MIT Chapel Concert, by Howard Martin

MIT Chapel Concert

by Howard Martin

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1.	Opening Improvisation 04:21	buy track
2.	Bemsha Swing 02:33	buy track
3.	Fables Of Faubus 05:11	buy track
4.	Wickets 04:06	buy track
5.	Goodbye Pork Pie Hat 02:36	buy track
6.	Ruby, My Dear 07:50	buy track
7.	Closing Improvisation 1 09:46	buy track
8.	Closing Improvisation 2 06:55	buy track

about

“You know, when people come to these concerts, they like to hear songs.”

The idea for this concert started with this observation from a colleague. Howard has been working in more abstract areas of sound for a number of years, but this suggestion began to resonate with him. He remains a heavy jazz listener and spent much of his early time as a saxophonist playing jazz. Now seemed like a good time to revisit some compositions by three of his favorite composers, bandleaders, and soloists: Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Steve Lacy and find a personal inroad to the pieces, bringing his sonic abstractions back to the tradition.

Howard picked these particular pieces because they form a web of instrumentalists. Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” is dedicated to the great tenor player Lester Young and has been performed by composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton. “Bemsha Swing” a piece by Thelonious Monk is wonderful in its own right, and a beguiling, abstract thing when performed by Cecil Taylor on his debut album “Jazz Advance”. Before composing “Wickets” and other idiosyncratic pieces, Steve Lacy worked as a sideman for both Monk and Cecil Taylor.

Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus” is particularly relevant to our current socio-political situation and brings Eric Dolphy, a close collaborator with Mingus and John Coltrane, into this horn playing orbit. Finally, Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear” connects John Coltrane, who played in Monk’s quartet prior to leading his own remarkable bands, with the underappreciated tenor foil to Monk, Charlie Rouse. Lacy performed the piece many times as well. Howard’s under no illusions that he’s in this lofty company, and that’s ok with him. He’s happy to wander through the same compositions for a while.

credits

released June 29, 2017

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about

Variant State Boston, Massachusetts

Variant State [....] is more or less Howard Martin, Jesse Kenas-Collins, and Michael Rosenstein. In various configurations, they explore the interstitial interactions of acoustics, electronics, abraded recordings, and feedback within performance spaces. Their playing draws on spontaneous interaction and collective structures, reveling in the syntactical alterations of sonic investigation. ... more

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