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Road Reports 2007
(click pics to enlarge)

For upcoming concert dates, go here

January

January 1 Poetry Project Benefit
The now-traditional New Year's Day Poetry Project benefit Marathon at St. Mark's Church, a chance to start the year off with a little bang of community plus good words and sounds. The backstage scene is always fun and ran into Maggie Estep, Emily XYZ, Lenny Kaye, Chris Rael, Penny Arcade, Marlon Cherry, Rebecca Moore, Peter Zummo, Ernie Brooks, and Yoshiko Chuma. We brought Kai and Lila who enjoyed running around, eating cookies, and meeting new people, both adults and babies. I played a new piece on the Godin in D Bb D Eb Bb D tuning - I'd like to record it while it feels both solid in structure but still fresh in the discovery of it's inherent sounds. I do feel it's necessary to strike that balance - if a piece hasn't burned itself in a bit, it can seem unfinished in the recording. Some pieces may already sound flat when they finally are committed to the medium.

January 4 Sonorexia performs at Publication Party for "Up Is Up, But So Is Down" - Bowery Poetry Club - NYC
The evening included a reading by Ann Rower, a showing of films by avant-garde godfather Richard Kostelanetz, and literary/musical performances by New Randy (Holly Anderson & Lisa B. Burns) and Sonerexia (Peter Cherches & E# in our first performance together in over 20 years). Peter was the founder of Zone Magazine back in 1981 and the first State of the Union compilation was also an issue of Zone. Sonorexia played all of the local hotspots back in the day: Darinka, Inroads, Mudd Club, 8BC, Folk City. We began as a duo with cheezy drum-machine but evolved into a trio with different drummers: Donna Rexia, Barbara Barg, and Katie O'Looney all taking the chair at various times. Peter vocalizes and plays kazoo. For this night I worked up a few simple drum patches in ReBirth, a software cheezy drum-machine and burned them to a CD that we played from a boombox. I brought the Nightingale and bass clarinet and we played our biggest hits: It's Uncle, Kennedy's Brain, Cherish, Prehistoric Man, Hail to the Chief, and F-Troop.

February

February 1 E# Plays Monk - Cornelia St. Cafe - NYC
Truly a pleasure to perform at Cornelia especially after this intense month composing pieces for the Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt, Relache, The Museum of Natural History, and video artist Jaye Rhee. I was practically grown into my computer chair & my espresso machine had become necessary life-support machinery for my body. Dangerous to health and sanity. Deadlines met, I found only a small bit of time to refamiliarize myself with the neck of a guitar. The house is filled with old friends and new and I performed two hefty sets with Bemsha Swing, Well You Needn't, and Epistrophy in the first and in the second, two new arrangements: Rhythmning and Played Twice plus Round Midnight and Misterioso. After the concert, owner Robin Hirsch (also a wonderful raconteur and author) invited me to taste some rare cognacs in the upstairs bar - a perfect end to the evening.

February 8 Flux Quartet - Merkin Concert Hall - NYC
This virtuosic and energetic quartet performed a wide-ranging and ambitious program as part of the Interpretations series. My Dispersion of Seeds was presented along with pieces by Roscoe Mitchell (featuring baritone Tom Buckner), Skip LaPlante, Alvin Lucier, Flux-leader and first violinist Tom Chiu, and Bunita Marcus. A surround-sound speaker system was in place for Marcus' lyrical and powerful work so it seemed appropriate to make use of it for my computer-processing in Dispersion. Besides air mics to amplify the natural sound of the quartet, the setup comprised signal from contact pickups on the instruments routed through the Ultralite interface into my Powerbook running Ableton Live as a host for my processors which included GRM Tools. At soundcheck, the setup worked well though I was unable to get the processing to appear at the rear speakers - the signal remained obstinately dry and pristine! I tried various strategies but nothing worked. As time ran out for soundcheck, I repaired to a nearby cafe for espresso and cogitation. I finally made a new patch that seemed promising. Of course, I would only find out if it worked during the performance as there was no more available tech time. Fortunately, this final approach succeeded and during the last 8 hi-density minutes of the 16-minute piece was able to bring in a cloud of live granulations into the rear speakers.
More about Flux Quartet here: http://www.fluxquartet.com/

February 11 Duo Nels Cline/E# - The Stone - NYC
Nels had his electric gear with him for other gigs and our original plan was to play completely acoustically. This felt dangerous in a crowded room so I brought my Godin and a spare for Nels. We both agreed after that our synchronous playing combined with the sound of the matched guitars created a quality akin to one giant guitar - very exciting for both of us and the packed house as well.

February 17 Duo Janene Higgins/E# - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
As part of a series called Pairings: Likely and Unlikely, J and I performed together for the first time since the birth of the twins. She made an edited version of "Suspension" which she processed and manipulated using her mixer, DVD decks, and Powerbook. I brought the Koll 8String plus some pedals and Powerbook. Our set flew by and sound and images seemed to flow from each other. We were followed by the duo of Luke DuBois and Lucien Buscemi with Luke doing witty and dazzling processing of Lucien's image in realtime as Lucien went from drum machines to laptop to guitar. Lucien is the son of my old friends Steve and Jo Andres and it's been a pleasure to see him develop as a musician. The evening was completed with a high-energy improvised duo between Lucien and I with he starting on electronics and finishing on an impromptu drum set made from a metal chair and other objects.

February 24 Terraplane - Bowery Poetry Club - NYC
This is Terraplane's first gig since our May 2005 tour and our first with Tony Lewis on drums replacing our dear departed buddy Lance Carter and is to celebrate Allegro's distribution of the "Secret Life" CD in the US (finally!). We spent the beginning of the week in Brooklyn recording at Bryce Goggin's Trout Recording and learning to hear each other. The recording will be completed over these next two weeks and be released in September on the Intuition label in Germany - its title will be "Forgery." Bowery Poetry Club books acts back-to-back with only a few minutes for soundcheck in front of the hit. Just before leaving the apartment, the babies pulled one of the tubes out of my amp in a less-than-gentle manner and I won't know until we set-up if the amp will work. It doesn't. Fortunately the club has a Peavey keyboard amp - far from ideal and not in the best shape but it at least allows us to play. Besides our oldies Work Or Leave and Please Don't we perform a number of tunes from "Secret Life" as well as two of the new ones. Despite a few trainwrecks, the band plays hot and Mingus is in great shape.

March

March 3 Terraplane at Etnafest - Catania
The twins have suffered all week from a mild stomach flu and I begin to display more profound symptoms at 5am of the morning of my departure. I'm dreading going on an international flight feeling as I do but I load up on Imodium before I get on the plane and sleep most of the way to Milano apart from an hour spent bouncing around in turbulence mid-Atlantic. Enough time at Malpensa for a ristretto then it's just a little over 90 minutes of flight time to Catania. We pass close to Mt. Etna on our approach and I'm treated to detailed views of the crater with its ever-present puff of smoke and the surrounding lava fields. I go directly to the hotel to sleep a bit more with plans to meet the rest of the band (who had arrived on the previous day) later in the afternoon. After my nap, a quick walk around this beautiful city to find a doppio ristretto and a pasticiotti di ciocolotto. I'm feeling very much better and we head off to soundcheck. The venue for this ongoing seasonal festival is the Zo - an old sulfur mine and factory converted to performance spaces and restaurant. We're performing in a small theater of about 250 seats built over a deep pit so stage sound is quite difficult. We're able to achieve something approaching clarity and the sound for us is quite listenable and even good during the performance (although reports from audience members after the concert indicate that there were indeed problems.) Tony Lewis is doing a phenomenal job given the small amount of time logged in with the band and the whole band is on fire for both the old tunes and the new ones that we've just recorded, especially "Tell Me Why", a screed directed against the arms merchants spreading misery for profit. Dinner and local wines after the concert and two hours of sleep before going back to the Catania airport - I'm feeling my flu symptoms return so it's more Imodium for our flights back to New York via Rome. Total time in airplanes and airports: 32 hours - total time in Catania: 18 hours.

March 22 "Evolute" premiere - Relache - University of Delaware - Wilmington
Relache is a Philadelphia-based new music ensemble with an active commissioning program going back decades. The title of the composition refers both to the battle in the Pennsylvania school systems over the teaching of evolution between the forces of ignorance (i.e. fundamentalist Christians) and the reality-based community and the mathematical concept of the evolute, a curve composed of the intersection of a collection of other curves. Both metaphors apply to this through-composed piece as each instrument follows its own independent evolutionary trajectory while trading "genetic" material with the other instruments creating 8-voice counterpoint for the 15-minute duration. There are various points of intersection and commonality in the arc of the piece manifesting in brief unison passages. For these premieres, I process the ensemble with various plug-ins operating inside of Ableton Live but Evolute may be performed without this element. Soundcheck is a major tribulation as my Live patch does not work - all of the routing seems correct but the processed sound is not coming out of the interface. I try the patch from Dispersion Of Seeds which I know to be functional but it also doesn't work. About 20 minutes is wasted before I just re-start the computer and this solves the problems. The hall is quite new and with clear bright acoustics and Evolute works quite well given it's difficulty though it's still not as it should be, especially in the complex polyrhythmic hocketing of the finale. As part of the program, I also perform Paracentric solo on the Godin and Relache also performs compositions by Fred Frith, John King, and Sophia Serghi.

March 23 "Evolute" - Relache - Trinity Center For Urban Life - Philadelphia
I have a welcome free morning to check out the Rodin Museum and walk past the old State Penitentiary on my way to a few of Philadelphia's fantastic used bookstores (of which NYC used to have many but no more) and eventually end up at the Trinity for soundcheck. This church has surprisingly good acoustics and my equipment works perfectly and we're all soon at a nearby Thai restaurant for a pre-show bite. The concert goes exceedingly well and many of the parts to Evolute come together perfectly. As th ensemble grows more comfortable with the intricacies of the piece, the sound should gel even more.

March 31 "Binibon" - Roulette - NYC
As part of the promotion for this show and also to present my Monk CD, I appear on John Schaefer's "Soundcheck" on the 28th (the program is archived here: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2007/03/28#segment76137 ). John is always quite welcoming and conversation is easy. We discuss various of my projects and some of the thought behind them and I play a brief version of Epistrophy on the Dell Arte, perhaps the most radical arrangement on Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk! (http://www.cleanfeed-records.com/disco.asp?intID=193). I plan an early soundcheck and runthrough the afternoon of the performance which is fortunate because soundcheck is an absolute nightmare and takes nearly five hours! The engineer is either inexperienced or unfamiliar with the equipment because he has great difficulty setting up this VERY basic staging and we're plagued with feedback. Still, we get through it and the performance itself goes very smoothly with all of the actors giving their all to excellent reesponse. It's the same crew as the 2005 performance at Howl Festival (text by Jack Womack who also performs as The Writer; Mike Lubik as Abbott and Actor/Waiter, Latarsha Rose as The Aesthete, Suzie the Waitress, and Contessa 185, Deian McBryde as Fabuluscious, Junkie Artist, Jazzman.)

