There are a lot of intersections between Sarah Neufeld, Richard Reed Parry, and Rebecca Foon. Violinist Neufeld was a core member and now a touring musician with the Grammy-winning Arcade Fire, which multi-instrumentalist Parry is a central part of. Juno winner cellist Foon has performed with Neufeld as part of Esmerine. But before any of that, they had Rachel’s Music for Egon Schiele in common.
As players of string instruments and lovers of unconventional, non-vocal music, that 1996 album resonated with each of them. “I had been trying to find somewhere to go with my violin and I didn’t fit anywhere,” remembers Neufeld. “I heard [Music for Egon Schiele] and I was like, ‘Oh there’s a whole world of possibility now.’”
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“The first time Sarah brought me to Becca’s house, I remember going into her room and seeing [Music for Egon Schiele] on her CD rack and I was like, ‘These are my people,’” says Parry.
Almost 30 years later, First Sounds, the trio’s debut album brings them back to their Rachel’s era. “It’s the first album I’ve been a part of that reminds me so closely of that time and listening to [Music for Egon Schiele] over and over again,” says Foon.
First Sounds is a COVID project that gestated for three years before being released in November 2024. The trio converged at Dreamland Recording, a studio built in an old wooden church in upstate New York to record First Sounds with Shahzad Ismaily. The neoclassical album has a raw dissonance that sounds like the score of a psychological thriller that hasn’t been made yet.
The trio spoke to SPIN ahead of its first live performance, scheduled at Brooklyn’s cultural institution, National Sawdust on January 30. They return to the members’ early stomping grounds, La Sala Rossa in Montreal on February 2. In between, they make a stop at the Ottowa Jazz Festival on February 1.
SPIN: The narrative for this project says you picked up right where you left off decades ago. Is that possible after all your experiences, musical and otherwise?
Sarah Neufeld: We didn’t really leave off. We’re in each other’s lives on a day-to-day basis in different ways, some less and some more musical. We play in different formations. Becca and I do a lot of improvising together. Richie and I are in bands together. Becca and Richie get together in Montreal and play. But we didn’t ever formally make an album like we’d thought of making back then. That’s the part of “picked up where we left off.”
Richard Reed Parry: We haven’t been playing as a trio for all these years. As soon as we get in a room together and start making sounds, music just appears, which is really lovely. There’s a musical language that comes out for us that we all really love. However a musical brain works, ours seem to work really nicely together. An amount of compositional ideas come out of each of us, an amount of taking the lead musically, an amount of following the other people’s lead musically. We don’t have to show up with a bunch of pieces written to make music together. We can just see what happens. Something good will generally happen each time, sometimes much better than others, and those are the things you keep.
Neufeld: I don’t have another ensemble in my life that’s specifically violin, cello, upright bass. It’s such a great combination. We all sometimes get confused when we’re listening back, like, “Who is that? Me or you, or you?” They weave together, and then they occupy all of the space and resonance. It’s a nice spread, both close and far. That’s part of the fluidity of it all.
Rebecca Foon: There’s freedom in every instrument also, because each instrument has its own frequencies so there’s space for everybody.
At what point did Shahzad Ismaily enter the picture?
Parry: From day one of recording. We were like, ‘It’ll be just the three of us on the floor, and since we’re just going to be making a lot of this up, why don’t we have someone come and sit in the producer’s chair?’ We’re all dear friends with Shahzad and we’ve all played with him in various contexts. He’s a very lovely, loving dude and he can hang easily with improvised music and makes a lot of it and can also play anything. If there was going to be a fourth, if we wanted percussion, or someone to jump in and take on another mystery role, Shahzad would be great. He was super up for it and that was that.
It sounds like it was organic and unplanned. Was there an intention with this project, musically or otherwise? Or was it just about getting together again?
Parry: The latter, I would say.
Neufeld: And also capturing what we felt our essence was, and could be. There’s an element of unknown because we hadn’t ever made a record. Richie did bring some bass fragments that served as starting points. We’d heard those and we also knew what it felt like to improvise together. We knew we were going forward but we didn’t know exactly what it would be. It was also a time capsule vibe. I was eight months pregnant, and Richie was like, “You’re about to become a mom. We better do this. It’s been 25 years in the making.”
Parry: Sarah’s partner’s Italian. I was like, “What if Sarah becomes a mom and they move to Italy and that’s that?” This might be the last moment that this is an easy thing to do, and our last moment of being young/middle-aged bohemians, rather than fully grown, middle-aged bohemians with kids. It was about capturing a musical moment together still on this side of life, whatever this side of life is.
National Sawdust in Brooklyn is a great spot for your first live show.
Foon: It’s so beautiful and so beautiful to play. The way they constructed that space is amazing for string music.
Parry: I’ve been looking to do something there for a long time. I’m good buddies with the woman who built that place. As soon as we were looking for places to play, it was like, “Let’s definitely do that.” Aesthetically what they do is interesting: new music, crossover stuff. I’ve worked there before, doing a residency, explorative stuff, not doing performances. It just felt like a perfect fit for us.
And you’re playing La Sala Rossa in Montreal, which is a return to the early days for you.
Neufeld: We all played there when we were first starting out and continue to play there.
Parry: It’s an institution, kind of a people’s music hall in the bohemian heart of bilingual Montreal, close to where all of us have lived in this city for a long time. It was started by one of the guys from Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It’s a really good venue, a central pillar of the Montreal independent music scene since 2000.
Foon: Mauro [Pezzente] who started it with his wife at the time, was a huge lover of avant-garde jazz and all different types of experimental music. It was also an effort to have a place in the city to cultivate that kind of thing and a place for people to perform.
Have you had a chance to rehearse?
Neufeld: I went up to Montreal a week ago and we’re going to rehearse again in New York. We’re just doing living room rehearsals.
Foon: For me personally, it’s been an absolute joy learning all this music. Playing instrumental music right now is so good for the soul in these wacky times just to escape to the melodies.
Parry: There’s only three of us, and no one instrument takes up that much space. Three legs is the minimum number of legs that any table or chair could have. There’s a structural total simplicity and integrity in that. I really feel that in our music. We’ll take little solos, where one of us is leading and the other two are supporting, but all of us are pretty necessary all of the time. We lean on each other in this way that—to what Becca just said, there’s something really soothing, and that feels spiritually important in these times. The music is not about a message. It’s not about supporting a singer. It’s pure three-way intertwining.
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