GUEST POST BY JOSH SINTON
Is there anything you didn’t properly explain in our last conversation?
Well, lots. Most of it I’d say.
Can you keep it to just one thing?
Hmmm, I’d have to say it’s that the methodology the band’s following is one I observed Steve using.
And that would be?
A kind of concrete materialism.
Ummm, can’t say I’m following.
Continue reading "Breath for Men to Draw From as They Will" »
Bill Dixon at the 2007 Vision Festival
(Photo: DJA)
I'm very honored to be able to present this tribute to the great Bill Dixon by his friend and colleague, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum. Taylor's post on Dixon's recording November 1981 (reproduced below the fold) inspired me to check out Dixon's appearance at the 2007 Vision Festival, which I wrote about here. That performance was recorded and released by AUM Fidelity as 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur. It's an utterly transfixing piece of music and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
— DJA
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GUEST POST BY TAYLOR HO BYNUM
Bill Dixon died in his sleep last night, at his home in Vermont. The news has spread fast, partly a testament to the strength of Bill’s legacy, and partly an example of the hyper-media age we live in, a strange contrast to the timelessness and infinite patience of his music.
I wanted to offer a short remembrance, along with posting a few recent articles I’ve written on Bill’s work: the liner notes to the recent Tapestries for Small Orchestra recording, and an appreciation upon the 25th anniversary of his November 1981 album. As my own blog is on hiatus, I thank Darcy James Argue and the Festival of New Trumpet for letting me use their platforms for my words.
— Taylor Ho Bynum
BILL DIXON, 1925-2010
June 17, 2010
I got the news at 9am this morning from Stephen Haynes, my friend, my brother in brass, and the man who introduced me to Bill a little over a decade ago. A little later in the day, I talked to Sharon Vogel, Bill’s life-partner. She has been an amazing presence in Bill’s life, loving and committed to the music and as iron-willed as the maestro. My thoughts and love to her, and there is great comfort knowing Bill’s legacy is in such strong hands.
I visited Bill just last Friday, and it was obvious this day was coming soon, but it is still hard to process. I spent a few hours by his bedside. I played him the pocket cornet I had just received as a gift from our friend Michel Cote. I read him passages from a new book, I Want To Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom, by my friend Danielle Goldman, that includes a fantastic chapter on the important and grossly under-recognized interdisciplinary partnership between Bill and dancer/choreographer Judith Dunn in the ‘60s and ‘70s. (When asked by Goldman why there is not more discussion of their collaboration, Bill offered the classic quote “The history that gets written is the history that’s permissible.” I’m glad he lived to see scholars like Goldman, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Ben Young, and others, establish the standard for a new and deeper level of documentation.)
He also quizzed me about what projects I was working on, and we discussed plans for releasing the concert recording of the performance we had done at the Victoriaville festival two weeks prior. Even in a weakened state, he was engaged in the work.
It’s hard to believe the Victoriaville concert was only three weeks ago. We had been invited to reconvene the ensemble that recorded Tapestries for Small Orchestra in the summer of 2008: Bill, Graham Haynes, Stephen Haynes, Rob Mazurek, Glynis Lomon, Michel Cote, Ken Filiano, Warren Smith, and myself. It was one of the most intense musical weekends I’ve ever experienced. Bill had composed all new music for the occasion. It was clear Bill was fighting for the strength to make it happen, and we all understood the stakes. In his life, he could be demanding, because he refused to compromise the quality of the sound he was always searching for. And he was still pushing us hard in that last rehearsal. Stephen and I quietly shared a smile when he chastised the trumpets for an unconvincing entrance; Bill was definitely still with us! He was telling stories, he was dropping wisdom in his inimitable fashion, he was challenging us to play something new. At one point he said, “You know, they might drop the bomb tomorrow, and this will be the last concert for all of us. Play like it matters!”
When Bill arrived at the soundcheck, after we had set-up and gotten all the basic levels, he took command of the stage. The immediate strength of his presence erased any doubts or concerns we might have had about his ability to make it through the night. The concert was powerful, Bill conducting us through the material, drawing the music out of the band. At the end, Bill took to his feet, gesturing for the brass section to reach beyond what we thought we had left in a final burst of musical intensity. After the show, Bill was full of life backstage, thanking us all for the music, receiving our profound gratitude in return.
It is so hard to lose someone like that. As a Facebook post I saw this morning said “I thought Bill would outlive the planet!” His achievements were extraordinary, as all the obituaries that will come out in the next few days will attest. His legacy is enduring, as all of us fighting for that one true sound continue the journey. And he made it through 85 years, making vibrant, beautiful, world-changing music up until the very end, and what more could you ask for.
