Fermi’s Paradox

The Recording

When I called Ronn McFarlane in January, to ask if he wanted to play a house concert in April, he checked his calendar and said, “Sure, sounds great!” Members of Ensemble Galilei (the other people playing in the concert) are spread across the country, and we don’t usually get together until right before a performance – but Ronn and I live about thirty miles away from each other, so we started rehearsing.

It was a comfy fit. As musicians, we have early music in our backgrounds, but we both crossover into traditional music, and write new compositions, too. As journeyman players, we’ve spent plenty of time touring and recording. As people, we have homes, families, and most importantly, we remember the first time we heard John Barleycorn Must Die by Traffic, coming from a turntable and stereo speakers.

February turned to March in this year of COVID-19. There would be no house concerts. But we kept meeting on Saturday mornings.

The dogs who barked at first, soon came to see Ronn as a member of our extended family. Thumper always made a point of enthusiastically welcoming him as he walked through the door. We drank tea, waited for the sticky-biscuits to cool, ate a snack, tuned up, and dug in.

It was a few weeks into March when I turned to him and said, “Hey, let’s make a recording in June.” It was a crazy idea.  We didn’t have much shared repertoire, at least that hadn’t already been recorded by The Baltimore Consort, Ensemble Galilei, Ayreheart, or Trio Galilei, and that meant a huge investment of time and energy.

I did not receive a resounding affirmative response. But days passed, and the reality of the pandemic settled in. There was nothing else that was going to be happening this spring. No concerts. No tours. Cancellation after cancellation with no end in sight.

“Yes,” he said, “let’s do this.”

I called Lindsey Nelson, our executive producer. He was all in. I texted our producer, Dan Merceruio. Totally on board. We added rehearsals. Wrote harmony parts. Wrote new music. Arranged our favorite tunes for lute and viola da gamba. Set to work every day, practicing, dreaming, thinking, and planning.

 All in the shadow of the pandemic.

Would we have done this a year ago? Not a chance. We were too busy. Would we have made a recording with viola da gamba and lute (and just one additional instrument)? Unlikely. We would have reached out to our friends and added a fiddle here, recorder there, even a song or two. But we didn’t. We couldn’t.

No, the recording exists because of this moment in time. The locked down, minimalist, intense, and miraculous spring of 2020, which took so much from so many, allowed for this project to come to life with its unexpected creativity, enduring faith, and deep, deep, gratitude.

The Music

We had all the time in the world. We had three months. Our Saturday rehearsals turned into Saturdays and Sundays. Week after week we scoured our memories, stacks of books, piles of sheet music, and beloved recordings, for pieces we might include on this CD.

Ronn brought tunes that have been part of his life since he was a young man – music he loves and had arranged for the lute, and then he arranged them again for the lute and viola da gamba. He asked, “Do you know Little Martha? It was originally recorded by the Allman Brothers.” I did not. Blackwater Side is a traditional Irish tune arranged by Bert Jansch. John Barleycorn, fit perfectly with She Moved Through the Fair, an Irish tune I had never heard, but was a new song to be sung by my instrument. We both love Turlough O’Carolan and neither of us had ever recorded Planxty O’Rourke, Second Air with its mysterious blend of Irish and Italian sensibilities (tunefulness and raw emotion) so that made the short list. The Rose of Raby, had been on my mind for years, and this was the time and place.

It seemed ridiculous to even consider a recording for lute and gamba without something by John Dowland and it turned out there was just one of his compositions for the two instruments – so we recorded it. If there’s Dowland then there must be Marin Marais one of the greatest composers for the viol that ever lived. If the gamba is going to sing a traditional Irish tune, why not a recitative and aria by Telemann? If the she’s going to sing something by Telemann, why not an Ave Maria written by Gounod based on thematic material belonging to Bach?

If we loved it, the answer was, “Yes.”

As the pandemic increased in its fierce destruction, I sat alone, practicing. Some of us play from memory, some with the music in front of us, and one night I began Amazing Grace. I had always played it in G major – there are lots of double stops easily available (playing more than one string at a time) and the instrument is super resonant in that key, but this time I tried C major. There was a kind of openness and freedom that had been hidden from me. I’m old. I’ve played that piece for decades, but I had never heard it like that before. I sent a recording to Lindsey. I called Ronn. We had to include it.

I worked on the Bach harmonization of O Sacred Head using all the resources of the instrument – and then we added the lute. We paired another hymn, Come Thou Fount with the Swedish tune Sjungar-Lars Visa and fell in love with the two together.

Ronn and I both compose, usually inspired by people or places. His Trinity Grove and Daniel’s Chaconne, are both tributes to dear friends. For me, The Last Day, speaks of the weight of deep losses. And then there’s Fermi’s Paradox. I love this story.

The brilliant Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was walking with friends at work one morning and said something like this, “It is mathematically impossible to imagine that there is not intelligent life out there in the universe.” When they were sitting in the cafeteria later that day, out of the blue, he said, “So where are they?” All of his friends knew exactly what he was talking about.

Why us, why now? As concert after concert is cancelled, as rehearsals become unnecessary, as the future of live music performance remains uncertain, we have to wonder, is there anyone out there? Without a reason to play, without audiences, without other musicians, why should we practice? The answer has to be, we play because we can. We make music because the world needs music, our hearts need music. This is what we can do in the face of isolation and despair.

We are not alone.

Carolyn Surrick