Company man back in town

Jim Carr is coming to the SF Bay Area this weekend to hear Earplay perform his piece, "Four Wilde Aphorisms".

I'm looking forward to hearing it. He told me about it while we were in Eugene last. It came up because I told him I wasn't used to writing music so fast, and "Test Pilot's Lament" had come together in just a couple of weeks. Jim said that "Four Wilde Aphorisms" had been written very fast too and it is his most-performed composition.

So if you are into contemporary chamber music feel free to join us on Monday, March 12 at 7:00 p.m. at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Full details are at the Earplay link above.

Good Karma

On Friday I met up with The Wonder That Is Daniel (Magazin), to give him a CD I burned of the four songs he plays piano on, on Not Made of Stone: "How Now Is Soon", "The Jaguar", "The Great Highway", and "Save a Prayer". We realized at that time that it is 2007 -- which means we've known each other for 20 years. That felt like something that needed celebrating with dinner at Cha-Ya real soon.

Friday evening I met up with Austin Space from KFJC at the Gallery AD in downtown San Jose. It was First Friday and a good crowd had turned out to see the opening of a show by Daniel Jesse Lewis. He is a graduate of CCA. His work is very personal, intimate and sometimes disturbing. The images seem childlike at first, but as I continued to look at them I realized they were more like a child's visions drawn with an adult hand.

They are the kind of images that, when you hear somebody react to them as you're standing in a crowd of people looking, it tells you a lot about that observer's inner world...and nothing about the artist's. I got to meet and talk to the artist and some of the images were definitely self-portraits. There was another often-recurring female character. There are many drawings where one character is approaching another one from behind, with a variety of different intentions. There was an 8x13 mural piece that Daniel said he created over a period of six months, which after you look at it for awhile, you'd swear it was moving. There are dozens of different miniature scenes in it, all of which seem to be interconnected in a dreamlike sort of way.

I met Brian, one of the curators, and we talked about the sound art he has brought to the space lately. He seems like he wants to expand that part of the gallery's mission, which I'm really excited about. It was very hard, when I lived in the South Bay, knowing there was no regular venue for new music there. If Brian succeeds, musicians might get to have a central place in San Jose that's comparable to the central venues further north.

I filled Austin in on plans for the 21 Grand concert on May 16th, which will include a solo set by John Hanes, the Flip Quartet, and a solo set I will be playing in memory of Leigh Ann Hussey. Austin volunteered to record the show. His initial plan is to suspend four mics from the rafters aimed at each of the four stations, which he'll turn inward when I start improvising in the center after the Flip.

Afterwards Austin introduced me to Good Karma, which is a vegan restaurant a few blocks from the gallery. It's run by some people who are also involved with KFJC. The restaurant was also participating in First Friday and art was newly hung on the walls. It's like a miniature version of Veganopolis in Portland, and I hope it keeps on succeeding.

Back from Eugene

I'm back from Eugene, where the men of the Company and I converged to finish up our album, Not Made of Stone.

Four inches of snow fell on Eugene on Thursday. It was beautiful. Temperatures stayed and the 20s and 30s the next few days, which kept a lot of the snow from melting. It was colder than this Californian is used to. I've visited Eugene several times over the past 6 years, and that was the coldest it's been while I have been there.

It's so exciting to have it all wrapped up, all ten tracks. We recorded three songs this past week, and Jeff mixed and mastered everything. Jim arrived on Friday and recorded all three of his bass lines -- the original bass line for Duran Duran's "Save A Prayer", a new one for "Test Pilot's Lament", and big scary cathedral bells for "Death and the Maiden" -- which he made by putting the bass through a ring modulator. Jeff created drum tracks for "Save a Prayer" and "Test Pilot's Lament".

John arrived on Saturday and made short work of his rhythm and lead guitar for "Save a Prayer". He was psyched to see the snow still on the ground. I had hoped it wouldn't melt before he arrived, since he hadn't seen much of any snow before now.

Jim dug the autoharp percussion in "Test Pilot's Lament". I told him that was me banging on the autoharp with the tuning crank, but he said that's not what we should tell everyone. "You should say you flew in a Sufi high priestess and her three disciples to do the percussion," he said.

