Jazz concert review: AntiGravity with Viv Corringham at Studio Z

Viv Corringham

When: Thursday, July 29, 2010 • Where: Studio Z • Who: Dean Granros (guitar), Stephen Goldstein (laptops), Patrick O'Keefe (clarinets and soprano saxophone), Scott Fultz (tenor saxophone, Viv Corringham (voice)

The improvised music/free jazz group AntiGravity has been playing a bimonthly series at the recently refurbished Studio Z in St. Paul’s Lowertown, and more people should be showing up.

I’ve been to three concerts now, in May, July, and last night, and their music deserves a bigger audience. Improvised/free/whatever you call it is a hard sell but I’ve seen decent crowds at the Rogue Buddha, the Clown, Homewood Studios and Art of This Gallery and there’s no reason the same people shouldn’t be coming to Studio Z. Different people, too.

Unless they’re not hearing about it. Or unless the door to the building is locked when they get there. In July, we had to enter through a deli on the other end of the building that happened to be open late. Last night we were about to drive off when HH saw Patrick O’Keefe push the door open. Concerts start at 8 p.m. and apparently that’s the same time the door to the Northwestern Building (an artists’ cooperative) is locked

Maybe start at 7:30?

AntiGravity. L to R: Fultz, O'Keefe, guest Corringham, Goldstein, Granros.

The core AntiGravity group is Dean Granros on guitar, Jacqueline Ultan on cello, Stephen Goldstein on laptops (software synths, samplers, beats, textures), Patrick O’Keefe on clarinets and saxophone, and Scott Fultz on saxophones (also flute and occasionally stainless steel bowls). For the last two concerts they’ve brought in guests: in July it was multi-instrumentalist/instrument maker Douglas Ewart and last night it was British vocalist/sound artist Viv Corringham. Ultan was unable to attend.

Steve Goldstein

AntiGravity is a very musical group. I was talking with someone recently, a musician, who said his main problem with free jazz is he doesn’t like it when instruments make ugly sounds. It’s true that sometimes they do, depending on who’s playing them and what he or she wants to say. Some musicians push their instruments to the edge and over. You can follow or not. Personally I have found great rewards in music I couldn’t have sat through a few years back, because I have trained my ears to hear it, mainly by going to live performances.

But not all free jazz is aggressive or (as it's often called) "just noise." AntiGravity may seem like five musicians doing their own thing, whether it’s a saxophone squawk or a series of static bips or a dissonant chord, but then O’Keefe’s and Fultz’s horns will soar together on the same wings or Goldstein will lay down a trancelike beat or Ultan will bow her cello or Granros will play a single phrase of pure guitar poetry and it's beautiful.

Patrick O'Keefe

I’ve heard Corringham twice before. The first time, a performance with Milo Fine at Homewood Studios in 2009, was daunting. I was surprised by the sounds she was making, some of which seemed very strange to me. A few months later I heard her again, at the Black Dog with Didier Petit, and because I knew more of what to expect, I could listen with a more open mind. The Homewood performance had begun my ear training (aided and abetted by an email exchange with Fine); the Black Dog was the next lesson. At Studio Z, I crossed over. I get it now, or I get it enough that I can enjoy it.

Vocal free improvisation—at least, how Corringham does it; I haven’t heard anyone else attempt it—is not singing or scatting. It’s using the voice, lips, palate, tongue, teeth, diaphragm, nose, and breath as an instrument, occasionally with electronic manipulation. (She uses a Line 6 looper; Fultz uses a DigiTech Whammy pedal and a Boss DD-6 digital delay pedal; Granros plays electric guitar. O’Keefe is the only one who’s unplugged. Yet at one point he makes his bass clarinet sound exactly like a didgeridoo.)

Scott Fultz

With Corringham, anything goes: clicks, growls, chirps, panting, trills, kisses, whoops, grunts, squeals, mews, glissandos, chatter, speaking in tongues. We hear occasional hints of a rich mezzo-soprano and  vibrato. Her range seems limitless, as does her imagination. She can do what anyone around her can do, except for chords. (At least, I’ve never heard her sing chords, though she probably has the Tuvan throat-singing thing somewhere in her repertoire.) It’s fascinating to watch and to hear.

