Summer Exhaustion

I've neglected to post anything here recently, in part because of the intensity of Spring semester, which was a fascinating and very productive time. Our residencies and concerts at Pitt were really wonderful, and it was a consistent pleasure to interact with our guests. In March, the grad composers' music was played in concert by Ensemble Linea, and I was really happy with their performance of my piece, 1996. The night of that performance, I went home after hanging with everyone and (somewhat hastily) finished another piece that got played recently, which I submitted to the ensemble about three minutes before the deadline. There was a draft of a seminar paper due in the middle of that same week, and though the day after the Linea residency was a significant mile marker, things didn't really let up until the very end of the semester (about a month later).

Solo - South Side Slopes 4/29

Despite the hustle and bustle of the semester (finishing/rehearsing pieces is only scratching the surface), I managed to do well with everything - I have a decent idea of what the next four years might look like in terms of my work at Pitt, and what I should do in other places to supplement it.

One thing that really hit me close to the end of the semester was the 20 or so pounds I've gained while living here in Pittsburgh. Compared to the other places I've lived, Pittsburgh hasn't been as conductive to getting out and moving around - many of its neighborhoods are isolated by hills - this along with the solitary nature of academia has presented a new physical challenge to me. I'm starting to get better about walking places, and also preparing more of my own (healthier) food. Without a doubt, extra time during the summer is helping with both of those things. Cooking had been a calming endeavor for me in the the last five years or so, and I'm glad to have more time for it now. I've also started playing with a local brass band that's been helping to keep me busy, especially in terms of getting to know more people in the Pittsburgh community. This is a really strange admission, but in many respects I'm aspiring to a time when I was nearly broke. In retrospect I definitely maintained a healthier physical routine living in NY and VT, and there's a part of that I've been missing.

Westmoreland Museum of Art - Greensburg, PA

Taking on this issue now is super important because of what this summer has brought on. Immediately after wrapping up classes (around April 27th), I launched into a mini-marathon of performances that were pretty enlightening and wonderful (That first week alone is deserving of another post), and I'm in the middle of a similar run now. Soon after these gigs I departed for NY to take a break on Long Island for a few days, and work on duo material with Steve (Blank Space #13 was at the Firehouse Space in Brooklyn on May 17th). After this I took a bus to Boston to visit family, and see the NEC graduation. Though Pittsburgh is a good place to live and study, I've started to proactively address some of the things that I need to get from other places, and Boston is still an incredibly important place for a multitude of reasons, a few of which I'll outline below:

1.) Shortly after I got to Boston in May, a few of us who took Lyle Davidson's counterpoint class got together to sing renaissance motets. For years during the semester, Lyle has met with interested students and alums of his classes on Sunday evenings to sight-sing polyphonic music. I had no idea how important this would become to me as I've moved on, but it was beautiful to reconnect with people who value those kinds of musical and community-oriented activities.

2.) Similarly, I played a duo set at Outpost 186 with Eric Stillwell. Eric is a trombonist, and like many others in Boston we have some similar references for creating a piece of improvised music. This was our first time playing together in that context. I really enjoyed this, and I feel good about returning to the city in the future to play more of the music that is at times extremely difficult to create at a high level in other places.

Jordan Hall before 2016 commencement

After a couple of days visiting with family, I went back up to town to go to the NEC graduation ceremony. The people that graduated this year were the last batch of folks that I got to know decently well, and I was definitely tearing up a bit when everything started. They also had a great group of people to whom they were giving honorary doctorates. Among these were Anthony Braxton, Bernie Worell, and Leonard Slatkin. Slatkin's graduation address was probably the best of those that I'd heard in previous years, and I loved seeing Braxton and Worrell receive degrees from the school. During the awarding of degrees, I watched all of the improvisers shake Braxton's hand before continuing across the stage to get their diploma, and he seemed completely enlightened by the whole thing.  When several of us went upstairs to congratulate him after the ceremony, we talked about how we enjoyed working on his music in our ensembles. His response to everyone was an enthusiastic proclamation: "You Are the Future of Music."    

Outpost 186 entryway

In having covered so much ground on this trip, my last days in Boston that month were filled with great anxiety over the hospitalization of my grandmother, who passed away on June 13th. She had been dealing with an illness she described to me and the rest of our family in previous weeks as a cold, and though she sounded better when being treated in the hospital (we spoke several times before I came back this way), tests and a later surgery revealed that she was terminally ill.

