emingway H 38 DOWNBEAT JULY 2011 Jordan Gerr y Hemingway Pluralistic

AttitudeBy Ted Panken

erry Hemingway is a collector with purpose. In addition to teaching percussion, impro- visation and composition in the music department of Hochschule Luzern in Switzer- land since 2009, the acclaimed drummer is also an obsessive collector and archivist. Which is why, in early January, near the end of a two-week stateside visit undertaken with the intention of selling his New Jersey home and 1913 Steinway B piano, he ex- Gpressed relief that, after a year’s separation, he would soon reunite with his holdings. “When the job was offered, I told them that about half his time—after a 30-year stretch devot- originals that constitute Riptide (Clean Feed)— moving would be difficult because I’ve accumu- ed almost exclusively to playing—he is currently performed by his current quintet (, lated so much stuff,” Hemingway said over din- experiencing an extraordinarily prolific period of tenor saxophone; Oscar Noriega, alto sax and ner in Brooklyn. “It’s my resource, and I can’t re- performance, composition and recording. clarinet; Terrence McManus, guitars; Kermit ally work without it.” Hemingway sat alongside a bulging knap- Driscoll, electric bass)—he distills a boutique With teaching chops honed from two de- sack and cymbal case, which he would later lug homebrew from a congeries of stylistic ingredi- cades of leading ad hoc master classes and work- on the subway to the East Village apartment ents: postbop, Aylerian freedom, Stockhausenish shops, Hemingway codified a pedagogy during where he was spending the night. In the morn- sound and space rubatos, electronica, pastorales, his 2004–’09 tenure at the New School, where he ing, he would reconvene with violinist Mark the blues, reggae, funk. He seasons them with inherited a class called Sound in Time from bass- Feldman, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and bassist a metrically modulated, global array of beats ist Mark Dresser. There, Hemingway became , with whom he had rehearsed (there are hints, more implied than in-your-face, an adept lecturer, adding Contemporary Jazz for the previous six hours, to record Hôtel Du of West Africa, Indonesia and New Orleans), History and World Music History to his teaching Nord (released in April by Intakt), a followup to much polyphony and constant melodic develop- portfolio. “These are large lecture classes, and I last year’s . He betrayed no signs ment. That the feel is suite-like may stem from had to engage the students,” he said. “To find out of fatigue. Hemingway’s intention to “weave each musi- about the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Ayler, or “All of us are sensitive to a notion of transpar- cian’s sound, their idea, their way of playing not Coltrane, they need to see them, get a real feeling ency in music, where all the elements can speak,” just into the improvising, but into the material for what went on in the ’60s. I got as much foot- Hemingway observed. “Mark thinks acoustically, itself.” age as possible, did tons of research and accumu- with many leanings—as Sylvie also has—to the On both Riptide and The Other Parade lated a strong body of work.” nuance of chamber music dynamics or control, (Clean Feed), an earthy recording by Hemingway has spent decades collecting a which I have a lot of experience with. Sylvie and I BassDrumBone—a collective trio with trom- wide array of sounds and experiences. He ex- have a compatible concept of what I call ‘negative bonist Ray Anderson and bassist Mark Helias plained the circumstances by which he joined space’—how you organize the space between the that has operated, off and on, since 1977— the faculty of the Lucerne University of Applied notes—that forms an interesting tapestry of rhyth- Hemingway propels the flow with an idio- Sciences and Arts, the differences in maturity mic tension. That way of thinking has roots in the syncratic pulse and precisely executed attack. and purpose between European and American traditions of modern classical music, serialized He tends to eschew a drums-as-orchestra ap- students, and the complexities of connecting his rhythms and things of that nature.” proach, instead favoring minimalist strate- charges to the diverse flavors of the jazz timeline. Tropes of abstraction are less prominent on gies, by which he elaborates rhythmic de- He observed that, although teaching now occupies two 2009 studio recordings. On the nine episodic signs on the drum kit’s discrete components.

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Gerry Hemingway Guitar School Dave Stryker JULY 2011 U.K. £3.50 Master Class John Abercrombie

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