John Harvey Wyre was born and raised in Philadelphia, he passed away in Newfoundland, but for a while, he lived in Norland.
Wyre was a founding member of the production ensemble NEXUS, formed in 1971. He was a former timpanist of both the Toronto Symphony and Boston Symphony Orchestras. He organized and directed World Drum Festivals. The World Drum Festival of 1986 brought together 250 drummers for Vancouver’s Expo ’86, including tribal drummers from Africa and Indonesian gamelan orchestras. The event was documented in a film of the same name available from the National Film Board (NFB 113C-0187-117). The National Film Board also has a 1991 half-hour documentary on John Wyre called “Drawing On Sound”. Barry Dove and the Percussive Arts Society’s World Music Committee produced a DVD tribute to John entitled “I’ll Be With You In Apple Blossoms” and is available from the NEXUS website. In 1999, he was inducted to the Percussive Arts Society’s Hall of Fame with the other members of NEXUS, and that same year, Wyre received a music touring grant in the amount of $50,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
“Every summer from the time I was six my family had retreated to a cabin in south central Ontario on the Trent River, where we fished, explored the wilderness, and simply found a solitude. I was seduced completely by the tranquility of living close to nature, so in the early 1970s I began looking for rural property and purchased some land in 1972, where I resided with my wife, Jean, until we moved to Newfoundland in 2002.” (Wyre. Touched by Sound: a dummer’s journey, page 49.)
The property was in the Norland area. He named the land Bellwood, and kept a recording studio, “Butternut Studios.” Under the Umbrella, an album by Jo Kondo, was recorded at Butternut Studios. The album notes “Under the Umbrella was recorded August 18, 1980, in the Norland, Ontario, Canada, geodesic-dome home of John Wyre. Each movement was recorded in one take, without edits. The recording was made using one microphone, Nexus having constructed a pentagonal rack, from each section of which hung each player’s five “almglocken”.”
Peggy Feltmate remembers “their unusual geodesic home; the mossy rock walls that John built meditatively, stone by stone; the meandering “dry ditch”, a dry streambed they had created and filled with smooth river stones that would create a rippling music in the spring runoff. In the trees hung lovely sounds: bells, of all sizes and shapes. And in the midst of the quiet, there was always laughter. During one evening visit, shortly after they had added a handsome house addition, there was much puzzlement – and laughter – as we discovered the new bathroom’s toilet was full of steaming hot water. It had been plumbed to the wrong water line! “It’s a challenge we must rise to,” nodded John in his best contemplative manner.”
About the unusual shape of the home, Wyre explains, “Influenced by the insights and technology of R. Buckminster Fuller and the sublime thoughts of Native North Americans– which I’d read about in T.C. McLuhan’s Touch the Earth, I decided that I wanted to live in a round, open space. So in 1972 I began a nest by building a four-phase geodesic dome, a hemisphere forty-feet in diameter. A third of the ground floor was for the kitchen, bathroom and a small study. Over these next three areas spread a sleeping loft. The rest of the space was for music.” (Wyre. Touched by Sound: a dummer’s journey, page 52.)
He hung “hundreds of bells from the curved arc of the hemisphere. They were suspended from long strings, and when set in motion the natural pendulum action would continue for quite some time. … Eventually the bells evolved into a nightly lullaby lasting from twenty to thirty minutes at bedtime as we drifted off into dreamland. It was wonderful to have an instrument that played itself into oblivion.” (Wyre. Touched by Sound: a dummer’s journey, page 53.)
The land itself provided Wyre with sources of sound. “Every spring four varieties of frogs join the orchestre de la pond, bringing to the band a passion, intensity, and decibel level that can only come from a force as old as the universe … I’ve played duets with woodpeckers on the cedar posts around the garden. The woodlands of my home have stretched me from the intimacy of the music of insects to the vastness of infinity for a ceiling.”
In 2002, Wyre retired from NEXUS and moved with his wife to Newfoundland. He recorded his memoirs and published them in Touched by Sound: a dummer’s journey. The book includes prose recordings of his recollections as well as his own poetry. He contracted cancer of the jaw and passed away in 2006.
Listen to some of John Wyre’s music on Spotify.
Books:
Touched by Sound: a drummer’s journey (2002) – available at SteveWeissmusic.com
Resources:
Obituary: https://www.legacy.com/ca/obituaries/theglobeandmail/name/john-wyre-obituary?id=41713590
In Memoriam: https://www.nexuspercussion.com/2006/12/in-memoriam-john-wyre-may-17-1941-october-31-2006/
Stewart Hoffman remembers John Wyre: https://www.nexuspercussion.com/2010/08/blog-bits-stewart-hoffman-remembers-john-wyre/
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