How much jazz experience do you have?
Honestly, very little. I mean, I was in jazz band in high school on tenor sax. I was pretty into it. But then I discovered the beast that is the bass clarinet and ended up playing in a youth symphony, which fueled my decision of studying to be an orchestral clarinetist. I joined a less than mediocre jazz band at a community college back in Grand Rapids, but that was only because I was chasing the drummer.
Where do you see yourself going with your music?
I see myself going all sorts of places. I feel I am constantly collaborating with other artists. I see myself being in and writing for ensembles such as Black House. I would like to put together ensembles and write with the intent of playing at different venues around the city. I am really getting in to the Jazz scene here in Kansas City and it has been freeing to both my mind and ears. This is something I would like to pursue more of, performance wise as well as compositionally. I have also been really getting in to electronic music. I would like to incorporate that into my singer/songwriting as well as other things if the opportunities arise. I don’t see myself writing ‘academically’. By that I mean, writing for string quartets and wind ensembles. I believe I will always be out there somewhere doing something collaborative, new, and possibly exciting.
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Pat's face is very expressive.
I just want to congratulate Pat Conway on being announced a 2012 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Fellow. Pat has worked with Black House as a guest clinician in the past and currently as a collaborator and workshop participant. I've been a fan of Pat's work ever since hearing his compositions for the People's Liberation Big Band and I couldn't be happier for him.
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The interruptions are over and now we’re on the home stretch of the spring workshop. We’ve got four rehearsals left and two of those include the full gamelan ensemble. We now know what pieces we are performing, which is always a relief. We’re far enough into the workshop that the character of the group is starting to really come through. A big part of that character is the coolest brass section we’ve ever had in a workshop.
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This coming Sunday from 3:00pm to 5:00 Black House is hosting a Sound Painting Improv Workshop at the rehearsal space at City Center Square. Dennis Shafer is in town to do some work with the RAT ensemble and Paul Rudy put him in touch with me. Sound Painting is a system of sign language used to direct a large ensemble of improvisors. I've never met Dennis but I have done some sound painting a few years ago while I was at the Banff workshop. It's a pretty fun way to conduct a large group of improvisors somewhat similar to John Zorn's game pieces. In Zorn's game pieces it's more common for the players to have more input but in sound painting the director literally conducts the action in a more hands on way. Personally I prefer sound painting to game pieces. Anyways, this workshop is open to any musicians who may be interested, not just Black House residents. Come learn with the rest of us. Anyone interested will just need to send me an email (blackhouseimprov@gmail.com) so that I can let them in the building.
Posted by Hunter Long at 07:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
******Sound Painting Workshop******
led by Dennis Shafer
3pm Sunday April 8th
5th floor City Center Square
Come learn how to sound paint with Black House. All instruments welcome
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Hunter Long, Nick Howell, Peter Lawless
This past Sunday the workshop took the day off so that Black House Blue Label could record. The idea being that, if this goes well, we'll be able to release a "Blue House Mixtape" of sorts. I feel reasonably hopeful about the results having heard only a small and rough portion of the recording at this time. This recording session is helping us ramp up for our next performance at Take Five on Friday, April 20th and we're planning on having a few new tunes to try out.
Next week the Collective is back at it with the deadline for compositions rapidly approaching and Russell Thorpe's newest work awaiting its first reading.
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Last week I was fortunate to enjoy the greatest concentration of quality live performances in my life. Saturday, through a well-connected friend, I was able to attend “Nixon in China” at the Kauffman Center. It was my first time in the building and I was really impressed. The hall was beautiful and the sound was fantastic. I’ve heard people complain about the use of microphones during the opera but it didn’t bother me. Seems like a silly thing to nitpick. I loved the score and the first act was easily the most enjoyable hour and a half of opera I’ve ever experienced. Things seemed to be somewhat historically accurate until the second act when a woman shot Henry Kissinger and things turned symbolic and arty. I continued to enjoy the music and the fantastic female soloists even if I stopped trying to understand what was happening. It was also fun to see audience members get uncomfortable when the word “motherfucker” was used in the third act.
The tickets for this show were over $100 and I would not have gotten to go if it had not been for special circumstances. It’s easy to lament the price of tickets and even make facile claims about elitism and class. Having seen the show, it’s obvious that they lost quite a bit of money even if they sold out every night at that price. Operas are not cheap to produce. To have that many musicians of that caliber it must have cost over $10k for each rehearsal. The production was obviously very expensive. You can’t put on work of that scope and quality and charge $25 a seat. The numbers don’t even work at $125 a seat. Please spare me your “one percent” bullshit when it comes to the opera.
On Sunday I saw Radiohead at the Sprint Center. I’ve wanted to see this band for many years so this show was a “big deal” for me. Going to a big rock show is a welcome palette cleanser. I couldn’t get over how good the sound was in such a large venue. Perhaps it had something to do with it not being stupid loud so you can actually hear everything instead of a deafening roar.
Halfway through the show I couldn’t help but feel like I had waited 5 years too late to see them. I enjoy their newer work but it’s not the soundtrack to my teenage years like their earlier work is. The band is in a position that they don’t need to play their greatest hits to sell out arenas and was content to play a lot of their more obscure work. I was starting to get worried that I would leave the show disappointed when they started to play just enough of my favorite tunes. I told my friend at the show that I wouldn’t complain as long as I got to hear “Ideotique” and I did. So I won’t.
On Wednesday I saw the SFJazz Collective in Lawrence. I love this organization and always make a point to see them whenever they come through town. I’ll admit that this is not my favorite line up of the band. Nor is it my favorite season of repertoire but I did enjoy this performance quite a bit. It was my first time to see Mark Turner and Antonio Hart, both of whom have their pictures up in my practice studio, and they were as wonderful live as I had hoped. The entire band lived up to their individual reputations in a big way. Unfortunately I don’t think they were playing strong arrangements. Stevie Wonder is a genius and his music speaks for itself but for me it didn’t translate well for a mid-sized jazz ensemble. I couldn’t help but feel that the show was yet another example of the all too common phenomenon in jazz of some of the best musicians in the world playing over not-so-good music. That being said, it was worth the price in admission to hear Antonio Hart’s second solo.
Since I was seated in the front row, I was free to examine the performance habits of some of my heroes on a very intimate level. I was struck by how world class players deal with the same issue that we all do: What do you do when you’re not playing? Once a solo starts they awkwardly walk to the side of the stage just like the rest of us. The idea is that you get out of the way of the audience’s view of the soloist. Unfortunately it’s always distracting to walk across the stage. Once you’re safely out of the way, you have a few different behavioral options. You can fiddle with your instrument, bob your head, stand there with an expressionless stoicism, or chat with your bandmates. It’s an imperfect practice that works best in clubs, but on a concert stage its deficiencies become glaringly obvious . Perhaps the only solution is for everyone to play all of the time? I don’t know what the solution is but I will say that during the course of a performance you start to pick favorites and I found myself drawn to the musicians that seemed to be enjoying themselves. Just saying.
In looking back on the three performances, the biggest thing I take away is in the different way the audience related to each. The audience was delighted by the opera and they admired SFJazz. But they loved Radiohead.
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This blog is maintained by Hunter Long.