Marc van Vugt and The Curious Badger Transcript
Episode Podcast, Video and shownotes
Marc van Vugt:
Actually, I've done that all of my career in teaching. I've always used my material as an example, but also material of others, of course. But I did not leave out my material because that's who I am. And I always think that it's very important for a student to realize that the teacher they're working with is also just a human being with a preference and a sense of taste and a sense of musicality and an opinion that it's also an opinion. It's not the opinion, which is very different from the way a lot of us were raised in the past where the teacher was the master, sort of almost on a, how do you say, on a pedestal. I don't believe in that sort of system is not the way I do it.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast presents in-depth conversations and great music with a fascinating diversity of guests. This week's episode is a special Catch-Up episode with the Dutch guitarist and composer Marc van Vugt, who was previously featured in Season Two with his album The Lonely Coyote. And if you missed that first episode with Marc, it's linked directly to this one. Today, you'll hear a selection of highlights from his new solo guitar album, The Curious Badger. We caught up on some of Marc's recent projects, and he also shared some wonderful insights into his creative process and different ways for independent musicians to find audiences for their music. In the description of this episode, you'll find the link to his website and my episode with his partner, the wonderful jazz singer, Ineke Vandoorn. Like all my episodes, this is available on your favorite podcast player as a video on my YouTube, and I've linked all this together on my website, leah roseman.com with a transcript. Please consider buying me a coffee to support this independent podcast. I really do need the help of my listeners to keep this going, and you can do that through PayPal on my support site linked in the description now to the episode.
Hi, Marc, thanks for joining me here today, and I must say for the second time, it's wonderful to have you back on the show.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, hi, Leah. Thank you for having me back. It's great to see you again.
Leah Roseman:
In a few minutes, we'll talk a little bit about your tour to Canada. I can't believe you came to my country and didn't come to my city. I misssed you!
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, you're totally right.
Leah Roseman:
But let's talk about your new album first, which is just released and just wonderful solo acoustic guitar album. And just like your first one, nine guitars, right?
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, right. Actually, it's even one more, I think. Okay. I think we're eight on the other one, and it's nine now or 10 now. I don't know. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So The Curious Badger, did you have this album kind of planned out when you were writing the music for the first one? Was it like overflow?
Marc van Vugt:
Well, yes and no. I did record a lot of material, and I knew it was more than just one album. I considered releasing a double album, but then in general, that doesn't work really well. I mean, especially solo guitar, a double album, it's just too much. So I decided on one album, and when I did, I did choose the music for the first album, having in mind that I would release the second one, but I also knew that it wasn't enough. So yes, it was planned out a little bit, but I had to do some work.
Leah Roseman:
And a lot of this writing happened during, I think it was when we had lockdowns, there weren't so many performance opportunities,
Marc van Vugt:
And also a little bit before and later. I mean, it's been a mixture. Some of the material I revisited because I had written it for large ensembles or something, and I sort of rearranged it to work for solo guitar. Yeah. But for this album, I recorded, after I had recorded a whole bunch for the first album, I had about nine piece extra or eight. And then about four months ago, I think I recorded three more pieces that are now extra also on The Curious Badger. Yeah. Yeah. So those are more recent.
Leah Roseman:
Now I was remembering, I think we spoke about a year and a half ago, and maybe some of the listeners haven't heard that episode, so it will be linked directly to this one as well as the episode I did with your wife, the singer, Ineke Vandoorn. Yes. Now, a lot of songwriting you do is with her, and I'm curious, did she suggest some of the titles for these songs?
Marc van Vugt:
Let's see. Yeah. There are some songs that have originally the lyrics of Ineke on it, and the title is the title of the song with the lyrics. Yes. So this one has, for instance, if I just recall De Man zonder Hoed which means A Man Without a Hat, and that's actually the title of the Dutch lyrics that go with the song. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I was wondering about that one because it's a novel by that name. And anyway,
Marc van Vugt:
Oh, is there, who was aware of that? Okay.
