Fail Better

Start of a series: Tony Malaby

2012-02-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Part ONE, TWO and THREE here of Tony Malaby's Apparitions Quartet live, with John Hollenbeck, Tom Rainey and Drew Gress! I'm working on a long term study/transcription blog process comparing different versions of Malaby's compositions, performed with different ensembles. Be on the lookout for "Cosas," and for now enjoy the music!

A THROW OF THE DICE WILL NEVER ABOLISH CHANCE

2012-02-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance by Stephane Mallerme, translated by A. S. Kline:

A THROW OF THE DICE

NEVER

EVEN WHEN TRULY CAST IN THE ETERNAL
CIRCUMSTANCE

OF A SHIPWRECK’S DEPTH

Can be

only

the Abyss
raging
whitened
stalled
beneath the desperately
sloping incline
of its
own wing
through an advance falling back from ill to take flight
and veiling the gushers
restraining the surges

gathered far within
the shadow buried deep by that alternative sail

almost matching
its yawning depth to the wingspan like a hull

of a vessel
rocked from side to side

THE MASTER beyond former calculations
where the lost manoeuvre with the age
rose
implying that formerly he grasped the helm
of this conflagration of the concerted
horizon at his feet

that readies itself
moves and merges
with the blow that grips it
as one threatens fate and the winds

the unique Number which cannot be another
Spirit
to hurl it
into the storm
relinquish the cleaving there and pass proudly
hesitates
a corpse pushed back by the arm from the secret
rather
than taking sides
a hoary madman
on behalf
of the waves
one overwhelms the head
flows through the submissive beard
straight shipwreck that of the man
without a vessel
empty
no matter where

ancestrally never to open the fist
clenched
beyond the helpless head
a legacy in vanishing
to someone
ambiguous
the immemorial ulterior demon
having
from non-existent regions
led
the old man towards this ultimate meeting with probability
this
his childlike shade
caressed and smoothed and rendered
supple by the wave and shielded
from hard bone lost between the planks
born
of a frolic
the sea through the old man or the old man against the sea
making a vain attempt
an Engagement
whose
dread the veil of illusion rejected
as the phantom of a gesture
will tremble
collapse
madness
WILL NEVER ABOLISH

AS IF

A simple insinuation

into silence entwined with irony
or
the mystery
hurled
howled

in some close swirl of mirth and terror

whirls round the abyss
without scattering
or dispersing

and cradles the virgin index there

AS IF

a solitary plume overwhelmed

untouched that a cap of midnight grazes or encounters
and fixes
in crumpled velvet with a sombre burst of laughter

that rigid whiteness

derisory
in opposition to the heavens
too much so
not to signal
closely
any

bitter prince of the reef

heroically adorned with it
indomitable but contained
by his petty reason virile

in lightning

anxious
expiatory and pubescent
dumb laughter

that
IF

The lucid and lordly crest of vertigo
on the invisible brow
sparkles
then shades
a slim dark tallness upright
in its siren coiling
at the moment
of striking
through impatient ultimate scales bifurcated

a rock

a deceptive manor
suddenly
evaporating in fog

that imposed
limits on the infinite

IT WAS THE NUMBER
stellar outcome
WERE IT TO HAVE EXISTED
other than as a fragmented agonised hallucination

WERE IT TO HAVE BEGUN AND ENDED
a surging that denied and closed when visible
at last
by some profusion spreading in sparseness
WERE IT TO HAVE AMOUNTED

to the fact of the total though as little as one

WERE IT TO HAVE LIGHTED

IT WOULD BE
WORSE
no
more nor less
indifferently but as much CHANCE

Falls
the plume
rhythmic suspense of the disaster
to bury itself
in the original foam
from which its delirium formerly leapt to the summit
faded
by the same neutrality of abyss

NOTHING

of the memorable crisis
where the event
matured accomplished in sight of all non-existent
human outcomes

WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE
a commonplace elevation pours out absence

BUT THE PLACE
some lapping below as if to scatter the empty act
abruptly that otherwise
by its falsity
would have plumbed
perdition

in this region
of waves
in which all reality dissolves

EXCEPT
at the altitude
PERHAPS
as far as a place fuses with beyond
outside the interest
signalled regarding it
in general
in accord with such obliquity through such declination
of fire
towards
what must be
the Wain also North
A CONSTELLATION
cold with neglect and desuetude
not so much though
that it fails to enumerate
on some vacant and superior surface
the consecutive clash
sidereally
of a final account in formation
attending
doubting
rolling
shining and meditating
before stopping
at some last point that crowns it

All Thought expresses a Throw of the Dice

Sam Trapchak’s Put Together Funny: Lollipopocalypse

2012-01-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

Long Overdue Album Review:

Sam Trapchak’s Put Together Funny: Lollipopocalypse

Sam Trapchak – bass

Tom Chang – Guitar

Greg Ward – Alto Sax

Arthur Vint – Drums

Track 1: Different Dance

From the start I’m amazed at the rhythmic layers that are going on, with only four members. It sounds like such a full band sound, but with a quartet, which is really difficult. Nice, a rhythmic tihi, like an Indian rhythm leading into the bass solo. There is constant accompaniment, with the bass shining through on top. Trapchak has a punchy tight sound that really makes everything feel buoyant and bouncy. The guitarists’ tone brings to mind some of the “New York Sound,” for lack of a better word, like a Brad Shepik/Kurt Rosinwinkle tone. The tune almost hints at a bossa feel, but much more modern. Great composition off the bat!! With the title “different dance” I can’t help but think of those live Zappa recordings where he would play this rhythmically complex music, and then have on stage dance competitions, messing with the audience members. So far the sound of the band right now reminds me of the earlier Dave Holland groups with Steve Coleman, just the rhythmic stew brewing and interlocking a beautiful weave of a groove. I dig that the album opener is the longest tune, and features all the band members soloing (drum solo is going on now), it’s such a great introduction, that concept mixed with this wonderfully upbeat grooving tune.

Track 2: On the Cusp of Cancer

Alright, little more of a rockin’ tune, giving me maybe a Scofield vibe to start out, with the groove and the sound of the guitar. Cool tune, so far very different from the first tune, so I’m ready excited to see what other directions the tunes on this album will take. I’m sold on it, this is awesome stuff! Now that I’ve heard the guitar solo, I was hearing a little of Scott Henderson’s sound. I apologize to anyone reading if they get tired of my comparisons, because obviously everyone is individual and unique, but that’s how I start to think about new music, categorizing it with what I have heard before. The bass solo has begun, and I’m amazing at how well the play off is between the bass, and the accompaniment. As a bassist I always like really open solos, best solos are usually unaccompanied, or only accompanied by drums, and Trapchak is killing it with these busier accompaniment figures behind him. I love improvised music that has this kind of a rock feel, I wish more modern “jazz” had this kind of an genre aesthetic. Saxophonist Greg Ward is destroying the end of this. Again, I feel like I heard kind of an Indian classical music rhythmic figure to end the tune.

Track 3: Long Live/Less Say

Going into the jungle of percussion and wood with the saxophone explorer. Woah, this tune is cool, very unexpected transition, chords, melody, rhythms, and is a really unique tune! The writing on this record is impeccable! Overdubbed guitar, that’s cool to hear the guitar accompanying itself for their solo. I’m curious who the guitarist’s influences are, really plays great stuff! I’m also wondering when Trapchak got his rhythmic influence from; that is one of the most interesting things in this record, to hear all that development, and all those kinds of ideas. The sax solo on this is beautiful, I’m searching for comparisons but am coming up short, and I mean that in the best of ways, it’s really great! Cool tune, it went in a several directions from start to finish.

Track 4: Tongue and Groove

I really want to know about this title! Rhythmic layers, woah, what a complex sound world we have dove into. Now into more of a salsa-esque groove, manipulated through this band’s filter. I can definitely picture walking into a club in New York and hearing these guys wailing, they just have that great sound. Man these layers that just happened during the interlude between the guitar and saxophone, into the guitar solo were awesome, because of the open feeling and space of the saxophone solo, then density, and then wide open spaces again for guitar. Again more guitar overdubs, which is a really creative way to fill the space for a quartet record. I wonder if there is anyway to loop/program this kind of thing for a live setting. I feel like Trapchak has studied some Northern Indian classical music, because I keep hearing these figures that seem to come more out of that world, than jazz or rock, or even European classical music.

Track 5: Losing You

The title is “losing you,” but for some reason it doesn’t sound too sad to my ears. It’s a beautiful tune, so I’ll wait it and let it play out to hear the emotion come out of it. This is the most traditionally “jazz” sound sounding piece I’ve heard so far, it has that smoky ballad vibe, that you can hear the breath of the saxophonist in. The bass solo is great, he has a really rich dark sound, that shines in the low and higher registers. Something about the harmony doesn’t sound happy to me, but doesn’t sound sad, it has more of a blues tone to it that I can’t put my finger on, like a really complex emotional statement, a wash of different feelings.

Track 6: Precious Few

Trapchak really has his rhythmic bag constructed well, it’s the first place my ear goes, trying to figure out what is going on, and how the pieces fit together. There is great counterpoint between all of the voices, and really strong band unity. I like hearing the bass in more of an open context, playing more aggressively, with only the drums behind him. The guitar enters in the middle of the solo, but is very mild, and the bass is still uninterrupted in the flow of ideas. I like how there are a lot of bass solos on the record, it being a bass player’s album, but it feels like a band record. I personally am very averse to albums that are “bass” albums, in that the bass is featured way too much, the tracks/cover is a cheesy manipulation or play on the word bass, and it seems really ego driven. This is a record of MUSIC first, and the bass comes out and gets to show what he can do, improvising and through composition, but doesn’t have that excessively “BASS!!” feel. I would give examples of what I’m thinking about, but I don’t want to be insulting to anyone out there in the musical universe. Great composition!

Track 7: Lollipopocalypse

Ok, where did this word come from?! Lolly pops, pop music, calypso, apocalypse, hmmmm….. Children with candy are bring about the end of the world?! Haahaha, funny title though, and it has a whimsical feel to the tune. More lolly, and less end of days, but that’s how this whole record sounds, it has a very positive vibe, it doesn’t dip into darkness too often. Guitar layers, and now into some rock, part one lolly is over, and now the bombs are dropping, the air raid sirens are blasting, and souls are hurtling to heaven and hell. People are traveling underground to get away from the fallout, dissension in society, yeah, now I’m hearing the nature of the tune and the title. I wish there were more moments like this on the album, more crazy madness, especially with this being the title track. That’s how my ears are though, I just tend towards the more “out” and the more timbral focused stuff, and they’re really going there with this tune. The end rhythms are like the chiming of bells, chiming in the end of the world, the end of the record.

Yet again, my apologies for not getting on this review earlier, but I’m glad I did. This is a great album by a wonderful bassist and composer, Sam Trapchak. Anyone curious about the review should go out and BUY THE ALBUM, Lollipopocalypse!!!!! I’m happy to have listened to it, and gotten a chance to review it, perfect way to start my morning here in the early 2012!!! This record is bringing in the New Year to me right, check it out!

John Cage meets Beethoven, Smiley Series

2012-01-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

This is a short post for two quick projects.

I read in Christian Wolff's collected book of writings, called "Cues," him talking about John Cage. Apparently John Cage told Wolff at one point that "The sound of all nine Beethoven symphonies played at the same time is as experimental as it gets." I thought about this for awhile, and just tonight uploaded videos onto youtube from protools manipulated files of all the movements of all nine Beethoven symphonies split into 24 tracks, and multi tracked on top of each other. You can find the first part of three parts here.

The second part is about "Smiley Series." This began simply with the Fort Collins' Tour de Fat weekend of 2011 hosted by New Belgium brewery, and my friend bringing a slide trumpet along for the bike parade. Later that day, me in my costume (which was a speedo and little else), was jamming out on his slide trumpet, while he took a video. Eventually I got a hold of it and put it on youtube. We thought then I should start a series of one minute videos, playing various instruments, in a speedo. The first video is here, and the one I recorded tonight is here, which is me playing melodica with a "devo" hat on. The next one may involve electronics, or beer bottles, or something of that nature, which other possible variations in location/clothing etc... I want the series to evolve organically, with some basic elements intact, for this performance art scene. Eventually it will be great to stack the audio on top of each other, for an isolated piece, when I have more videos up. Stay tuned and look for "Smiley Series" on youtube!

Kenneth Patchen and the Journal of Albion Moonlight

2011-12-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

I finished while home for Christmas in Virginia Kenneth Patchen's "The Journal of Albion Moonlight." The closest thing that I can say it reminds me of is some of Jack Kerouac's work mixed with James Joyce. There are points in the novel that are telling a story, parts of sheer poetry and imagery, parts of madness and of surrealities, and a complete stretching of form to the point of breaking. I think there is a lot to learn from this novel, and I'm thinking about trying to put some of it through a musical filter. Here's a couple of passages I found intriguing, before we get into the musical talk:

p. 156.

“Chapter II

He quiet and unseeing leave nothing to its fate. The useful dimension of the apple-bird-star-saloon-motorboat-naked cannibal-shadow-safety razor-arcade-jewelbox-baby’s ass-green cloak.

A. An owl in a wasp’s nest.

B. The next step is 1917.

C. Why can’t painting be done from inside the canvas?

D. Put this book on a glass-topped table and fire a bullet through it: it will drop a woman’s face in its own blood.

E. Advance the probably question now. Who put the used postage stamp on the milkyway . . . was it Friar Pierre?

F. The marvelous is in the seaweed’s milk: in the hastily devoured washing machine: in the fragile shudder of the bull dreamwolf.

G. It is all-important to know how you hold your hands in sleep.

H. A shoe made of alligator hid eating a poached egg while whistling to a one-lipped junior high school girl. I am jealous of the tent.

I. What crisis do you speak of? The gesture of fruit is not timid.

J. Keep your swaybacked rowboat. The hurricane lamp shall plaster from this explosive house.

Be quick and unseemly learns what he knows before his head gets around to it. Darling girl! Washed all away by the nasty rain . . . “

p. 162

“In future, men will write as though language were their only dull tool – Which is quite true.”

“When the book is finished, then will be the time to write.”

“The experience that is not impossible is no experience at all.”

“In sculpture the artist must learn the ancient law of his stone.”

“Music can only advance when every known instrument has been destroyed.”

“The painter will strive to exclude all living images from his canvases. He will paint only that which cannot be seen.”

I was thinking about doing a narration project with the first section, and adding some music to it, but I found two longer, more Walt Whitman meets Allen Ginsberg list sections that I want to combine and add music to. The first list is "an answer to my critics," and features a lot of "I am, I will, I may have..." all the while there is another text that is more prose based, that follows the list on the side, as if they are two thoughts going on simultaneously. The next list starts with "So it is the duty of the artist to..." and continues with all the duties of the artist, again with a prose that follows it along down the line.

I have a few ideas of how I want this to work, and with what instrumentation, and will be getting to it in the coming week. I will put it up in a misc. album on bandcamp and link it on a future blog post for anyone that is interested in checking it out. I would post the text from both sections, but they're too long (not that long) for me to re-write out, so you'll have to listen to my narration to hear it. For now, here is Kenneth Patchen reciting some excerpts from the Journal of Albion Moonlight.

Grant Gordy Album Review

2011-12-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

My apologies for these long overdue album reviews, been busy running around with gigs, holiday traveling, trying to organize some future gigs, and all sorts of other mess of stuff. Without further ado, here is one of the CD reviews that I promised:

Grant Gordy: Self-titled

Before I launch into this, Grant is an incredible guitarist from the Colorado area that I have been fortunate enough to play some gigs with, and this album has been a blast to listen to, because of hearing a different side of him, that I don’t get to hear as much with playing straight ahead jazz music at bars and restaurants.

1. Pterodactyl

The album starts off very intriguing, with some mysterious chord progressions, and lines building into a faster groove with a beautifully lined long melody. The band from the down beat sounds incredibly tight, and works as solid unity. I haven’t listened to a lot of bluegrass (newgrass?) in recent years, so this sound is very fresh in my ears this morning as I write this. Grant has some many great ideas, and you can hear it in his compositions and his improvising lines, a real inventive creativity. I’m trying to picture the flight of the Pterodactyl as we’re getting into a bowed bass section with violin soloing overtop. Really great repetitive ending, reminiscence to my ear to some of the Flecktones music I used to listen to growing up.

2. Channel One

Woah, right out of the gate, there are some really ear-catching rhythms and harmonies. Those are the kind of harmonies that make me twist my head, as they sound out, but have logical structure so it all works out formally! I can’t tell if those are some Coltrane changes, or what, but the violinist is navigating them in his solo effortlessly, and then right into the short interlude/pass off to the mandolinist. I’m only a few tracks through listening to the album as I’m reviewing it, and really want to hear this band play live! There is a breakdown at the start of the guitar solo, really digging into new territory with this composition. Woah again, wasn’t expecting this spacey, timbre-focused interlude into the rhythmic out section of the piece. Killer!

3. Little Grapes

The bass and violin blend beautiful with their arco accompaniment, to this slower pretty melody. As the first melodic statement ends, it picks up again faster, with more active banjo accompaniment, and takes off. I dig this catchy melody! There is a killer mandolin breakdown, into these quick sendoffs and Grant starting his solo. There is nice interaction between the band accompanying him, and the space left by here and there with the guitar solo, and effortless transition into the next solo. I’d be really curious to see how this music is written out, having never played anything like this before, and how quick the trading is going on right now between some of the instruments. I don’t know why, but the lines leading into the out head reminded me of a river scene, and maybe this restatement of the melody could be being on the boat.

