One of America's greatest artists, dead at 81 . McCABE (muttering to himself): All the time makin' me feel like I'm gonna make a fool outta myself... mmm... now we gonna see who the fools is. Son of a bitches. [McCABE pours himself a drink.] Never did fit in this goddamn town. God I hate it when them bastards put their hands on you. I tell you, sometime... sometimes when I take a look at you, I just, I just keep lookin' and a-lookin'... I want to feel your little body against me so [...]
I just got word from drummer Kendrick A.D. Scott (who making his Secret Society debut on Nov. 30 ) that his website has just gone live. Kendrick is probably best-known for his work in the Terrance Blanchard Group, but his debut as a leader, The Source -- featuring Derrick Hodge, Lionel Loueke, Gretchen Parlato, Seamus Blake, Aaron Parks, Mike Moreno, Vicente Archer, Lage Lund, Myron Walden, Robert Glasper, and Walter Smith, III -- is set for a 2007 release. www.kendrickscott.com -- check it out.
Maria Schneider in the NYT: Much of Maria Schneider's large- ensemble jazz of the last six years has been nearly a figurative description of long-flow movement, particularly dancing or flying. And even when that's not what it's really about — as it is in her piece "Hang Gliding" or the various dances represented in her suite "Three Romances" — that's still, in a sense, what it's really about. [...] She put on "Concierto de Aranjuez," from "Sketches of Spain," one of Evans's collaborations with Miles Davis. It starts [...]
REEDS Aaron Irwin Rob Wilkerson Sam Sadigursky Mark Small Josh Sinton TRUMPETS Jacob Wick André Canniere James De La Garza Tom Goehring Dave Rezek TROMBONES [...]
Lots of good music coming up in the next couple of days... Tonight at Barbès (8 PM hit), Secret Society co-conspirator Josh Sinton unleashes his new band, Ideal Bread, a group dedicated to the music of the late and much-lamented Steve Lacy . Josh studied with Lacy and knows his music intimately, and he and Kirk Knuffke (trumpet), Reuben Radding (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums) have spent a long time getting inside this music. Here's how Josh describes the hit: The evening's show [...]
I'm wary of the repertory movement in jazz. Ghost bands who linger on decades after their founding figure has passed, institutional jazz orchestras who dutifully recreate the music of Ellington and Strayhorn, Fletcher and Horace Henderson, et al., for a concert-hall audience... all of this seems ultimately self-defeating. It continually reinforces the idea that jazz is something that happened a long time ago, and that the proper role for younger musicians is not to stand on the shoulders of giants, but to lurk in their shadows. And with the audience for orchestras that bind themselves to that kind of subscription-warhorse-nostalgi a [...]
I've been getting a lot of incoming Google traffic from people wanting more information about the recent, heartrendingly tragic suicide-by-self-immolation of Malachi Ritscher. Please allow me to direct you to this piece by Nitsuh Abebe in Pitchfork (of all places). It's an exceptionally sensitive, thoughtful, and well-researched article, and I encourage you to read the whole thing , but here are some of the most salient excerpts: Most fans of underground music are probably aware of Chicago's experimental music scene, or at least its most prominent figures: People like jazz saxophonist Ken [...]
I missed this last week -- Marc Swed reviews Rzewksi in Pomona : Half an hour later, this small man, hair mussed, walked onto the stage of Bridges Hall, the jewel-box small theater at Pomona College three blocks away. No more than 40 people were in the audience. […] Rzweski's appearance at Pomona, for which admission was free, came with little advance word and no publicity. That might seem an outrage, given that Rzewski (whose name is pronounced Schev-ski), a 68-year-old American expatriate who has long lived in [...]
Keys to the Future bills itself as "New York's only festival of contemporary solo piano music." The event is only in its second year, but it has already expanded to a three-day, six-pianist, 32-composer blowout. I made the second night (Wednesday), which featured pianists Tatjana Rankovich , Lora Tchekoratova , and festival founder Joseph Rubenstein . Tatjana was first up, opening with a 1997 work by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh , called simply Music for Piano . (In case you were wondering, Azerbaijan is across the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan.) [...]
