art credit rule should be: if on side, then in gutter. if underneath, then at same baseline as text page blue line, raise art image above it. editorial note

PETER LOFTUS PATRICE VECCHIONE ould it be only ten miles south, down the coast from the chichi village of Carmel and a few C miles east, up through the redwoods, that an- Coast Near Lucia, 2008 other world exists, an entirely rural one, a world to put the Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in Where Music daily rush and grind at such a distance that the respon- sibilities of everyday life seem to disappear, if only for a Takes Its Sound little while? Palo Road is an uphill turn off ocean-side from Sun and Highway 1. Quickly the way becomes dark and thickly for- ested; in some places the road is wide enough only for a single car to get by. Tiny fairyland cabins perch on the Stars and Wind hillsides. About four curvy miles up, at the ridge top, there’s a nearly nine-hundred-acre property. A former gentleman’s and Waves ranch, Glen Deven was owned by Dr. Sealy and Virginia Mudd, and following their deaths, was left to the Big Sur Land Trust. The Monterey The open-faced land holds several buildings, including Festival Artist the home of its former owners. Past those structures it’s raw, unfettered Big Sur territory—hillsides wholly exposed in Residency to the elements, dramatic ridges that appear to have been cut into the sky, and deep below, dark canyons and creeks. Let the rich life run to the roots again. Moths, butterflies, lizards, and lions inhabit this place. —Robinson Jeffers, from “Return” Sitting on the ground across from a mountain’s flank does something to a person; it rights any misplaced sense of self-importance, brings one to level, and gives a day bal- last. Walking on land absent of human traffic untangles the mind’s cobwebs, relaxes car-weary joints. For an artist, such placement can do even more; the imagination, like the feet, is free to wander. As part of their bequest, the Mudds stipulated that Glen Deven serve artists. Virginia Mudd was a writer. She held parties for the Bach Festival musicians at her home. When musician and composer was invited to Glen Deven for ten days in 2012 as part of the artist-in- residence program, a collaboration between the Big Sur Land Trust and the Monterey Jazz Festival, he produced some of his finest compositions. According to Tim Jackson, artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival, “Each year an artist is commissioned to write a piece for the festival. We look for innovative music. Bill is always doing interest- ing, eclectic work.” Frisell loved the idea of going to Big Sur. Jackson said, “It was Easter Sunday when Bill arrived. His flight had been delayed, and it was late when he got in and raining really

