Chris Becker

Erotique Concrète

2012-01-22T12:39:00.001-08:00

Erotique Concrète
Improvisation in Ableton Live

Photo below by Doren Bernard, Super Happy Fun Land 1/21/12
Special thanks to Spike the Percussionist aka Astrogenic Hallucinauting for joining me for this set!

Angel of Light / Fallen Angel

2012-01-22T12:36:00.000-08:00

Angel of Light / Fallen Angel
Collaboration with Joseph Benzola
Chris Becker- Sinister Dark Ambient Soundscape
Joseph Benzola- Electronic Percussion Controlled via a Drum Kat.

Experimental electronic music showcase at SuperHappyFunLand

2012-01-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

Flyer design by Paul Connolly.

Update: Air Laptop: Inside the World of Experimental Electronic Music by Chris Becker for CultureMap Houston

Saturday, January 21, at Houston's SuperHappyFunLand, I'll be performing on a bill with some of Houston's finest experimental electronic musicians, including Cyclea, LIMB, Josiah Gabriel, Carlos Pozo, BrightBlueBeetle, and Pulse Rifle. For my set, I will team up with Spike the Percussionist aka Astrogenic Hallucinating. 9pm is the start time. Cover is only $7. SuperHappyFunLand is one of my favorite venues here in Houston, it's one of those places that has to be seen to be believed.

Jonathan Jindra, who curated this show and will play as Cyclea, is one of the first musicians I met when I relocated to Houston. I had no idea there were so many musicians in the city playing electronic music in about any hybrid one can imagine. In retrospect, it makes total sense, as this is town has always been very savvy when it comes to technology. The scene itself is very healthy and varied, embracing musical input from players from the classical, jazz, and rock worlds, as well as input from visual artists and dancers. It's also very underground, with PR done via social media.

After hearing Spike live, as well material he's posted on MySpace, I am certain that ours will be a good match.

Come out and experience yet another strain of H-Town's music and noise makers.

Dec 22 at Avant Garden: The Core Trio with guest Chris Becker

2011-12-12T16:17:00.000-08:00

The link below takes you to a sketch up on Soundcloud that might give you an idea of what I'll be doing Dec 22, albeit it with three other instrumentalists contributing, shaping, and taking control of the unfolding sounds. This is an unedited improvisation using Ableton Live:

http://soundcloud.com/cbeckermusic/sketch-for-avant-garden

Painting by Gottfried Helnwein

The image comes from the first and only piece of fan mail I ever received.

Dec 22 I'll be playing again with three of my favorite musicians doing a completely improvised set of music. With these guys, I've been able to take another step or two forward with the laptop as a vital component in a music ensemble. I believe there's still a lot of things to explore not so much perhaps with the technology, which is what much of my brethren seem to obsess with, but with playing in combination with your fellow human beings.

Hope you can join us. Singer Cindy Scott will perform after us accompanied by guitarist Brian Seeger.

The Core Trio with guest Chris Becker
Thursday, December 22, 2011
7pm
Avant Garden
411 Westheimer
Houston, TX 77006
$5 suggested donation

The Core Trio is:
Richard Cholokian – Drums
Thomas Helton – Doublebass
Seth Paynter – Saxophones, EWI, Gongs

Chris Becker – Laptop, Kaoss Pad

October 30 at Avant Garden

2011-11-25T13:47:00.001-08:00

Above image by Austin Osman

Wednesday, Nov 30 at 8pm at Avant Garden is the date for Robert Pearson's monthly New Music Improvisation Series. This is a free show. I will be doing a set on laptop and Kaoss pad with saxophonist, EWI player Seth Paynter. Seth is part of Houston's The Core Trio, a group I already enjoyed before getting the opportunity to play with them last month at 14 Pews.

Recent gigs in Houston have pushed me to stretch my ears and technique. I'm leaning less and less on beats and symmetrical loops and am instead interweaving with musicians in a more organic way. The music of late has been dark, ambient, almost industrial, but very dynamic. It's accessing and giving voice to the emotions I'm feeling of late.

Michelle Yom solo follows after our set.

Core Trio with Chris Becker on Soundcloud

2011-11-06T08:54:00.001-08:00

Thank you to Jonathan Jindra for recording (the link is below) of my set as a guest on laptop and Kaoss pad with the Core Trio who are Thomas Helton (bass), Seth Paynter (EWI, saxophone) and Richard Cholakian (drums, electronics). It was a truly wild performance; heavy, but dynamic. Imaginative, musical and unclassifiable.

We are hoping to play again as a quartet in the near future, so stay tuned.

Core Trio and Chris Becker at Binarium Sound Series, October 30, 2011

Core Trio w/guest Chris Becker October 30, 2011

2011-10-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Core Trio with guest Chris Becker

Core Trio is
Richard Cholakian - Drums
Thomas Helton - Bass
Seth Paynter - Saxophones

Chris Becker - Laptop, Kaoss Pad

October 30, 2011
7 to 10 pm
Binarium Sound Series / 14 Pews
800 Aurora Street

Also on this bill…
Bell Toll (Kathy Fay Mahdoubi)
Josh Ronsen
and Matt Armistead

$10, all ages. Door opens at 6:45, bands start at 7:10pm.

Musiqa Presents: John Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man

2011-09-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

September 24th, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hobby Center, Houston, TX, Musiqa presents John Corigliano's song cycle "Mr. Tambourine Man." Karol Bennett is the soprano. This is a video we created to promote the event. Jonathan Jindra shot and edited everything. The music is performed by George Heathco.

Special thanks to Karol Bennett, Tali Morgulis and Marcus Maroney.

TICKETS AND MORE INFO....

Music For Silent Films, August 21, 2011

2011-08-23T15:28:00.001-07:00

"We know the images are set by the time the performance comes around, but the dialogue between the visual and the soundscapes was so intertwined, that at times, it appeared as if the images emerged from Becker's and Thomas Helton's counterpoint. You had to be there." Joel Luks, Culturemap Houston

Photos by Jonathan Jindra

Music for Silent Films, August 21st, Houston, TX

2011-06-26T16:58:00.001-07:00

Above image from the film "Goad" by Noe Kidder and Ariane Anthony

August 21st, 2011
7pm
Divergence Music and Arts
1824 Spring St.
Houston, TX
Music for Silent Films
An evening of improvised music to contemporary silent films
Chris Becker - Laptop, Kaoss Pad
Thomas Helton - Upright Bass
Films by Noe Kidder, Jonathan Jindra,
Robert Thoth Carolina Vasquez,
and Pablo Gimenez Zapiola.
$10 cover
More about Divergence Music & Arts Space

Yvonne Marquis in "Puce Moment" a film by Kenneth Anger

Interview with Jazz Pianist Bobby Lyle

2011-06-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

Bobby Lyle 5/24/11 interview
Interview and transcription by Chris Becker

This is a full transcript of an interview I did with pianist Bobby Lyle for a profile in Culturemap Houston. The conversation was so interesting and filled with so many details, that I thought posting it in its entirety might interest fellow musicians and anyone interested in jazz. The introduction below is excerpted from the Culturemap profile.

This being Houston, where there is a avid audience for jazz, but not a whole lot of places to go and hear it played, it’s quite possible you have yet to hear pianist and Hammond B-3 master Bobby Lyle. Although based in Houston since 2000, Lyle’s gigs usually take him to L.A. or New York City, so local performances are few and far between. The buzz among those lucky enough to have witnessed his scorching set on B-3 last April at Discovery Green with saxophonist Everette Harp, or his 2010 “unplugged” duet with Harp at Zilka Hall to benefit Musiqa’s educational programming, or recent appearances with trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis as part of the Divas World Jazz Series, is if you see the name Bobby Lyle on an upcoming program, do not miss that show. Otherwise, shame on your music loving self.

I was blown away by Lyle’s ability to play an incredible variety of piano styles, often within the context of a single tune, when I first heard him last November at the aforementioned Musiqa benefit concert. Shifting gears after first playing a couple of originals by Harp, the duo headed into standards territory taking well loved tunes into the stratosphere. Their freewheeling set included John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” a Lyle only rendition of “Body and Soul,” and a startling yet perfectly timed drop of the Marvin Gaye classic “What’s Goin’ On?” Lyle also played one percussive piece of new jack swing entirely inside the piano. The whole time, you felt Lyle was as attuned to the audience as he was to his onstage “co-conspirator” Harp.

Lyle’s recorded output includes plenty of albums for the “smooth jazz” market, including the beautifully recorded and arranged Ivory Dreams and The Journey. 1991’s Piano Magic is a rare solo piano recording that includes Lyle’s sophisticated and funky take on jazz standards such as Bill Evans’ “Waltz For Debbie” and Miles Davis’ “So What.” Lyle has also recorded wild, genre busting fusion albums like 1977’s The Genie, which stands alongside similarly expansive and experimental records from that time period by artists such as Ramsey Lewis, George Duke, or Quincy Jones. The list of people Lyle has performed, recorded and/or toured with includes musicians from just about every genre of music one can name, including Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Pharoah Sanders, Al Jarreau, Bette Midler, Anita Baker and George Benson.

Pianist, composer, arranger and producer Bobby Lyle

Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble

Bobby Lyle: You know the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas? At one time he was the director of the St. Paul Chamber orchestra – this is going back years probably into the 70’s…so I got real ambitious one time and I wrote a piece for chamber orchestra and jazz ensemble…and my sister who used to be heavily involved with the dance world she did some choreography that we were able to work into the presentation…and it was quite an experience…and to this day I have no idea what happened to the scores…the scores have vanished! I mean, some of that music was in 7/4 time -

Chris Becker: Oh, no! You mean you just misplaced it over the years?

BL: Yeah, I guess somewhere in my moves…in my journey…and I remember Mr. Thomas kind of teasing me about…I did something wrong in writing for the viola which is that different clef?

CB: Yeah…

BL: So he kind of teased me about that a little but they all made the corrections and we got it together. But just from having that experience – you know of course you’re terrified when you first pass out the music because you don’t know…is it going to be okay???

CB: Oh, yeah! But that’s normal! Every composer – there’s always mistakes!

BL: I think everybody goes through that.

CB: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I wish when I was studying composition…I remember being a young man thinking that any piece of paper in front of a musician it had to be…perfect! Eventually I got over this! But I can remember being so nervous…

BL: So anyway that whole story was triggered when you started talking about composing. And then it made me think – again: “Where is that score?”

CB: Do you use any notation software?

BL: I’ve had some people recommend that I do that because that way you can get it down as you’re creating it!

CB: That’s one way to do it. For someone like yourself that would be great you know…and I’m thinking as far as saving the score, it’s on the computer; you’re not going to lose it unless you use your computer!

BL: Yeah! I wish they’d had that back in the day…Just the experience of it was valuable. So…I want to at some point before I retire or leave this earth, I’d love to do something with strings or an orchestra. I’d love to do something with a big band, piano and/or Hammond organ. I got at least a couple of solo piano projects I’m in my head that I’m working on to get recorded. So I’m reminded a lot of people I’ve played with, things I’ve done in the past and that’s like so finished for me because I’m thinking about okay what can I do now, down the road here…I’m keeping my focus present and future. And when you do that you realize all the stuff that you haven’t done – not the resting on what you have done.

CB: Yeah. Sometimes we don’t give ourselves…I know musicians are prone to this – not gibing ourselves credit we deserve for what we have accomplished. You know you get through a project it’s almost like you forget about all the work that went into it…

BL: Oh, yeah!

CB: But maybe it comes from what you’re talking about where you’re driven towards the future. Like: “What’s the next thing?” There’s something out there I wanna explore…

BL: And that’s not to low rate anything that you have done cos’ I know just the process of making instrumental albums over the years…it’s a lot of work. I was self produced a lot of the time, except for the early part of my career…Wayne Henderson was my producer and then maybe two or three albums in I took over and did the self-produced thing….so you forget the blood, sweat and tears, and the pain. Maybe it’s like a woman with childbirth, you know? (Laughter)

It’s like - what it took to get that finished product into your hand. But the GOOD part about it is that there does come a time when you can actually sit and listen to it like a listener instead of like a producer and nitpicking: “Oh, I should have done that…” That period does come when you can just enjoy the music. And “Hey, that was my mentality at that point in my musical history, and that’s what came out, and I’m ok with that!”

Title track from Bobby Lyle's 1977 album The Genie available on iTunes

CB: I am going to ask you some questions about your earlier years so we will talk a little about that, if that’s okay with you..

BL: Sure.

CB: But since you mentioned writing for larger ensembles, last night I was able to find one or two tracks from a record you did called The Genie-

BL: Hmm…

CB: - in 1977, which I loved! I love that period of music.

BL: It was wide open.

CB: It’s kind of like anything goes in terms of the harmonies, the rhythms, the instrumentation, even how you use the studio…and it doesn’t surprise me at all when you talk about continuing to write for larger ensembles, strings, brass, big band and all of that…

BL: I try to get that feeling in my smaller groups.

CB: Exactly. That’s something I wanted to talk about too. Even some tracks I heard on stuff like “Hands On” there’s a real arrangers sense to the music. I can hear these parts like “Okay, that’s a strings part there…” That’s definitely apparent in (that) recorded work. Well, (with) any musician they’re hearing way beyond…they hit a note and there’s a whole spectrum of things that they’re hearing…

BL: There’s a LOT of stuff. And the beauty of the piano is that it’s singular and it’s orchestral at the same time. The range of the piano mirrors the range of the orchestra, from the low bass up to the flute and the piccolos.

Early Years

CB: So your family (note: shortly after Bobby was born) ended up in Minneapolis (circa 1960). I read in your bio your mother was one of your first teachers?

BL: Yeah, she got me started out when I was maybe six, seven years old and then she took me for a little ways and then hooked me up with a formal teacher. And so I had that training as well.

CB: Were the (piano) lessons classical? Or were they jazz? Were they a combination of things?

BL: It was classical back during that time. The jazz thing sort of came by me listening to jazz records and hearing things by ear and trying to pick them out on the piano. My mom’s brother was a high school band teacher down in Memphis, Tennessee and also a big jazz aficionado. So he ‘d come in the summertime and bring all the latest Miles and Trane and Errol Garner. So I got to hear everybody. And even there was no one around who could teach this kind of playing; I was really self-taught in those early years. And then when I got out and started playing around Minneapolis, and meeting some of the other musicians, then I was able to get some mentoring by some of the guys who were older than me and saw some potential in me and wanted to help me and make sure I stayed on the proper path to do what I was going to do.

I really am grateful for the time I spent in Minneapolis because there was always a lot of good musicians – horn players, bass players, drummers, piano players – and I was able to steep myself in this environment and become a serious musician. Probably too much of a purist back in that time! As I got older and started to hear the other types of music or really appreciating people like Hendrix, Sly Stone and Bob Marley it was like – okay, I don’t think it’s really cool to be a purist! It’s better to be wide open!

CB: Yeah! Going back to when you were in that mentoring stage…it sounds like there were opportunities to play, there were opportunities to gig to perform in front of people in clubs?

BL: Yeah, my first professional gig was actually in a private club. I don’t know if I could have done it in a public one – I was sixteen years old!

CB: (laughing) I see!

BL: You know, being around adults and alcohol and all of that…the bandleader at the time was a drummer - I was sixteen I think he was about 24 - a guy named Harry Dillon, I’ll never forget him. He sang and played the drums and he was sort of my unofficial chaperone to make sure I didn’t do anything I wasn’t supposed to. So I had a taste very early of learning how to entertain people as an instrumentalist. And that’s more of a chore than someone who sings and can make that instant emotional contact with the voice and the lyrics...

CB: I was wondering what kind of music you’d play in a situation like that. Are you popular songs or are you playing standards?

BL: We were doing more of the jazz literature with the standards, blues and things that were kind of popular at the time. Some of the Miles stuff. So I had to be listening to a lot of music in order to be able to bring something to the table. With the drummer being the singer he could do the standards and deal with the lyrics and I HAD to know these songs. I had to learn them and woodshed, you know? It’s something for a kid who’s also going to high school and having to deal with that curriculum.

I had the burning desire to really want to do that and not just to do it, but to really do it well! And that’s sort of been the fuel all through the years. Now that I have piano students of my own and I’m giving them this knowledge, trying to give them the tools they need to become good players. The one thing you cannot teach though is the desire to really want to do this. Some parent can bring their kid over and pay me for the lessons but that has to be there in order for the kid to move from one level to the next.

CB: At that age, in high school, was there any kind of music education in place for you?

BL: Just band and choir playing the regular stuff bands and choirs play. There wasn’t any special “jazz studies,” again, I was getting all of that on my own. But I did do my first arrangement for my high school choir. Around the holidays I did an arrangement of "The Christmas Song." I took the four parts – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – and voiced them in really hip jazz kind of voicings. And that was my very first arrangement – I was so proud of that.

CB: When did the B-3 come into your arsenal of instruments? Did you discover that around the same time?

BL: I think that was a few years later… between 18 and 20 years old. There was a club in Minneapolis, kind of between the downtown area and the University of Minnesota area, called Big Al’s, down by the railroad tracks – I’ll never forget it. And they used to bring all the “name” artists in there. I was hired to be the local entertainment downstairs – a trio. And all the “name” people would play upstairs. I remember I’d hurry up and finish my set – cut it short! So I could go upstairs and listen, of course! And I met everybody there including (Hammond B-3 player) Jimmy Smith.

CB: Okay…

BL: So being able to stand there and watch him manipulate that organ like that. I was like “Yeah…yeeeeeah! I like that!”

CB: Did you introduce yourself to him?

BL: Yes, we met. And at the time he was like a black belt in karate! So when he shook my hand he almost broke my little fingers! (laughing) He was so strong – macho man! But wow, could he play that organ. So the seed was planted then and it was some time not too long after that that I started seeing the actual instrument in a couple of the local clubs. So I pretty much learned on the job.

At one of the early gigs I had – I still wasn’t even 21 yet I was too young to be there but everyone kind of looked the other way.

CB: Including your family? Your mom was cool with this?

BL: They weren’t all the way aboard with it. But they could see that it was something I was serious about and somehow I convinced them I wasn’t gonna fall into all the traps, you know. The drugs, the liquor…so they kind of rode with it. Plus I’d gotten out on my own at age 18 or 19 – I had my own apartment and everything so I was away from the family house by that time.

But one of my early gigs was at a strip joint on Hennepin Avenue, which was full of strip joints. And I remember…

CB (laughing) Playing organ?

BL: Playing organ!

CB: Of course! What else?

BL: Yeah, what else? It was a trio with saxophone, organ and drums and we were backing up the girls. And I remember there was another club catty corner off of Hennepin Avenue there, and Prince’s dad was playing at that particular club.

CB: Wow!

BL: Prince Nelson Rogers Senior was also a pianist. So Prince came by his stuff very naturally there. So those were really wild and crazy days because in addition to learning – still learning, because you never stop learning to play this music. But I was (also) learning about life and seeing a whole other level of night people, prostitutes, gambling, and after hours joints…Just being able to observe all of that without being sucked into it was probably my biggest blessing…my ability to not fall into that.

CB: There’s something about being a musician in that kind of environment where…people kind of leave you alone. That’s the musician, they’re a player, don’t mess with them.

BL: Yeah.

CB: You can kind of disengage yourself because you’re there functioning –

BL: There’s a certain element of that but there’s also the other element of people saying: “Hey, you wanna get high?” Always trying to turn you on…I guess trying to feed that myth that getting high will make you play better! You can do wilder things!

CB: It’s a myth that still hasn’t gone away, I’m still baffled by it. But it’s very prevalent, even today.

BL: Well, the one way I think guys can cure themselves of that misconception is…just tape yourself! And then when you’re straight, when you’re not high, listen to it back! And tell me if you sound better.

CB: (laughing) “I sound really bad! I’m not in time, I’m out of tune…”

BL: You see what I’m saying? Your time goes because when you’re really playing…there’s an album I carry in my car, I’ve been listening to it for the last several days. It’s Miles Davis Live in Concert at Carnegie Hall with the old rhythm section of Tony, Herbie, Ron, and George Coleman. The thing that strikes me the most is the crispness and the togetherness of that band and the oneness of the way everyone just…is polarized by the meter and the time that Tony Williams at age 17 was keeping. And of course Ron Carter is totally on top of the beat with his bass. And it further reinforces for me that there’s no way you can be that on top of stuff when you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. I don’t know if those guys were high or not. But they sounded like they were just playing with this natural energy. And for me, I can’t even have a swallow of a glass of wine before I play, because somehow the liquor gets into your muscles. The whole idea is that when you’re playing jazz you are in the moment, and your ideas are coming so fast that you have to have a brain to muscle to fingertip instant reaction. And if that’s slowed down a few milliseconds by some substance, you’re not gonna be on top of the time. You’re just not.

Well, for me! But there are guys who could do it. There are guys who could do it, but…

CB: Well, we know that but I believe you’re talking about a minority of musicians. That stuff will catch up to you that’s what I would say –

BL: Yeah.

CB: At my age, that’s what I’ve seen. What a guy or girl could handle in their 20’s…

BL: In their 20’s!

CB: 40, 50? It will catch up to you physically - it will take you down. If you want to have some longevity…

BL: Oh, yeah! Jazz musicians don’t have that option of like pop and R&B people of becoming a star overnight and making an enormous amount of money in four or five years with two or three albums. We HAVE to play for the long haul! We gotta pace ourselves. I feel that probably the greatest blessing in my life is to be here in my sixth decade with all the history and all the people I’ve rubbed shoulders with and still be a happening, viable player! And in good health – I’m kind of a work out nut. I like to go to the gym; I like to ride my bicycle. And that has served me well over the years and allowed me to still wake up everyday feeling vibrant and healthy. It’s such a blessing.

And it’s important to keep your body together in order to play your music properly. Because when people come out to see you live, they wanna feel your energy. They want to see and feel your energy. Otherwise they’d just sit at home with your CD and just kind of chill with that. But when they come out to see you, you gotta be delivering.

The other thing that’s kept me young or youthfully spirited is operating with younger guys like (saxophonist) Everette Harp. So I feel like I’m a role model and a co-conspirator at the same time with these younger guys and it’s been a wonderful ride. I really enjoy it.

L.A.

CB: After this period in Minneapolis, you started touring nationally. And it sounds like – I remember I wrote down “How did you get from Oscar Peterson to Jimi Hendrix?” I’m curious about that. When you hit the road and were playing something that isn’t jazz, music that drew on R&B, rock and roll and was groove centric – how did you make that leap? Did an opportunity open up or was it more of an organic thing?

BL: Well it’s a combination of things. Any musician there’s a need to be employed. Take care of your family and so forth. So when I moved to L.A. from Minneapolis back in the middle 70’s, it was a leap of faith for me. I didn’t have a gig or a tour or anything lined up. I just knew I had pretty much done all that I could do in Minneapolis…for me there was nothing else I could do in Minneapolis. So I decided I could go to New York, or I could go to L.A. Well, L.A. won out because I was tired of cold weather. But knew there was a happening music scene on both of the coasts and I would eventually see both of them. Then the question became okay to I bring my family? Or do I go out there and get started and stable and then send of them? I talked it over with my wife at the time and we decided it would be best if we all go together. And if we struggle, we’ll struggle together.

It just so happened that a friend of mine from Minneapolis, a guy named Bill Lordan who was playing drums with Sly and the Family Stone at the time. And he had been telling Sly about me, raving about this keyboard player in Minneapolis –

CB: That’s a good friend!

BL: A real good friend! So by the time I got out there and called him he said: “Man, your timing is great. We’re actually getting ready to go on a tour with Sly. You need to get down here and play for him so he can hear you.” So, they set it up. I had gotten some little apartment in Hollywood with my little Wurlitzer piano to write and practice on…so I went down to the studio and met Sly. I think I played the organ for him? Maybe about three or four minutes, maybe some licks or some blues or something. And he said to me: “Can you be ready to go on the road next week?” I said: “What?”

It’s funny cos’ we’d just gotten to L.A. and it was like the Beverly Hillbillies. I had driven across the country through the Bonneville salt-flats you know, in a straight line - white on either side. 120 miles an hour. I get into Hollywood and I’m going 15 miles per hour and BOOM I have a blowout.

CB: Oh, my God.

BL: So now I’m thinking maybe God intended for me to make this trip successfully because that blow out at 120 would have probably killed me and my whole family.

CB: Isn’t that strange? I’m sorry! I thought it was a little less serious than -

BL: No, it was a tire that – removed! We dodged a bullet on that one. I guess the point of the whole story is that by that time I had long ceased being this jazz purist. Then, to put an exclamation on it, your first gig when you get to L.A. will be with the funkmeister!

CB: Seriously!

BL: That was interesting. I have this really diverse array of people I’ve been privileged to play and interact with and they range from Pharoah Sanders to Bette Midler to Sly Stone, Jazz Crusaders…I even played a gig once at Catalina’s with Red Rodney who was like a direct link to Charlie Parker!

CB: Sure, sure…

BL: Of course when we weren’t playing I had a thousand questions about the bebop era and I think I probably wore him out! “What was is like playing with Bird? Do you think would have been better if he hadn’t gotten into drugs?” He might have thought I was a reporter!

CB: So you hit the road with Sly Stone. Was there something in that music that you hadn’t experienced before that you had to learn while you were on the road? Or did you find you just slipped into it? Was there something in his music that hit you like: “Wow, I’ve never done that before!”

BL: I would say no. Because when he broke on the scene so tough back in the 60’s, the 70’s whenever he came out…I was an avid fan so I was listening! All the way up until the time I got with him I was a fan. And so it was the most natural thing in the world to just plug my organ thing into what he was doing. And that’s the other really nice thing that I can be grateful for. Most of the people I ended up playing for or spending musical time with were people whose music I enjoyed previously before I even met them. Like Al Jarreau, Anita Baker… and of course Pharoah Sanders.

CB: I didn’t know you played with Pharoah Sanders. How’d that come about?

BL: I met him through (producer) Norman Connors. Norman Connors had produced, I think, one of his recent albums. And so…they were gonna collaborate on this thing in Montreaux, Switzerland for the Montreaux Festival. So Norman called me and asked if I wanted to come along. And I said: “Of course!” Wait let me think for a second...yes! (laughing) That was a very exciting adventure too…at the time Norman produced him, Pharoah was trying to come inside and do something a little more commercially acceptable. But his live performances still took him outside and had the avant-garde thing. So I got to do that and play “free” – another milestone.

The Journey

BL: People always ask me: “What was your biggest thrill in music?” I don’t know if that’s one of your questions?

CB: No. (laughing) Cos’ it all sounds pretty exciting to me! But what IS your biggest thrill?

BL: You know what really sticks out for me? I wrote a song on my album called The Journey. The Journey was something that I worked on – my first wife Delores passed away in ’89. She died of Lupus. Which they still don’t have a handle on. But I had an album due for Atlantic around that time. They gave me permission to just take off and get my head together. (pause) So I did a lot of thinking, I went over to Hawaii and I hung out there for awhile…came back and I had all this stuff, all these emotions and somehow I knew that my job was to channel them into a project.

So…Mandela had just been freed from prison around that time (1990). So I wrote a tribute to him called “Viva Mandela.” And I got a couple of African musicians and songwriters to work with me on it, actually do the lyrics in Swahili as well as English. I was living in L.A. at the time, and Mandela was coming to L.A. to speak at the coliseum. And the day before that there was a banquet in his honor – I think it was out at UCLA somewhere. And I was invited to play my song for him through Quincy Jones’ office.

CB: Wow.

BL: So to perform that song, and to look out into the audience and see him sitting there beaming! I always mention that as one of the highlights of my musical life.

CB: That’s wonderful. That song is on The Journey? (Editor’s note: The Journey reached #1 on the Billboard jazz chart in 1990.)

BL: Yes.

CB: That’s wonderful. What a serendipitous thing. What’s so beautiful about it is when we create something without the foresight of the profundity of what it’s going to be. It’s almost like you’re channeling something, something happens naturally and then you have this song ready to go when this incredible event happens. And then you end up playing for the man!

