Gillian Grassie

‘The Train’ included on Lebanon soundtrack, to premier at SXSW

// March 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News

More cool news: “The Train” was chosen for inclusion on the soundtrack of the indie film Lebanon, PA, which has been selected to premier at SXSW this month!

Check out the trailer, and if you’re going to be in Austin, TX for the festival, stop by the premiere on March 14th.

Mumbai Shows & Press

// February 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Music, News, Performances, Press

Just wanted to let you know about a couple performances happening this week in Bombay. Both are collaborations with incredibly talented artists.

First up, tonight I’ll be joining Ranjit Barot on stage at Blue Frog.

Friday, I’ll be performing with Indian fusion band Mithaavin as a part of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

(Details on the SHOWS page)

The Bombay Elektrik Project gigs at Cafe Goa got some nice coverage in the blogosphere. Check out what folks had to say at desictritics, indiecision, and the Mumbai Mirror.

Serpentine getting spins across the United States!

// December 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Press

Thanks so much to the following AAA stations for giving Serpentine airtime:

KXCI Tucson AZ
KCMV Breckenridge CO
KDNK Carbondale CO
KVNF Paonia CO
WFIT Melbourne FL
KKCR Hanalei HI
KDEC Decorah IA
WFPK Louisville KY
WMKY Moorehead KY
WTMD Baltimore MD
MPBN Bangor ME
WERU E. Orland ME
WNTI Hackettstown NJ
Indie SF Santa Fe NM
WEXT Albany NY
WDST Woodstock NY
WCBE Columbus OH
WXPN Philadelphia PA (these guys have been backing me for years…Thanks XPN!)
WVIA Scranton PA
WETS Johnson City TN
KFAN Fredericksburg TX
KPFT Houston TX
WNRN Charlottesville VA
WRRW Williamsburg VA

Most of these are public radio stations, which means they operate at least in part via member support. Consider making a (typically tax-deductible) donation to help keep your local station up and running and bringing you independent music.

Thanks and happy holidays! (next up: a blog about Mumbai, finally…)

-Gillian

First German Review!

// November 27th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances, Travel

Many thanks to Das Consortium, the wonderful Musikkneipe in Hamburg/Harburg who hosted me for my last performance in Germany. It was a totally lovely evening playing for you all and I’m completely blown away by these very kind words from the venue:

“Diese Frau ist wirklich Megaklasse. Die Kombination aus filigran gespielter Harfe zu einer Stimme, die sich mit weltklass Stars vergleichen lässt, und einer Titelauswahl, die einem jeden Zuhörer den Mund vor Staunen offen stehen lässt. Musik zu Versinken in seinen schönsten und/oder auch emotional einfühlsamsten Gedanken. Brillant! Danke.”

Can’t wait until our paths cross again (and I promise I’ll have worked more on my German by then)…

Vielen Dank,

Gillian

Recording by the Black Forest

// October 21st, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Music, Travel

On Sunday night I returned to Mme Claude in Kreuzberg for their open stage and ran into Dorothea, a fantastic German singer-songwriter fresh out of the Jazz & Rock Schulen Freiburg – a contemporary music conservatory that has a popular exchange program with (and similar curriculum to) the Berklee College of Music in Boston. We got all fired up talking about the independent music scene in Germany and closed the bar at Mme Claude, met up the next night at another open stage, Arcanoa – where Doro wrote a new song upstairs in the smoking room on a borrowed guitar – and by Thursday I found myself rolling South on the highway with my harp for a weekend of recording at a studio in Freiburg where Doro’s been working on her debut EP.

Pippi!

