Syzygy: On The Allegory of Light

www.expose.org

Ten years ago a talented Ohio based band named Witsend released a stunning debut album entitled “Cosmos And Chaos”. The album received rave reviews, but then years passed with nothing new from the band. In 2003 another group of talented Ohio musicians released an outstanding album under the name Witsend. As it turns out Witsend and Syzygy are one and the same band. The album entitled “The Allegory Of Light” has shown up on many year-end top 10 lists, and is gaining further attention from the prog rock community. The question remains however as to what is the reason for the change in name and why ten years between releases. Recently I had a chance to chat with the three musicians who make up both Witsend and Syzygy, Carl Baldassarre (guitars & bass), Sam Giunta (keys), and Paul Mihacerich (drums, percussion & vocals) to discuss these and other questions.

Expose: Let’s start by giving a bit of background on both the band as a whole and you and as individual. How did the band get together and a brief history?

Carl: We all lived in the same town (Euclid, Ohio) and went to the same high school although we didn’t hang out with each other during school. Sam and I played together in a regional club act called Abraxas during the late 70’s. Sam introduced me to his music teacher and our mentor, Dante Picciotti, whom I later studied with for eight years. Dante was a retired professor of music theory (classical and jazz) and a conductor. But most of all, he was a beautiful person who inspired us all and changed our lives. A whole story could be written about Dante, since almost everything we do traces back to him. Paul also studied briefly with him—but Dante died in 1990.

Paul: I knew Sam as a kid.. I was playing 5 nights a week during high school in a band with a junior high school teacher, Harry Hershey. This was a lounge band that played everything. Harry was an excellent musician and taught me more about playing drums than any drum teacher. We played all types of music, which taught versatility. Abraxas broke up and Sam and Carl studied and began to write progressive music. They formed Witsend and Sam moved in a few doors down from me. We talked about the possibility of adding me as a percussionist for Witsend. While that was being discussed, their bass player left the band and then their drummer left too. They asked if I was interested and I jumped right in.

Sam: Carl and I were playing five nights a week catering to the top 40, rock and roll crowd. We had a huge following, we gained valuable experience, and we had a blast. Then Carl and I decided to pursue our dream of playing progressive music and formed Witsend. We were amazed when, Paul, who had initially expressed an interest in joining the band as a percussionist, was able to play our music perfectly as a drummer.

What is your individual musical background?

Carl: There was always music in my house. I was the youngest of three kids and my older siblings force-fed me the music of the sixties and seventies, especially the golden era of 1968 to 1975. As a result, the music bug bit me early. I was four years old when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan and remember it to this day. Interestingly, I didn’t start to play until high school. Once I started to play, the music just exploded out of me. My classical training came later on from the eight years of private study with Dante.

Paul: I remember being captivated by the Beatles when I was 4-5 years old. I remember thinking, “that is what I want to do”. I listened to all types of music on the urging of my father. He was not a musician but his father and brother were. He encouraged me to study, and be open to all musical opportunities. I studied percussion at conservatories playing mallets, tympani, etc… but never studied drum set. I picked that up by listening and observing and playing anything that came along from school concerts, recitals, pit orchestras, big bands, and lounge bands. High school was a great time, I was playing five nights a week, studying at the Cleveland conservatories and practicing a lot. I was totally immersed in playing drums and percussion. I think that I had pretty much given up on the dream of playing progressive music until I got the chance to play with Carl and Sam.

Sam: Coming from an Italian family, my parents started me on accordion at a very early age. I took lessons for 7 years but wanted to pursue other musical outlets and further my musical education. I began playing the organ and from there the piano. Luckily, my parents found music professor and genius Dante whom I studied with for 17 years. Dante was responsible for opening up many musical doors for me. I started listening to ELP, YES, and Gentle Giant and realized that was the type of music that I wanted to emulate.

Your first album as a band was released under the name of Witsend. Apparently there was another band using the Witsend name? What is the story behind the name change to Syzygy?

Carl: I actually love the name Witsend and wish we could still use it. Our attorney told us we could fight to assert our rights to the name since we could show prior use; however, in the final analysis, it didn’t seem worth it

Paul: I think Sam came up with Witsend when they could not decide on a name and Sam said he was at his “witsend”. Carl came up with the name and concept of Syzygy, he was throwing the word around at rehearsals a long time ago. I think we were going to title an album “Syzygy”…

Carl: Syzygy was one of the names we had kicking around. It was originally in the backlog of ideas for a concept album. I love its meaning: three astronomical objects coming into alignment. We are three musicians who come into alignment and create some gravitational pull and tidal forces within our music.

Almost 10 years have elapsed since the band’s last release “Cosmos and Chaos”. Why such a long break in between releases?

Carl: Family, study, finances and need for personal growth.

Paul: We were raising families. We studied, wrote, practiced. “Allegory” took a long time because it was difficult to pull it together with family, work and time constraints.

