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Name: Gabriel Levine
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Writer, researcher, musician, performing artist
Current release: Black Ox Orkestar, composed of Thierry Amar (bass), Scott Gilmore (vocals, cimbalom, piano, guitar), Gabriel Levine (clarinets, guitar), and Jessica Moss (violin, vocals), will release their new full-length album Everything Returns, on December 2nd 2022 via Constellation. Guests include Pierre-Guy Blanchard, Julie Richard, Julie Houle, Craig Pederson and Nadia Moss.

[Read our Jessica Moss interview]
[Read our Jessica Moss interview about her creative process]

If you enjoyed this interview with Gabriel Levine of Black Ox Orkestar and would like to know more about his work, visit his official website.



For many artists, a solitary phase of creative development precedes collaborative work. What was this like for you: How would you describe your own development as an artist and the transition towards your first collaborations?   

I’ve always been drawn towards primarily collaborative work in music and theatre. True, as a songwriter, I would write alone first, but the intense loneliness and inwardness of this process is one reason I have moved away from that mode of making music, and toward practices that are collaborative from the get-go.

I began as a musician on parallel tracks: playing winds (flute, saxophone, clarinets) and writing songs on guitar. I found myself seeking and finding different things in these paths. As a songwriter, I was searching for something ineffable and elusive, something I didn’t quite understand rationally but when it emerged seemed powerful and right. Even when supported by other band members, this took a toll on my mental and emotional health.



As an instrumentalist, on the other hand, things are simpler: I love joining an ensemble, improvising, arranging, spending time in the studio, and performing with others. Considering I have a busy life as a writer and teacher of theatre and art, playing music collaboratively has become a simple joy. Reuniting with Black Ox Orkestar has been a beautiful example of this.

Tell me a bit about your current instruments and tools, please. In which way do they support creative exchange and collaborations with others? Are there obstacles and what are potential solutions towards making collaborations easier?   

These days I have been playing a lot of bass clarinet, and learning about the expressive possibilities of that instrument. With Black Ox, seeing as we live in different cities, we spend a lot of time meeting online and emailing or sharing files. It’s not as rewarding as actually being in the same room, but it does keep the process going until those exciting moments when we can meet in person.

What were some of your earliest collaborations? How do you look back on them with hindsight?

I’ve played in bands since I was a teenager, and I am comfortable and happy in that free-flowing collaborative space. I’ve also had a lot of experience making DIY theatre and performance, especially puppetry, which involves an open collaborative process. The rehearsal room (whether for music or theatre) is such a special place.

Black Ox is an early collaboration: when we started the band I had just turned 25. When you’re young and life seems full of limitless possibilities, it’s hard to grasp how certain collaborative relationships might actually be special and irreplaceable.

That’s why it’s such a gift to have this ensemble back and running again.

Besides the aforementioned early collaborations, can you talk about one particular collaboration that was important for you? Why did it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?  

Black Ox came out of experiences I had playing Jewish music in a few different contexts: as a band member and puppeteer with the Bread and Puppet Theater (where I met Jenny Romaine, who introduced me to klezmer); at Klezkamp in the Catskill mountains, and with friends in Toronto.

When I returned to Montreal in 2000 after a couple of years away, I wanted to start a band that could play traditional Jewish music with raw edges and a punk energy. Jessica Moss is a childhood friend who was also interested in exploring the music of her roots and ancestors. I met Scott Gilmore, who was studying Yiddish at McGill and could seemingly play any instrument with ease. He started writing gorgeous old-new songs in Yiddish.

We played together all that summer in his apartment facing Parc Jeanne-Mance. We practiced nearly every day, learning tunes off old records and dubbed cassette tapes. It was a magical time. Then we met bassist Thierry Amar, and as we started playing together as a quartet, the energy and style clicked into place. We started to build a “Black Ox sound,” which stretches from our early records to Everything Returns, which we’re releasing this December.

What are some of the things you learned from your collaborations over the years?   

Things can get hard and heavy. It took me many years, full of life experiences and therapy, to be emotionally mature enough not to take everything personally. People come into any collaboration with their quirks and baggage. Sometimes you have to say, OK, this person is clearly having a hard time right now, but it’s not about me, and ultimately what matters is the project.

