GUELPH JAZZ FESTIVAL Day Two

The second day of the colloquium presented in conjunction with the jazz festival featured talks and workshops on everything from the use of musical improvisation in Nigerian social activism to organizational practices in laptop orchestras. I was particularly interested in Tegan Ceschi-Smith's paper on Mingus's "Fables of Faubus" and the record company censorship Mingus faced. Francois Houle, here depicted with his clarinet, delivered a fascinating discussion of "poetic restructuralist aspects in live performance," including a practical demonstration. There was a morning performance in which musicians created an improvised soundscape as the Mexican artist Jazzmoart strung paper snakes about the room and moved through the performance space and audience drawing and painting with the emerging music. Canadian musicians The Rent returned for an afternoon workshop detailing their work on Steve Lacy's "Tips," which it turns out several in the audience hadn't known of as the CD appears to be out of print. Lacy worked often with texts, especially poetry, and I was beginning to silently celebrate the strong presence of poetry at this year's festival.

Which continued in my own keynote lecture, "Meeting Over Yonder," taking up the program William Parker has created reimagining the music of Curtis Mayfield with poetry in performance by Amiri Baraka, a project that had in fact been performed at an earlier Guelph festival. Sorry to say I have no photos from my keynote. Perhaps one of the many other photographers on the scene will send me something. This session was something of a reunion as well; I was introduced by Rob Wallace, a fine scholar and drummer I had met years ago on a visit to UC Santa Barbara's English Department. (You really should drop by your library and check out Rob's great book, Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism, which you can read about by following this link.) And while you're visiting that site, click on this link and buy a copy of William Parker's official release of his Curtis Mayfield project.

[even the local beaver was inspired to try a percussion improv outside the hall]

After a reception in the art gallery, we all made the trek across town to the River Run Center for an evening concert featuring Canadian improvisers TILTING followed by a trio improvisation led by Paul Plimley with the aforementioned William Parker on bass. Gerry Hemingway was supposed to play with them, but was still in the air between England and the US, so his place was ably taken by a Canadian drummer who was able to get to Guelph in time to confer with Parker and Plimley about what they were about. Check the next Guelph blog for a photo of Hemingway, who arrived in time to play later in the festival.

GYPSY SCHOLAR PART I - Guelph

My friend Cecil Giscombe has talked about the "No Book Book Tour." I've got a book, but this is more of a circuit riding affair I'm commencing. First up: The Guelph Jazz Festival, where I was invited to give one of two keynote addresses at the colloquium. Since I'm leaving on another mission in the morning, I'll just post these few photos from the first day of Guelph for now, but I'll be back with more in a few days.

Ajay Hebble and all the staff and volunteers put together a remarkable week in celebration of musical improvisation. The colloquium got started with a reading and interview featuring Caribbean/Canadian writer Cecil Foster, author of Blackness and Modernity.

The rest of the day brought a host of panelists discussing the pedagogy of improvisation (including teaching improv in a big band or a choral context), work on Jack Kerouac and jazz, reconsiderations of Bix, and a workshop on contact improvisation in dance.

That evening there was a wonderful exploration of the music of Steve Lacy by a Canadian group, The Rent.

BACK TO SCHOOL

I've in truth been back at school a couple weeks already, but today was the annual Penn State English back to school picnic. The thunderstorm that had been threatening held off (it's breaking furiously around me now)

Oh Oh -- there goes the electricity --

Back now -- The picnic, human-powered, was again on Tussey Mountain, where all the birds sing bass and the bass sing contralto (probably because if you catch one, you have to toss it back in the water after its aria) --

The veritable good time was had by all. In the annual raffle to support the grad student group I won a gift certificate for a hair salon. Nice, but I passed it along to someone who could make better use of it.

We'll all be back in our classrooms Tuesday, but for now, the laboring classes had one fine day of rest.

Bad Tenors Back to School West Coast Tour

CLICKEAR AQUI to hear backyard badness.

The 1980s were a time of tremendous musical ferment in D.C. There was the slow national awakening to the Go Go scene (marked by Spike Lee's inclusion of the music in his film), there was the harDCore phenomenon, the Bad Brains were stirring their stew and the famed 930 club was still located at 930.

And then there was the mysterious Bad Tenors Blues Band. The Bad Tenors, noted for their shifting personnel, first surfaced at a series of benefits for poetry programming on Pacifica Radio (WPFW). They disappeared for a time, only to resurface at the ADD Arts Festivals, where they appeared on bills (though not on the same stage!) with On Beyond Zebra, Gil Scott-Heron and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Local critic Royal Stokes noted their harmonica and guitar stylings in the Washington Post. The group also appeared at such odd venues as D.C.'s only above-ground Rathskellar and played a triumphant tour of E St., NW. The band was known to include at various times Dennis "Little Bro" Nielsen, Ross "Hound Dog" Taylor, "Huge" Walthall and "Wally" Walton. There was never any telling who might appear on the drummer's throne at any given gig, and the group were even known to play "unplugged," following the fad of the day. The only constant was the presence of co-founders Aldon "Papa Doc" Nielsen and Richard "I Still Ain't Got No Nickname" Flynn.



Seeing even the Monkees doing the reunion tour thing, the Bad Tenors decided to have a go at it themselves and were quickly booked for a Kardashian Wedding Weekend garden party. The crowd went wild when the Bad Tenors performed their famed bad tenoring. Rumor has it they may reappear at any moment (in any configuration) bringing the blues back to wine tastings everywhere.

(muchos photos A.Everett)