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January

happeigh noo yere!

so the Adobe Probe gig @ the Stone 1-10-09 went off great. The place was packed, the energy was up, and the band felt great. I feel very lucky to be and have been a part of this! Met all sorts of people, was just a great time.

There’s audience-recorded excerpt of the first tune, ‘duck’, at the Facebook page for Screwgun Records: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Screwgun-Records/52797520319

Also great fun was the previous night – I got a semi-last minute chance to play with Shane Endsley at the Jazz Gallery. Shane, of course [if you read my previous post] is in Adobe Probe with me, and we also attended Eastman together. He’s an insanely great musician, both as a trumpet player and as a drummer. This was our first time playing together in about 10 years with him playing trumpet, so it was a treat. We played 5 of his tunes – also in the band were Chris Speed [also in Adobe Probe], Brad Shepik, Todd Sickafoose, and Ches Smith. So it was a great band.

Next up is my solo gig, back at the Stone, on January 21st. I play at 10 pm. I’m going to play an unrecorded piece of Tim Berne’s, plus an Andrew Hill tune, I’m leaning towards ‘Dedication’ from Point of Departure. Please come on out!

http://www.thestonenyc.com/calendar.php

Other than that, work will resume on a couple different recordings of electronic material, one ‘beat’ oriented, one most definitely not so. and I hope to write a book of [‘improvising’] ensemble music this year as well.

thanks for reading!

new music

in the midst of an insane fall. Lots of exciting things happening, though. waded through apocalyptic traffic to play an awesome gig with Brad Shepik at the Puffin Foundation in Teaneck NJ last Saturday. We played music from Brad’s soon to be released album “Human Activity”. Also playing were Ralph Alessi, Drew Gress, and Tom Rainey.

next up is another gig at SciFi Philly @ Gojjo with Doug Hirlinger, on 12/14. The two of us will be playing music by Tim Berne, stuff from the Hard Cell/Science Friction/Big Satan books. This will be a nice prelude to a gig with Tim Berne himself at The Stone on 1/10/09. The band is called Adobe Probe, as is one of the tunes. The new stuff is fantastic, at least it is if you begin from the premise that his music is generally fantastic; I certainly do. Super excited about the band too: in addition to Tim and me, there’s also Chris Speed, Shane Endsley, Mary Halvorson, John Hebert, and Gerald Cleaver.

In the midst of that there will also be the first week of the Big Ears residency with John Hollenbeck. I’ve done a little blogging over there, in addition to posting some music. www.bigearsphilly.com

To top it all off, I’m playing again at The Stone 11 days later [1/21], this time solo piano. Gonna try some new things. More on all of this later.

Also, there’s new music on the page! An excerpt from my blowing tune Salvo, and three noisy electronic things. I hope you like them, please let me know what you think.

first laptop


so, a few nights ago, 4/28/08, specifically, I played my first ever laptop show, as the first of three very different sets at a Bowerbird show at the Gallery at the Gershman YMCA in Philadelphia. I’d originally been gearing up for a piano set, but it turned out the piano wasn’t obtainable, so I got a chance to finally get a solo set together. So, I gathered some acoustic guitar junk samples and rock some Zebra synth over it, and voila. In retro I wish I’d set the master volume a touch louder, but it was a smallish room and the main set, which turned out to be the fantastic trio of Nate Wooley/Sean Meehan/Carl Ludwig Huebsch, I figured [correctly] was going to be super minimal and quiet, so i initially erred on the slightly lower side of volume. Also playing was an extremely cool duo of Tim Albro and Dan Cappechi, very unique and inspring, nice melodic guitar shards with Oxley-inspired percussion.

all in all, a great night, a great communal feel, at least for me. thanks to Dustin Hurt for having me on the show, and to Ian Fraser for taking the above picture and sending it to me. BTW, missing from the picture, above my head and to the left, was a big sign reading ‘AIDS’. As you might surmise from the ones you can make out in the above photo, the gallery at the time was filled with photos of AIDS orphans, children with AIDS and rehabilitated child soldiers, all from Africa [like a dipshit, I don’t remember exactly where]. Very depressing and perspective inducing.

I’m lucky as shit, ultimately.