grey ghost 3030 impetus 2-20-2005

first time in awhile for grey ghost to play. tonight was a double bill with daniel givens at the 3030 space in logan square. i like the series that rai ichimiro is putting together, the impetus series, he is making good choices in terms of pairings - having diverse bills, and he works hard to make the concert worthwhile, he gets people out and puts together a cd-r of unreleased music by the folks playing as a gift to folk that come out. johnathan was out of town with head of femur for the week and half before, they were opening up with wilco down south - big shows, warm weather, what could be wrong? but, that meant we didn't have time to get together beforehand, so this show was a to be a loose one. i felt like the first half of the set was pretty good - as we let the improvising be the most important part. it seemed once we got into some of the material we have, we tightened up, and there were some tenative moments. the end especially didn't turn out the way it should. it's a tricky group balancing different worlds of sounds and concepts of free improvisation and structured computer parts. we'll play again on march 4th, i'm thinking it will be a good show.

daniel givens played with josh abrams and nicole mitchell - his music is based on precomposed electronic beat driven music, josh & nikki improvised along for the set; they were also playing accopmanied by a paul robeson movie: the emperorer jones i think it was. kind of a dark mood made by the black & white feel and the music - it was a good performance.

dragons 1976 virginia 2-10 through 12 2005

we finished our tour by going to virginia - two towns, richmond & charlottesville. i'd never been to richmond before, only passed it on i-95 before and never really thought it would be a nice place to hang out in, but i was wrong - it's a nice looking town with lots of old architecture, harking back to colonial days and all of that. we played at a place called emilio's, which serves tapas and has music several nights a week. we shared the night with an improvising quartet led by Marty McCavitt on the laptop. they were pretty good - reminded me of supersilent. a good chunk of the crowd were relatives of jason's - so they were all rambunctious in their support of our playing. the ajemian's tried to keep us out late - they succeeded with jason, but tim & i headed back earlier to charels ajemian's place. the next day we got to cruise around richmond a bit, seeing the avenue of monuments. the road that has all the big statues of the civil war southern generals and other important people. it's kind of strange when you think of it - having monuments to a country that broke away from united states.
we stayed in town for dinner before taking the hour drive to charlottesville where we stayed the night. a nice day in charlottesville with clear skies and good coffee. we played at the tea house again, where we played just last october. afterwards stopped in at a dance party - met some locals; my friend drew thiemann came down from DC. actually the most memorable thing of the evening was this crazy guy in some sort of flowery robe at the tea house. when Drew got there, he had put his things on a bar stool. this crazy guy comes by and tosses all of Drew's things on the floor. a few minutes later he butts into our conversation which was about chicago. patrick (friend we stayed with) & i both ask him why he threw the things on the floor - he gets real upset, bends a fork in his hand threateningly and asks if we want to talk about it outside. freak.
we had the long drive back to chicago the next day - 13 hours, home at 1 am.

dragons 1976 charlotte, nc 2-9-2005

throw a stone
Originally uploaded by dragonseventysix.

