Document for Dennis Gonzalez

Hard to say goodbye, my brother.

Listening to your family talk, I heard that 
you learned to read at four (you once told me that story),
graduated high school at 16 and college at 20.
Seems you couldn't wait to get started with your life.

You were your own guy the whole way up.
Made your mark on the world from a house on Clinton Avenue in Oak Cliff.
Your achievements command respect.
Was there a price you paid for swimming against the tide?

How do you show the people you love that you love them?
By welcoming them into your home.
By nurturing them with food.
By making them laugh.
By letting them see themselves the way that you do.

Sitting at your table once, I heard to story of the time in Eastern Europe (was it Slovenia?)
when you wanted to run onstage and be exciting
but the cloud of cigarette smoke in the room made you choke and cough
every time you tried to play your horn.
(You were secure enough to make yourself sound ridiculous.)

The time you and Jeff and I went to see King Crimson in Fair Park -- 
afterward, the sidewalk outside the venue was like a living social media comment section.
You alone said, "Why compare what's onstage with something in the past?
Why not just enjoy what they're giving you?"

When you were on the set, people felt less entitled to treat each other badly.

And now I guess I won't get to hear your Charles Brackeen story.

Go be part of the Universe for awhile.

We'll try and use the things you taught us.

The adventures of Dennis Gonzalez in the 21st century: an appreciation

There are those who will tell you that the only way to experience creative music is in live performance, and while I can see validity in that -- there's an energy exchange that takes place between performer and audience that recordings can't  capture -- if you don't live on the coasts, your opportunity to hear a lot of people you might read about is going to be limited.

And when the artist departs this life, as my friend Dennis Gonzalez did on March 15, recordings are the only way we have left to hear them.

Since reconnecting with Dennis in 2002, I heard him perform live many times, usually in Yells At Eels with his sons Aaron and Stefan, and for the last six years, with Ataraxia. But Dennis performed and recorded in many other situations during those years. A systematic appreciation of that body of work now seems appropriate.

To many listeners, Dennis's reputation is based on the records he made in the late '80s for the Swedish Silkheart label: Stefan, Namesake, Debenge-Debenge, and The Desert Wind. While it's not as dauntingly massive as some, sorting through Dennis's discography is complicated by the plethora of geographically-based names he gave his groups -- at the behest of Silkheart co-founder Keith Knox, Dennis told me -- and the several labels for which he recorded. 

By the turn of the century, the marketplace had changed; now it would be unheard of for a label to send an artist a big check, as Dennis said Silkheart did, to bankroll a week of sessions (which produced his own Namesake and Debenge-Debenge, Ahmed Abdullah's Liquid Magic, and Charles Brackeen's Bannar) in 1987. Between 2001 and 2021, he released seven albums on Clean Feed (Portugal), five on Ayler (France), three on his own Daagnim label (plus one unlabeled archival self-release), two each on Furthermore (U.S.) and No Business (Lithuania), and one-offs for Entropy Stereo Recordings, 1 Car Garage, Treefallsounds, and Aaron Gonzalez's Inner Realms Outer Realms (all U.S.); For Tune and Not Two (Poland); and Pirates Press (Czech Republic).

To begin with, Yells At Eels' Home is clearly a starter record, with the Gonzalez sons finding their feet and their father finding his way back to performing, but it contains the first recordings of "Document for Toshinori Kondo" and "Ganesha the Spy," both of which became staples of YAE setlists. Following its release, they toured in November, March, and June -- whenever school schedules would allow -- gaining valuable experience and solidifying as a unit. 

There's more fire on the follow up 2CD Home Away from Home (Live in Minneapolis) & Pictogram (In the Studio). The live disc finds YAE holding their own in the company of AACM eminence Douglas Ewart (who previously appeared on Namesake). The studio disc is highlighted by a four part expansion on The Desert Wind's "Hymn for Julius Hemphill" -- another YAE perennial -- with a guest appearance by fleet-fingered Fort Worth guitarist Bill Pohl (The Underground Railroad).

