Hear from the project co-founders themselves about how the collaboration came to be, and more about the artistry behind the final product.
How did your partnership come about and what about the other person makes you excited to work together on this?
Bobbie-Jane Gardner: The partnership came about when I was out in LA being mentored by wondrous Patrice Rushen. B+ kindly let me stay with his family when I was out there absorbing loads of orchestration skills from Dr. Rushen. It wasn’t until the second week of me being out there that I learned he had created and produced the Timeless project, which has been a massive inspiration. B+ asked Patrice Rushen and I whether we would like to work together, and we have developed a large project that we hope to realise, fingers crossed! In the meantime, B+ and I decided to do a smaller project whilst we hope to get the larger one off the ground. B+ is an exceptional filmmaker and photographer and his practice aligns with the musical communities that inspire me. We both share a passion for vinyl, hip-hop and Black orchestral music practices. I’m excited to collaborate to share the amazing stories and sounds about the two composer-arranger-producer giants, Charles Stepney and David Axelrod.
B+: Bobbie reached out to me through a mutual friend Ammo and she had been trying to get in touch with Miguel Atwood Ferguson. We spoke briefly and I saw that she was really serious, and I offered some advice and info regarding LA. In the end we hosted Bobbie at my family home and late in the evenings after she had worked with Patrice Rushen, we began having these conversations about music. Then Bobbie realized I had directed Timeless, and we began plotting a collaboration. We have a lot of the same references coming from digging culture.
Why did you choose to do interpretations (musically and visually) of Charles Stepney and David Axelrod’s music specifically?
BJG: David Axelrod and Charles Stepney are musical giants and have been sampled by so many people, especially in the world of hip-hop. However, people do not know that a lot of the music they wrote (often for others) was by them, they are often unseen, and the visibility needs to grow. If you ask a person whether they know who Charles Stepney is, they might not know, but if you ask whether they have heard of Earth, Wind and Fire are or say, Minnie Ripperton they will, without realising a big part of these artists’ sound was down to Stepney.
B+: For Bobbie and I they represent two of the most impactful and underappreciated figures in music of the last fifty sixty years… there are also some similarities, and they both represent their cities so well… David, LA, and Charles, Chicago.
What made you decide to interpret the chosen music in your own way (both musically and visually)?
BJG: I want to give the Stepney and Axelrod heads the opportunity to hear the music as it was intended but also add in layers or reframe it slightly (where fitting). When B+ and I recently went to visit Charles Stepney’s daughter, we learned how he loved to arrange existing tracks and was always studying other people’s music and scores. We want to experiment just a tad with the sound but in a sensitive way.
B+: This music for the most part has never been played live. These records were made as studio records and if the music was toured at all it was done very scaled down. All music evolves, we must feel compelled to contribute to the conversation. Playing the past as it was isn’t our motive, we must find ways to speak with the past in ways that interrogate our present. This music and the ideas behind it are as relevant today as they were when they were written – our job is to find ways to prove this thesis.
