music
“My songs are my most focused way of dealing with things that are very important to me, both personal (emotions, insights, the desire to communicate) and aesthetic (musical harmony, form, rhythm and textures, and words and how words and music combine). My songs are a crucial outlet for me; the ideas in my songs probably wouldn’t come out of me if they didn’t come out as songs. I don’t take any songwriting conventions for granted; I try to pretty much re-invent what a song can be with each one I write. That doesn’t mean I discard all of the standard elements of songwriting, but I don’t accept them unquestioningly.
“When I was a teenager I read a book by American composer Charles Ives in which he challenged the safe conventions of songwriting, asking something like “Why can’t a song climb up a mountain and take a new look at things?” (not an exact quote). I understood him to be saying that a song can be a powerful thing, it can take any form, and there’s no reason to be confined to the standard approach. I intend for my music and lyrics to relate in many different ways. Sometimes they coordinate, sometimes contrast, and both music and lyrics can shift roles in terms of which reaches out to the listener and which is more oblique.
“Here are some of my musical roots: My father sang ‘standards’ and accompanied himself on piano, both for his own pleasure and for the pleasure of the family. I went to a Jimi Hendrix concert when I was about 13, and had my ears opened wide by the opening act, Soft Machine. I loved Van Morrison’s album “Astral Weeks.’ I listened to a lot of jazz, with Paul Bley and the Art Ensemble of Chicago being favorites. The “art songs” (lieder) of Ned Rorem and Charles Ives opened me to new ideas of what kinds of words can be set to music. When I moved to New York in 1976 the minimalists (Reich, Glass, etc.) were writing ground-breaking stuff, and that impressed me. The “period instrument” trend in performances of Early Music also impressed me, with its sensitivity to timbre and pitch. In about 1980 there started to be a new music/punk/new wave rock nexus in New York, and I enjoyed and participated in that as a member of the band Ad Hoc (with Nigel Rollings, Mark Abbott, Bill Buchan, Shelley Hirsch, Bill Laswell, and others).
“Since I was a young teenager I’ve been playing in bands, starting with drums in a what was literally a garage band in suburban Massachusettes. When I was 16, I played drums in an ambitious jazz ensemble that included teenage Jane Ira Bloom (now a well known sax player). Meanwhile, I played piano mostly on my own, doing a lot of improvising. In college (Rhode Island School of Design, in the days of the nascent Talking Heads, known then as The Artistics) I played drums and flute in an experimental compositional/improvisational band, had an instrumental trio for which I wrote the music and played piano, and also performed songs, accompanying myself on guitar. I taught myself the instruments I play. I feel that it was with my Control Songs, begun in 1980, that I was able to synthesize all these influences and experiences into something that was original.
“Control Songs was a category I invented for my otherwise rather difficult-to-categorize music. The term applied to the song lyrics, rather than the music. The idea was that just as some people write love songs about the joys and pains of love, I was writing ‘control songs’—songs about our need, avoidance, and manipulation of that sense of control that we all use to help us function. These days I don’t use the Control Songs category for my songs anymore, since I’ve expanded the scope of the songs to include things such as, um, the joys and pains of love.
“I’ve been associated with New York’s “Downtown” scene, but I’ve never been out of love with the possiblities of harmony and melody. I want to be free of stylistic assumptions, so that as I create music I’m not thinking about traditions, but instead I’m working with the elements of melody, harmony, rhythm, words, and sonic color to build a new and true experience.” —David Garland
performances
Garland lives in New York City and has performed his music at important venues there, including The Knitting Factory, Tonic, The Kitchen, and Carnegie Hall. Recent performances include solo at Tonic, Union Hall, and The Living Room, and with his ensemble at The Stone. Garland’s trio (with Brian Dewan and Will Holshouser) toured in Europe during spring 2000, and played in New York City at Tonic, The Arts at St. Ann’s, The Knitting Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, and on WFMU. He performed in the New Music America festivals in 1984 and 1986, and has toured extensively in Europe, having given nearly 100 concerts of his music in West Germany, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, and the Netherlands. In 1988 Garland performed in The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival as the singer for Guy Klucevsek’s Polka Band. In the last few years he has accompanied performances by his friend, songwriter Sport Murphy. Together with drummer Ikue Mori and banjoist/synth player Cinnie Cole, Garland had an ensemble called The Worlds Of Love. In 1989 The Worlds of Love performed in West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France. The group also performed extensively in New York, and at the 1990 Festival Musique Actuelle in Canada.
In addition to his own albums, Garland performs on recordings by Michael Gira’s Angels of Light (flutes, etc. on “We Are Him,” 2007; “Other People,” 2005; “"Everything Is Good Here...,” 2003; all Young God Records), Mi & L’au (flutes, bowed psaltery, accordion on “Mi & L’au,” 2005, Yung God Records), Sport Murphy (piano, etc. on “Uncle,” Kill Rock Stars, 2002), and Guy Klucevsek (vocals on “Free Range Accordion,” Starkland, 2000; “Who Stole the Polka,” Eva Records, 1992).
Garland occasionally performs in the Loser’s Lounge series of songwriter/band tributes, and so has sung Burt Bacharach at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room, XTC at Fez—both accompanied by the group The Four Bags—a medley from “Ishtar” with pianist Rob Schwimmer for a Paul Williams tribute, and a Henri Mancini medley at The Bottom Line, as part of 1997’s JVC Jazz Festival. Garland has also sung songs by Raymond Scott with the Raymond Scott Orchestrette many times, and performed at the Knitting Factory (and live on the internet and radio) as part of The Firesign Theatre’s Big Internet Broadcast.
With the early ’80s band Ad Hoc, Garland played at Danceteria, Hurrah, CBGB, The Mudd Club, Columbia University and the seminal 1981 “Noise Fest” at White Columns. In 1985 and ’86 Garland sang in projects by turntablist Christian Marclay at Germany’s Moers Festival, Minnesota’s Walker Art Center, and New York’s Performing Garage.
Garland has received grants in support of his music from the National Endowment for the Arts Inter-Arts program, Meet The Composer, and composer’s commissions from the New York State Council on the Arts.
recordings
Garland has released 8 albums—info here.