Monday, November 9, 2009
Week of Magic
Wednesday 11/11
Roulette
20 Greene Street
Tilt Brass and Sixtet
8:30 pm
I'll be performing with the Sixtet, lovely music including a brand new one from Anthony Coleman.
The Brass Group will be performing my piece "There Was This Shadow This Double" which they premiered a couple of years ago. It is dedicated to a great friend of many of ours that we lost about that time, Take Toriyama.
Thursday 11/12
THE SCHOOLHOUSE
330 Ellery St. #3 Brooklyn, NY 11206
Directions:
JMZ to Flushing Avenue. Continue east on Broadway for several blocks. Take a left onto Ellery Street. The Schoolhouse is the second building on the right. Call 718 710 3095 to enter the building (buzzer does not work.)
Heave and Shudder (Audrey Chen/Nate Wooley)
show starts at 8:30 pm, we go on at 9:45
I haven't played with Audrey in a long time, so it should be a great time. Also on the evening is a great duo with Amsterdam badass Seamus Cater, also Andrew Lafkas and Bryan Eubanks which is always great. Should be a really nice night.
Friday 11/13
Flushnik Studios
698 Flushing Avenue #1B
An Evening of Solos
8 pm
I haven't played a solo set in about a year after working on a solo LP that has kind of sucked my soul dry. Well, it's time to get back on the horse, so this will be my first in a while. Adding to the pressure will be a solo set by Josh Sinton (all new stuff!) and the great unsung Oregon trumpet player/composer Doug Detrick. At the very least, 2/3 of this evening should be great, and let's hope for 3/3.
Sunday 11/15
Douglass Street Collective
295 Douglass Street
Crackleknob! (mit Mary Halvorson and Reuben Radding)
8 pm
Man, I love crackleknob, so I'm very excited to do this show. Also, that evening will be a duo of Tom Blancarte/Brian Osborne, and yet another chance to see Mr. Sinton.
good times, oh, and remember that 7 storey mountain with David Grubbs and Paul Lytton is out now. There was a nice review in the ol' AAJ this month, along with good times about the sleeper hit of the year, Transit "Quadrologues" on Clean Feed. Christmas is coming up!
love,
Nate
Monday, October 26, 2009
Seven Storey Mountain Dropped.......
Ain't nothing like a little capitalism to stir the warm glow of the heart.
Nate Wooley/David Grubbs/Paul Lytton
Seven Storey Mountain
on Important Records with artwork by the Wyvern!
out now.
grip a copy.....it will darn your socks......it will make you tea when you are sick......it is the perfect, most sensitive lover.......it listens.........it doesn't judge you......it will drive late at night when you are sleepy.....it picks up the tab.......
And, on top of it as usual, Massimo Ricci has written the first review:
Nate Wooley / David Grubbs / Paul Lytton
SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN
Important
Originally commissioned for Dave Douglas' FONT Festival in New York and based on the namesake book by Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain is a record whose layers, superimposed and stretched, disclose an underworld of unexpected revelations while also fulfilling Nate Wooley's intention of making "a piece that had a certain feel of the ecstatic to it". This is the first of what Wooley has planned as a seven-part project using this instrumentation, namely a trio plus taped sources (on this occasion an air conditioner, a piano and mostly unintelligible voices); yet it's anybody's guess if it will reach completion, given these artists' exceedingly busy schedule. What's truly impressive here is how "composed" this 38-minute performance sounds, despite the virtual nonexistence of rehearsals prior to the trio's debut performance, except for the soundcheck. The musicians worked with a few sketchy directives concerning Lytton's percussive drive (when applicable) and Grubbs' droning harmonium, but basically the music is a simple arc structure. It begins in extreme calm, as low vibrating hums emerge from bushes of humid whispers; movement gradually increases in the central section, first with sparse notes, delirious mutterings and sinister noises, then with Lytton swinging furiously over Grubbs' static chords, while Wooley brings a touch of madness to the situation, roughening the textures with his gargling hoarseness and abraded clumsiness. The finale brings everything back to (still charged) peace, giving us a chance to cauterize any bleeding wound with a relatively balmy ending. What about the aforementioned ecstasy? Not sure that my immediate desire to repeat the listening experience to better focus on the murkiest particulars qualifies as such, but what I do know is that any release which raises more doubts than it offers certainties is music to my ears.–MR
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Worst Post Ever
here are some gigs.
nuts.
