Anthony Braxton Quartet - Quartet (England) 1985 (Burning Ambulance, 2025)

Roundtable conversation with Gary Chapin, Andrew Choate, and Lee Rice Epstein

We join our trio of intrepids in the middle of a conversation about the new Burning Ambulance release of Anthony Braxton Quartet “bootlegs,” Quartet (England) 1985. The release presents music recorded by Graham Lock, who traveled with the quartet to write his book,Forces in Motion . Adding to the original Leo recordings of the tour, we now get sets from Sheffield, Bristol, Leicester, and Southampton, in addition to sound check recordings from throughout the tour. If you are into this kind of thing, the set amounts to 6+ hours of manna from Heaven.

Gary Chapin
Let's start with the magnitude that we talked about because it seems like this has always been an iconic tour. Partly based on the Leo recordings—which are great—but also because of Graham Locke's book. This is probably the most well documented tour in this kind of music. So, is this an iconic tour because of the documentation or because of the performances themselves?

Andrew Choate
I think that's a great question. The music definitely stands on its own and listening to all of these further recordings made me think this is the heart of Braxton's music for me, It's where I discovered his music, you know, the first time somebody played me some of his music. 16 years old. They showed me Forces in Motion and I was instantly intrigued and wanted to get to know more.

Graham's book helps a lot, but his book also talks about other aspects of Braxton's music. For me personally, this quartet was the height of when Braxton had a working band, and could do stuff on a really regular basis. They have this concentrated tour opportunity and I think it allowed a certain essence of his music to really get strong.

Lee Rice Epstein
Maybe before hearing these additional recordings, I might have said it was the book that helped cement these recordings. That tour is critical, but hearing more performances by the group—

You know what Andrew's getting at? It's a really transformational time for Braxton. He had already hit a bunch of highs, like his whole Arista run.

Andrew Choate
Yeah.

Lee Rice Epstein
Like Montreaux/Berlin (1976), I go back to that a ton. That's a classic live Braxton. But in a way—listening to it in 2025—it’still just kind of like, yeah, they're really really out there in the compositional structure, but they're also still doing a lot of head, solo, solo, solo, head, right? And England (1985) is like something else entirely. He's got three very brave musicians who are pushing as hard against expectations as he is. Marilyn Crispell's probably one of his most important all time partners in music.

Gary Chapin
I actually saw this quartet in New York City, and that was amazing. One of the things that I loved about this period was that Braxton was moving into his own universe. But he was still drawing from those compositions around the 40s and the thirty-threes and the twenty-threes. I saw them do 23G, which—I love that piece very much

Andrew Choate
There're a couple of sort of paradoxical things that I wrote down while I was listening. I kept thinking about Braxton's humbleness. Like he's writing these compositions and getting people to play them and push back. But I heard a sort of fundamental humility in the music, which I had never heard before. Like he's really excited about the music, but it's notFor Alto. The structures that he's created, and the young musicians with him pushing and pulling, emphasize that sense.

Lee Rice Epstein14:08
I for sure hear it. I've never met him. I only know people who know him, but he seems like one of the great humility engines in music.

[...]

Lee Rice Epstein
So what did you guys think [of the new set]? Even when you first heard they were coming out like, were you, “Oh yeah, that's gonna be all gold” or a little bit like, “I don't know.” They were very upfront about the fact that these were not professional recordings.

Gary Chapin
My first thought was that this is going to be extremely interesting. My second thought was that I am no longer the kind of person who listens to every archival recording recorded in the club bathroom with a mic snaked out to the bandstand. That kind of stuff just doesn't get me anymore. Since they warned us that it might not be great production, I said, “I'll manage my expectations.”

But there was nothing about the production that detracts from the music! For me it's just astounding that in 19—I don't know, what was that—80? 81? That they were able to get that quality from like a hand recording that Graham did.

Andrew Choate
Yeah, my first thought was also, “I bet the production is just not going to be very good.” But, I'm interested in the music and I can filter that out. But listening to it: these are absolutely acceptable recordings, really. The balance: you hear the differences in the halls. It's like, “Wow, this is, this is what a live concert feels like.

Gary Chapin
You can even hear the bass very clearly, which is so rare.

Lee Rice Epstein
One of them—I think it's the Bristol set—sounds like you're in a small room. And you’ve got all four instruments—I wasn’t ready for the quality of the playing. In a way it’s like the Leo sets were the safer ones because there is some very, very out playing here.

Gary Chapin
The opening of Sheffield, which is the first cut of the whole set, was such a blistering statement of purpose. It was just amazing, like a supernova of sound right from the start, so much energy. And it didn’t calm down for nearly 10 minutes.

Andrew Choate
A supernova of sound is a great way to put it because it is. It is really dense, it is really lively and it just grabs you right from the start.

Lee Rice Epstein
So, because I can't help myself. I made a playlist of the whole tour in order. I was looking at Graham's book a little bit online. Sheffield kicks off this set and is the first, yeah, but it's like the third, the third stop on their tour. By that point, they've really warmed up. And they sound it. They sound right. They don't let up for a minute. There's no coasting.

Gary Chapin
They're always interesting. There's a lot of emotional energy being spent.

Lee Rice Epstein
Additional thoughts? I don't know if we want to get into individual sets. We've talked about the whole of it, but are there specific highs? Listeners who haven't dipped into this yet, can get the set or you can get the individual concerts.

Andrew Choate
I mean, I would say if you're interested in this music, just get the whole thing. There's so much. I think the one show I came back to the most often though was Leicester, partly because in the first set there's just an extraordinary Mark Dresser solo.
There's also an extraordinary Gerry Hemingway solo, and they go on for more significant lengths of time than I think I would have guessed from reading Graham's book or from thinking about Braxton's compositions. They're significant.

Lee Rice Epstein
It's funny. This is exactly why I like the round table format for something like this, because I have my own favorite set that I've been going back to most, which is Bristol. So we each named a different one, right? Which is very fun, but I concur 100%. I think like anyone who's interested, there's no reason not to hear all, all, all the music. There's delight in every set.

Andrew Choate
We're really lucky that there's enough interest to have this stuff out there. It’s on a different level. There's no way not to be rewarded.

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Okkyung Lee - Yeo-Neun (여는) (Shelter Press, 2020) ****½

By Lee Rice Epstein

There is something to be said for patience, for allowing an artist’s work to blossom, not necessarily because the music “grows on you.” It’s more apt to say, with some albums it’s the listener growing into the music. When it comes to cellist Okkyung Lee—much like, say, harpist Zeena Parkins or trumpeter Peter Evans—there is an initial thrill upon hearing a new recording, followed by hours delightfully replaying, picking apart, and surrendering to it. In what ways joy and reckoning manifest largely depend on the album in question. Much like Parkins and Evans, Lee is a superlative musician, whose solo albums present myriad views of the player and her instrument and whose ensembles seem to have, over the years, ignited a renewable passion for reflection and redefinition. For, as light and airy an impression Yeo-Neun presents at first listen, there’s a heaviness to Lee’s newest album, as much an object to explore as it is a sonic work of art to surrender to.

The space within and around Yeo-Neun’s book owes much to the ensemble line up of Lee, Maeve Gilchrist on harp, Jacob Sacks on piano, and Eivind Opsvik on bass. The overlapping timbres of harp, piano, cello, and bass generate some plainly beautiful structures, suck as on the opening sequences in “Another Old Story (옛날이야기)” with Lee placing the quartet first in call-and-response duos, then stacking the voices, guiding them into a four-part improvisation. The stark melodies and timbral harmonics showcase Lee’s celebrated compositional gifts. Gilchrist, a Scottish musician who plays Celtic (or lever) harp, is a superb fit for Lee, who draws inspiration from Korean folk and pop, melding these musics with Western compositional tropes and free improvisation. With her wide-ranging work in Celtic, classical, soundtrack, pop, and folk music, Gilchrist’s harp provides Lee with a new sonic palette to draw from. On “Uiro (Up and Up and Up),” four lines move in counterpoint, with harp and cello knocking up against bass and piano. The fullness of Opsvik’s bass centers the album, especially when he’s paired with Sacks. Their duet on “The Longest Morning,” in which they are eventually joined by Gilchrist, is sublime. If there could be a standout on such a well-conceived album, it might be this one, which, like “In Stardust (for Kang Kyung-Ok),” contrasts a traditional Western melodiousness with a so-called avant-garde solo section. It’s not only that the contrasts exist but how they are connected that make these tracks particularly special.

