Mark Dresser and the new avant-garde

by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 10, 2000)
- For the last three decades or so, bassist/composer Mark Dresser has been one of a select group of musicians pushing the edges of new music.

Working with the likes of Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Anthony Coleman, Mark Feldman, Tim Berne, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Gerry Hemingway, and other luminaries of "new jazz" composition and improvisation, Dresser has helped to define a new style of music that eludes definition.

It is music that defies the distinction between classical and jazz, at least in any way those styles are conventionally understood -- or more significantly, in the way the music "sounds." Indeed, the Boston Herald cut it both ways when it called Dresser "an inventor" and "the most important bassist to emerge since 1980 in jazz or classical music."

As heard on Dresser's "Eye'll Be Seeing You" (Knitting Factory), his music ranges from atonal bass squeaks atop Cecil Taylor-like piano chord clusters to poignant folk-like melodies for trio of bowed bass, clarinet and piano to eerie sound effects to funereal organ lines to breezy, Sonny Rollins-like calypso.

But it's not simply the genre-hopping that makes Dresser's music evocative and contemporary. That would be mere post-modern shtick. Rather, it's the utter logic of the approach, the ease with which the composer melds the styles together, to the point where style or genre disappear, and all that's left are melody, texture and narrative statement in the overall service of mood, form and beauty.

Perhaps nowhere does the distinction between composed and improvised music, or "classical" and "jazz," grow more blurred than in creative music for film. Dresser, like Zorn, Coleman, and other like-minded avant-gardists, including Frank London ("The Debt"), Phillip Johnston ("Music for Films") and Gary Lucas ("The Golem"), is drawn to the challenge of scoring improvisational music for film precisely for the creative tension imposed by the film's narrative structure.

"Initially it was an experiment, an entree to new performance possibilities," Dresser said recently about writing for film. "However, the experience of writing for film has changed me. I've learned to enjoy thinking narratively, even in my non-film writing as well."

Dresser and his innovative trio will perform their original score for two silent films in the B-10 Theater at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art tomorrow, April 15, at 7:30 p.m, in a program called "Art on Film." The program includes "Un Chien Andalou," Louis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's 1929 surrealist classic, and "Subtonium" by the Kunst Brothers -- a collaboration of sculptor Alison Saar and digital artist Tom Leeser making its world premiere this month. Dresser's trio will perform additional compositions after a brief intermission. The evening also includes a post-show discussion with Dresser.

"I write leitmotifs, in the classic tradition, but I also describe textures to my musicians," said Dresser in a recent interview from his apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y. "My scores have plenty of improvisation, and I may only write for part of the group and ask one player to improvise over the written material. Often we improvise transitions between scenes.

"When writing for film, I'm trying to support and amplify the mood of the film. If I've chosen to write for a classic film, I want to respect the integrity of the director's vision. This doesn't preclude 'my interpretation' of the dramatic line. This essentially puts me in a narrative frame of mind."

Writing for film is as much about the performing process as it is about composition for Dresser. Over time, the compositions evolve, as does the film in the eye of the composer.

"Our performance of 'Un Chien Andalou' continues to evolve," said Dresser. "I'm now seeing subtleties in the film after several hundred viewings that allow me to amplify the narrative line, even as bizarre as the imagery is, with new levels of dramatic and musical finesse."

Well-schooled in the classics, Dresser holds a B.A. and M.A. in Music from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied with Maestro Bertram Turetzky. He received a Fulbright Fellowship for advanced contrabass study with Maestro Franco Petracchi. For nine years he performed and recorded with the Anthony Braxton Quartet with Gerry Hemingway and Marilyn Crispell.

Dresser's trio, which is scheduled to perform next week at New York's Knitting Factory, the temple of the downtown avant-garde, includes Matthias Ziegler on flutes and Denman Maroney on "hyperpiano," sometimes called "prepared piano," which involves stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, strumming and striking piano strings with various objects, independently of or more often in conjunction with regular keyboard action. The trio has recently performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mills College, University of California at Irvine, University of California at San Diego, Brown University, Boston Creative Music Alliance and at the 1999 Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival.

Dresser's other ensembles include Force Green, featuring Dave Douglas or Herb Robertson on trumpet, vocalist Theo Bleckmann, hyper-pianist Denman Maroney, and Phil Haynes or Mike Sarin on drums, and The Modular Ensemble, which performs his chamber music compositions and features violinists Matt Manieri and Mary Rowell, violist Marius Ungureanu, cellist Francis Marie Uitti, Denman Maroney and Matthias Ziegler.

In addition to his score for "Un Chien Andalou," which is included on the recording "Eye'll Be Seeing You," Dresser has also composed a score for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," recorded with Douglas and Maroney. The original piece called "Subtonium," on which the new film is based, is included on "Invocation: Music for Contrabass" (Knitting Factory), a collection of Dresser's solo work from 1980 to 1995.

Recent collaborative projects include Tambastics with multi-flutist Robert Dick, Gerry Hemingway, and Maroney, and a trio with multi-reed player Marty Ehrlich and drummer Andrew Cyrille.

Mark Dresser has also received commissions for compositions for other instruments including a 1998 commission from the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress for "Air to Mir," a piece for violin and piano, and "Banquet," which was commissioned by Swiss flute virtuoso Mathias Ziegler and is the title track of a CD on John Zorn's Tzadik label. His most recent commission, "Althaus," is for tuba virtuoso David LeClair with mixed quintet. Tickets to "Art on Film" are $15. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office at 87 Marshall St. in North Adams from 10 am until 4 pm, Tuesday through Sunday. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 662-2111 during box office hours or purchased on line at www.massmoca.org.

Backstage bits

Club Helsinki, the Berkshires' answer to the Iron Horse, features jazz/R&B saxophonist Charles Neville, of the famed New Orleans Neville Brothers, tomorrow night at 9. Next Saturday, April 22, the club presents Barrence Whitfield, Boston's answer to James Brown. Club Helsinki promises a host of top talent in coming weeks and months, including singer-songwriters Lucy Kaplansky, Jules Shear and Marshall Crenshaw, Stacey Earle, Rosie Ledet and Burning Spear.

Alt-pop band Ben Folds Five is at the Palace Theatre in Albany on Tuesday, April 18. Boston-based rockers Guster are set to open. And be sure to listen to Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" this weekend. Broadcast from Town Hall in New York, the show featuers the annual Talent From Towns Under 2,000 (TTUTT) contest. The six finalists competing for the grand prize, the Silver Water Tower Trophy, include our perennial favorites the Lonesome Brothers - Ray Mason, Jim Armenti, and Bob Grant -- representing the Pioneer Valley hilltown of Haydenville, Mass. The final winner will be chosen by listener ballot, which can be accessed online at phc.mpr.org. "A Prairie Home Companion" airs on WAMC's Northeast Network on Saturday at 6 p.m. and on Sunday at 3 p.m.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were at the Civic Center in Hartford this past Wednesday, and are expected to continue to tour throughout the summer. Joni Mitchell comes to the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Conn., on May 27. Steely Dan will be at the Saratoga (N.Y.) Performing Arts Center on July 1 and Meadows Music Theatre in Hartford on July 9. How come none of these quintessential baby-boomer acts - not one of which is likely to attract the under-40 crowd Tanglewood seems so desperately to want to avoid attracting to the Shed - are coming to Tanglewood this summer?

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on April 14, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Jan. 7, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]