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Dave Douglas on vinyl
So, Expand from Dave Douglas & Keystone – the second in the Spark of Being trilogy – is now up for pre-order. Spark of Being is Dave’s recent collaboration with experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison (read more here). As a cool option, it’s going to be made available on vinyl – a first for Greenleaf Music.
I’ve got mine on pre-order… boxset and now vinyl. Oh, and once pre-ordered… you get to download it, even though its release date is August 24th.
~Dan – np: Dave Douglas & Keystone – Spark of Being: Expand 
Dave Douglas & Keystone’s Spark of Being
The latest music from Dave Douglas & Keystone is a three-part release.
Part 1: SOUNDTRACK (out June 22nd)
Part 2: EXPAND (out August 24th)
Part 3: BURST (out September 21st)
All three releases were inspired by Douglas’ recent collaboration with experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison on the new multi-media project Spark of Being, and were written by Douglas for his electric sextet Keystone. The first release, to the aforementioned film, will be available exclusively through Greenleaf Music on June 22. Two additional releases, Expand and Burst, will follow later this year and feature Douglas and Keystone exploring and interpreting the themes of the film.
Spark of Being, which premiered on April 24 at Stanford University’s Lively Arts, combines a re-interpretation of the Frankenstein story featuring new, archival and distressed footage on film by experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison with an original score by Douglas. Spark of Being was commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts as the centerpiece of a campus-wide “Art + Invention” project throughout the 2009–10 season, and was also the culmination of a multi-stage residency at Stanford by Douglas and Morrison.
Expand is a fully realized new jazz album by Douglas and Keystone. It will be released by Greenleaf Music and distributed through traditional music channels on August 24. Greenleaf will follow with the release of Burst on September 21, which, like Expand, further develops the musical ideas of Spark of Being, without the parameters of a soundtrack composition. All three albums will also be available in a full box set on September 21.
“Spark of Being began its life as a meditation on humanity and technology,” said Douglas. “Through the lens of contemporary music and film, Bill Morrison and I were both interested in a collaboration that showed the various uses for invention, from the quirky to the profound, from the benign to the murderous.”
Greenleaf Music rolled this out as part of their newly expanded subscription series. The new subscription service offers expansions to their levels… newly included are subscriber-only podcasts, full streaming of the ENTIRE Greenleaf catalog, complimentary tickets to a Greenleaf artist’s show, meet & greet opportunities, et cetera. My subscription was expiring anyway; so it was a great time to re-up. :)
~Dan – np: Maery Lanahan – Lessen
Dave Douglas & Keystone – Spark of Being
From the Greenleaf Music blog…
Dave Douglas: “Keystone and I have finished our new recording and it will be released very soon. Here is the cover of the first album in the trilogy of CDs and we’re all really excited about the collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison on Spark of Being. ‘Soundtrack’ is the first release of three — it’s the music from the actual film. We’ve documented much more than that, with two CDs of Keystone recordings from the sessions in Stanford.
We’ll be making a big push for this first release as well as for the three CD set and new subscription podcasts and conversations.
I think you’ll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.”
Sweeeet… more news will be posted when I hear the word…
~Dan – np: Holy Fuck – Latin
Thom Yorke // Dave Douglas
Two news items… both film & music related…
As posted on atease… Radiohead’s Thom Yorke wrote three songs for the Tibetian documentary When The Dragon Swallowed The Sun. It is the documentary on the inside perspective on the Tibetan movement to free Tibet from Chinese occupation, its internal conflicts and contradictions. In an interview with 24-bit, director Dirk Simin revealed that Thom Yorke wrote three new songs for a particular chapter of the film.
Songwriter Damien Rice has also written a song for the documentary, and composer Philip Glass has penned the main theme for the film, including a piece for a key “grand finale” sequence. The premiere is expected early in 2010.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
One of my favorite jazzmen, Dave Douglas, is bringing his Keystone group to Stanford to collaborate with filmmaker Bill Morrison on Spark of Being, a ‘monumental work’ combining the screening of film with live musical performance. Dave Douglas is an artist in residency for most of the Spring 2010 at Stanford University.