What may be thought of as an inherent clashing of ideals is resolved by their mutual embrace, forcing a reframing of assumptions. It’s a space where Lee and Opsvik both have spent a lot of time, and the foregrounding of both cello and bass in the mix is viscerally thrilling. Yeo-Neun is, perhaps, Lee’s finest ensemble statement to date, and this quartet provides one of the best transitions between her extensive solo catalog and ensemble recordings. For all the reflective, autobiographical passages throughout her discography, the emotional openness presented here is powerful. And set to a music that subtly unpicks all the assumptions about what’s melody or harmony, what timbres are traditional or acceptable, what’s directed and what’s democratic or cooperative. These are the ways in which a listener gradually crawls further and further into the music, exploring the unanswered questions posed by this album. In all its 40 minutes, there are few moments as affecting as the final 10 seconds of “Then, There (그때 그자리),” the near-silence of the instruments fading away, the notes balanced as on a harmonic seesaw—precise, yet precarious.

Digital and limited-run vinyl available direct via Bandcamp:

Or, order through your preferred brick-and-mortar shop.

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Lee Rice Epstein

Lee Rice Epstein lives in California with his wife, kids, and their massive libraries of music and books. He started playing the drums and listening to big band music in the 5th grade, then graduated to jazz combo and Coltrane by high school. When he discovered his wife also liked Albert Ayler and John Zorn, he knew it was true love. Cribbing from Anthony Braxton, he approaches all things in life (from listening and reading to cooking, running, and gardening) as both a friendly experiencer and enthusiastic amateur.

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Alexander Hawkins - Togetherness Music (Intakt, 2021) ****½

By Lee Rice Epstein

Kicking off 2021 with a major work for small orchestra, Riot Ensemble, and Evan Parker, pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins brings this epic new work straight out of a brief reprieve from the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. Set aside, for a moment, anything you may have recently read or heard regarding Parker's thoughts on the pandemic, Togetherness Music is a remarkable assembly of many of the UK's best players. Like his previous magnum opus, Unit[e], this latest showcases Hawkins channeling the lessons of Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams, and forging his own, clear path forward with a unique lexicon.

In what's quickly becoming a typical Hawkins pattern, the polymathic lineup reflects his multi-perspective view of composition and performance. Sound groupings and melodic patterns intersect with the ensemble as light through a prism, with orchestral instrumentation inclusive of electronics and doubled-voicings. The album features Hawkins on piano, Parker on soprano sax, Percy Pursglove on trumpet, Rachel Musson and James Arben on flutes, Musson on tenor, Arben on bass clarinet, Hannah Marshall on cello, Benedict Taylor on viola, Neil Charles on double bass, Mark Sanders on drums, and Matthew Wright on electronics. In addition, the members of the Riot Ensemble appearing here include Mandhira de Saram and Marie Schreer on violin, Stephen Upshaw on viola, Louise McMonagle on cello, and Marianne Schofield on double bass. The doubling of viola, cello, and double bass across the Hawkins and Riot ensembles provides the recording with a sonic heft that balances out the winds and brass.

Structurally, the album is a mirror twin of itself, opening with a ten-minute solo from Parker, in which the ensemble rises to meet him with an almost Lygeti-esque progression. Parker's technique is simply unmatched, and his choices do expertly converge with the rest of the group. But it's as Parker's line wends its way to Pursglove's, which moves to the fore on the second track, “Sea No Shore,” that the structure of the whole suite begins to reveal its form. At this point, as well, the music takes on tones of Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd Orchestra. The structure and form feel commingled in a way that Hawkins has been moving towards for several albums, and the tonal warmth of “Ensemble Equals Together” is another point along his trajectory exploring community, organized improvisation, and a kind of social harmonics. Towards the end, as strings fall away into a tense, minor space, Parker's sax attempts to keep the group aloft. The tension is expert, Marshall and Taylor dashing forwards towards a suspense-laden finale.

Contrasting with Parker's solo, Hawkins takes the lead on “Leaving the Classroom of a Beloved Teacher” with a slightly relaxed opening. Within the space of about two minutes, however, he's toured stride, swing, and free alike, dipping into a century of Waller, Ellington, and Taylor. Charles, one of Hawkins's longtime musical partners, is so perfectly suited to duetting on this one, and the rest of the ensemble circles them both with sparkling, contrapuntal motion. For anyone who has followed Hawkins for some time, a title referencing baobabs promises something special. “Ecstatic Baobabs” marks the sixth recorded variation, following recordings by Hawkins solo, with trio and ensemble, and with the Convergence Quartet. The voicing in this version echoes previous variations, Easter eggs for a close listen, with Marshall and Taylor again taking the spotlight. This family of pieces often gives performers the chance to show their patient, meditative side, putting listeners into an impressionistic space, similar to the effect of a Joseph Jarman composition. Again, this is Hawkins drawing on a deep wellspring of inspiration, and it finds its apotheosis in “Optimism of the Will,” which reflects and builds upon “Ensemble Equals Together,” bringing the suite to its structural conclusion. As Hawkins explained elsewhere , the basic structure looks like this:

1: Solo feature — 2: Improvised contrast — 3: Tutti culmination

4: Solo feature — 5: Composed contrast — 6: Tutti culmination

And while it's admittedly useful to understand this, from a technical perspective, in fact the whole ensemble performs so successfully, one can easily glean the intention without much parsing. Gliding from movement to movement, Musson, Pursglove, Arben, and Parker give a series of striking performances, embracing the opportunity to perform in concert—even if not “in concert”—and giving themselves up to the goals of the music. If that sounds lofty, it's important to recall where we were at roughly a year ago, as Hawkins assembled the musicians in person to record the suite. Stormy, turbulent, unknown, 2020 was many things, memorable above all for the global COVID-19 outbreak. So much of last year's new music was performed in isolated solo, recorded at home by the artists themselves. And so, the fact of a large ensemble recording, wearing its utopic vision on its sleeve, seems improbable, at best. And yet, here we are, and everyone involved has done the near impossible and made what's already a highlight of the new year. Good on them.

Read an interview by Lee Rice Epstein with Alexander Hawkins here.

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Peter Brötzmann Tribute (Day 1 of 3)

Peter Brötzmann. Photo by Peter Gannushkin

 He was the most aggressive, uncompromising, radical, avant-garde jazz musician of European free jazz (even if he did not like the term). And he was so loud that he inspired people to create a verb for his saxophone style ( to brötz, which refers to the relentless way of playing the saxophone with all the power he had). Perhaps the most amazing thing about him was that you never walked out of one of his concerts the same way you walked in. Maybe that's what makes a truly great musician - that they change their listeners, again and again. Peter Brötzmann has always tried not to live up to expectations. That also includes occasional failure. On June 22, this icon of improvised music passed away, and he has left a real void in the musical landscape. The Free Jazz Collective bows to this great musician by reviewing our favorite albums.

 - Martin Schray

Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968; Cien Fuegos, 2018)

No one who has heard the beginning of this album will ever forget it. Machine Gun ’s 45-second intro represents one of jazz’s most distinctive listening experiences. In many cases even rough music tends to wear out over the years, becoming nicer and more listenable the more you hear it. With Machine Gun , this guiding principle is suspended, because the music has lost none of its destructive power. Until today it’s against most listening habits, jazz conventions and marketing strategies: Even 55 years after its first release, Machine Gun is an overwhelming, brutal, sometimes hardly endurable record. The horns roar without ceasing, we hear the purest form of energy, the frequencies of the saxophone have mutated into a percussion drill. Played loud, this must have been the sound of the trumpets and trombones that brought down the walls of Jericho. For lovers of traditional jazz, it’s the devil incarnate. And anyone who listens to this album knows why. It’s one of the few records that can still set a room on fire today, possibly only comparable to Jimi Hendrix’s version of “Star Spangled Banner“.

Even though Brötzmann later denied a political dimension of the recording, he did tell Downbeat Magazine on the occasion of the record’s 50th anniversary something else: “There is no contradiction between creation and destruction. I never thought music was a healing force of the universe. (...) We wanted to change things; we needed a new start. In Germany, we all grew up with the same thing: Never again. But in the government, all the same old Nazis were still there. We were angry. We wanted to do something.“ However, the album is not only a musical and political statement. Machine Gun was also a milestone in terms of production. Until today, many think that there was a concert in the “Lila Eule“ in Bremen, the place where the album was recorded. But in fact, the musicians had traveled to use the club as a studio. At that time, uncommercial recording facilities were far from being as available as they are today, and the musicians - by the way, the crème de la crème of European free jazz - used the opportunity to record two days there. The album is one of the beginnings of a wave of self-releases and the formation of independent labels in the field of avant-garde and free jazz in Europe. A landmark - in many ways.

