My First Blog

Wow!
What a whirlwind beginning to 2010. This is the first blog and I hope that you continue to check in.

Great things are happening. The Los Angeles Flute Orchestra will be playing Saturday, Aug. 14, 7pm before the major concert at the National Flute Association's convention in Anaheim. Also at the convention, on Fri. the 13th, I'll be conducting a flute choir reading session.

The LA Collective has met twice with great success, brain stretching & fun.
Yesterday, April 11 the artists that attended were musicians: Jeff Swartz bass, Laura Osborn flute & banjo, Oz stick, Stephen "Breeze" Smith drum set/percussion, Scott Heustis electric guitar, Bruce Friedman trumpet, Charlie Lowrey hand percussion, with dancer Cheryl Banks-Smith.

The first free jam was beautiful. We could have just playing. However, I had an hour of exercises where we played with time--creating one sound between all of us; randomly attacking quick notes right after someone else; dividing up time into 2 or 3 & picking one subdivision of a bar of 3. We all felt that when we were "thinking" so much we couldn't connect harmonically or energetically with each other. My attempt was to have some strict parameters on intellectual exercises to push our "tools" so that when we go into a free improv. situation we will be able to go to deeper more complex places.

One of the most exciting things for me was Cheryl's dance moves being treated as if it were a sound. One of the least successful things was everyone having their own 2 or 3 subdivision. There was no "grooviness" and it was too loud & muddled. A common pulse was not established.

Next session (April 25) we will have exercises all based around picking up on cues from other players. This is an exciting project, because there are 18 sessions so we don't have to do everything each time. We can actually focus on one aspect of improvising, and push our limits. We can find out what may work, what doesn't and grow beyond our natural inclinations. No soundbytes here! The collective is open to all artists: musicians, dancers, actors, visual, writers...