This month’s podcast features the return of Al Margolis! Al told me he had an idea he wanted to try out, and when Al Margolis asks if you’re interested in trying out an experiment, the answer must be YES.
Here’s the concept, in Al’s words:
The basis of this session uses the three long drone works composed and performed by Leslie Ross from her drop by drop, suddenly CD on XI Records (you can find this on Bandcamp). I had been practicing my reed instrument playing to these multiphonic bassoon drones, and then decided I would record (in a sort of Exquisite Corpse way) each of my wind parts (clarinet, alto clarinet, alto and tenor saxes) to Leslie’s piece, but without listening to my previous playing.
I was describing this to Craig, and also my desire to perhaps play these pieces live – with one performer listening to the recording in headphones and playing along, and the other performer(s) only playing to what they hear – in other words, the person playing under headphones. (This is something I am still hoping to do live at some point.)
Craig was interested in the concept and being involved and so this is how the podcast recording happened. So “Air” is Craig listening to Leslie and me playing to Craig, without hearing Leslie. “Sea Soil”, for technical reasons we cheated a bit – we both played to the recording and did not hear each other (allegedly). And “Water” has me playing to the prerecorded material and Craig playing to me.
I have to admit that I came in thinking we would just both play drones to Leslie’s drones. I got a great surprise when right away in the first piece Craig did not drone, thus immediately forcing to think outside my pre-conceived box. This actually made for a much more interesting session…so thanks Craig!!!
All our performances on this podcast are roughly the same length as the pieces on Leslie’s CD with very little editing.
We start with our version of “Air” and the mix includes Leslie’s recording in addition to Al and me.
“Sea Soil” begins at 16:30 and is just Al and me, Leslie is not in the mix. If you’d like to hear Leslie’s recording, you can find it HERE. (If you’re adventurous you can play her recording along with ours and make your own mix!)
Finally, “Water” starts at 44:17. Leslie’s performance is back in the mix. This section has some manipulation and processing applied to Al’s and my parts, while the previous two are sonically unaltered.
Al Margolis played tenor sax on “Air” and “Water”, and alto clarinet on “Sea Soil”.
Many thanks to Leslie Ross for the composition(s) and permission to use her recording in this.
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