You only live once....

...or do you?

Well, you only live this life once.

So, when the stars aligned to produce a low airfare, an impulsive state of mind, and a temporary lapse of judgment in regards to my own physical and mental sanity, I jumped on a plane for NYC Friday morning to catch the end of Vision Festival and run around the city for a few days.

I made it to Friday and Sunday, using Saturday to fulfill the inevitable deluge of familial and friendly obligations I take upon myself whenever I step foot in Manhattan (and Brooklyn these days, for that matter).

I can offer a different perspective on Friday from Mr. Olewnick for your comparison pleasure. There's also some interesting discussion on the Vision Festival going on over at DJA's blog (more on that later). Obviously I went in with a decided lack of skepticism, considering the fact that I chose to fly across the country to catch some shows.

I missed the violin tribute to Leroy Jenkins due to some slow food service and an underestimation on my part on how long it would take to get down to the Lower East Side.

Soon after I walked in, Roy Campbell's Ahkenaten Suite began, featuring Mr. Campbell, Billy Bang, Bryan Carrott, Hilliard Greene, and Zen Matsuura. The suite consisted of maybe 4-5 songs, all of them carefully composed. I thought the playing by the individuals was solid if not superlative, but the writing was excellent and I hope he develops the music further and hopefully records it as well. I love the vibraphone so its inclusion in any band increases my sonic enjoyment factor, and it was a great set to kick off my Vision Festival experience.

I was happily surprised to see that Matthew Shipp's solo set was next, since it had originally been scheduled for after the Leroy Jenkins tribute, so I had thought I'd missed it. It was definitely a highlight of the weekend, and it made me regret not seeing him solo when he was in Chicago sometime last year. It was a really engrossing set, and it was interesting to watch the crowd slowly get pulled in, as the background chatter ceased and he wrapped the audience around his twirling fingers. For me, he struck a fantastic balance between density and space, retaining a sense of playfulness and relaxation that shone through the music. A real gem of a set.

Next up was Patricia Nicholson's set of a dance/art installation, with accompaniment by the members of the William Parker Quartet, all individually and then as a group. It started out with each member of the band accompanying a dancer independently, in different locations within the venue - Rob Brown, Flip Barnes, William Parker, and Hamid Drake sequentially, each with an individual dancer.

While the addition of dance to improvised music has never been something that has added much to my experience, it's certainly never taken much away from it, and I don't understand the backlash against its incorporation into events like this from some people. I find it amazing that fans of such a marginalized music could put down an almost certainly marginalized form of dance. My biggest obstacle is probably that I listen with my eyes closed 90% of the time. I also have a harder time not ascribing meaning and intent to dance, constructing plot mentally, whereas I'm content to leave the music in the realm of abstraction.

In any case, I found the set to be enjoyable musically, and I remain open to the possibility that dance will enhance my concert going experience at some point in the future. I find it fascinating that dance and music are considered such separate entities in our society, especially in the art music realm, whereas in many other cultures around the world the two are inseparable. It's something I think about.

Next up was the Fred Anderson Trio, featuring Harrison Bankhead on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. It was truly a pleasure to see Fred in front of an out of town audience since I see him in Chicago so often, and to see how much other people enjoyed his music. It was really an incredible set: it started off with Fred playing a capella, with Harrison Bankhead and Hamid Drake joining in when Fred gave them the signal to do so. After playing as a group, and then featuring solos by Bankhead and Drake and then a full group improvisation again, the first song was basically the entire set, around an hour. It was a tour de force of improvisational music, with each musician putting on a veritable clinic on their respective instruments. The audience was really into it, and the set flew by considering how long it was, and they got a standing ovation.

They closed with Hamid Drake on frame drum, doing his chanting with Harrison Bankhead strumming chords on his bass. They play this song regularly as a trio now and I always find it soothing and enjoyable.

In contrast to Mr. Olewnick who found it lackluster compared to a previous Fred Anderson/Harrison Bankhead duo he'd seen (which is now available from Ayler Records, a great disc), I thought the set was fantastic. For what it's worth, Fred is 78, and for my money plays with an incredible intensity and force that requires no apologies regardless of his age. In terms of Mr. Olewnick's assertion that "...Drake was playing insensitively a lot of the time, often trampling over the other two," I have to disagree. Maybe it's my familiarity with the group, but Drake's propulsive and sometimes over the top style is how they function. He's the driving force, and while Fred is certainly featured, it's not a typical horn front man situation, and Fred has  said many times that Hamid Drake's rhythmic style is what feeds his playing.

While I stayed for Myra Melford's set, I unfortunately don't have much to say about it. I was suffering from physical fatigue from traveling that morning and from listening fatigue after some great music. That's the only unfortunate part of the Vision Fest format for me: music overload, which I had definitely reached by this point in the night. Myra was playing wonderfully though, and a lot of the audience enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to seeing her in Millennium Park this summer with Nicole Mitchell here in Chicago.

To briefly address some of the discussion going on over at DJA's Secret Society, part of the issue for me gets back to the role of so-called critics, pundits, and writers. I'm less interested in opinions than I am in descriptions of the music: how it made you feel, how it sounded, etc. Mr. Olewnick's review tells me more about his own personal taste and prejudices than it does about the music made. Is it the role of a critic to dictate what a musician should or should not do? Is a critic more qualified to determine how a musician should interact or play in a band than the musicians themselves? Of course it's okay not to enjoy something, and to enjoy one thing more than another. But to make essential value judgments about musicians, their intent, and how they go about their art, to me is distasteful.

Perhaps I'm not into what most people would traditionally call 'artistic criticism.' I'm more concerned with finding some beauty and trying to share it with others, to shine a light in a corner where some others might not look. I'm more interested in watering seeds than trampling grass, attempting to reflect the beauty that I find in the music and write something inspired that might elevate rather than denigrate.

More on this topic, and a review of Sunday's shows later....