I’m not sure at all where this is leading, but having through some combination of ideology and necessity (ain’t it always the way?) found myself somewhat involuntarily in the ‘Total Improvisation’ camp, I’m beginning to look on the other side of the fence. Let me be clear, the, to borrow Lewis’ term, Eurological conception of the score and the practice that surrounds it (theorized in detail by Small, Cusick, Nicholas Cook and others), with its limited models of control and dogma of reproducibility, and naive notions of aesthetics, does not interest me at all.
However, I’m feeling a gravitational tug. Maybe it’s due to coming into close contact with musicians who have a much more sophisticated (if often, from an non-practitioner’s POV, misunderstood and under theorized) relationship with the score and the possibilities of notation. But it’s a distinct pull. Still working—struggling—through some ideas, and studies, and have far, far more questions than answers about the possible role notation and the score might have in an improvisative context, but that’s the new thing that’s exciting me at the moment. [Read the rest…]
The theme of cuttlefish’s inaugural issue is “work-in-progress (sketches, doodles, journal entries, streams of consciousness…),” and features contributions by Wim Bollein, Laura Duran, Evgeniy Aleksandrovich (=dozen), Graham Holliday, ja’s ink on paper, Daniel Kan, Francisco Martins, Corey Mwamba, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Peter O’Doherty, Han-earl Park, Kiyomitsu Saito, Tom Tebby, Nicolas P. Tschopp, Andrea Valle, Krysthopher Woods and Alice Xiang.
If you are interested in contributing to future issues of cuttlefish, please contact cuttlefish[at]peterodoherty.net.
With the release of the recording with Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders, I’ve completed the current series of download albums, and I’ve been taking a break from releasing new recordings. The albums so far—all Creative Commons licensed, and free or ‘name your price’—are collated here and on the downloads page. With a break in the release schedule, I’ve taken the opportunity to overhaul the downloads page; the most significant update since I started, in September 2010, formally offering complete concert recordings online.
One notable update to the downloads page is the addition of the recommended Bandcamp albums that accompanied the current series. As I wrote previously, there are some very fine and inspiring creative, improvised and experimental music on Bandcamp, but it isn’t always easy to find the recordings. Here’s my small contribution to help people get started. Enjoy, download, share—support creative musicians!
Two non-stop sets of improvised music. This live recording juxtaposes the formidable creativity and muscular technique of veteran improviser-saxophonist Paul Dunmall, the imaginative cyborgian virtuosity of guitarist Han-earl Park, and the ever inventive playing of Mark Sanders, arguably the most sought-after improviser-drummer of his generation. [More info…]
Murray Campbell, Randy McKean, Han-earl Park, Gino Robair and Scott R. Looney
The Gargantius Effect is the brainchild of Murray Campbell and Randy McKean. This album documents Gargantius Effect’s August 2011 tour of Northern California with special guest and fellow Sonologist Han-earl Park, plus Bay Area veteran improviser, composer and electronic artist Gino Robair, and hyperpianist Scott R. Looney. [More info…]
A solo performance by guitarist-constructor Han-earl Park exploring, with feedback and resonant buzzes, the complex, cavernous acoustics of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, and the interactions between artifact (guitar) and the body (guitarist). For ‘Strokes and Screwballs,’ Park is joined by violinist-improviser Marian Murray for a conversational improvisation. [More info…]
A stark, real-time evolution of on-stage relations. The performance took place during Seoul-based experimental electronic musician Jin Sangtae’s European tour. Featuring clanking hard drives, buzzing electronics, noisy guitars and machine gun percussion, this recording captures Jin’s meeting with guitarist-improviser Han-earl Park, and composer, drummer and intermedia artist Jeffrey Weeter. [More info plus the 24-bit edition…]
“Sounds reverberate and carry in unexpected ways, and music improvised here [The Glucksman Gallery] runs the risk of losing all definition. That [Han-earl] Park and his co-improviser Franziska Schroeder gracefully avoided this testifies to their alertness, sensitivity and experience working together in other spaces…. Indeed the evening had the feeling of conversation, with the instrumentalists demonstrating the improvisatory give-and-take of a convivial exchange of ideas.” [More info…]
A performance by Catherine Sikora, a saxophonist with a striking, compelling sound. She has been described as “a free-blowing player’s player with a spectacular harmonic imagination and an evolved understanding of the tonal palette of the saxophone”. Sikora was joined by cofounder of the London Improvisers’ Orchestra, trumpeter Ian Smith, and guitarist Han-earl Park. Smith and Park had just come off the tour as part of the power-trio Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward) with Wadada Leo Smith. [More info…]
Special thanks to Randy McKean for organizing the tour, Ken Schumacher of Live Vibes Recording for the engineering, and to Corey Mwamba for feedback during the mastering process.