But that wasn't the only playing Dennis did in 2002. Released on Michigan-based indie Entropy Stereo, Old Time Revival, credited to Dennis Gonzalez New Southern Quintet, teamed him with the twin reeds of Tim Green (a Gonzalez familiar since 1990's Hymn for the Perfect Heart of a Pearl) and Andrew Lamb along with a rhythm section of AACM veterans who'd both been on the 1987 Silkheart sessions (Malachi Favors and Alvin Fielder). The album included the first recorded version of Dennis's "The Matter At Hand" as well as a cover of YAE's emblematic "Free Jazz Is Thrash, Asshole."

An August 2003 visit to the Northeast to play shows in Boston and New York resulted in a slew of recordings. Some of the Old Time Revival material was played at the August 8 show in Boston, which featured an ensemble with two basses (Nate McBride and Joe Morris), saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase, and 19-year-old drummer Croix Galipault (a student of Morris's). The Portuguese label Clean Feed released the live recording as No Photo Available in 2006. It was Dennis's first time performing with an ensemble other than YAE since 1999.

The next night's live recording at Tonic in New York was married by some equipment failures, but enough was salvaged for Clean Feed to release (with additional studio material) as Dance of the Soothsayer's Tongue in 2007. Dennis's NY Quartet included saxophonist Ellery Eskelin (whom I was surprised to see in a PBS documentary, talking about his father, the late "song poem" musician Rodd Keith), bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Michael T.A. Thompson. 

This was the same unit that entered the studio on November 22 to record Dennis's scintillating NY Midnight Suite, an album to put next to the Silkhearts. The following day, Dennis was back in the studio with a different group of musicians (except for Thompson, who held the drum chair): trumpeter Roy Campbell, Jr., multi-reedist Sabir Mateen, and bassist Henry Grimes, who'd anchored crucial recordings by Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, and Albert Ayler, and was making his return to the studio after 35 years. The resulting Nile River Suite, which Dennis released on Daagnim credited to Dennis Gonzalez's Inspiration Band, displays a rare depth of expression from all the players.

Last but not least in this series of Gonzalez records is Songs of Early Autumn, recorded in Connecticut at Joe Morris's invitation in the wake of the aforementioned Boston gig, in the company of Joe's regular collaborators Timo Shanko (on tenor sax rather than his usual upright bass) and Luther Gray on drums. You can hear the New Englanders' familiarity with each other's playing, into which Dennis blends seamlessly.

I wrote liner notes for Idle Wild, recorded in August 2004 and released by Clean Feed the following year. Dennis Gonzalez's Spirit Meridian brought Dennis and T.A. Thompson together with altoist Oliver Lake of Black Artists Group/Jump Up/World Saxophone Quartet fame and Austin bassist Ken Filiano. Highlights include Dennis's "Elechi -- Elegy for Malachi Favors" (the bassist passed in January 2004), the first released version of his politically themed "Bush Medicine" (previously recorded by the Connecticut Quartet but not released until 2009 on Lithuanian label NoBusiness), and a rousing version of YAE's signature "Document for Toshinori Kondo."

The Gift of Discernment, recorded at the end of December 2005 and released by the Polish label Not Two in 2008, was something entirely different. Originally planned as a trio with pianist Chris Parker under Alvin Fielder's leadership, it was expanded at Fielder's request to the double drum Jnaana Septet with Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez (the latter on tuned percussion as well as trap set and small instruments), additional percussionist Robby Mercado, and vocalist Leena Conquest. The music's modal melodies and rich polyrhythms give it an African tinge, with a thunderous 16-minute take of "Ganesha the Spy" a high point. Pianist Parker is a wonder, and the Gonzalez brothers' playing has gained expressive force and confidence since YAE's earliest outings.

