Enjoy our latest Monday Morning Brew playlist featuring Roufaida, Keith Jarrett (with one of his most surprising and unexpected offerings), Juni Habel, Don Severance, DUG, The Fishermen Three, Bonnie Prince Billy, Lewsberg, Chantal Acda, Dani Larkin, Joan Shelley, Big Thief, Pina Palau, Sam Gendel (with Sam Amidon and Philippe Melanson*), Julie Doiron and Msafiri Zawose.
*Not available on Apple
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Lou Rogai (Lewis & Clarke) – Cathedral: An Experimental Elegy (2020)
In 2019, artist, songwriter, and composer Lou Rogai (Lewis & Clarke) released Cathedral, an experimental elegy for chamber ensemble in three movements. As a follow-up, in 2020, he recorded a version of the first movement at a friend’s art studio/mill – Susquehanna Studio, Uniondale, PA. Alongside Lou are musicians Joanna Asia Mieleszko, Lou’s son Julian Rogai and Patrick McGee.
Lou wrote the following for us on the session, and followed this up with a further letter, which you can read after the video below.
Certain spaces contain the various energies of previous occupants, where stories are to be revealed simply by entering and being receptive. Susquehanna Studio is the home, workplace, and painting studio of my dear friend Robert Stark. Located in the Endless Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania, his place is both a beacon and a sanctuary. For forty years and counting, the Art Exchange at Susquehanna Studio has been host to countless artists of every discipline and medium.
I have been blessed with the ability to spend large blocks of time there, reflecting and creating. Falling asleep and waking to the sound of the Fiddle Lake Creek, which once powered the mill, absorbing the presence of Robert and Elizabeth’s work, feeling the energetic imprint of all the laborers and artists who have worked there. It is a sacred space, its rustic architecture embedded by decades of fostering process.
I am thankful for the opportunity to have documented the music in the old mill, suspended above the creek. I spent many lone hours creating sounds there, and longing to fill the space with more than a solitary sound. I am grateful for the talent and tenacity of the ensemble who joined me for this session: Julian Rogai, Asia Mieleszko, and Patrick McGee, as well as audio-engineer Sean Hamilton and film-maker Daniel James Papa. We spent an autumn afternoon recording an interpretation of “Arrival”, the first movement of Cathedral, which is in itself an exercise in interior/exterior spaces.
Although we tracked for several hours, the recording here is the actual first take of the day. The magic is always in the first couple of takes, but since we were filming as well, our director wanted to get all of the necessary angles and shots. The creek is heard on the recording, ushering us along as we played under the northern wash of the skylight, the sound of water rushing to power the long-gone water wheel, but turning gears of other sorts nonetheless.
A Letter From Delaware Water Gap (2020)
The transition from winter to spring seemed to be in suspended animation this year, as if the seasons themselves were on hold until further notice. Small signs of life emerge as bright green buds appear in the forest, flecks of color waking the grey winter sleep. The golden-winged warblers and mourning doves arrive in a fragrant wind of magnolia blossoms. We have all been waiting for things to settle, and there is comfort in this natural order.
Back in early March, I was honored to share the first listen of “Arrival” at KLOF – a live recording of the first movement of Cathedral, my most recent record. We tracked the live session in the mill building of my friend Robert Stark’s painting studio. I wrote some words about creating in such a living, breathing, storied place, and was equally excited to share the accompanying performance footage. Then a state of emergency was declared as a wave began to swell, grounding all scheduled performances of Cathedral. Everything was put on hold as the incoming shock of what we’re now in the midst of took center stage.
Releasing music seems like a trivial gesture with so many lives lost. The rest of us are on hold, so many variables in limbo. All of us touched in our own way, each of us coping, learning, adapting. Some of us turn to art as sustenance, creating inspiration and momentum. We take and we give. To stay healthy as an artist is to keep moving, ingesting, and exchanging. As we improvise our way through this peculiar pandemic, I am happy to share the footage from this recording and I hope it provides some comfort and escape.
This is a twilight season. We concede to time and place, climate, and circumstance. We’re all involved in a strange collective experience that is at best a common bond, at worst a great reveal. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The curtains of comfort are pulled back, illuminating the fragile illusion of security while challenging the very definition. It’s easy to feel exhaustion and frustration, and it seems that there’s an open nerve close to the surface. Something as simple as a mask is a gesture of solidarity, of respect. A way to signal that one’s concern is for a community above their own sense of personal freedoms.
For some, this experience might be a pacified inconvenience, whose savings, if any, have not been drained. Moving through each day, I am both aware of my own privilege and thankful for the closeness of my family. I am thinking of my friend who is thousands of miles away from family and expecting her first child this summer. I think of the conditions in the tenement where my grandfather was born over 100 years ago during the pandemic of 1918. I imagine the scene, the conversations – the smell. I think of how absurd it would be if they discussed the importance of social distancing or the moral obligation of disinfecting shared common facilities. They certainly weren’t being pummeled with a zeitgeist of misinformation, blasted with warnings of deep-state conspiracy while organic wild-caught salmon was delivered to their door.
I engage every day, making sketches and demos that will all make sense at a later time. It’s more of a meditation that follows the arc of the situation. Ideas are flowing, but without the urgency to knead them into completion. There are projects on the burner, Lewis & Clarke mixes, Cedar Sparks music to release, scores to finish. They’ll be fine as they simmer, there are larger issues at hand. I find myself immersed in my family, making sure my sons are up to speed with their lessons and studies, exploring the woods regularly. We are working to create memories of this time, to handle frustrations and to prepare for the next with strength, resilience, and empathy. I wish everyone health and sanity as we ease on down this strange road, as the forest appears through the trees and the seasons transition once again.
-Lou Rogai
Delaware Water Gap, PA
USA