The STU community is strongly represented at this year’s Music New Brunswick Awards.
Now in its second year, the Music NB Awards Gala recognizes the skills of artists and professionals in the province’s music industry. The event will take place on Oct. 16 in Moncton.
STU fine arts professor and dean of faculty Martin Kutnowski is nominated for three awards, including 2011 Educator and the Classical Artist of the Year. Local bands Oh No, Theodore! and Hungry Hearts have five and two nominations respectively.
“I still can’t sleep at night,” said Oh No, Theodore! member Jeremy McLaughlin. “Even if we don’t get anything, who cares, you know? We put our very first single out to radio last Tuesday, so there’s lots of things to get excited about.”
Oh No, Theodore! is nominated for this year’s anglophone recording, group recording, songwriter, emerging artist and folk recording categories for their album We’re All Underachieving.
“Really I didn’t expect one nomination so when I saw one I was like, ‘Oh we got a nomination, sick!’” McLaughlin, a STU grad, said. “Who would’ve known, you know, just a bunch of friends working together in [fellow member Lukas Bailey]’s studio. There are like, big names in recording, then there’s us.”
The Aquinian spoke to Hungry Hearts member Jeremy Hardy in September after the band competed in the Galaxie Rising Star contest. Between performing at the Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival and finding out they were nominated for two Music NB awards, Hardy said the week was “beyond what we expected.”
“But at the end of the day it’s not about the nominations, it’s just another weekend of music [to look forward to],” Hardy said.
Hungry Hearts are nominated in the group recording and rock recording categories for their album It’s Love.
Music NB helps New Brunswick artists and professionals in the music industry by providing resources like information on funding options, industry news and opportunities and business referrals.
Oh No, Theodore! member Lukas Bailey said it’s a great place to network and a great place to showcase.
Kutnowski, who’s also nominated in the classical recording category, said because of the province’s rich historical and cultural background, it’s healthy for New Brunswickers to have a resource like Music NB.
“I think we need to celebrate and develop what we have,” he said. “Hopefully [Music NB] will only grow.”
Kutnowski said he studied music as a child but it was a hobby along with other activities like sports and languages. It was only after high school that he decided to make music his career, so he finished a seven-year piano degree at the conservatory in Buenos Aires.
“I knew that composing was a primary interest of mine,” he said. “But I wasn’t clear if I wanted to be a performer or a composer or both.”
He then did his master’s and doctorate degrees in New York and taught at The City University of New York before accepting a position at St. Thomas.
Kutnowski said while he now realizes teaching is “an indispensible part” of his identity, it wasn’t
always that way.
“If there was anything I knew when I was 17 about my music career was that I did not want to be a teacher,” he said with a laugh. “I had this very firm conviction that teaching music was not what I wanted to do. I guess I wanted to be a rock star or something.”
McLaughlin had a similar experience with his situation.
“Three years ago, did I see myself doing this? Not at all,” he said. “Am I happy? Stoked. It’s pretty cool.”
Bailey said We’re All Underachieving has “a very East Coast flair to it” but not a traditional Martimes sound.
“It’s more of a new-agey-type East Coast sound. It still has those floor-stomping roots with a little more oomph. We’re changing the face of traditional folk music in the Maritimes – we’ll say that,” he said with a grin.
At that McLaughlin laughed and said, “That’s nice, eh?”
Bailey owns a recording studio, which he said was key in recording the band’s new album. Because they didn’t have to go anywhere to record songs the process was rather casual, recording the album over a span of four to five months while mixing and editing themselves.
“But then we got our good friend James Gauthier, who’s now a producer in Sweden, to mix it,” Bailey said. “He was home for the summer for a month and it just worked out that we had our stuff ready for him. It was still a very do-it-yourself project.”
The band laughed when they talked about how the new album differed from their debut, self-titled EP.
“We put them in cardboard sleeves on our deck,” guitarist Kyle Albright said. McLaughlin added, “We didn’t have any money – well we still don’t have any money, but we had significantly less money.”
Kutnowski’s album takes a different approach. Kaleidoscope is a comprehensive collection of 51 tracks that Kutnowski composed over 20 years, beginning when he still lived in Argentina. He said he had the idea to give the pieces a collective identity, and after pitching it to a label in France they bought it.
“It’s a wonderful pianist, Bertrand Giraud, I’ve worked with him before in the past. He found another pianist [Jerome Granjon] because some of the pieces are for two on the piano,” Kutnowski said. “And then because of technology it was so easy to do nowadays. In terms of distribution it’s much easier than before – now it’s on iTunes and anybody can download it anywhere. It’s kind of exciting.”
Kutnowski said he was very pleased and surprised to find out about the nominations in September. He said he’s had many wonderful experiences as an educator throughout his career and is very happy with the opportunity to work with “wonderful students and colleagues.”
“Depending on the day I might define myself as a teacher more than anything else,” he said. “To teach is like throwing an arrow into the future and we don’t see where the arrow falls. Sometimes we get to find out, and it’s a fantastic moment.”
Bailey said the band is thrilled with the nominations, let alone being tied for most nominations this year. McLaughlin said they have a few local shows coming up in October and are planning a tour for April 2012.
“The more people get involved in this, the more Music NB is going to grow,” McLaughlin said.
The Music NB Awards Gala is Oct. 16 in Moncton. The votes will be decided with 50 per cent membership, 25 per cent jury, and 25 per cent public. The two fans’ choice awards will be determined by the public vote. Voting closes on Oct. 13 at midnight.
