A Chris Forbes Trajectory.

Photo Courtesy Chris Forbes.

Chris has become a helpful regular in the comment zone and actually likes to write so I badgered him to go through the profile question ordeal and ...voila.

1.What brought you to music?

I was interested in music pretty young according to my mother. She said I always seemed to gravitate towards the musical instrument toys at the expense of most of the others. My earliest musical memories revolve around the piano that we found in the parsonage at my Dad's third church posting. It was a South African made Steinway and I sat at it for hours playing clusters and the most dissonant things possible. I remember being really interested in the clash of overtones that low clusters made. I think that even then I had a real kinship with dissonant music. After about a year and a half my parents got me piano lessons. My teacher used a method that immediately encouraged improvisation and composition and those remained interests of mine all through my schooling. Back then actually I didn't see much difference between improv and composing and would often write pieces in my head through improv that I never committed to paper. Early on I was a fan of the twentieth century and luckily grew up in a small midwestern college town with good contemporary music being played all the time. Loved Stravinsky after hearing the Rite of Spring and continued exploring Schoenberg, Webern Ives and even Penderecki, who I met at the age of ten or so. When I was in seventh grade a hippie music teacher (technically he was a Dead Head)  turned me on to Boulez and Stockhausen....and jazz improv. From there it was a quick journey of discovery from Bop and Bird to Ornette, Cecil, Braxton and the like. By the time I was in high school my parents were wishing I was into heavy metal like all my other friends instead of the cacophony that exploded from my room every night. 

2.Describe your role models, muses and mentors.

I've always been a bit of an autodidact with jazz. My piano training was pretty classical up through college. I learned a bit about jazz harmony from a friend of my dad's who played a kind of jazz based church music. Much of the rest of what I know in jazz was from listening pretty carefully to the great bop pianists, Bill Evans and then McCoy, Paul Bley and of course Cecil. The defining role model for me musically is Cecil. I admire his tenacity and his insistence on being himself completely even when it has not been convenient for him. It's impossible to be a free jazz pianist without some debt to Cecil, even if you go in a totally different direction. His is a pretty amazing presence.

I ended up going to Berklee in Boston for college. There was a bit of a free music scene there at the time, mostly surrounding George Garzone and his avant-big band student ensemble. I was a regular for a while at Michael's Pub listening to the Fringe. But it was the early 80s and the avant-garde was really dying at the time...it was pretty lean. My piano teacher encouraged me to move more into composition and I took a traditional composition major with a minor in classical piano. That allowed me to apply for the Master's program at Juilliard where I was accepted and studied with American Master David Diamond. Diamond was definitely a major influence on me. He taught me that every note mattered and how not to settle for my first musical thoughts. He felt the biggest danger for improvisers is that our facility for musical ideas can sometimes mean we don't examine them as much as we could. I've tried to keep that lesson even though I don't compose concert music much any more.

I also have to give props to two individuals on the NYC scene who really helped me early in my time here. I'd kind of given up on free jazz during a long time in Washington DC where the scene was pretty dismal. When I turned 40 and moved to Chicago I had a sort of midlife creative crisis and went back to free playing. I did a little work in Chicago, but when I moved to New York I decided I would really put myself in a learning posture. I met Daniel Carter and spent a lot of time playing with him early on. Daniel is one of the most generous musicians and someone who has the gift to help you build your confidence as an improviser, plus he has an interesting take on just about everything from music to philosophy to politics. The other big influence was Sabir Mateen. Sabir gives workshops sometimes and when I moved to NY I was lucky enough to get into one. I learned more about playing free in a group there than I had in any experience in my life before. Sabir has a real gift for conceptualizing group situations and has a strong idea about what every member of a group should do. He has turned my mind around several times about the role of the piano in free music and unlocked some real mysteries for me...plus at Sabir's workshops I met some of the closet collaborators, Ras Moshe and Matt Lavelle. I will always be grateful for that.

