Road Reports 2008
(click pics to enlarge)
Road Reports 2008
(click pics to enlarge)
For upcoming concert dates, go here
January
January 1 - St. Mark's Poetry Project Marathon - NYC
This long-standing tradition continues, lasting from noon to midnight. Great to meet up with old friends who it seems I only see at this event. I do a 5-minute version of "Momentum Anomaly" around 9pm. There are no monitors so the stagesound is not loud enough for me to hear any detail but still, it seemed to be getting out into the house allright.
January 14 Serial Underground - Cornelia Street Cafe - NYC
Jed Distler and Celia Cooke of the Composers Collaborative Inc. invited me to take part in this edition of a monthly event they curate at the Cornelia. First up is an excerpt of Justine Chen's sly and emotional opera "Jeanne" followed by monologist Thomas Bolster with an hilarious bit about his family blurring history and current reality. I follow with a 12-minute solo soprano saxophone piece titled "For Leroy Jenkins" dedicated to the late violinist and composer whose sudden passing was shocking and tragic. I'd been friendly with Leroy and been a huge fan since our jazz club at Bard College brought his group The Revolutionary Ensemble up to the school to perform twice in 1972. Our paths crossed now and again and we always had a good feeling and interesting conversations. For this piece, I made extensive use of the leg-mute, a technique of Steve Lacy's taught to me at Bard by Roswell Rudd. The leg-mute allows the soprano to play pitches below its' normal range. Exploring this technique over the years, I had also found a huge range of non-tempered pitches as well as pungent multiphonics, especially when employed standing on one leg. After my performance, the virtuoso pianist Distler performed a moving and structurally clever anti-war solo by composer Milos Raickovich, "B.A.G.D.A.D.", as well as Frederic Rzewski's "Fantasy on Give Peace A Chance." Jed truly made the Cornelia's small upright piano sing!
January 17 Sharp Plays Monk + All-Guitar SyndaKit - The Stone - NYC
8pm - Monk set on the Godin. Played "Bemsha Swing," "Rhythmning", Raise Four," "Well You Needn't," "Epistrophy," "Round Midnight", and "Misterioso" to a packed and enthusiastic house. Spending too much time in front of the computer composing and not enough on the guitar - really felt it in my hands about 35 minutes into the 55 minute set but rallied my strength simultaneously relaxed and made it through!
10pm - SyndaKit tonight is performed by Mary Halvorson, Ron Anderson, John Myers, Marco Cappelli, Marc Sloan, Dave Hofstra, Angela Babin, Roger Kleier, Enrico Merlin, Zachary Pruitt, and Lili Maase. A few newcomers but most had played the piece before so we got right down to business. Excellent listening and dynamics with consistently good interaction. The 50 minutes passed in a flash and again, a packed and responsive audience. We all used small amps so the sound was not overwhelming - just loud enough to have some body and create some of that good psychoacoustic stuff. On this set, I'm trying out a new electronics set-up as I was never completely happy with the old one (though I love my Boomerang pedal!) plus it was all a bit big and certainly heavy. Digitech RP250 and Eventide Timefactor are the new units and they sound great and are very compact. The Eventide is incredibly powerful and sounds wonderful though there are some features I wish it had, especially reverse looping and square-wave modulation. The RP250 is easy to program (in the studio I quickly cook up a number of presets to cover my basic sounds for this gig) and the amp models and distortions are very tasty with excellent wah.
January 23 Terraplane - Joe's Pub - NYC
"Forgery" has just become available in the US and we celebrate with a set at this cabaret-style venue in the East Village. Soundcheck was a bit disconcerting - onstage a brittle and overly dry sound. Much better for the performance for a good but not packed house. Everyone's sked did not permit a full rehearsal and the band starts out a bit ragged though friends in the audience assured me that this was not audible to them. Alex in Ecuador so only Curtis in the horn-section but Tracie is there to sing Nobody Know and Katrina Blues. Great versions of Oil Blues and They Say We Is, the latter getting deeply psychedelic on the groove sections. I use the new setup and about midway through the set I find that the Digitech has spontaneously changed patches and I'm unable to find the ones I've programmed. I don't know if it's a fluctuation in the stage voltage or Tony's massive kickdrum or a bug in the pedal, but this is discombobulating to say the least. I try to keep my cool (though Tracie is chuckling.) It seems to settle down into one of the factory presets, not great but useable and I can think about playing just in time for Tell Me Why - always a highpoint in the set for all. The next day I try to duplicate the RP250 problems in my studio but to no avail - it works solidly all day long.
January 29 Sharp Plays Monk - Vooruit - Ghent, Belgium
I'd been working madly to finish the score to "Polymerae", the commission for the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, before leaving and I do complete the piece on the day before allowing some fun time with the twins and a relaxed departure. Decent flights to Frankfurt then Brussels, a bit of sleep at the hotel then soundcheck and concert. The Vooruit was an entertainment palace built in 1919 which saw its peak in those years between the great European wars. It fell into disrepair until it was revived in 1979 and transformed into a well-equipped cultural center and restaurant. The sound onstage and in the house is excellent and I find it a pleasurable way to break into this tour. The evening is Monk-themed and after I play, Dutch pianist Michiel Brahm plays an exciting set of his own interpretations.
January 30 Christian marclay/E# Duo - BBC Radio 3 Recording
Dark and rainy and too early when I rise for the train to Brussels-Midi and from there to London via the Eurostar train. Efficient check-in and security. If this was in the US (to even imagine a low-cost high-speed train there is absurd) it would be mass stupidity and confusion. Fine and punctual ride to London and met by Ben Warren from the BBC - a driver brings us to the station. Caffeination and set-up - my Live patch is acting up - toruble with routing to the correct interface outputs - numerous re-boots then it finally works - irritation. I'm using my Tectonics rig for this tour but with the Godin instead of the 8-string. Guitar and curved soprano sax (with clip-on mic) routed into the computer as well as through the FX chain of Ultra-Fuzz and the Eventide. The radio would like a ten-minute piece from us and we do numerous takes. As it's a live mix to stereo, we want all of the balances correct - by the second take things are sounding excellent and we record 4 different pieces that we're quite happy with. The room sound feels great and we need no headphones for monitoring - it's as if we're playing a live concert in a very conducive hall. After the recording is finished, we do a short interview on our processes of improvising together: its evolution over the years and how it contrasts to our individual constructed works. The session is fine preparation for our concert the next night.
January 31 Tectonics solo - Duo w/ Christian Marclay - The Luminaire - London
Early set-up at this club in Kilburn as I'm to meet with Trinity College composition students under the tutelage of Nic Murcott, an old friend, at 2pm. Set-up is slow as it's difficult to find a proper table and to sort out the monitors. My patch is now working properly though and the sound is very good on-stage. The students witness my soundcheck and this forms the beginning of my talk as I describe my live strategies and the equipment that I use. I then go on to historical aspects of my work and approaches to large-scale composition, notation, algorithmic approaches, and various digressions on art, marketing, and politics. Soon after we finish, Christian arrives and there is another struggle to find proper tables for his turntables and other equipment. This takes some time so repair to a nearby Arabic bakery for excellent espresso. Finally, all is set and working and we can check together. Some monitoring issues to be worked out but no great problems and we feel that the onstage sound is quite workable. The evening begins with Open Source - an ongoing presentation of improvised music, this evening comprising four guitarists with quite different approaches. After there are 2 films including one by Jayne Parker, a stunning presentation of three of Stefan Wolpe's piano pieces performed by his daughter. I perform my Tectonics set first - using the Godin in this context changes things greatly in terms of both sound and content - I work in elements of Momentum Anomaly since I've decided to use that tuning in this portion. The house is sold out and the response is fantastic. After a short break Christian joins me and we go for a mix of darkness and slapstick. Lots of shifting percussive soundscapes and dynamic cuts and kitschy records (from Christian, that is, who said to me after, "Sorry, I went for the cheese...") I didn't mind - it was great fun (and again, a great response.) Lots of post-gig greetings with various London friends and then we depart. Nice late starting time for me to Heathrow in the morning. I'd dreaded the changed security rules there but it was very efficient and done with courtesy and humor, in welcome contrast to Amrkn-style airport brutality and incompetence. NIce flight to Hamburg but a wild wild landing, the plane jerking up and down and shimmying on approach - glad to make it to Terra Firma!
February
February 1 Westwerk - Hamburg, Germany
Always happy to return to Westwerk, hosted by Matthew Partridge. Lots of pre-gig press and some confusion over which program I will perform so I decide to make a variety show to the packed house beginning with a compact Monk medley and an expansive Momentum Anomaly after which I perform the Tectonics set. Computer/interface acting up again when I do my linecheck before beginning so I'm blessed with some very uncomfortable moments sitting in front of the crowd as I try to figure out what is not working and why. Trying to debug the system in front of an audience always makes time move like cold molasses and as is so often the case, restarting the computer proves to be the only solution. Devote more attention than usual to my soprano sax during the Tectonics set - the warm natural reverb of the room mellows the horn's brightness and I'm especially excited today by the sounds I'm getting from processing the horn through the Eventide. I complete the 75 minute set (one set only had been suggested) and feel the music to be complete. I thank the audience and leave the stage but no one else departs. I sense that they're expecting more and after Matthew polls the people, it is indeed decided that I'm to play another set. A short break and I retune to DADFAD to perform a 45-minute set of elements from Velocity of Hue and Quadrature and now the audience is satisfied. As usual, the most convivial post-gig Westwerk hang goes into effect and it's 0230 by the time I head to bed, only to be up at 0645 for my train to Luxembourg.
February 2 Philharmonie - Luxembourg
The invitation from Philharmonie dramaturge Bernhard Guenther for this concert was the impetus for this entire tour and it's always great to see him and his wife Elizabeth Flünger, a wonderful percussionist. Luxembourg was the point of my landing on the European Continent for my first tour in 1983 together with V-Effect. Our initial and final concerts were in Zurich as the tour was arranged by Recommended Records there. Whether it was bad planning or just parsimony, it was decided by somebody (I was not party to the decision for some reason) that we would fly over on Icelandair, a strategy that would save us $35 each over Swissair's nonstop fare JFK-Zurich. While I did consider this a major amount of money in those days, when weighed against the real cost of our travel in terms of time and energy, it was no bargain. We headed out from JFK in a cramped and ancient DC8, 6 hours to Reyjkavik. There, we deplaned and spent three hours in a chilly transit area with only a huge sweater store and overpriced tea-stand for diversion after which we returned to the DC8 for a three-and-a-half hour flight to Luxembourg, then a packed local city bus for nearly two hours to the train station (and we were carrying an entire drum kit!), 45-minutes wait then another six hours travel to Zurich via crowded 2nd-class train, arriving late in the evening. Total travel time: 24 miserable hours (not including getting to JFK.) On today's trip from Hamburg, about eight hours, I greatly enjoyed the time to read, sleep, and look out the window, especially enjoying the snow in Wuppertal, sadly missing from NYC this winter. The Philharmonie is in an area once farmland, now all modern office towers and EC administrative buildings. There are three halls, the largest featured Woody Allen in the previous week and will feature Jane Birkin at the end of the month. My room holds about 150, a blackbox theater set up with chairs and some cushions on the floor (Bernhard's sly reference to one of my battles with Morton Feldman.) Excellent sound and lighting. The house is full and I enjoy the formality of the room. First set is the Monk and the second includes Momentum Anomaly and then Tectonics. After the long concert, Bernhard and I do a short onstage discussion with some audience questions then a short interview with an Italian new-media journalist focussing on social/cultural/political thoughts. After that, a fabulous home-cooked dinner at Bernhard's & Elizabeth's home after which I return to the hotel at nearly three though my train the next morning to Namur is a very civilized 1124.
February 3 La Brassages - Dongelsburg, Belgium
Promoter Jules Imberechts meets me at the station and after I check into my hotel in Namur, we drive to the venue in a tiny village, passing through farmlands and stopping off on the way for tarte tatin and espresso. La Brassages was a small country bar before owner Luc decided to convert it to a venue for music and art with the performance space separate from the room where the drinking and smoking goes down. This is the first month of operation so it's uncertain whether it will resonate with the local population. Audience also comes from nearby Brussels and a surrounding radius and there is a good crowd already assembled while I'm setting up. Soundcheck takes but a minute as the equipment is excellent and the room sounds good. The only drawback is the temperature - it's cold outside and the room retains little heat. We all wait as the forced-air heating brings it up to operating temperature so that I can perform my first set, the Monk. After about 45 minutes, my fingers and back are stiffening from the cold so I take a break and everybody repairs to the bar (with a blazing high-tech woodstove) for intermission. I begin the second set, Tectonics, with a long soprano sax + electronics improvisation and then switch to guitar for Quadrature and Velocity of Hue. After nearly an hour, it's too cold to proceed so the concert ends and everybody moves to the bar.
February 5 Duo w/ Reinhold Friedl - Musee D'Art Contemporaines - Strasbourg. France
Relaxed train to Strasbourg and I have a free afternoon to wander the town, enjoy local snacks, and read and write. Reinhold arrives after 9pm and telephones so we run out to find a restaurant ahead of the usual weeknight 10pm closing and luck into a funky little place serving a fusion of Alsatian and Thai cuisine - incredible food! We have a fair amount of set-up time the next afternoon and quickly are satisfied. Reinhold has brought some good microphones and an interface so that we may record. We're looking forward to the concert as it's been some time since we last played together. A few test takes sound excellent and we're excited. Unfortunately, there is a musicological lecture at 5pm and even though we're told we only have to move certain things aside, when we return after the lecture we find that everything has been changed and the recording set-up no longer works. It takes us a bit of time to get almost everything in proper order again and we proceed despite the lack of recording. Our single 70-minute set is our best yet as a duo - huge dynamic range, fantastic sonic interplay, telepathic changes. After the concert, one young audience member challenged me: "Do you even listen to the pianist?" I tried to explain about textural counterpoint but it seemed futile. His friends seemed to be embarrassed by him. After the concert, curator Patrick Javault, Reinhold and I have another fine Alsatian meal. At 0400, I walk over to the station with my gear and board a Lufthansa bus that in a two hours takes me directly to Frankfurt Airport and my flight home.
February 7 Jan Kotik Memorial - Magnetic Fields - Brooklyn
I've known the Kotiks: Petr, Charlotta, Tomas, and Jan, since August 1974 when I arrived in Buffalo to work as an electronicist for the Music Department and the Center For Creative and Performing Arts as well as to pursue my composition studies. I would do sound and electronics for Petr and well remembered his two young sons. Twenty years later in NYC, Petr asked if I would give Jan and Tom lessons on guitar and bass, which I was happy to do. Both were astute and creative - I also soon found out that Jan was a great drummer. We did some trio gigs as Bootstrappers at some local clubs and made a CD titled "GI=GO" for the German label Atonal. Through Jan and Tom I met many interesting musicians and great bands including Beekeeper, Babe The Blue Ox, and Chris Rael. Jan later moved to Prague where his sculptural work met great success and where he married and produced two beautiful children. He had a long battle with stomach cancer and I hoped that he could beat it. Unfortunately, he could not - a tragic loss - a wonderful person and multi-talented creative artist. Tom organized this event at a little club on Brooklyn Heights with many of Jan's friends and colleagues performing and paying tribute. I brought the Godin and played Momentum Anomaly as an elegy for Jan.
After the tour, February is an incredibly busy time with finishing up the master for the CD of my new string quartets for Tzadik at Scott Hull's studio, doing drum programming for the next Tectonics CD, and a million other things. Head out on the 18th for Sweden and the festival Stockholm New Music. Weather in NYC has been stormy these days and just to torture myself, I check the radar maps before heading to the airport. It looks pretty gnarly and I'm not expecting a smooth ascent. What we get is a bit more, in the worst way: at about 600m from the ground we hit some gusts while going through dense clouds, all contributing to the bump and sway - pretty bad, but not unexpected. We smooth out for a bit but when we climb to about 2300m over Long Island and heading east, we run into some incredible wind blasts that nearly send the plane spinning - it's as if a giant hand has picked up the plane and tosses it up and down, left and right. One gust tilts the left wing up to a 45º degree and then we slide sideways for what seemed like a very long time - we're shaking, bouncing and lurching and I wonder if we can maintain control. It's over as quickly as it began though - perhaps a total of only 30 seconds (but 30 seconds that lasted a lifetime!) followed by 2 minutes of heart-pounding. Hitting the jetstream over Newfoundland is often pretty rough but this evening, in comparison, it felt just normal . The rest of the flight was calm though as was the 2 hour flight to Stockholm.
