And we don't have to look too far into the new year to find Donny working away. This month alone he has 14 dates on his gig calender.
This week:
1/7/2009
8PM - New York Public Library Bruno Walter Auditorium
Donny McCaslin's "In Pursuit" with Ben Monder, Kate McGarry, Scott Colley, David Binney, & Adam Cruz
1/9/2009
10pm - 55 Bar, NYC
Donny McCaslin Group with Lage Lund, Scott Colley, & Adam Cruz
1/14/09
with Han Bennink, Dave Douglas, Matt Penman and friends
MIDWAY, Lower East Side
And later on this month, Donny will take his Trio to Europe for a few dates in and around Deutschland. For a full list of dates, click HERE.
Over the break, I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Christmas On Mars, a film by psychedelia stars the Flaming Lips. Musically, the soundtrack is pretty unbelievable. Lots of great orchestration and themes. But also, in true Flaming Lips fashion, the sound effects and walls of noise used throughout bolster each sequence and sometimes adds a humorous element (sounds of doors opening, delayed footsteps, etc) that has always been a mainstay of the bands sound.
The film itself is a throw-back to the old sci-fi movies like Metropolis or The Day The Earth Stood Still. The plot -- humans are living on Mars, humankind is on the verge of losing oxygen and losing the first baby born in space, and an alien (Wayne Coyne) comes to help -- seems to be a vehicle for Wayne Coyne's nothingness philosophy which remains the subject of much of the Lips' work. And while Coyne says not one word the whole movie, it seems the characters are all speaking from this perspective. Lots of wordless walking sequences, too. A confusing amount of walking around actually. But great from start to finish.
For fans of old b-movies, cult sci-fi classics, and old monster movies, this is one you shouldn't miss in the theatre. It's a blast to watch and listen.
Even with centuries of innovation in brass instrument making, the trumpet is still basically a metal tube through which one is expected to blow, vibrating the lips against the opening at one end. It doesn't matter who's making the horn. That's basically all it is.
The notes come out following the harmonic series: beginning with a low fundamental tone and ascending, according to the laws of physics, by ever smaller intervals until the top of the range, where the series ends in pure, densely packed chromatics. Add three valves and you've got seven harmonic series available: 0, 1, 2, 12, 23, 13, and 123.* In the low range all the fundamental notes have their own fingering. In the high range, where the seven series converge, almost any note can be played with any fingering.
In addition, there is the quality of the attack, the flow of air, and the flexibility in moving from one note to another. All musical expressiveness on the trumpet stems from control of these few variables.
Freddie Hubbard was one of the most skilled practitioners of this art. The joy and freedom in his playing came in part from this complete mastery of the instrument. It always sounded effortless. In the high range his control of air was so sublime that his lines sometimes defied the laws of physics and harmony, resolving in odd ways just by dint of his total domination of the instrument. Freddie grabbed the opportunity of those alternate fingerings to pop in and out of chromatic chord and scale ideas. His attack was always precise and his dodging and darting lines flowed like water through a sluiceway.
A lot of people can play the trumpet well. Technical mastery is far from the reason Freddie Hubbard is the most imitated player of the last half-century. It was what he did with that mastery -- the inventiveness of his harmonies and the ingenuity of his rhythmic propulsion. Freddie's impact is so profound that you often don't have to mention him when noting a young player's influences. Freddie is always there. He had a lot to say, and we all soaked it up.
As a young player Freddie listened to Clifford Brown for sure. He also drank deeply at the well of Clifford's inspirations: Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Louis Armstrong, among many others. But trumpeters aren't the only influence for trumpeters. In the same way that Clifford Brown talked about putting Charlie Parker's language on the trumpet, Freddie Hubbard brought the practices of John Coltrane, his occasional practice-mate, directly into the brass world.
Freddie's lines drove the harmony. Freddie toyed with the music, anticipating and delaying resolutions in unexpected ways. But at the end of the day it was the maturity of his improvisations that were the most powerful aspect of his musical expression. Freddie at his best could go nuts with the lines and the harmony, but he would also ease off and play with bluesy simplicity when it more effectively served the moment.
