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Alliance for Improvised Music |
PREVIEW
Paul Lovens & Eugene Chadbourne
with Carl-Ludwig Huebsch & Harald Kimmig
October 15, 2000It has become common in recent years for curmudgeons to complain that free improvisation - once the wild and wooly domain of the unexpected - has fallen into its own orthodoxy, its own cliches, habitual gestures, and formal conventions. If that's the case, you would never know it from listening to the music of plectrum master Dr. Eugene Chadbourne or the two phenomenal drummers he will be playing with this fall.
Over his long career - stretching back to early game pieces with John Zorn, recordings with leading improvisors the world over, and even including his own bizarre amalgam of bluegrass, folk and avant-plucking - Chadbourne has not so much set out purposefully to avoid cliches as he has single-mindedly pursued his own Chadbourne-ness. Along the way he's collaborated with Zorn, Shockabilly, Camper Van Beethoven, Jimmy Carl Black (Mothers of Invention), Kramer, the Hellingtons, Hal Willner, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, David Moss, and Elliott Sharp, among others.
Dr. C is a gifted player on guitars, mandolins, and banjos, capable of spooling out endless lines of non-idiomatic improvisation, whether playing solo or in dialogue. Lightning-fast runs, weird choked chords, and spidery extended techniques blend together in his playing. Yet he is also possessed of the ability to turn musical forms and conventions themselves into instruments of a sort - country twangs, surf guitar licks, and blasts of feedback-drenched chords become his musical playthings as he ambles along his path. And, if you're lucky, the good Dr. might raise his voice in song as well.
So which fellow eccentrics can keep up with Chadbourne, or can throw a tasty monkey wrench in the musical works? On September 15th, at Go! Studios, enter Dutch percussionist Han Bennink. Improvised music thrives on these kinds of transnational partnerships, the chance or occasional encounters that bring together like-minded players in pursuit of the weird. And Bennink, whose awesome percussive power is matched only by his incredible schtick, is a splendid foil for Chadbourne. The two have played together over the years, notably on the recent reissue Jazz Bunker (Golden Years of Free Jazz) and on Chadbourne's Leo release Boogie with the Hook, where Bennink memorably plays a pizza box! Bennink has played with a lot of heavies, from Sonny Rollins to Cecil Taylor, in many cases in the duo format. Once the swingin' drummer of choice for Americans touring in Holland, one of Bennink's real high-profile gigs came on Eric Dolphy's Last Date. The pianist on that recording, Misha Mengelberg, joined with Bennink and reedist Willem Breuker to form the Instant Composers Pool in the mid-1960s. Bennink went on to become a key figure in the first wave of post-Coltrane European improv that included Peter Brotzmann, Peter Kowald, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, and Fred Van Hove.
A stalwart of that scene, Bennink broadened his playing in the 70s to reincorporate the swing that brought him to the music initially (his fave percussionist is Baby Dodds). His work with Steve Lacy and with the Clusone Trio (which he co-led along with Michael Moore and Ernst Reijseger) demonstrated this more conventional approach along with his theatricality and his incendiary free improv. Past Bennink shows have seen him play a snare drum in flames, working the ride cymbal with a giant bamboo shoot, shouting out in some strange tongue, and gnerally indulging in the possibilities of the moment. But at the heart of these antics lies a genuine musical creativity, a quicksilver responsiveness, and a playfulness that he shares with Chadbourne.
Percussionist Paul Lovens, with whom Chadbourne will perform on October 15, shares part of Bennink's family lineage but is an entirely different percussionist. The German-born Lovens has played almost exclusively improvisational music since the late 1960s, and has consistently performed with top-notch Europeans like the Globe Unity Orchestra, the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Alex von Schlippenbach Trio (with Evan Parker), Joelle Leandre, Mats Gustafsson, Barry Guy, and Paul Lytton, in addition to his work with Chadbourne. As Peter Stubley writes on his European free improvisation website, "Paul Lovens somehow epitomizes the free drummer/percussionist who is not there to lay down the beat and kick everyone else into action but to listen, colour, contribute, guide, and occasionally direct, the overall cooperative sound." Less theatrical and bombastic than Bennink, Lovens' playing could almost be described as pointillistic and intense - he micro-manages the percussion effects while still maintaining a motoric drive.
