Cory Harper-Latkovich of Jelly Ear Q&A

Mar 9

By Ado Nkemka

Pictured Jelly Ear Trio. Left to right: Sara Constant, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, and Cory Harper-Latkovich. Photo credit: Mechanical Forest Sound.

Read this Q&A with Cory-Harper-Latkovich ahead of an exciting weekend of experimental music workshops and performances from March 14th-16th. Co-presented with Tadpole. Read more event details on Showpass. This interview has been lightly edited for brevity.

Ado: Can you introduce yourself?

Cory: I'm Cory Harper-Latkovich. I'm a cellist, composer, and improviser from Toronto. I'm currently living in The Hague, where I'm doing a masters in composition. I created this group, Jelly Ear, which is a loose collective of musicians that use medieval European music as a basis for improvisation.

The approach we take is experimental. We are not necessarily historically informed performers, although we do take inspiration from the sorts of movements, but we come from a lot of different backgrounds. So some of us are classical musicians. Some of us come from jazz backgrounds. Some of us come from other experimental traditions. A core of the group has formed between myself, Sarah Constant, and Yang Chen – we've developed a means of approaching this material that I think is quite unique, and quite open, and quite free, but still maintains a nice quality of this music.

I did see, on your website, that you have a roster of rotating artists – the artists you mentioned, are they going to be playing with you in March?

Yes, those are the artists that are coming in March.

How did you meet?

We're all Toronto based musicians, and we all work within this unique space of people who are both composers as well as performers as well as improvisers. So within the music scene of Toronto, our circles overlapped quite a bit, and we interacted quite a bit before the band started. We had beforehand, on multiple occasions, played in each other's projects. So it was pretty easy to form this group – or for this kind of core to emerge. We had similar sensibilities. We were similarly attracted to this concept.

What drove your interest in medieval music?

Initially what interested me in it is that we have records of this music. We have scores. But outside of that, there's not as much information as later types of music. Once you get later into the renaissance, in the baroque period. There's a sense of how this music would have been performed, and what kind of context and what kind of instruments – within medieval music, there's not the same amount of information.

In the earliest records of notational music. It was just a shorthand for people to remember what they would have just learned by memory. And later on, it got more prescriptive, but still things like what sort of instruments, what sort of tempos, stuff like that was not really recorded. So a lot of the ideas of what are right or wrong in the performance of this music don't exist. So I think there's a lot of flexibility there. I think one of the things that I really find inspirational from a lot of historically informed performance practices are the people who try to strip away modern perceptions of a score.

If you listen to early recordings of people performing this music, it sounds very much like 20th century chamber music, because people are approaching these sources with a modern expectation of what it means when you see notes on a page.

We're not trying to necessarily do something that's historically accurate, but trying to capture an essence of how open these sources would have been treated in the time that they existed.

So that interests me a lot – that sense of freedom that they allow. There's also just some really, really lovely melodic material. And I think that it gives a strong basis to come back to these melodies that are singable. A lot of this music was written as vocal music so you have these very chant song-like melodies that are quite beautiful.

I saw that you play the rebec, and thought that was interesting and that made me curious about responses you may have when you share about either making medieval music or playing the instrument to people outside of your scene. What is that like?

A lot of people have not seen this instrument before, but there are people who've seen close relatives of it. And what I find interesting is when you have someone who's maybe more familiar with Greek music, for example, they'll look at this instrument and say, “Oh, that's very much like the lyre.” Or in more central Asian traditions, they'll say “It looks a lot like a rebab. I think it's an interesting association, because the rebec is the first bowed string instrument in Europe, and it comes from the same background as these other instruments that come from Balkan, Central Asian, Northern African traditions. And the theory is that all these instruments have their origin actually in Mongolia. So this is the first instrument that, in the 10th century or so, started appearing in southern Europe.