April

April 13 Tonic closing
Organized by John Zorn, this is the final concert at this Lower East Side venue which opened in 1998. Many improvisers were in attendance and performing in various combinations, the vibe very reminiscent of the Moers Festival projects of 1985. Among those on board were Anthony Coleman, Sylvie Courvoiser, Marty Ehrlich, Gerry Hemingway, Chris Speed, Annie Gosfield, Roger Kleier, Marc Ribot, Vijay Iyer, a tap dancer, and quite a few more, some of whom I didn't know.
I brought the 8string and opened the set in a jagged rocking trio with Jonathan Kane, original drummer in 1983 of both Carbon and Swans, and guitarist Eyal Maoz. Later, Ribot and Kleier and I did a noisy trio. There was a wonderful free-jazz offering from Anthony, Marty, and Gerry. The final number was a large group piece with just about everybody on stage.
It's certainly sad to see any venue gone, especially one that allowed many of us to present diverse projects. However, there's a general feeling in the international new music community that after an initial 3 or 4 years of centeredness in the scene, Tonic let down it's original set of artists and greatest supporters with strange booking policies and laissez-faire management. The vibe changed greatly and it ceased to be a fun place to play (or for audiences to go to.) One could understand if they were packing the house with the new policiies but this was not at all the case. This is not an unfamiliar tale in the cycle of clubs. A vital scene is dependent on a place to meet other artists and exchange sounds, ideas, and tales over beverages and the NYC new-music zone where improvisation, composition, rock, jazz, and electronics meet is sorely lacking such a venue. Stone is great for what it is but it is most resolutely not a social place, likewise Roulette. Issue Project Room had that potential when it was in the East Village but became more remote when it moved to Gowanus in Brooklyn. What's left? Not sure if there's anything that fits the bill but again, looking to previous cycles, some enterprising person with capital will realize that there's money to be made by presenting new music in a welcoming environment and both artists and audience will be there.

April 17 Beijing
A return to Beijing for a residency at the D22 club, founded by Michael Pettis ( http://www.D22beijing.com). Huge nor'easter has paralyzed travel on Sunday but by the time of my early-morning departure via Chicago, the skies are flowing, if not completely smoothly. As we're about to take off, the pilot gives a surprisingly long speech about how we're now in the eye of the storm but that we will essentially be flying into a hurricane and to prepare for horrific turbulence and bumps. Everyone looks around in fear as we make our run but none of the horror materializes and the flight to Chicago is quite pleasant and we even arrive early, a great rarity. I settle in at the lounge for the 3 hour layover and we finally board the 747 only to be told as we're about to take off that we have a mechanical problem and we'll have to disembark and wait for the repairs. Another 2 hours in the lounge and finally we go. It's a calm flight and I sleep a good portion of the way. Jeffrey (Shou Wang from the band White) and Justin Padro, the sound engineer from D22 (and a fine percussionist who has recently re-located from NYC to Beijing) meet me at the airport and bring me to the hotel. That night after a delicate but highly flavorful Yunan meal we head over to Dos Kolegas to meet with Yan Jun and other local musicians. Wednesday is free for walking in the smog and pollen-filled air and more dining.

April 19 SyndaKit - Beijing New Music Ensemble
The first concert is a collaboration with this wide-ranging contemporary music group co-founded by Eli Marshall, an American composer, pianist, and expat. He's assembled a great and diverse group of players including gu-zheng virtuoso Wu Fei, flutist Bruce Gremo who I know from NYC but never played with, pianist Michelle Yip, tubist Mickey Wrobleski, saxophonist Nathaneal Gao, bassist Da Hwe, and percussionist Justin. We rehearse in the early evening, break for a fiery Hunan meal and do two versions of the piece in each set. I feel that the strongest performances are the first and the final and considering that the musicians have only been briefly working with this composition and its approaches, they play it with fervor and good global listening. A noisy and talkative party in the balcony of the club inspires us to do a very aggressive finale.

April 20 Tectonics solo - Improvised trios
I begin this evening with Tectonics and bring out a number of new drum grooves that I've been working on. Lots of saturated textures from the 8string and the new beats work well. After a short break, Bruce and Mickey return for a trio of microsounds and microrhythms. Micky has an extraordinary sound-range from his tuba and Bruce, in addition to his virtuosic shakuhachi and ceramic ocarinas, has brought his Cilia, an invented "virtual shakuhachi" controller that interfaces with his Max/MSP patches. Next up is a power trio with Jeffrey and Justin - heavy beats and lots of overtone guitars and non-pitched noise. We finish the evening with Bruce and Micky joining for a more restrained but no-less intense quintet. There was a brief rainstorm during the final set and the combination of water and a strong wind has made the air clean and sweet (but nor for long.)

April 21 Tectonics, Wu Na, Olssu Beida, duos, group
Hit the second-hand market during the day and found some old Tibetan prints on linen - authentic. The market is filled with vendors all selling the same fake "antiquities" cranked out in some factory - it's hard to imagine that any of them are making money. .Later, we all meet for a blazingly hot and delicious Sichuan meal before heading to the club.
Again begin the evening with Tectonics - shorter denser set, more refinement of the material in preparation to record a new CD to be titled Abstraction Distraction. This event is a de facto record-release party for my new Tectonics CD "Solo Beijing" recorded "live" at my Yugong Yishan performance here in February 2006. It's on Yan Jun's label KwanYin. After Tectonics, a duo with gu-jin dynamo Wu Na. In her hands, this ancient zither is capable of a huge range of sounds: delicate arpeggios, jagged glisses and scrapes, dense clouds, knocks and booms and we dance around various strategies, always in sync. The Korean samul-nori (percussion group) Olssu Beida is up next with a short piece of theirs - exciting and grooving - after which I join them. It takes us a few minutes to find the pocket - my 12/8 is quite different from theirs - but we finally lock in to a straight-8th pattern and play a rocking 15-minutes with a number of textural and rhythmic shifts. Jeffrey and I then perform duo - our first time in this format and it works very well with the overtone-laden sounds blending and provoking each other. For the finale, Yan Jun joins us on electronics as well as Mickey on tuba and Eli Marshall on an old pump-harmonium residing in the club. The resultant piece is cloudy, bittersweet, and atmospheric, sometimes reminiscent of Japanese gagaku. A fine way to end the series.
A late hang at the club, 2 hours of sleep, and its off to the airport for my flights to San Francisco and on to NYC. The pilot of the first flight makes a casual announcement before take-off that there will be a bit of turbulence but as a result of a powerful tailwind, what ensues is five hours of wretched shaking and lurching, everything that the NYC-Chicago flight promised but didn't deliver! Sleep impossible and even reading difficult - things improve about halfway across the Pacific and I finally rest. A fine layover in San Francisco meeting with David Fulton [ http://www.fultro.net/ ] then it's back to NYC.

April 26 Trio with Dorit Chrysler & Lary 7 - Austrian Cultural Forum - NYC
This event is one part of the Moving Patterns Festival at the ultra-modern Austrian ACF on 52nd St. The auditorium is a cube with reflective walls and a balcony making for a very difficult sound onstage - harsh treble and booming bass! It's better when filled with people but we're told that the sound is quite good in the house. I've known Dorit for many years and she sang on one track on the first Tectonics CD yet this is our first onstage improvisation. More about her work at http://www.doritchrysler.com. Likewise, I've known Lary since Buffalo days - 30 years! He's a musician, producer, engineer, photographer and visual artist. Here he projects images and films during our set. Dorit begins solo with a number of her songs and arrangements using her clear soprano voice, Theremin, and laptop. I then do a Tectonics solo using the Koll 8string and the laptop after which Dorit and I do a 20 minute set beginning with a reading of "White Satin" and foraying into extreme textures and electronic grooves. We're quite happy with it and it bodes well for future work together. Opening is Austrian electronic musician I-Wolf (from the Sofa Surfers.)

April 27 Duo with Bobby Previte - Lower Manhattan Cultural Council "Swing Space"
Bobby has a weeklong residency at this "empty" space in the Wall Street area administered by the LMCC. He duets with different guests each night including Skerik, video artist Benton Bainbridge, and Zeena Parkins. The space is very raw - is it under construction or destruction? Hard to tell. We have only a small PA for amplification but the sound is surprisingly full. Again, I bring the 8string Koll and the laptop - Bobby has his drums and electronics. Our set is the continuation of our now 33-year long conversation - many strange terrains and ecstatic explosions.

May

May 4 "Screenplay" - Cite de la Musique - Paris
Our plane from JFK is blocked in at the gate for nearly one hour by a just-arrived jet awaiting its' gate so after arriving in Frankfurt I have to run to make my connection to Paris (as much as one can run while trying to go through long passport and security lines.) A few hours of rest then head over the Amphitheatre in Cite de la Musique for setup and soundcheck. I've brought the computer, Godin and Bb clarinet and my trio for this concert will include two wonderfully creative virtuosi: Helene Breschand on harp and electronics and Luca Bonvini playing trombone, slide trumpet, gu-jin, and ney (Luca was a member of the ensemble that performed EmPyre at the Venice Bienalle last year.) As before, we play to the electronic score that I created to synchronize with Christian Marclay's video and utilize a graphic score designed to give guidance to the players' improvisations (but never imposing strict limitations.) We do the final soundcheck and so we begin the evening. Many sonic surprises and excellent interaction and the 29 minutes seems to pass in seconds. Next up are the trio of Steve Beresford on electronics, Jon Butcher on saxophones, and Paul Lovens on drums with a beautiful mixture of unusual timbres, sensitivity and brutality. Finally, the DJ Erik M with singer and cellist take a slightly more traditional approach to film-scoring but with a good range of sounds and gestures. A civilized start-time for my trip to Frankfurt and in the Gare du Nord I run into guitarist and old friend Jean-Francois Pauvros with his partner and their 18-month old child. We're very happy to have this chance meeting.

