A Flutter and Some Words is an elegant confessional about spiritual completeness and bonds, about relationships and romance, and about profound moments of ecstasy and sorrow. The CD captures the rebirth of a woman and artist rediscovered in an organic evolution with a perfect stranger. The initially abstract music of Lorenzo Scopelliti (a.k.a. Saffron Wood) and the ethereal sound sculpting of producer and engineer Alessandro Mazzitelli sent Ingrid’s imagination on a journey of introspection, reflection and daydreaming. She reminisces on a road trip across the flatlands and mountains of America en route to her family’s inaugural encounter with their spiritual teacher Ammachi on the spoken piece “The First Darshan (Song for Ameera).” She muses upon the blush of new love on “Mine” and “A Flutter and Some Words” (her one outside collaboration with former Skyfish band mate Richard Werbowenko), and of a sensual baptism in “By the Water.” She also paints shamelessly naked portraits of herself in “Back Roads” and “Terrible Woman”. And she shares about the blessing of a man and a woman finding a way to fall apart gracefully in the bittersweet “No Goodbyes.”

In the short time that the Albuquerque- native floated along the perimeter of “Tinseltown,” Ingrid’s singular artistry penetrated the rare-aired realms of a few choice multi-platinum superstars. While living in Minneapolis in the late `80s, Ingrid became a lyrical muse for pop icon Prince, a real life role captured on selections from his CD Lovesexy (1988) and on celluloid in his modern times musical Graffiti Bridge (1990) via her Spirit Child character named “Aura.” Poems that she and Prince turned into genre-defying sonic-scapes became the basis of her debut album May 19, 1992 released on Paisley Park/Warner Bros, featuring the singles/videos “Elephant Box,” “Hippy Blood,” and the dance floor gem “Heaven Must Be Near.” In addition, while in the studio with Lenny Kravitz, Ingrid spontaneously transformed a letter into a lyric that became the erotic club land classic “Justify My Love” (1990), a corner-turning milestone in the career of Madonna.

Mired in a world of ego, politics and paperwork, the dealings instigated a slow inward retreat for Ingrid. But not before she was featured on two songs from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1991 album, Heartbeat, which the composer collaborated on with singer-songwriter David Sylvian. The British artist became Ingrid’s husband and father of her daughters Isobel and Ameera. Ingrid and her family (including her son Tinondre) settled in the Midwest where Ingrid submerged into motherhood, channeling her creativity into taking care of her family.

But a writer never ceases writing, and Ingrid harbored notions of continuing to make music, beyond the handful of songs such as “Starred and Dreaming” and “Remembering Julia” written in collaboration with David and released as b-sides of his singles. Sadly, twelve years of marriage came to an amicable yet devastating end. It was during this soul-searching period – a time when her sacred creative space was returned to her – that Ingrid rekindled in earnest her mystical melding of music and poetry.

In the beginning, it was a solitary process. Then a knock arrived all the way from Italy via Lorenzo Scopelliti. He had composed a haunting instrumental inspired by her which he titled “Song for Ingrid” and forwarded it to her as a gift. Ingrid had been sent scores of music by talented producers, DJs and songwriters hoping to collaborate with her. Yet Lorenzo’s beautifully borderless offering - with no strings attached - was the first to, in turn, inspire her, striking a chord deep within. She turned “Song for Ingrid” into “Isobel,” a meditation on her daughter. Late one night, obliging Isobel’s plea to let her slumber by her side, Ingrid listened to Lorenzo’s piece in her headphones and conjured a song.

“That music and my experience with Isobel became one in that moment,” Ingrid shares. “All of the words came to me as she slept. The next day I wrote them out, recorded a vocal and sent it to Lorenzo. That was the beginning. The song isn’t meant to be deciphered or make sense. ‘Isobel’ simply captures that moment in time.” A seed was planted and an artful kinship begun.

