James McGowan: Transcript Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman
Podcast, Video and Show notes links
James McGowan:
Because there's basically no one who's tone deaf, but there's some people who learned incorrectly or told, or people who have told them throughout their lives that they can't sing and they shouldn't sing. Just mouth the words. The most detrimental thing you can actually do to a person - it's basically abusive. to tell someone that they can't sing. It's core to our essence as human beings, but I think there's a way out of that. And with this technique or one of many techniques, people can reclaim their voice.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of the diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. This week's featured guest is James McGowan, a solo and collaborative pianist at home in jazz, classical, and improvised musics. The 14 member James McGowan Ensemble has just released its Jazz-Classical Fusion album, Reaching Out the companion to the previous album, Reaching In. And this episode features some of the music from this beautiful project as well as from James's Jazz Fusion group, Modasaurus. Besides James's work as a composer and pianist, he's also a Theory Professor, a choral director, and has served as Carleton University Chair in Teaching Innovation and developing experiences in the arts on campus and in the community. James is so passionate about sharing his love of music, and I trust you'll find this an uplifting conversation.
I also wanted to let you know that besides my role as a podcaster, I'm a violinist, and last year I founded an improvising chamber group with James, Collected Strands and we'll soon be releasing a special podcast episode to celebrate the release of our upcoming album. Finally, before we get into the episode, did you know that this podcast is in Season Four and that I send out a weekly email newsletter where you can get access to Sneak Peeks of upcoming guests and be inspired by highlights from the archive? Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links to have a listen to James McGowan's music, to look at well over a hundred episodes of this podcast you may have missed, and the support link to buy this independent podcast a coffee. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com.
Hey James, thanks so much for joining me here today.
James McGowan:
Hi, it's a pleasure to be here.
Leah Roseman:
You do so many interesting projects, and we're going to touch on a lot of the really great roles you play in music. And I was just thinking where do we want to start? But I always like to start with some music earlier in the episode so people know a little bit about what you're about. And I was thinking it might be nice with Modasaurus 4K album, if you could speak a little bit to that project. Maybe we could have a clip from Chaconne and Fugue because it kind of marries your classical and jazz background a bit.
James McGowan:
For sure. So yeah, I'm pleased to be sharing some of this music. The 4K album is the second album off of this quartet, the Modasaurus Quartet, which is a jazz fusion. But as you pointed out, it was starting to head towards classical influences in their jazz fusion as well. The 4K album, it is all about linking jazz with some other style. So there's Celtic Jazz, there's Middle Eastern Jazz, there's Rock jazz, there's Latin jazz, and then the one you're talking about is the classical jazz fusion where I'm actually exploring connecting classical paradigms with jazz, with rock as well. And I'm basically using the commonly used tradition of the chaconne, so a repeating bassline that's basically a ground bass is theme and variations. And then in the tradition of baroque music, there's often a fugue at the end of some prelude or Tocatta, or in this case, a Chaconne. And that fugu uses the same ground bass but incorporates contrapuntal writing in there. And as much as possible try to integrate the jazz feel with percussion and drums as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just thinking, I mean, funk uses repeating bass riffs, right? As opposed to jazz.
James McGowan:
I mean, the crossover is always messy. There's always blurred lines, but yeah, absolutely, for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, we're going to get into music theory and what that means because I'm really fascinated to ask you about your dissertation, actually. But yeah, we'll play a clip from this, and I'll be pointing people to the link right in the description of this podcast. They can go right to your albums and check them out from the acclaimed album, 4K by Modasaurus. This is an excerpt from Chaconne and Fugue. All the music featured on this episode is linked to James McGowan's website to all the places to stream and buy the albums. (music)
James McGowan:
Sure. Great.
Leah Roseman:
And I thought another interesting one that you mentioned, the Irish, that you have Crazy Ceilidh on this album too, unless there's another track you'd like to share a little bit of.
James McGowan:
Well, first of all, thank you for saying Crazy Ceilidh, because I've done interviews and people usually mangle the word Ceilidh, but of course that's the spelling. People say Kaludihee, or whatever they say. But yeah, that's the great piece. Those are the two longest tracks on the album. I think that's, but if you're playing excerpts, that's also good too. So Crazy Ceilidh is a neat piece because it taps into my not close connection to my Celtic roots, but I do have Celtic connections there, and I love Celtic music. I just don't typically play it that often because of the opportunities, just haven't gone that direction. But I love Celtic music and coming up with tunes, actually, there's a quote from a Schumann piece in that Crazy Ceilidh piece as well. But I think the main thing is just to create this wonderful space, and there's this free form, improvisation happens three times that allows the three melodic instruments to take the lead, the bass, the piano, and the guitar in the opposite order, and then interacting with drums comes out of solo. So it is a vehicle to explore the combination of Celtic and jazz styles, but also for the idea of connection through improvisation and see where that leads. And every time we record it and play it, it's completely different. But I just loved how this particular set of three free improvs worked out.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's great. So we'll just be playing part of this, but people need to check out the whole track
James McGowan:
For sure.
Leah Roseman:
This next musical selection is an excerpt from Crazy Ceilidh, also from 4K by Modasaurus.(music)
I was thinking, so Modasaurus, you're playing actually with people who were previously students of yours.
