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.