evanziporyn-blog

[evanziporyn-blog]

long ago, galaxy far away

The recent passing of one of the creative titans of 20thcentury music prompted me to dig through my hard drive and find the following, which I wrote in May 2002, right after returning from a short tour with said Creative Titan…

…waiting for cecil (2002)

Upper level negotiations aside, we're informed that a collaboration with Cecil will, in fact, take place: contract signed, dates set – he’s commissioned to write a 40-minute piece, for him and us, to be premiered in Vienna in May, 2002.  My own experience with Cecil is: somehow conning my way into the Jazz Showcase in Chicago as a teenager, where he poundedthe piano for 90 minutes, after which Joe Segal came out to check for broken strings.  It was probably the only direct contact I had with the legendary Joe – him looking up at me from inside the piano and saying, ‘don’t laugh, last night he broke 3!’  I also remember seeing large sheets of runic notation on the piano after the show.  And I remember in college Robert Moore doing an in-class analysis of Unit Structures- I was 19, and I think I still have the mimeograph.  Finally, I remember Cecil getting his MacArthur a few years back, and hearing from that a friend of [name deleted had had some kind of bad experience with him; I also remember  [same name, again deleted] telling me that Cecil was 'a user.'

At any rate, we wait for Cecil at a rehearsal; then we leave, and then we're informed that he's waiting for us at Tobacco Road, the bar below [the old] Carroll's [41stand 9th]. He's a flamboyant raconteur, many tales of Roger Woodward and Max Roach, lots of cryptic dish, and my own realization that I'll definitely have to remind him of my name every time I see him: we are his audience.  He is extremely interested in our nascent collaboration with Ornette (another story, for another day).

Another rehearsal is set, and Cecil arrives for this one, late as expected, but there.  He has an assistant of amorphously European accent, a stunning outfit (which he changes before the rehearsal), and many sheets of music, but no copies for the band.  We suggest that his assistant make copies, and we then all set up, with Cecil standing in front of us, staring at his own sheets.  Many minutes of silence, after which I ask him if there's anything we might want to work on.  

"I think it might be better to wait for the music."

So we wait, for another 20 minutes or so, until the assistant returns.

The music is in Cecil's own notation: letter names and contours, with various brackets, parentheses with positive or negative numbers, a few other symbols.  This is all eventually deciphered as being melodies and chords, with the numbers indicating distance of the first note from middle C.  None of this is explained at any point: 'let's start at the beginning…'  Some sounds…'no, let's try it again…' eventually, order emerges: comments about phrasing, directions on orchestration, suggested diversions from the score, ways of improvising, etc.  After each pause we start from the beginning.  We are allowed to ask questions about our own playing but not to make any suggestions about the totality or about what others might do. All this is - to me - tedious but absolutely valid: the score is a framework, a jumping-off point, and we're meant to find our own way through it, under his supervision.  This can only emerge slowly and collectively.  It is also unquestionable that Cecil knows exactly what he's written: when he does go to the piano, he plays the exact notes, quickly and forcefully, and it sounds like, um, Cecil Taylor.  (It should also be noted that I'm also aware that Lisa is at the grand piano and Cecil is left with the upright…this seems slightly odd to me but on the other hand Lisa is playing and Cecil is not, and in any case, it's not my position to step in…)

Three hours later, we've gotten through one page, it takes about 7 minutes, but it sounds pretty good, and very different from any of Cecil's music that I've heard.  The assistant tells me as I'm leaving that he's amazed at how quickly we were able to 'realize Cecil's vision.'

Weeks or months go by.  We try to arrange our rehearsals for the spring.  As usual with us, it's difficult to find times when all six people are available, and in the end we can't agree on any extra days to meet with Cecil.  This is reported to [our manager] Kenny, and a cyber dance begins…we hear rumors that Cecil is upset about this, so we make a decision to simply make our entire rehearsal schedule available to him: any time he's able to show up, we'll clear the books and work with him.

We don't see him again until Vienna.

Actually, I see him a little before then, as I board my connection from Paris.  He's sitting in first class, ensconced in a novel, a stylish Stetson straw hat on his head. I greet him, remind him of my name, but he does seem genuinely pleased to see me, excited about the gig.  We are to be met by a 'representative of the Konzerthaus,' or so I'm told, but Cecil informs me as we walk to our luggage that, instead, we'll be met by some 'friends.'

As we walk through the terminal, I ask him if he tours a lot - 'just enough to keep things interesting' he says….