James McGowan:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And I was thinking about your role as a mentor and how jazz is ever evolving, and maybe we could jump over to your role as an educator and in terms of music being a viable life, a viable career, what are your thoughts on that, especially coming out of the pandemic?
James McGowan:
Sure. Well, the pandemic, I think it was a societal historical aberration. It could be repeated, but let's assume it's not because there could be any kind of catastrophe that disrupts things. I truly believe that music is a persistent and pervasive art form that will last and endure. The social aspect of music is so critical as well. So the music making with friends, with colleagues in community is also critically important. So yeah, that's just the caveat for the frame of talking about the idea that music is a viable career choice. The arts are, I mean, if you look at any kind of media, television, movies, you walk down the street, you hear you're always hearing music, you're always seeing art. And so whether that is commercially created elsewhere or whether it's created locally is still viable. My own experience with my students, I've seen some great successes of people going on to film music as a career, some going on to become a Blues artist and winning a Juno and others making it big locally and sustaining a career through teaching and performance. And some go into the public school system teaching. Some people like to create aspects of their lives, including music performance or some aspect of it, and then have other jobs. And so they piece together a career that includes some music, and frankly, that's great too. These are all participants of a community of like-minded artistic creatives.
Leah Roseman:
You have a new album coming out, which is a companion to a previous album, and I think I'll let you just talk about it in your own words
James McGowan:
For sure. Thank you, Leah. So we've got Reaching In is the album I released last year, but it really was part of a larger project. And the second part is coming out, it's called Reaching Out. So this whole project is a large, I guess you would call it, is a music dramatical work. It's almost like an opera, but without the singing. It's all instrumental music with some spoken word. And over the two albums, there's six parts and each of these six parts tell part of the story, like scenes to a larger work while reaching out. The companion piece is coming out end of May, and I encourage you to have a listen to see the classical jazz fusion that takes place along with the spoken word. There's a spoken word program notes that helps to connect the story with the musical ideas that allow the music to have a voice in this journey of the protagonist of the story. So I do hope people will check it out.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it'll be linked directly in the description.
James McGowan:
Fantastic. This is a big album. There's 17 tracks on it, actually, it's so big it can't fit on a CD, so I have to, there's a digital version that will have everything and a CD will be slightly smaller, but it is a really big story to tell. And there are some pieces I think would be really great if you could share. Reaching In is the first part of this, finding yourself isolated, alone, and struggling with yourself. So you find your way to accept yourself and you try to reach out that you should be reaching out to your community, but also know that you're not quite ready. And so when you go into Reaching Out, you've just gone through the self-help process of reaching in and then the reaching out journey. It's like, well, you should be ready to go. It should be easy just to engage with society, but it's not. It really isn't. And a lot of this is autobiographical, or at least semi autobiographical, and that I struggle with my own thoughts and my own previous experiences and ideas of self-worth. And the second half deals with loss. So trying to find your sense of community and then losing family member or losing someone who is a really important artistic figure or whoever. And then the loss that comes from it, the sense of emptiness and anger.
And so I expressed that with music, and I also expressed the process that because you've gone through this reaching in and accepted yourself, you have the tools now to accept the situation you've been given, and then you can move on and then accept the people in the world that you do have. And it's never a hundred percent conclusion to the story. There's a happy, perfect ending, but there is this sense that you are who you are, accept that and know that you're part of this community. So that's a long introduction. The music itself deals with that by, I think one of some of the emotional high points is when, well, I wrote a piece as a tribute to Chick Corea back in 2017 or something like that, and Modasaurus played that quite a bit, and I don't think it was quite ready to record. And then I started thinking about, whoa, I can expand it for a larger ensemble with strings and horns. And then pandemic happened and Chick died.
He had cancer. He was giving these wonderful weekly presentations, and then a couple weeks later, then he stopped them and then he passed away. And that affected a lot of us. He was a mentor. He didn't know me, of course, he really helped me define how you could create your own musical statement through jazz, Latin styles with Classical because he was an amazing Classical musician, and then merge the two. So I incorporate that into this album, and I call this lightheartedly Corean Poultry because Chick Chick poultry, Korean Corea, so Corean poultry as a way of acknowledging this wonderful creative
Leah Roseman:
From Reaching Out, this is an excerpt from Corean Poultry, tribute to Chick Corea. (Music)
James McGowan:
I've got a piece called Blue Lament, which is based upon a Miles Davis tune called Blue and Green, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. And then I change it completely and then have this to be a whole journey of dealing with the screaming of the loss.
Leah Roseman:
From Reaching Out, this is an excerpt from Blue Lament.
James McGowan:
And then I have this other piece called Elegy, which is again, a tribute to a death of an individual, but it's more of a calming thing, and it is basically a tribute and elegiac statement. So there's the middle section of this album is this recognition of this great figure, the loss and acceptance of that loss. And that to me is the emotional high point of this album
Leah Roseman:
From Reaching Out, this is Elegy. (music)
Maybe we could go back a little bit. You have a lot of education. I was looking at your bio and you went to some really well-known universities. I was kind of curious your experience at North Texas, because I've interviewed two other people who went there. J.Walter Hawkes and Kait Dunton. It's quite a, well-known jazz school, right?
