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New Music Circle vets create new avant-garde music organization
(by Njaimeh Njie - February 03, 2010)
There’s a lot in a name. In the case of the Hearding Cats Collective, there’s even more to the people behind it.
Four cats make up this particular herd, and they’ve made it a point to roam free.
In November 2009 Rich O’Donnell, his wife, Anna Lum, and friends Mike Murphy and Ryan Harris created the Hearding Cats Collective, an organization that wants to promote avant-garde music and the people who play it. They aim to provide a platform for local musicians and artists to share their work, and to foster collaborations with national and international talent.
Hearding Cats’ story begins with Rich O’Donnell. The St. Louis native began playing the drums when he was 7 and went on to a more than 40-year career as a percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. “It was my passion, it’s what I followed,” O’Donnell recalls.
In the 1960s O’Donnell’s musical curiosity pushed him to begin making his own instruments, and it also led him to join the New Music Circle. Founded in 1959, NMC has become an institution in the avant-garde music world.
O’Donnell had chaired NMC’s Music Committee for many years. During that time he brought Lum into the organization, as well as fellow instrument-maker Murphy and former student Harris.
Lum, Murphy, and Harris served on NMC’s Board of Directors with O’Donnell until last year, when they ran into what they each described as “philosophical differences” with NMC leadership.
“There was a disagreement over musical development,” says Gary Gronau, a former NMC president and 40-year veteran who is still with the organization.
Recognizing the creative and professional differences emerging between himself and NMC, O’Donnell decided to leave the organization. “If there’s an orthodoxy beginning to emerge he goes against it,” Murphy says of O’Donnell. It was not as easy for Lum, who had to part with the six-figure endowment she had been so instrumental in creating.
However, Lum eventually decided “integrity’s more important than dollars.”
Murphy and Harris agreed, and from there the idea for Hearding Cats was conceived. O’Donnell, Lum, Murphy and Harris knew they wanted to make good music, but they also realized how unique the music they love is.
Rooted in improvisation, avant-garde musicians perform by reading each other or “clowning”—a skill both Murphy and O’Donnell describe as an almost psychic capability.
Murphy compares playing avant-garde music to speaking in a language that no one has heard before. He acknowledges a listener “may not understand the context or the idiom, but you know something serious is going on there.”
Each concert and jam session is “something that’s never existed before, and won’t exist like that again,” Harris says.
“It’s not predictable…it’s exploratory,” O’Donnell adds. Despite their passion and commitment for their craft, the founders of Hearding Cats recognize that what they do isn’t for everyone.
O’Donnell stresses that Hearding Cats won’t judge their success by audience size. Instead they want to help musicians perform and promote their music, and will aim to cater to anyone who is willing to approach avant-garde music with an open mind.
Even with this quality-over-quantity approach O’Donnell, Lum, Murphy and Harris agree that it takes more than determination to run a successful organization. It takes public interest, marketing and money.
Hearding Cats is looking at ways to get the public, especially students, interested and involved with the art they promote. They say they are thinking about seminars, workshops, concerts and classes that will have both educational and entertainment components.
O’Donnell’s status as a legendary musician among avant-garde artists in the U.S. and beyond has been a helpful marketing tool for Hearding Cats thus far. O’Donnell says he takes pride in the multicultural avant-garde music community and the eclectic essence of the music, and hopes the organization can bring different people and music from a range of cultures together.
And of finances, Hearding Cats plans to seek grant money and support from local art institutions. Until they find outside funding, O’Donnell and Lum are financing all of the group’s expenses out-of-pocket.
Gronau says that the current members of the New Music Circle understand that having two avant-garde organizations in St. Louis will mean changes for it, and the group is currently brainstorming what those will be and how to implement them.
Still, “anything that provides more innovative art for St. Louis is a good thing,” Gronau says. “Hopefully this city is big enough for the both of us.”
With years of experience and a love for the music, the founders of Hearding Cats are looking forward to creating something new. “My interest in life is to explore the line between what is and what could be,” O’Donnell says.
With that philosophy, Hearding Cats is looking forward to being on the cutting edge of music and art for a long time to come.
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