November gigs - Mingus in NYC, E# in Europe.
Nov. 4 &16 with Eric Mingus
We hit at the Mercury Lounge on Sunday the 4th - the gig was booked without
us even thinking about what else might be going on that night: Not only is
the final night of the World Series happening with the NY Yankees playing
(baseball!) but the Emmies as well (TV? movies? I'm not sure.) With all
this going on, we're not expecting a big crowd so we're not disappointed.
Still, the 30 or so folks there make up in enthusiasm what they lack in
numbers (except for the irritating student-types at the back of the room
expectorating empty drivel at a level louder than we were.) This evening,
we were a quartet with Brian Mitchell on keys and Sim Cain on drums (we had
done a few gigs in October with the great Lance Carter on drums, known for
his work with Sonny Sharrock.) We stretch on some tunes, train-wreck on
others, but Eric, as always, gives it up on voice. The legendary
photographer Jim Marshall, a friend of Eric's father, makes the gig and
shoots us - I look forward to viewing the results.
We next hit at midnight, November 16, at Tonic with the same quartet. Probably one of
our best ever sets in terms of energy and flow. For the Mingus project, my
main guitar has become a Guild Nightingale that I bought on Ebay this past
May. Built in 1987 and designed in collaboration with Nashville's George
Gruhn, only 82 of these guitars were made. Very light in weight, it
features a fast slim and very comfortable neck with ebony fingerboard for
good transient attack and a small single-cutaway hollow body with spruce
top and F-holes. The tone is rich and resonant but the instrument requires
a much more delicate touch than my usual Stratocaster or 8-string. I'm
greatly drawn to this guitar and am enjoying the sound and feel of it - it
has affected my playing style in the rock context of Eric's group. I wish
that I had this instrument for Eric's record (hopefully out soon!) For
that recording, the guitars were two different Strats, a hollow Guild M65
from 1967, a Harmony Silvertone also from the '60's, and an Ibanez George
Benson.
Nov. 21 - off to Vienna on Austrian Air. The first concert of this trip is
the Focus On Israel festival taking place there. Ronny Someck and I
perform on Nov. 23 at the club Szene Wien, site of my first-ever
performance in Wien in 1983 as part of the Tone Gegentone festival. Ever
since then, Wien has felt like a home away from home, with many friends and
good audiences. For this tour I bring the Godin electroacoustic guitar since Ronny and I
will perform a new set: "A Short History of Vodka" (abbreviated SHOV) as
well as some of the earlier poems. The CD of SHOV was just released by the
Israeli ZuTa label and my sole instrument on it is the Godin. It has a
longscale neck with great action and feel and maintains its acoustic ring
and resonance even when processed. The SHOV set is demanding - I actually
have to PLAY GUITAR throughout the course of its 40 minutes using
fingerpicking and tapping, no plectrum, and many traditional lefthand
approaches as well as my own idiosyncratic extended techniques. I use a
tuning of D Bb D A Bb D.
On Nov. 24, Ronny and I participate in a panel discussion at the
Schausspiel Theatre about "the arts and Israel in the current crisis." The
panel is moderated by the ORF producer Renata Schmidtkunz and also includes
the incredible Palestinian-Israeli actor Mohammad Bakry; Marwan Abado, a
Palestinian Maronite-Christian virtuoso oudist and composer; and Vera
Goldman, an 80-year old Jewish Israeli choreographer. We are to give
brief opening statements outlining our own personal history and views.
Goldman begins: she is an old-school Zionist and a hippie, good-hearted
but in denial and oblivious to history - in her overly-long monologue, she
merely explains that she just can't seem to understand why Arab
Palestinians that she has known over the years would become hostile. Bakry
gives a calm but impassioned account of his life and work in Israel,
displaying his warm humanistic spirit and clear analysis. He points out
that there are no Palestinian artists from the Occupied Territories
represented in the festival. Abado was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon
and his family suffered humiliation and death at the hands of the Israelis.
He lives in Wien now for some years and focuses his energy and feeling on
his music, refraining from bitterness. Ronny talked about how his Jewish
parents, born and raised in Baghdad, still thought of themselves as Iraqis.
He read a few poems that illustrated the shared love and pain of Arabs and
Jews in the region. In my portion, I talk about my analysis of historical
issues and how I, as a Jew and son of a Holocaust survivor, came to be
anti-Zionist, finding ways in my art to allow audiences to focus in some
way on the current, not in a journalistic sense but in the form of
"pointers" or "signposts." I feel that the artist has a responsibility to
devote some of their energy to this. The issues around the Israeli actions
especially pain me - Jews have traditionally fought against injustice and
their historical role as "victims" has caused them to "fight the good
fight" at least until the rise of Israel, a product of the British Mandate
of 1917, when at the behest of Zionists, the departing imperialists divided
Palestine and armed both sides. Before this act, during the Ottoman rule
of the region, Moslems, Jews, Christians, atheists - ALL were
Palestinians and lived in relative mutual peace and friendship. Herzl's
own diaries as he was developing Zionism reveal his strategy for "ethnic
cleansing" and desire to eliminate the Arab populations from "Jewish
regions" of Palestine. When Jews say "Never again!" it should apply to
everybody. The collective world guilt after the Holocaust allowed the
Zionist agenda to be advanced, with deeper and deeper shockwaves resounding
throughout recent years. As the panel advanced, Goldman slept (thankfully
without snoring) and we discussed among ourselves strategies for artists
and what role Americans can have - now especially after 9-11, Americans
must act as part of the solution rather than continuing as comfortable and
detached observers. The panel opened to questions from the audience,
sparking a maelstrom of shouting and accusations between different factions
of the audience - very revealing and depressing as we watched it unfold.