BL:Yeah, it’s like unconscious pre-cognisense. Or something like that!

CB: Musicians can tap into that. I think artists go through periods where they are tapped into something much larger than themselves.

BL: Yeah, I feel that a lot. And I feel that we operate with this sixth sense that, you know, normal people don’t really have. Whatever gifts we are given…along with that goes a stewardship. Which means that you’re obligated to nurture it, to share it, to teach it to others, to give back…otherwise I would just sit here in my living room and groove myself!

CB: I know what you mean…that’s such a beautiful way to look at it. You’re taking care of your creative self but you’re passing it along…

BL: Yes!

CB: …you realize that it’s going outside of yourself. When you sit with a young person, you’re role modeling. That young person will take some memories away from your interaction that – you don’t KNOW what they’re gonna take away from that! (laughing)

BL:You don’t know what heights your input can trigger this young person to until it happens. But that’s – it become it’s own reward. It’s not even about getting paid for it; it’s about “Wow. I made a contribution to this life.”

Jazz Piano’s History

CB: With your piano students, when you’re teaching jazz, is the history of jazz something that has to go into the lesson? There’s technique, but then do you say, okay, let’s talk about Jelly Roll Morton, let’s talk about Miles Davis?

BL: Definitely…A knowledge of a history of the music means a whole lot of people laid the groundwork for this music. And that in turn became a springboard for current people to hopefully take it to some other level.

So, I can tie this in with my personal odyssey, but herein lies the problem with people – and I’m talking about some writers – who position themselves as jazz purists. Which is to me a straightjacket. Because in their minds, any time you incorporate something that’s not traditional then your stepping outside of what jazz is. Well…I have a lot of problems with that. I have BIG problems with that.

The fact that I made that evolution myself, let’s me know that it can be done. Because when you study the history of jazz, the main element that has moved jazz stylistically from era to era, is the evolution of the interior rhythm section. So that means, from the time that say King Oliver was playing New Orleans style, and the bass drum was like (sings steady swinging quarter notes emphasizing the two and four) up to big band swing era where it was still pretty much like that…then all of the suddenly it took off from that. So now the bass drum is not necessarily four on the floor, it was doing different things, rhythmic things. Whereas the cymbal (sings steady swinging eighth notes) it went from that ride to more adventurous rides. You’d hear Elvin (Jones) and Tony (Williams) turning it around. So you hear all of these changes going on through the eras…in bebop everyone was seeing how fast they could play and of course the bass player and the drummer had to keep up with all of that speed. And then, you get up to the fusion era where other elements were coming in, R&B, funky stuff…

CB: Latin American rhythms…

BL: Latin American rhythms, Brazilian! The Brazilian artists were starting to make an impact too. So…that’s the problem I have with these so-called “purists” because they don’t allow for the fact that this music is big enough and can absorb these things. The main element is what? Being in the moment, being able to improvise in the moment over WHATEVER kind of bed, you know? You still have people who play over the top of that and bring some kind of harmonic sense to it regardless of what the rhythm is. And not to mention the fact that young people got more attracted to it when it got funkier.

CB: Yeah!

BL: So when Ramsey Lewis came out with “The In-Crowd” and Les McCann and those guys came out with the funky, church-y jazz that they did….a lot of people tuned in that weren’t tuned in before. Even though they were excoriated by the critics for daring to stray from this traditional path. What’s traditional?

CB: Well that’s exactly it. I don’t know of any jazz musician who didn’t come up playing a lot of different kinds of music. I’m talking about people I know personally but also historical figures…

BL: Mm hmm.

CB: …in this music. They played classical, they played strip joints, they played the whorehouse –

BL: Everything!

CB: You know? In popular music Motown had plenty of jazz musicians in their roster. There were plenty of pioneers of early rock and roll who could swing, plenty of country players who could play these rhythms…so this purism…it just, it never existed in the first place! (laughing) It’s something that’s been invented NOW to reign things in? Maybe to give young people some kind of context or the discipline of making music. I don’t know. But I think when you start talking in those terms you just end up ignoring a lot of great music….

BL: Right. And I know from playing this music all my life that the beauty of it is that it’s not a museum piece. It’s always open to reinterpretation and reinvention. I think it insures the longevity of the music when each generation can put their stamp on it or their own twist on it. It’s not a museum piece. Otherwise we’d all still be playing like King Oliver.

Dizzy Gillespie, one of the greatest bebop players every, he suddenly took a left turn and said: “I wanna play Latin music!”

CB: “Let’s play Cuban music!”

BL: Cuban music!

CB: And what a strange combination that was!

BL: Yeah, and what did Dizzy prove? That he can play bebop over anything. Over any rhythm, and that’s what I’m talking about man. Being able to blend any kind of world music, whatever and still – the focus is not on what the interior format is. It’s the fact that (in this music) there are sounds being created in the moment over whatever the format is. And that’s what I try to teach these kids.

Now you have to respect what came before. You can’t just throw it out with the bathwater. You have to listen to it and you have to respect what went into that creation and how important that was to get it to the next level. So if you’re a piano player and you don’t listen to Jelly Roll Morton, or Art Tatum, or Earl Fatha Hines, or Fats Waller…how can you call yourself a jazz piano player?

The piano players that played in the whorehouses and even the ones that played in the silent movie theaters to become the “live soundtrack” – you have to become the whole band if you’re just a piano player by yourself. That’s why stride piano became such a phenomenon. Because these guys were working alone and had to become the rhythm section and the filigree on top. Their gig depended on that!

CB: When I heard you with Everette Harp one of the many things that knocked me out about that gig was hearing as you guys were playing a tune…you almost went through this catalogue of piano styles and techniques within the context of a single song…it was like you were seeing these pages turning in musical history. And you were just having a ball up there…

BL: Oh, yeah. It’s all fair game.

CB: And again, you’re talking about this in the moment thing and what comes out via that history and your voice – it’s very exciting, you know?

BL: Thank you…A lot of that again is just taking the time to get caught up on the history of all of that…

CB: A lot of time!

BL: Yeah! At some point you realize that no matter how many musical influences you have or have had you still have to work them through your own personal hard drive and arrive at your voice – with these influences attached. And then make musical statements. I try to tell young people: “You have to learn to play conversationally.” You’re having a dialogue with whoever you’re onstage with, as well as your audience. You’re a storyteller. Tell those stories in your music…

CB: You guys did that REALLY well…there was one point where out of something Everette suddenly started playing the opening melody of (Marvin Gaye’s) “What’s Going On?” And the timing of it – it was just perfect. It was just the right time to drop that tune. And everyone around me was like: “Ahh…” (laughter) Do we start with that tune, or do we start with that, and just vibing out the audience…there’s a real art to that.

BL:Yeah, just how you program your set has a lot to do with how people lock into it.

Keep in mind that the big knock on jazz for a long time was that once it got past the era when people danced to it…jazz was suddenly regulated to the clubs as “listening music.” And the big knock on jazz people is that they became so intellectual and so deep - that they lost the people. People want to be a part of what you’re doing. They don’t understand everything you’re doing, but you gotta make them feel something and feel like they can relate to it on some kind of level, you know? If not musically, intellectually at least from a soul level.

So that’s why…you can play as complex as you want but at some point in your presentation you better play with some heart too. The combination of that whole thing I think will affect the person in the audience in a very positive way.

Recording

CB: You’ve been in the recording industry and you’ve released a lot of music. But a lot of changes have happened in the music industry since the late 90’s with the advent of the Internet …

BL: And not all good ones! (laughing)

CB: …file sharing – well, exactly! Things have very much changed. I remember when I was in (music) school, a goal was to record an album! “If I could just record an album!” The flip side is that there are a lot of tools out there that allow us to record relatively inexpensively.

BL: The Protools are in the next room!

CB: Right. But then again, you have an album like The Genie where you have this huge ensemble…you mentioned Quincy Jones and albums like The Dude and Body Heat where you have these wonderful tapestries of musicians. But I don’t hear a lot of albums being made like that anymore. I think it might be budget, it might be a lot of things…but what is your take on the recording industry – the music industry - right now? Are there things that bother you? Do you see some stuff that’s positive?

BL: Well, I think we’re at a crossroads right now. There’s a lot of indecision as to where to take the music or what to do because this relationship with radio is pretty much dried up. Thank God we have the satellite radio and we have the Internet outlets. But it’s definitely not the same. It’s definitely affected us BMI and ASCAP writers. When we look at our statement it’s not the same statement without all that radio there. As a result the record companies of course have slid back a lot and now they’re making deals where they want to attach themselves to the artist’s ability to sell albums at their gigs. They want a percentage of what you sell at your gigs. And it’s just like they’re grabbing for a life raft or something.

They (record companies) are being edged out. Because I can go in the next room and record a whole album and put it on CD Baby and sell it! I mean that’s just how self-sufficient everything has gotten.

But at some point I would like to see the situation become solvent enough where we can start having big sessions again, where we bring in a horn section or a string section and that type of production – that Quincy Jones type of production…because that’s where classic music that will last forever is made. That’s not to say that we can’t do it with our home recording but you know it’s not the same thing!

CB: No, it’s not. Recording studios too have suffered as a result of this. They’ve gotten smaller…having a room! It’s harder and harder to find studios that can handle that.

BL: Oh, yeah. And I was very spoiled. The bulk of my recording career happened during the heyday of those kinds of studios like Ocean Way, Castle Oaks, Capitol Records Studio where Nat Cole and Sinatra and the Beatles and everybody recorded.

CB: And you can hear that on the recordings. You can tell I grew up on vinyl.

BL: There’s a sound and an ambience. And you don’t get that in this digital age. If you grew up in the digital age, you can’t miss what you never heard. But see, having experienced that I know what the difference is. So I was very spoiled studio-wise. And now the best thing we can do is lay the foundation of our music at home and then hopefully get favors from friends, send it to this horn player or this guitar player…and we kind of work digitally like that. But there is no substitute for going in the studio with a section – or even the whole Burt Bacharach Dionne Warwick thing where you got the singer and the orchestra and it all goes to tape at the same time!

CB: (laughing) Yeah!

BL: Wow! That’s fantastic to me!

CB: No autotune!

BL: Exactly! The singer has to be on his or her game just as much as the musicians and you may do two or three takes and boom – either you got it or you don’t. Or the old Phil Spector stuff, same thing. So I hate to look at that as something that has gone and will never come back. The optimist in me thinks we’re gonna get to a point where we can get that back, you know? There’s still analog equipment out there! Waiting to be used!

CB: Yeah! And there are plenty of musicians who came up in the digital age who hear those (analog) records and say: “I wanna do this to tape.” Or “No, we need a tube pre, something with some warmth.” That body of music that was recorded during
this period that you’re talking about…young musicians eat that stuff up, you know?

BL: Yeah.

CB: And they’re going to ask: “How do you make a record like this?” If they’re inspired, it’s like how do we make this happen. So I think you may be right that some of this stuff is still shaking itself out.

BL: They’re curious. Some of them are sampling!

CB: Well, that’s one way of passing along this music. YouTube has the first track of The Genie on it. So last night I posted it on Facebook.

BL: The Genie?

CB: It’s on YouTube. I posted it on Facebook and asked, “Has anyone heard this record?” One guy, a great jazz saxophone player, commented, “I never heard this record, thank you for posting it, it reminds me of Ramsey Lewis, Tom Scott…” There’s good and bad about that I mean, every play on Facebook you don’t get…

BL: Yeah, I don’t get any benefit.

CB: No, they haven’t figured that out yet. But people get to hear your music.

BL: I’m gonna play you something recorded at Ocean Way…(Bobby cues up a track from his CD Ivory Dreams that begins with him at the piano). Analog music! Listen to that ambience!

CB: Sounds great…

(Interview ends listening to two tracks from Bobby Lyle’s CD Ivory Dreams)

Interview with Misha Penton

2011-04-10T17:31:00.001-07:00

Opera Singer Misha Penton as Klytemnestra (photo by Kerry Beyer)

Houston based opera singer Misha Penton opens her unique performance space Divergence Vocal Theater this Friday, April 15th. Located at Spring Street Studios, home to many of Houston’s finest visual and mixed media artists. Divergence Vocal Theater will bring together Ms. Penton’s team of singers, musicians, composers, dancers, and lighting and costume designers to present new chamber opera repertoire. Klytemnestra, a collaborative opera dance theater work featuring music by composer Dominick DiOrio, sung text by Misha Penton, spoken text by John Harvey, and choreography by Meg Brooker, is receiving a great deal of positive press in advance of its premier April 15th and 16th at Divergence Vocal Theater.

Ms. Penton’s mission is to subvert the social mores and business paradigms preventing singers from creating their own works. In the wake of reality after graduate school, more and more classical instrumentalists are creating their own business and career models, going further and further out into what is, for many musicians, uncharted territory. Violinist Todd Reynolds, the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, and Houston based pianists Jade Simmons and Kris Becker are a few examples of musicians who are each developing a sustainable means for commissioning, performing, and deriving an income from playing contemporary classical music. Their approaches are as varied as their personalities, and there is much to discuss when it comes to what is actually working for one musician as opposed to another. But in the near future, these intrepid instrumentalists are going to find that more and more singers, including Misha Penton, are "out there" with them.

Misha and I met shortly after my relocating to Houston and I quickly recognized a kindred spirit. This interview took place via email in advance of the premier of Kyltemnestra.

Chris Becker: In a recent interview you said: "One of the things I want to do…is restructure the way people think about who does opera, how it’s done, who makes it, and who performs it…What I do with Divergence is…create my own works and I sing in them. It’s very much something actors and dancers do, but singers are not encouraged to create their own products." Do you think this model that you’re describing is the future of classically trained musicians?

Misha Penton: Actually, I do - but it's already happening. And it really isn't anything new...instrumentalists in particular have been savvy to this model for a long time - the success of independent ensembles like Eighth Blackbird comes to mind immediately. Some conservatories are starting to take entrepreneurship seriously. Opera America has a great feature about entrepreneurship in its spring magazine and about singer-led initiatives, and entrepreneurship is the theme for the conference this year as well. Obviously rock and jazz musicians work this way and always have. I'm seeing more classically trained singers take on their own projects, but it doesn't seem to be as encouraged by the vocal teaching tradition as it could be...but again, that is all changing. The more opportunities we, as artists create, the better we'll be able to define success for ourselves. As a singer, I'm only partly an interpretive artist. I'm a theater artist and writer too, so I've always done creative work. I think of myself as an independent artist who happens to create work collaboratively.

CB: Who are some of your peers among singers that are doing something similarly subversive?

MP There are more and more small opera companies popping up that singers are joining forces to create - that's absolutely fantastic. And classically trained singers are branching out into all sorts of music projects. I meet singers all the time who say, "Hey I have this idea for a project" - I just love that. Go do it!

In general, I question the traditional company and nonprofit structure - so I'm not sure that's the best survival tactic nor the best creative model. There are so many options for funding work now without forming a nonprofit (fiscal sponsorship, crowdfunding, etc). The last thing I want on my back is an "organization". I work project-to-project and I'm aspiring to a Robert Fripp-ian model - a "small mobile intelligent unit".

Misha Penton (photo by Kerry Beyer)

CB: You now have a dedicated space for your work as Divergence Vocal Theater. Before this, where and how did you produce your work?

MP: In the past, I primarily used alternative dance spaces - and the acoustics are dreadful in those spaces, so it makes it very difficult to hear anything. I used a church for one piece - because I thought of the work there as artistically site specific, I didn't feel that I could continue to create work in churches (which are not as easy to access as one might think!). I have very strong ideas about what types of venues are conducive to my vision, and although I love alternative spaces, they need to be acoustically and physically friendly to the art form. I don't want to spend my time and energy competing over rehearsal space, performance dates, and juggling the schedules of artists. A very serendipitous opportunity arose for me to create an intimate chamber music and multi-performing arts space in a new art studio building in Houston - Spring Street Studios - so that's what I've done. I have to brag of its beautiful reclaimed wood floors, 20-foot ceilings - and we just treated it acoustically and it sounds amazing. I don't know of any place else like it. This is all very new to me and I think of it as a grand experiment. Who knows what the future holds?

CB: You’ve worked with two excellent Houston composers. Elliot Cole (now studying at Princeton) and Dominick DiOrio. How did you meet these two? And what drew you to their writing for the voice?

MP: Through the grapevine, really. I love new music and I love working with composers. I started up conversations with both Elliot and Dominick about collaborating and that led to the creation of two new opera theater works, both settings of my words (Selkie with Elliot and Klytemnestra with Dominick). For me, this is exactly the type of work I want to do. I'm completely in my element collaborating to create new works and bringing them to life.

Dominick is a singer also, so he has a wonderful grasp of the voice as an instrument - and I sang for him a good deal before he started writing - so he became very familiar with my voice, with my specific instrument. Dominick's music has a dramatic complexity and depth that really resonates with me. Klytemnestra's music has an interwoven quality - web-like, veiled, cyclical, a masterful interplay between the parts. The music is deeply psychological and reflective of a Greek heroine.

Elliot writes in a broad range of styles and he has this particularly delightful avant-chamber-pop thing going on in a lot of his writing - I just really love that about his music - it's intense, intelligent, and accessible. For Selkie, I think Elliot wrote specific to what my text evoked for him as a composer - so that was really special, I think. The style of the composition was influenced by the text. Selkie has this big, lush, swirling sea-ness about it that makes me weak in the knees. I admit, I nurture collaborative relationships with amazing people - Elliot and Dominick are fun to work with, it's not more complicated than that.

CB: Klytemnestra will include sung text that you’ve created as opposed to spoken text created by playwright director John Harvey. What is the difference between the two texts? Was either of the texts inspired by the other? How do they interrelate in the opera?

MP: About a year ago, John Harvey asked me to portray Klytemnestra in his new translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon - and I thought, "Oh, God - I have to memorize lines!" It's funny, but in response to that, I thought, "Well, if I have to deal with memorizing lines, then I want to create an opera companion piece". Like that's easier! And so, during the process, John asked me to write from Klytemnestra's point of view... and my writing became the libretto for the opera. Actress, Miranda Herbert, is also performing in the opera as another facet of Klytemnestra. Her lines are John's words, so the sung words are mine and the spoken words are his. Meg Brooker, a brilliant dancer, is the third aspect. The work is set for viola, piano, soprano, actress, and dancer. I think of the piece as an original collaborative work in its totality: the way a choreographer might think of their work. The theatrical vision for the piece is neither separate nor superimposed over the music, it's part of it. Agamemnon and Klytemnestra run on consecutive weekends in April as a Dionysia Festival.

CB: How does choreography and dance come into play into this performance? Is your movement onstage choreographed to some degree?

MP: I work very compositionally in a visual sense and every piece I've done has had a dance element. I continue to move closer, with each successive piece, to the entire work having an overall physical stylized feel. Visually, I keep working with the idea that the piece in its staging shifts from painting to painting. That's how it feels to me. Klytemnestra has a complete movement score. Meg is a highly skilled dancer and Miranda and I both have dance and physical theater backgrounds, so the three of us created a collaborative movement world. Ultimately, it is up to me to shape the work and to keep true to my concept for the piece, so I sift through video and assess what we do in rehearsal... but it is all highly collaborative. I've worked with Meg and Miranda several times before - that's another key to making work with a strong theatrical identity - and they both very much understand my aesthetic. It’s kind of like having two more versions of me with different skill sets, but that feed a common vision. And that's a very, very big deal.

Klytemnestra premiers April 15 & 16, 2011, 8pm, at Divergence Music & Arts at Spring Street Studios, 1824 Spring St, Houston, TX 77007. To purchase tickets, visit the Divergence Vocal Theater website.

Rachel Cohen and Chris Becker: Dance and Music in Conversation

2011-03-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

If The Shoe Fits is an evening length dance theater work I scored for choreographer director Rachel Cohen back in in 2005. On March 19th, 2011, If The Shoe Fits was performed at The Emeline Theatre in Mamaroneck, New York for one matinee performance. Thanks to Meet the Composer's Met Life Creative Connections Program, Racoco Productions was able to to bring me to New York to mix the music live for the performance and participate in a workshop about composing for dance.

What follows is a conversation Rachel and I had via Skype about If The Shoe Fits just over a week after the March 19th performance. Hope you enjoy it.

Chris Becker: If The Shoe Fits like all of your work has some fantastic images in it – I’m thinking of the two evil step sisters with their hair braided together or the super long shoelaces that the performers have to grip and try and hang on to as they attempt to walk and dance. Do your pieces – or sections of the pieces – begin with images like this? Is that where some of this starts?

Rachel Cohen: Sometimes. I would say that usually at least some inspiration I guess for any particular piece is going to be an image that I have that I want to figure out how to realize. Other times it grows out of the process. With the step sisters, that was an idea that I had that I wanted to see what would happen…and in my mind it looked cool and I wanted to make it work and the shoelaces may have come later on? I’m trying to remember what the idea was for if we just were playing around in rehearsal and the idea came up well what if the shoelaces were super long or was it something I had pictured in my mind first. That one I can’t remember. But the sisters that was definitely in my mind for awhile, actually. There’s a piece I did at Mary Anthony’s where I tried it for the first time and it was completely unsuccessful!

(Scene from If The Shoe Fits 2005 production)

CB: The first step might be after you get that image might be just to see if it can be done on stage just get it out of your head…and then if (realizing the image) is possible then movement and more theater comes next?

RC: That’s ideal. I think sometimes what happens is we go into rehearsal with the idea of the image and rehearse what it would be like if that were to be possible? And then we end up getting into the theater trying to realize what we’ve been trying to make in rehearsal which we sometimes find out is actually not possible. So sometimes the imagination doesn’t meet up with reality. Ideally we would go in start right away…like with the sisters we didn’t have how the hair was going to work until quite a ways into the (rehearsal) process. So we just put tights on their heads and were playing around with that…

CB: Yeah, I remember that!

RC: So then the final result was actually different from what I had imagined. But it worked and it looked good.

CB: The individual props that you use – how to they affect or rather shape the choreography as well as the performance of that choreography? I’m thinking of flour, the dough, and maybe even going back to those shoelaces again…

RC: So how do those (props) shape the movement?

CB: Yeah. How does having a prop like that shape any kind of movement you create and how does it shape the performance of that movement?

RC: What I like about props is they force you to negotiate movement and space in new and unpredictable ways. So I’ll have an image for some kind of…take the shoelaces or the hair or this idea of using dough and then play around with what’s possible and (you) end up with some surprising results. Sometimes I’ll have some ideas ‘Okay, let’s try this movement or that movement...’ and then something will happen by accident or you’ll discover when you’re trying to do a particular movement that it’s impossible to do it the way that I had initially suggested but that something else more interesting happens!

CB: Mm hm.

RC: And that was particularly true with the clay (Thrown and Like Dirt) because the way of it and the torque of it and how it would affect the shapes of the body when we were moving around with it was sort of unpredictable. And that’s what I like in performance is that because of that unpredictability it keeps a freshness in the performance and all the performers have to be present and really partnering with the object or the prop or the costume in real time. Because if they try to just do it on automatic then something’s gonna happen that you don’t expect and you’ll fall on your face!

(A scene from Like Dirt; Rachel Cohen choreography; Music by Chris Becker in collaboration with Lewis 'Flip' Barnes, Helga Davis, and Lynn Wright)

CB: So you like it when you see a little bit of struggle – is it struggle or engagement with the prop?

RC: It’s some combination of both. I sometimes refer to it as a struggle but I guess it really is more engagement. I guess what interests me about it in particular is how it does illustrate human struggle with life or with the objects or the people in our lives? Because I’m interested in things from an emotional point of view. But ideally I guess it really is a partnering or an engagement with – I think that’s a good way of putting it. I like that.

With the dough and with the piñata (How Many Licks?) …the image comes out of an emotional feeling. Like the dough came out of the feeling of anxiety - like when your stomach is full of knots? The idea of kneading dough felt like that would somehow alleviate that anxiety. Or sort of illustrate that anxiety? That’s actually where that came from. Now when people watch it -I don’t think that’s what comes to mind first because of all the other stuff that happens in that section. But that was the initial motivation to do it, ‘Okay how do I illustrate that emotional feeling?’ The emotion brought a particular interesting – a bizarre image to mind. Same thing with the piñata heads. I don’t know if you get the feeling that you’re so frustrated you want to smash your head against the wall? But I was thinking ‘Okay, what would be a healthier way to do that? Sort of translating some kind of physicalising of an emotional experience into something more fantastic.

CB: I was also thinking baking and the smell of something baking is a comforting thing, something people refer to as ‘This makes me feel calm’ or at home…

RC: That’s true. I didn’t even think about that. Maybe that’s one place where all the domestic references come from. The vacuums, the baking, and all that kind of stuff that there is some kind of comfort there?

(Scene from How Many Licks?)

CB: This is the third time we’ve realized If The Shoe Fits. I think its important people understand how much time we spent on this piece before we did it…that we spent not just a month and threw it together but that there was this long process.

RC: How long was it? Do you remember? I’m trying to remember when we started, was it six months?

CB: I think it was maybe eight…I could probably figure this out.

RC: We could check our emails!

CB: What struck me about hearing the music again was how dense it is. At least that’s how it sounded to me. There’s a lot of superimposition of sound effects…there might be one steady rhythm and then something completely arrhythmic on top of that and then something else on top of that. Even musical styles are kind of piled on top of each other. I think my own music since we worked on If The Shoe Fits uses a lot more space and silence…a lot of that came out of improvising on later pieces with live musicians and working with people like Flip (trumpeter Lewis ‘Flip’ Barnes) and Helga (vocalist Helga Davis) where I learned or rather just became more interested in opening things up and leaving even more space and silence in the music. I’m saying one is good and one is bad. It’s just something I’ve noticed in my own work.

But I wondered as a dancer director choreographer in your opinion what are qualities in a piece of music that keep it from overwhelming the movement onstage. What is it in music that prevents people from ‘seeing’ the movement? Is that something you can quantify?

RC: It’s interesting to think about. I know these were conversations we’ve had a lot in various collaborations that we’ve done…I think part of what happens if you’re watching a performance and your overwhelmed by the music there are couple of possibilities. One is that the movement itself just isn’t very strong.

CB: Mm hm.

RC: Or isn’t strong enough to compliment the music. I assume you can take any music…I mean, some people have done some pretty successful Rite Of Spring, right? And that’s a pretty intense piece of music.

CB: And all kinds of choreography to that too, there isn’t ‘This is the only way you dance to The Rite Of Spring, right? Pina Bausch’s ‘Rite’ is very different I’m sure than the original choreography…

RC: It’d be great to do a festival! All The Rite Of Springs!

CB: I think that’d be great. I think that’d be a revelation for a lot of composers, to see different dancers dancing to the same piece of music. Or, you know, I single dance presented three or four times with three or four different pieces of music. That’d be even crazier.

RC: That’s something that I’ve always wanted to do, actually. Both of those things. Because I think you also see different things about the music if you have different choreographers working with the same piece. Sometimes I can’t decide…sometimes there’s more than one piece of music that works with something I’m working on. But they (each) bring out something a little different…we had a little bit of that with If The Shoe Fits. For the most part, (each track) seemed to fall into place…I think there was only once or twice where it wasn’t what you initially written it for?

But going back to your question. I know that personally it can be difficult working with something with a really regular beat just because it brings you into a particular…it can be really easy to be kind of mesmerized by that beat. On the other hand most music has a beat of some kind, so I’m trying to figure out a more…

CB: I think there are creative approaches to rhythm where you feel the pulse but the music – the actual sounds you’re hearing, may be breaking up that pulse in so many ways that you’re not…feeling like someone is hitting you over the head with a sledgehammer. A lot of African music is like that, where there’s a pulse there, and it’s very accurate and it grooves, but there isn’t a metronomic feel to it because the music is breathing so much and constantly being expounded upon.

