MUSIC FOR SOLO SAXOPHONE PERFORMANCE
PAUL NEWMAN
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN MUSIC YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO
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1*1 Canada Abstract
This thesis is an account of my project to develop music for solo saxophone performance. Topics discussed include the techniques used to write this music, my approach to using it as a basis for improvisation, and some of the practice techniques I used in learning to play it. I also attempt to explain the influences, both musical and extra-musical, that have shaped this music. A recording of all eight pieces discussed in the thesis is included.
iv Acknowledgements
The music on In My Life represents a snapshot of my musical life as of the summer of2009. As music is an ongoing thing, I don't know where it will go in the future but I can look at my past and see where the present came from. I am eternally grateful to all those who helped me and are helping me in my journey. I would like in particular to thank David Mott, without whose lessons this music would be nowhere near as good. I would like to thank Timothy and Peggy
Gianotti for literary advice and hospitality; Michael Coghlan for fixing my punctuation and helping me to clarify my writing; Mark Zurawinski and Tim
Smith for unlocking the mysteries of the computer; Kyle Brenders, Rob Clutton,
Dave Fish, Michael Herring, Germaine Liu, Aaron Lumley, Michael Morse, Scott
Thomson and John Wilson for playing my music; Thomas Silvani and Dave Clark for recording it; and all the members of the Association of Improvising Musicians
Toronto for being your own great selves. I have been blessed to work with and know you all.
v Table of Contents
Abstract iv
Acknowledgements v
List of figures
Improvisation and Composition 1
The Twelve Tone Row in Improvised Music 7
The Solo Music 18
The Pieces:
"Like Water" 23
"Celebration" - 26
"Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" 30
"Ant Farm" : - 34
"Car Pound Inquiry" 37
"Elk Gesture" 38
"The Third Language" 40
"Shelter" 42
Notes 46
Discography 47
Bibliography 50
Scores 52
vi List of Figures
Fig. 1: Twelve tone row, four versions 12
Fig. 2: Eighth note grouping exercise for twelve tone row 13
Fig. 3: Twelve tone row in all transpositions exercise 14
Fig. 4: Matrix, prime row for solo music 17
Fig. 5: Rhythmic sequence for "Celebration" 18
Fig. 6: Melody for "Like Water" 23
Fig. 7: Row repetition in "Celebration" 27
Fig. 8: Error in melody of "Celebration" 28
Fig. 9: Overtone series 31
Fig. 10: Overtones used in "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" 31
Fig. 11: "Ant Farm," A section '. 35
Fig. 12: "Ant Farm," B section 35
Fig. 13: "Elk Gesture," A section.. 39
Fig. 14: "Elk Gesture," beginning of B section 39
Fig. 15: Beginning of melody for "Shelter". 43
vii Improvisation and Composition
My principal interest in music is improvisation; all the music I write is intended to facilitate it. For me, then, composition is at the service of improvisation. And this raises the question, what is the difference between composition and improvisation? According to The Oxford Dictionary of Current
English, to compose means "To create a work of art, especially music or poetry."1
To improvise means "To invent and perform music, drama or poetry on the spur of the moment." More detailed definitions are given by Ed Sarath in A New Look at Improvisation. Composition is "The discontinuous process of creation and iteration (usually through notation) of musical ideas."3 Improvisation is "The spontaneous creation and performance of musical materials in a realtime format, where the reworking of ideas is not possible."4 More poetically, the great jazz saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy was once asked to give a fifteen-second explanation of the difference between improvisation and composition. He replied,
"The main difference is that in composition you have all the time you need to think about what you are going to say in fifteen seconds, whereas when you improvise you only have fifteen seconds to say what you want to say."5
I like to say that improvisation is composition without an eraser, but I think the important difference is in a word found in two of the three definitions of improvisation: performance. Improvisation happens in a performance; composition happens before the performance. The composition can be played 1 many times; the improvisation only happens once. Accordingly, I will use the following definition for the purposes of this thesis: I can repeat a composition. I can't repeat an improvisation. I write the composition down, and then improvise on it during a performance. The act of composition serves to set up a system within which I will improvise.
One of my first experiences with collective improvisation was at a workshop given by Marilyn Crispell in the summer of 1988. During the workshop, she put together a composition made almost entirely out of a verbal narrative. I remember one section where she specified certain scales to be played, but essentially she gave us a story to tell and let us tell it through collective improvisation. It was, at the time, a unique playing experience for me -a half hour long piece where you didn't play any prewritten material but rather decided what to do by listening. And yet it was clearly Marilyn Crispell's composition, with a known beginning, middle and end. The recipe was supplied, but the ingredients left unspecified. I think that this was the beginning of my awareness that it is possible to be both a composer and an improviser at the same time.
At that time, the improvised music scene in Toronto was very small. This changed with the arrival in the late 1990s of clarinetist Ronda Rindone and saxophonist Maury Coles. Ronda started an improvised music series (called the
Improviser's Series) on Saturday nights at the Idler Pub on Davenport Road;
Mauiy started the Improviser's Pool on Monday nights at the Cameron House on
Queen Street West. Both lasted about two years during 1997, 98 and 99. At the 2 Improviser's Pool, names were drawn to determine who would play with whom.
The music was always completely improvised. The Idler series presented already existing groups whose music was focused on improvisation. I played at both the
Idler series and at the Improviser's Pool. Both were influential in my musical life.
At the Idler I met and first heard many of the musicians who I still play with today, Dave Clark being a particular example. At the Improviser's Pool I played within a community of musicians every Monday night for two years. Colin Fisher,
Jason Hammer, Thomas Krakoviak and Gordon Allen were there every week; other faces were new every time and some came for weeks or months before moving on to other things. The experience has influenced the direction of my musical life ever since, and it taught me a lot about what improvised music could be.
At the time, I decided there were two truisms about collective free improvisation. First, three is the ideal number of musicians for free improvisation.
With three imaginations at work there is no shortage of new ideas to keep the music moving forward; neither is there too much information to process. Three is a good balance of space, communication and variety. Two or four is great as well, but by the time you have more than five in the band, musical interaction can be getting difficult, as the amount of information that needs to be processed has become quite large. I think this is why so many free improvisation groups are trios. The Sam Rivers trio, the Slippenbach trio, Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul
Litton, and Paul Bley/Evan Parker/Barre Phillips come immediately to mind. At 3 the Improviser's Pool, whenever it got up to an octet the results were generally
dense and lacking in interaction. We would usually play as a large group at the end of the night, when everyone who had played earlier in smaller groups would take to the stage together. I don't recall anyone in the audience still being there by
the time we finished. In retrospect, the reason we had this problem was that, in the
Improviser's Pool, we felt that we had to play purely improvised-in-the moment music. It did not occur to us that we could impose any kind of strategy on the
music; that would have seemed to us to be against the "rules". I now realize that there are at least two methods that would have helped us to be more coherent in larger-ensemble improvisations. One is the use of a conductor as a unifying force; a good example of this is Toronto's Element Choir, conducted by Christine
Duncan. Another is to introduce composed elements, as did Marilyn Crispell at the workshop I attended; through this method, improvisation is aided by the interference of the composer.
The second thing I decided at the time is, after a while free improvisation often isn't free anymore. It tends to get locked into one rhythmic, harmonic or melodic area and then it just stays there. John Cage must have been thinking about this when he said, "I've always been opposed to improvisation because you only do what you remember."6 And as Derek Bailey says, "Once solo playing descends to being the recycling of previously successful formulae its relevance to improvisation becomes pretty remote."71 know from personal experience how easy it is to fall into formulae. I have found that this is another area where 4 composition can come to the rescue of improvisation. By directing improvisation
through the introduction of composed elements, the music can be steered in
different directions. Composition can be used to "free" the improvisation.
