn’t find me. She looked everywhere in the house. She was standing in the living room wondering where I could be. She could hear some kind of faint music. She followed the source and found me on the floor, hidden behind an arm on the chesterfield, with my ear up against the speaker. Radio has always fascinated me.
Who are you?
I can’t put it into words, but I’ve always known who I am. And what I am. I haven’t always lived up to the person I believe I am. I’ve tried. I’m a much calmer, much happier, much more peaceful person than when I was young. I don’t feel any different to when I was 50. (Although, if you could put me in my 50 year old body now, I bet I would know the difference!)
I like who I am now. All of my regrets are well in the past. I’d like to think that I’m a good person, and that over the years, I’ve made a lot of people happy.
Communication, connection, healing. Rachel Hynes
‘Breath-mind-body connection. How life events affect us and how the body tries to mend itself.’ Rachel’s experience of this - both professionally and personal - informs the connectivity and depth of her work. Singing for breath, singing for health, singing for life. More of this, please.
Who are you?
My name is Rachel Hynes. Who am I? That’s a really good question. We were talking about this at the start of (the first) lockdown and whether as a result of the pandemic and now the complications caused by Brexit, surrounding freedom to travel and work in Europe, people have the same desire to perform any more.
I think I went through this journey of grief and indecision quite a few years ago, and on my own – whether I wanted to perform or not anymore – firstly in the aftermath of vocal rehabilitation from a serious allergy, then when my family life imploded.
The question of ‘why do I do this’ and ‘who do I do this for’ – that’s something I’m still working on both professionally and personally, but I think it has shaped the way I have moved forward in my singing life.
A big life-changing trauma made me reassess things, as I was trying to survive, recover both physically and mentally, and still work – ‘perform’ and earn money. It was quite a lonely experience. Faced with ‘do you want to perform any more ‘ and ‘do you have the confidence to perform anymore’…my confidence disappeared completely.
I now know it was intrinsically linked with events in my personal life as I was always having to ‘perform’ – act in a certain way in order to survive in a very toxic environment, putting on an act to the outside, that everything was ‘ok’.
Now that I no longer needed to do this, the need to ‘perform’ in a costume on a stage in order to help me survive was no longer there, but was the desire to still do it as prevalent?
At the same time, there were other interesting and inspiring elements in my work that I needed to explore – my singing for health work. That inspiration came from working on a brand new opera created collaboratively with the medical world, about a man with dementia. It rekindled that passion for performing that I thought I was losing, whilst also nurturing a feeling that I might make a difference with this work.
It wasn’t an easy rehearsal process and the music was fiendishly difficult, but it all came together in the performances, and people responded positively to it. But then it finished. Dementia doesn’t end so neatly, and I was left with a deep desire to explore working in music and medicine further.
At around this time Scottish Opera was setting up their Memory Spinners dementia singing project in association with Alzheimer’s Scotland. I saw some publicity and fired off an email to my colleague I was working with on another small scale community project. I came on board for three seasons of the inaugural project.
It wasn’t just a dementia choir, it was more like workshopped dramatic presentations – stories and songs co-created with the participants themselves, with ideas and themes from one of the main stage operas of the season.
It was clear that this was where I wanted to be. After the three years was up I knew I needed to explore this holistic singing/healing work and find some more avenues to train or even if there were these opportunities out there. Enterprise Music Scotland had a training project in Music and Dementia in care settings and, with a group of musicians from McOpera, the Scottish Opera orchestra co-operative, I signed up.
Part of the course involved practical placements in care homes, and this is where I met a wonderful lady (who has since become a good friend) – Katherine – who ran a mental health charity called Common Wheel. I asked to join her with her one-to-one work during our shadow visit to the home she ran music sessions in.
It was the most beautiful session, seeing up close and personal how music can not only transform people, but can be a valid way to communicate with people who are otherwise rather locked inside this awful disease.
Katherine was looking for someone to join the music leader team and offered me a job at the end of the project. I’ve been working for Common Wheel for about five or six years. They use music and mending bikes to help people with mental health conditions.
They have a bike workshop in Maryhill, in Glasgow. They discovered that making things really helps people in their recovery, helping them to transition meaningfully back into society – people can rebuild and restore bikes to sell or they can buy them themselves. It’s perfect - to give them focus and value as they reintegrate into the outside world.
The music side of Common Wheel also works with people in the community and people can be referred to this programme. I work mainly with people with dementia or functioning mental health conditions, in hospital wards and care homes.
Still needing to nurture this desire to help people through my voice, I came across a new initiative with the British Lung Foundation, training singers in Singing For Lung Health. As I started that course, down in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland, incidentally where my husband worked as an organist, there was a breathing choir which was looking for a new musical director.
It was a bit of a baptism of fire! When we’re thrown into these situations, we have to exploit and explore our toolkit of knowledge and I quickly realized that I know much more about my craft than I give myself credit for!
It was great to train and work practically with participants at the same time, in reality, as it immediately allowed me to put into practice my new knowledge. I reconnected with the British Lung Foundation in Scotland and with funding from BLF, I was able to set up a new Breathing for Singing group in a very deprived area of Glasgow.
Another eye-opener, seeing how deprivation had seriously impaired people’s respiratory health . The average age for death in that area was 55. 45 for women. The project was plagued with problems from the start - a difficult venue to access and the health area we were covering was too culturally diverse, ironically.
Then – someone new took over the music organization that had picked up the project and it no longer fitted into their remit. However, my original boss there is now my boss at Common Wheels, so everything came full circle.
Why do you do what you do?
That’s a question I was continually asking myself as I transitioned into more of the community based, music facilitating work. I knew I needed to find something that would restore my confidence in my own musical, vocal and performing abilities again.
I did dip my toe into what I now call ‘music as therapy’ work when I was at university, but there didn’t seem to be a career path into this work back then.
The knock-backs of the stage performing world were chipping away at my confidence, and ultimately affecting my ability to enjoy my singing.
I participated in some truly innovative and interesting projects when I was a Company Principal Soprano with Scottish opera, taking music to small, isolated communities and seeing up close and personal how music and singing touched people’s souls – people from all sorts of backgrounds.
You don’t get that on the big stage. You get the applause, but what ultimately does that really mean at the end of the day? That was becoming a bit formulaic for me, as the pressure to perform ‘perfectly’ night after night, intensified. With what I was going through personally and privately, the professional mask was becoming too exhausting to put on every day.
I do strongly believe that everybody has a voice. I think now, looking back, I’d lost mine – my truth! Not my singing voice – I’d lost my voice in society, having literally walked away from so much of my personal identity because it was a toxic environment to be in, but having done so, I now no longer knew who I was, or even who I wanted to be.
I needed to find ‘me’ again. I think I was drawn to people who have also lost their voice through their own personal circumstance, perhaps through trauma and health conditions that have changed their lives, and that can’t be magically fixed by medicine.
If you didn’t do this, what would you do?
Pre-pandemic, it might have been different to what it is now. I don’t know.
For about 13 years, when I came off-contract, I had a part time job in a theatre, as an usher. A lot of people both in my personal and professional circles looked down on me for doing that.
It was a job initially for money, to pay the bills, but it became a grounding force in my life, one that reminded me of the importance of why I was doing it, to feed my true vocation, and also to get me out of my pyjamas every day and stay motivated.
I worked my way up in this ‘side hustle’ and became a cashier at the end of my time working there – I actually enjoyed the thrill of counting money and I was good at it! Looking back, maybe I stayed in that job too long – it was a sort of comfort blanket.
When I moved house, I gave up the job. Is it a coincidence that more of the work I’m doing now, has come in as a result of that? Sometimes you have to break away from that comfort zone to find more of what truly makes you tick?
A lot of your work speaks of connection – individual connection, even though the work is with groups.
Absolutely. I think that came from a point of self-healing. With my performing, I was going through difficult, personal times and I just didn’t have that armour. Performing, I think, metaphorically and physically, took away my voice.
The work that I now mainly do – finding a deep connection, communication with people who are sick, through music – has helped to heal me. Looking back, I’ve been able to really connect, really be present in the room, even often when my mind and heart were not there. There’s just something magical about it.
What is the difference between performing on a stage, to a large audience and what you are doing now (perceiving that as another kind of performing)? If you consider that those who do live performance also speak of connecting and response… Are you not doing the same thing?
I suppose it’s like the process of a rehearsal room. I always loved that process of growing through creating a production and enjoying exploring how my character developed. Yes, the end goal is exciting, but it’s more about the process for me. It is like piecing a puzzle together – finding the connections with the individuals.
Particularly with people who have lost their speaking voice, immediately with dementia. We all know that when people have lost speech, they can still sing. Music still ignites something in their soul and when I tap into that through my singing leading, I find new pathways of communication, which I can then share with their carers and families to help them communicate again, too.
We all need to feel part of society. Just a simple thing like saying ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’ and saying (or singing!) a person’s name, can change a person physically in that moment – their posture, their mood – they feel valued. It’s magical to see.
Particularly with mental health conditions, you can become locked in your own little world, often feeling unable to articulate how you really feel and no longer knowing if or how you fit into society.
Within a group, I get to know people’s personalities, just through movement, singing and music. Then I hone in on interesting characters that I want to connect with.
Do you think that in helping others find/discover/rediscover their own individual voices, that you have found (or are on the way to finding) yours?
Definitely. Specifically in my breath work. About three or four years before I discovered this work, I was working at Opera North and on realising my breathing technique was lagging behind the rest of my vocal technique, I sourced a new teacher to work with, I had a series of intense sessions and basically had to strip everything back to the bare bones. Quite scary.
I think that constant curiosity about my breathing as I rebuilt my technique was an important and enlightening part of my journey. I became curious about the relationships between breathing and health.
I’m still curious. Despite the trauma in my life, I breathe well, now, as a singer. I instruct breathing really well. However I know that outside of my singing, I don’t necessarily breathe well all of the time, as I have learned patterns, especially in fight or flight.
Trauma and trauma recovery have created breathing patterns in me that are not necessarily healthy; I think that there’s a lot of this about.
Then covid arrives. It’s a curious thing, really, really curious. Originally thought to be a respiratory condition because of the way it can attack the lungs and leave people so breathless, we are now beginning to realise it is a multi-organ attacking virus, that craftily focuses in on the para/sympathetic nervous system that serves so many parts of the body.
I am working very slowly and very cautiously in singing and long covid, to see if it will help people who are terribly breathless, where there is no conclusive organ damage. This is a very common theme I am seeing in long covid.
It’s that breath-mind-body connection, I think; how life events affect us and how the body tries to mend itself. It all ties back to (subconsciously) why the performing became more difficult for me as I was facing my own life traumas head on.
There was definitely a connection and a curiosity for me once I began explore singing for therapy, or singing for health. I want to explore more aspects: singing to help people with cancer, singing for pain, for trauma.
Lots of people use singing as a therapeutic tool.
Absolutely. We’re hard-wired to sing. We sing before we learn to speak. We sing and we move and we breathe. We are social animals and singing is a social activity. As fulfilling as performing was, when I was at the top of my game, something was missing. I felt alone up there. I felt very, very vulnerable, having been told for most of my life, that I was not good enough! I wanted to be in with the community, I think.
Maybe when I was a chorister, I still had that nagging desire to try to be a soloist. I achieved this and then felt I was no longer part of an important ‘ensemble’? Maybe I need to be in an ensemble and feel part of it again, both socially and musically.
This, I now realise, ties in exactly with me, having estranged myself from certain people in my personal life, wanting to find ‘my’ people; needing to feel validated again.
A year or two before the pandemic, I did re-explore performing – to see if I still had the confidence and the ability to do what I trained all my life to do, at such a high level. I did a couple of extra chorus contracts and I really, really loved it. I realised I could still do it and that I am good at it, and, most importantly, that I do still need to perform professionally in order to inform my other work.
I don’t describe my groups as choirs because your average person is daunted by the word ‘choir’. I truly believe that everybody can sing, everybody has a voice. That social connection you get from singing together as a group is so powerful.
I see the immediacy of the healing effect of that, particularly in my lung groups and especially with men. You see the change in them from walking in through door, connecting with other men who are struggling to breathe, struggling to do basic activities that they’ve always taken for granted, and then – connect on a social level through learning to breathe better through singing. It’s just empowering!
What has the ‘magic’ of the pandemic – the enforced stillness – brought to you? You’re so connected with others – what has it brought to you?
About 14 months before the pandemic, I had a bit of burnout. I became very ill. We’d moved house. I’d put all of my energies into a fresh start. I’d mended myself physically and mentally from a place of abject trauma. I hadn’t really estimated the emotional enormity of moving house.
Just before the pandemic, I’d taken on board the need for self-care. The warning signs were there that this was slipping though – don’t take on any more work. A job came in. “I don’t know if I can do it. I’ll try it – it’s only for 12 weeks.” I was right at that pivotal point…
Initially, it was pure relief. I could stay home a bit! It was nice to be with my husband and for us not be ships that continually passed in the night. I also knew, subconsciously, the importance of keeping connected with my groups.
I think that’s what really drives me - healing others heals me. Part of the trauma in my life was the realization of not being able to heal others in my life that needed healing. I think that’s spun out it into my work and I just find it really fulfilling.
Singing and performing as a child was my own therapy, my own escapism. It’s what saved me. To now be able to help people through something difficult, with something that saved me – it’s a blessing. I went into it, not thinking that that’s what I needed, but I now know that it certainly fuels why I do it and probably why I am really good at it too.
By the time the pandemic started, my work was there. It was easily transferable online. I became the outsider, looking in on a lot of people going through the loss and trauma that I went through on my own, through life circumstances, years before. Having empathy for people was actually very difficult because I remember how alone I had felt when it imploded on my career those years before.
It was interesting observing lots of people and how they reacted in different ways. The old me would have wanted to invest all my time and energies into trying to help them all, but now I knew it wasn’t my battle to fight.
I threw myself into the online work. And also crochet! In order to stop myself going back into that black hole, before the pandemic, I started my “Granny Square a Day for a Year” project. I’ve made three blankets out of the squares and I’m going to auction them for charity.
(Caveat – one has already sold, raising a fabulous amount for my ‘DAYR To Sing’ Lung Health Group. The second for the Singing for Parkinson’s group goes up this week!)
During the pandemic, it was a perfect grounding activity. If I did nothing else all day but make my granny square, well…! #crochetstopsmeunravelling. And it really does.
At the beginning of lockdown, I was posting my squares on social media daily, I set up an online crochet group and I was teaching others to crochet, creating a learning video a day! I went in all guns blazing, but then I had to find my realistic pace.
It’s really interesting watching how people reacted at the start of the pandemic. Those that fell apart but have maybe grown over that time and found their pace. I went all in. Half way through, I had to step back. I’m beginning to find my sustainable pace now.
I’ve also hit the big five-oh over lockdown. That’s really given me perspective. I’ve really tried to find the positives of the pandemic, taking one day at a time, and learning to enjoy a slower pace. As we come out of it, is there going to be money to fund these groups that have sustained me both artistically and financially? Particularly in singing, as it’s still classed as unsafe to meet up.
My groups are very vulnerable and I don’t feel happy enough about being inside, singing face to face, without masks, yet. For some groups, it’s not practical – I can’t run a Parkinson’s group with masks on because I need to see their faces and watch their mouths move. Lung health groups are also so vulnerable to this virus.
Most of those groups work well on Zoom. What’s been interesting about the pandemic and singing is, working online, you take away that facility to hear each other. You can’t sing very well together on zoom because of the latency, so we remain on mute most of the time, singing along only with me. For some people, it’s made them listen in a different way.
It’s made them sing in a different way, getting used to hearing only their own voice, but using their other senses to feel like they’re singing together with the others they see on screen.
I’ve been really shocked and pleasantly surprised by some of my long term participants whose voices have really improved via this digital platform. We went to the house of a founder member of the DAYR To Sing group who’s in end-of-life care – while he was still well enough – and we sang to him in his garden.
Singing together, everybody was listening. We were just connected. We’d had a different, more intense form of connection whilst online. And now, singing together…
Who are you?
I’m a survivor. This will sound weird – I’m a good person. For a very long time I was told and I believed, that I wasn’t. I now know in my own heart, that I am! I do deserve, and have a right to be happy.
A little bit of everything, as long as it’s spicy. Ronnie Littlejohn
JAZZFM.91 program host, Ronnie Littlejohn, has been a radio guy since forever. Really. Music/communication/connection - it started early and continues to this day. His program, Gumbo Kitchen, is all things New Orleans jazz. The perfect recipe for musical delight. Just don’t add tomatoes…
Who are you?
My name is Ronnie Littlejohn. I’m the host of the Gumbo Kitchen on Jazz.FM91. I’m also a father, husband and a singer. I haven’t been a singer for nearly two years so it’ll be interesting to see whether I still have that muscle.
Let’s stick with radio host, father and husband for now. I do a bit of singing round the house, with my out of tune piano at home sometimes, but can I do a three hour show? That’s the question, when that day comes, if that day ever comes again.
How did you get here? Why do you do what you do?
I’ve had a romance with radio ever since I was ten years old. I’m sure every radio host will tell you this. I don’t think I’m unique in saying that I had my own little radio station in my bedroom when I was a kid. It was called ROCK101FM. It was FM radio and I even had a little host name for myself, which I will not divulge(!). I did it in my bedroom and did my top 30 countdowns. I did my top seven singles of the day.
It got to a point where I had a little microphone hanging from closest on a coat hanger. I emptied my closet, shoved a desk in with my record player – a full on radio show. When I had friends come over (keep in mind I was ten years old), they would sit around the room and we’d be talking. Then, at some point, I’d tell them all to be quiet because we were going to air in thirty seconds. I swear they looked at me as though I’d lost my mind!
I did some college radio but I got to JAZZ.FM three years ago in January. I got on board when it was a bit of a political hot potato. It was half the radio station that it is now. It was going through some awkward transitions. A lot of the hosts had left the station. I hadn’t listened to the radio for quite a while.
I pitched this radio show, Gumbo Kitchen, ten years ago and nothing happened. When the transition was going on, they contacted me and asked if I still wanted to do that Gumbo Kitchen idea. I’d forgotten about it. They gave it a shot, gave it one episode and one turned into three years. I love it, more than anything.
That’s the history, starting in that bedroom, with nobody listening except for me. Here I am, at fifty years old and the love is there, the magic. I remember the first time I heard the radio, somebody handed me a little Walkman thing, with these incredible headphones. I turned on FM radio and it was so clear. I could hear the radio announcer. He had the little cards in his hands and I could hear those. It was a whole new world inside this electric box and I wanted to be part of it.
That’s a wonderful amount of dedication. What got you there as a child?
My love of music. There was always music around my house. I was raised by my mother. She always had one of those record players that you’d put 45’s and pile them up and decide what twelve songs you want to hear. They would drop one after the other. That’s something my mother and I would do when she was making dinner. We’d dance and listen to music.
I remember one day, I went to the Canadian National Exhibition and there was a radio station (CFTR) and DJ there. His name was Mike Cooper and he was doing a remote broadcast. I suppose it looked like an RV but it had the glass and the call letters. My friends were saying we should go on the rollercoaster or the haunted house but all I wanted to do was watch the DJ.I watched this radio host do his thing, blasting the music and he was watching me through the glass, making faces because I guess at the time I was a cute kid.
I was mesmerized by this guy. ROCK101 probably started a week after that but that’s the earliest that I can remember. Radio was always on in my house, and I remember listening to Blue Jay games on the radio, one of my favorite sounds on the radio. There’s a mystique to it, that I can’t explain but I always wanted to be part of it. Thank you Mike Cooper.
What is that magic about radio, for you?
Before the pandemic, I’d get a lot of emails but during the pandemic, my emails have skyrocketed. People thanking me. That’s what’s been happening in my show, to every host at the station. People are thanking us for what we do.
People feel connected, that’s obvious. They could go onto Spotify or any streaming station and listen to anything they want, or they can stream a radio station. I will listen to a streaming thing for maybe five minutes and I’ll eventually put on the radio instead because there’s that connection with someone.
People say ‘thank you for keeping me sane’. There were months and months where getting up to do the radio show kept me going. It got me out of bed. There’s the magic, right there. I don’t think you get that from TV. It’s been here forever, through depressions and wars, way before I was born. That’s what people turn to. You see old photos of groups of families, sitting around the radio, just listening. It’s still here.
You have the radio – music and communication. What has happened with the singing?
I’ve been singing since I was six. I played in a band called Planet Earth for about fifteen years. We made four or five CD’s - great band, soul/funk band. I was fortunate enough to play with some of the best musicians in the Canadian music industry. We made some albums, did a lot of shows but I always had a safety plan. I worked in a hospital for ten years, I worked at the Coroner’s office in Toronto. I always had a job that I knew would feed the family.
It was a great group of guys but, like anything, it just drifted apart. I’m still singing. I haven’t done it in two years but it’s a great seven piece project showcasing the music of Van Morrison called CARAVAN. We’ve sold out every show. I really miss that.
What was it like not to perform during this time?
I’ve asked myself why I don’t miss it more. I should be going crazy and yet I’m not. I love it so much. I’ll see musicians on social media losing their minds about not performing. My thought is that when it happens, it happens.
I also think it’s because I have the outlet of the radio show. Maybe that’s why I put so much extra into the show. It’s not just me sitting around playing Fats Domino records. It’s me taking the listener from A to Z, from Louis Armstrong to Buckwheat Zydeco without them noticing the twists and turns, without it being abrasive. I’ve made that my creative outlet. I miss singing on stage but I know it’ll be back.
To be fair, though, music has never been my bread and butter. If music were putting bread on my table, I’m sure my anxiety levels would be through the roof. I know so many musicians who have quit music and gone back to school, and good for them but people I never would have expected.Once again, radio kind of saved me, in a way.
There was a guy who sent me an email, he was in Japan and he was on a cruise ship. He was on the first cruise ship that got Covid-19, that was docked in Japan. His wife got it but he had to stay on the ship. He sent me an email and said that he was trapped on the boat and his wife was in hospital but he listened to the show. He requested some traditional jazz for himself. I emailed him back and said of course. We stayed in touch. Back to the magic. He reached out to the radio station, to me, with him going nuts in a small room across the world.
Do you feel a sense of responsibility?
I do, but without making myself sound more important than I really am. There is some responsibility. I’ll give you an example. When folks were rioting in the States, over the George Floyd situation, I knew I had to acknowledge it on my show. And I did. I played some Sam Cooke and Timmy Thomas - all important music. People were emailing me saying that that was the most powerful show that they had heard in a long time. I, myself, said nothing, the music said everything.
Do I feel a sense of responsibility? I absolutely do. One hundred percent. But at the same time, to some I’m just a guy in the background when they are driving down the highway, but I also get emails every week from listeners counting down the minutes till the show starts. Somewhere in there, lies my responsibility, somewhere between background noise and someone who’s waited all week.
The other thing is that my show is about escaping, it’s about getting away for four hours. I make an extra point to keep it fun and light and not take it too seriously. It’s Friday night, the show’s called the Gumbo Kitchen, I mean how serious can we get?
Nothing to do with the price of fish, but do you do recipes?
One guy sent in an email and it was his recipe for gumbo. I said it on the radio and in his gumbo, he had tomatoes. He started getting all these emails saying you don’t put tomatoes in a gumbo!! I thought ok maybe I should maybe stay away from the recipes!!
In the show, it is like gumbo, there’s a little bit of everything. That's why I intentionally called the show the Gumbo Kitchen. It gives me a lot of space to throw in a lot of different things – as long as it’s spicy. You you can put anything into gumbo. EXCEPT tomatoes.
What has the magic of the pandemic brought to you?
I’m closer to my wife and daughter. I don’t just mean physically as we’re locked in the house all the time! I think in five or ten years, when someone says ‘remember the pandemic?’, there'll be something in me that will say that those were the best two years of my life. I know that sounds… I hope that doesn’t sound insensitive.
I know people who have gone through hell, I know people who have lost people. I’ve been fortunate so far, knock on wood. If I were to be honest, the closeness that I have shared with my family has been invaluable and irreplaceable. I’ll be saying that there was something magical in those two years.
We went on more walks. I have a backyard and a bonfire. Sometimes I’ll be texting friends and say, “Call me. Pick up the phone because I’m tired of texting, my thumbs are killing me!” They phone and then at the end of the conversion, they will say thank you for getting me to pick up the phone. Although we’re further apart, in some ways we are closer together. I know it sounds like a terrible cliché. The listeners have kept me sane as well.
Who are you?
Oh boy! Wasn’t that the first question? I’m still Ronnie Littlejohn. I’m about thirty minutes older but after this conversation, I do realize how blessed and fortunate I am. I’m a guy who’s a little more aware than he was thirty minutes ago! Sometimes you don’t realize it until you speak to someone. I’m a very blessed and lucky and blessed individual. Talking to you shone a bit of light on that so, thank you.
Shared experiences of awe. Brian Lobel
Brian Lobel is a force of nature. His art, his work - Brian, himself - connects us to each other. The personal becomes a shared experience, one meaningful step after another. Always with care, joy, love and awe.
Today (5 October) marks the release of the interactive site “24 Italian Songs and Arias (and Voices)”. This project is part of Brian’s digital artist residency with the University Musical Society (University of Michigan). Check it out - listen, read, take part!
N.B. This interview took place on 15 November 2020.
Who are you?
I’m Brian. I am… It’s a great question. This is going to be the long one kids! My name is Brian. I’ve always considered myself American summer camp counsellor turned UK and European based performance artist. I really like that trajectory for myself and they also relate to each other.
I have been working as a performer for the last seventeen years. Other identities that are relevant to me in the world of ‘who am I’ - I am a leftist Jew, which is very relevant at the moment in the UK. I am an educator. I’m someone who’s both annoyed about politics in the UK and the US - a starting point for being annoyed about politics beyond those two countries, where things are much, much worse but they happen to be less outside of my voting ability to change.
As someone who’s nervous that I talk too much, I’m a Come Dine With Me winner! I would say I’m a good friend. Being an artist, I define myself as a performer, not an artist, because an artist is what other people call you, much like a friend is what other people call you. It’s obnoxious to call yourself an artist. They are definitions that others have to bestow on you. It always felt so uncomfortable.
I think what the image of an artist is - it didn’t naturally include the people that I’m most moved by. It felt like it had a relationship to capitalism and market that I’ve never quite seen in my own work. I don’t know. There’s something about artists that live intentionally. This might be it.
An artist is someone that engages with life somewhat intentionally and framing things as purposeful acts that they wish to share with the world. I think the intentionality seems obnoxious to claim just for yourself. It almost has to be witnessed and appreciated, has to be seen by others in order to be a good enough intention, that will then make it a meaningful addition to the world.
An artist is someone who creates with intention. The intention is essential to the doing, but - the intention cannot be self-evaluated. It’s not enough if I say, “I wish to live this life incredibly intentionally or do this act intentionally.” It has to be shared by other people who see the intention as rigorous and thoughtful.
That’s the reason why I have a hard time calling myself an artist. If other people want to call me that, then that would be okay. It’s not validation in a selfish way, it’s validation in accountability.
Why do you do what you do?
A few years ago, I got a Fellowship at Wellcome, which gave me four sessions with a very high end coach. I said to her that I’m not a person who does executive coaching. (That was the cult that was started in my hometown, NXIVM, where they made the HBO documentary.) I said, “Gina, what I need is a plan that will give me hypothesis and action, intention and accountability, action and reaction and future planning.” I said that I really needed to work with her on a plan. She said that I was thirty-five. For all intents and purposes, it seemed that I was doing okay so far. So much so, that someone else was paying for me to get coached.
She said that maybe what I needed was not a plan but more comfort knowing that I wasn’t a person who would work from a plan. It gave me this huge appreciation of that conversation because it cracked open to me that I have always, kind of, moved forward, without a grand plan. I never really had gigantic goals.
It’s really interesting because I’ve had some real moments of power in my career. (Not that I was in a lot of power but power played with me). I had a show at the National Theatre and everyone treated me like someone who really had their life goal of being at the National Theatre so I should shut up but I was like - it was never my goal to have a show at the National Theatre. It’s amazing and a humbling honour to be there but it was never a tick, tick, tick of things to do. Therefore, I feel fine here. I had a gig at the Sydney Opera House, I had a gig at Harvard Medical School. After a few of those, you’re like - they’re not different.
I have always done what I wanted to do. I’ve always created the work I’ve wanted to make or the teaching I’ve wanted to teach. I’ve always been someone who gigs. I love gigs. I come from a capitalist art economy. I was in the States, where there’s no arts funding, so you go from one thing to the next and keep the creative wheels moving because they need to do that to survive and to live. Thank God I have a big nose because I’ve always followed it and tried to engage with who I was meeting and the context we were changing and the things that are important in life.
The best projects I’ve done have come from a real, personal desire to change something in my own life and that desire in my own life, feels common enough or rather in common enough with enough people for it to be relevant.
I did my first show about cancer. I just needed to make my cancer story not just my cancer story. I needed to share it. The basic intention was that I needed to get everyone into a room for sixty minutes to tell them my story because then I didn’t have to repeat it over and over again. Thankfully, my need to do that is similar to a lot of other people’s needs to do that. So I’m carrying a lot of other people with me.
The reason that 24 Italian Songs and Arias was started, was because I needed my mother to hate my performances less. Therefore, I needed to put her into the show. I needed the show to be about failure because my bad relationship with my mother about my work was making me think that my work and my relationship with her was a failure. I had to do the Math. I had to do something about failure. That was the arc. The core, always, was to do something in my own life that I need and hope that that engages with enough metaphors, that it becomes relevant with an audience.
For me, I try to be useful, more so than productive. I’ve never been an artist who needs to put out a show every year. The seasons never dictated to me when I did things. Maybe, if I were more successful in different ways, I would do that because people would want a show from me every year. So it’s not that other people are plotting, I’ve just never felt that pressure. I’ve always tried to do something useful to me and then the world around it reveals itself.
Has the pandemic made any difference to opening that door in creation?
I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for people who are working very hard to get the arts world back open. In March and April 2020, Bryony Kimmings and I ran a big fundraiser to try and cover people who had lost wages. The pandemic has made me want to take care of people in very literal ways. It’s different from the metaphoric ‘taking care of’. When we do 24 Italian Songs, I think it brings comfort to audiences who have lived those lives, for whom those metaphors are important and that music is gorgeous. It does something to help their lives, it helps an audience in some way.
But that’s not literal enough for me right now. I’ve needed much more to see artistic intervention, artistic protest, theatres being repurposed for BLM protests. That’s what we need to be doing right now. I can’t imagine that this is the time that someone would want to write a romantic comedy that Netflix might pick up. It doesn’t mean that the creative juices can’t flow and that people can’t be moved by stories.
For me personally, the pandemic has changed what I need or want to put out or engage with, for art. I’m cautious about saying this but I’ve really watched no art. None. Maybe I’ve watched A Streetcar Named Desire and the videos that you place online. That English National Opera series of shorts in June/July 2020. I watch the content that my friends put on because that’s supportive, not of the art world but my friends!
The usefulness of art has really changed. What is missing is the art museum and the theatre space for us to express citizenship, practising being in a room together, listening to someone’s story quietly, having a shared experience of awe. That could be in a church, smelling incense or being in a Chekhov play. That’s the importance of art.
The thing I’ve missed about art is the half hour before and the hour or two following. I don’t need the art world to show me stories I don’t know. I have a pretty amazing, diverse group of people around me. I do need to see people and the conversations that are happening about representation of black voices and relaxed performance venues where people can make any kind of noise they want in a classical music space, which hasn’t happened yet. These are civic conversations that have to happen and they’re really important.
Sometimes artists can communicate about the problems in the world of art as if they were the only space that was practising citizenship. That’s when I get annoyed with artists. But there is real power when a theatre puts in unisex bathrooms. It does change the world. That’s really exciting.
I think the conversation about funding for the arts is only won when we have good arguments for it. I think we can win the argument when we can demonstrate the value that it adds. It’s annoying that the country doesn’t value the business case for the arts in the UK and the US. It’s disrespectful.
There are huge uses for people coming together. The use of theatre is shared experiences of awe. It’s the reason why I love 24 Italian Songs. It has just awe after awe after awe. What I love about it, is that I’m not the person that causes them at all but I am someone that facilitates awe.
It’s beautiful to me because the role in the show is for me not to be awe inspiring. Everything I do is kind of mediocre and that’s lovely to me. I know how to hold a room and I also know how to hold a room with vulnerability and a little bit of self-deprecation. Suddenly there’s a kid who sings and they’re nice but then there’s Gwen who awes. Then it’s Naomi who awes. Then in the end, when we get you to do a longer solo piece with Allyson, there’s awe there. Then there’s a choir of people and that’s awe inspiring as well.
It’s not just the super successful professional that can awe, it can be the person that left professional singing many years ago, it can be the person held back in their solo piano playing...the voices of all these people together is awe inspiring. I think that’s the usefulness of art and that’s what we’re really missing and that’s what we haven’t gotten around to yet.
In the other solo that I have, it’s about telling a very personal story. Maybe two minutes before the end, finding a metaphor for someone to think about that themselves and then to engage with the awe of that. This isn't self-deprecating, I’m not like a performance prodigy. I’m not going to do a monologue better than anyone, I won't have better timing than anyone. If I can get people to think of little ol’ me, then two minutes before the end, ask them to think about themselves and then they see the awe themselves - that feels really exciting to me.
I do a show where the audience touches my genitals. It’s a cabaret act and starts with five people medically appreciating my genitals and writing a description. It’s an eight-minute piece. I talk about how people thought of my body after I had testicular cancer and the surgery. And the reason why it's an amazing show (and I’ll say it without apologising for it) - I wrote it in the interval of an Akram Khan dance piece. It came out word for word and then I performed it about four hundred times. I’ve never stopped performing it. It’s really about how I felt when I was twenty years old. Only in the last minute do I ask people to close their eyes and imagine themselves, their body, how it felt and how it felt to be touched.
The reason it’s a good show is because people will never care about my cancer, I don’t care about them caring about my cancer. They have their own problems, their own families, their own things. But when I say,” This was how I reflected on myself twenty years ago, how does it feel and reflect on you on your body, in a really physical way?” That allows people to have a sense of awe with themselves. I do like an ending where people feel something, deeply. That is important to me. I don’t like the thoughtful, cerebral, theoretical endings.
My first boyfriend, who died in 2010, was the most magnificent human being ever. He was incredibly intelligent. After he died, I revisited all our emails and made a project out of them and recut them all, letter for letter and made them into a thing. He said,” Maybe closure is a garish, American trait but maybe I’m a garish American.” I loved that idea, to have this emotional cohesiveness. For me, the artwork lives in that awe moment, instead of, ”Oh yes, that is clever.”
I don’t want it to be clever, I want people to feel it in their gut. They can only feel it in their gut when they care about themselves. I could tell a million stories about my dead grandparents...but no one cares about my dead grandparents. They have too many other things to worry about. But if I can use a story about dead grandparents to make them think about their dead grandparents and their relationships to generations and ancestors, then that would be a story worth telling.
Does your work then give people permission to feel, to be in receipt of that awe?
It’s in the stories of the ordinary that we can really engage in that. Everything has tried to be really small in what it does. If you start with, ”Look at what Brian did..”, it’s totally easy to get involved in it. It’s not a world far away, a huge trauma. I’m very lucky not to have the material to make work about war and trauma in different ways. If you start with really small things and ask people to take one meaningful step and make it easy for them to do so, that’s better than throwing a million things at them and making them unable to take one step, even if those million things are really beautiful.
At the end of my show Purge (about Facebook – who’s your friend or not), I ask people, at the end of the show, to do me a quick favour. Before they switch on their phones, to hold their phones in their hands and to take one deep breath before turning it back on. You don’t have to do anything or change your relationship with your phone or cut your credit cards up. It’s just to take a breath before reentering the space. Maybe you’ll see it with a slightly more oxygenated view.
For me, it’s about enabling people to take one step. Because my work is about that one step, it feels better to maybe work at a food bank and help people and get things moving, so that the world around me feels more stabilised.
How has the journey of your art engaged your voice – artistically, personally and politically?
I really punctuate my journey with the teachers that I’ve had along the way - who I’m with, who I’m learning from, whether that be Holly, Lois, Katherine or either of you. The journey changes as I meet people and grow alongside them. I think I’ve become bolder. I’ve always had the same energy since I was at high school. I’ve had an optimistic outlook. I’ve been more friendly than I’ve been bitchy. I’ve been more lighthearted and approachable than sombre.
I think I’ve become more pointed, more clear because the more I engage with my teachers who are clear, clearly spoken, it’s easier. I’m less apologetic. I think I’ve found a voice that is stronger. I think it’s been strengthening but I would say that it is strong now. It doesn’t always mean that I’m right and I can be wrong. It doesn’t mean that I’m arrogant but this is what makes sense to me. This is how it’s going to work.
When you’re starting in your artistic career you are always trying to please other people. You do need other people to help you along the way, curators that like you, directors that trust you. I do a lot of applications for things, for academic and artistic things. If something’s too hard, you’re not going to get it. The reason why is, the older I am, the more confident I am, the clearer I am, I know what is for me and what is not.
My father was a food broker and he said to me,” Brian, you don’t need to convince someone to like ketchup. There are enough people in the world who like ketchup, who want ketchup and we’ll make enough money selling ketchup to them. You just have to get the ketchup people the ketchup they want. You don’t have to worry about other people.”
In some ways, I’ve learnt that not everyone is going to like this work. I wanted a piano player in 24 Italian Songs because I really wanted to enter that space of classical music. I don’t really care. People are going to like or not like it. I’m stronger because I know that it’s good. I know it contributes to the world.
A lot of my friends are much more political than me and sometimes I think that if they thought my work was bullshit, they would tell me. I’ve got strong people around me, they would tell me. They appreciate its contribution in its own way. I don’t care if someone doesn’t engage in it. They won’t need to. There’ll be enough people for me to engage with. That’s always been important to me in relationships and social media presence. I’ve never gone after viral video making and the like. I don’t wish to engage with people I’m not accountable to.
Who are you?
Who am I? I’m someone who worries, I’m a worrier. I feel even less secure in the answer than I did at the beginning. Who am I? I’m Brian. It’s more like - you know it when you see it, you know? I cook, I make art, I like teaching people. I like helping other people out with applications and making them feel more infrastructurally supported. I feel like I’m a good uncle. I’m a relatively okay volunteer. If some people want to call that an artist, then they can do that. If someone wants to call that a curator, then so be it. I feel like I have a strong sense of self but I don’t feel that I have a strong sense of self semantics. For some people, a strong sense of semantics is important to them, whereas it’s a little less important to me as all those self categorisations are more flexible to the audiences they’re engaging with. I am still a happy person.
It’s called a lifelong passion. Laura Fernandez
Our fifth post in association with JAZZFM.91 is a chat with program host Laura Fernandez. We spoke about just how much music, radio and DJs have influenced and filled her life. Communication and community are at the heart of her show - Café Latino. Come and share the love!
Who are you?
Well, my name is Laura Fernandez. I’m many things. I’m an artist, I’m a singer/songwriter. I’m a caregiver for my mom, who has Alzeimers. I work in real estate – thank god (because it’s gotten me through this year, since all gigs have been cancelled!). I’m a mother. I’m a radio broadcaster and sharer of incredible music all over the world. That might be one of the most important jobs that I have.
How did you end up in this radio business?
From the outside, it may look like it landed in my lap, but looking back, I realize that radio has always been a focus in my life. From the time when I was little and moved to Canada, from Spain, not speaking the language at all. Thrown into the school system, at seven years old and not being able to communicate by speaking my language – the music kept me company.
I’ve always been very focused on music from the time I was little. That was instilled in me by my parents. My dad loved classical music, opera, jazz – everything. It was always around. My earliest memories – my dad would sit me on his lap, play me a piece of music and I would tell him what it was. Apparently, I was two or three. It was like a party game – I knew everything!
I focused on music all my life. I focused on the radio. I had phone relationships with DJs. I would call into the radio all the time. The radio was my lifeline, because I didn’t have friends at first. It took time to learn the language and music was the positive energy in my life that connected me.
A little later on, I started writing poetry at age eight and I started writing songs at age twelve (when my parents got me a piano. I became a songwriter then. Took piano lessons, became a performer.
It was through being a performer that I was offered a job at JAZZFM.91 (It was suggested by the previous host Amanda Martinez, that she write in and let the managers know about me as they were looking for a host for Café Latino). I walked in, had an interview and the next thing I knew, I was doing a radio show!
I had never done a radio show before. I put together a playlist, I was trained. I was told to be myself and share what I loved and what I knew. When I went in for the interview, I confessed to them what I knew about music and that it had been a huge part of my life. I had never done a radio show and that I was going to approach it from the point of view of discovery. I knew a lot about Spanish music, but I didn’t know the whole world of Latin jazz (which, it turns out, is very extensive!)
So, over the years, I’ve kind of become the ‘expert’ in Latin jazz and it’s been an unbelievable journey for me. It has given me so much and, every week, I give it back.
That’s how I think of it. I share the beautiful music, the energy, the culture, the excitement that I have about the music that I play, with my audience.
I don’t know how I got here. It seems like it landed in my lap, but I almost feel that, in some weird way, I might have manifested it. I do believe in that.
How important is it being Spanish, doing this ‘niche’ program? What would have happened if you’d been asked to do the blues night?
It’s interesting. When I was growing up, I was much more focused on popular music. When I was writing my songs, I didn’t start writing in my native language until much later. So, I wasn’t necessarily focused on Latin music.
I look back at my life and I think it was meant to be. My father, back in Calgary, started a club called Culthispan which included all the Spanish and Latin cultures of the world. He made a kind of community and he was the head of it. I remember that he designed this beautiful logo and display-eagles representing all the Latin countries and the Latin influenced countries of the world.
I look back and, being Spanish and knowing that the Spanish language is the root of Spanish culture around the world (knowing that every country has its own beautiful identity) (and also that Spanish did not come to them in the best way… the Conquistadors were not nice people), I see these incredible cultures that have the seed in the Spanish culture.
Looking back, I think, there couldn’t be a better person that unites all the Latin countries because I’m from the mother country. I’m Spanish. I’m playing all the music that was born of our culture, mixed with the indigenous, mixed with the African cultures, mixed with all the beautiful cultures around the world. And there we have – Latin jazz!