Getting the luggage is benignly indicative: we need carts, which require coins, and Cecil somehow ends up at a Bureau de Change, shoving dollars at the befuddled clerk - 'two please'…that failing, I'm instructed to flag down a porter, and to find his two bags, 'one brown, the other a Gucci.'  Through customs, we're met by Tony O. and his wife Tutta, who've trained in from Dusseldorf, and Cecil decides we need to sit and have a drink before going to the hotel. I should mention that at this point I know nothing about Tony, I don’t say this with any pride, but I don't know that he's a drummer, Cecil's frequent duo partner, or that he's done a lot of the logistical work for these gigs.  The driver is nowhere to be found, so I pay off the porter and unload the bags, at which point the driver emerges, grouses about the lack of luggage carts, and goes off to rent them.  He then spends the next 90 minutes hovering and glowering, while Cecil and Tony catch up with on another - much opaque conversation about code-named friends and enemies, old friend stuff (sample: "well, there is a young man named Jed, who was last seen sleeping on his stomach in my apartment - so I don't know what that was all about - and Jed has given me his phone number, he'd very much like to see me, I can call him at the 'club' - which he seems to think he's going to inherit from the Dragon Lady, but young Jed doesn't seem to realize, regarding the Dragon Lady, that only the good die young!')…also, some interesting conversation about an aborted project in Italy, with the La Scala orchestra, in which Tony continually makes the point that 'they could be the best musicians in the world, but they're not right for you!', until finally my jetlag trumps my sense of decorum, and I ask that we go to the hotel.

On the walk to the car, Tony asks if we'll be rehearsing at 4 as planned, and Cecil replies, 'oh no, I'm far too tired for that, I'll need to rest.'  Tony mentions that we could rehearse without Cecil, and when I say that this is not really possible, as we don't really know how to rehearse Cecil’s material without him, Tony says, 'but you've got that one sheet, don't you?'  This is echoed by 83-year-old Trudy, a free spirit, Sun Ra veteran, and last member of the entourage, who meets us at the hotel. She says we should also rehearse without Cecil, and when I say that we can't really do this, Cecil says that the band should do 'whatever makes them comfortable.'  

For me, that's sleep; for Cecil and Tony, that's sitting at the bar all afternoon, until we all congregate to go to rehearsal, rescheduled for 5:30.  Standing in the driveway, we're informed that Cecil doesn't feel like rehearsing, and the provokes some dissension in the band: Lisa in particular is insulted, but the group comes to a tentative decision to go rehearse our other material anyway, in the hopes the Cecil will show up.  If he doesn't, we'll end early and have dinner.  I go to my room to get my music (I had assumed we were only rehearsing the Cecil material), and when I return, Mark and Lisa are screaming at each other.  Lisa departs, and Mark and David are recruited by Kenny to interface with Cecil at the bar.

15 or 20 minutes later, Mark returns, reporting that Cecil is 'on the warpath' about Kenny…Lisa has returned, and we all proceed to the Konzerthaus, to rehearse the rest of the program.

In fact, Cecil shows up not much later, and we have what in the end turns out to be an extremely productive rehearsal. The first half-hour is pretty annoying, with Cecil posturing and lecturing, acting the auteur, maybe Antonioni or Martha Graham.  The breakthrough is the realization/recollection that the notation is just a jumping off point: as soon as we start doing something interesting, notated or not, Cecil also starts playing, and we end up doing some quite interesting things together, moving seamlessly (when it works) from the notated materials to improvisation, then into the next section.  

We take a break, at which point I notice all of Tony's drum cases sitting in the hall, and when I ask Kenny about this, he tells me that this is just for convenience, as Tony and Cecil are doing some duo gigs between Vienna and London.  Despite this assurance, after the break, Nico the promoter asks Tony (who's in the hall) if he should 'set up the drums now,' to which Tony immediately yells "NO!!!" in a way that I find slightly disconcerting…It's absolutely clear to me that Tony is planning on playing with us, and that for whatever reason this is to be sprung on us at the last minute.  At any rate, the rehearsal continues: we're given syllables to recite - Ka! - and instructed to walk around the hall saying them.  At the end of the rehearsal, Cecil seems very happy, excited, and tells us to bring poetry to the concert as well.

We go to eat, Mark and Lisa get in a fight about the check, business as usual.

The next day is the sound check and the gig, and we arrive to find Cecil and Tony rehearsing on stage.  Tony's drums are in the exact middle of the stage, which actually makes some kind of sense, as it's the biggest area not being used by us, and it would allow us to do our normal set up were it not for a few cymbal stands, which jut into my area, making our normal setup impossible until the drums are moved.  This is not in itself a huge problem, as Andy and I decide that I'll simply set up between Mark and Robert during the second half.  But we can't really figure out what's going on: nothing is said to us one way or another about Tony.  Are they simply rehearsing for the following days?  Are they playing duos on tonight's concert?  Is Tony playing with us?  Impossible to determine.  We begin to rehearse with Cecil and, once again, Tony and Tutta simply sit in the audience, observing.  We do a long, quite successful improvisation, and when we're done, I go up to Tony and say, "So Tony, just wondering - do you know what's going on?  What's the story?"

And here my troubles begin.  Suddenly there's an edge of hostility to everything, annoyance at my asking, picking a fight.

"There's no story - I'm just waiting until you're through, and then Cecil and I will rehearse."

"OK, but you know we also have to rehearse the first half of the concert, including tech-ing a video [for Don Byron’s piece Eugene] - it may take about an hour" "I'm not talking about the bloody first half of the concert, we're talking about the second half - I don't fucking care what you do in the first half of the concert."

I tell him that I'm not trying to make things uncomfortable, just trying to figure out a plan that works for everybody.

