Grex Plays A Love Supreme (Berkeley, Sacramento)

[ep1str0phy]

Hey, all-

 

I haven't posted with great avidity lately--and late notice, I know--but it occurs to me now that this project may be of interest to some of you. My art rock trio Grex, alongside LA trumpeter Dan Clucas, is rearranging A Love Supreme.

 

Why A Love Supreme? We're taking the opportunity to reassess what it means to play a tribute--to take something impossibly universal and iconic and make it new and personal. 

 

It's a challenge masquerading as a Catch-22--i.e., you either try to make a personal statement of of music that is already, itself, deeply personal, or you make impersonal music that compromises the integrity of the composition. Mostly Other People Do the Killing ran headfirst into oncoming traffic by taking semi-sacred music (Kind of Blue) and doing absolutely nothing with it--the end result being that they both solved the Catch-22 (above) and satisfied absolutely no one.

 

My alternate solution was to not solve the problem at all--that is, to reduce the music to what I perceived to be the germ of itself and write something completely new. Sitting in the volcanic aftermath of this music is absolutely everything that is impregnable 50+ years after the fact--stuff like basic structure, harmonic mechanics, and, yes, sincerity. I've called it a "non-tribute" before, and I hold to this--in a culture that often treats original music with suspicion and canonical music with almost scientific distance, this is neither of those things. A Love Supreme/Not A Love Supreme.

 

Details:

 

Grex Plays A Love Supreme feat. Song & Dance Trio 

Saturday May 27, 8:00pm (7pm doors)

@ California Jazz Conservatory (2087 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704)

$15 cover

Tickets: https://cjc.edu/concerts/?eid=20122

 

Grex Plays A Love Supreme w/Byron Colborn, Kyle Motl (SD)

Sunday, May 28, 7pm

@ Gold Lion Arts (2773 Riverside Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95818

$10

 

Grex: http://grex.bandcamp.com

Song & Dance Trio: https://karlevangelista.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-kingmans-ivy-room

Byron Colborn: https://www.soundcloud.com/byron-colborn

Kyle Motl: http://kylemotl.com

[Chuck Nessa]

Some wonderful opportunities there. Sorry I am solidly in the Midwest then. Best wishes.

[B. Clugston]

Best wishes on the concerts. Sounds very exciting!

 

[clifford_thornton]

I hope that this is recorded!

[ep1str0phy]

Thanks for the kind wishes, guys! Rumor has it that some of this may make it on tape. For now, looking forward to doing some summoning this weekend! 

[JSngry]

Real/Reel tape?

No matter, y'all go bring it!

[ep1str0phy]

Final word: it is, indeed, on record (well, not record--yet, or tape--but it was documented). Went into the studio on Monday with the great Myles Boisen, in and out in five hours (including lunch break). Legitimately the smoothest session I've ever participated in. Hopefully it's out in the world before too long! 

[JSngry]

It's already out in the world, you played it! Now you just look at giving it a tangible physical form.