Klangbiennale - Hessischer Rundfunk Sendesaal - Frankfurt
This first Klangbiennale at the HR is the brainchild of visionary producer and curator Bernd Leukert and in addition to the works mentioned here, also includes pieces by James Tenney, Elliott Carter, Robyn Schulkowsky, Alvin Lucier, Jens Joneleit, Luigi Nono, Daniel Biro, Matthias Kaul and others, as well as sound installations from students at a nearby university. I arrived from Paris in the evening of the 6th and we began rehearsals for "On Corlear's Hook" the next morning. I received the commission for this piece around the time that J & I learned of our pregnancy with the twins. Shortly thereafter we moved to a larger flat on the East River in the area known as Corlear's Hook with a dramatic view of the Brooklyn waterfront and the river itself. I knew immediately that our new locale would provide me with the title. The name "Corlear's Hook" was derived from the shape of the nose of one of Washington's generals at the time of the American Revolutionary War (an illegal armed insurgency by terrorists against the legitimate interests of an established nation - at least, this is how the British viewed it. Sounds familiar.) "Hooker", a euphemism for prostitute, was the popular term for the many professional women who plied their trade in the Hook. In the early 1950's, John Cage and Morton Feldman shared a house very near us on Grand St, in a building now gone. The river became a focal point of our lives both visually and sonically: docks, factories, river traffic, helicopters, birds, jets. After the babies were born, I would take them on a walk on the river nearly every morning where we looked and listened. The composition was not intended to be autobiographical or documentary in any way but simply a distillation of my internal processes during this period and manifested in a spectrum shift into a musical composition. In a work that is not explicitly programmatic, one may still imbue it with the essence of the feelings, observations, and transformations that are occurring in one's life.
At the first rehearsal, we dealt with the score output from Sibelius which had some transcription errors with notes appearing ambiguously, neither on a line or a space. These were corrected and we began to play the piece down to become familiar with its elements. The orchestra, under the baton of Sian Edwards, sounded excellent right from the start. In each daily rehearsal, various elements would be tweaked and in some small cases, changed entirely. A recording of the piece was made on the morning of the 11th in one complete pass. Still a few things to adjust, but overall, I was very satisfied. The music remained transparent and the psycho-acoustic effects from difference-tones and timbral stacks revealed themselves perfectly.

May 11 "Howlin' At The Wolfgang" - Baermann Trio
HATW was commissioned by the HR for the Mozart Year for this trio of basset horn (similar to an alto clarinet), bass clarinet, and piano. I've always had mixed feelings about Mozart - even though I admired the skill of the construction and enjoyed playing the Clarinet Concerto as a student and some of the piano music when I was six years old, I mostly found his compositions to be too bubbly and clever but not deep - they never moved me the way that Bach or Beethoven did. That said, I very much like his opera "Don Giovanni", filled with dark brooding power. In HATW, I set out to channel a range of feelings and thoughts engendered by Mozart's music but filtered and then orchestrated through my own idiosyncrasies. The result is somewhat of a nightmarish comedy - perhaps the most explicitly humorous of my formal works. The Baermann trio are all gifted players both technically and in what really matters, their ability to channel the many layers of meaning encoded in a composition into sound. Their performance was manic and thrilling and sonically exactly as I wanted the piece to be. It's available on their just-released SACD "Between The Lines" on the Coviello Classics label [http://www.covielloclassics.de/]

May 11 "Momentum Anomaly" - Solo
Later the same evening, I premiere this 30-minute piece on the Godin electroacoustic guitar. At soundcheck, a strange rattle reveals itself from the innards of the guitar - very distressing. I open up the back and find some cables not completely anchored down. A technician finds a piece of insulation material which I stuff in - this seems to solve the problem. Soon into my set, I felt that the monitors were EQ'd too brightly and I'm missing sonorities that certainly are being produced by the guitar. This sometimes made it difficult to play but once in the groove, I didn't want to stop and tweak so just forged ahead. My troubles were not transmitted outward and at the end, the audience response was fantastic. Later that evening, the HR Sinfonie conducted by Sian Edwards performed Maria de Alvear's monumental work "Sexo" with Maria's spoken/sung/ranted text in Spanish, German, and English - a phenomental presentation!

May 13 "On Corlear's Hook" - RadioSinfonie Frankfurt
Preceding the concert was a live interview with a very attentive audience conducted by Michael Rebhahn from the HR with composer Daniel Biro translating - I explain many of the aspects of OCH and my compositional strategies. I also discuss my personal take on the relationship between art and politics and explain my anger about the US aggression and occupation in Iraq, the distressing Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and the general horror of the murder of scores of thousands of children by the machinations of international arms sales and their clients.
The orchestra first performed Franz Olbrisch's sonic spectacular "Grain" after which "On Corlear's Hook" was presented. Sian combines calmness and grace on stage with great power and knowledge of the music and her conduction of OCH was masterful. The orchestra sounded bright and focussed and the piece continuously accreted its sounds and energy building to the sustained energy of the finale. I used two pianos and separated them across the stage as well as four contrabasses also spread spatially. This allowed the strings, winds, and brass to function as resonators over the surging sea of sound. My only quibble was that the brass were perhaps a little too powerful at the end though this did supercharge the strings to very high levels of intensity!

May 14 "Nyms" - Cologne Trienialle
The Cologne Trienialle is a series of concerts lasting over three weeks in a wide variety of venues ranging from small clubs up to the Philharmonie. I was invited by Udo Moll to collaborate on this concert using the concept of alternating music and silence. His piece "Prozess" was a 30-minute sequence of silences and improvisations ranging from 15" to 2' which we timed by watching a large clock in front of the stage. I composed an algorithmic structure titled "Nyms" - essentially a palindromic timeline based on prime numbers with concepts of unisons (whether textural, melodic, rhythmic), porosity (a lateral transfer and transformation of ideas), and density (from low to high) defining the interactions for the various sections. Udo played cornet, melodica, and software synths from his laptop. Bassist Sebastian Gramss and trombonist Matthias Muche, both fantastic players, completed the group. The organizers of the Trienalle had the incredibly stupid idea of keeping the venue for this (and some of the other concerts) secret until the day of the event in hopes that this would add a frisson of mystery and excitement. This might work for an unnannounced after-hours Prince concert but certainly not for a new-music event. I received a number of emails asking me where the gig was and I didn't even have the info! The venue was the Gir Kellar, an ancient basement tavern in the AltStadt by the Rhein River, perhaps from the Middle Ages. Beautiful vaulted ceiling and quite good acoustics enhanced by a very clean sound-system. There was a decent-sized audience seeming to be mostly Cologne new-music insiders and friends of Udo and company plus a bit of "general public" but not full by any means. I've always had a good audience in Cologne so this was a disappointment. The music went very well though: "Prozess" was tense in a positive way because of the timings and keen interplay. The long silences expanded and contracted in percption, allowing listeners to absorb what had just gone down or to just listen to the ambience. In "Nyms," I gave the musicians more time to delve into the playing in a few sections (up to 7 minutes) and this was rewarded with some wonderfully intense interactions .

Solo Concerts:

May 15 Nato - Leipzig
Tranquil train ride from Cologne: a compartment all to myself for 6 hours in an older IC train with plush comfortable reclining seats. The newer trains all have molded pleather seats only comfortable to someone whose spine has been fused in a stiff upright position so this is a reminder of the glory days of touring by train. The last part of the journey is through a part of the country that was once the DDR and I'm still amazed at the vast amounts of beautifully undeveloped forest land - there are wild birds galore: hawks, cranes, jackdaws (kavka!), songbirds. We arrive punctually at the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, one of the largest in Europe. The Nato is a 150-seat theatre presenting music, film, and readings with restaurant and bar that has existed since the DDR days and whose name is an ironic commentary on the reigning political party of that time, the National Front: the only party that one could vote for and the face of the East German Communist party (not to be confused with England's racist right-wing organization.)
Excellent sound on stage and I perform Momentum Anomaly in the DBbDEbBbD tuning on guitar alone then The Heterotic String in DADGAD with computer processing. After a medley of Monk's Bemsha Swing and Epistrophy, I finish with Paracentric. I'm called back for an encore and perform the Manhattan-Delta blues in Vastopol tuning.

May 16 Cafe Teufelhart - Dachau
I was quite surprised when I found out from my agent about the booking in Dachau as this is one of those place-names that has become synonymous with human atrocity. As the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, this was especially resonant. To amplify those feelings, I imagined the name of the venue to be some ironic comment on the innateness of evil in humans. On tour with V-Effect in 1983, we passed by the concentration camp on our way to Regensburg. It was late in the afternoon on a cold rainy day and the grayness of the light blended with the grayness of the camp buildings to make an iconic image of bleakness. Axel from the presenting organization picked me up in Munich and we drove to Dachau where we sat outside and enjoyed pastry and a good espresso. He filled me in on some of the history of the village: before Hitler, it had long been known as an artistic community, filled with painters and musicians. It is much restored to that way now with galleries and restaurants. It is one of my pet peeves about contemporary Jewry that they act as if they own all to themselves all of the suffering of WW2, all of the extermination, all of the death, and that it gives them license to do any brutality to the Palestinians who just happened to be living (some for thousands of years) in "their" Promised Land (for those who justify this with "God's Covenant with Abraham," it must be pointed out that the Covenant was for Abraham and all o fhis descendents which most certainly includes the Muslim world as they regard Abraham as their founding patriarch. Returning to Dachau, we can't forget that Hitler's first victims there were the mentally ill, Communists and Socialists, homosexuals. What defines a Holocaust? Is it sheer numbers? A "capital H"? Why are there not memorials for the tens of millions of Chinese executed or dead of starvation during the Cultural Revolution? Stalin's millions? The Khmer Rouge? The Hutus and Tutsis? How many hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens of Iraq killed as a result of this American attack and occupation will it take for it to be recognized as an atrocity? As my friends and I often say to each other once the discussion heats up, "let's not get started."
The Cafe Teufelheart is run by Mrs. Teufelheart - kindly and a lover of art and music. The club has a great kitchen and the performance space seems small but can pack in a good number of people between it's floorspace with tables and the balcony. The sound is quite good once Jan the house soundman fixes a bad speaker cable. I perform two sets and two encores to wonderful and sustained response beginning with the Quadrature/Velocity of Hue pieces and The Heterotic String before the break and Momentum Anomaly, Bemsha Swing, and Epistrophy after. Encores of improvised pieces then apfelkuche and cognac.

May 17 Teatro Fondamenta Nuove - Venezia
It's the beginning of a long weekend so the train out of Munich is packed on this rainy morning. The ride over the Brennero Pass and through the Alps is one of my favorites in Europe but low clouds hide most of the craggy peaks. Finally, near Trento the skies clear and the jagged pink Dolomiti reveal themselves. On arriving in Venezia, presenter and good friend Massimo picks me up and we push through the hordes of tourists to make our way to the Teatro. Quick soundcheck and a fantastic dinner then one long set: Quadrature/Velocity of Hue, The Heterotic String, a medley of Bemsha Swing/Round Midnight/Epistrophy, a long Momentum Anomaly with many new territories, then the Manhattan Delta encore. The final treat: a walk through the now-deserted streets of nighttime Venice to a canal-side bar.

May 18 Cerkno Jazz Festival - Cerkno, Slovenia
Too early, trains to Monfalcone then Gorizia on the Slovenian border where I'm met and brought by car to Cerkno, up in the verdant hills for the final concert of this tour. This festival is in its 12th year with an international roster of artists presented in a tent - good equipment and acoustics so soundcheck is a breeze. Great reunions with the Ljubljana crew and various other musical friends (though I will miss meeting Cul de Sac who will arrive on my departure day.) Excellent listening from the crowd as I pretty much repeat the Venice set with an improvised encore. Early drive to the Ljubljana airport the next morning where the security crew seems to have never seen music equipment. I'm called into the cargo area (undergoing personal search and X-ray three times) to take apart my baggage under their scrutiny. Finally, all is approved and I board the sleek little Canadair jet for Munich and the Airbus for NYC.
Photos by photographer Joze Sveticic can be found here

May 24 Saadet Türkoz/E# duo - The Stone - NYC
It's been a few years since Saadet and I worked together but she's on the East Coast from Zurich for a few days and a few gigs. We meet first at my studio to do some recording. To maximize flexibility in recording and mixing, I want to have as much isolation as possible so we use headphones (something I don't normally enjoy). We record about 70 minutes of material. Her voice is magnificent as always. I use the Korg MS20 into a PCM42 delay for some of the playing, the Glissentar for some, and bass clarinet for the rest. The Glissentar is a fretless nylon-string guitar with 11 strings: 5 double courses and a single bass string. It's modeled after an oud and is capable of a wide variety of sounds. For the concert I bring the Glissentar and Boomerang delay plus the bass clarinet. We have a wide-ranging set - very concentrated and intense. We both feel that it's some of our best playing together.