out of georgia, back to the carolina's. i was excited about this date - this fellow brent bagwell set things up and he seemed to be really excited about it - got a 12 piece band together to play free jazz and got some press. we rolled into town in the evening (pretty routine by this point) and met up with him and others for a bite. not that we were hungry as we had the big meal only a few hours before in atlanta. the place we played at was kind of a dive, and i was a bit worried, what with a unc vs duke game going on and being shown on about 20 tvs but the night turned out to be a real good time. the first group was a duo that used plenty of different electronic sounds, and which i thought was quite good. another thing - it struck me while listening to them, that it must be really tough to play out there music in places like charlotte. but people get alot of satisfaction out of it - why else would they be doing it? after they were done, the game also ended, so thankfully all the tvs in the music room were turned off. dragons played acoustically, as always (the other bands were amplified) and i think it really changed the tone of the evening from "hey, these people play weird music" to " wow, these people are serious about it and are making some music in a way i haven't heard before". we played our set with a good amount of changes in the way we normally play the tunes. these last few shows are time to get ready for recording, which we're going to be able to do as soon as we get back to chicago.
the 12 piece band sounded good - i really enjoyed them because it seemed like everyone playing was really getting in to it - they were playing straight up free jazz - 4 saxes, trumpet, two basses, two drummers, two guitarists, and a keyboard player. there were a couple of spots in the improvising that were great - this alto & tenor player that were really going off - screaming into their horns to get the feelings out. brent also did a great job with the arrangements, using the whole group together, while having nice spacing between solos & duos.
we went out to his place afterwards - it was almost an hour drive out of charlotte outside of the small town of oakbar, nc. he lives in a house that is on a piece of land of about 300 acres. he and his wife moved down from nyc about 2 years ago = trying to find a place completely different from their last experience - they've found it. i finally got to sleep outside for a night - i've been wanting to the whole trip, but it hadn't really been warm enough until that night. it's strange sleeping outside when you almost never do it - little sounds can get you excited - and in the morning when the sun rises it's great, but you have no idea what time it is, for some reason i let it get me anxious. also in the morning it got real windy and i had to move inside. brent is a real good guy - really glad to have met him. we also got to take a nice walk to the river near his place - we skipped stones for awhile and got spooked by some cows that were pretty interestedin what we were up to...

dragons 1976 atlanta, ga 2-8-2005

we keep finding ways to make our short drives into longer ones. we took a route into atlanta which hit no interstates during rush hour. so it took us between two & three hours to get to atlanta from athens..... we stopped in at my old friend gregg's place - he's staying with his sister for a bit - it's nice to finally meet his sister who has lived the past 6 years abroad, first in toronto, then in moscow. we went on over to the eyedrum gallery around 8 or 9 - i didn't really know what to expect in the show - we played there a year ago and it was allright - this time it seemed like setting it up wasn't as solid. maybe my fault. two bands played before us - it was actually the first night we've played with other groups on this trip - unfortunately the bands seemed to be playing their first shows, or close to it. the first band was dominated by the lead singer/ keyboard player who was all about letting everyone know that he could sing and play piano. they played a very long set - probably an hour and a half. pretty tiring. rule #1 - if there isn't a huge crowd and you're the first band, it's probably a good idea to not try to convince folk you're the reason to be there by playing everything you know. i guess the good part of the first band playing for so long was that gregg & i got to hang out for awhile - there was a cool show at the space with all of these structures made with homeless folk in mind - we found a tent-type space that had a desk and writing paper, also a space heater - really a perfect place to be away from things. the second group was interesting, but the performance didn't really keep you interested. they made music on computers, alot of the sounds coming from phone tones - a good idea - they probably would have been better off playing at a dance party of some kind. by the time we played alot of the folk that had come had already given up, we played maybe 45 minutes and were done sometime after 1 o'clock. a low key evening - went back to gregg's and hit the beds.
the next day we went to this fish restaurant called six feet under because ross taylor's brother lee had dropped off $40 worth of gift certificates at the eyedrum. the place was good - and actually lee showed up there and we got to hang out with him, a good guy - into real estate - the food was great - i had blackened catfish and key lime pie -

dragons 1976 athens, ga 2-7-2005

so, a day off and then a nice drive to athens, georgia, a place i've not been to before but have heard much about. we got in right at sundown, we had a show set up for us at the 40 watt club, it was just to be us playing 2 sets, a monday night, my expectations weren't so high. after getting some good coffee and taking a walk i got the feeling that athens is really a music town - it seems people take it pretty seriously there - i just got a sense about it. we went and got some dinner at the restaurant next door to the 40 watt, had plenty of time to relax and warm up. i was really surprised with the turnout & the reception - about 70 people came and stayed for both sets - athens has a strange law that keeps a smoking ban until 11:00 pm, i could really tell the difference during our second set. i got to talk to a good amount of people afterwards, including bari, the owner of the club. she's very nice- we talked politics - athens & atlanta are the only liberal spots in georgia, and they're far outnumbered by the conservatives -basically it seemed like all the people that worked at the club were really into what we were doing, which gives me a good feeling for coming down again - we got out of the place around 1and went back to friend john's place. slept in late in the morning, then went for breakfast at the grit - apparently a famous vegetarian joint - i had some really good gumbo with dumplings....

