1:00 pm: NICOLE RAMPERSAUD SOLO (Toronto)
Nicole Rampersaud trumpet
Trumpet player and composer, Nicole Rampersaud is frequently sought after for her original and versatile voice in the jazz and improvised music scenes, and is an in demand performer in cities across Canada and the United States. Past and current collaborators read like a who’s who of today’s leading artists: Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, Rakalam Bob Moses, Django Bates, Marilyn Lerner, Joe Morris and Jean Martin, to name a few. She has also performed in some of the most prestigious venues in North America including: New York’s Lincoln Center, Berklee Performance Center in Boston, and Massey Hall in Toronto.
1:35 pm: AD HOC #1
Surprise improv group
2:00 pm: GARY BARWIN & STUART ROSS (Hamilton/Toronto)
Gary Barwin & Stuart Ross poetry, text, sounds
These are the Clams I’m Breathing (Reunion Tour)
Acclaimed poet/performers Gary Barwin & Stuart Ross have worked together since the 80s. Their blend of sound, text, performance, story, humour, character and emotion pushes to the exploratory yet always entertaining edge of poetry and sound.
2:35 pm: AD HOC #2
Surprise improv group
3:00 pm: ELOPING WITH THE SUN + AB BAARS (CT/NY/Chicago/Amsterdam)
Joe Morris banjouke William Parker ghimbri, reeds Hamid Drake percussion Ab Baars reeds
William Parker, Joe Morris, and Hamid Drake are three of the most surprising and adventurous musicians in the world of improvised music. In Eloping with the Sun, they all together step into a completely different musical realm again. Performing respectively on the sintir (a Moroccan bass lute usually associated with Gnawa music), banjo & banjouke (a ukelele hybrid), and frame drum, these remarkable musicians create a sound that is both ancient and totally new. Parker’s pounding, repetitive, though always morphing (and distinctly wicked) bass lines provide the bottom. Morris’ swirling, rapid, rhythmic lines cover the top and Drake’s dark, lush hand drumming moves the body between. Eloping with the Sun is hypnotic, contemplative, completely rhythmic music that would truly mess heads if it ever made rotation on the army of mobile subwoofing systems in the nation’s inner and outer cities. Let the revolution begin at home!
Joining the existing trio is Dutch improvising phenomenon Ab Baars on reeds (maybe, hopefully shakuhachi, too!). This first time meeting of these four greats is sure to be a trans-inducing experience!
3:50 pm: AD HOC #3
Surprise improv group
4:15 pm: DKV TRIO + JOE MORRIS (Chicago/CT)
Ken Vandermark reeds Kent Kessler bass Hamid Drake drums Joe Morris guitar
Joe Morris’ liner notes to DKV + JM album “Deep Telling”:
I love the music on this CD, but I wasn’t sure I could describe it even to myself enough to be able to say something about it. So I listened to the music many times for days. I thought about how free it was and yet how fully formed it sounded, as thought we had played as a quartet for a long time, when in fact we played twice in two days before we recorded. I noticed how easily the music flowed and how well it stayed together. The variety of feeling really got me. There’s something familiar and something different about all of it. I started thinking about how Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler, Ken Vandermark, and I figured out how to do this so freely without losing a sense of shape. How we could use what we know and spontaneously understand each other.
One could say that freedom in improvised music may be the ability to refer to a body of knowledge held in your brain like a language. It may also mean the opportunity to invent whatever you want, for whatever reason you can think of. Freedom in improvised music may also mean being able to remain true to your own creative purpose and to speak with your own voice while creating music with others, or taking the risk of using this passion, intensity, or humor when you play. Freedom in improvised music depends of what you know, how open you are to learning, and how willing you are to use it all.
At a certain point, when you’ve workded at learning to improvise for awhile you realize that playing music spontaneously is like talking. Your brain will quickly strip things down to basic information such as how to move, how to sound, how to use energy, how to key into the feel. The elaboration of the combined basics and their variables become your vocabulary. Playing in a group becomes a conversation. The free exchanges of ideas and range of the musical conversation, like a verbal conversation, depends on the knowledge and open-mindedness of the players. The most fluent players have spoken with others in the widest variety of contexts. These players tend to have the most respect for the ideas of others. They can also function with impliesd limits as to where the musical conversation will go, what it will concern itself with, what subject will be discussed. It could simply be said that the accumulation of that kind of musical understanding and the ability to be versatile, at this point, is the equivalent of having a repertoire. If you consider that the scene of new music improvisation, or Jazz as I prefer to call it, is a global one and you want to participate globally, your repertoire has to be extensive. If it is, you’ll have the confidence to play freely.
In that respect, and probably many others, DKV Trio has a very extensive repertoire. Their collective knowledge and their originality allows them to work with the rawest materials; the least amount of information necessary to know exactly where to go with the most possibilities. They move forward with a beautiful confidence and openess, inviting collaboration, exploring every sound with curiousity and respect. The slightest musical impulse can become a full-fledged experience. They can turn a hint of sound into melody, a gesture of motion into rich flowing swing. They aren’t afraid to play with a deep sensitivity. More than anything they can find that thing that has been overlooked before, the particle of musical experience not revealed until now. They’ll nurture the particle into a musical whole, a solid form of uniqueness. Playing with them is exciting because you never know what will happen. You have to be prepared for anything. I can’t imagine a more open environment to play in.
Fortunately, we and our colleagues are creating music that hasn’t been given a name yet. So we aren’t stuck having to live up to someone else’s description of what we do. We are free to play what we want to play. The music on this recording began with the most basic materials: sound, silence, motion, interval, duration, and emotion. We started to play without any words, written material, or agreed structure and within a couple of minutes we knew it would work. Our agenda seemed to be that we would musically talk to each other. We told each other what we know. We played to make something different, to create another experience for whomever listens. It remains open to personal interpretation, to be described by people who listen.
Joe Morris
September 1999
($35 door/$28 students, seniors and advance purchase)
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Photo by Tom Beecham
