Thursday, May 6, 2010
Music / Post No Bills Starting Tonight: A Ken Vandermark Mini Fest at the Velvet
Posted by Peter Margasak on 05.06.10 at 02:11 PM
- Ken Vandermark
The second record of the set consists of solo pieces, one side per musician; Vandermark sticks exclusively with clarinet for the four-part "Etudes for Jimmy Giuffre," delivering austere meditations that explore the instrument's upper reaches as well as its midrange (the latter with long, hovering tones, often restrained and vibrato laden). Daisy's side consists of seven relatively short vignettes that focus on friction-derived color and texture rather than open-road rhythm.
On Friday night Vandermark leads his Frame Quartet (Daisy, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and bassist Nate McBride), and band that's been pretty scarce in these parts over the past six months or so—basically since they released their debut album, 35mm (Okka Disk). According to Vandermark's Web site he used a variety of procedures, many derived from cinema (crosscuts, fades, montages), to propel the improvisations on the record: "This has been done to redirect the improvising, shifting it away from the conventional development found in most contemporary music environments. All of the predetermined elements are interfaced with a variety of improvisational tactics; the pieces can be spontaneously reformatted at each performance. In a sense, the actual structure of the music is improvised by the band, and with systems that can't always be predicted by the members of the group."
In case you aren't totally sure what all that means—don't feel bad, I'm not either—what you need to know is that the quartet usually bypasses anything the casual listener would recognize as "jazz," instead borrowing heavier grooves from rock and abstract motion from film scores. Someone in the band conducts the action on every piece, and the music develops in unexpected, exciting ways. The last track on 35mm, "Straw (for Steve Lacy)," kind of reminds me of an early piece by Ornette Coleman's Prime Time, with a looped, wonderfully dissonant arco scrape by Lonberg-Holm giving it a manic insistence.
Finally, on Saturday night the Vandermark 5 reconvenes in support of its latest album, Annular Gift (Not Two)—the first live recording of its long career, cut in Krakow, Poland, at the Alchemia Club in March 2009. The episodic nature of some of the leader's compositions here keeps each performance rolling in new, surprising directions—the 20-minute opener, "Spiel (for Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill)," barrels through raucous, in-your-face amplified cello noise by Lonberg-Holm, scorching sax solos from Vandermark and Dave Rempis, a lengthy and restrained long-tone meditation, then more reed cries, more calm . . . well, you get the picture. Naturally there's plenty of extended improvisation, but Vandermark uses the written-out parts of his tunes not just to prod the soloists but to rejigger the context that surrounds them.
Photo: Peter Gannushkin / downtownmusic.net
Today's playlist:
Amerie, In Love & War (Def Jam)
Taksim Trio, Taksim Trio (Doublemoon)
Joe Morris, Simon H. Fell, and Alex Ward, The Necessary and the Possible (Victo)
Gilberto Gil & Jorge Ben, Gil e Jorge (Verve)
Various artists, Shadow Music of Thailand (Sublime Frequencies)
Comments (3)
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Hey Peter,
Noticed that Gil and Jorge are on your playlist -- what do you think of that record? I'm just getting into the whole Tropicalia movement and the artists associated with it -- Gil, Jorge, Caetano, Tom Ze, etc. -- and I just got the Gil and Jorge CD. My reaction so far is mixed -- some of it is really beautiful, and other times, it sounds like Gil sings over Jorge or tries to overshadow him or annoy him or something (and out of tune at times, too)! There's a fascinating competitive tension going on, or at least that's my reaction.
Also just got Gil's Cerebro Eletronico from 1969 -- that record is far out.
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It's not a great record--more a curiosity, I think. Jorge Ben wasn't really part of Tropicalia, but just about every record he made through Africa Brasil is genius.
