Stet Lab featuring Murray Campbell John Godfrey
with Han-earl Park, plus Andrea Bonino and Kevin Terry

Tuesday, 4 January 2011

9:00 pm (doors: 8:45 pm)

Upstairs @ The Roundy [map…]
Castle Street
Cork, Ireland

€10 (€5)

Cork’s monthly improvised music event, Stet Lab, starts a New Year of on-stage mutations and hybrids on Tuesday, 4 January 2011, upstairs at The Roundy, Castle Street, Cork, Ireland. A unique opportunity to witness the interaction between novice and veteran, and local and visiting, improvising musicians, the January event will feature California-based multi-instrumentalist Murray Campbell John Godfrey.

Last heard at the Stet Lab two years ago (12 January 2009), Murray Campbell has proved to be of the most popular and generous visiting artists at the Lab. His contributions to the Lab were included as part of the Danny McCarthy curated CD Rediscovering Locality: A Sonology of Cork Sound Art+ (farpoint recordings), and his playing has been described by then Stet Lab regular Eoin Callery as “101 other things to be done with a violin” with “movement from long-sustained tone, multiple examples of melodic phrasing, and rapid combinations of whistle-tones, harmonics, bow scrapings, plucking and rhythmic taps—especially during the second trio—left nobody in doubt of his abilities and obvious comfort in many violin/fiddle styles.”

As a fiddler (of Scottish, Balkan and Bluegrass idioms), and a violinist and double reed player in classical, music theater and performance art settings, Murray Campbell has recorded with musicians from California, Scotland, The Netherlands and elsewhere, and performed on four continents. In addition, Campbell was long time musical and technical director of Jan Langedijk’s theatre company De Daders (Amsterdam), co-creator (with Alex Fiennes) of the octaphonic spatialization system for Dialogues (Edinburgh), and co-founder of the Church of Sonology. He regularly performs with musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area and broader Californian improvised and experimental music scenes, including as part of the ensemble Bristle with saxophonists Randy McKean and Corey Wright, and bassist Lisa Mezzacappa.

Murray Campbell will be joined by Cork-based improvisers including guitarist Han-earl Park, and the event will open with Stet Lab’s house band, The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of…, consisting of guitarists Andrea Bonino and Kevin Terry.

The event will begin at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:45 pm) and entry is €10 (€5).

Stet Lab will return on Monday, 7 February 2011 featuring Belfast-based drummer Steve Davis.

updates:

01-02-11 change of guest artist from Murray Campbell to John Godfrey.

Han-earl Park: Hello.

Eliza: How do you do. Please state your problem.

Not exactly a problem, but a kind of…. I’m wondering about what happens when old… when there’s a meeting of improvisers.

Is it because you are wondering about what happens what old that you came to me?

Sorry? No, what I mean is what happens when there’s an on stage reunion I suppose.

Please don’t apologise.

Okay. Take the performance by Marian [Murray], Tony [O’Connor] and myself. How does that compare with the work we’ve done in the past?

Why do you ask?

Well, Marian’s been out of the Lab equation since July ’08, and Tony, spare the cameo appearance in January [2009], the same.

In what way?

In what way? I haven’t really been performing with them, and they, with each other, for a while. The last Lab was, in that sense, a kind of reunion.

Does that question interest you?

Well, that is the question.

I’m not sure I understand you fully.

Does the most recent musical meeting accentuate past patterns, or do you bring new stuff to the table?

We were discussing you—not me.

Okay, do we bring new stuff to the table?

Please go on.

If the purpose of the Lab was to bring improvisers (their practices and approaches) from far afield, how does this reunion play into that?

Do you think its likely that the purpose of the Lab was to bring improvisers (their practices and approaches) from far afield?

Well, I did write the mission statement!

You say you did write the mission statement?

Well, I did.

Can you elaborate on that?

I’ve already done that elsewhere so no, not really.

Are you saying no just to be negative?

I feel I’m getting off topic.

How long have you been getting off topic?

Probably from the start.

What does that suggest to you?

That I’ve not got a clear picture of the situation.

Do you feel strongly about discussing such things?

Yes.

You seem to be quite positive.

Thanks.

I’m not sure I understand you fully.

Take the meeting with Thomas Buckner earlier this month. There’s a dynamic, between Jesse [Ronneau] and myself, and the negotiation between us and Thomas.

Please go on.

The first-time, real-time, on-stage meeting with, in this case, Thomas creates interesting tactical problems for the improvisers. And I get to interact with Jesse in a totally new environment—context.

Do you say and you get to interact with Jesse in a totally new environment / context for some special reason?

Well, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it’s no particular secret that Jesse and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on things improvisative.

Don’t you really mean this in a bad way?

Not at all. That difference is surely what fires the engines of improvisation.