Improvisation is a process of discovery in real time. But the compositional
process allows the luxury of suspending time. It can prepare the way for
improvisation. All of the compositions that I will be writing about function by
setting limits on improvisation. They give the performer a set of notes, intervals,
rhythms or types of sound to use as a basis for improvisation. In this way, with
each new piece, the composer provides the performer with a new set of limits, a
new set of improvisational problems to solve. This can be particularly helpful to
the solo performer, who cannot rely on other members of the ensemble to inject
new ideas.
I have moderated my view on both these points in recent years. I've heard,
and played, a lot of fully improvised music that contains a clear sense of structure
and pacing. Although I still think that a smaller band is easier, I'm often involved
in playing freely improvised music that works well, even in groups of a dozen or
more, such as Dave Clark's Woodchoppers Association. And even though I like
involving composed elements, I often find myself playing completely improvised
music that sounds so good that I wonder what the use of composing is. But just as
improvising will sometimes produce music that would never have been written, so composition can sometimes produce something that would never have been
improvised. In a lecture I attended in 2000 at the Banff Centre School for Fine 5 Arts, Dave Holland said that he had for a long time believed that fully improvised music was the only music worthy of his attention. What changed his mind was the realization that if there was only improvisation, John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" would never have existed.
In the case of a solo performance, I have no doubt that many performers are capable of hours of solo improvisation without ever emptying their well of ideas. Steve Lacy said of his own solo playing, "If a concert is two hours long I may have a minute here and a minute there where everything I do is very precise;
Q but most of the time it's improvisation, free." However, I personally do not have a big enough imagination to play an entire improvised concert without painting myself into a musical corner. For me, solo performance must necessarily be a combination of improvisation and composition: the two disciplines are interdependent. My goal is to thoroughly learn each new piece I write as a vocabulary for improvisation. In performance, I hope to find something new within that vocabulary each time I play the piece.
Steve Lacy sums up the composition/improvisation process well:
I'm attracted to improvisation because of something I value. That is a freshness, a certain quality, which can only be obtained by improvisation, something you cannot possibly get from writing. It is something to do with the 'edge'. Always being on the brink of the unknown and being prepared for the leap. And when you go on out there, you have all your years of preparation and all your sensibilities and your prepared means, but it is a leap into the unknown. If through that leap you find something, then it has 6 a value which I don't think can be found in any other way. I place a higher value on that than on what you can prepare. But I am also hooked into what you can prepare, especially in the way that it can take you to the edge. What I write is to take you to the edge safely, so that you can go on out there and find this other stuff. But really it is this other stuff that interests me and I think it forms the basic stuff of jazz.9
I love the immediacy of improvised music. It's there, then it's gone; you can never get the moment back. But a part of me wants to seize control of that moment, hold it and manipulate it to my own ends. So, I'm a composer. But I'm an improviser as well.
The Twelve Tone Row in Improvised music
My involvement with twelve tone (also called serial) music began in the early
1990s, when, as an usher at the O'Keefe Centre, I heard the Canadian Opera
Company perform Lulu, by Alban Berg. Ignoring all usherly duties, I sat in the balcony and watched all seven performances in their entirety. I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. I remember going to the University of
Toronto bookstore and reading the music theory textbooks for information on this compositional system, and arguing with opera patrons about the merits of Berg's music. At the time, I was playing in a duo with baritone singer Barry Espin and was writing settings of poems for him to sing. Twelve tone rows began creeping into this music, but I don't remember making any attempt to improvise on them. I 7 was improvising on the melodies in a general sense, but I didn't initially see the
potential of the tone row as the foundation of a more rigorous kind of
improvisation. For me, improvisation was still one of two kinds: free or chordal,
structured or unstructured.
I didn't make the connection until 2003, while I was writing "Symmetry,"
for two saxophones, bass and drums. I was in Halifax for a few weeks while
playing at the Atlantic Fringe Festival and had a lot of free time to spend walking
around Point Pleasant Park thinking about the music I was writing. I was
frustrated by my tendency to follow well-worn paths in both free and chordal
improvisation. I was in a rut, and looking to get out of it. Derek Bailey would
have said that I had "descended to the recycling of previously successful
formulae."10 So, I decided to use the twelve tone row to try to rid myself of
unwanted habits. I would write tone rows that excluded the patterns I was prone
to falling into. I would memorize these rows and improvise on them, keeping the order of intervals intact.
It seemed simple, but simple and easy turned out not to be the same thing.
I've been working on this for six years now and fluency continues to evade me.
However, the process has been instructive and useful, and has, I think, taught me a method of organizing my thoughts that helps me in improvising on music in general, not just twelve tone music in particular.
"Symmetry" turned out to be the first in a series of multi-section compositions based on a single row. It was followed by "We the Undersigned do 8 Hereby Agree," "Archimedes," "Heisenberg Revisited," "You May Attend a
Party Where Strange Customs Prevail" (the title comes from a fortune cookie) and, most recently, "Various Densities." Looking back on the recordings of these pieces, there is a gradual progression towards coherent use of the row for improvisation. To me, playing coherently means to play in the manner of Lee
Konitz, Sonny Rollins, Steve Lacy or Miles Davis - all of them musicians who show great retention of the material they are improvising on. The listener can hear the progression of melodic and rhythmic variations in their solos. Steve Reich, in his 1968 essay "Music as a Gradual Process," writes, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music."11 Interestingly, in the same essay, Reich says, "One can't improvise in a musical process - the concepts are mutually exclusive."12 And also, ".. .in serial music, the series itself is seldom audible. This is a basic difference between serial music and serial art, where the perceived series is usually the focal point of the work."13 Well, I want the series to be audible, and I want it to be the focal point of the composition. To me, improvising coherently in the twelve tone context means being able to hear the row and hear the ongoing process of variations on the row. That means that, although I love and am inspired by the music of Steve Reich, I will have to try to prove him wrong on the matter of twelve tone music and improvisation.
Of the above mentioned pieces, the one that saw the most progress was
"You May Attend a Party Where Strange Customs Prevail." This was a seven part 9 piece for two musicians written in a variety of time signatures. I performed it over and over with guitarist John Wilson, and I distinctly remember a night where, out of nowhere, we were improvising audibly on the row. It was a very exciting moment; after all the work of internalizing the material, it was starting to come out in performance.
There is a definite process that I go through in order to absorb the vocabulary of a twelve tone row. My development of this process is ongoing. I will discuss the methods I'm currently using, as well as the ones I plan to use next.
The first thing I do is to write a row (also called a series). Row, in this context, means a melody of twelve notes containing each note of the chromatic scale; there can be no repeated notes. I make up the row entirely on the basis of what sounds good to me. I love the music of John Cage and have at times tried to emulate him by using random methods (including dice, dartboards, phone numbers, birth dates and other forms of numerology) to determine the order of notes. For me, however, chance based methods of composition were tedious and unsatisfying. Now, my only method is to search for an attractive melody using the unrepeated notes of the chromatic scale. When I find it, it becomes the vocabulary of the piece. The row almost always undergoes some changes as I work on the composed aspects of the piece. I generally know whom I'm writing for and as I establish the general form of the piece I can imagine how it will fit the individual voices of the musicians who will play it. I may change the order of the row to find 10 the best fit.
Next comes the task of absorbing this vocabulary. I aim to memorize it so thoroughly that it can completely bypass my brain. I am a physical being more than a mental one. For me personally, music is primarily a physical process, as are most things in life. I experience and interact with the world more through my body than my brain and, ultimately, I trust my body more than my brain. I believe, then, that to play a piece of music most effectively I need to know it on a physical level, one that makes thinking optional. I think that the study of twelve tone improvisation has helped me in learning to better absorb music. I have always preferred to memorize the music I perform but for a few years after recovering from a brain tumor in 2001 I was unable to do so (I wasn't much good at remembering my phone number, either). I think working on tone rows rewired my brain in a way that allowed me to re-establish the ability to memorize.
