5th August 2020: #WhirlwindInFocus: ‘Pivotal Arc’ – a long time in the making! Quinsin Nachoff and Nathalie Bonin chat about their long-term project, out on 8th August
Quinsin Nachoff’s previous projects with Whirlwind includes Path of Totality, an album inspired by the moon’s total eclipse in 2017, and Quinsin Nachoff’s Ethereal Trio with Mark Helias and Dan Weiss described as having “Sophisticated structures framed in original and innovative thematic improvisations.” by Jazz Poland.
Now Quinsin is back with a new release that has been long in the making. Pivotal Arc marks an important moment in Quinsin’s professional career, as he sees the release of recorded versions of three significant compositions. The album is darting and engaging, a highly original contribution to the increasingly popular genre-bending aesthetics that look to take influences from jazz, classical and improvised musics.
We spoke to Quinsin and violin soloist Nathalie Bonin about this project, their long-held association, and keeping up with their respective busy schedules during lockdown.
Interview by Hugh Morris (hugh@whirlwindrecordings.com)
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WWR: Hi both! Could you introduce the project? How long has Pivotal Arc been in the pipeline?
QN: Pivotal Arc is a boundary-crossing album that consists of three diverse long-form works that were conceived as complementary pieces: a Violin Concerto, written for soloist Nathalie Bonin, a String Quartet written for the Molinari String Quartet and the titular large ensemble work featuring bassist Mark Helias, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi and myself on saxophones. Vibraphonist Michael Davidson is also featured along with conductor JC Sanford leading an ensemble of outstanding musicians from Québec.
This is my first large ensemble album, first violin concerto and first standalone string quartet. It explores and blurs the boundaries between genres, jazz and classical among others, and is the latest milestone in working with Nathalie. In many ways it is about our friendship over many years, as she has been integral to several of my albums. Magic Numbers (Songlines), recorded in 2004, incorporates a String Quartet that she leads with saxophone trio of bassist Mark Helias, drummer Jim Black and myself on tenor and soprano sax. Horizons Ensemble (Musictronic), recorded in 2005, was with pianist John Taylor, improvising cellist Ernst Reijseger and Nathalie and Parmela Attariwala on violins.
The idea for the Concerto came about after a performance together around 2007. We were able to secure funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the first draft was completed in 2013. We made a demo in NYC in 2014 and after more fundraising we made this album at the end of 2018. (Raising funds to record large ensemble works is no small feat.) Nathalie recommended that we enlist the Molinari String Quartet for the project and so I wrote a string quartet that complements the Concerto. We wanted bassist Mark and Satoshi involved so I wrote the piece Pivotal Arc to feature them along with myself.
JCs is also a close friend (I had co-produced his large ensemble album Views from the Inside on Whirlwind Recordings) and I knew he would be ideal to conduct this challenging music. When Nathalie and I originally discussed orchestration, we both loved the idea of vibraphone instead of piano, and so I enlisted Michael Davidson, as I was familiar with his work from the Toronto scene.
WWR: How did you two first meet?
QN: We met at the Banff Centre for the Arts at the summer jazz workshop in 2001. I was a coach and Nathalie came as a student to expand her interest in jazz and improvisation. I was impressed with her diverse range of skills and her attention to detail, we kept in touch afterwards and I asked her to lead a string quartet for Magic Numbers. At the time, neither of us knew that this would evolve to a long musical collaboration over many years.
NB: The Banff International Jazz Workshop was a new world for me and I was very excited to explore and play as many different forms of jazz and learn to improvise. At one point, Dave Douglas asked me to play part of a piece he was writing for Mark Feldman and I performed it during the weekly concerts where Quinsin was in attendance.
I think that my classical training, merged with my intense curiosity with jazz, was in line with his vision for future projects and so we stayed in touch and ended up collaborating on his Magic Numbers album, in studio and on stage, which led to the Horizons Ensemble project, and a few other iterations of those, and at one point sparked the idea of a violin concerto. Over the past 20 years, it has been really special to not only collaborate as musicians but also to become such good friends going through life, with each our own paths and experiences, and to witness how we both have evolved as musicians, composers and human beings. I think this comes out in some ways in the music and certainly in the joy of doing projects together.
WWR: Quinsin, how does the music appear for the musicians? Is it all on the page, or did you have to sculpt the improvised sections in person?
QN: Most of the music is fully notated for the ensemble. The String Quartet is fully notated and detailed whereas or the solo improvisations I explored different strategies. Sometimes there would be chord changes with ensemble cues, like Nathalie’s solo in Movement I and Michael’s vibraphone solo in Movement III of the Concerto. At other times the solos would be more open and free, responding to what had come before and what was coming next, like Mark’s bass solo in Movement III or Nathalie’s improvised cadenza linking Movements II & III that has written material used as a launching point. Sometimes the solo would be a combination like the saxophone solo in Pivotal Arc that begins with chord changes and gradually moves to a more open setting. Sometimes I would work with the player to talk about mood or direction, but often I would let them respond to the writing and enjoy being surprised by their take on it.