4. Interlude

This reminds me more of 20^th century classical music, a little bit like Morton Feldman, or Penderecki, definitely stretching out, almost getting to a breaking point, before the final resolution.

5. Motif for Leif

This from the start gives me a gypsy music vibe. I am very curious as to whom Leif is, to get more context on the tune. Yeah, just a nice swinging jazzy tune that the violinist so far is running away with on his solo. Time for the guitar solo, and really interested rhythmic activity, and variation of range, tasty and unique! Short bass solo with some breaks, into a mandolin solo (or trading with the bass?), nice way to break up things. What a cool tune, with a well thought out arrangement!

6. Mansa Sissoko

Having a great violinist and bassist really help with what you can do with these tunes. This opening arco section is a treat, as now the band is kicking in adding to the fray. I’m still trying to feel how the time and groove sit as the mandolin is coming in. The bass arco sound is huge, and reminding somewhat of Edgar Meyer with Bela Fleck and Mike Marshall. As I’m sitting almost halfway through the record, I’m amazed at the variety of music I’ve heard so far, and the different ways Grant uses the same band in different ways and combinations. I don’t know what the title of the tune means, but I dig the low end kinda funky groove and lilt that this tune has.

7. Blues to Dawg

This track features David Grisman on mandolin, and is written for the “Dawg.” Some of the first jazz stuff I heard from back in the day, the acoustic records with Grisman and Jerry Garcia playing some Miles Davis tunes like “Milestones” and “So What,” so this is a real treat for me to hear! It’s a real nice down tempo slow bluesy tune that has a lot of soul. Grant’s guitar is floating over the top, while inspiring some traditional blues flavor. It might be because of the instrumentation, but this melody coming in right after the solos is giving me a Parisian jazz vibe, of sitting in the café and watching the French folk go by. What a great tribute tune to Grisman!

8. Digging Hargreaves

This is the first time I’m really reminded that there is no drums and/or percussionist on the album. It doesn’t need it at all, but hearing all that space in the beginning of the tune, I automatically hear a ghost drum groove filling in the space. Man, the guitar is really stretching out on this solo, and the rhythmic accompaniment is blowing my mind! Anyways, there is no need of drums in this band, the groove are so tight from start to finish, that it is not lacking rhythmically by any means. I just realized I think this is a rhythm changes kind of tune, cool beans! Oleo quote by the bassist, solid Jackson! Man, I’d love to transcribe that tune and play it on a jazz gig!

9. The Desert, The Ocean

This tune is composed by most of the band, and the only tune on the record like that. I’m curious as to what direction the tune is going into with that in mind. I’m writing too much on this so far, because I am loving hearing the tune unfold so much, that I don’t want to waste the listening moment with words. It’s definitely taking an aural journey in a new uncharted way. The piece is floating in a foggy sea of memories…. And out of the fog and into the tight unison lines and breaks, that this band is so great at nailing.

10. Goodbye Liza Jane

This is the only tune on album that is a traditional, and the title to me sounds familiar, but I don’t know if I remember the melody. This sounds the most traditional so far, but the introduction to it was still custom tailored for this band, and you wouldn’t hear in a pickup bluegrass jam. This tune expressed the joy of playing this kind of music, and the buoyant feel of being able to show the creative spirit to the world. Peter Kowert, the bassist, is really nailing that deep and heavy Edger Meyer arco sound, more than any other bass player I’ve ever heard, I wonder if he has spent some time studying with him.

11. Lauren’s Waltz

This seems to be the first ballad styled tune on the album, a slow melodic waltz. This is the kind of track that I want to put on repeat, and dig into the emotion that it brings. It’s very beautiful, and very spacious, like a sunset over a plain. I don’t have a lot to say for this, just buy the album, and it really will speak for itself. Again, I don’t want to ruin the moment and the feeling of this piece, you’ll have to check it out yourself as a listener to dive into this sound world.

12. Lila

This seems a two part work, coming out of the waltz, and slowly building into this simmer boil of “Lila.” Quiet intensity, it’s a hard concept to get, but this piece has it. This opening reminds me of Philip Glass a little with the repetitive eighth note accompaniment to the melody. Speaking on the two-part aspect of this piece and the one before it, this album is really well thought out. The pacing, the variety, the tune selection and ordering, it really feels like a well-constructed record, and not just an album of isolated music. The interlude in the middle, and the conclusion coming up give me that feeling of a total full product. There is a storm a brewing with this, like a heavy weighted feeling, not of dread, but a certain somber tone that gives it a different emotional feel from the other compositions. Yet again, Grant is able to surprise the listener by the range and wealth of his musical abilities and ideas.

13. Conclusion

This last minute long statement is solo guitar, that is a hopeful, and mysterious, almost unresolved idea of what is to come. It’s a feeling of closure, but that there is more to come down the line from this musician.

That’s all for this album review, be on the lookout for another album review (long overdue, again, my apologies) of Sam Trapchak’s “Lollipopocalypse.” Check out Grant Gordy’s record though, and if you’re in the Colorado area lookout for his gigs, and be on the lookout for David Grisman’s band when they’re touring for Grant’s guitar wizardy with that band. BUY THIS ALBUM, you won’t regret it, dive into his musical mind, you know you want to!!

Free Jazz vs. Free Improv part 2 (another list!)

2011-11-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

I've already collected a lot of different groups, but am adding more things together to make this work. It seems since I started this project of looking at free improvisation, free jazz, etc... I've come to a little bit of a conclusion. To me, or my definition so to speak, I tend to view Free Improv as a musical art that comes more out of 20th century compositional techniques, and Free Jazz coming simply out of jazz. Both worlds though are attempts at shattering barriers, and going to the extreme of what can be done. So without further ado, a partial list of some great free improv albums:

1) AMM - AMMusic 1966

You can hear a clip of the album here. This group has existed since the 1960s, and as far as I know continues to exist via the duo of pianist John Tilbury and percussionist Eddie Prevost. This specific album though is before Tilbury was a member, and includes, Prevost on percussion, Lou Gare on saxophone/violin, Cornelius Cardew on piano/cello/electronics, Keith Rowe on guitar, radio and electronics, and Lawrence Sheaff on cello/clarinet/accordian/radio. This group to me is the quintessential band, they would get together once a week, not talk about the music at all, get their instruments out, and just start playing. The sounds became more quieter and involved more silences as part of the music, the later the band got. There are many different incarnations of the group, but if you want to find more out about them check out the spiral cage blog.

2) AMM/Musica Elettronica Viva - Apogee

There was an early record on Earle Brown's label that featured both groups, each on a different side of the record. Much later in history the band's actually recorded together in 2004. MEV seemed to go more in the electronics direction than AMM, and also incredible at having a huge sound/timbral world to aurally dive into. The AMM musicians on the album are Eddie Prevost, Keith Rowe and John Tilbury, while the MEV musicians are Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum, and Frederic Rzewski. Both groups had more members than that throughout their career, but these are very much some of the core players from each ensemble. Really incredible wild and free music!

3) Cornelius Cardew - Treatise (2 different albums)

I am keeping a thread going so far with AMM and Cardew to start off with. Part of my free improv album list will involve playing written music, as much of an oxymoron as that sounds. Cardew composed a mammoth 193 page graphic score (with no instructions on what to do with it) in the late 1960s and there are two great recordings, to my knowledge, of the piece in its entirety. I have heard rumor of eventually a Boston musician release of Treatise heading by Stephen Drury, but do not know the update on that. The two versions of Treatise are first the QUaX Ensemble, which is a group that Cardew worked with, directed by Petr Kotik, and is the first version ever performed (as far as I know) in 1967. This is a 2 hour version, and is very raw and intense. The other version of Treatise is much later, conducted by Art Lange, featuring Jim O'Rourke, Jim Baker, Guillermo Gregorio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Carrie Biolo, who are mostly all Chicago musicians. The version of the piece is also about 2 hours long, and features more space and silences, and more electronics. This is a more mystical sounding recording to my ears, like polished, free, and slightly mechanical (not in a bad way).

4) Sonic Youth - Goodbye 20th Century

This is another oxymoron album, that is the band with special guests, Christian Wolff, William Winant, Jim O'Rourke, Christian Marclay, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi performing works of the 20th century like Wolff's "Edges," and "Burdocks," Reich's "Pendulum music," and works by John Cage, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Cornelius Cardew, James Tenney and more. This album seems to exploit the more improvisatorial pieces from the 20th century and puts it through the Sonic Youth's filter. It's a really wild and free record, that due to the nature of the some of the pieces, calls for a large variety of improvisational settings. This is an incredible record, and I am very glad that you have a mix of rock musicians, composers, and experimental musicians all working together for this large project.

5) Earle Brown - Folio and Four Systems

This is a tzadik release of Earle Brown's music. Earle Brown is another great composer, that did come out of jazz, and wrote different modular pieces, and pieces that put the performer's into new spaces. This collection of some of his freer work involved a plethora of musicians who are paying homage to this incredible composer. A lot of very free and varied versions of his music, featuring Stephen Drury, Mark Feldman, Merzbow, Christian Wolff, Wadada Leo Smith, Joan La Barbara, Larry Polansky, Morton Subotnik, and many others.

6) Joelle Leandre/Steve Lacy - One More Time

Now to get back to the totally free improvisational stuff, this duo record is one of the first truly free albums I ever picked up. The communication between the two musicians is really something beautiful to behold. Leandre is one of my favorite bass players, and i was fortunate to hear her duo with Matthew Shipp in Montreal in 2007. Any record that she is on, is a record blessed to my ears.

7) Peter Kowald/William Parker - The Victoriaville tape

These are two other of my favorite free players, and to me this is kind of on the line between free improv and free jazz, not to be picky. Both played with legends of Free Jazz, both all over the world, but to hear them together as two bassist approaching music in such a wild sonic field, with such a wide range of emotions, the thought of jazz never crossed my mind. This is a recent find, as I have very much been on a search for Peter Kowald albums. As a bassist myself I really dig that in some of Kowald's own solo performances, he would throat sing into the F hole of his bass! Check him out here!

8) Peter Evans/Nate Wooley - High Society

I have actually not heard this album yet, but have heard several live bootlegs of this duo, and their own solo projects, and their bands. These two are younger trumpet players on the scene, and are so much in the sound world of what a trumpet can do. It really is completely mind-blowing what both these individuals, and as a unit can do. Between the two of them they could completely re-write extended technique for the trumpet, so check this duo out, and any bands featuring either of these musicians!

I am running short of time right now, and just want to get this long awaited blog post done and out. I have focused a little too much on the 20th century compositional side, and there are tons of free improv musicians to check out in the world today, who specialize in doing mostly that. I wanted to have a partial list of some free improv/new music groups, and leave it to you readers to go from there!

Here goes:

Fluxus

ONCE group

Foss improvisational ensemble

La Monte Young's theatre of eternal music

Ongaku Kosugi's group

New music ensemble of Davis

Sonic Arts group of New York

Gruppo 70 in Florence

Derek Bailey

Evan Parker's various ensembles

John Zorn

Robert Dick

Mark Dresser

Barry Guy

the list goes on.... but check out as many of these people as you can find, attack it voraciously!

Be on the lookout for some CD review blog posts coming up, and a Zorn interview transcription of his "theatre of musical optics."

Frederic Rzewski - Plan for Spacecraft

2011-11-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Frederic Rzewski - Plan for Spacecraft

"Form for a music that has no form. We begin with a group of performers and an idea. The idea concerns two kinds of space: occupied and created space. Each performer occupies a part of the space, which can be a theater, concert hall, radio station, or whatever. This space is corporeal and has limits defined by the performer's own body. his materials are the space around him, the objects within it, and his own body. His medium is the vibrating atmosphere. By means of concentrated energy, he excites the air, creating a situation in which lines of force are set up between himself and other persons. These alternating rhythms produce a sense of liberation in those whose ears they greet.

Each performer considers his own situation as a sort of labyrinth. Each begins by making music in the way in which he knows how, with his own rhythms, his own choice of materials, et cetera, without particular regard for the others, or for setting up some kind of simple ensemble situation. This primitive ensemble, however, is superficial and has nothing to do with the fundamental unit that is the final goal of the improvisation. He beings by making music in an already familiar way; he does not transcend himself and does not consider that he is creating anything or doing anything that he has not done already at one time or another. He sees himself as imprisoned in a labyrinth with many corridors; at the center of this labyrinth he imagines something like a movie screen with a loudspeaker; images flash across the screen and sounds emanate from the speaker, both without interruption. These images and sounds are incomprehensible orders snapped at him by an unknown master whom he feels compelled to obey. They are archaic runes and magic symbols whose meaning is unknown - all he knows is that action is required of him. The only action he knows is that of moving from one place to another within the labyrinth: left, right, forwards, and backwards, all the time with the more or less vague intention of getting out.

The images and sounds flashing at him are formulae drawn from the reservoir of tradition, that which he knows as art, which has been transmitted to him in various ways and is registered in his mind. They are like dream-images and appear to have a certain meaning expressed in the form of command; but they also seem to have a deeper, secret meaning that is incomprehensible. The commands are not specific, they are only commands. The response to them is to move spontaneously, executing already learned actions and empty gestures: mechanical repetitions of the past. His mind is like a complicated organ with many keys: an "inspiration" key, a "composition" key, a "communication with God" key, a "Beethoven" key, a "Stockhausen" and a "Cage" key: one for every myth. This is all right; he is a practiced musician and knows that he has a battery of arms at his disposal. He knows that if one thing does not satisfy him he can immediately flip a switch and turn on something else. This is his virtuosity. But he has done nothing to escape from his labyrinth, he is still reading images flashing across his individual mind, he has not transformed the space in any way.

Each performer begins by making his own music in his own way. The result is chaos, a great tumult and confusion of sound, with occasional chance harmonies which appear for a moment and then vanish, sometimes with clashing forces: sounds battering against each other and trying to push each other out of the way. Each person is contained within his own labyrinth. The object of the music-making is to escape from his labyrinth. The way out of the labyrinth is not forwards or backwards, to the left or to the right, but up. To go up it is necessary to fly. The performer must enter into someone else's labyrinth.

Now, two things can happen: either miraculously, by magic, music will immediately result; or, as is more likely, music will not happen, and the tumult will continue and tend to grow worse, or the harmonies will become more superficial. It is difficult to make music. If the magic takes over and the music happens, the entire space and everything in it will be transformed; the audience, too, will be drawn into the music and eventually contribute to it, either by producing sound or by remaining silent.

In the event that the magic does not operate, the performer finds himself confronted with a heavy task. He beings to search the atmosphere for lines which may unite his rhythms with those coming from other sources; he begins to examine his own rhythms, searching for those which he can cast out, hoping that someone will attach himself to them. It is as if each man were an atom floating in space, emanating feelers towards other atoms. Manifold tentacles of rhythm creep out from each vibrating body, catching hold of each other. Very slowly a single, fundamental rhythm, with which all of the musician can join in one way or another, begins to emerge from the chaos. As each person lends his weight to this rhythm, as if to a central pendulum, its force increases. A general oscillation, which forms the tonic for everyone's individual music, sets in: it is as if a giant molecule were taking form out of nothing. The relations, manifold, between the individual parts of this structure make it, as a whole, infinitely richer than the individual musics with which the process began.

The performer finds that he has been transported into a new situation in which there are other laws of gravity. He discovers a new economy of energy; he is almost weightless and is able to move with fantastic ease. The energy, which formerly had been expended in the general tumult and conflict, is now used more efficiently, used to move the giant pendulum. By placing his balance upon this fundamental rhythm, he finds he can devote his energies to the adornment of this rhythm, to its enrichment with smaller and more complex sub-rhythms. Ultimately, the sound of the players oscillating in a harmonic relationship with one another will acquire an unimaginable richness and fineness, completely transferring the individual musics. The spirit, endowed with grace, will ascend from the body, escape from the spatial limits of the body, and become one with the atmosphere in vibration - it will be everywhere the sound is. The space will no longer be occupied, but created. If this desired transformation of space takes place, it will not be magic (which should have happened immediately) but rather the creating of conditions where music becomes possible at the end of a long process. It will be work. The difference between magic and work is one of duration. It is possible that this work process may not take place at all. Two negative conditions can result. The tumult and confusion may grow worse. Or, the performer may find himself with nothing to do, nothing to say: he is surrounded by nothing and in him there is nothing. In both cases it is possible to transform a negative condition into a positive one.

The first case is that of conflict. Here the performer's task will be to give vent to violence in his music, and in an extreme form: to push the conflict further and let it break out into open warfare. He must localize and isolate the sources of resistance to the music, the inertia which interferes with the oscillation of the pendulum, and direct his energies aggressively toward the breaking-down of that inertia. Everyone must become aware of where the resistance lies and that the music is not taking place. The resistance may be in the performers, or in the audience, or both. The experienced performer's secret knowledge is that the resistance is normally in himself. The imagined hostility of the audience or of the other performers is a projection of a negative state, a hallucination manufactured to prevent strangers from entering into the performer's labyrinth. In this case. the performer is already at war with himself; it is too late for negotiations. One side must win, the other must lose. Before there can be peace there must be a clash of arms, a total thrust of the self into the struggle. An extreme state must be demanded of the body in order that the body accept other terms. The warlike situation is merely another form of work.

