24 November 2011

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Fire Room tour pt. 1. After a day off in Barcelona and a nice dinner to with Tim Daisy, Olga Abalos, and Javi Escudero (amazing visit to his CGI studio, fascinating film effects and design), I flew to London to start the Fire Room tour with Lasse Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love (incredible to think of the many projects Paal and I worked on together this autumn: Double Tandem, Lean Left, our duo, the Chicago Tentet, and now Fire Room- all radically different and creating unique environments for us to deal with). The trio was fortunate to have 2 shows in London, both at the Vortex, and both recorded for a future album. On the 1st night the stage sound was terrible for Paal, some kind of perpetual mix up with the sound techs concerning the monitors between him and Lasse (I went without monitors, used earplugs, the music again to loud for me to handle without some kind of buffer). Considering it was our 1st show since February 2010, the music went extremely well, all of us diving into the maelstrom; felt like I learned to let go of expecting to always “understand” the forms the music might take after our last encounter, and the work with Lean Left re-taught me this as well. In the morning of the 23rd I went to the Somethin’ Else BBC studio to interview order online cheap Wadada Leo Smith; had been preparing with the help of producer Becca Aitchison but was still nervous about not asking good questions or being well informed enough about Wadada’s thinking and music. The interview went really well, however, and the interview became an open discussion, could have lasted all mooring and afternoon, a total pleasure. An edited version of our conversation will be presented by the BBC sometime right after the holidays; will definitely post the details about the broadcast and streaming online as soon as I have them. That evening Fire Room was able to resolve the stage sound issues at the Vortex and the music was of course improved by Paal’s ability to hear and listen more clearly- a great night of music and a larger crowd that had more energy for what we were doing turned out, good times. From London we traveled to Geneva for an intense one set performance, music charged up and finishing with a 15 minute full bore stretch that piled sound on top of energy waves, over and over until the tension seemed to break through the floor and the ceiling at the same time. Wish that one got onto “tape” as well, but it sailed into the air instead, something for only the folks who could be there to listen. Fire Room in action during the Geneva show: