All At Once

A FRIENDLY REMINDER

2010-01-06T14:52:00.001-08:00

Just a note to my followers and subscribers, I am no longer blogging at this location. If you would like to continue to subscribe to my posts (and I hope that you do), please do so via this RSS feed: feed://kristiner.com/blog/feed/

Or, you can always head to http://kristiner.com to see what's new. And don't forget to leave a comment, so I'll know you were there...!

GREENER PASTURES

2009-10-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming, but I am finally making the switch to WordPress.

As anybody who is still using this platform knows, Blogger blows. Aside from the inherent limitations and generic-ness of the template, my main issue with Blogger has to do with the lack of a way to integrate (in terms of design, searchability, ownership, and location) the content that I post here with my artist website, kristiner.com.

I've had a simple HTML-based website for ten years (since GeoCities-RIP!) and I've had this blog, though the name has changed a couple of times, for well over four years. Simply put, managing two separate (and increasingly anachronistic) formats has become very tedious and confining. Especially considering that Facebook and Twitter have emerged as far more efficient methods of dealing with certain things that I used to use the blog for - things of the "what are you doing now?" variety along with the usual self-promotional chatter that precedes any kind of gig or upcoming event.

For everything else, WordPress offers an extremely flexible, artist-friendly solution, and I recommend it heartily. I've found a great template by Graph Paper Press that is elegant, functional, and easily adaptable, allowing me to string together posts that feature writings, compositions, tour journals, news, reviews, etc., and best of all, everything will remain in one place.

So from now on you can keep up with me at kristiner.com.

When you get there, navigate to the Welcome page for an explanation of how everything works.

You can continue to subscribe to my blog posts at my new RSS feed: feed://kristiner.com/blog/feed/

Thanks, as always, for reading, and thanks for the continued support. Exciting things are coming down the pipe, and I hope you will stick around...

SLOW SOUND

2009-09-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

SoCal people take note: tonight begins the Slow Sound Festival, a two week-long celebration of quiet music:

"Slow Sound is the mindful practice of experimental sound and music," says festival curator Glenn Bach, "and with the festival we hope to showcase musicians and composers who specialize in quiet, sparse, or otherwise low impact music. The festival will also give 'louder' artists an opportunity to experiment with quieter material."
Slow Sound descends from a long tradition of contemplative music and sound, from John Cage and Morton Feldman to Brian Eno and Steve Roden, and incorporates similar practices such as lowercase, EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), Reductionism, Onkyo, and other activities worldwide. Inspired by Bill Rieflin's Slow Music Project and ideas articulated by the Slow Food movement, Slow Sound provides experimental musicians and sound artists a framework with which to introduce more stillness in their compositions and live improvisations.
"Slow Sound is not an either/or proposition," Bach says, "but functions simply as an alternative practice. While crescendo and density are not strictly forbidden, Slow Sound's emphasis on the quieter end of the dynamic range allows for a more intimate, thoughtful, and meditative space in which to listen."
Slow Sound is partnering with Soundwalk 2009, CSULB's Music Department, and CSULB's University Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition of "Brian Eno: 77 Million Paintings."

My own contribution to the festival will be a solo trumpet performance at Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall at CSU Long Beach on Friday night, on a bill with Tom Recchion and Mitchell Brown.

Find out more on Facebook. Also check out Greggory Moore's festival preview in The District Weekly, Tim Grobaty's column in the Press-Telegram, and Sander Wolff's excellent interview with festival founder Glenn Bach at LBPOST.com

CHUNG KING CORPSED

2009-09-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

What a day, what a great event!

Full audio/video/photo documentation will eventually be posted at the SASSAS website, but here are some quick mobile pics (courtesy of Cindy Bernard) of Alicia Mangan and I:

The finale - Wadada Leo Smith, Vinny Golia, and William Roper on Sousaphone:

And a couple more from my phone - try to find the musicians among the masses... Dan Clucas (trumpet) + Lynn Johnston (bari sax) + Eric Sbar (euphonium) + William Roper (Sousaphone):

And Roper/Smith/Golia again:

SASSAS TURNS TEN

2009-09-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

Happening this Saturday:

MAPPING sound. – The SASSAS (Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound) 10th Anniversary Concert utilizes sites in 8 Los Angeles neighborhoods located along an east/west corridor and features more than 30 musicians drawn from the 10 year history of sound. for a day of concerts, presented free of charge! Concerts are from 11am - 11pm starting at the Sylvan Amphitheater in Eagle Rock and concluding at Beyond Baroque in Venice, with stops on Chung King Road in Chinatown, Amoeba Music in Hollywood and the Schindler House in West Hollywood among others!

I will be part of the musical Exquisite Corpse featuring a succession of improvised horn duos along Chung King Road. I'm paired up with saxophonist Alicia Mangan, with whom I've only played once before (long ago, in a very large ensemble) so this should be fun. The other duos are Bruce Fowler + Phil Teele, Dan Clucas + Lynn Johnston, Eric Sbar + William Roper, and Wadada Leo Smith + Vinny Golia.

Chung King Corpse starts at 2pm, and there will be plenty of great music featuring a host of SoCal creative musicians happening throughout the day. Come out if you're down...

Mapping sound. on Facebook.

ALMOST LIKE BEING THERE

2009-07-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

Some pictures below from our weekend romp through Zoey's in Ventura and Metro Galleries in Bakersfield. The pics of Chris and I were taken by Jeff Kaiser, pics of Kaiser and Liebig were taken by yours truly. Stay tuned for more commentary, audio, and if we're lucky, some of Kaiser's photos from the after-gig hang at the Crystal Palace...

Also, local musician/composer James Sproul just posted a nice review of the Bakersfield show. Thanks, James!

RETURN TO ELECTRIC TRUMPETLAND

2009-07-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

For this weekend's duo gigs with Chris Schlarb I am firing up Electric Trumpet Rig v3.0, which is looking like this:

Trumpet > Shure Beta 57 Mic > ART Tube MP Preamp >
BBE Wah Pedal > Ernie Ball VP JR > PreSonus Firebox >
MacBook Pro/MaxMSP > Firebox > PA

It's true, I tried to put this stuff behind me some time ago, and I'm not going to say that I am 100% optimistic about getting into this again. It has been two years since I last performed with live electronics, but I think that I may have come up with a solution that solves some of the basic issues I had with my previous attempts, first with a table full of analog effects pedals and then with just a laptop and MaxMSP software.

As I wrote back then, my issue with the pedal-driven setup was:

"...carrying all this heavy luggage to gig after gig, winding and unwinding cables, setting up tables and boxes and in all that hassle hoping you don't patch a cable to the wrong jack, drop a speaker on your instrument (or someone else's), or hit the wrong switch and release a torrent of feedback noise into the audience."

Having to deal with the sheer bulk of all that equipment made it nearly impossible to concentrate on actually playing an instrument as well; after nine gigs and two recording sessions I became more than a little annoyed that I never had the chance to warm up or prepare myself for the trumpet side of things (which is demanding enough without the extra equipment). To all of that, the laptop-only solution seemed simple, elegant and clearly superior. But I remained conflicted about it for quite some time, mainly due to the fact that performing with one hand on a trumpet and one hand on a mouse tended to make me a bit neurotic.

So for the past two years I've mulled over a setup that might offer the best of both worlds - the tactile maneuverability of a few foot pedals (allowing me to stand and play without the need for any knob-twisting), and the streamlined simplicity of a software rig with presets to accommodate basic EQ, reverb and compression along with simple key commands (which I prefer over adding a MIDI controller) to toggle the more "destructive" effects plugins on and off, so there is minimal need for mousing around. Basically I have tried to build something that feels transparent and as hands-free as possible, an extension (rather than an obstruction) of the horn.

The MaxMSP software I am using now is based on a VST host and integrated four-channel looper designed by Jeff Kaiser, with a few mods and design tweaks of my own:

I am actually quite happy with this. The pull-down menus allow you to select up to six VST plugins, and slots 1-4 can be rearranged in any order by clicking one of the number sequences on the right. Slots 5 and 6 are typically for reverb and compression at the end of the chain. All six plugins can be toggled on and off by hitting number keys 1-6. The ten PRESET buttons along the bottom each load a different combination of VSTs, basically different points from which to start because the plugins can also be switched out individually. Key commands for the presets are Shift + number keys 1-0. Kaiser's four-channel looper comprises the boxes A-B-C-D, and there are settings for forward/reverse, half/double speed, panning, etc. There are a few more bells and whistles, like the catastrophic blast of distortion that happens when you hit letter D...

Last night at Zoey's went well, so so far so good. I will update shortly with pictures, commentary, maybe some audio.

BLOGGING WILL RESUME

2009-07-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

...eventually.

For now, more gig spam. Playing two electroacoustic ambient improv duo sets this weekend with friend/guitarist/composer/producer Chris Schlarb, in Ventura on Friday and at my series in Bakersfield on Saturday. We double bill with Jeff Kaiser + Steuart Liebig both nights.

Info on both shows is here, propaganda for the Bakersfield show below:

FURTHER EVIDENCE

2009-06-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

Video below from the Sun Ra Tribute show at the Pharaoh's Den in Riverside. The video projections behind us (courtesy of VJFranzK) are all live effects, i.e. the video fx parameters are being altered by the music in real time:

THE BAKERY SET

2009-06-01T00:55:00.001-07:00

Some photo evidence here from last Monday's hit at the sadly-soon-to-close Jazz Bakery in LA, most of them shot by our friend Allen Glass (he's in the green plaid jacket in the third pic below).

Commentary soon.

WEEKEND TOUR RECAP

2009-05-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

Some images below from the last two Empty Cage gigs. Tomorrow (Monday) night we wrap it up at The Jazz Bakery in LA. Get tickets here, or find more info on Facebook.

On Friday we were at Metro Galleries in Bakersfield, sharing the bill with saxophonist Santiago Latorre from Barcelona. Santiago had a nice set exploring very delicate, slowly evolving sax loops while Sara Paniagua provided video projections behind him. Afterward was the requisite late night truck stop diner food hang at Zingo's Cafe.

(Thanks to James Sproul for the pics from our set)

Last night we were at the Pharoah's Den in Riverside, taking part in their weekend-long tribute to Sun Ra, who arrived on Earth 95 years ago Friday. Great scene they have down there, and it was a special occasion, obviously, so we did something unprecedented - we performed our first cover in nearly seven years together as a group, jamming Ra's "Moon Dance" to kick off our set...

OPPOSING WINGS

2009-05-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

Something new for this weekend. An explanation of the basic system is available here - see the composition notes for Gravity No. 1.

This is the first of the second-generation Gravity pieces which will utilize non-transposing gravity points (the longer pitch sets in the square boxes). The emphasis here is on symmetry, hence the repetition of 4s and 3s (major and minor thirds). These intervals yield a non-transposing set that duplicates the octave at 12, returning to A in order to re-route back into the piece.

