 by Dan Emerson
Those who market, write and talk about music have a penchant for putting musicians in categories. It’s a lazy substitute for insight. But, like the richly eclectic music he writes and plays, Douglas Ewart is immune to easy pigeonholing. He’s a musician, composer, instrument maker, teacher, actor, painter and tailor, among other things, drawing on multiple cultures and mediums, often simultaneously.
Since he moved to Minneapolis in 1990, Ewart, a longtime member of Chicago’s hugely influential Association For the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), has been the Twin Cities’ strongest link to the improvised music avant-garde. Saturday night at the Walker Art Center, he’ll lead his Inventions Clarinet Choir, as part of AACM’s 40th anniversary celebration.
Growing up on the east side of Kingston, Jamaica, Ewart’s first musical
instruments were tin cans he formed into makeshift hand-drums, inspired by the
sound of a local musical/educational/political collective called Count Ossie
and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari.
In 1963, Ewart, then in his late teens, immigrated to Chicago to join his mother
and uncle. A friend told him about the AACM, and he started taking music lessons,
studying alto sax and later adding clarinet and flute to his arsenal of sound
machines. Before long, Ewart was performing with his teachers, and by 1968 was
doing his own concerts.
A past chairman of AACM, Ewart has often performed with some of the most far-reaching,
“new music” composer-musicians of the last four decades, including
Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and Anthony Braxton. “It’s an
incredible group of musicians I’ve had the privilege of working with over
the last 30 years,” he says.
“At first, I was a bit reluctant to move here,” he recalls. “I
had things so well situated in Chicago. But after being here a year, things
really started to work out well and we’ve been here ever since.”
While the local scene can’t match the sheer quantity offered by a city
of 8 million, Ewart is glad he made the move. “The support for artists
here far exceeds what happens in Chicago. Both from private foundations and
the state, the support is far more substantive than in Chicago, which is primarily
geared to making grants to organizations, rather than individuals.”
Over the years, Ewart has played his sax, flutes and other wind, reed and percussion
instruments in “just about every type of musical situation: jazz bands,
rock bands, blues bands, concert bands, pit bands ...” and many that defy
categorization. “There’s no area of music I’m not interested
in.” A few years ago, after Ewart became interested in the shakuhachi
flute, he won an arts grant to spend a year in Japan studying the ancient bamboo
instrument.
 These
days, Ewart doesn’t play in bars or go to jam sessions; he prefers concert
settings or community venues like the Powderhorn Farmer’s Market, where
he’s played with saxophonist John Devine. “There’s no greater
commitment than to go out and do that kind of performance; it’s a real
commitment to the pulse of the neighborhood.”
Another favorite venue is Powderhorn Park, where Ewart has staged his “Crepuscule”
outdoor event, featuring several dozen musicians and other “volunteer”
performers banging out rhythms and melodies using various “re-purposed”
objects such as crutches, skis, hubcaps, oars and tennis racquets. He’s
staged the ongoing, evolving piece at Powderhorn annually from 1991 to 2004,
and has also performed it in Paris, Philadelphia and Chicago. Future performances
are slated for Canada in 2007 and Buffalo in 2008, and “we hope to bring
it back here, again.”
Ewart says he’s “always searching” for new combinations that
will yield exciting results. “No combination is really far-fetched,”
he notes. In the AACM tradition, his bent for unconventional instrumentation
dates at least as far back as 1968, when he formed a drummer-less saxophone
trio with two other members of the AACM, the Cooper Brothers. “We didn’t
have a car, and the drummer didn’t want to take his drums on the train,”
he recalls.
Ewart has recorded and released several CDs of original music. His most recent
CD, 2004’s Songs of Sunlife: Inside the Didjeridu (Innova Records),
features Ewart playing the instrument first developed 1500 years ago by the
indigenous Aboriginal people in what is now Australia. The CD also features
poet Louis Alemayehu and computer-percussionist Steve Goldstein.
 Along
with his composing and performing achievements, Ewart is equally well-known
as a maker of musical instruments, some ornate enough to double as sculptures,
like the totem flutes adorned with wood-burned designs and paintings. In a unique
twist on the old “swords into plowshares” concept, he also makes
instruments out of a very unlikely source material: 33 mm artillery shells he
buys at a military surplus store. Ewart fashions rainsticks and didjeridus from
bamboo and clay—including a “slide” didjeridu almost twice
as long as he is tall. Ewart’s interest in the instrument’s unique,
resonant moan dates back to the ’60s, when he first heard an LP of Aboriginal
field recordings. He later taught himself circular breathing, in order to play
the instrument in the traditional fashion.
One of Ewart’s most impressive traits as an artist is his ability to draw
on and integrate music and other forms of expression from so many different
cultures, from ancient to modern. “He’s so inventive across so many
different means of expression; we’re really very fortunate to have him
living here,” says Phillip Bither, the Walker’s curator for the
performing arts. He’s a bridge between the Twin Cities and the most creative
aspects of Chicago jazz scene. He’s mainly known here as an instrument
maker, educator and player in a number of different ensembles; we rarely get
to see him lead a large ensemble playing his own music.” ||
Douglas Ewart performs on Sat., Mar, 4 with his Inventions Clarinet
Choir at the Walker Art Center. 8 p.m. $20/$16 for Walker members. 1750 Hennepin
Ave., Mpls. 612-375-7600. For more info, visit WalkerArt.org.
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