Entries associated with the tag "Improvised Music":

Every so often Enemy, the experimental-music space booked by Jason Soliday, lands a really great show, but sometimes it seems like most people aren't supposed to know. For example, on Friday the great French pianist Frédéric Blondy makes his Chicago debut playing duets with cellist and former Chicagoan Audrey Chen, who now makes her home in Baltimore. As I write this on Thursday morning, the show's still not listed on the Enemy Web site--I just happened to stumble across the info on Tushar Samant's invaluable concert calendar earlier this week.  It's a shame, because Blondy is pretty great.

He's recently released a spate of new discs, including Obdo (on the excellent new Another Timbre imprint), a duet with German synthesizer master Thomas Lehn, but I haven't been able to track any of them down yet. I can vouch for his work, though, in the collective Hubbub--a quintet that exercises gorgeous restraint and patience in its carefully pitched, dialed-down improvisations.

Perhaps more germane to tomorrow's performance is Blondy's wonderful duet with percussionist Lê Quan Ninh, Exaltatio Utriusque Mundi (Potlatch, 2003), where he dissolves the lines between so-called lowercase improvisation, contemporary classical, and free jazz. Considering that Le Quan is a master of textural exploration on minimal setups--often he uses only a bass drum, laid flat and modified with objects placed on its head-- it's no surprise that Blondy keeps things quiet on this disc. I'm curious to see what he'll do with the more freewheeling Chen.

Today's playlist:

Ingar Zach, Thomas Lehn & Ivar Grydeland, szs zcz cze zec eci cin (Musica Genera)
Odawas, Raven and the White Night (Jagjaguwar)
Keith Hudson & the Soul Syndicate, Nuh Skin Up (Pressure Sounds)
Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem, Vous et Nous (Saravah)
Tisha Mukarji, D Is for Din (Creative Sources)

Among the extended techniques that occupy such an exalted role in the vocabulary of free improvisation, rubbing and scraping may seem humble, but they're vital all the same. Obviously many instruments are played by rubbing their strings with a bow (what those in the biz call arco), but an infinite number of objects can be rubbed or scraped to produce a surprisingly wide variety of sounds--it's common, for example, for a drummer to bow his cymbals or rub a moistened finger across a drum head to create evocative whines and moans. The Chicago trio called the Friction Brothers push this idea to an extreme: on the group’s self-titled debut, released by the Pittsburgh label Abstract on Black, all the sounds are generated by some kind of friction.

Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm long ago moved beyond the bow, just as percussionist Michael Zerang has gone beyond drums. Michael Colligan (pictured) barely uses musical instruments at all, creating most of his sounds with dry ice and metal. The list of instruments they're credited with sounds like the contents of a kitchen cabinet, junk drawer, or utility closet: knitting needles, cheese slicer, coins, pachinko balls, frying pan, clothespins, marbles, popsicle sticks, and on and on.

Since so many of the sounds are hard to identify by ear, watching the group play live has a special appeal. Many a Chicagoan has thrilled to the sight of Zerang rubbing one of his drums with a vibrator, but no improviser in Chicago (or maybe anywhere) is as fun to watch as Colligan. Over the years he's elaborated on his basic setup: a couple of teakettles, heated on an electric hot plate and then placed on, pushed into, and dragged across the dry ice to produce wonderfully excruciating shrieks and ominous rumbles. These days he also uses the aforementioned frying pan, trombone and trumpet mouthpieces, tin cans, spoons, keys, and more, all of which produce slightly different timbres and resonances when heated and touched to the dry ice. The last time I saw him perform, he lodged a variety of small metal objects in the ice and left them there, which not only made a steady drone but altered the notes he got when he placed other objects on the ice or against those lodged pieces.

It reads almost like an absurdist joke, and if it were only about making weird noises in unusual ways, it'd sound like one too. But the Friction Brothers' ensemble sound is diverse and extremely tactile, blending resonant long tones with abrasive blats, and the three players coax all of these noises out of their hardware in the context of a deeply intuitive spontaneous musical conversation.