They perform two pieces, one long (over an hour) and one short. There’s so much variety and color in the first piece that it doesn’t seem that long. (For reference, Beethoven’s Ninth is over an hour long, with short breaks between movements.) When you listen to something as unpredictable as this, you can try to take in all the sounds at once; you can follow one person for a while, then another; you can do both. To me, improvised/free jazz is like an Impressionist painting: Stand back, view the whole thing, and it becomes coherent; get too close or focus on a single aspect and it falls apart. 

Dean Granros

I close my eyes and listen to everything, then open them to see what a particular musician is up to. There’s a nice stretch between Granros and Corringham where they anticipate and respond to each other, and a dialogue between Corringham’s vocalizations and Goldstein’s beats. A spontaneous duet between O’Keefe and Fultz. A time when everyone else is playing/vocalizing low tones against a groove from Goldstein and Granros adds random blats from his guitar. At one point, Goldstein’s beats sound like cicadas.

The second piece is all percussion, suggestion, and breath. A soft landing.

***

Listen to AntiGravity on their MySpace page. Even better, go see them live. I heard Goldstein say something about skipping August, then reconvening in September. I'll put the specifics on the calendar as soon as I know them.

Watch a video featuring Corringham with guitarist Dave Tucker.

Thanks to Scott Fultz for help with the electronics.

Photos by John Whiting.

George Cartwright: From Ponderosa to PonyCat

"It's jazz, Paw!"

When: Friday, January 22, 2010 • Where: Studio Z • Who: George Cartwright, Andrew Broder, Davey Williams, Adam Linz, Alden Ikeda

A product of a Jerome Foundation Composers Commissioning Grant and several prodigious and unfettered imaginations, “Bonanza: The Musical” made its debut at Studio Z on Friday, January 22.

It’s “Bonanza” in a general characters-and-context sort of way, and a musical because it has music. No dancing, singing, costumes or sets, thank goodness.

“Bonanza: The Musical” is a radio play written by Davey Williams, an improvising musician/guitarist/writer/painter and longtime member of Curlew, the experimental/free jazz group founded by composer/saxophonist/bandleader George Cartwright in 1979.

Cartwright received a Jerome to write music to Williams’ play. He had two versions of the play to work with, one read by Williams into Cartwright’s answering machine (thin, gritty, sometimes indistinct) and another recorded in a studio, also by Williams. Cartwright took both recordings and synced them in his computer. Sometimes you hear the voices together, sometimes apart, like a phrase and an echo, or an echo followed by a phrase.

The play is absurd (in the big, philosophical, pointless-universe sense of the word). Here’s Cartwright’s description from the program:

So the Cartwright Boys are throwing the Marlboro Man and his Boy a going away party since no one smokes anymore, much. Arguments go on, food is cooked, songs are sung sort of, merriment, fisticuffs and reveling enlightenments are the course of the party.

Before the play began, Williams acknowledged Cartwright as “my bandleader for 20 years.” Then he said, “This is going to be a kicking ass night.”

The reading was accompanied by live and recorded music composed by Cartwright, performed by Williams, guitarist Andrew Broder, and bassist Adam Linz (via recording; Linz had to be elsewhere on both nights). The music included bits of score that the musicians could choose to play or not.


Rabbit (l), Andrew Broder

Behind the musicians, projected on a curved fabric screen, were flickering black-and-white films by Cartwright’s wife, artist Anne Elias. Flames and feet and fabric, landscapes, grass, shadowy figures. Also on the “stage” (simply the front of the room, not raised) was a small television set (not on a stand, just on the floor) with a sculpture of a rabbit on top.

That rabbit—upright ears, thin little body, and hyper-alert stance—was the essence of anxiety. It served as a constant reminder that things were not as cheery as they might seem, but more about (to quote Cartwright, from the program) “the stinking play of man on lesser man, murder on a large and small scale and general reaction to MEANness.”

For much of the time, the TV showed a single still image—train tracks in a field, maybe a house. At some point the still image was replaced by images going somewhere fast.

I listened to the reading, observed the musicians, watched the films, and noticed a plate of grapes (green and red) on a table that also held cheese, crackers, and wine. I thought about the grapes and made plans to score some during the break.

It was a happening (she writes, hoping that word is not considered stale or offensive these days). Everyone there, probably 25–30 people, seemed to enjoy it. I did. Parts of it made me laugh, like the discussion between Hoss and Hop Sing about which Star Trek was better, the original series or The Next Generation. Parts of it were puzzling or unintelligible. I probably focused too much on the words at the expense of the music, but I remember Williams working his whammy bar and Broder working his foot pedal. The music was like weather, changeable and unpredictable.