dragons 1976 columbia 2-5-2005

down in the south and feeling good about it. we had a nice short drive from greenville to columbia - the capitol of SC, the place where they have a statue of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, that beacon of american hope and equailty. our friend Ross Taylor always helps us out when we're down here - we were headed to his place just on the edge of Cayce, driving by some folk walking on the side of the road and to our surprise it is our friend Anthony Mathile - he who has been working as video documentarian for the lieks fo the rolling stones and david bowie for the past 3+ years. wild coincidence, no? he was in town from Berlin for just a few days visiting his grandma - so we invited him & his girlfriend jessie to the show.
as we rolled up into Ross's place he was working on some knife throwing - we tried a shake at it with different degrees of success - he made us a a great dinner that featured dichon radishes, tofu and hot stuff - Ross likes it hot for sure. we had a nice relaxing afternoon & evening, went over to the hunter gatherer around 8 or 9 to get going. it was a real good crowd, the standout was this guy jerry who introduced himself to us - a southerner of the tyed dyed harley davidson style. the most memorable part of the night for him was loooking at jason's sketch book, declaring - y'all need some flames on that shit" and proceeding to put flames on it. a gem.
the bar closed up at midnight on saturday due to some crazy south carolina licensing fee paid for bars that choose to be open on sundays. so, we played two focused sets that got folk excited and left them satisfied.afterwards we went back to Ross's place with a few folk including anthony & jessie - we all hung upside down in the stretcher Ross has before going to bed around 3.

dragons 1976 greenville 2-4-2005

to greenville
Originally uploaded by dragonseventysix.

the drive to greenville from knoxville (picture is on the drive) was only to be 3 hours, but we found a way to make it 5. we had an idea of taking that raod that goes through the middle of the smoky mountains - unfortunately it was friday afternoon and it seemed alot of people were headed that way to go to dollywood and the skiing areas (though i'm not sure if skiing is happening down here right now - there's no snow on the ground). so that took a bit, then we stopped in asheville, which is right on the way, to pick up jason's friend keith, who lives in a beautiful old house. got into greenville around 7, and got to the place to play which is the bohemian cafe, an upscale place that shares a building with horizon records, which our man gene berger owns and operates. we went out for some food with gene and back to the cafe, which was packed, to start playing close to ten. apparantly greenville has been waiting for some music like this to come to town. the crowd was mixed, but mainly younger folk - 20's & 30's - we played our music and the people loved it - such a great response for a town that has never really had music like this performed live in it before. as i kep[t talking to more people after the show, including trip, the owner of the cafe, it dawned on me that these people are open to different kinds of music, but they're just never given the opportunity to see it. it's a great thing to be able to come to a place and do something new for them.
there were some talkers, but the majority of place was attentive and into it - it took us a long time to get out of the place and up to gene's house were we relaxed in front of the fire and had some delicious carrot cake made by barb, gene's wife. it's really something coming into different people's lives and getting a glimpse of how they live. gene has run a record store for 30 years, has a nice home in a nice neighborhood with trees all around - a listening room to listen to his passion - classical music - they have a son who is a bass player who is in school in new york ..in the morning we woke up slow and they made us breakfast of eggs, grits, potatos and fresh baked bread. good times.

dragons 1976 knoxville 2-3-2005

p light
Originally uploaded by dragonseventysix.

we headed out of lexington towards knoxville, tennessee - not a long drive, and an easy one on the highway, but it was pretty foggy, so there wasn't much to see. we pulled into the old city part of knoxville around 6 or so, and had some time to kill, so checked out a coffee shop, then talked to kevin davis on the phone, who was in town from chicago visiting his folks. he recommended a pizza place, we tired unsuccessfully to find the place, then headed back to the old city and went to a different pizza place that was pretty good. we went to the pilot light and regina was there, we spent a good hour or so just practicing and relaxing a bit. the pilot light reminded me of a small empty bottle - dark walls, no windows, a good place for late night creativity. i was a bit skeptical at first, but we did get a good crowd in there, they were really listening and into the music. i think it was in the second set - someone kept making exclamation's like "play that bass" "play that saxophone" "play those drums", then, in a few minutes a fellow comes up to the stage and puts three bouquets of long stem flowers at our feet and then walks off. turns out it was this fellow leslie that sells the flowers at clubs, but he was so into the music that he gave us the flowers....we had a multitude of choices of places to stay for the night - we split up a bit - jason and i stayed at regina's place - a nice house with some cats and a dog named fahey. people down in the south really like pets - it's cool because they have the space for them to roam around a bit. in the morning we woke to warmth - well, warmth for chicagoans, it was probably in the 50's but with the light streaming in on a clear day we could comfortably sit outside. we made some tacos with eggs, spinach, mushrooms, potato hash, and guacamole.

dragons 1976 lexington 2-2-2005

mecca a
Originally uploaded by dragonseventysix.

our 2nd annual winter tour has begun. a year ago we went on a week and a half tour into parts of the southeast and after having a good time playing, and escaping the cold of chicago for a bit, we decided that it was something we should try to do again. lexington is one of the first places we always think of playing in because of one man - ross compton. he's so into creative music & has a core group of people around him that have gotten this thing going in lexington that is good. i think the first show they had down there was the brotzmann tentet. imagine that - the brotzmann tentet playing a free show in a college town in the south, and hundreds of people coming out to check it out & it being successfull. everytime i come down to lexington it is a good show and i want to come back. saying all of that, our show was good - we played at the mecca dance studio, a place owned by theresa_____. we made the drive down from chicago in 6 hours under gray skies & through some snow - lexington's weather can feel like chicago's, but will rebound real quickly to the feel of the south. the place was full and we played two sets to a listening audience that showed their appreciation between and after our sets. we played very well in the room that had nice natural reverb tempered by the amount of people in the space. it was a great way to start the tour.
we woke on thursday in lexington, picked up our equipment at mecca and grabbed a bite to eat at ross's place gumbo ya-ya's - a poster on the wall announcing the sun ra arkestra playing that weekend in lexington. ross is busy, getting the sun ra arkestra down for a mardi gras parade.....

never enough hope 1-30-2005

second show in two nights for the super group. this one went better though we were crammed in tight on the stage and front floor of the hungry brain. but it really shows that with a big group like that, in order to hear everyone, it's easier to not be in a big reverberrant space (reverberrant?). there was a very good turn out at the brain too: the first set was three smaller groups of improvising, there was an aggressive one with colin & dan letting the baritones out f the gate; a very nice melodic improvisation with bogie, amy cimini, dina maccabee & brian dibblee; and then the vibraphone duo of adasiewicz and tacket (not tucket or target) brown. good times. the long piece went well, and the audience really loved it - the way it's supposed to be....

never enough hope; open end 1-29-2005

toby summerfield wrote a piece for 16 of his friends - and gave it the name never enough hope. he's really put some serious effort into this project and i think it is good because of it. the piece is a long form, with several sections of a slow-build nature. most of it is in time with dense rhtymic parts fleshed out by drums & bass, 2 guitars and 4 vibraphones. add saxophone and string quartets and you'v egot yourself a large group. toby set up the show at the open end, which was a good thing as we could comfortably fit in there all together - also, just the atmosphere at open end, with a skyline view and super high ceilings give shows an aspect you can't get at other places. so, who was in the band? these folk:

