If you are the praying kind, please say a prayer for Joseph Jarman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. He suffered a a massive blood clot between his brain and its lining on the left side of his head. He’s in Engelwood Hospital in Engelwood, New Jersey.
If you take an interest in the kind of stuff that’s presented in this blog, I don’t have to tell you about the vital contributions that Joseph Jarman and the Art Ensemble have made to creative music.
One of the highest highlights of my time at the Creative Music Studio was getting to know Joseph Jarman. Here’s an article I wrote about Joseph that appeared in the online journal One Final Note, which appeared in 2004.
Please join me in wishing the very best for Shaku Joseph Jarman.
In my last post, I mentioned that Nick Didkovsky is one of the busiest guys I know who came through CMS. But then I got to thinking about Sylvain Leroux. He’s another very busy guy, actively carrying on with what he learned and absorbed at CMS. “Since 1990, Sylvain [has been] active as a free lance musician in New York, playing for many groups and dance companies in the Afro-Brazilian, African and African-American field” (Fula Flute website).
I just found out that Sylvain will be part of a holiday concert called “Hand in Hand for the Holidays,” which will be held on Sunday, December 11, at 3 p.m. in Trinity Episcopal Church, 141 Broadway in Bayonne, New Jersey.
But if you miss that show, you can catch Sylvain at one of his many gigs around New York City. Check him out on Facebook. Ans, listen to some of his tunes on SoundCloud.
Nick Didkovsky seems to be one of the busiest musicians I know of who came through the Creative Music Studio. He and his band Dr. Nerve have been “annihilating the boundaries between rock, metal, improvisation, jazz, and experimental music since 1983″ (Dr. Nerve website). The best way to keep up with him is to get on his News from Nick email newsletter. It looks like you can do so here.
Nick and Nerve recently made their way to Zappanale in Germany. It’s a Frank Zappa fest. Here’s a little taste:
The workshop and performance series that Karl has been running at The Stone since April will come to a close for 2011 on December 5. Look for the series to continue in 2012 at a new location.
On December 5 there will be two performance sets at 8 PM and 10 PM, with guest soloists, including John Zorn, saxophone.
Shaun Brady makes a brilliantly apt analogy of playing in a Karl Berger-led workshop as being akin to playing naked in his November 2011 Jazz Times article. If you’re not exposing yourself, you’re not really playing. It’s a very well done piece. He captures the spirit, the intent, and the method of Karl’s Monday Night sessions at The Stone. He also does a nice job of encapsulating the CMS history and conveying The Stone sessions as a focused and up-to-date microcosm of that history.
Please give Shaun’s article a read, and take a look, too, at my posts on the first of the Monday night Stone sessions and the prior Friday’s memorial concert at The Stone, which kicked off the historic CMS at Columbia symposium:
Well, lookee, here. . . Marilyn Crispell two days in a row. That’s OK, she deserves all the coverage she can get.
I just learned via the book of faces that Marilyn will be performing a live, webcast concert this Thursday, October 27. Live from Woodstock, New York! But here’s the cool thing: If you can’t check her out on the 27th, you can see the performance as many times as you want for the following thirty days, after you buy your virtual ticket for $9.95. That’s cheap, folks.
I first met Marilyn when we both came to CMS to do a ten-day New Year’s Intensive session with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, 1977-78. Was it intense? Damn straight, yeah right, you betcha.
“On Monday, September 12, 2011, Karl Berger’s Stone Workshop Orchestra began a new season at The Stone - the John Zorn-founded downtown performance space for avant-garde and experimental music ( corner of Ave C and East 2nd Street ). Themes by the likes of Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, original compositions, and melodies from the inexhaustible bounty of non-Western music are being explored and conducted by Karl Berger in his inimitable style, developed over many years at the legendary Creative Music Studio (www.creativemusicstudio.org). The ensemble aims at the highest levels of harmonizing improvised sound in orchestral expressions and contrasting solo/duo/trio flights.
“The new season is prompted by the success of this popular Monday night series, where captivated audiences delight in watching the 18+-piece improvisers’ orchestra turn themes and concepts, developed in the 7:15pm rehearsal, into a fully formed 9:00 p.m. performance.” (From Jim Eigo’s Jazz Promo Services.)
“Remi was born in Mexico City, Mexico. He studied transversal flute at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música from 1975 to 1979 with Rubén Islas.
“Self-study formation in saxophone, his professional debut was with Cuarteto Mexicano de Jazz in 1984. Later, he moved to New York City and continues his studies of composition and improvisation at the Creative Music Studio with Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell and Don Cherry. He studied a bachelor in jazz at the Escuela Superior de Música (ESM – INBA) from 1982 to 1987. In 1988, he traveled to Paris where his musical development was strengthened by taking classes with the composer-sax player Steve Lacy.”
You can get to know Remi a little bit more from this interview video on DooBeeDooBeeDoo. That’s right, DooBeeDooBeeDoo; it’s a “cross-cultural on-line music magazine.”
Check Remi out. We don’t meet many horn players from Mexico.
Did any of you encounter Remi at CMS? Write to me at bsweet[at]arborville.com and let me know.
Music Universe, Music Mind
Music Universe, Music Mind: Revisiting the Creative Music Studio, Woodstock, New York (Ann Arbor, Arborville Publishing, 1996, ISBN 0965043843)
This book is the only full-length account of the legendary Creative Music Studio, founded by Ornette Coleman and Karl Berger in 1971.
A wonderful book of reminiscence. -- Karl Berger
A valuable addition to the bibliography on the pedagogy of improvisation. -- George Lewis
