Much of Many Worlds’ self-titled debut LP is decidedly pulse-driven unfurling an eclectic and psychedelic amalgam of sounds.
~ Courtesy Riparian Media
In 2012, while biking home from a gig, Halifax-based saxophonist and composer Andrew MacKelvie experienced a momentary encounter that would come to drastically reshape his entire worldview, and subsequently provide the conceptual foundation for his new octet Many Worlds.
While stopped at a light, MacKelvie was struck by a drunk driver sending him over his handlebars and hurtling through the air. “I experienced a dilation of time; I recall those few seconds passing as hours while I realized that I was about to die,” he recalls “I survived, but my body was destroyed. I broke my back, shattered my knee, and broke many other bones but I landed on my saxophone case which prevented me from striking my head on the pavement.” Following months of immobility, he managed to learn to walk again, albeit with enduring chronic pain even over a decade later.
MacKelvie has since gone on to lead and contribute to a vast array of diferent musical projects. Notably, he co-founded acclaimed ensembles New Hermitage and Scions, both of which share members with Many Worlds. Yet the fateful event, which happened just as he was completing university and ofcially entering adulthood, left an indelible mark. “I persistently contemplate the infnite possible outcomes of every moment and choice,” he reveals “considering the infnite versions of myself making every possible choice at all times.” For MacKelvie, though, it’s not a matter of scrutinizing every decision, instead considering the multitude of potential realities and choices feels liberating more than anything else. As such, it’s only natural that this tendency permeates his artistic life as well.
While it has been a key aspect of his personal musical practice, Many Worlds is the frst time he has explored this consciously within an ensemble setting. His composition for the group embraces the quantum ramifcations of the band’s name wholeheartedly. “My compositions are amalgams of schemes for improvisation, guides for the performers providing them context and starting points, and chance based scores,” he explains “The chance element involves each performer rolling dice to create their parts for the composition. Before each performance of the material, musicians have the ability to completely rewrite their parts through chance.”
For many, the first name that springs to mind when chance is evoked in a musical context is John Cage, and yet Many Worlds is perhaps the least Cagean work MacKelvie has produced, especially when compared to the wafting hush of New Hermitage’s 2020 album Unearth. Instead, much of Many Worlds’ self-titled debut LP is decidedly pulse-driven unfurling an eclectic and psychedelic amalgam of sounds. The group is clearly anchored in jazz via its instrumentation and its spontaneous exchanges, yet for them it’s jazz in superposition.
This vision undoubtedly comes from MacKelvie’s mentor, the late Jerry Granelli, whom he met in 2008 and studied with for a decade within the Creative Music Workshop. The legendary drummer established this program in Halifax in 1995 after relocating there on account of the local Buddhist community. “Jerry espoused a singular but universally relevant improvisational process which, drawing on spiritual concepts, supports the improviser in divorcing themself from their ego in service of the ‘aggregate’,” relays MacKelvie, who is now a faculty member at the CMW. Not only did this prime MacKelvie to be responsive to the unexpected and engage directly with stimuli without trying to steer it, it also functions as a call to a pluralistic mode of listening.
Many Worlds features its leader performing on alto & soprano saxophones and his bandmates are all fxtures of the Halifax music community. Andrew Jackson plays trombone, Jackson Fairfax-Perry is heard on tenor saxophone and synthesizer, Tom Richards performs trombone and organ, alongside harpist Ellen Gibling, guitarist Ross Burns, Gabriella Ciurcovich on bass, and drummer Doug Cameron. This core ensemble is joined by guest vocalists on several tracks—Lance Sampson (aka Aquakultre), Meghan Gilhespy (who was the frst woman in Canada to pursue a DMA in jazz) and award-winning singer Zoe Leger. Recorded at Fang Studios in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, MacKelvie’s also enlisted his trusted collaborator Michael Cloud Duguay as co-producer—their frst time co-producing an album together, despite their longstanding creative partnership. Duguay also guests on the first and fnal tracks playing circuit-bent melodica.
Following the jagged abstraction of “Impact Awake,” the album launches headlong into “Disentomb the Brain Function,” a slab of molten motorik free-fusion. “Mirror Era” insistent, yet ever-shifting base of clapping intersects with trombone and synth in a manner that might recall Peter Zummo. Meanwhile the three ensuing cuts “Testament,” “Time Dilation,” and “Realities Blossom” find intriguing ways of merging languid groove, otherworldly atmosphere, and moments of turbulence. In the case of the first two, the group skillfully introduces text to this equation. The beautiful closer “What Lies Just Beyond” opens with MacKelvie’s spoken account of the aforementioned incident before his voice is subsumed into a bed of murmurs and what feels like a nod toward to Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams, while also functioning as a contrafact of Jerry Granelli’s composition “Berlin Sky.”
Emerging from physical and mental trauma, and deep-seated uncertainty, the assured, uplifting trajectory of Many Worlds’ debut recording serves as a potent reminder to listeners of creative work’s unique power to transform and disentangle such experiences.
Andrew MacKelvie is an improviser, saxophonist, composer, and educator from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
