FTW/Denton, 9.20.2023

My buddy Nick Didkovsky (Doctor Nerve, Vomit Fist) was in town from NYC to attend the Gored in the Heart of Texas fest at the Haltom Theater and had a free night, so we invited him over la casa for some of Kat's spinach lasagne and homemade bread, then he and I trekked up to li'l d to catch Molten Plains XVI at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. 

In between sets, I buttonholed Molten Plains's visionary impresario Ernesto Montiel to talk about the state of creative music in North Central Texas. While he might beg to differ, I see his involvement in promoting shows at Oak Cliff's The Wild Detectives and Texas Theatre, Fort Worth's Grackle Art Gallery, and RGRS as crucial in the development of an environment conducive to left-of-center musics in the area.

For years, performers like Peter Brotzmann, Joe McPhee, Tim Berne, and Andrew Cyrille had regularly visited Houston and Austin, due to the yeoman efforts of Dave Dove's Nameless Sound and Pedro Moreno's Epistrophy Arts in those burgs. Beginning with a memorable Brotzmann show at The Wild Detectives in 2018, continuing with Atomic and Ra Kalam Bob Moses at Texas Theatre and the recent Dallas debut of Joe McPhee at The Wild Detectives, Ernesto has been instrumental in bringing such performers to DFW, to the great benefit of adventurous listeners who can't afford to make pilgrimages elsewhere in the state to hear them. In addition, the ongoing Molten Plains series at RGRS, curated by Ernesto and Sarah Ruth Alexander, has picked up where Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez's Outward Bound Mixtape Sessions left off in bringing forward-looking performers, both local and national, to the area on a regular basis.

Montiel, who originally hails from Maracaibo, Venezuela, credits the late Oak Cliff-based Renaissance man Dennis Gonzalez, Austin/Mexico City-based No Idea Festival impresario Chris Cogburn (at whose fest Ernesto was the resident DJ for four years before the pandemic), The Wild Detectives boss Javier Garcia del Moral, and Texas Theatre honcho Barak Epstein with showing him the ropes of event promotion and being willing to take a chance on programming that was unproven in this area. 

Montiel makes a point of maintaining focus in the shows he curates, booking artists whose styles are complimentary, rather than appending experimental music to a rock show. He also believes that it's important for the setting and presentation of the show to be appropriate, insisting that seating is necessary for listeners to hear "music that doesn't involve your body; standing just makes you tired." He's equally insistent that the house music played between sets should compliment the performances. And he's a great believer in creating new collaborations and combinations of artists. On tonight's bill, topped by Illinois-based heavy guitar soloist Brian Barr (aka Granular Breath), there were first-time collaborations between Sarah Jay and Lo Ramirez on vocals and electronics with guitarist Christopher Robinson, and bassist Kory Reeder with electronic musician Daniel Ryan. A night of heavy drones and feedback, whetting my anticipation for the second Molten Plains Festival, scheduled for December 8-9 at RGRS.

FTW, 9.10.2023

Don't review many books here, but Mike Faloon's The Other Night at Quinn's hit me so hard that I couldn't resist. Faloon's a teacher, DJ, punk rock drummer, and fanzine scribe, and his tome, pubbed by estimable DIY punkers Razorcake/Gorsky Press, is an earwitness account of the unlikely free jazz/experimental music scene that grew up around a diner-turned-club in the sleepy upstate New York burg of Beacon. (A 'net bud of mine lives there and says that while things have slowed down since Faloon's book appeared in 2017, Quinn's is still going.) 

It's not often I encounter a piece of music scrawl that crystallizes or encapsulates what I think about a lot of things, but Faloon's does just that for this particular moment in the history of creative music. (The latest entry in NYC guitarist-composer Max Kutner's blog does something similar.) I've long been geeked on the idea of music as locus for community, and know that the ideal environment to experience music is one where you can see the performers work in human scale, and feel air from drumheads and speaker cones moving your clothes around. Faloon excels at observing and describing musical performance, and isn't afraid to put his own life into his scrawl. He also realizes that scenes like the one at Quinn's are ephemeral, and need to be appreciated and valued while they're around. 

