i am avoiding packing. i keep remembering why i’m going to india.
so i made some music from jaal mala (garland of water) which is a piece on quell that i made about my dad.
listen here. its my new year’s gift to you.
i feel better.
off to india
apologies for the lack of posts.
i’m heading to india on saturday, to put my father’s ashes to rest. not yet sure all that will be involved but the main focus is to go to varanasi to put the ashes in the ganges there.
i will also be doing lots of recording of environmental sound, taking some lessons in dhak (the bengali puja drum), and meeting some sound artists and contemporary art practitioners in kolkata.
i’ll be keeping the blog semi updated during this time.
upcoming for the new year: various projects (audio art, video, net) and woodshedding to create new works. dance performances, school shows, etc. oh yeah, getting married.
finally, there is a new improv uploaded, an outtake from the bad monkey bad bad monkey CD.
happy new year.
john wyre, rest in peace
many of you interested in percussion music may know john wyre, formerly of nexus fame. i am sorry to say that he passed away on october 31 at his home in st john’s, newfoundland.
there are better people than me qualified to eulogize him, but i did have the chance to work with him as a member of maza mezé a few years back. we commissioned a piece from him and recorded a number of songs for our “secrets moon magic” CD for CBC.
he was an amazing man, with an incredible outlook on life, and music. the first lyrics to the piece he wrote for us was “the joy of living/begins by giving/yourself away”.
rest in peace, john wyre.
thinking
i’ve been thinking about improvising. and trying it out. technique is one thing. commitment another. i have trouble with the second. i think in improvising commitment comes first and only then can technique flow.
i’ll keep trying.
artist profile
other minds
in searching around the internet archive, i found the other minds archive, chock full of lectures, performances and other audio from the amazing other minds festival. right now i’m listening to steve reich’s group perform 4 organs, my name is, piano phase, and phase patterns. fantastic.
check it out, as well as the other recordings (cage and feldman in conversation, evelyn glennie in concert, an interview with brian eno….).
online
audio studies
just uploaded a few audio studies. all the sound was created by manipulating audio files. the only source material was one sample that, according to soundhack, is 00.069 seconds long.
nuit blanche—the day after
played last night at nuit blanche, at the model for a public space (speaker). essentially a giant spiral seating structure, with an open space in the middle. the rain was on and off all night, so the mud was all over the place. not much different than the winnipeg folk festival, really.
ben grossman and i played a 45 min set of improvised music with hurdy gurdy, effects and various percussion. i was astonished at how many people were around, and stuck around and engaged with our music—everyone from jazzheads to hippies to frat house guys and high school students. it was an incredible social experience, and i am beginning to see what certain schools of thought around improvisation are talking about when they speak of the political overtones of improvised music. for me, it is more about mindfulness and listening, the collective meditation that the music inspires and demands. i suppose in many ways this is the presupposition for the social/political interpretation of the act of performing free improvised music.
in any case, a tremendously gratifying experience. one of my favourite moments: after our first 1/2 hour performance, i asked when we ended and someone yelled out “seven in the morning!”.
stay tuned—i am going to be broadcasting some live improvisation, both solo and duo in the near future.
peace.
drum nation post
drum nation concert has passed. after many crazy hours of prep and rehearsal it went off quite well. we played a number of traditional and contemporary compositions and everyone fit on stage….i was especially pleased at the warm response we got to the more contemporary pieces we played with traditional instruments. my contention is upheld—audiences are quite happy out of their element.
the encore was reich’s clapping music, with the audience playing part 1 (the unchanging one). my fiendish mission continues.