February 20 New Music Stockholm: Solos & duos with Elia Khoury - Ronnell's Antykvariet - Stockholm
Elia is a virtuoso oudist from Jordan, now located in Paris with his two brothers as The Khoury Trio. Check them out on YouTube. After I had my post-flight nap, Elia and I met in the hotel cafe to discuss our upcoming concert. Our conversations over double-espressos were wide-ranging and energizing. After wandering out into the frigid night for a bite, we decided to play a bit and our initial improvisations were like our conversations. Even though Elia plays a huge variety of musics and is a consummate master instrumentalist, he had not yet taken part in the "sonic gestural" improvisation that I might call what I do. He took right to it without abandoning his own style of melodic-harmonic invention based on the maqams. I tried to join him in these tonal areas without trying to imitate the gestures of Oriental music. We deemed our little rehearsal to be quite successful and felt primed for our concert. Ronnell's is a bookstore specializing in rare and out-of-print volumes and I would have been very happy to spend a day or week or more perusing the shelves. Pekka, one of the managers there, helped us with the simple sound system and we made a short soundcheck then took a walk to find lunch and coffee. When we returned, the house was quite full and crackling. Elia did his solo first - three different maqams with breathtaking playing. I next performed a medley of Quadrature/Velocity of Hue pieces and then we played about 30 minutes of duos. I felt that our listening just got better and better and the set was received phenomenally well by the audience. After, we agreed that there were things from rehearsal and soundcheck that we had wished to revisit but they were gone. There was no choice but to continue to find new variations - our pleasure! After the concert, we repaired to a Greek tavern for refreshments and then went to see amazing basso Nicholas Isherwood perform with composer/pianist Sylvano Bussotti some of Bussotti's works at the Strindberg Intima Theatre - the stage and lighting evoked an Expressionist cabaret of the 1920's as imagined by David Lynch, starkly beautiful. Afterwards, we all met backstage to have champagne with maestro Bussotti and to discuss Strindberg's eagle, apparently still in residence in the theater and stuffed with arsenic.
February 22 New Music Stockholm: premiere of "Sidebands" - Fylkingen - Stockholm
A central aspect of my participation in the festival was a commissioned piece to be performed at Fylkingen, a long-standing artists' cooperative venue - a black box theatre with excellent facilities including top-notch Meyer and Genelec sound systems. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just died while I was finishing "Sidebands" and so i decided to dedicate it to him - a major personal influence and important theorist whose ideas and compositions changed the way we hear and define music as much as those of John Cage. "Sidebands" is scored for four bass clarinets, piano, and acoustic guitar and has sections that are through-composed, some algorithmic, and some graphic. The clarinetists are Christer Bothen, Alberto Pinton, Boa Pettersson, ands Kristina Lindby. Kristine Scholz played the piano, and I, the guitar. "Sidebands" commences with the four bass clarinetists imitating a shortwave radio by independently playing in International Morse Code: "Stockhausen ist tot." At other times, the clarinetists take off their mouthpieces and use the horns as filters as they play the keys while singing and humming. There is also a difference-tone segment with the clarinetists only playing mouthpieces. Throughout much of the piece, the pianist and I function as a percussion section. We use preparations and various extended techniques to turn our instruments into non-pitched-sound generators. It was great to meet composer Helmut Lachenmann at his orchestra concert the previous evening and he attended "Sidebands" - with composers Saed Haddad and Giorgio Netti, we all enjoyed post-concert drinks and Helmut regaled us with fantastic tales of Stockhausen and his foibles and exploits. It was late by the time I went to sleep and the 0345 call was too soon - off to the airport with fine flights to Zurich then JFK. I had 45 minutes to change planes in Zurich, just barely enough time - a sweaty run across the entire length of the recently renovated (and enlarged) airport, not to mention passport control and security.
February 23 All-String SyndaKit - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn, NY
Car back from JFK and just enough time to greet the fam, take a shower, drink some coffee, and head to Brooklyn. As part of Issue's "String Week", I brought in a collection of great players including Jessica Pavone, Eszter Balint, Ron Lawrence, Alex Waterman, Ha-Yang Kim, Judith Insell, MV Carbon, Reuben Radding, Kevin Ray, and Dave Hofstra to tackle SyndaKit. This concert marked my debut on viola as well - not that I am in any way a violist (a composer needs to publicly humiliate himself on occasion!) In 2001, I was working on a commissioned piece for Liuh Wen-Ting and decided to purchase an inexpensive viola on EBay so that I could dig into the mechanics of the instrument. As Liuh Wen commented when she first played my prize: "Nice case." I very much wanted to be part of this ensemble tonight and not just as the composer so I practiced enough to be comfortable. We did four iterations of various length with many surprises and all players contributing to the transformations to a full and responsive audience. (thanks to Scott Friedlander for this composite pic!)
February 26-27 "Polymerae" Recording - Ensemble Modern - Frankfurt
After a welcome day free to hang out with the nuc, it's back to the airport on Monday and an easy flight to Frankfurt. A nap at the hotel and off to the Ensemble Modern's building for a rehearsal. They're all great players and have examined the composed material but much needs to be defined and refined. It's a complex piece that will accompany the choreography of Jacopo Gadoni and requires that all of the eight players double on various percussion instruments for the six interludes between the seven major sections. "Polymerae" is scored for alto flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, piano and percussion (which includes marimba and vibraphone.) We all feel quite confident when we break that night and assemble the next afternoon at the Hessischer Rundfunk in their Studio 2, mostly used for jazz. Excellent equipment and engineering crew and we get right to mic'ing up the group and getting sounds. Like "Sidebands," some of the sections are completely through-composed, some algorithmic operations based on composed cores, and some are graphic scored, very open. We dig right in and are able to get excellent takes of all of the material. Tonmeister Phillip Knop will certainly need to do some editing, but the ensemble sounds energetic and centered. We finish in our allotted time but it's still late when I return to the hotel after dinner and in just a few hours, am awake to return to the airport for my flight back to NYC.
March
March 1 E# Solo - "Children's Concert" - Roulette - NYC
After this concert, I was informed by one of the parties involved that the invitation to perform a "Children's Concert" was extended to me as somewhat of a dare - it was assumed that I wouldn't do it. One of the many things that two-and-a-half years of fatherhood has taught me is that children have an incredible openness and capacity to take in the new and that it would not be impossible to come up with a 45-minute set that would prove to be entertaining and informative. I had assumed that our Kai and Lila would be the youngest in attendance but 8 months turned out to be the lowest age limit. I brought the Godin and first spoke a little of the history of the guitar and its derivation from the lute and before that the oud and how all stringed instruments are thought to have evolved from lyres (themselves a multi-stringed version of the hunter's bow or monochord.) I demonstrated some of the basic acoustic manifestations of a vibrating string as well as some of the extended techniques used to produce un-typical guitar sounds and then cut to the late-19th and earlier 20th centuries in the US and spoke of how the convergence of immigrant nationalities from Europe, Africa, and Asia all contributed to American folk music. As illustration, I played some country blues and old-timey music and then used the metaphor of transportation by train (Kai and Lila love trains as do many children) to demonstrate onomatopoeic train journeys, first by vintage steam-train and then a sci-fi futuristic one by mag-lev rail. Roulette was packed and I felt great concentration on the part of the children in the audience. The response was strong and all seemed to enjoy themselves. Kai and Lila clapped and yelled "yay, Daddy."
March 7 SEM Ensemble - "Not Just String Quartets" - Experimentl Intermedia Foundation - NYC
Petr Kotik brought his group to Phil Niblock's performance loft to present two of my string quartets "Light In Fog" and "Eye In The Sky", quartets by Mary Bellamy himself, and and one of his large ensemble pieces. The excellent quartet included Conrad Harris, Lynn Bechtold, Lev Zhurbin, and Ludmila Konstantinova. It was raining heavily this evening and the very quiet "Light In Fog" blended with the environmental sounds. "Eye In The Sky" is louder and denser and the quartet played it both aggressively and sensitively.
March 8 Stone Benefit - Stone
A part of curating the Stone is participating in the monthly benefit - an improvising session whose income pays the rent for the space. I invited virtuoso guzheng player Wu Fei, Anthony Coleman, bassist Reuben Radding, cellist Ha-Yang Kim, and percussionist Jim Pugliese. John Zorn invited Lukas Ligeti, Shanir Blumenkranz, and a number of other musicians who I didn't know. Each set featured different combinations of smaller sub-groups with the full group finishing the set. Some of the playing was phenomenally great, some was abysmal. The audience loved it all. I brought the Turner baritone guitar and some effects - the first time using it in performance and certainly not the last. Its' tone is larger-than-life and its' feather weight is most welcome.
March 9 Magnus Andersson solo (Wu Fei/E# duo) - Stone
A virtuoso contemporary classical guitarist, Magnus has done much to create a modern repertoire for the instrument by premiering works by such composers as James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough, Lucian Berio, and more. He brings massive technique and a dry sense of humor. Magnus was doing a teaching residency in Buffalo and so was trapped by the snowstorm that engulfed the midwest and part of the northeast. His flights were cancelled, the highways closed, and trains all sold out. He was finally able to get a place on a train on the day of the concert - its' departure was three hours late and then it was further delayed by a tree falling across the tracks. Arrival time was uncertain so Wu Fei and I played a duo set of improvisations with Magnus walking in the door at 11pm just as we were finishing. He played a short and wry composition by the Slovenian composer Royko that deconstructed guitar harmonics and other performance gestures to a combination both musically and conceptually challenging but simplicity itself.
March 15 E# solo premiere of "Octal"/Orchestra Carbon performs "Quarks Swim Free" - Stone
8pm - The premiere of my Octal set for the Saul Koll 8-string and the "record release party" for the CD on Cleanfeed. Only received the CD's the day before - there's a long tradition of CD's not arriving in time for the release event but i was not interested in perpetuating it. Was hoping to use the PA only but there was a bad ground hum from the piezos (not a problem in the studio) so I ended up plugging the mag pickup into the PA and the piezo into the house bass amp. it was not an ideal solution and changed the way the guitar played and felt. Still, it sounded okay and I dug right in. The entire set lasted over an hour - surprising for me as it felt to be much shorter. The audience response was quite strong.10pm - Quarks Swim Free
Many of the Orchestra Carbon musicians attended the solo set and so when I finished, we quickly assembled the equipment and then descended into the basement to fill in the newcomers to the piece and to refresh everyone's memory. The ensemble this evening included Rachel Golub, Judith Insell, Reuben Radding, Kevin Ray, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Chris McIntyre, Curtis Hasselbring, Jenny Lin, and Danny Tunick. I conducted and played occasional bass clarinet. One of the musicians described this evening's set as "cosmic" and while it's a word that has been extremely overused in the last few decades, i wouldn't dispute it. Everyone played with imagination and fire and the "re-triggering" worked extremely well. ("Re-triggering" means that I separate out subroups of the musicians from the flux and count them in separately. This is done continuously with the musician sections changing as well. It serves to create real-time phasing and granulation.) The modules were stretched and transformed into wonderful mutations while still retaining their written identity. (pic by cott Friedlander)
March 16
8pm Sirius String Quartet - Stone
Sirius performed a very good version of "Dispersion of Seeds" and a fantastic version of the new piece "Seize Seas Seeth Seen." "Dispersion..." is an algorithmic score: 9 chords in a timeline played with a changing cross-bowing technique. "Seize..." is a graphic score in which i took composed modules and processed them with Photoshop in a type of digital "remix" using filters and sine- and square-wave modulations ahead of the game. The score focusses the players and gives an identity to the piece even though the final manifestation is very dependent on their improvisational skills. Also joining Sirius was wild and wonderful bass trombonist Dave Taylor in performances of 2 pieces of his. Sirius this evening was Jennifer Choi, Gregor Huebner, Ron lawrence, and Alex Waterman.10pm Ron Franklin/Dave Soldier - The Stone
Originally this set was to have been Soldier in duo with Brad Garton using an electroencephalogram machine to trigger sounds. Brad was feeling ill so Dave asked the Memphis-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Ron Franklin (just passing through NYC) to join him. Dave played fiddle, banjo, and nylon-string guitar, Eszter Balint played fiddle, and I brought my National Tricone resonator guitar and a mandolin (a beauty made in East Germany in the 50's that I purchased for $20 in a doll repair shop in Budapest in 1986. We played a number of Ron's songs as well as some country and old-timey classics. A funny moment: after the concert a young Japanese man was speaking with Dave Soldier and told him that he had come to NYC to "find the music of John Zorn and Elliott Sharp." Dave pointed out to him that I was "Elliott Sharp". He was flabbergasted to find that here we were playing country music and not contemporary noise.
March 18 Michiyo Yagi/E# duo - Drom - NYC
Drom is a new restaurant/club on Avenue A devoted to world music. Through the help of various banks and other businesses, a week-long festival of new Japanese music was mounted and Michiyo and partner Mark Rappaport were brought from Japan among the other artists. Michiyo first played a brilliant solo set including traditional and her own compositions. After a short break, I joined her on the Godin for a set of wide-ranging improvisations. Quieter passages were drowned out by the never-ending chit-chat from the tables - one of the pitfalls of performing in this kind of space. Still, the owners are very welcoming and the equipment is good so we enjoyed our unexpected concert (I had hoped that Michiyo would be in NYC to perform at Stone during my curatorial month but she had said it would not be possible.)
March 28 E# solo - Spontaneous Infinity Festival - Velvet Lounge - Washington, DC
A rare chance to perform in the USA! Chinatown bus down to DC, a quick bite at a narby Ethiopian place, and then a set on the Godin as part of this weekend-long event including such performers as Marshall Allen, Uri Caine, Sabir Mateen, and many more. I played Quadrature/Velocity of Hue pieces in a 50-minute medley and for an encore for the enthusiastic audience, a Monk medley of Bemsha Swing and Epistrophy. Just after, I was driven back to the city, arriving at 4am. Total time for the journey: 13 hours.April
April 3 Terraplane - Blue Apple Blues Festival - Crash Mansion - NYC
Another infrequent NYC appearance for the band, this time at an event organized by Meredith "Babe" Borden and Jon Catler who are the main force in the band Willie McBlind http://www.myspace.com/williemcblind . I've known Jon for many years and he has been a strong force in the microtonal and fretless guitar communities, is and now manufacturing and selling them: http://www.freenotemusic.com He's a virtuosic and absolutely original guitarist whose incredible knowledge of tunings and microtonality informs his soulful blues and rock playing.
The Crash Mansion is a spiffy basement club on Bowery and Rivington with good backline and sound equipment and a very competent and personable sound engineer and an overall excellent stage sound. I unfortunately missed the opening artist Hugh Pool but caught some of the excellent Stone Crazy Blues Band and Wilie McBlind's seriously stirring performance. We played a compact set: Blue State, Smoke & Mirrors, Oil Blues, They Say We Is, Clandestiny, Tell Me Why, Please Don't, and Lost Soul. We're just a little ragged but the energy is there and the band radiates it's enjoyment in playing. Mingus is sounding better than ever and the audience response is strong (though the late hour has caused some attrition.) I'm trying the Digitech pedal again, this time with good results.
