#gotonight

by Samuel Weinberg

A few months ago, I came across Keir Neuringer's solo saxophone record Ceremonies Out of The Air a truly striking and beautiful disc, and one that I find myself revisiting now, months later. At the time of its release, Neuringer and I corresponded briefly in the hopes of finding some time to conduct an interview. The timing wasn't right, especially given the extensive tour Neuringer was about to embark upon in support of 'Ceremonies'. But months later, we were able to find the time and the result is below. If you'd like to see my write-up of Ceremonies, you can read that here. What's more: Neuringer is going to celebrate the New York release of 'Ceremonies' this Wednesday night at JACK at 8 PM. 

Below is my interview with Keir Neuringer.

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What is your history with playing solo saxophone?

I began learning saxophone in public elementary school in 1985. Hearing recordings of Charlie Parker, and then Maceo Parker, in my early teens solidified my relationship to the instrument and to music making, in general. I had an early affinity for extended technique; when I would solo in high school jazz band, our director would smile broadly and invoke the name of Eric Dolphy, long before I knew who that was.

As a freshman at the University of North Texas, I knew there was something wrong with the way I was being taught jazz and classical saxophone. Nothing felt right or honest. There seemed to be a rejection of the sounds and techniques that developed organically through the playing of the instrument, and a preference for a very narrow conception of appropriate, legitimate technique.

The watershed moment of my development as a saxophonist occurred during the summer of 1997. Matt Bauder and I had become fast friends at North Texas, and had fled its constrictions at the same time, after two years. That summer, we were playing in a strolling dixieland band at Playland Amusement Park. He passed me three life-changing discs between sets: Henry Threadgill's Where's Your Cup?, Ivo Papasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Orchestra's Orpheus Ascending, and the duo recording of Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker Duo (London) 1993. I was already somewhat familiar with some of Braxton's recordings of standards and they didn't resonate with me at the time, but the duo record floored me. All that technique! All those sounds! All the playfulness! That fall I was studying in London and I tracked down Evan at the old Vortex and asked for a lesson. He said he didn't give lessons, but a few months later he relented to my persistent requests and invited me over to his house. He would not accept any money, but we spent about five hours in his kitchen playing and talking (mostly about group improvisation, rather than technique. He also discussed with me (and not for the last time) his perspective on Wynton Marsalis and the Vatican).

Around this time I also was completely enthralled by Rahsaan Roland Kirk's recording "Old Rugged Cross". I began working on circular breathing, and after a few years could sort of hack it. My first solo saxophone concert was at the Audio Art Festival in Krakow in 1999, and I have been performing solo concerts steadily since then. After performances, people sometimes ask me when I learned to master circular breathing. I'm still working on it.

Although you wrote at length about it in the zine which accompanied 'Ceremonies', can you talk about the origins of Ceremonies as a project?

In 2008 I left Europe, where I had been living for nearly ten years, to take care of my mother when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. I felt a strong connection between her illness - in the lungs - and my life's work, also in the lungs. In the midst of taking care of her I was reading The Road, Cormac McCarthy's book about a parent and child negotiating a post apocalyptic world, and this passage jumped out at me: "Evoke the forms. Where you've nothing else, construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them." I knew that my first solo saxophone record would be called "Ceremonies Out of the Air", I just didn't know it would take me five years before making it.

A few months after my mother died, in March 2013, it was time to make this album. I was completely consumed by grief, and honoring my mother with my best work became the thing that got me out of bed each day. I am fortunate in that my partner is very good - like, literally professionally good - at project management, and she helped me create a crowdfunding campaign and plan a recording session. I knew I wanted people in the room when I recorded, so we found a great space (the side chapel at Philly's First Unitarian Church) and made attendance at the recording session a primary perk for supporting the album. We had about 20 people there, and it was my birthday, that is: the day my mother gave birth to me.

I think of this project less about negotiating my grief and mourning, and more about celebrating my mother, and our really special relationship. My mother was a great supporter of the downtown NYC scene, including my friends and colleagues - not in a distant, philanthropic way, but in a showing up and listening and taking musicians out to dinner and hosting them in her house kind of way. I want people to know about her. And I want this record, which some people have noted for its physicality, to not be another record about a tough white dude who can put a lot of muscle into the instrument. The album celebrates my mother, in particular, but also motherhood and womanhood more generally. The liner note - which is my eulogy - the artwork, by my friend Erin Rice, who lost her mother two weeks before my mother died and helped me through that time, and the zine all speak to that more clearly. 

