ep1str0phy

Emphasis on "often" and not "exclusively" (or even, necessarily, "most of the time"). The phenomenon you're discussing 100% exists, but it's definitely not the full picture. I'm curious--are you reading Miles's sentiments as being a piece with this culture of denial, or as an avowal of genuine bisexuality/queerness? I actually don't know much about Miles in this respect, so I wonder if this is an instance of a musician defining his sexuality on his own terms (rather than one in a long string of inside/outside the closet/"hint, hint" incidents). Glad we're having this discussion. I've missed the heavy discussion on this board--there's serious brainpower and wit here.

Having babies and marrying multiple times is not at all unusual, especially when one considers Peterson's environment and the fact that we only recently have woken up to reality. I am currently compiling a list of jazz musicians who might possibly be straight. Please bear with me. Don't want to continue this much further, but I am trying to understand the terms here. Valerie above says that some of these musicians must be bi-sexual, which would seem to be accurate (assuming there's any merit to some of this, which I'm beginning to doubt quite frankly, and no, I'm not in denial). But Chris, stay with me here, you're saying that if someone is married to a member of the opposite sex for 50+ years (whether one marriage or several), dies married to a member of the opposite sex, fathers children, but also has relations with members of the same sex, that person's not bi-sexual; they're strictly gay??? This is a bridge too far for me. I'm not in denial mode or morally shocked or anything... and I don't mind discussing these questions. I asked Chris the very same question that John Tapscott rose again - however he seems to ignore it. So... Niko's explanation makes sense, but my point still is: it can be multi-faceted. You can be married, have affairs with people of both sexes... bi-sexuality exists. I quickly had the impression Chris was in denial-mode regarding bi-sexuality and found that a bit weird, but I guess I'm out of here now. I think it's crucial to note that, beyond the fact that bi-sexuality as a phenomenon (i.e., sex with both men and women) exists, bi-sexuality as a self-identifier is a very real thing. Reducing the conversation to a gay/straight dyad undermines the notion that many in the GLBT community do understand sexuality as more of a spectrum than a duality (and identify themselves at various points within--and not necessarily at the extremes of--that spectrum). This is actually a huge issue in contemporary sexuality--I've heard firsthand accounts of queer folk (self-identified as such) coming into tension with gay self-identifiers due to the fact that said queer folk are perceived as living in a non-committal, liminal space (i.e., get with the revolution). All this does is diminish the agency of people that do genuinely feel various degrees of attraction to both sexes, which is in its own way just as disenfranchising as perpetuating jazz's latent (or overt homophobia. On a different note, and keeping in mind I know very, very little about Arthur Rhames, I think it's interesting that Rhames's otherwise surprisingly detailed (for a relatively obscure musician) wikipedia entry completely omits any mention of homosexuality--especially considering his death at a relatively young age--in the late 1980's--due to AIDS-related illness. One of the more pointed passages in the liners to that Soundscape album that came out a while back was Vernon Reid acknowledging that (paraphrasing here) getting to know Rhames helped Reid "get over" his own homophobia. Obviously, Rhames's sexual orientation is totally incidental to whether or not the music moves you, but it's difficult not to see how the early death of this musician with remarkable potential was inextricably linked to the problematic nature of AIDS treatment/recognition/awareness. That's a very clear and relevant reason to discuss homosexuality in jazz.

