Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

The first of to two final Brass Ecstasy shows of the year was last night. A short, but good, review of the night at Lost In Bonkers. Excerpt below.

via Lost in Bonkers:
So you’re lulled into thinking that maybe what you have here is a case of softcore Dixieland. Nice, I tell myself. A good way to ease myself into the atmosphere for 4 days of nonstop jazz. And then. Then they hit you with the understanding that this is not your grandmother’s brass band. A complex, gritty, layered sound, that made the visuals image in my brain explode.

There’s a clinic with Dave today (with the time difference, probably happening as I type), and tomorrow, their second and final performance at the Hall. Showtime 11:30PM.

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Brass Ecstasy @ The GLM Store
Spirit Moves :: CD+DVD | CD | digital
On Stage (live) :: digital-only

After reading a few reviews and seeing some pics of the Wilco-curated festival out east, I realize now that I should have hunkered down and driven out. Ah well. Hope there’s a next year, guys!

Check out the NY Times write-up for a good overview of what went down.

Dave and Keystone hit the Toronto JazzFest (and the Montreal Fest for that matter) next week in support of the Spark releases. Can’t wait for this band to come through Chicago — it’s been awhile since I’ve seen them.

Dug this question and answer from the recent interview with TheStar…

Q How should [Spark Of Being] rank in your catalogue?

A I think in the larger scheme of things, people who are aware of my work will know that I’ve been pursuing this avenue of mixing acoustic improvisation with electronic sound for a long time and I think at this point in my career this is sort of a culmination of what can be done with that. I would hope that that would be the contribution. As in any musical endeavour, one also hopes that the melodies are wonderful, and I’m working with harmony and rhythm and timbre, all the other standard elements of music as well.

Read the full article here >>>

Photo by Simon C.F. Yu

Dave Douglas with Keystone: Adam Benjamin, Marcus Strickland, Brad Jones, Gene Lake.

Thanks to Brice Rosenboom and Adam Shatz for organizing this festival. It was a thrill to be a part of it and to see so many of you out there.

Check this out…

SUNDAY JUNE 13th
An unprecedented concert of new jazz works with renowned composers and performers for the telematic music medium. Telematic music is real-time performance via the internet by musicians in different geographic locations. Performers will be located in New York and San Diego, playing together as one trans-continental ensemble in real-time and “real-space”. There will be local audiences as well as a world-wide webcast. The music explores elements of jazz fused with artistic properties of telematic technology including multiplicity, heterophony, swing, polyphony, synchronicity, and nodality. The transparent densities and intensities are manifested to create this new music reality of telematic jazz.

Composers – Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Oliver Lake, Sarah Weaver
San Diego Performers – Hafez Modirzadeh saxophone,Michael Dessen trombone, Alex Cline, percussion, Mark Dresser, contrabass
New York Performers – Amir ElSaffar, Oliver Lake, saxophone, Min Xiao-Fen , pipa, Gerry Hemingway, percussion, Sarah Weaver, conductor

Steinhardt School, New York University
35 W. 4th Street, 6th Floor – New York NY, 10012
7:00pmEDT

Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA), University of California San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive – La Jolla, CA 92093-0436
4:00pmEDT

Tune into the video webcast here on Sunday.

I went to see a pretty cool show last night here in Chicago at the Harris Theatre. Fulcrum Point puts on a season worth of great concerts, and since my buddy Joe Darnaby is acting stage manager, and all-things-techy guru for the company, I try to make it out to as many as I can. Plus I love new music. Always have, always will.

At the show last night, the piece that stuck out was Cinque Quadri da una cittá fantasma (Five Paintings from a Ghost Town) by Luciano Chessa. For piano, three turntables, and chalkboard. You can check out a video clip of Chessa playing this here.

The turntable part, played by Joe, took the infinite loop at the end of the three LPs to generate polyrhythms that lay as a bed for the piano. And the chalkboard (part of the second movement I believe) was close-miced to get the chalk sounds and scratching. As the chalkboard player — also the pianist — began to write and draw more and more frantically, the LP loops got louder and louder. Finally, the two players left the stage as the loop continued. Apparently it’s written in the piece that the players must exit and drink a glass of Laphroaig, a heavily peated scotch (and my favorite). Upon returning to the stage for the later movements, the piano became much more interesting. And later, a specific set of 3 LPs began to play super-quite music instead of the loop.

All in all, a great performance. And thanks to Joe for sharing a glass of that Laphroaig with me after the performance. Fulcrum Point, we’ll meet again.

Next week begins the wonderful Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. The illustrious faculty for this season:

Week One:
Matt Brewer, Donny McCaslin, Jeff Parker, Clarence Penn, Hank Roberts, Robert Rodriguez, Dave Douglas, director.

Week Two:
Darcy James Argue, Michael Bates, Gerald Cleaver, Myra Melford, Ben Monder, Matana Roberts, Dave Douglas.

Week Three:
Ravi Coltrane, David Gilmore, Drew Gress, Mary Halvorson, Giorgio Magnanensi, E.J. Strickland, Dave Douglas.

Californians, start getting excited about this news item from Ben Ratliff at the NYTimes…

SFJAZZ, the San Francisco arts organization, will announce plans on Friday to build its own facility dedicated to jazz: a 35,000-square-foot building in that city’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, with two adaptable theater spaces inside.

“The concept of an institution for jazz is a very new thing — obviously, Jazz at Lincoln Center made that concept work,” said Randall Kline, the group’s director. “It’s the idea that jazz has earned a right to permanence. And because our view of jazz is wide-angled, it’s a great thing for the art form.”

Continue reading…

Can’t wait to visit it once it’s up and running.