Saxophones: Dan Bennett, Stuart Bogie, Colin Stetson, Aram Shelton
Vibes: Jason Adasiewicz, Dan Sylvester, Tim Daisy, TIm Brown
Strings: Amy Cimini, Kevin Davis, Brian Dibblee, Dina Maccabee
Rhythm: Frank Rosaly, Nathaniel Braddock, Joshua Tillinghast, Jason Ajemian

we had one day for a full rehearsal, which was kind of slow moving, as there are lots of things to have to practice with a group of that size: the instrument groups & the entire band need to be together - hearing where your part fits in can be tough. it was a good time - about a third of the group came in from out of town - from the east and west coast -

the show went off well - dragons 1976 played an opening set - a warm up for a tour we're starting on wednesday. while we were playing i was working with the room - you can play very softly and still fill the place up because there's so much natural reverb. and it seems unless the music is going through a PA, it won't wash out.
when never enough hope played, it felt good - in the rehearsal we kind of just jumped into the sections, but for the performance, toby let the piece take it's time building and receding, bringing in people for solos and sectional hits - keeping the piece changing by allowing different voices to come through. i think the piece worked well - we'll find out for sure with the recording....

improvising myopic & empty bottle 1-10-2005

played at the myopic bookstore with guillermo gregorio, josh abrams, jason roebke and jason adasiewicz. it was a nice ensemble with myself on Eb and bass clarinet, guillermo on Bb; josh & jason on bass; shevitz on vibes. we played for awhile, all improvised - guillermo is just the nicest guy you can think of, i always would like to play with him more, but time goes by quickly, and all of a sudden it's been three months since you saw each other. this is how time goes by in chicago. i've recently been playing the little Eb clarinet again, i forgot how much i enjoy playing it - it definitely has a high range, but i can get some flute like sounds out of it and the actual tone is very pleasant..or so i think. after we finished playing i had to head over to the empty bottle to play in fred lonberg-holm's lightbox orchestra...
it was a free night at the empty bottle, and the way it goes is that on a tuesday, very few people will come when the cover is $3, but if it's free the place is completely filled. people really get scared by cover charges. i get scared by them too. also, i'll buy a $3.50 beer and tip a dollar, and think it's allright, but when i see that half gallon of orange juice at the supermarket for $3, i think, that's a little pricey.....go figure.
anyhow. the night was for a terry plumbing cd-r release - terry plumb(m?)ing is a prose / poetry/ music zine put out by our frineds eric graf, mike merck, rotten milk and others - it's a nice diy thing. rotten milk played a noice set with this other guy going by the handle bubblegum shitface - almost electro there mr milk - watch out. next up was the girl trio sofserve, they tried the moves and whatnot, but they need to work on it more to make it convincing....the lightbox orchestra headlined - a big group, we spread out on the stage and the floor, i used my clarinets again, tv pow was all there, zerang, karel, payne, corbett, kapsalis, vida, sullender, morrow, pomerleau, and a fellow named matt who played a little synth next to me. it was good playing in front of a big crowd, and though you could hear the huge amoutns of talkers in the back, they were kind of quiet, and not disturbing the music what with the bulk of bodies quieting the din. it was a good set, if a bit short - walked home over the melting ice with jen, a walk that seems long if you think about it, but isn't so long when you're walking it....

jazz charleston 1-7-2005

i know it's been a bit since i wrote - the holidays and all of that - went down to florida for a week, but there was almost no sunshine, but it was warm - got to walk around outside with no shoes on. but i came back to chicago right before new years, and since then have been very busy with music : playing & recording. last friday i played at the charleston with jason ajemian on bass and frank rosaly on drums. we played monk tunes and standards - i like playing that music, it's a good time & challenging at the same time. we had some folk sit in with us - nick broste played some trombone solos, tim daisy and hatwich subbed out the rhythm section for a few tunes, and this fellow bob came up and played piano. he sounded good, it was one of those situations that i've been on the other side of - new guy in town, want to play with people, but are worried that you'll get vibed by the other people playing. that's one of the main drags about playing standard jazz - the mentality that some people get - they feel that they are so good that if someone shares the stage with them and aren't at that level, or share their ideas of how the music should go, they're not a good musician. i think that it is fine to dis-like the way someone plays, actually i think it's vital to be able to decide when you do or don't like someone's playing. it's not necessarily a personal thing, which is what people usually take it as. what i don't like is when someone doesn't like how you play, and then gives you attitude about it. this has happened to me before at sessions in the past. anyhow - bob sounded good, but he didn't give us his number or anything, so how can we call him now?
the rest of the night was good - shevitz poured the drinks, ajemian did some donuts in the snow that fell on the city a few nights before.