Sam: Raising families and job obligations had been the first priority for all of us.

The new album “Allegory of Light” is all over the place musically and should appeal to a wide variety of prog rock fans. What are some of your influences and how did you approach the writing and recording of the new album compared to your first release?

Carl: I think that diversity is what makes it appealing. It’s what keeps us entertained. The key to it all is the diversity of influences. I love to play classical music, but I can also play every Led Zeppelin song ever written. You put those together and you get progressive rock. The difference in the approach between the two albums is that we did the second album (Allegory) in my own studio, Monster Tracks, which I built in 1999. It’s a pro-grade studio which we have access to full time. It’s a dream come true for me to have this facility. Not having our own studio is part of the reason it took so long for the second release. It became clear that it wasn’t viable to do our work in other people’s studios watching a clock and hauling our gear around.

Paul: I think you can list the entire “common” prog influences in the production of “Allegory”, yet it sounds like something fresh. Much of this music has been rewritten and honed over years. The songs matured over many years just like we did.

Sam: We wanted to write something with epic proportion and combine every major progressive influence from all of the bands that we loved into one package, and hoped that it appealed to the progressive listeners as much as it appealed to us. We've always approached our writing with an exchange of musical ideas. We've always had to find the best way to polish, mold, and whittle down our creative ideas. It's like you've got a rough diamond and you're polishing away at it, trying to get it to sparkle.

How often has the band been able to perform live?

Carl: We’ve played live for years around our hometown of Cleveland. It comes down to a return on our investment of time. Given our lifestyles and musical priorities, we will get greater psychological return by producing a new collection of material and releasing a new album.

Paul: There were not a lot of venues open to original progressive music. When we did play live, we often opened for bands, I think we were a hard act to follow.

Much of your music is quite complex and sounds as if it would be a challenge to bring to the live stage. What differences comprise your music in a live setting compared to your studio recordings?

Carl: The first CD was really a live performance in the studio because we were on the clock. Then again, many of the pieces on Allegory were written for and developed during live performances. Even though Allegory is a more sophisticated production, virtually every piece has been and could be performed live by just the three of us.

Paul: When I go to a live show, I do not want to hear the studio version played back to me. I look for key sections, cues, and hope that the musical form/framework of a piece is there and look to the artist to build or embellish on that. All our recorded works have been played live and can be played live. We did it as a trio with Sam playing bass on keys. We did this with minimal MIDI technology and did not sequence. We have a lot of music we played live that still needs to be recorded. We were invited to Progday but chose to focus on a new recording to follow the success of “Allegory”. We want to avoid the long interim between this and the next album.

Sam: Almost every piece of music on Allegory has been performed in a live setting. The studio recording is the polished diamond with some additional overdubs that creatively would have to be worked into a live show.

Is there a main songwriter in the band or is it more of a collaborative effort?

Carl: The ensemble pieces are very collaborative. I generally handle the “vision thing” and keep us on the rails with respect to concepts, epics and story boarding. I also write the lyrics. However, this is a band and a democracy in the truest sense.

Paul: Carl and Sam do much of the writing and I glue it all together. It is a collaborative writing and we write in the same room together with our instruments. Carl and Sam have a lot of solo pieces that need no more than their talent to move emotions.

Sam: I write and compose music almost everyday for the band. All of my compositions are based on themes, not completed pieces. At that point, it's just a matter of an exchange of ideas with Carl. We've developed quite an amazing chemistry over the years.

You all have day jobs, wives and children. How do you balance your musical endeavors with everything else you have going in your lives?

Carl: I am still learning how to balance everything. The studio helps by making us efficient. That’s a big key. My wife and kids are behind me and that really helps make it happen.

Paul: Difficult balance. Sometimes it is not a balance but a love of the craft. In other words, “I have to do this”. My family is understanding and supportive of how important this is to me. They believe in it and are proud of the accomplishments. My wife Sue is my biggest supporter.

Sam: It is very difficult and challenging to find a time everyone can get together. It helps when you have a very supportive wife that understands and backs your goals. Seeing the end product makes it all worthwhile.

What does the future hold for Syzygy? Do you have any goals for the band?

Carl: I know that the best music is yet to come. One of the many drawbacks from not being prolific in developing a catalog is that you get stuck working on older material all of the time. You have to take care of the unfinished business before you can move on. We want to get the next album out as soon as possible without compromising quality. The new album will contain some of our backlog of compositions but we will compose some new material as well. The release after that will be all new material and that’s what excites me the most.

Paul: I do think the band has aged like a fine wine. I think there are high expectations of the band. I would like to see some live shows, a live album.

Sam: We have an endless well of ideas and hope to continue making CD's as long as we can, and eventually play live again.

Is a follow-up to “Allegory Of Light” in the works, and if so what time frame are you looking at? Will there be less than a ten year gap this time around?

Carl: We began working on it January 2004. I will not forecast a release date other than to guarantee that it will be “light speed” compared to the last interval of time.