June 26, 2025 • 44 mins
What if sound isn’t something we listen to, but something we live inside?
In this immersive conversation, I sit down with composer and filmmaker Jake Meginsky to explore how intuition, deep listening, and embodied experience shape a creative life. We talk about the physicality of sound, the pressures and revelations of filmmaking, and the lasting impact of his mentorship with legendary percussionist Milford Graves.
Whether you’re a musician, dancer, or simply tuning into your own inner frequency, this episode is an invitation to trust what can’t always be named—and follow the hum beneath the surface.
Find me on Instagram @ToHumisHuman and www.sonorouslight.com
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:05):
Hi friends, welcome to another episode of To Hum is
Human, the podcast where weexplore the transformative power
of tuning into our intuition toexpress our passionate purpose.
I'm your host, Donna Bell, andtoday we will delve into the
sound of purpose, discoveringyour true path through your
(00:26):
inner hum.
Because when you trust yourinner wisdom, you align with
your soul's path.
And I am so excited about myguest today.
We are joined by composer andfilmmaker Jake McGinsky.
He's a New Music USA Awardwinner and Massachusetts
Cultural Council Fellow in bothmusic and film.
(00:46):
He's collaborated and performedwith an extraordinary range of
musicians, including MilfordGraves, Alvin Lucier, Kim
Gordon, Greg Kelly, Bob Rainey,Thurston Moore, William Parker,
and Bill Nace, among manyothers.
His work has been presentedwidely and internationally
including at the Institute ofContemporary Art in London, the
(01:08):
South by Southwest FilmFestival, the Click Festival in
Copenhagen, the Duelon Museum ofModern Art in Shanghai, the
Lincoln Center, the GuggenheimVision Festival, Museum of Arts
and Design, the MIT Center forArt, Science and Technology, and
the Mead Museum of Art here inAmherst, Massachusetts, among
(01:29):
many other national andinternational venues.
Jake has been reviewedextensively in leading
contemporary music, art, andculture publications worldwide.
He frequently collaborates withchoreographers.
And in 2018, he directed andproduced the award-winning
feature film Milford Graves'Full Mantis, which the New York
(01:50):
Times called the film a stunningdocumentary.
Jake is currently a dancemusician at Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts, andhas had previous appointments at
Bennington College, AmherstCollege, Matt Holia College, and
the American Dance Festival.
Welcome, Jake.
SPEAKER_00 (02:08):
Thanks, Donabelle.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02 (02:10):
Oh, my gosh.
It's kind of a thrill for me tobe talking with you, especially
about this subject today.
Now, you are quite the fixturein the sonic realm, both locally
and beyond.
And I've experienced several ofyour live shows, which were
really mind-blowing.
Jake, you've said, I resonatewith the idea that music is
(02:31):
coming from somewhere else ormaybe growing up.
through us.
When did you first come to therealization?
Can you tell us about aparticular experience that
clearly led you to play andexperiment with sound?
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
That's a good question.
I'm not quite sure I canpinpoint a particular time, a
particular moment, but I thinkthere's a journey that I am on,
and I think many artists havethis experience.
My father's a musician.
There was music in my house.
I wouldn't say I was a expectedto be a musician, but there was
(03:07):
a lot of access and there was alot of musicians in my family.
So I gravitated towards that.
And when you first gravitatetowards learning music, the
technical side, at least from myown perception, it's very
amplified, meaning to learn toplay an instrument is to learn
to practice and to learn to getyour small muscles to start
(03:30):
doing things that they don'tnormally do.
And then trying to kind of getthere, I I think can often lead
a young person to think thatthat's what it is, that to play
an instrument, to have otherpeople respect you, you know,
celebrate your aptitude, thatthat's kind of like what you're
going for.
And I think that that taken toofar can kind of lead you away
(03:54):
from that other thing that'scalling you what you are going
to make, you know, what'swanting to come through you.
You can kind of avoid that byfocusing on the technical Yeah.
(04:23):
and it was competitive jazzband.
So I think that's what I'm goingaround.
There was a competitiveness thatwas inherent in my first
experiences with music that Ihad to learn to thaw out from to
even get to the point where Icould even be listening to
(04:44):
something that was trying tocome through me or come out that
had never existed in the worldbefore or that seemed like it
was connected to my own personalinterests and journey.
So, you know, I think luckilymoving up here to Western Mass,
Northampton area after highschool, I think the creative
(05:06):
ecosystem at the time, which hada lot of improvisation, a lot of
experimental music, that waskind of the norm, you know, so
everyone that I met was meetingmusically in this way where
anything could happen, you know,that I wasn't meeting people who
were saying, here's my song, Iwant you to play this.
It was more like, let's see whathappens.
(05:28):
And being in the area, beingyoung and being surrounded by
that.
And then also the programmingthat was going on at the time
was like, Michael Eilers wasprogramming at the Unitarian
Church in Amherst, lots ofreally great improvisational
jazz concerts, bringing peoplehere from New York City who
(05:52):
were, part of the scene at theVision Festival.
And just kind of absorbing allthat, it started to feel like
there was something else withmusic that wasn't about becoming
better and better at aninstrument that had to do with
something else.
So I think it was a slow processof momentum.
SPEAKER_01 (06:14):
And
SPEAKER_00 (06:15):
along the way, just meeting and learning from people
that had a different vision ofmusic than I had previously
experienced.
So a really big one in my lifeis Milford Graves, who you
mentioned.
He was my teacher for almost 20years.
And when I first met him, Ithink it was before I met him,
(06:37):
but it was kind of through thisfertile environment in the early
2000s, late 90s, early 2000s inWestern Mass.
There was a series at the timethat glenn siegel did called the
magic triangle and it was umassfine arts center shows and there
was this one season that had allsolos and duos and and he
brought milford graves up to thefine arts center to play a solo
(07:00):
and i went with my drum teacherat the time another big huge
part of my life and a huge partof western mass percussion
culture joe platts who no longerlives in the community but made
drums and taught here for manymany years in hadley and a bunch
of other drummers and friendswent to this show and you know
the lights turned down you're inthe fine arts center it's like a
(07:21):
proscenium theater it's meant tokind of present music in a
pretty typical way where theaudience kind of stays quiet and
perceives the music and at theend usually get a nice clap but
this was like a completelydifferent experience it was
milford came down in the crowdhe was picking people up out of
the crowd bringing them on stagecarrying them playing drums
(07:42):
playing sustained tones And whenthe lights came up, I remember
my friends and I, we weren'ttalking about how good the music
were.
We were talking about, is yourheart beating faster?
You look really flushed.
There was all this physical
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
stuff
SPEAKER_00 (07:57):
going on.
And I think it presented avision of music that was more...
about an energy exchange andless about presenting a
technical skill or presentingvirtuosity or and another
element of that concert and manyother concerts that featured the
great um iconic masters of freejazz the sense in the audience
(08:22):
was that you were really part ofwhat was happening also that
like the music that washappening was happening at that
moment And it had never happenedbefore.
It represented a collection ofenergies that were present in
the room at that time.
So you felt very kind of, mysense was you felt very alive,
both as a performer in thatsituation, but also as an
(08:44):
audience member.
SPEAKER_02 (08:45):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:46):
And I
SPEAKER_02 (08:47):
imagine it was like a very embodied experience.
And I'm wondering, it soundslike the instruments you play
mostly, were they percussiveinstruments in the beginning?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:57):
At that time, yeah.
I started early on the cello.
That was probably the firstinstrument that I was practicing
seriously as a kid.
And then my father's a classicalbassist.
SPEAKER_02 (09:11):
He
SPEAKER_00 (09:11):
plays for the Springfield Symphony.
He's a really serious practicertoo.
I grew up with this sound of thebass being practiced, classical
bass being practiced for hoursper day and started practicing
cello that way too.
And then moved to trumpet inmiddle school.
And I think I always was tappingout rhythms.
I was always curious aboutrhythm things.
(09:33):
I don't know when it was, butyou know, my dad's also a
multi-instrumentalist and drumsprobably was the instrument he
seemed least comfortable with soI think that helped me find a
little pocket of the instrumentthat my dad wasn't necessarily a
stratosphere away uh than me andum Back then too, I think I do
(09:56):
have this fortunate history ofjust meeting really great
teachers along the way.
The percussionist for theSpringfield Symphony at the
time, which was the first personmy dad got me lessons with, he
had a different way of teachingthan the cello teachers that I
had had.
Even then, the way that myfather presented a life in
(10:16):
music, which did have a linearprogression through books and
through a technical mastery toget to a place where you could
possibly hope that someday youcould compose something new.
That's how it felt to me, atleast.
But Michael Kars, who was thepercussionist in Springfield
Symphony, he lived close by inthe Forest Park neighborhood in
Springfield in an apartment justfilled with percussion
(10:37):
instruments, you know, singleguy smoking cigarettes.
