[silence] concert reminder

[S.E.M. Ensemble]

Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 7pm
Dum kultury mesta Ostravy
 
Chicago ­ New York ­ Ostrava
 
Janacek Philharmonic Ostrava
Petr Kotik, Conductor
Thomas Buckner, Baritone
Muhal Richard Abrams, Piano
Roscoe Mitchell, Alto Saxophone


Abrams / Mitchell
Two Of Us (2008) - world premiere
Piano and Alto Saxophone Improvisations Opus 1

Muhal Richard Abrams
Mergertone (2007)

Roscoe Mitchell
Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City (2002/03)
On a poem by Joseph Jarman

Petr Kotik
Asymmetric Landing (2003)
 
(For more information please contact Ostrava Center for New Music at
info@ocnmh.cz, or call +420-596 203 426)
 

Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman are among the most
important personalities of avant-garde jazz. All of them started their
careers in Chicago, and since the early 1960s they have been known as the
most influential musicians in their class. As soloists and founding members
of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and Art
Ensemble of Chicago, they collaborated with such stellar personalities, as
Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Ruth Brown, Woody Shaw, Anthony Braxton, Henry
Threadgill, and Lester Bowie, among others.
 
Since the 1980s, Abrams and Mitchell have increasingly turned to the idiom
of concert music, composing pieces for classically trained musicians and
ensembles. In the early 1990s, Joseph Jarman became a master of Zen Buddhism
(studying in Japan, among other places) and is presently a Jodo Shinshu
priest, holding the rank of Ggodan (fifth degree black belt) in Aaikido. His
poem, Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City, was written in the early 1960s.
 
Both Buckner and Kotik have collaborated with members of the Association for
the Advancement of Creative Musicians for many years. The collaboration
between Buckner and Mitchell, which started in the late 1970s, has been
especially fruitful and produced a number of compositions and recordings.
Kotik and his New York-based SEM Orchestra began performing works by members
of AACM in 1995, including pieces by Leroy Jenkins, Roscoe Mitchell, Amina
Claudine Myers, George Lewis, Joseph Jarman, Henry Threadgill and Abrams
himself, among others. Both Roscoe Mitchell and Muhal Richard Abrams were
lecturers at Ostrava Days (2003 and 2007, respectively).
 
Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City
poem by Joseph Jarman
                                    I
Non-cognitive aspects of the City
where Roy J's prophecies become
the causes of children
 
once quiet black blocks of stone
encasements/of regularity
 
sweet now
intellectual dada
of vain landscapes
the city
 
long history
upheaval
the heath valueless in its norm
now/gravestone or gingercakes
the frail feel of winter's wanting
crying to leaves they wander
seeing the capital vision
dada
new word out of the twenties of chaos
returned in the suntan jar
fruits of education/with others
 
non-cognitive - these motions
embracing sidewalk heroes
the city each his own
where no one is more alone than any other
moan, it's the hip plea for see me, see me, I exist
exit the tenderness for power/black or white
no difference now/the power/city
 
II
Could  have  spirits among  stones
uppity  the  force  of  becoming
what  art  was  made  to  return
the  vainness  of  our  pipes,  smoking
near  fountains,  the  church  pronouncing
the  hell/  of  where  we  are
 
Could have spirits among stones
uppity the force of becoming
what art was made to return
the vainness of our pipes, smoking
near fountains, the church pronouncing
the hell/of where we are
 
couldhavespiritsamongstonesuppitytheforceof
becomingwhatartwasmadetoreturnthevainnessof
ourpipes,smokingnearfountains,thechurchpro
nouncing
the hell
of where we are
 
      III
quiet city
wanting each to stop the/pain
it must be done ­ expresso
old fashioned sheet about boy thighs
war-their homeliness
common tools
the knife and gun
castration in store
the tarred spotlight against
what hope we have
 
non-cognitive
these elements of how
no more
 
shall it be better
the passion of other saints
ungodly
shall poison drinking hoodlum talk
 
to describe the callousness
of these penny fares
among/my friends they say they are
the hair torches
eggs for these deaths
internal zones of where they go
where they-come from
(in the language of the street)
internal
these states on planes
farout as what these lives become
thoughts
final last work there
spots for treason
last word
non-cognitive
doom