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Search and Restore Presents Three Nights of Jen Shyu!

This weekend, we at Search and Restore are beyond thrilled to present three nights of the experimental vocalist, composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist, Jen Shyu at ShapeShifter Lab. Shyu has curated a solo performance by an emerging artist for each night, followed by a different performance of her immersive work, which will be supported by a cast of incredible musicians, namely Tyshawn Sorey, Randy Peterson, Michael Formanek, Val-Inc, and a nightly appearance by guitarist Ben Monder. 

We caught up with Shyu for a lengthy interview conducted via email, in which she speaks at great length about the origins of her projects"Solo Rites: Seven Breaths" and her ensemble "Jade Tongue", and all of the research that went into executing both of those projects. 

ShapeShifter Lab is 18 Whitwell Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11215 Search and Restore Presents Three Nights of Jen Shyu November 14th, 15th, 16th 

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Maubisse

There is an opening of land off the Flecha road Where the earth spreads wide its grassy skins Til it breaks and reveals red clay Flesh where the wild horses graze Just beyond From afar their exhales fluttering Sighs in the expanse I knew not where I was, whom I strove to be It was cold Mother, I give you the sign I grabbed the first warm hand I rush home, and I see I was home all the time

- Jen Shyu, from Solo Rites: Seven Breaths

Excerpt published in Arcana VI: Musicians on Music edited by John Zorn

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Why did you decide to begin every evening with a solo performance by an emerging artist? What is the significance of that for you? 

Well, this is the first chance I’ve had a residency where I’ve gotten to curate myself, and I have to say it is really exciting to present these artists and post their work on Facebook, etc.  It’s funny because I feel like I’m also still very much emerging, but I recently got to hear Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Urban Bush Women) speak at our Doris Duke Impact Award orientation.  As she talked about her audience development project, which involved interviewing female artists around the country, one of the grantees commented on the fact that her project was very much about empowering other people more than simply developing her own audience.  Jawole immediately answered, “Oh, that’s a value set.  I learned it from Dianne McIntyre [very important modern dancer], and that’s what I try to pass down too.”  Her words have greatly impacted me, just the way she called it a “value set,” and the impact it can have on others.  I’ve been given so many opportunities by other artists, that I know how important it is to have the belief of someone when you’re in a very fragile state of trying to do something new, or feeling unknown, or just having moved to New York, or any aspect causing fragility.  I remember Miya Masaoka’s asking me if I wanted to do a set at the Stone years ago, when she was curating that month, and I had just formed Jade Tongue.  It was my first time performing at the Stone, and it really, really meant a lot to me to be playing there and being part of that community.   

  Can you talk about the specific performers who will open every evening of this residency at 7? What drew you to their work?

  I very much believe in these three artists, Rema Hasumi, Anjna Swaminathan, and Jordan Morton.  They’re all younger than me, and I just want to give them an outlet to show their work and try something new.  I told them that they could do anything they want as long as it was solo.  

Rema is a great pianist with a really unique sound and vibe and has been singing more, so I wanted her to build more material for this gig.  She had invited me to share a double bill with her at iBeam this past summer, and I liked her work a lot.  We have many of the same interests–ritual, language, tradition–and from our conversations, I knew she would bring something really beautiful and mysterious to the residency.

Anjna is a stunning violinist, trained in both South Indian Carnatic classical and Western classical violin, whom I met at Banff when I was on faculty there this past summer, and her voice is also beautiful – and she shared with me all these ideas she had from her experience with theater, and I said that she needs to make a solo work as soon as possible and bring these ideas to life.  So I thought this was a great chance for her to workshop something and get it documented for the future.  Oftentimes, it’s just beginning that is the hardest part – then once you’ve started, things start to roll and develop very quickly – it’s an exponential process.  

Jordan is an exceptional bassist and vocalist, whom I also met at Banff, and who just released a solo project on Bandcamp.  When I heard this, I immediately emailed her about doing an opening set – so I’m really looking forward to people hearing all three of them at this residency.  I will always champion other female artists as it’s still challenging for us in creative music and the music business in general – we’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go, in my opinion.  That’s a much longer discussion, “beyond the scope of this interview,” as they say… but I have a lot to say on this topic.

  Can you speak of the origins of the "Solo Rites: Seven Breaths" project?

  Well, the origins came from many places and many different “aha” moments. This Roulette TV special video explains a lot of its recent origins, better than I can say:

 But to get into the origins a little further back, it really started in 2001, when I was living in San Francisco right after graduating from Stanford, where I was interested in NONE of what I am into now, but instead, getting this great foundation in opera singing from Jennifer Lane, a teacher to whom I owe a lot in terms of vocal control and vocal health too as I maneuver through different vocal techniques, some which require purposeful wear and tear on the vocal cords.  Anyway, I lived on Fillmore Street between Haight and Page, and I used to go running in the parks around there and then eventually would always end up at Amoeba Music.  It was like a magnet.  I would hang out there wandering around and buying loads of used CDs – I remember I got my first Henry Threadgill and Cassandra Wilson albums there...  One day, I randomly found a CD with a French title, Chants des Aborigenes de Taiwan, put out by Playa Sound, back in ‘97 or ’98.  I had no idea what to expect, but when I played it back at home, I was dumbfounded.

 Some of the singing sounded so close to melodies that I was listening to at the time, in Lucumí songs from Santería ceremonies from Cuba.  I heard a connection and was seeking to understand more.  I had begun studying at first from recordings, then later from Regino Jiménez who was in the Bay Area for a short time, but there was nothing more profound than hearing this music in person in Matanzas.  That’s why it’s so important to go to the place, to the source.  So my first trip abroad in search of this music was to Havana in 2001, and it led to what has been 13 years so far of intuitively following my attraction to musics from different cultures in Brazil, Cuba, and Vietnam, as well as those connected to my own ancestry, namely Taiwan, China, East Timor, Indonesia.   After that trip to Cuba, I then went to Taiwan just around the time I met Steve Coleman, who, along with Francis Wong and Jon Jang, urged me to follow my instincts to go there.  That first trip to Taiwan was in 2003, on my own dime.  In recent years, my visits have become more intense on the research and immersion side, where I basically spend all of my time immersing into a new tradition, like sindhenan, the improvisational singing of Javanese gamelan music.  So my first three week trip in Cuba in 2001 then progressed into a two year stay in Indonesia between the years 2011 and 2014, with six months in Korea near the end of that time span, to study Pansori and Gayageum Byeongchang (singing while playing gayageum) intensively for those six months.

       So starting from those trips to Cuba and Taiwan, it has been an evolving search for my ancestors, their migration, the sounds they made, what my connection was to those sounds, and what I was going to give back, having learned from these elders, and what I wanted so much to convey to people who had no idea how beautiful these sounds from these “cornerest of corners” were.  There were many stereotypes I wanted to break, like many assuming that all Chinese music was the same, or that Taiwanese music was the same as Chinese music, that Chinese music was just pentatonic… so many assumptions I wanted to destroy.  I found myself looking primarily for vocal music that I had never heard before in these regions, especially “sung” storytelling from women.  Over the years, I continued on to China, then to East Timor, then to Indonesia, (Java, Bali, Kalimantan primarily), and South Korea, each trip getting longer, more intense, more focused, and my rate of learning the languages also picking up, and my involvement with the community as well, and collaborations with the local artists there.

Solo Rites: Seven Breaths also came from meeting Garin Nugroho, the director of the piece –his film Opera Jawa really turned me out, and I watched it just before going to Indonesia;  I urge everyone to just buy or download it from Amazon Prime – a must see for sure.  His aesthetic and interest in tradition and experimentalism was so aligned with mine that I was determined to meet him.  It turns out he is a huge star in Indonesia, but amazingly I was able to meet him after two months in Yogyakarta, thanks to the wonderful Solonese dancer, Eko Supriyanto, with whom I also got to collaborate while I was there.  After our first meeting and after giving Garin my albums and links to my previous work, I boldly asked him if he’d be interested in directing a new solo work that I was scheming but was still unformed.  He said “yes” and then invited me to his house in Yogyakarta, where he was hosting dinner for a film festival that he ran, and dozens of participants–actors, directors, producers–were camping out on his floor in his gallery.  It was like a big slumber party.  Garin’s openness and enthusiasm really surprised me and was so exciting.  Over the next two years I was in Indonesia, we made small collaborations and met often and discussed and critiqued each other’s work and different things that we saw, all during my studies of Javanese music and dance.  Wherever we travelled, we would keep in touch via email.  Then in 2013, Jim Staley offered me this residency at Roulette for 2014, and I jumped on the chance to bring Garin to New York and really create this piece.  Jim had asked me in 2012 actually, but I just wasn’t ready to leave Java yet, still wanted to learn more.  

Because Garin and I had two years of building upon each other’s ideas, making the piece was so organic.  I dumped all my favorite fieldwork footage over the past 10 years onto his plate, and he magically assessed all of it and came back to me with a general structure of seven sections starting in East Timor, and returning to East Timor, but ending finally in an anonymous place, a no-man’s land.  I then named these sections “breaths” and that became the title, Seven Breaths.  Everything flowed from there, as I fit in all the material that I had been learning as well as creating into his structure, and the narrative naturally came out of it.  We rehearsed in between his insane schedule of being a celebrity filmmaker, usually rehearsing in his home, with traditional Javanese architecture, with a “joglo” terrace, a traditional Javanese structure, which is supported by posts and has no walls.  So we were always rehearsing with traffic, birds, curious neighbors, and mosquitoes….

Those were the origins.  The piece is like a ritual, very much a ritual, and I try to keep it that way, rather than a “performance,” which is set in stone.  Now as I perform the piece in different venues, I throw in and take things away as things change, or as I learn new things, or get tired of other things.  I perform a lot of traditional music in this piece, which is in itself a practice.  For instance, it was just last year that I started to learn Pansori and these musics from Korea like Binari; so for me, it is important to perform them as I learned them, and refine that, and share that with people, before it becomes something else naturally after I have lived with it for some time.  In contrast, I’ve been playing Taiwanese folks songs on the moon lute since 2007, so I’ve lived with them longer, and spent a year perhaps just singing and playing those songs on the lute before I started writing my own songs on the instrument and changing the tunings.  When I started using different fingerings and tunings, I played them for my elder teachers, to their resistence at first, but then they accepted it, because I had spent so much time with the original way they had taught me.  Interesting - this negotiation between seeking approval, confirmation, but then breaking away and doing your own thing.  I think whatever you do, if it’s with sincerity and a pure heart, everything will be ok. 

(photo by Steven Schreiber)

There are a good deal of extra-musical things to be expected throughout these 8PM sets. Can you express any of what the audience might expect with these performances?

Well, my first answer was far too long, so I will try to answer these next questions as simply as possible.  I have always loved dance and theater, and over the years have witnessed so much ceremony, and non-ceremony, just every day life in different countries, different cultures - and then observing New York City in a new light, relating to my parents in a different way — for example, I remember that after my long spell in Taiwan and China from 2003 - 2009 really, my Mandarin had gotten a lot better.  And I’d be hanging out with my parents and suddenly realizing that I understood almost every word they said.  Before, I just knew intuitively, or caught words here and there.  But now I really knew, vocabulary-wise, and all.  That was a revelation and brought us much closer.

So there is all this potential in us.  As we expand our search, and learn more and more, things never stay the same.  How can one be bored?  Anyway, I went to my first metal show with Craig [Taborn], and standing in the balcony, watching people on the ground floor throw themselves around, and banging into each other, and just receiving vibrations - that made an imprint as well - so many things - theater and drama come in many forms.  People in ecstasy and other realms come in other forms too.  I guess the audience can expect to be surprised by what we do and what we don’t do in the space.  I am, at the moment, very influenced by the Javanese dance I was learning day in and day out - the pace of that dance, and the subtlety.  I often got sleepy watching it, and even doing it sometimes.  I didn’t sleep much in general out there in Indonesia— I stayed out late every night, like at a wayang kulit performance (shadow puppet performance), which would go from 8pm until 4 or 5am, and people just slept there on the bamboo mats, dreaming, waking, watching, eating a snack, and sleeping again.  I loved this.  I saw the same thing in the 24-hour and 3-day shaman rituals in South Korea.  Everyone just sleeping while the singer and drummer kept singing and drumming. I was always wide awake, recording, and stressing about how my batteries and memory packs were getting full, and remembering what I had to remember for the next day…recharging, etc….but every tiny moment, every gesture, every concept, every happenstance was an inspiration, ignited an idea, or just moved me… so I guess in performance, it’s about being aware of this impact that we can have as musicians, as artists, as people making the ceremony, and how we can relate to the audience - to involve them in something rather than merely “showing” them something or demonstrating how “good” we are…what more do we have in us that we can give? Giving ability is not enough.  So this “beyond” is what I’m interested in.  

I like foreign languages because it takes us out of the comfort zone - now you’re forced to observe other things and find meaning in other things.  I like how each syllable I create actually does have meaning in some languages somewhere – if I say “san,” this can mean “mountain” in Korean, or “three” in mandarin, or it could be “son” in English with a really open vowel.  And these are just languages I know, so it must have thousands of other meanings in langauges I don’t know.  This is always a powerful idea to me.  And that if I do choose to stay in a certain language for a while, there is always someone in the audience that might know that language, and it will have meaning for that person.  

  How did the new ensemble "Jade Tongue" come about? What's your concept with it?

Well, I was in a collective called Red Jade back in San Francisco led by a Filipino American percussionist Jimmy Biala and Chinese American dancer Lenora Lee.  This group had a great influence on me, and I had met all of them at the first salon that Francis had invited me to.  I’ll never forget it.  It was at Kallan Nishimito’s loft, and I remember it was a diverse group of artists and people in there, in that great room - everyone brought food, and Kallan was going around with a piece of paper, writing down who wanted to perform that night. It was a warm and exciting vibe, and I found myself on the stage with Jimmy and John-Carlos Perea, a great bassist and vocalist, and we did a version of Summertime that I had never done before - it was liberating, and I could sense that I was going into a new space, beyond category of “jazz” or whatever, but essentially trying to find my own voice.  Anyway, our work together, which also involved Japanese American percussionist and dancer Melody Takata, was beautiful and empowering - this was also the first time I danced and sang at the same time, in a non-musical theater way.  Lenora encouraged me to explore my voice while moving, and I was also trying to get out of my ingrained ballet movements…we did a lot of exercises and processes using text, movement, music, and all the senses, and this integration is a core of what I do today.  So I chose Jade Tongue for my band name, inspired by Red Jade, but wanted to explore more with language and non-language, especially as I was singing so much non-language with Steve’s band.   I am happy that at this point, when I’m improvising this non-language, people really believe it is a language – it’s a work in progress, but this is a start.

  Can you speak a bit about all of the first-rate musicians that you've enlisted for this band? the one constant, aside from you,  is the guitarist Ben Monder, so perhaps you can talk about him in specific.

  I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Ben just twice – once duo, and then once quartet with Mat Maneri on viola and Satoshi Haga dancing.  Both times were an epiphany – our duo improvisation, which was just after my three-month trip to East Timor, generated improvised lyrics which later became the closing monologue of Seven Breaths.  Playing with him is a journey and very mystical one – I don’t have to say anything about his technique and vision – everyone knows how remarkable he is.  But I can say that improvising with him is a transformative experience, hearing everything and much more than you imagined was possible, and taking you there to those realms.  I really can’t wait to play three nights in a row with him.

  Each night will be a different group, with Ben as the constant… the first night will be an exploration of an incredible ancient Timorese story from the Wehali Kingdom…I’ll explain more before the gig, as it’s too much to get into now.  John Hébert will be on bass – we’ve worked together a lot on his music and my music, and we haven’t played since I left for Indonesia, so I’m really looking forward.  He’s a first call bassist, and he can do anything.  Val-Inc is a phenomenal sound artist from Haiti, and one of my models for non-comprimising work and a power, which I still fear and love.  Val always opens the floor for questions after her sets, and I remember once after a solo show she did in Harlem, someone asked Val if she ever did music for fashion shows and if she would be interested– and Val said right away something, in a really sincere and generous manner, like, “Oh, no, sorry, what I do is spiritual, coming from a spiritual place, so, no, I don’t do fasion shows. Next question?”  I don’t think she is discounting fashion from being spiritual, but we could all tell that the woman asking was not talking about “spiritual fashion.” I always admire Val for her honesty and straightforward way, and for her fierce artistry.   Then Satoshi Haga, one of my favorite dancers ever, will be my partner in crime in expressing this complex story, which involves cock-fighting, territory, a woman disguising herself in order to save her brothers who have gambled themselves into slavery–you’ll have to come see what we do.   We have worked on many projects together, a lot improvising, and then our first staged collaboration, Cry of the Nomad in 2008  at the old Roulette and Raging Waters, Red Sands at the old Jazz Gallery in 2009.  Both were Jerome Foundation commissions (thank you, Jerome!)

  The second night features Michael Formanek on bass and Randy Peterson on drums.  Michael records on ECM, which can already tell you a lot, and he is a great, great composer and veteran bassist.  He and Randy are like teachers in my eyes, so I feel like I am just lucky to get a schooling from them and all the people who are joining me in this residency.  Craig was the first to tell me about Randy, and he said I should get together with him.  I had heard Randy with Mat Maneri, and I was totally overwhelmed and was quite intimidated, actually, as what Randy was doing sounded like cycles upon cycles upon polyrhythms and so much complexity to me.  When we did get together, he directed me to my intuition, which I feel I am still just learning about.  He is totally in there, with all this knowledge within.

  Tyshawn Sorey will join Ben and me on the 3rd night – anything can happen with Tyshawn.  He’s one of the most talented people I know, and we go way back when he was with Steve’s band for a couple years and we toured a lot together.  I always feel like I can go into unknown realms with Tyshawn and he pushes me to go there.

  I am also very honored to have two Indonesian musicians join us on this 3rd night.  Peni Candra Rini is a Javanese pesindhen and composer with an out-of-this-world voice and spirit.  It’s always goose bumps for all when she sings.  She’s like a sister, and we created a two-woman show in Yogyakarta during my last stay in Indonesia.  She will give an opening prayer on this night, in honor of a dear friend whom we lost, a most talented puppeteer of wayang kulit, Sri Joko Raharjo “Cilik.”  He died in a car accident tragically, with his wife and their 11-month old baby boy.  Djaduk Ferianto is from Yogyakarta, a bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer – a celebrity also in Indonesia.  He will also be helping us honor two other artists who passed this year whom we knew very well, Slamet Gundono, another visionary and puppeteer, and Dedy Luthan, a choreographer who took me to Kalimantan.  We will also perform a poem written by Edward Cheng, a physicist and poet who is in the hospital right now.  I cannot say enough about these artists and human beings.  They are represented in the title of “Winged Rain in Diamond Light.”  I hope that this night can be a ceremony for everyone meditating on their loved ones, who are still here, or who have transitioned to the next realm.  

  What is some recorded music you've been listening to lately?