 - Martin Schray

Peter Brötzmann Sextet/Quartet - Nipples (Calig, 1969); More Nipples (Avatistic, 2003)

These albums are touchstones for the lot of us fanatics I imagine. It’s perhaps one of the greatest sessions of freely improvised sound ever put to tape. Powerfully inspired music played with absolute urgency and intensity by a single-serving lineup that only managed to produce this one session (luckily for us). On these albums Brötzmann is joined by fellow legends Evan Parker, Derek Bailey (on the sextet pieces) along with Fred Van Hove, Han Bennink, and the legendary Globe Unity Orchestra co-founder Buschi Niebergall on bass. The music, as you well know, is a fierce and thorny affair. So many assertions and questions, dances, disagreements, misdirection - all in the name of good old catharsis. The band ties itself into stiff knots of tension, periodically wiping the slate clean through the sheer power of their playing, breaking through walls of gridlock into more enlightened spaces. While the quartet tracks can’t quite match the magic of the sextet offerings, they are also delightfully prickly affairs from the Brötz/Van Hove/Bennink trio plus Niebergall. One other element that’s easy to forget in these days of easy living where most any and all music is available instantly is that the original LP used to be rare as hens teeth, being out of print for ~30 years. Thankfully that isn’t the case any longer and we’re all able to have our eardrums regularly exfoliated by these masters. It’s definitely one of Brötzmann’s early career highlights, and while it’s not quite as monumental as Machine Gun what it does deliver is a more nuanced version of his archetype. 

- Nick Metzger

Peter Brötzmann, Fred Van Hove, and Han Bennink plus Mangelsdorff  - Live in Berlin '71 (FMP, 1971, 1991)

An early live recording from FMP with the early Brötzmann trio augmented by the great Albert Mangelsdorff. The concerts from August 28th and 29th, 1971, were originally released across three LPs, Elements (FMP 0030), Couscouss de la Mauresque (FMP 0040), and The End (FMP 0050). The single release, now known as Live In Berlin '71, should rank extremely high on anybody's list of best FMP albums. Relatively early in each players' development, it's nevertheless one of the finest albums of improvised music. Brötzmann sounds super raw and intense, yet there's a very clear sense of what he's trying to do and where he might be going. Over the decades that followed, you can hear these ideas recapitulate in fascinating ways that we've only just begun to process. 

- Lee Rice Epstein

Schwarzwaldfahrt - Peter Brötzmann & Han Bennink (FMP, 1977; Trost, 2022)

 Arguably, one of the most important documents in either artist's careers (and in the history of improvised music). It's been reissued twice, first in an expanded release from Atavistic, and more recently in an updated book, with additional photographs and new text from David Keenan. Schwarzwaldfahrt is both a holy grail and a rosetta stone, a wooly beast and a precious gemstone. It may be the album I've returned to most in my ongoing project of better understanding the music of Brötzmann and Bennink.

- Lee Rice Epstein

Peter Brötzmann, Harry Miller, Louis Moholo- Opened, But Hardly Touched (FMP, 1981; Cien Fuegos 2014)

Brötzmann’s preference for the trio format dates back to his early days, when he recorded his debut in 1967 and to his insane super group with drummer Han Bennink and pianist Fred Van Hove, which ended abruptly due to constant friction between the three (something that might happen when alpha dogs clash into each other, as Brötzmann would put it). The years that followed showed Brötzmann meandering between different groups, but he was not really satisfied until 1979, when he found he found perfect partners in two musicians who changed his way idea of playing by connecting their South African roots with his music . Brötzmann was very happy with Harry Miller (bass) and Louis Mofolo (drums) since he thought that he was musically in a cul de sac and the two offered him a perspective off the beaten tracks. Unfortunately, the trio didn’t last as long as he has wished (because of Miller’s tragic and untimely death). However, the experience of playing especially with Louis Moholo was crucial for him and renewed or better deepened his appreciation of African-American drumming, as he told my friend Ernst Nebhuth after a concert in Dachau. You only need to listen to the first piece, “Eine kleine Nachtmarie“, and you know what he means. Moholo’s percussion sounds as if a heavy rain is coming down on a sheet of corrugated metal, Miller counters it with abstract arco shapes, and Brötzmann’s long, unusually elegant lines show him from a whole new side. The title piece is also a study in patience. The sprawling arcs of tension create a different warmth and depth of interaction not known from Brötzmann’s other trios. Even if the old fire breather shines through here and there, Brötzmann reveals himself as an elegiac melodist, who draws from Albert Ayler as well as from Ben Webster and obviously from the blues. He is technically much more accomplished, his way of playing is more open. There are only two albums by this trio. Opened, But Hardly Touched combines two live recordings from 1980, and not only me would have liked to see where their way might have led them.

-  Martin Schray

Last Exit- Last Exit (Enemy, 1986)

For me Last Exit was an initial spark, it’s the band through which I was ultimately won over to free jazz (and with whom I first came across Peter Brötzmann). In 1986, the project was put together by bassist Bill Laswell, who was one of the hippest producers in the music business at the time (Material, Herbie Hancock, then later Mick Jagger, PIL, Motörhead, etc.). Similar to rock, Last Exit was a free-jazz supergroup that would give the genre an unexpected infusion of blood. Laswell called it “collision music“, he wanted to unleash four musical alpha dogs to let the sparks fly. And on their debut Brötzmann, Laswell, Sonny Sharrock (guitar) and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums) let them fly. There had never been anything like that before, nor really since. For Brötzmann, the main attraction of the whole thing was that he found something completely new for him here. In the mid-1980s, he realized that total freedom can be restrictive in itself, so he looked for an alternative to traditional free jazz (a bit similar to his collaboration with Oxbox in 2018). Last Exit’s approach was to start from spontaneously created, rough and tough forms - blues (“Catch As Catch Can“ could be a Cream riff before it completely spills out), hard rock, or New York No Funk that dissolves into a collective improvisational mess before the musicians are recaptured and the music gets some structure again (“Pig Freedom“). Even if a lot of the music was improvised, the basis always reminded of the song format. Laswell and Ronald Shannon Jackson provided the almost classical rhythmic framework, pushing Brötzmann and Sharrock mercilessly, who responded with squealing, shrill notes, shrieks and brutal noise. With Last Exit there was no pardon, it was always pure intensity. But what was more, it showed Brötzmann how well his sound fits in such a context. The band existed from 1986 to the early 1990s, Sharrock’s death in 1994 was the reason for the breakup.

- Martin Schray

 

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Darius Jones - fluXkit Vancouver (its suite but sacred) (Northern Spy Records/We Jazz Records, 2023)

By Lee Rice Epstein

One of the most imaginative, dynamic artists, Darius Jones followed his first solo alto album (2021’s Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) ) with, arguably, the most impressive work of his career, thus far. His latest, fluXkit Vancouver ( its suite but sacred), commissioned by the Vancouver-based Western Front and released this fall in a collaborative venture between Northern Spy Records and We Jazz Records, debuts a new musical language, designed by Jones, that features, “extended technique moments to be unique to each individual player.” As with his albums in the Man’ish Boybook of music, the intersection of aural, visual, and physical is foregrounded on fluXkit Vancouver, bringing players and listeners together into a collaborative receiving space, where making the sounds that form the music intersects with experiencing the performance.

The group features a new recording lineup for Jones, with the great Gerald Cleaver on drums, and a nontraditional string quartet with Joshua and Jesse Zubot on violins, Peggy Lee on cello, and James Meger on double bass. Incepted in 2019, fluXkit Vancouver draws directly on Jones’s personal experience with the city. Jones had to restart workshops with the group after cancelling performances in 2020, and that break allowed the music to, in his words, “gestate.” In addition to the 25 visual directions created for this music, the gestation period seems to have provided the players with time to ruminate on all the ways they could perform the music—or, perhaps, in the parlance of a Fluxkit, assemble (as well as disassemble and reassemble) the components contained within.

