06/18/2024
The performance on Sunday with The Forest, Warren Smith, and JD Parran went so well, was so beautiful, and was so deeply satisfying. It had a lot of facets.
The vibe of a solid group of people, an audience, in high spirits and so happy to be there together, many willing to get themselves to the Bronx from far away (one group came from Middletown, Connecticut) was off the hook and provided a magic carpet for us musicians to play with. It was so cool to play Warren's percussion compositions with him in the audience for the first time.
Warren and JD's opening duo set a beautiful tone and everything flowed from there. A river of playful fire.
I first heard the two of them playing in James Jabbo Ware's Me, We, and Them big band, probably in 1983 or '84 when Bill Lowe took us (his Wesleyan students) to Cobi Narita's UJC loft on Great Jones St. About 20 years later I remember hearing them play as a duo at a little cafe in the LES. This was shortly after I moved to New York, 20+ years ago and I was struck that with all of their experience and accomplishments--playing with AACM & BAG & Sam Rivers & Anthony Davis' Episteme, and on an on (which is how I know them) as well as with the ilk of Aretha, Stevie, Barbara Streisand, John Lennon, Dylan, Janis Joplin--with all that, duo improvisation in a little cafe was what they were choosing to do. The allure of music is powerful.
And this week, at 90 Warren's energy and curiosity for music and all things percussion is a marvel to behear and behold. His duo with Leah Bowden was so sweet. Leah was prepared to play this 12 minute, through composed drum set solo piece "A Composers Conversation" (possibly a world premiere)--no small task!--but Warren was feeling the spirit and they decided Leah would still do the piece as written but Warren would improvise and have the run of the timpani, marimba, gongs, etc. (they were all his instruments anyway). It unfolded magnificently.
I won't give a blow by blow of the whole concert, just that it grew from there and got better I think with every step all the way through an encore. And the Forest and Warren project is going to have another chapter since Warren and the Forest will be in the midwest in midOctober (I can't give details yet).
It was a performance that seemed to exist on another plane--we all went somewhere special.
I felt very fulfilled by the end. I guess this was a marker, a culmination of having conceived (with some encouragement) of The Forest in 2021 and having the personalities and group chemistry and everything come together from jump and stay so good over the course of a couple tours, two recordings (we're well into another project that I'll be writing about), writing a grant for that earlier activity, and writing another one for this performance, and now having a recording out. And one review (finally)! In retrospect I had been cooking this one for a while. There's been a lot of background work.
The night before the performance Leah and I were resolving various logistics complications very well and then I was up until past 3:30 writing a program, writing one last email, printing stuff out, packing my instruments, making sure I didn't miss any details, etc. I woke up less than 2 hours later, 5:30 am wide awake, clearly not going back to sleep. That was a bit disconcerting but as I anticipated I maintained my energy all morning and afternoon through the concert--doing the last details, driving up to the Bronx, setting up, performing. I finally got sleepy on the drive home, then slept for about 12 hours.
I realized I had experienced a positive manifestation of the phenomenon known as "performance anxiety." Performance anxiety has never been a problem for me, but I know some people experience intense stuff before they go on stage, and I respect that. But for me it's not that way. At the first jazz performance I ever went to when I was 14 or 15 I saw the bandleader, Julian Priester, look calm, at home, and not worried in the least about externalities, but just doing something so natural and deep. It wasn't like performing, it was being.
I know of course about jitters, nervousness, or intense fear, dread, throwing up, and other manifestations of anxiety. But I woke up with a sense of relief and excitement. So I'm going to start to think of the spectrum of emotional approaches to performing as performance energy.
Unfortunately the thing I didn't have energy or mental space to do was the externalities--taking photos, doing selfies with folks in the room. And it would have been great to collect testimonies in the heat of the moment from elated audience members. None of that. I'm a little envious of those who did that stuff. We did get some video though.
But all n' all it is very fulfilling to be able to channel a lot of forces--some that I helped start and many that came from the other musicians and the community--and make this several hours of transcendence happen.