That growth is consolidated on Geografia, the first recorded peak for YAE, released on Aaron Gonzalez's label Inner Realms Outer Realms in 2006. For the first time, the brothers' compositions predominate, and the collective improvisations really sizzle. Stefan's "Ethereal Carpet Ride" features his vibraphone facility, while the band composition "Elegy for a Slaughtered Democracy" offers thoughtful solos from all the participants, including guest tenorman Carl Smith. On Stefan's mysterious "Crow Soul" and the brothers' cathartic, co-written "Mutation Station," Bill Pohl's molten silver electric guitar and Kim Corbet (Tidbits)'s trombone, keys, and electronics provide orchestral depth (on the former) and excitement (on the latter).

(Around this time, I played one gig with Aaron in an ad hoc aggregation called Kamandi, fronted by two drummers who set up face to face, sharing a kick drum. My principle memories of the evening are the hail of splintered drumsticks, the atavistic hysteria of the audience members I could see, and Aaron's hands after we finished. They looked like hamburger.)

Dennis's next couple of recording projects were under the auspices of Marty Monroe's Asheville, NC-based Furthermore Recordings, a label active between 2008 and 2010. Renegade Spirits featured Dennis, his sons, and Tim Green in the company of Art Ensemble of Chicago percussionist Famoudou Don Moye (Dennis having previously played with the drummer's AEC predecessor Fielder and his longtime bandmate Favors). 

The session was originally planned to include Fort Worth drum titan Ronald Shannon Jackson, but he proved to be unavailable in the event, so Moye was slotted in. (This didn't prevent Stefan Gonzalez from picking up the phone, calling Shannon, and driving over to his Fort Worth home to share drum knowledge. In 2013, Stefan was behind the traps with the band at Shannon's Fort Worth memorial.) Stefan and Famoudou mix it up like peers, and the younger Gonzalez brother also plays bass clarinet on his father's composition "Skin and Bones" (on which Tim Green plays his ass off). And the percussion duets really signify.

On A Matter of Blood, Dennis and T.A. Thompson form a quartet with pianist Curtis Clark (best known for his work with David Murray) and bassist Reggie Workman (John Coltrane, Trio 3), recorded at the end of 2008. The long band tracks are interspersed with solo interludes by Workman, Thompson, and Clark. While Dennis is inclined to defer to Clark, and the music's in more of a post-bop bag than most Gonzalez offerings, it's Thompson who steals the show here; his loose-limbed energy drives the music. My favorite piece on the album is Dennis's "Anthem for the Moment," which has a similar vibe to Coltrane's "After the Rain," inviting Clark to inhabit its melodic contours before the group improvisation careens into free territory.

Another personal favorite is Scapegrace, a duet with the Portuguese pianist Joao Paulo (full name Joao Paulo Esteves da Silva), recorded in 2007 and released on Clean Feed in 2009 (a banner year for Gonzalez releases). It's a work of unbridled lyricism, a quality always lurking beneath the surface of Dennis's playing. They recorded a follow up, So Soft Yet, in 2010 (released the following year). On that date, Joao Paulo added electric piano and accordion -- the latter a particularly effective accompaniment to Dennis's Iberian soul music.

As I wrote when it was new, YAE's The Great Bydgoszcz Concert (we say in Texas that it's only a brag if it's not true) represented as big of a progression from Geografia as that album had from its predecessors. Recorded on a 2008 tour of Poland with Aaron and Stefan's Humanization 4tet band mate Rodrigo Amado on tenor and released on the French Ayler label the following year, Bydgoszcz documents an uncommonly high level of bandstand communication between players who can execute as fast as they can think. 

The way they improvise over fast tempos on Ornette's "Happy House" and Geografia's "Document for William Parker" is blinding -- surpassed only by a version of the former tune from the same period (with Carl Smith on tenor instead of Amado) that you can see on YouTube, which is terrifying (in the best possible way). This lineup was equally effective on dirges like Krystztof Komeda's "Litania" (which boasts a stirring solo from Stefan). Another astonishing peak.

