Just Looking…

It had been a long time and I had a lot of questions going in…

Confronted with a cacophony of color and form, some images familiar and others not, these questions took on a heightened intensity.  The galleries at the Museum of Modern Art had been enlarged considerably and the paintings took on an aggressive quality in their collective impact, even garish and grotesque.  I love painting and visual art so this seemed less a trustworthy reaction and more an invitation to inquiry.   Invited by my friend Scott Friedlander (a graphic designer by trade) I began bombarding him with questions, in essence asking what is it that visual artists see that I’m not seeing?  Do folks with an affinity towards making art perceive things differently?

We spoke about knowledge, emotional response, interpretation, likes and dislikes.  I certainly had my own personal responses.  Some things I could have imagined wanting to make, others not at all but I don’t seem to have a language for much of it.  Some folks will tell you what they think a piece of work means, whether it “works” or not.  Others will preference how it makes them feel.  I’ve never been satisfied that any of this gets to the heart of the matter.  Informed or otherwise, what we talk about when we talk about art seems a form of estrangement.  Maybe we have a map but we’re still stranded.  I wanted to know what comes before any of that.  Scott rightfully questioned whether it is possible to exclude those things from the experience of seeing.  Probably not, besides, an act of negation is just another distraction from seeing.  Inclusion on the other hand offers the chance to see what changes when looking.  Thoughts and feelings change just the like the weather while the painting remains right where it is on the wall.  So what are we seeing?

Carrying this question while moving through the gallery I imagined artists in their studios spending days, weeks perhaps months living with their work, a single painting becoming an entire world.  Now placed on a museum wall viewers stream past spending a few moments before moving on.  Do these works speak to each other in any way or do they each pretend that they’re the only painting in the room worth looking at?  Actually they seem pretty nonchalant about it all.  Is that off-putting or inviting?  One noticeable change in presentation is that MOMA is now integrating video and work involving sound throughout the galleries along with painting and sculpture.  Given the sonic bleed it often created the effect of being in an arcade, or perhaps in a store with the self check-out machines barking orders to everyone and no one.  This may have diminished the power of certain of the other works offered but still, the wire sculptures by Calder spoke truthfully and dynamically, no matter at what angle they were viewed.  The paintings by Rothko were both earthy and ethereal in their glow.  The sculptures by Serra were profoundly non-verbal.

Over time, perhaps due to the sheer weight of it all, the questions began to give way.  The works became lighter, at times almost amusing, revealing a subtle shift in presence.  Those steel boxes by Richard Serra are eleven feet tall and weigh forty tons each yet they appeared weightless in the room.  Each work I looked at seemed to be speaking in a different way, more dynamically and alive with time.  By now it had been three hours and we’d only seen half of what was on display so I wanted to check in with the latest offerings before leaving.  I might have been braced to a certain degree.  Political and ideological concerns, issues of culture and identity, concerns about ecology and technology have all come to the forefront in recent years.  I was prepared for confrontation and provocation towards the status quo.  These elements were present to varying degrees but what was most striking was the fact that just seeing the artworks was everything.  Even an artist’s intent is ephemeral.  Beyond any messages that might have been conveyed was the formal sensibility of any given work, all of which struck me as a form of kindness more than anything else.  A picture offers no possessiveness, exclusion, threat or conflict.  It simply invites you to look.  

After an entire afternoon of looking it occurred to me while walking home through the busy streets of New York City that this kind of seeing offers an antidote.  I had forgotten or perhaps taken for granted that what I’m seeing isn’t always what it appears to be.

(Photograph by Scott Friedlander)

“Across Breath, Voice, Silence” is released by Hat Hut records…

 

“Across Breath, Voice, Silence” is a new live solo saxophone recording made at the Zen Center of New York City this past May and has been released by Hat Hut Records on September 4th.

Availability...

The Hat Hut band camp site offers high resolution digital files along with a pdf of the booklet and a high resolution printable version of the accompanying artwork.

The Hat Hut website offers international distribution and mail order options for the physical compact disc version.

Physical CDs are also available for mail order in the US from my band camp site.

