9.19.2024
Performances in Fall 2024
Some upcoming gigs I’m really looking forward to, and an update I'm really excited about.
October 18-20, I’ll be making two appearances at the inaugural Great Lakes Dungeon Siege. On October 18th, I’ll be playing as part of the live band for Cernunnos Woods, returning after the headlining appearance at Northeast Dungeon Siege earlier this year. On the 19th, I’ll be playing a solo set as Nahadoth. The whole event has an incredible lineup of some of the best Live Dungeon Synth acts from here and abroad.
October 27 will be the live debut of the trio Carapace, which features Kelly Bray on Trumpet and Michael Larocca on percussion, alongside myself on piano. This improvising trio has recently recorded a second record, which features some of my compositions alongside some incredible improvisations. I’m always excited to work with these musicians, and for the rest of you to hear this trio as well.
Then, on Sunday November 3rd, Dr. Caterwauls Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptrap’s will play at Small Batch Winery in North Branford, CT, on a bill with local Klezmer band Nu Haven Kapelye. Doors are at 4 PM, music at 5PM, and tickets are available in advance here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nu-haven-kapelye-dr-caterwauls-cadre-of-clairvoyant-claptraps-tickets-993717013337
Finally, December 12th, I’ll be playing with Michael Larocca as Hypostatic Soundblast Awakening, the synthesizer/drums duo with Michael Larocca. We recorded a phenomenal record recently and the concept of this project is growing more refined both musically and philosophically. The performance will be part of the New Haven Improvisers Collective Performance series, at Never Ending books in New Haven, CT. Starting at 7 PM.
Finally, unrelated to performance, I’ve been working on some ‘live’ techno sets, using various synthesizers and sequencers, attempting to do some version of live Techno performances, ranging from 30 to 40 minutes in length. I’ve started uploading them to SoundCloud, if you’re interested to hear me try something very different than usual for me.
Looking forward to seeing you at any one of these upcoming dates!
3.12.2024
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.
1.21.2024
Experience before Understanding: Some Thoughts About Improvised Music
Free improvisation has been at the heart of my music making for most of my adult and performing life. It is one of those practices that you can do for decades but not actually improve on your abilities. Wary of that, I’ve tried to be as analytical as possible with my own practice of free improvisation, whether solo or with others. I don’t know if this level of analysis has ever had a meaningful impact on my sound, but it has certainly changed how I talk about it over the years.
The appeal of this for a lot of people I speak to is the “newness” of it. When listening to improvised music, you are theoretically hearing a sound or combination of sounds that has never been heard before. That’s obviously not the only appeal, otherwise people wouldn’t record music in this style, or form groups to do it in, etc. But encountering that “newness-above-all” attitude early on in my improvising life was one of the things that made me determined to figure out how to tell the difference from one improvised set to another, besides an affinity for the instruments being played or the people manipulating them.
The appeal of this for a lot of people I speak to is the “newness” of it. When listening to improvised music, you are theoretically hearing a sound or combination of sounds that has never been heard before. That’s obviously not the only appeal, otherwise people wouldn’t record music in this style, or form groups to do it in, etc. But encountering that “newness-above-all” attitude early on in my improvising life was one of the things that made me determined to figure out how to tell the difference from one improvised set to another, besides an affinity for the instruments being played or the people manipulating them.
1.06.2024
A Year Joyful and Tragic: An Explanation of why I play Irish Music
I’m coming up on a year anniversary of going to a local Irish session, and of really working on acquiring a repertoire and vocabulary in this style. During that time I’ve learned - certainly not mastered - somewhere around 120 tunes. I use the ‘tunebook’ feature of the website The Session to help keep track of these things, but some of the tunes added are placeholders, so those don’t count.
I can’t say completely what compelled me to do it. My only session experience was at this same session near me, in 2014, when I had absolutely no Irish repertoire, but a curiosity, and a desire to push myself further into folk traditions after spending some time at a Swedish fiddle workshop (also playing accordion) and getting my butt kicked by the details. I did what I now understand to be the mostly verboten thing of sort of ‘busking along’ with tunes I don’t know - and played a Swedish polska for them, by request. But I did also record, and from that recording, painstakingly transcribed a single tune. Not knowing any of the vocabulary, having very little idea of the ornamentation or variation that is often employed, this was not an easy process, and my attempts to actually learn the tune suffered for that reason. (I later learned, in this attempt, that the tune was called the Wicklow Hornpipe, or Sonny Murray’s, and actually learned the tune properly).