The ascending version of this set (A-C-C#-E-F-G#-A) is basically the "Bitches Brew" scale transposed to A; the descending version incorporates the same intervals going in the opposite direction
(A-F#-F-D-C#-Bb-A).

EMPTY CAGE: THE MOVIE

2009-05-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

Our DVDs just arrived - this is the video documentation of a gig last September at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. More info about this fantastic new DVD series here, and here are a few clips the Sanctuary has posted from our show (or check out the embeds below). They look amazing, expertly produced audio and pro-shot video with multiple cameras. What did we do to deserve such lavish treatment?

If you want a copy, we will have them at our shows next weekend. I believe they'll also be available shortly from Downtown Music Gallery.

UPCOMING GIG PROPAGANDA

2009-05-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly two years since Empty Cage Quartet has done anything on the West Coast, so this time we're doing it right: we finally got a Facebook page, we will be celebrating the release of a new live DVD, we're playing on a Sun Ra tribute, and wrapping everything up by helping to close out the final week for the venerable Jazz Bakery at their current Culver City location. Angelinos, don't miss that one - you can buy tickets here.

: : :

EMPTY CAGE QUARTET
SoCal Tour May 21-25

Thursday, May 21, 7pm
OAKWOOD SCHOOL, North Hollywood

Friday, May 22, 8pm
METRO GALLERIES, Bakersfield
w/Barcelona saxophonist Santiago Latorre

Saturday, May 23, 8pm
THE PHAROAH'S DEN, Riverside
Homage to Sun Ra w/Your Majesty, Synthenezian Duck Project

Monday, May 25, 8pm
THE JAZZ BAKERY, Culver City
w/Oakwood Nuems Quintet

: : :

WHITHER THE ARTS CZAR?

2009-05-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

Quincy Jones is still at it, again calling out for the current President to appoint a Secretary of the Arts. This time at HuffPost:

"Every great society from the Egyptians, to the Greek and Roman Empires, has been defined by its cultural contributions. The commercial benefits of the arts not withstanding -- our artistic endeavors are a consistent source of revenue in the United States and our nation's largest export -- can we really run the risk of becoming a culturally bankrupt nation because we have not inserted a curriculum into our educational institutions that will teach and nurture creativity in our children? That when future generations look back our cultural legacy is an age of disposable, vapid pabulum.
"I am of the mindset that you have to know where you come from to get to where you're going. The time has come to make a concerted effort from both the public and private sectors to put in place a system whereby our children and future generations will be aware of our county's rich cultural legacy and contributions to the world. The arts, particularly our music, are the soul of our country. They are an expression of our spiritual ideals and a timeline of the emotional state of our nation... scars and all. It is a disservice to every American not to recognize them in their proper light."

That much I can agree with. And if this ever was to happen, the Obama presidency would certainly be an appropriate moment. It's so rare, though, for a public figure - and particularly a President - to do much more than pay lip service to the idea that jazz and the multitude of other styles pioneered by African-Americans are (and continue to be) an integral part of our cultural legacy.

If Obama was to do this right, he would have to do it soon, to be sure to imprint the position with a strong and effective sense of advocacy for the kind of diverse cultural portfolio that Quincy is talking about. Lest we further empower a Ken Burns-esque backwards view of American cultural history, or even worse, embolden some future POTUS to come along and use the post to emphasize a political agenda. I get chills thinking about how someone like GWB might have leveraged an Arts Secretary position, after pulling a boneheaded move like appointing Lee Greenwood (!) to the NEA...

OLD, NEW, UPCOMING MUSIC

2009-04-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

I finally posted the live recording from the concert pictured above, which took place last May 30 at Baloard in Montpellier, France.

This was the third of three shows the Empty Cage Quartet played with French clarinetist Aurelien Besnard and guitarist Patrice Soletti. Each of us contributed original music, and we combined these pieces into extended suites for the live gigs. Both sets from this concert are available as free mp3 downloads at my archive page.

We recorded all of these tunes in the studio shortly thereafter, and that album will be released later this year on Aurelien's record label, Rude Awakening Présente. A video documentary of the entire project is scheduled to be released on limited edition DVD-R prior to that.

Exciting stuff, and I'm really very happy that this music is coming out. Consider this an advance preview...

(WHY DO) SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY?

2009-04-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

I was teaching my Music Education class last night and the topic was arts in elementary education in the climate of NCLB, specifically focusing on this TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson (embedded above), and this New York Times article from a couple of years back. We were talking about the systematic dismantling of arts education in public schools since the late 1960s, the political figures who have been primarily responsible for it, and what a tragedy it is that we have now raised several generations of students that have been progressively more deprived of the arts as a creative and expressive outlet. To make things worse, they are simultaneously being fed on some of the most image-driven (rather than content-driven) pop culture in modern history.

Suddenly (inevitably?), the conversation drifted a bit toward conspiracy theory, and the fact that music, poetry, and art were all central to the counterculture and protest movements of the 1960s. Is it any coincidence that our cultural, economic, and educational systems have been gradually and dramatically transformed over the ensuing decades? Instead of a unified, expressive, and conscience-driven conception of the arts, youth today are generally pushed to think of music, image, and language as little more than a narcissistic and ultimately selfish display of hipness and an affirmation of personal status. We no longer celebrate or encourage our great intellectuals, poets, musicians, philanthropists - instead we fetishize and commodify empty spectacle and bling...

Convenient, but for whom? Is it any wonder that during times of political and ideological oppression, the production of artists and musicians is stunted by the educational institutions that are shaped and regulated by those in power?

TO WHOM WHO KEEPS A RECORD

2009-04-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

My new email address: kristiner at me dot com

Hooray, MobileMe!

FOR FOLKS HERE AND THERE

2009-04-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

No fooling, we're gearing up for a trio of Industrial Jazz Group shows this weekend in Bakersfield (CSUB), LA (El Cid), and San Diego (Dizzy's).

Leave it to Durkin, this is the first tour I've ever been on that's had it's own trailer:

NOTHING IS FREE

2009-03-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

There are so many layers to this, I don't know exactly where to start... iTunes is offering the first movement of John Cage's 4'33" as a free download today.

Is it just me, or does this piece seem a bit incongruous with the typical Apple marketing hype?

"Listen carefully, and you can hear traffic outside, creaking floorboards and a clock ticking somewhere in the building. If you like it, you can download the remainder of the album..."

It will cost you $1.98 to get the other 2'46". And a buck more if you want to purchase it as a ringtone...

FOR FOLKS DOWN THERE

2009-03-25T00:57:00.001-07:00

Next Monday I am playing with Motoko Honda's Sound Escape Project at The Jazz Bakery, a venerable Los Angeles jazz institution that will be closing up and looking for a new place to live as of May 31.

I have to say, selfishly, this news makes me sad. The Bakery is one of the last jazz venues in LA that is still in the same place it was when I started going out to listen to gigs years ago. Most notable among the many, many great shows I've caught at the Bakery were the two times I saw Cecil Taylor - once solo and once with Jackson Krall/Dominic Duval - both concerts that changed my life.

It's a sad thing, but also an honor to be among the last few groups to play at the Culver City location (Empty Cage Quartet plays there on May 25). And there's a lot more great music happening down there between now and the end of May - Angelinos, show up and show your support...

FOR FOLKS AROUND HERE

2009-03-24T10:26:00.001-07:00

SUCH A NICE YOUNG MAN

2009-03-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

photo by Tom Palumbo

Wow. Wow. Wow. I love the internet.

Just discovered this rare 1953 radio interview (part I) with Miles Davis at Lockwood & Summit (via Jeff Hyatt).

If you can stand the extreme noise reduction, and KXLW DJ Harry Frost's pseudo-hipsterisms (have to give him credit for keeping the chatter going with an obviously muddled guest), it's quite a surprise to hear Miles' voice shortly before it would forever be reduced to the familiar "raspy croak" when he got in a shouting match while recovering from a throat operation. Plus, this is historic for the fact that Miles was on his way home to East St. Louis to kick his heroin habit - by locking himself in his father's guest house for a week.

And while we anxiously await the promised part II, check this out.

AS THOUGH A LITTLE KID WOULD PLAY

2009-03-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

Someone please tell me this is a joke:

Via Kaiser. And there's more where that came from.

INTO THE FUTURE, ONE SOCIAL NETWORK AT A TIME

2009-03-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I used to watch the original Star Trek quite a bit and dream about futuristic things like star ships, tricorders, warp travel, hand-held communicators, teleportation and the like. Never would I have imagined that the actual future would consist of things like blogs and Twitter widgets.

That's right, there's now a Twitter widget over there in the sidebar. I was getting kind of stir crazy here in babyland so yesterday I spent a few hours trying to spiff up my online world.

If anybody is so inclined, you can follow me. While you're at it, I would love for someone to explain to me why Twitter is such a big deal in the first place...

SUPPORT ARTS FUNDING

2009-02-11T12:14:00.000-08:00

If you care about this, and you haven't already done so, go to Americans for the Arts Action Center to voice your support for the inclusion of funding for arts and arts education in the economic stimulus bill. It's a quick and easy way to generate a letter to your elected officials to remind them that ARTS = JOBS:

There are approximately 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations, which spend $63.1 billion annually. Without an economic stimulus for the nonprofit arts industry, experts expect about 10% of these organizations (ranging from large arts institutions like museums and orchestras to small community-based organizations in suburban, urban and rural areas) to shut their doors in 2009 - a loss of 260,000 jobs.
According to the Americans for the Arts, a $50 million investment to the National Endowment for the Arts will provide critical funding to save 14,422 jobs from being lost in the U.S. economy. This is based on the ability of the NEA to leverage $7 in additional support through local, state and private donations, for every $1 in NEA support.
In a report released in mid-January, the National Governor's Association stated, "Arts and culture are important to state economies. Arts and culture-related industries, also known as "creative industries," provide direct economic benefits to states and communities: They create jobs, attract investments, generate tax revenues, and stimulate local economies through tourism and consumer purchases."

THIS JUST IN

2009-02-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

I'm now the proud father of TWO beautiful girls... Elise Lily Tiner was born yesterday at 8:08 am. 8lbs 12oz, 19 3/4". Perfectly healthy and content. Mama is doing fine, we couldn't be happier. Thanks to all who've been sending good wishes!

FROM MLK TO BHO

2009-01-19T19:19:00.000-08:00

"BBC World News America has unearthed a fascinating clip of Dr Martin Luther King speaking to the BBC's Bob McKenzie in 1964 in which Dr King predicts an African-American president 'in less than 40 years.'"

Watch here.