And his thing was just likeabout he was so much more
excited when I wrote somethingthat was I cared about than when
I was able to do an exercise.
And I think that stuck with me alittle bit.
And I think there was also justthe fact of being in drums
(11:02):
inside a Western classicallandscape.
You're kind of left alone morethan other instruments,
especially in this competitiveband situation that I'm talking
about where the band director isconcerned about everyone being
in tune.
you know, drilling things.
And as long as the drummersounds okay, they often don't
even check if you're playingwhat's written unless it's like
(11:23):
a percussion centric part,especially in competitive jazz
in high school, you canbasically choose your own
symbols, make up your own part.
So there's this kind of slowawakening of like compositional
or making something sensibilitythat I think was creeping in
there just by being fortunateenough to meet grownups at the
time who celebrated that, evenif they weren't in my own family
(11:46):
or in my own circle, I didalways kind of hold that.
And I think like, you know, youmentioned the physical, and I
think drums and bass are two ofthose places where that part of
music can be most pronounced,that kind of like place where
music or sound and touch meet.
Growing up with the bass, thislow frequency, the tailpin of
(12:10):
the bass being in the ground,vibrating the ground, that's
probably where I was fallingasleep, taking naps as a little
kid while my dad would practice.
This kind of very physical senseof sound comes in those bass
frequencies where you can kindof feel the tension on your
skin, not only through yourears.
And drums just has this amazingway to project power and to
(12:34):
project volume It doesn't getmore physical than just picking
up something and strikingsomething.
I see my toddlers do it all thetime.
UNKNOWN (12:43):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (12:43):
So that kind of sense that sound is a physical
experience was also somethingthat I can trace back to those
early times, early experienceswith music.
SPEAKER_02 (12:54):
Well, it's such a rich and diverse exposure to
sound and instruments in so manydifferent ways.
So I could see how that wouldreally influence you.
And I'm curious about thecomposing aspect because when
you were talking or working withone of your teachers and they
were really interested aboutyour composing, When you're
composing sound for a piece, howdo you distinguish between what
(13:19):
your mind wants to create andwhat your intuition or spiritual
sense is guiding you to create?
Are there moments where the twofeel at odds and how do you
navigate that tension?
SPEAKER_00 (13:43):
was coming out and just kind of examining what that
is.
And I think, you know, more andmore over the years, I kind of
turned to just showing up in thestudio and just making things
and kind of having a devotedamount of time that I do that
every day.
And now that I have smalltoddlers again, That time is
(14:04):
very precious because I don'twake up and think, maybe I'll do
this now, maybe I'll do itlater.
It's like I have a couple hoursat the end of the night after
kids go to sleep.
I think, you know, the timeswhere I've been able to do
something that I do feel isconnected in that way, they
often come from long periods ofjust studio practice where lots
(14:26):
of things are being made.
Sometimes the process justhappens and other times it
doesn't.
And I don't know that Inecessarily feel like I have
that much control over how thatis, but I can kind of show up
over and over again.
I was thinking about this today,maybe it was in the last couple
of days, There was a time when Iwas at Bennington where I worked
with a choreographer named SusanSwarbody who did this
(14:49):
improvisational practice calledemergent improvisation.
And she was really collaboratinga lot with scientists and
especially evolutionarybiologists and neuroscientists,
people that worked with systems,emergent systems, like very
complex emergent systems likethe brain or like an ecosystem.
And we would tour and meet withscientists essentially and kind
(15:11):
of show what we did and theywould talk about what they did
and And we would come up withways to kind of play together,
come up with scores or formsthat were based on the work they
were doing.
And there was a neuroscientistnamed Gerald Edelman, I believe.
And I think he got his NobelPrize around the immune system.
What he discovered was that thecells, the attacking cells, the
(15:36):
T cells, they were...
they were kind of pre, they werealready in a myriad different
kinds of shapes.
And what would happen when therewas a pathogen was like the
right, but there was like someexperimentation, but the right
shape that was like the closestfit would come and neutralize.
And then that shape would getpropagated.
But it wasn't that the cellswould kind of improvise in the
(15:59):
moment.
It was that there was such avast amount of creativity around
all the shapes that were presentin the body that the way
inoculation worked or the wayimmunization would work is that
that shape then gets propagatedso it made me think of kind of
like that what I'm doing I'mmaking all these different
things I don't really know whatthey're for I'm trying to stay
(16:22):
present be playful and then Iget a commission and someone
talks to me oh this piece I'mthinking this and this and this
and I kind of have a memory ofsome place I was with my
materials that seems like itcould be the right way but
without that practice it'salmost very hard to get to those
kind of meaningful things thatreally mean something to me.
(16:44):
I can really, as far as like acomposition commission.
SPEAKER_02 (16:47):
Well, being an artist, I think showing up is
really...
Half the battle.
You have to have a studiopractice in order to be
receptive to anything that'spossible.
And I think you're right whenyou're sort of starting out from
nothing, you're just making itharder for yourself, for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (17:03):
Yeah.
And I think those things thatare meaningful, they have a way
of just creeping in.
The sublime has a way ofcreeping into the mundane.
I think the process can be sodynamic that sometimes for me,
it's just like, let me focus onthis one thing that I need to do
with this two hour period.
Let me record that sound ontothis tape.
(17:24):
And then rather than thinkingabout a more broad idea, just
focusing on what's somethingdoable in the moment.
And then I think the collectionof those things kind of invites
something in.
And then I do think there'sanother aspect.
We all go through our day andthere's little things that we
see and mundane things that wehave to keep in our head that
(17:45):
have to do with just survivingand lots of other parts of life.
And then there's often somestuff that's deeper, that you
pay attention to once in awhile.
Then there's stuff that'sreally, for me at least, I only
can sense it a little bit.
I kind of sense it from in thecorner.
And I think sometimes makingthings, at least making new
(18:06):
things, is kind of a process offinding that space and moving
it, moving it, moving it, movingit over and over until I can see
it more clearly.
Because it's like a strong,strong feeling, but I don't
really know what it is.
That's kind of what's alsoexciting about it, that it seems
to be asking for it.
And like I said, sometimes thatthing can just come into the
(18:31):
forefront and other times itjust feels like chasing and
chasing.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (18:37):
Well, it seems like there is this flow and it could
trickle or it could be quiteimmediate.
And I'm curious, what would youcall that sensing?
Would you call that intuition?
SPEAKER_00 (18:49):
Yeah, I mean, I think intuition makes sense.
I think to me, it may be...
I think I may think of it morejust like in a sense of
listening, you know, how youcould be talking to someone at a
party and you sense there'ssomething really important
happening here, but you just,you can't hear it.
Even though you do hear it, thesounds are hitting your eardrum
(19:11):
and moving, but you're not ableto take that lens of perception
and move it to this other soundor conversation.
It's kind of like that, thatsense of deep listening.
The composer Pauline Oliveroshad a practice called deep
listening.
All right.
And it really had to do withinviting more and more of the
soundscape into that perceptualframework.
(19:32):
So you start and you paint atent, you sit down by the
traffic and you hear the trafficand you say, I'm here to hear
the traffic.
And that means, you know, maybeif an airplane comes, it's like
getting in your way and that'skind of noise and that traffic
is the signal.
And Pauline's thing was to kindof expand and expand that sphere
of awareness so that you're kindof including everything that's
(19:53):
in the soundscape in yourlistening.
and I think it can be a bit ofthat like just expanding your
sphere of awareness places thatyou don't normally bring
attention to.
SPEAKER_02 (20:07):
Absolutely, because it's almost like a state of
mindfulness when you're reallywanting to become present in
whatever situation you're in andnot having any idea of
projecting anything, justreceiving something.
How do you see the relationshipbetween sound, movement, and
what you call the spirit ofspace
SPEAKER_00 (20:29):
when you create?
This relationship between soundand movement and sound and space
That's where a lot of myinterests are.
And I think that soundessentially is movement.
So it starts as movement.
It's waves propagating in space.
And what we perceive as soundhas to do with this relationship
(20:49):
between something in motion andthe way that it reflects off
space and the way it articulatesspace.
And I think it does seem to me,at least when I think about my
experience of the world, thisfeeling of way Mm-hmm.
(21:19):
Each sound is kind ofarticulating a wave shape inside
whatever space you're listeningto it, or just even in the space
of your own listening, it'sarticulating relationships
between waves and patterns.
And that's what we think of asas sound.
So when you're using that asyour material, making art,
(21:40):
you're kind of shifting into aplayful space with that
experience of just being, beingin space, walking into a room
and having the room feeldifferent.
