8 August 2012

After returning to Chicago from the tour with Getachew Mekuria & the Ex, the concerts with Made To Break; and then with Tim Daisy, Haavard Wiik, and Waclaw Zimpel; work on a new project with Adrienne Pierluissi went into full effect. Since the beginning of the year I had been meeting with her on a semi-regular basis to document and transcribe a cycle of songs that she had developed. The idea was for me to notate her melodies as accurately as possible, and then create arrangements of the songs for her, recording them with an ensemble in late summer with Bob Weston.

This process took time because it was interrupted on an consistent basis due to my touring schedule and her work as a painter, but these transcriptions (of nearly a dozen pieces) were finished in the spring, and then the initial arrangements were completed with her during June. Once these were approved, I asked a musician she had worked with before, John Dereszynski, to provide harmonies for the parts I had developed. I am not a harmonic thinker in a conventional sense, and I knew that Adrienne’s songs need this component for them to be realized to the fullest. I hadn’t worked with John before, but I had heard him perform with Adrienne and was really impressed with the guitar parts he had developed for her pieces when they worked together.