One down, three more to go

First it was the end of term one, now suddenly it is the end of the Easter break and the start of Term 2. Life has been busy for this freelance musician, workshop leader and teaching artist – it’s time for a quick ‘stock take’. This term, in addition to my regular school teaching, I’ve:

• led a big jam (participatory music event) at the Myer Music Bowl for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO),
• spent a weekend at ArtPlay leading 6 x 1-hour free composing workshops for children,
• got the City Beats project off the ground for 2012,
• written and presented two different professional development sessions for teaching artists,
• recorded a one-our radio interview (to be broadcast on ABC Classic FM soon!),
• got some preliminary planning underway for two of 2012’s big creative projects – the Music & Mandarin composer residency, and the ‘Reef Residency’ community project for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and
• scripted and shot 2 videos (me in front of camera, not behind)!

The latter project was a new departure – the videos are short teaching resources, one for students, one for teachers – on the Alphabet Dance. I had to memorise my scripts. I am pretty comfortable speaking off the cuff in my various presentations, so memorising brought me a new challenge. I don’t think I’ve had to memorise this many words since I had a lead role in the primary school drama production in Grade 4!

The jam at the Myer Bowl for the MSO was also a new project model (you can read a description from my planning for the event here), especially as we knew that the great majority of people who would be gathered near the jam performance site would be older (elderly?) die-hard, classical music fans, ready with their picnics and not necessarily looking to join in a participatory activity. But it seemed to go down pretty well, and quite a few of the oldies joined in with the singing and ‘picnic percussion’. It was a jam on a Mexican theme, so it was important to dress the part (ole!):

 

Jamming

A number of years ago now, I developed the ‘jam’ large-scale workshop format. I wanted to create something that could take place in a public space (ie. open to the public), that could cater for all ages and all levels of playing ability, to which anyone could turn up on the day and participate. I particularly wanted it to be the kind of event that whole families – parents, teenagers and children learning to play an instrument, younger siblings who just loved banging things, grandparents – could take part in together rather than the instrument-learning child being dropped off while parents take the younger sibling(s) off for an hour.

Jams have continued to evolve since then and these days it is one of the workshop formats that new clients often ask me to create for them. It has also developed along some different strands – such as the massed music-making scale of the Big Jams I’ve created and co-led for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival the last two years. This clip is from the 2011 Big Jam, co-presented with Rusty Rich (purple suit) and Mal Webb (orange suit). The dress code was ‘colourful’, which I think we acquitted pretty well!

 

Another strand is the ‘Jam on a Classic’, which can involve hundreds (rather than thousands) of participants. This video shows the Jam on The Rite of Spring that I created in 2010. It’s a good example of the way I extract a few ideas and themes from a big orchestral work and use them as the basis for a large group improvisation.

 

The next big jam I’ll be leading is on February 18th at the Myer Music Bowl, a large covered amphitheatre surrounded by grass-covered slopes in the heart of Melbourne. Every February the MSO presents a series of free symphony orchestra concerts at the Bowl and Melburnians pack a picnic and attend in the thousands. This year, I’ve been asked to create a pre-concert jam that will entice the picnickers – parents and children – to examine their picnic baskets for possible soundmakers (cutlery? Salad bowls? Tupperware?) and join in a jam on themes from Aaron Copland’s El Salon Mexico (the first piece that will be performed in that evening’s concert). A team of MSO musicians and young players from the MSO ArtPlay Graduate Ensemble will be on hand to lend support and give us a solid musical foundation to lock into!

Myer Bowl Jam

Saturday 18 February, 5-5.30pm

Followed by a free orchestral concert at 7pm

All welcome!

Living in the material world

I finished marking the last of my Boston University students’ essays earlier than expected so last weekend saw me having pockets of time of something that felt like a Normal Life! I went to see the film George Harrison: Living in the Material World and I’m so glad I did. It was fascinating, inspiring, thought-provoking – I’ve had it replaying in my head ever since.

The trailer gives you a taste. It’s one of those films that I want to be able to watch all over again, but for the first time.

Also over the last few days I’ve been working on ideas for the AccessFest workshops (AccessFest is a series of music projects for people with disabilities in Armidale NSW that I’m directing) – we are going to explore a theme of Strength, and Being Strong. I’ve been coming up with simple musical ideas and strategies to help us develop some new music for performance. I’m also compiling a list of music material that we can adapt. One idea – in fact the whole idea of Strength – came from a short performance that some of my Melbourne Uni students created, inspired by the Maya Angelou poem Life doesn’t frighten me at all. They sang that title/refrain to the tune of Funge Alafia, a children’s song from West Africa that I’d taught them earlier in the semester. It’s a catchy melody and the words fit perfectly, so I’m planning on using that up in Armidale.

