Joe McPhee & Ken Vandermark: A Meeting in New York

The Stone is a vanguard not-for-profit music venue, founded by composer/musician and MacArthur Genius Award winner John Zorn. The space is located on the corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street on the Lower East Side in New York City. Described by some as a hole in the wall, it is a pretty well-designed one. The interior walls are brick but they are covered with black velvet curtains that fall from a high ceiling to a concrete floor. The room is about two and a half times as long as it is wide. At one end of the space, brick is still exposed; a small room with a white door has been built in the corner. Black plastic folding chairs fill the room. The wall seen on entering is covered with sheet-rock, painted white, and on it are displayed Peter Gannuskin's black and white photographs of the musicians who have curated performances throughout its six year history.

On March 18, 2011, a landmark event occurred...landmark, because Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark have never played in a duet before, except on those rare occasions during their tours with Peter Brötzmann's Tentet, when these two musicians can and have.

Before the music began, McPhee told the story of how he and Vandermark began their musical relationship. In his written words, the story goes like this:

In 1993, there was an interview in "Option" magazine with Ken Vandermark in which he had really marvelous things to say about my music and its influence on him.  When he began playing the saxophone his dad gave him a copy of my Hat Hut recording Tenor and told him if he was going to play tenor, he should check it out.  For better or worse he took the advice. It so happened that I was in Vancouver, B.C., for the jazz Festival as was Ken and I ran into him as he was boarding a bus en route to his concert and I thanked him for his kind remarks.  He invited me to the concert and his band proceeded to play one of my compositions from Tenor, "Goodbye Tom B."  I was not only impressed at their version, but it was the first time I had ever heard anyone play my music, and it was obvious that Ken was seriously into it for some time.  This was not done to impress me.

In 1995, Ken invited me to Chicago for my first visit there.  I arrived, we met, went into a studio and recorded our first CD, A Meeting In Chicago, all in a single take with no rehearsal, before playing our first concert later that night at The Empty Bottle.

With that preface, the musical interchange between these two reedsmen commenced. It was almost as if a father and his son were playing together. Vandermark seemed to soften in volume on his tenor deferring to McPhee, when, in fact, he provided a strong assured backdrop in front of which McPhee could launch himself on soprano sax. Instrumentally, the match was perfect. The high and the lows. The sparkling with the blustery. McPhee held forth with distinct phrases that became one entity, which Vandermark complemented harmonically, often merging with McPhee's sound. They did not imitate each other but carried strikingly different weights and interwove musical lines that created a whole densely packed body of abstract song.

Witnessing the two men listen consciously to each other was thrilling. McPhee kept his eyes closed the entire time; Vandermark did as well, though at times cast a meditative gaze towards the floor. Both were concentrating on the togetherness of their mutual sound; both were exercising their sensitivity to each other.

After each break, they changed their instruments. With those changes came the explorations of new integration of other timbres. After playing the soprano, McPhee switched to a silver Holton pocket trumpet, which was his Father's. This was the first time he had ever played it. Vandermark picked up his clarinet.

McPhee then revisited his soprano while Vandermark continued on the clarinet. This pairing was the most exquisite of all; the two instruments seared the air. The musicians played round and round each other. Vandermark turned red in the face, he was blowing so hard, not only to support his circular breathing, but also to maintain his dedicated presence, which was more than significant in response to McPhee's endlessly curving phrasings.

McPhee sought out the resonance of the space with his horn. Back on tenor, Vandermark refrained from playing with an extreme forward motion, where his instrument is so far in front of him in the metaphorical sense that he needs to expend an overabundance of energy to keep up with himself. Rather, he demonstrated an extraordinary awareness of how McPhee drew the lines, as they flickered, and popped, became boisterous, lyrical and melodic, even at one point introducing the theme from Coltrane's "After the Rain."