I’ve also learned how to bring out the best in my collaborators. That, to me, is the art of collaboration: finding out what everyone does brilliantly, and helping them to do that thing as well as they can.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?   

My friend Sandro Perri has a song called “Double Suicide,” which is about losing part of yourself in a collaborative artistic relationship.



I’ve never really felt that way: collaboration has opened up new vistas and possibilities for me. It’s true, sometimes you have to let go of your most precious ideas, or realize that the outcome you thought was going to happen is not possible.

Flexibility is key. But collaborative serendipity is always what I’m striving for.

There are many potential models for collaboration, from live performances and jamming via producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?  

Musically, nothing can replace being in the same room together. Black Ox practices mostly acoustically, and when we start playing, there is a vibration in the air that shifts the relationships between us (and the audience if there is one). Online things can get sticky and bogged down.

Our challenge is finding the time to travel and rehearse together. Our studio sessions for Everything Returns were a minor miracle in this respect: we managed to book a few weekend rehearsals over the fall of 2021, and then spent 10 days together in December 2021 with engineer / producer Greg Norman.

What you hear is a recording of those vibrations, and what I love most about the record is how it captures our collective energy and sound as an ensemble.

Is there typically a planning phase for your collaborations? If so, what happens in this phase and how does it contribute to the results?   

So much planning goes into artistic work – it seems to me that this is more and more the case, with the added need to represent your work online. Sometimes it feels like all planning and no reward …

But then when you have planned well, and can relax into making the work, it’s a tremendous experience.

What tend to be the best collaborations in your opinion – those with artists you have a lot in common with or those where you have more differences? What happens when another musician take you outside of your comfort zone?

I gravitate towards artists who are primarily collaborators themselves, and who have a DIY spirit. We have to want to spend time together, laugh, eat food, and enjoy each other’s company. Otherwise what’s the point?

I tend to avoid super-professionalized settings where everyone’s just doing their job or watching the clock. That said, it’s always interesting to play with musicians you haven’t played with before.

Some artists feel as though the creative process should not be a democratic one. What are your thoughts on the interaction with other musicians, the need for compromise and the decision making process?   

Everything is a compromise. If your idea works, great; if it doesn’t, onto the next one.

Making a theatre performance or a record is all about tryouts, experiments, failures, and happy accidents. Sometimes it’s nice to work in a structure with a clear hierarchy, like a theatre company with a director; there is a danger to structureless collaborations where the division of responsibilities is unclear.

But I also appreciate the horizontal decision-making that happens in a band or small ensemble, when everyone’s on the same wavelength and making choices together.

What's your take on cross-over collaborations between different genres?  

Genre-mashups are a bit of a trope in the Jewish music world: klezmer-funk, klezmer-rock, etc. I am a bit wary of fusions of different genres. But I’m also not a purist.

Black Ox likes to think of what we do as diaspora music, rather than fusion. Jewish music has always soaked up the music of whatever peoples Jews lived amongst and around. Jewish songbooks from the early 20th century are full of mazurkas, polkas, etc. We take inspiration from the port cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries, where musics from around the world got mixed up and stewed together.

For us, it’s about finding the deep roots of this ancestral music, and then tracing them to where we could imagine them leading, whether that’s elements of modal jazz, out-rock, Arabic maqam, rebetika, etc. But it all has to fit together naturally and intuitively.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?   

I’ve never really enjoyed performing solo, although I’ve forced myself to do it as a songwriter, just to get experience relating directly to an audience. With Black Ox, I’m happy to be able to play in an ensemble where communication is intuitive and elastic. We breathe together when we’re playing.

When we started up again after a 15-year long hiatus, it was amazing to find that this communication was still there. We still had the sound!

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you as part of a collaboration? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?  

A collaborative artistic process can lift me out of whatever preoccupations or funk I’m in. I generally leave the rehearsal room, studio, theatre, or meeting-space with more life-energy than I entered with.

For me, solo work drains more energy and can feel like more of a chore.

Collaborating with one's heroes can be a thrill or a cause for panic. Do you have any practical experience with this and what was it like?   

I’ve been lucky to apprentice and take workshops with many brilliant theatre and music artists. But I’ve not yet been in a peer-to-peer collaborative relationship with any of my heroes … Something to look forward to!