The No Idea Festival Austin 2.16-2.19

On Friday, February 17th I attended at the Museum for Human Achievement a free improvisation concert that had some widespread diversity in the performances.

The basic premise behind the music (many people would call it noise or sounds and not actually music as melody was not very prominent in any of the pieces I heard).  The idea of "No Idea" or spontaneity I guess is the premise behind free improvisation and I have been practicing it since about 1978 when I was a member of the Oxford Free Music Ensemble, based in Oxford, CT a suburban of New Haven, CT and was at a time I was driving from Wharton on a Thursday evening to New Haven (about a five hour drive) to spend time with Michael Pollack, Nan Helm, Michael Gittleman and assorted other musicians including some classically trained personnel.

The first piece by Aaron Russell and Kurt Newman I found pretty hard to listen to and was not a great example of free improvisation (sorry guys...)

Next up a trio of trumpet, trombone and percussion was much more together even though they were playing their instruments in non-traditional ways. Le Quan Ninh, Jacob Wick and Steve Parker

Next there was a film of free improvisation by two Austin musicians The Finger'd Remove that included a bamboo stick and some other sound generating implements.

#4 was a duo with oscillators and tv screens by Norwegian Kjell Bjorgeengen and Festival founder Chris Cogburn.  Though quite cerebral, this was far and away the best of the four pieces I experienced.

I missed Human Figure: Virginity a performance piece as after 3.5 hours of sitting I went home before the proverbial "last act."

So, there is an active downtown Austin avant garde music scene here in Austin and I am glad of that fact.

Jack DeJohnette, Ravi Coltrane and Matt Garrison -- University of Texas, Austin

I do not remember ever seeing Jack DeJohnette live before but he might have been at a Woodstock Creative Music Ensemble that Karl Berger and Pat Metheny organized many years ago.

That said, I was expecting "Coltrane" to be in the house mainly because John Coltrane's and Jimmy Garrison's sons were playing with Jack D. I did not know that DeJohnette had planned with Rashid Ali and Coltrane in 1966 during the very avant garde end of JC's career. Jack was 24 and that must to have been quite a trip for him.

Supposedly, this ensemble had been assembled by DeJohnette before; about twenty years ago. It will be 50 years this year that JC passed into a higher realm. If anyone achieved the acquisition of a "soul" I would have to be John Coltrane. His music is so spiritual that I hear it even in other like minded musicians' music. Hence, the term I coined -- "Coltrane is in the house tonight."

I was exposed to Coltrane by my former friend, Michael Pollack back at Yale in 1978, about 11 years after JC's death. Pollack aka Boa aka Bobo turned me on to both Miles and Coltrane in a big way and I was hooked after that initial exposure.

The set that DeJohnette-Coltrane-Garrison played included a free improvisation called Atmosphere, a rocking song called The Two Jimmys (after Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Garrison) and a few standards that I forgot the names of as well as a few other improvisations.  I was especially impressed with Matt Garrison's bass playing that included a lot of sounds being generated from a computer/pedal system he had (Matt was born in 1970 so he is the youngest of the group). Garrison also runs a club/AV place in Brooklyn called Shapeshifter that I have been to several times.

Ravi played alto, soprano and sopranino saxes and was lyrical and could stretch out further than I thought possible for him (I have never seen him live until this evening).

They played an hour and a half and then did a lovely encore after some discussion about whether Ravi remembered the song; he did just fine.

And it was fine, fine, fine...