COURTESY: R. BLITZER GALLERY

CATAMARAN 15 editorial note editorial note

hard. We met him at Carmel Valley Road, and he followed that perpetual movement, a reaching out, a bending into, road skirts the hilltop before dropping down, step by step, the way I walked. Keeping the creek on my left, I proceeded us down the coast out to the ranch, and we left him there.” is apparent in each song, but there are plenty of pauses, into the canyon and beyond. Settling low in the sky, the eastward, sheltered from the warming day by the canopy Glen Deven is nothing if not remote-feeling. There too, as the breeze catches her breath, as the rabbit freezes, morning fog drifted in off the ocean in perfect cloudlets, of redwood and eucalyptus trees, until the allure of a rest were no city lights and no corner stores to mute the perva- pretending to be a rock. In the music, just as on the earth, but the sun was warm, waiting just behind. on the rickety bridge got the best of me. I rested, wrote in sive rainy darkness that Frisell entered, nothing to mitigate there’s a lot of call and response. At Glen Deven the jays Big Sur, especially as a result of California’s severe my notebook, and gave my attention to the creek talk, the the magical sense of inhabiting the faraway. Jackson said, and owls do it, as well as many other birds. Once, when I drought, is dry and arid, even with the ocean right there. smooth rocks made shiny by the flowing water. As when lis- “I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d called me the next was out walking, a buck bent his head to the ground and This isn’t a place where I’d want to get lost for long. One tening to music, while in nature ordinary time is suspended. day to say ‘Get me out of here.’” But no such call came. stomped his feet repeatedly. That too was a call, a warn- water bottle wouldn’t do; thirst out in this country would set It was a relief to feel my life held in abeyance, at a distance, Frisell was made for Glen Deven. “When morning came, ing, a drumbeat call to other deer that danger was afoot. in fast. The downward walk was so inviting I forgot about and a luxury to be consumed by this here and now. it blew my mind,” he said. “You’re surrounded by redwood Wind rushed at the trees, and the pine needles trembled the afternoon return trip when the sun would be hot. A In my book Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination forest, and there’s a trail that you can walk to the bluff’s end, in response. vulture circled high overhead, and hawks leaned their flight and Spirit in Everyday Life, I wrote about the experience where the land drops off and you see the whole panorama The whoosh of waves at a distance and the patter of into the mountains. of being out walking on the earth and feeling pulled ahead of the coast and the Pacific Ocean.” In fact, Jackson didn’t gently falling oak leaves touching the ground slipped into The quails whose business I had disturbed skittered by something other than myself—the call of the land, my hear from Frisell until days later, when he’d left the ranch my ears through the Big Sur suite, but not in the form into the wall of brush as though a door had opened just spirit’s adherence to it? Maybe. I can walk past where I to get groceries and called to say that everything was going of recorded nature sounds, rather through authentic inte­ wide enough for their entrance then firmly shut behind. even want to, as though an invisible hand were at my back just fine. gration and imaginative interpretation choreographed and From out of the wild mustard, a spring-loud chorus of bees pushing me ahead. But just when I’m about to go past the The natural world can serve an artist like nowhere else. developed by a startling talent. If the trees could sing in a rose. Some hundred bees were clustered, rambling among point from which I’d be able to return, I force myself to Inspiration is everywhere—in the clean air, the hilltop vis- guitar’s voice or in the voice of a viola or violin, might this and hunkering down into the flowerets, having a mealtime turn around, my heart rapid in its beat. That’s what hap- tas, the burble of creek water. During his stay, Frisell didn’t be their tune? If the rocks spoke melody along with their conversation—the shared joy of feasting and satiation. Up pened when I was out at Glen Deven. I wanted to continue write just a single piece of music; he composed an entire rhythm of rolling, falling, and colliding, might these drums from the Pacific, the cool wind came in layers and progres- onward indefinitely eastward, to discover what I’d never suite made up of nineteen pieces that later became an al- be what we’d hear? Does the night sky play cello to the sions like song. Heading down and down toward the canyon encountered before, but talked myself into going home. bum. Tim Jackson said, “From both a critical and sales stars? Do the condors gently brush their wings along the floor, the farther I got from the ridge top there came another Getting lost is as much a part of the artist’s life as it is standpoint, Big Sur is one of Frisell’s best.” treetops? I could have sat there listening all night. Here was sound, more pronounced with each step—the indisputable the nature walker’s. It can also be a part of the experience lighthearted surf music, Irish ballad, lullaby, and lament. melody of traveling water. And beyond, was it possible, did of being an audience member or a viewer of art. Stand in *** In the album’s first song, “The Music of Glen Deven I hear the rippling, distant roar of ocean waves? front of a favorite painting long enough and one can be Though just about the only recorded music I’d been lis- Ranch,” violin, drum, and guitar play against a pattern of Walking alone in a natural place for the first time is the wholly transported, feel invited beyond any familiar locale. tening to for some time was Big Sur, I’d sadly missed the sound made by the viola. In “Sing Together Like a Family,” best way to experience it. For some of us, that’s one of the The landscape of Frisell’s Big Sur music does this to me. premiere of this work at the Monterey Jazz Festival, so on the drum keeps time, holds steady. And then some yearning finest things life has to offer. It’s odd how being in a spot The earth says, “Come hither”; the music says, “This way.” a January night, I went to the Jazz Center comes in, wistful like a grief that one leans into and backs on the earth with which I am unacquainted can provide Ah, and then the refrain returns the listener, enriched and to catch it live. away from—literally. The many times I’ve listened, I can’t an uncanny sense of return. In that way time in nature has deepened from the journey that only an artist like Frisell Guitarist Frisell was joined onstage by the other hold entirely still but find myself swaying from side to side a quality of pentimento—modern life may have painted can take us on. members of his Big Sur Quintet, comprising to just the point where I’m about to lose balance, and then over the original work and our primary relationship with Some of the Big Sur pieces sound otherworldly, and on viola, on cello, Rudy Royston on drums, that violin or the guitar pulls me back to the center again. it, but go back to the land, for even a little while, and it’s that may have to do with the expansive, otherworldliness and on violin. I closed my eyes. Frisell’s And right before the song’s conclusion is the sound of some- evident we’re returning to the place that, once upon a time, of Glen Deven. In an interview about his experience at the guitar was the first thing I heard before the other musicians one’s approach—not a human someone though. all people knew best. Is that, too, what I hear in Frisell? ranch, Frisell said, “When you’re alone, you put the idea took their parts. His composition is a portrait of a place; Might that be why I keep returning to the album, for that out into the air, and in the beginning I was in a panic to it conveys a physical and spiritual sense of Big Sur. The *** odd blending of new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, all think of something else right away—just the silence was music entered my body. It took me back to my own times Not being a state park or a regional park, Glen Deven isn’t of it welcoming, infusing my imagination? deafening. Now, I’m actually beginning to enjoy it.” Emily along that stretch of coast, the wild and ragged ones, the easily accessible to the public; I’d never been there, but At the canyon’s very bottom there is no farther down to Dickinson said, “Nature is a haunted house—but Art—a contemplative and solitary ones. There’s a distinct melodic was welcomed by the Big Sur Land Trust and given the go unless one were to slip into the creek or burrow earth- house that tries to be haunted.” Frisell’s music, however, connection between one song and the next; it’s symphonic gate code in order to get in. An early June morning was ward as snakes and gophers do. Considering the uphill walk doesn’t have to try. in that way. The music embodies its composer, giving the the perfect time to find out what the music was all about. of more than an hour in the hot sun that was ahead of me, a Art is also a conversation. The act of making—dance, listener a singular sense of Bill Frisell. Jim, the caretaker, led me to where the trail began and dip in cool water sounded good but, sadly, it was too shallow painting, sculpture—isn’t the conversation’s initiation. The suite is full of gesture. Nature is never still, and offered vague directions, my favorite kind. The wide dirt for that. In place of down, however, there is along, and that’s Making art is always in response to something or someone.