Leah Roseman:
I believe so. Okay. And I have to say, one of my very favorite tunes on your album is Liefde. Is that how we say it?
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah. You say that really well, which means love.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. And is it about Ineke? Is it
Marc van Vugt:
The lyrics are more about love in general and love for your partner and her reflections on that? Yes and no. Actually, you have to ask her because she wrote the lyrics. There's a second set of lyrics to it, which is in Portuguese, and then it's called Amar, and that is written by Fernando Lamar, Portuguese fado singer, who lives in the Netherlands for, and actually, he's just closing his career. He's a bit older.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that fado tradition's quite interesting. I've just sort of recently found out about it.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So do you want to speak to Liefde? Did what was like to set that for solo guitar coming from the song originally?
Marc van Vugt:
Well, actually, the way I wrote that song, it originally had that large intro, which it also has now, which is sort of almost free, interpreted a version of the song before it starts getting into the rhythm. And that was originally there also as an instrumental. It's on our album Crossing Canada. I think it's the last song there too, actually. That's a coincidence, which I just realized because it's the last song also on Curious Badger . And so yeah, it came very natural to adapt it, to play it purely instrumentally on guitar. It was already so close to that in the version we played as a duo. So yeah, that was an easy one for me.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, actually, Marc, it might be really interesting for people, I love that album Crossing Canada. If we could just play a short clip of both, then people could hear.
Marc van Vugt:
Okay, you could do that. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
You are about to hear two short excerpts from the song Liefde. The first is from Marc's album, The Curious Badger, and the second is with Ineke Vandoorn singing her Dutch lyrics from their album Crossing Canada.(music)
Now, for this episode today, you recorded a video, which is wonderful because a lot of people do watch the version of this podcast on YouTube, and I'll alert those people listening to the audio. They can just go over to YouTube and see you play. Yep.
Marc van Vugt:
Back to the Market Square.
Leah Roseman:
That's right. There's got to be a story behind this song. Yeah,
Marc van Vugt:
There's a story behind it. I was inspired for that song in two ways. First of all, it's inspired by a series in the tradition called the 10 Zen Songs, or the 10, they sometimes call it the 10 Tales of the Ox. It actually tells the story about the Zen student looking for the ox, and he searches the worlds to find the ox. In the end, he finds the ox, rides the ox and takes the ox along, which is more of a sort of, how do you say that is sort of a symbolic way of talking about the search for enlightenment. And the ox stands for enlightenment. At the very end of the story, the searcher finds himself back at the market square, which almost says after all that searching for enlightenment, in the very end, we're still living this life, whatever you say, and that search might continue by for the next stage and the next stage and the next stage.
It's a never ending story. That's sort of what the 10 Stories of the Ox are about. So, Back to the Market Square is the very last stage where the searcher finds himself in real life because life still is as it is. So that's what it's based upon. It also has sort of a reference to a couple of other songs that I wrote in the past that were inspired by a book by Philip Sudo, I think his name is. It's called Zen Guitar. And he has a sort of similar story where he talks about you start off with a white belt and the more you practice and the more he makes a reference to martial arts, the more you practice the dirtier your belt becomes. And then one day you find that you have a black belt. So suddenly you find out that you sort of got the hang of what life is about, but then you continue because it never stops and you continue, and then the black belt wears out and becomes white again. And then you are the beginner again, which is sort of the telling the story. Where in Zen we always say, you're always a beginner, always a beginner. You're always a beginner. Same thing, back to the market square, black belts to white belts, and then you start again, white belt, black belt. So yeah, long story for just one song.
Leah Roseman:
Now you're about to hear Back to the Market Square, which Marc performed especially for this podcast episode and this composition is also on The Curious Badger album. If you're listening to the audio podcast version of this episode, you should know that Marc performed this - it's a video, so you can see it on YouTube if you're curious to see him play. And I always put timestamps in the video, so you can jump right to that spot if you want to see that. (music)
Well, thanks so much for sharing this video. It's wonderful that you made that.
Marc van Vugt:
You're welcome.
Leah Roseman:
Back to the Market Square. Which guitar are you playing on?
