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FEATURE . :,_;: .:, .. .' conceft, on October2r, placed the newmusic in historicalconteKbyin- developed cohesion among a small circle of initiated players. With cluding an innovative Charles Mingus work from 1957 "Revelations." limited rehearsal time, an orchestra reading can be more of a seat-of- Uri Caine's piece, premieringin Philadelphia on February ro,willbe the-pants affair than ajazz gig. close in spirit to his bluesy, radical zooz treatment ofthe Beethoven According to Bermel, even the most polished classical performance Diabelli Variations. He sees that effort, and his multigenre reading of can brush up against the unknown. "Tuning, dlmamics, attack-all the Bach Goldberg Variations (zooo), as "an extension of the jazz idea these elements are unpredictable in the concert experience," he says. of having an under\ring smrcnrre *rat then gets amplified, commented "So there's always a factor of improvisadon, the question is how much' on, violated or what have you." In the new piece, as yet untitle4 'the The tension is, where does a composer ask for that imProvisation, and orchestra is either creating motifs to play aga.inst, or texnrres to play where don't they.' That tension lies at the very heart of the jazz big with, or sometimes it's functioning like a really big rhythm section." band tradition, from Ellington through Mingus and up to such curent Caine has taken a similarly unorthodox approach to Mahler, Wagner, composers as Mike Holober and Maria Schneider. Holober, a pianist Schumann and Mozart as well. In his essay "Theme and Variation" and leader of the Gotham Jazz Orchesra, wiu perform his newly com- (from Arcana II: Musicimts on Musi edited by John Zorn), he describes missioned piece *Hiding Out" in Februaqr at the Philadelphia Museum the titular concept as a 'tnetaphor for the coexistence of structure and of Art, His expansive, hard-swinging music involves a delicate balance freedom in music." betweenform and freedom; soloists may dazzle the audience,but they Steve Coleman comes to concert music from another angle. For serraea higher purpose as well, "When I conceive a solo section," Ho- roughly t:wo decades, he has pioneered a musical concept he calls M- lober explains, "I'm turning over responsibility for the dwelopment Base (macro-basic array of structured extemporization), described of the form to the improrriser. I feel strongly as a writer that when you onhis Web site as "a non-western conception of howto use music to improvise, you're sharing the compositional duties," express experience... There is no limitation on the kind ofstnrcrures or For Maria Schneider, who will bring her celebrated large ensemble the type of improvisation, or the sgile of the music," Though he burst to the Museum in Januarlr, the input of improvisers "changes the music onto the scene in the late '8os with a complex, funk-inflected take on from night to night. Each piece becomes a personality that bebaves jazz,his sound-world has grown ever broader, At the ACO's October in different ways. And what we create belongs to all of us. The joy is concert he premiered a work titled "The Illusion of the Body." everybody's." Infusing her recent work with Brazilian, flamenco and "Improvisation is at the base of we4rthing I do, including composi- Pervvianlando rhythms, Schneider throws curees at her musicians, tion," Coleman offers. "The Eurocenrric idea is you take a pencil and expanding their palette and prompting them to "figure out what to paper and go away for five months and come back with a symphony. do, how to stretch. It gives them something to work with other than I call irnprovisation 'spontaneous composition,' and for me both pro- the usual." Needless to say, jazz's globalizinginstinct is as old as the cesses are the same. It's just that one is more deliberate." music itself. Susie Ibarra, drawing on her Filipina heritage, has made In Coleman's score, the non-improvising players of the ACO may extensive use of kulintang(urted gongs) and otherEastAsian elements. encounter a rhythmic vocabulary that is rather unfamiliar. "At one Her ACO commission, "Pinado's (The Painted's) Dream," is inspired point in the piece I improvise a cadenzai' Coleman says. "Then I start by the tattooing or "paintingl' of indigenous tribes in the Philippines playing pans of the composition to bring the orchestra back in. Nonr, and northern Japan. with my band [Five Elemenrs], that's a very simple thing. I can even Eass clarinedst/compos€r Gene Coleman (no relation to Steve) play a form without a melody and they'll know where I arn But that's also merges Asian instruments and improvisational concepts in his not somethingyou can do overnight," And therein lies the paradox of Ensemble N-JP, which performed on September zo as part of the thejazz-meets-classical exchange. There is an image ofjazz as loose, a Slought Foundation's Soundfield@Slought series. Coleman, Slought's perpetual jam session At its highest lwels, in fact, it can require highly music curator, has developed special notational systems for euch in- PfF3 i llt F'r.:d.aat iSJc':'l,Jf{: r:.Fi.l t!?