Rova Scope #6
Bruce Ackley "From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Danny Kaye Meets the Interval Machine" & Garden of Memory
From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Danny Kaye Meets the Interval Machine from arcana IX (https://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=B011)
It is impossible to predict which early childhood events will turn out to be life-altering, particularly for artists who truck with invisible ephemera. Seemingly banal experiences can surprisingly open pathways to the profound. I mean, how could my decades-long life in music have been ignited by Danny Kaye’s The Little Fiddle? And how did singing Palestrina lead me to Steve Lacy and to Rova?
Although I can’t pinpoint exactly when Kaye’s tomfoolery entered my life, or how his 78 found its way into our household, The Little Fiddle was in heavy rotation on our family console hi-fi before I was five. Released the year I was born, Kaye’s madcap mini-drama filled me with absolute glee. I memorized the sung scenes he created to imitate the instruments of the orchestra, and parroted his every vocal escapade. To the dismay of my older sister, Kaye’s insane fiddlesticks had me tearing around our house for years, making whatever sounds I could tease out of my voice. Almost 70 years later, Kaye’s genius still resonates in my head, and my frenzied vocalizing now dances on the bell of my soprano saxophone.
My eventual gravitation to the straight horn was certainly presaged by my love for singing soprano as a boy in choir and in school. Seeming to prefigure the musical direction I would later take, my father had sung in a male vocal sextet in the 1930s—six voices, no rhythm section. He and I sang in the choir together, my dad a bass/baritone, and me a soprano before adolescence descended to lower my voice. I loved to soar, singing the highest lines of that early music in Latin, the inevitable loss of the high register affecting me profoundly. But, those experiences singing 16th century part-music, particularly in Palestrina’s complex style, ultimately kindled in me a desire to play in wind ensembles.
Contemporaneously, my 6th grade teacher led us in singing the songs from The Sound of Music, which included the iconic “My Favorite Things.” And she invited my classmate Billy Beaver to do a show-and-tell for us on alto sax. Seeing and hearing the saxophone in action made a deep impression on me—Billy even wore puss print pants for his solo show. But, I couldn’t even imagine myself playing. Yet.
My parents often listened to jazz records at home—Billie, Duke, Ella and others, and it was around this time that I discovered my dad’s old 78s—mostly 1920s Chicago jazz and boogie-woogie piano. Throughout that following summer when I was 11, my pal Eddie and I would play chess, listening to “Darktown Strutter’s Ball”, “Indiana”, “Crazeology”, and “Maple Leaf Rag”. Eddie played trumpet and ecstatically heralded every solo, but I was already listening for the saxophone, influenced by our classmate’s horn playing.
Fast forward to 1963. In the summers of my high school years I worked picking corn for a professorial and crotchety farmer, Old Man Bailey. He raised hybrid produce to sell to suburbanites in the rural outskirts of Detroit, employing local teenagers for a dollar an hour to do the labor. It was during that summer, riding in the tractor’s flatbed after the day’s harvest, I learned a co-worker a few years my senior dug jazz. And of course, I announced that I too was into jazz—a vague and unformed notion to me at that point.
I eagerly accepted my corn-picking jazz buddy’s invitation to his parents’ place to check out some sides. We listened for hours, but I can only remember hearing Les McCann’s funky Plays the Shampoo, and the record that changed everything for me—Coltrane’s My Favorite Things. I was mesmerized looking at the straight horn Trane holds on that iconic blue cover. I remember wondering if it was an oboe, and was promptly informed he was playing a soprano saxophone. The title track resonated deeply with me, having sung it endlessly in class. Thanks to that afternoon’s session, Coltrane’s music and the soprano would become life-long obsessions. Yet, it wouldn’t be until I was 22 that I got my first horn.
