Southwest - July 29, 2007
by John Schroeder
Anyone who has seen the primitive rock and cave art of the American southwest understands how these unknown artists, using just a few strokes of ochre, a slight smudge of chalk or charcoal, captured the entire essence of their subjects. The sensualality of movement, the richness of colors, the subtlety of texture—it’s all present within those simple lines. Theirs was a quiet, inspired, almost sacred minimalism lacking nothing in definition, and yet at the same time, inexpressible. These same ineffable qualities are native to the music of Eric Tingstad. And that he should apply his craft in capturing the essence of the desert southwest is more appropriate to his musical sensibilities than even he may realize.
In his new album, Southwest, Eric explores the confluence of cultures and influences that define the spirit of this “place,” which is as much an idea as it is geography. Weaving aboriginal and western elements, the perfectly paced sequence of tracks take the listener on a sonic journey that evokes the aura and wonder intrinsic to this part of the world.
Southwest is also a very organic expression, but not only in terms of the instrumentation. Tingstad composed several of the pieces in keys resolved by the pitch of the native American drums that drive the compelling rhythms—Bb for example—unusual keys for the guitar, but essential to conveying innate tonality of the Southwest. The percussive foundation also freed Tingstad from having to cover all the bases with his guitar, engendering a sense of space within his sense of place. “That was important,” he adds. “I didn’t want the record to feel like a room without windows and doors.”
That’s a musical ethic that has always driven Eric’s unique approach to the guitar. When you’re a hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail. Many guitarists tend to suffer a similar myopia. Not Eric. Though he has chops to spare, he spares his listeners the mindless pyrotechnics of guitar flash. Instead, he opts for simple purity of line and tone, unencumbered of self-consciousness or the need to impress. He lets the music do the impressing. And sometimes that means getting out of the way.
“The architect Mies van der Rohe,” says Eric, “was the first to coin the phrase ‘less is more’ to describe his minimalist approach to his designs and compositions. I think he meant that the space is just as important as the elements. This allows for more contrast and perspective. There has to be contrast. Without slow there is no fast, without pianisimo there is no forté.”
Eric also likes to draws a corollary to his other passion: gardening. “Certain things that you do compositionally in a garden are very similar to the way we compose music. You work with sidelights and colors and textures and height and proportion. It’s natural to want to include every idea. That’s okay, but then you have to start weeding them out. You plant too much and then as things start to grow in different ways, you start pulling things back to allow space.”
Good instrumental music has the inherent advantage of space, and not only because of the absence of lyrics: wordless music invites the participation of the listener in a special way. When television came along—a medium that admits nothing to imagination—many still preferred radio; “the pictures are better,” they said. Likewise, instrumental music allows the imagery to develop and bloom in the mind’s eye. And to this end, the compositions comprising Southwest speak for themselves, without need of outside contextual clues. But for those who need a little prompting, the titles he attached to each piece provide those clues—and aptly so. Tingstad spent a good deal of time researching and considering how each title would contribute to the intent of the project. “One thing Southwest had going for it was intent,” he says. “I knew exactly what I wanted from the outset and this made all my decisions very easy to make. The titles were very important to me; they helped to give the work a center.”
So what makes for a good title? “You know you’ve got it,” he says, “when it matches expectations and also surprises.” Sunrise at Four Corners, the album’s opening track, is a good example. Having lived in Colorado for a number of years, I’m well acquainted with the magic of a summer sunrise, its quiet prelude giving way to a brilliant crescendo—and this piece of music is an outstanding soundtrack to the event. But a spectacular southwest sunrise is far more than a visual experience. Like the dreams of vision quests, the senses run together—one hears the colors, smells the sounds. Taken together with the image of the music, the experience somehow becomes tangible—like the animated lines of the pictographs rendered upon the sandstone. As his music testifies, Tingstad understands these not-so-small miracles. And what better way to open up Southwest than with a sunrise! And there begins the journey.
In this “day in the desert” Tingstad’s musical sequence summons the memory of the ancestral Puebloans, pauses to bask in the winds of the kiva, contemplates a lunar standstill, amplifies the pulsating energy of the Taos hum, and in the main, celebrates the constantly changing rhythms of the desert. The enchanted day comes to a close with Trail’s End, a reflective echoing of the sunrise that sent us on our way.
Listen to Eric Tingstad’s Southwest—a sublime desert soundscape—and come to know the rare kind of Grammy award-winning artistry that is able to bring the spirit of place to life.
