Things of Beauty: the music of Daniel Robert Lahey

 

The Muse is a powerful force, you don't want to mess with your personal incarnation of The Muse. She will have her way no matter what you think you trying to accomplish. The music will come out, the picture will be revealed, the chant will be intoned, your poem will be found on your beach.

I think that all musicians refuse to allow themselves to be categorized in a tidy genre, and Lahey has emerged from the 1960s versions of pop and Bach, through the vast realm of his traditional classical studies. The term "classical" does not refer to a historical style period in music—in the sense that Baroque and Romantic do—but rather from his first guitar and earliest keyboarding to all art music, now to emerge with his hands in electronica, bringing together the past into his own current visions and shaped sounds.

Rebekkah Hilgraves is a singer/songwriter, recording engineer, writer, whiskey drinker (and some other free spirited things) such as RadHaus Studio.

She has ventured into the realm of this music before me, so I am indebted to her for sharing her impressions, and to her friend Mike Metlay, who has curated so much of this work of Lahey for RadioSpiral broadcasting enjoyment. Here is what Rebekkah had to say about the music of Daniel Robert Lahey.

"Being so prolific means that his music is sometimes uneven, but when he’s on, he’s flippin’ genius, reminiscent of Samuel Barber, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, or Kodály, in the Neo-classical ambient drift. He is in some ways the prototypical tortured genius, and some of his most brilliant work comes out of his worst moments — but then, some of his worst music does, too. He’s a prolific composer, and his works are semi-improvised, and are either inspired by, or evoke, specific moods or ideas. Not all are programmatic, though, and capture the music in his head solely for the music’s sake." 

I had another question. "How did you discover him?"

"He had been participating in the station chat community, and mentioned at one point that he was experimenting and would we like to hear it. It’s a very supportive community, and of course we  (the chat group) said yes! We sure were glad we did. This was for Stillstream, the station from which the current station, RadioSpiral, spun off. He pretty much followed us over when we jumped."

Again I wondered, "He calls each individual track a "thing" and has them numbered, I have never seen anything like that before."

"Well, his reasoning is that they are all “studies”, but he thought “études” would be too pretentious. So, “Things”. Each one represents a mood or a thought, or sometimes no thought at all. It’s ambient Electronica, most of it, with the experience and training of a classical musician. I believe he was a classical guitarist. So it’s electronic music with a distinctive modern classical/symphonic feel."

He has a sound that questions the tight definitions and categories of academic disciplines, which are only remnants of the past and not a distinct musical style, less a surface style and more of an attitude. His sound somehow incorporates elements of all styles of music irrespective of whether these are "classical" or not, drawing on an ever wider range of sources for inspiration and developed a wide variety of techniques.

Daniel Robert Lahey was born in Indianapolis into a family that loved music. His mother was an active keyboardist and both of his parents loved jazz, the family collection contained works by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, etc. They also had a few symphonic albums; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Peter and the Wolf (Disney), and some Tchaikovsky.

He was not allowed to play (meaning, pound on) his mom’s keyboards until he had reached an age where he could play without pounding. After that he soon started writing little ditties of notes and chords that sounded good to him. This led to many new things.

Growing up in La Jolla, California in the early ‘70s, he was treated to a lot of fantastic music (and a lot of really expensive stuff) among a populace who is not embarrassed by their privilege. 

Reflecting on moments of musical epiphany and life-realization, the first piece that "blew my mind," and that was Bach’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” His church in La Jolla had a brilliant musical director and organist who was a fellow Bach addict. It stirred his desire to hear those tasty Bach pieces, and such virtuosity and melodic inventions are enough to inspire any good listener. And that music was written 400 years ago.

