One of the biggest disappointments with my current life is that I simply don't have the time to see live music enough. Yes, I have a one year old, and I love to spend as much time with her as I can, but what really limits my abilities to see live music is that I work as an audio/visual technician evenings and weekends a lot..like five or six nights per week. So when I get the chance to see some cool music, I'm very grateful.
Last week, I went north to the Chapel
in the Good Shepherd Center to see a performer I've never met. I was
curious about this pianist that was going to perform two duo sets
with two different drummers. Steve Peters helped recruit two of
Seattle's best: Paul Kikuchi and Greg Campbell. I was there with less
than 30 other people for an evening of what turned out to be some of
the best live music I remember hearing.
Comparing Paul Kikuchi to Greg Campbell
is a complex task. If you want to have a solid and creative drummer,
you can't go wrong with either of them. If I had to compare them to
famous rock drummers, I'd say that Greg is like Neal Peart (Rush) and
Paul is like Stewart Copeland (The Police). However, I think Greg and
Paul are each more interesting drummers than these particular
counterparts.
Thollem McDonas is a traveling pianist
of spectacular talent. When asking him where he actually lives, his
response was simply “the road”. Thollem travels all over the
world performing improvised music to a great variety of audiences.
This brings a fantastic amount of imagery to my mind when thinking of
a traveling experimental pianist. Thollem is not playing Rachmaninov
with symphony orchestras, and I assume he doesn't do too many piano
recitals of Brahms and Chopin. Rather, I imagine he is performing in
bars, clubs, underground venues, etc. Because he's a pianist, he's
very much at the mercy of the instrument that is available to him (I
once had to play on a pretty crappy upright piano in Heek, Germany
because it was all the particular bar had). Luckily, when he performs
at the Chapel here, he has a very nice grand piano available. He did
make a little joke before the second half that when he's playing with
an electronic keyboard, he will often buy one off Craigslist when he
comes into a new city and then sell it there the day after the gig.
This was shocking, but I found out afterwards that this was slightly
in jest.
The first set of this show was acoustic
piano with Paul Kikuchi on drum set. Strangely, Thollem reminded me
of two of my most inspiring mentors: Peter Gries and Mark Polishook.
Peter Gries was the head of the music department at CWU while I was
there, and he was also my piano teacher for a couple of quarters. The
way he approached the piano with finesse and relaxation through the
body has always been in my mind. The tone that is created from the
piano is unique this way, and it is a similar tone that Thollem
creates when he touches the keys. Mark Polishook was my first
composition teacher, and he happens to be an incredible jazz pianist.
Not many people are as creative of improvisers as Mark, who has a
really aggressive and dissonant approach, but Thollem has a very
similar improvisational voice. In this set, Thollem seemed to channel
the piano stylings of Liszt and Scriabin with a touch of flamenco.
Paul very eloquently accompanied with a mixture of keeping time and
hitting textural sonic accents. Listening to Paul play and watching
him make each percussive attack very deliberately makes me wonder if
drummers really enjoy playing time all night. It seems to me that
Paul relishes the opportunity to play melodically with a drum set
(and some other toys). Since the nature of free improvisation doesn't
always have a steady groove/pulse, it takes a completely different
style of drum technique to make an interesting performance. These two
fantastic players complimented each other very well. Even though this
was the first time they had met (Thollem walked over to introduce
himself to Paul after the first “tune”), it was one of the more
spectacular musical performances I remember seeing. One particularly
exciting highlight for me was when Thollem played inside the piano.
He has developed a technique of touching the strings in just the
right spot to create cool harmonics, and he can alternate plucking
the strings and striking the keys to create some really nice timbrel
material. After the show, he mentioned that the inside playing
reached a new level that he was excited about.
The second set was electronic, and
Thollem played a Rhodes keyboard. This particular keyboard was a
digital Rhodes, but it was designed by Harold Rhodes
himself...presumably to be modeled after the analog instruments of
his earlier design. The keyboard was then being run through a series
of effects pedals before being fed to the PA system. As is often the
case with electronic music, there were some technical problems from
the beginning. Thollem didn't seem to have enough volume in his
monitor, and somewhere in his chain the signal was just not sending
enough sound. For a good portion of the beginning of the set, the
technical issues were somewhat distracting. During this time, Greg
Campbell was playing a series of bowls and other resonating objects.
Greg has a calm and cool demeanor and an ability to keep everyone
interested in the sound he's generating while Steve Peters helped
troubleshoot Thollem's setup. Eventually, Thollem was up and running
and playing great music. For this set, Thollem played less
traditional piano-type material and more spastic avant-garde lines.
With the electric keyboard, he used a lot more silence, and a much
more pointillistic approach with dissonant chords and non-linear
playing. I have to admit that even though the Rhodes has a great
sound, as soon as it's played, I'm transported to an underground club
in the 60's or 70's. It's such a distinct sound that's quickly
associated with specific music from a specific era. This set actually
brought to my mind scenes from the movie, The Warriors.
The soundtrack to that movie has a lot of electronic keyboard
sounds....even though I haven't watched the movie for a long time, my
memory of the soundtrack is electronic keyboard that sometimes
grooves and sometimes doesn't. I don't remember so much dissonance in
the movie, but the overall sound Thollem had was familiar. Even
though there were many different effects pedals, I found that there
was not a lot of sonic variety in this set. Even though there is more
capability when using electronics, I think the acoustic piano had
more timbrel variety. I do have a bit of an aversion to the use of
effects pedals. I would personally like to see Thollem route the
electric keyboard into a computer and use Supercollider to process
the sound. This to me always sounds more modern and interesting.
However, even with these limitations, Thollem and Greg played a
fantastic set.
Once again, I'm
floored by the artistry available for us to consume in this city.
Visiting musicians come and have great venues in which to perform,
local musicians are world-class, and our community is growing with
more and more supporters. It's an exciting time to be a musician!
