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!

The Gamelan Son Of Lion concert at the Living Theater went very well the other night. The entire evening had a very nice feel to it. I can’t post audio for the entire program, but my piece, Telling Time #3 is at the end of this post. Here is the program:

Program:

1. She (Really) Had to Go – John Morton
the gamelan blends with an electronically processed music box and a familiar tune

2. Music Box – Jody Kruskal
the entire gamelan plays as a giant music box in ths fantasy for double suling (flute)

3. Piece in Harmony – Patrick Grant
a stately, neo-baroque harmonic trance with keyboard

4. Telling Time #3 – Miguel Frasconi
for gamelan and glass. A composition in unison tempo is then repeated in “telling time,” where each performer tells a story through use of shifting tempi

interval

5. Toy Symphony: Introduction and Non-Development Section – Daniel Goode
a romp of the gamelan through Toyland, including the softest sound you can imagine

6. Wauking – Barbara Benary
five Scottish working songs learned in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Wauking, or milling, is a preindustrial way to preshrink wool by pounding

7. Hard Rain – Bob Dylan/Lisa Karrer
a Dylan classic arranged for gamelan

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Here is how Telling Time #3 sounded:

Because of some technical error, the program for yesterday’s Ne(x)twork’s show did not get printed correctly. Here it is:

EMF and CBD Music present

Ne(x)tworks: Dialogics 2
Chelsea Art Museum
Saturday April 5 2PM
$15

Music of Alvin Curran, Joan La Barbara, and Miguel Frasconi

Distancing #4 (1983/2008) Miguel Frasconi

Triadic Limbo (2007) (fragment) ** Alvin Curran

Words on Water (Shimmer) (2008) ** Joan La Barbara

Endangered Species (1994 – 1996) Alvin Curran

Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights (1992) Alvin Curran
Saltando in Padella (2005) ***

Al Forno Al Sugo Al Pesto Al Vino (2001) (fragment) Alvin Curran

** There will be no pause between Triadic Limbo and Words on Water (Shimmer)

*** Fragments of Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights and Saltando in Padella will be performed simultaneously.

Notes on the program

Alvin Curran
From The Alvin Curran Fake Book: Saltando In Padella Dal Quinto Piano Mentre Passing Notes In Triadic Limbo (2008)

Ne(x)tworks is pleased to feature the work of Alvin Curran, acclaimed composer, sound artist, and longtime member of the radical improvisation group MEV. The music on today’s program is selected from The Alvin Curran Fake Book, a compilation of compositions, sketches and improvisational modules created over the past 40 years. The arrangement, entitled Saltando In Padella Dal Quinto Piano Mentre Passing Notes In Triadic Limbo, has been created by the composer specifically for Ne(x)tworks. It consists of a string of recent pieces and fragments thereof that are to be presented in modular format. For this performance Ne(x)tworks draws upon material from Triadic Limbo (2007), Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights (1992), Saltando in Padella (2005), Al Forno Al Sugo Al Pesto Al Vino (2001), and Endangered Species (1994-1996). Ne(x)tworks presents this piece in celebration of Alvin Curran’s 70th year. The ensemble is also planning to release a CD of Curran’s music on the Mode label in the near future.
–Cornelius Dufallo

Joan La Barbara
Words on Water (Shimmer) (2008)

Shimmer is heat rising from the desert floor, shimmer is light sparkling on water, shimmer is wraiths passing along the back walls, shimmer is the aurora borealis, shimmer is in ghostly conversations. “Words on Water (Shimmer)” (2008) is the latest scene from an opera in-progress, for multiple layers of voices, instruments and sonic “atmospheres”. Here, I am exploring sounds inside the mind, impossible sounds, fragile sounds, transparent, ghostly sounds, shimmering voices and modular fragments. A series of inhales with no exhale, separated by sonic blackness, silences of varying lengths are shattered by a sudden burst of underwater wails, as the work moves from interior to exterior space and back again.
- Joan La Barbara

Miguel Frasconi
Distancing #4 (1981/83, arr. 2008)

In 1981, while I was living in Toronto, my composer friend Jon Siddall returned from Mills College in CA, where he had been studying with Lou Harrison and Robert Ashley. Before leaving Mills, Jon asked Lou to buy him an eight-piece gamelan degung ensemble on his next trip to Java. Lou followed through on this promise, and all the bronze keys & pot-gongs were on their way. Toronto would soon have its very first gamelan. This was particularly exciting news for me as, at the time, I often visited the then newly formed homemade new music gamelan Son of Lion on my frequent trips to NYC. I was also in a group, The Glass Orchestra, that was a self described “free-improv glass gamelan.” Upon hearing Jon’s news I immediately wrote “Study in Slendro: Distancing.” This was an open-instrumentation, homophonic, steady-pulse piece exploring additive and subtractive cross rhythms expressed through permutations of a basic pentatonic scale. The first performance was solo violin. The second, a large, loud rock band. In 1983 I arranged it for the ensemble that inspired it, and “Distancing #3″ was performed in the very first concert of Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan. Twenty-five years later, I’ve dusted off the score and have given it new life in an arrangement specifically for this concert.
-Miguel Frasconi

It was a wonderful concert, by the way.

Just back from Toronto, playing a concert there for the first time in 23 years! I will soon post pictures and audio files.

Now getting ready for the Ne(x)tworks concert at the Chelsea Art Museum on Saturday.

Next week: Ireland!

