a conversation with Glenn Buhr

Sam Decter: 

This evening the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra 
performs Glenn Buhr's Symphony number two (2001)
At Hilldale Lutheran Church, 321 Hilldale road, Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Please tell me a little about the performance history of your second symphony. 

Have you conducted it yourself? Which performance have you been most pleased with?

Glenn Buhr: 

The 2nd Symphony was written on commission 
from the CBC Vancouver Orchestra (now defunct). 

 It’s a tragic symphony, based on a song from my musical ‘Flux’, 
and I appropriated the stye of Baroque melodrama, to enhance the tragic element. 
 It was performed on Remembrance Day, exactly two months after 9/11. The music seemed to suit the time.  

The only other performance was with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony about eight years ago, 

but I’ve never conducted the work.

SD: 

How do you approach writing songs or airs for soloists 
such as Tracy Dahl or Sarah Slean? 

Do you write with specific performers in mind?

GB: 

 I always start with texts.  
The texts are in front of me, then I listen for music as I read them. 

 I’ve been writing songs since I was 14 years old.  
and music are closely linked; words have rhythm and pitch. 

 Prose and poetry are often musical when no music is present, 

so my job is to not lose the natural music in the words,

 but rather enhance it with my chords and melodies and counterpoint.  

I wrote my 3rd Symphony - a choral symphony - with Sarah Slean in mind.  

She’s a pop singer with a beautiful voice,
 and she’s musically literate too; a virtuoso classical pianist.  
Bramwell Tovey initiated the project with Tracy Dahl.  

They’ve done a lot of work together, so he brought us together for that project.

SD:

You've taught at Wilfred Laurier for 30 years now. 

How has your approach to teaching composition changed in three decades, 

and how has being part of the Kitchener-Waterloo music scene 
affected your approach to/outlook on music?

GB: 

My teaching has changed as the culture has changed.  

I opened up a program in improvisation and creative performance 
about 15 years ago in reaction the the dwindling interest in new concert music.  

 Concert music is just another of several genres. 
 It’s narrow-minded to expect important new work 

to only emerge form a musical class system that peaked in the 19th century,

 so we need to evolve our pedagogy as the world turns.

Creative music makers are at a disadvantage if they ...wait for the phone to ring 

hoping that some classical virtuoso might want to perform their work.  

Jazz and rock musicians perform their own music.  
Their audiences expect that. 

 There’s no reason to limit that idea to jazz and rock.  
New genres are always forming, 
and that depends mostly on what is going on in our culture, 
which is always changing. 

SD: 

As one of its founders, 
what are your thoughts on the current direction 
of the WSO New Music Festival?

GB: 

I’m rarely able to go to the festival these days.  

 I’m pleased that it still seems to be going strong, and that the public is still engaged.  

The various teams have done a good job with the programming, 

but the giddy days of the early years of the festival are gone.  

Back then, we had no idea that the festival was going to be as popular as it became.  

That lovely shock kept the energy and innovation going for quite a few years.

SD: 

What was your experience like 
as composer-in-residence with the WSO?

GB: 

That was a wonderful time. 
 Bramwell Tovey was very supportive of my work, 

and he still conducts some of the music I wrote for the WSO 

with the various orchestras that he's working with now. 

 In those days, he didn’t know too much about contemporary music, 

so it was my job to do all of the programming and stage design for the festival.  

And I love producing innovative concerts and also writing music, so it was my dream job.

SD: 

What was the inspiration behind the 
Music in the Ruins project?

GB: 

 Margaret (my wife, novelist Margaret Sweatman) 
and I moved into the residence at the Ruins of the Trappist Monastery 
in St. Norbert to escape our flooded property.  

(The Ruins are on the right side 
of the Red River Floodway; 

our house was on the wrong side, 
and was immersed.)  

So we partnered with the St. Norbert Arts Centre to create a musical version 

of what they were already doing with theatre, Shakespeare in the Ruins.   

That was the first time that I’d ever produced a musical event separate from the WSO.  

I now put together about 5 or 6 different productions every year, 
some of which have a longer life, like my new band, The Button Factory Band.

SD:

 Did you play a part in organizing the 
Contemporary jazz summit in 2012?

GB: 

I produced that when I was Artistic Director 
with NUMUS Concerts in Kitchener-Waterloo.  

