This selection of recordings and performances represents years of creative work in New York City's downtown music scene . The collaborative and improvisational processes at the heart of these projects became the foundation of my visual art practice, where those same ideas continue to evolve.
BUTCH MORRIS
The visionary composer, conductor, and cornetist Butch Morris conducts the Lucky Cheng Orchestra at Lucky Cheng's in New York City (2011). His groundbreaking method of ensemble improvisation, Conduction®, uses the extensive vocabulary of specific gestures he developed to shape spontaneous improvisation into a composition in real time.
Performing in Butch's ensembles for more than a decade fundamentally shaped my approach to improvisation and collaborative composition, and continues to inform my process as a visual artist and musician. Butch surrounded himself with unique musical voices, and was very much an avant-garde community builder in NYC. And through his invented system, he inspired some of the most extraordinary collective music-making.
Rest in Power, Butch.
MATT WILSON
Matt Wilson—the acclaimed jazz drummer, composer, bandleader, and educator, featured here with his Quartet Plus Strings. For this project, he expanded the quartet to include violinists Felicia Wilson and Skye Steele, cellist Alisa Horn, and me on viola for performances at the Newport and Litchfield Jazz Festivals and New York City’s Iridium Jazz Club. This lush cornet solo on Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy" is performed here by Kirk Knuffke, with Jeff Lederer on tenor saxophone, Martin Wind on bass, and Matt Wilson on drums.
Matt Wilson’s imagination, humor and joyful approach to music profoundly influenced my development as an improviser. The image of the open hand from Matt's “Choose”, after the Carl Sandburg poem, really captures the vibe he brings to all his projects.
Another Sandburg setting we performed, "Bubbles", ends with,
“Just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds."
That’s one of Matt’s guiding artistic principles: the true love of whatever any moment may offer. I'm deeply grateful to have performed his music and learned from him—experiences that continue to shape my creative practice.
ANDREW D’ANGELO
Andrew D’Angelo’s DNA Orchestra performs his signature composition “Big Butt” at the Undead Music Festival in New York City.
Like Coney Island’s Cyclone, Andrew’s big band normalizes the unreasonable but somehow never goes off the rails. He inspires creative fearlessness, and his ensemble parts often push players beyond what they think is doable—or even appropriate.
See: Josh Sinton’s athletic bari sax solo. He was not harmed!
RADIA
Radia: John Carlson, trumpet, Bill Ware, vibraphone, Andrew D’Angelo alto sax and bass clarinet, Matt Wilson, drums and me on violin and viola. This recording is from a session at Systems Two in Brooklyn, later engineered by Peter Karl.
All The Whiskey in Heaven is a piece I wrote for this group inspired by the poem of the same name by the NYC poet, Charles Bernstein. This was my earliest graphic score composition, and inspired the graphic score work I do today involving the translation of sound into visual art that can be performed.
InChantId is a piece written for the group by Radia’s trumpet player, John Carlson.
GRAFFITO
Graffito: Mauro Pagani and Charlie Burnham, violins, Nicole Federici, viola, Will Martina, cello and Marco Cappelli, guitar
This is a free improvisation from a performance at Brooklyn’s Douglass Street Music Collective, engineered by Peter Karl
Graffito was a string quintet that performed spontaneously composed pieces in various venues around New York City. Each of these musicians was so inspiring to work with and brought their own terroir and diverse musical background to the proceedings. During rehearsals, we explored ways of interacting and composing on the fly as a group, and developed the improvisational vocabulary we used to inspire spontaneous musical content in performance.
SONIC SMITHY
The group is pictured here in front of an iconic work by the renowned street artist Swoon—also known as Caledonia Dance Curry—near the Douglass Street Music Collective in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Sonic Smithy was a multi-instrumental, vocal, and multi-genre youth improvising ensemble that I founded and directed in Brooklyn. The group performed works by living New York City composers, alongside the composers themselves. Much of the repertoire involved custom arrangements, spontaneous composition, and improvisation.
For three seasons, I was joined by the extraordinary drummer and educator Konrad Meissner, who helped coach the ensemble. Sonic Smithy collaborated with Marco Cappelli, Slavic Soul Party, Kenny Wollesen, Butch Morris, Radia, Cornelius Dufallo, Free Range Rat, Amy Cervini, and Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
The ensemble appeared at New York’s Vision Festival and presented its own monthly concert series at the Douglass Street Music Collective and Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. Sonic Smithy also performed at Joe’s Pub with singer-songwriter Tracy Bonham.
Members included Indigo and Oliver, trumpet; William, Naomi, Niara, and Olivia, violin; Harper, Addie and Asa, piano; Max and Calvin drums; Alessandra and Giovanni, guitar ; Fynn and Caleb, cello; Tesia, viola; Willie, alto saxophone; and Tallulah, voice.
This is Sonic Smithy’s then 5 year old drummer, Max, conducting an improvisation by Radia and Sonic Smithy members (Indigo, trumpet, William, violin and Willi, alto sax) using some of Butch Morris’ Conduction® symbols and some direction of Max’s own invention. Recorded at Systems Two and later engineered by Peter Karl
This recording is from Sonic Smithy’s performance with Andrew D’Angelo at the Douglass Street Music Collective. They’re doing Matt Wilson’s “Raga” and Andrew’s “25 Hits”. Each student takes a solo. Engineered by Peter Karl.
All photos used here were taken by me in Brooklyn, except the thumbnails from publicly posted video on YouTube