I can’t believe today is finally the release day for my new album, [in]verse! It feels like it’s been a long time coming, and also that the day has really crept up on me. I thought I’d take this moment to share some backstory to the album, and give you insight into how such a perhaps peculiar and unique album came to be.
Picture this: it’s spring 2020 (yes, it’s been about 3 years in the making!). The world has been turned on its head — inverted, if you will. It feels like right is left and up is down, but alongside navigating an increasingly unrecognizable reality, we are also grappling with fear, and massive, incomprehensible loss.
I’ve somehow moved back into my childhood home in Canada — somewhere I haven’t lived since I was 14 years old, nor thought I would ever live again (definitely a silver lining of that time — a privilege to spend an extended period of time with my family <3). I’m on my daily hike through the forests I’ve known since before I could walk (insert photo of my father hiking with one kid strapped to his front, another on his back). It’s my unplugged, reflective, quiet time of day — my “me” time — usually taken after I’d finished recording my daily practice video.
These walks bore all sorts of creative thoughts and endeavours, as well as deep reflections on myriad topics and current events. As a small example, it was through these walks that my livestream series, #LivefromLowvillewithLove was born, as well as my Instagram collaborative commissioning project #SeptemberSoloCello, which enabled me to work with 26 composers from across the world (a handful of whom are featured on this album, [in]verse!).
At some point on this particular day in early lockdown, my phone rings — which is bizarre on many levels… at the very least, I rarely have it with me, and I almost never have service anywhere in this area. It’s Ilter Ibrahimof, the Artistic Director of Fall for Dance North Festival in Toronto. They’re reimagining their Fall 2020 festival, trying to pivot and figure out creative and meaningful ways to present a dance festival virtually amidst an ongoing pandemic. They’ve come up with this beautiful idea, inspired by the 1996 Acadamy Award winning soundtrack to Il Postino, of creating a sort of “soundtrack of our lives” — combining music and poetry, and shining new light and intimacy on their artists by inviting the beloved dance-makers to choose poetry or spoken word excerpts that speak to them, and share them from their homes. For each artist’s reading, they hope to have a pairing of music.
Through word-of-mouth (and good fortune, for me!), they’ve heard of me, and Ilter has seen my daily posts on Instagram over the past several weeks — many of which married and juxtaposed music + poetry in a variety of manners. He’s wondering if I would be interested in curating and recording the project! Of course, I am thrilled by the creative possibilities.
Over the next couple of months, I spend lots more time reading poetry and listening to music; imagining what pairings are particularly striking; whether they complement one another or juxtapose. I amass lists of potential poems we could include in the project — and then cross off many of my personal favorites due to inevitable copyright issues. Throughout the early summer, I start meeting (on Zoom) with each of the incredible dance-makers. We get to know each other a bit and chat about poetry and literature — some of them know exactly what they want to read, and some are open to or in desire of suggestions. We work to find poems that we both love but most importantly that resonate deeply with them, that they feel some sort of personal connection with, and that they feel comfortable reading. Then, I get to work finding it’s musical counterpart.
Inevitable themes arose — it really did become a soundtrack of the time for me. I will only speak directly for myself, but I know many of us were consumed with an array of complex feelings during this time. I was focused in many ways on social justice — on becoming a more aware, more sensitive and empathetic, more proactive community member and activist in my work and life. I was consumed with grief and anxiety, grappling with the horrors of the pandemic (not to mention the daily news cycles—pandemic and otherwise); trying to process loss on the scale it was being thrown to us (and inevitably failing to make sense of any of it). I was even more connected to nature than usual, and trying to understand more about climate change without getting so overwhelmed by it it felt incapacitating. I was missing my “life” — the basis of which (my work, and otherwise) had long been built on collaboration. In short — I can so clearly see and hear in the album these reckonings with loss, fear, loneliness, racism, oppression, the need for community, the need for one another… right at the forefront.
The resultant project felt both deeply personal and also deeply communal — and cathartic, in many ways, to have the opportunity to work so intimately with several inspiring artists, even if only through the internet. It was amazing to hear feedback from friends, family, and strangers at how deeply certain aspects of it resonated with them and spoke to their own recent experiences.
After the festival concluded in October 2020, the incredible team at Fall for Dance North kept in touch about the potential of turning it into an album. Fast-forward to winter/early spring of 2022 and we were doing it! We added a few new tracks to help tell the story of these past few years, and ran into some logistical challenges (like copyright laws) that forced some additional modifications. Then we headed into the studio to record! In many ways, what has resulted with this album feels like the most intimate and vulnerable thing I’ve ever shared publicly. It was created in profoundly intimate moments of the pandemic — just me with my cello, my books, my thoughts, myself. Observing, processing, and reflecting on what I could understand of the world around me. And most importantly, it also gave me the chance to learn a great deal from a plethora of composers, musicians, poets, and writers — living and passed — as well as, of course, each of the astonishing artists featured on this album — dance-makers, musicians, composers, and poets alike, many of whom were incredibly generous in baring their own hearts and souls and giving a great deal of themselves to these pieces and this project.
I cannot begin to describe how this project has changed me, and how grateful I am — first and foremost to Ilter, Lily, and the amazing team at Fall for Dance North — but also to everyone who left their indelible mark on this creation. What an unexpected source of beauty and growth throughout an inconceivable time.
The world is more recognizable now. Lockdown feels like a distant (hurtled out into space, never to be spoken of, traumatically repressed) memory, and much of normal daily life has resumed, for better or worse. We’ve neatly tucked away some of the complex emotions and unfathomable loss that we still don’t know what to do with. The world looks different, but it’s also the same. We are still reckoning with severe systemic issues — climate change, racism, socio-economic and public health crises, to start with… We, as a society, continue to oppress — and in some places, continue to attempt to erase — the vital, lived experiences of entire groups of people and history. Many of the issues that came to the forefront of our consciousness during the pandemic have not changed a great deal, or at the very least, have a far ways to go.
I suppose for me, this album serves as a reminder of the power of what we can do when we come together and uplift one another, and also the ongoing necessity for us to show up for one another, and not give up hope. Hope, after all, is a discipline. A practice to be cultivated. A conscious, daily choice. It is not blind optimism. It is a small, principled refusal to despair. Hope is work, and it's worthwhile.
Regardless of what you, personally, take from this album — I hope you find comfort and solace in it, and perhaps pieces of hope, alongside pieces of yourself and your own lived experiences over the past years.
(A few practical notes: you may find more information about the album, including detailed track descriptions and notes, on Fall for Dance North’s website here. Through that link you can also find the link to order physical or digital copies of the album. If you prefer to stream, you should now be able to do so through the platform of your choosing — you may find direct links here. Also, if you would like to join us this weekend for the release party at the Salmagundi Club in NYC (featuring several tracks from the album performed live!), please visit this website and RSVP. You will be able to purchase your own signed copy at the event if you so choose!
About the music: the album presents beloved classics by J.S. Bach and Edward Elgar, as well as 6 world premieres, all written specifically for and in close collaboration with me over the course of the pandemic. These works were all commissioned by me or my wonderful musical family, Bang on a Can, to whom I am so grateful for the pieces as well as the opportunity to share them in this capacity.
On the title: [in]verse is a play on words, as with the presentation of spoken word, this album is literally “in verse”. It also represents a time of what felt like inverted reality for many of us. Additionally, we wished to emphasize the word “[in]” as an invitation — an invitation inwards with us, into our inner worlds, as well as into your own.)