Leap Into the Unknown: Elliott Sharp & Janene Higgins

Elliott Sharp, 74, has been experimenting his whole life. “In popular usage it denotes exploration,” Sharp writes in his new book, Feedback, Translations from the IrRational, “an action without predictable results, an ascent into the unknown for the purpose of discovery or illumination. But its usage in labeling music is often pejorative and meant to marginalize the work and explain why most people consider the experimental unpleasant to listen to.”

His performance at Holyoke Media on November 13 with visual artist Janene Higgins, which they called "Entanglement Suite", consisted of 50 improvisational minutes of colliding sound and image, a clear “ascent into the unknown”. Twenty-five fearless individuals braved the unpredictable and experienced a change in body chemistry.

Seated on either side of a large screen, Sharp, with his 8-string electric guitar, and Higgins, with her laptop, created a dizzying, ever changing media landscape. But the evening began with Sharp reading excerpts from his latest volume, published by Wesleyan University Press. He launched the evening with An Asymptotic Manifesto (“Your goal is in sight and you will approach it but you will never reach it. Relax and enjoy the journey.”) He followed with an essay titled Future of Mind (“With every positive advance in knowledge of the physical and chemical workings of the brain, in a paradox worthy of Zeno, humans remain woefully distant from complete knowledge of the nature of our own consciousness.”) Sharp is an inventor, a self-described science geek, and a smarty-pants. When he was 65, his mother, now 99 and still living independently, asked him if it was too late to enroll in medical school.

E#, as he’s long been known, produced a plethora of other worldly sounds by tapping strings, manipulating pedals, inducing feedback and taking liberties with the equal tempered scale. Not a blues lick or major chord to be found, and not a predetermined note to be had. While Higgins had a finite number of images at her disposal, the order and manner of display were determined on the spot. Pictures of birds and warplanes moved across the screen, fading into each other. Desolate landscapes juxtaposed with endless oceans, a cosmic abyss morphing into celestial tumble. Abstract squiggles in split screen with a mass of humanity. Almost all of it devoid of color.

Ivor Miller said the performance reminded him of Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio’s non-narrative documentary. While the 1982 film, with a score by Phillip Glass, also had no dialogue, its message of a world out of balance - imbedded in the title - had a clear intent. Thursday’s event, while equally evocative, left us each to draw our own conclusions.

Sharp has been an iconoclast since his career launched in the late 1970s. His recorded legacy, including dozens of solo projects, duos with Bachir Attar, Nels Cline, Christian Marclay and Tracie Morris, operas, film scores, string quartets, his hardcore band Carbon, his blues band Terraplane, and his collaborative efforts with John Zorn, Andrew Cyrille, Vernon Reid and others, provides a pretty complete 45 year survey of the New York avant guard. He continues to be a fearless innovator. I hosted him in 2005 as part of the UMass Solos & Duos Series, soon after the release of his solo acoustic record, The Velocity of Hue (Emanen).

Janene Higgins, Sharp’s partner on and off stage, is a renown graphic designer and video artist whose video and projection design were part of Sharp’s operas Binibon, Port Bou, Filiseti Mekidesi, and Die Grosste Fuge. She was the art director at Vanity Fair and RCA Music Group, and has exhibited and organized events at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Documenta, MOMA’s PS 1 and Lincoln Center. She designed the cover of Sharp’s new book.

As usual, Higgins and Sharp were both dressed in black. Twenty years ago Marty Ehrlich, a long time East Village neighbor, reported seeing Sharp pushing a stroller with his two toddlers, also dressed in black.

Sharp and Higgins are quintessential hipsters who come by their cool naturally, without pretense or airs. They are fashionable because being curious about the world is always in vogue. Unconcerned about generating legions of fans, they are immersed in art experiments that bring them closer to wherever the eternal truths take them, without fear or favor.

Alone Together: Ned Rothenberg at Wistariahurst Museum

Since Coleman Hawkins’ 1946 recording of “Picasso”, there has been a long history of solo saxophone recordings. Antony Braxton’s impactful 1968 record, For Alto, has been followed by  a proliferation of full length solo albums by iconoclasts like Steve Lacy, Joe McPhee, Hamiet Bluiett and David Murray. Some musicians, like the British reed players Evan Parker and John Butcher, have devoted considerable time to pursuing solo work. But no one has spent as much effort or developed as complete a language for solo wind instruments as Ned Rothenberg.

