Hugh Gardiner Episode #15: Jazz Hands Jive His Creativity

Hugh Gardner joins our show from a unique vantage point. Perched on top of the musical peak of being a Saxaphone player, a Visual Artist, and being involved with the theatre scene in Eastern Ontario. This gives him a rhythmic, visual, and dramatic advantage. 

Join me as we take a deep dive in understanding what got him to this very point in his career creatively. Was it the love of music that put him in this direction? Was it working with his hands? Or expressing himself impromptu on stage that was the key to moving him in this direction?

Gardiner shares his journey in this creative submersion. Does he come up for air? Or is he completely immersed in this artful avenue? Hugh gives us some anecdotes that are both endearing and captivating. Our discussion raises some interesting parables between the audio and visual worlds; how they merge and stand separate at the same. Where are the boundaries? Are there any? Who knows how to blur them effectively?

Connect with Hugh Gardiner: https://www.artshubbrockville.com/hugh-gardiner

Podcast Interview Credits
Sound Effects from Pixby
Audio Links from https://freemusicarchive.org/
Podcast by Carolyn Botelho

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creatively Thinking Podcast. Join Carolyn Botelho as she uncovers the inspirations behind some incredibly creative minds that are orbiting our local communities. Hello, Hugh Gardner.
 
 How are you? Oh, very well, thanks. It's nice to meet you, Carolyn. Nice to meet you digitally too.
 
 I discovered your multidisciplinary talents online. You are a musician who plays the saxophone and an artist. Can you describe for our audience how you are able to combine these two distinctly different fields in your creative practice? Well, Carolyn, for combining music and visual art, I find both are an iterative process.
 
 So you have a vision of something in your mind, and then you keep shaping and reshaping your medium to move it towards the form that you have in your head. So in visual arts, you put a line or a dab of color on the canvas, and you just keep adjusting it until you're happy with the outcome. And some of that is practice, that you know where that dab or what kind of line needs to go where to get the kind of thing that you're looking for.
 
 So with music, you hopefully do all that iterative work and practice. But when you are improvising, you do some of that in real time in performance as well. Now, in college, I had a course in C++ computer programming that I really loved because it was the same iterative process.
 
 You would write some code, and then you'd run it to see how close the outcome was to what you wanted it to actually do. So then you would go back and you'd tweak and correct that code, and you'd keep doing that until you were happy with the outcome. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of exploration.
 
 That's great. Yeah. I like to ask all artists, what was it that made them choose this field as a career path? Was it working with your hands, your emotional insights, or something else? Well, Carolyn, I've been involved in visual art and music from childhood.
 
 When I was in elementary school, I took piano lessons and did a lot of drawing. I asked my parents for an oil painting kit one Christmas. In high school, I actually first considered going into commercial art as my career and attending the Ontario College of Art, but then felt the call to church ministry, which I thought would have the added benefit of using my artistic and musical skills as well as my desire to learn more in the humanities.
 
 So I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Queen's University, majoring in history, with the plans of doing a Master's of Divinity, which was a prerequisite to ordination. However, I changed my plans and then attended St. Lawrence College for a diploma in Instrumentation Engineering Technology, so something completely different. That's my day job.
 
 That's the field where I currently pay my bills. So I like to think about this in terms of a quote from the movie Dead Poets Society, in which Robin Williams says, and now this is paraphrasing, Engineering, business, and medicine are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, music, and the arts are what we stay alive for.
 
 Yeah, that's exactly right. I saw you recently celebrated a 100th anniversary. Can you share with our audience what that is all about? Is this your love of music or art that you are celebrating an anniversary for? I believe what you're referring to is the 100th anniversary of the Upper Canada Music Association, which is our local music union.
 
 As part of Jazz Month in April, the Upper Canada Music Association celebrated their 100th anniversary with weekly Tuesday evening jazz concerts at the Brockville Public Library, which were free to the public as they were sponsored by the Music Performance Trust Fund. I performed with Sue Baker and Rhythm Makers on April 23rd as part of that series. The series also included performances by the Maurice Lameau Trio, the King of Swingers, the David Drew Sextet, and the Matthew O'Halloran Trio.
 
 That sounds great. Sounds great, like a great way to celebrate. They also had cake.
 
 That's always a way to inspire the public. And they threw a lot of people, and the library was a great place to play. Yeah, I bet you the acoustics were probably really, really good for that.
 
