The Racer Sessions

We collectively organize weekly sessions for new, experimental music. We meet every Sunday, 8pm-10pm at Cafe Racer, 5828 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA. racersessions@gmail.comThe Racer SessionsTumblr (3.0; @racersessions)http://racersessions.com/Stratic - February 19, 2012<p>Stratic is an improvising trio based in Oakland, CA. The group is made up of Aram Shelton (saxophone and processing), Michael Coleman (keyboards and electronics) and Alex Vittum (percussion). The trio’s approach to improvising combines elements of free jazz, post-rock and noise music. Through the combined use of acoustic instruments and electronics, the music treads the line between more traditional improvised music and some sort of futuristic soundscape. While the music is entirely improvised, the trio has been experimenting with different types of cues to explore new ways of making quick shifts and changing textures in an attempt to avoid the common pitfalls of free music. Using cues presents new challenges of staying present in the music while being ready at any point to make a shift or call for a change. In the end, the goal is to be as aware as possible and let the music guide the musicians.</p> <p><span>The members of Stratic are all very active in the Bay Area music scene. Aram leads groups under his own name as well as the sextet Marches and quartet Cylinder. He has toured extensively in the US and Europe and maintains very strong ties to the music scene in Chicago. Michael leads his own groups Arts & Sciences and CavityFang as well as being part of the collective trio Beep. Alex has worked with numerous Bay Area luminaries in both the improvised music world and the experimental pop scene. He has released an album of solo percussion and electronics and continues to explore the processing percussion in his own compositions. </span></p> <p><span><br/></span></p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5319316/Stratic3B.mp3">Listen to a track</a> from Stratic!</p> </blockquote>http://racersessions.com/post/17554697858http://racersessions.com/post/17554697858Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:24:00 -0500Andrew Olmstead - February 12th, 2012    <p class="MsoNormal"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/17535193998/tumblr_lzbcvqwNnr1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><img height="124" src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5319316/guitar.jpg" width="468"/></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span>I’ve played piano for about ten years, but more recently started learning guitar. By removing previous technical facilities developed on keyboards, I find myself oddly more capable of connecting to my music. Plucking strings and sliding around the fretboard, music feels different through the electric guitar. The instrument is no longer stationary, it moves with me, and I can feel it vibrate. This new interface is restructuring my mind. My goal this week is to encourage you to restructure yours.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span>For some portion of the jam session, please limit yourself physically in an effort to “relearn” how to play your instrument. The goal is to discover new musical choices, rather than shredding out music via muscle memory. Basic examples:</span></p> <ul><li><span>Play with only one finger, hand, or arm</span></li> <li><span>Limit yourself to a set of only a few pitches or drums</span></li> <li><span>Only play notes of a certain duration and volume level</span></li> <li><span>Try playing piano for the first time</span></li> </ul><p class="MsoNormal"><span>“Linguistics” is a piece I wrote for this session to map my previous musical experiences to a new instrument. It has a simple form, two composed sections connected by free improvisation. The first section consists of a unison line influenced by the music of Lee Konitz and George Russell. The ending section is actually influenced harmonically by the kind of music I was writing two years ago. While “Linguistics” does not mark a compositional development in my style, it has certainly helped me relate to music in a drastically new way. Joining me will be Ray Larsen (trumpet) and Thomas Campbell (percussion).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span>Big thank you to </span><a href="http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com/"><span>T&C</span></a><span> musician Jared Borkowski, who I’ve been taking guitar lessons from. Check out his legit website if you’re interested: </span><span><a href="http://northseattleguitarlessons.com/">northseattleguitarlessons.com</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Amazing local artist Fritha Strand painted my guitar’s pickguard! <a href="http://www.wix.com/frithastrand/frithastrand1">Her art</a> has been blowing my mind ever since I moved to Seattle. See above for a sneak peak.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span>By the way, this video is the result from my previous Racer Session: </span><a href="http://vimeo.com/30707299"><span>vimeo.com/30707299</span></a><span></span></p>  <p class="p1">_____________________</p> <blockquote> <p class="p1"><strong>Past Session:</strong></p> </blockquote> <ul><li><a href="http://racersessions.com/post/8390900820/andrew-olmstead-august-7th-2011" target="_blank">August 7th, 2011</a></li> </ul><blockquote> <p><strong>Website:</strong></p> </blockquote> <ul><li><a href="http://emptyroom.bandcamp.com" target="_blank">emptyroom.bandcamp.com</a></li> </ul>http://racersessions.com/post/17143652495http://racersessions.com/post/17143652495Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:20:00 -0500Natalie Hall - February 5th, 2012<p class="p1"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/17128026781/tumblr_lyy6egqRaG1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p1">I read somewhere that the humans have a tendency to turn judgments into law or pertaining to religion, judgments into divine commands. All too often, I will listen to string players on the radio or in a live performance, I am bugged by what I perceive is a flaw. Whether it is intonation, tone or technique, the flaw immediately clouds and classifies my listening experience as not satisfactory and I fail to actually hear the music. I would like my Racer session to be void of judgment. The music should stand alone. </p> <p class="p1">I invite the audience to close their eyes and listen to the beautiful harmonies and bizarre tones that are being created and to feel the relationship between the players. For those jamming, I want you to listen to each other. Once you fully comprehend the other musicians, you may comment. These jams should be treated like chamber music or a conversation. So if you cannot hear what the other players are saying, you need to play softer or turn down. Blasting away and second guessing yourself will be strictly forbidden. </p> <p class="p1">I will play <em>Grāmata čellam</em> (Book for solo cello) by Pēteris Vasks. </p> <p class="p1">Hugs, Natalie</p> <p><span>———</span></p> <p><span>Past sessions:</span></p> <ul><li><span><a href="http://racersessions.com/post/3268694253/natalie-hall-february-13th-2011">February 13th, 2011</a></span></li> <li><a href="http://racersessions.com/post/8700420371/natalie-hall-august-14th-2011">August 14th, 2011</a></li> </ul>http://racersessions.com/post/16766008428http://racersessions.com/post/16766008428Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:28:00 -0500Simon Henneman - January 29th, 2012<p class="MsoNormal"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/16744783707/tumblr_lylg6jC0DK1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong>The Blues: </strong>not as a structure, but as an experience, for lack of a better term.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You know, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, I had a whole other thesis and many examples including rebetika, shaker hymns, Ayler, and a bunch of other cool stuff to throw in there, but I think that this is one of those things that is so personal it makes it hard to pin down or put into words: we all experience it as having a different cause, we all experience it in a different way, but we all experience it at some point in time and my blues is not your blues. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For me, the blues envelops longing, desire, disappointment, hope, expectation; that which is or might be and how we feel about that. It’s something that is distinctly personal and created with great intent going beyond the notes being played and the technique that creates those notes. The expression of it, for me, is the expression of who you are.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Simon Henneman Quartet will be playing a couple pieces to start out the night with, even an actual blues, and I invite everyone to play along and explore with us and then the night will open up. I urge you improvisers following to explore being personal, even to the point of not making sense to you inside of the improvisation with other folks, and having great intent and really putting yourself out there.</p>  <p>———</p> <p>Past session: <a href="http://racersessions.com/private/3847823572/tumblr_li13aeOOkI1qahzi7">Gregg Keplinger & Simon Henneman - March 13, 2011</a></p> <p>New album on Table & Chairs: <a href="http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com/artists/wa/">WA: <em>Cross the Center</em></a></p>http://racersessions.com/post/16353883688http://racersessions.com/post/16353883688Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:28:00 -0500Don Berman - January 22nd, 2012<p><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/16335566325/tumblr_ly8jd1vm8S1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p><em><strong><span>NOW meets the PAST, plus CONDUCTION</span></strong></em><span><br/></span></p> <p><span></span><span>For this evening I am planning to combine live players, performing simultaneously with recorded players! My colleagues Kenny Mandell and Kate Olson will be joining me as we revisit a recording by <em>VOICES</em>, one of Kenny’s past projects. Over two decades past, <em>VOICES</em> sounds like it could have been played at Racer last week! We will blur the gap between the past and the present as we apply our 21st century sensibilities to this visit from spirits of the past.</span></p> <p><span>After this, we will ask players in the various areas of the audience to get their horns out and play from their seats, as part of a conduction that will follow our <strong>Present / Past</strong> piece. As a transition from the curated presentation to the free session, we will blur the <strong>Performer / Audience</strong> gap with this conduction. </span></p> <p><span>So come ready to listen, and then join in with the curator and jam, as always, after the presentation. </span></p> <p><span>I may have a list, as I did last time, calling random groups from it up to play so that everyone who wants to, can sign up and be guaranteed his or her chance to play. This worked great last time. It combined folks who perhaps have not improvised together before, allowed all who hoped to play, to get to play, AND there was still time left over for the free-for-allers to come up on their own and play after that.</span></p>http://racersessions.com/post/15935210278http://racersessions.com/post/15935210278Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:56:00 -0500Neil Welch & Two-Year Anniversary Festival - January 13th-15th, 2012<p><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/15930349291/tumblr_lxvjugXKNE1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p>Racer Sessions is turning TWO, and to celebrate, we’re hosting THREE days of live music at Cafe Racer, featuring <a href="http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com">Table & Chairs</a> artists and groups, some of whom originally premiered their music for Racer Sessions curations. A complete schedule of performers is listed at the bottom of this post.</p> <p>Read more about the history of Racer Sessions and the new T&C releases being debuted at: <a href="http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com/2012/01/racer-sessions-festival"><a href="http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com/2012/01/racer-sessions-festival">http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com/2012/01/racer-sessions-festival</a></a>.</p> <p>Curating the NINETY-NINTH session on <strong>SUNDAY, JANUARY 15th</strong> is <strong>Neil Welch</strong>, who also happened to curate our first ever session. Here is, in his own words, what you will hear on Sunday…</p> <p>———————————————————</p> <p class="p1"><strong><em>Light Cut the Darkness</em></strong></p> <ul><li>Daniel Rossi, conductor</li> <li>Neil Welch, tenor saxophone</li> <li>Ivan Arteaga, alto saxophone</li> <li>Greg Sinibaldi, bass clarinet</li> <li>Vincent LaBelle, trombone</li> <li>David Balatero, cello</li> <li>Natalie Hall, cello</li> </ul><p class="p1">In June of 2010 six astronauts from Russia, Europe and China voluntarily locked themselves inside a mock spaceship to simulate a journey to Mars. Called <em>Mars500 </em>and commissioned by the European Space Agency, the project lasted 520 days and included a simulated take-off, landing and Mars walk. The astronauts took daily urine and blood samples, maintained a rationed diet and accomplished over 100 experiments. Communication with planet Earth followed a 20-minute time lag, and mission control pre- planed power outages and system glitches for the crew to solve. On November 4th, 2011 the <em>Mars500</em> mission successfully came to an end. Bold accomplishments are preceded by small, less electrifying ones.</p> <p class="p1"><em>Light Cut the Darkness </em>is my second large ensemble piece composed for the <em>Sleeper Ensemble. </em>In <em>Sleeper</em> I was inspired by a narrative concerning the War in Iraq, and the <em>Mars500</em> project provided the inspiration to compose this new piece. In most of my small and large ensemble work I leave much open in the way of artistic interpretation and even the written material itself. With this new piece I challenged myself to compose with specific goals in mind, to write a piece intended to be performed as it’s written on the page, and to leave little up to abstraction. To do this I composed with my musicians in mind. With Ivan, Greg, Vincent, David and Natalie I’m in good company. </p> <p class="p1">In much of what I compose as a solo player or in groups of varying size, I allow myself to be inspired by my environment. Often the places my mind wanders and mistakes I make along the way prove to be the most fruitful moments in my music. I imagine the crew members own internal, psychological journey during this mock mission spanned the gamut from rapture to sorrow. I wanted to absorb myself in the story of the <em>Mars500</em> mission. To compose<em> Light Cut the Darkness</em>, August 2011 I cleared six days from my schedule and told everyone in my life I was going on vacation. I composed in the same room, with the same lighting and the same instruments at my disposal, and worked from 6am to 6pm. With a set duration of time and consistent working conditions I found that I became more productive, and the composition evolved as it saw fit.</p> <p class="p1">The music in<em> Light Cut the Darkness </em>is uncharacteristic for me. There are recurring diatonic themes and almost an equal balance of rhythmic counterpoint and parallel rhythmic movement in the voices. My harmonic choices seemed to follow suite in this. Often times a rhythmic counterpoint will repeat steadily, but the harmony changes dramatically in the voices. Other times single harmonic ideas will be transposed into different keys over parallel rhythms. I chose to use recurring melodic themes at various points throughout the piece. These primary themes are stated directly as in a traditional melody, or at other times may be used as a counter melody to new material but muted in a lower octave or by using different instruments. These themes often appear in more subtle places. For example, a theme could be slowed down dramatically while an earlier theme is played atop it in a much faster tempo. The improvised portions of the piece are written with pitch motives in mind, and the written sections preceding them are often dovetailed by the composed section to come after. These motives are given as a notated framework, then individually transposed and executed at will to create a collective group improvisation.