Sound Exchange performances

Um, I got a little bit behind here on the bloggie blog... so, on April 1 and 2 I performed in Philadelphia as part of "Sound Exchange" - which was awesome. I was part of a large group of improvising musicians studying / rehearsing / performing with Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band (Pauline along with Stewart Dempster, trombone, and David Gamper, piano).

The Deep Listening Band gave a concert on Saturday night, complete with 12-channel surround sound. Nice. After intermission, the trio was joined by the full Sound Exchange group.

On Sunday, we gave an afternoon concert: it opened with the Deep Listening Band performing an acoustic trio (gorgeous) and then the world premiere of four pieces composed by members of the Sound Exchange group. My piece, "Beyond Vietnam" was up first. The performance went really well... the other musicians really seemed to dig-in, and after what I would call "minimal" rehearsal time, I was delighted that everyone really "got it" and did a beautiful job. Cameron McPhee delivered a stellar performance. She had the hardest part -- delivering excerpts from Dr. King's speech, which is no easy task. Honestly, I couldn't be happier with the performance. The event was recorded, so I hope to have a recording to share in the near future.

I'm a little short on time, so I can't write up a full blow-by-blow of the other pieces on the program... but it was a real treat to play with such a talented group. At times, it felt like herding cats (put a dozen improvising musicians in a room and try to get them to agree on what we're working on... or even just try to get them all in the room at the same time ;-) but I had a great time and it was really an honor and a privilege to participate. Big thanks to all of the artists, and to the Philly Chapter of the American Composers Forum for putting it together!!

City of Brotherly Love

Greetings from lovely Philadelphia, PA! It's a beautiful day and I have a little time before rehearsal this afternoon... so I can catch up on some news:

Since my last post about the bad day in rehearsal with Ben, I've been playing quite a bit, and things are going very nicely thank you very much. I think the allergy medicine really does make my brain foggy - so I've been trying to take as little as possible.

A few weeks ago, I performed with Jane Franklin Dance in a short performance that was part of their gala evening, held at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA. The school is really something... it's a high-end boarding school with a large and gorgeous campus. The arts center was very nicely outfitted, including some big name artwork on the wall, such as two Picasso limited edition prints, a Renoir lithograph, and a signed and numbered Miro. Quite a far cry from a public high school! Anyway, the show went well. They've added a new section to this suite of pieces including poetry that we've been working on for a few months. We had very little rehearsal time, so I had to make something up on the spot and there was little room for making revisions. I think that actually helped - I had the freedom to do whatever I thought worked best and didn't have to answer to anyone ;-)

I've also been hard at work rehearsing with Daniel Burkholder. Our new duo piece, "unmapped," will be performed in April (see upcoming events sidebar for details). Then we're gearing up for the full version in July during Fringe. This piece attempts to blur the line between the musician and dancer on stage. My guitar is hooked up to a wireless gizmo so I have to be out on stage moving with Daniel, and we can pass the guitar back and forth and toss it around, etc. (all while actually playing the music for the piece live). The two of us are also developing a new piece for Cross Currents - we've been commissioned as part of their 10th anniversary season. The plan was to use this commission as an opportunity to develop material for our own duo piece, but it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

Today (and through the rest of this weekend) I'm in Philadelphia for "Sound Exchange." Tonight is the first concert of the project - a concert by Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band. The second half of the concert features the Deep Listening Band along with the full group of Sound Exchange participants (a large group of improvising musicians, mostly from Philly). We had one rehearsal yesterday, and another one later this afternoon. It's been quite remarkable: there were a few rehearsals without Pauline and company, and the results were much different that what we played yesterday. Pauline, David Gamper, and Stuart Dempster really lead by example. We're all quite free to improvise - there has been very little structure imposed so far, but their playing (and mindful listening) really sets the tone. Yesterday's rehearsal sounded quite nice - with all members of the group showing quite a bit of restraint.