Interesting timing. Exactly 40 years from that interview would have been 2004, and then we couldn't even elect a competent white candidate. Just four years ago MLK's prediction would have seemed far too optimistic, so it is almost inconceivable that we could have come to this point so soon without having endured the political/cultural/moral fatigue of the last four years.

Of course it was in 2004 that John Kerry introduced Barack Obama to the nation, but it was ultimately the failed Presidency of George W. Bush that finally convinced enough of us that it was time to try something different.

The fantastic thing about all of this is that it's not exclusively the result of a racial struggle. As Congressman John Lewis pointed out on one of the cable news shows yesterday, Obama's election is evidence of the Civil Rights Movement being finally absorbed into a wider, more universal movement for justice and human rights. I'm not one of those who would assert that this means we've become a post-racial society (post-racist would be fine enough), but it certainly puts us one step closer to getting there.

And we can hope that our 44th President will be a leader who, like Dr. King, calls for all of us to live up to our better nature. He's certainly off to a good start...

EL SEGUNDO, THE SECOND

2009-01-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

Here is the second of three brief video clips from a late summer session at Lynn Johnston's place in El Segundo. Vinny Golia on soprano sax, Lynn on bari, Lisa Mezzacappa on bass, Vijay Anderson on drums, yours truly on trumpet. Fun stuff:

Thanks to Vijay for posting these. Also check part one, and part three (in which Lynn Johnston gets the sheng all up in it)...

READING AND WRITING

2009-01-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

A little late with this, but here are a couple of nice year-end reviews for Stratostrophic. Thanks to Nate Dorward, a longtime supporter of the various Empty Cage projects, for including us among the Top Ten "Destination Out" CDs of 2008 at the Canadian music rag Exclaim!:

"Hard to believe such rich, multilayered narratives could be constructed out of the sparse two horns, bass and drums format popularized by Ornette Coleman. Trumpeter Kris Tiner has a beautifully clear swing-to-freebop sound and a gift for phrases that hang provocatively in the air. He’s got a perfect partner in Jason Mears’ lemony alto, and the spiralling, witty extremity of their counterpoint rivals the Zorn/Douglas interplay in Masada. Ivan Johnson and Paul Kikuchi have blossomed into one of the supplest rhythm sections around: rather than locking in together, they pull away from each other in order to let these ultra-elastic grooves breathe."

And here's a snip from one by Italian composer/improviser/writer Massimo Ricci:

"When an ensemble needs not to recur to metaphoric paraphernalia and short-lived tricks, we immediately realize that the direction is right. Quite often during the playback I found myself thinking of charts made of very long lines and exploded views, music leading to places where expectations are met without fretfulness and transitions are clearly visible. This sense of structural intelligibility, in conjunction with an evident respect for tradition, is the most considerable attribute of the album."

It's a rare honor when a writer actually takes the time to parse beyond the usual facile comparisons (i.e. "this group sounds just like Ornette Coleman's quartet because the instrumentation is the same..." etc.) and actually listen to determine what's happening structurally, organizationally, and aesthetically within the compositions. Especially since we've never really been a "free jazz" group per se; the compositions - how they evolve both in a performance and over time - are central to what we've been up to for the past 6+ years.

Anyway, both Nate and Massimo have written some of the most perceptive and enthusiastic reviews of our previous projects, and beyond the obvious PR value, feedback like this is always appreciated. Thanks again, guys.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

2009-01-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

Forty-five minutes sifting through the archives at CRAP JAZZ COVERS was enough to confirm my long-held suspicion that the jazz fusion movement was responsible for THE absolute WORST assortment of album cover art in history...

Ahhh, egregious displays of chest hair, indecent acts with musical instruments, cutesy (freaky?) nods to grocery store commerce and pop iconography, and poorly rendered '80s neon surrealism... and there's plenty more where that came from. The commentary on some of these is delightfully twisted, but watch yourself: nothing is sacred...

FREDDIE SHREDS SKYLARK

2009-01-01T21:06:00.000-08:00

Everybody's linking to their favorite Freddie Hubbard videos on YouTube in the last couple days. Why not a few more? There are so many good ones - surely proof positive of his lasting influence...

Here he is with the Jazz Messengers in 1963, one of the best incarnations of that band, playing one of my favorite ballads, "Skylark". Young musicians take note - a ballad is not an opportunity to just tear shit up, even if you can... you still have to Play. The. Melody. And Freddie could certainly play a melody to break your heart, even as he was tearing everything else to shreds:

Speaking of "shreds", this other thing I just found... they had to do it to Freddie sooner or later:

(Maybe the satire is rather tasteless considering Freddie's recent chops problems, but if you're familiar with the actual clip you know that he really is tearing it up at the Vanguard...)

Gotta spread the love around though, here's one more for good measure:

I think it's Do The Math that calls this stuff "The New Folk Art" - couldn't agree more...

(I haven't had time to sit down with DTM's Wynton-Fest yet, although I'm looking forward to it. I suspect the video above will be even more hilarious afterward...)

THOUGHTS ON FREDDIE

2009-01-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of young trumpeters, I was completely spellbound the first time I heard Freddie Hubbard play. He did things on the trumpet that you're just not supposed to be able to do - piano licks, saxophone licks, Coltrane licks! But unlike many musicians who are known for their chops (and many trumpet players who count themselves among his legion of imitators), Freddie wasn't about displaying all of that virtuosity for its own sake. Freddie was no showoff; he was an extraordinarily sensitive and soulful musician who was able to make the whole group sound better, no matter the context. He could play it heartbreakingly lyrical, or bluesy and greasy, or bubbly and playful, or fiercely and mercilessly burning, whatever the music required.

Monster trumpeter he most certainly was, but it was his legendary versatility that was truly scary. Few others covered as much ground in the 60s-70s, from all those mainstream Blue Note dates to some of the most powerful statements of the avant-garde to full-on electric jazz-funk and fusion. As dazzling as those famous hard bop sides are, and as funky as some of that later, post-Red Clay CTI stuff is, the records that continue to knock me out are the more open things he played on in the mid-60s. For a young trumpet player becoming interested in exploring the freer forms of jazz, Freddie's discography pretty much showed the way. Freddie Hubbard was a gateway drug!

As a sideman on Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch and Sonny Rollins' East Broadway Run Down in particular, he carved out a powerful role for the trumpet in avant-garde jazz. Don Cherry had already opened the door, but Freddie came along and busted the whole wall down. Like Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown before him, Freddie showed that the trumpet was still contemporary, still relevant, and still capable of holding its own with all the saxophone players. He expanded the language and raised the bar, and he made it clear that the instrument wasn't about to be eclipsed by all the saxophonic fire of the New Thing.

Freddie had that rare combination of tremendous chops + tremendous spirit. I think I can speak for many trumpet players here: Freddie Hubbard is our Coltrane. Like Coltrane, much of Freddie's music represents the highest possible creative manifestation of instrumental virtuosity. When he was at his best, his technical mastery was entirely servile to his supreme artistic sensibility, demonstrating by example that true freedom didn't happen by simply breaking rules, but by developing a strong command of one's instrument coupled with a firm sense of tradition and an ability to fully translate personality to sound, breaking through the tradition rather than breaking from it.

He will be missed, but his music certainly won't - it remains as fresh and vital as when it was first laid down, perhaps even more so.

: : :

Other reflections...

Taylor Ho Bynum

Dave Douglas

Greg Burk

David Liebman (scroll down)

Darcy James Argue (+ more links)

I HEART NPR

2008-12-29T14:03:00.000-08:00

One more unintended interruption, but this time for some good news: I Heart Lung's Interoceans has been selected as one of NPR's Top 5 Jazz CDs of 2008. Here's the spiel from Lars Gotrich of NPR Music:

"Guitarist Chris Schlarb's projects capture a form of emotional release that few avant-garde musicians can muster. At its core, I Heart Lung is a duo with drummer Tom Steck, but Interoceans is a community. After recording a series of Brian Eno-inspired drones, I Heart Lung enlisted additional contributions from guitarist Nels Cline, trumpeter Kris Tiner, field recorder Aaron Ximm and many more. These meditative, exploratory and sometimes intensely rocking improvisations were woven into the album's basic framework. And while avant-garde jazz tends to frown upon post-editing, I Heart Lung creates an organic world, which ties all these disparate elements into a sound that moves together."

Interoceans is a positively gorgeous and epic record, and I'm regretting now that I haven't said more about it around here. But you can find it via the link above or click on the album cover in the sidebar to the right. And find it you should, before all those 2009 releases start showing up...

REMEMBER FREDDIE

2008-12-29T13:11:00.000-08:00

Freddie Hubbard is gone. The man took the trumpet to dimensions unimaginable and innumerable... what else is there to say? Where do you even start? Birdlike? Red Clay? Windjammer? Come on! Ascension? Free Jazz?? Out To Lunch???

How about "Straight Life". He took a lot of shit from the purists for this phase of his career, but funky Freddie is my favorite Freddie:

I'm still on hiatus, but I'll certainly be back with a proper appreciation at some point...

TIME OFF

2008-12-27T23:58:00.001-08:00

Happy holidays to all... I'm certainly happy to have some much-needed down time. Be back after the new year....

DECEMBER 13

2008-12-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

Kenneth Patchen would have been 97 today. If ever I had a guru, he would be that. I named this blog after a line from one of his picture-poems, in fact.

In years prior I've marked the occasion here with one of his poems or a lengthy quote. For today, something slightly different - a (timely?) selection of excerpts from his quasi-autobiographical short prose work They Keep Riding Down All the Time. Written in 1946, it's about as compressed an expression of Patchen's oeuvre as you're likely to find. The artist (as narrator) grapples with life, love, death, work, criticism, idealism, psychosis, politics, sexuality, murder, demons, angels, nature, God, and so on...