You can teach ideas, concepts, etc., but you can't teach sensibilities--not in a way that gets to your core. The best sort of pedagogy brings out who you are, rather than gives you instructions regarding what you should do. Music academics who play music aren't necessarily academic musicians. Braxton wrote the Tri-Axium writings. George Lewis is intensely involved in the academic sector of music. Evan Parker can put on his analytical hat and assemble an interesting historical narrative for Euro free improv. Fred Frith is a tremendous student and teacher of improvisation and modern composition. If not in a strictly "academic" sense, guys like Ornette or Muhal possess serious, deeply thought internal philosophies. Granted, these are "older" guys, but it goes to show that the intellectual and the musical (or even the experimental) can take equal priority without rendering the music stilted or stiff. I actually think it's kind of difficult to play any sort of creative or experimental music in a post-60's climate without having some sort of philosophical or conceptual understanding of what your'e doing--even if this is not overt/on paper/something you'd care to put into words--it could just be "felt." There are tons of intensely intelligent young musicians who don't make a point of marrying their intellectual selves with their musical beings--and that's fine--and it's also not the only way to live. The fact that guys like Lehman and Iyer--and Tyshawn Sorey and a number of others--are so overt about making the intellectual underpinnings of their music clear makes me think that this is how they want to be perceived. (The critical word their being want.) We can create our own narratives in a post-postmodern environment--maybe that's what these guys are doing? On a certain level, hoping that Lehman turns into Braxton might be missing the forest for the trees--this is Lehman's story--and it might not be as intrinsically appealing as Braxton's (which is sort of how I feel about it)--but it's a story, nonetheless. This is also kind of besides the point, but guys like Braxton and Ornette have some deep spiritual sentiments going on--these sentiments inextricably connected to their respective musics. Braxton might be considered intellectual for the nature of his vernacular, his tendency to theorize, and his involvement with a brick-and-mortar institution, but he's not academic in the same way that Lehman and Iyer seem to be. Braxton's philosophy seems to issue from his personal identity/feelings, whereas much of the personal philosophy that, say, Iyer has revealed to the world (I'm not saying that that's all there is--just the stuff that he's brought to the fore) is tied to actual academic standards of research, composition, and thought.

I can see that. Isn't this how a lot of music press operates--the very nature of being at the event makes you late to the party? If this is the case, then I can name a ton of really worthwhile parties going on right now. Grossly under-attended, yes, but just as worthwhile as--if not more worthwhile than--plenty of events I've been to as of late.

I have a related impression of the current school of mainstream-progressive NY players. It's been a solid 40+ years since the inception of the AACM and the beginnings of European improvised freedom, which can be understood--with some validity--as endgames to certain strains of creative music. Granted that--or, rather, from a different perspective--everyone making music is really just making music, and artists will not be unresponsive to external stimuli (which continue to exist even if all avenues of aesthetic evolution appear unlit). I don't see these new-ish musics as unswinging per se--or even, really, as a "tightening up" of long liberated structures. I think these folks (and I play around/with/sometimes am one of these people, in terms of Bay Area counterparts) have simply grown up far enough away from when swing/no swing was synonymous with an inside/free dyad--and also have lived and loved any number of divergent 20th century arts, whether they be the spectralism Lehman loves so much, alternate hip-hop, electronica, Mortan Feldman or whatever--that it isn't a question of does it swing so much as how it moves. That being said--and funny there's talk about swiss kriss in the other thread--I think the "loosening up" side of the mountain is often still a bit more fun to listen to and engage with than the "hard beats" side. It's great hearing some of these guys play with Braxton, Threadgill, Mitchell (and Coleman, for that matter, considering M-Base as well as the AACM seem to be spiritual forebears of this movement) as the "old" cats can elicit a degree of surprise and chaos that it seems difficult for younger guys to intuit these days. Weird side note--it's still open/free/outside/avant/progressive/whatever music, but part of me feels like the general rigidity of this/the under 50 crowd of musicians has to do with a weird adaptation of the exigences of "jazz life"--the idea that virtuosity, the presence of logic, and general (and I know this is out of date rhetoric at this point) modernist vertiginousness are not only prized values but also elements by which we can measure the creative success of things. That is, if we're living in a post free environment and everyone can do whatever they want, some degree of technical stricture is necessary to determine whether or not something is "good." The old school AACM guys and, hell, Ornette or Steve Coleman don't seem to care as much--they're virtually immune to criticism when it comes to the "people who care"--so those giants' musics are looser and more concerned with adventure and dialogue. Now this: if a guy from this younger crowd can come forward with both the virtuosity and cultural perspective of a Lehman and the I-don't-give-a-shit-what-anyone-thinks-ishness of a Roscoe and the sheer wiliness of an Ornette, I'll buy a ticket to that party.

When I was doing reviews there, that was pretty much the gist of it. Anyone can do it, regardless of knowledge or credentials. If you did it often enough (or maybe even if not--I'm not certain), you entered a sort of pool for review copies--hence reviews for more esoteric/obscure modern releases (the stuff of pro reviewers that may or may not have received notice otherwise). That being said, the site "hosts" some very legit reviewers from time to time. IIRC, that was the context within which I first read anything of Clifford's--and he's nothing if not completely knowledgable about the music.

