Words Project II

Words Project II has been selected as one of the best CD's of 2008 by Richard Kamins, who writes for the Hartford Courant. Click here to see the actual write-up.

Words Project II- Sam Sadigursky (New Amsterdam Records) - Multi-instrumentalist Sadigursky (who excels on saxophones and clarinet) creates intricate yet accessible musical backgrounds for this collection of 10 poems. The scope of the verses range from the sublime (Sadi Ranson Polizotti's "Such Fruit - The Ritual") to the forceful (Dunya Mikhail's "The War Works Hard") to the ridiculous ( a musical setting for Miss Teen USA contestant's Caitlin Upton's answer to a question about finding the United States on a world map.) The music is not loud but has much force and never fails to complement the words. You really need to listen to this CD a number of times to take it all in, to hear how the rhythm section dictates the flow on many tracks and how the textures can be so rich (for instance, the blend of clarinet, accordion and banjo on "The Dream Keeper" and Bill Campbell's exquisite cymbal work underneath on the same track.) There's plenty of music to be found in this project and it's quite good. For more information, go to www.samsadigursky.com.

holiday thought

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. -- Lin Yutang

Pandora

A lot of people know about Pandora, but I've come back to it recently and am astonished at what comes out of the old box. By entering artists or songs you like, it allows you to create personalized radio stations, free of any commercials, which play songs by artists deemed similar or related to the one entered. While each song is playing, there is a link that allows you to purchase it (or skip it if it doesn't appeal to you). It's remarkable what comes up and is a great way to hear new stuff, remember some forgotten corners of your record collection, and perhaps sell some records or songs on the other end.

Check it out.

Monk's rules to his band

I wish I knew how to increase the size of this... It's worth getting your spectacles out for though.



via Alan Elliott

Wednesday 12/10 @ Cornelia St. Cafe

Sam Sadigursky - saxophone
Jacob Sacks - piano
Dave Ambrosio - bass
Ted Poor - drums

Karlie Bruce - vocals

Wednesday 12/10 at Cornelia St. Cafe
two sets - 8:30 PM + 9:45 PM
29 Cornelia St.
www.corneliastreetcafe.com

$10 cover


I had a sinking feeling that something was missing from my life, but couldn't put a finger on it until I put Sam Sadigursky's "Word Project II" on to listen and I remembered the power that words have to bring beauty and meaning into life. Of course this force can be amplified by combining it with great music, and Sadigursky, whose first Word's Project was a revelation and one of the better releases of 2007, is back with another release that may even surpass the first one. - Brad Walseth, jazzchicago.net

cold, long winter ahead

It seems everywhere you look people are bracing for a difficult road ahead. I thought of this poem by Bertold Brecht earlier today, translated by John Willet. May we all embrace our broken world and never stop singing.

MOTTO

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing
About the dark times.


Bertolt Brecht. German 1898-1956.

Odetta 1930-2008

A voice and an icon leaves us.

NY times obit here.

Odetta at Newport:

Happy Thanksgiving

A word of caution to deep-fried turkey lovers




[Via Darcy James Argue]

"When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk."

It's not often you see a movie that instantly compels you to tell everybody you know, once knew, or might not know yet to see as soon as possible. I'm taking a few days off to get some R&R and recharge after a two week tour and figured I would take in a few matinees in the city. I read about "Man on Wire" in TONY when it first came out and was instantly intrigued. I didn't know about Philippe Petit's famous highwire crossing of the Twin Towers before reading the review, and like any New Yorker was quite affected by any story involving the two spires that are no longer with us.

How often is one's entire life driven my one moment? For Petit, a Parisian street performer, this moment came while sitting in the waiting room of a dentist's office, waiting for some respite from a toothache. While thumbing through a magazine, he saw an article about the building of the WTC, which included drawings of the towers. Instantly, the yet-to-be-completed towers would give him the challenge of a lifetime. Petit, who had been a tightrope artist for years would also cross the Notre-Dame and the world's largest steel arch bridge in Sydney in the intervening years, defying both death and the law in order to do so. However, the sheer height between the towers offered him something far beyond anything else the world had to offer a man of the tightrope.

The movie follows the six-year planning that Petit and his rogue cast went through to fulfill the dream. Every step of the process had to be accounted for in order for the team to rig the highwire and for Petit to cross it. The trials and travails of the group are totally exhilarating, and the characters, a mix of hippies, renegades, and an insurance adjuster on the inside, are totally fascinating. When Petit finally gets up on the wire (after a night of countless mishaps), 450 meters in the sky, it is totally breathtaking. Not only did he cross the span. He danced up there, walking, running, dancing, hopping and even lying down on the wire, spending 45 minutes up there before walking into the arms of police. For the thousands of people who were there to see it, most of them probably on their way to work, it was a sight never to be forgotten. Most of us will never be able to understand how somebody could flirt with death to such an extreme, but seeing Petit interviewed throughout the film, you feel that this was his journey in life, the only way he saw of living. He has no answer to why he did this. Somehow, in all its absurdity, it just has to be.

One can't help but think what could possibly keep Petit going after accomplishing this feat. Certainly, there is little chance any structures side-by-side and quite so high will ever again exist, and modern security mechanisms, especially in this new age of terror, will never allow an amateur team the access to buildings necessary to pull of something of this magnitude. The movie delves very little into Petit's life since, and one certainly wonders how things must pale in comparison with that miraculous journey that culminated so beautifully that summer day in 1974.

In the words of Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:

I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker'—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.

See this movie. Click here to go to the official site.

There is an excellent Gothamist interview with Petit here and one from Psychology Today here.

brooklyn makes some noise

let us dream, let us dream

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled -- Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.


— President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama, November 4, 2008

and the band plays....

After spending so many months guarding any optimism, obsessively reading the news and checking polling sites, repeatedly thinking this is to good to be true... what a feeling. I'm still going to the New York Times website obsessively, only this time it is to remind myself that what is happening is real.

We've seen so much damage done in the last eight years, more than anybody could have imagined possible. So much has been based on fear, isolation, and divisiveness. McCain/Palin repeatedly, to the end, played to people's worst, lowest, and most base instincts. We couldn't help but cringe as we saw John McCain, one of our bravest politicians, give up his values and literally sell his soul to appeal to the worst of the Republican base. As the gauntlet descended, his people tried every possible way of attack and refused to repudiate some of the lowest, most dangerous things ever said in a campaign. At last, people have finally begun to wake up to how far we have moved backwards, how much less of a voice we have when everything comes down to blue and red... Obama's decisive victory is a repudiation of eight years of a move away from democracy in this country, away from the values of tolerance, imagination, openness, leadership, and accountability that this country is supposed to represent. Yes, Obama is a politician, and despite the poetry with which he so often speaks and the exuberance he embodies, we must not forget this. Over the last two years, he often fought fire with fire, accepted large sums of money from special interests, and played into the sad, television-dominated electoral system that has so compromised real political debate in this country. He is no doubt a realist, somebody who often plays the odds and in many circles is known for playing it safe. Those of us who dream must remember this and urge him to face the ills of our system before it is too late.

