Peggy Lee & Cole Schmidt | Forever Stories Of: Moving Parties

Cellist Peggy Lee and guitarist Cole Schmidt are quite simply two of the most important composer-improvisers to have emerged from Vancouver's vibrant creative music community. Both wield vast vocabularies on their respective instruments, and with them they can coax out a seemingly endless array of sonic colours within just as many stylistic frameworks. They're also united by their shared gift for a particular sort of melodicism—one that can sneak its way into multiple idioms and expressions. 

This potent combination of attributes has been over the past decade in groups such as Echo Painting and SICK BOSS. It's also what propelled them into a 2017 residency in Montréal and later what animated this new project, which first came about in 2019. 

"This project was born out of Cole and I playing in each other's bands," explains Lee. "We decided to regularly get together to play as a duo, regardless of whether there was an upcoming gig or not. We would improvise and workshop new compositional ideas." Initially they would also play live in a trio formation, inviting a different drummer to join each time. 

Although Forever Stories of: Moving Parties seems to be billed as a duo record, a more accurate way of looking at it is right there in the title. "The initial concept for the record had to do with hosting a party," remarks Schmidt, "[one] that included all kinds of people and characters connecting on different conversations in different rooms of the house." ​​Funnily enough, Lee and Schmidt's birthdays are only a day apart from one another each year, which has led to them celebrating together in the past. 

The pair serve as the album's gracious co-hosts, sharing compositional duties, the auditory limelight and seemingly divvying up the allotment of guests. Each brings several close collaborators to the sizeable cast of friends: international luminaries such as Wayne Horvitz, Frank Rosaly, Erika Angell, Meredith Bates, Sara Schoenbeck, and Dylan van der Schyff, all make appearances, plus fellow members of SICK BOSS like JP Carter and James Meger. 

The diversity of material across the record's 14 tracks is consistent with the metaphor above. Each piece has its own clear identity—some pieces employ proggish structures that allow the players to dart between odd-meter acoustic passages and electric improvisation, while others offer cinematic fusions of folk and jazz. Elsewhere you'll find voice-driven pieces, electronics-heavy abstractions, and even molten rock-outs. Opener and first single "Blame" exemplifies the underlying warmth and amicable spirit that infuses even the record's darker moments. Unhurried gestures intertwine and evolve within a poised, luminous arrangement anchored by Mili Hong's wafting drum phrases. According to Schmidt, the piece was built on "a melody that had been circling in [his] head for over 10 years" and was ultimately finished in May 2020. 

Captured in vivid detail by Seb Fournier at Hotel2Tango in Montreal, John Raham at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver, as well as remotely from homes & spaces in Gothenburg, Melbourne, Amsterdam and New York City in 2022 & 2023, Forever Stories of: Moving Parties is an invitation to celebrate two of Canada's most ingenious and multifaceted performer-composers amongst some of their brightest peers.

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