THE WINSTON CHURCHILL MEMORIAL TRUST OF

AUSTRALIA

Report by Dean Stevenson – 2017 Churchill Fellow

A study of composers living on Islands, isolated cities or peninsulas.

Creative isolation with global business outcomes.

I understand that the Churchill Trust may publish this Report, either in hard copy or

on the internet or both, and consent to such publication.

I indemnify the Churchill Trust against any loss, costs or damages it may suffer

arising out of any claim or proceedings made against the Trust in respect of or

arising out of the publication of any Report submitted to the Trust and which the

Trust places on a website for access over the internet.

I also warrant that my Final Report is original and does not infringe the copyright of

any person, or contain anything which is, or the incorporation of which into the Final

Report is, actionable for defamation, a breach of any privacy law or obligation,

breach of confidence, contempt of court, passing-off or contravention of any other

private right or of any law.

Signed: Date: December 7, 2018

2

Contents

Introduction 3 Executive Summary 4 Program 6 Main Body 7 Conclusions and Recommendations 25

3

Introduction and Acknowledgements

From October through November 2018, I journeyed on 22 flights through 8 countries over 6

weeks on the most thrilling experience of my professional life. I met with Composers,

Musicians, Song Writers and so many more inspiring Artists that gave of their time and

knowledge to assist in my deeper understanding of how they worked and lived within their

practice from their beautiful, rare places.

I am so deeply grateful to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for their support and

guidance. I have truly felt held by them in every aspect of my journey. I would also like to

thank Churchill Fellow Simone Walters for her inspiration during my application process.

And finally to my partner Anya who travelled with me on this epic journey, Thank you for

keeping me fresh and being as excited about the journey as I was.

I hope you enjoy the read and discover something new of your own.

4

Executive Summary

Name: Dean Stevenson

Address: 3/7 Lower Domain Road, Queens Domain, Tasmania, 7000

Phone: +61417 320 604

Occupation: Composer and Musician

Project Description: The study of composers living on Islands, isolated cities or peninsulas. Creative isolation with global business outcomes. Travel to New Zealand, Iceland, United Kingdom, Alaska.

Highlights: Auckland, New Zealand:

• Eddie Rayner Tallinn, Estonia:

• Arvo Part Centre London, UK:

• Olafur Arnalds Concert, London Palladium Ísafjörður, Iceland:

• Mugison, singer songwriter Reykjavik, Iceland

• Ulfur Eldjarn and Jonas Sigerdsson Fairbanks, Alaska

• Attend Installation by John Luther Adams ‘The Place Where You Go To Listen’

Major lessons and Conclusions:

There were many and varied aspects to my journey that taught me more than I could have

imagined. As I live on an island and build my own music practice, I found the interaction with

fellow isolated composers and musicians to be the most refreshing experience.

Key aspects learned were about looking into the community rather than gazing out of it for

acknowledgement and the growth of a robust sense of place. This includes the celebration

of local heritage that is both old and courageously new, drawing from its people an

authenticity of purpose.

Many marketing and engagement tools were learned relative to balance and self-

preservation in a toxic music business atmosphere that mines places for ‘new exotics’,

hungry for new talent to exploit.

Dissemination:

As a composer, educator and consultant on music business, this experience has inspired my

music, and it is being written now. This music will be performed with full credit given to my

fellowship journey as its genesis. But my Churchill travel lessons are not simply restricted to

5

music, and they are far from over. From profoundly deep lessons on identity, I will reflect

back to my community in the form of mentorship, consultation, publications, performances,

lectures, role modelling, nurturing new cultural endeavours, my writing in all facets, guest

lectures and, perhaps, a re-vamped approach to university music business models. I am

building a model to establish short-series workshops for individuals or small ensembles,

specifically working on the artists own performance identity. The desperation to establish an

identity for validation by larger audiences can be a losing cause when not held by strong

values of purpose, and art can be an ephemeral purpose at the best of times.

Discussions have already begun to publish this report as an article in Island Magazine,

Tasmania.

6

Program

New Zealand, October 13 – 17

Auckland

• Discussions with Eddie Raynor

Whakatane arts Centre

• Discussions with Eric Halowacz of Whakatane Arts Centre

Estonia October 23 - 25

Tallinn

• Visit newly opened Arvo Part Centre, talk with staff and visit the library

United Kingdom October 29 - November 2

London

• Attend concert by Olafur Arnalds and ensemble

Iceland November 2 - 8

Ísafjörður

• Discussions with Mugison

Reykjavik

• Discussions with Ulfur Eldjarn and Jonas Sigurdsson

Unites States November 15 - 25

Fairbanks, Alaska

• Visit installation by John Luther Adams

7

Main Body

The snow in Ísafjörður in the Western Fjords of Iceland isn’t any whiter or rarer than

anywhere else. But from winter’s midnight to dawn, it is the intimate feature of a

drivers mind. In a backhoe loader, a shift worker scapes around the streets, metal on

bitumen, clearing the snow from roads, carparks and footpaths for the traffic the

following day. The driver works alone, effortlessly, meticulously, without pause. A

mental map of the towns drains, curbs, line markings and garden beds imprinted on

his mind like the names of family. A phenomenal thing to witness this blind man’s

world of memory from my apartment window at 3am.

