- Ronan Guilfoyle - Blog

MSG - new CD and video clip!

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 12:11:58 -0800

MSG - Rudresh Mahanthappa (alto), Chander Sardjoe(drums) and myself have just released our first CD on the Plus Loin label. We've been together for 4 years now and play whenever the Rubik's Cube of our three schedules can be reconciled! The CD is very representative of what we do and it's great to have it out at last!

I don't think it's been released in the US yet, but it's available in Europe and you can buy it http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mahanthappatasty&x=0&y=0" target="_blank">Here

For a taste of what we do, here's a typical live performance by the band featuring one of the pieces we don't do on the CD - Rudresh's 'Enhanced Performance'

http://www.youtube.com/v/-Cq849XVTko?fs=1&hl=en_US"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true">http://www.youtube.com/v/-Cq849XVTko?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385">

I don't think it's been released in the US yet, but it's available in Europe and you can buy it

I'll be posting more videos of the band in action very soon, but for a taste of what we do, here's a typical live performance by the band featuring one of the pieces we don't do on the CD - Rudresh's 'Enhanced Performance'

Give the Drummer Some!

Mon, 24 May 2010 08:00:31 -0700

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. And it’s only when you listen to as many performances back to back as I have in recent weeks that you realise that the solo-over-vamp thing has become as big a cliché in itself as the drum breaks/big solo was before it.

This is not to say that the drum solo over a vamp is not an effective device – it is and, like the drum break/big solo before it, it’s precisely because it is so effective that it’s become so ubiquitous and now somewhat tired. So is there a way to incorporate the drummer as a soloist in a piece without resorting to either of these rather overused devices? Here are a few suggestions:

1) Drum Breaks.

As usual it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel in order to come up with something fresh to do – just a bit of finessing of what’s already there can often yield interesting results. Take the ubiquitous drum break for example – drum breaks are still a cool idea, it’s just that they’re always done in the same way – i.e after all the other solos are finished. But here’s a suggestion: Let’s say you’re playing a changes/form kind of piece, (could be swing or not) why not have each soloist begin their solos with a chorus of exchanges with the drums? So each soloist will start with 8s (or whatever) with the drums for a chorus (or two depending on the form length), then continue with their own solo, the next soloist in turn will do exchanges with the drums and then continue on with their solo and so forth. In this way the drummer gets to both play and interact with the soloists yet the breaks are more incorporated into the structure of the piece than in the traditional way.

2) Drum Solo

Again this is just a variation on what’s already done. So if we imagine again it’s a traditional form piece, why not have the drummer play a solo chorus in between each soloist rather than a big solo at the end? Once again this will make the drum solo into a more holistic element of the overall piece and give the drummer a lot of material to work with since he/she will be soloing after more than one soloist. Each soloist in turn will be given a lift into their own solos by the preceding drum solo.

If the piece is less conventional, then other ways to incorporate this drum solo as interlude idea can be brought into place. So if the piece is multi-tempo’d for example, the drums could set up the new tempos with some solo improvised passages, or announce the different sections with a small solo section.

3) Solo Over Vamp!

The very cliché that started this train of thought can also be used in a fresh way – like so: Let’s imagine that you’re playing a piece at a brisk tempo – 200 or above – and you want to give the drummer a solo over a rhythmic vamp, such as the rather generic one below:

Well instead of playing the vamp over and over again while the drummer plays over the top of it, why not have a few members of the band (3 at most – any more than that and it can get messy), come in and out and play any section of the vamp at any time? In this way it becomes a very playful thing with nobody knowing which part of the vamp will be played by any one of the players. It’s more challenging too for the players since everyone has to keep the vamp in mind at all times in order not to get lost!

4) Duets

Have the drummer solo with somebody instead of on his/her own, a series of duets (or at least one), probably (though not necessarily), without bass can be both stimulating for drummer and other soloist alike and also create a fresh texture for the ears of the audience.

