A Difficult Fish, or A Post About Everything

I've been sitting on this post for a little while now. It's a bit half-baked, but nonetheless has been what I've been feeling swimming around my brain for the past month.

The difficulty being that, when living in New York and practicing any art, one has to do more of everything, with less time to do it. I’m finding myself in this challenging position. “Everything” means not having a sole focus on practice. I want to see more performances, of friends as well as people I don't know personally, of "up-and-coming" musicians as well as those "established."

Also, I would like to spend more time online in a constructive capacity. “Constructive” almost literally – building a repertoire of words to support the framework of my musical tree house. That includes the music of others, of course. It is always important - and maybe now more than ever, amid a recession and all the challenges stemming from it - to support one another.

So how does a person accomplish everything?

New York is a difficult fish. Even if you're hungry and want to eat you first have to catch it and know how to cook it.

An Addendum on "Obstructions for 'Solo' Trumpet"

You may ask why I put the word "solo" in quotes for this piece. I can't divulge everything, because I don't want to ruin any surprises, but let's just say the music I'll be making on June 8 will have one foot in the tradition of solo instrumental improv, and one foot kicking (or softly nudging) its counterpart repeatedly. There will be doppelgangers, voice walls, and hopefully a macked-out ride (for solo instrumentalist, of course).

The tentative titles for the pieces are as follows:

Obstruction #1: Wall
Obstruction #2: Mutes
Obstruction #3: Solo for Four Voices
Obstruction #4: Background Music

Oh Fun

I’m not going to even talk about how long it’s been since I last posted something on my blog. Oops!

Below is a list of some upcoming shows that I’d like you to know about. There are a lot of "TBAs," so be sure to check back for said announcements.

March 24, 8:00: Moffett/Kaplan/Merega/Nazary @ Doulgass St. Music Collective w/ Henkel/Carlson duo.

April 9, 9:00: Bird Fly Yellow @ International Waters (Philadelphia) w/ Henkel/Carlson/Stardrum and others, TBA
April 10, time TBA: Bird Fly Yellow @ Douglass St. Music Collective w/ Henkel/Carlson/Stardrum
April 30: Bird Fly Yellow is in the studio!

May 7, 10:00: w/ Jeff Kimmel (bass clar), Marc Riordan (dr), and Brian Labycz (synth) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Also performing: Wingbridge.

May 9, 7:30: w/ Jeff Kimmel at Myopic Books, Chicago.

June 8, 8:30: Obstructions for “Solo” Trumpet @ Douglass St. Music Collective. Also performing: Buckminster.

More dates with Bird Fly Yellow to be announced – looks like we’ll be in Washington DC and Baltimore in June. Check our website for updates: bird-fly.com.

One for August 16

Thinking about writing (not music, words), and watching L'Avventura for the first time. How does one keep up with modernity, while still retaining some semblance of meaning? I mean, if the present is upon you, and the present moment happens to be one of those nearly-unsolvable problems, how do you represent it in art? Oh hell. The woman in the film asks "Why all this fuss over a swim?" She dives in.

The Summer

The summer! It's been a busy one. A quick update on things: Two small tours have taken place in June and July, and a couple recordings (one at the home of Joe Morris and another at the Bunker Studio) have been made. It's been a very enjoyable couple months, where music is concerned anyway. Now I must prioritize a bit. Firstly, at least one of my groups needs a website, and of course this has fallen by the wayside. It will happen, just not without a bit of orchestration and willingness to do the "biz" stuff. Okay. Now for planning a couple more mini-bursts of weekend tours in November and December with Bird Fly Yellow and a yet-unnamed trio from Philly, culled from the quartet Shot x Shot.

Keep your eyes peeled for more details about gigs, releases, websites, et al. And by the way, some of my music (including an unmixed version of a track from the aforementioned Bunker session) is now available on my SoundCloud page: soundcloud.com/moffjazz.

A Brief Post

Be warned, this post was meant to be concise and to-the-point. It comes, however, from a number of thought-streams... At the front of my mind right now is the string of shows I'm playing with my group Bird Fly Yellow. Specifically: how to effectively advertise them. More accurately: how to more effectively advertise for my shows the next time around.

The group has gotten better - we have new music and are now capable of playing with a degree of reckless abandon that I sometimes crave as an audience member. Our show at Highwire in Philadelphia was, I believe, a high point for us - transitions between solos, collective improvisations, and heads were more natural; there was a consistency to the energy; there was a real sense of direction.

The voice in the back of my head is speaking, albeit in cliches: "Let's do this. Let's really go for it. I have to make a pact with myself to really promote this music. If I don't do it, no one will."

I have to start listening.

Shylock: Form or Deform?

Last week we held the first rehearsal for the new group Shylock, a Dixie-meets-free jazz ensemble. It’s a quintet featuring Noah Kaplan on sax; Avi and Benjy Fox-Rosen on guitar and bass, respectively; Matthew Rousseau on drums; and myself on trumpet. It went well, and certainly established, for me, the new light-motif of my musical life – the dichotomy of keeping to a musical form and the urge to twist that form, or leave it altogether. In theory, working one’s way out of a set form is great idea, but it is actually quite difficult to do effectively. How do you play off a form without falling directly into a formlessness that disregards the beauty of the piece in its original incarnation? Specifically, how do we honor Louis Armstrong’s music and perform our modern take on it without giving in to sonic masturbation?

I believe one way around this essential problem is thinking of form as an expandable and retractable medium. In this way, one is observing the power of the chord progression and yet is willfully mutating the chordal rhythm. This method certainly owes to Ornette Coleman’s revolutionary work in Harmolodics. In this case, the set form becomes “harmolodic” in that it melds to the ever-unfolding phrases and collective melodies created by the ensemble. It might also be likened to poet Charles Olson’s “projective verse,” where the form corresponds to the content of the improvisation.

This is certainly not the first time someone has approached set form with the intention of upending it in a meaningful way. But this would be “one of those times,” and I think it’s going to work.

Now for the pitch: Shylock will be playing at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn this Friday, May 7, at 9:00. A trio fronted by Noah Kaplan, will go on at 8:00. Come by, listen, and let me know what you think.