Going back quite a few years, she never embraced technology the way the rest of my family had. Without a computer, email, or social media, our sole way of communicating was by phone. Whenever I visited, I would show her pictures (like ones posted here), and try to explain further just exactly how I was getting by. In comparison, she was reserved about her own experiences, especially as she aged. She was however, curious (and I suspect anxious) to see that I was doing well, especially when traveling, and during my first year out here. It's impossible to sum up the impact of any such loss, but more than anything I've described earlier, this is making me realize some of the things I need to change for myself. Some of this is intensely personal, but everything else I've pointed out gives some basic clues.

Possibly as a result of the previous two months, I came down with an awful cold that really messed with me. I hadn't been sick at all for a few years, and bad congestion stuck with me until about a week ago. Since the summer months began, what started out as a conscious moment of -not- writing music has turned into an extended (but necessary) break. The fast pace of the year coupled with a lower level of physical activity has really caught up with me, and I'm just starting to feel like I'm outrunning it. That I have a steady schedule for the remainder of Summer is reassuring, but I'll certainly be glad when the semester starts. We all know that culturally speaking, 2016 hasn't been a great year, and it can be really difficult to  even just read the news at the beginning of every morning. Though things are picking up nicely for me, I'll be glad when more people return to town, and the weather cools down a bit. I'll follow up shortly with images from some of the great gigs that have happened this summer, but in the meantime, here's a picture from my return trip to PA, and some recent tracks. For anyone who's interested, I recently started an instagram account as well.

1st avenue & 10th street, Manhattan

New Tracks:






    

Origins & Histories – Full Circle Time Machine

12/2011 @ Weirdo Records

Full Circle Time Machine is my duo project with Tara Mueller that we’ve been working on now since February 2011. We didn’t begin work as a duo proper until the fall, but we had both been students at New England Conservatory for a few years. One of the Contemporary Improvisation teachers (Violist Tanya Kalmanovitch) had been holding these great duo sessions, where anyone could show up, throw their name in a hat, and play a duo with another person whose name was drawn next to yours. Tanya held three or four of these sessions over the long blistery winter that year, one of which was during a storm projected to be so severe they cancelled classes and barely ran any trains.

During one of these “Duo or Die” sessions, Tara and I were assigned to play together, and I remember really liking it. We sort of knew each other, and we had both taken a class on American experimental music performance the previous fall. I’d been prone to seeking out players who enjoyed that repertoire, and this just seemed like something that needed to be explored more. 

So, any time I’d see Tara after that, our duo experience or something related to Tanya’s initiative would come up. For the rest of the semester, we talked about how it would be nice to play together again, but our paths never crossed in a way to make it work. Then something awesome happened:

I’m not sure who pointed me towards the singer/songwriter Daniel Johnston, but I got really interested in his music that summer, and Tara and I had started to talk about forming the duo. After watching TheDevil and Daniel Johnston, I bought Chord Organ from eBay, and forming a chord organ/violin duo with Tara was almost all I could think about for the rest of the summer. When the summer was over, this didn’t take long. We met a couple times, and our repertoire of original music and our improvisational rapport built pretty quickly. We’d get together to play, then go get a beer or make flyers for our “concerts” (the first was in front of four people in a second floor ensemble room at NEC). Shortly after, we started to play on student composer’s concerts, and a few other things at school. One of our first off-campus shows was in December at Weirdo Records in Cambridge. We did two or three shows there before they closed in 2015.

By the spring semester of 2012, Full Circle Time Machine was one of the pillars of my creative existence (the other was Burr Van Nostrand’s Voyage in a White Building I). Tara and I got to do a community outreach residency at an elementary school in JP that winter, and she came down to New Haven to meet and rehearse with Burr before we played a concert of his music in April. Also in April that year was the Contemporary Improvisation Department’s Beckett Play, and it was the first of three times that we would play together in Jordan Hall. 

5/25/2012 @ Yes Oui Si Space

The first concert we both gave after finishing school in May took place a few days after our graduation, at Yes Oui Si Space (a relatively short-lived gallery space that closed that summer). One of the most significant things about this project has been that consistently, we’ve performed in places that either no longer exist (Yes Oui Si, Weirdo Records), that we can no longer access (Jordan Hall), or have been present during times that seemed like significant personal milestones, for one reason or another. 

