Last week’s concert in Saalfelden was a real blast and here is an excerpt Franz just passed me. (Franz Hautzinger, Hillary Jeffery, Tony Buck, William Parker, HC)
The latest Root70 album is out. Listen to your Woman can be heard and purchased here at the label site. And yes, it is verily a blues album. This is a track I wrote on it called Rusty Bagpipe Boogie
…and here are the liner notes by our good mate Ahmet Shabo.
In a lonely monastery on the border between Poland and Lithuania I find needed inspiration my wife said I so needed to return to some writing. Pilgrims come here to visit the room the Pope once slept in. The fields are filled with beautiful cobwebs and the lake is like a mirror. We spend our days holding long tones and playing Feldman and Merzbow- the noise spills over into the church where couples marry over the complex carpet of our sound. The monks chambers where we stay are perfectly silent. There are no mosquitos. I like.
After several months of lying around I finally dug up the recordings from this year’s Plushmusic2 festival in April and am happy with the results. I am putting up some of my pieces from that weekend onto which Iceland spewed her ash.
Precious Storm:
(Simon Nabatov-Rhodes, John Schroeder-Guitar, HC- Sax)
Voyage to the Inner Mongolia:
( Xu Fengxia- Guzheng, Gareth Lubbe- Viola, HC-Sax)
Critical Mass:
(Simon Nabatov- Piano, Adrian Brendel- Cello, Gareth Lubbe- Viola, HC- Sax)
Odessa Blues Suite:
(BJ Cole- Pedal Steel, Nils Wogram- Trom, John Schroeder- Drums,
Simon Nabatov- Piano, HC- Sax)
Huge vultures circle the skies of Sao Paolo
Competing with the helicopters and searching for prey
(they tell me if you fall over and die, they will eat your eyes first)
A black mercedes slices through the slums
Outside tiny kits rises in numbers, guided by unseen hands
Inside the driver’s Chick Corea cd is drenched with ecm reverb
We’re bulletproofed and even when the tire bursts we make it to the gas station
As the rubber’s changed I make out over 40 kites around us
And countless little brown eyes flickering in the dirty sun.
Grey and humid in Sao Paolo. Helicopters buzz past for those who can afford to avoid the traffic jams. Hotel pool 13 floors below (no fear here about the 13 moon phases of the year) is deep blue and deserted. Penguin-like business crowd fill the streets around here.Brazilians seem to like their white flour going by the bakeries I see and they seem to like bags- there are bag shops on every corner. I find a copy shop and hand over a juicy stack of Bach and Telemann to keep them in business today. Stacks of D. Foster Wallace essays next to the bed- a few weeks worth of food there. My hotel room is subjected to some incense and chanting, the wall art is cursed at/laughed at and hidden under the bed, the air conditioning switched off, windows flung open, pencils sharpened- now we can get down to work.
My 500GB hard drive is filled to the digital brim with mp3s though I hardly listen to them. Once in a while I put in a CD though I prefer the feeling and the effort of vinyl and have all but returned fully to it (funny perhaps coming from someone who has this particular site loaded with digital sound). I use my Iwhatever mainly for putting myself to sleep on planes and seldom for listening to anything with intensity. Right now it feels like there are simply too many releases so time is better spent selecting with care from the past and giving them the attention they deserve. Also I feel that modern recording, cutting, and mastering can verily turn shit to gold but that’s a whole ‘nother story innit.
Hotel fitness center: treadmills lined up against a glass wall which overlooks floors of office workers going overtime, smelling of apples and sweat over bossa nova tracks.
Hotel Bar: espresso cups are filled to the brim and CNN is played 24/7 over a massive flat screen.
Hotel Basement: saxophone practice is discouraged, though they have “nothing against music”.
Hotel Lobby: scores of american flight crews smile and re-assmeble themselves for their 8 hour lay over- I envy them not.
Room 1315- the quiet hum of hard drives, the distant flickering of TV towers, a maze of mobile receivers on buildings- otherwise emptiness.
Most coveted objects: a shruti box recently purchased, a pencil collection.
Here’s an old cassette mix for driving I made once, recently dug up:
One hour later:
Sushi restaurant with fish tanks galore
The pre-sushi swims in spiral formations
As the world reaches terminal velocity the last red tuna sure taste good
And the quiet bossas supplement the spiced rice wonderfully here in Brazil
Not so far away there are cold shootings
But right here there is raw fish and hidden sub woofers in the afro-black upholstery
The Sake smudges the epiphany
Outside, a transvestite blows smoke out into the night through it’s nose
Sao Paolo’s arrival hall this Sunday morning is flooded and the hundereds of of passengers stream towards the one exit which lies behind the customs check. The barriers are similar to the ones I described in Barcelona a few days earlier, only now they are even longer( each sweep being a good 30 meters) and more uneven, sweeping around like lazy rivers. The amazing thing I observe here is that the passengers waiting before the barriers begin automatically start to curl in the same zig zag formations in rows, as if this kind of cattle line up has been somehow engrained into their cueing mentality. It is beautiful to watch. Scores of people passing by each other and making sudden turns for no reason.
Does a friendly smile and some idle chatter increase the chances of having overweight baggage overlooked and flagged through? After much thought I have decided it does not. There are greater forces than us at work at airport check-ins. Lady luck is in the game too. I encourage young musicians to go for light and compact instruments.
The flight passes with a few hours with Gould- I have his Well tempered piano and Webern recordings with me. Hardly light and compact his vehicle but how he gives it wings. Lovely.
Gould plays C major:
Gould plays not C major:
As I’ve been asked this week to reach into my didjereedu bag and play it on a certain open ear gig in Stuttgart, I thought I would write a few words about my history and my take on this instrument. Although I spent a few of my very early years on the burning continent called Oz I never remember any didjs anywhere, all I do recall is searing heat, red sand, nose-bleeds, the scent of sunscreen and the buzz of a thousand mosquitos. Much later, in the early nineties I came across one in a drum store in Germany whilst searching for nose flutes. I tooted away for a bit after the shop guys told me about where this piece of hollow wood came from. I’m sure if you’ve ever tried to buy a didj you will remember the didj seller’s pupils dilating and his words start to tremble slowly as he relays with excitement and respect how the original dijs from the great red mothership are hollowed out by termites and simply “found”. Anyway, I liked the sounds more than the sales pitch and I had already been into circular breathing (by the way, one thing on my first solo cd Circe I never liked in retrospect is the constant use of circular breathing, back then I thought it was something different, something special- it’s not, it is one of the easier “advanced” sax techniques and I think it should be employed with caution- it’s ok to breathe ) and so I took it with me on my next trip to Iceland. That was 1995. No one in Iceland had seen one of these things before and each weekend, when most of Rekjavik are busy spending a good portion of their weeks wages on bottles of brenavin and could hardly stand straight, I coerced them with my long rod into giving me the rest of their wages. I made a very tidy living in those two months thanks to the Aussie sound stick debut on the Nordic island. By the time I recorded Circe in 1996 I used it as I liked the contrast to the Soprano which I was playing all the time. Is that really enough justification for using such an instrument in hindsight? I’m not so sure.