 You may have already answered with this, but where did your love of the saxophone originate? Was there someone in your family that introduced you to this instrument? Or were you familiar with jazz from a young age? Expand on what brought you, can you expand on what brought you to love and learn this instrument you now play? Certainly, Carolyn. In elementary school, we had some instrumental music classes, and I was assigned a clarinet, which I could only produce horrible tweaks on, while my best friend Jim got the saxophone, for which I was terribly jealous, because I thought the saxophone was cool and sexy. So when I went to high school, and went to music in grade nine, I was determined that I was going to get a saxophone, which I did.
 
 At the same time, in elementary school, I found a picture of a saxophone player in a photography magazine that really spoke to me. The picture was from some sort of outside festival, and the player was totally enraptured in the music he was playing. And to me, he was just a vision of freedom and expression.
 
 He had long hair, and a beard, and he had one dirty bare foot held up in the air, as he was just totally engrossed in his music. Now, I did a drawing of this picture during a summer art program I was in between elementary and high school. And then later, in high school, I did an oil painting of the picture during an evening art class that I took at St. Lawrence College with a local artist, Henry Bison.
 
 So that picture is currently hanging in my living room, and people refer to it as Saxophone Jesus. Oh, that sounds funny. My high school music teacher, John Palmer, had just graduated from a program in jazz at Queen's, and he taught us jazz improvisation.
 
 So, talking about my interest in jazz, for an adolescent filled with, as adolescents are, with powerful new feelings and fueled by hormones, I found jazz improvisations will be a powerful way to express those feelings and release some of that energy. In a positive way, too, yeah. Oh, yeah.
 
 Yes. And with a group of friends and kind of a home environment. At the same time, I was also involved with the Charismatic Christian Movement, where I gained the gift of tongues.
 
 And I found that both jazz improvisation and speaking in tongues were similar forms of expression. In both, you use a vocabulary within a loose structure to form an emotive expression. With tongues, you use sound parts and the rhythms and phrases of speech to communicate in an emotive state.
 
 With jazz improvisation, you do much of the same thing, except with a vocabulary of rhythms and riffs and patterns within a chord structure, such as the 12-bar blues form. That sounds great. A great way to release these kinds of, like you were saying, the hormones and just sort of, what am I trying to say here? Just use what's happening to you at that time in more of a positive, constructive expression, a way to just release these things.
 
 It does sound great. Everyone who's adolescent, all those feelings are brand new, and you haven't learned how to cope with them or haven't learned that, like a breakup, feeling through a breakup is at the end of the world. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
 
 And have a way of expressing it in a positive way in both art and music is a wonderful thing for young people. One of your favorite quotes is, the unconsidered life is not worth living. Can you dig a little deeper on this? Do you mean unconsidered is not developing a keen eye for the arts, or do you see it as a more sociopolitical quote, or even environmental? Now, that quote is important to me because I believe that much value of meaning in life comes from living intentionally, living with purpose.
 
 We gain so much more out of life if between stimulus and response, instead of allowing our response to be a knee-jerk reaction, that instead we take time to understand who we are and who we want to be and respond in a deliberate manner. Now, this means understanding the biases behind what our automatic responses would be and deciding what we want our attitude and action to be. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor and doctor of psychology, and the famous author of the book Man's Search for Meaning, said, between stimulus and response, there is a space.
 
 In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. That's so crazy.
 
 I just finished that book. Oh, my gosh. That is such a weird thing.
 
 Yeah, I found that book so inspirational. Yeah, it really is. All that he went through, you know, and it's just amazing.
 
 Anyone can survive, you know? That's, oh, that's right. And the ability to choose your attitude in a concentration camp, in the worst of situations. Yes, really, yeah.
 
 Another thinker that means a lot to me is Maslow, in his Hierarchy of Needs theory, where he placed self-actualization as the highest need. That self-actualization requires consideration and examination and understanding of yourself. And he later even added a higher need, self-transcendence, helping others to meet their own needs altruistically.
 
 So when you ask if the Socrates quote about the need for an examined life has socio-political aspects for me, I would have to certainly agree. Caring about those in our community and for the environment is what I see as a result of an examined life. Just flows out of it.
 
 The arts, music, and visual arts, and theater are all ways of examining one's life, finding what's inside you, and allowing it to nurture and grow. Exactly. And we'll be right back.
 
 I also saw on your credentials, you are an adamant believer in God. Speaking of the idea of God and the passion, and that this is not God himself, do you believe there is no way of achieving spiritual understanding of self without God, or do you see it as a choice? People can choose to see religion as a tool to help them, or one that they are not interested in. Well, the Christian faith is my heritage and framework for working on spiritual understanding, and is among my strongest lenses for struggling with the big questions of life and of meaning.
 