What is it you really wanted to know?

I suppose what I want to know is whether that Murray-O’Connor-Park trio was familiar or unfamiliar.

What would it mean to you if you got to know is whether that Murray-O’Connor-Park trio was familiar or unfamiliar?

Okay, how about this: to what extent, and in what way, was that trio a familiar retread, and to what extent was it something outside the comfort zone?

Are such questions much on your mind?

Given some comments by Paul [Hegarty], Mel [Melanie L. Marshall] and the recent encounter with Thomas, yes.

You are sure.

Yes.

I see.

But perhaps I am simply fetishizing the novel and new.

You don’t seem quite certain.

Most of my work in the last few years has been in the jam session mold. People fly in, or I fly out, and there’s an ad-hoc meeting. What I miss is the band.

Your work in the last few years has been in the jam session mold?

Yup. Even the concerts.

Does that have anything to do with the fact that your work in the last few years has been in the jam session mold?

Well, I suppose one leads to another.

That’s quite interesting.

But I miss the bands. The time to work on specific tactics and approaches.

You say but you miss the bands?

The Church of Sonology, say, or even the ensembles that exist for a few days or weeks. That gives the performers enough time to develop stuff that doesn’t happen in one-off meetings.

What does that suggest to you?

I’m neglecting stuff?

Do you believe it is normal to be neglecting stuff?

Well, it’s good to abandon stuff, not get too attached to it.

Do you feel strongly about discussing such things?

Well, [Evan] Parker admired [John] Coltrane for his ability to abandon. [1]

I’m not sure I understand you fully.

Again, I’m not sure about the fetishizing of the new.

Do you enjoy being not sure about the fetishizing of the new?

Not that—I wonder about the politics of it.

Can you elaborate on that?

Oh, I don’t know. Is it a form of middle-class, upward mobility—transcendence?

Why don’t you know?

Because it [the new] can also be about revolution.

Is that the real reason?

Hard to say. How can I perform one political maneuver while avoiding the other?

What answer would please you most?

That it is about change, but not…. Not sure. That I’ll need think about that.

notes:

1. Graham Lock (1991), ‘speaking of the essence’, Wire (issue 85, March), pp. 30–32.

Stet Lab begins 2009 with violinist Murray Campbell plus OPKA

Monday, January 12th 2009

9:00 pm (doors: 8:45 pm)

Upstairs @ The Roundy [map…]
Castle Street
Cork, Ireland

€10 (€5)

As is tradition, January is the time of new beginnings and resolutions. Stet Lab is no different and kicks off the new year with an exciting event, upstairs at The Roundy, Castle Street on Monday, January 12th. However, as Stet Lab is always attempting to navigate the boundary between familiar and unexpected, it begin with a favorite guest artist and respected (and unpredictable) fiddle player extraordinaire, Murray Campbell.

Campbell is something of a veteran of Stet Lab (he has featured twice at Stet Lab). A cutting-edge technician and popular musical agitator, he brings the best out in his fellow performers.

Campbell, as an improviser, has performed with some of the finest performers in the field including Mary Oliver (USA/The Netherlands), Stu Ritchie (UK), Koen Nutters (The Netherlands) and Randy McKean (USA). Campbell was also the long time musical/technical director of Jan Langedijk’s theater company, De Daders (Amsterdam), and is involved in an ongoing collaboration with Mr McFall’s Chamber (Edinburgh). In 2007 he created, with sound/software engineer Alex Fiennes, an octophonic spatialization system for dialogues (Edinburgh), and is a founding member of the Church of Sonology.

In addition, as a musician who loves to see people get up and dance, Campbell is the ideal candidate for starting off the electrifying 2009 season of Stet Lab. Currently based in California, and originally from Scotland, he is a versatile performer, at home in Scottish, Balkan and Bluegrass fiddle musics as well as ‘straight’ violin. In this capacity he has played with accomplished artists such as Vermillion Lies, and Paul Kamm and Eleanor MacDonald.

To aid Campbell in the musical leap-off-the-edge is a new, Cork-based ensemble OPKA. It seems appropriate to begin Stet Lab’s new year season with a promising 4-piece act that pledges “real-time efforts towards, and away from, coherence.” The (ir)rational agents of OPKA are Owen Sutton (drums), Paul Dowling (bass), and Kevin Terry and Andrea Bonino (guitars).

The event will begin at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:45 pm) and entry is €10 (€5).

Stet Lab’s 2009 season will continue on Tuesday, February 10th with veteran saxophonist-improviser Paul Dunmall.

But between those two, for me, lies an interesting gray area (I encounter this situation less often than the other two).

