Merely Players - Harp and Cello Collaboration (ft. Esther Swift)

Last June, at a music residency in Hoi An, Vietnam, I had the great pleasure of meeting and making music with Esther Swift, one of Scotland's premiere musicians. Esther is an immensely talented composer, harpist, and singer who brings a really personal and deep connection to her music.

We collaborated on a song which she wrote for a friend, Helen Mcleod, who unfortunately passed away. This song is dedicated to Helen and we hope that it brings a sense of peace and calm reflection to those who listen.

A Culturally Rich Year in Vietnam

After an unbelievable year of performing, composing, and collaborating in Vietnam, I have finally returned to my hometown of Teaneck, NJ. It’s bittersweet because I really did have an amazing experience abroad, but I’m also excited to be back and teaching my students, playing gigs, and composing more music.

I had so many performances in Vietnam that I’ll never forget. I played cello in a running stream of water while people danced and frolicked around me as my wife led a Dance/Movement Therapy workshop. Was I the only one wearing rain boots instead of being barefoot because I’m a curmudgeon? Of course I was. I had to take the cello on a rickety canoe across a river and then walk through the jungle to get there, too.

I collaborated numerous times with the superbly talented, Duyệt Thị Trang. Our cello and đàn tranh improvisational duo took us everywhere: the U.S. Embassy, a packed to the gills show at Heritage Space, and even the jungles of Vietnam.

I had the real pleasure and fortune to collaborate with Phan Y Ly and Eliott Malderez as well. We created the group, Mandala, which combined cello with đàn tranh, sào meo, and percussion. They became my really good friends and we’d often hang out and just improvise for hours. There were so many improvisations that I am super proud of. They came over on my birthday and surprised me (I was taking a nap and wasn’t exactly Mr. Friendly when I opened the door). I remember we improvised one song that really brought me to that next level, following which they made me eat a Vietnamese specialty called, Chân Gà Đông Tảo, which is a chicken foot that looks like it came from a chicken that was a professional bodybuilder.

I had some really beautiful solo performances in Vietnam as well. I played to packed houses at Vincom Center for Contemporary Arts and The Hanoi Social Club, where I got to debut some new compositions that I had written since being in Vietnam. After going to Trang An and taking a canoe around the staggeringly beautiful rock formations in the water, I was inspired to write a piece about it. There was something really mysterious about these geological structures that resonated with me.

I had the great fortune to be selected for two music residencies in collaboration with Lune Production and Phu Sa Lab. I met musicians from across Vietnam and got to make music with instruments I had never even seen or heard of before. A lot of them were custom made, one-of-a-kind instruments. These residences were really intensive, no days off, but the opportunity to create, explore, and make connections with these superb players was invaluable. I certainly will collaborate in the future with a lot of these musicians in some capacity.

I collaborated with my wife a bunch for her Dance/Movement Therapy workshops. I played for her workshops across the country, but the most powerful one for me was working with the Vietnamese soldiers from the American War. It was a small group, but the connection that we had was extremely powerful and made me quite thankful for the opportunity. I hope that my wife and I can expand upon this premise of working with soldiers (hopefully from both Vietnam and the USA) in order to help them heal from the war.

What I’m most excited about taking back the USA and expanding upon is my studies and compositions with the đàn bầu. I still have a lot to learn, but I feel like it’s going to become an integral part of my writing and hopefully performing as well. I busted out a small đàn bầu solo for the first time at a gig that my fellow residents and I played at this beachside restaurant in An Bang. As I grow more confident on the đàn bầu, I’ll definitely be working it into my live performances more. There’s a world of possibility with this instrument, especially the combination with cello.

Well it was truly an eye opening year in Vietnam and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. I’m back now at the Bryan Wilson Cello Studio in Teaneck, NJ and I’m getting ready to teach a bunch of new students, to record cello for artists across the globe, and to write some new pieces for cello and đàn bầu.