 However, other people have different heritages and different sources of inspiration and guidance that are, to me, just as valid. So I grew up in the United Church of Canada, so from the nursery and baptism to junior and senior Sunday school to confirmation and youth group, and I was at one time an intended candidate for ministry. So that's my culture and structure for viewing myself in the world.
 
 I have to say my wife, Lynn, was ordained in the United Church eight years ago and serves as a minister currently. So it's a bit of a family tradition. Oh, yeah, that's great.
 
 That's great. It's strong within your family, and it unites all of you to have that together. Because I've been thinking about that with my own family and how some of my family, they do do the church thing, but then it seems that at a certain age, then it just seems like maybe it's hormones, right? Or maybe it's just being involved in life that just pulls you away from that.
 
 Do you see it as that for other people, or is it just it's still a choice? Well, yeah, I think it's a choice. But it's nice to have a framework when you're struggling with those questions and to have the benefit of thinkers of the past that are—particularly if it's part of your own tradition and your own culture. So I think that type of grounding is important to people.
 
 Yeah, especially at the beginning, right? Well, that said, in my current place in my own spiritual journey, I have a more metaphorical understanding of God. I don't see God as a literal sentient super being, but as a concept of what is most true and valid and meaningful, both within us and that which is greater than ourselves. So I find expression of that in the life and the way of Jesus as written in the Gospels, a way of radical love and inclusion.
 
 But in my mind, you don't need religion or Christianity to find a way of radical love and inclusion. You just need empathy and self-understanding. Yes, yes, exactly.
 
 How long have you been playing with Sue Baker and the Rhythm Makers? How did that relationship begin? And was it something that developed in Brockville, or was it something that began many years earlier? I guess I should first say who the group is. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Sue Baker and the Rhythm Makers is a five-piece combo playing jazz, blues, and R&B here in the Thousand Islands area. Sue Baker, who's an inductee into the Brockville Performing Arts Hall of Fame, is our singer. My cousin Paul Gardner is our bass player.
 
 Harry Blair plays keyboards for us, and Brad Davidson plays drums, and I play saxophones. So I've been playing with Sue Baker and Rhythm Makers, who formerly called Thousand Islands Jazz, for over 10 years. I got involved with them 10 years ago when I heard them play at one of the Palliative Care Telethons here in Brockville.
 
 And they were playing a lot of the jazz standards I'd grown up with and had played on the piano from Reader's Digest series books. And their keyboard player at the time, Alan Osborne, played with me in the Brockville Concert Band, where he played the clarinet. He heard me ripping on some jazz standards, and he asked whether I'd want to come out and sit in with him during a rehearsal.
 
 And things worked out, and I became a member of the group. Wow. That sounds a bit like serendipity, right? How has working with the Brockville Theatre Guild impacted or influenced your love of music and art? Have you found they have complemented each other, or has there been no direct connections you've noticed? Well, I'll keep expanding on that theme that we've been talking about.
 
 Like visual arts and music, theatre is a means of finding out what is inside yourself and who you are. So when you try to portray a character, you need to put yourself in that character's skin and find the parts of yourself that relate to that role. And in doing that, you often find out a lot more about yourself.
 
 Another connection, just recently the Brockville Theatre Guild did a production of Calendar Girls, where I got to use my art skills for one of the props. So in the play, the photographer shows the girls some sketches that he's made for layouts for the calendar, that they plan to do a photo shoot of Calendar Girls, of these more elderly women from this flower society in some boudoir-type shots. And I got to do the sketches that were used as a prop for on the stage for that scene.
 
 I've also been honoured in the past to do some of the poster art for both the Brockville Theatre Guild and the Brockville Operatic Society. I did the poster for The Crucible a couple of years ago, and also for a production of songs from animated movies called Something Magical. That's great.
 
 How have you been able to fuse your love of art and music? Are you a time management whiz, with set days for saxophone playing and set days for exploring art? Or is it more fluid than that? Has it become intuitive in how you organize your time? Well, for music, it's a little more natural because the schedule is driven by the group that I belong to. So both the Brockville Concert Band and with Sue Baker and Rhythm Maker, we have weekly rehearsals. And I just started last year busking in downtown Brockville on Saturday mornings.
 
 I got my busker's license and raised money for the Cooperative Care Centre. So that sets my set times for music and also for performances. Like with Rhythm Maker, we perform once or twice a month.
 