It's so nice to be able to share this kind of information with people. Obviously people are so familiar with violins and cellos, and it's such an iconic family of instruments for Western classical music. But I think in the context of medieval music and this instrument, the idea of European music versus Northern African versus Central Asian – there's not as much of a clear boundary. And these musics would have been more in dialog up until about the 14th or 15th century. So it's just nice to be able to share this instrument. People see it. It starts this conversation. I can start talking about the historical context. And I use that to talk a little bit about certain aspects that inform my music as well.

You’ve touched on this a bit earlier – could you share a bit about the differences between collaborating within the Toronto arts scene and collaborations with artists outside of Toronto, and how those collaborations outside of Toronto benefit your practice in a way that collaborations within the Toronto scene may not necessarily be able to offer?

So this is my first time doing a collaborative project like this with improvisers from Western Canada so I'm quite excited about that. When you're in Toronto, there's a certain comfort zone, right? If I want to play a show, I know what programmers to talk to. I know I can email six or seven people and get enough people together to put together a band and I'm very sure of the language and shared sensibility we have.

But when I have taken this project to other cities, I've had quite different outcomes – so Jelly Ear has played in Montreal, collaborating with musicians local to there. We played in Cleveland and Louisville, collaborating with musicians there. And each time, it was really, really different. In Louisville, we actually collaborated with musicians whose background was in New Orleans Jazz, and the sensibility of improvisation was so much different than the Toronto scene.

It's a really, really big learning experience. You also learn to adapt your playing, to find the shared musical language. So it's a really, really nice emergent thing. We have this historical material but then we also have the background of all the musicians, which have their own historicity. People come from so many different backgrounds, sometimes even multiple backgrounds, and all of these languages can come together. So I'm really excited to see what sort of musicians I meet in Calgary. I'm really, really excited about the workshop that we're doing, as well. I think that's going to be really fun. And I really hope that people can really bring their own insight and traditions, and I can learn more about my own practice through that.

How much of your music education is from academia/formal, versus maybe self being self-taught. I'm curious about that and then whether you would change that balance, if you could, and how?

I did study composition and improvisation in my undergrad. I went to York University in Toronto. I graduated in 2011 and since then, I’ve been just totally self-producing. I spent a number of years playing in experimental rock bands and doing free improvisation. I wasn't really doing a lot of composition. It was very free-form and not very research-based. For the past six, or so years, my practice has gotten a little more centered on doing research, and it’s affected this band Jelly Ear, but it's also affected other aspects of my musical identity and I thought that it would be nice to go back to school.

So I am in academia now, but having almost 15 years outside of school, being self-directed, following my own curiosity, doing my own research, gives me a unique perspective and a critical voice within academia that I don't think I would have had if that was the only framework that I had. But I do love academia as well. I do love having the guidance of people who are established, who have spent a lifetime thinking about these things professionally.

That being said, I am going to a pretty open program. I think if I had gone to more old school or conservative conservatories, I might be butting my head a little bit more with the people I'm working with. I like that I have both of these perspectives, and they both inform my practice. I'm in school, because I felt like it was a time in my life where I could get a lot out of it, where I could get a lot out of having this focused time to work on my practice.

What’s the name of the program?

It’s the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

What is the importance of a DIY ethic to you?

So living in multiple worlds, I know that in, say, contemporary classical music, there's a lot of professionalism. Professionalism is the main mode of production within that which means that you have extremely, extremely highly trained musicians who are very versatile, but basically have to learn things quickly, and when you're working in making music in this mode, you have to keep that in mind. If you're a composer or if you're a performer who's working with people who are contemporary classical musicians that you might have an hour, or two hours, to workshop or rehearse your music before it gets performed. And it's incredible that these musicians have this high ability to do that, to produce really high quality concerts. But what, in my heart, I love coming from the DIY background is the use of time and not having necessarily the same kind of commercial pressure of time.

You have a group of people who just love something, and they put the time into it to make it work. Obviously, it's nice if you get paid, but it's not necessarily the end goal. And, I think as I get older, it's harder and harder to justify taking time away to just do something you love and not feel the pressure of professionalizing it. But I think it's nice to have these spaces where you just find people who are really passionate about the same things you're passionate about, and you just do it.

