It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had time to update the blog, which I guess is a good thing! The holidays and early january were relatively slow musically. Spent more time practicing and working on the Pitchfork Festival for this summer than anything else. By the third week of January things were in full swing though – first with a week of Don Cherry’s music that Ken Vandermark arranged for septet, and then with a week of gigs and recording with The Rempis Percussion Quartet.
The Don Cherry stuff featured me, Ken, Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Jason Adasiewicz, Nate McBride, and Chad Taylor. We did two gigs in Chicago, at The Hideout and Elastic, and then flew to Philadelphia for the big showcase concert that funded the project at Ars Nova Workshop. Playing that music was absolutely great – Cherry is one of my favorite artists, and all of the music came from some incredible sixties and seventies records – Complete Communion Suite, Live at Cafe Montmartre, and Brown Rice. It was also the first time I’ve played with Chad Taylor, even though I’ve known him for years. What an incredible feel he has! And Pandelis, the other out-of-towner in the band, also sounded great. Thankfully we’ve had a chance to do several things together in recent months, including a trio with Frank Rosaly in Boston in December, then a recording session with a quartet we’ve been working on with Forbes Graham on trumpet and Luther Gray on drums. Since my folks live in Boston, I try to make sure we get together when I go home to visit. So we’ve generally worked once or twice a year since 2008.
After flying back from Philadelphia on Saturday, I had one day to get ready for Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s arrival on Monday, for three gigs and a two-day recording session with the Rempis Percussion Quartet. The result will hopefully be our first record with him! The gigs went well – at Elastic and the Hideout in Chicago, and then at the Sugar Maple in Milwaukee. The session didn’t feel quite as good – it’s always challenging to play free-improvised music in the dead atmosphere of a recording studio, and nothing ever feels as good as it ends up sounding on tape. But, listening back, it has the same energy as a live show, so I think it went well overall! We’ve got four hours of material to choose from anyways, so I think something will work….
In the upcoming weeks we’ve got a month of weekly gigs with The Engines, as our second cd is released on Okkadisk, and we prepare for a tour in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands in March. Plenty of rehearsals with the group too, as we attempt a whole new book of material based on a much looser concept that will require learning everything by ear, and calling tunes on the fly during the set, rather than playing charts down. I’ve never worked with a band this way before, and am really looking forward to the rehearsal process. Perhaps almost more like a rock band than a jazz band.
In other news, been working on tours for this spring – The Engines tour in March is all set, but the Percussion Quartet tour for March is still up in the air. I knew when the financial crisis hit in late 2008 that 2010 would be bad, since all the arts funding decisions are made in the year previous. But trying to book this tour has been like pulling teeth. Nothing but dead air back from presenters all over Europe, many of whom I know quite well. I’d take it personally, but based on the number of tours that I know have been cancelled this year, everyone’s in the same boat. I certainly hope it bounces back in 2011 or 2012 though, and that this isn’t just the end of these concert series all across Europe. For those of us who make what little money we do by playing over there, this could potentially have a huge impact on the music, and our ability to keep working on it.
Ok, enough bitching. Hope to see you at a concert soon!
