Don Cherry

Electroacoustic improv, coming or going? (Herb Deutsch, RIP; synths forever?)

As the year ends/begins, I’m thinking electroacoustic music is a wave of the future. But maybe it’s been superseded by other synth-based genres — synth-pop, EDM, soundtracks a lÃ¡ Stranger Things. Is Prophet, the just released 1986 weird-sounds bonanza from Sun Ra with his Arkestra exploiting the then new, polyphonic and programmable Prophet-5 synth, timeless or passÃ©?

Herb Deutsch (glasses) with Robert Moog and his synthesizer

In February, I saluted Herb Deutsch, co-inventor of the Moog synthesizer, on his 90th birthday. Deutsch died on December 9, with synthesizers ever more present in music creation of all sorts, and a notable if slow trend towards electro-acoustic improvising ensembles, which he pioneered. Is the trend taking hold? Or a thing mostly of the past?

As I wrote in February:

[Deutsch’s] recordings collected on From Moog to Mac sort of a best-of, with “Jazz Images, a Worksong and Blues,” (1965 — credited as the first composition for a Moog) featuring bluesy piano and (overdubbed?) horn intersected interwoven with thick and thin electronic lines, unnaturally long fades, whirling sirens, white noise, delays and maybe backward tape. A Christmas Carol (1963) his prescient mix of found sounds, spoken word and haunting ambiance, was a contemporaneous response to the Alabama church bombing that killed four young girls and also drew profound comment from James Baldwin, John Coltrane and Dr. Martin Luther King. Deutsch’s composition still has power . . .

To celebrate that aspect of Deutsch’s work, here’s a view-list of mixed acoustic instruments and electronics, old and new, analog or digital, in-studio or live.

XXXX – Michael Wollny with Emile Parisien/Tim Lefebvre & Christian Lillinger

“The Prophet (abridged)” — by Sun Ra

“High Speed Chase” — from doo-bop — Miles Davis

“Patriots” — Zawinul Syndicate

from Streaming — Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell

“Raindance” from Sextant, Herbie Hancock (with Dr. Patrick Gleeson)

Evan Parker ElectroAcoustic Ensemble

“Message” from Leave the City — Music Electronnica Viva

“OBA” from Human Music — Jon Appleton and Don Cherry

“Babel” from Avant-noir — Lisa Mezzacappa

“You Know, You Know” — Jan Hammer with Mahavishnu Orchestra (John McLaughlin)

Video for fans of Sonny Rollins & harmolodics

Too good to not post: Ornette Coleman was surprise guest with Sonny Rollins at his fast-become-famous Beacon Theater 80th birthday party on September 10 (backstage there was birthday cake shaped like a saxophone, made of marzipan). Note SR’s quote at about 10 minutes in of “I’ll Take Manhattan,” which he certainly did. [[As of 9/15/2010 this video has been removed from Youtube by it’s “user.” Research will follow.

And next is another priceless clip I’ve never come upon before, from the early ’60s, of Sonny with trumpeter Don Cherry — Ornette’s brilliant partner — young Henry Grimes on bass and drummer Billy Higgins.

thanks to whoever made these public, though in the future — PLEASE get artists’ agreements to film and make public . . . And the embedding is disabled, but here’s Don Cherry playing Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Billy Higgins, from New Orleans circa 1986.

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A visitation with Don Cherry’s spirit

Attempts to revisit the music of an extraordinary improviser work all too infrequently, if “work” means evoking something close to the living presence of the player him-or-herself. This is true even when the tribute-payers are the tributee’s collaborators, bearing the best intentions.

But “In the Spirit of Don Cherry,” an all-star octet organized by pianist Karl Berger was able at a Symphony Space performance a couple weeks back to imbue seldom-heard yet unusually memorable songs with the wit, grace and world-ranging musicality of the man who created them (playing pocket trumpet withÂ Collin Walcott, tabla in this photo by Lona Foote).

Berger,Â Â the force behind the legendary, influential and under-reportedÂ Creative Music Studio of Woodstock — with trumpeter/cornetist Graham Haynes, tenor saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum, tubaist Bob Stewart, guitarist Kenny Wessel, bassist Mark Helias, drummer Tani Tabal and vocalist Ingrid Sertso — performed tunes Cherry included in his great albums of suitesÂ Complete CommunionÂ andÂ Symphony for ImprovisersÂ (both on celebrated Blue Note Records, from 1965 and ’66, respectively) as well as a couple recorded elsewhere, like “Art Deco,” title track of a 1986 album. True to its name, the concert’s operative plan was “in the spirit of . . .” rather than “note-for-note.” The musicians, most of whom had worked directly with Cherry, evoked the beauty, playfulness, pathos, imagination, unforced complexity and constant interactivity he tapped in himself and others by blowing as if they were onstage with him.

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