Overview
The Three Poets is
an improvising trio. The word “poet” is used in its wider sense to point
to the creative act in general and to include the language of music.
Blake
Parker handles the words, Paul
Landsberg is on guitar and Steven
Parish holds down the percussion seat. The trio freely improvise
on whatever theme or musical idea that rises to the surface and sometimes a
theme is solicited from the audience. The improvisations of the trio
naturally place emphasis upon the dynamic interactivity of the players,
which is itself predicated upon the balance between free spontaneous
creativity and the need to pay very close attention to each other. At the
root of the Three Poet’s work is mutual trust and the faith that something
of worth will emerge if we simply allow ourselves to really “be” in the
moment and with each other. From the beginning we have been concerned with
ways in which we could bring ourselves into a complementary state of focused
awareness. It is this state of awareness rather than any formal musical or
textual elements that guides the unfolding of each improvisation.
The
music is varied, ranging from Calypso to heavy metal, from the avant-guard
to the post-haste, from country to the most rarified of sonic landscapes.
Steven prides himself on traveling light–when he puts his kit together
for a show he usually just picks something from each of the three categories
of percussion, something with a membrane, something metal & something to
shake. Paul likes to coax a howl from his guitar, turn it into a stomp then
mellow out into a love song. Blake takes his themes from daily life in the
Kootenays & from the omnipresent inner city of the mind. His voice
ranges from Brimstone preacher to snake-charmer, from blues rant to smooth
sailin’ all the way home as he catalogues the daily madness of a day at
the mall, how to recognize that your real home is in outer space or what
it’s like to wake up one day & realize that you’ve living in a body,
head on top, eyes on the front.
