Bakersfield New Music Collective Live at the Mark – “Stones” (Doug Davis)
Ray Zepeda, Tenor Saxophone
Mike Raney, Trumpet
Doug Davis, Piano/Composer
Glen Fong, Bass
Zanne Zarow, Drums
“Stones”, originally written for jazz fusion guitarist, Larry Coryell, who recorded it on his 1971 album, “Fairyland”, has an atonal sounding melody with vast intervallic leaps that give it an arc characteristic of 20th century concert music. This recording features a particularly effective piano solo by the composer whose motivic development and overall shaping and energy are notable. Trumpeter, Mike Raney, takes things out on a Miles tip while Glen Fong and Zanne Zarow contribute engaging solos in a funkier vein. This has emerged as a consensus favorite on the new Bakersfield New Music Collective album, “Re-Imagining Milton Babbitt: A Centennial Celebration for an Exceptional American”, and has received extensive nationwide airplay.
This track and the entire album are available on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, and wherever music is sold![Video by Bob West Video (http://www.bobwestvideo.com/)Edited by Lisa Konczal (https://www.veritecreative.com/)Live Sound Engineer: Peter WonderlyRecording Engineer: Brian Boozer – AUM Studio (http://www.aumstudiopro.com/)]
About the Album
Milton Babbitt (1916-2011), who would have been 100 at the time of this recording, hence the Centennial celebration, is generally considered to be one of the greatest contributors to musical thought in the United States. My piece, I Care If You Listen [A Critic’s Response to Just Artistry] – a composition for eleven instruments dedicated to Milton Babbitt – is at once a parody of and a tribute to his All Set for jazz ensemble from 1957 commissioned for the Brandeis Music Festival which that year was a jazz festival. The aforementioned parody is a titular one, referring to Babbitt’s 1958 article in High Fidelity that the editor gave the unfortunate title, Who Cares If You Listen?, a foreshadowing of today’s “click bait” faux journalism practices. (Babbitt’s submitted title was The Composer as Specialist and the text was originally a Tanglewood lecture entitled Off the Cuff). After a slow introduction featuring virtuosic flute writing, a fast pointillistic section ensues. As in All Set, the percussion instruments then enter as a “canon follower”, playing the same rhythms as the composite ensemble rhythm for this section. Just as Mr. Babbitt has done in All Set, I have used all six of the all-combinatorial source hexachords for this piece. During the ensuing swing section, players are called upon to improvise jazz over each hexachord and its complement (the entire aggregate). Each soloist takes six choruses, one over each aggregate, treating each trichord as an unordered collection. The bass line is a linear statement of the source hexachord while the ‘comping instruments are limited to the pitch classes of its complement. [The soloists here are myself (alto saxophone), Tom Keel (trombone), Rebecca Spickler (vibraphone), and Glen Fong (double bass)]. The solo backgrounds too are limited to the prevailing aggregate. Furthermore, each aggregate employs a different trichord generator to create intervallic variety. The piece closes with a drum solo (Kyle Burnham) with flute accompaniment wherein the flutist (myself) is asked to improvise an accompaniment in the style of the opening section using the aforementioned six aggregates while interacting with the drummer. My complements to Milton!
DJ Raully D’s first mash-up juxtaposes the highly-organized pitch class workings of Philomel – Babbitt’s seminal piece from 1964 for legendary new music soprano and important collaborator throughout his career, Bethany Beardslee, and synthesizer – with my piece, Shattered Glass on the Beach, was which was realized at the USC Electronic Music Studio with more of a jazz aesthetic in that it was composed very nearly in real time using a Kawai K3 synthesizer (after programming the sounds of course) and then remixed in real time using a Tascam 246 Portastudio. Shattered Glass features spatial motion and heavy use of low-frequency oscillators (LFOs). Disdain for the postmodern minimalist school was the impetus for the title of this piece – a play on a major opera of that genre and its composer. In the middle of my piece, the listener will perceive some tonal pulsating harmonies that are all too commonplace in minimalist music. I have used white noise in the closing section to simulate waves crashing on the beach and washing over a shattered body. DJ Raully D’s musical sensibilities are on full display here in his live ad lib. remix, allowing Beardslee’s vocal to shine through at critical moments while folding my piece seamlessly into the tapestry as though it was part of the original Babbitt as a coloring texture.
