Improvised Music
Joe Morris, guitar
Pat Kuehn, bass
Andria Nicodemou, vibraphone
Jake Baldwin, trumpet
Sunday, April 14, 2013 4pm
Project Storefronts
756 Chapel Street
New Haven
On Sunday afternoon, I drove down from
the west hills straight into 1971. In a storefront on Chapel Street,
Joe Morris talked about the new music scene in the neighborhood since
that time, vowing to keep it fresh with young, new excellent
musicians with something to say. Gray longhair Joe Morris on guitar,
and three young players on trumpet bass and vibes.
I soon felt I was listening to Chick
Corea's Circulus, spacey, trippy clipped lines dancing in your head,
virtuosic runs interspersed with noise. Bass fretted with a card
under the strings to buzz and rasp. Vibraphones strummed with the
stick end of the mallet, or bowed. Trumpet turned over, blowing into
the bottom of the valve holes. Joe making classic avant-modern jazz
runs, all incredibly of the moment, in the present, 2013.
The first piece could have been John
Cage playing Carl Stalling's Looney Tunes melodies. The second piece
started with a bowed bass solo, like a deep, in-tune Rochester sawing
back nad forth. Joe jumps in clear and bright, polished in tone and
line, beyond lightning fast. The pocket trumpet – just like Don
Cherry used to play – starts screeling along the top, interrupting
himself with Miles-like cold, echoing peels. The final touch,
atmospheric vibes.
Vibes solo starts the next piece, a
melodic theme. Phrases reminiscent of bebop hooks and old standards.
Then the bass and trumpet mix it up. Joe adds neck-length runs while
the bass player threads a long metal rod between the strings,
sometimes scratching with it or just letting it dampen the notes he
plucks. Vibist drops ping-pong balls on the keys, letting them bounce
away. Joe frets a drone on his lowest string. The bass is exploring –
high screeches and mid-range bowing while really bending the strings,
pulling and yanking. Soon it becomes an all-out jam, a flood of
notes. Joe goes all raspy, first by scraping his pick fast against
the strings, next by slipping a card under his strings and finger
picking.
After a break, the second set started
with some percolating popcorn guitar sounds, then Joe scraping his
strings with a raspy loop of a wire spring, and the bassist drumming
his strings with the metal rod. More legacy of John Cage. Remember
prepared piano? These musicians are preparing everything. There were
times, after the ping pong balls, that the vibist bent down and
played the vibe tubes hanging beneath the keys, hitting strumming
with sticks and with a plastic credit card.
Anyone who has picked up an instrument
has tried to make pure sounds, learning to fret and pluck a guitar
string so it plays long sustained and clean without buzzing against
the fret, or blowing pure notes from a horn instead of a raspy squawk.
But modern artists in every idiom eventually break it down,
deconstruct things so they aren't quite so “pretty” in paint,
sculpture, and sound. The rock guys overdrive their tube amps so
those clean tones get thick and fuzzy with texture. The avants, like
the Art Ensembles of Chicago's Certain Blacks, “do what they wanna”
making whatever kind of noise they can. It's not unique to this
quartet. I've heard it at the Yale Music School and at Firehouse 12
and lots of other places, not defined by labels like jazz, or New Music. All parts of the instrument are fair game,
not just the strings but necks and bodies of guitars, not just the
skins but rims and sides of drums. And this is why I said it felt
like Circulus – Chick Corea's quartet with Anthony Braxton, Dave
Holland and Barry Altschul. Not the sound, but the feel.
http://youtu.be/GrKGv142LuE
After the show, I talked to Joe Morris
about what he meant by the scene in the 70's – standing as we were
in the original Goldie & Libro Music Center storefront. He
talked about seeing Anthony Davis and Loren Mazzacane Connors, and
otherwise long-forgotten performance spaces. We also talked about a
outdoor show Real Art Ways show in the early 80's, Joe filling some
gaps in my memory. The aptly named Firespitters, with Jayne Cortez
and the band that did double duty those days as part of Ornette
Coleman's Prime Time, Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix on guitars, her
son Denardo Coleman on drums, and probably Al McDowell on bass.
Here's her classic There It Is, with a slightly different lineup:
http://youtu.be/G6bKgljhvR0
And more:
And this, which is what I heard that
day in Hartford:
But just like Arcade, I digress. I've
heard Jesse Hameen II describe jazz as a method of communication, and
that applies to all of the above and especially Arcade. Communication
is the core, among the players, with themselves and with the
audience, in another language. It's not a new concept. Langston
Hughes talked about Jazz as Communication in 1956.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237856 And it's not limited or defined by labels like jazz. Arcade was not billed as a jazz show. On Sunday afternoon they communicated, sounds coordinated with some
looks and nods. These kids were young – at least 2 out of 3 are
New England Conservatory of Music class of 2013, so they're half
Joe's age – playing with the confidence and impetuousness of youth
yet with the grace of ages.
Joe Morris plays Sunday 4/21 3pm at Real Art Ways with Stephen Haynes and Matt Maneri. Next week he's back in the neighborhood at Cafe Nine
with his electric band Slobber Pup, which he described as the
complete opposite of what we had just heard with Arcade, loud and
electric. Tuesday 4/23 8pm.
See you there.