The passion they both felt was palpable. McPhee shone in his ever-present capacity for varying the extent to which he presses forward or quiets down, repeats his phrases or invents new ones. The rhythm maintained by the two was introverted. It existed as an inherent factor, an underpinning, in the structure of the improvisation. Only once, when McPhee tapped the mouthpiece on his pocket trumpet, was an overt rhythmic gesture detectable.

In visual art terms, the music simulated Cubism and Post-Impressionism at the same time. The two musicians contrasted each other with drastically opposed elements and directions or they completed each other, just as a bright yellow swatch of paint juxtaposed with one that is blue on the same surface fools the eyes as being green from a distance.

The music that McPhee and Vandermark played with the bassist Kent Kessler, in A Meeting In Chicago, in 1995, was inspired, evoking the sparks that occur when a warm collegial relationship begins. The blending was so fluid that the musicians shared only their compatibility. At the Stone, the contexts had changed. Since 1995, McPhee has become well-known in the United States because Vandermark removed him from his purely European audience by bringing him to Chicago; and Vandermark's career has skyrocketed not only in Chicago, but internationally. The music at the New York gig exuded confidence, and an evenness of expression that the Chicago recording only hinted at.

This concert displayed a camaraderie and intimacy rarely seen in the improvised music world. It is a well-known fact that McPhee is a romantic and the truest of friends. Yet, Vandermark guards the projection of his feelings and is not effusive. His feelings transfer to the fixed vigor within his playing.

At the end of the evening, the two musicians embraced just as they had at the beginning, after McPhee's verbal introduction when he described Vandermark as one of the greatest guys on earth. The night had revealed that Master and Apprentice may part ways in continuing the development of their own voices, their own groups, their own sounds; yet, they can always reunite in unparalleled splendor.

Text and Photos: copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Matthew Shipp Trio: The Art of the Improviser Live

I have been writing about improvised music for close to fifteen years. A few times, I have made mistakes in technical language or citing the wrong composer's name for a standard. Even though it gives me a minor headache that these errors passed me by before I let go of the articles to be published, I realize that, in the long run, these mistakes are no big deal and they do not override the content of the writing-only put a scratch in it that can usually be rubbed out by an editor or by a vigilant musician.

I trust myself to open my ears fully to take in the music well enough to describe my feelings on how I hear. I am nervous though every time my fingers hit the computer keyboard to start this process, because, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, you have to rid yourself of all distractions by stashing them metaphorically in jars so that the mind can calm down.

Within the last few weeks, I have been to several concerts. A couple of years ago, I decided that it was tedious to take notes at concerts and then review them, under time constraints that put me on edge. Honestly, I just wanted to enjoy the music.

But, on March 7, 2011, in New York City at (Le) Poisson Rouge, the Matthew Shipp Trio played in celebration of Shipp's new release, a double CD called The Art of the Improviser, on the Thirsty Ear label. This concert was so good that I was compelled to write about it.

The gig sang out its singularity; it was incomparable to any other concert I attended recently, where the groups' numbers ranged from one person to seven or more. The trio simply works so consistently and tightly that its impact as one organism defies criticism and invites only praises. And for an improvising group to have formed a web that is so closely knit is indeed rare and notable; in fact, kind of remarkable.

Shipp is indubitably the leader. He strikes the match that initially lights the fire. The pianist forges ahead in a state of consciousness that is apart from any that, collectively, we can know. Bassist Bisio and drummer Dickey board this plane of burning energy with equally as much fervor, supplying Shipp with the support he has earned and deserves.

Shipp has acclimated himself to chordal structures; yet, those structures find new definition, new positioning between more rhythmically nuanced and less intense, subtly arranged, phrasings. Those phrasings become the breathing room for the blasts that follow, whether in renderings of a jazz standard or gospel tune, towards which Shipp leans, or of a childhood song like Frere Jacques, which he once described as a "means to get out his frustration by pounding" the keyboard with double-handed chords.

