There’s something almost geological about the way trauma settles into memory; layer upon layer accumulating until what was once fluid hardens into something you can build upon, or break against. Ted Laderas understands this kind of sediment intimately. The Portland-based cellist and composer has spent the last several years excavating his own relationship to catastrophe, transforming an anxious fixation with disaster into something approaching grace. His latest album as The OO-Ray, Marginals, emerges from this excavation like light through cracked stone. Each composition is a careful act of remembrance for those lost to calamity, and simultaneously, a means of processing his own creative crisis.
Marginals unfolds through the patient architecture of memory itself. Laderas’s cello traces these elegiac territories like careful cartography, sometimes drawing precise lines of sorrow, other times mapping vast territories of reflection that seem to hold entire histories within their borders. The compositions breathe with generative processes that introduce elements of chance: moments where the predetermined dissolves into something more organic, more alive to possibility. There’s a tenderness here that feels almost unbearable at times, as if each note carries the weight of all those unnamed casualties, all those stories that risk being reduced to statistics. This is music that doesn’t so much console as it acknowledges, allowing grief to exist in all its complexity without demanding resolution.
Marginals is out now on Beacon Sound.
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When did you first pick up the cello, and how did you discover its potential beyond classical applications? (As an aside, my daughter started playing the cello a year ago – any advice for burgeoning cellists? :))
I started learning cello at 30, because I wanted to learn for years. I found a teacher who was willing to take me on. My plan was always to explore the outer realms of the cello, since it is an incredibly versatile instrument. It can be a backing instrument, it can be a lead, it can be part of harmony.
I think it takes patience and a supportive teacher to keep going with cello, especially when you are first starting and you’re not able to produce the sounds that you have in your head. Make small goals and continue to achieve them. Find a supportive group to play with.
Marginals carries this weight of remembrance, each track serving as an elegy for disaster victims. Can you walk me through how this fixation with catastrophe first took hold? Was there a particular moment when you realized your anxiety was shaping itself into music?
What kicked off Marginals is this incredible story about the explosion in Halifax harbor, of the last message that Vince Coleman ever sent to warn others. Vince Coleman was a train dispatcher at the harbor, and right before the imminent explosion, he sent out a warning to other trains: “Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys.”
That “good-bye, boys” is so incredibly compelling. It speaks of heroism and acceptance in the face of disaster. That’s what I want to remember and remind others about.
The act of memorializing feels like both a burden and a balm. How do you navigate the responsibility of carrying these stories, of people you’ve never met, disasters you’ve only witnessed through screens, into your compositions?
It is important to revisit these events, and understand what we can do to prevent them from happening again. It’s strange to think about, but regulations are one way to give these deaths meaning. The desire to prevent more suffering is a good reminder of what good we can do in the face of such disasters.
You describe finding “solid ground in the exercise of not forgetting” in a society that often avoids remembering. What role do you see music playing in collective memory and processing trauma?
There are ways to remember that bring meaning to the lives lost. After the 1919 Spanish flu, many people didn’t want to remember the chaos and the dead, instead trying to ignore the past. We need to understand the mistakes that caused lives and how to prevent them from happening again. Remembering helps us strengthen our systems so that more of us can live through these pandemics.
The album emerged during a period of writer’s block and loss of confidence for you. How did working through your own crisis influence the sound and themes of these elegies?
When you are trying new things, it can be a process that is full of self-doubt. You have to filter out the naysayers and write what is true to yourself. I think that this process helped me write for myself again, and not worry too much about what others think, especially classical musicians. I don’t really consider myself part of that group anymore. You can’t be bound by other’s opinions when you are trying something new.
Can you describe your compositional practice that you cultivated during this period? How did it differ from your previous approaches?
I often started with improvising at the piano, and capturing tiny little ideas I could orchestrate and build on. For me, the composition process is about discovering the story that these musical ideas want to tell.
Much of my process is about paring things down, doubling parts, and simplifying to a core idea that can be developed in unexpected ways. I use a lot of generative music processes to add elements of chance to the process, to create moments of time that evolve and change and surprise me. I use these processes when I perform as well, improvising and reacting to these moments.
You organized “Ambient Zoom” sessions for fellow Portland musicians, creating community in isolation. How did those gatherings shape your understanding of what it means to share vulnerability through music?
COVID disrupted our lives, and the music community we all relied on was suddenly gone. We were isolated from each other, and I felt lonely. I had a Zoom account and a desire to connect. It was a way to find support and normalcy with others.
The title Marginals suggests something about edges, about what gets pushed to the periphery. Who or what are you thinking of as marginal, and how does music bring those voices back toward the center?
A marginal is a term from statistics. It is a count of how many people had a particular outcome, such as dying in a disaster. We must never forget that people who died in these disasters were real people, and not just casualties or numbers. We must mourn them, and bring their stories to light.
And lastly, as always to close, what are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
I have become quite fond of the sound of crows, as a reminder to be scrappy and resourceful.
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