It was in a snow cleared car park the following day where I waited for Mugison. An

Icelandic songwriter who calls the far north western region home. His email said to

look for a huge black van. And he wasn’t kidding. Tyres in Iceland can be the size of

bears as it is, but add a huge black van to this, and Mugison’s entry to the scene was

indeed impressive. A wave, eyebrows of recognition, and I’m in the van, driving

through the streets of Ísafjörður to the wharf area where Mugison says we’re going

for coffee. I expect a coffee shop, but he stops the van in an open area near the

water’s edge and jumps into the back of the van where tinted windows make it

mysteriously dim. Spinning some seats to face a small table, he pulls out a gas

burner and a coffee pot. It appears the van is where we’ll be drinking. And its cosy. A

heater comes alive, the atmosphere is personal, which in the tales of all that is told

over the next two hours feels right.

Mugison informs me that his family’s primary income is from his gigs. My curiosity

rises when I think of the eight hours of anxious snow blind driving it took me to get

here from Reykjavik, the capital, where I imagine most income-deriving gigs would

be held. And it’s true, they are. House prices in the Western Fjords are a quarter of

what they are in Reykjavik and tend to be bigger, allowing the flexibility of creative

spaces. So, Mugison can drive to the capital once a month, perform a few times,

sleep in his monster van and still come out in front of an artist living in Reykjavik

who, by financial necessity, needs to play every week and live in a smaller tenement.

This of course makes good fiscal sense, but I’m curious about the access to the

8

music industry in the Fjords. The vibe, contacts and proximity that a city provides in

spades, the north west region may not do to the same degree. Mugison’s answers to

most of these issues usually contained the word time. Time and place. The dominant

reason he is still making music today is through time and his disclaimer that “I work

like a turtle”.

In Reykjavik, Mugison says his musician friends are on a slope [curve] that goes

down from original music after a few short years and heads into cover bands and

other incomes “real jobs” that then consumes the output of original music. In the

West Fjords, Mugison has time. In fact it’s time that makes his city friends work

better when he brings them to the West Fjords to record in his cosy home studio, a

converted garage with more guitars on the wall than your average music shop.

“When they come here” he says, “they’re stuck, there’s nothing else for them to do!”.

The remoteness of the West Fjords however, seems an improbable location to

maintain a music career, especially when Mugison talks about audience. But he also

talks repeatedly about community and love as cornerstones to any artful endeavour.

It turns out that Ísafjörður alone, with a population of around 3000 has about 20

grand pianos throughout the town available for public use, five of those are

Steinways. The evidence of cultural artfulness is there in the weight of pianos alone.

Having an imbedded cultural bloom in such a place however doesn’t automatically

translate to a marketing model or a way of being heard outside your region. In recent

decades, Iceland has punched above its weight with internationally renowned music

acts, which as it turns out isn’t just what we non-Icelandics think. There was not a

conversation in Iceland with any musician who failed to behold Bjork and Sigur Rós

with the reverence of royalty.

9

Ísafjörður in the West Fjords of Iceland. Picture by Dean Stevenson 2018

Musicians Ulfur Eldjarn and Jónas Sigurðsson in who I met 2 days later in Reykjavik

were equally as reverential. Eldjarn had recently launched a new compositional work

which is a GPS based piece that changes as you walk around Reykjavik, adapting to

the textures of the neighbourhoods. He kindly informed me “You need 4G to get it.” It

was a soft launch, which I suspect is in the character of many local artists, showing a

modesty which can thrive in a small population, because everything you do is seen

by everyone you know. But Mugison noted paradoxically that the need to be unique

is built into the character of the place. If you stood up in the music scene looking or

sounding like Sigur Rós, he says affectionately, “we kind of have to kill you”. He says

“Sometimes people here can be too cool for school, they try to find their own thing

then they protect it”. And he’s right, the world doesn’t need another Sigur Ros, but

from an outsiders perspective, there is a hunger for more Icelandic sounds.

Ulfur Eldjarn used to be annoyed by the persistent question of Iceland’s influence on

his band Apparat Organ Quartet which included the late Icelandic composer Johann

Johannsson. “We got the question quite a lot about Icelandic nature - we kind of

10

hated the question because our band was so non-Icelandic in a way. Our influences

were Krautrock and Japanese electronic stuff”. But I wondered as he said this, that

surely the experience of listening and playing Krautrock in Iceland is a very different

one to listening and playing it in Berlin. There has to be an infusion of the character.

