Interview with James McGowan

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We’ve been listening to James McGowan’s latest album “Reaching In” on loop, for days…we lost count, it’s that entrancing and hypnotic…and we couldn’t be more thrilled by having the artist himself, James, with us today to talk about his mesmerizing talent and get to know him more…

  • Let’s start with you James, when did you start your journey with music? 

Like many of us in music, my journey with music has been a lifelong pursuit. In my first memories as a kid, I recall making music by improvising on an old piano we had in the house. I played anything I could and loved to explore sounds. The joy of creating sound to express emotion has guided me much of my life. I later took music lessons in classical, then learned jazz, rock, blues, and other genres. I also studied composition and later did a PhD in music theory, which massively expanded my understanding of what musical creators had done in the past. From these perspectives, I’ve spent much of my adult musical life incorporating what I’ve learned into my improvisations, compositions, and recorded projects. I always strive to ensure my music is well crafted, but most importantly, that it retains the joy of musical discovery I had as a child and speaks what I feel in a way that might resonate with a receptive listener.    

 

  • How did the James McGowan ensemble come to be? What were the biggest challenges?

In the last ten years or so, I’ve been really focused on composing music that fuses together different musical traditions. I created a jazz-fusion quartet called Modasaurus that explored the coming together of jazz with Celtic, Middle-Eastern, Cuban and other musics. I was also particularly interested in the challenge of fusing together jazz with classical styles, particularly noticeable in a larger classical-rock-jazz piece of mine called “Chaconne and Fugue.” But I found that the quartet didn’t have a large enough tonal palette for the sounds I had in mind. I reached out where I live in Ottawa Canada to an amazing string quartet—quatuor Despax—who agreed to collaborate on a project that included strings. So I started writing music for the octet, the jazz-fusion quartet with string quartet. I soon discovered that I wanted to include more orchestral or big band sounds and needed at least four horns; and I knew exactly who I wanted to bring into the project. 

Once I had the 12-piece ensemble lined up (which later grew to 13), I was excited and spent a massive amount of time composing and orchestrating for this project. While it was a welcome challenge to write for this eclectic ensemble, another challenge was how to communicate the underlying narratives that fuelled the musical compositions. I decided to write unique spoken word poetry that told a semi-autobiographical story about a protagonist’s journey, while also referencing the titles of the pieces, as well as their musical elements and motifs from the work in a form of expressive program notes. 

 

  • What was the biggest challenge making “Reaching In”? 

Beyond the challenges I mentioned earlier, really the biggest challenge with this group was and continues to be logistical. Working as ethically as I can, I wanted to ensure that everyone is paid well as professionals, so I had to write a lot of grants to fund the project. Happily, I was awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to help with the finances. Another challenge is that they’re all busy artists and educators who are involved in different projects; so trying to get them all together for rehearsals, concerts, and recording dates is surprisingly hard!  

 

  • What inspires you to create such enchanting melodies and harmonies…what drives you to create the excellent music you make?

First of all, thank you for your kind words! As a teen, I was deeply inspired by some “third-stream” music including Chick Corea’s Lyric Suite for Sextet and Miles Davis/Gil Evans arrangement of Concierto De Aranjuez, which combined two or styles in ways that both respected their traditions as well as creating something genuine and original. Other musical inspirations include the music of J.S. Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich, Arvo Pärt, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett and others too numerous to mention. 

But beyond the musical influences, the main motivator was a need to work through thoughts and emotions through my art. Like everyone perhaps, I certainly have had many ups and downs in my life. I wanted this concept album to capture the process I’ve gone through as an adult by “reaching in” to come to terms with my own traumas, losses and challenges, finding a more complete sense of self.  

 

  • Are you looking to focus on live performances more or spend more time in the studio to create new music?

Live performance is essential to what I do as an improvising artist. So the music I write needs to be performed and to that end I have put on a few large-scale concert events with the music from this project, in partnership with a few different organizations (including the Music and Beyond Festival, DOMS concert series, and Carleton University Music program). That said, ultimately it is the recorded document that I want to live on. I’ve been in the studio quite a bit this Fall to record the continuation of this album. I plan to release “Reaching Out” with the same ensemble in 2024. 

  • So tell us more about “Reaching In”…what made you create this masterpiece? Where did you start!

This project really came about with too much time on my hands at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Like so many of us, I was experiencing deep feelings and I took the time to really reflect upon what I was going through. In my improvising, I started to connect the wide range of thoughts and emotions with sonic ideas and motivic elements. I decided I wanted to invest the time to write a large-scale work using recurring, unifying themes and started calling it “Reaching In/Reaching Out.” After working on its composition and poetry, I eventually realized that this was much too large for one concept album, and worked on creating a double album; though I eventually decided to break RIRO into two separate albums.     

Incidentally, I also want to add that from the outset I wanted this project to embrace inter-art expression as much as possible. Spoken-word poetry was a natural fit and I consulted with poet Jamaal Amir-Akbari, who recited the poetry on the recording and who mentored me in writing it. Visual art was also important to me. I commissioned the wonderful painter An Nguyen to depict a visual and metaphoric representation in a painting of “Reaching In,” which also serves as the album cover. I still hope that someday the music will extend to other art forms, especially dance. 

 

  • Could you describe the concept behind “Reaching In” to people who are yet to listen to it?

Reaching In is an extended story told through music, spoken-word poetry, and visual art of a protagonist’s journey from struggles of isolation, low self-worth, social anxiety, addiction, and loss, to finding peace, acceptance, belonging, and ultimately—in “Reaching Out”—a sense of community. This multi-movement suite is composed and performed in a classical-jazz fusion style. Using powerful musical expression and recurring motivic gestures, the work conveys deep emotions and extra-musical meaning. Supplemented by poetry, the instrumental music itself and the painting of Reaching In guides us through a narrative of overcoming personal challenges to offer an uncertain, yet hopeful future.

  • What are your plans for the future of the James McGowan Ensemble?

This ensemble was always meant to be fluid in size, with different combinations of the whole for various pieces. After we release “Reaching Out” I aim to perform it with the ensemble in 2024. But honestly, while I hope to continue working with all the amazing people in the ensemble in some capacity, I’m planning to focus on future musical projects with smaller, more intimate-sized groups, at least for a while. 

 

  • For all people out there…could you tell them why they should listen to “Reaching In” in a sentence or two?

For sure! 

This album is like a narrated one-act play that confronts internal conflict with hope. Yet instead of a dialogue with words, you are immersed in a 68-minute journey of powerful and diverse musical expressions that convey a range of emotions in a way that words alone could never achieve. 

  • We’re thrilled to have had this conversation with James, he’s an absolutely amazing artist, a true musical genius…we wish him all the best in life…and we need more music from him!

It was my pleasure! Thank you so much for your interest. 

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Born in the 80s, attracted by the beats and feeds on music, the "Hamza Sharkas" is a musical-carnivore that uses guitars, piano and drums as his weapons of choice in hunting down and composing music, mainly for short movies, solo work and his other musical projects. The "Sharkas" also records, mixes and masters music. One of the goals of the "Sharkas" is to spread musical knowledge and music technology education as much as possible through workshops and online articles. Beware the "Sharkas"....for he won't shut up about music and will go on and on and on and on….