I’m thinking of some of the Colombian or Latin music you’ve used, you’ve used a lot of that in some other pieces that we haven’t collaborated on. Like Suite.

RC: We used Colombian music on the dress piece, Looks Good On Paper. But yeah, that’s a good way of putting it, so there’s ‘room to breathe’ in there. It’s a specific choice to select music that’s atmospheric and makes a wall of sound and it’s possible to work with that. But it feels like a specific choice to me in a way whereas if the music has room to breathe…it’s like a conversation with somebody. If the other person is just talking non-stop, they might be saying something interesting, but you can’t participate! It’s the same with music and dance. Although I guess the same thing would happen if you took a very delicate piece of music and had a bunch of people come in and do really intense non-stop movement I think it would overwhelm the music and tire out the viewer.

CB: There’s no set formula, you know? I guess that’s it. Again, with If The Shoe Fits I’m remembering now that more than a few of the pieces of music in the early stages were inspired by an image you had and maybe a couple instructions as to musically what you’re hearing. Something particular might be the shoe salesmen. Just the image of those guys, and if I remember right you said something like ‘I’m thinking something Russian or a part of Europe that evoked for me a very rural, accordion driven folk music…”

RC: Right.

CB: Maybe Hungarian? Russian? I’m not sure. But that was enough to get the ball rolling. And bringing the music in without seeing the movement…there was a lot of back and forth between the two of us. But those images were really helpful and really all I needed to start the dialogue. But again, when I heard the music this time…I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it…maybe because so many of your dancers were so familiar with the music they kept finding ways to have that conversation that you’re talking about. So they weren’t overwhelmed, like ‘I don’t know what to do because there’s so much sound happening!’ They just kept grabbing stuff…these strange musical moments…

RC: That was one of the nice things about revisiting it…if you put something aside and come back to it you hear it in a new way. I had forgotten just how many different styles and things you’d packed into that score. And it was all coherent. It was certainly a dense…the whole things was a pretty dense production. I know a couple people who were actually too overwhelmed by it. They felt like it was too much. And then other people who say each time they hear or see something new that they didn’t see before.

CB: You know you talked about how it was all cohesive. There are these musical tricks throughout that score designed to hold the whole thing together, musical motifs…It could be little intervals that I use over and over again, even though stylistically the tune may be a doo wop tune verse a slinky groove number for the ballroom scene. But it’s amazing what your ear can pick up on. It’s not obvious like ‘Oh, there’s the aria in the first act being sung backwards in the second act!’ It’s not like that. Also just sounds of kitchenware appear all throughout the score…

RC: That was great.

CB: …part of that is just to hold these pieces together. Like when you hear the sifter in three or four different pieces, I think the listener’s mind sort of pulls all these pieces together and says ‘Oh, these things are all coming from the same planet, the same broadcast…

Composer Chris Becker's Shoe Salesmen Music from If The Shoe Fits.

RC: That’s interesting. When you incorporate sounds like that, like the shoes or the sifters, or the pots and pans and knives and things…do you have sort of the composition and you know in your mind where you want to put those things? Or do those things inspire the composition that comes around it? Do you know what I mean?

CB: There’s one piece that comes to mind for If The Shoe Fits that begins with a doorbell. The shoe salesmen have arrived…and the first thing you hear are the heels of shoes being banged together, and then another pair, and another…and I don’t remember how many overdubs I did of myself with my and my wife’s shoe collection around me in front of a microphone. But I spent a morning doing that! Just banging shoes together…and I just layered those sounds without any idea of what it would actually sound like. I didn’t know! But I thought well, it might sound interesting! And they’re shoe salesmen! So that makes sense, right? So let’s do it! And I then shaped the tracks of shoes (in the computer)…it was really just playing with the material and in playing there’s a composition that comes out of that process. Then I’d bring it to you and we could see what worked what didn’t work. Sometimes would need some very specific timings and cues.

The sound effects like the pots and pans and knives were…a lot of that was there to bring out the rhythms? I might have a drum loop going and to make (the loop) more interesting, I would take a recording of myself playing a sifter and then cut that sound up so that it aligns with the drum beats. If that makes any sense.

RC: Mm hm.

CB: And so then what I’ve got is two loops, I have a drum loop and a sifter loop. I would build rhythms by doing lots and lots of editing. The compositional framework was already there, but I knew I needed to get some kitchen sounds in there. In the last number, the tap dancing number, I knew there needed to be some punctuations, so I recorded myself slamming the door of our oven and that became a rhythmic ‘hit.’ That’s what I mean. So that was very practical and it worked with the composition.

Let me keep going with this. How has your relationship with this music changed since 2005? Or has it changed? Speaking as a director and also as one of the primary performers?

RC: Let me put on the choreographer hat first. I remember very particularly with The Fairy Godmother, before we met, I was using a piece of music for that movement that I’d gotten really attached to. And we were trying to negotiate how to get something new and something that was yours but was also something that I could live with. I had to get that other original piece of music out of my mind. But now I don’t even think twice about it.

I can’t imagine any other piece of music being with any of this stuff.
As a performer…just the more that I listen to it and the more I perform to it the more things I hear. I still hear things that I didn’t hear before.

CB: Yeah, me too!

Chris Becker's The Fairy Godmother's Song from If The Shoe Fits.

RC: So that’s nice. Even though it’s comfortable and familiar it hasn’t gotten boring or stale. Because there’s always more to get at.

CB: That’s a great compliment. And I pick up on that with the other dancers. Adrian (Adrian Jevicki) for instance continues to find new things in this music. Sometimes in very obvious and striking ways, like he didn’t do THAT in 2007 or whatever…

Yeah, the Doo Wop he did something completely different with the rhythm that was using like an underlying rhythm of the music that I don’t remember him doing before. So I agree. It’s partly because he’s on his own. Kelly (Key Kocinski – one of the two “evil” step sisters) always has to negotiate first with the other dancer and second with the music. But with Adrian it was really obvious.

(Scene from If The Shoe Fits 2005 production; Adrian Jevicki performing)

CB: How does it feel to have done this now for a third time? Since we’ve done it, and it’s a week or so after the fact, what are your feelings now?

RC: At first I had mixed feelings about doing it again. In the past my experience has been I prefer the creation process to the recreation process. Teaching new dancers old movement I get really bored with sometimes. But what I found really interesting about this time is I got really into it and really enjoyed the process trying to revisit and remember what some of the things were. But also, I felt the first two times…the first time (2005) it sort of just came together and just started to jell but it still needed some work. There were some things I wasn’t satisfied with, or that didn’t like the timing of, or transitions I wasn’t sure about. So I was really happy to get an opportunity to go back and look at some of those things.

I had a rehearsal director (Pablo Francisco Ruvalcaba) looking and helping like ‘Why are you doing this?’ Pablo really forced me to explain some things that before I didn’t want to necessarily and I thnk part of me still doesn’t want to! But it was a useful exercise. This choice, why did we do that? And maybe this would be better, let’s try this…

CB: I never got the sense that he was gonna get upset if you couldn’t answer a question…

RC: No, no.

CB: But he just asked the question and if was helpful to answer then great, if it was a question that couldn’t be answered then that was okay too.

RC: Yes, exactly. Also teaching it to new dancers, they had questions. ‘What is this about? What am I supposed to be doing here? What does this movement mean?’ And I think the first time we did it (in 2005) the dancers were all involved in the process of work shopping the movement and the characters so they had some more understanding of that and of the journey. This time, I had to explain it to people who hadn’t been involved before.

So that I enjoyed having to think it through a little more carefully or with a little bit of a different perspective. I got to perform it more. The first time, I was so busy with all the other things…so I felt like I got to get more inside the piece.

After this latest performance, Rebecca (Rebecca Ketchum) said “Now we need to do it two more months!” We were just getting a grasp on this world. We had just started switching from being dancers to living the piece. So it’d be nice to do it more to be able to explore that. But well, you know…money, time, and theater stuff…

CB: Hello, funders!

RC: How was it for you to revisit? Was there music wished you had done differently? Were there things that you wanted to change? Or things that were a pleasant surprise? What was it like for you to come back to this piece?

CB: It was very emotional. Before I came to New York to do the rehearsals the week of the show, I wanted to listen and organize all the music and get it set up in Ableton Live so I’d be ready to cue it once I got there. And it was a very emotional experience to hear all of that music. And that kind of surprised me. Because it took me back to the time period where I was creating it, which was a very specific time period in my life. And the score is very personal in that it’s not just me. Lainie (my wife) sings on it. My friend Lynn Wright plays a bunch of guitar on it. My friend Daniel Kelly plays piano and the crazy organ stuff. Chris Michael who is no longer in the U.S. and who I haven’t talked to in years contributed all of this incredible Brazilian and Colombian percussion playing. And I was just kind of overwhelmed at how much time and expression was just poured into this score by very different musicians. Almost completely different musicians, people with very different backgrounds. And then myself in there. And the emotional power of the score surprised me.

(The score) is also very funny. I found myself laughing at several cues in the score maybe at the audacity of the music? The kind of punk rock aesthetic of the piece. Like the Shoe Salesmen music, like ‘Well, they’re shoe salesmen. Let’s bang a bunch of shoes together!’ It’s almost this knucklehead way of making music but it worked, you know?

And I wouldn’t change anything. Lainie and I listened to ‘The Fairy Godmother’s Song’ and she said something like “Well, I’d sing that differently now…” but we agreed immediately that we wouldn’t want to change the score.

RC: Right!

CB: We both said that. We listen to this music for what it is. And it’s beautiful.

When I bring it in, the movement and theater has changed, the performers have changed, so in a sense, the music is always changing for me. It’s in a fixed form, and I’m hitting cues…but really the music changes as a result of you all doing new things to it. It’s a very satisfying process, you know?

RC: I had the same experience kind of reliving the time we were creating all of this. Of friends and people who were involved…it was emotional. But I feel like the music itself is…I don’t know if because this is a fairy tale or if you approached it as a fairy tale the music has a certain amount of reminiscence? Because everything is a little bit familiar but…we have our own personal memories in there, but I think the music is geared that way to make you go back and think about your past. It’s sort of like a fairy tale in that it’s a story that each time you read it it’s a little bit different and becomes comfortable and familiar but sort of cherished in a way. You can keep going back to it and back to it and it doesn’t get stale.

CB: I was thinking in very concrete terms of music that people listen to in order to take themselves away from their daily life, the daily grind. And that’s maybe Cinderella’s story or the story of any character in a fairy tale who gets sick of where they’re at and they go into the woods. Because they’re hearing something, they’re dreaming of something that’s beyond their experience. And some of that music can be kind of corny. I was thinking of Les Baxter or Martin Denny, the so-called “cocktail” or lounge music of the 1950s and 60s that used “exotic” rhythms from “around the world.” And a record album would be called “Exotica,” you know? I have a Martin Denny record where the band members are all making monkey sounds and bird sounds while playing congas and piano. But I didn’t things to be kitschy or ironic. Maybe after an initial smile or whatever maybe then the music kind of gets inside you like the way blues or soul music does. I wanted there to be soul up in the music. And I’m not sure how I did that. I think part of it is staying away from sentimentality…If The Shoe Fits is about a group of people and the friendships and bonds that happen when everybody is going through a fantastic experience. Why make fun of that? There’s a lot of work in New York that’s very brash and snotty – I mean, it’s like ‘What’s the name of your new musical? It’s called F--- YOU this or F--- YOU that!’ Which is fine, I’m not against vulgar humor. But for If The Shoe Fits I wasn’t interested in being ‘cool’ or sardonic, you know? Quite the opposite.

RC: Yeah it’s definitely not a ‘cool’ show!

CB: But I want humor in there! You’ve brought out a lot of humor in my music, humor that was latent before I started working with you. I wasn’t really writing music that was funny or attached to stuff that made people laugh…

But you have a sensibility…(your CD Saints & Devils has a lot of humor on it even though it’s a very earnest and very serious piece there’s lightness…

CB: I think working with you specifically, with what you do, I know that is something that’s brought out more attention to and more humor in my music. I always loved laughing. But I’d never thought about creating music where people would laugh. And then everything that comes out of that, do you laugh and then start crying, do you feel something else?

The Fairy Godmother scene is a great example of that where Rebecca is holding the vacuum cleaner nozzle or a hand sweeper or whatever like it was a microphone and you hear Lainie’s (Lainie Diamond) voice and this performer is lip synching it and your brain is processing all of that. And your first reaction is just to laugh. But then that leads to something else. There’s something very wonderful about you getting on the vacuum cleaner with the Fairy Godmother and paddling offstage. There’s something very sweet about that. It’s not just a gag, you know what I mean? I think that’s a very powerful thing to think about. Maybe not while we’re creating work but afterwards. While we’re analyzing it! Like we are now! And ruining it for everyone! This is where you must laugh!

(Interview disintegrates into mutual laughter)

Thanks to Rachel Cohen and Meet the Composer.

If The Shoe Fits Redux: The Sonic Palette

2011-02-27T20:50:00.000-08:00

If The Shoe Fits is an evening length dance theater work I scored for choreographer director Rachel Cohen back in in 2005. On March 19th, 2011, If The Shoe Fits will be performed at The Emeline Theatre in Mamaroneck, New York for one matinee performance. Thanks to Meet the Composer's Met Life Creative Connections Program, Racoco Productions is able to to bring me to New York to mix the music live for the performance and participate in a workshop about composing for dance.

In the weeks leading up to the performance, I'll be blogging about the challenges of writing for dance, the nature of my and Rachel's collaborative process, and the progress of If The Shoe Fits redux as the Rachel and her dancers rehearse in New York City.

Opening Scene from If The Shoe Fits (photo by Robert Polkosnik)

My score for If The Shoe Fits consists of sixteen individual pieces of music organized as separate "clips" in Ableton Live and cued by me using a MIDI controller/mixer. Each piece of music accompanies a tableau in If The Shoe Fits which appear in succession like the pages of a storybook. In performance, I have a clear sight line to the stage and take cues from the dancers while they in turn take cues from the music. Basically, I'm DJing my own score, trying to match the flow of the show as it unfolds before the audience.

I recorded the score as the show took shape over the course of several weeks of rehearsals. I didn't write the score, then give it to the dancers. It was a slower, more collaborative process.

I like to imagine a score for dance as a geographical body containing only the sounds indigenous to its particular landscape. I use my imagination to envision such a world in the beginning stages of a project, and then see if I can find the appropriate sounds to populate it.

If The Shoe Fits' palette of sounds came to me as soon as choreographer Rachel Cohen and I began discussing her idea for a work inspired by fairy tales and their impact on the waking world of adulthood. Stories by the authors The Brothers Grimm provided vivid and iconic images for us, including dungeons, kitchenware, and of course shoes (the title If The Shoe Fits, references the story of Cinderella), each of which in turn inspired musical sounds. Some of those sounds can be heard in the music excerpted below which accompanies the show's opening tableau:

Opening Dungeon (excerpt)

As I continued to ponder fairy tales, I took inspiration from so-called "exotica" music of the 50's and 60's which conveys in sound a sometimes cartoon-like reimagining of the temptations and pleasures of far away lands. "Doo Wop" is another musical genre I thought might sit in a world of fairy tales and adults, as the soaring vocals in that music, born on rough city streets, testify that there's SOMETHING else out there beyond the grind of inner city life.

Perhaps the characters that populate the landscape of If The Shoe Fits are dreaming about lands "far far away" and my music could provide some subtext for this?

Right photo: Mickey Mouse Kachina, c. 1950 (Arizona, Hopi)

I made it a goal to create some musical cues that would at first sound satirical, but quickly take on a deeper emotional resonance. The Surrealists embraced awkward collisions of modern and indigenous culture (see the Hopi carved Mickey Mouse figure from The Menil's Surrealist collection), and some of my musical cues speak to that aesthetic. The "Beanstalk" music you hear in the rehearsal video below is an example of what I'm describing:

I want to point out that Rachel made suggestions for the music throughout the rehearsals, sometimes giving me just a word or two that would inspire a particular cue.

With a sonic palette set in my mind, the next step was to chose musicians who could help me realize the landscape I'd imagined. I work very collaboratively with musicians from the worlds of jazz, classical, and rock and roll, the only commonality being that each one has a truly distinctive voice on their respective instrument. The core ensemble heard in my score includes Daniel Kelly (keyboards), Chris Michael (Brazilian and Colombian percussion, drum kit), and Lynn Wright (electric and acoustic guitars, electric bass, vocals). Mezzo soprano Lainie Diamond sings The Fairy Godmother Song and Jose Ariel Ramos sings the second Doo Wop number. Both Lainie and Jose lend their voices to a break in the show's toe tapping closing number.

In addition, the score includes flutes played by Keith Bonner, the voice of Manon True, and yours truly on harmonica, kitchen pots and pans, toy keyboard, and men's and women's shoes.

In the next chapter, I'll talk about Rachel's unique form of movement and theater.

If The Shoe Fits Redux: Chapter One

2011-02-24T19:42:00.000-08:00

"Sifter Dance" from a 2005 performance of If The Shoe Fits
Once upon a time...

If The Shoe Fits is an evening length dance theater work I scored for choreographer director Rachel Cohen back in in 2005. This was our first major collaboration as choreographer and composer, and the final work - which ran for ten performances at the Walker Space in New York City - received a rave review from then New York Times dance critic John Rockwell who selected it as one of the best dance performances of 2005. In 2006 we presented If The Shoe Fits at the Winter Garden in New York's World Financial Center. On March 19th, 2011, If The Shoe Fits will be performed at The Emeline Theatre in Mamaroneck, New York for one matinee performance. Thanks to Meet the Composer's Met Life Creative Connections Program, Racoco Productions is able to to bring me to New York (I now reside in Houston, Texas) to mix the music live for the performance and participate in a workshop about composing for dance.

In the weeks leading up to the performance, I'll be blogging once a week about the challenges of writing for dance, the nature of my and Rachel's collaborative process, and the progress of If The Shoe Fits redux as the Rachel and her dancers rehearse in New York City.

Michelle Vargo in If The Shoe Fits 2005 (photo by Silke Hasse)
If The Shoe Fits is inspired in part by fairy tales, most obviously Cinderella, and how these stories shape us for better or for worse as we grow older. Over the course of the work, dark, nearly bizarre moments of theater sit alongside moments of surreal humor. At one point, a fairy Godmother arrives on a vacuum cleaner to sing to Cinderella using a mop as a microphone. The score consists of several prerecorded pieces of music, each relatively short in length- almost like pop songs, and varying in musical styles providing a humorous and surreal subtext to the dance and theater. In the coming weeks, I will provide more details about the composition, recording, and mastering process of the score and post excerpts of the music.

I thank you for reading and welcome your comments as the weeks go by and we all get ready for this revised performance of If The Shoe Fits.

If The Shoe Fits
Choreography by Rachel Cohen
Original Score by Chris Becker
Saturday, March 19th 2011, 3:00 pm
The Emeline Theatre, Mamaroneck, NY
Tickets $40; $20 students, children
Funded in part through Meet The Composer's MetLife Creative Connections Program
Visit Racoco Productions

Katie Brack and Michelle Vargo in a scene from If The Shoe Fits 2005

Notes on The Body Politik

2011-02-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

I’ll be visiting the University of Louisiana at Monroe as a guest composer during the week of their annual Guitar Festival. My friend Dan Sumner who, in addition to being an excellent guitarist and composer, is the Assistant Professor of Music Education at ULM, commissioned me to composed a work for his student guitar ensemble. The resulting piece The Body Politik, for five electric guitars and one electric bass, will be performed at ULM the evening of February 18th. A second composition, Shifting Landscape (for John Cage and Leo Brouwer), may be work shopped by the same guitar ensemble. More details to come.

I am comfortable describing The Body Politik as a "post-minimalist" work. But this begs the question, what is or was minimalism?

Influences

Composer John Zorn in the liner notes to his CD The Last Supper describes himself as a “child of minimalism.” Although I’m a generation behind Zorn, I can relate to that self-description since works of minimalist composers had a powerful effect on me as a teenager. Philip Glass’ Glassworks, Meredith Monk’s Turtle Dreams, Steve Reich’s Sextet, Six Marimbas and Laurie Anderson’s Big Science (featuring Anderson's seminal 20th century art song O Superman) were records I sought out and studied, first on my own and then later as a composition major at Capital University. My mentor at Capital, composer Dr. Rocky Reuter, not only loved serial or "twelve-tone" music, but also iconic minimalist works like Terry Riley's In C. In retrospect, I realize now how unusual it was to encounter a professor as open minded as Dr. Reuter.

Many minimalist compositions from the 70’s and 80’s use a limited – sometimes severely limited – set of musical resources (ex: five diatonic notes, intervals of just fifths, one single rhythmic cell, etc). A linear process is often clearly audible, as in Steve Reich's Piano Phase, where two pianists play a melodic pattern in unison gradually moving out of sync with each other by one 16th note, 8th note, dotted eighth note, quarter note, etc creating a series unexpected "modulations, transitions, and climaxes." The material may be limited, but minimalist composers found ways to expand the material into works that could sometimes last several hours.

Here is the MIDI version of and the full score for The Body Politik.

And here are the parts for The Body Politik:

Bass
Guitar 1
Guitar 2
Guitar 3
Guitar 4
Guitar 5

Rhythm is the subject of The Body Politik, specifically the superimposition of two time signatures, 3/4 and 6/8. Bassist and composer William Parker wrote: "Three quarter time as six eight time has always conjured up joy for me. There must be a mystical formation inside the number 3 and its multiples." I wanted to explore 3/4 and 6/8 in an ensemble setting where the "feel" of these two time signatures could be explored as well, once each musician had their respective rhythms and notes under their fingers.

(Photo: Philip Glass Ensemble)
Facades by Philip Glass for 2 soprano saxes, violins, viola, cello, and double bass.

Like many of Philip Glass' early works, Facades, which appears on his 1981 album Glassworks, is about rhythm. Listening to this piece, you will hear some compositional precedents for The Body Politik, although many differences are audible as well. Facades moves through its various rhythmic statements at a seductive and languid pace, its instrumentation inspiring its phrases and emotional curves. In contrast, The Body Politik unfolds in a fashion similar to that of a DJ dropping one rhythm atop another and another (throughout the entire piece, the six players never double a part) only to suddenly "mute" several rhythms except maybe one or two to create musical drama. A friend described this to me as the "DJ" approach to composition, and it's not without precedent in "classical" music. The second movement of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra comes to mind.

Another influence on The Body Politik is the 1982 album I Advance Masked, a collaboration between guitarists Robert Fripp and Andy Summers. The music might be called instrumental rock album, but the music owes more to minimalism, as well as Indonesian gamelan, traditional Indian sitar music, and West African drumming than rock and roll. Still, it is a GUITAR album, and a unique one among instrumental albums of music for that particular instrument.

from I Advance Masked

Some additional notes

Tempo is a crucial component to any composition. Listening to MIDI playback of a piece I've written isn't all that helpful for me except for getting a ballpark idea of how fast or how slow the music could be in a live performance. Tempo is something I have to work it out with the live musicians. With that in mind, I look forward to being in the same room with Dan Sumner's guitar ensemble.

I want my music to breathe and "feel" good. I love and include phrasing and dynamics in my scores, but nothing is set in stone. During rehearsals, I listen to the musicians and am willing to make changes as a piece comes into it's own. That said, when it comes to scored music, musicians appreciate as much information as the composer can give them so that they can begin the process of realizing your piece without an undue number of unnecessary questions. They appreciate your a vision, and want to help you realize it.

To return to this term "post minimalist," have you heard minimalist techniques being used in new, creative ways in any particular new pieces for the concert hall? How about in contemporary pop music? Does the band Radiohead for instance use some minimalist techniques in their compositions?

How about in club music? Or in music for films or computer games?

Update: On February 17th at 11am during the recital hour, we'll be work shopping another piece of mine, Shifting Landscape (for John Cage and Leo Brouwer). I wrote it with a guitar ensemble in mind, but all instruments are welcome to participate, including piano, saxophone, and/or marimba to suggest just a few. More details to come.

Interview with Tom Myron

2011-01-30T08:38:00.001-08:00

Composer Tom Myron

The job requirements of a working composer are elusive, perhaps especially for composition students enrolled in University degree programs that fail to provide graduates with the interpersonal and business skills necessary for survival outside the walls of academia. One student composer told me recently: "We are all being trained to teach." Woody Allen famously said: “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” But those who compose and don't teach do find ways to sustain themselves and their passion for music through a variety of collaborative and creative means, some perhaps less "traditional" than others. With this in mind, let's have a chat with my friend composer Tom Myron.

The range of Tom Myron's work as a composer includes commissions and performances by the Kennedy Center, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, the Topeka Symphony, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Bangor Symphony and the Lamont Symphony at Denver University. He works regularly as an arranger for the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, writing for singers Rosanne Cash, Kelli O'Hara, Maxi Priest & Phil Stacey, the Young People's Chorus of New York City, and the Quebec folk ensemble Le Vent du Nord. Le Vent du Nord's new CD Symphonique featuring Myron's orchestra arrangements is receiving an incredible amount of positive press throughout Canada and will be available for purchase in the U.S. soon. A video preview of the recording is included in this interview.

His film scores include Wilderness & Spirit; A Mountain Called Katahdin and the upcoming Henry David Thoreau; Surveyor of the Soul, both from Films by Huey. Individual soloists and chamber ensembles that regularly perform Myron's work include violinists Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, Elisabeth Adkins & Kara Eubanks, violist Tsuna Sakamoto, cellist David Darling, the Portland String Quartet, the DaPonte String Quartet and the Potomac String Quartet.

Myron's current projects include commissioned work for the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and creating arrangements for Joe Jackson's music-theater piece Stoker inspired by the life of Bram Stoker author of 1897 Gothic novel Dracula.

Tom (I'll call him Tom now) graciously took time out of his schedule to answer a handful of questions including several having to do with the "business" of making music.

Chris Becker: You arrange and orchestrate music for a variety of artists and have a career composing concertos, string quartets, and various settings for voice. Are these two separate careers that you have to juggle? Or do they intersect providing you with even more musical opportunities than if you were focused only one or the other?

Tom Myron: From a purely logistical point of view it's a juggling act. Both types of work tend to lead to more opportunities within their respective areas, but there isn't a lot of overlap. That said, they DO intersect for me on a more personal, creative level. I love getting to know all kinds of musical idioms in a very practical, mechanical way. I also love just about everything that goes into handling, preparing and rehearsing music for live performance. My training in composition and the orchestral repertoire has benefited my commercial work by giving me the flexibility to consider (and rapidly execute!) multiple solutions to specific problems. The commercial work in turn informs my composition by instilling a disciplined work ethic and keeping organization and clarity of intention foremost in my mind.

CB: How did you get a grip on the business side of music?

TM: I'm still not sure that I have one! You pick this stuff up as you go along and I think that, to some extent at least, you have to have a real interest in it. The main thing is to make it your business to be where the music that interests you is happening on a professional level. I had the good fortune of being associated with the Portland Symphony Orchestra for the 13 years that I lived in Maine. That was where I started learning everything that I could about how the business works. ASCAP, both in person and via their online resources, have also been very helpful in this regard.

CB: How did you learn how much to charge for one job over another?

TM: In the commercial world in large urban centers you generally charge by the number of bars (horizontally) and lines (vertically) with rates set by the AFM. I'm affiliated with AFM Local 802 in NYC. Their website has a page that breaks down the rates for orchestrating across a range of venues. Depending on the job and my relationship with the client I charge some multiple of the 802 base scales.

CB: Do you do your own negotiating when it comes to fees, deadlines, and creative control?

TM: The type of negotiating that a situation requires depends on the scale of the project and (especially) its potential ongoing life once it's been completed. In a lot of cases I still do my own negotiating, which suits me temperamentally but probably isn't for everyone. For complex projects like Joe Jackson's Stoker or the latest Le Vent du Nord CD I have a very good agent/lawyer in NYC. I'll call him when a project has a.) the potential to earn income over time and b.) a lot of different 'players' (meaning producers, writers, director etc.) In that type of scenario you absolutely must have someone who really knows what they're doing representing your interests. It's not adversarial, it's purely practical.

Deadlines can be anywhere from a week to several months and almost never have any relationship to the amount of work that needs to be done. For instance, the New York Pops will often know months in advance that they'll be needing a specific treatment of a specific song. This is terrific because I can happily spend months polishing and tweaking three or four minutes of music. It also gives me the luxury of being able to put the thing aside for a little while and come back to it fresh. On the other hand, I might turn out eleven complete charts in six or eight weeks on a gala where the guest artist list is in flux until the last minute!

In my experience the phrase "creative control" is more journalistic than practical. If you've been hired for the right reasons by people who know your work the potential for aesthetic discord is pretty small.

A video preview of Le Vent du Nord's CD Symphonique, arrangements by Tom Myron.

CB: And how do you handle a project like your collaboration with Le Vent Du Nord where the performances and recording are happening outside of the U.S.?

TM: That project just grew with every step we took. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did not go into this with the intention of making a commercial CD. I had already connected with Le Vent back in 2006 through the Portland Symphony. Maine has a very deep Quebecois history and Le Vent has a big following there. The Maine Humanities Council got us funded to do four arrangements with the PSO. It was a blast. We sold out two shows and Le Vent's management saw a potential new venue for the band. When, in 2009, the Quebec Symphony asked them if they could do a whole evening with orchestra they called me. Initially, I did my own negotiating, both with the band and the orchestra. I made it a stipulation that I retain 100% ownership of my orchestrations and all associated rights. I then set out to make every bar of every chart sparkle and pulse with excitement, exactly the way the band does with each song. I learned a huge amount listening to those guys.

While I was busy writing, it was pointed out to someone that we were the first people ever to combine Quebecois Trad. with Symphonic Trad. The CBC then decided to record the concert live for Radio Canada. The National Theater of Quebec, where the concerts were held, is basically their Kennedy Center, so some serious technical resources were deployed. They mic-ed up the stage like it was a Hollywood Scoring session. As you saw from the video, it went very well. When the CBC realized that they now had a highly sale-able live recording on their hands, the fact that I had retained complete ownership (read: control) of my contribution to the project meant I was able to stipulate how I would be credited, where I would be credited and in what size typeface said credit would appear. I then called my agent in NYC and he handled the actual record deal.

Violinist Kara Eubanks tracking the cadenza from Tom Myron's Violin Concerto #2, 3rd movement.

CB: You’ve composed many works for soloists, including your Violin Concerto No. 2, Viola Concerto and Käthe Kollwitz for string quartet and soprano voice. How do opportunities to compose for specific soloists or ensembles come to you? Are these musicians who hear about you from other sources? Or are the connections more personal than that?

TM: There is a lineage that connects every one of my works from about 1994 onward to every other. Interestingly, it was a Schubert arrangement for soprano and string quartet that I wrote (very informally) for the Portland String Quartet that led them to commission Käthe Kollwitz. A friend of the quartet's then recommended the work to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and they programmed it on their chamber music series. Steven Honigberg, cellist and artistic director of the series, actually formed the Potomac String Quartet specifically for the occasion. In addition to Käthe Kollwitz, they've since gone on to record the complete string quartets of David Diamond and Quincy Porter for Albany Records. Tsuna Sakamoto is the violist in the group. She liked her part in Käthe Kollwitz so much she asked me to write her a concerto that she could do with the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra. Elisabeth Adkins is the concert master of Eclipse, and she liked Tsuna's concerto so much she wanted one of her own!

CB: I’ve been enjoying your 2002 score Wilderness & Spirit: A Mountain Called Katahdin. It’s wonderful to hear a score for an independent film played by a full orchestra! I haven’t seen this film. Are there long musical cues accompanying the images? How did you go about matching musical passages to edits in this particular film?

TM: Ironically, the piece for full orchestra only appears on the soundtrack album, not in the movie! (Editor's note: Whoops!) We did the strings in the actual film by overdubbing a quartet about 30 times. Huey, the film's director, wanted to release a soundtrack CD along with the film but I wasn't so interested. Then the Portland Symphony asked me if I'd like to take my favorite parts of the soundtrack and make a symphonic suite, which they would commission. That piece became Katahdin (Greatest Mountain) and they programmed it to coincide with the film's release. This gave us enough money and (barely) enough time to have Toshi record the piece in the Czech Republic, produce a soundtrack CD and have it on sale in the lobby at the premiere.

Working with a documentary director, particularly on a feature length project, is very different from working on a dramatic film. Huey spent five years working on Wilderness and Spirit. He felt that specific sections of the film had very specific moods and emotional textures. He was more interested in hearing what kind of music I would come up with by thinking about the emotional textures that he was describing than by showing me actual footage. He'd been living with this material for years before I had signed on and he wanted the ability to look at it with fresh eyes- to try out whatever music he wanted, wherever he wanted it. One of the best things about working with seasoned pros is that they have the confidence to work like this. I wrote a bunch of mini pieces and mocked them up in MIDI. He listened to them and picked the ones that he wanted elaborated. I wrote short, medium and long versions of the cues he'd chosen, booked a studio and hired the players. At the end of each day someone would drop by the studio and pick up a CD of what we'd done and take it to Huey, who would then edit all night. I didn't see any pictures with music until I was in the theater!

CB: I don’t remember when, but you and I did meet via the Internet. I’ve also met and developed both working and personal relationships with other composers, dancers, visual artists and even writers all via blogs and Facebook. How do you feel about all of the “social networking” that is nearly ubiquitous in American life now? Is it more helpful for an individual artist or a band like Le Vent Du Nord as opposed to a conductor or composer?

TM: As a way of staying in touch with a wide circle of people, obviously there's nothing like it. And I continue to make a few key connections/friendships along the way (you being one of them.) For an artist with an existing fan base, my sense is that social media is the living end. But for the kind of artist I am, not so much. I haven't touched my My Space page in years and I can barely even bring myself to blog on Sequenza21 anymore (as much as I love S21 itself, BTW.) (Editor's Note: NO OFFENSE GUYS!) These days I try to make my own use of the Internet as utilitarian as possible. The fact that it let's me move literally tons of printable music instantly is where it's at for me.

Music for Silent Films at CultureMap, Houston, TX

2011-01-21T18:32:00.000-08:00

PARADISE by Noe Kidder from noe kidder on Vimeo.

Paradise Film by Noe Kidder, Music by Chris Becker (from the CD Saints & Devils)

On Sunday, February 13th, 2pm, at CultureMap, 1011 Wood Street First Floor, Houston, TX, I'll be presenting a set of laptop and Kaoss pad improvisations to accompany a screening of silent films by Noe Kidder - including Paradise (see above) and her collaboration with Arianne Anthony Goad, Ruby Quincunx, and Maya Deren. Noe included three tracks from my Saints & Devils CD in the latest cut of Paradise which continues to screen in New York City and beyond in experimental film festivals and venues. This gig will be the first time I've accompanied silent films completely solo. Over the years I've presented films in ensembles that have included Lynn Wright, Paul Watson, Lewis 'Flip' Barnes, Tony Maimone, Stan Smith, Roger Hines, and Trista Hill. So I'm excited - I'll be working without a net. I know these films so well and yet nothing ever happens the same way twice when improvising.

I'll be sharing the bill with Houston pianist and composer Kris Becker (no relation - weird, huh?) who will present what will surely be a smokin' set with his band Frozen Heat.

Since this is Houston, there will be a grill and plenty of food and beverages. And the gig is early enough so that you can hear some cool music, stuff yourself, then make it home to watch The Black Eyed Peas do their schtick at Cowboys stadium. Seriously, it should be a fun afternoon. Thanks to The Caroline Sessions and CultureMap for coordinating Becker squared.

Rebirth of the Cool

2011-01-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

Thomas Helton photographed by Jonathan Jindra

To be cool doesn’t mean to be cold and indifferent. Being cool means possessing the character to remain strong under pressure. To be generous when times are tight. To find confidence inside of yourself even when a society is treating you like you're not even human. In his book Flash of the Spirit, Robert Farris Thompson traces the definition of “cool” back to the Yoruba people of Africa for whom coolness has always been “…the correct way you represent yourself to a human being.” Thompson goes on to way: “To the degree that we live generously and discreetly, exhibiting grace under pressure (i.e. keep cool), our appearance and our acts gradually assume virtual royal power.”

When trumpeter Miles Davis recorded the music released on the 1957 album Birth of the Cool, he probably didn’t anticipate that years afterward everyone’s least favorite jazz critic Stanley Crouch - a writer very few jazz musicians seem to respect, let alone like - would decry the album as “…little more than primers for television writing…another failed attempt to marry jazz to European devices.” Then again, Davis always knew when he was pushing boundaries be they musical or societal. The recordings - made up of “nonet” (nine instrument) ensembles with instrumentation that includes french horn and tuba and players both black and white - not only announced the “birth” of a new way of writing, arranging, and playing, but would influence for years to come musicians as diverse as John Lewis (and his ensemble The Modern Jazz Quartet) and Lennie Tristano. With all of this in mind, it might be worthwhile to revisit the music on Birth of the Cool and consider what made “cool” such a provocative word circa 1950. Enter Houston bassist Thomas Helton.

On Sunday, January 9th, 7 p.m. at Ovations 2356 Times Blvd., Thomas Helton presents a performance of Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool. Performing as the nonet will be Ralph Stivison (trumpet), Will Samson (tuba), Chris Shelburne (french horn), Ryan Gabbart (trombone), Martin Langford (baritone sax), Woody Witt (alto sax), Robert Boston (piano), Bobby Adams (drums), and Thomas Helton (bass). The performance is part of an ongoing series of “tribute” performances by Helton and collaborators of pivotal jazz recordings or musicians. Past tribute concerts presented the music of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Charles Mingus, Clifford Brown, and Max Roach.

There was only one studio recording and documentation of just a handful of performances of MIles Davis’ Birth of the Cool nonet. So will Sunday’s performance be an experience similar to that of hearing a period instrument ensemble playing Early Music? Helton tells us: “…when I was filling out the ensemble, I took great care in finding guys that I knew could recreate the sound and feel of the original. Although the improvised sections are purely their own, I know that the musicians are interested in and more than capable of presenting a 'period' specific sound.” And just what is that specific sound? Helton describes it as follows: “Solo development is generally slower, meaning that rather than come out of the gate with all your tricks, time is taken to 'work out' an idea or thought…Even on the fast pieces there is a sense of patience.”

Of the Birth of the Cool recording itself, Helton says: “You can listen to it over and over and (still) find something new and amazing about the compositions, the solos, and the arrangements.” Those familiar with the classic recording should get a kick out of hearing Sunday’s performance of the original arrangements and soloists taking the music into the 21st century.

Helton is well known in Houston’s jazz and avant-garde and experimental music scenes, and agrees there is potential for even more collaboration among musicians that run in different circles. What can prevent collaboration - among musicians of all styles - is fear. “Fear of change,” Helton says. “Fear of the unknown, almost a fear of trying. And that goes for all the 'scenes.' You know, the 'noise' guys (ed. note: And girls!) don’t like to be boxed in to any preconceived ideas of what music is supposed to be and musicians that spent years honing their craft and technique, sometimes in school, don’t want to compromise all they have worked for. As for me, I want it all.”

Sunday’s 7pm concert is free but donations are welcome. For more info visit the Ovations website.

Houston's Musiqa presents: Real and Imagined

2010-12-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

Visual Abstract (1st movement) from Jean Detheux on Vimeo.

On January 8th, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. in Zilkha Hall of The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Houston new music group Musiqa presents Real and Imagined - a concert collaboration with Aurora Picture Show featuring Theo Loevendie's Six Turkish Folk Songs as well as music by Eve Beglarian, Paul Frehner, and Evan Chambers. Houston-based composer Pierre Jalbert's Visual Abstract for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion will be performed live to a film created by Jean Detheux.

Led by five composers (including founding member Pierre Jalbert) Musiqa is receiving a great deal of notice for its innovative multi-disciplinary concert events (dance, visual art, and theater are always integrated into Musiqa performances) as well as its educational programming that annually reaches thousands of Houston area students. Next season, Musiqa will celebrate its ten-year anniversary.

Pierre Jalbert graciously responded to a few questions about Visual Abstract:

Chris Becker: Did Jean Detheux create his film before, after, or during the composition of Visual Abstract?

Pierre Jalbert: He created the film after the piece was written. The music was commissioned and premiered by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble a few years back. Jean and I worked on a project last year in which he created a film first and I wrote the music to the film. That work was entitled L'œil écoute (The Eye Listens), and was also premiered by PNME. This time around, we decided that we would reverse the process, and he would do his film to the already existing music.

Chris Becker: In performance with the film, is the conductor watching the film for the timing of some of your musical events? I’m thinking of the third movement where rhythmic hits coincide with abrupt changes in the film.

Pierre Jalbert: Yes, the conductor is looking at the film for cues from time to time, and we rehearse many times through to get the timing down. As you can imagine, it's very difficult as each performance is slightly different. But Jean made the film to not have too many abrupt changes. But still, there are a a few that make it challenging.

Chris Becker: The layers of images in Detheux’s film are very rich and tactile. They remind me of natural phenomena, weather, or even what we “see” when we close our eyes and listen to the sounds around us. Speaking as a composer, what do you think makes an “abstract” work of visual art successful?

Pierre Jalbert: I think when one looks at the film and hears the music as a single entity, and one does not dominate over the other, but each enhances the other, then we have something interesting.

Chris Becker: Next season, Musiqa will celebrate its ten-year anniversary. As one of the people who founded the organization, how does it feel to look back on all Musiqa has accomplished?

Pierre Jalbert: It's amazing to look back and see how the organization has grown. I remember a few of us meeting at Tony Brandt's house 10 years ago and brain-storming about what the organization could be. We wanted to get new music out into the community and into downtown and offer up repertoire that wasn't being heard in Houston. All of the composers on the Artistic Board work really well together (Anthony Brandt, Karim Al-Zand, Rob Smith, Marcus Maroney, and myself), and that has been crucial in keeping things going through the years.

Tickets for Real and Imagined are available for purchase on the Musiqa website.

December update

2010-12-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

I've started writing regularly for the Houston Press blog Art Attack. You can check out my latest article here which is a meditation on connections between the work of Marcel Duchamp and Houston's DJ Screw. I hope to be contributing to Art Attack at least if not twice a week. Comments over there are very welcome. Like a lot of blogs, the content is up and then it's gone REAL quick. But I guess that's how people expect their...um..."content"? It's kind of cool to see articles "shared" on Facebook or "retweeted" on Twitter (which I don't use...yet...). Hopefully I can keep up!

I have two new interviews in the works for this blog. I hope to have them up before the end of this month as they're tied to releases and events from the interviewees,

In February 2011, I'll have a couple of pieces for electric guitar ensemble premiered. More news on that to come. And my 2005 collaboration with choreographer director Rachel Cohen If The Shoe Fits will return in March 2011 (We just received a grant from Meet The Composer to help with some outreach we have planned for that show). As part of the outreach, I plan to blog about the creation of If The Shoe Fits and the collaborative process that is composing music for dance, so stay tuned for that.

Much more to come as we transition from 2010 to 2011.

Lepers Of Melancholy Performance Photos

2010-11-14T10:55:00.001-08:00

A few photos from our performance as The Lepers Of Melancholy, November 7th, 2010, Houston, TX.

Chris Becker - Laptop, Kaoss Pad (Photo by Jonathan Jindra)

Chris, Paul Watson - Cornet, Vocals, Electronics, and Lynn Wright - Guitar, Electronics (Photo by Lainie Diamond)

Paul and Lynn (Photo by Lainie Diamond)

Next Sunday in Houston: The Lepers Of Melancholy

2010-10-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

November 7, 2010, 8pm
Binarium Sound Series
The Mekong Underground at 2808 Milam St., Houston, TX
The Lepers of Melancholy
Chris Becker (Houston, TX) - Laptop, Kaoss Pad
Paul Watson (Richmond, VA) – Cornet, Electronics, Vocals
Lynn Wright (NYC, NY) - Electric Guitar, Electronics, Vocals

Listen to Double from the forthcoming Lepers Of Melancholy EP.

“Several summers ago, Lynn Wright, Paul Watson and I spent a week with producer Grant Curry at his studio next to Louisiana’s Tangipahoa river to record as an improvising trio that would not shy away from songs, spoken word, and/or the joy of a good groove. My relocation to Houston since that summer has meant less contact with Lynn and Paul. So I'm excited to share that through some fortunate circumstances and timing, the three of us will combine our respective musical voices again November 7th, 8pm, at Johnathan Jindra’s Binarium Series for two sets of music we dare not describe in advance. However, Paul came up with a moniker for this project and it says as much as one can about what you will hear."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you, The Lepers Of Melancholy.” – Chris Becker

Multi-instrumentalist Paul Watson is a long time and influential contributor to Richmond, Virgina and the Southeast’s counter culture and experimental rock scene. A small sampling of the bands he has performed and/or recorded with include: Sparklehorse, One Ring Zero, Vic Chestnut, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Eugene Chadbourne, ...and the Wiremen, Chris Becker, Glorious Company, Them Against Them, Ostinato, Sarah White, Tanakh, Tulsa Drone, Broken Hips, Spokane, South, Patrick Phelan, Blasco Ballroom, Cordero, Bee & Flower, Michael Hurley, Nina Persson, Plasmodium, Dexter Romweber, Rattlemouth, GriefBirds, Dirtball, Rainer Ptacek, Cracker, FSK, House of Freaks, Orthotonics, Gongs Of Violence, Half-Japanese, Hollow State. Ape In Essence, Albert Collins, Trans, Thunderbird Davis, the Cavemen. Paul Watson on My Space

Brooklyn-based guitarist/composer Lynn Wright has collaborated with a wide range of artists in the experimental rock, world, and new music scenes, including New Orleans gothic-soul songwriter James Hall, the Berlin chamber-pop ensemble Bee and Flower, Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone, Cordero, composer Chris Becker, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Watson. He currently works as a composer and producer of music for television, film, and dance; is a member of the electric Miles-influenced, Afro-Colombian music collective Gachupín; delves into improvisation with the Lepers of Melancholy, explores the collision of trance, minimalism and the spirit of Sonny Sharrock with the instrumental trio Ballroom Dance Is Dead, and leads his own, song-oriented band …And The Wiremen. Lynn Wright on My Space

The music of composer and laptop artist Chris Becker is equally inspired by rock and roll language, avant-garde jazz, dub compositional strategies, and musique concrète. His body of work includes compositions for dance, film, chamber ensembles, and mixed-media installations. He has received grants and awards from The Louisiana Division of the Arts, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center and The American Society of Composers and Publishers. Becker lives in Houston, TX. His current projects include collaborative performance and recordings with vocalist Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead and writing a monthly dispatch for the classical music website Sequenza21 about Houston’s contemporary music scene.

Cornell Box September 19th performance

2010-09-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

Cornell Box (2004; rev. 2010)
Chris Becker - Laptop
Rachel Cohen - Direction, Installation
Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead, Rachel Cohen and Michelle Yom - Performers

Thank you to Jonathan Jindra for the video of this performance.

Cornell Box at Binarium Sound Series

2010-09-22T12:41:00.001-07:00

Michelle Yom, Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead, and Rachel Cohen (from left) Photo by Chris Becker

Michelle Yom and Mexican Box. Photo by Chris Becker

Special thank you to Dave Garrett for building our boxes and Casa Ramirez (Houston, TX) and Lainie Diamond for loaning us some wonderful items.

September performances in Houston

2010-09-05T07:19:00.001-07:00

(Photo of Jospeh Cornell by Harry Roseman, 1972)

Sunday, September 19, 2010
8pm
Binarium Sound Series
Khon's Bar / Mekong Underground
2808 Milam Street, Houston TX

Sound installations and music theater created by Chris Becker and Rachel Cohen

Cornell Box
Chris Becker - Laptop
Rachel Cohen - Direction, Installation
Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead, Rachel Cohen and Michelle Yom - Performers

Saints and Devils (solo)
Chris Becker - Laptop
Rachel Cohen - Choreography, Dancer

Notes on Cornell Box (2007, rev. 2010)

“Creative filing, creative arranging, as poetics, as joyous creation…” Joseph Cornell, Diary, March 9, 1959.

Cornell Box is a theatrical and musical collaboration with choreographer Rachel Cohen that began with our very first meeting in New York City. The is piece inspired by New York born artist Joseph Cornell (b. 1903, d. 1972) who is best known for the glass fronted shadow boxes he created from1936 to the end of his life. I first encountered Cornell’s boxes in Houston in at a retrospective presented by the Menil Collection probably back in 1998 although I don’t remember the exact year. I did not know at the time that Cornell had spent nearly all of his life in an unassuming house on Utopia Parkway in Queens, NY. After relocating to New York, I learned much more about Cornell’s life and art and began to imagine some sort of musical and theatrical homage to the man. It is exciting for me to realize Cornell Box in Houston after at least three previous performances of the piece in New York City as the memory of that beautifully lit and arranged show at the Menil Collection has never left me.

As if by magic, the small sized dimensions of Cornell’s boxes offer the viewer a portal to the entirety of an infinite universe. This theatrical and alchemical manipulation of space and time is a point of inspiration for the box constructions, movement, and music for Cornell Box. The sound score – cued and manipulated in real time with a laptop computer in combination with a MIDI controller – is sent through four speakers placed to “box” in the listening audience. The order of sound events begins with an introduction of expansive “outdoor” sounds of New York’s urban landscape including subway trains, city traffic, and the crowded lobby of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

After this introduction, the aural environment is transformed by the appearance of several samples of piano performance by New York pianist Daniel Kelly improvising in an ersatz “Impressionist” style the results processed to sound like scratched and dusty 78 rpm records. Joining this collage of seemingly “found” objects are excerpts of some of actress Lauren Bacall’s most iconic scripted lines from Howard Hawks’ 1944 film To Have And To Have Not. Cornell created the stunning box Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall) after seeing Hawks’ film several times watching Bacall closely and noting in his diary what he described as the “interesting Javanese modeling” of her face. With the exception of a couple of lines from her co-star Humphrey Bogart, I have only sampled Bacall’s voice from the film.

The physical movement in Cornell Box is contained within the dimensions of three box constructions built specifically for this performance. Rachel’s hands as well as the hands of Houston musician/composers Alexandra Marchulewicz Adshead and Michelle Yom appear in the boxes manipulating objects we’ve collected and arranged in homage to Cornell’s interior world as well as Houston’s unique cultural landscape.

I hope that for the duration of the performance, the combination of sound, sculpture, and movement in Cornell Box keeps what the audience is hearing, seeing, and remembering in a constant state of flux.

Saints & Devils is the title of my 2006 CD consisting of ten tracks inspired by the music, history, and iconography of the Deep South featuring musical performances by players from New Orleans and New York City. The CD was mastered two weeks before hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast shore, and then delayed for release for another year as New Orleans and its citizens recovered. The CD’s cover and booklet was realized by New Orleans-based photographer/computer artist Jon Graubarth and directly alludes to the aftermath of that storm.

In addition to Cornell Box, Rachel Cohen will present a solo accompanied by one of the tracks from Saints & Devils. Her solo is part of a work-in-progress scenario of movement with each track from the CD that might be realized in a variety of forms including a dance performance, environmental installation, and film and/or photographic essay.

I’d like to thank Dave Garrett for building our boxes, Harry Roseman for the use of his 1972 photo of Joseph Cornell, Rachel Cohen for her friendship and creative vision, and Jonathan Jindra for allowing us to be a part of the Binarium Sound Series.

Houston Mixtape #4: Blue Skies

2010-08-24T09:53:00.001-07:00

What Not With Skyline - Houston, TX (Photo by Chris Becker)

Last Month (August) I visited Kaboom Books for the first time and in addition to buying a few great used books including a copy of Ralph Ellison’s Shadow and Act with its wonderful essay about Charlie Christian, I met and spoke at length with one of the owners about Kaboom’s former home New Orleans. For this summer’s White Linen Night Houston sound artist Doren Bernard turned Kaboom Books into a sound installation with a mysterious piece of entirely comprised of sounds recorded within the store. As I moved through the aisles of Kaboom that night, Doren’s piece seemed to sit at the edges of my peripheral hearing creating an effect similar to seeing a ghost and then - after blinking your eyes - seeing nothing but the space where your spectre had made its presence known.

A friend from New York asked me for a little more detail regarding my comparisons in last month’s Houston Mixtape #3: The Epicenter Of Noise between his city and Houston and each town’s respective “noise” level. He rightly pointed out that Houston, being more spread out with little or no zoning regulations, results in a more horizontal (as opposed to vertical) cityscape thereby diffusing and spreading out the noise of the city.

Horizontal also means you get to see wide-open skies and gigantic cloud formations from an uncluttered 360-degree perspective.

Clouds Over Tommie Vaughn Car Dealership - Houston, TX (Photo by Chris Becker)

Maybe this is a stretch, but I do wonder if Houston’s big skies and flat lands inspired the artist Mark Rothko directly or indirectly while creating the fourteen paintings contained in the Rothko Chapel. I do know Rothko worked closely with Philip Johnson and Houston architects Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry in designing the sunlit chapel that would contain his fourteen paintings, and there's no question in my mind that sunlight played a role in the planning and construction of the chapel. On a recent visit to the chapel (which is located in Houston's Museum District), I was struck at how dramatically Rothko’s paintings transform in appearance as the light from the chapel skylight shifts in relation to cloud cover and Houston’s crazy weather patterns. These changes occur almost minute-to-minute, and the paintings transcend their frames, colors, and textures.

It makes absolute sense then that composer Morton Feldman was asked by John and Dominique de Menil to compose a tribute to Rothko. In his essay regarding the resulting work Rothko Chapel, Feldman writes that his choice of instruments was affected by the space of the chapel as well as by Rothko’s paintings and that he wanted the music to “permeate the whole octagonal-shaped room” just as the paintings seem to continue beyond the borders of their canvases. It's a ways ahead, but on February 11, 2011, the Houston Chamber Choir and Da Camera of Houston will present Feldman's Rothko Chapel as well as works by John Cage and Erik Satie in the Rothko Chapel to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

On September 21st, 7:30 pm at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, you can hear a performance of Thomas Tallis' 40 part motet Spem in Alium by the Houston Chamber Choir. This is another piece of music that permeates "the whole" of any space it is heard.

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Houston Mixtape #3: The Epicenter Of Noise

2010-07-25T16:09:00.001-07:00

Outside the Eldorado Ballroom, Houston, TX (Photo by Chris Becker)

“…(Houston is) one of the epicenters of noise bands and experimental music. Nobody even knows that, you know?” Dan Workman of Houston's Sugarhill Studios.

Here’s an excerpt of a recording I made of a Houston thunderstorm using a Zoom H4 recorder positioned just behind the front screen door to our house. You might want to turn down the volume about half way through if you listen to this headphones:

Houston rain and thunder
Part One

New York City - the city where I lived for twelve years before relocating to Houston, Texas - is LOUD. In my mind’s ear, I can STILL hear the car horns, the jackhammers, the fire-truck sirens (my wife and I lived one block away from a fire station), the garbage trucks flipping over dumpsters filled with glass and concrete (BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!) and…the subways. Oh Lord, the SUBWAYS! Two musician friends of mine wore earplugs every time they traveled underground. My wife ALWAYS covered her ears when the trains screeched to a halt at the platforms. Loudspeakers in the stations and on the trains intermittently blared out jaunty yet nearly incomprehensible warnings about rerouted trains and “suspicious packages.” (Remember…if you SEE something, SAY something!) And microphone feedback? The MTA’s gotcha covered.

Quick! Without thinking, imitate a New Yorker! You started YELLING, right?