But is that character definable and can it be obviously characterized as Icelandic in a

blind test? One line of thinking, suggests Eldjarn, is that due to Iceland’s very recent

history of extreme poverty, access to modern western instruments is really only a

factor of the 20th century. What’s fascinating is we’re witnessing Iceland develop its

musical identity.

I met Úlfur Eldjárn in Café Mokka, just off the main street of Reykjavik that holds

dearly to its poets past. The décor is original 1950s and there’s no WIFI. Eldjárn tells

me it’s one of the last strong holds of the city’s art culture. I sense that when Café

Mokka goes, Reykjavik culture turns a corner. If it hasn’t already. Just a few blocks

downtown are a thrust of new developments that block the view of the mountain for

many locals. In this new building is a H&M store and other global retail chains “We

could be anywhere in the world” says Eldjárn in an unenthusiastic tone. So when,

shortly after he noted that “because of the small population you can still feel like

you’re the first”, I did feel a pang of sadness about how long that claim can stand. If

H&M are down the road, then surely the rest of the world’s chain stores will follow.

This could either strengthen the national ear towards its uniqueness or dilute it to be

like other locations of H&M. I am not claiming H&M are global perpetrators of a

cultural homogenization, just that the store wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t a

increasing rate of commerce, tourism and a need to connect people together in a

way that functions the same regardless of borders. So when Eldjárn continues “…for

example you could feel like the first female composer [in Iceland] to specialize in

something that someone hasn’t done 100 times”, I truly hope this holds for a long

while to come.

Despite growing commercial enterprise in Iceland, Jónas Sigurðsson, who I met 2

hours later for fish soup in a restaurant across the street from Café Mokka, delighted

that “It’s impossible to make a living in music in Iceland!” For Jonas, who also works

as an IT programmer, that keeps the music honest and avoids the trappings of

money, staying closer to culture. Supporting Mugison’s statement about knowing

11

everyone and having your ‘thing’. Due to the size of the society, Jónas says “It’s hard

to play a role here, other than yourself. If you wear new glasses and rock star hair,

then go to the supermarket, you meet your grandmother! I think this is something

that all musicians deal with – they are really playing themselves”. That can help

distillate uniqueness here as the success of one band doesn’t really create 30 more

bands with that same sound.

From an outside perspective, the Icelandic brand is strong. The community,

portrayed in marketing as small and robust, appears to be authentic. But the idea

that Iceland has a signature sound is met with friction by all that I spoke with. Yes, all

agree that the landscape - tundra, mountains, silence - plays a role, but the selling of

an identity is, in Jonas’ opinion a dangerous thing. “It creates tunnel vision” he says,

“I don’t buy it”.

When embarking on this journey around the globe, I was very keen to meet with

Ólafur Arnalds, a 30 years old composer who is the ‘piano guy’ of Iceland, and

currently Iceland’s most prominent touring artist. Arnalds rose through the last 10

years to hold a line established by the late Johann Johannsson, made more critical

by his recent death only months before Arnalds’ recent gruelling world tour. In light of

Mugison and Jonas’ claim to be different or ‘wear the wrath of your musical

collegues’, Arnalds found a unique way through to something quite solid. In fact, so

solid that he may have crafted a marketing first; you can buy a sample package of

piano and string sounds by Arnalds that are touted as the Icelandic sound. This

furrowed some eyebrows when mentioned to Jonas and Mugison who, whilst

respecting Arnalds’ work, had concerns in terms of defining them as musicians from

Iceland. Re quote Jónas – “I don’t buy it”. Admittedly, composers and song writers

may be seen in different corners, but here, a national identity is being packaged and

sold in digital sound samples. Like the didgeridoo for Australia and the Shakuhachi

for Japan, the timbre’s become intrinsically linked.

My emails to request a meeting with Arnalds were eventually answered by his

manager, asking for more details of my interview. In the next email I explained, in the

following email I urged, the final email, eventually, sounding desperate. All attempts

failed. Arnalds played 32 shows in 35 cities over a 6 week period. Touring schedules

12

are brutal and there just wasn’t enough time. As I travelled through Europe over a

few weeks though, I seemed, quite coincidentally, to be landing or leaving the cities

where Arnalds was playing that night. Eventually, I managed to catch a show at the

London Palladium. Arnalds’ soft, disarming demeaner fits with his music; gently

ambitious, with forward motion and an underlying melancholy; the marketing of the

Icelandic sound to a tee. In the 90 minutes of piano, string quartet and percussion,

there was compassion in the music; chords that did not seek to unsteady the

audience or drown us through the music. Indeed we are drawn closer to the wanting

of it with its slow movement, making it personal, intimate. We all have time to hear it,

and in this hearing we are gently allowed to be together in thought and mindfulness.

