Sadigursky / Hebert / Hirshfield @ Church for All Nations - August 21, 2010 - 417 W. 57th St.

Saturday August 21st - 8PM
417 W. 57th St.
NY, NY
$12 suggested donation

RIP Abbey Lincoln

I can't remember exactly how I found my way to Abbey Lincoln's music, but I know that she was the first living jazz singer to stop me in my tracks and make me want to hear a song again and again. I vaguely remember rummaging through the used CD bins at the local record store and seeing a record with Stan Getz (her 1991 release You Gotta Pay the Band, also with Hank Jones and Charlie Haden) and buying it based on Stan's presence... Regardless, I was hooked as soon as I heard the first notes of the song Bird Alone. Later on, I picked up other albums, including Abbey is Blue, which to this day is a desert island album for me.

The rawness and nakedness of her style and power of her conviction is almost unparalleled in the jazz tradition. She had nothing to prove about her voice or musicianship - it's simply there for us to take in, pure, honest, and timeless. Listening to her early records now, it's so hard to conceive that it's the voice of somebody in her twenties and thirties that is singing - it's so developed and full of feeling and sorrow.

Besides her singing, she had an exquisite choice of sidemen (just look at the roster of people on her Riverside albums of the fifties and sixties), unique taste in songs and and a totally adventurous approach to them. Although her own compositions were never my favorite things that she did, I do admire her desire to bring contemporary material to the jazz world that dealt with things other than romance, and I'm sure many of these songs will be sung by other singers for years to come.

I did see her perform once at Yoshi's in Oakland. She sounded great, and was just such a beautiful person to be in the presence of. She possessed a rare gentleness, style and grace that I will always remember. I only wish I had taken advantage of other opportunities to see her.

I put a few of my favorite songs of hers below. Read the New York Times obituary here.

Etudes II

I'm pleased to announce that my second book of clarinet etudes is now available at Amazon.com and www.Earspasm.com.

Bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern will be recording the etudes over the next year or so in order to eventually sell them in PDF form at Earspasm. Right now you can purchase the hard copy of the book from his website.

This is what the critics are saying:

Sam Sadigursky's etudes are a significant and welcome addition to the clarinet study repertoire. These marvelous etudes combine traditional technical exercises with a contemporary flare and vocabulary. They are challenging for the serious clarinetist and are a wonderful tool to increase not only virtuosity but musicianship as well! I have started to use them with my students at Michigan State with much success! - Caroline Hartig, acclaimed soloist and recording artist


I love these etudes! They’re obsessive, concentrated, and right on point. They grip onto important musical and technical issues without ever letting go. They’re challenging, but the real challenge is mastering the musicality in them. If the familiar clarinet etudes are the meal, Sadigursky has just given us the espresso…. - Andrew Sterman, Phillip Glass Ensemble

Sam Sadigursky's characterful etudes are so well crafted and musically creative
that they make me want to practice them! My students at the University of
Delaware love them, and they target many problem areas in clarinet technique.
A great addition to the etude repertoire! - Marianne Gythfeldt, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Zephyros Winds

These etudes are essential for the advancing clarinetist. The greatest bore in an etude is laboring and solving a problem of technique without a satisfying musical result. . . Sam's etudes manage to reveal the wonderful possibilities in reaching new levels of ability. The pieces are harmonically compelling, lyrical, and often witty. Concise but never narrowly conceived... This one's staying on the stand; I can't recommend it highly enough. - Peter Hess, Balkan Beat Box, Slavic Soul Party

Clarinetists will delight in these charming, graceful études, filled
with unexpected harmonic twists and turns. - Derek Bermel, clarinetist/composer/conductor

Review by Martin Gladu

Read it at All About Jazz.

There is something of genius in Sam Sadigursky's musical poeticizing. Indeed, besides his knack for casting the most uncanny yet perfect voices for his eclectic and at times Kafka-esque sets, the Brooklyn-based reedman/composer is rapidly becoming the beacon of modern jazz-informed musical prosody. In this capacity, he replenishes the dormant format with a daring, integrated approach to composition, cadence and arranging, while remaining creatively respectful towards the texts he sets to music. As unsettling as some of his arrangements may be, he always finds imaginative ways to put his writers' verses in an enhancive, albeit at times wry, light.

Though the second installment of his ongoing Words Project, Words Project II (New Amsterdam, 2008), proved somewhat disappointing, Sadigursky returns with a batch of incantations as gripping as the project's acclaimed first effort, Words Project (New Amsterdam, 2007). While this first outing firmly established him as a commendable talent right out of the gate, with Miniatures he reaches a new level of formal mastery, using the contrapuntal aspect of his compositional trade more fruitfully and somewhat more prominently.

