v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

From Minimal Exposition

Swoon

From Deitch.com:

SWOON’s worlds are often populated by realistically rendered-- and evocatively cut-out-- street people, often her friends and family. Riding bikes, talking on a stoop, going grocery shopping-- these people traverse a cityscape of her own unique invention. Bridges, fire escapes, water towers and street signs create crisscrossing shadows and spaces through which her figures move. Inspired by both art historical and folk sources, ranging from German Expressionist wood block prints to Indonesian shadow puppets, SWOON is a master of using cut paper to play with positive and negative space in a conceptually driven exploration of the experience of the streets.

You’ve probably encountered SWOON’s work before: she has been covering the streets of New York with her signature cutouts for over six years. Often found in beautiful states of decay, her wheat-pasted cut outs “collaborate” with the street to create a time-based public artwork. In conjunction with her collective TOYSHOP, she has executed projects ranging from billboard alterations and poster campaigns, to street parties and sculptural installations. Her recent work has focused on creating peepholes throughout the city in subtle places where, once discovered, the viewer can glimpse a hidden dream world through the unassuming aperture.

SWOON has been traveling for the past two years creating exhibitions and workshops in the United States and Europe. Other collaborators include Brooklyn based art collectives, Glowlab, Black Label, Change Agent, the Madagascar Institute and the Barnstormers. Her work was included in P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s Greater New York 2005, and appeared in Deitch Projects’ special design district space art Art Basel Miami 2005.

You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river

When you were a child, you were a tomboy
Gimme soul satisfaction
Way back in shady lane
Do you remember darlin'?

And it's the woman in you, and it's the woman in you
Gimme soul satisfaction
And it takes the child in you to know
The woman an' you are one

We're goin' out in the country to get down to the real soul,
I mean the real soul, people,
We're goin' out in the country, get down to the real soul
We're gettin' out to the west coast
Shining our light into the days of bloomin' wonder
Goin' as much with the river as not, as not, yeah, yeah
An' I'm goin' as much with the river as not
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah

Blake and the Eternals oh standin' with the Sisters of Mercy
Looking for the Veedon Fleece, yeah
William Blake and the Eternals oh standin' with the Sisters of Mercy
Looking for the Veedon Fleece, yeah
You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river
You don't pull no punches, and you don't push the river
You don't pull no punches, and you don't push the river, no, no
Goin' as much with the river as not

We're goin' out in the West, down to the cathedrals
We're goin' out in the West (alright), down to the beaches
And the Sisters of Mercy, behind the sun
Oh behind the sun

And William Blake and the Sisters of Mercy looking for the Veedon Fleece,
Yeah
You don't pull no punches, goin' west, goin' as much with the river as not
With the river as not, with the river as not, goin' as much,
Goin' as much with the river as not, no, ah
You don't pull no punches, and you don't push the river, no
You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river, no
You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river, no
You don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river

And we was contemplating Baba, William Blake and the Eternals
Goin' down to the Sisters of Mercy
Looking for the Veedon Fleece
Looking for the Veedon Fleece
Looking for the Veedon Fleece
Looking for the Veedon Fleece

You don't pull no punches, but ya, you don't push the river
You don't pull no punches, but ya, you don't push the river, no
You don't pull no punches, but ya, you don't push the river
You don't push the river, you don't push the river

Van Morrison

From Nerd Litter blog:

Confident I won’t be able to demystify it too much, a little background: Veedon Fleece was a back-to-basics reboot for an artist who never hewed too closely to genre specifications anyway. After his divorce and disbanding his orchestra, Morrison returned to his hometown of Belfast for the first time in eight years. There and upon his return to America, he wrote Veedon Fleece in a few weeks, infusing a healthy gulp of Ireland into the subjects, lyrics and music. Closest stylistically to his classic Astral Weeks, the album also relies on a stream-of-consciousness and is largely acoustic. But unlike that other work, critics mostly dismissed it and the record-buying public shunned it.