April 11/12 "Polymerae" - Frankfurter Positionen, Mousonturm - Frankfurt
I was contacted last Autumn about composing a commissioned piece for this annual festival to be performed by the Ensemble Modern with dancers at the Hochschule Frankfurt under the tutelage of Jacopo Godani (a former William Forsyth dancer). Jacopo and I met in New York in December for coffee and brainstorming and came up with a number of scenarios for how the piece would operate. Since it was planned that the musicians would mostly be mobile within the space, I decided to compose a structure comprising seven algorithmic modules and six percussion interludes with the players doubling on those instruments. I wanted a wide range for the orchestration so the players chosen were Dietmar Wiesner-alto flute, Nina Janssen-clarinet/bass clarinet, Valentin Garvie-trumpet, Uwe Dierksen-trombone, Rafal Zambrzycki-Payne-violin, Patrick Jüdt-viola, Ueli Wiget-piano and Rumi Ogawa-percussion (her setup included vibraphone, marimba, tympani, shaker.) A few short composed "isomers" were the source material used to compose all of the larger cores, materials which would be looped, hocketed, chained, mutated as well as the interludes. Two of the modules were graphic, created again using the strategy of processing in Photoshop the cores of written material. Each interlude used groups of like sonic sources: bass drums, cowbells, random pitched metallophones, crotales and glockenspiels, tam-tam gongs, and triangles. Each one-minute interlude created difference-tone effects with their own "polymerization" acting as a frame for the longer algorithmic sections.
Very nice flight to Frankfurt where I was met quite early in the snowy morning by Rolf from the Sudwest Rundfunk who drove me to Baden-Baden in a ride filled with good conversation. After sleeping a few hours, I went over to the SWR studio (with a fantastic new SSL desk) where with engineer Alfred Habelitz mixed "Ripples From The Bang" from my Donaueschingen concert last October for an upcoming Neos release together with Bernard Lang's piece "Paranoia" from the same concert. Relaxed train to Frankfurt the next day and the first rehearsal that evening where I found to my horror that Jacopo had changed many aspects of the piece and performed major amputations on the music (from which I felt the patient might not survive.) I was nonplussed but cool and Jacopo was very relaxed about it, telling me to do what I need to do with the music and he would make the dance work, which he did over the next two days with excellent results. The six young dancers are all very talented and Jacopo's choreography looks quite "intentional" but has improvisatory elements - there is great flow and motion on all scales. One factor that disappeared completely was the idea of mobility for the musicians. I originally imagined the percussion stations to be ringing the audience to create spatial manifestations which would enhance the difference tones. This was not to be (though the sound in the hall still worked quite well.) The first performance was for invited guests: friends and associates of the artists and the Mousonturm. Excellent run-through for this sub-premiere with everyone playing (and dancing) beautifully and the audience response in the full house is thunderous. The sound in the hall is quite good for the audience, less so for the musicians as it seems to be very dry on-stage but quite reverberant (but not excessive) elsewhere. Only the two strings, the piano soundboard (for inside-the-piano segments in the 2 graphic modules), and the tympani were amplified. Only a few minor elements need to be tweaked in terms of music and sound for the actual premiere. We had a final run-through in the afternoon and then the hit. This went even better than the night before and we were all elated at both our work and the response.
April 19 "Scharfefelder" - Os Dias Da Musica - CCB - Lisbon, Portugal
A marathon weekend-long festival at this large arts center in Belem, just south of Lisbon, with mostly classical chamber groups (including the Tokyo String Quartet) playing music of the 19th century but also a few artists under the "jazz" categorization, many from the Cleanfeed label. Pedro wanted this concert to be the release event for the acoustic guitar duo CD, "Scharfefelder", that Scott Fields and I recorded last fall, and so it was http://www.cleanfeed-records.com/disco2.asp?intID=242.
Tense departure day: I took the twins down to the river after breakfast not thinking that "The Pope" visiting NYC would affect me but around 11:00 when we were ready to head back to the apartment so i could prepare to go to the airport, we were not allowed to cross back on the bridge over the FDR Drive. The cop on duty was surly and told me to go the next bridge up. The cop there, a rude psychopath named Schneider from the 1st Precinct, was nasty from the get-go and needless to say, unhelpful. After enduring a few minutes of his ugliness, I took his badge number and turned to walk up another half-mile to Houston Street. He shouted after me for 7 minutes as we departed "Have a bad day, have a bad week, have a bad life..."! As we trudged along the FDR, the kids became more and more upset and asking to go home. By the time we got to Houston St., the entourage had passed and we were able to cross. Traffic later on in the afternoon still tangled as the car took me to the West side and the Holland Tunnel - it took longer to go the last two blocks to the Tunnel than the entire rest of the journey (but still made it in plenty of time.) The usual delays in flight departure due to runway traffic but eventually we were off on a fairly bumpy ride to Lisbon - little sleep to be had going over. We had a hairy landing in wind and rain and then had to wait 20 minutes to disembark for the buses to arrive to take us to immigration - the final indignity after an unpleasant flight (or so I thought.) Multiple jumbo jets must have discharged their passengers just before us as there were many hundreds of people queued for passport control. It over 100 minutes to go through, trudging step-by-step shlepping my gear. As a capper, when I finally arrived at the hotel, the desk told me that I could not check-in until 14:00. I blew my top and - hello! - they had my room available in 30 minutes. Finally, a chance to relax and I was soon unconscious for a blissful five hours.
Met Scott down at the lobby and we went out for coffee and food and then did a short rehearsal at the hotel. We each had composed five pieces with varying degrees of structure and improvisation for the "Scharfefelder" CD. We were able to quickly refresh our memories and get a sense of the music before heading down to Belem with Pedro from Cleanfeed. The Festival had a party-like atmosphere with throngs filling the huge space and moving from event to event. Logistics all well controlled and everything running on time. Our concert was in a beautiful room with excellent acoustics facing out on a reflective pool with a view of the planetarium and cathedral. Soundcheck was quick and easy as we each played through small Trace-Eliot acoustic amplifiers - the Godin sounding wonderful and a good match for Scott's beautiful Collings. Our 45-minute set passed in a flash before the packed room -about 400 people. The Festival offered inexpensive ticket prices which encouraged people unfamiliar with certain musics to take a chance. We half expected the audience to clear out after the first piece but it didn't happen - people listened intently and gave us a huge ovation at the end. Dinner after then back to the hotel for some rest before my flight back.
April 24 "Screenplay" - Radar Festival - Mexico City
I first was in Mexico City in 1983 and then again in 1984. Those trips were each a month-long exploration of Mexico by second-class bus and train - not without serious difficulties but amazing nonetheless. I was very curious to return as I'd recently heard many great things about the city from various friends. Up too early for pleasant flights to Chicago and then to Mexico City with a breathtaking sweep across the city as we made our approach to land. There was a zone of high-rise office towers that certainly had been erected since my last visit and the city generally looked cleaner perhaps because the air was freshened by rain during the morning. This was to be performance of Christian Marclay's video piece with live scores by the duo of Ikue Mori/Zeena Parkins and my trio with percussionists Hernan Hecht and electronicist Juan-Jose Rivas.
Shortly after our arrival at our Zona Rosa hotel, festival director Rogelio Sosa took us to a fine restaurant for a great meal and then a little later to the festival site, a courtyard in the Palacio di Medezino where a stage has been erected. That night we see performances by Israel M, Atsuhiro Ito, and Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms (whom I collaborated with in the short-lived coop band Slan with John Zorn and drummer Ted Epstein.) The call for setup/rehearsal is for 11 the next morning but this is postponed and then again as the stage equipment and screen will not be ready. I go over around 1:15 and the only thing in place is Hernan's kit which includes some drums but also other wonderful metal and plastic soundmakers. Slowly, slowly, tables are put into place and covered and a new Fender Twin Reverb amplifier brought out. Rivas' setup includes a number of lo-tech circuit-bent keyboards and Speak-n-Read as well as a laptop. I've brought the solidbody 8-string, a Bb clarinet, some pedals (including the new Celmo "Sardine-Can" compressor - a fantastic sounding unit), and the laptop running Ableton Live. Each of us has a video monitor at our stations. The sound-crew takes some time to configure the PA so by the time we're ready to check, the sun is at its zenith in the courtyard making for a grueling rehearsal.
Sound on stage is excellent and we do one run-through and call it. Showtime is at 8:40, once it's dark enough to see the large projection screen for Screenplay. There's a good crowd for Zeena and Ikue's set which is enthusiastically received. By the time we take the stage, the courtyard is packed with 600 people. There are some worries about rain as a few droplets fell during the first set but we don't really think about it. We blast through the set with good interaction between us and off of the images and my elecronic underscore and the crowd response is wild. We decide to do a group improvisation with all five of us to cap the evening. Some good moments in the 15-minute jam though not overly cohesive. After, we all head to the famed Cafe de Tacuba for dinner and libations. We close the place and return to the hotel late - I'm up at 5:30 to pack and return to the airport for my flights back to NYC via Washington DC. Hope to return to D.F. (as the locals call it) - a great mixture of funk and modernity and a charged atmosphere.
Some weather over Texas but mostly a fine flight though the United terminal at Washington D.C. airport is a hellhole as a number of jumbo jets have all discharged their passengers simultaneously. Total chaos in immigration/baggage/customs with hundreds of angry people and little organization. Wondering if I'll make my connection but make it through with 30 minutes to spare, jamming into a shuttle and then running across the terminal to find more chaos at the gate. No announcements, no action, and our boarding time arrives and passes. Finally, 15 minutes late, our flight is announced. The plane is a small jet for 80 people yet boarding takes 30 minutes after which the boarding ramp is left in place. The crew calls for its removal as a storm is approaching and one of them tells me that if they're not underway before the storm, it will be one hour more. Sure enough, no one takes away the ramp and we sit...and sit. The storm is long-passed before we enter the take-off queue and finally arrive in NYC over 90 minutes late.
May
May 7 E# Solo performs Octal - Stone - NYC - 8pm
Another opportunity to perform this suite of pieces. The recording of Octal was very concentrated and I was able to work as if using an electron microscope, honing in on atomic details during my practicing, all the better to play with some abandon when the red light was on. The live situation is always very different with one's physical state, the audience vibe, the weather, and finally, the uncategorizable factors all playing a role in determining how things will go down. At the premiere of these pieces in March, I was still feeling the after-effects of a cold and taking decongestants which had an unpleasant effect on both my ears and muscles. On this night I found that the Koll sounded especially good with the magnetic pickup going through the PA and the piezo into the house bass amp. Excellent punch and detail and an airy high-end allow for good overtones and rich lows and the one hour passes in a flash.
May 7 Conrad Harris with Gerry Hemingway & E# - Stone - 10pm
Violinist Harris has performed with Flux Quartet, SEM Ensemble, and Nextworks, and in many other situations. This ambitious and ear-bending program included solo works by Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, and David Behrman, plus Robert Ashley's Trio III which includes text and guest musicians. Pianist Blue Gene Tyranny was scheduled to perform with Conrad along with drummer Gerry Hemingway but illness prevented his appearance so Conrad asked me to step in. The Ashley piece wittily invokes the history of the violin and its use in various styles of music. Gerry and I improvised our parts, sometimes directly supporting Conrad's recitation and playing, sometimes acting as commentary or counterpoint. It was a great pleasure to play with both of them and also enjoyable to use the Koll in a way that is very different from the Octal pieces but still using no effects.
May 11 Duo Min Xiao-Feng & E# - The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens - NYC
An invitation from curator Laurence Donohue-Greene to perform a duo concert with Min, a virtuosic pipa player and great improviser, at this intimate non-commercial venue provides the impetus for our first session together. I'd been a huge fan of Min's playing for a long time and when our paths crossed at various gigs in New York, we spoke of our mutual desire to play or record. This gig finally provided us with a structure and venue. Min has also performed various of Monk's tunes and we decided to incorporate his music in some way into our improvisations . Hudson View Gardens is a housing cooperative in Washington Heights in the far northern realms of Manhattan above the George Washingon Bridge and The Lounge is a comfortable space in the complex with excellent acoustics and a relaxed feel. There's no sound-system so the plan is to play completely acoustically. I brought the Dell Arte Anouman 6-string and Min had two pipas, one, her "good" one and the other, somewhat distressed, allowed her to make various rude sounds, almost electronic. The weather was fine and the sound of various birds filled the air adding to the vibe. We opened the set with a short improvised duo followed by my solo then Min's with mine ending with a broken high-E string. We finished the first set with another duo touching upon fragments of Monk's music within our wider-ranging dialog. Our second set was one long continuous piece. We were quite pleased with our playing together as was the attentive and enthusiastic audience that filled the room and demanded an encore. We obliged with another 7 minute improvisation.
May 19 Solo "Momentum Anomaly" - FIMAV - Victoriavile Festival, Quebec, Canada
A return to this festival after a hiatus for me of almost ten years. This is one of the only North American festivals that operates like the eclectic European jazz festivals offering a wide range of artists across many genres. I decided to present Momentum Anomaly, a recent piece for electroacoustic guitar in a tuning of D Bb D Eb Bb D - certainly one of the reasons being that I knew I would get a good-quality recording of the concert.
Early but easy flight from LaGuardia to Montreal though a rough landing in bad weather. A driver from the festival was waiting to convey me to Victoriaville, 2 1/2 hours to the north - enough time for a welcome snooze after quickly consuming a Montreal bagel - the best in the world! This assertion is always surprising to those who hear it, especially coming from a New Yorker but it's a fact (or at least my very studied opinion.) NY bagels are big and doughy and can be quite good, especially fresh from the oven at Kossar's on Grand - the Montreal bagel (from one of the two classic bakeries near Fairmont) is baked in a wood-burning oven and is smaller with a higher ration of crust to dough and much more flavorful. They come in sesame and poppy - ONLY - no blueberry pesto bagels or other abominations. They are the best - period!
Quick hotel check-in (running into Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Tom DiMuzio, Carla Kihlstedt and Nick Didkovsky in the lobby) then off to the hall at the SEGEP for my soundcheck. The venue is a Catholic college but the assembly room is "wrapped" in black cloth thereby secularizing it and transforming it into a suitable performance space. The excellent sound and lighting systems help as well. The check was quick as the only real difficulty was getting a proper chair for the performance - the proferred drum thrones were wobbly or uncomfortable - finally an adjustable piano bench was found.
The hall was full for my hit and I fell right into the resonance of the tuning with the various sections flowing effortlessly. The sound truly aided this as I was completely unaware of the sound-system during my performance - it was that transparent and unobtrusive. Continuous 45 minute rendition of the piece delving into various regions for tapping, EBow explorations, linear excursions, and percussive harmonics to sustained applause and a standing ovation. I retuned to D A D F A D for a medley of "Velocity of Hue" elements to another standing ovation - a truly gratifying response!
After dinner, I watched about 30 minutes of the Art Bears set before returning to the hotel for a bit of work and rest before my 0530 call for the drive back to Montreal airport (hitting a major traffic jam on the way) and my flight back to NYC.
May 21 "Bootstrappers" - Kitchen Benefit Gala - Tribute to Christian Marclay - Puck building - NYC
The Kitchen has an annual party designed to encourage wealthy people to support this venerable radical art institution. The theme this year was an honoring of Christian Marclay, my good friend and longtime collaborator. I was asked to present a 10-minute performance and invited bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer Anton Fier for an improvised set. We were up first after the opening remarks by Kitchen director Debra Singer and board member Chris Ahearn.
I began with a short speech saying how when I first met Christian in 1981 I was thrilled that he was embodying John Cage's dictum that in the future records would be made from other records. I also described a few of our gigs together over the years including as part of a 1986 European tour, the basement jazzclub of the Karl Marx College of Economics in Budapest and a squat club in Bern in the third sub-basement of an abandoned office building reached by crossing shaky wooden bridges over underground pools. We dug right into a syncopated groove over which I played shifting textures on a 1958 Supro Duotone into a few pedals. We broke down into fragmented sounds then dove into a dense and hypertense rhythmic sequence to finish the set.
Also performing were DJ Olive in a solo set and a rock band, The National.