The Friction Brothers celebrate the release of their CD with a performance Wednesday night at the Hideout. The Green Pasture Happiness, an electronic trio with Aaron Zarzutzki, Daniel Fandiño, and Brian Labycz, plays first.

Today's playlist:

Skygreen Leopards, Jehovah Surrender (Jagjaguwar)
Oscar Brown Jr., Sin & Soul (Columbia)
Randy Newman, Good Old Boys (Warner Bros.)
Various Artists, Avanto 2006 (Avanto)
Kelley Stoltz, Circular Sounds (Sub Pop)

Five local musicians have resurrected the intimate Albany Park space that percussionist Michael Zerang called the Candlestick Maker when he presented improvised music there between 2001 and 2005. Renee Baker, Ben Gray, Joel Wanek, Jayve Montgomery, and Daniel Godston have renamed the space Brown Rice, after the great Don Cherry album; it's located at 4432 N. Kedzie, and the phone number is 312-543-7027. The first show is on Monday, February 11, at 9:30 PM, with reedist Guillermo Gregorio, percussionist Jerome Bryerton, bassist Wanek, and trumpeter Godston. Only five events have been booked so far, mostly on Monday nights, and the space doesn't yet have a Web site--check the Reader music listings for future performances.

Today's playlist:

Steve Coleman, Invisible Paths: First Scattering (Tzadik)
Various Artists, Colombia! The Golden Age of Discos Fuentes (Soundway)
Bonnie Dobson, Good Morning Rain (Rev-Ola)
Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker, Get Ready (Mack Avenue)
Eddie, Metropolitano (Salazarte)
 

A couple months ago local improviser Brian Labycz, who plays electronics and koto, launched a new CD-R label called Peira with a pair of releases, both packaged in hand-printed sleeves adorned by lovely, minimalist artwork (one by former Reader designer Nadine Nakanishi).

It's so cheap and easy to release music yourself these days that I sometimes dread the appearance of a new CD-R label, especially one that specializes in totally improvised material--there are so few barriers to enter the marketplace that people don't have to care whether they're selling something anybody wants to buy. So far, though, Peira is off to a terrific start--the quality of its releases implies that some kind of curatorial discretion is standing in for those market forces. The music isn't for everyone, and Labycz knows it: each title comes in a numbered edition of 100. But if you're interested in deep exploration of sound informed by split-second decision making, take heed--these discs are as good as anything I've heard on that front in the past couple years.

I suppose the "high profile" Peira release is the trio recording by trumpeter Nate Wooley and percussionist Tim Barnes, both from New York, and Chicago bassist Jason Roebke, but the album that really knocked me out was the duet by Roebke and Labycz. They create an austere, almost desolate soundscape, where a terse thwack or string scrape carries startling force, but the greatest pleasure is in their interactions in the pin-drop delicate passages between those gestures. It's no longer enough for contemporary improvisers to make the listener wonder who's doing what and with which instrument--although this pair certainly manages that. Roebke and Labycz's heavily tactile utterances masterfully underline the physicality of their instruments, which must be struck, rubbed, or touched in some way to function, but their interplay is so sensitive and engrossing I found myself not caring a whit about what was making the sounds.

Today's playlist:

Toni Iordache, Sounds From a Bygone Age Vol. 4 (Asphalt Tango)
Mika Vainio, Revitty [Torn] (Wavetrap)
Oh No, Dr. No's Oxperiment (Stones Throw)
Charles Ives, Symphony No. 3 (Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken) (Col Legno)
Teiji Ito, Tenho (Tzadik)

Both of the recordings I’ve heard by Argentinean trumpeter Leonel Kaplan have found him in the company of other trumpeters, an unusual context even for a guy, like collaborators Axel Dörner (Berlin) and Nate Wooley (New York), who’s committed to expanding the tonal palette of his instrument. The trumpet’s sharp, clarion tone isn’t very agreeable to the sort of textural acrobatics a saxophone can accomplish—split tones, multiphonics, tongue popping, upper register screams—but Kaplan is the latest in a growing line of players determined to manipulate the instrument anyway. (Birgit Ulher, a German trumpeter, is yet another radical, and she plays in town several times this coming weekend.)

