Here’s a little back-story: in my first semi-public attempts as an improvising guitarist, I had my guitar, amp and volume pedal… plus a compressor, a distortion box, a delay pedal and a chorus unit. Eventually, this chain would be joined by a wah. (I did, incidentally, my first recordings (a piece by Pedro Rebelo) with more or less this complex of equipment.)

Why am I going through this guitar-geek fetish confession? I started as an improvising guitarist of the ‘if-only-I-had-a-gizmo-I-would-rock’ school of wishful, self-delusion. Somewhere in my head, I had this naive idea that what separated me from the Frisells and Friths of the world was the hardware. (Oh, I almost got myself, don’t laugh, an SG thinking that this would get me closer to Frisell and Zappa.)

Yet Bailey never got better than with a guitar, terrible sounding fuzz box, a volume pedal and amp. Heck, Braxton, age 24, got two LPs from a single alto.

Who was I kidding here?

I only got through my personal-political-musical-technical hiccups and hang-ups by jettisoning, first the wah, then the compressor and delay, and eventually the distortion and the chorus boxes.

Fast-forward to the present…

I feel I’ve melowed from my fundamentalist, luddite stance from years ago, but, as I sat watching Katie O’Looney setup her behemoth kit, as I helped her carry her atomized percussion setup out of her van, up the stairs, into the performance space, I couln’t quite figure out what I was feeling.

My mentors include those who enroll gargantuan complex of musical resources and those who do not. How do I figure in this equation? There are, of course, pragmatic dimensions to this (I travel from one gig to another, by and large, via public transport), but nonetheless what are the political/ideological implications of subscribing to one position?

Part choice, perhaps: I did, for example, suggest to Owen Sutton that he might want to “decide whether you’re an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink drummer (a la Tony Oxley), or happier with a more spartan approach (like Joey Baron). Neither [is] the wrong choice, of course….” Sure, neither’s wrong, but neither are they neutral; they have very different implications and possibilities.

Stet Lab featuring Bruce Coates and Jonny Marks

Monday, May 11th 2009

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

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

€10 (€5)

This month’s Stet Lab, Cork’s improvised music event, will take place at 9:00 pm on Monday, May 11th 2009, upstairs at The Roundy, Castle Street, Cork, Ireland. The event will feature saxophonist Bruce Coates (UK) and vocalist Jonny Marks (UK/New Zealand via China), plus Cork-based improvisers, Han-earl Park (guitar), Owen Sutton (drums), Paul Dowling (bass), Vicky Langan (electronics) and James O’Gorman (guitar).

May’s Stet Lab will see a bold mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Returning will be Birmingham-based Bruce Coates, founder of FrImp and the Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra, and a saxophonist with a sound both daring and inviting. Having worked with musicians as diverse as Christian Wolff, Lol Coxhill, Tony Oxley, John Edwards, Chris Hobbs, and previous Stet Lab guests Paul Dunmall, Mark Sanders and Mike Hurley, Coates regularly negotiates the intersection between avant jazz, free improvisation and post-Cardew experimentalism. A Stet Lab veteran, he performed twice before at the Lab—in November 2007 and December 2008.

Making his Irish debut at this event will be Jonny Marks from New Zealand via Mongolia and the UK. Marks is an experimental vocalist and throat singer who has worked with Damo Suzuki, Thomas Lehn and Takashi Harada, and with bands such as The Verlaines and Thrashing Marlin. He has appeared at the Wellington International Jazz Festival and the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

Joining Coates and Marks will be Cork-based improvisers, guitarist Han-earl Park, and the young, up-and-coming drummer Owen Sutton.

The evening will be opened by a trio comprising bassist Paul Dowling, Vicky Langan on electronics, and newcomer to the Stet Lab stage, guitarist James O’Gorman. This eclectic ensemble will showcase three radically divergent approaches to improvisation.

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

Stet Lab will return in June with more real-time, musical mutations and hybrids.

Before we go on stage, I joke with Jamie Smith that we’re the two guitarists who’re going to be tripping up each other (and that the drummer, Owen Sutton, will have to pick through the carnage).

By ‘tripping up’ I’m not implying that the results weren’t going to be interesting, musical or fun.

FrImp, Birmingham, November 1, 2007

The first time I perform with Jamie, we spend the entire first set—forty-odd minutes of it—colliding with each other. That really was a train wreck, but the two horn players seem to relish the opportunity to fly over the heads of the two guitarists.

By ‘train wreck’ I’m not implying that the results weren’t interesting, musical or fun.

The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, February 11, 2009

The day after the Lab, I discover that Mark Sanders (a little like Murray Campbell) works well as a jump-cutter. After the feeling-each-other-out moment, our duet settles into a kind of classic coordinated block-structure dance (after-Oxley-Taylor).

Jamie (a little like Franziska Schroeder), however, is very much a parallel-track improviser.

I talk to Jamie about this later, and his map of the group resembles nothing like mine.

How do I fit in the picture?

FrImp, Birmingham, November 1, 2007

During the second set, Jamie and I settle into an agreement. The results are more ‘successful’, but are they more interesting? musical? fun?

This ‘agreement’ still operates, at least from my point of view, in the Glucksman performance 15 months later. I basically stay out of Jamie’s way; and Jamie, out of mine.

The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, February 11, 2009

Halfway through the concert, Paul Dunmall soars over the heads of the two guitarists.