Coming up on Sunday, there is another concert - featuring new works by the four "composer participants." I'm one of them. My piece is built around excerpts from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That came about in a serendipitous manner... our first meeting for "orientation" was on Martin Luther King Day in February. While I was driving up to Philly, I heard a fascinating radio program (on WPFW) exploring Dr. King's decision to speak out against the war in Vietnam, and examining how his remarks were received in the media. That night, after playing with the group most of the day, I was thinking of what to write and it seemed to make sense to include this material. The end result is an arrangement of King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech with instrumental accompaniment. Cameron is coming up to Philly to perform with us - she'll be reading the text. If you're curious, you can have a look at the score here (pdf).

The DC Improvisers Collective is also hard at work - we're preparing for a recording session in the beginning of June. We'll also be performing on May 15th in DC... details coming soon.

A kick in the 'nads of my confidence

Ok, so in the post below this one, I said how I was going to play with Ben and then podcast something? Well, I'm not going to. I played with Ben on Saturday and I kind of sucked real bad. I'm going to blame it on the allergy medicine. I guess this happens sometimes? We did some improvising and I had no ideas. Or only bad ideas. That sounded bad. Listening back to the tape, I felt like I was listening to old recordings of me playing when I was fifteen (and those are bad. very bad). Hopefully the recording we made (on Ben's four track cassette because I forgot to bring the power supply for my laptop) will never enter the digital domain or be heard by anyone ever again.

This week I have not one, but three rehearsals with Daniel Burkholder, plus Sound Exchange rehearsal in Philly tomorrow, and then rehearsal & gig with Jane Franklin Dance on Saturday, so I guess I'm climbing right back on that metaphorical horse and hopefully things will improve. Actually, I'm sure they will... had one rehearsal with Daniel yesterday and that was ok. But, ouch. Sorry Ben - will do better next time.

Sound Exchange in the news

The Philadelphia City Paper has a cover story this week about the Sound Exchange program / workshop that I'm participating in. Click here for the article. I'll be heading up to Philly this coming Thursday for a rehearsal with the group - hopefully we'll have a chance to work through a few sections of my piece (which is still "under construction").

Tomorrow, I'll be doing some rehearsing / recording with drummer, Ben Azzara. Assuming we don't run into technical problems (like forgetting to press the record button, which I've been known to do) I'll probably podcast something in a few days...

Misc. Update

I have a Performance this coming Saturday with Jane Franklin Dance, the same suite of short dances with poems that we performed at Iota a few weeks ago, this time at Arlington Arts Center. I'’ve got to set aside some home-studio time to build a recorded version so they can do the piece without me.

"“Sport Utility Vehicle" will be released on a compilation / audio '‘zine thanks to Sean Peoples and his Sockets CDR label. There'’s a release party on Sunday at Warehouse Next Door.– We'’re not performing at that, but you can pick up a copy at a discount during the show…

Cameron and I will also be presenting the world premiere performance of "Sport Utility Vehicle"” as part of a Baltimore Composers Forum concert, April 30, 3pm, at An Die Musik in Baltimore.

I was just hired by Cross Currents dance company to create original music for a piece that Daniel Burkholder is choreographing for them. Actually, it'’s a chance for us to work out some of the material that will be used in our upcoming duo piece, "“unmapped."” The Cross Currents show will be staged May 13 and 14 at Dance Place. Daniel and I will be showing our first version of the duo piece as part of "“The Pangea Project" at H Street Playhouse, April 14 -– 16.

Daniel and I are just starting our rehearsal process for the duo project. After the shows at H Street Playhouse, we'll be preparing for the real "“world premiere"” during the Capital Fringe Festival. Exact date(s) and venue will be announced soon. We'’re going to perform the piece, which will be a 40 minute structured improvisation, every hour for 24 hours straight. It'’s gonna be nuts.