So being a sensitive composer with sensitive ears, the first thing I noticed about Houston once we’d moved down here is how much quieter it is compared to New York City. And what tweaked my ears my first few weeks on the ground wasn’t the omnipresent hum of the Interstate 610 loop. It was the unpredictable antiphonal chatter of Houston’s bird population. The screeches and cooing were so intriguing to me, I spent the first couple months in our new city composing a piece of “musique concrete” utilizing several recordings I’d made of the birds in the front and backyards. There is a truly rural almost wild (as in wilderness) vibe to the city outside of downtown and the aforementioned beltways.

How did a city that to my ears is so much quieter than NYC come to be known as an “epicenter of noise”? Make no mistake, some of the Houston noise artists I've checked out make Nine Inch Nails sound like Sting. But one thing the Houston musicians I’ve reached out to regarding the “noise” scene agree on is that one person’s “noise” is another’s poetry. The hierarchal notion that a note from a clarinet somehow contains more emotional profundity than the sound of a hammer hitting a nail doesn’t really exist in the minds of (most) 21st century musicians (One of my “non-noise” composer friends pointed out that noise just like "music" can “evoke a wide range of sentiment”). But my research yielded so MANY Texas musicians either explicitly flying the “noise” flag (Concrete Violin, Spike the Percussionist, Richard Ramirez) or so loosely attached to however one might define “noise” (the grime meets speed metal music of B L A C K I E is one such example) that I wondered who or what exactly I could write about in this dispatch.

It occurs to me that one of my favorite recordings, “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground,” was created by a Texan (Blind Willie Johnson in case you didn’t know). The timbre of Johnson’s vocal lies somewhere between a whisper and a scream while his phrasing conveys a feeling of both defiance and resignation. Consider the title Johnson gave to this recording. Has the uniquely Southwestern connection to the earth – the dirt that we all will return to one day – disappeared in the years since the 1920’s when Johnson tracked his performance? I don’t think so. And in the noise of that recording (the slide on the guitar strings...the rumble of the grooves of the record itself...) is there some precedent for the Dadist freak outs of Houston ’s Red Krayola? Or the electric jug playing of the 13th Floor Elevators? Or the stinging strings of Lightning Hopkins, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, or Little Joe Washington?

Perhaps “noise” - that succinct descriptive noun - is actually in practice a portal to a sensory experience that isn’t so easy to describe but one we immediately feel and understand. To quote Morton Feldman: “…these moments when one loses control…and with a thrust there is no sound, no tone…nothing left but the significance of our first breath.”

Like rain and thunder. Or “cicadas making noise…” Or the crazy Houston doves that carry on their pygmy-like conversations from the trees around my house from sunup to sundown.

Part Two

Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead at Labotanica (Photo by Chris Becker)

Houston’s gallery and performance space Labotanica is currently hosting a monthly concert series called hereherhear that features women in experimental music. The first concert in June included artists from Houston, Baltimore, and New York. Last Friday, I attended July's hereherhear concert event featuring the collective Pear Prickley Pear, vocalist/ composer Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead, and DJ/Electronic artist Khrystah Gorham. On display at Labotanica wasYet Torres’ mixed media installation EYE-CANDY DELECTABLY which explores objectification and the body via Torres’ own mysterious, grotesque, and at times humorous iconography. Plenty of people turned up for the concert, and I was happy to see that at a little after 7pm the performers would be playing to a full house.

Earlier in July, Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead invited members of the Houston community to email her mp3s of samples that she might incorporate into her performance at Labotanica. I responded with my front and back yard bird piece and was delighted when Alexandra contacted me to say that she would indeed use it for her upcoming gig. Samples from Pear Prickley Pear and composer Steve Layton would also become a part of Alexandra's show.

Alexandra’s recorded works blend composed structures with improvised, sometimes heavily processed vocals that at times are character driven or seemingly inspired by the sounds of nature, animals, and even her one-year-old daughter. What struck me when I first listened to her music online was the sound of her voice—her tone and the emotive quality it contained. A voice sometimes jumps out at you in that way.

In performance, Alexandra utilized the laptop computer to play back the composed structures of her works while processing her live vocals through a variety of unpredictable effects. In one piece, she told the story of a woman’s descent into madness with a delivery that initially sounded as if she were reading a slightly unnerving bedtime story until flange and delay transformed her spoken words into the sound of the voice you hear when your frontal lobe isn’t functioning. Her closing piece did indeed incorporate my bird (noise?) piece into a multidimensional landscape where slowly looping chorale-like vocals rose to several crescendos before morphing dramatically into a texture that included percussive effects and (more) birdsong from Layton. The whole set was a thoughtful and engaging blend of techniques and technologies.

Outro

I wonder if "noise" as Houston has come to know it is due for yet another wave of creative development. For a movement that is by nature very "underground" - much of Houston's experimental artists are well documented thanks to the Internet and what I believe is a very Texan impulse to preserve history (and share some good stories) in words both written and sung. Or screamed. Houston is a comfortable and nurturing place for experimental artists. And there are probably many reasons for that fact that I have yet to sort out.

(Special thanks to Joseph Benzola, Douglas Henderson, Mark Kemp, Daniel Salazar, Ryan JustinBieber Supak, John Stone, Yet Torres, and Michael Vincent Waller for their sharing with me their thoughts on noise.)

Houston Mixtape #2: The Ink Spots Museum

2010-06-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

Photo of The Ink Spots Museum by Chris Becker

As a recent transplant to Houston, I am just beginning to take in the breadth and variety of the city’s cultural scene, especially its music. Each article will focus on contemporary composition, improvised idioms, and performances that integrate theater, visual arts, and/or dance. Inevitably, my love for rock, folk, blues, jazz, country, zydeco, and all out noise will creep into future writing. The goal is to expand people’s perceptions (including my own) about how and where one can find innovative music.

There may be a connection between Houston’s lack of zoning laws and the way that the past, present, and future inform each other throughout its landscape. Maybe that sounds like a cliché. If you’ve ever ridden the Houston’s Metro 80 bus through the Third Ward up Dowling Street, past Emancipation Park, and—just before turning left at Sparkle’s Burger Spot toward the glass cathedrals of downtown—observed an unfenced horse enjoying some grass in someone’s front yard, you know that I’m not talking some tourist board hogwash. There are many “zones” throughout this city dedicated to celebrating its history and nurturing its creative spirit, and they sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere.

The Ink Spots Museum (located in Houston Heights) is dedicated to archiving and celebrating the life and work of Texas born guitarist, singer, and educator Huey Long. Anita Long, Huey’s daughter and the museum’s curator, welcomed me and my wife for a visit earlier this month. Like many Houstonians I’ve met since our relocation from New York City, she generously shared her knowledge of Houston’s cultural scene. All the musicians I know would take great comfort in knowing that a family member like Anita would take care of their legacy after they departed. The museum and its accompanying website (featuring plenty of photos, audio, and video) serves to remind people that the history of American music includes the collective participation of many artists, each committed to his or her respective craft. You may know that Huey Long was a member of The Ink Spots from 1944 to 1946 with Bill Kenny as their leader, but you may not know that he also played guitar in ensembles that included Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Father Hines, Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and many other luminaries of 20th-century jazz and popular music.

Frank Davis' Louisiana Jazz Band (Photo courtesy of Anita Long)

Huey Long, who remarkably lived to the age of 105, was born in 1904 in Sealy, Texas. For the people in Sealy as well as on the farms in surrounding areas, music was a vital part of a day-to-day lifestyle dominated by hard labor. By the time he was a teenager, Huey was working as a sharecropper. Describing those formative years in Sealy in his pictorial autobiography The Huey Long Story, Huey recalls the names of no fewer than four different pianists (including his brother Sammy) playing “rags” on the pianos in people’s homes. “Ragtime” was indeed heard in Texas in the early 1900s, as was a style that would later become known as “the blues.” Huey’s sister Willie, also a pianist, studied music at Wiley College in Houston. She brought classical and popular sheet music back to Sealy to play note for note when “grownups” were in the house and improvise from when the youngsters were on their own. Some parents considered improvisation almost sinful behavior.

In addition to classical, popular, and ragtime music for piano, Huey was exposed to the uptempo groove-oriented blues played on guitar at all night “suppers” that included plenty of dancing, eating, and gambling as well as its more somber and sorrowful counterpart known as “slow blues.” Huey began playing both guitar and piano, eventually adding ukulele, an enormously popular instrument at the time, to his repertoire. After striking out on his own at age fifteen and relocating to Houston, he began playing banjo (tuning it like a ukulele but an octave lower) and joined the Frank Davis Louisiana Jazz Band. This was a popular and well-respected band in its timethat played for both whites and blacks in Houston’s segregated communities. He began playing guitar after relocating from Houston to Chicago and joining Texas Guinan’s Cuban Band, which traveled to Chicago from New York City to play the 1933 World’s Fair. Later, Huey would join Fletcher Henderson’s Band and Earl “Father” Hines’ All Star Band.

Fast forwarding a bit...

Two sessions Huey did around 1946 with trumpeter Fats Navarro, tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, pianist Al Haig, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Denzil Best were released on two separate records: In the Beginning…Bebop (a compilation of sessions by three different bands) and Fats Navarro’s recording Nostalgia. These recordings feature some truly kick-ass guitar playing from Huey who definitely holds his own in the company of two phenomenally creative horn players. The rhythmic interplay between guitar and piano is incredibly funky, as is the interplay between bass and drums. This music was probably inspired by the music heard at Sealy’s all night suppers—danceable, unpredictable, and filled with sly humor.

Huey Long in 2008 (Photo courtesy of Anita Long)

Teaching and composing music, including several chord melody solos based on themes from European Classical repertoire, would become a major part of Huey’s life along with researching his family tree and creating an exhibit of his life’s work that would become The Ink Spots Museum. Anita talked to us about the possibility of the museum one day becoming a virtual exhibit, and there is plenty of history and music from Huey’s life that should be shared with the world. For now, there is this small museum, a standing structure in the midst of Houston’s unzoned landscape that you can make an appointment to visit. The museum’s website is available at: http://www.inkspotsmuseum.com/

Signing off for now...

Houston Mixtape #1: Hand + Made, Screwed + Chopped

2010-06-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

In its March 2010 Global Ear column, The Wire magazine described Houston as “the weirdest and wildest of (Texas) cities” with a “rich tradition of unofficial and DIY art.” Speaking as a recent transplant from New York City (where I lived for twelve years), I can confirm that our British friends were on point with their analysis of H-Town. I am in my third month as a native, and only just beginning to take in the breadth and variety of Houston’s cultural scene– especially its music. Although I’m also enjoying the city’s classical music (Houston Grand Opera, Mercury Baroque) each dispatch I bring to you from Houston will focus on contemporary composition, improvised idioms, and works that integrate theatre, the visual arts, and/or dance. Inevitably, my love for rock, folk, blues, country, zydeco, and all out noise (Red Krayola, anyone?) will creep into future writing, the overall goal being to expand peoples’ perception (including my own) of where one can find innovative forward-thinking music.

2009-2010 marks the sixth year that Houston’s contemporary ensemble and presenting organization Musiqa has presented its “loft” concert series at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston. Each concert program is produced in conjunction with and inspired by a different exhibition. In May, CAMH debuted the show Hand + Made featuring works that blur the lines between craft (crochet, pottery, glass blowing) and performance. As a composer who has collaborated with clay and crochet artists (often in combination with dancers and improvising musicians), I dug the curatorial concept immediately and looked forward to hearing what pieces the composer founded and led Musiqa would choose for Hand + Made’s corresponding May 20th concert.

The concert took place at CAMH with the musicians surrounded by the artwork on display – including several elaborately designed and decorated “sound suits” by artist Nick Cave (a former dancer with Alvin Ailey’s troupe, not the singer with the Bad Seeds). I was happy to see people of all ages and filled CAMH’s space for this concert, using up all of the available benches and much of the floor space.

The program - performed by three percussionists (Craig Hauschildt, Alec Warren, and Blake Wilkins) included Clapping Music by Steve Reich, Panneaux en acier by Marcus Maroney (a beautiful and relatively new work for percussion soloist on various metals), Vinko Globokar’s primal piece of solo performance art Corporal (bravely and convincingly realized by a half naked Craig Hauschildt who was required to – among other actions – slap and strike parts of his body), and Ohko for three djembes by Iannis Xenakis. The performances were incredible, blurring the lines between what was composed, what was improvised, and where “music” as one might define it begins and ends. Musiqua’s program illuminated the creative interzone that is “in-between categories” where many of Hand + Made’s artists (and many Houstonians) reside.

Dave Dove and Lucas Gorham in performance (photo by Chris Becker)

Artist and performer Yet Torres is responsible for the handmade design and packaging of the new double CD Screwed Anthologies: Improvised music under the influence of DJ Screw featuring David Dove (trombone) and Lucas Gorham (guitar, lap steel). David and Lucas celebrated this CD release Sunday May 30th at Resonant Interval – a concert series (“Sideways Shows For A Straight Laced City”) that features Houston’s experimental, electronic and improvising artists. David is the director of Nameless Sound, a presenting organization that, in addition to bringing experimental musicians from around the world to Houston, offers music instruction to young people in the public schools, community centers, and homeless shelters. Screwed Anthologies is a “disjointed exhibition” initially conceived at Labotanica (an experimental laboratory for art and performance located in the historic Third Ward) featuring music and mixed media performances inspired by the “screwed and chopped” music of the formidable DJ Screw. The venue for the Resonant Interval performance was an empty storefront located a few doors away from a cool wine and beer bar with its own show on its walls of lovely and haunting photographs of New Orleans. Once again, the space was filled with people ready to take in the music.

Throughout David and Lucas’ set, excerpts of DJ Screw’s music were cued and superimposed over the sometimes (but not always) heavily processed sound of David’s trombone and Lucas’ lap steel and guitar. “Under the influence…” is the tag to this project, but legacy or homage did not seem to drive the actual improvising in performance (although both David and Lucas created sounds that harkened to the slow tempos, shifted pitches and soulful timbres of DJ Screw’s mixes). The disparate qualities of each sound (including the stray transmissions of DJ Screw) hung in the air like parts of a mobile (or a collection of Duchamp ready-mades) creating an experience where one seemed to hear each component to the music as an individual entity sitting in its own time and space, even as the music unfolded in the context of a duo (trio?) improvisation. The influence of Houston born Pauline Oliveros was apparent, along with the sounds of Houston's birds, traffic, and weather. I am excited to hear (via bootlegging or perhaps another CD-R or two…) how this music develops on the road. David and Lucas are current touring Screwed Anthologies throughout the South and East Coast. You can get the tour dates here.

Summer Visions

2010-05-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

Third Ward, Houston, TX

2010-05-15T15:21:00.001-07:00

(Above Photos) Art by The Flower Man, Third Ward, Houston, TX.

(Above Photo) Sculpture by Bert Long.

First Days Of Summer (Work In Progress)

2010-05-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

This piece utilizes recordings I've made of my new neighborhood (birds, bugs, wind, passing cars and planes), wind chimes, and kalimba. This might be the first in a series of tracks I create using "field recordings" of various locations in Houston.

The title is a working title. We'll see where this leads.

First Days Of Summer

Copyright 2010 Beckeresque Music (ASCAP). Composed, recorded, mixed, and edited by Chris Becker.

H-Town

2010-04-30T08:50:00.001-07:00

Apologies to Matana Roberts who first took a photo of this sign for her blog entry about Houston and its creative community. After seeing the inside of Huston's, I now understand why she chose it.

Video excerpt from The Other Shoe

2010-04-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

Choreography by Sasha Soreff. Score by Chris Becker.

This excerpt features Lenae Harris on cello and myself on percussion and Kaoss pad. The track is a combination of improvised passages and performance (on both cello and the Kaoss pad) along side heavily edited audio. While composing and recording tracks, I tried to maintain a tension between these two extremes - live "in the moment" playing vs scored and/or heavily edited passages. The raw and the cooked. The intuitive and the intellectual. I was listening to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and piano , Nine Inch Nails (Ghosts, The Slip), and Stravinsky (Les Noces).

You can download the whole score if you like. Check the links to your left.

VooDooTek: An Interview with Lawrence Sieberth

2010-03-07T06:17:00.001-08:00

Interview by Chris Becker

“I’ve always considered music to be a bridge to the spirit world…” Lawrence Sieberth

After moving from New Orleans to New York City, I managed to stay connected to keyboardist / composer Lawrence Sieberth thanks to the Internet and email keeping him posted on my music activities. My first memory of Larry is hearing him on piano performing his 1995 tribute concert Booker and Black at the Contemporary Arts Center which celebrated the music of New Orleans musicians pianist James Booker and drummer James Black with projected visuals by artist Jon Graubarth (Jon created the artwork for my CD Saints & Devils). More recently, Larry emailed to say he thought I might dig his latest CD Arkipelago and could hear the whole thing streaming on his website www.musikbloc.com. I downloaded the mp3 version, eventually got a copy the CD, and for several weeks listened to Arkipelago at least once a day. I just couldn’t get enough of the music and the production which reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s So, Jon Hassell’s City: Works of Fiction, and other recordings that artfully combine (to quote writer musician Michael Veal): “...the traditional conception of “note-based” music and the potentials of sound recording as an aesthetic medium on its own terms.” Larry is firmly grounded in the piano playing traditions of New Orleans. And Arkipelago will surprise some fans of that music and expand their perception of what “New Orleans” music is and has the potential to be.

Chris Becker: Where were you born?

Larry Sieberth: I was born in Detroit but moved to Baton Rouge when I was 5 - stayed in Baton Rouge until I went to Loyola University in New Orleans at the age of 20. Baton Rouge is culturally challenged. Fortunately there were several people that inspired and encouraged me in my musical development. (Trumpeter) Lee Fortier was a great musical inspiration for me as well as for many of the wonderful musicians to come out of Baton Rouge. (Clarinetist) Alvin Batiste was another major figure that I had the pleasure of knowing at Southern University.

CB: Your CD Arkipelago combines synth programming, extended through-composed compositions that include sudden unexpected breaks and rhythmic changes, and real-time “in the moment” improvisation. The title track (featuring Joo Kraus on trumpet) and the track Le Serpente Volant (featuring Ed Peterson on saxophone) are two examples of what I’m describing.

Can you talk about how you recorded those two particular tracks? Did you provide any specific instructions to Joo or Ed before tracking their performances? Or was that not necessary given your familiarity with their each musician’s approach to improvising?

LS: If I can backtrack a bit it will help help explain the way this project materialized. Over the last couple of decades I've been part of 'free' improvisational collaborations with other musicians, dancers and visual artists - the driving force of these performances has sometimes been spontaneous, a response to visual imagery or prerecorded tracks. There is a range as to what the word 'improvisation' implies - playing 'changes', manipulating the form, responding to the moment, etc. are all ways of perceiving the options inherent in improvisational music - all idioms and musical combinations of personalities have a built in set of expectations, manifest as compositions, styles, forms, tonal centers, etc. even when it is not predetermined. when the musician is faced with the option to create something new without preconceptions the creative mind is opened, allowed to connect with a communal state of being as opposed to reaching into the bag of tricks that our intellect builds - not to throw away that bag of tricks but to transcend it - for me, these situations have been some of the most joyful musical experiences of my career. This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed arranging and composing in the traditional sense. I like the balance between the two extremes - in truth, however, it can be self-indulgent and not something I want to listen to all the time. The 'quality' of the music, albeit quite subjective, can range from 'totally happening' to 'totally boring' whether I'm a musical participant or just a listener – it’s hard to convey why some 'noise' can be inspirational.

Arkipelago is the result of many performances of an ever changing group i assembled over several years called VooDooTek - the objective was to start with a blank canvas and draw upon the talents of the musicians assembled at the time - the idea was for everyone to contribute musical ideas to the direction of the music - responding and being open to the unexpected - whenever I felt the music had run its course I would abruptly change the musical context or mood. With electronics it is easier to cut through the volume of sound. The one prerequisite of the musicians was listening - for me a most important quality of musicianship. All the tracks on the CD started off as through composed synth soundtracks – soundscapes might be a better analogy - a combination of textures, industrial loops, otherworldly sounds - sometimes empty space - very sculptural - the charts are diagrams with emotional directives, sometimes a bass line, sometimes a tonal center - an integral part was the click that signaled sections and tempos that was removed - the core group, myself on more synths, Doug Belote on drums, Nori Naraoka on bass and Makuni Fukada on guitar, played with the prerecorded tracks - it was important for them to perceive those tracks as part of the improvised structure rather than a composition - since i was also incorporating more synth sounds and textures it was naturally impossible to separate what was virtual and what was live - so the whole track seems improvised but compacted due to its composition directives - most takes were the second take. Joo Kraus added his part in Germany and sent it back to me in New Orleans - I had played with him at a jazz festival and we really hit it off. I gave him no directions and the track you hear is virtually edit free.

Ed Peterson was present during the original takes - the other musicians were added later as I fortunately was asked to play with them on other concerts here in New Orleans - it was very important for me to find the right musicians as I very rarely influenced anybody's musical contributions - their contributions are unique and personal - even i had to leave my expectations at the door.

CB: Another thing I love about Arkipelago is how your mixes create a surreal sense of space and time similar to what one hears from the best of contemporary electronica and rock producers. Are there musicians and/or producers outside of the “jazz” world that inspired Arkipelago?

LS: I have had many influences throughout my life both musical and not - musically speaking I would say this project could be described as Bitches Brew in the 21st century with a little Joe Zawinul, Toru Takemitsu, Morton Subotnik, Peter Gabriel and Ornette Coleman thrown into the gumbo pot - not your usual New Orleans influences. New Orleans' music is usually associated with Louis Armstrong, Wynton Marsalis, etc. but there is a more adventuresome spirit that unfortunately goes very unnoticed here in New Orleans. I felt it a goal to reveal something entirely different. One of the greatest comments (about Arkipelago) was given to me by the wonderful New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley: "It is its own soundtrack."

The goal for me with all creative music is to take the listener on a journey. It is more than entertainment. This consequently calls upon the musicians to take you on a journey. I think we hit the mark with this project. The studio was essential in the creation of Arkipelago. Sometimes the basic tracks laid dormant for quite sometime until I stumbled across the right musician to finish the track. I have a wonderful relationship with Michia Kachkachishvili (the engineer) who contributed much to this project especially with the spatial placement of sounds. Sonic space is important. I let him do his 'magic' and then tweek. Makes my job as producer easy. Knowing when to let others contribute is essential to being a good producer. It could have been a mixing nightmare with the massive number of tracks and density of the music. I perceive music with an architectural bent - add and subtract - everything is connected. A reviewer of this CD equated Arkipelago as “fractal music” - I like this - the parts and the whole are inseparable.

CB: Vocalist Amit Chatterjee’s performance on the track Samsara Rosa has a powerful devotional quality to it. New Orleans is home to some very powerful spiritual practices. Did any particular spiritual or religious theology inspire the music you composed on Arkipelago?

LS: I’ve always considered music to be a bridge to the spirit world - the composition Samsara Rosa sat for quite a while, incomplete, as a world groove framework. I had experimented with keyboards and other instrumentalists but nothing seemed to work for me. I have a virtual plug-in that had some Indian vocal phrase samples and I liked the way it sounded but obviously there was nothing alive with the samples. I found that Badal Roy, whom I've performed with was coming to New Orleans with Amit Chatterjee – and knowing his work with Zawinul set the wheels in motion. I contacted him and played the piece for him and he was very happy to contribute to the project. What you hear is his first take – unedited. Since our three-hour session was finished in fifteen minutes, I suggested to him that we improvise an intro as a duet - that is also the first take unedited. I was amazed at how the musical pieces fell into place. I admit to being a novice of Indian music theory…all I can say is that we built the bridge to the spirit world on that one. Much about music is extending beyond one's self as if the person becomes the conduit for some otherworldly experience. Music connects us to the possibility of answers to the questions that are unanswerable. Spirituality is as unique as one's musical voice.

CB: There’s a lot of hope for the future now in New Orleans given the Saints 2010 Super Bowl win, the election of a new mayor, and a positive assessment by its citizens of the tremendous about of rebuilding that has been accomplished since hurricane Katrina – although clearly so much still needs to be done. What are your hopes for the future for musicians who currently call New Orleans home?

LS: New Orleans has always been a place for musicians to work. There is a ceiling here, and the world's perception of New Orleans music is somewhat narrow - i.e an extension of Louis Armstrong. It has definitely been hit by the economic crisis that the rest of the country is feeling. Each of us has to weigh the options. Being a musician anywhere is a risky proposition.

Arkipelago along with many other of Larry’s CDs can be heard streaming and purchased at his website www.musikbloc.com

Upcoming performances by Larry Sieberth including Jazz Fest (April 23 through May 2, 2010) dates:

April 23 - Harrahs - 8pm - Joints Jumpin: A New Orleans R&B revue
April 23 - Bombay club 10pm - w/ Leslie Smith
April 24 - Bombay club - 9:30pm - w/ Phillip Manuel
April 25 - Jazzfest w/ Keely Smith
April 27 - Blue Nile - 10pm - Neslort
April 29 - Jazzfest - Topsy Chapman
April 29 - Jazzfest - Lady Sing the Blues
April 30 - Harrahs - 8pm - Joints Jumpin: A New Orleans R&B revue
May 2 - Jazzfest w/ Germaine Bazzle
May 2 - Jazzfest w/ Phillip Manuel

Interview with Michael Veal

2010-01-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

Interview by Chris Becker

Writer and musician Michael Veal is the author of Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae and Fela: Life and Times of an African Musical Icon..

Michael's band Aqua Ife plays Jan 30, 2010, 10pm at The Shrine (2271 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd, NYC) and February 12, 2010, 8:30 PM at Theatre Romain Rolland (Sons d’Hiver Festival) 18, Rue Eugène Varlin, Paris (Villejiuf), Ile-de-France.

Michael Veal’s book Dub had a profound impact on me as a composer when it was released in 2007. There are a lot of composers today who talk about the influence of club music on their work. But the influence of Jamaica – and specifically the innovations of producers/engineers/artists who pioneered many recording and compositional techniques we take for granted these days – is often absent from the discussion. Veal’s book not only connects dub to today’s popular music, but to early to mid 20th century and 21st century forms of electronic composition as well.

Music knows no boundaries, but you don’t know what you don’t know. Michael Veal's Dub brings Jamaica’s contributions to contemporary sonic culture to light.

I've also posted some sound samples of dub music. Readers unfamiliar with the genre might find them helpful for reference.

Chris Becker: Your book Dub provides a history and musical analysis of the music including a section entitled “Studio Technology and Compositional Strategies of the Dub Mix” where you list and explain the compositional and recording techniques that distinguish dub as a genre of music distinct from jazz, rock and roll, and/or classical composition. Dub’s influence on popular music is made crystal clear as a result of this analysis. But what I also took away from your book was how my own compositional concepts have precedent in the work of dub’s pioneers - in part because I use the recording studio as a compositional tool. I also realized that techniques and strategies of dub could be utilized to produce music that might not even sound remotely like dub!

Did your study of dub reveal any musical or conceptual tools that you have since utilized in your own music (with Aqua Ife or other projects)? If yes, can you elaborate?

Michael Veal: Dub is one of the forms of music that - in its ambient aspects - helped me appreciate the sublimities of what could be achieved in the studio. And I love the way that the minimal techno people in Berlin and Koln have codified certain aspects of those Jamaican advances. I use some of those techniques in my music with the Aqua Ife small unit, but currently in a very subtle, embryonic form. We haven't released anything yet but we've been working on a CD project and I hope to have something out in 2010. The goal is to find a fertile meeting ground between the traditional conception of "note-based" music and the potentials of sound recording as an aesthetic medium on its own terms. Someone like Daniel Lanois achieves this by approaching the studio very self-consciously as a musical instrument. I'm sure that this way of thinking about things will increasingly have transformative implications for improvised music; in fact, it is already happening!

