For the past decade, Sarah Neufeld has held the violin chair in the arena-size indie rock band Arcade Fire. But during that time, the 32-year-old has quietly led a parallel life as a core member of classically trained, improvisational-leaning new music chamber group Bell Orchestre. After wrapping-up a nearly two-year tour with Arcade Fire, Neufield also decided to step out under her own name for the first time too as part of the Alone Together tour with Medeski Martin & Wood percussionist Billy Martin and noted classical pianist Gregory Rogove (Arcade Fire touring saxophonist Colin Stetson subbed for Martin for a leg of the tour too). In an attempt to mix their varied backgrounds in indie rock, freeform improvisation and orchestral music, Alone Together found the musicians performing a variety of solo pieces in an intimate, highly collaborative setting. Partway through the tour, Neufeld stopped by the Relix/Jambands.com offices to discuss the tour’s progress, her new yoga studio and why she always looked forward to “jam time.”
Let’s start by talking about your most immediate project, which is the Alone Together tour you’re currently in the midst of. It combines the musical backgrounds of three different people we’ve covered in Relix and Jambands.com over the years in very different settings. How did the tour come together and how familiar were you with Billy Martin’s music before it started?
So it’s this interesting union of people. I’d never met Billy Martin before but we’re both good friends with Gregory Rogove. Greg and I met when the Devendra Banhart band was opening for Arcade Fire last winter. We hit it off and stayed in touch, and we played some music together at his house in Venice. And he said, “You know what, we should do” and explaind the tour’s concept. He was releasing this solo piano album, and he kind of lit up a little fire under my ass to sort of get it together and write some music on my own.
Actually, a couple people did: I always wanted to write solo music, and it just never synced up at the right time. So he asked me to do this tour before I had a body of work together [Laughter]. So, I said yes! We’ve done two shows and it’s been really fun and, man, watching Billy Martin play drums in all his multi-faceted world of percussion instruments is so fascinating and beautiful.
We all kind of sit on the stage together. It’s like a living room show for ourselves that lends this really intimate character to the whole thing. So I’ve been starting the show and another [musician] will get onstage, and we’ll overlap a little bit. And the next person starts, and I just kind of sit down. It is truly “alone together”—we’re there for each other in this intimate “we’re-sharing-a-stage” way. Last night, we tried a kind of overlapping thing and we played together which was really beautiful. But mostly it’s this round-robin of solo pieces. Billy’s are looser, more experimental. Greg’s are composed. Mine are pretty much composed as well. And Greg’s got these beautiful visual elements projected behind him that he’s collaborating on with other visual artists. It’s been really fun and totally different and unique to anything I’ve ever done before.
Two questions leading off of that: First of all, when it comes to your solo piece, what was your initial idea for the project and did you immediately drift to orchestral work instead of more straightforward indie rock?
It was a combination of things. I’ve always had a personal style with this instrument that’s been more expressed in my band Bell Orchestre, for instance, which is instrumental and really driven by rhythmic-instrumentation. We have loose arrangements and improvisations, as well. I’ve always enjoyed playing in that capacity. It is really fun to not always be a part of a section or fulfilling a role as a string line or something like that. So I wanted to write music that was really informed by rhythm and movement, which were the elements that really inspired me to hear melody and make music. And so I’ve always played a tone on my own and come up with little seeds of pieces. But I never fully dedicated enough time to them to make them grow into full pieces. And then a couple things happened last year with filmmakers. A friend of mine did a piece for Vogue —a fashion film for Vogue Italia. So I composed a piece with him and performed in it, and it just felt like such a fun experience and it kind of gave me a little opening to follow through with more of that. So I composed a bunch of music around that piece just to see if it would hold together for me—and then it develops as you play it live. And I guess an album will follow out of that, too.
You mentioned earlier that Billy Martin, especially, plays in a very loose style. He definitely has a deep background in jazz and in improvisation, which is something you’ve explored over the years outside of Arcade Fire. Though you composed this piece for a film, did you leave some room for the songs to stretch out live?
Improvisation was always at the root of my playing, completely from the beginning. I was a tiny kid, three years old, when I started playing, and, in the Suzuki method I learned from, everything is very ear-based. And I really immediately connected with the improvisational element of playing. And that was the only way my parents could get me to practice my instrument. I was kind of rewarded with “jamming” time with my mom, actually, which, when I think about it, was so special. She’s quite an amazing flautist and she’s got a really great ear. She would come and play with me as kind of a way to encourage me to practice these things I was resistant against like scales and classical pieces.
So we would play these improvisational games where we really just improvised together. I didn’t really know what that was or what that meant and that it didn’t necessarily fit into the classical world which I didn’t really…I had a hard time with classical training. I stuck with it up until a certain point and then I just couldn’t deal—I couldn’t fit into that box, and I wasn’t willing to spend hours every day that were required of being a first violinist. It was too much, and I really just wanted to improvise and make pieces. That led us to start Belle Orchestre.
I met [Arcade Fire’s] Richard Reed Parry, really, on the first day of art school at Concordia. We had all these things that we were excited about and loved the same kinds of music. We both loved Rachel’s and groups like that. So we started improvising together and had this idea, “What if we could make this music that doesn’t really fit into any genre specifically?” We were both really inspired by other art forms and dance and visual art. So we used to just create improvisations together with dancers and with visual art. We’d play at art openings all the time and that turned into more of a formal thing—Belle Orchestre is as formal as that ever was. But all of our pieces were always informed by improvisations. That’s how we wrote music so I always had that thread with music. And then in other bands—the Arcade Fire and The Luyas and whatever else I’ve done over the years—it’s been like, “OK, let’s make a part that goes into a song form.” That’s always really creative and amazing in a different way, too. But it is interesting to make something make sense in a setting that’s already got so much form.
How did Arcade Fire sort of absorb Belle Orchestre?
We started Belle Orchestre kind of before Arcade Fire but it really existed in that art, experimentation project realm. We were doing collaborations with the contemporary dance choreographers at Concordia in 1999 and 2000. And then Arcade Fire was getting its feet around 2000/2001 and onwards from there. Before I was playing in Arcade Fire— before the first album was made—Belle Orchestre would rehearse in Arcade Fire’s loft. So it had this kind of feeling of community and stuff between the two bands a little bit, even though we were so different. They were like, “Yes! You weirdos can use our loft!” And we were like, “You weirdos are awesome!” [Laughter.]
We just had a similar conversation with the members of The National. Like Arcade Fire, they are a song-oriented rock band but have these roots in jam and classical music that inform those songs.
Especially, Bryce [Dessner]. Arcade Fire and The National met and did a whole tour together and we realized we have also these parallels. Bryce has an [orchestral] project Clogs and after that tour they went out with Bell Orchestre. That was kind of how our friendship developed: “Hey, you guys have this rock band,” and, “Hey, you guys also have this instrumental, new music group.” It was really exciting when we met those guys.
Outside the music realm, your other focus right now is your new yoga studio in New York’s Greenwich Village, Moksha Yoga. Not only did you start the studio, but I hear you are teaching classes when you are in New York.
Well, to make a little linear story, I started practicing yoga on and off over the course of ten years ago. And then as life became more centered around touring and that kind of stuff, yoga became more important and more necessary to sustain everything and make body and health kind of roll. That sounds a little abstract, but every time I’d come back from a tour I’d get more and more into this one particular studio in Montreal called Moksha Yoga.
It’s this little community they started with one studio in Toronto as an offshoot. They were involved in the Bikram, it’s a heated style, but then they started to do their own thing. And it turns out I was a friend of a friend of the co-founder, Jessica Robertson, and this little community was blossoming. That was around 2004/2005. And then the Montreal studio opened around 2005, and I started going there a lot.
It just made so much sense: It was the first place I’d ever found that really felt like a home. And it wasn’t like this yoga clique. I was always on the road and, with some studios, if you don’t go all the time or people know you or whatever they don’t really let you in. But Moksha had this great, welcoming sort of vibe, “Hey, you’re back! It’s great and you’re working on your practice. How’s your wrist? How’s your shoulder?” Stuff like that. So I started going all the time and a lot of my friends were as well. One of my best friends, Rebecca Foon—she’s also a musician living in Montreal, and she played cello for years and years in Thee Silver Mt. Zion—and I have had these parallel lives. She was like, “OK, when you’re not on tour and I’m not on tour let’s do the Moksha teacher training and see where that goes.” So we became teachers and then this little seed of an idea of wouldn’t it be amazing if we could open the first Moksha in New York City.
I live in Montreal, but we both really love spending time here, and I spend a lot of time here anyway. I kind of felt like…there’s tons of amazing places to do yoga in New York City but there’s nothing quite like Moksha yoga with its accessibility for all levels and all needs and just this sense of a really friendly, open thing. So we were like, “Yeah, New York City, we’ll like that, I think.” Then we were like, “are we really doing this?” And so a couple years ago we started getting more serious. We found a space around a year or so ago and built a partnership. We opened two months ago and I can’t even believe it all actually happened because opening up a business in New York City is quite a feat. So it’s this beautiful space, we built it really green. That’s one of the mandates of Moksha community. We have denim insulation in the walls, kind of above and beyond the low-VOC paints and all that. We got floors in the lobby that are made of recycled tires and we got a green wall. There’s so much of our own inspiration and expression into the place and it’s really beautiful and exciting. Then, you know, I’ve been touring or going up to Montreal and doing music stuff. The Luyas are making a new record so I did all the strings. And coming back to this new home in New York City is really cool.
My last question brings things full circle. You had mentioned that you had never really worked with Billy Martin before. Were you familiar with his music from before or were there any interesting reactions given your varied backgrounds on stage?
I was familiar with him because of Martin Medeski and Wood. I’d seen them only a couple times but maybe once, specifically, we made a pilgrimage down there from a bunch of people from Concordia. I actually studied jazz and improvisation at Concordia as well as electronic music and classical. So I was in this group of people that were doing a lot of improvisation and a lot of people were really into that band. And we drove down to Burlington and saw them and I remember it was really fun. And I never really followed that band to the utmost but I was aware of him for sure. And then just Greg had spoken so highly of him and I know people were really impressed with what he was doing solo. And just in the past couple nights we’ve had these really neat, little moments of slight interplay. He’s a really good listener obviously and we’ve gone back and forth a little bit. I love playing with drummers because they do play so rhythmically. It’s really what I get inspired by so it’s been really fun to listen to him and get to play little bit off of him. He’s doing some really cool shit with bird calls. [Laughs.]