The second case, that of drifting in nothingness, is more critical because the body lacks the energy to plunge itself into conflict. It is a situation of silent hatred. The performer has been or is being destroyed. In this second case four courses of action are possible. These courses of action are consequences of different interpretations of nothing. Although they may all be necessary at different times, and may, at least within the limited framework of music-making, have no lethal consequences, they are to be considered as arranged within a scale expressing an ascending order of truthfulness and, therefore, of desirability. (1) To be destroyed = to do nothing. It is to deny the possibility of creation, to interpret nothing as absolute. The duration of this state of "drifting" must be as short as possible. (2) To destroy = to make a gesture of total negativity, to produce a change, any change that will transform the state of things. To destroy is to interpret nothing as if it were something out of which something else is to be formed. A negative force is mistaken for creation. The mind cannot see beyond the possibility of a single, blinding act, which would bring nothingness in its wake. (3) To put on a professional mask = to conceal, to falsify, to draw upon the reservoir of formulae that constitutes one's virtuosity, to save appearances. This is to interpret nothing as if it were a vacuum, to be filled with something already existing; it is to transfer something from one place to another, like the convict who is punished by being made to dig a hole and then fill it up again. It may save appearances, but it perpetuates a lie. It is not creation. (4) To go back to point zero = to wipe the slate clean, return to the original situation, begin the piece again. To return to zero is to identify with nothing. It is the only creative attitude. It is to take zero as the common denominator between oneself and all other creatures, to admit the possible identity of oneself and all that is and is not.

By returning to zero the performer reaffirms the possibility of accomplishing his original task. The music continues to live. He may have to go through this experience once, twice, several times during the course of a performance. But, as everything which has a soul is mortal, this cycle must also end. There may be insuperable obstacles which bar the way to music. The obstacles may never be overcome, and the piece will end in exhaustion.

Three possible courses of the music have been described:

1) The goal was achieved instantaneously, through magic.

2) It was arrived at after a natural and necessary duration, through work.

3) It was never found at all.

The third result will be as acceptable as the first two because of its excellence, but with the difference that it communicates sadness, whereas the others were joyous.

A final note with regard to the situation at the beginning of this piece. Here, the performer is not entirely without responsibilities; he does not merely begin to play in any way whatsoever. Since this piece is based on an idea, although it has no necessary form, and this idea is the transformation of space from one state to another state, the music at the beginning must express what state it is that exists at the moment when this transformation is about to be attempted. We consider the audience as being in a state of ignorance. The space in its present state is non-musical, it is merely occupied; the people, including the musicians, are merely what they are and always have been: flesh, bound and finite, imprisoned in labyrinths, repositories of the past, automata. There is, however, a state of expectation, of general anticipation that an attempt is going to be made to bring about another state of things. What the musicians have to make clear is that this change is not just any change, but a fundamental one: the redemption of the space and of everything in it.

For what the audience does not yet realize, before the beginning of the music, is that the space which it occupies is profane, dominated by demons, and that those demons are themselves. Each individual is a worshipper of images; what is going to happen now is that images are going to be smashed and meaningful rituals created in their place. The air is charged with stupidity, complacency, inaction, slavery; it is poisonous, and we have to become fully aware of its loathsomeness. The music now must necessarily be demonic, because demons are everywhere - even in the musicians. The musician is possessed; the first sound that he strikes must be one of terror. The breaking of the silence is a breaking of the spell of stupidity which shrouds the soul. The sound, which may be called "anti-music," awakens the soul to its demonic state; and only then may the exorcism begin, the struggle to cast lines through the tumult to another soul."

This article/piece is found in issue no. 3 of Larry Austin's "The Source" magazine, a wonderful resource of avant garde music from the late 60s/early 70s. I couldn't find the text online, so I typed it up, my apologies if there are some transcription errors. There were a few lines in this that reminded me of performing Edges with Christian Wolff several years ago in a large ensemble. There were moments where various performers were stuck in their own labyrinth and simply moved from one thing that they knew, to something else that they knew. There were others that became so musically frustrated, with either themselves of the ensemble, that they chose to sit in silence, for 10 minutes or more at a time. Then there were few moments of actual violence, where the inner struggle/conflict became too much, and loud percussive noises from one member of the ensemble took over, but was incredibly musically necessary. This is one of the BEST writing that I've ever seen as far as what happens with free improvisation, and what options are out there. Rzewski was a member of group MEV, and an incredible pianist and composer. Check out his variations on "the people united will never be defeated" here.

Stay tuned for more blog posts, one on free improvisation recordings/groups, and another two on CD releases of Grant Gordy and Sam Trapchak.

Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Patchen and Music

2011-11-06T11:23:00.000-08:00

I want to start this post off talking about books and seque into music at the end. I have been reading a lot since this last late summer and went through the entire Song of Fire and Ice series by George R. R. Martin, which is the series that has spawned the HBO series "Game of Thrones." Needless to say it's a great read and very addictive. Since finishing the last book up a few weeks ago, I'm finally able to dive into a lot more recent collections and half started books that have been sitting around. Right now I am reading two separate collections of Jack Kerouac, one is a short book of poems, and another is some of his very early writings, "Atop an Underwood." I came across this passage in [I Am Going to Stress a New Set of Values]:

"P.S. Whenever you get tired of everything, go down to a saloon, or a pin-ball machine house, or jump in the river. However, if you do it every day like I do, you don't get anywhere. But who wants, as Nick says, to go anywhere? And furthermore, you can get sick of everything every day like I do and be one thing:--A casual poet with no regrets, no excess baggage, and humour and intelligence and goodnight my old mad masters, so long and forget it. It is no harm. That's the idea of it all. How many times do I have to tell you. Sleep it off in bed, and when you wake up, work yourself up to a lather, world it all day, then go back to sleep it off at night, unless you have a woman with you in bed. In that case, don't sleep right away, but be sure to do so after you've spent. Good night, boys. The Grim Reaper isn't grim at all; he's a life-saver. He isn't grim because he isn't anything. . . . he is nothing. And nothing is a hell of a lot better than anything. So long, boys."

The other book that I have started up is Kenneth Patchen's "The Journal of Albion Moonlight." It is a dark and surrealistic book that involves a tale of descent into madness. Throughout the first 30-40 pages that I've read it has been changing writing styles, and referencing missing pages, and the main character's split personality taking over, with these pointed statements that are more philosophical that come out. It's an incredible read, and strangely fitting for my life right now. To hear the author reading some of the passages go here and here, which were released on folkways records (and I'm currently looking for it).

I found out about this author via John Hollenbeck. The new Claudia Quintet + 1 record features Theo Bleckmann and Kurt Elling which you can listen to some of and purchase here.

Almost all of the music on the album is Patchen's words set for either singers with this sextet. It's an incredible project and I highly recommend purchasing this CD!

I also have found now that Peter Brotzmann released an album several years ago "Be Music, Night" which is an homage to Kenneth Patchen. The group is the Chicago Tenet, which features an incredible array of Chicago's jazz/avant musicians, like Ken Vandermark, Joe Mcphee, Paul Nilssen-Love and several more. I'm still trying to get a copy of this, but you can purchase it at jazzloft's website here.

The last finding that I'm also looking up is a radio play from that Patchen worked with John Cage on called "The City Wears a Slouch Hat." You can here some of it on youtube here, and purchase it here. I don't know much about this, but I definitely will find this soon!

I will probably have some more Patchen updates from time to time, as there is a lot to check out and dig into, but enjoy the links, and purchase some of this music!

Ochion Jewell - First Suite for Quartet, Album Review

2011-10-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

Album Review: Ochion Jewell’s First Suite for Quartet

Yet again, kind of a stream of consciousness review, like both of my review’s of the Dawn of Midi’s albums. I am simply listening through and writing what I’m hearing.

Track 1: From Dust

The album starts off with some dark meets light saxophone and piano duet with great contrasts of sound. It’s a slow build as bass and drums punctuate the space. So far really enjoying how the tune is building up, and reminds me of the bad plus (part of this is the drum sound, and the bass interaction) with saxophone. It is definitely it’s own beast, and going into sonic territories that are now more similar to Giacinto Scelsi’s music, and then Erik Satie. This track is going through a journey, and I can’t wait to see where the album takes me next. This is some beautiful music! I would love to know how this piece is written out, really great use of the different combinations of instrumentation, so that not all quartet members are playing all the time, from the start and finish of the track. There are flourishes of piano, with heavy Pharaoh-esque melodic weight, driving towards a triumphant end to the tune. The rhythm section closes this out with a quiet coda that leads into the next cut.

Track 2: A Snakeride Through The Fog

This is a great sounding band, and really original music. Moments here and there remind of different things, but this is a totally unique sound. Powerful rocking bass, unison lines, deep pocket, jarring but not jarring rhythms. Yeah, starting to hear more saxophone colors and timbres. I don’t know if we’re on the ride, or riding through the fog right now, but we are in some solid terrain of a crazy piano solo. It’s out, but in, there seems to be a constant focus of playing the written music, and playing freely, but the connection between the two is incredibly strong. Now going onto hear the sax stretch a little more without piano accompaniment. It’s amazing how something as simply as that changes the sound so much (and the way the drums/bass react to that change). I wonder if this was recorded as one large unit (the suite) with how seemless the transitions are from track to track.

Track 3: “…but there goes the baddest, lone-ass wolf I ever did know.”

This is what I’m talking about, free vs. composed, back and forth very quickly, and making a lot of composition sense. The balance that is struck is perfect. Finally hearing some more of the bass coming out of the texture to solo. You can really hear the wood and really hear the full instrument, as there are some chords, open strings, harmonics ringing. This bass player is killing, some of the lines reminiscent of Dave Holland at one step, or Reid Anderson, or Charlie Haden (regardless this guy is unique and a great bassist). The trio is starting to build up around the bass in support, and both piano and drums are comping in their own creative ways. This track has a lot of continuity while going into a lot of different directions through out, sonically very open and coloristic. Accelerating now into maybe a send off soon into the next part of the suite. We’re swinging now, four to the floor, playing the jazz, and keep on speeding up. Here it goes quickening into free sound, while staying quiet and not equally accelerating with crescendo. DRUM SOLO!! I don’t know what kind of kit this guy has, but it sounds like a world of drum sounds. This reminds me a lot of Elvin Jones on a Love Supreme, transitioning from one movement to the next.

Track 4: []Zero-1[]

Rockin, wild clusters, high energy, thuds and crashes, this is incredible!! Deceptively taking the feel down and melodically quiet, and back to the crashes. The sax starts improvising more in the quieter space, and then suddenly builds into the hardcore section (This now is starting to sound like a weird blues all of a sudden; one to the four chord). I really dig the contrast between the short quiet section (like a reverse tension and release) and the longer aggressive section. Band synergy, as everyone is feeling everything together, from the dynamics, to rhythmic play, just taking the sonic trip with ears wide open. Sax solo alone, maybe a foreshadowing of what’s next to come! It’s great to hear this stretch out, what a great command of timbre, facility, ideas, KILLER! This reminds me a lot of Ellery Eskelin in a way, but totally himself.

Track 5: Nectar

Now we are on to more of a Charles Lloyd ballad-esque tune, with a beautiful transition from one to another. This also sounds like Late Coltrane’s more melodic ballad material. Wow what a beautiful tune, and perfectly organized within the suite, to go from the noisier rocking tune, to sax solo, to ballad, well thought out conception. The bass player is opening up more on this and is featured and supported in a clear and inspiring way. This track really shows the depth of the group, and the range of what they are capable of. The torch is passed to the piano now, I can almost picture this piece breaking open and played even freer, maybe that’s the direction we’re going into.

Track 6: Atonement

Maybe this is the freer direction I was hearing after the end of the last piece. There is some really great interaction between the bass and sax and piano sticking out to my ears here. The blend between the bass and sax is incredible here; it’d be fun to hear them play in a duo setting at some point, with the bass playing arco. It is building, rising, sound filling the space, heavy but light, and dying back down into a new section. Sounds like a similar concept of the last piece Nectar, but darker, and more sobering. Unison, repetition, with space, the drums are playing a little freer on it. I’m not sure where it’s heading, but this last idea sounds like it could be ripe for some kind of a drum solo, with everything the rest of the band is doing staying the same.

Track 7: You are my sunshine

I can’t help but think of Ben Monder’s version of this tune on his album Excavation. This is a dark version of it, then simple and elegant with the piano playing it straight, and gives the listener a feeling of almost gospel, but not quite getting there all the way (nor does that intention seem there). I wonder what the story/idea behind this specific piece, and it’s arrangement…

Man, what a great record! Please pick this album up; it’s a great sounding conceptual work that really is in the tradition of the jazz suite, while maintaining a new fresh modern sound. Grab this record!! Check him out at myspace, or his website here.

More websites, and TREATISE ONLINE!

2011-10-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

Alright, I've been doing a lot of interneting/computing in the last few days and here's the results:

My friend Thad told me about a site called piano files, which can be found here. You essentially set up a profile, list what pdfs of scores you have, and trade scores with other people online. Before I would go on scridb and look for scores/jazz transcriptions/books in pdf file format. That site is great, but it seems like there is a lot of junk on it, and hard to search for specific items. Pianofiles been incredibly helpful so far, to find scores that would cost a lot of money to try and rent from Europe (only can be found in Europe), and/or don't circulate on interlibrary loan, and/or out of print. I am very interested in curious about how different 20th/21st century composers notate music/ideas, and it seems like going to the score is the only way to find out the method of their madnesses (listening to it helps, but sometimes the process/notation doesn't come out too clear in the writing, especially with open form pieces like Christian Wolff's Edges, or Earle Brown's December 1952).

The other internet of note is that I am in the middle of re-bouncing Treatise to large WAV files and uploading it online to the same bandcamp site that has the Ornette Free Jazz show. So by the time you read this the entire recording of TREATISE by Cornelius Cardew that I made will be online to stream/download. So now there are two albums of music available, live Ornette and multi-tracked recorded Treatise.

I will be updating blog soon with my Free Improv/Free Jazz part two album list, showing my list of Free Improv recordings.

New Bandcamp websites

2011-09-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Just an archival update here. I have released my dazzle show from a year ago as a free download on bandcamp. You can check out the bandcamp website here, and listen to our version of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman," "Free Jazz," and "Theme from a symphony."

ALSO, my new band MTM has a bandcamp website as well, right here. I will be uploaded music from time to time on that site continuing with our rehearsals and Zoe's concert series. MTM is presenting a performance of John Zorn's COBRA at the Laughing Goat, Oct 9th (sunday) 8pm-10:30pm. Finally COBRA is getting outside of Greeley!

Free Jazz vs. Free Improv (A List!)

2011-09-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

I preface this post with a few statements. Genres don't matter all that much to me, and especially as an outsider trying to define other people's music, as everyone has a personal approach to how they label their music. For example Yusef Lateef does not like the term "jazz" whereas someone like John Hollenbeck simply refers to his music as "new music." This is my own opinion for starters, and even given that some things in so called "free music" are very much composed. Let's take these terms now for what they are:

Free Jazz is a music that usually comes out jazz musicians, jazz tradition, or inspired by the first generation of avant garde jazz musicians. There usually are (or can have) very jazz related elements to this music, like swing, blues, specific harmonies (or modes), form, jazz instrumentation, and others. Free Jazz, say in the sense of Ornette Coleman's music, usually involves still swinging (playing in time), walking bass lines (but sometimes with ostinatos), swing patterns in the drums (but freed up), playing a head, having multiple soloists, playing an outhead. There is a lot of form to his music, even if the improvisations are the thing in which the form gets stretched. Listen to "Peace" from "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and you'll hear they are playing that form, even though it's a pretty advanced form, especially for the late 1950s, early 1960s. Even Ornette's piece "Free Jazz" has composed interludes, solo order, swing feel (one drummer/bassist playing medium swing, walking bass lines, the other drummer/bassist playing doubletime). The recording of Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" is very free, but it also is still very much in the jazz tradition, and very much follows a form.

My goal with this post was not only to try and define the music, and give some examples, but also a list (off the top of my head today) of ten great recordings of both free jazz and of free improvisation, which I feel are very different worlds. So without further ado, my Free Jazz List:

1. Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz

As discussed already, this is one of the first albums of freely improvised jazz music, with improvised backgrounds, and open ended solo forms (Some solos are less than two minutes, and Ornette's solo is 9 minutes). An incredible record, as well as featuring a large ensemble vs. a combo setting. This is also rare because of the use of two drummers and two bassists.

2. Ornette Coleman - Shape of Jazz to Come

This album was made soon after Ornette's classic quartet with Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden and Don Cherry moved from California to New York. Everyone in the jazz world came out to hear this band play at the five spot, which was their first engagement in the city (those would have been some amazing concerts, wonder if any bootlegs of that exist). These tunes are on the freer side, breaking away from walking bass lines, chord changes, AABA tunes, but several tunes still have a very identifiable in-head, solos (over the form), out-head. It is a revolutionary album, while having a foot in tradition and a foot in the future.

3. Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity

Albert Ayler said that John Coltrane was the father, Pharoah Sanders the son, and that he was the holy ghost. This is a great trinity of the free jazz tenor saxophone masters (add in Dewey Redman and Archie to this!) This album is probably his most well known, featuring Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock. Supposedly there is an unrecorded Paul Bley Quartet featuring all of these musicians, that did some tours back in the day (I can't imagine those sounds!). This record features more attention to timbre in the saxophone, and a more emotional approach, while playing very folk-like tunes, that are essentially diatonic. There is a lot of power in the music, and a freer approach to playing as a rhythm section. Gary Peacock plays very broken patterns, and Sunny Murray, from what I remember reading an interview in Signal to Noise, was doing a lot of work with studying acoustics of sound, and really exploring that world. The Music is incredible, and I feel like THIS is really what started leading people in totally free music (outside of jazz completely).

4. John Coltrane - Ascension

Sort of Coltrane's response to Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz. It is similar to that instrumentation setup, except with only one drummer, add piano, and more horns. There seems to be more free playing in this than on "Free Jazz" and is built more on chords and modes (which apparently were given as a guidelines, not necessarily having to follow them). There are solos with the rhythm section accompaniment, that always build into large free group forays, but as far as I can tell, these is not a lot of composition involved, but definitely a form.