Without doubt, he faces immense challenges, challenges beyond all measure, systemic problems too great to be solved in just one or two presidential terms. Nevertheless, let's hope that he can live up to his promise of something better and do some things to really heal this world, move it forward and inspire us all to lead better lives. This man is the American story in so many ways. By ascending to the top in so short a time, defeating political machines thought to be invincible, he has reawakened people around the world to the possibilities that exist here that make this country what it is. My heart is touched when I think that people in all corners of the world are smiling today as they read the news. As the son of immigrants, I've always been reminded that despite all of America's faults, it's a place that offers things that are unattainable to most of the world. Just thirty five years ago, my parents came here with next to nothing and have gone on to create a life for their children and themselves that they could have never have dreamed possible. There is a reason that millions of people dream of someday coming here, and it is time to act in way that embodies the vision that defines this nation and acts in every way to spread it to the rest of the world. We are an important part of the world, and our actions, both positive and negative, have impact on everybody. Regardless of who becomes the world's next superpower, what we do as a nation can determine the direction this world takes. Future generations will learn not only from our failings, but also from our triumphs.

Not only does Obama's story remind us that anything is possible, but also that it is patriotic to criticize your country when you feel it errs, that dissent truly does lie at the fabric of democracy, and that it is only when we and our leaders ask ourselves tough questions (and, yes, look at the nuance in things) that we can move forward and bring about a change of direction. Let us all be vigilant in holding on to the excitement we all feel right now, but not let our sense of victory at the present moment lull us into complacency. No public servant ever deserves a free ticket into office, and as citizens we have to work to remind our leadership who put them there and maintain a vigilance in making sure that we never again allow ourselves to be lead down any of the disastrous roads of the last eight years.

Cheers.

Ear to Ear

This Saturday (11/1) I'll be the guest on WNYC's Ear to Ear, hosted by David Garland. I'll be interviewed and will choose selections from both Words Project records to be played.

Here is the Ear to Ear website. You can listen to an archived version of the show there after it airs.

McCain Plays

a submission to the colbert report greenscreen challenge...

Palin Sings

Henry Hey put this together.

daily comfort

We're never as good as we think we are on our good days, nor are we as bad as we think we are when we have a bad day. -Bertrand Russell

the tortoise emerges

One of the biggest reasons I started this blog was to promote new music that I feel might not be getting the attention that it deserves. I previously wrote about my good friend David Doruzka's recent release of poetry settings, which was a staple of my summer listening, and now wish to spotlight saxophonist and composer Rob Mosher's new release with his group Storytime, entitled The Tortoise
, which I so curiously happen to play on.

Until he called me to play one of his open rehearsals at the Brooklyn Lyceum, Rob was unknown to me. He moved here from Toronto in 2004 and somehow our paths had never crossed. Clearly something big has been brewing inside of him since he got here and is probably part of the reason somebody of his talent has existed largely under the radar here. Storytime is a ten-piece ensemble that consists of four wind players (including Rob on soprano saxophone and double reeds), trumpet, french horn, trombone, guitar, bass, and drums. Not quite a big band, but neither a small group, it functions somewhere in the middle, in what some might call chamber-jazz, and offers a myriad of orchestral colors while remaining intimate and quite often subdued.

The tracks on the record are through-composed, and range typically from five to ten minutes in length. None of them ever fall into the typical head, solo, head out format of jazz. Solos emerge out of nowhere, and are brilliantly worked into the ensemble. Despite a beautiful lyrical sense to his melodies, so many of them are indistinct in themselves, small kernels from which everything else emerges. Rather than blow the mystery of the compositional process the way most jazz composers do by giving you the hook upfront and relying on predictable devices (bass ostinatos, odd time signatures, angular melodies, etc.), Rob's pieces unfold slowly, with the patience of somebody much older than Rob. Little motives emerge as the pieces unfold, and appear subtly throughout the instrumentation, tying the pieces together in a very disciplined, yet unexpected way. Much like the great impressionist composers who moved away from large sweeping melodies, Mosher takes the minimum amount of material at squeezes it until every possibility inside of it has been found. Despite the intimidation some might feel at the idea of chamber jazz, a joy permeates this music, even in some of the more tragic sounding moments on the album, and I really believe this record has a rare accessibility to listeners. There are several solos on the record that really knock me out, including one from saxophonist Peter Hess, trombonist Mike Fahie, and two from guitarist Nir Felder, who all soar above the ensemble. Rob makes some beautiful contributions on soprano saxophone (evoking his own brand of Wayne Shorter), but clearly shares the spotlight generously with the other members of the ensemble.

Several humorous miniatures offset the density of this record, and are beautifully worked into the program, offering contrast but always setting the tone for what's to follow. One of my favorite moments is the sudden emergence of a choir singing Latin gibberish on a piece called Sleepless Lullaby. It comes out of nowhere in an otherwise serious piece, but somehow feels totally natural despite its absurdity. None of us had any idea what he had in mind when he handed us a sheet of lyrics on the session and asked us all to sing, and to hear this emerge from something so seemingly silly is quite astonishing.

A CD like The Tortoise is the product of literally thousands of hours of difficult, soul-searching work. It's no wonder so few people know about Rob, as he has clearly had something profound on his mind since getting here, and is one of the most hard-working and dedicated people I know.

Storytime will be having a CD release concert on October 3rd. Here'sthe info:

* Friday, October 3rd, 7:30pm
* Third Street Music, NYC, 235 East 11th Street (near 2nd ave)
* No Admission, Limited Seating, CD's $15

Go to www.robmosher.com to hear clips of the CD and to get information on how to order it.

Kucinich on the Wall Street bailout

This just landed in my mailbox this morning. I think it's really important that the Wall Street collapse be seen in a larger context.

Protecting the public interest in any economic "bailout"

Dear Friend,

The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt "de-leverages."

Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration's growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff?

This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real - not imaginary - growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class.

The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.

The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.

This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed.
In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.
I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:

1. Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
2. Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
3. Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down:
a) resignations of management
b) givebacks of executive compensation packages
c) limitations on executive compensation
d) admission by CEO's of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout
4. Demands for transparencey
a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down
b) with respect to Treasury's dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
5. An equity position for the taxpayers
a) some form of ownership of assets
6. Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
7. A sunset clause on the legislation
8. Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.
9. A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts
10. A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts

And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure.

These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow.


Dennis J Kucinich
www.Kucinich.us
216-252-9000 877-933-6647

Inadvertent Songs on WNYC's New Sounds

Words Project II was featured recently on the WNYC program New Sounds,hosted by Jon Schaefer. The program was called Inadvertant Songs and also featured Gabriel Kahane, who has been a huge influence in some of my more adventurous text settings over the past two years. As you can imagine, the program is about composers using unlikely texts in their music, and featured my setting of Caitlin Upton's grand moment in the 2006 Miss Teen USA pageant.

To listen to the program, which features some great new music, go here.

Words Project II podcast

Jacob Paul, New Amsterdam Records' new "man on the street", has put up a podcast based on an interview we did about my new record. It's available here.

9/11

Tears -Alena Synkova

And thereafter come...
tears,
without them
there is no life

Tears---
inspired by grief
tears
that fall like rain.

Words Project II review on jazzchicago.net

Review by Brad Walseth


I had a sinking feeling that something was missing from my life, but couldn't put a finger on it until I put Sam Sadigursky's "Word Project II" on to listen and I remembered the power that words have to bring beauty and meaning into life. Of course this force can be amplified by combining it with great music, and Sadigursky, whose first Words Project was a revelation and one of the better releases of 2007, is back with another release that may even surpass the first one.

