Traveled to New York City for a week of shows – the impetus of the trip was Larry Ochs asking Darren Johnston to bring a group to perform at the Stone. Darren asked Cylinder, and the timing worked out for all of us. We’d originally thought of doing a trip similar to the one last September that we took to Chicago, where we played several dates, two as the quartet and two with Chicagoans. Unfortunately the situation in New York is a bit tougher to navigate without some funding, so we were only able to secure two dates: the Stone on Thursday March 18 and at the Douglass Street Music Collective on Friday the 19th. Lisa Mezzacappa also arranged an in-store for us at the Downtown Music Gallery on Sunday the 21st, Kjell couldn’t stay in town for that, so we played trio, which worked out pretty well.
Playing two nights in a row was a good experience for us, though I preferred the date at Douglass Street. My limited experience at the Stone doesn’t have me sold on it – though I appreciate the space as a performing environment and as an anchor for creative music in NYC, it doesn’t seem that musicians come to check each other out (partly because each show at 8 & 10 o’clock is a separate ticketed event), which is important when you’re not a particularly famous musician playing in Manhattan. At Douglass Street we shared the night with Michael Bates’ Outside Sources – and it was good to see some New York musicians that I haven’t before, and felt good to play in front of them and the audience who came. Michael’s group included Greg Tardy on tenor & clarinet, Josh Sinton on bass clarinet, Josh Deutsch on trumpet and Jeff Davis on drums. Nice players & interesting writing. A good turnout, and a fun hang afterwards with the musicians from Outside Sources.
As this was my first trip longer than 3 days in New York in quite awhile, I took the opportunity to arrange other dates and a few sessions. Played with Weasel Walter in two settings, the first night I got to town (wednesday the 17th) we played a trio with Damon Smith (in town for a different Stone show) at a space called Silent Barn out in Bushwick. Live-in show space – similar to spaces in West Oakland. We played a pretty blistering set, and I’m feeling real good about my recently overhauled alto reacting well when I push it. A date we played on Sunday the 20th was with Reuben Radding on bass and Daniel Carter on saxophones & trumpet, with Jen Baker joining us on an improvisation. I’ve been a fan of Daniel’s for quite a while, so it was a pleasure to play with him. A warm man – glad to meet him. That show was at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn, Lisa Mezzacappa arranged the date and played an improvised quintet with Ava Mendoza, Jason Mears, Darren Johnston & Jen Baker.
The other two dates with Matt Bauder – one was on Monday the 21st at Zebulon, the next tomorrow night at Issue Project Room as part of the Porter Records showcase event. At Zebulon we performed my suite “Kodachrome Music” for two horns & percussion with Harris Eisenstadt. Their aesthetics work perfectly with that suite, which was inspired by a trip to Southern Utah a few years ago. The small crowd at Zebulon that “braved” the rainy night reacted well and really listened. I’m looking forward to the concert tomorrow night, we’ll be playing Bauder’s “Paper Gardens” with Jason Mears and Reuben Radding.
Definitely a good trip – got to see more parts of Brooklyn than I had in the past, and saw interesting exhibits at the Whitney and P.S.1. Great to meet and play with more musicians in New York. Still not a place I want to move to. If I ever did, it’d have to be because of a particularly good opportunity……
Last night played up in Sacramento with Cylinder (myself, Darren Johnston, Lisa Mezzacappa, Kjell Nordeson). Ross Hammond has a series up there called Nebraska Mondays at the Luna Cafe, a small spot on 16th street in between N and O streets. Gotta love the grid style in Sacramento.
This was the first date for Cylinder since we had a recording session at the beginning of October, and though we were a little rusty on parts, it felt great to play together. I brought my Conn 6M for the show – it’s an alto that I got a few months ago – has a different kind of sound than my Pan American – maybe a bit more refined with more modern mechanisms, a really fast horn, built in ‘37. The stage was on the small size, a few times I moved backwards into Kjell’s ride cymbal, but in a perfect position in the room with tables in front and flanking. A good sized crowd came for the show, especially considering that it was Monday night, and they really responded to the music – such that we had to expand our set by three tunes… I was glad we played up there, it’s a quick trip from the Bay and completely worthwhile.
