SHIFTING PATHWAYS
OSGF
Music by Kristin Wilkinson
Quiescence
I began writing this piece early in the pandemic, as we were experiencing the new sensation of quarantine. The melody is extremely slow and simple; the chords are static and the rhythm is repetitious. Like solitude and the pursuit of survival – forces that winnow our focus during a pandemic – this song speaks to beauty through simplicity.
The videos that accompany this MP3 were filmed at the background string recording session.
Prayer for the Gardens
I composed this piece as one of a trilogy of pieces featuring the brilliant Native American artist Bill Miller; it accompanies Savannah’s Pathway and The Crow in this set. After the song’s composition and recording were completed, we were struck by the way in which the song evoked the growth cycle of an emerging plant, and overlaid it with a time-lapsed video of a sunflower as a visual complement to the music.
Savannah’s Pathway
This piece, a meandering theme punctuated by traditional native melodic fragments, features Native American artist Bill Miller playing flute and myself playing violin and viola. I dedicate this composition to his daughter Savannah, who tragically passed away recently after a valiant struggle with illness. I hope this music brings peace to those who listen.
The Crow
The English dictionary lists a horde, hover, muster, parcel, and murder as collective nouns for crows. I began to think of crows collectively, as a mass, a force through numbers, as I worked with Bill Miller recording his vocal on this song. As we recorded this piece, a number of crows suddenly landed on the trees in my yard. They called out loudly, so I recorded them to open the song. Bill’s name in his native language is Fushy-yah-heaka, which translates as Birdsong. We’ve noted in the past that when we work in the studio, songbirds sit in the branches of the trees outside. The past month has been a time of great sadness for Bill, and the songbirds gave way to crows.
In the garden and in nature, we are captivated by the sensation of immersion when we are surrounded by numerous members of the same species of animal or plant cultivar. Whether standing in a field of daffodils or under a murmuration of starlings, we seek meaning and discover new emotions in the vastness of their presence.
Q&A With Kristin Wilkinson
Where have you been the past few months?
I live in Nashville, TN close to the center of town. During the quarantine, I have been at my house. I only leave to go on small errands. I have a quarter acre yard that has become a huge focus of each day. The quarantine has been incredibly limiting. But, it has also been a blessing to stop the activities of commerce and social interaction. I’m usually busy traveling, playing music in recording studios, on TV shows and for movies. My last work/travel, was on February 21st to Seattle, just as Covid-19 was outbreak-ing. I was working with an artist named Brandi Carlile on her symphonic concert. I had written all the accompaniment parts for the Seattle symphony to play. I got back from Seattle and Boom! We were in quarantine. The past 2 months have been quite a change, but creatively, it’s been great to stop, slow down, and observe the world around me and have a more internal life rather than an external life.
I love my garden – I’m an amateur gardener, and having the time to spend in my yard has been great. I wake up every day and go out into my garden. In the past few years I haven’t had much time to do this. Now I can observe every tiny detail of what has happened the previous night: The chipmunks that came and sabotaged my plants, or how the plants have grown overnight. When I was in Seattle for Brandi’s concert, we took a trip out to one of the islands and we went hiking in the rainforest on that island. There I saw plants identical to one’s that I have tried to grow in my yard -but that do very poorly in Tennessee. There they were in that rainforest, growing like a weed – they are everywhere – it was crazy! So now, when I see them in my garden, they remind me of what my life used to be, prior to Covid-19, they remind me to take strength and they remind me of the peace and permanence of nature and that everything has it’s own place and time.
Historically, what ideas, issues, and subject matter(s) have inspired your work?
I’m a composer, musical arranger, and viola player. I think the core of musical inspiration is relationships. First: human interactions: love, longing, heartbreak, reminiscence. This runs through all genres of music: rock songs, classical compositions, jazz, country music.
Second, is interacting with other musicians. That can be playing with musicians, collaborating on a songwriting session, following a conductor – or playing a great piece of music composed by one of the composers of the past.
