Muhal Richard Abrams

[Lazaro Vega]

Muhal Richard Abrams is our featured artist on The Jazz Retrospective tonight, a difficult proposition for the short Monday night 10 p.m. to midnight edition of Jazz From Blue Lake. I mean, he's played so many different roles in his career, from sideman to soloist, in duet, in an amazing array of combinations, big bands, and written orchestral works. And his best work is in long form. We'll give it a shot, though. Hope you'll join us for the individualist ascending, http://www.bluelake.org/radio

[Chuck Nessa]

Happy Birthday to Muhal.

[JSngry]

How old of a man is he now?

(and please, nobody say young at heart, wise in time...)

[Chuck Nessa]

81

I don't think I have it within me to express all I feel about the man and how his work has shaped my life. He's a tough guy.

edit for bad typing.

Edited September 19, 2011 by Chuck Nessa

[Chuck Nessa]

I first met Muhal in 1966. I was adrift and moved to Chicago because of the reports of his work in Down Beat. This led me to Roscoe, Bowie, Jarman, Braxton, Anderson, etc.

Muhal and his amazing wife Peggy have been friends and advisers for over 40 years.

[Leeway]

Muhal Richard Abrams was the honoree at last year' s Vision Fest. Glad to say I was there.

With Ari Brown and Harrison Bankhead.

[Chuck Nessa]

I want to add, a few years ago in Ann Arbor when the Abrams/Lewis/Mitchell group presented the second set of the evening, somewhere in there, Muhal had a solo where his hands seemed to be completely independent. I hope Greg K was there. I hope to some day have a recording of this or have my brain erased.

Edited September 20, 2011 by Chuck Nessa

[ep1str0phy]

Though my time spent with him was terribly brief, my week or so under Muhal's tutelage (when I was studying at Mills) was one of the most memorable and enriching of my life. I had a one-on-one with him that completely changed my life--I was up until then extremely high strung about improvisation and the incorporation of silence into an open musical space, and I'll never forget the sort of calm and creative rightness that his playing induced in mine. My whole perspective on music was instantly changed--and in an emotional (rather than just intellectual) way.

One of the ensembles I was a part of also performed a piece of his, originally scored for a mid-sized ensemble. The first rehearsal of this piece was one of the most hysterically free performances I've ever been a part of. It wasn't even really a "noise" thing--the vibe was just uncanny... people getting up and reading old almanacs, the conductor getting up on a ladder attempting to change a lightbulb, Muhal putting his coat over his head and wandering into a corner (repeating the phrase, "I have sand in my mouth!"). There were tons of discreet, clearly notated sections, too--tonally nebulous but really conceptually clear--and it was really something to hear these Webern-y snippets, alternating with improvisation of all sorts, peppered into this chasm of activity. At no point was I taken out of it, though... it just so happened that the canvas of the piece had expanded to the room--and really just the room, since you could look in on at all and perceive it as a performative experience.

The week ended with a Muhal/Roscoe Mitchell duo concert, and damn--that was easily one of the best musical experiences of my life. Zanonesdelpueblo was there, too. Muhal and Roscoe held the audience in rapt attention for the full duration--including a solid twenty to thirty minutes of extremely sparse, super-minimal, little instrument-type improvisation. That whole night was a lesson in both defining your own realm as a performer and making that realm an area of shared experience--and there was an absolute shamanic/ritualistic character to the proceedings. I spent the first ten or so years of my life in Catholic schooling of various sorts, and I could recognize on that night vibrations extremely redolent of the church--but man, something so different, so universal, and so much more spiritual in any number of ways. Since then, I'd always aimed to make music in that way--the way guys like Muhal seem to live and breathe.

[johnlitweiler]

Muhal's music and the musics of others that he inspired were revelations and joy to a lot of us. George Lewis's wonderful book A Power Stronger Than Itself shows a more personal side of him, as the AACM began. More than that, what a good man. BTW the annual Ellington memorial concerts that he helped begin were a major part of the inspiration for the annual Chicago Jazz Festival.

[Lazaro Vega]

Thanks ep1str0phy for that recollection. The Tatum through Tristano movement Nessa alludes to from that Ann Arbor show needs be heard.

Our interview from 2007 was tough and educational. Wish his voice echoed more frequently through the chambers of "jazz media."