Interview with David Shea

 

I have always wanted to talk to David Shea. His work has always been quite inspiring and perplexed me in many ways. His new album is out on Room40 and I thought it would be a good idea to ask him a few questions. Here you are:

1. There is a moment in almost every musician's creative life that is and will be remembered as some sort of critical point when you move towards some area that you are able to express yourself. An inspiration that makes you think I might want to try it and do it. What was it for you?

I do know many artists do have unique pivotal moment, but there are so many of those, waves of peaks and crashes that I would list too many turning points. But as I child I was always clear that I wanted to be a musician and a composer of some sort that it was the direction I would follow for better or worse. There were of course some critical moments early on: encounters with music and films, life changing concerts and many moments of working in John Zorn’s ensembles, in particular that 1992 period of recording Elegy  (I could write for hours on that period) Zorn’s kindness and support and weeks of experiences the studio and in San Franciso shaped a direction that has continued ever since.  

As you know many of my works are tributes to the influential people and moments you mention, and they have shaped my life and work in compositions of both in collages of recorded material and absorbing the influence in my work as a whole. 

Meeting Luc Ferrari in 2003 was another transformative period, of just being immersed in a sense of connection to a wider extended family, with no pretension, just immersion into listening and creating. Luc’s guidance, kindness and critical sharpness, independence always with connections to the widest issues of why we create collisions between the natural and cultural world, the connections/ equivalences between creating new music in all genres and weaving sound from the world with electronics – all felt like a point of no return. 

Now I feel I have no real choice, although I feel free, always living with a sense of history, the many present artists in my life everyday – the ones living and living in other historical times but physically gone and a sense of responsibility to make the best work I could make to respect what they had done.

 I’ve always approached composition in that same sense as a spiritual practice, and it is that -a practice- like breathing, something where being aware of critical moments every day, and the potential of them, in a very pragmatic sense, in each new experience. 

2. How did you start your relationship with your instrument(s) and compositions? You seem to be creating your own instruments /set ups and combinations of acoustic, electronic, electric live instruments, and also there has been phases and periods where you used certain ones. 

Almost all these choices have been born out of necessity and what was happening in my life at the time. I have always worked with what I have or do not have and choose the instruments or material based on what the music needs and what the instruments potential is. When I first arrived in New York in 1985, I had no instruments, spent a period of time between being homeless and being a squatter in the East Village and had to make work with whatever was available. When there were no instruments, I used my voice and my body in solo vocal improvisations and was lucky enough to study with Shelly Hirsch who got me my first job taking tickets at Roulette in Jim Staley’s loft in Tribeca. Where I first encountered free improvisation live and saw any material could be used and that every choice was critical at every moment and that it could be absurd or irrelevant the next moment. This to me was a much deeper sense of orchestration, if we can call it that, than I had encountered and it confirmed my love of John Cage and Marcel Duchamp and those that picked up the materials they found- creating, choosing, selecting and attention to detail a way of life. 

Now that said I had a great deal of respect for engineers, producers, Djs , and 50s and 60s sound artists as well as great orchestrators who I had studied like Morricone , Ravel, Rimsky Korsakov and many others in electronic music – studio masters in, Bernard Herrmans innovations, Hip hop producers  and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to name a few and always was interested in the interaction between acoustic and electronic hybrids. But each project has its own needs, and each instrument or sound material has its own traditions and needs. I try to listen and learn what those needs are, work with great technicians who love the art of building and working with and shaping a composer’s vision. 

3.You are active as a solo artist - how did it start and what lies ahead?

I tried to focus on this in my 3rd record I – At the time I was immersed in the writings of Jiddhu Krishnamurti, in particular his conversations with Physicist David Bohm called The Ending of Time. I felt in 1993 as I was using samples, turntables, tape collage and other materials from the world that there really was no such thing as a solo. That we are collages as individuals or a mix of influences conscious and otherwise. Perhaps it was a simple way to express that, there are no sounds I created directly in the album I , but solo performance was and is always community and ensemble thinking for me,  ensembles as an extension or confirmation of this and I have always mixed solo concerts with ensemble work and collaborating with others as the same gesture, whether the sources/people  are physically present, virtual or remixed.  I plan to tour solo in 2026 in Japan, the US and Europe as the possibilities of of solo work seem to be expanding and I plan to again start using video in performance but this year I will be making the visual work as well, I’ve worked with great video and visual artists and will continue , but is is time to make video and film with the music .. 

