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A Brief History of Magnificent Bird

In the backwash of a year off the internet, I've become depression-key obsessed with Lewis Hyde'due south volume The Gift, in which he argues that the move of a gift—or a work of art—from 1 individual to some other helps to ascertain the community in which the souvenir or artwork circulates.

Today, my fifth album, Magnificent Bird, is released into the globe, and information technology is, for me, nigh fundamentally, an expression of my community. There are no hired guns: simply musicians whom I cherish as much for their humanity and friendship every bit I do for their artistry. And then I thought it would be appropriate to marker the unveiling of this project with a fiddling history & chronology of a dozen-and-a-one-half musical relationships that have made this tape possible.

1989 - At our respective homes in Rochester, New York, Ted Poor and I play boogie-woogie duets: me on piano, Ted on drums. We're also on the aforementioned Little League team; he ofttimes plays offset-base of operations, I'thousand over at shortstop for a quick six-3 on a basis brawl to the left side of the infield. 20-five years later, he plays drums in The Administrator, my showtime slice for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ted was so incredibly generous on this projection, recording iii,287 versions of "Hot Pinkish Raingear" before we arrived at the approach heard on the album. His sense of rhythm lights a room, and he is my oldest friend — not merely on this LP, but in life.

2006 - The Nickel Creek double-decker drops Chris Thile (as well as Sean and Sara Watkins) at my parents' house in Santa Rosa, California. We start playing music at around 1am. Fifteen years, hundreds of cups of java, and dozens of alcohol-fueled arguments about the "correct" arroyo to rhythm in the music of J.S. Bach later, Chris is one of my closest friends, and also a hero. Nosotros all know what a monster, once-in-a-generation talent he is. What is maybe less apparent is the insane work ethic that undergirds his seemingly effortless control of his instrument, an ethic I got to witness upwardly close while opening some 60 shows for Punch Brothers. The just person whose approach to rhythm is as continually mind-extraordinary as Ted Poor'south is Chris', hence the mando-drums on "To Be American."

2007 - I meet Alex Sopp through her new music ensemble, yMusic. I will forever be spoiled by the fact that she's the first flutist I work with: her tone singing, her sense of phrase totally intuitive and poetic. Over the course of fifteen years, nosotros share with each other many, many, many photographs of our cats. Her collaborative spirit was axiomatic in her work on this album: for "Hot Pink Raingear," I asked if she could play a synth riff on some "messed up whistles and flutes," and she sent dorsum, thirty-vi hours later, fourteen unlike tracks of diverse antique wind instruments. I wish I had kept all of it for you to hear, but sometimes less is more.

2008 (part one) - I hear Elizabeth Ziman sing at a tiny buffet in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I am instantly in honey with her voice and songwriting. I would happily listen to her sing revenue enhancement returns or technical manuals or the transcripts of municipal water supply hearings; she is magic. Somehow, after an almost 15 twelvemonth friendship, this is the first time nosotros've worked together on tape; her singing on "Sit Shiva" is, for me, what makes the song.

2008 (part ii) - Outside a rural elementary school in Switzerland, I am approached by a young human being, who, seeing my banjo case, announces that he "plays folk music, besides." It's Paul Kowert, who that autumn would bring together Punch Brothers every bit its bassist. Years later on, we travel around the state while I'm opening for his ring, playing chess over coffee, getting lost on long walks in unfamiliar cities, talking endlessly nigh music. He is a i of the nigh supremely gifted bass players of our time.

2009 - Holcombe Waller and I are ready on a West Coast co-bill tour by a friend who warns me that Holcombe is extremely flamboyant. I write to Holcombe, and in a postscript, mention—sort of in jest, sort of not—that I'1000 18% gay. He writes back, "I've worked with less." A friendship is born. Demand aid understanding obscure fiscal instruments or fledgling cryptocurrencies? Ask Holcombe. Need a quick tutorial on the history of energy policy in the Northwest? Ask Holcombe. Need the about sublime falsetto (simply also booming bass-baritone) you've ever heard? Inquire Holcombe. Happily, we now alive less than a mile from one some other in Northeast Portland. Holcombe, can I infringe some saccharide??

2010 (part 1) - I'm playing a gig in upstate New York accompanied by a string quartet. At soundcheck, one of the violinists mentions that she "writes a little music, besides." Next thing I know, that kind and tranquillity musician—Caroline Shaw—has won the Pulitzer Prize. Over the years, we email with eccentric frequency virtually Lunchables (can't remember how that ane started), and have occasionally appeared together in concert. What I admire most almost Caroline is the accented honesty of her music. Many of u.s. work for years building up bamboozlement, then violent it down. Non Caro: she knows, and seems ever to have known, who she is. When I start heard her overdubs for the record, I cried.

2010 (part two) - Casey Foubert and I have known each other for a few years when he begins to mix my second album, Where are the Arms. Working on that record reveals to me the uncanny depth of Casey'southward musical knowledge, spanning, as it does, obscure 60's piano-driven folk-pop to gratis jazz. One of the most versatile and multivalent artists I've e'er encountered, Casey is the but musician who has played on all of my records (with the exception of Book of Travelers, which is just me). He'southward as well a profoundly curious person, and a super generous spirit. He now lives with his family in rural Illinois, and I love that at that place's a scrap of that energy on this album.

