Manchester Jazz Festival 2012 : Roller Trio Review

Well, today has been lovely. I’ve been to the Manchester Jazz Festival and watched three acts… all for free. Three hours of great music, two different venues; one being a beautiful church, (St Annes) the other, the Festival Pavilion where I played last year with my octet.

My journey took me through Curry Mile, down Oxford Road (Manchester Uni students are graduating – congrats to you clever people!) to Piccadilly where I then walked through China town to my destination, the Festival Pavillion in St Albert Square. Don’t worry, this is not a geographical overview of Manchester. My point will become clear. Roller Trio were announced by MJF’s artistic director, Steve Mead and the three sauntered on. Tenor saxophonist James Mainwaring, guitarist Luke Wynter and drummer Luke Reddin-Williams. TrioVD are an obvious influence on this band, as is Polar Bear. Like Seb Rochford, Luke Reddin-Williams uses the kit to create a magnitude of different sounds. The drums come alive, talking in different languages, gentle whispering building to shouting, quick hands controlling every nuance. Guitarist Luke Wynter again matches this extensive pallette of sound, equally at ease creating reggae infused bass lines and ethereal gamelan sonoraties. James Mainwaring utilesized tastefully and sparingly electronics that included reverbs and delays as well as employing extended techniques such as multiphonics and slap-tonguing. I’m having a bloody good time, sat by myself, like all the other men around me who like jazz and have no friends, sipping my water, not tapping my foot or clicking my fingers. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on, time signatures changing, 7 then 6 then 8. One minute I’m chilling to the sounds of the far east (John Zorn’s “Masada” comes to mind – the band returned to this feel on numerous occasions, it was quite ingenious) when suddenly I’m jolted out by a mental prog riff a la King Crimson, Back to an ECM inspired landscape, trip-hoppy drums, then utter devastation. Half way through they erupt into noise… and all is right with the world. The set continues getting better, slow disjointed grooves in the vain of Kneebody and World Service Project along with some lush ballads which send me back to Norway, a truly post-modern affair.

This music is a byproduct of its creators’ environment, my environment and all the other young musicians’ environments. 2012 doesn’t swing and it doesn’t have a steady pulse. It is the internet; we can jump instantly from one screen to the next, our grandparents’ heads explode at its speed, you can see all your friends pictures, or a recipe for a scotch egg, and people who have made their faces look like cats… It goes on. I don’t have to sit in and eat egg and chips for my tea, I can eat literally any type of food. I could get a curry and some egg and chips and mash it all together with some toffee fucking ice cream if I’d like. Thats what these guys do… musically speaking. Yes, some people may be offended, sickened even, but they don’t care. Roller Trio are part of the new wave of young jazz musicians making great noises in 2012. Thanks for the show guys.

Rehearsing with Per Zanussi

So, we started practicing the music of Norwegian composer Per Zanussi yesterday. We’ll be practicing the set he’s composed everyday until  Monday when the orchestra will perform at the Mai Jazz Festival. Per has reworked some of his older compositions and composed new ones specifically for this band’s line up. In this blog I’ll hopefully explain what Per’s music sounds like and talk about the techniques he uses to achieves this sound.

The reason I’m doing this is to give a perspective audience more information about the music and the processes the composer and the musicians go through before the performance to transform the ink on the page, or an idea or concept in Per’s head, into an audible realm. I believe that giving the audience more information (in the form of blog in this case – but it could be giving them the scores, the composer himself telling the audience about the songs concepts before it is played, or under different circumstances, using other types of stimuli, such as combining the music with moving projections and other forms of technology) regardless of their musical understanding, will help them connect more intimately with music that is often perceived as more “difficult” to listen to.

