John Flanders, Geoff Miller, Harold Carr recording

On Feb 2, 2007 John Flanders (tenor and soprano sax), Geoff Miller (guitar) and myself (bass) recorded at Jo-Ann Wong's beautiful home. Sherm Clow did the engineering. Here are some tracks and pictures from the session. I'll add more in the future.

Transformation, h. carr (6.4MB mp3)


more pictures...

Other Minds

Flavia and I returned from San Francisco last night. I was there all last week at the Sun Engineering Conference. Flavia arrived on Friday.

On Saturday night Flavia and I, along with Venus and Chiara, went to concluding Other Minds concert. It started with Charles Amirkhanian interviewing the composers. The first piece performed was John Luther Adams' Selections from Strange and Sacred Noise. It started with four percussionists each playing a small tom-tom. Two of the percussionists were on the stage, the other two in the balcony. Unfortunately for us, we were also in the balcony above them. So we heard all the sound below us. I imagine it would have been great to be on the main floor and hear some sound from the stage and some from above your head.

The percussionists switched to gongs. That was my favorite part. It was a treat to hear such sustained whooshing sounds and overtones for an extended period. Next the percussionists all gathered together on stage to play four xylophones. This is were I feel asleep. But, for me, falling asleep is not necessarily a sign of a boring work. This time it was a sign of satisfaction of the preceding gong work. I took a break during the xylophones. Adams' piece ended with all percussionists playing very large bass drums. Once again, a joy to hear something not readily accessible.

The next piece was Evan Ziporyn's Melody Competition. This was a pentatonic "festival" pitting two teams of percussionists against each other - moving between stages of togetherness and separation.

The evening ended with Billy Bang's Selections from the Vietnam Trilogy. I haven't attended Other Minds for many years now so I was surprised to hear a more traditional mostly modal jazz band play. I wondered how the audience would react. My question was answered with loud applauses after solos.

It was interesting to see, in the same evening, the contrast in performers stage presence - from the formal, somewhat self-effacing manner of the more "classical" performances of Adams and Ziporyn, to the loose, walk-around-the-stage, get-down style of Billy Bang. Ultimately I prefer the Bang approach, although I did think his body motion was a bit insensitive during the solo piano piece.

This was the first Other Minds (or any "alternative" music concert) I've been to where I liked all the pieces.

Our blue haiku partner, Phillip Bimstein, was in San Francisco too, explicitly to attend the entire Other Minds festival. Thanks to him we went to the after-the-concert party at film maker Henry Rosenthal's converted warehouse house. His house is 5 floors of fantasy. Kind of a bizarre museum/playhouse around Stevenson and 6th street (a dangerous neighborhood).

We walked from the Yerba Buena center to the party, meeting and talking with Tom Steenland, of Starkland records and Stephanie Nugent, a dancer on the faculty of UC Santa Barbara who danced with Ririe-Woodbury in Salt Lake for several years in the early 90s.

At the Rosenthal house we were met at the entrance by young punks - literally - some nice young people with great hairstyles and clothes. They escorted to the freight elevator and up to the 5th floor. On the way up you get a peek of each floor as you pass it - a wild menagerie of shells, tools, skulls, bugs, flying toasters and more. The main party took place on the top floor - great food, drink, desert with original Warhol and Lichtenstein on the walls.

After eating and chatting amounst ourselves and others we wandered the building a bit - running into baseballs signed by Babe Ruth, James Brown's desk, two-headed stuffed animals and a 58 Pontiac next to the billiards table. A fascinating home.

I spoke briefly with Charles Amirkhanian, the Other Minds director. We reminisced about the time Jimmy Miklavcic and I "performed" with I Wayan Sandra at Composer-to-Composer in Telluride, Colorado. Charles seems to be aging well. He seems distinguished and accessible. I watched him relax around the party. He did not seem to stick with the "important" people there. Instead, he made his way around the home and seemed to be open to all. Who knows, but he did seem relaxed.

more pictures...

Hear Hearing - See Seeing

In an interview, Marchel Duchamp made an insightful comment: "you can see seeing but you can't hear hearing." On first reading it seems profound. But, thinking it over from the perspective of a musician you realize that the phrase is inaccurate. In music, particularly improvised music, you can definitely hear when another musician hears what you are doing and vice versa - literally.

Bataille on Bass

"The secular power of the basses sustained, without interruption, and brought to the burning point (to the point of crying out, to the incandescence which blinds) the high flames of the children's voices (just as, in a hearth, abundant coals, emitting an intense heat, increase tenfold the delirious strength of flames, trifle with their fragility, render the strength of these flames more insane)."

Inner Experience p. 75

Harold Carr - Life

John Flanders, Geoff Miller, Harold Carr recording

Other Minds

Hear Hearing - See Seeing

Bataille on Bass