Derek Ecklund has spent most of his life in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. His life has revolved around music, filmmaking and creative living. Research into esoteric and ceremonial uses of sound, a practice in field recording, and travels to India, Nepal and Central America have been a major influence on much of his work. Throughout the 1990’s he was immersed in the Portland music scene, playing keyboards, guitar, sitar and percussion in everything from rock bands, experimental composition, improv collectives, dance music, dub, fusion bands and his eclectic project known as Mesmer. In 2000, Ecklund left Portland to live in Astoria, on the North Oregon Coast, where he completed several full-length recordings started in Portland and immersed himself in the vibrant art and music community of Astoria. Returning to Portland in 2005, he began an immersion in the study of North Indian Classical vocal music with Michael Stirling. Already playing the sitar and surbahar in his own self taught style for several years; Derek immediately resonated with this ancient form of sound yoga. He subsequently has studied this tradition with the notable minimalist composer, Terry Riley, a senior North American disciple of the late Pandit Pran Nath. The intense listening required by this tradition has also tuned his ear into recording the natural sounds around him, towards unheard microscopic, underwater and electromagnetic sounds. Since beginning his Indian music studies, Ecklund has rarely performed as a musician. Feeling confined by usual modes of musical performance and a desire to branch into multimedia, Derek has focused his sensibility into field recording and digital video. As a sound artist and filmmaker, he uses media to create experiences similar to the beauty, wildness, awe and mysticism of sound and nature and how it relates to culture and our collective experience.
Recent projects have included sound recordings from the post eruption zone of Mt. St. Helen’s and the creation of a digital musical instrument that plays the mathematical frequencies of planetary orbits. His current project, started with Cameron Wagner, is Sonic Geography: Sound Portraits of The Columbia River. This is an ongoing project gathering field recordings along the entire 1100 mile course of the Columbia River from the source in British Columbia to the sea on the Pacific Ocean. An interactive website and installation are being developed to document this process and the results as they progress.
