Improvisation and Sound

Had the opportunity last week to play some music with Mark Michelli, Jessie Downs and Doug Farrand. After surrounding myself with hardcore jazz all summer it was refreshing to play in a completely different direction (Non-idiomatic improvisation I guess, but I have always thought that that was a stupid term.)

I remember after a solo piano improvisation I played for a friend some time last month I commented to myself "I need to respect the sound more." I felt a need to remove the personal ego from my music. Some thoughts I had been sitting on- the music of Morton Feldman, and his idea of "sourceless sounds" also the work of artist Yves Klein, who I had beliefs that would be the visual art analogy to Feldman's ideas. Klein wanted his works to be about more than himself creating a piece. He wanted to depict the immaterial.

In any case, the music we played that day left me very satisfied. In all cases, the sound triumphed over individuals. The result was evocative as a whole, but was not stamped with the intent of any performer, something which can ruin music.

Look forward to more of this when I return to Oberlin in a week.

Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo-Damrosch Park Bandshell

This was it. It was the best concert of the summer AND YOU MISSED IT OSCAR! YOU MISSED IT!

I'm new to Hermeto Pascoal, having heard only a smattering of his music. When I heard that he was giving a free concert as part of Lincoln Center's summer series at Damrosch Park Bandshell, it seemed like an opportunity I shouldn't miss.

I have a very hard time describing what happened on stage that night, but it was an incredible experience. The influence of jazz and brazilian samba and bossa nova music where evident, but to call the music a mere fusion of those two styles would be a great oversimplification. The music was thickly layered and polyrhythmic. As a listener, I could feel a pocket, but when I tried to count out time, or tell where one was, it became totally confusing. Every so often the band would settle down, and a clearly discernible meter would emerge. Only several seconds later they would depart again in a completely different direction.

The hour long set was played with very few pauses. The band would only stop playing for a few seconds at a time. The effect was overwhelming, like reading a novel in one sitting. Although I didn't have any time to think about what I was hearing, it was a really great effect. After the show I was left with incredible impression of the music I had heard, without being able to put together any of the smaller details in my head. Also, special recognition is due to Aline Morae, Hermeto's wife and vocalist in the group. She sang for an hour, while performing incredibly complex music with such intensity that the whole audience was awed.

I had come across some very cynical philosophies about this country and life in general this summer, for reasons I won't get into now. Basically, I was very frustrated with living in an increasingly conservative and consumer driven society. This concert really cleared my head out. After seeing Hermeto e Grupo on stage I was left with an important but very obvious revelation- "Right. That's why I am a musician."

Performance Announcement

I will be playinfg music at a farmer's market held at Princeton Public Library on Thursday the 26th at 12:30. The band is myself on piano, Dan Filipak on bass and Theo Lebeaux on drums. We will be playing music by Theo, myself, Miles Davis and Carla Bley among others. Come check it out.

Christian Marclay Festival

This festival, held at the Whitney Museum lasted about a month between July and August. One the third floor of the Whitney, There was an exhibit devoted to his visual art. The exhibit also served as a performance space for his conceptual music pieces. The two performances I caught were "Ephemera" performed by Sylvie Courvoisier and Ikue Mori and "Wind Up Guitar" performed by Mary Halvorson.

Ephemera is a strange take-off on the concept of the graphic score. Marclay collected a vast array of items featuring musical notation in non-functional form (i.e. as a decoration or design, not meant to be played.) He then wove images of these items together into a musical score. The result is a graphic score that, well... also has musical staves in it. The players are free to musically interpret both the musical notation and other parts of the score, and to elaborate freely on any of the melodic ideas presented there.

I can't be certain what effect it had on the musicians. Although the musicians did seem to pay attention to the score and were honestly devoted to the piece, the result mainly sounded like Sylvie Courvoisier and Ikue Mori improvising. Of course that is something that those two do very well.

Perhaps no one has done as much to realize the potential of extended piano technique in improvising as Sylvie Courvoisier. She has developed a variety of techniques, including the use of chinese exercise balls and duct tape. Furthermore, she has really studied them to the point of being able to incorporate them into improvisation flawlessly. She can fluidly switch between the keys of the piano and it's insides and sometimes even plays both at once. This way, the use of her extended techniques is never forced; she can access them at exactly the necessary moments. She also has a phenomenal conventional technique with which she produces some brilliant figures that sound totally alien to any sort of conventional jazz.

I know less of Ikue Mori as a musician. I have always had a little bit of trouble relating to music coming out of a laptop computer. This performance sold me on her a lot more. Her and Courvoisier have a tight-knit musical relation, and hearing the interaction between them helped me to appreciate Mori's skill in improvisation.

The piece "Wind-Up Guitar" consists simply of having a guitarist improvise on an instrument built by Marclay. This instrument is a small acoustic guitar with about ten wind-up music boxes built inside of it, and the wind-up keys protruding from the instrument's body. Each of the boxes played typical music box fair, but when several of them were started at once, the result was a dissonant and surreal fog of ringing sound.