The VSOP records of the mid-seventies show Freddie in an unusual and revealing light. This had been Miles Davis' band in the mid-sixties: Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. With Miles this music was spare and enigmatic -- no extra notes and no bravura energy added to the brilliance of the tunes. Freddie brings something quite different. He is generous with notes and all flowing grace. A different kind of grace, like a gregarious toastmaster. Freddie is so on top of the music and the horn that he is unable to restrain the joyful exuberance of his ideas and his ability to pull them off.
That explains a lot about why he is more imitated than Miles Davis -- his style gave so much more material to hold onto. Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard were two very different visions of the modern esthetic. Echoes of Miles are heard a lot, but you hear the sound of Freddie everywhere.
Trumpeters have often been tragic figures in American life. Freddie Hubbard was no different. The last fifteen years of his life saw him battling a disastrous lip injury that limited his ability to execute his ideas. Freddie also battled the forces of fashion - by his own admission (though not necessarily that of his fans) he spent some years making music that did not live up to his high standards. By the early seventies he had done pretty much everything that could be done: documented many masterpiece solos, participated in dozens of seminal recordings, elaborated a personal vision for the instrument and the music that still stands up today. Where was he to go? That kind of legacy and pressure at such a young age is hard to imagine.
We can be thankful for the joy Freddie Hubbard brought to us in his seventy years on the planet. He will be missed.
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* For those curious why 3 is not included among the seven basic fingerings -- 3 creates a length of tubing almost exactly identical to 12, with 12 being slightly more in tune. 3 is a widely used alternate fingering, but is not considered among the basic positions.
Darcy at Secret Society has a great collection of links to other thoughts about Freddie Hubbard, as well as some perceptive thoughts of his own.
Thanks for the nod Mr. D. Let me be the first to agree on the momentous year, and to extend my best wishes to everyone's family over the holiday break.
I decided not to do the usual Top 10 (25, 50, 100) list of the year. The last thing we need is yet another person saying how awesome records by the Fleet Foxes and the Walkmen are (which both are incredible no doubt). Instead, I looked back on what I heard this year regardless of release date. And what really stuck.
TOP 15 Most Played Songs at the Office (according to iTunes play counts)
* BOLDED text are tunes that I hadn't heard until this year.
1. Lento-e largo-Tranquillisimo (51) :: Henryk Gorecki, Symphony #3 2. Tom Thumb (50) :: Wayne Shorter, Schizophrenia
3. Behind That Locked Door (48) :: George Harrison, All Things Must Pass 4. Where Is The Puzzle? (48) :: Bonnie Prince Billy, Lie Down In The Light
5. Sin City (47) :: Flying Burrito Brothers, Gilded Palace of Sin
6. Summit Music (47) :: Dave Douglas, Mountain Passages
7. Very Slowly (46) :: Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring 8. Sugar Cube 1967 (46) :: Patto, Monkey's Bum
9. Four Provinces (46) :: The Walkmen, You & Me
10. Theme for Lester Young (45) :: Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus 11. Recommended Tools (44) :: Donny McCaslin Trio, Recommended Tools 12. Stolen Moments (44) :: Oliver Nelson, Blues and the Abstract Truth
13. To Kingdom Come (44) :: The Band, Musical History [Disc 2]
14. Paint a Rainbow (44) :: My Bloody Valentine, Sunny Sundae Smile [EP] 15. Homeless Wanderer (44) :: Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, Ethiopiques Vol. 21
Some of these newbies to my catalog may come as a shock (Blues and the Abstract Truth?!? Schizophrenia?!? How did I miss those?). But others you may need to check out. Like Bonnie Prince Billy's Where Is The Puzzle? from his latest Lie Down In The Light. And I can't talk up the Ethiopiques Series enough. Volume 21 is solo piano works from Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou.
And for those rockers out there reading, Patto is an under-exposed rock band from the 70's. Ollie Halsall is the guitar player who burns on almost every track they released and has since been reissued. Sugar Cube 1967 is from a record called Monkey's Bum. Pretty hard to find, but if you can, pick it up -- along with their self-titled debut.
