Sun., May 22
The Stone: 2nd St. and Ave. C
10 pm, $10
Saturday, May 14, 2011
String Choir Sunday, May 22, 10 pm
String Choir performing music of Paul Motian w/ Zach Brock, Mat Maneri, Sam Bardfeld, Dan Leong, Liberty Ellman
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
anupam shobhakar joins me in a duo April 5
INTAR New Music Tuesdays, curated by Cristian Amigo
Skin and Steel -PLEASE NOTE ADDRESS CHANGE~
Tues., April 5, 8 pm one set: $5 cover
500 W. 52nd St. @10 ave.
A second set will occur by Cristian Amigo and Dom Minasi at around 9:00 pm
Joel Harrison and Anupam Shobhakar: New Music for National Steel guitar and sarod
Friday, February 25, 2011
amazement at classical music offerings of late
saw an amazing concert at Tullyscope festival- Feldman's Rothko Chapel. Something remarkable about all the creativity in classical music festivals these past months. Ecstatic, Tune In, Thalia....There is Nowhere near the same dimensionality in Jazz festivals going on. Why? I welcome your view. We can list funding as a reason- but...that alone cannot be the reason. . Most of my life I saw classical music as the hidebound, conservative sector...now, I think there may be more happening there creatively than in jazz, although comparisons are perilous and possibly pointless. It's quite exciting, a bit surprising. Somehow there is a youth movement that has caught on... How, why? A bunch of these younger devotees are championing Xenakis, Varese, Feldman...It's quite amazing! Who would have predicted this? Meanwhile, I see a lot of young jazz players who are super talented, but I don't know if they are advocates for NEW music as opposed to...JAZZ. Yes, there are amazing solos being played, but you probably won't hear anything with the gravity of Rothko Chapel being presented. Or for that matter, music for 72 percussionists, or a 45 minute work for 18 musicians that is so freaking beautiful it lights up your week. My angle on this is that the walls between so called jazz and classical need further deconstruction, so that Feldman's piece for bass clarinet and 2 percussionists can be paired with set of, say, Marty Ehrlich, Andrew Cyrille, and William Winant. But! (!!!!) how massively challenging it would be to even come close to the rapture of Feldman's piece. Improviser beware!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Harrison duo with Mick Rossi this sunday
Sunday, Feb. 20
Joel Harrison and Mick Rossi (keys)Banjo Jim's: Ave. C and 9th St.
9 pm, one set
Songs, no songs, improv
Mick's an amazing player who amongst many other feats has worked with Philip Glass and Paul Simon
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
cd release show jan 23 string choir
Sun., Jan 23- 7:30 pm
Joel Harrison "String Choir" CD RELEASE SHOW!
The music of Paul Motian
String Choir includes (string quartet) Chris Howes, Sam Bardfeld, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Dana Leong,(guitars) Liberty Ellman and Joel Harrison.
www.joespub.com
on reading george lewis' aacm book
On reading George Lewis’ book:
A Power Stronger than Itself- the AACM and American Experimental Music
First things first- this is one of the finest books ever written about music, any kind of music, not just improvised music. It is part history, part biography, social and philosophical treatise, musical guide, and in all ways a gift to any serious musician. One can read it to learn about some of the finest musicians of our time, to see quite clearly how they think. But one can also read it to learn about how a social movement is created, how race played and still plays an enormous role in the music world. One can read it to learn how collectives are formed, how they can perish, or read it to understand the musical landscape of Chicago in the 1960’s, the intersection of civil rights and Black self-determination with music, New York’s so-called “loft scene” in the 70’s, and corallaries to other movements of the time, rock, fusion, European classical and improvised music, and experimental culture in other art forms. Lewis allows seminal figures such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie and countless others to speak for themselves as to their process; however, he goes further by placing these people in a broader historical context. Lewis tells an involved, important story that, for me, has been hiding in plain sight. His work succeeds for a number of reasons: he is a terrific writer, and composes from inside the story, somehow managing to combine a journalistic objectivity with a participant’s subjectivity. How rare is it that a Black man tells a Black peoples’ story, that a musician tells the musicians’ stories? Lewis pulls back the curtain on what almost seems a secret society. What his book does is show just how important and influential the AACM has been to all improvisers- whether they know it or not. In a climate in which scores of books are written about the same few heroic figures, in which we are inundated with every last note that Miles, Trane, Bird and Duke ever recorded, in which we hear about what Charlie Parker ate for breakfast on June 3, 1943, in which their primacy is not only considered an a priori truth, but an institutional mandate, how thoroughly refreshing, no ENORMOUSLY refreshing it is to know the history of this parallel universe.
This book should be a part of every jazz and new music curriculum in the country.
Let me try to analyze further why I could not put this book down, why I devoured it faster than any book I have read in recent memory.
In 1979 I had one of the most remarkable musical experiences of my life- I attended a 10 day workshop with the Art Ensemble of Chicago at Karl and Ingrid Berger’s Creative Music Studio in Woodstock. After reading this book I was flooded with memories of this time.
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