grey ghost hungry brain 12-19-2004

when it's this cold, you don't expect anyone to come to see you play, but then people do come, and it is good. it was 5 degrees when i woke up in the morning - it didn't seem that bad when i went outside at first, but it actually was that bad. trust me.
anyhow, grey ghost played for the first time in a wee bit in town. we've been able to get together alot to work on new things, and we're starting to make some headway - i think our goal right now is to have a good chunk of material ready so that when we play, we can be loose with our forms and bring things in when they feel right. i'm still using max/msp mainly for live sampling and manipulation, but am using reason more for synthesized sounds and sequences - the great thing about reason is the fact you can layer the hell out of a piece and remove parts & re-add them as you wish pretty simply. lots of possibilities - the dark side of reason is the ease with which you can make really bad music. ...
i liked how we played - a long set with a few breaks, couldn't tell how well it was received - some folks were talking up front - but most were listening - a good time.

second citizens hideout 12-15-2004

a good time and good night at the hideout. the second citizens returned to the hideout for a wednesday night double bill with michael columbia. there was a good crowd in the abr when we got there, we played a nice long set and the folks listened. playing with this band is fun- we all know the music so well that we can really let our instincts take over. afterwards someone asked me about the more open improvised sections, he said that he didn't really know what our goal was in them. i tried to explain to him that what we are doing by improvising is constantly trying to change the music to make it better. the great thing about improvising is that you can find new ways to play music - though of course some othings turn out better than others. but, if we played the same thing all the time, we'd be a jam band. michael columbia played kind of a short set - it's dave mcdonnell on saxophone, bass and electronics and dylan ryan on drums & electronics. a similar instrumentation to grey ghost, but an entirely different way of making music. i would say they are alot more rocking than grey ghost, with more emphasis on rhythm than looseness. all of us finished the night drinking beers that somehow became free after midnight - not bad...

mcbride / lonberg-holm / rosaly / shelton empty bottle 12-14-2004

it's finally cold here in chicago - who'd of thunk? nate mcbride recently moved into town from boston and he asked me to try to work on a group with him, fred lonberg-holm & frank rosaly. i said yes of course - nate is a great bass player and a top notch fellow, so playing with him is a good time, as well as challenging. the tunes he writes has so much looseness in their form that it truly is a challenge to remember where you are & what can possibly happen next. luckily we had two long rehearsals for this date - though we still were too loose for some of those forms. it was two sets at the empty bottle on a tuesday night - i had my work holiday dinner earlier in the night, but thankfully i didn't eat too much - almost, but not quite - a couple cups of coffee and i was ready to play. the first set we came out with alot of energy, i felt really good playing, it seemed like the first time in awhile that i got to play some music that was really wide open. nate's music tends to have alot of energy in it - which i like, and don't get to do so often.
we took a short break, some guys from the air force band were there - in town for some conference - pretty strange that guys in the air force band are into free jazz... vandermark was there - he's going to back in town for several months now - we talked about graduate schools; i've been thinking of applying to some, but am really torn as to where a program is that would really suit what i want to do. deadlines are fast approaching and i need to make some sort of decision.
the second set was good as well - it was a little hard for me to hear fred at times, but there was alot of good improvising going on - nate and i had a nice bass & clarinet duo; hope fully we'll be able to play some more and record some of the music.