May 31 - Lance Carter Memorial - Jazz Foundation Benefit - Knitting Factory - NYC
Lance Carter, drummer extraordinaire, died on Nov. 1, 2006 from the extremely rare bone marrow cancer called Primary Amyloidosis [ www.amyloidosis.org ]. The Jazz Foundation of America [ www.jazz foundation.org ] gave Lance and his wife Lisa much assistance and support during his illness and Lisa wanted to have this event to celebrate Lance's life and music and to give something back to the Foundation. On board to perform were most of the musicians who were Lance's friends and colleagues, a stellar cast including Robert Musso and Friends, the Sons of Sharrock (with Pheeroan AkLaff), Harriet Tubman (with Melvin Gibbs, Brandon Ross, and JT Lewis), Charles Burnham, Cassandra Wilson, Percy Jones and Tunnels, MeShell Ndegeocello, Marc Ribot, Eric Mingus, and Terraplane. It felt like a family reunion in this space that had abandoned the musical community that built it - somehow Lisa and Wendy Oxenhorn of the JFA were able to get the club to accomodate this evening. The vibe was an incredible outpouring of music and love - the only thing lacking was Lance's presence (though we all agreed that somehow he was hearing it all go down!) Selections from the evening will be available at some nearby future time on MussoMusic.com.

June

June 2 "Shuffle" - Christian Marclay - Roulette - NYC
To create Shuffle, a boxed set of cards, Christian had extensively photographed the appearance of musical notation in the world: on shop awnings, chocolate tins, T-shirts, underwear, and other places. The deck provides a visual experience, but is also intended to be used as a musical score to catalyze improvisations. To celebrate the release of Shuffle, Christian invited Anthony Coleman, Okkyung Lee, Peter Evans, Zeena Parkins, Jim Staley, John Zorn, and myself to interpret the cards in various combinations. Sometimes the content of the cards was closely followed - at other times, it provided only loose suggestion. Lots of good listening though the quality of the music varied greatly (at least to these ears.) Some of the segments were spellbinding or droll - others seemed interminable. In other words, a typical night of improvisation! The sold-out audience was extremely enthusiastic, always nice to experience. More info on Shuffle here

June 10 Limbic Trio - Jimmy's - NYC
A return to this fun little crypt in the East Village. It's been a long time since this trio performed but we jumped right into it for a one hour set of three pieces before a sparse but enthusiastic audience. I started and finished on tenor with soprano sax in the middle. Kevin Ray on bass and Don McKenzie on drums listening and playing with both sensitivity and power.

June 14 Duo w/ Audrey Chen - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
Audrey is a composer who performs on cello, voice, and electronics and who has been doing a series of concerts with different collaborators at the Issue Project Room over the last few months. Our concert is part of "Points in a Circle 2007" where the performers address the possibilities of the Project Room's sixteen-channel hemispheric speaker system designed and constructed by Stephan Moore. I've set up a patch in Ableton to route the sound of my Godin through various stereo processors each connected to a pair of the speakers. In this way, I can send sounds to specific pairs or create a cloud of variegated sounds emanating across the entire space. Audrey is routed through my system as well so that her sound may also be spatialized (though she uses none of my processors.) Smooth soundcheck (often this is an ominous sign!) but on this night everything functions smoothly and we're each able to clearly hear ourselves and each other making for an enjoyable and concentrated 45-minute set filled with saturated timbres and high energy playing to a great audience. More about Audrey's work at http://www.AudreyChen.com

June 23 Laura Andel Orchestra - Bronx River Art Center - Bronx, NY
I'd been a fan of Argentinian Laura Andel's experimental tango music since first hearing it at Art Omi in the summer of 2002 so it was a pleasure to finally play in her orchestra. (You can read more about her work here - I produced the recording of her full-length piece Somnambulist in 2002 and mastered In:Tension in 2004.) This evening's concert featured two works mixing David Simon's gamelan instruments with contemporary jazz and tango sounds: "Doble Mano" (which premiered in May at The Kitchen) and the world premiere of "Luminal", commissioned by the BRAC. Laura has assembled a group of top-notch players that have worked with her on various projects, all technically astute and improvisationally daring. In addition to the regular members of her ensemble including Taylor Ho Bynum, Stephanie Griffith, Ursel Schlicht, Danny Tunick, Carl Maguire, and Ken Filiano; bandoneon virtuoso Daniel Binelli and I were to be featured soloists. (After soundcheck, there was a wonderful spontaneous duo session between Binelli and Simons.) I brought the Godin LGX3 electric guitar for its piezo pickup in addition to its Duncan stacked humbuckers, plus Bb and bass clarinets and for effects, only a Tube Screamer. Much part reading in "Doble Mano" as well as some improvised sections: a real workout of my under-utlized music-reading. Like any "muscle," reading chops require regular workouts - I find writing far easier than reading, especially on guitar. In "Luminal." there are solo sections, opportunities to create textures, and in one section, a duet with Binelli. I've always loved the sound of bandoneon but never had played together with one - a real thrill, especially in the blazing hands of Binelli! Our duet was to grow out of his solo and I was awaiting Laura's cue when Binelli turned towards me, stamping his chair legs, and physically confronting me with the challenge of our improvisation. Adrenalin-charged, we engaged in a blustering, hyper-frenetic (yet melodically sensitive!) and wide-ranging exploration of melodies, harmonic-motion, textures, and pure sounds. This section transformed into a more lyrical section with the rest of the orchestra joining in. It was like jumping off of a high cliff and instantly growing wings. BRAC is not a large space but still held over 75 people. The response was thunderous to the evening's music.

June 24 TECK String Quartet - Vision Festival - Angel Orensanz Center - NYC
With Vision bringing Carlos Zingaro over, we're given the first chance for TECK to perform together since our January 2006 tour in Portugal where we recorded our just-released CD on Cleanfeed. Vision Festival has that great feeling we usually find in European events: reconnoitering with old friends and past musical acquaintances as well as meetings new ones. Iindeed, I was very pleased to hang out with fellow TECKers Zingaro, Ken Filiano and Tomas Ulrich plus Hamid Drake, Paolo Angeli, and Jin Hi Kim, as well as trade helloes with Roscoe Mitchell, Jason Hwang, Joe Morris, Lou Grassi, William Parker (one of the founders of this festival) and more. Our set was concise with each quartet improvisation introduced by a different soloist. Acute listening and continuous changing of dynamics and textures to create an always-flowing sonic landscape filled with gripping terrain. We all agreed that this was was our best set to date.

July

July 7 Shou Wang/E# Duo - Tune (Out)))side 2007 - Wave Farm - Acra, NY
Free103point9 is dedicated to Transmission Arts and is the sponsoring organization for this 10th anniversary event at their raw (but developing) site in the natural beauty of upstate NY, about 2.5 hours north of NYC. More about this event, the org and their history, activities, and future plans here: http://www.Free103point9.org All performances took place at three different locations on the grounds and all audio went direct into the radio mixing desks and was broadcast live on three different frequencies. Attendees (about 100) could wander and tune in (or out) using the provided portable FM receivers with earbuds. While playing, we monitored ourselves with the receivers as well. Jeff and I performed a 50 minute set with a solo for each of us at a site just bordering a pond complete with turtles, frogs, and various insects. Monitoring through the earbuds was difficult at first but once I became used to the sound, it improved. I had brought the 8-string solidbody, DynaComp, UltraFuzz and Boomerang pedals - Jeff had his SG, delays, and distortion. Our interplay continues to develop and grow and we were quite satisfied with the set. Joining us for the trip in the rented van were J and the twins. The kids loved running around on the grass, watching dragonflies on the pond, and trying various fun foods like chips and guacamole.

July 13 Stade vs Infinite Livez + E# - North Sea Jazz Festival - Rotterdam
My collaboration with the electronic duo Stade (Pierre Audetat-keyboards, Christophe Calpini-percussion) goes back several years and I always enjoy the sonic interplay and deep grooves. They now have Ghanaian/Swiss vocalist Joy Frempong in the band and this gig also brings in British rapper/vocalist Infinite Livez and myself as guests. My flight was booked very late in the process and so I'm routed through Lisbon adding unwanted hours to the journey. The packed flight from Newark starts out like a sauna but by the time we hit an hourlong stretch of mid-Atlantic turbulence it's a refrigerator. Sleep is scarce. A chance to relax with some breakfast during the layover and then sleep all of the way to Amsterdam. It's then more than one hour by car to Rotterdam but I have enough time to catch a few more Z's in the hotel before we all meet up to go over to the venue for the hit. A drawbridge over the river on the main road goes up as we're approaching and we're stuck for over 30 minutes in a huge line of traffic waiting for a few boats to pass, precious set-up time drifting away. We finally arrive at the festival site with just 20 minutes to set up before the concert.
The event takes place in a huge multi-purpose structure configured with a number of rooms ranging in capacity from a few hundred to many thousands of people, No soundcheck is possible, barely a linecheck and then we hit. Perhaps the franticity of the prep adds something positive to the mix because we're burning right from the start. Joy's voice is as much a synthesizer as anything else and she adds both sensuous and aggro textures and syllabic improvisations. Infinite Livez is a dynamic performer and presence on stage - besides rapping, he also adds many sounds as he and Joy both use a variety of pedals on their microphones. The entire set is a shifting sea of grooves and textures. It's all improvised but good global listening gives the feeling of a well-structured arc of songs. After our set, go backstage during Al Green's set in the next space over - even though his act is more Vegas then Memphis, it's still a thrill to see him perform his iconic "Let's Stay Together" from such a near vantage point. Because of its size, the festival is a bit short on logistical detail though the staff is all extremely friendly. The catering for the artists closes during our set and the thrown-together dinner brought to us after some heated discussion is quite lame (and quite unheated.). Still, we all enjoy a post-gig hang and return to the hotel late. One hour of sleep then back to Schipohl, Lisbon, and New York.

