Back on an August afternoon, Anna Wedlock and I had the privilege of recording some of our favourite fiddle tunes at Echo Chamber Audio with Charles Austin in Halifax. We’d spent some time busking together at farmer’s markets, jamming out our own arrangements of some traditional tunes from Cape Breton, Scotland, and Ireland. It was rad fun playing with Anna, sharing Indian snacks, and sweating over chop beats. I am vare excited to share this EP that we made!
Since moving to Montreal, I have been inducted into Ear Camera, an experimental composer/performer collective. On Friday, October 13, we had a concert at the secret underground venue Psychic City, a very muraled lava lamp and mannequin leg-filled cave. The show, “Body Language,” included two pieces by visiting Israeli composer Amnon Wolman, one piece I wrote, and one piece by Joseph Glaser. Our tuba player performed Wolman’s “EXIT (2)” as fully intended, i.e. fully in the nude. Glaser’s piece involved tying five musicians together with twinkle lights.
The vocal ensemble piece I wrote, “Dinoflagellates,” can be explained by the following:
So lonely, wee bits of algae floating through space emptiness.
But our bioluminescence is contagious, waves shimmering together, eccentricities blurring into each other in this radiant heart that has no eyes.
We see dinoflagellates in the ocean, the moon people see us.
And in the daytime, I continue my life as a student at McGill. In September, all of us cello students of Matt Haimovitz formed a cello orchestra to record a three-minute piece by composer Luna Pearl Woolf for an opera about Jacqueline du Pré. The opera involves Matt as on onstage cellist and will premiere in the fall of 2018. I am currently playing in the old fashioned McGill Symphony Orchestra, but I hope to someday play more music written for cello orchestra.
Thanks for reading.
Glad tidings to you!
India Gailey 