Summer scene…

Given the summer break most classical presenting organizations take each year there haven’t been many listening opportunities but that’s been balanced out a bit by the Jazz Foundation of America’s weekly summer series at Hudson River Park, which happens to be just down the street.  I’ve made almost all of them, having written about Bill Saxton and Dick Griffin in a previous post.

In a surprising plus there have been a number of unexpected meet ups with musicians that I’d not seen in many years.  One such instance was seeing drummer Steve Johns who played on July 1st with trombonist Clifton Anderson’s group (along with Gene Ghee on saxophone, Andrew McGowan on keyboard, Beldon Bullock on bass and Victor See Yuen playing percussion).  I’d heard Clifton Anderson a number of times with Sonny Rollins on the Lincoln Center Out of Doors series and it was good to hear him in a leadership role.

Steve was in my first band in NYC (along with Marc Copland on piano and Drew Gress on bass).  It was great to have the chance to catch up a bit and chat about days gone by.  Afterwards I went home and dug up the demo recording we made in 1986.  Here’s something from it, an untitled blues written by Marc that I first played with him at Blues Alley in 1979.

The saxophonist, Gene Ghee was new to me although he’s been around a good while.  In looking him up I came across this video of him telling a wonderful story about meeting John Coltrane.

On July 8th the band was led by Chief Baba Neil Clarke (percussion) with Bryan Carrott (vibraphone), Alex Blake (bass) and Kheunt Rose (steel pan) in a tribute to pianist Randy Weston.  This was impressive not only for the great repertoire but also for the unique instrumentation.  Baba Neil had many great stories to tell about he and Alex’s time with Randy Weston.  I once played with Alex Blake in 2006 and it was great to hear his sound again.  I’ve never seen anyone else play the bass while sitting down but perhaps that helps facilitate his emphasis on strumming the strings.  Everyone in the group was virtuosic (in a positive way) especially Kheunt Rose who applied a real harmonic sensibility to that instrument in a way I’d not heard before.  

August 12th was the final concert of the series for this year and I think it was my favorite.  Vocalist Ghanniyya Green led a group featuring Patience Higgins (saxophone), Les Kurtz (keyboard), Donald Nix (bass) and Bernice "Boom Boom" Brooks (drums) in a set that made me feel completely at home since it was reminiscent of any number of gigs I played coming up in Baltimore in the late ‘70s.  

Patience Higgins and I played a bit in the mid eighties and we had a chance to reconnect afterwards.  I don’t otherwise know much about Ghanniyya Green but clearly she knows what she’s doing and how to do it.  She often invited people to dance, demonstratively but affectionately.  “All my friends call me GG” she announced, so I’ll do so here.  Her band started out with a version of Blue Bossa (jam session style meaning none of the syncopation of the melody heard in the original) in which Patience did his best to pull the rhythm section along.  Then GG came out and did “In a Mellow Tone” followed by “Without A Song”, both in the exact same tempo.  There were some Jobim tunes, “No More Blues” and another I love but the name of which escapes me.  There was one selection that was not a standard nor did I recognize it, a song with a patriotic theme after GG addressed current humanitarian issues without being in any way divisive.  There were two ballads in a row (she asked permission from the audience) “My Funny Valentine” and “Here’s to Life”, ending with a swing version of Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are”.

Did I mention that this was my favorite concert of the series?  There were musically awkward moments; some missed notes, missed chord changes, some time issues here and there.  And yet the entire performance lifted everyone up.  I was surprised by how much I miss that feeling.  I might have assumed that was a thing of the past but this was no replication project, just a sincere expression of bringing everyone in.  Works every time, but should never be taken for granted.  

 

Solo Recording Release, September 2026

I’m pleased to announce that the recording made of my recent solo concert from last May is now scheduled for release by Hat Hut Records on September 4th, 2026.  The title is “Across Breath, Voice, Silence”.  You may recall that this title was used for a prior solo recording released on my Band Camp site in 2021.  Given that the title is just as evocative with respect to this music (if not a bit more so) it seems fitting to use it in this case since it will be offered on CD, giving it bit more weight by virtue of posterity.  It will also be offered on the Hat Hut Band Camp page.  The previous recording has been renamed “Solo Live at JMU, 2021”.  So just to be clear, these are two different recordings.  The JMU concert was recorded live in a fairly large recital hall with two hundred people in attendance.  “Across Breath, Voice Silence” was recorded in a more intimate listening space for about forty folks.  The subtleties that were afforded by this setting give the music a somewhat different character.  

