I’m delighted to be part of Ensemble Polaris, a motley crew of musicians whose diverse creative histories and broad array of musical interests make for some very entertaining and off-the-beaten-track collaboration. Since 2013 we’ve been playing live soundtracks for various films, starting with short films by Marcel Duchamps, Georges Méliès and Man Ray. Our most recent outing had us creating music for our first full-length movie, the historic documentary The Epic of Everest, which was presented by the Toronto Silent Film Festival. Ben Grossman was back with us for that project, playing vibraphone, and what a wonderfully surreal that whole evening was.

But since 2015 we’ve also been collaborating with faculty and students from Ryerson University’s Image Arts department, and we’ll soon have a DVD out which features work born of that activity. Here’s a sneak preview of the disc – Glissando, by Gerda Cammaer, with music by yours truly. It’s a lovely pocket film of a New Zealand fenicular railway ride, in both directions simultaneously. When I first saw it I had no knowledge of Gerda’s goal of creating a cinematic ‘lento pensivo’ – the music simply arrived in my head because of the way the film felt to me. Take a little look/listen:  https://vimeo.com/120089868