Some call it ‘Neo-classical’, because or the traditional instruments and lack of human

voice. This is a fascinating idea given the later introduction (late 1800s) of traditional

classical instruments to Iceland. So, could it be anything other than neo-classical?

For Iceland, the distance from classical to pop is only a few generations.

Unlike other Nordic countries, prior to the 20th century Iceland didn’t have an Edward

Grieg or Jean Sibelius to claim as their composer hero to help identify a national

character through the orchestra. But in the 1990s and 2000s, composer Johann

Johannsson became the Icelandic prince of Hollywood, winning several awards in

the last decade including scores for Arrival, The Theory of Everything and his final

score for Mandy with Nicholas Cage. His legacy has stuck to Iceland like a fog that

all other composers are emerging from. Eldjárn, who played with Johannsson in the

Apparat Organ Quartet, says that Johannsson moved first to Denmark, then Berlin

over the years, finding a vibrant scene and somewhere he could tap into his industry.

The Apparat Organ Quartet wasn’t your average band in that it performed with

dancers, projection and other artful elements, making each show more a spectacle

than a gig. Given this manner of performance and the band’s origin in Reykjavik, one

ponders it’s lifespan considering the population. The last sentence being, perhaps,

the most commonly written sentence for so many artists that finally move from small

origins to big ones. Having said that, it is interesting that Johannsson remained in

Europe, not moving to Hollywood where he was, as Eldjárn says, “drowning in work”.

In fact in the last few months of his life he contacted Eldjárn to help him cope with

the weight of scoring the film Mandy. Eldjárn treasures this connection as a

13

professional high mark and as evidence that living in Iceland, if not Europe, can bring

funds from Hollywood.

In moving to continental Europe to pursue a deeper connection with industry,

Johannsson retained something particular in his working title; His Icelandic identity.

A label that set him apart and provided an ‘otherness’ that few composers could

claim. Whilst not residing in his homeland, the ‘brand’ stuck fast allowing him a

unique position that would no doubt be both a benefit and a curse. The marketing

benefit is easy to see – he was rare. But the curse could have come with the need to

adhere to this brand if it longer felt appropriate or necessary. An awkward

recalibration of your perceived identity may follow. A cloud that may also hover

above Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. Gjeilo is currently the darling of choral

composers, having enormous success around the globe. There would not be a

choral festival today without a performance of Gjeilo’s work. But here again is a

composer that lives outside his homeland and yet, waves the flag of his country as a

brand, helping identify him in the din of others. But is that his reason?

Once again I was thwarted in my attempts to meet with Gjeilo, who now resides in

New York. As I landed in New York, he took off to Europe. A graduate of The Julliard

School, he has stamped a solid career in the wake of a renewed choral tradition over

the last 20 years. The biggest commercial push in the early 2000s came from the

American composer Eric Whitacre using a you tube video to marry singers from all

across the globe. In doing so, he truly de-centralized the idea of singing together,

making your location irrelevant.

But in the titles of Gjeilo’s work, the imagery of his country are still there in names

like Tundra, Northern Lights, and The Lake Isle. His claim of Norwegianess is not

just in his childhood, but it becomes a way of standing out in the noise of business in

the way that Johann Johannsson and Ólafur Arnalds can also claim.

In the back of the van on Ísafjörður’s waterfront drinking delicious hot coffee, I asked

Mugison about his Icelandic brand. Curiously, the conversation went two ways. At

first he waved it away as an insignificant thing when I asked about the integral

essence of place and how that worked for him. “I hate that word – Integrity”, he said

with scorn, “– like, you can only do reggae in Jamaica or can’t sing the blues

14

because you’re not American. Everything is as difficult as everything else!” But later

Mugison would return to the question of the Icelandic brand, recalling the early

2000s in the wake of Bjork and Sigur Rós. He said he would be booked for gigs

almost unseen and unheard because he was that rare gem – Icelandic. “It was like I

was a fucking fairy or something! People were like, can I touch you!”.

This marketing clout comes with two distinct sides. One is the slippery slope of

success that can fast track you into a spot where others cannot be. The other side is

the need to represent that brand, be an ambassador if you will. And the longer you

are within the light of this brand, the more it changes and adapts to its inhabitants. In

the words of Rolling Stone reporter David Fricke, a champion of new Icelandic

music, when writing on the Airwaves music festival of 2018, he says of Iceland,

“…nothing – and everything – has changed.”