Tonight
Vox Populi
319 N. 11th Street
(3rd Floor)
Philadelphia, PA
Phantom Limb and Wooley
(Jaime Fennelly, Chris Forsyth)
plus
Sharks With Wings
Sanguine Vessel
8 pm
Thursday
Monkeytown
58 N. 3rd Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Phantom Limb and Wooley
8 pm
(make a reservation.....make Monty happy)
Saturday and Sunday
Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street
Manhattan
Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day
(Matt Bauder, Chris Dingman, Eivind Opsvik)
8:30 and 10 pm
(show up, make us all happy)
thanks
Monday, October 12, 2009
EVAN PARKER!!!!!!
Why have I been having this dream? It might be because I'm more than a little nervous (and ultimately super excited) about this:
TOMORROW!!!!
EVAN PARKER/CHRIS CORSANO/NATE WOOLEY
10 PM
THE STONE
2ND AND AVE C
10.00
Both Evan and Chris have spent a looooooooooot of time in my stereo over the past 5 years and have had a lot to do with my playing whether they know it or not, so I am really excited to be a part of this show. I mean, what can you say about them? I don't know. You tell me. Maybe after the show. That'd be great.
Also, I'll be travelling to Winnipeg this week for the send and receive festival. I'm closing out the festival this year with a nice set of solos/duos/trios with Canadian percussionist Jeffrey Allport and Japanese vocalist Ami Yoshida, so if you feel like a roadtrip.............
http://www.sendandreceive.org/
thanks!
Nate
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
15th Floor
Two very tall, and from what I can gather from my limited German, very very sexually liberated young German women, and a small troll of a man who always is muttering at the elevator control panel. I am fairly certain this man will kill me using only a pocket knife and coffee stirrer if I am left alone in the elevator with him.
The 15th floor of my office building also smells strongly of donuts.
That's all.....no quips, no insights, no flowery language, I just want to know what the fuck they are doing down there.
Oh, and I have a gig tonight:
Admission: $15
Harvestworks & DTW members, Students, Under 30s & Seniors: $10
Roulette members : FREE
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Crackleknob Review from Massimo Ricci!!!!!
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
MARY HALVORSON / REUBEN RADDING / NATE WOOLEY – Crackleknob
Can impavid fighters against remunerative compromise sound so intelligibly sweet while improvising, to the point of having us wondering where the score is? Does artistic significance automatically imply inhospitable counterpoint? Is procedural sharpness a necessary negation of the magnification of conterminous instrumental details?
Crackleknob is a fully grown, moderately aerated recording combining brilliantly unique representatives of the modern jazz/free music scene gathered under the umbrella of respect, both reciprocal and for the audience. Mary Halvorson’s rational approach to the fingerboard is nirvana for those, like yours truly, who are tired of listening to trite versions of standards and/or incoherent finger-babbling aptly described as “spontaneous abandonment of technique” to hunt hypothetical liberties, a smart translation for “absence of ideas”. Reuben Radding is a lyrically composite bassist, his timbre a balanced mixture of demulcent harmonics, visionary abstractions and immediate mutability, cogent insertions permanently at the service of a pre-established cooperative cleverness. Nate Wooley is still able to extract drops of vital juice from the ghosts of famous men with the horn to transform those essences in invigorating fumes of timbral disintegration and not-exactly-diplomatic excrescences, halfway through a caustically refined helpmate and a coroner analyzing the corpse of a hermaphrodite variety of jazz.
“Quavering Voices Of The Mutilated” is the ultimate explanation of what these people do together: as Halvorson seams obstinately angular patterns and logically articulated spikes of anti-melodic percussiveness tinged by her strings’ nudity, at times deciding to dish up the companions with solitary chordal shards and Fripp-ish dissonant arpeggios, Radding punctuates the interplay with a considerable degree of ascendancy on the trio’s essential sonority, appearing as a man who has finally decided to settle for a somewhat regular way of life after having tasted the assorted facets of sonic intemperance, Wooley observing, taking notes and – often unexpectedly – coming out with cloudy lines that might occasionally manifest anomalously, yet maintain that quid of prosperousness guaranteeing auditory fulfilment even to the less expert recipient. “Caldwell, 1925” is a remarkable pictogram of how delicately acoustic this collaboration reveals itself to be, Wooley placing stripes of lament adjacent to Halvorson's clean-sounding whirlwinds, Radding choosing the right strokes to collate the parts in a total unity, potential breakup tendencies absorbed by a wonderfully emotional, only apparent fragility that - on the contrary - defines once and for all the genuine soul of this human combination, which indeed inhabits a superior responsiveness.
Explains the trumpeter: “In general, we work at making the cleanest, most elegantly simple piece of music that we can”. But it’s not stylishness or minimalism we’re dealing with. Crackleknob is one of those albums where skilled ears notice the presence of something much deeper, the sense of almost supernatural intuition that distinguishes a masterpiece from a mere “good job”. A record that hopefully won’t remain covered by the soil of ignorance, shining bright amidst the diverse intriguing challenges that these musicians have tackled in their respective careers to date. Let’s use the word: a classic.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Hello New York,
can I get anyone something to drink?
no, huh....none of you?
okay, well, let's get started then. First of all thanks for coming on short notice. I appreciate that all 8 million of you could get the morning off of work.