What exactly do I mean when I write such an instrument. What gives this one a special position as opposed to the sax I’ve always played on. I think the thing that unsettled me most about the modern euro-didj in all it’s dancefloor/jazzed/groovy splendour is that it is constantly used as an “effect” as opposed to how it is used in it’s original context. (It’s immediate “getting” of people I put down to some of the same reasons as overtone singing does – it bypasses certain levels of surface musical cognition and appreciation and cuts through to a deeper one without much pomp and circumstance. Admittedly,that can be a good and useful but only in doses and away from the stage in my books). Now, is that necessarily a bad thing? There’s no straight answer to that and all the arguments will be long and futile when it boils down to what exactly an effect is. Feuerbach sums it up well when he writes for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, representation to reality, appearance to essence…only illusion is sacred. Save it to say I shelved my didj in public and only pull it out at home once every few moons. If a layman were to ask me to put all this in a street sentence I would advise him thus: Don’t fuck with it, it’s holy. And still I am as far removed from 40 thousand years of Dreamtime and the spirits a Didj could evoke within it as one could possibly be- at least now I know that much for sure. Long journeys begin with such recognitions. As a certain little Skye Chisholm yesterday spake: “I want to cry, I want to watch the stars and cry”
The spanking new Terminal ONE at Barcelona airport sports a couple of features which I find not only amusing but also fairly representative of the modern condition in all it’s glorious absurdity. The first is the cattle-like separation barriers before the security check which makes you walk to and fro (a distance of 25 meters each to and each fro) 6 times before you are allowed to take your leather belts and shoes off, making the distanced walked around 150 meters instead of around 4. I think this might serve a purpose if over 1000 people suddenly and simultaneously descended on security- I’m yet to see that. The interesting point to notice is the vacant stares on the passengers faces, the unquestioning acceptance (and with this wonderful system you get to see each face at least 6 times)I didn’t even see any one smiling at this feature. All the same, these are most excellent training areas for breathing. Well, onward to number two.
These modern wonders are found at various airports now and are coined “SmokersPoint” (joined words with a capital in the middle a twist of modern German that sends shivers up the spine) or “Smoking Box”, even ” Smokers meet”. They are small glass boxes, usually smattered with Camel adverts, and if you can manage to make out any figures on the inside, they will all be in there, puffing away before take off. Sometimes if you are lucky you see them without ventilation, making for incredibly beautiful accidental hazy mirages spiked in the middle of pristine airport walkways. Although I’m a non-smoker, the current assault on smokers makes me enjoy the taste of passive smoke once in a while, depending on which lungs it is passing in and out of. Sometimes it tastes just a bit like freedom.
Whilst writing this: although I’m eternally into doing the right things health-wise I can never resist the self inflicted pain of a dodgy little Nescafe machine where the lurid black gold costs a mere 1,50 (compared to the 2,60 cokes and sugar treats next to it. The machine shakes and rattles, loud sine tones emit when the beverage is finished being poured into the dodgy little plastic cups and the dodgy scent begins to spread out, a dodgy little cloud of processed coffein floating out towards the smokers cabin as shoe after belt after shoe is removed behind me and another machine beeps for no reason.
Post scriptum, in my home town of New Plymouth in NZ there is no security checks, only a few placid gazes from some roaming sheep (actually not so far away from the looks in paragraph one of this post). You walk out onto the runway and board a sleek little Air New Zealand jet. Not a beep to be heard. End of story. I shouldn’t give away secrets like that, they’ll probably change it tomorrow.
A few hours later and I am on Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, marvelling at the sea of Russians before me. The Brighton Bizarre is packed with Russian treats and most people talk to you in Russian right off the bat. I love it.
On the beach itself it is early in the morning and contrasts abound. A group of around one hundred what I believe to be Haitians are dressed in white, drumming, and deep in the throws of a mass baptism, right in the middle of a group of fleshy Russian pensioners enjoying the morning sun. Asking one of the Odessa Jewry (all seated on their portable deck chairs) what is going on with this baptism he replies with a think accent: ” I don’t even know my own traditions and you expect me to know what the hell they are doing”. New York is good for these kinds of scenes.
Here’s some sensual Afrikaans that took my fancy:
Villafranca del Penedes
Since days I’ve heard nothing but cicadas and wind
A searing heat blisters the grapes and white stones of the town
Come afternoon, the wrap-around shades and señoritas disappear
Café amb gel- the hot coffein hits the ices and lets out muffled screams
A white room with a lawyer doing her best to bite the Catalan and let the Spanish flow
I nod
The orthodox Maria on the wall is weeping
There’s endless sadness in the heat
Outside, a baby cries then coughs then cries again
Tears and sweat meet alchemistically like the coffee on ice
High noon on the Peninsula in no man´s land.
A boy, blinded by the sun, asks me what “sophisticated” means.
The Maria, sobbing, points to her burning solar plexus.
Another German Wings flight from Cologne to Spain. Empty airports and seamless check ins fill me with hope. Cologne has a nice invention shop at the airport that sports individual banana flight cases so as not to get your banana squashed in a bag. Security lines are empty- bliss. I board the plane last and my ears pop automatically. The train ride to follow, the boarding and deboarding are all blurred into one long familiar gesture. Observing endless scenes for the xth time it hits me again- surely consciousness and not matter must be the fundamental. Norbu then comes to me ” Duality is the real root of our sufferings and all our conflicts…”- it’s worth breathing deeply through that one and the plane rides give us endless time for that. Here’s a good cleansing breath well explained from my favourite soho yoga teacher- I often use it when the air is good.
Touching down in Spain we get to walk on the run way- I always consider this a good omen. After the endless cattle-like bus transports, this uncommon leg usage rehumanizers us and earths us ever so slightly. My favourite 80yr old geomancer always tells me to bath to shower after long plane rides to rebalance the body’s charge after the long enclosure in metallic cases. In the train I’m reading some chapter’s from Pinchbeck’s 2012 book and loving it. One quote from the leaves sticks:
“What appears to be the established order of present-day civilisation is actually only the inert but spectacular movement of a high velocity vehicle whose engine has already stopped functioning” Arguelles
An intellectual vibration smack dab in the middle of the spectrum:
The Stammtisch was a blast. Around twenty 80 year olds were mad keen to tell me all about the Erzgebirge and order me one Schnapps after another. Outside the sun was burning down and Rudi was playing and singing in the corner. The whole affair went on for a good 4 hours. Twice I was asked which latitude New Zealand lay on. Here is a song of Rudi’s which gives you a good idea of how hard it was for me to follow him at first. By the way this was one of the forbidden songs in the old East.
The next days were spent in the forests of this beautiful region, sampling one deer goulash after another until we headed north to the festival at Rudolstadt. Large festivals always make me nervous and this one was no exception. The festival iteslf seemed to me to be a very large Djembe and didjereedon’t magnet but there were some highlights in between. I spent some time with Bobo, the angel of Rammstein I had once seen behind the burning cage ( the cage is gone now)- these days one of her projects is a re-working of folk melodies and we exchanged memories of Rammstein and other permeations of Teutonic verse. One of the nice things about this film apart from the great team around me is that they are are ready to go deep into every possible hue of German music- this in itself is already taking us to some very interesting spaces. There are of course, walls of cliches to go through and also a lot of misunderstanding from within. But from what I have experience so far, their years of research into this area is well worth it.