</p> <p class="p1">As I’ve become more accustomed to the unique instrumentation of this ensemble, I’ve also become more aware of its possibilities as an orchestrator. I used the amazing dynamic and octave range of the cello as a primary melodic voice and to fill a more gentle low end in the ensemble. For example, I used cello as the bottom most note in the opening voicing of the piece. This forced us to balance our sound around this instrument and to play quieter and lighter despite the openness of the chord. When this same bit of material returns at a different point in the piece, the bass clarinet now take the bottom most pitch. This immediately changes our perception of how the chord could be played. </p> <p class="p1">Only in hind-site did I really see a primary musical influence at work on this piece. A recurring source for me is my never-ending fascination with Ornette Coleman’s album <em>American Skies</em>. In the final piece, ”Sunday in America” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_melDEf3XGM"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_melDEf3XGM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_melDEf3XGM</a></span></a> I’m amazed by his use of stacked perfect fifths. He transposes the same voicings in different instruments, then shifts these voicings in a seemingly endless combination of directions. The melodic material seems almost trumped by the density of the harmony around it, yet the voicings are so suspended that the ensemble as a whole sounds like a vertical tower of sound. The articulation is very light, and the overall dynamic level is mute, but the orchestration makes the ensemble seem like they’re playing extremely heavy-handed. </p> <p class="p2">A very special thank you to Ivan, Greg, Vincent, David and Natalie for working so hard on this piece with me to bring it to you this week! Now we start our 3rd year at the Racer Sessions!</p> <p>———————————————————</p> <p>Festival Schedule:</p> <p><em><strong>FRIDAY, JANUARY 13th, 2012, 9:00 PM - $5-15 suggested donation</strong></em></p> <ul><li><strong>Brandon Lucia</strong> – Drummer and computer wizard Brandon Lucia will perform a piece written for his music-generating program, the Chango.</li> <li><strong>Smallface</strong> – Keyboardist Aaron Otheim and cellist David Balatero blur the lines between the electronic and the acoustic; the composed and the improvised; the light and the dark.</li> <li><strong>Bad Luck</strong> – Chris Icasiano. Neil Welch. Drums. Saxophone. Evil.</li> <li><strong>After-party:</strong> Garrett Sand curates the VHS sessions at Die Alone. Join us after the show for a selection of his favorite films.</li> </ul><p><em><strong>SATURDAY, JANUARY 14th, 9:00 PM – WA, Cross the Center CD Release Show – $5-15 suggested donation</strong></em></p> <ul><li><strong>Chemical Clock </strong>– Cameron Sharif, Ray Larsen, Mark Hunter, Evan Woodle. “Fierce, abrasive, angular and breathtakingly precise…”—The Seattle Times</li> <li><strong>WA</strong> – Simon Henneman. Gregg Keplinger. ‘nuff said.</li> <li><strong>Burn List</strong> – Greg Sinibaldi, Cuong Vu, Aaron Otheim, Chris Icasiano. The veterans meet the young blood.</li> </ul><p><em><strong>SUNDAY, JANUARY 15th, 8:00 PM - No cover charge</strong></em></p> <p>Neil Welch curates the Racer Session with a new piece written for his Sleeper Ensemble.</p>http://racersessions.com/post/15574856145http://racersessions.com/post/15574856145Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:57:00 -0500Cameron Sharif - January 8th, 2012<p class="p1"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/15553125707/tumblr_lxilmdeMg31qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p1">If only the sun burned with a million flames the tiger we tamed and brought back to life, sitting on the edge of the bed first hand, the pale morning sun creeps up his cheek, the alarm clock empty wine glasses, behind the curtain - the rivers of lead and blood melt the stony hearts who sit in the garden’s square wearing black suits and bearing roses, the poses of our neighbors mourning loves ones past, a snake in an hour glass, licking the sand betwixt. Unfixed like paper airplanes raucous laughs and cackles, the hour grew late and in sunk the leather coach and baggy eyes and rye water. A moth in a puddle- thorax in a lake dead and floating in the center of a rainbow’s reflection on the runway, heavy baggage up the steps and closed, all beneath a boy’s magnified glass. A moldy bench and crusty leaves, the nametag rusty orange in memory of… cages on the pond lend hands to swans and some fowl, making friends the earthworms churn the dirt and make wine in an underground city. Scabs and paperclips and spines and a white light and retinal fusion a thousand inks in the eye of a storm that dabbed the land with green and purple floods. Brick buildings became jungle gym skyscrapers while the rest of us held on dangling in the clouds and when we fell it was into pillows. Landline telephones ringing feet below the soil in coffins by the hundreds, ringing loudly and desperately while the receiver conducts in white silence. Metallic sheets of statue heads pile up in the roundabout and wrinkle the steel of unsuspecting cars splinters in the glass disperse like spiders. Ferris wheel covered in mustard caused the lamentable cause that the band played on to, to his baton his mustache sweat and brow playing on under helium voices, televisions and paper cups, warming up with scales in a congregation of sisters. Blue eggs in baskets at the end of checkered carpet hallways processional tarps on the grounds, while playing on and on to a rosemary theme in Eb the sun bore a hole in the blacktop and fire ants lapped up ice cream and brought it before the ruler. </p> <p class="p2">***</p> <p class="p1">I wrote the above poem after I went for a walk. I frequently go on walks by myself. During the summer, I like setting out for an urban hike in the hours before sunset – generally 7-9pm or so. Sometimes I’ll go for longer: 5 or 6pm to 9pm. I often start out with no destination in mind and don’t give very much thought to each turn I take. I’m always interested where I wind up when the sun sets. The sun sets and I’ll find a spot to sit. I’ll sit there for a bit, and then find a bus home after night has rolled in. In the winter, my walks are different. Because it gets dark so early, these are in what feels like the dead of night. I don’t enjoy walking through crowded urban areas during these walks as much as I do quaint suburban ones, where it’s still and quiet and every noise from each house, animal or tree stands out at me. My neighborhood is quiet and lined with trees. At night it’s still and no one is outside. The 20 X 10 block plot of land called Maple Leaf is something of a labyrinthine campsite to me. There aren’t really sidewalks, and roads are wide and have dirt or gravel shoulders. But the houses are still more or less on a grid. When I walk around Maple Leaf at night, I always try to imagine it without the houses – how dense the forest would be, and how terrifying it would be to find myself alone in this forest, in the cold. It is a formidable feeling. </p> <p class="p1">If I walk for much longer than an hour, my body and mind seem to warm up and become engaged on some level. I start to hear an internal dialogue particularly loudly – just the natural flow of thoughts that enter my mind. I’ve found that without distraction, this dialogue really comes to the forefront of my consciousness. At the same time the consistent rhythm of walking gives me a sort of relative stillness, and I feel like I’m no longer in motion. On these walks I’m often fascinated with how my internal thoughts are interrupted by the slightest of noises that I hear from the environment around me, and how these sensory inputs affect my thoughts and my rhythm of walking. In the past walking around and trying to be attuned to my environment has lent itself nicely to creative ideas.