Look out this week for recent audio interviews with New Orleans's musicians, Tim Robinson and Dan Oestreicher.
Oestreicher is now most known as the Baritone saxophonist with Trombone Shorty.
Tim is a survivor of Bourbon St. rounds and plays guitar or sings with Dirty mouth, Amanda Shaw and Neslort.
Just undetailed reportage:
The show with Los Muertos at The Parlor on Tuesday, 4th- Excellent!
The show with The Jackals at The Saturn Bar on Thursday 6th- Great!
The show with Derrick Freeman and Smoker's World at the Blue Nile last night- Outstanding!
That's right y'all! I'm back home for a good chunk of the summer so I'll be out with one of my oldest associations, Mas Mamones at Tipitina's in New Orleans. Andrew Wolf-bass; Manny Lander-vocals; Michael Skinkus- percussion.
You'd be crazy not to come!
It's also my first real appearance in LA since I've been spending a good deal of time out there. Come out and support if you get the chance- the music will be outstanding!
Robert's a great organ player who started a rather notorious group amongst other things, and Stanton is my old uber-talented friend from the Klezmer All-Stars who likes to keep his drumstick wrapping fingers in many pots as possible.
For those of you with that real spirit of musical adventure...I will be playing at Skerik's Saucefest, at Hi-ho Lounge on Tuesday May 1st. I don't know what time and neither will you- so MAKE IT!
Will be performing with the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars at The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on Sunday, April 29.
The All-Star lineup will be:
Joe Cabral-Bass
Glenn Hartman-Accordion, Keys
Jonathan Freilich-Guitar
Ben Ellman- Saxophone
Stanton Moore-drums
David Rebeck-Violin
You don't want to miss this.
What if he's right?
"The thorough bass is the most perfect foundation of music. It is played with both hands on a keyboard instrument in such a way that the left hand plays the written notes, while the right hand strikes consonances and dissonances, so that this results in full-sounding Harmonie to the honour of God and the permissable delight of the soul. The ultimate or final goal of all music, including the thorough-bass shall be nothing but for the honour of God and the renewal of the soul. Where these factors are not taken into consideration, there is no true music, rather, a devilish bawling and droning."
- J.S. Bach in Precepts and Principles for playing the thorough-bass or accompanying in four parts.
"...I considered painting as a means of expression , not an end in itself. One means of expression among others, and not and not a complete end for life at all; in the same way I consider that color is only a means of expression in painting and not an end. In other words, painting should not be exclusively retinal or visual; it should have to do with the grey matter, with our urge for understanding. This is generally what I love. I don't want to pin myself down to one little circle, and I tried at least to be as universal as I could."
-M Duchamp
From interview 1956
"The question of shop windows [therefore]
To undergo the interrogation of shop windows [therefore]
The exigency of the shop window [therefore]
The shop window proof of the outside world [therefore]
When one undergoes the examination of the shop window, one also pronounces one's own sentence. In fact, one's choice is "round trip." From the demands of shop windows, from the inevitable response to shop windows, my choice is determined. No obstinacy, ad absurdum, of hiding the coition through a glass pane with one or many objects of the shop window. The penalty consists in cutting the pane and in feeling regret as possession is consummated. Q.E.D"
How about a little more Duchamp?
Question d'hygiene intime:
Faut-il mettre la moelle de l'épée dans l poil de l'aimée?
[Question of intimate hygiene:
Should you put the hilt of the foil in the quilt of the goil?]
and
Parmi nos articles de quincaillerie parasseusse, nous recommandons un robinet qui s'arrete de couler quand on ne l'ecoute pas.
[Among our articles of lazy hardware we recommend a faucet which stops dripping when nobody is listening to it.]
After writing and working on a couple of operas the things that I was seeking to overcome still remained an obstacle. A production or any presentation is a single item that should be looked after as a whole by all involved no matter what their particular field of excellence. The tendency for most is to just attempt to do their "job" and if there are things amiss they pass the buck in a few ways that undermine the coherence of a work--at least those that are produced by a multiple number of people. Often, after they have done their "bit" (acting, singing, playing, directing, or lighting) they neglect other shortfalls they observe as if it wasn't their department. The mistake is, that in a larger work, the final work, as a whole, is every contributor's department. Otherwise the work remains in pieces and, the work of each contributor, is looked at as deficient regardless of skill level.