Oh, so much…was listening to Tyshawn Sorey’s new album, Miya Masaoka’s choral work, Henry Threadgill’s new Zooid albums, East Coast Shaman music from South Korea, from the master drummer and singer Kim Jung-hee, whom I got to know when I was out there, and who is very humorously active on facebook like many modern day shamans; Muhal Richard Abrams’ solo recording Vision Towards Essence, and revisiting my fieldwork from East Timor, from Atauro district in preparation for the Wehali piece I’m doing on November 14th.

  What are some things that you're looking forward to this late-fall/winter?

I’m trying to get my new album mastered while juggling everything else.  I think it will be called Sounds & Cries of the World.  Some of my favorite musicians, Ambrose Akinmusire, Mat Maneri, Thomas Morgan, Danny Weiss, and I recorded the music this past August, when it was warm.  I’d like to get it mastered before the first snow falls, let’s see if I can.  A bunch of us will record Danny’s newest record in December, which I’m shedding for.  I’m booking things for January on the west coast, and will perform Solo Rites: Seven Breaths at Center for New Music in San Francisco on January 23, but I’m reeeaaaally looking forward to my residency at Montalvo Arts Center which will be for about a month...I desperately need time away from the computer and email and booking and Facebook and blah blah, and just need to have the space to sit still and imagine, and write some more music.  I have tended to make my best work away from home, and especially before a big trip, because I don’t have to worry about booking things in the immediate future.  I have some travel ahead, another research trip planned, but I am waiting to hear back from this foundation, so I will not say anything yet at this point.  If I don’t get it, I definitely want to go back to East Timor for a time and Indonesia as well...but to be continued…

  What is your ideal sandwich?

I like a healthy sandwich, one that has gluten-free bread, laden with greens, avocado, other healthies, but with wholesome bacon in there somewhere.  I just tried BareBurger near NYU for the first time, which my sister Samita Sinha took me too – my kind of place.  They also offer peanut butter and chocolate milkshake, which I look forward to having again.  The simple things in life…

Copyright Chiuyen Music, by Jen Shyu November 12, 2014

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An Interview With Wadada Leo Smith About "The Great Lakes"

by Samuel Weinberg

On the heels of his massively impressive opus--the 4 CD box, Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012)--trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith has just released another suite, The Great Lakes Suites (TUM). Although The Great Lakes Suites is not as large in scope (it spans 6 movements, over 2 CDs) it is, in many respects, no less impressive. Joined by long standing collaborators, saxophonist & flutist Henry Threadgill , drummer Jack DeJohnette (drums), and bassist John Lindberg, Smith was able to capture his far-reaching, and widely researched thoughts on The Great Lakes. 

This is a striking document in a number of respects, not the least of which is that many of these movements seem--as a friend of mine remarked when I played him the record--like "classics"; like pieces that everyone should know, or somehow already have. Smith remarks upon this phenomenon in our interview below, saying "[this organic work] is older than it looks and younger than it could possibly be!"

It was a true delight to speak with Smith, who was generous with his time and responses. 

I began wondering something while reading the liner notes for this record: it talked about how you were on a plane from Austria, having just performed with Muhal Richard Abrams. You then began to think about The Great Lakes. Did this fascination with The Great Lakes have any deeper roots before that, maybe even from childhood, if that’s applicable?

Well, from childhood, everyone has to know the names of The Great Lakes in school and things like that. But my fascination came when I was living in Chicago, beginning in 1967 through 1970--Lake Michigan was right there and we would engage in walking by the side of it. Sometimes, my friends of greater economic wealth would take me out on a boat, to go check out the space outside of the city. So that was the beginning of my love affair with these lakes. But I grew up in Mississippi, and I lived 28 miles from the Mississippi River growing up. So the whole thing with water in the Delta is that there aren’t a lot of rivers, but there are a lot of lakes, and so my notion of water has those sorts of definitions to it. 

So when did you realize that you wanted to translate these thoughts you were having about water into music, and into this suite? 

Well, on that airplane that you mentioned, I began to work. Once I get an idea, I like to begin to work on it immediately. And so on this plane, I took out some plain white paper and began jotting down some musical notes. I had just played with Henry Threadgill in Muhal’s orchestra and we had always been fascinated with one another, in terms of being musical partners. So I started with that piece “Lake Michigan” and “Lake Michigan” contains all of the compositional ideas, and the philosophical and psychological notions about The Great Lakes and this suite: it’s the longest piece, it’s got far more dynamical configurations than the others, and the structure of it is absolutely supreme . And I say that because when I listen to it, I’m fascinated by the amount of nuance of structure that emerges. But meanwhile, I’m on this plane, and I’m thinking about all of these things, and I begin to write my configurations without pitches, and not even trying to think about pitches at all. That flight from Austria to California is 13 hours, so I had about four or 5 hours where I just sank into myself and was able to feel the rapture of what these Great Lakes represent and the more I laid out a few figures, the more it occurred to me that these lakes could be the bread basket of the world. If you look, starting with Lake St. Clair, going all the way across, there are a lot of major lakes going through that zone between the Northern part of the US and Canada. There is no other place on the globe like it! If you spread the globe out, as they have done on these maps, and you take a look at it, one has to be completely fascinated and astonished by how many fresh water zones are in that area. And then when you look at the supreme lake, Lake Superior, if it flooded, it would cover North, Central, and South America in about 12 or 13 inches of water. How fascinating is that? So when you put that in your vision, and you realize that if you step out on the top of Canada and look at this water spread for two continents, you realize how amazing it is. So those kind of reflections went into making this a piece. Like I said, “Lake Michigan” was the first one that I began making notes on, and then I switched to “Lake Superior” and starting writing stuff...so whenever I’m going along, and whenever inspiration would bust upon me, I would move to the next piece and put notes down. So eventually, I’ve got these notes accumulating, and then I decided one day, that I would start with the first one and then go down through the rest and work. Working on them was a beautiful dream, because I did my research, and the iPad makes that so easy because you can type in any sort of field of research you want to, and find multiple pieces of information: scientific, biological, ecological, the whole gamut. Usually, when I wasn’t out traveling, at the end of my day, I would sit on the side of the bed, with my iPad, and spend an hour or an hour and a half just flipping through information about The Great Lakes. I don’t feel as though I can musically betray what I want to without doing the proper research. By that, I mean : I don’t see the Lakes suites as being programatic music, because it isn’t. What I see it being is psychological music, that I intended, and that through my emotional experience with that intent, I think conveyed. I feel as those, through music, I can psychologically touch at those pure forces and meanings behind these bodies of water. For example, the notion of flatness, the notion of eruption, etc. 

I actually saw a documentary about Lake Michigan, which is one of the reasons why I decided to begin with it. In this documentary, they show these huge stones can erupt in a second. Huge ships would sink as a consequence, because they used to have a lot of commercial traffic coming out of those lakes, coming out of Chicago and these others. A big storm would wipe out these huge ships--it’s a graveyard for large ships! And this a lake I’m talking about, not an ocean! From time to time, I still research Lake Michigan because I can’t get enough of it, it’s just so fascinating!

  Can we talk a bit about flatness? I believe at one point in the essay you wrote to accompany the record, that you described the lakes and the pieces as “restrained yet explosive”. You can feel that in pretty much all of the pieces, in the contrasts between the textural improvisations and the really explosive, visceral melodies, particularly on “Lake Huron”. 

Well, think about it like this: there are around 19 pages in the score, and about 25 pages  in my notes. There is a lot of music there. So when you think about how you’re going to make this psychological move, which would pervade all the pieces, that was the way that I thought I would represent how I was feeling. Each work would be a suite and a suite gives you the opportunity of transferring information, but also the possibility of expressing something different about the same idea, or point of view. So you can look at this idea of flatness symbolically, as the score is kind of flat; you could look at it as the flatness of a lake, because if it doesn’t have any interruptions, the top of these lakes look very calm, but depending on the marine life and other things going on below, it’s a different story! I wanted to simultaneously capture the idea of flatness and explosiveness. To do that, one would have to think both about the flatness but also take into consideration everything that goes on beneath that flatness. When the storm comes up, that’s a whole different kind of reality, because this energy completely destroys that flatness! And when it’s all over, it comes back down just like nothing happened. It’s amazing, because nature can reveal things to us in such a flash, then in the next moment, it’s over! 

That notion is pervasive throughout all of the pieces, even though you have different ways of expressing it?

Yes, because if you lay something down on the ground, and you get down and you have a nice look at it, you’ll see a whole other way of looking, especially if it’s grass where you see a whole bunch of different contours and textures that you hadn’t before. You also have an image of the whole from your different perspectives. Music is the same way: if you allow this reflection to become organic--that is, if a person can connect with the music, and the music has the quality to connect with them--then they can explore various angels from them. Also programming-wise, one can begin to program things in a different way: “Lake Superior” coming up, and maybe “Lake Eerie” coming up in a different context. And as time goes on, you’re allowed to have a different understanding of your work, and the sequencing and the patterns of it.

Right, and you had written some of the music from Ten Freedom Summers 30 years before it was released!

Yup, 30 years! And some of those pieces I had written without instrumentation, which added a whole different quality to it. Some of those pieces were re-conditioned in terms of orchestrations and things like that, but once the whole thing was put together, and the context of 38 years top to bottom of completeness, you end up with an organic work, which is older than it looks and younger than it could possibly be! It only becomes alive when it’s played. 

Well let’s talk about the band on The Great Lakes. When talking about Threadgill, maybe you can speak a bit about some early days of the AACM, when you were first getting to know him. Jack DeJohnette was in Chicago, too? 

Jack was in Chicago, but when I met him, he had already moved away and was already playing with Miles Davis, so I didn’t experience his presence until Miles Davis was playing in Chicago, and Jack came over and started hanging with Muhal. Muhal had called me earlier that morning and asked if I wanted to come over because Jack was going to come over and maybe we would play a little bit. And of course I was already in the car on the way! So Jack comes over, and there’s nobody else there besides Muhal, me and Jack and so we talked a bit and then we started playing. I believe that Jack taped it, because at that time people were using tapes. It was a really fantastic session, because it wasn’t that any of us played a theme or anything like that, we just played and it was fantastic. I discovered then, and for the first time in my life, that this guy was the kind of drummer that I wanted to play with. I could play naturally, intuitively, and it would mesh with anything. It was just perfect. And that trio of Muhal, Jack, and I is something that has never been explored, would’ve and could’ve been a fantastic idea, anytime, any place, in any century. I would love to do it in this century. 

Threadgill, when I first met him, I thought was a very shy man. He wore a scarf wrapped around his head, so I wasn’t sure whether he was into some special stuff or not [laughs]. He struck me as an extraordinary personality, but when he turned around smiled, it was like light busting out of a sun, which I thought was pretty cool. I introduced myself to him, and we talked, but later on in that time, we decided to put a group together--it was a very different group, which never recorded and which involved many different aspects of theater and dance within the context of the performance. So it wasn’t just a concert/performance band. We went to Europe together at one point, and this was in the early 1970s. He, Leonard Jones and I shared a place and we kind of worked sporadically from there. Musically speaking, we had done a recording session with Muhal before we went to Europe, where Threadgill and I were the lead horns. I had a good experience of his musicality and also his personality. He was one of the few guys in Chicago where we would go and hang out, have a cognac or something, during my days of decadence. Those days are gone so long that I don’t even know what these things smell like! 

I met John Lindberg when he was 18 or 19, something like that. He was astonishing then as a young player, and also someone who struck me as being very serious. We’ve grown to be close friends from that moment on! We started playing duets after that, in all sorts of situations, we started communicating with one another. He’s one of the greatest bass players that I’ve ever come across. Once Malachi died, there was no question in my mind of who was to become the next bass player of the Golden Quartet.

  The best description of any of these artists that I work with come in the form of these poems that I wrote for everybody to accompany the record. I tried to capture all of these people exactly, and what it is that they project when they make their music. I struggled for a long time to find the best way to describe Threadgill’s playing. He’s non-prose in his playing--he’s very poetic--so I came up with this term “saxophone sonata”, because that’s the pureness of how I hear, see, feel him when I’m making music with him. 

Right, you also described him as using “sonic crystals”. What I find so amazing about his playing, and yours too, is that both of you can say so much in just 2 bars. He has an incredible sense of space and improvisational patience. With his own bands he creates these universes, and he doesn’t have to play at all for you to feel him there. 

Yeah, that’s right, he doesn’t play much in his own bands. It’s amazing! 

And it’s the same as you described DeJohnette as producing, “majestic rhythmic fields”. So I was wondering how you were thinking about space, when writing these suites, and with these musicians in mind. 

Well I didn’t have to consider any of that, and the reason for that was because I wrote the music specifically for these players, and I had them and their sounds in mind. So I told you there were 19 pages of music right? John, Henry and I rehearsed for an hour and a half only and all we did was check out if the notes were correct on the instruments, and that we could comprehend the forms. Jack didn’t rehearse. An hour and a half! From there, we went out, had some food and talked a long time. In the studio we looked at that music, tried to figure out if there were going to be any complications on cues or anything like that, and then we decided to just do a take. All that music was made in one take, and only “Lake St. Clair” was done with two takes and there was some technical reason for that. When I say one-take, I mean that I have a high-productivity, low-risk method of recording. And I get the maximum amount from the artists because of this. I record section-by-section. And then, in that same section, the engineer puts them together so that we can listen to them. We spent four and a half hours making 90 minutes of music--had lunch and a photo session, all in that four hours! People don’t believe me when I tell them that, but it’s true! With Ten Freedom Summers, Golden Quartet recorded 13 pieces, between 9 o’clock in the morning to 1 at night. And the last piece that was recorded was “Rosa Parks” and that piece is a gem! I don’t understand how they did it. How did they manage to get such a magnificent performance after working so many hours straight? 

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You're Invited to Tim Berne's 60th Birthday Party

(Tim Berne, Protestant minister; photo Ben Gerstein)

Since this blog's inception, I have made no secret about my adoration for the music of Tim Berne. In the past year, I have interviewed Berne twice (first & second), and have written about a number of his gigs, and those of his close collaborators. It should then come as no surprise that I'm beyond excited to speak a bit about his forthcoming week at The Stone, which runs from October 7th through the 12th, and is ostensibly a celebration of his 60th birthday. Throughout this week, Berne will present his working band, Snakeoil (pianist Matt Mitchell, clarinetist Oscar Noriega, drummer Ches Smith with the addition of guitarist Ryan Ferreira) for three nights--6 sets, between the 7th and the 9th--as well as some burgeoning projects: both sets on Friday will showcase Ice Station Zebra (with Matt Mitchell, David Torn, Tyshawn Sorey and Ches Smith), and on Saturday & Sunday, Berne will play the first sets with Decay (Ryan Ferreira, Michael Formanek, Ches Smith) & the second with Cornered (Snakeoil plus Ryan Ferreira and Michael Formanek). 

When the idea about writing this piece first came to me, I thought that I would enumerate some reasons why one should attend Berne's week at The Stone, and those reasons are many and varied. But given my lack of adequate journalese, or linguistic facility, I began to think that it's perhaps more proper to state simply that Tim Berne's music has truly and deeply changed me and that spending as much time with his music as I have, has really challenged my thoughts about the nature of both composition and improvisation. While there's a pervasive sentiment from journalists and others I've spoken with that Berne's music is "complex" --spoken of either pejoratively or glowingly-- this should not give one reason to either be averse to his music, nor to blindly praise it. All I can say to the reader is this: spend some time with his records and inhabit the universe that his wholly unique compositions create. And do yourself the favor of making it out to at least one set this week to experience this music yourself if you haven't already.

I will leave a few representative samples of these groups below:

(particularly the vamp in the last 2 minutes of this one!)

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Catch Taylor Ho Bynum on his Acoustic Bicycle Tour!

(photo by Peter Gannushkin)

There never seems to be a dull moment on the calendar of cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum. He makes numerous records with the diverse projects he's involved in; serves as the director of the Tri-Centric Foundation (an organization built in service of iconoclast Anthony Braxton's work); and has recently embarked upon his second Acoustic Bicycle Tour--a truly grassroots endeavor--in which Bynum, cornet on his back, bikes hundreds of miles to play various gigs, often in venues which are slightly off-the-beaten path. Having already successfully completed an ABT through New England four years ago, Bynum is at it again, this time with the ambitious itinerary of biking down the length of the West Coast: beginning in Canada, ending in Mexico, and playing with some of the West Coast's finest improvisers along the way. I had the great pleasure of chatting with Bynum about this endeavor, and three of his most recent releases: Navigation (Firehouse 12), Through Foundation, and Continuum (Relative Pitch). 

Along with some great embedded videos, I've also attached the remainder of his ABT dates at the bottom of this interview. 

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Do you want to talk a little bit about this new duo record with Tomas? You guys have made a bunch of records together and have known each other for years, but you recorded this one in your basement so maybe you could talk about those circumstances.

Yeah, Tomas and I met when I was 17 and he was 15, because we went to neighboring high schools. We met through a mutual friend and started playing together, and then we reconnected when I went to The New School for one semester in college, while he was there for his whole time in school, so we reconnected there. At that point we really reconnected and kept a band together all through college. Then we played all through our twenties and thirties, but it was slightly suspended while he was touring with STOMP. But even then, when he was in town, we would get together and do some gigs. So this has been a relationship that has been happening for over twenty years. So about 10 , we started actively working as a duo—he's in a couple of my groups, we were in a couple of collective things together, but we sort of wanted to break it down and have it be a core ensemble. There's kind of a nice tradition of drum/trumpet or drum/cornet duos: the Don Cherry & Ed Blackwell stuff, Philip Wilson and Lester Bowie...I think there's that tradition in place because there's a nice connectivity between those two instruments –the physicality of both of them and the primal nature of both of them. They're both so immediately related to ritualistic musics from all over the world that involve something you bang on and something you blow through [laughs]! So it's always been a particular part of our repertoire that we've kept up. We had done two duo records and we wanted to make a third one and we sort of made the choice that, rather than shopping it around to a label or making it in a studio, that we would really celebrate the personal nature of this project and the history behind it, and we decided to just do it ourselves, from top to bottom. So rather than doing it in a recording studio, Tomas came over to my house, stayed with me for three days, and my friend Nick Lloyd set up a portable recording setup in my basement, and we just recorded there! We would spend a couple of hours recording, then go out on the porch for a while and drink some iced-tea, have a sandwich, then go back down and record for a few more hours. So we really wanted to play up the relaxed, communal and social nature of this project and trying to get that to come across in the vibrations of the music. And similarly, once we finished the record, we decided that rather than shopping it around, that we would release it as a very personal and limited release, where we only did a small vinyl run. It was a friend of Tomas' who did the design—a really beautiful painting and she also printed some colored vinyl which matched the color of the painting. So this was all as a way to celebrate twenty years of playing together.

So how many vinyl were pressed?

249 [laughs]. That's a 250 vinyl order, and one of them must have gotten broken in the order or something! It's kind of an odd number but I like it. Of course, we're also making it available digitally. I mean, it's great because I've been doing more and more stuff on vinyl and it just sounds good, it feels good, I think the audio is better.

It's an experiential thing, too.

