Done Got Old

Back from a six-day sojourn in NYC where I depressingly found myself victim of the Rip Van Winkle effect (self portraiture above) and muttering the lyrics to Junior Kimbrough’s titular ode to senectitude. Once blessed with a body & psyche that could handle the consecutive nightly rigors of the Vision Festival schedule and still split a cord of wood and till a score of acreage each successive morning, I now find my robust constitution humbled by the challenge. I only summoned the stamina to attend three nights & each left me reeling in a bleary-eyed stupor at its close (7+ hours of music tends to tax all but the most enamored souls). Part of the problem stemmed from the last minute venue switch and a melding of performance schedules that were originally designed to be split over two stages (a change that carried with it a hefty additional price tag of $16K). But even though my physical powers have seemingly dwindled, the chance to witness the spectacle was still a memorable & welcome one.

By my lights the Orensanz Art Center, a converted and artfully-crumbling synagogue space, is a near ideal venue, at least from a visual standpoint. What it lacks in acoustics, it nearly makes up for in architecture. Arched ceilings and terraced balconies rim a central room that comfortably seats a few hundred and stretches three stories high. Plenty of wall space for artwork and a section on the second floor reserved for a copious expanse of merch and concession tables provided further means to while away the time between musical sets. One big glaring minus, the anointed emcee for the event. Poet Steve Dalachinsky has held the post in past years, but this time the mantle went to some guy operating under the sobriquet Zero Boy. Assaulting the audience with microphone-enhanced sound effects and faulty free-associative political comedy he quickly became a whipping post for purists and moderates alike. The constant sales spiels for his own $5 cds worked like fast-acting abrasives on audience nerves.

Other familiar regulars offset Zero Boy’s antics. Margaret Davis with her hand-crafted buttons and boundless enthusiasm; Jeff Schlanger, the Music Witness, with his flying kaleidoscopic paint and studiously hunched form; Dalachinsky with his self-deprecating faux Beat schlemiel persona and so many others. It was also a very valuable forum to meet new faces and catch up with old ones including several in the Bags orbit (Brian and Steve G., hat tipped to you both) and Pedro Costa of Clean Feed who kept a schedule far more rigorous than mine, but was always ready with a warm smile and a friendly word. Great to see and chat with Frank Rubolino too, who could be found nightly perched stage side, his chair outfitted with a jury-rigged back cushion, snapping an endless succession of beautiful shots with his digital camera. On the flip, there was Ted Panken, whose easy-to-rankle ego was a downright unpleasant surprise and the source of an instant note-to-self to accord wide berth to the bald-domed, bespectacled haphephobe in the future. Any one else had a run-in with this guy? Rarely am I visited with the urge to punch someone out, but Panken prompted me to ponder the action.

But on to more pleasant memories. Thursday’s Fred Anderson Day allowed a chance to celebrate the venerable Chicagoan in two contexts: a Song For ‘reunion’ match-up with Joseph Jarman and the perennial tandem favorite of Fred locking tenors with Kidd Jordan, backed by the au courant rhythm team of William Parker and Hamid Drake. Mixed in with these main events, Nicole Mitchell’s Trio, Thurman Barker’s Strike Force Percussion Quintet and Joseph Jarman’s Ensemble represented a continuum from revelatory to humdrum. Fred seemed genuinely moved by the hosannas and conjured up some deeply soulful blowing in response. He might be wearing his advanced age a bit more prominently these days, but his acumen on tenor is hardly diluted by the added gray. Blue Winter, his new double-disc set on Eremite, also sketches a profile of vernal vigor.

Saturday and Sunday had their moments too with exciting sets by the Billy Bang Quartet and Joe McPhee with (unknown to me) bass clarinetist Lori Freedman. Bang’s group looked like an awkward assemblage on paper with Ngo Thanh Nahn on dan tranh, Todd Nicholson on bass and the wildcard Shoji Hano on trap kit. Hano barely tempered his usual boisterous, skin-splitting style and at first he made for an incongruous counterpart to Nahn’s delicate plucking. Bang acted as charismatic bridge, coaxing his sidemen into a brazen funk jam at one point that joyfully jostled from one pocketed riff to the next. Leroy Jenkins set followed. Sans amplification, dressed in a white cotton tunic and pants he looked uncannily like a relative of Ravi Shankar. Joined by dancer Felicia Norton he sculpted minimalist drones that set a contingent of the audience to shushing the vocal and antsy minority in their midst. The effect reminded me strangely of a Cage piece with every sneeze, floor creak, chair scrape & mumble adding and shaping the music’s formation. Maybe not wholly successful, but a fascinating exercise nonetheless.

