Road Reports 2010

January 1 Poetry Project Benefit - St. Mark's Church - Manhattan
The annual fundraiser - an institution and a great chance to run into seldom seen friends and colleagues in the backstage hang. This year these include Edwin Torres, Lenny Kaye, Penny Arcade, Roy Nathanson, the trio of Peter Zummo/Bill Ruyle/Ernie Brooks, Marlon Cherry, Erica Hunt, Taylor Mead and more. The twins remember the scene from last year and head right to the refreshment tables where Lila befriends an older girl (10-years old) and is soon behind the tables helping out for the rest of the evening. Kai joins Janene out in the audience for my solo set and plays some mean air guitar while I perform "Hangin' 010" on a parts-Strat fitted with three Japanese pickups giving it a unique timbre - it's plugged into a silver-face 70's Fender Bronco amp - like a Champ: small, light, Class A and very toneful. The piece is a cross between twangy Delta blues and tapped melodic textures in a blue mode and worked well in the packed room. In the 9-10pm block, I join Tracie Morris for our version of The Temptations' "Ball of Confusion", a fantastic song that is somehow always appropriate, regardless of the decade. Tracie and I got together to rehearse and touched on some of her sound poetry, toyed with other covers, started working on a setting of an obscure poem from Edgar Allan Poe, and finally and enthusiastically took up this one.

January 3 Entertaining Science "- "Extremes" - Cornelia St. Cafe - Manhattan
For this evening, the final one curated solely by Roald Hoffman, Roald presented two short talks concerrning extremes: one on Archaea, bacteria that thrive under conditions impossible for any other living thing; the other on the effects of extreme pressure on such substances as gases like carbon dioxide. As always, Roald was erudite, fascinating, enlightening, and entertaining. Lukas Ligeti and I improvised together alternating sets with Roald. We tried to live up to our combined reputations as extremists but also attempted to stretch the definition. We played loud and dense but also quiet and delicate, arhythmic space but also heavily grooving. This was probably our 7th time playing together and it continues to grow. For this evening, Lukas augmented the house drums with assorted small percussion instruments and objects. I brought the solidbody 8-string and only a Digitech RP250 processor. After the show, we all had dinner together thanks to the gracious hospitality of our Cornelia St. host, Robin Hirsch (also an author and actor - check out his autobiographical "Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski.")

January 9 Terraplane - Winter Jazzfest - Bitter End - Manhattan
We're booked into this combination jazz festival and cattle-call that coincides with the APAP presenters' conference - a chance for agencies to try to drum up work for their artists (no complaints here.) The Bitter End is one of the infamous West Village clubs that were transformed into tourist attractions somewhere in the 60's. When I was briefly a Lounge Lizard in 1984, we did a long run at the club that was quite enjoyable. It's actually a decent room with good stage and PA. Because the event is a marathon of bands from 6pm until 2am, there is no soundcheck - just set up and play. We do have a good slot at 845pm - the band tonight includes Reut Regev on trombone, Alex Harding on bari sax, Dave Hofstra on bass, Don McKenzie on drums, and Eric Mingus singing. The jazz group preceding us goes over their set limit so we're squeezed to get up and running. The mic stand given to me for my steel guitar is quite unstable and the house Twin Reverb has the nasty tendency of unexpectedly and suddenly jumping in volume. No chance to do anything but blast through these little problems. And blast we do - there are some kids sitting right in front of my amp who have their fingers in their ears but smiles on their faces. Because of the time limit, we play very compact versions of the songs in our set but make up for the brevity with intensity. The pressure of the evening makes for a hot set and the packed house gives us great feedback.

January 17 InMixing Closing Event - White Box Gallery - Manhattan
For the completion of Hans Breder's "InMixing" show at White Box [ http://www.inliquid.com/gallery/whitebox/whitebox.php ] Hans invited Herman Rapaport [ http://users.wfu.edu/rapapoh/index.html ] to read texts he had written about the work while I process the sound of his voice. Hans provided me with a soundfile that he'd made of some processed voice and I included it in my Ableton patch. I made much use of the GRM Freeze plug-in grabbing sections of voice and isolating short sections which would be looped and layered, sometimes transforming part of one syllable into an individual pitched tone or cloud of sounds. Herman's reading in itself was quite was poetic and musical with shifting dynamics and rhythms - a pleasure to process. The post-concert hang at a little Turkish place in Chelsea was also a pleasure, with a trio of wonderful Turkish musicians, a belly dancer, plus food and wine.

January 22 Benefit for Tuli Kupferberg - St. Ann's Warehouse - Brooklyn, NY
Producer Hal Willner called me to invite me to participate in this benefit event for 86-year old Tuli Kuperferberg, founding member of The Fugs and important NYC poet/activist/weirdo. Tuli has had two strokes and is in great need of financial assistance for his medical treatments. More info here: http://www.thefugs.com/ I prepared "Carpe Diem" off of The Fugs' First Album as a country-blues number which I sing and play on my cheapo electric sitar, a copy of the old Coral and quite a good-sounding instrument. Over the river to Brooklyn for soundcheck where Hal suggested merging my arrangement with that of the the Fugs and so we did to good effect. Also taking part in the evening were John Kruth, John S. Hall, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Lenny Kaye, Dan Zane, David Amram, Peter Stampfel, and many more. A fantastic event that raised onver $20K for Tuli!

February 3 E# Plays Monk - KGB Radio Hour - KGB Bar - Manhattan
Saw Mark Jacobson for the first time in years at the Tuli Benefit (and met his KGB partner-in-crime Larry Ratso Sloman) who invited me to take part in their monthly live podcast at the homey KGB Bar on 4th Street in the East Village - a mixture of talk and music. I'd attended many sci-fi readings there and looked forward to taking part. The duo of Christine Ullman/GE Smith opened the proceedings with a great old Eddie Hinton song "Cover Me" after which I did a compact version of Monk interpretations on my acoustic tricone. Started with Bemsha Swing finishing it up in Delta slide style and then touched on "Round Midnight", "Epistrophy", and "Well You Needn't" after which conspiracy-expert and KGB bartender Danny Christian did an informed and righteously paranoid rant on the Federal Reserve system and world economics. Next Shilpa Ray sang a passionate "Venus Pearl" accompanying herself on harmonium after which Sal, proprietor of Rosario's Pizza came up to speak about his philosophy and personal 48-year history of pizza in the Lower East Side (accompanying himself with a couple of boxes of fresh hot pie!) I had to leave for a meeting so did not get to hear more but the podcast is of very good sound quality.
http://www.kgbbar.com/radio_hour/

February 8 Seminar "Strategies For Composition In The Post-Digital Age" - The Stone - Manhattan
For my part in this seminar series, I spoke about how my approach to composition and improvisation is in a feedback relationship with my electroacoustic and computer work with concepts from each informing the other. The talk also ended up being rather autobiographical as that was the best way to tie the developments in my work to both cultural and technological factors. Besides playing soundfiles of various orchestral and string quartet pieces (as well as parts of Cryptid Fragments), I also projected scores and spoke about filtering and processing of the actual scores in Photoshop to create graphic scores that evoke the sounds that might have been created through digital processing of the musicians' performance. I take a very non-linear approach to these types of talks and welcomed questions and discussion. Bert Shapiro and his cinematographer Loic de Lame filmed the proceedings for the next version of "Doing the Don't". (photo by Bert Shapiro)

February 25 - "The Italian Connection" - Marco Cappelli, Andrea Centazzo, E# -White Box - Manhattan
A rare visit to NYC from Andrea Centazzo, a pioneer of free-jazz drumming whose work in the 1970's saw him recording with guitarists Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, and Henry Kaiser and saxophonists Steve Lacy and Evan Parker among many others. visit: http://www.andreacentazzo.com
Heavy winter storm forecasts and it turned out to be the kind of day that gets the global-warming deniers all fired up and joyful. NYC is slush central when Marco Cappelli and I arrive at this small Chinatown art space. Andrea has arrived earlier and his complex setup is complete (comprising a Drum Kat mallet controller, a laptop, sundry frame drums, noisemakers, and metallophones.) I plan to go direct into the stereo PA and Marco will play two pieces completely acoustically as well plugging in his resonant-string "extreme guitar" direct. Soundcheck is quick once we sort out our patching into the PA and gives Andrea and I a chance to slog thorugh the slush to nearby Little Italy for espresso. By start time we have a surprisingly good audience. New Yorkers used to take snowy weather as a challenge and insisted on going out - snowy gigs would be better attended than fair weather hits. Now there's internet and Netflix and whatever else and so at the first sign of inclement weather they hunker down in their shells. But White Box has a dedicated crowd and we all have our friends and fans so what could have been a disaster turns out to be a crackling vibe. Marco opens the evening with completely acoustic versions of two virtuosic classical pieces "Drei Tentos" by Hans Werner Henze and "Sonata op. 47" by Alberto Ginastera. He then plugs in his "extreme guitar" for "Marked by a Hat" by Annie Gosfield and my "Amygdala", both part of his Extreme Guitar Project CD that I produced for Mode Records: http://www.moderecords.com/catalog/157cappelli.html. A version of the "Amygdala" score for standard classical guitar has also recently been published by Edition Peters: http://www.edition-peters.com/article.php?inno=IN00114§ion
After a break mostly spent dealing with various hums caused by fluorescent lights and intermittent ground connections on the mixer, Centazzo and I take the stage for our duo. Even though we've never played together before, our personal gestures and vocabulary mesh quickly. The music is often textural but sometimes these textures consist of micro-rhythms that grow into full-fledged grooves. Andrea switches fluidly between sampled sounds and acoustic percussion. I make use of various extended techniques on the 8-string solidbody as well as electronic processing to render chords and melodies "other" . Our 35-minute duo is compact and energetic consisting of one longer and one shorter piece. The ending is obvious to us both. We then bring Marco up for a trio. His amplified nylon-string "extreme guitar" thickens the mix and nicely changes the geometry of our interactions (the trio being one of my favorite setups for it' s balance and trilateral symmetry.)

March 2 Andrea Centazzo/E# Duo - Issue Project Room - Brooklyn
A much more controlled environment for this concert than White Box, both inside and out. Andrea arrives early from a concert in Baltimore giving him plenty of time to set up his instruments and prepare for an 8-track recording. I have the same set-up as our previous hit though this time I'm plugging into a Fender Twin Amp which sounds fine with the 8-string. Good global listening in our improvisations with shifting environments and fierce grooving. We have a good house to spur us on, surprising in that the concert was only announced at the last minute.

March 5 Nozart Festival - Cologne, Germany
Drop the twins at school and off to the studio for some last minute tasks: copying files, burning CD's, and general pre-flight idiot check. A few more errands then it's home to spend a little quiet time with Janene before the German film crew arrives to continue work on the documentary for Bavarian Television on the Munich opera project. J and I are wired for sound and then required to act naturally so that our usual talk and rituals preceding my departure are digitally captured to "broaden the portrait of the composer." The crew drives to the airport with me and I'm interviewed in the car. We're also filmed from another vehicle much to the delight of Tito, my usual driver from the car service. Smooth flights to Munich and then Cologne where the festival organizer meets me and brings me to my hotel for some much needed sleep.
Double-espresso on awaking and soon after, Scott Fields arrives at the hotel to bring me to the venue, the basement of a Unitarian church with space for 200 people. This is the 14th year of this international festival and what it lacks in grandeur is more than made up for by the enthusiasm of the audience. Scott and I spend two frigid hours rehearsing our compositions upstairs in the church. The 5-second reverb makes our guitars sound magisterial though the temperature turns our fingers into frozen sausages. For my use, Scott has borrowed a gypsy-style oval-hole archtop guitar made in 1985 by local luthier Thomas Reg'n. Scott uses his Collings cutaway 1998 OM-2H. We bring 4 pieces each to this gig and we have just enough time to be able to decode their intricacies. We go upstairs for a quick soundcheck and there meet Keith and Julie Tippetts who have just completed their check. Scott and I are opening the festival but we have enough time to duck out for a quick bite before the hit. The house is packed by the time we commence at 830pm. Too many smokers for my taste (it's banned but many seem to ignore this) but still quite a welcoming atmosphere (and warm!). We open with my "Krash Area" then proceed through the set to excellent response. Decent monitors and an attentive crowd allow quiet and subtle gestures to work as well as frenetic flailing (though the latter seems to always go down well with German audiences.) Our encore is completely improvised, we bow, and quickly pack up to allow Keith and Julie and drummer Willi Kellers to take the stage for their improvised set followed by Eberhard Kranemann, one of the founders of Kraftwerk who performed a freejazz-meets-techno set on guitar, tenor sax, and sundry keyboards.
The next day, Scott collects me in the morning and we head across town to the well-equipped Topaz studio to record our new material for the Neos label. Topaz' Reinhard Kobialka has put together a comfortable room with two control rooms, both packed with vintage and modern gear. Placement of mics is tweaked a bit until the optimum is found and then we dig in and record eight compositions and two improvisations in 5 hours. The sound is large, warm, and detailed. After returning to NYC, I'll mix the recording in ProTools at Studio zOaR and probably won't need much EQ at all, just some compression.
Early the next morning, I head to the K�ln airport for a quick flight to Munich and long meetings to plan our next week working with the kids. We have a grueling schedule of meetings and fimings and daily workshop/rehearsals. Great progress is made over the course of the week in terms of the kids accepting our ways of creating and the sci-fi story I wrote as a framework for this opera and more importantly, their growing understanding of the use of abstraction in expressive art and how to tell a story without resorting to simple narrative cliches. We work on non-illustrative musical accompaniment plus various types of group singing as well as trying to tell stories in a recitative half spoken/half sung manner.

