01/20/15: The first day off on the tour took place on January 19th, and Steve Marquette and I drove back to Louisville from Lexington where we were being put up in an Airbnb provided by a sponsor for the Lexington shows which, on paper, is a very generous thing to do- providing rooms in exchange for publicity at the concerts- but in this particular case it meant we were staying in a building THAT WAS ACTUALLY BEING BUILT WHILE WE WERE IN IT. Needless to say, that made catching up on sleep during the stopovers in Lexington next to impossible… In part went to Louisville so I could do a radio interview with Tim Barnes on ART FM, where he is the head of programming, organizing about 100 local DJs who play the widest range of music imaginable. Tim and I talked about improvised music, I played a solo tenor improvisation, and he played The Hard Blues/Skin 1 (by Julius Hemphill) from The Midwest School album by Audio One, also And She Speaks (by John Carter) from the duo album with Nate Wooley, East By Northwest. The other reason Steve and I traveled to Louisville was for the numerous independent record stores and great food, a great way to spend a free day. Traveling around in the beautiful spring-like weather I was struck by how much the light in Kentucky reminds me of the light in William Egglestons photographs. I was back to work in Lexington on the 20th, a master class at 12:30 after being woken up before 8am by construction in the house; theres nothing like the feeling of total sleep deprivation while simultaneously being completely wired on caffeine when presenting ideas to students. I wanted to talk about self-determination and music, using the approach to defining my work as an example. First I played Louis Armstrongs, West End Blues, and then gave a structural analysis of it. Then I played it a second time, underscoring key moments (like the opening of Louis Armstrongs fermata on the trumpet, where time holds its place for a few bars at the start of the fifth chorus). Many of the primary elements of this piece by Armstrongs Hot Five from 1928 encompass most of what I work with in my own compositions for improvisers: the dialectic between composed and improvised materials, varied expressions of time (with pulse and without, the use of stasis [which occurs in the example mentioned above], the incorporation of timbre as an essential component of expression, the use of varied arrangement possibilities that exploit instrumental resources and combinations to the fullest, and a focus on musical tension and surprise. I hoped that by going from personal experience, and from the point that, to me, jazz is not a style but a creative methodology, might help the students see the possibility that finding their own path in the music is about discovery and not a recapitulation to recreating the past. I brought up the work of the early AACM as a model for self-determination, and suggested the Anthony Braxton biography, Forces In Motion, by Graham Locke and John Cages Silence, as essential reading. Luckily, the students had questions and thing opened up in to what I hope was a useful dialog for them, it was for me. That night I played the last solo concert of the tour to a full room on a Tuesday night; again lucky with a space with good acoustics for the horns. On one hand I felt more in control of my time and memory than at the Louisville and Somerset shows, so my execution of ideas had more clarity, but I finished the performance wondering if the diversity of aesthetics I used from piece to piece, even within certain pieces, was just disorienting, or effective. I also probably talked too much between some of the improvisations, perhaps moving the mindset of the audience too far afield from music. I was gratified to see that many of the students from the afternoon class came to the performance, less so that many of them left soon after it started. Perhaps the ideas exchanged in class will have meaning that opens their perspective in a more significant way than the music I play. If thats the case I would still be happy because it would mean that I communicated something, which is much better than nothing. Best signs seen in Lexington- on a building: Bone Dry Roofers, call 254-BONE; on a truck: Produce Pimp. Solo in Innsbruck: https://youtube/watch?v=zqx18E6OUEg
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:40:12 +0000