. . .
There should be no wall between a man and his life.
. . .
Brothers, time is getting short. A wild flower in the footprint of a madman. There isn't much time left now. Does life have a meaning? Where is the larger kingdom? Better a father who hates, than one who is indifferent; better the nightmare of sight, than the gray unseeing of all these poor devils; better to kneel before a throne that doesn't exist, than to be caught with your pants down in the temple of the human heart.
. . .
In this year . . . eternal joy of things. Serene embrace of colors and the wondrous charity of trees. Fountain–tears of stone filling the eyes of mountains–again, one from all–by nature related to everything–There is no guilt; against you is nothing. Be little if you would know peace. Wisdom is in identity. Over thought is love. The child weeps because you are afraid.
. . .
It will always matter to someone. So with ceaseless flowing, the liquid monuments gleam in the half-dark –– (statues of the later great). The weather doesn't decide what it will be: but man does.
. . .
I understand because I have displaced the thing that troubled me, like a thinking wheel entering the water.
. . .
Culture is not imitation: each man is new, and sees things in a new way–this is why 'critics' are kept so busy trying to keep paintings under the dead hand of the painter (etc.); why at a certain time a bit of charred wood may appeal more than the most beautiful sunset. When art gives pleasure it finds a pleasure there to receive it–a new pocket every time.
Each line of a book must overcome and dispense with the line which precedes it, the coarse wiping out the fine, etc.
A change of gait–and often, even, a change of mount.
How dull (and copyclerkish) it would be to write at one's best all the time. How idle to praise freedom, and to do your own work like a slave.
Suppose I suddently want to break in to say that a yellow bird can eat more violets than all the lions in Africa–Where on all this earth is there any man with any right of any kind whatever to tell me I can't say it!
Jesus! you snivelling little meddlers, get back to your knitting.
. . .
So far the only ones who have a right to judge are the works of art themselves. It isn't wrong to think anything about an artistic creation; but what's thought is usually silly.
The function of the artist is to express love.
What most people fail to understand is not the artist's work, but his essential unworldliness in wanting to give love.
. . .
The cult of the mediocre in everything . . . The only art form that's worth a damn is when a man tries to offer up something out of himself, out of his own head, his own emotions, his own dreams, his own heart, his own guts–the rest is vomit-smeared cardboard; one dimensional; a made-up fraud.
. . .
I say let the love of a few men for freedom and brotherhood and whatever the hell word you can think of they haven't dribbled their pious crap on grow like a huge and beautiful flower up over the bloody counters of the world so that all men can get a load of it and let them keep their lying mouths off peace and equality and freedom for all these swindling bastards ever want is bigger wars and more hatred and to get their chains on the souls and bodies of everyone O come on you lovely goddam horn and blow that smug look off all their lousy murderous pusses.
. . .
Dear friends, lovers of truth and freedom, enemies of all that degrades and enslaves the spirit of our fellows on this earth–O of all that makes them blind and crass and afraid–and of all that causes them to lose sight of the star which shakes the very heavens with its grandeur and its beauty–O my dear friends, let the bloody crumbs fall from the table of evil: we will not touch them; let the darkness come down to cover everything now: O we will have had our eyes turned to the light! and I think that light will continue to shine whether any man is alive to see it or not. I hear the beating of a great heart. It drowns out all the little noise of wars and hatred and evil. . . O there is the wonder and nobility and incomparable majesty of every human being on earth in it!

DON'T HESITATE TO CHANGE YOUR MIND

2008-12-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

Here's more Empty Cage Quartet from Los Angeles, mid-2006. This one is in three parts. If you're the really enthusiastic type, you can find the score and notes here.

Previously. The rest is at youtube.com/emptycagequartet.

THROUGH THE DOORWAYS OF ESCAPE...

2008-12-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

Here is the first of a series of clips from an Empty Cage Quartet concert at Cafe Metropol in Los Angeles on August 11, 2006, two days before we recorded Stratostrophic for Clean Feed. Kraig Grady did the filming, Paul Kikuchi is working on the transfers. Yes, we are finally getting our act together with The You Tube. More to come...

COOL YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

2008-12-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

President-elect Obama this morning on Meet the Press:

"...part of what we want to do is to open up the White House, and remind people this is the people's house... we want to talk about parents reading to their kids. We want to invite kids from local schools into the White House. When it comes to science, elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about. Thinking about the diversity of our culture, and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that's America... historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that sense that better days are ahead. I think that our art and our culture, our science, you know, that's the essence of what makes America special, and we want to project that as much as possible in the White House."

Yeah, very cool...

FROM NASHVILLE EAST

2008-12-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

with comb & razor (a fantastic African music blog if you've never been there) posts a nice mp3 mix of rarities called Naija Sounds in Country & Western Music. That's right, country music from Nigeria...

Some of it is fluff, but there are a couple of real winners. Great titles too, like "Ever Liked My Person?" and "Show Me A Virgin (In A Maternity Ward)". Definitely worth a listen.

ODETTA

2008-12-02T23:10:00.000-08:00

Odetta is gone.

I read recently that she was ill, but fully determined to push on so that she could sing at Obama's inauguration. It's too bad... as a singer, musician, and a voice for civil rights, she was formidable:

UPDATE: the bit about the inauguration was posted at WFMU after her kidney failure on November 9, and it's all the more heartbreaking to read it now:

"Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama's Inauguration, and I believe that is the reason she is still alive. She has a big poster of Barack Obama taped on the wall across from her bed..."

SORRY, BARACK

2008-12-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

Have to admit, I'm with Campbell on this one:

(Click here if the embedded video doesn't appear)

She's right, particularly with that last bit:

"But this isn't just about the media. It's about the American people, many of whom voted for you because of what you said during the campaign. And they have a right to know which of those things you meant and which you didn't. Apparently, as you made clear today, you didn't mean what you said about Hillary Clinton."

I've been totally perplexed by the choice of Hillary for Secretary of State, particularly given the fact that Obama's pulling ahead of her in the primary was due largely to his success in differentiating their positions on Iraq, and thus discrediting her as a serious contender on foreign policy issues. That, plus the utter embarrassment of Hillary's bogus Bosnia claims (which was one of the things that finally tilted me to Obama's side). And let's not forget this:

That happened on February 26. Who knew Russia would turn out to be such a big deal (with Putin rearing his head and all)?

At any rate, I can certainly appreciate the "keep your enemies closer" angle (and so does Rush Limbaugh, oddly enough). As a junior senator Hillary would be unlikely to do much in the new Congress other than plot her own political future, and that may not be in the best interests of the president-elect. And with 18 million primary votes, she deserves a role in the new administration based on her political stature alone. Maybe it was clear that she would have rejected any lesser offer. But the whole idea of handing Clinton the State Department, along with the unusually haphazard way the Obama team leaked this particular announcement, and the current refusal to recognize a legitimate question about Hillary's credibility - it all seems kind of sloppy to me...

: : :

An aside: though my oft-stated euphoria about Obama's candidacy/nomination/election does not preclude me from understanding the cold reality that the guy is not perfect, and the world will not be perfect with him in the White House, it's at least going to be substantially better than any of the other alternatives we were offered...

So let's be critical, but let's not get all stupid about it, ok? (via)

WAIT, IT GETS WORSE

2008-11-29T10:06:00.000-08:00

If there is a special room in purgatory reserved for jazz bloggers who write about Pete Drake, it probably looks something like this:

Via Boing Boing.

EVENING ZEN

2008-11-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last one. But after Pete Drake, what is there left to say...?

Voila, Françoise Hardy... totally sublime.

Who else (besides maybe Sam Cooke) could sing "I love you" that many times and make it sound so perfect?

AFTERNOON ZEN

2008-11-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Am I wrong to love this?

MORNING ZEN

2008-11-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

Pharoah Sanders with harmonium in an abandoned tunnel in San Francisco, from 1982:

Via Root Blog.

REALLY AVANT-GARDE STUFF

2008-11-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

Via Yahoo!/Reuters:

"An unreleased, experimental track by British band The Beatles could be made public 41 years after it was recorded at London's Abbey Road studios, ex-member Paul McCartney has said...
'I said it would be great to put this on because it would show we were working with really avant-garde stuff...'"

Wow! Really? Like what, Paul?

"'I said all I want you to do is just wander around all the stuff, bang it, shout, play it, it doesn't need to make any sense,' McCartney told the program.
'Hit a drum then wander on to the piano, hit a few notes, just wander around. So that's what we did and then put a bit of an echo on it. It's very free.'"

Oh, ah, nevermind...

Seriously, and I happen to love the Beatles, but would it really take something like this to prove that they were avant-garde? Does that even still need to be proven?

WHAT DOES FIRE SOUND LIKE?

2008-11-17T00:33:00.000-08:00

While we're on the subject:

I loved this music before I ever heard jazz. It still kicks my ass. The blogs are abuzz with memories of drummer Mitch Mitchell, but Alex Cline's remembrance is a must-read...

METRO RECAP: WHILE LOS ANGELES BURNED...

2008-11-16T23:18:00.000-08:00

Despite the disastrous wildfires that shut down traffic through most of northern L.A. yesterday (and God help the people in Sylmar), Jim, Scott, and Nate managed to make a three-hour detour to slide into Metro Galleries just in time for last night's show. Incredible. I know from experience, those loooong drives for out-of-town gigs can really tend to zap the musical energy, but if that was the case, no one showed it.

My new trio with Nathan Hubbard and Scott Walton opened. This group debuted in San Diego last month, and it's one I'm certainly looking forward to continuing. I used to do the trumpet/bass/drums format quite a bit, but it's been about seven years since I've had a steady group with that instrumentation. It's a fantastic challenge, offering maximum flexibility and maximum exposure at the same time. And it gives me an opportunity to explore material that would be difficult to work into my other projects that focus exclusively on original music.

Case in point, we started our set with Ornette's "Faithful" (easily my favorite Ornette melody; it's on The Empty Foxhole), and segued into my arrangement of "Mrhaba" by Moroccan guembri virtuoso Majid Bekkas. I've been getting into these desert blues singers of late, and the connection with the clipped, moanful phrasing of Ornette's tune seemed like a logical one. The second group of pieces took on a more delicate tone, an arrangement of Morton Feldman's early "Nature Piece for Piano #4" followed by Nate's "Remembrance" and finishing with an old composition of mine called "Sometimes Too Much of Something" (here's a recording from 2002). We finished the set with Sun Ra's ballad/calypso theme "New Horizons", which I've written about previously.

Nate made a recording, which may pop up soon. And this group will be doing more. It's a happy situation to be able to work with great improvisers like these; they make great music out of anything you put in front of them, intuitively sensing the connections and making it all work.

I have raved about Jim McAuley's music here before, so at the risk of coming off all hyperbolical let me just say that it was more than a pleasure to hear him last night in this wonderfully resonant space. Every sound was as clear as a bell, and this had me thinking about just what stuns me so much about Jim's playing - each sound is crucial, and every sound is meaningful in the context of a particular contour, texture, or mood. There is no excess, and although that can be kind of cliché to say in the context of players who inhabit a more fragile or understated aesthetic, it's clear that Jim doesn't feel the need to skimp on energy. He's able to unleash a torrential mass of sound if the moment calls for it. The music is high drama, really; it's not defined by what it leaves out, nor is it "eclectic" merely for the sake of being so. It's dramatic because Jim is fearless in admitting, negotiating, and articulating all of the available colors: lush tonal bliss or abrasive wrenching noise, hard driving groove or graceful, lilting rubato, condensing what seems like eons of guitar history into every gesture.

There's something about this quality in Jim's music that connects with everything I love about Lester Bowie's playing, for instance, or Miles Davis's 1969 Quintet, when the music existed in that perpetual in-betweenness, creating a trajectory that encompassed everything that Miles's music had been, where it was then, and where it was immediately headed. Like Bob Dylan's entire career, or Picasso's - the detail never looses sight of the overall picture (and vice versa).

