High Zero 2007: Concert 4

High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music - Concert 4
September 29, 2007 @ Theatre Project, Baltimore, MD

Solo set:
Jaap Blonk: voice, electronics

Set one:
John Berndt: electronics, inventions
Asimina Chremos: movement
Dan Conrad: inventions
Sofia Jernberg: voice

Set two:
Eric Franklin: strings, percussion
Chris Heenan: contrabass clarinet, alto saxophone
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics, strings
Massimo Simonini: prepared theremin, objects, voice

Set three:
Audrey Chen: cello, voice, electronics
Aaron Dilloway: 8-tracks, electronics
Chiara Giovando: voice, violin, electronics
Bonnie Jones: electronics

Set four:
Jaap Blonk: voice
Dan Breen: strings, percussion, electronics
Matana Roberts: alto saxophone
Shodekeh: human beat-boxing

There really aren't enough places to hear a proper reading of Dadaist poetry. Rushing into that massive void one finds the eccentric and talented Jaap Blonk from Amsterdam. Reading from a single page with the German word for "scream or cry" printed multiple times Blonk worked that one word through many, many verbal iterations that shaded forcefully toward the profound disdain of war and barbarism that fueled the Dada movement.

Blonk also included a performance on the "cheek synthesizer" as part of his solo set as he contorted and stretched his face before a pair of microphones. "I use two microphones, because the cheek synthesizer is a stereo instrument." The intensity of this performance was equal parts low-tech and high-fun. And the stereo component was no joke as he had a clear handle on the panning properties of his own face.

This sense of play carried over into the first group set as John Berndt moved from behind his invented instruments to interact with Asimina Chremos's improvised dance armed with a styrofoam cooler with a slinky attached to it. The odd collection of movement and invented instruments actually yielded a tangibly sensitive expressiveness directed toward Baltimore's instrument inventor and experimental music fixture Neil Feather, who was home recovering from a recent motorcycle accident.

The highlight of the evening was the final group set as a last minute addition of Jaap Blonk provided a rare Amsterdam-meets-Baltimore take on vocal improvisation as Shodekeh matched his beat-boxing prowess with the Dutch voice master. In the end, it was Matana Roberts that emerged as a serious improvisational force. At one point she let out a "don't leave me alone" as the other three players had practically stopped playing to expose and admire her sound.

HurdAudio Rotation: Improvising for Change

Charlie Haden/Liberation Music Orchestra: Not In Our Name. 2005. Verve: B0004949-02.

Charlie Haden: bass
Carla Bley: piano, arrangements
Michael Rodriguez: trumpet
Seneca Black: trumpet
Curtis Fowlkes: trombone
Arnee Sharon Freeman: french horn
Joe Daley: tuba
Miguel Zenon: alto saxophone
Chris Cheek: tenor saxophone
Tony Malaby: tenor saxophone
Steve Cardenas: guitar
Matt Wilson: drums

Beauty as a form of contempt. Jazz in the face of mounting injustice. Carla Bley has fashioned some of the most shamelessly tuneful and astonishingly gorgeous arrangements of patriotic music in pure defiance of the ugliness flowing from Washington, DC. "This Is Not America" and the "America the Beautiful (Medley)" are an endless source of chills while the big band take on Bill Frisell's "Throughout" retains the formal crescendo of the original version and builds upon it. It may not change the world, but Not In Our Name offers hope that the human spirit will continue to be stronger than anything republican administrations bring about and that the desire to lift every voice and sing will eventually overcome the bleakest of days.

T.E.C.K. String Quartet: String 4tet. 2007. Clean Feed: CF089CD.

Tomas Ulrich: cello
Elliott Sharp: acoustic guitar, national tricone
Carlos "Zingaro": violin
Ken Filiano: double bass

Free improvised textures from the contrasting sensibilities of these four musicians as they form the unusual guitar/violin/cello/bass variant of the string quartet. The sonic sculpting works well even as it feels like the chemistry between these players hadn't fully coalesced at the time of this recording. The unfamiliarity and probing of one another adds an edge and an unpredictability to the overall sound as each player generously subsumes their own identity in favor of a group sound.

Gunda Gottschalk/Peter Jacquemyn/Ute Volker: Baggerboot. 2005. Henceforth Records: 102.

Gunda Gottschalk: violin
Peter Jacquemyn: bass
Ute Volker: accordion

"Improvisation is musical survival in the meta-cultural soundscape that is thriving, throbbing and sending new possibilities for relationships in a world littered with the millennial old patterns of argument as war. In this music there is negotioation, give and take in intimate and open spaces."
- Pauline Oliveros (from the liner notes)

Amen.
The give and take of a range spanning from double bass up through violin with an accordion in the middle makes for a gritty, reed-tinged timbre for this trio of free improvisers. At times lyrical, at other times a wash of abstract textures and colors with generous space for each individual contribution this disc is a rewarding listen - even more so for this particular spin in the rotation.

