My CityArts – New York column is about the Creative Music Symposium, organized by Karl Berger, pianist/vibist with his wife Ingrid Sertso, who cofounded with free-thinking Ornette Coleman of the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock NY (1972-1984). The symposium at Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies (directed by trombonist and digital music innovator George E. Lewis, once a CMS student/participant) last weekend dipped into the history and practices of the CMS, a paradise where cross-genre visionary improvisers (Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, et al), composer/interpreters (Pauline Oliveros, Frederic Rzewski) and “world music” fusionists (Olatunji, Nana Vasconcelos) taught through oral transmission in an immersion setting.
The good news emerging from the day-long discussions was that John Zorn has agreed to let Berger start a new Creative Music Orchestra at his East Village performance space the Stone, every Monday night for three months. If it’s a success, the ensemble could be ongoing. Every 7:30 there will be an open rehearsal, followed at 9:30 by a performance of the work rehearsed — all for one low $10 admission.
Re: Innova-
I think that Philip and Chris need to pick up the whole kit and caboodle and move it to NY. Innova is here in one way or other so often that they have become an integral part of the Music scene of New York City.
HM: Richard’s referring to Philip Blackburn and Chris Campbell of the Innova Record label — which is a project of the American Composers Forum.
Thanks, Howard, for helping to keep the CMS story alive. People who want to know more can pick up the book Music Universe, Music Mind (http://arborville.com/?page_id=8). I hope you won’t mind my plugging it here. It was a great day at Columbia, and you asked the right kind of questions to help guide a memorable and revealing discussion. Bob Sweet
Dear Howard:
I’m so delighted to see Karl Berger’s name in lights in your column. He, Zorn, Gorn, and many others from the original CMS came to Istanbul last August for the second installment of the IS-CMS, a tribute to a Turkish saxophonist who played at Woodstock.
Unfortunately, it didn’t get the kind of overall press ink it deserved here, but I did my bit as a critic to give its due respect. (http://todayszaman.com/news-218653-iscms-takes-grooves-through-the-gamut.html)
Rudolph’s Creative Music Orchestra is something that I would buy a ticket back to NYC to hear again and again. I’m planning on it doing very well at the Stone and elsewhere.
Best wishes from Istanbul,
Alexandra Ivanoff
music critic, Today’s Zaman; arts journalist, Time Out magazine
Istanbul, Turkey
HM: Thanks, Alexandra, for commenting here — I’m going to read your article. Please note that it’s Karl Berger who’ll lead the Creative Music Workshop orchestra at the Stone, not Adam Rudolph, who was leading his Global Orchestra at Roulette but isn’t do so right now (Adam will no doubt start again, maybe after Roulette completes its move to Brooklyn). I’m always interested to find out about creative music in Istanbul, which I very much enjoyed visiting for the first or second Akbank jazz festival, now more than 20 years ago (Cassandra Wilson, Butch Morris, David Murray, Nat Adderley and Cecil Taylor on the bill, plus the Erguners and I think Okay Temiz!)
I would think that any home for creative music outside NY ought to be nurtured right where it is. Unless, of course, we believe creative music is not relevant or tenable outside a single scene.
HM: Gee, I hope creative musicians live and play and share ideas everywhere. CMS hasn’t abandoned its Woodstock base, though it has not operated as a school there for a long time, due to funding problems. That Zorn will give CMS space to do its thing at the Stone, involving a new generation of artists who can get there, seems pretty nice of him to me. The more creative music spaces the better, and NYC shouldn’t be excluded, either.