If group improvisation is a kind of social negotiation, you’re often trying to figure out what options you have, and what position(s) you might occupy within the group. With that in mind, let me walk you through the three improvisations by Jesse Ronneau, Veronica Tadman and myself (Han-earl Park).

speeds of gestures and decision making

That would be speeds, as in apparent lack of, and decision making, as in many, many choices carefully considered and, for the most part, abandoned before sounded.

Jesse Ronneau’s a very different kind of improviser. I have no background in after-Darmstadt European or Euro-American noise, and I doubt Jesse has much of a taste for after-AACM creative musics. Certainly my interactions with him contrasts greatly with those between myself and, say, Murray Campbell. Jesse’s bass playing has a kind of inertia (I don’t mean that in a bad way); slow, deliberate, often in holding position around which you’re invited to orbit, sounds that you are invited to contrast with, pauses in which you can end up second guessing yourself (a kind of parallel trap to the one I fell into in July).

Throw into the mix Veronica Tadman’s wetware instrument (her voice) which cleverly resisted occupying the foreground to Jesse and my hardware instruments’ background (which was, according to my own musical prejudices, where it ‘should’ be), and I find a context that’s sometimes difficult to navigate.

Let me clarify this: there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with what either Jesse and Veronica were doing, but since the aggregate network behavior was alien to my sensibilities, I had to quickly figure out how I might make my contributions ‘work’ (however you define that) in that situation.

I often felt like I was clutching at straws, and if there was a kind of guiding principle to this, it might be summed up with Anthony Braxton’s description of Paul Desmond:

He [Desmond] had already plotted out five seconds ahead of time what he was gonna do, and you could hear it in his music. It looked like he was a very slow player, but in fact he was making very quick decisions…. He was far ahead of what you heard: what you heard had been edited completely….

Anthony Braxton quoted in Graham Lock (1988), Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-Reality of Creative Music (London: Quartet), pp. 62–63.

Searching for a way to operate in this group, I was trying to reach Braxton’s Desmond in my musical personality (i.e. carefully considering many choices, but selectively executing only a small number of them). And that’s not a position I’ve tried to occupy in a long time (possibly since the Church of Sonology amplification in Edinburgh, 2002). It turned out, however, to be an interesting scheme for generating tactics in real-time, if not one that I feel compelled to return to.

I think, to some extent, all three of us were being Braxton’s Desmond that evening, and now, looking back on it, I wonder if it may have been more fruitful if I had tried to be someone else. I only realized this when talking to Jesse after the performance. I told him that, towards the second-half of ‘a sad and twisted story’, I had chosen an (un-Desmond-like) simple strategy—a conditional behavior. I would continue with near-silent moments interspersed with Sforzando psuedo-clusters until the other performers had changed their gestures significantly. Turns out Jesse had realized what was happening and thus refused to budge, and, for me, that was one of the more interesting things I contributed that evening.

some random observations

Like July, wasn’t this an awfully male Lab? Having done not too badly on the gender front (at least until June), I think there’s going to have to be some hard work ahead trying to redress this issue. Not to take away anything from Veronica’s contributions, but the departure of a couple of Stet Lab (ir)regulars has left difficult gaps to fill.

So we’re back in the formal space of the Ó Riada Hall. This makes certain interactions with the audience harder (in particular, trying to encourage people to sit-in), but November’s Lab will be in The Roundy which I hope will prove to be less intimidating, and open to ad-hoc associations.

This is mostly due to my recent lack of effort (due to a lack of time!) inviting, prior to the event, people to sit-in, but I had problems with the recital-like nature of this performance; it gets us away from the Lab’s mission.

Stet Lab

featuring Murray Campbell
plus The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of…

Thursday, June 12th 2008

9:00pm

upstairs @ Sláinte [New venue!]
Market Lane (off Patrick Street)
Cork, Ireland

€10 (€5)

Cork’s monthly improvised music event—Stet Lab—begins their Summer 2008 season of on-stage mutations and hybrids on Thursday, 12th of June, upstairs at Sláinte. A unique opportunity to witness the interaction between novice and veteran, and local and visiting, improvising musicians, the June Stet Lab will feature California-based multi-instrumentalist Murray Campbell.

One of the most popular visiting artists of Stet Lab (he was guest artist in December 2007), Murray Campbell takes a short break from his duties with Vermillion Lies to return to Cork. As a fiddler (of Scottish, Balkan and Bluegrass idioms), and a violinist and double reed player in Classical, music theater and performance art settings, Campbell has recorded with musicians from California, Scotland, The Netherlands and elsewhere, and performed on four continents. In addition, Campbell was long time musical and technical director of Jan Langedijk’s theater company De Daders (Amsterdam), co-creator (with Alex Fiennes) of the octaphonic spatialization system for Dialogues (Edinburgh), and co-founder of the Church of Sonology.

Also performing at the event will be Stet Lab’s house band; a group of Cork-based improvisers appearing as The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of….