One might think of Gulf of Storms as the third installment in the Yells At Eels and the Great Drummers series, with South African Louis Moholo-Moholo -- who previously played with Dennis on Catechism and Hymn for the Perfect Heart of a Pearl -- in the seat occupied by Alvin Fielder on The Gift of Discernment and Famoudou Don Moye on Renegade Spirits. Stefan's growing facility on tuned percussion broadens YAE's timbral palette and is featured on Dennis's opening "Document for Walt Dickerson" (so named for a vibist who recorded with Andrew Hill) and on his overdubbed interlude (all three Gonzalezes get one, like the rhythm players on A Matter of Blood). And you can dance to Dennis's "Snakehandler," propelled by Aaron's three dimensional bass.

Fielder returns for YAE's third Ayler release, Resurrection and Life, along with New Orleans expat, trombonist Gaika James. The blend of the two brass instruments is particularly satisfying. (Furthermore honcho Marty Monroe magnanimously funded most of this project.) 

Stefan's vibraphone is now integral to the sound, lending an otherworldly quality to Aaron's composition "Psynchronomenography" (which sounds like something Sun Ra might have written in the '50s, when Fielder played in his Arkestra), as well as his own "Everywhere to Go But Up, Nowhere to Go But Down." Fielder, who at 76 had just survived a life threatening illness, plays with the vitality of a man half his age. For these sessions, Dennis and Alvin chose to reprise two tunes from 1989's incandescent The Desert Wind: "Battalion of Saints" and "Max-Well." (Fielder passed in 2019.)

Four tracks from a November 2011 Polish radio session with saxophonist Marek Pospieszalski and bassist Wojtek Mazolewski augmenting YAE saw vinyl release. Dennis's composition "Wind Streaks in Syrtis Minor" was split over two sides of a 7" on Treefallsounds. 1 Car Garage got three songs on a 12": a brooding dirge titled "The Polish Spirit" is the pick of the litter, but the jokey "Artykuty Gospodarstwa Domowego" is big fun.

Dennis made a point of saying (when I chided him for posting silly rock song lyrics on social media) that he was a rock musician before he was a jazz musician, and he was a church musician before that. The Hymn Project, a 2011 collaboration with the Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten (The Thing), is the first item in Dennis's discography to explicitly address the spiritual aspect of his world. It's an open and spacious sound, as rich in the sound of strings (Ingebrigt and Aaron's basses, Henna Chou's cello) as the great drummer collaborations were with percussion. 

Framing the interpretations of American and Norwegian hymns were two strong originals by Dennis: "Hymn to the Incoherent" and "Herido." The latter is the first song Dennis recorded with his sons, also recorded for 8th Harmonic Breakdown on a CD that's been elusive (now available digitally via Dennis's Bandcamp page), and later a highlight of Ataraxia's live sets. After playing together on this album, Ingebrigt recruited Stefan to play vibes in his band The Young Mothers.

Colorado at Clinton, recorded in 2011 and released on Ayler in 2013, teams YAE with Stefan's childhood friend Aakash Mittal, an adept altoist who's visited India and studied with Rudresh Mahanthappa and Ravish Momin. I saw this lineup play at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center on a night when my wife and I also took in a Clay Stinnett art show at the Texas Theatre and Junior Brown at the Kessler -- the Cliff at its finest. Mittal's two originals are fine (I had to smile at the quote from Trane's "India" in "Shades of India") and Dennis's "Wind Streaks in Syrtis Major" gets revisited with powerful solo statements all around. The dirge "Constellations on the Ground (for Chris Whitley)" features a Hadenesque solo from Aaron.

In Quiet Waters -- how odd it feels to be saying, the last YAE album, was recorded partly at the Gonzalez home studio and partly at a house show in Deep Ellum, and released on the Polish For Tune label in 2014. There's a YouTube video of the performance of "Hymn for Julius Hemphill" from this album that captures the vibe I remember from so many YAE shows. That and the 2016 video of a "guerrilla" performance of "Document for Toshinori Kondo" are what I'll always show folks who want to know what this band was about. This album represents the high water mark of YAE -- how far they reached as telepathic improvisers and skilled composers. Offline, Dennis also showed his sons, by example and experience, how to organize and promote this music in DIY fashion -- a legacy that has benefited creative music in North Texas.