There's the sonic level, thesonic part of that is very
strong and kind of, I'd say likemaybe easier way to articulate
some of this stuff that maybe ifyou were more interested in
(22:01):
physics, you would have to gointo like the realm of quantum
physics or kind of have a moredeep mathematical i mean i think
one of the greek definitions ofmusic was was it's like a way to
play with mathematics and not tosay i totally agree with that
but i think that when you domusic you your material is
essentially movement and spaceso i work with dancers and and
(22:26):
their material is the body inspace we find that we share a
lot of sensibilities and andlanguage around making because
we we make in time we make inspace and we're both dealing
with movement so that's been areally uh valuable part of my
career that i've had have so somuch of my musical life is my
(22:49):
professional musical life rightnow at smith is just spent in
dialogue with dancers So weoften find we have ways of
talking about what we do thatwhen you take them out of like
the musical field, like let'ssay like an idea like
counterpoint or counterpointalmotion and you apply that to two
bodies in motion, there's just alot of resonance there.
SPEAKER_02 (23:11):
It's so dynamic.
and so much a collaborationbecause it's almost like you
can't not work with the danceras you're working with the
music.
I mean, there's such arelationship and a cohesion
together as you're going.
When you are creating a pieceand you've spoken about this
sort of urge or this pressurebuilding to start a project,
(23:34):
which I find curious, can yougive us some insight into what
that looks like?
SPEAKER_00 (23:39):
That's just the way I experience it.
I think...
Um, I think that does have to dowith this feeling of something
calling you, something callingyour attention, something asking
you to listen to it.
I'm going to be 50 soon and it'slike I've been working in art
for a while and I think there'sas many ways to make new things
(24:00):
as there are artists.
I've met people who feel likeit's more of a revelatory
process, like they receivesomething and it's kind of fully
formed.
It may come in a dream and theirprocess is getting this thing
that they're thinking about outwhere I don't have that at all.
I don't have a tune in my heador anything like that.
(24:20):
It's much more, it's kind oflike the blurry thing is asking,
it's asking to be clarifiedthrough the process of being in
relationship to the materialsthat I work with, if that makes
sense, rather than to beexecuted and realized.
So I feel a little bit ofpressure that builds that kind
of, I sense it, it gets releasedinside a musical or a sonic
(24:44):
experience.
Mm-hmm.
(25:06):
So I enjoy that part ofcreativity more too.
I like being surprised.
I like not knowing necessarilywhat's going to happen.
I'm excited by...
the feeling that something newthat never existed could happen
through an interaction withanother artist or with myself.
So I think it goes with my ownpredilections, that process.
(25:29):
But yeah, I do find that eversince I've been making and doing
shows the last 30 years or so,pressure will build and then
it'll release and then it startsto build again, which is very
much the way waves work.
So it seems like many things Ithink the natural process has
(25:51):
that quality
SPEAKER_01 (25:52):
of
SPEAKER_00 (25:53):
pressure and release or tension and release.
Wilford described to me likewith improvisation he would say
something like you know youdon't need to get too cerebral
or too heady.
It's basically just theparasympathetic nervous system
and the sympathetic nervoussystem.
And you play for a while if youfeel like you've been in the
realm of the parasympathetic andyou can feel that there's a
(26:16):
relaxing kind of sensation.
That might be timecompositionally or
improvisationally to be lookingto transition to a sympathetic
kind of state, to find the otherend of that spectrum of that
waveform.
And then if you've been in aplace where there's a lot of
tension and you're ready tomove, you're you have the
sympathetic nervous systemengaged, that might be a time to
(26:36):
find a way back into aparasympathetic state.
This is in the course of like a20 minute to an hour
improvisation.
And I think it seems to me thatthat's one of the many ways that
we go through life, that there'speaks and there's troughs and in
between, there's like a way toget from one to the other.
And I think that's kind of whereI'm at with my stuff too.
(27:00):
These wires that are in front ofme, just because where my
computer is, the instrument thatI've been working with most
recently, the modularsynthesizer, it's kind of unique
quality and it uses waveforms asits basis for constructing
rhythm and constructing tone.
as far as the organizingprinciple.
It's not discrete boxes the waymaybe a sequencer in a drum
(27:24):
machine would be.
It's using waves and combiningwaves.
So I could kind of get that.
There's like a metaphor of it.
And then there's like a veryreal part of that, which you
combine two waves and they clashand you can make them go silent
if the trough and the peak areopposing.
So I think tension and release,parasympathetic nervous system
feeling and sympathetic nervoussystem feeling, those are my
(27:46):
guiding principles.
principles for the way that Iwork.
And that really comes fromMilford.
SPEAKER_02 (27:53):
Well, I was just going to speak about your film.
So in 2018, you directed thedocumentary film, Milford
Graves, Full Mantis.
Can you speak a little bit aboutthis film?
When you actually started theproduction, what inspired you?
Aside from the man himself?
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (28:10):
Well, um, I think it was 2002 when I saw that show at
UMass.
This was before I met Milford,but I was like a fan.
And because of that show,because of of how cataclysmic it
was to kind of, you know, firsthave like experienced Milford's
records and his recordings, thento see him live and realize this
(28:30):
is, you know, I just feltcompelled that if there was a
way to learn more, I wanted tofigure that out.
So I found out he taught atBennington, which wasn't too far
from here.
And I went there and waited forhim to show up there.
I didn't enroll as a student oranything like that.
And he basically saw me at hisdoor of his office and told me,
(28:51):
you know, come on in and thenasked me to sit at the drum set
and he played piano and weimprovised for quite a while.
That was our first meeting.
Yeah, and I was so nervousbecause I had projected all
these different ideas about whatthis great artist, you know,
what it would be like toencounter him as a teacher and
it was just like he dispelledall that stuff with a...
(29:11):
this pure dialogue throughmusic.
And I also remember feelinglike, wow, he makes it really
easy to play with him becausehis music was so strong and so
vital.
I played with him several othertimes, many times in his studio,
but several other times live andhad kind of a similar
progression of feeling supernervous while I'm about to play
(29:34):
on stage with his master andthen the music would start.
And then I would remember atthat moment again, oh yeah, this
is making music with Milford.
This feels as natural as it canbe and doesn't feel challenging
or hard at what he presents.
It was like, yeah, with the wavemetaphor, you can just get on it
and ride it.
So I went to Milford looking fora teacher and fortunately I
(29:55):
found a teacher.
He also hired me as hisassistant.
So we had a bit of collegialkind of dynamic from the early
times and And Benningtoneventually had to figure out
what to do with me and put me inthe track for an MFA because I
was just there, you know, livingthere, getting in where I fit
in.
I was like managing audio visualstuff.
(30:16):
I would do whatever work Ineeded to do around campus
basically to stay there and keeplearning from Milford.
And I would also go to Milford'shouse in South Jamaica, Queens,
where he lived since he wasborn.
He was living in what was oncehis grandmother's house in South
Jamaica, where he was teachingand gardening and just a huge
community fixture in Queens.
(30:37):
So I was working with himbasically as his assistant, as
his student, and eventually ashis friend.
And I didn't set out to make amovie, you know, with the story
of this movie is very emergentalso.
It came from at first, I wouldtake these one-on-one lessons
with him after I would be hisassistant for all the
(30:57):
undergraduate classes.
And they would often be reallylate at night, like midnight,
post midnight.
Wow.
Yeah, he had an amazing energy,really amazing energy.
He would come up to Benningtonand essentially teach for 12
hours and then drive back toQueens late into the night.
So I asked him if I could recordour conversations because this
(31:20):
was a different type of teachingthan I had ever experienced.
Sometimes we would talk.
Sometimes we would do Yara, hismartial art.
Sometimes we would play.
Sometimes he would show mesomething that he was working on
on the computer with his labview and his heartbeat
soundifications.
And I was kind of like, I knewit was everything was so
powerful, but it was so muchinformation for me as like, you
(31:40):
know, mid-20s.
I felt like I needed to recordit to be able to reflect and
analyze it.
So I asked him if I could dothat.
So some of the earliest materialin Full Mantis, this film that
you mentioned, come from thosetapes and those DAT tapes and
stuff that just were merecording our lessons and
recording our conversations.
And then over the years, hewould ask me to help with
(32:02):
different things since I hadaccess to the audiovisual
materials.
At Bennington, he had a lectureearly on at Harvard about
gardening, and he asked me tomake a short presentation that
had to do with his garden.
He asked me to slow downgardening footage, to do an
improvisational show at Roulettewith him and William Parker.
(32:22):
He had me digitize the stillsfor the Yara martial art history
that he had in his house.
And so I guess what I'm sayingis a lot of the parts of the
film, they have to do withthings I was already working on
with him as a student.
And then at a certain point, wekind of decided together we were
going to try to make a film,like a larger film.
