Totally Flipping Out Part II: M B V

My Bloody Valentine just released their new album last night. It is called M B V. This is the follow up to the indie classic Loveless that Kevin Shields and co. have been promising to fans for, like, 21 years or something. It does not disappoint. I think basically anyone who likes Loveless will like this album. The song writing is great, in a similar vein with their older work. There are a few new sounds in their arsenal too. Just like Loveless, M B V deserves repeat listens, to unearth all the little layers of beautiful sound that are packed into each song.   

 go buy it here

Totally Flipping out about the upcoming Wayne Shorter Quartet Release

There is a new Wayne Shorter Quartet album coming out on February 5^th! I’m excited, you should be too. I was just 13 years old when I saw this band for the first time and got completely blown out of the water. They’re 2004 album Beyond the Sound Barrier was a mainstay for me and a bunch of close friends for most of high school. Now I know a bunch of people have heard Sound Barrier by now, and I think most people like it, but if you haven’t got the chance to see them live you are missing out on the fact that by the time that album came out, the band had already progressed a few light-years beyond what you hear on those recordings. In the early 2000’s the band was making a name for itself with radical revisions of classic pieces from Shorter’s oeuvre. When I saw them in 2004, they played three pieces, each stretching well over half an hour, with no readily discernible form. This band deals with improvisation on a grand scale. Furthermore, they are navigating this terrain without falling prey to any of the more tedious tropes that even the best improvisers often fall into. Shorter and company don’t embrace the more pure sense of improvisation that people in the free jazz scene tend to follow, While the idea of improvisation as a form of composition has been thrown around a lot, The Wayne Shorter Quartet’s music is one of the few working bands that actually justify use of such a phrase. I really don’t exaggerate in saying that they have the greatest sense of timing, patience and group rapport of anyone band that I’ve had occasion to hear. One of there improvisations really does feel like a structured, considered composition, without losing any of the immediacy of composition.

One could still wonder, whether this new album will capture the band’s live personality (or could any album do this?) Like their previous two albums, this next one will be a collection of live recordings from the band’s tours. As excellent as those records are, they don’t sound very similar to the band’s live performances, at least not the way that they play now. The new record also features a rather extended piece featuring the Imani Wind Quartet. Well… I’m skeptical about that one, but I’m perfectly willing to be proven wrong. There’s really no saying what this album will be like, but if you care about jazz and/or improvised music, there is really no excuse for sleeping on this one.

In my own alternate universe, this was the official jam of summer 2012

A Poem by Saigyo

My dilemma:

That deep realization will

never come to

My mind, the truth of which

My Mind realizes all to well

Sort of comforting to relate to the insecurities of someone who wrote in the 12th century.

Now if I could just kick this damn injury everything would be cool.

Phosphor album review

This was one of two titles I procured taking advantage of Potlatch records sale on its entire catalogue this past summer. Phosphor is: Burkhard Beins, percussion; Alessandro Bosetti, soprano saxophone; Axel Dörner, trumpet and electronics; Robin Hayward, tuba; Annette Krebs, electro-acoustic guitar; Andrea Neumann, inside piano and mixing desk; Michael Renkel, acoustic guitar and Inaz Shick, electronics. I knew that this ensemble was at the genesis of the movement of what has variously been called “reductionism” “lower-case.” That knowledge in no way prepared me for this album. The music contains none of the extreme sparsity or stretches of silence I had imagined. Their improvisation is actually quite busy, and shifts texture frequently. The names that have been applied to this style are most accurate in describing the nature and quality of sounds used more so than the overall structure of the improvisation. The performers all use deliberately limited means of sound production, including a preponderance of non-pitched sounds. These often make the instruments difficult to differentiate from one another, especially the breath tones that are prominently used by Dörner, and Bosetti. Similarly, Andrea Neumann uses her “inside piano” which is a custom-built piano soundboard, without the casing or keyboard of the instrument, to produce sounds difficult to identify as a piano, or even as recognizable extended piano techniques. It seems as if no individual idea presented in the improvisations develops or really changes much of its own accord. Each gesture simply enters the musical space for awhile, remains largely static and eventually disappears. All of the performers have a remarkable and admirable ability to sustain a sound or texture with no overtly expressive qualities, and almost no variation. The result is a foreign landscape of sound that alternately accumulates and subsides, constantly changing without ever latching onto a “direction” or predictable outcome. This music sounds fresh, and contemporary, it suggests that there are still further challenges in improvised music to be tackled.