3. Describe your community of colleagues and audiences.

Mostly I hang around the younger elements of the downtown scene. Matt Lavelle is one of my closet collaborators and a good friend. Matt is always on a journey and he really wants to bring all of us with him. Currently I play with him in Morcilla, a group that started out as a Latin/Free concept but has morphed into much more than that.  I'm also working with him in a new group which will come out in a couple weeks at the Festival of New Trumpet and we're pretty excited about it...Matt is describing it as attacking Trane's concept, but in our own way. For my part I'm trying to imagine modal playing that doesn't involve either triads or McCoy....it's an interesting problem.

I also spend a lot of time playing in bands with Steve Swell. I'm involved with Steve's Nation of We band, which is pretty thrilling as it is a collection of really great known and lesser known players, many of whom have played with Cecil. Steve has a really interesting approach to composing for this band, which includes alot of conduction and I find our gigs to be real events...few and far between but really special.

I also am working in a new band with Steve, Rob Brown, Hill Greene and Michael Thompson. I'm excited about this group because the caliber of playing is really high and as a rhythm section we've reached an almost telepathic level fairly quickly. Steven is hoping to record and tour with this band soon. I hope it happens as it would be my first out of NYC touring.

The other major people I work with are people associated with Ras Moshe's Music Now. Ras is gifted with an uncanny ability to put people in musical situations and watch the sparks fly. His Music Now bands are almost always a rotating cast of characters...almost experiements in blending musical personalities. We've made some music I'm really proud of...alot of it is available on YouTube. And Ras is a deep cat...really uncompromising in his vision and very thoughtful.

 
4.What are the important elements you apply to your personal approach to performance, repertoire and composition?

I have an almost mystical relationship to harmony. Early in my life I read Schoenberg's Harmonielehre and I think I got infected with the old Austrian's note mysticism. Schoenberg felt the chord was actually the vertical expanding of the melodic tone. Though he never went far enough, I used him as a starting point for my conception, in which harmony is made out of the cellular structure of melodies and at least to my mind is just a thickening out of the melody and tone color. Various combinations of notes have deeply personal meanings to me. One six note chord I use obsessively came to me twenty years ago in a dream and has always represented the mysterious and numinous for me whenever I use it. Another might represent the earthy or the violent, or the erotic. I don't usually let anyone in on these personal meanings of chords...but it's more or less conscious on my part...like I'm telling a very literal story in tones.

As far as repertoire and composition, most of my work lately has been as a sideman so I haven't performed my own tunes much. I'm hoping to change that. I'm really interested in the line between the composed and the improvised. When I last had a working trio, we did mostly freely improvised work, but in such a way that most audiences thought that the material was pre-composed. I liked that...and I like writing tunes that sound like improvisations. I'm also finding myself more interested in open form composition, game pieces and music inspired by fractals and chaos algorithms.

5.What role does teaching have in your work?

I made my living primarily as a music teacher. I taught piano early in my career but since 1994 I've taught music in schools in Maryland and New York. I'm currently working as a teaching artist in Brooklyn, in a program that combines in school interdisciplinary arts and an afterschool comprehensive arts program housed in the Sunset Park neighborhood. I work with children from kindergarten all the way through high school. This work keeps me creatively fresh and challenged. Through it I have developed in interest in hip hop and how hip hop can be developed in creative ways. I have also learned a lot about world percussion, through my work with our percussion ensemble. And last year we did a musical based on a book by Salman Rushdie. To match the fantasy of the book, we decided to design and build our own orchestra. I immersed myself in instrument making theory and we ended up with many unique mallet and stringed instruments for our orchestra. The music itself combined composed music and conduction and has given me a new outlet for my own creativity. I've continued to experiment with new instruments and tuning systems. My significant other says I can't go into a china shop now without trying to ring all the glasses.

6. How have changes in the economy impacted your work?

I've never really earned a living out of playing or composing music. Oddly, I'm having the best performing year ever in my career, with more gigs per month than ever and most of them actually bringing in some real money. But the teaching artist work, which pays the bills, has been a little shakey. I was laid off for a while this summer, but hired back in the fall. I feel like I've dodged a bullet for now, but the chances of needing new work are greater than they've been before. 