We stayed with some old friends of Doro in this awesome student complex with a big mural of Pippi Longstocking on the front wall and an elaborate squatter camp next door, complete with organized art events, political demonstrations, and its own wash-your-dishes-and-it’s-free “Café,” where I had one of the best cups of Chai in my life (ask me again after India). Across the street was a very modern office building powered entirely by solar panels, which, fittingly, housed a group of dedicated environmental organizations. To say that this university town near the French border is preoccupied with saving the planet is an understatement; Freiburg has become one of the de facto capitals of the international Green movement. Environmental issues dominate the daily news in both print and radio, and the city elected Green Party member Dieter Salomon as their mayor. Bikes rule the streets and a short trip outside the city will lead you into the heart of the Black Forest (think Brothers Grimm).

the patio/balcony. a sign hangs above that reads 'Occupied' in German, and a large banner with a quote from Brecht hangs on the fence

I got to see a bit of the Black Forest in all its winter glory on a drive to a town an hour outside Freiburg where we rehearsed with Doro’s guitarist. As the road climbed up into the mountains we suddenly found ourselves pulling out of the thick clouds into a world of white, snow dusting the conifers and fallow fields and trapezoidal barn roofs. I had the best meal of the trip so far that evening, though it’s hard to say if it was the delicious food or the three bottles of wine or the new friends or the fact that whenever I looked outside I felt like I was living in a fairytale gingerbread land. Before we headed back to Freiburg to lay down some tracks, we took a drive out to see an old castle and stood along the banks of the Rhine River, looking across into the Swiss Alps (don’t worry, Watson, I didn’t cross the border!). The water had that gorgeous glacial glow, a sort of blue-green that seems somehow milky, like frosted sea-glass.

Schwein!

Growing up on a farm, animals –lots of them – have basically surrounded me all my life, and one of the few downers of this year of travel so far has been the critter-withdrawal I’ve been going through. So I was elated when Doro got a phone call from another old friend and asked me if I’d be interested in visiting a little farm nearby that afternoon. I think I was probably even more enthusiastic than the two year-old we were with about seeing the piglets, and the goats, and getting kisses from bulls (seriously, these were the sweetest, gentlest bulls I’ve ever met, a whole pen of affectionate Ferdinands).

the Koes in Normandy weren't into Knufflen, but the bulls in Freiburg were all about the kisses

If anyone can identify exactly what kind of pig this poor, unfortunate-looking dear is, I’d be very curious to know. We found two of these guys in a pen, with curled tusks, a big, bristled back, and kind of squashed, pug-like faces with a serious brow-bone.

poor dear, what are you?

Later that night, we went out to a performance by Lindsey Blount, a jazz singer who came over to Freiburg from the U.S. through the Berklee exchange. If you have a chance to see her perform in the U.S. (Philadelphia, I’m talking to you), you really must. She is a total treat.

doro laying down some piano in the studio

The trip to Freiburg finished with an inspiring day in the studio, tracking accordion, piano, and harp for Doro’s songs. I feel really grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Doro, who writes beautiful, interesting, strong songs with both German and English lyrics. As soon as she finishes mixing down a few of the tracks and posts them online, I’ll put up a link here and you can listen for yourself. It was exhilarating to have the good fortune to meet such a cool artist and be able to take her up on such a wonderfully spontaneous offer – all within the span of a week! Serendipity has been on my side lately, and I hope it sticks around, because one of the most incredible things about the Watson Fellowship is that it has freed me to accept fantastic, last-minute opportunities like this one, and granted me a spirit of flexibility that I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed before.

setting up mics for the harp

Berlin has been extraordinary, in part, because, despite a long history, it’s still a very young city in many ways (November 9th will mark only the 20th anniversary since the fall of the Berlin Wall). There is an energy here of constant change and reinvention and opportunity; it’s a very creative atmosphere, and this combined with the fact that it’s still an affordable city to live in lends Berlin a gravitational pull for artists of all sorts. The general consensus is that the arts and music scene in Berlin now is comparable to that of New York City in the 1980s. But there is also a sense here that the moment is fleeting – how long will it be before Berlin’s housing market becomes gentrified and beyond the reach of low-income artists? Do we have five years? Ten? Once a city’s rent climbs past a certain point, the creative arts scene invariably changes; artists become less experimental and collaborative and more competitive, accepting the types of commissions and bookings (and day jobs) that pay the bills. The low-rent factor that helps permit Philadelphia’s music scene to be more community-oriented is one of the reasons I prefer it to New York’s.

But this acknowledgment that Berlin’s creative heyday is probably not indefinite lends its own sense of urgency and earnestness. Doro, and I, and the other artists I’ve met so far agree: it’s exciting to be here, now, at this age, in this moment.

Experimental Music at Mme Claude, Berlin

// October 14th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Music, Travel

Last Monday I headed out to Kreuzberg to check out the experimental music night at Madame Claude – a small, quirky bar and music venue off of Skalitzer Strasse. When I got to the club, I paid a nominal, three euro entrance fee, got my hand stamped and walked down the stairs into a room that had been decorated so that everything was topsy-turvy, with all sorts of objects stuck to the ceiling and walls to give the appearance that you were in some sort of Alice in Wonderland World where everything was upside down. A row of pots and pans hung upright on the wall behind the bar, along with a backwards clock. Elsewhere in the room there were all sorts of things stuck to the ceiling (bolts? Super-dooper glue?), among them a pair of white high-top sneakers, a coffee table set up with chairs, and a David Bowie record.

pots and pans hanging up behind the bar

I bought a delicious bottled beer at the bar (for under 2 Euros – beat that, Paris!) and followed little black signs with “Live Musik” and arrows printed in red type through the lounge/bar area to a tiny, cobblestoned, blackbox basement of a room where a dark-haired, serious woman sat at a table, lit by a single old-fashioned lamp. She was fiddling with two Macs (a laptop and a desktop), a keyboard, and a few other pieces of equipment, making soundscapes of pulsations and fuzz – like deep space radio static, or a pack of hornets at the end of the world. I kept waiting for her to add in other sound elements, but she did so very rarely; a snip-it of a French woman’s voice announcing at the train station, then nothing for at least ten minutes, then an Asian flute, some chanting.

Emmanuelle Gibello performing her electronic soundscapes at Mme Claude's

I’d been exposed to music like this before, during an electro-acoustic composition workshop at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival back in 2001, but the notion of it as a live performance art was new to me. I kept looking around at the other audience members to try and find some cues for how to go about appreciating this sort of performance. Some seemed as baffled as me, our eyes catching across the room. They looked down quickly with embarrassment while others flashed tentative smiles, hoping for someone else to confirm their assessment that “this is really weird.” The wandering eye contact acted as a catalyst for a mass exodus of sorts from the room – people left in groups of two over five minutes.

Listen to \"Bleu\" by Emmanuelle Gibello

But others sat on the floor with their heads between their knees, reverent, or perhaps seasick. This is how I felt – the latter – as though the sound waves reverberating against the fluid in my eardrum were enough to give me motion sickness. Maybe it was. Still, this was not violent sound in the way of some music. I watched one young man in a checkered flannel shirt fold his coat on an overturned wastebasket – a recently vacated seat – and lay his head down on his arms. Another guy in a bright green sweatshirt under a sports coat leaned back in his chair with his head against the wall and seemed to fall asleep. One young man left the room quickly, as though he too was overwhelmed and seasick. In his haste, he knocked my foot quite hard from where it rested, crossed over my knee. He didn’t pause to notice the sudden contact. Others filtered in and took his space.

live musik

I remembered the time a man passed out at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. From the balcony, I saw him slump in his suit in the center of the fifth row during an aching, slow movement (I wish very much I could remember the piece). The woman beside him called his name a few times, each repetition growing in volume and panic, until she cried out for somebody to please, call a doctor! The pomp and circumstance of the classical music world was, however, so ingrained in tradition that neither the orchestra nor the audience was quite sure what to do. The notion of interrupting a performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra was such a taboo that it actually took a long minute for the musicians to stop playing and the audience to start moving to help this man and his frantic date. After the man had been carried out on a stretcher, the conductor seemed stumped as to whether he ought to re-start the movement, skip it, or try to pick up where they’d left off in the score.

In a strange way, sitting on the grimy floor in the basement of Mme Claude’s felt a bit like going to the orchestra. There was a familiar anxiety among much of audience, an earnest desire to do the right thing but not certain what that might entail. The Classical music world can feel rigid to audiences because of its long-steeped tradition, but this experimental music is tense for the opposite reason: it’s so new, with so few rules, that all the freedom can create feelings of awkwardness too. Do we clap between “movements”? Can we leave in the middle of the “set”? Can we enter? Do we have to watch this woman fiddle with her knobs, or can the performance become more of a physical experience? Are we supposed to feel seasick? We all look to each other for indications of appropriate aural consumption behavior, wary like the person unwrapping a cough drop in a concert hall, the miniscule movements of crinkling paper deafening.

musician want-ad on Mme Claude's bulletin board

Le Tennessee video

// October 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music, Performances, Travel

Here’s a video of “The Mark” from soundcheck at Le Tennessee Jazz Bar in Paris. Thanks for the link, James!