16 Patrice Vecchione CATAMARAN 17 “While there and since, I’ve“While alot thought about what it took were days aluxury. It’s aplace“Those of privilege. Iknow Akinmusire spent ten days at Glen Deven this past April. at spent April. ten Glen days past Akinmusire Deven this the At When we begin creating anew piece, creating we begin When we’re continuing a 18 He and Irecently about there chatted mu and his time his I could hear him contemplating almost silence. that in up.I grew Iwondered what would it like be for to be them It’s easier to listen—simultaneously and without— within that.” all but Ihad to trash writing I went started there, I’d Forgotten been commissioned to ‘The to write Place’I’d I felt piece of cleansed. the Ifound title Ihad to change the if they had?” they if inside solitude. myself, It’s aplace have we inside. all Before when we’re not predictably being and unpredictably inter young The premiere,will written. being one still that’s here. Alot of my never chance. ancestors had that What marvel, trumpeter, composer,marvel, and bandleader Ambrose glad to butterflies, and flitting moths mouthed at resting rupted. Akinmusire noted another, important attribute of noted attribute another,rupted. Akinmusire important somebodies.earth’s coming forward creatively and otherwise. In nature, that that nature, creatively In forward andcoming otherwise. open- walker to to lollygag, stare on,coming this causing conversation. Later, listener the viewer or it the extends because I felt I was getting back in touch with this place back touch in this Ifeltbecause with getting Iwas on not my by screen something but engrossed bybe the onstage, with the other musicians the band. his in with onstage, of beauty, like those in the community of Oakland where of Oakland of community beauty, the in like those going down; returning home day’s The is. always heat returning going down; was for order my in ancestors experience.” for me to have this took notes. He worked melody. on the our conver During elements and music,the place, himself of that with and, Frisell’s case, place, this In conversation with is further. sation, his voice his sation, got quiet for and a bit amoment; distant people many so never kind who will get to experience this solitude general in and solitude particular: in nature in amoresolitude place. agreater platform, secure has landing the to used second, it. By getting was day I first “The said, quicklysic. working on land began him. Akinmusire The