5. Alan Silva - Seasons

This is something I found (took a long time!) via a great article from Thurston Moore of the Sonic Youth on the avant garde. This is an incredible 3 LP set on the BYG Actuel Label, which I highly reccomend to anyone interested in avant garde jazz. It shows the late 60s early 70s scene in France, when lots of American musicians moved there. This recording features a large ensemble of most of the people involved in the scene, like Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Dave Burrell, and many others. I haven't listened to it in awhile, but as a I recall, there is a whole lot of group interplay, individual solos, and it's just a swamp of great free music!

6. Jazz Composers' Orchestra of America - The Jazz Composers' Orchestra

This swamp of sound is also amazing. I downloaded the scores to all of the pieces, and eventually want to put together a concert of this music, but that's at least a year away. This group was founded by Bill Dixon, and led by Carla Bley and Michael Mantler. This double LP features Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, Steve Swallow, Charlie Haden, just to name a few. The bass section alone is ridiculous. This reminds me less of a jazz group, and more of a chamber orchestra. A lot of the pieces on the record feature a soloist, like a mini-free concerto, and is very meticulously notated. There are some freedoms, as in specific melodic patterns to play freely, or lines that stay in a certain range was moving up and down by whole steps/minor thirds. Really ridiculous music!

7. Charles Mingus - Presents Charles Mingus

This is Charles Mingus' response album to Ornette's classic quartet. The music are all composed tunes, but the forms are stretched very wide open. This to me is one of Mingus' freest albums, and is incredible to hear Dolphy and him in such an intimate setting, with no piano.

8. Don Cherry - Symphony for Improvisors

Another large ensemble work of mastery. These large ensembles recordings are great, to hear the open collective improvisation, which free jazz uses more than traditional jazz, and it makes the open form/open solos sound more avant garde, than if were just one horn player playing free over a bass and drum backdrop. This record features Gato Barbieri, Pharoah Sanders, Henry Grimes, Karl Berger, JF Jenny Clark, and Ed Blackwell. I just heard a great recording of Dave Douglas with Royce Campbell doing a Don Cherry tribute, with a performance of this piece, featuring Henry Grimes!! This is another work eventually I would like to transcribe, to dig more into the form and structure of this "free music."

9. Anthony Braxton - For Alto

This is Braxton's famous solo saxophone recording. These solo pieces are some of the closest free jazz music to get into the world of free improv. Braxton worked out different ideas and graphic notation to be able to play ideas, while improvising these solo concerts. His music is more aligned with contemporary composers of the 20th century and with jazz musicians. He has a new website where you can exhaustively read about his concepts, and check out what's going on in his musical world, which has expanded to a pretty huge degree!

10. Art Ensemble of Chicago - A Jackson in your house

I personally really like this recording because it was when they were in Paris, and was captured on the BYG Actuel label. The Art Ensemble took ideas from Eric Dolphy, in say being total multi-instrumentalists, and ideas from theatre, and really ideas from everywhere. Like Anthony Braxton, they were really stretching outside of jazz, and combining so many elements to their concept and music. To read up more on the band, and musicians around them check out George Lewis' great book "A power stronger than itself." This band had an incredible pallet of sounds and worlds to draw ideas back and forth through, and really used a wide dynamic range, some very intense quiet and silent sections, some very verbose parts. With free jazz, it is easy to approach it as this high energy music, and want to play everything loud, dense, fast, and atonally, all at once, with no break, and this group really figured out different approaches.

11. Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures

A lot of his recordings early on featured standards, but played in his own style. His keyboard style seems to imitate both drumming and percussion, while at the same time utilizing 20th century compositional techniques, like listen to some of his solo piano works, and Morton Feldman's graphic piano pieces played by David Tudor. Both are "Unit Structures," and use compositional techniques that are outside of the jazz world. I have never looked at Cecil Taylor's written music but have been curious what it would look like. Ken Vandermark has a great quote in the DVD "Musician" where he talks about practicing along playing free to Cecil Taylor solo piano records, and how he would be done before a side of a record was finished, and it would be a 2lp live set of continuous music. The reason he brings it up, is to find a way to make music, practice, develop a system to be able to create music on that level.

12. Don Pullen/Milford Graves - Nommo

This is a rare recording, I think I saw it as a hard to find LP in a jazz magazine a year or so ago. Really great piano/percussion duets. I believe it's totally free playing, and pretty removed from jazz, so definetely on the fence between free jazz and free improv. Also, getting closer into the world of free improvisation, it features more timbrel based, with inside the piano work, and all of Milford Graves' percussion. He plays drums on several Ayler records, and has a great percussion record out there (many great ones at that). Worth a listen if you can find it.

13. Sun Ra - Space is the Place

This was one of my introductions to the world of avant garde jazz. I don't know how free this music is, but I had to include it on the list. Sun Ra and his band were intensely dedicated musicians, always working on their sound together, and working on new music, new ideas. I found a bio of his my first year of college, did a report on him for my communications class, and just really dug into his music early on. John Gilmore was one of the biggest influences of Coltrane (and I'm sure others) and really heralded in the free playing in the saxophone tradition. Anything by Sun Ra will be an incredible boost to your musical sights.

14. Dewey Redman - Ear of the Behearer

Dewey Redman, in his own world, his own concept. Around this time he was playing with Ornette and Keith Jarrett, but it's so great to hear his own incredible artistic vision on this beautiful album. Find it!!

This is my Free Jazz list, I'm getting tired as I'm typing this, so stay tuned for an article on Free Improv, and recordings in that genre in list form! I have a feeling this article will be edited as I think of more recordings to add and check out.

P.S. I was thinking about putting more of a post modern list of Free Jazz recordings, I don't know if I will or not, but the idea is to try and pick things out from post 1975 or so of freer music that is still in the jazz tradition, like Tim Berne, John Zorn, Ellery Eskelin, etc... Mayhaps more on that to come!

Bandwagon review for Quartet Art

2011-09-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

My album "Quartet Art" procured another review. Unfortunately this magazine is pretty new and doesn't have much of a web presence, so the following is the review typed up from Bandwagon Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 7, September 2011.

“Welcome to Greeley, the Jazz capitol of Colorado! Don’t believe me? Then check out Matt Smiley’s new album “Quartet Art.” Self produced at the UNC Studios with Greg Heimbecker engineering, you’ll hear top-notch talent that easily compares to the best anywhere. Matt’s superb compositions and bass playing are matched with Matthew Coyle on drums, Josh Reed on trumpet, David Pope on tenor sax, and Greeley resident Ryan Fourt on guitar. The result is something new, and it’s full of cutting edge and traditional styles that are unique to northern Colorado.

The 14 track album starts with a couple of improvisational pieces, highlighting each member. By track three, we’re planted firmly in melodic terrain with lush sax work on top of solid rhythms. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, we’re launched into an experimental universe that takes us clearly into uncharted waters, and the album clearly starts to shine.

It’s obvious these guys know what they’re up to and how to blend their instruments into a highly enjoyable audio experience. I would not be surprised to find they had a blast as well. The music has a way of being both pure and complex. The production meanwhile is clean and precise. Admittedly, the casual listener might be a bit challenged, but anyone with an ear for the “good stuff” will find listening to this album over and over again, is time well spent.

Rest assured, our local jazz scene is in capable hands and our own jazz visionaries are on the right path. Take a trip to the outer reaches of the universe and return safely back home. Here’s your soundtrack for the journey!

Currently, it’s available as a download at iTunes, Amazon.com, and eMusic.com. You can catch Matt at his regular weekly gig at Ace Gillett’s in Ft. Collins, Thursday-Saturday from 8-midnight, and in Greeley, starting August 29^th at Zoes Matt will launch his ongoing experimental concert series. Go to www.myspace.com/smileymnbass for more info.

-Joe Lee Parker BandWagon Magazine”

Another great mention was my alma mater, James Madison University, put a mention in the Fall 2011 edition of the Madison Magazine:

"Quartet Art, by Matt Smiley ('07)

Zach Diaz/Soulspazm Digital, 2011

Matt Smiley ('07) of Fort Collins, Colo., released Quartet Art with JMU albums Matthew Coyle ('06), percussionist, and Josh Reed ('07), trumpeter. The CD also features JMU saxophone professor David Pope. Smiley, a music major and jazz minor, performs bass on his jazz-influenced debut. Smiley says the album is a "journey in soundscapes, half-composed and half improvised." The CD runs the gamut of soft ballads and energetic tunes to sonic adventures like the title track. Smiley wrote 13 of the 14 songs and enjoys a regular gig at a Colorado's (sic) Ace Gillett's. http://soulspazm.com/digital/QuartetArt "

Great reviews, and hopefully more to come! As far as the blog is concerned, I will be posting soon-ish about Free Jazz vs. Free Improv, with my list of top ten albums from each musical world. Stay tuned!

Alice Coltrane Quote

2011-07-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

The library at UNC got this book in recently, and I'm reading a chapter a day. It reads a bit like a dissertation (it may be just that) and has a wealth of incredible information about Alice Coltrane's life, music, impact. I'm about halfway through the book and found this incredible quote from her that I felt I needed to save here, because it is a perfect description of playing free music:

"Avant-Garde music to be is like journeying across the country until you come to as beautiful park. You say, "We'll stop here for just a moment." After a while you decide to go onward because you know of a nice area ahead, but before you leave, you see a lake that you didn't notice before, and you decide to stay and experience that for a while. Sometimes your moment is there like an eternity. This type of thing is quite prevalent in my music."

Back to Billings (Montana Trip!)

2011-07-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

EDIT: (While writing this post I am currently listening to the Tim Berne Empire box set, featuring his early recordings, which I have a few LPs of)

I got back a week or so ago from playing some shows in Billings Montana with my good friend Alex Nauman. We were there a year ago with the Reid Poole trio with Britt Ciampa and did some shows with Alex and Erik Olson on saxophone. Alex invited Britt and myself to come up and play, but unfortunately Britt couldn't do it, so I went up myself.

The first show was a jazz duo set at Bones Brewery, kind of wicked with all these pictures of dinosaurs all over, and Montana gambling machines (keno and the like), and a psuedo-sports bar vibe with tvs all over. As soon as we set up we were playing "Lonely Woman" and I knew that my time in Montana would be great. Our night of music consisted of Ornette, Tears for Tears, some funk tunes, Hendrix, Zepplin, Zappa and I think at one point we might have even played a standard or two. We closed with a blues, which Alex suggested we play as fast as possible. I need to check out the recording, but it was probably 20+ clicks too fast for either of us, just silly fast (and all over the place on my part).

After this we had some down time for a few days, played some batchy ball, had a few rehearsals, and in general hung out waiting for the next gig. There was a short trip to Bozeman, in which I dropped $100+ dollars on records finding an old Ashish Khan LP (I can't believe I played with him several years ago), some Oscar Peterson, Sam Rivers, Yusef Lateef, Bill Evans, Steve Lacy, Bob Dylan, Charles Ives, Erik Satie, and more. The Steve Lacy LP was his first release as a leader, with a strange group of Dennis Charles on drums, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and Wynton Kelly on piano, playing a variety of tunes. What was strange was that the rhythm section was Cecil Taylor's rhythm section, but with swingin' Wynton Kelly on the keys!

The next gig was at an experimental venue called simply "Pat's Place." It was a shed/workshop kind of small building right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, that you could fit maybe 20 some people in if you're lucky. Pat Epley ran the place, with (I think) Alex Nauman and Matt Taggart. It was a very supportive environment, and had an small but very enthusiastic crowd there to see us play and hang. The way it worked was the act performing would provide beer (PBR!) and charge a 5 dollar cover, to pay for the beer but also so that the people paying cover would get more than just the music. I thought it was a genius idea and am still looking around in Colorado for a place to try out like this (more on that as I work on it). They expressed that it worked so well because there really weren't any rules, or anyone to tell them what to do, how to run it. Also they were starting to get more bands/acts from all over playing there while on a tour.

Our music for Pat's Place consisted of solo sets with Alex Nauman playing first a piece he had written that day using guitar "bends," followed by me doing improvisations with my cassette players, tapes, radio, microphone, junk percussion, hand fan, and voice, and then Brad Edwards playing Coltrane's "India" using a loop station with pre-recorded music and drum set. Brad is an incredible drummer that has been making music for years, playing with people like Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Ray Brown, just to name a few. After our solo sets, we took a break, and came back to play Christian Wolff's "Edges" and an original piece by Alex Nauman, originally written for two basses and percussion, and from the first note I destroyed the hair on my german bow (accidentally!). I figured out different ways to make it work, because I still wanted to bow different things in both pieces, so it was a great "experiment." The recording came out great, and someone was video-recording as well, which I hope to get a copy of.

The next night the same trio played a standards gig at Walker's, a nice restaurant in town, and we got to play standards, but in a louder/freer way than I am used to. We played several tunes from the duo gig at Bones Brewery, but also the Theme from Mash, Four Winds from Dave Holland's Conference of the Birds, Coltrane's India, and just a lot of fun music. I didn't record this night, and am kicking myself, because it turned out great, and I really wish I could go back and hear some of the things we did. After the gig we hung for a bit, gambled at some keno machines, and Alex won $70+ bucks!

All in all it was a really fun trip, Alex and his wife Jill were such great hosts, it was fun playing with their daughter Sami and their dog Molly, and so great to get out of Colorado to play some totally different music. I was really inspired, especially by the experimental venue and the people I met there that I want to start up something like it here. Also, from playing "four winds" I want to bring Nauman to Colorado for a handful of gigs, and do a gig at Dazzle playing a "Conference of the Birds" tribute show, arranged for a sextet of bass, drums, two guitars, and two saxophones. More on both of these projects to come!

Dawn of Midi - Live (Review)

2011-07-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

EDIT: (Fix a few things, like that all the music is freely improvised and not composed, although their next album will be a larger through composed piece. Also changed some of the tune names, and added a little bit more to the post)

Dawn of Midi - LIVE (the album review!)

1 Fields

Great piano sounds, muted fast passages with spurts of drums and bass coming in and out of the texture. The drums have a groovy free feel, similar to the sound Tom Rainey gets in his freer ensembles. The bass player is starting to build a motif and become more active, while the piano is pursuing a melody. The music is improvised, but it’s built so organically that it could be composed, especially as the rhythm sections drops out and comes back in. It’s a dense groove that feels light and airy.

2. Surround

More muted piano string sounds, and quick spotty noises coming from everyone, that seems to slowly meld into a groove. The timbre of this group seems to be one of the first elements that separates this group from most piano/bass/drum trios. In a way this piece sounds like a ballad, but mixed with elements of Steve Reich and minimalist repetitive rhythmic structures. The sense of song and melody is more apparent in this live concert than in the studio album (which seemed more timbre and sound focused). These pieces are free, and they have a strong compositional element, and I believe could be transcribed and arranged into composed pieces. I really dig the interplay of this trio, and it seems like the connection is even stronger from their studio album. The tune winds down with a beautiful coda in the piano.

3. The Black Danger

Great improvisation from the start, freer than the first two pieces, repeating the same note on the piano hyper rhythmically, energetic drumming, and bass drones pseudo ala Charlie Haden. The low end rumble really makes this cut for me, just from the start. I really like how the trio as individuals starts with an idea, or quickly comes into an idea, and sticks with it for the duration of the tune. It is easy in free music to jump around from one idea to another, but the taste and aesthetic that they use is incredibly musical. The drums are accenting more of the phrases of the trio now, with crashes breaking up the landscape of the music. The end of the tune starts to change course almost as if it could go into a new direction (one that could last much longer). I would love to hear how that improvisation could have continued into new territory.

4. While

I like this from the start, sounds almost like electronic music, but isn’t, nice bass drones and fifths, metal noise, muted string piano playing, with a simple held out melody. Sounds both in time and out of time, free and composed, yet played always as a trio, as a unit of music. This could even be a pop tune if it wanted to be. I really like this piece, a lot, it would be meditative, but it’s almost too disjunctive to be so. Winds down like an old metronome.

5. Lapse

Timbre based soft punctuations, like a string of hyphens and commas. This is the sound of murky silver and tin waters. A heart beat like thump of the bass drum, the pulsation of the double bass pattern, the little sounds coming out from the edges. A few chords resound with prepared piano, a spot of melody, a low bass note, some arco bass, all integrated pieces in this complex aural mosaic. The music gradually transitions into a repeating piano figure, with light high pitch bass accompaniment, and little to no percussion, a very sustained texture. I really dig this piano player and the direction they are taking the music. There is always a sense listening to this trio of a composition (tune) rhythm (pulse) and timbre (the great cornucopia!). Seemingly diatonic phrases, that suddenly twist into another world, Paul Bley-ishness. More morphology, the bass takes up with a beautiful melody, with metal factory percussion and inside of the piano machinery and a solemn bass chord to end the journey with.

6. Gravity

Bass harmonics pulsed with an arpeggiated changing piano line that is reminiscent of Steve Reich or Philip Glass’ minimalist piano music. The sparse beginnings build with toms vamping, arco playing that sounds in a cello range, and a developed piano phrase coming out of the earlier start. If it’s free it’s incredible, and if it’s not it should be a composition! It has build ups going throughout giving it a triumphant feel and at the end almost seems to be going into a new direction, but fades out.