Though Tara would return to NEC for a masters, I was finished. The next fall (a year after we started playing regularly), I moved to VT, but made it a point to work in Boston as much as possible. VT was incredibly beautiful and livable, but there were fewer musical opportunities during the time I lived there. So, we would get to play every 6 weeks or so, and by that time we were pretty close. Tara had been dating Andrew Chilcote for the same amount of time we’d been working as a duo, so to go to Boston, see them, and meet some of their friends I didn’t know was always wonderful. This has continued to be the case from an even greater distance.

One time this sense of community served an especially important function was in April 2013, surrounding the Boston Marathon bombing. I was in town for concerts by Andrew, our friend Eliza Kinney (both of whom asked me to write solos for their recitals that month), and a concert where Tara and I played Donald Miller Piece with the NEC Wind Ensemble. On Marathon Monday (a day before the Wind Ensemble performance) we were in a coffee shop next to the school. Around 2:30, I received a phone call from my father who told me that there had been explosions in Copley Square. We walked outside to see Huntington Ave full of EMS crews speeding towards Copley. When we made our way into the Jordan Hall building, we watched live coverage of the scene, and were made aware that public transportation would cease operation for several hours, and that NEC would close up at 6 pm that day.

The only business that remained open was a dive bar off of Huntington ave, so we took shelter there for several hours, drinking more than we should have, until the subway began to run around 9 or so. The next day, NEC re-opened and the concert went on as planned, with a sort of somber tone. It didn’t occur to me until much later, but now I’m realizing the importance being there with those people at that time. Had I been up in VT, my experience around the bombing could have been far more confounding or painful.   

This and more recent experiences are consistent reminders that Full Circle Time Machine was (and still is) some sort of connective tissue for me. We would go on to play one more concert in Jordan Hall in the next year, and Tara played the solo violin part when we brought Voyage to Pittsburgh in 2014.

With our friend Lou Goldford on Laptop in Bloomington, IN

Since Tara moved to Bloomington, IN for another bout of grad school, we’ve kept in touch, and managed to put together a 5-concert tour last spring (from Chicago to Pittsburgh). We organized it during a rough moment in my personal life, and after the last gig, Tara had to drive back to Bloomington (and I got on a bus to Boston). There’s something to be said for spending five days in the presence of people you have a genuine connection with after so much time away. I really hadn't felt that in tune with someone in a long time, and that we couldn’t continue our run for any time in the foreseeable future had an impact on me that I wasn’t prepared for. After we said goodbye, I spent the time before my departure in the Amtrak parking lot crying. In recounting the experience with another friend a few days later, I still couldn’t get into it without tearing up. Now I live in Pittsburgh, and a year after that experience, thinking about it still has the capability to make me emotional.

We'd been trying to figure out a way to play again for the last several months, and it finally happened here in Pittsburgh at the tail end of my break. Our original plan was for the end of March, but Andrew had an audition for the symphony here a few weeks earlier, so both of them were in Pittsburgh for two days en route to Miami. In anticipation of playing again, I bought a new chord organ,and we were able to do two shows. I'm completely thrilled with what we did given such short time. We got our original sound back, and like last year we both brought some new things to the table. We were amplified at our second show, and during one improvisation there was a prolonged moment where we each had two or three sustained activities going on (vocally and instrumentally). It was wild. 

Tara is relocating to Miami after May, and we're going to try to play a few things and do some recording before she leaves the midwest. My teacher suggested that we have a number of good quality recordings so we can apply for grants and residencies. Whatever happens, I'm confident that the relative security of our current situations will allow us to invest time and effort to assure that Full Circle Time Machine keeps growing.

Photos from Pittsburgh, March 2016. At Howler's, and Station P with Anna Azizzy & Eric Weidenhof

2016 Adventures

The spring semester is well underway, it's getting warmer outside, and Pitt's spring break is basically over. I'm having a slight bit of trouble getting back into paper-writing mode, but blogging always seems to help clear the brain.

A year ago, I had just arrived in Chicago to explore uncharted territory, and prepare for touring with Tara & Lou. That stretch has been more or less a constant theme for me (especially in terms of the blog), and that I'm now living in the place where we played our last (and will play our next) shows seems like a real significant matter. Since January, I haven't got to play out so much, and it has definitely had an effect on me. I have no doubts that the anticipation of our two shows (this Sat & Sun) here are contributing to my watered-down ability to focus at the moment, but this will be remedied soon.  