Ataraxia proved to be Dennis's sunset project, and while it came about as the result of a scheduling conflict, the trio with bassist Drew Phelps and tablaist Jagath Lakpriya allowed Dennis to explore a quieter, more reflective music than YAE was accustomed to playing (although there were moves in that direction on In Quiet Waters). 

The obvious comparison was with the jazz/"world music" hybrid trio Codona, and Dennis told me after Ataraxia's second performance that he had discussed collaborating with Codona's Colin Walcott before Walcott's death in 1984. Ataraxia's double vinyl debut captured their sound beautifully: the traditional Sri Lankan tune "Ukusa," a dedication to Aaron's daughter "Issy," a new version of "Namesake," Phelps's composition "Thoink." Those of us who caught their first run of shows will have to rely on our memories of the aforementioned "Herido" and David Bowie's "Black Star."

The fact that the follow up, Nights Enter, was completed is indicative of Dennis's strong drive to create. For years, he had been dealing with a multiplicity of health issues -- hearing loss, diabetes, heart disease, and later, kidney failure -- that made going and doing a supreme act of will, which was further complicated by a life-threatening injury Dennis sustained during the recording sessions. I wrote the album's backstory in the liner notes. Suffice to say that electronic musician Derek Rogers provided the Moog synthesizer compositions that served as the foundation over which the Ataraxia musicians and harpist Jess Garland added their contributions. Regardless of the circumstances of its creation, the music on Nights Enter fits perfectly the Merriam-Webster definition of ataraxia: 'calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet."

It was with this unit (with Aaron subbing on bass) that I saw Dennis perform for the last time, at the Fort Worth opening of a collaborative art show with his beloved granddaughter Issy. The sound mix was dodgy, but only a couple of days earlier Dennis announced that he'd completely lost hearing in his right ear. The last time I set eyes on him, he looked drained but happy, surrounded by people he loved, who loved him. The memory of that warmth and love will sustain me for a long while.

Dennis Gonzalez, 1954-2022

The first time I laid eyes on Dennis Gonzalez, I didn't know he played trumpet. My friend Tim Flynn, the first person I ever saw play an 8-string guitar, had a restaurant gig and I was driving. But first, Tim said, we had to stop off in Oak Cliff and pick up this bass player.

It was 1978. Dennis had just started teaching in Dallas public schools (French and later, mariachi). He was just 24. I was 21, an age at which a three year difference in age still matters. Already, he had the mien of a sage: an old soul. There was an Old World courtliness about him, out of which a playful nature would occasionally emerge. 

(In his maturity, he had an owlish demeanor, like Don Quixote as played by Zero Mostel, and he regarded the world with puzzled amusement. Once filmmaker Jason Reimer tapped Dennis to play a post-apocalyptic wise man in a bumper for the Oak Cliff Film Festival. Dennis was perfect for the role.)

The home in Oak Cliff that he shared with his wife Carol, a nurse and St. Louis Cardinal fan, was already a creative's lair, filled with art objects and musical instruments, of which Dennis played a bunch. Their family grew with the birth of Aaron in 1981 and Stefan five years later. A lot of Fort Worth punk scene habitués of my acquaintance, now in their forties, can tell you stories of attending punk shows at the Gonzalez family home when Aaron and Stefan were teenagers. Some of them didn't know Aaron and Stefan's dad was a musician.

By the time I met Dennis, he was already broadcasting on KERA-FM: the late night jazz show Miles Out, which helped me maintain my tenuous grip on sanity when I was freshly out of the Air Force and working overnights for Catholic Charities at St. Theresa's Boys Center on East Lancaster. 

Dennis had founded daagnim (Dallas Association for Avant-garde and Neo-Impressionistic Music), a performance cooperative and record label. It was a time when Dallas jazz fans could still occasionally hear '50s eminences like James Clay and Red Garland on the evening stage, but Dennis and his daagnim cohort were playing free jazz, tapped into the same wellspring of creativity as Chicago's AACM, St. Louis's BAG, and Horace Tapscott's L.A. milieu.

