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Night Vision

6/8/2022

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I'm so delighted to be bringing a new Carole Nelson Trio into the world - Night Vision, our 3rd album together. 
Night Vision – the ability to see in the dark, lucid dreaming, trusting the unknown.

The composition for this project began in June 2020 on an artist’s residency in Mayo with the Na Cailleacha women’s art collective. I went with two words in my head, deeper still, not knowing what they might mean, but feeling they would be a guide. At first it was the elemental landscape, ancient human history, the rocks and stormy seas, the depth of the peat bogs, deep time.

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Back home I continued playing with ideas and the meaning of deeper still began to change, becoming more of an inward spiritual journey. Home-bound as we all were, I observed the different lives around me- fox, hedgehog and bird. I wanted to give voice to the world outside of myself, to other species. It’s hard to find a real wildness in our cultivated landscape but I found it in the insect world, right there in my garden and in my house. How alien, how interesting!
 Creatures at night have skills and intelligence beyond our own, beings that see in the dark. 


Light pollution is affecting so many populations, particularly insects, and their world is intimately bound with our human lives and the well-being of other lives.
The process of rehearsing and recording was delayed by the pandemic. By the time we were able to record, I had plenty of material, but perhaps, had spent too long alone. As we laid down the tracks, some worked, and some didn’t. On the last day Ivan pressed record and suggested we played freely. We spent an hour improvising and the magic happened. The meaning of deeper still took another swerve and became the process of trust, of entering the collective creative mind, of fresh thought and intimacy. To me the music is mysterious, elusive, playful and unafraid. 
Huge thanks to Dominic, Cormac and Ivan for everything!
Download from Jazz Ireland
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Streaming and downloads from all usual sites.

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I Want to Keep Surprising Myself

11/7/2020

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I spent the whole of September with the eight women artists who are Na Cailleacha, a newly-formed artist collective of women who are all, except myself, over 70. We had the luxury of a month together at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in North Mayo. Having all cocooned for a fortnight beforehand, we felt safe after a few days to trust we were all Covid-free. This gave us such a freedom, in our pod. After working on our own projects during the day we met for dinner every evening, wonderfully provided for by Maria, a local cook from Ballycastle village, followed by discussions that ranged over subjects including frailty, energy, death, feminism.....(more about that on the Na Cailleacha blog)

So here we are, in no particular order, Helen Comerford, Maria Levinge, Barbara Freeman, Gerda Teljeur, Therry Rudin and Patricia Hurl -all visual artists - Catherine Marshall - writer and curator, and myself - musician. And not forgetting our wonderful intern Anouk Rudin who took care of us all so beautifully and kept our Instagram up to date. 
And here is a link to Rosita Boland's article about our time in Mayo in the Irish Times

We had no particular agenda except to work, talk, support each other and form friendships. This all translates into ideas and projects for 2021. First up is an exhibition in Clonmel in March, followed by a showing of a documentary of our month together made by Therry Rudin in May as part of the Bealtaine Festival.  June sees us return to Mayo and we are planning exhibitions for Carlow Visual and Wexford Arts later in the year. A set of limited edition prints is also in the pipeline for 2021. 

It is such a joy to me that, as concerts disappeared and the future seemed to close in, this unexpected path opened up. I took a keyboard and two saxophones intending to compose on the piano and get back into my sax playing after a long break. Right now the sax recordings I made are taking me down a whole new path, leading I don't know where. At one of our evening discussions we spoke about where we found the energy and desire to keep making art: Barbara said "I want to keep surprising myself". What a wonderful mantra to sustain us all as we age. 


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The road to Benwee Head
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Downpatrick Stack
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So what's been going on?

7/24/2020

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 Its been a long time since my last blog post.....back in February when Arboreal arrived in boxes to my home. So what's been going on!

Well Covid has changed the world of course and my life was thrown way off course like everyone else's. All my concerts were cancelled and then I had a fall and broke my arm. I guess if there was ever a 'good' time to have an injury, lockdown was it.

