Wadada Leo Smith's Organic: Heart's Reflections

The jewel case holding the two discs of Heart’s Reflections from Wadada Leo Smith’s Organic sports a simple cover image of alphabet-like curved gold and black lines on white and red fields. On that is superimposed the title of the record.  On the back is a listing of tracks and performers on a deep brown field where a nearly invisible full circle is also inscribed; its diameter is almost the width of the jewel case.

Open up the case and the visual information explodes. On the left is a stunning full frontal photo of Smith playing his trumpet and on the right is poised the first of the discs on which is printed a reproduction of one of Smith’s scores that shows horizontal bands of bright colors through which flows a line signifying changes. The three page bi-folded liner notes themselves exhibit additional portions of Smith scores and a detailed roster of information, spelling out who solos when in each piece and where they are identifiable in the stereo channel field.  Flip the cd holder and the second disc is revealed bearing the same colorful score reproduction. A photo of a golden grass field through which a fence runs appears on the inside back.

Organic has fourteen members, both male and female. The complete sound of the instruments spans a range of extraordinary balance.  No instrument hits a shrieking peak except for the trumpet, and the drums and bass lend heavy weight when called for compositionally. The music, all written by Smith, expands on the nature of contrasts, the necessary intensity of fluidity, melodic coherence, controlled dissonance and the inexorable presence of rhythmic design.  Violin, basses, guitars, piano, reeds, electronics, drums and Smith’s single trumpet comprise an ensemble whose transmission of the composer’s intention “to transform the music” never waivers.

Throughout the performance, a distinct pattern arises of conversation between clear-cut solo and duo presentations over the landscape of the “collective” sound. Smith’s trumpet is both the grounding component and the initiator for improvisation. He sets the standards for, corals the performers within and integrates his own playing throughout the organization of musical evolution.  His trumpet never disappears in the collective; it shines, glorifies joy, conjoins with spirit, and magnifies peace in relation to its creative sources.  He instills the same goals in the rest of the players.  This is reason that the sound unwinds easily without sharp turns or undesirable clusters of sonic disturbance. The motion of the music is biomorphic.  When it has resolved, the sound simply stops. 

The titles of the pieces refer to Smith’s experience: from his practice of the Sufi tradition to his metaphorical appreciation of nature to his nods to writer Toni Morrison, trumpeter Don Cherry, and violinist LeRoy Jenkins from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music in which Smith used to participate. 

This recording musically describes the layers of life that Smith has further scrutinized, which have everything to do with the present moment as it is guided by feelings, the gift of the breath and how to offer love.

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Label: Cuneiform Records

Personnel: Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet, electric trumpet; Michael Gregory: electric guitars; Pheeroan akLaff: drums; Brandon Ross: electric guitar; John Lindberg: acoustic bass, electric acoustic bass; Skúli Sverrison: electric bass, six-string bass; Angelica Sanchez: acoustic piano, Wurlitzer electric piano; Josh Gerowitz: electric guitar; Lamar Smith: electric guitar; Stephanie Smith: violin; Casey Anderson: alto saxophone; Casey Butler: tenor saxophone; Mark Trayle: laptop; Charlie Burgin: laptop.

Track Listing: Disc One: Don Cherry's Electric Sonic Garden (For Don Cherry); Heart’s Reflections: The Splendors of Light and Purification (tracks 2-9) (for Shaykh Abu Al-Hasan al-Shadhili): The Dhikr Of Radiant Hearts, Pt. I; The Dhikr Of Radiant Hearts, Pt. II; The Majestic Way; The Shaykh, As Far As Humaythira; Spiritual Wayfarers; Certainty; Ritual Purity And Love, Pt. I; Ritual Purity And Love, Pt. II; Disc Two: Heart’s Reflections: The Splendors of Light and Purification (tracks 1-3) (for Shaykh Abu Al-Hasan al-Shadhili): Silsila; The Well: From Bitter To Fresh Sweet Water, Pt. I; Well: From Bitter To Fresh Sweet Water, Pt. II; Toni Morrison: The Black Hole (Sagittarius A)/Conscience And Epic Memory (For Toni Morrison); Leroy Jenkins's Air Steps (For Leroy Jenkins).

