John Mark Sherlock

This interview first appeared online at

ARTPOST.info – The Art Information Portal for Galleries and Art Buyers.

Living in Toronto, John Mark Sherlock studied composition at the University of Western Ontario with Jack Behrens, Arsenio Girón and David Myska. His works have been played by many of Canada’s finest performers and ensembles including Arraymusic, the Burdocks, Critical Band, The Ergo Ensemble, Eve Egoyan, Linda Catlin Smith, the NUMUS Ensemble featuring the Penderecki String Quartet, Richard Sacks and Stephen Clarke. Also, he has written original music for dance or had works used for choreography by Marie-Josée Chartier, Heidi Strauss, Darryl Tracy, Allen Kaeja, Sylvain Émard, Gerry Trentham, Jessica Runge, Barbara Lindenberg, Gillian Komarda and Shannon Cooney. With composer eldritch Priest, he recently formed the ensemble, neither/nor.

OC: You are the first sound artist/composer I am to interview. This change, from my regular visual-centered discourses, should be challenging. I already find visual-based dialogues leave me searching and I anticipate the switch to a sound focused interview to be an even more blinding experience in attempting to transcribe music to text.

Your next public piece, the fifth performance of Mercer Union’s “Music In Alternative Spaces” concerts, is to be held just two days from now on March 18th, 2006. I see this interview as an opportunity to contrast my early assumptions about your post-minimalist inspired music before experiencing the work live. Let’s start with my first assumption then: Is post-minimalist a meaningful description of your music?

JMS: I have never been very excited about theoretical pigeon-holing because it always seems to fall short of actually grasping what is interesting about the music/art it purports to illuminate. And further, the composers that influenced me never accepted the label of minimalist. I prefer neo-modernist. How about neo-nadaist? Nothing.

My friend eldritch Priest, who is far more knowledgeable about these matters described my music as radical innocuousness. I’m not sure about the radical but will happily go with the innocuous.

After things were completely dismantled by the music of the 1950′s and 60′s, we don’t have much left to work with without treading over the same ground: post-modernism? I’m just holding on to the floating detritus; the flotsam remaining after it all went down. I don’t mean this as negative; it’s more a factual statement as to the way I see my work in the context of recent history.

I like to think of my music as the pursuit of failure. While everyone is trying to avoid failure, I’m pursuing it: failure as possibility so as to transcend failure. This leaves nothing to worry about. Utopianism.

OC: What are you anticipating for the Mercer Union performance? I understand other musicians will accompany you, playing a range of instruments including the Organette (a single 32-note organ stop) electric pianos and Clavinet along with an open call for people to show up and join in with their own instruments. How integral is this instrumentation in regards to the authenticity of the final compositions? Or do these enhancements simply add an additional layer of stylistic texture as improvisational effects?

JMS: One can expect a similar sound to what I have produced in the past; however, the Organette is slightly peculiar. I have no idea who might show up with which instrument for the group piece titled “salvage/wrecking”. I expect to be surprised in any event: something I really like.

Since 1999, the inclusion of analog keyboards has been a hallmark of my music. Having everyone show up with whatever instruments they want to play is a socio-political statement on my part rather than solely a musical element. Let everyone have their say on what they want to speak with… the pitches are mine though. I may end up with instruments I do not like the sound of. Just this one time though as community service.

OC: The press release for the performance states, “these pieces will involve a mobile approach to form”. Does this mean motion will be also be a choreographed element of the performance?

JMS: This mobile approach is a way of writing music I have adopted for some time now. More music is written for each performer than they can physically play. They can choose their own path through the work, often playing from the same part. In this way the overall piece is declaimed, or not – as though it mattered – in what amounts to incidental orchestration. In “salvage/wrecking” two pieces are played simultaneously. Conceptually, for me, this adds to the mobile form – and I’m thinking mobile as in Calder, right? But, of course, this is all just in my head. Whether this is discernable to the listener… I have my doubts.

OC: One could argue arrhythmic music is a form of cultural subversion. When the BBC Symphony Orchestra played John Cage’s 4’33″, one could simplify the performance to an aestheticized and elitist labour disruption. The restrained comedic element was heightened when BBC Radio 3 had to override the emergency system, one that normally protects listeners from unanticipated durations of silence, in order to properly air the performance live.

JMS: Well, I bet the BBC orchestra members were paid union scale to do it: so much for labour disruption. Or maybe they all subbed-out that night! I suppose there is an aspect of cultural subversion with experimental music since most music one hears normally has a plainly identifiable beat. This alteration is definitely musical subversion.

I’ve heard it said, “all music is political” and I believe it. Let’s just say I write socialist music. I’m the benevolent dictator of my musical state. It’s a one-party system. Still, everyone is welcome because there is room to be musical and the system needs it. Utopianism.

OC: Do you think these sensationalist events, including the regrettable, popular parodying of, let’s say Yoko Ono’s Fluxus experiments, are the causes for audiences hesitating to explore experimental music?

JMS: I think we need to define the exact audience we’re talking about. I explore music and art I am interested in through my own volition, following a path of interconnected artists and their work. I think people who are interested in experimental music are a subset of those interested in contemporary art, dance, literature or anything out of the ordinary. It really is the same set of people and there are not very many of them. I hesitate to suggest why this might be – especially in print.

OC: Is the image of the secluded, introspective nature of the experimental musician valid or is this stereotype superseded by music informed by current events and changing environments?

