Eric Zinman – piano, euphonium | Kilian Schrader – electric bass, sfx effects | Mario Rechtern – sopranino, alto and baritone saxophone, flute | Johannes Krebs – drums
Recorded April 9, 2009 at Celeste, Vienna, Austria. Mixed & mastered by Kilian Schrader. Produced by Eric Zinman, Kilian Schrader, Mario Rechtern, Johannes Krebs. Liner notes by Eric Zinman edited by Mario Rechtern. Cover art by Mario Rechtern. Design by Andrzej Wojnowski
Tracklist: 1. Track 1 [23:45] 2. Track 2 [13:27] 3. Track 3 [20:23]
The ensemble is the lifeblood of our choices.
We learn together. Hey baby your band is so cool they play so far Ooooooouuuuuuut…. no in no in, all very out. What got you into the music scene when it was clean you dig and now you’re all dirty and jive? It was all because of that flying saucer. They picked us up at Celeste. They got us a gig on Mars, called us head generals and booked us in the stars. The moons were dripping down like sliced melons, what a little moonlight can do with that strange speech you make on that thing. My five year old daughter can play better than that. Where are you guys from? They say we will never play here, so we go there, just like children. Why don’t you just stay in church and sing gospel? Cuz all I ask of living is to feel some life in you baby. Romeo pouncing on Juliet (and they both come from good families!?!?!) hot wet teenage seals, their bodies crashing like the sea, in rapture of wind, trees, forests and animals surviving by their wit, their vision looking out like spirit guides, playing in the sand along the shore. We are vagabonds staying up night after night to sing that beast into a trance in it’s corporate austerity bleeding sympathy. What’s your sign baby? Hey honey, I’ve got an elephant at home. Maybe your god can meet my god sometime.
So who will open the door? Why no footprints leading us back to make the old man rich? Cuz I know yo mama don’t teach you to play that way. You guys crack me up like those Ami cowboy movies. Do you play stripper music? Now that’s real. Are y’ all growing up to get a seat at the knights table? to get clear? Ok enough unterhaltung, For businessmen who want culture, I present:” THE ‘for the love of it, let’s get back to the office song cycle”
So what kind of music do you do? Trust me. I remember the first keys I touched as they appeared facing me like little drums in front of my elephant paws. I remember Stephen on a piano in a classroom playing the wind until they made him feel odd, those head officers and their gods. What they will not say in public they will say to their trusted students spreading lies so subtle as to poison the minds of young aspiring musicians. I won’t tell you who told me that. After the final yes there comes a no. Truths become lies “Verde marcio” in their decay, this vacancy in their eyes, “have a good time” they say…look at those tender and soft men, the best of us, if I wasn’t such a creep, thief, murderer, bastard, I couldn’t get through this either…
Now it moves to “never never land”, Peter Pan with Icarus wings of belief after all has fallen into the sea. Apollo can’t fuck us now.” yah shouldn’t swear” Feel your stick swing across the set, pullin on your bass, while your horn churns in the sea, shout it!!, ooh baby, let the hidden be revealed. Blue green canals, pouring Willow trees, dancing on a mirage, decoding lies, creating new languages. The most beautiful has yet to be heard. You can play pretty and dirty too, transforming the bitchy house wives, house husbands, and the grey conservatories. It’s your research baby. Just begin. Can I play this daddy?
The graduate is still under water. There are always the many against the few, apparitions of rolling wheels for feet and monitors for bellies, the encroaching pendulum of faceless priests asking you to recant your beliefs, the head officers and their gods, mts robinson begging you ypstairs, “I’m into ethnic things, you look ethnic and I love ethnic” “you must be born dancing” “you’ve fucked your life” yah shouldn’t swaer” “so illiterate but so natural” “but if you play with those guys, you will never play anywhere in Europe” “seems negative to me”, “why do they scream like that?” Haven’t you heard my baby cry? Hey baby let’s go down, I mean we’re not at the opera, right?!?!. Jazz must not be great; it’s gotta be real. I’ll see you on the flip side. So check this out; don’t let em take you….hehehe….Cause I know y’all funky and you proud, right!?