Played duets on Thursday night at Blue Six in the mission with Kjell Nordeson. Part of the Active Music Series, it’ll be a monthly concert where I’ll be bringing a project and inviting another group to share the bill. This night Darren Johnston brought a new quartet called Farallon where he’s joined by Sheldon Brown on alto, Noah Phillips on guitar and Jordan Glenn on drums.
Kjell and I played the first set, all improvised – we played four pieces, the first two were more rooted in tempo based forms with Kjell creating multi-layered rhythms with lots of variations and colors of sounds stemming from his kit that includes many “little instruments” in addition to the standard elements. Really fun to play with him, I like his feel when playing time – driving & intense, with a solid pulse supporting all the variations.We played four pieces – the first two were pretty high energy tempo driven affairs, lots of forward momentum and repetition. I started on tenor and switched to alto halfway through the second. The third piece dealt with more quiet tones and silence at first. Kjell then created a pulsing theme utilizing some complex sounds which developed into an ostinato in a kind of 12/8 feel with cross rhythms on top. I was able to float on top of this with melodic material. A very patient feel to the piece. We were able to record it with 4 tracks, here’s the second track, where I play first tenor and then alto:
Farallon played the second set. It was quite good, some originals by both Darren and Sheldon and one Herbie Nichols tune which was quite an interesting interpretation largely due to the instrumentation and the playing style of Noah Phillips. Instead of comping in a jazz way, Noah’s concept has a strong rock influence, and he would create backings which reflected this, while maintaining the chordal aspects of the written music. It was a real juxtaposition which I thought worked well. The music written by Darren and Sheldon was strong and you could tell how much those two had played together in the past. Darren’s been sounding extra good these days – a benefit of playing alot of shows all over the place (I think he was in Chicago, Toronto and New York in the past month.)
Last night played with Weasel Walter’s Quintet – first show in a few months – me, Aaron Bennett, Darren Johnston, Damon Smith and Weasel. It was good. We didn’t have a rehearsal, we played the first piece Weasel had brought to the group, “On the Verge of Destruction”, so we all knew how to approach it. I think because of no rehearsing, the looseness that we played with actually helped the music. Darren, Aaron and I are all good readers, so the notated music was there, and the improvising was really interesting and varied. Probably because we hadn’t played in awhile: those situations always tend to freshen the ideas. I think structurally there was a good amount of variation too.
The first set was with Josh Allen, Mike Guarino and Tim Orr. Two drummers, one saxophonist. Alot of energy. I hadn’t seen Tim play before – used alot of extra percussion, cymbals and such, with his kit. Sounded good.
The last set was a trio made up of Derek Moneypeny and two fellows from Sacramento, Chad Stockdale and Kevin Corcoran. Drums, guitar and electric saxophone. More energy music! Loud – loving my westone earplugs these days………
In January I played up in Milwaukee for the first time – somehow in the 6 years I lived in Chicago I had never made it up there. Bruno Johnson of Okka Disc runs a great bar up there called the Sugar Maple. He has a music room and has been holding concerts for a few years now. After a rehearsal for the large group pieces for a concert at Heaven, we picked up a rental minivan and headed up the 94, through too much traffic, with a stop at a gas station where Kjell and I were approached by a spray-on wipe-off car wax hawker, past the Cheese Castle and finally to Milwaukee. It was our first quartet concert since we played at the Musicians Union Hall in San Francisco back in August – we had some rehearsals before I headed to Chicago a few weeks ago and we had a little time before the show to warm up and run some parts. It was a good concert – a small turnout, but enthusiastic – we played really well. The room is very live, and I think that gave some extra energy to our playing – our maybe it was that Bourbon Barreled Scotch Ale that I had on during dinner….. Afterwards we hung out with Bruno at the bar, tasting some really interesting micro brews from Wisconsin and other parts. Got to bed real late – got up a little too early – felt it on the drive back to Chicago.