James McGowan:
So I went to University of North Texas for a number of reasons, but the primary reason was to study composition. So I guess I will say that my experience at North Texas, despite it being a very good school, was not a really positive experience because of my personal situation, I guess my comfort living in Texas as part of it, as someone who has lived their whole life in Toronto at that point, and then moving to Dallas area, it wasn't a good fit. I started to study composition at the doctorate level, and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't connect with my instructor, my prof and composition, and I was feeling some awkwardness in terms of fitting in socially. And I do think that people need to find their people, find where they feel most comfortable living. But I ended up finding a really fascinating music theory professor there, actually a couple of them.
The main one though is John Kovac, who I believe I've always viewed as a mentor. He now teaches at University of Rochester Eastman School of Music, but he was at North Texas at the time, and he inspired me to consider music theory as a creative practice and not just as a technical and learning, oh, that's a 1 6 4 chord. To me, that's all irrelevant, that's all just tools to get at the purpose and the joy, the excitement, the meaning of the music. And it helped me decode some of the magic that was taking place. And so magic still happens in music, but now I just know how it's done more. And so yeah, so I ended up switching to music theory and I decided to do a second master's so I could leave North Texas with a positive experience with a degree in hand and not as a failure of dropping out of the composition program.
I mean, I'm still a composer, but I just didn't want to do the academic composition that I was being exposed to. I wanted to look at it creatively and explore a combination of classical and jazz and things like that. And music theory allowed me an avenue to dig deep into the music and also the opportunity to share that as an educator to those who are studying music and thinking music theory as just a chore, and show them that music theory is this secret key to unlock the magic of the music, the world that they're experiencing.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leahroseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peaks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. And you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now back to the episode.
So your doctorate thesis that you did in music theory, you talked about music as dialects. Can you speak to that a little bit?
James McGowan:
Take a step back by saying, I was always interested in the things I was being taught as a music theory student, the set theory in 12 tone theory for 20th century and 21st century music. At that point, it was in the 20th century, so just 20th century music, but also Schenkerian analysis for tonal music. And those seemed to be the only two major fields that was accepted. And so I learned these techniques and so to understand tonal music that all music is underpinning, all tonal music are these contrapuntal frameworks and these reductive techniques. And so I started applying music theory to jazz, which I loved as well. And then I started to see some other people doing it, and I didn't think they got it right. I kept seeing people saying, well, we can just get rid of these notes because they're not central to how the music goes.
And to me like, no, those are really important notes. Those are critical to understanding the harmonic framework and the melodic structures. So I dug deep into some other ways of thinking about music and realizing that whereas composed music is like literature or poetry, jazz is a little bit more like conversation because it's so improvised. It's not just jazz, but all improvised traditions. It's more like conversation. And in a conversation we do different, I started thinking about the analogy of linguistics, not just linguistics, but primarily social linguistics. So the idea that people are speaking the same language but pronouncing words slightly differently or using some slightly different structures in how they use semantics and grammar. And beyond that, there's also intentional shifting, which we call style shifting in social linguistics. So if I'm hanging out with my tough friends, I'm going to be saying more slang or maybe some more swear words, but if my grandmother, I'm going to be using more polite words and how I frame these things.
And so people style shift all the time depending on the context that they're in. So if we think of the language as music metaphor, which has been done considerably explored over years, over decades, centuries. But then if we think about that metaphor, I guess as more of an analogy, then we really see that jazz musicians can play in a blue style and create these sounds that have these music theory talk here, the flat sevens and the blue notes, and the sharp five sharp fours and flat fives. But that doesn't make any sense when the same jazz musician is playing a modern jazz gig or early thirties swing tune. So I feel like there is intentional shifting, style shifting and style shifting in a social and linguistic way to get from one way of expressing and piece of music to another. And that formed the framework, the conceptual framework for understanding, well, what are these dialects? And so I fleshed them out in one possible manifestation of musical dialects came about through the use of harmony and harmonic practice, and that's where my dissertation went.
Leah Roseman:
So it didn't tie in so much with classical western theory, it was more about jazz.
James McGowan:
Well, so that's a great point. So I'm looking at jazz, that's because of the conversational language, but I actually dug deep into especially 19th century German music theory because I use that as a foundation. So I looked at early 20th century work with Schenker, the late 19th century with Hugo Reman and early 20th century with Hugo Reman and a couple others, Ernst Kurtz and earlier with Rameau and a few other theorists, and just started piecing together that there are ways of thinking about music that do resonate well with jazz because I think we all know that those who are playing jazz standards know that these are based upon show tunes, which are written by composers of the first half of the 20th century who were trained in classical music. And so they're using these structures, but changing the rules a little bit. So I think a lot of this music is fundamentally based upon some western music structures, a classical music structures, but the verticality and the concept of improvisation and a few other significant differences mean that you can't just apply these classical music theories to jazz, and then you need to have a different framework.
And so that's where I brought in the dialect to talk about the differences in basically the use of melodic and extra tertiary type of harmonic structures, the extensions or tensions. So yeah, it's basically saying it does apply to classical music, but because of the language of it being as a conversational language, I am extending, selecting carefully, curating basically the western music theory, the classical music theory, and looking at temporal things that are based upon African studies and studies of the early 20th century blues and sort of creating a structure that then models the social linguistic studies of dialects in style shifting.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was wondering about African music, which is such a huge continent. Did a lot of the slaves come from Western Africa? Is that my understanding, correct?
