Claire Devlin and Eli Davidovici of Bellbird talk about the bird whose recorded cry became the foundation of 'The Call', the chordless sound that defines the quartet, and the political commitments embedded in the music.
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Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on the Montreal jazz collective Bellbird.
Bellbird formed during pandemic park jams and has since become one of the more compelling voices in Canada's avant-jazz scene. The quartet consists of Claire Devlin on tenor sax, Allison Burik on alto sax and bass clarinet, Eli Davidovici on bass, and Mili Hong on drums. No guitar, no piano, just three mostly single-note instruments and a drum kit, which turns out to be more than enough. Their debut, Root in Tandem, earned serious praise. Their second album, The Call, came out on February 6th on Constellation Records. It was built from bird sound transcriptions, Mary Oliver poems, and sessions in the countryside, and it doesn't sound like anything else on that storied label's roster.
Two members of the collective, Claire Devlin and Eli Davidovici, are here to take us through the story.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Bellbird's album The Call)
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00:00 Introduction
01:44 Claire and Eli on arriving in Montréal and finding a scene
04:10 First gig together and early connections
04:53 Pandemic park jams and the formation of Bellbird
06:22 Genre diversity and the Bellbird sound
09:14 What "collective" means in practice
13:48 Shared composing credits and egalitarian music-making
14:33 Transcribing bird sounds as compositional material
17:53 "The Call" and the White Bellbird
19:31 The chordless quartet: freedom and constraint
22:47 Playing with Allison Burik's dual instruments
24:45 The rhythm section dynamic: bass and drums
28:14 "Soft Animal" and Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"
31:11 "Blowing on Embers" and instrumental music as political expression
35:51 Signing to Constellation Records
38:01 Community, Café Résonance, and the Montréal scene
41:34 Gender, queerness, and inclusive creative spaces
42:46 Translating the studio album to live performance
45:29 Climate activism, streaming platforms, and the future of Bellbird
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- Visit Bellbird at → https://www.bellbird.band
and follow them on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/bellbird.music
and YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@BellbirdBand/videos
Purchase Bellbird's 'The Call' from Constellation Records → https://cstrecords.com/collections/catalogue/products/cst190-bellbird-the-call
Bandcamp → https://bellbirdband.bandcamp.com/album/the-call
or Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/the-call-bellbird/ofkvbc7900t8a
and listen on your streaming platform of choice → https://lnk.to/cst190
For extensive show notes, links, and podcast information, go to https://podcast.thetonearm.com
Be sure to check out The Tonearm, an online music + culture magazine featuring fascinating perspectives and conversations with creative people → https://www.thetonearm.com
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