Edition XL & poets at The Green Mill: night one
Edition XL and the poets Ed Roberson, Ken Taylor, and Kai Ihns will be back at The Green Mill tonight- Saturday, August 2nd, at 8pm- for our second series of performances. The experience of last night’s event was incredible. After months of work and a preliminary show at the Jazz Estate in Milwaukee, Edition XL got on stage for 3 sets and took the music to new heights, turning conception into reality. I am so grateful to be able to work with Beth McDonald, Erez Dessel, Josh Berman, Lily Finnegan, and Nick Macri. Also lifting the bandstand were the poems of Ed Roberson, Ken Taylor, and Kai Ihns- 3 very different poets who share a commonality in the exploration of what language can do and mean.
The visual artist and teacher, Richard Hull, led a painting course at the Ox-Bow School of Art in the summer of 2022 and 2024 called “Words, Music, Action!”. No better phrase could better describe what took place at The Mill last night. First, Richard was in attendance, and another visual artist who is extremely important to my creative path, John Sparagana, was at the concert as well. John’s work in particular has affected the way I think about organizing material. Though I was truly looking forward to the poetry and how it might impact the presentation of the music, I did not realize beforehand the parallels that would exist between Ed, Ken, and Kai’s work and that of the compositions and performances by Edition XL. The poets used traditional language to explore new terrain. As a listener, though the words and phrases were not necessarily experimental, their usage was. For example, the number of times the imagery of birds and flight were turned on their head and reassembled to find new meaning by Ed and Kai was extraordinary.
In a sense, this is what I’m striving for in my current music- the examination of musical ideas that often originate with materials from certain genres but are then put into different contexts, hopefully providing new perspectives and, possibly, understanding about what these components can mean and express. It makes me realize, once again, how much cinema has impacted my musical thinking. I see now that what I’m attempting is what Jean-Luc Godard accomplished in his New Wave period. Is “Breathless” film noir, is “Pierrot le Fou” a crime film, is “A Woman Is a Woman” a musical, is “Alphaville” science fiction, is “The Carabineers” a war film, is “Le Petit Soldat” a spy film? The answers are yes… and no. In many ways this is what I’ve been seeking to do with Edition Redux and now, in additive ways, with Edition XL. Is the music free jazz, funk, post-punk, electro-acoustic, contemporary composition? All, or none, of the above?
The band and listeners will get another chance to find out tonight at The Green Mill starting at 8pm over three sets introduced by the outstanding poets, Ed Roberson, Ken Taylor, and Kai Ihns.