Milton Babbitt: Composition for Guitar (1984)

A piece I have been enjoying very much regularly. I think this flies in the face of a lot of the pre-conceptions people have about Babbitt and his music.

Tom Rainey Trio at Cornelia St. Cafe, Dec. 30th

Tom Rainey performed a set of engaging improvised music with Ingrid Laubrock on Tenor and Soprano Saxophones and Mary Halvorson on Guitar. I was unfamiliar with Rainey as drummer and came away from the concert very impressed. He plays very few things that drummers play, focusing on a timbral approach reminiscent of Tony Oxley, or Paul Lytton, but unlike those drummers, his playing is always rhythmically propulsive and time-oriented. Laubrock and Halvorson both played with conviction and nuance in a set that often dipped into extreme, noise oriented blowing but also contained a great degree of subtlety and musical surprise. Rainey also made a touching tribute to the lately departed masters Paul Motian and Sam Rivers.

Recital!

Hello Oberlin-located folks. My Junior Recital will be on Tuesday the 13th at 6:30 at the Cat in The Cream. Will feature Jules Verne and the debut of my trio with Nathan Swedlow and Ian Mccolm (also known as the rhythm section of Jules Verne) I've been hampered with very poorly timed playing injuries, however I hope it won't stand in the way of having an excellent concert. The program features music of mine from my high school days up to the present, and some other favorites of mine (Bud Powell, Arnold Schoenberg etc.) Please come out! For those of you on the east coast, there will be a show in princeton later in the month, more to come on that soon.

David S. Ware Planetary Unknown Album Review

I almost couldn’t get my head around the idea of there being a new David S. Ware Quartet. Ware has made a more than impressive return to form after having a kidney transplant a few years ago, but nevertheless, how could any group ever rival his classic quartet? This group, with Cooper-Moore on piano, Muhammad Ali on drums and holdover William Parker on bass succeeds by sounding like an entirely different band, not a replacement for the old line-up.

All the signatures of Ware’s sound are here: the rapid and blurred flurries of notes, keening altissimo cries, bleating low-notes and occasional traces of Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins hidden inside the swirling abstract lines. Cooper-Moore has a bond with Ware that goes back to their early days in Boston, and his playing avoids obvious modes of accompaniment, while still complementing the band perfectly. Parker mostly acts as the anchor of the band, something he always does wonderfully. His handful of steps into the musical foreground are highlights of the record. Ali brings echoes of the tradition into the music, with drumming that often verges towards straight swing, but also recalls the free-time of older brother Rashied and others.

The material is all freely improvised, which is expectably significant in making this different from the music Ware recorded with his previous Quartet. Whereas the other band could charge with conviction down a straight path to exalted realms of music, this band is wilier, and darts into many unexpected directions. The 20+ minute opener Passage Wudang rises and crashes like waves without ever fully settling until the somber repeated chords played by Cooper-Moore at the ending. On the saxophone-drum duet Duality is One Ware opens with soft, motivic playing before quickly moving into rushing gusts of notes against Ali’s driving swing. The balladic Divination shows the very tender side of Ware, with delicate and beautiful interplay of sopranino and piano. On Divination Unfathomable, Ware plays shrill and swirling repeated line on sopranino that blend with Parker’s aggressive and growling arco bass while Cooper-Moore and Muhammad Ali paint a splattery, pointillist accompaniment in a moment of refined group interplay.

Ware’s recovery and return to performing and recording is inspired and inspiring. Perhaps this will lead to a personal renaissance for him, bringing with it some of the recognition and respect that this master musician has earned two or three times over now. In the meantime, those in the know have a hell of an album to listen to.

Injury

Yesterday I resolved that I should actually invest sometime in practicing my extended techniques for piano. It has only been something that I do when improvising with others and I have never taken the time to work on it by myself. I reasoned that devoting a little time to that could really help develop the things I have been doing inside the piano into a more mature musical language.

The result is that I have badly hurt my hand from twisting into uncomfortable positions in order to achieve interesting combinations of piano harmonics.

There are also some recordings. Since this is still in a developmental stage, I'd appreciate feedback of any kind.