Playing alto saxophone, clarinets and shakuhachi flute, Rothenberg gave 50 listeners who assembled at the Wistariahurst Museum on November 2 a master class on unaccompanied performance. The 69 year old, Boston-born reed player was celebrating his new release, Looms & Legends (Pyroclastic), his latest in a long line of solo recordings. In fact, Rothenberg’s first two recordings under his own name, Trials of the Argo (1981) and Portal (1983), were solo efforts. (Reissued as The Lumina Recordings on Tzadik Records.)

Rothenberg explained the title of the new record as a focus on texture (looms) and narrative (legends). It was the perfect framing to appreciate his 60 minute recital, which was full of both applied sound science and storytelling. The marble Music Room of the venerable Holyoke landmark provided the perfect acoustic setting for the concert.

He began the afternnon with a lengthy exploration on B-flat clarinet. Using circular breathing and his leg as a mute of sorts, Rothenberg created a complete sound world full of melody and multiphonics. What struck me throughout the performance was how he was able to sustain and develop ideas that kept my attention. Where was he going next? Although forged through a lifetime of studious refinement, he made it look natural, if not easy.

He then switched to alto sax for another long sonic investigation. Fully evolved extended techniques allowed him to create multiple lines simultaneously, as if in dialogue with himself. It was astounding and very musical.

Rothenberg’s extensive use of circular breathing, which allowed him to produce a continuous sound without pausing to take a breath, resulted in thick cascades of notes. The technique is achieved by storing a small amount of air in the cheeks and using those muscles to push air out through the mouth while simultaneously inhaling new air through the nose.

After these two long salvos, his third piece, also played on alto sax, changed the dynamic. He told us this was the closest he had come to writing an anthem, and the composition, “Resistance Anthem”, unfurled as a short, unadorned hymn. The piece is found on Looms & Legends, and as he writes in the liner notes, “the focused attention on sonic expression might help the individual keep a connection with their humanity and reinforce positive human endeavors – love, empathy and truth-seeking.”

Next he picked up the A clarinet, which is a semitone lower than its B-flat cousin, is slightly longer, and has a darker, more mellow sound. He mentioned that Mozart and Brahms composed with the A clarinet in mind, and indeed it has a rich tradition in classical music. On this improvisation, and throughout the concert, Rothenberg displayed a technical level of control and command that has very few parallels in creative music. We were witnessing genius at work.

Sunday’s concert concluded with a succinct reading of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”, played on shakuhachi. (The new recording ends the same way.) An end-blown bamboo flute developed in Japan in the 16th century, the shakuhachi has only five finger holes, but changes in blowing angle, embouchure and fingering can produce rich variation in tone color. Rothenberg spent a considerable amount of time in Japan, including a 6-month residency during which he studied the instrument with two of its foremost masters, Goro Yamaguchi and Katsuya Yokoyama. It's been part of his performance practice for almost 40 years, and today he is regarded as one of the most accomplished, western practitioners of the instrument.

I first met Rothenberg in 2009 when I produced a memorable duo concert with Evan Parker at UMass. I invited him back in 2016 with his project, Inner Diaspora (Jerome Harris, Mark Feldman, Erik Friedlander, Satoshi Takeishi), and he made a cameo appearance during Sylvie Courvoisier’s concert in Northampton last year. Rothenberg is a serious musician with an open invitation to return to western Massachusetts, with or without colleagues. Everything he touches turns to music.

Joys From South Africa: Steve Dyer's "Freedom Melody"

It is approximately 8,000 miles from Massachusetts to South Africa, and although a world apart, the US and SA share both a debilitating history of race relations and a deep commitment to jazz music. The latter was on full display on Monday, October 20 as the Steve Dyer Quartet performed for 65 North Americans at the Community Music School of Springfield.

Steve Dyer is a highly regarded 65-year old South African saxophonist, who along with Aaron Rimbui (piano), Jimmy Mngwandi (bass), and Matthew Fu (drums), shared the exuberant power of South African jazz by delivering an uplifting concert of original music.