Yeah, I could have done a show on pop music – maybe. I don’t think it would have been as deep. I am very cognizant of my roots and I’m very connected to my roots. My family is the only family that moved away from Spain. Everybody is still there – my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my grandparents (who passed away). We were the only ones who moved away to North America.
I think – what a beautiful way to share this culture, which belongs to everyone – to the world. Now, they listen to my show in Spain and they’re so proud!
Somehow, this opportunity (I can’t even call it a job, because it doesn’t feel like one) – this blessing – landed in my life. I said ‘yes’ to it, even though, honestly, I did not know what I was doing in the beginning. I had faith that there was a reason why I was here. I share the joy and pride and emotion about it every week. I think people like that!
Along with the clear sense of honour, is there a sense of responsibility?
Yes. There is responsibility in making sure that people know that music is pure, that it is non-judgmental and is for everybody. That it deserves to be listened to in the best possible way. I don’t cut off my songs. Somebody once said, in an interview, “You can fade my song out if you want to…” No. Art deserves to be heard in its complete form.
Yes, there’s a sense of honour. There’s a sense of responsibility to share in the highest quality manner that I can. To educate people about it so that they can connect to it – not just emotionally, but a little bit intellectually. To tell the story of the artist, to tell the story of the music.
You don’t want to tell an enormous amount of technical stuff. You’re giving them enough of a story so that they have the path with which to discover themselves. Many times, when I play this music, people write to me asking to know about this person, their albums. I’ll write back and tell them more. And then, they search that music out themselves.
I’m a conduit. I looked up the definition – you’re a path of spiritual energy. Music is a spiritual energy. Whether you like it or not, it is the language of the heart, the language of the soul. It’s pure in its form, however it’s created. My job is not to get in the way of it. My job is to transmit it.
You said that when you arrived in Canada, radio was your first friend.
Absolutely. At seven or eight, I did not have money for records. I came from a traditional Spanish household. We didn’t have a lot of money. There were five kids. My parents were immigrants and just getting started in a new country.
My dad was always fun and always thinking of things to do. He would bring home 45s – when they were emptying out the jukeboxes, he would go and pick up records. That’s where I first heard Miriam Makeba, the Beatles. I was obsessed with music. I would read all of the liner notes for all the records.
My dad bought me a transistor radio (I don’t know if my sisters’ had one!). I would go to sleep with it on. I heard all kinds of music. I still remember sitting in the car and listening to ‘Hey Jude”. Some of my strongest memories are connected to listening to music on the radio.
I loved the DJs. I used to call in. In Calgary, there was this thing called “The School’s Out Picnic” – everyone would gather in the park. I remember going and meeting the DJs. Here’s a magical, full-circle story: in my early days at JAZZFM.91, a man contacted me on Linkedin and said that he was a radio guy and that he would like to meet me for a coffee at Tim Horton’s. He loved my show and would I meet him?
Now, I meet just about everybody, because I love people. I met him for coffee and he told me that he’d been listening to my show and he just wanted to give me a few tips. I learn from everyone! “I feel that, before every break, you don’t mention who you are enough. You should mention who you are, the station and your radio show at every break. Would you do that?”
Nowadays, you’d call it branding. I understood how important it is. There are three identities here: myself, there is Café Latino, which is a community and there’s JAZZFM.91, which is a broader community.
Here is the full-circle moment that confirmed that I’m where I should be. He had a stroke and I went to visit him, brought him a little gift. He told me “I have to tell you something and it’s very important. I received and email from a DJ friend of mine in Alberta, in Edmonton. He said, ‘I love radio in Toronto. There’s this particular DJ that I listen to who is my favourite DJ. Her name is Laura Fernandez.’”
He, apparently, is the DJ that I used to listen to when I was growing up, on CKXL Radio, in Calgary, that did the School’s Out Picnic! I was floored. I am this guy’s favourite DJ. He was my favourite DJ. I got so emotional. These guys are elderly, kind of forgotten and here I am, kind of carrying the torch!
I approach my show very much the way it was when I was growing up. I love to communicate with the audience, I write them back. I have personal relationships, even though I have never met most of them. It is incredible to me that people will recognize my voice on the phone, recognize my name.
I do have a responsibility – to be the best person I can be. There are other things attached to my name now. JAZZFM.91 is attached to my name and to my voice. Café Latino is attached to my name and my voice. It’s not just about me anymore.
With this ability to pull a very large world together has there been an added responsibility? Especially with this pandemic and what radio has meant to people.
I know a lot of people have been very lonely. I, myself, have not had an easy time. I don’t show it, but if I do feel down, I will say it on the radio. I’m honest and authentic. I feel more connected than ever, to the listening audience. I feel more of a responsibility than ever, to try to be the voice of hope, not the voice of doom.
I think a lot more about the music I play and I try to connect to what’s going on, somehow. I will mention that – hey, we’re going into another lockdown, so kick off your shoes and dance!
The joy of human contact has been ripped out of our lives and we’ve got to put it back, somehow. I’m trying to do it through music. I’m so grateful that people can turn on the radio and have a little company. That they have a friend. That I can be the voice that gives them a little bit of comfort.
How have you survived the pandemic?
In the beginning, it was kind of a novelty not to have to run around. I felt almost as if I was on holiday. I didn’t mind. Having been an illustrator and used to working at home, I just felt like I was back to my old life.
But, I had the added challenge of being a caregiver to my mom. Her day programs were cancelled and all of sudden, I am the one taking care of my mom. There was some respite, which I am grateful for, but that was hard.
However, it became a creative time for me. I wrote songs, I released an album last year but, in this second year, I wasn't able to play my music or do a CD release. There have been challenges, but I have used this time well. I’ve still been working. And my radio show has been out every week!
Sometimes it’s been a bit draining. As ‘up’ a person as I am, I’m still human and I still get down. We all do.
Who are you?
I am a citizen of the world, who is in love with music. I have been, from the time I was born and will be until the day I die. I love to create it. I love other people’s music, too. It’s really an expression of people’s souls, isn’t it? I am one of those souls.
Exhale
Anette Aarsland is ALL things breathing. We talked about the physical, emotional and mental benefits of understanding our breath. This is medicine we can all get on board with.
Who are you?
That’s some question! I thought I was a singer and that I would only be a singer. That was the only thing I really wanted to do. I had moved to London to be with an ex-boyfriend. I woke up one morning and he was smiling and said, “I didn’t sleep all night because I was thinking of us.” And I thought – this is it. He’s going to propose. Instead, he said (still smiling), “You have to leave immediately.”
That’s when my life changed dramatically. I was devastated. I cried, sang, cried, sang every single day. For months. I was completely rock-bottom at that point. That’s when I came across (voice teacher) Dinah Harris, who, with her brother, had come up with breathing techniques that allowed singers to get their voice back. That was the very first time I’d heard about breathing. I thought – wow. I’ve been studying singing for eight years and I haven’t learned the first thing about breathing.
That woke me up. It took me some time before I realized, though. I then went back to Milan, to my teacher there and learned some other breathing techniques. I found that, not only did my voice come back, but it came back stronger. For the very first time in my life, I felt grounded. I had always felt slightly anxious, with the top out of my body. I was always told ‘you have to get grounded, you have to get grounded!’. Yeah – but how do I do that?
Now I felt grounded. I’d also found that the pain that I’d had in my back (due to scoliosis), became much better. After six years in London, I moved back to Norway. All of a sudden singing wasn’t so important. I mean – it is important. In some ways, I miss it.
However, I had started a job in a psychiatric hospital in Oslo. I worked there for eight years. I didn’t only see how the patients took their breath when they had problems, but I also noticed the way my colleagues were breathing in stressed situations – very superficially. Which, of course made them nervous.
I had a patient – 27 year old young woman – who was cutting herself. She was so full of pain. I took her down to a basement room where nobody could hear us and asked her to scream. To scream and let all of the shit out. She screamed and we walked. Walked and walked. It made me cry. That scream was so full of pain – it was devastating.
Every single day I was working, I took her down to the same room, I made her scream and just breathe. We were walking in circles, screaming and breathing quite slowly. After two weeks, she sang ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ (having never sung before in her life!) But that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing was that she didn’t cut herself one time, for months. Her psychiatrist told me, “Anette, you have to look into this.”
I left the hospital after eight years. I had been attacked quite badly and I forgot everything about breathing. I was insisting on going back to the same patient (even though my doctor told me not to). My shoulders were up, I started breathing superficially. My wife told me that it was horrible to live with me that year. I forgot everything about breathing because I was in such deep pain.
A friend of mine (an actress here in Norway), shouted at me – “Anette, it’s fucking enough! You’ve lost yourself! I don’t recognize my friend. You’ve become somebody else. You have to quit that job, immediately!” I thought – my god what am I going to do? I don’t sing anymore. I can’t go back to the the psychiatric hospital. What am I going to do? She said, “Anette – you’re going to work with breathing. That’s what you know.” “Nobody works with breathing, alone.”, I said. “That’s exactly why you should do it.”, she answered. That was such a big ‘ah-ha’ moment for me – maybe it’s possible to just work with breathing techniques.
The very next day, I quit my job. I put a notice in the local paper about starting a ‘breathing choir’. “I want to get in touch with people who would like to find their true voice, through correct breathing. You might think you can’t sing, have the worst voice in the world. I’m going to show you that, through correct breathing, we can all sing.”
We live in quite a small place. The day after this appeared in the newspaper, 80 people had signed up for my breathing choir. One year afterwards, the Breathing Choir was on the Norwegian national television. They were singing a really simple, one-line song, but it was such an achievement.
I saw in these women (it was an all-woman choir) a confidence and energy level rise, within those two hours (first hour we just breathe, the second hour, we sing). Now, we are even singing in six parts, which is amazing! They never thought that they could achieve such a thing.
I started this ten years ago and it’s what I really, really love to do – empower women. Not so much to sing, but to use their voice. To dare to give speeches. To dare to hold their position in society, at the same level as men do.
That was a long answer to “who are you”!
How important is it to put breathing into practice, during this pandemic?
That’s such an important question.
There are so many ‘mouth breathers’. We get rid of 42% more moisture, breathing through the mouth than breathing through the nose. If we have symptoms, or are infected, we will spread so many more droplets, breathing through the mouth. That’s the first thing.
The other thing is – we have hair in the nose. When we breathe in through the nose, the air is naturally filtered. When we breath out, we get rid of ‘bad’ particles more quickly. When we breathe through the mouth, the same particles/viruses, get down all the way to your lungs and they can cause injury. And you get much more of them if you breathe through your mouth. The amount of air you take in through your mouth is much, much more than if you breathe through your nose. Another thing – cold air gets heated up to body temperature through your nose before it reaches your lungs, which the lungs like!
With the SARS virus (2003-4), they found that nitric oxide helped treat the virus. In 2005, it was discovered that we produce (in small amounts) the same nitric oxide in our nasal cavity. If we inhale and exhale through the nose, we will get much more of the nitric oxide into our body – possibly! Research is going on in the States
That’s a scientific answer. What about the emotional benefit at this time?
I don’t know if many agree with me, but I’m convinced that, if you’re very scared, in an extreme state of ‘fight or flight’, and exhale through your mouth – with resistance – will reduce anxiety. The “ssssssss” that singers do…
I was coming home on a flight from north Norway, where I’d just given a workshop. The woman who sat beside me was very anxious. I suggested the “sssssss”. “Just say ‘sssssss’? Yes, just that. In the end, she called the flight attendant to say “this really, really works!” Breathing is the only function in the body that is both automatic and that you can command.
There has been some research on breathing and emotion, where different groups were told to ‘create’ an emotion – angry, scared, happy etc. Their breathing pattern was noted and found to be the same. Things were then reversed – the different groups were asked to breath in the same patterns found in the first research without telling them why they should do so. What they found was that the different breathing patters created the exact same emotions that were found in the first experiment. I find that amazing.
How many years have you been practicing?
I’ve had my company for ten years, but I’ve been practicing the techniques for at least 25.
And now, in this pandemic period, who is coming to you to work on their breath?
When I first started ten years ago, people were saying, “Breathing? Everybody breathes!”. I had loads of resistance. I’ve been working very hard at this. My first victory was with a group of carpenters! And doctors. when I started, if someone told me that medical doctors would come to see me I would have said – HA!
Today, it’s people with all kinds of issues: anxiety, panic attacks, pain issues. Bad digestion, hypertension. Also people who have low self-esteem. Or have to give speeches – using their voice in their job. All kinds of people. Normally, I run courses in Italy, three times a year (bringing Norwegians over). One year I had four lawyers, another year – three hairdressers! It’s really all ages, all kinds of people.
How many singers do you get?
Not many! I’ve had a few – young singers. I’m not trying to pull them towards me, to be honest with you. It’s not my favourite client. I don’t like giving singing lessons but I’ve had a few who have come to work on their breathing. The sense of being grounded is so important for your emotions to get out for your singing voice. In order to be true to ourselves, we need to be in touch with our emotions and then we need to be grounded in order to be that.
Many times, I feel that the work I do is just as much about getting the emotions released. So many emotions get stuck – in the breath or in the diaphragm or solar plexus area. We tend to tense up in the chest, shoulder blades, neck.
How does one deal with ‘fight or flight’?
It’s a way that the body is telling us to survive. I had an accident on my cross-country skis, where I got stuck and flew and landed on my pole. In my chest. I was convinced I’d broken a bone. I was hyperventilating for at least ten minutes, shaking. I think it’s a good thing. It helps to not feel the pain so much in that moment. The trembling gets the shock out of the body – what animals do. Grown up humans don’t. We tense up the muscles and get stuck. So that’s why I think, sometimes, it’s good to be in ‘fight or flight’.
The problem is when we are constantly in “fight or flight” without there being a real threat. We might have issues with our bosses or spouses, financial problems, anxiety etc. This is when stress becomes dangerous and, the reason WHO has claimed stress as the biggest health threat in this century.
When in “fight or flight” the body gets ready to deal with threats from the outside, all the energy goes to the arms and legs in order for us to escape or fight. The problem is that there is no energy left to deal with our immune system. In order to get the energy back to our immune system we need to breathe slower and deeper.
We can`t fight dangers both from the outside and the inside at the same time. But, as I said, when there is a real danger - a rapist or a dangerous animal - “fight or flight” is a really important part of the nervous system.
What about cultural differences with breathing and emotion?
Norwegians (and maybe British, too?!) have loads of tension in the jaw. We don’t let emotions out. (I’m not a typical Norwegian!) When I moved to Italy, I finally felt at home. People talk much louder, they move their mouths much more, they talk on their breath… Norwegians even talk on an inhalation! I don’t think it’s just the olive oil and warmth that make the Italians have less heart disease! They really use their breath while talking. They let their emotions out. They’re really angry, really in love.
Norwegians are too concerned about the neighbours and what they might think. Don’t laugh too loud or, worse – never be angry. We have the ‘Janteloven’ – Law of Jante – where you shouldn’t think you’re better than anyone else. Something really in the Norwegian population.
I haven’t had much cultural difference when I do my courses. There are big differences within the groups – people worried about taking up space. I think that comes from childhood. Boys don’t cry. Girls are supposed to be seen and not heard. Phrases like that get stuck in your body. I have women in their 60s who sob, loudly, when they realize that they have a voice.
When it comes to breathing, some people are shocked at the emotional impact it has when you get connected to your breath and then all the prior experiences in your life. I’ve never experienced anyone being re-traumatized. The emotion goes out – and then you’re free.
What has the ‘magic of the pandemic’ brought to you?
All my travels, all my trips to Italy were cancelled. All my courses, all my breathing choirs. I couldn’t work at all. In the beginning I thought – what am I going to do? I realized that I’m a very positive person. I’m very solution-orientated. So, I thought – what can I do now in order to go further. I’ve taken courses on how to make online courses and I launched an online course in Norwegian, I made a webinar and I’ve sold loads of courses. My income is now the same as it was before Covid.
Another thing – before this, I was convinced that I was a very extrovert person. I realized that I’m so introverted! Up here in the cabin in the mountains, we don’t see anyone at all and I love it! I feel so calm. The only thing I miss is not being able to see my parents. That’s hard. But we can talk.
But, I feel it’s the future. There’s so much less pollution, all the flights we don’t take. But I think it’s a lesson from – whatever you may call it – the universe. We need to calm down in all senses. Back to the breathing, we really, really need to get back in touch with ourselves, to dare to be alone, to not always be trying to find solutions or distractions from outside. Try to find them inside ourselves. It sounds horrible, but I’m going to miss this, once society opens up.
Will you be able to take some of the calm with you as things move forward? Some kind of hybrid version?
My goal now is to go abroad. I want to make my online courses in English, in order to help more people. I also see people online, once a month. The extroverts miss getting together, a lot. They are so looking forward to the breathing choir starting up again.
What would you do if you couldn’t do this?
I haven’t got a clue. I feel that I have the best job in the world. It’s so diverse. I have so many different clients. I wouldn’t go back to working in a psychiatric hospital. I couldn’t do it. I’m done doing that. I wouldn’t – or couldn’t – go back to singing. I haven’t practiced singing for a very long time.
I haven’t got an idea, really. I love talking to people. It would have to be some sort of communication. Definitely. I’m grateful that I haven’t had to think about this question. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to get through this pandemic without losing my job entirely.
What advice could you give regarding grief, this pandemic and breathing?
It’s so, so important to cry. In grief, it’s so important to get those tears out. To get the emotion out. To accept that you are in grief. If we deny it, we just push it further and further back. And then, it will come back with double force, later on in life. I’m sure of it.
I experienced a stillbirth. I screamed, I cried. I remember the doctor saying, “I’m so proud of you, because you’re sharing, you’re telling people.” I cried for so long. I made a conscious decision – my biggest desire was to have friends giving birth and for me to experience real joy. From inside. I didn’t want to become bitter. I was going to work every day with myself, until I could feel that joy from the inside. It’s easier said than done, though, but I`ll never forget the day, 6 months afterwards when I could feel happy for a friend giving birth to a healthy child without feeling bitter.
I’ve learned so much through all of my experiences. But, I would never tell a person going through grief that this is going to teach you something. I just think it’s very important to get your emotions out. And to work at not becoming bitter. It’s a job, and in retrospect, you might be able to see that this was one of life`s important lessons.
Who are you?
I’m still the same person as I was when we started this conversation! We are normally asked ‘what do you do?’ We forget who we are.
Hi. I’m here. Let’s listen to music.
Our fourth post in association with JAZZ.FM91 is a conversation with program host Brad Barker. Conversation about, communication with, impact of - music. And appreciation of the little things.
Who are you?
My name is Brad Barker. I am the music director and afternoon host here at Jazz.Fm91 in Toronto.
How did you end up being a host?
I was a musician out of high school. I wanted to be a musician and that’s what I pursued for the first part of my life. I went to university and studied jazz as a bass player, never in a million years thinking it would have any connection to my job when I was in my thirties. I didn’t even really want to be a jazz musician! I didn’t distinguish what was going on - it was a big bath of music that was teaching me.
Jazz was just something I loved from age twelve or thirteen. I grew up in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia (east coast of Canada) - a very small suburb of Halifax. I went to university to study jazz, not to be a jazz musician, but thinking that it was a great foundational kind of approach to being a musician. If you can play jazz badly, you can probably play everything else at a pretty good level. As soon as I got there, people were in practice spaces for five, six hours a day. I was like – ‘Oh - dedication... This is going to require something of me.’
At the same time, it was an incredible experience for me. I was at a very isolated university in Nova Scotia, so there wasn’t really anything else to do but study. So, I went off and started a musical career that had some success. I was in a band that had quite a lot of popularity here in Canada, called The Pursuit of Happiness. I used to tour all over the world and do all the kind of things that I thought would come from that experience.
It kind of wound itself down and I was minorly petrified at what would be in front of me. I decided at a thirty-whatever-year old to go back to school and study broadcasting. There was a course here in Toronto that had a one year program that was fast-tracked and seemed like, even if it all goes wrong, I’ve only set myself back another year and a half.
I had great success at school because I’d never gone to school thinking that it mattered so much. This was about career, a level of desperation, as opposed to filling some need in my heart. I had to get through it and get a job. That kind of fire made me try really hard.
I started interning at a radio station and got a job there, which was very lucky. One of the people I went to school with started working at what was called CJRT which was JAZZ.FM91. Every time he talked to his boss he would say, “You know, I went to school with this guy, he has a jazz degree…” He kind of softened him up and the CEO at the time, triggered a meeting. I went in there and pretended I knew something – “This is what your radio station should be, it should be inclusive and get away from where everyone’s a professor. You should make it open and…” He liked the cut of my jib, so to speak and he knew he could get me for a dime (!). He offered me a job.
This was twenty years ago, just as the station transitioning from being a hybrid community station that had folk music and blues, jazz music and stories for kids in the evenings. It was like an NPR radio station. When I was hired, it went to an all-jazz format. It took all the other things off the radar.
When I got here twenty years ago, my job description was very undetermined - I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in an office with a phone, wondering what would come next. It took a while, there was a lot of culture change going on. So, I’ve just been kind of hanging around for the last twenty years, quite honestly. It’s been an interesting ride but that’s how I ended up here.