(32:44):
And that also had to do with umjust having other people come
through the house and try tomake films that didn't quite
they just didn't sit well withwith him so we were kind of like
let's try to do it ourselves buti had never made a feature film
i had done video you know hadmade video art and kind of like
more gallery type context butthe idea of making like a
full-length documentary was umseemed something people do far
(33:08):
far away from where i was otherpeople became involved neil
young who was local at the timehe was the audio visual person
at hampshire marcus de mayo whowas the audio visual person at
amherst so there was like it wasall diy no budget but we had
access to some of theseequipment cages at the at the
colleges especially during thesummer when students weren't
around basically it was a15-year process with no deadline
(33:33):
where the only pressure wascreative pressure but more so it
was like the pressure of havingsaid we're gonna make the film
and then it was either are yougonna make the film or are you
gonna have a whole bunch of harddrives in your closet that you
have to return to over and overagain trying to figure out how
to make the film so At a certainpoint, it just picked up and
(33:54):
picked up.
And me and Neil, Neil's adrummer also.
And Neil was a huge part of thecreative community here.
He did many differentpresentation series and was part
of a lot of bands.
At a certain point, we just saidwe were going to edit it.
And we set two computers up,almost like two drummers.
And we were just making cuts andtrying to impress each other and
(34:15):
putting this thing together,seeing how long it would be.
And yeah.
found a form in this emergentidea.
It was very present insideFullmanthus also in the sense
that I had seen lots of filmsthat I liked about musicians.
And I think many, many parts ofthe process, I tried to make
something that fit into thosemolds and basically got thrown
(34:39):
to the concrete every time.
And just, it just never workedproperly until the form that
needed to happen for this filmkind of emerged.
And that was a process ofwatching and listening and
noticing that, you know, itwasn't right.
And many times feeling like,wow, I'm not going going to
figure this out, you know, andhaving someone's legacy and
(35:00):
someone's life, essentially atrust to be part of that was
daunting at times.
Ultimately, it was really a filmthat had to do with me
reflecting back to my greatteacher, the lessons that were
most resonant for me and alittle bit in there of wanting
to show him that I was listeningto him all the time and that
(35:21):
basically the way he taught meabout art making wasn't just the
subject of the film, but it wasalso like the way the film had
to be made, ultimately.
What I often say is you couldlook at Milford Graves'
Fullmanthus' film about thisamazing drummer's creative
process and find instances inthe film where he discusses
things like polyrhythm.
(35:41):
And you could also look at theformal quality of the film and
you could find polyrhythm in theway the film is made.
And that goes for almost all thesubjects, the parasympathetic
and sympathetic thing, which hearticulates really clearly in
the film about teaching yourselfto cry and where where sound
lives in the face, you could gothrough the film and look for
that dialogue between theparasympathetic and the
(36:04):
sympathetic sensation in thefilm and the formal part of the
film.
So the film ultimately became alesson The lessons he gave me
were the lessons that Iultimately had to turn to to
figure the film out.
So it was like this greatexperience where I got to kind
of...
And then the beautiful part ofthat film was it took 15 years,
meaning from the first time Irecorded till the end, but that
(36:26):
wasn't 15 years of saying ormaking a film.
It was like the last couple ofyears, but...
I got to show him the film.
And when I showed him the film,I was looking for basically
permission to enter it intofestivals.
And he just at the end looked atme and said, well, that's me on
the screen and that's what I do.
And we did enter and we did havethis wonderful journey with the
film where he got to be in thetheater and see the film with
(36:50):
other people and have lots oftalk back.
So I got to have thisexperience.
this amazing experience with himbefore he passed.
He passed in February of 2021,where for a couple of years, I
got to go on this journey withthe film and with my great
teacher and share these lessonswith so many people around the
world and continue to learn inthat process, this new dynamic
(37:13):
of like a filmmaker and asubject, which was a new dynamic
for us.
SPEAKER_01 (37:17):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (37:18):
So yeah, long-term process and basically like a
labor of love always that justgained momentum over time.
I
SPEAKER_02 (37:25):
mean, what an incredible tribute to your
mentor who was so equallygenerous based on your
experience of just first meetinghim and having him allow you to
come into his office and thenjust start improvising.
How magical and so present thatmoment must have been for you
with him.
And how amazing that he was ableto experience the whole
(37:47):
evolution of that film.
It really was.
And I mean, if
SPEAKER_00 (37:55):
you see the film, that generosity is present
towards the audience.
Like he really talks about theway he thinks about living and
drumming and gardening and lifein his characteristic way.
you know, just extremelygenerous and open hearted way.
And I think that the film reallytries to put the viewer in that
(38:20):
place to receive that fullgenerosity.
SPEAKER_02 (38:23):
And what a teaching lesson for you.
Now you've now have a film underyour belt, in addition to all
the other things you'veaccumulated in your experience
and learning.
What would you say to to anaspiring composer or filmmaker
about working in this creativestate?
or ways to tap in differently?
SPEAKER_00 (38:44):
I would just say keep making things.
Keep making things.
And yeah, keep making things.
And I think I'd just leave it atthat.
Just keep making things all thetime.
And I guess there's something inthere of the reason to make
things isn't because peoplenecessarily are going to care
about them.
At some point, you have to finda different reason.
(39:05):
Exactly.
So if you're not there yet...
There is one for you, but thatif you're making things because
you want to impress anyone orthat's not going to be where the
the thing comes from that keepsyou making things over a long
period
SPEAKER_02 (39:23):
of time.
What I also loved and heardthroughout this whole
conversation is the amount ofplay that you incorporate into
the work.
I mean, there's a certainelement of play and openness
that helps make you receptivewhen you're not pressuring
yourself to produce or to create
SPEAKER_00 (39:41):
an audience.
Yeah, I think that's huge.
Totally.
Playfulness is It's the best wayto start anything, playfulness
and humor.
I think especially when you goto school for making things, for
going to school for art or goingto school for music or doing
something creative, the wayschool is set up is...
(40:03):
People get really good at likeasking questions and not that
there's anything wrong withthat, like kind of being in
touch with your questioningself, your intelligence, your
analytical self.
It's not to knock that, but thatI think for me, at least
learning to get into a differentkind of stance with the material
where you're starting torecognize that it has questions
(40:26):
of you and you can kind of bethere to answer.
do what it says rather thantrying to figure out exactly
what it is.
I've found a more richer processin that kind of position with
the material rather than theanalytical part.
And not to say that theanalytical part is not valuable.
I think that what I find is whenit gets too much in the way or
(40:49):
it's happening at the same timeas the other part that you can
be like on the highway with yourfoot on the gas and your foot on
the brake and your foot on thegas and your foot on the brake
where sometimes you need to justopen up and let it come and see
what's there when you're nottrying to ask it what it is and
(41:09):
what it wants to be and whenit's kind of starting to tell
you what it is.
SPEAKER_02 (41:14):
Yeah, roll down the window and look at the view
while you're driving.
SPEAKER_00 (41:17):
Yeah, yeah, take a deep breath, no doubt.
SPEAKER_02 (41:19):
Take a deep breath.
What's next for you, Jake?
Is there anything exciting youhave on the horizon that you're
particularly excited about?
SPEAKER_00 (41:26):
I've been kind of excited about taking this
opportunity way of making sound,modular synthesis, which I've
done a couple tours with soloingand moving into kind of more
collaborative improvisation withother musicians.
This summer, there's a new artinstitute in London that focuses
(41:47):
on ecology and biodiversity andart, and they're going to
feature some of the short filmsI made on Milford.
I made a bunch of shorts, somewith my partner, Sarah, during
Milford's last couple of yearson focuses on his last summer in
his garden.
They're going to show that andI'm going to make something new
(42:07):
for this more gallery type offilms on loop situation this
summer.
And I've really been enjoyingthese last couple of summers
being a musician in residence atBates Dance Festival, where I
get to meet a lot of dancersworking in the field, one of
whom I worked with last year,Kendra Porter.
We're working on a new eveninglength thing.
(42:29):
And this summer, I'll be workingwith Shayla V, who was a dancer
at Smith a while back and nowpart of Bill T.
Jones' company.
Also, I get to meet a lot ofmusicians who work with dancers,
which is really fun.
And we do a musician's concert.
And yeah, working on a newrecord with another Milford
student, Ben Hall, who was atBennington when I was there,
(42:49):
making new stuff.
And yeah, just getting deeperinto this process with this new
instrument that I've beenworking on.
SPEAKER_02 (42:55):
amazing it sounds like you're definitely in the
flow of this wave whatever'shappening just so many
opportunities and I just loveall the different modalities
that you work in to really justexpress this part of you in so
many ways it's been such afascinating conversation today I
really enjoyed learning aboutyour creative process and how
(43:20):
you're really intuitively guidedin your work there's such an
incredible pull and draw thatyou just trust and you just go
with it.
And it's so beautiful whathappens when you do that.
So thank you so much again forjoining me today.
And I look forward to seeingmore of your work out in the
world.
