“Singing, planting rice,
village songs more lovely
than famous city songs”

Haiku by Matsuo Basho

We begin with a poem from the Japanese poet Basho for a couple reasons.  The beauty of haiku is its ability to capture vastness in just a few simple lines.  In this way, less becomes more.  For local musician and singer-songwriter Wes Swing both the poet and the idea of less is more are at the heart of the music he makes.

A classically trained musician who began playing violin at the age of 4, Wes Swing is creating a very unique and personal style of music that is unlike most of what I’ve heard in Charlottesville.  By drawing together elements of minimalism and modern classical pieces with expressions of folk that are at times reminiscent of the late Nick Drake, Swing hopes to push upon the boundaries of what defines the singer-songwriter genre .

[Wes Swing photo from the artist]

————

Wes Swing describes his music as ever-evolving.  To begin to understand his sound, one must first have a basic understanding of minimalism as it applies to music.  The idea is to create a composition using a little as possible in terms of notes played, instruments used, or lyrics written.  The style was popularized by a number of artists beginning in the 1960’s, foremost among them are Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, and both are readily cited by Wes as definitive influences on his sound.

To this end, Wes Swing’s music relies heavily on a limited number of instruments including violin, cello, and guitar (all of which Wes plays in addition to piano).  Prior to arriving in the Charlottesville area in 2005, Swing worked on an instrumental piece for eight cellos while living in Boston and in recent years he has been composing a series of themed works that he describes “as short, powerful, and evocative” and center around the idea of family.  Through these pieces Wes hopes to highlight how one single idea can be interpreted to possess a wide range of feelings, emotions, and experiences.

And while the modern classical and minimalism paths have clearly been the well-travelled ones, in the last year or so Swing has begun to explore new ground by adding the element of singer/songwriting to the music he writes and now performs.  When I mention the Nick Drake reference that I hear in his voice, Wes admits to being a definite fan but he is also quick to point out his love for Bjork and Radiohead, two contemporary artists whose music cannot easily be defined as simply being rock and who both employ aspects of an almost avant-garde quality to their sound.  They seem like proper choices for an artist whose own music does not fit so neatly into one well-defined genre.

As the conversation turns to focus on his songwriting, I happen to mention a recent show at the Gravity Lounge that I attended where Wes opened for Paul Curreri.  I bring up the fact that I noticed that there was a strong literary component to his writing.  As Swing explains it, a great deal of what he writes about is drawn from what inspires him and that in some cases he writes in response to those sources of inspiration.  As such, he points to his song “All Other Love” which came to him after reading a quote from T.S. Eliot which reads “all other love finds speech, but this is silent”.  In other instances he mentions the song “Ulysses”, which was written as a personal reaction to the themes of Tennyson’s poem of the same name and to the use of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” as the lyrics for one of his songs.  When I say that Wes Swing is playing it smart, it can be taken in the most literal of meanings.

But playing it smart doesn’t make it any easier to find a place to perform, especially in Charlottesville where there exists an overwhelming number of artists searching for opportunities to play on a limited numbers of stages.  For now Wes is grateful to Bill Baldwin, the owner of the Gravity Lounge, for booking him into a couple opening slots and for giving his music as chance to be heard by a live audience.  He calls the Gravity the best room in town for his music because it’s a place where people come to listen and for Wes Swing listening is the biggest and most beautiful reward of all.  Your next chance to check out Wes Swing’s live comes on September 16 as he opens for Basia Bulat.  Doors open at 7:30pm and the cost is $10.

[You can listen to demos of “All Other Love” and others at Wes’s MySpace page here]

When Wes isn’t writing, recording, or performing his own music, he still finds time to give private lessons to local students in both Latin and in music, play fiddle from time to time in Keith Morris’s band The Crooked Numbers, and hit the surrounding mountains for some well-spent time in the woods.  He currently lives in Nelson County with his girlfriend and hopes to have his first full-length album of original material completed by the end of 2008.  And as he sees it, the purpose of art “is to connect and make things better.”  Here, here.

Popularity: 21% [?]