Matthew Shipp: The Art of the Improviser

 

Nothing but smart musicianship is evident in pianist Matthew Shipp’s double disc set, The Art of the Improviser.  Both discs are live-date recordings.  The first, recorded at the Troy, NY, Arts Center in April, 2010, is one continuous set from Shipp’s trio. Michael Bisio plays bass and longtime trio member Whit Dickey, the drums. The second disc is comprised of an equally tight Shipp solo gig at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC two months later.

Turning fifty years old in December of 2010, Shipp reached a milestone in a musician’s career that is commonly noticed, as if age signified creative maturation. Over the years, Shipp’s innate musical intelligence has gone unchanged, but his improvisatory language seems to have acquired more of a nuanced fluidity and engaging character through his discovery of fingering subtleties integrated within an increase in fluctuating rhythms.

A three-pronged organism operates in the first disc, where each musician yields to the other with ease. Identifiably the leader, Shipp tows the thematic ropes for his own tunes as well as for Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train.”  The introductory “The New Fact” reveals Bisio inheriting a trio-built line in a stunning pizzicato solo that induces stone-cold silence from Shipp, Dickey and the audience.  In the next “3 in 1,” after Shipp’s lengthy piano ostinato, Dickey, in his own solo, outdoes his restrained, understated drumming self, with a relentless, downright breath-taking, even-handed face-paced snare-tom-bass drum drive; he treats the cymbals on a par with drums. Shipp’s shining moments on this side are everywhere: his playing glistens like a multitude of stars across the darkest of nights. The most intensity comes mid-album when he does not leave the middle register of the keyboard for nearly sixteen minutes, alighting accentually on a treble or bass note.

Shipp’s solo performance reflects his inexhaustible exploration of timbre and touch. The reverent boldness with which he approaches the keys widens the improvisatory field in between a specific thematic concept and its parenthetic reprise.  As Shipp moves from “4-D” to the concluding “Patmos” without breaking, the repetition of phrases and figures constructs the spatiality of his language. It is a means to render his gestures simultaneously recognizable and brand new. His take on “Fly Me To The Moon” demonstrates a conscious determination to alter perceptions of the familiar. An exquisite balance of straightforward musical design and profound sound generation testifies to the pianist’s God-given genius.

Matthew Shipp, Michael Bisio, Whit Dickey (The Matthew Shipp Trio)

Matthew Shipp (solo piano)

The Art of the Improviser (2 discs)

Thirsty Ear

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

The Holy Grail of Credibility

Writing every day religiously is a pattern of existence that I have not established yet. When I do, the writing will come more easily and I won't have such angst about the process. It has been bad enough submitting my words to the people who write for a living to edit; or thinking anyway after the product is spewed out that I do a pretty good job.

When the subject matter of my words is general rather than zeroed in on a specific record or event, the writing is not so full of uncertainty. That is for the reason that no other person can question it.

But when I do write about recordings and concerts and people, even, then, I go on record with my statements and they are read by those who seek "veritas."

Back in 2004 or so, I had been practicing being a serious scribe about creative improvised music for several years. I had earned the label "critic" from those who did not write about the music I followed. I was looked upon as a vehicle for publicity by those who put on concerts & musicians who wanted me to pay attention to them. As the years went on and I kept writing, it was incumbent on me to let go of the pressure I felt to write anything about music otherwise I could not do it.

Writing an article is like giving birth. And when I am done with one, I feel relief for a day or two and celebrate and then have to think again about what is coming next. In that zone of thinking, I get a lot done. Now that it is spring, I can go outside and fiddle in the garden. I can actually walk a couple of miles like I used to every single day, instead of resorting to riding the stationery bike in the mudroom for fifteen or twenty minutes. I can clean the dust off the furniture that accumulates without my noticing until my thumb prints are visible on the trinkets that decorate the table tops or the light at a certain angle shows the bunnies as I walk by. Or, and this is the most pleasurable I think, I can go to town and walk up and down the main street window shopping. Dreaming.