I'’m still hard at work on my piece for "“Sound Exchange"” in Philadelphia. The project is a workshop for improvising musicians, led by Pauline Oliveros and members of her Deep Listening Band. The piece will be premiered in Philadelphia at the Trinity Center for Urban Life on Sunday, April 2nd at 4pm. The piece is a large-scale work, built around excerpts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "“Beyond Vietnam" speech. I'’ll be in Philadelphia from March 30 -– April 2 for the workshop and concerts.

I just fired off a grant proposal to Chamber Music America, for their "“New Works: Creation and Presentation Program," which funds the commissioning of pieces for composer-led jazz ensembles. I hope to continue developing the Sound Exchange piece, as an evening length piece for DC Improvisers Collective. Keep your fingers crossed!

I'm heading to Austin, Texas in April (6th to 11th) and while I'’m there, I'’m planning on doing some recording with Graham Reynolds. Hopefully I'll have some material to share afterwards… I haven't seen Graham in a while, and I have no idea what might happen!

We're still making arrangements for the DC Improvisers Collective recording sessions, looks like it will be in late May, or early June. Hopefully our second full-length CD will be available shortly thereafter. As part of our preparations for the recording session, we hope to schedule two live shows before then… dates and venues coming soon.

Jane Franklin Dance at Iota

This past Sunday I performed with Jane Franklin Dance in an unusual event at Iota in Arlington. This season, Jane Franklin is doing a series of performances using poems by local writers - in very different types of venues. A few weeks ago, we were at the Schlesinger Center at Northern Virginia Community College (a huge concert hall), and this time we were in a small club.

This show was part of a monthly poetry series hosted at Iota. We did a twenty minute piece using several poems, and then the poets who normally gather for this Sunday night thing read some work, some of them inviting the dancers to improvise during their readings.

We had a few rehearsals, and I have to admit I think I did a better job in rehearsal. I made a few mistakes during the performance, and had some problems with noise from my guitar rig (probably interference from the lights messing with my single-coil guitar pickups). I think it went ok, but I didn't feel like it was my best work...

Sport Utility Vehicle

I wrote this piece a few years ago and shelved it. The story goes like this: I heard a performance by Charles Amirhkanian, and a few days later (not surprisingly) I had an idea for a text-based piece. I came up with an algorithm for distributing the words using chance operations, and I found the numbers to be intoxicating and wound up getting caught up in the process, which caused the piece to go on for way too long.

Lately, I've been experimenting with some new looping tools in Audiomulch, and I came up with a revised version that could be performed live pretty easily. Cameron had some great suggestions, and we made this recording today. Hope you enjoy this new revised (rescued?) version of Sport Utility Vehicle featuring Cameron McPhee (voice).

Guitar and laptop

Today I want to share a new recording I made at home this weekend. I've been doing some tweaking of my guitar processing rig lately for a few projects that I have coming up.

A few years ago, I sold my racks full of guitar gear and switched over to a computer based system using my laptop. I'm working with an audio environment called Audiomulch. For more information about Mulch, visit audiomulch.com and you can learn all about it. Basically, it's a very cool platform for manipulating audio in real time. It provides a system for configuring lots of little contraptions in a very flexible way. I've replicated the system I used to have with my old hardware-based rig, plus I've added some nifty new features.

This recording was made while I was testing out my latest configuration – making sure it works the way I'd hoped it would, and I've been practicing making loops and juggling looped material along with live playing. This piece was played live – it's just one pass with guitar and live processing, totally improvised. I hope you enjoy it.

As always, you can get the latest news about what I'm working on by visiting morrismatis.blogspot.com.

Good News! DCIC = Grantee

Let's all give thanks to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Through their "Small Projects" program, the DC Improvisers Collective just received a grant of $1,000 to make a studio recording!!! We plan on spending three days at Inner Ear / Silver Sonya with Chad Clark.

We still need to raise another $500 to cover the studio time, so you'll be hearing more from us about that in the near future... but today let's just enjoy the good news!