JMS: Both images are true. Much of the time, I am secluded and introspective. Alternatively, I read the news too much and am strongly affected by the world’s political tides.

OC: Where do you draw references for your music?

JMS: In the past I consciously constructed poetic (not literal – definitely not literal) analogies: metaphors connecting the physics of colour with those of sound. Currently, my references are subconsciously motivated. Actually, my whole process has been set on autopilot for years while I’ve just been looking out the window. Soon I’m going to bail and hopefully remember pull the ripcord. But ultimately, I believe some music is more abstract than others and to work from that is my purpose.

OC: With your sound studio located in the Darling Building, is it wrong for me to imbue your work with elements of the Spadina Avenue locale and its history or is the site merely a backdrop covering rent as reality?

JMS: Everyone who knows me is aware I am in love with Spadina Avenue, the Darling Building and that entails. In a way this is normal because that is my life. How the location informs the music, I couldn’t say. I do know it barely disturbs the endless surface and maybe that’s the point.

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OC: It is now just over a week since your performance at Mercer Union and there are elements I still find myself considering. I’m surprised at how moving an event it was, enough to temporarily displace even my own skepticism with a lingering tranquility. Is your first intent as a composer to create a highly affecting mood or is this just the result from a greater project?

JMS: It is part of a greater project to create a mood that highly affects me; failing every time.

OC: At the start of the performance you spoke about how your work as a church organ tuner and repairman was the origin for the creation of the Orangette. Can you again explain how your construction of this instrument relates to ecumenism, especially for those who did not attend the concert?

JMS: That was really just an off-the-cuff joke about where the used parts came from for the Organette. I was raised Catholic but am an aetheist or agnostic most of the time but I suppose the possible cross-over in christian music could serve as a point of ecumenism for those concerned about that. But are any of them really ready to cede power let alone compromise on the deep divisions in dogma between Roman Catholicism and the various Protestant sects?

OC: I was skeptical of your avid use of the word “Utopianism” in our earlier dialogue. After hearing the tranquil harmonies your compositions offered I’m about half way there. Do you truly believe music has the power to influence society towards peace? Is this aspiration realistically attainable, especially given the specialized make-up of the audience as already either choir or converted?

JMS: If you’re afraid that Utopianism is synonymous somehow with some 1984-type Fascism/Totalitarianism then the imperialists have you running scared. No, I don’t believe music has that power. Maybe the title of a work or lyrics of a song in conjunction with particularly stirring music can spur people towards actions that influence the powerful towards a reduction in overt killing or war making, but peace, no. As long as there is Capitalism and the economic violence it inherently perpetrates on us all, worldwide, there will never be peace. It gets right in your face and screams its deafening obscenity ceaselessly. No, really, Otino, I was referring to Utopianism in musical politics more so than in reality. And about that: Failure reigns supreme.

OC: “salvage/wrecking” is an apt title for the piece featuring the collective performance of customized instruments. I was impressed at how the unique timbres of each instrument ebbed and flowed mellifluously; rarely did an individual voice appear overly prominent. Your earlier shipwreck analogy provided a perfect visual for me during the piece as the notes were gathered and assembled from rescued treasures of modernist accidents. This floating appeared gently melancholic, highlighted by shards of glimmering hopefulness. Was this quality of play or theme discussed with the volunteer musicians prior to the performance?

JMS: Well, a few technical details, but given the material they had to work with, unless one turned out to be an exhibitionist, they had no choice but to add to the shifting surface of the thing.

OC: The decision to have the compositions for the Orangette performed by another artist seemed notable in so far as the quality of the piece moved beyond an individual perspective towards objective interpretation. Was there a conscious attempt to present the work beyond a subjective perspective?

JMS: No, never any conscious attempts to do anything. I think it is better if someone else plays my music because there is more likelihood of an honest interpretation of what is on the page that way. If I did it the piece would start changing the on the spot… nosediving out of control on some other tangent.

OC: Many of my initial assumptions regarding experimental music have since been revised. My cautious investment of undivided attention not only proved to be both immediately sound and rewarding, it provided me with stable growth and a continued return. You should present your work to an exclusive audience of investment bankers and financial advisors since sponsorship has its advantages. Do you have new plans for the Organette or was this recent performance an even more of an exclusive engagement?

JMS: With ideas like that you’re the one who should be talking about Utopia! If the “investment bankers and financial advisors” read what I said above about Capitalism and are OK with that I suppose they could pay the corporate rate – some insane amount of money – for the privilege of an exclusive audience (as in Papal) with the Organette. Which would also go to prove my point about the ludicrous obscenity of it all given that everyone else just heard it for free.

My next plan for the Organette is to get it out of the back of my “glorious” van except that I don’t have anywhere to keep the thing. If anyone wants to buy or at store a slightly used Organette…

OC: I hear there is a long waiting list for such Organette transplants. You know, every few months or so, I run through my iTunes Library deleting songs to make room for new ones. It is interesting to note the songs I can never bring myself to discard: Eno, Glass, Riley, Boards of Canada, Gould

I’ve added a few of the audio streams from your site and they are still there among the other buoyant pieces.

- Otino Corsano & John Mark Sherlock, March 2006

OTINO CORSANO incorporates artist interviews as a facet of his new genres practice. His artist interviews are published in artUs magazine. www.artext.org. Corsano’s work is exhibited at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects and P|M Gallery in Toronto. Visit his blog pages at http://otinocorsano.blogspot.com