playlists and listening

For the last month, it's been the usual back-&-forth between Burlington and Boston, a groove that I've become accustomed to recently, but also one that will change somewhat when my lease here ends on 8/1. Aside from 4 Roma gigs in the last 8 days, nothing too out of the ordinary is happening. As mentioned in previous posts, I've been thinking about going back alot recently - looking at old journals, and generally mulling over what I actually did when I was studying. Living in Burlington has been fantastic for practical and personal reasons. I've been really engaged in the musical activities of this community, and basically learning the ropes of a new place. for a couple years, I kept asking "What could I do in a new place?" and what would I be able to teach myself in that process. Learning to budget is an ever-evolving process, as is learning to cook, network, and a whole bunch of other things.

I've come to the conclusion in the last month or so that my days in Burlington are numbered. I will leave shortly after my lease ends, put the 9 small boxes of stuff I have into storage, and make another move. I'll always come back here, but I know now that I need to be in a much larger place to pursue the living I really want to make, artistically and otherwise.

In looking over the last 8 years or so, one thing I've recently wanted to do was make a (fairly partial) list of the music I listened to during that time. I feel like laying this out will be interesting. There will definitely be omissions, but here's some sort of list:

Pre-College:
Scott Joplin rags
John Cage - Living Room Music
J.S Bach Brandenburg Concerti
Terry Riley - In C
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um 
Thelonious Monk - Monk's Dream
Mussourgsky/Ravel - Pictures at an Exhibition
Duke Ellington - The Mooche 
Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring

2005-06: 
Paul Hindemith - Piano Sonatas, brass works
Luciano Berio - Sinfonia 
Fredric Rzewski - Les Moutons de Panurge  
Ralph Vaughan Williams - Requiem
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Leonin/Perotin - Magnus Liber 
Samuel Barber - Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians 
Bela Bartok - Mikrokosmos 
Edgard Varese - Hyperprism 

2006-07:
Wynton Marsalis - Blood on the Fields
Tom Waits - Big Time 
Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach 
Tim O'Brien - Songs from the mountain 
Bjork - Debut
Pete Williams - I've Grown So Ugly
Brian Eno - Music for Airports 
Branford Marsalis - Requiem 
Morton Feldman - Cello and Orchestra
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Reese & the Smooth Ones

2007-08:
Ba-Benzale Pygmies
Banda Pygmies
Anton Webern - Concerto op.24 
Fred Frith - Massacre 
John Zorn - Naked City
Sun Ra - Supersonic Jazz
Boban Markovic - Boban i Marko
Ran Blake - Wende 
Gyorgi Ligeti - Viola Sonata
Peter Brotzmann - Be Music, Night

2008-09:
Thai Brass
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party
Don Cherry - Where Is Brooklyn?
Steve Lacy - The Way
Frank Carlberg - The American Dream
Jonathan Harvey - Flight Elegy
Lake Street Dive
Charles Ives - General William Booth Enters Into Heaven
Anthony Braxton - Quartet (Dortmund) 1976
Anthony Coleman - Pushy Blueness

2009-10:
Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures
Christian Wolff - Burdocks
Cornelius Cardew - The Great Learning
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung
Olivier Messiaen - Catalogue d'oiseaux 
Balinese Ketjak
The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World
The Fluxus Workbook
The Velvet Underground (Banana Album)

2010-11:
Burr Van Nostrand - Voyage in a White Building I
Julius Eastman - Stay On It 
Meridith Monk - Dolmen Music
Robert Cogan - Fierce Singleness 
Muhal Richard Abrams - Levels and Degrees of Light
Daniel Johnston - Hi How Are You
Roscoe Mitchell - Nonaah
Lee Hyla - Piano Concerto no.2 

2011-12:
Lyle Davidson - Chester
Capsule - L.D.K Lounge Designers Killer
Brian Ferneyhough - Time and Motion Study I
Michael Finnissy - English Country Tunes 
The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Harry Partch - Barstow  
Joe Morris & Augusti Fernandez - Ambrosia  
Wadada Leo Smith - Golden Quartet

The header of this post has no particular significance, other than that I still think Space Jam is a great movie, and perhaps also that I've been looking at a bunch of old things: CD's I bought when I was a kid, binders of music I wrote when I was 16, journals. etcetera. It is no coincidence that this is happening to me as I've been visiting my family, and have met some of my old friends and teachers. Now, I'm in my hometown of East Bridgewater, while last month I was visiting my grandparents in Middleboro. I spent the entire month of April in Massachusetts, and this time I'll be back to VT after only a few days in Boston.

My primary reason for visiting EB these last few days was that the EBPS music department held its annual pops concert in the High School, which is scheduled to be demolished this summer (they built a new one just down the hill). Because of this, they invited back alums to play in the concert band. It was conducted by Dan Lasdow, who retired in 2001 after 35 years of directing the program. I was 13 at the time Dan retired, but he gave me my very first music lesson, and also premiered one of my first pieces (a brass quintet I wrote when I was 14) at the South Shore Conservatory. After not seeing him for almost seven years, I ran into him at a concert we were both playing in March, and he told me about the pops concert. I knew I was in as soon as he told me it was happening. I knew quite a few people in the alumni pool, which included a few more of my teachers.

