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Inside the Brain of Eileen Ivers By CHRIS GRANT Special to the Irish American Post MILWAUKEE,
WIS. – We wanted to chat
with Eileen Ivers before her stop in Milwaukee recently to appear with the
Milwaukee Symphony for three shows, and an interview wouldn’t have taken more
than a few minutes. But Homeland Security and the airlines made announcements
in the Newark Liberty International Airport every two or three minutes.
“There’s not even a club lounge I can duck into,” the frustrated nine-time
All-Ireland fiddle champion apologized after the 10th PA
disruption. We asked, “Don’t you travel with masking tape?” hoping she could
stick a foot of it over the announcer’s considerable mouth. She laughed, and
we plowed ahead, talking about everything from her immigrant parents to the
brain of a fiddler and what her band gets out of performing. IAP: Your music is very intelligent. Does the
fun continue when it gets intelligent? How do you go from having fun to being
a great fiddler? And what's the experience like? Eileen
Ivers: Of course we
always learn the instruments well. I think for me I was drawn to the violin
because there was some fun, and another aspect is that I loved the emotions
that one could get from the instrument; joy, you know, rhythm, some sadness. I remember being struck by that
when I was a Very much now is intertwined
with fun and improvisation especially makes it extremely fun. When you take
these chances, you know the audiences are very smart. They know when you're feeling
the music, and you're really going for it, and you're giving an honest
performance. Which, quite frankly, I don't know any other kind of a
performance to give. It's totally from the heart. And people who have heard myself and, and our group, you know, will testify to that.
That's very important for any
artist to be very real, and perform in the moment. So that you
kind of constantly intertwine and intersect the fun, the emotions, and the
technique, and the intellect— intellectualizing of the music. Harmonic
improvisations to how the band and I are interacting and the rhythms that are
happening. So it's wonderful. If you're truly exhausted after
a performance, then I think that's a great thing. Because you leave your
heart out there on the stage, and you hope to break that fourth wall that
really connects with the audience. That’s something we just love to do. IAP: Is the audience responsible for the
quality of the performance? Eileen
Ivers: I think they're huge part of the performance quality of
course you know, we pride ourselves and you do your homework. The
arrangements are very well thought out and that part. There's always that
spontaneous quality that's again very essential for every performance. And
that's also where the audience becomes a part of it. Because, once you have a
dialog with the audience and they're with you. And this is folk music at the end of the day;
expressing emotions of a wonderful people that have gone through incredible
times. You know, through the many
hundreds of years. Certainly the past you know 300,
400 years of immigrating, hunger, famine, leaving the country. My parents
both had to leave Ireland at, at very young ages. And it's all intertwined in
the emotions of the music; heart-wrenchingly sad, romance, cathartic, slow airs and very infectious, rhythmic joyous dance tunes. And
it's, it's kind of all there. The audience, they get the
honesty. And when they see back into what you're giving, it's just as you
know becomes and infamous kind loop back and forth. A cycle that it just, can
literally bring down the house and, and especially in beautiful halls, like
the symphony hall in Milwaukee. It is a gorgeous hall
and we've play there before. We've been very privileged to share that stage
before with, with a wonderful orchestra and even in that kind of a setting,
it could feel very intimate. IAP: Blues guitarists like to grimace when they
hit high notes, as though it were painful to play up the neck. How can I tell whether you are just
performing or really into it? Eileen
Ivers: Yeah, well I don't know about certain blues guitarists or
[laugh] heavy metal guys but I suppose not every performer comes from the
heart. I've certainly seen performances of musicians I've really admired and I knew they weren't really in the moment and I
had to leave because I’d rather listen to the CD. For me
anyway, representing the kind of music that we play it's more of a
responsibility. Throughout the
performance we like to talk about a lot about Ireland, about the history,
about how things have affected my family as one of many, many immigrants that
left the country and it's just kind of a part of my being. So, if I were to not be
truthful, I'm not being truthful to me and to the heritage, and to the music
and stories that we’re privileged enough to represent on stage. The band is there because they
all want to be on stage and that's extremely important. We've made changes in
the past where perhaps a band member was maybe asked to possibly leave and
move on because they might not have been feeling that it’s a true blessing to
be invited to perform and to be on stage. There's not a lot of beauty and
glory in getting to the shows. [Laugh] But when you're on stage
that's, that's the true, you know, magic. That's what we all strive for and
live for and breathe. So, that's what I can tell you at least about the way
we approach it. IAP: What's the cost been to you personally of
being a musician who’s been on the road? Do you have kids? Do you have you a commitment
to the music that has kept you from going in other ways? Eileen
Ivers: It's actually very much enriched my life. My husband Brian
travels with me and he does the house sound and manages things, and we have a
