Anthony Braxton plus, uh, relentless noise-punk? I’d missed that: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=22814 and http://www.wordthecat.com/goku/2006/07/28/wolf-eyes-and-anthony-braxton/.

That’s what it feels like, a bit: been there, done that. So now I can say: I have performed at the BIMHUIS, with Oorbeek and Koichi Makigami (what a sweet person he is, and what a performer!) I was nervous, I stayed in the dressing room for 2 hours, rehearsing.

Then, on stage, everything was fine & went fine. Heard quite a few good reactions, both from people who’ve seen us a few times (and probably would not hesistate to tell us if it was terrible), and from people who saw us for the first time. Sold a few cd’s. The audience was mainly a sunday afternoon crowd — it was the jew’s harp festival & I don’t think all of them enjoyed our way of making music. The chaos of it, the noisy bits, the changes from soft to loud to soft, the piecing together (or coming together) of various fragments. But it was pretty packed — and that felt, well, good of course.

It felt strange as well: in the past I’ve seen so many concerts of improvised music & free jazz — in the old BIMHUIS — by groups far better than us, for an audience of like 20. I don’t know what that means… I guess it means that this festival was marketing success. (The jew’s harp festival received al lot of publicity). So I wonder how many in the audience did think — let’s go for a nice sunday afternoon concert, and then thought, oh my god, what a terrible noise!

But it was a great joy to play with Koichi Makigami. And he, of course, was the star.

Excited & nervous: on sunday Oorbeek will indeed perform with Koichi Makigami, the wonderful Japanese vocalist, (overtone) singer, improvisor, jew’s harp-player: . See: http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/mondharpfestival/. The concert is at the BIMhuis and starts at 15.00.

Oorbeek — the band in which I play the guitar — will be performing here: http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/voorstelling.asp?PageID=2&EventID=17411. That’s next week sunday.

Rumour: there’s a chance that Koichi Makigami will do a guest performance with us.

Summertime as performed live by Shelly Manne & his Men in 1956 and, played immediately afterwards by itunes, In the Black by Motorhead. Although these tracks are very different (fifties west coast bop versus rock-n-roll-heavy-metal), they also are in the same category — for me. Maybe both pieces exemplify ‘the perfect track’? Manne’s precise and subtile drumming propels what is basically just another version of a classic song, it ensures that what could have been dreary, becomes exciting to listen to. Motorhead is straightforward, completely formulaic, yet very exciting because it is thight and every note, every chord, every word comes at, well, the right moment. Is it simplicity? Not quite. Is it restraint plus exuberance? Maybe. Is it the miracle where a song that could’ve been just as easily boring, becomes an exciting piece of music? If that’s it, I want to entangle that ‘magic formula’, I’d like to know how it is ‘programmed’.

During breakfasts I’m reading ‘indeterminacy 1960-1970’ from Michael Nymans Experimental Music, Cage and Beyond, a book I’ve never picked up, because of my dislike for Glass & Nyman-styled minimal music. But this book is very good. (Read it, buy it). It gives an excellent overview of Cardew’s compositional strategies and formulas (excellent for the lay-musician that I am). I love Cardew’s The Great Learning (or what I’ve heard of it, the total piece runs on for several hours), and I’m inclined to say that it is actually one of the masterpieces of all times. It succeeds in totally transforming our idea of art. (And yes, it is possible to look beyond the Maoist ideology it was supposed to get across).

This is Cardew on discipline: “Discipline is not to be seen as the ability to conform to a rigid rule structure, but as the ability to work collectively with other people in a harmonious and fruitful way. Integrity, self-reliance, initiative, to be articulate (say, on an instrument) in a natural, direct way; these are the qualities necessary for improvisation. Self-discipline is the necessary basis for the desired spontaneity, where everything that occurs is heard and responed to without the aid of arbitrarily controlled procedures and intellectual labor.” (Nyman, p. 126)

This makes sense, certainly, in a musical context. (Probably can be ripped apart and de(con)structed totally when interpreted by some liberal/conservative against a Maoist/revolutionary prespective (bring on Pol Pot)).

So I’m wondering what the connection is between Manne’s Summertime, Motorhead and Cardew. (And no, I cannot substitute just whatever other track here, not Lady Fury ‘Too Much Drugs in Ur System’, Earl Browns ‘Octet 1 for 8 Loudspeakers’ or Camille’s ‘Ta Douleur’, to mention a few other tracks that I’ve recently downloaded and like very much). Not that there has to be a connection…

Cornelius Cardew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Cardew
Motorhead mp3 see: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/06/dj_compilation_.html
Michael Nyman: http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521653835

Samuel (Vriezen — he again — Dutch experimental composer) writes today something worth quoting on http://blogger.xs4all.nl/sqv/archive/2006/05/30.aspx.

“Experimentele kunst is supracultureel omdat ze zich niet wil beperken tot een of andere vaststaande cultuur. Enerzijds verklaart dat waarom het normaal is om experimentele kunst ontoegankelijk te vinden – geen houvast. Anderzijds verklaart het waarom die kunst vaak zo toegankelijk is – iedereen is gelijk voor deze kunst. Als je de knop maar kan omzetten. De muziek van Xenakis wordt pas muziek voor je als je haar kunt horen op haar termen: klankwolken, nevels, draaiende oppervlakten, massa’s, chaos en orde, boomfiguren: en dat zou even moeilijk of makkelijk kunnen zijn voor iedereen, onafhankelijk van met welke muziekstijl hij of zij is opgegroeid.”

