January, when I was exploring a new motif and the combination of sounds gave me goose bumps! I realized that this was deeply important to me – that I couldn’t not pursue this! Moving home to upstate New York last summer was almost as challenging as leaving. It was hard to regroup and figure out what was next. I knew I had to record an album, and was so blessed by all the people who supported my Kickstarter last December. Since then I’ve been working at Electric Wilburland Studio in Newfield, NY with my amazing sound engineer and friend Dana Billings, and we just finished up the final track of the album a few weeks ago. The project has evolved significantly since we started, and my sound and concept has matured as well, so it took much longer than initially expected. But this means that the finished product will be something I’m really proud of and excited to share with everyone! and learn with 47 other talented and innovative young musicians. Immediately afterwards I attended the Wabass Institute with a smaller but similarly inspiring line-up of students and teachers. I am writing suspended in the afterglow of these two incredible experiences, full of hope and excitement and new ideas. I can’t thank everyone enough for the support and encouragement in response to my solo work. It really means a lot to me, and gets me really amped to share the full album with everyone in a few months time. Until then, here is a private link to a track from the album: The Tracks The Bells Enjoy! ■ This year, in addition to working on the album and playing some live solo shows, I’ve been teaching private lessons at Cornell University, and at the Opus Ithaca School of Music in downtown Ithaca. I really love teaching, perhaps because I’ve had such great teachers! I’ve also been playing with a group called Ljova and the Kontraband in New York City, and have had other gigs and opportunities there as a result. For a while, it seemed like taking auditions for a masters degree or other program was the next step. In each case, I realized on the day of the audition that this wasn’t the right move for me. I’m not ready to go back to school, nor does the music I’m trying to play right now call for that. I took some time off from working on the album to prepare for these auditions, which I was really torn about. In the end, the experience was important in that it revealed once again where my priorities and dreams lie right now, and helped me to embrace the uncertainties and risks of what I’m most excited about, which is building a solo project and exploring the potentials of voice and bass. I feel like I’ve barely scraped the surface of my personal musical idiom, and am looking forward to diving into some new ideas and sounds after releasing this album. I often get comments about how new or different my music sounds, but a lot of the raw materials of these songs are very traceable, and even the combination of bowed bass and voice is already out there. I got to work with a very intense bassist, vocalist and improviser in Paris named Joëlle Léandre, who provoked me to be me. And I encourage everyone to check out Nat Baldwin, the bassist of the indie rock group the Dirty Projectors, who has a hauntingly beautiful solo project of his own. Everything anyone ever does is rooted in history and culture, in the scene. We’re not islands! A note on improvisation – I can’t live without it. It has the power to draw from you what you didn’t know was there. It’s coming from somewhere deeper than music. It’s coming from the pure and raw intention behind the music. When I’m deeply improvising, I’m not trying to create something, its just happening because I get lost in a sound. An essence gets channeled. The original ideas for tunes often emerge from this state, and the real work begins when I have to sculpt it into a coherent piece of music. It takes me a long time. Any one of the pieces that will be on my album took at least 3 or 4 months to coalesce into what it is now - some of them were even a year in the making. Things need to be quality, they need to be genuine, and they have to be lived in. This past month, I spent three weeks at the Jazz and Creative Music Workshop at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, where I got to play 20 SUMMER 2014 NEXT LEVEL BASSIST
Finding your own path SUMMER 2014 NEXT LEVEL BASSIST 21