I arranged some concerts this past weekend in Chicago and Milwaukee for Cylinder, the quartet I’ve been working on in San Francisco with Darren Johnston, Lisa Mezzacappa, and Kjell Nordeson. Two were for the quartet and two involved musicians in Chicago.
The first night was at Elastic up in Logan Square. We invited Keefe Jackson, Josh Berman, Frank Rosaly and Hans-Peter Pfafmatter to join us in some free improvisations. (Hans-Peter is a Swiss pianist, who has been in Chicago for the past four months – a grant council in Switzerland, maintains an apartment in the Ukrainian Village and they provide artist residences year after year. This is how I met Marc Unternauer and Thomas Mejer.) We played two sets of improvisations: the first grouping was a trio of Keefe, Lisa and Kjell. The second was a quartet of myself, Hans-Peter, Frank and Darren. The third was a duet with Darren and Keefe, the highlight for me being some very strong difference tones produced by the blended high notes. And the final piece of that set was a quintet with myself, Lisa, Josh, Frank and Hans-Peter. A lot of strong playing during the set – you could tell that all the musicians were listening and really improvising with each other.
The second set had only two groupings: a duo between the percussionists, Frank & Kjell; and the final piece of the night involving all eight musicians. There was only one full drumset at the space that night, so during Kjell and Frank’s duo, they constructed smaller percussion kits, the use of these highlighted their skill with using smaller sounds and the sense of space that both of them have. They set up facing straight at each other, and it had me imagining some kind of esoteric ceremony. Though the final piece of the night had all eight musicians, we arranged it so that no more than two musicians could play at a time, while allowing for everyone to truly develop material. It worked quite well, and though the entire night had a great sense of timing, patience and musicality, this “passing along the music” piece was very memorable. I was glad to be able to get these people together to play!
Quite a bite has been going on the last month or so and I just haven’t been writing about it. It’s spring in California, and though I’m sure to those of you in other parts of the country that can be a struggle, out here it’s generally good. For me it’s been good as I’ve been looking for “work”, and have had extra time for practicing, writing music, and concerning myself with an upcoming trip to Europe.
March went by pretty well, had a trip down to Los Angeles with the Pink Canoes where we played a good show at the Pharoah’s Den down in Riverside (and now I know why Orange County is considered a totally different thing than LA) and a fun if ill-attended show at the Echo Curio in Echo Park. Stayed in Bel Air – went to the Getty Museum, nice trip. We finished that trip in Santa Cruz, a long day of driving up from LA, to the show, then back to the Bay that night. All in all I think Pink Canoes played 5 shows in March, had a good one at the Hemlock where Gerrit Wittmer played a set, and then another one at Travis’ house the Golden Trapperkeeper Lodge where it was Earth Hour, so we played a rare acoustic set.
Jordan Glenn’s trip Weiner Kids played a couple of shows too – at the Hemlock and then one up at the Ivy Room in Albany. That music is getting more and more fun to play – two saxes and drums – Cory Wright playing baritone in the group, me on alto. We’re getting to know the music better and having more fun with it. Going to record next week.
Weasel’s Quintet has played a few shows too – last night we played over at Kimo’s in SF – a good, short set, plenty of energy, but afterward Darren got the terrible news that his house had been set on fire by the crackhead who lives downstairs from him! I drove him to his place in the Castro, I couldn’t see the building, but on the way he talked to his girlfriend and it seemed like the important things (people, cats) were okay. Here’s hoping the rest is salvageable…..
Ton Trio played at the Ivy Room last month too. I asked Jordan Glenn to fill in for Sam Ospovat and he did a great job. It was good to play that music again, and now I’m writing more trio music to have when I head over with Kurt to Europe in a few weeks to meet up with Sam and play in Paris and Poland.
