well-weathered music

I played with four of my most favorite musicians last night; Carla Kihlstedt, Marika Hughes, and Shahzad Ismaily, who make up 2 Foot Yard, plus Zeena Parkins. It was just 2 songs in a 15 minute set, but it was an absolute joy to play with these master musicians again. Oddly enough, it was the first time I’ve actually played with Zeena. Odd in that I’ve heard her play so many times, it seemed natural to play together. And of course Carla never ceases to amaze me, even though we’ve known each other and have worked together for almost 15 years. It was kind of an odd but very interesting show; the opening night of this year’s Look & Listen Festival.

I am now three weeks away from the end of the busiest three months I’ve ever had. The Ne(x)tworks gig this Saturday, the Behrman gig monday night. On Tuesday I’m off to San Francisco to finish up a score for choreographer Alonzo King. Then back to do the Merce Cunningham gig at DIA-Beacon on May 17 & 18. After that things lighten up; only three projects to work on!

I wonder what it is that the thousand-named-oneness (aka God, the Fates, etc.) seems to frequently take masterful musicians of contrasting genres off this planet within just a few days of one another. Last year Stockhausen and Ike Turner died on either end of the same week. Now two other music treasures have moved on; and their musics could not have been expressed in more disparate forms, while still sharing a uniquely 20th century vision. On the one hand, we mourn the passing of Henry Brant, orchestrator extraordinaire and inventor of “spatial” instrumental music. While on the other hand the jazz world will never again have anyone quite like composer/clarinetist Jimmy Guiffre, whose music was structurally so scaled back it was almost invisible, yet amazingly soulful. Mr. Brant eloquently showed us that we exist in a multi-planed dimension where front and back is just as important as high-pitched and low. Mr. Guiffre eloquently showed us that we are our own multi-planed dimension where internal and external are practically non-existent. We are lucky they have left so many auditory impressions for us to visit again and again.

I don’t know why it took me so long, but I finally checked out the American Music Center’s Counterstream Radio, and I haven’t turned it off since. It’s not just that Raz Mesinai used recordings of me and Joan LaBarbara to create their “audio logo,” or that within the first half hour of turning it on I heard some of my own music I haven’t heard for a while. Nope. I’m surprised it took me so long because they play some f#%king great music! Just in the last half hour I heard some Bill Frisell, Sun Ra, Paul Dresher, John Cage…, it’s like they looked in the “favorite composers” file in my brain and created their playlist. Then other times I’ve heard wonderful music by folks I don’t know, and also by people I’ve met but haven’t yet heard their music. Now I have. There are also “on demand” and special programs I’m looking forward to hearing, like their spotlight on pianist Jenny Lin and the conversation Sarah Cahill arranged between Elliot Carter & Phil Lesh (that’s Sarah for ya’). Thank you American Music Center!!

I’m working on two rather involved posts at the moment (and some music, always), but don’t have time to finish either of them. In the meantime, let me just list some of the really great concerts I’ve seen in the last week. (And, of course, no time to link all these names.)

A wonderful quartet with John King, George Lewis, Zeena Parkins, and Fast Forward. Also joined by the amazing pianist Jenny Lin and the beautiful voice of soprano Charlotte Dobbs. This was part of the “Experiments in the Studio” music series (in which I’ll be performing in May) at the Cunningham Dance Studios. If you know any of these players, you know how good they can be, and they were all in top form this night.

Composer, soprano, accordionist Kamala Sankaram presented a short excerpt of a one-woman music theater piece she is working on, accompanied by her band Squeezebox. At the Here Art Center in SoHo. Too good to be so short. I look forward to seeing more.

My buddy Miya Masaoka had a busy weekend but I was only able to see one of her events. This night she presented “For Birds, Planes and Cello.” A beautifully constructed ambient score with the always superb cellist, Alex Waterman. At the White Box gallery in Chelsea.

Then if that wasn’t enough, Anthony Coleman presented an evening of his very complex, mostly string ensemble, recent pieces topped off with a very eloquent solo piano improvisation. Part of a new music series at the Brecht Forum.

Ya’ gotta love NY.

I’ve been getting some interesting feedback from my Stockhausen/Ike Turner piece (the previous post). I sent it out in individual emails to (as Chris McIntyre would say) “my peeps.” Three of my favorite composers answered back right away. Jay Cloidt said he was going to forward it to a zillion people. John King thanked me for the “mash-up,” which got me wondering if there is a difference between “mash-up” and “plunderphonics.” David Behrman said it brought back memories of his first driving experience, in his mother’s 1952 Olds 88 with a Rocket engine.

Then there’s my brother, who asked if the title means I believe in heaven. I was actually referring to the Ives’ piece “General Booth Enters Into Heaven,” which, admittedly, is a pretty obscure reference. But, no, I don’t believe in heaven, except as a metaphor for whatever happens after we leave our corporeal existence. My initial idea was to create a piece representing the post-corporeal spirits of KS & IT as they gradually lost their individual identity and merged together to become part of what my Gurdjieff inspired bodywork teacher used to call “the field.” I don’t mean to get metaphysical on y’all, but that sort of process (body returns to the earth, spirit returns to the ether) does make the most sense to me. It does not, however, lend itself to representation in a 3 minute New Year’s greeting. So I kept the two musician’s identity intact, and found some very interesting nexuses. I made no changes to the pitch or tempo of either piece, yet there are some places where they really do compliment each other. I can only imagine that the young Karlheinz could very well have been influenced by the Ike Turner piece. “Rocket 88,” from 1951, is thought to be the “first” rock and roll song, so it might well have sparked KS’s 1952 ears as he made his first piece in the new “tape music” medium. Is that common and reoccurring Eb, and the equally common and reoccurring 160 bpm triplet really a coincidence? Hmmmm….

My Toronto friend Andrew Timar observed that my piece obviously placed “Etude” within the structure of “Rocket 88″ and wondered, referencing Jim Tenney, what it would sound like the other way; with the pop song placed within the structure of the Stockhausen. A very interesting idea. It is of course always easier to do this sort of creative editing within a clear rhythmic grid than a rhythmic splatter, but it would certainly be an interesting project. Any takers?

Oh, and if anyone might think this kind of work is new for me (there’s no glass!!), may I direct you here; some pre-digital work from 1982.

To all my readers (yeah, all 3 of you),
Have a great 2008!

Karlheinz and Ike entering into heaven.

Source material:
“Rocket 88″ (1951), Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm
& “Etude” (1952), Karlheinz Stockhausen.

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.

… about Toronto. John Oswald has some excellent samples of his varied work online. He played me this piece when we first met back in 1975. This is some of the visual art he is doing now.

Below is a picture of the gamelan I helped start in Toronto in 1982. Composer Jon Siddall had just returned from studying at Mills College with Lou Harrison. He asked Lou to buy him a degung ensemble gamelan on his next trip to Java. Jon then asked me to help him start a group, and the Evergreen Club Gamelan was born. (Jon doesn’t run the group anymore, but it’s still going strong.) Here’s what it looked like back then, ca. 1983 (performing a piece by Trichi Sankaran).

(That’s me just to the right of Sankaran, with Andrew Timar above my head, playing suling, and Jon Siddall playing gongs.)

I think that’s enough about Toronto, for now anyway.

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.