Marc van Vugt:
Oh yeah, the guitar is my baritone guitar. Lowden baritone guitar it's a large scale. It's tuned down to be lowest. It's lowest note on my guitar, and it's a big guitar, physically, just the guitar itself, the dimensions, but also the strings are incredibly heavy. It's almost, you go down almost like on a bass guitar, and it's a challenging instrument, but it's beautiful. It's got such a sono sound and beautiful resonance. I love baritone guitars because in contrast to regular steel string guitars, they're much more even in sound, it's almost as if the instrument, it's almost like a cello, which has a sound that just fluently moves through the register. Whereas in the regular guitar, the higher strings are very often very different from the lower strings in timbre. So I love that. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So I was going to ask you about the tune black belt, if there was a martial arts connection. Have you studied martial arts yourself?
Marc van Vugt:
Yes, I did, but that's a long time ago. I started doing judo when I was a kid. I think I was seven or something. And I did that for about five years. And then later on when I started studying on my 18, I moved to Utrecht, and there I started studying karate. I did that for I think two years. Then I got so much problems with my back that I had to stop. But yeah, it's been a part of my life, but it's from a past, from long ago. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So Marc, I was curious to ask you, in fact, I discussed this with Ineke in her interview about the need for self-advocacy. A lot of musicians end up being their own agents, their own PR agents, which you fulfill that role. So how are you getting your music out there? What advice do you have?
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, okay. Yes, we do a lot ourselves. In fact, we have our own production company. That's also how we approach it. So tours, CDs, everything is approached from a perspective that we run a business. We have a publishing company that publishes our music. We have a record company that, a record label that does all our music, and we have a production part that produces our projects, whether it's projects here in Europe or whether it's the tours that we do abroad. Yeah, we do it all ourselves because in the Netherlands, it has proven very difficult to find somebody to do it for you. We're in such a niche that you almost have to do it yourself. There are a few managers that do this work professionally for Dutch jazz musicians, but there are like three or four of them, and you have to be a pretty famous name in the Netherlands already before it becomes interesting enough for them to work for you, because it all about money of, so that's one perspective.
The other is we've always been doing it ourselves. Ever since we were 18 or something, we started out with our first bands, and the only thing we knew was to go out ourselves to promote us. And we've been doing that ever since. And also, the good thing about it was that we also always felt very connected to not only our music, but also getting these concerts, getting these contacts, getting to know these people. It's a very, it's all about human beings. It's people and people want to connect. And getting a concert is also something that somebody wants to give to you, the opportunities to come there. So there's a person behind there that's sort of involved in that. And I think the direct connection with the artist is appreciated. More specifically, in our sort of business, if you would do theater concerts in the Netherlands, it would be different because theaters in general like to speak with an impresario or an agent. But for clubs, it's a different thing. Festivals is somewhere in between, in my experience. So it grew out of something that started naturally and it stayed that way just because it works the best. It's a lot of work.
But on the other hand, it's also a lot of satisfaction if you succeed. Nevertheless, if somebody would take over a part of our promotional work, I still would be glad if they would do that, just because it's so much work. There's always work that has to be done. It never stops. So what we do is we tend to be very precise in how we create a promotional material, very precise in how we write our letters that we send out and what is included. And we also do a lot of research on who do we approach and why. So in general, I know who I'm approaching, and sometimes I make a mistake. I asked you to write a review where you were actually involved with your podcast series. So that was not the best research from my part, but somehow we got connected and you gave me the opportunity to be in your podcast series.
And I think in general, this happens that way. So I mean, if you approach a venue, they want to know who you are. They don't want to hear huge stories, but they want to know that there's also another person there that's very eager to do something, and you approach them and you propose it. And in publicity, with publicity, we do the same kind of thing. If we want to get reviews, we send out press releases and we try to research really well who to send it to. And I learned a lot of this by watching Willem Breuker.Willem Breuker was a Dutch composer saxophone player. He used to have his group Willem Breuker Collective. He was one of the people that was a big part of the free jazz music scene in Europe. They toured worldwide. They were one of the most famous European groups touring the world.