And finally, last weekend I took a trip over to New York with Jen. We found cheap flights a while back and decided to head over there. I put together a group with Matt Bauder, Jason Ajemian, and Harris Eisenstadt. I’ve been wanting a group with Matt for a while, and I think that this may be the start of that. Probably go back sometime in the fall to work more on it, but this was a good start. Played at a space in Long Island City called the Chocolate Factory. We only had one rehearsal and the set was on the short side, but the chemistry is good. We will see.
Last monday night played at the Ivy Room up in Albany with Weasel’s quintet. Our last date was at the Uptown in Oakland. the big difference between that night and this one is that we’ve been rehearsing almost regularly, so we know the music better, and are able to take some more liberties with it. Easier for the horns to get away from the material and then back into it with smaller cues – which makes it flow better from composition to improvisation. Darren had a really great solo about midway through. We all played with alot of energy – you can see in this video:
The first set of the night was the duo of Jacob Felix Heule and Tony Dryer – they did a very quiet set and had setup in a spot surrounded by the audience – a good way to counteract the muffled acoustics in the space while playing very quietly. The last set was Bad Paradise, a group made up of Steve Dood, Cansafis of No Doctors and Andrew – electronic / experimental / weird / dance – a good set to cap off the night – the three sets were VERY different – which I like.
Last night there was another free show at the Uptown in downtown Oakland. This one was put together by Sarah Lockhart. The first set was John Gruntfest’s Ritual Resurrection Band, which is led by John on alto and words. It was pretty theatrical, and the line up of 2 drummers, 2 keyboards, and 4 saxophones made for a full sound and opportunities for small group pairings for improvising.
The second set was SL Morse – the duo of Sarah and Aurora Josephson. Now I think that Sarah was reading a composition the whole way through and it seemed that Aurora was free – had some good moments and the simple pairing of voice and percussion worked well.
Weasel put together a quintet with me on alto, Aaron Bennett on tenor, Darren Johnston on trumpet and Damon Smith on bass. He wrote a long-form piece for the group that we played for the first time at 21 Grand about a month ago. That time we didn’t have a chance to actually rehearse it before hand, and this time we did – the piece has Weasel and Damon being free for the majority of the piece and alot of written material that is in time for the horns to play together – compositionally the opposite of the SL Morse set. The music is all high energy, with the piece opening up after about 10 minutes into long solo sections for each horn player to work with the rhythm section. Darren’s trumpet solo sounded great and despite the mic set up for this purpose, Aaron went without in a real high energy section with Weasel and Damon. I started mine and didn’t feel so strong for awhile – I don’t know if it’s the extra work I’ve been doing or that it’s actually kind of cold around here, but I just didn’t feel like my playing was working – maybe a bad reed. These things happen.
Good to work on that music again – I think we’ll be recording it soon.
Last night played at Blue Six in the Mission. Small space at 24th street and Treat. Played with Darren Johnston, Lisa Mezzacappa, and Kjell Nordeson. We’d gotten together a few months ago at Lisa’s place – the different instincts from the players in this group allows for some interesting playing – also, everyone is willing to really go for it so strong music happens.
We played two sets this night, I brought both alto and bass clarinet, Darren played mainly trumpet and some flugelhorn. Both sets were varied – I think in the first we stayed towards higher energy while in the second we took our time to develop ideas. Playing with a talented trumpeter is always great as a reed player, the combination of the sounds enhanced by the range that Darren plays with – we were trading lines that stretched throughout several octaves while I was on bass clarinet – with him matching the range of that instrument easily. Kjell is such a strong player in terms of instant composition – he builds parts that develop over time – the quartet interacted with smaller motifs that he would introduce throughout both sets, and the overall energy that he brings to the kit acted as a guide for much of the music.
In terms of improvised music, what I really like about this group is that while we all have many skills at our disposal, the result is strong music that is not dominated by special techniques. Instead, those techniques are used as parts to create music that is complex on many levels, while being about both the interaction of the individual players and the music created as a group.
Thanks to Joe for having the show at his place -