James McGowan:
Right. So yeah, western Africa, and of course there's so many different cultures within Africa and specifically western Africa. So when you're looking at some music, some music is Monophonic, other music is very rich harmonically. Some music is very much based upon overtone series. And some of those structures are really fascinating because they find themselves transported through lots of different reasons into arranging techniques and seeing how our structures are wider at the bottom and closer in the middle and then top. And also thinking about different structures that are not necessarily functionally driven, that comes from classical music tradition, but still rich in the Harmonic series. So that comes from some Western African music traditions.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. There's two things I want to clarify. So what were you just talking about in terms of the structure and wider at the bottom? What do you mean by that?
James McGowan:
Sure. I'm not sure how well this sounds, but we've got the overtone series, and as you get closer, as you're at the bottom is an octave than a fifth and a fourth, then a third, then a major third and minor third, and it gets progressively smaller. So it is commonly understood among jazz arrangers that chords that a big band might play, or frankly, this actually works for a lot of different musics, but there's wider intervals in the lower segments are the chord structure. So a big band chord might be something like this. You got very rich stuff from the top, very dense stuff, but the foundational chord part of the chord is maybe like a pure overtone fifth root, third at the bottom.
Leah Roseman:
That is very interesting in terms of the overtone series that our harmony comes from, it comes from nature, it comes from physics. It's always fascinating to me,
James McGowan:
And we've been thinking about this, we as a human culture and writing it down since the ancient Greeks. So it is just very much been part of our understanding of how music works from the beginning of music that we started thinking about it. And the first music theorists are now 2,500 years ago. And so we've been thinking about this music for a very, very long time. But yeah, overtone series, foundationally plays a role in how that works. And this is not something that comes from strictly from West Africa, but also it comes from European music traditions, but from different perspectives using physics, the sound of a psychoacoustics perspective, we all hear this because this is a naturally occurring feature of sound.
Leah Roseman:
So I admit that when I was a music student, I found theory extremely dry, and maybe it was the way it was taught, and I regret now that I didn't get more into it and get more out of it. And I should probably go back and take some theory courses from you, but how do you bring things to life for your students?
James McGowan:
I have to say, I will say I was very good at music theory, but I thought, this is stupid. This is a waste of time. Why do we, it is just so boring. So all through my undergrad experience, no offense to some teachers who were very musical people, at University of Toronto, I never saw the value of it except for maybe applying to some specialized performance studies and some compositional ideas. But when it came right down to it, when I started to see the mystery unfold in larger works with my first mentor with John Kovac at North Texas, and I started saying, wow, it is far more than the people who had taught me. And it's, it's a simple thing that if you learn music theory from someone who's not really engaged in music theory, then you know how to do not very engaged music theory. And those are the people who are teaching more people to not like music theory. And it's just a self-perpetuating cycle, one that I really work hard to break.
I just think when composers who just want to compose music, but they're, oh, you have to teach music theory and say, oh, begrudgingly doing it, that's not helping anybody. I think the people who should be teaching music theory are those who actually see the connection between how music works from a composition and creative perspective and relating to the performance perspective or even appreciating it as his own puzzles, a mystery unto itself. But there is a magic in how things are used to create music and a lot of people, and one more thing about disliking music theory. Most people think of music theory as learning the chords and scales and key because that's what you do for the first little bit, but frankly, that's just spelling, that's just the basis of grammar. What does a subject do? What does a predicate do? The language in music metaphor, when you're just teaching how grammar works or vocabulary in spelling music theory or the study of any language is going to be boring. It becomes more interesting when you create with it where you write poetry and then you look to see how a sentence can be creative and expressed meaning at the same time as having interesting twists at the end. And then it becomes a motif that's used elsewhere in the creative work. You can't stop at the fundamentals because then you'll think that music theory is just boring grammar and spelling and yeah, it's way more than that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just thinking about music history too. The way we were taught was unfortunately just kind of regurgitating a textbook. I don't remember even doing a research project on one musician.
Let's switch a little bit to, you mentioned poetry, and I know you're a poet and some of your spoken word poetry is featured in the Reaching In album, which we're going to be featuring. I know that you've brought together some beautiful intersection of different arts, not only in this album the way it was put together, but some of the live performances as well. Do you want to speak to that?
James McGowan:
Well, I'll first say that as a poet, I've been writing poetry all my life. I'm not really trained in this way. So I guess the self-conscious side of me says I'm a hack. But I believe that everybody can express themselves through language, especially if you take the care to think about what the words mean and how they can go together. And I did get a wonderful mentoring from Jamaal Amir Akbari, who was a former Ottawa poet laureate for English in Ottawa, I think, out of the world of him. And he gave me some tips to think about. So I really felt more comfortable sharing these ideas. And I want to link that to the music too, because I started thinking like, well, should there be poetry? And I basically said, no, there shouldn't be poetry, but let me write some creative program notes so that people would know what's happening with the music.
Leah Roseman:
And in your live performance, at least one of them, you went beyond that as well.
James McGowan:
Well, I did have painter and did some live painting with that. So we have a plan of what was going to be covered and did just a fantastic job. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
No, I'd missed your first performance because there was this power outage. I remember. And then I had heard in an interview you did last year that you were going to have a sign language interpreter who also did dance. So I don't know if that came to fruition or not.