The original project centered around translations of Eastern European poets, while the new release only offers one in this category: "The Sea and the Man" by Anna Swir. Instead, there are two African American written poems, "Therapy" by Audre Lorde and "The Dream Keeper" by Langston Hughes; "The War Works Hard" by Iraqi-American Dunya Mikhail, and poems by two well-known Western poets, the late David Ignatow ("No Theory") and Sadi Ranson Polizzotti ("Such Fruit - The Ritual"). These "serious" works are countered by three darkly humorous entries from noted "troublemaker" Andrew Boyd's book Daily Afflictions (as opposed to "affirmations"), and a transcription of Miss Teen U.S.A. contestant, Caitlin Upton's convoluted response to a question posed to her during the pageant.

Many of the same participants appear on this new recording: Nate Radley on guitar and banjo; Pete Rende on keyboards; Eivind Opsvik on bass, and are joined by drummer Bill Campbell to form the core group (percussionist Richie Brashay is added on three tracks, and soprano saxophonists Daniel Blake and Jeremy Udden appear on one). Sadigursky himself plays saxophones, clarinet, piccolo, percussion, keyboards and more. Singers Monika Heidemann and Becca Stevens reprise their roles, providing different vocal while Wendy Gilles joins in replacing Heather Masse. The continuity adds to the recording and things sound even more focused and relaxed.

"Paths" starts things off in a darkly compelling manner with its cynical look at self-help tracts, while Polizzotti's �Such Fruit - The Ritual" is a lovely number that perfectly captures the longing and ambivalence of romance. Meanwhile, track three, Ignatow's "No Theory" will have you dancing and singing along to a song that features not your usual words and sentiments you would never expect in such a cheery musical number. Hughes' "The Dream Keeper" is given a delicate treatment that suits these beautiful lines well.

"Miss Teen U.S.A." is again humorous in a dark way, with the indecipherable lines fitting the jazz groove like beat poetry. And Sadigursky is able to write music that corresponds tightly to Andrew Boyd's wryly sardonic insights on "It Takes a Nail" and "Indecision."

The subtle "The Sea and the Man" may be the centerpiece of the album with lines like "You will not tame this sea either by humility or rapture, but you can laugh in its face," seeming to express the sentiments of Sadigursky's entire project. The haunting "The War Works Hard" features the poet herself over an appropriately swirling freeform morass. The jazzy outro is Audre Lorde's "Therapy" with a single saxophone accompanying the singer. A delightful ending to a work that fuses the sadness and joy inherent in life and filters them through the beauty and absurdity of life in a way that helps me remember why I love both music and words so much.

Words Project II review on Courant

Words Project II - Sam Sadigursky (New Amsterdam) - Saxophonist-composer Sadigusrky has created a compelling second recording that, like the first, takes poems and puts them to original melodies. I truly enjoyed his initial endeavor (read my review here) and hoped his next recording would be as impressive.

In fact, it's better. Whereas his choice of poems shows sensitivity equal to "Words Project I", the music seems better integrated with the words - actually, I believe the melodies are stronger (and they were really good on the first disc.)

Sadigursky's choice of material comes from poets well-known (Langston Hughes, David Ignatow, and Audre Lorde) and writers new to me (Andrew Boyd, former Miss Teen U.S.A. contestant Caitlin Upton, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, Anna Swir and Dunya Mikhail.) The track that stands out immediately upon first listening is Mikhail's "The War Works Hard". The Iraqi-born poet, currently living in Michigan, reads her own work. Amidst sounds of war and a dirge-like melody, the piece seems like an answer to the question "War - what is it good for?" The answer is not pretty but the poet writes "How magnificent the war is!/How eager and efficient!" and goes on to explain how it gives work to grave diggers, ambulances, orphanages, etc. To read the entire text, click here.

Caitlin Upton is, perhaps, best known for her convoluted answer to a question asked during a recent Miss Teen U.S.A. contest. The question, which opens the track "Miss Teen U.S.A.", reads "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't find the U.S. on a world map. Why do think this is?" The reply is, at best, elliptical, and incredibly strange. The music, anchored by Bill Campbell's active drumming and Pete Rende's subtle Fender Rhodes piano phrases, has the feel of 1970s British fusion (Hatfield & The North) right down to Wendy Gilles's straightforward vocal.

Monika Heidemann takes the lead on Hughes' "The Dream Keeper." It's a beautiful ballad,sounding not unlike a traditional Scottish song Sadigursky's clarinet swoops up around the vocal while Rende creates a drone on pump organ and Nate Radley picks gentle lines on the banjo. Becca Stevens is the 3rd vocalist featured on the recording and her gentle reading of Ranson-Polizzotti's "Such Fruit - The Ritual" is bolstered by the active bass lines from Eivind Opsvik and rich piano chords from Rende. The leader's soprano saxophone tone bring Wayne Shorter to mind as does his declaratory solo lines.

Throughout the CD, Sadigursky often serves a second voice to the vocalists, sometimes in unison with them, creating an echo effect. His sonic shadowing not only provides depth for the voices but also creates fascinating colors - on "The Sea and the Man", there are moments when it's hard to differentiate between his tenor and Gilles' voice.

Each track, even the very short (1:24) "Therapy" that closes the program, is well thought-out. There's no hint of slapping this recording together just to get it on the market. From the title, one realizes it's really about the "words" but much of this music could stand on its own ("The Sea..." starts out with a sweet bass line, creating a feeling not unlike a piece Gill Evans might have created for Miles Davis.) This music is not about technical facility or long solos or vocals that "stop the show"; instead the music gives added strength to the words, makes them stand out more because one is compelled to listen closely.

For more information, go to www.samsadigursky.com or www.newamsterdamrecords.com (where you can listen to and/or buy all the tracks.)

I like the cover art, too, a reproduction of "Leaping Kiss" by Chilean-born artist Pablo Campos. Click on his name to see more of his engrossing work.

Words Project II now available

I'm happy to announce that Words Project II is now available at New Amsterdam Records.


This is from their press release:

After receiving international acclaim and a spot on Time Out New York's Top Ten CD's of 2007 with his first CD, Sam Sadigursky has released his second CD of poetry and text settings, Words Project II, today on New Amsterdam Records. Featuring much of the same cast of singers and musicians as his first CD, his new effort is a substantial departure in character and mood from his previous work. From the darkly comic and strangely philisophical settings of Andrew Boyd's Daily Afflictions, an ambitious and politically-conscious spoken word setting of Dunya Mikhail's The War Works Hard, a touchingly serene setting of Langston Hughes' The Dream Keeper, and a sardonic setting of Caitlin Upton's infamous response in the 2006 Miss Teen U.S.A. pageant, this CD will certainly take listeners on a unique journey that defies convention.

Brad Walseth at Jazzchicago.net has already caught on:

"I had a sinking feeling that something was missing from my life, but couldn't put a finger on it until I put Sam Sadigursky's Words Project II on to listen and I remembered the power that words have to bring beauty and meaning into life. Of course this force can be amplified by combining it with great music, and Sadigursky, whose first Words Project was a revelation and one of the better releases of 2007, is back with another release that may even surpass the first one."

Richard Kamins at courant.com also had some very nice things to say about Words Project II:

"From the title, one realizes it's really about the "words" but much of this music could stand on its own ("The Sea..." starts out with a sweet bass line, creating a feeling not unlike a piece Gill Evans might have created for Miles Davis.) This music is not about technical facility or long solos or vocals that "stop the show"; instead the music gives added strength to the words, makes them stand out more because one is compelled to listen closely."

To purchase the album now or stream it for free, head over to the New Amsterdam site.

September 11 concerts

I'm really honored to have been selected to curate four performances on Sept. 11th, all of which are part of the September Concert series, which commemorate the anniversary of the attacks in 2001. There will be privately sponsored concerts in all corners of the world, including many here in New York City. All events are free and open to the public.

