I spoke with Sharlene Wallace and Frank Horvat via Zoom on Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 for “The Forest Issue” of The Daughter's Grimoire.
A couple of months earlier, Sharlene had told me about an intriguing co-compositional project that she is working on with our mutual friend and colleague, Frank Horvat. Trees.Listen brings ancient Druid wisdom regarding trees together with Sharlene's Celtic lever harp and Frank's 21st-century, synth-inspired bed track.
I was inspired to learn how how Sharlene and Frank’s shared passion and respect for trees shape their joint creative process. As a flutist, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with both of them over the years, but this conversation is our first work as a “tree-o.”
–Jamie Thompson
Jamie Thompson: Greetings Sharlene and Frank, and on behalf of Max and myself, thank you for being so open to having a conversation today, and welcome to The Daughter's Grimoire! Our conversation will be featured in “The Forest Issue.” And speaking of telepathy and being on the same page, I think each of us would agree that there’s mysterious things that go on every day and we happen to catch some of them. We notice things, little things, all coincidences, synchronous… And personally I think we only catch small things. We just see the tip of the iceberg. There’s probably so much going on that’s under the surface for us, but when?
Sharlene Wallace: Good tree metaphor, Jamie.
JT: Yeah, I wasn't meaning to go there! [Laughter] We’re gonna redact all the tree metaphors.
SW: No, it’s good, it’s good.
JT: I heard about your project and really it didn’t click right away. But Sharlene, you and I were in touch and I mentioned how it was just such a coincidence, and we joked about how we probably started our independent projects the same nanosecond! You know, we probably started the same week and then fortunately we happened to discover that we both have a tree-themed project that’s ongoing for each of us, and so that's a lovely moment.
SW: Hey, I'm Sharlene Wallace and I play harp, Celtic harp and pedal harp, Celtic lever harp, pedal whatever harp [laughter], and and I write music, mostly for harp.
Frank Horvat: Is that right?
SW: I mean almost exclusively for harp, and I record a lot.
JT: Yeah, and Frank, the last time that you and I saw each other, Sharlene was playing a work of yours featured at the Canadian Music Center.
SW: A Little Loopy.
JT: You collaborate with artists other than musicians, yeah.
SW: Yeah I do. But actually across disciplines. A lot of people think harp, classical music, or harp, Celtic music, but Frank and I actually met working on a singer-songwriter project.
So yeah, I'm always looking. And part of my creative process is actually visual. My sense of hearing, my sense of the aural, is actually very abstractly in a visual sort of context.
JT: Yeah, yeah, so when you're composing, that for you has a visual component – so that's how you compose in a way?
SW: Yeah, and it actually might be more like, I’m not thinking about painting, I’m not thinking of the sea, so much as it might actually be more movement.
JT: Right, perhaps with your background in dance?
SW: Yes, yeah yeah, exactly! And in thinking ahead to our conversation here today, there is this idea of movement along with the irony of a tree actually being in one place, and the context of movement in that tree is one of the sensations I’m actually really interested in.
JT: Lovely, yeah, I’d be curious to hear more about that. As I was sort of flitting around doing my usual day-to-day activities in the apartment here this morning, I was thinking how different it must be to be a tree and be in one place and I don’t know which I would prefer. I think I’d feel a little stuck to be rooted in one place, but this human tendency, and car culture, all of this is in striking contrast between our species.
SW: Yeah, the idea that everything you need is right where you are. I think as humans we’ve grown to not feel that as much. We’re always looking.
JT: And when we have so much anyway – we’re in this day and age where it’s all about thinking you need –
SW: – More and and more movement and to get somewhere else so much of the time!
JT: Right, lovely, that’s so true, and Frank, I’m sure you’d totally agree! Perhaps you could give our readers a brief intro to your work, give us a glimpse of what you do.
FH: Sure, well, thank you. I’m Frank Horvat, and I am a composer, a pianist, teacher, producer and I also think of and call myself an artivist as well – not necessarily an activist, but an artivist, where I basically enjoy using my music and my collaborations as a platform to bring about awareness about various issues that are close to my heart.
So Trees.Listen is one of the types of projects that I work on that I have collaborated [on] with Sharlene that I’m really excited about, especially lately. I think I’ve collaborated with both of you over the years. And a lot of our collaborations tended to be around basically one of two areas, either something that is to bring awareness about some kind of a social issue or a hot-button issue related maybe towards human rights. I know, Jamie, we worked on recording that piece about whistle-blowing, that you’re part of that, so that was exciting.