Awful . Condolences to those who knew him.
Today, I am honored, grateful, and contractually obliged to acknowledge the support of the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center in funding (ever-so-slightly retroactively) the Oct. 28 premiere of "Habeas Corpus" with the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra . The first stateside performance of this work will be by the usual band of co-conspirators at the Bowery Poetry Club on Nov. 30 -- of which more later.
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Bay Bridge Silhouette , originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk .
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } VOTE! , originally uploaded by neuroticjose . I don't care who you are or what's in your dayplanner, you do not have anything more important to do tomorrow than to go vote. "Oh, but both parties are corrupt... ," "Nobody's speaking out about the issues I care about... ," [...]
In an effort to resuscitate the long-dormant Pulse blog , I've been doing a bit of linkblogging over there today. The other Pulseketeers have been busy getting married, having children, and working long-distance commutes, not necessarily in that order. When I get a minute, it will also be updated with fresh audio and pictures from our June (yes, yes, I know, I know) gigs. But if you missed our Eloquent Light 2 program this summer, we are reprising it on December 17 at the Bowery Poetry Club. Details will be forthcoming on the soon-to-be-regularly-updated Pulse blog.
Thursday, Oct. 25 - first rehearsal with the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra at Stadtgarten, 10 AM. I head up there around 9:30 and knock on the front door, but nobody answers. The side service entrance is open, so I wander in that way. One of the guys from the café unlocks the door to the Konzertsaal for me. I'm a bit confused at first -- there's no piano, no drum kit, no amps, no chairs, no music stands... just a wide open empty space with a stage at the front and a bar at the back. Hmm. I eventually [...]
Okay, so my plans for multiple "Cologne liveblogging" installments obviously fell by the wayside -- there simply wasn't time. But I'm back with the full report. Tuesday, Oct. 24 - subway to Penn Station, NJ Transit commuter rail to Newark Liberty Airport, farking AirTrain to the terminal (for non-New Yorkers, AirTrain is your first introduction to our charming local custom of naked extortion -- welcome to New York, now pay up, motherfucker), short flight from Newark to Montreal (the one nice thing about Newark airport is that it's not busy, so you don't get [...]
Greetings and salutations. I'm currently sitting in the Stadtgarten's café, taking advantage of their complimentary WiFi and killing time before tonight's soundcheck. I've spent the past two days in intensive rehearsal with the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra and I'm frankly blown away by their passion, dedication and musicianship. Of course, it helps to have people like Marko Lackner (lead saxophonist for Bob Brookmeyer's New Art Orchestra) on board, but these cats can all play, for real. I'm really looking forward to tonight's hit. The gig will also be going out on [...]
She I went am going to Germany. In just a few short hours, in fact. So if there are any Secret Society blog readers in or around Cologne and you're planning on coming to my Saturday night gig with the CCJO , (A) bless your heart, and (B) be sure to say hi afterwards. I will be premiering a new piece written specifically for the CCJO, called "Habeas Corpus." (Explanations seem unnecessary.) I'll try to do some liveblogging from Cologne, but if interweb access [...]
UPDATE: The Whitney has made the audio of this concert available on their website (via Alex Ross ). ----- One of the most interesting things Steve Reich says in this interview (which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago) is that the reason he formed his own band is that he grew tired of composers making excuses for poor representations of their work -- "well, there wasn't enough rehearsal, the violinist couldn't make it this day, the conductor didn't really care for it." He also talks [...]
Just back from today's Steve Reich marathon at the Whitney, featuring So Percussion and Alarm Will Sound. A full review will be forthcoming soon, but meanwhile, allow me to rant while the rant's still fresh. Right in the middle of the first piece ("Pendulum Music"), some officious woman from the Whitney comes up to me and tells me I can't take pictures. This confuses me since I'm sitting in the reserved section along with all the other press, some of whom are also taking photographs. I'm certainly not doing anything stupid like using a flash, but [...]
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society
Monday Music – 28 May 2012
Bison - Quill