On Saturday Germany played Argentina and our filming took place in the think of in the town of Jena- with 1000’s of screaming fans and flags around me I could softly whisper to myself some of the songs I had learnt over the last few days. Some of them may seem a little odd at first until you hear the stories behind them. After there performance today in the soccer I decide to burn my Scottish passport (not the Kiwi one, I may need that if the world caves in) and simply give in, I like wurst and precision, I like punctuality and black bread, I liked those 4 beautiful goals and the dark beer that showered me on the market square of Jena. O, du alle schoenste Zier, scheiden das bringt Graemen.
On the Sunday I travelled back to Liepzig with the film team where I met the Gewandthaus Choir who were readying themselves to travel to planet Stelzen to perform their Volksmusik program. On the bus I had a long chat with their conductor Gregor, a nice young guy with a tattoo on one shoulder and a small baby nursed in his other arm. He told me about the themes of the songs and why they are still as current as ever: love, separation, nostalgia, and the myriad of colours from the human heart. The Choir had put together a program of Silcher, a composer who had created one of the most important collections of German folk songs. Even if he is lesser known today than he perhaps should be his collection is important. I get to play with them back in the barn as above us the accordions still lazily stretch out from the roof and the manure organ hangs ominously behind us, waiting for the next chance to open it’s wings and croak out it’s wonderful microtones. After the concert and the euphoria of Germany’s 4-1 trouncing of England has subsided, we all gather on a hill and I get to sing some songs with them. I’ll never forget this one:
Morgen muss ich fort von hier, und muss Abschied nehmen…..
The next stop is the heart of the Erzgebirge close to the Czech boarder. It is here I meet the bandoneon player Rudi Vogel- German Soul music with a capital S. His story is a long one and I get to take it over a few days as he shows me the little bandoneon workshop in Klingenthal (sound-valley as I like to call it) where his instruments were made. Rudi is now in his 70’s and only plays the odd wedding, singing songs that were once forbidden under DDR rule. He tells me how he was asked by Honecker and co to accompany their parties until the mid 70’s when he couldn’t take that kind of society any more. He then was forced to stop playing in public and had to wait a good 20 years for the wall to fall before be began anew. He plays me songs that were once forbidden for the most bizarre of reasons. He talks and then he plays- all day long. His accent is so broad it makes the folk from Stelzen seem like English news readers. It takes me a long time to really tune in.
He is a tall man and he is walking breathing music. Without his bandoneon he doesn’t add up to much, he tells me. If he doesn’t play he suffers vicious pain and cannot sleep. His face is a mixture of an old man’s and a 7 year old boy’s. He’s never left these mountains. The songs seem simple at first but when I try to play along they are anything but- tonics become dominants become sub dominants become forbidden again. After a long day of songs and story telling my brain and heart are filled to the brim. It’s something else to meet a soul like this.
This film is supposed to be about German Folk music. Once you move behind the clichees you get into a different zone that for me has nothing to do with German culture itself but more with Ur-emotions- the very roots of human understanding. From a musicians perspective an old guy playing three chords on a bandonoen may seem like a quaint notion but hearing the stories behind the songs and listening closer reveals a whole new layer of meaning. This guy is on his own planet, he is as far away from the music I heard last weekend as a New Zealand Maori is from a Mongolian shepherd- only they happen to speak a similar language here. There seems to be a universe of variation within this German speaking music world and I’m sure it’s similar elsewhere. In general, the music here is more about Melody than Rhythm. There are no dances in the Erzbegirge, only songs. The rhythms are simple but the melodies can be complex and winding, even 3 chords can be combined to make difficult forms. I start to feel more strongly how much the European classical music owes to such folk traditions. With Rudi you also understand how politics tried to smother these songs which simply wouldn’t die. Another of Rudi’s favourite pain-killing schnaps quickly halts such trains of thought.
Tomorrow we go to a Stammtisch, a coffee and cake affair for pensioners which Rudi plays and sings at. It is deep in the forest in a small Gasthaus. I can’t wait to hear their stories.
For the last few days I have been at a place which isn´t easy to describe. Stelzen is a tiny village deep in the heart of the old DDR. Around the village are rolling hills and beautiful patches of forest and the local folk tell their stories with broad accents. Gareth had told me a lot about the annual ¨Stelzenfestspiele¨ but I understand now why it is something that needs to be experienced to really understand.
I arrived on the Wednesday and spent sometime outside the huge barn that the people of the village had built to house the famous ¨Landmaschinen Symphonie¨and other concerts of the festival. The mastermind of all of this is one of Gareth´s viola buddies from the Gewandthaus Orchestra in Liepzig, Mr Henry Schneider. Inside the huge barn, a handful of souls watched a soccer game with the flat b of the soccer trumpets, outside I watched a farmer turning hay and the sun turning red- in my headphones I had the perfect track, a Brahms sonata just made for hay turning:
Inside the barn (which can easily seat 1000 people) they have turned a manure machine into a large organ, beautifully detuned and hung above the stage. Where once manure flowed through pipes, compressed air now fires up the long trumpet pipes. Bowling balls run along the roof of the barn and fall into oil drums. Lengthened accordions fall 8 meters from the roof playing themselves. Tractors are driven in and the rhythm of the engine is used to count in Ellington numbers. Donkeys are amplified at the mouth so that the sound of crunching carrots blends in with the Haydn. Bycicles are turned upside down and Beethoven is played on the spinning wheels with sandpaper. Farmers play Xenakis-like textures on violins and the begin to chop wood whilst having their pulses measured for the next Haydn tempos. Films of Cows and Sheep eating are shown with my humble bagpipes playing fragments of Schubert. A Farmer sings an aria. More bowling balls. All of this is executed with a Teutonic precision and with only the faintest hint of irony- that’s because it is all about the sound of these machines. Some may giggle at the sight of all this but many simply close there eyes and fall into the rhythm and sound. It’s as perfectly natural as it is completely far out.
Not long before the concert Henry hands me some Bach scores- the Art of Fugue will run beneath some of the tractor engines. I like to think I am alright at transposing at sight and the rehearsal was fine but when the concert came and the barn was packed out with over a thousand fans and the spotlights were burning me in my tails more than any infra red sauna could do, my brain didn’t manage to quite compute the Bach. Henry didn’t seem to mind.
Behind me is Erwin on accordion- he is the guy who has built a lot of these strange machines and transformed the farm machinery into instruments.This year he had truck seats with him that trigger synthesisers as well as a host of gadgets. On keyboards is Wolfgang who, when he is not composing music to accompany his films about animals eating, stamps out the piano rolls for Nancarrow scores. Shortly before the concert his wife comes in with their donkey and some cake. Thomas plays bass in the Gewandthaus and comes each year to join this madness. The full moon is red moments before we go on stage. Wolfgang explains to me the point of wearing tails (something to do with large stomachs in days gone by). It seems like many pilgrims have travelled here from far away. Augen zu und durch Jungs.
