In familiar ensembles, with performers you’ve worked with a lot, it’s often fruitful (and fun) to push and pull, and discover alternative relationships, and observe the network respond, change and reconfigure itself. Similarly, in a musical meeting between strangers, it’s also interesting to ‘test’ the network; to ascertain the wheres, whens, and under what conditions, of performers’ responses.
But between those two, for me, lies an interesting gray area (I encounter this situation less often than the other two). Continue reading ‘Lab report October 9th 2008: being Paul Desmond’
It’s good, I think, to think tactically about improvisation, and group improvisation in particular. You know, however, that you’ve lost the game in improvisation when you’re preempting the music. You don’t want to be thinking this is how it should be, goddamnit, and I will fit that square piece into that triangular hole. Continue reading ‘Lab report July 10th 2008: fitting the square piece into that triangular hole’
“This was possibly the noisiest ‘hoedown’ ever………………………………………” —Everybody’s sub-conscious
Anyway, it began with several short burst to get things started, from the house band of the evening. This comprised Eoin Callery (mountain dulcimer), Susan Geaney (flute), Tony O’Connor (bass guitar) and Barry Twomey (guitar). A very well behaved bass player who could have crush the puny acoustic forces, swelled and tinkered over the guitar and dulcimer duel. Continue reading ‘Lab report June 12th 2008: noisiest ‘hoedown’’
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