In the mid 1970s, Keyboard player Eddie Rayner and fellow members of the band

Split Enz, moved from New Zealand to Australia. Their songs, costumes, stage

theatrics and popularity had grown to a size that was getting tight in their home

country, which could only grow so much to keep up with them as they were

determined not to be a pub band. An earlier talent contest had coined the emerging

band ’too clever’. Australia provided a new audience, but an offer to record in the UK

was not to be refused. So, giddy with the world at their door, they remained in the UK

for 4 years until 1980. Success in the UK never really happened like they wanted,

however the US and the audiences back in Australasia wanted more. So they

returned with new material, a new image and in time to produce what both critics and

album sales would suggest, were their most successful years.

In the mid 1970s, the internet was the stuff of science fiction. In the mid 1980s record

companies were at their height as global bankers of entertainment with rosters full of

new urban explosions and a back catalogue that the world wanted re-pressed on

CD. Even in the mid 1990s as the internet was being born, islands like New Zealand

were only just being seen outside Australasia beyond holiday photos, television

features and the work and words of immigrants from the island nation.

15

New Zealand has a deep and beautiful culture of people and their connection to their

land, but there are only so many people on an island. And there is only so much

resource on an island. Split Enz moved away to find more people and commerce

than their home could provide.

The name, Split Enz, was a master stroke. Wherever they went, their name

announced their origin - the unmistakable name (or initials) of their country.

Whatever they did, they carried within their name an ‘otherness’ that could not be

manufactured or taught. They were islanders from the bottom of the world.

In 2018, the list of New Zealand creatives that has made the world their stage is long

and impressive. The exoticism of NZ may have dimmed, but it still flags a sense of

distance and access, and a leaning toward a particular creative essence. Or, does

it? Or does it have to?

Split Enz’s undertaking in the mid 1970s was daunting, and the story still is. It is the

concrete belief that you can make your art pay in a new city or country. That’s

difficult enough, but to also hold in your mind that the smallness of your birthplace or

chosen home has some cultural currency or interest that can penetrate an already

saturated place is, I believe, a more compelling story to tell and to hear.

When arriving at Eddie Rayner’s home in eastern Auckland, he wasn’t home. I was a

little early, so went for a walk along the beach to pass the time, returning 5 minutes

later to find him still not home. I wondered if I was at the wrong address. A quick

glance in the nearest window confirmed that I was at the right house - a wall covered

in the Split Enz story, from gold records to photographs with fame. A short while and

a beer at the local café later and now the door swung open. I first saw Eddie in the

manner with which I was to see him for the next two hours, sunglasses on his face,

never removed. He’s a rock star. It’s stamped on his soul from decades of playing in

that arena. Part way through our meeting, he lay down on the couch to ease the

discomfort of a recent operation, but kept talking about the scenes of his memories

and pondering the future with familiar ease. He rarely paused for long to think of

something he hadn’t already thought about (or already been asked about).

16

To me, the time factor is interesting in this context because Split Enz moved to

London when I was two years old. When I was 10 they released a mid-career album.

The legend of what they wrote, the lens they focused on New Zealand and the spin

off careers that followed, have permeated the musical world from top to bottom ever

since.

It became clear to me that my questions on this journey were evolving. Eddie has a

reputation that allows his music to be as free as he wants without considering the

city, the country, its isolation, the commerce, or its accessibility from the rest of the

world. Eddie is not just starting out, nor mid-career, and thus it doesn’t really matter

where he is. The world cometh. His conversations did however, tend to lean on

music and memories from the 90s and back. Yes, he is still mixing and making music

today, but his biggest stories were full of his legend and not his present. Eddie was

confidant in his ability and his knowledge that the world knew him enough that he

could explore his muse without too much worry about what he ‘needed’ to make - the

benefit of being a pioneer.

When considering the difference in islands and cities, he said “Everywhere is the

same size!”. The internet is in all conversations on this matter. In fact, Eddie believes

the internet “wrecked isolation”. He did however refer several times to a “DNA in your

sound that is unavoidable if you come from that place.” He says “ There is an old

stock, an old pedigree about your history which has made you because you learned

to be you in that place, and you will take it with you”.

After rice crackers and cheese, tea and Boston bun and an obligatory photograph

with sunglasses on, Eddie drove me to the nearby bus stop where I headed back to

Auckland, happy to have met a Split Enz member who filled my youth with glorious

music that would take me years to understand.

So for Eddie Rayner, his most active business model is his reputation. We all rely on

this of course, however, the luxury of being relatively anywhere and bringing the

world in is, for Eddie, made easier now by the years of toil he put in in the 70s and

80s, work with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, producing other artists, and

“being a Maverick” as he says in his newer, matured life in music.

17

Eddie Rayner and I. Auckland 2018.

