Interview with Janet Lumb - musician, composer
By Susan DubrofskyBorn and raised in Toronto for twenty years and having lived in Vancouver for ten years, Janet Lumb has now been living in Montreal for the majority of her life. As a musician and sax player since ‘75 and working with dancers, poets and painters, she has been exploring her visual interests as a composer for film music for over 15 years. As Director of Accès Asie, Janet merges her passions for the arts, culture, community and social activism. A great believer in the chaos theory, that there is order in chaos, Janet continues taking chances in the magic of the moment.
Interview
Q. You are a musician, a sax player, film composer and activist. How do you combine all this?
A. They are all for me integrated. I was always someone who was not content enough to do just one thing. Even when I was working as a child care worker, I was playing in bands at night, going to demonstrations on the weekend. There was always this drive to pursue several different things at the same time...
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Excerpt from CBC Radio 1, Homerun – January 31, 2007
Bernard St. Laurent interviews Janet Lumb
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Excerpt from the Mirror, January, 2006, Montreal, Quebec
Full Stream Ahead
By Christine RedfernWhen it comes to performance art and tech, Janet Lumb is out to push boundaries. "I don’t like to always see a classical musician perform with other classical musicians, and VJs and DJs always happening at techno spaces," says the curator of the annual 8 Moments event and director of Accès Asie. "I like to mix and match and break people's assumptions."
8 Moments unfolds each year at the artist-run centre Oboro in conjunction with Asian Heritage Month. The event is both Webcast and staged live as artists from different cities improvise with each other by means of live-streaming. In the original 8 Moments there wasn’t much definition. ...
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Excerpt from CBC Radio 1, Roundup - Tetsuro Shigematsu interviews Janet Lumb - September 27th, 2004
Interview with Janet Lumb
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Excerpt from The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, February 4, 2002
Life is more than a living
It was an accident that took Janet Lumb from her longtime job as a childcare worker to a new career as a musician. Literally. She's from a musical family, plays several instruments, including saxophone, and performs with three musical groups, although she couldn't support herself on that alone. "As much as I loved working with kids, it was a long-term dream to one day live on my music," said Janet, 48.
One day, six years ago, she took a bad spill while playing with a young charge she was babysitting and badly injured her knee. She was forced to give up her job at Giant Steps, a Montreal school for children with autism.
She was devastated, "but it was a blessing in disguise. Within a month, I got two or three calls to work on film scores -- and I have been doing it since."
Lumb is now at work on a score for a National Film Board documentary on the Doukhobors and another for an independent film on a Vancouver poet, although she says she hasn't ruled out the option of working with children again.
Even if people do different jobs, "the skill set stays the same," said Steven Appelbaum, professor of organizational behaviour at Concordia's John Molson School of Business. Careers "are no longer the foundation block on which individuals' self-esteem is built," he observed. "I think the mobility is much more significant than the stability, which was once the classic structure." ...
Excerpt from the Mirror, February, 2000, Montreal, Quebec
Revolution in Three Part Harmony
By Skidmore"Eventually I'd like to dissolve the Asian Heritage Festival," co-founder Janet Lumb says over a giant bowl of café au lait. "I'd like it to be just artists, period. But that's the long term."
As a former social worker, composer, musician, band member and driving force behind the festival, Lumb's numerous projects transcend the written word. Of course, "tireless" may also run in the family. Her mother, Jean Lumb, received an Order of Canada for her contribution in the fight to get Chinese-Canadians the vote some 50 years ago.
Photo by May Truong
Excerpt from Festival International de Musiciennes Innovatrices program booklet, Montreal, Quebec, 1988
Unnatural Acts
UNNATURAL ACTS: a musical clowning, a satire with many acts, the meeting of JANET LUMB and ALISA PALMER.
LUMB, a talented multi-instrumentalist whose performing strength has been much appreciated from Montreal all the way to Vancouver and who was last seen in the group Mat'Chum. PALMER, an actress with classical clown training, was a member of Hysterical Women. Her caustic sense of humour reminds us of a Sheila Gostick.
UNNATURAL ACTS, a musical commentary on issues affecting our community and our personal lives addresses itself to issues such as sexism and racism. UNNATURAL ACTS was created for the « Feminism and Art Conference » that took place last year in Toronto. A tour across Canada is planned for next summer...
Persisters: positive female images
by Janie Newton-MossExcerpt from Georgia Strait, Vancouver, B.C. 1983
Rock music, like any musical form, is not inherently sexist. What makes it sexist more often than not is the exclusion of women from its production.
For the majority of us growing up in the 60's and early 70's, fantasies about performing in a rock band were quickly obliterated when it became apparent that our role was to be "consumers" not "producers" of rock music. Like it or not, we had to content ourselves watching brothers and boyfriends experiment in garages or basements and listening endlessly to the radio.
Indeed, if we had felt comfortable in that other role, who would we have imitated? The Supremes?...too sophisticated. The Mamas and the Papas?...only half of them were women. Fanny?...few of us ever knew of their existence. The only women instrumentalists playing rock music up until the mid 70's were either tucked away in mixed bands or working solo.
Women of 25 plus will not be able to look back to their adolescence and talk about their five favourite women rock bands, but next generation...!
The Persisters, like other women's bands, by choosing to play electric instruments and by careful selection of material, are able to give the high energy of the rock medium a non-sexist character...
The members of the Persisters are Janet Lumb (saxes), Wendy Solloway (bass guitar), Jorie Cedroff (drums), Doreen Allen (guitar), and Mona Arens (keyboard).