Hey Folks!  Took a little time between posts, but grant season was upon us and there were many things going on… Anyhow, the other day I had the great pleasure of playing a duo gig with Evan Flory-Barnes, bass player extraordinaire, composer of elegant music, and a genuine pillar of the Seattle  music and art community.  Let me say, I have been trying to figure out a way to play with this cat for a while and  he just happens to call for the gig!  Serendipity baby!  So, we played at the newly re-incarnated Vito’s on First Hill.  Good piano, great staff, awesome food, and a very formidable bourbon selection.  I took this as an opportunity to have Evan play on A Tune A Day piece.  I selected a piece called Interim.  I wrote this piece while I was killing time between 2 appointments.  It pretty much represents what I think anybody does when they are killing time:  have a little idea and improvise.  Maybe you know you will get a coffee, but  who will you meet, what will you see, what thoughts will come and go?  This piece is like that.  An idea or 2 to get you going then let whatever happen happen.  It’s a passing observation of thought, an ongoing conversation, the Interim.  Evan is great to play with.  Besides just being a great player, he has a way of making it easier for you to play and of making you sound better.

Interim (Feb. 26, 2011)

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Interim (PDF)

I think every artist goes through periods of writer’s block. The last 6-7 months yielded no fruit for me in the composition department.  It was really frustrating.  The harder I tried to write, the less I could.  Eventually I came to terms with the situation and let it go. The weeks without that bromidic sword hanging over me were great – carefree almost.  A deadline for composition came up.  I needed to write new music for a Seattle Pianist Collective Halloween show.  Summer moved to fall. No music. September was waning. No music. I booked rehearsals with violinist Paris Hurley.  Still no music.  October.  Still no music.  5 days to rehearsals (10 days to the concert). BAM!  An idea came and off I went. Finished it in time for the concert.  Not only that but all of a sudden writing was easy again and I got ideas for other pieces.  Situations like this have happened to me before and I finally am putting my finger on what’s going on.  For me, breaking through writer’s block is a coupling of two things.  Honestly letting go of the usually productive (albeit nagging and somewhat neurotic) impetus to produce, produce, produce, and a real deadline.  As with anything that requires training and discipline, sometimes the best thing for it is leaving it alone for a while. Reset. Clear any clouds that have formed with so much RAM activity.  Let new ideas settle into one’s being.  Give your brain and your soul a rest. Deadline, well sometimes that is simply the best inspiration.  Next time this happens, I think I will be properly armed to handle it.  Here are the two pieces for the Seattle Pianist Collective’s Halloween Concert 2010. I am playing piano on both:

Sketches of Hamlin

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Prelude No. 1 for Violin and Piano (Paris Hurley-violin)

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“Just as appetite comes from eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning”- Igor Stravinsky

Sometimes feelings overcome the capacity of one’s words.  Writing about the OWCHARUK 5 trip to NYC is like that.  A lot of subtly important things happened that are too nebulous to be succinctly scripted by this somewhat prosaic author. All I know is that it was some kind of turning point for me.

Outside the Local 269

More will become apparent as I ruminate.  Some more apparently things of note: The OWCHARUK 5 played in NYC!!!! Jim got his first vacation in a while, Nate learned to navigate the subway system and a huge portion of the city, Cody and Elsa Nilsson performed their first gigs in NYC within a week of moving there, and Beth made some new friends.  The group bonded as only traveling companions can.  A trip and a completely different setting has a unique concrete that it pours into friendships.  And we played really well!! On Sept. 19 we played at the Local 269 on the Lower East Side.  Decent crowd and some reall

Beth and I performing for my family

y good friends came out to see us.  We had to do our short 45 minute set.  It was good.  No jazz dawdling between tunes.  Bam, bam one tune into the next.  The next night we played out in Brooklyn at a really cool club called Bar 4.  We had some almost serious snafus with both of the clubs.  Everything worked out okay in the end, but I have learned that as far as clubs and bookers go, the grass is not greener on the other side.  The amount of carelessness and disregard for the acts is the same everywhere.  Earlier in the week, Beth and I performed at my cousin’s graduation party out in Jersey.  For the first time a lot of my family got to see what I do.  That was priceless. We will be back.  I am planning a tour on the East coast for the spring.  Thanks to Jim, Beth, Nate, Cody, Elsa, Basil, Robert, Angie, Graham, Xenia (sorry that you had to make that long trip, thank you!), Wasyl, Charity, and my grandparents.  Special thanks to my mom Olena for putting up Jim and me, and for getting that sleeping mat for Nate.  For now, please check out some video from the Bar 4 gig.  This is a segment of Vzyabi ya Banduru, featuring Elsa Nilsson on the flute.

