16 May 2013

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Of course the soundcheck was a waste of time- the technician had changed the sound since we reviewed it- and the tenor (with which I started the set) was so brittle and harsh I could hardly continue to play (I kept trying to indicate that I didn’t like the sound by playing off mic, but he didn’t get the point). After the piece was finished I walked offstage to ask him to turn off the PA, realizing I should have just played acoustic from the start- things sounded good this way and the horns were strong enough to fill the room. The crowd was excellent and enthused, calling for 2 encores to one set of 50 minutes. Playing solo this way is extremely physical, my chops started to again fall apart by the end- I don’t know how the hell Peter Brotzmann does it.

This concert was a creative breakthrough, however. I was less concerned with the “concepts” of variability and surprise, and more focused on just “playing the room.” The music had more range and focus because of this I think, more variety in durations and character between each piece. I played some “groove-based” pieces, and a blues, in addition to the more “essay/extended sound” improvisations, and this seemed right. Concluded with two composed encores: Ayler’s, “Love Cry,” and Joe McPhee’s, “Goodbye Tom B.” Then had a very interesting talk afterward with Bojan Djordjevic and two women from Belgrade radio/TV- who are huge music fans and are organizing live broadcasts of concerts from the local TV station once a month- discussing Yugoslavian culture under Tito, that it was probably the only country in the world that openly embraced the artistic discourse from the Soviet Union and the West.

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