The eminent Hungarian composer György Kurtág turns 90 today, and -- it's reported by his publisher, Editio Musica Budapest -- remains hard at work on a magnum opus, the Beckett-based opera Fin de partie. In wishing him robust health, I offer in tribute a small handful of useful links, including an outstanding Jeremy Eichler profile that I'm having permanently extracted from behind the Globe paywall in Kurtág's honor.
Scanning social media recently, Torn came across a journalist who was crowd-sourcing questions to ask him in an upcoming interview. A common reply: Ask what he’s been doing since “Cloud About Mercury.” That’s Torn’s most famous album, sure, but it came out in 1987.
I'm reasonably certain that I heard David Torn on the two Everyman Band LPs that ECM released before Cloud About Mercury arrived in 1987, but what an impact that record made on me. How could it not? Mark Isham played stellar trumpet, and the rhythm section was the then-current King Crimson tandem of Tony Levin on Chapman stick and bass, and Bill Bruford on electronic and acoustic percussion. Over it all, Torn's guitar dipped and soared, gliding like some proud bird of prey. The album holds up for me even now, and led to further adventures by three-quarters of the band - joined by Chris Botti on trumpet - as Bruford Levin Upper Extremities (B.L.U.E.).
Torn's done quite a lot since. But instead of continuing to build, his renown took something of a dip. Maybe part of it was that he signed to Windham Hill when that label, formerly the iconic stronghold of acoustic New Age, was exploring other routes; surely part of it was a health crisis that kept Torn out of the spotlight for a time. But as he indicated in this interview, he kept extremely busy with sideman and soundtrack work; you've quite likely heard him on film, on television, in video games, on singles by John Legend, and on albums by David Bowie.
In 2007, Torn came back to ECM with Prezens, a disc that found him working with saxophonist Tim Berne, keyboardist Craig Taborn, and drummer Tom Rainey - collectively, the trio Hard Cell, whose most recent recordings for other labels Torn had produced.
Now Torn has a new CD out: only sky, a completely improvised solo album that showcases his knack for fashioning moody atmospheres with guitar, oud, loops, and pedals. It's a quiet stunner, and to celebrate its arrival, he's touring solo for the first time in around 20 (!) years. On Wednesday night (May 13), he'll be playing sounds consistent with the album - but not identical, mind - at Regattabar in Cambridge.
Two videos here: first, rare footage from 1987 of the Cloud About Mercury band, with the late, lamented bassist Mick Karn filling in for Tony Levin, and second, a recent TEDxCalTech lecture/concert by Torn that demonstrates the kind of magic he works on only sky.
Shared on Facebook by Larry Appelbaum, here's a video I've never seen before: a documentary about Ornette Coleman's 1966 Parisian trek to record the soundtrack for Who's Crazy? with bassist David Izenson and drummer Charles Moffett.
Happy 84th birthday, Ornette, with profound thanks for the music and its message.
Finally getting around to posting two reviews that ran in the Times last Tuesday. Both concerts were events I specifically requested, and neither disappointed.
This Alarm Will Sound concert came first, a week ago Saturday. It was part of a seasonlong residency that also included this previous program, as well as a flash-mob performance of "Cliffs" by Aphex Twin the following Monday afternoon. This concert also happened to be a particularly special event for a personal reason I'm keeping to myself. (If you saw me there, you can guess, I'm sure.)
Here are two videos showing portions of the aforementioned flash-mob performance, which happened on November 18 at noon.
The early 1980s were a period of transition for the avant-garde fringe in New York. The loft scene – the days in which Ornette Coleman's hom on Prince Street and Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea provided workshops for experimenters to develop their art –was drawing to a close, and the arrival of the Knitting Factory and its explosive impact on the Downtown scene was still a few years away, it fell to the artists themselves to create new opportunities.
As chronicled in Ebba Jahn's 1984 [sic – 1985, actually] documentary, Rising Tones Cross (just released on video), two such motivated visionaries were bassist William Parker and dancer Patricia Nicholson. The film centers around the Sound Unity Festival, a precursor to the couple's current Lower East Side bash, the now four-year-old Vision Festival.
It was German bassist Peter Kowald, on an extended sojourn in New York that included a hefty formative role in Sound Unity, who convinced Jahn to make a film about the upstart festival. "It was clear to me that I wanted to have a German protagonist and an American protagonist," Jahn says. Her friend Kowald was the German of choice, naturally, but America's representative had yet to be confirmed. "Originally, I had thought of Ornette Coleman. But on the day I arrived, first thing in the morning I met Charles Gayle, the most un-famous saxophonist at the time in New York City." That meeting, combined with a choice encounter with a cameraman who was working on Shirley Clark's Coleman documentary, Made in America, led Jahn to shift her focus "from the most famous avant-garde saxophonist to the most un-famous."
Instead of simply a compilation of festival footage – though performances by musicians like Jemeel Moondoc, Don Cherry, and Peter Brötzmann abound in the film – Rising Tones Cross was intended to be a tool for music education. "For many people who saw the film in Germany, it was the first time they ever heard this type of music," she says. "They said in the beginning they had difficulty. But after a while, they could, all of a sudden, hear it 'click' in their ears, and something opened up."