Third is responding to and being inspired by the work that I do with other writers and musicians. This past year I had the honor to write symphonic arrangements for one of the great songwriters of our time: John Prine. Sadly, he passed away from Covid-19, but I feel that his songs, together with the compositions of other great composers and songwriters have informed my musicianship in a deep way.
Finally, music that challenges your technique is very inspiring – someone wrote it, and now you’re figuring out how accomplish and perform what they wrote. Collaboration’s not been possible in the past few months. So, you go back to your first relationship and inspiration: that is with nature. With the world around you. With my garden – watching the plants or listening to the birds. The beauty of sound that the earth creates. The symmetry with plants and with music and of the universe.
What creative projects are you currently working on?
When this [the pandemic] came down, one of the first people I thought to collaborate with is the person you heard on three of the pieces of music that I submitted for this project — Bill Miller. He’s one of my best friends in the world – he’s a Native American artist – I hope you get to meet him sometime! His music is transcendent. It was so great to reconnect creatively, with him through this. I am currently working on a few pieces of music with Bill. This music incorporates Native American chant, Native flute, and the instruments that I play: violin, viola, guitar, mandolin. Native American music is born of the land. Bill’s Native American name is Bird Song – Fun fact: when he comes over here and sings there’s a bird that sits outside the window and sings back! I’m not making that up, I have it on tape!
Another project that I’ve been working on, is a series of pieces written by Impressionistic era composers such as Debussy or Satie – I’ve been reimagining the orchestrations to be played by myself on the viola and “Americana” acoustic string instruments such as mandolin, acoustic guitar, and acoustic bass.
And the third thing I’ve been working on is, (I don’t know if this is top secret), but Willie Nelson is working on a second album of Frank Sinatra songs. I’ve been working with him on that, writing the orchestrations that go behind his singing. I’m just finishing up the last song for that this week.
How has your artistic practice changed during this time?
I’m coming from a career that’s marked by really dynamic high-profile collaborations. Suddenly, the brakes were put on and now I’m in my house. I think I’ve actually become a lot more self-disciplined and rigorous. I set a schedule for myself, I impose a structure on my day that is my own structure but I stick to it – I’m busy from morning to night. That structure has allowed me to become more free and more creative. I’m listening and I’m observing what’s around me. I have a lot more open bandwidth – I don’t have the crazy, exciting, addictive, commercial music world. When this was taken away from me, through the quarantine, I went through a period of mourning. But now, I feel like it’s a good thing. I’ve allowed peace to settle in and inspiration is now coming from other places.
I feel so happy in my routine now, that in some ways I don’t want to go back. I’d rather be stretching myself – pushing myself through projects such as this one. I’ve set strict goals for myself in practicing my instrument, learning a new Digital Audio Workstation and exercising. I want to see those goals accomplished.
Has COVID-19 shifted how you think about the natural world?
It’s shifted it a lot. I feel that this episode we are currently in has caused ambient stress. I don’t think we even understand where it’s all coming from. It’s just there. Before this quarantine time, we could get up and go about our day and our routines. Now what I do to alleviate some of this stress, is go to my garden, to turn to the natural world for peace. It’s caused me to think about my musical relationship with the natural world.
Plants enabled people to create musical instruments. For example, long ago a person heard the wind blow through reeds and thought “that makes a sound that I like.” In ancient Egypt, they took the reeds and made the instrument that was the predecessor to our oboe or bagpipes. Other ancient peoples took bamboo or another hollow piece of wood and they drilled holes in it and they made a flute. Most instrumentalists consider their instrument to be an extension of themselves. Stringed instruments are created from wood, from a tree. The great instrument makers in Italy in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, lived for their wood. They loved trees, and they knew trees and they went to special forests to get these trees. When we play these instruments, the wood vibrates in the special way that corresponds to how each person plays that instrument. My life is changed by the wood that made my viola. The natural world impacts us on so many levels. It speaks to me, then I go back to the instrument that was born from a tree and try to speak back to the natural world.