March 25 "Watch it Grow" - Scott Fields/E# duo - The Loft - Cologne
The flight to Frankfurt is fine and from there I take the ICE train for a short fast ride to Cologne then a 5-minute walk to my hotel, where I'm soon snoozing away until my espresso time and the pickup by Scott to head to the venue for soundcheck. Set-up should be quick as my rig is simple: the 8-string solidbody, Celmo compressor, Rat distortion, Eventide Pitchfactor with expression pedal, and Boomerang into the house Blues DeVille. I find that Homeland Stupidity (renamed Transportation Security Administration but the same level of competence) has managed to break my Boomerang - it as if they've attempted to take it apart. There are loose screws in my roadcase and the footswitch is dangling inside the chassis - everything is there except one necessary washer. Out comes the toolkit and it's soon back together thanks to soundman Christian who finds a suitable washer.
Scott has scored 16 musical fragments for us to interpret within our improvisation. They may be played in unison or asynchronously and cued by hand-signals or even ignored altogether. From the recording of this set Scott will derive parts for a string quartet (including himself on guitar as one of the instruments) for a concert in May. In June, we will convene again with six string players plus Scott and myself. Our set ranges widely across various flavors of noise, high-intensity riffage, twisted loops, readings of the fragments, and even quiet subtleties. Opening for us is Finnish guitarist Kalle Kalima using six amplifiers to spatialize his layered loopings and improvisation.
My wake-up call comes too early for the train to Ghent, Belgium where I'll meet the other members of Carbon who have arrived from the US this same morning.

Carbon: Void Coordinates Tour
At the behest of Patrik Landolt at Intakt Records, I reconvened the Carbon quintet of 1991-96 for a new recording in 2009 and this short European tour around the release of Void Coordinates.
The morning of my departure from NYC, I received a phone message from our drummer, Joseph Trump (Pigface, Chanting House, Kiki Band) beginning with the dreaded words "Don't freak out but...". Joe lives in Portland, Oregon but had to go to Florida on a family matter and his flight back was cancelled because of a mechanical problem. His flight to Europe was from Portland (where all his equipment was packed and ready to go) so nothing could be changed. He was able to book his own flight back to Portland (no thanks to Continental) and made it home just in time to get his gear, return to the airport, and board his flight to Atlanta and from there on to Brussels.

March 26 Vooruit - Ghent - Belgium
I've written about the Vooruit before: a welcoming and well-equipped multi-level culture space. Our soundcheck/rehearsal goes quite smoothly and we're soon relaxing over an excellent dinner. We're part of a jazz festival and Joelle Leandre (as always) does a beautiful solo acoustic bass set preceding ours - I've known Joelle for decades: we had a trio with percussionist Greg ketchum in Buffalo in 1977.
Carbon takes the stage but descend into the set from hell. Some of our problems could be blamed on jet lag: missed cues, misread setlists (my bad) and assorted trainwrecks. But the big problems were with infrastructure: a monitor engineer who would change things arbitrarily and then disappear and a lighting engineer who would create dark moody settings for us that probably looked great from the audience but rendered sheet music, fingerboards, and each others' faces invisible - bad for precision changes and endings. Still, the audience was extremely receptive so I think the music sounded better from the outside than it did from the inside. Post-gig hang and back to the hotel for 3 hours sleep before a daunting four-train trip to St. Johann-Am-Tirol in Austria beginning with a 0615 pickup. The law of inverse proportions states that the nicer the hotel (and this was a grand one), the less time you will spend in it.

March 27 Alte Gerberei - St. Johann-Am-Tirol - Austria
Amazingly, we make all of our changes including 7 minutes in Cologne to detrain with all of our gear, descend to ground level, get across six platforms, get up to train level, and then push our way through the crowds all the way to the end of the train where our reserved seats are located. Making our way while changing trains in Munich I hear my name and turn to see Bernhard Lang and his wife Gerlinde Hipfl who are returning from the premiere of his opera in Mannheim. Glad hugs and we're all off on our way. Arriving at this small town in the Austrian Alps at 1735 after 11 1/2 hours of travel, we only have time to quickly change in the hotel and rush to the nearby venue, an old building converted into a culture center with 35mm film projectors, stage, sound system, and bar. Hans, the promoter hooks us up with espressos and sandwiches and we're soon set up and sound-checking. I'm excited to use the vintage Fender Quad Reverb that's been brought for me but soon find that it has only a feeble and tinny output at what would be normal Twin settings. I think about Albert Collins and dime all the pots - this just adds some low-end mush so time to engage Plan B: an Ampeg SVT bass head through a vintage Kustom cab which does the trick, especially when goosed by my Celmo compressor.
The crowd is waiting to enter when we finish and our set commences shortly. The music comes together as it should on this hit and the band at times sounds like one instrument, bristling and pulsing. Our first encore is "Raptor" from the Tocsin CD of 1992. We're called back for another and improvise a tranquil groove with curlicues of sound floating up. We're rushed off to dinner by Hans and later return to pack up and get back to the hotel. A civilized start time the next morning so it's possible to get some good horizontal sleep as well as a real breakfast before the van takes us to the station for our trip to Zurich.

March 28 Rotefabrik - Zurich, Switzerland
Where is that vaunted Swiss precision? Our train arrives in Zurich over 30 minutes late cutting into our already too-short hotel time as our concert is to begin at 7pm. I do have time to jump in the shower and find that the shower-head has built in LED's that display different colors dependent on the fluctuating water temperature. How did I ever live without this before?
The Rotefabrik ("Red Factory") is another cooperative house of culture with multiple venues, a cinema, and restaurant right on Lake Zurich just outside the city center. I first played there in 1983 and have been back many times since (which still does not make the stage's electrical system any less annoying: the power onstage is filthy and my normally quiet rig has many strange buzzes, hums, and other extraneous noises.) Still, my amp, "The Twin", is in good shape and is so loud that it cannot be turned above 2. The onstage sound is generally good and friends in the audience say that the house sound is excellent. We've tightened up many aspects of the set and can now twist the material a bit as well as pull out various dynamic subtleties. The songs are deepening the more they become second nature. "Raptor" again as first encore and a different version of the improvised encore tune, this time starting with my solo and slowly building.

March 29 Porgy and Bess - Vienna, Austria
Another late train and we're in Wien. As we're waiting for the van to pick us up, I hear my name called and it's Sergei Tcherepnin, a fine composer, performer, and sound-artist who was one of my Associates at the Atlantic Center in 2009. The local traffic is thick and it takes us too long to drive the short distance to the hotel affording us little time there before heading to the club for soundcheck. Setup is quick except for Joe who has to piece together disparate hardware to get his kit together. My amps are perfect: blackface Twin and an SWR valve bass amp and 4x10 cab. A different set of strange hums on this day. I'd say that my rig needs to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb but the inconsistency of the problems points to the venues. Quick check and bite and we're onstage. Two sets tonight - the first is a bit short at 35 minutes but quite intense with a cranked version of Eukaryonic. After the interval, we return for our second. We stretch some of the tunes and add a wider dynamic range without losing any of the edge. We're quite pleased with the results as is the full house. Long improvised encore that expands on the gesture of the previous shows and adds a double-time element at the end. Many friends in the house tonight including Sergei, composer/performers Helmut Neugebauer and Susanna Heilmayr, and Hans from St. Johann making for a gemütlich post-gig hang

March 31 Bimhuis - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Our train on the 30th is at the reasonable hour of 10:40 but we have twelve hours of travel ahead of us with a change in the Frankfurt Airport station. When we arrive in Amsterdam it's winter with cold rain and driving wind and a long shlep to the taxi stand. Soon enough we're at the hotel with a free day ahead of us which I spend working on various things including beginning a composition for bass clarinetist Gareth Davis who resides in A'dam. I hadn't performed at the Bimhuis in many years and had yet to see it in its new incarnation in a just-built complex on a large canal that includes our hotel and a boat passenger terminal. The club is incredibly well-equipped and the crew is friendly and efficient. The canal and passing trains provide a dramatic backdrop to the performers on stage. We're quickly set up and checked and soon sitting down to a fine meal by the Bimhuis restaurant's chef. At soundcheck, we begin to develop a new piece, called Transalpino (for now) which we debut in the first set of our penultimate concert of this tour. The first set goes extremely well and after a short interval, we play the second. Great response and our encore is a fiery Raptor. After the show, greetings with Frances-Marie Uitti, Jack deKuypers, and Gareth Davis. Director Pavel Borodin has filmed our set (he made the DVD of "Velocity of Hue - Live in K�ln") and interviews us after.

April 1 Grand Theare - Groningen, Netherlands
Another civilized start time and then what should have been a simple train ride to Groningen offered a lesson in the dangers of privatization. About ten years ago, the Dutch train system was offered to private contractors - one bought the tracks and stations, the other the trains themselves. The decay and incompetence apparently began almost immediately. We took one packed train to Hilversum and there changed to another overstuffed one marked "Groningen". After about one hour, I asked a passing conductor an unrelated question and he mumbled half to himself, "oh you're going to Groningen ...you need to move to the first car as the train will split." I announced this to my colleagues and we discussed strategies, finally settling on bringing up the smaller backpacks and instruments through the train and waiting for the next stop to move the bigger cases as it was just too crowded to do anything else. At this point a general announcement was made about the impending change and chaos ensued. Reaching the station, we hightailed the gear to the first car and loaded it on only to be told that the first car was NOT going to Groningen and that we needed to move everything to the train ahead on the track. We unloaded and did the transfer onto a train even more packed than before. We did eventually reach Groningen and fortunately had a bit of recovery time at the hotel which was conveniently located next door to the recently renovated Grand Theater, a beautiful old space with polished wooden floor and high-tech lighting and sound. Some tweaking necessary in soundcheck but generally good sound and we break for dinner. Two sets to excellent response and a relaxed post-gig hang with Marcel from the Theater and various friends. I get one hour of sleep at the hotel and then Joe Trump and I catch a taxi to the train station at 0430 through streets packed with pre-Easter drunken revelers. Our train to Schiphol Airport in A'dam departs on time but has no heat and in the frigid morning it's quite the refrigerator. At Schiphol Joe and and I bid each other "good flight" and he heads to Portland and I to Frankfurt and then Newark where I rendezvous with Zeena, Marc, and David who were on a different flight.

May 4 Mary Halvorson/E# acoustic duo - The Stone - NYC
Though Mary and I had played together electrically in 12-guitar versions of my algorithmic piece SyndaKit, an invitation by Stone guest-curator Henry Kaiser to perform a purely acoustic duo gave us the opportunity to present intimate and unadorned guitar interaction. I've written about Mary's playing for Guitar Player magazine - Dece. 2007) and I feel she's one of the most original-sounding guitarists in jazz today. Her main guitar is a Guild Artist Award - a 17" width carved archtop with a magisterial sound and visual presence. Normally she plays it amplified and processed with delay and distortion - played acoustically in the Stone's confines it sounded big and bright. I brought my 2001 Dell Arte Anouman, a gypsy-style guitar in the style of the Selmer Grande Bouche D-hole guitars. It has more bass than the typical gypsy guitar and balanced well with Mary's guitar. Our set was completely improvised: we looked at each other and hit "go" for 45 minutes of fast and angular sonic interlock. We often played contrapuntally, whether dwelling on pitches with convoluted single-string runs or focussing on sounds with clusters and extended techniques. Mary has a very precise right-hand picking technique: her single-string flurries are beautifully articulated and ring out. I brought in more extended techniques including harmonics; two-hand tapping; and use of slide, spring bow, and EBow. We followed our epic with a short and snappy improv and called it a night. Interestingly enough, Mary and I are both left-handed but neither of us plays a lefty guitar. We both taught ourselves with what was at hand, which happened to be in both cases, right-handed instruments. The notion of left-brain/right-brain is excessively over-simplified yet there are tendencies associated with each side. One can only surmise about the results of this switch.

