Water Bear reunion in August 2021

 Yes! A small bunch of us got together and played some music, at the First Congregational Church, with the windows open, the ceiling fans going full speed, and distanced. Ruth Roland and her family were up from Baton Rouge delivering son Cole to Cornell for the beginning of his PhD studies, which was the impetus for getting together. Bill Cowdery, Nate Richardson, and I were able to attend, Chris White could not (for a very sad reason, as his daughter Liana passed away the day before), Hank Roberts could not (due to his busy touring schedule) but in a lovely development Cole played violin with us as well. We had a three-violin sound! That made my heart sing.

And the session was remarkable, to now have the next generation of bears learning this music, and participating in the fun, in what I like to think of as the Water Bear magic. We played mostly older pieces from our repertoire, both Ruth’s compositions and mine, but also played a piece of Ruth’s that while older, never got an outing in New York, though it was popular with her trio (violin, trombone, and bass) in Baton Rouge. A beautiful and striking piece called  .

And Ruth had put on the set list my recently-composed piece Guido (in memory of my uncle who died of Covid in 2020), which was a lovely treat to hear brought to life in this grouping. To my ears we were of course missing the bottom of Tim Reppert’s bass! So important to me, as I’m pretty satisfied with bass and melody lines creating the music. But the chordal support was tremendous with both piano and guitar joining in, and I didn’t know how much I had missed the discussions around what the chords really should be. That is an aspect of composing these fiddle-tune-like pieces that is still challenging for me, as I do hear the harmonic structure in my head to some degree, but have trouble naming just what the chord might be.

I don’t often hear complicated, jazz influenced chordal tones: 7ths (though sometimes major 7ths!), flat 5ths, let alone 9ths, 11ths, etc. I do pretty well figuring out the triad — root, third, fifth (or rarely, 6th), but mostly don’t want those additional notes showing up in the chords, even if they are passing tones in the melody. I tend to want the harmonic structure/environment to be sparse — more of a canvas on which the melody can lay out the picture.

And it is important not to have the chordal instruments fighting each other sonically — and not a concern here because Nate and Bill play so well together, and of course they each “get me” and my pieces, too.

Guido was lovely to hear! And we got to play it twice, which was even more of a treat, since everyone was more comfortable with it the second time around. Nate said he was really enjoying how the A part and B part interacted with each other — each leading you to the other, so that he wanted to play the piece all night long. What a fun reaction to hear! Magic indeed. I do think I am trying to balance the sections when I write in a fiddle tune style, but I’m not always as successful as Guido.

Definitely this reunion music get-together was the musical highlight of my summer!