Over two winters, two springs, two summers and one autumn, Lorenzo came to visit Ingrid and she flew to Italy to record – three trips of four to five songs each. However, the greater sum of their collaboration was accomplished Trans-Atlantic over the Internet. Each artist worked best in their own space. With no commercial consideration to “make an album,” Ingrid and Lorenzo challenged and appreciated each other. Both unschooled creators, they composed on an even playing field of intuition and invention – he sending her music, she selecting bits she could work with and structuring them into song forms of her shaping – some conventional, others less so. It wasn’t always easy. There were language barriers, time zone issues, and Lorenzo’s densely abstract musical concepts were often at odds with Ingrid’s airier aural environs. In the end, she would have had it no other way.

Ingrid knew that their work was done when she finished what became the opening piece of the album, “Wing of a Bird” - an excerpt of a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky, father of her favorite film director Andrei Tarkovsky that they set to music. “That was the last song we completed,” she says. “We captured creaky antique music boxes…the gears sputtering to life. I wound up abbreviating the poem and instinctively felt I’d found the entryway to my album. I’d always known that ‘Isobel’ would be the closing song. With more than enough in between, everything felt right. The story had been told.”

Culling her deepest inspiration from photography, movies and nature, it was only fitting that Lorenzo create an evocative short film that illuminates Ingrid’s creative environment and process. Never having the opportunity to perform the music from her debut album, so she intends for live presentation and musical web-casts to play a strong role in sharing her work: old and new. She hopes the passion that went into these pieces is an inspiration to all artists of unique vision, particularly women in search of outlets for artistic expression.

“It has been a long time since my first project,” Ingrid concludes, “but this album could not have come before now. It’s been quite a journey. The music is different but the experience of entering my world for a little while is the same. Because this album was written over a two-year period, one gets a real sense of time – of seasons coming and going. And each song is a slice of my life: the promise of love, memory, disappointment, love lost, and motherhood, the biggest part of who I am outside of my music.”

“‘Little Mama’ lives on.”

A. Scott Galloway (May 2009)

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When Ingrid Chavez began to write music again after a 16-year break she had no idea it would be the starting point for another record, but that’s precisely what happened. A Flutter and Some Words is Chavez’s newest release, a multidimensional journey through the seasons of the soul. Produced and recorded primarily in Italy by Lorenzo Scopelitti, the album is as diverse thematically as it is musically. While Chavez shares her poetry in compelling spoken-word pieces, her haunting vocals span multiple tracks in a variety of styles ranging from pop to blues. In an intimate conversation with freelance writer Carrie Grossman, Chavez offers a deeply personal glimpse into the breakup of her marriage, motherhood, her creative process, and the eventual exhumation of her authentic voice.

It’s been 16 years since you made your last album. What inspired you to start recording again after such a long break?

Well, I was at a point in my life where I needed to figure out what I was going to do. My children were old enough that I could focus on something besides just mothering. Then someone who had followed my career many years ago contacted me and asked why I wasn’t making music anymore. I asked myself the same question and it became the seed of this little journey that I’m on now.

In some ways you’re probably quite a different person than you were 16 years ago when you were writing. How do you feel like this period of time has influenced the art and work that you’re doing now?

Gosh, there’s such a difference between being 23 and being 40 when you go to express what’s going on in your life. I really feel like, although there was this long gap between the two albums, this album is perfectly in time. I needed to grow and understand myself a lot better. My approach now is from a place of being more content with who I am. Before I was just in awe of that world of music and wasn’t completely formed as an artist, so I was easily pushed in one direction or another. It always left me feeling like I hadn’t said what I needed to say as a person. And I had a lot of people say, “This is how you should look. This is how you should sound and this is how you should be perceived.” And there was an aspect of my character that was reflected in what they were saying, but it wasn’t all of me. Now I know a lot better who I am, what I want to say, and how I want to say it.

It sounds like the work you’re doing now is an expression of your authentic self and a weaving together of different areas of your life – whether it be motherhood, womanhood, art, etc. It’s an expression of those things coming together without needing to give up anything for some conventional model.

Well, not to go too deeply into the breakup of my marriage, but I think that going into my marriage and not knowing how to balance my creative self, my internal life, with David’s clarity of vision as this well established musician was difficult because I wasn’t clear. It was easy for me to fall into this position of supporting someone else who was very clear. When the marriage fell apart and I was left wondering what to do, I realized how I could get really lost in the process of finding myself again.