July 26 East Village Radio
A chance meeting a few weeks ago on the street with old friend Steve Cohen - he informs me that he's now general manager of EastVillageRadio.com and invites me to do a show presenting a variety from different realms of my work. The station is in a tiny storefront on First Avenue near 2nd street and the glass wall/door allows one to take in the full panorama of the now-gentrified but still fairly funky East Village. Because of our upcoming concert at Issue Project Room, I feature the new duo CD with Nels Cline "Duo Milano" as well as some things rarely heard including a recording of a Hessischer Rundfunk broadcast of the Darmstadt premiere of "Calling" in 2002 performed by RadioSinfonie Frankfurt. I also give a preview of the upcoming Terraplane CD "Forgery" which will be released in September by Intuition in Mainz. The show is archived and may be downloaded for podcast.

August

August 3 Nels Cline/E# - "Duo Milano" record release concert - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
To mark the release of our CD "Duo Milano", Nels and I perform in Issue Project Room's new temporary space in the OA complex, the old American Can Company factory, in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn. Martin Bisi's B.C. Studio is a longtime resident - I recorded the first few Carbon records there as well as a number of other projects. While lacking the delicious architectural eccentricity of the silo, the new Issue is acoustically far superior. The wooden floor and high ceiling of the oblong space contribute to a warm sound, tolerably wet though with some low-frequency muddiness.
Nels and I start out on two electro-acoustic Godin's for an action-packed 30 minutes, again playing as if we comprise one big guitar. Because of the sonic clarity, this was my favorite part of the concert. After, we switch to electric for 60 minutes of raging feedback, sonic blizzards, and thickly layered textures. I'm using Issue's Fender Acoustisonic amp and it just doesn't handle the low-end of my solidbody 8-string nor does it have enough headroom to give me clean volume when needed. I bring out the Black Box Quicksilver delay which I normally use only in studio. It's quite a powerful and sweet-sounding device that can well emulate an old tape Echoplex but with the possibility of edgy psychedelic mutations. I felt the playing to be wonderfully empathetic in this second set - I was only sorry the amp couldn't handle it!
More about our CD at: http://www.longsongrecords.com

August 11 E# Tectonics solo - "WarmUp" - PS1 - Long Island City
Intrepid organizer, composer, performer and former student of mine, Zach Layton curated the live performance aspect of WarmUp this season at the PS1 Contemporary Art Center and invited me to present a project. Given the limitations of the staging, I decided to present my new solo Tectonics program "Abstraction Distraction" using the Koll 8string and a few pedals: Tube Screamer, UltraFuzz, the Boomerang, and the Quicksilver delay (a very flexible and powerful emulation of an old Echoplex.) In the interest of both efficient set-up and the desire for a simplified signal path (which may also have helped to create a simplified conceptual path) I brought no computer thereby foregoing the use of pre-recorded grooves and plug-in processors - old school!.
The outdoor courtyard was filled with a sculptural installation but sonically, it remained, as always, a very reflective and simultaneously diffuse space, even with a massively powerful PA designed to pump dance music out to the partying masses who make up the major constituency of WarmUp. I found myself gravitating towards layered drones and using an expression pedal patched into the Quicksilver to change delay times instigating small pitch shifts which created massive difference-tone vibrations. Most of the audience lounged on hammocks lending a certain distancing to my own perception of the event. I felt myself to be as much a sound-installation as a performer and this very much influenced my compositional strategies for the set. Hot and sunny outside, the twins enjoyed the crowds, the gravel, and the music.

August 26 The '31 Band performs "The Spectropia Suite" - Saalfelden Jazz Festival - Austria
Toni Dove's sci-fi feature film "Spectropia" takes place in England in 2099 and New York in 1931 (more info about it here: http://www.tonidove.com/spinterface.html ). Most of my score for it was recorded during August and September 2006 and finally completed in June 2007 adding the brilliant vocal talents of Blondie singer Deborah Harry. For the scenes in the future, I created fractured drum grooves and layered massively distorted guitars and samples made with a circuit-bent Speak n'Spell. For the past, I wrote music paying homage to Duke Ellington's "jungle band" and imagining the group to have been orchestrated by Edgar Varese. It was quite liberating and exciting for me to write and record this music as things relating to swing and traditional jazz are a bit outside of my normal operating territory. To present the music "live", I needed to re-orchestrate and reorder the various elements of the score to create the "Spectropia Suite." The band includes Ellington-alumnus Arthur Baron (a friend and collaborator since 1972!) on trombone as well as Curtis Fowlkes and Steve Swell on trombones and Duane Eubanks on trumpet making for a dream brass section. Alto saxist Rudresh Mahanthappa, pianist Anthony Coleman, bassist Dave Hofstra and drummer Don McKenzie, all fantastically creative virtuosi complete the group. I play Bb clarinet and tenor sax in the "New York" music and guitar and laptop in the "future" sections. I've brought a Telecaster with Bigsby tremelo that I've cobbled together from various parts and it's the perfect instrument for this group in vibe and sound. Unfortunately we can't bring Debbie Harry for one song so the vocal duties in This Time That Place are left to this composer. There are 17 pieces of varying complexity and never enough rehearsal time so I'm moderately nervous as we start the set. Fortunately, it doesn't take long for the sound to coalesce and the concert begins to feel thrilling with the music pulling us through the sections with great urgency.
This festival had been one of my favorites to perform at but it nearly folded a few years ago because of various business problems. One of the results of the new management was a change of venue from an outdoor tent holding 3500 people to the town's Congresshalle holding 1500. The equipment and sound crew were excellent and the stage monitoring allowed us an incredible dynamic range. An advantage of the indoor hall is that audience attention was more focussed allowing quieter and more subtle music to be made. Some of the Spectropia score is very delicate and things that might have been lost in performance were quite audible (including the mistakes!) One small problem for me is that switching between conducting, the guitar, and the various reeds never allows me to warm up into any one instrument until nearly the end of the set. Fantastic audience response gives me hope that we'll be able present this again.

September

September 9 Manuel Göttsching 55th Birthday - Watergate - Berlin
Founder of the legendary 60's/70's Krautrock band AshRa Tempel and composer of the visionary "E2E4", Manuel continues to create diverse and interesting music. I became friends with him and his wife, documentary filmmaker Ilona Ziok, a few years ago, and I was pleased to be invited to perform at his 55th birthday at the hi-tech Berlin disco Watergate. Rough flight from JFK but a chance to sleep a few hours in the Berln hotel then off to Manuel's birthday dinner (a fine mix of northern Italian and Korean cuisine!) at the club's dramatic terrace on the Oberbaumbrücke. Manuel is a fan of White so Jeff (Shou Wang) is also performing - he begins the evening with a wonderfully noisy loopfest with his old SG after which I perform "Momentum Anomaly" on the Godin with Powerbook. Manuel then performs a selection of pieces using his white Strat and various synths and a laptop. Finally, the three of us perform a rousing and psychedelic guitar trio version of "E2E4." Many guests and toasts backstage, a few hours sleep, then flights from Tegel and Frankfurt back to JFK.

September 13 E# Solo Tectonics - "Abstraction Distraction" - White Box Gallery - NYC
As part of the New Composers Series at White Box curated by Michael Schumacher and Charlie Morrow, I perform this open-ended solo composition using the Godin and Powerbook, today using DBbDEbAD tuning. A 5.1 system is set up in the gallery and I'm hoping to make full use of it, routing a stereo signal (the Godin and some processors) to the front and the same signal processed with other strategies to the rear with a full mix going to the subwoofer through a crossover. Alas, my software-hardware gives me grief on this day and my plans are not to be. The MOTU Ultralite interface sounds great and is packed with features but somehow it doesn't live up to its promise. The interface is easy to use but routings addressed inside of my Ableton software do not manifest properly through the interface. The real problem is unpredictability - I've done concerts where everything worked properly, other times, not. Today, my very simple set-up just does not work! Outputs appear where they shouldn't and desired sounds are nowhere to be found. With minutes to go before the showtime and people lined up outside, I quickly come up with a compromise solution and a compromise it is - the gain structure is all wrong but at least I'm able to get some of my processors working in both front and rear. Once I've taken the plunge, I'm able to forget about the technical issues and just delve into the music and that at least works. The rapt audience attention helps and 50 minutes seem to pass in a flash. I can't hear the rear speakers too well but the hints I do get tell me that things are at least minimally working. The response is strong and ultimately I can feel pleased with the evening. The next morning I do some online research and find a firmware update to the Ultralite. It works better though there are still bugs.

September 14 Terraplane - Mo Pitkin's - NYC
I wanted us to do one Terraplane show in NYC before leaving for tour and it seemed that Mo's would be a pleasant low-key place to do it. Certainly not a hotspot, not even a place that advertises its shows, I knew we would essentially have an intimate "live rehearsal" in front of friends and a few lucky outsiders. It's also our first time performing outside of the studio with Tracie Morris so a good opportunity to try out some things. We've rehearsed selections from the entire Terraplane series of CD's and some are flawless, some manifesting a few slight trainwrecks - nothing fatal, not even a derailment, but definitely some major bumps. By the 3rd tune, the band is back in gear, and by the time Tracie joins us for Nobody Know and the new Katrina Blues, we're in the pocket. Tracie will not join us on these upcoming European concerts but definitely will be with us at Milano's Teatro Manzoni in November.

Terraplane in Europe
To celebrate and promote our new Intuition CD "Forgery", Terraplane set out on a compact 12-concert European tour in a large van with our driver, Ulli.  It was filled with great playing, lots of laughs, and deep discussions.

September 18 Objekt 5 - Halle
Fine flights to Frankfurt and Leipzig, a bit of sleep, and it's off to our first soundcheck.  The Objekt 5 is a sprawling multi-leveled performance space, bar, and restaurant.  From the outside it looks deceptively small.  Good equipment and great stage sound except for an inordinate amount of line-hum from the lighting system.  I use a noisegate to get rid of most of it but this mars the feel and response of my guitar, the white Strat - the Fender Stringmaster console steel is unaffected because of its good shielding and massive sustain.  We play two long and enjoyable sets to a packed and enthusiastic house.  The next day at noon, we've assembled in front of the hotel to await our driver and an elderly man walking by is visibly agitated at our appearance - he berates us in German and I suggest he call the Polizei if he doesn't like blacks and Jews.

September 19 A-Trane - Berlin
I've played this well-appointed  jazz club off the Ku-Damm twice before, and the owner, Sedal, is extremely warm and welcoming.  Good equipment but again a large hum problem from the lights.  Still, we play two long and powerful sets to great response.  Many friends in the house including Reinhold Friedl, Laura Berman, Werner Fritsch, Nathan Fuhr.  During some inchoate flailing in the second set I manage to slice into my thumb and while changing strings at the hotel post-concert, I discover a fine spray of blood droplets adding a patina of funk to my guitar.

September 20 Enercity Cruise Cafe - Hanover
This club is an office during the daytime for an energy company but at night it's converted to a space for music, theater, and cabaret. Excellent equipment and no problems from the lights! Despite the large glass windows and hollow stage, the sound is superb and we play a single 2-hour concert set with Wang Dang Doodle for an encore.

