Interview with Steven Leak and Sequentia Legenda

I was delighted to be able to illustrate my forthcoming
album GALACTIC CRYSTALS
with the magnificent photos of Steven Leak.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH STEVEN LEAK
I invite you to discover our exchange through this interview

I'm delighted to share with you my encounter with Steven Leak, a sensitive person with a big heart, an artist to the core. I had the pleasure and privilege of using Steven's superb images to illustrate my forthcoming album GALACTIC CRYSTALS.

I invite you to discover our exchange through this interview.

Musical greetings,
Sequentia Legenda (Laurent Schieber)
🙏💎🙏

Watch the GALACTIC CRYSTALS trailer

 

DISCOVERY OF BERLIN SCHOOL MUSIC
my Mother who played an indirect but important role

Steven: When did music first „find“ you or „speak“ to you?
Describe that moment/experience.

Laurent: Music has always been part of my life, bringing me serenity, happiness and dreams. I can still clearly remember a snow globe with a traditional wind-up musical mechanism, with this pretty little ballerina dancing to the rhythm of the gentle melody. I was probably between 5 and 6 years old, so that was the first real musical experience I can remember. To my mother's credit, she enrolled me in various activities. Between the ages of 8 and 9, I had taken a few accordion lessons, but the weight and size of the instrument had been a hindrance. As for music theory, I was totally put off by it.

As far as the discovery of Berlin School music was concerned, it was once again my Mother who played an indirect but important role. I was between 15 and 16 at the time, and as I was browsing through my parents' vinyl collection, I was immediately intrigued by a particular-looking cover. It was the timeless album "Mirage" by Klaus Schulze. I fell in love with it and it triggered my musical imagination. It was literally a revelation! I had to discover these fabulous and enigmatic sound machines called synthesizers and explore this new musical universe that had just revealed itself to me.

 

Steven: How do you prepare yourself for creating music?

Laurent: To tell the truth, there's no real preparation; it's more like a call to creation that comes without really warning and draws me like a magnet to my keyboards. When this creative invitation comes to me, I savour this privileged moment and let myself go, guided towards the first experiments and improvisations. The ideas then emanate, highlighting the overall atmosphere, and the soundtrack is woven together little by little. This process is simply divine, allowing me to connect with the fertile ground of creativity, for an exploration that annihilates all proportions and time constraints. It's a real journey, allowing me to surpass myself and regenerate.

Ultimately, there are several artistic and informative ingredients, elements of a spiritual nature that support this creative phase (texts, images, sounds, the imagination, nature, the cosmos, vibrations, emotions...). With hindsight, I can say that for me, it's truly a benevolent guidance, helping and supporting me during the creative process, throughout my musical journey, in my mission to share, in my freedom of expression. Added to this is the fact that I'm a 'sensitive' and 'receptive' person. My late mother used to say to me: "If only you weren't so sensitive". Without this sensitivity, I don't think I would have been able to share my musical vision with such sincerity.

MUSIC IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF MY LIFE
it's a form of expression, a balance, a freedom of expression

Steven: What role/place does music hold/play in your life?

Laurent: Music is an essential part of my life, and has been for a long time. In fact, it's probably been salutary. It has the power to help and support me, to take me on a journey, to make me happy and free, with no time constraints. And that's what I want to share with my listeners: music that helps, regenerates and stimulates. For me, it's a form of expression, a balance, a freedom of expression. Music is a divine opportunity that I savour with great gratitude 🙏

WORKING AND PLAYING WITH ICE
and share it with others what a joy

Laurent: Can you explain your "working and playing with ice" approach?

Steven: For a few years I was painting highly detailed mandalas and mandorlas that took 100 - 150 hours each to complete. It was super satisfying work but it took so much time and I felt after a while as if I was creating iterations of something that looked somewhat similar to work I had already done.

At the same time, I had been experimenting a little bit taking pictures of ice impregnated with things like aluminum foil, food colouring, flowers etc. and the light source was candles and old flashlights.

One day I noticed that at a certain time of day, the sun would pass through a piece of stained glass that I have hanging near my front door and cast a prism across the floor. I decided to see what would happen when that colourful prism passed through a piece of ice.

I’ve been working and playing with that approach for two and a half years now. Because there are variables that I can’t control - the intensity of the light, the ice melting or breaking (I take all of my ice pictures indoors - year ‘round when light is available!), and my camera’s decisionmaking which is sometimes contrary to what I think I see, I take as many images as I can while the conditions are “right”. It is such literally “in-the-moment” art because everything changes moment-by-moment. I like that. If I can be there for that moment . . . before it is gone . . . never to return. Then share it with others . . . what a joy!!!

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ART AND CREATIVITY
refine my availability to the creative force

 

Laurent: What is your relationship with art and creativity?

Steven: The notion of “working and playing” with creative projects has its roots in a phrase I came across years ago suggesting that “creative work is hard play”. When I am painting, creating ice art, photographing my part of the world, or creating music, I feel a focussed playfulness and then also I’m aware that as much as possible, I need to get out of the way and let whatever is happening happen, in a similar way to children’s play which is often fuelled by their imaginations. Also, art and creativity are strategies that assist me in welcoming whatever it is that needs to find me in order for it to make its way into this world and help me refine my availability to the creative force.

 

Laurent: A lot of musicians request your photographic work. I'm delighted to be able to benefit from your creative talent too. Could you perhaps explain to listeners how you feel about this new collaboration and how you feel about the music of Sequentia Legenda?

Steven: I’ve been blessed to provide artwork for musicians in many different countries. Musicians who each bring their own unique voice into this world. It’s always a real honour to be asked to provide artwork to accompany or act as a visual portal for the music. Being asked by Laurent (Sequential Legenda) to provide cover art for his latest release is a joy as I greatly admire his music.

Carefully crafted, transformative, beautiful, emotionally rich, are thoughts I have when I listen to his music. His music often brings me to remember the first time I heard Klaus Schulze’s album “Moondawn” when it first came out in 1976. I had heard nothing like it and I was simultaneously ecstatic and transformed by it. Sequentia Legenda’s music has a very similar effect on me.

Presentation: Hi! My name is Steven Leak. I am a Canadian musician, artist and photographer. I love working and playing with the creative force that flows through me. I like to find ways in which to allow that energy to find its way to this place. I experiment with sound and vision. I like those experiments to be as analogue as possible, while also being grateful for the digital technology that allows me to not only work and play with those experiments but to share them with people as well.