FluXkit Vancouveropens with a short, invocation from Jones, answered by Cleaver and Meger, who, throughout the album, straddles the roles of rhythm section and string quartet. As conceptually brilliant as the material is, Jones has rarely played with such clarity and depth of feeling. He sounds more exposed than even on Raw Demoon Alchemy, partly because of the way this music relies heavily on his subsequent direction and sublimation to the ensemble. It’s a dazzling performance, with superb leaps and references to traditional jazz, which he plays against occasionally spiky, modernist violin lines. The Zubot brothers, well versed in chamber, symphony, and jazz motifs, play brilliantly together with Lee and Meger, the collective sonic environment is warm, bold, and inviting.

Lyrically circular motifs, like aural curlicues, recur throughout, syntactical guideposts in the hour-long suite. And throughout, Cleaver’s pulsing swing showcasing, as always, his brilliance on the drum kit. Late in the final piece, “Damon and Pythias,” Lee moves forward with a cello line that could have come straight from Charles Ives or William Grant Still, over which Jones solos in the middle-to-lower range of the alto sax. The combination of folk and modern techniques is emphasized by the gradual addition of Meger and the Zubots, with the final minutes harkening back to the opening, a gorgeous and contemplative recessional. This will undoubtedly remain a high water mark for Jones as an emotionally rich, sweeping epic.

Short documentary on the making

Animated score for “Zubot”

Buy direct from Northern Spy Records

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Damon Smith/Balance Point Acoustics Roundup, Part 1

By Nick Metzger & Lee Rice Epstein

Featuring Damon Smith

Over the past couple of months Lee and I have been chatting with bassist, composer, and Balance Point Acoustics label head Damon Smith about his huge year of releases in an effort to learn more about what’s often missing from our reviews - the artist’s perspective. Even with excellent liners there is much about a record release that is unknown or even unknowable to those not intimately involved in the blood and guts of planning and execution. Some of these releases have histories that go back decades while some are brand new, which made for excellent conversations as old stories and insights unfurled alongside those of newer, fresher ones. Many of the collaborators on these albums (and in corresponding stories) are masters like Roscoe Mitchell, Alvin Fielder, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk, Peter Kowald, Joëlle Léandre, Bertram Turetzky, Gino Robair, and Ra Kalam Bob Moses, either in duets with Smith or playing alongside heavies like Sandy Ewen, Weasel Walter, Rebecca Novak, Jerome Bryerton, David Dove, and Jason Jackson. If I learned anything for certain from these extended conversations, it’s that Damon is a generous guy. Generous with his time, his resources, and with his praise for his collaborators. Portions of the conversation are transcribed below along with blurbs for each album from Lee or I to give a brief listener’s perspective.

Blonk/van der Putten/Meurs, Blonk/Smith - Hugo Ball: Six Sound Poems, 1916 (Balance Point Acoustics, 2021) 

“Six Sound Poems'' is a 1916 work from chief Dadaist and Cabaret Voltaire founder Hugo Ball. There are two fantastic renditions in this single package; the first album was recorded in 1989 with Blonk, Bart van der Putten (saxophone), and Pieter Meurs (double bass) and the second was recorded in 2013 with Smith (double bass). Excellent art & packaging with a terrific essay from Melissa Venator on Hugo Ball along with the original text for the poems. The instrumentalists are superlative on both sets, mainly buttressing and/or sparring with Jaap’s howls, screeches, and raspberries. If you’re looking for an entry point to Blonk’s music you could hardly do better than these sets. - NM

DS: I first saw Jaap play with my bass teacher, Lisle Ellis, Miya Masaoka, and Malcolm Goldstein, a fantastic group. And then about a year later, the first time I went overseas to Sicily was the Dream in California Festival in Palermo. I played with Garth Powell, a drummer from the Bay Area, and Gianni Gebbia and Jaap played with us then. That was the first time we played together and I bought some CDs from him around that time. And one of them was a solo of his, and the other one was the other disc in this set, which was a trio. Then we didn't work together for a long time, but then we found money for him to come play in Texas. We had a couple of working groups, one with Chris Cogburn and Sandy Ewen. We did some other stuff together, and then we had an off-day and we went and recorded. I said ‘I always wanted to do the Hugo Ball with you’ so we went and recorded and then put that CD out. I think we did 250 copies and then we repressed the cassette at 100 copies three times. So 550 copies, which is sort of a hit in this music, right? (laughing) And then I had this idea to put out the double CD, and was able to do that, which is really great. I'm happy to have it out. It’s got expanded notes by Melissa Vanader, who's my girlfriend, and an art historian, which are pretty fantastic. If you know about Hugo Ball at all you know that he did the sound poems, but people don't know what else was going on with him. This edition also publishes the poems themselves and some photos. I'm really excited to have that out.

Feichtmair/Smith/Robair - The Shilling of Frogs (Balance Point Acoustics, 2021) 

A spacious and lovely set from 2003, Feichtmair, Robair, and Smith generate a great amount of drama from stretches of silence offset by an occasionally spiky tenderness. - LRE

DS: I met Tanja in Austria in 2002. I was playing the festival in her hometown of Ulrichsburg, Austria, with Fuchs & Bryerton, and we exchanged CDs and kept in touch and started working together. When she came to the Bay Area we recorded this trio with Gino. It was during a time when it was harder to get CDs out, you had to order 500 or 1000, there weren't a lot of options. A couple of people had figured out a way to get people to care about their CDRs, but it's really hard to do that. So these recordings just ended up getting lost and when I moved to St. Louis, I guess, two years ago. I was looking for something and this fell out of a box. And I put it on, and it was a pristine studio session mixed perfectly. Everything was there. And so all I had to do was get Weasel to master it. Scott Looney recorded it. Gino was one of the first people I played with, so it's a bit weird that he and I don't have that many things out together, so it was really nice to get this out with him. He had made these beautiful drawings, for Lelio Giannetto, the great Sicilian bassist who had just passed,and again, this is how albums can come together, you can have something sitting around but if you don't know what you want the cover to look like that's something that can really hold something up. I know it’s hard to imagine, but if you don't have a vision for the cover, how are you going to make a CD? You can't even create a Bandcamp release if you don't have a vision for the cover, even if it's just going to be a solid square or something. But Gino made these beautiful drawings In the Red for the cover, and he had posted them on Facebook. and I thought, oh, man, that would be a great cover.

I got titles from Ingeborg Bachmann. Because Tanja's Austrian. I wanted to find an Austrian poet to get titles from an Austrian source. At first I tried one of the Vienna Actionists, Gerhard Rühm, and that didn't work out. They just didn’t line up. Sometimes this title thing works really well and sometimes it doesn't. I live next to Forest Park, which is bigger than Central Park, and I was sitting in this little wetland area and looking through this book of Ingaburg Bachmann's and there were frogs in this pond, so it was a nice way to get the title and I think the title came out great and the cover and everything. Tanya is a very special player. She's got these rounded edges to the way she plays. She talked about being influenced by Francis Bacon who sort of distorted faces and things like that, the way he brutalized these human figures in his art. I think there's a really interesting way that she deals with pitch. If somebody can deal with pitch in an interesting way, I think that's an incredible feat in this time period because we're not abandoning it. That's the music part of improvised music. I think that the music part ends up being how we're linking the stuff back, how we're dealing with the traditional music. I think dealing in general, what we're often doing is dealing with the timbre, which I think is a really important thing to do and there's a lot to explore there. Reggie Workman does it, especially with a lot of portimento, which is when you slide into a note, the vocal quality of the way he plays, it's very special. What she does with notes and makes them swell and gives them shape is incredible. Gino is an incredibly innovative percussionist. He's one of the very first American percussionists to start working with the ideas that came from European free improvisation. And his work is a very early American version of that stuff. David Moss, who just does voice now, but David Moss, Alex Cline and I think Michael Zerang and I'm forgetting a couple others, but those are the people who were really in-there very early on.

