ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Hugh Marsh was raised in Ottawa and received his formal music training here, but when he returns home, it has been, with one exception, to play his violin in the shadow of Bruce Cockburn. That will be the case again when he performs at the NAC Opera on March 14.

Marsh has no complaints about this role. While he does not share Cockburn's enthusiasm for politics, it does reward him with creative challenges which have become increasingly satisfying as Cockburn's music gets more and more instrumentally involved.

At the same time, though, Marsh is also juggling a solo career. Last year, he released his first album, As The Bear Walks. While it was critically praised, it did not sell like hotcakes. Jazz-tinged instrumental records rarely do, even if they are a lot more fun that the definition implies.

But the violinist plans to record another album in June and this one may considerably change the attitude of the marketplace toward Marsh.

Robert Palmer, still riding high from his involvement in Power Station, has agreed to contribute vocals on at least one track. The reaction of the marketplace, however, was not the motivation behind this move.

"Airplay is not my main concern," says Marsh - and he sounds like he means it. He gets visibly bored talking about selling records or the quirks of radio programmers. It doesn't even interest him enough to bother complaining about it.

Marsh has sent a demo tape to Palmer a couple of years ago when he first gave thought to recording a solo album and much to his surprise Palmer phoned back personally and asked him to play on a cut from his Pride album.

"I was ecstatic about it," recalls Marsh. "But it never panned out. Rupert Hine came in for overdubs instead and so the violin was replaced by a synthesizer. Regardless, I felt it was good enough to have been phoned."

Two years passed and Marsh never expected anything more to come of it. However, one evening just before last Christmas, he came home, slumped back on the couch and switched on MuchMusic (Canada's premier music channel). There was Palmer saying one of his favorite musicians was this Canadian violin player named Hugh Marsh and that he'd like to get together with him sometime.

The collaboration with Palmer comes out of mutual admiration, the exact nature of which is ill-defined but makes sense to the parties. Marsh stumbles around with the question and throws out some reasons that include respect for Palmer's non-compromising attitude and his willingness to take on new and different things.

The pieces of music Marsh has sent off to Palmer are certainly different. They include one inspired by Red Music - a short story from the book The Bass Saxophone by Canadian author Josef Skvorecky, who fled Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is a story about a teenaged saxophone player who played in a band called Red Music during the nazi occupation of Czekoslovakia and had to abide by ten rules set down by the Third Reich.

"Robert will recite the ten rules, then we'll break them all. The tentative title is Rules Are Made To Be Broken," says Marsh. He then pauses to form an explanation. "I wanted to do something with lyrics, but I didn't want it to be tune."

While Marsh had read The Bass Saxophone years earlier, it was a tour of East Germany with Bruce Cockburn last year which brought it back to mind. The occasion was The Festival of Red Music which was organized by East German Communist Youth Party.

"It was an eerie week. It was quite bizarre. Western contact was not allowed, at least theoretically, although I managed to talk to some musicians anyway. There were a lot of restrictions on music and I think it clicked something in the back of my mind about The Bass Saxophone."

Despite the oblique political angles in some of his music, (Marsh) is not particularly interested in politics. "I don't consider myself politically aware. I'm sort of apathetic. I'm really more concerned with just music. If music is threatened, though, then that's another thing."

Evelyne Erskine (The Ottawa Citizen - March 1986)

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Hugh Marsh's album Shaking The Pumpkin was released in 1987.

Robert Palmer appears on several tracks: the aforementioned Rules Are Made To Be Broken,  a cover of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze and Little Miss Big Kiss which he co-wrote.