Eddie didn’t claim to have lived a life on the benefit of grants or funding (although its

documented that the NZ government bailed Split Enz out with a $5000 grant in the

70s which brought them back to life), but the connection with arts bodies and those

who facilitate spaces and infrastructure for art is an interesting one, especially when

the space is considerably far away from a major population or industry. The Place

Where You Go To Listen is a perfect and yet intriguing example of this. The Place, is

a continuous sound and light environment at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Museum of the North. This room, established 2004-06, remains in the ongoing work

of American composer John Luther Adams (JLA). JLA spent decades living and

18

working from a small cabin just north of Fairbanks, and is quoted as saying he didn’t

have running water until he was over 40. The Place is an ever-changing musical

ecosystem that responds in real time to the Alaskan continent from empirical data of

geological, astronomical, seismic and climate change sensors across the country.

JLA’s work in composition is by looking into the land rather than focusing its attention

on himself. This unique body of work, which often allows the environment to be the

real creator of the composition, won him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2014 with a

work commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra called Become Ocean.

JLA’s position in the world of composers is both large and interesting on a number of

levels, primarily in a manner whereby he seeks to remove himself from the work,

allowing the natural world to be the creative hand of the music. Also compelling is

that JLA lived in the remote Alaskan continent for so long and made a global

business from a cabin that lay off the grid, creating musical works of such unique

value. He spent years in environmental activism, but now concedes his music is his

voice in that area, leaving the activism to those with more political energy than him.

Ironically, JLA no longer lives in Alaska, although his name is still intrinsically

connected to the place. In fact in today’s catalogue of composers he would be top of

the list of composers of a Place, to the point where one might even say he created

the oeuvre. Now he lives in a number of places for his work. Around the time of the

Pulitzer he was living in New York. It was there that I tried to meet with him. But like

Ólafur Arnalds, he was unavailable; away on a writing project in South America

making a meeting unlikely. My first email to his manager was a query, the next

offered money, and the last one earned the response “You are persistent!”. I would

have persisted some more, but a flight to South America was a journey too far for

now.

Nevertheless, I did spend a day in The Place Where You Go To Listen in the

Museum of the North in Fairbanks. This small room with speakers on every wall and

a bench big enough for a few to sit at a time, was a compelling place to be on a

snowy Fairbanks afternoon. Being Autumn, the leaves were turning and the

temperature outside was below freezing which meant the snow couldn’t melt into

slush, so it stayed a perfect white fluff for all the day I was there. The reason I

19

mention the weather outside is because inside The Place, the outside is the most

critical thing. The sounds generated by the data receptors is electronic, it does not

attempt to replicate the natural world, but leaves you with a feeling of the random

wonder of events generating music as you listen. A few weeks after I was there an

earthquake hit Alaska above 7 on the Richter scale, I can only imagine what The

Place would have sounded like on that day.

The Place Where You Go To Listen installation, Museum of the North, Fairbanks Alaska.

Image by Dean Stevenson 2018

20

Fairbanks is an interesting place to foster a career in composition. It’s a very small

community, where I imagine arts funding and available musicians are limited.

Fairbanks does have its own symphony orchestra but they don’t seem to appear in

the notes to JLA’s body of work. The Anchorage Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic

Chamber Orchestra are regular names on his earlier works, beyond which the

ensembles become more specialized and professional as his career grew. In not

meeting JLA, I did not get the chance to ask him how he fostered and funded his

career from such a small place. There is much writing on JLA, the majority of which

focusses on his music of place, but little about how to fund and draw attention to

himself. Ironically, it’s the very drawing of attention away from himself which got him

noticed. Or should I say, got people to notice that which he was drawing their

attention towards - the place: Alaska.

In recent articles, notably a piece he wrote for the New Yorker, JLA talks of the

diminishing of the Alaskan wilderness. His home of many years is fading through

climate change and the effects are irreversible. What is interesting is whilst perhaps

his compositions are more deliberately about his place rather than living in the place

(external over internal?) his brand as ‘the place guy’ is undiminished. Perhaps

because we are encouraged to see Alaska as the subject rather than the composer.

The reason this sticks longer is because, despite the effects of climate change,

places don’t move, whereas composers do. Relocation and travel is dominating

business strategies everywhere, so to put a pin in a map and say ‘this is where

everything comes from’ can be a bold step towards a strong, if not romantic,

business plan. And programmatic (or environmental) music without words can be

intensely difficult to write, especially when you’re not in the place for which the music

is being written. But, despite the internet and access to global communication, even

JLA moved to New York. The gig isn’t always in your street and sometimes, you do

have to go where the work is. Perhaps, to take a place name with you, or a local

texture that is your business card is a strong way to get through the banality of music

flooding our eyes and ears. John Luther Adams has moved away from the place but

left us listening to it.

If a composer is to successfully claim a heritage, it is because there is one to claim.

Otherwise it is in your own story that only has you as its origin for which you had

21

better be a good story teller to generate your own heritage. But local art can be a

strong purveyor of culture and character. In the small town of Collioure in the south

of France, there is distinction in the language, food, songs, instruments and thoughts

that help preserve its heritage and a strong, unique sense of itself. The biggest bar in

town, Les Templiers, has its walls covered in art. This is not because the publicans

were necessarily great interior designers, but that it was a place where artists came.