FAMLAB Hoi An: Seaphony Blog 7

Yesterday was the culminating concert of the residency and to be honest I had mixed feelings about it. There were a lot of positives, though. First off, Ro Cham Ti, the master musical instrument maker got a traditional Jarai outfit sent down from the highlands of Vietnam just so I could wear it for the show. I got to show off my shoulder hair while being cool for once.

My wife, daughter, and mother and father in law came down for this concert and it was an absolute joy having my family there and especially seeing my daughter dancing and calling, “DADA!” I told everyone near me on stage, you’re going to hear my daughter and sure enough within about 30 seconds of the beginning of the show, you could hear her laughing and hollering with excitement. I proudly turned to my friends, “yep, that’s my daughter.”

The concert definitely had some great parts to it. We covered a lot of ground musically and showcased combinations of instruments that I’m sure have never been done before. Sometimes I felt like maybe there was actually too much. Maybe we tried to cram a bit too much musical material into one concert.

The sound on stage was not good, however. There were many times that microphones weren’t on and players couldn’t be heard and even when they were on, the mix was poor and it was difficult to hear one another. I wish there had been a more comprehensive sound check because when you are playing and can’t hear yourself (or others that you need to hear) it’s enormously frustrating.

People seemed to enjoy the concert, I even got an email shortly after the show from a guy who happened to be in Hoi An, heard the music, followed the sound, and came for the final number. He was bummed that he missed most of it but he really was excited by the music.

Sometimes when you’re performing it’s difficult to be objective about how it went. I think overall the concert was good and that the residency was worthwhile. I met a lot of really awesome musicians, who I hope to collaborate with in the future. I will say that I wish it was a bit better organized. Like I explained in previous blogs, there was a lot of downtime at rehearsals. So much downtime that I ended drawing a whole series of cartoon fruits with different fun expressions. I used to love drawing cartoons when I was younger, so it was nice to reconnect with that part of my brain.

I do wish I had learned some more traditional tunes from a lot of these musicians’ cultures. I feel like that element was lacking a bit. I know that organizing and coordinating something of this magnitude in creativity and scale is monumentally difficult. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have taken part in this residency and I hope to do a lot more experimentation, creation, and cultural exchange in the future.

This was a really nice way to end my year here in Vietnam. I’m currently writing this on my phone from the train from Hoi An to Hanoi (a 15 hours ride). Now we have about 5 days to pack everything up and leave to go back to New Jersey. It’s been such an amazing year musically and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to cap it off.

FAMLAB Hoi An: Seaphony Blog 5

The residency is starting to come together. The pieces are shaping up and are sounding cool, we just need to trim some fat off them. Rehearsal isn’t exactly riveting. I spent the majority of this morning drawing a fully colored cartoon eggplant on my iPad, but hey it came out pretty cool.

Other than music, I’ve been sampling a lot of different Vietnamese cuisine. Every region of Vietnam has specialties, for example Hoi An is known for its Cao Lau and Mi Quang, which are noodle dishes with a bunch of things in them. I gotta be honest, those were okay. I know my wife is gonna kill me, but the best meal I’ve had here has been a hamburger and french fries. I KNOW, I KNOW. I’m a culture-less misanthrope who can’t enjoy anything beyond his sad provincial upbringing. I get it, trust me. But, you don’t know how happy that burger and fries made me. Jesus Christ, I almost cried.

That being said, I have opened up my horizons a bit. I’ve never really eaten that much seafood before. I just never really got into it. Honestly, fish with bones scare me. I’m not trying to get one of those stuck in my throat. I didn’t even know that was a possibility until I saw my buddy Eliott choke on one as I was eating a fish with him that honestly wasn’t that good anyway and I thought to myself, okay, that seals the deal, I’m out. Look, I grew up eating tuna out of a can, I couldn’t pick a tuna out of a line up. It never even occurred to me that fish had bones.