7. Leads

Looking at the title I wonder if it means lead as in, the band leads your ear in different direction, or as in a lead pipe, because either way works, the metallic sounds mixed in with the searching journey of the music. There is a sense of “buying the ticket and taking the ride.” Somehow again this sounds like electronic music, but with acoustic instruments. I can tell everyone is listening really intently to one another. Beautiful piano playing, complimentary bowed bass sounds, and subtle cymbal sounds. The punctuations sound like there is a war almost with trying to break out of the music into chaos, but the piano is determined to ride out with beauty. The bass is pulsating a drone in a high register pizz, while the piano goes into a low frequency post-romantic flourishes, building from the bottom up. Great ticks and tocks and ringing percussion give the piece a clock like sound. The piano plays a nice coda to fade out the piece, with the acoustic bass ending a great live record.

If you are interested in checking out this recording of this great band go to HERE for a free download. DO IT!!

Kerouac on art

2011-06-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

"My only ambition is to be free in art. This is a moral synthesis. To be free in art is like the refueled, repaired, reconditioned, and "fit" ship that I have signed on, and which is ready to sail in 4 hours from now. From there on, the ship is on its own, but it suffers from no drawbacks other than those in the essences of nature and supreme reality" - Jack Kerouac (the quote is from 1943)

This quote was taken from the book "Atop an underwood," which is a collection of Kerouac's earliest works, and this is an early writing of his about what it is he wants to do. There was a story I just read about him planning a play, and this play was going to be great, and SPONTANEOUS, and one day would just hit him in the face, and he would come home and write all of it out in one huge burst. Amazing that this is essentially "On The Road" that he is forseeing years in advance.

More Treatise, Electronic version

2011-06-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

HERE is the link

(2002) Electronic realization of Cornelius Cardew’s graphic score, "Treatise". Sine waves are generated from the black areas of the score as it scrolls from right to left, with the y-axis corresponding to pitch. An imaginary vertical line in the center of the screen is the “sounding membrane”.

This is a link to what I envisioned the piece would sound like with electronics while I was working on my own version. I tried to account for all the symbols, read it left to right, below the line was low pitch, above the line was higher pitched, and the middle line was a drone. Obviously it doesn't do anything timbre wise or dynamically, and the numbers I feel really play a part of the piece. Either way i always wanted to hear some kind of simple, non-biased electronic realization, that was essentially this, and I feel like it really helps on a certain level to ascertain what the piece sounds like (it also confirms to me how annoying it is to have a drone as the middle line, which again is exactly what I did). Really great to hear and see this multimedia work of the piece.

How about free jazz?

2011-06-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

HERE and now I just out out (edit) about part two HERE

There is this great video on vimeo, linked above interviewing great musicians, like Ken Vandermark, Trevor Dunn, Jim Black, and more on Free jazz, experimental music, and trying to talk about what the genre means, how to define it. I'm only now starting to watch it, but would like to archive it on this blog, because it's an incredible find on this music!

Eddie Prevost Lecture at VAMH

2011-06-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

This lecture transcription is not entirely precise, there were a few words where I couldn’t quite make them out, but made the most sense of them as I could, while also hoping to have a clear cut document of what the lecture says. Either way enjoy!

LINK TO THE VIDEO HERE

Eddie Prevost Lecture, 12-14-2010 at VAMH

“I’m not going to give a lecture, in fact I don’t really know what we’re going to do, which is not an unusual situation because in a way its how I think you should approach improvisational situations. More on that as we go on, and I’m feeling my way into this, this is how I play, and this is how I do these kinds of talks now. I used to write stuff and present it as a lecture but it seemed to be totally inappropriate, a formal lecture style discussing music that has a great deal of informality so I have turned the thing around and I stand in front of you now wondering what will I say next, this is what is going through my mind now, what do I do next? But that’s the condition you’re in as a player. Now I imagine many or all of you are musicians of one kind of another. Is that true, or some of you are not. I imagine from our conversations that you are informed or not to know little about what goes through musicians’ minds so hopefully it won’t be too arcane.

Now where to begin, I’m going to propose this kind of music in which we will call improvisation is that needs to be constantly reappraised and I’ve come to the conclusion late in life that some of the messages that I heard earlier in my life I never really noticed. I’m now beginning to understand. Curiously I begin to understand because I’ve been working with a workshop in London which we meet weekly with mostly young people, most people are younger than me now anyway not surprisingly, but there are one or two older musicians which is great. And its lead me initially to appraise what is was I was doing because I thought well maybe is there anything boring in this activity other than my own selfish satisfactions in life, does it have a meaning beyond my satisfaction in making some of this music. So what I am going to do this evening is to present you with a few ideas and get you to ultimately engage with me and discuss them to see whether we can push this thing along because I don’t think its meant it seems to me the music itself demands in the way its played a certain sense of collaboration and maybe in discussing what this music might mean and to the wider world, if it ever gets to the wide world, what it should mean. That’s the way I’m going to push this.

I’ll play a few examples of some of the material which you may or may not have heard, but the first piece I’m going to play, just to put us in the mood, and to give context to my earlier remarks about having messages earlier on that I didn’t realize now, it’s the first record that the AM made and this was in 1966 and of course it had then Cornelius Cardew in the band. Just to set the record straight it was never his band, he joined us, we had to stop to fight people from saying it was the Cornelius Cardew band. While the Musical Times called it the Cornelius Cardew ensemble and Jazz Journal called it the Cornelius Cardew quintet, which of course it never was, he joined us. He was as scared of us as we were as scared of him, but that’s beside the point. Here’s a bit of that music now, this was made in 1966.

(Prevost plays about an eight-minute excerpt of the first AMM recording)

It goes on like that for some time. Before I discuss more, I’ll just give you some background on that recording. It was originally released by Elektra, Jack Hopkins (sp?) and two of the producers, part of the small production company, were managers of Pink Floyd and the other person who was involved was another well known English rock and folk fusion musician Joe Foyle (sp?). Symptomatic of the time 1966 they thought anything could work, while trying these things out. It was available for weeks, and then was not available for a long time after, in fact the first recording session we did, they panicked and scrubbed the whole thing and called Jack Hopkins (sp?) to come in and record it personally, because they didn’t know how to record this stuff. This seems very strange now, but I think you should remember this was 1966 there was very little reception of this kind of activity being called music at all, perhaps there still isn’t. Now that’s the background to it and it has remained unavailable for a long time. Chris Cutler approached me and said we should re-release this and I agreed; so I said let’s ask them. Chris ended up sending telegrams to Elektra and Warner Brothers asking “Can we release this?” and they never answered. In the end he gave up and said we’ll release it and they object we’ll give them some money, because that’s all they want anyway. We’re still waiting for the reply to the telegram.

The point about it from my point of view, and sorry it was a bit loud earlier on, was that Cornelius in his early days was our spokesman, our very articulate spokesman, and one of the things he said about the approach because not only was it different in terms of general music, it wasn’t what the rest of the improvisers were doing in Britain at the time. It was a very different approach to spontaneous musical ensembles of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker and those kinds of approaches to the music. It stuck in my mind and I’ve used it very often now, what Cornelius said about the music, he said, “The way AMM was experimental is in the fact that we are searching for the sounds and looking for the responses that could be attached to them.” What he meant this, or at least what I’m sure he meant, and what I definitely mean by it is the difference in the approach is that we are looking for the sounds in the moment making the music, it isn’t a matter of working away somewhat introspectively in your studio working on a body of sounds to produce, to present as you like as a legitimate of doing things. That’s a perfectly valuable way of producing improvised music or any kind of music in fact you could say that the idea of composition is a continuum of the idea composition if you like ranges from studiously putting together a whole range of ideas represented on paper, or get something else to produce right through to improvising and recording that composition. I always had trouble with that for a long time until I realized that the imperative for most improvisers is exactly the same as a composer. “What do I do next” is the issue. Composer when he is presenting formal, I’m talking about the tradition of composing music in the conservatories generally is based on a pretty well understood structure in which the ideas are moved in a fairly linear form and search in a compositional exploration is in “what happens next,” “what do I next.” And this is what most improvisers do. In jazz music that is definitely a presentation of an approach, which is based upon an undefined moment next, but the moment is defined by the course of the piece you’re playing so there is definitely an imperative there which is to discover “what is the next moment.”

Now in music that we are talking about this evening like what we heard there is the first movement towards an ethos, an aesthetic which wasn’t involving that kind of imperative it was involving searching in the moment for making music. Now this may seem like a subtle not particularly interesting distinction but actually the more you think about it, and I’m just finishing off my third book which is all about it, is its absolutely different from what makes most music happen. I’m not saying it’s different because of its internal structure; it’s different in its relationship to people and things.

Now one of the most interesting conversations I’ve heard about music in relation to the musician was Phil Collins, who did he play for Genesis? He was asked what was his relationship to the audience. He said “when I make music its like making love to the audience.” Those words are quite so different, making love TO not making love WITH. That is a big distinction about how one hopes to approach ones creative life. Not doing things TO people, or doing things TO things but doing things in conjunction with, in collaboration, together with. I think in a sense what this issue, I think it all stems from searching for sounds, seeing what they’re about, engaging with the materials, engaging with the people you’re working with to see how you can make some kind of creative moment that might have significance with your self, and hopefully have significance with the people who hear. Now I’ve already said too much. I’ll play you a bit more music. I’ll step the timeframe up, that was 1966 this is now 1992, unfortunately Cornelius had died in the 1980s, Lou Gare had left the band, the band had gone through a few changes, John Tilbury had joined us, and this is fairly early on in the period where John Tilbury joined, so this is what I suppose some people think is the classic trio form of AMM, and this is a concert we did in Newfoundland, significantly called Newfoundland. Poverty of imagination there, heh heh, but it has some poetry there of course, with NEW FOUND LAND. Right, I haven’t played this in a long time, so I don’t know what its all about, we’ll see. This is a long form, it’s eighty minutes, but we won’t play that much anyway.

(Prevost plays about a thirteen-minute excerpt from AMM’s Newfoundland)

It goes on for nearly seventy-seven minutes, it’s a continual piece. I guess it would be a chance to anybody in the audience to deal with that, which makes lots of questions I think. It is a kind of journey, which we invite the audience to come along with. It isn’t a journey that we know the destination of. Perhaps we should open this discussion up a bit. Do you think musicians should map the journey? Do you think it’s their responsibility to map out a journey of this kind of a corporeal journey? It seems to me this kind of approach begs a lot of questions. Most music is worked out beforehand and it re-presented to you and the structure is fairly well familiar to the musicians and eventually to the audience. Or it’s presented to you as I’ve described jazz was and much improvised music is. Or do you get this other experience? Now what is it? Does it have a meaning for you? Are people searching for sounds for themselves of any significance for anybody else? What is going on? Does anyone want to engage me on this, because I’d like to know the answer.”

Audience Member: “I don’t have an answer but I have a feeling that you’re beginning was, and not that nothing would happen, but it was more like a situation that would go on for quite a while and I don’t know if I may say that you have time to sink into it and if the audience had to get into it more like a situation. What I mean by the situation then at the end just before you came in would somehow get to another point. It was quite a while, and it opens up a space.”

Prevost: “It opens up but it’s a space.”

Audience Member: “It’s an open space.”

Prevost: “It’s a greater factor on your part.”

Audience Member: “And there also of course I would say there are some things after awhile I realize, and you said it would last for eighty minutes that it would not stay in that situation but then I would not so much expect that something unusual for this situation would begin to happen and get into it self. Which is different of course especially from the piano, or the guitar.”

Prevost: “So the audience in that sense though are engaging with the music and they are being creative in their responses to it. They are finding out for themselves what it might mean.”

Audience Member: “…kind of a creative…”

Prevost: “That’s just, unfortunately that comes in stride in a recording, and in a way I kind of hate the fact that it is, because the experience of being there when it is happening is so different from this embodied experience of what you hear now, it’s not the same, it can’t be the same. Curiously enough just the fact, some people know, I rarely listen to it, this record very well, and they speak to me, they say, “I love that bit when it does this that or the other.” I have no mindful experience of that, it’s not like that at all. All I remember is the mayhem and the confusion in my mind when we were doing it. That’s the creative moment for me when I can recall it like that. I would imagine that maybe something like is possibly true when anybody listens to it for the first time perhaps. Unfortunately in a way once it’s recorded it gets classicized and remembered and those roots become familiar when the real value is in the new roots, finding new roots, finding new places to go in a sense.

In fact that’s one of the things I always say to people who come to the London workshops, I say, “Look for new places to go, look for new things in yourself.” That’s the point of this in a way, and I think for audiences that’s probably good suggestion also. Not to expect and to be satisfied. Not to have this warm, kind cozy experience, some of its going to be awkward some of its going to jar, that’s the human experience anyway and that way it replicates that I suppose in a sense, but I’m meandering.

Come back to that, do you think is that a response back at you for musicians to have, not to know where they are going but to be actively searching.”

Audience Member: “Yeah it’s a possibility.”

Prevost: “It’s wonderful.”

Audience Member: “Oh yeah to be open.”

Prevost: “To be open.”

Audience Member: “To be open to hear to listen to the situation to what is…”

Prevost: “And you trust the musicians maybe to do that, that’s what very often happens. In fact I would hope it happens more often then it does. I do fear that sometimes what is suggested to be improvisation, and in a respect is, because I’m offering a rather more severe critique now, I’m suggesting you shouldn’t know where you are going and if you do you’re involving presentation rather than this other stuff. I’m arguing that the musician should come back to this stage of not knowing much more often rather than organizing their thought. I mean we all do it and I’m as guilty as the rest. Having said that I know it seems to me the really creative moments are in those places where you don’t know where you are. And to keep coming back to that and create a discipline where that is possible, rather than relying on your reputation or relying on what you’ve done before. It’s hard to let that go but it seems to be absolutely imperative that you do otherwise you’re forever repeating yourself you know. Now this is ventriloquist conceit. You’re talking to yourself you’re repeating what you said endlessly. You’ve got to get out of that nonsense and get to find new…what Boulez referred to as “primary material.” Easier said then done. You’ve got to find the primary material, that’s what we’re after. It’s invaluable; otherwise it’s all secondary.

I mean the curious thing, you could argue, its been argued successfully I think that the great painters, Matisse, Rohtko, even Jackson Pollock had really one big creative idea each, and what they were doing thereafter was representing this idea. We all love it, we thankfully we got all these wonderful examples. As a creative moment they probably did it once, and they never really managed to repeat that kind of intense creative experience. You could say that’s true of, lets say close to home, I’ve got many Derek Bailey records, but once you recognize the musician that closely, once you know what he does, and he has produced a lot of records, but actually the great moment is perhaps gone and he has got into the point of repetition and maybe most of us do. The really creative moment is to get beyond that, to try and keep it fresh and open all the time. It’s not easy as I’m suggesting but it’s the only one we should work towards.

Anyways, this is because I have no formal structure in the way I’m shooting this whole thing, and hopefully it will make some sense. Shout at me if it doesn’t, because I don’t know the answers, but I’m hoping to learn from yours in this process. This is the improvisational moment, you know what is coming and you’re inspired by your colleagues and hopefully surprised by them and you hope to surprise them in turn, otherwise the relationship is very uneven. So do interject, do tell me.”

Audience Member: “I have a question, so if you don’t know where the process is going, so do you accept wherever it goes or does it happen that you sometimes don’t like the way it takes?”

Prevost: “That’s interesting, that whole issue of liking or… Are you a player, do you play music?

Audience Member: “I’m a composer.”

Prevost: “You must have moments when you are dissatisfied with what you do. I think as a composer you have the option. As an improviser you’ve got to get it right the first time. But then you are suggesting well maybe we don’t have to worry about being correct or not correct, maybe that’s not an issue, I don’t know, I’m feeling my way here. It seems to me, the only thing you can ask the musician of, or the musician can ask of themselves is that “Are they being honest with themselves about their approach to the music?” “Are you engaging with this?” “Are you looking, in the scenario I suggested, are you really looking for stuff you’ve never been to before, looking for places you’ve never been to before?” Are you looking at the materials and saying, “Where does this go?” “What can I do with it, that has not happened before?” To open it all up, and using that same experience with your fellow musicians, What does this do, what is this, how can I make this relationship a ritual?

The new kind of evolutionary biologists talk about social intelligence and technical intelligence a lot, I don’t know whether you’ve read much about that stuff. This seems to be quite interesting. I draw parallels with the propositions that I’ve used in trying to describe this music as being the biological and heuristic. It seems to me the biological is definitely the social intelligence and the heuristic is the technical intelligence you know, looking at things from the technical point of view, and then engaging with people, that’s the strategy for life. We have to do those things, and to do them successfully makes good music, Other than the music we normally… Your life is musical if you get the heuristics right, if you could find something to eat, and you could propagate and you could make life continue. When its right or whether you like it they’re variable factors aren’t they, they’re to do with things that are not absolutes, are they? They’re not fixed they’re culturally based. I suspect that the liking or disliking is whether or not those relationships are being developed or whether you gain as a musician, as a playing musician, you gain a certain amount of satisfaction that you have done something creative that time. Which then maybe in hindsight an audiences’ satisfaction with what you’ve done or what you’ve not. You can’t answer for them, I can’t tell what you are as a composer, you don’t know what the audience wants. If we knew we could make a fortune couldn’t we, but we don’t know what they want. So you have to work with your own integrity, with your own music and hope that it means something. If it doesn’t mean anything to you then I doubt it will mean anything to anyone else so that’s the first step I think, working with other people and working with your materials to the best of your ability and you’re going to fall flat on your face. It’s not for everyone sometimes; you’re not going to be happy.

Audience Member: “But the problem is if you are dissatisfied with yourself, but the audience likes it.”

Prevost: “Hahaha, but maybe you seek some comfort from that.”