I use a series of exercises while in the process of learning a row. It is important to note that I never write any of the exercises down but learn them through repetition alone. Remember, I'm trying for a physical and intuitive, not mental, process. The four versions of the row (the examples given are the rows used in "Celebration," "Ant Farm," "Elk Gesture" and "The Third Language") are shown in figure 1.
11 Fig. 1: Twelve tone row, four versions.
Prime i?o ijo
Retrograde $is ? -e—l><»
Inversion
t]o |,0 tf"
Retrograde Inversion
First is the prime row; this is the twelve note melody I have arrived at. Next is the retrograde, which is the prime row backwards. Then comes the inversion, this being the prime row with each interval inverted. Finally there is the retrograde inversion: the inversion backwards. My first step in tone row improvisation is to memorize the row. My method of doing this is as follows:
First, I play each version of the row over and over in eighth note groupings of three, four, five and seven (see figure 2). Lately, I'm starting to work on eleven.
12 Fig.2: Eighth note grouping exercise for twelve tone row.
u—
12 fei" # r—— J ''' i IH
1 J 4I J -J- b-Nt- J
JttJ * J J -MJ' V m W -J.
=F=F =4== • [Hi # Mt• M J > « J
1= J •J V HJ fr •V b* t|J
HI AL s>* FH-- i— tm J Jm-« F 1 iJ V * w **
1 - -kP*= jar~i 9 j- * J TT [>< -- is J «
d ¥—- bJ ^J —H» H 13 Again, I don't actually ever write this down. I commit the rows to memory as soon as possible and then never look at them; my objective is to memorize the sound of the rows rather than thinking of them as a set of intervals. Second, I play each version of the row over and over in all twelve transpositions, just as I might learn a tonal melody in all twelve keys (see figure 3). Fig. 3: Twelve tone row in all transpositions exercise. y t m kJ- Jt Jg •- T~ - -m 1 ¥ — J n^ * TTf nf br m ¥—ta 'tnr -J ''fflJI A-—ft.'' f ri1. 14 As with the previous exercises, I don't write this down but learn it by repetition. Once I get so I can play each transposition, I play continuously, changing transposition with each repetition of the row. Currently, I transpose in half steps but am beginning to work on adding other intervals. I hope eventually to be able to make any transposition at any time. Then, I gradually increase the tempo. I try to get it going fast enough that I don't have time to think about the transpositions but have to listen for it to sound right instead. I also apply the three, four, five and seven exercise to all transpositions of the row. My goal is to memorize by sound, not by thinking of a series of notes or intervals; I want this to become intuitive, based on sound and physical sensation rather than conscious thought. This method, which can be likened to memorizing the periodic table of the elements, is quite time-consuming, although the more times I go through the process the quicker it gets. Still, I'd been working on the rows for "Various Densities," which, of my twelve tone music, are the rows I know best, for about six months before they even started to become instinctive. This is why I always write a series of tunes on each new row; learning it is too much work to only use it once. I begin improvising on the rows right from the beginning of the memorization process. I play at various tempos, but mainly very slowly. I usually, but not always, play in time and most often use a metronome, because I develop bad rhythmic habits quickly if I don't regularly submit to its tyranny. I don't, however, try to play in predetermined phrase patterns. This is because when improvising on a twelve tone row, there is no set harmonic rhythm, as there would be when using a chord sequence as a basis for improvisation. I can spend as long as I want on one version of the row, or one fragment thereof. In this way, my twelve tone music is like the music of Ornette Coleman, whose compositions allow the improviser to play on the melody without observing structures based on numbers of bars. George Russell said, "This approach liberates the improviser to sing his own song, really, without having to meet the deadline of any particular chord."14 Ornette Coleman himself calls his approach "Harmelodics," a word which describes how, in the words of Joachim Berendt, ".. .each harmony is, as this title suggests, established only by the melodic line."151 have listened to Ornette Coleman a lot, and I'm sure that his music has had a strong influence on my approach to improvising and to writing melodies. When I'm practicing improvising on a row, I start by using one version of the row with no transpositions and then gradually add possibilities until I'm using all versions and jumping from row to row and transposition to transposition. My aim is to internalize the entire matrix so it becomes an instinctive vocabulary (the matrix is a table of all possible permutations of the row. See figure 4 for the matrix for the prime row shown on page 12). 16 Fig. 4: Matrix, prime row for solo music. G B Eb E Bb Db Ab A C D F F# B Eb G G# D F C C# E F# A Bb Eb G B C F# A E F Ab Bb C# D E G# C c# G Bb F F# A B D Eb Bb D F# G C# E B C Eb F Ab A Db F A Bb E G D Eb F# Ab B C Ab C E F B D A Bb C# Eb F# G A C# F F# C Eb Bb B D E G Ab C E G# A Eb F# C# D F G Bb B D F# Bb B F Ab Eb E G A C C# F A C# D Ab B F# G Bb C Eb E F# Bb D Eb A C G Ab B c# E F When I'm finished writing the composed parts of the piece, I memorize them as well. Then I have all the material of the piece crammed into my brain, hopefully to be available at all times. While I'm practicing improvising on the row, I do several rhythmic exercises. The first involves changing the beat that the metronome's click falls on. I put the metronome on only one beat of the bar, and then switch to a different beat from time to time. For example, in four/four time I'll play with the metronome on beat four, then on beat three and so on. I can do this in four/four and three/four now, and hope to expand it to all time signatures, especially the odd numbered ones like seven/eight. I also improvise freely on the row without observing beats or bar lines. The second of these exercises involves specific rhythms. Using the metronome as a reference point I attempt to play rhythms such as eighth note septuplets or half note triplets, while keeping the row intact. Doing this exercise led to the writing of "Ant Farm," "Celebration" and "Elk Gesture." "Celebration" is the most recent of these compositions. The score gives an indication of which rhythms I'm currently working on (see figure 5, also score on pages 53 and 54). Fig. 5: Rhythmic sequence for "Celebration." This is a relatively new approach for me but one that is starting to show up in my writing. The Solo Music In this section, I'll discuss in general the compositions that are the subject of this thesis. These eight compositions are representative of one aspect of my present work as a composer and performer; my music for solo soprano saxophone 18 performance. They were written during 2008 and 2009, and were recorded during the first week of July 2009 for the CD In My Life. I wrote this music in order to take on the challenge of trying to hold an audience's attention for forty-five minutes without the help of others. I also wanted to use more silence in music than I had previously been doing; going down to one performer makes it easier to achieve this. I chose to write for soprano saxophone (I more often play tenor) because I wanted to get better at playing that instrument. I also wanted to learn to improvise with greater retention of the melody, to play in such a way that each piece would retain its identity throughout the improvised parts of the performance. By identity I mean more the melodic and rhythmic identity of a piece as opposed to its harmonic identity. Lee Konitz has said, The first improvising step as I understand it is stretching the rhythm, and the expression of the melody notes. So before adding anything, I play the song. If I can't play that melody as if I just made it up, I need to work on it until I can.... Unless the basic groundwork - melody - is strong, the variations certainly will not be convincing.16 It seemed to me that solo performance would help with this. By freeing myself of the responsibility for keeping up with the rest of the band, I can focus more completely on melody (or on rhythm as well, in the case of "Ant Farm," "Celebration" and "Elk Gesture"). "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" and "The Third Language" do not have melodies in the usual sense of the word; there is no aspect of them that could be hummed with any accuracy. When playing on these two pieces I'm trying to stay in what I have often heard Joe Sorbara, in discussing his music for large improvising ensembles, call the "sound space" of the piece; that is to say, I aim to remain true to the overall sound and texture of the piece. Joe calls this sort of playing a "sound space exploration," which I think is a good term for it. In general, I would like