Here is the info:

Marta Topferova duo.
1560 Broadway (@46th)
1-3 PM

Becca Stevens duo
200 Varick (@ King)
1-3 PM


Sofia Tosello duo
630 9th Ave. (44th and 45th)
1-3 PM

Sam Sadigursky trio (featuring Jorge Roeder and Tommy Crane)
230 5th Ave (@ 27th)
1-3 PM

sometimes you have to love being a musician

this is priceless.

leave that bottle on the shelf

Walking in NYC yesterday I was so pleased to see that an organization (whose identity seems to be secret) has started plastering signs around the city condemning bottled-water consumption as wasteful and unnecessary. I think the reasons are quite compelling, especially given the new awareness of our society's oil dependence, and hope that we can see some state or municipal action against it in the near future.

TEN REASONS NOT TO BUY BOTTLED WATER

Since 1976 there has been an increase of 1625% in the consumption of bottled water. In 2006 people in the US consumed 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water, or 30 billion actual bottles, a 9.5% increase from the year before.[i]

1. Research shows that bottled water is not purer than tap water. Recently, Pepsi was forced to admit that its bottled water, Aquafina, is actually certified tap water. 60-70% of bottled water is tap water with carbonation, seltzer, etc. In fact, an “estimated 25 to 40 percent of bottled water really is just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated, sometimes not.”[ii] According to the National Resources Defense Council, 25-40% of bottled water is tap water that has been treated, but sometimes not.
2. Tap water is regulated by the EPA, and is tested 3 to 4 times DAILY; bottled water is regulated by the FDA, and is tested once a week at the most. A recent Cast Western Reserve report found that 15 of 19 samples of bottled water had bacterial counts almost 2 times as high as Cleveland tap water.[iii]
3. If bottled water is derived in-state, then there may be no regulation. One in five states have no regulations for bottled water “made” in that state; there are no requirements that bottled water has to ban e-coli or fecal matter.
4. More water is used in making the plastic bottle that holds the bottled water than is in the bottle. At Coke’s India plants according to the company’s own report “3.9 liters of water are needed to produce each liter of beverage” because of the need to wash bottles, floors, and equipment in addition to the water used in the drink itself. Coke has 50 plants in India, using “hundreds of thousands of liters of water” per day.[iv]
5. The cost is much more: $1-$1.50 per bottle = $10/gallon for bottled water vs. $.04-$.05 per gallon for tap water. In Los Angeles you get 450 gallons of tap water for the price of one bottle of Evian![v]
6. The environmental impact is great. Bottled water impacts stream and river flows by drawing down water, reducing the water for vegetation, bird and animal needs. Bottled water is connected to global warming, using huge amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport them bottles. The National Resources Defense Council estimates that 4000 tons of carbon dioxide is produced yearly—which is equivalent to the emissions of 700 cars yearly—by importing bottled water alone, not to mention the amount produced by transportation in the US.[vi]
7. It takes 1.5 million barrels of crude oil to create the plastic in one’s year’s supply. That would fuel 100,000 cars a year. Distribution requires the equivalent of 37,800 18 wheel trucks.[vii]
8. Plastic bottles create 2.7 billion pounds of plastic garbage in the US per year![viii]
9. There are cheaper alternatives: a carafe (e.g. Brita) = $.31/gallon; faucet filter = $.34/gallon; undersink filter = $.42/gallon
10. Coke and Pepsi bottled water factories in India (one of the largest sources) draw water from aquifers, depleting the water for farmers in the surrounding areas.

[i] “The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept., 2007; Bryan Walsh, “Back to the Tap,” Time, 9 Aug., 2007.

[ii]. Quoted in Cameron Woodworth, “A Clean Drink of Water: Choices and

Responsibilities,” Sound Consumer (August 2006), 4.

[iii]“The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept., 2007.

[iv] “Around the Globe,” Seattle Times, 22 Sept. 2006.

[v] “The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept. 2007.

[vi]Brian Walsh, “Back to the Tap,” Time, 9 Aug., 2007.

[vii]“The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept. 2007; Editorial, “In Praise of Tap Water,” The New York Times, 1 Aug., 2007.

[viii] Bryan Walsh, “Back to the Tap,” Time, 9 Aug., 2007.

Information on Water Conservation:

www.h2ouse.org

www.wateraware.org

www.wateruseitwisely.com

www.weathertrak.com

www.friendsofwater.com

www.smarter.com

www.watersavingtips.com

WATER FACTS

–The minimum amount of water that the average person needs daily for drinking, cooking, bathing and sanitation is 13 gallons. The average person in the U.S. uses between 65 to 78 gallons of water daily.

–Gallons of water needed to produce:

One pound of potatoes – 100 gallons

One pound of rice – 340 gallons

One pound of chicken – 460 gallons

One pound of beef – 4200 gallons

One 6 inch silicon wafer (computer) – 1892 gallons

One gallon of gasoline – 9 gallons

One average US automobile – 39,000 gallons

Gabriel Kahane on WNYC Soundcheck

Gabe Kahane, Rob Moose, and I appeared on WNYC Soundcheck last week, promoting Gabe's upcoming record on Wasted Storefront/Family Records. There's going to be a record release show this month at the Zipper Factory in Midtown, followed by a tour in November.

Listen to the segment here.

Words Project II bonus track

There's a bonus track from Words Project II, which will be out on New Amsterdam in September. It features Monika Heidemann, and due to reasons beyond my control won't be on the CD. Feel free to listen to it and/or download it here.

Beauty

"I cannot believe that the artist who establishes beauty as his fundamental approach to art can go very far wrong. No one denies that beauty is broad in scope, so broad that no single lifetime could encompass more than a small part of it. The great danger lies in allowing beauty to get bogged down in personal opinions, trends, and isms, in narrowing our individual understanding to the dogmas prated by the few. Beauty must be free, belonging individually to you and me, as far as we are capable of grasping it. Beauty is all around us, waiting to be discovered, and every artist interprets it on paper or canvas in his own particular way." - Andrew Loomis, The Eye Of The Painter

Morning on the Q Train

So many times I've looked around me on the train at the incredible diversity of NYC and wondered just how many stories lurk inside a single train car. So few people of this city were actually born here. Everybody seems to have a story as to how they ended up here and why they've stayed. The NY Times did a story on just this (read it here) and it has one of the coolest photographs I've ever seen, somehow stitched together from a number of photographs taken while the train crossed the Manhattan Bridge.

8/8/08 - South Ossetia

It looks like another regional conflict has escalated and is taking on global proportions. Here's to the new edition of the cold war, which never really stopped.

The War Works Hard
by Dunya Mikhail
Translated by Elizabeth Winslow

How magnificent the war is!



How eager



and efficient!



Early in the morning



it wakes up the sirens



and dispatches ambulances



to various places



swings corpses through the air



rolls stretchers to the wounded



summons rain



from the eyes of mothers



digs into the earth



dislodging many things



from under the ruins...



Some are lifeless and glistening



others are pale and still throbbing...



It produces the most questions



in the minds of children



entertains the gods



by shooting fireworks and missiles



into the sky



sows mines in the fields



and reaps punctures and blisters



urges families to emigrate



stands beside the clergymen



as they curse the devil



(poor devil, he remains



with one hand in the searing fire)...



The war continues working, day and night.