"There is no plan - I'm just following orders like you - I realize it's a bit unusual but you just have to go with it.  If you think I like sitting down here all afternoon, waiting for you all to finish, you're out of your mind, but I've got no choice.  Now leave it at that or I promise you things will get a lot worse."

Things get stranger and uglier from there, whatever I say is taken as provocation, and I eventually realize there's no point, and walk away.  Cecil announces that the rehearsal is over, and I ask him if we can rehearse our first half.  He says yes, and I ask him if the drums can be moved so we can do the setup.  Again, he agrees, and tells Andy to 'help Tony move the drums.'  Tony then asks Cecil if they should rehearse again, and Cecil say, 'no, no, let's go get something to eat.'

Now, it's important to understand a few things here: first, we do in fact need to strike the drums for the first half of the show; second, there is nothing inherently insulting or threatening about doing so.  Stage set-ups are just that: people need to be where they need to be, and instruments get moved around all the time.  I assume this is fairly obvious.  I will admit that I was annoyed at Tony's picking a fight with me, and that I decided to go over his head to get the drums moved.  But I did this simply because it needed to be done in order for us to play the first half of the concert.  It also should be clearly stated that no oneever talked to anyone in the band about Tony playing with us, ever- nor was it apparently ever mentioned to Kenny in any of his numerous communications with Tony.  And, of course, Tony didn't try to rehearse with us, in fact insisted that his drums notbe set up during our rehearsal the night before.  If it had been mentioned, we would have had no choice but to agree, and it might not have been a bad thing.  But nothing was said, we were just left in limbo, and my attempt to simply find out what the parameters of possibility were was met with Tony's implied threats.

OK, on with the show, we do the first half (pieces by Hermeto Pascoal and Don Byron), it goes great, we're very on, and in fact it's clear that the work with Cecil has freed up our improvisation in the Pascoal. We go off stage, and Cecil is in fact in his dressing room, so that's good.  Tony meanwhile is on stage, resetting his drums in the center of the stage, while my microphones and music stand get moved - as agreed - to the other side of the stage.  Tony's setup takes about 30 minutes, and when he leaves the stage, the crowd cheers. This is OK, as at this point Cecil is in the middle of changing his clothes, and isn't ready anyway.  Mark has appointed himself emissary to Cecil, he's running in and out of his room, coming out with breathless updates - "Cecil's changing, he does want to play, and he's very excited."  The promoter is freaking out over the long pause, but it seems like business as usual.  Mark, alone with Cecil, asks him if he wants to play with Tony first, or bring Tony on later, or…and Cecil replies, 'no, Tony won't be playing tonight.'

This is news to Tony, who is literally chasing after Cecil on his way to the stage, saying, 'what would you like me to do? Shall I come on with you?'  Cecil replies, softly, 'not yet…'

So off we go, we do it, it's OK, not the best improvising I've ever done, not the worst, and, as I had predicted to Wendy and Lisa, we get many curtain calls and something of a standing ovation.  I feel pretty empty inside, let’s just leave it at that.  We walk off stage, and Cecil says, "I think we've all deserved some champagne."

Backstage, Trudy reports that Cecil is thrilled, and, unlike his normal practice, wants us to join him in his dressing room.  Tony meanwhile is left to take his drums apart on the stage.  The band gets taken to dinner at the Konzerthaus restaurant; Mark stays behind to hang with Cecil.  Halfway through the meal Mark comes into the dining room, and tells Kenny that "Tony and Trudy need to speak to you," and Kenny disappears, until Wendy goes and rescues him 10 minutes later.  Tony and Trudy then join us at the table, Tony sitting next to Kenny, at which point Wendy and Trudy suggest that we change seats.  Mark again is breathless, reporting on Trudy's account of Cecil's happiness, I'm tired, and I leave in a cab with Wendy and Lisa.

Robert stays and parties with Cecil, entranced. Kenny is apparently accosted by Tony at the hotel at 2:30am, at which point he tells him, "the store is closed."  Interpret that as you like.

After this, we go to Graz and our own gig, with the full knowledge that more is in store in London.

Cut to several days later, arrival at the Barbican for our sound check.  Once again the drums are in the center of the stage, and once again I'm set up between Mark and Robert.  This time it's apparently an open rehearsal: there are photographers, press, a large stage crew, all hovering.  As I walk to my instrument, Cecil, speaking more to the crowd than to us, announces the agenda: "All right, for today's rehearsal, I'd like you all to take out your music, and to study it silently.  We will do this for the next 30 minutes."  And there we are, trapped on stage, staring at our music silently, while the public looks on.  To Cecil's credit, he takes his music, stands stock still in the hall, and stares at his music as well.  Every few minutes he takes a step.  We're all caught flat-footed.  It is impossible to not do it: clearly, this would be insubordination and would have absolutely dire consequences.  Also, there's clearly some value in this kind of thing - meditation, silence, clearing oneself out.  As such, it's brilliant psychological manipulation, and good theater as well. Shock therapy, shamanism, yada yada yada.  Having come this far, having put up with no rehearsals and no instruction, and random drummers and nonsense syllables, and having concluded, fairly definitively, that there's no future in this for us as a group or an organization, what's one half-hour out of my life?  So I stand there, I actually take it seriously to the extent that I can, looking at the music while moving through various yoga and tai chi postures, trying to be aware of the silence and the music and myself.  