7. If you perform beyond your region or overseas, how has that changed over time?

I have yet to do the overseas thing. I am hoping for it, but also know that it's hard given my teaching schedule. The same is true for domestic touring in any extensive way. However there are some small things in the wings that I hope will pan out.

8.How has technology and changes in the way music circulates impacted your work?

Not really. I never recorded very much before 2004. In fact I had a 20 year hiatus in free jazz and in jazz in general. I've been a sideman in a handful of small label projects and put out my own CD back in 2005. I put out a small batch but I've still got about 100 of 'em left. I honestly love the freedom that the home recording boom has given us as musicians, and I think the internet can be a great marketing tool, but I also think that it's harder and harder to get noticed, even with this expanded market. There's so much out on the net and sooooo much of it is of questionable quality. It can be quite a job to get your small needle in the haystack noticed...quite as difficult as it was in the bad old days of record labels. So to me the answer, as it has always been for avant-garde musicians, is DIY. We need to take some pages from some of the punk bands or Dirty South hip hop. Too many of us are still thinking on a label model and that is almost totally dead, and I don't think it will be coming back for us. We have to create our own destiny.

9. Describe your current and potential future projects and collaborations along with things you would like to do.

Matt Lavelle has my whole career planned out for me! He says I should do a trio album, then a quartet or quintet, another trio album, and then maybe something with strings...the man's full of plans!

Actually I do want to start a working trio soon. I have a lot of ideas and even some people in mind for it, but I'm a really bad leader when it comes to shilling for gigs. I blame it some on my day job, which is really demanding on my time, but if I'm honest I can admit that I have a pretty big lazy streak. And also a bit of an easily bruised ego...rejection is hard and gigs where two people show up really get to me if it's my band.
I have two pieces I'm working on right now that I hope to one day play with bands...one's called The Infernal Machine and is based on a long series of melodies generated by a fractal algorithm, interrupted by free improvisations from the band. The other is called Major Arcana and is a series of notes, textures, scales, methods of improv, each based on a card from the Tarot. The performance while actually be ordered by dealing out a reading and then performing based on the spread of the cards...sort of like Zorn's game pieces but with a different twist I hope.

I've been lucky in the people I've worked with, especially people in Steve Swell's bands but there are a number of people I'd like to persue things with. I'd love to do something permanent with Will Connell, an amazing player who is underexposed in the community but played with Horace Tapscott and Cecil among others. I'd love to do a larger project that could shoot some work to people who've helped me like Matt, Ras, Sabir and Steve. And at some time I'd love to do something with a really large ensemble involving composition and conduction...and even some of my invented gamalan instruments. There's a lot in my mind...there's always a lot in my mind. The problem is bring it out.

John Blum, An Appreciation. Stanley Jason Zappa.

Attention Attention: I have known and been friends with John for just about 20 years now, so please be cautioned that there is a bias and a partiality that may transgress the high standards of music journalism so righteously upheld both in print and on them interwebs. Those who are offended by “log rolling” (rare those it is in any North American journalism), now is the time to to stop reading and find a site of fitting journalistic integrity. (I like Maangchi.com)

John Blum: A wildly biased, brief, personal appreciation.

John does not eat the flesh of mammals or birds. This has complicated plans to get John to visit me at the feed lot, especially in the fall. I have some theories as to why John doesn't eat the flesh of mammals or birds. It could be that in college, when I met John, when not studying music or practising piano or performing, John spent a considerable amount of time studying a great deal of science. And not just the entry level non-major freshman level classes like “Guess my Gender”, but real live advanced college level biology and chemistry.


I am given to understand one of my other favourite piano players (Lowell Davidson) was no slouch when it came to Science. Not to compare one to the other, but there you go.