When I said goodbye last week at his home, I told him I’d try to visit him again in a few weeks, but I knew that was unlikely. I wish I had the guts to really say goodbye, to tell him how much his music changed me, changed so many of us. To tell him I loved him and would never forget what he taught me. But I like to think he knew.
photo by Isabelle Moisan, Victoriaville, Canada, May 2010
GUEST POST BY JOSH SINTON
STOP! If you’re sick ‘n tired of reading more words about Steve Lacy, I have a recommendation for a healthy alternative. This Sunday, June the 13th of 2010, Ideal Bread will present a musical rendition of these same ideas. You’ll be able to find us at 6:40 P.M. performing at Kenny's Castaways in the West Village of New York City as part of the Undead Jazz Festival. But if you find yourself wanting yet another pamphlet about Mr. Lacy, read on.
Consonance is the sine qua non of today’s jazz discourse. No matter how thorny/atonal/disruptive the chord or melody note, today’s jazz musicians by and large work mightily to integrate all their utterances into a seamless fabric of sound. If they don’t, then often times said musician’s product is thought to be lacking. And if it’s not the product, then the musician himself is thought to be missing some information. So it would seem from my previous post that Steve Lacy somehow missed something in his training. He didn’t demonstrate any clear knowledge of consonance in those five selections. This post will rectify any lingering doubts about his abilities with more consonant sounds.
GUEST POST BY JOSH SINTON
"The only thing important in music, as in anything else, is life and death. Any kind of style, any kind of way is valid if it's alive. Life and interest are two things I equate...If it's alive, I'm for it. In my own case, I don't want to be put to sleep, so I don't want to put others to sleep." Steve Lacy as interviewed by Brian Case in 1979.
Dissonance is not popular among jazz musicians today, at least not in any broad sense. Think of other musics where twenty somethings are a vital audience (rock, hip hop, techno, the various metal musics, r&b and even pop to an extent) and that makes jazz an anomaly. For the most part, dissonance in jazz is either used in the traditional way (as a dynamic way of returning to consonance) or it’s softened by couching it in reverberating timbres (think of most of the ECM records of the past 25 years). Where dissonance does exist by itself, it’s often played LOUDLY and rarely does it contrast with less dissonant textures. This is where I think Steve Lacy made some pretty thoughtful (and profound) contributions. Building on the precedence of Monk (and before that Ellington, and before that James P. Johnson and contemporaneous with that Sidney Bechet), Lacy heard dissonance as a sound, a fairly compelling one and something that didn’t need much in the way of softening.
[N.B. ‘Dissonance’ is a word that gets bandied about a fair bit without any real clarity of meaning. Of course, like any frequently used word, it has a lot of meanings. For the purposes of this essay, I’m using dissonance to mean this, this or this (scroll down to “Quality” and click on Minor second, Major second, Tritone, Minor seventh or Major seventh).]
I’ve selected five of what I consider some of Lacy’s most dissonant pieces. I left plenty out, but these are pieces that range from the cryptically strange to the downright harrowing. What they all share is that they are clearly the work of an exceptionally musical mind that has as deep an understanding of dissonance and its expressive possibilities as it does consonance.
Continue reading "A Deathless Valley of Mysterious Motherhood" »
Photo by Guy Le Querrec
GUEST POST BY JOSH SINTON
"Hi Josh,
Whatever you want to do w/r/t cross-posting stuff is fine!
Cheers,
- DJA"
[O.K. Darcy. 'preciate that and hopefully this all works out.]
Greetings. My name's Josh Sinton. I play baritone saxophone and bass clarinet in the Secret Society. Darcy has very graciously opened the floor of his beloved blog to allow me to post a few words regarding a band called Ideal Bread that I've been running for five years.
In 2004 I started work on what I thought would be a relatively simple project: come to grips with Steve Lacy's music by playing Steve Lacy's music. I called up stranger and friends to play his music in informal jam sessions, I played his music on nyc subway platforms, I listened to his CD's. I got lucky. I met three other very generous souls (Kirk Knuffke, Reuben Radding and Tomas Fujiwara) who were also very interested in his music. We started playing Steve's music regularly, then we got a gig (at Barbes no less!) then another gig, then an offer to make a CD, etc.... Now I find myself in the happy position of being able to say we're on the cusp of releasing our second CD. On June 8th "Transmit" will be released on Cuneiform Records. In honor of all this, I've decide to post some words and music every week from now until the end of June on my website (www.joshsinton.com) that relates to either Steve Lacy, Ideal Bread or repertory. Below the fold, you'll find the first post that went up this past Friday. It's the fifth in what I call a selfterview (yeah, I know it's an awkward name, but it explains itself quickly). Even if you're not interested in my words, I promise you'll be interested to hear the music that I've posted.
p.s. Ideal Bread will be playing some nyc shows throughout the year starting in June. You can check my website to get that info.
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