But I am growing as a person (though my growth is microscopic compared to that of the average person, but hey I’m trying). We went to a seafood restaurant for one of our colleague’s birthdays and I tried a bunch of different things. Squid, clams, stingray, shrimp salad, fish soup, and of course….french fries. I swear I didn’t order them, someone did it for me…but I ate a lot of them. The clams were my favorite. You dip them in this salt with lime sauce and it’s fantastic. People got these huge raw oysters to eat, but I tapped out there. I don’t know, I just couldn’t do it. What’s in the oyster shell looks like what comes out when I clean the pipes underneath the sink (which also is a sign of growth for me that I know what that looks like because earlier in my life trying to do any sort of manual labor quickly devolved into me shouting obscenities and kicking the wall).

I will say that the river right by our hotel is quite pretty at night when it’s illuminated by quaint boats with picturesque colored lanterns. Too bad it’s right next to a tourist hellhole. It’s all foreigners here and you walk down the street and after barreling through 400 Korean tourists taking photos, all the people at the restaurants are aggressively trying to get you to come in and eat there. This is just because we are in the tourist sphincter of Hoi An. When I stayed here a couple months ago while my wife was teaching a workshop, we stayed off the beaten path and I barely saw any foreigners at all. You could walk two minutes to some really beautiful rice fields and drive to the beach as well. That was a lot more enjoyable.

You know you’re not exactly in the most authentic part of Hoi An when there’s an Irish pub a two minute walk from your hotel. But hey, at least I can get a burger.

FAMLAB Hoi An: Seaphony Blog 1

I have been so lucky to have been selected for this FAMLAB music residency in Hoi An, sponsored by the British Council in Vietnam and in collaboration with Lune Production. The program started a couple days ago and it includes over 40 musicians from around Vietnam including those from tribes from the North West and Central Highlands, Cham community, Scotland, Laos, Philippines, and two New York Jews (I’m one of them).

Trust me you’ve never seen an orchestra like this before: bagpipes, t’rung, k’ni, cello, gongs, electronics, cham drums. The list goes on. It’s really cool, but I do feel like an uncultured idiot because I don’t know half of what the instruments names are or where they are from. But hey, what are we here for other than to learn and experiment?

We have just started scratching the surface of what we are going to be doing. Today we sat together as a full Seaphony (that’s what we’re called) and tried to go over the first piece. The thing is, there really is no set music besides a very few numbers. The majority will be just exploration, improvisation, and collaboration, which is fantastic, albeit quite hard to do when there are over 40 musicians working together. We will be broken down into smaller groups to collaborate, but unfortunately there aren’t multiple practice spaces, so it’s nearly impossible to work on music in a group when a completely different music is blaring at you in the same room from a different group.

One challenge is there seems to be a lot of time where a large portion of the Seaphony isn’t working on something because only one group is needed to rehearse. Since it’s only a 20 day residency, it’s a quick race to the finish line to create over an hour’s worth of music that sounds good.

But it’s such a fun challenge and I know that it will turn out really cool. The most challenging part for me is usually learning the gong parts. We all will play one gong and they all fit together in a very tight rhythmic pattern that is full of polyrhythms and odd time signatures. Rhythm has always been my weakest element of my playing, but it will be good to try to stretch myself and see if I can do it. And if I mess up, honestly, who is going to really know the difference? That’s an important lesson I impart to my students. Seriously, no one knows if you screw up, just keep going.

Yesterday we got to see the show, Palao, by Lune Production that takes influence from the Cham community in Vietnam. Many of the people in the show are also in the Seaphony. Lune Production shows are always fantastic and this one was no exception. The choreography, lighting, music, emotion, and cultural elements were just stunning. I really can’t do it justice in words. If you’re in Hoi An, go and see it, you will not be disappointed.

Tomorrow we’re going to see another Lune Production show, Teh Dar, so I fully expect to have my mind blown again. It’s just funny because I’m a guy who loves to sit down, stay in one place and either write music or play cello. I see these amazing people who are all acrobats, musicians, dancers, and actors pulling mind-bending moves with their body, voices, and souls,. I try to envision myself doing what they’re doing and just laugh at the prospect of me trying to stuff my incredibly inflexible (and hairy) body into a clay pot like they do in Palao, all the while maintaining complex choreography and convincing acting.

I think I’ll just stick to sitting down and playing the cello.