James McGowan:
It has not. That's what I was saying, that was our plan, but ended up there, there's just way too much to put together with the three main elements that I was saying. That is one of my goals to have movement and sign language interpretation to help again, tell the story through visual and aural, but increase the visual aspect of the performance.
Leah Roseman:
So Reaching In your child, Cal is featured in a couple of tracks, and I thought it might be really nice to share Acceptance.
James McGowan:
Sure, that'd be great. Acceptance is a piece that a lot of people have commented that they really relate to. It brings forward this subtle Latin feel to it, but the cello interacting with bass and guitar, drums from percussion side and the piano creates this interesting texture. And my goal with this piece, which I wrote, the last piece I wrote for the album is because I listened to the album and I'm like, yeah, yeah, but what does this all mean? Where is this going? And I realized that there was one major piece, and that is after you go through the process of reaching in and tackling the pain and struggles that you go through and you seeking inner peace, but you can't fully get there, there has to be a point at which you just accept yourself warts and all for who you are. And I thought the music itself would be able to capture that in a very subtle and hopefully graceful way. And that's where this piece came about
Leah Roseman:
From Reaching In, this is Acceptance.(music)
Beautiful. Well, thanks for sharing that. I have to say, as a mom, I'm jealous that you get to perform and improvise with your child because I think most musicians, we want to be able to, music is such a, I think it's our best language as humans. And to be able to have that with your kids, it's pretty special.
James McGowan:
I am very lucky. Both my children, one played violin, one played cello, and they took lessons and of course they just went through, but I wanted to make sure that music was fun. So we created a group and I made arrangements of Star Wars music and ABBA music and Beatles and Taylor Swift and a couple other more contemporary artists, and they just love playing that. And then as soon as we get it up and we start playing it, but six months later, they're past that level, so they don't want to play it again anymore. So I have to keep writing new arrangements. So I guess I want to keep the joy of it. I tried getting improvisation, but some interest in that. But when they're playing some pieces and not all that's written out, they have to use their ears. So I'm just encourage 'em to do that.
And my oldest has decided to pursue writing more as a creative outlet and didn't want to continue with violin. And that's great. That's wonderful. My youngest wanted to keep with the cello and Cal's doing some wonderful things. And it is not because I'm saying you should go into music. I'm just saying music is a great career, but you have to be passionate about it. I caution people don't go into music unless this really calls you. Then you can and you can make a really good statement out of it. And I can't hold this kid back. I mean, even if what I went through with my dad saying, I don't know if you should go into music. And then I proved him wrong by making a living in music. And he said, okay, I guess you should go into music. And so I didn't want Cal to go through that, but I also want caution them just make the right choice. And so they're in grade 11 at the moment and are passionate about pursuing it. So that's great. And I'm all for that. But yeah, the joy of creating music with your family is there, but you have to meet them where they're at.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's great. Thinking. I've spoken to a few, I don't know if it's a gendered thing, but a few of the men I've interviewed had dads that didn't want them going into music because of exactly that concern. How did that play out when you were a teenager?
James McGowan:
I guess I loved my dad, but there was a lot of tension between us. Absolutely a lot of tension. And so I don't want to speak too badly about him because he died 20 years ago, but he was someone who pushed me and tried to get me to be tougher, and I wanted to be more of an expressive, creative, and sensitive type of guy. And I guess the desire to create was never stop doing it. It was always like, I just be concerned about you choosing as a career. So it wasn't a serious roadblock. I just had to show that I was by working hard and making some money and doing quite well. Even before I got to university, I was doing a lot of accompanying church music work, even getting some commissions for composition at that point. And then he was like, oh, I guess you can make a living.
And I guess an older generation just needed to be who wasn't in the arts at all, who knew nothing about the field of music or creative pursuits in the arts, had to be convinced that this was a viable career path. And I think we still have that problem today. A lot of parents are saying, don't go into the arts. It's just not a viable career path. I mean, you asked that question earlier, not from a perspective, from of ignorance, which some parents just don't know anything about music, but it is something that we all talk about, can we make a living in music? And I think we can. I just think that we should be a little bit more open-minded as society to pursuing it and supporting it in our children as much as possible.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I've been teaching violin for about 30 years, maybe more than that, and I've never had a student actually go into music, but I don't push it because I figure if there's other things they want to do. Like you said, you have to have that drive and maybe not be so interested in other things. You have to have that kind of commitment, would you say?
James McGowan:
Yeah, and frankly, going into music is, I don't think it's directly related to the experiences one gets in lessons, what the goal of lessons is to make them a better person in many ways. But there's a lot of people who graduate from a music program, an undergraduate, they don't pursue a career in music, but they've got transferable skills in expressing themselves work and create collaboratively with others, critical thinking, communication skills, all those things you get from music and absolutely kids who do music thrive in other fields. If they don't choose music, they thrive. So absolutely, there should never be pressure to go into music. Just these are great experiences, plus they're learning about music and they can appreciate that for the rest of their lives.
Leah Roseman:
I ran across something in another interview that I found really touched me if you'd be willing to speak to when you were 13, and there was this theft in your home and how that affected you and how music helped.