As some of you may know, I’m a pianist and I compose and arrange my own music, so when playing other people’s material it’s the harmonic content that first attracts me. On Per’s music I have no chords written down! I’m looking at the scores and I can see the melody (there is an obvious linear compositional process throughout most of the pieces) so I try to figure out what is being implied by this. Half tone, whole tone scales appear frequently and what I first believe to be 9 tone-rows. So, I’m like, “Hey Per, where’s the chords dude? What the fuck should I play?”… Well, it turns out that there are chords (he has chosen not to give them to me, or the rest of the rhythm section) and when composing he does think vertically. Sometimes poly-tonally (two different chords sounded simultaneously – C minor and F sharp 7) In others he composes the melodies based on the the harmonic minor or, my personal fave – the octatonic mode (this is in two of the pieces we are playing) and 9 tone rows are created when they vary by one note from this mode. These modes are duuuurtay and can create extremely dissonant harmonies. Per uses them to great effect by keeping the melody line (played in the horns)  in mostly unison and only ever harmonising the last note of phrase with a simple, two note chord. The majority of the sound is created through octave doubling and at its greatest the same melody can be being played at 3, or even 4 different octaves.

Per Zanussi

The melodies are long (usually over 32 bars) and within them there are very subtle changes. The contour of melody often moves slowly in a stepwise motion, it is a tentative movement that could go either up or down yet remains around the same area for some time before suddenly leaping higher as if bored of its own sheepish nature. The long melodies are often repeated but with double octaves to widen the range of the sound. It is filmic in many ways and There is always a sense of growing intensity, the dynamics building slowly, constantly being pushed forward by the rhythm section.

Per is a bass player and so, his sense of groove is key to the compositions. The bass lines are syncopated yet still accent the downbeat, the counter rhythmic lines in the keys, guitars and sometimes baritone blur this feeling adding to the sense of changing time. The rhythmic complexity and the simple lines of the melody draw comparison with Korean Shamanic music. The utopian sounds of an introverted sacred place (in which the Shamen travels to as he experiences a trance like state, brought on by the ritual) where he encounters spirits is evoked by the melody whilst the rhythm section pulls him back to earth with its fragmentary groove. His piece “Sinawi” is a musical form used in Korean Shamanic ritual. It sounds amazing.

I’ll be writing more soon concerning Per’s music and how it links with free improvisation as well as its difficulties and strengths. I may also have a go at comparing the music of Duke Ellington with free improv also! The time is going very quickly now so my adventures in Norway will soon be over 😦

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading

Christian x

Day 6: Group Composition

Everyon’es pretty good friends now. “Prit-taaay… prit-taaaay… pretty good” friends indeed. I felt comfortable enough to have a little kicking fight with a German girl at a party and today I’ve been calling a huge, Norwegian double bass player, stupid – to his face. Not that I think he is, just that I knew I could get away with it. I did. It was bloody funny. I’ve spread enough of my germs around the house for Alan and Anton to catch the cold I had and I’m also becoming increasingly more aware of the strict rule that each dog in Stavanger seems to abide by – ALWAYS FACE LEFT! Last but not least, a Norwegian forest cat scratched me today when I grabbed its face to get a better picture of it. Look how sleepy and perturbed the thing looked right before it dug its dirty claws in me…

Yesterday we were instructed to create a composition of around 15-20 minutes using the concepts we have been discussing over the last couple of days. We chose to work in a group of 6 consisting of vocals, flute, alto and baritone saxophones, double bass and piano. Most of us had worked together previously so we had an idea of what worked well before we had even started. We discussed that we would like to link free sections with pre-composed ideas and then decided to divide the group in two to work on separate ideas. Subgroup one, consisting of female vocals, flute and alto sax were to create a sustained, soundscape texture as this pairing had blended really well together in previous days, whilst in contrast to this static element, my group of piano, bass and baritone intended on creating a groove or repetitive riff.

In true progressive jazz McNuttery I came up with a riff in 17/8. We varied this riff by playing it in compound time (a la Avishia Cohen) as well as freely – using the same notes of the motif but with different rhythms and playing any notes but with the same rhythms. Varying one cell in these ways achieves a sense of pre-composed micro composition but, in actuality these are developmental concepts that are easy to perform and compose collectively in real time. It can also serve as a basis to create linear form when a “goal” is agreed on. In this composition we set the goal of playing the 17/8 riff in unison. Beginning free – noises, open space, moving to hints of notes within the line, building up in our own individual time, until the fully formed riff is played in its original, composed form. This is then repeated until everyone else is playing the same thing in unison. We agreed that when the vocal entry would signal the last time the riff would be played and the end end of the piece.