It inspires tyrants



to deliver long speeches



awards medals to generals



and themes to poets



it contributes to the industry



of artificial limbs



provides food for flies



adds pages to the history books



achieves equality



between killer and killed



teaches lovers to write letters



accustoms young women to waiting



fills the newspapers



with articles and pictures



builds new houses



for the orphans



invigorates the coffin makers



gives grave diggers



a pat on the back



and paints a smile on the leader's face.



It works with unparalleled diligence!



Yet no one gives it



a word of praise.





Copyright © 2005 by Dunya Mikhail and Elizabeth Winslow. From The War Works Hard. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing.

Becca Stevens

Nate Chinen did a great article on Becca Stevens in the New York Times over the weekend. Read it here. Becca is definitely one of the most uniquely talented and dedicated people I know. She has a new, self-released record out that's fantastic, and is also featured on three songs on Words Project II, which will be released on New Amsterdam Records in September. Catch Becca tomorrow night (8/7) at Barbes.

internet fads

Things seem to pass so fast on the internet, especially the various social-networking websites that seem to be all the rave of anybody under forty. I tend to be pretty uninspired (maybe even a little bit intimidated, frightened, and lazy too) by things that beckon me to spend even more time online than I already do, and thus I've been relatively late to get on board with the social-networking sites of our times. One minute everybody is crazy about Friendster, then it's MySpace, only to have that replaced with Facebook, which seems to have left MySpace strangely passe in the past few months, likening it to a once indie band that is just not what it once was.

Once I stopped holding out, I remember being genuinely excited about the possibilities of MySpace... I found a few people I didn't expect to find and spent a lot of time going to people's pages, listening to their music, and would even check most every friend request that came my way, with the same hopes that people were checking mine. Just a year later, it all feels strangely dead to me, and slightly loathsome. It feels like most people have moved on, and it's become yet another e-mail account that I have to check regularly, on the off-chance that someone has used it to contact me for work, which has happened a few times and is certainly a good thing. I'm not quite sure what Facebook offers that's so different or new, but it leads me to think that maybe we're all seeking something that just can't be found online, something based more actual human warmth and connection, somewhere we can share music without it being so shrouded in self-promotion. Maybe this unsatisfied desire keeps us flocking from one site to another. Or maybe it's all just for dating... who knows? In the end, maybe we're all just excited by online presence, where we can show people what we want them to see (none of those awkward smiles that take place when we actually see people in passing), where we know people from our distant past (and maybe even that attractive person from the bar whose number we lost) can find us. For musicians today, any online presence is a good thing, so it seems hard to justify not spending an hour or two setting up a page (or a blog, shame, shame, shame). Certainly these sites are compelling in a lot of ways and still free(!), but the way in which users flock from one to the other every few months leaves me thinking that in the end, they're places that largely remind us of our loneliness (or if you're a musician using them, the fact that you might not be performing as much as you would like to). Are we really happy, absorbed, gratified being when we spend an hour modifying our profiles? What are we really expecting from all this time we spend socially-networking online?

Oh well.... off to check my latest friend requests.

food for thought

It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear. -- Dick Cavett

Cannonball Adderley

A few months ago, after having spent way to many consecutive hours traveling in subways, cars, airplanes, and vans, Frank Basile and I had one of those conversations most people stop having when they're fourteen years old, one that began, "If you could play in a frontline with any other horn player, living or dead, who would it be?". Pretty dorky, I know, but then again, if you're reading this blog, likely indoors on a beautiful, sunny day, it might be time to make some similar personal admissions.... However, it was something I hadn't really thought about, and pretty entertaining to mine jazz history for an answer.

Somehow, Cannonball Adderley has consistently come into my world over the years, and ended up the object of my adolescent fantasy that day. There are so few improvisers who've been able to combine such an combination of elegance, virtuosity, unpredictability, lyricalness, blues, and swing like he did. Every time I hear him, he still sounds modern to me and totally surprises me in how he weaves in and out of changes, even just simple turnarounds. He had one of the most distinct alto and soprano sounds in the history of the saxophone, and conveys such a profound joy in his playing, no matter what the material. This man could make you cry and smile at the same time, and thankfully a few YouTube videos have surfaced recently and allow us to watch him in action. Most people know him for the Miles Davis albums he was on, and later for the original recording (and memorable pre-tune monologue) of Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, but check out the stuff in between and you'll definitely find one of the hippest bandleaders of the sixties and seventies. Much of what Joe Zawinul later did with Weather Report certainly came out of Cannonball's band, and even the more commercial ventures that Cannonball released as a solo artist are incredibly compelling and inspired.

There's a pretty impressive tribute site and discography here.

RIP Johnny Griffin

I was so fortunate to hear Johnny Griffin play live a few times, mostly in the nineties. In fact, I think (that along with Phil Woods) he was one of the first saxophonists I saw live and was an early hero, and a big reason I switched from the alto to the tenor when I was a kid. Affectionately called The Little Giant due to his small physical stature, he left an impression that I'll never forget. He could blaze at some of the fastest tempos and play a beautiful ballad, evoking Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster with one of the biggest tenor sounds on the planet. He recorded until the end, but I'm a big fan of some earlier recordings of his. Thelonious Monk's Misterioso has some of the most fierce and distinctive tenor playing (and some great Roy Haynes too) ever recorded. He also led a record date for Blue Note called A Blowing Session featuring John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, and Hank Mobley in the front line and absolutely blazes through The Way You Look Tonight.

Even though he rarely played in the U.S. after moving to Europe in the 1960's, his presence on the jazz scene will definitely be missed. Here's Ben Ratliff's obituary from the NY Times:

Johnny Griffin, a jazz tenor-saxophonist from Chicago whose speed, control, and harmonic acuity made him one of the most talented musicians of his generation, and who abandoned his hopes for an American career when he moved to Europe in 1963, died Friday at his home in Availles-Limouzine, a village in France. He was 80 and had lived in Availles-Limouzine for 24 years.

His death was announced to Agence France-Presse by his wife, who did not give a cause. He played his last concert Monday in Hyères.

His height — around five feet five — earned him the nickname “The Little Giant”; his speed in bebop improvising marked him as “The Fastest Gun in the West”; a group he led with Eddie Lockjaw Davis was informally called the “tough tenor” band, a designation that was eventually applied to a whole school of hard bop tenor players.

And in general, Mr. Griffin suffered from categorization. In the early 1960s, he became embittered by the acceptance of free jazz; he stayed true to his identity as a bebopper. When he felt the American jazz marketplace had no use for him (at a time he was also having marital and tax troubles) , he left for Holland.

At that point America lost one of its best musicians, even if his style fell out of sync with the times.

“It’s not like I’m looking to prove anything any more,” he said in a 1993 interview. “At this age, what can I prove? I’m concentrating more on the beauty in the music, the humanity.”

Indeed his work in the 1990s, with an American quartet that stayed constant whenever he revisited his home country to perform or record, had a new sound, mellower and sweeter than in his younger days.

Mr. Griffin grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended DuSable High School, where he was taught by the high school band instructor Capt. Walter Dyett, who also taught the singers Nat (King) Cole and Dinah Washington and the saxophonists Gene Ammons and Von Freeman.

Mr. Griffin’s career started in a hurry: At the age of 12, attending his grammar school graduation dance at the Parkway ballroom, he saw Ammons play in King Kolax’s big band and decided what his instrument would be. By 14, he was playing alto saxophone in a variety of situations, including a group called the Baby Band with schoolmates, and occasionally with the guitarist T-Bone Walker.