For hundreds of years, artists like Dali, Picasso and many others would drink at the

bar between fits of creativity. But the drinking came at a price that the artists could

not afford. Their bar tabs rose as did their love of the town and its serenity. So as a

way of paying their tabs, they painted and donated. Les Templiers’ walls are covered

in paintings. Bar tabs made good by the ways of their craft. And now, in 2018, people

come to Collioure to visit this bar and gaze at the walls to inhale a history of what the

cities could not provide; safe places to be, to make and to live. This smallness, this

notion of value, this exchange that has created a spotlight of time and essence, has

created a niche that brings the world to it. A place that needed the rural honesty of

people who knew all the other people. A community that had limited means of

exchange and motion and had a need to make good with who they were and what

they had.

The same cause can be given to a city experience too, but in this case the

remoteness of the place caused the exchange. The isolated artists had few means at

their disposal. In making good of what they had and could not communicate (the

paintings are both on the walls of the bar and in the vault to be sold in the years to

come as a way of a retirement fund for the family), the value has shot up to untold

amounts of both financial and cultural rewards. The place created the need which

created the art.

Where this example does not fit the case of this research is that, in a historical

sense, there was no need to communicate or transit the artwork into the world. No

business strategy for promotion or market as the exchange was local and was

designed for paying a local debt. However, the idea remains strong that a local need

made art that was about its own identity. How much more integral can an artwork be

about a time and a place and a story that doesn’t exist anywhere else?

22

Likewise in Cullen, in the highlands of Scotland. In this small village of approximately

1500 residents, the sea crashes on the beach, pushing sand and rock again the

houses that have lined the waterfront for hundreds of years. Most of the fisherman’s

cottages that line the seafront have no windows at the risk of rocks blown off the surf

front. So, in a reversal of town deign, the seafront is the modest end of town, whilst

in a typical Scottish seaside village, the higher you go up the hill, the more affluent

the houses and the more likely you are to be a Earl.

In a small gift shop up the high street where little more than a dozen shops can run

including a paper shop, a fish and chip shop, a few antique shops and a few pubs, a

local maker has in the window works of art made from found objects of steel. I

entered the shop and inquired about a particular work that was made in the form of a

tractor made of pistons, valves, part of a singer sewing machine and other metal

pieces. It was an extraordinary piece of work that was clearly one of a kind and

made with incredible precision. The owner of the shop is a young English lady who

curates local artists from the area, and said “This piece cost the maker £140 and has

a selling price of £160.” “The joy of making it” was the reason the maker had set the

price, a realistic figure to ensure it sells and doesn’t stay too long on the shelf of the

small local store. It was made with skill, effort and not a hint of naiveite, and yet was

a one-of-a-kind in a small fishing village in Scotland. There is no business strategy to

take the work further than the town gate, yet the workmanship, finishing and window

placement meant it had a high value because of itself. The rural sense of art that is

made within the confines of the local material or people of the area that comply with

its own heritage makes sense to those who are in the vicinity of its making. It is the

art of the area that speaks to itself. Like the art on the walls of Les Templiers in

Collioure, or The Place by JLA, the art is of that place and time. It seeks only to be

that. And that is what brings people to it, or gives an artist a heritage once the

heritage is shown to be rare.

What struck me the hardest about my interactions with all the artists I met on this

journey was not only their output and the quality of their craft, but their reflections on

the impact of their places across time. Here, I requote Eddie Rayner, who left the

greatest imprint on my journey with his line “Everywhere is the same size!” For the

ease of getting around, physically or electronically we are grateful for this, but at

23

what cost? Could it be that each of these composers from these small places are

riding the last of the great place waves? Back in Reykjavik over a bowl of fish soup,

Jonas wondered if the music businesses are turning their attentions now to the

smaller places in order to mine the last of the truly rare things before everything

becomes an urban creation.

The global leak onto small places has its dilution in unrealized ways. For example an

island artist can look into her island, making music on a folk level; about the people,

its shape, its sounds and its time. But her neighbour can look out to the world,

seeking to sound like the noise, fashion, speed and the clashing of ideas from the

intriguing ‘far away’ place. From the latter example, the DNA of the place will still be

in the music as it is transmitted, but it’s very exposure to the world immediately

causes itself to be diluted. Without criticizing musicians who at first look to a greater

world audience, once the door is open and exposure is achieved, all local elements

then unfairly but inevitably, fall prey to comparison and update.

The early days of music business were about building a sustainable cache of

musicians with enough songs for them to play. To be out of that loop by distance,

meant you missed out. So the cities proved a necessary migration for many

composers and songwriters brave enough to travel, then clever enough to hustle.

