Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly December 2008 Artist in Residence: Sangeet-Richard Downs

For a musician who’s traveled around the world performing and studying, life, - at least temporarily - has come full circle. In July, Downs left Switzerland and returned to Winston-Salem, where he first arrived from his native Nicaragua as a seventh grade student enrolled at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

“There have been huge changes in my life,” Downs explains, his tone a blend of cheerful weariness that can accompany big transitions. However, as an artist moved mostly by spirit, one senses that this transition is part of the journey, a new piece in the evolving mystery.

These days the classically trained violinist plays with several symphonies, including ones in Winston-Salem, Asheville, and Roanoke. Performing classical violin is a familiar gig, given that Downs performed ten years with the Puerto Rico Symphony. Listening to Downs play Bach is a transporting experience, one marked by elegant beauty, rich and soulful.

But his musical passion resides in a world far removed from orchestras and concert halls. Downs is an improviser. He seeks the spontaneous, is moved by the moment, and feels the pulse inside unwritten music. Locally, he plays in two groups, the Latin Fusion Project and the World Jazz Trio. Disparate as these groups may sound, they are joined by deep love of making music rooted in the now.

“Improvisation is extremely liberating,” he says. “My ears are more open to the form of music, to the harmonies. Improvisation is unexpected and new every time.”

Downs began experimenting with improvisation in 1995. That’s when he started playing blues during down time from the symphony in Puerto Rico.

“I worked with the pentatonic scale, playing those five simple notes,” he explains. “It was very easy and I didn’t have to think as much.  I began playing notes when I felt them.” This experience initiated a musical journey as varied and unpredictable as the very word improvisation.

At that same time, Downs started studying yoga and meditation. His focus started shifting. He took on the name Sangeet, which means deep music in Sanskrit. His musical voice expanded to include not only blues but jazz, funk, and world music. He began mastering the flute and electric mandolin, exploring computer music, and enjoying percussion, something that, as a Latino, he considers practically an innate birthright.

“Everything is fusion,” he says, “All music is a combination, a marriage of elements, epochs and genres.”

The song, “Amsterdam,” which he co-produced last year in Switzerland, opens with a driving European pop beat only to be joined by Downs’ searing violin that moves through the increasingly layered rhythms like a dancer, a soloist, a penetrating force. Is the song pop or is it jazz? Is it classical or new age?  The best answer is itself a fusion: yes, no, all of the above.

As a composer, Downs’ strives for simple structures. “I like to stay in one or two chords through the whole piece,” he says. “I’m like [John] Coltrane, who said his compositions were an excuse to improvise.” In addition, composing modal music means that Downs’ “fast fingers” can react more quickly, more emotionally, within that tighter frame.

In his composition, “Self Remembrance,” emotions move dream-like throughout the piece; there are phrases ranging from joy to elegy flow out of the spatial percussion that serves as a comfortable bed for an evening’s wandering. Downs wrote the piece after reading the work of Armenian mystic, G.I. Gurdjieff.

Ideas, meditation, and his self-professed “rational mysticism” are the forces inspiring Downs’ creations. Emotion as personal catharsis holds no appeal for him musically. No matter where Downs lives, what music he’s playing, or where, he’s always seeking the same thing: a higher emotion.

“I only like to express the highest form of energy,” he says, “joy, peace, light, abundance, and an emotion of compassion. To me, that’s where it is all arising from.”

contact information:
sangeetosho@hotmail.com
www.myspace.com/sangeetosho
www.youtube.com/sangeetosho

When did you realize you were going to live a creative life?

I had no choice. It was put on me. If I could do it again, I’d be a philosopher or a neurologist or a psychiatrist.

Where do you find your inspiration?

From evidence, science, oh yes, and rational mysticism.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

When you’re happy, you’re creative. When I’m not happy, I work on my health. When my body’s healthy and my mind is healthy, I’m creative.

What do you think of failure?

In a way, it’s not a big deal. It’s easy to be successful – it’s about being true to your self. You have to close your eyes to go inside. Failure is not getting in touch with your passion, you intention, and that’s not that hard – you start with sensation.

What do you most admire in other artists?

Integrity. Authenticity.

Which artists do you most admire?

Miles Davis, Coltrane, Prince, Paul Winter, Frank Zappa, Mozart and Stravinsky, who said, “A good composer doesn’t borrow, he steals.”

What would surprise people about you?

People can’t understand that I’m clinically depressed. I’ve been that way since I was 15 years old.