SPEAKER_00 (43:37):
Thanks so much, Donabell.
SPEAKER_02 (43:40):
Thanks so much for tuning in today.
I'm so glad you spent this timewith me.
If something in this episoderesonated, feel free to share it
or pass it along to someone whomight need that little spark.
Until next time, keep humming.
Hi friends, welcome to another episode of To Hum is
Human, the podcast where weexplore the transformative power
of tuning into our intuition toexpress our passionate purpose.
I'm your host, Donna Bell, andtoday we will delve into the
sound of purpose, discoveringyour true path through your
(00:26):
inner hum.
Because when you trust yourinner wisdom, you align with
your soul's path.
And I am so excited about myguest today.
We are joined by composer andfilmmaker Jake McGinsky.
He's a New Music USA Awardwinner and Massachusetts
Cultural Council Fellow in bothmusic and film.
(00:46):
He's collaborated and performedwith an extraordinary range of
musicians, including MilfordGraves, Alvin Lucier, Kim
Gordon, Greg Kelly, Bob Rainey,Thurston Moore, William Parker,
and Bill Nace, among manyothers.
His work has been presentedwidely and internationally
including at the Institute ofContemporary Art in London, the
(01:08):
South by Southwest FilmFestival, the Click Festival in
Copenhagen, the Duelon Museum ofModern Art in Shanghai, the
Lincoln Center, the GuggenheimVision Festival, Museum of Arts
and Design, the MIT Center forArt, Science and Technology, and
the Mead Museum of Art here inAmherst, Massachusetts, among
(01:29):
many other national andinternational venues.
Jake has been reviewedextensively in leading
contemporary music, art, andculture publications worldwide.
He frequently collaborates withchoreographers.
And in 2018, he directed andproduced the award-winning
feature film Milford Graves'Full Mantis, which the New York
(01:50):
Times called the film a stunningdocumentary.
Jake is currently a dancemusician at Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts, andhas had previous appointments at
Bennington College, AmherstCollege, Matt Holia College, and
the American Dance Festival.
Welcome, Jake.
SPEAKER_00 (02:08):
Thanks, Donabelle.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02 (02:10):
Oh, my gosh.
It's kind of a thrill for me tobe talking with you, especially
about this subject today.
Now, you are quite the fixturein the sonic realm, both locally
and beyond.
And I've experienced several ofyour live shows, which were
really mind-blowing.
Jake, you've said, I resonatewith the idea that music is
(02:31):
coming from somewhere else ormaybe growing up.
through us.
When did you first come to therealization?
Can you tell us about aparticular experience that
clearly led you to play andexperiment with sound?
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
That's a good question.
I'm not quite sure I canpinpoint a particular time, a
particular moment, but I thinkthere's a journey that I am on,
and I think many artists havethis experience.
My father's a musician.
There was music in my house.
I wouldn't say I was a expectedto be a musician, but there was
(03:07):
a lot of access and there was alot of musicians in my family.
So I gravitated towards that.
And when you first gravitatetowards learning music, the
technical side, at least from myown perception, it's very
amplified, meaning to learn toplay an instrument is to learn
to practice and to learn to getyour small muscles to start
(03:30):
doing things that they don'tnormally do.
And then trying to kind of getthere, I I think can often lead
a young person to think thatthat's what it is, that to play
an instrument, to have otherpeople respect you, you know,
celebrate your aptitude, thatthat's kind of like what you're
going for.
And I think that that taken toofar can kind of lead you away
(03:54):
from that other thing that'scalling you what you are going
to make, you know, what'swanting to come through you.
You can kind of avoid that byfocusing on the technical Yeah.
(04:23):
and it was competitive jazzband.
So I think that's what I'm goingaround.
There was a competitiveness thatwas inherent in my first
experiences with music that Ihad to learn to thaw out from to
even get to the point where Icould even be listening to
(04:44):
something that was trying tocome through me or come out that
had never existed in the worldbefore or that seemed like it
was connected to my own personalinterests and journey.
So, you know, I think luckilymoving up here to Western Mass,
Northampton area after highschool, I think the creative
(05:06):
ecosystem at the time, which hada lot of improvisation, a lot of
experimental music, that waskind of the norm, you know, so
everyone that I met was meetingmusically in this way where
anything could happen, you know,that I wasn't meeting people who
were saying, here's my song, Iwant you to play this.
It was more like, let's see whathappens.
(05:28):
And being in the area, beingyoung and being surrounded by
that.
And then also the programmingthat was going on at the time
was like, Michael Eilers wasprogramming at the Unitarian
Church in Amherst, lots ofreally great improvisational
jazz concerts, bringing peoplehere from New York City who
(05:52):
were, part of the scene at theVision Festival.
And just kind of absorbing allthat, it started to feel like
there was something else withmusic that wasn't about becoming
better and better at aninstrument that had to do with
something else.
So I think it was a slow processof momentum.
SPEAKER_01 (06:14):
And
SPEAKER_00 (06:15):
along the way, just meeting and learning from people
that had a different vision ofmusic than I had previously
experienced.
So a really big one in my lifeis Milford Graves, who you
mentioned.
He was my teacher for almost 20years.
And when I first met him, Ithink it was before I met him,
(06:37):
but it was kind of through thisfertile environment in the early
2000s, late 90s, early 2000s inWestern Mass.
There was a series at the timethat glenn siegel did called the
magic triangle and it was umassfine arts center shows and there
was this one season that had allsolos and duos and and he
brought milford graves up to thefine arts center to play a solo
(07:00):
and i went with my drum teacherat the time another big huge
part of my life and a huge partof western mass percussion
culture joe platts who no longerlives in the community but made
drums and taught here for manymany years in hadley and a bunch
of other drummers and friendswent to this show and you know
the lights turned down you're inthe fine arts center it's like a
(07:21):
proscenium theater it's meant tokind of present music in a
pretty typical way where theaudience kind of stays quiet and
perceives the music and at theend usually get a nice clap but
this was like a completelydifferent experience it was
milford came down in the crowdhe was picking people up out of
the crowd bringing them on stagecarrying them playing drums
(07:42):
playing sustained tones And whenthe lights came up, I remember
my friends and I, we weren'ttalking about how good the music
were.
We were talking about, is yourheart beating faster?
You look really flushed.
There was all this physical
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
stuff
SPEAKER_00 (07:57):
going on.
And I think it presented avision of music that was more...
about an energy exchange andless about presenting a
technical skill or presentingvirtuosity or and another
element of that concert and manyother concerts that featured the
great um iconic masters of freejazz the sense in the audience
(08:22):
was that you were really part ofwhat was happening also that
like the music that washappening was happening at that
moment And it had never happenedbefore.
It represented a collection ofenergies that were present in
the room at that time.
So you felt very kind of, mysense was you felt very alive,
both as a performer in thatsituation, but also as an
(08:44):
audience member.
SPEAKER_02 (08:45):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:46):
And I
SPEAKER_02 (08:47):
imagine it was like a very embodied experience.
And I'm wondering, it soundslike the instruments you play
mostly, were they percussiveinstruments in the beginning?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:57):
At that time, yeah.
I started early on the cello.
That was probably the firstinstrument that I was practicing
seriously as a kid.
And then my father's a classicalbassist.
SPEAKER_02 (09:11):
He
SPEAKER_00 (09:11):
plays for the Springfield Symphony.
He's a really serious practicertoo.
I grew up with this sound of thebass being practiced, classical
bass being practiced for hoursper day and started practicing
cello that way too.
And then moved to trumpet inmiddle school.
And I think I always was tappingout rhythms.
I was always curious aboutrhythm things.
(09:33):
I don't know when it was, butyou know, my dad's also a
multi-instrumentalist and drumsprobably was the instrument he
seemed least comfortable with soI think that helped me find a
little pocket of the instrumentthat my dad wasn't necessarily a
stratosphere away uh than me andum Back then too, I think I do
(09:56):
have this fortunate history ofjust meeting really great
teachers along the way.
The percussionist for theSpringfield Symphony at the
time, which was the first personmy dad got me lessons with, he
had a different way of teachingthan the cello teachers that I
had had.
Even then, the way that myfather presented a life in
(10:16):
music, which did have a linearprogression through books and
through a technical mastery toget to a place where you could
possibly hope that someday youcould compose something new.
That's how it felt to me, atleast.
But Michael Kars, who was thepercussionist in Springfield
Symphony, he lived close by inthe Forest Park neighborhood in
Springfield in an apartment justfilled with percussion
(10:37):
instruments, you know, singleguy smoking cigarettes.
And his thing was just likeabout he was so much more
excited when I wrote somethingthat was I cared about than when
I was able to do an exercise.
And I think that stuck with me alittle bit.
And I think there was also justthe fact of being in drums
(11:02):
inside a Western classicallandscape.