</p> <p class="p1">I will present a piece of solo keyboard music, which like the poem above, has been influenced by the sensation of long, silent walks. </p> <p class="p1">For the jam, I would be really happy to hear some soloists share their own inner dialogue. The improvisations don’t have to be influenced by walking in any way, but if they are influenced by your interactions with the environment around you, then that is a definite plus. When, or if, there are no more people who would like to improvise solo pieces, we can continue with group improvisations as usual. </p> <p class="p3">Thanks and I hope to see you there!</p> <p><strong>Past sessions:</strong></p> <ul><li><a href="http://racersessions.com/post/571714249/cameron-sharif-may-9th-2010">May 9th, 2010</a></li> <li><a href="http://racersessions.com/post/1467733555/november-7th-cameron-sharif">November 7th, 2010</a></li> <li><a href="http://racersessions.com/post/5611960681/cameron-sharif-may-22nd-2011">May 22nd, 2011</a></li> </ul>http://racersessions.com/post/15190470864http://racersessions.com/post/15190470864Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:02:00 -0500Tari Nelson-Zagar - January 1st, 2012<p><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/15165025816/tumblr_lx5maxdpyH1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p>Hi Racers - tonight I’m working with transportation, cycles, and pitch layers. Here’s some background:<br/><br/>I was 10 or 11 when my father (a piano tuner) taught me how to hear beats when he was tuning, and how the lowest strings on a spinet lacked a fundamental (they’re too short to create one!), but they project the sense of a fundamental through the presence of certain parts of the harmonic series. I wasn’t much older when my brother showed me how to tune a violin using difference tones. When I was 12, my violin teacher taught me a tone-production technique that she learned - it involved deeply overdriven vertical string movement combined with slow lateral string movement. The product was an intense sound that often generated some unusual resultant pitches. <br/><br/>So these became some of the prominent features of my lexicon. My concern with pitch, the qualities of a sound, the desire to experience a more perceptual part of hearing (not the actual sound), along with the “happy accidents”, or emergent qualities, of cycles of sound. <br/><br/>I should probably also tell you that I struggle with my instrument a lot - the violin. It is small, and there is a very high and annoying string that I have never been comfortable with, that I’m always trying to figure out how to use properly. (The “E” string.) <br/><br/>So, <em><strong>transportation</strong></em>: seeking a transportative experience. (Ecstasis is a part of this - to stand outside oneself, it’s definitely transportative) <em><strong>cycles</strong></em> & <em><strong>pitch layers</strong></em>: hopefully the means to said transportation! Specifically, I’m working perceptions generated by pitch manipulations. <br/><br/>Samples:<br/><br/><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/1-1-12/Polymorphia%20for%20Strings.mp3" target="_blank">Penderecki - Polymorphia for 44 strings</a> - cycles and pitch layers. did this guy write the book or what? There is an eternity in this piece, and it teaches me to listen all over again at each hearing. A phenomenal experience as a live performance.</p> <p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/1-1-12/istrians.mp3" target="_blank">Istrian singing</a> (women) - emergent ecstatic qualities don’t get any clearer than when you hear this stuff live.</p> <p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/1-1-12/Louange%20a%20l%27Immortalite%20de%20Jesus.mp3" target="_blank">Messaien - Louange a l’Immortalite de Jesus</a> - the internal sound of the string is really intense, the interplay between the ringing of the piano chords and the amplitude shifts of the violin pitch (vibrato) is interesting to me.<br/><br/>Performers:<br/><br/>I’ll be in good company with <a href="http://www.tomswafford.com/" target="_blank">Tom Swafford</a> and <a href="http://hearbyron.com/default.aspx" target="_blank">Byron Au Yong</a>. They will help me to work through some compositions that I have prepared for Racer.</p>http://racersessions.com/post/14934369072http://racersessions.com/post/14934369072Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:08:00 -0500Evan Woodle - December 18th, 2011<p><p class="p1"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/14443096238/tumblr_lwfq10HaE81qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p1">For this installment of the Racer Sessions, I have composed a piece of music heavily inspired by Indonesian gamelan. Joining me in its performance will be King Tears Bat Trip.</p> <p class="p3">Since its inception a little over a year ago, the essential sound of KTBT has comprised a fusion of Haitain Vodou music and free jazz, with the latter style being most notably in the vein of Albert Ayler. This piece is my attempt to essentially replace those Haitian influences with Indonesian ones, hence posing a new challenge of finding a balance between two contrasting musical styles.</p> <p class="p1">I was introduced to Indonesian gamelan music this Fall Quarter through an Ethnomusicology class at the UW. I vividly remember being completely blown away after the professor played a 10 second sample of the music on the first day of class. Everything about it was foreign and extremely intriguing to me: The pitches, which come from a unique tuning system that utilizes microtones, were clearly not of the Western, equal tempered variety; the organization and conceptualization of rhythm was unlike anything I had ever heard, as it has several layers of complexity as well as a particularly mind-bending factor of melodic tempo fluctuation (called <em>Irama</em>); and the way a vocal soloist elaborated upon a skeletal melody (called the <em>balungan</em>) was profoundly beautiful and awe-inspiring. </p> <p class="p1"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/12-18-11/04%20Ldr.%20Pangkur%20Plg%20Br.m4a" target="_blank"><em>Ladrang Pankur</em></a></p> <p class="p1">Now, there are many elements of gamelan music that I would be simply foolish (at this time, anyway) to try and recreate in a manner that even approaches authenticity. For instance, the rhythmic concepts with which a gamelan hand drummer improvises and the techniques with which a gamelan vocalist elaborates upon a <em>balungan</em> are far beyond me, and shall remain as such unless I were to study the music regularly, diligently, and with a master practitioner in the art.</p> <p class="p1">Certain elements, however, are more reasonably transplantable; I was able to incorporate gamelan concepts of form, melody, and rhythm into my piece. My piece also uses a pelog scale (below), one of the two essential gamelan scales.</p> <p class="p1">Pelog scale (the numbers on the left indicate the scale degree, and the “+” and “-” signs indicate whether the pitch is to be played up or down a quarter-step, respectively):</p> <p class="p1">1: D+</p> <p class="p1">2: E</p> <p class="p1">3: F+</p> <p class="p1">4: Ab+</p> <p class="p1">5: A+</p> <p class="p1">6: B-</p> <p class="p1">7: C+</p> <p class="p1">With regards to form and melody, parts of my piece essentially follow a basic model that is widely used in gamelan music. Check out the following notation (which also uses the pelog scale) for a <em>balungan</em> to accompany a traditional <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IzFuyn_--0" target="_blank"><em>Beskalan Putri</em> dance</a> (read one line at a time, from left to right, then repeat; the periods indicate a beat although there is no note to be articulated):</p> <p class="p1">. 2 . 1 . 2 . 6 . 2 . 1 . 6 . 5</p> <p class="p1">. 6 . 5 . 4 . 2 . 6 . 5 . 2 . 1</p> <p class="p1">The rhythm of the melody here is stagnant in relation to the “pulse,” though the “pulse” in gamelan music is quite elastic. After some time, the above <em>balungan</em> is to be followed by the one below, which contains twice as many notes at twice the frequency:</p> <p class="p1">6 5 6 1 3 2 1 6 4 5 6 1 2 1 6 5</p> <p class="p1">2 1 6 5 3 1 3 2 5 6 5 4 2 6 2 1</p> <p class="p1">You will perhaps notice that neither melody uses all seven pitches of the pelog scale. This is a common practice in gamelan music, as it is generally favored to pick a subset of pitches that outline a certain mode. In writing my piece, however, I found the melodies I ended up with to contain all seven pitches. This was likely just a result of me paying more attention to my intuition than to the rules of gamelan.