Frank Gratkowski is visiting the Bay Area for a number of weeks – busy with all kinds of concerts. A few weeks ago we both played in ROVA’s sax cloud at the ODC theater in San Francisco. 16 saxophones in a circle with the audience in the middle (some very nice music). Damon Smith suggested we play together in a quintet with Tim Perkis and Kjell Nordeson, and I was all for it. Damon, Kjell, Tim & I have played as quartet a few times in the past, and the results have always been musically complex, diverse, quickly changing and ultimately rewarding – adding Frank into the mix didn’t derail our past efforts. We played several improvisations, with Frank on bass clarinet and alto saxophone, myself on soprano and alto – the group had a nice and wide orchestration palette with Tim’s electronics, Damon’s non-amplified bass and Kjell’s percussion. Everyone was mindful of the use of space and silence, and there was some good & strong music made.
The first set of the night belonged to Joshua Allen on tenor saxophone, Matt Montgomery on bass, and Spirit on drums. A number of improvisations – Josh has been playing with Spirit for at least 17 years and they play well together. Josh did a particularly nice solo point where he explored overblown harmonics in a methodical yet visceral way. Here’s a shot from their set:
josh allen, matt montgomery and spirit play at the ivy room
Played tonight with Kjell Nordeson at the Flux Theater out in east Oakland. Shared the bill with Jacob Zimmerman’s Lawson project. Playing with Kjell in duo form is both fun & challenging. In a way what we do is simple – we just play. But Within that simplicity there is so much to do! His playing style is encompassing – the sound of his kit is full and active with many layers. It allows me to follow tangential thoughts while also following a path. Fittingly to the venue, it’s sort of like LaMonte Young’s Fluxus piece that simply states: draw a line and follow it. We start in one place and follow the ideas to their end. Sometimes they don’t end, they just change direction, but we keep following it. Always with energy.
I play alto & tenor when we play in duo form, and we’ve settled on a microphone technique involving 4 mics total. I’m hoping that by sometime this summer we’ll have decided on some material to release.
Jacob’s compositions for Lawson were quite strong and thoughtful. I favored one piece in particular: a melody harmonized in clusters, the lead evenly flowing around the voices of the ensemble (Cory Wright, Matt Nelson, Drew Ceccato, Rob Ewing, Dan VanHassel, and Dan Good). Sound painting.
I like the Flux theater – Mitchell Random is a good guy – glad to have played there tonight.
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……
Back at the Ivy Room for the first time this year – I’d taken a little hiatus from the monthly series that I book there due to the holidays. The fourth mondays tend to fall right near thanksgiving and christmas, don’t they? For this night I asked Damon Smith, Tim Perkis & Kjell Nordeson to do a set of improvising. Damon, Tim and I have played in quartets with a roving fourth member – once with Josh Berman, a time or two with Jordan Glenn – and this time with Kjell. There’s a lot of activity musically with that quartet. Perkis is so flexible with electronics – his being computer based, a system that he’s developed over time – and of Damon can extract so many sounds from his bass that just having those two in a group creates endless possibilities. Add Kjell to that with his multi-layered rhythms and palette of sounds and it things move fast from point to points. Not that we didn’t have sections that were patient and textural, where the group’s sound really coalesced. An inspiring set – would like to play in that grouping again, soon.
The second set of the night was brought in by Jon Raskin, of ROVA. He brought his alto & baritone and was joined by Aurora Josephson, voice; John Shiurba, guitar; and John Hanes, on drums. A nicely varied set, they played several distinct improvisation that he chose either before or after (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that it was a concerto for each of the instruments. I appreciated his “concerto” where he let the other members play an exposition of sorts before he joined.
A really strong night of music at the Ivy Room, thanks for everyone who came out despite the intermittent downpours, that are so rare in the bay area (and because of that make for the perfect excuse for people to stay at home)…
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.)
The third concert of Cylinder’s Chicagoland run was at Heaven Gallery in Wicker Park. We had Jeb Bishop, Dave Rempis, Anton Hatwich and Frank Rosaly join us in this endeavor, we had a quick and focused rehearsal the day before that went well. All four us brought pieces, I wrote a new one that began with a bass melody with stacked chords by the horns, which led to a bass duet. Then some in time playing – had Rempis on baritone take a solo with Kjell and Lisa, I took the second one on alto with Anton and Frank. Up next was an expanded personnel version of Kjell’s untitled piece – a light structure with few instructions, but effective. A lot of energy. Darren brought a piece called the Paper Garden, he asked Josh to join us as well, so it was up to nine players. Lisa brought a modified arrangement of her piece the Deep Disciplines – inspired by deep divers, they can go down to 100 meters below the surface. All in all it was a fun set. I felt that getting all of those musicians together was very worthwhile. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to do it again sometime.
Paul Giallorenzo and Hans-Peter Pfammatter played the first set of the night. A piano duo. Paul played the upright piano, Hans-Peter played the baby grand. Both used preparations. Very good pacing. Lots of interesting sounds. Paul also added some synthesizer towards the end of the set. If not for the loudness of the Milwaukee Avenue Saturday Night drunkenness alot of the sounds could have been heard better.
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!
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 -