To help facilitate this reaction, Jahn put the most difficult music at the end of the film, easing the audience into it gradually. She also included a number of scenes intended to dispel common myths about free jazz. For example, when Brötzmann's strapping 11-piece ensemble – boasting a tenor phalanx comprised of the leader, Gayle, David S. Ware, and Frank Wright – seems to be blowing chaotically onstage, Jahn's camera pans across Brötzmann's diagrammatic score to reveal an extraordinary amount of careful detail, planning, and scripting – the architecture girding the maelstrom.
And having overcome an initial distrust and some reluctance to take part in the film, the enigmatic Gayle is revealed to be affable, erudite, and quite well-versed in jazz history, a far cry from his dark public persona and stage presence. "He was perceived as a philosopher in Germany," says Jahn.
Now that the film is available on video – through Jahn's Website (http://members.aol.com/FilmPals/store.htm) and through NorthCountry Distribution – Jahn looks forward to her film reaching new viewers. "I would like it to be in colleges," she says, "where people learn about jazz. I think it's a good tool for people wanting to learn a little bit about this music. Nobody else has made a film about this music. And at the end of the century, the time is probably right for it."
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The Vision Festival, now in its 18th season, will be held June 12-16 at Roulette. Rising Tones Cross was issued on DVD by the FMP label in 2005; I have no idea whether it's still available, but you can watch the first 26 minutes of it here. Below, the Peter Brötzmann scene I described in the article, mistakenly labeled as the Vision Festival (which was launched in 1996).
Ken Thomson and I first crossed paths back in 1997, when I was the publicist for the Knitting Factory and its first-annual [sic] Texaco Jazz Festival (formerly What Is Jazz?), and he was part of an intrepid team broadcasting multiple events for Columbia University's invaluable radio station, WKCR-FM.
Since then, I've eagerly and admiringly followed Ken's exploits as the force-of-nature reedist who fronts avant-skronk jazz quartet Gutbucket; in the new-music all-star aggregate Signal; with the composerly chamber-jazz combo slow/fast; and in the riotous Bang on a Can street band Asphalt Orchestra – the last of which you'll see tearing up the pavement anew at Lincoln Center Out of Doors this summer.
All of which makes it a distinct pleasure, if hardly a surprise, to congratulate Ken on his new status as clarinetist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, announced mere moments ago. No question, Evan Ziporyn is a tough act to follow…but if anyone can do it, Ken can.
Watch Ken in sax-dervish mode, fronting Gutbucket in his "dOg Help Us" at Le Poisson Rouge:
Interview with Lauren Worsham [link missing] Time Out New York, Feb. 21–27, 2013
An excruciatingly short snippet from a lengthy, wide-ranging and brilliantly fun conversation with Lauren Worsham (full name: Lauren Worsham Jarrow), who plays Flora in New York City Opera's stylishly spooky production of Benjamin Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw.
Worsham caught my eye and ear in Brooklyn Village, a wonderfully creative multimedia concert event staged by the Brooklyn Philharmonic at Roulette (reviewed here), then shook me to the core in a Peak Performances staging of David T. Little's opera Dog Days at Montclair State University (reviewed here).
Since both of those events made my list of Top 10 events for 2012 in Time Out, talking to Worsham about her City Opera assignment was a no-brainer. We covered her Texas roots, her training at Yale University, her early jobs, her relationship with opera and her flamboyantly stagey rock band, Sky-Pony, which she leads with her husband, theater composer Kyle Jarrow.
Someday, I'd love to get around to transcribing and posting the entire interview. Don't hold your breath right now, though. Instead, look out for Worsham as Guadalena and Manuelita in City Opera's production of Offenbach's La Perichole at City Center, April 21, 23, 25 and 27. And watch this video of Sky-Pony in action at Joe's Pub, then see the band's schedule for your next chance to witness it live… as of this writing, it's March 30 at Pianos on Ludlow Street.
Musical America reports that the great American conductor James DePreist
passed away this morning in Scottsdale, AZ, at 76, due to
complications from an earlier heart attack. Born in Philadelphia in 1936, and the nephew of Marion Anderson, Mr. DePreist was a prominent, gifted
musician who won the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music
Competition for Conductors in 1964, and spent more than two decades as
the music director of the Oregon Symphony. He leaves behind numerous
distinguished recordings.
In this 2009 video, Mr. DePreist tells
Seattle journalist and composer Melinda Bargreen about his early career
path. The video quality is nothing special, but the conversation
certainly is. I'm glad to have had a few chances to see him conduct in
person, notably a memorable Mahler Fifth Symphony with the Juilliard
Orchestra, about which we exchanged pleasant emails after my New York Timesreview appeared.
My only Times review so far to include Eddie Vedder and Zooey Deschanel in the lede graf. (Felt good to sneak in a Buke and Gase mention, too.) I went into this one slightly skeptical, despite a vivid review by Allan Kozinn of the ensemble's 2010 Zankel Hall concert, but came out a convert: The show is a pop-savant's delight, with nostalgic kicks for multiple generations. The medley in the video I've embedded below is a great demonstration of what the ensemble is about.