CMS 40th anniversary workshop and retreat
Extraordinary. Did I say that already?
Here’s the deal, folks: I’ve committed to blogging every day (and I’m gonna), but there’s so much going on that I can’t really do it justice in the short little times that I have to write stuff down.
Some highlights:
Breakfast. Yeah, yeah, the food’s better than you could hope for, but you’ve heard that already.
Body awareness. Back in the day–1976, when I first came to CMS, body awareness was taught, by dancer Sara Cook, and Eva and Savia Berger, the daughters of Karl and Ingrid, were just little girls. Now, body awareness is taught by Savia. This is great stuff. If you’re a musician or any other kind of human being, you need body awareness training.
Then we had gamala taki training and voice training. If you don’t know about gamala taki and you want to, email me at bsweet [at] arborville.com. Email me anyway.
Then John Medeski taught a workshop that had us transferring improvisations in a circle around the room. I know, you’d like more detail on that. I’m sorry, time is short.
Oliver Lake’s workshop was fantastic. Everyone got to play a lot and we were all challenged by his charts, despite how deceptively simple they appeared.
Mark Helias. The man is brilliant on the bass, and he’s spent so much time exploring the mental processes that make or break your ability to improvise effectively. A great session where he created small groups on the spot to improvise freely. At the end, we all (twenty-some people) improvised as a unit. Extraordinary.
Then we had a music -mind meditation session with Karl Berger. We listened to the ends of sounds, sounds disappearing. Give it a try.
Tonight there’s a concert with Karl, Tani Tabbal, Mark Helias, Kenny Wessel, and John Medeski.
Stay tuned, y’all.