Letting it Land

It has been a whirlwind of a year so far. I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but I do sometimes pick a theme for the year - or more accurately a theme emerges some time in December that feels like the right way forward. A few years ago it was If It's Not Scary It's Not Worth It, which was in reference to my work (and only my work!) and was a way to push myself out of my comfort zone. This year's theme has been Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is and was a response to a growing feeling that I was talking a good game but where was the action? With that in mind I put out a funding call to spend a month with MWB's sister project Sounds of Palestine, responded to a nomination to apply for Serious/Cryptic's AirTime Artist Development scheme and did my bit to support the incredible Canadian violinist Aline Homzy in her application to bring Bitches Brew to Toronto. I then settled down for a freezing cold but lovely Christmas in Hamilton, Ontario with family and wondered what 2018 would bring. (Did you know that at -10˚C the hairs in your nose freeze while you breathe?! You can feel them breaking... it's a bizarre sensation.)

Fast forward seven months a this is what the year brought: 

Four weeks in Palestine including teaching at Sounds of Palestine, a project based on the El Sistema model from Venezuela in Beit Sahour, West Bank, that takes children from the al-Azzeh, Ayda and Dheisheh refugee camps in Bethlehem and teaches them music and provides social support for the children and their families. The MWB team there also provides weekly workshops in schools in the area and I was lucky enough to join in a couple of those and also a few music workshops in a school for deaf children. (Think about the main components of music and translate them into a non-sound-based experience - I was blown away by our deaf MWB Workshop Leader, Halimeh.)

Bitches Brew Toronto Launch curated this time by Aline Homzy and supported by Toronto Jazz Festival, the roots and themes of BB are just as pertinent in Canada as they are here. It was a chance to connect with some outstanding musicians and to introduce the eclecticism that is at the heart of Bitches Brew.

​Bitches Brew Traverse Launch, #9, #10 and Glasgow Jazz Festival a tremendous array of musicians and including the incredible storyteller Marion Kenny who improvised a live soundtrack to a long and intriguing Japanese folk tale.

​MWB Welcome Notes a project that started in Holland and is extending across other parts of Europe to provide relief for refugees in reception centres. This is an extremely fragile time, and music can provide support and relief from the stress of continued uncertainty. WN is also extending it's reach to look at Inclusion once people have been settled. 

AirTime ​Artist development programme run by Serious and Cryptic - seminars and ongoing support for Bitches Brew.

MWB: CONTACT Seminar for Peace-building (Vermont) a seminar aimed at people engaged in peace-building activities, we ran a course to introduce MWB's principles and to show the role that music making can play in creating empathy, which is vital in rebuilding communities after conflict.

MWB Introductory Course (Edinburgh) ​Running over three weekends in June and July this  pilot course was designed to cover designing music workshops for vulnerable people, working with trauma and developing feedback and reflection methods - placing our work within the wider context and brought three members of the team, Amanda Koser, Darren Abrahams and Chris Nicholson, to Edinburgh.

​Glasgow Jazz Festival ​Bitches Brew almost didn't happen because of the tragic fire at Glasgow School of Art. Thankfully it got the go-ahead and a few days later I joined Raymond MacDonald and friends to perform some of his original pieces. That was a stunning gig.

Pilot project with refugee children in north-east Scotland ​I was really delighted to find that most of the children that have been settled in this part of the country are being really well looked after by teachers and head teachers. It's going to be great cultivating an ongoing project to see how they fare over the next few years. 

BOOM Artist Residency I am currently looking at how trauma affects our sense of identity, how we relate to our surroundings, and how this is expressed through music. This is just the start though...

Workshops with SCO VIBE a week in Glasgow and another in Edinburgh for SCO Vibe - a tremendous project for teenagers aged 12 - 17 that have been playing for at least a year on any instrument at all. We write music together, learn to improvise and generally have a great time. 

Music and Visuals workshop with SCO at WHALE Arts in Wester Hailes using music and visuals to explore how we relate to our environment.

Boomtown Festival with Yola Carter great to be doing backing vocals again.

Edinburgh Fringe playing with Ron Davis, Aline Homzy, Kevin Barrett from Toronto, and Alyn Cosker, Chris Grieve, Aisling O'Dea, Clea Friend and Seonaid Aitken.

Teaching double bass and bass guitar at Broughton High School in Edinburgh and at the University of Aberdeen. I love this work, my students mean the world to me. Teachers are not given the respect they deserve.

This is a lot more than I bargained for. I have been out of my comfort zone for most of the year, sometimes way out, and the schedule has left little room to 'rest and digest' - a term used by Darren Abrahams, our MWB trauma specialist. The opposite of Rest and Digest is 'Run and Fun' and Darren shows a normal life cycle as a sine wave: run and fun on the way up, rest and digest on the way down. In addition to this, most experiences - at least the ones we plan for - have three stages: preparation/anticipation, action and integration. We plan the thing, we do the thing and then we think/talk about the thing. Our body is designed with mechanisms for dealing with this, such as yawning and crying (both of which culturally we're supposed to suppress) and when stronger emotions are involved - could be intense excitement, stress or trauma - time to let this cycle complete its course through to the integration stage is even more vital. Darren calls it Letting it Land.

The intensity of my schedule this year has allowed no time for integration, no time to Let it Land, until now. It has been exciting, exhilarating and at times extremely tough, and I wouldn't change any of it. So get out there and explore. Push yourself, let yourself fail, find new bits of yourself and throw out the old bits that you no longer need. And once you've done that, stop. Let it Land.