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Looper's Delight
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Hi everyone, Phil Zurrigo took a picture of the Loop Bus while Andy Butler, Bernhard Wagner and I taught a the Electronic Music History class at the University of California at Santa Cruz today. We cracked up when we saw it! We did a lecture demonstration on the history and technology of live looping. It was lot of fun! Later, Phil, Ryusei, Hideki and I drove to San Francisco where Phil, Hideki and I did mostly avante garde live looping performance at the Luggage Store. I played an improv set with Matt Davignon on drum machine (please go out and buy BWOO, it's a really unique and extremely creative CD) and the Hideki came and joined us playing the amazing 'daxaphone' which is an instrument that I saw him play in Kyoto at the looping festival there earlier this summer. He is an incredible craftsperson and has a factory that makes the beautiful electric mandolins that he plays in concert. This instrument is just a piece of then hardwood, carved like a dagger that has a pickup on it. You play it with a bow and 'fret' it with a wooden 'slide' that has frets on the bottom of it in a curved shape. In this way you can roll the 'slide' over the board and it tunes the wood as you bow it. It sounds uncannily human; almost like little boys and girls who are making nonsense sounds. It's extremely expressive and Hideki played it while I processed him in the EDP and the Repeater. I was so blown away when I saw it that I asked him if he'd consider making me one for me to buy. Well, he blew my mind when he got to our home in Santa Cruz and unvailed a beautiful one, replete with a piezo pickup and a stand and case. It was a present and I was floored. Consequently, it was wonderful for me to hear him play it tonight. He's really good on the thing. I know because I shedded it a little today and can hardly make any thing interseting come out of it. Afterwards, Phil Zurrigo did a really beautiful solo guitar/EDP concert. It was really challenging harmonically and rhythmically and there were some really beautiful moments in the piece. I especially loved a Cecil Taylor cover that he did for his finale. His use of the EDP is just seemless and his guitar technique is really wonderful too. I am usually very concious about what techniques a looper is uses and tonight I just didn't notice what he was doing. It was that accomplished and flawless and musical. I was really impressed I have to say. He seemed to bring a lot of joy to the music which is not usually an emotion that I associate with rather free jazz influenced music. At one point he was dancing in 19/8 as he played. It was pretty magical. ********************************* This was day two of the Looping Fest. Yesterday, Ryusei, Hideki, Bernhard, Andy, Bill and Dan Soltzberg performed at the Henry Miller Gallery in Big Sur. I was teaching a master class in rhythm at the Kuumbwa Jazz center and wasn't able to attend so we'll have to wait for a report about that gig from one of them. I wanted to thank Bill (my brother) for completely running the Big Sur gig for me this year. It was great to add Big Sur to the Y2K5 festival this year. The Henry Miller Gallery may be the most beautiful place I"ve ever played and the curator, Magnus Toren, is a wonderful man who really supports art. He was one of the first people who believe in us enough to let us have one of the first live looping festivals there several years ago. Well, It's off to San Francisco again tomorrw where Ryusei, Hideki, Andy and Bernhard will play at Javacat Coffee and the, bright an early, the main festival starts on Saturday morning. I'll try to send pictures to this URL while we keep going: www.looppool.info/Y2K5/