Oh man. I'm picking up both of these.

Two rather different things. A proper "practice" environment enables precision and control, whereas the best live settings can induce moments of creative frenzy and even more intense listening/communication (these latter phenomena are especially true for improvisers/improvising). Then again, either situation can provoke the opposite effect. I feel like absolute masters can sort of bridge the gap in body chemistry and psychology that renders the two situations somewhat mutually exclusive. Granted this, I more or less feel like gigs (like recordings) are snapshots--sometimes beautiful, sometimes unflattering--of what is an ongoing life. I'm sure many musicians here could relate when I say that I'm a musician 100% of the time (just as I'm a human being 100% of the time etc.), and of those several waking hours I spend doing creative stuff, only a fraction is really comprised of "live performance." Sometimes my best nights are gig nights, sometimes they're in a remote location rehearsing for several hours in a row.

Boris Johnson?

Oh man.

One of my favorite performances of Trane's in any format is the 1965 Downbeat Jazz Festival hit (with the classic quartet and Shepp). Trane's solo on that is literally out of control. On the recording that has been circulating, you can literally hear the audience react to the beginning of late Trane (some random heckling, nervous laughter, disbelief, then ecastatic cheering). I think that, of the actual albums, Transition and Sun Ship might come closest to matching that sense of mania and wonder, but Transition gets a minor edge on that tally for the eloquence of its construction (both compositionally and improvisationally) and the huge surprise elicited from the apeshit Ayleresque histrionics like halfway through.

...which leads us to harmolodics. Judging by any number of often contrary opinions (by bandmates, "official" critics, and armchair commentators alike--no slight to any one, naturally), a length's time of listening habits, and conversations with friends (some of them at least occasional musical intimates of Ornette's), "true" harmolodicism has something to do with achieving a sort of uncompromised self expression within a group and with others. I think that at least one of the reasons the term/ethos of harmolodicism has never been textbook defined is because textbook definition sort of defeats the purpose. Harmolodics is/are what you make it/them, and external definition just sort of institutionalizes everything (and transforms said everything into that very thing that harmolodics is opposite of--i.e., prescribed methodologies and idiomatic strictures). I actually had a conversation about this after criticizing Christian McBride's impromptu performance with Ornette at the big Rollins extravaganza like a year or so ago. To me, McBride's pseudo-aping of Charlie Haden's idiom--the double stops, pedal points, etc.--struck me as forced and halfway; my sense/conclusion was that it took a special "kind" of musician to play harmolodic music convincingly. Ornette's thought on this might be (and again, I can't speak to this either directly or even first-degree indirectly) that in not "trying" to play a certain way to "fit in," and in playing what came naturally in that moment (consisting of, I suppose, the Hadenisms), McBride did the music right. The essential "problem" here is that this leads to a degree of artistic relativism and it becomes difficult to weigh the relative merits of one guy/gal or the other. Ultimately, I don't see this as a bad thing, especially when viewed from the perspective of Ornette's career--he's spent decades creating music that has bucked even his own listeners' expectations (incontrovertibly true, even if just looking at the post-Atlantic music--(1) trumpet/violin, (2) chamber music excursions, where the rail between totally composed and totally improvised is actually pretty wobbly, (3) orchestral work, (4) vocal-centric music, (5) Prime Time, (6) Prime Time/Time Design, (7) electric music with Pat Metheny, (8) playing with Jerry Garcia, Lou Reed, Claude Nougaro, etc., (9) multimedia spectacle with Prime Time, (10) integration of electronic music, rap, etc. and other post-jazz/contemporary idioms into his music, the list goes on...). Nothing in this ethos is necessarily "better" because it is/can be just a different experience. This is what I was getting at talking about Denardo above, because (especially in his preteens) Denardo has barely a fraction of the chops of a Blackwell or Jones--but he's perfect for that music and he's committed to both himself and his role. In that music (and not necessarily, say, a repertory performance of Le sacre du printemps or even recreationist Coltrane modalism), that's all that it takes for the art to work. Ultimately, it just has to operate and operate well on its own terms. None of this means that one shouldn't have a preference for one style or the other, and I genuinely think that Jones & Garrison don't have as strong of a feel for what I like about Ornette's music than, say, Blackwell and Haden. It's just that New York Is Now and Love Call aren't necessarily less legitimate pieces of Ornette's discography than the Atlantic stuff is, taken on harmolodic terms. As for The Avant-Garde--I don't really like it, either, if only because Trane at that point was looking for lateral motion in his rhythm section and the band is trying to play either (a) in a generalized, post-1st Miles Quintet/post-Monk mode or (b) like Ornette. It sounds like the band is literally waiting for something to happen, whereas Trane figured out that, for him, motion could happen sideways--inside of the idea and not necessarily in the bridges between concepts. It's a testament to just how mutually challenging Ornette and Trane were/are that Ornette had a difficult time finding musicians for his music and those musicians, in turn, had a difficult time making Trane sound his "best." Ironically, and indicative of how narrow the walls between these idioms may have actually been, the Ornette crew later found their own ways to turn stasis into motion. Old and New dreams is rife with that stuff--"Mopti" and "Togo" being brilliant examples of this. (When Cherry nails that piano entrance on the ECM version of "Togo," go the fk home. That's it right there.) As far as moods and emotional personalities are concerned, I love Ornette and Trane equally (as my #1 and my #1, in certain respects), but Ornette does make me feel "happier" in a mundane sort of way. Trane's music is ecstatic and large, but its emotions are so unfailingly operatic in scope that the ground view is kind of obscured. (The solo intro to "Song of Praise" on One Down, One Up is one of the times in Trane's recorded legacy that this is not the case, and it scared me to death when I first heard it.) At the same time, I think both musics are equally confrontational. Trane's music is often harder in content and energy, but Ornette's music is striking to me for the sheer kaleidoscope of grounded, naked emotion it evokes--not just happiness or elation but often rage, confusion, and hurt. I'm the last guy to say that free jazz is intrinsically "angry people's music," but I don't blame the guy for flashing a little cynicism or edge--and it might be more cutting precisely because it isn't so exalted. Listen to "Crossroads"/"The Circle with a Hole in the Middle," "Written Word" on the Science Fiction sessions, or some of the music on Who's Crazy. If you're listening for what inflicts your gut (rather than what triggers your formal mind), that some bruising music.