DCIC at Warehouse Next Door, Jan 18

As promised, here's a podcast from our performance at Warehouse Next Door a few weeks ago. We played as a trio that night, and did three "pieces." This is the final one. At this point, I was kneeling on the floor, playing prepared guitar. Mike opens the piece with key clicks on the sax, while Ben is playing with brushes. Mike then pulls out a particularly gorgeous lyrical improvisation and Ben's brushwork gradually coalesces into a steady rhythm. I didn't want to mess up this nice texture, so I let them take it for a while... You'll hear me sneak in at about 2:15. The entire concert is available for free download on our website now: http://dcic.alkem.org.

Dan (bass player) couldn't play with us that night, but he did contribute titles for the tracks. He named the set "An Index of Elements" and this track is named "c) Sn (density 7.3)"

Robert Carl - Changing My Spots

Last Friday night (January 27), I had the chance to perform in a concert by composer Robert Carl. He was one of my composition teachers at the Hartt School of Music (where I did my graduate work). He came to town to present an evening of work that he performs by himself - including several nice piano pieces, and some electronic things along with some shakuhachi music. The last piece on the program is an improv piece for an ensemble of unspecified instrumentation called "Changing My Spots." For this performance (which was the "world premiere" - fancy fancy), we put together a quartet with Jodi Beder (cello), Dan Barbiero (double bass), me (guitar), and the composer at the piano.

The score is wide open, but all pitches are specified. I'm probably the weakest reader in the group, and Cameron remarked that she thought it looked "cute" when I was squinting at the page, then looking at the neck of the guitar, then playing a note or two. Well, hopefully the audience couldn't see me counting the frets trying to make sure I was playing the right notes!

Music roundtable at DCist

Just came across this nice post at the DCist. They published a "music roundtable" discussion about the state of the "industry." It's not exactly comprehensive, but a great start. I think the discussion about the usefulness of MySpace is actually pretty accurate, which is rare given all the hype surrounding that stuff these days.

DCIC at Warehouse Next Door

Last night, DC Improvisers Collective played on a bill with Hugh McElroy (former member of the legendary Black Eyes, and currently working with Hand-Fed Babies) and the guitar duo of Don Fleming and Chris Grier.

We played as a trio again, since Dan (our bass player) couldn't make it. Happily, the trio format is really working nicely. With the bass missing, there's lots of sonic space open, so I brought my laptop processing rig and allowed myself the luxury of gadgets. When we're a quartet, I've found it works much better to leave the gadgets at home since there's no need (or space) for looping and processing.

We played this show with very little planning, we really left things open to make up everything on the fly. After hearing the two guitar assault of Don and Chris, I wanted to open with some noisy guitar playing, so we agreed to start with a short noisy guitar solo (which I did with a slide in my right hand - attacking the strings above the pickups and occasionally over the neck), then Ben and Mike entered with some droning textures and I switched gears to more ambient textured sounds. Then things just progressed organically from there.

Mike started on bass clarinet, which is a fairly quiet instrument and I had a hard time playing softly enough to match (the joys of borrowing the Azarra's delicious sounding tube amp), but when Mike switched to his tenor sax that wasn't an issue.

We were all quite satisfied with the performance. I felt like there was really good ensemble listening and interaction. We all had ample opportunities to initiate new ideas, and I think we all did a nice job of responding to one another. It may be a week or two before I get the recording posted online, but I'll podcast something when it's available...

Sound Exchange Orientation

Last Monday was our "orientation" for Sound Exchange in Philadelphia. The session was basically our first day of workshops with Pauline Oliveros.

It's a very interesting group of musicians with very diverse backgrounds: jazz players, experimental musicians, people coming from different areas of rock, electronic music, and all kinds of improv traditions.

