Receiving Music with Mike Lewis / by Liquid Music

by LM blog contributor Trever Hagen

Michael with guitar.jpeg

Perhaps it is a bit tongue-in-cheek to call Mike Lewis a local musician. The saxophonist regularly (and literally) plays to hundreds of thousands of ears every year across the globe. But calling Mike Lewis “local” accomplishes three things: first, it gives us who live in the Cities some kind of pride, I suppose, that we can call him one of our own; second, it tethers ‘local’ to something socially organic, a luxury in the distributed digital culture of modern relations; third, Mike does in fact play remarkably often in the Cities. So how is he not local? For example you’ve surely heard Mike blow as part Happy Apple for the past twenty years. You’ve probably seen him at the Khyber Pass Café in St. Paul on Thursdays with Fat Kid Wednesdays. Or maybe you caught him singing background vocals while playing bass for Alpha Consumer at the Turf Club? Possibly you were lucky enough to catch him at First Ave. when Gayngs played their Last Prom (remember Prince gazing on from the side stage?). Or certainly you saw Mike playing with Bon Iver at Rock the Garden. If you haven’t seen him on any of these stages, then you have absolutely heard his recordings on KFAI or The Current. Mike is never far away, if you are listening.

This is all to say that Mike is a person whose depth of musical communication is matched only by his social grace. Furthermore, he has an innate ability to articulate his reflections on creative expression, which makes him well-poised to offer point after point of wisdom for any performer or curious mind. Why call it wisdom? Well, it seems that Mike has digested quite a bit of the contours of performance, improvisation, theory, narrative, storytelling, abstract communication and affect. He has digested it in a manner that feels natural—as if music was his mother tongue rather than a language learned in a classroom or through memorizing vocab flashcards. It is much less about the display of knowledge as it is about actually trying to engage communication. I recall some years ago asking Mike about his practice schedule when he was younger; I figured that he would confirm my assumption of musical learning by listing a host of jazz pedagogical materials. Rather, Mike stated: “I don’t like practicing alone, I just like to play with others.” Perhaps that statement could be considered an overarching ethos of Mike’s approach to playing music: to connect with other people.

On April 18, Lewis brings this ethos to When Isn’t Yet, a piece for Liquid Music with dancers Eva Mohn and Sarah Baumert, and Maggie Bergeron on lights. When Isn’t Yet is like a Zen koan, a linguistic paradox to expose intuition and reality. Their approach is with clear improvisatory intent, which requires one to shore up all of their perspectives on the unfolding drama of existence. Mike’s most recent work with dancers has been with TU Dance and Bon Iver’s Liquid Music-commissioned collaboration, Come Through. That project began with rehearsals in the spring of 2017 and most recently was performed at the Kennedy Center in spring 2019. However, Come Through is a much different collaboration than what we will witness in April. I caught up with Mike in Cincinnati via phone while he was on tour with Bon Iver to discuss how When Isn’t Yet will be realized.


Trever Hagen: What would be different for you in this scenario of dance and music? How do you approach performing something like this?

Mike Lewis: The primary thing is trying not to get so lost in what I'm doing—like the orchestration of what I am doing—so that I'm unable to pay attention to what's going on with the movement. That is part of the reason that I'm considering pulling JT [Bates] in. Just so I don't have to rely on myself for every single part of what I want to pull off.  With what ends up being the composition or the general structure, I want to make sure that I can be engaged on a level beyond just the musical. Because [JT] will be taking on this conductor-type role and performing role I suppose. And yeah, just catching cues and providing them and trying to make sure that the narrative is somewhat clear. So that’s what I want to get [the performance] to be.

Is the narrative or orchestration something improvised or is there actually material you are composing?