But then I also love using my music as a platform to bring about just awareness of spirituality – an opportunity for an individual to become very introspective, placed within their own heart, and their own mind, and, you know, on this planet and so forth. So I’ve worked on pieces with both of you that more or less are in that zone. And this is what I love about what Sharlene and I are presently collaborating with, because – and you can correct me if I’m wrong, Sharlene – but I feel like Trees.Listen is a bit of both of these things, where we want to use Trees.Listen as a platform to bring awareness about the importance of protecting trees for the sake of our environment, as one of the tools for humanity to fight climate change, but there’s also something incredibly spiritual about trees that allows us to look within and and see them as a very therapeutic way for making ourselves more fulfilled.
JT: Such an eloquent response to the question I had all queued up for you, Frank! [Laughter] And that of course is whether you and Sharlene feel that Trees.Listen is political, or is it poetic, or perhaps even a bit of both! You answered that beautifully, Frank, so thank you.
I was reflecting on how we’ve each grown individually as artists, how we each have found our own voice, and how this could be likened to individual trees, which led me to thinking about how this kind of collaboration and the collaborations that we’ve done over the years is like the root system connecting our work.
FH: It’s like an evolution. I think you’re right, so right, Jamie. I think about things that you and I worked on to record my music, or that in performance you’ve done on my music, and I just listen to those pieces now that some years have passed, and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, all the things that I’ve done!” And basically, I wouldn’t be here right now, or working on the projects right now that I’m working at, if we didn’t have that experience of us collaborating on that! Or Sharlene, for you and I definitely as well, I don’t think we would be collaborating if we didn’t have such a great experience of putting together A Little Loopy, or working on the Music for Self-Isolation recording, or even many many years ago, meeting here in Toronto for a Sora gig.
JT: When did you first get the idea for Trees.Listen? Did you come up with it together, Frank, or was it your idea or –
FH: Right, so it was around the time that the Music for Self-Isolation album came out last year – oh, actually it's a brand-new year [laughter], so I guess this was during the summer of 2021. Sharlene and I worked on it together, she had contributed her talents to that particular project and that all turned out to be a really big success, and we were still in a fragile state with the pandemic. But I found I had the whole Music for Self-Isolation project in my rearview mirror. I had worked on that since the beginning of the pandemic, and it was an extremely joyful thing, and I had met so many wonderful people and grew very close to a lot of people, Sharlene included, and I was just thinking to myself: okay, what’s next? How do we move forward here? Or at least if we can’t move forward, how can we get ready?
So I made a concerted effort that particular summer to start to reach out to close friends, close musical friends who I really appreciated and had just worked with in the past couple of years in this very isolated state, and thinking, why don’t we start brainstorming and planning ahead? It was during this period of extreme isolation when Sharlene and I had a wonderful conversation. Rather than the traditional situation of me composer, Sharlene performer, where you commissioned me, we thought – I knew Sharlene was also a composer and I thought to myself, hey, what about this idea of us collaborating? So that’s how we did it at first – the whole idea about trees, that came later. We started our conversation just about how you and I should work together, and more specifically, how can we create something together, compose and create music together–
SW: – And did we want to? [Laughter]
FH: Well, I’m sure that was a big question for you, that’s for sure.
SW: But I didn’t even know what it meant. I don’t think either of us knew what it meant. Until we actually did [the first two Trees.Listen pieces], the Birch and the Hazel, I had no idea and I didn’t want to know either. I was happy with that, with that not knowing, just it being an organic experience. But we were both excited, so we decided, yeah, we want to work together with this co-composing approach, whatever that means! Whatever it would look like, what’s the draw for us, where is the meeting point? And we both were talking about the natural world, and then Frank, you had been reading Diana’s book.
FH: To Speak for the Trees. Yeah, so I came across this wonderful book called To Speak for the Trees, by Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a well-known botanist here in Canada, who actually lives in the Ottawa Valley, just outside of Ottawa.
JT: Oh, I thought she was based in the UK for some reason –
FH: – Well, she’s actually Irish, she’s Irish-born and raised, and that’s a whole story
right there! Her book To Speak for the Trees is one of the most inspiring books I’ve
ever read. Sharlene – just like you, Jamie – is an avid photographer, and I was following her [social media] posts. I said wow, she likes taking pictures of trees a lot, and she’s good at it and they’re beautiful, and I put two and two together and I thought, wow, this could be something special. And of course Sharlene plays the Celtic harp and Diana’s book is all related to her lineage as being a part of the ancient Celts, so it was like, this just feels right, everything is aligning here!
