evan parker, susie ibarra, derek bailey, where to start ...?

However, I found Susie Ibarra's Songbird Suite pretty appealing overall. Funny though, I wouldn't necessarily call much of it jazz if I didn't know that Ibarra labels it that way. It's borrowing from a lot of other sources as well.

Also I think Derek Bailey considers what he does to be outside of jazz.

David S. Ware - Go See the World
Other Dimensions in Music - Time is of the Essence

Both about 5 years old now and granted neither of these have Bailey, Parker or Ibarra on 'em, but hey.

Susie Ibarra is best with some combination of herself, Daniel Carter, and Willaim Parker, but her stuff with husband Asif Tshar is also worth seeking out

You realzie, of course, that Parker / Bailey etc and Ibarra are worlds apart, aesthetically

Karyobin is a great choice - that's sort of where it all starts, really - but I'm not sure if it's in print anymore. But absolutely, that's an all-time desert-island type disc. The music sounds so organic and sui generis; it's like the sound of breathing. Failing that, the Derek Bailey / John Stevens disc Playing on Incus is one of my favorite Bailey related discs. It's 2/5 of the SME, and it was recorded in the early 90s so it's basically two savvy veterans enjoying the fuck out of each other's company and the playing is off the hook.

Also, maybe try to scare up that Tony Oxley Quartet CD on Incus - it should still be in print. That's got Bailey along with one of the absolute best drummers of all time, Tony Oxley. It's also got a fellow, Pat Thomas, exclusively playing keyboards and electronics; that may help make this disc in particular a nice transition from the sonics on something like the Chicago Underground Trio to the more free end of this music.

Roger - you know Ibarra and Tsahar are no longer together? sad but true. In any case, the recommendation is seconded. Home Cooking is a wonderful disc.

The first exposure to both Bailey and Parker I ever had - in fact, to the whole sphere of free improvisation in general - was via
the old Metalanguage: The Science Set lp on Henry Kaiser's Metalanguage label. I plucked it out of my college radio station's library at the tender age of 18 and man, some synapses were seriously fried. What a fantastic record; it's a live recording of a free improv festival featuring all the heavyweights - Bailey, Parker, Kaiser, various members of ROVA, um ... I forget exactly who else. Anyway, it's a series of varying groupings of the participants in varying sizes. A great, great record and one that I think is still sadly out of print..

(There ought to be a People Magazine for the avant-garde.)

I had heard of her before, but you sort of pushed me in the direction of buying Songbird Suite, accurately guessing I would like it (and I don't think my taste is easy to predict in these kind of fuzzy areas of "out but not too far out").

I want to get an Ibarra/Bailey CD too, though I don't really expect to like it.

But this new one on Tzadik sounds like it could be similar enough to Songbird Suite that I would like it. (I think I checked before and it was the same violinist and pianist. I think.)

David S. Ware Live in the World 3CD live set features a different drummer on each disc (Guillermo E. Brown, Susie Ibarra & Hamid Drake) from three separate performances in three different countries. Live in the World will be released in the first quarter of 2005 and is David S. Ware's first live concert recording.

They don't do things by half-measures, do they? I still haven't heard a full album length sampling of Ware. I think he's coming from an area of free jazz that doesn't appeal to me that much, but I'd still like to try him eventually, maybe not starting with this one--though these drummers are each a plus.

February 18, 2006
Bang a Gong (or Eight) in a Pan-Cultural Fusion
By PETER CATAPANO

Susie Ibarra first made her mark in the early 1990's as an adept free jazz drummer in the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, led by the bassist William Parker. The arrival of a slight young Filipino-American woman into one of downtown's most raucous and adventurous ensembles was bound to create a stir, and it did.

But Ms. Ibarra, now 35, has moved far beyond that. In the past decade, her willingness to step out from behind the kit and embrace nonjazz forms — opera, poetry, experimental sound, dance — has taken her from that initial buzz below Houston Street to international renown as a composer, performer and proponent of folkloric music.

Tonight at Joe's Pub, she performs new songs from "7,000 Mysteries," a suite of "sonic images of the Philippines," with her husband, Roberto J. Rodriguez, a Cuban-American percussionist and composer. Together they make up Electric Kulintang, a duo melding indigenous music, field recordings, live percussion, atmospherics and dance beats in a hybrid that Ms. Ibarra calls "Filipino gong electronica."

The kulintang, played in "7,000" by Ms. Ibarra, is an ancient Filipino folk instrument consisting of a row of eight small gongs of different pitch; traditionally, it is played by women.