An inappropriate word to describe Shipp's music is abstract. He has developed his own musical language and logic, which bows substantially to the history of piano-playing, but is not exclusively riveted to that history. The music rallies around his spirituality as it paradoxically merges with his intelligence, itself invested in the awareness of the stars, planets, intergalactic gases or dust and the unfathomable mystery of the way in which totality and beyond works. His music is a means of demonstrating that he just does not care about everyday drudgery and would rather be breathing fresh air than standing in a subway car. His music operates as poetry; the shifting in and out of formalized repeated resonance to lullaby is intentional. That he has been touched by a Yogic master is Shipp's gift to his audience.

The bold broadness with which Bisio performs, either using pizzicato or arco technique, clearly shows his passion for his instrument and the music he plays with it. As he looks up with his eyes closed and his lips un-pursed, his facial expressions tell of a deep sensitivity to weaving his sound throughout the large picture painted by Shipp and Dickey. When he solos, he wills himself as a one-man orchestra. It isn't the separate notes he hits that matter; it is how he connects from pizzed pitch to gliss to bowing. The imaginable throbbing of the vibrations that surround him resembles how force fields can exude from any radiant form.

Bisio has an amazing sense of rhythm that does not wane for a second as he progresses in a tuneless mode of stroking the strings. Often he stomps his right foot - a manifestation of an inner pulse wanting to free itself from his body as well as from his instrument.


His neck at a measurable angle from the static trunk of his body, Whit Dickey produces a steady stream of restrained percussiveness from his drumset that nearly becomes the axis around which the trio rotates; his drumming acts almost as a drone. His arms could not possibly flail uncontrollably because of the way in which the sound comes off the cymbals more than from the skins of his drums. Yet, when he solos, he lets go of the restraint that penetrates playing with the trio and his arms dance more and the sticks go higher into the space above him and they descend onto the drums more often. The sound is clean and strong. His sitting position remains the same. Dickey does not lack momentum; he is total momentum, inexorably so. With that momentum, the trio is buoyed in streams that ripple into rivers and oceans that rock with swelling waves.

At this gig, Shipp listened as Bisio and Dickey soloed. With his arms and elbows on the edge of the piano above the keys, Shipp's listening pose was stunning. His pause provided as much music as his playing would have. Shipp did not play a solo; his interaction with the band was his solo.

As Shipp's music has evolved so his capacity to create a distinctive statement has increased. But his maturity has always existed because his motive to make music never disappeared. Critics fuss and fume about his verbal overstatements and liken him to every pianist they recognize within his playing, but Shipp is only Shipp. Just like Kandinsky is always Kandinsky. Believe it and believe in the inspirational embrace which their art imparts.





Text and photos: copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Knowing

There was a time when I believed that life was going to last forever. My days were absorbed with my son and chores and doing my art when I could. Lately, I have come to realize that the present moment is more important than ever. When the chance to seize it confronts me, I consciously take it.

But when I feel at odds with myself, my mind flip flops: past to future to past to future. That dynamic is my present; how present is that?

The plans to complete a drawing or write a blog entry or write an article about music are mental exercises. The doing of any of the aforementioned grinds and plows through present time.

Stabilizing my body sense with my poetic sense regales balance and peace. The desire for that balance and peace is larger than the actuality of the states.

Worrying about either then or later is ridiculous. Analyzing and haranguing is all intellectual for me. None of any of it is in my gut where it needs to be. Where the mental meandering stops and the oneness with the universe begins.

Writing words resembles playing music. That I never achieved good comprehension scores on standardized tests does not surprise me. When I read, I do not take away details; I consume the larger ideas, which are incorporated into my manner of thought. I have always done this. My best memory of the act of absorbing large ideas is a time when I was sitting in my family's kitchen by the window at night. I think that I was alone in the house; the light was dim. My feet were propped up on a chair to the side of the one on which I was sitting. I was reading Bertrand Russell's Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. Not one iota of a quotation could I give from it; nor could I lay out a synopsis of the book. I remember the feeling I had reading it: I loved being able to understand the ideas. It is all I cared about at the time. My mind needed the engagement of understanding Bertrand Russell.