to approach each piece as a vocabulary unto itself, finding the characteristic aspects of the piece and bringing them out through performance. I want to be true to the individual piece, rather than trying to play in a particular idiom. I don't like always having to try to answer the question, "What kind of music do you play?" I want to just play music, combining the worlds of Sonny Rollins, Arnold Schoenberg, Johnny Rotten and anything else that inspires me. It seems to me that the avoidance of specific genres of music is a worthwhile objective. A music that incorporates the widest possible variety of influences will be a music that escapes definition and remains open to constant change and development. A musician working at the present time has a greater possibility to achieve this than at any previous period in history. All the musics of the world, past and present, are available to us via recordings and the Internet. The ease of travel in our time allows those of us living today to play with people from around the world. I had the good fortune on several occasions this past summer to play improvised music with two musicians from Mali, Jah Youssouf and Abdoulaye Kone, who toured with Dave Clark's Woodchopper's Association. The setting 20 aside of genre that comes along with purely improvised music was part of what made this the satisfying musical, and community, experience that it was. On In My Life, each piece is written about a specific person, and most relate to a specific event as well. In order to build some variety into the CD, I used a number of compositional and improvisational methods. There is use of twelve tone writing, modal improvisation, use of overtones and a couple of methods of sound production that are new to me. In all cases, I was looking to write something that would offer me the possibility of extensive variation; something to which I could continue to find new approaches during repeated performances. There are many different characteristics that can make a composition rich in opportunities for variation. A distinctive rhythmic or intervallic sequence, a particular scale or even a series of dynamic changes or articulations can all provide the necessary basis. However, it is possible for a piece to have too many of these characteristics. A good vehicle for improvisation, for me, is one in which the basis for variation is easy to remember. I have to be able to fully internalize the vocabulary of the piece; it must be thoroughly memorized in order for me to improvise effectively on it. So, I can't give myself too much to memorize. In the process of preparing for my solo recording I worked on a total of fourteen pieces, eventually recording eight. The ones that I stuck with have one or two distinctive elements that I can use as a starting point for improvisation. In one case it's a scale, in another an arpeggio, in another a series of overtones. The most 21 complex pieces are the ones that utilize a twelve tone row; these require me to search for variation in both melodic and rhythmic patterns. I can't play pieces like these without a lot of prior work on the rows themselves. For this reason I only use one row per set of pieces. If each twelve tone piece on In My Life had a row unique to itself, I would be unable to retain enough information to play the complete set of music at a live performance without the music suffering from too much thinking. As I wrote earlier, for me a good performance is one that bypasses conscious thought. To play creatively, I have to be operating at a physical level. Mental activity is fine for composing music; by the time I perform it, the thinking, ideally, will be over. The pieces that I used for the recording (with the exception of "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders," which was completely new and happened to work well the first time) were the ones that I did not tire of practicing and performing. They were the ones whose basis for improvisation was vivid enough for easy memorization, simple enough that, when playing them, I could readily hear the series of variations that I wanted to play, and yet substantial enough that I could continue to find new things to do with them through repeated performances. In the next section, I'll discuss each piece in detail. 22 The Pieces "Like Water" "Like Water" (page 52) is dedicated to singer Barry Espin because I wrote it with his voice in mind. I wrote it by setting to music the poem of the same title by Saskatchewan poet John Newlove, published in his collection Apology for 17 Absence. The melody consists of two bars of F ascending melodic minor, then four bars of F major, then two bars of F ascending melodic minor (see figure 6). Fig. 6: Melody for "Like Water". -H* r 6J IM|J S nJT9 ' ] »n M ' la4 - if4 mP 5 rr—"> r r -p * !» ' 4 P—*—- T 5 —I : * __ 4 • * ^<^4 / dim. mp 8 -K QjJTLn =« ^ W . t . | mf The melody starts and finishes low, while rising to a higher pitch in the middle. I feel that the scale change accentuates this as A flat rises to A natural in the middle. Although it's written in five/four, when playing it solo I take advantage of 23 the freedom of the solo format by adhering only loosely to the bar lines and note values. The structure of "Like Water," like four of the eight solo tunes, is a "bookend" one: an improvisation between two statements of a written melody. The improvisation on the recording is episodic in nature. That is to say, I mentally divided the tune into six episodes. They are, approximately: bar one, bar two, bars four and five, bars six and seven, bar eight and bar nine. When improvising on "Like Water," I play on each episode, one at a time, in order of appearance. I spend as much time as seems necessary on each one and return to the melody after one cycle of the six. The main thing that differentiates one performance of "Like Water" from another is the length of time I spend on each episode. Also, where I choose to divide them and the order in which I play them can change. I might, for example, combine some episodes or play them in reverse order. On the version recorded here, I lingered longest on the third and fourth and skipped the fifth entirely. In order to maintain the continuity of the melody, I mostly play only on the written notes of each episode. There are very few notes from outside the written material. This is deliberate. I really want to have the melody be recognizable in the improvisation, more than it would be if I just played on the structure of two bars of F harmonic minor/ four bars of F major/ two bars of F harmonic minor. I think this is an offshoot of my twelve tone practice; I have become much more conscious of adhering to the character of the melody while improvising on it. I don't try to interpret the words of the f>oem while 24 improvising; however, I do keep in mind the concept of various kinds of water: raindrops, lakes, rivers, mist, snow and ice. The use of poems is one of my favourite compositional approaches. I find that since the rhythmic structure, and, to an extent, the pitch choices, are determined by the poem, there is less for me to do. It becomes a sort of compositional paint by numbers, as reading a poem out loud almost always indicates to me the way the poem would be set to music. If possible, I get the author of the poem to read it out loud to me in order to get the most accurate version (unfortunately, John Newlove died in 2003, so this wasn't possible here). Contacting poets and asking them about their writing has led to some enjoyable collaborations. In particular, my 2004 recording Black Lake, a collaboration with Toronto poet Ronna Bloom, was a result of me asking her if I could use one of her poems as lyrics for a song, and getting her to read it to me on the phone. "Like Water" bears the influence of Steve Lacy's solo music, especially in the leisurely phrasing and use of silence. One of the aspects of Lacy's playing that I admire most is his ability to improvise at length on a short melodic fragment, finding great variety without ever losing the sound of the original motif. I'm consciously trying to emulate that throughout this record. Thus, I think it's fair to say that Steve Lacy is the most prevalent influence on my solo music. 