John has been playing this music, full tilt, for 20 years—to the year. My first witness of John 'in full flight' came around 1990 at a small restaurant/bar in North Bennington, Vermont called “the Villager” (or “the V” for short.) There John was performing with Marco Eneidi on alto saxophone, Jackson Krall on drums and I think, Xtopher Farris on
bass. Naturally, no effort was made to document these sessions, so you'll just have to take my word for it that the music was unbelievably awesome. What's more, John was playing a Rhodes keyboard. So thoroughly and completely did John play that Rhodes, that when investigating as to the possibility of John playing a “keyboard” (as actual pianos are an endangered species) at a theoretical gig, John asked if me I would like to play the recorder as opposed to the saxophone. Nevertheless, let there be no confusion:there isn't a musician on the face of this earth who can play the Rhodes like John Blum.

John does primary research. Maybe that's the scientist in him. When interested in something, John goes after it in a precise, thorough manner. John lived in Europe for a while, checking out that scene and sound, while others got jobs in children's publishing. I believe John met Antonio Grippi in jolly olde Europe, on one of those trips that
the record companies didn't pay for. I could be wrong about that. In any event, do you all know Antonio Grippi? He plays the Alto Clarinet (and Alto Saxophone) and plays them both quite well. An interesting counterpoint to the other Alto in John's life, Marco Eneidi, with whom John has made countless hours of music. Hands up, who digs Marco Eneidi? (Hands go up EVERYWHERE!) 


Which is all to say if and when there is someone musical whom John admires, John makes real, meaningful personal contact as a fellow human, and usually winds up playing with them in some capacity. Like Dennis Charles. John and Dennis Charles made music together, but nowhere near enough. Perhaps there is a larger cosmic reason that Dennis Charles didn't live longer, and a reason why the John Blum Astrogeny quartet (with William Parker on Bass) couldn't have continued and continued and continued. Perhaps that reason is because the John Blum Astrogeny Quartet is an end. The “the head” and “the tune” are given their final treatment. That form is done. The John Blum Astrogeny Quartet closed that party down forever.

John then recorded Who Begat Eye (a solo piano follow up to Naked Mirror) as well as In the Shade of the Sun, a trio with William Parker and Sunny Murray. What's “neat” about both recordings is that they each give a look into how this music evolves. Listening to Who Begat Eye after Naked Mirror, you hear development. Listening to In the
Shade of the Sun, you hear continuity and fluency of music language between Blum, Parker and Murray—Blum and Murray having recorded together on Murray's Les Perles Noires. But you have all those, because you are fans of the music, and support artists like John who is performing at the Vision Festival on Day 6, July 25th at the Loft
Underground (Downstairs theater) at 9:45pm with 20 year musical colleague, Jackson Krall.

Bill Dixon Meets the Citizens Orchestra. Eric Zinman.

Good Old Zinman hasn't been back from the EU for more than a week and already he's sending me this gem from Bill Dixon's encounter with the assembled Citizens Orchestra at a rehearsal in Cambridge last fall. Eric and Stanley Jason Zappa labored over the transcription which is a tedious process. Take it away Eric.

 

Portrait of Bill Dixon by Nick Ruechel

Jason Zappa, Nick Scrowackzewski and I convened a small orchestra in Boston to honor Bill Dixon and his contribution. The orchestra was composed of former students like myself and Jason as well as players on the Boston scene. Stephen Haynes came up from CT and drove Bill from Vermont. 

I transcribed the following lecture which was then edited by Jason Zappa.

"One of the errors that stays with this music is that ‘if you just wait the music is going to construct itself and you will have done nothing’ 

The difference between this music and the other area of music has to do with the responsibility for the erection of the piece of music is 100% on the shoulders of each player. When someone writes a piece of music, the responsibilities for detailing what each of you need to know to make it into a cohesive whole is on the person who writes the music. So for many years you don’t pay it any attention and then a sliver of light "freedom!"… and people say: "oh freedom! we don’t need to do this!" and still you don’t pay it any attention.

There is just as much discipline (with) as many rules and variables as a piece of music you sit down and construct as it is happening as is in a piece that someone else does. So your responsibilities as players are the same. 