The day opened with a short performance by Pauline and David Gamper, utilizing their Extended Instrument System (laptops running a Max patch into a four channel surround sound system). It was simply breathtaking, gorgeous, and amazing.

Pauline and David explained some of the evolution of the Extended Instrument System and the development of her Deep Listening practice.

We continued with several pieces / exercises such as: a five minute group listening, two one-minute "pieces" where we each made one sound during that minute, a series of short solos (as a means of introducing ourselves to the group), a series of duos and trios, followed by some discussion.

After a meal break, we dove into a full group improvisation. That was followed by a discussion including some poignant criticism of the large group piece, and then some discussion about how the rest of the program will proceed. It seems that I'll have an opportunity to "compose" a piece for the full ensemble, to be included in a concert on Sunday, April 2. I have some ideas about that already... maybe when I write up a summary / proposal to float to the gruop, I'll post some info about it here.

All in all, a fascinating and inspiring day. I'm looking forward to playing with everyone again!

Sound Exchange - Philadelphia

I just found out today that I've been selected as one of the four "composer participants" in a program called Sound Exchange - presented by the Philadelphia chapter of the American Composers Forum and Ars Nova Workshop.

The program is essentially a three day workshop with Pauline Oliveros (pictured), and mebers of her Deep Listening Band: David Gamper and Stuart Dempster - along with four composers and I think fifteen performers? I'm tickled to have been accepted and am seriously looking forward to it!

Oh, and I'll be needing a place to crash in Philadelphia, March 30 - April 2... please let me know if you or a friend or relative might like to host a visiting artist...

(at this time, I couldn't find much info about the program online, but if you click through to Ars Nova Workshop, go to "event calendar" and then scroll down to March you'll see the original call for participants)

holy crap! I just got the list of participants and Byard Lancaster is one of the "performer participants." Looks like a really interesting mix of people that I'll be working with... including some previous conspirators like Charles Cohen. Here's the list, if you're curious:

PERFORMERS
Bart Miltenberger
Byard Lancaster
Charles Cohen
Chris McGlumphy
Dave Smolen
Evan Lipson
Gerone Dale Jimenez
Helena Espvall-Santoleri
Jesse Kudler
Joe Whitt
Monica McIntyre

COMPOSERS
Ben Camp
Jonathan Matis
Valerie Opielski
John Phillips

Leroy

I'm working on new music for Jane Franklin Dance - as part of a project called "Dancing the Page" which is a collaborative project with local poets, composers, and the dance company. The piece I'm working on now is called "Leroy" and it's built on a poem by Reuben Jackson.

We started on this a few months ago, and did an in-progress showing at the Improv Festival last October (which I wrote about at the time). Since then, I scrapped what I had done and tried something different - which didn't work out so well with Jane Franklin. So we went back to the original approach, and for the latest draft I made a cleaned up version of that first material. It's funny to call this a piece of "my" music since it's just a collage of samples from old soul records, but I'm not so interested in authorship - let's just say I'm playing D.J. on this one... I think I'm going to add some live guitar or prepared-guitar material on top, but this is probably going to be the foundation of the piece. So, anyway, here's the 3rd draft. Comments welcome.

Happeningistime

Ginger Wagg has a new show coming up this Saturday called "Happeningistime" - it's at Spare Room in Baltimore from 7 - 9pm.

The show is an installation and performance. For the last few months, Ginger has been travelling around the country and sending packages to the Spare Room. She is making an installation of all the mailed materials, plus there's some sculpture by Agata Olek. Ginger will also be doing some movement performance (costume by Agata as well). For the show, she wanted to create some audio, so I helped her with the recording.

Wanted to clarify since there's some possibly misleading info on Damian's blog... I didn't do any composing - Ginger created the piece and performed the cello herself. We made two recordings - one on her rooftop of the cello and other ambient sounds, then took a walk down U Street and recorded that. We edited them together, and this will be the sound environment for the installation and performance.