The CD package has a cover photograph by Hans-Jörg F. Walter and contains an enclosed post card image from a print by artist Jan Scheir called “Box for Sax” that I’ve had hanging on the wall for many years.  Inside the booklet is a short essay written by myself as well as a photograph by Luciano Rossetti.  I’m very grateful to the new team at Hat Hut Records for keeping the label going (since 1975!) and for hosting most of my recorded output since 1997.  I’d like to further point out the excellent work of engineer Jon Rosenberg who has recorded and mastered this live document to audiophile standards, so you can literally hear the breath.  It also seems worth mentioning that this will be the first CD project I’ve released since 2019.

Oh, and since these are musings from a saxophonist, I’ll mention that I played the Buescher Aristocrat tenor using a Morgan 6C mouthpiece and a Boston Sax Shop Blue Box #3 reed.  And if we’re really getting nerdy, Jon used a pair of Neumann 193 microphones to capture it all.

On Tradition(s)…

On the passing of Sonny Rollins…

There have been a number of moving tributes written in recent weeks and I’m still experiencing a range of feelings given the depth of musical expression he made of his life. It’s an enormous loss of course, and yet...the inspiration he gave us is even larger. It has to live on and it has to live on through us, in whatever form that may be. That may seem insurmountable but I don’t think we have any choice. Rather than be hung up by virtue of comparison we must simply keep going.  There’s no time for anything else…

The tradition has taken many forms and there have been many great contributors. Perhaps the single most revered figure would be Louis Armstrong given the enormity of his impact on music and culture worldwide. Last week I visited the Louis Armstrong House and Museum in Queens. I’d been meaning to do so for years.  It’s easy to postpone things like this and my advice would be, don’t.  Having seen photos and read about the archive I kind of felt as if I already knew what I needed to know.  Wrong.  All I will say is that I could not have been prepared for the feeling of standing in the man’s living room, kept just as it was when he lived there. Just go. 

I bought my first Louis Armstrong record just around the time he passed in 1971. It was on a budget compilation LP on UpFront Records and I bought it at, of all places, a 7-Eleven store.

Also, it can sometimes be easy to postpone going out to hear someone play, perhaps someone you’ve been meaning to catch for some time.  Like, perhaps decades.  A couple of weeks back saxophonist Bill Saxton performed with a group as part of a Jazz Foundation of America presentation at Hudson River Park, just down the street from where I live.  This free concert took place outdoors in the early part of the evening, so no excuses for not making it. Mr Saxton (age 80) simply blew the roof off the joint, and there was no roof to begin with. It was all about spirit, and it’s one that we don’t get to hear very much any longer. It took me back to the ‘70s, an exciting time for the kind of no-nonsense, hard bop/modal approach to playing that so inspired me.  The set was well constructed and his announcements to the crowd reflected a relaxed authority, a kind of gravitas that feels very welcome these days. But it was what he was saying on the horn that was so compelling.  His note choices were absolutely on-point, speaking that language in a way that made you feel his life experience, you were a part of it at that moment. Afterwards I went over to shake his hand and say thanks and that while I’d been aware of him for years this was the first time hearing him live, to which he was appreciative.  As I was walking away I couldn't help but think that he would have been completely justified had he said something like, “well, I’ve been here all this time, where have you YOU been?”

The following week on the series was trombonist Dick Griffin and his big band.  Dick Griffin (age 86) is one of our neighbors and has played with Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Sun Ra among others. Again, that spirit in sound, this time orchestrated for a slew of horns. Everyone got space to solo and occasionally everyone did so at the same time.  The only issue I will speak to would be the use of the P.A. system which was overly bass-heavy for both of these concerts, something that current-day sound engineers do not understand about jazz music.  Besides being inappropriate musically it messes with the rhythmic feel of the band. Musicians do not often have control over this but I feel it important to continue speaking about it.    