Now for the more intangible: Morrison’s always been a leading figure in blue-eyed soul, but on Veedon Fleece, his voice sounds weirder and more idiosyncratic. The soul is still very much there, but his impassioned phrasings and ethereal falsetto are all his own. It’s hard to forget his anguished howl at the end of “Cul de Sac,” his guttural, throat-clearing guffaws on "Bulbs." His tendency vocally to adapt and elongate at will fit the lyrics perfectly, which also tend to meander and drift like a backcountry river. Every song, even the largely straightforward “Comfort You,” bends and twists on repeated listens, stripped-down and cryptic and multifaceted all at once.

Along the way, Morrison cites Poe, Thoreau, Wilde, and Blake and his Eternals. That set of influences gives us a sense of just how poetic, natural, supernatural, and mystical his own work is. On the longest song, the sprawling eight-minute-fifty-second “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push The River,” he details a homecoming to the fluttering strands of flute: “We're goin' out in the country to get down to the real soul,/ I mean, the real soul people,/ We're goin' out in the country, get down to the real soul/ We're gettin' out to the west coast/ Shining our light into the days of bloomin' wonder/ Goin' as much with the river as not.” Those issues of authenticity and self-discovery in nature seem especially Wordsworth-Romantic and Thoreau-transcendalist, with Ireland, "God's green land," standing in for Tintern Abbey or Walden. From there, specifically alluding to Blake, he sings of a search for the titular Veedon Fleece. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s a mythical object of Morrison’s own invention, his own Holy Grail much in the way Blake dreamed up his Beulah.

Earlier, Morrison composes another mythical figure, Linden Arden, who’s a little easier to parse. Led by a sullen piano intro, “Linden Arden Stole The Highlights” is the tale of an Irish man adrift in San Francisco. In just a few lines, Arden’s memorably described: “Loved the morning sun and whiskey ran just like water in his veins/ Loved to go to church on Sunday, even though he was a drinking man.” But the apparent peace is quickly undercut when some neighborhood toughs threaten Arden, and he cuts their heads open with a hatchet. It’s a rare and stunning intrusion of violence on the otherwise peaceable album. Its closing lines are even more powerful when Morrison sings, “He said, ‘Someday, it may get lonely.’/ Now he’s livin’, livin’ with a gun.” The song is just as much an outcast on Veedon Fleece as Arden is in America, and among references to Killarney lake and Arklow streets, the mention of San Francisco can be jarring. And yet it also fits beautifully in an album indelibly defined by struggle and searching, of people looking for home and existing in flux.

There remain moments on Veedon Fleece that I wish I understood better. Sometimes, I can’t help wishing I knew which references are directly autobiographical, which are simply fantastic, and which are a redolent mash of the two. At the same time, I’m glad that this album came out in the '70s, when artists still had auras and works could still permeate listeners on their own terms. But I have a feeling, even if it were just being released today, that Veedon Fleece still wouldn’t unravel or surrender its knots of mysteries. It wouldn't be any less of a soothing antidote or a roving puzzle. After all, even after ten years of having it in my collection, it’s still just as alluring and affecting and incredible as it’s ever been.

From swinginglondon.org:

Van Morrison – You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push The River Song origins: The song was written on Morrison’s three week trip to Ireland in October 1973, along with seven other songs that would feature on Veedon Fleece. Biographer Clinton Heylin wrote that Morrison admitted—that “aside from ‘flashes of Ireland’—the song had ‘other flashes on other kinds of people. I was also reading a couple of books at the time…[there's] a bit of Gestalt theory in it, too.” (A book entitled, Don’t Push the River (It Flows by Itself) by Barry Stevens about her use of Gestalt therapy was published in 1970.) In the song’s lyrics are Morrison’s first referral to William Blake, and the Eternals from Blake’s The Book of Urizen. The Sisters of Mercy, also mentioned in the song, is a religious organisation of women founded in Dublin, Ireland. Composition: The song begins as a love song celebrating a young girl’s childhood and then goes into a journey along the west coast of Ireland and then suddenly goes into a mythological search for an object he calls the “Veedon Fleece”. Musically, it combines a woodwind section and strings, both played in blocked chords. The song is played at a moderate tempo in the key of G major. The Em-C chord progression features throughout the duration of the piece. The song’s introduction consists of Ralph Wash’s acoustic guitar playing chords on the upper registers of the instrument, with James Trumbo playing the legato melody on piano in 12/8 time …

A Must See

At An Die Musik

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- KREation Ensemble at An Die Musik

Let's torture!