And I watched very closely how they did it. And one day I spoke his manager at that time, and she was doing, I invited her for a seminar at the school where I was teaching, and the first thing she said to my students was, you have to do your homework. And they all were looking like, okay, now there's somebody telling me that I have to do something and my homework, did I miss something? And I looked at her and I suddenly realized immediately, this is what I've been doing all of my life. Do your homework. Find somebody that does the same as you do. Find out how they did it and do the same. And that's what I did exactly that I tracked down where Willem Breuker used to play. I tracked down how he would release his music. And there were some others of course, as well.
But you got to just do your research, do your homework, find out where your music might be appreciated. And so for instance, we did a tour in Canada. Well, there's a lot of venues in Canada, but some of them are not suited for our music, so don't go there and don't send them the material because you're only wasting their time. And there are several that might be perfect for your music, but you are one of a hundred that is trying to approach them. So you got to be persistent, but also considerate in the sense that they don't have all the time to look at everyone and every, so yeah, every proposal. So you've got to stand out and yeah, it's a job. It's quite a lot of work. For press, it's slightly different in the sense that you also have to research who does reviews that might work for your music and only approach those because sometimes you're just wasting people's time if you send them something that will not be possible for them to review.
And on the other hand, you have to also be persistent because they get, you send out an email and they get a hundred emails, so why would they read yours? If you send it the second time, it might be the one that they read. If you send it the third time, they will, very often they will say, thank you for reminding me. I've seen it, but I forgot to follow up, or I didn't have time. But now I do. And that's sort of how it works. So it's a pretty big job to do this. Well, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks for sharing your wealth of experience about this.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, you're welcome.
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 peeks 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.
I wanted to ask you some of the tunes like Dancing in the Wind, you have interesting layering, so if you're performing them live, it's different than the studio version.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, that's one I still have to think about, about performing that live. We do perform it live, and when we play as a duo, it wasn't originally written to be sung. There's a vocal version on an older album, Four Brothers, I think. And on Uncovered, there's a recording with voice. One is in Dutch, the other one is in English. This time I thought, wow, how would it be to do with guitar? The way I look at my guitar albums is a bit like I've always been writing for larger ensembles as a part of what I do as a composer. And what I wanted with these acoustic guitar albums is to strip away all that, strip away the possibility of writing for a large ensemble, strip away to write for a choir or whatever, just bring it back to the essence. But with this song, I thought, well, okay, I'm doing that, but how would it be if I start to approach the whole thing as a guitar orchestra? And that's what I did with Dancing in the Wind, and I started using all the guitars, and so to perform that live will be a chore. Sure. But it'll be fun to think about how I'm going to solve this. I'm not sure yet. So yeah, we'll see.
Leah Roseman:
Next is a short excerpt from Dancing In the Wind from The Curious Badger album. Please check the link in the description to Mark's website to listen to and buy the whole album.(music)
I am curious, Marc, when you were recording these, did you sometimes start on one instrument and just realize it's not working? I should switch to a completely different instrument.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah. In recording, not really, but in preparing, yes. Yeah. Some songs just don't work on a certain instrument in a certain key. I mean, it's more about key, I think, but it's also about sound, a piece like Back to the Market Square, which it's a ballad. It's a very, how do you say that? It's sings. It needs to sing, it needs to breathe. And then the baritone is great, but if you play a faster piece like Dancing in the Wind, it wouldn't work on the baritone guitar. I think that's the only guitar I didn't use of my guitars on Dancing in the Wind, because the sound is too slow. It becomes a bass, and then you better use a bass, something like that. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Now, I saw a beautiful photo you have of your collection of guitars. Maybe it's on your website. I was hoping we could include that as a gallery of images in the show notes for the episode.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, sure. Sure. No problem. Yeah, I'll see that you get them. Yep.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so people listening to the podcast, you can just go over and click on that, and then you can see these beautiful guitars.
Marc van Vugt:
Okay. Yep.
