|
Peggy Lee / Dylan van der Schyff
by Greg Buium
Reprinted with permission from Down Beat Magazine, July
2001
Photo by Bruce van der Schyff
 While
their relationship may have nurtured and emboldened their art, drummer
Dylan van der Schyff and cellist Peggy Lee, husband and wife, are
far more interested in talking about Vancouver's creative music
community.
"That's the nice thing about this little scene
— we've been playing with the same group of people for 10 years
now," van der Schyff says. "We had to develop our common language."
Since moving to the West Coast in the early 1990s,
van der Schyff and Lee have been at the hub of Vancouver's widely
admired improvised music scene — though their backgrounds are
an invigorating combination of the eclectic and the peripatetic.
Born in Johannesburg but raised in Canada, van der Schyff, 30, assimilated
a range of sources early on: pop music, classical percussion (briefly
studying at universities in Victoria and Montreal) and modern jazz.
While Lee, 38, was always drawn to pop and folk music, the Toronto-born
cellist took a classical musician's standard route: University of
Toronto, private study in Atlanta, Banff Winter Workshops.
In Vancouver, however, they quickly fell in with
musicians immune to ideology, creating settings where collective
improvisation grew. Indeed, they met on the bandstand — Ron
Samworth's Talking Pictures was one of their first gigs together.
And guitarist Tony Wilson was certainly an important influence —
listen to his sextet's Lowest Note or The Peggy Lee Band,
both on Spool.
"I only now realize how much I fed off the people
I played with," van der Schyff observes. "You start realizing the
kind of things that a person does, not only technically but what
they bring to the music even just from an emotional space. Everyone's
playing has a different spin because of who they are."
In Lee's case, her formal training needed to be
reassessed. "It wasn't just a matter of the kinds of sounds, it
was more breaking out of being a reader and trying to get the flow
happening — of hearing and playing at the same time. Some of
the techniques that I use in written music, and especially in new
music, I'll use as an improviser, but sometimes I also like to play
with a nice tone. Or in tune. I'm not trying to discard my whole
training, but just get the other part of my brain working as far
as thinking creatively at that moment."
These Are Our Shoes (Spool), the couple's
1998 duo recording, might best characterize their art — in
miniature. Fifteen short cello and drum improvisations, Shoes
is surprisingly accessible: These are musicians who interact with
frightening immediacy, without inhibition. van der Schyff, the master
manipulator, tests and expands common notions of timbre, moving
easily from grooves to propulsive swing. Lee weaves discord, melody
and sheer sonic weight into seemingly innocuous spaces.
Alone or together, Lee and van der Schyff are
an annual treat at Vancouver's du Maurier International Jazz Festival,
where artistic director Ken Pickering routinely pairs up local musicians
with prominent guests. And its not surprising that these one-offs
often spin into ongoing projects. Last summer, van der Schyff recorded
with English saxophonist John Butcher before flying with Lee to
New York: She joined Dave Douglas' Witness at the Tonic, while he
played downstairs with bassist Mark Dresser.
"It's just opened up our community," Lee says,
referring to the festival. "It's given people the opportunity to
see what's happening in Vancouver."
|
