last changed on 21 May 01 by
It takes nerve to put your own name on a trio & push out into the sea especially when the other two musicians in your group can shove you right out of the boat if you can't lead. There are at root at least three possible directions. But Rob Wagner plays in a trio with James Singleton and Kevin O'Day, who could probably hold the Titanic together.
The Rob Wagner Trio's eponymous cd is the existentialist in this pair of records. Rob Wagner says in his notes to the record that O'Day & Singleton are "capable of playing alone and creating beautiful music." Music without a utopian program but with dangerously vibrating overtones, disturbing like a foghorn.
The Naked Orchestra: Brief Repairs On The Gradually Unravelling Spool In The Sense Continuum. This shit hits. Some of it resembles Sun Ra's breezy/funky syncopated marches. Something New Orleans has in common with Ra. Jonathan Freilich says, in his notes, that the first tune, "Nicolas Slonimsky's Freedom Mambo Jazz Dance Party" is inspired by what he learned with Mas Mamones, but I can't help but think of Ra. He's all over the place, & so is Eddie Harris, whose classic "Freedom Jazz Dance," is, I guess you could say, deconstructed here. There's something that sounds like someone playing the hell out of a bass clarinet solo but it is probably baritone sax. I'll have to listen to it again. Utopian music. The kind that says there will be a tomorrow & it will be stranger than this.
How many great pieces of music have been built around insanely simple rhythmic devices, stuff that even idiots like me can beat on the back of a chair?
Some of The Naked Orchestra's disk sounds like Charles Mingus too. "Each musician must play himself:" Mingus, on the age of improvisation in tightly organized music. Sun Ra himself, another genius of orchestration, had a reputation for making musicians play beyond their capacities so that even indifferent musicians were transformed by the effort.
He was a musician who played what he wanted to play & made not a dime over expenses for the effort. Guitarist Marc Stone said, in slightly different context, that musicians will put tremendous effort into doing something creative even if they're not paid a nickel. He was preparing a Tom Lehrer show for le chat noir, & even though this is a completely different kind of music, the risk is about the same in terms of complexity of the production and the pile of money you're probably going to lose.
I was looking for the name of the record company that put out the Naked Orchestra cd and saw that there wasn't one. This is an independent production. Anybody who sticks their necks out to produce music like this is doing it for love.
Nobody is tempted into this music by the money. But don't let that scare you!
The Naked Orchestra: Brief Repairs on the Gradually Unravelling Spool in the Sense Continuum.
Contact: Jonathan Freilich, 911 Poland Ave., New Orleans, LA 70117
moroller@bellsouth.net
Rob Wagner Trio: Valid Records validrecords@yahoo.com
Both are available at Louisiana Music Factory.
--Dennis Formento
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last changed on 21 May 01 by