I haven’t heard any of Kaplan's solo work, which includes a new version of Reveille recorded for an exhibition at the Renaissance Society last spring, so I can’t say for sure what he contributes in a group setting. But on the eponymous outing by Silo—with Wooley, cellist Audrey Chen, and James Webster on traditional Maori instruments—there’s lots of fluttery hisses, puckered and parched blubbering, high frequencies whinnies, and muted percussive clicks. The pieces are striated sound masses—highlighting individual components is clearly not a concern—and in that regard Kaplan seems to be an inspired participant. On Absence (Creative Sources), a 2003 recording made in Buenos Aires with Dörner and percussionist Diego Chamy, the sound is rumbling and flatulent, with a focus on unpitched breathing and low-end gurgling. Splatters of familiar trumpet sounds emerge here and there, but for the most part conventional tonality is ditched. The goal is finding new ways of shaping sound with valves and embouchure to create a common language with Chamy’s metallic scraping.

Kaplan performs tomorrow night at the Renaissance Society with Chicago clarinetist Guillermo Gregorio—a native of Argentina—and on Thursday with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, sharing the bill with Wooley and the brilliant drummer Paul Lytton, at Elastic.

Today’s playlist:

Cascabulho, E Caco de Vidro Puro (Atracao)
Clinic, Visitations (Domino)
Lars-Göran Ulander Trio, Live at Glenn Miller Café (Ayler)
Tord Gustavsen Trio, Being There (ECM)
Pete Brown, 1942-1945 (Chronological Classics)
 

Belgian vibraphonist Els Vandeweyer began her musical career on the classical path, focusing on contemporary pieces while studying at a performing arts school in Antwerp, but when she noticed how many pieces simulated the feel of improvised music she yearned to play the real thing. She decided to study jazz at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where she's still enrolled, but for the last two years she’s had the best sort of musical lessons, playing in real life situations. She's spent time in Oslo, working sporadically with some of the scene’s most important figures—including Kjetil Moster, Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, Havard Wiik, and Paal Nilssen-Love—and in Lisbon, hanging out in the record shop Trem Azul, which is owned by the same fellow who runs the increasingly important Clean Feed label.

While in Lisbon, Vandeweyer and Brazilian saxophonist Alipio C. Neto cofounded Imi Kollektief, an international quintet featuring French trumpeter Jean-Marc Charmier and the Portuguese rhythm section of bassist João Hasselbring and drummer Rui Gonçalves. The band’s sole recording, Snug as a Gun (Clean Feed, 2006), offers the only extended evidence of Vandeweyer’s work; while the songs are spiky and angular, her harmonically rich, jagged lines recall the golden era of Blue Note Records, when Bobby Hutcherson was a fixture on loads of classic albums. Sadly, Vandeweyer's playing is too low in the mix, but when she solos or her darkly shimmering chords fight their way through, her talent is plain. The raw energy of the quintet and the predilection of Neto to ramp his solos into explosive free jazz terrain fits in nicely with some of the free jazz made here in Chicago, so Vandeweyer ought to feel right at home when she plays three gigs with locals this week.

Tomorrow, August 1, she’ll be joined by a terrific band (guitarist Jeff Parker, reedist Dave Rempis, bassist Josh Abrams, and drummer Mike Reed) on a program of her tunes at the Hideout; she says her music has changed greatly since she cut the Imi Kollektief record. Then on Thursday at Elastic and Sunday at the Hungry Brain she’ll improvise with two different line-ups of Chicagoans.

Today's playlist:

Guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Jessica Pavone are in the thick of New York’s bustling new music scene, routinely erasing the lines that separate free improvisation, jazz, experimental, and pop musics. They regularly play with Anthony Braxton and trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, lead their own projects, and participate in countless ad hoc assemblages, but they make some of their most satisfying and personal work as a duo. They’re about to release their second album, On and Off (on the New York artist-run imprint Skirl), and it sounds like they've followed their guts even more than they did on their superb debut, Prairies (Lucky Kitchen, 2005).

