Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Harmonica MasterClass Workshop concert (first night of

[EGS1217@xxxxxxx]

Wow...what a review, Winslow!  You've enabled us all to be  "flies on the 
wall"...and regretting missing such a stellar show.   I've long been a big 
admirer of Joe Filisko, Dennis Gruenling and Michael  Peloquin on both his harp/sax, 
don't know enough about the other harp  players: Kinya Pollard and David 
Barrett...though I'm sure to pay a lot  more attention now.  Thanks for this, it 
was wonderful.
 
Elizabeth
 
"Message: 6
Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 12:37:29 -0700 (PDT)
From:  Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Harp-L]  Harmonica MasterClass Workshop concert (first
night  of    two)
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx


I was present at  the Friday night show. First Filisko doing the prewar
rural stuff, then  Dave Barrett doing the urban 1950s-70s, followed by
Kinya with a Paul  Butterfield tribute, culminating with Dennis
Gruenling presenting the  modern blues harmonica, backed by Rusty Zinn
on guitar and Mike  Peloquin on tenor sax added to the backing band
already in place (John  Garcia on guitar, with drums, a bassist who
doubled on second guitar,  and a piano player).

This was the first night of two, and there had  been the usual variety
of technical difficulties setting up the room,  stage, and sound and
recording equipment on top of a full teaching  schedule and the
knowledge that this was being recorded for posterity.  Naturally this
led to some tension and awkwardness, but some really  great music and
playing were delivered once the paricipants warmed up.  I wasn't there
the second night, but I hear that things were more fluid  the second
time around.

It's easy to be dismissive about a  concert (and CD) that re-creates
music that has already been recorded  in superb performances, and the
"why-do-it?" question certainly  occurred to me. Once could go out and
find the dozens of CDs and  out-of-print recordings that informed this
concert, but you'd have to  know what to look for, and for some folks
this process of discovery has  taken decades. OK, maybe you could cobble
together the rights and  access to put out some sort of historical
anthology CD with the  original recordings. But the amount of music 
would be huge, and again,  people would have to know what to look for.

The value of a live  presentation goes beyond just gathering significant
music in a single  package. There is a dimension to real-time live
performance that goes  beyond listening to old recordings. Re-creating
music live in front of  an audience brings it to life and makes it real
in a way that can't  happen with even the best old recordings. Seeing a
real live person in  front of you playing this music lets you know that
this amazing music  is playable by real, live humans and not
supernatural beings that we  can hear but never see. You can witness
that the sounds the players  create and the techniques they use are not
recording tricks or the  result of some sort of production process. Dave
Barrett alluded to this  briefly when he mentioned in the course of
introducing a tune that  Walter Horton always had huge tone even in home
recordings made in  someone's living room or at a party.

And the repertoire can be  synthesized and combined in ways that are
quite creative and very  difficult to pull off. It's true that just
recycling old riffs is not  particularly creative; a casual visit to a
blues jam will confirm the  cynical credo that anything worth doing is
worth doing badly. But  that's not what was going on here.

For instance, Filisko's  presentation method was something that could
not be duplicated by  playing old recordings. The most visible part of
his creative process  was his weaving together of the work of several
old masters in the  context of extended pieces. For instance, he opened
the concert with an  unaccompanied train piece that combined many of the
most notable parts  of train pieces by George Bullet Williams, De Ford
Bailey, Lonnie  Glosson, Palmer McAbee, William McCoy, and several
others, calling out  place names along a line as was done on so many of
those old train  pieces, ending the piece with a deboarding call for San
Jose, where the  concert was given, placing all that history in a
context of here and  now.

Joe employed the full stable of acounstic harmonica tricks  ffrom the
pre-war period, including whooping, falsetto singing, playing  one
harmonica with his nose while playing another with his mouth,  and
putting the harmonica in his mouth like a cigar and playing with  no
hands.

Joe did do a few standalone pieces, like Blues  Birdhead's "Mean Low
Blues" (with piano accompaniment, one of the few  accompanied pieces in
his mostly solo set). Before each piece he listed  the players whose
work contributed to the piece, and noted significant  things about their
careers, place in history, or styles and techniques.  He brought the
timeline up to John  Lee Williamson's bringin of  rural styles to
Chicago, and ended with Rice Miller'ws Bye Vye Bird  played no hands

Dave picked up where Joe had left off, with the  development of the
urban electric style out of John Lee Williams. He  started with an early
Little Walter piece, "Evan Shuffle," and  continued with "Juke" and
"Roller Coaster" before going on to numbers  from George Smith, Jerry
McCain, Walter Horton, and Junior Wells. Once  warmed up, he delivered
these with great gusto and elan, really  bringing the music to life. I
had never seen Dave play more than  perhaps one full number before, and
his passion for the music (and his  musicality and chops and delivery)
really came to life before my eyes  and ears; it was a very satisfying
performance. 

He brought  Filisko up to play Little Walter's "Blue Lights," one of the
rare  instances of Joe playing chromatic harmonica in public (this is
one of  those tunes where Walter switched back and forth between
chromatic and  diatonic). As a humorous At one point Joe even held the
mic up to the  amp at just at the moment where feedback is audible on
the original  recording (Joe's attempt here did not succeed, but it was
fun if you  knew why he was doing it, and it provided a humorous
commentary on the  whole premise of the concert).

Kinya Pollard's tribute to Paul  Butterfield was as much about the
effect on his own life of the  discovery of Butterfield's music as it
was about Butterfield's place in  a timeline of harmonica styles. His
storytelling over the "Everything's  Gonna Be Alright" signature riff
brought to life the transformative  effect on a young man from a
background that did not encourage  exuberance of finding an album whose
liner notes declared that the  music sounded best if played loud (this
was the first Butterfield  album). His subsequent delivery of that song
and the instrumental "Work  Song" demonstrated the profound effect a
musical discovery can have on  a young person, and Kinya clearly
conveyed his love and enthusiasm for  Butterfield. In some ways this was
the most personal statement of the  evening.

While Joe and Dave had the nerve-wracking assignments of  not only
re-creating faithfully old recordings but bringing them to  life
convincingly in fornt of an audience that knew every note of  the
original, Dennis Gruenling had the easiest time of it in one  respect -
he wasn't trying to re-create or survey an earlier period or  style. By
way of presenting modern-day blues harmonica, he was just  doing his
thing and doing it very well, and the added support of Mike  and Rusty
really propelled him to some fine playing - he had the crowd  (and the
other performers on the sidelines) howling in  appreciation.

The concert ran late and there was no time for the  "harmonica
swordfight" promised . This might have helped open out the  present-day
side of the story. But it was nonetheless an ambitious  project and one
that, whatever the concept, produced some fine music  and a very
enjoyable  evening.

Winslow"






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