We also created a graphic score based on my mums phone number (Love you mum! She won’t be reading this, she likes the X factor and is thoroughly repulsed by this music) using the numbers to indicate a rhythmic group of random notes that would be played by subgroup 2. Each group of notes would be directly intersected by a sustained chord from subgroup one. Subgroup two would interupt subgroup ones noise when cued by myself.

Here’s an alpha-numerical representation of what we played. The numbers are the number of random notes played by piano, baritone and double bass (subgroup one) and the letters indicate the length of noise produced by alto sax, flute and vocals (subgroup 2).

7,    (S)    7,   (M)   6,  (M/S)    2,   (VS)   2,   (M/L)   7,    (L)    0 (SILENCE)   (M)    9   tutti – NOISE/PEDAL C♯

(Brackets describe the length of subgroup one’s sustained chords – (V/S)-VERY SHORT, (S)-SHORT, (M)-MEDIUM, (M/S)-MEDIUM SHORT, (M/L)-MEDIUM LONG, (L)-LONG

You can hear how this sounds at 5.24 to 5.50.

My next blog will be on rehearsing Per Zanussi’s compositions so keep posted!  Again, comments and questions are welcome x

Days 5: The group’s first Free Improvisation

Our rehearsal space, and also the venue for the performance at the Mai Jazz festival, is Tou Scene. We loaded in the equipment on Monday and the group was given a tour of the renovated brewery by its managing director, Niels.

The group was split in half. My group consisted of guitar, tenor and alto saxophones, female vocal, alto flute, and piano. Our tutor for the afternoon was Christophe and straight away he asks us to do a free improvisation as a group with no music and no prior discussion of a compositional intent, shared or individual material. The recording below is the first performance of a group that had never played together before.

To watch what we’ve been doing, click here and scroll down to “Improvisation 1”

After the performance we listened back to the recording, stopping to describe how we felt at certain points. The beginning was tentative. Everyone was looking sheepishly at one another and nobody seemed ready to play their instruments – we were all waiting for someone else to begin! Inge (tenor) begins the piece by simply blowing air down his sax and he is quickly followed by Eva (vocals) with a low stuttering effect. The sax uses slap tonguing to develop on this already percussive texture and the rest of the musicians add to this with equally shortly articulated bursts which combine to create the sense of a single fragmented melody. The flute signals the begging of a new textural device that adds a sustained element above the percussive figures, which are constantly evolving. The alto sax blends with the flutes long sustained notes in support, and, at the same time transfiguring the pure sine waves of the flute, fluctuating the pitch microtonally to create a shifting sense of phase. This idea is conjured again at around 7.30, now without the percussive sounds, and with added harmonic implications from the piano.

The movement that began at around 10.30 was of great interest to us all when we listened back. We all agreed this is the highlight of the piece and at this point we had all been enjoying ourselves! We discussed why we collectively shared this feeling, and talked about of the sonic implications of the soundscape. Upon closer analysis we came to appreciate how these implications, produced by the group, had affected our decisions as individual performers on a conscious and unconscious level. Eva described her reaction to the sounds as listening to an orchestra tune up and so she made the conscious decision to sing like an opera singer. Miklos played his alto saxophone in such a way that gave the impression of a violin section, long, rapid passages, articulated smoothly but very quietly. Listening back I don’t remember hearing this part whilst playing, but I believe it was this cell that affected me unconsciously to play largely spaced, marcato chords, in the upper range of the piano, echoing Grieg’s piano concerto.