May 17 Nachtmix - Bayerische Rundfunk - Munich
A return to Munich for another week of work on my sci-fi opera "About Us" for teenage performers and I've been invited by the BR's Karl Bruckmaier to make a repeat appearance on his Monday-night radio show which sometimes features live performances for an invited studio audience. I had last done one in September 2005 and looked forward to it - I've enjoyed Karl's friendship for many years. Left Sunday afternoon from JFK amid some worry about the active Iceland volcano and how it might affect my flight - parts of British airspace were to be closed. A smooth flight until we hit the western border of the Sea of Dublin and some strong turbulence. We then headed due south completely avoiding the British Isles and flew across France and Switzerland and approached Munich from the south. Quick trip to hotel and 3 hours sleep and awoke feeling absolutely lousy, hit with either a stomach flu or a bad sandwich at the airport. Rallied the forces with an espresso or three and was able to get through rehearsal with the opera project, our time spent reviewing old materials from March and just introducing some new parts for the third act. Driven to the BR station by the video crew filming the opera rehearsals and who would also be filming my concert. They were able to come up with some Vomex, little pink pills that worked wonders (though the brandname might not go over so well in the US). I was able to play the concert with energy and focus though with a rare lack of desire to eat anything after (I had to pass up Isabella Bruckmaier's delicious-looking Austrian beef salad!) I had brought the Godin acoustic and planned to play Velocity of Hue/Quadrature materials and in the first half of my forty minute set touched on a lot of new sounds and gestures that I look forward to developing. Having not played this material in awhile, I was able to enter it with a fresh approach. The second half dwelt more on the familiar but with good intensity. Adrenaline buzz from the set left me feeling very much better but I was quite happy to get back to my hotel for some deep sleep. Thanks to Vomex and espresso, I was able to function quite well but it took until Wednesday until I felt somewhat normal. Rehearsals on the opera proceeded quite well over the next days with the kids developing an understanding of the overall arc of the piece and why I approach it the way I do. Some genuine enthusiasm developing for the songs. One, "The Song Inside Me" wrote itself in about 10 minutes when I was here last March. It is sung by just eight of the kids and still needs work but is coming along quite well. The penultimate song, "About Us," literally deconstructs those words into sounds which are split across the entire troupe of kids - as it increases in speed and intensity it becomes clearly the words "About Us." There will be one final song which is waiting to manifest itself - soon!
http://www.br-online.de/bayern2/zuendfunk/zuendfunk-studio12-elliott-sharp-ID1275650327033.xml

June 3-4 "Watch it Grow" - Scott Fields String Ensemble - Loft - K�ln
This is the final installment in Scott's expanding composition that began with our duo in March and continued with string quartet in May. Fly out from Newark - too bumpy to sleep for a good chunk of the flight so feeling exhausted when I land in Dusseldorf. Time for a relaxed breakfast then head over to await violist Jessica Pavone and her Air Berlin flight. We make our train to K�ln with just a minute to spare and taxi to the home of Scott Fields where we're each given our respective apartments. Time enough only for about two hours of horizontal sleep then it's coffee and shower and head to the venue for soundcheck and rehearsal. The ensemble includes Axel Linder and expat American Mary Oliver on violins; Jessica and Vincent Royer on violas; Daniel Levin from NYC and another expat, Scott Roller, on celli; and Scott and I on electric guitars. I've brought the Koll 8-string. It's resonant woody tone will fit in well with the acoustic strings plus its classy deep -almond finish looks like it fits with classical instruments. My electronics include Celmo compressor, Rat distortion, PitchFactor, and Boomerang. The concerts will be recorded - we'll also record the pieces during the next afternoon. We set up quickly and are soon going through the pieces. Some involve complex chains of cued commands passed around the players. There is some confusion but we manage to get through everything before breaking for dinner. It's a holiday long-weekend in this part of Germany so many people are away. We're quite surprised to have the 20 or so in the audience that do make it. We give decent readings of the pieces with some trainwrecks and moments of deep confusion. Still, everyone is experienced enough to be able to recover from errors. The bowed strings all sound fantastic together - their intonation is beautiful and the room acoustics bring out the best in their unamplified sounds. Scott and I both play through amps turned down quite low. The audience response is strong and we leave the venue heartened. The rehearsal and concert are filmed for a DVD. We arrive at 1230 the next day and quickly get down to recording the pieces. After a few minutes I notice that my PitchFactor is behaving erratically and soon one of the footswitches gives up the ghost. I had a similar problem with a switch just before the Carbon concerts and recording last summer. I'm not happy about this. Despite the problem I still have one bank of my patches available to use though some of my faves are in the inaccessible bank. As we work through the pieces we begin to understand their inner workings and get a better sense of overall arc. We get good version recorded and break for dinner returning in time to caffeinate before the hit. More people than the previous night but still not what I usually experience at this venue. Besides the holiday, the weather is spectacularly fine: sunny and warm. This means that the beer-gardens are full and concert-halls empty. Our renditions of the pieces are finally where they should be with all elements combining musically and sonically. We break down and head to Scott's for the post-hang and for me, a few hours of sleep before catching an early train to Dusseldorf Flughafen and my flight to London.

June 5 Octal solo and improvised combinations with John Butcher, John Edwards, Tony Marsh - Cafe Oto - London
More time spent getting to DUS by train and out of LHR by Underground and Overground than on the brief flight. Heathrow Immigration has a long line but I'm amazed at the efficiency (and the politeness!) - a far cry from the rudeness and glacial pace of immigration at US airports. It's hot and humid in London and I'm pretty toasted (actually steamed might be a better description) by the time I arrive at my hotel, a short walk from the Canonbury station. Shower and a solid nap and I'm picked up for soundcheck by Hamish of Cafe Oto where I'm given some amazingly good espresso and homemade cake. Setup is simple: an old solid-state HH bass amp for the piezo pickup of the Koll (through my K&K Pure preamp) and a silverface Twin Reverb for the magnetic pickup through the Celmo, Rat, and Boomerang. The equipment is in good working order and the Twin sounds beautiful: fat, warm and sparkly. Hamish, his partner Keiko, and I sit down to a takeout Turkish meal (great food can most definitely be found in the UK) while Butcher, Edwards, and Tony drift in, join us for a bite, and set up. The vibe of the Oto is casual but crackling, a good mix of hanger-outers and musicheads - and great to see many friends in attendance including KJ Grant, Phill England, and Martin Davidson. I wish NYC had such a place. One feels that the music is the reason for the commerce there - not the other way around. People are there to listen but the welcoming nature of the venue creates a fine vibe - perfect for improvised music and a good lesson in socio-acoustics. For strategy, we decide that each of the two sets will begin with my Octal solo after which we'll play quartet with improvised breakdowns into sub-group duos and trios. I'm quite pleased with the Octal sets (new discoveries to be found within the sound-design of each piece) and the quartet sets seem packed with inevitability - my mark for a good improvisation. John Butcher has perfected a style based on micro-sounds but he can also wail with the best of them in an extroverted manner when called upon to do so. John Edwards also has a full complement of unique sonics and unmatched energy and enthusiasm. Veteran Tony Marsh plays standing with a very personal drum/percussion setup and has a universe of sounds and a powerful but free-floating sense of time. The quartets range from the delicate to the raging - they sometimes even sound just like jazz, much to our amusement. By the end, we've steamed up the room quite a bit. Great response from the audience and then it's time to call it. The post-gig hang is just as fine as the pre-. Before heading back to the hotel, I check the TransportForLondon website to find out about any anomalies I might encounter in getting to the airport in the morning but my chosen lines are predicted to have "good service." It's my usual pre-flight 3 hours of sleep, up at 0530 for coffee and then a relaxed walk to Canonsbury and the Overground. To my surprise, the station is closed. I find a worker who tells me that it's always closed on Sunday. Right. He suggests walking to Highbury-Islington where the Over- connects to the Under-. "Just five minutes, mate, and it's open, absolutely." A little anxious and I'm putting the burn on and it actually takes closer to 15 minutes . It's only 0620, the sun is up and the humidity is high and thoroughly I'm steamed when I arrive at the station and even more steamed when I find that it''s closed for repairs as well. Moment of panic. I need to get to King's Cross by 0700 to make sure I'm at the airport in enough time for check-in and security. Check the bus stop but then a black cab comes by and I ride to King's Cross where I connect to the Piccadilly Line all the way to Heathrow with time enough for breakfast before my flight back to NYC.

June 8 Demierre/Hug/Leimgruber/E# - The Stone - Manhattan
A completely improvised set with the Swiss musicians Jacques Demierre (piano), Charlotte Hug (viola, voice), Urs Leimgruber (soprano sax) and myself on guitar. I've played quite often with Charlotte and known Urs for years but this is the first time meeting Jacques or playing with Urs. I've brought a simple setup: Rat distortion and a new Echolution delay pedal from Pigtronix plus a beautfiul Luna Gazelle guitar that I found on EBay for $99! The Gazelle is about the size of a Les Paul but semi- hollowbody and thus light in weight with lots of snap and resonance in the sound. The Echolution is a massively powerful delay very much in the same character as the original Electro-Harmonix 16-second delay. It allows looping and reverse and has a versatile modulation section allowing tremolo, vibrato/chorusing, and at extreme settings, much more radical sounds. Our set is extremely varied: many short soundscapes that meld seamlessly from one to another and moving from full quartet to various sub-groupings, intense in a mostly-quiet way but with occasional blasts nearly out-of-control. One 45-minute piece then a short encore that explored yet more different territory. We were quite pleased with the music and so was the full house. I was also very pleased with the new setup: the Gazelle is appropriately named as it plays fast and smooth with a bright and detailed sound even with full fuzz and the Echolution is almost like having a warped collaborator - It has a high unpredictability quotient - a big plus +.

June 12 Dither Guitar Quartet Extravaganza - Invisible Dog - Brooklyn
To celebrate the release of their first CD, released by the Henceforth label, the group produced an "Extravaganza" at the Invisible Dog art-space in Brooklyn. Dither is an electric guitar quartet and the pieces they play on the CD are most definitely steeped in noise but not just bashing: they also revel in structuralism, timbral counterpoint, microtones, massed gestures, and conceptual approaches with pieces by the composers Lisa R. Coons, Eric KM Clark, Lainie Fefferman, and Jascha Narveson. More info about the group and CD here: http://www.henceforthrecords.com/catalog/dither/ The members are James Moore, Taylor Levine, David Linaburg, and Joshua Lopes. Invisible Dog is a huge multi-floored building that was once a factory whose most famous product was the "invisible dog" collar with rigid leash, a gimmicky accessory from the 70's that was right up there with "pet rocks". The ground-floor space was filled with a variety of installation works - some subtle and delicate others glaring and visually loud. Add to this the all-wood room's excellent acoustics and it adds up to a unique and quite-appropriate venue for this event. A true highlight for me was to hear Dither (plus three additional guitarists) perform James Tenney's Septet For Electric Guitars from 1981. A fiercely difficult piece to play and yet it sounds so "simple", not simplistic but as plain as a force of nature, and like a force of nature, natural laws are there in the manifestation featuring otherworldly sounds from the harmonic series and their inter-relationship with layered rhythms. Larry Polansky conducted the piece and its clarity was revealed. I played the piece with Dither the year before and it's much more enjoyable to hear it from the outside - being inside, one does not necessarily hear the sum total of the sound. After the Septet, I performed a 15-minute mash-up of gestures from Octal:Book Two on the Koll. Thanks to Nick Didkovsky and Kathy Supove for allowing me the use of their amps: K's Roland keyboard amp for the piezo and Nick's Soldano for the magnetic pickup. Nick warned me that the Soldano was NOT a Twin and he was quite right: it has it's own nasty upper-midrange saturated honk and was not best suited for the subtle complexities of Octal but still, it gave me a bright and saturated sound. I moved quickly from gesture to gesture, trying to find which of the compositional strategies would best work with the equipment at hand. After a few minutes I was able to relax and dig in with two-handed tapping working the best. The audience was completely enthusiastic when I finished the set. My set was followed by the quartet Redhooker after which bagpiper Matt Welch did a rocking solo set that made one realize that the first fuzzboxes were not guitar effects but double-reed pipes with a drone. After this, Dither commenced their set , performing the pieces on the CD. While I truly dig the transparency of their studio CD, the juiciness added by loud amps in a good room made me wish that Dither had recorded a live performance instead. For this event, Dither managed to bring together musical elements with a conducive venue and an energetic and receptive audience: friends, musicians (including Dean Drummond and Steve Mackey), curiosity seekers, party-types, and the clueless but open-minded. It made me nostalgic for the "good old days" in the last century: NYC's glory time of imminent apocalypse and urban decay when extreme music was made for the joy of it and because we had to - there was no choice in the matter (and we were all the better for it.)

June 17 Payton MacDonald/E# duo - The Tank - Manhattan
A virtuoso percussionist who plays with Alarm Will Sound, Payton is a hugely talented polymath whose passions include exotic snakes and arachnids http://www.paytonmacdonald.com/ . We had met up a few months ago to discuss my composing a piece for him and our talks led to the idea of recording and performing together. His set-up included a huge marimba mic'd with condensors which feed multiple distortion and looping pedals allowing him to create layered textures - a good parallel to the way I work. This is the first time that either of us is playing The Tank in midtown. The room is small - 40 seats - but with a decent stage and good room sound. I've brought the Koll, Pitchfactor, and a Rat plus the K&K Pure preamp for the piezo - quite simple. The house amps are pretty tired though - the Peavey Classic 50 is a fine amp but this one needs new tubes and speakers. The Ampeg bass amp that I use for the piezo side is missing knobs but with the aid of a pliers I'm able to get it sounding okay. Payton runs his electronics into the PA and the acoustic sound of his marimba fills the stage and room quite well. The evening begins with his performance of the surprisingly jazzy piece by David Saperstein commissioned by Payton after which I perform a short Octal mash-up. We then begin our duo improvisation and go right into the zone as soon as we hit - a very good sign. After a solid 45-minute set full of twists and turns and a variety of expanding drones and textures, we both comment on the notion that there are a huge number of sounds that intersect between our instruments. We're quite pleased and look forward to our recording session planned for July.

June 19 Tamo Tuma/E# duo - The Stone - Manhattan
A Mexican/English singer and performer, Tamo invited me to collaborate with her for this set. A few days before, we met for coffee and discussed music, children, touring, and many other subjects - ample rehearsal for an improvised set! Our concert covered a wide range of sonic territory - a bit reserved and strangely jazzy, it was an energetic and sympathetic first encounter.