September 21 Gutersloh
A long-running jazzclub that has over the years presented many of the great names in jazz with photos on the wall to prove it. Go out for a pre-gig espresso and have to teach the girl at the coffee bar how to make a ristretto.
The room is a small theatre, packed with over 200 people. Excellent equipment and acoustics and we play a long single concert set to great response and two encores. Fantastic post-concert dinner of extremely fresh whole trout.

September 22 Radio Bremen - Bremen
Do a long interview for later broadcast in the afternoon then we set up in the station's Sendesaal. The room's acoustics are a strange mix of diffuseness and dryness - difficult to get a good sound on the guitar and to hear each other. I also have great trouble with the guitar itself - acting up again, fretting out, going out of tune,  stiff and unresponsive. The large audience loves our set though and gives us a long standing ovation which feels great.

September 23 Bahnhof Langendreer - Bochum
Fine equipment but a boomy room in this converted train station now with multiple concert spaces, bars, and a fine restaurant. It's a beautiful warm Sunday and the promoter tells us that it's difficult to get people to a concert in weather like this. There is a decent house though and they love the gig and we play quite well.  My guitar seems fine tonight. Our concert is filmed by Russian filmmaker Pavel Borodin for a DVD release.

September 24 Ostkirche Wedding - Berlin
We arrive back in Berlin and find the hotel booked by the promoter unacceptable so after waiting around for him to arrive and then some discussion, return to the Hotel Armony in Kreuzberg that we stayed at before and liked very much. The proprietress is very happy to see us and welcomes us all warmly. Still, we've lost well over an hour of time needed to refresh after the drive. The concert tonight is in a church and I introduce our set as the necessity of bringing in the "devil's music" to this space. The acoustics prove to be very difficult for the band both in terms of monitoring and the feel of the instruments but things pull together and we play a powerhouse set.  My guitar is absolutely horrible this night and so after the concert, take it apart and work on the neck.  This instrument has been ultra-reliable for years and these latest developments are quite disturbing!

September 25 Wagon - Prague
A long drive through the still-wild East German countryside and passing through Dresden then massive traffic when we hit the outskirts of Prag. Our driver has a GPS system and was given wrong instructions by his boss (he's programmed the destination for "Pitkovicka" instead of "Pikovicka") so we end up in the horrible industrial suburb of Strasnice in search of our hotel.  "Strasnice" means "horrible" in Czech!  Some digging in with the road atlas reveals the proper location and we set off on the dense-packed roadways to Branik and our hotel. We've lost two much-needed hours. Quick change in our rooms then it's off to the club.  Traffic in the center is even worse and it takes us one hour to go 2km!  We make it to the club for scheduled soundcheck but the backline isn't built up yet so we drink coffee and I work on my guitar some more with Mingus supplying needed muscle to turn the recalcitrant truss rod.  There is a local support band performing after us, sort of "show-metal" with costumes - they have a huge drum set that they would like to leave on the stage which would allow us no space at all. We threaten to leave and the promoters work things out so we have the stage to ourselves.  Good single concert set to much applause.  The only technical hitch is a high-pitched whine in the amps from the subway below that reveals itself in quiet moments (of which there are few.) Great to spend time with old friend David Nemec at the show and at our dinner afterwards. Full moon blazing when we return to the hotel late.

September 26 Cafe Museum - Passau
I performed solo here in at this fine venue on the Donau in 2005 and the owner, Juergen, is wonderfully warm and welcoming. Amazingly good food, wine, cake, and coffee in this cafe after soundcheck and then an intense two sets to the standing-room only crowd and multiple encores.

September 27 Bluesiana - Velden
Into the Austrian hinterland near the borders with Italy and Slovenia to this surprisingly great roadhouse decorated with pictures of numerous blues legends and many of our friends from NYC who have all performed here in the past. When we pull up to the club we're shocked and surprised at the "KKK" displayed on the outside of the building for which we're quickly given an explanation by the world-wise proprietress, Gudrun. Her family name is Kofler and the place had been a bowling alley ("kegel"). In fact, our dressing room has two working lanes in it which we make much use of!  So it was the Kofler Kegel Kellar and now the Kofler Konzert Kellar - she points out the connecting small n's between the K's. 
We play two driving sets and enjoy the post-gig hang.

September 28 Reigen - Wien
On to Wien and this well-equipped club overlooking the bridge at the KennedyBrücke with a most-helpful and friendly sound-engineer, Andy.
Two long sets to an enthusiastic house.

September 29 Schranne - Dachau
The final gig is presented by the jazzclub who brought me here last year for my solo so happy to see everyone again. The Cafe Teufelhart is too small for Terraplane so it's arranged for us to perform in the upstairs room of this restaurant and pub. The portable stage is a little shaky and the monitors are either too loud or too quiet but the feeling in the sold-out house is fantastic and we play two manic sets and a long encore. The event is recorded by the Bavarian Radio for later re-broadcast. A fine way to complete the tour!  A late hang, a few hours sleep and we're all off to the airport.

October

October 9 Art Depot Festival - St. Petersburg
This is my first time performing in Russia since our August 1989 tour by the coop group Frame in Moscow, Kiev, Riga, Tartu, and Vilnius. I'm invited by Elena and Ilya Belyaeva whom I met in Gdansk last year to take part in the Art Depot festival which would include Elena, a strong vocalist influenced by various ethnic traditions as well as Anthony Coleman, kotoist Sakaki Kimie from Hiroshima, pianist Piotr Rachon from Poland, guitarist Luis Cobo Manglis from Spain, and Cyril on tablas. There's only a small window between the Terraplane tour and my Donaueschingen festival project so the timing just works out.
After a day hanging out with the twins, I make it through traffic to JFK with some time to spare. In many of my recent flights from JFK, the plane has sat in a long queue for takeoff - it's a problem endemic to US airports these days with capacity insufficient to meet the rise in air travel. I was concerned about this before we boarded as I had only 55 minutes for my connection in Munich and had suggested to the Lufthansa rep that I be re-booked through Frankfurt which had a larger window for a flight to St. Petersburg. She assured me that my connection would be no problem (as did a flight attendant when we were finally en route: "the plane will wait for you!") When we push off from the gate, there are 30 planes ahead of us and it's two hours before we take off. By the time we landed and disembarked, my flight was long gone with the next one for St. Petersburg not for another nine hours. The Lufthansa people were helpful and got me waitlisted on an earlier flight through Helsinki but as it approached boarding time, it became apparent that I would not get a seat on the final leg so time spent reading, sleeping, eating and then flying. After a two-and-a-half hour flight I finally arrived in St. Petersburg at 0030 in the morning and was met by people from the festival. We then picked up Kimie at the domestic airport, just arrived from Moscow, and headed into town and reach the hotel around 0230. In typical Russian hotel fashion, the "hot water" is only warm so my desire for a bath is thwarted but I'm happy to finally get into bed - horizontality feels great after all of the travel and waiting.
A relaxed morning and a long lunch with everyone and then two hours sitting in traffic to go the 3 kilometers from hotel to theater. The hall looked like a cream-filled wedding cake and had a capacity of 300 with wonderful acoustics. Their lighting system induced lots of noise into my computer so I decided to forego it completely and routed the Godin and my curved soprano sax with clip-on mic into the sparse but effective setup of volume pedal, Tube Screamer, and Boomerang . Low attendance (Dimitri, the lighting designer, said that this was to be expected in St. Petersburg) but a good concert anyway beginning with Piotr on solo piano, then NetLenka, my solo, then finally a group improv, which proved to be a bit tentative and light.
The next day was free to wander with Anthony Coleman and find a funky lunch at a Daghestan restaurant. The second night of the festival began with Luis' electric and acoustic guitar duo with Cyril on tabla, Kimie's koto piece, Anthony's piano solo, and then their group improvisation. A bit better attendance this second night and more digging in. Early call to get to the airport for our flight to Moscow. We beat the normally dense traffic and so had time to kill at the airport before boarding our TransAero Boeing 737 for a pleasant flight but bumpy landing with lots of crosswinds in a heavy rainstorm. There's a certain confidence that comes with flying in the new Boeing - no more Tupelov's or Antonov's for me! On the Frame tour none of the flights were too sanguine but we had one especially harrowing trip from Vilnius to Riga in a 40's-vintage twin-prop Antonov with the babushkas in the back all crossing themselves as we prepared to take off. As we rolled down the runway, a man pedalled furiously next to us waving a red handkerchief - apparently smoke was pouring out of one of the engines. We aborted takeoff, returned to the gate and sat in the broiling sun for two hours while two guys in coveralls banged around on the engine. Finally the captain emerged from the cockpit in his floor-length flight coat covered with military ribbons and medals and announced "kaput!" We got off the plane and repaired to the airport bar where vodka seemed to be the perfect beverage. Two hours later we boarded another Antonov (not the same one as before - that one was now festooned with red ribbons) and had an uneventful flight to Riga.

October 11 Moscow
Typical traffic-jam affords a chance to nap from the airport to the hotel then a quick change and off to the Art House for soundcheck and lunch after which Anthony and I explore the "monument graveyard" behind the hall - an amazing collection of discarded public statuary. The theater has good acoustics and red plush seats (Morton Feldman - are you watching?) The program tonight is in two halves with Piotr playing a long solo skirting dangerously into ECM territory then a strong trio of Elena, Kimie, and Cyril. After the break I perform my solo, beginning on soprano with a bellmute and building loops and difference-tone sequences then switching to guitar. The monitors have changed greatly since my soundcheck (they're now probably set for the vocals) - extremely bright and piercing with no body yet also much quieter - i gesture for more level to no avail and so just plow on. I don't enjoy the sound but the only thing to do is try and not get caught up in that deficiency and just dig in. Some new territories (always) and then I'm finished to good response. The others join me for a longish improv that has a good feeling but doesn't stray from obvious improvisation moves, despite my attempts to derail certain tendencies. A late dinner in the restaurant downstairs and gypsy cabs back to the hotel. I have 2 hours then it's off to Sheremetyvo at 4am on the 12th for my flights back to Frankfurt and then NYC.

