Eugene weekly., November 21, 2024, Page 16, Image 16

MUSIC
‘A FRIENDS’ CONCERT’
‘ALL THE
WAY BACK
HOME’
Eugene-born EDM musician LP
Giobbi performs at WOW Hall
right before Thanksgiving
BY SAVANNAH BROWN
L
eah Chisholm got her first period at
MacArthur Court. Before Chisholm
was LP Giobbi, a top performer in the
underground electronic dance music
scene, she was a 15-year-old piano player
who — like all young teenagers — had no idea what
she wanted to do with the rest of her life, and was
waiting for the sweet release of puberty.
On Oct. 12, 2002, Chisholm and her family
went to see Bob Dylan perform at the University
of Oregon’s MacArthur Court. He opened with
“Maggie’s Farm,” a song protesting conformity, and
immediately followed it with “Just Like a Woman.”
Not long after, Chisholm ran to the bathroom
in excitement, as she had finally gotten her period.
“I was a late bloomer,” she says. “I came back and
I was celebrating with my family” when it finally
happened. A bit later in his setlist, Dylan (coinciden-
tally) played “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”
When the family arrived home, Chisholm’s
father wrote a poem about watching his little girl
blossom into a woman while being soundtracked
to Dylan’s song about the qualities and vulner-
abilities of womanhood.
Today, Chisholm is LP Giobbi, DJ and producer,
who has performed EDM around the world from
Coachella to Spain, and has released official remixes
for Jerry Garcia and Taylor Swift.
On Nov. 27, Giobbi — who currently lives in
Austin, Texas, but spends most of her time on
tour — will be coming home to Eugene to perform
at WOW Hall as part of her Way Back Home tour.
She’ll be playing new mixes from her two albums
Lighter Places and DOTR (pronounced “Daughter,”
for how she would sign letters to her parents as a
child), released in October.
Giobbi says the concert is a “high energy musi-
cal journey” featuring all of the concert staples that
make her unique. She exquisitely incorporates her
music history as a classically trained jazz pianist
who grew up in a house of Dead Heads into her
work and her performances, using live synthesiz-
ers and a microphone to layer improvisations over
recorded tracks. Her shows combine an ethereal
mix of jazz, classical music and classic rock with
upbeat dance jams and bubbly basslines — creat-
ing an immersive, sweaty and captivating EDM
experience.
Her dad’s poem, along with one Giobbi’s friend
wrote, is featured as an interlude on DOTR titled,
“Dad to Daughter; We Say Yes.” Tracked over a
fun, space-age beat, Giobbi and her dad’s voices
intermingle, reading the respective poems about
daughterhood. On the track, her dad recites his
poem, saying, “She wiggles and she sizzles/in a
hair tossed twirl of delight/She is her own mega
watt beacon/tearing up the darkness into light.”
DOTR is Giobbi’s creative process into griev-
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November 21, 2024
ing and honoring mother figures she lost in 2023,
while understanding her own role as a daughter.
“A lot of the lens of who I am as a person is seen
through being a daughter,” she says. “The process
of making this album is sort of finding my inner
child again.”
The album has more long-form songs with lyrics,
as well as other personal thematic interludes that
string the piece together.
One of the muses to whom DOTR is dedicated
is Giobbi’s piano teacher Carolyn Horn. Giobbi
went to her house every Monday for lessons from
second grade through high school. At Giobbi’s senior
piano recital, the two performed a concerto that is
featured on DOTR as the interlude “Carolyn Horn.”
“She’s the reason that I’m a musician,” Giobbi
says. “Nobody was closer to me than her. The gift
of having somebody who’s not your parent hold up
this mirror of unwavering belief, I really believed
through her eyes that I could do anything.”
Giobbi was in her recording studio when Horn
died. Through her tears, she remembered that she
recorded her last session with her. It didn’t take
her long to find it, and she wrote her first song for
the album, “Carolyn,” with it. “I wrote in a major
key because she was a major, major woman. I was
sobbing the whole time that I wrote it.”
Another of DOTR’s subjects is Suse Milleman,
Giobbi’s mom’s best friend and the only profes-
sional musician she knew growing up. Before Mille-
man succumbed to Alzheimer's, she made a short
voice recording of a song. After she passed, her wife
found the memo and sent it to Giobbi to see if she
could think of any way to bring life to her song.
Giobbi mixed a track, and put it on DOTR. “The
interlude ‘Suse Milleman’ was her last musical
idea,” Giobbi says. “I kept it pretty raw because I
thought it was actually just really cool and beau-
tiful within itself.”
With the album focusing on losing the women
who built her and getting back in touch with herself,
Giobbi says, “I wanted the theme of this album to
be about coming home.” It’s only appropriate that
she will soon be coming back to her hometown.
She was originally scheduled to perform at
McDonald Theatre but recently changed her venue
to WOW Hall so the show could be “in the round,”
an EDM term for when the DJ is in the center of the
room, creating a more immersive musical experi-
ence. Skyeler Williams, WOW Hall’s talent booker,
writes in an email to EW, “She is very proud of
her production on this tour, and as amazing as
McDonald Theatre is, there was no way for her to
produce the set she had imagined without being
in the center of the room. WOW Hall allows her
to do that.”
When she comes to Eugene this time, it’s so she
can be with her family on Thanksgiving. In fact,
she revolved her whole tour around this Eugene
show. “Thanksgiving is the most important holi-
day in my family,” she says. “The Wednesday night
before Thanksgiving, all the men get together and
make pies, while the women sit around and drink
wine. It’s my favorite day ever.”