June 24 - The French Connection/Tectonics "Abstraction Distraction" - White Box Gallery - Manhattan
Harpist Helene Breschand and multi-instrumentalist Franck Vigroux arrive in NYC from France so that we may debut our quartet with Zeena Parkins on her unique electric harp. The first concert is at White Box. The rented harp awaits us when we arrive for sound check and we're able to deal with the limited technical resources of the venue and soon have a sound up and running. Helene attaches a pickup to the harp and processes her sound through guitar pedals. Franck is playing turntables with effects, and I've brought soprano sax and the Godin acoustic. We all go direct through the PA except for Zeena who plays through the house amp which is somewhat challenged but still sounds decent. This event is also designed to debut my new Tectonics CD "Abstraction Distraction" on Frank's label Autres Cordes. I only play reeds on this CD and for the performance just use my curved soprano with the laptop as well as various processors: Pitch Factor, Boomerang, Ultra Fuzz. My set is a compact 20 minutes after which we perform a 40 minute quartet. We can hear each other quite well once we "learn" the sound in the room - a good beginning. Helene surprises us with some beautiful and affecting polyglot vocals.

June 25 - The French Connection/Man Forever
Similar setup this night though I have a Bb clarinet instead of the soprano as I'll not do Tectonics. Some monitoring problems but the music digs in much deeper to my ears and is greatly appreciated by the full house. Our set is followed by Oneida drummer Kid Millions' multi-drum project - a sea of sound!

June 30 - Christian Marclay Festival - Whitney Museum - Manhattan
For the press conference and the Members' Opening, I've been asked to perform on Christian's "Wind Up Guitar", a sculpture/interactive sound installation/musical instrument built in 1995 that marries a number of music-boxes to a classical guitar. I first performed with it at the Miami Center For The Fine Arts in January 1996 and also did some recording with it at Studio zOaR, never released. For these concerts at the Whitney, I've composed "Guitar Upwind", a set of strategies for the instrument that combine gestural approaches with electronic processing using a clip-on condensor mic, the TimeFactor, Boomerang, MXR Compressor, and a volume pedal. The set for the press show is short, about 10 minutes, and covers quite a bit of my planned excursions, though in miniature. Some franticness before we begin as the previous day's soundcheck seems not to have "stuck" with the equipment. Huge gain-structure problems that are only vaguely resolved when I hit just after addresses from museum director Adam Weinberg and Christian. Things work well enough though and I'm able to quite enjoy the instrument. It doesn't hold tuning like a "real" guitar so I use it as a sound-source and resonator with occasional nods to traditional technique. With all of the music boxes running, it generates quite a beautiful din, especially when looped and filtered. For the Members' opening in the afternoon, I play the piece for about 25 minutes and am able to find many more sounds and strategies.

July 1 Graffiti Composition - Min Xiao Fen/E# - Whitney Museum
A duo performance with Min and I each choosing pages from Christian Marclay's Graffiti Composition and using them as the basis for our improvisations. I have the Koll 8-string, Timefactor, Boomerang, and UltraFuzz pedals. The wiring on this end of the room is not well-isolated or grounded and there are hums from my normally quiet set-up that are impossible to remove. Add to this, an attitudinous and unhelpful sound-assistant and I'm quite annoyed by the time we begin our set. As goes the old cliche, the music has a healing power: our duo improvisations are exciting and completely in-tune (but then again, playing with Min has always been a joy). She brings a virtuosic technique to the pipa and augments it with tasteful use of electronics with a Lexicon LXP5 as well a gorgeous singing voice that she uses intermittently to good advantage for lyrical and sonic abstraction. Whether this is just good improvising or determined by the graphics is an open question. Graphic scores have always held an ambiguity as to how much they shape the actual music with some scores defining the sonic space more than others. There is no doubt that the musicians are contributing greatly to the realization.

July 2 Screenplay - Min Xiao Fen/Maria Chavez/E#
We're on the opposite side of the room under the big screen and the wiring is as it should be: quiet. I had composed an electronic score tightly synchronized to Christian's video and this gives a narrative arc to our improvisations, sometimes augmenting the implied sounds from the screen, sometimes providing a subtextual counterpoint. Maria plays turntables with some effects and her work is subtle but also quite dramatic. I've brought a Bb clarinet for thes performances. Soundcheck is quick and easy and the set goes quite well with lots of good interplay between the three of us.

July 3 Screenplay - Min Xiao Fen/Maria Chavez/E#
The previous day's performance seems now almost to be a rehearsal for this day with our set both more dynamic and simultaneously more subtle. Janene has brought the twins and Kai is especially captivated by the concert. He adds his alligator to Blackboard, an ongoing public-participation piece.

"About Us" - Mini-Opera Pavillon at the Bayerische Staatsoper - Munich, Germany
Between the Christian Marclay concerts at the Whitney and finishing up the recording and mixing of a radioplay version of "Binibon" as well as completing some sound-design and one final song for "About Us," my time before departing on the 12th was quite dense-packed. Happy to have a smooth flight to Munich and some rest in the hotel for a few hours then off to McGraw for our final week of rehearsals. Our crew has helped refresh the kids' memories of the piece and how they play it and when I arrive we begin run-throughs as well as concentration on individual scenes and some of the songs. It feels like everyone understands the piece now and the musicians are also beginning to live in their parts. These rehearsals are mostly done in costume. This is brutal as McGraw is rarely used in the summer because it cannot be cooled. It sits in the sun absorbing the heat and becomes a giant sweat-box. Even just walking from the corridor into the main room, one feels the temperature differential like a heavy slap in the face. It's hard to keep focus for all. We take a long break in the hottest part of the afternoon but we never quite regain the edge on our work after the break. At the end of the week we do two complete run-throughs for timing after which the crew packs the costumes and props and everyone gets Sunday off. Early Monday morning we're in the Pavillon - a black-box theater in the Marstallplatz next to the Opera and holding about 250 seated guests with an advanced lighting system and excellent acoustics (and air-conditioning!) We spend most of the day going through the piece scene by scene and getting a basic sense of lighting, video, and sound cues. There are a number of tracks on two CD's (some of which are played together to take advantage of the 4-channel spatialized audio-system with two sub-woofers) comprised of music I composed for the Staatsoper Orchestra (conducted by Christopher Ward) and also some electronics mostly realized on a Korg MS-20 analog synth but some with software in ProTools. Finally, there are tracks where the orchestra sound is processed in software and comes out of the rear speakers while the original acoustic tracks play out of the front. After a short dinner break, we're back in the Pavillon without the kids and down to the serious and sometimes tedious business of fine-tuning the automated lighting cues. There are a few special effects that take some time to program including a scene in the climax where intense and tightly-focussed spotlights are directed to the heads of two large bass-drums up on the platform at the front of the house. The heads facing the audience are covered with thin sheets of plastic wrap. These drums are kept in the black throughout the piece until this scene in Act 3 when they are illuminated while two of the actors furiously beat them from the rear head. This combines with a near-strobe flashing effect and playback of analog synth tracks to create a wild, scintillating, and overwhelming effect in the darkened room. Tuesday and Wednesday are spent tightening up various cues, more rehearsing of scenes and group singing; and dealing with a few kids freaking out from impending stage fright. It would have been most helpful to have had at least one more day of rehearsals in the Pavillon but by Thursday morning we're ready to hit for an audience of schoolkids, friends, and colleagues. I'm incredibly grateful to my amazing crew from the Opera: Ursula Gessat-educational outreach coordinator, Natascha Ursuliak - assistant director, Falko Herold - costumes, Rainer Karlitschek - dramaturge, Amelie Mayr - music assistant, Marie Pons - sets, Silke Holzach - video, Michael Bauer - lighting, Henning Ruhe - production coordinator. They were absolutely wonderful to work with and put an incredible amount of creative energy and dedication into the project.

Here is the synopsis of "About Us":
The sky suddenly changed, a strange shift in light, profound and dramatic. We know now that it lasted only an infinitessimally smallest fraction of time yet for some it seemed to have lasted hours, days, an eternity. We could not say how the world was now different yet no one would dispute that it was, especially after the fact that something had indeed changed and everyone knew it but not in the same way. As we learned later, we had passed through a singularity. Conventional science had always taught that this would mean instant annihilation, the Earth sucked into a black hole so dense and all-consuming that not even light could emerge. The reality was something other than that - not the end of life but merely a new world paradigm - our universe had transformed, immediately and irrevocably and was now inextricably entwined with another. Yet awareness of the depth of this new reality did not extend to everyone, only to persons between 13 and 19 years old and only when they lived in concentrated numbers in the larger towns and cities - the combined quantity of teenage hormones was the catalyst for this receptivity. For these children, it was as if blinders had been removed from their eyes and ears and hearts. They claimed to receive communications with creatures that now shared our world. Initially discredited as hysteria and mass-hallucination, these claims were so widespread that some began to take them seriously. Enterprising young bloggers, separate from the mainstream media, published extensive descriptions of this presence, linking the affected communities around the globe. One who was especially influential, BlahBlahBlogger, and conversant in post-quantum physics, called them Schr�dingers, after the legendary Schr�dinger's Cat of the paradoxical thought-experiment devised by Erwin Schr�dinger to illustrate that a quantum particle could enter an indefinite state, only made coherent at the point of observation and measurement. The Schr�dingers telegraphed their existence and their densely-packed modules of info through various cryptic means: patterned gibberish literally appearing as text on cell phones and across computer & video screens. For the receptive, this gibberish presented ideas and concepts untranslateable to ordinary spoken language but resonating deeply within the brain. In similar fashion, the Schrodingers transmitted their messages through forces of nature: cloud formations visible from the ground and from the air, coherent waves on the ocean, desert sands seeming to be instantly rearranging their own dunes and hills. The patterns resembled standing waves as seen on an oscilloscope, the raked patterns of Zen rock gardens, barcodes twisted into musical notation. In the air of the teens' inner ear was a subtle music, hearable only by them. It was not definable as rhythm and melody but again, waves, loops, densities. Children assembled or passing through a public space might erupt in choirs of spontaneous melodic glossalalia and sounds that they could never before imagine thereby transmuting the Schrodingers' info-packets into the hearable spectrum. The crowded sidewalks of the city would suddenly transform themselves into spasms of calmly ecstatic dancing, infectious and joyful, free but patterned fractal waves, a beautiful resonance of impossible polyrhythmic grooves and unearthly harmonies. The Schr�dingers were certainly real to those that could see them - yet even for those few, the Schr�dingers were small, quiet and elusive - barely there. Fluid and graceful, eyeless and silky, somewhere between fawn, snake, architeuthis, and feline - in a word, indescribable. To attempt to fix on one with analytical stare, one could not be certain that one was seeing a solid creature - more a dense cloud of probabilites, an aggregate of tendencies toward existence - a vibration, a shimmer, a manifestation. Never threatening, never imposing, and only, always, in the peripheral vision. But with their first appearance, there were the seeds of major upheavals, the threat of violence, though ultimately, never an explosion. Flash mobs would form at the instigation of certain individuals and try to hunt the Schr�dingers or even groups of children thought to be in consort with them. One result of the presence of the Schr�dingers is that upon building to a certain level, the malevolence just dissipated into confusion and embarrassment and the mob would mill around for a moment before returning to their lives. Violent acts became completely unattainable. Dr. Bhik, a former Tibetan monk turned post-quantum physicist was the first to understand the nature of the Event and the nature of the Schr�dingers. Her theories were widely disseminated and accepted (though not without dissension.) The realization that the Schr�dingers were an actual alien presence triggered an onslaught of reactions on various levels. At first there were suicides and the birthrate crested at the predictable time. Talkshows filled with "expert" blather, usually mendacious and an incitation to some action, however ill-considered. Across the globe, indignant religious and government groups formed based on fear and ignorance and a need to "act" against the alien invasion. The International Coalition For Return to Normalcy became the overseeing body whose function it was to "deal with" the problem. It was decided by the Coalition that the teens within the affected age-groups should be quarantined in camps, tested, experimented upon, tranquilized, perhaps even euthanized to protect the younger ones from "infection". There was debate with some saying to let the children be: there was no harm and only joy in their new reality. But others, especially those controlling the blast of media pressure tilted the tide toward a general approval of the round-up and detention. The real issue underlying the reaction was the loss of control. A decision was made, worldwide, to escalate the action and an emergency research program instituted at laboratories in Geneva, Omaha, Beijing, Dusseldorf, Tel Aviv, Manaus, Tehran and at satellite units to develop a shield from the unknown force of the Schrodingers. After 2 months of intense research and construction, a special isolation suit was built for the military coated with a nearly-infinitely-tiny layer of anti-matter that shielded the wearer from the moderating influence of our transformed world. Thus suited, these soldiers existed both outside and inside our reality - shielded from some of the operative paradigms of our new world but able to operate within it. In exhaustive testing in secret black locations, these soldiers were able to commit horribly vicious actions. The stage was now set for the confrontation. Bloggers would be detained first with the idea that they served as a conduit for communication between the kids and the Schr�dingers. After they were silenced, the children would be rounded up. BlahBlahBlogger was targeted - an important symbol to be eliminated. As pressure built, the children would assemble in public spaces and stay there round-the-clock. Schr�dingers would nestle in and among them. Despite the threat, the youth were calm and resolute, happy in their congregation and the knowledge of their invulnerability. They had also come to the realization that the Schr�dingers were not giving them songs to sing, not giving them their creativity. The songs, the impulse to act, was inside them and always had been - it only needed to be catalyzed into reality. The songs were theirs. Dr. Bhik became the lead spokesperson for the forces of reason. She counseled that through her analysis of minute vibrational patterns, another singularity intersection, another Event, was imminent and that anything could happen. To act hastily could be tragic. She stated that sometimes the best action is inaction. Still, Coalition military forces were deployed first in Munich around the assemblies of children. The attack was imminent but held back, waiting only for the command (still in dispute with some of the more moderate generals who were listening to Bhik.) Suddenly, a transmission was manifested simultaneously on screens everywhere, in clouds, on cellphones, even in the foam of a cappucino: the message at first appeared to be a typical Schr�dinger output. After a few seconds its coherency rate shifted and it was clearly in German: "All of you, enough! You think it's only about you, but guess, what, it's not! Here we are trapped in this dull dimension with no end in sight (though we are certainly working on it, believe me, pulling strings here and there and hoping that something will pop out.) Listen, try as we can, we are distracted. You �people� have nothing better to do than try to kill each other and it's all we can do to keep it from happening. Remember, it's not just about you, it's about US yes, it's ABOUT US! So please keep that in mind before you do anything too stupid. Thank you from US (or as you call us, Schr�dingers, which we actually find quite charming.)" Finally, without herald or announcement, there was another shift in light but this time with incredible intensity. There had been a new singularity and a new transformation. The Schr�dingers were now visible to everyone and the sense of confrontation and tension had disappeared. The military forces were left confused and dejected but at the same time relieved. The youth retained the glow of their experience of another dimension and now advised their elders as guides to their new awakened pan-dimensionality. After some months and the novelty of the singularities had faded from the nightly news, life seemed to go on with beautiful weirdness as part of everydaylife - indeed everything was now different.
- E# - NYC - February 2010