Lester Young Live and Private Recordings

ubu roi, one of my favorite music blogs has posted what is almost all of the existing live recordings of Lester Young.

http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2011/02/lester-young-live-and-in-chronological.h

Highly Recommended. Lester Young is one of my favorite musicians of all time. Something about his sound is totally captivating to me. Even when he was playing a busy solo over a fast tempo, there was still a certain of inward-looking wistfulness to his playing. There a appearances by many other great players here, Sweets Edison, Teddy Wilson, Hank Jones, Barney Kessel and others. I do hope you get the chance to hear some of this great music.

Concert 3/19/11

On the 19th of March ( a week from today) I will be performing with a new project that began this winter, a trio with Danny Kamins on reeds and Ian Mccolm on drums. While I've played with Ian a lot before, working with Danny is new and this has been an exciting group so far. We will also be joined by Alex Cohen on guitar for part of the set, and percussionist Ryan Packard will be playing a set before ours. Show starts at 9:30 p.m. Expect awesome.

Spring Semester 2011

A new semester is underway. I am undertaking several projects this semester that I am very excited about

The first is the continuation of Jules Verne, formed this fall with Carl Mitchell on Saxophone, Ian Mccolm on Drums and Dan Pappalardo on Bass. Due to an unfortunate and ongoing injury Dan is not currently playing with us, however the equally capable Nathan Swedlow is now acting in his stead. Of particular interest to me is further exploration of American Folk Music as a source of material. Our first foray into this was a rendition of the Charley Patton song "Some of These Days I'll be Gone" which we rendered in a free expressionist fashion. If you are not familiar with Patton's music I strongly urge you to give it a listen. Fewer people are as crucial to the blues and the roots of American music, and few could put a song over with as much honest soul and down to earth grit. Anyway, that number became a mainstay of our repertoire, and we are now looking for other songs to follow it with. While I was first attracted to the blues, I've also recently grown interested in appalachian area folk music, or old time. Accordingly, I brought in the folk tune "He Rambled," recorded by Charlie Poole and Fiddlin' John Carson, to the quartet. Hopefully this interest will be developed further. We also have plans to make studio recordings in the near future.

Another semester of the Oberlin Improvisation and New Music Collective is also promising. The ensemble is much larger than it was in the fall, which will be a very good challenge. During my time in that ensemble, we have been struggling with the immense difficulties of large group free improvisation. Our last two performances in December were certainly the most cohesive and convincing that we have played so far, and I hope to continue in that direction. I also look forward to improvising in small groups with some of the individuals I have been working with for some time now, Matt Chamberlain Jessie Downs and Doug Farrand, and also with some new collaborators.

Paul Motian at the Village Vanguard 8/31/10

My return to Oberlin has found me to busy to do any writing. I am therefore currently using my recuperation time from this unpleasant cold as a chance to catch up.

Paul Motian at the Village Vanguard 8/31/10

Okay so maybe this was the best show of the summer. Tough call. I have heard Motian's trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano live before, and it was quite a show. This show blew that one away.

While Motian's recordings for ECM in the past decade have generally been about restraint and gentle subtlety, they were out for blood this night; it was the most aggressive I have ever heard Paul Motian play. Bill Frisell was the shy guy that night, in the shadows towards the side of the stage, hunching over his guitar. His solos were brooding and introverted but full of dark energy. He mixed jarring dissonance and rhythmic akwardness with twangy folk-like passages. Lovano was the extrovert, gushing tremendous post-Coltrane lines at high speeds, sometimes breaking into his melodic altissimo, one moment holding his saxophone off to the side like Lester Young, the next moment lifting it above his head like Albert Ayler and all of that history there in the music. Motian's playing was typically cryptic and fragmented, giving only the loosest and most round-about references to time. As always, it somehow managed to swing like mad. The trio played through three of Motian's pieces and three by Thelonious Monk. It is my belief that they are one of the very few contemporary groups who bring anything original to Monk's music. The set highlight was was Misterioso. After a very loose and collective take on the theme, Lovano took the first solo- mostly post-Coltrane knotty and sophisticated lines. Frisell followed, still introspective, but bringing in a lot of bluesy grit. Lovano then returned to take a second and longer solo. Halfway in he began referencing the blues heavily too, stomping it out like Illinois Jacquet. Motian's playing became uncharacteristically funky in response. While never playing any really obvious backbeat feel, he communicated his own unique sense of funk. This was a very rare moment for this group, I think.

The Paul Motian Trio is still one of the most innovative groups in contemporary jazz. Motian has nothing left to prove, he's just doing his thing.

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.