My passion for music continued to deepen, yet I opted to study painting and photography in college. Through mutual friends I got to know Tom Braund, an iconoclastic painter-educator who taught high school art and music and had access to instruments. Although I was focused on getting a soprano, he kindly offered to provide me a 1920s era Buescher C melody saxophone (pitched a major second above the tenor) to get me started. Tom referred to the horn as the silver bullet, and told me, “Go play that thing for a month and then come back and let’s jam”, which of course I did.
After buying my first soprano, a Couf Superba II, Tom and I, along with an assortment of musicians, played several nights a week—everything freely improvised. Living in a repurposed dentist’s office above a noisy laundromat, I was able to practice daily without distraction. When Tom played me Sidney Bechet’s “Summertime” recording, another world opened up. Bechet’s thick and storied sound washed over me, an approach with the horn so distinct from Trane’s almost cubistic-lined soprano. And soon, Wayne Shorter’s lush and pastoral playing, so much a part of Miles’ evolving music, was also on my radar. I began to sense there were other practitioners out there I would find equally intriguing, as I continued to diligently pursue my craft.
Important to me among the many ideas forming then, were two primary tenets learned in my time as a visual artist: the importance of the discipline of daily practice; and the concept that a creative work must be made with authenticity, be self-referential, and come with its own inherent laws. I departed Detroit, fortified with these seminal improvising experiences and percolating ideals about creativity.
I hitchhiked across the country during the summer of 1971, traveling alone with minimal clothing, a few books and my horn, arriving in San Francisco at journey’s end. The following few years were characterized by deep turmoil. I was held at knife point and had my horn stolen soon after arriving. Although this wrenching violation was both frightening and heartbreaking, I remained undeterred. I soon acquired a beautiful Selmer tenor that I traded for a less coveted, but soulful sounding, vintage soprano. The person on the other end of that bargain was quite happy to get away with such a sought after tenor, but I was psyched to have the soprano back in my life. That late ‘20s King was my instrument for the next five years.
It was then that I first read about Steve Lacy and heard him on Cecil Taylor’s version of “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.” Issued on Taylor’s 1961 New York City R&B album, Lacy was allotted a brief solo, and you can pick his soprano out of the ensemble cadenza at the end of the track, spiraling high above the clouds. Those singular moments captured on the Taylor LP grabbed me and Lacy’s contribution hasn’t let go nearly five decades later. Hearing his mastery of the high horn, while working to develop my own soprano sound, left me spellbound.
In the early ‘70s the great jazz re-issue project was yet to be launched, and Steve Lacy albums were scarce. Some older recordings were in circulation, and those in the know had a few, or had cassette tapes of them. But, by 1975 both new recordings and re-issued Lacy LPs were proliferating. Since I was concentrating exclusively on the straight horn, hearing each new record was like school for me and those in my circle. In fact, it was School Days, along with his record with Don Cherry, Evidence, where I was able to really focus on his concept. The tone, the range, the phrasing, the incredible swing and imagination! And his extended interview with Ron Welburn, published in the journal, The Grackle, in the fall of 1976, provided important context for this world of soprano magic Lacy was creating. Ideas expressed there matched what I was hearing come through his horn—his thought was consistent, original, and moving. I found his insistence on making connections between music and visual art, comedy, writing, theatre, poetics, wildlife, politics and daily life essential, and his remarkable dedication to the art of performance infinitely inspirational.
Friends and early Lacy acolytes I encountered were horn players Phillip Johnston, Leora Barish, Larry Ochs and John Zorn. What drew me, and I suspect the others, to Lacy’s music was his being unbounded by conventions of the celebrated jazz of the time. I found Steve’s music a doorway to traverse, an opening to new possibilities. Following that opening’s path led to points of departure, just as the study of Thelonious Monk’s entire canon had for Lacy.
Soprano player Barish and I made a commitment to daily practice sessions to see what we could create on two straight horns. We discussed the instrument, sound, composition, improvisation, and listened to and talked about Lacy. We explored alternatives to what had previously made sense, imagining more personal and less traditional rules for improvising, or no rules. Those sessions further crystalized my dedication to the straight horn, and illustrated the value of consistent and concentrated effort.