2008 has started off with a bang, or a klang, or a …, well definitely not a thud or a boink. But you get the idea. Last week was my first rehearsal as a “regular” member of Gamelan Son of Lion since 1987. I did write a piece for them in 2006, but I attended only a few rehearsals. This year I have decided to join the group on a regular basis. Son of Lion is a “home-made” gamelan ensemble built by Barbara Benary back in the late ’70s. The metalophone, keyed, instruments are mostly made of iron, as opposed to the bronze instruments of Indonesia or the aluminum of most California new gamelans. When I was in the group in the ’80s (rehearsing in Phil Corner’s loft on Leonard St.) they also had a large array of car hubcaps used as gongs. But those seem to have been replaced by actual bronze gongs from Indonesia.

The 1980s was sort of my “gamelan decade.” Gamelan was the through line during my moves from Toronto to NYC to San Francisco. There was even a 5 month trip to Bali & Java in 1986 to study the different gamelans there. But over an eight year period I wrote 4 pieces for 3 different American gamelans and played in 5, coast to coast. I was a founding member Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan in 1982, then worked with Son of Lion in NYC in ‘86/’87, then to California to play with Bay Area New Gamelan (BANG), The Berkeley Gamelan and one of Lou Harrison’s groups. But new gamelan in CA had sort of run it’s course by the time I got there, and I stopped playing in these ensembles by 1989. The 2 east coast groups I had been in, SoL and Evergreen, continue to this day, and I’m very glad to be back in Son of Lion.

Here is what SoL looks like these days. (Photos taken 8Jan08)

(left to right, Jody Kruskol, David Demnitz, Barbara Benary, Lisa Karrer, Laura Liben)

(left to right: David Simons, Denman Maroney, Patrick Grant, Jody Kruskol, David Demnitz. Not shown: me, John Morton and Dan Goode.)

Then a few days later, David Behrman came up to my apartment to rehearse for the gig we have this week. I’ve been a fan of his work since I was a teenager so it was wonderful to finally play his music. The sound of glass fits in beautifully with his sound world. Here is David in my apartment (10Jan08).

Then Keiko Uenishi (aka o.blaat) came by the next day to help on the mix of the upcoming release of our OBJECTS cd. Back in 2004 Keiko & I & Ricardo Arias (who plays balloons) did a trio concert at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City (across the east river from Manhattan). We managed to get a very good multi-track recording of it and a small label in the midwest want to put it out. It’s one of the favorite bands I’ve been in. Me playing my glass objects, Ricardo playing his balloon objects, and Keiko playing her virtual max-patch objects. Here is a photo of the 2004 concert.

Ain’t the internets grand? I just came across some things from my distant past. Okay, not too distant, but significant. Actually, 2008 marks yet another 20th anniversary for me; 1988 was the first year I became active in the SF Bay Area’s new music scene (I moved there mid-’87). So it’s only fitting that I find youtube videos of my first major performance activity out there. Paul Dresher & Rinde Eckert’s opera Power Failure, from 1988-89. This was my first work as keyboardist in the Paul Dresher Ensemble. (I worked with Paul on another 4 or 5 of his projects through the late ’90s.)

Power Failure was a wonderful piece with an unfortunate title. From this I have learned to never put the word “failure,” or anything negative, in a title; it does not lend itself to success. But I had a great time working on this piece. This is where I first met Rinde, an amazing performer, and tenor John Duykers, who has gone on to be one of my most frequent and most treasured collaborators. This is also where I first met and played with wind player/composer Ned Rothenberg (Ned and I are finally talking of collaborating together; glass & shakuhachi).

So here are excerpts from Power Failure. I think they are too short, and you can’t see us on-stage musicians (Paul Dresher, electric guitar & keyboard; Gene Refkin, drums; Ned Rothenberg, winds; and me, keyboards). Rinde, John, and Stephanie Friedman are the wonderful singers.

Power Failure, part 1

Power Failure, part 2

I was sent this nice photo of me playing last month at City Center, at the Gala for Career Transition for Dancers. (I don’t know the photographer.)

These (below) were sent to me by Sheila Bunin, taken at a gig in Pomona, NY, a few months ago:

(By the way, the turkey baster is used for tuning.)

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.

Man, that was a bizarre & fun gig last night (Dance Rocks, Career Transition for Dancers gala). I actually got to play a little longer, and Kathleen Marshall (of TV & B’way) gave me a nice little plug on stage. But otherwise I spent the evening back stage, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Tommy Tune (he is very tall), Bebe Neuwirth (she is very elegant), Melissa Manchester (big hair, lovely voice), and Ben Vareen (also very elegant). I felt like the new music police were going to come and take away my experimental music license. But that’s a 20th century way of thinking. Here in the 21st c. the boundaries between styles are more translucent (sometimes even imaginary). There was an awesome, very hip, tap dancer on the show I hope to keep in touch with; Jason Samuels Smith. His warm-up sounded very much like south Indian drumming rhythms. Talk about translucent styles.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to document the rather odd gigs I get every now and again. Tomorrow evening I’m playing at the 3,000 seat City Center as part of “Dance Rocks!” the gala fundraiser for Career Transition for Dancers. I have a prerecorded score for a dance by Ann Marie DeAngelo and then I’ll be performing live on my glass instruments as underscoring for a tribute to some successfully transitioned dancers. I thought I’d be playing much longer but it turns out to be quite short. Here are some of the rather polite, rather Satie-esque, notes I’ve put together:

And here is the Playbill blurb on the evening. I didn’t know I was a Broadway star.