5) Write longer sections for the drummer to solo over

Instead of writing a bare vamp for the drummer to play over, why not write something a bit more involved? This can be particularly nice in a slower tempo piece where drum solos are rarely heard. If you have a good creative drummer there’s no reason why they should only be given a chance to solo over ‘wham-bam-thank you ma’am’ kind of tunes. A slower piece with some nicely written passages for the drummer to interpret as a soloist rather than an accompanist can make a welcome change for everybody and freshen things up.

There are many more possibilities for using the drums, (or any instrument), as a solo instrument - like so much, it’s just a matter of having a think about the various possibilities available to us instead of always going for the default position. As we know, jazz has a fantastic tradition of drum soloists, and this continues to the present day - there are so many great drummers out there. So let’s try and take advantage of that by using our imagination on how best to incorporate solo drums into our music as an organic constituent rather than always as a flag-waving rabble rouser. Let’s give the drummer some!

Recording with Trilogue

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:41:16 -0700

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 of improvised music. Sarah comes from a jazz background, but has another string to her bow in that she studied South Indian classical music extensively in India and brings that experience ot her improvising. She too has a fantastic technique and an extraordinary ability to learn and memorise even the most technically difficult of material. She's really fearless and will take on things that would send most other singers running for cover!

So the stage was set for a tryout of this new group and in January we went off to the beautiful Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Monaghan to rehearse the music and see how we could develop things. Having the luxury of just spending three days at music without interruption was an incredible help and we really got things moving and began to develop an individual sound. Of course these things take time and no doubt we're only at the beginning of what's possible with this group, but already I'm sensing that the group has a real personality combining as it does true spontaneity with an ability to dig into complex written material.

We have a bunch of written pieces and also some completely spontaneous pieces which we set up by playing a little tag stolen from Serge Prokofiev's 7th Piano Sonata - anyone in the group can start this at any time and hearing the tempo and vibe chosen, the others will join in immediately, the piece taking on whatever shape it wants to, and going in whatever direction it wants to.

Today we recorded four written pieces and seven improvised pieces based on the little Prokofiev theme. Once we got the sound going in the headphones it all went very quickly and easily. It really helps that Dave is such a good engineer and musician - he's fast and able to hear little technical problems in the music, and this can be really helpful when, like us, you're trying to put together challenging material in a short space of time.

It's always difficult to be objective just after you've recorded, I usually wait a few days before listening again, and I'll probably do that with this recording and then decide whether it will be the basis for a CD, or whether it's a kind of document of a work in progress. But I feel very positive about this music and so I'm putting up a rough mix of 'Helter-Skelter', a piece that typifies the group's approach - free wheeling improvisation blended with strictly written passages demanding real virtuosity. Hope you enjoy it!

(Trilogue will be appearing at JJ Smyth's in Dublin on Sunday May 9th next

Developing New Music

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:14:04 -0700

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 here to to see a clip

On the Road with Jim and Julian - Day 6 - Dublin

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:59:00 -0700

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 place I love to be most in music. It’s a point where you know that you can do pretty much anything in the knowledge that everyone in the band knows the music and each other so well that even the most distant exploration of the material – or even a complete departure from it – will all end happily. And even if it doesn’t nobody minds! It’s real exploration of improvisational process rather than a display of licks or written material.

This was also the first time on the tour where we played two sets, and that was different in itself. As usual we didn’t have any set plan when we walked on the stage – we knew the available composed material and that was enough – no need for set lists or any of that. This way of working also cuts down on soundcheck time too since it’s never the ‘soundcheck as rehearsal’ kind of thing that one so often has to deal with due to limited proper rehearsal time. Tom Rainey once told me that the four most important words at a soundcheck are ‘sounds great, let’s eat!’ and I completely agree. So, it was one of those great nights where all the creative stars were in alignment and everything seemed just easy.

It was a good tour in that we got to play together 6 times (between concerts and workshops) in a short space of time, which is pretty good these days, but it also makes you long for a longer tour. However the reality is that getting 4 gigs in a row is pretty good these days – getting that ‘band’ feeling is getting harder and harder, but at least we managed it this time.