What does your instrument do in the texture? 

What doesn’t it do when someone else is doing something? 

When should you play unison? 

When does this need to be reinforced? 

When should someone have a line and cut through and waken the thing up? 

When should you be lethargic and just let the sound of the room dictate the aura that you are supposed to be addressing? 

But you have to pay attention and you have to MEAN IT! I didn’t hear any meaning--its like fucking a dead whore. No one gets anything from that so you have to make believe--make believe you are doing music, and all of the things that go into a piece of music will become a part of your  vocabulary. 

When should you reinforce? 

When should you play in unison with someone? 

When should you try and build a line? 

When should you  do counterlines? 

When should you be in your upper register? 

When should you make a noise or something because things have become to pure? 

All these things. 

And you answer these with your playing.  Now [there is] one rule that will guide you and that is no matter how many players are in the room, you should be able to hear distinctly what each player is doing. That gives you your level of balance. You don’t need a conductor--your ear is dictating to you. 

The other thing is, what about the sameness of sound? 

Play a concert C 

(musicians play) 

you have to hear it in your mind and when you play it that’s what comes up. You can’t puff and hope that it will happen. Instruments are cruel and insensitive things when you entrust them with too much responsibility, see?  And you learn that very early.  Alright.

Play a concert C but before you play and everybody play it at the same time and not too loud and not too soft but to establish a sound. Alright go ahead. 

(musicians play) 

STOP.  Alright.  Now you’ve got to find some way of communicating so the best way of doing it is to make yourself circular. There’s a reason why people play in a circle--so everyone can see everyone--and you can see when that person is going take a breath and you’re guided by that--and you have to 

play that note as if you are not going to get another chance to play that note. See--that’s what it is.

  

Alright, hold that tone as long as you can. When it sounds like one sound, you are in tune with the sound 

As long as there are these other things, you are not in tune with the sound 

And you may very well not want to be in tune with the sound but what you play should be played because that’s what you want and its not what you get that you are satisfied with. 

Alright now [here's] what you should do--and this is an old thing: 

Establish a sound.  Then we have 3 notes that you can go up from that sound, and 3 notes that you can go down from that sound, arbitrarily and no one should play that in unison: 

2, 3, 4 and play 

(Musicians play) 

Every sound has its initiation, its gestation period and its establishment. 

A sound is a sound, not something to help you get to the other one, so when you hear the players, you think are doing something that you really favor.  Whether they think of this, or have thought of this, whether they have studied it or not studied it--this is what they are doing. What would you rather do--play any sound that you want or would you rather name the sound that someone else plays?  Which would you rather do?  I would rather play the sound because if I to know the name of the sound I would ask a person.  So intellectual discourse has no place in music performance.

(Musicians play) 

See how beautiful that sounded?  [That's] because it can’t be measured. Now if I told you to play each sound 2 beats it becomes arithmetical and that’s the way you learn music anyway--but that’s not what you say you want to do.  You want to create music…don’t you? 

So how do you think it's created?  Someone has to stand out there, make all the mistakes, everyone else learn them and then you come along, diligent students that you are and you learn how to do that--but you’ve gotta have the feeling. 

I personally don’t believe everyone can do everything. I don’t think a person can run a 3 minute mile, climb mount Everest, knock out Muhammad Ali, Swim 100 yards in 3 seconds...I don’t believe a person can do everything. But the thing that you do we hold you responsible for. 

A HA! Your whole personal stance, how you hold the instrument, how you are dressed-- all of those things have something to do with what is going to come out of your instrument which originates in your brain and is coursed through your body. That’s what makes us pay attention. 

The rest of it is bullshit.

So one decides what one wants to do. Alright, so with that as a guideline. Lets play something for six minutes no more. Decide whether its going to be six minutes of solo playing, decide whether its going to be an ensemble thing making an ensemble statement, decide how many octaves you’re going to use on the instrument because don’t forget you have all of that. 