We kind of put together an initial idea about it last year and right from the get go, we wanted to make sure that improvisation was a large part of it. Because that was actually the first conversation I ever had with Eva. [Dance can be] such an incredibly structured world and it's rehearsed so heavily—down to the most minute details—that we're kind of trying to play more with an idea of real-time reactions to things. Having areas that we know we want to hit, energies that we want to explore. So having “zones” that we arrive at but then within those zones, we try to have room to have things happen in real-time that are that are different. That's a nebulous answer. [laughs]

Sarah Baumert and Eva Mohn in residency at Carleton College, September 2018

Sarah Baumert and Eva Mohn in residency at Carleton College, September 2018

We're trying to embrace the title of the piece. It's kind of playing with the idea “what is yet”, or “when ‘when’ isn't yet”, kind of that idea. It’s the mastery of “Why did things happen when they do?”, “Why do you make the decisions that you make when you make them?”, “What makes one decision feel better than another one or translate better?” So much of the answer to these questions has to do with years and years and years of learning to create in abstract contexts. So improvisation is definitely a huge part of it. We're going to be relying on those skills that we've honed over long periods of time, and, you know, and try to really get inside of why those things happen when they do.

In terms of aesthetic decision-making, this approach or awareness you are speaking about seems to tease out all of this tacit knowledge we carry on our bodies.

It's like we're driving from where we have arrived at after all of this time. Like figuring out how to improvise—figuring out how to have it not just be wild scribbling but rather how to be centered in an idea, in an energy. So a lot of how we've talked about it thus far has been maybe not even necessarily like “Okay, when this happens, we'll do this.” Instead we'll talk about how we've been feeling that day; we've talked about film or what spaces and moments feel like.

So attempting to connect almost on an extra-musical level first?

Things are interesting, like simply the world that you exist in on a daily basis, just as a human being. And how that is affecting you. Like the way that people relate to each other, or like the way that people relate to a time in their lives and their equilibrium within that: communication between people even if you don't have anything in common. How do you connect? How do we translate something into something not necessarily extremely descriptive and specific, but how do you create an energy? How do you create the kind of give and take and release that everybody deals with? That's a difficult question.

How do you attempt that or know when that occurs?

There're definitely moments when it happens. Yes for sure, you know when you know. You're weirdly always able to tell when you're in the midst of one [of these moments] and that has to do so much with an openness and an energy that you're offering, how it's received and reciprocated by people that are in the room with you. And once you have successes in those lightning strikes, it's like [that energy] tells you when to do the next thing. You just get immersed in it and then that helps you, like, hold a note out longer or hold the pose. How do you make something come off pretty? How do you create tension in dissonance and then release it into something that makes people feel like they’ve had some travel?

It's like if we pull it off, if we do a good job with this piece, I think there will be moments that are goofy and funny and I think there might be moments that are really lonely and kind of scary and desolate. You decide to make meaning out of it for you. I think that's what we're playing with right now.

There's a lot of intent in that but you're leaving so much up to like just emergence. As if it isn’t completed until the audiences hears it.

Yeah which is why it is hard to put any of “improvisation talk” into exact words. This approach [with Eva] is almost obsessively restorative in terms of what a performance could be for people together. It's like you go back to the title of the piece and realize how true it is. It's like how do you know “yet”? It probably won't known until the day of the performance. You kind of have to just show up. That's the biggest, most important thing. And actually a measure of that.

Do you see dance and music as two different languages? Or could you say they're the same language? Or there's two different languages speaking together on the same topic?

Mike in residency at Carleton College

Mike in residency at Carleton College

I'd say like two different vocabularies. But not wildly dissimilar conditions. My understanding of modern dance is basically nil. I am approaching that purely from a completely reactionary and up to certain extent, obliterated perspective. But I'm also trying to trust my ability. Instead of just deciding that, I don't know anything and deciding that I don't get it. If you know who you are, where you are, and what you think about, then you're able to be able to receive—like the ethereal part of [performance]. At the end of the day, that's how any artistic output is working. Because you can’t expect anybody to know anything about what’s going on.

Indeed, aesthetic affect should be able to be received no matter of what age, concept, background, school, etc.

I think that about jazz music all the time. It's sometimes a major downfall with jazz music. Especially when it comes to the musicians who are working in such a small camp. It is so misunderstood, for lack of a better term. So often the way jazz music is sold is like what's playing in the background while you eat dinner or it's like a weird, corny aesthetic that people make fun of. And I think a lot of musicians get bitter about that and then just end up saying, like, “Well, you wouldn't get it, because you don’t know Eric Dolphy.” Or “You wouldn't get it because you don't know what was happening in New York in the 50s.

