Friday, January 18th, 2008 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

(Return to playlists.)

I did manage to see Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd perform Still Life with Commentator last night, in the theater that's literally above our heads here at KZSU. I'd interviewed Vijay and played some of the album's tracks on last week's show; the link includes a description of the piece.

It was great stuff. I'd love to have seen the full theatrical production put on at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last year, but this stripped-down, more intimate version was plenty moving in itself. The pieces come with compositional skeletons and of course pre-written lyrics and narration, but the music is largely improvised, creating swirls of textures that can build up to a frenzy. I became a fan of Guillermo E. Brown, who showed a lot of stage presence with his vocal parts. It was also great to watch Pamela Z in action, as always, and to see Liberty Ellman for the first time; he got to dig in with a couple of solos late in the piece.Okkyung Lee on the cello was terrific, too, laying down deep bassy grooves or adding scraping metallic sounds to the overall textures.

Electronics samples were flying everywhere. The overall piece has a drifting quality to it -- not necessarily dreamy, as some songs get hard-edged and crisp, but wandering, a byproduct of the improvisation that's going on. I like that. In addition to being a rewarding sound, it's a good representation of the confusion around media today -- things are changing, but we still don't know what the final forms will be.

The "Tips" Project: Took some time today to interview Phillip Greenlief, who along with Bruce Ackley (of ROVA and Aurora Josephson has been performing Steve Lacy's "Tips," a set of 14 songs based on aphorisms by cubist painter Georges Braque. They'll be performing it again at the Jazzschool in Berkeley tomorrow. (The second act will be a Larry Ochs group that also includes Okkyung Lee).

More on the interview below.

(You can read more about "Tips" by following the Lacy link above; from the Home Page, click on "Play," then "Art Songs." The site is set up to reject you if you try to go there directly.)

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

Bruce Ackley Trio -- "Out of the Box" -- The Hearing (Avant, 1998)

Previously noted . This one's got a snappy, tuneful intro that makes it a nice opener; it also works well coming out of rock songs that have a long, fading last note, a trick I tried way back when.

* Martin Speicher, Georg Wolf, Lou Grassi -- "Shapes and Shadows" -- Shapes and Shadows (Clean Feed, 2007)

Previously noted here.

* Bill McHenry -- "The City" -- Roses (Sunnyside, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Solo cello workings of songs in the Masada songbook, mostly in percussive pizzicato. Like the other Book of Angels disks we've sampled, it's got a classical air to it, quite serious stuff. Definitely in contrast to the folkier, melody-driven stuff on his Block Ice and Propane, noted here.

Over-the-top crazy guitar solos with occasional drum machine, as Barr is wont to do. He's been part of the Flying Luttenbachers and has been doing this solo stuff lately. Blazing metal-influenced stuff heavy on the "complexity" thing, well played but not easy to take in large doses.

Previously noted here.

* Amir ElSaffar -- "The Blues in E Half-Flat" -- Two Rivers (Pi Recordings, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

A well-deserved tribute to jazz saxophonist Marion Brown. The packaging includes a marketing sticker on the CD case that reads: "'It's beautiful, thank you, you really understand me' -- Marion Brown." The connection isn't immediately clear to me, unless there's a chunk of Marion Brown's work I'm unfamiliar with (which is possible). This stuff is low-key and droney, lots of percussion, lots of keyboard noodling and some guitar attack. It's good, though, and Marion Brown does deserve the recognition.

? (Tim Berne's) Bloodcount -- "Scrap Metal" -- Seconds (Screwgun, 2007; recorded 1997)

Previously noted here.

* Healing Force -- "Heart Love" -- Songs of Albert Ayler (Cuneiform, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Nicely hazy guitar instrumental, a bright sort of drone. From a split EP with Dysrythmia, which contributes a 14-minute prog/metal attack that starts with over-the-top rawk and develops into some nice interlocking prog noodling.

Previously noted here and here.

From a solo sax concert by Lacy.

Previously noted here.

As noted above, Greenlief, Ackley, and Josephson have performed this album a few times. It's a project that was in Greenlief's head since first hearing the album -- which conveniently came with sheet music to the songs. Lacy had somehow found these aphorisms of Braque's while living in Paris and set them to music, leaving room in the frameworks for improvisation, of course. Greenlief's trio, in performing "Tips," uses a looser struture, where sometimes all three players will be improvising.

The collaboration could become a longer-term idea, as Greenlief mentioned they've got a couple of composers in mind for possible commissions. "Tips" itself wasn't meant to be a long-lasting production, but their most recent performance, at Noe Valley Ministry, apparently went really well. When Larry Ochs asked the three to perform "Tips" again at a Jazzschool gig, they happily said yes.

With Irene Aebi on vocals and a full band that includes harpsichord (!) and accordion. We don't have "Tips" in the library, sadly; it's a hard record to find. I did the next best thing and played an arbitrary Lacy/Aebi track to go out on the right sound and mood. This is probably a lot jazzier and more aggressive than "Tips," but that's just a guess.

The Cry is a very interesting project in itself. All the lyrics are translated texts by Taslima Nasria, an activist who has spoken out on the state of women in Bangladesh and received death threats for her troubles. She actually had a role in creating this 13-song "opera," which goes through a variety of tough moods and strong beats, while crossing into jazzy territory and some art-song sounds. The title track, which comes second to last, is brutal and powerful.

Great combo from Pittsburgh, Pa. I got to see the saxophonist, Ben Opie, on one of his trips to Beanbenders in Berkeley (Dan Plonsey seems to have taken down his Beanbenders pages, sadly). This is a fun track with a funky horn riff that repeats, and in between "verses" of the instrumental, they get into weird free improv. Big fun.

Previously noted here and above.

Steve Lacy -- "Monk Medley" [excerpt] -- Solo: Live at Unity Temple (Wobbly Rail, 1998)

More solo Lacy, this time sorting through the Monk songbook. I think we heard parts of "Evidence" and "Pannonica."

Fun string quartet stuff, an album with lots of Raymond Scott tracks, including this one. Scott, if you don't know, was a jazz composer who wrote a lot of cartoony stuff, fun and fleet. He was also a pioneer in electronic music, making gloopy tuneful noises to go with TV commercials, work done under his lab called Manhattan Research Inc.

Previously noted here.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.