High Zero 2007: Concert 3

High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music - Concert 3
September 29, 2007 @ Theatre Project, Baltimore, MD

Criminal by Marina Rosenfeld
-A composition for 10 vocalists.

Duo Delay
- Two players with digital delay
Kyp Malone: guitar, voice
Matana Roberts: alto saxophone

C(8,4) "Eight choose four"
8!/[4!*(8-4)!] = 70 possible combinations
Jaap Blonk: voice, electronics
Dan Breen: strings, percussion, electronics
Jeff Carey: computer, original software
Eric Franklin: strings, percussion
Thomas Helton: bass
Bonnie Jones: electronics (open circuit)
Donna Parker: sound (processed feedback)
Eve Risser: prepared piano, toys, voice

Kinetic Color with Dan Conrad
Peter Blasser: inventions, strings, trombone
Aaron Dilloway: 8-tracks, electronics
Matthias Kaul: percussion, hurdy-gurdy
Melissa Moore: field recordings (amplified micro-sounds), electronics

The "middle" concert of the five main High Zero Festival presentations took a slight departure from the free improvisation format to unfold a range of pre-determined improvisational strategies that occasionally bordered on "composed" over a handful of early afternoon sets.

An austere forest of microphone stands lined the stage from left to right in front of a white, fabric backdrop in preparation for Marina Rosenfeld's exquisitely textured Criminal. Nine performers armed with portable music players and headphones took their places in front of the microphones. On Rosenfeld's cue they hit 'play' and vocalized the asynchronous sounds that roughly resembled the musique concrete track that Rosenfeld mixed into the overall soundscape. Marina Rosenfeld has a fascinating musical sensibility and this work was the clearest example of her sound to emerge from the High Zero experience. As with so many of the performers involved with this festival, the ears were left deeply hungry from the brief glimpses that dribbled out from such a large pool of players.

Duo Delay worked with a simple and extremely effective conceptual basis. The duo of guitarist Kyp Malone and alto saxophonist Matana Roberts improvised with each other and against two time delayed playbacks of their own playing that appeared first on the left speaker, then on the right for a trio of duos separated over time. The sound resembled a train passing through a pair of tunnels as individual gestures and phrases would vanish and reemerge. Kyp Malone and Matana Roberts are outstanding, creative players and this set was easily the highlight of this year's High Zero Festival.

C(8, 4) is a rule-based improvisation piece that involves assembling quartets within a set of eight players. Dan Breen served as an ad hoc conductor as he used hand gestures to select (and de-select) players. The rule-set didn't strictly hold as there were frequent moments when there were more-than or less-than four active players at a time. This was partly because Eve Risser was performing with her back to Dan Breen much of the time. And honestly, once Risser got going I didn't really want her to stop. Having this particular rule set fall apart actually served the music well.

Kinetic Color featured a quartet of players running in parallel to an improvised light environment designed by Dan Conrad. The use of light, and the shadow silhouette of Peter Blasser marching while playing trombone behind the fabric backdrop, played up another dimension of theatre in a festival filled with dramatic turns. Including the light artist/performer on stage with the instrumentalists was a nice aesthetic touch that underscored the inter-disciplinary and inter-media bleed-through running throughout this festival.

(Photo Credit: Erin Baiano for The New York Times)

Scale of the Day: E Lydian 2% narrow

The E Lydian 2% narrow Scale. There's something deeply appealing and perverse about using an interval of "harmonic equivalence" that is such a strong dissonance to the cognitive system. The compressed octave of 1176-cents is just far enough off of the 2/1 frequency ratio to give this interval some bite.

High Zero 2007: Concert 2

High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music - Concert 2
September 28, 2007 @ Theatre Project, Baltimore, MD

Solo set:
Asimina Chremos: movement

Set one:
Chiara Giovando: voice, violin, electronics
Sofia Jernberg: voice
Kyp Malone: guitar, voice
Donna Parker: sound (processed feedback)

Set two:
Jaap Blonk: voice, electronics
Dan Breen: strings, percussion, electronics
John Dierker: reeds
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics, strings

Set three:
Peter Blasser: inventions, strings
Chris Heenan: contrabass clarinet, alto saxophone
Matthias Kaul: percussion, hurdy-gurdy
ID M Theft Able: mouth, frictions, textures

Set four:
Sofia Jernberg: voice
Melissa Moore: field recordings, electronics
Marina Rosenfeld: turntables, electronics

The High Zero Festival generated plenty of evidence and documentation as each action and sonic preceding was carefully recorded and photographed for posterity. There were CDs available from High Zeros past available in the lobby beside a laptop displaying a slide show of photographs from the previous evening's performance and there was even a portfolio of sketches drawn by a particularly talented artist within the audience. John Berndt even brought his portable recorder to many of the High Jinx street performances around town. It was both amusing and deliberately consistent that the unaccompanied solo dance performance of Asimina Chremos was also being recorded as the microphones captured the feet hitting the floor, the odd grunt exhaled from an energetically physical display and the scattered coughs, sneezes and creaks from a shifting audience.