David Byrne had constructed a floor installation of hundreds of guitar pedals wired together in a matrix that would allow passersby to affect the resultant soundfield by stepping on the pedals of their choice. The idea was cleared with the Puck Building's security but the head honcho, for his own arbitrary reasons, declared the installation unsafe and ordered it removed - stupid exercising of authority by another petty tyrant in a position of power - probably fueled by a fear of litigation.
May 23 Tectonics - Cafe 7 at Kunsthalle - Mainz, Germany
Late flight out from JFK - calm skies and I slept most of the way over. Michael Rennebeck met me at the airport and brought me to the hotel in nearby Wiesbaden. After my rest, we meet for cake and coffee and head to the offices of Intuition at Schott Music in Mainz where I drop off the master tapes and artwork for the reissue of "Do The Don't" which will include five previously unreleased bonus tracks from my music for Dael Orlandersmith's plays "Yellowman" and "Raw Boys." "Do The Don't" was first released by me on zOaR and after it went out of print, I licensed it to Gaff Music. That version of "Do The Don't" sold out rapidly and with Scott Beal's unfortunate passing this year, the label ceased operations.
My concert here was to be the first concert in the cafe of this new contemporary art museum - an experiment, which if successful, would lead to additional musical events. We arrived much after the scheduled soundcheck time to find that the small system was not yet set up and when it finally is hooked up, it's discovered that there are no multi-outlets for power. More waiting until the needed components arrive and then a quick soundcheck followed by a chance for a pre-show espresso and to visit with various friends who are attending including Bernd Leukert and Clair Ludenbach.
First set went well though I never feel deeply connected with the greater flux. It's a completely fresh technical configuration for me that I'm not completely one with yet: a new laptop running a new version of Ableton Live, new floor pedals, and finally a new set of drum grooves that I had worked on in the last few months. I have the solidbody 8-string and my curved soprano sax. Second set very much better - the sound gels and I can dig in with the various instruments. The response is warm and sustained.
Off to a nearby Bengali restaurant for a post-concert dinner then back to the hotel for some sleep.
May 24 Duo Franck Vigroux/E# - Le Weekend Festival - The Tollbooth - Stirling, Scotland
No need to wake up too early as my flight to Edinburgh is at 1310, a very reasonable hour. Frankfurt Airport is quite crowded and the security line is dense with impatient people. I pass through this airport quite often, usually with no problems. A few times a year though, a "random" check is deemed necessary for my guitar - we're taken away and the guitar is wiped down and the cloth put in a molecular sniffer. This was one of those times and while waiting for my things to come through the X-ray, a security officer grabbed my guitar and told me to come with him. I had stupidly zipped my backpack shut before putting it through - usually I leave it open as a reminder to check for everything. But nothing else seemed to be emerging from the scanner and as I felt pressured and a little scattered with that "just arrived in Europe" feeling, I went with him, unknowingly leaving my Powerbook in the X-ray. After the guitar was cleared, I went off to the lounge and a few minutes before boarding, went to fetch my UK work permit from my bag and realized that I had left the Powerbook. PANIC! I had to go back through immigration and then find the proper security area. Much to my relief, they had my computer. I then had to clear security again and rush to the gate just in time to board fhe flight to Scotland.
The terrain looked quite beautiful as we approached the airport with flowering hedges of yellow broom abundantly dotting the landscape near the river and cloud-shrouded mountains in the background. Immigration was a bit complicated here as my work permit was correctly issued through May 25 but didn't account for the fact that I would not be flying right out of the country at midnight after my London show. The issuers of the permit had neglected this logistical necessity and the agents at immigration were in a quandary as to how to proceed. They were quite friendly and not interested in preventing my entry - they just needed to figure out how to prepare paperwork that covered themselves and me, allowing me to stay until my flight out on the 26th. Finally, a novel-length note was written on my tiny landing-card. This could be referenced if necessary when I exited the country or when I next return.
The Tollbooth is an old stone building at the top of the hill by the Old Jail and is directed by Alasdair Campbell. The labyrinthine venue is beautifully renovated inside and the Auditorium has stadium seating for about 140 and excellent acoustics - Alasdair and everyone else with the festival are extremely warm and welcoming. Soundcheck delayed a bit for want of adapters for our European power plugs but once they're found, things proceed quickly. After check, there were snacks in the Green Room after which we went to the old church next door to see concerts of Evan Parker's quartet including Max Eastley and a commissioned piece for the church organ and two percussionists by David Fennessy. Evan's group has a beautiful calm (but with just the right amount of tension!). The organ piece was more of a concerto for percussion and left sorely undeveloped the potential of the great instrument. Up before our set at 10 is the improvising duo of drummer Hamid Drake and guitarist Raymond Boni who issue a riveting stream of consciousness with Raymond generating a wide variety of guitar sounds with the help of his electronics while always drawing on a driving gypsy-flamenco soul and Hamid joyfully creating every-shifting grooves, sounds, and assymetrical patterns on kit and bodhran. After a rapid changeover, Franck and i dug right in. Our duo is aggressive but with lots of careful interaction and spontaneous orchestration. Franck has brought his electric guitar, turntables, and analog synths and processors and has a huge range of sounds to work from. I start on soprano and after a sequence on guitar, move to the piano, an excellent grand with a bright sound and good action. I use the 2 EBows to generate high drones on the piano strings while interspersing clusters, strums, plucks, and low tremelo drones. The last part of our set is loud and dense but we end on a lyrical note to excellent audience feedback.
The post-concert Green Room hang was very enjoyable with Evan, Hamid, Raymond, Annette Peacock, Max, Franck and others until quite late.
May 25 Tectonics - The Baltic - London
Flight to London delayed for one hour so cool my heels in the Edinburgh airport for what feels like way too long. The flight is finally called and is fine except for roughness going through a dramatic cloudscape into Heathrow.
This concert was originally to be held at a club called Charlie Wright's but their renovation is incomplete and so the performance is at the Baltic, an Eastern European restaurant with a Sunday night music series and an excellent kitchen. The equipment setup takes awhile so a chance to catch up with various old friends including Lol Coxhill, Martin Davidson, KJ and Phil. The PA is not ideal but workable especially as I'm set in an alcove that holds about 50 chairs dedicated to listeners who are not eating. Because Monday will be a bank holiday in Britain, the restaurant is unusually crowded with diners for a Sunday and not all of them appreciate live music, especially E# Tectonics! (I know that I prefer NOT to have live music while eating!) Those there just to listen are extremely attentive though and even some of the diners seem to like my set and express their approval. After a short intermission, I do a second long set and an encore after which there are post-concert greetings, CD sales, dinner and wine..
May 26 Tectonics - The Loft - Köln - Germany
London was a late night and the 0530 wakeup seems too early but it's necessary to give myself sufficient time to pack and catch the tube to Heathrow. Weather is extremely bad this morning and I'm not surprised to find the flight delayed, then delayed again, and then again. We finally take off in a thrilling ascent through the high winds and rain clouds then breaking through the cover to reach sunlight at our cruising altitude. It's a short flight of one hour and we land through more rain clouds into Köln.
Filmmaker Pavel Borodin and his crew are there to meet me and film my arrival. We're stuck in traffic heading into town so Pavel takes advantage of this to begin an interview with me. He's made a DVD of a previous Loft solo concert of mine and is working on a more complete documentary focussing on my recent German solo and Terraplane concerts. We do more of the interview at the hotel after which I try to undo my sleep deficit before soundcheck. They pick me up at 6 and we head to The Loft for soundcheck and more filming. Scott Fields is waiting there with a photographer friend to take some photos for our duo. The filmcrew is shooting our shooting - I'm feeling over-doc'ed! Thanks to Loft-meister Hans-Martin Muller and Scott's assistance, setup and soundcheck are quick and I'm ready to begin.
Excellent sound as always at The Loft and a good feeling as well. It's the kind of place that NYC needs so badly: a venue truly dedicated to new music with good equipment but also a fine vibe, conducive to "the hang", so important to any scene. Helping Hans-Martin at the bar is reed-player Frank Gratkowski, a virtuoso whose playing I'm a big fan of and who is now a member of Zeitkratzer.
One long set to great response and then an 8-minute encore that mostly explores ring-modulation with 2 EBows. We all end up down at a river-side cafe in the Altstadt for a late bite.
May 27 "Sharp Plays Monk"/Tectonics - AMR/Cave 12 - Geneva - Switzerland
Civilized start-time and a pleasant journey by train to Geneve via Basel. This concert is a joint production of Cave 12 and the AMR and takes place at a bar called L'Ecurie. Cave 12 was evicted last summer (as were all of the people living there) from it's 20-year span in a large squat. The city told the organization "no more concerts" but not to be daunted, Sixto and crew continued to put on a massive number of events (aided by allies of new music at various other local organizations and venues such as the AMR) and letting the powers-that-be know they would not be giving up the fight. Finally recognizing this, the city will continue to give them some help with productions and eventually find a venue for them. Marion cooks a gourmet dinner for us all and I'm ready to begin.
First set is the Monk for which I'm provided with a Takamine dreadnought acoustic guitar with a cutaway. It's an excellent sounding instrument but plays much too easily - I like a guitar with some fight to it with higher action and a larger neck. The Tak is much more delicate but serves the purpose well and I get right to it with a set consisting of Bemsha Swing, Well You Needn't, Rhythmning, Epistrophy, Round Midnight, and Misterioso. After a short break, I perform an intense Tectonics set. Good conversations with various friends post-concert and a late return to the hotel.
It should be a relaxed morning but there are trucks moving and emptying large metal dumpsters in the street outside the hotel at 0545 making an incredible din so there's no choice but to have an early breakfast then off to the train to Padova via Milano.
May 29 Tectonics - Rassegna di Musica Elettronica - Unwound Club - Padova
The 28th is a very-welcome night off which gives me the opportunity to relax and to see an incredible performance by Debora Petrina with live sound-design by Veniero Rizzardi and then to join them for a great Sardinian dinner followed by the transcendent gelati at Bepi's - made "as his grandfather did". I'm truly sorry that I will miss Carl Stone on Sunday - certainly for his company and music but also for the fact that he is bringing ma-cha from Japan which will be made into green-tea gelati, a new flavor for Bepi.
The Centro d'Arte at the University is presenting this small festival of electronic music which besides Carl and myself included Kernel from France a few days before. Rather than using the auditorium at the University, the local rock club Unwound is being tried as an experiment to bring the seemingly disparate audiences together. This did not work for Kernel - attendance was extremely low.
Soundcheck was quick and easy in the cavernous former warehouse and we soon repaired to a nearby ristorante for another delicious dinner. Back to the club where we were greeted by emptiness - apparently the experiment was still not working. I normally have quite a good audience in Padova but tonight it's only about 30 people who disappear into the darkness of this room for 300. It's hard to tell if it's the rainy weather, the particular night, the venue - sometimes there's just no reason. In any case, I began the concert on soprano but when I added the electronics I found that one side of the monitors were not working and the one that was in operation was way too loud. I gave the usual signals for correction to the sound engineer but things did not get corrected - everything louder but still nothing from the right side. He came to the stage and when he returned to the desk, things improved (though it was still way too loud.) I brought my volumes down in the software and proceeded and soon lost myself in the music. The set lasted one hour to great response from the assembled multitudes and I played a short encore.
May 30 "Sharp Plays Monk - Sharp Plays Sharp" - Museum Of Art and Tradition - Roma
Eurostar high-speed train to Rome - pretty crowded but that's not a problem. The real issue is how the trains have deteriorated. They were never very comfortable to begin with as the seats seemed to be designed for some sort of inert mannequin that did not bend as a human did and did not have knees. Originally they were called Pendolino but after a crash with many fatalities in the mid-90's, the name was changed. In the four first-class cars there was only one working toilet and that had a few centimeters of water on the floor. All of the plastic handles had dirt worked deeply into their surfaces and the automatic doors between cars and to the outside all seemed sticky and unresponsive. When plastic decays it just looks unpleasant. However, wood, metal, bone, other organic materials develop a patina as they age that evokes a very positive emotional response - a strange mixture of longing, sadness, and nostalgia. I'm happy to say that at least the caffeteria worked to spec producing a wonderful ristretto - in Italy, there are priorities.
Did some work and rested at the hotel in the afternoon and arrived at the museum at 7 for soundcheck. Thanks to Giovanni Palumbo for lending me his beautiful Lakewood cutaway dreadnought for this concert. It's a very solidly made guitar but with a deep resonant tone and a burly neck, just to my taste. The venue is part of a large museum complex including anthropological and prehistoric collections. The current exhibition at this museum is one of costumes from all over the world. Good acoustics in the venue though there is a 200ms slapback that I notice when I hit percussive harmonics but which disappears once the people fill the room. This is the last concert in this extremely eclectic series and the audience has turned out in full. I began with a compact Monk set of about 30 minutes then retuned to DAFDAD for elements from Velocity of Hue and Quadrature. After a long ovation, I performed an excerpt of Momentum Anomaly. Great to see Mike Cooper and Maria Galante at the concert. Dinner at a restaurant nearby to celebrate the end of the series that extends well into the night. On the way back to the hotel, there is a procession of dozens of horses with uniformed riders with military escort for a parade on the next day. Once I pack, there's only time for 1 1/2 hours of sleep before heading to the airport for flights to Frankfurt and New York.
June
June 6 All-Guitar SyndaKit as part of "Floating Points" - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
A festival presenting a number of different artists utilizing Stephan Moore's 16-speaker installation at the IPR. Joining me in the ensemble are Mary Halvorson, Ron Anderson, Debra DeSalvo, Ben Tyree, Zach Layton, Marc Sloan, Dave Hofstra, Angela Babin, Marco Cappelli, Zachary Pruitt. We set up in a semi-circle along a longitudinal wall flanking Stephan's equipment rack and have a mono mix in the 3 speakers overhead so that everyone can hear each other. Each musician is also assigned an individual speaker in the space roughly mirroring their physical position. Stephan quickly cooked up a patch in Max/MSP that allowed the individual outputs to be automated randomly in space in a 40% proportion to the direct signal. No amps were used - everyone plugged directly into the system. Soundcheck was quick and allowed sonic orientation to the speaker matrix as well giving newcomers a chance to try the algorithms of the piece. The first half of the evening was Tony Conrad's solo performance using a setup he constructed years ago for his film "Flicker" utilizing sinewave oscillators, some pedals, and various amplified motors which altogether generate a massive wall of intermodulated low tones and occasional high sounds - a deep sonic massage. SyndaKit starts off slowly but by the third iteration, the group felt comfortable with the processes resulting in surprising unisons, massed waves, and shifty grooves. The response from the packed house was sustained and strong.
June 13 "206 Trio" - Stone - NYC
This constellation (Anthony Coleman, John Zorn, E#) had its first performance on the Stone benefit night during my curatorial month there of March '08. Anthony suggested we three do a hit and so we did. We all enjoyed it quite a bit and planned to do it again at some point. Anthony (together with Brad Jones) curated June and suggested that we try the 206 Trio again (named for our building) and make a full set of it. Anthony only played piano, no electronics, and John only his alto sax. I brought a somewhat gaudy Epiphone hollowbody rebuilt by Peter Florance that I purchased about 12 years ago and only used in the studio except for one concert with poet Ronny Someck. I decided to play without any effects pedals except for distortion but brought my slides, springs, rods, and EBows. The guitar is lightweight and resonant with a big comfortable neck, a fairly flat fingerboard, and three P90 pickups giving an open and throaty sound but also yielding clear bell-like tones. It sounded and felt great through the house Fender Deluxe. We began with no noodling, just energy, power, challenges, and lots of ideas. We played a number of pieces ranging in length from just a few minutes to over ten to the packed house with each piece retaining a certain unity of gesture. The audience demanded an encore and we obliged with one more short one and called it a night. It will happen again.