Whoa. Sounds like an amazing night! I had a (vaguely) similar experience with Andrew Hill in Los Angeles years ago--I talked to him for something in the area of fifteen minutes way before the concert, quizzing him about the "state of jazz" (or whatever "relevant" phrase or term I was bandying about at the time...). Funny thing was, I didn't know it was Andrew Hill at the time. I had heard most of his Blue Note albums, so I knew what he looked like, but something about seeing the guy in person didn't trigger any mental alarms. He kind of winked at me when he strode on stage, which pretty much made the evening for me.

Whoa, Allen--was this the band with Haden/Blackwell, or really Haden/Elvin? The RVG remasters of the Golden Circle music are a mixed bag. I love how beautifully foregrounded the alto is, and the separation is wonderful. As a live recording, though, the remastered GC albums have this sort of digital sheen that is really pungent in spots, and the stereo image can come across as slightly artificial. Part of me loves the sheer muddiness of the 80's reissues, but--when it comes down to it--the quality of that music carries everything over. I do wish that Love Call/New York Is Now had gotten the RVG treatment, seeing has how they're studio albums and reasonably well recorded. Might-have-beens are always kind of beside the point, but I can't fathom how amazing those albums (compositions, arrangements, etc.) would sound anchored by Haden/Blackwell or even Haden/Denardo. The superimposition of Ornette's concept over the Coltrane rhythmic logic is interesting but lacks that crackling energy that a "real" Ornette band brings to the table. "Classic" Coltrane rhythm is dispersed and multifaceted, turgid and magnificent, whereas "classic" Ornette rhythm is sharp, linear, and almost anxiously energetic. Granted, Garrison/Jones is one of my favorite rhythm sections--maybe my favorite--but one of the things they couldn't really do was that breathless, vertical sort of burnout swing time that the Atlantic Ornette rhythm sections excelled at. I guess the Coltrane bag is more physical (maybe more "African") in how enveloping and polyrhythmic it is, but Ornette's early rhythmic construction struck me as an even more logical conclusion to bebop--faster, faster, faster until the broad strokes start sounding like short strokes and the short strokes just disappear into swatches of sound. More than anything else, Haden and Blackwell (or Higgins) were propulsive and sparse, which is ideally suited to a melodically-based music. Garrison and Elvin don't shine like that on the Blue Note albums. Interesting comparison to Denardo on what could very well be my favorite Ornette album ever, Crisis--Denardo's tendency (for lack of technique, at the time) is to break up the time. He's still a melodic player--ala Blackwell--but something about the sound of his drums, his touch/articulation, and his melodic sense just sounds inherently fatter and less sharp than Higgins or Blackwell (even when playing the same sort of stuff). Haden knows this and stops doing his walking bag, playing more like he did with the Jarrett group and a similarly dispersed (but melodic) drummer, Paul Motian--double stops, melodic phrases that play against (rather than with) the tempo, pedal points, etc. The overall effect is vaguely Coltraneish, or at least in a middle ground between the Atlantic Ornette feel and mid/late Trane. This, also, makes the band sound more "turgid and magnificent," and Crisis renders some of the most effective versions of some epic themes that don't sound quite as epic with, say, Blackwell or Higgins--"Song for Che," "Broken Shadows," etc.