Not to say that I'm not also occasionally passing glances to those among us who are likely to be aware of the absurdity…and at 15 minutes, Wendy signals me for a time update.  I'm also painfully aware of being watched - not just by Cecil but by the press, the stage crew, and - sitting in the audience - by Tony.

It ends, maybe 20 minutes rather than 30, and we're then instructed to walk silently through the aisles, thinking of the nonsense syllables on the page.  Another 20 minutes, and then we're told to enunciate the words.  Maybe 10 more minutes of this, after which Cecil abruptly shouts, "OK, now forget it all!!  I'll see you tonight."  And he leaves.

I have this odd feeling at this point - having done something healthy but under duress, and for the wrong reasons, with public humiliation thrown in, both for the act itself and for my acquiescence…what is this like…I go backstage, and, just being truthful here, I say to Lisa, "I feel like I've been raped…"

Drum saga part two.  Andy tries to start resetting the stage for the first half, and then informs me that Tony has told him, 'anybody touches my drums, there'll be trouble.'  I'm not interested, I'm still in let's-get-this-fucking-thing-over-with mode, so I tell Andy to forget it, just set me up way over on the side of the stage, separated from the band by the drums.  He does so.  We start our sound check, with Tony on stage, adjusting his drums at a VERY SLOW rate. I'm about twice the distance from the group than I've ever been, it's like there's five of them and one of me. Finally we're ready to play, I count off Pascoal’s Arapua, and Tony immediatelystarts bashing away on his drums loudly. We stop, and Mark offers, demurely, "um, Tony, we're trying to sound check."

"Well you might have bloody well asked me if I'm bloody finished!"  He claims he needs 'two more minutes,' so we wait about five, then finally decide to take a break until he's off the stage.

He leaves, we begin again, and I finally decide that it'd be better to be on the otherside of the drums, that is, wedged up against Mark, blocking the audiences' view of Wendy and Lisa, but nonetheless allowing us to play music together.  To do this, Tony's stool and empty drum case have to be nudged about one foot.  I request that the stage crew do this, and meanwhile Mark goes back to Cecil's dressing room to 'make sure it's OK.'  We're already in the twilight zone here.  Mark comes back, five minutes later, shaken but still standing, waves off requests for explication, and we begin.  Ten minutes later, midway through Lisa and David's cadenza in Tan Dun’s Concerto For Six, Tony roars on stage, screaming about his drums being moved.  We keep playing, and he rushes toward me, at the last second veering away and pushing my music stand over, screaming about 'respect'.  Mark and David rush to my defense - though he doesn't touch me - and we all start screaming at each other, Tony about his drums and about 'no fucking respect - 30 years in the business - I'm glad to see I wasn't wrong about the vibe I'm feeling;' David pointing out that we didn't move his drums, that we came in with respect for him (which is true in David's case, though not in mine, since I didn't know who he was), and Lisa finally telling him to 'piss off - you're not wanted here.'

Tony leaves the stage, goes to Cecil, and Cecil freaks - I don't witness this but apparently he starts with 'they can't disrespect the world's greatest drummer' and proceeds to a very detailed litany of every injustice suffered at the hands of our organization since the collaboration began.  I wasn't there, but the list included the upright piano, the difficulty in scheduling rehearsals and - most significantly - non-silence on the part of Lisa and myself during the silent rehearsal.  He will not perform with Lisa or me.  He is going back to the hotel.  He leaves.

Meeting and talks, the Barbican guys wanting to 'find the Tony Blair solution - a compromise.'  We are adamant - and in unanimity - that we are prepared to fulfill our contract - to perform with Cecil - but that will not perform with Tony under any circumstances, and that we will only perform as a whole group. Robert is dispatched along with the presenter to try to talk to Cecil.  Tutta answers the phone, there is raging in the background, she tells Robert that it's not the time to talk, but that everything will 'work itself out.'

Somehow we manage to play the first half, having gotten the big stage crew guys to promise to keep Tony off the stage at all costs.  At intermission we're informed that Cecil is back, wants to play, but will only go on stage with Tony and without Lisa and me.  Wendy immediately announces that she won't play, packs up, leaves.  Mark is near tears…Barbican is saying that if there's no critical mass of our group, then the public doesn't get its collaboration, could want its money back, and that might have consequences.  Kenny - true mensch - basically says he's not worried about that, we should do what we think is right.  I can see that Mark and Robert want to play.  So I tell them, look, if I were in your shoes I don't think I could play under these circumstances, but then again I'm not being given the choice - people should play or not play based on what theywant to do, what they think is right, not based on whether or not I'll approve.  Mark and Robert immediately decide to play.  So there’s that.  David, having already said that he'd do whatever was called for, decides to play to give the presenters what they want.  So there’s that too.  Mark and Robert go into their dressing room, smoke a bowl, hug either other, and off they go.  Lisa and I go to a pub and wait for the crowd to come out.

They play for 45 minutes, and afterwards I make a point of going backstage, not avoiding anyone.  Mark asks me if I'm mad at him.  Tony breaks down on stage, apparently convinced that he's been mic-ed improperly, and that he won't be heard on 'the recording.'

He later demands that Andy give him the DAT, the only recording of the concert, and Andy does so, so I guess we’ll never know…

[evanziporyn-blog]

(Needless to say) on Bowie

Clearly I’m not the only one who’s taking this like a death in the family, a big one at that.  Wandering around with that hollowed out, restless feeling, calling relatives and old friends.  Yesterday was spent ramping up to the inevitable evening activities, i.e., binge-watching dozens of his videos, of all shapes and sizes, starting with his brilliant auto-obituaries from the new record, digging back through the original 1967 “Space Oddity,” onto the surprisingly rich and informative Dinah Shore (!) interviews with him and Iggy Pop, the MTV classics etc, winding our way across the brilliant parodies (Flight of the Conchords of course, but also the exceptional Brothers McLeod’s “Warszawa”), finally ending with the beautiful live version of “Fantastic Voyage”, which more than ever seems to say everything there is to say about, well, everything.

What’s happening here?  I don’t tend to get too caught up in celebrity death, even when it’s a hero.  Not to make too horrible a comparison, but Boulez’ recent passing…it interested me and gave me pause, intellectually and I suppose artistically, and of course a human life is a human life.  But frankly (really no offense intended, but needless to say I had no personal relationship with him) it didn’t ruin my afternoon. This one feels far different, and this is strange, because while Bowie’s been very important to me (I will pit my Low/Heroes/Lodger obsession against anyone’s, and I’ve had the requisite number of stoned discussions of his music over the years), he was never the primary devotional spirit to me that he was for so many people.  So I’m surprised by my own reaction, though I’m quickly realizing that I’m not alone either in terms of intensity or surprise at feeling same.

The wealth of material out there - just go to the davidbowie.com homepage - is the first thing: it feels like an incredible gift to all of us, to humanity, a lifetime of thought, work, artistry, effort - just put out there for the world to engage with.  (Yes he got famous and made money, he wanted that and he got it, but why should we begrudge that?  Lots of people do the same and don’t leave us with nearly as much, if anything, of value.)  Some of it - much of it - is simply perfect without qualification, right out of the box.   Other things that just last week seemed ignorable or even lamentable for their excess, pretension, self-conscious artistry - these just seem fabulous now.   Suddenly the over-produced videos of the 80s (Loving the Alien for example) seem like much appreciated gifts - cultural toys in the best possible sense, food for our senses, our minds, our spirits.  Because from the mid-70s on, certainly from the mid-eighties, and most of all in 2015, when he knew he was dying and chose to make Blackstar, there was no reason for him to try so hard.  Why bother with the risk of reinvention?  He touches on this himself during the aforementioned Dinah Shore interview, explaining why he was happy to spend months playing keyboard on an Iggy tour (“I’m quite rich you know, I can do what I like”).  I watched at least 4 different versions of “Heroes” last night - I’m not crazy about all of them, but I kept thinking about the process, the willingness to remake, to keep trying, to stay engaged.  Not just because it eventually gets him to the masterpieces, but because even the lesser works (relatively speaking) had - and continue to have - so much in them.

But it’s not just that he stayed engaged or that his work has such staying power.  It’s not just that he was a serious, searching, and deeply intuitive artist (as an old and dear friend said after watching Lazarus, “expressionist to the end”), it’s more that for those of us feeling this - whether we were born in 1959 or 2000 - it turns out that it was David Bowie - more than anyone else, and unlike anyone else - who gave us the idea of what it means to do art, to be an artist.  On an ongoing basis, he worked in pretty much every medium available - words (sung or recited), music, performance art, dance, visual image, theater, film, am I leaving anything out?  He did so at every cultural strata (Young Americans and Let’s Dance on one end, full blown pop hits that needed no explanation or back-story; Alabama Song and Peter and the Wolf on the other).  Not only that (because one could say the same thing in some sense about Boulez, performing Zappa; or Zappa, performing Varese; i.e., respectful nods or brief forays across some smaller-than-you-might-think part of the cultural divide), but Bowie actually  straddled those strata, validating the quantum cultural leaps we were all making in our own lives (i.e., watching a double bill of Fassbinder and Bugs Bunny, listening to Abba and Xenakis back to back; writing scholarly papers referencing all of them, etc.), and TRYING to do in our own art.  And I’d argue he was more viscerally persuasive in this regard than anyone I can think of - Warhol, DF Wallace, Zizek, you name it.   Obviously he had precursors, in fact he absorbed influences like a sponge - everything he did had its roots somewhere else, that was kind of the point - but it all came out sui generis.  (Who else could see - or build - a coherent image out of, among others, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, the New York Dolls, and Iggy Pop?)  In the end his medium was the zeitgeist itself, riding it, playing with it, ultimately shaping it.  Hard to think of any other artist of our era who did that - but people like Picasso, Richard Wagner, that level - these are the ones who come to mind.  And I’m ashamed to say I wouldn’t have thought to put him in that category before yesterday.  In practice, he was already there.

Tim Page wrote a very nice post yesterday, quoting someone (I’m embarrassed that I’ve already forgotten who) re Noel Coward (to the effect of, ‘there might be a better playwright, a better composer, etc. - but you’d need 14 of them’).  But with respect to all concerned, I think it was more than Bowie’s polymathic skill, more than his ability to do so many things so ‘well.’  More, I think it had to do with where the artistry actually resided, i.e., in the persona itself - not the life lived (which wasn’t really any of our business, he made that clear right to the end) but the person projected outward.  He cut through the Gordion knot of the modern, media-saturated artist, how to reconcile life and art, how to fascinate the world with who one is without risking seeming hypocritical or disappointing. (Maybe this has something to do with the ontology of his presence, something like that...)  Meaning: it’s not possible to imagine finding out any detail of Bowie’s life that would make any of the work questionable (not naming any names here, but just go through anyone else on your list and see if you can say the same).  I’m not sure if that’s really the important thing here, or if I’m qualified to render an opinion as to what ‘the’ important thing would be.  Perhaps it’s a simple as finding it very hard to imagine what life would have been like - in all sorts of ways - without David Bowie.  And the equally stunning realization (which in its own way confirms the thought) that, until yesterday, I had no idea that this was the case.  But he knew, and, judging by Blackstar and Lazarus, he knew we’d know too.  

[evanziporyn-blog]

Today's News Quiz - The Death of Klinghoffer

Here’s a quick poll, no disrespect intended to any parties…but which of the following is most preposterous?

1) calling The Death of Klinghoffer anti-semitic without ever having seen or heard it

2) decrying calling The Death of Klinghoffer anti-semitic without having seen or heard it; or, for those that have, not being willing to acknowledge its inherent ambiguity in this regard

3) writing/composing The Death of Klinghoffer, and then claiming indignation and victimhood when its subject matter causes controversy

4) using real people’s real names and life stories only a short time after their murder, fictionalizing their dialogue and their characters, and using them as symbols for a larger political struggle, and then being surprised when their children find this to be disturbing.

5) producing the piece years later, in the country’s most prestigious opera house, arranging for it to be broadcast world wide, and then suddenly canceling the broadcast only days in advance because you ‘believe’ it will ‘stoke anti-semitism’ while insisting that you personally believe the opera is ‘not anti-semitic’ 

6) feeling outraged that the piece is now being ‘suppressed’ by ‘only' being performed live at the Met, or thinking that this is some way ‘deprives’ ‘the world’ of ‘the right’ to hear it...

just curious...

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ArtSake Interview

Thanks Massachusetts Cultural Council for this great shout out! ArtSake post about our new project In My Mind and In My Car

from http://artsake.massculturalcouncil.org/blog/artsake/index.php/2014/04/04/christine-southworth-and-evan-ziporyn-mapping-new-territory/

  Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn: Mapping New Territory

Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn, two composers working in an…

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10 9 8 … Launching Hatchfund Campaign!

10 9 8 … Launching Hatchfund Campaign!

Dear Friends,

We are very excited to share our new project, In My Mind and In My Car. You may know this title from the work we premiered last fall, a 45-minute piece for solo bass clarinet (Evan) and electronics (by Evan and Christine), featuring archival field recordings from around the world, electronics, and sounds from nature. We now want to expand the project by adding new pieces to the…

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Evan Ziporyn at Quarry Festival, Acton MA 9/7 - new wks by EZ &  Christine Southworth - Wargasari, Old Growth (3 movements), Bowl Drones, In My Mind & In My Car (4 mvts.)

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Evan Ziporyn at The Quarry - Pt 2 (by Evan Ziporyn)

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Evan Ziporyn at The Quarry - Pt 1 (by Evan Ziporyn)

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Byron Unbound

Don Byron returned to MIT last night with his New Gospel Quintet.  We arranged for him to work together with a truly luminous high school choir, the Boston Arts Academy Spirituals Ensemble, under the exacting and highly musical direction of Tyrone Sutton.  And we put together a little horn section of MIT students (with myself on bari sax, to feed my not-so-secret Earth, Wind & Fire jones).  A great band - Xavier Davis on piano, Pheeroan akLaff on drums, Jerome Harris on bass, and Carla Cook on vocals - Don himself, playing his ass off, on tenor sax, B-flat and E-flat clarinets.  

In the course of the evening Don spoke a bit about his interest in and passion for gospel music, making some concise & extremely insightful comments about what it and various other 'vernaculars' - country music, the blues, etc. - brought to the American musical fabric - in his estimation the most salient of which were a type of introspection and connection with everyday reality that otherwise hadn't been a big part of the American songbook before.  He also spoke about 'the two Franklins' - Kirk & Aretha - and how they in very different ways embodied an approach to music that regarded genre distinctions and boundaries as porous.  Cited two examples which speak for themselves:

