Vancouver composer Sylvi MacCormac brings together varied soundscape collaborations on swan-song album.
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Active on the local scene since the late 1990s, the soundscapes on the album date from 1998 to 2023 and include works from across MacCormac’s career. Material ranges from a segment from QEKIYEKSUT, an excerpt from 2023’s Brother Bear & Bent Boxes with vocalist Russell Wallace, to 2003’s folk-warping penny whistle loops Penny: A Process and Spirit wheels: Railway Lines: Trains of Thought.
QEKIYEKSUT was honoured with a Canadian Electroacoustic Community Jeff Chippewa Award. This honour is given to an “artist with family or historical lineage or who maintains a spiritual connection to Indigenous culture including, but not limited to, First Nations, Métis and Inuit.” MacCormac is of Irish descent, but Wallace is from both the Stʼatʼimc and Lil’wat Nations.
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 21, MacCormac drew inspiration for the Wheels projects from a number of sources dating back to her studies at Simon Fraser University where she studied under Canadian electroacoustic music pioneer Barry Truax. Of particular interest to MacCormac was the BBC Radio Ballads created by Peggy Seeger and Ewan McColl, which presented audio portraits of people with polio.
Hearing people with disabilities offering pieces in their own voices left a deep impression on MacCormac and started her project rolling.
Q: How does it feel to devote so much time to one single project?
A: The soundscape studies with Barry and Glenn Gould’s solitary studies were the inspiration for getting into soundscape composing. Then the BBC Radio Ballads made me hone in on the potential to do something like that with different artists which launched the Wheels project. It’s been going on for 25 years, coinciding with my studies moving from instruments as I lost my ability to play and more into computers as an instrumental tool, as well as developing a love of the harmonica.
Q: You can trace your musical interests and explorations right along with the recording can’t you?
A: I first approached former mayor Sam Sullivan about the project when he was still at VAMS, outlining ideas and sketching them down onto basic four- or eight-track recordings to then flesh out later on. I would then listen and think, ‘This would be a good to do with Dal Richards and his Orchestra’ and pursue it.
Q: Legendary big band leader Richards does indeed turn up on the recording as well as Wallace, the Odds and others. Do you enjoy collaborating?
A: Each of those experiences has been singularly wonderful. What else can it be but fun to be laying down harmonica and vocal tracks at Bryan Adams’ studio with the Boom-Booms. Each piece is something I developed around a script, often from interviewing a subject/collaborator. That way I could find out if you preferred cello or loved bird songs and bring those elements into the recording. It means I’m more in a director’s role, I suppose.
Q: You’ve also done acting as part of your creative outlet haven’t you?
A: I produced a documentary short in 2012, titled Patience & Absurdity about a mother with Alzheimer’s and a daughter with MS and acted in the Canadian feature film Bella Ciao! in 2018 and the CBS series Charmed in 2021.
Q: Last year’s Brother Bear & Bent Boxes, with vocalist Wallace, really took off didn’t it?
A: It did. One track is included on the Wheels’ collection as the original piece is 30 minutes long. The eight-minute-long cut is the one that was internationally juried this year and went on to be featured in the U.S.A., Netherlands, Mexico and the U.K.
Unfortunately, my disability is so severe that travel is too difficult. But I did manage going to the Canada Council Jury in Ottawa which was pretty much international travel for me. I think that finishing Wheels kind of feels like my retirement piece now.