4. What are your inspirations when it comes to style and creative process in your own work? Music wise and beyond.

If you will forgive me let’s talk about this when we have a few days and some good wine or great tea and share the many hours of sharing inspirations. The more direct answer is, each one of the records of mine are filled with references and they are all there to be discovered. Since music is the source of form as Cymatics among other things shows us, I consider with out any cosmic aspirations that sound and frequency are the fields that shape us and the exploration of sound and music is always an exploration into the connections beyond the mythology of music as disconnected from other arts or other physical experience. 

5. How are the musical interactions between you and others in collaborative work? How has it been recently?

Collaborative work has always been at the heart of what I do. New York in the 80s was a constant interaction of dance, film, theatre, poetry, club music, gallery culture and visual art and my time as the Performance director at ABC NO Rio on the Lower East Side put that influence directly in my life. It is the nature of the classes I teach now in my elective courses at the Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne University now and something I do in Second Life, YouTube, Twitch and any streaming platform that I can find new international connections with. 

I think I realized early on that every sound, style, genre and artist is not a style, there is a contextual life blood in each sound and that collage is not neutral material brought together, but connections to the source of the culture, understood or misunderstood. I have always found folk and traditional musicians understand this the most deeply, that a sense of identity is crucial to a global view., Italian, Indonesian, and Chinese players I have worked with have always treated the electronics of mine as my traditional instrument. And I have found it fluid to arrange my pieces in collaboration with them and the traditions and to listen to what the music may need or connect with what I ma trying to explore and compose with them. This has been the same process in digital worlds and other hybrid art forms, but there is so much more to explore as a genuine dialogue globally seems to be emerging, and a deeper dialogue with technology as a part of our bodies and nervous system and a central part of shaping our evolution and global culture. 

6. Where is the line between your own prose and theory of what you do and academic pursuits? How does your own academic education affect what you do artistically? What and who influenced you at different stages of your life?

Well, I have very little formal education as disliked most of what I did have. Although I liked the formal work of artists and wanted to study everything I could find , and spent my misspent youth in libraries, films, and TV and reading. I suppose being an only child helped, but I found academic life very small in comparison to the Taoist and Buddhist influences that were so central at that time and had more interest in that direction. In high school I studied at the Indianapolis School for the Performing Arts, which had no composition program, so I was able to study theory, harmony, counterpoint and was completely immersed in studying them. Johnny Blanchard a Jazz guitarist with Jack Dupree the great organ player, turned my life in a few lessons explaining the complexity and simplicity of all harmony, and how to survive from its lessons. And of course, a lifelong respect for Jazz as a search for the truth as he would say.  Another deep Influence was Joan Gerzon a piano teacher and pianist for the Indianapolis Symphony who gave me access to tickets to many many free concerts and pre-concert talks, as well as know as much as I loved Bach and the repertoire, the contemporary record collection she had and the computer music which she had the insight and care to see it was the direction I was moving towards. 

This all resulted in a year at the Oberlin Conservatory and my desire to study with John Cage and Morton Feldman who had left by the time I arrived but still had a vibrant scene as well as Richard Hoffman, who had worked with Schoenberg who along with Webern and Stockhausen I studied endlessly and to study electronic music and composition in a very disciplined way.

 It was a dark cynical experience seeing the academy from  the inside and I left as soon as I could to get back to New York. But I am these days deeply grateful for that year and all the incredible experiences, and the collaboration I was able to make with dancers, video artists and other musicians, but I should have read the sign on the wall – Conserve- A Tory .. I respect it but it wasn’t for me my path of learning. 

Now this may be a bit ironic as I have been teaching, doing workshops, artist talks and have been creating courses in since 2008 perhaps inspired by Pauline Oliveras and meeting Anthony Braxton in 2008 and how well they would weave performing, and teaching outside and inside the institutions still with fully active creative lives. Perhaps also Messian and his self-taught global and natural world love of theory, and the experiences at Ircam, and the Centre Pompidou in the early 2000’s, as well as others, allowed me make peace with institutions. But still stay very independent form that world.  

But my education if you can call it that was in New York with the downtown music scene, and the last 25 years with the natural world and spiritual teachers is my root system and soil conditions. 

Zorn was an immense influence and older brother, Anthony Coleman, Ikue Mori, Mark Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Tom Cora, Christian Marclay, an many others and of course  the connected scenes of that time which continued when I moved to Brussels in 1999 always meant my teaching would be cross discipline and balance experience, practice and theory or formalism. 