</p> <p class="p1">With regards to rhythm, I took the concept of rhythmic elasticity that is abound in gamelan music and interpreted it more broadly to apply to certain sections of my piece. For instance, one section features three drummers maintaining a steady groove while one improvises in a more liberal manner. Another section of the piece features drum patterns derived from rhythms played by a <em>gamelan gong beleganjur</em> ensemble during a post-cremation purification ritual called <em>memukur.</em></p> <p class="p2"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/12-18-11/05%20Music%20For%20Memukur%20Procession.m4a" target="_blank"><em>Music for Memukur Procession</em></a></p> <p class="p1">Finally, a group improvisation section I’ve included in the middle of the piece serves not only as a bridge between two disparate composed sections, but also as a chance for the group to display its true character in the context of these new influences.</p></p>http://racersessions.com/post/14254622055http://racersessions.com/post/14254622055Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:52:00 -0500Maria Mannisto - December 11, 2011<p><p class="MsoNormal"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/14103898190/tumblr_lw2psmc1Rf1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The most important aspect of an opera singer’s training is gaining the technique necessary to be heard over a large orchestra through the entire range of the singing voice. By learning to control breath pressure, relax the larynx, and manipulate the resonating chamber inside the throat and mouth, a singer can cultivate the <em>singer’s formant</em> (a peak of spectral energy at around 3000 Hz not present in orchestral instruments) necessary to successfully be heard without a microphone. This results in the characteristic opera tone: free, rich and expressive, with a large spectrum of overtones and the ever-criticized vibrato.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a trained opera singer with a particular fondness for contemporary musical styles, I’m sometimes disappointed that classical singing and contemporary/popular music aren’t more compatible. When singing modern and popular music I seldom get to utilize my full range of volume, pitch and expression. Instead I often find myself manipulating my voice to control volume and vibrato, and thus create a sound that seems to be more pleasing to the modern ear. I’d like to see what happens when I combine my training in the <em>bel canto</em> singing style with my love of beat-oriented electronic music.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a composition that I will present at this Sunday’s session, I’ve juxtaposed classical art song with experimental electronica and glitch – something which to my knowledge is rarely done other than in house remixes of existing classical songs and arias. My piece is for voice and string quartet, with electronics composed and improvised by Justin Parker. The vocals will be sung in the <em>bel canto</em> style, with long florid lines interspersed with quicker coloratura, utilizing a full range of pitch and expression. I wanted to primarily showcase the voice and electronics, but felt that just those two elements alone would sound a bit too chaotic and unstable. I needed some harmonic “glue”, and a string quartet playing primarily holding long static chords seemed like a good choice! </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Joining me on Sunday are:</p> <ul><li>Andrew Joslyn – violin</li> <li>Mitchell Drury – violin</li> <li>Seth May – viola</li> <li>Natalie Hall – cello</li> <li>Justin Parker - electronics</li> </ul><p class="MsoNormal">For the improv following my piece, just do what you do best. Be true to your particular musical training and background, and don’t be afraid to combine styles, genres and unlikely instrumentations. I look forward to playing with and for you on Sunday!</p> <p class="MsoNormal">… free punch and pie …</p> </p>http://racersessions.com/post/14029081079http://racersessions.com/post/14029081079Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:42:00 -0500Luke Bergman, December 4th, 2011<p><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/13765235308/tumblr_lvppsysOO21qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p>Lately at Racer Sessions I have been focused on improvising with a simple approach: beginning to play without planning anything and taking whatever it is that I play in the first couple seconds and using only that idea for a long time. I like to think about stretching the phrase length out to infinity and developing my initial idea with a rate of change that’s very slow. I’ve found that it’s one effective way for me to play abstract stuff with other musicians and still retain the feeling that everything I play flows clearly from the first idea i had. I enjoy the surprise of how the character of my first idea is unfolded over time as other musicians react to it and how it bends to the things that they are playing.</p> <p>I find that I am most successful in creating spontaneous group music when I am able to minimize the amount of thinking, planning or asserting that I am doing in the moment, and I’m able to just flow with everything without trying. Therefore it’s useful to have a little seed to start out with so that I don’t have to spend time thinking of what I can create, I can simply stir it around and let it become a part of the group.</p> <p>I wanted to make a piece that exaggerated the starkness of the relationship between the quick idea that I start with, and a group’s contribution of how my idea is defined over time. I decided to make a recording and have a trio improvise along to it. In an effort to preserving the spontaneity of my contribution, the directions for the recording were decided in a very short amount of time (about a minute and a half) so I wouldn’t be able to second-guess and/or revise any of my initial ideas. Instead I would plan everything out down to very specific details and then execute it being as true as possible to my directions.</p> <p>My idea was to record myself running with a portable 4-channel digital recorder. I would run from my house to a bridge on the Burke Gilman Trail and back to my house. Then separate the way out to one track in the left channel and the way back to the right channel. I hoped to capture both the stomping foot noises and breathing noises with surround recording.</p> <p>Then I would record a five-part bowed bass texture. Each part would be a cluster of microtones surrounding a central pitch and each part would be slowly heaving at slightly different speed and direction. Each part starts more sparsely and becomes more frequent over time. The parts layer themselves in and are out of sync when they begin, but eventually come into sync.</p> <p>The parts intensify in a number of ways and eventually turn into slow glissandos approaching a final chord. </p> <p>All beginning and ending pitches where decided based on rough geometric patterns that I projected onto the fingerboard of the bass. Also all 5 parts were recorded separately so I wasn’t able to use my ear to adjust pitches and rhythms to be more harmonious on the whole. This was an effort to make the way that the parts interact to be an element that I had little control over.</p> <p>Next, I planned to highlight all “accidental” (**NON-CAR) noises above a certain VU level (i.e. bow smacking the side of the bass, speech of passersby, bird chirping etc) by doubling them on the glockenspiel with my best approximation of the pitch that they occurred as. </p> <p>Finally, I wanted three musicians to improvise along with my recording. These three are Wally Shoup on saxophone, Natalie Hall on cello and Gregg Keplinger on drums. I selected them because I knew that they were all capable of playing captivating solo improvisations though I had never heard any of them play together, so that would be an element beyond my prediction. My only directions to them were, “wait for a while to come in and make sure there are times when each of you is playing alone or two of you are playing as a duo.”