In some ways being lost is essential to being found.

Yeah, it’s the search to find yourself. And there’s a complacency that happens in a marriage where you kind of stop seeking sometimes. I didn’t stop seeking necessarily, but I stopped seeking myself as an individual and sought myself as part of a family instead. I put all of my energy there. I was completely devoted to my children—still am—but I didn’t put my energy into music and writing anymore. I put all of that energy into being a mother, learning to cook, taking care of my family, gardening, and planning beautiful trips. I did everything to the same 100% that I did with music; it just went to a different place. And I don’t regret that at all. I’m really thankful I can say that I devoted all of my attention to my children during that period.

One of the themes I see in your album is relationship— lover or partner, children, place, home, spiritual teacher, self. It seems like a thread through the album, primarily your relationship with yourself and how that’s informed by other relationships.

One thing I heard [my spiritual teacher] Amma say one time that never left me is that you can be a monk and put yourself in a cave and turn the world off in your path to enlightenment, but the real test is within the family and relationships with people. That’s where you can’t shut it off; you have to deal with everything that comes your way. That’s how we really grow and if you’re even halfway conscious of what you’re doing then hopefully you see where you’re failing yourself and the people who are close to you. Then you want to work on those aspects of yourself, whether it’s as a mother with your children, a partner in relationship, or with yourself. There’s always room for growth in any relationship. My music is primarily relationship-based. I only know one person really well in this world and it’s me.

I’ve heard you say that you’re inspired by the changing seasons in New England where you live. You have a few songs on the album, particularly the song “No Goodbyes”, which is about relationship, but also about place. I know you make a lot of music in your house and it seems to play an important role in your work.

Well the seasons are very important to me because I sit in my studio that has ten windows and look out into my garden. I see if it’s springtime and everything’s in bloom or winter and everything is shut down inside and sleeping. I see if it’s summer, which can represent pure easiness and joy, or fall, a period when things are changing and you have to prepare for the long winter that’s coming. That happens in relationships too. To me the seasons really represent the cycles within a relationship, an experience, or a lifetime lived somewhere. It’s all related. This record took two years and the windows painted a backdrop of my emotional landscape.

One of the songs I really love is “Returning to Seed.” When you went through a change of form in your marriage, it’s almost as if you went down into the earth and found new resources there. Do you feel that some kind of germination process happened when you “returned to seed” through the breakup of your marriage?

Well when I started making this music it was almost like I had gone to this height, fallen off a ridge, and found myself at the bottom. The only thing I could do was start again and go back to that place of rebirthing, approach everything as if it was all new.

It seems like you were re-birthed into a new self-awareness in the process. In the song Terrible Woman you basically acknowledge that, like everybody, there are parts of yourself that may be hard to really accept and embrace, but this is what you are. You want love, you want to be loved, and you want to be able to love someone else in that space.

That song is saying nobody’s perfect- nobody’s gonna be an angel all the time and sometimes when someone’s being hurtful they’re just scared. I really feel like we all have this little hurt child inside of us that is playing itself out in our adult life. You know, you’ve been hurt, you want to run away, you want to punch back. You have to understand that about yourself and other people. Sometimes you just need to hold them, hug them, and say, “Oh, you terrible woman. I love you! You’re just so annoying, but God I can’t live without you.” That’s what that song is about. And that’s what I want. I want somebody to just love me for being the terrible woman that I am. And terrible woman, I’m not saying it in a derogatory way; it’s more in an affectionate way. It’s another kind of love song. It’s like, “Just love me. Just love me for who I am.”

In a way there are a lot of songs on the album that are love songs to yourself. I think my favorite track on the album is the last one, Isobel. When I listen to that song it always touches a place inside of me. We all have a child within and I’ve learned that if I can embrace that part of myself, then I can be with that part of you. In the song you are talking to your daughter, but saying, “Your tears are my own.”