Exactly, it's an experiential thing and it puts the material object to the moment, and I think that there's something about that that makes you listen to it in a different way, because it's not wholly ephemeral or digital. Well it's funny because I remember when I was a student, and I was studying with Braxton, he told me that I had to go check out some Albert and Donald Ayler. So I thought, “Well, Professor Braxton told me to check this out, so I better do it”. So this is back in the days of record stores, in Middletown, CT where there weren't any good record stores, so I had to really search and find this Ayler stuff. So I finally found this Albert Ayler record, which cost $15, and I hated it [laughs]. This is utterly terrifying! I had checked out Ornette and other things of that era, but Ayler totally terrified me. So I put it away for a while. But it was sitting there, and I had had to travel to Boston to get it and I had paid 15 bucks for it, so I listened to it again and again, and I finally realized that it was changing my life. I think that having been forced to go out, really search for this record and having to pay money for it, and then having a physical object staring at me from my shelf, made it give it the couple of extra listens that I needed to get into it. Like, I'll tell a student to check out someone and they'll come back the next week and say, “I watched five minutes on YouTube and it wasn't really my thing”, and they're done with it from that point on. So that's a totally different thing. And there's something to this notion of having to struggle through something that, once you get it, you'll give more of a chance to. So we figure that we'll make an expensive piece of vinyl so that people will hate our music for a little while before they dig it [laughs]!

So to segue a little: you pressed Navigation on vinyl too, right?

Yeah, I got even weirder with Navigation: it's a four album set, but it's one piece of music, but it's a very modular and shifting piece of music. What I really wanted to represent was the process of the composition, and not just one finished product of the composition, if that makes sense. So I wanted the listener to have the same experience as the musicians who made the music; where we're making different choices with the music and that it doesn't come across the same way any time. It seemed antithetical to the concept of the composition to present one singular, fixed version of it. So it was very important to me to present it in multiple versions and with multiple recordings. We did two live sets with the sextet—both at Firehouse 12—and then one day in the studio version where we did it as a septet, adding the great Chad Taylor as a guest. I ended up really liking them all, and so the idea was to put them all out, but then I really wanted to play with form, and make people think about it in a different manifestation each time. So rather than do a 4-CD set, or 4-LP set, I decided to do two of the sets on CD only and two of the sets on LP only, but if you buy either of the sets, you get the other free, as a digital download. It confuses people a lot that the LPs and the CDs are actually different material.

With the same cover!

Right. And you can't get the CD stuff of LP or the LP stuff on CD, but you can get it all digitally. So I tried to confuse and isolate my small niche audience as much as I possibly could. It's all part of my grand strategy to minimize sales. But I kind of like the idea of it, because I want everyone to think about all four of the albums as a set, but really differentiate between the sextet and septet, the live and the studio, etc. But the listener is really entering into the same space as the musicians, because we have a fixed set of materials that we're playing with, yet how we're interpreting them, and what choices we're making in the moment, are totally different from performance to performance. And really the whole point of that composition is leaving much of it up to the musicians to figure out what tune we're going to play, or what arrangement we're going to take. I've given the macro-structure, and the core-materials to be utilized, but the whole purpose is to leave it up to the musicians to what path we would take. I thought it was the closest way for the audience to experience what we the musicians were feeling when performing the composition. The LP and CD look similar, but once you listen, you notice all of the many differences.

Can you talk about what the score looks like for Navigation? Or what the macro-structure is?

Yeah, the piece is based around 6 movements which are interlinked in this sort of web, where each piece has two potential entry-doors from other compositions, and two potential exit doors to two other compositions. So it's kind of a choose your own adventure book: you get into a piece and you can go over here, or go over there! The idea is that each composition has two musicians that are responsible for cueing it in, and each musician has two pieces which they responsible for. So it's a web or possibility and responsibility which creates this constantly changing map or agenda for us to follow. So that's the macro-structure, and if you look at the cover art, those are the interlinked boxes converging. Within the movements, these pieces have their own identity—some are graphic scores, some are more traditionally scored, some are somewhere in-between. I said to them that the primary way we can think about it is that, for example, the alto saxophone would be playing the melody, and the cornet and and trombone would be in the background, while the rhythm section would be playing the changes. But we could come to it sometime, and the bass could play the melody solo, and the drums could play the backgrounds, for example. Or we could just take the bridge or two-measure cycles and just repeat them. We have these primary identities of the composition, but now that we've performed the piece many many times, we can really refract it, abstract it and fit it into what the moment calls for. So it's very much never been the same. I have to say that it's been very gratifying for me, because I love all of the musicians in that band—they're some of my favorite people in the world and they're people I've played with for 10, 15, 20 years across the board. How much fun they've had with it, and the sorts of amazing and extraordinary choices that they've made in the moment, makes me endlessly happy. That was really the concept of the piece. I tend to write in sort of extended suites most of the time, and the last thing that I had written with this sextet, was this piece “Apparent Distance”, which I still love and am proud of, but it's really a fixed roadmap. It was getting to the point where I realized that these musicians were just eating this up and it wasn't giving them the challenge that they needed, and that I wasn't giving them as much material as I wish I could've. I wanted to give someone like Jim Hobbs more latitude than going from section A to section B. If he was taking it to Z, I wanted to let him do that, and to structure a composition where we could really respond to the music, while still maintaing a larger structure, because composition remains really important.I didn't want it to be a free-improvising ensemble and I wanted us to have material to prod and to play with, but I wanted it to have the flexibility and possibility to go beyond a fixed system.

  It's fascinating because it really strikes me that it's a near perfect hybrid between composed and freely-improvised music, in a certain sense.

And clearly that's something that has stemmed out of my work with Braxton because he does that on such a brilliant and high level. But I wanted to make sure that I did it with music that sounds very different than Anthony's. One of the credits that I give to Anthony is that he doesn't want clones: he provides ideas which, those of us who work with him, can manifest in different ways. (stopped around 19)

Maybe we can switch gears a bit and talk about Firehouse 12 Records. You had a hand in starting that, right? Are you still involved with the operations of it?

I'm not necessarily involved directly with the day to day operations of it anymore, now I'm more like a floating consultant [laughs]. Carl Testa is now the operations and manager and Nick Lloyd is sort of the chief producer and mastermind behind the whole of Firehouse 12. This is kind of an amazing story: the space that became Firehouse 12 was one of these abandoned buildings that the city was taking open bids on. I think that the call-for-proposals request wanted it to be a multi-use space which could help revitalize the neighborhood. So Nick came up with this plan which was a bar, a concert space, a recording studio. The city accepted it and he built up the space over a couple of years and it really has revitalized that neighborhood and has been a cultural hub for New Haven, and really for the larger region. It's an extraordinary recording studio, and he's an incredible engineer, so the sound of the records are always fantastic. Then he has a concert series up there which has been great. The original format that he had was that there was the recording studio, the concert series, the bar and it just so happened that I had recorded an album there which I had been shopping around, and I wasn't particularly happy with any of the offers that I was receiving, so I was thinking of releasing it myself. I was telling Nick this, and he told me that he was thinking of starting a record label, too, so we were like, “Hey! Let's work together on this”. And so that's how the label started. This was back in 2005 or 6. And our first release was, of course, this 9 CD/1 DVD box set of Anthony Braxton's 12+1tet Live at Iridium. And so we decided to start the label off completely insanely! But I have to say that it's been one of our most consistent sellers; it's been the top back-catalogue seller for us, actually. But that became the model for us: sort of trying mix projects of elder statesmen with mid-career artists and emerging artists, all the while keeping a consistent aesthetic. Nick's wife, Megan Craig, is a fantastic visual artist, so she's done all of the design for all of the records. It goes back to what we're saying about making an LP—we wanted the label to have a consistent presence and aesthetic and to have weight as an object. The Braxton Iridium set or the Bill Dixon Tapestries set, these are guys who are my heroes, and who have done so much important work, but all-too-often, their releases really fly under the radar because of these fly-by-night labels, or people bootlegging older material or whatever the case may be. But we wanted to be able to present these things with critical essays and documentaries and to put it in context with the music. So it's been really rewarding. In the past few years, especially once we brought Carl on as operations manager, I've really pulled back from my work there. I still record for the label, I still help out with certain releases, but I'm not as actively engaged in it. It got to a certain point where I was working with Firehouse 12, I was working with the Festival of New Trumpet Music, I was working with the Tri-Centric Foundation and I just got so overextended that I kept thinking to myself, “What is this piece of metal? Do I even play it?!” So I kind of made a conscious choice a couple years ago to pull back from Firehouse 12, and I got more deeply involved in the Tri-Centric Foundation, which is my main day job, such as it is.

Braxton has a few things coming out on Firehouse 12, right?

Yeah! We're going to be doing this larger group called Echo Echo Mirror House and that'll be amazing. This is a seven piece band, in which every member also has an iPod constantly on shuffle, going through Anthony's entire recorded discography. It's just this completely insane and immersive wall of sound. That's one of the things that I love about Braxton—he's this dude, who's 30 years older than me, who has changed the face of music six times over, and he's still coming up with crazy new shit. And presenting us as his sidemen with that musical context is amazing, because improvising in that context is unlike improvising in any other context I've ever played in, and that is so exciting. To still have him offering us these sorts of challenges, as his musicians, is so inspiring and it's why we all stay with him—to be continually challenged to try something different, and try something other than what we're comfortable with, and to do more than what we thought we were capable of. And Anthony always wants to do different things, for instance we just made a record that will come out next with Nels Cline and Greg Saunier from Deerhoof. It was just one of those things: we met Nels and Greg at this festival and everyone hit it off and Anthony immediately knew that we had to record this, and we recorded 4 hours worth of music.

So let's talk about the bike tour. You've done one before?

Yeah, in 2010 I did a bike tour in New England, and did at least one concert in every state in New England. I did about a two week trip around Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, etc. That one was completely grassroots and it was incredibly rewarding and was a transformative experience. So I decided that I wanted to expand and refine the idea, and I was wondering whether I should go cross-country or down the West Coast, and when I looked I realized that there aren't many gigs from Chicago to Denver [laughs]! So there were a couple of really long, discouraging stretches so I decided to nix that. So I was just thinking about that the West Coast has turned out perfectly with a lot of people going to teach at UC schools and that there are really vibrant scenes in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I figured that there are a lot of musicians that I'd like to play with out there, not to mention it's really bike friendly and beautiful. It seemed like a good option.Originally, I think I was planning on going from Vancouver to San Diego, but then I was talking to my sister and she encouraged me to finish in Mexico, since I started in Canada. I'm going to play a sunrise concert on the US side of the border, and then a sunset concert on the Mexican side of the border and that'll be my final day. I was able to get this incredible grant from Creative Capitol which really made this trip possible in a lot of ways. Since I had some funding, I could really put some time in to plan a good itinerary and find some good gigs. The mistake I made with the New England tour was that I played a gig every night, which was insane, because I would bike 120 miles, and then play with a pickup quartet in Maine, and be totally exhausted! It also kind of robbed some of the spontaneity from the trip. So this time, there will be longer stretches without gigs. In that time, I'll certainly be playing, but I want to hangout in a state park and just play or hang out by the beach and just play, but not having advertised gigs. But then also spending a couple of days immersing myself in San Francisco or Los Angeles playing with a bunch of local musicians there. I think that that is a positive development from the New England.

Do you travel with your pocket cornet?

I did the New England one with my pocket cornet, but this one I'm traveling with my real cornet. The pocket is fun, but at a certain point it's a little limited. The full-sized is a little heavier, but I think worth it to bring my regular horn.

Can we talk about the Book of Three record, Continuum? This is you with Gerald Cleaver and John Hebert?

I mean, those guys are just such amazing musicians. It's kind of my most just playing records, if you know what I mean. This is our second record, we did one in 2010. And this trio record was kind of an accident: it was originally going to be a quartet record, but through a series of tragically comic mishaps, he never made it, after we had rehearsed a bunch with a this saxophonist who will remain unnamed! So that saxophonist never made the session, so John, Gerald and I just decided to do another trio record! It was totally accidental, but it was one of those things that was just really happening. It was completely spontaneous. We were all really relaxed and it was just a great hang. It truly was just a chance to play. With so many of the other projects I do, I'm either the leader or am contributing compositions, but this project is really just a nice way to connect with an absolutely killing bass player and drummer, and make music in the tradition, which I think is why we ended up with Continuum as the title, and one of the reasons that we played a Bobby Bradford tune, because he's one of my heros as a cornet player, as a composer, and so I was just connecting with making music in the tradition, whatever that tradition is! 

The remaining dates on THB's Acoustic Bicycle Tour:

09/03/2014 SEATTLE, WA

Quartet with Cuong Vu (trumpet), Carmen Rothwell (bass), and Dylan van der Schyff (drums). The Royal Room, 5000 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA.

09/07/2014 PORTLAND, OR

The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, 12-piece ensemble led by Douglas Detrick (trumpet). Central Hotel, 8608 N Lombard St, Portland, OR. Co-sponsored by the Creative Music Guild.

09/12/2014 ARCATA, CA

Duo with Gregg Moore (tuba), Arcata, CA. House concert, rsvp required.

09/16/2014 BERKELEY, CA

OrcheSperry, 14-piece ensemble led by Phillip Greenlief (tenor saxophone). Berkeley Arts, 2133 University Ave, Berkeley, CA. Including Ela Polak (violin), Shanna Sordahl (cello), Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), John Shiurba (guitar), Pete Fitzpatrick (guitar), Rachel Condry (clarinet), Cory Wright (bass clarinet), Jon Raskin (baritone saxophone), Clifford Childers (trombone), Gino Robair (percussion), and Tim Perkis (electronics). Also featuring the Goggle Saxophone Quartet (Chris Jonas, Randy McKean, Cory Wright, Dan Plonsey).

09/17/2014 OAKLAND, CA

Quartet with James Fei (saxophone), Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), and Jordan Glenn (drums), performing the ‘70s quartet music of Anthony Braxton. Duende, 468 19th St, Oakland, CA.

09/19/2014 SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Duos with Myra Melford (piano). Center for New Music, 55 Taylor St, San Francisco, CA.

09/20/2014 PALO ALTO, CA

1pm afternoon duo with Ben Goldberg (clarinet). Lytton Plaza, corner of University Avenue and Emerson Street, Palo Alto, CA.

09/27/2014 LOS ANGELES, CA

Anthony Braxton Trio, with Braxton (saxophones, electronics) and Kyoko Kitamura (voice). Angel City Jazz Festival, Zipper Hall, 200 South Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA.

09/28/2014 LOS ANGELES, CA

7-tette with Nicole Mitchell (flute), Michael Dessen (trombone), Jeff Gauthier (violin), Jeff Parker (guitar), Mark Dresser (bass), and Alex Cline (drums). Angel City Jazz Festival, Barnsdall Art Park Gallery Theater, 4800 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

09/29/2014 MISSION VIEJO, CA

Duo with Mark Dresser (bass). Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Pkwy, Mission Viejo, CA.

09/30/2014 SAN DIEGO, CA

Sunset solo at Border Field State Park, San Diego, CA.

10/01/2014 TIJUANA, MEXICO

Sunrise solo, Playas de Tijuana, Mexico.

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"In This Case, One Is Greater Than Four", An Interview With Travis Laplante

Tenor saxophonist Travis Laplante has the uncanny ability to make his solo saxophone sound like many, as he evidenced on his remarkable record Heart Protector (Skirl). With a host of extended techniques and a distinctive approach to phrasing and improvisation, Laplante fashioned a wholly unique sonic universe with his solo saxophone performances,which was unlike anything I'd ever heard. That alone made me so thrilled to hear of the formation of his new group, Battle Trance, which is comprised of four tenor saxophonists--Patrick Breiner, Jeremy Viner, and Matt Nelson--all playing a through-composed piece of Laplante's entitled "Palace of Wind", which is likewise the title of the record which will be released at the end of this month. 

Throughout "Palace of Wind" the four saxophones meld into one, in a stunning display of the limits of circular breathing and the extreme limits of physicality that a saxophonist can muster. But beyond that, and more meaningfully, is a striking unity of sound that the four conjure, where the individual personalities are blurred for the sake of the collective. "Palace of Wind" moves through weighty, dense movements, but just as quickly moves into ethereal and light moments, where the sounds seem simply to float. As Laplante says below, this is largely the result of intense and tireless rehearsal that the four musicians put into realizing and actualizing Laplante's vision.

Having seen this band live--and experiencing this music live--I can attest to the fact that the album is as good a representation of the sensations I experienced that night as one can get on record. This is powerful and necessary music that all ought to listen to. Battle Trance will be touring extensively this fall and I've posted their tour dates at the bottom of the interview, along with samples of their music. I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with the Laplante about this project over email, and you can read our correspondence below.

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In the description of Palace of Wind that I read, it spoke of how Battle Trance essentially came from something like a vision that you had in which you knew that Battle Trance needed to be not just four tenors, but Matt Nelson, Patrick Breiner, Jeremy Viner and yourself. Perhaps most surprisingly, it says you didn't know their music, nor them personally. Can you talk about that vision in some more depth, if possible? These sorts of things seem to elude reason, but if you could provide some, I'd be interested to hear it.

Sure, It was pretty simple. I was at my job at the time and had a thought "I should email Patrick Breiner, Matt Nelson, and Jeremy Viner and start a band."  I know this sounds completely unremarkable, but there were a few things that made this thought quite out of the ordinary; first of all I knew very little about them on a personal level, but the more unusual thing was that I wasn't familiar with their playing!  It's not like I had heard them play and thought that we should do something together or that I had this great idea to start a band of four tenor saxophonists and just needed to find the right guys who could play my charts.  In fact the idea of starting an ensemble of four tenor saxophones was something that had never crossed my mind before.  

Of course I have my fair share of "random" thoughts and I could have easily tacked this thought up as one such thought that had little true meaning and gone about my day…BUT there was a feeling that lied beneath the thought, something in the heart that I couldn't run away from.  This is where my words run out and I find myself in a deep mystery.   

Within minutes of having this feeling, I went ahead and tracked down their contacts and wrote them asking them if they wanted to start a band.  They all responded very quickly saying Yes and that was it.

What I value about my experience of starting this band is that I didn't hesitate and let fear or doubt stop me from doing something that I could have easily viewed as impulsive or insane.  I'm trying to get better at taking chances in life and not being so afraid of making mistakes and this is an instance where I just followed something without asking questions.

Battle Trance Promo Video from Travis Laplante on Vimeo.

   Can you speak about the compositional process for this piece? How did the parts come together? Did you have any sort of notion for the whole of this when you began its writing?

Writing Palace of Wind was the most effortless compositional process that I've experienced in life so far. I was in a state where my ego was quiet.  I wasn't doubting myself or comparing what I was writing to other music.  The music seemed to just come if I allowed myself to stay out of the way.  It seems like that's often the challenge for me, allowing for something to happen rather than making something happen.  During the period of writing Palace of Wind it was easy for me to stay out of the way.

The fact that it was such an effortless process still creates challenges, because now I find myself sometimes wanting to get back to that state from which I wrote Palace of Wind, but the fact is that I didn't want anything while I was writing Palace of Wind so to get back into a similar state I can't want it.  The second I start wanting, I'm no longer in the correct state to be an instrument of something that is beyond my mind.  