July 22 Preview - 11am
We open to a packed house - sold out. There are a few missed entrances and miscues - mostly in the lighting department. The kids perform beautifully if a bit stiffly. Still, it's technically quite good and the audience response is tremendous. We meet in the Kantine just after to go over corrections.

July 22 Premiere - 8pm
Sold out and a high-energy buzz as we open. The kids loosening up in their acting and our little "house orchestra" also improves. During a scene with "Schr�dinger Effects" a major thunderstorm comes crashing down with lightning and high winds. Outside in the plaza, tables and shrubbery are blown over. Inside our pavillion, we hear the rain on the roof but softly (I was warned that if it rained it would sound like being inside a steel drum pelted by rocks - this was false!) The only major manifestation is that a nearby lightning-strike causes the emergency house-lights to come up in one scene. It takes some time to tourn them off. A few timing issues in transitions but these are minor. Again, some mistakes in the ligthing program but we correct it after. Fantastic applause and two curtain calls. After, our crew retires to the Hofbrau House, a touristic Bavarian beer house for food and drink.

July 23 Morning show - 11am
I'm up at 0600 to run out to the airport to meet Janene who is flying in for the weekend. She rests in the hotel while I head over to the Pavillon for our 11am show. The house is sold-out again but they seem half asleep. So do our kids. Morning shows are not necessarily a good idea. Still, the show is technically excellent (though again, some lighting cues need tweaking!) Given the general energy level, it's a good performance with good response.

July 23 Evening show - 7pm
Sold out again. Everything comes together and works as intended: timings, transitions, energy levels. The kids do an excellent performance and get three curtain calls. It's pouring buckets outside when we leave, trying to find a good restaurant close enough so that we're not completely soaked.

July 24 Evening show - 7pm
The kids are becoming seasoned professionals - relaxed enough to do everything effortlessly but still with lots of excitement and edge. Three curtain calls for this penultimate show, and yes, sold out!

July 25 Afternoon show - 3pm
Our final sold-out show and the kids are quite emotional before. Some minor crises but resolved with a bit of warmth and discussion. They pour everything out - three curtain calls again and no one can believe it's actually over. We have a small party for the kids outside the Pavillon which moves into an empty room in the Opera. All are relieved but saddened - myself included! We devoted seven intense months to this project and were able to see it grow from very tenuous beginnings into a polished and technically-ambitious production.
Now I'm looking forward to the documentary on the project - it will probably be completed in January.

August 4 Duo Marc Ribot/E# - Cornelia St. Cafe - Manhattan
Guitarist Joel Harrison curated a multi-day festival of guitar duos including such players as Brandon Ross, Michael Gregory, Mary Halvorson, Vic Juris, Pete McCann, Adam Rogers, Rez Abbasi, Brad Shepik, and Joel's duo with sarodist Anupam Shobhakar. Marc and I ended the series with first duo hit together in a few years. He brought an assortment of vintage Gretsch, Gibson, and Fender guitars plus a pedalboard. I traveled light bringing the Luna Gazelle and the Dynalap 8-string lapsteel plus UltraFuzz and Echolution pedal. Marc and I are old buddies so the duo was lively and fun even though it highlighted major differences in approaches. Marc tends towards irony and deconstructivism while I'm more into generative and structuralist strategies. Still, we both love noise and we made some. The AC down at Cornelia is a bit loud but it grew so hot that it was necessary to turn it back on - we were going blind from dripping sweat! (Photography by Scott Friedlander �2010)

August 11 3pm - Screenplay w/ Jessica Pavone, Nate Wooley - Whitney Museum - Manhattan
Bring my bag of electronics, Bb clarinet, and the solidbody 8-string up to the Whitney for the start of my stint there this week. The first event is Screenplay with Jessica Pavone and Nate Wooley. Jessica has a pick-up on her viola and is mic'd and Nate has a mic for his trumpet plus one monitor speaker set up to emulate an amplifier behind him. We have a small amount of discussion where I urge them both to neither be afraid to blow it out nor to be silent. I really like both of their playing so I had no doubts that this would be a fine rendition of the piece. Indeed, my expectations were more than met: the music ebbed and flowed with grace and ranged from delicate filigree to raging storms. Great response from the audience.

August 11 10pm - Octal:Book Two - The Stone - Manhattan
Run home for dinner with the nuc and then back up to the studio to re-string the Koll and down some espresso. The Stone is hot and humid - there's no ventilation and the small air-conditioner is completely inadequate. Hard to maintain concentration when sweat is dripping into eyes and onto guitar and there's no respite. I worked through most of the gestures of Book Two in about 35 minutes. It felt complete and the audience seemed to enjoy it though I wondered afterwards if I should have played longer. But Octal is dense and sometimes relentless music and the Stone is physically quite uncomfortable in the summer so after all, the finish was appropriate.

August 13 4pm - Artist Talk: On Realizing Graphic Scores - Whitney Museum
As part of the Christian Marclay Festival, I'd been asked to give a talk on realizing Graffiti Composition and on graphic scores in general. I gave a brief history of contemporary usage starting with Russolo's scores for the Intonarumori and scores of Varese and Xenakis, John Cage, and George Crumb. I also spoke about my own use of graphic scores to notate things that don't necessarily lend themselves to either traditional notation or pure improvisaiton. I showed early graphic scores of mine from 1972 including Spectral Shift (pictured) and Noise Floor. There was quite a bit of audience participation in the Q & A, some from people who were completely confused by the notion of this type of notation as well as some who were more deeply involved either in music or visual arts.
http://www.whitney.org/WatchAndListen/PublicPrograms

August 13 7pm - Graffiti Composition w/ Dither Electric guitar Quartet + E# - Whitney
After the talk, went down to the 4th floor and set up my equipment for Graffiti Composition. Rather than being clumped in one end of the room as most of the performances of this piece are, I chose to have the players spread out widely across the space. We each had a stop-watch and a loud Fender amp. I was located centrally to cue sections. We manifested a wide-ranging and very noisy version of the piece to great response from the large audience.

August 15 2:30pm - Graffiti Composition w/ Zeena Parkins/E# duo - Whitney
For this performance, Zeena and I did choose to stay near each other in the regular area. We hadn't played duo in awhile and we moved from contrasting to complimentary sounds throughout our 30-minute set.

August 15 10pm - Terraplane - Le Poisson Rouge - Manhattan
Rainy Sunday night and a late set. Not optimum conditions but still a decent house for our "rehearsal" show before heading off to Europe. This is a pared-down Terraplane: Dave Hofstra on bass, Don McKenzie on drums, Eric Mingus singing. I've brought the white Strat and the Dynalap steel, no horns. A couple of new songs that will be exciting when we can play them smoothly plus a lot of our old standards. Good dynamics and solid high-energy renditions of the tunes. Looking forward to what we'll do with them on big outdoor stages in Frankfurt and Haarlem.

August 19 Terraplane - Palmengarten - Frankfurt, Germany
The days before departure were hectic with projects to complete including the recording of young bluesmaster Ladell McLin's CD. Basics, guitars, and vocals finished with a day to spare. Late flight out from JFK with only a couple of brief periods of what the pilots call "moderate" turbulence which translates to "can the airplane really withstand this without disintegrating?" The Palmengarten is a botanical garden named for its palm trees. The grounds are quite well-maintained and include a bandshell with excellent acoustics. Soundcheck is also a rehearsal and we find that everything works as it should. Our gracious host, Dr. Aladdin Jokhosha, makes us feel extremely welcome and the feeling carries over to the concert. We perform two sets on this warm clear evening but get off on the wrong foot with a small trainwreck on Clandestiny. We start the tune over and after, the first set flows quite well with the new tunes meeting great response. After a short break we perform the second set, finishing right at the curfew time for the park. The crowd is over 1000 strong and screams for more. Civilized start-time for the airport the next morning allowing a relaxed breakfast in the hotel and time for another at the airport.

August 21 Terraplane - Haarlem Jazz Festival - Haarlem, Netherlands
A smooth short flight after which we wait 45 minutes at the Arrivals area but the pickup from the festival never arrives leaving us to hire a van-taxi ourselves to get to our hotel, just about 30 minutes away. The free evening is welcome as is most of the next day. Pickup at 1700 for our 1830 set which is on a large outdoor stage in the town square. A wild Colombian merengue band is just finishing when we arrive and the breakdown of their equipment is quick. I'm supplied with a vintage blackface Super Reverb, my Terraplane amp of choice these days. One problem of an outdoor stage is that open-back amp cabinets have nothing to dampen and reflect the signal and the speaker can sound extremely flabby. My first reaction was that it was blown. but by reducing the bass I was able to get it to sound a little tighter. The lap steel sounded really fine through it. One longer set which just poured out, the band sounding tight and extremely energized. Good monitoring helped but we noticed that when the wind increased, we were less able to hear either orselves or each other - the wind disrupted the sound waves. Again, fine response from the large crowd. Great dinner after and return to the hotel for some rest before the morning pickup for Schiphol. Our flight back to JFK was packed but smooth. As we descended to 7000m off Montauk Point on Long Island, the captain announced that we were being held. We circled for 45 minutes just above some bad weather and then moved to a position south of the airport where we circled another round before being told that the weather as JFK was deteriorating and we were being diverted to Philadelphia to re-fuel and that hopefully they would get us to NYC that night! People were shouting "NO!". Suddenly we began descending rapidly - the active flight map indicated that we were going into JFK but the flight attendants had earlier told us to disregard this display. Some turbulence on descent but not as bad as it might have been. Visibility was near zero though but soon enough we were on the ground. Where though? Philly or NYC? Too dark and rainy to see anything. Finally, an attendant announced (to cheers) that we were in NYC.