June 14 Orchestra Carbon - Stone - NYC
8pm - Quarks Swim Free
10pm - SyndaKit
Intermittent thunderstorms all day - very typical Carbon weather! We assembled at 6:30 to go over Quarks, especially for the benefit of those who haven't played it before, and did the same at 7pm for SyndaKit. The two pieces have these players in common: Rachel Golub-violin, Judith Insell-viola, Okkyung Le-cello, Reuben Radding-bass, Kevin Ray-bass, Chris McIntire-trombone, Danny Tunick-percussion. For Quarks we added Anthony Coleman on piano and for SyndaKit there were Emily Manzo-piano and Wu Na-gu-jin. I conducted Quarks as well as playing bass clarinet and played both electro-acoustic guitar and bass clarinet in SyndaKit. First set was excellent with Quarks taking a very dark and emotional cast. SyndaKit was very different: the jungle-like humidity from the nonstop rain gave the entire ensemble a pellucid sheen, gamelan-like, and trance-y. Deep grooving. Good audience and response.
June 18 Edwin Torres 50th Birthday Celebrity Roast - Bowery Poetry Club - NYC
To celebrate his 50th, Edwin decided to invite various friends to do short performances that would somehow take that odd American form, "the roast" (where you deeply and viciously insult your friends and colleagues to demonstrate your love and respect for them.) Not really my style so I decided to write an "Edwin Torres" piece, a poem that somehow captured some element of Edwin's unique and completely indescribable style. In operation, I left ellipses after phrases speaking about Edwin's poetry that I filled with short metaphorical saxophone solos on my curved soprano. It sounds more complex and cerebral than it actually was and was fun to do and well received - Edwin totally got it for which I was grateful. Also attending and performing were various friends and colleagues including Edwin's wife Elisabeth Castagna, Dael Orlandersmith, Leeann Brown, Bob Holman, Latasha Diggs, and many more.
June 20 "If Winter III" Premiere - Album For The Young (A4TY) - Bloomingdale School Of Music - NYC
Composed for students at this small conservatory uptown, this is the continuation of "If Winter-Parts I & II" composed last year for them. Not an easy piece, it uses syncopations, polyrhythms, and simple transformational algorithms to generate shiftimg textures sometimes reminiscent of Banda polyphonic horn music of the Central African Republic and even jazzy funk. Instrumentation was piccolo, flute, 2 alto saxophones, trombone, 2 violin, cello, piano, and 2 percussionists. Faculty members Katy Luo (piano) and Clay Greenberg (conductor) greatly facilitated the learning process for the students and added an element of polish to the energetic performance. I was very moved by the entire event as it was inspiring to see young composers and performers (the youngest born 2001!) present their work with enthusiasm, aplomb, and an incipient professionalism. The piece "Time of Fear" by seven-year old Jasmine Ogiste was startling in its beautiful dark dissonant harmonies on a simple rhythmic framework.
June 27 Marco Cappelli performs "Amygdala" - Oscar Ghiglia celebration - Mannes College of Music
Ghiglia has taught many many modern classical guitarists, Marco among them. As a bridge to the more traditional first half of the concert virtuosically performed by Elena Papandreou, Marco chose a suite by Ginastera and the first Ko-Tha by Giacinto Scelsi as well as selections from Extreme Guitar Project: Anthony Coleman, Nik Didkovsky, and mine. He opened the concert with Amygdala and I could sense that his timing was off - tempi were slow and there were other minor problems with transitions. Still, it was a stirring performance that met with great response. When I mounted the stage to congratulate Marco, he whispered to me, "Jet lag" (he had just returned to NYC he day before.)
July 20 Juilliard Musicians perform "Homage Leroy Jenkins" - MOMA Summergarden
One concert this month and for it, I'm a composer only, not performing. The month has been spent cleaning and reconfiguring Studio zOaR (activities both long overdue and most necessary), composing, mixing the Willie Dixon Project recording, and being a family man.
Last April, Joel Sachs asked if I had written anything for the trio of piano, clarinet, and violin for this concert so I offered to compose something, The recent death of Leroy Jenkins lay heavy on my mind so I decided to make an homage to him. Leroy was a formidable violinist and composer and early member of Chicago's AACM. I first met him in March 1972 as a student at Bard College when our jazz club brought his incredible Revolutionary Ensemble (with Sirone on bass and Jerome Cooper on drums) up for a concert. They combined the intensity of Hendrix with the delicacy and intimacy of a chamber trio. Over the years, Leroy and I became quite friendly and would run into each other on odd corners of our city or on the stages of European festivals. This through-composed 9-minute piece includes jazzy gestures, polyrhythmic grooving, and textural transformations - it requires virtuoso musicianship to render its intricacies expressive. I wanted it to have the feeling of a well-structured improvisation as well as a sense of inevitability. Joel played the piano, Sean Rice the clarinet, and Emilie-Anne Gendron the violin. There was a 50-50 thunderstorm forecast early in the day but good weather prevailed and the concert proceeded outdoors in the Sculpture Garden to a capacity audience. The night was hot and humid and bats fluttered overhead as the sky darkened, hopefully hunting the ubiquitous mosquitoes. "Homage Leroy Jenkins" closed the concert and the players mustered incredible energy especially when considering the length of the previous pieces. The unobtrusive sound system allowed all details to be heard and the piece was very well received.
August 12 "Momentum Anomaly" Solo - Bowery Poetry Club - NYC
The only gig this month, a welcome change from my studio routine, is a short solo guitar set. I've been composing "Dark Matters" for the Slovakian group Veni for an October premiere in Bratislava as well as working on rhythm tracks for the Tectonics "Abstraction Distraction" CD and recording a 20 minute solo slab piece, "Ground Return" for the Zelphabet label.
This gig was organized by bassist Adam Minkoff and features his band Harry Lime performing beautifully twisted arrangements of classic flim scores and topping it all off with a Zappa medley. It's a humid night and my guitar refuses to stay in tune but there's no point in fighting it - the Godin's hyper-real sound carries the harmonics and microgrooves of the piece anyway.
September 1 Velocity of Hue solo - Angel City Jazz Festival - Los Angeles
Smooth flight out of JFK and enough time after landing for a double espresso before my 2:30pm hit at the first edition of this eclectic Hollywood festival organized by promoter Rocco Somozzi at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Barnsdall Art Park, sitting atop a hill facing the Griffith Observatory atop another hill. Rocco has long been an enthusiastic and creative supporter of LA's new jazz scene and has been booking shows at the Metropole restaurant these last few years (where I did a 3-day residency in 2005.) It's great to hook up with many old friends: Paul Diamond, Carl Stone, Nels Cline, Wayne Horvitz, Arthur Blythe, Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamera, Vinnie Golia, Alex Cline, Steuart Liebig, Jeff Gauthier, Tim Young. Likewise great to meet musicians like Leni Stern, Scott Amendola, Ben Goldberg, Keith Lowe, Emily Hay, and more.
My set is in the 300 seat Gallery Theater and concerts are split between there and an outdoor stage. Soundcheck is quick as the the room and stage have excellent acoustics and the Godin as always sounds just fine plugged in direct with no EQ. I perform Velocity of Hue material for nearly 40 minutes then a quick Monk medley as an encore, one eye on the clock as I want to keep within my 45 minute slot. After I take my bow and head offstage, the stage manager runs up and whispers "play some more - Wayne's still at the airport." I retune and perform a 10-minute slice of Momentum Anomaly to great response.
After-set hang with various friends until it's time to head off to the nearby Armenian/Thai neighborhood for an incredible Thai meal at Jitlada, a restaurant fave of Carl's who steered the ordering, which included catfish with sator beans (AKA "stinky beans"), fish kidneys in spicy turmeric curry, green mussels, and escargot in coconut and tea leaf curry. Killer. Back to the Barnsdall to catch more sounds, culminating in Nels' quintet performing a set of Jimmy Giuffre tunes. Post-gig hang and eventually back to my hotel for a few hours of sleep before the 5:30 wake-up to get to the airport. A few of us are heading out from LAX at this time but we're delayed as a drummer who shall be nameless has overslept and is exceedingly slow in getting down to the vehicle. We're all looking nervously at clocks and each other until he finally emerges and we set out through the already traffic-jammed Hollywood streets at sunrise on this first day after Labor Day. We make it to LAX in time for me to check in and get to the gate. I hope the others fared as well. Fine flight back with incredibly dramatic views of the Grand Canyon and later Manhattan as we approach the airport. We fly right over my studio and then my apartment building and if I had a better lens on my camera, I could have seen the twins playing in the playground outside.
September 9 Boris Salvodelli/E# - The Stone - NYC
Boris handed me his CD "Insanology" at a Terraplane concert in Milano last year and I was blown away by its power, musicality, technique and humor. He's a singer with a huge range, both in tessitura and sounds and uses looping delays and processors to further take things into the zone. We met again in Padova a few months ago and he proposed that we collaborate on his upcoming trip to NYC to which I agreed. We spent a day improvising at Studio zOaR and recording the results to ProTools and then played a concert at Stone the next evening. Boris spreads sheets around him with his texts printed large which makes for beautiful staging. He began the set with 3 of his "Insanology" pieces after which I joined him for a long and intense improvisation and finally, one more, introspective but no less intense, as an encore for the wildly appreciative audience. The concert was also recorded to hard-disk.
September 11 "In The Shadow Of No Towers" - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
This project was created by Maria Isabel Gouverneur, Anne Rothshild, and Marco Cappelli from the immensely powerful book by Art Spiegelman about his experience of 9/11 and its aftermath. Anne and Isa made a 60' video collage from processed scans of the images from the book. The music was composed and performed by Syntax Error which In addition to Marco on guitars, features Daniele Ledda - live electronics and Roberto Pellegrini - drums. I was invited in to play guitar, bass clarinet, and electronics and Eric Bogosian narrated. The whole program was beautifully realized and well-structured. The only problem was that the music under the text was loud and rhythmic and Issue's simple PA did not offer sufficient headroom or monitoring for Eric to read comfortably over the din. The quiet passages had no narration, ironically enough. Still, the total effect was quite moving and the audience responded.
September 18 E# Concert - New England Conservatory, Brown Hall - Boston
At the behest of Composition/Improvisation Department faculty member Anthony Coleman, I was brought up to NEC as an artist-in-residence to give two lectures, meet with students, and present a concert of my works using the student musicians. Too-early train from NYC and after checking into my hotel and caffeinating, I head over to the school to rehearse SyndaKit. Anthony has primed the students and they're all great players. On first hearing, they'd been approaching the piece very much as if it was written by Steve Reich. I opened up their sounds and vocabulary and by the time we had to stop, things were working very nicely. After a brief coffee break, I give my first talk on Strategies for the Composer/Improviser . This included a couple of demos of solo guitar to illustrate certain points as well as autobiographical material to present my work in the context of its development since I first began improvising on guitar in 1968 (or was it just making noise?) I ealt with the social nature of improvising and the gradations in the spectrum of organizing open ensemble music. Another coffee break and then it's the very efficient and productive rehearsal of Dispersion of Seeds by a string quartet formed for the occasion of three students with faculty member Tanya Kalmanovich on violin. Finally, I meet up with Anthony for some incredible tapas after which we hook up with a number of the students for a great Thai dinner in nearby Brookline.
The next morning begins with a short but intense rehearsal of Quarks Swim Free with seven players, a break, and then my second talk, Algorithmic Approaches for Ensembles. In this I deal with the development of my ideas on the nature of compositions that exist as instruction sets that yield always-varying internal detail while maintaining the core identity. I touch on my earliest such work, the "Hudson River Compositions" of 1974, written when I lived in a little house on the Hudson upstate in Germantown with Steve Piccolo, his wife Wendy, John & Evan Lurie, three dogs, and seven cats. I lead up to SyndaKit, Quarks, and the latest graphic scores, including Seize Seas Seeth Seen. The next morning we rehearse Quarks again with the full ensemble of eleven musicians, a break, and then spend the afternoon sound-checking at Brown Hall. The acoustics are excellent and the set-up is orderly and relaxed.
The concert begins with my solo on the Godin, a compact version of Momentum Anomaly followed by an exciting 30' set of Quarks - the players all seem charged up and attentive. A short break after which the string quartet gives a beautiful manifestation of Dispersion of Seeds, the hall acoustics allowing the overtones and difference tones to bloom. Finally, SyndaKit - a magical dervish version of high concentration and energy. Overall, I was incredibly impressed by the level of musicianship displayed by the students - not just great fingers but great ears as well. After various greetings and good-byes, it's time to climb into Tanya's Jeep for the 4-hour drive back to NYC, arriving at a very civilized 0315.
September 20 Fretless Guitar Festival - Crash Mansion
A great collection of players and instruments, all dedicated to fretlessness - see http://www.unfretted.com/ for more info. I meet a number of interesting musicians and ogle some gorgeous handmade instruments. I've brought the Godin Glissentar, a fretless 11-string guitar with a single low string plus five double-courses, very much like an oud with a long scale-length. Tonight, I've tuned it to D Bb D Eb Bb D for Momentum Anomaly and it sounds bright and resonant through the house Super Reverb.
September 22 Cleanfeed Festival - Duo Scott Fields/E# - The Living Theater - NYC
A four-night festival of artists associated with the Cleanfeed label of Portugal. Scott Fields comes in from Germany for this event and it's our first chance to play together since our April hit in Lisbon. He has't brought a guitar so I lend him my 1946 Martin OO18 and I play my Dell Arte. The venue is a smallish Lower East Side basement taken over by the venerable Living Theater, recently returned from their self-imposed exile in Italy. The room is raw and reverberant and we decide to play completely acoustically, a calculated risk, trusting that the audience will pay enough attention so as to not drown us out with chit-chat. This pays off as the full house is extremely attentive, their focus and deep listening proving to be very inspirational. We've had no time to rehearse so just dig right into the pieces - some moments of confusion here and there but overall a very concentrated set with lots of intricate counterpoint and some teeth-gritting high-intensity crescendi.
September 26 Terraplane/Tectonics/Bootstrappers - Spielboden - Dornbirn, Austria
This brief sleep deprivation experiment otherwise known as a Terraplane tour) begins in Dornbirn. Curtis Fowlkes is committed to a Charlie Haden tour so my old friend Art Baron subs on trombone. Art is a fantastic musician and veteran of the bands of Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. The band has flown out of NYC the day before me and I arrive on the day of the gig with a nice flight to Frankfurt and on to Friedrichshafen getting out just ahead of two fronts converging on the New York area and threatening high winds and lots of rain. Arriving in Frankfurt and attempting to check in for my next flight, I make the unfortunate discovery that United has never issued the tickets for my inter-Europe flights, only the NY-Frankfurt return. I have to leave the secure area to go out to the ticket office to straighten this out but there's plenty of time to do this and even have a bit of breakfast before the security ritual. Landed at 0930 where I'm picked up by organizer Peter Fuessl and dead asleep in my room at the hotel by 1100, rising at 1500 to meet the band and go over to soundcheck at this cultural center converted from an old factory. Strange room sound, a bit diffuse, but good equipment so it's all workable. I'm using a very different setup for this tour because of the need for lighter and more compact baggage. The guitar is a 1987 Hohner G3T copy of a Steinberger headless guitar that I've modified with 2 Duncan L'il 59'er pickups. This instrument is far superior to my ears over the Steinberger because it's made completely from wood, not composites - it's also a lot easier on the shoulders than a normal-sized guitar. I've also brought a Dynalap custom-made 8-string lapsteel that mounts on a microphone stand, obviating the need for the heavy steel legs used on the '58 Fender (also quite weighty) that I normally use. This new steel has a Truetone pickup and sounds bright and articulate though without the magisterial depth and presence of the Fender. I can put both the steel and Hohner in a shoulderbag and carry it on the plane with me. This concert is a bit of a profile of my work and features three projects. First up is Bootstrappers: Tony Lewis, Dave Hofstra, & I as an improvising power trio. I've defined four basic grooves/tonalities for us with open sections between: an eighth-note pulse in E, a jagged funk in C, a rolling-tom feel in A, and an atonal hyperwalk. We revisit the first to finish up. Our set has some intense moments but I just can't tell at the moment if it came together. Next after a short break is the debut performance of the Abstraction Distraction set of Tectonics. I had just finished recording this material a few days before and was anxious to try performing it. For the recording, I only played tenor and soprano saxes, analog synths, bass, and drum programming - no guitar. These recordings (minus the horn parts) have become my backing tracks for this set, with my soprano processed through the Eventide delay, quite useful for creating textures for segueing between grooves. It's a severe test for me to play a non-stop 45-minute set on the sax, especially the soprano with it's tight embouchure. Because of baggage and our train travel, it was impossible for me to bring the tenor as well so it's only the little curved horn this tour. Of course, the more I play it, the easier it gets. After the intermission, the full band takes the stage with "Work or Leave." Everyone is up and focussed and despite a few minor train wrecks, we play an arching and powerful set that is well over two hours in length to great response. We finish up with "Dance For Lance" and "Killing Floor" for encores.