Soundcheck photo by Gerlinde Hipfl
October 20 "Ripples From The Bang" - War Zones - Donaueschingen Festival - Germany
Last June, Austrian composer Bernhard Lang contacted me about taking part in the venerable Donaueschingen Festival in an evening whose theme would be War Zones. I've known Bernhard for nearly twenty years and though our paths cross infrequently, we've always enjoyed each other's company and music. It was decided that we would share an ensemble of the same personnel for "Ripples..." and Bernhard's piece "Paranoia" and that we would be performers in each others' ensembles. The group included poet/rapper/electronicists Latasha Diggs and Mixmaster Todd, turntablist Philip Jeck, clarinetist/saxophonist Hans Koch, drummer Fredy Studer, Bernhard on keyboard, and myself on 8string guitarbass and laptop. We had a 5.1 sound system at our disposal so we both recorded synchronized spatialized electronic backgrounds to be used. My piece, 24 minutes in duration, was titled "Ripples From The Bang" and used notions of causality, from the most cosmic to the most ordinary, as its inspiration. In nine sections, there were four focussing on the spoken/sung text and five instrumental, with two focussing on a polyrhythmic interlocked groove. Latasha's text was abstract yet emotionally affecting, never sloganeering nor didactic but loaded with phrases that steered the listener into thoughts and references completely connected to the events of these current days. I had only 2.5 days in NYC after Russia, barely enough time to hang with the fam and take care of necessary errands. Back to JFK for pleasant flights to Frankfurt then Stuttgart, then a two-hour drive to Baden-Baden where we rehearsed. The Sudwest Rundfunk lodged us in a luxurious 5* spa hotel - no complaints from anyone! The rehearsal room at the station was excellent as well: a spacious performance room with separate control room with ProTools and SSL console. We could rehearse in a leisurely but concentrated manner fueled by the well-stocked refreshment table and always-ready coffeepot. Recording versions of the pieces in progress offered a chance for critical and objective listening, very necessary to refine the music. "Ripples..." has a fixed structure that allows some interpretation and improvisation by the players at various points but overall, it's a tightly organized work with specific sound design. Bernhard's piece is longer and wide-ranging, with sections of jagged hip-hop and funk as well as open areas. We rehearsed Tuesday evening, all day Wednesday and Thursday and Friday morning and then all equipment was broken down and loaded into various trucks and vans for the 2.5 hour drive to Donaueschingen over narrow curving roads through the Schwartzwald (Black Forest) and over dramatic vistas. As beautiful as the scenery was, I was glad that I chose not to eat lunch before setting out. The wild road combined with the van's suspension and the hint of diesel exhaust made for a sickening combination for all. Once in Donaueschingen, we checked into our hotel, the aptly named Concorde - nice but certainly not a ***** palace - inf act, the hotel grounds were also the Donaueschingen airport, one landing strip for props and small business jets, no doubt ferrying the omniscient and omnipotent music critics to the festival. After a bite we headed to the 500-seat Sporthalle where the concert would take place. For such a room, the reverberation was not too bad and sound on stage was excellent. We spent the evening setting up and beginning to check the sound. Our dress rehearsal the next morning was well-organized and we were able to do very exact versions of both pieces for the SWR recording. Some chilltime at the hotel and then a return for the event, to be broadcast live. Energy for the performance quite a bit more manic then at the dress, more elaboration and intensity. I'm looking forward to hearing the recordings! We all enjoyed the reception backstage which continued until the early morning hours back at the hotel. At the festival, I finally meet Wulf Weinmann of Neos Records in person as well as composer Jens Joneleit who I met at the Klangbienalle in Frankfurt. Jens arranged for Neos to begin reissuing out-of-print recordings of mine and the first three are debuted at this festival. They are Orchestra Carbon:Larynx (from 1987), Orchestra Carbon:SyndaKit (from 1998) and E#:Tectonics:Errata (from 1998.) More info may be found at the Neos site: http://www.neos-music.com

October 21 Live interview - "Enjoy Jazz" Festival - Heidelberg
7:30 comes far too soon as I must meet the waiting driver and head to Heidelberg, about 2.5 hours away to do a live interview onstage at 11 in the morning as part of the Enjoy Jazz festival where I will be performing on Nov. 4. Frankfurt journalist Hans-Juergen Linke will be interviewing me, a good thing, as he wrote an extensive article for the Frankfurt Tages Anzeiger for my appearance there this past April and we had a most enjoyable time speaking then. Light snow falling, unusual for this date. The event is hosted by a local software firm and the conference room is right on the river, a dramatic view. There are about 100 people in attendance and Hans-Juergen and I have a flowing conversation touching on many topics: my compositional strategies, the question of diversity of style, political issues for an artist, my evolution. Good audience questions and then we retire to lunch and the drive back to Donaueschingen, returning just in time to catch the final concert, the SWR Orchestra. There is a very fine piece by Enno Poppe, melodic and microtonal, in strict contrast to the typical pieces comprising the rest of the program. After, there's a reception at the castle of the Count! Quite a cozy little domicile - I only saw a small part of it but quite impressive. Great to see old friends there including Alvin Curran.
Time for one hour of sleep and then a 3:30 taxi ridethrough the bad weather to the Stuttgart airport for my flights to Frankfurt and home. The SWR made the taxi arrangements including an agreed price of 150 eu in total to get me to the airport - the driver presents me with a "tax" surcharge of 28.50 eu extra which I refuse to pay. She speaks no English but indicates that she has my luggage locked in the back of the car. I have no choice but to fork it over. I expected this in Russia but not Germany! The plane needs to be de-iced before we fly and then we're off.

November

November Solo Tour: E# plays Monk & Sharp
The time in NYC after Donaueschingen flew by. I mastered the new solo recording for Clean Feed, "Octal:Book One", a collection of pieces for the Koll 8-string guitarbass, and nearly finish a new string quartet titled "Homage James Tenney" which will be recorded in December by Sirius String Quartet. I've also prepared some new Monk tunes to add to the active setlist: Raise Four, Played Twice, Rhythmning, and Hackensack. I don't want to just learn the head and improvise in the "jazz mode" but desire to create a "sound-design" for each piece that is somehow unique to the song and related to the intrinsic material as well as allusions and tangents from the titles.

November 2 Teatro Municipal - Guarda
I have a good seat with plenty of legroom on the old TAP Airbus 310 out of Newark nonstop to Porto but before we even take off, I find that the padding has long worn thin leaving little comfort. Oh well. Quiet flight good for resting until we hit some violent turbulence two hours from Porto that gives us all one hour of white-knuckling. After we pass through, time for a bit more sleep before landing. Pedro Costa of Clean Feed meets me and we drive the 2.5 hours up to Guarda, one of the highest points in Portugal. Going up the mountains, there are spectacular lunar landscapes that I didn't see on my last trip to Guarda in January 2004 because of bad weather. Halloween is being celebrated in the town this evening and there are many people wandering the streets in costume.
The Teatro is a new facility with multiple spaces. I'm in the Pequeno Auditorio holding about 200 and the acoustics are fine and the audience listening intensely makes for a most enjoyable playing experience. Beginning with Bemsha Swing, I then play a medley of Epistrophy, Raise Four and Round Midnight. Raise Four works quite well for its first presentation. I finish the set with Quadrature material and play Misterioso for an encore. A fine aguardiente velho at the afterparty and then return to the hotel.

November 3 Salăo Brazil - Coimbra
Relaxed afternoon drive down the mountains to Coimbra. I was last here in 2001, just 2 weeks after 9/11 and my memory of it is a sleepy town, the place where I first felt any relaxation after the horror of New York's own "Reichstag fire" with which Bush was handed carte blanche to embark on his idiotic war of false empire and massive profits. But let's not get started...Coimbra is the site of one of Europe's oldest universities and I enjoy a walk around the old town during my free afternoon. A quick soundcheck, another wonderful dinner and one set as this is part of a festival and Ze Eduardo Unit is playing after me. The event starts fairly late so I play compact versions of Bemsha Swing, Raise Four, Epistrophy, Round Midnight and then Quadrature.
It's one in the morning by the time I get to the hotel and only get one hour sleep before the driver arrives to take me to Porto airport.

November 4 Karlstor Bahnhof - Heidelberg
Calm flight to Frankfurt where Dennis from the ongoing Enjoy Jazz festival picks me up for the short drive to Heidelberg, site of another ancient university and beautifully situated on the river Neckar. The sleep dep catches up and I happily spend the afternoon in slumber, rising for a double-espresso and kuchen then a soundcheck at the club, a converted train station near the river. Good sound equipment and excellent acoustics. After a relaxed bite, I play a long concert set, nearly two hours, beginning with the Monk tunes in a medley and then continuing with Quadrature material. I'm very happy with the audience's attention and am called back for 2 encores: Misterioso and then Momentum Anomaly.
The director, Rainer, brings me to a bistro in nearby Mannheim to have a late dinner with the Medieval Trio who also performed this evening as part of the festival. We find we all have many friends and colleagues in common. Soon it's 2 in the morning and time to go. Photographer Toby Mueller (who was also the driver for Enjoy Jazz who drove me to and from Heidelberg for my talk) picks me up for the run to Frankfurt and we continue our conversations from the previous trip.
In Frankfurt, after check-in I go to confirm my other flights and the Lufthansa rep tells me there is no record of my upcoming flight to Wien and that a new ticket will be 900 euro! This is disturbing news but I try to avoid thinking about it and to enjoy the 2 hour flight to Bilbao.

November 6 Club Victoria Eugenia - San Sebastian, Spain
After takeoff we head south then fly alongside the Swiss-French Alps and the Massif Central before a dramatic landing in Bilbao. At the airport I try to find out about my ticket and about alternative flights but with no success. One-hour drive on magnificent mountain highways to spectacular San Sebastian in the Basque country on an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean where I settle in at the hotel and spend the next hour online researching flights to Wien. Everything comes up absurdly expensive or not workable in terms of schedule. I'm about to plunk down $500 for a flight via Brussels with a questionably short connection time when on a hunch I decide to call the Lufthansa office in Bilbao again. This time i meet success - the rep finds my reservation with no problem, apologizes for the trouble, can't understand why I had this experience. Okay: relief, irritation, relief. Later head over to the theatre, a grand labyrinthine building mixing old and new. I will perform in the club, an intimate room with polished wood floors and stone walls. Great sound and no need for monitors (which I usually find to be a detriment to good hearing.) Time for a walk around the town and a fantastic snack of tapas, pinços, tinto, and espresso in a nearby bar. Well-fueled, I play an intense 75 minute set for the audience. I've cleared out half of them by the concert's end. The technical director tells me that this is a very wealthy town and they like their music "easy." Those that remain are very enthusiastic though.

November 7 Le Moliere:Scene d'Aquitaine - Bordeaux Jazz Festival - Bordeaux, France
A civilized start-time from the hotel to the Hendaye train-station, just over the border in France and two hours later I'm in Bordeaux. Afternoon and evening spent walking around. I find a good-looking restaurant near the quay and make a dent in the oyster population. A decorative fountain is being shut down for the night and it spreads a dark foam over the roadway and nearby quay. The concert is to be a matinee at half-past noon. I'm wary of such a start-time, both for the question of audience presence and for my own "presence", the afternoon being my least-favorite time to perform music. The theater has great acoustics and is wonderfully dark so after liberal doses of espresso, I can transport myself to a different timezone. To my surprise, the 200-odd seats are all full. The monitor is perfect and I find it easy to enjoy the sound of my instrument. The set is Bemsha Swing, Raise Four, Rhythmning, Epistrophy, Round Midnight, and Well You Needn't then Quadrature. We repair to a nearby bistro for a post-concert lunch and then I'm off by train to Toulouse where i spend the night at a hotel near the Blagnac airport for my morning flight to Wien via Munich.