25 "Celebration" "Celebration" (pages 53 and 54) is dedicated to Dave Clark, who is one of my biggest influences, both in music and in life in general. Dave is primarily known to the public as the drummer of the Rheostatics but I know him best from playing with him, for almost thirteen years now, in his band the Woodchopper's Association, a large free-improvisation ensemble which Dave leads and conducts. Dave Clark epitomizes, to me, the role of the musician as a builder of community. He brings music eveiywhere he goes. There is nowhere Dave won't play, no audience that he can't form an instant connection with and no group of musicians he can't persuade to play at their highest potential while improvising together. I feel that the most important function of music in this world is as an act of community. I hope very much to follow Dave Clark's example in the furthering of community through music. "Celebration" came about from watching Dave start a parade on Bloor Street. He did this by getting a bunch of bystanders off the sidewalk, putting a drum in each pair of hands, standing them in a circle in the road and teaching each person a rhythm. Then, after a few corrections, he marched, or rather samba'd, them down the street. The piece is built on the same row as the other twelve tone solo pieces: "Ant Farm," "Elk Gesture" and "The Third Language." For "Celebration," I used the prime row throughout, and built the piece on a series of rhythmic events. Because there are twenty-six notes in the rhythmic cycle, a 26 different part of the twelve tone row comes up with the start of each cycle. The rhythmic cycle of eighth note triplet, quarter note triplet, eighth note quintuplet, half note triplet, quarter note quintuplet and sixteenth note sextuplet does not change, but the notes do because the number of notes in the cycle is neither a division nor a multiplication of twelve. As you can see in figure 7, the row begins to repeat before the end of the rhythmic cycle. Fig.7: Row repetition in "Celebration.' Row repeats starting here. fine I—3—i IT3-1 1 5 11 3t 1 k _ .III rn r^M'l^lj Thus, melodic variation is heard, but not rhythmic variation. You may notice that the second sixteenth note sextuplet is in fact a plain old string of eight sixteenth notes. This is a mistake, but I liked it and left it in. You may also notice that I occasionally leave a note of the row out of the melody. For example, the first set of sixteenth notes goes from A to D; there should be a C between them (see figure 8). 27 Fig. 8: Error in melody of "Celebration." I did this because it sounded better that way, but afterwards I felt guilty; I had violated the sanctity of the row. Then, I realized that if I adhered strictly to the row, after six repeats of the rhythmic sequence, I would arrive back at the first note of the row. This full circle approach appealed to me, so I wrote a second version, this one free of sin against the row. And... I didn't like it. It sounded bland and lacking in character. So I returned to the original, impure version. I find that some of the best elements of my compositions are mistakes. It is very common for me to discover a mistake and leave it in because I liked it better than what I intended to do. I believe that the Latin expression for this is "felix culpa" — a happy error. Over the six years that I've been engaged in the twelve tone project, I have gradually become less strict about the use of the row for composition, and more strict about the use of the row for improvisation. In my first twelve tone recording, Symmetry (recorded with Open House in 2004), there is never an out of place note in the composed sections. However, my improvisations bear only a general resemblance to the row. With time and practice, I have become more adept at the use of the row in improvisation. On the row-based pieces that are part of In My Life, with the exception of "The Third Language," row-related "mistakes" are rare during the improvisations. I actually use the row in a freer way while composing than while improvising. I am curious to see if my improvisations start to become looser as I become more experienced in twelve tone improvisation. If I could play all day on the row without making a mistake, would I deliberately step outside the row from time to time? At present, it's too early to tell. I still find it a challenge to stay within the row while improvising. The structure of "Celebration" amounts to the use of a rhythmic row as well as a tone row. I would like to incorporate this feature in the improvisation by learning the rhythmic row as thoroughly as I learn the tone row. I'm working on this at present but at the time of the recording "Celebration" was only about two weeks old and I was still reading it off the paper. I didn't know the piece well enough to improvise on the rhythmic series. For that matter, I was only able to play the written line in an approximate way. I have since performed "Celebration" from memory, but have yet to produce a mistake-free public playing of it. There's a lot of work left to be done here. Finally, I think I was channeling Igor Stravinsky when I wrote "Celebration". The second of his Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo is similar in both the rhythms used and in the use of large intervals. I love Stravinsky's piece and have tried to play it, even though I barely know how to play the clarinet. 29 "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" (page 55) was written in honour of the name change, by marriage, of Kyle and Jess Brenders' cat, Ocho. The piece involves playing the three lowest notes of the saxophone range with the bell of the instrument held against the head of a drum, in this case a floor torn belonging to Mark Zurawinski and Germaine Liu. The three lowest notes (all notes listed in this thesis are concert pitch) - B flat, A and A flat - are used because these are the notes where all the sound comes out of the bell area of the instrument. Thus, the sound can easily be directed at the drum head. This means that this piece could only be performed with a straight soprano saxophone, as a curved one could not be held against the drum without considerable physical contortion. I found several ways of changing the sound: pressing on the drum head with varying amounts of pressure, changing the angle at which the bell rests on the drum, and playing the overtones of the three stated notes. The overtones, also called harmonics, are the notes of the harmonic series, shown in figure 9 for the note C (in reality, this is an open- ended system with no upward limit). 30 Fig. 9: Overtone series. f § In saxophone performance, overtones are produced by manipulating the air stream with the diaphragm and larynx. The fingerings are not changed, meaning, in this case, that I can get a variety of pitches while still using the same fingering, one that concentrates the sound at the bell of the instrument. The overtones I was using are shown in figure 10 in brackets above the notes from whose fingering they are produced. Fig. 10: Overtones used in "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders". j[f\ frl i Originally, I had planned to vary the distance between the bell and the drum, but on the recording I left the saxophone in contact with the drum, as I found I was able to get a sufficient variety of sounds without any vertical movement. Subsequent performances have shown that this is the most effective method, as 31 the effect is lost by the time the two are a few centimetres apart, and it's difficult for me to judge the distance. Because the resonant harmonic notes of the drum are heard at all times, playing the overtones of the saxophone produces overtones of overtones.. .1 think. Or perhaps there are two parallel harmonic series being heard. At any rate, these are sounds which I cannot produce with a saxophone alone. "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" shows, I think, the influence of Alvin Lussier's I Am Sitting In a Room. This piece, first recorded in 1969, involved two tape recorders alternately playing and recording a spoken paragraph. The cycle is repeated thirty-two times, during which the sound is gradually transformed as the tape recorders register the overtones produced by each other and the room that they are placed in. As Lussier used the tape recorders to multiply the overtones, I am using the drum, in a much more limited way, to bring out overtones that otherwise might not be noticed. Like Lussier's piece, I suspect the results will change according to the natural resonance of the room in which it is played. I'm sure the results will vary according to the size and type of the drum used, and also the tuning of the drum. Recently I have been listening to John Cage's Etudes Australes for Piano, performed by Grete Sultan. This is a set of thirty-two pieces for piano. In each of the pieces, certain keys (different ones for each piece) are held down with rubber wedges during the entire piece. Thus, these notes and their overtones resonate in sympathy with the notes played by the performer. In "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders," the drum serves the same function as the open piano strings in Etudes 32 Australes. I could emulate John Cage's pieces by changing the type of drum or other resonant object I use, as each would produce a different set of harmonic pitches. In addition, I could further emulate John Cage by preparing the drum much as he prepared pianos. Various objects could be placed on the drum in order to change the sound it makes. I could try mobile objects such as ball bearings or marbles, stationary objects such as cymbals, or a combination of the two. I think I'm going to have to buy a drum and do some