September 27 Aula Lienz Gymnasium - Lienz
Train out from Dornbirn at a civilzed time and change to a bus in Kitzbuhel. I normally hate buses but this one is comfortable and has panoramic windows to take in the Alpine sights as we wind through the mountains to Lienz on the border with Italy. Our concert is produced by Ummigummi, the Mutzschlechner brothers, who I've worked wih a number of times before, so it feels like a homecoming. For this concert, we're in a beautfiul auditorium in the local high school. Excellent acoustics compounded by a good sound engineer with good equipment all make for a great onstage experience. Two longish sets to a very giving and responsive crowd. Our encore is an extended "Wang Dang Doodle".
September 28 Moods - Zurich, Switzerland
We're back at the hotel in Lienz by midnight but have a brutal 0400 call to make our train to Innsbruck to change for Zurich. The later alternative involves three changes including one with a prohibitively short interval - with trains seeming to always run late these days, it's not worth taking the risk. What little sleep time we have is destroyed as the streets of Lienz are filled with noisy drunks punctuating the stillness with sporadic shouting, singing, and retching. ZZZ's on the empty train then coffee in Innsbruck and on to the next train with an early afternoon arrival giving us plenty of hotel chill time before the soundcheck. Excellent equipment (including a fine espresso machine) and staff at Moods makes for a quick and pleasant soundcheck. The room is acoustically tuned and very dry so we can hear everything clearly on stage. Early start-time and two lengthy sets to an enthusiastic audience. The improvised segments of "They Say We Is" go deep into "On the Corner"/"Get Up With It" territory. We finish with "Killing Floor" and "Wang Dang Doodle" which includes a drum solo from Tony over the vamp. Great to see Saadet Turkoz and Patrik Landolt at the post-gig hang. Back to the hotel before midnight and an 0600 call for the trains to Feldkirch, Innsbruck, and Wien.
September 29 Porgy & Bess - Wien, Austria
One of those days: that 6am call felt far too early though we were soon on the train heading off to Feldkirch and made our change without problem to the train to Innsbruck. This train ran slow (probably due to track construction) and we fell behind schedule, late enough to miss our connection to Wien. We had pulled all of our equipment out of its stowing places in preparation to bolt from the train when the conductor told us to wait for Wörgl to connect to Wien so we had to put it all back to allow incoming and outgoing passengers to pass - no small task. The train to Wien is packed but at least we're on our way and make up some time. The club had emailed ahead to tell us that we would not be picked up at the station and to take taxis. This is usually easy from the Westbahnhof but on this day there were no cabs, and the few that were there were small - no match for the general burliness of the band and our sizeable luggage. Forty-five minutes later we're at the hotel (ironically, in walking distance from the station if you're traveling light but impossible with equipment) with just a few minutes there before heading to soundcheck at the club. We're in two cabs, one of which gets lost and takes quite some time to arrive. We find that none of the backstage rider is taken care. Fortunately, Ronny the sound engineer is completely on it and starts getting all of our technical needs met. Quick sound check and it's just a question of waiting for dinner, hoping it arrives in enough time that we'll be able to digest before hitting the stage. Maybe it's all of the minor annoyances or maybe it's the fact that the Porgy always has a warm vibe, but we're burning right from the start of the set. Second set is even better and we're called back by the full house for two encores: the Howlin' Wolf medley and then Dance For Lance. Finally back at the hotel after biz, greetings, and good-byes, where Mingus and I both do interviews. It's 0230 before I get to bed and the 0600 call is even more harsh this morning. Beautiful hotel breakfast and we're off to the Sudbahnhof for a direct train to Ljubljana.
September 30 Cankarjev Dom - Ljublana, Slovenia
No changes means a chance to really relax and that coupled with a Croatian dining car all make for a pleasant trip. Early arrival also means a chance to chill in the hotel before soundcheck. Terraplane performed here in 2005 but this roomftop club has been improved since then with a Meyer sound system and a solid stage. Quick check then off to dinner returning shortly before our start time. The stage sound is loud but diffuse with some strange reflections from the windows and possibly some phasing problems with the PA. It's not enough to get in our way and we play a hot first set with an especially good "Oil Blues." In the break we see various old friends including Mike Benson and Melitta. Extended second set with an encore of "Dance For Lance." Back to the hotel and an interview then a luxurious five hours of sleep. We arrive at the station 30 minutes before our train to Salzburg departs and we're hoping we can find the proper place on the platform for our car. Train stations in Germany and Austria have the Wagenstandanzeiger on the platform to show travelers the proper location - this is sometimes critical info as trains often split up in different cities and one needs to be in the proper car. One also does not want to drag lots of luggage i.e instrument cases through a crowded train or platform with everyone else also trying to find their spot. In any case, there is no train map at this station. I find a conductor and ask him if there is a train map or if he knows where the 1st Class cars will be? He tells me that "The 1st class cars will have "1" on their sides." I try to clarify further asking about where on the platform the car will be. He tells me "Just ask the conductor on the train when it arrives." Right. Off to the info booth where they have the same amount of information. Finally, I find someone who has a definite answer, "It's at the front." This proves to be easily found and we're soon on our way to Salzburg and from there to Wels.
October 1 Alter Schlahthof - Wels, Austria
Always great to see Schlachthof director Wolfgang Wasserbauer who meets us at the station and brings our equipment to the venue giving us a chance to rest in the hotel before soundcheck. Quick set-up and a bite. Nearly everyone in the band has a laptop and the scene of all of our heads buried into the use of free wifi pre-performance is amusing. It's our last show so everyone's wired up and burning. Both sets are slamming, with "Killing Floor" and "Dance For Lance" a fine way to finish. Post-gig hang then back to the hotel. The band members will catch a train at 0740 to Munich for flights home or elsewhere while I'm off at 0430 (more sleep dep!) for an early flight to Frankfurt and from there another to Torino, Italy where I'm met by Stefano Bassanese for the 90-minute drive to Cuneo. Near my gate in Frankfurt run into Ted Reichman who is on tour with Claudia Quintet. Nice surprise as I rarely see Ted anymore since his re-location to Boston.
October 2-4 Workshop and Concert of Ensemble Pieces - Sala Concerti - Conservatorio da Cuneo - Italy
Five years ago composer Stefano Bassanese had extended an invitation to me to come to the conservatory in Cuneo where he teaches to be an artist-in-residence and work with the students to present a concert. It was only a question of finding the right time in my insane schedule when it could be possible. This three-day gap after the Terraplane tour proved to be perfect (although in retrospect, too short!) Cuneo is in the middle of Piamonte, an incredibly beautiful part of Italy near the border with France, with arguably, the best cuisine in a country filled with amazing food. I arrived in the middle of the Chestnut Festival, the main street closed off to cars and set up with food stands with all sorts of local products as well as roasting pits for the chestnuts. It's also the season for tartufo, the rare and pungent white truffles. After a short and extremely necessary coma at the hotel and my first fantastic caffe doppio (one can find good coffee throughout Europe but absolutely nothing matches the coffee in Italy) I meet the 20 students who have signed up for my workshops. I give a talk on my approach to composition and electroacoustic music. This is, as usual, semi-autobiographical, as I detail my evolution as a composer and performer in the context of developments in philosophy, software, and hardware over the last 40 years. For the concert, we will present "SyndaKit", "Quarks Swim Free", and "Dispersion of Seeds" as well as two solo pieces that will be collaborations with electro-acoustic processors controlled for one by Stefano, and for the other by Benjamin Thigpen, another faculty member. Student electronicists will deploy different processing strategies as well in the ensemble pieces (though Dispersion will be left acoustic albeit slightly amplified.) Finally, Stefano informs me of the presence of a vocalist in the workshop, Francesca so that evening (after our first fantastic dinner) I compose a graphic score for her plus processing, "What Place Of When", with a text "remix" based on the text I wrote for my 2003 chamber work "No Time Like The Stranger." The first SyndaKit rehearsal on Friday is rough in the beginning (the jazz musicians in the workshop have their musical ideas quite formed and it's a problem to get them out of their usual ways of approaching music) but begins to take shape by the time we break for lunch (a celebrated event here.) In the afternoon I first meet with the vocalist to work on her piece. It's a concentrated meeting and very productive. Next I rehearse the string quartet with excellent results - the players are fine musicians and very open. Finally, a long Quarks rehearsal that proves to be quite frustrating for me. Veniero Rizzardi (now also on faculty) is there to translate and explain but not everything seems to be understood. It's also difficult to keep the players attention focussed and to get them to remember how everything works plus there is the same problem with the jazz players. When we break I'm feeling that we'll have to cancel Quarks for the concert. We drive out to Stefano's house about 10km out of Cuneo where he prepares a superlative meal with white truffles on gnocchi and the barolo from a nearby vineyard. Quarks is first on the agenda the next morning and begins to work as it should. I'm very much relieved, even enthusiastic, by the time we finish. One gratifying result of this is to see players who have never improvised before taking chances and enjoying it - realizing that they can trust their impulses, fingers, ears! Next is a rehearsal with Francesca with processing added by Veniero and Bruno. The sound system is set up to make an 8-chanel cube and their Max patches work with resonance, resampling, pitch-shifting, delay, and spatialization to completely transform the vocals (while retaining the human voice in all its beauty.) Another good string quartet rehearsal and finally I check my solo sax with Benjamin's patch and my guitar with Stefano's (which needs some tweaking!) The concert hall is full when we begin with introductions by Stefano and my explanation of the first half with translation by Veniero. We begin with SoloA for soprano sax and electronics, Ben providing ethereal and guttural transformations of my sounds. Next is the quartet in an intense version of "Dispersion of Seeds" followed by "What Place Of When". We finish the set with a 20-minute version of Quarks employing just three of the eleven modules but with great results. Two of the electroacoustic students use wireless handheld mics to "interview" different musicians as the piece proceeds - their amplification shifting the focus and sonic balance. We meet with enthusiastic applause from the audience then break to reconfigure the stage. Second set begins with SoloB, Stefano providing dramatic processing to my guitar improvisation. Next is "SyndaKit", the ensemble digging right in and meeting up in some dynamic unisons. We're all quite pleased with the event and after a series of goodbyes, head to the ristorante to celebrate. Stefano picks me up the next morning for the 90-minute drive to Torino and my flight to Frankfurt.
October 5 Barry Guy Orchestra Featuring E# - Feuerwache - Mannheim
I was excited to hear of the invitation for me to appear as a guest with bassist Guy's virtuosic all-star ensemble as part of the Enjoy Jazz Festival. I've long enjoyed his incredible sound, technique, and ideas as well as that of the individual members of his formidable lineup, which included Evan Parker, Paul Lytton, Herb Robertson, Mats Gustaffson, Hans Koch, Johannes Bauer, Agusti Fernandez, Per-Ake Holmlander, and Raymond Strid. Some of the players I've been friends with for years, some I'd never met. Barry created an improvisational structure for the first set which featured a number of interactions in three expanding and overlapping sections. Great inventiveness from all and a rising flood of energy. After a short break, the orchestra returned to perform Guy's extended work "Entropy", a piece that balanced composed and improvised sections. Barry asked me join them on the stage towards the end for the final sections of this wonderfully teeth-gritting piece. Ecstatic audience response and a fine hang post-concert. Three hours of sleep before my ride to Frankfurt airport in the rain and darkness to check in for my NYC flight, which turns out to be smooth and easy.
October 11-14 Duo with Erdem Hrvacgliou - Akbank Jazz Festival - Istanbul, Turkey
Hardly enough time in NYC to see the fam, write some liner notes for the next Zeitkratzer CD box and work on some other little projects and then I'm back at the airport. Thirty minutes of bumpy jumpy lurching over the Sea of Maine after takeoff but then a smooth flight to Munich and then to Istanbul - I manage to sleep through most of both of them. Driving in from the airport along the Bosporus, there is a fantastic sight of hundreds of freighter ships awaiting escort throught the Straits. I stay at Erdem's spacious and well-equipped studio while we work on a duo recording. The first evening is spent discussing recording strategies over a great Turkish dinner.
Quick setup the next morning after breakfast and pretty soon we're making tracks, beginning with guitar duos. Erdem uses a Les Paul and lots of processing with both pedals and rack equipment. I have the Godin, a Digitech processor, my Eventide, and my soprano sax. The duos each take a different sonic approach and flow effortlessly. By the time we break for dinner, we've recorded over 80 minutes to be mixed and edited at a later time. The next day, we begin creating tracks using drum sequences - Erdem using a Korg Electribe and effects - I use Ableton Live to play and process soundfiles on my laptop plus my Eventide. Each of us improvises to the other's grooves. I break out the soprano sax for one of these tracks and we finish with a guitar/sax duo. My sax is processed through my effects as well. Lots of material to sort through for mixing and editing!
Ilgin from the festival comes to the studio to bring me to my hotel for the next two days. It's near Babylon, the club where we will play, and looks to be a stylish 4-star joint. I'm brought to my room and am horrified to find that it's just a bit larger than the bed and has NO window! Unacceptable! I go back to the reception - fortunately, Ilgin is still there and the next 30 minutes are spent with the festival office trying to find me another hotel as this one is completely booked. Eventually I'm settled into a spacious room at a much nicer hotel nearby. A little later it's out to meet Erdem, Esin, and Alexandra Ivanoff for a late dinner at an outdoor cafe in an alley whose ambience includes numerous street cats plus wandering musicians, some excellent and some just annoying.
Arriving for soundcheck at our appointed time the next afternoon, we find that the other band for the evening, a "jazz-lite fusion" group, is still onstage, rehearsing and seemingly completely uninterested in stopping. After another five minutes, they quit. However, the club worker who seemed to be dealing with the stage (and who speaks fine English) acts as if he doesn't understand when I say that the various guitar & bass pedals and the large keyboard setup need to be moved back just one meter to allow us room for our equipment. This "discussion" goes on for 10 minutes with my polite insistence meeting a wall. It's time to play the insane asshole card, one which I rarely indulge in. I tell him that if the keyboard isn't moved, there are three options: we will cancel, we will setup on the floor in front of the stage, or I will throw the keyboards off myself. Finally, this makes an impression and everything is moved and we build our setup. Time wasted: 20 minutes. At a certain point, I realize that my soprano sax in its bag is nowhere to be found. I scan the room to no avail. I remember putting it down on a table (or do I?) I run back to the hotel but it's not in my room - I'm distressed. When I return, I see it sitting on a table near the bar. I had looked there before. Had the table been moved? Was someone messing with me? No real time to decide - I was just happy that my horn was there. The sound engineer, Jemal, was excellent and we were up and running very quickly with clear and powerful monitor sound on stage. After a bite, it's time to hit.
The house was packed and some were genuinely enthusiastic to our set - others most definitely not. Fair amount of talking during quieter moments though cheering for certain parts. Heavy smoking throughout - I'd forgotten how toxic it feels to play in such an environment. The finale gets serious applause in some corners but a certain indifference in others. Okay. The lite-fuzak group fares much better - their unswinging and forgettable (but competent) wanking was loved by many. Butch Morris taught in the jazz academy in Istanbul for a number of years and told me that a continuous frustration was that in this country of such an incredible musical heritage, the young musicians all aspire to sounding like Yellowjackets or Spyrogyra. Post-concert hang at nearby cafe until late and back to the hotel to pack.