It’s almost like my child talking to my child. Because I was told once that to really embrace your own lost child and to really embrace your own child sometimes you have to see yourself in your own child. You have to see that what you needed is exactly what they need. So now when my daughters Isobel or Ameera come to me and I can see in their face that they really, really need something, I can put myself in their eyes and say, “That’s me. That’s me needing something too.” It’s a very important song to me. I cried when the words came to me, so they’re very, very heartfelt. It’s a very raw song and there’s really no pretense. It’s spoken for Isobel. I want her to know my sincerity, how much I love her, and how much I understand how she feels because I’ve been that little girl.

I’m really glad you left that in. I think it’s significant that you have a song for both of your daughters on the album. I also love the song for Ameera in a different way. That song is about your journey to go meet Amma, but it’s also very much a love song for your older daughter. How did that come to you and where does it fit in?

Well, Ameera’s 15 now and she’s a teenager. Relationships change when your kid turns 15 and I wanted her to know how special she is in my journey to where I am. I wanted her to understand that, when she was first put into Amma’s lap and David, my son Tinondre, and I were pulled over her, that we are a house for her. Not a physical home, a heart home. Even though you don’t think your teenager wants that because they’re rejecting you, I wanted her to know. I was hoping that somewhere along the way a song about Ameera would come without me having to force it, and it did. It’s the last song that was written. I really feel like the things you need come to you if you’re patient and don’t force them.

Earlier you were primarily known as a spoken-word artist and on this album each track stands alone- each track is musically unique. You have so many different genres of music in one album: blues, pop, spoken word, acoustic, ambient. Your music seems like it’s more multidimensional than it used to be.

That’s because for the first time I was able to really take hold of where I wanted to go with this project. When I worked with Prince he directed all of the music and just kind of took my spoken word. There was a beauty and innocence to that record [May 19, 1992] that was really perfect for its time.

But what’s great about this record is that Lorenzo is an artist so his approach to everything is from a really unique place— whether he’s sculpting something or designing an interior space, making a little film or a piece of music, it’s coming from a place where there are no rules; it’s just his own little world. He’s coming from way left field. And I’m coming from this place of understanding pop structure, knowing the elements. So there are some songs that are very pop structured and then there are some that are outside of the rules. Isobel, Returning to Seed, Path of Rain, The First Darshan—none of those songs have a pop structure. So in that sense each song was built without any preconceived notion of what it should sound like, it just sort of evolved.

And what I really like about it is that each piece really does stand alone, like a beautifully unique snapshot, yet all the pieces come together to create a whole. It’s a journey and each part of the journey comes out in technicolor.

It’s because it was written over a two-year period. There were two springs, two summers, two winters, and one fall. I never even really knew if this record would become a record. I was just writing for the sake of accomplishing one song. One song to me was a whole universe. So the fact that all of these songs were completed and made an album is just so amazing.

It’s wonderful that you were able to rediscover the energy that you channeled into being a mother and direct it towards music again. Can you offer a seed of wisdom from your experience for those who want to find their creative voice again?

Well, I think it’s important to be where you are. Okay, this is where I am. What do I have to work with? What is realistic for me? If your life is so busy and you know there’s something you’re not doing that you should be doing to satisfy that creative place in yourself, you have to recognize it and stop even for five minutes to write it down or record it. If you want to be a singer, just carve out time to write, carve out time to sing and sing all the time. My house is so full of singing it’s nauseating for my 15 year old who’s just not interested. But between my 11-year old and me, we just belt it out all the time. That’s what we enjoy doing, so we do it.

You have to find something for yourself, some little hobby or passion: knitting, crocheting, drawing, maybe cooking or baking. It can be anything. A lot of people say, “I’m just not creative.” You don’t have to be a photographer or a writer; you can just plant a little garden. There are so many ways to show how creative you really are. You wing it, put all your energy into it, and do the best that you can. And then you don’t beat yourself up if it’s not perfect because that’s easy to do. It stops people from even starting; they’re afraid of not being perfect.

One thing that I lost in my marriage is that I forgot to make a space for myself. I forgot to make that little space that was mine. It doesn’t have to be big, it can be a closet, some place that you shut the door and bring it down. Just keep carving out that little five minutes, ten minutes. It’ll grow because you’ll begin to see some voice forming in your writing. You’ll begin to see the potential. You have to give that to yourself because you deserve it. And it’s the hardest thing to do. I’m the first one to say, “Oh, I have the dishes to do, I’ll record that later.” It’s not easy.

