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I Performed in Barry Morse and Jason Finkleman’s “Improviser’s Summit” last weekend (October 24th, 2015) at the Institute For Creativity. (AKA: i4c.) Here are some of my impressions:
There were less than a handful of audience members and about 20 musicians. There were quite a few guitar players, two trombonists, one sax, one oboe, one keyboardist playing a Nord Stage 88, one Thereminist, one harpist (the marvelous Claire Happel), one laptopist (two, if you include me with the Max patch) — the fascinating if understated/restrained Alan Wu, and Dorothy Martirano on violin. There were two vocalists, a woman I don’t know with some serious vocal chops, and, surprisingly, Scott Schwartz of the Sousa Archive/Center for American Music, who sang and vocalized quite well, and DID NOT bring his guitar.
The architechts of the gig, Jason Finkleman and Barry Morse, also performed. Barry played trumpet in non-standard technique mode, and Jason had a full electronic rig plus Berimbau and shakeres.
Some of the guitarists were familiar from the C-U music scene. One, whose name I did not catch, was playing an Ibanez electric with a batch of pedals that made rich, slow moving soundscapes that I found literally mesmerizing.
I’m lumping the banjoist in with the guitars, He also played some extended techniques, using wooden pegs inserted in the strings to pluck and tap on.
There were also two cellists. How can I forget them! As different as could be, one was a woman with a solid technique and no amplification; the other an older man with a GK amp and a unique style and undying sensitivity to other textures and tonalities.
I arrived at the scene early and took some photographs.
The steps up to the second floor, from the top looking down. (duh.)
My rig piled up in front of door…
A very arty wall…
Another way of saying “enter at your own risk.”
Jason Finkleman in conversation with Scott Schwartz.
The photo was taken before the concert, after a few of us had gotten set up, but before most of the guitarists had arrived. My space is just inside the stage right speaker. No, not that speaker. That’s Jason’s table and laptop over by the stage left speaker!
Once the guitarists arrived and set up, there was constant guitar playing happening. At a few minuted past 8, Barry addressed us all and explained the set up of the gig: he’s asked us all to submit our names and instrument on a small square of paper. These scraps went into a pair of black pouches. From the pouches, a pair of interns for the i4c would draw a number of the slips. Thus, we wold perform together in random quartets and trios, for a duration of about 5 minutes each.
Following this, there would be a break. After break, the entire ensemble would perform together under the loose direction of Barry Morse. He’d start by conducting the attacks of a series of chords (random), and then point out those who would perform long tones and such going forward. From time to time he would moderate the action (reaction) by singling out players. At the end, he would repeat the conducting of chords followed by a cut off and that would be that.
The small groups picked “randomly” by the i4c interns proved the strength of the gathered talent far more than the massed ensemble. I put randomly in quotes because the small pieces of paper were stuffed into the pouches in a particular order. Those on the scene early got their slips in first; those coming later went in last. The pouches were fabric, so the slips could not be randomized by shaking. The ‘randomization’ was entirely determined by how deeply an interns’ hand went into a pouch and which slips happened to emerge within the pinch of fingers. The fingers went in deep; I was in the 1st group along with Barry, the Theremin guy, and Alan Wu — the other laptop wielding, live-coding, madman. Until a recording becomes available, you’ll have to take my word for it that this was a pretty good start to an evening’s improvising. My sensation was that we were going on too long. I raised my iPad and made some noise, but when my declaration was done, I sat back down, pointed the tablet earthward, and rotated it to silence. I listened: Barry was flutter-tongueing his trumpet and the theremin was swooping. Alan was quite subtle on his rig. The theremin offered an opportunity for me to duet with swoops of pitch. The range of the iPad rig was well beyond that of a theremin, both in pitch range and volume. At the end, I went out with a last low belch of sound.
Of the subsequent groups, the order of arrival remained apparent in the drawings. I took a seat out in the audience, as most of us did. We were our own audience.
The ‘cellists were in a group together. So were the trombones. Jason Winkleman, a veteran improviser, managed to shape a performance that rebooted when he took up his Berimbau. This is a monadic instrument of African origin with strong ties to Brazil. Jason has been playing it since before I met him and can make it speak effectively and rhythmically. I am no expert on world musics. All I know of the Berimbau is from hearing Jason play it.
The vocalists, one of which was the aforementioned Scott Schwartz, were performing from a text which also seemed to come out of somebody’s hat. The sonorities and textures they unleashed were the perfect antidote to the instrumental varieties that outnumbered them.
The guitarists ended up together in groups also. Those that had extended techniques were fascinating to watch as well as hear. One of the guitarists was very virtuosic in his approach. He had plenty of opportunity to absorb the new music zeitgeist, and it was this ethos that he employed in his small group improv.
The large ensemble, all 20 plus of us, was an unwieldy mass of sound despite Barry’s conducting. The madness only made sense to me when small groups were again singled out. The ensemble was chaos. In the most generous take, it was a joyful noise. It was a melee in which the loudest and most amplified prevailed.
I’ll link a recording of the gig here if one becomes available.