Long story short, Jim is one of my favorites. And given the rapt attention paid by the local crowd, and the rousing standing ovation that followed his set, I suspect he gained a number of new fans last night. Do yourself a favor, snag a copy of The Ultimate Frog, Jim's new double album of duets with the likes of Leroy Jenkins, Nels and Alex Cline, and Ken Filiano. Masterful pairings and masterful renditions, all.

: : :

UPDATE: You can read Nate Dorward's uncut liner notes for The Ultimate Frog at Don't Explain...

LOOK OUT FOR THE GONGFARMER

2008-11-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

For you local readers, I'm excited to be hosting another concert at Metro Galleries tonight, not least of all for the rare chance to hear a solo set by the phenomenal acoustic guitarist Jim McAuley. Jim is absolutely one of my favorite musicians on the West Coast, and I've been looking forward to bringing him up here for some time.

(By the way, Jim's new duets album is not to be missed... I have a review copy, and will be back shortly with more to say about that)

Opening the show tonight is my new trio with two outstanding musicians from San Diego: bassist Scott Walton and percussionist Nathan Hubbard. We'll be doing some of my tunes along with music by Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Morton Feldman, and Moroccan Gnaoua musician Majid Bekkas. Details above and more to come...

FAREWELL MAMA AFRIKA

2008-11-10T19:39:00.000-08:00

Miriam Makeba, 1932-2008.

THE SHAPE OF CHANGE TO COME

2008-11-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

This is very, very, very cool.

THE TIMES THEY ARE STILL A-CHANGIN'

2008-11-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

Daily Kos offers one of the most revealing graphics of this election - and perhaps the most convincing rebuttal yet of the ongoing GOP claims that America is a center-right country:

Think about it. McCain focused his attack (at least in the final weeks) on claims that Obama was too liberal for America, that he was a socialist and a redistributionist - and Obama wins more votes than any other presidential candidate in history...

BEEN A LONG TIME COMING

2008-11-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America."
–President-Elect Obama, November 4, 2008

Seems like this will be the enduring quote from Obama's victory speech last night, an obvious nod to Sam Cooke's great (and now deeply prophetic) change anthem from 1964. This has to resonate in a special way for those who lived through the Civil Rights Movement to witness the miracle that just happened.

But like I've said before, and as many are saying now, an Obama presidency represents change on so many levels:

"...it is exactly his understanding and his mastery of his own otherness that makes him such a great uniter, across lines of not only race and culture but also religion, nationality, economics, academics, even - no, especially - politics..."

The basic fact that we have elected Barack Obama as our president is the definitive referendum on the ignorance and intolerance that have defined the Bush era. That we are about to be led by the 47-year old biracial son of a Kenyan immigrant and a white woman from Kansas, with a Muslim name, who spent his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, who became a civil rights lawyer, a teacher of constitutional law, and so quickly the most beloved and successful politician of the 21st century - for all these reasons the very identity of our next president will be our most immediate defense against those who still want to hate us and attack us. But it's the more substantial stuff - his firm sense of policy, his inclusionary ideals, and his talent for surrounding himself with smart and capable people - that will almost certainly lead to a dramatic and (hopefully) lasting positive shift in the dynamics of global politics.

This is really an exciting moment. To see all those images of people celebrating and dancing in the streets, not only in America but all over the world, makes it clear that we are witnessing something much, much bigger than just a change in racial politics. But if you've been following this campaign with any measure of enthusiasm, you already knew that.

: : :

Today WFMU offers 14 different versions of "A Change Is Gonna Come" (including a stirring live performance by Bob Dylan, whose "Blowin' in the Wind" inspired Cooke to pen his masterpiece). Yesterday I made my popular music class listen to Aretha's version. We may have to listen to a few more of these tomorrow...

PRESIDENT OBAMA!

2008-11-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

THE LOOKS OF THINGS...

2008-11-04T19:33:00.000-08:00

Via.

Seen the scene in Grant Park? This is history in the making!

MEDITATIONS ON CHANGE

2008-11-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

Vote today. No excuses.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

2008-10-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

This was our project today... my daughter got to pick, she wanted an Elmo pumpkin. Dad is SUCH a pushover...

TAKE A SWING

2008-10-31T14:22:00.001-07:00

Which quote is from The Onion, and which is from the Associated Press?

"Patrick Campbell worries Barack Obama will raise his taxes but thinks John McCain will send people off to war. He says that leaves him leaning toward Obama ... maybe. 'I'm split right down the middle,' said the 50-year-old Air Force Reserve technician from Amherst, N.Y. 'Each one has things that are good for me and things that are bad for me. And people like me.'"

Or:

"'On the one hand, I'm pretty sure Barack Obama will undermine my best interests by maintaining the same centrist, pro-corporate policies of previous Democratic administrations,' said Jim Estey, 34, a recently laid-off assembly-line worker. 'Conversely, I agree with McCain and Palin on abortion, which might just balance out the fact that they'll further marginalize people like me by supporting deregulation and slashing social programs. So it's pretty much a toss-up at this point.'"

It would be funny, Onion, if it weren't so true. How 14% of us could still be undecided between these two candidates is beyond me. Have you picked up a newspaper in the last two years?

Well, apparently not. From the AP piece:

"'These tend to be people with a lower level of knowledge about the election; they don't follow politics as closely,' said Michael McDonald, a political science professor from George Mason University who studies voting behavior. 'If they can't distinguish between the candidates at this stage, the question is if they will vote.'"

If they will vote... nah, the question is, will they decide the freaking election if they do vote?

(Of course it's one thing to be hopelessly uninformed, another thing entirely to consciously choose none of the above. It's not that I deny the viability of third-party candidates - part of me would love to vote for Nader, as I have in the past. But the argument that the Democrat and the Republican are essentially the same just doesn't hold water this time. Or last time, it turns out. Or the time before that. Call me a practical optimist, I guess, but my vote for BHO is already in the mail.)

JOE THE AMERICAN IDOL

2008-10-29T22:57:00.000-07:00

Used to be if you could sing well enough you'd eventually get famous. Now, apparently, all you have to do is get famous:

"Move over, Sanjaya, and tell William Hung the news: Joe the Plumber is being pursued for a major record deal and could come out with a country album as early as Inauguration Day..."

JUST ONE MORE WEEK

2008-10-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

Don't... know... if... I... can... stand it... any longer.....

WORTH TWO THOUSAND WORDS...

2008-10-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

Via. Larger version at Flickr. The original.

MASTERPIECE COMPLEX

2008-10-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

Another trumpet player weighs in on Bernstein's music today at ANABlog:

"Bernstein was a musician of the first rank, and a composer of the third rank. He punched out some of my all-time favorite music, but his ambition was so much greater. He had the ultimate masterpiece complex: feeling that every piece needed to be a 'masterpiece'. Sadly, the more he tried to write great music, the more his efforts showed. Bernstein just always reminds me of someone standing on his tiptoes to try and seem taller than he really is."

I never thought of it that way. Maybe that's why LB sells me so much as an educator (or "cultural emissary" as per below) but not as a composer, not at all.

And truly, I never appreciated Bernstein so much until I actually had to teach classical music appreciation to a room full of first-year community college students. At that point, his enthusiasm for, say, Beethoven's Ninth conveyed certain timeless ideals within that music that the students would never accept had it been just me telling them.

Some (like the Vienna strings) would say that Bernstein projected his own ideals onto Beethoven. Maybe that's also symptomatic of this masterpiece complex. I happen to usually like Bernstein's renditions, so I'm comfortable just calling that charisma. But when Bernstein the composer channels that charisma and charm through his own music, and all that enthusiasm becomes so self-celebratory, mawkish and vain... boy, do I loathe that stuff.

Complex, indeed...

BERNSTEIN AND GOULD

2008-10-23T00:28:00.001-07:00

While searching for Bernstein vids on YouTube tonight I made this lucky discovery. Gould's decrescendo on that pedal point beginning at 1:11 absolutely kills me. My poor daughter had to watch this clip with me about a dozen times during dinner:

BERNIE AT NINETY

2008-10-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

Courtesy CBS

I'm no fan of Leonard Bernstein's music, but there's no denying his lasting influence as a cultural emissary nonpareil. And as a recent Newsweek article suggests, we could certainly benefit from a bit of Bernsteinian perspective right about now:

"Today, when high and low culture sneer at each other across a gulf of incomprehension and politically useful ill will, Bernstein seems a glorious freak: the avatar of a democratic cultural dream that elitism and populism can commune, not to cancel each other out but to their mutual benefit. This is not what Tocqueville had in mind when he predicted that the sprawling patchwork nature of our society doomed us to mediocre, middle-ground art. But not even the prophetic Tocqueville could see Lenny Bernstein coming...
"Anybody reading the papers can see how vicious the culture wars have grown. Just about any personal quality with a whiff of distinction—a hobby, a vegetable preference—can get you branded an elitist and a threat to our values. Remember how, in a desperate bid for self-preservation, John Kerry pretended four years ago he didn't speak French? Or consider how, at this year's Republican convention, Barack Obama was mocked by the multimillionaire former mayor of New York City and prominent opera buff Rudy Giuliani for being 'cosmopolitan.' Maybe Tocqueville was right about us."

WTF, Rudy?! At what point did it become politically acceptable to use culture as a divisive, even a derisive force? We can all hope that an Obama administration would bring a bit more cultural sensitivity to the political dialogue. But perhaps what we need in addition to that is a Bernstein (or two or three) for the twenty-first century... someone with the clout and charisma to address a wide audience, but also with sufficient artistic merit so as to actually enhance our experience of culture, to demystify it and make the case for its relevance in contemporary public life. And most importantly, given this painfully divisive/derisive political climate, to push a philosophy of cultural inclusion rather than further division and dissociation.

For example, while I don't think Bernstein ever presented a particularly compelling appraisal of what jazz was, he was one of the first members of the so-called cultural elite who was even willing to address it, and hence make it credible for others of that milieu to do so. Likewise, his appropriation of popular elements into his own music never much appealed to my aesthetic, but I can appreciate the importance of that music in helping to lift the veil of academic elitism that impeded the serious study of popular music for many, many decades. And though his flirtation with the classical avant-garde was relatively brief, Bernstein premiered Messiaen's Turangalila and recorded orchestral music by Ligeti, Feldman and others. All these endorsements point to what was perhaps most impressive about Bernstein as a public figure: he was able to inspire a greater appreciation of the past while simultaneously clearing a path for the important voices of the future.

So how about a moment to show some respect... Bernstein performing Beethoven. If you ask me, and I'll assume that you did, this is both of them at their best:

BETTER THAN SNL!

2008-10-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

Some timely (and desperately needed) political comic relief here courtesy of LisaNova...

Debate #3:

Obama's debate prep:

Palin vs. Biden:

Palin vs. Nader:

"In what respect, Charlie?"