Over time, some of those concepts will also infuse the sound of the Aqua Ife big band. That band has a funky, Afrobeat-jazz sound right now, and over time I plan to take that sound on a journey into the same imaginative realms that I associate with Nathaniel Mackey, Octavia Butler, Italo Calvino, Samuel Delany - people like that. That vision still requires a lot of body-rocking groove music, but filtered through a more diverse sonic palette, in order to stimulate the imagination in various ways. I love the colors of Stravinsky and I also understand the region of the imagination that Herbie was operating in when he made recordings such as "Empyrean Isles." The ambient aspects of studio production will increasingly be a crucial component of that palette.

CB: You mention in the introduction to Dub that one reason there hasn’t been a book length study of dub might be an ambivalence among writers or musicians to treat a music that is both process oriented and sensual to any kind of musicological analysis. During your research, the question that was put to you more than once was: “Does this music really support theorizing?”

Did you experience any degree of suspicion or criticism from Jamaican or U.S. musicians while researching or after the publication of Dub? And there been any ambivalence or confusion in the academic community regarding the book?

MV: Jamaica is a hard place to do interviewing in general - not necessarily because of intellectual issues, but more because the average musician thinks there are millions to be made from selling their story (I call this "post-Bob Syndrome"). Fortunately for me, the producers and engineers I spoke with were generous with their time and happy to speak with me.

As far as the response of American and European academics, most of the reviews have been very positive. Given that most people engage with Jamaican music via the lenses of Rastafari or resistance, I think there's been some grumbling from readers who resist engaging with the music from the conceptual standpoint that I'm taking. Actually, I feel that all of the religious, spiritual and/or political themes are present in my book, but they are sublimated through the technological narrative, and I feel that is one of the book's most successful contributions.

I believe that when it comes to writing about music, great music deserves great words. I don't want to play into the racist/essentialist trap that says black music can only be appreciated from the gut. It can also be appreciated from the head. And just because we approach it from the head, that doesn't mean we can't continue to appreciate it in the gut! Words themselves can be appreciated in the gut, and can in fact open up new ways for the gut to appreciate the music. I plan to continue this approach in my upcoming book about Miles Davis, which is called Technotopia 1969.

CB: In 21st century Jamaica, has dub been replaced forever by ragga and/or other forms dancehall music? Is it a genre now regarded as music our parents listened to?

MV: Yes and no. As a discrete genre, it is associated with the 1970s and early 1980s. But as I mentioned in the book, the innovations of dub have largely been absorbed into the "common practice" of Jamaican production technique. So, like any historically-specific genre, it has made its contributions to the ongoing evolution of Jamaican popular music.

CB: The life and music of Fela Kuti is receiving a level of unprecedented attention in the U.S. thanks in part to the Broadway show Fela! (Directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones). Music (Afrobeat) as a catalyst for political change is being celebrated not only on Broadway but also on U.S. cable TV shows like The Colbert Report.

You quote Lee “Scratch” Perry in Dub: “When you hear dub you fly on the music.. If it wasn’t for the music, oppression and taxes would kill you. They send taxes and oppression to hold you, a government to tell you what to do and use you like a robot. So they will torment you to death. So when you hear dub you hide from the f---ers there.”

In performance, both dub and afrobeat have the power to affect the political and spiritual consciousness of its listeners.

Has the role of Afrobeat changed since Fela named it back in the 1970s in Nigeria? Was it initially a means for battling political oppression and now more a music for achieving more broadly defined states of liberation and transcendence?

MV: Who's to say? I don't want to wax dogmatically about it. Ten different people will probably experience the same music in ten different ways and consequently have ten different interpretations! Even in Fela's hands, it meant different things at different times; it was variously a means of battling political oppression, a funky good-time dance music, a counter-cultural soundtrack to Anglophone West African bohemia, and a "jazz workshop" for a master big band composer/arranger who also just happened to be a political dissident. It still takes on those various roles, in the hands of different practitioners. At the Shrine, there was Fela's core audience and his devotees, and then there were other people who dug the music but didn't necessarily relate to Fela's politics or lifestyle. And there were those who primarily engaged with the music ideologically and for them, the musical vehicle itself might not have even been so crucially important. The music will probably be all of these things, always. Meanwhile, we have to wait and see what the commercialization of Fela (via the Broadway play and the proposed film bios) means for the future of Afrobeat. I'm sure that there will be classical composers referencing Fela's work, there will be "Afrobeat" patches on Casio keyboards, ad everything in between (including Coca-Cola commercials). That was inevitable once the broad recognition began to be granted.

CB: Let's talk about your Aqua Ife Big Band. I love the chart writing on L.G.C. Odopa (note: You can hear this composition and others on Aqua Ife’s MySpace page).

MV: Thank you!

CB: Can you tell me more about who is writing what for that band? Are the compositions all yours or collaborative arrangements among the dozen musicians who make up the big band?

MV: We have about two CDs worth of material and until now, the compositions and arrangements (horns & rhythm) have been mine. Actually, we cover a Wayne Shorter tune ("Super Nova") and a Mal Waldron/Steve Lacy tune ("Snake Out"), but I re-arranged them. In the future I hope the other players will contribute ideas as we develop a more stable personnel and get more regular work. It's hard to keep a 12-piece band going, believe me!

Dub: A (very) brief history...

2010-01-22T09:47:00.000-08:00

This entry was created to accompany my interview with author and musician Michael Veal (author of Dub). Readers unfamiliar with dub as a musical genre can check out the musical examples I've posted below for reference. The sound samples are posted for educational purposes only. A ton of great dub music is available via mainstream outlets like Amazon and iTunes as well as via smaller labels you can track down on the internet.

Note: I will probably tweak and update this page over time with more detailed information and additional music samples. For now, I hope it reads like a beginner's guide to the music.

Here's a great early example of producer King Tubby's early experiments with dub production featuring the band The Dynamites: Kingston Town Dub. Recording date is probably 1972 or 1973. Note the fragmentation of the original vocal track - a poetic technique Veal writes about in his book.

Dub producers often take an existing completed track of music and - using the recording studio - rearrange individual parts, add various effects to the tracks, and even compose new musical parts essentially remixing the song into something new. The compositional game played when dealing with the preexisting material is one of the many things that fascinates me about dub.

Here's a song from Massive Attack's album Protection, Better Things (featuring Tracey Thorn) It's a very dub inspired track, but not necessarily "dub."

Now check out dub producer The Mad Professor's version of Better Things from the album No Protection (The Mad Professor vs Massive Attack): Better Things (Bumper Ball Dub)

Producer Lee Scratch Perry at Black Ark Studios (photo by Adrian Boot courtesy of UrbanImageTv)

Cow Thief Skank is but one example of producer Lee "Scratch" Perry's wonderfully bizarre productions. Veal examines the history, mixing styles, and musical innovations of Perry along with several other Jamaican producers in his book. Cow Thief Skank assembles portions from at least four entirely different tracks of music into a poetic collage that reminds me of the tape sliced compositions of the pioneers of musique concrete.

My understanding is that this particular track was not produced at Perry's legendary Black Ark Studios. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me in the comments section.

Sound System (photo by Adrian Boot courtesy of UrbanImageTv)

Dub was / is conceived to be played through outdoor sound systems for long nights of partying and dancing. Above is an image of some gear from a sound system. However, in addition to high volume outdoor broadcast, there is a strain of dub that is designed for more contemplative, interior listening atmospheres (i.e. "headphone music).

Public Image Limited (photo by Adrian Boot courtesy of UrbanImageTv)

Careering comes from PIL's second heavily dub influenced album Second Edition. This band featured former Sex Pistol's vocalist (and reggae freak) John Lydon on vocals and the formidable self-taught Jah Wobble on electric bass. PIL Guitarist Keith Levene handled much of the actual arranging and production of PIL's "post rock" recordings inspired by both punk rock at its most avant-garde as well as the music of the Jamaican producers Veal writes about in Dub. Other bands who expounded upon the compositional strategies of dub include The Clash, Pere Ubu, and Cabaret Voltaire (there are many more).

Kreyol

2010-01-18T05:58:00.000-08:00

Haitiaction.net

...a volcano in yuh head!

2010-01-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

Jelly Dub (mix in progress)

"Jelly" as in...um...I am still trying to decide on a title for this mix in progress, and I was listening to Jelly Roll Morton this evening. This mix is part of a series of collaborative studio composed sketches inspired by dub music and features Jeremiah Hosea on the bass.

2010 will not be boring. On the blog front, please stay tuned for another triptych of interviews with writers, musicians, and visual artists who have inspired me of late. If you enjoyed the posted interviews I've done with Ned Sublette, Matana Roberts, and Douglas Henderson, I guarantee you will find the next round just as stimulating. More details to come.

March 1, 2010, Parlour Games (choreography by Tze Chun) will be presented as a work-in-progress here in NYC at The Flea Theater in Tribeca (41 White Street btwn Broadway & Church). Our initial performances of the work at The Tank were very well received, and Tze is now working on an evening length site-specific version. My score for Parlour Games is for piano - some of it composed, some of it improvised, and some of it chopped up and collaged to create dream/nightmare like textures - and features performances by Daniel Kelly and Pedro Tsividis.

In addition to Tze's wonderful company, working with Daniel and Pedro has been a pleasure as they each bring such unique concepts and technique to the piano - an instrument I wrestled with as a composition major many (?) years ago.

And I'm continuing work on my guitar quintet (four guitars, electric or acoustic, and one bass, electric or acoustic). The guitar is an instrument I'd like to come to grips with at some point in my lifetime and the guitar ensemble is a mode of expression that I believe is still very ripe for development by non-guitar playing composers (God bless the guitarists who play our stuff!).

Some pieces you write very quickly and then move on. Others simmer for long periods of time and are the better for it. It's a weird process and I don't pretend to understand it.

Much more soon...

Parlour Games

2009-12-07T09:51:00.001-08:00

Parlour Games. Choreography by Tze Chun. Performed by Jules Bakshi, Tony Bordonaro, Elisa Davis, Eileen Farrell, Meghan Frederick, Renuka Hines, Katherine Richardson, Dana Thomas, and Ilana Weber. Original score composed by Chris Becker. Performed at The Tank, December 4 and 5, 2009.

Gentle from Parlour Games (Daniel Kelly is the pianist).

All photos by Alex Birdsall.

Beautiful photo...

2009-12-07T06:48:00.000-08:00

Installation by Douglas Henderson.

Music for 100 Carpenters (Installation)
Nov. 13 to Dec. 20
BOILER @ Pierogi, 191 North 14th Street,
Williamsburg Brooklyn.
T.718.599.2144
www.pierogi2000.com

Parlour Games at The Tank Dec 4 and 5

2009-11-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

December 4 and 5, 2009
Parlour Games
Choreography by Tze Chun
Original Score by Chris Becker
@The Tank
354 West 45th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
December 4 and 5, 2009
9:30 pm
Admission: $12

Parlour Games is a collaboration between myself and choreographer Tze Chun. The choreography is inspired in part by Victorian era parlour games as well the architecture and environment of late 19th century / early 20th century New York City.

The music for Parlour Games is mainly piano with the harmonic, rhythmic (definitely rhythmic), and melodic language coming from some of my favorite composers - Debussy, Satie, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Joplin, even a little bit of Mahler. The score is prerecorded, and features my good friend Daniel Kelly on the keys. While some of the performances are straight forward, others have been processed and edited to create some truly crazy cut-up textures. The challenge for me was to create a consistent thread throughout the pieces - a vibe that evokes the Victorian era and parlour games that inspired Tze's choreography.

I've also utilized a lot of Foley-like sounds (my own recordings) including the creaking stairs and slamming doors of a six unit turn of the century building as a part of the mix.

Hope some of you can come check this out. Have a great holiday.

Wish You Were Here

2009-11-18T17:13:00.001-08:00

Douglas Henderson's Music for 100 Carpenters at The BOILER. Photo by David Henderson (from atop the boiler!)

The installation version of the piece (which includes video shot from above with wide angle lens capturing the performance AND a five channel surround mix of the piece) is up at The BOILER until December 20th. BOILER hours are Wed. - Sun., noon - 6pm, 191 N. 14th St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (bet. Berry and Wythe)

Interview with Douglas Henderson

2009-10-24T17:26:00.001-07:00

Interview by Chris Becker
Right Photo: Composer Douglas Henderson

To complete my triptych of interviews that began back in September with author Ned Sublette followed by saxophonist, composer Matana Roberts, I bring you an interview with my friend composer Douglas Henderson. I am participating in a performance of Doug’s Music For 100 Carpenters next month (November 7th and 8th, 8pm, at Peirogi Gallery's BOILER space in Williamsburg, NY) and I thought an interview about the piece would interest and provide a "way in" for those unfamiliar his work.

Douglas Henderson's work straddles a line in between the categories of music, sculpture, and dance and theater. He has presented works at the Whitney Museum at Altria, Dance Theater Workshop, and PS122 in New York and at Inventionen and daadgalerie in Berlin, among many others. Doug describes Music For 100 Carpenters as “a theatrical surround-sound music performance, enlisting 100 skilled and unskilled tradespeople. Prying at Stockhausen’s convolution of rhythm and timbre, 100 hammers, 100 blocks of wood and some 10,000 nails of varying sizes are brought to bear in a real-time, real-world articulation of complex computer synthesis. Under the guidance of job supervisors, thousands of hammer blows become waves of tonal murmur, threaded with rustlings of nails and occasional snarls of righteous indignation. The performers are organized into work crews with lists of tasks and closely timed schedules, and arranged in a circle around the audience. Toolbelts, sweat and lunchboxes are part of the score.”

If you are interested in participating in one or both performances of Music For 100 Carpenters, you can email me, leave a comment, and/or visit the 100 Carpenters website.

Chris Becker: Over the course of the performance, Music for 100 Carpenters generates an incredible dynamic range of sound using what you yourself describe as a “limited sonic palate” (i.e. hammering nails, shaking bags of nails, opening and closing lunchboxes, etc). As a composer, do you yourself hear the potential for all manner of expression from the “non musical” sounds of tools, household objects, and/or the natural world (rain, wind through leaves, etc)?

Douglas Henderson: I generally work with base source material; partly because it is much more susceptible to surprising transformations (especially in this technique of multiplication, which I'm much taken with), and partly because it inevitably has a heavier psychological wallop. Working with the stuff we all grew up with, from birth, affords a lot of suggestion, which, manipulated, becomes a strong part of the subject matter of the composition. Psychology, or more phenomenology, is something that can be played with on the level of musical composition, and that fascinates me.

CB: There’s a spatial component to Music for 100 Carpenters that is hard to explain on paper. In your description of the piece, you write “… (it) unfolds as a moving sculpture, using sound to tilt the architecture of the venue.” The audience is more or less surrounded by the carpenters and the sounds they’re producing over the course of the piece. Other works of yours that I’m familiar with – multichannel compositions using prerecorded sounds – are played to listening audiences seated in concentric circles facing outwards with several speakers placed around perimeter of the venue. Is your use of space (spaces?) – i.e. where the individual sounds occur and where the listeners are located –a means for sensitizing your listeners’ ears to sound?

DH: I would say that tuning the listener is a central part of the work, both in terms of space and sound. Maybe this is one of the things that distinguishes the identity of the thing, and perhaps defines it outside the realm of music (but maybe not...).

In this piece the carpenters are arranged around the audience, in 10 groups, so I have in some way a 10 channel surround system (with considerable slop, as I don't expect any sort of precision of execution from the mass of carpenters). I would love to put the audience in concentric circles, as this maximizes the dimensional imaging, but we don't have space in the gallery, and the audience will be in 2 sets of rows facing opposite walls, the best compromise I can manage. In this piece, space, location, direction and sonic architecture are nearly the totality of the composition. Each performer can make only a few sounds, and while the multiplication of those sounds is a large part of the magic trick, the main is about location, mass, volume and so on. "Where is it? How thick is it?", these are the things I'm trying to get the people to perceive as variables for composition, and to experience the organization of time in those terms.

CB: Music for 100 Carpenters began as a prerecorded work overlaying several tracks of the sound of one person hammering nails. Since then, the piece developed into a live performance using as many as 50 people. And November 7 and 8 at Peirogi Gallery, you have 100 people (carpenters) on hand to perform the piece. What are some of the qualities to the live performance of Music for 100 Carpenters that you could never realize in its original prerecorded single carpenter version?

DH: The recorded version was actually only an accidental discovery, when a “solo” button was inadvertently released and something strange came out of the speakers. From hearing one person pounding some nails into a board I suddenly heard 40, and the sound was completely transformed, I could no longer recognize the source. The piece was born at that instant. I then used the canned version as way to compose the 50 carpenter piece, which was never intended as anything other than a proof-of-concept, i.e. that the same magic trick could take place in the real world. I was always shooting for the 100 carpenter version, but never had the venue or the money to make it happen until now.

The piece is designed as a set of orders, or scheduled tasks, in the same way that a large construction site is organized. No one has the complete picture, everybody just puts their heads down and does their bit of the work; somehow a building emerges out of all that unknowing, and all that lack of communication between the trades, the architect, the general contractor. I thought this was an interesting set of boundaries for a score. The live iteration, fraught with error, unpredictable following times and so on, completes the thing, or corrects its inherent clumsiness, because the commands possible in the score are very clumsy. If everybody performed exactly what is on the paper it would be kind of blocky (as is the recorded sketch), like a low bit-depth digital converter; the human element is a kind of “dither”: noise introduced to make the signal clearer.

CB: There’s a quote from the painter Piet Mondrian at the beginning of composer Morton Feldman’s essay “Crippled Symmetry”: “I enjoyed painting flowers, not bouquets, but a single flower at a time, in order that I might better express it’s plastic structure.” I immediately thought of your multi-channel piece (pages of illustrations) which uses thousands of recordings you made of brushing two leaves together to realize a multi-tracked, complete and leafy “tree." What did this recording process – similar to Mondrian painting a single flower at a time to create a bouquet – reveal to you in terms of structuring an imagined tree?

DH: A slightly lateral reply: I’m doing some sort of granular process in these pieces. But where the definition of granular synthesis assumes (or perhaps mandates) that the grains have no particular identity, I am interested in putting an individual face on every grain. So for example, in (pages of illustrations) I made hundreds and hundreds of individual recordings of brushing the leaves together - in some way I was getting to know the tree one leaf at a time.

I see the algorithms used to manipulate grains streams and clouds as some form of government - you make a law and many people will follow it, to some extent. It can be something rather minor, like, “don’t spit on the sidewalk”. Some people will disobey, but you will see a citywide trend of less slime on the walkways. This is my metaphor for granular synthesis; and it then becomes interesting to zoom in on individual grains, to give them some meaning in their legal structure. Music for 100 Carpenters is very much involved in this metaphor, with a simple set of rules and hierarchies guiding the performance, and the individual sounds and micro-rhythms being very recognizable, until they form a cloud mass and take off.

CB: You describe Music for 100 Carpenters as “Prying at Stockhausen’s line between rhythm and timbre…” You lived and created work in New York City for a long time before relocating to Berlin, Germany. I realize I’m generalizing here, but what sort of reaction are you getting from Berliners when they hear and/or see your work? Is anything lost in the translation? Or are there elements that they respond to more immediately than New Yorkers?

DH: Europe, as has been observed by many more eloquent observers that I, is different. Morton Feldman said, “..in Europe, if you have a job, you’re an amateur.” This is very true, and makes it hard to perform Music for 100 Carpenters over there, because the piece is so much about this very American flexibility in the labor market. Almost every artist or musician I know in New York has at one time or another been a carpenter to make some extra dough; the piece is largely a tribute to those “tool bag days” which are familiar, not just to artists. In Germany, every profession requires a training period of 2 - 3 years before one is permitted to practice; paperwork, licenses, insurance and so on. So people don’t do a lot of different jobs, and if you declare yourself a composer or artist it is somewhat shameful to admit that you have another source of income (though most people do...). The effect on people’s perceptions is substantial, and I bump into some incredulity when I tell people that I actually make my own sculptures, do my own audio engineering, compose music and tie my own shoelaces. One curator said to me, “it is not possible that you can be really good at such different tasks. You must choose one, and only one, field.” (He has since lost his job and is frantically struggling to find a way to pay his rent, with his one, and only one, skill).

So there is a lot of skepticism of Americans for that reason, and also a lot of interest, because Americans are apt to approach problems very differently. Discussing (pages of illustrations) with a group of mainly German electroacoustic composers at the Technischen Universitaet, someone asked me, “What is the structure of the piece?” (I think he was worried that there wasn’t any - a cardinal sin of course). I hadn’t really approached the work from that angle. I was more concerned with the conceptual/perceptual problems. But the answer was very simple, and I said, “The structure is the wind.” The man was clearly hoping for something less poetic, and I had to explain that I studied a particular 14 minute stretch of wind gusts I had recorded, analyzing them for speed, acceleration, pitch alteration in my ear canals, how leaves react at the windward and leeward edges of a tree, etc. That map became the score for the piece. He was shocked - it wasn’t in his way of thinking at all. He wanted something rigorous, or he wanted me to fail - it never occurred to him that a structure could be both rigorous and completely outside his analytical framework. I had to repeat my magic formula three times before anyone would believe me. Then we all had a good laugh.

Mind you, I don’t see these differences as negative in any way, they are just differences. And I think my success in Germany is partly down to the alienness of my background. The corollary to Feldman’s observation is that in America, artists are regarded as dangerous slackers who refuse to get a real job; while Europeans view the calling as a noble one and they have great respect for the sacrifice and effort required. A cop at the German passport control asked me what I was doing in Germany, and I replied that I am a sound artist (Klangkunstler). He said, “Oh, that’s wonderful! Are you doing more in the way of installations or concerts? Berlin is a great place for sound art, I wish you all success in your work.” I wager this will never, ever happen to me at U.S. Customs.

Music For 100 Carpenters

2009-10-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Photo by Douglas Henderson.

Thank you everyone who took time to read my interview with saxophonist, composer Matana Roberts. And if you haven’t already, you might find my interview with author Ned Sublette interesting as well.

Soon, to complete the triptych, I will post an interview with my friend composer Douglas Henderson. I am participating in a performance of Doug’s Music For 100 Carpenters next month (November 7th and 8th, 8pm, at Peirogi Gallery's BOILER space in Williamsburg, NY) and I thought an interview about the piece would be of interest and provide a "way in" for those unfamiliar his work.

Doug’s work straddles some weird line in between the categories of music, sculpture, and dance and theater. He has presented works at the Whitney Museum at Altria, Dance Theater Workshop, and PS122 in New York and at Inventionen and daadgalerie in Berlin, among many others. Doug describes Music For 100 Carpenters as “a theatrical surround-sound music performance, enlisting 100 skilled and unskilled tradespeople. Prying at Stockhausen’s convolution of rhythm and timbre, 100 hammers, 100 blocks of wood and some 10,000 nails of varying sizes are brought to bear in a real-time, real-world articulation of complex computer synthesis. Under the guidance of job supervisors, thousands of hammer blows become waves of tonal murmur, threaded with rustlings of nails and occasional snarls of righteous indignation. The performers are organized into work crews with lists of tasks and closely timed schedules, and arranged in a circle around the audience. Toolbelts, sweat and lunchboxes are part of the score.”

If you’re interested in participating in one or both performances of Music For 100 Carpenters, feel free to email me, leave a comment, and/or visit http://www.douglashenderson.org/100Cdesc.html.

Mo later.

Interview With Matana Roberts

2009-10-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

Interview by Chris Becker
Photos by Owen Richards (top) and Brett Walker (b&w w/saxophone)

Saxophonist, composer, fanzine writer, and blogger Matana Roberts is the current artist in residence at Issue Project Room (NYC) where she is developing and presenting in a series of concerts material for her “large scale…sound narrative” COIN COIN. COIN COIN might be described as a multi-movement composition utilizing composed, improvised, and pre-recorded music along with elements of theater (projections, candles, chains) to give voice to a complex family history that extends from Louisiana to at least three other continents. Matana – a Chicago native – combines her Midwestern roots (including the influence of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians of which she is a member) with a very Southern-styled “collage” compositional technique to realize performances that (in Matana’s words) “…create an atmosphere where the people witnessing it feel enveloped into the experience.” Those words certainly describe the two COIN COIN performances I myself have witnessed, the most recent being last week (September 30) where Matana, on alto saxophone, clarinet, and vocals, was accompanied by drummer and percussionist Mike Pride.

Her recent CD The Chicago Project (2008) is a wonderfully varied collection of original compositions featuring Chicago musicians guitarist Jeff Parker (Chicago Underground Trio, Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble), bassist Josh Abrams (Josh Abrams Quartet), drummer Frank Rosaly (Ken Vandermark) and special guest tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. We talk a little bit about this recording in the interview that follows.

I first became aware of Matana’s work via her blog (Shadows of a People now called In The Midst of Memory) What I like about her writing is its immediacy and honesty whether she is providing details about her family ancestry or reacting to this country’s current confusions regarding race, gender, and class. Matana’s will to give voice to her experience as a creative artist in the 21st century, as well as to the history of her Southern, African, and European ancestors is one of the things that inspired me to reach out to her for this interview.

Please note: This interview was conducted and edited just before the untimely and tragic passing of Issue Project Room founder Suzanne Fiol. Matana is certainly not the only artist to speak highly of Suzanne, and I would like to express my sincere condolences to everyone who knew and loved her.

Chris Becker: As a composer and bandleader, can you talk about how you select musicians for a recording date or a Coin Coin performance? Do you compose with specific musicians in mind or do you go about the search and selection after the fact?

Matana Roberts: I like to compose with specific people in mind when I have the luxury to do so. Since I have been working on COIN COIN now for about 5 years as I re edit the work, I can pick and choose amongst sound makers that mean a lot to me not only as musicians but also as friends and almost honorary family. I put together The Chicago Project with every musician that is on that record in mind. I wanted it to be a very specific document about my Chicago roots and development and all of the people involved are people who made it possible for me to play at the level I am playing now.

The only exception on that record would be Frank Rosaly- Frank showed up in Chicago right after I left, but I wanted him on the record because I felt he represented the positive new influx of creative direction Chicago has been getting in the last 10 years or so, and I also just liked him as a person. I'm more interested in musicians as people first, sound makers second. If they are not compassionate and open and considerate as people, that means that their sound output will (to me) be just as cold as their probable personality in my opinion.

CB: Not to take anything away from the other musicians you play with, but one of the many exciting things about your CD The Chicago Project is the sound of Jeff Parker’s guitar playing alongside the sound of your alto saxophone. You each have a very distinctive sound that blends as well as contrasts with the other throughout the tracks. What do you anticipate musically from Jeff when he is playing with you?

MR: For whatever reason I have yet to figure out why Jeff and I have a very special musical connection that has always been apparent even in the little time we have played together. Maybe it’s because he has such big ears. He listens to some of everything and deals with the process of sound in so many different capacities - in collaborative groups, groups he leads, as a deejay. He's one of the busiest sidemen in creative music and so I just feel like he internalizes so much that allows him to connect with someone weird like me in a really empathetic and eerily intuitive sense. He's also just has an incredible big heart, the best laugh ever (Nicole Mitchell is a runner up to this though-her laugh comes from such an amazing wellspring of sound!) and speaks with such kindness about so many things, and knows how to speak on them with a tasteful brevity that I wish I could access more often.

He also has an incredible work ethic when it comes to dealing with the guitar and improvisation that I'm not sure many people are aware of. I personally think he's a bit too hard on himself creatively, but so am I, so maybe that's why we get along so well musically? He’s wonderful, I love him so much.

CB: Another treat on The Chicago Project are your three Birdhouse duets with Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone). I hear something new each time I listen to these tracks. Was there any discussion in advance between you two before recording the performances? Or was that even necessary?