At 18, three days after his high school graduation, Mr. Griffin left Chicago to join Lionel Hampton’s big band, switching to tenor saxophone. From then until 1951, he was mostly on the road, though based in New York City. By 1947 he was touring with Joe Morris, a fellow Chicagoan who ran a rhythm-and-blues band, and with Morris he made his first recordings for the Atlantic record label. He entered the army in 1951, was stationed in Hawaii, and played in an army band.

Mr. Griffin was of an impressionable age when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie became a force in jazz. He heard both with the Billy Eckstine band in 1945; having first internalized the more ballad-like saxophone sound earlier popularized by Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster, he was now entranced by the lightning-fast phrasing of the new music, bebop. In general, his style remained brisk but relaxed, his bebop playing salted with blues tonality.

Beyond the 1960s, his skill and his musical eccentricity continued to deepen, and in later years he could play odd, asymmetrical phrases, bulging with blues honking and then tapering off into state-of-the-art bebop, filled with passing chords.

Starting in the late 1940s, he befriended the pianists Elmo Hope, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and he called these friendships his “postgraduate education.” After his army service, he went back to Chicago and started playing with Monk, a move that altered his career. He became interested in Monk’s brightly melodic style of composition, and he ended up as a regular member of Monk’s quartet back in New York in the late ‘50s; later, in 1967, he played with Monk’s touring eight- and nine-person groups.

In 1957, Mr. Griffin joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers for a short stint, and in 1958 started making his own records for the Riverside label. On a series of recordings, including “Way Out” and “The Little Giant,” his rampaging energy got its moment in the sun: on tunes like “Cherokee,” famous vehicles to test a musician’s mettle, he was simply blazing.

A few years later he hooked up with Eddie Lockjaw Davis, a more blues-oriented tenor saxophonist, and made a series of records that act as barometers of taste: listeners tend to either find them thrilling or filled with too many notes, especially on Monk tunes. The matchup with Davis was a popular one, and they would sporadically reunite through the ‘70s and ‘80s.

In 1963 he left the United States, eventually settling in Paris and recording thereafter mostly for European labels — sometimes with other American expatriates like Kenny Clarke, sometimes with European rhythm sections. In 1973 he moved to Bergambacht, in the Netherlands; in the early 80s he moved to Poitiers, in southwestern France.

With his American quartet — including the pianist Michael Weiss and the drummer Kenny Washington — he stayed true to the bebop small-group ideal, and the 1991 record he made with the group for the Antilles label, called “The Cat,” was received warmly as a comeback.

Every April he returned to Chicago to visit family and play during his birthday week at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, and usually spent a week at the Village Vanguard in New York before returning home to his quiet countryside chateau.

judgement

"Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment."

-Rita Mae Brown

Perfect Pitch

Musicians and non-musicians alike are often fascinated by people who have perfect pitch, often referred to as absolute pitch. It's one of the most mysterious phenomenons in the musical world, and perhaps the cognitive/neurological world as well. Numerous studies continue to try to pinpoint the roots of it, often with surprisingly different conclusions. Perhaps it is one of the only concretely definable aspects of innate musical ability, one that typically makes its presence known early on and remains elusive to many of the most gifted and accomplished musicians on the planet. Many great musicians have not had it, and it's by no means a guarantee of musical talent or ability.


Despite the fact that both my parents are professional musicians with perfect pitch, I don't remember having any knowledge of what it was when I started playing music. Unlike many musician parents, overeager to gauge their children's musical abilities, my mother and father never did any of the tests to determine if I had perfect pitch (or if they did they never told me anything about it). After about a year playing saxophone, a year in which I started to listen to a lot of music as well, I realized that I could identify the notes that I heard other alto players play. Without really having an understanding of transpositions of different instruments, it didn't go any further than that in the initial stages, and it seemed pretty dependent on being able to recognize the timbre of specific notes on the instrument. Not knowing what perfect pitch was, I didn't think anything of it, and assumed that it was something any musician could do. It wasn't until people pointed it out to me that I realized that this ability wasn't something that all musicians had.

Never having not had perfect pitch, it's difficult to describe. The Psychology of Music defines it as "the ability to identify the frequency or musical name of a specific tone, or, conversely, the ability to reproduce a frequency, frequency level, or musical pitch without comparing the tone with any objective reference tone, i.e., without using relative pitch." The closest analogy I can come up with is that it is like the ability to recognize basic colors. Once you learn them, it is basically instant, and done on a level more basic than thought. Nobody ever needs a reference color to identify the color before them. Somehow, you just know what's before you, instantly, without having to consider it in any way. It's not an ability you need to practice once you know your twelve notes, and despite the fact that I've never been away from music for too long, I'm sure it wouldn't escape me if it wasn't used for a while. Some musicians with perfect pitch have it to the degree of being able to identify pitches to exacting measure, and can tell you if pitch is in tune or how out of tune it is, sometimes within a few cents. (A cent is 1/100th of the way from one pitch to the next closest pitch.) I can certainly identify when a note is egregiously far from our tonal system, but can't make such small distinctions of pitch. In fact, it wasn't until I tried to play along with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, famously sharp in its original version (supposedly the tapes on which it was recorded were running slow that day), that I realized just how out of tune it is. I rarely experience the physical pain that some musicians refer to when music is out of tune, and often struggle not to play sharp, which is a common tendency for saxophonists. I'm more bothered when pitch isn't even from note to note or between register than by a single pitch that's slightly out of tune.

One of the most common questions with perfect pitch is whether it's something that can be learned or acquired. There's a company that persistently runs ads in music magazines and journals that not so slickly claims to teach perfect pitch. However, I'm skeptical, as are most people who have it, but it might just be a matter of definition. I think that with practice somebody can learn good pitch memory, perhaps by identifying specific moods and colors with certain tone centers, and from there develop a relative sense of pitch that allows them to identify notes with some degree of consistency and accuracy. As far as I know, this is what the perfect pitch course accomplishes for some. Some studies have proved that perfect pitch is a genetic trait, and that somebody is much more likely to have it if a sibling has it. One study even identified a relatively enlarged left planum template in the brain in people with perfect pitch. The presence of it in my family supports the genetic theory, although my two siblings don't display it. However, the presence of perfect pitch can only be known once somebody has some degree of musical training, making it difficult to study conclusively.


I won't deny that perfect pitch helped me develop quite quickly as a musician early on. I listened to jazz obsessively from about the age of thirteen to twenty, and could internalize musical vocabulary without having to go through many of the motions that somebody without perfect pitch has to go through. As a jazz musician, it's incredibly helpful to be able to easily identify what is going on around you and thus interact with a group. Professionally speaking, it's great to be able to recognize the key that any song is in without having to ask or make efforts to find it. I've also been able to work over the years as a music transcriber, something that I can do quicker than most musicians without perfect pitch.

However, I think that along with perfect pitch comes some common limitations. Most basic, it isn't something that can ever be turned off by people who have it. Thus, somebody with perfect pitch will never experience music the same way most other musicians and non-musicians experience it. Music always enters the brain as specific information, thus subject to a greater degree of analysis than commonly experienced. No note, or even common noises, can enter the consciousness simply as sound. It's always subject to a degree of categorization that most don't experience.

Also, because I can instantly identify notes, my retention for music is not very good. I can instantly play something back to you, but most likely won't be able to remember it the next day or the next week, because I haven't had to grasp the musical relationships in order to learn it. Because music enters my mind as little bits of information, it took me a long time to learn to identify the larger, mostly systematic categorizations that help musicians
learn and understand material. I tend to be slower at transposing than many musicians, probably because I hear pitches as single events and not as much in terms of their relationships, which also affects my ability to identify chord qualities, where most often I first have to identify all the individual notes before I can identify the quality of the chord. Also, I have a lot of trouble playing instruments not pitched in C or Bb, as I tend to be confused when everything around me doesn't relate to my own instrument in a familiar way. When I play alto saxophone, I can hear the notes on the instrument itself quite clearly but hear everything around me in a different pitch center. (Playing the alto flute, which is in the key of G, is a total mess, despite my love for the instrument!)

