Make Your Organ Dance

As they shoot through the underbelly of Toronto, many subway passengers crank up their iPods. Others tune out, zone out, or on especially long trips, submit to the train's rhythm and sleep.

Not Andrew Moore

During his daily underground commute, the 27-year-old elementary-school teacher listens carefully -- wondrously, even -- to clattering turnstiles, squeaky brakes, the whoosh of air through tunnels and door chimes.

For six months, the part-time musician has gone on an auditory hunt beneath the city, capturing the sounds of the TTC and its humanity on his digital recorder, mixing them on his computer, and converting them into songs.

"I've lived in Toronto all my life, and I've taken the subway for as long as I can remember. And I've always really loved the sounds of it."

Last month, he launched his second independent electronica album, Underground, at a subway-themed CD release party at his St. George Street apartment, where friends nibbled on Union-rings, Queen's quiche and Bloor-Yonge veggie-line (made of green and yellow vegetables, of course).

"It's sort of a hometown pride thing," he says.

The 11-track disc loosely represents a full day on public transit, beginning with the first track, Rush Hour, and ending with Blue Night, which incorporates the drunken jumble of a ride on the night bus.

Before delving into electronica, Mr. Moore sang and played guitar in a local rock band called Oberlin. They had some success, playing at the Horseshoe Tavern, but when a member took off for Germany and the band folded last year, Mr. Moore switched genres.

With his second electronica album, he decided to incorporate his love for the subway that began as a child growing up on the Danforth with English-born parents who preferred the tube to wheels.

He recorded mostly during his commute from Ossington to Pape, catching drivers on the intercom, buskers, and the groans and whispers of the trains.

He had his girlfriend, Meghan Roberts, 27, wear heels and clack along tile floors. One summer night, he hopped on the night bus and recorded the revelry. "It was kind of neat to be the only sober person around," he says.

Back in his apartment, he mixed those sounds with samples, acoustic guitar and keyboard. In the songs, some subway noises are more noticeable than others. People who are unfamiliar with the TTC might not hear them at all.

"It's kind of neat," says Mr. Moore, who goes by the initials, A.M., on his albums. "There's so many sounds on there that are so evocative, like, you know those [subway] sounds even though you've never really listened to them before."

Not everyone is so enamoured with the TTC. At Union Station on a recent afternoon, most commuters said they hadn't noticed the rhythms of the underground.

"I don't hear music," said one businessman, raising his eyebrows.

"I never hear anything," said Ruben Zina, 16, before his friend, Johnathan Benincasa, chimed in: "Sometimes I hear the 'click, click, click' and it's like the drums from a rock song I've heard before."

Musicians have long borrowed from their environment. Railway rhythms appear in American roots music. Composer Philip Glass has been inspired by trains, as was American composer Steve Reich in his work Different Trains, which superimposes a live quartet performance over a recording of sampled sirens and train whistles.

During the past month, Mr. Moore has sold about 50 discs, mostly in Britain, and he knows he won't quit his job as a Grade 4 teacher at a Toronto private school any time soon.

But he does think his work will strike a chord with Torontonians.

"I feel like in the past five years people have been starting to care about not just the subway system, but Toronto in general," Mr. Moore says. "I never hate my commute."

Hayley Mick - Globe & Mail (Jan 5, 2007)
- Globe & Mail

Mar 27, 2008 04:30 AM
John Terauds
CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC

Appearances can be deceiving.

Like an old city gate, Timothy Eaton Memorial Church shelters the posh homes behind it from the bustle of St. Clair Ave. W. The church's carved stones and upholstered pews whisper of old, comfortably Protestant Toronto.

Yet deep in its basement labyrinth, in a small, windowless room dominated by a desk heaped with video monitors and other electronics, the musical forces at work are anything but soft-spoken.

The resident organist, 29-year-old dynamo Marty Smyth, and his friends – "electronica artist A.M." (a.k.a. bespectacled Grade 8 teacher Andrew Moore) and vocalist Andrea Wappel – are working at mixing jazz, pop, rock and hip hop into the organ's repertoire.

Smyth has also corralled the church's children and teen choir to help with tomorrow night's concert, which stars the organ in different genres and instrumental combinations.

Joined by percussionist Eric Morin, trumpeter Craig Thompson and bassist Scott Kemp, the gang will perform Smyth's arrangements of pieces by the Beatles and Rush as well as new creations by Moore alongside showy solo-organ classics by 20th-century French composer Marcel Dupré.

As a companion to the great Toccata in D Minor by J.S. Bach (which almost everyone recognizes on hearing the opening notes), Smyth has created an unorthodox arrangement for the companion Fugue that adds a jazz trio.

Smyth wants to show how the pipe organ can be effective in ensembles. "Because, quite frankly, the organ does not have a great history of playing well with others," he says.

And unlike many organists, the southwestern Ontario native loves working with ensembles. He credits his work as a bassist. As a teen, Smyth played in a Rush cover band.

Although he studied at University of Toronto with one of North America's finest classical organists, John Tuttle, Smyth has never identified with the traditional repertoire.

"Halfway through a Bach fugue, I'm usually bored," he says. "I guess I sound like someone with attention deficit disorder."

Or a restless imagination. His latest CD, last year's Synchronous, includes organ-heavy interpretations of songs by Frank Zappa, Procol Harum and Led Zeppelin.

Smyth is excited that the huge Casavant pipe organ at Timothy Eaton will soon get a computerized console (keyboard and controls) within a year that will add the audio options to a Hammond synthesizer.

"We're going to be tonally advancing this instrument, so that we can perform electronica" as well as the classic repertoire, he asserts.

Smyth mixes contemporary with traditional music for the church's two Sunday-morning services. After more than two years on the job, Smyth says the older people he thought would object to his newfangled ways are enjoying the mix.

"They're some of my biggest supporters," he says, beaming. - The Toronto Star