Before making this album, my work always pointed away from my self, away from personal narrative, and towards catastrophic socio-political circumstances. While this record came out of personal grief, it is about something more universal. I have been gratified by the conversations it has opened up, with listeners and other musicians, people navigating past or current or imminent loss. In some way, I feel resonance with and inspiration from Matana Roberts, the way she makes her personal narrative a general narrative, and the general narrative a work of experimental art on her last album. It's powerful. I can't speak for her, but what I hear in her work and what I am also trying to do is make this music relevant beyond the technique. Not every listener cares about how loud, fast, and high I can play, or how long I can sustain a note.

Can you talk about your extensive recent solo tour that you took? How did the music evolve or grow during that process?

The album is a recording of improvisations and I anticipated improvising on tour. What has happened is that I quickly found a format that worked well to communicate this project and connect with audiences. I read from the zine to give some context and then I play, then I read again and play, and then if there's time, I read and play once more. The text gives me an opportunity to bring my mother's memory into the room and introduce the reason that I am playing this particular music in this particular way.

The playing has evolved into variations and reflections on the album material, and to a greater extent, to whatever I played at the previous night's concert. I don't feel, as I perhaps once did, a need to present this music as one hundred percent bona fide never before played unadulterated totally spontaneous improvised music. I am certainly improvising. But I reference material that previous audiences have heard, going to certain similar technical and emotional and structural places each night, taking the performance circumstances - the room, the audience, my physical condition, the limitations on the set length - into consideration. There's no notation and no plan, per se. I'm just using memory as an improvising/composing tool.

Are there other projects that you're currently working with that you'd like to remark upon?

I've been playing a lot with the West Philly drummer, Julius Masri. His musicality and inventiveness blow me away. We have played a lot as a duo, and have had the opportunity to play in a few different situations lately with Shayna Dulberger, another musician who really pushes me to play better. I think it would make a lot of sense to play more shows and cut a record with those two.

Another big part of my activity in Philly concerns the movement to end mass incarceration - I'm a collective member of Books Through Bars and a supporter of Decarcerate PA. I also try to show up, as much as I can, for grassroots anti-racist initiatives and movements here, sometimes as a musician. I find that this work overlaps with the musician legacies that inspire me. I'm thinking of Archie Shepp, for example.

Can you talk about the benefits you see living in Philadelphia, as an improviser, and maybe speak a bit about the scene there?

I moved to Philly in 2012 and I'm still learning the scene, meeting people, finding out where things happen. I love it here and I plan to stay for the long term. There is always something going on, there is energy and deep creative and radical political history, and I feel strong links to great musicians - both peers and elders - and presenters. Philly is definitely the most radical place I have ever lived. What that means to me is that politically-engaged people are very real about the challenges and very real about their responses to those challenges. It's inspiring. The scale and tone of the city suit me better than NYC, but the proximity has been good for me. People here are often friendly, and the musician community feels supportive to me.

That said, I am concerned about issues of inclusion and exclusion in the creative music and arts communities. Who is organizing, who is performing, who is listening? How are multiple identities represented on- and offstage? I am always disappointed by the absence of radical socio-political analysis among musicians who make music they would describe as free, creative, experimental, avant garde, new, particularly when it is meant to somehow reflect any kind of liberation from convention.

So it is that I am not only bored, but opposed to, say, three band bills of white men, organized by white men, promoted to and performed for white men. I look around at these events and wonder whether it would feel safe to be black, or queer, or a woman in some of these spaces. Musicians who don't understand how and why white male dominance in our experimental music community is tightly bound up with systemic racism and hetero-patriarchy ought to spend time doing more than practicing and updating their press contacts. I have this conversation all the time with my colleagues in Philly and actively organize with all of this in mind. Actually I suppose you could call it a project I am working on!

What's some recorded music you've been listening to lately?

