Tag: thought of the day

Equal tempered music is mechanical.  Just intonation music is organic.

Larry Coryell & Mumbai Jazz @ Gateshead Old Town Hall.

Was it jazz? a question posed by one or two. I think so. Was it good? I know so!

Of course it was jazz – with Coryell in there pitching it couldn’t be any other. In fact it was quite an amazing session with, for my money, Majumdar’s Indian flute playing getting the gold. The things he could do on those keyless flutes was simply amazing. McGowan’s much vaunted contrabass flute was, in effect, used sparingly and didn’t really add much to the gig unlike his concert flute playing which was melodic and, at times, aggressive. The two flute blasts were exciting. Was McGowan improvising? I don’t know and I don’t really care – he is a supreme flautist.

Rajbhatt produced some stunning rhythms and tonal variations on the tabla.  As for Larry – well he did everything that was required integrating easily into the ragas and playing a couple of features that showed he is still a player.

The ensembles were frenetic. Flutes intertwining with guitar, tabla firing staccato off beat rhythms,  one number could have been a jig written by the offspring of an Indo/Irish marriage.

I went with reservations – I left without them!

Good gig and thanks to Gateshead Council, Jazz North East and Gem Arts for making it possible. They were rewarded with a good turn out.

Lance. (Bebop Spoken Here)

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Mumbai Jazz, a US-Indian collaboration featuring Larry Coryell gave us an agreeable evening at St George’s. The guitar veteran is pretty laid back these days, and so was the whole affair – though enlivened by the presence of a wondrous contrabass flute played to great effect by Ned McGowan, especially in the second set. He was the most convincing player of the evening, on all his flutes.

Overall, though, perhaps not jazzy enough to grab the ear, but not really Indian enough either. Can you be in the middle of two roads at once? If that uncomfortable posture is feasible, that’s where they were.

Jon Turney (Bristol Jazz Log)

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Rainlore’s World of Music

Interview on the TV program Vrije Gluiden

Acht Brücken day 1

I am in Cologne for the next ten days for the Acht Brücken music Festival. They commissioned me for a sound installation (I will write about this later) and I decided to take this chance to spend some time in Cologne and go to the amazing lineup of concerts. The featured composer is Gyorgi Ligeti so there are lots of his works being performed.

Yesterday the festival kicked off to a great start, which is a great sign for the rest of the days.

The 1st concert I saw was the young Cologne ensemble ‘hand werk’: young lion virtuosos with a program mix of theatrical, electro-acoustic and traditional new music works. Nice program which stayed fresh the whole way through, including some nice fresh notes from Harald Muenz. During the slippery non-stop Enno Poppe trio it was nice to see the violinist play with an extra page turner next to the cellist who played from PDF’s on the ipad with foot pedal page turner. CR pointed out that they both can go wrong. Indeed.  I always feel there are two great advantages to using the iPad for music to read off of: 1, when you mount it alone on a microphone stand it leaves much more space for the audience to see the performer and 2, it has its own lighting so you are free from making sure there is enough stage light to see your music. Of course, there’s nothing like reading off of paper…

2nd concert was a conglomeration of saxophones plus viola and piano playing Ligeti inspired cluster atmospheres. Led by Hayden Chrisholm, it was beautiful and mesmerising, and Simon Nabatov played tastefully over the texture.

In another part of the old warehouse there were trashy video’s where they alternated between Kubrick’s 2001 and various famous scenes from old classics, except during 2001 they put the music from Gershwin’s American in Paris and the haunting Ligeti music was put over the other scenes. Crazy effect!

https://www.facebook.com/achtbruecken

Saw two concerts of our home team Asko Schoenberg in the Kolner Philarmonie. Very well done and the audiences were enthusiastic. Particular favourites of mine were Vladimir Tarnopolski’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ and several arrangements of Nancarrow’s player piano Studies. 

Again two more concerts in the evening. First spectacular versions of Ligeti’s ‘Aventures’ and ‘Nouvelles Aventures’ for three singers and small ensemble. From the early 60’s these pieces are masterworks of timing, wild theatricality and suspenseful textures that Ligeti’s music is full of. From SN I heard that Ligeti presented the emotional characters in a serialised manner, which makes sense in the way the singers changing characters all over the place. This is one of the things so strong in Liget’s music – the combination of serious composed music with a strong sense of humor.

Then the evening concert presented the musikFabrik like I’ve never seen them before. The first thing to see was just the stage setup – a fantasy world of oversized Greek inspired instruments.

For the first part of their concert they played through all the musical bits from Harry Parch’s play ‘the Delusion of the Fury’ on this newly built Partch instrumentarium (by Thomas Meixner). It was great to see them playing unconducted, from memory and with great energy. There was a lot of joy in the music and performance, but indeed the music did get a bit tiring after a while: constant fast notes in constant variation, similar in style to Cage’s Third Construction. I look forward to hearing some new works written on these instruments, perhaps even writing one myself one day.

The second part of their program was all Zappa, starting with several versions of the Black Page. My hope that they would play it on the Partch instruments was dashed, but still, with their incredible technical prowess they rendered a flawless and energetic version of this classic.

The Zappa set continued as his sets did, with jams, lots of notes, some solos and a percussion battle ending in sticks being hurled all over the place (except at the winds or strings, wisely). I was also hoping that for the solos that they’d whip out some Stockhausen or Berio on top of the Zappa groove, but they kept them mostly melodic and pentatonic. Works every time of course, particularly last night for the 1500 or so in the audience at the grand Philharmonie.

ACHT BRÜCKEN Festival day 3

I just saw one concert last night, the Hochschule orchestra led by Manuel Nawri.

The program was an eclectic mix of Leonard Berstein’s Prelude, Fugue & Riffs, new works by Minkyu Kim and Irene Galindo Quero and Ligeti’s Melodien and three arias from Le Grand Macabre. 

Each piece had a different setup and, I kid you not, we spent more time watching the setup changes than listening to music. Plus there was a break of a half hour. So in the end the concert lasted two hours but there was certainly less than an hour of music. It was like watching American football games – so much standing around and commercials. But those moments of waiting only serve to ramp up the anticipation for the music, right? 

While the orchestra played well, I found the program a bit hit-or-miss. The two Ligeti works were by far the strongest. He had such a great sense of timing, knew when to change things up and when not to. So much of new music these days is just changing all the time, constantly saying new things at the same rate, and I often find myself struggling to follow. Of course there are a lot of great pieces that do this in a good way, but my attention immediately picks up when a piece make use (at least sometimes) of simple and clear gestures – when the music breathes… Just when Ligeti’s textures start to get too complex and tedious, he throws in a long unison note to clear the air. I guess that’s one reason there is a whole festival formed around his work.

Oh, and great solo by guest tubaist Melvyn Poore.