Corpus Ludens is an experimental and interdisciplinary dance-music troupe based in San Francisco. The ensemble consists of four performers: choreographers/dancers Eponine Cuervo-Moll and Erica Blue, contra bassist Morgan Guberman and composer / multi-instrumentalist Andrew Voigt. The Carrboro performance will invite local percussionist Ian Davis.
The interdisciplinary nature of this ensemble is very unique and dynamic. Their performances convey the most genuine sense of "inter-play" between dancers (movement) and musicians (sound). On one hand, the dancers consider themselves as equal members of the ensemble whose instrument is silence thru movements. On the other hand, musicians use sounds as sonic movements in space. Through their improvisational creative process, the whole ensemble becomes one integrated whole, which is not a mere aggregation of individual parts, but is rather something which exceeds the duality of dance and music. Corpus Ludens will produce their new works at La Mama Theater in New York during the month of October 2000. This Carrboro performance is their premier and only appearance in the Triangle area.
Biography of the performers
* Eponine Cuervo-Moll is Columbian born writer, painter and choreographer. Residing in San Francisco, she is presently the artistic director of WinDolls Theatre of Images, Studio For Experimental Arts and Corpus Ludens. Her research on body expressions includes Chi Kung (Chinese body-mind-spirit exercise), Grotowski, Feldenkreis, Butoh (Japanese post modern dance form), Noh (Japanese traditional theater) and Western modern dance. She has worked with the City Contemporary Dance Company in Hong Kong as guest choreographer, Ellen Stewart of La Mama Theater in New York City, Anna Halprin of the Dancers Workshop in San Francisco and Kazuo Ohno in Japan. Her ongoing collaborations with multi-instrumentalist and composer Andrew Voigt have created numerous movement theater works performed throughout the world.
* Erica Blue is a writer and choreographer based in San Francisco. Graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied dance and theater, she is a founding member of Raw Material Moving Theatre in Amsterdam. Blue has worked with The Stalhoudeij Theatre in Amsterdam and with Meredith Monk's House Foundation in New York. Presently, she is co-director of Studio For Experimental Arts and Corpus Ludens in San Francisco, and is a member of WinDolls Theatre of Images.
* Andrew Voigt is best known as the "V" in the acronymically named saxophone quartet ROVA, which he confounded in 1977 with Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, and Bruce Ackley. After 10 years with ROVA Saxophone Quartet, he left the ensemble, and has been active since then as a composer, collaborator and soloist. His projects include a 1990 duo album "Kol Nidre" recorded with Anthony Braxton, and countless other projects encompassing a variety of musical genres and interdisciplinary collaborations.
* Ian Davis is a long time contributor to the North Carolina music scene through his organization of the improvising Micro-East Collective. The Micro-East Collective has performed with Peter Kowald, members of Dr. Nerve, Scott Rosenberg, and John Shiurba. Ian has performed regularly in the Triangle over the years with Onomata, Good Neighbors/Anubis Leisure Society Orchestra, Randy Pelosi, Bicentennial Quarters, Trailer Bride, Mind Sirens, Blue Chair and the North Carolina Jazz Ensemble. He has worked with Scott Rosenberg, Morgan Guberman, Matt Ingalls, and other Bay Area improvisers in the Micro Collective Orchestra. His recordings include the critically praised "062099" (1999) and "Out of My Face" (2000) by Micro-East Collective, the self-titled "Anubis Leisure Society Orchestra" (1992), and various odd independent math and pyschdelic pop releases by Blue Chair, Bicentennial Quarters, and Mind Sirens. Upcoming releases include a third Micro-East Collective CD. Ian also helps run Chris Stamey's Umbrella Records label (<http://www.umbrellarecordings.com>).
* Morgan Guberman is a composer/performer/improviser of both instrumental and electronic solo and chamber music. His music has received radio play throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Australia, and Japan. His primary instruments are the contrabass, voice, piano, electronics, and various percussive devices, including found objects. Collaborative efforts have been made with filmmakers, dancers, and performance artists. Compositions for solo piano were used on NPR's "This American Life", and compositions for solo contrabass will be featured in a documentary film about bicycle messengers in New York City, by filmmaker Peter Sutherland. Guberman has performed and recorded with Vinny Golia, Andrew Voigt, Peter Van Bergan, Gino Robair, Jackson Krall, Marco Eniedi, John Shiurba, Matt Ingalls, Scott Rosenberg, Tom Scandura, Ron Anderson, Aurora Josephson, and many others.
--Jason Bivins
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