What was the attraction to broadcasting?
When the band I used to be in did press, it got left to me and the leader to do it. It went well, whether it was on television or radio. I wasn’t mic shy, I wasn’t overly anything. I wasn’t trying to hold onto a persona. I would go in and be goofy and try to make things work. I remember a couple of times, being told I should work in radio. I felt that I could dialogue, I liked asking questions. I didn’t want to give into something that felt like it was just getting a job. I still wanted to do something I liked, something I still felt good about. That was the drive to do broadcasting.
Twenty-something years later, what is the attraction to broadcasting?
When it’s at its best, it’s like, “Hi, I’m here, let’s listen to music.” I am the audience, it’s not a case of trying to be like them. That’s who I am. For me, it’s so fun when you get a chance to dialogue with someone and you can feel it’s a real conversation, even though it’s public. We’re doing something that’s normally quite private but we’re talking into microphones and it sounds as though you’re in the room with me answering these questions. I’m here, really listening.
I certainly love serving music up. I love creating the playlist for our radio station. The real joy is when we are on the air, being the people that we are, hopefully entertaining people, bringing them in. Sometimes, after those moments, I can sit back and think – ‘that that was really great.’ Those moments aren’t daily. In some ways, it is a job, a thing you have to manufacture sometimes. You are paid to do it. That’s fine too. It’s a job talking into a microphone in a comfortable chair, which makes it a pretty good one.
I do feel that it is small, intimate. I’ve never come in here, thinking of people listening. I think about the room I’m in or the person I’m talking to. I hope it translates in a way that’s broad, as opposed to coming into the room and shooting to the back of it. It’s not my style. Most of the things I’ve been entertained by, whether it be radio or television, have been intimate and seem real.
That’s what I’m trying to do - have a real conversation with someone, or talk like I would really talk to you. Whether it’s everyone’s cup of tea or the right way, I’ve been doing it this way for twenty years, so…!
Has that communication changed in any way through the pandemic?
I was in the United States when lockdown was declared, so when we came home, we had to isolate ourselves for a couple of weeks. I started doing the show from my basement. There was a very interesting energy from being down there for a couple of months. For a while, it felt like we were having a slumber party. Let’s get all our groceries and close the door. Let’s watch TV. Even if you didn’t quite know what was happening, it kind of had that feeling of a snow day.
I don’t think I changed how I was on the air but people were reacting in a different way. You got the feeling that JAZZ.FM91 was acting like a lifeline, in the broadest sense. It was something important to people in a way that I didn’t realize. People were seeking friendship and security. They were seeking voices that had been with them for a long time. Behaving in a normal way that made things seem more normal.
In those early days, the feedback that was coming from listeners was ‘thank you for doing what you’re doing’. What are you talking about? After a while, I told myself not to deny it, that thing I do. At this point, it was more important than I ever thought it was, because of the impact, the music, the vibe has for people. It’s been a real eye opener for me to see how people have responded to the radio station and to what we do.
With that realization, was there a growing sense of responsibility?
I think there is something to that. I think that’s maybe why I didn’t want, at first, to accept the importance of people’s reaction. In accepting it, you do have to take on more responsibility. Whatever people are responding to, you don’t want to change how you do it because that would then not be the same, what they were used to. Privately, it did make me think about the responsibility in a different way.
What has the ‘magic’ of the pandemic brought to you, personally and as a host?
It’s funny, I wish I had come to a bigger revelation in this time. I am still betwixt and between all the things I was betwixt and between before, only they’re shaded slightly differently because of what’s gone on. I look at people who have made big changes during this time and I have great admiration for them, that they were able to take whatever was happening and make something new.
For me, it makes me think about life after the pandemic, it makes me think of the things that have been carved away by all of this and I’m not really sure that I want all of that stuff back, to some degree. I can now understand how little I can live with, to a certain degree. Put me in my backyard, with a glass of wine and some music, that can be as good as it gets. Before, with that wine in that backyard, the thought would have been, “Wouldn’t it be great to be in New York City right now?” I don’t have those moments of wishing to be somewhere else anymore.
With age too, I think you get a little smaller in your life. This, maybe, has accelerated it slightly, to make things a little bit smaller. In some ways, it makes me happy, as I move through these ‘other’ last years of my existence on planet earth, that it can be small, I can be happy. My partner, Caroline, and I, we’ve been together for twenty-six years and we did really well during this time. We enjoyed our time together, we still enjoy our time together.
What will you take with you as we come out of the pandemic?
There’ll be some things I’ll really value and enjoy. I would still like to go to New York. I’d like to be sitting at Smalls, watching some jazz. That will be a very exciting experience in a way that it was never before, without the pandemic. It’s going to feel like I won the lottery because it has felt like it would never happen again. To go in and out of the businesses in my neighbourhood with freedom and buy what I want. It gets small for me. The community experiences, without a mask on, to go to a meat or veg market and have more of a normal exchange with someone. I’m really going to value that, in a way that I wouldn’t have thought of, ever before.
Who are you?
That’s a question I’m trying to answer every day. The thing I’ll take away from this - how I’ll be a better person. I can be driven by frustrations - these are things that are in my head all the time. I’m not quite sure why they’re there but they’re useless. With everything that’s gone on, I’m really interested in the next twenty, thirty years, to get to a place where my default isn’t to think of what’s wrong, what the problems are, but to cling to the things that I know are great in my life.
That seems to be what I’m most focused on, through this time. To be a better person sounds like the most stupid answer to that question. But so much stuff has been torn away and there’s so much space now...and a partner who’s good at recognising what goes on in my head…
The radio station has been through a lot of things, a lot of waves to ride and things to process. Those have left some scars because of the enormity of it all. To get past all that and have it be about music, a great city and the incredible artists that make the music… And I’m healthy. I’m just hoping that balance doesn’t get out of whack. I’m trying to get the balance better. I don’t know if it answers who I am but I’m working on being more of this and a lot less of that.
Commitment, contentment and chutney.
Mezzo soprano Lucy Schaufer talked to us about ‘making’ - projects, connections, a legacy. And chutney. And jam.
photo: dan welldon
Who are you?
Oh well, there are so many hats! To say I know who I am means that I’ve sussed it out, and I certainly have not sussed it out at all. I’m a performer, producer, commissioner of new works, advocate, educator, wife, stepmother, and it is said I do make some damn wicked jams and chutneys.
What I am is someone who’s voracious. I’m voracious in my personal and artistic life. I have an enormous desire to know things, ask questions, seek answers, and I’m hardly satisfied if I don’t know an answer, so I keep asking WHY - yet it’s vital to add that my voracity is not the quest for being right. It is to seek, clarify, and understand.
So…Who am I? I’m a person who likes to walk on the road (never the pavement) and go off piste, who chooses to create my own desire path, in the woods – and say, ‘that looks interesting over there, I don’t understand why people haven’t walked this way before, so that’s where I’m going’.
Where did this curiosity come from?
Maybe it comes from being the last of four children, with a big old, fat ten and half year gap between my brother and me. And I do consider myself an only child in many ways, even though it’s a 3 plus 1 arrangement. Everyone in the family sang. It was taken for granted that the Schaufer kids would always have the leads in the musicals. My siblings would sing in harmony as they dried the dishes at night. My father Henry Schaufer, who worked for Zenith Radio & Television, was part of the team which developed the first FM Stereo Radio technology in Chicago. It’s in the blood.
Yet spending a lot of time on my own made this kid have an imagination that just wanted to… go…to fly! My best friend was ‘Mabel the Maple Tree’ - my dad planted her well before I was born, and it was in the front corner of our yard. I used to pretend she spoke to me when the wind blew through her leaves. How poetic! Ha! I would climb her every day, hang upside down. My eldest sister married a local dairy farmer, so I would spend a lot of time at the farm, feeding the calves, playing with the dogs, and making sure that all their ticks were pulled out. All the cows had names, but I still renamed them and made-up stories.
I suppose it’s storytelling, yes, I suppose it always comes back to that for me, creating that inner life. Hollywood musicals and films were my salvation. I would stay up late, late at night watching TV and my dad would come in, “Why aren’t you in bed?!” But I couldn’t go to sleep because I was sure there was always going to be something on the next channel, in the next movie that would fill me with that sensation, that life force that would make everything...all right.
I was looking for this life force, always curious as to what was next or going to happen. Maybe it was the boredom of childhood. If it doesn’t stifle you, it makes you curious.
Why do you do what you do?
It’s why I’m here.
Would you exist without it?
When you ask me that question, the tears want to fall. I don’t know is the simple answer. Consciously, I know I would. Spiritually, if it’s why I am here, then the answer must be no, right? Logic demands. I would find it a very difficult path without my artistic life. Even if I were to stop singing tomorrow, I would not stop producing, teaching, creating in some way. There’s no scenario in my head where I would not be part of this creative world. Hell, I’d start a jam company. Anything. I’d have to MAKE.
Sometimes you’re forced to ask this question. Years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I had the beginnings of a nodule, and after my mum died, I had a vocal haemorrhage. These are the two times in my life where the “will I ever be able to sing again” came into play. You have no choice but to ask yourself deep questions, and often you’re not ready nor do you have the tools to answer. Dark days. Or upbringing clouds your vision. For me, at one point, Catholicism darkened my ability to fully examine my life and made me wonder if I were being punished for hubris. Would I exist without it? Yes, I would. Would I want to? Absolutely not.
So let me circle back - it’s one of the things I do, I circle back to things. Bear with me… Why do I do what I do? How do I put that into words? It’s why I want to get up in the morning. I like making sounds, I like telling stories, I like playing with others. It really is how I vibrate in this world. For me, as many have heard me say before and you’ll hear me say it again: it’s about connection. It has always been about connection and it will always be about connection.
When you’re a bored, curious child, you look for people to love and to love you. You seek out and find places where connection happens. The beauty of it fulfils you, and you acknowledge your own contribution and power within this spark. Then it grows, becomes bigger than, more than. I have this huge, great desire to love. That’s one way of how I express it, through my music and my work on the stage.
Is there anything in there about being seen?
Completely. Are you kidding? Of course! I found, as an adult, there were stories in my family that I knew absolutely nothing about because they’d all been told before (remember, I’m the youngest). But not to me - I felt not seen, the outsider. Typical, perhaps, but it’s a seed of insecurity in a child. Not valued, not in on the family “skinny.” Is it no wonder my favourite question is WHY?
The follow up to that is the fear and fury of being misunderstood. Being misunderstood is the most hurtful thing in my consciousness. That’s why I’ve had to learn to say, “No, you wilfully misunderstand me.”
Excuses are made: you’re a woman, just a singer, or blonde (God forbid!) or five foot two. There are so many bits of ammunition in this toxic world that say, “We don’t need to hear from you.” Which is why I guess I’m loud. I’m just tired of not being heard or given the space to have a voice. I am not the only person who feels this way, boys and girls, am I?
There are multiple levels as to why we‘re not heard - be it colour of our skin, gender, socio-economics. We could talk all day. I wanted to be heard and I was always told to be quiet. It’s not about walking into a room and being at the centre or demanding attention. It’s simply that I’m eager to hear other people’s voices. Tell me something and let’s share.
There’s a difference between wanting to be heard and wanting to hear. Through different experiences, my mantra became ‘Listen. And believe me.’ It’s #metoo, BLM, LGBTQ+… everyone is saying that very thing. ‘Listen. And believe me.’ I’m not going to sit back any more. I’ve got maybe, maybe thirty-five more years. I’ve already had fifty-five. I’m not going to fuck this up.
In this enforced hiatus, creatives haven’t been seen or heard. What has that been like for you?
I am incredibly lucky, that over the years I have become friends and colleagues with some of the younger generation who are incredibly innovative and really want to put things online. Alex Parker asked me to sing for his online concert extravaganza The Kings of Broadway: Celebration of Styne, Herman, & Sondheim. That was in May, 2020. Then we did the our residencies Wild Plum Arts - Made at the Red House in August and that felt like - YES, we did it!
It was serendipity, in the grand scheme of things. August was that pocket of time when we all could meet up. I was so grateful my job in September was not cancelled, and I filmed The Diary of One Who Disappeared, for Scottish Opera with Ed Lyon, for the Lammermuir Festival.
My last job in “the before times” was Weill’s Street Scene in Monte Carlo at the end of February 2020. March was going to be a personal month anyway. So I worked May, August, September. Then we did a live concert of Kings of Broadway at the Palace Theatre in London in front of real people (socially distanced) in December in that wee window before the Christmas lockdown.
I’ve had plenty of ‘soul food’ and again, I was very lucky. No, I wasn’t seen a lot, had no desire to put any work online personally, and my first Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd was cancelled, so that did bring some anxiety. But I found myself - content. Yes, content.
For very first time, in my twenty-five years of marriage, my husband (Christopher Gillett, or more widely known as Mr G) and I spent a whole year together. We slept in the same bed for a year. That has never happened. It was amazing. And we still like each other! We sorted, gardened, we went the full Marie Kondo on our arses! I foraged and fermented. It might have been an artistic hiatus but, personally, I felt free.
It was a time for questions. What isn’t serving me? What is serving me? What do I want to do? I allowed it to fester and bubble, and allowed myself time to figure it out because I didn’t have a deadline. One of my artistic advisors for Wild Plum Arts, Gillian Moore told me not to plan anything before April 2021 and to go slowly, slowly. So, I had permission to postpone projects, do nothing, and it reinforced the contentment I wanted. I had enough gigs to feel in demand, so I didn’t feel left out.
I took leadership courses, I was chosen for the Beth Morrison Producer’s Academy, and I went back to teaching in September at the RCM, which was a battle and a half. How do you teach acting and movement and guide people’s bodies on Zoom? I went off piste and we did many different things, and allowed the students to be more inventive, autonomous, and personally creative. So, Amen.
It was that year of allowing danger, doing things I would have never allowed myself to do. Like read books, nuzzle on the sofa. My husband’s been walking sixty kilometres a week, so he gets out. And when he’s out, I’m doing other stuff. Though I’ve knitting projects that are not quite finished…(apologies to Thomas Hyde).
It was okay. It truly is okay to stop and say, “Some of this really doesn’t work personally, institutionally, systemically.” And it was good to question it all and whether I wanted to run around like a headless chicken for the rest of my life. Quality over quantity, and I know that’s difficult as a freelancer.
Sometimes, I’ll hold onto the door closed, window open adage of the universe working in mysterious ways - because when you leave space for the opportunities to appear, and allow your heart and mind to open, clarity comes.
The year has been refreshing, renewing. Allowing in a new way, what I want and not what the industry wants from me, or what I think the industry wants from me and fighting the tensions. Change of perspective. We’re all different today - No, I don’t really have to play your game. I never really did to begin with, and why are you still trying to play it?
I am so grateful I have agents now who do get me and allow Wild Plum Arts to flourish, who value my contemporary works, opera, and the music theatre gigs, who get that the industry has had to catch up to me, in a funny way. Is not every opera house doing musical theatre works and commissioning new opera? You might need me and my experience. I’ve been waiting. And I’m still here! Institutional speed is akin to a sloth. Some move quicker than others, and kudos to those making new paths forward. And we haven’t even scratched the surface of equality, diversity, and inclusion.
I’ve been doing music theatre for my entire life (my first job was 4 variety shows a day, 7 days a week from May to September at an amusement park) and I’ve been belittled for it, or told I wasn’t a serious artist.
Change on all levels may be hard, and many are discombobulated by the speed the world and the younger generation wants them to evolve, but evolve these institutions must. We are not the same as we were in the “before times.” To try to revert simply to old patterns and structures risks deep failure and stagnation.
You were given ‘permission’ to not do anything. Did you take it? And – going forward – will you keep giving yourself permission?
I’d like to change the noun, please. Gillian (Moore) gave me the affirmation (not permission) I needed to know I was going in the right direction, to acknowledge what was in me already, that I wanted to STOP, WAIT and look for the longer arc. I needed her counsel and guidance, and because I respect her so much, I listened. I needed to stop in order to quiet the noise, for me to hear what I was telling myself.
Oh, there was too much in the way. There was way too much noise in my head to hear what my inner voice was telling me. The inner voice needed space to be creative again, to breathe again, not plan the next train journey or cram another thing into my week or create online content. Inner voices like life forces need regeneration. Like our creative sector itself. The commoditisation of the arts and artists is a tough systemic nut to crack and eradicate. We can’t breathe…
The next battle is the democratisation of the arts and how we fund it. Which leads back to what actions/choices will I make? I will try to make better choices - and again, quality over quantity. Recently, Alice Goodman posted golden words from her husband, Sir Geoffrey Hill: Hill…” defended the right of poets to difficulty, as a form of resistance, to the demeaning simplifications imposed by maestros of the world.”
So, it’s okay to be difficult, it’s okay to be different. Stand up. Create the space for the world to change.
What’s the definition of difficulty?
It could be as simple as non-violent protest. Civil disobedience. Yet, clearly, that’s too difficult for some to accept as we have seen every single gosh-darn-blasted day.
Personally, in work situations, I think it might be that I have an opinion. And I don’t cork it enough. For me, when someone considers me difficult, I think it’s because I believe in something so strongly that I have to say it. It doesn’t mean that it has to be acted upon, I just need to say it. Or God forbid, I would want something to be better. Others may feel I undermine their sense of security by asking a question.
To be branded “difficult” is the price for caring so a pal told me recently. There are obviously times, under budget or time constraints, when we have to accept a situation or agree to disagree and get on with the production. That’s respectful pragmatism. But, if there’s time, make it better, speak up. Simply have the conversation. Use your voice.
That’s true in life too. It can always be better, there can always be more. I’m not asking you to fix it. I’m just asking the question. (I like questions!) Maybe it’s that dang Catholic family again.
I would ask my mother “Why?”
Her answer, “Yours is not to question why.”
Of course my next question is, “But, why?”
Why do you do what you do?
I love what I do. There is no greater joy for me than when I do what I do.
Which is a different joy from the profound love for my husband and step-children.
Talk about Wild Plum Arts. Why did you create it and what does it give you?
It’s been a long held dream of mine, ever since I was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival. I love the idea of helping create a viable artistic future for us all. If we don’t commission and support it now, what will we have for tomorrow? I suppose it’s my way of leaving a legacy - I want to make a difference. Wild Plum Arts is where I can funnel my unconditional love, to be absolutely blunt about it.
The name? Chris and I chewed over many different options, but none rang true. Make it personal, right? Every autumn, we pick wild plums in a hedgerow near our house and this hedgerow gives of its fruit unconditionally every year. I can make jam, I can make chutney, I can make whatever I want from the fruit. And wouldn’t it be great if somebody gave of themselves, so somebody else could make what they needed or wanted? Isn’t that the most amazing thing? And not make it conditional or transactional, but to provide support and nourishment for another creative artist to become their optimal, whatever that may be.
Chris and I have always felt strongly about WPA’s unconditional ethos. That’s why I love to teach and Wild Plum Arts exists, so that artists can become their fully vibrating selves in the world. If I can help, if I can advocate for you, that feels great. And that means I’ve succeeded as a person and as an artist, too. WPA is now in its fourth year, will host its third season of Made At The Red House residencies in August, and we’ve created The Wild Plum Songbook, which is a cornucopia of our new commissions.
Who are you?
So, who am I? I’m an artist. But that sounds wanky, even if possibly true. I’m a MAKER who wants to use her creative energy to imagine new things, form new connections, and find joy with others. Whatever it is that I make while I’m here, I want that path to be wide enough for others to walk with me and clear enough for whoever comes after. But for Pete’s sake, please veer off the path. I promise it’s more fun out there in the weeds.
When it comes to the arts, it’s just me, living my life. Jaymz Bee.
This is our third post in association with JAZZ.FM91. We spoke to Jaymz Bee, host of Jazz Gone Wild, Jazz in the City and the international party, also known as The Jazz Safari ™. Passion - for music, for people, for FUN - is this man’s life. And life is for living.
photo: desh fernando
Who are you?
I’m Jaymz Bee. (That was my idea, not my parents.) I was originally from a small town in Northern Canada and moved to Toronto at 18 in 1981. Shortly after unpacking all my worldly possessions, my house burnt down and I was trapped inside of it. Almost dying and being a little bit of a bubble boy was a great thing for my life because when I came out of it, I never thought of anything the same again. I’ve had fun for the last twenty-five years. The essence of me is the positive guy who almost died and every day is a gift.
I moved down to Toronto because I wanted to be a puppeteer on the Fraggle Rock Show (Jim Henson and Friends). I auditioned but I never knew if I got the part because my house burnt down, all my puppets died and I couldn’t use my hands. I had considered studying acting but my thespian friends were all broke and besides, I didn’t want to audition - I didn’t want to wait. I knew that I could make music and no one could stop me. I could make it on the street, in a cafe, I could make a record someday - I just knew music was the way to go.
always liked the arts, so even if I’m just finger painting, as long as it’s creative, I’ll make something and enjoy myself. Also, I have a wicked sense of humour, so I know I’m not all that…I’m not precious about art.
How did you become a radio host?
I was in a punk, funk band. We were called Look People and we had t-shirts that said “5 Guys Who Think They’re Playing Jazz”. My love of Jazz happened during those tours because my other musicians would be playing really heavy Weather Report and other cool jazz stuff, so I started getting jazz apart from punk and funk and rock and everything else. I started doing some radio in Switzerland (DRS3). They liked me and kept interviewing me and they said to come in and bring Canadian music to host a show of my own.