Ulher/Smith/Cogburn - The Eternity-Cult (Balance Point Acoustics, 2021)

“The Eternity Cult” is pretty different from the rest of these releases in that it’s mainly timbral in its design. The trio utilize electronics in addition to sax, bass, and drums and often make it difficult to discern the acoustic sounds from the electric ones. Quiescent atonal sound fields pocked with all sorts of tasty textures played with a patient and steady confidence. - NM

DS: Brigit Ulher and Gino have a duo, they've worked together for a long time. And there's a connection with this, too, though, because the first time that I met Tanja I was on tour with Fuchs and Bryerton and the next place we went to after Ulichsburg was Wiesbaden in Germany, which is interesting because that's where the fluxus composer and artist Ben Patterson was living. I wasn't connected to his work at the time, but he was there. It's interesting to think about that. And I borrowed the bass of a fantastic bass player named Ulrich Phillipp. He has a great album called Put, and he gave me a copy of that, among other ones. I got in contact with Birgit and this is one of the things you could do in the Bay Area. The Bay Area is a weird place because Tech is so hostile to art and music. So there wasn't a lot of funding because Tech is the big money in that area. It was really hard to get money for music. There was a little bit around here and there. One of the people on the scene that would throw money into the music is actually a foundational partner of Pixar and Lucasfilm. So it's not like every person that worked in Tech, but just generally that industry. But this guy would sometimes put up money for the music and help out in a bunch of ways. So, it's not to say that across the board, but what you could say to a German is, ‘hey, I can get you concerts in the Bay Area. It's really nice here.’ And they'd show up. And then the thing about the Bay Area is there was improvised music every night. And you could have a concert in Oakland, a concert in Berkeley, and a concert in San Francisco, and different people would come to all three. So you can have a project and sort of tour the Bay Area with it and play to different audiences. I used to always say that the Bay Area had a giant, lazy audience. The benefit of that would be you could play a concert one day and 15 or 20 people would come and then you'd play a concert later in that week and a different 15 or 20 people would come. So improvised music was sustained at a local level. If you did something big, if you're bringing some German into town or whatever, then you get a really big crowd in each of these places. But at that time, at least, I don't know how it is now. I haven't been back since I did the Roscoe Mitchell album.

NM: The Eternity Call one is really different than all of the other releases. It just stands out as something completely different from a listening standpoint.

DS: Yeah, it was completely different to play, too, and in a way to kind of relate that back to the discussion Alvin had with me about ‘of all Cecil Taylor’s drummers Andrew Cyrille is the most adventurous with swing.’ One of the things about The Eternity Cult that makes it different from an EAI record is that there's a movement in it. I think that album has a sort of a momentum that I would call a very abstracted swing, and I think it's my most radical version of it on record to this day.

NM: Yeah. What makes it unique is like you said, that forward propulsion that's missing from a lot of that kind of music. I thought that was really interesting.

LRE: It's interesting, though, because poetry obviously plays a strong part in your work, but a thing that we're touching on here is narrative, a kind of dramatic narrative, as abstract as it might be.

DS: Right.

LRE: It's not telling a story but pulling a listener through the album. I think that The Eternity Cult is one example, but I also think it’s there in some aspects on both albums with Alvin Fielder, who does it extraordinarily well, one of the best at it. There is this, I don't want to say theatrical because that sounds like you're putting on theater, but it has that quality.

DS: Yeah, some kind of abstract version of it. I think, again, that kind of goes into the music part of improvised music because I think the two words are important, the improvised and the music part, the music and music's connection to things like lyrics - what lyrical even means when you say somebody plays ‘lyrically’. But there was something special that happened when we came together. This is a group that I wanted to do for a long time, actually. When I first moved to Texas, I'd played with Chris Cogburn in the 90s and he was doing a van tour of the country. We just did some private playing. I always liked him personally. I feel like both Birgit and Chris are people who are friends that I stay in touch with. And I really like both of them a lot personally. And I think that group came together and created something that night. And also Denton, it was recorded in Denton, Texas, which is a really magical place because you play these concerts and I think this one was a house concert and there's all these young people in their early 20s and late 20s, and you'll go to one of the concerts and they're running around and smoking and drinking and yelling and being young people and all that.

DS: And then the concert starts and then they all sit with just rapt attention. And there's some people who are constant through the scene who live there. In my experience since I first started playing in Texas and Denton, there's just a new set of these young people that have the same behavior where they're partying and they're doing the young people thing. And when the music starts, they're just incredibly quiet and there's a lot of them. And with this music you're not playing to, like, a room full of 20 year olds very often. And if you are, they're not silently sitting there with total focus. A lot of them are going to be North Texas students, but a lot of them aren't. And so there's a weird listening culture in the youth culture in Denton that keeps getting passed down. And it really changes things. It's an intense experience. The concert is full. That it's people that are used to playing to a bunch of, like, older dudes - to be honest in this music, that's what it is. And those people are very important too and I love every one of them. But Denton has a special atmosphere, and it changes the music. Then we were about to play the New Idea Festival, which is always super fun and super serious and really amazing in Austin. Chris puts that on. At the New Idea Festival, we actually did a quintet with Jim Denly and Tomas Lane, which was outstanding. 

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Jump to: Part 1 | Part 1b

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Henry Threadgill - Double Up Plus and 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg

Double Up Plays Double Up Plus (Pi Recordings, 2018) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

Composer and saxophonist Henry Threadgill's previous album, Old Locks and Irregular Verbs, with the first incarnation of the Double Up ensemble, was dedicated to Lawrence "Butch" Morris' conduction method, and was given a thorough review by Lee Rice Epstein in 2016. Noting the reintroduction of the piano to Threadgill's compositions, as well as his non-performing role, Epstein wrote:

Threadgill’s Ensemble Double Up debut is a thrilling shakeup of his compositional language, which has admittedly been in a state of near-constant evolution for decades. If it was strange to be missing Stomu Takeishi’s bass on last year’s Zooid double-album, it’s even stranger to have a new album without Threadgill’s flute or Liberty Ellman’s guitar ... Moran and Virelles, both with deep ties to Threadgill, bear a strangely heavy burden of reintroducing piano to Threadgill’s discography. And their solos throughout show a deep affinity for Threadgill’s tonal and rhythmic playgrounds.

A few weeks ago, the saxophonist and composer released two new recordings, one with the Double Up ensemble, where again he assumes the role of composer and conductor, and the other, where he is part of the group and re-engages with Ellman. However, on the Double Up ensemble here, Threadgill has doubled down on the pianos by adding a third. The group is David Bryant – piano, Luis Perdomo – piano, and David Virelles – piano and harmonium. Not on piano is Curtis Robert Macdonald – alto saxophone, Roman Filiu – alto saxophone, alto flute, Christopher Hoffman – cello, Jose Davila – tuba, and finally Craig Weinrib – drums, percussion.

The rich panoply of instruments gives Threadgill many choices to use in his compositions and he mixes the voices well, but this recording is really all about the piano - all three of them - and it is the first sound one hears on the album. On the opening "Game is Up," each piano introduce a distinct strand of  interlocking parts, as the other other musicians slowly filter in. The composition feels somewhat fragmentary and complex as seemingly incomplete melodic ideas appear and then move on, that is until Davila introduces a punchy bass line towards the final moments of the track. Then, a delicious interplay of strings and low brass ensues, and the kinetic crisscrossing strings are buoyed by the big brassy bass lines.

‘Clear and Distinct from the Other’ certainly starts differently than the previous tune. A snippet of sparse melody from a single piano is quickly overtaken by woodwind and cello. A slowly building but fractured melody emerges in their interweaving. The different snippets connect loosely until the brass again introduces a punchy theme, and the modern classical veers into lively modern jazz.

Double Up Plays Double Up Plus is a substantial album but in a very approachable way . It is both dedicated to Threadgill's own musical systems but also organic in its expression. As Virelles states, “it always feels like the blues, funky and soulful.”

14 or 15 Kestra: Agg - Dirt... And More Dirt (Pi Recordings, 2018) *****

On the twin release - fraternal, not identical in this case - Threadgill’s new 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg group's Dirt... And More Dirt, we find the composer also playing along with a large ensemble (14 or 15 musicians), which includes many of the his Zooid and Double Up compatriots like guitarist Liberty Ellman, keyboardist Virelles whose Harmonium playing is a defining sound, and saxophonist Roman Filiu (the whole list of musicians from each group is below). The sound, as you can imagine is full, varied, and truly exciting.

The recording was Inspired by the conceptual art installation “The New York Earth Room” by Walter de Maria at The Dia Art Foundation. Tucked into some prime NYC real estate, the 250 cubic yards of earth in a 3600 square foot space has been on view since 1980 in lower Manhattan. In addition, the osseous clay sculptures of Stephen De Staebler served as inspiration - and when listening to the music, it’s not hard to imagine digging through the ground and unearthing the things from the past, and re-casting them new. The music on Dirt and More Dirt carries that distinction of sounding both thoroughly forward thinking with its angular and twisting themes and complex harmonies, but at the same deeply rooted in musical tradition.

