Ronan Guilfoyle: Blog

For one reason or another, I’ve been listening to a lot of concerts and performances in recent weeks. And one thing I've heard SO many times in all kinds of contexts, is the drum solo over a vamp. Time was when the drummer’s soloing opportunities were limited to trades with the horns, or maybe a solo at the end of the night or on the obligatory burner at the end of the set or performance. This came to be seen as a cliché and other ways were sought to include the drums as a solo instrument without going to the obvious trades/solo option. Enter the solo over the vamp.
I'm not sure when this entered the vocabulary of jazz musicians -- I can think of Billy Cobham soloing over complex vamps with the  Mahavishnu Orchestra back in the early 70s, but it was probably done before that, no doubt an enlightened reader can fill in the gaps for us. But only in the last 20 years or so that this become really ubiquitous, and is a stock in trade of most bands in contemporary jazz. [...]

 
Spent today in Dave McCune's lovely studio in the north Dublin countryside today. The occasion was the recording of some tracks with Trilogue, my new chamber improvising group - a trio with Sarah Buechi (voice) and Izumi Kimura (piano). This is a relatively new group but one that's already real fun to play with and one with great potential.
 
Over the past 10 years I've written a lot of chamber music for various classical ensembles, sometimes with an improviser, sometimes not. And for a long time I've also thought it would be a nice idea to have a group that combined a large composed element with the ability to improvise and be spontaneous - with Trilogue I think I've found such a group. About 5 years ago I came across Izumi, a really great contemporary classical pianist who plays my music very well, and who really understands the rhythmic language of contemporary improvised music very well. She has a great technique and a great time feel, and a real appreciation of the aesthetics [...]

Recently I've been playing some new music with two great French musicians, the saxophonist Stéphane Payen and the drummer Christophe Lavergne. At the moment we're trying to develop the music and then we'll look at doing some performances and maybe recording. It's been a luxury to be able to work on music without the pressure of preparing for a particular performance, this is so unusual these days. I wrote some music for the project and Stéphane wrote some also and we worked on the pieces and looked at different ways to develop them.
 
In February I went to Paris to play with the guys (they have a very cool little practice room which they rent collectively with some colleagues), and in March they came to Dublin, and we had a lot of fun playing and trying things out. We decided to do an informal performance in front of an invited audience in Dublin at the end of our rehearsal period, and I set the video camera up.
 
I've out some footage of it up on Youtube, click [...]

So, we did the final gig in at The Pendulum in JJ’s and it was a great way to finish the tour – the biggest crowd by far and of course the audience in there has really developed over the years in terms of attentiveness and responsiveness. Playing abroad has often reminded me of just how good the audience at The Pendulum really is – you can play incredibly quietly and do so in the knowledge that you’ll do so in attentive silence. Playing in Odense in Denmark recently reminded me of how difficult it can be to play in the alternative to that – a noisy inattentive crowd. But this was the opposite of that – a great crowd, really into the music, and their enthusiasm and attentiveness paid off for us, since this was by far the best gig of an already good tour. The combination of the good situation aligned with us playing several nights in succession took us to a new level of of creativity - that combination of tightness combined with looseness which is the [...]