Personal loss, creative release for musician
GARLAND
Over the last 40 years, David Garland has been a generous and inquisitive musical citizen. As a composer/performer, he’s released more than a dozen recordings and collaborated with an impressive array of figures from the contemporary music scene, including John Zorn, Sufjan Stevens, Sean Lennon, and Meredith Monk. Widely known for his work in radio, Garland produced and hosted “Spinning on Air,” which ran for 28 years on WNYC in New York. He’s been living in Red Hook, near Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, since 2010.
The latest release from Garland is also his most personal. “Vulneraries Vol. 3 Mortality” consists of structured improvisations performed by Garland on a modified 12-string guitar in duet with his son Kenji Garland on modular synthesizer. The eight cuts are rattling and experimental but also spacious and contemplative. The music was recorded during a six-day period last June immediately following the death of Anne Garland, a writer and designer who was David’s wife and Kenji’s mother.
“The music is naked and revealing but I didn’t consider that a reason not to put it out,” says Garland. “It’s part of what we went through.”
Though no other single work in his career has been so intimately tied to a particular life passage, Garland believes that all of his music is personal. His body of songs do reflect the lively musical universe that he’s inhabited.
In his hometown of Lexington, Mass., he played drums in a garage band and taught himself guitar and keyboards. Musical adventures continued during his years at the famed Rhode Island School of Design. “I was a year or two behind when the Talking Heads were there,” he recalls.
Arriving in Manhattan in 1977, Garland became a part of the fertile and freewheeling downtown scene that blended jazz, rock, and noise. He brought along that network of fellow sonic travelers as his livelihood turned to broadcasting. After a decade of supporting himself as a graphic designer, he found a niche with radio, eventu
ally landing a full-time position as a producer and host.
“I started with a weekly slot on WKCR at Columbia University. But WNYC was the only place that could possibly pay me to do this. It was a wonderful job and a terrific way to earn a living,” he says.
Continuing as a performing musician, Garland rightly viewed himself as an ongoing contributor to the emerging aesthetic. And his on-air platform made him an advocate who took the listening public on a weekly journey into the boundless field of new music. He regularly invited guests on his show to discuss their music and what other kinds of sounds got them excited.
“I applied the same energy to my music making and my radio work. I get genuine pleasure out of sharing stuff,” says Garland. “Being a stylistic omnivore was something happening with composers and musicians who were on the cutting edge. I know a lot of composers who are incurious about what other people are doing. I never stopped being curious.”
Garland says he got “a new perspective on everything” when he and Anne bought a home in the Hudson Valley in 2010. It was her idea to get out of Manhattan and stop paying rent on an apartment, a parking garage and storage. But for the first five years they split their time between the city and the midcentury house in the country. When “Spinning on Air” was cancelled in 2015, as part of WNYC’S move toward an all-talk format, they finally gave up their apartment.
Garland reapplied himself to visual art, creating an ongoing series of photo collages of leaves. He also embraced a new instrument, a 12-string guitar that with his son Kenji’s modifications can play sustained tones and also interface with electronic signals.
This new aesthetic realm resulted in the ambitious “Verdancy,” a fourcd set released in 2018. Besides his special guitar, Garland also sings, plays woodwinds and percussion and samples electronics and sounds of nature. Also woven into the tracks are appearances by a variety of guests, including vocalist and violinist Iva Bittova, pianist Kyle Gann, and Yoko Ono. “I’m in a new, previously unknown sonic world, bushwhacking new paths, seeking beauty and danger, building new structures that suit the landscape,” Garland wrote at the time.
With his family Garland stepped into yet another brave new world when Anne was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in October, 2018. Kenji, who at this point was 30 years old, returned home for the duration of his mother’s illness. One result of the difficult period is that father and son formed a new musical partnership, which they named Garlands.
“Kenji suggested we plug our instruments into one another. It’s like a single tandem instrument, a bicycle built for two, and it put us in a real state of responsiveness and listening,” explains Garland. “What we were producing was sound that could be of a comfort to Anne who was upstairs listening. She also listened to some of our recording while going to Memorial Sloan Kettering for her treatment.”
To date, three volumes of music from these sessions have been released through Bandcamp, an online music platform. The series is named “Vulneraries,” an ancient word for medications and healing substances.
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The first two volumes came out before Anne’s death. For the second volume, Anne contributed an essay in which she discusses her diagnosis and care and also the original music that filled the family’s home. She concludes: “I’ve spent the past few months floating and basking in the healing tones and textures of Vulneraries. I hope it is healing to you as well.”
Anne died one month later at age 66, nine months after being diagnosed.
“I think the world doesn’t address death. It’s something that’s avoided. We knew we wouldn’t live forever and so we thought let’s experience this by providing support and anchor it in our reality,” says Garland. “This is not angry or dark music. It’s kind of intense and it felt right to combine that intensity with a larger picture of transcendence.”
“I started with a weekly slot on WKCR at Columbia University. But WNYC was the only place that could possibly paymetodothis.itwasa wonderful job and a terrific way to earn a living.”
—David Garland