description
In front of a small but appreciative audience, the California-based Gargantius Effect, including [Han-earl] Park, Murray Campbell, Randy McKean, Scott Looney and Gino Robair, slip in and out of something approaching Webern-ian counterpoint on Nor Cal 8-2011. Looney and Robair join in later on this disc of various tour dates, leaving the other three to explore the outer limits of timbre, especially on the epic “Old Robots Never Rust”. Campbell’s violin slides are an excellent foil to the more vocal qualities in Park’s improvising, not to mention similar devices used by multi-reedist Randy McKean as the trio converge and diverge in pitch space. When Robair and Looney appear, electronics and hyperpiano are difficult to distinguish, but first-rate audio keeps everything in proper perspective and the improv is always edge-of-seat energetic.
“Han [Han-earl Park] is a very old friend of mine. We’ve done a lot of strange things in various parts of Europe. He’s somewhat responsible for me ending up in Nevada County. About ten years ago he was studying at CalArts, and I came over to play in his graduation show. Part of that trip was my first visit to Nevada County, where many things spinned out from that.
“Also finding this gentleman [Randy McKean] here in Grass Valley; finding not only a great improvising player, but one that plays bass clarinet, was a huge thing that helped me stay. It was a complete leap in the dark to move out here. I was raised in a rural area, I always known that that was the thing to do, but leaving a metropolitan zone [The Hague] and coming out here with nothing—no plan—was a shot in the dark, and finding that there were things like this [McKean] in the woods made it a lot easier to stay.
“So these are two of my favorite people to play music with.”
The Gargantius Effect is the brainchild of Murray Campbell (violins, oboe and cor anglais) and Randy McKean (saxophone, clarinets and flutes). Like the Stanislaw Lem story of the same name, in which armies of warring soldiers are linked together to form a peaceful, blissfully-aware omni-mind, so, too, these longtime collaborators and Nevada County natives transform the connections and crossfires of the various genres in which they usually find themselves—the Euro-café of Beacoup Chapeaux, Balkan swing of Chickenbonz, chamber jazz of Bristle—into scintillating bits of free improvisation, compositional constructs and mechanized mayhem.
This album documents Gargantius Effect’s August 2011 tour of Northern California with special guest and fellow Sonologist Han-earl Park (guitar), who had just returned to the States after years in Europe, teaching, and playing with the likes of Paul Dunmall, Charles Hayward and Franziska Schroeder. In addition to the recording of the performance at The Tin House (Grass Valley) on August 25, 2011, the August 30, 2011 session at Studio 1510 (Oakland) features Bay Area veteran improviser, composer and electronic artist Gino Robair (energized surfaces, voltage made audible), and hyperpianist Scott R. Looney (hyperpiano).
The Gargantius Effect is the brainchild of Murray Campbell (violin, oboe and electronics) and Randy McKean (reeds). Like the Stanislaw Lem story of the same name, in which armies of warring soldiers are linked together to form a peaceful, blissfully-aware omni-mind, so, too, these long-time collaborators channel their contrarian impulses into synchronized bouts of free improvisation, compositional constructs and mechanized mayhem.
Murray Campbell
Murray Campbell has described himself as a Sonologist ever since it was recommended to him as a more respectable occupation than “musician” for the purposes of immigration control. In this capacity he has worked with Alex Fiennes on an octaphonic spatialisation system un-muted at Dialogues Festival (Edinburgh).
He currently resides in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California where he is designing an off-grid solar-powered geodesic wavefront recreation system with the aim of upsetting the bears.
He finds writing about himself in the third person slightly disturbing.
Randy McKean
Randy McKean has burrowed into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada but still wants to blow your mind. Whether his mission is executed by his chamber jazz quartet Bristle, through sideman gigs with the likes of the Euro Café messabouts Beaucoup Chapeaux, or via performances of his pieces for orchestra or string quartet, matters not to him, as long as his objective is achieved. Perhaps one of his CDs—Bristle’s Bulletproof (Edgetone), So Dig This Big Crux (Rastascan), or the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet’s Child King Dictator Fool (New World)—will do the job.
Han-earl Park
Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park has been crossing borders and performing fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, always traditional, open improvised musics for over fifteen years. He has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.
Park is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, Eris 136199 with Nick Didkovsky and Catherine Sikora, and Numbers with Richard Barrett. He is the constructor of the machine improviser io 0.0.1 beta++, a project performed in coalition with Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder. He has recently performed with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Lol Coxhill, Mark Sanders, Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, Pat Thomas, Andrew Drury, Josh Sinton, Dominic Lash, and as part of ensembles led by Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, and Pauline Oliveros. Festival appearances include Freedom of the City (London), Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), and CEAIT (California). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions and Creative Sources.
