s o f t s p e a k e r s

Taranaki

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 04:43:27 +0000

How much I had missed being back in my home in Taranaki, New Zealand. 5 long years I had waited to come back to this special part of the island where the sacred volcano of Taranaki gradually cascades into the Tasman sea.

My first morning here was opened with a chorus of Tuis, birds I have written about before. If you are new to this beautiful creature, here is their sound.

On top of that they bear colours that ignite in the sun and are iridescent like nothing else I know.

I don’t have long here to walk slowly and breathe in the sea/mountain air. I have my little sruti box and will be playing and singing as much as I can, in the hope that some little kiwis will be infected with the overtone bug. And it also feels good to be in a place where my shorts, long socks, and sandals almost blend in again- even if I’m a few years late. It is a timeless place in a way, and it still feels like home.

Vibrato Sax

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:45:49 +0000

Beginning this year I will be the first non-Thai endorser of the poly carbonate saxophone Vibrato. I will be helping them with testing and you can look out for some wicked colors on my horn should you be at one of my gigs. My motive in doing this two fold- firstly, it fits in well with my teaching concept of the sound coming more from the source and less from the means, and secondly I have been looking for a lighter alternative for younger players so as to get them started early and well on a horn that is good to play on. Now of course I have a soft spot for such daring color schemes and I was already sold on first glance. The president of the company, Mr Piyapat Thanyakij, is a charming man and passionate about the sax (as many Thai’s are with there wonderful king still madly in love with our instrument) – so stay tuned for some official test videos soon, fasten your seat belts and don your dark sunglasses as these babies sure do shine.

The Fly in the Curtain

admin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:52:20 +0000

I’m back with a new me. It’s not that I will all of a sudden be writing differently and it will probably be less frequent than before- it’s just that something deeper changed on the inside and the easiest way for me to express that would be with sound. Here is my voice which I recorded the other night in the wonderful Sendesaal in Bremen. You might not notice anything special about what and how I play but for myself the wind is blowing to and from a very different place and I thought I’d post it, staying true to the spirit of why I began this in the first instance.

Spirit Rejoice

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:59:52 +0000

Readers, I try to keep this blog going as best I can, try to keep providing you with sonic fragments of the beautiful, no matter what is bubbling below the surface. Then there comes a time where that is not possible and I am forced to disappear for longer stretches to slay all kinds of dragons, the description of which I can maybe post here in about 34 years from now when the dust has settled. As I will be away for a while I want to leave you with something special- something in which the spirit sings out loud and clear.

There are many concerts I would love to beam myself back to and be there in person but this one is right up close to the top of the list. The band is tight, o so tight- but above and beyond that is Aretha herself who channels like a goddess. I would have like to have been in the front row, live at Fillmore Hall, Feb 5, 1971.

If I were to isolate one musician who is particularly on fire it would be Mr Purdie on drums. Don’t really need to say much more about this gentlemen on this particular night.

I reread The White Goddess by Mr Graves last week. In it, he describes the muse of the poets and how she works on men through the ages. As the poems of the bards he describes were always sung, we know that she likes best to move through the soft wind made by our voices. When Aretha sings about the spirit and sings of her love for you, the goddess moves.

When the inner song is clear and the outer expression pure, she moves- spirit rejoices- snail moves closer to the summit of Fujiama- the green blue marble in space shimmers.

In the meantime, if any of you souls out there ever see or hear anything at all regarding the Fibonacci sixths I have written so much about re my piece Love in Numbers, do let me know- I still haven’t found anything anywhere, despite trawling through mountains of literature. Feel free to drop me a line, do.

Though the catagories on this blog are invisible, I can tell you this post is filed under hope. Spirits rejoice! – she never ceased to sing: 5 Feb, 1971, Aretha Live at Fillmore Hall:

Caning and Hakas

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:20:28 +0000

A blast from the past? Per chance found this video of our old school Haka in New Plymouth. Regularly we would be marched out to watch the rugby games and us 1100 boys in black and grey uniforms would be ordered to perform the Haka dance on the terraces overlooking the rugby field. What fond memories. Actually I wasn’t really that into it back then- now I can look back and smile. Even on this low res film I can pick out the many dudes like myself who weren’t really into it but still went through the motions to avoid a caning.

Fela hitting it massively

admin — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:23:21 +0000

No matter who you are, and what you do to live, thrive, and survive, there are some things that make us all the same- and this little track here by Mr Kuti himself brings it all together. The rhythms, the horns, the vocals- it is all pure magic. It has pretty much everything I need right now in music and I think you can do no wrong by putting this baby on repeat for a good while. It is one of my latest trawls from the beauty-hunts I embarked on and I serve it up to you, unknown you, with a deep bow. Spur1:

dream

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:36:45 +0000

It’s 0544 am as I write this. I have been playing the whole night- I can feel it in my lips. Bird song is out again in force- they usher in the spring. On the way back I check in at the espresso bistro which opens at 5. It feels like everything I played was like a dream. There’s something about the birdsong which bridges wake-time and dream-time.

My babies

admin — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:22:43 +0000

A match ignited in heaven. Even when I leave them alone they still get on. In Ireland they’d call me the matchmaker- the one who brought them together. It warms my heart to see them happy now, a perfect marriage of wood, metal, air, and fire:

JG3

admin — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:44:43 +0000

A couple of posts ago I wrote about Jimmy Giuffre and posted a track from the fabulous 1961 record Flight. Moving back in time to ’56 we find the man cutting another trio record which I find superb for different reasons- Jimmy Giuffre 3 . As with Flight it boasts a delicate mixture of composition and improvisation- to such a level that it is often hard to tell them apart. Again, the trio is tight, very tight. It’s hard to imagine why this recording relatively unknown and yet, when I consider it, the thoroughness of the idea/execution and almost brutal reduction to the minimal musical information lends this recording a high level of abstraction. And as we know, the a word winds its way down a lonely, windswept path. Once again he was ahead of his time even when he was playing relatively straight jazz with nothing too radical in a harmonic/rhythmic sense. By this token this is a fine example of how a stringent idea followed through to its most extreme and logical conclusion in any genre can lead to strange and complex sonic gems. Not that he necessarily did it on purpose- do we ever? Where are the strings on our hands attached to? This record contains the essence of jazz without the sweating, panting, and the cigarette afterwards. It’s cool and contained, calm and all-perceiving, deeply intelligent and graceful- the buddhist Vajra principal seeping into the west coast jazz club. Hats off to Mr Giuffre. That’s the way it is:

Wow!

admin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:29:52 +0000

Now here is a real gig with a relaxed and cooking rhythm section at work. Mr Clark especially is the very epitome of relaxation. I find Getz at his best when he is not having to force it as he does on some of the songs, but there are a few ballads in the set which let him sing out. And on all of the tunes the three in the back are truly on fire. Tony’s hit hat alone is worth the watch.