Although not included on this recording, DJ Raully D worked his improvisational magic again blending Babbitt’s Composition for Synthesizer from 1961 with my No! – A Drive-By Electronic Drama, in and of itself a remix of electronic sounds and musique concrete – a movement in serious composition that began in the late 1940s in Pierre Schaffer’s studio in France and gradually acquired momentum to the point where it even infiltrated popular music (i.e., Revolution 9 from the Beatles’ White Album). The objective is to create a sound collage or montage of “concrete” sounds from everyday life by manipulating and combining the sounds in such a way so as to produce an abstract result. To this end, I incorporated street sounds from East Los Angeles in No! which Raully aptly orchestrated with Babbitt’s crystalline, analog austerity.
DJ Raully D’s presentations of Babbitt pieces with live instruments include Vision and Prayer from 1961 (an electronic tape piece also written for Bethany Beardslee) paired with Canaan McDuffie’s brilliant extended live drum solo, and None But the Lonely Flute from 1991 written for and performed by Dorothy Stone, one of the leading exponents of the contemporary flute. In the latter case, an excerpt of Stone’s performance is used as an introduction to my jazz arrangement of the Babbitt piece performed live by flutist Audrey Boyle and rhythm section. My arrangement includes the first 12 aggregates of Lonely Flute and is rhythmically adapted for suitability for jazz interpretation and to conform to a standard 32-bar song form, through-composed (A-B-C-D) in this case. Modern jazz harmonies were fitted to the interpreted Babbitt melody which, in conjunction with the jazz ballad rendering, gives it a Billy Strayhorn-like character.
There are three pieces on the program that do not have an obvious connection to Babbitt – Stones by BNMC pianist, Doug Davis; I Am That Personby myself, and The End by BNMC keyboardist, Jay Smith. Stones, originally written for jazz fusion guitarist, Larry Coryell, who recorded it on his 1971 album, Fairyland, does have an atonal sounding melody with vast intervallic leaps that give it an arc characteristic of 20th century concert music. This recording features a particularly effective piano solo by the composer whose motivic development and overall shaping and energy are notable. My I Am That Person for jazz chamber orchestra is a concept piece in the spirit of Herbie Hancock’s Speak Like a Child album that has become a favorite of the Collective and audiences alike. The soft, mellow blend of the horn section, Tony Rinaldi’s perfectly-placed piano fills, and the textural colorings of drummer, Zanne Zarow combine to great effect to imbue it with this character. Paul Cierley’s atonal electric guitar solo, also featuring vast intervallic leaps, and his sparse fills and effects heighten the ethereal nature of this performance.
Jay Smith’s The End, previously recorded on the 2011 Jay Smith Group release, Unashamed Portrayal, is performed here as part of the End Suitewhich, fittingly, closes the concert, so titled as it includes Babbitt’s My Ends Are My Beginnings (1978) for clarinet and An Encore (2006) for violin and piano which is the last piece he ever composed, the end of his celebrated oeuvre, before his death in 2011. The End Suite begins with Canaan McDuffie’s drum solo (coming out of Vision and Prayer) with me entering on clarinet with a freely-interpreted treatment of the opening section of My Ends which segues into The End. After the head and solos (including a magnificent one by the composer on keyboard), McDuffie’s drum solo re-emerges, this time with DJ Raully D in the fray, mashing up An Encore with Vision and Prayer. This extended drum solo with DJ section comes to an end at which point The End re-enters with the out-head, an apotheosis celebrating a man whose music I fell in love with in my early adulthood and whose intellect and character I truly revere – a venerable and, yes, exceptional American.
Very truly yours,
Ray ZepedaHermosa Beach, California, USA