Audience Member: “I don’t, the problem is when I was improvising I sometimes would have this feeling that the thing goes wrong and I am dissatisfied with it but how can I show it, this is not the way it is supposed to be. “

Prevost: “Let me give you my experience first, I have something similar. I will refer to AMM, if you had Keith Rowe and John Tilbury they might have told you these stories anyway. The last time we went to America on tour with AMM there were a couple of concerts that stick in my mind. One we went to San Francisco and played there and we didn’t even have play, the audience was so pleased to see us that we didn’t have to play. We did play, and they seemed to like that and it seemed to be quite an enjoyable experience, and it was recorded and we thought we might use that at sometime.

We then did another concert in a place called Allentown in Pennsylvania; I’ll set this up slightly. The night before we played in a concert in Atlanta and we had then had to get from Atlanta, off the plane after midnight to get to Allentown the next day in Pennsylvania to an afternoon concert and we were in no fit state for it. It was a very uncomfortable journey, we hadn’t slept much, there were only fifteen people in the audience, most of the percussion equipment I put back in the music room because it was so…I had to wash my hands…it was not a very promising situation. The piano was terrible. It was a glorious spring day outside and we thought what are we doing in here; everybody should be out having a picnic. Anyway they said we should start even if no one else would come, there were fifteen people in the audience, so we thought, and we got on with it. It was hard work, perhaps you can guess probably the same. We listened to the recordings and the San Francisco one was bland, self-satisfied, hopelessly un-interesting and the one where we had to work was interesting and we released it. It has been one of the best AMM recordings in terms of its response.

That was a good lesson for us; it’s the work that’s important, you’re not enjoying yourself actually. I’m not saying we should wear hair shirts and be…. The point is about the music is its about being engaged with it and having sometimes to work quite hard at it, and not enjoy it. It’s peculiar; it’s the way sometimes it works. I hope to manage a good median between those things. Enjoy being in the moment and enjoy doing it with certain people in fact it’s often the case for me. But it is an interesting case in point, our feelings about it weren’t positive, it was hard work and we all thought that this was not going to be any good. We were relieved. The concert series had actually finished with our performance, we thought it was us. We thought, they’re not doing this anymore because we’ve ruined it completely. Happily it wasn’t the case it turns out.

This sounds all kind of puritanical and it should be something we enjoy to do, I’m not saying we shouldn’t but at some level it can be actually quite difficult I think and we shouldn’t avoid it I don’t… I’m suggesting it maybe. Maybe in some of the things that you write, maybe you’re not entirely satisfied but you feel compelled to do it in some way and that’s the way it comes out, so be it. Like I say, I don’t think you can assume you understand any of what the audience might think, beforehand anyway, afterwards that’s different, that is their prerogative, to say whether it had any meaning for them and we should learn from those things I suppose. Does anybody else want to get involved?”

Audience Member: “I wanted to ask about recordings because I was thinking while I was listening, do you listen to the recordings afterwards? Is it a totally different experience being on the outside, in the audience then actually being on the stage creating it? And do you learn anything from it, or do you listen to your own thing?”

Prevost: “I think we do, yes, but its no…I don’t think its necessary. It can be a guide of what not to do, which is a good lesson. Well I don’t spend an awful lot of time listening to them now. During the process where they were being released you spend time with them, but after that I’m more interested in the process of doing them, playing them. I suppose these things become a means of a…well they do become representations of it. They are representations. They’re not the music itself, they’re something else, and I live with that kind of contradiction, certainly uneasily. But we live in a strange world, most people if they’ve heard AMM at all have mostly been through recordings, so I’m grateful for that.”

Audience Member: “But is it different for you listening to it afterwards then?”

Prevost: “Yeah, it is different. Frankly I hate listening to it immediately afterwards, I would always leave at least two or three months, then I’d dissociate from it, it’s not me anymore. If it is the next day I feel like I did that is so close to me and I feel responsible. I feel less responsible after six months and after twenty years even less responsible.”

Audience Member: “I’m just a listener and I know I’m going to lots of concerts and sometimes it doesn’t work. I mean that’s the risk of these concerts where people don’t know where they’re going and where they’re going. It can go longer and it doesn’t work and I just wondered if you were sort of analyzing the music or trying to find what went wrong, or why didn’t it go wrong, what didn’t work.”

Prevost: “Maybe you think this is too simplistic but I think it only goes wrong, I know it’s a tricky word, it only goes wrong if you’re not actually attending to what you’re doing, and in that case it’s always right. It may not be much fun to listen to, but that is what, in terms of the process of doing it, then that is it. I mean there was a recording I did with a young colleague of mine called Seymour Wright, he’s a young saxophonist and we produced a much more sterile recording I’ve ever released. I really didn’t like it from start to finish but I know the process itself was correct and therefore I knew it because of that and although it was released I wouldn’t wish it one anybody to be quite honest, haha. It was definitely a record of that process with a great amount of austerity and not a lot of fun so to speak, but then it could be that I’ve become too entrenched in my expectations, because what you have to allow for is that if this is essentially going to grow, if the meaning of the music is embedded in the process I described for example, the searching and in the dialogue with other people, and an understanding of the process, that becomes a basis for the aesthetic. It also becomes of a basis of how you listen, and that ultimately will be transformed into your likes and dislikes about the music, it must of always been there some suggest.

We do become familiar with certain things, we get to like them because of… I mean my first experiences as a young person was jazz, I thought “What the hell is going on?” I couldn’t understand all this stuff that was after the tune there was this other stuff, albeit you’re talking about a twelve year old, I had no conception as to what was going on. The only way you learn what the priorities were, what the aesthetic priority was that you could begin to get some understanding of what was going on and therefore and then begin to maybe assess its value and whether you like it. The liking comes out of an understanding of the process wherever you say. Anyway, so anything else before I play some more music? This will be a light relief to this, haha. Any other ideas come to mind from anyone? I’ll play you some more music. This is ’66, this is ’92, this is this year, earlier this year. John Tilbury and myself in Poland, I’ll play a little bit of this. This again is an old concert, its fortunately got some tracks on this one, they were superimposed after the fact, it’s just a convenient way of being able to handle the material. This was just a concert which lasted a totality of 63 minutes or so and I’ll play you the third section of this piece.“

(Prevost plays about an fourteen-minute excerpt of this recent recording of Prevost/Tilbury in Poland)

Prevost: “I was thinking about what you were saying about the right and the wrong and being involved and being in the moment and… That was done in May of this year (2010), a wonderful concert hall in Jaslo in Poland, again there was no more than twenty people in the audience, it was a pity. To give you some idea, my feelings about that were very mixed at the time that is. The year before John Tilbury had a stroke, and we hadn’t played that much in between times, an occasion, so part of my feeling in being involved in that was great joy of being with him and doing it and being as ever completely enthralled by it. Also, because of the nature of the environment, it was a very beautiful acoustic, but I’m a percussionist, I got all these bits and pieces around and the first thing I don’t want to do is drop anything or shift anything. So I had to be extremely careful and I was really on the edge in terms of care to everything, extreme care, and John was playing at a level which I thought it was fairly loud, the general level was very subdued, very quiet. Really I think he’s a master of doing what Morton Feldman recommended to Karlheinz (Stockhausen) of “Not pushing the sounds around.” He was just gently easing and not really doing much with them at all, in fact that’s probably part of its always hurrying the sounds rather than might making them. Where will they take you rather than where will you take them.

So it had all of those ingredients, although its… I don’t know how you perceived it, but from the back there it seemed to be quite peaceful, contemplative, but actually during it I was quite a wretch in just trying to hold it, trying not to do the same thing, not to, basically silly things like dropping the stick and general clatter, and the terrible noise and all. I think that brings the conversation to an end, I hope not.

Does any of this make any sense? Do my suggestions about coming back to a proto-musical position from that, not being musical. In fact in a funny kind of way I think the moment that it gets to the point where someone says, “well that’s good music” I’ve always lost interest in that. The process is the most interesting thing. Maybe keeping ideas about music out of it is not a bad place to start. Contradiction as a suggestion perhaps.”

(The video cuts here and starts up abruptly with Prevost talking)

Prevost: “The imperative is on the… if you’re considering what you should do next, then you’re composing music. If that’s not an issue, if you’re actually engaged with the sounds from a different perspective of looking, you don’t know what’s there, you’re not expecting, you’re not trying, you’re actually just trying to develop a relation with the materials. Find out what’s there. Is that the same when you found it? It’s not, it might in my mind, it’s different.”

Audience Member: “It’s something you never can fix so its composition is normal, not modern improvisation.”

Prevost: I suggest it’s a different category of tendency. It’s maybe something, and maybe I’m fooling myself, and I will accept that’s a possibility, I’m still with it, I’m still trying to work on it myself you know. It seems to me it is fundamentally different and you maybe well aware that I’m scrupled. But I think it’s worth thinking about because even if I’m not absolutely correct in that basis, it is an important distinction to make about how you deal with the materials. I mean, in English you commonly hear the words mastery, command, mastery of your instrument, commander of the materials. These are strange words to use aren’t they? Why don’t you get rid of that stuff? Well let’s not have mastery of; let’s not have command of over, let’s have a relationship with. It’s different. It’s no different from the same way as when you…

This is a microcosmic kind of response to the one, which we perceive us as a species messing around the world. We want command over it, we want to control it and in doing so we’re destroying it but that’s the kind of parallel level I would make in this, it’s a different relationship with the stuff. I might be wrong, you ask me to come over and give a talk a bit and that’s where I am, I feel very strongly in the moment so I’m sharing with you, hoping you might give me some ideas so I can develop an idea better. Anybody want to ask about the general ideas or back or…?”

Audience Member: “The difference between what’s next and this music of energy which you preferred. What’s next is not your preferred musical energy in the improvisation, it’s more wider… contemplative…?”

Prevost: “The consideration isn’t what’s next. What next will be, what is next? Go back to what we discussed earlier about right and wrong then. If you’re actually playing materials, searching for materials, as Cardew said all those years ago, “One way that AMM was experimental is that we are searching for the sounds and looking for the meaning which are attached to them.” If you adopt that attitude that is significantly different from… and it’s not musical, it’s different entirely, because it’s not planned, it’s not trying to present anything, it’s just actually doing it.”

Audience Member: “But you have to make decisions. I mean you may have decisions, maybe not consciously…”

Prevost: “You have the make a decision to turn up to the concert, right? You have to make a decision to bring an instrument, and to play but after that you can actually, there’s a different mindset available. “

Audience Member: “There are different concepts of making decisions.”

Prevost: “Yes, I’ll go with you on that.”

Audience Member: “A reaction is also a decision.”

Prevost: “It comes down to, I try to define it maybe not very well as the difference between what should happen and what does happen. But I’m more interested in what does happen then the should and I know you may say well there’s no distinction, they’re the same thing but actually the point before that, before you get to the should or the does that’s the decision you’re talking about. Now that is different from doing something which you think might be right, doing something which you think might work. These are the composer issues you have, but what if you don’t have them? What if you don’t have “I know what will work,” “I know this will sound good,” and you discard that and you just search for the materials, engage in the materials in a way. Is that not slightly different? We’re not entirely there, but I think there is a distinction there and an important one.”

Audience Member: “You know there is the other side of the decision, if you search for some things you avoid other things that you might not find interesting because you already know it and you leave that side and search for others and that’s also another decision, not to play anything that you’ve ever played before.”

Prevost: “I’m suggesting something, which is a virtual impossibility. I’m accepting that, I know it, I’m not that much of a fool. I know it’s virtually impossible, what I’m suggesting is that in most cases much of the material we produce as improvisers will be a presentation of what we’ve done. That’s when it becomes music. But I’m looking and hoping, using this other thing sort of like investigatory searching attitude, as a way to find new music. Unless you divorce yourself from the idea of presentation, then you’re never going to get there. It has to be, you have to stick to it, otherwise it doesn’t work, you end up repeating yourself. This is coming back to the many Matisses and so on, you end doing another Matisse, another version of the same thing. To get beyond that you have to have a different mindset, it’s not easy, I’m not suggesting it’s easy. But I am suggesting it to the audience; I know it works. I’ve seen it with young people I’ve been working with over the last eleven years and even longer; I’ve seen quite remarkable things happen. Maybe they’re minute, maybe hardly anybody else sees it or hears it other than maybe myself, but I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it, I know it works. And that’s all you can hope for in a way.

Most people maybe are not destined to produce great works of art via this process, that will give great satisfaction to a huge mass of people, but frankly that’s not my concern. I’m concerned about the process and seeing people find themselves, finding things for themselves, that’s the important thing for me. It’s a small music, not for majority of…and that’s its virtue, that’s the thing I like about it. The fact that, to try to transform this kind of approach into a mass medium or whatever, it’s not feasible; it’s not even worth engaging that idea. It’s about, the most important thing for me, it’s about the relationship between people and stuff and that’s worth thinking about and worth doing. And you may not make a career out of it, you make not make a successful financial rewards out of making music that way, but that is a good relationship for people to develop for themselves.”

Audience Member: “Do you sometimes rehearse, or do you make a distinction between rehearsing and performing?”

Prevost: “No, we never did with AMM. Two rules with AMM: Never, if anybody tried to tell what they were going to do, you’d shut them up. I don’t want to know what you’re going to do. Somebody might have a strategy for playing and they might give suggestions, and we’re talking about the early days now. And you’d say “No, I don’t want to know.” You want to be surprised, you want to actually have that opening experience that will lead you to something fresh. I mean otherwise you would… you need a system to be kept as open as possible. Think back to Physics, first law of Thermodynamics, close systems reject very quickly, the best systems are open because there’s new information coming in.”

Audience Member: “In terms of sett the music together, rehearsing in terms of velocities, or bowing a cymbal or something you can do very badly or something you can do very well. You want to do it well, maybe you rehearse it.”

Prevost: “I’ve been doing it for forty or fifty years, so I kind of know what I’m doing. I’m still looking for new things, I have mixed relationship with this whole attitude, because there are times when I do find, when you get to my age, that this curve of discovery which is like that (increasing) and gets to be like that (staying the same) plodding along a bit. And you find something and you think, maybe no one’s heard it, no one understands it but you, I know it, I now found it. I think, why didn’t I see that before, where have I been? Have I been so unobservant not to know that you could do this or that? That’s what’s so rewarding about it, but it may not be any great cultural phenomenon but it does translate into the music. But in terms of the rehearsal, you can’t rehearse this. What do you mean by rehearse; you see that is the issue, you can discuss what that…”

Audience Member: “Practice your instrument to help…”

Prevost: “You can only practice the discipline of what I just described. That’s not rehearsing, that is always doing it. That is always at the doing stage, never at the rehearsing stage. And you gain, it’s cumulative because you do, you learn, you learn from doing it. Your vocabulary gets wider and wider and also it’s a trap because you can really know what you can do and you’re attempting to do it obviously, because there’s all kinds of reasons why you might want to produce an acceptable performance perhaps. But in reality, you won’t say something really interesting unless you go that notch further; you push it. You should be pushed the whole time, it is a very rigorous critique, I understand that. It’s very severe, unrelenting, but it’s fun. That is the other thing; you get joy out of doing it. It’s not as if its… You can tell from my attitude, this is why I like doing it.

Audience Member: “But you play a lot for yourself, without the audience or…”

Prevost: “Not really, no, I’ve done a few solo performances, but I enjoy playing people and that’s an important part of the process for me. I do under duress situations. It’s interesting because I try to use this philosophy in the way that I’ve described and sometimes I fail, I very often fail, and then I think, well I got to do something. I feel myself reiterating, repeating, I know I do it. But it isn’t when I’m happiest, that’s when I’m unhappy, you know I’ve done that. I’ve let myself down, I’ve let the audience down, even if they’ve liked some of the stuff that I’ve done. See this is the interesting liking again, liking and disliking.

I’ve put you into silence. Thank you for listening to me, and thank you for having me here to discuss things, and I hope it’s not been too much of a drag coming around just to hear this old man rant for a bit.”

Free Jazz and Free Improvisation (A response)

2011-05-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

The following blog post is a response I made and emailed to the writer Douglas Detrick of THIS article on Free Jazz and Free Improvisation. Long story short if you don't read his article, it is about the definition of the two terms and albums representative of them. "Free Jazz" as a genre is defined by Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" and "Shape of jazz to come" while "Free Improvisation" as a genre is defined by Anthony Braxton's "For Alto." I disagreed and lay out my points below. This subject is something that has been on my mind for years now, and so below is my response:

"Hello,

I came across your recent article about free jazz vs. free improvisation, and found no room on the site to comment on it, so I thought I would shoot you an email. It's an interesting idea by the way, dissecting the differences between the two. I was wondering with the article who your target audience is as well, is it for other musicians/music fans, or more for the laymen? Anyway by the way I'm checking out your own music on your site while writing this, good stuff!

I'm interested in your beginning statement about how free jazz tends to through out swing, chords changes, and formal structure, and I have to say I disagree with you. I DO think that this does happen from time to time in some freer musics but not necessarily in free jazz all the time, at least in your definition of it. Ornette's Free Jazz (which I transcribed the collective improvisation sections), does have pretty set formal ideas and themes in the music. I wasn't there obviously to know what instruction Ornette gave his musicians, but they tend to play busily, and then long tones (maybe a prescribed chord they hit together in a format) and then busy again, or some variation of that, but are doing it very much together. As far as the form, they stick to a very solid form of ensemble sections met by solos with open ended backgrounds, and everyone solos with the same backgrounds, except for the drum and bass solos (which are still accompanied by the other bass player, or other drummer. And the entire thing does swing, Billy higgins plays a medium swing pattern the entire time (virtually) and Ed Blackwell plays double time to that (virtually). It really only breaks free at all towards the end with the bass and drum solos. I'm working on Coltrane's Ascension currently, which also has a similar set form of solos and collective improvisations, also with a set of chords and modes which the performers follow or choose not to follow. Coltrane instructed all the soloists to end their solos with a crescendo. Just in general as well, collective improvisation isn't new, in fact its very old, and early jazz/dixieland records feature a lot of that. Ornette Coleman, by the way, swings very hard, and plays very much blues and bebop related material, he himself though stretches out harmonically and melodically, by basically modulating all over the place (but doesn't play free in the same sense that Roscoe Mitchell or Anthony Braxton plays free.)