EBHS music alumni band members 5/10/13 

The day after the concert, Jared Burrell (2nd from right) and I got together to listen to music, have dinner, and watch a Werner Herzog movie. He graduated from EBHS four years before me, but we were at NEC together, so we have a pretty strong association that we've maintained over the past few years.

Last month's trip south of Boston was essentially a vacation. I had 4 premieres in Boston the week before, and the Marathon Bombings happened on the 15th (the day before my performance with the NEC Wind Ensemble). I spent almost a week in Middleboro after that. I managed to finish reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, and got some much-needed R&R. It partially was a result of being derailed, but on the other hand, it was great - exactly what I needed to regroup my thoughts, and continue on.

Since then, I've decided that in order to fulfill my long-term career goal, I should probably move back to Boston, or go directly to NY after my lease is up in August. My reasoning for this comes from the fact that I've been down here an awful lot, but it's always been for a good reason. More of the people I need are down here, and Burlington has such a strong local-oriented culture that I feel it could take some time to make the right connections, and secure a good arts admin job. That's true anywhere I suppose, but I feel especially isolated in a city of 45,000 people, where less of those opportunities exist. That said, I love everything I've actually been able to do in Burlington, and I wish I could take all my friends there with me. They are great people.

When I got into Boston on April 3rd, one of the first things I did was play in a last-minute show at a gallery called the Hallway in JP. Fausto put it together, and my schedule wasn't so defined when I got in. I ended up playing duo with Ethan T. Parcell, a really interesting Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist I've been crossing paths with now for over a year. It was awesome, and though we didn't record it, we played another duo in the same space right before I left town at the end of the month. The second Hallway show was also Fausto's last before he left for Berlin, so I'm glad I stuck around to hear him.

Ethan Parcell and his drums

On April 10th, Andrew played the double bass piece I wrote for his recital, which you can listen to below. I thought it went really well:

Go Andrew, Go!

The next night, Eliza played the hell out of the percussion solo she asked for. It was in Jordan Hall too! I don't have the recording yet, but it rocked. Below is the score. A one-pager!

Eliza! Where is the recording?!

Another breakthrough that week was the concert I played in at the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill. A friend of mine named Matt Samolis works for the church, and produces a monthly series there. He asked me to curate a short set for the April concert, and below is what I came up with. The trio was  a pretty ad-hoc assembly (the concert coincided with the plague, rain, and midterms), but Alliison was playing my piece, and I'd worked with Eve Boltax (the violist in the picture below) before, and thought we would play well together. Below is everything we came up with that night. We had a great little audience, and Matt conjured up one of the best post-concert receptions I've yet to experience :)

Melodica Improvisation:

Trio Improvisation:

11_ Summer _23 for solo flute:

Trio improvisation with Allison and Eve

The day before the Wind Ensemble performance was of course Marathon Monday, and nobody was prepared for what would happen. Fortunately, I was at Pavement Coffeehouse (next to NEC) when the bombs were detonated, and nobody I knew running or watching was close to the finish line. Pavement is around the corner from Huntington Ave, so we couldn't hear the explosions. I got a phone call from my father who told me to stay put, and when I found out the full extent of what happened, we had no choice - the T and bus service was temporary shut down. A few hours later, they shut down NEC, and a few of us (Tara, Andrew, Eliza, and myself) ended up going to a local bar. The service that day was pretty bad, but in retrospect, I wish we had tipped them a bit better, and hadn't been so cold on our way out. It can't be easy to work when the city is in a state of emergency.  Three hours and Five pitchers later, we decided we had enough of the news broadcasts and headed back to JP.

The next morning, we had a soundcheck for Donald Miller Piece, after which my nerves were calmed, and I thought we'd do well. The performance was on edge, and I was enthusiastic about the result. It really meant something to do this in the wake of such a terrible thing so close by, and I think it had a positive effect on everyone there.

FULL CIRCLE TIME MACHINE with the NEC Wind Ensemble

That Friday, I caught a commuter train to Middleboro. I remember watching the press conference when the photos were released - I was in the NEC cafeteria, and then got on my train about an hour later. If I had waited a few more hours to leave the city, I may have been caught in the lockdown that ensued when the suspects were found out in Cambridge. I didn't watch any news when I got to my grandparent's house that night, but was glued to the news updates from the minute I woke up on Saturday. As a friend of mine said, this was the "longest episode of COPS ever."

I had already decided to spend some time there, in part because I felt that traveling would be a total mess (I was carrying three black bags). Before I got back to Boston, I found out Fausto was leaving and wanted to do another gallery show. There was also a concert produced by NEC in a church near Copley that I wanted to see. Between those two concerts and a few other folks' graduation recitals, I ended up leaving Boston just in time to send in my rent check for May, and to play a few VT gigs before returning to my home state. I'm not unhappy with this sort of transit. In fact, I rather like it. 

Circle 0 from Dorsey Bass' Senior Recital (4/13/2013)