As if all of this wasn’t enough the film team I am working with on the German folk music project have arrived and this is our first port of call. And so on top of the donkeys and manure organs we also have film cranes and steady cams in the mix. On the day following the concert I visit with them the “Bachwiesen”: a beautiful meadow on which the entire works of Bach are played nonstop for an entire week. I nervously play the fugue I had butchered the night before, asking Johann for forgiveness. Not far from that a caravan is set called “singing stones”, where I am allowed to listen with a stehoscope the sounds of various stones underwater, some sounding like soldiers’ steps, some like falling snow.
Henry’s master plan is to transform the barn into a huge instrument. He tells me it comes a little from sitting inside the sound of the Gewandthaus Orchester and wanting others to experience the exhilaration of sitting within the sound instead of simply being in front of it. As he tells me this his eyes light up and become crystalline. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years his barn is just that: an enormous Landmachinen Symphony which you can sit inside of. I can’t wait to come back to that.
A little postscriptum to yesterday’s breath work- may sound a little ethereal but it’s as close as I can get to describing the act of sinking the consciousness. By observing and feeling deeply all of these sensations in the inward breath, you actually become the breath- you enter the hara, you are there via the breath. Now, as soon as you start to think about all of this you are already back in the head but don’t worry, just return to the breath and you will shift back. Everything seems to come in waves. Personally I can hold the practice comfortably for around 15 minutes. The more you do it the more you can shift into this state naturally and extend it, especially in playing situations.
Some of this practice reminds me of some lyrics in this song by David Sylvian that always used to get me. The stage sound was a whisper with all the in-ear monitoring and in my little wedge I had only his voice- whether he meant it or not he was certainly channelling something that struck a chord in me.
Sell, sell,
Bid your farewell
Come, come
Save yourself
Give yourself over
Pushing your consciousness
Deep into every atom and cell
On a slightly lower vibrational level I would like to share an email I received after landing from my Ryan Air odyssey. No commentary is needed here other than to say that even something like this is a an opportunity to practice sinking the breath.
Hi Hayden
We are looking for a really good looking Saxofpone (sic(for the rest of the mail)) player for the Europe tour of :
Sun Storke Project ! – you might have seen it at “Grand Prix de Eurovision”
Video
The tour will be end of 2010 all over Europe, it will be well boocked and well payed.
please let us know if you can imagine to join !
Olia the singer suggested you – she is a fan of you :)
so if you could alreaddy confirm end of october and novermber,
we should be fine ..- i think that is very good !
Best Greetings,
Peter xxxxxxx
HI Peter,
thanks for the mail. The track sounds fantastic- right up my alley. Could you send me the exact dates and details and maybe I can help you out personally I recommend you the right player, full of sound and fury,strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage.
Greetings,
Hayden
Inversions is what the Yoga crowd call their upside down positions and I spent a good portion of last week feeling the blood flow back to my head. During my stay in New York I visited an array of different classes, mainly to check out how the different teachers and schools approach the breath. The Yogaworks studio in Soho was not a bad place to do this, with it’s pristine rooms and variety of classes. Most of the breath work I experienced was aimed at correcting our postures, opening the chest, and using the breath to deepen the asanas. It was enlightening hearing the different takes on breath. I still didn’t figure out why over 90 percent of the students there are female- is the yin element more inclined to the subtle workings of the body? Well, at least I received several positive comments about my Hawaiian flowered yoga mat with the Spider man peeking out.
Something that I did think about whilst training and practising in New York was the idea of sinking the consciousness to the belly (or hara, as it is sometimes called)- a pretty abstract concept and for the beginner a strange thing to aspire to. It is a huge topic but it is a practice that can have some instant benefits. Basically we are trying to use the breath to help us lower the seat of consciousness, lowering it to a mysterious place around the navel for reasons as yet unknown to us. Over the years I have tried to break down breathing exercises to their very essence and I believe that the best way to learn about why a particular practice is beneficial is simply to try it out and observe the results over a given period of time. After much experimentation this is the method I have found most useful for experiencing this shift in consciousness. Bear in mind that for most of our waking hours, our consciousness is firmly rooted in our heads- for better or worse, usually for worse. Shifting it down taps into a more grounded centre in our bodies, a place where we are in my mind more at home in our bodies and less prone to the endless waterfall of discursive thought. I do this without trying to go against the brain but rather using it. I breathe deeply and consciously and I give my full attention to the sensation of the air entering my body in every possible detail: the taste of it, the feeling of it in my mouth and down my throat, the expansion of my lungs and rib cage, the contraction of my diaphragm, and everything else along it’s path – I follow this chain of sensation all the way down to my navel- even if the air is physically not going that low it feels to me like it is. when I breath out I am simply aware of all the similar sensations in reverse, but without straining anything. Like with so many exercises, the key is to stay in a state of relaxation. And that is all there is to it. I breathe. I observe. I feel. There is hardly any trying going on here. Simply by doing this for a while and working with sensation we can find a shift in the seat of consciousness- and as to what that feels like or what changes, we have to experience and document it for ourselves. I find that decisions are best made in this state and as improvising is about decisions, this is the state you want to be in before you take the dive. (ps, this is also a nice one to do for a few minutes whilst lying in bed before sleeping)
One of the reasons I even bother to post ideas like this is that I notice a shift in something of late. I have experienced all kinds of nervousness, nigh-on breakdowns, increased drug usage(tut tut), depression, und und und, amongst friends and colleagues. People I would at least expect it have laid out bare to me their inner weaknesses and perhaps their fear or uncertainty, prompted by the slightest of impulses. Is the earth spinning differently, I ask myself. At least for my students- I seriously recommend a return to an awareness of breath to get us through whatever this may be.
Strolling around the East Village I am struck by the number of homeless people, the number of New Yorkers sporting tattoos, and the size of the deli sandwiches. I stroll into a club where there is a Hip Hop band in full swing. I never really got that. What is that all about? It can’t be the lyrics. I must be missing something. I also stroll into a few Jazz clubs and feel there is something else I am missing. I smile when I think of a friend of mine, a TV sound guy, who likes all kinds of music, as long as there is no walking bass in it.
Back in Europe I embark on another Ryan Air Odyssey- how nice that someone out there is putting the adventure back into travel. Before begging for my Saxophone to be allowed through on my lap I enjoy a lightning storm around Mont Serrat, which for some strange reason reminds me so much of Uluru, only without the red and orange and with less dingos prowling the sand. Is there a similar kind of dream-map that cuts through Catalonia? Maybe the secret is held by some of the cigar munching retirerees that hold up the street cafes in Gelida. Will Australia run dry? Will the cockroaches survive in Sydney? What will lego look like in 60 years? So many questions, maybe my hara will know the answers. Or does Kitty Cassidy?:
I’ve been lucky enough to hear some great music in between my asanas this week. On Sunday an old friend of mine led his Quintet on a barge in Brooklyn playing Morton Feldman’s 90 minute Piano Quintet. It was quite an experience watching the Manhattan skyline tilt back and forth behind the soft textures. A lot of the crowd were lulled into sleep by the slowly evolving music- it was really the perfect soundtrack for a gently rocking barge on a grey Sunday.
