weather/weight by Jesse Olsen Bay

Over the past 25 years, I worked extensively as an accompanist for contemporary dance, spending countless hours in the dance studio creating music for dancers improvising, choreographing, and practicing their craft. However, in all of this time, I never once recorded myself. Not only was my accompaniment music completely spontaneous, existing in and for the moment, but it was also functional, supporting the dancers in their investigations. It never occurred to me that the music might have a life as a recording.

In 2020, while accompanying classes at Sonoma State University, I had a feeling that my time as an accompanist was coming to an end. I was compelled to document the music that I’d slowly been developing over the past two decades. So, I brought my recording gear into the dance studio at SSU, with the intention of recording every class I played for the semester. By March, when the pandemic hit and classes were cancelled, I had dozens of hours of recorded material. Which, in the subsequent chaos of pandemic parenting, I promptly forgot about.

Fast forward to late 2021: Having relocated with my family to Western Massachusetts, in the heart of a dark, cold winter, I returned to this music. Listening back, what grabbed me was not the rhythmic groove-based music that made up the bulk of the material, but rather the quiet, spacious, drifting improvisations that I’d created in unexpected moments. I was struck by the unique, precarious beauty of these sound areas. Many of them seemed like almost-finished pieces, that wanted to be shaped and heard by a wider audience.

Over the next few months, I listened over and over again, making slight adjustments and edits. My structure was this: I could shorten the pieces by cutting off beginnings and endings, make adjustments to the sound, and add subtle effects. I would not, however, do any overdubbing, layering, or drastic editing. I would trust and remain true to the original performance, embracing odd sounds and “wrong” notes. The several friends who I asked for feedback echoed my intuition that this was the right approach.

In April, I felt satisfied with what I’d created. I sent the tracks to Chuck Johnson for mastering, and the album was finished.

I think of this music as “ambient”, although my friend Chris, who likes to geek out on genres and sub-genres, calls it “minimalist post-rock”. He's responding to the tools used to make this music: guitar, drums, piano, voice, electronic sounds. But I think more of the functional, contextual aspect of "ambient" music: creating a space, a landscape, something to inhabit. This is music without a protagonist, a lead voice. When it was created, that role was filled by dancers. Now, it can be filled by you, the listener, discovering the music as it unfolds.

The title weather/weight is an allusion to the setting in which this music was created. As a dance accompanist, I often feel like I create weather, generating an overall environment that affects everything that happens within it, sometimes subtly and sometimes more forcefully. Inside of that weather, I’m in constant dialogue with the weight of bodies moving in the room, responding to their pathways and gestures as they occur.

As a listener, you’ll inhabit this music in your own way. Perhaps you’ll dance with it, or take a bath with it, or meditate, or dive into a focused task. Or just listen.

This music fills a room beautifully when played loud. It’s also nice as a quiet, subtle layer of the soundscape, coexisting with birdsong or traffic. Headphones open up another dimension of nuance and detail. Find your own pathway, your own weight inside the weather.

Western Massachusetts based composer and performer Jesse Olsen Bay creates aural landscapes and narratives to explore the depths of the human experience.

jesseolsenbay.com