From Foreign Policy in Focus:

During the recent Republican presidential primary debates, three candidates said without hesitation that they would authorize waterboarding as an interrogation technique if elected president. In their recent memoirs, both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney admitted with evident pride that they had approved the technique.  

This defense and approval  of waterboarding has been voiced despite President Obama’s establishment of a standard for interrogations that would prohibit coercive interrogation techniques altogether. It’s worth asking why we find ourselves in the midst of this debate once again.

Flirting with Torture

Waterboarding involves strapping a person to a stretcher, tying on a blindfold, and placing a wet cloth over the nose and mouth.  It is impossible to breathe during this process, and the point is to induce the sensation of drowning.  “Water torture” is not new. It was used a century ago against Filipino prisoners in the Spanish-American War.  In fact, there is a famous photograph of U.S. soldiers applying the method, forcing water down the throat of a prisoner. 

For nearly 30 years now, there have been clearly applicable legal provisions that would prohibit waterboarding.  The UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) was signed in 1984 and became effective in 1987. A few years later, Congress passed a criminal statute prohibiting torture under U.S. domestic law. Both of these standards define torture to include “severe” mental or physical pain. Moreover, the U.S. Code provision specifically forbids the “threat of imminent death.”  It would seem obvious beyond argument that a simulated drowning constitutes severe mental and physical pain and that it also amounts to a threat of imminent death.  Thus, waterboarding violates the torture statute.  However, contending with these legal constraints while aggressively prosecuting the “war on terror,” the Bush administration interpreted the “torture” definition in a strikingly narrow fashion.  Assistant Attorney General (now federal appeals judge) Jay Bybee submitted his now-infamous  memo to the White House in 2002 arguing that “severe” pain meant pain equivalent to “organ failure” and that short of this standard, state-inflicted pain would not constitute torture. In another memo that specifically evaluated waterboarding, Bybee advised that it does not produce lasting harm (relief is instantaneous when waterboarding stops, he said) and therefore does not constitute torture.  The Bush Administration withdrew the Bybee memo in 2004 but did not specifically repudiate the practice of waterboarding.

More

Peace Piece by Bill Evans

Elis by her window, Chicago 12/29

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- Elis by her window

River's Fuchsia Swing Song from 1965

From bravo juju:

Fuchia Swing Song was recorded in December of 1964, and it features two-thirds of the Davis rhythms section: bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams, both of whom provide a modern, aggressive, yet sumptuously swinging base for Rivers to work off of. Pianist Jaki Byard, who began working with Charles Mingus in 1962, offers not only the chordal framework from which Rivers works, but also distinguishes himself by playing a variety of styles with equal aplomb as well as offering some deft solo work of his own.

Fuchia Swing Song is Rivers’ debut Blue Note recording, and it is a confident and sharp debut. All the pieces here are Rivers compositions, with the most well-known being “Beatrice,” dedicated to his wife. Other musicians have recorded the piece, but there has never been a better, more sensitive reading than here, and the solo work of Byard and Carter furthers the lyricism of the piece beautifully. Other standouts include the title track, a 32-bar structure that features the propulsive cross-accents of Tony Williams, helping Rivers build an intense, turbulent swirl of notes that eases back into a rollicking swing formation, as well as “Luminous Monolith,” which employs traditional chord changes but manages to sound modal.

Byard and Rivers are perfect for each other, as both are in complete command of their instruments and are aware of the traditions that other musicians have paved on them, but at the same time can propel those traditional sounds into the future. In addition, both possess loads of technique but never use or display it as an end in itself. Add to this the potent mix of Ron Carter and Tony Williams and you’ve got an album that sounds as modern, complex, beautiful, and hard-hitting as it did in 1964. The reissue of this CD should go a long way towards restoring interest in Rivers, which would be an excellent thing. Jazztitude.com

Rivers dead at 88

The great Sam Rivers has passed away, at the ripe age of 88. I remember seeing this prolific musician playing at the Baltimore Left Bank Jazz Society and at DC Space in the 70's his cerebral and encyclopedic solos ala Rollins and with a funk all his own. What a leader, what a teacher-let's see the attention this giant visionary gets now that his time has expired.