The opening of Fort Worth's Caravan of Dreams in the early '80s brought Dennis in direct contact with like minded, world class musicians from all over. Dennis began traveling to Europe to perform, and formed creative partnerships with musicians like the multi-reedist John Purcell and the trumpeter Rob Blakeslee. On a 1987 visit to London, he recorded Catechism with Soft Machine saxophonist Elton Dean, pianist and King Crimson fellow traveler Keith Tippett, and South African drummer Louis Moholo (the latter an association that would continue for many years).

Between 1987 and 1989, Dennis made a series of exceptional recordings for the Swedish Silkheart label with groups built around himself and the saxophonist Charles Brackeen that included another longtime associate, the drummer and AACM founding member Alvin Fielder. In the '90s, Dennis recorded with the altoist Carlos Ward, tenorman Tim Green (another longtime collaborator), and the Canadian pianist Paul Plimley (Hymn for the Perfect Heart of a Pearl); the brothers Nels and Alex Cline (The Earth and the Heart); and the Norwegian pianist Nils Petter Molvaer (Welcome to Us). Then...he retired from music for awhile.

In 2002, I reconnected with Dennis when I was writing about music for the Fort Worth Weekly and a friend who was doing PR for the Wreck Room (my favorite rawk dump of all ti-i-ime; RIP) pulled my coat to "this guy who has a free jazz trio with his two punk rock sons." The guy in question was Dennis, of course, and Yells At Eels was the band Aaron and Stefan coaxed him out of retirement to form.

It was a pleasure watching YAE grow from somewhat tentative beginnings (with Dennis playing occasional standup bass; the first time I saw them was also the first time I heard Bill Pohl, sitting in that night, play guitar) to a powerful juggernaut, with Dennis by his own account holding on for dear life atop the relentless forward motion of Aaron and Stefan's propulsion -- kind of a free jazz simulacrum of the Wetton-Bruford "flying brick wall" in '70s King Crimson. 

As for Dennis, aside from occasional use of an octave splitter/harmonizer pedal, his playing became ever simpler, ever more spiritual and lyrical. One of my favorite ways to hear him is on the pair of duet CDs he recorded for Clean Feed with the Portuguese pianist Joao Paulo (Scapegrace and So Soft Yet). There's a video of the duo performing in the square of a Portuguese village that I love because it reminds me of the film Cinema Paradiso and I can hear my friend's breath in it.

Dennis continued making good records through the Aughts and Teens, most notably for the French label Ayler. In 2016, he formed another ensemble, Ataraxia Trio, with bassist Drew Phelps and tablaist Jagath Lakpriya, to explore quieter spaces than YAE. Their second album, Nights Enter, added synthesist Derek Rogers and harpist Jess Garland to the mix, and is a worthy epitaph.

Besides his musical endeavors, Dennis was also a prolific poet and visual artist. In his last years, when health concerns -- diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure -- filled his life with pain and worry, he undertook a series of collaborative works with his granddaughter, Isabella Anais Sisk-Gonzalez, which culminated in exhibits in Shreveport, Dallas, and Fort Worth.

Sometimes in those last years, I felt concern seeing Dennis go from a hospital stay directly to the road for a music gig or an art opening. But he was driven to create, the way the real ones are, and determined to leave a legacy for Issy. Fueled by love, he kept pushing himself to perform, even after the complete loss of hearing in his right ear (a possible Covid result). The last time I saw him, he looked drained but happy, surrounded by people who loved him. We should all do so well.

As a friend, Dennis was unremittingly steadfast, loyal, and generous. I wish we could have had more time together. In the wake of his passing, his absence is palpable. I send peace and comfort to Carol, Aaron, Stefan, Isabella, and all who loved him.

FTW, 2.28.2022

 

Listen.

There have been six or seven live music experiences in my life that I consider total wish fulfillment and are the standard against which I measure everything else. Twenty years ago, I returned from one of them and got fired from my job two days later. I was so high from the event I didn't even care. 