MR: No discussion necessary beforehand, I just wanted to document myself getting "schooled" by a master in real time! Originally I wanted it to be a saxophone trio with myself, Fred and Von Freeman, as those two men represent so much for me as far as saxophone, Chicago and my development there but Von wasn't able to do it at the last minute and actually now in retrospect I was am so glad. Fred, 80 plus years old, was killing me in there! If it had been the double trouble of Von and Fred? Sheesh, I shudder to think on that...One time when I was playing at his Sunday night jam session Fred asked me to come by early the next week. As he was standing behind the bar getting things ready for the nights upcoming fun he turned on the stereo and blasted some classic Bird (Charlie Parker) recordings, talking to me about my sound and what he heard and what he didn’t hear in my sound that he heard in Bird’s sound that I needed to work on. There was a certain strength in the core of my sound that was hiding then. We did this ritual for a long time, really trying to put into words what the core of Bird’s sound was. It was hands down some of the best teaching I ever got about dealing with the saxophone. So when we were playing I was thinking a lot about those times-and named the tracks Birdhouse not only for that but also as homage to one of Fred's first clubs in Chicago that went by the same name. He has provided so many opportunities for inner city Chicago youth musicians who just needed somewhere safe to go that they'd stay off the streets and deal with music. Von too with his regular Tuesday night jam at the new apartment lounge. I owe of them a great deal....I hope to one day be able to provide the same kind of space for developing musicians.

CB: In a recent interview, you described your experience with elder musicians in Chicago: “…I felt like I was learning from artists who really lived their lives – like the way they learned how to play was by truly living life and very organically turning this into music.” This reminded me of something a friend of mine – a friend who teaches jazz guitar and composition in a University – said. He said once jazz loses its connection to “the street” it’s no longer jazz. Is there any way to teach a student, other than by example, how to live a life and turn it into music?

MR: Stay out of traditional music schools, would be my initial answer. I am a graduate of two by the way, and so I’m not trying to be a hypocrite here, I just have yet to see a music program that teaches people to be critical thinkers outside of trying to master their instruments. It might not be possible as there is so much that has to be focused on just dealing with the building blocks of music that there's just not the right time frame. The mastering of an instrument takes a lifetime. You will not learn a life time of mastery in a 4 to 6 year educational period. But you can learn in that 4 to 6 year period core intellectual ideas and values about the possibilities of the human experience that will last u a lifetime and will push your artistry forward if you have the wherewithal and freedom to blend the two (and it might be cheaper - music school is big business....)

On the flip side - I have had a lot of compassionate, energetic, passionate teachers within the box of "music education" and I would hate to say music school is a completely bad thing as its also allows real music masters who are also master educators (sometimes that’s not always one in the same) to have another way to support themselves and in the end support art and music (it’s all a cycle really). But I have also had my fair share of negative experiences within this framework partly because they could not classify my creativity. I think this is dangerous. I also find the diversity within a lot of these programs lacking and now see the residuals of this in the 21st century jazz framework looking kind of scary. But I mean whose fault is that really? For instance almost the entire jazz blogosphere reminds me of music school in that I rarely see any women trying to be a part of the discussion and rarely any folks of color. And I'm not quite sure if I should care in this post-Obama world we live in, but I don't know how I can contribute without just being naturally reactionary and this troubles me. I know there are folks out there blogging who are very aware of this, but few touch on it. Why is that?

At the same time, the idea of what it means to be a person of color in America is changing – it already was before Obama because of the complexities of 9/11. Now more than ever its time for a reexamination and redefinition of the idea of race as well as the idea of gender as it relates to the classification of the African American identified woman and lastly how this all relates to creativity. It can't be summed up to sound bites or the classic (in my opinion, tired) intellectual arts reactionism and generalizations of the last 30 years. My COIN COIN project has been helping me personally redefine some of these things...

Also, I don't know if it’s so much about Jazz's connection to the street per say as its connection to the struggle of the African American question? Again I am having to think of this along those lines because this has been my experience. I feel like the elders I mentioned, both African American, all came up playing during a time where there was so much struggle and strife going in relationship to the color line that a lot of the questions that this brought up came out in their expression. Miles Davis was from a middle class family; there was nothing "street" about his upbringing, but the music he made had a lot to do with these questions. Another elder musician I admired greatly and came into some contact with when I was growing up in Chicago was the white tenor man Lin Halliday - an amazing player - and his experience spoke of a cultural camaraderie with African American musicians. There’s not this same camaraderie anymore, because there doesn’t have to be, which is great in many respects. I mean at one time in America the only thing that Black folks were allowed to do was entertain. Jazz music, no matter how intellectual it might have become, was initially attached to this sphere. If Count Basie hadn't of been a band leader he would have been a janitor (he even said so himself). So now that being African American means more choice in terms of expression combined with the fact that you can receive a degree in a music that was once seen as a slumming type of discourse the whole the idea of jazz's "connection" has changed and demands a re-definition instead of a re-romanticization that answers nothing concrete. It just can't be summed up so simply anymore based on the sociopolitical-economic history of our country's past.

CB: Have you performed the Coin Coin project in Louisiana or elsewhere in the Southern U.S.?

MR: Not yet. Would love too. Right now my focus is just on getting to these places to do more in depth research. There is only so much you can do via the internet, phone calls. I need to touch the soil of these places I speak of, hug the people who have been so kind as to share tidbits of really beautiful memories with me. I also need a patron to really make this happen on the level I want it too. In the meantime I’m trying to play the grant game so that I can get support for the work but so far its been a no go. But little things keep helping it to chug along - the residency that I was just given at the wonderful Issue Project room in Brooklyn is helping me so much in just keeping the project from dying.... I can only do so much in creating the music and if it were not for people like Suzanne Fiol, proprietor of Issue, who definitely has had a vision for supporting creative and experimental sounds my own artistic visions might never be heard. I am so grateful to her and her superhero staff and also to the tireless Jim Staley of Roulette who was the first to commission this piece when I started it 2006. It was because of him that this project and the ideas I have been able to put together with it even exists in the realm it does now.

CB:: In December 2009 you’ll be presenting chapter one from your Coin Coin narrative Gens de Couleur Libre (Free People of Color) at Issue Project room. You said you’ve discovered ancestors who lived in the Cane River area (in Northwestern Louisiana) who weren’t Cajun or Creole. And that these are the people who appear in Gens de Couleur Libre. Can you elaborate a bit more on the background of your Cane River ancestors and describe how they’ll be represented musically in this upcoming performance?

MR: I guess I would direct everyone to read three books - A Forgotten People by Gary Mills, Cane River by Lalita Tademy, and Cane River and its Creole Stories - self-published by Kathleen Balthazaar Heitzmann, a cousin I found in doing this research. Mills’ book (he is a genealogist) is an important document. It’s out print but you can still find used copies on amazon.com. That book cites a lot of my people. I am a direct descendant of Carroll Jones, a very powerful businessman from that area. It examines, though maybe too briefly, the question of Creole versus African versus Cajun etc. Tademy's book is more historical fiction based on family research she has done and though I am not related to her line everything that she speaks of in that book is very much relative to my people's experience on that river. Hietzmanns book is really important because it’s a collection of documented historical narrative by people in their own words who actually lived there and it gives a really good taste of what that community was like. All of this combined with stories I have been told by my own family that still remembers certain important things in regards to race on that river I have used as jumping board to create the first chapter of the narrative Gens de Couleur Libre. The Creole thing is confusing. I have uncovered a myriad of things and am not sure how to make sense of it. Just the other day a relative told me my Great Great Great Grandmother spoke French Creole, but not Louisiana Creole. Not sure what to make of that! Again it means its time for a visit. Creole is a dying language and I am hoping, I am trying, to include more and more of it in my piece about these amazing people.

My relatives are represented in different ways in the piece - some of which is seen and some is not. It focuses a little, but not exclusively on the life of Marie Thérèse (COIN COIN) Metoyer - a woman I am not related to by blood in any way I can decipher yet but am related to her distantly by marriage. (The pianist Jason Moran is actually related to COIN COIN - something I found out after I started this project - by direct blood lineage. He has also been doing work on the Cane River story with the Imani Winds - you might want to contact him about his work on the area. He turned me onto another interesting book - The Known World by Edward P Jones which doesn’t talk about Louisiana but discusses the mysteries surrounding slaves owning slaves in the South - something that is a part of my family's Cane River history as well). COIN COIN’s story was a big part of my upbringing in that it was one of the first historical legends I was told about constantly in terms of my peoples' connections to Louisiana. And she was the first strong female, woman of color archetype outside of the women in my immediate family that I was exposed to exclusively by family story telling. For me that translates well in terms of my own struggles trying to be a woman of color dealing with an art form that sometimes refuses to include me in the discussion of it's progression among other things. But also in this chapter I touch on some New Orleans stories that were passed onto me (some of which you saw the other night) and stories of other family members within that part of my lineage. But again some of that is more ingrained in the conception of the composition and its score in ways the people witnessing and even the musicians performing it might not even realize unless I explain. I use a lot of numerology in my scores for COIN COIN, and a lot of the musical ideas are based on dates, geographic coordinate numbers, addresses, etcetera, that are directly connected to specific stories and sometimes specific people within the narrative.

Please visit the Issue Project Room website for the latest news on Matana Roberts upcoming performances. The Chicago Project is available via amazon.com, iTunes, as well as Downtown Music Gallery. Matana Roberts contributed an essay for Arcana IV available via Tzadik.com and Downtown Music Gallery. Visit the Matana Roberts website.

Feed The Loas

2009-09-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Hello after a bit of a break from any updates. I wanted my interview with Ned Sublette (see below) to sit for awhile as the first thing people see when they visit this blog as I put a lot of work into the questions, Ned put a lot of thought into his answers, and the whole subject of New Orleans had weighed so heavily on my soul throughout August.

The whole experience of reading, researching, and brooding in order to prepare questions for Ned’s interview felt like an extension of the process of composing music. Actually, I can’t really tell you if there is any difference between one process as compared to the other. I’m not a gifted writer, but I do enjoy learning, studying, and sharing what I feel is important information with the world. So with all of that in mind, I decided to reach out to a couple more creative people I admire to see if they’d be agreeable to answering some questions for this blog. I’m happy to say that next up I will be posting an interview with saxophonist, composer, and writer Matana Roberts. Matana’s work – particularly her sound narrative Coin Coin (more on this soon) – takes a lot of inspiration from her family’s history as it unfolded in the Southern U.S. So her interview and Ned’s will more than likely compliment each other in significant ways.

In other news...I am working on a new piece for four guitars (electric or classical) and bass (electric or acoustic). After several weeks of getting a grip on the instrumentation and analyzing and refining a chord progression I had come up with without much thought at the piano, the piece seems to be writing itself. That doesn’t mean its writing itself QUICKLY. Just steadily.

As always, thank you for reading, commenting, and for just being cool and supportive.

An interview with Ned Sublette author of The Year Before The Flood

2009-08-26T08:50:00.001-07:00

Interview by Chris Becker
Photo of Ned Sublette by Jennifer Kotter

Writer, historian, and musician Ned Sublette is the author of two incredible books that IMHO every musician should have on their bookshelf: Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo and The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. The World That Made New Orleans is a meticulously researched history of the Crescent City beginning with its Spanish and French colonization, continuing on through revolutions both near and abroad (most significantly the Haitian revolution), and concluding in the early 19th century when - in what was now one of this country's wealthiest port cities - African American music was coming into existence. There is final chapter - a coda titled We Won't Bow Down - describing the return of Mardi Gras Indian tribes to New Orleans less than a year after hurricane Katrina. It’s an unexpected and sobering postscript pointing the way to his next book The Year Before The Flood: A Story Of New Orleans.

The Year Before The Flood describes the year Ned Sublette spent in New Orleans researching The World That Made New Orleans. During that time, Ned and his wife Constance (also and author) lived in the historically tough working class neighborhood known as the Irish Channel. After ten months and a brief return visit to take in Satchmo Summerfest, Ned returned to his home in New York just ahead of hurricane Katrina which hit Louisiana on August 29th and - thanks to decimated wetlands and an inadequate levee system - destroyed so much of a city he had come to know and love.

The Year Before The Flood resonates with me on a number of levels. I lived in New Orleans for five years (1994-1998) meeting and collaborating with many incredible visual artists, dancers, and musicians. I met my wife in New Orleans and we were married there in a ceremony that brought family and friends together from as far away as Texas, Minnesota, Florida, and Atlanta. My CD project Saints & Devils – a five year recording project inspired by stories and icons of the deep South with performances by musicians from New Orleans – was mastered just two weeks before hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast. As artists, we sometimes find that the purpose of our work is to bear witness to a history we do not control.

This month (August 2009) I chose to spend a lot of time meditating on the history of New Orleans, the experience I gained as a result of living there (1993 to 1998), and the possibilities for its still uncertain future. Ned graciously took time to answer some questions for me:

Chris Becker: Your book describes several inspiring musical performances you attended including second lines, a show at the Funky Butt by the Wild Magnolias, and a Halloween house party with Big Sam’s Funky Nation throwing down in the living room. What are some the qualities of New Orleans’ indigenous music that separates it from music heard elsewhere in the U.S.?

Ned Sublette: The music you hear in New Orleans has all the depth of the city’s unique 291-year history. As far as I can tell, New Orleans had its own peculiar personality from the earliest days of the colony.

The indigenous music of the region would be the music of the Choctaw, the Houma, etc. I don’t think that’s what you were asking but even so, I’ll take your question as an opening to underline the importance to Louisiana culture of the indigenous people, who first showed European and African alike the secrets of survival in the peculiar environment of the cypress swamp – even if we hear little direct influence of them in the sound of modern-day black New Orleans music. (If you don’t believe me, ask the groups of African American men known as Mardi Gras Indians.)

I don't know what differences might have existed between the indigenous music of south Louisiana and indigenous music elsewhere on the continent, but I think it’s safe to assume that at the time when Native Americans were a political power in the region, their music was along the generally known lines of Native American music up and down the hemisphere – drums, shakers, voices, pulse, spirit.

There's a description of a celebration with the Houma Indians in the March 20, 1699 journal entry of the French-speaking Canadian founder of the Louisiana colony, Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d’Iberville, which I reproduce in The World That Made New Orleans:

“To the middle of the assembly were brought some drums and chychycoucy, which are gourds containing dry seeds, with sticks for handles. They make a little noise and help to mark the beat. A number of singers made their way there. Shortly afterwards came twenty young men, between twenty and thirty years old, and fifteen of the prettiest young girls, splendidly adorned in their style, all of them naked, wearing nothing except their braguets, over which they wore a kind of sash a foot wide, which was made of feathers or fur or hair, painted red, yellow, and white, their faces and bodies tattooed or painted various colors, and they carried in their hands feathers that they used as fans or to mark the time, some tufts of feathers being neatly braided into their hair.

The young men went naked, wearing only a girdle like the girls, which partly concealed them. They were prominently tattooed and their hair was well arranged with tufts of feathers. Several had kettles shaped like flattened plates, two or three together, tied to their girdles and hanging down to their knees, which made noise and helped to mark the beat. They danced in this way for three hours, appearing very merry and frolicksome.”

Does this not sound a little like a description of the party esthetic of New Orleans, already in effect when the colonists arrived?

But when we talk about the music of New Orleans we’re talking about a powerhouse of black culture -- the layering of Afro-Orleans: Senegambians, Kongos, English-speaking African Americans, Saint-Domingans, arriving in successive waves to a series of different colonial environments and an urban space compressed by water and muck on all sides. The decades-long importance of Congo Square, a place of memory and a laboratory where a new African American music was created, every Sunday. The divide between Catholic and Protestant forms imposed on African spiritual practices. All that’s in the music, if you can hear it.

If you visited New Orleans and heard a random sampling of bands in the clubs, parties, and streets, you might conclude that what they have in common is that whatever style of music they’re playing, it’s what we recognize as funky. The way I heard it the year before the flood, funk – one of the great American musics, IMHO -- was the lingua franca of the city.

More: lurking in back of New Orleans music is the parade, most importantly including the funeral parade. And then there’s the observance of a wide range of annual festivals, saint’s days, holidays, anniversaries, et cetera. One thing that sets New Orleans apart is the intensity of its devotion to a calendar rhythm of celebrations.

CB: You describe New Orleans as a town “…where you need a different verb tense to describe a past that hasn’t ended.” I knew immediately what you were talking about. And I personally feel that this is one of the most endearing as well as frustrating things about the city. With this in mind, who in New Orleans (be it an individual or organization) is currently taking the lead to create better future?

NS: I don’t know if it’s for me to evaluate that, since I don’t live there. But I will say that I went on the Tamborine and Fan Super Sunday this year, and it was a mighty event [Editor’s note: Inspired equally by the civil rights movement as well as New Orleans street traditions, Tamborine and Fan is an organization hosts an annual pan-tribal parade.]. Which is not to say that everything’s fine. The working-class black population was devastated by the flood of 2005 (and the concomitant forced evacuation) and many have not been able to return. Nonetheless, the community that is there knows what the stakes are for the survival of the culture. Social and Pleasure Clubs are going strong – Black Men of Labor, Young Men Olympians, Prince of Wales, too many to name. A second line these days in New Orleans is a powerful experience. And then there are the Mardi Gras Indian groups.

CB: New Orleans has a long history with the island of Cuba. You write about this history in great detail in your previous book The World That Made New Orleans. Would lifting the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba have positive repercussions for New Orleans’ economy?

NS: It would be a great game-changer, in Cuba as well as in New Orleans and all along the Gulf coast. I say this every time I have a platform: the embargo of Cuba is also an embargo of New Orleans. For more than 190 years, definitively ending with the imposition of the embargo of Cuba by President Kennedy in 1962, Havana was New Orleans’s great trading partner. With restored relations with Cuba, Houston might ultimately wind up with the major airlink because it has the connecting flights, but beans from North Dakota are gonna come down the Mississippi. There’s a reason Kathleen Blanco went on a trade mission to Cuba when she was governor in 2005: Cuba imports something like 80% of its food. They can get US agricultural products way cheaper than they can from anywhere else, and a lot of that would pass through the Port of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, we need to get the Havana-New Orleans cultural link reactivated right now. New Orleans should jump out in front on this. I’m a firm believer that cultural engagement between Cuba and the US should not wait for full commercial engagement, but should light the way. There’s a marvelous organization in New Orleans, the CubaNOLA Arts Collective, that’s been doing great work. My last trip to Cuba, in 2003, was a CubaNOLA trip with a big group of New Orleanians. A lot of progress had been made before the Bush administration slammed the window shut on cultural exchange and travel at the end of 2003. It looks like that window may be about to start opening up again, though it’s hard to say how fast.

CB: Many of the homes and families who bore the worst of the levee breeches after hurricane Katrina were part of a community dating back at least to the late 1940’s if not before. A home in the Ninth Ward might have been built from the ground up in the mid 50’s with ownership being passed from one family’s generation to the next. I bring this up because I know many New Yorkers do not understand why people chose to live in New Orleans in spite of the threat of flooding, as well as other fundamental problems with that city’s infrastructure and politics.

As a non-New Orleanean, do you yourself understand why someone who isn’t Allen Toussaint or Fats Domino would want to remain in New Orleans?

NS: I don’t live there, but I hope I can keep returning there and that it can always feel like home when I do. Which, I guess, is to say that I hope New Orleans will remain.

It’s like Cuba, in that it’s not hard to see why someone would want to leave, and it’s not hard to see why someone would want to stay. It’s a hard town to live in, and it can be a wonderful town to live in. But it’s not for everyone. It’s a tough place for older people, because of the scarcity of medical resources and the ordeal that the annual hurricane-evacuation madness represents for the aged. A lot of older folks have simply died under the stress. It’s a younger town now. There’s been a move to the city in the post-flood period of single adults, some of whom are activists, trying in good faith to contribute to the community. Meanwhile, there are still many families who formerly lived in New Orleans that can’t get back, and the more time passes, the less likely it is that they will. Nor is it at all clear that the city has adequate protection from the water.

CB: You spent a year in New Orleans doing research for The World That Made New Orleans. Literature, poetry, and drama are vital components to New Orleans’ cultural life. Did you and your wife find New Orleans to be particularly conducive to the process of writing?

NS: Not exactly. It was the most remarkable year, which was why I had to write a book about it. I started writing what became The Year Before the Flood before the flood, during the Thanksgiving weekend of 2004, because I had this sense that our mundane activities felt like they were somehow part of history. And they were: the last year the city was whole. Amazon’s category for the book, which I like, is “21st Century History.”

But I found New Orleans less conducive to writing than to researching, at least since what I was researching was the city itself. I had a great working situation, with my own office in the Howard-Tilton library at Tulane. Constance was not as fortunate, because she was working at home, in a house we’d rented, subject to all kinds of interruptions, including a crew of – well, it’s in the book.

Upcoming 2009 Ned Sublette book readings and concerts:
Reading: September 2, 7 p.m., Barnes and Noble, 82 & B'way, NYC
Reading: September 23, 5:30 pm., Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania Street, New Orleans
Party: September 24, 6:30 p.m., Mother-in-Law Lounge, 1500 N. Claiborne Ave., New Orleans
In concert: November 20, Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC

All Times Are Present At Once

2009-08-11T10:11:00.001-07:00

Coliseum Theater (1915-2005) Photo by yours truly.

"...the town where you need a different verb tense to describe a past that hasn't ended." Ned Sublette on New Orleans

Me in New Orleans, December 2005. Photo by Lainie Diamond.

That's the Mississippi River behind me. In December 2005, my wife Lainie Diamond was invited by the Louisiana Philharmonic to sing as the Mezzo soloist in a performance of Handel's Messiah. This was the first classical music concert given post-Katrina. For those of you who don't know, I lived in New Orleans for nearly five years before relocating to New York City. And it New Orleans is where Lainie and I met and got married.

August 29, 2009 marks the fourth year anniversary of hurricane Katrina. And New Orleans has been on my mind a lot as of late.

Much more soon including an interview with Ned Sublette author of The Year Before The Flood.

The Bluebird on Magazine Street, Summer 2006. Photo by Chris Becker

Update: An article about the New Orleans Musicians Health Clinic.

Also, you can make a donation as small as $10 to help out the New Orleans Musicians Clinic using paypal. The link to do this is on the NO Musicians Clinic's homepage. They even have a CD you can buy for 10 bucks via iTunes, the sales proceeds go to support the clinic.

New Orleans cemetery near Magazine St. Photo by Chris Becker

Get Happy

2009-07-19T20:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Sharrif Simmons for this link...

Incantations for Laptop and Cello

2009-07-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

On July 18th at 6pm at the Cornelia St. Cafe (NYC) I'll be performing a 30 minute set of music on laptop with cellist Lenae Harris. Lenae contributed some incredible playing to my score for The Other Shoe.

I'm calling the evening Incantations for Laptop and Cello as we are opening for poet Kahlil Almustafa and a ceremonial incantatory approach to the music might be appropriate.

In live performance with other musicians, I always try to reimagine the laptop as an organic part of a musical whole; I am not interested in go nowhere "glitchy" noises, a severely limited range of dynamics, and / or "let's run this sample through X plug-in, let it roll, and go get a beer..." I want the joy I experience when exploring sonic possibilities to somehow come across when I'm up there clicking a mouse, hitting pads on a controller, and / or making scribbling motions on the Kaoss pad.

I am definitely looking forward to Kahlil's set. I think he'll be reading material from a new book of poetry he's published. As I get more details, I'll update this post.

Update: Looks like this show will move back and forth between Lenae and I improvising as a duo and Kahlil reading excerpts from his new book 100 Poems For 100 Days. It will be a collaborative mix and flow - which is different than Lenae and I doing a set and then Kahlil doing a separate set.

This will be the first time the three of us have shared the stage, which means the energy level will be high. I've enjoyed and learned so much from improvising over the past five years - and this is yet another opportunity for me to experience the energy and sense of discovery that comes when so much is left to chance. I remember guitarist Stan Smith telling me that one of his favorite ways of meeting and getting to know people is through playing music. I feel the same way.

Thank you

2009-06-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to see The Other Shoe. We had an incredible turnout over four nights at the Ailey Theater.

I truly appreciated the compliments on the music. Special thanks to Jonathan Kane, Lenae Harris, and Daniel Kelly for contributing some inspired performances to the score and to the mighty Tony Maimone who mastered the tracks so beautifully. I also want to give a shout out to Joel Wilhelmi who did a fantastic job running sound for all the shows.

The score isn't for sale (sorry) but I plan to post some excerpts from the mastered score soon.

Here are some photos of the show taken by Di Zhang. More to come...

The dream we all dance...

2009-06-26T12:03:00.001-07:00

The Other Shoe runs at Ailey Citigroup Theater
Choreography by Sasha Soreff
Original Score by Chris Becker
405 West 55th Street
June 25th, 7:30pm
June 26th and June 27th 8:00pm,
June 28th, 7:00pm
Tickets $22/$14 (student/senior/artist)
More info...

Last weekend I came home after a rehearsal with the dance company I'm working with and happily got to catch some of a Gene Kelly movie on PBS. The film itself wasn't that great, but the dancing...holy cow. So musical. And one obvious point here is that Michael Jackson (rest in peace) was an incredibly musical dancer.

If you think the legacy of dance and popular music begins with Thriller, well...go check out videos (you can find them on YouTube) of Frankie Manning (another Harlem legend - yes, I know MJ is from Gary, IN) and definitely Sammy Davis Jr. That should get the ball rolling. These are just some of the people Michael Jackson studied, man. No question.

And isn't it inspiring to put him into this context? I'm reading a lot of "I remember when I first saw MJ moonwalk..." tributes. But I'm not reading anything that is really dealing with what inspired Michael Jackson's artistry or what his legacy may bring to us in the future.

Re: MJ (according to Pitchfork) MIA says "the future sucx." Whatever. When you get a little bit older you realize the future is a gift - and we're stuck with it. And its hard to say exactly how the past might inspire the future. But when I see Gene Kelly dancing like crazy with that cartoon mouse...hey, it's exciting. I can dream can't I?

A lot of fun to watch...

2009-06-19T09:42:00.001-07:00

(note: Currently I’m writing about the process of composing music for choreographer Sasha Soreff’s newest evening length work The Other Shoe. See below for previous entries describing the early rehearsals for this project.)

The Other Shoe runs at Ailey Citigroup Theater
405 West 55th Street
June 25th, 7:30pm
June 26th and June 27th 8:00pm,
June 28th, 7:00pm
Tickets $22/$14 (student/senior/artist)
More info...

Tune in to WBAI 99.5 FM Tuesday, June 23, at 2pm (ET) for an interview with Sasha Soreff on Arts Magazine. Some of the music I’ve composed for The Other Shoe will be played during the show.

Dancer photo by Hope Davis

So there is a final running order now for the music for The Other Shoe. We're gonna try it out this weekend and any additional edits (mostly for length) will be done by me by Sunday afternoon. After that, I'm off to Studio G to master the tracks.

This show is very tightly choreographed and is layered throughout with soloists, duos, trios, and ensemble activity that overlaps quite a bit creating this constant flux of perspective and emotion. A shifting landscape. The music in some ways is much more minimalist in its construction. I limited myself to a handful of compositional motifs, three instruments (piano, cello, and drums) and electronics, and a commitment to preserve many spontaneous musical moments that occurred while tracking performances. The mixes are raw and organic in a way that really appeals to my ear. The score compliments but also offers a contrast or perhaps another subtext to Sasha's choreography. I think it's an exciting combination of techniques.

Special mention must be made of The Other Shoe dancers who in performance have to be completely focused and hyper aware of everything that is happening around them. I really don't know how they do it! And it's a lot of fun to watch.

What we talk about when we talk about mixing...

2009-06-15T10:03:00.001-07:00

(note: Currently I’m writing about the process of composing music for choreographer Sasha Soreff’s newest evening length work The Other Shoe. See below for previous entries describing the early rehearsals for this project.)