dragons 1976 Impetus 12-5-2004

Dragons 1976 played for the first time since our tour and show at the Phrenology Fest. These fellows Raiichiro Iijima & Brad Loving put on a concert series called Impetus, which matches up good music from different genres onto the same bill. The concert was at 3030, and the other groups were Matt Leer, a singer/guitarist from Texas and Bear in Heaven, a group from NYC. This goes to prove once again that the best wayto have a good show is to have people dedicated to getting the word out and promoting it, while also including good music. The show started around 8:30, and there was a good crowd - Matt Leer started things out, he played solo, making good use of a variety of pedals and looping devices to create a big sound. We played the middle set and I felt really good about it - we had the chance to have a few rehearsals before the date, and it really helps - I also had the chance to make a little adjustment to my horn, so the low notes were coming out much easier. We played four songs, with lots of improvsing throughout to bridge the spaces in between. It felt good and we had a good response from the other musicians and people in the crowd. Bear in Heaven played last - they're normally a six piece band, but only two of their members could make it out to Chicago for the show - they used samples and triggers to flesh out the sound - but even with the stripped down performance, I really liked the music - lots of interesting rhythms, good textures - melodic songs. Not trying to be too much - a good thing.

quartet at charleston 12-3-2004

tonight i played at a bar called the charleston in bucktown with anton hatwich on bass, nori tanaka on drums and matt schneider on guitar - i played alto. we played tunes - mainly by thelonious monk, but some standards and one orenette tune - turnaround, not really my most facvorite ornette tune, mainly because it's basically a blues - not an open tune like most of his. i don't mind playing blues, but i love ornette's music so much, i'd rather just play it open. the monk tunes are great to play - they all have his particular characteristics stamped on them - good feels, & simple melodic statements that leave lots of room for interpretation. we played two sets - playing at the charleston is a good time - it's a small bar, and people are just hanging out, it's friday night, you play in the middle of the room with people only a few feet away - people have their choice of listening intently or not, everybody gives you some money if they want to, you play with no pressure, have a few drinks and spend the night enjoying yourself...

broste quintet 3030 12-2-2004

so it was a thursday night at 3030, and i was to play with nick broste's quintet - unfortunately, only four of us showed up - frank rosaly forgot about the gig, even though he was playing in two groups that were scheduled for the night. it was a quiet night, but relaxing - jim baker, anton hatwich and paul hartsaw did some trio improvisations - baker's work on the arp synthesizer is so right on right now - i really like watching him play that instrument - the interface is great - lots of knobs and controls - signal routing and all of that - here's a picture:



our set went well - nick on trombone, myself on alto and bass clarinet, anton on bass and kevin davis on cello. actually with frank not being there it was nice to be playing with all harmonic instruments - we concentrated on the tones and had a nice feeling throughout. one of these days broste's quintet will have a gig where everything works out -one time nick couldn't show up because he got stranded in another town with a wrong plane flight....

shelton ajemian tanaka rodan 11-25-2004

thanksgiving 2004 - we got a little snow here in chicago the day before, so it was a nice wintry start to the holiday season. i'd rather it snow than rain when it's 32 degrees outside....
i had a good dinner at johnathan, giselle and brandy's place on milwaukee avenue - had my fair share of food and wine, hung out for a bit and then headed up the street to rodan to play with jason ajemian and nori tanaka. we hadn't played as a trio before, so it was a good time to do some playing. we played two sets that had no breaks in between the songs - which is a challenge - if you feel like the music is headed somewhere you don't want to go, you can't just simply stop and start anew. you have to figure a way to slowly change the music and move it into a new direction. we went from repetitive drone-type musings to section swith nori and jason clearly defined as the rhythm section and me blowing over the top. i enjoy playing solos over a rhythm section, but always feel that i want to be truly part of the group. finding a way to make what i do both soloistic and ensemble orientated at the same time is always a challenge - sometimes with more success than other times. obviously.. we played late and finished the night - it was good to play with those guys.