It was in 1975 that the poet and playwright Ntozake Shange took me to hear Jon Raskin playing at the Yardbird, a bar on San Francisco’s Divisadero Street. That night he was smoking on soprano, and I was soon to learn what I heard at the Yardbird was only the tip of the iceberg. Jon and I connected, leading to the formation of the large ensemble Continuum. Members of that band soon opened the Blue Dolphin, a collectively run neighborhood performance space in the Castro district. Shows there included a range of local improvisers, as well as touring players, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Wadada Leo Smith, Eugene Chadbourne and others. With this and other venues emerging, new improvising groups were forming. The Dolphin became a hub for adventurous players and listeners, where a free exchange of ideas helped to initiate an important era in Bay Area improvised music.
Without a doubt my early singing experiences informed my desire to play in horns-only groups, like my first band in Detroit. And for three years in San Francisco I teamed up with Lewis Jordan on alto, and George Sams on trumpet, to form the Sound Clinic. That band developed an original repertoire that blended improvisation and composition in seamless and compelling ways. I was also having parallel discussions with Larry Ochs, whom I had already worked with for several years, about forming a saxophone quartet as a vehicle for creating composed works for improvisation.
When I was approached to put together a group to perform at an improvising music festival in late 1977, I immediately called on Larry and Jon with the saxophone quartet in mind, and of course both were on board. We discovered a kindred spirit in alto player Andrew Voigt and asked him to join us, with Raskin taking up the baritone, Ochs on tenor and me on soprano. Ten years later, with Rova firmly established, Steve Adams replaced Andrew to form the group’s present-day configuration.
That model of daily work applied to our nameless quartet during that formative period. We met each morning to rehearse at the Blue Dolphin to work through sketches, ideas, concepts, full blown compositions, and to improvise, explore and discuss. Those sessions established a foundation the quartet would build on over time, and led to our first recording dates in 1978.
In the saxophone quartet I once again assumed the high voice in the choir, the altissimo range of the horn especially attracting me. I had been fascinated with Lacy’s ability to take the horn to the stratosphere, and for several years I worked on the horn’s upper register. Hearing his composition “Moon,” on the solo LP Stalks, made me aware of what was possible—four full octaves, in tune, with deep rich tone. Extending the horn’s range was just one of the many ways the four of us were resisting the confines of traditional saxophone technique and the accepted conventions of jazz-based improvisation.
While the quartet commenced preliminary steps to becoming an active ensemble, I took on a new project with guitarist Eugene Chadbourne. Eugene had a long-standing dream of forming a two horn / two guitar quartet to be known as Twins. He and Zorn were both living in New York at the time, playing together incessantly. Eugene cooked up a plan for them to come to the west coast to meet up with guitarist Henry Kaiser and me, making Twins a reality. The concept was that we would rehearse, record and perform together for a month.
The work was challenging, and required a dramatic shift in how I approached improvising. With the exception of one by me, we concentrated on compositions by the New Yorkers. Zorn’s pieces were magnificent and complex, compelling us to deal on multiple strategic levels at once, while Chadbourne’s were more playful, almost slapstick, and had their own unique logic and rules of engagement. Performance required undistracted attention to every detail, and monster chops. I often felt in over my head, yet was utterly charged to be doing Twins.
That collaboration had a lasting impact on my outlook about music, improvisation, performance, and the value friendship and trust can bring to risk-taking projects. Our time together revealed a great deal that remains a part of my musical DNA, resonating for years after, and significantly influencing my eventual contributions to the saxophone quartet.
Always running in the background during Twins was our shared fascination with Steve Lacy’s music. Chadbourne had met Lacy in Canada and was taken with both his music and his persona. And John, Henry and I were avidly listening to everything we could find. Simultaneously, the saxophone quartet was also investigating and absorbing Lacy’s ideas—both for his improvisational creativity, and for his compositional inventiveness.