On the opening "Content," Sadigursky's treatment of David Ignatow's thought-phrase gets a mechanistic, clock-like working, as each of its syntactical propositions get isolated and repeated ad infinitum by Monika Heidelmann's overdubbed vocals, but with each line's exposition deployed through its own set of rhythmic permutations. In both its design and effect, it is reminiscent of the medieval motet. Fernando Pessoa's "Recall" takes a similarly clever, though more fugal spin. Other pieces in the program also showcase Sadigursky's sure skill as an arranger/orchestrator, namely the tranquil wind arrangement of "Wistful," the string quartet-adorned "Now," and the monosyllabic chorale "Do Me That Love."

But the real ear-opening moment comes in Christine Correa's performance of Maxim Gorky's scornful screed against jazz, "O Muzike Tolstykh." The assembling of the overly expressive vocalist—who takes a serious joy digging in each of the Bolshevik author's cutting descriptions—and Sadigursky's cohorts' dissonant machinations lends to one memorable moment. The sonorous commentary is followed by the group's dense construct around Alena Syknkova's "Tears," akin to listening to Björk in the middle of a noisy New York City traffic jam. Conversely, Maureen MacLane's "Ode" gently rolls off the tongue of violinist Roland Satterwhite's soft, rickety voice, which is stealthily supported by Michael Beers' English horn and the leader on piano. "To Know Silence Perfectly," a dreamy, almost psychedelic ditty, also adds to the other, more introspective vignettes.

Miniatures is an engaging, richly textured work to be reckoned with, a modern masterpiece of the profoundest authenticity.

for your podcasting pleasure

Jason Crane just posted a nice interview we did last month. Go to The Jazz Session to listen to it, or look for it on iTunes.

Etude Videos

Marianne Gythfeldt, who I was fortunate to take clarinet lessons with in college, recently recorded two of my clarinet etudes. Here are some videos of them that I've posted on YouTube.

You can purchase the etudes here.

Scenes from the Archipelago

Thanks to everybody who came out to see the Words Project III release concert at Galapagos. Here are some videos from the night.

The CD is now available on iTunes, Amazon, and at New Amsterdam Records.

The Words Project: Process and Evolution

I wish I could say that I've been a lifelong reader of poetry and that this venture evolved naturally out of that. This couldn't be less true, actually. I've always loved reading fiction, but never could achieve the quietness of mind that poetry demands. I read and memorized the requisite poetry fed to us in school, but beyond that I wasn't exposed to much of it. Given how marginalized it is in our culture it's easy to ignore. I can't even say that I was ever very interested in song lyrics, even. I've always loved listening to music of any style with singers, but like many musicians I tended to ignore lyrical elements in favor of musical ones.

I spent a number of years in New York in search of what my own contributions here would be, dipping my feet into as many waters as I possibly could. I was involved with a few groups with singers and started to feel a shortage of new vocal pieces that involved lyrics (rather than wordless vocals), and many of the newer works I heard didn’t have very challenging lyrics or content. Having long loved the art-song tradition, I set out to find some initial poems to set, and started calling singers over to sing through my work. The directness to the human voice and its mysteries were thrilling for me, and I found myself thinking and working differently than ever before. Fortunately, I also began to discover a deep well of talented young singers eager to take on new material, which furthered my interest in this venture.

The first pieces I set were by Lithuanian-Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, whose work I’ve continued to set to this day. There’s a certain simplicity to his work that makes it highly typical of the kind of work I enjoy setting. The ideas in his work are by no means simple, but the use of language has a direct quality that makes his work conducive to musical setting. When poetry reaches a certain level of abstraction, there’s no longer room for the kind of music that I would like to write. Similarly, there’s a lot of poetry that tells something akin to literate story, which also doesn’t intrigue me as a composer. It’s difficult to define what lies in the middle of these two extremes, but I do tend to know whether I can set a work within the first few lines of it.

I’ve sometimes wondered whether it’s the poetry that I set to music or music I set to poetry. It’s probably a little of both… There have been times when everything has started simply with the words in front of me, a musical gesture or phrase that arises from the first stanza, with nothing else preconceived. Other times, there is a more intentional process, where I’ll employ a musical idea I’ve been toying with or use a certain stylistic notion in crafting a piece.

I don’t tend to dwell too much on the meaning of a poem before I start working with it. Perhaps this is out of impatience or over-eagerness, but I feel strongly that my job is not to filter the meaning of any work for the listener. I try my best not to interpret these poems or put any sort of definitive stamp on them. I simply want to color them and make them come alive in a unique way. Great works of poetry, like great works of music, can mean different things to us at different times. This is one of the beauties of art in genearal. Certain works can fill us with sadness one hour and be completely exhilarating the next. We bring our own experiences to whatever we take in, and it’s not my intention to subjugate this process by governing the experience of a poem. By the time it lands in my hands, the poem is a complete work of art on its own. It doesn’t need my efforts to be read or to thrive. It already exists in its full flowering, and this is a humbling thing that I always try to keep in mind.