The moderator correctly let the storm burst and subside, then outlined an
orderly approach. I felt that most questions were more about the audience
members venting their own feelings rather than asking us for responses.
Still, some issues dig dig deeper. After the discussion, we received much
direct feedback from the audience - some VERY positive (especially an
American woman, Jewish and married to a Palestinian, who leads a local
chapter of the organization Women In Black, opposed to current Israeli
policies) and some VERY negative. A few of us retired to a local cafe
for continued discussion, coffee, and beer. I met a local Palestinian
organizer: intelligent, warm, objective, hopeful, not hateful - but willing
to dig in and struggle. That evening, Mohammad Bakry performed Emile
Habibbi's play "The Peptimist." It was an astounding act to witness: Bakry
ranges from Chaplinesque humor to the darkest of rages and sorrow - he is
physical and soulful. The play was performed in Arabic with German
supertitles so I could only understand about 30% - still, much came through.
The day of November 25 is spent on the train from Wien to Udine in Italy
where I visit my good friends, John Duncan and his wife Giulianna. Duncan
and I have been engaged in a long-distance recording collaboration which
began a few years ago with our voices recorded when Studio zOaR was on 30th
Street. We each worked separately within ProTools, editing and processing,
and shared the results. Our session that night involved listening,
analysis, and further editing. We feel that the project is nearing
completion. I will mix in NYC and we will hopefully finish soon. The
project will be released on John's All Questions label.
November 26 - to Venezia for a duo performance at Teatro Fondamenta Nuove
with another old friend, Steve Piccolo, a bassist, singer, guitarist and
composer. In Venezia, taking a taxi to the gig means getting on a small
boat. Arriving at the theatre, we're set awash in bucking waves caused by
the wake of a passing large craft - it makes getting my roadcase (and our
bodies) out of the boat a daunting task. Steve, a founding member of the
Lounge Lizards, was my classmate when we were students of Roswell Rudd at
Bard College - we shared bands and houses in the area with John and Evan
Lurie. Piccolo has lived in Italy for many years now and performs as a
soloist and in many collaborations. We had decided to call this evening of
continuously seguing solos and duos "Songs From The Frozen Zone." We
structured the concert to commence with my solo computer/voice piece Living
Room with Steve eventually joining on bass - after I switched to guitar, we
traveled through a number of improvised moods, sometimes hinting at pop
songs that have floated through our memories of New York. After a bass
solo, I switched to tenor sax as Steve sang a few songs, including one of
Billie Holiday that he has adapted.
He read this1926 text of Edoardo Persico over my computer-generated sounds
"Two roads ascend to this place of inner concentration and sustain it, invisible, like a spiritual fact. Only the track is free under the sky
before God. The means by which the works arrive here is concealed in the
order of the factory like a restrained, eternal aspiration. These two
helixes have a meaning of obedience: entering them means grasping the
secret motive of discipline that connects all the parts of the factory to
the summit, the supreme end. They seem to unwind from top to bottom, bottom
to top, for some natural reason. No massive beams, no complicated visible
construct supports them, but only a harmony, and a law that moves them by
virtue of a principle that seems to be part and parcel of the material. In
the place assigned by the foresight of order the workshops adhere to their
particular task, and along this road the varied works blend into a form of
obedience: as far as the track. These helixes are truly a mode of human
freedom, in which everything is elaborated in the individual, mingled in
the mass and integrated in the whole."
Here are some notes written by Steve:
"This text was written by Edoardo Persico, a man of great aesthetic
influence (even today) in Italy who was found dead in his apartment in
Milan in 1936, at the age of 36. He'd been straddling the ideological fence
in order to work (he was very poor and very brilliant) and even today no
one knows for sure if he was killed by the fascists or by the opposition.
His death was officially filed as being of natural causes. The newspapers
reported that his body was found near his bed, but everyone (even today)
seems to know that he was suffocated and left with his head in the toilet.
Given the fact that the newspapers were controlled by the fascists, who
would only have been too happy to accuse the communists of having
perpetrated the deed, but didn't, and given the ugly method of the
assassination (typical of fascists and untypical of their opponents), I
tend to believe he was killed by his own taskmasters. The text (already in
1926) contains an amazing series of explicit waverings or betrayals of
constriction of freedom of speech. The phrases taken out of context seem to
refer to DNA and the human body in a strangely prescient machine-age
metaphor. He is actually describing the Fiat factory in Turin. A double
helix ramp leads to the rooftop where there is a huge racetrack for testing
of automobiles, or just for showing off when foreign dignitaries arrive.