Zach and Jim’s songs can be found here.

Brotherly Love in the City of Lights

// September 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music, Performances, Travel

I managed to squeeze in a show here before I leave for Berlin – and it’s got an ALL PHILLY line-up! Jim Boggia and Zach Djanikian will be joining me for an evening of music in the Latin Quarter (6eme).

If you’re free Tuesday night and in the city of lights, drop by the Tennessee Jazz Bar around 9 PM. I’m hoping to finish some new material over the weekend and test-drive some songs!

Details here and on the Shows page:

September 29th: Paris, France
Tennessee Jazz Club
12 Rue André Mazet
75006 Paris
9 PM (21h)

I’ll miss this town for many reasons, including the fact that THIS happens twice a week:

pari_roller

What you’re watching are several thousand Parisian rollerbladers taking over the streets of Paris Friday night. It’d kind of like that bicycle takeover in Philly, only these guys get an official police escort to help divert traffic – twice a week! If you ever plan on visiting Paris with your rollerblades, visit Pari-Roller.com for the scoop. Suggested listening: Adrien Reju’s rendition of “Brand New Key” from her album A Million Hearts.

XPN Fest ‘09 highlights

// August 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music, Performances

It happened a while ago, I know, but I was so thrilled to be a part of this year’s XPoNential Music Festival that I just wanted to post a quick, belated note about the experience. In my defense, I played the festival Sunday, packed like mad on Monday, and hopped on a plane for France Tuesday morning. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind ever since then getting settled abroad, but before I tell you my stories of Paris and Lorient and Normandy, I wanted to share some of my personal highlights from the Festival.

audience view of the Marina Stage

First off, the band sounded just fantastic and I was so proud to be sharing the stage with such fine musicians. Ross Bellenoit, Matt Scarano, Ryan Kuhns and I have been working together as a quartet for nearly a year now and I was very sorry to have to leave my Idling Ferraris behind, but very proud of how far we’ve come as a group. I sorely miss their support and creativity when I play over here, but am excited to come back with a bunch of new songs to throw at them when I get back!

There was some exceptional, above-and-beyond fan lovin’ that took place at the festival. Francesca and Erika had me do sharpie body-art (see photo documentation). Special thanks also goes out to Adam, Dorothy, and Elliot – the cool kids from Lancaster who chatted a while and made me feel like a million bucks.

Erika getting inked!

I was just delighted that my longtime harp teacher and dear friend, Janet Witman, was able to make my last State-side performance, and was tickled later to see someone tweeted about the shout-out moment.

There are some more pictures up on my flickr account if you’re interested, and Bekah Larson also wrote a very nice review of the performance for the XPN All About the Music Blog, which you should check out here.

Thanks to everyone who came out and tuned in to share this very special afternoon with me!

Set List: July 26th, Wiggins Park, Camden Waterfront, NJ
Pulse
Silken String
Summer
The Canonization of Margot Price
No Answer
The Mark
August

Frencesca

Top 10 Desert Island Songs… from Paris

// August 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music

Well! I’ve been traveling around quite a bit during the past few weeks in Brittany and Normandy without much internet access, which doesn’t entirely excuse me from not posting updates sooner. And, I’m afraid, you may have to wait just a day more for a proper blog update. BUT, I promise that I have plenty of new stories and pictures and potentially even songs for you.

Before we get into all of my adventures in France, however, I’d like to post the Top Ten list I’ve put together for the XPN 885 Desert Island Songs countdown. You can vote for your own top ten list on the XPN website until September 11th and then tune in from September 29th – October 9th to hear the station listeners’ top 885 songs, in sequence, without commercials.

I know that the numbered ordering actually does matter for these things, but I can’t say that you should put much weight on my order.