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS...

2008-10-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

SERIOUSLY.

2008-10-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

From a forwarded email I received today - I think it's supposed to be a joke, but man, with 100 midterms to grade and the first round of term papers approaching, I would love to have one of these:

KAVAPICS

2008-10-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jeff Kaiser for the pics of our band; thanks to me for the pic of Nate's band... thanks to Nate for organizing the gig!

Fun music - I'll have more to say shortly...

KT3 AT KAVA GALLERY SUNDAY

2008-10-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

I'm playing in San Diego this weekend in a trio with the incomparable Scott Walton on bass and percussionist/composer/instrument maker Nathan Hubbard. Nate's Everything After ensemble shares the bill.

We'll be doing newish music by myself and Nate, along with trio arrangements of early piano music by Morton Feldman and a version of an old Sun Ra ballad called "New Horizons" which I've recently fallen completely in love with.

Here's an mp3 of Sun Ra's 1956 outtake of "New Horizons" from We Travel The Spaceways. I actually prefer this to the better-known version released on Sun Song. This has a much more dreamy atmosphere, blending Ra's optimistic opening chords, John Gilmore's spaced-out bells ringing like a Salvation Army Santa on Mars, Art Hoyle's crystal-clear trumpet sound (dig the cathartic moment when he ascends up to that concert Bb on the bridge!), and Julian Priester's schmaltzy serenade during the second act.

Nice title, too - and hopefully a timely one, if you consider Ra's written notes on the piece:

"A sketch of a new and better day dawning. It is meditative, an expecting mood. What is it expecting? ... Excitement in an enjoyable form, beauty, and superior love."

THE TRUTH FINALLY EMERGES!

2008-10-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

From the YouTube comments:

"If Sigmund Freud were alive his head would explode."

PREPARE THYSELF TO DEAL WITH A DEBACLE

2008-10-06T22:01:00.000-07:00

Good God, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. Or this.

Bringing up Keating is topical, I can see that, and they're smart to try to pin McCain on his history as an ambitious deregulator. But I have a lingering suspicion that this is all going to further necessitate (and enable) the Palin-as-attack-dog strategy we saw today. It was frighteningly obvious from her debate performance that she has absolutely no qualms about being the one to lead us all through the mud and muck of the next four weeks.

Maybe they're hoping she'll go so far as to forfeit what little credibility she still has, or at least far enough to pull another rope-a-dope (and there is certainly mud enough to throw back). But it seems like a dangerous gamble, what with the man at the top of the ticket obviously happy to follow along and join right in with the muckraking.

Or you know, as they call it, "energizing the base."

I was going to sit down tonight to blog about exactly why I hope the Obama campaign remains above the fray, but lo and behold The New Disease beat me to it:

"I want a President who doesn't speak down to me or my wife or my son, who will treat us as intellectual, ethical, moral and political equals. I think this is Barack Obama.
"I want a President who will face up to the problems of the nation, like our avalanching economy, and not run away and say that he'd rather not deal with it because it will make him unpopular. I think this is Barack Obama.
"Finally, I want a President that I can be proud of when he is representing us to the world, to foreign leaders and foreign peoples, a President that will show the world the almost lost face of American diplomacy and the inherent power of that diplomacy when practiced by intelligent men and women who have a firm grip on the ideals and history of this nation. Contrary to what our current President has told us for years, much of the world loves and idealizes this country and what it stands for. We have to show them that we also love and idealize this country and that, as Americans, we understand the special role and the unique responsibilities we've carved out for ourselves in the affairs of the world, that we take that role and those responsibilities seriously.
"I think this is Barack Obama."

Read the whole post, it's worth your time.

IT'S A...

2008-10-03T22:11:00.001-07:00

Girl! Another one! She's due February 3.

NYC RECAP - Addendum

2008-10-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

Caught Josh Sinton's Ideal Bread at Zebulon in Williamsburg last Tuesday night. These guys ROCK the Steve Lacy songbook, striking a rare balance between dynamic sensitivity and adventurous postbop exploration. What a great band. Check out their disc at CD Baby or eMusic.

NYC RECAP - V

2008-09-29T15:51:00.000-07:00

On Monday and Tuesday of last week we moved our operation to Park West Studios in Brooklyn to record the next album for Clean Feed. Jim Clouse at Park West was fantastic - the kind of engineer we like - no nonsense, he got great sounds right away, and was supremely efficient. We spent five hours tracking on Monday and four hours mixing and mastering on Tuesday, and it was a done deal. Nice to have Pedro from Clean Feed stop by the studio for part of the time on Monday as well...

The music was two extended compositions, one by myself and the other by Jason Mears, organized into nine separate sections. Jason's piece was new for this tour, mine we've been working on for over a year now (it's the same composition we presented at the ISIM Conference in Chicago last December; click here for a peek at the score).

More info on this record as the project progresses. This one is going to be quite different, even we were surprised at how the music came out. Certainly the goal was to compress what we were doing with these extended compositions in our live concerts into 3- to 8-minute tracks. I think we achieved that, but the ensemble sound is very, very different than anything else we've done. We haven't decided on a title for it yet, so there's not much more I can reveal at this point other than this sexy, sexy waveform (yes, that's the entire 55-minute album):

NYC RECAP - IV (Manhattan)

2008-09-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

Beautiful day to drive back into Manhattan last Sunday for our show at the Living Theater as part of both the Clean Feed Festival and the Festival of New Trumpet Music. We got a big, enthusiastic crowd for our New York City debut, which included Clean Feed boss Pedro Costa, festival emcee Steve Dalachinsky, and FONT Music founder Dave Douglas (Dave blogged about our show here), plus a number of musician friends like saxophonist Josh Sinton, who took these pics:

We shared the bill with the power duo of Texas trumpeter Dennis Gonzales with Rachiim Ausar Sahu on bass:

And we finally got a chance to hang for a bit with Pedro from Clean Feed, who has been so supportive of this group, releasing our last record and our next one as well...

NYC RECAP - III (Troy)

2008-09-28T15:27:00.000-07:00

I didn't manage to get any photos of our performance at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, but here are a couple I took during setup and sound check:

The place used to be a church, but it's been converted into a multimedia space where they present some very hip programming. Our performance was part of the Free Jazz from the Sanctuary series, and it will be released soon as an hour-long, pro-shot DVD and made available to national public television. Saw some of the raw footage before we left and it looks (and sounds) fantastic; we hope to post some clips on our YouTube site when it comes out.

NYC RECAP - II (Bennington)

2008-09-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

The day after the Dakar hit I rendezvoused with Jason, Paul and Ivan in Brooklyn. They rolled up in the slickest tour van we've ever sported: heated seats, GPS, dual DVD screens, satellite radio, automatic doors, the works:

So we made our way up to Bennington College in Vermont, a bit under the gun, but cruising in style. Our concert was in the Deane Carriage Barn, a quaint old building with a sunken wooden floor and really excellent acoustics.

For a small school with not a very large music department, the students at Bennington came out in full force and were really enthusiastic about the music. They stayed for two sets and loaded up on Empty Cage swag, anyway.

Ah, beautiful Vermont... I'd stay there if I could...

NYC RECAP - I

2008-09-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Back home, fighting off a cold I caught on the flight back, thanks to the guy behind me hacking a lung all over the back of my seat as we sat on the runway at Kennedy for two hours waiting for Air Force One to take off. Actually, maybe I should just blame Bush.

Anyway, sorry for the lapse. I left my laptop behind this time (which was good - we needed the time away from each other). So let the post-tour blogging commence...

The dimly-lit photo above was from the Tin/Bag hit on Sept. 18 at the Infrequent Seams series at Le Grand Dakar, a fantastic pan-African restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Nice place, really nice staff, and the fufu stew is highly recommended.

I haven't played with Mike since last November, which was kind of a disastrous string of gigs (we were up against a double booking in Hartford, a hurricane in Maine and the NYC Marathon in Brooklyn) but also a real epiphany for our conception of the duo music. So it was good to revisit that project again, even if for just one gig. We plan to get our act together at some point next year and record the new stuff.

I have no pictures, but the other group on the bill that night was the improvising trio of bassist James Ilgenfritz, trombonist Ben Gerstein, and trumpeter Dave Ballou. James, who I've played with in California a few times, is a monster bassist and a total stud for so unselfishly helping us out with our bass needs for the quartet gigs last weekend. Dave Ballou has such a beautiful sound, especially on flugelhorn, a nice compliment to the impossibly angular lines he puts together. As for Ben Gerstein, I've never seen someone get so much music out of a beer can in a trombone bell...

WADADA HONORED

2008-09-16T00:05:00.000-07:00

photo by Lillian Schrank

Congrats to Wadada Leo Smith, who's just been honored by the Festival of New Trumpet Music for "his visionary musical and cultural analysis, his revolutionary approach to composition, and his brilliant brass playing, which has expanded the parameters of creative music for over forty years." Right on, FONT - nobody deserves it more.

Wish I could have been there for the event last Saturday. I'm getting ready to head out on a Wednesday night red-eye for gigs in New York over the weekend (and missing out on another fantastic Wadada Leo Smith event in the process - damn!).

FYI: Time Out has a preview of the Tin/Bag show happening in Brooklyn this Thursday. The Empty Cage Quartet plays FONT on Sunday. Looking forward to joining the festivities...

BREATH-CATCHING MECHANISM

2008-09-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

Check the "OF INTEREST..." module in the column to the right for a constantly-updated list of blog items I'm sharing via Google Reader. It's mostly campaign stuff at the moment, but doing it this way seems to dampen my urge to get on the political soapbox so often. I figured you might appreciate that.

GLORY!

2008-09-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

There's a new Mitch Hedberg album out.

Best line so far, after two listens:

"Yeah, man. I'm sick of seeing squirrels on waterskis..."

CLASSICAL MUSIC AND "WHITE GUILT"

2008-09-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

Another hilarious observation from Stuff White People Like:

"There are a number of industries that survive solely upon white guilt: Penguin Classics, the SPCA, free range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market. Yet all of these pale in comparison to classical music, which has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance."

Read the whole post, it's actually pretty frighteningly accurate ("white people see little to no value enjoying classical music without recognition from other white people..."). Although I'm not so sure about the bit about name-dropping Erik Satie to impress people at dinner parties. I'm white, and I love Satie, but I'd never use that information to try to impress anybody. Maybe it's because I don't go to dinner parties. Or probably I'm just not "modern and post-modern" enough.

BUT SERIOUSLY

2008-09-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

I need to get away from politics for awhile. Too many other things to think about...

Like upcoming shows in NYC in a couple weeks - one with TIN/BAG and three (including a big crossover show between the Clean Feed Festival and FONT) with the Empty Cage Quartet. More details forthcoming.

