For an awkward second, silence rings out on the FaceTime line.

I have just asked saxophonist Jason Sharp and poet Kaie Kellough, who dually lead the experimental Avant-jazz nonet, FYEAR, how their band’s name is supposed to be pronounced. Kellough turns the question back on me. “How would you pronounce it?”

Already, I feel as though I’m being tested. I tell the pair on the other side of the screen that I’d say: “F-Year” — as in, the year following A, B, C, D, and E.

“It could work that way,” says Kellough, “if it makes you more comfortable.” Knowing little of comfort, I persist with the enquiry.

“I’ve been saying straight-up ‘fear,’” Sharp informs, “the emotional state.”

“I’ve been emphasizing the ‘Y,’” says Kellough with a smirk. “There’s an extra vowel in there: Fyyyear,” he stretches out the syllable into two.

“It was coined during the pandemic, during the lockdowns. And basically, it comes from a very simple observation — that it was a fucked-up year. Hopefully it causes a little bit of uncertainty.”

Doubtless, nothing else in 2024 sounds quite like FYEAR’s self-titled debut recording. Generically, it’s an adroit and ambidextrous mix of improvisatory free jazz, chamber music, spoken word, electronic, and Afrobeat. The instrumentation of two percussionists, two violinists, two poets, a pedal steel guitar, and Sharp’s bass and baritone sax combine for a collaborative album as delightful as it is daring.

“This particular project has a lot of nods to a lot of different traditions,” Sharp tells me. “As a performer inside of it, I feel like it travels. It’s most enjoyable that way.”

FYEAR’s mission grew out of a partnership between Sharp and Kellough that began just as the Coronavirus crisis hit in 2020.

“About a year beforehand,” Sharp says, “we performed a version that was not quite fully composed and included fewer members, opening for Saul Williams at La Sala Rossa. That was the first iteration that had more of the defining seeds. Certainly, the vocabulary has been brewing for many years. But it finally catalyzed during Covid.”

Although FYEAR is technically Montreal-based, the three of us share a moment when we collectively realize that we all hail originally from Alberta — Kellough from Calgary, and Sharp and I from Edmonton.

During his teenage years, Sharp got a taste for the stage playing baritone saxophone in The Little Birds Big Band, a youth ensemble that performed regularly at the Yardbird Suite, Edmonton’s legendary jazz club.

“I remember around that time I went to see Steve Lacy play solo at the Yardbird,” Sharp recalls. “That was my first encounter with a more improvisational performance. Steve is such an influential musician. He seemed to span this world of classical music and jazz and improvisation. And he played this solo soprano saxophone concert, and I was riveted. It definitely left a mark on me.”

Kellough discovered a fondness for the rhythms of language after reading the Harlem Renaissance poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes in high school English classes.

“It was poetry that referenced a musical tradition but also spoke about people’s everyday experiences,” Kellough explains. “Even if I’m a writer who writes very differently from Countee Cullen or Langston Hughes, I find that those were two writers who drew me into poetry, initially, and made me feel like it was something that was relevant in the world. Certainly, something that was relevant to me. Something that I might think of doing.”

Often, the metropolis that draws westerners is Vancouver; yet migrating east to Montreal was a notion that came separately to each artist.

“I fell in love,” says Sharp, “so I ended up landing in Montreal and getting married. But when I came here, I discovered a scene that resonated with me in a wonderful way. I didn’t know much about the incredible creative hub that is Montreal, but it’s shaped me greatly.”

Though for Kellough, the love affair was more with an inkling of French culture.

“I had seen this documentary on Bravo television about this French writer,” Kellough confesses. “I don’t even remember who the writer was, or what it was called. But it was this writer in the 1980s in Paris. He was in his apartment, and he was being interviewed by an interviewer in a black suit and a skinny tie, and they were both smoking cigarettes in the apartment. There was a shot of him out the window walking across a cobbled street coming back with a baguette. And I thought, oh man, that is it, that is it. I need to be in that apartment writing long, anti-imperialist tracts and going to get my baguette between smokes.”

Kellough laughs. “I really thought I wanted to go to Paris, but Montreal ended up being closer.”

Historically, Montreal has steadfastly been a bright sun that lures so many stars into its romantic orbit.

Sharp resumes reminiscing. “When I landed in Montreal, one of the first musical experiences I had that made me feel like Montreal could be home was meeting Sam Shalabi. Sam invited me to play in Land of Kush. That was the first time I sat inside of an ensemble full of rock musicians, improv musicians, jazz musicians. That record came out on Constellation Records and that was my introduction to the label. For this FYEAR record, I was just so grateful that Constellation was as excited about it as I was. I think Constellation is a very important musical nucleus in this city.”

They each arrived in Montreal for different reasons. Nonetheless, Kellough and Sharp have equivalently insightful visions about that elusive élan that stimulates great artists to create.

“There’s a momentum that exists,” observes Sharp. “It’s like getting that snowball that you’ve been pushing to lurch forward and roll on its own. Then you’re just guiding it. Once it starts to take shape, the choices become obvious. You have different options of going this way or that, but essentially once that momentum is established, it’s forming its own path. Then, that flow state happens.”

Kellough elaborates on the importance of simultaneous inspiration and reflection.

“I always feel it’s a very delicate thing, especially performance. It requires patience. Even though you may experience what you feel is a flow state, it’s important to reserve the time to come back and observe the results when you’re in a different mindset. It’s important to have that more critical, detached awareness. In the moment, it’s a funny thing, because you have to be invested in it. You have to feel it. But at the same time, you can’t fully trust that you’re going to produce good results. You can never get completely lost in the moment.”◼︎

_{FYEAR’s self-titled debut is released 5 April 2024 via Constellation Records.}