[ it{' -!'F{*: U rC*i n*iil] i "h: Reachingbackcenturies andeven millennia, smrments as the sho,shamisaz and &oto. The Music" presentedbrySRUTI: The India Music groups Asmodeus and Secret Chiefs 3. players, including Ko Ishikawa and Ryuko and Dance Society. Veenai Jayanthi Kumaresh, In Europe, klezmer was all but obliterated Mizutani, are "very special performers with master of the veena (a lute-iike string instru- in the Holocaust; in the U.S. it faded along all the traditional training who have chosen ment), wiu be amongthe featured performers, with the jazz big bands. To play it today, on to go over into the area of experimentation," "There are two important branches in Indian some level is to reinvent it. But for drummer Coleman says. classical music, the creative and the recre- Elaine Hoffrnan Watts, matriarch of the Hoff- Other Slought projects this season involve ative," says Jayanthi, The former entails raga man Watts family and heir to an illustrious Coleman's Ensemble Noamnesia, a chamber alapana, or scalar improvisationi swdrdpr- line ofPhiladelphia klezrner artists, talk ofthe group that uses western instrumentation d.sthdrd.s,in which, "solfa syllables of the music's "revival" rings false. "It never went but is no less unconventionai. On October raga are performed in as many pennutations away," she declares. "I cut my baby teeth on zl they joined violist Vincent Royer to play as possible within the metert' and nereval, it, I drank my bottle to it. My daddy used to music by the experimental composer Luc "wherein any one line of the composition is take me dovm to the basement and he would Ferrari (t929-zoo5). On March 20 they meet taken and interpreted." In the "recreative" practice his r<ylophoneandshowme thebeats the Rome-based ensemble Ossatura to real- portion, krithies, or "compositions by great to play." With support from the Phiiadelphia ize compositions by Anthony Braxton (b. legends of the past, are recreated each time Folklore Project, she and her daughter, trum- 1945),among others. And on February 26, the according to the style and individuality of the peter Susan Watts, are preparing a spring Austrian/British-based Polwechsel arrives at performer." Carnatlc music is in many ways a zoo8 concen featuring rare melodies from the Slought's West Phillyvenue to perform origi- worldunto itse$ but it has hada considerable early zoth century writtea by Joseph Hoffrnan nal electro-acoustic luorks. impact on Western improvisers, including (Susan's great-grandfather). Inspired by Braxton and other'6os leaders Steve Coleman. Jayanthi's account of atypical There are notated elements in klezmet but ofthe Association for the Advancement ofCre- concert should sound familiar to jazzplayers: spontaneous group interplay is essential. Me- ative Musicians (AACM), Coleman represents "So much of the music depends on the atmo- lodic ornamentation, so evident in the crying a generation that doesu-t so much blend jazz sphere, time, day, audience, acoustics and the klezmer clarinet sound, is what gives the mu- and classical music as deconsunrct the catego- performer's mood." sic its character. According to Dan Blacksberg ries altogether. His work employs open-form Like Indian music, klezmer-the folkloric a jazz trombonist who plays frequently with structures, defying any firm distinction be- idiom of European Jewry-has its moderniz- Susan Watts, 'there are accompanying pans tween the notated and the improvised. "The ers and its purists. John Zom, never aklezmer that also involve a lot of improvisation. The improvisation I do is very linked to the music player per se, has created a new zeitgeist middlevoice has a lot offreedom.I play wery- t want to write," Coleman says."The old idea through his Radical Jewish Culture series, thing from harmonized melody to rhythmic is that these are completely different musics, presented on his record label Tzadik (llebrew phrases, where I'm outlining the harmonic with completely different hierarchies, and for "righteous one'). "Just as jazz music has progression. At a klezmer gigyou don't really these worlds never connect. We don't even progressed from Dixieland to free jazz and tell me anything-we just start playing." study them in the same space or talk about beyond in a few shon decades .,. the same Renaissance and Baroque ensembles them as being related. That's slowly gone by kind of growh should be possible-and is may go about it less casually, but they too the urayside." perhaps essential-for Jewish music," Zorn are intimately familiar with ornamentation If hybridization and modernization are has written.