dirty linen

Oliver Schroer by Numbers

by Pamela Murray Winters

5 feet, 17 and a half inches

That's the self-described height of the person onstage. The audience can't help but take note of this, and of the mohawk that crowns his head (for those who can see that far up). The man describes what he is about to play, a tribute to one of his favorite composers. After a rather lengthy discourse, he lifts his instrument, delicately, and plays with great passion and intensity. And the audience doesn't hear a single note.

3 minutes,
59 seconds

That's the length of the piece this mysterious figure has just played on his invisible/imaginary fiddle. It's called "John Cage's Reel," and it's on his latest CD, O2. Not once, but twice. (The longer version at the end of the second disc is described as "John Cage's Reel [extended version].")

Welcome to the world of Oliver Schroer, dubbed by a friend "Canada's tallest freestanding fiddle player." If you think you've wandered into a Monty Python sketch or a Peter Schickele experiment — P.D.Q. Bach's cousin Oliver? — think again. Schroer is utterly serious about music. It's with him every second of the day. He composes, sets his compositions aside, and finds that they seem to write themselves when he separates himself from them. In the liner notes to O₂, he writes: "I didn't really write these pieces at all. Rather, they announced themselves to me, and I was quick enough and lucky enough to catch them as they flickered by."

Head in the clouds? Sure. Feet on the ground? Absolutely. Schroer's music is rooted in a wide range of influences. Here's his list: J.S. Bach, the Beatles, Johnny Winter, Yes, Steeleye Span, Lenny Breau, jazz yodeler Leon Thomas, Ricky Scaggs, and early Emmylou Harris, Quebec fiddler Jean Carignan, Frankie Gavin with De Danaan, Kevin Burke, Canadian fiddler Denis Lanctot, Norwegian fiddler Sven Nyhus, "various hot Balkan bands, Ituri rain forest pygmy music, Tuvan throat-singing," Dewey Balfa, and Calvin Carriere.

Like many other children, Schroer was first exposed to music when he was given violin lessons. Again like most kids, he found practicing a bore. On his website, he tells this story: "I got a cassette player at a certain point, and I made a tape of my scales, exercises, and arpeggios. When my mom told me to go upstairs and practise, I would go into my room, and play the tape. I never told my mom till last year!"

13

That's the age at which Schroer began to lose interest in playing violin. Classical instruction was "too rigid, not enough fun." He learned "Orange Blossom Special" on a dare, as a party piece. But his father gave him a guitar for his 16th birthday, and for a time his tastes turned more to Pink Floyd and Gentle Giant. "Structurally," he said, "that music rubbed off on me. The Beatles, too. I was a real Beatles fan."

He was a musician at heart, but on paper he was a graduate student in philosophy when he went back to the fiddle. "I met an old friend from high school who had this band. In the context of his country swing band, I picked up the fiddle again and got into just playing lines on the fiddle. Then at one of those dances we played, we needed to actually do the music for a square dance, so he passed along a tape of Don Messer to me. I learnt a couple of those tunes, and that's how I got into it. And then I kinda got hooked on fiddle tunes and began learning fiddle tunes. Even though things have got pretty esoteric and stuff, I really did start with Don Messer, like a good Canadian boy!"

This is an excerpt from issue #90.

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