Tag: improv

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Gig in Crouch End

Saturday night I had a gig in Crouch End, at a venue called The Loft – which isn’t actually a dedicated ‘venue’ but is an apartment belonging to Jenni Roditi, a composer, singer and musician who uses her flat as a venue. It’s spacious, beautiful and acoustically lovely.

I was invited to play by Rowland Sutherland – the genius flautist who has played at the Recycle Collective before now. The non-me part of the gig was a new quartet that he’s a part of with Alwynne Pritchard – voice, Thorolf Thuestad – laptop processing and Roger Goula – guitars.

My set followed on from the end of the football (apparently bad things happened to England – ah well), and went very well. I was slightly concerned that my stuff would be a little to pop for the audience, given the contemporary composition theme of much of what happens at the loft, but the portrait of Joni Mitchell on the wall gave much encouragement, as did the hearty applause of the audience. All in, a very well received set, with much positive feedback.

Mytle’s set was a mix of composed stuff, improvised stuff and mangled-beyond-recognition standards. I have a hard time with post-Schönberg classical singing – so much of it sounds like the soundtrack to encroaching mental illness (I think this is largely due to me relating so much in music to the process of personal soundtracking, whether playing or listening – it’s all about providing a soundtrack to the world…) – There were moments I really enjoyed, and it was all expertly done (all four musicians are hugely talented), but I did come away feeling slightly traumatised by it. Maybe that’s the intention? I’m certainly not averse to being left confused or upset by music, or any other art.

Anyway, ’twas an enjoyable, fascinating evening, in a lovely venue with a very warm audience. Great stuff. This kind of house concert happens a lot in the US, and I hope it catches on here (if you have got a big room in your house, and a lot of music loving friends, and want to organise a gig, please do drop me an email…)

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Recycle Collective 8 – Fret Phobia 2

no, not a football match, it was in fact the 8th RC gig and the 2nd Fret Phobia gig.

And much fun it was too – BJ had brought along Emily Burridge on cello, and they opened the show with a gorgeous duo set. The logistics of getting musicians with lots of looping toys and gadgets onto the tiny stage at Darbucka is always an interesting one, and tonight was as tight a squeeze as we’ve had since the gig with Orphy, Roger and Patrick, but we made it work eventually.

After BJ and Emily, I played a 25 minute solo set, with BJ coming up and doing his special cameo on ‘Scott Peck’ – as much as I still love the solo version of the tune, it’s just not the same without him. I also did Amo Amatis Amare, which isn’t the same without Theo after having recorded it with him… such are the perils of having fabulous collaborators.

from me, we went straight into Ned Evett’s solo set, which was fab. Lots of fretless resonator guitar, and some crazy loopage, especially on ‘Are You Experienced?’ – good noises, very much appreciated by the audience.

And then the RC Royal Rumble, all in at the end – two improv pieces, the first of which started as a disparate ambient mush (in a good way) coalesced around the ‘Windham Hill Blues’ (Am7-FMaj7), and then shifted somewhere else entirely. Good stuff. The second one started with a bubbly filtered slap percussion thing by me, I think looped a pizz. cello line which I doubled in speed and pitch that became the hook for the tune, and gave us something to hang the rest of it on, and it finished with me processing Ned’s voice with the Kaoss Pad… Most enjoyable.

Thanks to all who came along, another fine evening.

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Fret Phobia gig pt 1

So while a nation of armchair critics parked their carcasses in front of the TV to watch some football, a lovely select group of more discerning music lovers came out to see Ned and I in Cambridge on the first night of the Fret Phobia tour. And much fun it was too – I played solo (even did ‘The Inner Game’ which I haven’t played live for about three years!), then Ned played solo, and then we did some most enjoyable improv stuff together, with me looping and layering bass, guitar and voice into a lovely mush…

So, if you’re near, don’t miss the rest of the Fret Phobia gigs – tonight we’re at Darbucka, Recycling.

see you there!

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Last night's gig in St Ive's.

Another fun gig in St Ive’s, Cambridgeshire last night.

I was added to the bill pretty late – I was planning on going to the gig anyway, was invited to play and thought it’d be fun. And it was.

The main attraction was Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers, who had Michael Bearpark guesting on guitar with them, and made a delicious noise. Pete is a fantastically delicate and skilled piano player, with the best piano sample sound I’ve ever heard, as well as some clever processing in Kontakt (I think that’s how its spelt) – a very clever bit of software that allows you to write ‘improvising’ algorithms.

My own set went well – Behind Every Word, Highway One, Scott Peck and Deeper Still (Highway One had been promised to Catherine StreetTeam for a long time, and I finally got round to playing it live again. Haven’t played it in ages, but played a fine version. Yay!

All in, a fine night out.

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Gig tonight…

Just about to start rehearsing for tonight’s gig with Julie McKee. I’m so looking forward to this one – I rarely bother to learn other people’s songs, as the only gigs I tend to do these days that aren’t my own music or improvised are jazz gigs where I’ve got charts. But as there aren’t many Green Day, Slipknot, Cure or John Martyn songs in the Real Book, I’ve had to actually learn them.