From different backgrounds and diverse training experiences or modes of apprenticeship come different ways of working. Certain artforms make action in different ways- for example the inner workings of opera singers tends to be different than actors and others from more "straight" theater. Where there would be benefit from both exchanging, learning, and translating each others methods the default is to recoil into what is easy, and then compete for dominant view in a production. If dominance isn't obtained then variations of the line, "well...I've done my job." emerge, and a production is on the way to fragmented compromise and egotistical stagnation of he various artisans.
It is like Franklin's revolutionary observation- "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Most good theater has a certain air of revolution about it anyway, and this starts early in history.
(Note to hipsters and group musicians: when you perform it is a kind of theater ritual whether you like it or not. The tendency is to imagine that you have a heady and less pretentious mode of performance...but you don't! Audiences still respond as if it was a dramatic performance with another kind of content. Poor music performance often hangs on a lack of attention to this. Muddy Waters's band had a look and a stance on stage where another could have been used, and a lot could be derived and realized from that stance. So, he projected the real, or similar values even before any music was played. Archie Shepp wrote for the theater and there is probably much underlying knowledge there that reveals itself in the power of his stance and presentation when he performs. Arts separation is a bit deadly!)
Perusing Peter Brook's (wish I'd read it sooner) classic, The Empty Space,I came across this passage which even more articulately states the problem.
"Closely related to this is the conflict between theatre directors and musicians in opera productions where two totally different forms, drama and music, are treated as though they were one. A musician is dealing with a fabric that is as near as man can get to an expression of the invisible. His score notes this invisibility and his sound is made by instruments which hardly ever change. The player's personality is
Josquin; contrapuntalists beware! Rest of us are free to enjoy it within this supremely liberated state of ignorance...
..."Many things have thus become better playable, too - there are no "utopian" passages anymore."
"No two rivers run exactly the same course, but water runs in all rivers - whether in the abundant Amazon or the smallest brook in the mountain. Their banks may be different, but all oppress the waters which run between them."
_________
Later speaking about TV and destructive media...
"It is not the violence per se which causes damage to the viewer, but the lack of rationale for this physical activity. When dealing with Rambo and other 'super-heroes' of this sub species, Empathy plays a very dangerous role. Empatheia, in Greek, means the vicarious experience of feelings and thoughts of others - characters in the performing arts, or a real person in daily life. This is especially potent when imposed by the Protagonist in Tragedy or passive spectators.
"When rational foundations of physical acts are not there, Empathy turns into a relationship of pure irrational animality. Continuous intimacy with brutality tends to form brutes. When a person lives in the wild in the company of savage predators, without human presence, how will that person be humanized? Children abandoned in the jungle never learn to smile. Violence in itself is neither good nor bad. Shakespeare is full of such things as the amputation of hands and the piercing of eyes. Violence is bad when unaccompanied by reason, when reduced to blows and punches, or supported only be simplistic, standard pre-conceived ideas. But it can be didactic when rationalized and when its causes and its Ethos are laid bare.
"This type of cinematography owes its mediocrity not to the lack of its authors creativity, but to the deliberate intention, by means of mechanical repetition, to block the intellectual development of its passive audiences, and stunt their capacity to to create and to think in metaphor.
"Stanley Kubrick's marvellous Full Metal Jacket shows with aesthetic perfection the ultra-military process by which peremptory orders to obey and to kill oare implanted in the brains of army recruits. What the talented director demonstrates in this military example is the same process as occurs on TV for civilians, far from civilised as it is."
From The Aesthetics of the Oppresed by Augusto Boal
The opera, ee me & pollock thee, written by Adam Falik(Libretto) and Jonathan Freilich (Composer) has been nominated for an award in the Gambit's creative opera category...
"To deny all morality is to be moral, for the accepted morality is the morality of respectability, and I'm afraid we all crave to be respected - which is to be recognised as good citizens in a rotten society. Respectability is very profitable and ensures you a good job and a steady income. The accepted morality of greed, envy and hate is the way of the establishment."
-J. Krishnamurti
Dan Oestreicher passed this on. It's really beautiful...relax and enjoy!