The Racer Sessions

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SONIC RESIDUE

We were very pleased with the results of the Pungent Blast-themed Racer Session that we curated when we last played in Seattle this past July, so we’ve decided this time around to focus our attention on a more slippery yet similarly crucial aspect of music improvisation…

1. We ask everyone to consider the inherently theatrical aspects of improvised music in a live performance setting, with an emphasis on the physical gesture and how it corresponds to its sonic residual.

2. We encourage the creative application of movement, lighting, artifice, ritual, spectacle, and other means of attaining unimpeded out-of-body experiences that enhance music improvisation performance, enabling both the individual and the ensemble to soar beyond the restraining forces of ideology and identity.

3. We will begin the evening with a performance of our newest long-form composition, A WAY IN, which utilizes visual uniformity, ritualistic collective action, lighting effects, and a multitude of creative approaches to improvisation that keep the structure of the composition in a perpetually evolving state. We will also be performing our full set the next evening, Monday, March 26 at The Josephine, and our vinyl and merchandise will be available on sale at both events.

4. Thank you to everyone in the Racer Sessions improvisers’ community for honoring us with this opportunity once again!

http://realizationorchestra.com

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7RGprK6Xos

http://vimeo.com/35282834

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Committing to the creative process.

As professional musicians receiving an overflow of input working in this city, we can easily lose sight of our own individual creative processes.  We both play in multiple bands and teach a plethora of students, and while these experiences are inspiring in their own right and serve as mediums for our artistic sensibility, we feel the necessity to place more value on our own artistic journeys. This session serves as a call for us all to be committed to our own creative process. 

We play music to be present, to create transformative experiences, to achieve a meditative quieting of our internal monologues.  We play music for the artistry of it, because it is expressive, raw and beautiful.  When we create music with presence of mind, that music is transcendent. 

While the creative process certainly includes the playing of music, it also includes how you engage with life and inspiration and struggle and practice both in music-making and outside of it.  

What are you doing to nurture your artistic development?

“Why am I a musician?  Well, I kind of want to change the world” – Kate Olson

“The most holy of human rights is the right to art.” – José Antonio Abreu

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I will be presenting two pieces I have composed for a new quartet project. Joining me will be Cameron Sharif, Jarred Katz and Mark Hunter. The idea for this group is to serve as a vehicle to experiment with various concepts in improvisation and composition that I have been interested in recently. Many of these improvisational concepts have arisen in the context of the Racer Sessions. Navigating and exploring form in the midst of a free improv continues to fascinate me (as it does most of us). In the first two pieces for this group I have tried to facilitate ways in which free improv can interact with composed material. There are a few specific concepts that I was working with for each piece. 

The first piece is called “Doubt.” Most of the material is derived from one pitch collection. I tried to explore the different colors and tonalities within that collection. The focus of the piece became a relatively consonant and diatonic melodic idea set against chromatic bass figures, creating a kind of loose polytonality. The beginning of the piece meanders as it tries to find clarity, gradually picking up steam until it reaches an oasis where the generative material is stated and again pushes forward to new material. 

The second piece is called “Wind Chimes.” Most of the pitch material belongs to a collection taken from transcribing wind chimes in my backyard. The meditative timbre and rhythm of wind chimes have always intrigued me. Needless to say, it was difficult translating the bizarre overtones of the chimes to our 12-note chromatic system. Instead, I tried to focus on recreating a similar soundworld to what I experience listening to the wind chimes.

In the end, the ideas on which the piece is based are really not that important. They only serve as starting material for further development in the piece. As I have come into more musical contact with some of the great contemporary classical composers (Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg etc.), this idea of development in composition has become increasingly interesting. The nature of development, how and why aspects of a piece change and what effect it has on the listener is at the core of all great composition. 

The presentation of these pieces marks kind of a beginning of my own grappling with these ideas, which will continue for a long time. This brings me to another recent realization: that music is just an endless process. There’s no end destination, no goal except to engage deeply in the process. There’s always more to learn. Recognizing this has made it easier for me to be more creative and more free in musical endeavors because external pressure to reach a certain point is eliminated.

For the jam part of the night, I would like people to think of their improvs in this way and simply engage in the process of improvising, free from preconceived bench marks of right and wrong, good or bad. Hope to see you there!

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GRID: gregg keplinger, sean lane, cj stout, andrew rudd, erica carlson, kate olson, neil welch and jen gilleran.

GRID aspires to create an environment in which everyone’s ideas can be expressed. this group makes amazing choices and better ‘mistakes’ because i think fear and insecurity are accepted and confidence is born out of that. i love that i have absolutely no idea what is going to happen, even when i am conducting. i choose obvious hand signals to invite the audience into the choices musicians make and to feel the narrative more personally. thanks to the racer sessions staff for having me back.

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We will explore ways of cultivating melodic and harmonic control during free improvisation.

Melody and harmony are meant here strictly in terms of pitch. The nature of free improvisation makes it difficult to coordinate and structure melody and harmony in a manner similar to that of a pre-composed work. Despite this, they remain a compelling sources of musical tension and release, compositional unity and formal definition.

Most of the jams on Sunday will be structured so as to encourage playing and listening that facilitate attention to melody and harmony without compromising the sense of immediacy and emotional rawness that set the improvisatory experience apart.

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My opening piece draws from the narrative provided by the current financial crisis and the recent Occupy Movement. Particularly within the United States, this saga manifests conflicts that I believe transcend “99% versus 1%.” Certainly, the basic story is one of loss, and, for many, chronic disadvantage, at the hands of the powerful, but as a society, we must temper our idea of and question the purity of “the American dream” in the face of forces such as greed and unbridled self-advancement, which has motivated both consumer irresponsibility and preying financial institutions.

We see a landscape is dotted with people who want to live simply (or simply live), those who don’t, behemoths that create and behemoths that consume, and neon signs that promise to deliver “the quickest way to satisfy your cravings.”