WWR: Nathalie, how did you prepare for tackling the Violin Concerto?
NB: The preparation for this piece was actually multifold. On a larger scale, my entire career was essential because I had many previous experiences tackling classical and contemporary solo pieces as well as performing jazz with Ted Nash and ODEON, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center as well as other groups and ensembles. My previous collaborations performing Quinsin’s piece also gave me a good introduction to his writing style, which was very useful.
This concerto is so complex on multiple levels from extreme technical difficulties and rhythmic complexities to interpretation and improvisation. It was great that I had the chance to learn parts of the concerto when we recorded the first demo in NY a few years before. I remember taking two weeks of intense full-time practicing to get ready for that. When I started working on the piece again for the premiere in 2018, I had a different perspective and so I got to explore the interpretation and improvisation sides more. I still had to learn most of the notes though since the entire piece is about 45 minutes long. So I went back to very disciplined technical training and learning the piece during the entire summer before getting into the interpretation of it and then studying the sections over which I was to improvise. I have to say that, because of all the different challenges, this piece is certainly the one that pushed me the most out of my comfort zone, but was also one of the most gratifying in the end!
WWR: Quinsin – could you talk about what influenced the final track, Pivotal Arc, particularly about its links to climate change?
QN: At the time of writing this piece I had read an article in the New York Times discussing potential outcomes based on when greenhouse-gas emissions peaked in various countries. Unfortunately, none of the results were particularly cheery. It seemed that we were at a pivotal point, depending which arc we chose to take, as a global community. Many of the world’s largest polluters are still, strikingly, heading in the wrong direction. I am hopeful that actions can be taken to minimize the worst outcomes, but our window of opportunity is closing quickly.
This piece explores some of these ideas and itself has a large arcing form. It also served as a piece on the album that was less musically demanding for the ensemble and had more familiar reference points in terms of harmony, melody and orchestration. It puts solos in the spotlight: Mark Helias’ opening and closing statements, Satoshi Takeishi’s back and forth with the ensemble and the evolving saxophone solo in the middle.
WWR: What have you been getting up to during lockdown? Has it been a time for rest and recuperation, or ploughing straight through? And for our UK readers, what does lockdown look like where you both are?
QN: Knowing Nathalie and myself, we are not really the type to rest and recuperate. I think we relate well to each other because we are both very driven people. I have been using the time to get some music ready for publishing that had been on hold for a while. I jumped down the rabbit hole of video editing, taught myself Premiere Pro and After Effects, so I could develop some content for this release. There is a series of Teasers and one of Interviews with the musicians from the album. I also wrote an article for the International Association of Jazz Arrangers and Composers, coming out August 1st, that talks about how I have pursued developing a language writing for strings. And upcoming projects include getting my home recording studio set up and completing a couple of commissions amongst some online teaching.
Being here in NYC, it was really intense as we made it over the initial peak of the pandemic. Even now, as the city is opening up gradually, it still feels fairly subdued. New Yorkers are very resilient, so I know that it will be a thriving scene again, but at the moment, with most of the cultural elements still shuttered, we are not yet near the normal vibrancy.
NB: When the lockdown occurred I had just flown back to Los Angeles after selling my house in Montreal the previous week. I was on a tight movie-scoring schedule and about to embark on a crazy three-month stretch of composing and performing between Los Angeles and Montreal. The lockdown and all the consequences came as a shock with everything getting cancelled except for my scoring project for Hallmark. It really hit me in April and I realized I really needed to rest and take care of myself. The psychological fatigue from feeling the weight of this pandemic everywhere was difficult for me at first. I started running and hiking and catching up on lost sleep of the past years.
Nevertheless, I kept pretty busy all the time as I remote tracked for numerous composers’ projects including recording solo violin for film composer Greg Dombrowski’s soon to be released album. I also finished a short commissioned string quartet piece for the LAFCI 2020 New Music Project providing repertoire that can be performed in today’s socially distancing context and am now working on my own cinematic album to be released in the fall.
Los Angeles, where I am going through the pandemic at the moment, was doing pretty well for a while but, unfortunately, events and re-openings have forced places to close down again. People seem divided at the moment with some being careful and abiding by recommended safety rules and others being very careless. I am not sure where we are headed with this but I do believe we have been given the opportunity to come out of this as better people, a better society and a better world. It really depends on all of us.
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Quinsin and Nathalie’s album is available to pre-order on 12″ LP 180g Limited Edition Dark Green Vinyl / CD / DL: here.
You can find Quinsin’s previous releases Quinsin Nachoff’s Ethereal Trio and Path of Totality over on our Bandcamp page. Follow @quinsin and @quinsingram on Twitter and Instagram where you can find updates about the album, as well as their series of interviews with the key players from the Pivotal Arc process.
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