When I came back to Toronto, in the early/mid 80’s, I got a small show on a radio campus station. It was really popular and got syndicated quickly to other campus stations. It didn’t make me much money but it was really great to know that people were listening to my tastes in music.
Around 1999, I was doing talk radio. I wasn’t a very good radio host because I’d cut people off, I wasn’t being respectful enough. I wasn’t trying to be rude and in my defence I’d add “if the guest is boring me, our listeners will be bored any second”.
Then I did Conspiracy Radio. (I always say, - play the ‘what if’ game, but don’t believe it.) While working at radio I listened to other stations, most notably 91.1FM (www.jazz.fm) in Toronto. One afternoon I heard on JAZZ.FM91 that they were doing a fund drive. I knew all the musicians they were playing on the radio and I just thought, “I should probably have a job there.”
At first they wanted me to produce a one-hour show and then host a second show. In no time I was doing marketing for them and raising so much money that it turned into a full time job for me, for seventeen years! I was doing jazz tours, The Jazz Safari (™), and took jazz fans around the world. It began with tours of Toronto, then branched out to New York, Newport, Monterey, New Orleans, Chicago, Cuba, Panama, Italy, England and Iceland.
It’s nineteen years now, doing Jazz radio and it really remains my passion. I discovered I loved jazz in my mid-twenties which was the late eighties. Now, there isn’t a decade in jazz that doesn’t fascinate me. Aside from Duke’s “Far East Suite” as a teen I missed jazz. Most people do, I think. They find jazz in their twenties, thirties or forties, most people don’t listen to jazz when they’re kids.
What is your role as a radio host?
It used to be very simple - to promote the music that was coming into our town. My show is a three hour show about what is playing in every club. Toronto is probably the third biggest city in North America for jazz venues. A lot of them are small. There are only a few premium venues where everyone goes and all the tourists go. If you don’t know your way around, it can be daunting, so my show was to promote every club with the same amount of fervour.
I believe the clubs and the publishers and the publicists and all the people that helped those musicians, they all deserve a round of applause.
But now my mission is completely different. Now, because there are no clubs open, I’m going in and giving information about an artist and playing a few of their songs. I’ve even made up diagrams to make sure I don’t just wing it. I’ve made it as inclusive as possible. Toronto is a multicultural city, so we’ve never had to worry about black and white, male and female at our station. There’s so much to pick from - from everywhere.
I go into the micro now, I want to find stuff, it’s my passion to dig deeper. Who’s making music now? I feel it’s my duty now to dig deeper and find people with interesting stories and are making jazz here in Toronto and maybe have been overlooked. And I’m not afraid of music that’s way outside! My stuff is bebop and stuff that grooves. I’ve been dabbling in Exotica music, electronic music too. Still, sometimes I want to go play outside. It’s wild but without tongue in cheek. That’s Irritainment!
Is there now, in this current climate, an added responsibility for you (as a radio host) to bring people together?
I don’t think there is (the music brings people together already) but I put it on myself anyway. I don’t think a DJ has to be worried about it but I’m innately inclusive: I want everyone to feel involved. It means more now than it used to - to bring us together, to stay positive.
Remember, no station in life is ever permanent. This is not the ‘new normal’. This may last longer than we want and it already has. You can slide into a depression and if you don’t have someone to talk to, you’re in serious trouble.
When I’m on air, I need to come up with a positive spin on these things - only a little bit of humour as I’m not making light of the situation. I try to keep it pretty much about the music, I’ll stay positive in Lockdown and say, “Don’t forget folks, one day we are getting together in person, at a real live concert”.
Last summer, we got to reopen the jazz club I booked - but for just a little bit, a couple of months so meanwhile I started booking bands in people’s backyards. My deal is that I turn up to MC with a small PA that I set up, small and loud…it’s all so simple. All they have to do is give us one power bar and we play far away from their guests.
We set up to play for an hour and fifteen minutes and then leave. So it’s very safe. These guys get an amazing party and musicians they wouldn’t believe were in their backyard…and the bands get a little money and a chance to play together in person!
This year, I’m going to work harder at this and the trick is - who knows what the rules will be. It’s starting to ease up but who knows? While I book private shows, I want to make sure different people get gigs. I ask the host questions about whose music they like and what they want. The host has a dozen or so friends over, and many people who attend then ask for events at their homes. For now, this only works outdoors spring to fall.
I would hope in this moment of pause, that all the governments could re-tweak certain things. This is a time to rethink many things beyond dealing with a pandemic. We shuffle about with too much commuting, for example.
Artists are in a unique position. For most of us, the five percent that make a living or something, we’ve never had it easy, so this is just more of that. There are sensitive artists, who are really messed up and my heart goes out to them. They have all these emotions and it can be a very dark place for them if they don’t have the option to hang around with other people. In Toronto, it felt like solitary confinement for some.
In Canada, we have the Unison Benevolent Fund. It helps musicians with medical, mental, and financial issues. One example: If somebody breaks their arm playing piano, their rent might be covered for three months. It’s a very quick process. Now, because of this, they are overwhelmed with requests; but on the positive side they also have been raising more and being on more people’s minds in general.
Aside from the money, they do counselling and a lot of artists need that really badly. Everybody’s hurting. The people that have regular jobs are having a harder time because artists always have had a hard time. If you worked 9 to 5 and now you’re homeschooling your kids - that’s tougher than writer's block!
When the pandemic lifts, will some of these new things continue? The backyard concerts?
I think what we’re doing now will influence what is coming up. The artists that are making music, right now, they’re all at home practising new licks, new sounds. They’re finding new things. I think they’ll take that moving forward.
I’m hoping that the people that have music at their homes now, with the backyard music, I’m hoping that that becomes a thing. We have to take what happens now and keep it with us as we move forward. What happens next won’t be completely ‘back’. That’ll be years away.
There was a study done recently (Canadian Independent Music Association) where it was reported that in the first six months of this, the Canadian Music Industry lost two hundred and thirty-three million dollars. When they did all these surveys, they realized that this isn’t going to end quickly. I think they said that fifty-five percent of the people surveyed said that they would not be going to a concert as soon as the doors opened. They would wait a few more months until it was safe.
I booked a club called the Jazz Bistro, it’s a nice place. They can’t open for ten people. If they have fifty people, having dinner and drinking, they can do that. But otherwise they can’t open.
When clubs open, I believe the people will be coming in. They will have waited long enough. But things won’t get settled - some will stay nervous and stay away. Meanwhile, luckily, there are people who basically saved money in the past year, so they can pay a cover and enjoy some great music in concert.
If you didn’t do this, what would you be doing?
I’d probably be finger painting in a barn by a lake in Canada. In Ontario, we have two hundred thousand lakes, so there’s always somewhere to go. To be honest, I’m kind of looking into a farm concept of a commune of artists, that make music, hang out and come into town to do things. I think we’re a couple years away from really getting back into it, so I’m looking around for that.
I also had time and went up North, hung out in a cabin and started writing my memoirs. That’s something I’ve been doing on and off my whole life. Luckily I’ve kept diaries and things so I can hear the voice I wrote it in and laugh at my youth. It was a really nice getaway. I got to walk in the woods and the fresh air every day, eat simple food and kept writing.
It will always be something in the arts. I was five years old when I finally asked my Dad “How much does it cost to be in a movie?” and he explained to me that actors get paid to be in a movie. I thought only rich people were allowed to act, because you had to pay for the privilege of pretending you were someone else.
I kept probing him about other jobs or careers. He explained that writing the scripts, shooting the film with a camera, painting and playing guitar…they could all be jobs. He also mentioned hobbies and how few people made a living but I chose to ignore most of that - I turned to me and said: “Dad, I’m an artist.” I’ve never stopped creating... I mean I've had some epic fails, but even the bad decisions make me laugh!
Is what you do a job?
No, I don’t think so. In a sense, I’ve only ever had a few jobs, like fixing watches in a jewelry shop. That’s a job because I’d rather not be there! I’m not even sure about the word ‘career’. If this is a career, then I have tempered ambition, not lowered expectations. If this was my career, if I took the notion of a career seriously, I suppose someone would have every right to call me a loser because I didn’t make millions of dollars.
I’d say, I have a great life, I’m a happy person, I’m never bored, I’m always grateful. It feels like I’m always winning. When it comes to the arts, it’s basically just me living my life and expressing myself with wild, joyous abandon.
What has the ‘magic of the pandemic’ brought for you?
First, the guilt. I’m up to season seven of the television show Barnaby Jones. That means I’ve seen over one hundred episodes since this time last year. Now, I didn’t waste my time. I wrote down the exact time in each episode every time he drank a glass of milk or was running after somebody. Someday, I’ll make some art out of this because watching this old guy, drinking milk, in every different dull suit in each episode, not really running because he has bum knees - it’s all a guilty pleasure but also guilt.
In some ways, it’s too easy to binge watch. That’s the one thing that’s negative. But I’d least I’m watching 70’s TV detective shows and not the current news much.
Now the positive - I didn’t realize how much I drank until I stopped going out. My booze bill has gone from $600-$800 a week to $120 a month. I realized, when I went out - and I loved going out - I went to so many clubs and spent so much money. I’ve been doing this my whole life.
If you recall earlier, I nearly died in the early 80’s, so every day is a blessing. It’s nice to cook a little food, have a little drink and then get to writing stories, songs, music - and I find I am finally reading books all the time too. So in that way it’s been positive to slow down and reconsider how I spend my time and money.
It’s a major test on artists on how to keep moving forward, how to stay positive and what to do. What I haven’t done, is get up and do yoga every day, so I’ve got the Covid-19 pounds, (let’s say kilos). I’ve had a bad couple of days but even my bad days aren’t that traumatic. I’ll be sad for a couple of days, I’ll look at the news and watch documentaries that don’t make me happy.
I’m snapping back to working on my Christmas Album which is, by the way, ‘Yuletide Irritainment’ (!) I’m making a Christmas record, where the singers are off key and the arrangements are, in some ways, horrible. I’m tired of tasteful Christmas music, so I’m going to put out something else. My engineer, Mariana Hutton and I have been laughing ourselves silly while working on this project “A Very UnTraditional Christmas”.
You’re like a magician. You create opportunities where there are none…
I’m surprised you caught that so quickly. I hear that a lot. Not normally by talking for just an hour though!
I feel like a jazz Robin Hood. I don’t steal from the rich. I just convince them that philanthropy is awesome. We ask people to donate to JazzFM91. It’s a not for profit radio station, nobody owns it, it’s not the government, it’s not a business like other media businesses. We made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, by asking people to send us some money last week. Since Covid-19, we have had more calls than ever but maybe for smaller amounts. We’re seeing that more people are saying that they love the station and it’s keeping them sane through all this.
Radio now is more important than ever. Our numbers are up because we are not just the station that you listen to on the way to work. We’re the station you listen to when you want a friend, a familiar voice and the playlist so NOT boring. It’s not just smooth jazz or one style like some other stations. People really have a friend in the station and I’m seeing it’s easier and easier to get the jazz community involved…everyone supporting each other.
When I took our listeners (donors) to Cuba, we hung out with the legendary Bobby Carcasses. At the London Jazz Festival, we hung out with Ian Shaw and in Umbria, Jamie Cullum invited us backstage and we all toasted him. I can’t wait to get back to travelling with like-minded music fans. I miss that most of all I think.
When you talk about JAZZFM.91, you make it sound like a family.
It’s more of a family than anywhere else I’ve been. When we say it, it’s not corny. We went through a major family crisis a couple of years ago - but changes were made and it’s more like family than ever before. I think it made us stronger about our commitment to the people who support the music as well as those who actually create it. The bond between employees, musicians and jazz fans is about to be tested as clubs reopen. I firmly believe the scene will turn around.
JAZZ.FM91 is getting more and more involvement (comments and donations) from people around the world than ever and personally, I love getting email from people around the world who listen to my whacked-out-show “Jazz Gone Wild”. I’ve had more contact with people in the past few months than in the previous ten years.
The show is on at 1am here in Toronto. In Israel it’s 8 or 9am. There’s a guy in Israel who wrote, “I wake up and have breakfast whilst listening to your show. I absolutely love it, I’m going to donate to the station.” So people around the world are listening in different time zones! I get a lot of comments from the West Coast. From Vancouver to LA it’s 10pm…Music that might be perfect after a night of drinking can be someone else’s breakfast fodder! We have so much international acclaim and I think we deserve it because this is a really good radio station. I’m always happily surprised to discover that it’s more global than we think.
Who are you?
I’m a creator. Uh, let me try this: I’m a magical spirit that’s visiting from Avalon 2. Part Brad Pitt, part Oompa Loompah. I’ve been here several times, but I can’t really remember them, so someone must have put the whammy on me. While I’m floating around in this shell, I think my job is to hold up a happy mirror, try to get people to see that life is worth celebrating even when it might look kinda shitty. There’s always a way of turning it around and looking at it another way.
It may be foolish to have the amount of positivity that I have. I used to think I had attention deficit disorder but there’s no disorder. I just jump around from project to project, treasure my friends and stay grateful for my health. Tada!
Running a little faster. Robin Norton-Hale
We spoke to the artistic director of OperaUpClose, Robin Norton-Hale, about perceptions, barriers and the differences between directing theatre and directing opera (hot tip: none). Read on!
Who are you?
I’m Robin. I’m a director of opera and theatre, in that order. I tend to do a little bit more opera than theatre, partly because I think that the theatre world is a bit snobbish about opera, which is the opposite way around from what people tend to think. That’s another story…!
I’m also a writer and a mother of two small children.
How did you get here? Why do you do what you do? And why in that order?
I studied English at University. I love words – my first love in the world of arts was books, novels, fiction. At school I also enjoyed performing, and music has always been a big part of my life – I played saxophone, violin and piano (not to a high standard), and my dad loves music and has really eclectic taste, and he took me to see things at English National Opera from when I was pretty small.
We’d sit high up in the gallery and he’d explain what was happening. I think I saw Peter Grimes when I was about 9, which I realise now is quite unusual! When I started at university I knew I didn’t want to be a performer but I was very interested in performing arts, storytelling and words and the way they all interact.
I thought (in my eighteen year old confident way), when I go to university, I’ll do some directing. When I got there (in my unconfident eighteen year old way), all the people that were involved in drama seemed to know each other. My friends weren’t in that world, so I didn’t do it.
In London after university, I just started going to the theatre obsessively - two or three times a week, all of the great under 26 schemes, five pound tickets - and I thought, “Oh no. I missed directing as a student so I’ll never direct anything now.”
Obviously, at the age of twenty-two, you think ships have sailed. And I didn’t know anyone who worked in theatre. I had this English degree, I really wanted to write, but you couldn’t just...write. I didn’t feel I could, anyway. I did a journalism qualification, then got a job as press and marketing officer at English Touring Opera. It was combining my love of theatre and opera, and some writing, and I found it really interesting.
I found the marketing side much more interesting than the press. I never knew how to talk to the opera critics – it felt like we wanted them to write nice things about the work so much, the relationship was very one-sided. Marketing is telling existing and future audiences about the work and connecting with people, and if you get it right they’re just as excited as you are - I found that really interesting.
James Conway (Artistic Director of ETO), very kindly let me be his assistant director on a show that was part of a summer festival. I loved it and knew that this was what I needed to do. So that’s how I ended up directing, although it took a good few more years of using all my annual leave to direct shows, and various training courses, and assisting and shadowing before I felt I could begin to describe myself as a director.
The way I introduced myself is wrong. I’m a stage director. I don’t think theatre and opera directing are different skills. I think you need to be aware of a few different things when working with opera singers - about what they need from you as a director or from the staging, so that they can produce that amazing sound. The training that opera singers and actors get is quite different, however the skills of the director are very similar. It annoys me that they are seen as such different mediums.
I think there’s an idea in the theatre world that opera singers can’t act and connected to that, that opera directors can’t direct to the same level as theatre directors. People can be totally immersed in theatre, professionally, and really know their craft and industry and then say to me that they’ve never been to an opera, which I think is so bizarre. Some of the most inventive, theatrical stagings are in opera productions.
And. obviously, many singers really can act. The opera world sometimes feeds this idea that opera is lagging behind by inviting film and theatre directors to direct a huge opera – “Come and save us, you must show us how to do this…”
What is your role in getting rid of this ‘myth’?
Accidentally, I ended up being Artistic Director of a company (OperaUpClose).
I was a freelance director, directing theatre in fringe pub theatres and staff directing/directing on touring mid-scale shows. I was introduced to Adam Spreadbury-Maher, who’d set up this thirty-five seat theatre above a really rough pub, The Cock Tavern Theatre, in Kilburn. We got talking about opera and he said that he really wanted to put an opera on there and he wanted it to be La Bohème. We agreed it would definitely be in English and he invited me to direct it. I offered to write a new translation.
This meeting happened in October of 2009. He said it should be on at Christmas time and I thought he meant the next year. He didn’t. It was that Christmas. I was tipex-ing out the Italian words and writing mine in in biro at the kitchen table every night after rehearsals, then running off photocopies each morning. The poor singers only had Act 1 and part of Act 2 when we started rehearsals.
So, we put on this sort of DIY-show and partly because the press knew me from my role as press officer at ETO and partly, maybe, because there was something exciting about the idea of doing La Bohème with people who actually were students and in this grimy environment, we ended up with five or six national critics coming to the opening night.
And every night, the audience really loved it. I remember being surprised at the impact it had – I felt at home with fringe theatre, and opera, so putting them together seemed kind of obvious to me (and of course we weren’t the first to do opera in a pub theatre) but people were genuinely thrilled by it.
After La Bohème transferred to Soho Theatre, it was eligible for the Olivier Awards and it won, which was obviously amazing but also too early. It was our first show, we were still working out exactly what we wanted the company to be and what its ethos was. All of that got worked out with a lot more attention on us than would have been ideal. But, I’m not complaining, obviously.
At first, OperaUpClose wasn’t even a registered company. We thought we were doing La Bohème for a four week run in a thirty-five seat theatre. I was just directing it, I had no official role in OperaUpClose – OperaUpClose was just a name. The name came about because we needed to say ‘someone presents La Bohème’ and OperaUpClose was a very good description of what the experience was going to be. Then it kind of snowballed.
Of course, I wouldn’t suggest starting a company with someone you don’t know, on their credit card, but we hadn’t intended to start a company, just to put on one – hopefully good - show. We had to build the company, after the fact.
I only became Associate Director after directing OUC’s first two shows and I had to really fight for my artistic input to be recognised in that way. By that point, OUC was already quite successful. I had to fight for that and then again later, to become joint Artistic Director.
I considered walking away a number of times, because there were some challenging personalities and we’d set up no parameters for running a company together. On the other hand, I knew we were incredibly lucky that La Bohème was so successful, and so we had an opportunity to really do something significant with this company.
I think an arts company probably always slightly defines itself and its mission as it goes along, but that was more true of OperaUpClose than most.
How important is it to break down this wall between opera and theatre directing?
It probably seems like a pretty niche discussion to anyone outside the performing arts, but I do think within the industry it’s important to recognise it – that this is the way the opera world thinks about itself, or the theatre industry thinks about the opera industry. That idea that opera needs saving, or solving, is something we need to deal with, within the industry.
However, it’s a symptom of something much bigger, which is the image problem that opera still has. ‘Opera singers can’t act’ is a small part of that wider image problem. Mostly it is about image, but it also comes from a place of truth in some respects - from the idea that opera is grandiose, is not about people’s real lives, that the emotions are overblown, and that it’s incredibly expensive. All of that can be true – but opera can also be the most primal expression of our human experience.
The opera industry’s perception of itself and the public, sometimes stereotyped, view of what opera is are two sides of the same coin. What we’ve been trying to do with OperaUpClose is, if you start off a metre away from the audience, there is no room for grandiose acting or semaphoring emotion or anything that is not incredibly truthful and detailed. And the singing has to be really good too, of course. There’s nowhere to hide.
OperaUpClose now performs in mid-scale venues, 400-800 seats normally, quite different from the 35-seat pub but still relatively up close compared to ‘normal’ opera, without an orchestral pit, which means you will always be closer. The band is on the stage. For me, the quality of the acting doesn’t change. You slightly turn up the volume, whether it’s the flicker of an eyelid or an eyebrow or a movement of the head or the whole body.
Unless all of that starts from truthfulness of emotion and understanding who the character is, what they want and being rooted inside the body, then what comes out physically is not going to be truthful.
That is what is essential and central to what I do as a director and what we’re trying to do with OperaUpClose. We are breaking down this idea that opera is not about real people, real problems and real emotions.
All OperaUpClose shows are in English because I think any time you have a surtitle machine, it’s another barrier. The majority of people I encounter who haven’t been to an opera and are a little bit interested in doing so find language the biggest barrier to them accessing opera. The relief when they discover it can be in English is big, and it’s real.
There are certain groups within the industry and opera audiences who are vocal about only wanting to see opera in the original language and there’s still a lack of awareness of what a barrier that can be. It’s as if because ENO (and lots of other companies) have been doing opera in English for years, that’s enough, and it’s ok to have a slightly condescending conversation about how ‘it’s just better in the original though, isn’t it?’. Let the poor uninitiated people outside the opera club come in, if they like, but we’re not going to reach out our hands and welcome them.
