Dear friends,
January came and went in what seemed like a flash. We’ve just celebrated Saint Bridget’s Day here in Ireland, where the coming of spring and new little green shoots is meant to be right around the corner. Let’s keep hoping for that. No matter what darkness we find ourselves in, nature always seems to come around to spring, reminding us that life wants to keep living, keep growing, keep adapting and coming back renewed.
DREAMS OF THIS YEAR’S MUSIC
For some years January has been a time where I actively practice thinking, dreaming, planning and making funding applications for bigger music projects I want to try to see come to fruition in the coming year. It just happens that many of the arts funding deadlines in Ireland come around at the start of the year, but it also feels like the right time to hunker down in the quiet and start envisioning plans. Applying for funding is hard work - it takes time and effort and needs the right language. I used to feel resentful about this, but I have come around to realising that it is actually a really positive part of my artistic practice and is worth making time for in January each year. Firstly for the reason that this public money is there to support art projects that will contribute to society, and that there is a chance we might be successful, and be able to do bigger things than we can on our own! But secondly, I would encourage all artists to go through this process, as doing the homework, really thinking and writing about what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you are going to do it has an amazing way of distilling your idea into something real. Even in the times I wasn’t successful in getting the funding, the thinking and writing really helped me focus in on whether this idea was important to me, and the steps I would need to actually bring it to light. In some cases, the rejection only made me want to pursue it further, and I found other ways to fund the project and really put in the hard graft to bring it to light.
Presenting at Limerick City Art Gallery about my work with older people in hospitals.
HOSPITAL FIELD RECORDINGS
As many of you may know, a large part of my weekly work as a musician is as a resident composer in 2 local community hospitals, mostly making music together with older people, many of whom have dementia or other conditions. Its such an enriching part of my life, and has changed and transformed my attitude towards music and my understanding of its beautiful power to heal and to bring us back to our selves. During some of my recent sessions I have been making field recordings of some of the women singing, after they asked me to bring my recording equipment as they wanted to make a document of songs their parents sang them as children. The songs and the stories are beautiful, and it is a remarkable feeling to be able to make these recordings. In December I was invited to present my work in this field at a conference in Limerick, and also asked to perform some music to end the day’s events. I would have loved to bring these singers with me, but as they are confined now to the hospital, I brought my beloved tape machine with one of the songs on the tape reels, pressed play, and then improvised a drone accompaniment on violin through reverbs and loop pedals. The gathered crowd were suitably moved by the performance, and many encouraged me to develop this idea. So, this year, I plan to compose a larger work for live string ensemble with tape track running on stage. I’ve applied for some funding, but will also be putting some of the funds from my patreon community, and documenting some of the journey of the composing of the work as it takes shape - if you’d like to help support this project and interact with it as it is made, do consider joining the patreon community for a month or two - its a great way of directly supporting artists like myself, just for the price of a decent cup of coffee per month, with lots of behind-the-scenes insights delivered each month.
BUILDING NEW STUDIO
January has also seen lots of changes to our house with my wife happily finishing up work with her bean-to-bar chocolate business which had a little chocolate factory using two of the larger rooms in the back of the house. I am now taking over the space, moving all my studio gear down to this bigger room (including the piano - wish me luck) so it’s a nice opportunity of re-imagining of my work/play space and how I would like to set it up to be able to do bigger projects and invite more people in.
Having studied electroacoustic composition at Durham University, and been trained on analogue gear, tape machines and consoles, I’ve always loved the hands-on tactile nature of tape, and have had a fostex R8 sitting on my shelf for about a decade, sometimes getting the odd use. The romantic side of me dreamed that this studio move might be a continuation of my ongoing life project of ‘digital minimalism’ and re-analoging’ and that I could wire up the machine, maybe even get a 16 track machine and set up to work totally in the analogue realm. However, the reality has been sobering! Even after cleaning up and trying to re-align the heads on my R8, the reproduction of sound is a bit wobbly, a bit lo-fi, not really up to studio standards. I’ve had a look at a few second hand 16 track machines but nothing working well, and to be honest, the headaches and price of tape, not to mention lack of service people, have put that dream to rest. Digital is clean and solved a lot of the problems analogue was having.
I am learning a lot about what the sort of creative flow I’m chasing would look like, and why these old techniques were attractive to me. I feel like as soon as one opens up a DAW software, one’s focus is automatically pulled in certain default directions, like adhering to a grid pattern time-line, using a ‘click track’, trying to keep everything clean, and in order and in computer time. However, music made by humans never follows these directives, when we play together we are fluid with time, we sync to each other’s timing, we naturally ebb and flow.
Not having a screen pulling you to quantise everything is a good thing - it allows us to use our ears more, commit more to performances that capture the soul of the music. And not having every plug-in and every instrument sample at our fingertips pushes us to allow space, to let the music direct us, rather than the endless possibilities.
In short, whatever technology we use to capture our music, be it analogue or digital, it has to serve us, rather than dominate us. The end goal is to capture the soul and magic of the sound, and this should be what we strive to use (or ignore!) the tools to do. More limitations force us to extend our creativity and are worth imposing, joyfully!
The room is half set up, and contains a lovely dining table - so my plan in the coming months is to organise som ‘soiree’ type evenings here, invite musicians, poets, friends, loved ones, everyone bring a dish to share and something to perform, and we will have an evening full of human connection, collaboration, inspiration and hope. Give me a shout if you’re in my neck of the woods and would like to pop in!
JANUARY BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Over Christmas I stumbled across this collection of essays and diaries by the wonderful classical tenor Ian Bostridge on my father’s bookshelf. He had no recollection where the book came from (perhaps a neighbour) but it was a fascinating read. Bostridge was a post-doctoral history researcher interested in the history of witchcraft and the decline of ‘magic’ in the enlightenment world. He argues that music is the last realm in a world dominated by rationalism where people experience this transcendent ‘magic’. Also, some wonderful diary entries from life as a travelling opera singer, and pieces about Bach, Handel, Britten etc.
The great Irish writer Edna O’Brien died last year, and I read a write up on her in the final newspaper of the year, celebrating those we had lost in 2024. Then I found her monumental novel ‘The Little Red Chairs’ on my mum’s bookshelf, so hoodwinked that. It is a deep, visceral, at times horrifying book, but gets so deep into the heart of the human condition that it leaves the reader completely changed, almost on a cellular level! Absolutely recommended.
Daniel Levitin’s newest book is a huge tome putting together all the latest research on music in health settings, and as I am working a lot in this realm, especially with those suffering dementia, it is an essential read. Thanks to my in-laws for bringing it over as my Christmas present. It has just been published in Europe but with a different title - Music as Medicine. As lovely as the Leonard Cohen reference is, the premise of the book is that there is no magical chord or frequency that will heal us, but that much of music’s power is in the relationships between the chords and tones and how they resonate in us in such personal ways.
Wishing you all a creative and playful start to 2025!
Justin