Additional Information
The Montreal saxophonist and composer Colin Stetson (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre, Bon Iver, as well as writing soundtracks such as Hereditary, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), and the recent The Whisper Man on Netflix) will be at the Théâtre Outremont this Friday, September 11, with Brìghde Chaimbeul (pronounced somewhat like Bridja Campbell) and her bagpipe. The two will launch the album All the Light in the World, which brilliantly mixes modernity and musical ancestry. I took the opportunity to talk with Colin Stetson, with whom it was a first discussion, but not the last, I hope.
DETAILS AND TICKETS FOR THE COLIN STETSON CONCERT
PanM 360 : What was the first spark that led you to play music with this musician and to combine the saxophone and the Scottish pipes?
Colin Stetson : Brìghde came out with a record, her debut, which is called The Reeling in 2019. I just was floored by it. I’m just a huge fan of that record and her playing on it, and just the whole way that it navigates the trad landscape, but in really new and subtle ways. As soon as that came out, I got in touch with her.
At the time, I was working on a documentary about NASA for Disney+. I really wanted to involve her playing in that. I had written a few pieces that I thought that she’d be perfect for.
She recorded several things for me on that score.
After that, she invited me to come to Ireland outside of Belfast to play and to help produce her second record there (Las, 2022), which we did and which came out a number of years ago.
Subsequently, I asked her to play on a few tracks on my solo record that came out three years ago
Logically, it was all pointing towards a proper duo collaboration. The main obstacle of that, as is the main obstacle with everything these days, is time. We finally did find the time to get together at my studio in Vermont and write and record this fully together.
There’s a lot here where we’re really just breaking new ground, but it also feels like we’re just scratching the surface of said new ground. There’s so much possibility, so much potential. It was a very exciting process to write these songs and then just to know that there’s a whole deluge beyond it of more things coming.
REVIEW OF ALL THE LIGHT IN THE WORLD
PanM 360 : How did you first devise the idea of the album? Did you have an idea of the sound world, or you just came together and just explored on the spot and created things?
Colin Stetson : The sound world is rather straightforward. We are simply bringing our respective solo aesthetics together. We had already explored in ways prior to it, as I said, on her record and my record. It was just an extension of that. There are no overdubs. There is no additional anything. It is just live performances of two people playing their instruments in the studio. Like something you would hear in a concert, like at Theatre Outremont.
PanM 360 : How much improv is there? How much of improv versus written or semi-written canvases are there in the pieces?
Colin Stetson : Improvisation… How much is it? It’s a difficult question. There’s a piece that’s out right now from the record called Dirt Dance, which is a very, very distinct form. It has a form wherein Brìghde is playing a very, very tight ostinato. And then, with her, I start by playing a very, very distinct ostinato, which then is augmented by a half-step, which comes back and augmented by a half-step. And then I start to improvise in metric modulation. Basically, I’m playing with variations on those initial ostinatos, metrically modulating over the pulse, so that I’m rolling fives over twos, sixes, sevens, nines, threes.
And so, yes, I’m improvising that whole thing. But there are very strict parameters. It is not just blow a solo and see what happens.
So, yes, and there is that kind of a thing throughout the record. These are through-composed pieces, and where there’s improvisation, it is very, very specific, very, very well-parametered improvisation.
PanM 360 : And now you are going on tour with this.
Colin Stetson : Yes. First Toronto on the 9th, then Montreal on th 11th for the official launch. After that, Quebec City the next day, Brooklyn on the 15th, Kingston (US) on the 19th and Boston on the 20th.
PanM 360 : Best of success with that.