Park taught improvisation at the UCC Department of Music, and founded and curated Stet Lab, a space for improvised music in Cork.
Gino Robair
Gino Robair has created music for dance, theater, radio, television, silent film, and gamelan orchestra, and his works have been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. He was composer in residence with the California Shakespeare Festival for five seasons and served as music director for the CBS animated series The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. His commercial work includes themes for the MTV and Comedy Central cable networks.
Robair is also one of the “25 innovative percussionists” included in the book Percussion Profiles (SoundWorld, 2001). He has recorded with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Otomo Yoshihide, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, and Eugene Chadbourne, among many others. In addition, Robair has performed with John Zorn, Nina Hagen, Fred Frith, Eddie Prevost, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, and the Club Foot Orchestra.
Robair is a founding member of the Splatter Trio and the heavy-metal band, Pink Mountain. In addition, he runs Rastascan Records, a label devoted to creative music.
10–24–12: add recommended price. 05–20–13: updated the ‘also available for download’ list, and updated reviews. 11–01–15: add A Little Brittle Music to downloads list, and change currency from USD to EUR.
A couple of more download releases in the pipeline after which I’m planning to take a short break. The releases so far—all Creative Commons licensed, and free or ‘name your price’—are collated here.
I’ve also listed my recommended Bandcamp albums that have accompanied the releases. There are some very fine, inspiring creative, improvised, experimental music on Bandcamp, but it isn’t always easy to find the recordings. Here’s my small contribution to help people get started. Enjoy, download, share—support creative musicians!
A solo performance by guitarist-constructor Han-earl Park exploring, with feedback and resonant buzzes, the complex, cavernous acoustics of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, and the interactions between artifact (guitar) and the body (guitarist). For ‘Strokes and Screwballs,’ Park is joined by violinist-improviser Marian Murray for a conversational improvisation. [More info…]
Accompanying Recommended Albums
Jin Sangtae, Han-earl Park and Jeffrey Weeter
A stark, real-time evolution of on-stage relations. The performance took place during Seoul-based experimental electronic musician Jin Sangtae’s European tour. Featuring clanking hard drives, buzzing electronics, noisy guitars and machine gun percussion, this recording captures Jin’s meeting with guitarist-improviser Han-earl Park, and composer, drummer and intermedia artist Jeffrey Weeter. [More info plus the 24-bit edition…]
Recommended Albums
Han-earl Park and Franziska Schroeder
Áine Sheil (from the liner notes): “The Glucksman Gallery is one of the finest buildings to have been built in Ireland in recent times, but it is a tricky space for any musician to negotiate. Sounds reverberate and carry in unexpected ways, and music improvised here runs the risk of losing all definition. That [Han-earl] Park and his co-improviser Franziska Schroeder gracefully avoided this testifies to their alertness, sensitivity and experience working together in other spaces…. Indeed the evening had the feeling of conversation, with the instrumentalists demonstrating the improvisatory give-and-take of a convivial exchange of ideas.” [More info…]
Recommended Albums
Catherine Sikora, Ian Smith and Han-earl Park
This was a rare performance in Ireland by Catherine Sikora (New York-based, originally from West Cork), a saxophonist with a striking, compelling sound. She has been described as “a free-blowing player’s player with a spectacular harmonic imagination and an evolved understanding of the tonal palette of the saxophone” (Chris Elliot, Seacoast Online). Sikora was joined by cofounder of the London Improvisers’ Orchestra, trumpeter Ian Smith (London-based, from Dublin), and guitarist Han-earl Park (then Cork-based, currently Brooklyn-based, from California). Smith and Park had just come off the tour as part of the power-trio Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward) with the legendary composer-improviser Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith. [More info…]
A one-of-a-kind improvised musical meeting between artists from Ireland based overseas, and a then Ireland-based artist from abroad which took place on April 4, 2011 at The Roundy, Cork, Ireland.
This was a rare performance in Ireland by Catherine Sikora (New York-based, originally from West Cork), a saxophonist with a striking, compelling sound. She has been described as “a free-blowing player’s player with a spectacular harmonic imagination and an evolved understanding of the tonal palette of the saxophone” (Chris Elliot, Seacoast Online). Sikora was joined by cofounder of the London Improvisers’ Orchestra, trumpeter Ian Smith (London-based, from Dublin), and guitarist Han-earl Park (then Cork-based, currently Brooklyn-based, from California). Smith and Park had just come off the tour as part of the power-trio Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward) with the legendary composer-improviser Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith.