home studio where I record, and produce different artist as well and it's
been a, a very fulfilling life in the sense. I went to college
and I’m just shy of a master’s. I went on to study post grad mathematics at Iona
College, and it was just a wonderful discipline and I had sort of dreams of
my own back in the day of possibly doing some kind of aeronautical
engineering, working for NASA in some capacity. And the creativity and beauty
of mathematics is not far from that of music, so I think I just listened to
my heart and said, “God, life is so short,” as we all know, and what gifts might
I have and how can I use them? You know, what can you do to really try to
make a difference or just do something you feel right about? IAP: They say that left brain is analytical and
right brain creative, but with mathematics and music you seem to have both of
them going on. Eileen
Ivers: I've done papers on this and the similarity of mathematics
and music when I was at the university. They're very, very, very similar. There's
logic in mathematics and in music. You have your proportions and ratio of
harmonies. But even just the nuts and bolts, just the whole theory, they use
words like beauty and elegance in math when you solve theorems and that. And
there’s beauty elegance, and again, logic in music. When you were talking
about blues players that maybe go for a note and play it so long that it
hurts, sometimes it goes beyond logic; the notes shouldn't go with the chord
that's underneath it, but that's where emotion comes in, and it's really
interesting. But, you know they're two wonderful
disciplines and I often say how I think that a math background has actually
really helped me in my musical life, for sure. IAP: We say that mathematics and music are both
languages. When you are communicating in music, whether you're in Los Angeles
or in New York, a crowd will react in a similar way to a particular tune.
What is the content of the expression? What is the language? Eileen
Ivers: You’re right. Both math and music are languages that
involve a universal truth. I think I know when I have a form and you might
have seen this or any visuals of us performing or myself performing that, but
I can't hide what I'm feeling and it comes from my
instrument. I'm not a vocalist, obviously, but through my instrument, that's
what my emotions are being pressed through. IAP: What are the universal truths that are
communicated through music? Eileen
Ivers: I think you get back to all of the truths in the emotions
in there. You know, if you're in the middle of playing an air, you're kind of thinking about that.4 I can't just kinda
click off. You're thinking about the notes, how you're going to express it – the
emotion behind it; the phrasing of it, if you were a vocalist. You know, I'm
actually thinking of what the lyrics are to a slow tune, and kind of
projecting that. So a lot
of the emotion is there. The tunes are just so joyful, and so very rhythmic
it’s just part of your whole body, how you're feeling it. You internalize the
rhythms and it just comes out that way. So I think again this gets back into emotion. When you're improvising, boy
you better be thinking. You better be good on your feet. There are all these
honest things that are just kind of going on that's happening in the moment.
Those are all truths because if, if they weren't, I think you would implode,
you know? [Laugh]. IAP: Okay. So it is
the expression of you playing the music. That's what you're saying. That the “truth”
is you expressing what you feel when you play that particular piece. Eileen
Ivers: Correct, correct, absolutely. IAP: Among the fundamental fiddle-playing
techniques is how a fiddler has to anticipate a note or three or four ahead,
and think about how to get the bow into position. Joan Driver, drummer for the
Screaming Orphans, says the Irish
fiddlers are amazed at the way Scythian’s
Alexander Fedoryka, who is not Irish, plays Irish fiddle music. Like
Alexander, you learned in the United States.
Do you have a unique approach to those anticipated notes that the
Irish trained fiddlers don't? Is that part of the playing quality that makes
you who you are? Eileen
Ivers: I play mandolin and tenor banjo as well, so I know what you're
saying from the picking point of view. And the bow is a wonderful part of the
violin, because it does make things very fluid. Obviously your
brain is trying to be in the moment and rapid fire and you're thinking on the
spot. Your fingers should be always kind of up. There should be like just
really one finger on a string at a time and every other finger should be
ready to be flown down at any particular second. And I'd love to see a study
like really how quickly decisions are made. I remember hearing something
about a quarterback, and how he releases the ball to his wide receiver. Like,
this split second he's going to decide which
receiver he’s going to. Maybe the linebacker's in his field of vision too. But, it’s the split second decision. IAP: Some of that is not thought. Some of it is
not reduced to words. Eileen
Ivers: Exactly. It's instantaneous, right. You are in a stream of
consciousness, and you're just kind of in the moment. The beauty of Irish
music is that that's part of the subtle improvisation. Each time you play the
form of the tune you're certainly encouraged traditionally; you're
reinventing it each time through ornamentation, through slight melodic
variations; and then, of course, in how I look at performing with our ensemble Some passages will be more free
form where you're losing the tune altogether and you're truly, you know,
obviously improvising and creating a whole new melody and rhythm, and you
might even lose the rhythmic structure sometimes if it feels right. You might