more research. Because I don't have any drums, it was not possible to rehearse this piece. And, at the recording sessions I only did one take. As I did not know what kind of sound it would produce until I started playing, the performance of this piece heard on In My Life can be considered an improvisation by any measure. I feel that my subsequent live performances have more of a composed element, as I had an idea of how certain things would sound and was able to plan what I would do. In the future, I would like to pursue the use of the harmonic series further by writing music for several saxophones playing overtones. The most interesting thing about them, for me, is the intonation. We are used to hearing the system of equal temperament, in which the size of intervals is standardized throughout the octave. In the harmonic series, the notes are not spaced equally; some are sharper and some flatter than their standardized counterparts, especially higher up the harmonic series. In usual saxophone performance, this is compensated for by bending the pitch whenever notes are produced as overtones. But, I have been 33 experimenting with overdubbed recordings where I try to leave the overtones at their natural intonation. And, I find that I like the resulting sound. Finally, "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" offers an opportunity for research in the area of sound recording. I've noticed that the recorded version on In My Life sounds best on headphones, as more details of the sounds made by the drum become audible when listening in this way. The recording was made with one microphone positioned above the drum and the saxophone. I'd like to try different microphone placements to see if I could capture more of the sounds produced by the drum. Perhaps separate microphones on the drum and saxophone would yield more details. I'd also like to try attaching a contact microphone directly to the surface of the drum head. In the meantime, I recommend listening to "Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders" on headphones. "Ant Farm" "Ant Farm," (page 56 and 57), dedicated to Joe Sorbara, is about a night at the Tranzac club in Toronto when Joe couldn't get at his drums because he was locked out of his house. So he sat on the floor and played a mountain of small objects, none of which were primarily intended to be musical instruments. He sounded great, and left a permanent image in my mind. "Ant Farm," like "Celebration" and "Elk Gesture," was made by writing a rhythm and then fitting the notes of the row to it. In this case, in the A section the first five notes of the prime row are heard forward, then backward, then forward again, before repeating (see figure 11). Fig. 11: "Ant Farm", A section. ( r3——i fc n 'r "r / In the B section, shown in figure 12,1 start with the first four notes of the prime row in reverse, then the first five in written order, then backward for two notes before repeating. Fig. 12: "Ant Farm", B section. rw&r I think that restricting myself to less than the full row can make for a simpler, hence more memorable melody, and I'm doing this more and more lately. Rhythmically, "Ant Farm" draws its identity from the contrast between straight eighth notes and various kinds of triplets: eighth note triplets, quarter note triplets and half note triplets. This results in a kind of rhythmic elasticity, which appeals to me. "Ant Farm" and "Elk Gesture" are, in my mind, the tunes most closely associated with the York University strike of2008 and 2009, because I made the rhythms up while walking on the picket line. I think that the energetic nature of these pieces probably reflects my efforts to keep warm while doing so. "Ant Farm" resembles a Thelonius Monk tune in the angular nature of the melody. But it still reminds me more of Joe Sorbara than Thelonius Monk (listeners may, of course, think otherwise). While improvising on it for the recording, I didn't think structurally at all; the twenty-four bar ABA form is not observed. I concentrated on keeping the row intact (and using only the part of it that I used for the melody) and maintaining the groove. I briefly dropped out of the groove towards the end, hoping that my return to playing in time would lead more emphatically into the melody. After hearing the recording, I wished I hadn't, as the identity of the piece is so dependant on the rhythms of the written-out melody. For this reason, during subsequent performances I have played in time throughout the improvised section. Of all the solo tunes, I find this one the easiest to play. The melody sticks easily in my head, and I find that as long as I keep the row intact and play in the groove implied by the melody, the performance will sound good. Happily, this is another Thelonius Monk parallel: I've always found that Monk's tunes have such strong characters that they are easy to play. All you have to do is play the right notes. And that's an ideal worth aiming for. 36 "Car Pound Inquiry" "Car Pound Inquiry" (page 58) is about Michael Herring's car getting towed off of Queen Street while we were playing at Chicago's with a reggae band in July of 2006. It took several hours to recover the car, and I spent a long stretch of that time on the sidewalk of Queen Street, watching Michael's bass while he tried to get the car back. The bass turned out to be a perfect conversation starter, and I talked to numerous people that night, mostly having the same short conversation over and over ("Is that a bass?"). Accordingly, my improvisation here never strays from the C Phrygian mode out of which the melody is made, and consists of small variations of a short melodic idea. With most of the solo pieces, I expand somewhat on the melody while improvising; I think "Car Pound Inquiry" is the only one where I simplified the melody. The A naturals which represent the melody's only departures from the C Phrygian scale never appear in the recorded improvisation. I think it sounds better that way; this is a tune that works best when I make it as simple as possible. "Car Pound Inquiry" sounds easy, but I find it to be the most difficult of the solo pieces. All the other tracks are first or second takes; this one took four tries to get a usable performance. "Car Pound Inquiry" imposes stricter limits on improvisation than the other solo pieces; with less notes to choose from, I have less room to move. But usually that makes it easier to get a good performance, not harder. I am puzzled that it was so difficult to get a good recording of this piece. One possible reason is that I was trying to illustrate such a specific event. To sound right to me the music had to be evocative of a particular thing. A thing that was also quite static, compared to (for example) "Celebration," which depicts a dynamic event that traveled down Bloor Street through changing scenery. The simplicity of improvising on a single scale isn't necessarily limiting. One of my favourite Miles Davis solos, on side one of A Tribute to Jack Johnson, is a long improvisation on a single scale over a repeating ostinato. An even better example would be that of Indian music, in which I have recently been developing an interest. I've been listening to a recording of a piece, "Rag Lalit" (performed by Hariprasad Chaurasia, flute and Anindo Chatteijee, tabla), intended to be performed at dawn. It covers seventy minutes without, to my ear, a change in scale, yet remains fascinating throughout My night on Queen Street gradually ended as the hour grew earlier and people vanished from the street. Finally, the car returned from exile, and we went home at about five o'clock in the morning. But my memory of the night winds down before that part of the story. For me, the last hour or two are just a blur. The music ends by gradually winding down as well. "Elk Gesture" "Elk Gesture" (page 59 and 60) is about an encounter between Rob Clutton and a mother elk at the Banff Centre School for Fine Arts in 1999.1 was there as well that spring and had the opportunity to witness the threat vocabulary 38 of elk body language, and the answering evasion vocabulary of human body language. Here, the elk is represented by the first section, the human by the second. This is another of the tone row tunes. Like "Ant Farm," the rhythm came first, and then I wrote in the notes of the row. In this case, I use the last seven notes of the prime row for the A section. Of these, the first three are heard four times before the last four appear (see figure 13). Fig. 13: "Elk Gesture", A section. After four repeats of this motif, it's a relief when the entire inverse row appears at the start of the B section (see figure 14). Fig. 14: "Elk Gesture", beginning of B section. m m I approach the improvisation in an episodic manner, similar to that of "Like Water". First, I use notes six, seven and eight of the prime row, then notes nine to 39 twelve, then the entire inverse row and its retrograde. This mimics the structure of the melody. Essentially, I'm