The Hammer Museum

Good Sunday to you. I had a great time yesterday going to the Hammer Museum to check out the artwork, as well as some musical happenings. Musical curator Chris Kallmyer provided a joyful atmosphere by encouraging each visitor to wear a bell around his or her neck, the instructions being simply "consider your surroundings". I felt that this lightened the mood of what can sometimes be an awkwardly quiet museum atmosphere in the galleries, and simply made me relax and smile walking the grounds.

The main attraction, as far as my wife and I were concerned, was a solo performance by Colin Woodford on a single cymbal. The cymbal was close-miced from below, allowing overtones/undertones and other intricacies of sound to emerge that a listener would never (or barely) hear otherwise. These intricacies could be highlighted or dampened with a volume pedal. Although Colin improvised the material for a cool 45 minutes, it was apparent that this was not an experiment taking place; the exploration was musical, not physical, and the performance was permeated by sensitivity and intent. Tones were treated with care, themes were stated and developed, and each phase of the performance seemed a comfortable length. All this, coupled with the sound of bells and the surrounding environment of people, made for a sublime experience that crossed intense musical listening with a light-hearted enjoyment of just being.

Keep an eye out for further installations at the Hammer, and I will definitely post about any further Colin Woodford solo excursions. I've got a gig with a new assemblage of musicians a week from tonight, so look for more details tomorrow or Tuesday in the form of a post......it will be FREE (the gig, not the post. Well, the post too).

Walk and Talk

From wikipedia.org:

"Walk and talk is a distinctive storytelling-technique used in film and television in which a number of characters have a conversation en route. The most basic form of walk and talk involves a walking character that is then joined by another character. On their way to their destinations, the two talk. Variations include interruptions from other characters and walk and talk relay races, in which new characters join the group and one of the original characters leaves the conversation, while the remaining characters continue the walking and talking."

I've been spending a lot of time thinking the past few days about different processes and/or means of composing for and playing with improvisational ensembles. An opportunity has arisen to start a new project with drummer Colin Woodford and bassist Emilio Terranova (and perhaps another horn or two?), and certain leanings of my good friend Colin toward the integration of language into music got me thinking: what if the driving force behind each composition and subsequent improvisation was generated by some manner of language? Pianist Jason Moran has produced some amazing work using pre-recorded voice in conjunction with his live trio (my favorite utilizes one side of a phone conversation), and Colin has put together several extremely entertaining "storytelling" pieces performed on his graduation recital this Spring at Calarts. My initial concept involves a little more distillation of the "language material", so that none of the original words or sound will actually overtly appear in the performance.

I've been toying with ideas of varied complexity: I would like most of the material to be concise in length and concept, to be developed mainly by the musicians in the group during performance. A piece could be written based upon something as simple as one word, or as complex as a paragraph from a novel or exerpt from a speech. Cool Hand Luke, anyone? For audio clips, the delivery will definitely be a focus in shaping a musical interpretation. For words written on a page, I am imagining creating grooves or textures based on the word choices, creating tone poems ("setting" the text without actually using it in performance), or a combination of both.

The wikipedia definition as it pertains to film and television shakes up some ideas as well; my flavor of improvisational music is definitely coming from a conversational place, and often times could be viewed as a "journey". Individual characters conversing as they travel through space and time to get from one place to another? Sounds like quite a concept to tackle in a musical arena, but the kind of challenge I could really wrap my brain around.

If anyone has ideas and suggestions, this early stage is a most welcome time to hear them. Additionally, I would love links to great quotes, passages, movie clips, etc. that make you feel something. Keep an eye/ear/(foot?) out for Walk and Talk stuff; I'll likely be using this blog as a notebook for ideas as well as a forum for suggestions, so pass this along to anyone who might be interested.