 

The Big Jam 2011

Another fun project I’ve been working on lately is The Big Jam, the opening event for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, which was held on Saturday on the outdoor stage in Federation Square. This is the second year that it’s run, and the second year that I’ve been involved as co-presenter and co-writer. This year I was joined by two extremely talented and funny performers – Mal Webb, who is a brilliant multi-instrumentalist and vocal contortionist, and Rusty Rich, a fantastic musician and comedian who for a long time has performed with a group called the Scared Weird Little Guys. These two also looked superb, Mal in his orange suit (cut in a David Byrne style) and Rusty in rich purple. I completed the trio in red-and-white-stripes, and a beret – going for a decent jazz cliché while keeping myself warm – despite the winter afternoon sun, there was still a bit of a chill factor out there.

This is me warming up the crowd. I look like I’m trying to ride an imaginary motorbike, don’t I? Actually I was conducting them in a tuning note.

We had the talents and effortless coolness of the Australian Art Orchestra accompanying the crowd in all their efforts. I think there were probably around 1000-1500 people there all together (certainly Fed Square was pretty full), and lots had brought instruments along with them – including a double bass, a number of saxophones, kazoos, a ukelele, clarinets, flutes… and lots of percussion.

The Big Jam started with on the note G, and got the crowd playing layers of short riffs before moving into a jazzed-up version of Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree (re-named Kool-Kaburra for this gig). We then moved into a far less tonal, more experimental, free-jazz world, introducing the art of F.I.G.J.A.M (Free Interpretive Grandiose Jazz Artistic Movement – at least, that was our version of the acronym), in which the Art Orchestra and the crowd improvised wildly in response to the dance movements and dramatic gestures of Rusty and Mal.

We later got everyone groovin’ with a fine blues, including numerous solos from musicians in the crowd, and finished with a massed performance of Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon, with the music notation projected onto the big screen above our heads so that everyone could play along.

There’s a nice photo and promo story about The Big Jam here (courtesy of the Herald Sun). I’ve also got some fun filmed footage which I’ll edit up sometime in the coming weeks.

Presentation – integrating Timorese music into workshops

Last Friday night I gave a short talk and video presentation to the Melbourne East Timorese Activity Centre in Richmond, inner-city Melbourne. This is a group of Timorese and Australian activists and Timor supporters who meet at the start of each month to hear about various initiatives and developments taking place in Timor, to eat together, and keep in touch.

As you can imagine, it is a lovely group to present to. There is a wealth of experience and knowledge in the room, and also an appreciation for all the work and initiatives that are taking place in East Timor. I decided to focus my presentation on the ways that I’d integrated the aspects of Timorese traditional music that I’d learned about during my residency – songs, instruments, stories – into some of the workshop work I was doing there. I created three new videos for this presentation, showing the gradual transition from a song or story being learned, to being integrated and then shared more widely.

I got some very warm and appreciative feedback after my presentation. Several of the Timorese people talked about how important it is that the traditional culture is maintained. However, they said, “We don’t really know how to use it in workshops like this. It’s an important way that outside visitors like Gillian and Tony can contribute and assist us. There are lots of music people in Timor, but they don’t have these skills of working with children and large groups of people.”

Here are two of the new videos I presented that night. The first one shows the integration of a traditional song into workshops – from the first time I learned it sitting on the back of a truck:

The second one shows a Musical Story-telling project I led in Lospalos, about the nearby Lake Ira-Lalaru:

The only time I visited Lake Ira-Lalaru (which is enormous), it was flooded, and the causeway that you travel across by car proved impassable. Here are a couple of photos from that day, taken through the car window:

 

Jam on Prokofiev

The Jam I am leading for the MSO next week is now a Jam on Prokofiev – specifically, the Romance from Lieutenant Kije by Prokofiev. If you are thinking of coming along (or don’t know this theme – made famous by Sting in his song Russians) you can see the notation and listen to a playthrough  by going here. Note though, this is not the original key.

Details of the Jam on Prokofiev are:

Tuesday 19 April

11.30am and 1.30pm (60 minute duration)

BMW Edge at Federation Square, Melbourne

Jam on the great classics

This week I’m hunting for Great Classical Riffs.

What are the pieces of classical music you’ve always wanted to jam along with? What are the riffs, melodies, rhythms and chord progressions that you’ve always wanted to pull out of an orchestral piece to turn into loops for improvising over?

I’m creating a Jam on three great classics for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on the 19th April. I’m still choosing the ‘moments’ of music to use. One definite is the Romance from Lietenant Kije, by Prokofiev. You probably know the tune – Sting borrowed it for the song ‘Russians’. It’s a lovely, solemn Russian melody in Aeloian mode.

Other ‘moments’ I’m thinking of including is the driving, rhythmic opening of the Dances of the Young Girls from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring… but I’ve done a whole jam on The Rite of Spring before, so it’s not a new idea. There are some funky syncopated rhythms from The Soldier’s Tale (also by Stravinsky) that could work well…

A friend suggested the 6-8/3-4 rhythm of ‘America’ from West Side Story. I like the idea of this very much. A quote that is purely rhythmic could be teamed with a harmonic or melodic idea from another piece.

Music for jamming needs to be in a key that can be played on open strings by beginner string players… and also be in a key signature that doesn’t transpose into a tricky multiple-sharps key signature for the Bb instruments! It needs to be simple enough to be memorised quickly, and have sufficient interest to be looped so that people can solo and riff over the top of it.