From the NYT, Nate Chinen writes:

Sam Rivers, an inexhaustibly creative saxophonist, flutist, bandleader and composer who cut his own decisive path through the jazz world, spearheading the 1970s loft scene in New York and later establishing a rugged outpost in Florida, died on Monday in Orlando, Fla. He was 88.

The cause was pneumonia, his daughter Monique Rivers Williams said.

With an approach to improvisation that was garrulous and uninhibited but firmly grounded in intellect and technique, Mr. Rivers was among the leading figures in the postwar jazz avant-garde. His sound on the tenor saxophone, his primary instrument, was distinctive: taut and throaty, slightly burred, dark-hued. He also had a recognizable voice on the soprano saxophone, flute and piano, and as a composer and arranger.

Music ran deep in his family. His grandfather Marshall W. Taylor published one of the first hymnals for black congregations after emancipation, “A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation Melodies,” in 1882. His mother, the former Lillian Taylor, was a pianist and choir director, and his father, Samuel Rivers, was a gospel singer. They were on tour with the Silvertone Quintet in El Reno, Okla., when Samuel Carthorne Rivers was born, on Sept. 25, 1923.

Growing up in Chicago and on the road, Mr. Rivers studied violin, piano and trombone. After his father had a debilitating accident in 1937, he moved with his mother to Little Rock, Ark., where he zeroed in on the tenor saxophone. Joining the Navy in the mid-’40s, he served for three years.

Mr. Rivers enrolled in the Boston Conservatory of Music in 1947 and later transferred to Boston University, where he majored in composition and briefly took up the viola and fell into the busy Boston jazz scene.

He made an important acquaintance in 1959: Tony Williams, a 13-year-old drummer who already sounded like an innovator. Together they delved into free improvisation, occasionally performing in museums alongside modernist and abstract paintings.

By 1964 Mr. Williams was working with the trumpeter Miles Davis and persuaded him to hire Mr. Rivers, who was with the bluesman T-Bone Walker at the time, for a summer tour. Mr. Rivers’s blustery playing with the Miles Davis Quintet, captured on the album “Miles in Tokyo,” suggested a provocative but imperfect fit. Wayne Shorter replaced him in the fall.

On a series of Blue Note recordings in the middle to late ’60s, beginning with Mr. Williams’s first album as a leader, “Life Time,” Mr. Rivers expressed his ideas more freely. He made four albums of his own for the label, the first of which — “Fuchsia Swing Song,” with Mr. Williams, the pianist Jaki Byard and the bassist Ron Carter, another Miles Davis sideman — is a landmark of experimental post-bop, with a free-flowing yet structurally sound style. “Beatrice,” a ballad from that album Mr. Rivers named after his wife, would become a jazz standard.

Beatrice Rivers died in 2005. In addition to his daughter Monique, Mr. Rivers is survived by two other daughters, Cindy Johnson and Traci Tozzi; a son, Dr. Samuel Rivers III; five grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Mr. Rivers pushed further toward abstraction in the late ’60s, moving to New York and working as a sideman with the uncompromising pianists Andrew Hill and Cecil Taylor. In 1970 he and his wife opened Studio Rivbea, a noncommercial performance space, in their loft on Bond Street in the East Village. It served as an avant-garde hub through the end of the decade, anchoring what would be known as the loft scene.

The albums Mr. Rivers made for Impulse Records in the ’70s would further burnish his reputation in the avant-garde. After Studio Rivbea closed in 1979, Mr. Rivers continued to lead several groups, including a big band called the Rivbea Orchestra, a woodwind ensemble called Winds of Change and a virtuosic trio with the bassist Dave Holland and the drummer Barry Altschul. With the trio, Mr. Rivers often demonstrated his gift as a multi-instrumentalist, extemporizing fluidly on saxophone, piano and flute.

Mr. Rivers tacked toward more mainstream sensibilities from 1987 to 1991, when he worked extensively with an early influence, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. While touring through Orlando with Gillespie in 1991, Mr. Rivers met some of the skilled musicians employed by the area’s theme parks, who persuaded him to move there and revive the Rivbea Orchestra. He lived most recently in nearby Apopka, Fla.