I’m still stuck at the medium scale. In particular, next to Paul’s incredible variability in velocities, speeds, densities, spaces and (ir)regularities, my playing—my contributions—seem more limited than ever.

Because of this, I’m considering jettisoning the volume pedal for a while to see what happens. I rely on the volume pedal; it’s been my hook into specific traditions of guitar playing, it’s how I breathe, but maybe my reliance is blinding me to certain possibilities. If you can imagine the topsy-turvey image of my knee as diaphragm, and ankle as jaw, the foot as mouth, you’re close to how clumsy this system of breathing might be. It’s breathing cycle never gets above a certain allegro, and below a kind of adagio.

My home, Cork, January 14, 2009

I’m wondering why so many relative novice improvisers will jettison preparations—tactics and ‘tricks’—when they finally hit the stage. Why, I ask, do they make it so impossibly hard for themselves when there are easier ways.

Murray opines that they are perhaps aiming for art rather than fun. “It’s always better to try to have fun, than to make art,” he says. “If you try and make art, you’re likely to end up disappointed, but if you’re having fun, you just might make art by accident.”

Art as a cherry-on-top.

Murray quickly adds that once you take the easier routes, you are in a much better position to add extra complications.

Stet Lab, Cork, February 10, 2009

Jamie’s guitar is hooked into an amplifier that is determined to misbehave. It’s humming and buzzing away. Jamie turns to face it, rotates dials this way and that, and finally says, “I like that noise.”

Trying to imagine—to anticipate—how I might be able to respond to that steady-state noise, I reply that it “makes it very hard for me….”

Jamie laughs, and so do I.

Jesse Ronneau’s apartment, Cork, February 13, 2009

Jesse Ronneau tells me that what I do is not improvisation, that what I teach is not improvisation, that I instead act on a philosophical agenda.

Well, yes, I do have my own idiomatic allegiances, ideological agendas, social habits, cultural traits, psychological quirks, but I fail to see how we could be rid of them, and I am skeptical as to whether an emancipation from these would necessarily amount to a good thing.

…And if I could be agenda-free (identity-free?), what would that mean to real-time, on-stage interaction (whether you’d call that ‘improvisation’ or not).

According to Jesse, during our October performance, I was being ‘uncooperative’ (“always interrupting” and “doing the opposite”). For whatever definition of ‘improvisation’ Jesse subscribes to, whatever it is I do, does not fall under it.

We’re talking cross-purposes: I’m not sure what ‘opposite’ might mean in a musical-performance context (never mind one in which identities and relationships are being (re)negotiated in real-time). Isn’t saying that this (performance infected by agendas, etc.) is not improvisation, akin to saying that polemical or ideological disagreements are not democratic?

It occurs to me in retrospect that our discussion, ironically, is a good illustration of this: a disagreement does not make this any less of a conversation, and musical ‘oppositions’ (whatever they might be) does not make a performance less of an improvisation.

An Spailpin Fanac, Cork, February 11, 2009

Paul Dunmall is explaining to Melanie L. Marshall how easy it is to improvise: “there are no wrong notes.”

The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, February 11, 2009

I’m as surprised as anyone that, despite the initial configurations (Mark and myself; Paul and Jamie), that by the end of the performance the foreground interactions exist between Mark and Jamie, and between Paul and myself.

Jesse Ronneau’s apartment, Cork, February 13, 2009

I say, “if you play clang, I might play clang, but I might play bloop, or bleep… scratch, or whatever, I fail to see the problem.”

“I don’t have a problem,” Jesse states. After a pause, he turns to me and adds, “you are the problem.”

An Spailpin Fanac, Cork, February 11, 2009

Paul is explaining to Melanie how easy it is to improvise: “there are no wrong notes.”

Aine Sheil’s apartment, Cork, February 21, 2009

I tell a story about teaching improvisation.

There’s one sticking point that, every year, I encounter: the notion of having multiple (contradictory) goals, (incompatible) volitions and (complex) agencies within a group, all driving the performance, but none having control. It seems the single consistently difficult (scary? threatening?) concept to grasp. In the students’ opposition, there may be invocations of the neo-Cagian denial of agency, or the dogma of command-and-control; the temptation is to let the music ‘just happen’, to be subsumed into chamber music, or to separate the leaders from the followers.

It occurs to me in retrospect that a student’s resistance to the idea of a complex of agencies is, ironically, a good illustration of it: disagreements, after all, fuel the engine of a discussion, and multiple goals, volitions and agencies have a corresponding function improvised performance.

An Spailpin Fanac, Cork, February 11, 2009

Paul tells Melanie that “there are no wrong notes.” You can’t make mistakes, just choices that may be better or worse.

random observations and questions

Flaws’n’all, and it’s by no stretch of the imagination a perfect piece of music (whatever that means), ‘the two Pauls…’ with Paul Dowling, Paul Dunmall, Veronica Tadman and Kevin Terry may contain some of my favorite surprises during the February Lab, and ‘it’s a great door, innit?’ by Paul Dunmall, Neil O’Loghlen and Mark Sanders, the musically strongest moments…

The best moments of hardcore tactical maneuverings may have been by Paul Dowling, Paul Dunmall and Owen Sutton towards the end of ‘last call for the big band…’.

Were Paul Dowling and Owen Sutton in groove mode?

Next to Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders’ decades-long experience, we’re all very much junior parters in this musical enterprise. Are we all going to be transformed in their wake? (And I’m struck yet again the oddity of this latter-day, transnational improvising musicians’ tribe (of which I am embedded): seniority rules.)