Detroit composer, musician, and saxophonist Marcus Elliot’s new album incorporates the sounds, activities, and energy from five Detroit parks.
The five tracks on the album are named after the Detroit locations where the original performances took place: Eliza Howell, Clark, Chandler, Palmer, and Belle Isle.
The album is available on Spotify starting September 17.
Stateside Host April Baer spoke to Marcus Elliot about the process of composing this album.
The following is a transcript that has been edited for clarity.
April Baer: Were there some things that in each case, you felt like you wanted to understand before you could come up with the concept for each composition?
Marcus Elliot: I really wanted to make sure that I approached this project from a place of listening. Listening is really important when it comes to making music, and especially as a composer, listening to not just the environment, but the community that cared for these parks was really an important process for me.
Originally, I got to be honest; I was excited about this project because I was like, “Man, I get to spend an entire year in the parks - a dream project for me.” Then, as I got to spend more time in the parks and meet the people, and really just listen and see what the parks had to say, what the communities had to say, it really left an impact on me.
AB: Each park ultimately became its own musical world in that each one had different melodies, of course, but it was a different theme and a different ensemble of musicians and a different composition.
[Eliza Howell Park] is on the edge of Brightmoor, I think, and this is a big park. It's about 250 acres. It's got some relatively wild spaces. And people might know of the Stickwork sculpture that, you know, kids just love playing over there. Can we talk first about what you experienced when you were spending time at the park and how you developed the piece?
ME: Eliza Hall Park is a special one for me because it's very close to my house on the west side. And some of my son's earliest memories will actually be at this park because we spent a lot of time there.
The other great thing is, out of all of the parks in Detroit, this one has really allowed the natural space to just thrive there, so it almost feels like you're not in Detroit while at the same time being a very Detroit experience.
It's kind of like both things; it doesn't feel like you're in the city, but you are just in this green space. It's very quiet there, and it's huge. It's a really large park. But I wanted some power as well behind the music. So I added a great drummer and a pianist keyboardist to kind of add that punch to it as well. That's what I was attempting to kind of capture with that ensemble.
AB: Can you talk a little bit about the elements of sounds from the parks that you worked in to some of these compositions, like actual recordings of, say, birdsong, or kids playing or different things that people would hear. What was your sense of when to incorporate those?
ME: The thing that I incorporated more than anything was actually the voices of the caretakers and the stewards of the park. So not on this track, but on some of the other songs that we have done and also on the album as well, that will be coming out. You'll be hearing voices and those voices are actual stewards and community members that care for the parks - this is where Sidewalk Detroit did a lot of help.
They helped me gather a lot of these different interviews and conversations of different park stewards. I took a lot of those and I chopped them up and did some different things with them, and I allowed that. I allowed a lot of the compositions to surround what they were speaking about, and what they were talking about.
In a lot of those interviews in the background, you hear the birds or you hear kids playing or in one of them, at first we were upset about it, but I was like, no, I'll leave it in there. There was somebody with a lawn mower cutting. One of the things, it was like, yeah, that's part of it. I wanted it to have all those elements in there.
AB: Are there ways that doing this changes the way you understand the parks or Detroit or the communities that make up the city?
ME: One hundred percent. I think especially when it comes to our parks, I took for granted, because you don't see these people, you don't see these sort of silent heroes that show up every day, every week to clean up a playground or to care for a community garden or to, you know, run that little like soccer league or these sort of things that.
You just assume that somebody is doing it or, you know, someone's on staff somewhere to do it. But these are literally, in a lot of these situations, it's just the community. It's just community members, just our neighbors. It's how we care for one another, you know, without anybody asking us to, you know, you just do what needs to be done.
That's why this place is so resilient. That's where the resilience is – it's not any sort of any other thing. That's truly in these communities that we have. So it was just a humbling experience to see that. And it definitely changed the way that I think about how I want to show up, as a neighbor, as a father.
AB: Well now that all these compositions performed in the parks are becoming an album, people who are listening to them may actually have their earbuds in and be standing at Palmer or Belle Isle or Eliza Howell and listening to it while experiencing the park.
Have you thought much about what might carry over and how the music might change when it's listened to outside of the parks a little bit, a little bit less in context?
ME: I mean, I've been listening to it in my car. You know, like I've just been listening to it in the house, in the car. My experience is a little bit different. I'm immediately tranced, it's like, it takes me to space. Like I'm there in the park.
And I think anybody who was able to attend some of the performances, when they hear it, they will be like, boom. It will take them back to the park. And yeah, I would highly suggest anybody who is checking out the album, listen to it. If you get a chance, go to the park where we recorded it, and listen to it, and experience it there.
I think it will really leave an impact. And also just so that you can, especially if it's a park that you haven't visited yet and you're not familiar with. I would highly suggest going and spending some time there and getting to know that park. And hopefully that music can be a bridge for some of the people here in Detroit who haven't been to some of these parks to go check them out.
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