Opera doesn’t need protecting. It’s a powerful art form – it can take change. For me, it’s just about telling the story as effectively and directly as possible and using whatever language achieves that. If that’s the original German /Italian, great but if it isn’t, change it.
Early on at OperaUpClose, we knew translation didn’t describe what we do, so we use ‘English version’ for our librettos. When you translate an opera libretto, you already have to take quite a big step away from a literal translation because you have to make it fit the music.
You’re already making changes. It’s not like translating a novel. Once you start making those changes, I think, why not allow yourself to make the changes intentional, so that it’s more idiomatic, and truly fits the production? Work together with the director and translator to make something that doesn’t make people say, “What is this stuffy language?” You might get closer to the truth of what the librettist was saying in the first place.
One thing I would say, which is an ethos for me, words and music are equal. For me, the best storytelling in opera is when those things are working together. All are equally important and have to be completely enmeshed. You have to try it and see what works, for singing, language and motivation.
So although you can make sure your new English words fit the music and tell the story, you don’t know until you hear them sung what really works. They don’t exist separately from one another – and even though I sing the English words to myself when I’m writing, I still don’t know if they are right until I hear them really sung out by a proper singer.
What gives you the right to make those decisions? Whose story is it?
Whose story is it? Every time we create a production, it’s a product of the time it’s created, and the people who created it. It’s the original composer and librettist’s story, and it’s also the story of the performers, director, conductor and everyone involved in the production, at that time. The same creative team working on the same opera ten years apart would make different shows. So, productions that we make coming out of the pandemic, will be informed by this moment.
And because productions will be - should be - at least partly the story of their creative team, it’s really important who makes up those creative teams. That’s something I’m increasingly aware of. I have this power, as an artistic director, to choose the creatives and artists that I work with. That changes the stories we tell. I am telling my story and that’s why all my librettos are feminist. I didn’t set out to write feminist librettos, they just are.
Who am I to do it? Anyone who creates art is partly telling their story, and hopefully they’re trying to tell some other stories too. I try to highlight some of the stories that are less told.
Surprisingly, for people that see opera as more old-fashioned, because so many of the leads in opera are female, there is more scope for telling strong female stories than in lots of classic or canonical plays, where most of the leads are men. That’s exciting to me and one of the reasons I like working in opera.
What did the pandemic do for you?
On a personal level, it gave me more time at home with my children and my husband, which was mostly great, not always! My kids are really little. Just before the pandemic, I was just coming back to work after a maternity leave with my second. I had just directed two shows - one for Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe and one for a drama school - in January and February 2020. I was in a world of, “You take him at 9am and I’ll get him after nursery, then you do dinner and I’ll…” Bleh. A lot of emotional energy just into scheduling, and resulting in the classic not feeling as though I was as present as I wanted to be at work or for my family.
What the pandemic has done for me and I think lots of other people is a realisation we don’t have to do things exactly as we always have, to one timetable, without question.
I’m hoping we can keep some of the new ways of doing things because we’ve learned we can work more efficiently and happily, in a much more flexible way. That’s big. I realise it’s a privilege to even be talking about flexible hours, and in many jobs it’s not an option. But I also think theatre has historically been particularly inflexible, and unsupportive to anyone with caring responsibilities, when we should be leading the way with this stuff.
And I’ve done a lot more running. It’s been amazing to run through the seasons on Hackney and Walthamstow marshes, near where I live. So what’s the pandemic done for me? I’ve got much faster!
Artistically, it’s been kind of great to pause and reflect, though with huge sadness. I’m very aware that I’ve been very lucky. Although I do some freelance directing, I am on a salary with OperaUpClose, which meant that there were furlough options for me and the team. It also meant that I was in a position to create work that could be produced in the pandemic. I saw that as a responsibility, in a very small way, to try and create some paid work for artists.
We’ve produced a series of online Coffee Break Concerts. We did eight last year and two this year. We also did an online show for seven to ten year olds, called Sammy and the Beanstalk. It was a modern Christmas fairytale, informed by emotions brought up by the pandemic but not literally about the pandemic.
I was interested in not saying, “here’s what we would have done on stage and here’s a film of that” and everybody being a bit sad that it’s not live. Rather, what can we do that makes a virtue of the fact that we’re all stuck at home?
For example, Sammy and the Beanstalk used a set where the walls actually moved and were drawn and had some animation. And for the Coffee Break concerts, these poor performers, performing at home, having to learn to use their cameras and lights! Rather than pretending, we made it a virtue and had them singing into laptops and so on, and I think they worked better as a result.
It has allowed me to do a mashup of the art forms. These so-called concerts have got Shakespeare, some new performance poetry, some opera. That’s really hard to do on stage because of this pigeonholing that we do with art forms. And when you’re touring there are maybe eight operas that theatres are interested in booking, in terms of title recognition.
So the pandemic has enabled us to choose new poets and pieces and present new things. I wonder if we can take some of the online work to demonstrate to programmers that maybe we can be a bit more daring about mixing art forms, when we go live again.
As we come out of lockdown, can you take some of these things forward with you?
For sure. During this year, obviously Black Lives Matter was around before but gained huge momentum and more recently, the death of Sarah Everard focused attention on violence against women.
There has been a lot of righteous anger, and the fact that the world has slightly been on hold has I hope given us an opportunity to look at what has been wrong and to focus on what could be better, when the world starts again.
Of course, the world hasn’t totally been on hold and I recognise it’s easier to talk about these things and what is wrong than it is to genuinely rebuild better. I do feel that the kind of breadth of anger and emotion, first about the killing of George Floyd and then the report that came out recently here that concluded, ‘oh, there’s no racism….’ is a real opportunity for genuine change. It’s also difficult to know how much I’m existing in a bubble on social media. It’s always that way isn’t it?
I feel that things are being put in place that mean that we can come back saying, ‘you know, we were only doing lip service to things before, we need to do better.’ I feel that. I feel that myself and about Opera Up Close.
We weren't doing badly, compared to the world, but not doing badly isn’t good enough. That’s through everything - what work are we programming, who are we working with, how do we set up rehearsal rooms to be supportive, not just for carers like I was talking about before, but to be much more inclusive.
A few performers for the Coffee Break Concerts were performers with disabilities. We’ve hardly worked with disabled performers in our live shows. Doing the online work has shown us there’s no excuse to not take that to the next level – no excuse but also a huge benefit to us, because the work is so much richer when you work with a wider range of people in every sense. It’s easy to say, but this year has shown me how true it is.
For me, I’m going to try to keep on running faster (literally, too - I’ve booked myself into three half marathons in a fit of over enthusiasm). Seriously, I want there to be actions, rather than just talk. I’m still working out what the best actions are.
We are in the work we create. I think I’ll be a bit more intentional about that, about what stories I’m telling and what stories I’m trying to tell. As a white woman, I feel that I have the right to tell white women’s stories. Does that mean then, that I don’t programme stories about black women? No, obviously not, but it will mean working with a director who has more right to tell that story. I think sometimes, we can tie ourselves in knots about having the right to tell a story and then end up not telling it at all.
Who are you?
I’m a theatre maker and a storyteller and I’m really excited about what we can do next. I mean, with Opera Up Close, the arts world...the world. I know there’s been a huge amount of pain and loss in the last year but I feel it’s a real moment of possibility.
Happy birthday to us!
We’re a year old! Ha! (Academy Award Acceptance Voice) - “We’d like to thank…” Everyone. Thank you for talking to us and sharing so generously. As we look back, what is most striking are the accurate predictions of a year in flux. We are celebrating with a few (!) quotes that have struck us with their honesty, vulnerability and inevitable strength. Here’s to a second year, exploring the enormity of now.
TIM MCCOY
We can ask for help if we need it. We can be compassionate. We can be gentle with ourselves and with others. We can take life one day at a time. We can know that life will return to normal. We can be scientific in evaluating our situation. We can be patient. We can share our love. We can seek out humour always. We can meditate. We can breathe. We can do. And we can be.
CATHERINE WYN-ROGERS
...the one thing that can bring me to tears is the thought of being able to hug my friends again.
FELIX CROSS
I need very little to create work; encouragement, money and deadlines, and a warm, quiet, private space, where I will not be interrupted until I’m ready to be interrupted. I need a desk, a piano, a guitar, a laptop and an agent. Working life in this lockdown therefore is no different from how it has always been.
PHILIP VENABLES
I sympathise very much with performers, whose music-making and livelihood is much more sociable (and therefore precarious at the moment), than my solitary version of music-making. I have no idea what the future of live performance holds right now…
TONDERAI MUNYEVU
I think that one, big thing that is going to set it (the return to theatre) off, will happen. It’s hard to predict what it will be. But there’ll be one, big fuck off thing where everybody will be – “I don’t care what I get, I’m going!” It’ll probably be football or something!
ERIC STERN
The essence of musicianship is togetherness. If you don’t like working with people, be a painter or a novelist. Music requires presence, synchronicity, proximity, inspirational interaction.
RENÉE SALEWSKI
It’s also important to remember that change is a wonderful thing. I’m not going to say that this is any sort of “yay”, I’m not going to say that this is some sort of wonderful blessing – not in any way. But – remember - this is what the arts do – they tell stories. This story is going to get told.
ADELE THOMAS
It was the first day of tech when the pandemic shut us down.
By tea break, we wondered if it would play beyond its first weekend.
By lunch, we wondered if the show would ever see a live audience.
By dinner, we were closed before we’d even opened.
It felt like standing next to an implosion. Next to negative space.
CHRISTIAN BALDINI
As a society, we must remain strong, positive, but also vigilant. We must be ready to help. Music feeds our souls like no other art form does. It accompanies us and enhances our lives in every moment, from dancing to healing, from mourning to celebrating. Music making (and/or listening) is undoubtedly also one of our human needs; it is not a luxury.
TREVOR A TOUSSAINT
What is the purpose of performing? Connection and growth and love and support. Engaging. Life. It’s an integral part of us.
INGRID MACKINNON
As a black woman, this conversation about racial inequality has always been spotlighted. In fact, the spotlight never dims.
ANDREW WATTS
We can not wait any longer. We have to take things into our own hands and rise up and make the case that culture, art and music is a vital part of society and community.
JAMES GARNER
We can collaborate sideways: seek out mutual support and bridge the voids between our own often isolated sectors and sub-sectors, from theatre and opera to dance and cultural heritage. And we can plan radically: to invent, as well as restore.
DOMINIQUE LEGENDRE
While I have little reason to believe this present government is the one that will usher in meaningful change that allows us to work together towards a future with respect, equality, consideration for our planet and justice at its heart, I know that things will not be the same. What we CAN do as artists, friends and people with integrity, is to insist on accountability, demand equality, press for the spaces where we too can be seen and heard and show that our difference is equal to all differences…just different.
CAROLE STENNET
If we can start to see change in the decision makers, legislation, have open and honest conversations, then we'll start to see change in our world.
KAREN VAN SPALL
Now that everything has gone quiet, I am searching for what it is I really want to do in the next phase of my life… I have discovered that the niggling, negative inner voice that criticised everything I tried to make and do was in fact a loud bellowing, outer voice and lockdown has shut it out.
TORIA BANKS
I mostly feel like being disabled by chronic illness has made it really, really hard to claim a professional artistic identity for myself in the way that some (non-disabled, middle class) people take for granted, and I’ve done what I can.
ANNA POOL
Perhaps, one day soon, my thought process can look something like:
Be excited about writing.
Write.
Enjoy.
Repeat.
ELIZABETH KENNY
...looking into the revealed void of the last few months is making us all question what “the profession” looks like, and we do have an opportunity to re-negotiate the old hierarchies. There seems to be much more openness about sharing ideas on how to make musical survival possible.
HAZEL HOLDER
We have to make space in our hearts to listen to each other. With our hearts. Our hearts. Because until we start to listen, until certain people start to really listen we can’t make steps towards change.
ELEANOR LEWIS
There’s just something about getting on that stage and, no matter who it is you’re performing to and no matter what that stage is, there’s something about going out, doing what makes you feel good and makes other people feel good as well – sharing emotion in one big room.
PETER BRATHWAITE
What I’ve learned [from it] is that I have to use my art to answer questions and fight for things that we’ve always been fighting for.
LAURA HUDSON
I think I will sing, no matter where I am in the world. If you put me at the South Pole, I'm sure I'll find a flock of penguins somewhere.
ADEBAYO BOLAJI
We may not be in physical galleries anymore or physical theatres any more. That doesn’t mean that what’s coming through us stops.
LEA CORNTHWAITE
We’re social animals and that aspect of music is about being with other people. It’s really important that that’s not left out… It’s more than just a hobby for some people. It’s actually helped them stay well.
ROB BIRCH
It’s a weird time. You have to maintain your mental strength and mental shape. If you’re not surrounded by a little community of like-minded people where you can all thrive off of each other’s buzz, it can be a little tricky and you can start to go a bit – your envelope starts to shift. It’s a bit odd out there.
LAURA ATTRIDGE
I’m a reasonably strong willed, intersectional feminist. I’m not perfect but I’m doing my best.
SÈVERINE HOWELL-MERI
I can love the act of reading a script or singing a song without an audience - that’s where my joy starts, but I don’t think theatre works without an audience.
SARAH TAYLOR ELLIS
...I am less invested in the digital possibilities at the moment. I don’t think there’s the same communal experience online.
TUNDE OLANIRAN
For me, it’s been a journey to help reframe, for other people as well as for myself, an understanding that being an artist can and should be like any other work, any other career.
ANNA DRIFTMIER
Pre-pandemic, many of us were rushing, rushing, rushing. Now there is time to really (in the pre, making of and post production) work through things in a systematic manner and give it the time it deserves. It’s made me realise how much time it actually takes to really create a great piece of work.
LUNG
I think the question should be – “how can theatre spaces be adapting and changing? What are the roles of arts venues?” During the pandemic, have arts venues made a case for themselves? Will theatre go back to how it was before? Probably not. Is there a hopeful conversation to be had about – is it time that arts venues re-calibrated their ideology and policies? Maybe.
SASHA HAILS
I feel that I am still emerging. When you say “who are you?” I feel really quite lucky to be here, because it’s quite an exciting place to be.
CLEMENT ISHMAEL
Have I written a happy song recently? Hmmmm… It’s difficult to write something carefree when you’re in the middle of a pandemic and people are losing their jobs. You can’t, as an artist, not be affected by it.
HAM THE ILLUSTRATOR
Music was the passionate love. It’s like the love you find in your adult life, where you’ve already had experiences, you’ve had girlfriends and you’ve gone through the dramas.
JOHN DEVENISH
I know who I am but too many people think they know who I am and like to throw titles at me.
SUSIE MCKENNA
When we come out of this, we should be healing. Our industry has got to be about bringing people together and that isn’t the Brexit fucking festival. We’ve got to find a way of telling the stories, of doing that.
SHARON D CLARKE
What do you mean, who am I? I’m one of God’s children, baby.
NJABULO MADLALA
I have used the time during this pandemic to reflect and celebrate life beyond just being a singer.
MARTINA MARSHA LAIRD
I don’t want my voice to shut anyone else up, though I want my voice to be heard.
LORE LIXENBERG
As musicians, I would love that out of this time comes a true sense of community, where musical tribes are dissolved, where everyone has access to support, music, lessons and performance spaces when they open again, whoever they are, whatever community they come from. I am not holding my breath.
ELAINE MITCHENER
Institutions, colleges and opera houses, concert venues etc can’t claim ignorance because the information is out there. I want them to do the work, do the research, and if they need help, credit those whose expertise and knowledge they have gleaned.
WALTER VENAFRO
Just because there’s a pandemic doesn’t mean that you should stop creating. What I’m seeing is that artists are going back to the main reason they got into this in the first place, and that is to make sounds from the inside.
RICHARD WATTS
[George Floyd’s death is] a moment of social and political epiphany, that relates to a hugely extended period of inequity, violence, embedded white supremacy within institutions, both in terms of the work that they have been promoting and how they’ve been interpreting it, as well as how they make people feel and who is making it.
HEATHER BAMBRICK
I feel our job is to draw attention to the plight of musicians and artists, to encourage people to keep supporting them, to think outside the box.
A port in the storm
In our second post in association with JAZZ.FM91, we speak to host Heather Bambrick. The journey from political science and law (yes, you read that correctly) to jazz - performance, education, communication - is pretty straight forward. It’s what she wanted to do. The passion and commitment are clear. Read on.
Who are you?
I’m Heather Bambrick, host of the Heather Bambrick Show and Jazzology on JAZZFM.91.
What got you into that seat?
I moved to Toronto from the East Coast, to study music and become a jazz singer. I was originally going to study law and had a degree in Political Science and English. Then I decided “nah, I'm going to be a jazz singer instead”. I called Mom and Dad when they were on vacation in Florida and said, “Guess what? I’m going to apply to some music schools to study jazz and become a singer.”
I moved to Toronto, became a jazz singer and graduated from school and all that. I’d done a concert at a club and someone from the audience worked at JAZZFM. (At the time it was CJRT.) He said, “Hey, do you have anything I could bring down to the studio? I work at a radio station, we focus on Jazz and…” I had a little E.P., they started playing it, I started helping with fundraising and then I got called in to do more fundraising.
Eventually I was asked to pitch a show. I started doing shows and one show led to another show and then full time and then back to part time - you know, independent contracting. I’ve kinda done everything …. everything short of maintenance. Technical maintenance they won’t let me do but cleaning out the fridge? That kind of maintenance I can do.
How much of your life is performing?
These days, none. Before all of this hit, I guess a third was the radio station, a third was singing and a third was voice acting, commercials, animation projects, things like that. Among the three of them, I had a career and I could pay bills. Right now, everything is the radio station. There’s no performing. I’ve done a couple of online things but not really a lot. It’s been mainly the radio station and some voice work, but mainly radio right now.
I do a little bit of teaching as well. Over the years I’ve taught at University of Toronto and Humber College. Now I’m doing things like online adjudications, which is really fun. Eight hours, sitting in this chair, staring at this computer screen, listening to young, pop singers, from St John’s, Newfoundland. I would listen to them do their thing and then do adjudications. Two hours later, I was with a group from Vancouver, listening to jazz stuff and analyzing it, doing what they call ‘guided listening’; anything and everything.
This situation makes it interesting to do this kind of thing, in this way. I think more and more people are doing things virtually now. For example, this festival in Newfoundland wouldn’t have had as many people [if it wasn’t virtual]. They had someone from Toronto, Vancouver … from Nashville, from Florida. They get people from all over and they wouldn’t be able to do that if they had to fly everyone to St John’s, put them all up in hotels, etc.
This situation has made people think outside the box and do different kinds of things, especially when it comes to workshops, teaching and things like that.
Would you continue like this? Or a hybrid version – online and face-to-face?
I think it depends on what it is. Workshops and the like are fun and it’s interesting to be able to connect with a whole group of people. I do like having that closer connection with people. There is something really nice, though, about sitting in your chair and then, when you’re done, going into your living room or your kitchen and grabbing another cup of coffee or something. It’s nice to not be away or have to worry about parking or driving or flying or travelling. I think it depends on what it is. Teaching is kind of fun to do this way but I do like being more hands on.
I hate performing online, to be honest. (I hope people don’t say, “well, Heather hates it, so we won’t ask her anymore!”) I connect so much more with an audience, so the virtual thing doesn’t have the same appeal. I’m instant gratification girl! I like laughter - the back and forth.
How did the change from Political Science/English to jazz happen?
I had been singing in a bunch of choirs and one of them was an all-female jazz choir (you know - twenty girls from Newfoundland, who didn’t have a lot of experience with jazz and had these really broad, almost Irish accents…) We were at this music festival in Halifax and I think, on some level, I must have been thinking that I enjoy singing like this, I enjoy doing this thing.
The opportunity came up to do a little audition. First, a mini lesson with a conductor/arranger who was adjudicating at the festival and was from California. My choir director had me go to a little lesson with her and I made a little deal with myself. I’d had a bit of an epiphany the night before. I could do this. I could study music if this was the music I studied. I didn’t feel that I had what it took to do classical music but I felt that I could do this. I made a deal with myself that if this conductor/arranger felt that I could do it, then I would do it. At the end of the lesson I asked her what she thought - she said yes and to go for it.
That was the night I called Mom and Dad and said, “Heyyy! Remember that retirement you thought you’d have? Sorry! I’m going to be a jazz singer. And wait for a year from now when my sister’s going to tell you she wants to be a chef!” We’ve both managed. I’ve pivoted a little bit and gone on from music to voice acting to broadcasting to teaching and kind of did all of that.
If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?
I was going to do law or I was going to do journalism. I was toying with the idea of entertainment journalism … that might lead to focusing in some direction or something. You know, I might be “Canada’s Oprah” or something - not in making a lot of money, but in talking to people. (Hopefully, the money would follow!) I probably would have gone down the broadcasting road, or… well, there’s something about law that was intriguing to me. I love being right about things. It doesn’t happen a lot (probably why I didn’t go into law), but I love researching things and proving my point and going, “Ah HA!”.
What do you think the role of radio has been during the pandemic? What has your role been in that time?
