Rich in Tucson

Tucson's Solar Culture Gallery had another great show last night, the ambient artist Robert Rich. He played a continuous 90-minute set with more rhythm than I typically associate with his music, many passages underpinned with a tribal beat, which must have been pre-programmed since I didn't see Rich make any action that would have produced drum sounds other than hitting a couple of keys on his laptop. His albums have often given me the feeling of a nocturnal jungle, with lots of small avian and insect sounds seething in the mix, and this feeling was enhanced by a bright green, continuously moving light show behind him. For the electronic part of his setup he had an analog synthesizer from Synthesis Technology, a couple of keyboards, a small Apple laptop, and a mixing board. He would use these instruments to set up different kinds of textures, which became the ground for his lead instruments: a variety of flutes (perhaps constructed from wood, but some of them looked like PVC pipe) and a pedal steel guitar, both plucked and played with an ebow. Having seen him perform, I can now recognize these instruments on his other live albums; they are all over the three-CD set of concert recordings Humidity, for example. On a couple of occasions, he played brief interludes on exotic percussion, including a waterphone. Solar Culture has a superb sound system, so the music was at the right volume, loud but not deafening. The gallery is in Tucson's warehouse district, with train tracks close by, and he even incorporated the train whistles into the set. He chatted around the merch table before the show and was happy to answer questions afterwards, very pleasant and easy conversations. This was a memorable concert, and 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for live music.

Small sounds and ecstatic drones

Seldom does Tucson get the kind of live drone shows that seem to appear regularly in Chicago and New York, but this evening we were blessed with performances by Jeph Jerman and Sun Circle, a duo of Greg Davis and Zach Wallace. The Solar Culture gallery, which presented the show, has been the subject of some controversy recently as its landlord changed rather abruptly from the state of Arizona to a local developer, but tonight's show is a hopeful sign that the gallery will continue its concerts, especially of the more avant variety.

The warmup was a short soundwalk led by local sound sculptor Glenn Weyant, through the railroad yard behind the gallery, into the dormant industrial park across the tracks, and then under the tracks to get back home. When we returned, Jerman had started his set, gently dancing around the gallery wearing a leather fringe jacket, where the fringes all had rattles and other noisemakers attached. He sought creaks in the old gallery floor, then slowly shed the jacket and evolved his performance through a number of different textures. Wooden rattles gave way to squeaky rubber, seed pods, pebbles and sticks manipulated in his hands, then deepened with larger stones that he rolled on the floor, creating deep rumbles because of the uneven texture of the wooden boards. He played pine cones, plucking the scales and then dragging them across the floor. The performance concluded with Chinese health balls, also rolled across the floor, punctuated with gentle strokes on temple bells. I was completely entranced, and the performance had a clear arc. By the time he dragged the pine cones around, especially a very large one, I was so tuned into his actions that it seemed very loud. I've got a few Jerman recordings, but this was the first time I have seen him perform, and the recordings make so much more sense now. My description doesn't do his performance justice, and I cannot recommend enough seeing him live.

By any absolute scale, however, Sun Circle's subsequent performance made Jerman's seem like a whisper. Billed correctly as "ecstatic high volume drones," Davis and Wallace extinguished all lights in the gallery except for a single yellow bulb on the floor, then turned on an electronic Tambura-type drone. Seated cross legged in the middle of the gallery, they both blew mizmars, Turkish reed instruments, into microphones (using their shoes for microphone stands), generated cascades of overtones. Although at first they played the mizmars in unison, they moved out of sync to increase the complexity, and the performance concluded with the tambura fading out, leaving only the nasal sound of the reeds. For an encore, Jerman, Davis and Wallace performed a short set on Tibetan bells, cymbals and a couple of gongs, variously bowing and striking them. Not bad for a Monday night in the southwest!

The photograph is Jeph Jerman's setup, taken before the show.

Tom Heasley in concert

Last Friday evening, Tucson had a visit from Tom Heasley, performing on tuba, didjeridu and electronics, without any aid from computers. Heasley plays gorgeous, deep drone music, and at the Solar Culture gallery, Heasley's sounds filled the room. I have been corresponding with Tom for a few months, and serendipitously, have an article about him that was published this past weekend.

The opening act was local artist Kati Astraeir, who played a number of short videos over droney soundtracks from artists such as Matthew Florianz, Igneous Flame, and Raison d'etre. The videos were composed from still pictures cross faded into each other. Some of the images were photographs with various levels of alteration, some were paintings. The juxtaposition of the photographs (which were typically nature) and the paintings (which were more fantasy oriented) showed the degree to which the natural forms showed up in her paintings.

Following a short intermission, Heasley played three extended pieces. The first and last pieces used the tuba as the primary sound source. He opened the concert with a simple breath through the tubing, he added more and more layers until there was finally a big cloud of sound, over which he soloed. The second piece was with a "poor man's didjeridu" (Heasley's words), a handmade instrument constructed from plumbing pipe. Initially he made the deep, rolling didjeridu noises, but often he sang or whistled into the pipe. The gallery is right next to the train tracks, and there were lots of trains, whose whistles and bells added an extra jolt, but which were never picked up into the loops though.

Seeing Heasley perform brought home to me how closely his music is tied to the breath — obvious when I think about the instruments he plays, but not always so obvious when I listen to his music at home. This is the origin of the calming energy that his music imparts. Of course, the other wonderful aspect of hearing him perform is the sound system. It's great to hear drone music played so loud that the room vibrates, bringing out all kinds of partials and overtones that ordinarily get missed.