| Ensemble weaves threads of folk, jazz, pop and classical
with favorite Austin songwriters in a church setting
By Brad Buchholz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, January 27, 2003
Will Taylor has a musical proposition for you -- a playful,
dignified, off-kilter idea that brings honor to Austin's
identity as "The Live Music Capital of the World." It's
a cool concept. But it's just a bit . . . different.
Imagine what might happen, suggests Taylor, if we took
Austin's most popular singer-songwriters -- Abra Moore,
or Jimmy LaFave, or Patrice Pike, or Ray Wylie Hubbard
-- and let them perform, live, in a church? Then imagine
if you paired those artists with acoustic "chamber" instruments
-- cello, violin, viola, trumpet and hand drums -- and
wrote new arrangements, adding dashes of jazz and classical
music, that revealed new facets of their most beautiful
or familiar songs?
Imagine what might happen if you dared to blur all these
boundaries between pop music and jazz, between rock music
and classical music, between the musical realm and the
lyrical realm, between the honky-tonk and the church,
and in the spirit of art and fun and experimentation,
you reached out for something . . . transcendent?
Imagine. Will Taylor and his acoustic ensemble stage
this dream at St. David's Episcopal Church once a month.
This spring, the Strings Attached concert series features
one-night-only collaborations with Hubbard, Tish Hinojosa,
Eliza Gilkyson and Slaid Cleaves, Albert & Gage, Jon
Dee Graham and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
"The whole point of what we're trying to do is communicating
song to soul -- and that seems to happen very well with
these artists, and these pairings, in the church," says
Taylor, a classically trained musician with strong jazz
influences. He plays viola and violin, piano and guitar,
and writes most of the arrangements for the Strings Attached
series. "Sometimes, people are thrown off by the venue
when they first hear about it. A church? But the point
is that it's not a bar. It's not smoky. It's not loud.
And though it's not a built-in concert hall, it's a beautiful
space with beautiful sound."
Since their first experiment with jazz singer Beth Ullman
two years ago, Taylor and his ensemble (which currently
features Steve Zirkel on bass and trumpet, Jason McKenzie
on tabla and drums and Charles Prewitt on cello) have
collaborated with more than a dozen Austin vocalists.
Each concert brings with it its own musical challenge
to forge a union with the guest artist's specific musical
vocabulary. Some pairings feel like weddings; others feel
like lightning storms.
"I'll do almost anything for the challenge of it, to
test my arranging ability," says Taylor. "I see it as
an exercise: Can I connect with something that's further
away from my style than anything I know -- and still make
it work?"
Will Taylor's story begins, like so many Austin music
stories, at the Armadillo World Headquarters -- the late
great concert hall, beer garden and artists' haven that
both nurtured and reflected the open-minded spirit of
its patrons. Taylor was raised in Austin, and his parents
loved music. So it only followed that young Will spent
many nights at the Armadillo, listening to music, in the
company of his parents.
The Armadillo was all about inclusiveness, for it was
the home of rock and country, ballet and jazz, folk, blues
and the spoken word. There were no boundaries. Form didn't
matter as much as passion. As a boy, Taylor wandered about
in this landscape without thinking about it.
As he came of age in the late 1980s, Taylor gravitated
toward jazz and classical music -- a world void of lyrics
-- even though his parents had always been aficionados
of singer-songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt. He mastered
the viola, toured with the Turtle Island String Quartet
and eventually put together a string jazz ensemble in
Austin. His compositions were adventurous, creative .
. . and well outside the lines of the mainstream.
Once, in the midst of a cross-country tour in the mid-1990s,
Taylor and buddies in the band began listening to Joni
Mitchell's "Hejira," one of several Mitchell albums that
weds a songwriter's lyrical soul with a jazz sensitivity.
"The songs on that album -- like 'Black Crow' and 'Refuge
of the Roads' -- about being an artist, being on the road,
just blew my mind," says Taylor. "The lyrics in those
songs cleansed my soul . . . and they opened up an entire
avenue of creativity in me."
While remaining true to his jazz and classical roots,
Taylor began to build a music library stocked with lyric-driven
artists: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Neil Young. He began to
recognize the parallel harmonies in music and the written
word. In Austin, he'd seek out folk singers at the Saxon
Pub and Cactus Cafe. He began writing arrangements for
vocalists such as folksinger Sara Hickman and jazz singer
Suzi Stern.