What creates the angst in me is: Do I assess the music I am writing about in ways that will make sense to the reader? Or that the reader will believe? Do I hear everything? Or do I talk about it well enough that hearing every detail is unnecessary? See, the writing is supposed to point in a certain direction. 

A few years ago, a well-known writer for a well-known online jazz website asked me a question about a record from Europe that he wanted to order, obviously worried that my supportive comments about the record could have been off the mark. My confidence about my words led me to urge him to buy the record. Not long afterwards, he emailed me to say that he had bought the record, listened and said that my observations about the music were "right on." Not only did this give me a pat on the back, but silently I absorbed this reassurance and said to myself: OK, Lyn, keep going.

And even earlier than the above instance, when my writing was infrequent, yet thoughtful, and the number of CDs that appeared in my mailbox did not amount to nearly what comes in now, the president of one of the longest operating creative improvised music recording companies emailed me to say that he truly believed that my reviews had gained "credibility."

The musicians reputed as great music-makers in the world of creative improvised music have never wavered in their belief in what I do. To receive accolades from these musicians gives me more incentive to continue than those I might receive from other jazz critics. I feel more a part of the world of the musicians than that of the jazz writers. Sometimes and sometimes not, in the jazz publication world, I feel like I have to fight to write and have the words be accepted. 

Evolution occurs with the survival of the fittest. Last time I went to the doctor, he said I was doing great. 

So, I say: OK, Lyn, keep going.

Video and text copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Billy Bang at His Best

Speaking of This Earth

Mr. Billy Bang knows nothing but reverence to his violin, the music he makes with it and the inspiration behind the music. He takes nothing for granted. He is in love with his life and how it means to be alive. The inherent quality of these characteristics were expressed intensely, energetically and with determination when tiny Mr. Bang stood with his violin as a larger than life soloist on a moderately-sized stage in a moderately-sized hall, packed with dedicated listeners. At UMass Amherst, last Wednesday night, October 19.

Bang‘s music flows from his bow as it meets the strings. Obviously. But, it is how the bow meets the strings that makes the difference. It is the attack that makes the difference. His mastery of the attack pervades his musical statements, whether they are meant for him alone or are orchestrations of solos from his pieces for group. It is the attack that creates the signature for how the music is shaped. It is bad form for me to write about style. But Bang has a style that rings solid and true. It is honest and consistent and allows for continuity that rarely sees a break. The breaks come in the form of whole beat rests in a place in which they are planned, or the split second before he lands the bow on the strings and clarifies the end of one phrase and begins the next. The continuous-ness of the music is the telltale sign that the music is Bang’s and his alone.

Bang places atmosphere and energy and patterning into his playing, which combined is entirely distinctive. It is all about the story. If he could speak his story, it would be as continuous as the music. For when he speaks, his words fall out of him like the music, like water...like a river. The cadence of the music, that is occasionally overtly rhythmic, can be anticipated. This is different from being predictable. Bang’s cadence drives the music, impels its constancy, through repeated stroking methods, as they are lengthened and shortened, and shift from key to key, from consonance to dissonance, then shaped to be close and warm & intimate. The Bang Cadence.

Sure, he has serious statements to make and you know when he makes them because his bow digs into the strings, the pitches become stringent, his body wraps itself around his violin. Yes. He is so adamant and directed that he contorts himself around the box of the instrument to hold the strings below where the neck and the body of the violin meet and squeezes and twists the strings with the bow …. And when he repeats glissandos so that he lifts himself off the stage or pulls the bow down the strings so fast and hard, one, two, three, four times so that he bounces up and down on his toes --- it is then you want to weep.

It was not until the last number that Bang used a pizzicato: high and dry. And typically non-reverberant. But that is an aside. What Bang had done is sing from the mournful to the marching to the joyous. There was no mistaking any of his intentions. The “thereness” of Bang is unmistakable.

Like a whirlwind that stays in one section of the stage and radiates light as he spins into another zone, Bang solidly claims his position as incomparable musician. Fearlessly, speaking his mind.

Copyright 2005 Lyn Horton

Originally published at Jazzreview.com

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