This last week of shows at Dallas's Nasher Sculpture Center, culminating in the pianists Kris Davis and Craig Taborn's appearance at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth last night, is going to be one of these. The memory of this could conceivably get me through the rest of this year.

Davis and Taborn have been playing together since 2015, starting with a couple of tracks on her album Duopoly, going on to tour and record together under the rubric Octopus (eight limbs, two heads forming a single musical intelligence). The previous night in Dallas, they shared a single baby grand while interacting with Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures at the Nasher, where their listening and communication came to the fore. 

For this evening in Fort Worth, Davis and Taborn each composed two new pieces, each one inspired by two sculptures in the Modern's permanent collection, finishing with arrangements of two compositions by Ronald Shannon Jackson, a Fort Worth native who, like his fellow I.M. Terrell High School alumni Ornette Coleman and Julius Hemphill, had to leave home to make his impact. The piano arrangements brought forward the harmonic richness that was sometimes obscured by the dense rhythmic thickets of the original recordings.

At the Modern, the pianists had two full-size grands at their disposal, one of which was previously used in the Van Cliburn competition, as well as an array of electronic devices and small amplifiers.Their collaboration is highlighted by precise synchronization that sounds spontaneous, and technique that ranges from great delicacy to brute force. 

I previously wrote in regard to their Nasher stand that neither is a trained percussionist, but piano, I was reminded watching them at the Modern, is a percussive instrument, both in the action of the hands on the keys and the hammers on the strings. At one point, Taborn was playing something approximating a bebop line (filtered through Ornette) when Davis countered with a tsunami of thunderous clusters (played with the whole forearm), cascades of notes, and wide intervallic leaps that lazy writers like this one habitually compare with Cecil Taylor (an important influence on Davis, along with the composer Luciano Berio). Both musicians are as comfortable using extended techniques, manipulating the piano from within, as they are adept on the keys.

The incorporation of electronics into the Octopus project is a new wrinkle, but not for Taborn, who first tinkered with a Moog synthesizer when he was 12 and has led an electronic outfit, Junk Magic, since the early Aughts. Davis hasn't learned to program sequences yet, but is using the synth for different textures, as she did to good effect, doubling her line in one piece. I'll be listening to hear how she integrates this new element into her music in the future.

In the aftermath of the performance, I was processing my impressions of the event with some friends, in preparation for writing this (if you know writers, you get to hear all of their shit before they write it -- lucky you) when two women who'd heard the performance sidled up and one asked, "What did we just hear?" (I'm told there were walkouts; probably the grandchildren of the subscribers who walked out when John Giordano and the Fort Worth Symphony played "Skies of America" with Ornette in '83.)

These were folks who were thoughtful enough to buy a ticket and show up, but baffled to hear sounds they associated with horror movies on the concert stage. The precursors to this music are 60 years old, I told them. You don't need labels. Trust your ears. Listen and respond. If you care enough, buy the recording when it's available and listen again. Such is the fate of creative music in Cowtown. Perhaps more exposure would reduce the "strangeness." But how to make that happen?

The man responsible for my wish fulfillment week is producer extraordinaire David Breskin, who did the Musician magazine interview that pulled my coat to Shannon back in '81 and went on to produce Shannon's breakthrough records for Island and a whole lot more, including all of my favorite Kris Davis sides. He loves the Modern and reminds me that he has history with North Texas going back to the mid-'80s, when he wrote stories about teen suicide and high school vigilantes for Rolling Stone. I came out of retirement to write a piece for the Nasher's magazine because he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Bless him.

This week of recording concerts marks the 40th anniversary of Breskin's collaboration with master engineer Ron Saint Germain, who came to the rescue when the fledgling producer was struggling with the mix of Shannon Jackson's Man Dance album. I talked to Saint (his preferred moniker) for a minute before he left to do family stuff, and asked him if he was going to be able to "fix" the sound of police sirens that intruded during a moment of musical turbulence that everyone agreed was a key moment in Davis and Taborn's Nasher performance.

"Why?" he said. "It was perfect. You'll hear when the recordings are released."

I look forward to it. All I ever need is something to look forward to.