well-weathered music

I had a dream the other night that a friend of mine was married to Pablo Picasso. Even though they had just been married a few months, they already had 6 teenage kids. I went to visit them in the south of France, which was a two hour drive from Manhattan. They lived on a very rocky shoreline and I had to walk the last mile or so to get to their house. Once there, I sat and talked with my friend for a long time. A while later Picasso came in and sat by the window. He didn’t join our conversation for a good long while. When he heard that I was a musician, he perked up and started asking me questions about music. He asked me what my favorite piece was and I said that it was, without a doubt, this one recording of Miles Davis that was made right before Bitches Brew, and I always carry it with me. (In reality “In a Silent Way” was Davis’ recording right before BB. But the recording in this dream was made in some other dimension between these two sessions.) Picasso & I listened to the entire piece together. When we finished, he got up right away and said he must go paint. My friend had gone out to do errands. I left and climbed across the rocky coastline back to my car and woke up.

The feeling of listening to this wonderful (imaginary) music with Pablo Picasso was what stayed with me after waking.

I remembered this dream later that day as I was packing my glass instruments for a short run of solo shows; a concert at Barbés in Park Slope that evening and one the next day here in Inwood (northern Manhattan). In both concerts I told the story of this dream and played a piece called “Listening to Miles Davis with Pablo Picasso.” I, of course, wasn’t trying to recreate the Davis piece from my dream, but the feeling of the dream itself.

This is the 2nd night’s version.

Here is something more melodic, a companion piece from the 1st night.

And if you’ve had enough high harmonics, here is something more mellow.

I was just speaking to a friend who was saying how she finds everything interesting in that everything is an expression of the infinite combination of things. (Yes, she’s a poet.) I found that thought to be very refreshing.

To that end, here is what I found particularly interesting today, the 3rd to last day of 2007.

Over on his weblog, composer Daniel Wolf wonders what if…

We all wake up one morning having forgotten music, what music is, and what music does to us. Three things can happen: (1) we re-invent music, more or less as it was before, or (2) we re-invent music, but it differs in substantial ways from what it had been, or (3) we get about with our lives but without any music. What have we lost and what have we gained in each scenario? What does this suggest about the nature and value of music? To what degree do these three possibilities reflect the working methods of a composer?

I lean towards #2. If fact, that is my modus operandi as a composer. I try to re-invent music with every new piece and every new improvisation. A daunting task, certainly, but there are, after all, infinite possibilities to be explored. Earlier this year I performed with John Duykers in a song festival at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (hear it here). At the post concert reception I found myself talking with 3 other composers. We were discussing how there is no longer any defined “school” to be a part of. It seems at one point you could either follow Schoenberg or Stravinsky, then Cage or Babbitt, but now it’s “every man for himself.” One fellow (a very academic composer) said his solution is to compose music similar to the music he likes to listen to. Being a bit of a rebel (and thinking of Xenakis), I said “Well, I prefer writing music that I can not imagine listening to.” The unimaginable is where I’m most comfortable.

Mr. Wolf’s premise can also be explored when a musical instrument that has been developed for a specific music tradition becomes part of a drastically different music tradition. Like the use of the western violin in Indian Carnatic music. Or, most strikingly, the use of the piano in traditional Burmese music. Just as it is fascinating to imagine what sort of new music human beings would come up with upon losing all known music, it’s amazing to hear how western instruments are played by folks who have zero knowledge of western music. Here is the incomparable U Ko Ko, Burmese pianist.

What a couple of weeks it’s been! First there was Okkyung’s concert (see below). Then from Nov. 12-16 I was up at the Kaatsbaan Dance Center, near Bard College, working with choreographer Erica Essner on a new piece. It was wonderful spending 5 hours a day improvising with sound files (thanks to Ableton Live) and creating a score at the same time as the dance. I much prefer that to having one follow the other, which is usually the way it works. Here are some things I came up with.

and

I then came back and went right into rehearsal for a performance of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, which was performed at Here Theater Nov 19 & 20. I created the score, which was more than just incidental music, and performed it live, mostly on my glass instruments. DT’s language is quite musical and the actors did a great job. DT created it as a radio play and that is the way we performed it, with the actors sitting at a table with microphones. I was behind them with my glass menagerie.

Also on Tuesday, Nov 20, Neil Dufallo & Joan LaBarbara came by my apartment to do some recordings of our trio. All my glass was still at the theater so I ending up playing electronics and we sounded something like this.

Then Chris McIntyre came by and the four of us sketched out the rep for Ne(x)tworks spring series at the Chelsea Art Museum. Nothing is official yet, so I won’t give any details. But suffice it to say it’s going to be yet another wonderful season for NxW.

Then Thanksgiving rolled on by, which involved a few days of driving around eating too much. But a pleasant break.

Now, back to work.