Got some good recordings of the gigs – I’ll post a track or two here soon.

On the Road with Jim and Julian - Day 5 - Bray

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:01:36 -0800

So we set off from Cork this morning and thanks to the new motorway made good time to Dublin – 3 and a half hours, I remember, not that long ago, when it took about 5 hours to get from Cork to Dublin – happy days....... More music chat on the way, more sorting out of the world’s musical problems, more rhythm practice – all in a day’s work for the contemporary travelling band.

Tonight we played in the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, a place I have a long history with and at which I have played many great gigs – including one with this band on our last tour. The people in the Mermaid are great, and have a very enlightened policy on jazz. I also like the sound on stage very much, it has a clarity to it that suits me very well, and suits this band in particular.

We had a very good gig tonight – very different to last night, probably because of the very different sound – no smothering carpet to deal with, instead we had a crisp clear sound in which we could explore much more of the dynamic range than in Jury’s in Cork. Before we go on stage we never discuss what we’ll play – we just walk on and start playing. We have 6 pieces of composed music, but we never make a decision as to whether we’ll play them or not – we just let the music happen. Tonight we improvised almost all of the whole first set, the only concession to the composed music was when we somehow slid into Ornette’s ‘Round Trip’ towards the end. The second set on the other hand was comprised of nearly all composed pieces – again not by any prior agreement, we just ended up going that way.

It’s a very liberating way to play – I have all the composed music memorised, so I don’t need to bring any music on stage and have no need for set lists etc. It’s a real luxury, as are the short soundchecks. So often soundchecks double as extra rehearsals as you usually never have enough rehearsal time, and so you spend a lot of time at soundchecks checking notes rather than sound. But with the trio this is completely unnecessary, so we’ve been having minimum time at the soundchecks and maximum time in the restaurants – a very civilised division of our time in my opinion.

The only downer tonight was the small audience. Sometimes I almost despair of this – what do you have to do to get more than 20 people to a gig these days? I know Ireland is in the grip of a recession at the moment, but when you consider the combined experience of and track record of the members of this trio, can we really only attract 20 people? I’m convinced there’s a way of getting the message across to people, via the internet probably, but we just haven’t cracked it yet – but hopefully we will. We have to, otherwise we’ll all need day jobs again!

JJ’s in Dublin tomorrow night – should provide the setting for a fitting end to the tour. A JAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ gig...................

On the Road with Jim and Julian - Day 4 - Cork

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:36:18 -0800

It’s a rare luxury to be able to play and stay in the same place. Tonight we played for the Triskel Arts Centre, but not at the Triskel Arts Centre. They’re having a new theatre built at the moment and are holding their concerts in Jury’s Hotel. We were also put up by them in the hotel – in fact we’ve been here since yesterday – another luxury! It’s so great to stay two nights in the same place when you’re on the road, it’s like a holiday. And this is a really nice hotel too, very comfortable and with 4 Star standards.

But though it’s like a holiday to stay two nights here, it’s also not like a holiday in that I spent a lot of the day in the room taking care of various business stuff. The internet is great in some ways (for example being able to post this blog...........) but in other ways it’s a drag since your work follows you around. Anyway, I took a break from that at lunchtime had lunch in a very nice French patisserie, and went to the English Market – the famous food market in the centre of town. For a foodie like me the English Market is a paradise – I could spend hours there and I wish I lived closer to it – there’s really nothing like this in Dublin. And the patisserie was good too.

In fact, much to my amazement on this trip, I find that I like Cork! I say much to my amazement because for years I’ve not been fond of this town – principally because of some bad experiences at the Cork Jazz Festival in the early years – drunken mobs roaming the streets, being gouged by local shops and restaurants during festival time, playing in less than optimal conditions. As the years went by my playing situations got better there, (particularly when playing at the Triskel) and I had some really good musical experiences over the years, but the damage was done – I always associated Cork with bad experiences, it was a gut reaction rather than anything rational.