You're kind of left alone morethan other instruments,
especially in this competitiveband situation that I'm talking
about where the band director isconcerned about everyone being
in tune.
you know, drilling things.
And as long as the drummersounds okay, they often don't
even check if you're playingwhat's written unless it's like
(11:23):
a percussion centric part,especially in competitive jazz
in high school, you canbasically choose your own
symbols, make up your own part.
So there's this kind of slowawakening of like compositional
or making something sensibilitythat I think was creeping in
there just by being fortunateenough to meet grownups at the
time who celebrated that, evenif they weren't in my own family
(11:46):
or in my own circle, I didalways kind of hold that.
And I think like, you know, youmentioned the physical, and I
think drums and bass are two ofthose places where that part of
music can be most pronounced,that kind of like place where
music or sound and touch meet.
Growing up with the bass, thislow frequency, the tailpin of
(12:10):
the bass being in the ground,vibrating the ground, that's
probably where I was fallingasleep, taking naps as a little
kid while my dad would practice.
This kind of very physical senseof sound comes in those bass
frequencies where you can kindof feel the tension on your
skin, not only through yourears.
And drums just has this amazingway to project power and to
(12:34):
project volume It doesn't getmore physical than just picking
up something and strikingsomething.
I see my toddlers do it all thetime.
UNKNOWN (12:43):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (12:43):
So that kind of sense that sound is a physical
experience was also somethingthat I can trace back to those
early times, early experienceswith music.
SPEAKER_02 (12:54):
Well, it's such a rich and diverse exposure to
sound and instruments in so manydifferent ways.
So I could see how that wouldreally influence you.
And I'm curious about thecomposing aspect because when
you were talking or working withone of your teachers and they
were really interested aboutyour composing, When you're
composing sound for a piece, howdo you distinguish between what
(13:19):
your mind wants to create andwhat your intuition or spiritual
sense is guiding you to create?
Are there moments where the twofeel at odds and how do you
navigate that tension?
SPEAKER_00 (13:43):
was coming out and just kind of examining what that
is.
And I think, you know, more andmore over the years, I kind of
turned to just showing up in thestudio and just making things
and kind of having a devotedamount of time that I do that
every day.
And now that I have smalltoddlers again, That time is
(14:04):
very precious because I don'twake up and think, maybe I'll do
this now, maybe I'll do itlater.
It's like I have a couple hoursat the end of the night after
kids go to sleep.
I think, you know, the timeswhere I've been able to do
something that I do feel isconnected in that way, they
often come from long periods ofjust studio practice where lots
(14:26):
of things are being made.
Sometimes the process justhappens and other times it
doesn't.
And I don't know that Inecessarily feel like I have
that much control over how thatis, but I can kind of show up
over and over again.
I was thinking about this today,maybe it was in the last couple
of days, There was a time when Iwas at Bennington where I worked
with a choreographer named SusanSwarbody who did this
(14:49):
improvisational practice calledemergent improvisation.
And she was really collaboratinga lot with scientists and
especially evolutionarybiologists and neuroscientists,
people that worked with systems,emergent systems, like very
complex emergent systems likethe brain or like an ecosystem.
And we would tour and meet withscientists essentially and kind
(15:11):
of show what we did and theywould talk about what they did
and And we would come up withways to kind of play together,
come up with scores or formsthat were based on the work they
were doing.
And there was a neuroscientistnamed Gerald Edelman, I believe.
And I think he got his NobelPrize around the immune system.
What he discovered was that thecells, the attacking cells, the
(15:36):
T cells, they were...
they were kind of pre, they werealready in a myriad different
kinds of shapes.
And what would happen when therewas a pathogen was like the
right, but there was like someexperimentation, but the right
shape that was like the closestfit would come and neutralize.
And then that shape would getpropagated.
But it wasn't that the cellswould kind of improvise in the
(15:59):
moment.
It was that there was such avast amount of creativity around
all the shapes that were presentin the body that the way
inoculation worked or the wayimmunization would work is that
that shape then gets propagatedso it made me think of kind of
like that what I'm doing I'mmaking all these different
things I don't really know whatthey're for I'm trying to stay
(16:22):
present be playful and then Iget a commission and someone
talks to me oh this piece I'mthinking this and this and this
and I kind of have a memory ofsome place I was with my
materials that seems like itcould be the right way but
without that practice it'salmost very hard to get to those
kind of meaningful things thatreally mean something to me.
(16:44):
I can really, as far as like acomposition commission.
SPEAKER_02 (16:47):
Well, being an artist, I think showing up is
really...
Half the battle.
You have to have a studiopractice in order to be
receptive to anything that'spossible.
And I think you're right whenyou're sort of starting out from
nothing, you're just making itharder for yourself, for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (17:03):
Yeah.
And I think those things thatare meaningful, they have a way
of just creeping in.
The sublime has a way ofcreeping into the mundane.
I think the process can be sodynamic that sometimes for me,
it's just like, let me focus onthis one thing that I need to do
with this two hour period.
Let me record that sound ontothis tape.
(17:24):
And then rather than thinkingabout a more broad idea, just
focusing on what's somethingdoable in the moment.
And then I think the collectionof those things kind of invites
something in.
And then I do think there'sanother aspect.
We all go through our day andthere's little things that we
see and mundane things that wehave to keep in our head that
(17:45):
have to do with just survivingand lots of other parts of life.
And then there's often somestuff that's deeper, that you
pay attention to once in awhile.
Then there's stuff that'sreally, for me at least, I only
can sense it a little bit.
I kind of sense it from in thecorner.
And I think sometimes makingthings, at least making new
(18:06):
things, is kind of a process offinding that space and moving
it, moving it, moving it, movingit over and over until I can see
it more clearly.
Because it's like a strong,strong feeling, but I don't
really know what it is.
That's kind of what's alsoexciting about it, that it seems
to be asking for it.
And like I said, sometimes thatthing can just come into the
(18:31):
forefront and other times itjust feels like chasing and
chasing.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (18:37):
Well, it seems like there is this flow and it could
trickle or it could be quiteimmediate.
And I'm curious, what would youcall that sensing?
Would you call that intuition?
SPEAKER_00 (18:49):
Yeah, I mean, I think intuition makes sense.
I think to me, it may be...
I think I may think of it morejust like in a sense of
listening, you know, how youcould be talking to someone at a
party and you sense there'ssomething really important
happening here, but you just,you can't hear it.
Even though you do hear it, thesounds are hitting your eardrum
(19:11):
and moving, but you're not ableto take that lens of perception
and move it to this other soundor conversation.
It's kind of like that, thatsense of deep listening.
The composer Pauline Oliveroshad a practice called deep
listening.
All right.
And it really had to do withinviting more and more of the
soundscape into that perceptualframework.
(19:32):
So you start and you paint atent, you sit down by the
traffic and you hear the trafficand you say, I'm here to hear
the traffic.
And that means, you know, maybeif an airplane comes, it's like
getting in your way and that'skind of noise and that traffic
is the signal.
And Pauline's thing was to kindof expand and expand that sphere
of awareness so that you're kindof including everything that's
(19:53):
in the soundscape in yourlistening.
and I think it can be a bit ofthat like just expanding your
sphere of awareness places thatyou don't normally bring
attention to.
SPEAKER_02 (20:07):
Absolutely, because it's almost like a state of
mindfulness when you're reallywanting to become present in
whatever situation you're in andnot having any idea of
projecting anything, justreceiving something.
How do you see the relationshipbetween sound, movement, and
what you call the spirit ofspace
SPEAKER_00 (20:29):
when you create?
This relationship between soundand movement and sound and space
That's where a lot of myinterests are.
And I think that soundessentially is movement.
So it starts as movement.
It's waves propagating in space.
And what we perceive as soundhas to do with this relationship
(20:49):
between something in motion andthe way that it reflects off
space and the way it articulatesspace.
And I think it does seem to me,at least when I think about my
experience of the world, thisfeeling of way Mm-hmm.
(21:19):
Each sound is kind ofarticulating a wave shape inside
whatever space you're listeningto it, or just even in the space
of your own listening, it'sarticulating relationships
between waves and patterns.
And that's what we think of asas sound.
So when you're using that asyour material, making art,
(21:40):
you're kind of shifting into aplayful space with that
experience of just being, beingin space, walking into a room
and having the room feeldifferent.