_
Anyone who has seen the primitive rock and cave art of the American southwest understands how these unknown artists, using just a few strokes of ochre, a slight smudge of chalk or charcoal, captured the entire essence of their subjects. The sensualality of movement, the richness of colors, the subtlety of texture—it’s all present within those simple lines. Theirs was a quiet, inspired, almost sacred minimalism lacking nothing in definition, and yet at the same time, inexpressible. These same ineffable qualities are native to the music of Eric Tingstad. And that he should apply his craft in capturing the essence of the desert southwest is more appropriate to his musical sensibilities than even he may realize.
In his new album, Southwest, Eric explores the confluence of cultures and influences that define the spirit of this “place,” which is as much an idea as it is geography. Weaving aboriginal and western elements, the perfectly paced sequence of tracks take the listener on a sonic journey that evokes the aura and wonder intrinsic to this part of the world.
Southwest is also a very organic expression, but not only in terms of the instrumentation. Tingstad composed several of the pieces in keys resolved by the pitch of the native American drums that drive the compelling rhythms—Bb for example—unusual keys for the guitar, but essential to conveying innate tonality of the Southwest. The percussive foundation also freed Tingstad from having to cover all the bases with his guitar, engendering a sense of space within his sense of place. “That was important,” he adds. “I didn’t want the record to feel like a room without windows and doors.”
That’s a musical ethic that has always driven Eric’s unique approach to the guitar. When you’re a hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail. Many guitarists tend to suffer a similar myopia. Not Eric. Though he has chops to spare, he spares his listeners the mindless pyrotechnics of guitar flash. Instead, he opts for simple purity of line and tone, unencumbered of self-consciousness or the need to impress. He lets the music do the impressing. And sometimes that means getting out of the way.
“The architect Mies van der Rohe,” says Eric, “was the first to coin the phrase ‘less is more’ to describe his minimalist approach to his designs and compositions. I think he meant that the space is just as important as the elements. This allows for more contrast and perspective. There has to be contrast. Without slow there is no fast, without pianisimo there is no forté.”
Eric also likes to draws a corollary to his other passion: gardening. “Certain things that you do compositionally in a garden are very similar to the way we compose music. You work with sidelights and colors and textures and height and proportion. It’s natural to want to include every idea. That’s okay, but then you have to start weeding them out. You plant too much and then as things start to grow in different ways, you start pulling things back to allow space.”
Good instrumental music has the inherent advantage of space, and not only because of the absence of lyrics: wordless music invites the participation of the listener in a special way. When television came along—a medium that admits nothing to imagination—many still preferred radio; “the pictures are better,” they said. Likewise, instrumental music allows the imagery to develop and bloom in the mind’s eye. And to this end, the compositions comprising Southwest speak for themselves, without need of outside contextual clues. But for those who need a little prompting, the titles he attached to each piece provide those clues—and aptly so. Tingstad spent a good deal of time researching and considering how each title would contribute to the intent of the project. “One thing Southwest had going for it was intent,” he says. “I knew exactly what I wanted from the outset and this made all my decisions very easy to make. The titles were very important to me; they helped to give the work a center.”
So what makes for a good title? “You know you’ve got it,” he says, “when it matches expectations and also surprises.” Sunrise at Four Corners, the album’s opening track, is a good example. Having lived in Colorado for a number of years, I’m well acquainted with the magic of a summer sunrise, its quiet prelude giving way to a brilliant crescendo—and this piece of music is an outstanding soundtrack to the event. But a spectacular southwest sunrise is far more than a visual experience. Like the dreams of vision quests, the senses run together—one hears the colors, smells the sounds. Taken together with the image of the music, the experience somehow becomes tangible—like the animated lines of the pictographs rendered upon the sandstone. As his music testifies, Tingstad understands these not-so-small miracles. And what better way to open up Southwest than with a sunrise! And there begins the journey.
In this “day in the desert” Tingstad’s musical sequence summons the memory of the ancestral Puebloans, pauses to bask in the winds of the kiva, contemplates a lunar standstill, amplifies the pulsating energy of the Taos hum, and in the main, celebrates the constantly changing rhythms of the desert. The enchanted day comes to a close with Trail’s End, a reflective echoing of the sunrise that sent us on our way.
Listen to Eric Tingstad’s Southwest—a sublime desert soundscape—and come to know the rare kind of Grammy award-winning artistry that is able to bring the spirit of place to life.
_