Please come down if you’re in London at 6pm – it’s at the National Theatre Foyer, free to get in, and will feature much bass and vocal loopage. Go on, you know you want to.

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cats and websites

Sorry for big absence from blog-world – two big things have been going on. Firstly, and most tragically, the ginger fairly aged feline has been very unwell. You know about the cancer, which at the moment isn’t showing up the way it was, but he’s now got very serious kidney failure, (creatin level of over 800, which is off the chart), and there’s pretty much nothing they can do. We’ve been trying to get his blood levels settled, but he’s not enjoying the renal food and isn’t really improving anyway, so we’re now pretty much resigned to giving him whatever he wants to eat so he can enjoy his last week or two on earth. It’s a horrible horrible moment to reach – it feels like condemning someone to death, even though there’s no way he’s going to suddenly get better. The will is there to keep fighting for him, but he’s got nothing left to fight with. It’s a dark time in Stevie-Towers.

The second hugely time consuming thing of late is moving my website over to a new server. Copying the stuff over was no problem at all – the Captain took care of that in his usual uber-geek cleverness way – but once there, it became clear that OSCommerce wasn’t going to run on a server running the latest versions of PHP and MySQL (like I know what I’m talking about). So, ’twas time to find a new shopping cart – this time I’ve gone with Zen Cart – it looks quite similar to OSC, but I’m assured by geeks who know that it’s more secure, and much tidier code-wise. I’m almost there, almost completely up to date with the shop – it’ll hopefully go live over the weekend, with advanced order on ‘Behind Every Word’ available, which will include the free download album ‘Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines (Lessons Learned Pt III)’ – I just need to finish mixing that, zip it up into a zip file with some artwork, and maybe a couple of tracks from ‘Behind Every Word’, and it’ll all be on sale then. I’ll then over the next week or so get Lessons Learned Pt I, Conversations, Open Spaces and It’s Not Gonna Happen up for sale, and hopefully replenish the Street Team Stash with all manner of goodies. Busy time for a bassist cum web designer. :o)

Also, just in, I’ve been booked for an open-air gig in Portsmouth (at least, I’m assuming it’s open air, as it’s for a boat race of some kind, and they generally don’t happen in doors) – I’ll posted the deets as soon as I can.

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Good times, bad times..

My what a mixed up week!

Starting with the screwed up car – bad times.

Then Tuesday I had a rehearsal with Julie for our gig at the National Theatre on the 31st – got lots of songs done, including songs by Green Day and The Cure. It’s going to be a fab gig. – good times.

Wednesday was another great rehearsal, this time with Andrea Hazell – Andrea’s only improv experience before this was onstage at Greenbelt last year with me, so she came round for a run through before thursday’s RC gig. Working through various ideas we found that Dido’s Lament by Purcell worked beautifully when looped and layered over ambient mush! – good times.

Which leads us to Thursday and the RC gig. The day started with renting a car – Enterprise do a scheme where they pick you up for free as well, which was nice. I then set off to pick up Todd from Peckham. When, after an hour and a half I hadn’t reached the river, I had to admit defeat to the traffic and head back home, leaving Todd to get the bus to the gig! – bad times, but at least I got to have a listen to the whole of the new album on the in-car CD player and check out what it sounds like in another situation. it’s pretty damned fine sitting in traffic music!

Anyway, came home, loaded the rental car, with gear and TSP, and headed down to Darbucka. Got there nice ‘n’ early, got set up and sound-checked, and even the sound check was sounding lovely. It’s safe to say, that this Recycle gig was one of my all time favourite gigs. Y’all know by now the the RC is ALWAYS stunning, but this perhaps even eclipsed the others. I started solo, with a glitch-free version of ‘Behind Every Word’ (first time that my opening tune at the RC has gone off without a hitch)… However, the loop gremlins just hid until my second track – some weirdness going on in ‘FRHU’ but it was still fun. Followed that with ‘Grace And Gratitude’, then got Andrea up to join me. We did two long pieces – the first a wordless improv, and the second was the Purcell – the purity, clarity and power of Andrea’s voice makes for a completely unique duo experience. Like so many people, the harshness of bad opera has left a bad impression on me, but working with Andrea shows just how good operatic vocals can be when performed by a world class singer. A total joy.

After the break, Todd Reynolds was on. I already knew Todd was amazing, world-class. I wasn’t quite prepared for just how awe-inspiringly amazing he would be as a solo performer. This was, without a doubt, one of the greatest virtuoso performances I’ve ever seen – it’s hugely inspiring to watch someone play who has obviously dedicated such a super-human amount of time, energy and love to being right at the top of their game. I can count on one hand the performers I’ve ever seen of equivalent levels of skill and beauty in their playing – Gary Husband, Show Of Hands, Antonio Forcione, Michael Manring… it’s a tiny tiny select group that serve as a wake-up-call to the rest of us to up our game considerably. I don’t think I’ve ever heard violin played like that live, even on video. It was a fairly small crowd for the RC, but every single one of the people there got a major treat checking out Todd’s magic.

