Shelton Nordeson at Blue Six 9-24-2009

Played duets on Thursday night at Blue Six in the mission with Kjell Nordeson. Part of the Active Music Series, it'll be a monthly concert where I'll be bringing a project and inviting another group to share the bill. This night Darren Johnston brought a new quartet called Farallon where he's joined by Sheldon Brown on alto, Noah Phillips on guitar and Jordan Glenn on drums.

Kjell and I played the first set, all improvised - we played four pieces, the first two were more rooted in tempo based forms with Kjell creating multi-layered rhythms with lots of variations and colors of sounds stemming from his kit that includes many "little instruments" in addition to the standard elements. Really fun to play with him, I like his feel when playing time - driving & intense, with a solid pulse supporting all the variations.We played four pieces - the first two were pretty high energy tempo driven affairs, lots of forward momentum and repetition. I started on tenor and switched to alto halfway through the second. The third piece dealt with more quiet tones and silence at first. Kjell then created a pulsing theme utilizing some complex sounds which developed into an ostinato in a kind of 12/8 feel with cross rhythms on top. I was able to float on top of this with melodic material. A very patient feel to the piece. We were able to record it with 4 tracks, here's the second track, where I play first tenor and then alto:



Farallon played the second set. It was quite good, some originals by both Darren and Sheldon and one Herbie Nichols tune which was quite an interesting interpretation largely due to the instrumentation and the playing style of Noah Phillips. Instead of comping in a jazz way, Noah's concept has a strong rock influence, and he would create backings which reflected this, while maintaining the chordal aspects of the written music. It was a real juxtaposition which I thought worked well. The music written by Darren and Sheldon was strong and you could tell how much those two had played together in the past. Darren's been sounding extra good these days - a benefit of playing alot of shows all over the place (I think he was in Chicago, Toronto and New York in the past month.)

Weasel Walter Quintet 21 Grand 9-23-2009

Last night played with Weasel Walter's Quintet - first show in a few months - me, Aaron Bennett, Darren Johnston, Damon Smith and Weasel. It was good. We didn't have a rehearsal, we played the first piece Weasel had brought to the group, "On the Verge of Destruction", so we all knew how to approach it. I think because of no rehearsing, the looseness that we played with actually helped the music. Darren, Aaron and I are all good readers, so the notated music was there, and the improvising was really interesting and varied. Probably because we hadn't played in awhile: those situations always tend to freshen the ideas. I think structurally there was a good amount of variation too.
The first set was with Josh Allen, Mike Guarino and Tim Orr. Two drummers, one saxophonist. Alot of energy. I hadn't seen Tim play before - used alot of extra percussion, cymbals and such, with his kit. Sounded good.
The last set was a trio made up of Derek Moneypeny and two fellows from Sacramento, Chad Stockdale and Kevin Corcoran. Drums, guitar and electric saxophone. More energy music! Loud - loving my westone earplugs these days.........

Cylinder Double Quartet at Heaven Gallery 9/12/2009

The third concert of Cylinder's Chicagoland run was at Heaven Gallery in Wicker Park. We had Jeb Bishop, Dave Rempis, Anton Hatwich and Frank Rosaly join us in this endeavor, we had a quick and focused rehearsal the day before that went well. All four us brought pieces, I wrote a new one that began with a bass melody with stacked chords by the horns, which led to a bass duet. Then some in time playing - had Rempis on baritone take a solo with Kjell and Lisa, I took the second one on alto with Anton and Frank. Up next was an expanded personnel version of Kjell's untitled piece - a light structure with few instructions, but effective. A lot of energy. Darren brought a piece called the Paper Garden, he asked Josh to join us as well, so it was up to nine players. Lisa brought a modified arrangement of her piece the Deep Disciplines - inspired by deep divers, they can go down to 100 meters below the surface. All in all it was a fun set. I felt that getting all of those musicians together was very worthwhile. Hopefully we'll get a chance to do it again sometime.
Paul Giallorenzo and Hans-Peter Pfammatter played the first set of the night. A piano duo. Paul played the upright piano, Hans-Peter played the baby grand. Both used preparations. Very good pacing. Lots of interesting sounds. Paul also added some synthesizer towards the end of the set. If not for the loudness of the Milwaukee Avenue Saturday Night drunkenness alot of the sounds could have been heard better.

Cylinder at the Sugar Maple 9/11/2009

In January I played up in Milwaukee for the first time - somehow in the 6 years I lived in Chicago I had never made it up there. Bruno Johnson of Okka Disc runs a great bar up there called the Sugar Maple. He has a music room and has been holding concerts for a few years now. After a rehearsal for the large group pieces for a concert at Heaven, we picked up a rental minivan and headed up the 94, through too much traffic, with a stop at a gas station where Kjell and I were approached by a spray-on wipe-off car wax hawker, past the Cheese Castle and finally to Milwaukee. It was our first quartet concert since we played at the Musicians Union Hall in San Francisco back in August - we had some rehearsals before I headed to Chicago a few weeks ago and we had a little time before the show to warm up and run some parts. It was a good concert - a small turnout, but enthusiastic - we played really well. The room is very live, and I think that gave some extra energy to our playing - our maybe it was that Bourbon Barreled Scotch Ale that I had on during dinner..... Afterwards we hung out with Bruno at the bar, tasting some really interesting micro brews from Wisconsin and other parts. Got to bed real late - got up a little too early - felt it on the drive back to Chicago.