Gabi doing midi mock-ups in Philly

That said, 2016 has been a good year so far. Almost as soon as I flew back into Pittsburgh, I took a bus to Philly and drove up to Burlington with Gabi Shapiro. Gabi is a tenor player that I met in VT and did a lot of playing with. Since then, we've both left, but Galen (who I did some work with in VT this past summer) asked us to do horn tracks for an album he just finished. It's mostly his original music, and we had a blast getting the arrangements together. Driving up there, and spending a couple of days in our old little city was lovely. It wasn't freakishly cold, either. We both stayed at the Manhattan Drive house (Gabi used to live there), and I was struck by how rejuvenating it all felt. I guess it hadn't been that long, but there was something about that trip that really seemed like a breath of clean air, and it was the only time we could have made it back before summer. It was too short a trip, but maybe that was for the better.

Not more than a week after that, things at Pitt had gotten into full swing. There have been some unexpected challenges this semester, but from the beginning things were pretty well set in stone. There's a lot going on, and everything is moving at a pretty consistent pace. The Pitt Big Band was hurting for low brass and so I've been playing with them this semester, too. I'm enjoying that.

Early in the semester, the composers had a great reading session with Ekmeles, a NY-based vocal ensemble that came to give a concert at the Warhol Museum at the end of January. Tomas Cruz (a friend of mine from NEC) was singing with them that weekend, and we got to catch up a bit after the reading and concert. They were an awesome group, and a really fun bunch to hang with.

Pitt's campus from the bridge into Squirrel Hill

Shortly after this, Steve came out to Pittsburgh for a few days. It was great to see him, do some playing, and get to show him around. His visit also prompted me to move out of the house I had been living in. I've previously mentioned that one of my roommates there was a little bit of a nutcase, but it was unbelievable how erratic he became when Steve was here. Luckily, Steve is one of those people who can really dig into absurdity and find humor in it. We definitely got our laughs out at the bar down the street, and  he quickly convinced me that the best thing I could do for myself was move out of that place - He was absolutely right. I'll never forget the way thing unfolded those few days, and I feel lucky that getting out wasn't too much of an issue. Within three days of Steve leaving town, I found a place to move, and informed both my landlord and roommates that I'd be leaving within a week. It wasn't hard to pack up, and I don't regret getting out when I did.

Gabi in the Studio

Irene Monteverde & George Lewis

I'm living out in Greenfield, just south of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, in a house that gets considerably more natural light. It got icy a few days after I moved and it was tough getting down the hill for a minute, but other than that its been great. I don't have any plans to move any time soon. There's a sun room that I do most of my work in these days. I love it. We need a new dining room table, but that's really the only thing missing.

Since the move, I had really been looking forward to break, though couple of weeks leading up to it were great. The Big Band had our first gig of the semester, and the George Lewis residency was a total blast. In addition to a handful of talks, Ben Barson and I played for him in a masterclass. It was incredible how each of his talks was completely different, and he had unique approaches to every presenter in the masterclass. The first concert was done in collaboration with Geri Allen and several other improvisors on the West Coast, through telematic technology that they'd been setting up at Pitt for months. I could go on and on about that concert and the whole week, but I'll refrain for now...

Ben Barson Shredding Bari

For two days after our last concert (New Morse Code at the Warhol), I didn't do much of anthing related to school, and I needed that. I made one last trip to my old place to grab some odds and ends I had left there, and the next day I met up with a couple of the composers for lunch, record shopping, and listening. On Wednesday a few of us met up in Harmony, an absolutely gorgeous little town about 40 minutes north of Pitt. We went to this neat coffee shop, and spent some time wandering around town before driving back. We were all blown away by the place, and I hope we can get back soon. Out of curiosity, I looked up ways to get out there without a car, and Greyhound (as much as I dislike it) stops there for $11 each way. Summer day trips are totally doable! I love little coffee shops, and I'm pretty sure Wunderbar in Harmony is in my top 5 (see list below).

Now I have to get organized for the rest of the semester, and figure out what Summer is going to look like. I'd be thrilled if I can spend time on the east coast, but I can't plan much until things start to wind down here. Getting back into the grind these next few days is going to be a small uphill battle, but it was worth it to take some time and get my head together.

Five Little Places (most with coffee) that I really really love, in no particular order:

Kuro Kuma - Manhattan

Chubby Muffin - Burlington, VT

   

                                      

                                           Nutty Steph's - Middlesex, VT

                                       

 

Wunderbar - Harmony, PA

              New Recordings!