I had the happy experience of getting great reviews for Arboreal, and even made it into the Irish Times top ten albums of 2020 so far. Pretty cool for a jazz album!

Things are moving along again now...zoom gigs, socially distanced concerts coming up, though I think it will be a long time before musicians will be playing in small clubs and crowded bars. I'm letting my creative mind drift back into a big What Next? Arboreal was such an all-consuming project and I needed to  restore the musical brain to factory settings. I went back to basics with Bach (left hand only) and focused on singing.  My right hand is still sore but I can play piano now if a little tentatively. I recorded myself playing and singing a song I wrote for Zrazy yonks ago..I Know When you are Near for anyone who enjoys romantic jazz ballads and I have a song about the lockdown in the works.

So, for whoever is reading this, I hope you are well and finding ways to get through these days with kindness and resilience. x Carole

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Summer skies, July 2020
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Arboreal

2/12/2020

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Tomorrow I will have boxes of my new album Arboreal in the back of my car and then in my hand. It is the culmination of a year or more's work. From initial concept to final beautiful package. And along the way I have so many people to thank; firstly and mostly my co-musicians Cormac O'Brien and Dominic Mullan who slid gracefully into the project once I had a shape on things. We recorded Arboreal in less than two days at Hellfire Studios in the Dublin Mountains with the unflappable Ivan Jackman at the controls. Ivan also mixed and mastered...very much a fourth member of our merry band. And it was a merry occasion....totally stress free and in the flow. And considering I had bronchitis at the time...the easy high of it all saw me through.

Who else? My dear friend Paul O'Connell who arrived at the studio to take photographs and my other dear friend Cormac Larkin who designed the CD for me. I love the design...you can't miss it!

The Arts Council of Ireland gave me a bursary award that supported me during the composition process and Carlow Arts  contributed to recording costs. It means so much to be given the backing and belief, especially when one has to continually self-motivate.


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I started out in January 2019 with the simple idea of finding inspiration from my local woodland walk, but as the year went on the growing alarms about climate and ecological crises were arriving thick and fast. So my thoughts were intensely with the question of how artists respond to this.

I kept a project diary during the writing process and looking back I can see all the names of inspiring ecologists, philosophers and poets that I came across - Susanne Simard, who proved the woodwide web is there beneath us, Glen Albrecht who created neologisms to help us imagine a different future, Kathleen Dean Moore for reminding us that climate action is a moral responsibility, Joanne Macy for her years of sounding the call, Robert Macfarlane and Richard Powers, and many more, all of us trying to re-imagine a world based on community not commodity and  the interconnectedness of us and nature.

How all of this became Arboreal I'm not sure. All I know is I wanted to reflect the natural world, and our precarious human place within it. I know that many are either in despair or denial and it sure ain't easy. I hope Arboreal offers grace, hope, emotional truth. I hope you can listen to it while sitting under your favourite tree.


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Requiem for Lost Species

10/21/2019

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A couple of years ago I went on a retreat to Plum Village Buddhist Monastery in France with about 100 other people from Ireland. It was a wonderful experience but one thing stood out for me from the overall peace and mindfulness practice. I had a conversation with a sister there who was studying trauma counseling for, in particular, scientists and ecologists who are traumatised by years of sounding the alarm and being ignored. She told me that Hawaii is called the extinction capital of the world as it witnesses the greatest number of annual species extinctions. We know now that we are witnessing the Sixth Extinction and there is little debate left to be had about the cause. 
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Photo by Louise McGrath
I wanted to compose a space for sorrow. It isn't easy to let ourselves really feel emotions that touch into the enormity of our current reality. We risk overwhelm, burn-out, helplessness and hopelessness. I think it's important not to be afraid to feel. Perhaps, from a truthful feeling place we can find new much-needed resources. So here is a recording from our Carole Nelson Trio gig in Dublin a few weeks ago. In a normally loud bar you could hear the proverbial pin drop. (you might need to turn up your volume as the recording is quiet)

Requiem For Lost Species
On a happier note, I spent two amazing days in HellFire Studios in the Dublin Mountains, with Cormac O'Brien, Dominic Mullan and Ivan Jackman (engineer) It was an extraordinary experience, despite my dose of bronchial asthma, as we put eleven pieces down in an atmosphere of openness, positivity and connection. 
and...

