The sound of infinity

Quintin Bart’s favourite instrument has a name that’s easy to remember and it makes a sound that’s difficult to forget.

Say it with us — hurdy-gurdy.

Functioning like a wheeled, crank-activated violin, Bart’s trapezoidal instrument produces a continuous range of sound by manipulation of two drone strings, two melody strings and one trompette string. As the wheel spins in a single direction, the music created can last as long as the crank turns.

“I like to think of it as an analogue synthesizer,” says Bart, a jazz-minded Winnipeg folk musician who has used the baroque tool in performances with artists including Matt Foster and Raine Hamilton.

“It has this very meditative and contemplative nature, especially with that drone. It can be transformative, like time stands still or feels to be moving differently when I’m playing or listening to it. That’s made me think a lot about what we do as performers. I really do feel that music is a kind of sharing of a state of vibration with the performer, both emotionally and intellectually. And listeners may attune to that and meld to it in the performance setting: we draw on the energy of the listener and it creates a circle there as well.”

To Bart, the hurdy-gurdy — which predates the pipe organ as an accompaniment for liturgical service — sounds close to infinity.

In order to get familiarized with the uncommon, millennium-old instrument, Bart had to head east, moving to Budapest in 2010 after graduating from the University of Manitoba with a degree in jazz double bass performance to learn and play with Romano Glaszo, a traditional Romani family band.

“While I was there in Budapest, I encountered the hurdy-gurdy in a music shop. Throughout my life, I’d been interested in that instrument, but because it’s so rare and unusual, especially here in Canada, I never had a chance to hold one and rarely did I get to see one in person. So I brought it home. That was my carry-on luggage,” he says.

The next seven years, Bart studied the instrument’s mechanics and tended to its maintenance, an ongoing concern in the extremes of a Manitoba climate. In 2017, seeking to advance his education, he received Manitoba Arts Council support to study privately in Austria, Switzerland and England with hurdy-gurdy masters Matthias Loibner, Tobie Miller and Nigel Eaton.

“Even though those are the top players in the world, they welcomed me into their studios and gave me a lifetime of musical direction to continue practising afterward,” says Bart, 39.

Those experiences led Bart to develop his own composition cycle on the hurdy-gurdy, a sequence of neo-baroque explorations he calls the Oroboro Vignettes.

“It’s my take on the ancient symbol of a snake eating or chasing its own tail, and to me, it really echoes the infinite sound of the hurdy-gurdy,” he says.

Blending traditions of classical music, Slavic folksong and exploring the history of the instrument itself, the Oroboro Vignettes will be performed Sunday at 7 p.m. at the St. Norbert Arts Centre. Bart will be joined by Natanielle Felicitas (cello), Daniel Koulack (double bass), Monica Jones (tenor sax), and percussionists Daniel Roy and Scott Senior. Clair Tang will play the violin and the erhu, a two-stringed Chinese vertical fiddle.

Tickets are $20 at quintinbart.com.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com