I think there are a couple of roles that we’re playing. You know when you go to award shows and you go to get your award and there’s a seat holder, like a placeholder? I feel like we’re a placeholder in a way. I feel that we’re going down and sitting in that seat and making sure it’s warm and everything’s okay so that when the artists come back, we can let them have the stage again.
I feel our job is to draw attention to the plight of musicians and artists, to encourage people to keep supporting them, to think outside the box, to maybe not go to a streaming service but try purchasing music directly from artists. They’re not on the road, they can’t sell CDs from the stage anymore.
I think our job, more so now than ever, is to point out how we, as individuals, can help artists, while they cannot help themselves. I think we’re providing some sense of normality or normalcy, at a time that’s absolutely, unequivocally abnormal. Just being that voice: the voice was there before. We’ve always been there, to soothe, to play music, to make people feel better, to add something to people’s lives. Now we’ve got to do all that plus comfort and provide that extra little bit of – “it’ll be okay”.
Even if it's levity, not mentioning the pandemic, or if it is mentioning the pandemic, reminding everybody that we’re all going through this together. I don’t like to say we’re all in the same boat because I don’t think we are. We’re all in the same storm but there are definitely people who are in bigger boats than others. Some people are trying to get through with a little rubber dinghy and others have a hundred and fifty foot yachts.
We all have to try and get through it with the machinery we have. And sometimes that’s the message that we have to get across. We’re all trying to deal with this so let’s try to do the best that we can, in the kindest way we can.
The history of jazz combined with George Floyd’s murder – was there a sense of more importance?
I think so. As someone who studied the music, for me it became about adding my voice. Sometimes you’re so focused on that, you forget about who got you here. This style of music was created within the African-American community, by African-American artists. It’s one of the only American art forms and it started there. We have to acknowledge that. To say anything different would be to stick heads in sand, quite frankly, being ignorant of the history.
I think we had to acknowledge that we are standing on the shoulders of the people that fought for it: the hardships they had to face, everything they had to endure and yet they still got on stage and did a show, so to speak. I think you can’t perform, present, program, or produce this music without acknowledging that.
Sneaker companies, fast food companies - they can all get in and say ‘we support it’. In the jazz world, we have no choice but to support it because it supported us, to this point. There would be no jazz were it not for the African-American community and what it went through. I say this as a middle-class, white woman from Eastern Canada. I’ve never walked in the shoes of my brothers and sisters of colour who have had to endure this but, my God, I want to listen and I want to learn.
Just like we listen and learn in the art, we have to listen and learn in society, too. I think that was probably the eye-opening moment. So many people, especially in this music community, had to stand back and go, “wait a minute, we wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing this.” We need to pay respect and tribute and honour and stand as protectors, in a certain way.
How do we go forward?
That is a great question. It’s so easy to pick up where we left off. To go back is pointless. We’re never going to be able to go back to where we were. As much as we want to, we can’t. We have to go forward to what we will be. I feel like there have been some eyes opened, as if there’s been a shift in some attitudes. But, just like anything, specifically in this world we live in, things move so quickly. Everyone focuses on something and that’s the cause of the day or the month. Next month, there’s another cause and now we’re fighting for that. We have to remind each other not to forget that other one. That’s still happening.
I think as a society, we need to take our blinders off, rely a little more on our peripheral vision, and find out what’s going on over there. Not in a ‘I want to know because I’m nosy’, but in a ‘maybe I can help’ kind of way.
But, as time has gone on and this situation that we find ourselves in has gone on, it’s less about ‘I’m going to check on my neighbours” or “I’m going to pick up groceries for my elderly aunt” - and blah blah blah and more about, “I have to watch out myself, now, because this has gone on too long’. That, I think, is going to be the challenge. It’s hard to know how this is really going to go. Sometimes people surprise me and sometimes, sadly, they don’t. I think we’re going to learn more about ourselves and each other, as we continue to manoeuvre through this.
It’s like shovelling snow when it’s really light and fluffy and the wind is blowing - you’re clearing out as much snow as you can. Every time you go to throw it, the wind catches some of those flakes and throws them back into your driveway. I feel like we’re shovelling away, as much as we can but the wind is always going to throw some stuff back. Sometimes the wind blows so hard (Donald Trump!), that everything you’ve shovelled gets thrown right back in your driveway again. I think a big, blowhard, horrible wind like that throws it back and you kind of sigh and think “here we go again”.
It’s easy to be cynical and I don’t think we’ll ever get everything out of the way but I look at the baby steps (I use that term ‘baby’ very deliberately and liberally because I do think we’re making baby steps).
I look at Black Lives Matter, I look at violence against the Asian community, I look at the LGBTQ community, I look at what’s happening with the NCAA right now, the women’s facilities versus the men’s… my God, it’s 2021! I don’t know if reminding ourselves of the date makes much of a difference. I think we are making steps, I just think the wind keeps blowing the snow back.
What has the magic of the pandemic brought for you?
Learning not to put so much pressure on myself, maybe. I’ve always been go-go-go-go-go. One of the things that I’ve had to accept is that it’s okay not to go-go-go-go-go. Mental and emotional wellbeing - that’s been a tough one for me right now. A good friend of mine (another performer) shared that, as an artist, when the time is tough, your art becomes your therapy. Your social constructs, your band, your audience, the people that are in your world, particularly your bandmates, who become your family, the getting up on the stage and giving of yourself, with an audience - that’s very therapeutic. Normally that would be the thing to get you through the tough times. Now, when you can’t do that, it makes it even harder. Not putting too much pressure on myself has been important, but also acknowledging that it’s been a really hard year.
For me personally, it’s been a hard year. This pandemic has made me realize I need to reach out when I need help. I need to look at my mental and emotional well-being and make sure I take care of that. I need to be honest and upfront about how I’m feeling and not worry about it; not look at everyone else and say, ‘well, they’re working on new music and they’ve got a record coming out, they’ve done this and …’ It’s fine. I’m managing. I’m getting by and if that’s all I can do. “That’s all I can do.”
Allowing myself to feel that way has been really one of the biggest things for me - not putting pressure on myself. I’ll try to bring those things with me when we get to a new normal. I’ll really, really try. If that means accepting certain things about what my world is going to look like, going forward … that’s probably going to be what I’ll allow myself. If I feel horrible, I’ll still check in with my therapist, etc., - letting people know that I’m struggling.
Who are you?
I’m an entertainer. As an entertainer, you entertain everything! You entertain thoughts and ideas, you entertain souls and troubled minds. Distraction is a big thing. I think I’m an entertainer of distraction, even if it’s just, “ HEY, LOOK OVER HERE! THAT’S NOT A PANDEMIC, LOOK AT THIS! RADIO JAZZ! AHHH!” Sometimes people need that and there’s nothing wrong with it. Going forward, I’ll continue to be an entertainer, someone who distracts and continues to say, “Hey, you’ve had a bad day? Let’s sing some music together or let’s laugh together.”
People make it work. Richard Watts
It’s not just the name of his company. “People make it work” is Richard Watts’ mantra. This is a commitment to autonomous change - change BY people, not TO people. Compelling, necessary, important.
Richard Watts
Who are you?
I’m a fifty two year old man from a working class, rural background who grew up in a loving, confident, practical household. Arts and culture weren’t present. What was present was commitment to family, a lot of love, compassion, some values that still drive me to this day and a complete absorption in agriculture. As I think about it now no conversation was about a play or a story or a book, to be honest, it was all about cows and corn! Every conversation was about that rural community, an amazing, committed, right-up-to-here focus for everyone.
I see myself now as somebody who’s really interested in the effects that arts and culture have on our society, in the way that a piece of music can touch you or plays that are shaped by the society we’re in and by the society we’re making can reach and affect people. That’s why I work in the cultural sector. That’s why my work is focused particularly on cultural organisations. I feel it's really important that they are as effective as possible at making work that connects with audiences and communities, that they support artists to make extraordinary, creative work. If it’s true that culture makes society, then it’s really important who is making that culture.
How did you get from cows to culture?
Literature was my gateway drug into arts and culture. The power of stories and the transportive, immersive effect of stories - I had my head in a book a lot of the time, as a kid. I don’t think I mentioned when I said who I am that I’m a gay man. When I grew up in Devon, it was a rural community that had – in the 1970’s and 80’s a very dominant, monocultural dimension to it. That means a rural, Church of England, heterosexual, white, artisanal perspective.
As I questioned my sexuality early on, I think I felt different, sometimes isolated. Whilst it never felt significant at the time, looking back on it, I was constantly experiencing low level bullying and othering, almost a permanent narrative that was present around me. I suppose that allowed me to choose my own course. I wasn’t trying to fit in. I was a sociable, really confident kid and I look back on myself with lots of compassion. So I read a lot, volunteered in the school library and had summer jobs that were a combination of working on the farm helping with harvest, and in parallel working in an art shop and for the theatre, promoting their programme to tourists in the South West.
How did it become your job to be the conduit – getting that art to those people?
I don’t think that’s how I would describe it. I support artists, creative people and organisations to connect with audiences, readers, visitors and communities. I guess the reason it became my job is that I believe in the power of culture to shape our society, and the role of artists to help humanity to create a better world today and imagine a better future. That is essential right now and I think I learnt that growing up.
I went to secondary school in 1981. Margaret Thatcher was on her ‘throne’ in our country, from when I was in primary school to my final year in university. That’s more than a decade of Thatcher and the particular divisive politics of her time. It’s a decade of Section 28 – which made it illegal for books that depicted a gay lifestyle to be displayed in schools and public libraries. The political nature of literature didn’t escape me and my story was illegal.
As an adult, I’m really shocked that that was true at that time. The fact that my husband and I were able to get married in 2018 is a function of the stories that have been told in our lifetime – in books, on stages and on screen – which have shifted our national culture. Our society is made up of the stories we tell each other – our culture shapes our culture.
peoplemakeitwork, the company I run, is twenty years old and for the past twelve or fifteen years, we’ve concentrated on supporting arts and cultural organisations and leaders to change and develop. I now think of myself as an organisational activist within the cultural sector, recognising that change happens when it’s enabled and needs to happen now more than ever.
I’m not going to make the biggest difference with a placard or a street protest. It’s best served by working with chief execs and boards and artistic directors across scales, art forms, across the country, to enable them to unlock their positive intentions around change, increasing equity and representation, fostering and building relationships with artists, fixing the crimes against freelancers - in terms of how they’ve lacked agency security and creative influence - and more broadly, to be essential to communities of audience and to foster and support a broader range of artistic contribution. That’s what we are committed to doing, because who makes creative work really matters, and how collections are interpreted, whose story is told, who works on and back stage needs to reflect and represent our entire society.
When we are working with cultural organisations, we recognize that organisations and their leaders have sovereignty. Our job isn’t to tell them what to do. We’re definitely in either the support-and-enable or challenge-and-provoke role. There are legal structures and an authentic and appropriate way of making decisions in organisations that we need to honour and respect, otherwise we are just like another patronising, patriarchal, white folk who think they know best.
So we’re either supporting organisations and leaders who know they want to make change and develop, but need some outside support from people who are doing that all the time, to help them navigate, shape and create that – in that case we are building confidence, skills, practices and resilience. Or we are at the challenging, provoking end – where we are constructively confronting organisations and leaders with the implications of their current practices, in order to help them rethink and then choose to create that change. In that case our work is often relatively outspoken, relatively confrontational, predominantly in private, only occasionally in public.
More generally, I certainly try to make a loud, compelling and constant case for more relevant representative arts and culture in our nation. I believe it’s not that difficult and don’t accept ‘it’s difficult for us to be more inclusive, or make more relevant work because of our history, it’s difficult for us because of how long people have worked here, or because of our business model’. That’s all bollocks. What is really shaping organisations is the priorities they are choosing - it’s what they’re making most important.
Do you think the George Floyd murder moved institutions and organisations into overdrive to address the situation?
For us, for peoplemakeitwork, which is essentially a group of sixty freelancers with a common commitment to help cultural organisations to change and develop, George Floyd’s death and the human response to that, has been a much bigger influence on our work with organisations than Covid, by far. Of course it’s difficult to talk about Black Lives Matter as a singular moment. I think it’s a moment of social and political epiphany, that relates to a hugely extended period of inequity, violence, embedded white supremacy within institutions, both in terms of the work that they have been promoting and how they’ve been interpreting it, as well as how they make people feel and who is making it. It isn’t a moment is it?
But, it is a moment of realisation by (I think) a global majority and a moment of reckoning by white cultural leaders and a realisation about who the global majority is, within that.
I think there is an existential crisis for organisations who are exclusive, who are excluding, who don’t represent their audiences and communities, who don’t engage or enable and support a representative group of artists and practitioners.
At this moment I see representation, resilience and relevance (our language in organisation development), being absolutely entangled. Often, people say, “you know what? It’s a really difficult time. We’ve got Covid going on, so we need to worry about our solvency.” My answer – ‘that’s a really funny version of resilience, just worry about still being here at the end of another year.’ What you’re really talking about is keeping hold of the money you’ve already been given by someone, whereas, real resilience is about your future – and that’s about being essential in your communities, to your audiences, to the artists that you work with. And that comes from making work that connects with now, that helps us see the world through other people’s eyes.
If you look at the cultural funders - the Arts Council, Gulbenkian, Paul Hamlyn, Jerwood and others - they’re all absolutely aligned around the question of who is making the work and who is it for... with, by and for. If in three years’ time you’re less representative than you were at the beginning of Covid and less essential to communities, audiences and participants, then you’re not a fundable organisation. You’re not a partnerable organisation.
The reverse is also true. Those organisations that are really shifting to a more equitable, representative space – who are working in collaborative ways, reflect their communities, are thinking about how they work better with artists and freelancers or who are black led, have historically stronger relationships with under-represented audiences and groups - they are partners of choice. Not for tokenistic reasons but because they are the means by which organisations that are consciously or unconsciously excluded in the past are able to learn, connect and grow.
Most cultural organisations, because they are so busy, forget their mission. Their dominant question nowadays is, “how do we stay afloat?” I come along and say, “but why are you here?” That sort of mission focus is really important to me. I’m here to create a more equitable and agile, relevant, essential, cultural sector. When you understand that system you realise a lot needs to change. Different trustees, different ways of leading, different hirings, really boring things, that actually are the drag anchors that are slowing down change.
One of the things that lots of cultural organisations do is say, “oh, it’s hard to make change here, we’re like an oil tanker, it takes a hundred miles for us to turn around.” Fuck off, you’re not like an oil tanker, you’re like a group of humans! That’s what you’re like, that’s what you’re exactly like! And you’re probably a group of humans in a room. Nothing to do with being an oil tanker. The story of the oil tanker allows you to say, ‘isn’t it hard?’ No, it’s not hard.
It’s the power of story, isn’t it? Are you applying the power of story to what you want to make happen? And then it’s all choreography. Let’s all get in step and let’s all make that move. It’s as hard as putting on a show or something. It’s not easy like scratching your nose. We don’t need to make it a thing that’s impossible for us. If we spent as much time on that as we did on everything we think of as important, we'd be able to make an extraordinary amount of change. So that is what we advocate for cultural organisations who feel stuck. Really, really prioritise becoming a more open an equitable place. With as much focus as you do on being a safe place to put on a performance, or with as much focus as you do on courting sponsors…. Then we see remarkable change in short periods of time.
My skill set is in helping individuals to build confidence and clarity. My knowledge is in organisational culture and leadership and strategy.
So, when we think about supporting leaders to make change, I think it comes from love. My perspective is, when we’re working with organisations, the way to really support them is to love them, to love the individuals. We meet with organisations and leaders and hear them properly, then fall a little bit in love with them. I get what they’re up to and what they’re seeking to make happen and who they are. Everything we do after that is fine because you stay committed to that. We’re sitting in service to their intentions. I think most leaders have better intentions than their impact.
Our core philosophy is human centred and collaborative. It’s around the idea that the way we make change is by involving everyone. That’s why we’re called peoplemakeitwork. We see that change is done by people not to people. We don’t predominantly resist change, we resist being changed. The more we work with organisations, the more we can unlock everyone’s potential, by sharing the problems, sharing the ambitions, then asking to create ‘me’ shaped change. What’s your bit of all of that?
What would you do, if you couldn’t do this?
There is another parallel life that just hasn’t taken off yet to the same extent as peoplemakeitwork. It’s called the Everyone Foundation. It’s a charity that we set up about ten years ago that’s all about celebrating our common humanity. If each of us were more present to our common humanity, if we felt it more powerfully, we’d make better decisions in our communities, in our country and across the world. Think about climate, international development, Covid vaccine distribution, any question, really.
In the charity, there are three strands of work. One is advocacy, telling that story, activating that idea and helping people to orientate to that part of our identity, alongside all the others that exist. The second is an action research type of lab, running little projects to test that (we’ve done projects with Oxfam, WI, Comic Relief and involved organisations like UN, GLA, Sport England and Compassion in Politics) where we are asking questions about how enable people to connect more powerfully as humans, and how we can make that easier, all the time, for everyone. The last strand, the Academy, is about sharing all that learning with other charities, for whom understanding how to connect with people would help them to deliver their mission and other projects.
So if I weren’t leading peoplemakeitwork, I’d be leading the Everyone Foundation more actively… And that will happen when the time is right.
Who are you?
I think I’m an organisational activist and a humanitarian superfan.
One more time! Who are you?
You and your intonation! I think I’m someone who connects.
Something about the passion of sharing music. Walter Venafro
Today begins our association with JAZZFM.91 - Canada’s premier, not-for-profit, charitable broadcast of, well - jazz. Huge supporters of emerging talent, arts education and community outreach, JAZZFM.91 is at the top of their game as an essential broadcaster of this art form. We will be posting our chats with some of the programme host on the first Thursday of the month, for the next few months. Join us!
Walter Venafro is passionate about sharing the music he loves. Think ultimate mix-tape, with a voice that is guiding you on a voyage of discovery.
Who are you?
I am many things, I guess. It depends on what day. I’m Walter Venafro, host at JAZZFM.91, on the weekends. I’m also the co-creator of Jazzcast.ca, an online radio station. I’m a voiceover actor, as well as a real estate sales person – something I did to pay honour to my dad who was in the business for three decades. One needs the income if they’re working in the arts. That was a way – a means – of creating an income so I could enjoy the luxury of what I enjoy doing, which is broadcasting.
How did you get into broadcasting?
There’s a question! It really started on a chaise longue, when I was about 15 years old, in my back yard! I was listening to CFNY 102.1 (known as the “Spirit of Radio”). I imagined myself working, walking in the hallways, not knowing how exactly I would get there. I just found myself in situations where I met others who were in radio and that desire to be in broadcasting introduced me to other people.
I got a job working at a station, in early ’84 (I think it was during the local elections. that led to a part-time on-air job. Up the hall was CFNY. I think it was a year into my gig at this station that someone at CFNY asked me if I was interested in working for them as a board operator. I quickly said yes and within three months, I was promoted to road show manager, which was a video road show that travelled to all of the high schools in the greater Toronto area. That led to more work at the same station.
I went to work at a country music station (not knowing anything about country music) and then quickly became one of the more popular hosts on that station. But I also, on the side, had this crazy DJ world. It started with working in small bars. My dream came true about a year after leaving CFNY. I became very good friends with Skip Prokop, who was the drummer of Lighthouse and also host of a show on CFNY called “The Rock and a Hard Place” – a religious program. He was doing marketing for a club that was to open up in Mississauga and suggested that I audition for the DJ position there. I took up the opportunity, got the gig and I was the house DJ at a place called Superstars. It was the largest club in the GTA, a capacity of about 1600. In fact, we would probably put over 3000 people in over Friday and Saturday nights.
All the while, I still had my hand in radio and was doing a little bit of voice work as well, commercials and stuff. I’ve been involved in radio, in one way shape or another, since the mid-80s and continue to this day. Seventeen years at JazzFM and we’re coming up to our second anniversary with Jazzcast.ca.
It’s a passion for me. I’ve put in my 10,000 hours.
What is the attraction of being behind a microphone?
I can only speak from being a radio listener and the passion that I got from my small, little transistor radio at about age 12, listening to these voices on AM radio. When it comes to music radio, it’s really about a means to share your passion about the music that you’re presenting. It’s like DJing in a club, except that in a club, you’re not necessarily talking about the music in a context. You’re mixing records, keeping the dance floor full. In some cases, it doesn’t really mean that you like the music that you’re playing. Thankfully, I’m in a great place where I’m playing jazz music and it’s something that I truly enjoy listening to.
It comes down to a passion for sharing the music. I take a page from the early FM DJs in the late 60s/early 70s in North America. They would string together a set of music that would go from maybe Bob Dylan to Miles Davis (?) to Steely Dan and make it all make sense. There was something about that connection with voices and, again, something about the passion of sharing music.
I’m not one for talking for a long time on the air. I just like to whet people’s appetite. I mean, we’re in the world of the internet, so if someone wants to do a deep dive into any artist, it’s available for them, right then and there. As long as I can whet their appetite about the piece of music I’m going to be playing and they find interest in that – then I’ve done my job.
So, with the sharing of your passion, what do you think your place was in the middle of a pandemic?