Gillian’s Top Ten Desert Island Songs

1. Urge for Going – Joni Mitchell
My father used to sing this song to me as a lullaby, which probably contributed to my initial assumption as a child that Joni Mitchell was a man. The record was set straight a few years later when I wandered up into the attic and found my parents’ Court and Spark vinyl – a pretty earth-shaking discovery that firmly solidified my love affair with songwriting. Joni is hands-down the single most important artist in my collection and it takes some concentrated restraint not to fill this entire list with songs like Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, Court and Spark, Cactus Tree, Trouble Child, People’s Parties, Blue, and A Case of You.

2. The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us! – Sufjan Stevens
I was really torn between this song and John Wayne Gacy, Jr. – which I also consider a sort of tour de force of songwriting – but ultimately sided with the one that doesn’t involve serial killers.

3. Everything is Free – Gillian Welch
I’ve been listening to this song a lot recently; it hangs around. “I could get a straight job / I’ve done it before / never minded working hard / it’s who I’m working for / everything is free now / that’s what they say / everything I ever done / gotta give it away / someone hit the big score / but I figured it out / and I’m gonna do it anyway / even if it doesn’t pay”

4. What a Little Moonlight Can Do – Billie Holiday
Ah, Billie… When I was younger Jazz seemed something akin to wine, in the sense that I was absolutely sure it was this fantastic thing that was probably going to take a little time to understand and appreciate. I kept listening and grew into Jazz about the same time I started actually liking the vintages my uncle pulled up from the cellar at Christmas. Billie Holiday was one of the first artists who really opened up the genre for me. Nobody does deep-set grief like Billie, but her rendition of this happier song always makes me dance, and there had to be at least one song on my desert island good for dancing.

5. Meadowlake Street – Ryan Adams
My friend Stu gave me Gold sometime last winter and I quickly ran to the record store to pick up Cold Roses and Heartbreaker. I’m in love with many of his songs, but this verse is the cincher for me: “I feel like a dream that’s not worth having / like a nervous joke, ain’t nobody laughing / like somebody with nothing ‘cause they don’t know what they want / and tiny like the sand in the cracks of the driftwood / washed up on the shore of an ocean of you / boats out on the horizon / made out of the maple tree where we used to lie down on Meadowlake street / counting the stars, you and I.” I mean, really.

6. Première Arabesque – Claude Debussy
There was a time in my life when I thought I was going to go to conservatory and become either an opera singer or an orchestral harpist or both. Things didn’t quite work out that way, but there’s still a corner of my heart that only classical type of music can reach. I haven’t played pedal harp in a long time, but Marcel Grandjany’s arrangement of this piece was my favorite.

7. Shebeg & Shemore – Turlough O’Carolan
Sometimes I feel a bit of a traitor for taking the Celtic harp so far away from our beginnings, but the truth is I really do love Celtic music. Turlough O’Carolan was this incredibly prolific Irish harpist of the 17th Century, who picked up the instrument after being blinded by smallpox at the age of 18. He’s credited with over 300 gorgeous melodies. For years, my dad brought a recorder with him wherever we went, and this melody became the backdrop of many mornings on the rocky Maine coastline and evenings around campfires. I pretty confident I spelled it wrong here.

8. No One’s Crying – Patty Griffin
I love Patty Griffin for many reasons, not the least which is that this song of hers almost single-handedly got me through both my parents’ divorce and my own first major break-up.

9. O Canada Girls – Dar Williams
The ideas and imagery in this song are just so lush and abundant. I especially like the bit about secrets written on hornet-nest paper blowing across the border. Bryn Mawr, you’ll have to forgive me for not putting “As Cool As I Am,” much though I cherish the memories of dancing around the May Hole covered in flower petals and rain. “If I did not dream, who would you be? / and if you did not dream, who would I be?”

10. Take it From Me – The Weepies
Writing happy love songs is absurdly hard, and The Weepies do it absurdly well. This is one of my favorites.

So close to being on this list that they may as well have been: Kathleen Edwards, Damien Rice, James Taylor, Indigo Girls, Handel’s Ombra Mai Fu, Joshua Marcus, Portishead, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s.

Pictures and stories and proper updates coming soon!!!