Ben Brown pounds out a movement
COLLABORATION: Drum and dance improv sessions have brought local musicians and international guests together
It’s been a little while since Ben Brown (benbrownsounds.com) moonwalked to Michael Jackson across his parents’ living room. But the Juno award-winning drummer for Vancouver post-rock/folk/jazz prog-ers Pugs & Crows never lost his interest in movement.
Just watch the guy dancing behind his kit in concert and it’s clear that besides having some of the better drummer face expressions, he is a “physical” player.
“I was always fascinated by dance, took it as a kid and went to a lot of shows growing up,” says Brown. “Seeing guys on laptops pushing buttons or just pre-recorded canned music being used over a real live musician increasingly frustrated me. Perceiving a void where the musical and dance communities weren’t coming together, I built Music and Movement Mondays to fill it.”
Over the past four years, Music and Movement Mondays (MAMM) live dance and music improvised sessions have united leading local creative musicians such as Gord Grdina (Dan Mangan, various) and international guests such as Czech composer Iva Bittova and Dutch violinist Ig Henneman. Hosted by Brown and bassist Colin Cowan at the China Cloud, MAMM presents focused labs on selected Mondays at various locations as well as a freewheeling open jam every second Sunday. Why Sunday for a Monday session?
It’s not some coy musician jibe. What began on Monday afternoons shifted due to logistics.
Does Brown find that his drumming has improved in how it moves people since he began working with moving people?
“Having performed in dance bands like the Boom Booms, this is something very different,” he says. “It’s more of an investigation of what makes people move and the conditions are preferable to do that research in a dance studio rather than a smoky bar.”
Brown has studied in Europe with such noted percussionists as Dame Everlyn Glennie and Han Bennick while keeping focused on how dance and live music interact there. It’s a far less rigid separation of disciplines and after touring Europe solo with a stripped-down suitcase drum kit and jamming with dancers in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris and Stockholm, he returned home with a goal to create.
We’re Making a Band is a B.C. Arts Council-funded project at the Dance Centre between Brown and dancer Justine A. Chambers looking into how drummers’ approaches to playing is possibly defined by theirgender. Drummers Joy Mullen, Mili Hong and Brown are the players and dancers Kevin Li and Ashley Whitehead are aiming to transpose the musician’s physicality into choreographed work. Open studio showings of the work in progress at the Dance Centre have taken place over the past month. The last is on Feb. 18.
“We’re finding that the line between the two is paper thin,” Brown says. “The biggest truth I found in my studies in Europe was that it comes down to problem-solving, and using movement to solve what comes up is inherently what drummers and dancers do. We are both engaged in performative movement and feeling the music through our entire body.”
An in-demand player not just with the excellent Pugs & Crows, Brown keeps active in a number of projects. But pursuing the places where drumming and dance converge and what kind of art can come out of that is a career passion. As to whether he’s ever had a dancer interpret his groovy moves behind the kit in ways that made him think there might be a problem to solve there too, he laughs:
“Many times over actually. One of the most satisfying things about the MAMM sessions is that no one every walked away feeling neutral. You develop a self-consciousness about your own movement that can be elating or deflating but always is inspiring.”
With his compositional chops growing as well as his body awareness, Brown sees a future plan to develop a drum choreography method for players. Exploring his movements on the kit and finding the most comfortable and natural body motion has changed his playing forever and he thinks there is a way to build something out of this.
“My relationships with dancers and drumming is forever,” says Brown. “But don’t expect any full length dance pieces from me any time soon, if ever. That’s not my thing at this point at all.”
As a closing FYI to other drummers wanting to find ways to keep their instrument in shape, Brown says that he studies yoga as well. The MAMM session this month is on the Feb. 21.