​A recent Blindboy podcast on coping with climate anxiety.
(it takes about 10 minutes to get into it)
I love Blindboy and have been listening to him for a while. He's sound! On politics, mental health, climate chaos. (If you can't cope with his uninhibited limerick lingo...move along :)  

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Ar Scáth a Chéile

10/10/2019

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Ar Scáth a Chéile translates from Irish into something like 'We stand in each others shade, or shelter'. Nothing and no-one can exist independently. In this week of Extinction Rebellion actions around the world it seems a good time to be reminded of this obvious truth. 
No bees? No food. No insects? No pollinators. No trees? No protection  from desertification, erosion, global warming...the list goes on and on. 
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My favourite poster from the Dublin students strike

I was walking in Clashganny Woods feeling the life beneath, around and above me. Everything connecting - the upper canopy giving shade for younger trees and smaller plants, creating habitats for myriad beings, wind and rain and sun and seasons in endless cycles.  Here was a deeper time, a holy place. In these days when so much life is threatened,  I breathe in the joy and beauty of the natural world. ​​

Connecting the activist and the spiritual, here's a link to a conversation between an London XR activist and two monastics from Plum Village Zen Monastic Community. 
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Forest Floor

In a few days I'll be heading into HellFire Studios with my good friends Cormac O'Brien and Dominic Mullan to record our next trio album. I'm excited to see how the tunes I've been writing these last few months will develop. I know we will bring our most open and receptive selves to creating something new.

Meanwhile, here is a solo piano version of Ar Scáth a Chéile

Hope you enjoy! Comments welcome!
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Arboreal...the story so far

9/25/2019

2 Comments

 
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For the last few months I've been composing music for a new Carole Nelson Trio album, working title Arboreal. Last night we - that is Cormac O'Brien on bass, Dominic Mullan on drums and myself on piano- played a really informal gig to give the new tunes an airing. The International Bar in Dublin on a Tuesday night is the place to be for great jazz. I'm really happy with how it went and as soon as I have some of the sound files from last night I'll post up some pieces-in-progress. Meanwhile here's a picture of me waiting to play (note the pints of guiness and the huge photo of Michael Collins behind me. You know you're in Dublin!) ​

​So I'm starting this series of blog posts with the guidance of my good friend Cathy Fitzgerald, ecological artist and mentor, to give a little more of the story of the creation of this music. 

About a year ago I started to think about music and ecology, about my emotional response and my growing understanding of the scale of the climate emergency and the sixth extinction. How could I bring any of this to jazz composition?

I wanted to start with a specific place, my local walk through Clashganny Woods here in County Carlow then expand out from the local to the global. My first trio album One Day in Winter was a pastoral hymn to my home place, reflecting the immediate beauty of the natural world and our place in it. Now I needed to go deeper and express my understanding of threat, of loss, the need for change and all the feelings of grief, love, despair, hope and sometimes shut-down that challenge us all now. 

Below is an early piano solo version of Canopy, one of the pieces I'm working on and that we played last night.  Canopy gives us shelter, life and protection. Now we must do the same for the natural world. 

Canopy 
PictureClashganny Woods, Carlow





Would love to hear what you think in the Comments below
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Brixton Reggae Daze

4/1/2015

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After college I moved back down to London and found a room in a friend's squat in Brixton.  On a sunny Saturday morning I walked into town and into Brixton Market, where the exotic vegetable stalls, lurid pink hanging pig carcasses and competing reggae soundtracks filled my eager senses.  Sensimilla by Black Uhuru was both the soundtrack and the sweet pungent scent of strong grass that floated down every street, from every shop doorway. There was no need to travel any further to see the world, and Brixton held its magnetic pull on me for the next seven years, right up to the first explosion of riots.  