They marketed Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell as ‘deranged genius’, (still working on Cecil Taylor). Artists speak in code: “Four in One”, Bye-Ya, Brilliant Corners. You can’t play these like Harold Arlen. ASCAP says they deciphered the code. That will be $75 please. ‘But that’s Monk’s Bye-Ya.Yah’ ‘but it’s based on living Berlin’s ‘It’s a Lovely Day Today’. ‘Are you sure? Damn!’ You can’t modernize Thelonius Monk so let it go. Winnie the Pooh says Monks mine now. Nostalgia is a poor substitute for passion. I saw that stupid bourgeois stare after finishing the Haydn trumpet concerto; it must be hard for Winnie to keep up all that pretense. Of course he takes a more sciento-logical approach. Do you remember Leonard Bernstein’s party for the Black Panthers? Then there was the United Nations Jazz Society founded by Bill Dixon. Leonard Bernstein was at the table and said (paraphrase)’ If Monk had been trained differently, it might have occurred to him to change his technique. Cecil Taylor jumped up on the table and shouted in his face, “WHY SHOULD IT HAVE??!!”…There is no technique. There are techniques…
The police beat Bud so bad, they nearly killed him. He was never the same after that. So what you want? It’s our music, isn’t it? $75 my ass.
The grass covers all things; the veneer vanishes, what was it like? It’s a process of erosion.
Some stay alive and some fall like Cronus’s scrotum through the cosmos. Milford Graves said ‘ a jazz musician only starts to get good after 50’. Are the gods going on pension?
“I did not want to see the VAO completely whittled down. That would be like seeing a top athlete who cannot stop and gets worse and worse results every year.”
Avast ye aye & aye and all for one yee scudly mates. Prepare to be boarded by tinkling rains of swords. Batten down the hatches, let the ropes squeal on deck.
FIRE!! staccato and tremolo for the ages rippling and starting again.
Los fellamenghus riding the breeze, charging the dust in visceral registers salty and swift. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyah… I have faith in the pagan harpooner.
When we get within earshot of the land and the ship is cookin through the waves, we sing. Those who listen are charmed for we know all the ills that have been laid on you and can tell you all that will happen.
During WW2, the American army soon decided that if a soldier said “motherfucker” to a superior officer, that soldier would be court marshaled with a dishonorable discharge. He would not be able to work anywhere.
The black infantry were the first into Berlin. They saw women waving white flags amidst the rubble and spoke to them. “The white army’s comin soon. When yah see them, there’s a greeting in our language, say ‘heilo motherfucker’ yah got that? Cool!”
Walt Whitman was a medic during the war between the states. He carried young men over his shoulder off the battlefield. ….head athwart hips …”many a soldiers loving arms about this neck”…beat beat whrrrr thud…to watch boys and men die on the field, in the hospital, under a tree, to be laid in endless cemeteries along the appalachian trail…I have walked with soldiers on the trail, to wash away the stories from Iraq and Afghanistan… the mayor giving medals to fallen soldiers… the veterans, the people, and their families screaming in the streets…HONOR THEM WHILE THEIR ALIVE!!!
The Brahmins were brave to publish Whitman, that rude muscle.
So NOW, WHO is brave enough to come FORWARD on the field? Who hired the men with iron pipes that beat you nearly to death in the streets of Vienna across the street from the police station where no one noticed?
The grass covers all things. The medic is back on the field lifting bodies in shrunken uniforms, those crazy casualties. Where do we put them all? Will there be music? — Liner notes by Eric Zinman edited by Mario Rechtern
Eric Zinman
was born and educated in Boston, MA. He studied music/composition with Bill Dixon at Bennington College and later George Russell and Jimmy Giuffre at New England Conservatory. He formed a piano trio with percussionist Laurence Cook, bassist Craig Schildhauer and later bassists John Voigt and Jacob William. For years, he has been an active producer, performer and organizer and composer and arranger of ensembles in Boston including Citizen’s Orchestra with Stanley Jason Zappa and the ensemble New Language Collaborative with Syd Smart, drums and Glynis Lomon, cello. Turning away from the music scene he worked in theatre, with poets and with painter Linda Clave. Mr. Zinman has collaborated with artist, Aldo Tambellini in presenting performances which used Tambellini’s films, videos and poetry read with poet singer actress Lo Galluccio. In 2006, he began to play and gain recognition in Europe in collaboration with Austrian based musician/artist Mario Rechtern, and a trio with French bassist Benjamin Duboc and percussionist Didier Lasserre and later Makoto Sato with bassist Yoram Rosillio He has performed in 6 different countries and has been reviewed in 5 different languages. Since 2005 musician/composer Eric Zinman has been recorded and produced on Cadence(US), Ayler, (France) Studio234(USA), Improvising Beings(France.) He is listed in the 19th edition Penguin Guide To Jazz Recordings
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