The paragraph that I just wrote flowed out of me like the notes from an instrument. A steady stream of description unwound out of nowhere. No, from somewhere. From my heart, my cache of feelings, my will to express myself to make a point.

Knowing is knowing only in the meaning of the word, not in the realness of the feeling of the knowing.

Tears well up in my eyes when I consider that there are so many knots I would like to unravel, so many stories I would like to tell. I hunger for the opportunities to continue to record my stories.

The groundwork has been laid for how words shall unlock themselves from the shackles of my brain, the chemistry of confusion, the heartlessness of false hope and the torrents of illusion.

I have had enough of skipping down the garden paths. Metaphorically. I care about the real paths; the ones I negotiate my way through. Even if those paths reveal themselves in ways which are not verbal. Imagery will suffice.

The lushness of possibilities of language I will go on exploring. Grieving about my inabilities to get on with it should not be an option.

But I do grieve.

Each day.

I get over here and then I am there instead of here.

And I will ask myself where have I gone? And I will catch myself in another ramble.

Saying nothing and meaning everything.

Photo: Studio Shot, January 2011

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Take Me to the River

More often than not, when I visit the water, its unstoppable motion and infinite gurgles take me to a place in my mind that is peaceful. The phenomenon of water itself overrides my heady turmoils, my rants of self-deprecation, the seemingly continual aches and pains within my physical being.

Water is a vehicle for tuning out the cacophony of the barrage of information with which I am hit every day. There is only so much of computer networking that I can face or in which I can even participate.

Paradoxically, the computer is the tool I need for promoting my interests and my writing. Look at this blog for heavens's sakes.

If I remove myself from the currency of cultural time which happens to be technological, I truly deny the essence of human evolution. Whatever is going on out there beyond my immediate reach, I can bring into my environment somehow through this machine. Yet the drawback of this machine is that it takes me away from human contact, which, as a social being, I desperately need.

Granted a state of hermit-tude aids in focusing, concentration, and a chance for introspection can happen in no other way, I can spiritually die if I do not break the solitude and breathe the air, tread on the ground, listen to the birds, smell the flowers, let my fingers get numb, perspire, bump into people on the sidewalk. Whatever is there for me to do.

I am seeking an intimate embrace.

The embrace that comes from the poetry of feeling closeness to myself.

The closeness of the one I am with. Stephen Stills meant his lyrics: When you're down and confused, Love the one you're with.

Yet, if I can inhale safety and love without the presence of anyone, I am in the intimate embrace I am seeking. I am in The embrace of God. God never wavers in His Love.

God takes many forms but I am with Him always. Just as the memories of those whom I love accompany me all the time. I can take them wherever I go. They experience whatever I experience.

I can go to the stream; I can go to the river; I can go to the ocean; I can stand in the rain.

I am close to my true self, which is endless, unprotected, intangible, uncontrolled, a simple project of awareness. With or without the water.

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Where The Calm Lurks

And let us pray:

Oh, Holy Father, where are we going? And how are we reaching our destination?

Can You help us to find the greatest of all solace which is along the thin line between Light and Shadow, between the Material and the Spiritual, and the Known and the Unknown?

If what I ask is a truly substantial question, how is it that its relevance dissipates so easily?

Is it for the reason that I do not care? Is it for the reason that I am overwhelmed with the burden that being on earth rests on my shoulders?

Herein lies the poetry that is the closest to the realization of my soul. The words come through like the water flows.

The stream of words that captures the evanescence of my thoughts. How some thoughts are meaningless and others when expressed have enough coherence to communicate to some one else.

I offer the words; the reader receives them.

I cannot find the secrets of the brain without being a scientist. I cannot determine how the mind works without practicing some other vocation other than the one of writer or visual artist.

