Guest post by Sam Sadigursky
Tremendous thanks to Darcy for allowing me this space to share my work. I'm very excited to release Words Project III: Miniatures on January 29 at Galapagos (the same space where Secret Society kicked off the release of Infernal Machines) and thought I would take this opportunity to talk about the evolution of The Words Project, which has thus far been my focus as a leader and composer.
I
wish I could say that I've been a lifelong reader of poetry and that
this venture evolved naturally out of that. This couldn't be less
true, actually. I've always loved reading fiction, but never could
achieve the quietness of mind that poetry demands. I read and memorized
the requisite poetry fed to us in school, but beyond that I wasn't
exposed to much of it. Given how marginalized it is in our culture it's
easy to ignore. I can't even say that I was ever very interested in
song lyrics, even. I've always loved listening to music of any style
with singers, but like many musicians I tended to ignore lyrical
elements in favor of musical ones.
I spent a number of years in New York in search of what my own
contributions here would be, dipping my feet into as many waters as I
possibly could. I was involved with a few groups with singers and
started to feel a shortage of new vocal pieces that involved lyrics
(rather than wordless vocals), and many of the newer works I heard
didn’t have very challenging lyrics or content. Having long loved the
art-song tradition, I set out to find some initial poems to set, and
started calling singers over to sing through my work. The directness to
the human voice and its mysteries were thrilling for me, and I found
myself thinking and working differently than ever before. Fortunately,
I also began to discover a deep well of talented young singers eager to
take on new material, which furthered my interest in this venture.
The first pieces I set were by Lithuanian-Polish poet and Nobel Prize
winner Czeslaw Milosz, whose work I’ve continued to set to this day.
There’s a certain simplicity to his work that makes it highly typical
of the kind of work I enjoy setting. The ideas in his work are by no
means simple, but the use of language has a direct quality that makes
his work conducive to musical setting. When poetry reaches a certain
level of abstraction, there’s no longer room for the kind of music that
I would like to write. Similarly, there’s a lot of poetry that tells
something akin to literate story, which also doesn’t intrigue me as a
composer. It’s difficult to define what lies in the middle of these two
extremes, but I do tend to know whether I can set a work within the
first few lines of it.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether it’s the poetry that I set to music or
music I set to poetry. It’s probably a little of both… There have been
times when everything has started simply with the words in front of me,
a musical gesture or phrase that arises from the first stanza, with
nothing else preconceived. Other times, there is a more intentional
process, where I’ll employ a musical idea I’ve been toying with or use
a certain stylistic notion in crafting a piece.
I don’t tend to dwell too much on the meaning of a poem before I start
working with it. Perhaps this is out of impatience or over-eagerness,
but I feel strongly that my job is not to filter the meaning of any
work for the listener. I try my best not to interpret these poems or
put any sort of definitive stamp on them. I simply want to color them
and make them come alive in a unique way. Great works of poetry, like
great works of music, can mean different things to us at different
times. This is one of the beauties of art in genearal. Certain works
can fill us with sadness one hour and be completely exhilarating the
next. We bring our own experiences to whatever we take in, and it’s not
my intention to subjugate this process by governing the experience of a
poem. By the time it lands in my hands, the poem is a complete work of
art on its own. It doesn’t need my efforts to be read or to thrive. It
already exists in its full flowering, and this is a humbling thing that
I always try to keep in mind.
One of the greatest challenges of this genre for me continues to be how
to fit all this into the jazz continuum, one that is based on
improvisation. Many of the longer works I’ve set demand long forms and
it’s difficult to know where improvisation should fit in, or whether
there’s a place for it at all. Personally, it’s unappealing to simply
use words as a launching point for extended improvisation. I’ve always
wanted to frame my work primarily around the poems themselves, and
always have them be at the center of my work. Thus, I want any solos or
improvisation to function somehow within the poems themselves, to make
this all feel like one, creating the illusion that the words and the
music came out of the same mind. All the principles of tension and
release in music really come to the forefront. Sometimes improvised
sections function as a release and other times they build tension or
intensity from a place where there was not before. Other times they
simply function as a breath within the poem, a chance for the listener
to take in what has come before.
Melodically, my own voice tends to guide me when I write. I do my
best to forget my background as an instrumentalist and try to think
like a singer. I also keep the use of melody in everyday speech in
mind. We all use varying degrees of pitch inflection and rhythm when we
speak, and thus we’re so easily able to accept lyrics that are sung as
a natural extension of everyday speech. Perhaps this is what makes so
many of us want to be singers, to further the expression that language
allows us, and possibly communicate things where speech falls short. To
this effect, I tend to use mostly close intervals in my writing that
mirror the intervals of everyday speech.
Words Project III: Miniatures comprises material that I’ve written
spanning back to 2006, primarily songs that had never fit into the
framework of what I’ve done previously both live and in the studio. The
project started quite spontaneously…. I called Michael Leonhart
to sing through some songs I had written for male voice, and he hit the
record button and we started tracking. A few months later, vocalist Sunny Kim
was in New York, and I decided to bring her into Michael’s studio to
record a few things. Based on how well these two experiences went, not
long after I chose material for an entire record of short songs.
Sometimes I had conceived arrangements and instrumentation before going
into the studio, and other times these things came together as we
worked. Most of the tracking was done individually, which allowed
Michael and I plenty of room for editing and experimentation. I wanted
to create a unique world of sound for each piece on the record, and
used a lot of uncommon instruments and sounds in order to achieve this.
Sometimes I had a good idea of what a piece would end up sounding like
and other times tracks unfolded themselves from something more unknown.
The miniature aspect to each piece is really what holds this record
together through all the changes of texture and instrumentation. These
are musical portraits or glimpses, maybe akin to a collection of short
poems or stories. I’ve always loved listening to collections of short
pieces, whether they be art song or piano preludes. I love the challenge of creating interest in a piece quickly, constructing something that is short yet feels complete, taking a more microscopic look at the arc of a piece of music, and connecting a collection of short pieces to one another in order to assemble a larger work.
The broad mix of styles reflects the many kinds of music that have
shaped me, perhaps never so apparently as on this record. There are
very few improvised solos on any of the tracks, but to me the way this
record was recorded gives it the feel of a jazz record, and most
everybody who appears on it comes from a jazz background, although they
all bring much more than that to the table. In any case, I’ll leave
this to the listeners to decide where they want to put this album…
For
more information, please visit newamsterdamrecords.com or
samsadigursky.com. The CD will be available on iTunes and Amazon on
January 26th. The release party will be January 29 at 8 PM at Galapagos
Art Space in Brooklyn as part of the Archipelago series.
Watch a video here.
Visit Sam's blog at www.theoneseat.blogspot.com.
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