The Other Shoe runs at Ailey Citigroup Theater
405 West 55th Street
June 25th, 7:30pm
June 26th and June 27th 8:00pm,
June 28th, 7:00pm
Tickets $22/$14 (student/senior/artist)
More info at sashasoreffdance.com

Tune in to WBAI 99.5 FM Tuesday, June 23, at 2pm (ET) for an interview with Sasha Soreff on Arts Magazine. Some of the music I’ve composed for The Other Shoe will be played during the show.

Throughout the development and rehearsal process for The Other Shoe, composing, tracking, and mixing the music for The Other Shoe has occurred simultaneously. Although I have two days set aside for final mixing and another day scheduled at a recording studio for final FINAL mixing and mastering of the score (with Tony Maimone at Studio G), from the very start I’ve tried to bring tracks to Sasha and co. that sounded close to what they would end up with in performance in the Ailey Citigroup Theater. So mixing is a part of the compositional process (as is recording, which I’ve written a little bit about before…).

However, mixing on a budget (i.e. without a recording studio designed for that purpose) is a challenge. And being a New Yorker, I am guilty of doing the dreadful “headphone mix” more than once in order not to disturb the neighbors in my building. For the music for The Other Shoe, I found myself moving between doing these sort of guerilla mixes with headphones to mixing through monitors in my rehearsal space (again, not the ideal mixing environment). Playing back the tracks over the PA or sound systems in One Arm Red or DTW has allowed me to check levels, bass, and other issues with the mix while providing the dancers with music to rehearse to.

06/16/09 Update: Not that anyone asked, but you might wonder what's wrong with mixing your tracks on headphones? I don't want to say that any one technique is "wrong" or no, but in my experience, the problem with mixing with headphones is that you can't accurately determine how loud your instruments and sounds are in relation to one another. A single instrument that sounds too loud in your mix might actually - in a world without headphones - be getting lost amongst your other tracks. But since your whole mix or portions of it are pounding right up against your eardrums (as opposed to coming through a decent set of monitors), you just can't hear what your mix will actually sound like when played over a PA or stereo.

Any composer who has attended dance rehearsals knows that the playback equipment can vary wildly in quality depending upon where the rehearsal is being held. Generally speaking, more rental money means better equipment. But that isn’t always the case. However, you the composer will – if you hear your music back in a variety of spaces over a variety of systems – be able to gage the quality of your mixes accordingly. I should also point out that I check out my mixes at home on a portable CD player as well as over our speakers in the front room which is pretty “dead” thanks to rugs, curtains, and sound proofing material. What I’m listening for is a consistency to the levels and bass. That’s basically it.

Knowing that the speakers in the Ailey Citigroup Theater are probably spaced waaaaay apart left and right, I’ve avoided using extreme panning when placing my instruments on the virtual soundstage. A single drum part panned hard left might end up completely inaudible during playback to those audience members seated in front of the right speaker. I haven’t heard music played back in that particular theater, so I’m making sure my mixes are pretty conservative when it comes to panning. Although I am using reverb generously, but my assumption is that the theater is probably relatively “dead” thanks to carpeting and 244 people in their seats.

Quietly freaking out

2009-06-08T04:23:00.000-07:00

So Sasha had her dancers run through the various solo, duet, and ensemble pieces that she's created in an order that more than likely will undergo many changes over the next couple weeks. I was there with the pieces of music we've been playing in rehearsals and a few new tracks I'd composed since. Right now, music pretty much runs continuously throughout The Other Shoe, so I DJed as best I could with the dozen or so "demos" I had on CD while Sasha called out directions to the dancers. There are a handful of relatively short solos that need (and to not currently have) music. Whoops. I also discovered I need to create at least one more extended textural thing in the vein of the Pianos, Guitar, Bell, and Cymbals track (see below) for another tableau of duets.

I do believe the movement and music will hang together as an extended work. That is pretty evident even with the pieces of the puzzle still coming together.

Here's another piece of music we're working with. It combines a recurring pentatonic hook with notes from my Egyptian scale (D, Eb, F#, G, A, Bb, C#) to create a bitonal quasi gamelan atmosphere. Lenae Harris is heard on cello (she's amazing) and Jonathan Kane makes a virtual appearance as well on sticks.

Hope

More soon. We're all quietly freaking out.

Some music in progress...

2009-06-03T08:34:00.001-07:00

Photo by Hope Davis

Below are links to two "demos" I've created for Sasha Soreff and her dancers to begin seeing what sounds, tempos, and/or moods work with the various choreographed phrases (solo and ensemble). We're mixing and matching both the music and movement at this stage but it's been noted by the dancers as well as one person who attended our open rehearsal that the music seems to be fitting much of the movement like a glove. But we still have a lot of work ahead of us!

These "demos" are more accurately "mixes-in-progress" - and what I've chosen to post are the more realized tracks (i.e. not really sketches) in order to provide a more accurate aural picture (for you) of the world that will be The Other Shoe.

Pianos, Guitar, Bell, and Cymbals
Four and a Half (Fear Music)

Special thanks to Daniel Kelly who plays some very intense piano on the first "demo." There's also a recurring guitar crescendo that comes from Peg Simone from our Silver Threads sessions.

And Ralph "Buzzy" Jones' flute recurs in sampled form in Four and a Half.

More to come...

Architecting About Dance

2009-06-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the people who came out to the open rehearsal for The Other Shoe. And thanks to Steve Layton over at Sequenza 21 for alerting their readers about this blog.

There seems to be very little writing out there breaking down the processes of creating music for dance. Although, if anyone out there can direct me to books, interviews, and/or video where composers and choreographers discuss the collaborative process, I'd appreciate it - and I wouldn't be surprised if there's documentation out there that I'm oblivious to.

I named Stravinsky's Les Noces on my "The Other Shoe Mixtape" in part for that piece's use of timbre and rhythm as the main ingredients for its compositional flow. Contrast, the sequencing of so-called musical "blocks", and the use of close intervals for their percussive, ambient, and propulsive effect - these are all elements I'm using in the score for The Other Shoe and are crucial components to Stravinsky's score. I brought up rock music - maybe more accurately so-called "industrial" or "goth" music - in an earlier post as another obvious source for inspiration, and the music for The Other Shoe definitely rocks. Bands like Coil or Neubauten simply go places that are only accessible via the sounds and ritualistic atmospheres that these bands cultivate. They're onto something that I hear as separate from "musical technique".

But compositional flow - the technique of pulling together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into a completed picture - that comes (I think...) from listening to extended works like Les Noces or other similarly theatrical works with a similar duration.

More soon...I'd like to go ahead and post a couple of the "demos" I described earlier so readers can hear what Sasha and the dancers are working with at this stage of the process. They should go up soon.

Open rehearsal for The Other Shoe

2009-05-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

Photo of The Other Shoe rehearsal by Hope Davis

The Other Shoe is coming together quickly and I am pushing it trying to keep up with the music! Come down to DUMBO this Friday night and stop by our open rehearsal (information is below). Before or afterwards, you can enjoy the view of the Brooklyn Bridge, buy some vinyl records, and/or hit one of the restaurants in the area.

The Other Shoe Open Rehearsal
Choreography by Sasha Soreff
Original Score by Chris Becker
6:30 to 8:30pm, Friday, May 29th
Feel free to stop by at any point between 6:30 and 8:30pm, Q&A from 8 to 8:30pm
at One Arm Red
10 Jay Street (at John Street)
Suite 903A, DUMBO
F Train to York Street, right on Jay to the bottom of the hill

Watch our rehearsal and see how we create this piece. Discuss the work and ask questions about it. Participate in the creative process (don't worry, you won't be asked to dance). See how you can be a part of the creation of The Other Shoe. Hear music by Chris Becker.

Share you shoes: Sasha Soreff Dance Theater is collecting all kinds of shoes for use in this piece. Bring any shoes you don't want anymore. The best shoes will have a spot on stage in The Other Shoe. All shoes will be donated after the shows to Goodwill and Housing Works.

The Other Shoe Performances:
June 25 through 28
Ailey Citigroup Theater
305 W. 55th Street at 9th Avenue

Frankie Manning

2009-05-21T20:13:00.001-07:00

Blurry Buddha at One Arm Red

2009-05-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Blurry Buddha at One Arm Red (Chris Becker)

I’m currently working on an original score for an evening length dance piece choreographed by Sasha Soreff. The title of the piece is The Other Shoe and it basically deals with fear and the ways we live with and/or transcend this intense emotion.

Like me, Sasha creates work out of a process, which means movement is being generated in rehearsal with specific themes and concepts in mind, but not with beginning, middle, and end imagined as of yet. I half-jokingly described my compositional process for this piece to her as “holistic” – meaning, I’m generating a short two to three minute sketches or “demos” that like are linked via some recurring sounds or motifs: two particular scales (a pentatonic and "Egyptian" scale), rhythms that place duple patterns over triple, and the use of distressed or "buried" sounds to convey a sense of intense emotions beneath a surface facade.

I would also describe this stage of the compositional process as “populating the landscape” with indigenous sounds.

Structure seems to be emerging quickly. Sasha’s rehearsals are very focused and physically demanding. I’m attending rehearsals when I can to play some of the music in progress for the dancers and to see new movement as it comes into being.

The final score for The Other Shoe will prerecorded – played back via a CD. The tracking is going in stages over the next several weeks with a final mastering session scheduled the week of the show (!). I’m composing the aforementioned “demos” on the computer and have already had one session with pianist Daniel Kelly who played some material I had composed (including a short piano piece for a Gollum like character in The Other Shoe that was inspired in part by Daniel’s own playing on his solo piano CD Portal) and improvised over several of my current mixes in progress. In the next couple weeks, drummer Jonathan Kane and cellist Lenae Harris will contribute musical performances to these tracks as well. I'm trying to compose music that is primal yet otherworldly.

I’m happy to realize that the music is drawing upon some bands I haven’t listened to for quite awhile but who are a part of my musical subconscious. Bands like The Cocteau Twins, Coil, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, PIL (Flowers of Romance), and Nine Inch Nails are all bubbling underneath the textures. Still, it can’t be overstated how incredibly important the individual musicians I’ve chosen will shape the final score. They bring their respective sounds to the mix and the alchemy that results is shaped in the end by me at the mixing desk. Until then, check out their respective links for a taste of their musical projects.

So far, the dancers have been incredibly receptive to the music, which means a lot – that’s really the only way you the composer know if what you’re giving them is working or not. So onward…

The revised The Other Shoe Mixtape

Daniel Kelly – Emerge, Portal
Jonathan Kane / February – Jet Ear Party
Harold Budd and The Cocteau Twins – The Moon And The Melodies
Igor Stravinsky - Les Noces
Einsturzende Neubauten - Strategies Against Architecture
Zeena Parkins - 16 Feet + Cello (from Necklace)
Coil - Tainted Love
David Byrne and Brian Eno - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
David Darling - Journal October

I Am The Door

2009-05-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Photo by Chris Becker (City Lights Bookstore)

"People often introduce themselves to me with "I know nothing about dance but," as though the general public does not have the right to know what it likes or the background to understand what a dance is...But the truth is that dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination." - Twyla Tharp from When Push Comes To Shove

The Other Shoe

2009-04-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

Last week's shows at The Tank were a blast. I have to give full props to Movement Pants Dance (Adrian, Anne, Chris, Nasim, and Rebecca) for presenting a truly magical evening of dance, clown and mask, and theater. Audiences at The Tank seemed especially receptive to Adrian's vision and on top of that, I received some very nice compliments regarding the score for La Spectra. So thanks everyone who came out.

Spring and on into Summer is going to be busy. I've just begun a score for choreographer Sasha Soreff for her upcoming evening length work The Other Shoe. Rehearsals are underway and I am scribbling furiously in the proverbial musical sketchbooks (i.e. a big black notebook, notation paper, Ableton Live, FL studio, the Kaoss pad, etc). I will post more about this score as it evolves. It will be a prerecorded score featuring guest musicians. Sasha's conceptual premise for The Other Shoe is how we humans choose to live with or let go of fear.

Performances of The Other Shoe will be at the Ailey Citicorp Theater (NYC) June 25 though June 28. More details to come.

On July 10 and 11 we'll present Music For Silent Films at Live With Animals. For this popular event, the musicians improvise live soundtracks to accompany a varied program contemporary silent films. The core group of improvisers includes myself (laptop), Lewis 'Flip' Barnes (trumpet), and Lynn Wright. Guitarist Stan Smith will be joining us for these shows. Other guests to be announced. Our colleciton of films continues to grow and we will be screening a lot of new works at these shows.

More mundane news...enjoying John Brackett's new book on the music of John Zorn, can't stop listening to Bob Dylan (Time Out Of Mind, Modern Times, the new one comes out today...), and am grateful for the change in the weather.

La Spectra, April 23 and 24th at The Tank

2009-04-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

Video above is by Adrian Jevicki. Music by Chris Becker (from the CD Saints & Devils)

April 23 and 24th, 9:30 pm at The Tank, Movement Pants dance performs "La Spectra" with choreography by Adrian Jevicki and company and original music by yours truly.

La Spectra has changed quite a bit since it's first performances back in December 2008. And its score is in a process of being cut up, rearranged, and remixed to compliment the now augmented ensemble of five performers who in a "vaudevillian half-way house...rescue themselves from the cutting room floor..." to entertain their audience. Themes surrounding neurodiversity are (as they were in the December performances) still present, but the piece has morphed over time into something else altogether. Adrian is coming at these themes from at least a few different angles. At the beginning of our collaboration, I told Adrian that the score could be cut up, rearranged, and recontextualized (is that a word?) as I knew he would continue to develop La Spectra possibly into a full evening work. This week and next we'll finalize which and where elements from my score will be placed in what is now a 40 minute work.

The score features vocals from Helga Davis and electric bass from Jeremiah Hosea. Fellini's film and Nino Rota's score for La Strada was a point of reference for me while composing the music, as was certain scenes and music cues from one of my all time favorite films Wings of Desire (the library scene, the angel wandering around Berlin looking for his circus girl, and of course Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' awesome song "The Carny"). But ultimately it's the performers and their movement and theater that guides me as the composer. I was and continue to be inspired by the individual performers in Movement Pants Dance.

Anyway, COME SEE THIS. This is the kind of art that's gone after it's been performed. You can film it, but it ain't the same as being there. Kind of like the circus.

Finally, for no other reason I can think of except it suits my mood, here's Bowie and co's incredible "Heart's Filthy Lesson" from "the late 90's..." Enjoy. Hugs. CB.

William Grant Still

2009-03-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 22, I was able to attend the American Symphony Orchestra's concert of William Grant Still's music. I'd been looking forward to this program for awhile. Performances of Still's music in the U.S. are rare. And the more I've researched Still's biography and music, it is clear that many of his works haven't been performed in the U.S. or at all. For instance, the ASO program mentions that Still wrote eight operas. That really took me by surprise - and I came to the ASO concert with some knowledge already of Still's music and his biography. You would think I would have already been aware of this fact, but nope. And something about the number just hit me. He wrote eight operas and how many of them have been performed here in New York?

Who is William Grant Still? You can read about him at Africlassical, Wikipedia, and here.

I am particularly interested in hearing or seeing the score to an early work of Still's called Levee Land for soprano and orchestra which was premiered in New York in 1926 with Florence Mills. If anyone out there knows of a recording that's available for purchase, please give me a shout in the comments. I am not clear yet as to who owns the publishing of his music, and this may be an issue when it comes to buying his scores. But I've only just begun my research.

There was a really good turn out for Sunday's concert that included a lot of young people in the audience. The ASO did a great job performing three very different pieces by Still. I particularly enjoyed "Africa" (this was the first time I'd heard this composition) but would recommend checking out any of his orchestra works. Still's output was huge - there's a LOT of music to explore.

It's fascinating to hear the music now with some understanding of the historical context in which it was composed. Still composed music from the early 1920's up through the mid 60's (maybe beyond that?) and in each decade the U.S. (and American composition in general) experienced painful and profound social and political upheavals. And with that in mind, when you put Still's biography alongside to George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, and Duke Ellington (to name just three of his musical contemporaries), you are dealing with a complicated multilayered "portrait of the artist" in these United States. I hope all of this doesn't sound glib. If I had more time perhaps I could provide more detailed examples to support my point...perhaps in a future.

Again, does anyone know of an in print recording of Levee Land? Is the score published?

Silver Threads

2009-03-16T10:09:00.001-07:00

Silver Threads is a new collaborative project with my friend singer, songwriter, guitarist Peg Simone. Peg's eerie songs are combined with a Saints & Devils-esque approach to creative mixing and editing. A real collision of the intuitive and the meticulous - with neither Peg nor I really settling for either approach...

I would love it if you could give us a listen and then come back to tell me what you think. More details about this project are forthcoming. We have to wait until the next full moon.

Delta score now available

2009-03-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

(Guitarist Dan Sumner with Composer Chris Becker, January 2009)

The score for my classical guitar piece Delta is now available for purchase. Delta was commissioned by Dan Sumner and the Bloomington Classical Guitar Society. Additional funding for the score came from a grant from the American Music Center. Dan premiered Delta January 10, 2009 at the John Waldron Arts Center, Bloomington, Indiana. Dan was extremely helpful with suggestions throughout the compositional process - the guitar poses more than a few challenges for a non-guitar playing composer like me. And he played the piece beautifully.

Running approximately 11 minutes, Delta consists of three movements: a slow free associative introductory movement that explores triads generated from a two bar melody (appearing in the bass) and its harmonic relationship to the triads, a second rock influenced movement in 5/4, and a mysterious third movement where chords informed by rural blues are accompanied by a thick prerecorded texture of cicadas and crickets. I recorded the insects last August at midnight along the Tangipahoa river in Louisiana (Thank you to Grant Curry for the microphone loan).

I want to give a shout to guitarist Christopher Davis at his Classical Guitar Blog. Thanks for posting news about the score! I'm enjoying your blog.

Da Pacem Domine

2009-03-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

Listening...

Arvo Part - In Principio
U2 - No Line On The Horizon
Fennesz - Black Sea
Nels Cline - Coward
Boz Scaggs - Speak Low
George Benson - Breezin'

Looking forward to hearing Earthdriver at Arlene's grocery March 13th and Daniel Kelly's solo piano hit at The Stone Sunday March 15. More news soon :)

Good night.

Columbus, Ohio

2009-02-17T16:58:00.000-08:00

First, thank you to all of the Capital University Conservatory students who came to see and hear our Music For Silent Films show in Hamilton Hall Friday, February 13th. We truly appreciated seeing so many people in the audience. And I was very pleased to be a part of the 2009 NOW Music Festival which began shortly before I began as a freshman at Capital.

Flip, Lynn, and I were joined by guitarist Stan Smith (who teaches at Capital and coordinated our weekend of shows in Columbus) and guests. It was an incredible band. The addition of harp brought a whole new dynamic to what we do when improvising music for silent films. Everyone was listening which is so crucial to this kind of playing.

If you dug the show (or even if you didn't) please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

The band for February 13, 2009:
Matt Adams - Saxophone
Lewis 'Flip' Barnes - Trumpet, Effects
Chris Becker - Laptop (running Ableton Live), Kaoss Pad
Trista Hill - Harp
Roger Hines - Upright Bass
Stan Smith - Electric Guitar
Lynn Wright - Electric Guitar, Effects

Silent films by Molly Schwartz, Ruby Quincunx, Noe Kidder, and Aurora Neeland.

After our NOW Festival hit, Stan took us to Dick's Den to hear La-Z-Boy & The Recliners who blew our minds...

Roger and Flip obviously dug it...

...as did me and Lynn...

Flip had to return to NYC for another gig. Saturday and Sunday evening we were joined by the amazing Ralph "Buzzy" Jones on woodwinds. This was my and Lynn's first time playing with Buzzy and it was a total blast. Next goal is to have him and Flip on the same gig...stay tuned...

The band for February 14, 2009 at Espresso Yourself Cafe:
Chris Becker - Laptop (running Ableton Live), Kaoss Pad
Roger Hines - Upright Bass
Ralph "Buzzy" Jones - Woodwinds
Stan Smith - Electric Guitar
Lynn Wright - Electric Guitar, Effects

No films shown on this gig.

Towards the end of our set, I cued up a pair of loops - a hi hat and some low toms - that Lynn and I have improvised to quite a bit. Buzzy took the lead and began playing tin (?) whistle over top of the groove giving us a total Mississippi Hills vibe. It was one of many moments to remember...

Sunday night we played with the films again this time at Carabar...

The band for February 15, 2009 at Carabar:
Chris Becker - Laptop (running Ableton Live), Kaoss Pad
Trista Hill - Harp
Roger Hines - Upright Bass
Ralph "Buzzy" Jones - Woodwinds
Stan Smith - Electric Guitar
Lynn Wright - Electric Guitar, Effects

We played two sets with the films adding Tom & Marta's Loose Among The Ruins to the program. Much thanks to Carabar's owner Ron who ran our films during both sets.

The band was in a very exploratory mood. Since we'd performed together already, we had a sense of other places we could go either individually or as an ensemble or in other configurations (duos, trios, quartets). This gig started late and that added another element of creativity to the mix. The improvising for Ruby's film and Noe's "Paradise" was some of the strangest stuff I've ever heard us do. The traditional relationship between "soundtrack" and "film" morphed into something else altogether - almost as if the films were accompanying us...

Ralph "Buzzy" Jones and Stan Smith at Carabar...

Wiped out. I asked Trista to take the photo above around 2:30 am (?) after our last set at Carabar. I'm back in NYC and I'm still wiped out. That's why I have time to just sit here and create long posts like this. Again, if you caught any of these shows holler at me. Much love to Stan, Roger, Trista, Ralph, Matt, and everyone at Capital University, Espresso, and Carabar for having us.

Three Columbus, Ohio dates...

2009-02-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

We now have a third date for Columbus. All of the details are below!

Music For Silent Films
Improvised music to contemporary silent films!
February 13, 8pm at Huntington Hall,
NOW Music Festival
Capital University Conservatory of Music
2199 E. Main Street, Columbus , OH
With Lewis 'Flip' Barnes (trumpet), Chris Becker (laptop)Lynn Wright (electric guitar), Stan Smith (electric guitar)
and special guests.

Films by Ariane Anthony, Noe Kidder, Ruby Quincunx, Aurora Neeland, and Molly Schwartz.

February 14, 6pm at Espresso Yourself Music Cafe
50 W Olentangy St, Powell , OH
With Chris Becker (laptop)
Lynn Wright (electric guitar), Stan Smith (electric guitar)
and Ralph "Buzzy" Jones (woodwinds)

Music For Silent Films
Improvised music to contemporary silent films!
February 15, at Carabar
115 Parsons Avenue, Columbus , OH
Time TBA but it’s an evening show…
With Chris Becker (laptop)
Lynn Wright (electric guitar), Stan Smith (electric guitar)
and special guests.

Films by Ariane Anthony, Noe Kidder, Ruby Quincunx, Aurora Neeland, Molly Schwartz, and Tom & Marta.

Music For Silent Films_updated 06_29_2010

2009-01-27T09:07:00.000-08:00

"Goad" a silent film by Noe Kidder and Arianne Anthony

Music for Silent Films
Chris Becker writes:

The core trio of myself (on laptop), Lewis 'Flip' Barnes (trumpet), and Lynn Wright (electric guitar) over the past couple years have continued to develop our Music For Silent Films project and it still continues to inspire me as a composer, improviser, and film enthusiast. In concert, we improvise music to accompany contemporary silent films many created by friends in New York as well as in New Orleans. The film I've posted above is one we've played to several times. It is a beautiful piece of work in gorgeous black and white created by film maker Noe Kidder and choreographer Arianne Anthony.

For each film, I create a specific session in Ableton Live that sort of acts as a template in performance for the other musicians to play off of over the course of a film. The sessions are built from my library of recordings of instrumental performances by friends as well as field recordings. So there is a strong compositional gesture in place, but the components of the sessions I create are completely malleable, meaning, the music is never ever the same performance to performance. I adapt as a result of the music Flip and Lynn (and guests) are coming up with. And sometimes - as a result of the heat of the moment in performance - I will throw out my original concept altogether and do something completely different. The session may act as a template, but the moment and the film truly determine the outcome. I am not conducting the music; I am simply a part of the band.

I am always refining or completely breaking down and rebuilding my sessions to keep myself and the band stimulated. It can be a lot of work, but ultimately, creating sessions to improvise with in a live setting is a truly enjoyable, fluid, and completely immediate way to "compose." And as an added bonus, I get to perform onstage with Flip and Lynn who simply don't sound like anyone else but themselves.

We've performed Music for Silent Films in New York City at Studio 111 and Live With Animals, Richmond, VA at ADA Gallery, New Orleans, LA at Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, and Columbus, OH at Capital Universities annual NOW Music Festival.

Guest musicians for Music for Silent Films have included bassists Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Bob Mould, Frank Black) and Dana Schechter (Bee and Flower, Angels Of Light), cornet player Paul Watson (Sparklehorse), guitarist Stan Smith, and tenor saxophone and flute player Ralph "Buzzy" Jones.

Film makers featured on Music for Silent Films programs have included Noe Kidder, Molly Schwartz, Micki Pellerano, Tom Murphy, Ruby Quincunx, and Maya Deren.

Chris Becker, Music for Silent Films, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA

Lynn Wright, Paul Watson, Music for Silent Films, ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA

Lewis 'Flip' Barnes, Music for Silent Films, Studio 111, New York City, NY

Back from Bloomington

2009-01-16T09:21:00.001-08:00

Guitarist / Composer Dan Sumner

Me as a Mii

Back from Bloomington where my friend Dan Sumner premiered my composition Delta - my first piece for classical guitar. I have to thank the Bloomington Classical Guitar Society for commissioning the work and the American Music Center for awarding me a CAP grant to help fund the engraving of Delta's score. I also want to acknowledge Brent McPike who shared the bill with Dan. I really enjoyed his pieces for two classical guitars and...that may be the instrumentation for my next notated piece.

In other news...

Flip, Lynn, and I will be traveling to Columbus, Ohio in February for Capital University's NOW Music Festival. We'll be doing Music For Silent Films on February 13th at Capital with guitarist Stan Smith and some special guests. Lynn and I will also join Stan for an additional films show at Carabar (also in Columbus) on February 15th. More info to come.

Listening to a lot of new CDs this week:

Permagrin - As If In A Dream
BG McPike and The Haute Club - Smooth Landing
King Crimson - Discipline, Beat, Three of a Perfect Pair
Brian Wilson - Smile (Thanks for playing this for me, Dan!)
Lou Reed - Berlin, Live At St. Ann's Warehouse
Blind Faith
AC/DC - Black Ice
John Zorn - The Last Supper

Delta for Classical Guitar January 10 in Bloomington IN

2009-01-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

Delta (for classical guitar)
Commissioned by The Bloomington Classical Guitar Society
to be premiered by guitarist Dan Sumner
January 10, 2009 at 4pm
Rosemary P. Miller Art Gallery
at the Waldron
Bloomington, IN
$15 admission

Seating is limited for this All-Salon Series Event. To make sure that you have a seat, email a request to: btowncgs@yahoo.com

Delta was funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center.

Delta consists of three movements: a slow free associative introductory movement that explores triads generated from a two bar melody (appearing in the bass) and its harmonic relationship to the triads, a second rock influenced movement in 5/4 inspired by two of Dan Sumner’s favorite guitarists – Andy Summers and Robert Fripp, and a strange rubato third movement where chords informed by rural blues are accompanied by a thick prerecorded texture of cicadas and crickets. (I recorded the crickets in August 2008 at midnight along Tangipahoa River in Southeast Louisiana).

One of my goals with this piece is to evoke the ever changing physical characteristics of a lake, a river, and a swamp. The moving roots of the first movement, the constant changing of key in the second, and the tension between musical and environmental rhythms in the third, all evoke the experience of being in a delta as well as the experience of being displaced from such an environment – perhaps as a result of conditions beyond one’s control.