Two days later I finally got to hear Paul Motion live which was simply great. I knew the pianist, a vastly underrated Kansan keymaster called Pete Rende who had written some really beautiful ballads. Motion simply sat in on music he hadn’t heard before and the results were sublime.
I found myself in a bluegrass session and I even went to some straight ahead (until you hit the wall) jazz clubs which is always a trip in itself for various reasons.
Following that we had a nice session in Systems 2 Studios in Brooklyn, a frozen snapshot from the 80’s. A beautiful large recording room packed with great mics (including one of Coltrane’s) and German drummers lambasting me for my deep and overwhelming reluctance to play on swing- was it something I drank? Is it something in the tap water here? The abundance of flouride perhaps? I’m just not feeling it.
Paul Motion with Bill Evans in 1961:
Walking into to the Vinyasa Flow 2 class at the Soho Yogaworks in an attempt to balance the 3 deadly espressos I had tasted at 9th St Espresso some hours earlier (the best here I’ve found) and which still hadn’t ceased to excite my capillaries, I first thought I could be in the wrong class. There were around 60 girls and women and the only other guy was the teacher. After overcoming the initial shock I settled in to the surroundings and enjoyed a few hours upside down breathing deep and admiring the pristine Soho loft and the sight of 124 legs pointing skywards, toes extended like little fleshy fans.
My first few nights here have been spent being the groupie of Mr Rueckert who played in Nublu and tonight in Cornelia St Cafe with John McNeil. I carry his leather stick bag to the gigs and make sure the drinks are mixed with the correct Boston shaker. When he’s not playing his sweet jazz he sits with a red bull or two in his tidy East Village abode and programs jewels like this, a mixture of microtonal textures, complex drum programming, and poetic fragments. This is Lonely out Here:
En route to New York I am to make an adventurous two day detour: my Serbian son needs a passport urgently and I am to escort him to the mysterious fortress of the Serbian Embassy in Madrid, cutting through the arid heart of Iberia. Leaving Catalonia the landscape gradually becomes more dry and barren until it seems like I am driving through death valley itself. We stop in the nowhere of a middle and step inside a seedy looking outpost that doubles as a bar. High Noon. Again it’s the unmistakable scent of sweat, smoked ham, oil, smoke, and perfume that greets us. I wonder if this will be burned into his memory of Spain for ever, just as for me the heat, dust, and sensation of bleeding noses of Australia are still burned onto mine. As we order our drinks and return the stares I look at the television sets and see a program on cellulite: voluptuous senoras are lined up on camera as a specialist pinches and outlines their various stages of cellulite, all this in front of a proud row of smoked and cures legs of ham, some almost dripping with fat. As the burning sun cuts through the windows I can almost see our reflection in the ham, that is until the smoke cuts through. As a non smoker I used to hate these places but now I relish them as last and quickly disappearing bastions of freedom. I breathe it in ( not too deep, but enough) and smile to myself how smoke always smells different to me depending on who is blowing it out.
Another cafe solo for the road- viciously bitter- enough to make any cowpoke grimace. I wash it down, pick up my little blond Slav, and hurry on to the capital.
We make sure we are outside the doors of the Serbian embassy at 8 and step inside a time warp to the late 70’s in all it’s splendour, we are swallowed up by the lush leather sofas in the waiting room from which the sound of brass bands and the scent of tobacco seeps out.
It’s been another hectic week with hardly a moment to write. Instead of trying to put some of this madness into words I take the abstract approach and offer one of the tracks I am listening to most at the moment and the picture on my desktop which I like to gaze at, the one displaying the active volcanos of the world- the future travel and life disrupters waiting calmly for their hour upon the stage. I do miss the feeling of living between ice and fire as we have in Taranaki and it must be quite a sight when huge pieces of burning mountain are flung out into the crashing waves. I couldn’t resist putting on a striped shirt and heading out this morning in Paris for the one curved bakery item that the French do better than us Germans-how much butter do they put in these things?
Kyoto Imperial Court Ensemble, Karyobin:
The Moers New Jazz festival begins tomorrow and we will be streaming the whole event via Plushmusic here.
My last day in Rio contains a short lecture and a short burst of overtones in the Museum. In between that I will be filling up the last spaces in my suitcase with tiny bottles of propolis and royal jelly- they seem to share my obsession with bees and their products. Here’s a good brief on these delights.
Most of my days in Rio are spent in the Museum where it is proving fun trying to communicate in broken Portuguese with all of the technicians. There is a certain pace here that reminds me of Naples except that they talk a lot less here which I like.
Around the museum the center of the town is dense in the day time and the streets give off the scent of soap, sweat, and perfume- all compounded by the sticky heat. I’ve noticed that the portions of food are large here, heading towards what you get in North America, and the people strutting the streets are “big boned” as my mother would say- a trend that seems to be spreading in the wealthier parts of the globe. What I do like about this place is that anyone at all could pass for a Brazilian so there is no staring at the odd one out but rather a calm and lilting acceptance of every shade from light Cappuccino to dark Americano- at least that’s my impression so far.
Back in the museum I have been recording some more overtones in the main hall to go with the existing track. These installation pieces were designed to evolve and I left plenty of space for it. As they run for months on end I also try to avoid torturing the museum staff too much with the same track and rather try to build in some small surprises into the tracks which vary constantly on two different DVD players with alternating discs. I have lost the interest in multi-channel works and have resorted back to stereo in most cases. I still enjoy using overtone singing as the overtones seem to move through the spaces in ways other sounds cannot seem to. Ideally I would sit in the space and sing on and off for the 2 months, eating rice and taking alms, but as this isn’t possible I record what impressions I can and mix them into the original track. Here is a section from the Universe piece in the main hall:
Recently I recorded with a real madman in the finest sense of the word. This Slavic figure who shall remain unnamed for fear of retribution is arranging Anton Webern themes for a “funky” band and asked me to record some saxes. This is a sketch of one of the unfinished tracks which is already so far out I decided to put it up. Bear in mind that there is still a Trombone Quartet, Church Organ, Tablas, and many more delights to follow. The sax solos are rather free improvisations in between the Webern themes. It’s always encouraging to meet and work with people who are far out there in their own way: Schweiget die Welt:
My favourite part of Rio so far is the shops selling Propolis in all possible forms- my suitcase is now bursting with the essence of bees.
First impressions of Rio:
Lucky enough to taste something I didn’t know existed as a food: the fresh inside of a palm tree-divine. Something feels light about the energy and then I find out that 97% of it is generated by Hydro power here- I like. Running along the beach I am intrigued by the shapes and forms – the geometry of skin seems to have a particular importance here and the act of procreating seeps out from the very sand and drips from the sliced coconuts dotted along the sea. From my hotel window, Ipanema streches out lazily to the right and the endless Favelas to the left, split by a busy road- the crashing waves and the sugar-cane powered cars are held in perfect stereo. I had been looking forward for some time to visiting one of Rio’s legendary music venues, the Canecão. After booking some tickets for this weekend I see the headline this morning ” The legendary Canecão to close this Thursday after 4 decades of music”. Sometimes I really wonder who wrote this script.