You move on to talk about Shape of Jazz to Come, and yet again I disagree with you. The music is freer than the music before it, but if you listen to it, especially having heard Ornette's records on contemporary, "Tomorrow is the Question" and "Something else" you hear some of the same ideas starting to take form in the atlantic period of recordings, like the tune "Lorraine" which in someways has similar material to "Lonely Woman" or "The Sphinx" which on the bridge to the tune is rubato, but the rest of the head is in swinging 4/4 time (with a 5/4 bar) thrown in. To give you an example from "Shape of Jazz to Come" check out the tune "Peace" Listen to how the band plays the head, and then listen again to the solos and try to sing the head during the solo sections. There are very composed hits/chords that Haden is playing and Higgins is playing off of rhythmically (much like the tune Lorraine from tommorrow is the question). On "Lonely Woman" Haden plays off of the same bass line/chords from the head even going into the bridge with don cherry behind ornettes solo.

My argument is that Ornette and his band rehearsed constantly and took things into a new level of arrangement and approach to the music, but the music still very much swings and all the players swing, and chords are still in play (at least on a certain level) and form is definitely still followed. They are "free" in the sense that Mingus' bands were "free" which means they rehearsed a lot, knew the tunes inside and out, could compose and come up with forms spontaneously, but also had a LOT of stuff worked out and pre-conceived, especially on the studio records. You say on "Free Jazz" the album, that there are no melodies in unison, but what do you call the verbatim unison melodies in the melody of the piece, pure chance? And hes only going backwards in jazz, looking to early jazz via dixieland, new orlean bands, where there was a high level of collective improvisation that you could say sounds just as free as Ornette's bands.

I agree with you that Free Improvisation goes out of the realm of jazz (which is confusing because you say free jazz did the same, getting rid of jazz idiomatic notions) and then you go into Anthony Braxton, which I would have to say very definitely embodies the "free jazz" idiom. I personally hate having to make genres out of things, but Braxton plays the saxophone, and usually plays with other jazz/free jazz musicians, sometimes in a much more conventional sense than other free improvisational players. Braxton has a lot of tribute albums out there to Lennie Tristano, Charlie Parker, and standards records where he plays in his own way jazz standards with a conventional jazz rhythm section. Sure his solo improvisational music (similar to Steve Lacy) is solo saxophone, but partially because it is a saxophone, it is still pretty close to jazz territory, even though the music is based on graphic notational systems. I can see Braxton being on the fence basically between what you would call free improvisation and free jazz, but I still would lump him closer to the jazz category for how much time he has spent in that idiom and world. For me personally, if a musician is still dealing with playing standards, I would not consider them a free improvisational player, as much as the people that ONLY play free improvisational material (or original music that has little to no jazz-ish elements). Ken Vandermark is a musician that always writes tribute titles in his pieces, to photographers, painters, composers, musicians, etc... but even still I would label, if I had to label, him close to a free jazz world than free improvisation, even though he does both, it just seems he works closer to a jazz idiom.

Your mention of John Cage is interesting, in that many of his compositions do provide almost exclusively free improvisation of some way or type. Sure there are instructions as to what to do, or how to come across it, but with Cage's "Variations" pieces they are open in such a way where you there is more improvisation than there is through composed music. With Braxton's solo saxophone music he developed motives and graphic notation to work out music to play, and therefore is not completely freely improvised, just as Cage's music although composed and some of it is completely improvised coming from the score, might sound more improvised, especially depending upon the players. I also disagree that individuality and improvisation is the priority, I think the priority is to make music that is close to you, and music that you are hearing on your own level.

Overall I like what your article set out to do, but I do believe your approach is a little overtly simplified, and that your examples are not "pure" like you say they are. I don't know if I could give you a "pure" example to be honest, unless the liner notes of a record or an interview with an artist specifically says something along the lines of "This album is a collection of purely free improvisations" which comes out a lot these days. In the music of Ornette, Braxton, Cecil Taylor, etc... I don't know as to how much of it is "free" in a sense, or how much of it is personal systems/forms/structures that people have spent a lot of time working out and explaining to other musicians to work together.

To me free improvisation, like you said, is about getting ridding of genric influences, but due to instrumentation its hard to do that for the listen's ear picks up on comparisons (our brains like to organize material) and so free music to one person, say via Sonic Youth, to others just sounds like rock music, or free music using orchestral instruments might sound like 20th/21st century contemporary composition, or if you use a bass, drums and saxophone, it might just sound like jazz to people. For me the closest group to totally free improvisation would be AMM with Keith Rowe, Eddie Prevost, (and other various members through the years like Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare and John Tilbury) and depending on the incarnations of that group it has been compared to free jazz (lou gare played sax, prevost drums) or to 20th century composition, because of John Tilbury's piano playing. I just released a CD recently, and some of my friends have commented that the music sounds like movie music, soundtrack to films, even though what they are talking about are freely improvised tracks with jazz musicians.

As far as "Free Jazz" I just think that is made up of people coming out of jazz, usually using jazz instruments in whatever combination of their choosing. The closest I have heard would be some of Alan Silva's large ensembles from the late 60s, or Michael Mantler's large ensemble work, or even Albert Ayler's groups, but even with those I think forms are thought of, compositions are there, and truly free improvisation didn't come until later. I think in all those groups they had an idea of what it was they were doing, unless the idea became "let's just play and not talk about it" which is what the group AMM was doing.

My point is that just because things sound free, doesn't make them free, as well as just because something sounds composed, doesn't always mean that it is composed. Anyways, you may or may not read this, but I have a blog as well and will re-post this on my blog too. Thanks for giving me ideas to think about with your article, I don't mean to be harsh by any means. The idea of "free" music has been on my mind for 5+ years now since hearing Ellery Eskelin's trio with Jim Black and Andrea Parkins (again free music, that very much has composed elements to it, with exception to a recent live album that group put out) and have I thought a lot about free jazz, free improvisation and 20th/21st composition involving improvisational elements.

Thanks, and I enjoyed the clips off of your site, nice playing!

-Matt Smiley"

The Band!

2011-05-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

The single most lacking thing I have come across since moving to Colorado is the concept of the BAND. Note to anyone reading, this post will be more directed towards personal thoughts/music, as opposed to too many specifics pertaining to music I am checking out (although that will come into play). I miss being in a unified group of musicians, being on the same page, hanging out, rehearsing, playing and the like. In Virginia I was fortunate to basically have three bands throughout college that I can think of that fit this mold that I have in my head.

The first group was a quartet consisting of Matt Coyle, Matt Johnson and Josh Reed (drums, sax, trumpet respectively). This band formed out of variations of playing in a larger jazz combo with Coyle and Josh, but then rehearsing and practicing with Matt Johnson duo. My memory is shady as to how long it took for us to start playing as a quartet, and we did play with Jamie Barnes on guitar in a various version of this group, but unfortunately was short lived as Jamie graduated and moved. Either way I remember a lot of nights just hanging out with these guys again and again, listening to music, talking about music, talking about concepts, and generally coming at music from different points, but being open with one another. There was a general consenses that we should all get good at straight ahead jazz, and yet we were listening to avant garde music, and world music, and contemporary jazz (ie Dave Douglas, John Hollenbeck, Ellery Eskelin). I was always on the bounds of wanting to push it farther "out" and playing gigs at a coffee bar, the artful dodger, gave us the chance to stretch out, especially in our limited repertoire (I wish I could go back and add more charts/tunes to our sets). Luckily the artful dodger didn't care as music about what we were doing, and we were given for the most part free reign. There were certain tunes I can remember, like a few masada tunes, footprints, autumn leaves, etc... that we would experiment more with and go "out," which Coyle and myself were usually the first proponents to do so. We played many gigs with Coyle on vibes, and those harmonically stretched out in various pedal point/noise sections. The music did get very loose from time to time, and we were all pretty young, but it was invaluable to my growth, and I would think as well for everyone else.

This band/quartet mentioned above sort of morphed as people graduated and moved away, and became a larger group of retaining Matt Johnson, adding Bobby Gregg on saxophone, Greg Lyons on drums, and Paul Forrester on guitar. Some of the gigs we were playing with the quartet, turned into gigs for this larger group. I was at a spot in my life where I was finishing school, and during the time had a lot of free time to arrange music and book gigs. This group didn't last longer than a year, but was still a very memorable experience, because personally I was doing more to get a band rehearsing and performing, which I hadn't taken as much initiative in the quartet. (which I would later on with the quartet, during breaks when we would get together and play and record music). This larger group didn't hang out as much as a whole, as everyone was coming in from different parts in their life, but still we came together musically and for the most part focused. And the main thing to emphasize is that we were a BAND and in it together, working on our sound together.

The last, but not least BAND mention is the great experience I had in a trio with Matt Coyle and David Pope. Between the two bands mentioned already and this group, I feel like I grew and learned the most during these three groups. This trio was exciting, I started playing in it after only a semester of college. In retrospect I would do a lot of things over again, as far as what I was practicing (and how much) and bring charts in and the like. This trio was a lot of fun, and a lot of hard work, and was a great experience in how to accompany. I am incredibly fortunate to have had that opportunity and the opportunities to play with all the other bands as well.

Now to my point of the issue. I feel like since I have been in Colorado I have not been in any bands (in my own definition). Everything I do out here, in my opinion are projects. I have gotten to play in a LOT of groups in Colorado and it has been a lot of fun, with great players, but with these groups they all are mostly things where you show up to rehearse/play a gig, but there isn't much hanging out. Maybe I'm wrong though, because there are bands in which I play in where that does happen, and maybe what's different is I and the people I'm playing with are older, and all from very different parts of their life. The bands have their own concept usually, be it 50/60s swinging jazz, more modal/modern jazz, funk music, rock music, vocal/r&b jazz, etc...

On my own I have formed temporary groups for gigs/recordings and have played in settings with two drummers, double quartets, free improv with all sorts of different musicians, chordless quartets to replicate the quartet from virginia (as best I could approximate), and those have worked, but nothing has lasted too long.

My lament maybe goes to not feeling like I have a group to fully express what I personally want to do musically, but also incorporating in what everyone else wants to do musically. With most gigs I play, it is to play very specific music for a specific function, but I miss being able to play music with a long term group of musicians, to play, not necessarily for certain social functions. The closest I have gotten is with the COBRA ENSEMBLE, whereas we started with playing COBRA by John Zorn, then added more contemporary classical music/improv into the mix. The longer the group was together, the more of a band it felt to me. It was also nice just not having to have the pressure of confirming to a specific audience want or desire, but doing what we wanted to, and letting the audience coming and going. I also enjoyed that at times the group was 10+ people, because with something like that, the players can become the audience. I have been reading a lot of Cornelius Cardew lately and reading about the Scratch Orchestra, and remembering how that was the first music we attempted in COBRA that wasn't COBRA.

The larger, uncontrollable group of the COBRA ensemble was great, especially with it's fluctuation in membership over the years (it is still being run by other musicians now). There must have been at least 40+ members throughout the past 3 years in different incarnations of the group, from having a group with violins and cellos and basses, to having three bass clarinets, to multi percussionists, and having brass, not having brass. The current group performed last march, and the new concept was electrification, every instrument was electrified, which is interesting to me how that can affect the sound and especially the dynamics, given that it is also a smaller ensemble.

In bringing this up I wanted to say that of myself now I wish I could form a AMM-ish group, but playing compositions. I want a small group, trio to sextet size, that would be dedicated to playing group compositions/arrangements to the best of their abilities, and with the least amount of restrictions. Ideally this band would have diverse instrumentation (percussion, strings, winds, electronics) and might feature people from different genric backgrounds (rock, jazz, classical, etc...). But more than anything I want it to be a band where there are no subs, although the group could perform in smaller ensemble versions of itself (duo concerts for instance) and would be together for a long time. I have ideal musicians in my head, some I've mentioned from these earlier bands, but the problem is everyone is always moving around, and the musicians I want to do this are all in different states around the country.

The lament and point of this is that I miss being in a band, and I have an idea of what kind of group I want to play with, and even specific people in it, but that at this juncture it isn't possible. Maybe later on in life, when I live in a different area, or find the right combination of musicians, then it will work. Until then I will continue my projects and work as a side man, which is very fulfilling, just very specific on a musical level.

My apologies for this self centered post. I have a future post coming up, on the Music for Merce Boxed Set, and also on composition(s).

IRMA, an opera by Tom Phillips

2011-04-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

No blogging in a while, just because of the new album coming out, and wanting to keep that as the top blog post for awhile surrounding the release. So far successful release for a digital only release. We did well on the iTunes charts initially, and starting to get the word out for reviews. More to come later as I start getting album reviews published, and do more legwork getting the word out to other publications. Side note, I cannot stop listening to the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds," damn good record!

Now I have a few different ideas for blog posts to come, this was the shortest and perhaps most recent post, which is dealing with Tom Phillips' opera "Irma." The opera is a chance operation piece (but very controlled chance) seemingly coming out of a Cage tradition, in how the opera works. THIS is a link to the composer/artist's website to check out the score. The concept is that Phillips went into a bookstore a while back to purchase a cheap victorian novel to do some art projects with. What he bought was W.H. Mallock's "A Human Document." Since then he has released several editions of his treated version of this novel, called "A Humament" by cutting out words/letters, or blocking out certain words/letters, to give the novel new meaning. The opera IRMA is one of the ideas based off of this, that comes out of this same novel.

There are two recordings that I know of, of the piece. One is by Gavin Bryars that is the earlier recording, and more minimalist (HERE is some audio from that) and the other is from a group I can't stop thinking about and listening to, AMM. The AMM version is how I first came across this opera, looking at some of their collected albums online. AMM is freer than the Bryars, but both are incredible to listen to, and also show just how varied this opera could be upon performance. I wish there was a DVD version of it, to see how both performances were staged, since the action and theatrical element is a very huge part of it (like hearing the audio of a TV show, it's good, but it's not the complete idea/picture).

Like my crazy self, I went through Tom Phillips score and typed it up neatly in a word document, to study and also possibly try and program a Colorado performance of the piece somehow, if I could find a creative music venue that would host it. The score is very open-ended, and very open to improvisational elements, and I think it has a lot of potential!

BELOW are my typed up notes from the score:

IRMA

“Love is help mate”

“Irma you will be mine”

“Perhaps to treat the indications here given as if they were the only surviving fragments of an ancient opera, or fragments of eye and ear witnesses’ accounts of such and given no knowledge of the performance tradition of the time, to reconstruct a hypothetical whole which would accommodate them economically, would be an appropriate basis of approach to a production.

Perhaps –

Ritual, pageant, ceremony, parade, cantata scaenica, spectacle

The work is made up entirely from treated fragments of A Human Document, by W.H. Mallock or its complete treated version A Humument. It can be performed by a number of players, singers, dancers, mimes, etc… Performances may last any length of time: compactness however should be aimed at.

Although moments of extravaganza + grotesque comedy are implied, the general mood of the work should be sober, and the outlines of the action as rational as possible.

Any production should have an overall director.

Parts may be allotted in any way although each performer should at some time see the whole score.

Separately shown are the little aria “Irma, you will be mine” and the chorus “love is help mate.”

These must be performed at least once in every staging of the opera: prominence might be given them by suspending other action, etc…

All other material is optional, including the melodies, including the melodies, which may be used vocally or instrumentally.

As often as possible links should be made and found between action, text, score and décor.

A plot or sequence of action can be devised with reference to all the material given and not merely to the libretto similarly, décor and sound-material can be taken from other sections.

Two characters at least must be realized in any staging of the work. i.e. the eponymous heroine and the hero Grenville (these are also the chief characters in A Humament)

The motifs associated with Grenville and Irma are indicated by name. All melodic material may be transposed, fragmented or combined in any way.

Cf. The music making described in Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis.”

Cf. Plotinus “it is the reasonless soul, not the will or wisdom, that is beguiled by music, a form of sorcery which raises no question, whose enchantment indeed is welcomed……”

LIBRETTO

Love is a fool robbed me of my ordinary cool

We start tomorrow and unbelievable dream

‘Stop,’ and be consistent.

Go. You, who trouble

“By the way, I I find I am famous.

I know why you done me a trifle soon

Be pain of one pain ville insensible

I am not laughing—no, —I am a physiognomist.” O O ted marked

Numb French—classics ; oh, the women were in them ! one book after another. I could stand it no longer.

This woman was all torture

Art ur dulge rudge ed id

“ Never, “ said Grenville ; and I only photograph afterwards.

Last week I had my false membrane sent

About help man, ure. How vain—how vain I have forgotten that—

If I had your voice,

Earful. –I forsee it all. in the eyes—

Pose tomorrow ask her

Creditable time Silbersheim

“Mein Gott!” nobody without such a tube could perform it

I know, the purple questions

Jackson—a good looking prig has excited her

O surface longing

Trains she exclaimed ; miles! I said

Quick—quick !—out with the chance operation

SOUNDS ETC

Ss’s ss but with them thirty two

Constant systems mute g.

Birds sang last the unit a o

—c c E fine imitate it.