What favourite musical ‘moments’ do other people have, from the classical music world?

 

Musical magpies

The main reason I returned to Melbourne in November was to lead the last two Jams at Federation Square for the year. Both were well-attended (around 50-70 in each, I’d say) – I’ve been gratified this year to see our numbers of teenage and adult instrumentalist participants increasing. When they are in large number, they balance out the under-5s that are also enthusiastic attendees, and so the musical outcome is much stronger for all involved.

I’m a bit of a ‘music collector’, I’ve realised. I love uncovering new musical ideas, and finding ways to apply them to the musical environments that I inhabit. This is a strong motivation for collecting original and unusual pieces of musical material from around the world. Unlike an ethnomusicologist, who is fascinated by what the music reveals about the community that performs it, and thus tries to keep that music as pure and unsullied as possible, I am more of a magpie. I collect musical ideas – melodies, songs, rhythms, riffs – and find ways to apply them to my own world. They change straight away, the moment I take them and try them out on my clarinet.

The Jam I led for the MSO this month contained two musical ideas I have ‘collected’ this year. One was a riff that I heard Mulatu Astatke (Ethiopian vibes player and his band) play in his Melbourne International Jazz Festival gig this year. I took the 5-note Lydian mode that formed the backbone of the piece, adapted a riff from it, shifted the key up so that it would be playable by young players, and made this the starting point for the Jam.

Halfway through, I introduced the Fataluku work chant that I learned just a few weeks ago in Lospalos – the corn-kernelling chant with the words cele cuku cele cuku lao ta ta te. We used the rhythm of this chant as an initial idea, but then all the Jam participants invented their own ‘work chant’. I asked them to think of a task or job they ften have to do, and invent a word riff that they could say to make this task less onerous, less boring. One of the ideas that emerged was:

Wash the dishes

Dry the Dishes

Turn the dishes

Over.

We invented word chants, isolated and memorised the rhythms formed by the syllables, then set these rhythms to music using the 5-note Lydian scale.

By the end of the Jam everyone had at least three original riffs to play, and could change from one to the next quite freely. The next step on from this would be to improvise on the 5-note mode, creating solos; from there things could get even freer in terms of pitches and harmony.

I felt happy too, to be sharing something I had learned so very recently with all the participants. It’s great to have a forum in which to explore something that is a completely new idea even for you.

Jams will be different in 2011. I am only leading one set of Jams at Federation Square; there will also be Family Jams AND Under-5s Jams at the Melbourne Town Hall as part of the MSO’s Beethoven Festival.

Nine days in Melbourne

I’m writing this in Darwin Airport, awaiting my flight back to Dili. I’ve had a whirlwind few days in Melbourne. Here are some of the things I’ve done:

• Planned and created parts for a Jam with MSO
• Led two of these MSO Jams, incorporating some ideas from Ethiopian Mulatu Astatke blended with the Fataluku work chant I learned in Lospalos
• Finished article for the International Journal of Community Music, and sent off a description of my community music practice with young new arrivals for a forthcoming book publication;
• Met with the directors of my Australian/Timorese host organisation Many Hands International to talk through my experiences so far, and to flesh out the project outcome ideas in more detail;
• Several dinners with friends – this was a week of over-eating I’m afraid
• Attended an excellent one-day conference on Ethical Issues in Research with Refugees and Asylum Seekers
• Uploaded the final pieces of text and recordings to my new website, and launched it (as of yesterday – hurrah! www.gillianhowell.com.au);
• Stocked up on Timor essentials – DEET-flavoured insect repellent supplies, tuna in freshwater, spices like fenugreek seeds, etc.
• Attended Tony’s house recital where he performed alongside his chief collaborators for this year. Extraordinary music, excellent company.

It’s been non-stop. It is in fact a relief to get on the plane. I’m looking forward to my return to Timor. I had a slight sense of distraction that I carried around in my head the whole time I was in Melbourne and I think this was a subconscious attempt not to separate myself to strongly from Timor just yet.

Sandy Point

This is the second year that Tiny and I have taken a week’s winter beach holiday down at Sandy Point. We choose a house to rent for the week (open fireplace, full kitchen, close to the beach), and invariably plan a stack of projects we want to do while we are away, then pack up the car and go. Sandy Point is perfect – there isn’t much to do there apart from run on the beach (unless you decide to go further afield, to nearby Wilson’s Prom, or Walkerville, or to Foster for groceries), there’s no internet or mobile phone coverage (or so we thought – we discovered we both had full coverage inside the house this year – ’3′ must have increased their range since last year – and the local cafe has a wireless option now. But fortunately we only found out about that on our last morning!).

The beach at Sandy is wide and long. At one end, as the beach widens further into Shallow Inlet, the wind has sculpted the sand there into ornate dunes – folds and points of sand that get whipped up and re-sculpted on a daily basis. Here are some photos I took on our last morning there, trying to capture the eerie, moon-like sandscape quality.