Nonplace celebrates it’s ten year anniversary this year ( a feat in itself in our times) and Burnt has put together a label compilation which has just been released. On it there is a remix of the Embassadors track “Iboga Dreamtime” which I have now here for aural tasting. If anyone is interested in the inspiration behind this piece, the Ibogaine Dossier is an excellent start with links to some great neuroscience resources.
Iboga Dreamtime:
“Nonplace can be grasped as the antithesis of commonplace or also in terms of quantum theory. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts. Quantum physics, that most exact of sciences, considers not just the particles but also their interrelationships. When Nonplace music is coming into being, the smallest, even most random event influences the work. Nonplace is a formula for high improbability, since the sounds happen more on the fringes. In this respect, Nonplace is the counter-programme to the ubiquitous striving for higher redundancy (simplification by digitalization, coding, standardization). Details and rhythms are the agents that de-core the songs and potentially transform them into further versions. The attention shifts away from the individual contribution of any one instrument or player, away from the defining hook and towards the micro-elements of the groove with its patterns of linkage that inhabit the musical forms. In music of this kind, the role played by subjects and grand gestures is no longer central.” From the release page
Once again the stretch of the river between Bonn and Koblenz gives me a few precious moments to reflect. Two older women with handbags and blue vacuum cleaners have just stepped onto the train, exited to be travelling to Vienna with their prize inhalers. I must admit I am fascinating by them.
I’ve been listening to a new Album by Akira and a women behind me has just asked the conductor if everything is ok with the train, mistaking the sound spilling from my earphones as a possible indication of imminent derailment ( not the first time this has happened). Surveying the train I see many examples of inner derailment, but train itself chugs along happily. This is a track I especially liked, With the Gift of your Small Breath:
I’m putting together my own monochord for some basic grass roots interval work and I have found some interesting source books. One of them, unnamed for the moment, is filled with incredible insights into our tone systems which are then interrupted by the most brazen and far-fetched theories I’ve heard in a while (including a classic 4 page analysis of the “character” of the different keys). I sometimes wonder if that is a method in itself, to simply open fire at the distant target with a machine gun and hey, if you kill everything else in the way at least you got your can.
My old sax teacher Frank Gratkowski is heading now to California for a two month residency in which he will focus on developing some working models for “live- electronics” with saxophone using max-msp. I have seldom found anything interesting involving sax in this genre but if anyone can do it Frank can, and the fact that he is both playing and programming should give off some interesting results. As he blogs is trip I will link up with him from here. Here is a piece we played together at the festival a few weeks ago with Michael on percussion:
As I write there is a wonderful exchange taking place between Zeitkratzer and Universal Edition who are accusing us of copyright infringement of the Schoenberg estate in the form of our “cheap imitation” series. Their “cease and desist” statement makes for wonderfully amusing reading. Reinhold’s response is even more delightful and with his permission I will publish the whole exchange for those who take pleasure in seeing crumbling estates squirm and splutter in the dense quicksand of copyright law. This certainly won’t be the last pile of nonsensical legal jargon flung over the Austrian boarder with ageing cannons in the name of the ecstasy of infuence.
Someone in the wagon yawns loudly in unknowing yet perfect unison with the glissandos of the Irish pipes in my ears. It is still random events like this that give me the deepest musical pleasure and sense of profound connectivity.
My next entry will be from Rio in 2 days, the earth’s bowel movements via the Icelandic orifice pertaining.
This is another version of a song called “Fly” we played in trio with John Schroeder on Drums and Simon Nabatov on Rhodes. If I may say it contains a delectable Rhodes solo in the middle which I have had to listen to several times already, Simon was surrounded by a ball of blue electricity:
Voyage to the Inner Mongolia was the title of one of our last concerts some two weeks ago and here is a longer excerpt from that evening with Xu Fengxia and Gareth. I had waited a long time for a chance to play with Fengxia and even though I’d had some long days before me, she carried her usual fireball energy with her and swept us up for quite a ride. I spent a good bit of time before the concert with Gareth gargling on Grasovska Vodka to protect out throats as we roared out in joy whilst being hurtled over the Gobi plains at high speed. Looking down I could see distant wrestling tournaments, purple tents surrounded by torches, stone apachetas with Shamans collapsed over them, children running after yaks, and the wicked grin of Fengxia ignited by the sparks flying from her Guzheng- I had to breath deep and clutch on to my horn for dear life- how did I get myself into this one? Part One:
Regarding my Masterclass in August in Greece I wanted to write a little more about the topics we will work on this year.
I do not run the class in a traditional way with me speaking and students listening, rather it is more of a laboratory and testing ground for ideas related to the saxophone but not exclusively (I expect some Violists this year too). Out of the last 4 years, different ensembles have formed and continued the work we began in the village. The last 2 years have seen us focus on:
-Expanding the repertoire for saxophone ensemble without notation
-Intensive Ear Training and Intonation work (microtonal and overtone related)
-Various Improvisation models for ensemble
-Continued exploration if extended techniques for saxophone (Here is our multiphonic piece from last year’s concert)
This year I will be sharing my current research which combines elements from the Taiji form with saxophone technique- a kind of Sax-Chi-Gong if you like, in which positions, breathing, and saxophone elements are combined into a specific form. (Yes, there is more to this than simple hip twisting)
We will continue to explore new ways of practising scales and intervals using “brain strechers” without notation. We will then apply these to our ensemble work.
Moving deeper into the Breath we will examine the connections between breath and tone, breath and mind – this quickly takes us to the topic of meditation which will will explore further especially how it can help us with our playing in general. Understanding the function of breath relating to saxophone and beyond can open many doors of perception.
Moving beyong stylistic boundries means developing a universal apparoch to music via the saxophone that makes styles in themselves redundant. Put simply, it doesn’t matter what kind of music you are playing, your sound and timbre is always the central and forging element and should always have the same intention and result. This is perhaps easier in theory than in practice but it is a crucial point. I often experience how difficult, even impossible it is, for many listeners ( and surprisingly “experts” and journalists” ) to take in the music without the framwork of styles – this requires and appreciation of timbre and a different kind of listening, a “deeper listning” if you like. As for us players, it is also important to develop a musicality that goes beyond styles. Styles are useful only up to a certain point. In a nut shell, I don’t give a xxxx if you play bebop or country, I just care how you sound and how close your saxophone sound is to the inner voice you hear.
We will intensively work on the connection between our voices and our playing, using singing exercises to strengthen this connection and understand how a greater control of our voices gives us a greater control over our saxophone sounds.
We will walk to various locations on the beautiful Pilion Mountain and conduct many of the classes outside.
I will invite some Greeks to teach us some of the many odd-meter dances so that our clumsy musician bodies are challenged and we can begin to groove with the dancing centaurs around us.
