We still have more projects in the works with our Global Music Match teammates, but we wanted to share the pieces we’ve made so far this summer. Each collaboration has led us in a different direction, as you can hear, and all the tracks are attached at the bottom of this message for you to download!
Collaboration #1: Drummer Boy with Andrea Kirwin (watch the video here)
Andrea is a Fijian-Australian singer-songwriter with a soulful voice and a big heart. She jumped into the Global Music Match pool feet first, volunteering to be the first feature artist back in June when we were all still figuring out how this whole program was supposed to work. Luckily for us, she was incredibly organized and already had a piece in mind for us to work on with her, this composition called Drummer Boy, which she wrote in 2013 to honor her friend Matty Sykes, who died in a tragic spearfishing accident. It’s written in the call-and-response Fijian Methodist style that she grew up singing in her family, which made it a perfect piece for us to sing with her! In the video you’ll see her standing in front of a beautiful mural that features Indigenous Traditional custodians Lyndon Davis and Brent Miller, painted by artist David Houghton, in her hometown of Nambour, Queensland, Australia. We filmed our part at Walden Pond in Concord MA, where naturalist, writer, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote “Walden.”
Collaboration #2: Orsa Långdans with Lena Jonsson Trio (watch the video here)
We shared a work-in-progess video of this piece in our last Patreon post and talked a bit about the Swedish trall style of singing, but we hope you take a moment to watch the final video, because it was truly a very special collaboration. In the midst of working with Lena’s piece, Jeremy and Lauren went to Pinewoods Camp to teach music and dance over the July 4 weekend, and given that Orsa Långdans is in waltz time, we had the idea to recruit the dancers there to be part of this video. After more than a year of being so isolated from each other, it felt especially meaningful to dance and smile and share this joy with our community. You might even see some familiar faces whirl by in the video! (note: everyone attending Pinewoods this summer is fully vaccinated)
Collaboration #3: Prussia Cove: Align with Eliza Marshall (watch the video here)
This piece probably pushed us furthest outside our comfort zone, because while Eliza is an incredible flute player, there wasn’t an obvious place for us to add vocal harmony to her solo work. Then she sent us a piece called Prussia Cove: Align, a multi-instrument solo performance she made with a looping pedal after visiting the wind-battered coast of Cornwall, England. Having spent time in Cornwall on our last tour of the UK in early 2020, we knew exactly the landscape she was trying to evoke and started playing with vocal textures to accompany her playing. The soundscape we ended up creating was inspired by Shepherd scales, a sort of aural illusion that makes it sound like a pitch is constantly rising, and it was a delightful challenge to think about using our voices in such a different way!
We highly recommend listening to all of these on good headphones or speakers, but that is especially the case for Prussia Cove–as you probably know, your computer or phone speakers are not the greatest for high quality music listening, and there is so much depth to these tracks that we don’t want you to miss!
Collaboration #4: Emigrant Song with Stephen Fearing (sneak preview! This hasn’t been released yet!!)
When we first announced our participation in Global Music Match, we were really excited to learn that a number of folks in our audience already know and love Canadian singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing! Given our overlapping audience and tour routes, it’s a little surprising that we haven’t crossed paths yet, but it’s been a joy to get to know him over the past few months. He’s got a big voice and a big heart, and we were really excited when he asked us to collaborate on his piece Emigrant Song (written by Stephen Fearing and Andy White). This track is a draft work-in-progress, and the video has yet to be released, so you will be the first to hear the direction we’re going with this song! We just posted a teaser clip on our social media pages with a behind-the-scenes timelapse of our creatively situated video shoot–Stephen asked us for stark lighting, high contrast, and a neutral background for this video, and the best place we could find at Lynn and Will’s house was their basement steps! You can watch that teaser clip here.
Our final teammate is Fanfara Station, a Tunisian-Italian fusion trio that describes themselves as bringing “the power of a brass band and electronics to North African vocals and percussions.” Their dynamic combination of musical and cultural influences results in music that makes you want to move! We didn’t have a chance to collaborate on one of their songs yet, but you should check out their latest music video, which they filmed on a fishing boat in the Mediterranean Sea! Click here to watch the video!