I also have to remember that the compositional process is alive and always changing and I don't want to spend my time trying to replicate something that took place during a time that is no longer the present.   It can't always be spring.  However, spring comes, then summer, then autumn, then winter, then spring.   

We rehearsed the piece as it was written.  It couldn't have happened any other way.  We were, and still are living inside of it.  I find with material of this sonic nature, it's necessary to hear the timbre with my own ears before I know if the sound is true.  I'm not good enough yet to hear a sound in my imagination and know that the translation into the physical world will be completely accurate.  For instance I can write something down that sounds incredible on the piano and I imagine it sounding even better with four tenor saxophones, but the second we try playing it I immediately know it is not right.  Being able to rehearse as the piece is coming in is like an instant check point for the sound, making sure it's not getting off of it's path and being compromised by me trying to be clever. 

For the most part rehearsing the piece while it was being written had the opposite effect.  Everything sounded so fresh and the instrumentation made all of the raw material I was working with come alive in a way that was more powerful than I could have imagined.  It was really easy!?!    

I didn't have the whole picture of the piece beforehand.  The parts were given one at a time, not always in sequence, for instance I was given the beginning and ending before the material in the middle of the piece had taken form.  Being in close contact with the band during this time surely helped to guide the writing both on a conscious and subconscious level.

Since you didn't notate any of the music, you had to orally transmit the piece. Can you speak about how those rehearsal went? 

Rehearsals were a lot like marital arts or dance training where we repeated specific techniques over and over until our bodies developed the proper endurance, as much of the piece is quite physically demanding.  We rehearsed a lot.  Probably two or three times a week for five months.  Once we had the physical side of things together we could focus on the collective sound.   

Since a deeper, unspoken understanding was there before the music itself, we didn't need to talk about the music much.  We all know if we played something that wasn't connected, we know when we messed up.  As we rehearsed and continue to rehearse we are becoming more sensitive to each other and to the group's sound so even less needs to be spoken about since we're all naturally tuning in on a deeper level.  

Perhaps related: there's a striking unity of the sound, where individual voices are rarely detected. Was that unity organic and self-generating? There must be a degree to which that unity is necessitous for the piece to succeed.

I believe that the unity of Battle Trance's sound is due to the extremely high level of musicianship that everyone in the band comes to the table with, the relationship that the four of us have cultivated with each other, as well as the composition itself.  

We work on balance a lot, not only dynamic balance, but also timbral balance, physical balance, balance with the room where we're playing, and purposeful imbalance in both subtle and blatant ways. What this comes down to is awareness and awakening the senses.  

The piece highlights all of the player's abilities to dissolve their individual sounds into the collective by working with unison.  When speaking of unison I'm not only referring only to literal unison, but also intentional imperfect unison where there is a melding of our individual sounds into one instrument, rather than four instruments playing together at the same time. Given the fact that we all play the tenor saxophone, the ability for us to act as one instrument in unity has come naturally.  Sometimes it actually is confusing because we think that a certain sound is coming out of our own horn, but it's actually coming from someone else's!  We're not used to working in this way so it's disorienting to our ears.  As tenor saxophonists we've all been bred to "have our own sound" and to set ourselves apart from each other.  Part of the learning for all of us in Battle Trance is to unlearn certain ideas and surrender to the collective in service to a sound that none of us could play on our own.  If we all were trying to "have our own voice" in this particular band, it would sound like four voices rather than one voice.  In this case one is greater than four.

   Where did the name Battle Trance come from?

It just arrived.  

And Palace of Wind? 

It also just arrived.

What is the future of this group? Have you begun to write new music? If so, is it in this same fashion of a lengthy composition? 

Battle Trance will tour performing Palace of Wind extensively in the fall of 2014 and 2015.  I think we have something like 30 concerts booked between now and the end of the year. I'm very much looking forward to playing this piece night after night.   

I am working on a new composition for the band and it will most likely take the form of an album-length composition, but I don't want to speak too soon.    I will say that so far the process of writing the 2nd piece is extremely different than writing Palace of Wind.  It literally and figuratively comes from a different time than Palace of Wind.

Battle Trance Tour Dates:

9/1 – The Buoy – Kittery, ME

9/2 – Jenke Arts – Burlington, VT

9/3 – Casa Del Popolo – Montreal, Quebec

9/4 – Mugshots – Ottawa, Ontario

9/5 – Array Space – Toronto, Ontario

9/6 – Now That’s Class – Cleveland, OH

9/7 – Constellation – Chicago, IL

9/8 – Trinospheres – Detroit, MI

9/9 – TBA – Kalamazoo, MI

9/10 – Oberlin College – Oberlin, OH

9/11 – Silo Sessions – Buffalo, NY

9/24 – Roulette – Brooklyn, NY

9/26 – The Red Room – Baltimore, MD

10/30 – Emerald Lounge – Vancouver, BC

11/1 – Earshot Jazz Festival – Seattle, WA

11/2 – Habesha Lounge – Portland, OR

11/4 – TBA – Sacramento, CA

11/5 – Center for New Music – San Francisco, CA

11/6 – TBA – Oakland, CA

11/7 – Equitable Vitrines – Los Angeles, CA

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The Screwgun Story--An Interview With Tim Berne

(Tim Berne's Studio)

by Samuel Weinberg

Midway through the existence of his seminal group Bloodcount, Tim Berne began putting out and distributing his own records under the name Screwgun. Berne continued to release Screwgun albums for roughly the ten subsequent years, in which time he put out records by a number of his projects and the projects of his friends. It should largely go without saying that the contents of the records are unique and wholly original, but equally as important to the Screwgun aesthetic was the idiosyncratic cardboard packaging coupled with the artwork of Berne's collaborator, Steve Byram. 

Recently Berne put the entire catalogue of Screwgun Records on both iTunes and Amazon, which got me thinking that it would be worthwhile to speak to Berne about the label, its history and the various records that he put it out while running it. Our conversation is below. 

This is a list of some of the Screwgun records that we speak of which are certainly suggested listening:

Bloodcount, Unwound (1996)

Marc Ducret, l'Ombra di Verdi (1998)

Michael Formanek, Am I Bothering You? (1998)

Paraphrase, Visitation Rites (1998)

Django Bates, Quiet Nights (1998)

Science Friction, Science Friction (2002)

Science Friction, The Sublime And (2003)

Hard Cell, Feign (2005)

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So I want to situate these Screwgun records in terms of the Julius Hemphill solo record that you put out. You said in the liner notes that you were there when it was recorded. 

Yeah that originally came out on his label. It was when I had first met him and my sister and I helped him out with it. She did the art work for the album, and the he and I figured out together how to distribute an album on the fly, although he had a label earlier in his life, when he was living in St. Louis. So because it was him, and people knew about his playing, I would get sent letters all the time. He had a Post Office box, so I would go down and check the mail. I sort of learned the ropes from that. And from there, I created my label, Empire. 

Can we talk about that for a bit? You had 5 records on that?

The Julius record was ’77 and then Empire was, I think, ’79. I learned the ropes from him and most of those same distributors dealt with me, when I released my record. It was a lot easier back then because there were a lot fewer people doing it. So it was a little easier to hook up with distributors. The Julius record went pretty quickly.

How many did you press?

Probably made around 1500 or 1000. It was a double record, so the shipping thing was a nightmare. I did that a bit with Empire, and then that CD shit happened, at which point I was already on other labels. I didn’t come back to doing my own thing, with Screwgun, until 1996.

That was Unwound? 

Yeah. With Empire, I ended it in ’83 or ’84. But the Soul Note stuff started in 83, so I might be wrong with the dates. 

So was it just easier to be on another label? Is that why you ended Empire?

Well, I sent a tape to them, but up until that point, I wasn’t too concerned about being on a label and I was pretty happy doing it myself. I didn’t really think it was an option. Seeing Julius do it, I kind of thought, ‘Who am I to think that I could be on a label, when he isn’t?’ It wasn’t a big deal and I think it’s a little more intense now. Most musicians nowadays, by the time they’re 25, have a publicist and are trying to get a gig at the Vanguard, but I think I was just happy that I had put a record out. That was enough for me. So I sent live tape to Soul Note of a show with me, Motian, Ray Allen, Mack Goldsbury, Herb Robertson, and Ed Schuller. I didn’t hear anything from them, and I was about to put it out, but I called them on a whim saying, “I want to make sure that you aren’t going to put this out, before I proceed.” And he said he had never got it, but then he ended up putting it out [laughs]. It’s called The Ancestors. And then I went on the road with Ed, Paul and Herb in ’83 and then we did a studio record. That one was called Mutant Variations. Then I think I made this duo record with Bill Frisell, and we sold it to this German record label called Minor Music. The thing that happened after that was CBS, then in ’86 I was able to make a living and got used to doing things with other people--I think I hooked up with Stefan Winter and JMT around that time. He allowed me to do some nice studio records.

Bloodcount had a few records on JMT, right?

Yeah, three. 

So what prompted the Unwound, three disc re-entry into making your own records?

Well, I had made 9 CDs with Stefan Winter up until that point and we kind of reached an impasse in '95 when he sold JMT to Polydor KK. There was this 10 year anniversary concert in New York in 1995 that Steve Byram and I helped him organize. We were kind of his "not so silent" partners and unbeknownst to us he was planning to casually announce the sale of the label at this anniversary celebration without telling anyone--a rather strange thing to do. We were pretty devastated by this and things kind of unraveled after that.

Stefan was cool, but what bothered me was that I wanted him to see the label as more than just an expensive art collection. We were touring a lot at the time and could see the potential for something more. Somehow he was able to keep control of the label after the sale and renamed it Winter and Winter, which I found rather telling. With the Japanese/Polydor investment he had had some success with Cassandra Wilson which led to more commercial projects and then I think he started to like the taste of this mild success and the focus started to change. So me, Ducret and a few other people sort of became the “Art” section of the label. When our records came out, the distributors didn't really care about them because they were more interested in the commercial things that he was doing, like Gary Thomas with Pat Metheny. I did one of these projects, a recording with David Sanborn of Julius Hemphill's music. Julius was still alive at the time, and it was kind of an idea that Julius and I had because he knew Sanborn from St. Louis. I think they were licking their chops because Sanborn was on this, and they assumed that it would be one of these commercial things and of course it wasn’t.After doing the Big Satan record for Winter and Winter I decided to take control again and start my own label. Of course years later  all 10 discs I did for Stefan are out of print and not even available from iTunes.

Anyways, so at the time, I had this idea that most people I know really liked getting bootlegs, you know getting the bootleg of some gig that they had heard of. So I just thought, why don’t I just do these really low-budget bootleg recordings and package them in a really bizarre way, and just operate it as an authorized bootleg label, of myself. The Unwound record, and actually all of the Bloodcount records, were just two mics in front of the band. One of the Paraphrase was on a mini disc player! All of the Paraphrase were audience recordings. Up until a certain point, I was really into that live stuff. And I was selling more records with Screwgun than I was with my JMT stuff.

The sound is actually great.

Well, yeah. I just thought, “I like listening to bootlegs, so why wouldn’t anyone else?” It was just great because we had this psychotic packaging and there were recipes. Byram was like my partner in this and we were just having a blast. Everybody was making money! I was paying the musicians, probably more than most people make now making records, and I was making money off this records. It was pre-computer, for the most part, which in a way made it more fun, because it was kind of less competitive, because not everyone could make a record for ten cents.

So then I met David Torn. Well Torn actually mastered the Unwound record, so I got to know him better. But once I started doing the electronic stuff with Craig and Tom, I knew that I had to get better recordings and go into the studio again, since I was kind of missing it. So I talked to Torn about it and he told me that there were some good studios up in Bearsville and he had been mastering all of my records, but he told me that he would love to produce one of them. So we did Hard Cell and Science Friction at this place called the Make Believe Ballroom, with this guy who Steve Swallow turned me on to named Tom Mark, who’s a great engineer. And we did one of them I think on analog, and Torn would produce them. We also made Formanek’s solo record up there, too. Then we got to the point where David said that he would like to produce one of my records like one would for a pop record--spend a day on each tune and really mix the shit out of them. I can’t remember the first one we did that way, possibly Science Friction or the Live Science Friction. Anyways, we started doing these studio recordings with him like Hard Cell’s Feign which was live to two tracks, and it was really fun. It was really easy and much more relaxing than working with a label. And I was selling records! I was making my money back pretty easily and was able to pay everybody. Then all of a sudden, the record industry got hairy--all this streaming shit started, with downloads and everything and initially I didn’t think that that was going to effect us, since we made these special packages. But all of a sudden, the 2000 records I was selling became 800, just like that. And I said, “Ah shit! It’s over”. But I was getting tired of the work and I was touring more, so it was hard to keep up. But I realized that I couldn’t keep making studio records because I would need to sell at least 1500 records to make it work. So then I started thinking that I should’ve stayed with Stefan, or whatever [laughs].

So then I put out these live things, and although I was doing it, my heart wasn’t really in it because it was just not the way it had been. I hated doing them cheaply because I had to. It just wasn’t the same. But around that time, we did Prezens, Torn’s record, which was the first ECM thing that I was on. And that was 2007. We did that one all on our own, with David recording, producing and mixing it. But then Manfred took it and put it out. It was then that I started thinking about ECM. I had made a few records for Clean Feed, which was great, Pedro was fantastic, but it was still kind of an independent thing and it was only going to go so far. But I really wanted to get back into the studio again and I also really wanted to max out my audience, because I know that there are more people that like this music than buy the records. ECM gets to those people, you know, those people who might buy it if it’s sanctioned to the right people. And I saw that with Prezens, because all of a sudden, those records were out there. And there were still record stores, there was still Tower, so the records could be sold. But I should say, I didn’t get any press between 96-2006. I was making records that, to me, were as good as anything else I had made and I could’ve sent out 5000 promos and would have received the same 3 reviews. You know, that’s just the way it is without a publicist. And even though all the Times guys and Downbeat all know me, if you’re not taking out an ad, or don’t have a spokesperson or publicist, then you’re not going to get reviewed. I was okay with that when they were selling, it got to the point where I started to realize that I wouldn’t be getting any gigs because I wasn’t getting any press and that it would be impossible to book tours. I really didn’t want to get a publicist, so I just didn’t have a band for a while, after Science Friction ended. 

I started chipping away at the ECM thing, because I knew Manfred, and every time we saw each other, we would always say, “Let’s do something together.” I’d get excited, but it was always pretty hard to get past the “let’s do something” stage because there are a million people in the same boat. But the next thing I did for ECM was Formanek’s record, The Rub and Spare Change. Mike did that on his own, and someone at ECM gave it to Manfred. Mike didn’t really know that any of this was going on and he was thinking of maybe putting it out himself . All of a sudden we heard from ECM that Manfred wanted to mix it and release it. There was an opening, in November, on this one day, and Mike had to be available because that was the only day it was going to happen. So I said to Mike, “Unless you’re going to be at your own funeral, you have to be at this mix.” So with some hilarious stories around it, Mike made it happen. I had to go, too, because Mike didn’t know Manfred and I did. It was kind of a blind date. So I went and we did it. It was an amazing experience. Manfred was totally into it and Mike and I kept looking at each other thinking, “Holy shit! We’re mixing a record with Manfred Eicher!” Because, like it or not, there’s something really validating about being on ECM, almost like I made it. I had been listening to ECM records since the 70s and never dreamed of being on that label. So we went home, got drunk, and listened to it and it was amazing.

But that kind of opened the door for me to enter, because Manfred saw me in a different light, because I was in the studio with him, mixing. I think he really likes us because there’s no bullshit--we’ll just make the record, no egos, and just have fun and relax. So I started Snakeoil around 2008 and then thought that it would be a great band to record for ECM. I really didn’t want to put it out myself. And so I decided to patiently wait for ECM, even though that’s really not my nature. So it took us a good year and a half to get rolling, because we didn’t have that many gigs, but finally Manfred said, “let’s do it” and it was one of those same scheduling things, where it had to be January 5th and 6th, otherwise it could have been another year. We squeezed it in right before a tour and it was great and really fun. Because of the nature of the scene now, without the ECM machine behind me, I’d be back to zero. I like knowing that most everyone who is interested in anything like this will at least know about it. It’s the option that they’ll at least buy it. The press stuff, which I don’t really care about, is nice but mainly because it helps me get gigs and book tours. All of a sudden, people who would have never noticed me were writing about me. And when you get to Italy or something and try to sell , it’s amazing because everybody has already purchased it. It’s really made things easier, and it’s a luxury to make nice sounding records with a great piano. 

So let’s backtrack and talk about some of the Screwgun records in specific now that we have some general sense of the whole. Let’s start with Bloodcount and how it came about.

That band was preceded by a bad called Total Chaos or Caos Totale which was Bobby Previte, Herb Robertson, Mark Dresser, Steve Swell and Ducret. One of them is called Nice View, and that’s with Django Bates that’s a full studio recording. The first one had some silly title, Pace Yourself. We had a good run--a lot of touring, and those few records. But the usual shit happened and people got busy. I had been playing a lot with Formanek and I wanted to do something with him. These days, part of my consideration when starting a band, is who is going to want to rehearse, and I don’t really want to get a bunch of fully-formed guys who have already been through the mill. I’d rather get some young guys who are hungry, and who nobody knew about. So I met Jim Black through somebody, and originally it was going to be a trio with Jim and Formanek. And I started writing and just kept hearing another voice, so I said to myself, “Fuck it, I’ll make it a quartet.” Then I asked Ellery to do it but he couldn’t do this tour that we had booked, but Jim told me to ask his friend Chris Speed, who had yet to move to New York. And Chris came up, we did a tour of the West Coast in ’92, and I don’t even think we had a name for it at that time. In ’94 we did that live recording. That was around the time of Total Chaos, but then it became my main focus. My stuff with Total Chaos was super intricate and very arranged, so with Bloodcount I wanted a group that just played the written music and would then improvise. It would be far less calculated, and more collective. I asked Chris to play clarinet for that band, and until that point, he had only played Balkan and Classical clarinet, so he wasn’t even sure that he could improvise in this way on clarinet, because no one had ever asked him to. So that made it really transparent, but also Mike made a conscious effort to change how he played, and he and his approach were really a crucial part of that group. He really embraced the collective thing. We had a great run of I think 7 years. 

It’s amazing listening to those records because Chris and Jim were in their mid 20s, and they both have their voices already and they sound incredible. 

Yeah, they were amazing. And all of these bands end when some of these guys get too famous and get into their own shit. I like getting bands together before that happens. It’s cool to create bands with people who I, and the rest of the world, know little about. It’s fun to start bands that way. 

Anyway, the first Bloodcount record came about because we did a tour in Berlin, and this woman Sasha recorded it and gave it to me. It happened to be a really weird gig--we were all cranky, none of us had eaten, and I don’t think that anybody thought that it was a good gig. I waited a year to listen to it, but when I did, I said, “Holy shit! This is insane!” But for some reason, I wanted the first Screwgun record to be a three-CD thing for some reason. We got this tape from a gig in Ann Arbor, which had not the best sound quality, but the music was cool, so I figured that it would be a good first record. And I got in touch with Torn through Wayne Krantz who told me that David would love to master something like this. So I called David up and told him, “I have these tapes and they’re really lo-fi, but I want to master them and make them sound better.” So we hung out, and he spent days on these things, and it was really a blast hanging out with him. That’s how Unwound came about. 

