The new avant-garde

By Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 8, 2000) –
There's a moment on the title track of Erik Friedlander's recent CD, “Skin” (Siam), where the music all comes together. African drums are measuring out time with haunting precision, composer Friedlander's cello is laying down the harmonic bed with a repetitive ostinato, and saxophonist Andy Laster is breaking free from the song's foundation with a nearly-human wail.

“Skin I” is followed by “Sahel Va Danya,” which opens with Friedlander's cello playing a free-metered improvisation over Alexander Fedoriouk's cimbalom, using a form based on the klezmer doina, which itself is based on the Romanian shepherd's lament. Laster then joins Friedlander in stating the song's melody, a kind of Balkan tango, before swapping jazzy variations on the theme with Friedlander.

The next song, “Reflections,” features the Atlas Cello Quartet emerging out of the low rumble of bass notes to support a lyrical if occasionally atonal solo by Friedlander. “Fekunk” follows, Laster's sax dancing with Friedlander's cello above bouncing, funky bass lines. A similar array of stylistic influences can be heard on recent albums by trumpeter/composer Dave Douglas (“Charms of the Night Sky”), bassist/composer Mark Dresser (“Eye'll Be Seeing You”), saxophonist/composer John Zorn (“Taboo and Exile”), trumpeter/composer Frank London (“Shekhina”) and keyboardist/composer/vocalist Phoebe Legere (“Blue Curtain”).

While these composers and instrumentalists differ widely in their styles and approaches, there is also much that they have in common. All are virtuoso instrumentalists, as are their accompanists. All combine classical training and education with an immersion in jazz composition and improvisation. All are children of the rock era who in one way or another have been as influenced by the sounds of Top 40 radio as they have been by cartoon and film soundtracks, advertising jingles and rap music. All exhibit omnivorous appetites for the music of many cultures – so-called world music.

None see any insurmountable wall between “high” and “low” or “art” and “pop” music, and none make music that gratuitously confounds a listener by refusing to communicate in a recognizable language, as some of the more unfortunate experiments of the past have done.

Yet none of these artists -- nor others of their ilk, including John Lurie, Anthony Coleman, Richard Teitelbaum, Jim Staley, Gary Lucas, and the Bang on a Can ensemble – are mere purveyors of genre-hopping, post-modern pastiche and sampling.

Rather, they are inventors pushing the borders of music in both composition and improvisation, creating new structures and styles atop firm foundations in traditional forms. They gather strength from these traditions – one thinks of the beauty of Douglas's shimmering, Balkan-derived folk melodies, or the pulsating throb of Legere's electronic rhythms – in order to forge ahead into the unknown, oblivious to the demands of the marketplace and to the hidebound criteria of meek, unadventurous arts programmers and record company executives for works of easily-defined lineage and genre. (Or as Legere recently put it to me, “Can we forget about genre? It's a totally artificial capitalist marketing tool that has nothing to do with real creativity!”

Having been raised in a multi-media world, many of these composers and performers of the new avant-garde don't limit their creative efforts to the concert stage, either. Almost all of them work in collaboration with other artists in other media, as composers for film, dance, theater and spoken-word accompaniment.

There is nothing new about this; music, as has all art forms, has always had its innovators and trailblazers. But what is perhaps unique to our time and to these artists is the huge gulf that separates their cutting-edge work – widely acknowledged by their fellow artists and some critics to be the most important and significant works being made – and that of the mainstream, which is almost entirely, hopelessly corrupted by corporate marketing.

This extends, unfortunately, to many of our most celebrated music venues and festivals, which tend to ignore the cultivation of artistic talent for the long run in the short-sighted scramble for box-office dollars today. Outside of New York's experimental clubs like the Knitting Factory and Tonic, there is virtually no place to hear the music of the new avant-garde on any regular basis. Fortunately, for listeners right here in the Berkshires who are left unsatisfied with the typical fare doled out by the mainstream venues and record companies, there are several reasons to be sanguine.

For one, there are still a few locally-owned, independent record stores run by individuals who actually care about music – who actually listen to new music and who are constantly seeking out the new and different. People like Hal March of Toonerville Trolley Records in Williamstown can guide or steer hungry listeners to the latest in experimental recordings.

The Internet, of course, has also given anyone with a connection to the World Wide Web access to information, sound samples, and virtual marketplaces where experimental music can be found. And a few of the key venues and independent labels that distribute this music have created user-friendly sites which serve as useful jumping-off points for a lot of this music. (Among these are www.tzadik.com, www.roulette.org, www.knittingfactory.com, and www.tonic107.com.)

But none of this is an adequate substitute for seeing these musicians live. A savvy Berkshire listener can actually catch some of this music if he knows where to look.

The key is not to think in terms of where you go to hear music – although occasionally you can catch Phoebe Legere at the Iron Horse in Northampton or at the Van Dyck in Schenectady, N.Y. Instead, think about where you go to be challenged by new and provocative works of art.

Berkshire County is now bookended at the north and the south by two of the nation's most supportive platforms for avant-garde art. I speak of course of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. It is at these two places where in the last few years listeners have enjoyed performances by Lester Bowie, Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser and Frank London, and it is at these two places where audiences will have the opportunity in coming months to catch Gary Lucas, Bang on a Can, Patti Smith and others.

One still hopes that eventually those programming the music festivals and venues will care enough about the future of music to open their minds, ears and stages to the sounds of the present – to say nothing of the future. Traditional music is wonderful and it is what the best experiments are built upon, and thus deserves to be celebrated. But to turn the appreciation of traditional music – whether it be traditional folk, jazz or classical music – into an ideology is literally to worship idols, a mistake our civilization supposedly rectified about 4,000 years ago.

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