The piece has a suggested form and unity due to the repetition and re-occurrence of rhythmic and harmonic themes that are then developed in two ways – by the individual who composed the cell, or another performer who has heard it, assessed its musical value, and chosen to take on the theme for themselves. This affirmative type of interaction forms sub groups within the band and upon close listening one can detect which musicians are playing “together” in this way. It is these supporting and opposing dialogues under constant flux which create an organic flow.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this piece as well your views and concepts on free improvisation, so please leave comments below.

Day 4: Day trip on T/S Prolific

On the day of rest we were instructed to be at the harbor at 9 o’clock. We were to man a boat, called the T/S Prolific, that would take us round the fjords. We had been to a Pirate party the night before and had gotten a little drunk, so, upon awakening at 8 o’clock (my head feeling too small to accommodate my brain)  a boat, going up and down, up and down upon the ocean was the last place I wanted to be.

Upon arrival the captain of ship gave us a tour of his boat and told us that this was a training ship and so, does not carry passengers. Which meant we had to put the sails up, tie knots, look through a spy glass, sing sea shanties etc, etc. However I was deemed physically unsuitable to carry out these manly tasks and was put with the female crew member in charge of “service” (Innuendo intended) This suited me. I made tea (as the british do best) and at dinner time, with the other members of the orchestra, also in the “service” department, made a pot of fish soup from a packet of white powder, four litres of water and a pint of milk…mmm. Here’s a picture of Inge stirring shit up.

The rest of the time we watched our new friends tugging upon harsh ropes and winch things made of cold metal whilst we sat in the sun and enjoyed the tranquil scenery. However the weather became such that there wasn’t enough wind to sail so the engines had to be switched on to propel us forward. This meant we could all relax and take in the views.

The fjords where vast and still; nature at its purest: clear waters and cloudless skies; we even saw a group of around 50 baby whales which swim around Norway in small pods of 10 – when they came up for air we could hear them breathing in.  We all really enjoyed ourselves on the Prolific and it served as an excellent bonding experience for all the members of the orchestra.

Day 3: Play time

The street outside our house

Today I have been whacking a grand piano worth over £20,000 with my fists and elbows, hitting its strings with a half empty (or half full!) bottle of water, scraping its strings with a wooden hot-rod and listening to the best young musicians I have ever heard play. We were given an introduction to graphic scores by Stealthy Nick and split into small groups to work together on interpreting or composing a piece using exsiting graphic scores as an impotus for a performance at the end of the session.

I was grouped with Alan from Salford and singer Eva from Stavanger. We started of by listening to John Zorn’s “Snagglepuss” from his wacky “Naked City” album. We were drawn to the jump cutting aspects of the piece as well as the post-modern concepts which are prevalent throughout. The piece utilizes thrash metal blast beats, Curtis Mayfield-esque funk, swing/light jazz and industrial noise as well as contemporary extended techniques such as clusters, stomach churning portamenti and juxtapositions of extreme dynamics. Have a listen. We are also given a collection of open form works from Decemeber 1952, composed by an American, Earle Brown who directly influenced the work of the aforementioned John Zorn.

Minature dots vertical and horizontal lines of varying length and thickness are spread across the page. It’s minimalism that reminds me of the time I spent experimenting in Windows 95 “Paint” software when I was 8, or an extremely fucked up game of Tetris. Have a look. It does however give us a direction for our improvisatory composition. It comes together well Eva’s delivery is extremely impressive. She sings in French over ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ before making herself go blood red screaming at an extremely high pitch then softly murmurs around a free improvisation based over C lydian. It’s this type of post-modern approach to composition and performance, which is both fragmentary and highly controlled, that I have come to embrace having listened to bands such as The Bad Plus and Radiohead. It frees you from restrictions created by genre labels and allows you to express all of your influences without boundaries.

We had a break and went outside into the glorious sunshine. As we were walking up the road to the bakery, we notice hundreds of people walking towards us in traditional Norwegian clothing. Why are these people dressed in tea cloths I wonder? Per tells me that its for Confirmation. Mmmm, Norway is next to Sweden, which happens to be “THE MOST ATHEIST PLACE ON EARTH” (a Richard Dawkins production) so I question him further. It turns out that the ‘wegians’ have made the confirmation a secular ceremony which celebrates a young adults coming of age. I like these wegians. We eat our expensive “half horns” of cheese and ham (again) and make our way back to the conservatory to listen to each others performances.