The first track, 'Dirt Part I' begins with Thomas Morgan’s bowed bass and some loosely related percussion. It’s a soft beginning, but as the bowing is replaced by deliberate plucking, the tempo picks up a bit and ground is laid for the entrance of the accordion like harmonium (pump organ), and when the tuba and guitar enter, the sound pallet begins opening up in a most welcoming - though unusual - manner. Ellman delivers a slightly jumpy intervallic solo over a swelling group sound. A series of tracks, parts II through VI follow, each with slightly different theme. 'Part II' is under a minute, and features the pianos of Bryan and Virelles, ‘Part III’ finds the saxophone front and center with the tuba/guitar/piano/drums playing a fine pulsating rhythm, rapidly turning up the heat and cooking up a fine modern jazz tune, only to change entirely by the time the avant-garde ‘Part IV’ rolls around.

“And More Dirt - Part I” kicks off the second suite of tracks. While not entirely different than the first suite, feels a bit more fluid - or rather in the dirt theme - like a fruit bearing potting soil, rich in nutrients and moist to the touch. Christopher Hoffman’s cello and at least one of the ace trombonists are featured in tandem, along with a solid piano driven back up. The suite ends on ‘Part IV’, which begins as a haunting duet between sax and piano, before the whole group enters with an orchestral flourish that simultaneous evokes a feeling of leaving and of something yet to come.

Both of these albums took me several listens to really hear. So, let the complex and unusual harmonies wash over you, be carried away on the eddying confluences of rhythm, and indulge in the piano interplay and the frolicking of the tuba and guitar. Threadgill, now in his mid-70s, has been delivering absolute masterworks, and it's nice to think of these these two as part of a continuing series.

Double Up, Plays Double Up Plus

• Curtis Robert Macdonald – alto saxophone
• Roman Filiu – alto saxophone, alto flute
• Christopher Hoffman – cello
• Jose Davila – tuba
• David Bryant – piano
• Luis Perdomo – piano
• David Virelles – piano, harmonium
• Craig Weinrib – drums, percussion

Dirt... And More Dirt

• Henry Threadgill – alto saxophone, flute, bass flute
• Liberty Ellman – guitar
• Christopher Hoffman – cello
• Jose Davila – tuba
• Jacob Garchik – trombone
• Ben Gerstein – trombone
• Jonathan Finlayson – Bb trumpet, F trumpet
• Stephanie Richards – Bb trumpet
• Roman Filiu – alto saxophone, alto flute
• Curtis Robert Macdonald – alto saxophone
• David Bryant – piano
• David Virelles – piano, harmonium
• Thomas Morgan – bass
• Elliott Humberto Kavee – drums, percussion
• Craig Weinrib – drums, percussion

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Flowers from Charlie

Charlie Rouse - Two Is One (Strata-East, 2025) 

Charlie Rouse Band - Cinnamon Flower: The Expanded Edition (Resonance Records, 2025) 

By Lee Rice Epstein

In December of 1960, saxophonist Charlie Rouse recorded a lovely, engaging quartet session, issued the following year under the unassuming but hip title, Yeah. After a couple of blowing sessions that preceded it, Yeah is arguably the first look at Rouse as the warm-toned, ingenious artist who would emerge almost a decade later from Thelonious Monk’s quartet. The opener is Gene De Paul and Ron Raye’s classic “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” taken at a relaxed tempo. A palpable evening-at-the-nightclub vibe flows effortlessly from the speakers and carries through the rest of the album. Any listener hearing Yeah as their on-ramp to Rouse’s discography would be forgiven an expectation of a stack that sits comfortably alongside contemporaneous Wilkerson, Gordon, and Donaldson records.

And yet, shortly after, Rouse stopped recording as a leader for a decade, instead spending the bulk of the 1960s as a core member of Monk’s quartet. To say Rouse learned much from Monk both feels true and also underplays how much Rouse brought to the quartet. In the 1950s, he recorded a set of albums with Julius Watkins under the name The Jazz Modes, a rich and inventive pairing of French horn and tenor sax. Rouse’s talent for creating rich, unexpected tonal palettes paired well with Monk’s talent for composing equally unexpected harmonic clusters. Rouse (and of course Monk) understood that playing with Monk didn’t necessitate playing like Monk. In equal measure, they accentuate and lift the other, not unlike Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons.

In 1974, when Two Is One was released on the independent label Strata-East, it’d be hard to say what most longtime listeners of Rouse would have thought. Thankfully, with Strata-East albums coming back in print, we have the luxury of looking back now and seeing the through-line connecting Rouse’s 1950s experiments with those of the 1970s, where electric guitars, bass, and cello dip into and out of funk, swing, and bossa rhythms with ease. Stanley Clarke’s bass is magnificent, and with Airto Moreria there’s something of a Return To Forever meets downtown soul vibe that works brilliantly. It’s as effortless a session as Yeah from ten years earlier, and just as stylistically and tonally interesting as Jazz Modes.

The band stretches out pretty well on every number, and then comes “Two Is One,” eleven minutes of soulful, driving funk. The drummer here is David Lee, who was backing Sonny Rollins at around the same time, and who has a great touch on the drums, knowing exactly how to push the song along, while leaving space for Rouse to flex on his solos. With a wave of saxophonists leaning in and overblowing at the time, Rouse emphasizes phrasing set off by brief moments of silence to pull in the listener. The result is simply fantastic, one of the finest in Strata-East’s nearly unbeatable catalog.

And then there’s Cinnamon Flower. Coming back to Rouse in a moment, one of the more fascinating aspects of the album is Bernard Purdie, whose flawless timing and feel is often compressed into only minute-long clips highlighting his eponymous shuffle. Here, however, he’s all over the set, brilliant and grooving; it tells a much fuller story of his skills than any Steely Dan Behind the Music ever could.

The set of songs on Cinnamon Flower are composed and arranged by either pianist Dom Salvador (known for his part in samba funk breaking out during the 1960s boom) or guitarist Amaury Tristão (maybe best known for championing bossa nova’s introduction to the States). Under Rouse’s leadership, the blend of samba funk rhythms with bossa nova accents is a dazzling, hypnotic groove. Wilbur Bascomb, Jr., plays electric bass on most of the album, with Ron Carter subbing in for Milton Nascimento’s incredible “Clove and Cinnamon (Cravo E Canela)” and Tristão’s “A New Dawn (Alvorada).” One of the most exciting elements of Rouse’s music is how smoothly the band mixes tempos and styles; again, while it’s not merely an extrapolation of Monk’s music, you can hear how ten years with the maestro would have opened Rouse up to even more possibilities than he’d explored previously.

And while the Two Is One reissue sounds fantastic all on its own, for Cinnamon Flower, the vaults have been raided, with the entire album presented in its original, unedited format. For anyone keen to play out a this-or-that game of comparing recordings, this is a perfect experience, where the original album remains as-is, and the additional studio versions (recorded at Sound Ideas by Resonance’s own George Klabin) play out just as beautifully. There are subtle yet striking differences in the opener, “Backwoods Echo (Sertão),” one of Salvador’s contributions and lengthier “Clove and Cinnamon (Cravo E Canela).” And of course, the best part of all is hearing more of Rouse, whose legacy seems to continue to grow as more of his records are rediscovered. Here’s hoping there are some live sessions from around the same time yet to be heard. It’s hard to believe, but even after twenty years of regular gigging, the ’70s were a high peak for Rouse, when his playing was as lush, dynamic, and imaginative as ever, and the band was eager to journey alongside him.

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Damon Smith/Balance Point Acoustics Roundup, Part 2

By Nick Metzger & Lee Rice Epstein

Featuring Damon Smith

A continuation of the conversation between Lee, Damon Smith, and myself talking about the recent Balance Point Acoustics releases among many other things. Also be sure to catch Smith on tour this April & May in a trio with Jason Stein and Adam Shead whose new album Volumes & Surfaces we discuss below. 

