“Everything I did was all I could do at the time.” – trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon, July 2005.
A lot of thought goes into parsing the formal conventions of art, what makes something tick or why it exists where it does and in relation to whatever else. There is also a lot of breath given to the idea of sincerity, especially with respect to those whose art we do not wholly understand, but that we feel has its rightful place and must be there for some reason. Whether or not one aesthetically appreciates what is being done, and where it might fit into one’s own tastes, the realization that a work has to be done is hopefully there. And sometimes belief leads very well down the path to information – the work fits into our views of art because we’re convinced that it’s honest. For example, Clyfford Still’s paintings aren’t made of snake-oil; they’re aggressive gradients of very thick, materialist paint, a substance that pushes against itself both as color and shape in an unharmonious dialectical battle of the material and the immaterial. Still’s pictures are nowhere near as gauzily romantic as Rothko’s, but they are Sublime and they do command one’s undivided respect for their sheer presence as art.
Improvisation is likewise an art of necessity, and when the work is at its apex, it’s quite obvious that action is taking place. The act and the work arise from conflict, whether an internal system of contradiction or an external and downward press. Artists like reedmen Arthur Doyle, Peter Brötzmann, Paul Flaherty and drummer Chris Corsano are among the small legion who have never once compromised their art for sheer vision. Whether or not one actually likes the music being created is another thing entirely. After all, art doesn’t really care whether one likes it or not. Regardless of one’s engagement, art defiantly maintains its kinetic presence.
The third set of Flaherty-Corsano duets released in the past year and seemingly a direct response to their first recording together (The Hated Music, Ecstatic Yod, 2000), The Beloved Music is another disc of massive, direct, sharp and highly nuanced duo improvisations clocking in at just over three-quarters of an hour. Flaherty’s playing for the most part consists of a staggering degree of split tones, gruff bellowing and ecstatic multiphonics, a bodily and highly physical approach to the saxophone. There is an ebb and flow to that presence – there are passages of softer, burnished tenor playing, especially midway through the third piece, “What Do You Mean This Is A Dry County?,” and Corsano gets a lengthy unaccompanied percussion solo at the outset of “A Lean and Tortured Heart.” Buoyed by flowing swells of tom skin, The Beloved Music is an aural analog to Still’s caked oils or Richard Serra’s manhandled lead. Flaherty and Corsano make music that is here, and they don’t give a shit if you’re around to love it or not.
~ Clifford Allen
Posted by clifford on April 7, 2006 11:49 AM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................