We tend to be in such a fast-paced culture that we don’t naturally create space for that to arise. It’s almost as if we have to recreate a sacred space in our lives so that our creative impulse can come through. If we’re so busy all the time we can’t really receive it.

That’s the whole thing to me: be where you are, be present, and you will see that everything you have before you is exactly how it should be. There were times during the 16-year period that I didn’t make a record when I was resentful and it was probably a bit of a bad seed in my relationship. But on the other side of it I learned a lot. Sometimes you have to be on the other side of something before you can recognize it.

Having reclaimed this creative part of yourself—not that it ever went away, but reclaimed and redirected it—do you feel like it has influenced your relationships in a new way?

It has. Because I did find that the fact I wasn’t doing what I felt I should be doing created some energy in my relationship. I was trying to make myself complete with someone else. Now I feel so complete as a person and my relationships aren’t necessarily based on what others give to me. I’m giving myself what I need and that is such a wonderful feeling after all these years. When a person feels like she’s relying on herself, that she doesn’t need someone else to fill something in her, she can approach a relationship differently. Now I want to find someone who is independent because I don’t need to live through anyone else. I’m living through myself.

So where do you feel all of this is leading you?

Making this record was such an amazing experience and sense of accomplishment. If I left this life without having done it I would have felt like I didn’t accomplish something that I really needed to for myself, for my own wellbeing. Now I want to take the same amount of patience and see what comes just as organically as this record did. Yes I’d like to make more music, but my life has to fit into being a mother. I want to be an inspiration for my daughters and I think I am even though my teenager can’t really show that yet.

It’s been a very valuable journey. I’m so glad I had the courage to say, “Why not?” So what, I’m 44. Do I feel any different than I did when I was 20 as far as what I’m capable of doing? No. I’m better than I was when I was 20, way better, so why not? I encourage any woman at any age because it’s never too late. You’re the only one who can tell yourself it’s too late. I hope this is an inspiration. Whether you like the music or not, you can understand that anything’s possible. That’s what I feel about this record.

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Carrie Grossman is a freelance writer, yoga teacher, bodyworker, singer, and lover of deciduous trees. She can be reached at carrieg108@gmail.com.

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On the other hand, you also get the sense that Chavez was on to something in the way of musical language, being that she was one of the earliest female artists to merge spoken word with a dance floor sensibility. She is, after all, credited with co-penning Madonna’s sultry slice of musical eros, “Justify My Love”, a tone-poem of love, sex, and controversy that reshaped the public’s idea of a pop lyric. Following the release of her debut and a few moderately successful singles, Chavez seemed to recede from public view and little was heard from her. In reality, she would marry art-pop trailblazer David Sylvian, on occasion contributing to his oeuvre of work while holding down the fort maternally and quietly making designs on a follow-up album, which would finally see fruition after 19 years.

A Flutter and Some Words is the combined effort of Chavez and Italian composer Lorenzo Scopelliti, who initially sent Chavez a composition a couple years back, which kick-started their collaborative song-writing process. Much of this album was pieced unhurriedly together, mostly over the Internet, with the two artists emailing their contributions back and forth between the US and Italy. This transatlantic exchange is apparent on the album; there is strain of European jazz that underscores the music. This influence in particular is what expunges all preconceptions that might exist in lieu of Chavez’s dance-pop flirtations of yore. Given that many of the songs on this album are working within the structures of jazz (though not exclusively), the more confining borders of the pop format are removed, allowing Chavez to invite more space into her designs and experiment freely with other sonic textures. It also allows her voice, cool and clear like fresh water, to breathe easier in the airy spaces of the music.

In fact, Flutter is all about spaces, both private and open, yielding to an array of live instruments (brass, woodwinds, and strings). These sounds collide and ribbon around the centre from which the singer’s voice emanates, but they never threaten to overtake it. The album, in addition, is mainly devoid of the dance beats that featured heavily on her debut, excepting first single “By the Water”, a delicate, crisp hip-hop number sparsely coloured by the soft cries of a trumpet and the digital ripples of a synthesizer.