All in all, I don't want the long list of gripes above to be any sort of whine about how I feel about perfect pitch. Basically, along with many great things about it, I think there are some drawbacks and limitations to it, and thus it's not something to be quite so idealized or coveted. Other than the various party tricks that somebody with perfect pitch has at his/her disposal, I think good relative pitch can benefit any musician as much, if not more, than perfect pitch. However, it's undoubtedly a mystery that continues to fascinate musicians and non-musicians, and hopefully with more study and advancements in genetics and brain-mapping more can be learned about it.

If anybody wants to read more, particularly on the science of it, the Wikipedia entry on it (found here) is quite good and has a lot of good links.

Blessed Unrest

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” - Martha Graham

composition, illusion, and inevitability

Composition is a strange world. Very strange. A skilled composer is one who consistently surprises you, showing you that he or she has the depth and skill to take a composition in any direction, that they own the composition at hand and are effectively its master. Yes, we could go there, could go there too, but we're going here, whether you like it or not. Since any composer worth his or her salt commands a broad and developed language, I like to think that some of my favorite works could have been quite different and still exist as masterpieces.

However, an outstanding composition, much like a great novel or movie, damningly creates the illusion of inevitability. Bovary had to kill herself in the end... Chinatown had to end in bloodshed. Once the opening gesture or mood of a piece is established, the composer must convince us that all that happens from there must happen. In music, it's not enough just to listen to a series of events if a work is to demand repeated listening. Successive musical events must flow from one another seemingly effortlessly, temporarily convincing you that each one only could have lead to the next. For a piece to exist as itself and preserve the special identity we give to it, each event within it is crucial, unavoidable, and cancels any other possibilities that might have existed otherwise. Later on, upon analysis, we can say that this chord might have lead here, this part could have been played by the oboe instead of the clarinet, this gesture could potentially be sequenced a certain, perhaps more obvious way. However, in the end, these possibilities didn't happen, and that just is. If a piece is going to momentarily transform us, we accept this and go along for the ride, dismissing any serious thought that it might have been any different .

Within all this, though, one can't underestimate the importance of surprise. While creating this myth of inevitability, the composer must constantly create a feeling of expectation in the listener. Depending on the whim and skill level of the composer, this expectation is then either fulfilled or broken, leaving the listener constantly on edge, never knowing whether or not to trust his or her instinct. In the end, however, once that next idea comes, whether it fulfills expectation or jolts the listener out of any sense of comfort they might have achieved, the listener simply accepts it as part of the ride, part of a vision that is greater than the human involved in creating it, a vision that has transformed the work at hand into something timeless, something that despite all the options a composer might have considered, ended up like this, and now exists and has an identity all to itself.

heat wave!

My living room clocked in at 95 degrees at one point yesterday, and I live on the ground floor. Brian Lehrer on WNYC asked listeners to complete the sentence "It's so hot..." at one point in his show and there was a definite winner in:

It's so hot my grandmother doesn't need her cardigan.

Kept me laughing the whole day.

Take Toriyama

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since Take left us. It's still such a shock to most of us and so painful to realize that he's gone. Like so many others, I had some of the most beautiful and wonderful experiences with him personally and musically. The guy really had a sound, and when you played with him, you were never just playing with a drummer... it was always something greater than that, and so incredibly selfless. He was really the whole package, and exuded such groove, sensitivity and joy when he played. I'll never forget the string of trio sessions and hangs that Take, Chris VanVorstVanBeest and I did at my old place in Park Slope, and fortunately there's some material from a recording session that Take and I did together with Ethan Herr in 2004 or 2005 that I'll cherish.

I'm still amazed when I remember how many people showed up to share their grief and pay him tribute at his memorial. Never had I seen a gathering of musicians that transcended the cliques or divisions that supposedly exist in our little music world.
In just a few short years in New York, Take had touched so many people. Anybody who was there for the walk down 9th street from Prospect Park will never forget the intensity and the collective feeling present that morning. Such a strange mix of sadness and joy to see the music community together that morning, so many friends normally wrapped up in their own lives who rarely come together otherwise unless it's for a gig.

To take his life the way he did, Take had to have been suffering in a deeper way than any of us can imagine. I remember the Buddhist monk who conducted Take's formal memorial pointing out that just like cancer can invade the body, there is a sickness of the mind that is so powerful and debilitating that one loses all hope that things can get better. Take and I were never the closest of friends, which never seemed to matter to me. We're both fairly quiet people and he was somebody I felt close to without opening up to or spending loads of time with. Regretfully, I didn't see him much in the last six months of his life, but through others I know he was going through some really difficult things and kept so much of it inside, fearing that he would burden others by sharing his pain. One of the most tragic things is to think of just how many people would have done anything for him had he reached out. Most people knew he was down, but nobody saw what was coming, and I think his suicide made all of us aware of just how real of a phenomenon it is, one we all need to keep in the back of our mind when we know somebody is suffering.

Take's friend and teacher Hal Crook spoke at the funeral, and it's been posted on Yoshi Waki's website. I don't think anything better or more comforting could have been said.

FOR TAKE

We have gathered here today to honor and pay our respects to our dear friend and brother, Take Toriyama, who made all of our lives better simply by being a part of them. Take’s life touched us all in the best of ways, and his death has left us with an unfathomable emptiness.

At a time like this, it seems that Silence is the real super-power. In Silence, things become clear, and we understand. In Silence we are consoled and healed. We may never get over our sorrow, but in Silence we can accept it and get used to it.


Words can never explain or clarify what went wrong. Words cannot console us, or heal us, or diminish our pain. At times like this, the purpose of words is to set the stage for Silence to take over and do its thing. Silence is the real power here today, so I will be brief.

I met Take when he first came to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music, some 13 or more years ago. He became like a son to me, and like a brother as well. Not that I could ever replace his natural family, whom he loved dearly, but I was grateful for the opportunity to fill in for them while Take was living here.


In fact, I used to joke with Take about this, sometimes calling him the son I never had, and never wanted. But of course, during his years at Berklee and afterward, I wanted very much to be his mentor and his friend, and we became the closest friends. I’ve never had a closer, or truer friend.


In all my life, I’ve never met or known a kinder, or gentler, or more considerate soul than Take Toriyama. Always positive, always doing right, always taking the high road regarding his values and principles. To me, Take was a model example of the best in human potential. Sure, he may have been just a short little drummer guy, but he was a big tall hero to me.


Music was a major part of our connection, as it was with everyone who really knew Take. We got inside each other’s heads and hearts and hands on the bandstand every time we played together. I learned how to tap into the musical strengths of another being from playing with Take. He made it easy.


We studied music and life together, we practiced and performed together, we ate sushi and drank sake together. We recorded together and toured Europe together – sometimes just as a duo. And I can tell you that throughout all our travels and experiences together, everyone loved and respected Take as much as they loved and respected his music.


When I listen to Take’s playing, I think: This is someone who understands everything. Not just drums. Not just rhythm. Not just melody. Not just harmony. Not just form. Not just freedom. Not just music. Everything. Take got it all. He understood the things that matter most to people.


