Humbility

I think it's important for a musician to stretch his/her musical boundaries. Taken in the proper context, all experiences be they good or bad can enrich one's musical ability.

To that end, I've been doing some new things lately.

One of them was leading an improvisation workshop at the Western Front for the New Orchestra Workshop. I've participated in the workshops for years, now with thanks to Coat Cooke, it was time to teach one. I immediately broke my own prime directive for what I think constitutes a good workshop. I talked and encouraged discussion for a greater period of time than we played. The participants were are fairly experienced, and so I decided to spend time on a number of more advanced improv concepts and to share a number of the more important points that I had distilled over my years of taking these workshops. Since then, the feedback from most in attendance was positive, but next time I will work to severely limit the number of concepts that I present. As any regular reader of this blog can attest, I can go on for a bit.

Another one has been to start taking music classes at Ache Brasil. As a saxophone player, singing while playing is a great conceptual technique, but doesn't happen in the standard sense. So it is a very new thing for me to sing, in Portuguese no less, and play percussion at the same time. At this point in time, I can't really do it for any length of time without screwing up.

I can't help but think that this is one of the most ancient forms of music making, yet a considerable challenge for me. Capoeira music is very deeply connected to African music and operates on the same primal level. It's a relatively simple combination of percussion instruments and song that quickly becomes fairly complex, subtle and powerful.

No problem for a university educated jazz guy, like, we're supposed to be able to play everything, right? Riiiight...

I have no pretensions about where I fit in the local music scene, and consider myself relatively low on the food chain. Conversely, I have done a few things in my life at what I consider to be a pretty high musical level. Yet it really counts for very little when I walk in the door at Ache Brasil. I'm just another novice pandeiro player, and I'm quite happy to have it that way.

The next challenge this coming week is my participation in Vancouver New Music's presentation of John Cage's Atlas Ellipticalis. The performance is next Saturday night at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, part of a John Cage series being staged next week. It's a great privelege to be invited to play a composition by one of the icons of 20th century music. The score is a going to take a lot of work just to understand. We have 3 days of workshopping it into shape, led by Giorgio Magnanensi and visiting artist Marina Rosenfeld. Just to add to the degree of difficulty, I'll play percussion, maybe have one sax or clarinet ready if the music leads in that direction.

Here again, I expect to have my work cut out for me.

Finally, this coming Wednesday night at Rime, I will perform one set with ion Zoo, then a second set with Helsinki 8, where I'll conduct one of the pieces I wrote this year in Banff.

That's enough on my plate for now.