Hearing Halvorson play solo (fairly unusual, as I understand) revealed a lot about her as a guitarist. She proved herself to possess a more impressive technique than I had believed. Power-chords were a pretty frequent facet of this performance. I guess come to think of it, I can imagine her at a young age being just another kid who took up the guitar to follow after their rock idols. (I'd imagine that next she discovered Sonny Sharrock or Keji Haino and then...) These rock-like chord riffs would then develop in complexity until they became dissonant and thrashing waves of noise. At other points, she played twisted and harmonically angular vertical lines.

The music boxes inhabited a very separate world from the guitar playing. Halvorson's improvisation evolved alongside the music box melody, but with only the faintest hints of any relation. At some points, when she played her loudest chordal figures, the music boxes would be totally obscured. When she subsided, the audience would catch a few seconds of tinkle-tinkle before she launched another attack- a very effective technique. As simple as the concept of this piece was, it worked very well for me.

Summer Concerts: Mary Halvorson

I guess I kind of chose guitarist Mary Halvorson as the artist I was going to follow this summer. It wasn't a bad choice at all. She is the antidote to every bad association guitars have for me; she plays with enough originality to offset the the negative effect on the universe of every kid from my high school who bought a guitar and tried to impress his friends by sitting in the hallways and cranking out weak-assed renditions of nirvana tunes.

In any case, I managed to hear her three times this summer.

The first was with a quartet lead by saxophonist Ellery Eskellin also featuring bassist Mark Helias and drummer Tyshawn Sorey at the Stone.

The entire set was freely improvised, and felt like completely democratic music, with no one leading too much. As with the best free improv, the players did not confine themselves to traditional instrumental roles; Sorey's playing was as much in the forefront and as melodic as anyone else's contributions. In this setting, Halvorson's playing is even more free than in her own groups. she played a lot of excellently gritty chordal lines made frequent use of a pitch bend pedal. I should like to hear her incorporate open ended situations into her own groups a bit more. (You won't find it on her record, but if you seek out a bootleg of her trio that was recorded in London, you can hear a more of this kind of playing. It's out on the interweb somewhere.)

In July I heard the first night of a three day run at Roulette with her quintet featuring Tim Berne on alto sax, Kirk Knuffke on cornet, John Hebert on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums. The quintet really brings out her writing skills even more than the original trio did. The compositions that night featured complicated and very engaging polyphonies and a a full use of the possibilities which the larger ensemble provided.

This was the first time I been to Roulette and it really was a nice experience. Like the stone, the focus is all on the music, and it isn't at all a tourist spot like most of the mainstream jazz clubs have become. It is great to be at a concert and know that everyone around you is a dedicated and passionate listener.

The third time I heard Mary was at the Christian Marclay festival at the Whitney Museum. This really deserves it's own post, soon to come.

If you haven't checked out Halvorson's record Dragon Head yet, I strongly recommend it. Also, a quintet album is due in the fall, keep a look out.

Summer Concerts: Ahmad Jamal

I have been absent for very long. I will try to play catch up with reviews of the shows I have seen this summer. Also stay posted for news of shows I'm playing this month. First up is a trio hit with Noah Baum on violin and Theo Lebeaux on drums taking place at Thomas Sweet ice cream shop in Princeton (the site of my first gig ever) on Sunday the 15th of August at 3:00. Should be exciting.

Ahmad was pretty much at the top of the list of the old masters who I had yet to hear in concert. I caught him at a late set at the Blue Note in June with James Cammack on bass, Herlin Riley on drums and Manolo Badrena on percussion. Beyond how impressive Ahmad's playing is for his age, he's become a much more aggressive player, an incredible contrast to his Pershing Lounge- era playing, where he was a perfect model of the philosophy "less is more." No matter which era of his playing you prefer, he still sounds excellent and his sound is still recognizable. The beautiful tone, delicate but incredibly solid swing feel and perfect precision and execution are all still there. Music is an amazing thing, that so many players are able to keep in such great condition into there elder years (Try hearing Cecil Taylor or Roy Haynes in concert some time.)

The rest of the group was deeply engrossed in the music. Seeing Ahmad live really helped me to appreciate his group concept. His bands are truly not about democracy in the same way that most jazz groups are. HIs band is an extension of his own playing, and he uses it to fill out his personal musical vision. Witnessing the dedication, focus and pure joy that all three sidemen put into this performance assured me of the merit of this group concept. Herlin Riley basically played simple time for the entire concert, but it was the baddest shit just because of how deep his pocket is. Jame's Cammack also grooved hard throughout. His solos showed a lot of technique and finesse. I'm still not entirely convinced about the place of an auxiliary percussionist in a straight-ahead jazz combo. I do not mean to diminish Badrena as a musician. At many times he added something great to the band, and he had a few very interesting solos. But for all that there were also times when his contributions seemed out of place and unnecessary.

Towards the end of the set the quartet played two classics from the Pershing Lounge album- But Not for Me, on which Ahmad repeated his exact solo from the recording (I sang along quietly from my seat) and the popular arrangement of Poinciana. It was a fun moment for all of the fans and die hard musicians who have been through that record so many times. Good to hear that the man hasn't slowed down at all.