get into a free form and bring it back into a rhythm. So that's beautiful, obviously,
just happening at the moment. IAP: Is it an equation? You may lose the time,
but at a point, everybody has to come back together. How do you know that
point? Eileen
Ivers: You feel it. [Laugh]. That's the great thing, and sometimes
it defies the logic; you just kind of feel it. And you have to go with the
gut. When you want to come back, sometimes, to get other folks back on it,
there might be visual cues in that. But you just land on the leader. So you bring, you bring everybody together on that point
again. And I think it makes for very exciting performances. IAP: Everybody likes Mexican food and people like
to go out with friends and eat and drink margaritas. But it's not what you make
when the boss is coming over; it’s just fun, familiar food. Irish music was for
a long time the Mexican food of music. Everyone played Johnny
I Hardly Knew You, or Molly Malone. But the music you play is very
sophisticated. Is Irish music enough of market that a musician like you can
spend a career at it; someone with your skill and the accolades that you
have. Is the framework of Irish music enough for you to fully spread your
wings? Eileen
Ivers: I don’t just play fiddle. I don't just consider myself an
Irish fiddle player. I consider myself a player of the violin. And I love so
much music that can fit on this instrument. I've been known to play and
collaborate with people from very diverse genres of music, from the pop world
and the rock world. I mean, I've worked with Patty Smith, Hall
and Oates, did something with Sting, you know, and bring my musicality into
that situation. I’m not thinking by Irish fiddling rules or anything. I'm
just playing music. The same is true with the
classical instrument. It's wonderful
to play with classical musicians. I greatly admire the technique and the
theory behind what they do. Jazz, too. I'm a huge lover of jazz. Even work
with hip-hop players in that. So I love just being a
player of my instrument. I also play jazz with some guitar effect pedals. And
I've been recently doing some looping in that, so I think just having an open
mind is also key. For me there's no limitation and the band and I are much
more than Irish music. IAP: Let’s rephrase the question: Is Irish
music now big and flexible enough that someone like you can fully express
yourself in it? Not whether you limit yourself to Irish music. Eileen
Ivers: Yeah, I would say so. And I could speak for our performing
of Irish music. There are some traditional pieces. There are some pieces that
are original, that I've written, and the arrangements are beyond what
traditional Irish music is. That makes, I think, a very very big difference. I'll kick on a wah wah
pedal and some fuzz distortion on a passage that is an improvised section of
something. So we're going outside the boundary of
what, quote unquote, the traditional Irish music is. In a performance, I'm feeling
like there's an awful lot going on. We also talk about how the music of
Ireland and the immigrants, you know, interacted going through Canada. And
then, the rhythms there, with African rhythms, and African instruments; the Banjo
over American music, and Appalachian and Blue Grass that came out of that. And then you get your blues,
you know sort of slightly blues notes in there. We're coming from the place
of, of Irish music, but there's a lot more in the concert. I think, a lot of
these groups performing Irish music are still being paying homage to the
tradition but also taking it [beyond]. It's wonderful, there are a lot of
incredible musicians now playing this music, and coming out of Ireland and
around the world. And it has broadened itself. It's
not, like you said, immigrant songs like Molly Malone. Well, that's not an
immigrant song. But, um, yeah, it's widened its appeal. But yet, it's not being
diluted of what the essence of tradition is. IAP: A few years ago
Tommy Makem defined Irish music and was considered the
most popular Irish musician. Who defines Irish music now? Who is the person? Is
it you? Eileen
Ivers: No, absolutely not, no. The thing is, there's no one person
that can define a folk idiom, you know, of Irish music. There are so many elements to
it. It's a wonderful mind set of just the community
and I mean that very, very sincerely. There's a very big community spirit.
Lots of instrumentalists, lots of singers. A dancer might just knock your
socks off by, by doing an incredible dance and feeling better and express a
part of what the music and the traditions. So that's the thing; can't sum it
up with any one being. It's much larger than that. IAP: There is so much free music in Ireland
that I don't suppose a professional musician from the United States going to
Ireland would find much of a market; every time you go to a pub there are
people playing. When you to Ireland, do you play with people in the pubs, and
enjoy the community like that? Or is your community more of the virtuoso
caliber? Eileen
Ivers: The great thing about Irish music is that we've performed
in the National Concert Hall in Dublin and I've
performed at the local pub down from the house that we built on my father's
land in the west of Ireland. So that's the wonderful
interesting thing about the music and it's important that it lives in both
places, and it's important for musicians to be open to play. I mean, it fuels me when I come
back to Ireland and just kind of hang out the house. I love to play the
music, and to play it with other musicians in a traditional way, that's
wonderful. But, you know, we've played with the orchestra
and we've played with incredible stages in Ireland. So
it's kind of a wonderful duality that exists. |