The cover thing, came about because I didn’t want to do a jewel case and I didn’t really want to do normal cardboard either. I used to go to Other Music and look at the Indie Rock stuff and I saw these letter press things on brown cardboard, and there was some label, I think it was called Touch and Go, and I kept picking up these Touch and Go records--they looked really appealing to me. On the case it said Fireproof Press, Chicago. So I looked for Fireproof Press and I found Touch and Go and told them that I really liked the printing on their covers and would love to know who did them. They told me it was this guy John Upchurch, who played in one of the more successful bands on Touch and Go. He was a crazy guy. Anyways, so Byram and I had been talking about all of these crazy ideas for packaging, like aluminum. We would walk around Canal St and look around for weird things. We’d always see things that were either too heavy, or too labor intensive, which was ironic, but I’ll get to that in a minute. So I proposed to Byram that we do letter-press things, even though it could limit what he could do graphically. He said that it would be cool, so we ended up doing it. And then we got the idea for the inserts, which were wild. The first really psychedelic one, which you may or may not have, and it’s so out you can barely read it.

That’s the one that wraps around the page?

Yup, that’s the one. It kind of looks like a poster from the early Fillmore days or something. So we really made it hard on ourselves, but I called up this guy Upchurch and he said he would do it. It was just hilarious because if he said one week, it’d be one month, if he said two weeks, it’d be two months, and I couldn’t reach him, then he would send the packages to the wrong address. We would just have these hilarious moments of insanity. But he was super nice and half the time he would even forget to bill me. I never met him until years later, when I was in Chicago. I looked him up and he was teaching somewhere, and he was just this nerdy guy, it was hilarious. So we had all of these things coming from different places, like the inserts and the CDs, etc. It was all of these steps and we would get all of these things, and so me and Formanek got together and did the first batch of them together, by hand. We had to assemble them by hand. We would find ways of making them a little more elaborate. But eventually John found a company that he could send the covers to and they would do the inserts for him. We didn’t have barcodes, which would always get us into trouble. Byram was kind of my partner in all of this. 

With the Bloodcount record, my idea was that it would be all mail order, and that I would send out these post-cards, basically. And it was amazing how well it worked. I figured it out--I would make these records, it would probably cost me $8000 by the time I payed everyone, printed the records, and all of that, and if I charged 30 bucks a piece, I’ll make my money back, if I sold 300 copies. So I said, if I print 500 copies I’ll be in the clear. How could I not sell 500 copies? This band was touring and working a lot. So I did it and it worked just the way I had planned it. I ended up selling three to five thousand of these Unwound records man. Of course I had to keep manufacturing these, but it was amazing. So I did two more Bloodcount records recorded at gigs, that didn’t do quite as well, because I think the box-set had something behind it. So those next Bloodcount records were Discretion and Saturation Point. Then I got into the Paraphrase band and released a number of records with them, and then I did a Django Bates record which I think sold 5000 copies! That’s gone. There are no more of those. Ducret’s records did well. Everybody did well. 

Let’s talk about Formanek’s record and then Ducret’s and Django’s.

Well, I used to talk to Mike about doing a solo bass record because he would always take these really long bass solos and they’d be incredible. That guy Tom Mark in Woodstock was really a great engineer and I thought that we should go up there and do it. Finally Mike got into the idea and so we went up and did it. So that was the fifth Screwgun record, since I had done a Paraphrase and three Bloodcount’s. The next one was Ducret.

How did you meet him?

I met Marc in ’88 at the Baden-Baden Jazz Meeting, which is a thing in Germany where they invite people from different countries. Marc was there, me and Herb were there, too. We met and Marc kind of sounded like John Scofield at the time. He’s had a long arc of a career. But man, he was super quiet. I mean, we hardly spoke. But i used him on my piece, and Herb used him too, and we both really liked him. He practiced all the time and would just memorize everything. I just really liked him, so when it got time to start Total Chaos, I thought of him and remembered how much I had liked him. So I called him and asked him, “Do you want to do a tour of Europe, and play in my band?” I don’t think he actually believed me. I think he thought, “Why is this guy from New York calling me, to ask me to come to New York to rehearse and do a tour, when he has like five trillion guitar players to choose from in New York?” But anyways, I hooked it up and Marc showed up. I’ll never forget, the first rehearsal everybody has their stands, and everybody is looking at these piles of music, I had about 15-20 tunes, all of which were pretty elaborate, and Marc had his book up, but it was closed. He had everything memorized. Dresser almost had a heart attack. At the end of the rehearsal, Dresser came over to me and asked, “Why didn’t he have his book open the whole time?” He was just shocked, because none of these guys knew him, and Marc just blew their minds. Ever since, we’ve been working together--you know, I play in his bands and he’s played in mine. I think Marc is the greatest guitar player and composer that I know. I think he’s the shit. I think his most recent four records are amazing. As soon as this finishes you should buy all of them. Even if he wasn’t playing, the compositions are so impressive.

And Django I had been friends with for a while. His record came about from a hilarious story. He stayed with us over Christmas. The day he left, he left us a gift, a teapot. And we just never used it; it sat there, almost in the same place. And then one day, I took the top off, because I think we were going to use it--this was months later, maybe a half year later. And there was a cassette in there. He had left me a tape of this recording that he had done, with a singer. It’s an amazing record. He left it for me, and I listened to it, and thought, “Wow, this is so different.” I was really intrigued. So I played it for Byram and we both thought it was fucking great, and like nothing else on the label. But I really thought that I should put it out. I don’t think that Django had even left it for that reason. But I called him up and said, “I’d really like to put this record out, because I think it’s amazing.” This was at a time where I was pretty aggressive in terms of selling the shit. I had a bunch of distributors. So to make a long story very short, we did it. And this was our first color cover, I think. I think I sold like 4500 copies. It did really well. It was a 5 year licensing thing, so now he owns it. That was sort of the peak. Then I released the Julius thin, and realized that I couldn’t put out other people’s things; that I didn’t have the time. I did Marc’s, the trio, and a solo record, and then I realized that I was too burnt out from touring too much. 

But I think Quiet Nights is one of the most amazing records. It achieves what a lot of people have tried to do--super un-ironic versions of standards and known songs, but with really far out arrangements. 

After this came Open, Coma a larger ensemble and then I started Hard Cell with Tom and Craig.

How’d you meet Craig?

He lives up the street from here, so I used to see him on the street. I think I knew him from James Carter. I was always intrigued by him, because I knew he was an amazing pianist. He was super quiet, and every time I would say hello to him he’d get super freaked out. One day, me and Sarah ran into him and we kind of crashed his lunch. Then I asked him to come over and play a session with Tom and I. I was kind of fishing because I wanted to start a new band, and I wanted to start writing for piano. I had this idea of something electric, without guitar, that was able to straddle a large range. I had no idea what Craig did. I just kind of guessed and thought it might be kind of cool. It worked out exactly how I thought it would, except ten times better. Sonically, I knew he was into some shit, and he had these pretty advanced and degenerate way of using electronics. And his rhythmic thing is amazing. He’s probably one of the best bass players I’ve ever played with! So that worked out and I think we did that for five or six years, and then we added Ducret for Science Friction. Science Friction was a blast. For some reason, doing that studio record was a big step. We did that for awhile--I think we did 3 or 4 European tours. After that I didn’t really have a band and I just did a lot of improvised stuff. And then I met Matt Mitchell and realized that I needed to start a band with him. 

  We didn’t really talk about Paraphrase, if you’d like to.

Paraphrase was me trying to face the challenge of being able to carry a performance without written music, and just improvising. So me, Tom and Drew would do these sessions all the time, but we never did any gigs. I asked them, “Do you guys want to start a band that only improvises?” and they agreed, but I don’t think that any of us thought that it was going to go anywhere. It ended up being really successful. We ended up doing a lot of tours, and people like that band. In some ways, it’s the most accessible  music, even though it’s totally improvised. 

I mean, there are many moments on Visitation Rites that sound composed.

Well man, that’s how we improvise. I’m always trying to make sense of what I’m doing. The other thing that I think is unusual, which I think Sam Rivers set the precedent for, is that it’s unusual playing free music, that there’s not an avoidance to obvious stylistic references, like grooves and harmony. It just so happened--and this was kind of the unwritten rule--is that we could do anything, and we don’t have to just play as out as possible. It wasn’t conscious, but it was just the nature of our connection. We could do it today and it’d be just as much fun.

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Out of Your Head Brooklyn Returns!

A few years ago, in Baltimore, bassist Adam Hopkins and guitarist Matt Frazao began an improvisational collective known as Out of Your Head. Having found a conducive home in Baltimore's The Windup Space, that series has been going strong for many years, with new members joining the collective.

When Hopkins moved to Brooklyn, he started another branch of the series, which is returning tonight at its temporary home, Douglass Street Music Collective. Douglass St, which in recent years has been an important venue for the scene, will soon shut its doors, so aside from witnessing the return of OOYH, you ought to go experience DSMC before it's too late. 

I caught up with Hopkins via email and he gives a nice history of the series as well as serving up some notable anecdotes about OOYH.

Can you talk about the origins of OOYH in Baltimore? Why did you and Matt decide to create such a series?

Matt and I kind of came up with a very similar idea at the same time. We were sitting in the Yacht Club in Baltimore, which was a bar and pretty mediocre restaurant right across from Peabody, where we both went to school. We sat in the Yacht Club a lot in 2008, come to think of it. Anyway, we were talking about how we had been playing in Baltimore for a few years, and were part of all of these different scenes of really great musicians, but none of those people were playing together. A lot of these amazing musicians we were playing with didn't actually know each other, even though musically Baltimore is a fairly small city. 

So we got this idea to put people together from different scenes who had never played together before, and see what happened. OOYH was born out of that pretty simple idea. The original concept was that every week it was a new one-time-only band of people who had never played music together. OOYH Baltimore has been going strong for 5 years now, so the concept of a full band made up of people who had never played together wasn't completely sustainable. Despite the original concept not being fully possible at this point OOYH Baltimore continues to be a breeding ground for some of the best improvised music in town. A lot of current Baltimore bands were born out of a one-off OOYH, which is pretty cool. 

What were the effects for the improvised music scene in Baltimore once OoYH began to pick up steam?

People started playing music together, both inside and outside of OOYH. People started making bands and writing music. We would all hang out. OOYH would happen every Tuesday night at the Windup Space, and when it ended at midnight we'd all go hang at a bar down the street. We were just into being around each other. It was a musical community, and that is the best possible outcome that we could have asked for. People making friends and playing music together. It was (and continues to be) a really awesome thing. You also can't talk about OOYH without mentioning Russell de O'Campo at the Windup Space. He gave us our first date for Out of Your Head in March 2009, and he's been supporting the series ever since. It is so rare (especially in NY, but in Baltimore too, or anywhere really) to have a bar/venue owner who supports creative music in the way that Russell does. We had nights early on where OOYH played to a crowd of 3-4 people, and he stuck with us and allowed the series to grow. Any other venue guy would say "I made $15 tonight, we're going to make Tuesday night dart night. Sorry." Russell is the man, and he's been a very close friend since we started OOYH in 2009. OOYH have ended a long time ago if not for his continued support.

When you moved to Brooklyn, did you know that a chapter was going to open here? 

Yes, definitely. I had that in my mind, and had talked to Matt about it before I moved. The idea was for OOYH to start in Brooklyn, and then we'd cross-breed the series', sending musicians from NY to Baltimore to play and vice versa. It happened a couple of times and it was really great, but I had a hard time keeping the series running in NY. Nothing to do with the musicians--all of the musicians played and supported and it was a great scene. But we didn't have someone like Russell here in NY, so I didn't have the support necessary to keep the series running at a venue. It seemed like a great idea--instead of just focusing on musicians playing together in one city, why not introduce people in Baltimore to people in NY and see what came out of that as well? I still have hopes of it getting there.

  Another good friend and great drummer named Devin Drobka was living in NY when OOYH BK was happening. When he moved back to Milwaukee he started an offshoot of the series called Unrehearsed MKE, which is apparently going really well. I'd love to collaborate with that series at some point as well. I think there's a lot of potential for mixing all of these series up. We'll see...

How have the two series been different, if at all?

Well, they were actually booked differently from the beginning, and that was a result of instantly having a ton of people in NY interested in the series, and not enough events to have them all participate. OOYH Bmore happened every single week, so each Tuesday night was two sets of the same band. It was really awesome to hear the change in a band after the set break, when they got to hang out and talk for a minute, then come back and play again with the same group of people.

When I started it in Brooklyn I could only get someone to agree to let me have the series every other week, and I had twice as many people interested as in Baltimore. So I had to do two sets per night with different bands. They didn't get a second set to hear how the music developed, so it was a very different experience. I think both series' served the same purpose and addressed the same need in each city. They just had to be curated a little bit differently for that reason. I also enlisted a co-curator for every cycle in NY, because it was too much control for me to do all the booking myself. I wanted someone who would offer an opposed perspective when it was booked. Matt and I had that for each other when we booked together in Baltimore, so I wanted to keep that when I did the booking here. Jesse Stacken, Dustin Carlson, and Josh Sinton all helped me co-curate a cycle. That being said, I did this round on my own just because I had to get it done quickly. 

Do you have any notable or humorous stories from either Baltimore or Brooklyn's OOYH?

Ha, I do! And Matt still holds this one against me. This was in August of 2009, and the first (and one of very few) OOYH's that I ever missed in Baltimore. There was a guy (not to be named here) traveling through Baltimore from Chicago and wanted to participate in the series. I checked out some of his music--he was an improviser, and seemed cool when we spoke--so I booked him on the series with some great Baltimore musicians for the night. The guy apparently showed up with a ton of gear, and a posse of 4-5 musicians who all thought they could play the series as well. We were very clear from the beginning that OOYH was NOT a jam session--it was a curated event. A lot of thought went into putting the bands together, so it wasn't really an open "jam" environment. Anyway, the set started and the dude was playing ridiculously loud and not listening to anything else going on. His friends started sneaking up on stage and grabbing instruments, and it was apparently a disaster. Matt and the other Bmore musicians (I believe it was Nathan Ellman-Bell and Jon Birkholz) walked off stage mid-set. After the Chicago guys were done Matt canceled the second set because it was so terrible. I got an email the next day telling me all of this. I think I still owe Matt a beer for putting him through it...

Here is the schedule for the remaining OOYH's at DSMC:

JULY 14

SET ONE (9:00pm) Mariel Berger--accordion/piano Joanna Mattrey--viola Nathan Ellman-Bell--drums/percussion SET TWO (10:00pm) Anna Webber--reeds Eric Trudel--reeds Carlo Costa--drums Flin van Hemmen--drums SET THREE (11:00pm) Ben Syversen--trumpet Brian Drye--trombone Dave Miller--guitar Chris Welcome--guitar Devin Gray--drums

JULY 28

SET ONE (9:00pm) Ed Rosenberg--tenor sax Kirk Knuffke--cornet Patricia Franceschy--vibes SET TWO (10:00pm) Jesse Stacken--piano/nord Sebastien Ammann--nord/piano Nico Soffiato--guitar Jonathan Goldberger--guitar Nico Dann--drums SET THREE (11:00pm) Josh Sinton--reeds Patrick Breiner--reeds Drew Williams--reeds Rick Parker--trombone Achilles Kallergis--guitar

AUGUST 24

SET ONE (9:00pm) Kenny Warren--trumpet Dustin Carlson--guitar Tomas Fujiwara--drums SET TWO (10:00pm) Will McEvoy--bass Kate Gentile--drums David Grollman--percussion SET THREE (11:00pm) Danny Gouker--trumpet Jake Henry--trumpet Adam Schneit--reeds Thai Matus--piano Max Goldman--drums

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Keir Neuringer "Ceremonies Out of The Air" at JACK

by Samuel Weinberg

A few months ago, I came across Keir Neuringer's solo saxophone record Ceremonies Out of The Air a truly striking and beautiful disc, and one that I find myself revisiting now, months later. At the time of its release, Neuringer and I corresponded briefly in the hopes of finding some time to conduct an interview. The timing wasn't right, especially given the extensive tour Neuringer was about to embark upon in support of 'Ceremonies'. But months later, we were able to find the time and the result is below. If you'd like to see my write-up of Ceremonies, you can read that here. What's more: Neuringer is going to celebrate the New York release of 'Ceremonies' this Wednesday night at JACK at 8 PM. 

Below is my interview with Keir Neuringer.

---------------

What is your history with playing solo saxophone?

I began learning saxophone in public elementary school in 1985. Hearing recordings of Charlie Parker, and then Maceo Parker, in my early teens solidified my relationship to the instrument and to music making, in general. I had an early affinity for extended technique; when I would solo in high school jazz band, our director would smile broadly and invoke the name of Eric Dolphy, long before I knew who that was.

As a freshman at the University of North Texas, I knew there was something wrong with the way I was being taught jazz and classical saxophone. Nothing felt right or honest. There seemed to be a rejection of the sounds and techniques that developed organically through the playing of the instrument, and a preference for a very narrow conception of appropriate, legitimate technique.

The watershed moment of my development as a saxophonist occurred during the summer of 1997. Matt Bauder and I had become fast friends at North Texas, and had fled its constrictions at the same time, after two years. That summer, we were playing in a strolling dixieland band at Playland Amusement Park. He passed me three life-changing discs between sets: Henry Threadgill's Where's Your Cup?, Ivo Papasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Orchestra's Orpheus Ascending, and the duo recording of Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker Duo (London) 1993. I was already somewhat familiar with some of Braxton's recordings of standards and they didn't resonate with me at the time, but the duo record floored me. All that technique! All those sounds! All the playfulness! That fall I was studying in London and I tracked down Evan at the old Vortex and asked for a lesson. He said he didn't give lessons, but a few months later he relented to my persistent requests and invited me over to his house. He would not accept any money, but we spent about five hours in his kitchen playing and talking (mostly about group improvisation, rather than technique. He also discussed with me (and not for the last time) his perspective on Wynton Marsalis and the Vatican).

Around this time I also was completely enthralled by Rahsaan Roland Kirk's recording "Old Rugged Cross". I began working on circular breathing, and after a few years could sort of hack it. My first solo saxophone concert was at the Audio Art Festival in Krakow in 1999, and I have been performing solo concerts steadily since then. After performances, people sometimes ask me when I learned to master circular breathing. I'm still working on it.

Although you wrote at length about it in the zine which accompanied 'Ceremonies', can you talk about the origins of Ceremonies as a project?

In 2008 I left Europe, where I had been living for nearly ten years, to take care of my mother when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. I felt a strong connection between her illness - in the lungs - and my life's work, also in the lungs. In the midst of taking care of her I was reading The Road, Cormac McCarthy's book about a parent and child negotiating a post apocalyptic world, and this passage jumped out at me: "Evoke the forms. Where you've nothing else, construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them." I knew that my first solo saxophone record would be called "Ceremonies Out of the Air", I just didn't know it would take me five years before making it.