James McGowan:
Yes. Okay. So I think a big theme in my life, and I think it might resonate with others, is that music is more than just an art form to express yourself. It actually is an essence a more part of who you are. It's one of the more powerful and direct ways to express your feelings. And the music I've written recently and Reaching In and Reaching Out is trying to capture that, but also with improvisation. And I learned improvisation very young, well, because I didn't have lessons. There was a piano in the house I just started playing. And so I just wanted to play a lot. And so I learned enough to, I would just be able to play. And then when there was a theft, it quite possibly, I know who the person was, but we never found out. The person knew exactly where to go.
They broke into our house and went down to my room where I had a keyboard. I had all the sound equipment, which, because again, although my parents were not encouraging me to choose a career, they were supporting me in my craft at the time. So there was a loss there, and I lost a lot of electronic music equipment. So the way I dealt with that was I sit down on the piano and after a while I wasn't talking to anybody. I just closed right up. And I worked my way to the piano and just started playing and just played. I don't remember what I played now, but it's pretty powerful, I'm sure. And sorrowful and angry, the joy of music as an outlet, as a way to express yourself, as a way to go right into the heart and not have to worry about the meanings of words is really powerful, but only if you know the magic of the codes of the language. So if you know enough chords and some rhythmic ideas and some melodic patterns, then you just tap into that and you can create in the moment. It is truly a powerful way. And I mentioned this as a teenager, but it is been saving grace for me throughout my life just to be able to play.
Leah Roseman:
And you've done some work like you taught a course or two through Discovery University through the mission in Ottawa. Can you speak to that experience and what you were teaching?
James McGowan:
Sure. I did one course, it was in the fall of 2023, wonderful experience. And I thank Jesse Stewart for making the connections because he had previously taught in Discovery University, and I basically incorporated some of the thoughts I have of how music can be created, but how music works, again, it's that joy of discovery in pop music, in jazz or in classical. And I think these are three art forms that are often viewed as so different, and yet there's some underlying structures that exist in all three of them. And there are things that I can speak to. So the Discovery University course was about listening to some music that they like and me introducing some music that they might not have heard. And of course in the Discovery University students, they're so diverse. Some play classical piano at a very high level, and others are jazz guitarists or rock guitarists. Others don't know anything about music. Might be more interested in the poetic side of things. But yes,
Leah Roseman:
Just to clarify, so these courses are provided free of charge to people who wouldn't be otherwise be able to afford this
James McGowan:
Discovery University is provided free of charge for people who are clients or people affiliated with Ottawa Mission,
Leah Roseman:
Which supports people experiencing homelessness and different kinds of,
James McGowan:
Some of these, the patrons or some of the people who take part in Discovery University have experienced homelessness and are sort of on their way out, but maybe struggling with mental health issues, certainly struggle with other factors. But yeah, their life isn't, it has challenges and homelessness, it can be one of them. But my particular group had different challenges that each of them are experiencing, but the commitment that they bring in to have conversations, share what they know, and then have me show them tips, techniques so that they can write their own music so that they can express themselves was a wonderful sharing for everybody. I think we all got something out of that experience.
Leah Roseman:
That's really great. Another volunteer thing you did, you're on the board of the Lotus Music Center?
James McGowan:
Yeah, the Lotus Center for Special Music Education for Children, but also adults, but mostly children with exceptionalities. There's a lot of clients there who are on the autism spectrum, but there's also some other issues, hearing impairment or A DHD or whatever the case may be. I think I share the same values of a lot of people who work with children who don't have the same opportunities. And I believe that through all my conversations with the founder and executive director, Erin Parks, who believes that music should be for everyone, and learning music is something that is not just, it should be a right that everybody should have, but we need to have the right tools to teach that and make sure that these kids get the right experience. And Lotus Center is all about four pillars, which I totally believe in, which is why I want to be part of the board to support this. It is research driven. The research helps to develop professional development for educators. Then those educators can be teaching the students with exceptionalities in a one-to-one basis. But the fourth pillar is also outreach. So there's some connections that we have with Chamberfest with the NAC, and I know NACO has been involved with some of our work as well.
And so yeah, just wonderful things. And I do volunteer my time and I'm not part of the teaching team there, but I bring my own experiences to help shape the direction of the organization and support Erin's and others' works.
Leah Roseman:
That's great. In your role at Carleton, I have say you've been awarded many teaching awards for exceptional teaching. One of the things I noticed you teach are musicianship courses. What is a musicianship course? Is it like ear training with appreciation? What is that?
James McGowan:
Yeah, great question. So music appreciation to me is all courses should be music appreciation. So that's a foundational thing is ear training. When I learned ear training in university, it was like, okay, so this is dictation. I'm going to play something. You write it down, and that's part of what we do because essentially part of it. But if it stops there, we're missing so many opportunities to connect the dots of what we're doing and why it's relevant to the students or potentially relevant to the students. So I believe that ideation, so that to me is the process of you hearing something and you sort of know what that is. And so you process it. That understanding of what you're hearing can be written in, you write it out in transcription and dictation. You can share those thoughts through maybe keyboard playing. I hear this chord.
