[NewMusic] Booking / 'Usual Suspects'

[Phillip Greenlief]

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Damon Smith
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] Booking / 'Usual Suspects'

On the other hand the more of us who participate in the "Promiscuous"  
idea the more it develops the sound of whole scene and our ability to  
work together in different situations.

On Aug 21, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Matthew Goodheart wrote:

> On Aug 21, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Phillip Greenlief wrote:
>
>> I know I often compare our scene to jazz, but no one complained when
>> Bird was playing 52nd street nearly every night of the week -
>
> This may seem to imply I'm against the "promiscuous" scene, and I'm
> not by any means. The difference between the what you are talking
> about here (or Monk and Coltrane at the 5-Spot)- is that it was
> essentially the same band, playing mostly the same material, each
> time. What happened was that it allowed them to refine what they were
> doing based on the interactions of that particular group. It's a very
> different dynamic that a large number of "one offs" with different
> people each time. The "promiscuous" scene promotes a different
> modality of development- a more individualistic one (which fits with
> the more libertarian philosophy of many of it's practitioners, and
> the times themselves, really). It tends to concentrate more on "what
> do I bring to this particular group of individuals," rather than
> being a member of an ensemble where the playing of each member is as
> intimately familiar one's own.
>
PG:
Well, I don't see such a radical difference here in improv vs.
composition. Composition is "fixed" - it speculates that given a setting
of predetermined musical choices, one can predict the outcomes. In the
case of improvisation, the speculation is that anything can happen.

On the scene here in particular, I don't think that construct holds much
water. I'll cite my own practices - Jon Raskin and I wrote some
open-ended scores for our 2+2 series - each month the group played them
- the outcomes couldn't be more different. We've been listening to the
recordings lately to try to determine what we might put on a compilation
CD. Believe me - the tracks, despite the fact that we used the same
compositions each month with different players, are so different I can't
quite believe it.

On the other hand, if I were to put together a group of improvisers and
we got together and played once a month - I have a feeling the music
would be more predictable than the "predetermined" music we came up
with.

Now, I realize that you were responding to the idea that all these
imaginary groups exploring improvisation would hardly ever include the
same players twice. It doesn't seem to happen that way - yes, folks like
Weasel finds himself in a variety of different groups - that's great - I
love that approach. But when I look out at the groups that are playing
on the scene here, I can't help but see the old factions in place...Z
plays with X and C, but rarely R; Y plays with C2 and R5 and is polite
to Z, but resists playing with Z under most circumstances, and on and on
and on...

Damon's point is a good one - playing around with lots of different
people kind of creates this meta-band (which is what Raskin and I
discovered in the 2+2 construct - everyone seems to speak this
"language" that is developing), where certain practices are fluid and
easily transferable across a variety of groups. I like that - and again,
it sort of emphasizes the "usual suspects" routine - but in the bay
area, that list of usual suspects is pretty large - and that's a
beautiful thing, IMO.