And then the improv bit at the end, the musical equivalent of a 70s wrestling ‘royal rumble’, only a bit more gentle and considered. For this, the three of us were joined half way through by Julie, and the transition from the layers and layers of Andreas’ huge expansive voice fading across to the intimate exquisite layers of humming from Julie was definitely one of my favourite improv moments ever.

How lucky am I? Definitely Good Times.

And then today. I took the rental car back, they found a stone-dent in the back door (was it there when I got it yesterday? I didn’t see it…) and charged me £75 for it, making a grand total of £105 for the day’s car rental. Bollocks. Bad times. Then, just as I arrive home, the garage calls and tells me my car’s ready – £666,69. I’m not sure if the number’s significant, but it’s certainly an evil amount of money. Still, they are a fantastic and trustworthy bunch of guys, and it was really nice to get back in our car. It’s the first time ever that the switch from rental car to own-car hasn’t been a disappointment. This is one lovely car, and even with the blown gasket, I’m still hugely grateful to the lovely G and J for selling it to us for a solo-bass-wages sized sum. So bad times on the cost, good times on getting it back.

Then I come home and finally start to tackle the monumental task of tidying my office. – scary times. The problem is, I’m halfway through and need to somehow make it so I can teach in it tomorrow! arrrrggghhh!

Good times, bad times, you know I had my share…

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Sad news

Just received a very sad and shocking phone-call from a friend in Edinburgh to let me know that Duncan Senyatso died last week. Duncan, you may remember, was the Botswanan guitarist and singer that I played with at Greenbelt last year – a fantastic musician and a very generous and patient man, putting up with me taking ages to get my head around the rhythms of his songs, laughing and joking, and being very generous with his praise when I finally got the songs right. He also played a vital creative part in what was one of the best gigs I’ve ever done – my ‘global footprint’ improv piece at Greenbelt, along with Jez Carr, Patrick Wood and Andrea Hazell. He sang and played guitar beautifully, miles outside of his musical comfort zone, but he fell into the a-rhythmic improv setting like a natural.

We’d talked at some length last summer about the possibility of getting British Council funding and taking the same project out to Botswana to tour with it, to do workshops in schools on improvising and music technology, and see how the marriage of the two musical worlds would work. Yet more regrets, to go along with the regret that the Global Footprint gig wasn’t recorded.

Simon, who rang me, was the mandolin player in the band last year, and has known Duncan for more than 15 years, and is flying out to the funeral.

if you click the link above, you’ll see just how highly regarded he was in Botswana. A big loss to the music world in that part of Africa, and a musical partner I shall be sad not to see again.

That’s Duncan on the left, with Rise Kagona in the middle.

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End of the mini-tour

Last night was the last date on the iddy-biddy tour with Muriel Anderson. Four very fine gigs. Small audiences, but lovely venues, and very appreciative peoples. And for me, a great chance to try out a load of the new tunes from Behind Every Word. Thanks so much for all the feedback on the new tunes – the overall opinion seems to be that they’re fab, though it would take a pretty churlish person to turn round and say ‘those tunes you just played, they’re crap’. So make of that what you will.

Anyway, I really liked them.

Was also much fun doing the duet stuff with Muriel in the second set. At the first gig, we just did one tune together at the end, but in all the rest of the gigs, we did the second half as a duo, playing a whole load of stuff from Don McLean’s ‘Vincent’ to ‘Autumn Leaves’ to tunes by both of us to some lovely improvs. Much fun all round.

Now, back to the album…

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Portsmouth gig

Fine first gig on the tour with Muriel. Nearly didn’t happen, as my car almost overheated on the way down, but some water and a half hour cool-off for the engine seems to have fixed that…

The gig itself was at the Eastney Cellars, a lovely pub with a landlord who’s massively pro-live-music, and has spent a small fortune converting it into an even better live music venue. He’s also generated a fab listening environment.

Most fun for me was having Linda and Geoff there – they’re my step-aunt and uncle (I think that’s right…), and we at my first ever gig! (well, I’d played one school show before that, but they were at the first one in a venue – The Galleon in Spittal, for anyone keeping score).

At that gig I was playing with my band EARS (Eric Adam Robert and Steve – we could have been ARSE but wouldn’t have got to play at school if we had been). And we were rubbish. Largely. We had one good song at that point called ‘Through The Tunnel’ which I could probably still play on bass and guitar (I wrote the guitar part too!) Can’t remember much else of what we played, other than doing Foxy Lady despite only knowing the first chord (or thinking we knew the first chord, we might even have got that wrong…) and Venus by Bananarama. Oh yes, we were that hip. I think we got paid about a tenner between us, by a very very drunk landlord called Keith. Who claimed to be ‘tired’ when he was clearly inebriated beyond the ability to string a sentence together. And we were opening for Faldstool – Berwick legends, formed from the ashes of my first non-gigging band, Mother’s Legs. Maybe I’ll tell the rest of the story of my early bands at another point, when it’s not 1am…

That was 18 years ago! So G and L were back for more, and got to hear the slight improvement I’ve made since those days.

Was lovely to hear Muriel play again – she’s a fab guitar player, and write great tunes. I’m looking forward to the rest of the dates – Colchester Wednesday, Petersfield Thursday and St Ive’s in Cambridgeshire on Friday.

See you there!

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