Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

There’s a great feature on Stanford Lively Arts director Jenny Bilfield posted yesterday at the MetroActive site.

An excerpt from the story of how Reich’s Double Sextet came to be:

Upon hanging up the phone [with Bilfield], Reich thought back to his ’60s pieces like Violin Phase, written for instruments being played live against recordings of themselves. He realized that he could do the same thing for eighth blackbird if the group would agree to pre-record a piece, then play a second sextet performance live against that recording—thus, Double Sextet. He called Bilfield back the next day and proposed the idea, and she took it to the group members, who said they would love to do it.

“And the piece won the Pulitzer Prize, and it is really one of the best pieces I’ve ever written,” says Reich. “But I would never have thought in a million years to write for eighth blackbird. It was Jenny Bilfield, whose basic subtext is ‘I’m not taking no for an answer.’”

And later in the article, some words about the Dave Douglas/Bill Morrison collaboration Spark Of Being [world premiere next month].

“Jenny called me and said, ‘What would you like to do that you couldn’t do anywhere else?” remembers Douglas. “It’s not every day that you get asked that question.”

The basis of the piece is matching Morrison’s talent for shaping films made from a collage of archival footage—his similarly constructed Decasia was named by the Village Voice as one of the 10 best films of 2003—with Douglas’ composition work. It has gone by many different titles over time; for a while, it was known as Frankenstein: The First 100 Years, in reference to Thomas Edison’s 1910 film.

“Before that, it was called The History of Gadgetry,” Douglas says. “For us, it’s all been about this conversation between technology and art, humanity and invention—what our inventions mean to us and how science has affected humanity. We went to Frankenstein because that seemed like a good metaphor for the whole thing. Bill works with older films, creating something new out of them, and I work a lot with samples and various disparate elements of music.”

“The Frankenstein monster is a collage of pieces in and of itself, so we’re referencing our process,” says Morrison. Finally, though, they settled on Spark of Being.

Read the full article here.

A new show just posted to the DD shows page. John Zorn’s Masada Sextet will hit the Cleveland Museum of Art on Friday, March 26th. Show time is at 7:30 PM. Happy hour with a cash bar and light snacks starts at 5:30 PM. Tickets are available here. The Masada Sextet is John Zorn, sax; Dave Douglas, trumpet; Uri Caine, piano; Greg Cohen, bass; Cyro Baptista, percussion; Joey Baron, drums.

In other Masada news, Dave will be conducting a seminar on May 10th at The Stone celebrating the Masada book. Details below. Further info at The Stone’s website.

DAVE DOUGLAS—The Music of Masada
7PM to 10PM—THIRTY DOLLARS: Open to musicians on any instrument.
Trumpeter in various MASADA ensembles since 1993, Douglas talks about and demonstrates some of the unique performance issues raised in this celebrated book of compositions by John Zorn. The group will work on several pieces from the book in differing ensemble formations, illuminating ideas about performance practice and limning the knowns and unknowns in the pages of the MASADA book. For those interested in an inside look at this music, this will be a challenging and fun hands-on experience. Please arrive on time and bring your instrument.

A nice review of the Brass Ecstasy performance last night by the Oregon Music News blog hit this morning. Click here to read.

UPDATE: Check out another review from Mainly Music Meanderings here with accompanying photos. Note: one tune was missing from Posty McPosterton’s setlist — “The Brass Ring” (with the drum solo Posty mentions) should appear between “Awake Nu” and “Mr. Pitiful.” That update came straight from the horse’s mouth. Thanks for posting Posty!

Early Warning: Brass Ecstasy’s next scheduled performance this year will be at the Red Sea Jazz Festival this coming August. More info on that festival coming soon. As always, keep your eye on Dave’s tour page for the most recent tour news.

Special 1/2 price Student/Senior Tickets

Half-price tickets are available to students and seniors via walk-up only at the Crystal Ballroom. Limited availability.

For non-seniors and non-students, buy your tickets in advance here.