I have been working my way through George Lewis' important book A Power Stronger Than Itself. In a completely non-systematic way, I am listening to a lot of the music discussed in the book, music by A.A.C.M. and Black Artists Group composers. I'm catching up, slowly, on my Art Ensemble, Braxton, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Muhal Richard Abrams. I'm also getting to hear a lot of good stuff from New Atlantis Records (the label that released Ceremonies) and Relative Pitch Records (who I am discussing a release with for 2015). One of my favorite records so far this year is the Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey duo And Other Desert Towns on Relative Pitch. I'm also enjoying two albums by Jen Shyu that I recently picked up: Jade Tongue and Synastry

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 What do you look forward to for the duration of this summer?

by Samuel Weinberg

Tonight begins the first night of Jim Black's curated week at The Stone. Black--a drummer of extraordinarily inventive technique, approach, and feel-- has curated a week that varies tremendously in the bands showcased and highlights a number of different strengths he has as a musician. Tonight, Black is reprising the beloved Tim Berne's Bloodcount, yet, calling it "Not Bloodcount" as they are playing an entirely improvised set. If you can't make it tonight, as you'll see below, Black has exciting things in store for the duration of the week, so check him out! (The Stone is located on the corner of Ave C and 2nd Street in Manhattan; Jim Black is curating until Sunday, March 30th).

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The first night of your residence you're bringing back Bloodcount, but calling it Not Bloodcount. What was it was like to play in that band and what will you be playing that first night?

Since this week should be approached as a sort of retrospective of our work according to John Zorn, it seemed impossible not to want to play with one of my first real long term bands in NYC. Even though it’s not my band, I found a way to trick Tim into showing up to play with Formanek and Speed, only because I love playing with these guys so much. I don’t even remember how many years we toured around the world together for that matter. I don’t think we ever did a completely improvised show however, hence the name “Not Bloodcount".

You're bringing a reunion version of the 97 Ben Monder Trio on the second night. What was significant about that band to you? Can you talk a bit about Monder as a player?

Another band I cut my teeth on in NYC. That trio played weekly at ‘3 of Cups’ in the East Village – standards, Monder’s originals, etc. We spent hours and hours learning Ben’s music, all of that vocabulary was totally new to me at that time. To me at least, all these “old” bands never really break up – they take breaks, maybe leaders want to work with different projects or maybe the band has to leave the scene for a while just to refresh in the public’s/promoter’s eyes...but that particular music never dies, it just hibernates. If anything I’m more curious now to hear our sound after all these years and individual experiences. We’ve been doing this with the band Human Feel the past decade and it’s been amazing to realize how strong the music is between us. It just gets better and better over the years, without even playing all the time. Same goes for Pachora.

Later that night you're playing a duo with Ches Smith. What's your history playing duos with other drummers? What is it about Ches' playing that made you want to play duo with him?

I was in a Portuguese group with 5 drum sets once, Tim Tim Por Tim Tum – that was a blast. I really love playing with other drummers because it forces me to play a completely other way on the kit. I think the problem can arise when two drummers have to play the same parts but have two different and really stubborn feels, grooves, or approaches. The first time I played with Ches, the music fit like a glove, so that’s worth investigating, plus I love his music and he’s a great human.

For two of the nights you'll be playing with a trio comprised of you, Teddy Klausner and Chris Tordini and both nights with a special guest. What is the history of this trio? Care to reveal the mystery guest(s)?

That trio was a great release for me after having written for AlasNoAxis for so many years, a completely different direction musically and sonically. I never dreamed in my life I would start a piano trio but you meet players you love and then creating opportunities to play together becomes a priority. Actually, when I was younger I couldn’t imagine having a band like AlasNoAxis either, maybe that’s just the way it works for me. As far as the trio, that grew out of the desire to have a band that could go anywhere and play anything, like an all terrain vehicle. The music on the first recording was an opportunity for me to write what I thought swing tunes might be for me now after all this good musical damage through the years, using different grooves and feels from the Balkans to North Africa. We have a new recording waiting to be released that’s in the opposite direction. Now perhaps it’s time to push again to a different place, hence the guest for the shows is so named Loftir Gudmundsson, an amazing saxophonist.

You're reprising H-Alpha who have a great Skirl record. What do you like about playing in that band?

Chemistry. We’ve never said a single word about the music. We don’t hang out as a trio. We get together to improvise and it’s awesome. It’s nice that there are situations in life that can be that simple. Improvising is at the root of everything I do, even if it evolves into a totally composed, song based band. So I loaded Wednesday with just that, like the trio with Simon Jermyn and Jonathan Goldberger, and trio with Sam Pluta and Peter Evans – I’m in Peter’s band with both of them but we have never just improvised together, so....yes, freaks we shall be.