While at Glen and keptWhile ajournal Deven, Akinmusire My Glen back Deven walk upa lot was slower the than In solitude, ableIn are better of us many to receive what’s Patrice Vecchione Patrice 2015 Monterey Festival, a new Jazz piece of music *** editorial note - - - The Forgotten Place nature writingworkshops. adults andyoung people. Sheteaches creative writingand of poetry. Shehasalsoedited many poetry anthologiesfor Within by Looking Voice Your Life Everyday of Patrice Vecchione Nature and art have essence; a shared they’re ofNature and art acts both His comment made me think of my time in nature in anew in commentHis nature of in my time made me think I wanted nothing sharp or harsh.” brassy, nothing sharp I wanted nothing you might picture deer grazing as they hold they as their brown you picture might deer grazing is woody, likeis birds and that’s it’s harp, angelic. and Irish it open Iwant But to to be because it my say changing. Ican in other protectedin places, enclaves, even asphalt-free wild, Glen At Deven and our is birthright? and creating, art, ing inclined for there to those remindis to do that so, us mak we get, the easier this may be to do. be may But easier teacher this the we what get, better nascent impetus to create. The further away from nature nature away from to create.nascent impetus further The can become undeniable. creation—the human’s on arelatively scale, creativity small band is composed ofband ten is musicians. We’ve got cello, which as it, and the sun and the sky, and sun the and the it, as entered Frisell so himself, of lineage our to the link abolish of this our innate knowing way, added,and important “After privilege. as Akinmusire the earth’s on unequivocally an one. large earth’s land andthe The Ifeltten been there days for amonth.” like I’d the wind lift off the Pacific and slip through the trees. And Pacific the trees. the off andthrough slip lift wind the way. Bigthat Sur to the you hear Quintet, can Listening It were sounds and playing transformed? writing his that kind. first the For generations to tried some denyhaveand and inventors doers, makers, are all of sea and the sky the shoulders against that wind. that against shoulders of our endeavors inspired call cities, the within parks small in Everyday Life Everyday in recent book, Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in in Spirit and Imagination Nurturing Nature: into Step —This essay is an expanded adaptation from Patrice Vecchione’s most Vecchione’s most Patrice from adaptation expanded an is —This essay When I asked for details about new for Iasked his composition, details When Did the air enter Frisell’s guitar through its open mouth enter air Did its the Frisell’s through guitar Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit Spirit and Imagination Step into Nature: Nurturing and (Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster, Atria Books, 2015). Books, Atria & Schuster, Words/Simon (Beyond , he declined, saying, “I can’t talk about talk “I can’t , he declined, saying, Writing and the Spiritual Life: Finding (patricevecchione.com) istheauthor *** , aswell astwo collections - editorial note North From Pfieffer Burns, FromNorth Pfieffer PETER LOFTUSPETER Oil on canvas, 36 x24 36 in canvas, on Oil

COURTESY: R. BLITZER GALLERY 2008 then at same baseline as text page blue line, raise art image above it. art creditruleshouldbe:ifonside,theningutter. ifunderneath,