Margaret Slovak Re-releases Album ‘For The Moment’
JGT’s Joe Barth sits down with Austin, Texas guitarist Margaret Slovak and talks about re-releasing her acclaimed 1989 album ‘For the Moment’ on vinyl.
JB: On your album, For the Moment, talk about the upbeat track “Charissa” that opens the album.
MS: I wrote this song when I was a junior in music school at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. I usually write songs for people, places, or things that touch me deeply. When I was about twenty years old, I worked at a daycare center, taking care of little people and sometimes playing my guitar for them at nap time! This song was written for a little girl there named Charissa, who had a gentle spirit and a radiant smile that lit up the room and made everyone else smile along with her! This composition is primarily in 5/4 time; it switches back and forth from 4/4 time. The lilting nature of 5/4 seemed to fit Charissa’s joyful spirit!
JB: This album consists entirely of your own songs. Did you compose this music for a particular project?
MS: This album was recorded in 1989 in New York City, where I had moved in 1988, two years after I graduated from music school. I wrote most of these songs in the mid to late 1980s. Many of them were written during my junior and senior years in college, and I performed them at my senior recital. There were afew that I composed later, such as “November or April”. After I moved to New York, I wanted to record my compositions for a possible album, so I combined songs I’d written in college with some that I wrote in the first few years after my graduation.
JB: You are a good composer. Talk briefly about how you go aboutt he compositional process.
MS: As I mentioned above, there is usually a person, place, or eventthat inspires every song that I write, so I’m always coming from an emotional place when I start a piece. I’m a slow composer; sometimes it takes me many months or even years to finish a piece, but sometimes a piece comes out in one day, as with “Flowers for Marie.” Sometimes I start with a melody, sometimes I start with a harmonic or chordal idea, and sometimes I start with a more textural, guitaristic palette. I am also inspired by visual art. I am a visual artist myself, so sometimes I compose music and paint or draw simultaneously in an integral creative process. Composition to me is almost like sculpting; I have to work and work at it, listening to, shaping, molding, and feeling the music as I write it.
JB: I know this is a very personal album to you. Tell us why you named the album For the moment.
MS: I wrote the title tune of this album, For the moment, when I was a senior at Cornish College of the Arts. As I was learning more about and exploring the world of jazz improvisation, I was intrigued by the way that jazz music and inspired moments of improvisation within songs could reach across boundaries of age, race, language and social status to help to bring the listeners and musicians together in pure moments of beauty, joy and peace.
JB: Talk about the musical relationship you have with pianist Fred Hersch.
MS: I met bassist Michael Formanek at a club in the East Village in 1989; I was floored by Michael’s playing, so I gave him a cassette demo of some of my compositions and asked him if he would be interested in doing a recording project with me. He called me afew days later and said yes to the recording project. Michael then recommended that I call Fred, as he felt that Fred would be perfect for the music. I was very nervous when I called Fred after sending him a cassette demo, but he was so kind and gracious, and he also agreed to record with me. It was an honor to playwith Fred on the recording. Although I feel like I’ll never be at his level musically, I felt like I was playing in a beautiful dream whenI played with Fred; his playing was so gorgeous, supportive, elegant, and innovative. He heard everything and responded so purely to anything that I played. Although we haven’t played together since the 1989 recording session, we’ve remained close friends; he’s been very supportive of my music over the years, especially after I injured my right hand, arm, shoulder, and brachial plexus in a 2003 car accident, which required 8 surgeries and took me about 20 years to recover from. It was Fred who encouraged me to finally release For the Moment on CD in 2007. I just released For the Moment on vinyl to give it some new life!
JB: What do you appreciate most about your rhythm section on the album, bassist Michael Formanek and the drummer Michael Sarin?
MS: Michael Sarin grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and he was actually, the drummer on my senior recital at Cornish College of the Arts in 1986! So, he was really one of the first jazz drummers Iever played with in my formative years. Michael is so musical, and he plays and hears things very orchestrally; the same goes for Michael Formanek. And like Michael Sarin, Formanek seemed to have an intuition about my music from the very first note. With both of them, I didn’t have to give them a lot of instructions on how to play the charts; I wanted them to interpret the music the way they felt it. When I listen back to the recording, I love the interplay between both Michaels, which provided a magical cloud that Fred and I could play within. It sounds and feels to me like they are dancing joyfully and gracefully; I feel that with Fred’s playing, too. They were not just keeping time; they invented new ways to expand and enhance both the written and the improvised music. It was amazing to play with all of them!
JB: Which guitars did you use most on this album?
MS: I only used one guitar this album; it was a solid-body Yamaha SG2000 that I had purchased from a music store in Seattle in 1984 when I was a student at Cornish. It had belonged to the great guitarist Roger Fisher, who used to play with the wonderful rock group Heart. My guitar teacher at the time, the amazing Seattle guitarist Dave Peterson, played a Les Paul, and got such a great tone out of it. I had intended to get a Les Paul, but when I found this guitar, it fit the sound I was hearing. I don’t have this guitar anymore; after my car accident, it was too heavy for me to play it!
JB: You play solo guitar on the song “Twice.” What challenges and rewards do you find playing solo guitar?
MS: I love playing solo guitar; I have also written many completely through-composed pieces for solo guitar, many of which are contained on my very first release, Undying Hope. I also love playing and improvising over standards, bossa nova, and jazzy blues as a solo guitarist. It’s a completely different thing from playing with other musicians, something that I also love to do. It’s challenging in that as a solo guitarist, you have to try to cover many different aspects of music simultaneously: melody, harmony and rhythm. I used to try to do too much, and I would get very discombobulated! Now I try to leave more air and space when I play solo. I learned so much from listening to the great NYC guitarist Gene Bertoncini, whom we sadly just lost on August 29th. He was a dear friend and mentor. Although I didn’t study with him, I heard him play many, many times, and I gained so much inspiration from him. I think the most important thing I learned from Gene was to always play from the heart, with love!
JB: Tell us about “O’Keeffeness” that closes the album.
MS: I wrote this song in 1989, after I had moved to New York. I was inspired by the paintings of the great artist Georgia O’Keeffe. I had already started to do my integral music composition and painting process, but had also read in an art print book about how Georgia was inspired to create a series of paintings called “Music Pink and Blue” after listening to music while she painted. I had an inexpensive print of one of these paintings and gazed at it as I composed this piece. I tried to evoke the colors, shapes, lines, movement, and emotion of her painting in the music that I wrote.