But on this trip I really enjoyed the city – it has a certain faded charm that Dublin doesn’t have, and there are some really nice little neighbourhoods up on the hill that almost have a country feel to them even though they’re in the city. And there’s some very good food here too! And the city can look really nice at night as well – looks like I’ve become a convert to Cork!

As to the gig tonight – the biggest problem with it was the room. A hotel function room, it was a carpeted acoustic-less box, very dry sound. I use an Acoustic Image amp, a great design where the bass speaker is in the bottom of the amp and fires downwards onto the floor. It therefore uses the floor as a sounding board, dispersing the bass sound across a wide area. This works great on most surfaces, especially wood, but carpet – such as there was in this room – kills it. I managed to get a wooden box and sit the amp on it and this helped, but the sound still hadn’t much body to it and I found this to be a bit constraining. Sound is everything really, and if you’re not getting the sound you want, and like, then it’s hard to perform at maximum effectiveness. So I had to work a bit harder tonight to get it going, but we still managed to play some good music – there was one improvisation in particular, that started with Jim bowing the cymbals, that I particularly liked. The crowd wasn’t so big tonight, but were very enthusiastic, (Triskel audiences are always good in this regard), so that was good. I even sold a CD! I must admit I’m the worst CD salesman in the world – I even forgot to announce that I had CDs for sale. And since the trio only tours every couple of years you’d imagine I’d be a bit more efficient at using the sales opportunity presented by this tour - but no, I admit it – I suck at being a travelling salesman. Better stick to the day job.............

On the Road with Jim and Julian - Day 3 - Cork

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:46:22 -0800

Today was mostly about food - at least the beginning and the end of it. It started off badly enough, for me anyway, with one of those dire 'cooked breakfast' things at Jury's Inn in Limerick. God knows the traditional Irish breakfast is not exactly a healthy option at the best of times, but the places where you can order your bacon/sausage/egg etc and then it's cooked for you, are fast disappearing. Instead the stuff is cooked in vast batches and left to sweat in its own juices and harden under lights, so that you're left with bacon that's as hard as a bullet and nearly cold, eggs that are overdone and tasteless sausages, everything covered with a layer of grease. Grim. I like an occasional Irish Breakfast - I never eat it at home - while on the road in Ireland, but really I need to be more careful about where I order it..........

And then it was off to UCC in Cork for a workshop - boosted by the discovery of a very decent coffee and flapjack in a local Centra! An hour and a half to Cork, with the usual music talk leavened on this occasion by rhythm practice (should probably be illegal while driving) and geeky software discussion. On arrival at UCC Jim and I went off in search of a pre-workshop sandwich and encountered that usual mixture of charmingly delivered yet confusing directions by local people when we asked where the nearest shop was. But eventually we found it and returned with the trophy of an egg salad sandwich, some brown bread and some local smoked cheese. Just time to wolf it down then we did the workshop, literally wiping the crumbs from our lips.

This was a different workshop to the one in Newpark the day before – the students here are doing a music performance degree, and are not necessarily focussing on jazz, quite unlike the hard-core jazzers we had the day before in Newpark. So it’s hard to know how to pitch what you’re doing to an audience like this. But it went well enough – we opened up by improvising a piece and then taking questions. The students were pretty shy generally, but a few good questions opened up a few avenues for us to explore, which we duly did and the whole thing went off pretty well. All of us have clear opinions about why we do what we do and the choices we make as improvisers, so there’s never much problem filling in the time at a workshop like this. And I love to hear the guys talk about their take on how they work – Jim did a particularly interesting rap on the possibilities of dealing with completely controlled elements in music and with random elements. I hope the students enjoyed that as much as I did!

