Bruce Eisenbeil: acoustic, electric guitars
Jean Cook: violin
Nate Wooley: trumpet
Aaron Ali Shaikh: alto sax
Tom Abbs: acoustic bass
Nasheet Waits: drums
BRUCE EISENBEIL SEXTET - INNER CONSTELLATION (Nemu 007)
Band History, Mission and Project Description
INNER CONSTELLATION is a composed-through piece for six musicians: guitar bass, drums, violin, trumpet and alto sax. Approximately every five minutes, after thematic material has been expressed, an extended improvisation occurs for a specific instrumentalist.
I spent two years composing the music and then, through five months of sessions and a computer MIDI realization of the score which was prepared using FINALE, the musicians learned their parts by ear. The notated score served as a map for the interaction. But, just as the map is not the territory, the score is not the music. The piece happens when the musicians actually bring it into sound.
In 2001 Jean Cook, Aaron Ali Sheik and myself played in a forty piece ensemble conducted by Cecil Taylor. For a month with CT we played together a few times a week and then later on Aaron and I did some performances together. I was really energized by learning about Cecil’s music and started to check out his unique sextet from the late 1970’s: CT on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Raphe Malik on trumpet, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Sirone on bass and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums. It’s sort of like a mini-orchestra with a member from each family: strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion. The guitar can be a template for the horizontal and vertical spacing of an orchestra. So naturally I substituted guitar for piano and wrote for guitar, bass, drums, violin, trumpet and alto sax. I thought it would be great to see how all of these instruments can help to illuminate the various colors of the guitar. Eventually I started playing with Nate Wooley and because I was already familiar with Tom Abbs and Nasheet Waits I thought the six of us would work well together.
The music comes from a set tone field sort of like the stars in the night sky. In this tone field the pitches maintain their place. The field expands through six octaves. And, you know how people have always liked to connect the stars to make figures, images and heroes? Well, we do the same thing with the pitches in the tone field.
This piece explores a contrast in the weight of sound. This means that the melodic line and the rhythm go in a horizontal direction, but there is always a vertical pressure of the chording, of the harmonies, that is constantly shifting.
Some sections of music employ a musical texture that is a composite of separate stratified layers. The music may suggest several layers of feelings that co-exist simultaneously; sometimes evoking an unnamed emotion somewhere between acceptance and despair. This stratified texture has contrasting harmonies, tone-colors, rhythms and expressions. Counterpoint based on stratification rather than imitation is preferred because this allows for the development of individual voices in a clear democratic system. This democracy of voices allows the instrumentalists to co-exist and explore their unique independent identities.
One goal was to create a musical atmosphere that resembles the way people actually interact: They talk past each other; conflicts are not resolved; forces of inertia and entropy triumph over our desire to tie up loose plot ends. Every artist has a personal way of making music. Our thing is based on paradoxes and extremes being a necessity in order to achieve a balance.
Fueled with a propulsive rhythmic force, along with the spontaneity and techniques of jazz and modern improvisation, our music strives to incorporate a new vocabulary that has been evolving through jazz and contemporary classical composers such as Elliott Carter, Xenakis, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Ferneyhough and Lachenmann. Naturally, many jazz composers and improvisers were influential including: Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Wayne Shorter, and Anthony Braxton.
This music explores a place where people live not out of necessity but because they want to be part of a future that invites surprise and where spontaneity is welcome. This music is a look at the existence of the living after one has been devastated by loss. It is a splintered style of storytelling – breaking a mirror and piecing it back together with small telling parts missing. Throughout INNER CONSTELLATION there are several points of view and several horizons. In this enmeshed experience is the merging of object and field which allows the listener to experience a world where foreground, middle ground and distant view are part of a unified horizon.
Bruce Eisenbeil, New York City, 3.01.07