Leah Roseman:
The Coyote and the Badger, that tune. It seems like you're using some field recordings in there.
Marc van Vugt:
That's all done with percussion and sounds that I made, and on the guitars, and I've got this prepared harp that I also use in The Lonely Coyote. I use it now just for little snippets of sounds, and it's all sounds that I made, flute sounds, I think. Yeah, all these little sounds. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
It's really evocative.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, I can imagine that. And then I played it on, I think, three guitars. I think it's my baritone guitar, my 12 string guitar, and my nylon string guitar. And the tune was originally written for cello, viola and baritone guitar, and we did record it, but it was never released until now. So that's still somewhere that recording. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
This next excerpt is from Marc's composition, The Coyote and the Badger from The Curious Badger album.(music)
In your description of your influences, you mentioned, well-known guitarists, Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny, Egberto Gismonti and I'd heard of all of those guys, but Bill Connors who played with Chick Corea , I wasn't familiar with him,
Marc van Vugt:
But you found out that he played with Chick Corea. Yeah. It's good that you did. Yeah. He's an interesting guitar player. He was part of the first edition of Return to Forever. Return to Forever is like Chick Corea's most famous starting band in which they sort of started fusion jazz, fusion, jazz rock kind of music. It's an icon in our history. And Bill Connors was part of that, an important part. One day he decided to sort of switch and he switched to classical guitar, and he taught himself to be a classical guitarist. And it's not like what many of us do is they switch to using the classical guitar. No, he really dove into the whole style, the whole repertoire, and then decided to create his own music out of that. And he actually only made one album Swimming With a Hole in My Body.
Leah Roseman:
Interesting title.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, strange title. It's a beautiful album. It's amazing. It's up there with the music of Ralph Towner, who's also somebody who really approached the guitar from a classical perspective and then brought it into improvised and jazz music.
Leah Roseman:
Your title track, The Curious Badger. I was curious, was this coming from your, I think you were in Arizona staying with friends?
Marc van Vugt:
That was in California when I talked about The Lonely Coyote that was inspired by a residency I did with France just outside of San Diego. Well, the Curious Batch, that's a nice story. When I was looking for a picture for the album, the Lonely Coyote, I found the picture that I used on the album, found it online. I could never find who made the picture, and I never found the picture again. But nevertheless, it represented so much the feeling that I had for the album, that I wanted to use it. So if the owner ever hears this, they can call me and I'll make my excuse for using that album without having found them. Nevertheless, I discovered later on that there's a whole thing about how coyotes hunt. They sometimes hunt together with badgers. They do this because they sort of compliment each other. The badger doesn't have a real good sight, but it smells really has a good smell, and it is more flexible than a coyote.
So they help each other out. When they start hunting for, do you call 'em groundhogs or something in English? Well, they hunt for those, and they do that together. And the funny thing was that the picture that I used had on the side, not only The Lonely Coyote, but on the other side of the picture, which is not on the album, is a badger. And I only found out that later. So I thought, well, that would be a nice connection for a new album. Then I was looking for a picture for a badger, and then I ran into these beautiful pictures made by Cat Urbigkit. She's an American photographer, and she did a whole series on badgers and coyotes. And I found her and I wrote a letter and I said, wow, this would fit my album perfectly. And specifically this picture, because it has a bachelor in front and in the back there's the coyote.
And I thought, that's such a beautiful image for this album. It tells there's still that Lonely Coyote, the other album in the back and what happened there. And there's this connection of the two. And it's almost like the way I deal with my guitars, because just like the coyote and the badger that have a packed together to hunt, I feel the same with me and my guitars when I'm out there and try to make these recordings. And it's a pact that I have with my guitars. They speak to me, they tell me something, and I'll try and see what that ends up with. So yeah,
Leah Roseman:
This is the title Track, The Curious Badger.(music)
Beautiful. Now, if we could talk about your tour to Canada. I'm curious, did you have favorite venues?