September 4 Inventions for Electric Guitar - Metamorphose Festival - Mt. Izu - Japan
Manuel G�ttsching's compositions "Inventions for Electric Guitar" and "E2-E4" were widely influential in the late 1970's-early '80's in a variety of scenes including progressive, ambient, house, and techno. Associated with the "Kraut Rock" and "Kosmiches Musiches" movements, Manuel's music also displayed affinities with the Minimalist approach of Steve Reich in its use of delay-modified repetitions. 1974's "Inventions..." used 4 tracks of guitars all played by Manuel to create a bubbling modal tapestry. There has been a surge of interest in Manuel's work of late and he enjoys strong support in Japan. For the 10th anniversary of the Metamophose Festival in Izu, Manuel planned a performance of this work with guitarists Steve Hillage (of Egg, Gong and System 7), Shou Wang (of White and CarSickCars) and myself. To break up the outbound journey, I stopped in Seattle overnight to see Al Kaatz and Kimie and then flew out the next afternoon to Tokyo's Narita airport - a fine flight marred only by two hours of turbulence in a storm over the Bering Sea. We all convened on the 2nd at our hotel in Tokyo and that evening found us in a nearby izakaya for food and drinks with English translations of the menu listing such items as "roast hormone", "tuna and abogado" (lawyer in Spanish), and "three types of horse". (Standard part of my kit for trips to Asia is a jar of Medaglia d'Oro Instant Espresso. If you're a coffee addict like I am, the typically weak and tasteless brown water (appropriately called "American coffee" that is proferred in most hotels just does not cut it and the Medaglia d'Oro makes life possible. It even produces a hint of crema.) We spent most of the next day in a rehearsal studio in Setagaya working on the three pieces from Inventions: "Echo Waves", "Quasarphere", and "Pluralis" plus one new one, "Fights." It was decided that we would all go direct into the desk using individual monitors behind us and a stereo mix in front to give a full and clear sonic panorama without the potential monitoring difficulty of loud amps on stage. The rehearsal studio is run by the festivaI sound company so we had a good representation of our stage sound to work with. My rig for this hit consisted of my Hondo Longhorn guitar, an early-70's tribute to the Danelectro Guitarlin: a lyre-shaped solid-mahogany body with a three-octave neck and built-in overdrive plus the Digitech RP250, a surprisingly versatile but simple multi-FX pedal with good amp simulators and delays. The Longhorn's splittable humbucker has a unique voice and the extended upper-range of the instrument was perfect for one section of Echo Waves - it's a great example of the quality guitars being produced in Japan in that era. It was great to re-connect with Shou Wang who I had not seen in a few years and to meet Steve Hillage whose work I had admired since first hearing him with Gong, decades ago. We were all a little groggy from travel but still had a very concentrated rehearsal and at the end, added "E2-E4" to the set. Noon departure by car the next day for Izu, 137km as the crow flies but MUCH longer if the crow is sitting in a van stuck in typical Tokyo traffic. After more than five hours of travel (mostly spent not-moving) we arrived at our hotel in Ohiro, 10 minutes from the festival site. The hotel is also an onsen (hot springs) and the lobby was filled with yukata-clad families going to and from the baths. We have a chance to dine at the quite-wonderful buffet and then head to the festival site. The festival has five stages and over 30000 people in attendance. We're on the main stage, "Solar" and follow Omar Sosa Rodrigues' powerful band with Mogwai coming up after us. Our set-up is quick and at the appointed moment, we jump into "Echo Waves" which ripples, phases, and drives. The entire set goes by in a flash and we finish to great applause. Backstage hang until too late with Mark Rappaport and Norwegian guitarist Ayvind Aarset followed by a sojourn to the hotel and the next morning three trains to NRT and my flight back to NYC via Washington DC-Dulles. The storm in the Bering Sea had not broken up when we flew over it on the return and we had some severe jolting and shuddering for an hour - not pleasant at all. IAD is a terrible airport for transfers, even with a two-hour window: Immigration had only 7 out of 21 windows open and the line stretched back almost to the gate. I thought I'd miss my flight to LGA but managed to clear customs with 15 minutes to spare. On our approach to LaGuardia we flew just past my apartment - I could see our windows.

September 12 Flexagons - Stone - Manhattan
Debut performance of this new project with Brad Jones on bass and Ryan Sawyer on drums for this first hit. More a construction set in the mode of SyndaKit or Quarks Swim Free than a collection of tunes, these first eleven cores for Flexagons are fairly melodic and lend themselves to a jazzy interpretation. More cores will be composed before the next show in October. We arrive at Stone one hour before for soundcheck and find that there is no longer a house bass amp. Brad has to make do with running the pickup on his acoustic bass directly into the small PA - there's no sub-woofer and the sound is inadequate but has to do. At least the house guitar amp is in decent working order - an improvement over my last two times there. I've brought the Luna and just the Rat distortion and Time Factor. Ryan is happy with the house drums and we jump right in with great intensity : the 40 minute set flows continuously, sometimes opening up for solos, sometimes the trio blowing full-force gales of sound. (Photo by James Ilgenfritz)

September 15 Wind Up Guitar - Whitney Museum - Manhattan
Used the same set-up as in June for "Guitar Upwind" performed on the Wind Up Guitar and achieved some rich harmonic feedback from the instrument using the bandpass-filter delay "seeded" with the sounds from the music boxes. Thumping on the body of the guitar and looping that yielded some grooves reminiscent of a cracked memory of acid-house.

September 16 Screenplay - Whitney Museum
This performance of Screenplay was led by Jim Thirwell and also featured Kenny Wolleson on a wildly aumented drum kit. Jim played sample loops from his laptop, sometimes humorous, sometimes dark and brooding, that were loosely synchronized to various actions in the video and either reinforced the images or added layers of meaning. We improvised freely and Kenny would play grooves or textures using the various elements of his kit, some are obviously non-Western in origin and some are mysterious mechanical noise-makers built into old suitcases and hatboxes. I'm playing the solidbody 8-string and using the germanium Phuzz Bender built for me by Al Kaatz - it's a blast of a pedal, like a mix of the classic Fuzz Face meets the Tone Bender.

September 16 Wind Up Guitar - Whitney Museum
Continuing with sounds and strategies from the 15th except more so. Digging the spring bows on this instrument.

September 19 Screenplay - Whitney Museum
Bassist Melvin Gibbs and violinist Rachel Golub join me for this Screenplay. We have an open rehearsal/soundcheck at 2pm with audience and it's Melvin's first chance to see the work. After our runthrough we run out to caffeinate then back for the hit. A very uninhibited performance with wild sounds and dynamics yet sensitive to the structure of the video and my synchronized electronic score. After the concert I need to bring my equipment back to my studio for a recording project the next day but there are no taxis to be found as it's that nether time of shift-changes between 1630 and 1730 and the streets are filled with transpo seekers. The blue-haired ladies are quite an aggressive bunch and I end up walking three blocks shlepping my gear before a gypsy car-service driver makes me a reasonable offer for the drive downtown.

September 24 Wind Up Guitar - Whitney Museum
My final performance of "Guitar Upwind" in this series and my favorite of all of them. The piece unfolds in almost a relaxed manner though the sonic content of the individual sections are far from tranquil. The filters in my Time Factor sound especially chewy today, almost vocal, especially when used with the spring bows, and the feedback is rich and detailed. (Photo by Janene Higgins)

September 25 Graffiti Composition - Whitney Museum
This set features Rachel Golub - violin, Oscar Noriega - reeds, Briggan Krauss - alto sax, Nate Woolley - trumpet, Jacob Wick - trumpet, Curtis Fowlkes - trombone, Reut Regev - trombone, Art Baron - trombone, Julie Kalu - bass trombone. I've brought only Bb clarinet. I want to do something different with the piece, something spatial, something in the spirit of graffiti, and so configure the area to have ten "stations" defined by the presence of ten music stands placed around the perimeter of the audience space. Each station also has a small table so that the brass players may leave mutes around to be picked up and used when desired. We begin all together at the first station and then the players move freely between stations to create a variety of imprompu combinations, playing all the time. Each station has two sheets that I've chosen from the Graffiti Composition box of scores. I tell the players that any and all sounds are fair game. The only other instruction is that we will end when I return to the first station after which all players should drift back to join me and we will exit playing en masse to the back and the Green Room. The performance lasts 30 minutes and feels highly concentrated, lighthearted but with heavy sounds, from ultra quiet to roaring. I enjoy duets and trios with various players and am greatly pleased at the wide dynamic range and sonic inventiveness manifested by the entire group. The audience seems bemused but fascinated and we end to great response.

October2 Octal solo - Freedom Garden - Brooklyn
Zachary Pruitt is a very talented guitarist who studied with me in previous years. He and his housemates have recently begun doing a concert series at their home in Bushwick. Weather permitting, the concerts happen in their garden. http://www.bushwickbackyards.com/thefreedomgarden.htm This night was unfortunately too chilly so the evening's festivities went down in the finished basement. First up was a solo from tenor saxophonist Travis LaPlante. He's a member of Little Women with Darius Jones and we'd previously met at a festival in Austria. He was suffering from a severe head cold and so cut his set short but what he did play was stunning: an elusive balance of simplicity and complexity and rich with overtones. Next I performed an Octal mash-up on my Koll 8-string using Zach's Fender amp for the magnetic pickup and an Acoustic bass amp for the piezo. It was loud and gritty and it felt right. It had been necessary to perform self-surgery that morning on my left index finger using a sterilized sewing needle as I had discovered two miniscule but deeply-embedded and extremely painful splinters on awakening. Started the set avoiding that finger - not an easy task - but then just tried to play without being conscious of it - necessary for the music to be played properly. Excruciating pain at first which then completely disappeared as I dug in (thank you, adrenalin). It felt fine until about 40 minutes after the end of the set. After I finished, Killer Bob played: an electric band with two saxophones, electric bass, drums, and electric guitar played by another talented ex-student, Dave Scanlon. Angular and unpredictable compositions with wild soloing from all - pretty exciting. Caught a car back to Manhattan to meet Janene at Phill Niblock's where his birthday (77!) was being celebrated.

October 13 Briggan Krauss/Ches Smith/E# Trio - University of the Streets - Manhattan
The U has been around for years, an East Village institution presenting bop jam sessions and occasional forays into freer realms. During the 1980's, returning home in the early morning hours, I would often run into alto saxophonist C Sharpe, trombonist Grachan Moncur, trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, and others hanging out on the sidewalk and holding court. C had a fantastic tone and melodic facility - his playing had that salty tang that I also found in the playing of Cannonball Adderley and Arthur Blythe. We would discuss getting "The Four Sharps" together with D. Sharpe on drums and Avery Sharp on bass but It was not to be. Wayne Horvitz curated this October series and in addition to booking Flexagons for Oct. 16, Briggan asked me to join him in an improvised trio with Ches Smith, a drummer of incredible inventiveness (and a new dad to boot.) I had just received by mail a nicely strange guitar that I had been searching for since late in the last century when they were discontinued: the Rogue Aluminator. I decided to break it in on this gig. The body is identical to one of the models of the Abel Axe: a one-inch thick machined piece of billet aluminum. It has a typical hum-sing-sing pickup configuration and a neck reminiscent of current Danelectro build quality and probably made in Korea. I found the guitar for a low price on a northern California Craigslist and the owner and I communicated and agreed on the transaction, an initially wary process because of the ubiquitous presence of scammers. The guitar is lightweight and has American-made DiMarzio pickups giving it a sparkly transparent sound with lots of sustain (no doubt helped by the aluminum body) and a funny midrange curve that gives notes a vocal quality. After tweaking the truss rod and bridge, I found that the instrument played quite well and when played clean, chords had a piano-like quality with great clarity and separation of notes. Researching the instrument, I found a rather amusing reference to it here: http://www.genepensiero.com/blog/2009/08/10/all-i-want/ We all arived shortly before the 9pm hit time and quickly set up. Good drum kit and a selection of not-great amplifiers. I chose a solid-state Fender and plugged the Aluminator into the MXR compressor, the Rat distortion, and the TimeFactor. Briggan's sound on his old silver Selmer alto is huge and he was unamplified. The room acoustics were surprisingly good and the music sailed on from our first sounds to the last, ebbing and flowing, sighing and screaming, for 50 minutes. We paid subtle tribute to our surroundings with some jazzy sections - nearly swinging! Unfortunately the audience was sparse but those there in attendance were exuberant about the music.

October 16 Flexagons - University of the Streets - Manhattan
Tonight's edition of Flexagons is with Melvin Gibbs on electric bass and Ryan Sawyer on drums. We find that the house bass amp, a small Peavey, to be "challenging" to say the least but Melvin is able to eke out a sound that is acceptable from a Roland keyboard amp. The nylon-wrap strings that Melvin is using (with his unique attack, of course) give his bass a distinct sound, reminiscent of an upright. Interpretation of the Cores is very different tonight: more referencing the materials and as a result deeper flux and some extended ecstatic sonics. The audience is much better this evening and gives back to us. I've brought the Aluminator again and I'm appreciating its sound and feel - different from a wooden guitar especially in the transients.
(picture by Wolf Kampmann)

October 24 Flexagons - Brooklyn Guitar Festival - Rose Live Room - Brooklyn
Not sure if "festival" is the word I'd use to describe this event. None of the promised promotion from the venue materialized in any meaningful way - the show seemed to be flying well under the radar and Sunday nights are usually grim anyway. Still, we had a fine time playing with Melvin Gibbs again on electric bass and Don McKenzie on drums for the rockingest version yet of this music. The Aluminator sounded massive through a solid-state Fender amp and it was a pleasure to hear Melvin through an Ampeg amp. House drums surprisingly good sounding but then again, Don makes almost any drum sound good. A number of friends in attendance made us welcome and the music continues to develop.

October 27 Cave Canem Foundation Benefit - Memorial Auditorium - Pratt University - Brooklyn
This organization's mission is to provide encouragement, both spiritual and material, and infrastructure for young black poets. More info here: http://www.cavecanempoets.org/ Tracie Morris was hoping to interface the Foundation with Pratt where she is a professor and so organized this massive and ambitious benefit concert. The stellar cast of writers, musicians, and performers included pianist and poet Cecil Taylor, singer Pauline Jean, pianist Geri Allen with vibraphonist Cecilia Smith, poet Margo Jefferson, singer Eisa Davis, and fire-eater/knife-thrower/Circus Amok director Jennifer Miller. The sets were all brief and exciting with an incredibly warm feeling backstage between everyone and even more coming back from the wonderful audience. Pauline did a riveting piece with electronic percussionist Val Jeanty: Creole/ dub/techno/chanson. Tracie Morris Band normally includes Val and guitarist Marvin Sewell and I joined them on Koll 8-string for a bracing Wang Dang Doodle featuring a haunting slide solo by Marvin. I performed an excerpt of P-Branes and D-Branes from Octal:Book Two. The highlight for me was the closing set by Cecil Taylor (a huge influence for me going back to my first hearing of his album Unit Structures in 1970). Cecil began with some of his poems, read quickly but clearly, crisp and abstract but also funky and funny if one listens for the humor. He then moved to the piano, demonstrating why he is considered a force of nature: roiling ostinatos that never stay the same, delicate filligree, cascading flurries of notes and clusters, incandescent lyricism. We've been discussing forming a trio together with Don McKenzie on drums - it would be an incredible thing. I hope we can make it happen!