You understand what I mean? 

Ok play something for six minutes and make it concise.

2,3,4 and...

(musicians play) 

We can’t discriminate against sound. All sounds are beautiful. Some collections are more effective and please us aesthetically more than others. So there were some points there that sounded really quite beautiful. There were some things that happened in that span that no one could have done the way you did them--because you have to understand that when you play well, no one can do it as well as you.  If you play badly, there is no one who could play it as badly as you--so there’s always this individual thing―you understand what I mean--and what we do is we emulate the players we think are playing well and we try to say that we’re being creative. 

That’s not true. 

You’re not even being re-creative--you’re being nothing because its already been done by someone else and you’re trying to jump in on that.  More power to you [but] it’s impossible--[it] can’t happen.  

But if you have a problem, you can’t forget all the things that preceded what you’re doing now. If you have to write something down to form a unified 'something' out of which you can come that’s what you should do.  Don’t think that because another direction happens to surface in music that it gets rid of all of the stuff that preceded that--its added. It's given you something else because there are some things, for example some things cannot be written down...so that you can...well lets put it this way: nothing can be done twice. 

We try to do it as much as we can. It can’t be done twice because the first time you do it you’re a certain age, you’re this, you’re that your body, the world is spinning a different way and all like that so if everything stayed the same, you could do it twice.  

[It] doesn’t stay the same, you can’t do it twice, but you want to repeat that because there is something about it you want--so you work at trying to remember what the feeling was, what the sound was, how the instrument felt in your hand blah blah blah and that’s what you do…. 

But you can’t make music that way--you can’t create music. To create music you gotta come up with a whole other thing.  Someone punches someone in the mouth and he doesn’t say “OW!” he says “Gee! do that again” that’s creative. You want to imitate?  My god he got punched in the mouth and he enjoyed it for gods sake. 

Doing music and the people around you who are doing music are the most important people you can have because they are the one’s that are going to teach you--the one’s that you play with--not the ones you listen to on CD, the one that you play with, see?  So try to understand what they are doing when they are taking a breath, what kind of sound they make or how you can compliment that sound.  Can you get inside that sound and do something? Can you do it?  AH--how do you then take one note and make it seem to imply three or four notes?  You see?  How do you do that? 

So if you have nothing else to practice, these are the things to think about and work at in addition to the academic things that are still important on the horn.  

A scale is still a scale and still has to be played as a scale. 

A line which is a scale has to be played as a line. 

A melody has to be played as a melody. 

So all of these things when you break it down, everything is reduced to a cipher. You've got to decide what part of it at a certain time your dealing with. 

Now one of the problems...you’re going to do something tomorrow, because tonight you should be trying to grease the wheels--like, get rid of a lot of the dumb stuff, you know, and tomorrow what you should do when you give your performance [is] you have to play every note that you play as if it was the last thing you were going to do on the face of this Earth.  And that it's also possible that if you do it right that it can change things--and that is not mere folly--you have to believe and you can’t wait until someone gives you a four star review in Downbeat before you believe in yourself.  You have to believe if no one else does.  I’m doing this--you have to critique yourself.  Someone says “Oh my God man it was beautiful what you played” and you know half of it was and you thank them, be generous, but then go back and say "if this is what I’m doing I better be doing something else...because I’m not doing what I think I’m doing." 

Music, creative music, improvised music--whatever you’re going to call it requires a basic kind of honesty. YOU have to know when you’ve done it because you’re the only one who knows because you’ve done it. You might play and someone says ”my that was really something” and you barely got by in your playing by the skin of your teeth.  Everyone of us has had that. 

You played well at a party, concert or whatever it is or something and no one heard it, they were talking, The better you played the more they talked and then there--sometimes at a performance where you played, you just barely limped along and everyone was “gee wow man this guy is greater than Miles...man he’s sittin' here...Oh 'Trane better watch out” 

So its you.  [You] gotta be honest with yourself. 