The first thing you read in Take’s self-written bio is, “An amazing parents raised Take.” His parents and brother Kazu were always a major part of his life, as was Natsu, the woman he called his soul mate. He was a great son, a great brother, a great musician, and a great friend. And he should not have died. But he did.


And now we want answers. We say it is human nature to try to make sense of things when they go wrong. We think there has to be an answer. And if we can’t find one we may make one up, just so long as things make sense to us in the end.


Well, maybe it is human nature to search our minds for answers. But it’s also a torturous game, a pathological mind game. Well, maybe it is human nature to search the mind for answers. But it is also a selfish, pathological mind game. The mind, after all, is as much the home of deception as it is truth.


At times like this, I remember what Shakespeare said about thinking. He said, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Nothing has meaning unless we think it does; or, if we prefer, everything has meaning unless we think it doesn’t.


So, it doesn’t really matter how we leave this life – unless we choose to think it does. One person’s tragic defeat may be another’s triumphant victory. Who is to say? Maybe, in his mind, Take chose victory. And who is to judge? Who is anyone to determine for anyone else what the right course of action is?

When we think about Take leaving us, and how it happened, we become angry and sad because we all loved him and we will miss him. We know that death is the ultimate irreversible act, and that he will not be back to play or hang out with us again.

But I will not think of Take’s final act as good or bad. I refuse to let my thoughts about his death make such an incomprehensible decision. Thinking is simply the wrong tool for the job.

I will let my laughter and my tears determine what is good and what is bad. I will let Silence make things clear to me, and console me, and heal me. I will never get over my sorrow from his dying, but in Silence I will accept it and get used to it.

And I will enjoy the deep and beautiful memories I have of my deep and beautiful friend for as long as I live.

。

Hal Crook

more Strindberg and Helium

Kurt Rosenwinkel interview at Camp Studio

Thanks to Ethan Iverson's blog,Do the Math, I found this interview with Kurt Rosenwinkel that was more revealing than any interview with him I've read. To read the entire thing, go here. I've put some highlights below.



Interviewer: you must be so happy sometimes?

KR: the sweetness of a certain friction- it's bliss. those are moments of dissolution, among the few happiest of my life, if you can say "happy"; a word i have never related to. i don't think trees are happy. but i believe they feel the bliss of a certain friction.

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i just want to say one thing about my relationship to these kinds of things [different scales he is discussing]. this area is on a high intellectual level, which is fine. but i just want people to know that i am not interested in these things because i enjoy contemplating them intellectually. i'm not a braniac. for me discussions like this one usually come from the need to learn how to play my own music; that my music has this stuff in it naturally and it moves me to learn about it on an intellectual and practical level. my music is not intellectual. that's my most hated comment from writers, etc. they really don't get it at all if they think that. i try to make my music as simple as it can be, always.
there are some moments in my songs that have a chord that one needs to use octave specific scales to play over. that "chord tones" only sound good in the bottom register and a completely different scale emerges at the top like a flower.

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Interviewer: What "unofficial" session stands out for you as a great and deep moment in your life?

KR: i love what this question points to: that there are moments of music so profound and that can happen anywhere. there are two deeply affecting moments i would like to share. the first is when i was at a friends house and i heard a beautiful modern classical orchestral piece being played over the radio. i went into the room where it was and listened to the most incredible music i had ever heard, it went on for about 20-30 minutes. only afterwards did i realize that two radios were playing different music at the same time, and i was hearing it as one piece of pure genius.
there have been many amazing moments in private jam sessions and parties through my life, but the other time i'd like to relate i was alone playing the piano. i was playing and at a certain point i felt something take over and begin to play its own music. i stopped actively doing anything and i just watched and listened as this music was unfolding in front of my eyes. i saw spirits running back and forth across the keys, using my hands to make an impression in the material world through music. the music that came out was like a symphony. that's how i remember it. but all the while it was happening i knew i would never remember any of it because it was going by so fast and there was so much detail and what i recognized as perfect form. when it was finished i just sat there for a long time, feeling this heart-yearning mix of rapture and sadness, and what i guess would be called humility- that music of far greater power was possible when your self can dissolve and not think that it's you that makes music.
one of the ways i see music is as this comet that flies around the universe. sometimes it swoops down, other times it is nearer or farther. and on rare occasions it picks you up and takes you up and you fly with it on a journey only it knows how to make; showing you things. and we humans? only passengers, or mediums- like we are the magic pill that music takes- it digests us and we dissolve like an alka-seltzer. that is what music needs to become real, to manifest- a human dissolution pill. to feel music from the inside out and feel myself dissolve into nothingness was i think the deepest thing i have ever experienced. i can count the times this has happened on two hands in my life- being possessed like this. and i think that is very lucky.

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i am certain that there is a real spirit realm. it has been the revelations and literal signs from this realm that have given my life its coherency and made clear the lessons i need to learn to move forward. there is really nothing of value in my life that hasn't come in some recognizable way from this world. so my prayers and aspirations are to the universe and the organization of forces within it. that there is a universal intelligence is a matter of experience for me, and can always be demonstrated when the meditation is true. answers come in startlingly literal ways. i know that separation is an illusion and we are all part of a net sum. analogy and visualization are the best ways to describe and apprehend esoteric reality. one thing i used to do and still do sometimes is to imagine that the vibrations of music are changing the spiritual or vibrational (same thing) reality of the space i am in. i would see a sea of pluses and minuses in the room and go about changing the minuses to pluses. negativity to positivity. i understand the role of the drummer who cleanses the space before a shamanistic ritual. it makes sense from an energetic point of view.

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It was good to be able to experience being on a major label. it provided valuable windows into how it all works (and doesn't work). it was a good way to build an audience too...yes we both did eventually get dropped. i am happy to be on my own now making records. i can do what i want and i can make some money from it too, unlike being on a label. there was an adjustment period trying to figure out how to release records again, but now i think we have figured out how to do it, at least one way to do it, and i am looking forward to putting out more than one record every 2-3 years....

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sometimes all i have are the goblin doors. i realized today while riding my bike that if i could make something good, music, that would be really meaningful beyond my life, that i would run my bike into an oncoming car and obliterate myself if that's what it took. i would do that for it.

i think that fact might make it difficult for me to find stability or happiness but i know it's true.

in outer space it's either lasers or free float. guidance. thrusters are so byzantine; crude. they won't ever get you where you need to go. ok maybe in a spacecraft but that's just a very crude analogy for the space travel we do as human beings. in our minds. who hasn't been afraid of the dimensions there? humanity seeks comfort but also gets used to wider circles of knowledge, little by little over eons. i feel like i have lived eons. what else would you call it when some of the lives you have lived are like postcards or dreams. sometimes i can't tell the difference between dream and memory. time seems ancient even in my own memory. just as ancient as anything. egypt. my own personal fictions. my lived life is a personal fiction. ancient egypt is just as close or far, really to my thoughts, to my dreams, to my memories. past life experiences? hell yes! even within my living brain!!
i haven't really got a fucking clue who i am. anyway, knowing is over. starting is learning. i don't want to be someone who knows.

about knowing:
to go from a person who doesn't know to a person who knows is a test. when you are young you are in a position of not knowing relative to everything in life. the natural orientation is towards the unknown as someone who doesn't know. in order to grow in any art form you have to adopt this position. later when you become the one who knows, relative to a younger generation, there is the risk of thinking that you know relative to your own art. orienting yourself towards your art as someone who knows will disable your ability to grow. music has no questions that we can answer. it is we who ask the questions and music which answers.