These will just be a few notes that I took after Fred Frith blew my mind with his graphic scores last Saturday, during his two sets at The Stone. Fred didn't play, he just conducted a breath-taking octet of:
Violin: Mark Feldman
Cello: Okkyung Lee
Harp: Shelley Burgon
Piano: Sylvie Courvoisier
Drums and objects: Tim Keiper
Trumpet/cornet: Peter Evans
Electric guitar: Mario Diaz de Leon
Laptop, voice and electronics: Chuck Bettis
Anyway the band rocked from the beginning of the first set. I arrived there almost at 8:00pm and all the chairs (not too many, there's maybe like 40 chairs in total) were taken. I sat down on the floor in front of the first row, a few feet away from where Fred was conducting. The graphic scores were actually color photographs of what looked like street-floor patterns; for instance one was a picture of a cap of a sewerage (those that one can find in the street corners), another looked like a street formed with bricks, etc. But he had specific rules for the musicians; the tempo was read from the bottom-up, the pitch from left to right, etc. He had approximately 12 or 14 of those pictures, and there wasn't a specific order to them, he just started with a random one and he kept pulling the others out randomly as the music progressed.
However, there were a few parts that were common to both sets. There was this amazing part, for instance, where Fred pointed towards any musician, and that musician played a riff or a rhythm, and then said musician pointed to another musician who was supposed to follow with another melodic or rhythmic fragment, and that next musician pointed to another one, and so on. But my favorite part, which happened in both sets (which gave the impression that it was preconceived, maybe it was a specific instrucion for one of the scores), was when each musician played a fragment of a familiar tune, pretty much doing what they did when they signalled each other, but this time without signalling, in a more chaotic and out-of-context way which actually produced some super hilarious moments. The strings (specially Mark Feldman) kept playing fragments of classical pieces by Beethoven, Vivaldi and the like (at some point Okkyung Lee even played the "Wedding march", a hilarious thing); the drummer played a rock&roll beat, the guitarist played (in both sets) the first notes of "Welcome home sanitarium" by Metallica, etc.
There were also some specific preconceived solo moments in both sets, or so it seemed. Those (along with the two moments mentioned above) were my favorite parts of the sets. In the first set, Okkyung Lee and especially the impressive Mark Feldman outshone everyone. In the second set, Sylvie Courvoisier played what it seemed like a piano concerto, a fantastic one, with the other instruments providing tension and crescendos. And the laptop/electronics guy's work was really remarkable in the second set. He had a microphone next to him and a small battery of effects, including what seemed like a voice modulator. At one point he started to scream frantically into the mike, adding reverb and distorting his voice. He stopped, and Fred signalled him to do it again. He stopped, and Fred signalled to him again. This went on like 5 or 6 times, and it was quite mind-blowing.
Fred was actually a super nice person. I talked to him briefly after the first set, and he signed for me a CD of Mexican free jazz in which he played a few years ago (Germán Bringas'
El Engrane Amarillo). As soon as I introduced myself he told me he loved México, and when I showed him the CD he got excited and said "I'm on this! I have it". At the end of the first set, I met with trombone player Brian Allen (registered as Brain here in JC), another mega nice guy, and we walked around the Lower East Village. When we returned for the second set, Fred was outside and when he saw me he said to me, in loud voice and with his characteristic British accent: "So once was not enough, eh?"
I'm probably forgetting other cool moments of their music (oh I should mention a great use of silences, which added a lot of drama to the music, as well as the great work of the trumpet player, it was the first time I saw anyone doing circular breathing with a trumpet), but I can honestly say that it was a fantastic concert. And The Stone is a cool place, the sound is pretty good I think, although the room is quite small (I sat on the floor both sets, not a terribly bad thing in the second set because next to me in the floor was a very hot French girl with whom I talked a lot
), you can't bring in beer/alcohol there (that really sucks, can't imagine how the concert would have sounded with a few beers in my brain) and as they mentioned in another thread the bathroom is behind the musicians, so you can only go in either before or after the sets. Anyway it was a great experience, and a wonderful introduction for me to the NYC live free jazz scene.
[
Edit: Found the missing names of the musicians at The Stone's website]
Linear Mode