November 8 Miles Smiles - Wien, Austria
As we're boarding the plane, a new Airbus A380 lands. As a tech geek, I like to follow aviation progress and this one is a cause for ambivalence. For it's size alone, it's amazing to see - it IS huge - but to my eyes it lacks grace, in fact, it looks like one of the less-glamourous whale species - bulbous and ungainly. While I'm curious to ride in it, I also would dread the baggage wait after a flight of 500 people - things are already pretty bad on that front with smaller craft. Beautiful flight to Munich along the snowy Alps then another good one to Vienna with a dramatic sunset as we made our approach to Schwechat. A return to this very warm and welcoming club - the only drawback for me is that there's too much smoke - Christoph, the proprietor, asks for a cessation of smoking during the performances but that's nearly impossible in Wien. Two long sets with the first comprising Bemsha Swing, Rhythmning, Raise Four, and Epistrophy plus Quadrature. The second: Misterioso, Well You Needn't, Played Twice, Round Midnight, and Momentum Anomaly with some Manhattan Delta blues for an encore. Late hang after so 2:30 before I'm in bed - the 5:30 wakeup call is brutal - the reward: one of my favorite trainrides through the mountains of Styria and the Dolomiti on my way south to Mestre - time for gazing, dozing, reading and then meeting Massimo Ongaro for a very fine lunch before I board my train to Firenze. It's just unfortunate that the old comfortable long-distance trains are being refurbished with seats designed for people who are not made of flesh and blood. The new seats are fixed at strange angles and if they do recline, it's only to a different uncomfortable angle. Instead of the great old velour upholstery it's all now pleather. We were all worried about a planned train strike in Italy on this day that but it's little in evidence and the trains are no later than usual.

November 9 Sala Vanni - Firenze, Italy
Giuseppe welcomes me at the station and after I make a quick pit stop at the hotel we go to the venue for soundcheck. The Sala Vanni was the former dining room of a convent and there are much-decayed religious frescoes in evidence on the walls. There's a simple PA and soundcheck takes but a minute leaving us plenty of time to repair to the nearby trattoria for a fantastic dinner with bressaola and moscardini, little baby octopi in sauce. After, a caffe doppio ristretto and I'm ready to play. The soft natural reverberation of the hall brings out the resonance and sustain of the guitar. As I'm winding down Epistrophy I hear a loud male voice coming from the front center of the audience half-muttering and half-shouting in Italian, He's angry and I assume it has something to do with my performance. My limited Italian is of no use at this moment (plus I'm trying to concentrate on playing!) He's being shushed by those around him but he continues. I respond by playing quieter and quieter until the guitar's pickup is completely off and I'm just gently caressing the strings bringing out little glisses and harmonics. He finally shuts up and I continue with Round Midnight and then a long Quadrature. Misterioso for an encore, post-gig hang and back to the hotel. Three hours sleep this night and then it's time for my airport pickup at 5. Bad weather in Frankfurt so we sit on the ground for an hour. We have additional delays in our flight because of the air traffic situation at Frankfurt and we circle the airport for 20 minutes waiting for a landing slot. We finally arrive more than one-hour late, my flight to Portugal long-gone. The Lufthansa and TAP reps are extremely helpful and I'm soon booked on another flight to Lisbon.

November 10 Centro de Artes do Espectáculo de Portalegre - Portugal
I was hoping (& planning) to sleep on the 3-hour flight to Lisbon but for some reason I'm wired and can't relax. Listen to Bach Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin performed by Nathan Milstein and finish a Graham Greene short story collection. Ilidio from CleanFeed picks me up at the airport for the 2.5 hour drive to Portalegre, a little town in the highlands close to the border with Spain. Brief hotel stop then off to play the concert, armed with just a few biscotti and some espresso to fuel me. The hall is a beautiful hardwood auditorium in a newly-completed high-budget arts center. a little strange in this medieval town. Very good sound but the audience remote in the dark room. I can often get a good sense of the feedback without explicit visual contact but tonight it's difficult. Is it the audience or my fatigue? In any case, I play a 70-minute set to good though muted response. When I pack, I notice some audience members still seated and find out there has been confusion, with some people expecting two sets. Unfortunate. There's nothing to do but eat as hunger has surmounted everything else. Back at the hotel I sink into a 9.5 hour coma, the most sleep I've had in days. Ilidio and I depart at noon for Barcelos in the north, about 4 hours of driving. Over a river, we see a flock of storks on maneuvers, a dramatic sight.

November 11 Auditório da Biblioteca Municipal de Barcelos -Portugal
After checking into the hotel, there's time to wander a bit in Barcelos, another small medieval town. It's Sunday and there's are festivities in the square, with a folkloric band and vendors selling roasted chestnuts. This concert takes place in the town library and art gallery - a small auditorium with good sound and a very responsive crowd. Exhibitions of folkloric influenced artworks - my dressing room is the children's ceramics classroom. A long set of Monk and Sharp, Misterioso for an encore, and the tour is finished. The hang lasts until 1 then it's time to make my final pack for the flight. We leave at 4am for the drive to Porto airport from where I fly to Lisbon and then on to Newark after a 4 hour layover.

On tour at home:

November 15 Littoral - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
This evening is part of a series pairing a musician with authors reading from their work (not simultaneously!) Tonight's edition includes Susan Daitch, Jim Shepard and Amy Hempel, none of whom I was familiar with before. The evening begins with my 20-minute solo on the Godin which is being routed through the small stereo PA as well as the 16-channel suspended speaker system. The sound in the room is full and resonant making the playing effortless. After my set, the readers each present a droll tale.

November 18 "The Cambrian Explosion" premiere - Eclipse Quartet + Marco Cappelli - Roulette - NYC
I was asked by classical guitarist Marco Cappelli to compose a piece for him and the Eclipse String Quartet for a November concert in Naples and a warm-up in New York. The composition was inspired by readings about the Cambrian period in the Earth's history, a time of great biological turmoil resulting in a fantastic increase in the diversification of species. The fossil record did not always allow a clear picture of the evolutionary processes at work and so some controversy existed. This was exploited by the reactionary forces of ignorance, also known as the Creationists, who claimed that the Cambrian undercut Darwin's Theory of Evolution. (The Wikipedia entry on the Cambrian gives great insight into the current state of thinking.)
The Eclipse Quartet formed in 2003 and its virtuosic members include Sara Parkins on violin and Maggie Parkins on cello (twin sisters of Zeena Parkins) as well as Sarah Thornblade on violin and Johanna Hood on viola. "The Cambrian Explosion" is not an easy piece and having it open the evening increased the height of the hurdles. It requires great endurance and rhythmic accuracy and a fluency in various extended techniques. The group pulled off with great intensity and I was thrilled to hear it, There were some small technical problems but these will be resolved with additional performances and perhaps some amplification of Marco's guitar to allow some details to be better heard. Also on the program were pieces by Giorgio Tedde, John King, Fred Frith, and Ralph Towner.

November 26 Terraplane with Hubert Sumlin, Tracie Morris, and Eric Mingus at Teatro Manzoni - Milano, Italy
The band heads out from JFK on Alitalia - I fly out later in the evening on Lufthansa with tranquil flights to Frankfurt and then Milano. A rest at the hotel and we all meet for a fantastic dinner hosted by the organizers of our concert. The next day is spent at the Teatro rehearsing the classics with Hubert and working out Tracie's tracks as well as Terraplane "standards" with Tracie added. The hall is a beautiful looking and sounding room with red plush seats. Excellent equipment and stage sound. Some brief chill time at the hotel and then we hit for one long set of nearly two hours starting with Terraplane tunes from the entire history of the band after which we bring Hubert up for Dust My Broom, Sittin' On Top of the World, his own Healin' Feelin', a rocking Back Door Man with Mingus channeling the Wolf, and finish with Wang Dang Doodle with Eric and Tracie trading verses. We complete the evening with more Terraplane tunes with Hubert joining us. He's never heard Tell Me Why before but his parts are perfect. Hubert is on our recorded version of They Say We Is and his tasty licks bring the song to life - likewise, he adds a rhythm part to Lost Souls that sounds somewhere between a clavinet and Jimmy Nolen (but that's Hubert!) Since his last heart attack, Hubert has had a very-beneficial pacemaker installed. He's more relaxed and also more energetic and his playing is a marvel of raw emotion and angular melodicism. The thousand-seat hall is packed and we get a rousing response. Long version of Stop That Thing for the encore and after, a crush of people in front of the stage wanting autographs and to give us greetings. We finally get everything packed and give last goodbyes to various friends there to see us and head off to the restaurant for dinner.

November 28 Terraplane - Iridium - NYC
It's 2am when I return to my room - after packing, I have one hour of sleep and then it's down to the waiting van to bring me to the airport. (The others are on a later Alitalia flight and get a few more hours of sleep.) I was tempted to just stay up but felt that one hour might be worth more than it's intrinsic value. I still feel pretty wretched waiting to board though some tea helps. Dramatic views of the Alps at sunrise during our mountain crossing to Frankfurt also helps. One hour layover and then a seemingly endless flight back to NYC against a strong headwind that delays us by 30 minutes and keeps the plane bumping. Despite the turbulence, I manage a few hours of much-needed sleep.
After Milano, we're primed to play this gig that almost didn't happen. On Saturday, a few hours before leaving for the airport, I received emails from various people asking if the gig was Nov. 28 or Dec. 28 and others telling me that our show is not listed on the Iridium website. A few emails and phone calls and the problem is straightened out with the Iridium management admitting their negligence and giving us promises of a massive last-minute publicity campaign. We considered cancelling but decided to go ahead. This small but well-equipped club is right on Broadway in Times Square, the heart of NYC tourism. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is being lit on this day which means that the police have set up barricades to cut off certain streets, another factor not promising for attendance. We find excellent backline at our disposal and have a quick and efficient soundcheck. Sets precisely at 8:30 and 10:30, very unlike the usual NYC club timing, and a surprisingly decent audience given the various mitigating factors. Alex has remained in Italy so the band lineup is leaner (metaphorically speaking, given the feasting in Milano that we indulged in) and I suggest that we stretch tunes. We have two very inspiring sets with lots of sonic play and a loosening of the arrangements allowing the band to generate some very subtle interaction. We improvise backing to Tracie's Got It? Get It? (on Radio Hyper-Yahoo) taking it into On The Corner/hip-hop territory and truly burn through Please Don't and Lost Soul.

December

December 10 - Panel Discussion: The Question of Genre - NYU Fales Library - NYC
Very happy to be finished with touring until the end of January. Working on two commissioned compositions: one for the Fylkingen Festival in Stockholm in February which will be for four bass clarinets, piano, and guitar and titled “Sidebands”; the second will be for the Ensemble Modern for the festival Frankfurter Positionen in April and titled “Polymerae.” Also recording five recent string quartet pieces for Tzadik, improvised duos with guitarist Henry Kaiser and mixing a duo CD with expat-guitarist/composer Scott Fields. My only gig this month is not a concert but a panel discussion moderated by Peter Cherches. Also on the panel are Jon Gibson, Don Christensen, and Butch Morris. The time passed too quickly and could have been better utilized as I would have liked to hear some discussion between us panelists on various issues and would have also enjoyed more audience questions.

 

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