A few months after my mother died, in March 2013, it was time to make this album. I was completely consumed by grief, and honoring my mother with my best work became the thing that got me out of bed each day. I am fortunate in that my partner is very good - like, literally professionally good - at project management, and she helped me create a crowdfunding campaign and plan a recording session. I knew I wanted people in the room when I recorded, so we found a great space (the side chapel at Philly's First Unitarian Church) and made attendance at the recording session a primary perk for supporting the album. We had about 20 people there, and it was my birthday, that is: the day my mother gave birth to me.

I think of this project less about negotiating my grief and mourning, and more about celebrating my mother, and our really special relationship. My mother was a great supporter of the downtown NYC scene, including my friends and colleagues - not in a distant, philanthropic way, but in a showing up and listening and taking musicians out to dinner and hosting them in her house kind of way. I want people to know about her. And I want this record, which some people have noted for its physicality, to not be another record about a tough white dude who can put a lot of muscle into the instrument. The album celebrates my mother, in particular, but also motherhood and womanhood more generally. The liner note - which is my eulogy - the artwork, by my friend Erin Rice, who lost her mother two weeks before my mother died and helped me through that time, and the zine all speak to that more clearly. 

Before making this album, my work always pointed away from my self, away from personal narrative, and towards catastrophic socio-political circumstances. While this record came out of personal grief, it is about something more universal. I have been gratified by the conversations it has opened up, with listeners and other musicians, people navigating past or current or imminent loss. In some way, I feel resonance with and inspiration from Matana Roberts, the way she makes her personal narrative a general narrative, and the general narrative a work of experimental art on her last album. It's powerful. I can't speak for her, but what I hear in her work and what I am also trying to do is make this music relevant beyond the technique. Not every listener cares about how loud, fast, and high I can play, or how long I can sustain a note.

Can you talk about your extensive recent solo tour that you took? How did the music evolve or grow during that process?

The album is a recording of improvisations and I anticipated improvising on tour. What has happened is that I quickly found a format that worked well to communicate this project and connect with audiences. I read from the zine to give some context and then I play, then I read again and play, and then if there's time, I read and play once more. The text gives me an opportunity to bring my mother's memory into the room and introduce the reason that I am playing this particular music in this particular way.

The playing has evolved into variations and reflections on the album material, and to a greater extent, to whatever I played at the previous night's concert. I don't feel, as I perhaps once did, a need to present this music as one hundred percent bona fide never before played unadulterated totally spontaneous improvised music. I am certainly improvising. But I reference material that previous audiences have heard, going to certain similar technical and emotional and structural places each night, taking the performance circumstances - the room, the audience, my physical condition, the limitations on the set length - into consideration. There's no notation and no plan, per se. I'm just using memory as an improvising/composing tool.

Are there other projects that you're currently working with that you'd like to remark upon?

I've been playing a lot with the West Philly drummer, Julius Masri. His musicality and inventiveness blow me away. We have played a lot as a duo, and have had the opportunity to play in a few different situations lately with Shayna Dulberger, another musician who really pushes me to play better. I think it would make a lot of sense to play more shows and cut a record with those two.

Another big part of my activity in Philly concerns the movement to end mass incarceration - I'm a collective member of Books Through Bars and a supporter of Decarcerate PA. I also try to show up, as much as I can, for grassroots anti-racist initiatives and movements here, sometimes as a musician. I find that this work overlaps with the musician legacies that inspire me. I'm thinking of Archie Shepp, for example.

Can you talk about the benefits you see living in Philadelphia, as an improviser, and maybe speak a bit about the scene there?

I moved to Philly in 2012 and I'm still learning the scene, meeting people, finding out where things happen. I love it here and I plan to stay for the long term. There is always something going on, there is energy and deep creative and radical political history, and I feel strong links to great musicians - both peers and elders - and presenters. Philly is definitely the most radical place I have ever lived. What that means to me is that politically-engaged people are very real about the challenges and very real about their responses to those challenges. It's inspiring. The scale and tone of the city suit me better than NYC, but the proximity has been good for me. People here are often friendly, and the musician community feels supportive to me.

That said, I am concerned about issues of inclusion and exclusion in the creative music and arts communities. Who is organizing, who is performing, who is listening? How are multiple identities represented on- and offstage? I am always disappointed by the absence of radical socio-political analysis among musicians who make music they would describe as free, creative, experimental, avant garde, new, particularly when it is meant to somehow reflect any kind of liberation from convention.

So it is that I am not only bored, but opposed to, say, three band bills of white men, organized by white men, promoted to and performed for white men. I look around at these events and wonder whether it would feel safe to be black, or queer, or a woman in some of these spaces. Musicians who don't understand how and why white male dominance in our experimental music community is tightly bound up with systemic racism and hetero-patriarchy ought to spend time doing more than practicing and updating their press contacts. I have this conversation all the time with my colleagues in Philly and actively organize with all of this in mind. Actually I suppose you could call it a project I am working on!

What's some recorded music you've been listening to lately?

I have been working my way through George Lewis' important book A Power Stronger Than Itself. In a completely non-systematic way, I am listening to a lot of the music discussed in the book, music by A.A.C.M. and Black Artists Group composers. I'm catching up, slowly, on my Art Ensemble, Braxton, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Muhal Richard Abrams. I'm also getting to hear a lot of good stuff from New Atlantis Records (the label that released Ceremonies) and Relative Pitch Records (who I am discussing a release with for 2015). One of my favorite records so far this year is the Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey duo And Other Desert Towns on Relative Pitch. I'm also enjoying two albums by Jen Shyu that I recently picked up: Jade Tongue and Synastry

.

 What do you look forward to for the duration of this summer?

I have my NYC album release at JACK on July 9, a new project try-out with strings at Angler Arts in Philly on July 26, and something with Vinny Golia, who I've never played with, at Ibeam on August 11. Besides that, I'm watching the garden grow, practicing the clarinet, and composing. And there's an imminent release that I'm super excited about: The Krakow Letters, a particularly good concert recording on the Polish label For-Tune, with my duo partner of nearly 15 years, Rafal Mazur. All good things going on.

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Bill McHenry is Coming to the Village Vanguard!

(photo by Peter Gannushkin)

by Samuel Weinberg

For close to ten years, saxophonist Bill McHenry has been leading groups of his own at The Village Vanguard. McHenry is a saxophonist of clarity of tone and ideas. His compositions tend to be sparse, singable and infectious and are conducive to all of McHenry's improvisational explorations. McHenry is back at The Vanguard this week, leading a number of projects throughout the week, something rather rare at that venue, where artists generally spend their allotted week with one group. I caught up with McHenry to speak about his forthcoming week at The Vanguard, which you can read below.

You're beginning your week at the Vanguard with two nights with your quartet with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille, a band you've been playing with for the past few years at the Vanguard and you have a record with that band La Peur du Vide. Can you talk about this band? How has it grown? Will you guys be playing new music this week?

   I played with Eric and Orrin for the first time in a quartet gig of Eric's with Nasheet Waits on drums- I had admired them in Tarbaby and I also heard them play in a sideman situation- when I played with them together I was amazed with the combination of freedom, intellect and unity they shared (along with Nasheet as well) and I thought it would be a great influence to combine with Paul Motian. We booked the gig, but Paul had to cancel- it was at the end of his life- Andrew Cyrille was available and I had wanted to play with him again-

I had played with Andrew Cyrille with Henry Grimes a few years earlier- and he ended up being a huge influence on all of us, and it became a band. 

  Before it had come together as a group, I practiced a lot imagining what the band would sound like, and what I needed to do to raise my playing to their level. Everything I imagined came to be in the first 20 minutes of the first gig - so after that, the growth happpened on stage with them in front of the audience.  I can't judge what has happened on a musicial level, but I know that Orrin Eric and Andrew are resposible to a lot of personal growth on my part. 

Yes, we will be playing music that has not yet been recorded- hopefully we will correct that soon-

After this, you're playing a duo set with Andrew Cyrille. Can you talk about Cyrille a bit? You surely admired him before you two began to play together as part of your quartet and he's the one constant throughout this week.

Leading a band with Andrew Cyrille in it, much like when I had the same privledge with Paul Motion, is something I never could have imagined I would be in the position to do. I have to imagine it is a combination of open mindedness on their part,and also a reflection of Mr.Cyrille not being acknowleged as a leader to the degree he should be. He is a true living legend and I shouldn't be abe to casually hire him-  but at the same time I know he wouldn't do the gig if he didn't enjoy it, and he has been very supportive and encouraging . I recommend the reader to explore his duo albums with Jimmy Lyons, with trio 3, and his own albums as a leader. He has as wide a palate and is as proficient as anyone I've been around, on any instrument.

The following evening you're essentially re-forming the band which you made three records with--Ben Monder, Reid Anderson and in Motian's stead, Cyrille. You have a deep rapport with these guys from playing and recording so much. Can you speak to this band and what music you'll be playing?

I played with Reid and Ben together around 1998 for the first time, Jorge Rossy put together a casual session in his basement. Reid and Ben and I played a lot with other drummers, including Gerald Cleaver, Joe Strausser, Danny Freedman and Mike Mazor before I had the chance to record with Paul, which led to us playing a the Vanguard. We'll play a lot of material from 3 albums we made together, "Featuring Paul Motian" "Roses" and "Ghosts of the Sun".

I wanted to combine the sound textures from Pink Floyd albums with the music I loved by free jazz musicians and I think we achieved that.

<a href="http://sunnysidezone.com/album/ghosts-of-the-sun" data-mce-href="http://sunnysidezone.com/album/ghosts-of-the-sun">Ghosts of the Sun by Bill McHenry</a>

  The final evening, the Sunday show, you'll be playing with pianist David Bryant and bassist Jonathan Michel. What do you look forward to about playing with these guys?

David and Jonathan are two of the best musicians coming up on the scene- they already work with a lot of established leaders- I worked with them a couple times with  RJ Miller as the leader- they both have a lot to offer- very  focused, creative, passionate and swinging. 

You lead your own groups a couple of times a year at the Vanguard. Beyond the obvious things about the history of the club, what do you enjoy about playing there?

I just think it's a thrill to be so close to the Javits Center- you can feel the energy!

Besides that the sound is great, 6 nights in a row, long sets and the employees are friendly. Also it absorbs a lot of sound so you can hit hard without it hurting the ears.

What's some recorded music you've been listening to lately?

I love the trio3 album with Mr.Cyrille, Oliver Lake and Reggie Workman with Jason Moran- it got almost no press "Breaking Glass" - is incredible- 

I have also been enjoying the new Captain Black Big Band record, "A mother's Touch" , Ben Wolfe's "From here I see", RJ Miller's "Ronald's Rhythmn" and I'm always listening to the great saxophonists, Miles Davis records,  and the sitar player Nikhil Banerjee.

What's your ideal salad?

I love a nice salad! I'm not fussy if someone else is making it-

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Jason Ajemian Interview (Part Two)

by Samuel Weinberg

A few weeks ago, I posted the first part of an interview that I conducted with bassist, composer and, in that instance, party organizer, Jason Ajemian. This second part of our interview focuses on two resplendent records which Ajemian has recently released: A Way A Land Of Life (NoBusiness) and Folklords (Delmark). These records, while recorded almost seven years apart from one another, both have a remarkably unique and through conception of weaving improvisation in with composition and the fluidity of that enterprise. While A Way A Land of Life uses Ajemian's original compositions, Folklords sets the music of Charles Mingues, Sun Ra and Thelonious Monk in conversation with one another with recognizable snippets emerging occasionally, interspersed with masterfully woven improvisations and Ajemian's singing, which has become a signature with his terrific band, HighLife.

Although they are not available for embed, two tracks from A Way a Land of Life are available here on the NoBusiness site, for streaming.  

What's more: Ajemian is coming to a town near you on a tour leaving today, with a hybrid of Folklords and The HighLife--FolkLife HighLords Tour--with drummer Jason Nazary, and saxophonists Nathaniel Morgan and Peter Hanson, for which I've attached dates at the end of the interview!

So you’ve just released two records, Daydreams and Folklords.

Yes. Well, Daydreams was recorded a while ago, so maybe we’ll talk about that one first.

That’s with Tony Malaby, Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek.

Yup. I met Tony my first year of college. I had this friend in college, and his older brother was friends with Tony and they would go fishing together and things. Tony is about 15 years older than me. So Tony came to my college to do a clinic and his bassist, Trey Henry, did a workshop with all of the bassists. Tony was living in New York at this time, and he would bring his friends from LA and they would do clinics, play some shows and bars, and things like this. That band was amazing, man--the Malaby/Scott Quartet with Billy Mintz! So that band came through and I met Tony, because he was staying with my friend. Anyways, Trey did this bass workshop and asked us to play a blues. So I played one and he said, “Wow, that’s kind of how I would play one with Tony, but can you play one normally?” [laughs]. For whatever reason, Trey and I were cool and so then Tony and I kept up and whenever he came back to Arizona, he would check out what I was working on, and give me things to work on. He was kind of like a mentor to me, which was awesome. I love that man. 

Eventually, after years, I moved to Chicago, and I played in the Chicago Underground with Chad and Rob and played weekly with Jeff Parker. Tony had a lot of respect for them; had heard them and heard their records. But Mazurek hadn’t played with a saxophone player in years, although he was really into Tony’s playing--as did Jeff and Chad. And then once I was hanging out with Tony and he said that we should play some music together, which I thought was awesome. It turns out that he really loved Jeff and all of those guys and wanted to get to Chicago, so I suggested that we do an Underground quartet, which we all would write for. But they all said that they wanted to play my music and that it was my band! And I was like “shit! I don’t even know how to lead a band, and get gigs!”. I was playing my own weeklies and things at art galleries and things, but I had no idea how to get a gig at a jazz festival or something bigger like they were doing, or even a record deal which is why it’s taken 8 years for this record to come out! 

But about the music on the album: when I was a kid, I used to lucid dream, which was how I learned not to pee myself. If I had to pee in my dream, that meant that I actually had to. And that’s how I got rid of my early nightmares. Then was I was 15 or 16, I read a book that talked about lucid dreaming, and I stopped doing it because I was too aware of it. Once I stopped lucid dreaming, I couldn’t remember my dreams, I still slept deep. But during college, playing music, I began to remember my dreams from the night before when I was practicing or playing. It was weird because I lived in this zen temple and the monks would always say “that’s your meditation” and point at the bass. My brother took me to a sweat-lodge, either my last year of college or right after, and in the sweat-lodge, there are these lights and things and...I relate this lucid dreaming stuff to consciousness. You ever been going to sleep and right in that line between being asleep and awake you’re so out of your mind that your mind is on its own thing--you can hear a whole song that you’ve heard once before, and your mind is doing something on its own, without you consciously doing anything and once you acknowledge it. So in this sweat-lodge, the guy running it told us not to close our eyes even though it was pitch-dark and he explained the culture of this whole thing and how they perceive things. In there, these lights were happening and changing shapes and I sat there long enough to realize that I wasn’t creating this and that this wasn’t a part of my memory. That’s the thing about lucid dreaming: once I brought about consciousness, it went away. So the whole Daydreams album is trying to represent that dream state: you all of a sudden morph into other things and other feels. You have these themes that go along, but time is not a continuum; you can teleport instantly all over the place. A lot of the tunes are built off of these memories. That is, what musical ideas are happening or re-surfacing when I’m playing music, or the sound in my head and what this moment in a dream sounded like to me.

So probably no immediate plans for playing with those guys again?

Well me and Chad keep up a lot in New York and did that band with Marc Ribot and Mary Halvorson and Josh Sinton has put together a new band with the two of us. But it’s a little tricky, you know, because Rob lives in Chicago. To get us together, it would have to be something big enough to bring Rob from Chicago or bring us all somewhere together. I have a lot of music that I’ve written for those guys in the years since we’ve played together, but I’m not in the position to say, “Alright Rob, I’m going to fly you out to play here for a week”.

  Well, a record you recorded more recently was Folklords on Delmark. 

Yeah, that’s with Nathaniel Morgan, Owen Stewart-Robinson and Jason Nazary. 

It’s ostensibly a Sun Ra inspired thing?

Well, not really. Basically, I’ve always been obsessed with the Mingus tune “Portrait”. I was writing all of the HighLife music in AutoCAD. And the Daydreams band was the first band in which the idea of writing with AutoCAD came about--how do I write music so that it’s not like how I think about playing standards, which is like an animal trapped in a zoo; you know, we just cycle this thing over and over and over again, and we all do our thing over it in this soloistic, virtuosic way. Like, ‘See what you can do over this!’. It’s like a dunk competition, you know? With Tony and them, there are no solos, maybe bits and pieces, but not many. And I was trying to figure out how to create improvisation out of a song which is stated like a poem or something. In that way, the improvisation can be expansive and fun, and doesn’t have to necessarily be this thing where we destroy a song by being too avant-garde or where we take a tune to the limits or jazz harmony. So to backtrack, I was writing all of this AutoCAD music and was obsessed with the Mingus tune “Portrait” so I thought I would draw Mingus’ portrait in AutoCAD, which is essentially the premise of all of this. The Mingus portrait then became the container for the score. I just thought that it would be cool to have these containers, where Mingus’ face is a container for Mingus’ music and how I think of Mingus’ music. So I did one for Monk, Sun Ra...well it’s more Monk and Sun Ra together. I had a dream that Thelonious Monk was asking Sun Ra all of these questions, which is the premise of the piece. I mean, I had this dream and it really effected me; it effected me because these two are asking one another questions and there are no answers, and then Jim Baker puts out this Delmark record, Sometimes Questions Are Better Than Answers, which was right after Malachi Ritscher burned himself and my home town paper did a story on Richter, and the headline was almost the same as a lyric from Jim Baker’s album. But I just thought about this in a lot of ways--whatever we think about religion or the future, I just began to think that questioning it was a little better because we can’t really know it, you know what I mean? We can believe it, but it’s hard to really verify it.

  What’s your ideal sandwich?

For whatever reason I’m thinking about a Bánh mì. There was this place in Seattle, which had them for a dollar and a quarter. That was pretty perfect. Last, Bauder and Harris Eisenstadt got pork Bánh mìs at the Pork Slope, they said they were really tasty but not worth 14 bucks!

JUNE 19th 

DC

Union Arts DC

411 New York Ave NE, Washington, District of Columbia 20002

20th 

Columbia, SC. 

Conundrum Music Hall 

http://conundrum.us/

22nd 

Charleston, SC

King Dusko

23rd 

Athens, GA. 

The World Famous

351 N Hull St, Athens, Georgia 30606

24th 

Athens Oh

House Show

25th

Yellow Springs, Oh.

Quonset House

26th 

Columbus, Oh

Double Happiness

27th 

Lafayette In. 

The Spot Tavern

28th 

Louisville, Ky 

The Cave Residence. 

29th 

Lexington, Ky

Mecca Dance Studio 

30th 

Chicago

Empty Bottle

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Michael Formanek Takes Over Cornelia St!!

