Monika Bowman is a communications specialist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and a lifelong birder. She'salso an artist, and now she is working on a unique art project that will bring her two passions together.
Avimancy, which combines the concepts of birds and magicas the name suggests, is an open-ended project that just got off the ground. Bowman teamed with her partner in life, Akron-based jazz saxophonist Chris Coles, to express their shared wonderment and kindred spirit with birds.
It all came from Bowman's love of the outdoors and birding.
"I think that being outside and listening for something is really magical," said Bowman.
On a camping trip with Coles, who was not initially a birder himself, they were caught by winged inspiration.
"We were camping in the Valley Overlook in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and we were awakened by the sound of the wood thrush," said Bowman.
The wood thrush became Chris Coles’ “spark bird,” which in birder terms is the bird that awakens you to the popular hobby. The soft ethereal song of the wood thrush immediately got Cole's musician side thinking.
"It was just like,‘Oh, I think I'm gonna transcribe this," said Coles.
Art and exploration
The pair soon started conceiving an expansive arts project that explores the importance of birds through sound, music, film, dance and potentially evenother mediums.
Avimancy seeks to link birds to the almost magical effects they have on the human experience and an appreciation of a shared ecosystem.
Bowman and Coles also said they hope to bring the struggles of bird populations to peoples' consciousness to help them understand the inexorable link between us.
"Looking at birds as an omen, and as we look at bird populations declining, it kind of is an omen," said Bowman.
To give Avimancy flight, the pair have recorded over 400 bird sounds, which they are looking at through a variety of lenses. Bowman is making a film and working on visual interpretations of the birds based on the music Coles is creating from his transcriptions of their song. Both of them are then opening these projects to artists of other media to help it grow.
The couple recently got a chance to give the concept a spin with a workshop and jam session at the National Choreography Center - Akron (NCCA), after Coles reached out to NCCA Executive Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke.
"Christopher said, ‘I'm interested in transcribing bird-song, and I'm interested in finding dancers that might improvise the way that he does as a jazz musician.’ That got me really excited, because this year we happen to be working with mostly percussive dance artists who are both dancers and musicians, and this gave them a shared task to explore something together," said Bolingbroke.
A creative playdate
Coles brought some musician friends, including veteran percussionists Jamey Haddad and Patrick Graney, and Bolingbroke paired them with Soles of Duende, in residence at NCCA. The New York-based trio features three types of percussive dance: tap, flamenco and Kathak, an Indian dance style recognizable for the use of anklebells that provide a rhythmic chime.
Between the three styles, Soles takes a worldview of percussive dance. They also have their own backing band, featuring drums, guitar and trumpet, who joined in the jam session.
The day started with the musicians spending some time getting to know each other and learning about birds from Bowman. They gathered around her in the studio and she talked about birds, birding, their habitats and the dangers they face. The group also shared their own personal bird experiences and their favorites. Coles then took over, sharing some of the recordings they had made, and some of the sonic additions he was already making, thinking about bird-songs as human songs.
The group then workshopped two sounds. One was the trumpeter swan,and the other was Coles' spark bird, the wood thrush.
"The wood thrush in its song, it has you know a few basic parts. And while they may not have,like, a pattern that you would follow, things do repeat. They do come back,” Coles said.“I think music is perfect for that because we can mimic all things through music."
The musicians quickly took inspiration from the bird sounds and incorporated them into a lengthy jam, while the dancers improvised new ideas.
All the while, Bowman watched on, taking notes, forming ideas for her film, poetry and other avenues of creation.
"Birds have been used in art for millennia. I think it's a great way to bring people together," said Bowman," and it's a great way to bring us out into nature, which is so important these days. As wild spaces are kind of declining."
Bowman and Coles continue gathering and creating new sounds for the project, and thinking of new ways to interpret them. The workshop with Soles of Duende isn’t guaranteed to produce a show. It was just a creative space to get some ideas out of heads and into the world.
"We were creating so much beautiful music,” said Amanda Castro, the tap dancer from Soles of Duende.“It's just so nice to be in this short moment of collaboration with Avimancy and talking about nature and what's here, because place matters.”