The entire plant was based on Fordist and Taylorist principles, and was
intended at first as a hymn to American ingenuity. Only later did Mussolini
manage to exploit the image, getting a huge anvil standing on a base shaped
like the letter M placed there in his honor. In the text the 'work' are
cars, the helixes the dual spirals of the ramp leading to the roof track,
and the 'foresight of order' is just what you think it is."
We finish the concert with more guitar and bass interactions and then head
off to dinner. I feel that Venezia is best experienced at night, with a
hint of fog. The tourists all leave after dark and the ancient buildings
and myriad canals hold history and mystery. Watch Nicolas Roeg's film
"Don't Look Now" to experience some of this dark joy.
November 27, Piccolo and I arrive in Milano in the afternoon. I decide to
put my roadcase, the "Albatross," in Left Luggage in the Stazione Centrale,
in the past, a simple process. With terrorism paranoia rampant, things
have become more complicated: the inevitable metal detectors followed by
search of the baggage and interview by the police. Needless to say, this
rigamarole is lengthy: "What is this stuff? Oh, you are a musician - what
kind of music do you play? " I ask if they are interested in music. "No,
we must know what kind of music you play." I'm tempted to tell them that
it is AnarchoAlQaedaCommunistAntiZionistFolksongs but just say "It is the
music that I compose." "No, you must tell us what kind of music that you
compose." I tell them that I only can write it, "it's the police and the
critics who tell ME what it is." End of conversation and I put the box in
storage. In Milano, this evening, an interview for the magazine Strumenti
Musicali, focussing on my live and studio guitar processing setups. I also
meet with guitarist Luciano Margorani of LA1919 and Claudio Chianura of the
Auditorium label which has just released Beyond, a CD of trio
improvisations I did with drummer Joey Baron and guitarist Roberto Zorzi
from Verona. This session was also recorded at the 30th street version of
Studio zOaR and include brief pithy duos, psychedelic power trio jams, and
slowly developing ambient waves.
Off to Geneve the next day for two nights of concerts at the Cave 12, a
long-running squat with a basement performance space. Inactive for four
years, the Cave 12 just recently began concerts again. I had performed
there in 1992 at their Solo Festival where I first met Saadet Turkoz and
then twice with Carbon. The first night was solo - the first of two sets
began with Living Room and continued through a fairly delicate set of
textural work on guitar and computer. Second set began with bass clarinet
and was a bit more raucous, using more of the Tectonics grooves. The
second evening began with a very different version of SyndaKit, performed
by a quartet including Claude Jordan - flute and electronics; Herve Provini
- drums, and Dirk Buirsma - saxophones. The musicians had previously
downloaded the score and our rehearsal in the afternoon was quite efficient
(fueled by a wonderful Tagine at a nearby Algerian restaurant accompanied
by lots of potent mint tea.) The SyndaKit set was tight and powerful,
locking into dense grooves or evanescing into quiet transparency. We
improvised for the second set and this was less successful - not enough
listening, not enough openness even though the technical level of playing
was quite high. The dynamic range of the Godin and the bass clarinet are
somewhat limited with uncontrollable feedback at higher sound levels and I
felt that the group was somewhat insensitive to this - frustrating.
November 30 and back to Venezia. It's a rare treat to play Venezia twice
in one week, let alone in one year. Hat's off to organizer and friend
Massimo Ongaro of Risonanze - Rassegna di Nuove Musiche Contemporanee.
The focus of this event at the University of Architecture is created by
Steve Piccolo and is titled Expedition-Dirive (with "dirive" as defined by
the Situationist International, in particular Guy Debord. From Steve's
notes: "A 'drifting' path in the city as an artistic practice, a random
experience as an immediate way of capturing the inexpressible complexity of the world." The group for this night includes: Steve Piccolo - voice, bass; Luca Gemma - voice, guitar; Gak Sato - DJ,
sound effects, percussion; videos by Ilvio Gallo, Armin Linke, Luca
Pancrazzi, Gak Sato and Tomoo.
December:
Been too busy! A bit late, but here finally is the report for December 19:
Orchestra Carbon performs SyndaKit at Tonic, NYC.
One of the best NYC SyndaKit hits. The band included:
Sim Cain - drums, Jim Pugliese-percussion, Eric Shanfield - trumpet,
Curtis Fowlkes - trombone, Andy Laster - alto sax, Tim Smith - bass
clarinet, J.D.Parran-bass clarinet, Kato Hideki - bass, Jamie Saft -
keyboards, Anthony Coleman-piano, Lin Culbertson- synthesizer, and E# -
soprano sax and 8string.
Delicate interlocks and crashing unisons that vibrated on the edge of chaos
were the order of the day - I was very happy with it as was the large
audience. Parran and Culbertson played the piece for the first time but
jumped right in with enthusiasm.