But what is knowable is that I can read this and make sense out of it. I can be happy with the simplicity of the meaning of the words, which in some ways is sheer nothingness.

Being compelled to write the words is the key to their power.

It is as if I were drawing a line to add to the other lines which make up an entire drawing.

No word that I write has not never been written before. Not in the same context. But in conveying a similar idea. That I need the words to give meaning to my existence, whether that existence is indicated in detail or as an overview. Nonetheless. Here and now, I am writing prose, construable as poetry, sentence after sentence, phrase after phrase, word after word, letter after letter. In silence.

The music is in the background.

So is the snow falling outside of my studio window.

So is the love in my heart.

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Video:

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

My Top Ten

If you have not seen my Top Ten anywhere else, here it is...Enjoy.

New Releases:

William Parker Quartet, Uncle Joe’s Spirit House (AUM Fidelity)

Matthew Shipp, 4D (Thirsty Ear)

David S. Ware, Saturnian (AUM Fidelity)

Vox Arcana, Aerial Age (Allos Documents)

Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly, Cyrillic (482 Music)

Joe McPhee, Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen and Mikolaj Trzaska, Magic (Not Two)

Wadada Leo Smith, Ed Blackwell, Blue Mountain’s Sun Drummer (Kabell)

Hamid Drake and Bindu, Reggaeology (RogueArt)

Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys, Betweenwhile (AUM Fidelity)

Odean Pope Ensemble, Odean’s List (In + Out)

Missing the Water

The form of water that has invaded the season is now snow. I do not mind snow. Because it is an insulator. What I do mind is missing the sense of flow that the motion of water conveys. Granted snow is a product of the flow of the weather and each snowflake changes with every second, especially in the melting of the crystals. But those changes are invisible to me on a microcosmic scale...as the grey days pass into sunny, bright ones and the wind gusts die down and the air is still.

Change seems to be invisible except as periods of time pass. I turned sixty this year. So far I feel the same as I did when I was fifty-nine, a day earlier than my birthday. Yet, in August of 2009, I had major surgery, which led me to the couch literally, for months. I could walk, yes; but I could not do as actively as I had before the surgery. So what happened was that over time, what would happen to any person happened to me. I gained weight and in all the wrong places.

My diet has been as effective as it can be. I bought a stationary bike. I use it as often as possible. I am actually in a good mood most of the time. But I have this one pair of pants that I wear for work pants that are tight. On some days, they feel less tight than on other days. It is discouraging. It seems that over that period of months and now it has been over a year and a half, I lost feeling good in my body.

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Billy Crystal: It's not how you feel, it's how you look and you look MAHVELOUS, dahling!

Believe me, it is not easy using the best creative parts of me to transcend the physical. But, I have to. Even when the transcendence is delivered with a sense of humor.

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Gazing at the water is a peaceful means to focus. The water is powerful. It has weight, but no meaning. The sound of the pounding excites me; I am inspired by that over which I have no control.

The belief that I can live out the rest of my life happily and pursue my personal fulfillment must be all-pervasive and that belief must ooze out of my pores and be filtered by them at the same time. I have no control over what happens for the rest of the day, much less the rest of my life. Casting away dread is a major step in letting myself go in the directions I need to go in. Then I have to make mistakes. Mistakes are vehicles for taking hold of what is possible, otherwise, how would I find direction? And be fearless about turning the corner, turning the page, whatever metaphor is applied to mean: going for it! So I can sleep at night, for heaven's sakes.

When I meditate, I am with the universe. I take no form as does the water or even my body. I am not even particles. I see nothing and breathe. Thinking of the sound of the water is a gateway to emptying my mind, which is itself a pathway to another time and another place that I knew nothing of before I meditated.

I am not missing the water, only the external physicality of it. I dream of being one with it. Now and now again. After all, water is part of my constitution. My dreams should be easy to come by.

copyright 2010 Lyn Horton