 So between rehearsals and performances, I also try to practice every evening when I'm not at a rehearsal. Now, for art, it's much more when the inspiration for a project strikes, but it also involves taking art classes. So I've been taking a few classes with Bob Shackles at the Arts Hub in Brockville.
 
 And I also try to do a little drawing every day by doing doodling at my desk, and particularly during conference calls. So my desk is littered with scrap paper and doodled faces. And I used to do that between face-to-face meetings.
 
 And I had a manager who was not pleased with me doing that at all. And I gave him an article about doodling that talked about how people that doodle during meetings are actually more intensive and retain more. No, he wasn't interested.
 
 The optics was not good. But now we've... Yeah, he wasn't impressed. Not impressed.
 
 But now most of our meetings, our conference calls, Teams meetings. So we're in our offices since COVID. And so no one's there to criticize the doodling faces.
 
 Yeah, no one sees all the masterpieces you're coming up with, do they? That's right. Well, sometimes I'll take a shot and post it online. Well, that's great.
 
 Yeah, it's good to show others what you're occupying your time with other than your day job, right? Do you see your career with the saxophone as expanding beyond Brockville? Do you see yourself adding or changing your current routines to include any new instruments or new musicians? Or is your current setup something you wouldn't want to change? Well, I plan to retire from my day job sometime in the next two or three years, and I can definitely see myself expanding my music and my art. But when that happens, I would definitely put priority on continuing to play with the Sue Baker and Rhythm Makers. I was recently asked if I was interested in playing with a soul band out of Ottawa.
 
 So it was tempting. Between work and my other commitments, it just would have been too much. After I retire, I talk about other instruments.
 
 I took piano lessons as a child and still play piano, but I can see myself working more on my piano keyboard skills. Yeah, that's always something that can use further refining, right? Just like most instruments, I would think, yeah. Oh, yes, yeah.
 
 Reading some of your online credentials, especially your favorite quotes, you seem to be a bit of a philosopher. Would you say it is your experience with religion, music, or art that has shifted your perspective this way? I would say, yes. All of them.
 
 In a short answer, yes. And they're all interrelated. Yeah.
 
 I did study some philosophy at university as part of a course on the history of Western thought. Wrestling with my religion also played a large part. But I probably attributed my philosophical outlook mainly to periods of depression.
 
 So I suffer from a bipolar affective disorder, which includes or has included long periods of depression. And during those periods, I would try to understand why I was depressed as if it was something in my life or my situation or my outlook. That was causing me to be depressed.
 
 So I spent a lot of time in introspection. And I think that has had a large role in trying to define what's meaningful and how I should approach life. Yeah, having philosophical sort of ways of thinking just really helps to just understand things a little bit more, right? Oh, I definitely agree.
 
 And understand yourself about why you do the things you do. Yeah, like you said, it relates with all of the music, the art, the theater. Like they're all sort of interconnected and it just kind of all works together.
 
 Where do you continue to find your inspiration artistically and musically? Do you find intrigue for these fields in the same place? Or does their separation artistically keep them integrally on their own creatively? Does the theater have a higher degree of intrigue? Well, I like to think that life is a question that never ends. So inspiration finds us each day. And as we learn more and more about ourselves, we find ever more to express.
 
 Visual art and music are also crafts. As we continually practice and hone our craft, becoming more proficient, we find the means to express more of what lives within us. And I think all of those ways of expressing what are in us feed off each other.
 
 And that we actually find inspiration for one from the other. So inspiration for the art from the music and music from the art and the theater. Yeah, they do all work together, don't they? Yeah, I like to think so.
 
 Yeah, it's nice that you can kind of experience all of them together. Well, not together, but sort of. Yeah, that's good.
 
 All right, I can't believe we got to the end of our questions already. Yeah, no, that's great. Okay, great.
 
 Well, thank you for doing the interview with me, Hugh Gardner. Well, thank you so much for asking. It's a great honor.
 
 Yeah, it's been fun trying to just see what artists I can chat with and just, you know, listen to what's going on with them and where they're coming from. And it's just nice. It's nice to see.
 
 Yeah, I've listened to some of your podcasts. Yeah, that's a lot of interesting, interesting things. Yeah, that's great.
 
 All right. Well, thanks again, Hugh. And I will get this to you as soon as possible.
 
 And yeah, maybe we can touch base in the future and see where you're at creatively. All right. All right.
 
 Oh, great. Okay. All right.
 
 You have a good evening. You too. Okay.
 
 Take care. Take care. Okay, bye.
 
 Bye now. Join me next time as I go down another rabbit hole with another creative professional on their insights, their inspirations, and their ingenuity.