Today I’d like to share a few wee things- I’m doing this from a train rolling along the Rhein between Bingen and Andernach. It’s a pretty stretch of the river and the rolling hills can easily lull you to sleep if you let them.
The first is the first piece from last weeks concert “Voyage to the Inner Mongolia” with Gareth Lubbe and Xu Fengxia. This particular place is not on the map but it is one that we sought out in between the plucked guts and vibrating reeds and flesh:
The second is an interview with Barrie Trower, retired British military intelligence scientist in microwave and stealth warfare, about the dangers of electromagnetic radiation- possibly nothing new for any of you but still some very important material. Last week during the festival I experienced a few minor breakdowns with people who otherwise struck me as relatively stable. I have noticed that in this particular time, those who really do not care for the state of their nerves and do no kind contemplative training are easily affected by such unseen changes in the forces around them and to tend to “lose it”. Last week’s pause in flights in Europe didn’t just cause a sudden peace in the sky it also caused a change below, some subtle and barely perceptible shifts in energy which seemed to affect some more than others. In short, it seems to me more important than ever to be at peace in our bodies as best we can.
The third offering is a video of a session I had in Kenya with the Bauls of Bengal and a wonderful Kurdish Oud player. The Bauls would be in their room all day, singing, smoking, praying, cooking, and smiling – I’l never for get them. Thanks to Pietro Silvestri and Gabriele Girardi for this film.
And lastly, ‘cos now I need it, Eddie Harris sings the blues. For Dubes:
It will surely take me a wee while to go through all the recordings from last weekend but I just extracted a tiny bit from each rough mix as a taster from the festival and took my brutal crossfade function for a joyride:
The website of my summer Masterclass in Greece is now up here and all the information laid out. We will, as per usual, hold long notes for most of the week and try to get deeper inside the saxophone.
It’s taken me a few days to surface after all the dust settled from last weekend’s festivities. There was certainly plenty of action and we hope to put some of it up soon on Plushmusic. Throughout the weekend there was a peaceful emptiness in the skies above, a calm abiding that made a nice contrast to the electricity in the loft below. The first 2 days were cut open somewhat through the flight chaos into something I hadn’t planned but luckily everyone was on their game and we managed to somehow hold on to the boat….Come Sunday and the very last stretch of the marathon I was given a boost by a fireball in the form of Xu Fengxia who was really burning from the inside:
Alas I only just found out that the internet stream we announced turned into a trickle and then quickly became a dried up little patch of earth in the middle of the Gobi desert. Sorry to all you caravan drivers who were heading towards this stream – as I understand they will try and put up some of the concerts on Plushmusic this week – all the madness has at least been successfully recorded. Walking outside today it is interesting to note a clear shift in vibration which, volcanic cloud or not, is noticeable in the taste of the air and the colour of the sky. This billowing ash cloud gave me all manner of headaches over the past few days and cost me a small fortune- but now that that part is taken care of I can now actually enjoy this shift in energy and the natural adjustments in mother earth thast remind us of the fragility of our position, both above and below us- I’m lovin’ it.
The almighty’s message to me this morning was a clear : “No, thou shalt not have your one and only rehearsal today, I shall put a great volcanic cloud in between you and your finished music” and who am I to argue with that? Perhaps another Kansan poem might help pass the time:
I pluck off a grape from this strange and foreign tree-
look through it’s transparent skin,through the faint tint of purple
and I see a tiny kansas
the fields are all there and the moon is setting
or rather seeping into the skin of the grape
it’s silver shadow, a perfect orb within an orb
is moving over the inner skin
and the little moon’s body is now exiting the grape
poetic osmosis fully justified
hovering between my form and the tiny ball of juice and mystery
bathed in soft moonlight streaming from the miniscule satellite
the goddess now reigns at this hour
and the grammar of the night has been reinstated
i gaze longingly at my dear silver kansas
encased in a grape
From my Kansas folder:
as ripples make towards the kansan shore
(the forgotten village long since sunk)
so too the apachees and chippewa once
in vanquished toil fell forwards
content to kiss the the raw earth, once fresh in the light
now bloodied in maturity and crowned
in kansan moonlight – all baring witness
to the glorious fight.
and time that gave her gift contends
as ghosts whisper echoes of childhood
slice the parallel in the crops and beauty’s brow-
they feed on the raw earth’s truth
nothing now but for the scythe to mow
in the empty field the whispers breath and stand
singing of fire, despite our cruel hand.
Whilst working on the release of the Installation music with Rebecca I got to know a certain Mr Lutz Eitel who will be blogging the Loft festival this week on the Plush blog here. Leading up to the concerts he will be putting out some information on this motley assembly of sonic vagabonds and zealots and if you would like an expert take on the proceedings, he is your man.
Here are two versions of a shoe-gazing song I once wrote for the band Pluramon- one is sung by Julia Hummer and the second by Julee Cruise- both mixed and produced by Marcus Schmickler. It came to me on a bike in Cologne and was inspired by the special K scene in Lima who all came to our Goethe Institute lecture flying higher than any kite I’ve ever seen. I thought to myself- is it just me or is everyone else in this room on something? Hence the lyrics If you could fly like me you’d know that feeling when you go too high
Julia’s Special K:
Julee’s Special K:
We interrupt this program for a short commercial announcement: I am subletting my old apartment in Barcelona through an agency here online. It is a nice big place very close to the sea and in a nice part of town. If you happen to be an alchemist or a searcher for the light, you might be happy to know that before me the place was used by Paolo Coehlo – so you or your friends can sleep on the same bed he did, write on the same table, or chill on the balcony on the very same place I beat him at tetris twice. If you write that you came from softspeakers a generous discount awaits you.
In the last year I succumbed a little to the growing peer pressure and joined the digital “revolution” in some modest ways – tested out facebook and myspace, had a peek at twitter, got an iphone, started using updates, uploaded HD video and so on and so on. As you can now clearly ascertain, this is by technical definition a blog (though I still can’t stand this word) and so I am like many of you firmly and inextricably rooted into this infinite mass of zeros and ones. Taking a few days off (a long time to be a way, isn’t it) and surveying this overwhelming landscape, the only word(s) I can find to sum up what I have perceived is a German one- another word which hits the essence but is hard to translate. It is
Na ja and the closest gesture elsewhere could be a slightly indifferent shrug of one’s shoulders. The type and the quality of information being relayed certainly doesn’t knock my socks off, let’s put it that way.
I can’t help but remember the first line of Debord’s Society of the Spectacle “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” – Na ja.
On a single yesterday, I walked with my baby son in the sun, flew across an ocean with a plane of severely mentally retarded persons, accompanied a sick friend in an empty hospital, whispered with doctors about life, and contemplated briefly our existence minus the digital component.
On a different plane, here is Gareth and Rhani performing at last year’s Plushmusic festival. The program for this year’s is here and all the concerts will be streamed on using exactly the same technology, exactly the same endless stream of ones and zeros, exactly the same “social me-dia” so why not join the party?