improvising on the notes of the first two and a half bars of the first section, then the notes of the last half bar and then on to the second section. I think of this as an elastic (a term I first heard used by saxophonist Dave Liebman) approach to playing on the form. It observes the different sections of the melody but lets each section last for an indeterminate period of time. I can decide to change whenever the time seems right. "Elk Gesture," along with "Ant Farm," is one of the easiest of the solo pieces to improvise on. The melody provides a vocabulary of well-defined rhythmic and melodic fragments. "The Third Language" "The Third Language" (page 61) is dedicated to Germaine Liu, and was inspired by the sound of her meowing to my cats. Germaine has a shockingly cat- like meow, and when she uses it my cats look at her in complete amazement. Never before have they heard a human with such a good accent. Accordingly, in "The Third Language" I attempt to make sounds outside of what I would usually play. Germaine is a good role model for this sort of playing. Apart from her remarkable meowing, she is able to draw a vast vocabulary of sounds out of her percussion instruments. Listening to Germaine has made me more aware of the wide range of sounds that are possible with any given instrument, and motivated me to search for new sounds with my own. I also have prior influences in exploring this aspect of music. My earliest role model for this kind of playing was Evan Parker. I first heard Parker in 1988 at Clinton's Tavern in Toronto, and have had the opportunity to hear him live a few times since. His early solo soprano CD, Monocerous, was very influential in causing me to realize that music could consist of sounds as opposed to notes, in the sense that I'm sure that it would be impossible to transcribe the music on Monocerous - it lies outside of anything that could be written down on staff paper. More recently I've been listening to Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber's Thirteen Pieces for Saxophone. Leimgruber, who I heard for the first time this past spring at Somewhere There in Toronto, has invented a saxophone language unique to himself. When I heard him live, many of the sounds he produced were not recognizable to me as saxophone sounds even though I sat right in front of him and observed him making them. Two summers ago I heard British saxophonist Chris Chant play solo. Chant has discovered a new sound world for the saxophone by blocking the bell of the instrument, forcing all sound to come out of the tone holes instead. Again, he produces sounds that I could not recognize as coming from a saxophone if I had not observed him with my own eyes. I'm scratching the surface of the sound universe here; there's nothing on this track that Evan Parker or Chris Chant wouldn't have played, and certainly there must be many more undiscovered sounds that can be produced by a saxophone. I begin "The Third Language" by trilling on the intervals of the prime row, but then improvise on that sound in general without trying to keep to the 41 row, making this the least exact of the row pieces. It represents a general, rather than a specific, use of the row and thus could more accurately be called an offshoot of row playing. In this way, I feel that "The Third Language" is the beginning of a new type of piece for me. The difference is one of intent: although I have previously used the row in a general sense, it wasn't on purpose; I was trying to be accurate but not succeeding. When performing this piece, I mostly play the overtones of the lowest notes, but while doing so, I open holes higher up on the instrument, which I find has unpredictable results. I can't tell for sure what sound I'm going to get, even if I'm using a fingering I've used before. I also copy Chris Chant by playing some of the piece with my right leg blocking the bell. This also produces unpredictable results, allowing this piece to sound different every time I play it. This, to me, is a good thing. I am sure that, with time, I can develop a vocabulary out of these non-standard fingerings. But for now, I enjoy not knowing for sure what sound the instrument will make. I like surprises. "Shelter" "Shelter," (page 62) written for my fellow backpacker (and once upon a time record store co-worker) Alix Bortolotti, is as simple as a tune can get, coming quite close to being nothing but a descending G minor triad (see figure 15). 42 Fig. 15: Beginning of melody for "Shelter". Rubato: y0 iI r — p m -m- »„ _ft Ar—— i 1 M fZ li •f mf 2 . -€»- / 0 vyi \f- In writing this tune, I was thinking of a day in Killarney Provincial Park when rain, hail, high winds and cold temperatures caused me to take shelter in my tent by mid-afternoon. The storm passed overnight and the next day I emerged into a clear, calm and silent morning as a mother loon swam by on the steaming water with her baby riding on her back. It was a scene best described by a minimum of notes and frequent use of rests. In performing this piece, I never stray far from the G minor tonality. I generally start by improvising on the triad and gradually expand to the whole G natural minor scale, regularly returning to the triad. If I depart from G minor, as I do on this recording, it's a brief excursion. If you listen carefully to the recording, you'll hear a point where I waited too long to breathe and briefly lost consciousness. I edited out the sound of my knee hitting the floor but if you listen to the track and breathe where I breathe, you'll find it. The heavy breathing just afterwards kind of gives it away as well. This is a bit ironic, given that I originally set out to make solo music that contained a lot of silence. However, I don't think that the end result sounds particularly dense. The lesson in this may be that you really have to go out of your way to sound dense in a solo wind instrument performance. As soon as you stop to breathe, there is silence. This seems, to the ear, to provide balance even when a great many notes have been played, or a constant sound has been heard, between inhalations. This piece is certainly influenced by Steve Lacy: the repetition of a simple idea, and adherence to that idea while improvising, is characteristic of a lot of Lacy's solo work. In particular, I think I was influenced by the solo performance of his six-part "Tao Cycle" on the record Remains. I've listened to that record probably a hundred times over the years, and it is my all time favourite record of solo music for a wind instrument. I'm learning a lot from the experience of playing solo music. A solo performance is both mentally and physically draining. It requires self-reliance and a constant search for ways to provide variety within an extended period of one performer and one instrument. With no one else to help, rhythm becomes much more difficult: it must be present in order to engage the audience but it can never be delegated. The use of silence becomes not only important but unavoidable: the only options are sound and no sound. The choice of which to use is a large part of what rhythm is about in a solo performance, and, for that matter, in writing music for it. I hope to keep engaging in the challenge of solo performance for a long time to come. However, for me solo playing is an offshoot of collective playing, rather than the other way around. Besides, Steve Lacy said: "If you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music. Jazz is people's 44 18 music, a collectivity.'"0 So, I view solo playing as a side project, one whose main benefits are found in the application of what I learn from it and can apply to playing collectively with other people. But I also think that my solo music, as compared with my music for duo, trio and quartet, represents a different kind of collectivity: that which exists between performer and audience. So, I still feel that solo music, in its own way, represents an act of community. 45 Notes 1. Catherine Soanes, ecL, Oxford Dictionary of Current English (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 456. 2. Ibid., 456. 3. Ed Sarath, "A New Look at Improvisation," Journal of Music Theory, Vol.40, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), 2. 4. Sarath, 3. 5. Steve Lacy, Findings: My Experience With the Soprano Saxophone (Paris: Outre Mesure, 1994), 70. 6. John Cage, Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art Music, ed. Joan Retallack (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1996), 270. 7. Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), 107. 8. Jason Weiss, ed., Steve Lacy: Conversations (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 79. 9. Weiss, 51. 10. Bailey, 107. 11. Steve Reich, Music as a Gradual Process. 1968. Available at: http://austere.org/ProcessMusic.sthml; INTERNET. 12. Ibid. 13.Ibid. 14. Joachim E. Berendt, The Jazz Book, trans. H. and B. Bredigkeit (Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill and Company), 92. 