We had a monthly series in Toronto where we were able to try out a lot of different things, and they were all pass-the-hat gigs. So we weren't making a lot of money doing that, but it wasn't the point. We were able to develop this band and give it its unique identity and voice through this use of time. I think there are just things that cannot exist without this free relationship with time.

Can you share what the workshop you’re offering will entail and if you have a title for it?

The workshop title is Medieval Horizons of Now, an improvisation workshop with Jelly Ear. It's going to be a workshop that's open to anyone who is interested in doing group improvisations using these ahistoric sources. We're looking for participants who either can read music or can learn things quickly by ear, and percussionists, from any background.

We're hoping to get pretty mixed skill levels and backgrounds. So we'll have a few sources, a few scores to look at. We'll get the melodies in our ears. I will situate this music historically and talk a little bit about what the historically informed performance practice movement would – that perspective they would bring on to that. And then talk a little bit about Jelly Ear’s perspective. And there'll be a little talking about my research, which is into broadening the concept of the present.

I'm doing a little bit of political research into how, basically capitalist temporality is a temporality of claustrophobic time. We don't experience a very broad horizon of the future, and the same with the past. Also, radical ideas of time that exist in our society do bring ideas of tradition more into the present. And I think by broadening this idea of tradition and the past, not treating it as a cultural commodity or pastiche – finding some genuine way of interacting with it is a way of broadening the plateau of what can be considered now or the present.

I'm going to do a little short lecture on that, and then we'll get right into it, and we'll be working individually with musicians, and then be doing some group improvisations. And I think it's going to be really fun and really interesting.

What are you looking forward to the most, when it comes to the concert?

I'm really, really looking forward to having the opportunity to just offer this music to an audience. I really, really love both the musicians I'm playing with. It's always so fun, and our explorations always take us off into some pretty weird, fun, beautiful places. And I'm just excited to be able to share that with a new crowd and new city. And then I'm also just thrilled that Naomi McCarroll Butler is also on the bill. She is one of my favorite Canadian musicians and improvisers. And it's just such a fun combination having Jelly Ear and her. I'm really, really looking forward to it.

Is there anything that you want to share that I haven't given you the opportunity to share?

If anyone happens to be in Toronto, the week before, and then is in Calgary, Jelly Ear will be doing a collaboration with Labyrinth Ontario. Labyrinth is an organization that does music and educational programs centered around modal music. So, as I alluded to earlier, this includes everything from Northern Africa, Balkans, Central Asia, traditions from these parts of the world, which I'll share, have commonalities in their modal traditions.

We'll also be looking at some of the Jelly Ear repertoire within the frameworks of Iranian dastgāh music. So we'll be playing with Araz Salek who is the artistic director of Labyrinth Ontario. We're going to be using medieval music sources, but playing them in an Iranian improvised style. So if you happen to be in Toronto the week before, I highly suggest that. It's going to be a fun gig.

Jelly Ear Bio

"This ensemble featuring ever-evolving cast of members plays creatively open renditions of medieval repertoire. The maudlin wistful interpretations bristle with quiet nuance and tears of hope. Jelly Ear's pensive cautious dance evokes the dreams of a world long past. Contained cacophony buzzes with the energy of a bucolic babbling brook." (Burn Down the Capitol)

Personnel

Yang Chen – percussion

Sara Constant – flutes

Cory Harper-Latkovich – rebec (medieval fiddle)

Yang Chen — yangchen.ca

Yang (they/them) is just happy to be here with you :) They are a percussionist with many side-hustles who prioritizes collaboration, personal growth, and joy. Yang is a grateful nexus of playful curiosity, cross disciplinary yearning, classical training, and loving relationships. All of which influence process & product within their work. Recent fruits of their labour include

• longing for _ : their debut percussion+ album released in November 2022

• Tiger Balme : their band’s self titled debut album release

• leaving their arts admin job in early 2023 to pursue freelance music full time (yikes! but also wahoo!)

