Tucson COVID Tales No. 27: Thinking of Coltrane in a Time of Virus, by Donivan Berube

When the Time of the Virus began, every headline might as well have come with a question mark. Reports were conflicting, information was ongoing, and change quickly became the only constant.

A year after my solo debut Endlessly Won’t Last for Long, I’m releasing my sophomore LP, Truth in Constant Change for Now, made over the course of quarantine. It was a tumultuous but inspired year, scored by constant waves of focus over obscurity, persistence over surrender. It felt quite natural then to “Coltrane” myself in the studio throughout that time. In the jazz giant’s composition of A Love Supreme, he reportedly locked himself in a small room until emerging with a complete work. The COVID closures became a similar allowance for uninterrupted coffee and music-making, only to surface for a daily bike ride on the Tucson Loop.

Themes grew to weave intimacy and isolation into a polyrhythmic heartsong of jazz chords and sudden redirection. If “love became the walls in which to quarantine us,” then “what got between us?” You can find some answers by listening to the first three tracks in the link below. You can preorder a copy of Truth in Constant Change for Now and hear other music here. 

Donivan Berube has traveled the world as a musician. He has worked as an English teacher in Peru, a librarian in Big Sur, a luthier in Arizona, and taken solo long-distance bicycle tours across the United States and Iceland. Visit him at https://www.donivanberube.com

Category: TUCSON COVID TALES