‘You know,” says Bruce Paine, “I’m not very good at this marketing thing.” Classical guitarist/composer Paine says it with a chuckle but he’s not joking. His last concert was by invitation only. His next concert, which happens as this issue of the Listener hits news stands, is a pre-launch for his excellent new album … still we sang, which is launched, concert-less, on May 12, ahead of the post-launch concert on May 26 at Alberton in Auckland.
And although he’s releasing an album, you may struggle to pick one up at the merch table.
“I will have CDs on sale but it’s not the point of the exercise,” Paine says of his launch. “I’m not going to force them on people.” Which is just as well because he’s only pressed 50 copies.
But if Paine is not much of a marketeer, he is one of our best guitarists, and increasingly devotes himself to composing. … still we sang, Paine’s eighth album, is his second collection comprising solely his own works. The music is impressionistic; tuneful but deceptively difficult – “it would test some professional guitarists” – and not programmatic so much as narrative. So, while birdsong makes its way into the album (Paine transcribed recordings taken in his garden), you mightn’t know it if the resulting pieces didn’t have names like Avian Antics and Dawn Reflections.
“I like an image in my mind, as a guide to what I’m aiming for,” he says, “but I’m putting these labels on just to help people find some meaning.”
Paine was reticent about writing “bird music”, reasoning that there’s plenty of that about. In the end, though, he wrote a whole suite, When All Was Quiet, Still We Sang, inspired by the way birds pierced the silence during Covid.
There’s a bird on … still we sang’s cover, too. It was painted by Paine’s mother, Frances, a gifted amateur who briefly studied with famed landscapist Ida Eise, and who died between lockdowns. The ability to display Frances’s artwork was one of the reasons Paine bothered to make physical copies of the album.
… still we sang, officially released on Mother’s Day, is dedicated to her, an act of reflection from a musician who generally prefers to fix his sights on the future, rather than the past.
“I don’t play my recordings very often,” Paine says. “How much of that music will I ever play again? It’s better to be moving forward. Whether it’s painting, music, sculpture, artists try to find new ground, not look back.”
Bruce Paine’s … still we sang is released on May 12. He performs at Alberton, Mt Albert, Auckland, 2pm, Sunday, May 26.