I performed last night and friday night in Okkyung Lee & Andrew Lampert’s show at The Kitchen. The show was quite wonderful. Okkyung’s music was scored for a quartet of cello (Okkyung), violin (Cornelius Dufallo), string bass (Trevor Dunn), and me (glass, analog electronics, toy piano, & computer). Andrew Lampert’s contribution was a sort of performance filmmaking, with a number of 16 & super 8 projectors projecting on all 4 walls. Andy had 2 assistants, Emily Davis & Jared Abramson, moving projectors around, changing films & light filters, and splicing film loops on the spot. In one section Andy also projected directions and questions for us musicians. My 88 year old dad came to the show and said it reminded him of an event he saw at MoMA back in the mid ’60s. It sort of had that multi-media “happening” feel to it.

Okkyung’s compositions are wonderfully unique, with beautifully flowing, through-composed melodies and rhythmic cycles emerging in and out of group and solo improvisations. She chooses her musicians carefully. One must have the ability to go from the written page to a non-directed improvisation without it sounding like there’s been a sharp turn in the road. It’s nothing like having a “head” then 16 bars to blow. Nor is it anything like interpreting an aleatoric score. One must be a composer to play her music. One must know that when she says “just improvise,” she’s not giving you permission to use every trick you have, but to place your sounds in the context of the moment and to play exactly what you believe is needed, no more, no less.

Her music fits perfectly into the way I have been thinking about composition & improvisation for a long time now. I believe (as Cage did) that the act of creating is a series of questions and answers. The questions one asks oneself when creating any music, through-composed or improvised, are all subsets of the same basic question, “What happens now?” (High, low; fast, slow; sound, silence; etc…) The only difference between composing and improvising is the amount of time it takes to answer these questions. When composing, there is time to mull things over and even go back and change your mind. With improvisation one has to come up with an answer almost as soon as one gets a hint of what the question might actually be. The act of composing relies on the intelligence of one’s brain. The act of improvising relies on the intelligence of one’s entire body. One acts before the brain even has time to form the question.

I used to study bodywork with an old Kurdish rug merchant (in Oakland), and he used to say, “The brain likes to think it’s in charge. But the brain does not tell the heart to pump blood, or the lungs to take in air. All our organs have intelligence, and the brain is simply another organ.” This bodywork, called Breema, was taught technically yet practiced intuitively. The structure of the session is set (start at the feet, end with the head), but what one does in each session is improvised.

I always have a hard time calling myself a composer and improviser. I see them as essentially the same. It’s just that when one sits down to create something “through-composed,” one of our internal organs gets to spend more time with our questions than the others, and when we improvise, all of our organs get to listen & react. Perhaps that’s what makes Okkyung’s music so special; “improvisation” and “composition” end up just being words and every part of every one listens and creates.

Here are some pictures and an audio segment of the Relay event in Williamsburg last week, organized by flautist extraordinaire Jane Rigler, part of the Conflux Festival. The idea is that there are a number of improvising musicians who trade off playing trios in three locations. When a fourth musician shows up, someone must stop so that this new musician can join. The one who has stopped moves on to a new location where the same situation occurs. And on and on for three hours or so.

Here is an audio clip from one location (Lucky Cat):

This clip starts with me, Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon) & Jessica Pavone (viola). Then Chris McIntyre (trombone) shows up and takes Jessica’s place.
More audio and info here.
Here I am playing at the Ione Bar with Julianne Carney, violin, & Kyoko Kitamura, voice.

And the Lucky Cat Bar with Julianne Carney, violin, & Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon.

Actually, my favorite location was outside in front of the Conflux office, but there were no pictures.

I went to The Stone last night to see legendary guitarist Eugene Chadbourne playing with equally legendary drummer Jimmy Carl Black. It was a wonderfully enjoyable concert. For those not “in the know,” JCB was the original drummer in Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. If you were one of the many who could not stop listening to We’re Only In It For The Money when they first discovered it, you know him from his line: “I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group.”

And then there’s Chadbourne, the quintessential North American free improvising guitarist. He took Derek Bailey’s guitar explorations to a whole new level. I first saw (and played with) him over 30 years ago in Toronto (he was living in Canada as a US draft-dodger). He was the first person I ever saw play a prepared guitar, and he even took that a step further by adding kalimba tines on to the body of a few of his many guitars. So then President Carter granted immunity to all the draft-dodgers and Chadbourne came back to the US. To make a long story short, he has been integrating Country Music into his improvisations over the last many years (coined the term “Shockabilly”), and, judging from last night, has been having a grand ol’ time doing so.

Last night’s concert was all songs; some blues, some Texas ballads, and even some Zappa covers (an amazing version of Mom and Dad from …In It For The Money). EC & JCB have a great rapport; singing together, talking to each other during the songs. When EC would start getting “out” JCB would be right there with him, and again, with him when they seamlessly returned to the tune. I’m always happy when I hear music that simultaneously refers to and defies styles, but still knows exactly where it is at any given point.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth at least a million:

Eugene Chadbourne (but no Jimmy Carl Black):