The day-job balancing act

This week was my first Wednesday since leaving my bookkeeping job at Cultural Tourism DC. I had been working for them one day each week for the last few months - and found that I really didn't have time for it (but it paid well, and I do need the money). So, I made a leap of faith, of sorts, and gave them notice back in November... they convinced me to stay on through the end of the year, but now I'm free free free. And if this week was any indication, I think I made the right decision.

This week, instead of going to their office and spending the day doing bookkeeping, I went to work by spending the day in my home studio making recordings. Much more enjoyable work -- the hours flew by. Ginger Wagg came over in the morning to do an editing session for audio for her show coming up this Saturday, then I spent the afternoon working on music for a project with Jane Franklin Dance. (I'm going to write entries about those projects in a few minutes...)

Hopefully the money will work out... but in any event, I'm feeling great about setting aside some additional time for art-making. It certainly feels like the right thing to do now.

Alkem Benefit show

On Saturday, December 17, the DC Improvisers Collective (DCIC) played in a marathon show at Warehouse Next Door to benefit Alkem (the lovely and amazing nonprofit that provides free web-hosting for DCIC, Improv Arts, the DC Sonic Circuits Festival, and many other local artists).

There were seven bands on the bill and things got started late, so the show went (as expected) until very late. We didn't go on until after 1am, and I think our fatigue showed - and it was showing in the audience (what was left of them) as well.

Turnout for the show was very good. We got a pick in the CityPaper's "City Lights" section of weekly critic's picks, and a small write-up in the Post's nightlife column. Dan even got his picture in the CityPaper. Unfortunately, by the time we went on the crowd had thinned considerably. Sarah Azzara mentioned during her set (she was the only one who had to go on later than us) that by that point in the night it was more like the Alkem office party...

Sarah also opened the show with her new trio, Shame Girl. They were followed by Ben Azzara's new band, Pup Tent. The evening was really the Ben & Sarah Azzara variety show, which is a good thing... since they both rock. Other non-Azzara performers included The Antiques and Kohoutek. I hadn't heard John Rickman play drums before, so that was nice. I've only heard him in more "experimental" settings such as his duo EBSK.

As for our set, it was a little disappointing. We were all kinda wiped out before we got on stage, and then we rushed to set up and start playing since it was already so late. After the show, Mike said he felt like free improv really is about realizing the energy in the space - at the time, and we didn't really do that... we did more of a "hurry up and blow" kind of set rather than feeding on the overall mellowing that had occurred by that late hour. I don't feel like we really connected with one another (we all had a hard time hearing Dan's bass), so overall it wasn't so satisfying.

That being said, I'd still rather spend a Saturday night playing with these guys and not realizing our full potential, than almost anything else... and hopefully we raised enough money at the show to cover our web hosting for the next year.

In other news, I'm working on music for a new dance piece with Jane Franklin Dance. The piece is still in the fuzzy stages of development, but since the show is coming up next month I need to get it ironed out soon. Assuming it comes together ok, I'll podcast a draft of it in the next week or so.

DCIC at Black Cat

Here's the final track from our performance last month at the Black Cat. Dan (bass player) couldn't make it, so DCIC was a trio: Mike Sebastian (sax), Ben Azzara (drums) and me. Mike's new horn sounds particularly nice on this track -- and his playing is lyrical and bittersweet. I think this piece has a kind of wintery feel, so a nice choice for a snowy weekend... The rest of the show is posted on our site for free download: http://dcic.alkem.org

Well, not the whole show. I forgot to press record before we started playing, so the recording is missing the first fifteen minutes or so.

We'll be playing next saturday (12/17) at Warehouse Next Door along with The Antiques, Sarah Azzara, Lida Husik (who is coming to sit in at DCIC rehearsal tomorrow... I'm eager to see how that works), Kohoutek, Pup Tent, and Shame Girl. The show is a benefit for Alkem, which provides free web hosting for artists and small arts organizations.