What really opens up Flutter, in fact, are the far more expansive numbers that show off Chavez’s growth as a songwriter. In “Mine”, a lone violin threads its way through the meditative, circular guitar lines and swirls in the rhythm of some lightly tapped percussion. It works to create a sense of solitude and resignation, sentiments that are echoed in other tracks—like the heavy heart of “No Goodbyes”, made heavier by the contemplative, forceful strokes of a piano and found-sound samples of falling pennies (perhaps from heaven?). There is also a suggestion of other musical flavours that factor into the sonic mix; the title track appropriates a classic jazz riff by way of an electronic beat and harkens back to the days of fossa, the smoky nightclub take on ’50s Brazilian jazz that was made popular by the likes of Maysa Matarazzo and Nora Ney. Trading in standard jazz fingerings for treated woodwinds and sly snatches of DJ scratching, the song still retains the lush romanticism that fossa is noted for while being performed from a contemporary standpoint.

Elsewhere, Chavez explores more gritty terrain, such as on the earthy, fractured rhythms of “Tightrope”, a scrap-metal opus of clanks, creaks, and groans drowning in a wash of ethereal blues. Here, we get an idea of the kind of invention that took place behind the scenes; there isn’t so much a sense to prove any sort of musical technique as there is to introduce the listener to alternative modes of music-making. Though intricate and artfully crafted, we never feel like we are being schooled on the M.O. of art-pop.

This comes down to the interplay between Chavez and Scopelliti; an interaction, challenge, and acceptance of musical ideas that ultimately distinguish the more mannered and restrained approach of Scopelliti from the spontaneity and abandonment of Chavez’s. And somehow the work manages an elegant balance of imagination and discipline. This attitude is openly voiced in “Back Roads”. The track features a buzzing synth that sounds as if it is being transmitted from somewhere outside the song, imprinting it with a sense of urgency. The clarinet that cuts its way through the bells and chimes orbiting in the airy mix is a nice and curious touch. In the song, Chavez sings of opportunity at the expense of comfort, leaving for the back roads and more importantly, the power to leave and affirm an identity.

A Flutter and Some Words arrives this winter. It seems justly suited for a season that respires with an alternating sense of stillness and flurry. It arrives with assuredness but not without a feeling of turbulence—something not quite excised in the past 19 years that it took for this album to materialize. A compass in the midst of rhythm and song, Chavez navigates around emotions of misgiving and desire, equal components in the routines of life. It is an album not of reborn love, but of seductions, old and new, taking place in troubled air.

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Each song is fully realized as its own complete entity, yet all connect seamlessly in an ideal tangibly intangible slice of peace and time. Ingrid Chavez is exactly where she is meant to be at this moment, and so too A Flutter And Some Words has arrived precisely in due season.

The fourteen album tracks are diverse and compelling: they include sensual confident funk (“By The Water”), moody ambience (“Isobel”), quirky blues (“Tight Rope”), delicate lilting ballads (“Mine”), gentle jazzy-pop psychedelia (“Back Roads”), and beatific sung/spoken words (“The First Darshan [Song for Ameera]”), all woven together in a hypnotic aural web. Each song subtly reaches out and enraptures the listener unawares…each is a pearl in a perfect musical necklace.

The influence of the Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky upon Chavez and Scopelliti’s process can be felt and heard throughout the album (indeed, she reads a segment of a poem by Tarkovsky’s father Arseny in the opening track, “Wing of a Bird”). As in Tarkovsky’s films, the physical traces of slow moving seasons, a stillness and a quiet reflective mood are present…time is timeless. The line feels blurred here between memories and dreams…a new light is shed on the ordinary within the musical realm. These are sounds that connect fully to the spiritual while maintaining a presence in corporeal daily existence.

A Flutter And Some Words is singularly and entirely a perfect aural snapshot of an instant in musical and life time. These are special songs that speak succinctly to the soul and heart as well as the feet. Listen and be transported too.

-- Rebecca Sharp

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