Derek Hunter Wilson’s music falls into that same nebulous zone where artists like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra or his friend and collaborator Peter Broderick. It touches on elements of contemporary classical, jazz, New Age, and pop without every sliding completely or fitting entirely comfortably into one genre category.
Wilson’s new album Steel, Wood, & Air (released August 2 by Beacon Sound) is an especially perfect example of this. The instrumentation—piano, cello, bass clarinet, and viola—may lead listeners in one direction, while the loose yet stately feel of the music wants to pull you towards different territory. That might suggest a kind of tension within this amazing collection. But Wilson’s compositional strength lies in building bridges between sonic worlds and make those imposing structures feel natural within whatever landscape they are placed. This is an album that can soundtrack any time of day.
There’s a precision to Steel that feels apropos to the way Wilson seems to approach everything in his life, including sitting down to talk with me about the album. He considered each of my questions carefully, often taking long pauses to mull it over before responding. The same care went into the two years it took to write and record the 10 tracks on the album. It was a process that involved finding new inspiration in composing after hearing some lectures by Bang On A Can co-founder David Lang, losing demos in a hard drive crash, and building off the work he and his collaborators (bass clarinetist Mike Grabarek and cellist Anna Fritz) did during a recording session he planned and scheduled for his birthday in 2017. Though open to chance—”With Eyes Closed,” on this album, is an improvisation—Wilson’s meticulousness is what has made his recorded work so fascinating and affecting.
What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of the interview I did with Wilson last month, where we explored his interest in composing, the gestation of Steel, Wood, & Air, and working with Beacon Sound on getting his music released into the world.
MERCURY: When you relocated from California to Portland about a decade ago, were you already making music at that point?
DEREK HUNTER WILSON: Yeah. It was more bedroom project stuff. At the time I played guitar and sang. I come from a background listening to punk rock and having that DIY mentality of, “If you want to do something, don’t wait for someone to give you permission. Just start creating.” I came up here and I played in a folk-y trio. I didn’t really start playing piano for a while, actually.
Did you already know how?
No. I’m entirely self-taught on everything. I have taken some viola lessons, to be fair.
When did that transition happen from you playing more song-based material to the ambient/modern classical sounds you work with now?
While I was still doing more traditional guitar singer/songwriter stuff, I was still interested in experimental music and increasingly more interested in ambient music like Brian Eno. I got introduced to Philip Glass and Steve Reich. I slowly started making attempts at instrumental stuff. The big thing that happened in my life that made me change my approach about six years ago now: I got an opportunity to teach English in Thailand. I ended up only being there for six months. I gained a lot of things and grew from it, but it wasn’t overall a positive experience. But one of the side effects it had was, because language was part of my whole focus there, it kind of burned out the language part of my brain in a way. Whenever I would come back to my apartment, I only wanted to listen to instrumental music. I realized along with that, I felt a lot more connected with making instrumental music. It came to me a lot easier. When I came back, it’s what I set about working on. The first album that Beacon Sound put out was about that experience. I wrote some of it while I was in Thailand and the rest while regaining my footing back here.
As you were writing this music here, were you confident enough in the work to want someone to release it? Were you shopping it around or was that something that came incidentally?
My relationship with Beacon Sound has been really great. I first came to know them through being a customer. I started going to the first location, near where I moved back to. Andrew [Neerman] always had interesting records that I wouldn’t necessarily see at other shops. I remember there was this one time I was completely broke but I always enjoyed going over to hang out and talk music. I came into the shop, and I told him, “I’m so sorry. I’m broke, I can’t buy anything.” He sort of nonchalantly said, “Oh, it’s okay. You can always come and say hi if you want.” He didn’t really know me. It was just this kind thing for someone else to say. When he moved the shop to the Mississippi location, I volunteered to help with the painting and moving all sorts of stuff. Even after the move, I still showed up to help with the other details of putting everything up. I didn’t have some ulterior motive. I genuinely liked what he was trying to do to create a space for music that wasn’t the focal point of what gets written about in Portland. He knew I did music, and at some point, I just happened to play him stuff. It was basically demos of the first record. He liked it and encouraged me. He connected me to Jason Powers, who has been my producer/engineer for everything I’ve done. We put the album together and I was sending stuff to Andrew as it was coming along.
At the same time, when you were transitioning into this work, was that something that you felt immediately confident in and felt confident in sharing with Andrew and others?
At that point, I was a little naive and was a little hard headed and thought, “This is cool.” I’m genuinely sharing things I make with friends. And Andrew was a friend. Some of the stuff I shared he didn’t like! [LAUGHS] I think the more I became knowledgeable in composing, the more I realized how much I still had to learn. At the time, it just didn’t really occur to me to think about that.
Listening to the material that you’ve released so far, there are more composed pieces and material that is improvised or uses chance to help decide where the music goes. With this new album, are there both elements happening within it?
There’s only one track that’s an improvisation [“With Eyes Closed”]. Improvisation is very important to me, and I have a longstanding project with a friend of mine who plays harp where we never create any songs. But for this record, I wanted to focus on the compositional aspect. The biggest thing I wanted to do was become a better composer. Part of that was me deciding I don’t want any effects or overdubs or electronic manipulation on the record. I thought, “If I can write something that can hold up without any ‘studio trickery,’ that would be an interesting challenge.”
Was that a challenge when you were recording, knowing that you couldn’t simply go back and fix things as an overdub or cover things over a bit with electronics?
I lucked out in having a good group of musicians that I put together. Mirabai Peart, who plays the viola, has played with Joanna Newsom and done a lot of touring and comes from a conservatory background. The cellist Anna Fritz has done studio sessions with just about every musician that has come through Portland. The bass clarinetist Mike Grabarek is really, really solid. The main thing was that I didn’t have enough budget for rehearsals. The worry was, “Can we learn a piece while in the session itself? Can we learn it in enough time and get the take?” Travelogue was basically recorded in parts. A couple of days of just piano. A couple of days of cello. And then we had an overdub day. Peter Broderick who did the violin for that record; I sent him the files and he sent me back his parts. While I was really happy with how that came out, I realized I never got to experience the music in its fullest form live. There’s just a different way it hits you. That’s also why I didn’t want to think about doing overdubs.
You said something in the notes for the album that you were inspired by a David Lang lecture to “examine what is essential to you.” Have you determined what that is?
I think it’s an ongoing process. We, as humans, are always changing day to day. Who I was six months ago is different to what I am now. Who I was several years ago… I’m a completely different person. I think the main thing is being open and willing to experience other viewpoints and other experiences that come to you whether you choose them or not. Allowing your life to shift and change. Keeping an honesty in the art that I create. Trying to pare everything down to what I’m trying to convey emotionally through the music. I think I made a big step towards that but I also see the journey ahead at the same time.
What are you trying to convey through naming one of the pieces on the new album “Knife Fight”?
When I’m making demos, you have to name the file something. When I wrote the piano demos, it had this water feel to it. It felt like some pseudo-impressionism. You’d name something like that “Water Lilies,” but that just seemed so stupid and abhorrent. I just wrote “Knife Fight” because it was so opposite of what it sounds like that it made me laugh. Contemporary music of a classical bent can take itself so seriously or people project that there’s a lot of seriousness in it. Naming it “Knife Fight,” was me saying, “Let’s not take this too seriously.”