You play this chord, it's chord progression or through your voice singing, and there's other ways of doing it too. But the three main pillars are the ear training, the keyboard portion, and the singing portion. And if at all possible related to your own instrument, or it could be voice, but if you're a violinist, if you are a guitarist or a trombonist, any of these ways can be another form for you to bring this out. But yeah, with the air training, it's not just about playing piano, it's about playing examples from the pop music literature. For example, let's listen to some harmonic paradigms or chord schemas, the 6 4 1 15 core progression, and let's learn that in this context of this piece and this piece and all this. Hear it in a choral style and make the connections that this chord progression is used everywhere. And just get familiar with how it's used in the wild and not just in the laboratory, played in a piano in the classroom, and demonstrate these concepts through your voice.
Now, no one's going to say that everyone in the class can sing equally. Absolutely not. But some are professional or pre-professional singers and some have never sung in their lives. So what can you do? So it's not about how well you sing, it's about can you sing? Can you hear that major third? And can you sing that major third? And then beyond that, can you sing this more complicated melody? And then if you can't sing in tune, just work really hard and learn the solfege or number systems that shows your understanding how these notes fit into a total scheme. Then even if that's not your instrument, you're never going to sing again. At least you demonstrating through your voice that you understand the concepts. And I'm not marking you on how well you sing, but it does show that ideation realized through your voice or through keyboard or through writing it down the answers on the paper.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just thinking about community music, James. And when people have trouble pitch matching, this has come up with a couple of my guests, I believe it was Kavisha Mazzella who was talking about working in one of the community choirs she worked with, and the people that couldn't pitch match that she would have them hold a note and other people would meet them there. And that was kind of the magic that brought them what that felt like to actually sing the same as someone. So they would start where they could, which I think is so cool.
James McGowan:
That's a great idea. That's a wonderful technique. And I fully support that. I've also had a lot of experience working in church music, so directing choirs and working with amateur singers. Some of them are stronger than others, and sometimes I give vocal coaching, so I know a little bit how the voice works and try not to take on too much if they take on too much. I want to give that to the specialist who invoca pedagogy. But I've taken voice lessons, I've taken vocal pedagogy, and I apply that to my classes right now. So I offer tutorials in this class of oral training that I teach in this tutorial. Students can come and get lessons if they are behind in their vocal production. And so your example of someone singing a note and can't match so other people match them. Absolutely. Great. I actually have a very similar situation with one of my students right now who sometimes can but can't always match the pitch.
So I play this note and they're like a tone away, a tone flat almost consistently. And can you try and raise it? Yeah, sing louder but not sing higher. And so just they don't know how it feels in their body to sing those notes. And although they can hear the difference when I play the notes on the piano or when other people sing, it sounds different when you sing in your head. So it's just retraining after years and years of hearing how one hears themself in their head to hearing it differently because I record what they do and then I play it back for them so they can hear what you're doing. And I say, okay, so you're lower. So since you don't know how to get there, I don't see that exactly, but try using, so they learn how to go up and down with the voice.
And then, okay, so you're here. So it's just going to go up and down. Okay, stop. See ?You got it. So there's this idea of empowering someone who can't do it, and instead of giving up in them, you can't match pitch, go away. No, here are the techniques. Just use your voice to explore it. And then when they get there, there's praise galore because you've got it and they hear it. Basically, there's no one who's tone deaf. But there's some people who learned incorrectly or told, or people who have told them throughout their lives that they can't sing and they shouldn't sing. Just mouth the words. The most detrimental thing you can actually do to a person, it's basically abusive. To tell someone that they can't sing is core to our essence as human beings. But I think there's a way out of that. And with this technique or one of many techniques, people can reclaim their voice.
Leah Roseman:
Now, I believe you started studying voice and choir directing when you had an injury and you couldn't play piano for a while.
James McGowan:
So something I care about deeply about is the voice, because I was an awkward teenager and I didn't want to sing. I was terrible singing. I felt very insecure, and I started learning how to do it, but I started accompany some people who were singing. Then I started working with this wonderful voice teacher in Toronto, and I was doing accompanying for a lot of her studio, and I was doing so many other things in piano, and I got stressed out and I started playing with bad technique. So I injured myself because I didn't know my body and I didn't know my limits. And then I kept pushing myself, and I really did a number on my arm. So it took a long time for that soft tissue damage to heal. But after about a year and a half, I was fully recovered. During that time, I went through depression, but I also realized I've got to do something.
So I switched to music education away from composition. I learned all sorts of music education techniques temporarily when I was a music ed major. And also I studied studying voice because I didn't have my arms. So studying voice with the same teacher I was accompanying her students with. And it really empowered me to learn what was going on. Now I have terrible allergies actually. So singing sometimes of the year is very frustrating. So I still do sing, but I've never decided to pursue it that seriously because of the hassles of dealing with allergies. But at the same time, I believe it's helped me become a better choral music educator and music theory educator, musicianship, and a greater awareness of what your body can handle and the stresses it takes when you play instruments. And I know that performance injury is very common in string instruments as well.
And I know many violinists who have struggled with that, and you could probably speak better to that than I can. But I do know that these are things that help us have better empathy towards students and in the music world in general. And so I'm more aware of that when I see a pianist playing with tension that you can tell with the way their shoulders are or their hand placement. I truly want to help them. And I have some great educators who helped me rebuild my technique with much stronger than it ever was. And I try to use those same techniques. And again, it opened up many doors because it allowed me to think about music differently and think about people and those who practice arts and especially music differently. And so I guess I wouldn't change that experience, but man, it was hard at the time.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I mean, your sense of identity is so understandable. And I was thinking about how Reaching In that album, this concept album, came out of a place of true isolation at the beginning of the pandemic where you really, I think a lot of us were really getting to know ourselves better, but then what next? What now? It brought forth a lot of beautiful creative output, right?