• Lunchbox Dilemma : they were the subject of this CBC Gem docu-series featuring Asian-Canadians and their coming of age experiences

• continuing to dream boundlessly, hope with discipline, grow into their most authentic self, seek & create joy, and movemovemove relentlessly despite significant & mundane difficulties and societally imposed & self imposed limiting assumptions

Yang is a soft-hearted dream-headed Pisces who enjoys yelling, cooking, and giggling at dad-jokes, often all at once.

Sara Constant — saraconstant.ca

Sara Constant is a musician and artist working in various forms of contemporary/experimental music and sound.Sara’s practice is grounded in music and listening as forms of research, embodiment, and place/space-making. Trained as a flute player and active as a soloist, improviser, and ensemble musician, Sara has performed at festivals/series in Canada (Music Gallery, Innovations en concert, CMC Presents, Women From Space), Europe (Fylkingen, Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Fondation Royaumont, Klangspuren Schwaz), and the United States (Oh My Ears, SPLICE, Cornell University). Among others, Sara has played with Paris-based contemporary music septet Semblance, graphic score project re:frame, medieval/improvised band Jelly Ear, FAWN chamber creative, the Canadian Composers Orchestra, and alokori, an experimental music and performance art project with Montreal-based guitarist An Laurence.

As an artist, Sara’s current projects include collaborations with composers on new works, improvisations with instruments and electronics, installation work with loudspeakers, and curation work aimed at building community spaces for interdisciplinary music-making.

Sara holds degrees from the University of Toronto (flute), University of Amsterdam (musicology), and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (contemporary performance). From 2018-2020, Sara participated in CoPeCo, a program in experimental music co-hosted in Tallinn, Stockholm, Lyon, and Hamburg, where their projects included the development of new music for amplified flute/electronics and tours to Finland and Italy playing improvised music. From 2016-2019, Sara co-organized the Toronto Creative Music Lab (TCML)—a community-oriented summer workshop for early-career composers, performers, and ensembles working in contemporary music.

Sara is currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto, where they work as a flutist, writer (Musicworks), and curator (Music Gallery).

Cory Harper-Latkovich — harperlatkovich.com

CORY HARPER-LATKOVICH (He/Him) is a cellist who balances his musical life between experimental musics of many genres. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Cory moved to Toronto in 2007, where he studied composition, improvisation, and performance at York University. There he formed Clarinet Panic, a band described as “scrappy chamber rock.” Infusing minimalism, free jazz, and noise music, Clarinet Panic became Cory’s main platform for composition for several years. The band played frequently in Toronto, toured Canada and the United States, and was featured in the Toronto Music Gallery Emergents series in 2015.

Clarinet Panic disbanded in 2015 and subsequently, Cory has worked to diversify his practice. He has participated as a composition fellow in many contemporary music programs, such as the Array Music Young Composer Workshop, Toronto Creative Music Lab, Montreal Contemporary, and the Neif-Norf Summer Festival. He has been invited/ commissioned to work with ensembles in Canada, the USA, and the UK. As well as developing a compositional practice within contemporary chamber music, Cory has an active solo practice involving cello, film, photography, and text.

Cory’s current composition plays with delicate densities, quiet noise, and fragile tones that carefully dismantle semiotic melodic structures and encourages careful listening and performer vulnerability.

Cory is a member of Jelly Ear, a creatively open early-music music group. Playing the rebec, a medieval fiddle, he is joined by a rotating cast of Toronto’s creative musicians. Each iteration of the band offers new interpretations of music from medieval Europe, including 11th-century mystic motets, 12th-century secular love songs, meandering 13th-century polyphony, and the knotty cryptic experimentation of the 14th-century. Decidedly anti-historic, Jelly Ear instead respects this music as a living art form, using playful improvisational explorations to collapse time and affirm the inventive humanity of composers and performers regardless of which century they may hail.