12.19.2019
Year End Roundup
Hi Folks!
While the year is not done for me yet at this point, I am definitely already thinking back over this year and some of the music I was able to get done. Next year will be a very different year for me in terms of output and more on that in a subsequent post, but for now, I’m just glad to have the chance to have so much music documented and released during this year. Several of these releases were recorded in previous years, notably the Anthony Braxton GTM (Syntax) 2017 box set, and my duo record with Chris Cretella on guitar, “Singing and Singing to Keep out the Smell”. Kolessa’s “Fires” was also produced last year, as was the bulk of Mystal Tree’s “New Growth”.
But this year brought a small load of new endeavors, including Dust Seeker, Ghost of Forest, Black Epheria and L.B.R.P. I want to speak about the last one a bit as it was, as far as my dungeon synth work goes, a fairly unusual one in that it was a collaboration. I won’t go into to much detail, but my original material, recorded on 4 track in the course of 2 days, and submitted to Attic Shrines, who released it. But Attic Shrines headquarters, built as it is atop a huge deposit of unpronounceable minerals, is not a kind place to tapes. Something happens to them there - some entity, fascinated with the potentiality of analog media, takes them apart at a molecular level, and reassembles them without great care for accuracy. The result was corrupted, rearranged. Jazz people would say “Teo’d”. It was definitely an intriguing process for me as a composer and one I hope to embark upon again.
Some highlights of the year were getting the chance to perform in the Sonic Genome and at the main stage of the Berlin JazzFest with Anthony Braxton this year. I also got a solid grasp on performing Nahadoth live, which happened four times over the course of the year, including at the first ever multi-day Dungeon Synth festival, the Northeast Dungeon Siege. I performed solo a number of times and that set forth some ways of exploring solo accordion and voice that I will definitely be following up on in the future.
See below for a gallery of album covers. Blogspot seems to want to scramble the order, so I apologize for that. Two more releases will still come out before the year is done.
While the year is not done for me yet at this point, I am definitely already thinking back over this year and some of the music I was able to get done. Next year will be a very different year for me in terms of output and more on that in a subsequent post, but for now, I’m just glad to have the chance to have so much music documented and released during this year. Several of these releases were recorded in previous years, notably the Anthony Braxton GTM (Syntax) 2017 box set, and my duo record with Chris Cretella on guitar, “Singing and Singing to Keep out the Smell”. Kolessa’s “Fires” was also produced last year, as was the bulk of Mystal Tree’s “New Growth”.
But this year brought a small load of new endeavors, including Dust Seeker, Ghost of Forest, Black Epheria and L.B.R.P. I want to speak about the last one a bit as it was, as far as my dungeon synth work goes, a fairly unusual one in that it was a collaboration. I won’t go into to much detail, but my original material, recorded on 4 track in the course of 2 days, and submitted to Attic Shrines, who released it. But Attic Shrines headquarters, built as it is atop a huge deposit of unpronounceable minerals, is not a kind place to tapes. Something happens to them there - some entity, fascinated with the potentiality of analog media, takes them apart at a molecular level, and reassembles them without great care for accuracy. The result was corrupted, rearranged. Jazz people would say “Teo’d”. It was definitely an intriguing process for me as a composer and one I hope to embark upon again.
Some highlights of the year were getting the chance to perform in the Sonic Genome and at the main stage of the Berlin JazzFest with Anthony Braxton this year. I also got a solid grasp on performing Nahadoth live, which happened four times over the course of the year, including at the first ever multi-day Dungeon Synth festival, the Northeast Dungeon Siege. I performed solo a number of times and that set forth some ways of exploring solo accordion and voice that I will definitely be following up on in the future.
See below for a gallery of album covers. Blogspot seems to want to scramble the order, so I apologize for that. Two more releases will still come out before the year is done.
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