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Why Roscoe Mitchell is Important: RANDY MCKEAN
Saxophonist/clarinettist and composer Randy McKean leads or co-leads several bands, including the chamber jazz quartet Bristle, the improv trio Pluck Vim Vigour, the avant-folk duo Sawbones, the acoustic-electronics duos Wild Horsey Ride, Zap!, and The Gargantius Effect, and his latest project, the power trio Moch Mach I. He has composed works for string quartet and symphony orchestra. McKean’s releases include the CDs Wild Horsey Ride, Bristle’s Bulletproof (Edgetone), So Dig This Big Crux (Rastascan), the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet’s Child King Dictator Fool (New World), and the electronic release Gargantius Effect +1+2+3 (w/Han-earl Park, Gino Robair & Scott Looney). He studied with trumpeter Paul Smoker and composers Anthony Braxton, David Rosenboom, and Maggi Payne. He currently lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Grass Valley, CA.
Needle-drop moments—those instances when stylus hits spinning vinyl and your inner life is blown to smithereens, flies about your head, then reassembles itself within you, shiny new bits now insinuating themselves into your psyche for years and decades to come. An NDM oftentimes is ultimately surpassed in one’s estimation by other works in that artist’s oeuvre, but it remains that white-hot entry point into their particular universe of sound that one never forgets. My list of NDMs could serve as a shorthand sketch of my evolution as a musician, each NDM kicking me up the chain from a starting point of Midwestern-bred Beatles worship to a higher state of expanded saxophonics, extended composition, and attitude adjustment: XTC’s Life Begins at the Hop, Sonny Rollins’ Hold ‘Em Joe, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Anthony Braxton’s Composition 23B (first cut on New York Fall 1974), Morton Feldman’s For Four Pianos, Fredric Rzewski’s Coming Together, Ornette’s Body Meta, Captain Beefheart’s Hot Head, Xenakis’s Metastasis. Thing is, by the time I’d reached my late twenties, I thought I’d outgrown the gee whizziness of an NDM. Then I heard Nonaah.
It was late Saturday afternoon, Summertime 1989, Berkeley, CA. I was just out of grad school, Mills College, and feeling somewhat adrift. The saxophone quartet I’d started while at Mills had just finished rehearsing at Dan Plonsey’s house. With the recent defection of our tenor player, we were once again a trio. Dan, Chris Jonas and I had tried out some new material but couldn’t seem to get a handle on anything. I supposed the real reason for the malaise was the recent departure of Anthony Braxton from Mills for Connecticut, where he was to assume teaching chores at Wesleyan. I’d been a devoted student of his, and talk turned to teachers and mentors. Dan told us about his time at the Creative Music Studio and his two summers studying under Roscoe Mitchell. Although I was a big fan of Mitchell’s work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago—I had seen them during the Third Decade tour—I admitted I was not as familiar with his solo work as I should have been. Dan got out Mitchell’s album Nonaah and dropped the needle on the alto quartet cut.
NDMs—their sounds are always accompanied by the images they create in my mind’s eye. Nonaah’s four-in-one line, with its jagged kinetics, shifting weights and balances, relentlessly repeating itself, was a perpetually-motoring whirligig. Its extremes of range, its unity of ideas, its sheer ornery patience as its opening segment continually looped yet never occurred the same way twice. Its unhurriedness, its intensity burned itself into me. It spurred me on to new activity.
Not a month or two later, Mitchell delivered another NDM: Line Fine Lyon Seven, Side 1, Cut 3 of his duet record with Braxton. Braxton’s on contrabass sax, pounding out a riff. Mitchell on alto, playing with that singular, maxed-out sound of his, comes charging in over the top of the line—the syncopation, the angularity, the momentum of the melody caught hold of me. The pendulum nature of this line, its bopping ebb and flow against the riff, I played it over and over again, stretching the original minute and 15 seconds into hours of repetition.
My first glimpse into the magic of Mitchell’s material, the art and science of his method, came when I was preparing an arrangement of Line Fine for my first recording. As I juxtaposed one micro-section against another, trying to preserve the sway and swing of the line, it yielded new trajectories, generated new rhythmic fields. I was amazed at how much invention was contained in that seemingly straightforward duet.
Nonaah is another, perhaps greater font of material, and the program for the upcoming Seattle concert reads like my more recent experiences with Mitchell writ large: the audience will first hear Mitchell playing solo, then extended/expanded versions of this masterpiece. I got to see Mitchell play solo in 2011. For the first part of his set, he played from the alto quartet score for Nonaah. It was a dynamic, yet patient etching of sound as he stitched together elements from the spacious, sustained note section of the piece. He followed it with an intensely boiling extended improvisation. Just a few months later, I began rehearsing and ultimately performed Nonaah as part of James Fei’s alto quartet (along with Aram Shelton and Jacob Zimmerman) for a concert of Mitchell’s music at Mills in March 2012.
One might suppose that with this performance many mysteries were finally revealed to me. Although insights were gained, the fascination and wonder deepened. The music was scored in such a way that exactitude and spontaneous interaction were equal partners—the written and the improvised informed the other. That opening section that had grabbed hold of me 20 years earlier, here I was in the midst of it and discovering it was far from static. The intricate relationship among the parts ensured a living difference from one iteration to the next, generated an energy that drove the piece and brought our creative energies to the fore. Here I was on the inside of an NDM, shiny bits, new and old, spinning and swirling.
Thank you for this and other musical universes, Mr. Mitchell. I can’t wait to hear what materializes on June 7.
Table & Chairs Presents: Roscoe Mitchell Performs Nonaah on June 7th, 2013 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.
