Millieu

If you've been spending An Evening With... us, you'll want to hear this.

INSTRUMENTATION:
Timbill (Timbill Corder, askemeaboutLOOM): Horn
Tréteque (Trey Beauregard, yours truly): Baritone Saxophone
Pheatherwäit (Melissa Burcham, pheatherwait): Flute

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posted by man vs sun (3 comments total)

again, this is really lovely stuff. really engaging when most improv i hear these days just sort of isn't (most of which is what my mate matt calls 'one thing music' - stuff you hear 40 seconds of and thereby can safely predict how the next hour or so is going to pan out). i think it's because you're not afraid of playing time, or proper notes, or listening to each other. which is much harder than striking an avant-hard kind of pose. there's some beautiful playing there.
posted by peterkins at 6:36 PM on June 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thanks very much, Peter. So many people are so wary of us when I refer to us as avant-garde because they usually associate it with things like noise rock, or other generally loud, typically obnoxious sounds in an unpleasant cloud texture, meant to be difficult to listen to. There's an important difference between music which is difficult to listen to, and music which challenges the listener. I always hope that we fall into the latter category, unless we're being intentionally stupid and twat-ish.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 8:41 PM on June 25, 2010

listening to each other

This is the absolute biggest thing in the music we make. Through the years of ensemble playing in school, the directors always stressed the importance of listening. Every day with the listening rant. We know, we know. Listen.

But no one really did. The notes in front of us were the most important notes in the piece. So blast them out so that your aunt in row HH can hear your part.

It didn't hit me until much later that most of the time, I didn't have the melody. Like 80% of the time. Not melody. And that 20% of the time, I was doubling the low brass section. Still not an excuse for blasting.

Couldn't hear the melody, either, but I sure could hear my part. When I sing the piece to myself later, it was never the melody; it was my part. Not very interesting, but it's stuck in my head anyway.

Not until the notation was pulled out from in front of me and I only have the other instrumentalists in the room to react to did I realize that this was music-making, and that symphonic band nonsense was really a bunch of overly-loud wankery with no real musicianship backing it up.

After this epiphany, it doesn't make sense to blast the notes in front of you. It's just a shame instructors can't really get this point across in a tangible way when it matters most.
posted by man vs sun at 10:55 PM on June 25, 2010