Alden Ikeda (l), George Cartwright

Following the break and the grapes: songs, tunes, and improvisations by GloryLand PonyCat, a group I’ve heard before and like a lot. Tonight it was Cartwright on saxophones, Broder on guitar, Alden Ikeda on drums, and Josh Granowski on upright bass.

Before the music started, Williams promised to do his best to destroy it, then said, “Don’t worry—it’s going to be a lovely gig.”

It was. Midway through the second tune, which started out small and slow, then grew to fill the room, Cartwright invited Williams up and all hell broke loose. Williams played his guitar with his hands, scraped it along the edge of a metal music stand, banged it on a bentwood chair (after which he tossed the chair). Broder and Williams each seemed to be doing his own thing but you knew that in a parallel universe they were mano-a-mano. Cartwright led the way with his big, muscular sax, Granowski planted the rhythmic pylons, Ikeda sprayed the room with buckshot, and Williams windmilled his right arm like Pete Townshend. It was glorious.


Davey Williams assaults a chair (l); Josh Granowski

If there had been a film, it might have been herds of rhinos charging, or scenes from the Transformers movie: Optimus Prime rising.

Photos by John Whiting

More about “Bonanza: The Musical”: Click on the sound file under “Text” to hear pieces of Cartwright’s conflation of Williams’ answering machine and studio recordings. Click on any word under “Film and Video” to see a clip by Anne Elias. Click on the sound files under “Music One” and “Music Two” to hear selections from the music. Under “Music Three,” click on any word to see a bit of Cartwright’s handwritten score.

Free Curlew music. Download 14 live performances from the early and late 1990s.

Ellen Lease/Pat Moriarty Jazz Quintet

When: 3/1/08
Where: Studio Z, home of the Zeitgeist new music ensemble
Who: Ellen Lease (piano), Pat Moriarty (alto saxophone), Kelly Rossum (trumpet), Chris Bates (bass), Dave Stanoch (drums)

We snag the last three seats in a row in a small room that fills to standing room capacity. (The young man in the orange polyester zigzag trousers just outside the door keeps selling tickets.) I’m not familiar with Lease, Moriarty, or Stanoch but knowing that Bates and Rossum will play has brought me here tonight.

It’s the first CD release for the avant-garde quintet; Chance, Love, Logic is just out on Innova Recordings, the label of the American Composers Forum and home to George Cartwright, Carei Thomas, Steve Reich, and other interesting modern musicians and composers. All of the compositions on Chance, Love, Logic are originals by Lease and Moriarty.

Lease introduces “Phoebe” as “the oldest tune in our book.” It’s melodic and tuneful. “Phrenology,” named for the practice of determining one’s mental faculties and character by the shape of the skull, is next. Stanoch blows a toy trumpet and the band quotes from “Spinning Wheel,” the song by Blood, Sweat & Tears that in turn quotes “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.” It’s a tricky tune with a carny feel.

I think the next song is “Italy” but I can’t be sure. The two horns dance. I’m wishing Lease’s piano was miked, or her playing was a bit more muscular; I’m missing parts of her performance, especially the more lyrical passages.

Lease tells us that the title track was inspired by something she read by Robert Motherwell, who was a philosophy major before he was an artist. He called chance, love, and logic the “eternal values.” As I listen, I wonder if I’m hearing a love song, a melody of chance and improvisation, a logical work, or all three.

“Orange” is an homage to Matisse. The next tune has no title; Lease suggests a contest where we all submit suggestions to win a six-pack of a fancy microbrew. She lays down a thick carpet of arpeggios repeated over and over. Bates bows his bass; Moriarty and Rossum come in together, bending and sliding. I think the word "undertow." A potential name for the tune?

“Liner” leaves room for everyone to solo. “A Round with Sphere” is a bow to Thelonious S. (for Sphere) Monk. “Cloisters,” the final song of the evening, is thoughtful and spiritual; Stanoch plays sleigh bells.

Lease is an artist of subtlety and grace. Since this is the first time I have heard her, I hesitate to speculate on her style, but she doesn’t seem like someone who plays strident runs or splashy chords. I would like to hear her again. Until then, I’ll enjoy the CD by the quintet formerly known as “the best unrecorded band out there.”

Photo of the quintet by John Whiting.