John and I took the same train back to the Bay Area. I read Bruce Sterling's "The Artificial Kid" and Rudy Rucker's "Spaceland". John read "The Stranger" by Albert Camus and "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. He also fended off the advances of a five-year-old future heartbreaker who drew him several crayon pictures.

Next will be to nail down the album artwork. I'm expecting it to be green, overall.

Greetings from Portland

I'm told that two guys, one from Boston, Mass and one from Portland, Maine, came to the place in Oregon where I am now to start up the town. Each one wanted to name it after his hometown. They decided to flip a coin, and the guy from Maine won the toss.

I'm here until Wednesday.

Last night I met up with my friends, Rich and Daria. We had dinner at the Kalga Kafe and did six months' worth of catching up over tasty vegetarian food.

Then we went to the show at Holocene. First up was the Music Population Orchestra, consisting of nine members -- flute, viola, 2 violins, drums, clarinet, bari sax, and 2 cellos -- and a conductor. One of their missions, the conductor said, is to take classical music to venues where it wouldn't normally be heard. They played a set of works by a Norwegian composer whose name I didn't catch. They are good players, apparently with experience making classical music heard in non-recital halls. Listening to them, I felt like I was watching sessions for a film soundtrack. And there was, in fact, a video being projected on the wall, but I think it was unrelated.

I talked to the flutist afterwards. His name is John, and I hope he'll get in touch with me so I'll know his last name. It turns out we have some friends in common and background in improvisation and extended techniques. He's just moved to Portland from NYC.

Next was Iretsu, whose CD release concert it was. They had six members. They played psychedelic art-rock with videos projected behind them that looked like they WERE related to the music. Most of the members sang -- one of them reminding me of Thom Yorke. The violinist did a neat impression of The Edge's rhythm guitar playing in one tune. I liked their interesting offbeat arrangements. I bought the CD they were releasing, but I haven't had a chance to hear it yet.

In other news, K has taught me how to make espressos from scratch with all the steps!

Notorious non-percussionist bangs on stuff, film @ 11

There's been a percussion theme to the past few days.

I've been working on "Test Pilot's Lament", one of the songs I'm about to record. In it, percussion on an autoharp will take the place of rhythm guitar. The wooden handle of the autoharp's tuning crank turned out to be great for hitting several strings at a time and I'm practicing this. For a notorious non-percussionist, even a sequence of even eighth notes can be a challenge so I'm working on it with a metronome.

Also last evening I accompanied Celeste to the Musical Nightmare Before Christmas at the Starry Plough, organized by Suki and Lucio (whom I overheard referred to by someone in the crowd who I guess couldn't remember or pronounce his last name, as "Lucio Megatron"). There was lots to listen to including Lumper/Splitter's emergency guitar surgery and a solo set by notorious non-metronome Moe! Staiano. I was close enough that I was hit by flying shrapnel. It was awesome.

The memory of that experience came with me to my classical flute gig this morning, in which I was directed to play finger cymbals and claves in a couple of pieces instead of the flute. During rehearsal I made sure to play them in ways I wasn't supposed to, in honor of Moe!. But I play often enough with those classical people that they now expect me to act out in new music ways and it's hard to shock them anymore.

Year-end madness

Hmmm...exactly when am I going to get everything done I need to do before the end of the year? Or more precisely, before my two big commitments in January? I've got those sessions coming up, to finish "Not Made of Stone", and Womantis is supposed to premiere my piece "Genesis" in January too. So I've got a lot to do, and like Celeste always does in her blog, here it is in no particular order:

get flute and bass flute repaired
rehearsals with John for "Save a Prayer"
coordinate Dan's "Save a Prayer" piano part, editing, MIDI file export
be on the hook for Jim's questions about "Save a Prayer" and "Death & the Maiden"
practice vocals for all the songs
find out what mallets are good for playing percussion on an autoharp...or else see if chopsticks work, or the tuning implement
figure out how to pack everything
worry about if I can get my instruments onto the plane as carryon or not
go with Celeste to new music shows while she is back for the holidays
make elaborate plans for my time in Portland with K
make more elaborate Portland plans with Rich and Daria et. al. (I hope)
do Yule and Christmas things as appropriate with friends & family
play classical holiday gigs
work on "Genesis"
coordinate the Company's travel plans and lodging arrangements in Oregon

I'm sure I've forgotten plenty of things. If you know of any, drop me a line. Thanks muchly. :)