Now a good way to approach that is, like, I know as long as I’ve been playing--and I’ve been playing a long time--every single day I find out something about the trumpet that I didn’t know the day before, so some people say you’re smarter. 

”Oh I thought you couldn’t play”--well that’s their problem. I’m hunting for information that's what I want. I want to be able to play effectively what I want to play. I want to be in charge and if no one likes it, that’s their problem 

So your audience is your enemy,see? This is a private thing--you decided you wanted to play this music this way.  No one forced you--in fact if you’re not remiss and you’re hip, they did everything they could to see that you couldn’t learn how to play. So if you do anything well its not because of them its in spite of them. Remember that. 

And there’ll be times in your playing when you finish you’re playing. You’re doing a performance or something like that. There’s a very good feeling that comes out of when you play well. Maybe money won’t happen. Your next job you may get five dollars more, but there’s something about playing well in music. I don’t even think sex equals that.  I don’t, but I’m older―you guys are still young, bucking around stuff--but be honest with yourself, because you can’t get anywhere as a creative musician if you are dishonest...you just can’t. 

Know when you need to work on certain things, Know when you are not identifying  pitches properly. Know when if there is D flat situation and you’re playing a D because you haven’t sat down today, KNOW THAT--THAT’S YOUR INFORMATION. That’s your information, see? and LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN 

In the ensemble you may start to play something and this other person has already started to play that. You don’t need to play that, so you have to find a way to get out of that and start another situation. See what I mean? Thats your orchestration. When you have someone write for you they write it. Don’t forget if you have ten players, ten players are writers. Keep that in mind. The pleasure in this music is...they equal the horrors and the disappointments--but just a little bit.  They make you want to continue. You have to do that. 

Now, you can’t neglect academic practice of your instrument. If you don’t know your instrument, your intervals, and you think you can play everything chromatically you’re deceiving yourself in playing . If all of a sudden harsh sounds are in vogue, it doesn’t...what we ascribe to music, it doesn’t rule out beautiful sounds. There’s something, I mean, you can be playing all of this stuff and all of a sudden there’s this...someone can be playing a simple, beautiful academic melody.  Well if it fits, fine, because 

sometimes that’s what, I mean, you know everything isn’t a thirteenth chord.  Triads--when I was studying the rule was when you get into trouble, go back to your triads because they contain everything. You understand what I mean? So with that as a thing, make small examples, like, do an orchestra piece that has an introduction, whatever an orchestra piece has, and do it in ninety seconds--Things like that, and see if you can make it sound like it had a beginning, middle and end...you know what I mean. 

And things like that and do things where, if you can, start like in the middle of a piece of music--which is what most people do anyway; they think they’re at the beginning and they’ve really started in the middle. You can hear it because the more comfortable they become, then they begin―they work themselves up to the beginning and back again 

So give yourself little examples of things like that. Don’t just play openly to see how long you can play.  Don’t do that.  Start off to see...have someone play and see if everyone can learn to play in unison with that person who’s playing. These are exercises--good for your ear, good for your facility, certainly good for your knowledge. 

You understand me? 

Doing duets: Duets are easier than trio’s for one reason--two people can get along better than three or whatever. I don’t make the rules--that’s what they do, because that’s what the hell it is, right? The more people you have, there’s a kind of, um, "what about me? what about me? what about me?" 

They may do a piece or part where your horn isn’t required. That's being honest in the music. You understand what I mean? So know where you belong architecturally and instrumentally and try these things out and when they don’t work, learn to critique yourself without feeling attacked and without being defensive. 

When would I say “hey man, you’re out of tune...” 

“Well your mother’s out of tune...” 

You want to be gregarious about wanting the information because knowledge in that instance IS power. 

Well why don’t you just take a unison--do this for about 90 seconds…and here’s why don’t you play a unison--this is very difficult. You’ll start off, and as I’m talking to you now, everyone should be thinking of the note that the unison is going to be.  This is how intuition...everyone talks about intuition--intuition is invisible as a thing, it only exists in our imagination and when we hear it, OK. So I’m going to tell you to play for ninety seconds and I’m just going to give you the thing, the downbeat to play, I’m not going to tell you what note and you’re going to try to do it in unison.  You do that for six months you’d be amazed at what the group is supposed to sound like… 

(a small sound is heard)... 