Marc van Vugt:
Oh, wow. That's a very dangerous question to answer. No, I mean, there's a lot of great venues. I mean, I think most places where we played, I really love playing. There are some that are maybe more special just because of what happens. There's one in Saskatoon, the Basement, if I can call one that is so special because every time we are there, we feel so welcome. It's got great acoustics, incredible sound. It's just always amazing. We feel very welcome. But we had an incredible experience in on the Sunshine Coast, and Gibson at High Beam Dreams, incredible place where they just received us with a welcome that's just unparalleled. But there's so many places. Frankie's in Vancouver, the Rex in Toronto, you name it, there's the Jazz Room in Waterloo. So, so many places, it's just too many to have one preference, but they all have something special that they have that makes it so interesting for us. And in general, for us, playing in Canada is also special because I think people have a more connection to jazz music and maybe specifically to our music. They respond incredibly. And I mean, this was the third sort of large tour that we did Cross Canada. We did one in 15, one in 18, and last November, but it was maybe our sixth or seventh tour that we, in Canada, we've done the festivals and those tours as well. But these are club tours in November, mostly clubs, theaters, and schools that we played. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And you were in the Maritimes, had you been to that region before?
Marc van Vugt:
No, that was the first time. It's somehow a bit out of the usual route you would take if you go to Canada as European, because I mean, there's not so many venues in the Maritimes, and it's, well, people need to know you before you get invited, and it takes a bit more time to create your contacts there. And this time we had quite some invitations enough to get there and to do this on our tour. So yeah, that was special to do that. Yeah, we have been in Halifax a long, long time ago, somewhere at the beginning of the 2000 or something to do one concert at a festival there, but we had never toured there. It's beautiful to be there. It's a beautiful area, a beautiful part of Canada. But then again, which part isn't, you have a beautiful country in general, I think, but the Maritimes are special because it's a mild climate. And we also went to PEI which is just gorgeous. It's beautiful. Prince Edward Island is just, it's a beautiful place. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
In my interview with Matt Zimbel, I don't know if you heard that one. He talked about how his parents, they'd seen PEI in the summer, and when they decided to move from New York in the middle of the winter, they didn't recognize it. I've heard that kind of story before.
Marc van Vugt:
Oh, wow.
Leah Roseman:
But you were there in November, so I guess it was still
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, it was cold and windy. I remember that. We did a trip, we stayed in an Airbnb, and we had one day off or so, and then our host told us, well, you should go to the northeast part and all the way up. And we did that, but it was so windy that it was almost impossible to get out of the car. I mean, it would almost ruin your car in the end. We went all the way up, and that is a place where two Gulf streams meet each other, and it's really bizarre to be, at that point, it's really pointy piece of land that goes into the sea, and you see the flood coming in from one side, and you see the flood coming in from the other side, and that with the wind so strong that you were almost blown away. That was just an incredible experience. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Yeah. I've been there. I traveled in PEI. Three summers we went as a family and spent quite a bit of time there.
Marc van Vugt:
It's beautiful.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Different in August though. Very. And you mentioned you played in schools, I believe you did some workshops with students?
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, we did master classes and workshops at schools, universities, colleges in Toronto. We did a masterclass workshop at U of T university of Toronto, and when we traveled through the Rockies, we were in Nelson. We were teaching at Selkirk College. Incredible place there in the Rockies with all these students in that little town. It's beautiful. And then in Capilano University in Vancouver and things like that, and some workshops that were organized by people privately, all these kind of things
Leah Roseman:
So you and Ineke together?
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, it's mostly focused on what we do together. And there was one or two of them were completely focused on voice. Ineke has written her book on Pop and Jazz singing, and that is always sort of a reason for people to invite her, of course, and talk about what she's doing. So yeah, we did that too.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I'll be linking her episode directly to this in case anyone missed it. And I was curious, also, the Soundmakers Project is something recent with Christine Duncan that you were also involved with? Do you want to speak
Marc van Vugt:
To that? Well, we just finished that project a week ago. It was like a two week project that we did. It was called The Soundmakers Project. About five years ago, we had a chance to visit one of Christine Duncan's Element Choir rehearsals. Christine is an incredible singer, composer, and a conductor from Toronto. And she has this system where she has a certain amount of signs and symbols that she uses gestures that are used to conduct a group of people to create sounds and soundscapes. So they're not singers per se. They could be anyone that wants to make sound, and they create textures. And yeah, it's beautiful what you can do with the human voice. And we visited a workshop five years ago and we thought, oh, we got to find a way to see if we can do this in combination with the music of our duo.
