Build A Fort is the drums/saxophone duo of Gareth Dylan Smith and Zack Moir, two of the leading lights in progressive music education. The title of their new album, Ignorant Populists, is presumably a play on their role in advancing popular music pedagogy. The album was mostly recorded while Gareth was in New York and Zack was in Edinburgh, but that is no big obstacle in the age of the internet.
The album starts with a bit of free jazz that evokes John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space before settling quickly into funk. Gareth plays one of those massive prog-rock kits with all the different cymbals, and hits it hard. Zack uses a lot of octave harmonizer, which gives him a synth-y edge. My favorite track on here is “Brigid In Blue,” it has some natural sevenths over the minor-key drone that make my hair stand on end.
The weird things about university-level music educators is that we as a group don’t make a whole lot of music together. So I appreciate Zack and Gareth for reminding me that such a thing is possible, that we can actually play music and not just talk about it all the time. More power to them; may more of us follow their example.
Sounds great, thanks for sharing this. And I totally agree with what you said about colleague playing together! We educators sometimes forget that we’re musicians too!