</p> <p>I will also have two improvising exercises to impose on the first two ensembles after my piece is finished. They will be based on another approach to elongating initial ideas in improvising.</p> <p>I hope to see you on Sunday!</p> <div></div>http://racersessions.com/post/13541008750http://racersessions.com/post/13541008750Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:00:00 -0500Ivan Arteaga - November 27th, 2011<p><p class="MsoNormal"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/13441386037/tumblr_lvctvy5lyo1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I do not consider myself any form of composer, and hardly think of myself yet as a student of composition even though I <strong>just</strong> started composition studies at the UW. I realize however, that the way in which I think about music and improvisation - even how I’ve been <em>rehearsing</em> in the past - is very compositional. For my session, essentially I am going to share the work I’ve been doing recently with bringing in compositional thought and practice with the experience of free-improvisation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Spending a lot of time over the past 4 years focusing on improvisation, I have been trying to experience improvised pieces, and my own improvisations, in the exact same way I would a classically composed piece of music. (For that matter, any other music I listen to!) I have recently discovered a new term for the idea of some all knowing omnipotent power that judges music. It’s been called “The Big Ear,” and I like the phrase. What this means for my improvisation, is that I am work-shopping with the elements of music that are compositional, in a very explicit way, within improvs. This can range anywhere from small scale phrase motif relationships, to the overall form of a piece. The reason for doing this, is really to bring the art of improvisation up more and more to art that can be more effective, and moving, to “The Big Ear,” which presumably judges <em>all music past and present!</em></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What is amazing is that some of the best improvisations that we hear at the racer sessions for example, are inherently treated compositionally while still being free and interactive/communicative in the moment. All I’ve been trying to do is “practice” improvisation from the point of view of a listener who <em>might not necessarily know</em> that it’s nothing more than a “piece of music.” This means that being in command of music elements at work in “Great Composition” is essential. (e.g. tension, release, pacing, expectations, form, temporal relationships of sounds, intent, etc)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Joining me for the session will be Evan Woodle on drums, and Cameron Sharif on keyboards. We have been working together as a group on improvising/composing in real time. We’ll be playing a slightly structured improvisation <strong>twice.</strong> Audience members will have a sheet with the same basic structure that we have worked out. The idea here is that as a listener, both pieces should function overall in the same way, while all of the source material, and content of that function are products of the free – improvisation interactions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Additionally, I have been working on a composition. It is a piece for solo saxophone, heavily inspired by the work of our very own Neil Welch. The piece will be presented in still a very improvisational format because that is how I’m creating it. In keeping with the theme of improvisation/composition, I have been piecing this work together by recording lots of short improvisational snippets of the “source material” for the piece. By listening back to the improvisations, I have started to work out the directions, pacing, balance of sonorities, and level of interest between sections all in the space of my own head, not writing it down on a score. By doing this, I hope to maintain the ethos of an intensely improvised presentation, while treating much of the musical functionality in a compositional way. The result is that, on a micro level, the sounds and particularities of a given texture are dealt with improvisationally, while the trajectory, and ordering of the landscapes that I travel through, is beginning to be very intentional, and composed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For the session, I would like to alternate between completely free improvisations (the norm), and structured exercises that I will have prepared. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">See you Sunday!</p></p>http://racersessions.com/post/13313400485http://racersessions.com/post/13313400485Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:16:00 -0500Brandon Lucia - November 20th, 2011<p><div> <p class="p2"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/13099594798/tumblr_luzuk7HlbY1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p2">I will be presenting two new pieces of music this week.</p> <p class="p2">No Air, Movement 3: Light and Motion</p> <p class="p2">—————————————————</p> <p class="p2">When I last curated the Racer Sessions about 6 months ago, I presented a piece called <a href="http://racersessions.com/post/4570212378/brandon-lucia-april-17th-2011"><span class="s1">No Air</span></a>. No Air was written for the Chango, which is a program that I made for making music. In my first performance, I manipulated the Chango using the mouse and keyboard of my computer. A simple linear function of the position of the mouse cursor dictated how loud each of a fixed grid of tones should be. While this interface was adequate, it did not feel especially expressive. I started my last performance with a caveat that the piece I was about to play was missing a movement because I had not had time to make the software that I needed to play that movement. So to start this week, I am going to finish playing No Air.</p> <p class="p2">In conversations with people about a year ago, when I first got the idea for the Chango, I thought it would be interesting to make an interface based on light and motion. So for this movement of No Air, I am using video, rather than using linear interpolation from a single point to determine the amplitude of each tone. In effect, the amount of light in each part of the video determines how loud tones in that part of the grid should be. The instrument can be played in a darkened environment, using a light (I prefer a headlamp). As an alternative to using light, I have also made an interface that detects which parts of the video show motion. Points in the image with more motion make tones in their part of the grid louder.</p> <p class="p2">Using the new interfaces to the Chango, I have written the third movement to No Air, entitled “Light and Motion”. You can download and run the original mouse-based Chango or the new light-and-motion-based Chango on your Mac from <a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/blucia0a/chango.html"><span class="s1">here</span></a>.</p> <p class="p2">The Internet is an Apt Mother Fucker </p> <p class="p2">————————————————</p> <p class="p2">Background:</p> <p class="p2">Apt Mother Fucker is a piece of computer music that I originally wrote as a tribute to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Eastman"><span class="s1">Julius Eastman</span></a>. His music is generally many-layered, repetitive with minor variation over long time scales, and punctuated with references to elements of modern culture. He is also known for giving his pieces deliberately inflammatory titles, such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_QGQcKq1ik"><span class="s1">Evil Nigger</span></a>, for the purpose of making a political or cultural statement. The linked piece is one of my favorites. The score is <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/dtoub/evil_nigger.pdf"><span class="s1">here</span></a> and really sheds light on his process for creating the piece.