In quick english translation:

“Experimental art is supra-cultural because it does not limit itself to one or another fixed culture. Nothing to hold onto. On the other hand this explains why this kind of art is often so accessible — everybody is equal for this kind of art. As long as you are able to switch the button in your head. The music of Xenakis only becomes music when you are listening to it on its own terms: clouds of sounds, mists, revolving surfaces, masses, chaos and order. That should be equally difficult or easy for anybody.”

I can only agree. Xenakis is not difficult music. It is accessible. (And no, there’s no irony here. But there is fun.)

Btw: Samuel searches for a better term than “supra-cultural”.

I have a soft spot for the trombone-playing of JJ Johnson. That might sound strange, since Jay Jay is definitely more “good taste”, and less wild, exciting and pushing boundaries than my favorites for the period say 1954 – 1959: Coltrane, Clifford Brown, Rollins. (Not to mention freejazz and all the other sorts of music that some people dissmiss as difficult…). Last week I was very happy to find the Complete Columbia Small Group Sessions of JJ Johnson. These are basically his recordings with either a quintet with Bobby Jaspar and Elvin Jones, and a quartet with Flanagan, Chambers and Roach. I knew some tracks and had searched in vain for it before (the library didn’t have these). It’s a joy to hear such precise playing and arrangements that are equally precise, without becoming precious (precieux). They are the definition of ‘classic’. It asks for precise listening as well — or actually, you will realize at some point that you are listening carefully (instead of just nodding your head to the rhythm). This is the kind of playing that makes me envious. I wish I could play like this — then I’d be able to play everything…

When I found the blog, approximately 3 months ago, I thought, probably for the first time in my life on the internet: “I’m not going to tell anyone. This will go down when too many people know. This cannot last long.” It lasted longer than expected.

I had often thought about converting my collection of jazz and improvised music to mp3. My collection consists mainly out of (about 700) audio cassettes and around 100 LPs. I did convert a few tapes, then decided it really took too much time.

This blog made it possible to collect in one go all the hard-bop and free jazz as mp3s, that I own on cassette or LP. All the Coltrane’s, Ornette’s, Cecil Taylor’s that I know by heart, and yes, also the ones I’d never heard.

The blog operated on the brink, I’d say. There was no reason to doubt the good intentions of the six posters. They uploaded vinyl-rips of long out of print LPs, music that was never released on CD. They made hard to get CDs available. They uploaded everything ever recorded by Andrew Hill, to share the love for the music. I enjoyed it, downloaded as long as it lasted, was surprised again and again that most uploaded files were downloaded only like 40 times over a period of a few weeks. Only once in a while I encountered a file that was downloaded 300 times (that would be a Miles Davis, or mainstream bop). Sometimes I downloaded a file that had not even been downloaded by someone else (that would be European free jazz). But, they did upload really a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot: like basically everything of John Coltrane (I think I only did not see Expression and, funny enough, Live at Birdland).

The blog made me greedy. I put myself in the absurd position of downloading music and not listening to it. Saving for later. Knowing that audio cassettes last longer than harddisks. Knowing that the sound quality of most of my audio cassettes is superior to that of the mp3 files. It goes without saying that — also since I already ‘owned’ much of this music — there’s no chance that I would ever buy one of the CDs. It’s partly hoarding, partly downloading out of curiosity, to listen to once, maybe twice. Anyway, I already wrote about this issue in Metropolis M: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ariealt/luisteren.html.

And then, two days ago, the blog went down. “The trolls found it”. Someone complained. The blog was hijacked, files deleted. Exactly what was bound to happen. What they knew was going to happen.

I have to give a talk on mp3-blogs on the SLSA conference in Amsterdam in june. So I think I will come back to this ‘case’.

And indeed, I will not tell where it continues. Not where the bots are listening too.

The Same Girl is Nicolas Field (percussion — also member of PHO) and Gilles Aubry (electronics). They play tonight in Amsterdam at Kraakgeluiden in OT301 and tomorrow evening, 21.00 at the Jan van Eyck in Maastricht. I’ll be there — (= in Maastricht).

http://www.kraakgeluiden.com.
http://www.janvaneyck.nl/0_2_1_events/events_current.html.

Niet dat ik nou zo van de jazz uit de jaren twintig en dertig hou. Ik ben meer een man van de freejazz & (free) improv & various avantgardes & experiments (ja, en natuurlijk Coltrane, Dolphy, Parker). Maar de Ellington-bands van eind jaren twintig zijn een godswonder. Ik krijg er bijna vanzelf een goed humeur van (geholpen de afnemende verkoudheid), hoor mezelf na een kwartier meefluiten & voel dat mn lichaam, ongemerkt, lichtjes beweegt op de swing, terwijl ik tik & brows.

De band is tegelijk volledig ‘los’ en ‘super-tight’, zo relaxed dat je je voor kunt stellen dat elke muzikant ieder moment kan wegdutten, en tegelijk rete-strak en compleet ‘daar’, ‘bij de les’. Logisch gezien zou je die Ellington-band een paradox moeten noemen. (Toch, of laat mn nog iets verkouden hoofd me hier in de steek?) Incredible time.

En de solo van Bubber Miley op Creole Love Call (1927) is onbegrijpelijk mooi, ‘makkelijk’, logisch, hij keert de blues soort-van binnenstebuiten. (Ik ben niet voldoende geschoold in muziektheorie e.d. om uit te leggen wat hij doet, maar veronderstel dat er vanuit de harmonieleer een uitstekende verklaring te geven valt voor deze ‘schoonheid’).