In related news, I've been featured in the "Listen Up!" column in the September issue of All About Jazz-New York (you can read the PDF version here).

There is a new review of Stratostrophic on p. 20 (thanks, Rex Butters!), and "Listen Up!" is on p. 12. Read it. No really, read it - there's a big announcement hidden in there...

THE KIND OF CAMPAIGN...

2008-09-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

I can get behind:

Works for me. Really, it is refreshing to think of having a president who not only has decent taste in music (cruising around with Miles, Coltrane, Bird, Dylan, and Stevie Wonder on his iPod), but also has the support of the general music community (via Darcy).

Because seriously, four years of "Dancing Queen" doesn't exactly appeal, does it?

NOW THAT'S REASSURING

2008-09-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Don't be worried. Really. From the NYT:

"'She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,' said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers..."

Ahhh, you know silly season in politics has officially begun when even Diddy begins to make sense...

MAKING THE BEST OF IT

2008-08-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

From today's LA Times:

"Apart from humanitarian concerns, the GOP's image-makers are mindful of the public relations and political cost if the party appears to be partying in Minnesota while Americans are battling to survive a devastating hurricane."

Because what a disaster that would be... remember what happened last time:

Three years after Katrina and the GOP is still utterly oblivious, more concerned about what it looks like they're doing than what they're actually doing. How do you convert tragic, epic destruction into political spectacle? Politico:

"McCain was scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech Thursday, but now may do so from the devastation zone if the storm hits the U.S. coast with the ferocity feared by forecasters."

Seriously. Postpone the convention. Send help down there. For everyone's sake, don't turn this into a campaign stop...

BRAVO.

2008-08-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

Brilliant, brilliant speech. Not only that, brilliant ideas, wrapped in a forceful and effective (but classy as ever) rebuttal of those nasty, puerile insults that have been leveled at him over the past several weeks. In line with some of my own recent comments, Andrew Sullivan hit the nail on the head:

The McCain campaign set Obama up as a celebrity airhead, a Paris Hilton of wealth and elitism. And he let them portray him that way, and let them over-reach, and let them punch him again and again ... and then he turned around and destroyed them. If the Rove Republicans thought they were playing with a patsy, they just got a reality check.
He took every assault on him and turned them around. He showed not just that he understood the experience of many middle class Americans, but that he understood how the Republicans have succeeded in smearing him. And he didn't shrink from the personal charges; he rebutted them...

I never thought I'd be this inspired by a public figure in my lifetime. This is historic, transcendent. It was theatrical, yes, but no empty theatrics here - this was a context that had been carefully crafted over the last four days in order to raise the discourse to this level, to be able to say things in prime time that have needed to be said for years now. Make no mistake, we are all fortunate to be part of this moment.

LOOK'S LIKE HE'S CATCHING ON...

2008-08-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

Via.

SLAM DUNK

2008-08-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

Durkin, who like me is prone to setting aside plenty of time in the wee hours to feed his political addiction (and then, also like me, has the nerve to turn around and blog about how politics are like jazz), brings up a point that I've also been thinking about lately:

"the events of the past few days bear out Randi Rhodes' theory that Obama has been developing a Rope-a-Dope strategy. At the very least, they remind me of one of Obama's great strengths: his ability to respond in the moment to the circumstances that surround him. (Kind of like an expert improviser.)"

Right! And like an expert improviser, the past couple of weeks indicate that Obama also knows when it's more important not to make a move. This Rope-a-Dope strategy (if we want to call it that) shows a strategic mind at work, one with the confidence, the mental equilibrium, and the coolness of character to allow the other guy time to posture and flail about, even if the other guy happens to land a few punches in the meanwhile. And that's all right, because Obama also has the intuitive sense of when to deliver a well-timed blow, in this case pouncing on McCain's latest gaffe and expertly turning it into a defining moment in this election.

The timing of Obama's Hawaii vacation coupled with the tension-building-to-a-fever-pitch text message strategy this week was political genius. On the MSNBC recap today Chris Matthews was trying to get any of his commentators to go along with his theory that all the suspense over the text message was really a veiled strategy to let the MSM (as well as everyone watching at home) conclude on their own that Biden was the right choice. I can totally buy into this. By last night it became obvious that the big reveal we were all waiting for, cell phones firmly in hand, was not so much the point of the whole exercise (which is why I wasn't so bummed out as I thought I'd be when Larry King spoiled the surprise). Nor was it simply a clever way of expanding the campaign's database of likely donors. The strategic point was rather to focus both the media and the nation's attention ever more intensely on Obama's smart, diplomatic, even "presidential" decision-making process in selecting Biden. And everything of course leads up to the explosive inevitability of that moment today in Springfield where we see the campaign coming fully together and finally going on the offensive with a remarkably clear-cut line of attack (those lines of Biden's about Senator McCain, his longtime friend, turning to the dark side during this campaign must have really hurt, boy). It's great timing, and what a spectacular way to set up a narrative for the convention next week...

Anyway, I keep waiting for a lull so I can ignore this for awhile, but I'll be damned if it doesn't seem like things are about to get really interesting...

THE CURSE OF CELEBRITY

2008-08-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the absence of late, after this crazy busy summer I've been enjoying a couple of weeks off before teaching starts up again. I've finally been able to sit down and do some reading. The last thing I finished was Philip Freeman's Running the Voodoo Down: The Electric Music of Miles Davis. More a collection of opinionated critical essays than factually accurate biography, I was slow to warm to this book (hard to top Paul Tingen's masterpiece from a few years prior) but eventually came around. Freeman's perspective may be idiosyncratic at times, but c'mon, it's Miles Davis we're talking about.

The most excellent thing about Freeman's book is the liberty he takes in exploring many of the social, cultural, and political scenes surrounding both the creation and reception of Miles's electric music. To this end, one of the areas where Freeman makes some very noteworthy points is in his appraisal of Miles's final decade, when balancing the roles of artist and celebrity really came to the fore. At that point Miles was thinking not only about what he wanted creatively, in the moment, but of his legacy (and like it or not, his fans) as well. It's here that Freeman makes the following observation:

"White America doesn't totally trust or embrace black people, but it loves black entertainers, whether they play the trumpet or shoot three-pointers. And in America, becoming famous and successful can bring with it a kind of racial transcendence. Stars from Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan to Halle Berry and Will Smith have, in many ways, left blackness behind, moving into the rarefied realm of cultural omnipotence. But this phenomenon has no impact on, or connection to, the economic or social status of American blacks as a group. It's a mediated condition, rooted entirely in celebrity."

Naturally my mind went directly to the Celeb ad that was rolled out a couple of weeks ago (because my other summer pastime is, of course, being a total political junkie):

At first I was kind of amused by this apparently sad and unfocused attack (even had a big laugh at Paris Hilton's droll response). On the surface it looks like yet another crude attempt to portray Obama's dedicated following as nothing but empty celebrity worship. After all, when the ad opens with the line "He's the biggest celebrity in the world...", I'm sure I wasn't the only one to wonder what Michael Jackson has to do with the presidential campaign (Obama is certainly gaining a hefty international reputation, but that "biggest celebrity in the world" title is quite a stretch). So immediately this connection is made with the idea that a black person can become a great entertainer, world famous even, but never so far as to be taken very seriously.

Freeman continues:

"...the blind adoration America affords its celebrities, once they're anointed, isn't the same thing as appreciating art."

Not to push any connection between Miles and Barack Obama too far, but it seems in both cases we're dealing with an endemic form of racism that extends far, far back, to minstrelsy, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and even further. From the moment that African-Americans began to push into the cultural and political mainstream there have been limitations placed on how seriously a black person could or would be taken in the public arena. Any student of jazz or twentieth century popular culture will understand this immediately. The consequences for a black musician demanding artistic credibility have been at best negative press or a limited share of the record market, at worst (in Miles's case) brutal mistreatment at the hands of police or other figures of white authority. On the political side of things the consequences have been much more severe; push too far and it becomes literally a matter of life and death.

It was inevitable that these issues would have come up in this election, despite all of the candidates' pledges to the contrary (and recently, McCain's claim that it was Obama who "played the race card" (!) by responding to the subtle (but undeniable, more on that below) racist themes in the Celeb ad). But there is a far more malevolent aspect of this emphasis on Obama's celebrity, which is the attempt to downplay his "seriousness" and push him into the role of a simplistic entertainer. It's becoming a painfully familiar refrain: "Sure, he gives great speeches, but is he ready to lead?"

No one denies that Obama has less experience in Washington than McCain. The problem in turning this equation into a strike against Obama is that you must argue that he lacks credible experience to be president - which is simply untrue. All relevant questions of judgment aside, Obama's tremendous success as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, constitutional law professor and state senator have got to speak to something... dramatic rise? against all odds? the chosen one? Take your pick.

(And if there is any Rovian, Swiftboatian turn to all of this - it's been the gradual twisting of Obama's most valuable asset, his very identity as an outsider, a non-Washington, a smart, regular joe type coming up through the cracks to clean up the terrible mess that all the folks with "experience" have gotten us into over the past eight years, twisting what ought to be his most valuable asset into a big negative, using the perception of risk, using doubt, using fear, once again, to manipulate results in the polls.)

The ever-brilliant BAGnewsNotes reveals undertones of not only rape:

...but also the unthinkable:

One commenter at BAG also references the repeated phallus imagery of the Siegessaeule (which actually merges with Obama's head at 0:08, and is mirrored by the letter 'T' dangling from Obama's name at 0:17), reinforcing the portrayal of black man as sexual predator. And of course there is the implied association of thousands of Germans chanting "Obama, Obama, Obama..." with whatever WWII fascist fantasy you might be secretly harboring.

But not even all of this fully parses just how calculatedly wicked an attack this is. Watch the video with the sound turned off, and pay careful attention to the words Obama seems to be mouthing: after the images of the two celebrity blonde women he waves and appears to say "bitch"; at 0:15 how about "screw you people"; and at 0:18 that's a very clear "WAR". That isn't coincidence, this is a carefully crafted, edited down to the millisecond, piece of insidious, racist, sexist, murderous propaganda of the worst kind. Why so bad? Because it plays on the surface with themes of spectacle and celebrity just enough so as to ensure that it will get plenty of airtime as the talking heads babble perpetually over Britney, while completely missing some of the deeper, uglier, more subliminal layers of meaning. This is far more frightening than anything we saw by this point in 2000 or 2004. And it scares the bejeezus out of me, considering how those elections ended up (voter suppression, ballot tampering...) to think of where we could be headed with this one.

Anyway, I fully expected this continuing effort on the part of Obama's opponents to paint his popularity as a negative. It started to work for Hillary towards the end of the primaries. As despicable as I considered some of her tactics at the time, the McCain campaign appears to be taking an even lower road.