Since making her way to New York City from West Cork, Ireland to study abstract improvisation, Catherine Sikora has become a well-known face and sound in New York creative music circles. She has worked with Elliott Sharp, Eric Mingus, Michael Evans, Matt Lavelle, Jeremy Bacon, François Grillot and Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, among many others. Her undeniably unique approach sets her apart from everyone else, even when surrounded by the most original and creative voices in New York City. Sikora is a contributing writer to the book “Silent Solos-Improvisers Speak” (Buddy’s Knife Publishing, Köln, DE) and is currently working on producing a solo recording.
Ian Smith has performed with Evan Parker, John Stevens, Maggie Nicols, Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, Eddie Prévost, Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar Arkestra, Reeves Gabrels, John Sinclair, Harris Eisenstadt and many others. In 2000 he recorded his second CD as a leader, Daybreak, with Derek Bailey, Veryan Weston, Gail Brand and Oren Marshall. His own trio, Trian, has played the London Experimental Music Festival and the Soho Jazz Festival. He also participated in a reformation of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra in 1994. He has collaborated with composer Roger Doyle, winner of the Bourges International Elecro-Acoustic Music Competition, and he has been featured on two instrumental tracks by the hip hop band Marxman. He toured the UK with Butch Morris’ London Skyscraper conduction project. He cofounded the London Improvisers’ Orchestra and The Gathering.
Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park works within/from/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries and concert halls in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA. He is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, and is involved in ongoing collaborations with Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. He has recently performed with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Lol Coxhill, Pat Thomas, Paul Dunmall, Mark Sanders, Matana Roberts, Richard Barrett, Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner and Kato Hideki. Festival appearances include Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), and CEAIT Festival (California). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions and DUNS Limited Edition.
10-24-12: add recommended price and SLAMCD 528 info. 05-20-13: updated the ‘also available for download’ list, and add reviews. 10-07-15: add ‘Anomic Aphasia’ to discography. 11-01-15: add A Little Brittle Music to downloads list, and change currency from USD to EUR.
As previously announced, after thirty-two events over three and a quarter years, I’ve stepped down as curator of Stet Lab as of February 2011. The duties of running the Lab now are in the very capable hands of Veronica Tadman, Tony O’Connor, Athos Tsiopani with curatorial duties handled by Kevin Terry (Kevin and Tony performed at the very first Lab!). I’d like to thank all of them, Kevin, Veronica and Eoin Callery in particular, for their work keeping this no-budget, alternatively pedagogical space on track over the years. (And thanks for the whisky y’all!—sorry I was too taken to make a proper speech.)
My thanks also to all the guest artists who have shared the stage with us, generously contributing to, and transforming, this practice. There’s too many names to mention, but I’d like to thank, in particular, two club-runners, Bruce Coates (who with Sarah O’Halloran and I kicked-off Stet Lab in November ’07) and Mike Hurley for their advice, cautionary tales and encouragement; to Murray Campbell, Franziska Schroeder and John Godfrey who took time out of their busy schedules, and stepped-up when others would/could not; and to Corey Mwamba, Ian Smith, Justin Yang and Alex Hawkins for encouraging words, and an unwavering belief in grass-roots music organizations. Special thanks to Paul Dunmall, Mark Sanders and Don Malone; heavy-hitters who believed in the Lab enough to participate with neophyte improvisers in what must be, by their standards, a low-key event.
Kudos to Jesse Ronneau for supporting improvised music, and the aims of the Lab in particular, during his time in Cork. I apologize for the many whose name I’ve not listed, but y’all have my warmest thanks, and my sincerest admiration for your contributions—we are a better space for it!
Of course, the biggest thanks go to everyone who participated as listener (and I am thinking in particular of the regulars who come every month!), and to those brave ones who jump-in the deep-end!
Signing-off as curator: Thanks, thanks, thanks and thanks to y’all!
Also, there is now an index of Lab reports written between June 2008 and April 2011 by fourteen author-practitioners documented over nineteen events from the POV of the stage.
Monday, December 6, 2010, at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:45pm): Featuring the exciting, up-and-coming vibraphonist Corey Mwamba, plus The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) Of…, consisting of Tony O’Connor (bass guitar) and Han-earl Park (guitar), the final Stet Lab of 2010 takes upstairs @ The Roundy, Castle Street, Cork, Ireland. Admission is €10/5. [Details…]
Stet Lab returns! With Kevin Terry (guitar), Marian Murray (violin) and Jeffrey Weeter (drums), plus Han-earl Park (guitar), Claudia Schwab (violin) and Dan Walsh (drums).
Admission: €10/5.
[Details…]