It focused on new work, 
and also the music of Miles Davis 
and Thelonious Monk.

SD: 

Which Jazz musicians have had the most influence 
on you as a piano player? 

GB: 

Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Thelonious Monk, 
Chick Corea, John Lewis, Oscar Peterson

SD:

As a songwriter?

GB: 

Neil Young, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, 

Bob Dylan, John Lennon, David Byrne, 

Paul Simon, Daniel Lanois

SD:

 Do you see Jazz as Black 
America's Classical music?

GB:  

Yes, since like classical European music, 

Jazz is essentially a dead language 
that lives on in other forms of social music. 

 We preserve jazz like we preserve the classical music of Old Europe. 

 The museums are concert halls, educational institutions, 
libraries, music notation and tribute concerts. 

 (W)e have a lot of new music evolving 

that includes some sounds and attitudes of the old music, 

but it’s a new and present language.  
I see the Hip hop culture as a new incarnation of Jazz.  

The  syncopated words (often improvised) of Hip hop  
have replaced the syncopated melodies (often improvised) of Jazz. 

 Both emerged from African American culture 
which is a living and thriving musical culture, 

...the language of the music is always changing.  
I’m with Miles Davis on this. 

 He stopped using the word ‘Jazz’, 
and replaced that with ‘Social Music’ 
in his vocabulary.

SD:  

What is the Ebony Tower?

GB: 

It’s a short story by John Fowles
 about a young avant-garde artist 

interviewing an older and very successful painter 

who is opinionated in the extreme.  
For the older painter, the new style is too antiseptic, 
and a negative new direction, 

hence ‘The Ebony Tower’. 

I like the term as an analogue 
for the art that emigrant African culture has given us, 

especially through music.  
So it’s the title of a complex set of variations that I wrote in 1984, 

based on a blues song of mine 
that was more influenced by African-American music 
than by Western classical music. 

 It’s interesting that most conventional jazz 
is an appropriation of variation technique that was developed in Old Europe.  

The influences go both ways.

SD: 

Vis: your thesis in Our Native Song: "all music is folk music." 

Does this idea stand up to the influence of capitalism and marketing 
on how music is commodified, 

homogenized, and electronically consumed?

GB: 

All music is folk music simply because it’s made for and by people.  

I really needed to articulate this because there is a pervasive idea out there 

that classical music is  superior to just about every other music.  
But it’s not superior, it’s just different than many other kinds of music 

because the social strata from which it emerged is different.  

The toe-hold on the idea of its ‘superiority’ 
comes from the drive of the European Empire to conquer the world.  

I guess those kings, emperors and dictators thought 
that if they could take Africa, India, and the New World, 

then their music must be better. 
 But really, it’s just music 
that the literate classes enjoyed ... 

so it’s folk music.  
The folks just happened to be also independently wealthy.  

Rich folk are still folk.

Music has been commodified since before I was born. I’m used to it, 

and I can still here a strong cultural voice in most music, even these days.  

Commercialism has always muddied the cultural quality of music to some degree.  

But culture is messy and organic, like soil and fertilizer 
That kind of muck often generates new and unusual things.  

SD: 

I too am a musical Winnipeg ex-pat. 

I recall Winnipeg as a place of plains, trains, and all-ages punk shows. 

How do you feel Winnipeg has defined who you are and what you do?

GB: 

Well, I’m still a Winnipegger.  I have a house there, 
and Margaret teaches creative writing at the University of Winnipeg, 

so I still haunt the place. One of my favourite artists/activists/philosophers is Neil Young.  

We both grew up in Winnipeg, and I think that Winnipeg punk/funk is there in his music, and also in mine.  

It's a great city, with a sharply drawn musical personality.  

SD: 

Has Winnipeg changed since you grew up there?

GB: 

I hopped a train near Higgins and Main when I was 17 years old 
and headed out to the west coast for some adventure. 

 Now, there’s a music club there on Main Street the Times Change(d) 

and you can watch a good band in the summer and look past them, 
out the window over Main Street to the rail lines. 

 The trains are still heading west. 

  

The First Nations folks have finally found a foothold, 

and have a healthy influence on the culture. 

 But other than that, it’s still trains, 

plains and all-ages punk.  

Eternal and utopic.