By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Even a pandemic wasn’t able to knock multi-instrumentalist Grant Flick out of action.
In the past year, he’s completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, recorded three albums, two of which have been released, taught online, wrote some new tunes, and returned to live performance.
On a recent Saturday he worked three engagements – a swing gig, a duo performance of original music with collaborator bassist Jacob Warren, and a bluegrass show.
Back in Bowling Green recently, Flick was still busy. The humid weather has been tough on the instruments so he was restringing his violin, tenor guitar and nyckelharpa – a Swedish keyed string instrument related to a hurdy-gurdy.
Flick is getting ready of a short run of shows to promote his most recent project, a duo with violinist Hannah O’Brien. They recently released “Windward.” The tour touches down in their various home bases – St. Louis where she grew up, Ann Arbor where they both studied and met, and Bowling Green where he got his start as a swing fiddling prodigy.
Flick and O’Brien will perform Wednesday Aug. 11, at 7 p.m. outdoors on the porch of Mary Dennis at 161 Eberly Ave.
O’Brien and Flick were both performance majors at the University of Michigan. They were a couple years into their studies before they met. She was, Flick said, mostly on the classical side, while he was in jazz.
She had a deep family background in Celtic and Irish music, and they started playing duets, mixing the Celtic with Americana and jazz, Flick focuses on.
They were acive in the chamber music department at the university, and by fall they realized they had enough repertoire for an album. They recorded last December, in the middle of the pandemic.
The repertoire included a pieces he composed over last summer, when he holed up in Bowling Green riding out the pandemic.
Though he visits his hometown, he seldom performs here. So when Bob Midden of the Irish ensemble Toraigh called about hosting the concert, Flick jumped at the chance to share this new music with his hometown fans.
“Usually I’m the fiddle player in the band, so it’s fun to play with the two fiddles,” he said. It’s also a good format for showcasing the nyckelharpa. “There’s something magical about playing nyckelharpa and fiddle duos.. It’s fun to have two instruments in the same range.”
The nyckelharpa provides resonance and “Hannah just shreds.”
O’Brien, Flick said, is “a top level classical violinist. She can do anything which is fun to work with.” In fall, she heads to Boston to study violin performance at the New England Conservatory.
The duo, he added, is the project that involves the least amount of improvisation of the bands he plays with. “We know pretty much what we’ll do beforehand but there’s a lot more inflection and more chamber music elements that I don’t always get to hit with the other groups.”
His main ensemble is Westbound Situation, a band that performed at the 2019 Black Swamp Arts Festival.
The band stayed active as much as they could during the past 18 months. Every month or so, they would get tested for COVID-19, and then hunker down to do livestream events and work on new repertoire. In that time, they had a personnel shift with Jake Howard joining on mandolin taking over for Matthew Davis who is headed to seminary.
“It was good to try to keep things in motion with that band,” Flick said. The quartet mixes a chamber music sensibility with the drive of bluegrass and the colors of jazz. “It’s a strange band,” Flick said. “Nothing is written but it’s all pretty complicated, and there’s a lot of improvisation.”
Westbound Situation is getting ready to head into the studio for record its second album.
In the meantime, Davis and the bassist Jacob Warren worked with Flick on his own solo album “Tomorrow Worries About Itself.”
Flick continues to take pick-up jobs, and has been a regular with the western Michigan bluegrass outfit Full Cord.
“It’s super fun,” he said. “It keeps you on your toes musically, and it’s fun to be in so many scenes.”
Working in a variety styles is what he likes to do. “Following the current trajectory” is his career plan. He’ll start working on a master’s in improvisation at Michigan in fall.
Five years ago, he said, “I definitely didn’t expect to be doing this. But at the same time I don’t know what else it would have been.”