I have one hour of light sleep and then down to the lobby at 0330 for my pickup to the airport for my 0530 flight to Ljubljana and from there to Vienna. I'm surprised to find that the airport is packed. Two huge tourist buses are disgorging _ I manage to run ahead to the security lines that one faces before even entering the terminal. This was a good move as I would have been waiting for a long time to get through if I had been behind the crowd. Smooth takeoff north over the Black Sea in light rain but as we climb we enter an ice storm. We stay in it as we head west through Bulgaria. The storm must continue to quite a high-altitude because we stay in it for nearly one hour, bouncing and lurching. I'm sitting forward and the lights on the engines illuminate the driving crystals of ice and snow - an unearthly and beautiful sight that my camera cannot capture. We finally reach calm air and, exhausted, I doze off until just before our landing in Ljubljana. One hour to kill there and then a short flight to Vienna where I'm met by Veni keyboardist Peter Zagar, who brings me to Bratislava, about 45 minutes away, where I sink into a deep coma in my hotel room before heading to the first rehearsal.
October 18 Veni Ensemble premieres "Dark Matters" - ISCM Slovakia Evening for New Music - Bratislava
For the 20th anniversary of Veni Ensemble, director Daniel Matej asked me to compose a piece for the group with the orchestration of flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, trombone, accordion, violin, viola, cello, piano, synthesizer plus my own guitar as a solo instrument. Also taking part in this festival with pieces for Veni were composers David Dramm, Hilary Jeffrey, Peter Graham, and Marián Lejava (who also conducted the ensemble quite beautifully.) The piece was composed during August 2008 and title, "Dark Matters" referred both to the heretofore invisible materials thought to make up the greater proportion of the universe and also to the state of American politics in the current presidential campaign with the Republicans and other forces of reaction proving that they have no shame with their hypocrisy, lies, slanders, and ruthless manipulations. By now, close to the actual date of the election, I'm guardedly optimistic as it looks as if the greater proportion of American people are seeng through the nonsense - still, call me paranoid but I believe there is no depth that the Right will not sink to preserve their hold on power. First rehearsal showed me that the group, all excellent players, could easily handle the technical requirements of the written material. There was much work to be done on the conceptual approaches taken in two of the sections. In one, the players start with a unison ostinato but each has a different "target pitch" which is elongated in duration with each repetition, transforming the horizontal riff into the vertical - a drone with scattered conterpoint. In the other, the players are given a menu of rhythmic variations which they loop with the freedom to transform the timbre of the note or its octave. The players may change their loops at any point and may make their choice based on the sounds of those nearest to them, much as in SyndaKit. Everything began working much better the second day, Thursday. That evening a number of use went to see Animal Collective perform at a nearby space. Friday morning, Daniel Matej, David Dramm, and I drove to nearby Heinburg just over the Austrian border to see an exhibition of historic electronic musical instruments at the Kulturfabrik, a small but well-presented gallery dramatically overlooking the Donau. The third rehearsal on Friday day was open to the public as a seminar and I began with a short talk about my compositional and notational strategies in general and specifically about Dark Matters after which we ran through the piece, first in its entirety and then work on one section. Saturday was spent with soundcheck and dress rehearsal. The hall was packed and all of the performances were outstanding. The evening began with Peter Graham's spatialized meditation on Cage and composers followed by Marian's tersely modernist medley of nine short segments. David Dramm experienced the horror of an unplugged microphone cable rendering his vocals inaudible. The prceedings were stopped and the problem solved and he followed with a stirring performance, his raspy smoky vocals perfectly offset by the darkly jazzy music, evocative of Steely Dan and Frank Zappa in the best way. After an intermission, Hillary Jeffrey's sinewave + orchestra piece nodded to Tibet after which we performed Dark Matters. Audience response to Dark Matters and to the entire evening was rapturous and after a number of encores, I grabbed Hilary and suggested that we do an improvised duet. It was by turns spiky, jazzy, noisy, and grooving, packed into 5 minutes. A great way to end the evening after which we retired to a cafe adjacent to the opera for dinner. Early the next morning, Daniel drove me to Vienna where I caught a flight to London.
October 19 BBC "Somethin' Else" recording - solo at Charlie Wright's - London
Smooth flight to London and a relatively snarl-free ride to the studio in Central London. Producer Robert Abel meets me and gets me set up while he goes on a caffeine run. I decie to play a few short pieces and one longer one. In D- tuning, I perform Velocity of Hue and Euwrecka, retune to Spanish tuning for a version of Monk's Bemsha Swing and then play a 12-minute version of Momentum Anomaly. For an encore, I tune to DADGAD for a slide piece in the class of my "Which Delta" compositions, drawing equally upon Delta blues and my own vocabulary. We fnally record a short interview and then it's off to the nearby club Charlie Wright's for setup/soundcheck. Charlie Wright's is run by an affable Ghanaian named John and has a wide variety of activities including it's own Thai restaurant, "new music" nights being the least frequent. It's a warm room with a decent sound system and I'm soon up and running after which we enjoy a Thai dinner. Great to see friends Steve Beresford, Anne Bean, Richard Wilson at the show. One long set of Tectonics Abstraction Distraction followed by a short break and then a 15-minute Momentum Anomaly. Two different artists shot the set and Helen Petts' film may be seen here. Post gig hang, one hour of sleep and it's off at 0445 to Heathrow for my flights back to Dulles and from there to NYC. My taxi driver had a GPS system that would give him ambiguous directions "300 yards and turn left" (but there would be two streets in proximity) so he kept making wrong turns which would be corrected by the system - he would swear at it and refer to it as his wife. Both flights fine and landed in time to see J and then surprise the twins at school.
Video by Joseph O'Kelly from this concert at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QbziqYZnH_o
October 22 "Screenplay" - eMedia Festival - Xuhui Park - Shanghai, China
Fifteen hours at home is not nearly enough but at 0600 I'm off to Laguardia for my flights to Chicago and from there to Shanghai - I sleep most of the way. Smooth sailing until we're over the mountains northeast of Beijing where we hit severe turbulence that lasts for one hour. The rest of the way to Shanghai is fine though, the heaving and shaking stopping suddenly as if a switch is pulled. Long immigration line and wait for the baggage but I'm out after a little over one hour and the driver is there to bring me directly to soundcheck. Shanghai is humid and thick, the air smoggy and odorous. Still, the tropical warmth feels good after seventeen hours in airplanes. Greetings with Christian, Lydia Yee, Wu Na, Yan Jun, Bruce Gremo, and organizer Defne Ayas and I'm off to set up. Wu Na with her gu-jin and Peking Opera percussionist Wang Li Chuan are already set onstage and it's just a few moments to build up my compact equipment: 8string, soprano sax, laptop, Eventide and Digitech pedals. Getting power to the stage is more problematic but it's finally up and we check the sound and video monitors quickly and all seems to be fine. Run to the hotel for a quick shower and coffee (when traveling to Asia I carry a jar of Medaglia d'Oro or Bustelo instant espresso as good coffee is sometimes difficult to find) and back to the hit. The concert is free to the public so the large crowd is quite diverse. First up is a Shanghai rock band Top Floor Circus that mixes punk-rock songs and recordings of soundtracks. They're followed by Bruce Gremo (on his homemade Cilia), Ben Hauge on laptop, and Yan Jun narrating and using a small mixing board. We're up last and begin smoothly but as it develops the computer sounds wrong - I gesture to the sound engineer for more level but he makes it quieter. Onstage sound is weird - diffuse from my monitor for my guitar but I can hear Wu Na acoustically and of course, the percussion cuts. The set feels good though it's sonically frustrating for me. We get a great response. As I'm packing my gear, I discover that one channel of my computer had been disconnected from the DI boxes somewhere in the confusion between groups, hence the bad sound - my electronic tracks for Screenplay rely heavily on stereo separation. This seems to have been unoticed by all but me - so it goes. We all head off to a nearby restaurant for a long multi-course dinner. After, there are a number of taxis waiting in front of the restaurant and Bruce is speaking in Chinese to a driver. The driver acts extremely agitated and is talking wildly and erratically. My radar pings - I don't like his vibe and suggest to Bruce that we get a different cab. He assures me that all is cool so Lydia, Bruce, and I get in for the quick trip to the hotel. Not to be! The driver quickly gets lost even though we're just a few blocks from the hotel and the hotel card has a map (not sure if he can read). He drives around for ten minutes and finally stops, begins shouting and orders us out. We quickly pull our equipment out of the trunk and hail another taxi while he yells at us demanding payment. We jump in the other taxi - the new driver is laughing and quickly brings us to where we need to go. Now I'm back at the hotel with only enough time for four hours sleep before rising to make the van that is taking us to the airport for our flight to Beijing. The first hour is rough (I've experienced strong turbulence on all of my China flights) but the air calms down for the last half of the flight (though we have a wild bouncing landing in sharp winds.) Heavy traffic slows us down to the hotel but we get an hour there to chill and drink coffee before heading to D22 for the soundcheck.
October 23 "Screenplay" - D22 - Beijing
There will be two groups this evening: Bruce Gremo/guitarist JeffRay (ShouWang)/saxophonist Li Tie Qiao and my trio with Wu Na/Wang Li Chuan. We split the small stage so that we can all remain set up simultaneously. Christian deals with the less-than-powerful projector (windexing the lens of the accumulated cigarette smoke helps enormously) and pretty soon we're ready to go. After soundcheck we head to the fantastic Hunan restaurant next door returning to the club for a 10pm start. Bruce's group goes first and this night's instrumentation gives a clearer sonic picture than his Shanghai set. We benefit from the punchy stage sound and have a burning set. The full house greatly appreciates the entire evening. After a short break, JeffRay, Bruce, Li, and guitarist John Myers (ex-New Yorker who has been a member of my all-guitar SyndaKits, my guitar quartet 'Dyners Club, the groups of Glenn Branca, and his own band Rat At Rat R) join me onstage for a long, dense, drone-filled improv. I'm happy to leave the smoke-filled club and return to the hotel at 0130 and sleep until well into the next afternoon - a rarity for me but something that I can truly appreciate (and need) every now and then.
October 24 Solo Tectonics/Guitar Trio - D22 - Beijing
A chance to walk around a bit in the afternoon then off to the club for soundcheck. A number of bands will be on the bill this evening (including Snapline), all doing soundchecks. Not interested in waiting around for a chance to check, so Christian, Lydia, Wu Na, John, and I head to a nearby Buddhist restaurant that offers an incredible selection of completely vegetarian food - all uniquely spiced, fresh, and creative. Well-fueled, we head back to the club where the first band begins, JeffRay's extremely noisy Speak Chinese Or Die. I follow with a Tectonics set (but not using the sax) - in the middle, I hit some frequencies that sets rattling the snare drum from the onstage drumkit. One of my great irritations and pet peeves - drummers always forget to mute their snares. I'm adrenalized and angry - I set a loop going and go to the kit to try and mute the drum - I can't find it's mute lever so the drum goes flying off its stand - at least it's quiet now. I resume my set but the sound engineer jumps onstage and sets the drum back up - naturally it starts rattling again. I'm instantly furious and turn around, planning to give it a kick - fortunately, JeffRay jumps up onstage and removes the offender. I continue my set, ending on a feedback loop and beckon to John and JeffRay who join me onstage for 20 minutes of drones, scrapes, slides, and feedback. I kick in a drum sequence and we finish over a groove to big cheers. More of a hang and various good-byes and its back to the hotel to pack and do some reading: Michael Chabon's brilliant "The Yiddish Policemen's Union." Civilized pickup time of 0830 to get to the airport for my 1200 flight to San Francisco and from there to NYC. Smooth ascent from Beijing but as we enter the jetstream over Korea the plane goes into serious turbulence mode which last for more than three hours. It's not the kind of lurching that makes you feel that death is imminent - just relentless and annoying. The flight finally settles down over the Bering Strait and is mostly smooth to San Francisco where I change planes. Bad weather and worse air traffic in NYC delays my flight home by two hours. The last fifty minutes of our flight is that kind of turbulence that DOES make you feel sheer terror - seemingly uncontrolled dropping and 40 knot gusts heaving the plane in the darkness and rain. Skip James on my iPod keeps me calm.
November 9 Trio: Joey Baron//Franck Vigroux/E# - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
Franck has flown in from Paris on the 8th for this show, a little warmup for our brief tour (though Bruno Chevillon is unable to come.) Instead of his normally involved setup, he uses a portable Numark turntable and various electronics from my studio. To prepare for the tour, I bring the rig that I will use: the Godin LGX III electric, my curved soprano, and Eventide & Digitech pedals. Joey puts together a kit from the drums there at Issue. We set up and hit immediately to a good-sized and extremely enthusiastic audience, generating some huge climaxes as well as subtle ruminations. Excellent rehearsal for these next days.
November 11 Quartet: Joey Baron/Bruno Chevillon/Franck Vigroux/E# - Strasbourg Jazz Festival - Le Preo, Oberhausbergen
Smooth flight to Frankfurt where Joey and I meet Bernd Leukert and Clair Ludenbach for coffee in the time before our Lufthansa flight to Strasbourg (actually a bus.) Just enough time at the hotel for a quick shower and we're off to soundcheck at the venue, a theater for 200 in the nearby village of Oberhausbergen. Opening my suitcase,I found the little card from Homeland Stupidity informing me that they had rifled through my gear (which I already knew as the strap on the suitcase had been reinstalled incorrectly.) Pulling out my bag of electronics from my suitcase, I noticed that everything was in great disarray compared to how it had been packed. This was certainly not the first time my bags had been searched though they usually don't make as much of a mess as they did this time. Still, I didn't think to look more carefully and headed down to the lobby to meet the others. Franck and virtuoso bassist Bruno Chevillon had arrived earlier in the day and are waiting for Joey and me with the driver. Amazingly, our driver, Amy, is a woman I knew back in Western Massachusetts in 1978 who was working as an apprentice to sax repairman Jim Vogel and is now living in the area and often working for local jazz promoters in various capacities. Nice stage and good equipment and we all worked on our set-ups. I've brought a light rig for this tour so I'm ready to go pretty quickly. Wait, where are my power supplies? Not in the bag, not on the floor here, not under an amp. Not here. Or here. Minor freakout. I've been touring so much that I don't even unpack the equipment bag between tours but I still carefully inventory everything before heading to the airport. I'm hoping that it's in the hotel somewhere - my theory being that security didn't properly re-pack my things and the bag of power supplies is in the suitcase. While waiting for a driver to take me back, I go about getting the guitar and sax in place. I find that the screw that holds one of strap buttons on the Godin had stripped itself out of the wood somehow. Age-old solution: I take little pieces of an old sax reed and after wiping them with white wood glue (supplied by a stage hand), stuff them into the hole left by the screw. Eventually, the hole is packed tight with glue and wood chips and I drive the screw back in and put the guitar down to let it set. When it dries, this will be stronger than the original wood. Amy returns to bring me back to the hotel. I run up to my room and go through the suitcase. Sure enough, I find that the bag of power supplies has been stuffed into an opaque plastic bag of t-shirts. Thank you Homeland Stupidity for wasting my time! Back to the theater for a quick check - everything sounds fine on stage - clear and loud. Break for coffee and then we hit: one long set interspersed with brief solos. We rarely coalesce into a groove but we maintain a free-floating fracture that is both tense and disjointed but simultaneously flowing and arching. We're called back by the crowd for an encore and oblige with a rocking piece with a long slow fade. The lighting designer injects his own esthetic into the fade and cuts us off visually before we're ready to end. Called back for a third encore we play an extremely quiet number of light drones and small-scale interjections. Pack up and off to a small restaurant in town for a fine meal.
