Fort Worth/Dallas, 5.3.2025

A big day of music, starting off with Sounds Modern at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in the afternoon, culminating with Duo Memento Mori, the rubric for the collaboration of guitarists Gregg Prickett and Jonathan F. Horne, at Full City Rooster in Dallas.

Sounds Modern's The Ear of the Whale: Music to Celebrate Alex Da Corte's The Whale, was a program of intriguing works by mostly-living composers, intended to replicate the multiplicity of emotions evoked by the multimedia artist Da Corte's paintings -- replete with pop culture referents -- in a medium the artist called "the mouth of the whale," a portal to absorption.

Alex Hills' Alles contrasts the musical themes from San Francisco punk rockers the Dead Kennedys' "California Uber Alles" with transgressive chanteuse Nico's version of "Deutschland Uber Alles." Performed by a quartet that included pianist Stephen Lucas, violinist Kathleen Crabtree, cellist Kourtney Newton, and percussionist Patrick Overturf (on a small trap set), the melodic center shifted between the piano and the strings, with Lucas damping the piano's strings at times. I was reminded at times of the sheer idiot glee of my bandmates when the DK's song came on the house music at the old Black Dog Tavern (RIP) when we were loading out the first time we played there, and the darker undertones of the current regime's authoritarianism (one manifestation of which was the attempt by Fort Worth police -- rejected by a grand jury -- to declare a recent Modern exhibition of Sally Mann's photos obscene).

Violinist Mia Detwiler has previously displayed an adeptness at performing with electronics, using a looper as part of Jessica Meyer's Getting Home during Sounds Moderwan's concert in conjunction with the aforementioned Sally Mann exhibit. On Melissa Dunphy's Theme and Variables: Scallops and Bollocks for Tea, Detwiler dueted with an electronic rendition of the Colonel Bogey March inspired (and partially sampled from) the one played by CSIRAC, the first computer in the world to be programmed to play music. While listening to the virtuosic variations, I was reminded of singing the obscene schoolboy version of the song (with allusions to Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels) with my mates back in the schoolyard, and of the senescent HAL 9000 singing "Daisy" while Dave Bowman deprograms him in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Note to self: Write new lyrics for Mingus' "Fables of Faubus" with allusions to Trump, Vance, Musk, Miller, et al.)

Matthew Shlomowitz's Popular Contexts, Volume 10: Beethoven's Fourth Symphony in context teamed Detwiler with three musicians I'm accustomed to hearing in improvising contexts: Lucas (on keyboard and pre-recorded sounds), Newton, and Sounds Modern director/flutist Elizabeth McNutt. Besides the composer's gambit of overlaying found sounds (sirens, waves, ducks, crowds singing) with live instruments, it was novel to hear the seasoned experimentalists performing in a classical/Romantic context. I also enjoyed the juxtaposition of Lucas' electronic keyboard bass figures with the acoustic instruments. 

After a brief intermission, Mauricio Kagel's Pan featured McNutt on piccolo and a string quartet of Crabtree, Detwiler, Newton, and violist Daphne Gerling. The piece is based on the signature ascending scale the birdcatcher Papageno plays on the panpipes in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. Kagel, a refugee from Peron's Argentina, was a surrealist swimming against the serialist tide of his time; historical validation wears the white Stetson. The strings built and released tension as McNutt performed variations on Mozart's theme.

I will not pretend to understand the numerology and philosophy of the Lo Shu Magic Square that provided part of the inspiration for Zack Browning's Moon Thrust. The quartet of McNutt (on flute), Detwiler, Newton, and Overturf (on bongos, congas, and triangle) played syncopated polyrhythms that included a vamp which recalled the Sherman brothers' theme from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and textures reminiscent of the Mission: Impossible TV show theme. I left with a head full of allusions and images, and the strong conviction that more people need to know about Sounds Modern. But don't believe me. Watch the video from the live stream, and realize that live music is always better when you're in the room.

Gregg Prickett and Jonathan F. Horne have been conducting a mutual admiration society for 15 years now. I've enjoyed Gregg's work with They Say the Wind Made Them Crazy, Unconscious Collective, the Monks of Saturnalia (my favorite band that doesn't play nearly as often as I'd like), Sawtooth Dolls, and Habu Habu in its multiplicity of forms. I first saw Horne with The Young Mothers (whose recently released third album is worth checking out) and recently heard him in THC Trio with saxophonist Joshua Thomson and drummer Lisa Cameron (album release imminent). His work on Breezy by Ingebrigt Haker Flaten's (Exit) Knarr is some of the best I've heard in the last year. 

On this occasion, the two brought a full arsenal of instruments and effects. Prickett started out on classical guitar then switched between his signature custom electric with attached echo pedal and a reissue Fender Jaguar. While he usually employs only two or three effects (usually including a volume pedal), this evening's signal chain comprised half a dozen stompboxes (no pedalboard, man after my own heart) including a Korg Miku Stomp, based on Hakune Mitsu singing software (I called it the "Japanese syllable pedal), to Horne's great amusement. 

Horne had his signature Mosrite Ventures model along with a short-scale Fender Mustang and Fender Jaguar baritone. He'd just purchased a white mystery box with a 50-page manual that provided glitchy sounds as well as other sonic wonderment. His pedalboard included two Electro Harmonix Freeze Sound Retainers, an electronic signature of his sound. Horne has undergone nine surgeries to repair a severed tendon in his fretting hand. He's still unable to voluntarily flex his third finger, which means most of the time he's playing with just two fingers -- imagine Django Reinhardt inhabiting Nels Cline's sound world. With inspiring pragmatism, Horne avers that the injury and subsequent series of surgeries and recoveries enabled him to find his own voice, rather than "just being someone who wanted to sound like Nels Cline." An exemplary player in more ways than one. 

Together, the two musicians are remarkable in their ability to achieve great dynamic variation at low volume, and inhabit the same sonic space without ever replicating each other. Prickett's rigorous technique and endless supply of melodic and harmonic ideas blends with and compliments Horne's nervous energy and explosive flights of invention. At one point Prickett took up a Native American flute for a minimalist interval, at another the two battled in midrange frequencies on dueling Jaguars. At their zenith, they achieve a kind of music of the spheres, as spiritually cleansing as it is emotionally cathartic. 

The small audience of cognoscenti was packed with musicians, including Prickett's occasional duet partner, guitarist Paul Quigg; bassist Mike Daane (playing with Andy Timmons at the Dallas Guitar Show this weekend); and Prickett's Trio du Sang bandmates, percussionist Bobby Fajardo and violinist extraordinaire/Sounds Modern  assistant director Andrew May. May, a one-time punk rock guitarist from Chicago's Hyde Park, made some trenchant observations on your humble chronicer o' events' listening behavior. A case of the hunter getting captured by the game? And yet another reason why Full City Rooster is one of my favorite listening rooms. 

Prickett will be in Fort Worth on May 18th for the Grackle Art Gallery's Ekseption 2: a festival of unique musics, on a bill that also features Leaking Bright, Kitbashes, Ogonosu, Aaron Gonzalez, and Stefan Gonzalez. Don't you dare miss it.