Dyer, who is white, refused mandatory service in the apartheid SA army, and moved to Botswana, where he started a family and became a cultural activist. (One of his sons is the well-known pianist Bokani Dyer.) As befits someone whose life is built on acceptance and a shared humanity, Dyer’s band included a Kenyan pianist, a South African bassist and a Houston-born drummer of Chinese descent.

They played music composed by Dyer, which was by turns euphonious and wistful, full of strong melodies and sturdy rhythms. Incorporating earlier South African music styles such as marabi, kwela, and mbaqanga, Dyer’s program, titled “Freedom Melody”, had the swaying optimism we associate with South African jazz.

In April, 1985 in Gaborone, Botswana, Dyer helped organize the Freedom Melody festival. Musicians from all over Southern Africa converged for a memorable weekend of cultural events, headlined by Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa. Two months later, the SADF raided Gaborone, killing 12 people and terminating cultural activity in the area. Dyer’s Freedom Melody tour, with stops in Newport, RI, New York, Oakland, UCLA and University of Arizona, was commissioned by Lincoln Center and celebrates the aims of the original festival.

Stretching over 20 years, Dyer has a long history with Mngwandi, who has performed with South African legends like Miriam Makeba, Bheki Mseleku and Masekela, as well as Americans like David Murray and Will Calhoun. For years he has split his time between Johannesburg and New York, and told us a beautiful story about being taken under the wing of Reggie Workman. Bending rules at the New School, Workman gifted Mngwandi his first upright bass and allowed him to attend classes without paying. He didn’t get a degree, but he learned a whole lot of music. Mngwandi’s warm personality translated to the stage, where he served as a one-man welcome center for the music’s expansive agenda.

Born in Nairobi, pianist Aaron Rimbui is a modern African man, comfortable with world travel, the latest technology, and pop music, with the depth of spirit to play the real jazz. He’s currently co-leading a class with Seton Hawkins on Abdullah Ibrahim and Bheki Mseleku through Lincoln Center’s Swing University. Hawkins, incidentally, is South African and a tireless supporter of his country’s jazz artists, and is Manager of Public Programs and Education Resources at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Over dinner, Rimbui described the process of producing music with Burna Boy, the hugely popular Nigerian rapper/producer. The amount of resources and technical precision required to pull off these stadium-size productions are mind-boggling. He said after doing this type of work for a few months that when it came time to do a jazz gig, he ran out of ideas a third of the way into his set. He had to switch his musical mind. His string-dampening percussive work inside the piano with Dyer’s quartet added a wonderful dimension to the music.

Drummer Kabelo Mokhatla couldn’t make the first half of the Freedom Melody tour and recommended Matthew Fu for the job. Now 21 years old, Fu is in his last year at the Manhattan School of Music, and is already a professional grade drummer. What with the skiffle-like rhythms and four-beat shuffle patterns that distinguish South African jazz, a clueless drummer can bring the lilt to a halt in a hurry, but while he did not grow up with the music, Fu embodied the intrinsic buoyancy of South African jazz. Dyer told me how impressed he was with Fu’s sense of purpose and seriousness, and gave him a public nod as he introduced his piece, “The Young Ones”. Fu loves Ed Blackwell and knows his jazz history. Between gigs and his studies, he’s already rubbed shoulders with Kendrick Scott, Frank Lacy, Nicole Glover, and John Benitez. His solo on the last piece of the evening revealed what we knew all along: the young man can play the drums. 

In Springfield, Steve Dyer played alto and soprano saxophone, and flute, and sang on a number of pieces. The concert included a number of compositions from Multipolar, his forthcoming release on Ropeadope Records (produced by Seton Hawkins). It’s his 11th as a leader, and it reveals a musician finding inspiration in the triumphs and tragedies of his country. South Africa has a long and distinguished jazz tradition that began when merchant vessels brought early jazz records to Cape Town, and flowered in the 1950s and 1960s with groups like the Jazz Epistles and the Blue Notes. In the 30 years since apartheid ended, the music has continued to flower, and Steve Dyer is a major part of that renaissance.