Giobbi, who spent her summer nights playing
capture the flag in the cul-de-sac where she grew
up, says, “I cannot believe how much I love Eugene
with all my heart. Whenever I go home and I hike
Spencer Butte, with the fresh air, and the trees,
and the whole town surrounded by mountains,
I’m just in awe of how stunningly beautiful this
place is. I feel so grateful to have grown up there.”
LP Giobbi’s Way Back Home Tour is 8 pm Wednesday, Nov.
27, at WOW Hall, 291 West 8th Avenue. Doors open at 7 pm.
The performance was originally to take place at McDonald
Theatre but was moved to WOW Hall. The date, time and cost
remain the same and all previously purchased tickets will be
honored. Tickets start at $25 at WowHall.org.
Andrew ElRay Stewart-Cook celebrates 40
years as organist and choirmaster at
Central Lutheran Church
BY DAN BUCKWALTER
he position for organist and choirmaster at Central Lu-
theran Church opened up in 1984. This time, Andrew El-
Ray Stewart-Cook felt comfortable pursuing it.
It had been open before, during his early years in Eu-
gene, but Stewart-Cook (“ElRay” to friends and family) demurred, in-
stead remaining at Bethesda Lutheran in West Eugene. He was in his
early 30s by 1984, but before that, he notes, “I knew I needed more
experience before I got in this pond.”
“This pond” includes the enormous John Brombaugh-built pipe
organ and its 2,800-plus pipes, as well as a large and musically so-
phisticated congregation that knows its sacred hymn texts. When
Stewart-Cook got the job, a friend offered congratulations — sort of.
The friend wondered if “they will eat you up and spit you out.”
Stewart-Cook laughs at the memory. In 40 years he has grown
the music program from 22 singers in the choir (and with no tenor
section to speak of) to 50-plus members with a chamber orchestra
and a handbell ensemble as well as growing the children’s choir. He
has mentored many musicians, and some of those musicians — all
friends — will join Stew-
art-Cook Nov. 24 to cel-
ebrate with A Friends’
Concert at Central Lu-
theran Church.
Modestly, he says,
“My job is to make the
clergy look good,” and
Stewart-Cook is now
working with his 10th
and 11th pastors at
Central (Laurie Jones
and Ben Nickodemus).
It’s his steady presence
inside the church, how-
ANDREW ELRAY STEWART-COOK PLAYS THE
ever, that makes him
BROMBAUGH ORGAN AT CENTRAL LUTHERAN.
Photo by Bob Keefer
beloved. As soprano Siri
Vik notes, he has been
“a shepherd,” all the
while adhering to a simple sign in the choir rehearsal room that leads
to the choir loft: “Let Music Touch Your Soul.”
“It’s just so hard for me to conceive of the Central choir without
ElRay,” says Vik, a Eugene native who was 9 years old when she met
Stewart-Cook and was 13 when she performed in her first musical at
the church, Bishop Theodulph. “He was the anchor that brought me
back to the church. He made me feel encouraged and safe.”
“He’s very much a music pastor,” says David Gustafson, a tenor
who met Stewart-Cook while a student at the University of Oregon
40 years ago. Gustafson was the new choirmaster’s first hire be-
cause the tenor section needed a strong voice. “He’s been the one
constant. He gets along with everybody.”
Stewart-Cook was raised in a Mormon family on a potato farm in
Rexburg, Idaho. He jokes that at age 4, if his parents couldn’t find
him, they learned to look for him on the organ bench in the church, “a
tenth of the size of the one here,” he muses.
By age 12 he was the church organist. “I was infatuated with the
instrument,” he says. “It’s that deeply embedded in my DNA.”
His love for the organ and sacred music took a further leap when
he went to study at the Guildhall School of Music at the University of
London. In his mid-20s, Stewart-Cook was near the Royal Ballet and
Royal Opera, as well as St. Paul’s Cathedral and The Abbey.
“It was,” he says, “an incredible opportunity.”
Also in London, he met a Scottish woman — D’reen Stewart-Webb.
An instant friendship blossomed into love, and the two were married
for 37 years before she died of cancer-related illness in 2017. “I defi-
nitely married above myself,” Stewart-Cook says. “She was a remark-
able woman.”
“Before she got cancer, she was a go-getter,” Gustafson recalls.
He says that in the final years of her life, Stewart-Cook would often
leave rehearsal early to tend to her. “He really did all the care for her,”
Gustafson adds.
Stewart-Cook notes that the choir was a refuge during his wife’s
illness and after her death. “It kept me afloat.” Further, he adds, he
has become “spoiled” by the professionalism of the choir today and
has no immediate plans to retire.
Now in his 70s, Stewart-Cook has trimmed his schedule. He works
on 10-month contracts, spending 90 minutes a day on the organ
bench instead of the three or four hours a day in the early years.
Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers is now the associate organist and handles
the children’s choir, and Stewart-Cook gets plenty of help with the
physical aspect of setting up chairs and tables.
“I think he’s living a pretty large life,” Vik says. “It seems he has the
best of both worlds.”
T
A Friends’ Concert, marking Andrew ElRay Stewart-Cook’s 40 years as
organist and choirmaster at Central Lutheran Church, is 4 pm Sunday, Nov.
24, at Central Lutheran Church, 1857 Potter Street. FREE. Reception to follow.
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