The theatrical antics and instigations of spark plug percussionist Dan Breen could hardly be fully captured or contained within the second group set as his whimsically confrontational approach toward group improvisation made for a particularly unpredictable creative disturbance. Breen made extensive use of saws. Starting with a course bowing. Later he substituted his sticks with a pair of saws as the heavy handled ends of a pair of saws were haphazardly applied toward the drum kit. It wasn't long before he performed the saw's more utilitarian function as he cut one of Stewart Mostofsky's shoes in half. Also contained with the Breen toolbox was a winding stretch of PCV pipe with a mouthpiece that he performed as a peculiar match and forceful challenge to John Dierker's bass clarinet.

The first group set was my first introduction to the feedback technique of Donna Parker and her willingness to both shape the smooth sonic timbral qualities of microphone on speaker and dive headlong past the pain threshold of piercing loudness. I was struck by Kyp Malone's ability to find his own territory within this unusual soundscape with a layer of guitar and delay.

Marina Rosenfeld is unlike anything I've heard from a turntable artist. Her involvement with High Zero only whet the appetite for her unique sonic sensibility. Another fleeting and enchanting presence in this festival was the voice of Sofia Jernberg and the hauntingly deliberate approach to weaving utterance into some particularly intense noise studies.

Scale of the Day: E Flat Lydian 1% narrow

The intervallic content of the E Flat Lydian 1% Narrow Scale. All the equal tempered proportions remain unchanged within the compressed octave space.

High Zero 2007: Concert 1

High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music - Concert 1
September 27, 2007 @ Theatre Project, Baltimore, MD

Solo set:
Matthias Kaul: percussion, hurdy-gurdy

Set one:
John Berndt: reeds, inventions
Jamie Branch: trumpet
John Dierker: reeds
Chris Heenan: contrabass clarinet, alto saxophone
Thomas Helton: bass
Matana Roberts: alto saxophone

Set two:
Audrey Chen: cello, voice, electronics
Asimina Chremos: movement
Eve Risser: prepared piano, toys, voice
ID M Theft Able: mouth, frictions, tabletop percussion

Set three:
Bonnie Jones: electronics
Marina Rosenfeld: turntables
Massimo Simonini: prepared theremin

Set four:
Jamie Branch: trumpet
Thomas Helton: bass
Melissa Moore: field recordings, electronics (amplified micro-sounds)
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics, strings
Shodekeh: human beat-boxing

There aren't many concerts that feature an electric toothbrush solo. The High Zero Festival of Experimental and Improvised Music may be one of the few places to bring a packed house of focused ears to bear on such a thing. A cluttered tabletop of drum membranes, styrofoam, contact microphones, mallets, small metal cages and an assortment of electric toothbrushes may be one of the more enduring images to greet listeners at the onset of the High Zero main concert series. And in the hands (and mouth) of Matthias Kaul, the electric toothbrush is a source of greater sonic interest than what I've heard from most laptop improvisers this past year. The focused intensity and smart use of amplification by Kaul made for the perfect opening salvo for the many hours of well-outside-the-box performing that lie ahead.

The winds plus bass set that followed was an ear opening experience and a glimpse at several performers who would unfold an astonishing variety of textures over the next few days. Baltimore's John Dierker has already been on the HurdAudio radar for some time. While Thomas Helton made a strong argument for investigating the creative music scene over in Houston with his deep chops and even deeper improvisational instincts. The duo/solo/sextet groupings that emerged and shifted organically through this set exposed a raw collective energy of rich textures punctuated by humor and generous interaction.

The quartet of Audrey Chen, Asimina Chremos, Eve Risser and ID M Theft Able was one of the most compelling of the High Zero experience. The intensity of Chen and Risser found an easy chemistry as they worked a broad territory between childlike wonder and relentless angst.

The wisdom of shuffling new ensembles of improvisers for each set became clear by the end of the evening as the shifting sonic textures and unpredictable contexts allowed the ears to absorb unfamiliar personalities and find new understanding of familiar local performers. Placing the extraordinary beat-boxing Shodekeh within an ensemble of bass, trumpet and electronics provided exactly the kind of group dynamic I'd hoped to hear. The clipped and segmented hip-hop beats and arrested grooves made for a welcome layer that the ensemble responded to in interesting and compelling ways. Jamie Branch's extended trumpet technique, realized with the microphone well within the bell of the instrument, was a fitting sonic conclusion to an evening initiated by the resonant properties of styrofoam.