P sigh abrupt ending neigh d a

20 distant audible door burst

the Emperor ;

scratch form slowly, lines, A

ding two pop twilight

one more in tones A d

f f the first parasol, sound f

g change ; to actual hardness music

c tr completely wrong ball, crash tr a f

snatches, long held sound p

a b the Ring e

record of the ring period pp passage c

quiet high intonation divine time

quiet. Suddenly a gong in rough series

Building echoes hit after

Zz the whole ding music shining

M art —mm cum the quality Amplify it. f

Acc morning’s murmur, like butterflies.

Tr low and high, divisions s the hiss of cheeks

Tic drops the tone various phrases Instantly

Ben electric bell. P gain

Meta silence tremble ; intervals

Car a flats flat some splendid street sound

The International b p

B which coarse pitch ral

B g two thought pieces,

Requisite tube twenty minutes

Do read it. jarring read it ;

Measured rise and returning b

DÉCOR & MISE EN SCENE

One dressed him amongst the eastern clouds. Four

Has movements ss smoked

Image tissues

Measureable encumbrances.

In another moment rapidly surrounded by men with stars,

As a e certain light flashed the slightest undulation imaginable Then all was over;

Red scent huge gilded vest moons

Hat feather ceremony rust

Her startling uniform dress the sea

Flickering of creamy with frocks red

A jacket clipped her figure a walking pocket-handkerchief

Above her soft black dress, the petal

Ble pale cloak, swan’s down

Shaped iron ties ble fast falling pieces

One kiss on on the table,

Paper your image

Her form tow gently tendrils no plant, lips whispering

In the glass the tips of her toes

Hat refined, wonderful velvety ff dress almost insolent in its star

Let us meet him, clothed in a suit of light brilliant flower.

Leaves. Love-making the scattered tables

Lighting a cigarette, across the gravel

Raw the hat of happiness

A mask.

What shoes step perverse elf ring ear

All lie, wicker coffin flesh violets above rave,

The tabulated hat fluttering with feathers, geranium A physical weight. D chest smothering him. Ot

Siders he sound elf blue books and blue-books

Passion w lashes W w

Breaking grass and,

The shuttered dress, hat

Sinking lights of lamps

Ormola rays, clothed V A bourgeois

Paper brown two mirrors and life sized photograph of Emperor, coloured Here and there vases candelabra arranged sale objects décor-

Trembling ging white-capped woman mit passing through arp

Scrubbing smoke

Quartet Art, Pre-Order!!

2011-03-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

THE ALBUM IS OFFICIAL READY TO PURCHASE OFF OF ITUNES!

EARLIER TODAY THE ALBUM WAS RANKED #24 BEST SELLER ON iTUNES TOP 200 JAZZ ALBUMS, MARCH 29th!

My first album, Quartet Art, will soon be available on itunes and emusic! Go HERE for the link to the pre-order site, and it will be available by March 29th digitally for $9.99! The album is with tenor saxophonist David Pope, trumpeter Josh Reed, drummer/percussionist Matt Coyle and guitarist Ryan Fourt with myself on double bass. About half of the album is quartet without guitar, and the other half is with guitar. Half of the record is free improvisations, and the other half original composed pieces, with one "cover" tune, "Song for Che" by Charlie Haden. You can hear the original version of it HERE performed by the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra in 1969 on his first album. A much earlier blogpost on this site discusses Charlie Haden's political influence on his music, such as pieces like "Song for Che."

This was a fun project, Josh Reed flew in from NYC and Dave Pope from Virginia, all to UNC's studio in Greeley Colorado to record 3 hour sessions two days in a row. I had to cut an original tune (the composition just wasn't great) and a few free improvisations. Much later on, after mixing and mastering, I went though the record and transcribed all of the free improvisations into playable "tunes." I put tunes into quotes because they don't work like most tunes do, but are maps of composed (originally improvised) parts and text instructions on improvisations. Whenever I plan on some CD release concerts the band will play the free improvisation charts from the album, which will be an interesting concept to see how the music changes once it is codified and written down.

The album is named "Quartet Art" from the title track of the same name, based off of a piece that was a late night painting I made after a gig. The album cover is a version of part of the painting, and the score is a written out in and out melody with the graphics as the middle section of the piece. It essentially is a map of when to play, and who is playing together. It involves more listening and cueing to get through successfully. We played three versions of this, all of them great, and was very difficult to decide which ones to cut out. The graphics decision came out of a conversation with trumpeter Hugh Ragin about playing Anthony Braxton's music and what the scores were like. Another track on the album "Toe Knee" is a tribute to Tony Malaby, based off of what drummer Chris Smith told me about playing with Malaby, and how everyone could be improvising at the same time, but the focus shifts from one player to another very specifically. I wrote a composition based on this idea.

I hope you enjoy the album, only digital for now, hope to physical press the CD by the summer, and do Colorado and East Coast CD Release concerts whenever it is ready to go!

Quick Archive, Mirror and Voynich

2011-02-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

Mirror is the score to Miles Okazaki. I'm looking for the CD as we speak on ebay. Incredible complex music, and part of the more recent trend of hyper mathematical music, that I can trace back to Steve Coleman and Vijay Iyer. Oh look, I found it on amazon as an mp3 download for 8.99. Downloading currently!! To be honest I don't know much about this musician, but I am fascinated more by the music if musicians post their scores online. I have bought scores in the past from Tim Berne and John Hollenbeck to better understand their music in their own writings. I even have a few Zorn scores that I have found via friends and interlibrary loan. Maybe I will edit this post or repost when I have heard the music! Looking around I highly reccomend checking out more on his websites, articles, drawings scores, really incredible information!

The other bit I wanted to archive here was this book I found out about via huffingtonpost's site. This is the Voynich Manuscript. It's a remarkable old book, recently carbon dated as being over 600 years old, and is written in a language using symbols that have been so far undecipherable. Their are also pictures related to plants, medicine, astronomy, and other subjects. It immediately struck my attention because of my work with Cornelius Cardew's Treatise, a piece that is slightly familiar, but also completely new and foreign. I would like to possibly study the manuscript (I found it online via a webtorrent as a pdf scan) and try to work out some musical possibilities related to the information concerning the text.

Michael Pisaro and the List

2011-02-17T00:16:00.000-08:00

Michael Pisaro and the List

The following LIST is taken from musical compositions and a few literary works mentioned by Michael Pisaro in “Writing, Music” from the Ashgate Research Compantion to Experimental Music. The chapter that he contributes to this goes into different techniques and processes involved in contemporary music, or even patterns that he has found in different composer’s works. After reading it I found that I knew of some of the music listed, thought of pieces that I knew myself that would have fit in certain sections, but for the most part was left with a lot of gaps in my own musical knowledge as to a lot of the composers, especially post 1980. Essentially this list is personal; I left a lot of scores, and literary works out of the list if I found it extraneous (like mentioning too many by the same person) or if I already had heard/looked at the score to certain things. I now have the task to go through later on and interlibrary loan and hunt down as many of these recordings and scores as possible. Since so much of this chapter is about the process or visual aspect of the composition the score comes first in most cases and recording second. It sounds counterintuitive to researching music, but as John Zorn said, and I paraphrase, “I care more about the process than the sound.”

LIST:

John Cage – Winter Music (1957)

Alvin Lucier – Queen of the South

George Brecht – Water Yam

John Cage – Concert for piano and orchestra 1957-58

John Cage – Atlas Elipticalis

Mallarme – Un coup de des

MUSIC WITH “THE POINT”

James Tenney – Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow (1974)

James Tenney – Flocking (1993)

George Brecht – Time-table music (1959)

George Brecht – Candle Piece for radios (1960)

George Brecht – Symphony (1962)

Antoine Beuger – second music for Marcia hafif (1994)

Michael Pisaro – a certain species of eternity (1996)

MUSIC WITH “NUMBERS”

John Cage – Solo for Piano

Morton Feldman – Ixoin (1962)

Jurg Frey – Die meisten Sachen macht man selten (1) (1994/7) for percussion

Manfred Werder – (ein(e) ausfuhrende(r), 2 ausfuhrende (1999)

John Cage – Two for flute and piano (1987)

Antoine Beuger – ockeghem octets

Antoine Beuger – badiou tunings for eighteen

MUSIC WITH “THE GRID”

Michael Pisaro – ricefall (2004)

Michael Pisaro – A wave and waves (2007)

Michael Pisaro – nachtstimmung (2008)

MUSIC WITH “THE LINE”

John Cage – Ryoanji (1983-85)

Alvin Lucier – Still Lives

Alvin Lucier – Panorama (1993)

Alvin Lucier – Diamonds for 1, 2 or 3 orchestras (1999)

Craig Shepard – Lines (1) (1999)

MUSIC WITH “THE PAGE”

John Cage – Variations

Antoine Beuger – dialogues (silences) (1993)

Antoine Beuger – things taking place (1994)

Michael Pisaro – leaves (1994)

MUSIC WITH “THE IMAGE”

John Cage – Variations series (1958-1966)

John Cage and Alison Knowles – Notations

James Tenney – Critical Band (1988)

Jurg Frey, Manfred Werder, Markus Trunk, Sam Mirelman, Michael Winter, Tashi Wada - Miscellaneous scores

MUSIC WITH “PROSE”

Pauline Oliveros – Sonic Meditations

Pauline Oliveros – Deep listening pieces

John Cage – Lecture on nothing

Robert Ashley – Private parts (the record) (1977)

Mike Richard – Affects, Affections 1-4 (2002)

MUSIC WITH “THE LIST”

Alvin Lucier – Chambers (1968)

Antoine Beuger – calme etendue (1996-1997)

Jurg Frey – Lovaty (1996)

MUSIC WITH “THE POEM”

John Cage – Roaratorio: an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake (1979)

Nathalie Sarraute – Tropismes (1957)

Yoko Ono – Grapefruit

Yoko Ono – EARTH PIECE

Yoko Ono – Map Piece

Antoine Beuger – ein ton, eher kurz, sehr leise

Manfred Werder – 2008 (3)

MUSIC WITH “THE TITLE”

George Brecht – TRUMPET

MUSIC WITH “DURATION”

Manfred Werder – 2005 (1)

Manfred Werder – 2006 (1)

Manfred Werder – 2006 (2)

John Cage – Williams Mix (1952)

John Cage – Radio Music (1956)

John Cage – Fontana Mix (1958)

Kunsu Shim – expanding space in limited time (1994)

Carlo Inderhee – fur sich (1997)

Carlo Inderhee – Stimmen (2001)

MUSIC WITH “LEAVING THINGS OUT”

Morton Feldman – his pieces with very little dynamic specification

MUSIC WITH “TRANSCRIPTION”

Peter Ablinger – Quadraturen

Alvin Lucier – Letters (1992)

MUSIC WITH “WRITING AS A PROCESS”

John Cage – 0’00’’

Antoine Beuger – auch da

Antoine Beuger – aus den liedern

James Saunder - #[unassigned]

Manfred Werder – stuck 1998

Manfred Werder – (_ausfuhrende)

Michael PIsaro’s “A small manifesto” at the end of the chapter:

“What writing music comes down to, in the end, is care. We create situations. We care about them and take care of them. And we care for the people involved.”

Pillow People

2011-01-18T22:04:00.000-08:00

Pillow People!! I have been going through old protools files edited/listening/bouncing through old sessions to try and delete some stuff and get some room. I found several sessions with no information on them, several duplicate sessions, one corrupted session that screwed me up for a bit, and some stuff I hadn't heard/remembered doing. I found one titled "Nov5A," with 6 tracks three unnamed and three named. The named tracks were "dark blue," "apples that smile" and "pillow people." They are free improvisations either duet with melodica and hand drums/percussion or trio with same instruments plus trumpets. All were made with my roommates at the time, my guess is november 2008 in our old house in Greeley Colorado. I bounced them to disc and later I think will transcribe them into compositions of their own right. Some of these I could see re-orchestrated for a jazz quartet/quintet. The thick sounding 3-5 note voicings on the melodica plus trumpet could make for some interesting sounds. I have been keeping in mind the "next record" with a combination of drums, bass, guitar, and a larger horn section of trumpet/alto sax/2 tenor saxes.

Anyway more on the topic is I would like to do more with transcribing free improvisations in different ways to open up them into compositions in their own right. I remember reading a Chris Speed interview about his band "Yeah no," and them playing free improv, him transcribing it, and then writing tunes using ideas from the free playing. I like the sounds of free playing, their is more timbral considerations in that than most jazz heavier improvisation. I have transcribed already all the free pieces from my album Quartet Art (yet to be released) so that their will be continuity in playing music from the album at the CD release (whenever that is). I think the next "album" I do should be all composed music, but composed music made out of material coming from free improv. The idea comes partially from Joan Miro who would start his paintings out with complete spontaneity and then at some point stop that process, and meticulous plan out and complete them with a total idea/concept in mind. My materials would be the transcriptions (and find different ways to present the transcriptions, normal vs. graphic notations, text, etc...) that I could manipulate into compositions. So transcribing the NOV 5A material gives me very simple, very open sounding music, that could easily be re-written for a larger ensemble.

THE OTHER fun find was an older project that I blogged about soon after making this blog was finding my Backyard Soundscapes file. It's 10 10 minute tracks of our backyard at different times in the day. I think I specifically recorded them so that they would be at different hours. My goal was to have 24 pieces of 10 minute audio, one from each hour of a day, but I never got that far. One of the tracks is not really usable because of a jazz trio recording in our house while i was outside recording. I thought it would work well, but it defeats the concept a bit. I bounced a track of it today of 9 tracks overlapping for 12 and a half minutes to use for a backdrop for improvisation. I think if I practice with it enough, especially with my prepared tools, it would make a good solo prepared bass piece with tape.

Going through old protools files is fun!

2010 top records!

2011-01-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years!

Now that it's 2011 time to reflect on 2010. It's been a good past year for me, lotta ups lotta downs, but without a doubt a good music year! I have compiled a list of 2010 CDs that to me are a quintessential to the year! I preface this list with not knowing anything about the modern rock world with the exception to Wilco or Radiohead, and with modern classical music I'm also behind in the times with that..... so essentially this list is all jazz, or jazz-ish (the big umbrella). Also these are my own personal CDs of things I've bought/listened to and there are a lot of great releases that I haven't gotten to yet so they aren't listed (like new Tony Malaby, new Mary Halvorson, Marc Ribot, etc...)

1. Chris Speed, Oscar Noreiga, Jim Black, Trevor Dunn - Endangered blood

I was able to see this group in Colorado in December and they were selling their Skirl record release CD at the show, even though it's not available anywhere else. This was the best show without a shadow of a doubt that I have seen in all of 2010, incredible energy, great tunes, and very obvious that these guys have been playing with one another in various groups for years. They closed with an Ornette tune that was right up this band's alley (unfortunately not on the CD).

2. Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden - Jasmine

These two, as far as I know, have not played/recorded with one another for years, so it's nice to hear a duo record, of mostly beautiful ballads in this intimate setting. They recorded severals albums back in the 70s with Paul Motian and Dewey Redman, so to hear this reuinion is quite nice! I'm working on transcribing the bass parts right now, because my weaknesses are playing without a drummer AND playing slow tempos, so I'm getting a lot out of it. Charlie Haden's sense of time and phrasing is out of this world!

3. Dave Douglas - Spark of being (LP!)

Finally modern jazz groups are starting to release LPs!! I've seen it in the Bad Plus and in the new Fred Hersch record, but this is the first recent jazz LP purchase I have made. It sounds phenomenal, and I can't wait to hear this trilogy of albums with the modern silent movie that the music is written to accompany.

4. The Bad Plus - Never stop

The Bad Plus making an album without covers, and nothing is lacking whatsoever. The original compositions are great, I've heard several of them over the years at their live shows, so it's great to hear a nice studio record, great sounding recording of them doing what they do best. I love how much this group is a BAND and not just three guys that got together for a record date, surprisingly it is a rare concept in these times of modern improvised music.

5. Jon Irabagon - Foxy

Doxy for 70+ minutes!!! And it's completely enthralling, entertaining, emotionally high energy, GET THIS ALBUM! Who knew the extended saxophone solo legacy was still intact. The motivic development of ideas keeps it charging, and the back and forth of the saxophone and drums keeps the listener excited through the entire recording. I would love to hear how the tune starts and ends, since it is faded in and out for the album.

6. Ches Smith's These Arches - Finally out of my hands

I was waiting for this record for a while, luckily there were several high quality videos on youtube of this band playing so I was able to hear what they sounded like in advance. Ches Smith, Mary Halvorson, Tony Malaby, and Andrew Parkins! This group is an incredible fusing of some of my favorite musicians, and the compositions seem to push them into territory that I haven't heard before.

7. The Claudia Quintet + Gary Versace - Royal toast

The more Hollenbeck albums I hear, the more composed it sounds, and the more layers that are there. This, more than most Claudia Quintet records, sounds cinematic, in a very good way! I can't wait to hear more of his writing for any ensemble (this group being one of the best for their long history together).

8. Michael Formanek - The rub and the spare change

Really interesting record, not what I originally expected, which is great! Very cool tunes, awesome to hear Tim Berne play over more of a North Indian sounding piece. There's a lot of great material in this record, and Formanek has put together and amazing group of like minded musicians. More of this please!!

9. Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green - Apex

I haven't given this more than one listen, but so far an incredible sounding record. The dual saxophones play so well together I start to lose track of who is who. I need to check this one out more!

10. Jason Moran - Ten

Also, I have only given this one listen, but it will be coming back to my CD player very soon! Congrats on the Macarthur grant!! Always great to see a musician, and an improvising musician at that on the yearly list.

EDIT:

I new I forgot something! Pool School by Tom Rainey!!! WHAT A KILLING ALBUM!!! Tom Rainey is one of the best drummers in the idiom, and this is his first under his name as a leader. More please, and I would love to hear what his compositions might sound like!!