I didn’t really think about it at the start. You’re just doing what you normally do. I didn’t change anything in particular, in terms of my way of presenting. I think it became a lot more important to the listener, more so than on my side. I didn’t dive into the obvious – that we were in a pandemic. I didn’t think we needed to have that conversation with listeners. We’re all in the same place – obviously different experiences. I tried not to bring that up in my programs. More than anything else, I sat down and thought about the music I was going to play that afternoon and the kind of vibe that I wanted to create as a means for people to escape – whether it was for 45 minutes, an hour, two hours – from reality.
Music is a source of relief – of sanctuary. During this pandemic, did you feel any sense of responsibility?
In this day and age of radio, most hosts don’t get to choose their music. It’s programmed for them. I’m fortunate in that I’ve been given the leeway to pick my playlist, or at least, massage my playlist. Pre-covid, that was my focus, my target on a regular basis. In some ways it became even more important to consciously create a soundscape on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon that would put people in a better spiritual and emotional place with the music that I was playing. So most of the stuff I would play, for example, would be uplifting and have a general ‘feel good’ vibe.
That’s why, generally speaking, my musical tastes gravitate towards a soul/R&B/funk sensibility. Those areas speak to me louder than anything else. I do enjoy jazz/rock fusion, but there’s a place and a time for that. There are some really good pieces that are uplifting and I do play them occasionally. But I find myself more in the other categories than in the jazz/rock fusion. Especially in these times. The rhythm, the kind of vibe that the song elicits is extremely important for me in selecting a playlist, so that it can somehow uplift my listenership.
You are in the one area of the arts that has kept going through this pandemic. Did you ever get a chance to stop, breathe, reflect?
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that. Most of my friends on social media platforms are musicians, so I got to see, immediately, what the effects of the pandemic were. It’s extremely challenging out there for musicians. No question. I don’t know what I can do on my side of things, other than to promote music and the artistry of these musicians on my social platforms or during a program. I can’t even imagine what it would be like not to be able to perform. When you live for that interaction…
Recorded music is great. It’s wonderful. But nothing substitutes you being in an audience and the connection with that performer on a music or theatre stage. And I think that is what performers thrive on – that human connection. And you need to be in that space where that performer is performing to feel that connection.
I keep that in mind. That awareness is there as I’m going through my hours on a Saturday and Sunday (and on a Friday night with Jazzcast). I reach out to a lot of my friends on social media, to see how they’re doing – have conversations to see what kind of emotional state they’re in. Try to uplift their spirits in any way that I can.
Look – we’re all creative beings. We all have the ability. It’s a matter of digging in deep to see what we are good at. It could be woodworking – a kind of meditation. Music is my woodworking. Pretty much every night, I’m online, going down rabbit holes, trying to discover new music. There could be two or three hours that go by in that process. If I didn’t do that, there would be those extra two hours in your day! That you could fill up with real estate.
I was told that you must have a target at all times. Short term or long term. It helps you focus. You can assess. For artists and performing artists that don’t have a hard date, you’ve got to look within yourself, see what it is that amuses you first and keeps you in a really good emotional state and then – anything is possible.
We’re in a very difficult situation right now with performance, be it musicians or theatre performers. I think of the side musicians who used to make a living doing four/five gigs a week. Those are all gone. And there’s no other means of making money. You will work again. That’s going to happen. This is not going to stop things in that respect. I think performers are going to be that much more important when we come out of this – if they’re not already important.
You (and the other hosts) are the ‘glue’, assuring an ongoing relevance.
Sure. Just because there’s a pandemic doesn’t mean that you should stop creating. What I’m seeing is that artists are going back to the main reason they got into this in the first place, and that is to make sounds from the inside. As opposed to meeting a specific deadline.
What would you do if you didn’t do what you do?
If I didn’t do radio? Lately I’ve gotten into electronic music. I’ve always been a fan of EDM. That music really interests me. I went out and bought a toy about three months ago and I’m learning to use it. (It’s a pretty cool little toy!) I would probably be creating more music, because of my club DJing experience. That world is still interesting. If I didn’t get into radio, that’s probably where I would have gone – down the electric music avenue. With a jazz sensibility…
What stopped you from totally immersing yourself in music?
I think the other things were much easier to pursue. I guess it was less resistance that sent me down the path that I went. Voice acting and working on the radio came naturally to me. Making music was a little bit more difficult. Curating music was easier for me. Putting music together for a dance floor or a program seemed a little bit easier.
It could have been different. But at this point in my life, it’s becoming important again. I’m experimenting with, seeing where it takes me, spending more time in my home studio. At some point, I’m going to have to make a decision. If I had focused on the music side, I think I may have succeeded. I have the prerequisite systems that have allowed me to be successful in other areas. I just need to apply that to the music side of things. I think it was just a matter of time and circumstance before that goal would be achieved.
When the pandemic lessens/lifts, are you still going to be able to give it that time?
I’m going to follow through with this. Producing music – I have a lot great musicians around me that will help me achieve that. I didn’t go to school to study music, I played in the high school band. My calling was with the turntables and that’s why I went down that road and became a DJ as opposed to a musician.
Now I’m at the other end of that. I’ve done the DJing, I understand what great dance music is. Experience swilling around in my brain. Now I need to use the tools that I have to express myself in that fashion.
Yes, I will continue.
Who are you?
I’m this guy who lives just outside of Toronto, who most people know as a voice on the air, but is a lot more than just a voice on the air. I’m a friend, I’m a brother and my only goal in life is to approach things with peace and love.
We’re in the business of the new. Elaine Mitchener
Elaine Mitchener creates in order to challenge - others and herself. She’s not looking for the comfort zone. We talked about necessary questions and uncomfortable answers.
photo: D Djuric
Who are you?
Who am I? The public Elaine or the private Elaine? The private Elaine is, well private!
The official description is that I’m a vocal movement artist and composer working betwixt and between. I’m also trying to work things out like everyone else.
Do you like to challenge?
I like to challenge myself and people who experience my work may then feel challenged by it. Maybe ‘challenge’ isn’t the right word. I want people to think and reflect on what they’re experiencing.
I’ve been told that my work is exhausting and that may be due to the journey. This journey is a challenge for everyone, performers and audiences alike.We are in this together 100% and that collective energy services the work.
Why do you do what you do? Why is the ‘newness’ important?
I’ve created new pieces because I haven’t come across works that examine the things that are of interest to me and what I want to say or explore. In order to do that, I have to make the work. Of course, there are composers that interest me and therefore I enjoy reinterpreting works and expressing their relevancy in today’s world.
This is why I also enjoy collaboration, because I learn from and am inspired by other artists. When Apartment House invited me to Perform Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together/Attica for the London Contemporary Music Festival In Dec 2018, this work was composed in direct response to the Attica prison riots in 1971. When I presented it, I was not only thinking about that riot, but also another riot that had occurred in Birmingham, just before our performance. So my reaction to these real life events fuelled my reinterpretation of the work.
The pandemic has allowed for the removal of many distractions. Has it made you think differently about what you do?
This pandemic has simplified many things, cleared mental debris, allowing me to focus, pause and reflect, be thankful.
Some things haven’t changed. I still try to use performance opportunities as a platform for positive change. And following the worldwide BLM demonstrations and the outcry, institutions who quickly pledged solidarity by placing a black square on their websites, will be held accountable for their inaction.
How much of this is your responsibility?
About decolonising classical music? Well, I’ve been doing that through my work and the music I present. It’s the responsibility of arts management to decolonise their programmes. The need to do the work.
Remember the huge push for 50% women composer representation in concert programmes? That’s one way of tackling the inequality but it more about who’s programming and how their programming decisions have historically neglected work by women composers. Similarly, programmers who claim there are no works by black composers good enough to be programmed, are are stuck in a Eurocentric time warp and LAZY . There’s plenty of bullshit work by white male composers that’s constantly clogging our ears.
A few weeks ago I showed a film about Fluxus composers in Wiesbaden in 1962, on Ubuweb to a group of composer students. There were six Fluxus composers in this film including Ben Patterson (African American), Nam June Paik (Korean) - the female composer was unnamed (it was Alison Knowles), George Maciunas, Emmett Williams and Philip Corner. It’s a really amazing film, completely avant garde. I wanted my students to understand the history and the part women , African Diasporic and Asian composers have played in shaping contemporary new music/ experimental music.
The problem is we’ve been taught a skewed colonised version of music history and there’s much unpicking to be done and if my remarks makes anyone feel uncomfortable, they should ask themselves why.
Institutions, colleges and opera houses, concert venues etc can’t claim ignorance because the information is out there. I want them to do the work, do the research, and if they need help, credit those whose expertise and knowledge they have gleaned . That’s how you change what the idea of the canon is, and challenge the status quo. There will be resistance because it’s about power and people don’t want to yield their power. There are very few people that would step aside and allow someone else with fresh and new ideas to come forward.
A friend (who happens to be white) (and the first person I worked with in arts administration) and I talked about many things including decolonising classical music during the quiet days of the lockdown. I recently sent her Daniel Kidane’s recent essay that he wrote for PRS, which was excellent, along with George Lewis’ Eight Difficult Steps to Decolonising New Music Programming. She thanked me for it and said that she was really grateful to me for sending it to her because it will help her be able to talk to her board of trustees about what they’re doing, where they’re not doing it and how things need to change.
That is someone who understands the problem and is working from within by using her position of influence to effect positive change, however challenging.
Everyone’s breaking point is different. Someone very close to me once said, ‘fuck classical music, who gives a shit?’ I clutched my pearls – hard! But what was I trying to defend? An institution which has been shored up by colonisation, imperialism, conquest, aggressive globalising at the expense of indigenous cultures? It’s indefensible.
It’s no longer on a pedestal for me which is why I create the work that I do in the way that I do. If people like it, cool, if they don’t, fine. Whoever wants to present my work will present it, who doesn’t, won’t. That’s fine, it wasn’t for them. Don’t get me wrong, I love performing. I love being on stage but a ‘stage’ is wherever you want it to be.
How do you remain able to keep presenting to his kind of behavior?
My piece Sweet Tooth is about that period of history, that genocide, that holocaust as it was, that legacy. It’s about how humanity has that capacity to do that to each other. It’s also about how we can avoid repeating these atrocities – clearly humans are stupid because we continue to slaughter each other.
Sweet Tooth says - I am a person, I am human, so treat me with respect. We’re all equal. When I originally conceived the piece, it was about Britain, the Caribbean, the Middle Passage. I quickly realised that this couldn’t just be about British history but European history and that’s why I had to take Sweet Tooth out of the context of the UK and present it elsewhere.
Although this ‘sceptred isle’ perfected the capitalist dream with the Sugar Trade and enslavement of millions of Africans, the rest of Europe was also complicit (see Slavery Hinterland) and that’s something that isn’t taught. It’s not a piece about victimisation but about a strength that black people have. You won’t be surprised to learn that classical music festivals were terrified of the work and it was visual arts organisations that supported it and still do.
Who are you?
My name is Elaine Mitchener. I am someone who needs to make work to ask difficult questions and to seek out answers.
photo: Guido Mencari
Participation, transformation, experimentation. Lore Lixenberg
The mezzo-soprano, Lore Lixenberg, talks to us about art, her art, politics, her politics and the heady, challenging and engaging mix of the two.
Who are you?
Oh...I am Lore! I am a post-cyborg atomic mezzo-soprano. I also make things out of sound and operatic artefacts.
How do you do what you do?
How to sum that up?? Well, concurrent with my interpretive and improvisational voice-art practice, I have evolved a compositional practice based purely on voice, that has three major features. Firstly, treatment of the voice, exploring extended vocal techniques and hyper-extensions of the voice (BIRD - pieces working with birdsong from the inside out, applying the extended body practice to the voice). Secondly, drawing on socially engaged practices (PRÊT À CHANTER, The Voice Party) and thirdly, exploring digital technologies and apps for their operatic dramatic potential regarding the language of code as libretto, (SINGLR and VOXCOIN).
I also incorporate comedy into my creative, experiments, its timing, characters and possibilities for subversion. I'm interested in the possibilities of participatory practices for their creative potential and possible transformative effects. I would describe my process as improvisational, participatory, experimental and chaotic.
Why do you do what you do?
Why? I do it out of an endless fascination for the form of opera that never leaves my side, no matter how impossible things seem. I do it because, in a space time continuum of trillions of light years cubed where in the face of eternity all life is ultimately pointless, I have the privilege of existence for the briefest of moments measured in the human life span, and for some strange reason I will probably never understand, I breathe in and out and am born in the time of trees to witness things like sunshine, motorways and pasta.
Where/how are you in the present situation?
December 2020 , I was breaking for the border on a Ryanair flight to Bratislava. My final destination was Vienna, but because the new variant of coronavirus had been found in England, understandably the Austrian border was slammed shut to arrivals from ‘Plague Island’ (aka - the UK). For some reason, Slovakia was allowing flights from the ‘Septic Isle’ and I grabbed this opportunity. I knew that after midnight on the 31st, suddenly I would find myself the citizen of a 3rd country, and entry into the EU at all, would become tricky. So armed with my passports and a negative corona test, I took my chances.
The background to this is obviously the trauma of Brexit and the fact that the UK sociopathic liar for a prime minister at the helm, who is in fact completely empty - he believes in – well... nothing really and just follows the stinking winds of populism. He was advised by an evil snake with borderline personality disorder, Dominic Cummings, with a host of characters such as Nigel Farage and Priti Patel, fanning the maligned flames of populist racism. These people consider themselves to be above the law and behave with impunity.
The UK also has an uneducated, culturally numb population frozen in aspic, traumatised by years of austerity, desperate people whose underfunded self-image is still based on outmoded WW2 tropes and who still think they somehow have an empire and that they are better than other peoples. A cap-doffing vulgar population who are taught the Pavlovian response to pee themselves with excitement and drop to their knees at at the sight of royalty (or anyone they consider to be their financial superior) and through ignorance, and media lies, vote against their own self interests. They are a population who never went through a period of self-examination after the horrors of empire, colonialisation, partition, slavery and theft. Indeed, they are now imposing partition upon themselves with the break-up of the UK. Our poor country is not the only one in this position, but is a surprising addition to a litany of failed states internationally.
All the challenges that are currently being thrown at us - pandemic, climate crisis, world inequalities, poverty, homelessness - are made far worse by these British leaders. They feed the population enough ‘news’ to excite them, but not enough to educate. They do so via various channels: Rupert Murdoch and his SKY ’News’ plus Fox News channel, also the ubiquitous social media, in particular Twitter, all the while maligning the BBC public funded broadcasting, who at least try to disseminate thoughtful content. For instance, we are asked to believe as a population, that a few hundred bedraggled refugees that make it across the English Channel in fragile rubber dinghies, somehow constitute a national emergency. This fake news and skewed vision is designed to shock, destabilise, and to take the populations’ minds off the real threats of climate change, pandemic and in my stupid country of birth…Brexit.
The population is lied to daily through these social media channels. The language used is incendiary and manipulative. This ‘fake news’ Conservative party encourages the population to think of ‘me’ and not ‘we’, the ultimate expression of this being the Brexit vote that was also built on fake news and lies (£360 million/week to be spent on the NHS if the UK leaves the EU, to name one famous piece of fake news) with one U-turn after another. In addition to the actual tweets and posts from the government we have a whole host of bots and trolls of various nationalities, who amplify this fake news, which gives the impression of solidifying it via repetition.
The psychology of the bot is fascinating. There are bot farms in various locations in the world, machines dedicated to the nefarious task of causing mischief, that are programmed to get clicks and likes, and to provoke reaction. I noticed on social media, people unwittingly getting into terrible arguments with bots, that they could never win. It is due, in part, to these bots and amplifiers of right-wing stories that brexit was won.
This piece is an attempt to harness the angry energy of the bot and transform it. Because of the confusion of altered realities, being gas-lighted by our own government who try to tell you that things you see in front of your face are not there, in 2017, I declared that everything I do in my life is to be considered an extended-vocal because, in the 2016 UK referendum, words and syntax were once again twisted into lies and were used to appeal to and encourage the worst, most base aspects of human nature, persuading the English (and American people, in the case of Trump) to vote against their own interests.
It wasn’t only the shock and disgust at Brexit that galvanised my departure, but also, crucially, I had a hot date with radio ORF to work in their hörspiel studio in Vienna and I was not going to let anyone or anything stop me. It's funny, leaving wasn't so much a decision as an instinct for survival, I don't think I could have coped with being on British soil at 11pm 31/12/20. I did not regret making this move. After a two week quarantine period and another test, I had my first sessions in these studios.
The project I was working on was ’TheVoicePartyOperaBotFarm - MyFuryIsMyMuse’, This is a hybrid piece created originally as a twitterbot that was programmed to troll Boris Johnson’s twitterfeed (and will be trained on another political sociopath once he is booted out) mocking, joking, advising, commenting, insulting, flirting and fleeing from nightmares about him. This piece came out of my project ‘The Voice Party’ that is both an opera and a political party, standing in opposition to Boris Johnson at the UK elections in 2019. The Voice Party stands for everything that the mainstream parties do not and if elected would restructure the entire political system around the beautiful, truthful, harmonious and egalitarian laws of pure sound. Music would no longer stand cringing and impoverished in the background of society, gratefully receiving the pathetic crumbs of support currently on offer, prostituting itself in meaningless, castrated government sponsored arts projects, constantly having to justify itself to a grey, ignorant and culturally illiterate elite, whose interest in 'the arts' doesn't extend beyond specially commissioned lame and useless pie charts. It would be gloriously and proudly at the centre of society where its true place should be.
‘The Voice Party’ is an obsession and an enormous project that may never be completed in my lifetime! Probably I die with it unfinished. Maybe it takes on a life of its own. I will consider it a success when I am voted out as its leader and someone young and charismatic replaces me.
To say that working in the ORF studios was a revelation would be an understatement. The possibilities I found there were mind-blowing and had a big effect on the work I was doing, not only because of the amazing technical possibilities in that studio, but also because of the expertise of the engineers I was working with. I learnt so much, I basically did not want to leave, and it has left me with an appetite to explore this medium much further.
The composed bots are created by combining acerbic, desperate vocals that loop and build-up as the stress of being English floods the brain with cortisol (what fresh hell will the government unleash on us today?), sometimes with gloopy nostalgic songs as found sound objects (eg. ‘White Christmas’, and ‘Lily the Pink’) being used to remind the population of a past and of Christmas’ past that they never actually had. Included are voices of politicians with their own particular voice formants and tics, some programmed by AI, most notably Boris Johnson.
I have always been fascinated by the artistic possibilities and politics of participatory practices. Maybe because I have never ever felt I belong to any particular community, I am fascinated by how they function and maybe, as a complete outsider, I have a bird’s eye view of them. In the time of Corona, it has been really difficult to organise community activity unless on zoom, but maybe it has given a space to reflect on them and their possibilities.
Because access to the human community in lockdown has been limited, I found myself seeking the communities of birds with their effortless daily participatory opera - the dawn chorus. I was lucky to perform BIRD at Bill Bank- Jones Tête a Tête Opera Festival 2020. This was the first company to explore the possibilities of analog performances in a pandemic, opening with Heloise Werner 'Across the Sea' at the Cockpit theatre. It was a great success in that it was a beautiful jewel of a festival, groundbreaking and I would say that the risk assessments and front of house precautions were equally as choreographed and operatic as anything happening on the stage.
From that time I was concentrating very much on birdsong and bird communities and finally was able to finish a book 'Birdsong Studies' that are vocal exercises based on birdsong. There are 80 of them based on different songbirds. I have transcribed examples of birdsong and also filmed the birds, the idea being that the student/performer studies the bird video for the choreography of the piece to really transform themselves physically and vocally into a bird.
My interest in singing birdsong is born out of a desire to escape from being human because I watch birds in awe. I see them not only producing their carefully honed song, but completely and unselfconsciously embodying it. Obviously the birdsongs can be transposed for all voices and, as is true to birdsong, they include introductions to extended vocals.
It's really fascinating to me that there is still so much fear around contemporary singing and especially extended vocals among voice students, and yet I don't know any singer in the contemporary singing world who has ever run into serious vocal problems. The same cannot be said of those who bash their voices to death on a diet of only Verdi. Georgia Barnes and some of her compatriots at Trinity Laban had a go at 'Robin' from the studies during the lockdown.
I would love to get the 'Bird Studies' published by a publisher with a proper distribution. Failing that, I will publish myself as I usually do. As the outsiders’ outsider I often find myself in this position and always think of something. Interestingly and ironically, as an outsider (and 100% funding free) many of my publications have found their way into institutions such as the Kandinsky Library at the Pompidou Centre and various other places.
In other activities, I had the amazing good luck to do the first lockdown in 2020 with my partner Frederic Acquaviva, whose great piece ANTIPODES was written for the combined voices of Dorothy Ianonne, Joel Hubaut and me. It went on to win the SWR Karl Szuka Prize in Germany and we were supposed to go to Donaueschingen 2020 for the festival. Hopefully this will happen next year. He has written now five substantial pieces for my voice and is a composer who really seems to understand my instrument. Performing his music is super fun.
What can we do?
As musicians, I would love that out of this time comes a true sense of community, where musical tribes are dissolved, where everyone has access to support, music, lessons and performance spaces when they open again, whoever they are, whatever community they come from. I am not holding my breath.