Cylinder Mixed Groups at Elastic 9/10/2009

I arranged some concerts this past weekend in Chicago and Milwaukee for Cylinder, the quartet I've been working on in San Francisco with Darren Johnston, Lisa Mezzacappa, and Kjell Nordeson. Two were for the quartet and two involved musicians in Chicago.

The first night was at Elastic up in Logan Square. We invited Keefe Jackson, Josh Berman, Frank Rosaly and Hans-Peter Pfafmatter to join us in some free improvisations. (Hans-Peter is a Swiss pianist, who has been in Chicago for the past four months - a grant council in Switzerland, maintains an apartment in the Ukrainian Village and they provide artist residences year after year. This is how I met Marc Unternauer and Thomas Mejer.) We played two sets of improvisations: the first grouping was a trio of Keefe, Lisa and Kjell. The second was a quartet of myself, Hans-Peter, Frank and Darren. The third was a duet with Darren and Keefe, the highlight for me being some very strong difference tones produced by the blended high notes. And the final piece of that set was a quintet with myself, Lisa, Josh, Frank and Hans-Peter. A lot of strong playing during the set - you could tell that all the musicians were listening and really improvising with each other.

The second set had only two groupings: a duo between the percussionists, Frank & Kjell; and the final piece of the night involving all eight musicians. There was only one full drumset at the space that night, so during Kjell and Frank's duo, they constructed smaller percussion kits, the use of these highlighted their skill with using smaller sounds and the sense of space that both of them have. They set up facing straight at each other, and it had me imagining some kind of esoteric ceremony. Though the final piece of the night had all eight musicians, we arranged it so that no more than two musicians could play at a time, while allowing for everyone to truly develop material. It worked quite well, and though the entire night had a great sense of timing, patience and musicality, this "passing along the music" piece was very memorable. I was glad to be able to get these people together to play!

Quartet at Hideout 9-9-2009

Played last night at the Hideout over on Wabansia in Chicago. Played in a quartet with Keefe Jackson, Anton Hatwich and Marc Riordan. I played alto and clarinet, Keefe was on tenor, Anton on bass, Marc on drums. Back in June when I was in Chicago for a weekend, we played a show at Heaven. This time around I brought 4 new pieces, we played a new one of Keefe's and a (very slightly) older piece by Anton (we played it in June).
We had a rehearsal the day before and worked some things out. I always try to keep things clear in the parts, but making the pieces work all together has to happen through playing. This night was a good first step in that direction.
The first set was a duo between Brian Labycz and Jim Baker. Labycz on Doepfer modular synth, Baker on ARP 2600. A wide variety of sounds, Labycz stayed closer to buzzes and sounds, where Baker would rub up against tonality from time to time. Good pacing. would like to hear this in a different space - maybe in one where each sound source is very separate so that there would be more spatial aspects. It was somewhat of a short set, I could've listened to them play longer.
The quartet set went well and we were able to get some video and some audio recording of the set. (I'll be posting some of those as soon as I can.) The group has a cohesive sound already - probably due to all the playing Keefe and Anton and I have done in the past. Anton's playing was solid throughout - particularly during a solo near the end of the set. We'll be recording the music this weekend, with talk going around about a December week long tour - - - ---- -

Here's a video:

Rolldown at Charleston and the Chicago Jazz Fest

In Chicago for two weeks. I'll be playing a string of shows next week, but the impetus of the trip was today's concert at the Chicago Jazz Festival with Jason Adasiewicz' Quintet Rolldown. So I flew in on Tuesday - and we rehearsed on wednesday during the day and then played a warm up gig at the Charleston in Bucktown last night. It was definitely a good way to get ready for the show today, where we played on the Jackson Stage. I'm not sure the last time we played, I think it was all the way back in January when I was here playing and recording with the Fast Citizens. But, in the meantime, the album we recorded last fall has been picked up by Cuneiform and is being released this month. Great news!
Last night when at the Charleston I thought we did some very good playing - though I felt a little out of it during the first part of the set. Not sure why, I think I was tired or something. Could of also been getting used to playing with musicians' earplugs in. I've been trying to get used to wearing them while playing. It's tricky with a horn because you hear yourself so much more than everyone else (some would say this is regular for saxophonists). Josh played an exceptionally structured and executed solo on the ballad "I Hope She is Awake". Shevitz played some very clear and fast ideas. The great thing about playing with Frank Rosaly and Jason Roebke as a rhythm section is that they're willing to go with you at times and let you go from them at others. There was some really interesting free playing during Creep - I think I ended up playing an unaccompanied clarinet solo during that.
Today at the Jazz Fest things felt good. Getting used to the sound on stage took a bit, which caused a little miscommunication during Varmint. We got around that and played some great stuff - there was another great free section during Creep - playing in that style with those musicians makes alot of sense - all of us have developed alot of extended techniques on our instruments - while also being able to play in time. That's one of the reasons why we're able to push our music in different directions than alot of other jazz musicians playing today. It would be nice to hear the set, I think the Jazz Fest records the shows, not sure when we'll get to hear it though. Hopefully too we'll see some photos popping up pretty soon - there were definitely enough photographers there.
Here's one from the backstage: