when? how? what? Why?

When I Began to Play (like this, at least)

I am not sure that I have the words. . .

That’s a strange way to start off an artist statement, particularly for someone who tells stories and who used to be an English teacher.  But, all of this - the music, the shows, the recordings, the experimentation, and the improvisation - all of it started with my not having the words to capture this transcendent musical thing that happened to me on a milestone birthday.

It was the morning of my 40th. I was three years into a detour career as a filmmaker that was stalling. Both the security and the clout of my comfy prep school English teacher gig were far in the rearview mirror, and I couldn’t get anyone to produce my coming-of-age/rom-com film.  They liked the script. They thought it was smart and sweet. They just didn’t think it would make anybody any money.  

So, I was keeping the lights on by teaching cello lessons, doing session work, playing with bands, and doing DEI contract work where I used to teach.  And on the morning of this 40th trip around the sun, I was certain I was flirting with failure of massive, adult proportions (I had children after all). Such a failure would require that I either go back to the classroom, or make some high-concept monster film that I didn’t want to make (it was the age of the Vampire Diaries and Walking Dead here in Atlanta, and that is all anyone wanted to put their money behind).

But then that morning I stumbled onto this bass line that I captured on my looper, and it made me cry.  I had no idea why I was crying. My words seemed to fail me in that effort.  The only thing that I suspect may have been at play was that the sounds that had just poured through me were so profoundly more eloquent than anything I had been writing  in the script for the last 3 years.  So, dismayed and encouraged, I cried and I listened.

More than make me cry, that bass line made me want to play. And so, I improvised into that ostinato phrase for a good two weeks until I had a song.  A song that changed my life.

That song is named 40.  It’s the 2nd track on my first album, Liminal. And it gave birth to 5 other songs that became a concert. That concert became a concert series in 2015. That series became an artistic direction and an inertia, and that inertia became a new artistic identity and destiny.  And so, here I am, and here you are reading the words that were born out of a magical musical moment that changed my life by leaving me speechless. 

Instead of speaking, I played.  And I’m still playing.

How I Play

The looper opened the door.

I started playing the cello when I was 6. I stumbled into rock, folk, jazz, soul, and goth cello in college.  From there and over the next 20 years, I would play professionally with singer songwriters. One or two you might know, but all of them were and are brilliant artists.

But, for all of that time, I played the cello as one does - one note, one phrase, one style, one expression at a time - generally in the context of a specific genre, and in service of someone else's artistic vision.

But the looper changed all of that.

It reintroduced me to my cello. It deconstructed its sound into all of these parts that I could now isolate.  A bass line first; some percussion tapped out on its body next; an interior plucked rhythm guitar riff after that; some double-stop chords that sound like an organ to follow; a simple, repeating earworm-hook near the top; and finally a stream-of-consciousness improvisation for the verses.  All recorded and played sequentially and perpetually.

The looper held it all in real time, vertically, and elegantly.  It made me sound like 7, and allowed me to lose myself in every developing sonic idea. I fell in love with that freedom and power.

The OkCello sound, though produced by just one me, is an ensemble of cellos, real or imagined, but felt just the same.

What I Play

I don’t play the Prelude.

I love it. I love Bach. I love a lot of classical repertoire, but I don’ t play rep - primarily, because there are so many cellists out there who do that and do it well.  I don’t think that tradition of maintaining the canon needs my help, though I have nothing against it.

I do play funk, drum and bass, reggae, soul, Jazz, spirituals, highlife, afrobeats, hip-hop, and rock, and it is my firm commitment that when you hear me play these things, it feels authentic, full, informed, and inspired.

My greatest creative motivation is to make music that I like and that I would want to listen to, and I listen to a lot of contemporary, African Diasporic music and song forms.  My bet is that my audience and I listen to some of the same things and they will hear and appreciate those influences in my music and revel in the joy of hearing those influences in new the context of my imagination and instrument.

The body of work I am creating is not especially political as to explicitly reject or include any particular genre of expression.  Instead, I am just hoping to find, write, and play the sounds that tickle my ear and soul. 

And hopefully yours too if I’m lucky.

Why I Play

When I improvise, I am praying.

While I have played for nearly 44 years now, I have only really played the way I play now for the last 10.  The songs that I share with my audiences, almost all of them, come from moments of practice in which I simply and exclusively improvise.  On one level I might be trying to master a skill.  But on another, I am listening for little phrases and ideas that can be polished into songs and stories. If I tear up in this process, I know I’ve found the beginning of something I want to share.

But, more often than not, I don’t find a song. What comes through me, however, still does work.  During this time, my mind wanders and fires and also sometimes takes a back seat to something else that is expressing.  Minutes sometimes an hour will pass by, and I will emerge from this meditation refreshed, renewed, and often relieved.  And in those moments, I feel like I am connecting to something more important and better knowing than I.

I hope - rather I believe that the things I need to say, but don’t have the words for or aren't even aware of are allowed to live and breathe in the fertile soil of that sacred improvised sound.

Essentially, I believe to improvise is to pray with the most honest part of yourself - the unrehearsed, unedited, unfiltered expression of the you that hides in the shadow of that for which you have no words.

This is how I pray. That is why I play.  

That and to connect with you. Hope to see you at a concert soon.