In the late seventies the squatting community gave shelter to punks, radical queers, feminists, left wing housing activists, Rastafarians, artists, junkies - people who were running away from one world and trying to create another.  It was an idealistic time, if a little flawed and crazy round the edges, and, for a while at least, this eccentric mix of colour, class, gender and  sexual orientation bobbed happily along on the same wave.  

I decided to devote myself to music with a nun-like devotion. I didn't care much about making money. Beyond feeding myself and staying warm in winter my needs were minimal. I cycled everywhere, to band practices, to my first paying gig as a restaurant pianist in the West End, to dance classes where I accompanied children as they wafted around as butterflies or autumn leaves. Some women from North London asked me to join a band as a keyboard player, and as soon as I had an outlet I started writing songs. The Spoilsports were part of a growing  scene of feminist bands, much of which has been archived at The Women's Liberation Music Archive.  

Politics was intense. Anti-racism, anti-fascism, anti-sexism, gay liberation, Trotskyist groups of all kinds denouncing each other, Troops Out, anti-imperialism, anarchist collectives. And there were badges for everything pinned to our dungarees. We were self-righteous and provocative: "How Dare You Presume I'm Heterosexual!"  and "A Woman Needs a Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle" clinked and rattled next to "Gays Against Fascism" and "Eat the Rich"  



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Playing with The Spoilsports 1979

John Lennon national health specs
Che Guevara beret
Unidentified badge




 
One April afternoon, I was leaning out of the upstairs window of the house I shared with Racine in Strathleven Road. Someone was playing loud ska music that filled the street - Ghost Town by the Specials - and I heard Rico Rodriguez' sublime Jazz  Jamaica trombone rising from the grey streets like a bird in an updraught.  The sky held an eerie yellow darkness, a storm on the way, a clammy stillness and state of suspension. Thatcher had come to power and the innocence and idealism of the seventies was  to crash to a halt. The National Front was marching in Lewisham and Deptford, and in Brixton anger was gathering like the storm clouds above.  Reggae accompanied us  into tougher times.  Less One Love from Bob Marley and more Police and Thieves by Junior Murvin.


I remember walking back from a pub with Racine and a white policeman hissed "black c***" at her as we passed. I felt her rage and humiliation and her determination that I should not see her suffer.  The notorious SUS laws were criminalising and radicalising a generation of black youth, and it didn't take much to spark off the first Brixton riot in 1981.


One Saturday afternoon Sonia and I  set out for the Ritzy Cinema to see Nine To Five and we found ourselves in the  riot. A line of policemen was being driven down Railton Road by a very angry crowd. And here's the thing: the crowd I saw that day, as the riot began, were black, white, old, young, male, female - the whole community was furious. And as the defeated police retreated from the  town centre to wait for reinforcements, Brixton had a party. Yes, there was looting, and yes, there was damaged property, but the mood  on the traffic-free streets and in the pub I was in that night was one of carnival, a wild joyous celebration of an unthinkable victory. "Anybody want a television?" " Anyone want a fur coat?" It was the ancient human ritual of reversal, king for a day, where the powerless take power and the powerful tremble. 

Later, I learned that there had been 280 injuries to police, 45 injuries to members of the public, over a hundred vehicles burned, including 56 police vehicles, almost 150 buildings  damaged, with 30 burned. There were 82 arrests.     
 Guns of Brixton by the Clash...

The Scarman Report into the riots 
found "unquestionable evidence of the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of 'stop and search' powers by the police against black people."  As a consequence, a new code for police behaviour was put forward in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.


  *****
                  
      
Nights out were the Women's Discos, and  Racine was Queen of the Turntable. She kept a proud, inscrutable stillness while we boogied and flirted and threw shapes to I'm Coming Out and We Are Family. Once when when she was stopped by a policeman:

Policeman "Name?"
Racine "Ross"
Policeman "First name?"
Racine "Diana"


The policeman wrote it down, and Racine held her poker face while we struggled not to collapse with laughter.  