 

Sarah Ruth Alexander/Damon Smith - God Made My Soul an Ornament (Balance Point Acoustics, 2021)

Another standout in this roundup is “God Made My Soul an Ornament” from the duo of Smith and singer, multi-instrumentalist Sarah Ruth Alexander. The diverse array of instruments and traps Alexander utilizes makes for a full and heady listening experience, while her vocals add a much appreciated lyrical dimension. Smith provides a perfect complimentary aesthetic that sees him mining his range of sounds and techniques. - NM

DS: I went to Texas in I think, 2017 or something for a family health situation, and my girlfriend was at Harvard working on the Bauhaus show, the Bauhaus Centennial Show, and so she had that to do and when I didn't have gigs, I was pretty free. And I've been teaching remotely for years already by that point. So I could just go to Texas. So I went to Texas to kind of take care of her mom and be with her mom after she just got out of the hospital and stuff. And I brought my travel bass so I could practice because I was there for like two and a half weeks. The first time Stephan Gonzalez had a music series and Stephan wasn't available Sarah took it over and got in touch with me, found out I was there, and I didn't know when I went down at this time that I'd be able to play at all. She organized some concerts for me in Denton and in Dallas then I met and heard her on one of those nights. Then we got to know each other, she's got a lot of similar interests, there's a lot of similarities, and she gets a lot from literature and visual art and other things like that. And there's a lot of similar tastes that we have and then a lot of different tastes, which makes it interesting. But the fact that a lot of her influencers are coming from these other art forms was a really great place for us to connect. So we did several duo concerts, and then we made this duo recording, like two in the morning at North Texas State and it had been sitting for a while, and we wanted to do it.

She had been reading the Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, which is a big one for me, and it turned out one of the interesting things is that my very first bass guitar teacher (Chris Daniels) was a student of Jaco Pastorius, which I thought was cool. But then I sort of lost touch with him, and then when I got in touch with him again, it turned out that he had learned Portuguese from working in kitchens and became one of the primary translators of Fernando Pessoa’s Heteronyms. He's got two books out and he gave me a Pessoa translation. I thought that was really exciting. It's a bold title in a way and I don't necessarily have a spiritual practice. I'm more like Barre Phillips who said, my religion is bass. I feel like art is a place where we can try to hover above our humanity and petty human squabbles rather than wallowing in them. I guess that can be thought of as a spiritual place, but I think of it as more of a subconscious space or whatever. So I'm not so much into God or souls necessarily, but I love this title. Ernesto Montiel is also a great musician, and he had all this beautiful artwork. And again, someone who I've talked to a lot about art and music and literature and these other things, and we are able to get this sculpture from him for the cover. So the design and the title of this one, not just the music, I love the music. Playing with Sarah, it's different every time. And more than anything, it embodies the concept that Bill Dixon used to talk about where he said each person is their own Orchestra. There's this architectural breadth between her and I where it's almost like anything could happen. There's the percussion and other instruments that she plays, like the dulcimer. But of course, it's really grounded in her beautiful voice, this pure classical voice, and everything hangs off of that thread, on this purity of the voice that she brings, it's so striking. But she doesn't overuse it either. I think there's just this breadth of playing with her in a duo that I feel like I feel like you've probably done ten or twelve concerts together by now as a duo, maybe more, maybe less, but we did a little tour last summer, and that's a lot for improvised music, and then each one is completely different and has a different range and a different way of doing things together. We've got some things planned for this year hopefully. We're talking about doing some stuff.

NM: This is another album that stands out like the Eternity Cult, it’s a lot different than the other ones. And to your point, she does a great job with all the different instruments and voice and contraptions and things. For it being a duo album, there's a lot of information there.

LRE: Going back to Kowald for a minute, he seemed to never stop exploring different modalities, different groups. He was constantly trying working with new players and creating work for dance, obviously, also. You also seem similarly interested in exploring new sounds that are exciting to you. Because I agree with Nick, this album. It was sort of interesting to put this one on and be like, wait a minute…(laughs)

DS: Yeah, definitely. When I heard Sarah for the first time, I was like, yeah, this is somebody doing original work. I want to play with her. It was the same kind of feeling as when I heard Sandy, honestly. She's got some great recordings, which I would recommend tracking down. There's one called Words on the Wind. It's about the Panhandle of Texas. It's amazing out, super bleak and beautiful. When I heard her. I was like, well, this is original work, and this is something that's important.

Mitchell/Ewen/Smith/Walter - A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice (ugEXPLODE, 2021)

Brilliant improvised set, with Mitchell in particularly fine form. Driving, grooving, swinging—whatever you expect, this is not what you expected. It’s much, much more. - LRE

DS: That whole thing happened because of Sandy. One of the last things I did in the Bay Area was a collaboration with a dancer named Micaela Gardner and a filmmaker Darren Hawk. And that's on YouTube somewhere. But we did these outdoor bass and dance pieces with the filmmaker kind of involved as an equal partner. And when I got to Houston, there was a dance film festival, and somebody knew that I had this film. I forget who it was. It was someone in Houston. And they said I should apply for this festival with that film, so I did and I got onto the festival. And then Sandy has a long term project with a belly dancer named Yet Torres, so I first saw her on film. I hadn't met her yet. And I was like, Whoa, that's original. I want to play with her. And so we started to play together in Houston, she was much younger than me. She's much younger than me. I think she's twelve years younger or something. But I started improvised music in my 20s, and she started it in high school. She had Keith Rowe workshops in high school. She was already a lot more experienced than your average person in her mid 20s at this music. When I started to work with her in Houston it was basically side by side. We were organizing things together, we were doing projects together, and of course I had a few more connections because I've been out in the world a little longer and stuff like that. I knew Roscoe just from being at Mills. I wasn't at Mills, but he had an Orchestra piece and Steve Cowert, one of the Mills professors, brought in Weasel and I to play in this Orchestra. He said ‘hey, do you want to come play in this Roscoe thing?’ and we're like, yeah! (laughs) And the funny thing, the other piece on the program was In C, and Weasel did the marimba parts for In C, and he did a fantastic job. And that was also an eye opening moment with Weasel. We had been working together for a bit, but then watching him just kill it on the In C part, even though it's fairly simple, it was still like Weasel Walter. It just expanded what we could do together. Roscoe came through Dave's organization, Nameless Sound, David Dove's organization and there was a workshop, and what we do in Houston, the workshops are free, and we'd all do it no matter who it was. We'd all come to the workshop because it was a musical thing, but it was also a social thing. We're all friends, and we're all going to come and come together at the Roscoe Mitchell workshop. So we're doing the workshop, And he's not really impressed with anyone except Sandy, he really loved what she was doing. And he said to a saxophone player, why don't you listen to her and try to play something like her? I could listen to what she's doing all day. So he heard what everybody else hears. So then after the workshop he said, hey, is there a beer around? So I get him a beer, and we're having a beer together and then he asked, what are you and Weasel doing? I said, oh, we just did an album with this guitar player. And he said, well, I'd love to hear that. We sent him the album, and he really liked it. So, Sandy is the reason why Roscoe knew me and Weasel and wanted to work with us. Obviously, he spent a lot of time talking to us, and there was a nice personal connection and everything, but there was no sense that Weasel and I were going to play with him until this.

And we got a gig at a place that has a really great chef. Paul Canales has a restaurant called Duende. It just reopened in Oakland, and he's been a huge fan of the music. He made dinner for Giani Gebbia and I in the 90s, like a big fancy dinner with Pigeon and all this great stuff. And he's a really cool guy, and I'd run into him at Amoeba buying CDs, and he's just this superstar chef that is really into this music. And then I said, hey, man, if Roscoe will play with us, will you pay him? And he said, oh, I know exactly what he'll want. And we'll pay him. It'll be great. So I asked Roscoe. And he said, yeah, that'd be great. And then we had it recorded. This concert was interesting because we had a bit more responsibility to present our music to Roscoe rather than to try to interface with his concept, if that makes sense. And that was kind of an exciting moment, because when I got to play with Cecil Taylor and things like that, you really want to get inside Cecil's music. That's the whole thing. You're trying to do that, and it's a great thing, but it's often harder in some ways because you're going outside yourself. The whole thing was that all of Sandy's playing on that album actually makes it a bit more than what it would be if it was me and Weasel. It wouldn't be bad, but I think she adds this whole other element. It's almost like an intersection of Sun Ra and AMM in a way. Working with Sandy and Weasel, these are also people that I'm friends with and I don't always like to push that, because I think one of the things folks used to always say is this is not about friendship. It should be about the music. But with Sandy and Weasel, they're definitely people I can get projects done with. So I know if I start a project with either or both of them, it's going to happen. It's going to get over the finish line, we can work together in all these other aspects of getting something done, which is why we’ve made so many albums together, things like that. In a certain way, I feel like Sandy and I have not made enough albums together for how much work we've done together. We've done some stuff that's important, but I think we could use a few more because we've just done a lot of things together. We've got a new duo that we recorded last year or the year before that, that I'd like to get out at some point. It was really beautiful and we got to some special places. And then we just recorded a couple of recent things, we just did a quartet project with Lisa Cameron, afantastic drummer, and Alex Cunningham, great violin.