Bassist and composer Michael Formanek needs little by way of an introduction; he's been a stalwart sideman for many decades and has also released a number of records under his own name, with decidedly rigorous tunes, offset by a certain playfulness in approach and humorous song-titles (perhaps most emblematic is his website: amibotheringyou.com). 

Although he established himself in New York City, Formanek now lives in Baltimore and is a professor at Peabody and an integral aspect of that city's scene. Tonight through Saturday, Formanek will be in residence at Cornelia St. Cafe playing his compositions with three different outfits, all comprised of amazing musicians. 

And, what's more: Formanek will play with Tim Berne's Decay at the Red Hook Jazz Festival with Ryan Ferreira and Ches Smith.

It was a distinct honor to get to correspond with Formanek via email, and you can read our conversation below.

For the inaugural night of your three day residency, you're playing with a newly formed band of yours, named the Elusion Trio with Ches Smith and Kris Davis. Why these two in particular? What attracts you to this format?

First, they're two of my all time favorite musicians, and I just thought they would be really interesting  to make music with in this context. They're both such compositional players, and patient improvisors that I thought we could get to some things that are not so typical of a "piano trio". I've played in many trios with this same instrumentation and it's one I've always loved. But I do get tired of hearing almost everything coming from from the pianists concepts and perspective. It seems funny to me that with all the bass player led groups there are these days I can't think of any that are basic piano, bass, and drum trios. There must but I can't think of any. 

The second night you'll be playing with your acclaimed quartet which has two tremendous ECM records out. Can you talk about the growth of that band? Any plans to record again?

The quartet is a very special group and has been a very important experience for me. I was very fortunate to be able to record it twice, both times on ECM. And also very lucky that I was able do two European tours, a few isolated festivals, and quite a few gigs in the states with this group. The reality is that everyone is so busy doing their own projects that it has been very difficult to work consistently. In the time we've worked together I feel that the music has grown tremendously, but there are very large gaps that we can't work because of all the great projects that Tim, Craig and Gerald are doing on their own. Because of that, and also because I wanted to I started setting up gigs with a number of other musicians. These include my group Cheating Heart, which has a somewhat flexible instrumentation and personnel. Sometimes it's a quartet similar to my regular quartet but with different people. Often Dan Weiss and Jacob Sacks play in that group, and sometimes Ellery Eskelin, Chris Speed, or Tim Berne may play either separately or together. This has really given me a chance to meet and get to play with younger musicians and re-establish relationships with musicians that I hadn't worked with in a while. It's difficult to say which group will record next but that should be becoming clearer soon.

Drummer Dan Weiss will be playing with that group, subbing for the normal Gerald Cleaver. Can you talk about Dan as a drummer?

Gerald is a obviously a completely unique musician. There is really no sub for Gerald. when Danny plays with us it's really just a new version of the quartet with Dan as the newest member. Dan can play virtually anything on the drums, and can process just about anything you could possible throw at him with minimal effort. What I love about Dan is that he's always improvising and trying something that's just on the edge of possibility. He never just plays what he know he can play perfectly. If it's one of my compositions I don't want to hear what I already know about my piece. I want to learn something new about my own music. That’s definitely something that Dan brings to the table. Also a really twisted sense of humor which is always good.

  The final night you'll be playing with a band dubbed the Resonator Sextet. What was the original Resonator band? What went behind the idea to expand it? These are some really amazing musicians lined up to play in this group!

Last year I got the urge to do some expanded, multi horn, groups. One was my incredible big band, Ensemble Kolossus,and the other was Resonator. The premier of Resonator was at Cornelia Street Cafe last August. It featured Loren Stillman and Chris Speed on reeds, Angelica Sanchez on piano and Tyshawn Sorey on drums. For this concert Andrew Bishop will play instead of Speed, and I've added the great cornetist, Kirk Knuffke. I got to play with Kirk a few times in the past couple of years and really love his playing, and his sound is really rich and very personal. I love the multi-reed format but having a trumpet or cornet gives me something really different to compose and arrange for, not to mention another really fascinating improvisor to add to the mix of other really fascinating improvisors. 

You've been living in Baltimore for a while. What do you like about the improvising community there? especially as contrasted to NYC's?

Baltimore is a great place and has a great scene of improvisors. These days I kind of think of it more like a much, much, lower Brooklyn. There's more overlap and interaction between the scenes but it still has its own unique personality. People like John Dierker, Eric Kennedy, and Susan Alcorn are great example of people that I've met here and have have many great opportunities to make music with over the years. Dave Ballou was a friend and collaborator before either of us had moved here and now play together regularly in a number of settings. I think one of the main differences between the two cities/scenes are that in Brooklyn time is tight and everyone is scrambling around to make all their gigs and need to learn and process new music very quickly. This has both positive and negative effects on the music, but it definitely keeps the intensity level high. Baltimore is a more relaxed scene, full of really great players and improvisors who are mostly not making their livings from playing "creative" music. So more of a difference in attitude and lifestyle that in actual substance. I should add that there are a lot of younger musicians who either came for college (Peabody or Towson U particularly) and who are around the scene trying to learn from everyone now. This is good and I think will keep things growing here for a while.

What's some recorded music you've been listening to lately?

Morton Feldman - for Christian Wolf, Mingus live at Cornell and Paris 1964, the new Nels Cline Singers CD, Eric Dolphy's Complete Last Recordings, Old and New Dreams and Dewey Redman on ECM.

What's your ideal sandwich?

Fresh Italian Caprese panino with Mozzarella di Bufala, real tomatoes, and great EVOO!

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Bizingas Residency at I-Beam!

Brian Drye is a trombonist, composer and the father of, what has become, a central part of the improvisatory community in Brooklyn: his rehearsal, teaching and performance space I-Beam. In recent months, Drye has given artists a three day, two set residency at I-Beam--a rare opportunity for musicians these days. 

Tonight through Saturday, Drye himself is in residence with his band Bizingas comprised of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, drummer Ches Smith and guitarist Jonathan Goldberger. And Drye has done something special with his three night run in giving his Bizingas cohorts each a set to play their own music, in a band of their choosing, after each Bizingas set. 

I caught up with Drye to talk about this residency and some tangentially related topics which you can read below.

(I-Beam Brooklyn is 168 7th St; Bizingas starts at 8:30)

----------------

How was Bizingas formed? What was the impetus to gather these folks together?

This band has been together since 2004. It started as a trio of guitar bass and drums with Jonathan Goldberger and Take Toriyama. Take passed in 2007 and we had recorded a full length album a few weeks before. At some point in 2008 I started playing sessions with Ches Smith, Jonathan Goldberger and Kirk Knuffke and I knew that had to be the band. The chemistry was great and I had a sense that this would be a great group to try some of my Bizingas songs. At the time I was very interested in blending analog synth within the group and adding Kirk gave me even more freedom to do so.  We recorded out debut album which was released in 2010 and they were a whole new set of compositions written specifically for that date. 

How'd you come by such a name?

A friend of mine used to call and leave nonsense words on my answering machine (which dates that activity). One time he said Bizingas ( or atleast that's what I thought he said). I liked the way it looked and sounded and  that became the name.  As far as I know there is no official definition of it.

  Can you talk about the special guest subs who will be playing with you guys?--Shane Endsley and Tom Rainey.

Shane has been my friend and musical compatriot since I moved to NYC in 1997. We've played countless gigs together but this is the first time I've had Shane sub in my own band. It just so happens that one of the songs on the record is titled Shane.  It's an old song that Shane mentioned years ago that he liked. On the new record Kirk Knuffke and I play it as a duo, so I'm excited to have Shane guest for this one. Tom Rainey is one of my favorite drummers in NYC and I've been listening to him since I moved here.  I've recently gotten to know him a little more and had some chances to play with him some.  I'm really excited to have his as a guest with this band.  I have a history with Ches and the music now after so many years and had very little opportunity to sub it out.  I thought since this was a residency that it would be fun to hear the music from a different perspective.  

Every night of the residency, for the second set, you're giving your Bizingas bandmates a showcase with their own groups. What was the idea behind that? It should be exciting to see these guys in a different context immediately following a Bizingas set!

I just thought - it's hard enough to get these guys all together, let alone for 3 nights, I thought it would be fun to have them also present something since they are all amazing leaders and sidemen.  Ches is bringing his long standing duo Good for Cows and both Jonathan and Kirk are using the opportunity to bring a new project.

  Can you talk about how I-Beam has grown since you started it? It's really become a large part of the community.

Ibeam started as a teaching space and it has grown into a performance space.  The idea for a residency series has been brewing for a long time and it seemed like the perfect time to start to try it.  So far all the residencies have been really successful and it's a rare treat to offer musicians the opportunity to present their music for more than one night.  It's very rare for this community, and I think it can be an essential way for the music to take shape, develop and encourage the audience to participate in the process. We also have a membership of amazing musicians who also produce concerts and we occasionally rent the space for shows.  I worked my ass off to improve the space, the sound, the gear.  We just got a sponsorship from Maxwells Drum Shop and we should have a brand new drum set any day now.

  Any notable I-Beam stories?

Hmmm…It's hard to say - there have been so many amazing events there in the past 7 years.  I could not have imagined that this would have turned into such a great performance space.  I think one of my favorite moments was many years ago, Roswell Rudd performed with this Russian trio I guess he had met on his travels.  Roswell being one of my personal heroes I was pretty excited to have him in the space.  Back when I was first open, I used to teach a lot of lessons there, and he had come in while I was teaching where we used to have a waiting room.  I came back to greet one of my students and he was sitting there so nonchalantly I thought he was a student's grandfather.  He commented how much he loved the student's playing and I asked him who was his grandchild.  He looked at me puzzled and I suddenly realized who he was.  (I was pretty embarrassed but he seemed to get a good laugh out of it.)

What's some music you've been listening to lately?

I've been listening to Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite and Brahms Piano Concerto #1.  My two year old daughter keeps pulling out scores and records that I haven't listened to in years and those are some of the ones she keeps pulling off the shelf.  I'm also obsessed with this Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer record and Jelly Roll Morton.  

What's your ideal sandwich?

A perfect eggplant parmesan sandwich. Not bitter, seasoned perfectly, with amazing red sauce and just a little parmesan chefs. I can't really think of anything better than that - but it's pretty hard to find.

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ZhirtZ n ZkinZ

In recent months, I've written about and interviewed the saxophonist Patrick Breiner and the trumpeter Kenny Warren, both of whom have recently released some great records under their own names. Yet in both of those conversations (and various others that I've had with those guys), their eyes really lit up whenever the subject of their band--dubbed ZhirtZ n ZkinZ--came up. This is a band comprised of them, bassist Will McEvoy and drummer Flin van Hemmen and is a special group, indeed. This band is really close personally, and that's reflected in the democratic nature of the music and practice of this group--all of the members write tunes, and if the band is in the mood to play them, they do, and if not, they play wholly improvised sets. Yet in the little that I had seen of the band (that is, solely on YouTube and before listening to their recently released, self-titled debut) I was really struck by the fluidity that they had: one member would flirt with a section of a melody and that would be occasion for the rest to join in with him, as all of these melodies are memorized.

As I mentioned, they recorded a record, almost precisely two years ago in a house in Maine and the product is ZhirtZ n ZkinZ, being released on Breiner's Sulde label. Not only can you hear the bands amazing rapport documented throughout, but also unexpected yet charming bird calls and dog barking which were captured by the microphones and seem to blend perfectly.

This Saturday (June 14th) ZhirtZ n ZkinZ will be playing a record release show at Barbes in Park Slope. You shouldn't miss it! You can pre-order a copy of the record here. 

I caught up with the guys from Z n Z and asked them some biting questions that really get behind this record.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://zhirtznzkinz.bandcamp.com/album/zhirtz-n-zkinz" data-mce-href="http://zhirtznzkinz.bandcamp.com/album/zhirtz-n-zkinz"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Zhirtz n Zkinz by Zhirtz n Zkinz&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Patrick Breiner: 

Shirts or Skins?

Skins. Always. Clothes are so post-Eden. There are few things I enjoy more than performing regular daily activities in the buff: making breakfast, drinking a beer on the couch, washing dishes, vacuuming the rug, practicing my saxophone, you name it.

Coffee or tea?

I rarely drink coffee. I used to drink a lot of tea. But my Aussie buddy, Jon Crompton, recently got me hooked on flat whites. Now I'm kind of screwed because a flat white is an Aussie beverage, so only the snootiest NYC cafes actually know how to make one. Also, since I hardly ever drink coffee and thus know very little about it, when a barista asks me, "what's a flat white?" I have absolutely no idea what to tell them.

physical or digital?

Are we talking about music here? Or...? Physical. PHYSICAL. Although there's a lot to be said for the immediacy and portability of the digital mediums. Ahem.

Blazers or cardigans?

Cardigans. Clearly.

Ale or stout?

Ale. Year 'round. My favorites, though, are all pretty conservative (in terms of hop content) American Pale Ales. I prefer the balance of these over the west coast super mega ultra double-triple-hopped everything. This is something I seriously miss about living in Wisconsin. Ale Asylum's Hopalicious, Lake Louie's Arena Premium, New Glarus's Moon Man No Coast Pale Ale. Brilliant, beautiful brews.

Miles 1958 or 1985?

Based on a quick Google Image search, my girlfriend chose 1985. "Windbreaker and mustache. It's a Patrick Breiner Special. What? Am I crazy?"

Kenny Warren:

(photo by Peter Gannushkin)

Shirts or Skins?

At the moment shirts. Wait...now skins.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee. Small, strong, black, ethically grown, organic, fresh, funny, graceful, intelligent, with a generous spirit and if it's not asking too much, a job. 

Digital or physical?

Let's get digital.

Blazers or Cardigans?

Portland Blazers, St. Louis Cardigans.

Ales or stout?

Ales all the way. Pale Ales. Hops enough to make the seafaring voyage around the cape to India or the refrigerated-truckfaring voyage from Colorado to my Brooklyn bodega.

Miles 1958 or 1985?

I love everything Miles Davis, but this one is kind of obvious.

  Will McEvoy:

(photo by Patrick Breiner)

Shirts or Skins? 

Skins. 

Coffee or tea?  

Not going to go there. I like the entire spectrum.  I will not drink Redbull et al.    Mate- if I have to pick one beverage from  the spectrum of caffeinated infusions. 

Physical or digital?  

Physical.  Give me vinyl, wood, gut, dirt, spit, sweat, oil, taste, colors, smells and tedious work over digital debased boredom and ineffectual categorization.

Blazers or Cardigans?  

Neither or. What the hell kind of question is this?   

Ale or stout?

A SnakeBite.  A mysterious mixture of ale, stout, and black currant liquor. I drank more of them in college than I care to remember. 

Miles 1958 or 1985?

How many miles of what?

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://zhirtznzkinz.bandcamp.com/album/zhirtz-n-zkinz" data-mce-href="http://zhirtznzkinz.bandcamp.com/album/zhirtz-n-zkinz"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Zhirtz n Zkinz by Zhirtz n Zkinz&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Flin van Hemmen

  (photo by John Kelman)

Shirts or Skins?

Great band, wait, I think there called Zhirts n Zkins though, great band.

Coffee or tea?

Tea, Irish tea, packs a punch but more importantly, makes you feel loved, like someone is keeping an eye out for you.

Physical or digital?  

physical, I'm old fashioned, I suck at digital downloads, I try sometimes, but it doesn't get easier, as hoped it would. Sorry everyone for not digitally downloading your beautiful music.

Blazers or cardigans?

I don't know what those are, I'm European, we just walk around in the nude. At night we wear a top hat, sometimes.

Ale or stout?

Such a seasonal matter. Cheers.

Miles 1958 or 1985?

Early 80's rather that mid, 58 there is no question.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://zhirtznzkinz.bandcamp.com/album/zhirtz-n-zkinz" data-mce-href="http://zhirtznzkinz.bandcamp.com/album/zhirtz-n-zkinz"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Zhirtz n Zkinz by Zhirtz n Zkinz&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

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Briggan Krauss Descends Upon The Stone!

(photo by Brian Smith)

Saxophonist Briggan Krauss has been at the forefront of innovation and sonic exploration in his two decades of living in New York. This week, he's been given a week to curate the Stone (Avenue C & 2nd St) and in his week, he's brought a host of special guests from his musical life to collaborate with him--and no two sets will be the same instrumentation or lineup.

I caught up with Krauss via email to talk about the week he's lined up!

You're beginning this week of curation at the stone with a solo saxophone set, which seems largely appropriate. What's your history of playing solo? What do you like about its vulnerabilities?

This was the one set this week that was not my idea but rather a suggestion of Zorn’s. He said that playing solo was the ultimate challenge for a saxophonist and that nobody plays anything like I do. Well, I had to say yes. The only other solo saxophone playing that I have done was also as a challenge from a friend. Skerik wanted to produce a record that documents some of the ways that I approach the saxophone and so we made some solo recordings in his studio as well as in a giant bicycle/pedestrian tunnel with amazing acoustics in Seattle. We are currently looking for a label to release this recording.

I’m not sure I like the vulnerabilities of playing solo. It certainly is the ultimate challenge in many ways. What interests me most about music is playing with other people. The biggest challenge for me playing solo to fully accept the sound of the saxophone the way that I play it in the moment and to make that the full sonic palate from which to compose from. I am also hyper-critical of my own playing and to be forced to listen to only myself is a kind of torture in a way. In many ways my drive to extend the sound of the saxophone is a way to get away from it as much as anything.

Immediately following that, you'll be playing with what you've dubbed your "Jazz Quartet". What can be expected for that set? There are some amazing musicians in that band.

The idea of this quartet is to revisit what I think of as the music of my roots. I grew up the child of a saxophonist and avid jazz listener. In fact, the horn I’ve played my entire life was once my father’s. I grew up deeply loving, playing and studying jazz music which was a huge part of my life up to a certain point when I began to be interested in other things such as purely improvised music, electronic music and sound art. I have gone in other musical directions since before moving to New York City in 1994 but I’ve always wanted to revisit that music and decided about a year ago to put together a band of my friends to do just that, although to approach the music with some of the musical places I’ve been in the years since.

H-Alpha, a band with a record out on Skirl, is playing the following night, once as the trio with Ikue and Jim and then one set with the great Nels Cline. Can you talk a bit about that band in its original incarnation and then with Nels? What do you think Nels will bring? He and Jim clearly have a deep rapport and improvisational hookup.

I have always been a great fan if Ikue Mori who is the one laptop musician I know of who not only truly has her own voice on the instrument but who also has exquisite control and fluidity as an improviser. Jim Black is also one of my heroes besides being an old friend. It seems to me that both of these musicians have very wide rangingapproaches to sound which is something that I aspire to as well so it was a natural idea to get us together. I love playing with Nels whom I first met many years ago when he played with Sexmob at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. I’m really looking forward to hearing what will happen when he joins H-alpha.

On Friday evening, you'll be playing trio with Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara for one set, then as quartet with Ches Smith, Mary and Wayne Horvitz. How did these configurations come to you? These are all people who have played together for years.