Now each course deals with these connections, and the mix of Asian , Australian and international students who have been amazing the last 15 years make the experience worth it every year. 

7. How do you feel in an ever-changing world of musical distribution? How difficult is it at the moment to promote your own music?

This is a massive economic question on the future of how we use our resources in a world that has multiple economies layered in physical and virtual worlds. But music in general, I think is heading in a good direction. As the move towards open source, direct support of artists by community, internet or local becomes at least as important as the governments, labels or monopolies that have controlled music and technology, I think th mentality is slowly shifting. That direct involvement in culture is a part of each of our lives if we choose it to be and its transformative power is as important as at any time in history. It may be difficult to see in this environment today as we seem to be still stuck in the revolution mode of the 20th century. I think farmers figured out a very long time ago that the soil conditions need to be right to grow what is needed. Forcing the natural world mechanically pr conceptually seems to cause constant conflict, which Im sure is necessary on some level but Im with the farmers on this one. Gaming culture has cultivated for better and worse its own global economies and the creative possibilities associated with blockchain, virtual currencies and Bandcamp, Patreon etc models are not ideal but point to the fact that artists should, again if they choose to, use their creative capacity to create an economy they feel has value, that is profitable in all the sense of profitable. This takes a change of mentality and attention first, to change again the soil conditions to oppose the economic models we know are destructive and to take the power in making our work into networks of alternative yet efficient means of support. Life, animals and plants seem to be the best teachers for this but applying these geniuses of adapting to a resource crises need some insight if wa can connect with a fully global dialogue around how a world economy of culture can care for and support not just the work but the emotional, and material life of artists. I think we have the technology to do this, and if artists and engineers work to make this a adaptive and sustainable together, I fully believe this direction can and is happening. I have a set of talk called “Real economics for artists and creative economics for commerce students” The strategies are there and the technology in place, but we have to ask what do we want and do we have the knowledge and enrgy to pragmatically make it happen? 

8. Plans for the future?

There is a future? Well I’m happy Meditations has been released and these days flow is the focus with the digital and physical world. The reality of Meditation practice is the focus of that record, and as anyone who regularly has any mediation practice, thoughts, fears, memories and distractions are a part of that practice. Any great musician at the height of their power still practices every day and most say , there is always much more to learn. I have always been interested if any record is successful or not to change directions an explore something new. I have no dedication to a genre or tradition, Im guided by observation and experience and the teachings that have been central to my life. 

The latest new exploration is virtual performance. I started a blog series called the Universe of Sound on Twitch last year and began performing YouTube concerts in the Australian bush where I had been making field recordings for years and wanted the live sound to be part of the music and performance. Second Life the virtual world of sims created by the residents of SL since 2003 , I began performing live streams as a 3D Avatar in November 2024 in Second Life and now am a resident artist at the SL Endowment for the Arts with a weekly series based on the original Universe of Sound performances and historical talks on Archeoacoustics, Physics, Film Music, Sound Art and Technology and connections between Visual Arts and Music. It has spiralled into a lot of Second Life experiences, but my interest is in the mix of ways of presenting and sharing work with new audiences not in any competition with traditional performance. 

So Meditations the new album will be followed by the Electromagnetic Piano Project on Room 40 , a label run by Lawrence English and not only a special should but a great friend and best label I have ever worked with ( no offence to Zorn’s Tzadik label and SubRosa, they were both honest and great experiences. Im currently working on a large ensemble 3rd Symphony a very large 8 movement electroacoustic real virtual and constructed orchestral work of eastern and western ensembles and electronic ensembles of analogue and digital instruments. 

In Melbourne I am writing and collaboration with Zheng Wang Ting the Sheng (Chinese bamboo mouth organ) master and Koto master Brendon Yang as a trio. Bandcamp is where I’m realising tracks almost every week, and is an extension of asking fans to support these projects by donating or paying whatever they want to for each track and keeping them independent of the major releases. 

2026 and the Year of the Horse will be a year of planning live tours and virtual tours, the live will be the US in November, Europe in December and Japan and China the following June/July but organizing all that with others in the next few weeks. 

I want to say that I think you were very clever in asking 8 questions (as huge as these questions are!) with the album having 8 sections of 8 minutes each! Coincidence??  Ive tried to give the clearest responses I can and appreciate your care and support and hope these words can be useful for anyone reading to cultivate your own creative work, ask yourself these questions, and I thank you for taking the time to read my words and share with me the work Ive been able to make. 

                                                              Please contact David via          Bandcamp link