I posted a couple of photos from the day on my Facebook page - here

And the day ended with food as well – this time more happily than it began – in Isaac’s restaurant in Cork city. I’ve eaten here a few times, usually during the Cork Jazz Festival, and it’s always been good, and not too expensive. This time most of the conversation between the three of us was about food – all three of us are very interested in food and so we passed a very pleasant couple of hours talking about food and eating good food – sometimes it’s good being a musician!

On the Road with Jim and Julian - Day 2 - Dublin - Limerick

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:31:54 -0800

So, the day began with a hurried trip for me to the passport office in central Dublin - I'm going to Germany on Monday and this was the only time I could collect it. Still took 45 minutes in the office due to 'industrial action' by the staff.......... Arrived back in Dun Laoghaire and then collected the guys at the hotel, then off to the school to do our workshop.

We decided to do it as an open rehearsal kind of thing, where we ran through the stuff we're going to play (an Ornette tune, a Monk tune, one of mine, one of Julian's, one of Jim's) and tried them out in front of the students. I've seen those kind of open rehearsals before (saw Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - the Blanchard/Toussaint/Mulgrew edition - do it in the same room in 1986!) and always found them interesting as an observer - hopefully the students found it to be interesting. It was good to play again after three years! We took questions too of course . Then it was a quick sandwich and off to Limerick. There’s no doubt that travelling in a car - or any ‘on the road’ mode of transport gives ample opportunity for musical discussion – and this trip was no exception. I’ve always found jazz musicians to be extraordinary in just how endlessly they are prepared to talk about music – I’ve never found the same obsession with music (generally speaking though of course there are exceptions) among musicians from other genres. I guess if you’re into jazz, you’d BETTER be obsessed by music because you sure aren’t going to get paid much!

We played in Dolan’s in Limerick, which is the best known music pub in Limerick with two differently sized rooms – naturally enough we were in the smaller room – it’s jazz after all! Dolan’s also provides good food, something that looms large in the hierarchy of important details for the travelling musician........... The gig itself was great – at first it looked like there’d be few people there, but just before we were about to play a large contingent came in and the place was quite full by the time we went on stage. And they were very attentive and supportive too (Limerick Jazz Society have done great work in keeping the music alive in Limerick) – all of which makes for a really good atmosphere to play in.

And play we did – we decided on one long set rather than two shorter ones – a format I both enjoy playing and listening to. I think the band sounded great – considering we hadn’t played for so long we just seemed to take off from where we left off so to speak – I just started improvising a groove and Jim and Julian joined and we were off! Over the course of the set we played some of the tunes we rehearsed at the school in the afternoon and otherwise just played free – grooves, sounds, vibes – it was really fun and very typical of the trio.

So first day over, two jobs done - ‘something attempted, something done has earned a night’s repose’, as they say – so repose I shall...........

On the road with Jim and Julian - Day One

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:02:44 -0800

And so it begins........... It's been a while since we played together. This is the third tour by the band, and I'm confident it'll be as much fun as ever. This is a wonderful group to play with, very open and loose. I think Jim, Julian and I have quite different musical personalities, at least in the details of how we play - but we have a shared love of spontaneity and musical exploration. And I think it's this combination of a shared broad philosophy allied to a difference in approach that makes the trio so creative.

Usually we only have 4 or 5 actual tunes to play and we often don't even discuss what order to play them in, or even if we'll play any of them - walking on the stage knowing anything is possible is very liberating.

So Jim and Julian arrived today and we had a pre-tour dinner, a lot of catching up and a typical musician's discussion of what's going on, what we'd like to see going on and what we hate to see going on! I'm slightly older than the other two but we're broadly of the same generation so we listened to a lot of the same stuff growing up and in our early musical years, so that makes for an interesting conversation always - who of our heroes is doing good stuff still, and who's not - and NO, I'm not going to name names! Our musical ranting and highly opinionated discussions will remain between us and that window table in the Baan Thai restuarant in Sandyford.

Tomorrow we do a workshop at the school in Newpark, then it's on to Limerick for the first gig - let's see if the magic is still there - if tonight's conversation is anything to go by, I think it should be fun........