And so finally we found the possibilities to invite her. And then she came last January, and we did in three cities, we did two nights of rehearsals and then one night a concert, and then we went to the next city, and we did that in three cities. And then end here in the theater. We had the final concert where we had almost all of the people that participated in the Soundmakers Choir on stage. So it was 35 participated, but at the concert we had a choir of about 50 or 55 soundmakers working with us as a duo. So there was a stage with Christine conducting them, and we did a whole concert that we also recorded on video and audio. So it'll be released one day, we hope if it's, but we'll still have to see because I haven't been able to check the recordings yet. So that's what we did. And then we even did it at the ArtEZ University for the Arts. We worked two days with students there and did the same kind of project with them there. So there was a whole thing that we did.
Leah Roseman:
What kind of feedback have you got from the participants?
Marc van Vugt:
Oh, they were all amazed that they could participate in a project like that. First of all, a lot of them were not singers, so they don't think that they could be on stage with a professional group. Second, in the beginning, they didn't realize that it was possible to create a professional project because it met all standards of a professional project. They never realized that they could have participated in that. And also that with two rehearsals, you can do that. So it is sort of a magical thing, but she has this way of working with them, very disciplined, very focused, and she gets them to improvise sounds, and it sounds amazing. Yeah, really good.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. You write so much music, Marc. I'm kind of curious about your routine in terms of your creative,
Marc van Vugt:
The process in composing?
Leah Roseman:
Your studio practice. In terms of where, I think we talked about this a little bit the first time we spoke where improvisation meets composition. I mean, obviously sometimes you're busy doing all these other things, but when you have time to just be creative, do you have a sort of go-to?
Marc van Vugt:
It depends on what I'm working on. I mean, at this moment, I'm so involved in all these projects that composing is sort of on the back burner a little bit, although I still have all these ideas, and I will sort of somehow be sure that I don't forget. I either write them down or record them or something like that. Well, I've got different routines. A regular routine is that I always find time to work with my instrument, because that's just sort of nature of the beast. I need to be connected with music and with my instrument every day. So whatever happens, I will always pick up a guitar and play, and I mostly will try to improvise and get my fingers moving. And that'll always create a flow of ideas as well. And that is also the basis from, well, the starting point for a lot of my composing is there's an idea that either pops up in my head or comes up while I'm playing and improvising, and I'm like, oh, okay, that will be great.
I'll start working on that. If I've got not these kind of projects at hand, then I'll sort of sit down and start writing music. It's just sitting down and think about, okay, what am I going to write about? And I'll come up with an idea and I'll start fooling around with it. A lot of composing for me starts with playing playfully with the material or the ideas that I created. I always call this the note gathering phase. It's like you're gathering all these notes, phrases, motives, and you're just fooling around with it to see what options they give. And then I'll put that down somewhere. Sometimes I'll leave it there. Sometimes I'll start working with it straight away. It's a bit like as if I would be a ceramic artist working with clay. And you take that piece of clay and you start fooling around with it, and suddenly you see, oh, okay, that looks nice.
I can continue with that. Or you can think that looks nice, but next time I'll try to do that. But then seriously, something like that. And that's very often how I work. I work from small fragments and by fooling around, I create more material. If I have a motive and I start playing with that motive, you can invert it, you can, things like that. All these techniques that you have to fool around with material. I'll write down every option I like. And at a certain moment I see that I have a whole pile of ideas, either written down, recorded, or I write a lot with pencil just on the staff paper.