My Japan tour begins with a flight to Washington-Dulles where I'll connect with the flight to Tokyo and then another to Nagoya in central Japan. There must be lots of air traffic because the usually 35-minute flight takes 70. Enough already and I haven't even begun the 14-hour leg to Tokyo! Sleep, books, and music get me to Narita where I connect to an ANA flight. I need to transfer my luggage after customs and get a boarding pass from the ANA transfer desk. The girl working the desk tells me my guitar, the Koll (in a soft bag) "does not fit on plane" and must be checked. I tell her that the Airbus 320 has large overhead bins and the guitar will certainly fit, in fact, it even fit in the overhead in the tiny Canadair that flew me to DC. My ticket is through United and I am connecting from an international flight, I'm allowed a "personal item" in addition to a carry-on, I have "Premier Executive" status from all the flying I do, IATA regulations allow a musical instrument as carry-on. I also explain that the instrument is unique and very delicate and if it is checked it will be destroyed. "No, it does not fit - it must be checked." She pulls out a tape measure and takes on the condescending tone of voice that I often find with protein-robots: "Too big - will not fit in plane." I tell her again that it will most certainly fit and why doesn't she just let me ask the flight attendant at the plane. If it doesn't fit, then I am willing to do a gate-check (where the bag is placed by hand in a pressurized cargo area and then returned as one exits the plane). "No, this is not possible - it will not fit." I try to maintain cool which is getting a little difficult as it's been 21 hours of travel since leaving home. I ask to speak to a supervisor who is even more condescending while maintaining her perfect smile - she talks to me as if I'm a total moron: "Guitar is too big to fit in plane. Every passenger gets ONLY one carry-on - same for everyone. You cannot carry it on - you must check it. It will not fit" I try to appeal to reason but no go. "No, it is impossible - guitar is too big for airplane." The flight is boarding in 30 minutes and I'm getting desperate and angry: "So, what am I supposed to do? Allow my instrument to be destroyed? Go back to New York and cancel my tour?" I ask for HER supervisor who soon appears: a dour man as wide as he is tall who waddles up to me shaking his head "NO" and walks away. Finally, the supervisor smiles and says "You may buy seat for guitar." Extortion. I really have no choice - the only other alternative would be to take a train to Tokyo and from there another to Nagoya - expensive and exhausting. 10000� later (more than I paid for my own seat) I have boarding passes for the guitar and myself. Finally on the plane, I find it less than half-full and absolutely ALL of the passengers have more than one carry-on, some with garment bags quite a bit larger than my guitar's gig-bag. After landing, I'm quite happy to exit the Baggage Claim and see Carl Stone and Ito, his student, there to bring me out to the hinterlands near Nagoya with a welcome stop at an izakaya for sake and food. [The guitar/ANA story has a happy end: the United rep that I spoke to after I returned to NYC was very sympathetic and refunded my money. She also said she would pass on my feedback about consistency in carry-on regulations especially regarding to instruments. We shall see....Digging into the ANA site, I found a reference to contacting them ahead of time about musical instruments. Any musicians contemplating travel on this airline would be well-advised to do so. So far, I've had only good experiences with United and especially with Lufthansa. I certainly have seen the viral video "United Broke My Guitar" and hope to never remake it!]

November 03 Lecture: Socio-Acoustics: Application of Contemporary Strategies in Post-Digital Performance - Chukyo University - Toyota City
My lecture-demonstration is at 11 in the morning so we head over at 9 to set-up at the video studio. Carl teaches at the art college within this engineering and technology school - there are concentrations in artificial intelligence and robotics. I run the Koll and pedals direct into the soundboard and the room is filled with a deep stereo field - quite satisfying for playing. It's a holiday, "Culture Day", honoring the birth of the Meiji emperor so there is some concern that there will be no attendance. However, the room fills up by the appointed time and I begin with my pre-written lecture (which is translated by Carl's wife Yoshiko.) The relationship between the participants in a sound-event has long fascinated me: the varying range of perceptions and responses that occur between performers and audience members, between performers themselves, and between performers and their materials. I began to think of these relationships as "socio-acoustics." I hope to research and write about this more in the near future. For this lecture, I use the concept as framework to examine some of my recent projects: Ganging the Hook, the opera About Us, Octal solo, and a work-in-progress, music for Toni Dove's Lucid Possession. After the talk, I play the Koll for about 25 minutes in an improvisation that touches on elements from both Octal and Tectonics. Finally, there is a Q & A with some excellent questions from the audience, a mix of faculty and students, about my processes of composition and analysis. After the event we're go with the department head and selected faculty and students to a nearby restaurant that features the local specialty, eel, prepared in a variety of ways. (Eel with spicy wasabi leaves is especially pungent and tasty).

November 04 Yasuhiro Usui/E# - Solos and Duos - Urban Guild - Kyoto
Yasuhiro Usui picks me up at 1000 for our relaxed drive to Kyoto, about 150km away. Short stop at hotel then soundcheck, also quick. This club is a funky wooden upstairs space with a cafe in a seedy part of town. First on the bill is Mitsu Salmon, a charismatic dancer and performer from Los Angeles accompanied on electronically-augmented accordion by Ryotaro followed by Tanya Calomaneri, also a powerful dancer/performer from NYC visiting Japan and accompanied by the virtuoso violinist Akiko. Usui begins our set with his solo and gets a massive sound from playing his Strat in a variety of unorthodox ways. I'm next with the Koll and electronics. The old Twin Reverb is a little muddy in the bass but sounds sweet otherwise and I run through another Octal/Tectonics mash-up sans any computer grooves. Finally, we play a 40-minute high-density duet. My strategy is to find various ways to orchestrate Usui's wall-of-sound using my own sonic strategies so that we have an always-shifting texture.

November 05 Shiga Shuyukan - Omihachiman
An hour's drive out of Kyoto into cow-country to the Shuyukan. This gallery and venue was once the warehouse for the sake factory of owner Akira. He has a newer warehouse for his organically grown and processed sake and converted the building into an acoustically and esthetically welcoming space for music and art. Again solos and duos followed by a fantastic Kansai-style meal including the tiny local "ayu" (sweet fish) and Akira's fantastic sake.

November 06 Nu Things - Osaka
A nicely dark basement space in Osaka's "American village" area filled with boutiques, bars, music stores, and lots of teenagers in various theme-costumes: hippies, glam, bikers, rockabilly, goth, "brown girl" and some unclassifiable. Opening act has a wide sonic palette and evocative visuals. Our solos are expansive this evening and we dig into the duo. I'm using the house Ashdown bass amp in hope of getting more clarity in the low end and indeed, the amp sounds great. About 40 minutes into the duo (and just about when we should have been finishing up anyway) we were greeted with a loud and corrosive sound from the bass amp - I unplugged everything and the sound continued. All agreed that it was time to quit and the full house seemed to enjoy the technical malfunction in good spirits. We repaired to a local "greasy-spoon" izakaya for refreshments - an atmospheric joint popular with local musicians and hungry drunks.

November 07 Big Apple - Kobe
A return to this live-house that just celebrated its' 20th anniversary last year. I've performed there many times over the years the first being with Slan during the club's first year of operations and it's always an enjoyable gig and packed with people who love to listen. There's a Polytone bass amp to augment the tired Twin and the sound is good. Fine sets to great response then the clubowner has the idea to have a small "session" since there are many musicians in attendance and they all seem to have come prepared. One of them cues unison hits while Usui and I continue to improvise. It's all good fun. Kobe is apparently reknowned for its Chinese food and ten of us make the scene for a post-gig dinner.

November 08 Power Trio & SyndaKit - Tokuzo - Nagoya
The Tokuzo is Usui's home-base and he's rounded up a number of great musicians for this evening's show. We arrive in the afternoon and rehearse SyndaKit and the Trio at the club with Usui translating my instructions. We plan to do the event with no monitors or sound system and this strategy works well at soundcheck (and in the concert as well). I have my doubts about how well SyndaKit will work as the musicians seem averse to making unisons and never seem to stop playing. I tell them that sometimes "nothing" is more important than "something" and that listening is more important than playing. The evening begins with the trio with Atsumoto Ishigaki (bass) and Taro Tatsumaki (drums), both virtuosic players. I'm surprised at one point when Atsumoto starts screaming into the microphone. I don't understand what he's saying and it doesn't sound particularly good to my ears. Still, it's an improvised session so there's no rules (the outburst does seem to go on a bit long!) Turns out that he was screaming about his favorite baseball team losing. Other than that, some intense interactions and slamming grooves. After a short break, we assemble for SyndaKit and in this case I'm also surprised but quite pleasantly at some of the textures and unisons. The crucible of performance transformded the players' ears into focus much to everyone's pleasure. Hisamine Kondo(per) Atsutomo Ishigaki(bass),Yasuhiro Usui(gt), Shingo Takeda(as), Toshinori Terukina (euphonium), Ryoko Ono(as, Yoshiyuki Hirao(Bs), Misaki Ishiwata(Tp), Kayo Kobayashi(fl,tb), and Korekiyo (tuba). After the show, a few of us repair to a nearby izakaya specialing in yakitori.

November 09 Satoko Fujii Big Band - Shinjuku Pit Inn - Tokyo
To Tokyo by highspeed train, the Shinkansen Hikari Rail-Star, with a maximum speed of 167 mph. It makes the trip shorter than usual which is fine as the seats are incredibly uncomfortable. We meet late afternoon at the Pit Inn to discuss Satoko's strategy for her music. Usui and I will join in as special guests on a suite based on the Chinese Zodiac with each of us having solo features and some duo interactions. Satoko has composed quirky, jazzy music that is also quite sonic in places. Her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, has also composed some pieces which draw more heavily on humorous approaches. Everything is quite enjoyable to play and the band is filled with interesting soloists and dynamic players. We operate without the club sound system or monitors and the strong brass presence gives the ensemble a punchy gleam. Two high-energy sets to good response and a great feeling on stage. The Big Band includes: Sachi Hayakawa, Kunihiro Izumi (as) Kenichi Matsumoto, Msaya Kimura (ts), Ryuichi Yoshida (bs), Natsuki Tamura,Yoshihito Fukumoto,Takao Watanabe,Yusaku Shirotani (tp), Haguregumo Nagamatsu,Yasuyuki takahashi,Toshihiro Koike (tb), Toshiki Nagata (b), Akira Horikochi (drums), Satoko Fujii (piano, conductor.)

November 10 BioMimicry - Tokyo Zokei University - Aihara
For the conference and exhibition on BioMimicry at this art school outside of Tokyo, my old friend Keisuke Oki has invited me to give a talk about my involvement in this subject. Before my talk there are student presentations, some of which are quite compelling, and a talk by noted art historian Yukiko Shikata. My presentation includes some audio recordings as well as slides of appropriate images and scores and I begin by discussing the Hudson River Compositions of 1974, my first explicitly algorithmic works that dealt directly with imitation of natural forms and processes. Next I described Fibonacci numbers and fractal geometry and how I've worked with them in such compositions as Innosense, Tessalation Row, Larynx, and the pieces for Carbon. Next up was an examination of SyndaKit and Memory Amor. Finally I described the compositions of Octal before performing a short mix of those pieces on the Koll. I prefaced Octal with the notion that our art-making is specifically an action of life: not mimicry but life and art in itself. After the talk, selected faculty and students all repaired to the only restaurant in town for refreshments before the long train ride back to Tokyo.

November 11 SyndaKit - Shinjuku Pit Inn - Tokyo
Mark Rappaport has assembled an incredible group for this performance: my old friend Jim O'Rourke (guitar, EMS synth), Keisuke Ohta (violin), Michiyo Yagi (koto), Yumiko Tanaka (futuzao shamisen), Natsuki Tamura (tp), Daisuke Takaoka (tuba), Kazutoki Umezu (alto sax, Bb clarinet), Satoko Fujii (p), Takashi Sugawa�ibass), Noritaka Tanaka (drums), Kumiko Takara (marimba, perc). Michiyo Yagi and Yumiko Tanaka both participated in my orchestra piece Spring & Neap for the 1996 Tokyo Music Merge Festival of 1996. Tanaka has a relentless groove which helps drive the ensemble in this performance. We play two long sets and two encores to great response in the full house. Many surprising transformations, especially breathtaking metric modulations as well as gorgeous textures and some earth-shattering unisons. We hit the izakaya Dora after the show and stay until late.

November 12 "Reflexions" CD Launch - MIchiyo Yagi/E# Duo - Disk Union Jazz Store
Yagi and I recorded Reflexions during my 2005 tour in Japan but it's taken until now to prepare it for release. The mastering and package are beautiful and we're both quite proud of this disk. Producer Mark Rappaport has selected our most cogent pieces for the CD and to celebrate the release has arranged for us to do a free performance at the Disk Union jazz store in Shinjuku. We plug into Yagi's Bose column which gives a beautifully present and full sound to both our instruments. The audience packs in and the air is charged. We play a 40-minute improvisation to wonderful response with lots of autograph signings and discussion after. The evening concludes with the requisite bistro. A fine end to the concert portion of this tour. I stay in Japan for one more "gig" before returning home: the wedding of Yuka Honda and Nels Cline in Kugenuma - a joyous event!