I think that's really unfortunate. I think it's understandable because we're all human beings, we're all real and we're insecure. And it's like, so easy to kind of lash out in the context of that insecurity. And to get defensive. We're all animals. It's like if you're afraid of something, you lead with anger. But I do believe that if you drop me in the middle of a shopping mall food court in Oklahoma City, you know, with JT and we played free music, I think we could translate something. And I could get some people with an open heart and with the idea of like, truly trying to connect as opposed to some ego-based activity. Something to make myself feel better. I think that you can translate to anybody and I don't think that prerequisite knowledge has to be involved.

Fat Kid Wednesdays

Fat Kid Wednesdays

I have a tendency to I lean away from the “placard”, you know? I know they're there. But I also know that that's somebody’s summation of what I'm supposed to receive. I don't know if I want to be told. Maybe that's why I'm an artist. I would rather know absolutely nothing and be completely cleared out so that I have every faculty available to me. Like in terms of how I think about the world at large or how I live so that I can be more fully present with a completely open mind as I'm receiving whatever that given moment offers.

How do you see this type of so-called specialized language and its relation to communication?

It's not like ridiculous to want to showcase your work. But it's a very slippery slope. That's why when you're younger you're amassing so much knowledge and technical ability to play fast or to play complicated or jam, you know, like or if you're writing, you know, you have an insane vocabulary and an understanding of all these different theoretical ways to write where you can display the raw intelligence of whatever. And I think sometimes it takes a long time to realize sometimes you get so far down the rabbit hole of that you're not—after all this work that you already did—in the present moment anymore.

It became for me a long time ago so much more about how do I clear as much of my fragile human psyche. The vessel, you know. How to clear as much of that shit out as I possibly can? So that whatever actually is happening is something that I can translate to whatever actually is happening in the room.

How do you see theory entering into our understanding of musical communication?

MLEW_JUL18_067F.jpg

Some of my favorite [former students] to teach were kids who wanted to learn about theory, you know? And it's like, “Okay, cool. Let's talk about theory.” But understand that theory is math. It's a code. It's a way to code what's happening. It's not the reason why. And it doesn't mean some people don't take theory to such an infinite degree that it becomes just a tool with which they used to arrive back at that original point. Why you're doing anything in the first place.

Theory lessons for me, inevitably, always turned into: let's play the melody of the song. Where did that melody come from? Where's the song from? It had lyrics. Go back and listen. Oh there's this whole other phrasing. It is all about relation. What is the trail of breadcrumbs? In any given piece of art—what is the melody? What is the theme? Then as you create around that, that's why the melody sounds like it does and it becomes so malleable and simple in a way. You can add more color wherever you want to. But it has so much more to do with the relation of the colors next to each other. No color exists purely on its own. You don’t know red until it's next to blue.


Many of these conclusions that Mike speaks about are kind of like musical exemplars: phenomena that happen while making music that can be abstracted in order to understand non-musical situations. How can we approach our fears that arise from lack of knowing? How can we shed perspectives that do not arise from direct experience? How can “the unfamiliar” in fact be a place of learning? How can all that knowledge that we share and confirm with those around us be used to connect to people far away from us who have different ways of receiving information? How do you communicate with other people when speaking languages that complement rather than denote or specify? How can “room for error” be a positive thing? Perhaps these questions are only for the world of ideas and philosophy, but only if you wish for them to remain there. Music, clearly, is a limitless resource. Music, in anybody’s hands, can be a champion of communication, a point of connection, a way to understand humanity and a method to negotiate one’s fragile place in it all. The context of music is people, in other words.


Trever Hagen, PhD is a writer, researcher and trumpeter living in Minneapolis. A former Fulbright Fellow, JSPS Fellow, and Leverhulme Trust Fellow, Hagen’s work targets how the arts function in societies. Hagen's newest book, "Living in the Merry Ghetto: the music and politics of the Czech underground" will be out on Oxford University Press in 2019. 

Visit this link to purchase tickets for When Isn’t Yet April 17 & 18, part of Liquid Music’s New Music & Dance Duos, also featuring Dustin O’Halloran and Fukiko Takase: 1 0 0 1.

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