The final set of the week you'll be bringing a great band to play Paul Motian's music, with Oscar and Brad who both played with Paul. What was Motian's influence on your playing and conception of drumming? What appeals to you most about his completely distinctive compositional style?

That’s a tough one to nail down in a few sentences. I fell in love with his compositions and songs before I could really grasp his drumming, which was over my head at that time in college. I think I’ve heard the trio with Frisell and Lovano live more than any other band, which when going to see them at the Village Vanguard was as close as I got to going to church. His songs are singable, sometimes dark as well as beautiful, memorable, and beg for improvisations in a very cool way. I now cover some of his songs in my bands simply because I feel his music needs to heard by the next generations. I finally have a personal, honest, and artistic reason to cover his songs. Of course I would never pretend to try and copy his style when playing his music, but it’s a real challenge not to think of Paul’s approach and drum sound. Hopefully I’m old enough now to play what I hear on his tunes.

What do you enjoy most about both playing at The Stone and its existence for the creative music community, more generally?

Man, just the existence of a venue like that in Manhattan nowadays is incredible, after the closing of the Knitting Factory in Tribeca and Tonic on the Lower East Side. It’s Zorn’s gift to the community, and it’s an honor to get asked to play there for a week. Plus, I like the fact the audience is wrapped around the band, the intimacy of it... I’ve heard so much great music there that wouldn’t get the chance to be played or get exposure anywhere else.

What's some recorded music you've been listening to lately?

Well, iTunes is playing down through the letter M in song titles right now as I type..so that’s Ornette Coleman, Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, Stereolab, Meshuggah, Caetano Veloso, Beck, Deerhoof, Nicki Minaj, Peaches, Queens of the Stone Age, and Paul Motian in the past hour. I just bought the last Autechre, Boards of Canada, along with the latest Lady Gaga and Beyonce, mainly because people were raving about the production values, which I tire of pretty quickly these days. I do like panning for gold when listening to music that at first listen could appear silly or trite – I like to soak in it for a while and see if something usable or fun rubs off on me. Kind of addicting sometimes. I think I spent a whole month two years ago listening to one Britney Spears track, which if I hear again I might....

What's your ideal omelet?

Speaking of food.... My ideal omelet is one with no eggs, because I cannot stand them boiled, scrambled, or sunny-side up – that runny yolk and floppy gelatinous white part? Not gonna happen. But I do LOVE Spanish tortilla, which is generally more potato than egg, so it hides the texture/flavor of the egg....so let’s start there. One toasted piece of Spanish bread rubbed with garlic, tomato, & olive oil then top with the already olive oil soaked tortilla, and cover it with some of those badass roasted red peppers they make in Spain – serve with a side of fresh Manchego and membrillo. Add a double café con hielo if breakfast, or an all purpose dry Albarino white wine if lunch. And now I’m starving.

WHERE: Le Poisson Rouge

WHEN: 10:00pm

We already sang praises and spoke with Dawn Of Midi, which you can revisit here. But tonight we are ordering you to go see them live. 

They're celebrating the release of their new record Dysnomia, which is a perfect display of  the Search & Restore motto: music you've never heard before. It can simultaneously be impossibly fresh and beautifully simple, and getting lost in the sound is far too easy. Live and in person it is going to melt you into your chairs / shoes / pole you're leaning against.

Opening the show tonight is west coast resident upright bass magician Mark Dresser, playing a solo set that should set the tone for the night beautifully. Check out a collaborative trio recording featuring Dresser below and you can feel how he sings on the instrument. 

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WHEN: 9pm and 10:30pm

WHERE: Cornelia St. Cafe, 29 Cornelia St., NYC

Tonight tenor sax & clarinet operator Chris Speed leads his trio at Cornelia Street Cafe with the great Chris Tordini on bass and Dave King on drums.

Tordini is a young bass wizard who's been utilized by Greg Osby, John Hollenbeck and Jim Black , and is no stranger to playing with Chris. 

Dave King is constantly playing at the precipice of humor and sincerity on the kit, shown off by his work The Bad Plus and his own Trucking Company who have a record coming out in the fall. 

But Chris Speed the man the myth the legend leads the assault on this one. His musical personality is understated and enigmatic, unpredictably dynamic and a lot of fun to be around. 

It's fortunately as simple as that. We have some awesome video below from the Undead improvised round robin night from a few years ago, featuring Chris Speed & Kirk Knuffke at the top and leading into a lifechanging experience with Dave King & Jim Black later on.

Enjoy it all!