The reason I asked you all here to my office is...oh, excuse me, young man, can you give up your chair to that pregnant lady? yes, you....thanks, I appreciate it. Anyway, as I was saying, the reason I brought you all here is because it is that time of year again, summer....deeeeeeeep summer and I thought maybe you could use a pep talk.
Listen, I'm right there with you, summer sucks, it's hot and humid and everything smells like pine forest urine and no one looks good because they are all sweaty and grimy and it is so muggy that your new skort doesn't fit right and you can't find a mr. softee when you want one and you start wondering where the guy pees in there and now there is no way you could ever eat that ice cream......okay, so yes, I get it.
But, I've been noticing that a lot of your frustration is being taken out on some very innocent bystanders, tourists. Yes, it's easy, and yes, they can be annoying, but there is something I thought it might be good to bring to your attention.....with very few exceptions none of you are from New York!!!!! All I'm proposing is that once a day until the first day of coat wearing (probably about Sept. 15th or so) you make a concerted effort to show just a little bit of empathy. Maybe take a moment to remember that you are from Oregon or Nebraska or California or Japan or wherever and well, if you were just here for a week and saw the Wall Street bull for the first time, yes...you would want a picture of yourself next to his giant brass testicles too....and then you would want a pic of your grandma next to the giant testes and then your sister and her kids.....New York is full of family wonder like this and we have an obligation to let the people of this great Earth take advantage of it. You would want the same if you were taking a stroll through Ellis, Kansas for the first time, wouldn't you? Yes, you would. You would want to take it all in without a bunch of douchy, sweaty locals rolling their eyes at you or throwing their hands up in disgust. I know it is hard, but I am asking just for one time a day, the rest of the time, douche away to your hearts content, it's part of what makes NY so great (?). I think the change would be palpable. Oh, and if you are actually FROM New York, once every other day, you deserve it.
And just to show you that I"m not a tyrant, I've prepared a magical festival of brother and sisterhood for your listening pleasure. It stretches through next week, so please pay attention.
Starting Thursday!!!!!
Douglass Street Music Collective
8/20/2009 8:00 PM at Two is the Loneliest Number
295 Douglass, Brooklyn, 11217
Cost: $10 suggested donation
Now, on the weekend, I'll be out of town at my sister-in-law's wedding, so we are going to have to be on an honor system, can we do that....excuse me?...one more time and louder...thank you, I knew we could.
Tuesday
The Stone
Ave C and 2nd street
10 pm
In Medias Res
Tyshawn Sorey (drums, composition) Nate Wooley (trumpet) Steve Ruel (woodwinds) Terrence McManus (guitar) Christopher Tordini (bass)
A concert-length composition composed during the spring of 2009. This will be the first and only performance of this composition for the year.
Wednesday
Roulette
20 Greene Street
8 pm
Sparks Orchestra Slays Again!
Peter Evans, Tom Blancarte, Okkyung Lee, Brandon Seabrook, Dan Blake, Sylvie Courvoisier, Dan Peck, Nate Wooley create buckets of delicious blood.
Thursday
Tea Lounge
9 pm
too lazy to look up the address for the millionth time...you know where it is.
Scram
Stephen Gauci, Isabel Pupo-Walker, Tom Armstrong, Tim Lefebvre, Nate Wooley Latin experimental magic carpet ride?
take Friday off, see your family, then let's finish it up with a nice picnic!
Saturday, August 29, 2009, 4pm
Music for an IMAGINARY BAND
on Roosevelt Island www.rooseveltlive.com
Presented by Generate Records, celebrating its 10th anniversary with an afternoon of performances, and new recording release!
Music for an IMAGINARY BAND is a (real) 7-piece group led by Gordon Beeferman and comprised of some of New York's most uniquely creative musicians. The band straddles the fertile and still not-totally-charted territory where classical 'new-music,' jazz and free improvisation intersect. Beeferman's compositions range from the gnarly to the operatic, and are both incredibly detailed and very free; the band's intensive improvisational explorations are tethered to highly structured frameworks.
Gordon Beeferman - piano & compositions
Nate Wooley - trumpet; Matt Bauder, Evan Rapport, Josh Sinton - saxophones; Brad Kemp - bass; Alex Lambert- drums
Hey everyone, thanks a lot for hanging in there for the whole talk. I"ll let you guys go now, but I've told all your bosses that you wouldn't be back until noon, so take an hour and have a nice lunch. Oh, and there are cookies on the way out.....