Although he took up the guitar around age 10, he says he didn’t do much with it until he was about 16 or so. It was the early ‘70s when a lot of progressive rock was being made: Yes, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Premiata Foreneria Marconi, etc. There were a few fellow git-pickers in La Jolla and they would get together for jam sessions, which was a great way to pick up licks on the guitar. Being an all-or-nothing person, he decided  to get really serious so he began studying guitar; scales, arpeggio studies, slur studies, learning to read music in earnest, building a repertoire, et cetera. He got to the point where he started playing for money, and was actually able to survive on what he was making playing in restaurants and bars in Spokane, Washington.

When he moved to Seattle in 1983, he couldn’t find any place where he could play, and he couldn’t stand teaching, so that effectively ruled out taking on students, so he began to focus on keyboard (synthesizer) and do what most musicians and actors do for a living: wait tables or do other restaurant work.

Some of the music that has moved Lahey the most is Bach, Mozart, Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Saint-Saëns. Playing Bach on the guitar was very difficult but very rewarding. At his peak, he was able to render a satisfactory performance of Bach’s Chaconne, Partita No. 2 for violin- a benchmark for violinists and guitarists alike and a 14-minute workout for either instrument, using his own transposition, not Segovia’s.

Eventually he became a Software Engineer and did that for 10 or so years. He was not a standout and had problems with evil managers. That field at that time was sometimes fraught with charlatans and montebanks.

He has  created over 150 albums over the last 10 or so years, many of which are quite extraordinary. In that time, he has been shifting away from ambient music and toward symphonic music. You may notice the prominence of Horn (it’s not French, btw), English Horn, and Strings in  music. When asked about how he goes about composing, he revealed that his process consists of first breathing mindfully for a minute (not always), then sitting down at the keyboard. Then he listens to his fingers. Much of what he does seems to happen more as a feeling in my fingers, like they know where to go and he tries to just follow them. This is from about 62 years of fiddling on keyboards and studying music theory. 

Listening is an ability that is one of the most important and neglected qualities in a human. It first requires an ability to focus on what your ears are telling your brain. Listening is sustained attentiveness to what your ears are bringing you. One’s musical upbringing is to hear the tonal relationships of the sounds and compare them to passages you’ve heard before. This might be seen as more cultivated listening.

His task as a composer is to bring unusual and un-worn out harmonies and melodies and rhythms into the aural realm and bend the range of notes (sounds) here and there that intrigue the listener, scheming to get her to listen more deeply. It’s diabolical, really. [I can hear his playful evil laugh.]

His sense of humor is one of his key survival strategies. His musical life and love of music has overcome the slew of mental diagnoses dragging him along. After his final firing from the Software Engineering profession, he applied for SSDI which was granted for the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Seasonal Affective Disorder. He was making a lot of money as an SE, so the reward from SSDI was very generous compared to most.

Music is a way of telling stories -- if you listen deeply enough, all inspiration comes straight from The Muse, the head of the Pantheon. Music is the workings of The Muse to put tantalizing  ideas into sound. You can do that if you’re in with The Muse. 

He tells of  an experience where he was sitting in his little studio, contemplating The Muse. Within the acoustics of the room, he heard a woman’s voice say “Call me Maud.” Maud is an ancient Persian name meaning “Powerful Battler.” 

Being freed from the chains of 9-to-5, he has been freed to pursue his true passion, which is, of course, music. At this time he has  created around 800 pieces over the last 10 or so years, and in that time he has been shifting away from ambient music and toward symphonic music. 

Wings of Splendor: The Sleep Collection

Sleep is a time for our brain and body to engage in vital growth and repair, it plays an important role for maintaining physical and mental health. It would appear that music consistently improves subjective sleep quality, slow, quiet and minimally modulated music sometimes improves subjective sleep quality. According to popular folk wisdom, lullabies and gentle rhythms can help babies to fall asleep, evening rituals that give the body sufficient time to wind down. Not everyone falls asleep on command.

Some of us simply listen to music when going to sleep since it is the only time of the day one can fully enjoy and focus on the music, and some of us put on music at night to block out noises that stop us from sleeping, other motivations for music use during sleep include distraction of the mind, a routine developed over the years, creating a state of relaxation.

