Robin Holcomb is a true original. Her music goes to the heart, to the bone, and touches the soul.
—Meredith Monk
Robin Holcomb and Peggy Lee have been making music together for two decades, including The Point of It All (Songlines, 2010), a collaboration between Holcomb, Wayne Horvitz, and Vancouver jazz quartet Talking Pictures. Now Robin and Peggy have made a duo recording, featuring eight enigmatic Holcomb songs and eight of her instrumental pieces. The intimacy and improvisational interplay of the music-making are remarkable, as are the realism and beauty of the sound.
This music is hard to pin down—it reaches well beyond jazz. The soundworld and poetic vision of Holcomb’s songs seem connected to American folk traditions, while her pianism, notable for its unique harmonic language, and Lee’s texturally gorgeous cello playing combine a rigorous contemporary classical sort of focus with the freedoms of avant-jazz. The result is a modern art music that draws the listener into the conversation.
“I’m not a confessionalist,” says Holcomb. “While I write from my experience, it is not necessarily always my lived experience.” The songs here include her very first, “Larks, They Crazy,” from the 1980s, and several that come from song cycles. “Copper Bottom,” “The Sweetest Thing,” and “The Point of It All” originated in The Utopia Project, a suite composed in 2004 about utopian communities that thrived in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s/early 1900s. “Divine Stall” and “Coin” come from We Are All Failing Them, her most recent song cycle. Reflecting the story of the Donner Party and scored for voice, piano, cello, banjo/guitar and Foley artist, the work was performed with film and magical objects. “Waltz” comes from Angels at the Four Corners (1989), Holcomb’s earliest song cycle. “It was a mashup of extrapolations on both the histories and imagined futures of people I knew while sharecropping in North Carolina and The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow. “Waltz” is a good ender in that it starts specific and ends wide open.”
The purely instrumental pieces reveal an unusually close collaborative process. For Robin, “playing with Peggy has always been very relaxed and unpredictable, even with a shared understanding of how the music has sounded in (often many) previous iterations…. Unless we are playing totally free, we loosely hammered out a form, mostly where the written music would go. The improvisations and more subtle architecture generally just happen. Peggy’s parts often touch on the written music, but not always.” For Peggy, “When I am playing a composed part, it will be one of the lines from Robin's piano score. We'll try a few options and decide what works best, or I'll switch it up within a piece if there are a few verses. In the improvised solos and duos there is really no discussion as to what it should be, and they usually take a few twists and turns.” Robin: “Peggy is a deep and beautiful player on so many levels. She has an uncanny sense of not only color and rhythm and implication but also of how to blend with a voice. And harmony and melody! She is also a supremely deft improviser and a great foil for me. I can go in and out of vocal music/instrumental music without a second thought. Not everyone can not only follow me but also be right there with me.” Peggy characterizes Robin’s music as having “great depth and beauty, polytonality, life, and simplicity within complexity” and her own approach as “trying to find the simplicity…to contribute in a way that feels true to the moment.” Robin sums it up: “We bring histories of listening to all kinds of music when we play together—sensibilities of clarity and chaos.”
Wayne Horvitz produced: “The recording has a lot of 'living room' feel to it, and in fact it was recorded in a living room. This is reflected in the intimacy of the sound and the intimacy of the musical interaction. Our host, William Molloy, has a sort of boutique studio in his home—plus a beautiful and beautifully maintained Steinway B piano. He has a limited quantity of gear, and every item is at the highest level…. The mix was very simple. Really the question for each track, depending on the dynamics, was the balance between the close mics and room mics…. The absolute secret to great sounds is recording musicians that have great sounds.”
The interview is linked from the Songlines release page.
This music is hard to pin down—it reaches well beyond jazz. The soundworld and poetic vision of Holcomb’s songs seem connected to American folk traditions, while her pianism, notable for its unique harmonic language, and Lee’s texturally gorgeous cello playing combine a rigorous contemporary classical sort of focus with the freedoms of avant-jazz. The result is a modern art music that draws the listener into the conversation.
“I’m not a confessionalist,” says Holcomb. “While I write from my experience, it is not necessarily always my lived experience.” The songs here include her very first, “Larks, They Crazy,” from the 1980s, and several that come from song cycles. “Copper Bottom,” “The Sweetest Thing,” and “The Point of It All” originated in The Utopia Project, a suite composed in 2004 about utopian communities that thrived in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s/early 1900s. “Divine Stall” and “Coin” come from We Are All Failing Them, her most recent song cycle. Reflecting the story of the Donner Party and scored for voice, piano, cello, banjo/guitar and Foley artist, the work was performed with film and magical objects. “Waltz” comes from Angels at the Four Corners (1989), Holcomb’s earliest song cycle. “It was a mashup of extrapolations on both the histories and imagined futures of people I knew while sharecropping in North Carolina and The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow. “Waltz” is a good ender in that it starts specific and ends wide open.”
The purely instrumental pieces reveal an unusually close collaborative process. For Robin, “playing with Peggy has always been very relaxed and unpredictable, even with a shared understanding of how the music has sounded in (often many) previous iterations…. Unless we are playing totally free, we loosely hammered out a form, mostly where the written music would go. The improvisations and more subtle architecture generally just happen. Peggy’s parts often touch on the written music, but not always.” For Peggy, “When I am playing a composed part, it will be one of the lines from Robin's piano score. We'll try a few options and decide what works best, or I'll switch it up within a piece if there are a few verses. In the improvised solos and duos there is really no discussion as to what it should be, and they usually take a few twists and turns.” Robin: “Peggy is a deep and beautiful player on so many levels. She has an uncanny sense of not only color and rhythm and implication but also of how to blend with a voice. And harmony and melody! She is also a supremely deft improviser and a great foil for me. I can go in and out of vocal music/instrumental music without a second thought. Not everyone can not only follow me but also be right there with me.” Peggy characterizes Robin’s music as having “great depth and beauty, polytonality, life, and simplicity within complexity” and her own approach as “trying to find the simplicity…to contribute in a way that feels true to the moment.” Robin sums it up: “We bring histories of listening to all kinds of music when we play together—sensibilities of clarity and chaos.”
Wayne Horvitz produced: “The recording has a lot of 'living room' feel to it, and in fact it was recorded in a living room. This is reflected in the intimacy of the sound and the intimacy of the musical interaction. Our host, William Molloy, has a sort of boutique studio in his home—plus a beautiful and beautifully maintained Steinway B piano. He has a limited quantity of gear, and every item is at the highest level…. The mix was very simple. Really the question for each track, depending on the dynamics, was the balance between the close mics and room mics…. The absolute secret to great sounds is recording musicians that have great sounds.”
The interview is linked from the Songlines release page.
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