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!