http://youtu.be/nhx8FHYBs7k

and

http://youtu.be/_6WW6TXPdPw

The thing about it is, this unboundedness is also a great description of Don, one of things I've not just admired about him but found truly inspirational.  The other sax player in our little horn section was an MIT student, Dylan Sherry, himself quite a player, whose father as it turns out went to NEC at the same time as Don.  He was blown away by Don's playing, not just by the quality but because it wasn't what he was expecting: his father remembered Don as a 'klezmer nerd.'  (not an insult BTW)  For me, I was remembering Don's year at MIT, as a Visiting Professor in 2007/8.  In particular I was thinking about two of the more memorable projects he did with students that year, one being a Sugarhill Repertory ensemble, a bunch of students learning note-for-note early rap tunes by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five.  The other was his performance with the MIT Wind Ensemble of Carl Maria von Weber's Clarinet Concertino.  Triangulate that with last night - Precious Lord, Rosetta Tharpe, and Kirk Franklin - and in and of itself you get a fairly exemplary model for musical ecumenicalism.  But what's truly remarkable about Don is that each one - along with his performances of Mickey Katz, Mahler, In a Silent Way (highly recommended, even if you live and die - as I do - by the original), and Raymond Scott - is that he manages to do it with both legitimacy and individualism.  You can feel the depth of study and homage, but also always hear Don himself in it.  This is what Anna Maria Friman of Trio Mediaeval describes as 'personal authenticity' - akin to what Glenn Gould brings to Bach, or what Krystian Lupa brings to Chekhov - and it increasingly feels to me like what it's all about, and not just in music.

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03 Put Your Lovin' Arms | airplaneears John Adams Gnarly Buttons 3rd Movement MassMOCA Dress Reh EZ, clar; Brad Lubman, cdtr; Banglewood Fellows

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Adams Gnarly Buttons Mvt 1 - Mass Moca Dress | airplaneears John Adams Gnarly Buttons Mvt. 1 The Perilous Shore dress rehearsal EZ, clar; Brad Lubman, cdtr.; Banglewood Fellows

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Hoe Down (Mad Cow) from John Adam's "Gnarly Buttons" - Live | airplaneears from dress rehearsal of John Adams' "Gnarly Buttons" - 2nd mvt. - EZ, clar; Brad Lubman, conductor; Banglewood Fellows

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Nik Bartsch - Modul 55 - Banglewood Version | airplaneears 1st sampling of this year's batch of Bartsch arrangements, BOAC Summer Institute..more to come...

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RAAG, part whatever

Thanks first to Craig P. for the Scelsi reference - that one remains to be explored, I can see it from either side frankly, because after all he did insist on a notated transmission process...that complicates the equation, but anyway...but just to return to the stream here, as meandering as it is...

I mentioned the other day that my doubts about a prevailing idea of improvisation that floats through the air particularly in major urban centers of the US, i.e., that at its best its a portal to a kind of 'pure' self-expression, unencumbered by the shackles of any particular musical rhetoric, even when - hmmm - its rhetoric seems so culture-specific, so rooted in its time and space.  And in a way the pioneering cross-cultural encounters prove this - listen to "Midnight Sunrise," the great track on "Dancing in Your Head" with Ornette and the Master Musicians of Joujouka.  Somehow Ornette still sounds like Ornette, the Joujoukans still sound like Joujoukans (and there in the background, clarinetist Robert Palmer still sounds like Robert Palmer, I guess).  Since the Joujoukans are clearly playing their pre-composed tunes, questions naturally arise: was there interaction?  Did there need to be?  I'm not talking on a human level here - I can easily believe that this was a moving, meaningful encounter for all concerned.  But I question how different the recording would have been if Ornette simply overdubbed  on top of a pre-existing recording of the Moroccans.  One could argue that this is a live version of the same thing.  For evidence of this, one might listen instructively to one of John Oswald's lesser known Plunderphonic tracks, "Mirror", where Oswald juxtaposes solo recordings by Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, and, I think, Andrew Cyrille (I can't remember who the bass player is), and about which he writes:  "Mirror is a jazz quartet or quintet that never existed.  None of these musicians has the slightest idea what the others are playing.  To some people free jazz always sounds like that."  (You can find these notes at http://www.plunderphonics.com/xhtml/xnotes.html#plunderphonic - where I think you can also download the whole CD as a zip file, though I haven't actually tried this.)

So - we're sidetracking here, should have waited to have had a bit more caffeine before doing this - but this also brings up a sneaking hunch that I've had for some time regarding certain improvisors - most specifically late period Ornette and Miles, both of whom I revere and still return to constantly for inspiration.  Which is that their solos - so ostensibly 'of the moment' - are more or less interchangeable from track to track, from disc to disc.  This is a bit harder to prove relevant in the case of Miles, as his musical surroundings were distressingly (to some) consistent in the last few years of his life - same clean, fusion-y sound, popping basses and quartal synth lines in the background...but in the case of Ornette it's definitely worth some epistemological investigation.  So I propose the following: take a random sampling from several of his most recent albums - one with electric backing, one with Joachim Kuhn, one with the acoustic band - and transcribe enough of his solos to see just how consistent they are in terms of form, pacing, melodic motives, etc.  You'll see what I mean.

