Improv Night @ The Stone 11/21/08

I went to the 1st set. I knew it was going to be heavy on the electronics, and that I might not be that into it. Still, I was interested to see people I never heard of.

It started at maybe 8:05ish. Okkyung Lee asked Mattin who he wanted to play with besides her for the 1st piece. He decided to go with Carlos Giffoni because he's familiar with him. I found I had trouble appreciating Mattin's electronics. I think its just something I'm not ready for yet. Carlos was a little more to my liking, but the laptop was a little too intrusive for me. It reminded me of something going wrong with the tv and having to turn it off because the foreign sounds are too intrusive. The piece did get more enjoyable for me a little later. I enjoyed Okkyung throughout the piece.

Next was a trumpet duo with Nate Wooley and Thomas Heberer. That was awesome. I'm interested in the difference in their trumpets and whether Thomas had an extra valve. I now see he was playing a quarter tone trumpet. Nate was playing a regular trumpet, so I could get an idea of the differences. Of course, they both play them in unique and atypical ways, so I just got a little flavor of the differences. I think Nate had a different trumpet for the grand finale,and it looked more like the quarter tone trumpet, but I'm not sure.

I loved the next one. I think it was all-Jewish because Zorn made Cyro come up because he had a qualifying nose. It might have been all the Jewish musicians up there and the music had a Jewish flair. Brian Chase was on drums and Shanir Blumenkranz was on bass. There was also a male vocalist. This one was especially great and probably the shortest.

Then came the 2 trumpets, Chase on drums, and Carlos. I liked that. It gave me a chance to distinguish between Carlos and the Mattin from the 1st piece. The drummer also started playing electonics in the middle of the piece. He abandoned the kit after that.

The pieces were longer than last week, and they started a few minutes late. Therefore, it was time for the grand finale already. Everyone except the vocalist for 10 minutes. That was awesome and took a different route than the earlier electronic pieces. Cyro, Shanir, and Zorn made it work better. I think I just needed more instruments than in the 1st piece.

It was fun and different. I'm probably a babystep closer to appreciating the electronics more in the future.