Author: catsynth

Outsound New Music Summit: The Breath Courses Through Us

This past Monday, the Outsound New Music Summit featured a screening of The Breath Courses Through Us, a documentary by Alan Roth about the New York Art Quartet.  From the Outsound Summit website:

The Breath Courses Through Us” (2013) is a documentary film about the early 1960s avant-garde jazz group, the New York Art Quartet. The film focuses on the group’s 35-year reunion, while reaching back through their recollections of their foundations and innovative musical ideas. The year 2014 is the 50th anniversary of this group, and a revolutionary period in jazz music, which declared its existence in the October Revolution in Jazz, in October 1964. “The Breath Courses Through Us” mirrors the newly open improvisationary style of “free jazz” that subverted the traditional structure of jazz. Unfolding in free time and enveloped in their music, the film helps the viewer better understand the human element of the creative process, by focusing on their interactions in the present.

It was an interesting experience on multiple levels, as the structure of the documentary mirrors that of our musician- and band-focused CatSynth TV episodes, but on a larger scale.  It weaves interviews with members of the ensemble with archival footage, live performances from the early 2000s, and even scenes from a casual dinner among the members of the group discussing their music and plans for their reunion in 1999.  In many ways, the latter is the foundation for the history and interviews, and we keep returning to the dinner throughout the film.

Musically, it connects the current scene of free and avant-garde jazz to the creative foment of 1960s New York.  We hear from the founding members: John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, and Milford Graves, along with one of the original bassists Reggie Workman and poet Amiri Baraka.  The five reunited for the early 2000s concerts as well as the documentary.  We get to hear their distinct personalities.  Tchicai brings a serious and brooding discipline, Rudd an exuberance and enthusiasm for playing, and Graves his quirky and humorous character. Workman was one of three bassists that performed with the group during its brief existence in 1964 and 1965; Baraka often read poems to the quartet’s improvisations, including his famous “Black Dada Nihilismus”, parts of which are included in the documentary.  It seemed like an improbable coming together that depended on a series of coincidences and connections, but together they informed a style and practice of music that was “revolutionary” in its time, and still in many ways sounds fresh.

Although the documentary has been out for a few years now, this was its first public screening on the west coast.  Hopefully, this will lead to future screenings.  Even immersed as I have been in the music influenced by the New York Art Quartet, I was not as familiar with them as I should be.  I think it will be a valuable experience for those who perform and listen to free jazz, as well as though who are new to it.

More information on the film, including screenings, can be found at the official website.

Weekend Cat Blogging with Sam Sam: Camera Study

The vast majority of my recent photography has been done with the iPhone, but for the upcoming Outsound New Music Summit, I will need to use the SLR and lenses.  So I’m getting back into practice with Sam Sam.

I think this one came out beautifully, especially as Sam Sam was being the perfect model.  I recently got a new faster camera, and so far it has been a joy to use, especially with our existing portrait lens on manual.  With the iPhone, I have forgotten both the fun and hazards of managing optics.  When focused properly it really brings out the detail of her fur and puts the background in the background.  Some shots work better than others, of course.  This one was less than perfect, but I really liked her vocal expression.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t shoot some pictures of her scratch’n’roll.

Sam Sam definitely knows how to ham it up for the camera.

I will be on photography duty for most nights at the Outsound New Music Summit, or at least the nights I’m not also performing with my band CDP.  You can find out more about the festival, including tickets, on the official website.

CatSynth 12th Anniversary

It’s our twelfth anniversary!  It’s hard to believe that this little project I started as a lark in 2006 is still going and expanding.  Here is that first picture of Luna that went up on July 19, 2006!

As always, we look to the anniversary as a moment for reflection and for changes.  We don’t have compiled detailed stats this year, but we do have several high-level milestones.  Most notably, we launched CatSynth TV last October, and since then have shared 74 videos! More are on the way.  We have continued to develop our apps, including the original CatSynth: The App! and Highway☆, though there is so much more we want to do there, both with existing and new apps.  And Sam Sam has blossomed into the new star of CatSynth!  With so many facets competing for our attention, there has been less time for the long-form reviews that once dominated this site, though we still write long-form articles when we can.  So with that, we make some announcements:

  • Sam Sam finally takes her rightful place on the masthead alongside the late great Luna!  It’s a change that is long overdue.  And appropriately, we are featuring one of her scratch’n’roll poses.
  • We are going to open up the site to new voices.  We have already had a couple of guest music reviews, and of course the semi-regular Mensa Cats cartoon series.  This is going to expand in the coming months.  If you have an idea for an article you would like to contribute, please let us know.
  • And as always, please keep sending us your cat-and-gear pics.

So please join Sam Sam and me in celebrating twelve years of CatSynth!  We look forward to sharing many more with all of you.

Pick Your Poison: Road Travel in California

We at CatSynth love traveling and exploring our adopted home state.  This includes day trips from the Bay Area as well as longer adventures.  But one thing remains a bit of a challenge.  For much of the state, the main highways are primarily north-south, with very few east-west routes.  One chooses one of the long-haul north-south highways, California 1, US 101, I-5, California 99, or US 395 and is pretty much locked in with only a few options for efficiently traveling east to west.  There is I-80 in the middle north, California 152 or California 46 from the coast through the Central Valley and California 58/I-40/I-15 further south.

 

North of Sacramento, east-west travel becomes even more difficult, with routes like California 20 and California 299 being relatively rural and windy for much of their length.  The end result is that most of our trips – especially single-day trips heading north – are forward and back along one of the main north-south routes unless we have extra time or necessity to use the smaller east-west roads.

This north-south bias can be seen in an almost self-similar way when zooming in on the extended Bay Area.  South of San Francisco, there is California 1, I-280, US 101, I-880, I-680 and then not much at all until one gets to I-5 in the Central Valley.

In the North Bay and wine country, a similar pattern appears with CA 1, US 101 and CA 29, with another large gap until I-505 and I-5.  We have made use of east-west roads like CA 128 to get between them as in our recent wine-country trip that featured Elsie the Library Cat.  But this is a long detour.

This north-south axis may be frustrating at times (especially the further north one gets), but there is nothing particularly sinister about it.  It’s all a matter of Calfornia’s geology.  The interface of the Pacific and North American plates that give us our reputation for earthquakes also lead to long bands of north-south mountain ranges and valleys.  The Sierra Nevada may be the most dramatic, but it is only one of several that form vertical stripes, with the Central, Sacramento, Salinas, and Napa valleys in between.  The San Francisco Bay can be seen as another such valley in a way, with shallows bounded by high hills running north-south.

The exception to the “north-south rule” can be found south of the San Gabrial mountains and into the desert.  From Los Angeles and San Diego, one can easily travel east-west to the desert towns and to the Arizona border on I-10 and I-8, with a network of other east-west freeways in between.  It is definitely a different experience traveling down there once one gets over the Grapevine or the Tehachapi Pass and into the southern realms.  As for the rest of the state, there is no escaping the geographic reality, so it is best to embrace it, and even enjoy it.

CatSynth Pic: DJ Pearl

Meet “DJ Pearl”, an adorable foster kitten who lives with Shadow and Brodie (whom we met a few weeks ago).  She even has the same affinity for playing the M-Audio Axiom keyboard as Shadow.  Submitted by Anne Corwin via our Facebook page.

Introducing Shadow’s tiny assistant, foster kitten DJ PEARL! She is ready to rock…and looking for her forever family!

Pearl seems so sweet and charming, and we suspect she will end up as a “foster fail” 😻

https://www.facebook.com/anne.corwin.7/videos/10156408542318618/