The Peggy Lee Band

A Giving Way

“For many years, Peggy Lee has been casting her spell of avant-garde, folk, modern jazz, chamber, and ambient musics, and with each successive occurrence, the enchantment gains even greater strength.”

–Dave Sumner, Bird is the Worm (Best of 2018 #12: Peggy Lee, Echo Painting)

This is the first release in eleven years and sixth studio album from The Peggy Lee Band, the first group put together by Vancouver’s celebrated cellist/composer. Formed in 1998, its membership remains unchanged since 2007. It was created, Peggy writes, “to explore different strategies for improvisation within composition and to feature the unique and brilliant voices that make up the band. Over the years the individual voices remain vivid and compelling but the overall ensemble sound has also developed into its own rich entity.” Indeed, the ensemble playing is beautifully polished and warm and the members of the band improvise with great creativity, passion and clarity. 

Though Peggy cites Carla Bley, Wayne Horvitz, and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra as related and influential, A Giving Way, like all her music, has its own story to tell in its own way. It is dedicated to her late parents and was mostly composed at the family cottage in Ontario: 

“The cottage was built by my father and we spent every summer there as kids. There was and still is no electricity or running water. As I grew older I would spend less and less time up there, but on this occasion I had a nice stretch of time to write and reflect, which I did with the aid of an acoustic guitar. My long-standing band seemed like the right vehicle for this music as they had all known my parents and my parents loved them. I think returning to a familiar sound may also have been part of the impetus, but each musician has been busy working on their own music over the years so it’s also interesting to see how the sound has evolved on its own. It’s always my preference to write for particular musicians. Knowing their sounds and their voices as improvisors helps shape the pieces. The process usually begins with just picking up an instrument and finding a path. Environmental sounds can play a part as well. In the case of this music, there was a lot of wind and water lapping on the shore which I enjoyed.”

“My parents were not musicians themselves but when three of the four of their children pursued music professionally they could not have been more supportive. And when I ventured into improvisation and more experimental forms, they were equally on board. These compositions come from a place of gratitude and love for family, place and community as well as a desire to do better collectively towards justice and human dignity. Not all of them were composed at the cabin. ‘Justice / Honour’ came directly in response to George Floyd’s murder, and so I feel that human decency is also a theme of this music and one which I connect to my parents.” As for “Whispering Pines”: “I’ve spent a long time listening to The Band, and that song seemed to fit well within the environment of music written in the woods.”

Much credit for the record’s realization is also due to drummer/producer Dylan van der Schyff (Peggy’s partner) for managing the setup of the session, guiding some of the improvised pieces, as well as going through the material to find good takes and doing the editing.