Now who did that? Why did you do that? No tell the truth why did you do that? 

Student: “ when I started playing the horn I had difficulty figuring out where I was. I was so used to playing the piano.” 

Well that doesn’t help the situation. You understand what I mean? That’s cheating in a way. If you want to cheat all your life its not going to bother me but its going to bother them and they should chew your ass about it.  

Alright I’ll give you four and then you, I mean, do it moderately so we can hear the overtones 

1 2 3 4 and... 

(Musicians play) 

Now that wasn’t bad. That wasn’t bad at all, but you learn so you can almost hear what the musicians are thinking especially after you’ve played together for a while. 

Reading: you know, there is an old story--music of the future, music of the future, we’re going to be so advanced that the composer will come in and sit down, he’ll face the audience. The composer will sit down and he’ll face them and they’ll look at each other and for three hours they will just face each other and then when the three hours are up they’ll applaud--you know why?  They will have read each others minds and they will read in his mind what they want to play--and so you know if they can get that, why waste time trying to write it down and have them interpret what they want to play? 

Now, you may think that’s impossible but it's not impossible. The mind sends out vibrations--it's up to you to catch it, and this is simple. We’re all on the same wavelength [in] this is music. If you play together for a month and you come in and you do that exercise after one or two times you should be able to do it anytime you want because you’ve already circulated what you think and how you think if people are paying attention. 

Now in that instance the saxophone player was the strongest voice but there was a point for six or seven seconds [where] there was a beautiful sound--it just had to happen very briefly--a beautiful sound and if I were playing, I would have wanted that sound to stay, and then when you couldn’t stand it anymore, then someone just shriek a line through that dog gone sound 

I'll tell you a story. I have a piece of music called Shrike and I was in Vienna and I met...what the hell was his name...(student reminds him―Luigi Nono) HA! who? (student says Nono) Nono--Luigi Nono, yah I met Nono--a tall man. They were having a composers conference and the people I was with had given him a copy of the record.  He’s a tall man so he picked me up and he’s holding me off the ground and he says “come we must go to my villa and we must spend time there and you must show me how you do these things so I can write a piece for you” 

And I said but Mr Nono I couldn’t play it if you wrote it. It wasn’t conceived that way and he just looked at me wondering if I was holding something back. Everything can’t be written in the way that you want it so...alright, Ok, try it again 

2 3 4 and...OH, but this time whatever you play..play it a half tone higher 

2 3 4 and 

(musicians play) 

Ok, now the other thing is learning how when one person runs out of breath, so that when one person is leaving a note, you attack your note on the high point of his leaving his note, so we don’t hear a break. You learn how to do that in an ensemble too see because everything isn’t a whole not or half note or something like that. These are the things you can do instead of wasting your time thinking your doing something.  Learn the things that go into making music so that when you're lucky (snaps) you can do music. 

Alright, get it.  Here we are again.  One more time.. 

2 3...now do it a half tone lower 

2 3 4 and.. 

(musicians play) 

OK. Alright. Now it’s the last one and then you’re going to take all four of those and put them together. Alright this is the last one. I want you to start of on a C sharp--your version of a C sharp.  You know you gotta have it in your mind. And start pretty strongly, and hold it, and then bring it down so that its almost a whisper 

OK 2 3 4 and 

(musicians play) 

Now all of you could stand some time in the gym too! 

alright…….take those four things that you have: the first note, then a half tone lower and then a half tone lower than that, or then a half tone higher, and then this last one make a piece of music that lasts a minute. Out of it I want two soloists...I want three soloists. I want Jason, I want the alto, and I want ah...ah...whats his name, Forbes.  At various [points] you’ll take a solo. You'll make it relate in terms of the sonority. "

(recording was cut off)