THE JESSE STEWART PROJECT
Music prof shares rare sounds online
Canoe paddles, sea shells, bird calls and a cardboard box. To most people, this random assortment of items sounds like junk they might have in the basement.
But to Jesse Stewart, each one carries a world of musical possibilities. The Carleton University music professor proved the point recently with a series of 40 daily videos posted to his Facebook page during the lockdown. In them, he plays a different instrument almost every day, from the unexpected to the obscure.
As he says in this edited interview, the series started out as a way for the drummer-percussionist to reacquaint himself with his instrument collection after undergoing brain surgery for a benign tumour.
Plus, he wanted to amuse his friends.
But then the accomplished musician, whose resumé includes a Juno Award, a PhD, plenty of volunteer work and a long-standing passion for improvisation, watched the numbers grow.
Most popular was the canoe-paddle instalment, with more than 30,000 views.
Here’s more about the project:
Q Why 40 videos?
A Originally, I just thought I’d post a video a day on a different instrument, basically just for my friends on Facebook. This was at the outset of the pandemic outbreak in Canada. I didn’t realize that we would be sheltering in place for as long as we have been. About two-thirds of the way through, I thought, I’m going to run out of instruments and ideas, so I thought, I’ll do 40, in keeping with the etymological of the word quarantine, which originally meant 40 days. That was why I ended up doing that.
Q Tell us about your surgery.
A Towards the end of February, I had brain surgery. The tumour ended up being benign, but it was pushing on other parts of my brain and it had been causing me quite a bit of discomfort for six or eight months or something. It took a while to figure out what was wrong, but in the end that was the culprit. I had to go off work. I wasn’t teaching at Carleton for the winter semester. I went six months or so without playing music at all in public, and even at home I wasn’t able to do much in the way of practising.
Q Was that a long stretch for you?
A Yeah, the longest of my life. This video series was also a way for me to start playing music again and get my chops back up.
Q It looks like you had fun doing it.
A Yeah, for sure. I really did enjoy doing it, and that was part of the reason I thought I’d try to play a different instrument every day. A different instrument every day will force me to get reacquainted with the various instruments that make up my collection. But also I just wanted to be thinking musically again. There’s the technical level, getting my chops up, but it’s also getting those synapses firing.
Many of the instruments are not things people are used to seeing and hearing. Some are rare and obscure.
Q Did it get easier?
A Maybe a little bit. One thing I definitely noticed, I had to move instruments from our basement to the living room because it made for a nicer backdrop, and that definitely got easier for me. I wasn’t supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds initially. That was one area where I noticed a big difference.
Q It was nice to see your family on camera at one point.
A They were an integral part of the whole thing, in part because my son and my wife filmed most of the videos, but also we’re in a shared space so they heard everything. They were part of the process from the beginning.
Q Several of the videos have an educational component. How come?
A Many of the instruments are not things people are used to seeing and hearing. Some are rare and obscure, or in some cases things that people don’t usually think of as instruments. So sometimes, if it wasn’t necessarily self-explanatory, I’d include a little bit of context.
Q Were you surprised by the reaction to the series?
A There’s been a lot more interest in these videos than I anticipated. One of them has been watched something like 30,000 times, for example. I really did not anticipate anything like that. Quite a few musicians from all over the world have gotten in touch with me, and music educators and also parents. Parents have contacted me to say they watched the video every day and tried to do something inspired by it with the kids. That was really nice to hear, and unexpected.
Q What will be your next creative project?
A Well, I’m finishing up a book I’m co-authoring with another academic. It’s called Jamming the Classroom, and it’s about teaching and learning musical improvisation. I’ve also signed on to co-edit a special issue of a journal, Critical Studies in Improvisation, about improvisation during the pandemic; how are improvising musicians responding or otherwise improvising in this difficult time?
Q Are the videos mostly improvised?
A Yes, they are. I might talk about the video series, but that wouldn’t be the main focus. The pandemic has hit many people hard, first and foremost the people who are sick or have loved ones who are sick, but it’s also been really hard on musicians around the world who lost basically all of their gigs overnight. Musicians have had to scramble to concertize online, put up some kind of tip jar or come up with these various solutions to make ends meet. I think that might be an interesting thing to write about.