1. "Sinfonietta 4 - 2" (thing_497) "prayer for peace" 09:58, from the album Complete Symphoniettas

2. "Conservatory of idle thoughts" (thing_176) 06:29, from the album Escapes

3. "Dithering" (thing_143) 06:27, from the album Beyond the Ruin

4. "Quiet splendor" (thing_020) 08:00, from the album Old Stories Bold

5. "Uncultivated upland" (thing_412) 15:11, from the album Uncultivated Upland

6. "A blue note pastorale" (thing_323) 11:44, from the album Another Experiment Gone Awry

7. "Earful" (thing_482) 10:54, from the album After Un-Rethinking Things Again

8. "Mysterious and dangerous" (thing_446) 13:25, from the album All Like Pretty and Stuff

9. "Go gentle into that thing" (thing_202) 10:53, from the album Stragedy

10. "What days are these" (thing_040) 07:13, from the album Gravity’s Kiss

Acoustic Awakenings: The Classical Crossover Collection

We go from the somnulent soperifica to the land of mixed tempos and dynamic play. 

1. "The Zookeeper Escapes" (thing 416) 10:33, from the album Uncultivated Upland

2. "Baked" (thing 420) 11:37, also from the album Uncultivated Upland

3. "Gravity's Kiss" (thing 033) 12:07, from the album Gravity's Kiss

4. "Daniel's Lament" (thing 081) 9:00, from the album Escapes

5. "Butterfly Bolero" (thing 592) 14:01, from the album Black and Hot

6. "That thing you do with your neck" (thing 648) 5:55, from the album Baby's First Chamber Music

7. "Assembler" (thing 529) 9:29, from the album Assembler

8. "Let us hope there is a Starman" (thing 768) 6:13, from the album Amber

9. "Riffin on the strings" (thing 435) 6:43, from the album All Like Pretty and Stuff

10. "Do drift" (thing 485) 10:57, from the album After Un-Rethinking Things Again

11. "Apprehension" (thing 733) 12:40, from the album A Neat Little Mess

12. "A walking shadow" (thing 179) 9:02, from the album A Tale Told by an Idiot

Capricious Dreams: The Ambient Electronic Collection

Now the gates are open, all forms of electronic expressions are invoked and elaborated.

1. "Ocean deep ocean" (thing 075) 7:22, from the album Once Upon a Thing

2. "Variations on a thing" (thing 042) 14:36, from the album Old Stories Bold

3. "What things do to me" (thing 024) 10:35, also from the album Old Stories Bold

4. "Solace" (thing 163) 8:00, from the album Loneliness

5. "Gymnopedie" (thing 013_3) 7:55, from the album Heart Fire

6. "Angels forget their wings" (thing 079) 9:22, from the album Gravity's Kiss

7. "Offshore" (thing 075) 11:42, from the album Big Things

8. "Aujourd hui" (thing 87) 9:42, from the album Assembler

9. "Gigue" (thing 122) 9:14, from the album Apparitions

10. "A Measured Piece" (thing 364) 11:17, from the album A Neat Little Mess

Daniel Robert Lahey started his musical career in one area of discipline and has lately migrated to or embraced other disciplines, ranging from classical to ambient and back to symphonic, combining elements of diverse musical genres and compositional techniques. No particular style is favored and his individuality indeed has been encouraged, knowing that music is too diverse to categorize or limit, but it is still somewhat of a struggle to encourage the public to listen to contemporary classical music.

Thanks to Rebekkah Hillgraves, Mike Metlay, Beth Ann Hilton, and of course Daniel, for their illumination and indulging me with the creation of this story.

The music is available from Bandcamp:

https://danielrobertlahey.bandcamp.com/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2GiB9RfQAB6pDKWprGiHTi

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/daniel-robert-lahey/1138156818

https://www.discogs.com/artist/2728385-Daniel-Robert-Lahey

Originally published February 23, 2021

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