"Jazz is really a first love for me in New York," Ms. Ibarra said in a recent interview in Midtown. She seems barely to have changed since her neophyte days: still soft-spoken and quick to laugh and praise others, with a gentle manner that can often seem at odds with her musical tenacity. "It's a part of my roots and a part of my language," she said, "but it's not everything."

Ms. Ibarra has journeyed through many realms: from avant-jazz with David S. Ware, John Zorn and Mark Dresser to free improvisation with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, indie rock with Yo La Tengo, and more. She has played in Indonesian gamelan groups, worked with the experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, and studied with the drummer-shaman Milford Graves and, more recently, with Danongan Kalanduyan, a Filipino kulintang master. She has even composed an opera, "Shangri-La," with the poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Today, Ms. Ibarra is involved as a composer or performer in no less than six musical projects, including her own trio. And an album of children's music, created with Mr. Rodriguez, has just been released.

Ms. Ibarra and Mr. Rodriguez, who married in 2002, met through their musical associations with Mr. Zorn, around whom musical and cultural barriers are routinely erased. "We met as improvisers," Ms. Ibarra said, "and the whole language of improv bridges a lot of people, cultures and backgrounds."

Ms. Ibarra conceived Electric Kulintang around the time of her marriage. The distinctive sound of "7000 Mysteries" (an allusion to the number of islands that make up the Philippines) comes from the ringing pentatonic melodies of Ms. Ibarra's kulintang. Mr. Rodriguez, whose skill with electronic music contributes to the trance aspect of the project, also adds acoustic patterns on the claypot and cajón la perú (box drum). In live performances, the musicians also take turns on drum kit and laptop.

In songs like "The Ancients," "Golden Dream" and "Bangka," the result is a sort of aural tapestry. At times, beats that would be welcome in a laid-back club predominate. But the grooves come and go and melt away to near-abstraction. A full palette of environmental sounds — what Mr. Rodriguez calls "the music of life" — emerge and recede: motorbikes, children's cries, flip-flops scraping on pavement. Many of these sounds were gathered by the couple on a six-week trip to the Philippines in 2005, much of it spent in Mindanao, the second-largest island and a cradle of kulintang music.

For Ms. Ibarra, the daughter of two doctors born in the Philippines, the pull eastward was natural. "I grew up in a Filipino family in Texas with choral music, piano and church music, as well as some folk," she said in an e-mail message. "There was also a kulintang in my uncle's home. I began playing Philippine kulintang music when I was a teenager."

Later, as her career as a jazz drummer was taking off, she kept her connection to these roots, making her first attempts to merge kulintang with contemporary music and improvisation, following a path cleared by other maverick composers, most notably Lou Harrison, who embraced gamelan. Two of her most recent albums as a leader, "Folkloriko" and "Flower After Flower" (both on Mr. Zorn's Tzadik label), blend kulintang with the sort of free improvisation she is well known for.

Mr. Rodriguez — who was brought up in bands led by his father, a trumpeter and arranger, and by the legendary bassist and composer Israel (Cachao) Lopez — displayed an obvious delight and awe for the richness of Filipino life and music as he recalled their trip to the islands.

Electric Kulintang, he said, was music, but could also be heard as a collage or a soundscape of the couple's trip to the Philippines, a place where contemporary Western-style culture has largely pushed the nation's indigenous art forms aside. "It's bringing a little piece from there to people here who would otherwise never hear it," he said.

Susie Ibarra - Radiance and Folkloriko; SO good. Radiance got these kind of corny merry mouth harp pieces but I like it, it's easy going.

Why is there not a reissue out of Karyobin? I need that but feel 80 bucks on ebay is a bit to avant garde for me

Currently fascinated with Evan Parker. Can anybody suggest good places to start in his vast (solo and collaborative) discography?

I'm drawn to the solo soprano sax recordings - Does one of these stand out? Are they all worth having or should I live with one and see if it holds my interest?

Combo and bigger band recommendations are also welcomed. I guess it's a strike against, if EP plays an inconspicuous role or is absent from too many tracks...

Are you more into the quiet stuff or the more balls-out stuff?

Two of my faves are Conic Sections (solo soprano) and the Schlippenbach Trio's Elf Bagatellen.

xp Open to both - assuming Conic Sections counts as "balls-out" and The Moment's Energy counts as quiet. Heh, TME isn't really quiet, is it?

Thanks, I love what I've heard off Conic Sections. will certainly check out that Schlippenbach Trio disc.