And then I'll start fooling around with that material because then it's very often a pile of motives, a pile of ideas. And the other thing I do is start to think very early in sense of structure and form, because structure and form are sometimes more important than the material. If you have an idea of what it should be about, the material will write itself. So sometimes I'll connect it to a story and what will it be about and how long will it be? I mean, it's different if you write a piece of three minutes or a piece of 10 minutes. And if I have a 10 minute span, then what's going to happen in 10 minutes? 10 minutes is too long for a simple song. So it brings its own questions, its own demands, and I always start fooling around with it. I make drawings, drawings that sort of represent the timeframe and what's going to happen. Oh, there will be a climax maybe on two third, let's just for sake of this explanation, so if I have a climax on two third, then I have to get there. So it'll always dictate what's going to come. Well, maybe too complicated to tell this way, but this is how I work sort of in a way intuitively, but at the same time, very structured, always keeping an eye on what's the purpose, what's the structure, what is it? What will be the form? Yeah, things like that.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious, in your work with your students, do you bring some of your own process in? If you're working on something, might you show an example?
Marc van Vugt:
Oh, yeah. I do that a lot actually. I've done that all of my career in teaching. I've always used my material as an example, but also material of others, of course. But I did not leave out my material because that's who I am. And I always think that it's very important for a student to realize that the teacher they're working with is also just a human being with a preference and a sense of taste and a sense of musicality and an opinion, and that it's also an opinion. It's not the opinion, which is very different from the way a lot of us were raised in the past, where sort of the teacher was the master and sort of almost on, how do you say it, on a pedestal. I don't believe in that sort of system is not the way I do it. And I think it's very important for them to see where you come from if they realize what your background is in the kind of music you play and make, they can better understand what you say about their music.
And also that it's very relative. It's my opinion tomorrow there might be another opinion, and they have to find their own way in that. So yeah, I do that. I'm very aware that a lot of my colleagues don't do that, and they do that with the same conviction of that it's the best because they think they should not do that. Some of them told me that they thought they were sort of putting themselves on front, and I don't think that that is a problem. I always loved hearing what my own teachers did. It's something that a lot of young students nowadays do that less. But when I was studying in the past, I would go to concerts of my teachers, as many as I could, just to hear how they were playing their music or how their music was played. And I would go along with my composition teachers to their rehearsals with orchestras, and just also to get to know that whole world.
So I think it's important. It's part of the chances I got is when they took me along to those orchestras, I just recall the very first time that I was taken by my guitar teacher to his job, he was the guitar player of the Dutch Metropole Orchestra. And so that was his regular job, and he would take me along and he would show me how he said, go and sit next to me. And then they were rehearsing, and then he said, watch. And then I would watch what he was doing. I would see how he would change the parts into something that was, in his opinion, a better guitar part. That was interesting for me, both as a guitar player and as a composer. I saw, well, okay, so apparently this happens to your music when an orchestra is dealing with it, because sometimes the players know it better than you as a composer. So that was a lesson. And also that way I was introduced to, at that moment, the conductor of the Metropole Orchestra, Rogier van Otterloo.
We talked about him, I think in our last conversation. He was one of my teachers later on, so I got to know him that way. So yeah, I think it's important. I think it's, we are in a field of work. This sort of art is important. Where somebody used the word, the ecosystem of music, A big part of our ecosystem is that we have a system where experienced musicians are taking the position of a teacher and bringing along the nuances and taking them along in their world just to experience how it is and to make sure that they can see how it is, how things work. And I think it's good. Yeah. It also changes the questions that you will ask as a student. Suddenly you just realize exactly what's happening and what you should be asking. I think it's important. Yeah. But you know that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And as you know, I always talk about mentorship with my guests is so important.
Marc van Vugt:
Yeah, I know that.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for this today, Marc.
Marc van Vugt:
Yes, well, thank you. It's really a pleasure to talk to you again, and thank you for inviting me in your beautiful series. It's incredible. How many interviews is this?
Leah Roseman:
I've kind of lost count. Think I have over a hundred episodes in terms of individuals it's over 100 too.
Marc van Vugt:
Incredible what you do. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please 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 the series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