It is no surprise that the aesthetic direction of Rova was in part informed by our relationship with Lacy’s recordings. His soprano-driven output included pieces that influenced how we were hearing things, and also expanded considerations for organizing music as a group. Especially impressive were his ‘70s masterpieces: Solo Concert (recorded in Avignon in 1972), Saxophone Special, Lapis, Clangs, and Straws. From solo soprano, to sax quartet plus electronics, to percussion-horn duos, as well as recordings with different instrumentation on each track, the breadth and scope of these releases was without parallel in jazz. In 1982, at Lacy’s suggestion while hanging with him in Paris, Rova embarked on a project to create an album of his music, arranged by Rova. Favorite Street, released on the Italian Black Saint label in 1984, chronicles seven lesser-known pieces by the maestro, each prepared by Rova members with separate and unique concerns important to the arranger, intoning that precept of originality and authenticity. A lot of thinking, labor and love went into remaking each Lacy composition, and our engagement with this venture continues to affect our work decades later.
I have been especially enchanted with Lacy’s solo playing, which I witnessed live several times. Each experience demonstrated the power of his iconoclastic voice, and laid bare the mechanics of creating solo work—from the rigor of memorizing complex lines to the relaxed and committed posture that allowed him to deliver disciplined and carefully-honed improvisations, without the constraints or benefits of a supporting cast.
The isolated soprano echoed the solitude of my own practice and connected me to that boyhood passion for singing. With characteristic humor, while trading touring woes, Lacy shared a story of playing a concert for an audience of one. I asked him about the group. He said it was a solo concert. I wryly asked if he played two sets. “Of course”, he replied. His commitment to the work, regardless of the size of the audience, resonated with me: commercial concerns sidelined in favor of a dedicated desire to create and discover. For, even though a reliable and consistent audience can dictate the economics of the art, my life of music making largely operates independent of practicality.
My enduring investigations with the soprano—playing with Rova, alone, and with countless other artists—has brought me immense pleasure and feelings of awe, while still challenging me to the core. 50 years after first picking it up, the soprano saxophone engages me at the heart of this mysterious process of discovery, and enables me to broadcast findings to the world. As I offer deep bows of gratitude to Danny Kaye, Palestrina, Lacy, and Coltrane, I can exclaim that this interval machine, as Lacy referred to the soprano, continues to reveal endless delights.
--Bruce Ackley
November, 2019
San Francisco
Garden of Memory at the Chapel of the Chimes Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland.
Two members of Rova, Steve Adams and Jon Raskin, will be performing at the Garden of Memory at the Chapel of the Chimes this Wednesday June 21st from 5-9 p.m. Steve will be performing in an electronics duo with Gino Robair (who will be playing the alternating sets solo) in the Garden of Ages Room and Jon will be performing solo in the Quietude Room. (This event is sold out)
Adams & Robair will be performing two of Steve’s graphic scores, Unintended Consequences and The Backwards Deck. Unintended Consequences is a set of 28 pages created in 2008 in reaction to the Iraq War and the presidential election. Texts were selected from newspaper articles of war coverage that could be interpreted as instructions for improvisation (“purposeful engagement not witless engagement” or “like a monkey in a cage”) and incorporated into collages with painted elements. Several example pages are included below. The Backwards Deck is a deck of cards that have brief text and graphic elements, and the players respond when they are dealt a new card by another performer.
Unintended Consequences #5-3
Unintended Consequences #6-3
Unintended Consequences #7-3
Jon Raskin will be playing alto sax and jaw harps and will be taking the opportunity of performing in a columbarium to play laments and songs of remembrance for those we lost to the Covid Pandemic and the lives that were altered from that loss.
Oh wow!
How wonderfulllll to read this Ackley musing and veritable history. Beautiful Bruce, When I lived in Paris in the 70's and 80's, I heard/witnessed / absorbed Steve Lacy and Steve Potts together in small basement clubs. Somewhere I have sketches in a notebook of that. Jeff and I will be going to Chapel of the Chimes tmrw pm and look for you there. Sending love and well wishes to you (each)! Amy T