Watch the whole concert on Plushmusic
It’s a hot and windy day in the surreal little kingdom of Monaco. I descend the golden steps of polished stone until I reach the famous first right curve of the racing circuit and watch the light reflect of the the water, the yachts and the asphalt. It feels good to walk the track at a snail’s pace and an hour or so later I reach the parking building of the royal palace where tiny Japanese models are streaming out onto a catwalk and vegetables are been cut and prepared for playing (the group before us is specialised in playing on vegetables) Against the backdrop of the ocean we play our “cheap imitation” series and tonight Schoenberg and Bach are up for execution. On the music in front of me is printed in bold letters on each page “Do not play anything written here”. The models seem confused but the carrots and pumpkins remain unfazed. As we launch into Metal Machine Music a wave of feed backs surges out from our sound check and bounce off the castle walls, mixing in with the seagulls’ cries. A group of French clarinetists , discernable by their embouchures are warming up to surround the audience clusters by a certain Radelescu. Someone has decided to call tonight “Nuit de Surprise” or the like. The carrots look on. Looking down at the massive open sea and the even sets of surging waves it is easy to feel the world as a breathing and writhing organism, ready to swallow up this principality in a moment.
Here is our performance of Tenney’s Critical Band form the Luxembourg Philharmonic Hall last October:
Following that is a beautiful track of Michael Moore’s I have with me called Jodi Jones :
Barely a Moon Old is a new trio piece I recently wrote. It migrates east during it’s short outward breath and leaves with a whisper (piano- Nabatov, drums- Burgwinkel) :
Here is the weekend Walz from the heart of the chemical wedding in Bayer:
I’m playing tonight in Berlin unannounced here..
Last weekend was a busy one filled with sounds and I would like to put up some of the pieces form the concerts we gave. On Sunday I played a Brazilian program twice with Simon Nabatov - once in the heart of the Bayer Chemical mothership compound in Leverkusen (entertainment and “erholung” for the crew members) with wonderfully timed soundcheck at 8am on a Grand Piano constructed entirely and incredibly out of Asprin – and once in the evening at Loft on a regular Steinway made from future coal. In the second set Jonas Burgwinkel joined us on drums and I managed to turn ink drops from my feather into six new songs without falling into a deep sleep on the still empty manuscript page as I so often do when I attempt to capture sounds with ink.
A rather slow Samba (duo):
Fly (trio) :
When I was in Greece last year I was lucky enough to meet and record two amazing musicians from Bulgaria whom you can see and hear on this film. There was just Bernie and myself in the classroom as the guys launched into this piece. I was filming from the ground and at a certain point it became hard to hold the camera, so absolutely blown away I was. At around 3′52” I thought they were winding down when in fact they were just taking off – from there on in it is quite a ride…..
The days are running past at and I am barely keeping up with my little offerings here. I recently dug up this track, without a doubt, the best version of Ipanema I have ever come across. The proportion of the head to the solo length is very close to the golden section and Archie is truly on fire here.
It’s been a big week with a lot of Brazilian music and new Embassadors tracks. and of course being snowed under in the mountains of Catalunya. On the way to one of the many rehearsals I was delighted to see this oversized salami which reminded me suddenly of the first German breakfast I was ever served – red meat on black bread, what a shock that was.
This release with John Taylor and Matt Penman – BREVE – has been two years in the making and has finally made it up. I feel as if I’ve just crossed the finish line of an ultra marathon and can now collapse in peaceful but aching samadhi. The 2007 and 2008 concert of this trio are ready for download here.
Enjoy the whole concert on Plushmusic
Excuse the pause in operations, readers- it was one of those weeks. Here is some footage from a solo concert I gave in Krefeld last year to welcome you back:
The world is at peace as my old bike splutters and coughs along the majestic winding Rhein. Everything is white and the distant carnival drums are muffled and mute. The further I go, the deeper the silence becomes, until the only sound remaining is the low rumble of the barges ploughing upstream. My ears are almost iced over but it is a fair trade off for the silence I now enjoy. Although I can still see the peaks of the cathedral when I turn around, the scenery has become wild and the forest spills over into this great river with no sign of man in between. I can even pick out some sheep huddled together in the distance. All this isn’t just about respite from the thumping drunken fury of the Carnival but about picking up a Mk 6 Soprano from a distant cottage way down the Rhein. The thought of that gorgeous horn urges me on.
After several miles my tempo shifts from andante to largo and the quietude becomes even deeper. I stop to throw a frozen stone into the river and watch the shapes spill over. I sing some overtones to the river spirit, revelling in the white around us. High above, an unknown bird defecates, adjusting its position carefully to use the breeze. He misses me by around a meter and continues to fly on, oblivious to the patterns in the water. The moment of Samadhi now has a slight feeling of danger to it as a long line of gargling Geese now fly over, cutting the sky in two.
Across the other side of the Rhein my glass eyes make out some frozen monks and vikings, their legs protruding from the snow, their last cry of “alaaf” reverberating underground. Beyond them in a glen, a circle of Armenians clad in green robes practice long tones on their Duduks while one of them roasts sweet potatoes over a gas flame. I decide to wear my contact lenses next time to be sure.
As my breaths deepen I can feel the world around me slowing down with me and the blanket of snow and ice amplifies this feeling. Perhaps instead of exploding or imploding we will simply wind down and freeze over, an entire planet of frozen clowns.
Last week we recorded with Root70 in the old RBB radio studios in Berlin. These are beautiful old rooms that have a fantastic sound and are well suited to the kind of old-school sound Nils was after. No separation walls or headphones and a direct-to-tape method meant the session was a smooth one. I made this little film on that snowy day:
For some time now I wanted to put up my favourite track from Coptic Dub in it’s entirety: Dagaz eterna. Dagaz is the rune of day and contains a universe of meaning within itself. Aspects of the rune which led to the title of this piece are the inevitability of dawn, the turning moebius strip, and the meditation on ceaseless light.
Yesterday I played a nice concert with a Hurdy Gurdy player from Barcelona, Marc Ergea. Marc, a philosopher by trade, has been working to expand the possibilities of the instrument and I loved to play within the textures of this intriguing sound maker. I was fascinated to hear how he translates the ars magna of Raymon Llull (an intriguing system of interlocking wheels that revealed attributes of the logos) into musical structures and about his secret recipe for cod with figs, something that will hopefully accompany our next meeting… Here is Marc playing on this thousand year old turning wheel tickling the taunt gut in perpetuity:
During last week’s tour I organised a jazz night at Rote Platz in Cologne. Alongside some broken glasses and Russian conversation here are a couple of softbop tracks from that night:
As part of my duties to the City of Cologne and the contract I once signed I am obliged to perform at least once during carnival. As I am unable to play on one of the parades as I usually love to do I have been cajoled into playing this evening in a tour of the South City with the band Schmakes. For those who havn’t heard the delectable vocals of the Cologne dialect before here you go:
I am parting with one of my dear lady friends. She is beautiful in every way and is sounding better than ever with the ripe old age of 78. I have played her now for a few years and am looking for a new owner for her as I am after a new bass clarinet. She has a round and robust sound and is in mint condition, recently overhauled. I played her on the root70 52nd St album and on the Breve concert with John Taylor. Here she is in detail.