If you are lucky enough to live near (or are vacationing near) Stanford, you can try your hand at going to the world premiere performance of Spark of Being on April 24, 2010.
~Dan – np: Floss – Vitamin A
REVIEW: Erik Friedlander @ Winningstad Theatre (Portland, OR – 9/12/09)
FYI… PHOTOS of the SHOW at the BOTTOM
Erik Friedlander grew up spending many of his summers on the road with his family due to his photographer father, Lee Friedlander. I knew his dad was a photographer with some notoriety, but I hadn’t known about the long, cross-country summer road trips – which were the basis for Erik’s 3-day run of Block Ice and Propane at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)’s TBA Festival (aka T:BA:09). More about T:BA:09 later…
I have been into Erik for a while… basically contemporaneously with my immersion into John Zorn, as Erik is a mainstay in the Downtown NYC jazz scene and finds his way on maaaaany of the Tzadik releases that I love. He’s a part of the Masada String Trio & Bar Kokhba Sextet, and has played with Dave Douglas, Ikue Mori, Wadada Leo Smith, severalk of Zorn’s Filmworks series, et cetera.
When I showed up for the event, I was caught off guard by the vast amount of people milling about the lobby. “Does Erik have this big of a draw in Portland?”
Well, the answer to that question is, “now he does.” This was the third night of his three-night run as part of the T:BA:09 festival put on by PICA. The entire 10-day festival was also coming to a crescendo on the 12th… needless to say, the program looked amazing, full of art of all kinds, not just music. I’m definitely putting T:BA:10 on my radar for next year.
Erik’s solo chair, laptop stand, and microphone in front of a projector screen was nicely lit with a blue light as the herd of an audience entered the Dolores Winningstad Theatre. I’d never been to the Winningstad Theatre, but it’s in the same complex as the Newmark Theatre (where I saw the SF Jazz Collective in ’08 and where I’ll see Patton Oswalt tonight), and it’s right next door to the Arlene Schnitzer Hall (where I’ve seen many shows). “The Winny” was a great venue… small & intimate, but seemingly able to fit in a large amount of people, including 2 tiers of balcony seating. Luckily I was solo; so I found a stray seat right up front-left.
As mentioned prior, the show was Erik playing solo cello in front of a backdrop of photos from his childhood, primarily taken by his father Lee Friedlander. The performance, specifically the backdrop, had a very “Americana” feel set to non-“Americana music.” Or perhaps it was Americana music set through the filter of the cello. It wasn’t Woody Guthrie-esque, but it had that dirty, road weary, wow-look-at-this-wonderful-country feel to it. Amongst the photos were also some videos shot by Bill Morrison.
Outside of photographing the country on big summer roadtrips, Erik’s father Lee also photographed many musicians… Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane… even up to the current era like a famous Madonna photo. Lee’s love of music spilled over to Erik, who found a love for music early in his life. He started on guitar and eventually moved to cello. However, his basis in guitar drove much of the style of playing last night. Only a few times did Erik pull out a bow – rather he plucked and strummed his cello like one would with a guitar… well, a guitar that you were holding like a cello. :)
Setlist:
- Block Ice & Propane
- Road Weary
- King Rig
- I’m Not Here
- Cold Chicken
- Yakima
- Pressure Cooking
- Winking at Highway 7
- Rusting in Honeysuckle
- Dream Song
- Airstream Envy
- Night White
Some of my favorite pieces were the lead-in, title track (to the 2007 CD of the same name), as well as “Pressure Cooking” and “Night White” (nice harmonics). The story about “Cold Chicken” was great, about how at a diner they were served very slowly and Lee stormed into the kitchen to complain about “who wants to eat cold chicken!?” while the family scurried away. The music, which I’ve heard several times before on the CD, totally made sense now. Nice…
Block Ice and Propane (the 2007 CD) can be purchased directly from Erik HERE.
The Appropriate Linkage:
~Dan – np: Porcupine Tree – The Incident
ERIK FRIEDLANDER PHOTOS
all pictures (cc) 2009 Daniel Temmesfeld,
you may use freely under a creative commons attribution
(click for larger)
-Eyvind Kang
-Frank Zappa
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