I was thinking Topography of the Lungs re: balls out

My favourite Parker line-up is his trio with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton, they've done a number of albums of which At the Vortex (1996) is my favourite.

For Soprano solo look no further thanMonoceros. I remember liking The Snake Decides too.

Karyobin showcases him in a group and at the beginning.

This is a British free improv classic. You could see Karyobin as beginning to depart from US free music but this is more of a break.

I would urge you to seek a duo w/Derek Bailey, such as Arch Duo.

You might be intersted in his work with electronics but I haven't explored much of that.

Thanks Julio, was hoping you would weigh in. Will investigate!

> I was thinking Topography of the Lungs re: balls out
Thanks, that gives me some perspective (Found it here btw: http://youtu.be/OV3sBCI-pLs )
And I've now heard enough of The Moment's Energy to realize it's in the same "ball" park...

Actually, Saxophone Solos is the ones where he really lets go with the circular breathing technique he was developing at the time iirc. It has a similar cover design to Monoceros hence the confusion.

Of his solo sax albums, you've now recommended the three that are out of print. *sticks out tongue*

I'll watch for them - there's a shop in town with a well-stocked jazz section...

His soprano playing seems to get more press and attention, but I'm a huge fan of Chicago Solo, his solo tenor album.

From the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio, Atlanta is very strong. Everything I've heard by the E.P. ElectroAcoustic Ensemble is great.

> Of his solo sax albums, you've now recommended the three that are out of print. *sticks out tongue*

I was wrong, can get Saxophone Solos!

I now feel overwhelmed by all the recommendations, but thank you everybody & keep them coming...

Yes, I have my issues w/his soprano playing. I would only get one of these myself (and think I only have one now). Its a great sound but he boxes himself into a corner at times - not sure it really works in improvisation w/groups.

His tenor is really really good - can't recommend The Hearth, his trio w/Cecil and Tristan Honsinger enough.

This thread inspired me to dig out my copies of Drawn Inward and Toward the Margins, the two Electroacoustic Ensemble records I have. Magical stuff. Crossposting to an idea in another thread, I might put these on next time I watch Nosferatu or Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Everything I've heard by the E.P. ElectroAcoustic Ensemble is great.

― WilliamC, Thursday, December 27, 2012 6:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ this. His duo with Lawrence Casserly, Solar Winds, is one of my all-time favorite's of Parker's.

I would actually swap my recommendation of Elf Bagatellen with the Schlippenbach Quartet(w/Peter Kowald)'s Hunting the Snake. All their stuff is good, but they were probably at their best in the early 70s (and I think Hunting the Snake is easier to find).

Just bought 11B - seems like a good starting point for me, with different textures and concepts slotted into separate, relatively short pieces. So I'm hungry for more and will keep Hunting the Snake in mind.

OTOH, I can see the piano being a problematic "free-improv" instrument for me. On saxophone, say, free improv opens a door on a whole world of sounds and techniques that could hardly be notated, let alone reproduced in response to precise, descriptive notation. And for me that's one of the most appealing ways in which this music is free. But a pianist hardly gets that freedom, except by cranking up the velocity or reaching inside the instrument (which is sonically disappointing to me, in comparison to EP's squeals and cracked notes and multiphonics and... ). Not knocking Schlippenbach's artistry - he has impressive harmonic versatility, an adventurous rhythmic sense, other virtues.

That's an interesting point, especially considering the musician who serves as the starting point for this music is a pianist (Cecil Taylor). I think one area in which pianists have this freedom, which many seem to engage in, is in the overtones that result from certain tonal clusters. Taylor's (and Schlippenbach's) more reflective moments are good instances of this, and some have put forth Monk as an early microtonalist for his work in this area.

One thing I dig about Parker, though, is that the extended techniques aren't ends in themselves, something seemingly lost on many of his followers.

That's something I appreciate in Schlippenbach's playing, actually, although I'm not sure I'd consider to be a freedom from what is readily notatable/repeatable. Anyway, Cecil Taylor is mostly just a name to me, I know his reputation but not his music; and I'm hardly better versed in Monk. So I should really be focusing itt on my new enthusiasm for free improv (even though I'm just dipping my toe), rather than fumbling with a critique.

the live at the Vortex/David Mossman tribute album is quite blistering stuff. Still got it has this bus-pass crew.

Parker's been entitled to a bus pass for 20 years now and is still going strong. A weekend of 80th birthday concerts:

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/evan-parker-at-80/