Get Well, Octopus / Orange Moon Songs

Sadly, my favourite eight-limbed percussionist, Germaine Liu plus Mark Zurawinski, came down with a big flu on Tuesday and couldn’t take part in the program with Michael Keith, David Sait, and me that I’d listed as Plumber Octopus Cracker Shoe. In a pinch, ST regular John Oswald joined me in the first set, making the evening JOUST Cracker & Shoe. It was a real treat to hear David and Michael, whom I hadn’t heard, I believe, since they played at Lennox Contemporary Gallery as part of the inaugural MUSIC(in)GALLERIES in July 2006.

Michael was in particularly fine form, extracting some extremely delicate things out of his guitar, loops, delay, and other effects. At the best moments, he created a marvelous, shifting-landscape context for David’s always tastefully timed unamplified guzheng gestures. The only problematic instances, to my ears, were Michael’s two extremely brief outbursts of heavily distorted shredding. While certainly not overly loud, his distorted guitar tone dominated the soundfield in a way that painted David’s guzheng – not really the most dynamic of instruments – into an acoustic corner. Interestingly, however, these episodes were both followed by moments of great clarity, and Michael – certainly a savvy, experienced improviser – could well have planned such effective contrast as part of his intuitive strategies.

Disappointingly, last night’s Element Choir concert was muted not only by Christine Duncan’s absence (she is working in BC this week) but also by low attendance by choir members. Only seven were on hand and, without a clear leader in the bunch, the show was extremely tentative to start. It’s clear that some in the group really don’t grasp that these residency sessions are performances not workshops (despite the small audiences) and without Christine’s hand on the tiller last night, it was extremely rare that any collective focus was fostered. As always, there were some positively brilliant moments – who knew that a scream by Parmela Attariwala could actually curdle blood? – but the night was dominated by overlong and pretty self-indulgent bits of theatrical silliness. Some blamed (credited?) the strange forces emanating from the full moon and orange-mooned eclipse for the uncharacteristic state of affairs. I do not wish to sound dismissive of forces that I can’t possibly understand but, since nobody suggested that inattention and a lack of good musical decision-making are more likely culprits, I will do so now.

I’ll be crisscrossing Germany with Maestro Ricardo Marsella for the next few weeks, so this weblog will be on hiatus until I return. Thus, it’s ST’s Non-Reading Week. School’s Out. Have fun in Fort Lauderdale, kids.

Thanks to Ken Aldcroft, John Oswald, Pete Johnston, and Nick Fraser, who will be presiding over events here in my absence.

Folk Forms (or Folks Form)

Try to say that one ten times, quickly.

Due to some scheduling vagaries, I’ve had a string of Thursdays become available, and I was very happy to offer last night to violinist & violist David Prentice and bassist Aaron Lumley for a Valentine’s joust. This pair was here about a month ago (just before the inception of this site) and I was quite taken by the rapport between them and, once again, how totally brilliant David is. Last night, they picked up right where they left off, twisting knotty, this-follows-that improvisations into what may as well be folk songs. David has the rare ability among improvisers to play idiomatically ‘free’ but to develop his ideas tunefully and melodically (broadly speaking), as if a narrative logic overrides the temptation to shorten ideas within the gestural logic of the moment. It’s a capacity that he shares with the ‘likes’ of Leroy Jenkins, Paul Rutherford, and Mario Schiano, each a hero of mine for similar reasons.

Aaron is clearly the junior partner in this duo but, while he tends on occasion to default to ideas with short shelf lives, he demonstrated again how high he’s climbed on a steep learning curve. It’s obvious that Aaron relishes the big, Mingus-y sound he’s getting out of his gut strings, and he really digs into his instrument in an occasionally self-absorbed search and discovery of fantastic sounds, but last night he proved how fine and supportive an accompanist he can be in this kind of context. It’s a context, perhaps ironically, where a successful ‘accompanist’ generates roughly half of the material.

For the second set, David and Aaron invited audients John Oswald and myself (a group known in the annals as JOUST) to join them for a good-natured spar. No folk songs were in the offing here, since both John and I were feeling perhaps too fanciful to let things reside anywhere too simply. Instead, the quartet lived in a web of darting lines and little blats that resulted in a joyful disorientation. Great fun. For arcane reasons that tickle my most nerd-like sensibilities, I propose that the four-piece – if and (hopefully) when we play together again – be called PLUTO. We’ll travel the spaceways.