2011 - It's a dark and dreary evening in Peterborough, NH, when I find myself sitting at the pianoforte in a petty cabin, singing standards with a young woman named Amelia Meath. We keep in touch here and there, and then a few years later, I hear a band called Sylvan Esso and think, that voice sounds familiar! Over the last few years, Amelia and I take had long, deep phone calls virtually everything from literature to TikTok to systemic racism to the music biz. She encouraged me, while we were working on "Linda & Stuart," to encompass the cognitive dissonance betwixt the cheerful groove and the sense of grief that pervades the lyric.

2014 (part one) - Driving from the Denver Airport, Chris Morrissey tells me that he does a great BBC newscaster impression. I immediately try to one-up him. (Mine is ameliorate.) Every year on his altogether, to commemorate my modest victory of superior British dialect, I go out Chris a three-minute voicemail in a preposterous BBC voice. Chris is a consummate musician, and a complete human. One of the things that drew me to him when we offset met was how emotionally available he was. And then glad he's on this joint.

2014 (part ii) - A recording studio in New Jersey. yMusic has a new cellist on the session. Nosotros get through one take of my arrangement of Beck'due south "Mutilation Rag," for the Vocal Reader album, and Gabriel Cabezas, perhaps 22 years former, says, without a trace of attitude or ostentation, "oh, this is a twelve-tone row, right?" What a punk! One memorable night years afterward ends drunkenly at my firm, where we cook both carbonara and cacio eastward pepe later a long chat near how the best pasta sauces are emulsified using the cooking water.

2014 (part iii) - I'm non sure that the classroom at the fancy private school in Laguna Beach, California, was where I outset met Joseph Lorge, but information technology sticks out in my memory for some reason. He's at that place with a friend of his, a songwriter, who performs two beautiful songs equally part of a main class that I was giving. By 2017, Joseph has become indispensable to my procedure as a studio artist. He records and mixes Book of Travelers, and acts equally mix engineer and house psychologist during this project. He is tall and shy, quietly hilarious, with a heart of golden. His ears and imagination are amazing; without him, this record would not exist.

2015 - In the entrance hall of the newly opened Ordway Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, I am accosted past a blonde man with a cheerful face and intense eyes. "I have a question to ask you," he says, betraying the slightest hint of a Northern European emphasis. "On your song 'Mannerly Disease,' from your album Where are the Artillery, is it three clarinets or one claviola that announced suddenly in the second poetry?" This was Pekka Kuusisto, a true magician of the violin, and i of my dearest friends. I have fond memories from 2019 ("the before times") of walking down to the water—his house in Finland sits confronting the Baltic Bounding main—in cipher but towels, freezing our asses off before retreating to the warmth of his wood sauna, which I judge is what Finns exercise in February? When his violin enters halfway through the tune, I experience the chill of that numinous, Scandinavian wind insinuate itself into the harmonic field.

2016 (role one) - St. Paul, once more! Sam Amidon and I have known each other for a decade past this point, but information technology's over burritos at Chipotle that we bond for real, talking about our shared love of Herman Melville and obscure jazz records. If I'chiliad reading a keen book, Sam is often the commencement person I desire to tell. In a world brimming with highly individualized voices, Sam's artistry—from his singing voice to his banjo and fiddle playing—stands out for its idiosyncrasies and emotional depth.

2016 (function two) - On a tour bus somewhere in Montana, Andrew Bird and I get to talking most how folk and orchestral music can coexist. A few years afterward, we work closely on Time Is A Kleptomaniacal Bow, a bike I orchestrated comprising vi of his songs. Getting to hear him sing every dark was a real master class. Andrew has magnetic rock star energy, only he is besides a kind, gentle, quiet and deeply thoughtful soul. And no one plucks the violin quite the way he does. When I wrote the riff he plays on "To Be American," I knew it had to exist him.

2017 - From time to time, I head uptown to hear the NY Combo. One evening, I'm hypnotized by a sound—serene, expressive, otherworldly— emanating from from the principal clarinet chair. Eventually I muster the nerve to write to Anthony McGill and tell him what I huge fan I am. It'due south thrilling when he tells me that he knows my music and would love to exercise something together. And now, at last, we have.

2019 - Nathalie Joachim sends me mixes of her album Fanm D'ayiti. Information technology is then damn gorgeous. We've been casual acquaintances for five years at this point, but now I am *a fan*. Over the course of the pandemic, nosotros talk more often, counseling each other about the diverse challenges of being an artist in these confounding times. She joins the Creative Alliance with the Oregon Symphony, where I serve as Artistic Chair. This June, the Oregon Symphony volition present the globe premiere of an orchestral song cycle drawn from Nathalie'due south album that fabricated such an impression. The combination of Nathalie & Alex on the championship track, forth with Holcombe's vocal feature, has me feeling that my cup truly runneth over.

Appendix A:

Tony Berg is a joyous contrarian whom I've known for a dozen years, during which time he has shown me only generosity of spirit, resources, and wisdom. He co-produced Book of Travelers (which nosotros recorded at his old domicile studio in LA), and was an indispensable early sounding board for the songs on this anthology. And now he's got a dog named Bing-Bell. How near that?

Having said all that, may I remind you that tour begins on Monday?

The workings of the music business organisation are murkier than ever, but the bottom line is that even an art-house oasis like Nonesuch can't afford to keep putting out interesting music if no 1 is paying for it. I'thousand so grateful to all of y'all for your continued support, and hope you'll consider picking upwardly a copy of the record in one format or another if y'all've not yet washed then.

All my best, and hope to run across you at a gig in the next few months,

Gabriel

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