Also reminiscent (quite literally) of the tradition is a recent memoire written by bassist Ron McClure. To say that Ron McClure (age 84) has played with just about everyone would be no exaggeration.  The Wynton Kelly Trio, The Charles Lloyd Quartet, Joe Henderson and even Blood Sweat and Tears are just some of the names involved.  Ron is also one of the first musicians I met upon moving to NYC and I later got to play with him at a now defunct club called Sweet Basil on a gig led by trumpeter Terumasa Hino along with Larry Willis on piano and Billy Hart on drums.  It’s a rewarding (if lengthy) manuscript and could really use a serious editing but at least the important aspects are documented.  Here is an excerpt.

In my other realm of listening, just some weeks ago the Gotham Early Music Scene presented a thought provoking performance by the ensemble Theotokos, led by Doug Balliett.  I wrote about this ensemble last year, albeit a different configuration and program.

I’ve come to learn a bit more about composer and bassist Doug Balliett. He’s involved in an impressive amount of musical projects within the early music scene yet his interests clearly extend beyond any such confines. This ensemble has an ongoing residence at St. Mary’s Church on the lower east side and Doug composes a new cantata for the ensemble each week.  

This particular concert was called “Music in the Time of Charlemagne”, which means music from around the year 800. That’s 1200 years ago and coincides with the first notated western music. I was excited to attend hoping to satisfy my curiosity around how this music would have been performed that long ago. Some of it was quite simply presented as monophonic chant and yet the music seemed to grow subtly into some unexpected and exquisite harmonies. There was one moment in which I would have loved improvising on what I was hearing.  As for satisfying any curiosity, I came away still wondering, so much so that I contacted Doug to ask some questions. Turns out that while there are several schools of thought concerning rhythmic interpretation of that music, there may not be any real consensus.  The issue of harmony seems equally uncertain.  Beyond the monophonic notation there are sources from that time period that refer to “sweet harmonies” so it’s possible that the monks from that period were actually harmonizing in performance while the notation did not reflect this until centuries later. Doug admitted that the gorgeous 9th and 11th chords he was playing on the organ (the ones that so much made me want to play) were not historic but given the fact that various kinds of choices were likely made over the course of time it’s not at all unreasonable.  A case might be made that it is more in keeping with a dynamic tradition as opposed to a static one.  I’m still very curious however in as much as while there is an ideological approach to defining early music there is also a physiological aspect in how music can make us feel.  As much as I love those 9th and 11th chords part of me craves a connection with historic practice, however imperfectly we can discern what that may have been.

As for Doug’s predilection for expanding the possibilities that early music offers, there was a collaboration between another of his ensembles, called Ruckus, and the great Roscoe Mitchell that took place last year as part of the Vision Festival. I asked Doug about this, apparently the group's flutist Emi Ferguson was aware of Roscoe Mitchell’s use of baroque flutes and so she made contact with him, instigating this project. Also involved was saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, who has impressed me with his rootedness as well as his forward looking musical nature.  Doug mentioned that this project will be recorded for upcoming release, which is good to know being that I was not able to attend their festival gig.

I’ve written before about the affinities between early music and improvisation as we know it today. Not so much in an explicit way, just that from a personal vantage point over time the differences seem less and the similarities greater. Rather than try and unite these traditions in a conscious way I’ve been patient, allowing things to take form on my instrument in my daily practice without the need for nomenclature.  It may be that some of this has informed the recent solo concert I did last month.  I think there was a balance of elements achieved, musically and acoustically due to the excellent listening conditions afforded by the Zen Center where this took place.  As it happens, the concert was recorded and will be released on Hat Hut Records in the next months.  More news on that to come…

I’ve heard this song before…

Does art need to be provocative, challenging the status quo?

Should the process of art-making be front-loaded with ideas and prerequisites to notions of validity?

Do artists have any responsibility to society?

Should artists be advocating, telling anyone else what to do or simply speak for themselves?

What is activism?  What is quietism?  What is ism?

Are humanitarian and universal values in art evasive of the problems that people experience?  Or are they inclusive?

What is culture in the digital age?  Is there culture in the digital age?

What is the spark, the urgency that drives the creative process?