15. Berendt, 92. 16. Andy Hamilton, Lee Konitz: Converstions on the Improviser's Art (Ann Arbour: University of Michegan Press, 2007), 116. 17. JohnNewlove, Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992. (Erin. Ontario: The Porcupine's Quill. 1993), 160. 18. Weiss, 137. Discography Bach, Johan Sebastian. The Six Cello Suites. Pablo Casals, cello. EMI Classics, 7243 5 66215 2,1936-1939. Bach, Johan Sebastian. Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Elizabeth Wallfisch, violin. Hyperion CDD22009. Berg, Alban. Lulu. The London Philharmonic, Andrew Davis, conductor. Kultur D2253. Bley, Paul, Evan Parker and Barre Phillips. Time Will Tell. ECM Records, ECM 1537, 1995. Bley, Paul, Evan Parker and Barre Phillips. Sankt Gerold. ECM Records, ECM 1609, 2000. Bloom, Ronna and Paul Newman. Black Lake. Independent, 2004. Boulez, Pierre. Le Marteau sans Mmtre. CBS Records Masterworks, MK 42619, 1989. Braxton, Anthony. Quartet (Dortmund). 1976. Hat Hut Records, hatOLOGY 557, 2001. Braxton, Anthony. Saxophone Improvisations Series F. Inner City Records IC 10023, 1976. Brenders, Kyle. Flows and Intensities, independent, 2007. Cage, John. Etudes Australes for piano. Grete Sultan, piano. Wergo WER 60152/55, 1987. Cage, John. Suite for Toy Piano. Margaret Leng Tan, toy piano. ECM Records, ECM 1696,2000. Chaurasia, Hariprasad and Anindo Chatterjee. RagLalit. Nimbus Records NI 5152, 1988. Clutton, Rob. Dubious Pleasures. Rat-Drifting, RD8,2005. 47 Clutton, Rob. Suchness Monster. Rat-Drifting, RD17, 2008. Coleman, Ornette. This is Our Music. Atlantic Records, SD 1353. Coltrane, John. Crescent. Impulse IMPD 200, 1964. Coltrane, John. Giant Steps. Atlantic 1311, 1958. Coltrane, John. Meditations. Impulse IMPD 199, 1966. Crispell, Marilyn. For Coltrane. Leo Records CD LR 195, 1993 Davis, Miles. A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Columbia Records WKC 30455, 1970. Davis, Miles. Kind of Blue. Columbia 8163, 1959. Feldman, Morton. Only. Joan La Barbara, soprano. New Albion Records NA 085CD, 1996. Guy, Bany, Paul Lytton and Evan Parker with Marilyn Crispell. Natives and Aliens. Leo Records CD LR 243,1997. Holland Dave. Conference of the Birds. ECM Records ECM 1027,1973. Konitz, Lee, Don Friedman and Attila Zoller. Thingin. Hat Hut Records hatOLOGY 547,2000. Lacy, Steve. The Beat Suite. Universal Music 067 617-2,2003. Lacy, Steve. Momentum. RCA Novus 3021-I-N, 1987. Lacy, Steve. Remains. Hat Hut Records hat ART CD 6102. Lacy, Steve. Packet. New Albion Records NA080CD, 1995. Lacy, Steve. Vespers. Soul Note 121260-2, 1993. Leimgruber, Urs. 13 # Pieces for Saxophone. Leo Records CD LR 498,2007. Lucier, Alvin. I Am Sitting In a Room. Lovely Music LCD 1013,1970. 48 Messiaen, Olivier. Vingt Regards sur L'enfant Jesus. Yvonne Loriod, piano. Erato Records 4509-91705-2, 1975. Monk, Thelonius. The Blue Note Years: The Best of Thelonius Monk. Blue Note CDP 95636 2. Mott, David. The Sky Ringing in an Empty Bell. York Fine Arts YFA 00596, 2000. Open House. Symmetry. Independent, 2004. Reich, Steve.Works 1965-1995. Nonesuch 79451-2,1997. Reich, Steve. Electric Counterpoint. Pat Metheny, guitar. Elektra/Nonesuch Records 9 79176-2, 1989. Rollins, Sonny. Newk's Time. Blue Note 4001,1958. Schlippenbach Trio. Complete Combustion. Free Music Production FMP CD 106, 1999. Shostakovich, Dmitry. 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. Konstantine Scherbakov, piano. Naxos 8.554745-46. Schoenberg, Arnold. Erwartung, Op. 17. Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, conductor. Sony SMK 48 466,1993. Stravinsky, Igor. Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo. Geogina Dobree, clarinet. Chantry Recordings CHT 004, 1978. Taylor, Cecil. Indent. Arista Records Arista-Freedom 1038, 1973. Vandermark, Ken. Furniture Music. Okka Disc OD12046,2003. 49 Bibliography Bailey, Derek. Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1993. Berendt, Joachim E., The Jazz Book, trans. H. and B. Bredigkeit (Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1975). Bloom, Ronna. Personal Effects. Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2001. Cage, John. Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music. Ed. Joan Retallack Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1996. Feldman, Morton. Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman. Ed. B.H. Friedman. Cambridge, M.A.: Exact Change, 2000. Fischlin, Daniel and Ajay Heble, eds. The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation and Communities in Dialogue. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Forte, Allen. The Structure of Atonal Music. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. Hamilton, Andy. Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Khan, Hazrat Inayat. The Music of Life. New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications 1983. Lacy, Steve. Findings: My Experience With the Soprano Saxophone. Paris: Outre Mesure, 1994. Lock, Graham. Forces in Motion: the Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. Newlove, John. Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine's Quill, 1993. 50 Peyser, Joan. To Boulez and Beyond; Music in Europe Since The Rite of Spring. New York: Billboard Books, 1998. Reich, Steve. Music as a Gradual Process. Accessed at: http://austere.org/ProcessMusic.sthnil Sarath, Ed. "A New Look at Improvisation." Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), 1-38. Villars, Chris, ed. Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures 1964- 1987. London: Hyphen Press, 2006. Weiss, Jason, Ed. Steve Lacy: Conversations. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006. Whitehead, Kevin. New Dutch Swing. New York: Billboard Books, 1998 51 Like Water Paul Newman tor Barry Espin M o. —p 1 rj Wrj— —p mf Form: Head, open improvisation on melody, repeat head. 52 Celebration For Dave Clark J=108, stacatto. Paul Newman fine I 5 1 - i—3—i r~3—i i 5 ii 3 —i 7 a ¥ •—f m Mf^ m- h* > \—ii j 1 -\f a T ^ 1 FfH ¥ w •3-1 .-a-,1- 3 ir — /rnr 4 A •'k-rir , i—3—i <~3-, I -5 , , 3 , , 5 , , 7 , Repeat head as many times as desired. Dynamics are at performer's discretion. Gradually enter improvisation using rows, primarily the prime row (see next page). Restate head after improvisation. End with first three notes of head. Accidentals only affect note immediately following them. 53 Rows for Celebration Prime 0 o ° l>L o tjL o t* i 'ci«' » ^ t^o " =tfoa = 2 Retrograde l*ti bo , qo l|" „ ^ 1W, T -©—pe- -e- 3 Inversion ° ° H° k, II" H"-^ " m ^ Retrograde Inversion 1 ^ o " |k> o bo ° Rhythms for Celebration 5 1 equals: i equals: m > r > n equals: equals: £££££ 54 Now Her Name is Ocho Brenders For Kyle, Jess and Ocho Brenders Position bell of soprano saxophone over drum. Play given notes and add harmonics. r\ r\ r\ TT Experiment with: 1. Angle of bell to drum head. 2. Pressure of bell against drum head. 3. Dynamics. 4. Performance time (use about 5 minutes as a starting point). Ant Farm Paul Newman J=138, swing. For Joe Sorbam • l 3 1 v*. ±i T \ n 'tJf n iprT / I 3 1 i 3 1 f* Km 0 \>0 m J~"3 I 'T 5 L^J 3 1 3 , ,—3—, T r i-hit- rnr r r i cxJCr r p A2 9 —i _ \f r— >'r j-] _"r' r * nj ry 1 j * * j > T > / 12 fa m B 75 3- , i 3 1 A 0 V0 m m £ Form: head, improvisation, head. Improvise on rows (see next page). Accidentals only affect the note immediately following them. 56 Rows for Ant Farm Prime o -o 1 po 2 Retrograde >0 : BO- O II" H" O ^ " "" [,„ -0—?e- Inversion o I ° , tf.. h.. <> ^o fcjO [,0 ^ Retrograde Inversion U> t|«> „ U.- , fo I o 1 ^ O " tf" i>o O bo 57 Car Pound Inquiry Paul Newman j=gg For Michael Herring H i J lU m use any dynamics and articulations as desired. s i iJij XJJ i» 9 liM , 1 .-1-1, 1 , . 1 : , J ,,J * cr \>rJ ! ' ¥ t -e- jp| 4 ^ J J = -o- 1 Jf M ii J : m gf v 11 J • J r r 58 Elk Gesture For Rob Clutton J=168 Paul Newman 1trJ1 ii \fOII ktjdl -^hd—r=-i—^Ffl >0 vo w 94 J ^ mp cresc. >— I 3 1 * br* \ T~ py f Y If t>rf te-ffF ^ LT f— / 7 5 1 3 i ^ ^ rhv— i P i»P -—Jl 1 -1 r r l j ^ T u 4 10 = 0 ——Hr —*—j- • r H!f i | -W—Li——I— £ a j^u hiHm'n 1 Improvisation: see next page. Accidentals only affect note immediately following. 59 Improvisation: play on form. Use the following rows and fragments of rows: 14 fix • L J u J • 1 • 1 J uJ i - ] fflhj w ¥.—Jll^ ^ J 1 16 B 4=1 -ftA — « |J d J |J JH t|J J 17 —fei— -I Id J i J- — \rJ * P f- V+ 1 Return to head after improvisation. 60 The Third Language For Germaine Liu Paul Newman Trill between notes. First use two notes at a time, then gradually expand to three, four and five notes. Experiment with resulting sounds. Performance time is about 3 minutes. fflJ r J n-i Y iJ |J l|J i ^ J :|1 Accidentals only affect the note immediately following. 61 Shelter For Alix Bortolotti Paul Newman Rubato: 0 0 -jhyF— m m » w^—-1 mp Last time 33= -e- Gradualiy move from written material into improvisation. End by returning to written material. Approximate performance time 5 minutes. 62 * m • « & L mp 5 3 F=F=i %—" r ' i J i' r f dim. mp 8 -——f— j "T—i1 — a pp m1 iS JI v*J