I half agree--I think that music like Vol. 1 of Golden Circle and the alto features on Love Call and New York Is Now is as accessible and unabashedly swinging as any music Ornette had made up to that point. At the same time, much of Ornette's mid-60's music--captured on Blue Note and elsewhere--is as abstract as anything he's ever done. Most of this has to do with his doubling. Ornette's untutored sound on trumpet and violin went, in a way, a step further than Ayler, since Ornette's facility on those instruments was not predicated on an understanding of even basic technical facility. Same result, in a way, since Ayler got to "the point" of complete tonal denaturation--in that respect, Ornette's violin work strikes me as an early string analog to the sort of brute force sound exploration that would prevail here and there in subsequent times--but Ornette was among the first to get at the point that you didn't even really need to "play" the instrument in order to make it sing. (And yes, as Ornette has pointed out, there are elements of his trumpet technique that, developed via auto-didacticism, would cause problems for a more conventionally schooled cat.) Granted all that, I think that "Love Call," "Snowflakes and Sunshine," and especially the masters thesis of untutored improvisation--The Empty Foxhole--would still freak a lot of people out (including those well-versed in free jazz/free improv, since, again, even the "basic technique" is hard to hear). I think those works are closer, in at least a conceptual-spiritual-philosohpical sense, to a lot of Euro/Asian free improv and EAI, in that sound production and feel are the prominent focus. The blues/folk basis that most of what is recognized as free jazz has internalized is still there, of course, but I think that these elements are less ostensibly the focus (or even "the point") than in Ornette's Atlantic music, stuff like Old and New Dreams, or even stuff as visceral as Ayler or some Cecil Taylor. Ornette's mid-60's music is really singular since it is simultaneously emotionally gripping and daringly technically abstract, and it calls attention to what it aspires to be (or, rather, the thing that it "is" other than jazz) by virtue of being so casual with the cylinders it fires on. Or, rather, there's something in there that doesn't necessarily make you shout or move your body, and it is weird.

The only thing I've heard (and heard of) is the quartet recording with Gary Peacock standing in for Ron Carter.

] To be fair, there's only one violin cut on New York Is Now, and it's very brief (as JS noted, it's supposed to be an "interruption"). New York is more dispersed than Love Call--that is, the energy is more decompressed--but I feel like there's a lot more going on in the rhythm section on the New York sides. Basically, I hear at as Love Call = the shredders, New York Is Now = the more introspective, interactive cuts. Granted that, all of this music is from the same set of dates, so the basic group "sound" of the two albums is the same.

I think that listening to both the post-Atlantics groups and any number of Ornette repertory projects have heightened my appreciation for those late 50's/early 60's bands. For one thing, I don't think that either Old and New Dreams or the post-70's Ornette/Cherry pairings were as effortlessly virtuosic as the Atlantic bands. It's interesting that Ornette is identified as this primitivist par excellence--first and foremost. The blues is, of course, there, but it's been transmogrified/transported; the sound of the Ornette/Cherry/Haden bands always struck me as both primeval and staggeringly futuristic. Laying down something like "Eventually"--with its ridiculously dense unison line and breaking-the-sound-barrier fast tempo--is more like a riff on/logical conclusion to the verticality of bebop. Anyway, everyone talks about "Lonely Woman" and "Ramblin'" and the blues, but JESUS was there a lot of straight up (not just, "post," but like "supra" bebop) technique on the Atlantic sides.