Of course this can be construed as a form of self-expression - i.e., that that IS Ornette being Ornette, who he is, what he has to say, and that in fact it IS evidence that improvisation is in fact a form of true, spontaneous self-expression.  Put Michael Jordan on the basketball court, he has a repertoire of moves, they will be applied in every situation, and they generally work.  Doesn't mean he's not being creative or spontaneous, the creativity comes within the general principles of the game, modulated through his way of negotiating through them.  Fair enough, but of course this is the opposite of 'free' improvisation.  There are limitations and restrictions binding every move he makes, physically, cognitively, and cultural.  Physically, gravity cannot be defied; cognitively he can only react to what he sees and hears; culturally, the rules of the game are the rules of the game - can't double dribble, or go toward the other team's basket.  (And btw a tip of the hat to Dave Hickey's Air Guitar' for the basketball metaphor in general).

Well, another day has passed and at best we've made imperceptible progress toward our goal here...will try to inch forward a bit more quickly tomorrow...

I spoke the otherd it’s possible that this idea of improvisation – in raag, in jazz, maqam, anything else – might be applicable for some people – but certainly the idea of it as a universalfasdfasdfafdasdf

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BOSTON RAAG Part 4

‎"A fairly young, intelligent-looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no." - Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless

The above tips my hand a bit, perhaps not a bad thing given the meandering and sporadic nature of these posts…ultimately I’m trying to get around to building some kind of case Against Notation – but WH’s words remind us even that is only one brick in the edifice.  What I’m really thinking about is the implications of all these well-meaning artistic efforts towards permanence – not that all sorts of lovely things don’t result, but because of the endemic side-effects, both to the art and the individuals.  As Ornette so memorably put it, ‘we’ve been dealing with notation for 400 years, and it’s just got us all stressed out.’

Also (since I’m just treading water today anyway) this is probably as good a time as any to mention/admit that much (but not all) of my own music-making  - and enjoyment therein – comes from various activities only made possible by notation – and by this I also don’t just the type of music I write, the type of music I usually perform, or even more immediate pleasures like sightreading my way through Beethoven piano sonatas or finding the right way to notate a rhythm, edit a Sibelius file, whatever.  I’m also talking about things that go right to the core of my self-conception as a musician: the fact that I was reading music before I read “Hop on Pop,” to give just one example, the way that’s embedded in my sense of who I am.  But I’ve also had a taste of life on the other side, or on various other sides, and while I’ve seen others jump the fence and never look back, I’ve never actually wanted to do that – too many things on life’s To Do list would go undone.  But in this I feel like an environmentalist who knows how much fuel they’re burning while flying to the Kyoto Conference, but still gets on the plane.  Will try to make that all make sense within the next couple of posts.  More to follow…

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Bring Back the Boston Raag

Years ago cultural critic Greg Tate came to MIT to do a residency broadly focused on hip-hop.  He brought with him a young female rapper whose name I honestly can’t recall, but who had just finished a stint living and working with the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince (I believe he’s now referred to as “Prince,” but I’m not actually sure…).  Needless to say she had a lot of intriguing stories to tell…(NOT about what you think – about his work habits and daily schedule).  In the course of a somewhat freewheeling discussion about the art itself – the high quality of the best hip-hop lyrics, creativity and its relationship to the market, originality and individuality vs. trendiness, etc. - she asked people in the room what hip-hop they were listening to.  In a very well meaning and unselfconscious way, she responded to each person’s list with what amounted to a personal grade sheet – ‘oh yeah, they’re great,’ ‘that’s cool, ‘really? you still like them? I was into them like 2 years ago’ etc.  At a certain point people began to intuitively realize that their expressed taste was a coolness meter, and began self-editing.  We all know this drill, you want to be into the right things, neither too ahead or (far worse) too behind the curve (unless you’re far enough behind…that’s ok, and probably something else we should discuss at some point, but not now.).  I don’t even remember what year this was, so I can’t even tell you what that would have been at that moment.  I dodged a bullet when the person before me mentioned my personal favorites (Tribe Called Quest, then and now, though that’s irrelevant) and was mildly excoriated for, their expiration date apparently having passed, so I called an audible and instead shamefully talked about something fashionably irreproachable, maybe WuTang Clan (about whom I have no feelings one way or the other), maybe something else.  I wimped out.

It seemed like there was some kind of energizing contradiction at work here, on the one hand being told that an art form has lasting value, while at the same time being told that a particular iteration of it is, in effect ‘so last week.’  Possibly something in that about popular art in general, the agon between the demands of the universal spirit and the invisible hand of the market place – and possibly this goes right to the source, how we speak in our own voice while somehow using the vocabulary and subject matter of everyone else…which is to say that if I’m arguing hypocrisy here, I’m doing so in the good sense – i.e., I think I’m kind of for it, or at least entertaining the possibility that it’s a necessary part of the intellectual/artistic ecosystem.  Being the way I am (uncharitably speaking, a nonconfrontational contrarian), I said nothing about this at the time, but left the seminar with a much more hardened attitude to cling to the 10 hip-hop records I had in regular rotation (of which “Midnight Marauders” was probably the MOST current, even in the mid-1990s…)

BTW this is all a digression (nothing like starting at an oblique angle), maybe tomorrow we’ll get to the topic at hand…stay tuned…