When life and music collide
Strong emotions fuel saxophonist Michael Webster’s new CD, D3
When Michael Webster went into the studio in November 2011 to record Momentus, his just-released CD, the musical and personal stakes were life-changingly high.
The Ottawa-raised, New Yorkbased tenor saxophonist had booked only two days at Systems Two, one of New York’s best studios. His group’s special guest, fellow Canadian expat and star trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, could only make the first day of the session. Looming over everything was the fact that just two weeks before the session, Webster and his wife had split up.
“The split was integral to the emotional charge of the session,” Webster, 36, says. “I hadn’t slept at all the night before the first studio day ... and had to dig deeper than I ever had just to get to the studio.
“With so much on the line, I felt I had two choices — I could let the difficulties get to me, or I could pour it all into the music, knowing that if it fell flat on its face, I would have given everything I could,” Webster recalls.
Fortunately, the session was a triumph for Webster.
“I had often been in my head, second-guessing things as I played them,” he explains. “Since that day, I’ve been able to put my inhibitions aside, accept who I am more completely, and concentrate on developing that.
“I’ve never felt inhibited as a composer, but frequently felt that way as an improviser, and all of that changed with Momentus.”
Webster grew up in Bells Corners in a very musical family, the son of National Arts Centre violist Peter Webster and the celebrated piano teacher Sandra Webster.
The saxophonist, who played piano, viola, guitar and French horn as a child before settling on saxophone, returns to Ottawa Monday for a rare hometown concert. He’ll present the music on Momentus at the NAC Fourth Stage, with a sextet that includes fellow Canadian expat Ingrid Jensen on trumpet.
The group, which also includes vibraphonist Chris Dingman and guitarist Jesse Lewis, has a special sonic signature and the versatility to shimmer and float or ratchet up the energy and groove hard as Webster’s compositions dictate.
Webster, who attended the University of Toronto before moving to New York in 2002 for graduate studies in jazz composition, says that he has a “strong melodic bias,” and that a “singable melody can balance any complicated rhythm or harmony.”
The nine originals on Momentus, a followup to Webster’s 2005 debut disc Leading Lines, cover a range of moods, from the mathematically intriguing but catchy title track to the hard-hitting Beam Me Up to the prayerful CD-closer Simple Wish.
While the disc is anything but a breakup album, there are two tracks that Webster relates to his marriage and its conclusion.
Erica’s Song is a love song that he wrote for his wife after they were married. “Although there is no malice between us, the studio recording is the last time I played the song,” Webster says.
Of the following track, Train Song Reprise, Webster says: “It is a programmatic representation of Erica getting on a train and being taken from my life.”
But he’s not one to wallow, and the CD’s final tune, Simple Wish, is a “song of hope.” Webster says he has played this anthemic composition at the end of all of his gigs.
Overall, the disc is “a turning point,” Webster says, and not simply because of what happened in his personal life. Momentus, he says, is Latin for an object that embodies momentum. Webster hopes that his disc reflects a new-found personal momentum, in keeping with “a commitment to pursue what might have seemed only distantly possible.”