Dear friends
There was a frost on the ground this morning, the sun is low in the sky and everything feels crisp and autumnal. It’s amazing how the seasons change and bring with them such different perspectives. On Thursday night the Aurora Borealis was visible about the little town of Clonakilty where I live….but I didn’t see it until the next morning when I got lots of pictures sent to me! I feel like those creative days in the cabin in the Canadian summer were so long ago now! I hit the ground running on returning to Ireland with rehearsals in Limerick, the wonderful Clonakilty International Guitar Festival(which I am a sound engineer for) and lots of really enriching music sessions in community hospitals as part of my work with Arts for Health.
TRIPLE SPIRAL LIVE CONCERT: OCT 29
Along with Yonit Kosovske (harpsichord), Sarah Grosser (viola da gamba) and Chloe Pisco (contemporary dancer) I will be staging my work Triple Spiral in a live concert as part of the Uillinn Dance Season in Skibbereen, Ireland on October 29th. This is a rare opportunity to see this work performed live with dance, and the program will also feature new works by composers Tal Arbel, Will Ayton and Fiona Linnane, as well as the world premiere of my new collaboration with Yonit entitled ‘SEAMS IN MY SOCKS’ - an audio visual exploration of neurodiverse ‘stimming’ for harpsichord, tape and visual projections.
Tickets are limited and on sale at this Eventbrite link. Do come along if you are in the area!
ORCHESTRA OF LOST FUTURES
I’m delighted to share with you a film of a very playful musical event I put together for my friend Donal O'Sullivan's poetry/jazz event 'Snag Notes 2' on Culture Night this year in the Clonakilty Community Arts Centre.
(Fun fact: 'Snag' means 'jazz' in Irish language)
I had had in my mind for some years a faint idea of an instrumental trio I wanted to put together inspired by Australia's 'The Dirty Three' - violin, electric guitar and drums. And playing instrumental improvised music. This was a great event in which to try this idea out! I decided on a format where I would write song titles and prompts on cards for each of the musicians. The musicians can interpret these as they like. Then I gave 'wild cards' to everyone in the audience, to play whenever they liked, giving to a musician to change what they're doing. These were a set of Brian Eno's 'Oblique Strategy' cards that I had printed and used at a workshop I did earlier in the year.
The result was a lot of fun and the audience really enjoyed it! My son played the first wild card. Then that got the audience going!
There was one more piece, a very jazzy swing number, that we played at the end, but my camera stopped recording and didn’t catch it. I did however get the audio, which I delivered this month as a little bonus gift to my patreon community. Do head over there and consider joining to get lots of music, videos and behind the scenes stuff from my various projects.
OCTOBER BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Questlove is a creative force to be reckoned with - drummer and co-founder of the legendary hip-hop band ‘The Roots’, writer, DJ, film-maker and much more, he’s been a huge influence on artists across the board. In fact, I did his ‘Masterclass’ series on DJing and music curation and it set so many fires going in my brain, I went out and bought a battery powered scratch turntable! I saw this book in the library and grabbed it. Now, I’ve read a lot of books on creativity over the years, and this one started out with a lot of name dropping and tangents, but once getting into it, it was like no other book I’d read - a deep dive into Questlove’s thoughts, his creative life, blocks, strategies, wisdom…and lots of fascinating stories about other artists he works with and their ways of creating.
‘A Simpler Life’ is one of the many books created by ‘The School of Life’ - a collaboration of writers, psychologists, psychotherapists and philosophers, whose mission is to ‘bring about healing, growth, calm and self-understanding’. All their books I have read are very well written, clear and wise, they offer practical and very generous ways of transcending the blocks and problems we might face in life. This little tome was enlightening in the positive and perhaps unexpected ways we can aim for more simplicity in our everyday pursuits, relationships and possessions - always asking the question of what this thing/person/activity really means to us and then prompting us to either move on from it, or bring it to a place of deeper resonance.
Finally, ‘Smash the Patriarchy’ was a fun find while browsing the graphic novel section of the library that my son has got me into. There are so many wonderful graphic novels (I also found a great one about Leonard Cohen’s life) and this one tracks the story of patriarchy through history, how far we have come, and what we can do to really shape our systems and attitudes to be much more feminist. A great read.
I hope autumn treats you gently, and would love to see you at a concert some time.
With sweet hummings,
Justin
PS. If you’re in Cork or Kinsale, I’m playing 2 shows with Boa Morte, the wonderful band I have been writing and arranging strings and clarinets with for the last few years. 20th Oct at Primm’s Bookshop, Kinsale and 1st Nov at Coughlan’s Cork.