November 16 Issue Project Room benefit :Terry Riley's "In C" - Le Poisson Rouge - Manhattan
There's always a need for money at an artspace and to honor the 6th anniversary of the "Darmstadt" organization and to raise some cash for Issue, Nick Hallett and Zach Layton organized a massive ensemble to perform Riley's classic work composed in 1964 - perhaps THE piece that opened the world's ears to the movement now known as Minimalism. The score may be found here: http://imslp.org/wiki/In_C_%28Riley,_Terry%29 I first heard the 1968 ur-recording by Margaret Hassell while a student at Bard in 1972. It was mind-blowing to say the least! A group of us played the work for our own edification that year but it was a very reverent and somewhat dry and academic rendering. This performance at LPR was far from that: an ecstatic, high-energy, nearly punk-rock blast that was grooving from the bottom up with Jonathan Kane's monster drumming, Zach on bass, and Emily Manzo and Kathy Supove providing the 8th-note piano pulse. There were a few guitarists including David Grubbs, Shahin, and Hans Tammen. I brought the solidbody 8-string to jump from the highest parts down to fuzz-bass unison and interlock with Zach. Other luminaries in the huge cast of killer players included Peter Gordon, Mary Rowell, Neal Dufallo, Miguel Frasconi, Peter Zummo, Ha-Yang Kim, Nate Wooley, Ben Neill, and Jessica Pavone. After, the full house seemed as infected with happy ears as we were.

November 26 Alternativa Festival - Archa - Prague, Czech Republic
Very happy to have nearly 9 full days at home for the nuc and to work on re-writing the score to Calling in Sibelius for the Sarasota Symphony for a performance next March. Calling was composed in 2001 using Overture - software that was easy to use and inexpensive but not at all suited for professional-looking scores or for anything as complex as a large orchestra. Re-making the score is almost like composing it all over again - I exported the piece as MIDI files but every detail must be proofread and often tweaked and all text and dynamics re-entered. It's incredibly tedious but must be done. Thanksgiving lunch with Janene and the twins then off with Zeena Parkins to a nearly-empty Newark airport for a seriously turbulent flight to Frankfurt. Snow in that important hub delayed air traffic all over and our departure to Prague was delayed for an hour and then we sat for another 45 minutes on the runway before de-icing and takeoff. Finally, a brief rest in the hotel and then off to hook up with the other half of this quartet for a quick soundcheck: harpist Helene Breschand and electronicist Franck Vigroux. Archa is a black-box theater with excellent equipment and the hall is full for our set. Many of the people are here for the punk/circus/folk ensemble Usje Me Doma (whom I'd had met on my first concerts in Prague in 1983) and there is some impatience and talking during quieter parts of our set. Still, the majority were wildly enthusiastic when we finished and called us back for an encore. We have two acoustic harps and it's both a fantastic visual and a great sound with the styles of Zeena and Helene very different but very complementary. Great to see David Nemec and his mother Dona (who hosted us in that first trip to Prague and whose family was the backbone of the incredible Plastic People of the Universe.) Dinner after the show then a meeting with Ivan Bierhanzl, current bassist for the Plastic People, to discuss our upcoming NYC tribute in December to Magor, poet/muse of the Plastic People. More about the Plastic People and their trials and travails at the hand of the Czech/Communist government here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plastic_People_of_the_Universe

November 27 Acousphene Festival - Le Bateau Geneve - Geneve, Switzerland
Our next gig is a festival on a de-commissioned boat on Lake Geneve that is used for municipal events, parties, and concerts. It's still night for our trip to the airport and flight to Zurich where we find more snow and that our flight to Geneve is cancelled. We're put on a later flight which takes off late and then spends 35 minutes circling as more snow falls in Geneve. We finally land to find ground-travel chaos as the city was unprepared for this very minor snowfall (at least by my standards which were calibrated by four years in Buffalo). Quick train trip into town and a short rest at the hotel before being trundled off to soundcheck. Unfortunately, we have to cool our heels in the chilly boat (literally) as the soloist who is checking before us (with a very simple setup) takes an incredibly long time with total disregard for the rest of us. We have an abbreviated linecheck . The first part of the set does not gel but the latter half comes together quite well and it feels dramatic and inevitable. Great response and we're off.

November 28 Instants Chavires - Montreuil, France
Very reasonable start time to the airport and we're quickly checked in. We go through security without hassle and all seems fine but a few minutes later I find my phone is missing. I had assumed that I had unconsciously put it in its usual pocket in my travel vest. It was most definitely not there and so I went through my various pockets, backpack, and guitar case. And again. And again....with growing disbelief... and a touch of panic. Went back to security and no one had it so I began thinking that someone had grabbed it from my tray. We tried calling my phone from Zeena's but there was no answer. Boarding time loomed so i ran back to security to get a police report. Unknown to me, the taker of the phone made contact with Zeena and told her that it would be returned to security. As the report was being filled out, one of the security attendants overheard us and said, "oh is it a Nokia?" He had it - the guy who took it had returned it to him but the guard did not think to tell the supervisor or anyone else even though I had asked him and every other guard there. Board the plane and adrenalin withdraws as we head to Paris. The Peripherique is fluid and our taxi to Montreuil is quick giving us a little chill time before soundcheck. The club is packed for our show and the air is charged up giving an electric tension to our concert. We're called back for a long encore. Various friends in the house including two ex-NYC ex-pat choreographers, Jennifer Lacey and D.D. Dorvilier, both quite happy to be living and working in Paris.

November 30 Cankarjev Dom - Ljubljana, Slovenia
The call is way too early for our taxi to the airport for our flight to Ljubljana via Frankfurt. We board promptly but because of Frankfurt weather and traffic sit on the runway for over an hour before de-icing and takeoff. Our landing gate in Frankfurt is at the opposite end of the huge airport from the departing gate for our next flight. I run ahead with the idea that I will convince the Adria Air flight manager to hold the flight for Zeena. The Adria people were quite reasonable but Zeena ran into a blockage within the airport and was unable to get to the gate. We decide by phone that I should go ahead and she'll catch the next plane in an hour or so. The driver in Ljubljana is late anyway because of car trouble so I have an excellent espresso at the airport Arrivals cafe and wait for Zeena. Her flight is delayed by an hour and when her plane arrives, it is without any of our baggage. No one at Adria can find a trace of it even though it's entered into the system. There's no choice but to avoid thinking about it and hope that it arrives on one of the evening flights. These hopes are dashed and it's left for the next morning's flights. In fact, our baggage arrives about 2 hours before we must leave for soundcheck so all is well albeit tense. Bogdan Benigar's production crew was actually making great headway at rounding up contingency equipment for us to use but it was unnecessary. Our concert is very different from Paris but no less concentrated although a bit less electric. We're quite pleased at the arc of this little tour and hope to cull material from the concert recordings for release. It snows all night but we're told that this not at all unusual and that Adria flies through anything. Franck and Helene leave the hotel at 0500 and we run into them when we arrive at the airport at 0630. The flights are all on time and our ascent is quite smooth considering the thickness of the clouds and the volume of snow falling. Our descent into Frankfurt is not so tranquil though with serious bouncing and lurching. Just enough time to get to the gate and board our flight back to Newark. There's some trepidation as the news is reporting major winter storms across North America. In fact, we fly through some pretty bumpy air for the last three hours, directly into the oncoming storm front. Our landing is in heavy winds and zero visibility and we're lucky to get in before Newark is closed for three hours.

December 06 Mofungo - Maxwell's - Hoboken
The band Yo La Tengo are old friends of ours from years back and I was pleased to hear from Chris Nelson that Mofungo had been invited by them to "reunite" for a set. This would be part of the legendary annual Yo La Tengo Hanukkah series at Maxwell's, an equally legendary club in Hoboken that was a frequent part of our performing circuit in the 1980's. The series allows YLT to present a wide array of material with a "Jewish" theme (whatever that may be - the definitions get stretched and debated) and invite various musical friends, both famous and obscure. Mofungo fits both of these definitions. The band began in the late 1970's as a pioneering punk/noise/No Wave band alongside Information and Blinding Headache. I first guested with them around 1980 and released their first LP, "Out Of Line" on zOaR. My association with them grew into "producer" and then "full-fledged member" until the band became inactive around 1992. A more detailed history may be found here: http://www.furious.com/perfect/mofungo.html This evening would also include Wreckless Eric, Amy Rigby, Tara Key, and Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco as well as comic Eugene Mirman as guests. Mofungo opened the festivities on this frigid night to a packed house, body-heat warming the unheated Maxwell's backroom to a range hospitable to human life. Unfortunately, the day before Chris fell ill and was unable to play drums at all, let alone sing or even attend. The night before, we held a last-minute rehearsal with longtime Mofungo-compadre Rick Brown of Fish & Roses and Run On substituting on drums. Our set presented a capsule history of the band with material ranging from the atonal noise of "At the Shop" to Woody Guthrie's bittersweet Norte�o-tinged "Deportee" with Sue Garner as guest vocalist. YLT's drummer Georgia Hubley played guitar on our "Ronnie Thinks" and Ira Kaplan joined in on the bombastic finale "El Salvador". I had the green Strat, Rat, MXR Dynacomp, and Boomerang. We were all quite happy to revisit our songs from a bygone era and if invited to do so, would do it again. The crowd seemed to enjoy it immensely. One of the beauties of these nights are the "framing" provided by Yo La Tengo. The audience knows that YLT is presenting musicians and music that they love and this opens their ears and hearts. Yo La Tengo themselves presented a stunning set of highly-evolved garage-rock that included obscure pop-songs from many past eras as well as hard-edged psychedelic jams.

December 07 Roulette Benefit - Manhattan
A two-night benefit with a selection of performers reflecting the wide-ranging and inclusive programming of Manhattan's premier new-music space (soon to be moving to Brooklyn!) Our evening begins with pianist Kathy Supove followed by alto saxophonist Darius Jones' dynamic trio. After a break, David Behrman used Max/MSP on his laptop to process his violin with hypnotic beauty. Finally, Janene and I performed a water-themed duo with her video processed in realtime using Jitter and my solidbody 8-string running direct into the PA through the Dynacomp, Rat, and Pitchfactor.

December 10 Spectropia - The Kitchen - Manhattan
Toni Dove is presenting Spectropia as an interactive performance at the Kitchen for three nights and has asked me to perform a solo at the talk and reception after the Friday show. She speaks about the processes used to create Spectropia and also about her next project, Lucid Possession for which I've already begun to compose some songs For her set, she is accompanied by Luke DuBois who has done the programming for the "talking heads" and other elements. They use three screens and three laptops with various light and proximity sensors to control the video and audio, augmenting and layering what appears on the single-channel screen in the center. More about Toni's work here: http://tonidove.com/ For the afterparty, Toni demos the sensing/triggering mechanisms and allows curious audience-members the opportunity to try them. She shows the trailer for Lucid Possession after which I improvise on themes from Spectropia, sometimes using just the guitar and electronics, sometimes using soundfiles from the Spectropia soundtrack played back on my laptop as backing for my playing. Besides the Rat and Pitchfactor, I've brought the Aluminator - it sounds great and its' look is perfect for the decayed-futurist-steampunk-goth vibe of Spectropia.

December 11 Tribute to Magor - Bohemian National Home - Manhattan
Poet Ivan Jirous was a muse and friend to the Plastic People of the Universe and was in the US doing a tour around his latest book. This final event of the tour took place at the beautiful Upper-East-Side ballroom connected to the Czech Consulate. Bassist Ivan Bierhanzl assembled a fine band: Jonathan Kane-drums, Anthony Coleman-piano and organ, David Soldier-violin and flamenco guitar, and myself on electric guitar and bass clarinet. We were to accompany "home movies" of the Plastic People and friends from the Prague scene of 1973-74: documents of an underground rock festival, surrealistic antics, beer-drinking, kitchen work and play, and theatrical fantasies. We used Plastic People riffs as a jumping-off point for our improvisations. We had transcriptions of the bass-lines and some themes in advance and a brief rehearsal in the afternoon. We relied on our instincts - a good strategy given the situation and the simple but dark and compelling musical fragments. After our rehearsal, Anthony and I wandered around in the cold until we found a Sichuan restaurant - quite a good one at that! Very good atmosphere for the concert with a charged-up audience and 30-minutes of unaccompanied film. We had a video monitor and could also twist around to view the screen. The house sound was surprisingly good and the playing seemed effortless and exciting with Jonathan's drums providing a high-impact and steadily rocking groove to work from. It was wonderful to see a very young Dona Nemcova and her son David Nemec at various points in the films. I brought a simple setup: bass clarinet with pickup, the Hondo Longhorn (chosen for it's unique garage-y sound and cool look) plus the Digitech RP250 multi-effects into the house backline Blues DeVille. It was a strange set of juxtapositions: former "anti-social degenerates" and their outlawed poetry and music celebrated at a decadently ornate ballroom run by the Czech government. Of course, an important fact tying elements together is that recent Czech president Vaclav Havel was a friend of all of theirs and equally persona-non-grata during the early 70's.