</p> <p class="p2">The Piece:</p> <p class="p2">Apt Mother Fucker is about The Internet. The Internet is awesome. I love The Internet. The Internet has a lot of stuff, though. Most of it is noise. Some of it is intelligible, but redundant or unclear. And some is actually information, put there by another real person.</p> <p class="p2">Apt Mother Fucker is based on algorithmic manipulation of the main theme from Evil Nigger. The theme is deeply layered and perturbed in time by a duration drawn from a probability distribution. </p> <p class="p2">The piece also relies on computer synthesized ”mumbling” derived from a statistical model I built from text on the internet (Wikipedia). The model, and a tool to build models from arbitrary text are available <a href="https://github.com/blucia0a/Mumbley"><span class="s1">here</span></a>. I will be improvising with this speech synthesis model during the performance. </p> <p class="p2">My friend <a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/afader/"><span class="s1">Tony Fader</span></a> made a system that listens to questions, finds answers to them on the internet, and recites carefully chosen answers back to you. Tony will be improvisationally conversing with the internet during the performance.</p> <p class="p2">There isn’t a theme for the improvisations this week, but it would be cool to hear things that are inspired by the ideas in Julius Eastman’s work, light, motion, or The Internet.</p> </div></p>http://racersessions.com/post/12892639215http://racersessions.com/post/12892639215Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:01:00 -0500Brennan Carter - November 13th, 2011<p><p class="p1"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/12775600383/tumblr_lumu2klIsB1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p1">Greetings!</p> <p class="p1">Recently, when sitting down at the piano I have been really drawn to the sounds of polytonality. I would like to explore these sounds in ways other than my left and right hand, and include other musicians. I will have a structured form for a poly tonal “free” piece. The instruments will be divided into bass instruments and treble instruments, each having their own sonority movement. The only information I will give to performers is the chords, and performers will be encouraged to stick mainly to pentatonic scales. </p> <p class="p1">Performers TBD. Email me if you are interested in playing <brennancarter <@> <a href="http://gmail.com/"><span class="s1">gmail.com</span></a>></p> <p class="p1">Have a great week!</p> <p class="p1">Brennan</p></p>http://racersessions.com/post/12522943324http://racersessions.com/post/12522943324Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:30:00 -0500Greg Campbell - November 6th, 2011<p><p class="p1"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/12455820182/tumblr_lu9vkhoTFr1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p1">We’ll be doing two pieces, each inspired by ideas from different composers. </p> <p class="p3">The first piece has two inspirations. The first is Henry Threadgill, who has offered the compositional world many ideas over the last forty years or so, and I’m borrowing only one — the ideas of pairs within a larger ensemble, creating tiny “sections.” (Others have used the idea, too, of course, notably Christian Wolff, in his aptly named piece “Pairs.”) Threadgill’s famous Sextett included (in a brave move, as even drummers like me will acknowledge) two drummers, and the cello and bass often played in unison, octaves, or harmony.</p> <p class="p3">audio 1: <a target="_blank" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/04%20What%20Was%20That_.mp3">The Henry Threadgill Sextett, “What Was That?”</a> from the album “When Was That?” (1982, About Time)</p> <p class="p3">In a later band, Very Very Circus, he took the idea further, using two (and sometimes even three) tubas, two electric guitars, and even pairing his own alto saxophone (maybe like one of those famous Emily Dickinson “slant rhymes,” which intentionally don’t quite rhyme, but almost) with a French horn. Check out the bass line created by the two interlocking tuba parts here:</p> <p class="p3">audio 2: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zabSUKHMAVk">“Little Pocket Size Demons”</a> from the album “Too Much Sugar for a Dime”</p> <p class="p4">The second inspiration for the piece is Igor Stravinsky — another composer who generated any number of thought-provoking compositional strategies. In this case, I’m interested in his explorations of duration (just long and short) in his “Symphonies of Wind Instruments.” As you can hear, these ideas about duration are sandwiched in between other, more dense passages. </p> <p class="p3">audio 3: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIL7wnx6Yy8&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL0ED7C65C525C099D">Stravinsky, “Symponies of Wind Instruments”</a></p> <p class="p3">_____</p> <p class="p3">The second piece has some wider influences that include very rhythmic styles of music, from Balinesian gamelan to African drumming, and even to minimalist composers like Steve Reich. There are some sections of metric modulation here, too, maybe invoking (though not too intentionally) Elliott Carter. Overall, though, the texture here might be closer to the dense canons created by Larry Polansky, with the feeling of polyrhythm and collage and semi-structured improvisation all at once.</p> <p class="p3">audio 4: <a target="_blank" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36478272/Racer%20Sessions%20%28IV%29/03%20four-voice%20canon%20%2317%2C%20Guitar%20Canon.mp3">Larry Polansky, “Four-Voice Canon #17, Guitar Canon”</a></p> <p class="p3">I should note that my original idea for tonight was to introduce the Racer community to the fabulous octogenarian clarinetist Bill Smith, who can easily be described as one of the godfathers (along with trombonist Stuart Dempster) of creative improvisatory music in Seattle. This is a guy who studied with Darius Milhaud, played with Dave Brubeck, won the Prix de Rome and Prix de Paris, not to mention two Guggenheim grants, and, with Dempster, co-led the Contemporary Group at the UW (where I first met him) for 30 years. He’s still busy as a performer and composer, having premiered a “jazzopera” in New York just last year. But sadly, Bill recently suffered a small heart attack and wasn’t able to join us tonight. If you’re interested in creative music — composition, improvisation, whatever — you should look him up, and try to see him when he makes one of his rare appearances in town.</p></p>http://racersessions.com/post/12207009830http://racersessions.com/post/12207009830Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:18:00 -0400Jared Borkowski - October 30th, 2011<p><span> </span></p> <p class="p1"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/12149030672/tumblr_ltww3yulOI1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="p1">I’ve learned that experimenting, even in the genre of “experimental music”, is a very difficult thing to do. It takes courage. I fear it, which is why I must do it. Experimenting is scary because it is so new. It’s the unknown. The more familiar you get with what is going to happen and how to navigate something, the less experimental it becomes, even if the results stay relatively the same throughout the process. </p> <p class="p1">I feel the need to explore; to find my own path; to truly experiment until I feel comfortable in my own skin; to examine all of the possibilities that interest me so that I may someday have a sense of my true identity as a musician.