Closer to home, we visited the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth yesterday to hear Sounds Modern's Impure Music, presented in conjunction with the current exhibit, Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting. In response to Motherwell's contention that "pure music" should be free of external influences, the ensemble (in its various configurations) performed "impure" works including Dieter Schnebel's Pan, a duo for flute and cello inspired by the mythical fertility demon; a triptych of works commissioned by the Amorsima Trio to commemorate Beethoven's 250th birthday; Stefan Wolpe's Muzik zu Hamlet, composed for a Berlin production of Shakespeare's play; Morton Feldman's solo percussion The King of Denmark, a tribute to the Danish resistance to Nazi occupation; John Cage's Six Short Inventions, using the techniques of the composer's teachers Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg; and the premiere performance of Erik Ulman's The Golden Fleece, inspired by Motherwell's painting of the same name and dedicated to flutist/Sounds Modern director Elizabeth McNutt.

Sounds Modern always provides lots of food for hungry ears, and they did not disappoint. I was particularly taken by the gamut of emotions McNutt and cellist Kourtney Newton evoked via the seven vignettes in the Schnebel piece; the dizzying play with tonality the Amorsima Trio undertook during what I believe was Sounds Modern assistant director Andrew May's Flutter, Swoop, and Wheel; percussionist Christopher Teal's light touch on the Feldman (which requires the performer to use only hands and fingers); and the rhythmic irregularity of Ulman's premiere piece (it was interesting to contrast the sounds emanating from the ensemble with the steady meter of May's conduction). How fortunate are we to be able to hear this music for free in a good-sounding space. 

Finally, my jaw hit the floor when I saw the lineup for the second Molten Plains Fest, skedded for December 8-9 at Rubber Gloves in Denton: Joe McPhee, Zoh Amba, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Dave Dove, Wendy Eisenberg, a host of worthy locals, and out-of-towners I need to find out more about. So I've got a ton of homework to do, but a couple of months to do it, at least. A major event for sure; save the date and check their website for updates.

Angelica Sanchez's "Nighttime Creatures"

I first heard the Arizona-born pianist-composer Angelica Sanchez in 2013 on Twine Forest -- a duo (for Clean Feed) with Wadada Leo Smith, but one for which she wrote all the tunes. She also recorded solo and helmed a trio and quintet for that label. Since then, she's done much estimable work, most recently including a duo with Marilyn Crispell (2020's How To Turn the Moon for Pyroclastic), a new trio with Michael Formanek and Billy Hart (2022's Sparkle Beings for Sunnyside), and another with Tony Malaby and Tom Rainey (this year's Huapango for Rogueart). But her latest album, Nighttime Creatures, due out October 27 on Pyroclastic, is Something Else Entahrly: the recording debut of a nonet she's been working with for six years now.

The group is rich in horn polyphony, with a front line of three reeds (Michael Attias's alto, Chris Speed's tenor, and Ben Goldberg's Dolphic contra alto clarinet, pitched a fifth below the bass clarinet) and two brass (Kenny Warren's cornet and Thomas Heberer's quarter-tone trumpet, which can play the pitches between normal half-steps), powered by a rhythm section that includes Omar Tamez's guitar alongside John Hebert's bass, Sam Ospovat's drums, and the leader's piano. The way Sanchez employs the winds' expansive range gives her group's sound the fullness of a larger ensemble.

Sanchez is a venturesome composer who's unafraid to engage with tradition. The original pieces on Nighttime Creatures have evolved over years of revision, rehearsal, and performance, allowing the musicians to find space for their own voices within the structures Sanchez designed. Her obvious inspirations here are Ellington (whose "Lady of the Lavender Mist" gets a workout, highlighting its harmonic modernity) and Carla Bley (to whom "C.B. the Time Traveler" is dedicated). Indeed, the Old World tinge in "Astral Light of Alarid," dedicated to the composer's father, recalls Bley's "Reactionary Tango" from Social Studies. 

The compositions on Nighttime Creatures share a harmonic density, angular melodies, and spiky counterpoint that also evoke Monk, Andrew Hill, and on "Cloud House," Cecil Taylor -- whose "With (Exit)" Sanchez covered on Sparkle Beings. To these feedback-scorched ears, the title track -- inspired by nocturnal walks in the upstate New York woods where Sanchez now lives -- and the aforementioned "C.B. the Time Traveler" both resonate with the suspenseful aura of noir film soundtracks. Overall, this album represents a watershed moment for Sanchez as a composer and bandleader.