I’ve only recently begun playing with Mary and Tomas having long admired them both. I’ve played with Ches many times over the years in different settings and of course Wayne and I go back more than twenty years. As ensembles both of these sets will be first time public performances which I hope will be the first of many more to come.

Can you talk about your connection to Wayne Horvitz? He shows his face fairly regularly throughout the latter half of your week, and you two have been playing together for quite some time. What do you like about playing with Wayne?

Wayne Horvitz is not only one of my musical mentors but also one of my closest friends and it’s so great that he could come out from Seattle to play some music with me. Wayne is responsible as much as anyone for making me the musician that I am. The first band of his that I was in was Pig Pen which he formed while I was still in college in Seattle in the early 90’s. Pig Pen was initially a very electric, rock inspired band closely descended in my mind from Naked City and is comprised of keybards, drums, electric bass and saxophone. I grew up listening to electric guitar and I also loved the way that Zorn can scream on the alto saxophone. These are the sounds that I was hearing for Pig Pen but I couldn’t execute that. Nor could I figure out how to fit my sound into that music. How could I make the also saxophone work on a sonic level in that music? I was really frustrated and after a while I actually wanted to quit the band because I felt I wasn’t cutting it but Wayne wouldn’t let me. Instead he encouraged me to stick it out. Eventually I figured it out and in the process it totally changed my music and my life.

Elliot Sharp will join your band with Kenny Wolleson and Wayne Horvitz, 300, for a set. What's your history with Elliot?

I’ve known Elliot since I moved to New York and have always loved his music and have had the opportunity to play with him on several occasions. I could take a moment here to say that the guitar is probably my biggest influence outside of the saxophone and having taken up studying the guitar myself in the last few years, my love and appreciation for it has grown ever stronger. It is such a thrill for me that I will be joined by some of my favorite guitarists (Nels, Mary, Jonathan Goldberger and Elliot) over this coming week. I am really looking forward to getting to play with Elliot not only for myself but also it will be great to get Elliot and Wayne together to share and build on their long history together too.

The final set of your week is the one most diametrically opposite from your solo set beginning, and it sounds like a wonderful configuration of people. How did The Phoenix come about?

I am starting my residency by myself but am ending it playing with a group of my friends. Why does it have to be the end though? Instead why can’t it be something of a rebirth? Hence The Phoenix.

What do you value about a place like the Stone in the improvising community of NYC?

What can I say except that the Stone is a place simply all about the music. That is priceless, especially in a city which seems to be suffering a lack of artist centered venues focusing on creative music. I am truly honored and grateful to John Zorn for giving me this residency.

Beyond the week at the Stone, what do you look forward to this summer?

I am going to Seattle in July and doing a bunch of shows out there with friends otherwise I’m around town doing a few gigs and recordings. What do I look forward to? Playing music...I just want to play music.

-What's your ideal sandwich?

Play guitar for two hours, play saxophone to two hours, play guitar for two more hours with lots of dark coffee throughout and finally making music with friends for desert.

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Jason Ajemian is Throwing a Party: TRAYSH NY

Jason Ajemian is an accomplished bassist and leader of a number of eclectic groups. This Friday, June 6th, in Maspeth, Queens, Ajemian and his partner Joe Jeffers are throwing a party called TRAYSH NY which will bring together a variety of acts, sights, and sounds. I caught up with Jason at his apartment in Brooklyn to speak of this party and other things (the rest will come in the following weeks as a special PART 2):

So what’s going on with this party?

TRAYSH New York is the first (hopefully annual) showcase I am presenting with my partner Joe Jeffers @ The Knockdown Center in Queens. In case you aren't familiar with the Knockdown Center, its a 50,000 square food warehouse in Masbeth Queens. Some of friends from Chicago have been working to establish this venue for around two years. TRAYSH New York offers ten acts which seem to share some connection to soul music.

We are excited to have JODY an R+B collective from Chicago on the same stage as a low-fi legend like R Stevie Moore. The bill is eccentric and certainly offers a different spectacle than something like Governor's Ball, to be held the same weekend. Overall I would say TRAYSH New York is an experiment, is it still possible to undertake large DIY events in New York, without media sponsors or Vitamin Water, or some secret patron footing the bill.

Check the full listing @ www.traysh.info

You had one in Ohio and that was a similar thing?

Well, when my friend Joe Jeffers’ grandfather passed he was 19. His grandfather owned a bunch of land out in Appalachian Ohio and he opened an artist residency there and it’s been going for almost 10 years. It’s a 900 acre tree farm. And we’ve always talked about having shows and things. I had always gone there as a guest artist until a few years ago. Last year I started to help them run it. Joe and I had always talked about festivals, as well as other ways to bring our networks of musicians to this space.

Conrad Freiburg, an amazing sculptor who has visited the site many times, built the first permanent installation out there, The Woodshed, which is an eleven-sided practice space for musicians which also features a fully rotational observational deck. We make up constellations out there, that’s one of our things. Like, what's Mike Ditka's Mustache? The whole freakin' Milky Way! Essentially TRAYSH ISLAND I : TURNING DIAMONDS INTO COAL was a ribbon cutting for the structure, which was completed hours before.

So why should people come out to this party?

The Knockdown Center is unlike any other warehouse space you might find yourself at in Brooklyn. First of all its way bigger, the KdC is a former door factory, which is approximately 50,000 sq ft., there is a feeling when you are there that you are not in New York. I personally find it to a great respite from the rest of the city; its the closest thing to being at the farm while being grid-locked.

But why should people come out Friday? Well if a legendary poet like R Stevie Moore doesn't peak your interest, then come for DONCHRISTIAN, the slick and soulful nephew of Teddy Pendergrass, or stoner crooner Jimmy Whispers. Or come for world-class projectionists on the case, Zoe Fitzgerald, Tim Saccenti and Wolfshirt beaming on a couple of large weather balloons in the space. If thats not enough come for the damn frito pies!

And you won’t be playing bass?

No I will not. I will be fronting Alta Vida, which is the latest iteration of my ongoing project High Life. At the farm, High Life backs up karaoke singers. In the area a lot of people are into karaoke, so when we can we put together this live band karaoke performances. In a way the Alta Vida performance will be an extension of that process, though I will be only singer, and I'll mostly be singing songs unknown to most, but precious to me. I come from a large family with a few very musical family members, so I will play their songs as well as Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus cause my home girl just found out they cousins. Approaching the performance without an instrument is humorous to me, as I've always been suspicious of frontmen, so might as well try and be one, if only for an evening. I'm playing early @ 7pm, but I'll be there all night.

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Kenny Warren Releases "Laila and Smitty" With Interview!!

When I first heard the opening track to Kenny Warren's new record Laila and Smitty, "Your Well", I was fairly taken aback. I had known of Warren as a trumpeter with crisp, immaculate tone and a proclivity towards freely improvised music. "Your Well" has little in the way of free jazz, and rather showcases Warren singing--with a distinctive, almost raspy quality--a simple melody, with an impressive orchestration below him. Suffice it to say, I was intrigued. Throughout the duration of Laila and Smitty, Warren strikes the balance between his trumpet work and his newfound habit for singing and it serves him well. All of the songs on this record are infectious and moving and utterly unique. 

I had the nice privilege of spending part of an afternoon with Warren in his apartment wherein we conducted this interview which you can read below. 

I have also posted future dates of the Laila and Smitty band and another band referred to here, at the bottom of the interview.

Can we talk about the inspiration or the beginnings of this record, because it’s pretty different from your other work, and kind of surprising.

Yeah, well I surprised myself with it! I started playing with this band and calling it Laila and Smitty, 3 or 4 years ago. I was subbing on a tour with Jeremiah Lockwood--the dobro player from the band-- he has a band called Sway Machinery and I was on a tour with them...that band is almost a kind of afro-jewish rock band or something. Jeremiah’s grandfather is an amazing cantor, and he grew up playing in the subway with this great blues musician Carolina Slim, who just passed away a few months ago. They did a nice memorial for him on WKCR. But anyway, I realized on that tour, that Jeremiah had this whole other bag of delta and country blues music he could play, which I had never really checked out. We went record shopping at Amoeba Records in Berkley and he helped me pick out a huge stack of records. Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, Jimmy Rogers,The Carter Family. And for him, I picked out Ornette Coleman’s Complete Science Fiction Sessions and the Booker Little record Out Front. We did a nice little exchange. When I got back to New York, I really wanted to start learning these tunes from Jeremiah who is really knowledgeable about this stuff. So I started playing duo with him, and then called up MYK Freedman, who is this totally unconventional and incredible lap-steel player. I was doing some sessions at the time with him and Josh Myers. And Carlo Costa who is one of my favorite drummers, and so we just started getting together and jamming on these old blues tunes. For years, some of the music I’ve written has been this had this folky Colorado-jazz kind of sound, and those tunes worked well with that. For about a year or two, all of the stuff we were playing was all-instrumental. Then my girlfriend and I broke up and I started writing all of these heartbreak songs, and I guess I realized that I had to sing these songs even though I wasn’t a singer. I started bringing those songs in and over the last couple of years, it’s evolved into it’s own thing--we still play some of the old country blues things, but we aren’t trying to be a country blues band anymore.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://kennywarren.bandcamp.com/album/laila-and-smitty" data-mce-href="http://kennywarren.bandcamp.com/album/laila-and-smitty"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Laila and Smitty by Kenny Warren&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Right, well you play “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” on the record, but called it “In The Pines”.

Yeah, I think we did three different versions of that tune, all of which were completely different. Sometimes we play that tune and it’s burning and exciting, but on the third version we did in the studio, I asked the guys to create some space and to take us to a kind of spooky zone. That version came out pretty nicely.

Cool, you maybe answered some of this already, but the amazing thing about the record, which fits into a metric of mine for thinking about good songs, is that once I listen to it a few times, I feel like I’ve known it for years. And the first 6 tunes or so on the record--especially “Your Well” and “Warm My Soul”--are really like that for me. Can you talk about those tunes? It makes a good deal of sense that those were coming from a breakup.

That’s been one of the biggest challenges for me. I’m sort of an open book, in general, but I’m really exposed here. There’s a lot of really personal and vulnerable shit that I’m talking about. This is something that I was feeling really deeply. Music connects to so many aspects of yourself, but by using some words and talking about these real honest things, it opened up a way for me to connect emotionally. There’s something about lyrics that add another dimension to things, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, it affects you on an emotional level in a different way. That’s what I’m always struck by when listening to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen--these emotions are really slammed in your face, and you can hear the vulnerability in these people’s voices, and in your voice here.

I think it’s the same as when you listen to Don Cherry or Lester Bowie. Most of my favorite jazz players, horn players in particular, have this sort of raw, vulnerable and yet strong sound. Or the way that Ron Miles or Chris Speed play. Either of those guys can play one note and you know it’s him. And here’s something really vulnerable and powerful at the same time in there sounds.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://kennywarren.bandcamp.com/album/laila-and-smitty" data-mce-href="http://kennywarren.bandcamp.com/album/laila-and-smitty"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Laila and Smitty by Kenny Warren&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Do you think that the singing has in any way influenced or shaped your trumpet playing at all?

Maybe. I’ve always thought of playing the trumpet as kind of a vocal thing. I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. I’ve been playing the trumpet for twenty years and I’ve only been singing in public for about a year, so I’m not sure that the singing has had time to come back around and influence my trumpet playing yet. Then again, my trumpet playing has always come so much from that same place of wherever singing comes from. It all seems pretty connected. Singing and playing on a gig is becoming a bit more fluid for me, or it’s starting to. I’m getting to be more comfortable with singing and not having to hide behind my closed eyes the whole night.

It’s also nothing new for someone who plays trumpet to sing. All throughout jazz history there have been trumpet players who sang, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy, Kenny Dorham. And even now there are a bunch of great trumpet player/singers like Eric Biondo or this amazing dude Jeff Eliassen in Denver.

So how’s it been for someone like Carlo to play music like this? Were there guidelines that you tried to set up? What was the mood you tried to set when you were recording this? I guess you had been playing for years...

Yeah, we’d been playing for years with varying degrees of openness and improvising. I’d actually like to get back to that a little more because a lot of the stuff has become a very codified, set thing. That can be good, but it’s also nice to have an openness, especially when you have people like Adam Hopkins who is now playing bass and Carlo. I’m thinking about trying to incorporate some free playing in different ways for the next thing we do. There are definitely some more possibilities to explore there.

So do you have any other plans for the future of this band?

Well Jeremiah is moving to California in September, where he’s going to do a PhD at Stanford. That’s great for him and his family and I’m psyched for him, but I want to get back into the studio before he leaves.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://kennywarren.bandcamp.com/album/laila-and-smitty" data-mce-href="http://kennywarren.bandcamp.com/album/laila-and-smitty"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Laila and Smitty by Kenny Warren&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

So let’s talk about ZhirtZ and ZkinZ, a band which has a record coming out soon.

The release is June 14th and we’re playing a show at Barbes. That band has a really great chemistry and collective vibe. Patrick Breiner and I used to be in a band together called NOOK that has a record out. He was one of the first people I played with once I moved to New York. Just before he moved to Madison for a few years he introduced me to Flin van Hemmen and Will McEvoy and said that we would like playing together. So we did a trio session and it felt really good. We played as a trio for a couple of years. Then Patrick moved back to New York and we were like, “Hey, Patrick you should play a session with our trio”. So Patrick shows up and is like, “Hey man, I wrote us a tune and got us a gig”. Haha. So then we were a quartet. The quartet instantly felt really good. Patrick and I have some sort of musical ESP. Either that or he just has really big ears, which make him so easy to play with that he makes you sound good. Just to feel like you can step out into some unexpected territory and be with guys that you trust is really special. Anything could happen and it would be cool.

So you guys write really short, rubato tunes, right?

Yeah, we have little melodies that we’ve all learned, and sometimes we’ll play those songs and sometimes we won’t. Sometimes it’s 100% improvised and sometimes someone leads us into one of these melodies.

That’s what I’ve been struck by in these YouTube videos is that it could be 11 or 12 minutes of improvisation and all of a sudden you’re in one of the tunes.

Yeah man, it’s a lot of fun! That’s been the concept for that group. In the studio we did a few things that were slightly more involved. Flin wrote a nice tune which had a few different movements in it. There’s one or two of my tunes, one of Patrick’s, a few of Flin’s and one of Will’s. They are all so wide-open that it feels like an improvised record. There are a lot of small-sounds and textural things. It’s kind of long, almost an hour long. We thought about splitting it up into two records, but it’s such a pain to make a record in the first place, so why do that twice? We’re just going to put out a long record and if people want to listen to half of it one day and half the next, that’s fine too.

Is that going to come out on Sulde?

Yes! That’s Patrick’s record label with a lot of cool stuff on it.

Are there any other projects that you’re involved in that you want to talk about?

Man, I get to play a lot of different music that I love. I’ve been lucky. I’m playing with Noah Garabedian’s band Big Butter and the Eggmen, with Kyle Wilson, Anna Webber, Curtis Macdonald and Evan Hughes. I’ve been playing with this great oud player Brian Prunka in this band Nashaz, which is sort of Arabic influenced jazz music. To my ears, it sounds more like Arabic music than jazz, but I guess to Arabic audiences it sounds more like Arabic music than jazz. I still play every Tuesday at Barbes with Slavic Soul Party and that’s always fun. I’ve also really been enjoying playing with Rob Brown’s Quartet with Juan Pablo Carletti and Peter Bitenc.

I’ve been trying to write some new music lately, too, and I’m not quite sure of what’s that’s going to be yet.

What’s some recorded music you’ve been listening to lately?

Man, that’s constantly changing. I just got the new Tune-Yards record which sounds really good. I just bought it on vinyl. I’ve also been listening to this Syrian dance musician named Omar Souleyman, that shit is crazy. The Maqam stuff that the synthesizer player plays in that band is ridiculous. Maqam is something that I started hearing when I started listening to Balkan and Turkish music, but it’s a little more distilled in this Syrian pop music. This guy can play within a fourth forever, with just these tiny modulations. But it’s ultimately like party music. I’ve been listening to some Duke Ellington, too. I just discovered this record called Afro-Eurasian Eclipse. It’s one of his suites from really late, like ’71. Also Bobby Avey’s new record is amazing! I’m also always listening to KCR, that’s like half of my musical diet. I almost always love what they play unless they’re talking about the Lions basketball team. Nothing against basketball, but...

What’s your ideal sandwich?

Torta. Con todos. 

6/14 8pm Barbes

ZhirtZ n ZkinZ

6/22 10 pm Manhattan Inn

Laila and Smitty

7/24 10pm Barbes

Laila and Smitty

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GO TONIGHT!! Ty Citterman's Bop Kabbalah at Joe's Pub

by Samuel Weinberg

For the past few decades, alto-saxophonist and composer John Zorn has been presenting what he dubs the "Radical Jewish Culture Series". From  Zorn's long-standing band Masada (in all of its various iterations), to his seminal record Bar Kokhba to Ben Goldberg's Speech Communication and all of the Radical Jewish stalwarts like Shanir Blumenkranz, Zorn's Tzadik imprint has been flooded by the mass of artists commissioned for this series and their own idiosyncratic methods for tackling Zorn's basic mission which, in his own words, is: 

"The [RJC] series is an ongoing project. A challenge posed to adventurous musical thinkers. What is jewish music? What is its future? If asked to make a contribution to jewish culture, what would you do? Can jewish music exist without a connection to klezmer, cantorial or yiddish theatre? All of the cds on the tzadik RJC series address these issues through the vision and imagination of individual musical minds." 

The most recent musical mind to address these questions and puzzles is the inventive guitarist and composer Ty Citerman, with his new record Bop Kabbalah (Tzadik). The record's name alone--taken from an Allen Ginsberg poem--seems to incapsulate a bold response to Zorn's aforementioned problems, and the music on the disc surely lives up to these expectations. On Bop Kaballah, Citerman, who is known for his genre-defying work with the group Gutbucket, has surrounded himself with able partners to execute his vision: trumpeter Ben Holmes, bass-clarinetist Ken Thomson and drummer Adam D Gold. Throughout the disc's eight tracks, the quartet moves through a number of feels, obliquely hinting at the not-so-obvious nod to Klezmer sensibility, all while maintaing a palpable originality.

The record begins with "The Cossack Who Smelt of Vodka" which opens with a rather dark, haunting repeated cell doubled by Citerman and Thomson, broken by an impressive and motivic solo by Thomson over the vamp. Other highlights include the aptly titled "The Synagogue Detective", which is rather suspenseful and creeps along, with a tricky and slightly off-kilter bass clarinet line (imagine Philip Marlowe on manischewitz); the remarkably catchy "Talmudic Breakbeat", which offers an nice feature for Holmes; and "Exchanging Pleasantries With a Wall" which showcases the most impressive guitar work of Citerman's on this date, in which he crafts an immense sonic landscape unaccompanied, for the first two minutes, then he is slowly joined by a unfolding melody, which hovers atop his well-crafted frame.

   TONIGHT you can hear this band play all of the music from their new record at Joe's Pub at 7:30 PM. 

Joe's Pub is located at 425 Lafayette St NY, NY