One of the greatest challenges of this genre for me continues to be how to fit all this into the jazz continuum, one that is based on improvisation. Many of the longer works I’ve set demand long forms and it’s difficult to know where improvisation should fit in, or whether there’s a place for it at all. Personally, it’s unappealing to simply use words as a launching point for extended improvisation. I’ve always wanted to frame my work primarily around the poems themselves, and always have them be at the center of my work. Thus, I want any solos or improvisation to function somehow within the poems themselves, to make this all feel like one, creating the illusion that the words and the music came out of the same mind. All the principles of tension and release in music really come to the forefront. Sometimes improvised sections function as a release and other times they build tension or intensity from a place where there was not before. Other times they simply function as a breath within the poem, a chance for the listener to take in what has come before.

Melodically, my own voice tends to guide me when I write. I do my best to forget my background as an instrumentalist and try to think like a singer. I also keep the use of melody in everyday speech in mind. We all use varying degrees of pitch inflection and rhythm when we speak, and thus we’re so easily able to accept lyrics that are sung as a natural extension of everyday speech. Perhaps this is what makes so many of us want to be singers, to further the expression that language allows us, and possibly communicate things where speech falls short. To this effect, I tend to use mostly close intervals in my writing that mirror the intervals of everyday speech.

Words Project III: Miniatures comprises material that I’ve written spanning back to 2006, primarily songs that had never fit into the framework of what I’ve done previously both live and in the studio. The project started quite spontaneously…. I called Michael Leonhart to sing through some songs I had written for male voice, and he hit the record button and we started tracking. A few months later, vocalist Sunny Kim was in New York, and I decided to bring her into Michael’s studio to record a few things. Based on how well these two experiences went, not long after I chose material for an entire record of short songs.

Sometimes I had conceived arrangements and instrumentation before going into the studio, and other times these things came together as we worked. Most of the tracking was done individually, which allowed Michael and I plenty of room for editing and experimentation. I wanted to create a unique world of sound for each piece on the record, and used a lot of uncommon instruments and sounds in order to achieve this. Sometimes I had a good idea of what a piece would end up sounding like and other times tracks unfolded themselves from something more unknown.

The miniature aspect to each piece is really what holds this record together through all the changes of texture and instrumentation. These are musical portraits or glimpses, maybe akin to a collection of short poems or stories. I’ve always loved listening to collections of short pieces, whether they be art song or piano preludes. I love the challenge of creating interest in a piece quickly, constructing something that is short yet feels complete, taking a more microscopic look at the arc of a piece of music, and connecting a collection of short pieces to one another in order to assemble a larger work.

The broad mix of styles reflects the many kinds of music that have shaped me, perhaps never so apparently as on this record. There are very few improvised solos on any of the tracks, but to me the way this record was recorded gives it the feel of a jazz record, and most everybody who appears on it comes from a jazz background, although they all bring much more than that to the table. In any case, I’ll leave this to the listeners to decide where they want to put this album…

WPIII - Galapagos - 1/29/10

8 PM
www.archipelagoseries.com

Galapagos Art Space
16 Main St.
Brooklyn, NY

Buy the CD here or on iTunes.

Words Project III Podcast now available

The podcast about the new CD is now up on New Amsterdam. It was produced by rising star Jacob Paul. Hit the podcast button on the upper right of the homepage to listen to it. Hopefully it will be up on iTunes soon.

Detroit Free Press review

By Mark Stryker.

See it here.

The overlapping a cappella voices that open Sam Sadigursky's "Words Project III Miniatures" (***, New Amsterdam, in stores Tuesday) hit the ear with a bracing freshness: What have we here? Sadigursky, a saxophonist, composer and multi-instrumentalist, creates compelling soundscapes that sit on the intersection of the classical art song and a wide-ranging eclecticism that references jazz, world music, post-minimalism and pop.

Sadigursky sets texts by Carl Sandburg , William Carlos Williams, Maxim Gorky and others with an aphoristic flair. He bypasses song forms for through-composed settings that hug the imagery of the poetry. Whispered like a secret, Emily Dickinson's "Light" marries a lonely woman's voice with gentle counterpoint from acoustic guitars. Williams' jaunty, slightly warped "Danse Russe" lopes along jazzily on a bed of walking plucked cello, with Sadigursky's voice doubled by plucked viola. Vibes and various "little instruments" create an exotic wash.
The bass line and vibes on "Danse Russe" recall Eric Dolphy's "Hat and Beard," but Sadigursky mostly creates a self-contained sound world of beguiling combinations of vocalists and mysterious orchestration. After a while, I willingly gave up trying to parse the details: As in some modernist poetry, the sound of the music becomes meaning.

