last changed on 10 May 01 by
"I think one of the things that really helps in improvisational stuff like this is getting together frequently (IAC tries to do it once a week) and just playing. Although a lot of the musicians around town frequently play together, it's so different creating from scratch than on playing tunes that everyone already knows. Everyone's got to think compositionally, as well as leave holes & not be afraid to come out of left field & change the direction/mood/mode/whatever. It's a real challenge: if people are feeling timid, it just doesn't work & if there's overbearing egos, then it turns into 'Someone & the Backups.'"
As a non-musician who finds himself having to keep his footing as a poet with an improvising band, I have had to learn to listen actively-aggressively even. A moment's hesitation means the opportunity to slip in a word, to repeat a phrase & catch the right wave of rhythm, gets lost. The music suddenly changes and what might have happened, disappears like a lost love. The head you hear in jazz & that you expect to hear again at the end of a long jam doesn't exist. Something that begins with a Middle Eastern feel might become a full-tilt boogie or a shimmering cascade of elongated notes, a violin bowed slowly, dreamy oceanic wash. You often see audiences like the people who crammed into the FreeportMcMoRan theater for the Die Like A Dog Trio on the edges of their seats, straining for every note, even though the music might be loud enough to wake the dead.
This music is rare enough wherever you might be, but here it's been largely unavailable. Our jazz, rock, & r&b musicians are capable of some mind-stretching things. The Zeitgeist Creative Music Festival is doing something that will advance the arts in New Orleans, allowing a creative push to match the pushes we've been seeing in visual art and literature over the last ten years.
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last changed on 10 May 01 by