Bobbyisms: Sarah Slean brings Sea Tour to Aeolian Hall

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: IVAN OTIS
Sara Slean will be at London’s Aeolian Hall on February 16.

I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. It's certainly no surprise that people have been comparing Beyoncé's Super Bowl performance to Madonna's just one year earlier, but it is funny to see people so divided as to which was better.

Sure, Beyoncé fell short of Madonna by some eight million viewers, but by any other metric the show at halftime this year was far superior. Clever stage design and reunions aside, Beyoncé managed to come off looking less self-indulgent and proved to be a vocal powerhouse, demonstrating that talent and vision have an impeachable place in the industry.

Fortunately, Sarah Slean is demonstrating closer to home that the same can be said of live music. To say that she is enthusiastic about her work is an understatement. She speaks of her music and her latest concert series — the massive orchestral Sea Tour that began this month — as dreams coming true.

Taking its name from Slean's 2011 album Land & Sea — a double album split between the pop-oriented songs of the Land disc and the lush, orchestral compositions of the Sea disc — the tour has been designed to recreate the sweeping 21-piece arrangements on the album, enlisting local classical musicians to round out the string orchestra in venues across Canada.

Slean assembled a crew including trusted tour managers and core string musicians to aid in the logistics of bringing a concert series such as this to realization. "It doesn't feel like work at all," she joked.

The tour stops into The Aeolian Hall on February 16 before turning westward for Manitoba and beyond. A testament to Slean's keen vision and sharp direction, the Sea Tour represents a unique way to celebrate the music and personality of Land & Sea.

"This record still feels new," she explained, contrasting it to working with material from her previous albums to round out the set. "There are only seven songs on the Sea record that have full orchestral complements, so we've been pulling from this enormous back catalogue."

"For instance, the song 'Duncan' — I've probably been playing that song for 20 years! I have no contact with the girl, the personality that wrote this song, she feels a million miles away. But the song has a flavour, a temperature that doesn't change through the years."

It doesn't take long to get the impression from speaking to her that Slean is constantly challenging herself to enhance her skills. Long before the Sea Tour could be conceived, she first had to rise to the challenge of creating the music on Land & Sea, a seemingly overwhelming task on its own.

"I asked myself, 'Do you really want to take this enormous risk?'" she recalled. "In the studio, looking through the panel at the conductor and the orchestra, and hearing that exquisite sound in my headphones as I played the piano... knowing that music came from my heart through my fingers, you can't put a value on that. That's what keeps me going."

Perhaps most remarkable is her drive; undaunted by the tremendous undertaking that is writing and releasing a double album, supporting it and then building an expandable mobile orchestra to tour it, Slean has no intentions of slowing down or lowering her ambitions.

"I go to the edge every time, because that's how you grow," she explained, insisting the importance of completely spending one's energy in order to completely fill it again. "I don't hold anything back — for what? For when I'm dead and I can't do it anymore? There's no time to be cautious with the contents of your heart, because the world needs the contents of your heart."

For more on Sarah Slean, her music and the Sea Tour, visit sarahslean.com or follow along on Twitter @sarahslean. The Sea Tour arrives in London for a performance at The Aeolian Hall on February 16. Tickets for the event are $30 in advance or $35 at the show, doors open at 7 p.m.

And for more of the latest music news, views and concert previews around the city, consider following this column on Twitter @fsu_bobbyisms. Voting for the SiriusXM Indie Awards is open now — head to indies.ca to vote for your favourite artists, the big show is next month during Canadian Music Week. I'm out of words.