</p> <p class="p1">Two things that I am very interested in are poetry and electronic music. For my Racer Session I am going to perform a series of spoken word pieces which will be electronically manipulated live. I am going to improvise with the poems both lyrically and electronically. Portions of the piece will be recited over a pre-recorded song that has been slowed down many times over. The words will likely be interrupted by excursions of sound manipulation and sound synthesis. </p> <p class="p1">For the jam session I just want people to be honest. Be honest about who you are musically. Listen for what interests <em>you</em>, what sounds good to <em>you, </em>and try to be that. Investigate why you are part of this. Investigate what you want out of it and why. Be honest. Avoid thinking about what is expected of you, or what has worked in the past, or what works for someone else. Whether it’s a new idea or an old idea, just be yourself. Use all of your strength and inspiration to be honest. </p> <p class="p1"><span> <img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltlsxtlwkU1qaa2w0.jpg"/></span></p>http://racersessions.com/post/11896353005http://racersessions.com/post/11896353005Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:10:00 -0400Kate Olson - October 23rd, 2011<p><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/11852006016/tumblr_ltjx1cQDL21qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p><span>Kate + 8 </span></p> <p><span>Sometimes sound is so lush, you can wrap yourself up in it. Enjoy.</span></p>http://racersessions.com/post/11653607032http://racersessions.com/post/11653607032Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:44:00 -0400Jen Gilleran - October 16th, 2011<p><p class="MsoNormal"><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/11559978452/tumblr_lt6z99YLhO1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em>“When you’re watching a performer of any art, don’t you find yourself constantly wondering about the ‘real’ person behind the art? I do, all the time. My dance reveals that ‘real’ me; and its truth, I hope, speaks to the audience.”</em><span> </span>Min Tanaka<span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In 1997<span>,</span> I had the great fortune of living for four weeks in Hakushu, Japan on a farm owned by the choreographer Min Tanaka. Eight<span> </span>dancers were selected for a piece based on the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe to which Susan Sontag contributed a libretto<span>. <span> </span></span>Each morning I rose at 5am, harvested onions, carrots and soybeans, cleared trees and watched the dancers rehearse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Min’s work is inspired by the Butoh artist, Hijikata. Some qualities of grotesque and excruciatingly slow movement are similar to both Hijkata and the Butoh tradition, yet Min is more concerned with finding the “origin of dance”.<span> </span>His process explores territory designed to provoke visceral reactions by placing the artist in beautiful and terrifying circumstances. Certainly he is among a community of artists that approach their work with this intention, but it was one of my first experiences as a witness to it and it changed my view of my own work. <span> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Min instructed his dancers to kneel blindfolded in the center of a goat pen with the goal of embracing the animal with no resistance. <span> </span>This could take hours, and the dancers experienced a vulnerability that asked them to confront a variety of emotions from fear to exaltation.<span> </span>Sometimes a dancer would present Min with movement ideas after spending days on their own, only to be met with the thundering words “Too much dance!” Some had breakdowns and went back to the States, particularly as the exercises explored taboos of madness and killing. Like Andre Gregory recounted in his play ‘My Dinner with Andre’ after his workshops in Poland with Jerzy Grotowski, many participants described a sense of being completely lost. They could not reconcile what had been discovered with their previous identity.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For those that stayed on, the performance weeks later mirrored the process. Haggard, thin, lost and found, the performers obliterated the proscenium<span>,</span> and consequently the role of the audience. The viewers were revealed as complex humans grappling with the gamut of emotions the artists themselves had experienced. It was a frenzied gospel moment. Some cried, some froze, some gasped, and some shot out of their seats forgetting all social graces to announce wildly<span>,</span> “THIS IS SHIT!” before they stormed out. Afterwards, Min would forsake positive reviews from gushing fans to replay the moment. “They FELT something!” he would say, with joy. He was fascinated by the quality of rage demonstrated and celebrated the depth of reaction.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am rarely moved by art that fights to keep identity intact and the audience comfortable. In music, this has nothing to do with the choice of loud or soft, as sometimes silence is deafening and a true challenge to hold. <span> </span>I think it starts with an intention and I strive to play from a place that is, for better or for worse, Me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am not sure how these experiences will translate this evening, but I see myself in a supportive community at Racer. I am honored to be a part of it. Gregg Keplinger, Sean Lane, C.J. Stout and Erica Carlson will be joining me for the intro pieces. I may ask certain other musicians to join if it feels right. Inspired by my time in NYC witnessing John Zorn’s game pieces, I will be using hand signals to conduct. Thank you!</p> </p>http://racersessions.com/post/11337948818http://racersessions.com/post/11337948818Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:30:00 -0400Endangered Blood clinic - Saturday, October 15th, 2011<p><span>Seattle’s new music record label Table & Chairs and the 2011 Earshot Jazz Festival are proud to present a workshop with New York-based band Endangered Blood.<br/><br/>Where: Cafe Racer<br/>When: Saturday, October 15 - 2:00-4:00pm<br/>Cost: $10<br/><br/>The members of this band have been a huge inspiration for many of us here in the Racer Sessions/T&C community and it’s exciting to have them here to spread their knowledge!<br/><br/>Endangered Blood:<br/>Chris Speed - tenor saxophone<br/>Oscar Noriega - alto saxophone<br/>Trevor Dunn - bass<br/>Jim Black - drums<br/><br/>Read more about the band <a href="http://earshot.org/Festival/artistinfo/endangered-blood.html">here</a>.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.tableandchairsmusic.com">Table & Chairs website</a>.</span></p>http://racersessions.com/post/11286224662http://racersessions.com/post/11286224662Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:57:00 -0400John Teske - October 9th, 2011<p><em><a href="http://racersessions.com/private/11260276285/tumblr_lstzjxCKjD1qahzi7">LISTEN TO THIS SESSION!</a></em></p> <p><span>For the opening piece, a number of local improvisers and I will<br/>perform a series of graphic scores I composed last year. I had been<br/>thinking a lot about where I put my attention and where we<br/>collectively put our attention; how we can have focus, lose it, and<br/>return to it. These scores are based on the idea of sound coming in<br/>and out of focus. Each improviser reads off the same score, aiming to<br/>realize composition as an ensemble. The scores are simple shapes that<br/>are designed to draw the ear to the subtleties of timbre and texture.<br/><br/>These pieces have been performed a number of times over the last year,<br/>from solos to string quartets to large mixed ensembles. For this<br/>performance, we will be realizing the scores rather quietly. I’ve<br/>found that taking excessive volume out of the equation allows for the<br/>details to be heard more clearly.<br/><br/>You can listen to a recording of the original performance here:<br/><br/><a target="_blank" href="http://johnteske.bandcamp.com/album/six-graphic-scores"><a href="http://johnteske.bandcamp.com/album/six-graphic-scores">http://johnteske.bandcamp.com/album/six-graphic-scores</a></a><br/><br/>For the improvisation session following, I would hope to contribute<br/>one core idea: that each ensemble might huddle before the<br/>improvisation, pick one or two simple musical ideas to focus on, and<br/>realize it as an ensemble. This may mean that not everyone need to<br/>play at once or that each individual may play a small part that<br/>contributes to the overall sound. In my performance of minimalist<br/>improvisation, the focus required is different, yet very rewarding.</span></p>http://racersessions.com/post/11237724096http://racersessions.com/post/11237724096Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:12:00 -0400