All of the musicians are expert technicians on their instruments with extremely high levels of individuality and flair. The stand out performance is given by tenor saxophonists Inge Breistein from Stavanger and Karlis Auzins from Latvia from the Amsterdam Conservatoire. They play their intrepratation of Cornelius Cardew’s “Treatise” of 1963 a work in seven parts or “Paragraphs,” based on translations of Confucius by Ezra Pound (this will interest someone I know greatly 🙂 and it “blew” me away. Inge was circular breathing for around 5 minutes as well as playing mutliphonics whilst fluctuating volume and intensity. It was immense and something I never seen before. He went on to play an incredibly rapid bop solo, perfectly executed before continuing with a cyclic pattern which repeated for around 5 mins again supported by circular breathing, this time however more intense, sweet begins to from on his brow. He is a warrior. A massive pig. Karlis is also a pig but in a completely different way. Gutsy and clear his tone is powerful beyond belief. If Charles Mingus was the “angry man” of jazz then Karlis is a fucking maniac. Incredible. I’m going on a boat with him tomorrow… I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Off to a party, Ciao for now x

Day 2: Meeting the Orchestra, the tutors and Per

I’m ill 😦

The lurgy has attached itself to my face and does not want to leave (other than when it drips out of my snout when I play the piano or when I sneeze). It is sapping my energy like a thieving mongoose and I’m sure people will find me even more repulsive and pig-like than they normally do. Meeting new people is not easy at the best of times.

However, the presentations went well today and we heard some new and interesting music. People presented one song that inspired them, ranging from  Eric Dolphy, Avishai Coen, John Zorn to hip hop, latvian and bulgarian folk. The stand out track for me was by Colin Stetson. I heard what I believed to be the work of a producer, distorted samples and loops of industrial filthiness, squeaks and moans and what sounded like Thom Yorke crying into an Electrovoice RE20 with added filters and effects, all simultaneously, yet perfectly balanced. It turns out that this is a live performance, by Mr Colin himself, with only his bass saxophone. No added loops, overdubs, effects, other players, nothing. Just him. It’s fucking brilliant. Check out his solo stuff.

It was a long session, and I was gradually drowning in my own mucus. I had been mopping my nose constantly between the sneezes and if wasn’t for the softness and the great absorbent quality of the hand drying tissues, my nose would missing a vital layer of skin and the whole situation would have been an even greater mess. Luckily we had a break and Stealthy Nick kindly went back to his place to get me some paracetamol. I ate a ham and cheese “half horn” and spoke to Per.

Mr Zanussi is bloody massive, (let’s say 6 foot 6) the friendly giant type, handsome and softly spoken. He shields his mouth and nose with his massive hand as I ask him about one of his compositions (Body and Zeul) which I particularly love. He is very pleasant indeed and I look forward to seeing what we he will give us to play in the coming week for the final performance at the festival.

When the session finished me and Alan decided to stay behind to play. We’d been itching to get on our instruments since our tour of the department. The grand piano, made my Shigeru Kwai, is superb. Perfectly in tune (a luxury when compared to the pianos on the ‘wooden corridor’ in the Adelphi) and the action is superb. The piano stool rises higher than most as well, and considering my tiny short legs I do like to be perched quiet high above the piano keyboard, so this is again a comfort I am not usually afforded as most stools do not elevate me to the desired height. The room however is a little reverberate for a drum kit and it takes us time to adjust to our surroundings. We play until snot begins to drip out of my nose again.

The weather has been sunny today and the local people seem to be making the most of it by walking around, (mostly couples or people with incredibly well groomed dogs) and one young man, in the contemporary buildings near the Uni, was setting up a BBQ on his balcony! A colossal cruise liner has docked in the bay eclipsing the view of the fjords somewhat and we have taken some more pictures of the thriving community of Norwegian Forests Cats.