Golden Circle, Volume 2 was always my jam back when I was getting into Ornette. I cannot understate the impact of my first exposure to "Snowflakes and Sunshine" (which I later discovered to be somewhat of a regular set piece for the trio). Consuming all of this music with the virtue/curse of hindsight makes for some weird narrative disjunction... I think I leapt from Shape of Jazz to Come to Golden Circle 2 to Science Fiction (or maybe Sci Fi was in the middle, I can't remember), which did wonders for my appreciation for Ornette as this sort of comprehensive avant genius (though, at the same time, blunting my understanding of the ENORMOUS leap in terms of liberty/looseness between the Atlantics and the trio music--or rather, the unreal virtuosic tightening up between the Blue Note music and the reformed Haden/Blackwell group). I still hold that Vol. 2 is the superior album (compared to 1), even though the performances are easily appreciated as a whole. Vol. 1 is pure shredding and motivic invention, whereas Vol. 2 is ragged creation, big ideas, and emotional projection (the latter of which meaning the most to me). I still hear Vol. 1 as an enjoyable but relatively facile representation of Ornette's emotional dimensions (the ballad, "Dawn," sounds far less direct and earnest than Vol. 2's "Morning Song"), and the one real "big idea" track on the album ("European Echoes") teeters really close to laboriousness (I love the insistence of Ornette's more repetitive melodies, but I wonder if the trio had difficulty saying much with the waltz idea). Anyway, 2 has the balls-to-the-wall, terrifyingly untutored blowout ("Snowflakes"), a stark and movingly unguarded ballad ("Morning Song"), a ridiculous uptempo alto feature ("The Riddle"), and the sort of warm, slow-burn, rhythmic juggling that Ornette's music excels at ("Antiques"). Anyway, Vol. 2 has everything. I almost wished I voted for Foxhole, though, because the sheer balls on that album are a miracle. Of course, it works as a musical piece, and as a sort of jazz art brut it's in the upper echelons (alongside some of Rahsaan's weirder works, early Art Ensemble, some of the wackier stuff Dudu Pukwana was involved in, and a number of other things). I can understand it might not be everyone's taste, but taken on its own grounds (as a "folk music" and not, say, the apotheosis of the pianoless trio concept), it's a stunner. I think it accomplishes exactly what it seems Ornette wanted it to accomplish. My love for the Redman/Garrison/Jones dates is an up and down kind of thing--I think everyone is there to play, but Garrison in particular sounds a little spent for ideas in spots--but the quality of the heads and the general musicianship on display is of such a high quality that I'd consider all of it worth listening to. I actually don't think these albums are as "successful" in and of themselves as Empty Foxhole or the bordering-on-sublime Golden Circle records, but I would rather hear Elvin jones work through an unfamiliar idiom than I would virtually any contemporary jazz drummer burn through your (now) typical post-Tony Williams, post-Miles sort of bag. I think that the piece "Old Gospel" is an amazing performance and everyone plays through the McLean album wonderfully, but the other compositions seem a little too self-conscious for my tastes. I think McLean thrived in that mysterious, not-quite-earworm space that Grachan Moncur III conjured so effortlessly, and the Ornette-ish context is simultaneously liberating for Jackie and kind of straightjacketing (all bright edges and less mystery). Again, worth listening to, still.

Wow--I've wanted to see this for ages.

No, Jay, side spam is awesome--thanks for the kind words! Seats are filling up, so it's good to get the word out before it's too late (at all). Also, this interview just happened: Fred Frith's Manifesto ...which I'm very happy about. Pre-concert press is often mangled and weird, but Memory Select is pretty straight with its use of interview materials... this one is a good summary of what we're "aiming for" on Sunday.

CB does have a NY show at Roulette coming up. (Checks Fred's website...) September 18.

