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-

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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 rDixieland 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. On March r, International House and middle-voice improvisation. TWo period- becoming the norm, traditional forms are and Ars Nova will present works from Zorn's instrument groups, Piffaro and Tempesta di flourishing as well. This concert season will still-unfolding series "Masada (Book Two): Mare, are among this year's PMP grantees, include a "Mosaic of South Indian Classical Book of Angels," performed by the electric with unique early music programs on the

Pl|P' Top to bottom: Klezmer trumpeter Susan Hoffman Watts, photo by James Wasserman Polweschsel Composer Maria Schneider photo by David Korchin

anon el'olrresanew in ever,yage

docket (in early January and ear$r March, respeaively). Hearing them, one can ap- preciate changes inimprovisadonalpractice that accompanied the transition&om the Renaissance to the Baroque period. Renaissance ornamentation involves "division," or the practice of "taking long notes and turningthem into a melodic contour of shorter noteq" accordingto Pif- faro'swoodwindplayerRobenWiemken"who likensthe pracdce to learning'licks" in jazz.In Barogue music, says recorder player/f,utist Guryn Roberts of Tempesta, "omamentation is much more about grand gestures and swoops and swirls" than about manipulating cadences on the micro-lwel Another major change in the Ba- roque, says Wiemkeq involved "the vertical harmonic conception of a piece with a figured bass line." What emerged was the practice of continuo, which Robens describes as

David R. Adfer writes regularlyfor ThePhlladelphia lnquirel PhiladelphiaWeekly, Jazz nmes andDown Beat.His work on music,politics and culturehas also appeared in fhe NewYork Timeg TheN*v RepublicOnline, Slatq Democratiyaand manyother publications,He blogs at lerterland.blogspot.com.

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