Lilith, and Mushrooms

It is often recognized that support for noncommercial music is usually limited to premieres. Everyone wants to be recognized for helping bring a new thing into the world, but it seems like there is more prestige in supporting novelty than there is in supporting development. Given the pressures of deadlines, music preparation, communication, etc, premieres are often not the best performance of a work. Which makes it a shame that sometimes, premieres are the only performance a new work may receive.

So my experience working with Ingrid Laubrock in her Lilith project, alongside the phenomenally talented band of Yvonne Rogers, Eva Lawitts, David Adewumi and Henry Mermer, has been somewhat unique for me, in that we not only had a full week of rehearsal prior to its first unveiling, but have had the chance to return to this music more than once. This week, we’ll perform the suite on Thursday the 14th at Hawks and Reed in Greenfield, MA, presented as part of the Pioneer Valley Jazz Share, and then Friday the 15th at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, CT, and record it there as well.

It has been nice to settle into this music. I believe this composition makes a profound first impression, but thanks to the contributions of my fellow players under Laubrock’s direction, I have had tremendous pleasure revisiting this music and learning how to better understand my place in it. It is difficult not to want to sing along when I am tacet in the score, and our breaks are often punctuated by someone vocalizing one of the piece’s many outstanding, angular melodies mid-conversation. If you’re in the northeastern US this week, please consider checking this project out.

As for the title, scholars of Judaism, biblical Apocrypha and occultism will recognize Lilith as the first wife of Adam, who chose not to be subservient, and was banished from Eden. Lilith was transformed into either a night demon or screech owl, depending on which text or translation you’re reading, and became a symbol for disobedient femininity for centuries. (As you can imagine, this left no chance whatsoever of her being reevaluated and reclaimed by people of all sorts who shared the belief that one’s morality was not inextricably linked to one’s gender, especially not in the last few decades.)

While this music is not a programmatic, narrative suite in any sense, the title does make for an interesting framework with which to view the piece. Maybe it offers a different perspective on the piece’s friction, on its momentum. Maybe it comments somehow on the development of the continuous 50 minute running time of the piece. I’m not sure how my perspective on it as a player would differ from that of an audience member, but it is my biased perspective that this music gives you a lot to chew on.

(And I am happy to note that Rogers and Adewumi both were recipients of the Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award this year. Both have extended solo sections in the piece, during which they’ve made profound statements about themselves as musicians, and I look forward to them every time.)

Also happening this Friday is the release of “Assorted Mushrooms of New England, Vol. 2” by my dungeon synth project Mycologia. A digital preorder is live on the project’s Bandcamp page. There will be a vinyl release on Phantom Lure Records, available to customers in the EU and worldwide, while US customers will get more affordable and quicker shipping ordering from Out of Season. There will also be a vinyl repress of the first album available from both sources, and I’ll have some artist copies at some point as well.