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Music innovator uses all he has
■ Ela Lambin incorporates a variety of objects, instruments
and physical properties to create his eclectic sounds
By Jonathan Allen
Oregon Daily Emerald
Take a four-foot long drum.
Panel it with mirrors on the in
side, and tell someone to put their
head inside the opposite end.
Close a small door at the end —
capturing the person’s head in
side a wall of mirrors surrounded
by the drum — and what you get
is a kind of sculpture-instrument
that Ela Lambin has invented, tak
ing the ideas of self-sufficiency
and musical production to an en
tirely new pitch.
Lambin, 28, made this ‘drum’
when he was 17 years old at the
Atlanta College of Art and is clos
ing in on a collection of 100 dif
ferent types of sculpture instru
ments.
vviitJii i wem away iu uunegt?
and enrolled in the sculpture pro
gram, I kind of just started making
things,” Lambin said. “I realized
that things I made that weren’t
supposed to be instruments end
ed up being good instruments.”
Lambin, a native of southern
Oregon near Williams, said that
he even made a mobile once for a
friend that had a moon and a sun
with rays hanging from it. They
found out that you could pluck
the different rays of the sun, and
it made a wonderful sound.
But Lambin, who was home
schooled before attending college
in Atlanta, has learned that it
takes a great deal of time with
each instrument to learn how it
wants to be played. He no longer
has the mirror-drum, but he still
has one that he made when he
was 18 — a flower arrangement of
sawed off nitrogen tanks at differ
ent lengths. He stands in the mid
dle of the tanks and makes music
by striking them with mallets.
“That one I’ve been playing for
the longest,” Lambin said. “The
neat thing is the instrument teach
es me things ... I learn from it
how it wants to be played.” Lam
bin also researches the physics in
volved and learns “things about
the physical properties about how
the instrument works.”
As if fusing sculpture with mu
sic isn’t pioneering enough, Ela
has teamed up with his wife,
Leah Mann, to create a new form
of musical production that they
call “Lelavision.”
Lelavision’s Web site explains,
“The name of the group is more
than a play on the names of the
founders; derived from two San
skrit terms meaning ‘creation’ and
‘creative sgark,’ with inferences
to ‘play’; it denotes the spirit of
the performance group.”
And the group is even more
than Lambin’s creations and the
creative spark that engineers
them. It is also a fusion of dance
and music, creating a production
that is one of a kind.
“Before meeting Ela, I’d only
done traditional musician-dancer
relationships where the musician
was off to the side, and I was
dancing to music,” Mann said.
“Then Ela and I started playing
with ‘What if the musician was
actually on stage?’”
Mann started her own dance
company in Atlanta called “Mov
ing in the Spirit,” which is still
run by a friend there and has ex
tended to an urban outreach pro
gram that teaches dance to urban
youths. Mann and Lambin met
while in college in a yoga class
and their two artistic forms have
blended together to create Lelavi
sion.
“When we moved out here and
got married, we started really try
ing to combine our two forms,”
Lambin said. “The dance is mak
ing the music. We’re trying to
combine them so that we’re both
dancing and playing the instru
ments at the same time.”
One instrument that Lambin
calls “Singing Stones” is com
posed of more than 100 river
rocks suspended from music wire
with three to four stones per wire.
with a drum kit in the air and
snare drums on the ground.
“Things like that sort of allow
you and the instruments to be the
entire landscape of the stage,”
Mann said. She also said that they
do a great dance piece within that
performance.
Lambin’s creative desire to
sculpt instruments is at the heart
of his performances, and both he
and Mann express a great desire
to teach others^ the value of mak
ing things with your own hands.
They are actively involved in
teaching people how to make in
struments and use their artistic
abilities.
“I’m a real believer in making
things, in actually forming things
with my own hands,” Lambin
said. “That’s why I try to teach
others because it’s real important
to make things with your own
hands. That’s the magic of making
something yourself. It’s going to
be completely unique due to the
fact that you made it with your
own two hands.”
“Our performance work is a big
intention toward community,”
Mann said. “Our focus is to teach
people about creative problem
solving to art. You don’t have to
be a consumer necessarily to
solve a problem. It can be created
Bryan Dixon Emerald
(above) Cutline goes here and must be at least three quarters of the photograph
long, (below) Santa Claus leaps to his death off of the roof of Gateway Mall.
They hang up in an arch, which
looks like a rainbow of stones,
and the wires all go up to a sound
box near the ceiling. The arch is
20 feet across and the longest
string raises 17 feet.
Like the nitrogen tanks,
“Singing Stones” is performed
with a combination of dance and
the instrument. It becomes a kind
of dance of the hands in this case,
with each gesture ringing new
sound to the audience.
Another new instrument is one
where Lambin and Mann bounce
up and down on bungee cords,
out of your own inventiveness.”
Lambin was at early July’s Ore
gon Country Fair with an piece he
calls “Stamen Phone,” which he
made in college and has been
playing for 10 years. He and
Mann don’t have any Eugene
plans before next year’s Country
Fair, but they do several shows in
Seattle and are open to people
coming to visit the studio and
play with whatever instruments
are set up. Lelavision can be
reached at (206) 329-3724, or you
can check out their Web site at
www.lelavision.com.
At The Movies: reviews of new films
“Nutty Professor II: The
Klumps” — This sequel to Eddie
Murphy’s monster 1996 hit is one
big fat mess, and that has nothing
to do with the oversized girth of
its main characters. What weighs
this movie down is weak story
line and juvenile, crude humor.
Unlike the first “Nuttv Professor,”
the follow-up is charmless and
even boring. Although Murphy
turns in hilarious performances
as various members of the Klump
family, its not enough to carry the
movie. And Janet Jackson, who
plays the fiancee of obese scien
tist Sherman Klump, adds noth
ing except pretty scenery. PG-13.
“Wonderland" — A gray, damp
London fills the screen in “Won
derland,” the Michael Winterbot
tom movie that may be less ironi
cally titled than it seems. There’s
no disputing the often sorrowful,
sad lives of its characters, starting
with the three sisters at its center.
But without a trace of sentimentali
ty, the film dares to hint at an in
nate decency in people that can
survive any amount of drear, even
if it comes expressed in nothing
more dramatic than the quintes
sentially English offer of “cheese
on toast.” The talented cast charges
up the most potentially mundane
of moments. Special credit to Gina
McKee (“Notting Hill”), here play
ing a loveless woman who, the
script suggests at the end, may just
have struck it lucky. R.
Associated Press
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