There's the sonic level, thesonic part of that is very
strong and kind of, I'd say likemaybe easier way to articulate
some of this stuff that maybe ifyou were more interested in
(22:01):
physics, you would have to gointo like the realm of quantum
physics or kind of have a moredeep mathematical i mean i think
one of the greek definitions ofmusic was was it's like a way to
play with mathematics and not tosay i totally agree with that
but i think that when you domusic you your material is
essentially movement and spaceso i work with dancers and and
(22:26):
their material is the body inspace we find that we share a
lot of sensibilities and andlanguage around making because
we we make in time we make inspace and we're both dealing
with movement so that's been areally uh valuable part of my
career that i've had have so somuch of my musical life is my
(22:49):
professional musical life rightnow at smith is just spent in
dialogue with dancers So weoften find we have ways of
talking about what we do thatwhen you take them out of like
the musical field, like let'ssay like an idea like
counterpoint or counterpointalmotion and you apply that to two
bodies in motion, there's just alot of resonance there.
SPEAKER_02 (23:11):
It's so dynamic.
and so much a collaborationbecause it's almost like you
can't not work with the danceras you're working with the
music.
I mean, there's such arelationship and a cohesion
together as you're going.
When you are creating a pieceand you've spoken about this
sort of urge or this pressurebuilding to start a project,
(23:34):
which I find curious, can yougive us some insight into what
that looks like?
SPEAKER_00 (23:39):
That's just the way I experience it.
I think...
Um, I think that does have to dowith this feeling of something
calling you, something callingyour attention, something asking
you to listen to it.
I'm going to be 50 soon and it'slike I've been working in art
for a while and I think there'sas many ways to make new things
(24:00):
as there are artists.
I've met people who feel likeit's more of a revelatory
process, like they receivesomething and it's kind of fully
formed.
It may come in a dream and theirprocess is getting this thing
that they're thinking about outwhere I don't have that at all.
I don't have a tune in my heador anything like that.
(24:20):
It's much more, it's kind oflike the blurry thing is asking,
it's asking to be clarifiedthrough the process of being in
relationship to the materialsthat I work with, if that makes
sense, rather than to beexecuted and realized.
So I feel a little bit ofpressure that builds that kind
of, I sense it, it gets releasedinside a musical or a sonic
(24:44):
experience.
Mm-hmm.
(25:06):
So I enjoy that part ofcreativity more too.
I like being surprised.
I like not knowing necessarilywhat's going to happen.
I'm excited by...
the feeling that something newthat never existed could happen
through an interaction withanother artist or with myself.
So I think it goes with my ownpredilections, that process.
(25:29):
But yeah, I do find that eversince I've been making and doing
shows the last 30 years or so,pressure will build and then
it'll release and then it startsto build again, which is very
much the way waves work.
So it seems like many things Ithink the natural process has
(25:51):
that quality
SPEAKER_01 (25:52):
of
SPEAKER_00 (25:53):
pressure and release or tension and release.
Wilford described to me likewith improvisation he would say
something like you know youdon't need to get too cerebral
or too heady.
It's basically just theparasympathetic nervous system
and the sympathetic nervoussystem.
And you play for a while if youfeel like you've been in the
realm of the parasympathetic andyou can feel that there's a
(26:16):
relaxing kind of sensation.
That might be timecompositionally or
improvisationally to be lookingto transition to a sympathetic
kind of state, to find the otherend of that spectrum of that
waveform.
And then if you've been in aplace where there's a lot of
tension and you're ready tomove, you're you have the
sympathetic nervous systemengaged, that might be a time to
(26:36):
find a way back into aparasympathetic state.
This is in the course of like a20 minute to an hour
improvisation.
And I think it seems to me thatthat's one of the many ways that
we go through life, that there'speaks and there's troughs and in
between, there's like a way toget from one to the other.
And I think that's kind of whereI'm at with my stuff too.
(27:00):
These wires that are in front ofme, just because where my
computer is, the instrument thatI've been working with most
recently, the modularsynthesizer, it's kind of unique
quality and it uses waveforms asits basis for constructing
rhythm and constructing tone.
as far as the organizingprinciple.
It's not discrete boxes the waymaybe a sequencer in a drum
(27:24):
machine would be.
It's using waves and combiningwaves.
So I could kind of get that.
There's like a metaphor of it.
And then there's like a veryreal part of that, which you
combine two waves and they clashand you can make them go silent
if the trough and the peak areopposing.
So I think tension and release,parasympathetic nervous system
feeling and sympathetic nervoussystem feeling, those are my
(27:46):
guiding principles.
principles for the way that Iwork.
And that really comes fromMilford.
SPEAKER_02 (27:53):
Well, I was just going to speak about your film.
So in 2018, you directed thedocumentary film, Milford
Graves, Full Mantis.
Can you speak a little bit aboutthis film?
When you actually started theproduction, what inspired you?
Aside from the man himself?
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (28:10):
Well, um, I think it was 2002 when I saw that show at
UMass.
This was before I met Milford,but I was like a fan.
And because of that show,because of of how cataclysmic it
was to kind of, you know, firsthave like experienced Milford's
records and his recordings, thento see him live and realize this
(28:30):
is, you know, I just feltcompelled that if there was a
way to learn more, I wanted tofigure that out.
So I found out he taught atBennington, which wasn't too far
from here.
And I went there and waited forhim to show up there.
I didn't enroll as a student oranything like that.
And he basically saw me at hisdoor of his office and told me,
(28:51):
you know, come on in and thenasked me to sit at the drum set
and he played piano and weimprovised for quite a while.
That was our first meeting.
Yeah, and I was so nervousbecause I had projected all
these different ideas about whatthis great artist, you know,
what it would be like toencounter him as a teacher and
it was just like he dispelledall that stuff with a...
(29:11):
this pure dialogue throughmusic.
And I also remember feelinglike, wow, he makes it really
easy to play with him becausehis music was so strong and so
vital.
I played with him several othertimes, many times in his studio,
but several other times live andhad kind of a similar
progression of feeling supernervous while I'm about to play
(29:34):
on stage with his master andthen the music would start.
And then I would remember atthat moment again, oh yeah, this
is making music with Milford.
This feels as natural as it canbe and doesn't feel challenging
or hard at what he presents.
It was like, yeah, with the wavemetaphor, you can just get on it
and ride it.
So I went to Milford looking fora teacher and fortunately I
(29:55):
found a teacher.
He also hired me as hisassistant.
So we had a bit of collegialkind of dynamic from the early
times and And Benningtoneventually had to figure out
what to do with me and put me inthe track for an MFA because I
was just there, you know, livingthere, getting in where I fit
in.
I was like managing audio visualstuff.
(30:16):
I would do whatever work Ineeded to do around campus
basically to stay there and keeplearning from Milford.
And I would also go to Milford'shouse in South Jamaica, Queens,
where he lived since he wasborn.
He was living in what was oncehis grandmother's house in South
Jamaica, where he was teachingand gardening and just a huge
community fixture in Queens.
(30:37):
So I was working with himbasically as his assistant, as
his student, and eventually ashis friend.
And I didn't set out to make amovie, you know, with the story
of this movie is very emergentalso.
It came from at first, I wouldtake these one-on-one lessons
with him after I would be hisassistant for all the
(30:57):
undergraduate classes.
And they would often be reallylate at night, like midnight,
post midnight.
Wow.
Yeah, he had an amazing energy,really amazing energy.
He would come up to Benningtonand essentially teach for 12
hours and then drive back toQueens late into the night.
So I asked him if I could recordour conversations because this
(31:20):
was a different type of teachingthan I had ever experienced.
Sometimes we would talk.
Sometimes we would do Yara, hismartial art.
Sometimes we would play.
Sometimes he would show mesomething that he was working on
on the computer with his labview and his heartbeat
soundifications.
And I was kind of like, I knewit was everything was so
powerful, but it was so muchinformation for me as like, you
(31:40):
know, mid-20s.
I felt like I needed to recordit to be able to reflect and
analyze it.
So I asked him if I could dothat.
So some of the earliest materialin Full Mantis, this film that
you mentioned, come from thosetapes and those DAT tapes and
stuff that just were merecording our lessons and
recording our conversations.
And then over the years, hewould ask me to help with
(32:02):
different things since I hadaccess to the audiovisual
materials.
At Bennington, he had a lectureearly on at Harvard about
gardening, and he asked me tomake a short presentation that
had to do with his garden.
He asked me to slow downgardening footage, to do an
improvisational show at Roulettewith him and William Parker.
(32:22):
He had me digitize the stillsfor the Yara martial art history
that he had in his house.
And so I guess what I'm sayingis a lot of the parts of the
film, they have to do withthings I was already working on
with him as a student.
And then at a certain point, wekind of decided together we were
going to try to make a film,like a larger film.
(32:44):
And that also had to do with umjust having other people come
through the house and try tomake films that didn't quite
they just didn't sit well withwith him so we were kind of like
let's try to do it ourselves buti had never made a feature film
i had done video you know hadmade video art and kind of like
more gallery type context butthe idea of making like a
full-length documentary was umseemed something people do far
(33:08):
far away from where i was otherpeople became involved neil
young who was local at the timehe was the audio visual person
at hampshire marcus de mayo whowas the audio visual person at
amherst so there was like it wasall diy no budget but we had
access to some of theseequipment cages at the at the
colleges especially during thesummer when students weren't
around basically it was a15-year process with no deadline
(33:33):
where the only pressure wascreative pressure but more so it
was like the pressure of havingsaid we're gonna make the film
and then it was either are yougonna make the film or are you
gonna have a whole bunch of harddrives in your closet that you
have to return to over and overagain trying to figure out how
to make the film so At a certainpoint, it just picked up and
(33:54):
picked up.