This slew of questions came to mind upon reading a book review in which the word “quietism” was used, rather pejoratively, towards an author whom the critic felt did not take enough risk in presenting their opinions.  It’s not a word I’ve seen used much other than in old zen stories in which teachers who espoused the use of koans (a kind of problem to concentrate on in meditation) used it to criticize other teachers who espoused a more open contemplative approach.  And that’s probably overblown, more a matter of pointing out the potential pitfalls in either approach, aggression on the one hand and passivity on the other.  In seeing it used in a literary forum I decided to look it up and was surprised to find that it has a history relating to western philosophy as well as Christianity.  

In Catholic theology quietism refers to late seventeenth century contemplative and mystical practices oriented towards absorption into the Divine Essence that were ultimately deemed heretical by the church.  In later times the term referred to religious practice that eschewed political activism.  In early Western philosophy (second or third century) quietism was associated with a philosopher named Sextus Empiricus who espoused Pyrrhonism, describing it as a form of philosophical therapy.   He felt that philosophy had no positive thesis to contribute.  Rather than settling debates Pyrrhonism was intended to liberate the mind by diagnosing confusing concepts.  More contemporary expressions of this idea came from Wittgenstein who influenced the “ordinary language” philosophers who considered philosophical problems to be the result of linguistic misunderstandings.  

That’s paraphrasing wikipedia in as much as this is all quite new to me.  If I’d have known about this when I was younger it might have spared me a fair bit of angst.  I recall my college philosophy course (a subject that actually interested me) as being an exercise in the high tedium of intellectual conflict, reducing the whole of Western thought into a litany of arguments and refutations starting with the assertion “I think, therefore I am” and going downhill from there.  Or perhaps I simply checked out mentally on the whole thing being that my real interests lay elsewhere and I was hungry for life experience.  In reading about this now it resonates with a certain tension that I’ve long felt in considering the role of music and art in society, namely the need to speak to real issues and the need to allow the creative process free and unrestricted rein into the unknown.  I’ve alluded to this in a number of previous posts and have never felt completely resolved about it.  I’m not alone in this and sympathize with what my fellow artists are going through yet I’m at a loss when it comes to identifying a singular ethos that satisfies all parties in all situations.  

As in…what’s the solution?  

What if there is no solution?  

What if the situation is hopeless?  

No one likes hopelessness but what if we allow for the possibility just long enough to imagine the implications?  How far do they go?  What form could we possibly apply to the process?  Somewhere I read an interview with a physicist who tried to describe what happens when a black hole collapses.  All I remember about it was the poetic way he put it, something akin to, death dies with death.  Somehow that sounds reasonable, assuring even.  That which we are most afraid of.  Does this help in any way on planet earth as we struggle to address our problems?

This verse from the Tao Te Ching showed up in something I recently read…

“Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing.”

Pretty drastic, eh?  Kind of goes against everything we seem to be fighting for.  Maybe it strikes you as a form of anarchy.  Or perhaps it’s pointing towards something else, the artifice that comes with making an ideology out of natural goodness, and then using that ideology as a weapon, in the name of goodness!  I think there are a number of ways one might understand this statement (made three thousand years ago) but I don’t think it’s espousing that we do away with any of the tools we need to navigate the relative world.  That may seem contradictory when seen as dualistic, which is actually OK because it’s the product of thought.  It becomes a problem when we can’t see that and act out of a misguided belief.

I suppose this has become a theme on the blog, and yet I keep thinking that this time everything is suddenly going to be OK and there will be no need to bring it up again.  There is a tension around this issue in that I used to speak out pretty strongly on social and political issues but it didn’t help, it made me feel worse, in ways I didn’t understand.  That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless and not to speak out.  Plenty of artists do speak out and with good reason.  But perhaps it’s hopeless in a more positive sense.  We are all going to die.  I think that means that we’re already free, we just need to make some effort in realizing it.  No matter what you choose to do, how that effort is directed makes all the difference.  You can see it in the way it affects other people and you don’t have to be a sage to feel that.

As for those questions posed at the top, they’re OK, it’s just that they are all imposed before the fact.  Too far ahead of the beat, as it were.  Let’s see if we can find a better groove…