But those days, for a raft of industries, is fading. Whilst travelling for this project,

there was expressed by each of the writers I met, a care through their words and/or

music that distilled their practice in reflection of their place. They had embraced the

tech of isolation. Hustling from a distance is no easy task but an important one if you

are to remain there. Each one talks about their community with a big heart, full of

love for it. “Your measure of love will determine everything you do.” says Mugison

over his steaming coffee.

All composers whom I met, or learned of, on my journey shared small stories that

made great things. All have within their daily practice, or within the ways of their

places, a way towards peaceful things bathed in quiet and acknowledgement of a

natural way of things. It is this way of things that can be the most compromised

aspect of yourself when you amplify yourself or your art into the world at large. It is

24

also important to note here that peace and quiet does not always refer to the volume

or tempo of the music. You can be at peace in the noisiest of places, travelling as

fast as you can. John Luther Adams makes a fine point that when still in nature, you

begin to notice things change around you. Then you begin to notice yourself within

the changes.

But externally, the world demands structures and speeds that you may be

unaccustomed to sharing. It is either the resilient or the most flexible that will most

likely remain. If there is to be a genuine celebration through your identity, with an

ongoing practice in relation to where you come from or live, then effort is required to

be still. To listen. To play. Then make lots and lots of noise.

25

Conclusions and Recommendations

The world is not so small that we can access everyone at any time. This privilege

given to me by the Churchill Trust, to travel to meet these creators of music was

indeed a gift that would otherwise be untenable journey for me to mount on my own.

I found kindred people who love living in their places, their nooks, their own private

wonderlands, whilst making music that is the most genuine projection of self they

can, which in its authenticity draws people in. Not all these musicians and

composers are enlightened beings nor even claimed to be the MOST happy - that

was never assumed. But to know where the best chance for this lies is certainly a

bonus.

I have a deeper appreciation of the concept of brand, and how that can be used and

carelessly abused. Through this particular lesson, I have seen how few places are

now unreachable by the eyes and ears of technology. This is not to be taken lightly

as we reduce special events and places for commerce and in doing so can mine

smaller communities of their unique sense of place and history. The warning shot

learned during my travel is to regard my own sense of place, including my

community as a whole, as a sacred thing.

The tools of marketing learned from these artists, is almost anti-marketing. Balance

and self-preservation are the leading factors in their decisions on career. Mugison is

directly involved with his fans online to the point of charging them with offering

homes for performances. By showing up in his community in sheds, on boats and in

lounge rooms, the stories of intimate concerts and ‘what you missed’ become

marketing gold. Eldjárn made a sound work that intimately connects both his fans

and visitors directly with his home town. This open display of affection for his home,

enough to immortalize its streets with music, connects him to his place and to its

legend. John Luther Adams uses the natural world as his palette, and by doing so,

engages orchestras and audiences alike into the deepest connection of nature as

the creating hand. Whilst some refer to JLA in all manner of prophetic terms, he is,

essentially, working like Eldjárn; the place is the sound. From this, we as audience

use the composers as a conduit into realms of the world we cannot reach without

them. Whilst this may seem like an easy thing to name up as a marketing tool, the

26

responsibility to preserve your place, not just as a habitat, but to use its name with

care is of the utmost importance in order to preserve it as special. Say the word ‘foot’

50 times in a row and see how it dilutes it’s meaning after a while and becomes

bland. This is the risk we run by over-naming our places if we do not understand

their specialness, their stories and others who may also be using the same name,

perhaps for very different purposes.

It took me a long time through my journey to stop looking for what I wanted to see; a

magic marketing pill. The angle that would guarantee good business with the

smallest of concepts. I was genuinely humbled and horrified by my thirst for a quick

fix to my own search. Strategies did present themselves, but never at the cost of the

art that feeds the strategy. Music can be frustratingly ephemeral, which means that

in business, you can feel like you’re marketing fog. Fog is more or less the same

everywhere, but I have learned through this journey that it is where you experience it

from, and your ability to translate that, which makes all the difference.

My major conclusion from this journey is that there is no conclusion, only constant

beginnings and the occasional can of worms of identity. From this fellowship I have

seen that the largest journey that artists make from these small places is coming to

terms with, and then celebrating their cultural identities to the best of their abilities.

The mining of your own place and the heritage you bring with you guarantees your

uniqueness without the need to manufacture an identity. None of the artists met or

mentioned here engage the world of music with a totemic claim of isolation as the

basis of their self-promotion. That claim is made by the music business machine. It is

simply the places they make their art whilst being themselves.

For my own compositions, my attention is turned by my interviewees to aspects of

self and environment that I would otherwise have overlooked through discomfort or a

lack of confidence in my abilities. I have a new found courage for my discipline,

reducing my need to always self-promote rather than self-care in order to serve my

practice.