Final Appeal Through Indie Gogo Recording Project

[Chuck Nessa]

Not sure about that. It just replaces the lens with a prosthetic. Just went through that for both eyes.

I have my final post op exam on Tuesday. I will ask my doctor about it.

Edited June 25, 2012 by Chuck Nessa

[Tom Storer]

No. There's Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and Makanda Ken McIntyre.

O, OC! U, MAIIAWAIB.

[David Ayers]

No. There's Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and Makanda Ken McIntyre.

O, OC! U, MAIIAWAIB.

Allen got it.

[AllenLowe]

Chuck, let me know what he says; I know the Jazz Foundation is helping him out, and I've been calling him every week just to check in.

[Chuck Nessa]

I will report what she says.

I was wrong, my appointment is next Tuesday.

Edited June 25, 2012 by Chuck Nessa

[AllenLowe]

oh, than it's a Doctress:

Doc´tress

n.1.A female doctor.Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co

Edited June 25, 2012 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

One thing that amused me as we prepared for the session was that Ursula Oppens, who has had pieces written for her by Elliot Carter and Conlon Nancarrow, and who has performed at the behest of people like Morton Feldman, requested that I demo the little piano piece that I had written for her (called Crazy Dog) - needless to say she had nothing to worry about, and performed, as well, a stunning little improv of her own after the theme statement (she had improvised before, but was unaccustomed to working with jazz musicians). She's a great artist and wonderful lady.

Edited October 26, 2012 by Son-of-a-Weizen

[B. Clugston]

Looking forward to hearing this. Allen, you always manage to get such incredibly interesting musicians on your dates. Oppens is a treasure. She's also recorded with Derek Bailey and is one of two pianists on Braxton's For Two Pianos.

[skeith]

I assume she peformed her Ursual material....

Edited June 25, 2012 by skeith

[AllenLowe]

I hope I spelled her name right on the check -

[Pete C]

I recently learned that she's on the faculty of one of my alma maters (or is it almas mater?), Brooklyn College. When I was an undergrad in the '70s the piano star was Agustin Anievas.

[Spontooneous]

I'm a big Ursula fan. Good work, Allen! Hope to hear it soon.

Edited June 25, 2012 by Spontooneous

[Teasing the Korean]

Ursula 1000 played a gig I was on about a year ago. I loved his fashion; He looked like he came right out of an early 70s spaghetti western. Amazing.

[AllenLowe]

Ursula is a terrific improviser as well - mixed her stuff down tonight.

[AllenLowe]

from the new thing - Variations on Jim Crow (1)

http://soundcloud.com/allenlowe-1/variations-on-jim-crow-1

[Shawn]

Sounds really good! The guitar solo had a Robert Fripp kinda vibe to it.

[AllenLowe]

that's Ray Suhy - best guitar player around, IMHO.

[robertoart]

I really like the drumming in the improv section. Not sure about the sax player though. Where did you find him?

[cih]

Sounds great, kind of outwardly bright but with a dark underbelly. is the opening actually the tune of Jump Jim Crow? (can't remember if I've ever heard the music)

Edited August 7, 2012 by cih

[MomsMobley]

Excellent, thanks for posting! Ever see this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Xp2PEr8F0

from the new thing - Variations on Jim Crow (1)

http://soundcloud.com/allenlowe-1/variations-on-jim-crow-1

[AllenLowe]

1) Moms - for some reason I can't see anything on my screen that you've posted -

2) we exhumed the sax player just for the session, then put a stake through his heart and buried him again

3) this is not the actual original Jim Crow, but based on my idea of that piece (see below) -

my liner notes to this (there are two separate versions that will be on the CD):

Jim Crow Variations – The ties of jazz, not to mention all of American vernacular music, to dance are, of course, well known and amply documented. Of particular interest in this respect is Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress lecture/demonstration on Tiger Rag. Morton demos Tiger Rag as something that came out of the old-time Quadrille, a dance which had, in its outline, a 19^th century, parlor-formal gravity. Through his auspices and under questioning by Alan Lomax, we hear, on these Library of Congress recordings, Tiger Rag morph into something both very different and yet quite the same - dance music that starts to swing and gradually become jazz, yet which retains certain old-time gestures of rhythm and melody. This is the American vernacular in action, as something actively engaged in both transformation and reaffirmation, a conservative impulse overwhelmed by the idea of cultural progress. Significantly, it is also a precious piece of the 19^th century prehistory of American pop.

The same thing may be said of a song written by the great Black entertainer Ernest Hogan, about whom we shall hear elsewhere in this project: Pas Ma La, which he wrote, was a substantial hit in his time (he lived from 1865-1909)and embodies a similar old time fusion, of early swing as shackled to classic, parlor-like politeness, with (more than) a hint of populist-dance lilt.

Jump Jim Crow, my model here, has a similar lineage: long before it became part of the phraseology of Southern institutionalized racism, it was a fiddle tune which had a clear relationship to much of the above: 19^th century dance music as an emerging and indigenous domestic style of expression and swing.

Hence my composition of Jim Crow Variations, in which I attempt to fuse a diatonic melodic classicism with an inference of chromatic dissonance. This is polite music as somewhat dismantled by Ray Suhy and Matthew Shipp and then reassembled into the final theme.

Edited August 7, 2012 by AllenLowe

[robertoart]

Here's a novel way for you to promote the new release perhaps.

My link

[AllenLowe]

might work.

[robertoart]

give it a shot.

[cih]

re. the Big Joe Williams video posted by MomsMobley - fantastic stuff (don't think I ever heard him sound so rock n roll - almost like Arthur Crudup with the drum & bass). The hard to find book on him by Mike Bloomfield was recently made available on the net as a pdf here though I must admit it made me feel a big queasy..

talking of Jelly Roll Morton, Jim Crow Variations made me think a little of Charles Mingus' Jelly Roll things..

What an amazing session that was with Morton & Lomax, 'My Gal Sal' is my favourite transformation that he does 'live'. I'm reading the John Szwed book on Lomax at the mo (which i know you've all read..) & it's very interesting on that session.