"Will has an innate sense of bringing a song to fruition
in the most beautiful way he can," says Hickman, who records
frequently with Strings Attached. "It can be from a country
song to rock song to a lullabye. It's not just one genre.
The first tune Will ever arranged for me was an a capella
lullabye I wrote for my daughter called 'It's Alright.'
All l had really was the song in my mind and then I sang
it into a tape recorder at Will's house. When I came back,
he'd done this beautiful string arrangement to my melody,
with a depth and lushness that brought me to tears."
Taylor knew the idea of mixing popular music with classical
forms wasn't new. Leonard Bernstein had done it. Aaron
Copland had done it. He knew, too, that mixing popular
music with jazz forms wasn't new. Sting's solo career
was built around the idea. In Austin, jazz guitarist Mitch
Watkins has always been comfortable mixing his textured,
compositional sensitivity with the pop visions of Joe
Ely or Abra Moore. Most of all, Taylor knew that music
in churches wasn't anything novel. The idea is as old
as medieval Europe.
The magic was in bringing it all together, in a single
vision. Why not, thought Will Taylor? Why not wed the
worlds of music, in the name of creativity, in a Strings
Attached concert series? "The only thing that surprises
me," he says today, "is why someone else didn't think
of it first."
**
When a vocalist signs on to play a Strings Attached
show, Taylor first asks the artist to pick some favorite
songs. They don't have to be the most recognizable, or
the easiest to play. The idea is not to stage a greatest
hits production at church. Rather, the challenge is to
select songs that lend themselves to different moods in
the context of strings.
After choosing the songs, Taylor writes out the musical
charts from the original CDs -- including solos -- and
then works out new arrangements at his computer. In the
meantime, he gives copies of the original tunes to members
of Strings Attached, so that they might become acquainted
with the singer's style and vision. This is before they
ever see new arrangements or rehearse.
Taylor listens to the original tunes, too, for he needs
to know when it's best to shoot for understatement --
or when to gamble.
"The artists usually want to be comfortable. But I don't
want them to be too comfortable," says Taylor. "I think
that's how creativity happens, in the taking of risks.
But at the same time, our job is to respect the integrity
of the musicians and enhance what they do." A lot of times,
that means walking a tightrope.
At rehearsal, Strings Attached and the guest artist
gather at Taylor's house, where ideas and arrangements
are discussed, refined and often tossed out. The confluence
of vocabularies is fascinating. In December, Jimmy LaFave
brought Jack Kerouac to the creative table, while Taylor
and cellist Charles Prewitt ventured into the land of
J.S. Bach.
"So. We're ending on a 5? Or are we ending on a 1?"
said Prewitt at one point, pencil in hand, studying the
sheet music on the music stand before him as the ensemble
worked through its arrangement of LaFave's "When It Starts
to Rain."
"Well," answered Taylor, "we're actually ending on 3
if we're in an F-sharp major!"
Inside the musicians' circle but also apart from it,
LaFave looked up at the heavens and rolled his eyes in
bemusement -- for he is an artist who knows only the feel
of music and doesn't know the language of flat fifths
and the potential benefit of tabla in C-sharp.
But in the end, the union of these disparate visions
-- even if it's a bumpy union -- is what makes the Strings
Attached concerts so special. LaFave is a master of interpretation;
it's his very signature as a singer. How challenging,
in a creative way, for Strings Attached to take on the
challenge of interpreting an interpretive artist!
And so it was, at St. David's Episcopal Church, that
Will Taylor and Jimmy LaFave looked each other in the
eye and, without words, faced the proposition of "Why
not?" In the first half of the show, LaFave performed
"Buffalo Return to the Plains" to rich string textures
that suggested Americana, and Appalachia, which added
a delicate drama to a Woody Guthrie-flavored tune that
LaFave fans know oh so well.
But in the second half of the show, LaFave turned the
tables. "Now we're going to play by my rules," he announced
with a mischievous smile -- and promptly launched into
a 12-bar blues, forcing the cellist and violinist to leave
their comfortable place and play strictly by ear.
Risks are taken. Boundaries are broken. The musical
realm and the lyrical realm become one, in the heart of
downtown, inside one of the oldest churches in Texas.
Amazing grace, indeed.
bbuchholz@statesman.com, 912-2967 |