To Know Silence Perfectly

Thanks to Doug Jacobson for making the video.

The song is based on a poem by Carl Sandburg and is available Jan. 26th on Words Project III: Miniatures
. Monika Heidemann is featured on vocals.

Step Tempest

Richard Kamins on Words Project III: Miniatures.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Words and Music That Can Touch the Soul

Words Project III: Miniatures - Sam Sadigursky (New Amsterdam) - In his ongoing project to connect poetry with original music, saxophonist Sadigursky has, in the past, created elaborate works, with melodies that often used a small coterie of instruments in counterpoint with the vocals. The 3rd entry in the series concentrates more on the sound and shape of the words, this time allowing the poetry to dictate the form of the songs. Few of the 18 tracks have more than 3 or 4 instruments playing; there's no real rhythm section and solos are rare. This time out, Sadigursky's focus is on the voice - even the one track that has no words is a chorale written for voices. Working alongside multi-instrumentalist Michael Leonhart (and a number of musicians and vocalists), Sadigursky is not interested in displaying his (or his sideman's) technical facility but in making the listener move easily into this aural landscape. Sometimes it's tough, the words whiz by, the images don't make immediate sense - go back, play the cut again and again and, as you do, the words and music start to come into focus.


If you've not read Carl Sandburg in decades, you may have forgotten how he could create such vivid images in short sentences. There are 4 examples on this disk and each one has a unique soundscape. "Wistful"utilizes Leonhart's multi-tracked brass chorale to frame the lines while "Swirl" moves on the Middle-Eastern percussion of Richie Barshay and droning background vocals. "To Know Silence Perfectly" utilizes several keyboards, sounding not unlike Brian Wilson in his "Smile" days or the simple yet haunting songs of Robert Wyatt. Numerous horns and strings play in unison with Leonhart on "Stars, Songs, Faces" and there's a dreamy quality to this beautiful idea of how to live your life that the poet asks his reader to consider. The shortness of the cut (1:07) only strengthens the message of impermanence.

Other poets include William Carlos Williams (his "Dance Russe" is a mad look at the creative process while "El Hombre"has the feel of Brazilian poem/melody by Caetano Veloso), Sadi Ranson-Politizotti (her "Now" is a song of love that Karlie Bruce sings with an aching tenderness over a chamber music ensemble) and Kenneth Patchen ("Do Me That Love" has the feel of a introspective John Lennon work.) "O Muzyke Tolstykh" uses text by Maxim Gorky that is a scree against modern jazz with a soundscape featuring bass clarinet, piccolo, baritone saxophone, tabla and moaning brass. "Light (Ample Make This Bed") features a handsome guitar melody (played by Andrew McKenna Lee) over which Heather Masse quietly recites a wondrous piece by Emily Dickinson. Sadigursky also wrote music for the words of contemporary poets Michael Lally, Han Dong, and Maureen N. McLane as well as older poets such as David Ignatow (1914 - 1997), Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), León de Greiff (1895-1976), and Alena Synkova (1926 - ?, the only child-poet to survive the Terezin Concentration camp.


Sam Sadigursky is a busy musician, playing and recording with the likes of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Folklore Urbano, Tibagui, Julie Hardy and Rob Mosher's Storytime. He's a fine, articulate, player whose sweet tone enlivens the various ensembles he plays with. Yet, the Words Project CDs offers listeners the opportunity to hear Sadigursky the composer, arranger and orchestrator. While there is an "art song" quality about the Projects (a style which often has a distant and impassive feel), the majority of the pieces on "..III" have emotional weight and many speak of longing or love or sadness. The musical backdrops may be spare at times (the use of kalimba on "Rain" is a perfect touch as the hand-held African thumb piano's sound can resemble falling water) but never out of touch with the words. In this time when one can be surrounded by "talk shows" on television and radio as well as the constant jabbering of politicians and fundamentalists, these "Miniatures" pack quite a punch.

The One Constant

I shot this earlier tonight... Danny is currently mixing a new record of material that should be out in May or June. He's been one of my favorite pianists and composers for a long time now.

Danny Fox: piano, composition
Chris VanVorstVanBeest: bass
Max Goldman: drums

live at Cafe Vivaldi

New Rules

New York Times contributor Jon Pareles thoughtfully weighs in on the impact of music downloading and the new music business here.