VCMI meets Time Flies

Wednesday was a full day indeed. I've been fighting the onset of a cold, and by the end of the day, I was dead tired. It was quite satisfying and the parts that weren't satisfying were informative. There's always something positive to be learned when situations don't work out as expected.

The day was structured in typical Vancouver Creative Music Institute fashion. There were a series of simultaneous workshops that went on throughout the day. You had to make choices, sometimes quite arbitrary, as which one to attend and which to miss. The workshops were led by the performers in this weekend's Time Flies series at Ironworks, and participants were VCMI alumni and VCC music students.

The first one of the day was a no-brainer, at least as far as the actual choice. Once we got into the room with Eyvind Kang, our brains were fully engaged. This was an easy decision for me because Eyvind played on Bill Frisell's Quartet album, one of my all-time desert island picks. He immediately launched us into a very philosophical and compelling discussion about improvised music, punctuated with short group improvisations. He continually encouraged us to go deeper into the music. Later in the day, the two of us talked about the challenges in strengthening the connections between the creative music communities in Seattle and Vancouver.

Next up for me was a larger ensemble situation co-led by John Butcher and Giorgio Magnanensi. I must admit that I am not really familiar with John's saxophone playing, but have read glowing reviews of some his previous performances here. I found him to be a very personable, down-to-earth sort of guy. Part of the workshop was given over to a conduction by Giorgio, something I've done many times and often enjoyed.

This time I was annoyed by some of the VCC students who were attending the workshop. The essence to conduction is keeping your eyes on the conductor at all times and following his every gesture. Another essential skill in improv is to pick your times to lay out and when to play, and then only do so with deliberate intention. So it started to get to me that some of these students just didn't get it. They kept their heads down, never followed a gesture and basically played nonstop for 20 minutes. I've seen this before with young players, and it's only with musical maturity and experience that they develop sharp improv skills. I guess I'm getting old and cranky because it was getting under my skin.

The third workshop was led by by Cor Fuhler from Holland. Though his English was excellent, I don't think we got his main point, and as a group we were unable to distinguish between making a gesture and making a more deliberate musical statement, save for doing it more loudly. For me, the best part about this exercise was that I played bass clarinet along with a couple of other much better players, Karen Davidson and Mike Dowler. I haven't had my bass clarinet out of the case since the ion Zoo gig in December, so it was gratifying to connect with them.

My feelings about outcome of the evening's performance were mixed.

The program was divided into two sets, the first being various groupings of VCMI alumni, each with a 6-minute slot. These groupings had been left up to the participants to arrange well in advance of this date. I had asked Jeff Younger and Russel Sholberg to do a trio thing. We've never really played together before in a small ensemble, but I have seen them both play quite often and I knew we'd be a good fit.

We were scheduled to go on first. So it was guitar, bass and me on soprano sax, aided by tympani. This was an idea I got from trumpeter Gord Allen during our time at VCMI in 2005. He played his trumpet into a floor tom to great effect. There was a large tympani onstage yesterday, so I commandeered it and played into it. It was a terrific effect, especially when playing the bottom notes of my horn and using the tympani head to totally or partially block the airflow, which created fantastic overtones, combining with the resonance of the drum. I thought it was an effective trio performance, and it was short and sweet.

("Tympani" is obviously plural - what's the singular? Tympano? Tympanum? Gotta check my Grove's.)

None of the groups that followed kept to the 6-minute guideline. A couple of them ran closer to 15 minutes, often with people choosing to ignore obvious timely endings. Rather, they just kept blowing. Every performance had something going for it, but my enjoyment was tempered by a growing annoyance at their inability to self-regulate. As a result the first set ran quite a bit over time and not surprisingly, we lost a fair bit of audience over the intermission.

The second set was a series of 15-minute performances comprising of the people involved in each of the workshops during the day. Again, every performance had something going for it and I was interested in seeing the results of the workshops that I didn't attend. Our performance for the Cor Fuhler workshop clearly reflected that we hadn't really got the message. It got bloody loud and ear-piercing at one point. I doubt that was the gist of the workshop.

Near the end of the night came the group from Eyvind's workshop, which I was really looking forward to. I thought things were going fairly well and I liked my playing. We came to an ending. But it didn't end. A VCC student who had sat in on the workshop had invited himself onstage for the piece. I was under the impression this was supposed to be a performance by VCMI alumni only, not the students. He decided it was time to feature himself on piano and so we lurched through a couple of more false endings while he continued to play. There was a bit of eyeball-rolling by some the rest of the people onstage.

Yes, I am getting old and grumpy. It probably wasn't all that bad. And maybe my low energy due to my cold didn't help. But I certainly have less tolerance for that sort of thing nowadays.

As I type this, I can't help but have more respect for teachers who work with these young musicians every year, full of unbridled enthusiasm. I just don't have the patience for it .