Limbo: an uncertain period of waiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition.

Pandemic lockdowns affected so many and so much in so many ways. For a musical artist such as myself, a major effect was the absence of regular performing, which I welcomed first as a respite, but lamented as the months wore on. While I organized and offered the occasional livestreamed concert, most of 2020 and the first half of 2021 was dedicated to solitary practice and the investigation of areas of my playing and musicianship that I had longed to engage more deeply. I know I was not the only musician using the time for new and meaningful investigation. Yet I was also uncertain where it was all going; there was the seen, the unseen, the unforeseen.

 In the midst of the lockdown, there were heroes; those who organized opportunities for musical artists to express themselves and document aspects of their growth during a fallow time. These were buoys. One such hero was Steve Peters, a fantastic sound artist and long-time curator of one of Seattle’s, indeed the country’s, most important concert series for experimental and improvised music: the Wayward Music Series at the Chapel Performance Space. To keep the series going and to honor the work of many Pacific Northwest sound artists, Steve organized the Wayward in Limbo series, a pre-recorded, streamed, and archived version of the live series, documenting 134 performances by the time he ended it in August 2021. Like many artists invited to be on the series, not only was I fortunate to perform but I was also gifted with Steve’s remarkable talents as a recording engineer and handed one of the best recordings of my solo work I could ask for. As is often the case with Steve, this was done with humility and a no-nonsense focus on the importance of live performance and its documentation. I am grateful to Steve.

 While my performance on the Wayward in Limbo series documented over 60 minutes of improvising, I chose 10 pieces that spoke to me for this recording. There is no editing here and these are musical moments captured in time. Listening, I hear an element of “so far”; the musical vocabulary and the grammar by which I use it that has developed over the last 30 years of performing, recording, touring, and searching. Yet I also hear the “still”; the search for that which is just out of my hearing and technique. This is as it should be and the balance point I most want to be at. I also hear manifestations of the practicing and investigating I was doing with the time granted to me by the pandemic. This is also as it should be. Playing with Steve’s limbo theme, I titled these 10 pieces after concepts of suspension, searching, and longing. Like the concept of limbo and like much of my work over the years, there is a theological impulse, a sense that music, especially improvised music, can act as an allegory if we wish. (It’s also ok to just let it be sound.)  

 I am at heart a wind player and performing with my breath is most natural to me. Yet So Far Still also marks my recorded debut at the piano, an instrument which I have played since elementary school and which has guided me in important sound explorations. The three piano improvisations here, all titled Limbus (Latin for limbo), bring out percussive aspects of my improvising that breath cannot. And if you hear something a bit odd in this piano, it is the balancing of several Indian handbells on the strings, which teeter as I play, causing distortion to some pitches and delightful resonance, like distant thunder, to others. (As a side note, I cannot help but hear my teacher Ran Blake in my piano playing. We always stand on the shoulders of our teachers.)

 In addition to Steve Peters, I am grateful to Scott Anthony at Storybook Sound for his excellent mastering ears, and my friend Joshua Young for dynamic and bespoke graphic design. Releasing recordings is always a team effort and I’m grateful to have gifted and thoughtful collaborators.

 As I write, many aspects of the pandemic abate. This is good. And yet documents remain of where we were, what we were thinking, and how we were feeling during the depth of lockdown days. So Far Still is such a document for me and it’s my hope it brings you to your own memories of that time; when we were in limbo, which, I believe, we actually always have been and always will be.