LRE: This seems like Roscoe has come back to some of this long form improv.

There's been a lot of albums like Bells for Southside and Splatter, where it's almost compositional, but it's kind of exciting in a way to hear him sort of back in a real, long form kind of improv space, developing ideas over a much greater duration. I mean, I just love him. Just love him.

DS: Well, yeah. He's one of the greatest. in the Art Ensemble. I was saying that Odwalla the Juice Company is a name from the Art Ensemble, and they would pay to bring the Art Ensemble to the Bay Area every year. So I got to see the original quintet, I got to see the quartet formations, and I got to see that group a bunch of times. So they were just huge for me, and I got to see them. I saw the Art Ensemble before I was even involved in actually trying to play this music, back when I was still trying to have a Minutemen type band. One of the cool things about that Roscoe show was being able to listen to his music up until then and really dive into Roscoe Mitchell's music. One of the really exciting things is I went to my local record store in Houston, Vinyl Edge, and I found this LP. Do you guys have this one? (holds up Roscoe Mitchell, Tony Marsh, John Edwards LP Improvisations, otoroku, 2013)

(NM and LRE shake heads yes)

DS: Yeah. And that's another one where he's doing improvised music on a long form double LP with the great Tony Marsh and John Edwards, who I'm a big fan of. And so that’s kind of exciting. And in that time period, there wasn't a lot of that when I first started to do this music. If you wanted to know what the new releases were, you went to the record store and you looked.

It was one of the first times in a long time where I found an incredible album that I didn't know about in the record store that was relevant to what I was about to do. So it was a big moment to find that record, there's very few times since then.

NM: One more question on the Mitchell album. When you play with somebody like Roscoe Mitchell, who has led so many groups, and then kind of he's had all his orchestrations, he's done conducting, how does he communicate? Did you talk beforehand about what you wanted to do? You said that you were going to be more geared toward what you all play?

DS: Well, we knew that he liked the album, and that's why we asked him to play. And we didn't discuss that with him at all. He got out of stopwatch and used it a timer, and that's why it's a CD length. So I think we knew he was planning to play all the way to the end. I don't think he said it. We just knew. Maybe he said it, but there was some information whether he said it or whether it was there, that we were going to do one long piece. That was something we knew. And then when you know that, what's pretty cool is you can settle in and work with it. This goes into something that's a bit like thinking about what I think about as far as the audience. I don't ever want to compromise my music. And the kind of lucky thing for me is that's what my audience expects of me. My audience is not expecting me to please them. Right. I think you have to make these considerations about taking your music out of your bedroom and into the world. And the sculptor Lawrence Weiner, who I'm a big fan of, said you only make work for the public, so you have to think about them to a degree. One of the things I think about is that if possible, especially at a concert, my ideal concert would be a local series that has two 20 to 25 minutes sets. I think what you can give an audience is brevity if you're not working with scale. That's the way I always like to put it. If you're not working with scale, make things concise. But in this case, scale was part of it. We knew we're going to make one long piece. Right. So we know we're working with scale. And sometimes you just start working with scale. It's not discussed. It just happens. But like Feldman, when he knows he's going to write a four hour piece or whatever, he's working with that scale, he's trying to deal with long form decision making and stuff like that. And I think that's what happens in a concert, like with this quartet or recording with this quartet, we knew we were making a long form piece. We knew we're going over. We're kind of working with that time frame.

Ewen/Rowe/Smith + Gooseberry Marmalade - Houston 2012 (Balance Point Acoustics, 2021)

A terrific double CD that combines a set from the trio of Ewen, Rowe, and Smith and Ewen’s Lady Band - working under the moniker Gooseberry Marmalade here) - with a set from the trio alone. of Ewen, Rowe, and Smith. The former was recorded live at 14 Pews, and the latter a couple of days later at KUHF. Both discs are excellent, very much in the spirit of Scratch Orchestra and the more subtle AMM releases, but also very different. Despite the large group, the Gooseberry Marmalade set is measured, even pointillist, as the band works its way through several scores selected by Rowe, Ewen, and Smith. The trio improvisations, likewise, are reserved pieces of sound art that detail how differently Ewen and Rowe approach prepared guitar, smith filling in the gaps with long bowed tones or animated grima. - NM

DS: Scale is something that Keith had often worked with in AMM. Keith is really influenced by Cage and also Rothko and the abstract expressionist painters and things like that who are dealing with scale and looking at scale in that way. And one of the things I did once it came up that would be possible to play with Keith is I would go to the Menil Collection in Houston, which definitely has some of the best artworks in the world that live there. Like, there's a 60 foot long Cy Twombly painting in Houston. It's the most work of his in America, and I think the most work in one place, and it's free. You can walk in there and look at this Cy Twombly anytime you want. And so I'd go sit in front of the 60 foot long side Twombly painting for like an hour, just working on my sense of scale and my concentration on the painting, looking at the painting and things like that. This is also something that was very much driven by Sandy in a way. Keith had come to Houston to do a concert for Dave Dove’s organization, Nameless Sound. And Texas has these great things called Ice Houses where you basically sit outside and drink beer. And there's a really iconic one called the Alabama Ice House. And we were there with Keith and that Ben Patterson exhibition was up, and I had done the Ben Patterson piece, and Keith was really excited and had a duo with Ben Patterson. I don't know if there's any recordings of that, but Patterson played an electric upright duo with Keith Rowe, and Keith was really into the connections between Fluxus and Scratch Orchestra and stuff. And so we're drinking and talking about that. Sandy was there and he knew her from before, he'd been coming to Houston for a while. They've done workshops and stuff like that. And obviously Keith is the first one to really put the guitar flat and have that as the primary working method. A crucial difference, but an important difference is he tests the guitar totally flat on a table, and then he has his objects on the table, and the guitar is rigid. Right. And one of the things about Sandy is the guitar is on her lap, and she uses her legs to move the guitar and to move the objects on her guitar, so some of it is coming from her legs as well. Almost like a drummer but it's not really percussive, but it's a whole body concept. And the fact that it's on her lap is an important part of the concept. That's not obvious. Like, you might just think I was just there because it's flat but also her legs come into the movement and the rhythms and the sounds that are happening. So her hands come into it and her legs under it are moving it and I think that is an important aspect of that. And then hearing her with Keith, you can kind of hear there's a different type of movement in her playing versus his.

I found out from the Keith Rowe film What is Man and what is Guitar, one of the things I took from that film was that he first put it on the floor, which is an interesting idea. I didn't know that he was thinking about Pollock working above the canvas on the floor, and putting the guitar on the floor. There's that connection with Sandy and Keith. But then the other connection was that Sandy had made this all female ensemble that changed his name every time. And it was always a name involving fruit and they came up with a new name every time. And then they would make up their own little pieces and things like that. And it was very much in the tradition of Scratch Orchestra in a way, even though she wasn't thinking that at all, if she knew about the Scratch Orchestra, it was in passing. She was around enough hardcore improvised music nerds that knew the history that I'm sure the Scratch Orchestra was mentioned in her presence at some point, but this was all her idea, to do this group with the women. She just felt like not enough women were present on the scene. And so it was open to people who were musicians or not. They didn't have to be musicians. They just had to be interested. There was a choir in the Bay Area called the Cardew Choir. And their thing was, if you're interested, you're already qualified. Okay. So we made that connection. We asked Keith to restage some Scratch Orchestra pieces with her all female ensemble, and that sort of brought the whole thing together. And we brought a Cy Twombly book of the paintings in Philadelphia, the 50 Days at Ilium, into the studio. We used that as a graphic score, but not really. It was just there. And then I was able to get photos from the Cy Twombly Foundation, liners from Brian Olewnick, and then from Rebecca Novak.

 

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Jump to: Part 2 | Part 2b | Part 2c

 

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