So kudos to Obama for maintaining the moral high ground here, even while his campaign supplied the requisite, if somewhat tasteless response. Every time one of these bombs gets thrown at the Obama campaign I cringe, and I did in the primaries also, because shit can get ugly real fast. And being accustomed, like many these days, to having very little hope for American politics, I'm always waiting for that bubble to burst. And indeed, not only are the McCain people poking at it with every opportunity, even some of Obama's own supporters, for a while anyway, seemed ready to jump ship at any evidence of a shift towards the center.

But as Durkin writes in a kind-of-recent post:

"How much stupider could Obama be than to get hamstrung by the "PETA syndrome" -- political stances that may draw attention and engender a certain degree of moral satisfaction (for those who grasp and sympathize with their meaning), but that ultimately fail to break through the deadlock. It would be like, oh, I don't know, a jazz composer declaring that there was no redeeming value in pop music, thereby shoring up the quaint but useless notion of "high art."

Exactly! Here's Freeman again:

"Miles surely understood that. But if that was the path to enjoying the life he knew he deserved, he'd take it."

A sidenote: I wish more could be made of the fact that an Obama presidency would symbolize far more than just a black achievement, as monumentally important as that in itself would be. Those who are so quick to label him an outsider should take a closer look at his biography, put fears and apocalyptic suspicions aside, and realize that this is a momentous opportunity - this is a person who by his own life story represents everything that's quintessentially "American" - if that word still has any meaning at all beyond simple blind patriotism. Not to be overly dramatic about it, because several times now I've heard the argument that Obama is somehow post-racial more or less laughed aside. I don't agree with that premise either. I'm rather talking about the fact that it is exactly his understanding and his mastery of his own otherness that makes him such a great uniter, across lines of not only race and culture but also religion, nationality, economics, academics, even - no, especially - politics. Durkin quotes someone who points out that Obama is someone who, like a master artist, has been "working within the system to rise up through the system in order to change the system."

That doesn't frighten me at all. In fact, I quite dig that.

CAFFEINE TEST

2008-07-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

This is what two grande coffees and a four-hour drive gets you...

ON THURSDAY, ON SATURDAY

2008-07-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

Excuse the continuing gig spammage... I'm heading up to the Bayarrhea this week for a few things worth noting, first is the debut of my duo with drum master Donald Robinson. We have been talking about putting this together for a while now and I'm psyched it's going to happen. Donald has played with a number of my heroes (among them: the great Raphe Malik), and he is a real sensitive drummer who is capable of just about anything. So there's no telling where this will go...

Thursday we hit at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, and then Saturday afternoon we'll do a live set at KFJC in Los Altos Hills. You can stream it on iTunes radio or here.

Late on Saturday I'm playing with another distinguished colleague, Long Beach composer/guitarist/producer Chris Schlarb's Twilight and Ghost Stories ensemble. The story behind that provocative band name is Schlarb's intensely beautiful (and conceptually brilliant) new album of the same title. He's assembled a completely different group to perform the music at the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival this weekend:

Expect a thorough analysis (and regular blogging to resume) after I get back...

THE RETRO METRO SETRO

2008-07-13T23:56:00.002-07:00

Converging on Metro Galleries last Friday night for the newest installment of the jazz and improv series I've been curating: Jeff Kaiser (quartertone trumpet/electronics) + Steuart Liebig (contrabass guitar/electronics) and then Kris Tiner (trumpet/flugelhorn) + Jonathan Moritz (tenor/soprano saxophone) + Chris Welcome (guitar) + James Ilgenfritz (contrabass). A beautiful group of people, no doubt. Here's proof:

DAYS BETWEEN

2008-07-08T22:46:00.000-07:00

I just came across this performance of "Days Between", a piece I wrote years ago for a good friend, (now) Boston-based flautist Andrea Lieberherr. The composition is for three alto flutes + solo dancer and this was its second performance, in the Gamelan Room at CalArts in October of 2004. The flautists here are Andrea (center), Reiko Wanabe (right), and Terese Wagner (left). The dancer is Allyson Boell and I believe the choreography is her own.

I didn't attend this performance (or collaborate on it) so it is curious to note the difference between this version and the original, which was choreographed and danced by Miyuki Kobayashi. Allyson emphasizes a very lyrical, dramatic (sometimes almost Javanese?) aspect of the music and the result is quite beautiful to watch. But this is drastically different than the way the piece was initially conceived with Miyuki. I remember that her thing was to really explore the space around and between the musicians as well as the boundaries of the hall (the walls, doors, and the floor), activating the performance space as a musical time-space.

Indeed, when I wrote the piece I was thinking of a connection between time and distance - how in the anticipation of waiting for something to happen, an interval of time can be perceived as a kind of space, an actual lack of proximity or even a distinct separation. There is something of that embedded in the design of the music, which follows a melody line broken up in space between the three flautists - not hocketed per se, but more like a continuous overlapping, anticipating and delaying, all attempting to confuse and blend the performance space with musical time. So the music was composed not so much as a backdrop to the dance as it was intended to exist in a spatial relationship with it. My program notes, which are partially reproduced at the actual YouTube link, go into more detail about this idea.

I don't think this spatial aspect of the music comes across in the video as much as it would have in the actual space. But I don't get so hung up about all that, mostly because I'm fascinated by the way this performance becomes really another thing altogether on the video screen. The camera work has a lot to do with that - it has its own dance going on as it follows Allyson's movements, sometimes zooming in on faces in the audience and out again... and rather than my original idea of writing music to activate a still space, here the musicians become a very still element that anchors a very active space.

(I was just talking to Nate Hubbard about how YouTube is changing the way artists conceive of their audience. Case in point, Nate and I played a gig recently where less than a handful of people were actually present in the hall. Ordinarily this would be very disappointing... but the performance was being filmed and recorded, and during the performance we all knew it was eventually going to end up on the internet. Sure enough, now the excerpts are posted here, here, and here. So far the three clips have 215 views between them - not so good by YouTube standards but for an improvised music show 215 listeners would have been quite the success story. And this "extended audience" will of course get gradually bigger and bigger. So my question is, how does/should/will all of this affect the psychology of a performer, or the actual dynamics of a live performance? With audiences for new music arguably on the decline at the same time that artists are more and more capable of potentially unlimited self-dissemination of video and other electronic media, will live performances become more like recording sessions, where the music doesn't actually become itself, doesn't fulfill it's cultural function until after it is performed?)

A KIND OF BLIND LOVE

2008-06-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

I'm just now getting caught up on 3+ weeks of blog reading, and today I found this great post by Larry at Funky16Corners paying tribute to The Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You", one of the most transcendent performances of a pop song, ever. Like a lot of people I'm sure, this song is deeply rooted in my subconscious, like an early, early memory that I don't have any words or images for. It's just there, along with mom and dad and my first dog and the smell of the big tree I used to climb in our front yard... And more importantly it's a song that stays good; I still go back and listen to it quite often.

Larry makes a few keen observations:

"There’s something special about the spare instrumentation - pretty much just piano, drums and guitar – contrasted with a rich, velvety blanket of human voices, all of it arranged to perfection (whoever came up with the “shoo-bop-sh-bops” ought to be awarded some variety of the Nobel Prize) that simply blows my mind."

Indeed. And it's not only that clever doo-wop hook, Nate Nelson's flawless lead vocal, or even that incessantly repetitive (in a good way!) 12/8 piano figure that keeps coming back again and again... it's that there are so many small things that fall into just the right places: that harmonically ambiguous beginning (with the bizarre placement of those "obsessive, almost dark" first two lines that rival only the opening of "God Only Knows" for most surprising lyrical intro to a love ballad); the eerie chorus effect on the guitar line doubled with the bass; a seamless background vocal arrangement over those harmonic left turns taking us into and out of the bridge; that soaring, wistful falsetto that becomes more and more prominent as we near the end, and don't get me started on the production (notice the subtle panning effect at the very end? rapture!).

Larry again:

"I’d go as far as to say that this is a signal record that verily transcends the construct (constriction) of genre, elevating itself to an entirely different level. It’s almost the musical equivalent of a meditative exercise, where you just close your eyes, allow yourself to be enveloped by the music (which you all probably do every now and then anyway) and just kind of feel it. Whether the Flamingos intended it or not, this record is possessed of a kind of otherworldly magic."

Quite right. And for a song that's been covered by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and many other legends, The Flamingos really did everything right here. My other favorite version has to be Lester Bowie's with Brass Fantasy from 1985 (out of print and hard to find, although it's available digitally on iTunes or here). Ten and a half minutes of lyrical doo wop brass bliss, played as buttery slick as only Lester can, and then midway through he rides a key change as things get slower and looser and slower and looser.

Anyway, here are The Flamingos to play you out... sounding like 1959, looking like 1979!

THE FACE OF CHANGE - VI

2008-06-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Last one. It was certainly refreshing to see the level of interest in our elections among both the French and the English. Particularly during the week that Obama wrapped up the nomination, the impression I got both from the media coverage and from people I talked to reflected a very genuine enthusiasm about this candidate's capability to be a real transformational leader... so different from the tabloid games being played up by the American media.

At least we're paying more attention to our own elections this time around. But our general ignorance to the world outside our borders is as inexcusable as it is unreciprocated. They seem to care far more about our politics than we care about theirs. How many Americans could even name the President of France? Or the British Prime Minister?

TOURIST POINT OF VIEW

2008-06-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

Now that the music is over and Kim is here the real work begins: cramming as much sightseeing as we possibly can into just five days in Paris and three in (and around) London. We're celebrating five years of being married, after all, so no slacking on this trip.

Coming back to Paris tonight we both agreed that this city is certainly more our style. Funny we should both feel that way, that the country where we don't speak the language should seem more like home. And after staying over two weeks in France I felt this very strongly when we left, even began to really miss it in a homesick kind of way.

It may have had to do with the somewhat rushed nature of our time in London, squeezing in a day trip to the countryside, but we did cover a fair amount of the city and the impression was very much that of a place in flux, confused even, perpetually under construction with an incredibly jumbled sense of architecture that awkwardly juxtaposes classical opulence with stark urban modernity. Paris seems far more stable, centered, focused. The bustling, big city attitude is certainly there but underneath that surface is a pronounced sense of calm, as if however active things get, they all will inevitably and continually return to stillness.

My camera battery died in London so I didn't take many photos other than these few from our trip to Stonehenge and Bath:

Both were highlights for me. In London we also visited the impressive new Tate Modern where I finally got to spend some time with Rothko's Seagram Murals. Amazing. Talk about a continual return to stillness. I'll shoot back with more on that later.

MANDALA PHOTOS

2008-06-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Toulouse photographer Pierre Ricci has posted a really nice set of photographs from last week's show at Le Mandala. Here they are.

Thanks, Pierre!

Also: Troy Collins recently reviewed Stratostrophic at All About Jazz.

Thanks, Troy!