{"id":2572,"date":"2019-04-14T13:57:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T17:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2019-04-14T16:48:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-14T20:48:11","slug":"audio-video-jazz-improv-mnjam-experiment-w-teens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2019\/04\/audio-video-jazz-improv-mnjam-experiment-w-teens.html","title":{"rendered":"Audio-video jazz improv: Mn&#8217;Jam Experiment, w\/teens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What&#8217;s <em>really<\/em> new in improvisational music? Where else can innovation go? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mnjamexperiment.com\/\">Mn&#8217;JAM Experiment<\/a> &#8212; singer Melissa Oliveira and her visual\/electronics\/turntablist partner JAM &#8212; are daring to mix high-tech audio-with-video media in live performance, and as they say, it&#8217;s an experiment, in a direction that live performance seems sure to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"285\" height=\"177\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/download-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2573\"\/><figcaption>Mn&#8217;JAM, photo by Charlotte Steunebrink<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Grounded in jazz fundamentals (call and response, in-the-moment interactions, individualized expression, rhythmic drive, repertoire; she went to Berklee, he to New England Conservatory) they use screens, loops, layers, cut-ups, self-crafted as well as appropriated items, abstraction, distortion and familiar themes &#8212; and they&#8217;ve made it all portable, so they tour and teach worldwide, recently out of Melbourne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YCnKEkcJS9s\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>Their performance last week Chicago&#8217;s Old Town School of Folk\nMusic proved Mn&#8217;JAM&#8217;s essential ingredients of multi-track looping and\nrapid-fire yet intentional manipulations of images <em>that are wedded to\npercussive, sometimes pitched, also malleable sounds <\/em>can be rapidly\nunderstood, enjoyed and adopted by young players. Members of the School&#8217;s Teen\nCollective had a two-day workshop with Mn&#8217;JAM, then performed well, I&#8217;ll say\nrockin&#8217;, at the School&#8217;s estimably international Wednesday night\ncommunity-donation series (which is funded in part by the European Union).\nThese teens, 13, 14 and 15, added their own solo and backup voices, electric\nguitar, bass, keyboards and traps parts to the act &#8212; as Mn&#8217;JAM has on their\n2017 DVD\/CD album <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Live-Boom-Mn-Jam-Experiment\/dp\/9078377275\">Live With A Boom<\/a><\/em> (still, much of that\nalbum&#8217;s musical material is significantly more complex than what these forces\ntried). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/IMG_20190410_213826-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2574\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/IMG_20190410_213826-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/IMG_20190410_213826-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/IMG_20190410_213826-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Teen Collective members, from the Old Town School of Music &#8212; JAM at far right. \nPhoto by Devin Sebastian Bean<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>While Melissa records stacks of vocal loops cleverly metered\nfor polyrhythmic effects, over which she sings and which she can distort or add\nto using a Korg Kaossilator, JAM triggers images ranging from GIFs, pictograms,\ngeometric figures to accompany, complement, lead (or ignore) her. He, too,\nmanipulates source material, starting with a bank of let&#8217;s call them\nvisual-sonic gestures, typically totaling 60 &#8212; consider bank a keyboard,\ndifferent for each of the duo&#8217;s tracks (which they compose separately but\ncollaboratively), which he can change with color, overlays, stretching\/mirroring\/dividing\/warping\nfunctions by hand-drumming and table-spinning. The visual display can be &#8212;<em>\nis<\/em> &#8212; quirky, surreal, hypnotic, distracting, sometimes simultaneously.\n(They&#8217;re into <a href=\"https:\/\/images.app.goo.gl\/ebEeRS5KLjTLQcS98\">moire patterns<\/a>.)\nMelissa, sings affectingly in Portuguese, and rather more cooly in English, but\nstill slices, dices and swirls her phrases, isolating key elements of\n&#8220;Body and Soul,&#8221; for instance, or offering a hot version of Bill\nWithers&#8217; &#8220;Use Me.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u6NN-K7PZfI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>In the training sessions (I&#8217;ve attended two Mn&#8217;JAM conducted\nfor adults), the two musical artists quite openly discuss and demonstrate their\nequipment and techniques, designed and devised to offer vast opportunities for\ncreative composition, spontaneous variation and sensory overload, including\nconsiderations of what can be carried, used to greatest affect,\nreplaced\/repaired\/modified on short notice. Having formerly been based in\nAmsterdam, Oliviera (she says she&#8217;s half-Portuguese, half-Australian) and JAM\n(persistently &#8220;all Portuguese&#8221;) have done a TedX SPJain Sydney, Talk,\nperformed at the 2017 Cairo Jazz Festival and in India, in 2016 traveled\nextensively in China, Japan, Macau and Hong Kong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They acknowledge a couple of other ensembles are trying to unite image and audio, but intend their own processes of combination to more immediate, organic and as much as possible analog &#8212; they abjure using a click track to sync music and image &#8212; and identify themselves, in the best sense, with jazz.  So they keep experimenting, and explaining what they&#8217;re up to with <a href=\"http:\/\/ https:\/\/youtu.be\/FIZAmoGuWtA \">weekly YouTube clips<\/a>. Pretty cool. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s really new in improvisational music? Where else can innovation go? Mn&#8217;JAM Experiment &#8212; singer Melissa Oliveira and her visual\/electronics\/turntablist partner JAM &#8212; are daring to mix high-tech audio-with-video media in live performance, and as they say, it&#8217;s an experiment, in a direction that live performance seems sure to go. Grounded in jazz fundamentals (call [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1355,1711,20,1497,1710,1712],"class_list":{"0":"post-2572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-howard-mandel","9":"tag-image-sound-combination","10":"tag-jazz","11":"tag-jazz-beyond-jazz","12":"tag-mnjam-experiment","13":"tag-old-town-school-of-folk-music","14":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/download-4.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-Fu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/04\/jazzapril-begins-no-joke.html","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":0},"title":"JazzApril begins (no joke!)","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"April 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"April is Jazz Appreciation Month (so named by the Smithsonian Institution), culminating on the 30th with\u00c2\u00a0International Jazz Day (a project of UNESCO, organized by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz) -- and both those initiatives are endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. So the Jazz Journalists Association has launched\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"ja-ijd-jamSQ200","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/ja-ijd-jamSQ200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1401,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/09\/chicago-jazz-festival-13-in-marc-pokempners-photos.html","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":1},"title":"Chicago Jazz Festival &#8217;13, in Marc PoKempner&#8217;s photos","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"September 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Photo-journalist Marc PoKempner, a long-time collaborator and one of my bffs, has a clear eye as well as a sharp ear for music. He captured some of the diversity and vigor of the 35th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, August 28 - Sept 1 \u00c2\u00a02013. Click on these photos for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rudresh-collage-chicago-jazz-fest-2013.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rudresh-collage-chicago-jazz-fest-2013.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rudresh-collage-chicago-jazz-fest-2013.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rudresh-collage-chicago-jazz-fest-2013.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":243,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2009\/08\/social_networking_does_its_jaz.html","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":2},"title":"Social networking does its #jazzlives stuff","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"August 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Start a Twitter campaign, and see what happens! Do as many people hear live jazz in a week as attended Woodstock, say? Using the hashtag #jazzlives, a rough count is underway, supported by independent jazz activists, musicians, festivals, journalists but most of all the listeners themselves. It's a lesson in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1687,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2014\/08\/jazz-venues-in-chicago-parks-bars-clubs.html","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":3},"title":"Jazz venues in Chicago: Parks,  bars, clubs","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"August 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Chicago is relatively new in bringing jazz to its many small, diverse parks but the Neighborhood Nights experiment, \u00c2\u00a0conducted by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, works just fine, as drummer Michael Zerang's Blue Lights in Logan Square last Sunday proved. Last of these free shows is Saturday (tomorrow) at 1\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Jenny527M.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Jenny527M.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Jenny527M.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":333,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2010\/08\/twitter_campaign_jazzlives_aft.html","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":4},"title":"Twitter campaign #jazzlives after one year","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"August 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"#Jazzlives -- the Twitter campaign aimed at demonstrating that there is a big and enthusiastic audience for live jazz -- is one year old. What has it wrought? First: What is #jazzlives and how does it work? To participate in the campaign, audience members at live jazz performances \"tweet\" -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1327,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2013\/04\/jazz-composers-the-buffalo-philharmonic-orch-jazzapril-week-4.html","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":5},"title":"Jazz composers @ the Buffalo Philharmonic Orch &#8211; JazzApril week 4","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"April 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Five jazz-associated composers took on the heady task of writing eight-minute works for full symphonic forces, introduced to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and worked up for performance by conductor Matt Kraemer on Tuesday and Wednesday this past week, thanks to\u00c2\u00a0Earshot \/Jazz Composers Orchestra Initiative, organized by American Composers Orchestra. As\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"4 of 5","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/4-of-5-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}