November 12 Quartet - Theatre Municipal - Nevers Jazz Festival - Nevers
Civilized start time for our train to Paris Gare de L'Est where we're met by a van we've reserved in advance to bring us to Gare du Lyon for our train to Nevers. Touring through France almost inevitably forces one to change stations in Paris, usually a nightmare because of the infamous Parisian traffic. It can be avoided by using the Metro or RER if no equipment is being carried but with gear, a car is a must and may add lots of time and lots of stress to the transfer. Bruno has his upright bass so the van is an absolute necessity. We arrive at the Gare with time to spare for coffee and a bite before boarding our train to Nevers. Our hotel is directly on the Loire affording a beautiful view from the rooms and the concert will be at an old opera house, grand and just the least bit decayed - a gorgeous room with fantastic acoustics. Easy soundcheck then off to a spectacular dinner then back for our concert. Even better than the previous night, we're getting the hang of the dynamics of this group. Great response so one encore then clear the stage for a powerful Albert Ayler tribute by NYC friends Roy Campbell, William Parker, Joe McPhee, and Warren Smith.
November 13 Quartet - Teatro Fondamente Nuove - Venice
The call is at 0600 and feels too early (as it always does) but the hotel has breakfast ready for us then it's in the van for our drive to Paris. Bruno must leave even earlier by train as he can't bring the upright to Venice but will use an electric solidbody upright that is made for traveling. Franck informs us that Bruno's 0500 train was cancelled - when he arrived, the station was dark and locked. He'll have to crank in Paris to get home to change instruments and then get to the airport in time. Our trip is only 220km but we must allow over 3 hours because of the infamous bouchons (traffic jams) on the Peripherique running around Paris. Indeed, at times, we're essentially parked for long periods. As an extra treat, we find out before leaving that Air France pilots will go on strike this evening and already, 50% of the flights have been cancelled. We're unable to find out if ours is one of them until we're close to CDG and Franck is able to get through by phone. The traffic clears up at the A1 and we make it to the airport with time to spare and breeze through check-in and security. Mostly a fine flight to Venice though a few periods of turbulence. The Alps are covered with clouds so I miss one of my favorite sights. Stormy weather in Venice makes for a rough descent though nice views of the laguna and city as we land. We're met at the airport by Enrico who is wearing rubber waders as there was high-water earlier in the day when the storms were at their worst, flooding the alleys. Wild ride by water-taxi to the Teatro where we do a quick soundcheck and then off to a typically fantastic Venetian dinner with an antipasto including uove di calamari (squid eggs), rarely found outside of Venice. Checking my email before the gig, I learn that drummer Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience has been found dead in his hotel in Portland, Oregon while on tour. It's shattering news which I share with the others and which supplies an unspoken undertone to our set (clearly emerging in a couple of sections that seem to pay tribute to the Experience.) Intense 70-minute set then a long encore for the packed house. Many friends in attendance including Veniero Rizzardi, Boris Salvodelli, Roberto Masotti, and Massimo Ongaro, of course. After the concert we say our good-byes as this is the last show of the quartet for now. My train to Schio is not until the afternoon so plenty of time in the morning to catch up on sleep, walk around Venice, and meet Massimo for a fine pranza.
November 14 Tectonics Solo - Centro Social Stabile - Leguzzano
Short trains to Vicenza then Schio in the foothills of the Dolomiti and Alps where I'm picked up by Renato. Plenty of time to chill at the hotel before soundcheck. The hotel restaurant has a huge fireplace with a giant rotisserie completely covered with pieces of meat and bulbs of garlic that slowly rotates. As these elements roast, the oil drips into pans in which pieces of polenta will be fried. Heart attack food at its best! It looks amazing but as I eat no pork, I won't be trying it. We go to the CCS and set-up is quick and then it's time for dinner, cooked by Renato's twin sister Renata. Kitchen genius runs in this family. Whenver the subject of polenta has come up over the years, I invoke Renato's name as the absolute best polenta I've ever eaten was cooked by him when Carbon performed here in 1994. Renata has prepared an incredible risotto con zuca and a polenta that is delicious (though I must say, not as transcendent as Renato's) as well as bacalao and cooked greens with a local cheese for dessert. Perfect fuel for a cold night. I perform one long set using the drum grooves made for Abstraction Distraction then a quiet encore on soprano with electronics to great response. Post-concert grappa with everybody then a relaxed night at the hotel, reading and working. I can sleep in as my train to Munich is not until 1417.
November 15-18 "Volapuk" - Go Guitars - T.U.B.E. - Munich
This past summer, Gunnar Geisse invited me to guest with Go Guitars for a concert (Geisse, Adrian Peyrera and Harald Lillmeyer.) "Go" is "5" in Japanese and the group originally had five players and in addition, was named after the eponymous composition by Lois Vierk for 5 guitars. On arrival in Munich on the 15th in the evening, I met the others and did a basic setup to get operating levels after which we all repaired to a nearby brauhaus to discuss strategy. The players are all virtuoso guitarists but in this group, the emphasis is on concepts and sonics. I composed a graphic score, Volapuk named for the Russian usage of the QWERTY keyboard for Cyrillic text and for the constructed language, created in 18791880 by Johann Martin Schleyer. The ten pages are arranged so that the group has some unison pages and some open sections where players may choose any page to operate from. The next two days were filled with relaxed rehearsals of Volapuk and the other pieces. The gallery T.U.B.E. is in the same underground complex as the jazz club Unterfahrt and considering it's bunker-like shape and polished concrete floor, has quite decent acoustics. The sound system has 8 channels which are divided among the four of us, spatializing our outputs. We performed a one hour program of four other compositions besides Volapuk, each with a separate character: expressivity, looping, negation, and structure.
Photos from this concert may be seen here: http://www.fotoart.org/main.html
The night before the concert, I join Karl Bruckmaier on his 11pm Bayerisch Rundfunk radio-show to play favorite blues records as well as some odd tracks from my past. We have a full house for the concert and they receive the show with great enthusiasm. Late night hang at a nearby Greek restaurant, a few hours sleep, then off to Munich Airport for my flight back to NYC.
November 20 "Doing The Don't" Screening + Orchestra Carbon - Tribeca 92Y - NYC
Filmmaker Bert Shapiro first contacted me late in 2005 about his idea for a documentary about my work and music. Plans took shape and Bert began filming some interviews and continuing discussions about how he would proceed. The more he did, the easier it became - Bert came to many concerts and also arranged to have people shoot my concerts in Venice at the 2006 Biennale and in Beijing during my residency at the D22 club. We did a number of interviews and he also interviewed various friends and colleagues. The final cut began to emerge during the summer of '08 and Bert began planning for a screening. With the opening of the wonderful new Tribeca 92Y in October, Bert was able find a screening room in NYC that could also do a full-on concert. Pianist Jenny Lin and curator Ben Sisto both did much to make the event happen.
Frank Oteri of the American Music Center MC'ed and began the evening with a short intro to the night's events. I started with a 15-minute Velocity of Hue solo followed by an interview by Frank. One can always count on Frank to provide unusual and incisive questions designed to take one out of the cliche-zone. Among other things, we spoke about how being filmed changes one and how it is to be "followed" by a crew. Next, Rachel Golub, Conrad Harris, Judith Insell, and Alex Waterman performed an intense version of the string quartet Dispersion of Seeds. The documentary was next shown and then Bert was interviewed by Frank speaking about his approach to making films (very improvisational!) and why he chose to focus on my work. Jenny Lin and I next performed Suberrebus - I used Ableton Live and various plugs to do my processing of her piano. Frank next did a short interview with Bert and I together to wrap things up followed by the entire Orchestra Carbon (the string quartet plus Jenny; bassists Reuben Radding & Kevin Ray; percussionist Danny Tunick; trombonists Curtis Fowlkes & Chris McIntire; saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh both out on tour and sorely missed!) performing Quarks Swim Free. A compact set but quite powerful and surprising. I used my bass clarinet in one of the earlier modules but when I picked it up again later in the set, it wouldn't work - loose pad - drat!) The entire evening flowed well and was enthusiastically received by the good audience.
More info about "Doing The Don't" and other filmwork of Bert Shapiro may be found here: http://www.pheasantseye.com/films/elliott-sharp/elliott-sharp-html.htmlDecember
December 4 Duo Maurice deMartin/E# - Gladhouse - Cottbus, Germany
Afternoon flight out of JFK starts out beautifully calm but I was wary as the pilot announced that our total flight time would be only 6'20" because of a strong jetstream. Flying completely embedded within the jetstream can yield a ride that is fast and smooth but some jetstreams are erratic in height or location and can cause a flight to be bumpy. This was to be one of those flights in spades: we entered the jetstream around Nova Scotia about 2 hours after takeoff and began lurching and heaving, a state that continued for most of the trans-Atlantic crossing. Things finally calmed down as we approached the UK but all in all, it was pretty nerve-wracking and made sleep scarce. Breakfast in Frankfurt and then a short hop to Berlin with a dramatic approach to Tegel past the Alexanderplatz tower rising up from the sunrise fog. At TXL, I was met by Reinhard, the promoter, after which we drove into Berlin to pick up percussionist Maurice followed by a 3 hour drive to Cottbus, affording me ample opportunity to catch up on sleep. Hamid Drake was originally supposed to do this concert with me but some confusion with his manager caused him to cancel just a few days before. The promoter had funding for a duo so I asked Reinhard Friedl for a suggestion with Maurice being hired as a result. Maurice is the percussionist in Zeitkratzer and besides being a great improvising drummer who has studied the rhythmic complexities of Rumanian and Balkan music also works with electronics and a modified zither. We performed two 50-minute sets of effortlessly intense and intuitive interaction in the acoustically-welcoming cinema of this cultural center with bar in a town that is near the Polish border and was once an industrial stronghold and whose grim post-unification economic situation led post-Unification to a large skinhead/neo-Nazi movement. This is not in evidence at all in our concert though - the full house listens intently and applauds enthusiastically and warmly. We play a longish encore then have dinner in our greenroom.
December 6 Festival Muzyka z Mozgu - Bydgoszcz, Poland
Asia, a saxophonist and friend of the director of this festival, Slawek Janicki, drives from Berlin and picks me up at my hotel for the 300 kilometer drive. In Germany with its efficient autobahn, this would take three hours max - through Poland's countryside on two-lane highways, over seven hours. Sixty kilometers from Bydgoszcz, we're flagged down by the police. They claim that Asia was driving too fast, impossible as we were in a line of cars all going quite slowly, certainly less than the 80km/hr limit. It soon becomes apparent that this is a shakedown, apparently not uncommon on Polish roads these days. The police demand 200 zlotys from her and threaten 4 points on her license. They point out that her car (a 14-yr old borrowed Subaru) has a GPS system and therefore she must be rich. She tells them that the car is not hers and that she's just a poor musician and doesn't have the money (about $60 US) and is only trying to bring this "famous American jazz musician" to his concert. The police bargain themselves down: "How about 100 zlotys and 2 points?" She says that she still has no money but the real deal-killer is the fact that her license is from Germany where she resides and they can't really punish her because of a lack of traffic reciprocity rules between the countries. We're free to go but over 30 minutes are wasted.
On arrival, there's time for a quick bite then over to the festival venue, the Polskie Theater within the opera house to catch the concert. Highlight of this evening is the duo of Paolo Angeli, a Sardinian guitarist with his unique electroacoustic instrument based on a traditional Sardinian guitar with Japanese vocalist/violinist Takumi Fukushima. The next afternoon I do a workshop at the Mozg, a club near the hotel and the organizational center of the festival. Many of the festival musicians were involved in a session until 7 in the morning so they drift in slowly if at all. Attendance is low as is the energy level in the room. I explain my compositional and improvisational strategies as well as my technical setup (curved soprano sax, Godin electric, Digitech preamp and Eventide Timefactor) with a series of short demonstrations and fragments of compositions. A few good questions at the end then a dinner break and head over to the theater for soundcheck where Hamid has just arrived and is setting up the drums. Quick soundcheck then a chance to catch up with Hamid and guitarist Jon Dobie of Sonicphonics and B Shops For The Poor. Excellent "free flamenco" solo set by Thomas Gwincinzki and beautifully stark guitar/drums and visuals by Piotr Pawlek and Michal Gos after which Hamid and I hit. While moving equipment into position for our set, I warn the soundman very clearly not to lift the table on which all of my equipment is parked but to drag it. Of course, he immediately lifts it causing the Eventide power supply to fall, breaking off one of the pins. The next 20 minutes is spent trying to find a substitute supply. Eventually, the soundman is able to jury-rig a workable albeit temporary connection and we're able to play. We do a flowing and high-energy set, moving through varied sonic regions. Hamid is always a joy to play with: deep warmth, intelligence, and power. We finish to great response after which I take part in an impromptu guitar quintet with Gwincinzki, Dobie, Michael Gos, and Paolo Angeli. Our styles are all quite different yet we create a 40-minute set that finds intersection of sound and interaction and yet leaves space for everyone's individual style. Time for good-bye's then back to the hotel to pack. Typically, I have one hour for sleep in the hotel before meeting Slawek's brother for the 2-hour drive to the airport in Gdansk for my flights to Munich and then NYC.
December 9 Binibon reading - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
"Binibon" will be presented by The Kitchen in May 2009 but the production budget offered by them is insufficient for our needs (which includes a stage director, Equity actors, sets, video, and many other costs.) To help out, Issue Project Room sponsored a fundraising event with author Jack Womack reading from his script while I accompany him on guitar, sax, and electronics. We both speak about various aspects of the production and its genesis. Our director, Tea Alagic, also talks. The full house is very appreciative and we finish the evening optimistic about both the production and fundraising.
Any interested funders/donators reading this may contact zachlayton@gmail.com to make a tax-deductible donation.
December 11 Terraplane - Knitting Factory Tap Bar - Manhattan
Our bari saxophonist Alex Harding organized this evening which also featured Organ Nation featuring keyboardist DD Jackson as well as Alex. The Knitting Factory is getting ready to close at this location and move to Brooklyn. There was already a feeling of desolation around the place last time I was there and the weather did not help. Massive rain storms all day. When I left for the club, it was pouring and impossible to get a car service. Where we live is fairly remote: the far eastern side of the island - next stop the East River! For me, this is one of my favorite aspects of the location. Still, too far to walk to public transport, especially with guitars and a bag of cables and pedals. I waited under the awning and eventually a taxi dropped off a fellow denizen and I was able to get a ride. The rainfall increased to a torrent as we arrived at the club and trying to get an umbrella open and gather my equipment caused me to drop my camera in the car (a fact that I discovered while in the club while planning to shoot a pic of Alex soloing his heart out! Hence no pic from the gig - a weather map of the evening seems appropriate.) No soundcheck and it was quite late when we set up. To complicate matters, house guitar amp was dead. Sound engineer was courteous and helpful and set up an Epiphone half-stack for me. Can't say it sounded good but at least it worked and we were finally good to go. We played an absolutely burning set, due partially, no doubt, to the lack of audience and difficult conditions. Few people attended Knit shows these days anyway and the weather was the kiss of death. Oh well.
December 17 Benefit for Downtown Music Gallery - Bootstrappers at Bowery Poetry Club
This shop has been a mainstay for all extreme musics for years and I've known Bruce and Manny going way back. Due to rent increases, they will be moving to a new location in Chinatown and this event will help defray costs. Check them out at: http://downtownmusicgallery.com/Main/index.htm
Tonight's benefit included a long performance by Tisiji Munoz, Robert Musso's group with Raoul Bjorkenheim and Elliot Levin, and my Bootstrappers with Melvin Gibbs on bass and Anton Fier on drums. Roulette Xmas party was this evening as well and the twins greatly enjoyed running around with the other children there and eating excessive amounts of cookies. We finally headed out and I taxied to the club and J home with the kids. Great but long sets by Munoz and Musso so it was already well over an hour past schedule when we hit the stage well after 1 AM. Quick setup and no soundcheck - Melvin with an old Fender Jazz Bass (first time I've seen him with it) and Anton on the house drum kit. I've brought the lime-green Strat made from odd parts and a few pedals. Blast off into a 45-minute improvised overdrive set enjoyed immensely by those still around. 2:30 by the time we leave - at least I'm not going to an airport though there's that same feeling that I should be.
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