James McGowan:
Yeah. Being alone with your thoughts is a really scary thing. I was lucky in the pandemic. I isolated with family, but I know other people didn't have that luxury, I guess. But to me, the reaching in album, returning to that topic, because it's very important because when we're talking about isolation, that was systemic through basically all the world. But I do think that we all experience loneliness or this sense of being alone at many other times. It's just that we all have it at the same time. So the idea of the Reaching In came about because maybe that as a catalyst, but not necessarily something that was a real emotional driver behind the sense of isolation. I've had isolation, I've had loneliness before, and that was very profound those times when I was lonely. And that's where I tapped into more than the pandemic. But again, the pandemic was a catalyst for me to think about this as a universal scourge, I guess, across humanity and reaching out to a larger community allows us to be stronger as a collective.
Leah Roseman:
So in your role as an educator at Carleton University, you've mentored other musicians on community music. We touched a little bit on community music. What does that mentoring look like?
James McGowan:
Mentoring and community music is very different for different people because people's different experiences, what they want to contribute in community is going to be fundamentally different from person to person. The biggest experience I've had, community music was working in churches for 30 years or whatever, because I started when I was 16, I guess, and I found a sense of community, but I also realized that at a young age that the music I was playing could actually help people, not just in a church service, make them feel good or whatever, but that sense of community. In the choir, I learned how to work with the choir and I realized the value that here I was a 16-year-old and I had an 80-year-old, I had two 80 year olds in my choir, and I had a 30 5-year-old. And the sense that these octogenarians wanted to keep singing with me was a real testament to their sense of belonging.
So community music to me, first and foremost, is helping people in various communities get this sense of connection is achieved through music. Choral music, I'm a big fan of because it allows everyone to sing together. It's the epitome of community building. But we also see this in working with elderly who maybe have dementia, and we've seen this, if you're studying, if anyone reads stories on this, you know that if you've got Alzheimer's, for example, music might be the only thing that reaches them. Because music uses the whole, pretty much the whole brain. It activates everything. So when some of the brain isn't working properly, there's other parts that are, and that music is bringing those people out. So I know that when I've been mentoring people, especially in the class of community music that I taught, there are some people who are interested in working with people in those scenarios, and I encourage them to talk.
We talk through some strategies and they all come up with a plan, what they would incorporate in their own work, and they all put for their portfolio of what other people have done and what they could do. But it could be anything from that to working with children, to working with children with special needs, to working with people in prisons who people have done that, done some great work in that area. I've done some work with people struggling with mental health. When I was living in the States, I did, I was part of a program there and I thought music, again, the way to reach people and bring people together. So yeah, I mean, I could answer that question a number of different ways, but community music is to be one of the most important things that we as musicians can do. And mentoring people who want to pursue that is something that we should, as much as possible, give and support those who want to take on the hard work of that kind of leadership.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I mean at its core, it's about creation, it's about songwriting, it's about improvising, it's about doing things collaboratively, right?
James McGowan:
It really is. And the improvisation is important because even if you're not improvising over a chord progression, maybe you're improvising how to reach someone, you're improvising the narrative strategies you're using, you're improvising your lesson plan. Improvisation in the form of thinking on your feet is foundational to community music. You never know what you're going to encounter. So if you feel comfortable with your materials, then you can draw upon different strategies that come your way to help the situation the best.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I mean, you definitely are a mentor to me in terms of improvisation. And some listeners may know we have a group together collected strands, and we'll be doing a special podcast episode to highlight our upcoming album. But I just want to say I am very grateful to you to have that opportunity to play and create with you. It's been amazing.
James McGowan:
Well, a lot of credit to you, Leah, for bringing people together and sharing your own vast experiences and your talents, and then finding that place. I like to think of Venn diagrams quite a bit, and I don't know how well this comes across in this call, but we've got the zoom or we've got the video to show that there's this point of intersection, and when you bring three people or four people what we have, you got to find that point of intersection for all of us. And if we're not spending a lot of time in that space, it's a challenge for us to step out of our comfort zone to go in that space. And it's amazing how our particular group, in a way, I've seen this in many groups that I played in that circle of all the intersecting vendor diagrams expands. And it's really a wonderful thing to feel it not just to even see it, but just to feel it expand and like, oh, I want to go there and you try something new. I want to go there. And it's a really neat thing to create together and do it together. And improvisation is not about playing perfectly, it's about playing empathetically and deep listening and creating something that's special and unique for that moment. And that is what's something we can achieve. And I know that I admire any improviser who gets together with other people and creates something that pushes oneself out of your comfort zone, but to create something that is special for that moment.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks for this today. It's been really great actually getting to know you better and talking about the many, many things you do in music.
James McGowan:
Thank you. It's absolutely a joy to be in this community, and I see you as a pillar of this community, and I really think that your work, this program has touched a lot of lives who've listened to it, but also the community of people that you have created all over the world is really fascinating. We're all connected through you, but also through our love of music. And I think that's something that's admirable. And so thank you for this.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