The pieces twist and glide through all kinds of terrain, both soothing and jarring: jagged counterpoint, smooth unison lines, extended harmony, dynamics that dissolve notions of foreground and background, composition and improvisation. Attempting to classify the songs is an exercise in frustration because they rarely stay in one place, and the pair's easy rapport allows them to access all kinds of approaches without a fumble. It’s not unusual for a piece to open with the austerity of contemporary classical music only to fold into a plaintive folk song and then into a concentrated blast of dissonant texture. Halvorson is an especially nimble player, with an impressive mastery of the splintery tangles that distinguished Derek Bailey, who finds the narrow pathway that connects confusion and fluidity. On their debut they added some wordless vocals to one track, but here several tunes include genuine lyrics, which they sing together with earnest simplicity, tracing unadorned melodies without a lick of self-consciousness.

The duo performs tomorrow night at the Hideout .

New York reedist Ned Rothenberg plays duets tonight with British improvising saxophone legend Evan Parker over at Elastic, reprising their duo appearance at the Empty Bottle back in April of 2000. Bill Meyer’s recent Critic’s Choice focuses on Parker, but don't forget Ned. As Rothenberg writes in the liner notes of the recent two-CD set The Lumina Recordings (Tzadik), which collects the three solo albums he made for his titular label in the early-to-mid 80s, Parker was an important influence on his own playing: “I immediately realized that he was making use of a sonic language that could give the solo saxophone context unprecedented range,” he writes of hearing him for the first time. Like Parker, Rothenberg excels with lengthy pieces using extended technique -- circular breathing, advanced multiphonics, slowly developing phrase permutations -- that are informed by a wide variety of nonjazz approaches, from the singing of Inuit Eskimos to the shakuhachi playing of Japanese Zen monk Watazumido-Shuso (Rothenberg added the instrument to his own arsenal back in the mid-80s).

Many improvisers prefer to stick to free-music situations, but Rothenberg alternates his approach, playing in band projects that use written material. Over the last couple of decades he’s placed himself in loads of disparate contexts aside from his solo work, including his electric trio with Elliott Sharp and Samm Bennett called Semantics, the tabla-driven trio Sync, and his dryly funky double trio. He recently released a superb album, The Fell Clutch (Animul), with drummer Tony Buck (best known as a member of the Necks), electric bassist Stomu Takeishi, and a handful of cameos by slide guitarist Dave Tronzo. In a press release for the album, he refers to the group as “a kind of next-generation jam band,” but that description sells the music short. It’s all improvised, and even though the pieces are built from loose but hypnotic rhythmic schemes, there’s nothing aimless or indulgent about the performances, which reveal a stunning degree of interaction. The best pieces use short little stuttery phrases the coalesce neatly into transparent groove alternately choppy and fluid, the perfect setting for Rothenberg’s mesmerizing, interlocking phrases.

Reedist Ken Vandermark presented the latest installment of his long-running Territory Band last night at Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavilion. It was an impressive concert, revealing the international ensemble as one of Vandermark's most rewarding and exciting vehicles; his episodic writing and meticulous arranging does a masterful job of sparking a variety of improvisational situations.

Things like instrumental combinations, rhythm, and color can’t be isolated from the composition in which they’re embedded, but the performance allowed discrete elements to emerge. A passage that featured only bassist Kent Kessler and Swedish tuba player Per-Ake Holmlander put the focus on low-end sounds, as the bass bounced and the horn blubbered in some gloriously gut-rumbling statements. Each section of the set-length piece flowed nicely into one another—an area where Vandermark is improving—but the real satisfaction was in getting absorbed by each one of them.

Fred Anderson was the featured soloist, and it's to Vandermark’s credit that he challenged one of his biggest heroes by putting him in unfamiliar settings: it’s a sure bet that the veteran tenor saxophonist had never dueted with the kind abstract electronics that Norway’s Lasse Marhaug produced. Anderson has an unflappably patient, deep-toned style, ruminating over the subtlest intricracies of a given phrase, and Vandermark presented some frenetic sections that created a nice tension while set against Anderson's playing. The concert was recorded for future release on Okka Disk Records, the former Chicago imprint that’s issued all of the Territory Band recordings, including the brand new 3-CD effort by Territory Band-5, A New Horse for the White House.