Premiered at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin on 20.01.24 as part of the Improvised Music Company BAN BAN Commission Award, and in Crescent Arts Cent on 21.01.24. Next performance: Manchester Jazz Festival 25.05.24
'We're all just walking each other home,' embarks on a multi-dimensional journey through themes of home and displacement. These musical postcards from her various global 'homes from home' ultimately lead to a journey within, finding 'home' as an inner state of being. In the spirit of creative improvisation, the piece adopts an equanimous, 'whatever happens, happens' approach. And yet, if we are, inadvertently, taking on roles in each other’s parallel homeward journeys, how might we proceed (and improvise) with more listening, intention, care and joy?
All About Jazz Review: "Award-winning composer and musician Bianca Gannon has dedicated much of her professional career exploring Indonesian gamelan and improvised music. That, of course, is the short story. Having returned to Ireland after the guts of twenty years abroad, Gannon's suite drew on her experiences in Australia and Bali, as well as her Irish roots. The suite's title, "We're all just Walking Each Other Home" takes its inspiration from a poem by Ram Dass (née Richard Alpert)---the American spiritual teacher and best-selling author.
The piece began with Nick Roth on Irish whistle, channeling the Irish traditional air "Caoineach An Spailpin" A spailpin was an itinerant laborer, made homeless due to the evictions at the time of the Great Famine (1845-1852), a catastrophe that killed at least a million Irish and forced another million to emigrate, thus reducing Ireland's population by a quarter.
History is never far from one's heels in Ireland, and Gannon drew parallels to Ireland's present-day housing crisis. [Exorbitant prices and rents, compounded by a severe housing shortage, means that Ireland is experiencing record levels of homelessness, with the Housing Department recognizing that thousands are living in "emergency accommodation."]
To Roth's appropriately mournful whistle, Gannon gently ran a bow along the edges of bespoke gamelan metallophones. Drummer Matthew Jacobson's sharp tattoo ruptured the reverie, with Derek Whyte's probing bass (subbing for Neil O'Loclainn) and Roth—now on spiraling tenor saxophone—steering the music into heady improvised terrain. As the intensity waned, subtle percussive effects came to the fore; Bowed waterphone, impressionistic piano, and bird song courtesy of the ever-versatile Roth's soprano saxophone, sans mouthpiece.
Softly tinkling bells, dappled piano notes and little shakers combined, but the lull was brief. A pounding piano mantra and soaring saxophone upped the tension once more. Gradually abating, the growing space invited Gannon to play a circling piano motif with her left hand, while a mallet in her right hand deftly worked the gamelan.
Downing saxophone, Roth picked up sticks and rattled a small wooden box festooned with pairs of finger-cymbals—the former tool of an Indonesian ice-cream seller. The spirit of Indonesia was an almost constant presence throughout the suite. In the final stretch, over a bowed bass drone, prayer bowls previously distributed to audience members chimed with those on stage in a beautiful piece of choreography that dissolved the fourth wall and radically altered the spatial dynamics.
A gentle piano motif, the rumbling of mallets on drums, and a closing burst of Irish whistle brought the suite full circle. The final grace note was a communal hum—on cue—repeated three times.
A powerful, multi-layered and organic narrative that quite beautifully underlined the commonality of seemingly disparate musical cultures." - Ian Patterson