Thursday, November 12, 2015

Solo Gig Tough Corner




Tough Corner in the Coliseum



Ceremonies traditionally are preordained events, with details to be repeated each time for more or less the same reasons, enacted and witnessed periodically for mutually understood ends. A ceremony, especially a religious service, is not really a “gig” unless you´re, say, a church organist.



In contrast to religious or spiritual ceremonies, almost any other audience need not have some unified purpose for showing up at a musical performance. Even when there is an ostensibly unifying purpose, it´s subject to individual motivations.


One person really want to hear such-and-such artist play live; another wants to impress a date. In any event, such a gig today (six thousand year ago) normally does not involve the slaughter of a goat; and this is just as well, at least for the goats.



In fact, talking of life at musical events in stupidly commonplace today, though it´s probably always been that way among we humans. Carrying weapons in public;  lethal lack of empathy; perpetually decadent sociological thing.



So, in performance at least, go easy on the quadrupeds.

Paintings Blinky Palemo
 Dave Williams

SOLO GIG


01.- Call it anything you want
02.- Concerning accidents
03.- Dislike of musical noise explained
04.- Choo-Choo
05.- Truth in music appretiation
06.- What is musical free improvisation
07.- Our Universe
08.- Working Jung's Riff
09.- Preferences
10.- When it's our of our hands
11.- Glad we didn't order the special
12.- Working Jung's Riff
13.- Know the enemy
14.- The mutable form
15.- Concerning Inmortality
16.- Mach Numbers
17.- Conditionalities of Quietude
18.- Then and now
19.- Why not Sneeze
20.- We Passed Jupiter and Then Headed North
21.- Product Placement
22.- Coming under Fire
23.- Longevity of the Unpredictable
24.- Signal Intelligence
25.- FUBAR to the Rescue
26.- What Was That?
27.- The Sonata Came much Later
28.- Coming Under Fire
29.-
An Unlikely Crisis
30.- The Huge Flummox Factor 
31.- Solo gig - A token of Esteem

Based in a noted musician's decades of personal experiences, his book Solo Gig: Essential Curiosities in Musical Free Improvisation (CreateSpace  Independent Publishing Platform, 2011) examines some crucial and  far-reaching aspects of musical free  improvisation, with particular  regard to live performances.  In this  illustrated collection of  narrative essays, the author looks both into  and from inside this  uniquely paradoxical, challenging and rewarding way  of making music,  within the context of an inherently eccentric milieu. 

Available here. (U.S.A.) (Europe)