In these past 2 weeks I was lucky enough to participate in 14/48: The World’s Quickest Theater Festival.  7 writers, 7 directors, 4 designers, 25 actors,  6 band members and a host of volunteer bloggers, photographers and support staff all come together to write, score, design, rehearse, and perform 14 one-act plays, complete with music, in 48 hours.  It is a grueling artistic endurance challenge that leaves the mind reeling, the body exhausted, and some great theater in its wake.

Steering Committee member Shawn Belyea giving the 14/48 "virgins" the skinny at the company meeting.

I did 3 out of 4 days this time around.  Whew. This is what I learned:

• Gay people really do know a lot about musical theater.
• The Golden Girls theme is awesome.
• Actors talk to themselves… Often.
• Amazing scenes can be created with lighting alone.
• I can sing the theme from Titanic.
• A person can enjoy cereal with beer instead of milk.
• It’s hard to hold it together after an actor is making really lewd and obscene gestures at the band, unbeknowst to the the audience, in the midst of the performance. Hot tears were streaming down my red face as I was trying not to laugh.
• Alcohol can be fuel.

Really, it is just amazing what a large group of people with a common goal can do.  Especially artistically.  It feels good to be a part of something like that.  Being a professional artist sometimes takes you on isolated, single-minded journeys.  It is important to give yourself over to a larger tide.  To let your artistic skills dissipate into a larger pool, a pluralistic expression.  It frees you from your own introspective nightmares.  And it makes that cliche ring true:

The 14/48 band. From left to right: Beth Fleenor, Dave Pascal, Nate Bogopolsky, Annie Jentzer, Eric Ray Anderson, yours truly.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  That you are 14/48.  Thanks.

Music is an amazing force. It is an omnipresence that may not be the primary focus of most people’s lives, yet underscores just about everything we do.  Movie soundtracks, church services, road trip mix tapes, absentminded humming, exercise motivators, jukeboxes, buskers, elevator muzak, concerts, shows, videogames… There is no denying that our lives are scored.  This summer I get to first-hand experience the different functions music plays in our lives.  Tomorrow (July, 17, 2010) I will perform at the 5th annual Sounds Outside: A Celebration of Adventurous Music and Community.  I will play with my group the Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble and Andrew Boscardin’s brainchild  The Zubatto Syndicate.  Two concert bands whose purpose is to be an entertainment focal point.  This incarnation of the Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble (SJCE) is also meant to help push the players in new directions.  For example, Beth Fleenor wrote SJCE a piece which requires us to perform blindfolded.  The piece is a distinct frame work for spontaneous composition.  The blindfolds made us listen very deeply and be very succinct and deliberate in our improvisational choices.  It actually worked to establish order and helped keep the players from interjecting practiced patterns and preconceived musical notions into the new composition.

SJCE is blindfolded for rehearsal

The next day The Michael Owcharuk Trio featuring vocalist Holly Riccardi, will perform at the memorial service of a friend and very inspirational person: Gordon S. Brown.  Known as Gordini to his friends, he was prolific artist, traveler, adventurer, author, mentor, and friend.  Amazingly, his adventures did not begin until after age 40.  He proves that age is a state of mind, and it is never, ever too late to follow your dreams.  Gordini loved jazz.  I was honored to be asked to provide music for the celebration of his life.  Music as a vehicle for remembrance and comfort.

Summer time means weddings.  I get to play a few with a couple of different groups.  Here music is used to accompany the joining of two people and two families.  I love playing weddings.  No matter what the repertoire, no matter if the music I am playing is not music I would listen to.  It is for the purpose of helping people usher in a new chapter in their lives and I am more than happy to do it.  Everyone remembers their wedding song.

On 7/22 the OWCHARUK 5 is performing at the Chapel Performance Space as part of Earshot’s Jazz: the 2nd Century. Here music will be used to bridge  cultures and to exhibit a new direction of an art form.  The OWCHARUK 5 hybridizes Ukrainian folk music with jazz, Latin, and punk rock.

I have been busking with Beth Fleenor (we will be at the 12th Annual Neighborhood Festival on capitol Hill 8/15).  Busking is bringing music directly to the people.  People who might not normally hear your music. It supplies that subliminal soundtrack to your life.  Music wafting through the air as you shop, or hustle to work, or walk the dog, or are on a date.  And it is free.  If you can drop some coins in the hat, but if not, no biggie. You still get to experience the music and hopefully it brightens your day.

Finally, there are gigs.  Gigs at clubs where people come to see what you do. Art is exhibited and appreciated.  The feedback loop between performers and audience.  The moments where the audience is so engaged that they become part of the show. Music as the medium.

Simply put: Music is communication. It is a constant that brings people together and lets them experience the full spectrum of human emotion.  I feel like the most fortunate person in the world because I get to immerse and devote my entire life to it.  And, it is in everyone’s reach.  Turn on a radio, put in a CD, go to a concert, walk through the town square and participate in the never ending dialogue of the aether.