Other notables I hadn't heard this year include El Corazon by Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell, Moontrane by Woody Shaw, and Everything That Happens Will Happen Today by David Byrne and Brian Eno -- all phenomenal records.
Alright, back to work. Lots on the schedule for this upcoming year -- another FONT Music schedule, another DD recording, this one with Brass Ecstasy, and more great music from us to you. Anyone wanting to share their Tops List(s), feel free to pass them along in the comments section.
As the raging snow ushers Suzannah and I out of town for the break there's been almost no time to reflect on the momentous year that was 2008. Three cheers to the adults moving back into power in Washington. Jim tells me he's got a tops list that he'll post. But other than that blogging will be suspended until the new year.
Tony Horwitz (Baghdad Without A Map, Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes) has a new book I'd planned to read while away. It was too good - A Voyage Long and Strange tells of what happened in the (future) United States between 1492 and 1620, the two dates most of us remember from school. Fills in a lot of gaps and puts a lot of subsequent events in perspective. And even though many of the details are tragic it's a forgotten place in our national memory that bears remembering. And he tells of it compellingly.
Hallelujah Junction: Composing An American Life by John Adams will travel. And call me crazy but I like to read Paul Auster on the beach. John Berger's Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches On Survival and Resistance comes. And Huffington's Guide to Blogging so we can see about spiffing this place up in the new year.
This festival (Festival of New Trumpet Music, or FONT) and its growing organization is dedicated to music: performances first and foremost, but also commissioning new brass music (12 commissions to date), and increasingly, educational events. Our mission is to present and support living brass music regardless of genre.
For 6 years, FONT Music has been putting together engaging programs of brass music around New York. It has been both an enormous challenge and exciting thrill. We have not always been able to do what we wanted, and not all programs have succeeded in every way. But we've been able to look back and see the gains from the new music we have helped to facilitate.
At the beginning FONT Music was Roy Campbell and myself, hashing out ideas over the bar at Tonic. The first two years remained at Tonic, but in 2005 we were joined by Jon Nelson who brought a broader vision to how we could work, and guided us forward as an organization. Micah Killion was instrumental in helping us incorporate and organize, all the while lending his vital creativity to the presentation of programs.
In 2007 we made a big step into nonprofit status, forming a board and adding new voices to the mix. Taylor Ho Bynum has emerged as a crucial and hard-working member of our organizational team, as well as a keen curatorial ear. Other curators have now included Jeremy Pelt, John McNeil, Mark Gould, and Frank London. We also have a working group of officers (still all-volunteer, as is everything to date...) in Chris DiMeglio, Richard Johnson, and Erol Tamerman.
We are still a very grassroots organization, as many of you know.
In 2009 we will change the way we work somewhat, presenting a few special events throughout the year and presenting a shorter, more tightly-focused festival in September. We hope you'll join us -- in any case please feel free to send us your thoughts and ideas for how we can make the festival more effective in serving the community. And visit us at Myspace and Facebook.
And we will continue to support creative, exciting new brass music as we continue to move forward with the Festival of New Trumpet Music. Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you after the new year.
Thanks to Steve Greenlee of The Boston Globe for the two nods he made to Greenleaf releases. Both Moonshine and Recommended Tools made the cut for Steve's Best of 2008.
DAVE DOUGLAS "Moonshine" (Greenleaf Music)
Hard-pumping post-fusion jazz that gets the adrenaline going. The trumpeter keeps paying homage to Miles Davis, and every album gets more aggressive. Heck, this one even ends with a tune called "Tough."
DONNY McCASLIN "Recommended Tools" (Greenleaf Music)
The saxophonist is on from start to finish during this outing with just a bassist and drummer supporting him. His blowing is brawny and brainy, blistering and beautiful.
I will be directing the workshop at Banff again in 2009, from May 18 to June 6. Tentative faculty (so far) includes Joshua Redman, Don Byron, Nicole Mitchell, David Gilmore, Matt Penman, Dafnis Prieto, Clarence Penn, and yours truly.
The music building at Banff.
A brass workshop in 2008 with Dave Douglas and Daniel Ramirez of the Orbits Quintet. (h/t to Jamison Sevits and Kevin Tang)
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