{"id":6007,"date":"2016-07-28T20:01:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T20:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=6007"},"modified":"2016-07-28T20:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T20:01:02","slug":"on-improvisation-form-sunsets-and-lobster-off-i-go-to-maine-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/28\/on-improvisation-form-sunsets-and-lobster-off-i-go-to-maine-again\/","title":{"rendered":"On Improvisation, Form, Sunsets and Lobster: Off I Go to Maine Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo<\/a>
photo by Larry Blumenfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nI\u2019m packing up my things to head off to Deer Isle, Maine, for two weeks.
\nIt\u2019s a Down East island I know well. First, it was an escape valve for my wife Erica and I\u2014a place to shut off, eat lobster, paddle a canoe and do \u00a0little else.
\nThen, it became the site of a labor of love\u2014through my role for the past 16 years as founding curator for the Deer Isle Jazz Festival<\/a>, at a lovely century-old former vaudeville opera house overlooking a working lobster dock.
\nMagical stuff has happened there (I took the picture above, just before showtime several\u00a0years ago.)
\nSoon enough, we had a willing partner in the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, a renowned center for sculptors and potters and glassblowers and weavers and poets; each year, one festival musician would serve as musician-in-residence.
\nYou can find some personal history related to all that here.
\nThis year, I have the honor of being writer-in-residence. (Scroll down here<\/a>.)
\nI\u2019ve decided to call the 2-week workshop I\u2019m leading, \u201cJazz and the Abstract Truth,\u201d which I do with apologies to saxophonist and composer Oliver Nelson, who titled his landmark 1961 LP \u201cThe Blues and The Abstract Truth.\u201d
\nIn his liner note, Nelson wrote: \u201cOne device that has always been successful in both classical music and present-day jazz is to let the musical ideas determine the form and shape of a composition.\u201d
\nThere are a few things I\u2019m trying to explore through this residency. I want to examine the relationships between improvisation, composition and ideas about form as expressed in music, visual art and the written word. Another is to dig into a few examples of innovative or interesting visual representation that function as guides or templates for musical organization, that are the scores\u2014in the work of, say, Wadada Leo Smith or Anthony Braxton or Steve Coleman.
\nAs I sift through some of my writing during the past 20 years, I\u2019ve noticed, especially lately, that these themes are already bubbling beneath the surface.
\nI\u2019m also just going to get artists together to listen to great music communally. Perhaps we\u2019ll veer toward what Pauline Oliveros calls \u201cdeep listening.\u201d But at the very least we\u2019ll simply listen as a community, and talk about what we heard and how it relates (or not) to what we create.
\nLastly, in the context of all this, I\u2019m hoping to get these artists to write.
\nWhich is why, when I give a public presentation to begin my residency on Monday, I\u2019ll start by playing the track \u201cArtists Ought to Be Writing<\/a>,\u201d from Jason Moran\u2019s \u201cArtist in Residence\u201d CD, in which he essentially creates a piece from a recording of artist Joan Jonas saying:<\/p>\n

Artists ought to be writing about what they do, and what types of procedures they go through to realize a work. If artists\u2019 intentions and ideas were more accessible to the general public, I think it might break down some of the barriers between the artists, the art world, and the general public.
\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m packing up my things to head off to Deer Isle, Maine, for two weeks. It\u2019s a Down East island I know well. First, it was an escape valve for my wife Erica and I\u2014a place to shut off, eat lobster, paddle a canoe and do \u00a0little else. Then, it became the site of a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “On Improvisation, Form, Sunsets and Lobster: Off I Go to Maine Again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[309,429,310],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}