And me and Neil, Neil's adrummer also.
And Neil was a huge part of thecreative community here.
He did many differentpresentation series and was part
of a lot of bands.
At a certain point, we just saidwe were going to edit it.
And we set two computers up,almost like two drummers.
And we were just making cuts andtrying to impress each other and
(34:15):
putting this thing together,seeing how long it would be.
And yeah.
found a form in this emergentidea.
It was very present insideFullmanthus also in the sense
that I had seen lots of filmsthat I liked about musicians.
And I think many, many parts ofthe process, I tried to make
something that fit into thosemolds and basically got thrown
(34:39):
to the concrete every time.
And just, it just never workedproperly until the form that
needed to happen for this filmkind of emerged.
And that was a process ofwatching and listening and
noticing that, you know, itwasn't right.
And many times feeling like,wow, I'm not going going to
figure this out, you know, andhaving someone's legacy and
(35:00):
someone's life, essentially atrust to be part of that was
daunting at times.
Ultimately, it was really a filmthat had to do with me
reflecting back to my greatteacher, the lessons that were
most resonant for me and alittle bit in there of wanting
to show him that I was listeningto him all the time and that
(35:21):
basically the way he taught meabout art making wasn't just the
subject of the film, but it wasalso like the way the film had
to be made, ultimately.
What I often say is you couldlook at Milford Graves'
Fullmanthus' film about thisamazing drummer's creative
process and find instances inthe film where he discusses
things like polyrhythm.
(35:41):
And you could also look at theformal quality of the film and
you could find polyrhythm in theway the film is made.
And that goes for almost all thesubjects, the parasympathetic
and sympathetic thing, which hearticulates really clearly in
the film about teaching yourselfto cry and where where sound
lives in the face, you could gothrough the film and look for
that dialogue between theparasympathetic and the
(36:04):
sympathetic sensation in thefilm and the formal part of the
film.
So the film ultimately became alesson The lessons he gave me
were the lessons that Iultimately had to turn to to
figure the film out.
So it was like this greatexperience where I got to kind
of...
And then the beautiful part ofthat film was it took 15 years,
meaning from the first time Irecorded till the end, but that
(36:26):
wasn't 15 years of saying ormaking a film.
It was like the last couple ofyears, but...
I got to show him the film.
And when I showed him the film,I was looking for basically
permission to enter it intofestivals.
And he just at the end looked atme and said, well, that's me on
the screen and that's what I do.
And we did enter and we did havethis wonderful journey with the
film where he got to be in thetheater and see the film with
(36:50):
other people and have lots oftalk back.
So I got to have thisexperience.
this amazing experience with himbefore he passed.
He passed in February of 2021,where for a couple of years, I
got to go on this journey withthe film and with my great
teacher and share these lessonswith so many people around the
world and continue to learn inthat process, this new dynamic
(37:13):
of like a filmmaker and asubject, which was a new dynamic
for us.
SPEAKER_01 (37:17):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (37:18):
So yeah, long-term process and basically like a
labor of love always that justgained momentum over time.
I
SPEAKER_02 (37:25):
mean, what an incredible tribute to your
mentor who was so equallygenerous based on your
experience of just first meetinghim and having him allow you to
come into his office and thenjust start improvising.
How magical and so present thatmoment must have been for you
with him.
And how amazing that he was ableto experience the whole
(37:47):
evolution of that film.
It really was.
And I mean, if
SPEAKER_00 (37:55):
you see the film, that generosity is present
towards the audience.
Like he really talks about theway he thinks about living and
drumming and gardening and lifein his characteristic way.
you know, just extremelygenerous and open hearted way.
And I think that the film reallytries to put the viewer in that
(38:20):
place to receive that fullgenerosity.
SPEAKER_02 (38:23):
And what a teaching lesson for you.
Now you've now have a film underyour belt, in addition to all
the other things you'veaccumulated in your experience
and learning.
What would you say to to anaspiring composer or filmmaker
about working in this creativestate?
or ways to tap in differently?
SPEAKER_00 (38:44):
I would just say keep making things.
Keep making things.
And yeah, keep making things.
And I think I'd just leave it atthat.
Just keep making things all thetime.
And I guess there's something inthere of the reason to make
things isn't because peoplenecessarily are going to care
about them.
At some point, you have to finda different reason.
(39:05):
Exactly.
So if you're not there yet...
There is one for you, but thatif you're making things because
you want to impress anyone orthat's not going to be where the
the thing comes from that keepsyou making things over a long
period
SPEAKER_02 (39:23):
of time.
What I also loved and heardthroughout this whole
conversation is the amount ofplay that you incorporate into
the work.
I mean, there's a certainelement of play and openness
that helps make you receptivewhen you're not pressuring
yourself to produce or to create
SPEAKER_00 (39:41):
an audience.
Yeah, I think that's huge.
Totally.
Playfulness is It's the best wayto start anything, playfulness
and humor.
I think especially when you goto school for making things, for
going to school for art or goingto school for music or doing
something creative, the wayschool is set up is...
(40:03):
People get really good at likeasking questions and not that
there's anything wrong withthat, like kind of being in
touch with your questioningself, your intelligence, your
analytical self.
It's not to knock that, but thatI think for me, at least
learning to get into a differentkind of stance with the material
where you're starting torecognize that it has questions
(40:26):
of you and you can kind of bethere to answer.
do what it says rather thantrying to figure out exactly
what it is.
I've found a more richer processin that kind of position with
the material rather than theanalytical part.
And not to say that theanalytical part is not valuable.
I think that what I find is whenit gets too much in the way or
(40:49):
it's happening at the same timeas the other part that you can
be like on the highway with yourfoot on the gas and your foot on
the brake and your foot on thegas and your foot on the brake
where sometimes you need to justopen up and let it come and see
what's there when you're nottrying to ask it what it is and
(41:09):
what it wants to be and whenit's kind of starting to tell
you what it is.
SPEAKER_02 (41:14):
Yeah, roll down the window and look at the view
while you're driving.
SPEAKER_00 (41:17):
Yeah, yeah, take a deep breath, no doubt.
SPEAKER_02 (41:19):
Take a deep breath.
What's next for you, Jake?
Is there anything exciting youhave on the horizon that you're
particularly excited about?
SPEAKER_00 (41:26):
I've been kind of excited about taking this
opportunity way of making sound,modular synthesis, which I've
done a couple tours with soloingand moving into kind of more
collaborative improvisation withother musicians.
This summer, there's a new artinstitute in London that focuses
(41:47):
on ecology and biodiversity andart, and they're going to
feature some of the short filmsI made on Milford.
I made a bunch of shorts, somewith my partner, Sarah, during
Milford's last couple of yearson focuses on his last summer in
his garden.
They're going to show that andI'm going to make something new
(42:07):
for this more gallery type offilms on loop situation this
summer.
And I've really been enjoyingthese last couple of summers
being a musician in residence atBates Dance Festival, where I
get to meet a lot of dancersworking in the field, one of
whom I worked with last year,Kendra Porter.
We're working on a new eveninglength thing.
(42:29):
And this summer, I'll be workingwith Shayla V, who was a dancer
at Smith a while back and nowpart of Bill T.
Jones' company.
Also, I get to meet a lot ofmusicians who work with dancers,
which is really fun.
And we do a musician's concert.
And yeah, working on a newrecord with another Milford
student, Ben Hall, who was atBennington when I was there,
(42:49):
making new stuff.
And yeah, just getting deeperinto this process with this new
instrument that I've beenworking on.
SPEAKER_02 (42:55):
amazing it sounds like you're definitely in the
flow of this wave whatever'shappening just so many
opportunities and I just loveall the different modalities
that you work in to really justexpress this part of you in so
many ways it's been such afascinating conversation today I
really enjoyed learning aboutyour creative process and how
(43:20):
you're really intuitively guidedin your work there's such an
incredible pull and draw thatyou just trust and you just go
with it.
And it's so beautiful whathappens when you do that.
So thank you so much again forjoining me today.
And I look forward to seeingmore of your work out in the
world.
SPEAKER_00 (43:37):
Thanks so much, Donabell.
SPEAKER_02 (43:40):
Thanks so much for tuning in today.
I'm so glad you spent this timewith me.
If something in this episoderesonated, feel free to share it
or pass it along to someone whomight need that little spark.
Until next time, keep humming.
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