Hi, all- Since Frith's music has been discussed here on several occasions, I thought some folks would be interested... my duo Grex (grex.bandcamp.com) will be playing on a bill with Bay Area chamber folk band Jack O' the Clock (www.jackotheclock.com) and Fred Frith's Cosa Brava this Sunday, August 14, 7:00pm (doors) at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. Cosa Brava doesn't play out very much, but it has a fairly unique, hybridized 20th century chamber/avant rock sort of sound. It may sound closer to Henry Cow than any of Fred's other band projects under his name in recent years. In the band: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum members Matthias Bossi (dms) and Carla Kihlstedt (vln), bassist Shahzad Ismaily, harpist/keyboardist Zeena Parkins, electronics maestro the Norman Conquest, and Frith himself. This is, I think, their only WC date in 2011, and they really never play out. Cosa Brava live We're treating this as an opportunity to alert folks to the extraordinarily diverse and often intensely strange Bay Area experimental song scene. It's a movement that originated at Mills College and has close ties to the local free jazz, noise, folk rock, prog rock, and contemporary classical scenes. Hailing from this milieu is Jack O' the Clock, whose crazy Canterbury-esque hybridism is on full display here: Jack O' the Clock: Novaya Zemlya And my duo Grex, which is what happens when you grow up on a steady diet of free jazz, EFI, grunge rock, and chamber pop. Here's one (untypically vocal-less) sample: Grex: Small Sad Creature Anyway, if you're interested, tickets/further info available here: Tickets/Info Looking for a way to blow minds... E

Thanks for the info! I know about his interest in Kirk, but I didn't know about the Byard connection. Byard's music--especially those two albums--that makes so much sense. Byard had and an extremely unusual and prescient sense of album repertoire and construction; I mean, it's jazz music, but a lot of those albums (those and the fittingly titled Jaki Byard Experience) have the programming and sensibility of pop albums.

Even having been exposed to the Paul Motian Quintet's unbelievable The Story of Maryam for some time now, I wasn't prepared to hear that group's recorded legacy in its (essential) entirety (Maryam + Jack of Clubs and Misterioso). The rest of the material on Motian's Soul Note box is fine, but that Quintet is one of the most distinctive and powerful jazz combos of the past 30 or so years. (For those unfamiliar, the personnel is Joe Lovano (ts), Jim Pepper (ts/ss), Bill Frisell (g), Ed Schuller (b), and Motian (dms).) One thing that really strikes me about this music is what it isn't. The obvious point of comparison/the group's closest relative (barring earlier, shorter-lived iterations of the quintet) is the Lovano/Frisell/Motian trio--another band that is only really derivate insofar as it has become self-referential with time. The trio, however, is often times this delicate, gossamer thing, even in its hairier, more adventurous moments beholden to a kind of soft-focus experimentalism and dogged bitelessness. The Quintet, on the other hand, is angles and aggression, and even when it lapses into Motian's trademark sentimentalism--and a lot of this has to do with Frisell's swathy, delay/reverb-driven sound--it's a respite to weirder things happening elsewhere. The quintet does what the trio does and, literally, everything it doesn't--there's a bass player (the committed although not-particularly-dynamic Ed Schuller) and a more aggressively experimental saxophonist/outcat (Jim Pepper), and Frisell plays with a dark edge that has been conspicuously absent from his more recent, Americana-tinged work. I can't stress just how insane and virtuosic this band gets. Motian is an almost total maximalist for what seems to be like the last time out, and it's kind of striking just how different and correct he sounds for playing music this consistently rhythmically engaged. The sax duo both throws into focus and compounds Lovano's normally-kind-of-detached harmonic virtuosity by having Pepper burst into hardcore early-Pharoah Sanderisms every couple of minutes. And Frisell--I talked to Fred Frith about this, and that man--who is a total master of extended techniques--has a deep respect for the Frisell of this vintage, who can somehow summon Derek Bailey, Hendrix, Jim Hall, and James "Blood" Ulmer--as well as something odd and unique--all at once. The fact that Frisell at the inception of his powers sounds so dizzyingly into creating this new idiom is a plus--it doesn't sound the slightest bit hackneyed, and it is genuinely, endlessly free sounding. Anyway, that Motian box--if you don't have the Quintet music, pull the trigger on that sucker.