The dock at Stavanger and some houses

We have our first session tomorrow playing together in groups, reading and interpreting graphic scores. So my blog tomorrow will go more into depth about the musical concepts we will be utilizing in our performance. Im excited to hear my fellow musicians play as they all “seem” like they know what they are talking about. There is something in the air… and it is good.

Night night x

Day 1: Travelling/In the Countess’s house

I arrived at Manchester Terminal 3, two hours and a half before my flight time (I’m always early) and waited for Alan Taylor and Anton Hunter. There was a young boy of about 5 who looked exactly like Mr T.  He was running around with his sister, scaring the shit of me. I was relieved when Alan arrived. We checked in our belongings and met Anton in the bar, brought the standard three bottles of liquor from duty free, had a pint of beer (this will probably be our last under £5 for two weeks) and made our way to the plane.

KLM Flight 1082. Free wine (Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot) and savory snack (Pretzels) on the flight to Amsterdam. Free beer (obviously Heineken) and sweet snack (biscuit with added potato starch and E numbers) on the next flight to our final destination in Stavanger.

On arrival we where greeted by an old fellow, white beard, prescription lenses with the sunglasses flap lifted up, holding up a piece of A4 paper with our last names on – FIELDS, TAYLOR, HUNTER, KATUSZONIC, de BEZENEC. We had not yet met Nick Katuszonic, we had heard his voice (not Greek) over the phone, but no contact. It turns out he had been on both the flights we had been on. Stealthy Nick. He tells us that ‘de Bezenec’ (Christophe de Bezence of Trio VD fame) is on a later flight so we didn’t have to wait for him. We were escorted to our car and driven by the old fellow to our crib for the next two weeks.

Old fellow was very pleasant – I shot gunned the front seat so I conversed with him and asked him about the food he eats…”Meatballs” he says. “Like the Swedish ones” I asked stupidly, a look of utter disgust gradually smears its self onto his wrinkly, bearded face, “Fårikål is my favourite though”. Mmmm sounds lovely. He tells me its two pounds of cabbage and two pounds of lamb, cooked for two hours. YES! I’ll be trying that.

We arrive at our home and I’m sad to say goodbye to the old fellow. The house is in the old town, all the houses are small and made of wood and where made in the late 1800’s. They are painted by their owners in reds, yellows and blues. Ours belongs to a Countess. The downstairs area is a space she allows local artists to use, its a very cool space which would be great to jam in. The upstairs has everything we need and the vast bay is clearly visible from my bedroom window, even without my glasses I can still see the huge ships, again painted.

The artists' retreat

Our guide arrives. Anders is a 1st year student at the Stavanger University, like me he plays the piano and writes his own music. On the walk towards the Music Department I saw a Norwegian Forest cat on the step of a little house. It was dusk and the owner had lit two small candles which flanked the black cat. I went over to stroke its little face, it let me and I walked away from the doorstep happy.

When we got to the music department, there were some students laughing and chilling out on a couch. Anders takes us to the practice rooms, there is a long corridor of rooms (around 20) which each house a grand piano. Fuck. He takes us to another room – a Kwai grand piano, a Mark I, 1972 Fender Rhodes, a Nord electro 3 a Macbook and a Fender Jazz chorus keyboard amp. Fuck. A drum kit, great acoustics, lots of space, a leslie cabinet, what I think is a Hammond B3 and you can see the outside. Fuck. Tomorrow we will be meeting the rest of the Orchestra here and giving a presentation of a song that has inspired us. I ask Anders to take us to the nearest pub… I need a drink.

More tomorrow x

Hello world!

I’m Christian Fields, Manchester based jazz composer and pianist. I’ve set up this blog because I’m off to Norway today to play some jazz. Me and two other postgraduate students from Salford University are going to Stavanger for two weeks worth of workshops and concerts. At the end of it we’re going to play the music of composer and bassist Per Zanussi at the Mai Jazz Festival, with musicians from Stavanger University and the Amsterdam Conservatoire. I’m going to tell you all about my adventures in Norway and more in this blog.