The situation led my friend Ted to joke speculatively on the sound engineer set-up stage side and suggest the presence of a sheet of paper taped to the console dictating the proper levels for each performer.

Soji Hano: -8
Brötzmann: -6
Billy Bang: -2
William Parker: +2
Bill Dixon: +4
Leroy Jenkins: +8
Etc.

Eddie Gale’s Now Band featured an odd assemblage of players too with John Gruntfest and Ismael Navarette officiating on saxophones and pianist Valerie Mih and drummer T.Squire Holman joining William Parker as the rhythm section. Gale seemed disgruntled about the sound from the start, lamenting Mih’s place in the mix and repeatedly chastising the sound crew for his dead vocal mic. The ill will ended up coloring the playing and the band ended up faltering despite some solid playing by the leader and Gruntfest. The latter man was a pleasant surprise, blowing velocious and chopped lines on alto and obviously having a grand time doing it.

PaNic, a collective of dancers led by Patricia Nicholson and coupled with the music of Rob Brown’s trio (WP on bass, Alvin Fielder on drum) experienced a similarly mixed set. In front of a revolving PowerPoint slide show depicting Baraka-style the beauty and ugliness in the world the musicians and dancers acted out a salmagundi of emotions from rage, to love, to resignation, to hope. From my vantage, the end result was unfortunately significantly less than the sum of the parts.

McPhee’s set was originally slotted to cap the night, but an MIA Nasheet Waits necessitated a schedule flip, that ended up presciently opportune. Brötz and Waits injected their sign-off set with a fair share of bluster, but the whole seemed a checkered affair to my ears, tea-kettle steam blasts giving way to more measured and effective waves of heat. On the other hand, McPhee and Freeman achieved a stunning degree of rapport, overlapping and anticipating in a deep listening manner that their peers rarely touched.

Sunday supplied the grand finale and yet another endurance test. After a dining on a sumptuous Chinese feast organized by an acquaintance we hit the Orensantz just in time for Joelle Leandre and India Cooke. Both women struck poses sharply contrary to any stiff string recital expectations. Leandre was full of vulgar whoops and hollers and Cooke joined her in tearing away voraciously at the tropes of their instrumentation. If anything the results were even more exciting than their recent duo disc on Red Toucan, and for those who’ve heard it, that’s hopefully saying something.

Another oddball ensemble followed with Matthew Shipp, William Parker and Sabir Mateen constituting three quarters of an all-star quarter. The fourth man? Han Bennink with “take no prisoners” game face steadfastly affixed. The set quickly hit a fever pitch and remained relentlessly in the red for pretty much the remainder. Bennink even exited stage left at one point to quickly exchange his sweat-drenched sailing shirt for a new one that was soon equally saturated. I suspect if I hadn’t had the weight of five sleepless nights on my skull, I’d have enjoyed it more, but Bennink’s incessant bashing coupled with Mateen’s merciless false register squealing quickly took its toll and I soon found myself tuning in and out to the din. Shipp and Parker played well, but they were largely drowned out by the white noise deluge.

Next up Rob Brown presented another multi-media collaboration of visuals, dancers and musicians. I found it better than the set a few nights prior, but still had a bit of trouble with the sometimes rickety fit between the constituent parts. A short purely musical set by the trio of Brown, cellist Dan Levin and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi was an easier pill to swallow and well-stocked with seasoned interplay. Finally, as the clock hands neared 1:30am, Dennis Gonzalez’s Yells at Eels took the stage with Oliver Lake guesting on curved soprano and alto. Dennis seemed to sense the communal fatigue that hung as a heavy canopy over the remaining crowd and responded in kind with a short and highly accessible set and pieces dedicated to William Parker & Toshinori Kondo. Sons Stefan and Aaron, on drums and bass respectively, fixed on some muscular grooves beneath the horns spirited flights, but the sum seemed a bit like a sail at three-quarters mast. Still it was great to see Dennis again and have the opportunity to catch up with him however brief. As I type this the trio is touring Portugal and I’m excited to hear about their adventures upon a return stateside via the always welcoming Gonzalez thread over at JC. An early morning cab-ride back to Brooklyn accompanied by the mellifluous strains of vintage Negro string band music served as icing to the evening.

So that’s Vision X in a highly personalized nutshell. My body may not have the necessary backbone to shoulder the tonnage of the daunting schedule these days, but there are plenty of fresh recruits who do. Numbers seemed a bit down this year compared to past fests and the economics of the venture aren’t improving by any stretch, but I’d lay odds that a Vision XX is a healthy prospect for ten years hence.