I had started to play the saxophone, and little by little I was withdrawing from the social whirl, staying home at night to practice long notes. My friends would call round en route to a club and thought I must surely be depressed not to  hang out with them. But I was so happy, so obsessively happy. I was listening to Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. I discovered John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Cannonball Adderley, and these giants of jazz were my new companions.


I'd also been invited to play keyboards with Carol Grimes, a well-respected London r&b singer, and suddenly I was moving in a different circle of professional musicians. Carol gave me the gig because she wanted to encourage female musicians, but really, I was out of my depth, and my ego took a huge blow when I eventually got fired.  But for the time being I was playing in the best music pubs in London - Dingwalls in Camden, The Cricketers at the Oval. I was learning Aretha Franklin tunes, Billie Holiday songs,  and earning a musician's living.  
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In the Beginning

3/24/2015

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As a child I woke daily to the sound of classical music floating or booming up the stairs while my Dad smoked his first pipe of the day or sang robustly along to his favourite Beethoven or Mozart symphonies.  My mum's favourites were the pop songs of the 40s - Ella Fitzgerald and the Andrews Sisters. I remember her singing "A Tisket a Tasket, I Lost My Little Basket"  and  "Don't Sit Underneath the Apple Tree with anyone else but me".


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A piano came into the house and my brother David started lessons with Mr McDaniel down the road. I had to wait till I was seven and then I too trotted down to Mr McDaniel and learned to play The Bluebells of Scotland and The British Grenadiers. Mr McDaniel had lost a leg in WW1, and it was hard not to look at the pinned up trouser against his stump. If I got to my class early I sat on his settee and looked at copies of Titbits Magazines, naked breasts and female mud wrestlers, exciting and disturbing in equal measure, while Audrey Swinburne finished her five finger exercises. Back home I was encouraged to practice by the placing of an egg timer set for fifteen minutes on top of the piano. Even though I could hear my pals playing out on the street and longed to join them, the egg timer held me to the piano stool till the bell went ping and I could run out to play. 

Neither of my parents played an instrument, though Mum remembered a group piano class where they were given silent cardboard keyboards and were expected to...what exactly?  They were delighted that David, Debbie and I all wanted to learn and encouraged and supported us through exams and small concerts. We belonged to the Methodist Church and went every year to a church-organised music and art competition for the Kent area. We were the family Von Nelson, winning cups and certificates that  Mum hung on to for years.  When relations or family friends came to visit we were asked to play and sing. I sang "In an English Country Garden"  and "The Ladies of the Harem of The Court of King Caractacus" by Rolf Harris. When I played piano there was a sighing agreement - she's so sensitive! 


We listened to the Saturday morning Childrens Favourites  programme, Danny Kaye and the Ugly Duckling, Doris Day in the Westwood Stage, Oklahoma, The Hippopotamus Song by Flanders and Swan. Pop music was rationed in our house. We could watch Top of the Pops, or Juke Box Jury, or Thank Your Lucky Stars.  The Beatles changed everything. Even Mum and Dad would come in from the kitchen or the garden to see them on the telly. They were a sensation, an event, a happening!  


On my last day at primary school the boys could all be Beatles and the girls could all be Supremes and we could mime to records. Oh hang on.... I wanted to be a Beatle and play bass guitar. Signs of things to come.  On family holidays at YMCA guest houses in Folkestone or Shanklin David and Debbie and I formed bands with our cousin Gill. David banged out tunes on ancient pianos, Debbie played cardboard guitar, Gill played drums on wastepaper baskets and I was the lead singer in jeans and sunglasses. It's the Loving things You Do by Marmalade and Last Night in Soho by Dave Dee. Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich  - a band name that never struck me as dumb at the time.  We sang harmonies on long car journeys, laughed ourselves sick singing My My My Delilah with full dramatic absurdity and Massachusetts in high BeeGees falsetto.  And David taught me how to play Georgie Fame's Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde on the piano. A walking bassline! A stomping beat! Dominant 7th chords! My first Blues! 
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    Carole Nelson

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