Upcoming interviews with artists coming to the Portland Jazz Festival were just announced. Check out Dave’s interview on Sunday (day of the Brass Ecstasy performance) at noon. Full list of interviews below.

Jazz Conversations (all at the Art Bar [map] and all free) include:

* Friday, 2/26 at 4pm: Tom D’Antoni with Craig Handy of the Mingus Big Band
* Friday, 2/26 at 5pm: Tim DuRoche with Trygve Seim & Frode Haltli
* Friday 2/26 at 6pm: Matt Fleeger with Christian Wallumrod
* Saturday 2/27 at 12pm: Steven Cantor with Dave Holland
* Saturday 2/27 at 6:30pm: Barry Jonson with Pharoah Sanders
* Sunday 2/28 at 12pm: Lloyd Peterson with Dave Douglas

Left-coasters can hear Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy this coming Sunday the 28th at the Crystal Ballroom [map] as part of the Portland Jazz Festival. Get your tickets here.

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To celebrate, this week at the Greenleaf store we have a sale going for all the Brass Ecstasy music.

Spirit Moves: Buy the CD and receive a free upgrade to the Deluxe CD+DVD package. Saves you 40%.
On Stage: Part of our download-only series, pick up these live sets for $5 MP3 or $7 FLAC saving you 30%.
Sheet Music: Five bucks off the digital PDFs of the extended Spirit Moves book of music. Saves you 25%.

Sale ends Monday the 29th.

A quick reminder…

February 11th, 2010 – 8:00PM
Dave Douglas Quintet
+
Young Artist Workshop Participants
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center
31-10 Thomson Ave
Queens, NY 11101
***Free to the Public***

more detailed post from earlier this week including details for the Friday performance…

Creation Suite: New Compositions for Small Improvising Ensembles.

On Thursday there’s a FREE concert at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center [map] in which the Dave Douglas Quintet (with Donny McCaslin, Uri Caine, James Genus, and Clarence Penn) perform as well as the 11 participants in the Weill Music Institute Young Artists Workshop.

Friday at Zankel Hall [map] [tickets] is a concert dedicated to the Young Artist original works. Dave, Uri, Clarence will be hanging out and might play a little bit.

Young Artist Workshop participants and players:
Eden Bareket, Baritone Saxophone
Johannes Dickbauer, Violin
Philip Dizack, Trumpet
Sam Harris, Piano
Kristijan Krajncan, Drums
Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Saxophones
Hui-Chun Lin, Cello
Rizpah Lowe, Harp
Nadje Noordhuis, Trumpet
Linda Oh, Bass
Dan Peck, Tuba

In the artist’s own words:

In this concert, you will hear original music written and developed by the players.

In a way, this idea is part of our own tradition—musician-composer-performers coming together to create a program of new music that includes the improvised voices of each player. The jazz tradition is where this concept has most recently flourished, and all the musicians on this stage are certainly educated and influenced by the great jazz musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. But influence is a slippery thing, and you’ll certainly hear shades of all sorts of music on this program. The inclusion of many sources is not approached as eclecticism; rather, it seems to be the natural way that young musicians react to the profusion of musical languages and to the challenges of making personal and powerful music in the current age.

Tradition can be defined as an established method or style. The tradition present in this concert is not so much in the sense of a style, but in the practices of certain kinds of musicians.

Player-composers who improvise tend to learn from one another: writing music for each other to play, learning each other’s practices, listening, exchanging feedback, thinking about what the music means to them and where they fit into it. This music is neither all improvised nor all composed. The amount of improvisation varies from moment to moment and is developed collaboratively by the musicians as part of a charged process that is both intuitive and well considered.

In presenting this original music, the musicians situate themselves in a tradition of creativity—of collaboration, personal investigation, and making the most engaging music in a human and interpersonal context.

Tradition can also be defined as the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation. With that transmission, ideas grow and change; new musical forms emerge with each generation. In preparation for this concert, the musicians shared their sense of musical custom and belief in the creation of a new body of work. We are thankful to the Weill Music Institute for giving us this opportunity to find out where tradition will take us next.

-Dave Douglas