Current Mood: saturday!
Current Music: Weekend Edition on WNYC
Pictured, left to right: Gregory "Ironman" Tate (moderator), Matana Roberts, Amina Claudine Myers, Douglas Ewart, George Lewis (author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music), Iqua Colson, Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith.
Oh? You can't see the picture? But I brought a camera!PLEASE NOTE:
WE ASK THAT THERE BE NO AUDIO OR VIDEO TAPE RECORDING, NO PHOTOGRAPHING, AND NO SMOKING AT THIS CONCERT. WE MUST WARN YOU THAT ANYONE FOUND VIOLATING THESE RULES WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE PROMPTLY.... I'd weighed myself down with a bulky old-school digital camera, tucked in my laptop bag, along with a giant college-ruled notebook, Mr. Lewis' 700-page tome, umbrella, heavy gloves and woolen hat (for it was rainy and wind-chilled outside), and assorted PDA/phone chargers and docks. Not even room for a laptop. I lugged this rig 25 blocks from my office to the Community Church (Unitarian! My mother will be so happy!) to see the big event and take pictures.
The event was a panel discussion (for the launch of the book), combined with a book signing, and a trio set by "The Trio" — Lewis (on trombone), Smith (on trumpet and a wonderfully odd-looking flügelhorn), and AACM co-founder and national treasure Muhal Richard Abrams (piano). It was also, essentially, the first AACM (New York chapter) concert of the season, though the next few are several months away.
(Also not pictured: Tate had a copy of what looked like a paperback edition of the book. WTF?)
The panel discussion was great, a wonderful coda or adjunct to the book, but it ended abruptly after about 45 minutes, only really scratching the surface, since there were two other things on the agenda. This could have been an ideal five-hour event for BookTV, or, edited down perhaps, something for Channel 13, the local PBS flagship. (After all, how often do you get a group like this together for a public discussion?)
That ties in, a little, with the book's subtitle. "American Experimental Music" tends (Lewis' efforts in recent years notwithstanding) to conjure up images of Cage, Cowell, and Ives; Partch and Feldman; Fluxus, minimalists, and whomever Kyle Gann's writing about this week. Maybe even David Byrne and Thurston Moore and circuit-benders du jour. And they can get on BookTV or American Masters or NPR or in "arts coverage" somewhere, while other American Experimentalists like Blind Lemon Jefferson, or Dizzy Gillespie, or Roscoe Mitchell, get lumped into the bluesandjazz category — snap yo' fingus chillun! — and relegated to a drive-by mention during Black History Month, rather than some expansive, scholarly or hoity-toity treatment.
The 45-minute trio improvisation that concluded the evening (on a high note, both figuratively and literally, IIRC) was indicative of some of the un-jazz-sounding varieties of "AACM music", explorations of sound, space, and "Eurocentric" chromaticism, the sort of stuff for which Anthony Braxton caught much grief back in the day (Lewis and Smith are alumni of Braxton's groups). Added bonus #1: the Community Church has the best acoustics I've heard in any NYC venue thus far. Added bonus #2: having listened mainly to 31 flavo(u)rs of bop over these last few months — part of my ongoing osmosification campaign before resuming my education — it was a nice change of pace to revisit the work of some of the people who originally inspired me to change my major to music.
In the last few minutes of the set, relaxing in the sound, I started dozing off, unfortunately; I'd been up for 18 hours straight, capping off a week in which I failed to get more than one good night's sleep.
It's a few weeks short of the 28th anniversary of the first concert I ever attended (without being dragged by a parent): a pre-Wadada, pre-dreadlocks Leo Smith, touring the east coast (an art gallery in Richmond, in this case) with vibraphonist Bobby Naughton. I was a post-punk teenager who'd become besotted with Braxton and Charlie Parker — thanks to major-label campaigns in support of new releases, unthinkable today. I've slowly worked my way from two different points of jazz (or "jazz") history to some spot in the middle. (Cannonball Adderley? My mother will be so happy!) Long, strange trip, etc., etc.... |
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