Gongs and wayward girls: heavy metal redux

As exciting as the local improv scene is looking, our neighbours, er, neighbors to the south have us trumped in one department. They have a series that is being presented in one hell of a venue. Well, maybe hell is not the best choice of words, but then again...

Last night I played at Seattle's Good Shepherd Centre, er, Center in the Wallingford area. It's located in a former Catholic school for wayward young women, with the performance space located in what was previously the chapel. There are stained glass windows on two sides, a 28-foot high ceiling, and with a beautiful hardwood floor. Performance features include a slightly raised stage area, white backdrop, theatrical lighting and lots of pro PA equipment. And a 9' concert grand piano. And a beautiful natural sound in the room.

Since last January, 10 nights a month, Nonsequitur has been presenting new and improvised music. Seattle area musicians have embraced this space and it is now fully booked 9 months in advance.

I was invited down to play with Dean Moore, reprising the evening we did in May at 1067. Joining us was Sha'ari Garfinkle, also of Seattle, who also has an extensive and very impressive collection of gongs. In all, we had over 30 true gongs, plus dozens of bells, chimes and cymbals. Paiste should have been sponsoring the evening - we had so much of their gear. I don't have any of their gongs, all of mine being Chinese styles from Wuhan, but I do have over a dozen of Paiste's special percussive cymbals, ranging from 13" down to 4" in diameter. Dean and Sha'ari own Paiste gongs up to 40" across. Yet for all of the dozens of instruments onstage, the three of us only had one instrument in common, a 6" Paiste bell chime, and even those were pitched differently. In other words, there was a tremendous range of different metal percussion, set up in a large U shape around the audience.

We used this spatial arrangement to our advantage, the three of us moving around all of the racks, constantly shifting the sound around the audience. Many later reported having profound listening experiences. The great acoustics of the room permitted us to really explore the possibilities of the collected instruments.

We played two improvised sets, both with preplanned arcs. In the first, we were more frenetic and we introduced a few other instruments to give variety to the timbres. After about 20 minutes, I played an extended soprano sax solo, with Dean on a hand drum, then Sha'ari replaced me on a Native American flute. The other non-metal instrument I had was my pandeiro, but even with that, I played it in non-traditional ways, using rosined bamboo skewers to produce cuica-like moans out of it.

In the second set, Sha'ari drew upon her profession as a music therapist, guiding the audience through meditation and healing sound. Dean and I are not practitioners of this aspect of gong music, but were happy enough to participate in the process. Some of the audience were definitely into this sort of therapy and were quite moved by the music we created. Or maybe it was just the gut-shaking rumbles from Dean's massive Balinese gong.

Previous to the gig, we discussed some strategies for improvising, just making sure our varied approaches to the instruments would be OK with each other. And we were also OK with allowing each other to respectfully play each other's instruments. These gong guys can become pretty protective of their stuff.

Sha'ari is into the healing sound and Dean approaches it as a drummer who respects the tradition of gong music, both of them tending towards more beautiful consonant sounds, building up washes of overtones starting from the deep fundamental tones of the big gongs. I come at it as the free improviser, sometimes supporting the musical choices, sometimes subverting things. That may mean that I would choose to make sounds that were more "ugly", more random, more frenetic, yet still striving to be musical choices. Often that meant I would do these sorts of things at a considerably lesser volume than the other two.

The result was an interpenetration of sounds, exactly the sort of thing we did in the Vancouver New Music John Cage show last year. I was making deliberate choices to create a richer and more complex group sound. I felt at times that the other two players would pick up on what I did, and then they would change their playing accordingly. Examples of that would be simply rubbing my palm in circles on the pandeiro, or lightly tinkling my pin chimes, while Dean and Sha'ari were creating big washes on the gongs.

Given the great acoustics of the room, the audience was hearing many of these things, and afterward, I got several comments about how my playing in this manner added depth to that sound.

And yes I will gladly admit to whacking the bejeezus out some of my stuff, if that's what was called for in the moment. I now have a very large thin china type cymbal that has a ton of different dark trashy sounds in it, whether bowing, scraping or striking it, the harder the better. And it was very cool to play some of these very large or hard-to-get instruments that we all had collected.

In the end, it was a very satisfying show for audience and musicians alike. Definitely, there will be more performances for this group.

Before going back to Dean's for the night, I went over to check out my old pal Paul Rucker, who was part of an installation art show, not too far away, as the crow flies, from our gig. I, on the other hand, got lost and got stuck on Hwy.99 all the way downtown to Safeco Field, before I could turn around. He was at a place called the Bridge Motel, in Fremont, just off Aurora. It's Seattle's answer to our Downtown East Side. The Bridge Motel is about to be demolished, and for one night, artists and scenesters took over every room of the building. Paul had set a laser-controlled video piece playing in his assigned room, the same room where on the previous day, a meth addict had given birth. Maybe she could have benefited from the Good Shepherd Centre, had it still been in its original incarnation. I looked down - there was a crack pipe on the rug. Upstairs, another artist had ripped the ceiling and roof off of his room, in order to have some sort of campfire singalong, symbolic of something that escaped me.

I never saw it in full swing, getting there just at midnight as the organizers were shutting it down at the scheduled time. Good thing, as it was starting to get out of hand with hundreds of people swarming over every inch of the motel.

I was just able to help Paul load out, and we made plans to play together again in the near future. He's currently commissioned to do 50 solo cello performances during the course of year, all improvised, often playing at schools and other places where the concept of free improvisation is fairly unknown. He's being really well received, which doesn't surprise me at all, knowing his musical talents and generosity of spirit. We attended Banff together, and it was the definitive turning point in his musical life.

I drove home today, worrying (needlessly, as it turned out) about getting hassled by Customs about bringing my instruments back over the line. Yet again, I was bridling at the stupidity of governments, particularly the current US Administration, for putting up such hostile barriers to the growth of ties between the artistic communities in Seattle and Vancouver. There is no rational reason why there should not be free movement of artists between these cities, reaching all the way down to Portland, and beyond. This whole area, Cascadia or whatever you want to call it (I like "Canadian Southwest"), has the potential for being one of the great world centres for creative music, yet is stifled in the name of Freedom. Go figure.