Hi Friends,On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 8 PM I am bringing my quartet (for this configuration) ROOTS to SHOOTS to the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, NY and will perform the World Premiere of an electroacoustic piece written in collaboration with Rome-based internationally acclaimed electronic composer James Dashow entitled Quantum Butterfly/Adjacent Possibles.
I am extremely excited to bring this performance to the Upstate Arts Weekend. For the first set ROOTS to SHOOTS will be playing my original compositions as well as pieces by Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Claire Fisher.
Tickets are $15 at the door.I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE!
Michael
Category: music
I’ve been rehearsing my newest compositions with the Accidental Orchestra, and the sounds are entering my consciousness which before have been mostly in my mind as intellectual exercises which are intended to invoke a certain meditative state. As I meditate on my meditation it occurs to me that there is in the music exactly what I intended, a quantum superposition of notes hovering around a musical structure that implies rather than specifies what is to come next.
They are deceptively simple, structured to be easily played, leaving plenty of room for improvisation which I encourage to be abstracted from the dense chordal dissonances I introduce. Let me attempt to get inside my musical-philosophical-quantum mind and let out what I hope happens when musicians hear this, play this, and what you as an audience hear and experience when you enter the domain of Qabbala from the point of view of quantum entanglement.
Direct experience of the soul
entanglement with all notes and musically organized sound
establishment of structure in which there are implied infinite possibilities of musical superimposition
the ultimate in associative reasoning bordering on free association
mystical breakthroughs into alternate universes
I’d better stop here so you can generate your own fields. Which you can do by listening to my initial offering by the Accidental Orchestra, the cd HELIX. https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/michaelmoss1
http://www.michaelmoss.bandcamp.com
https://michaelmoss.hearnow.com/helix
On Friday, May 18, 2018 I will be presenting some pieces from HELIX and from a suite of ten works based on the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah: I Kether–Crown/I Am, II Binah–Intelligence, and IX Yesod–Foundation/Basis. Please come to the
HELIX cd release party held in Westbeth in the
Please enter through the courtyard which is located on Bank Street between West St. and Washington St in the West Village to avoid the construction at Westbeth.
All my recent cds will be available for purchase and/or download.
We are on an adventure in superposition! Where all things are created equal and anything is possible! Held together by love where disorder and dissonance are a figment of the imagination. Or as Albert Einstein once is purported to have said, “imagination is greater than knowledge.”
thenameofthisband
mossteinmeyer
Thirteen: a mathematical representation of the one and the three. The three in one. A trio of musicians playing free jazz. Free jazz is the concept of many as one. The musicians play together as individuals and as a group. On the highest level the individual and the group are entangled and the action of one is the action of all. The idea of the highest level is this concept of one for all and all for one. It is a very common idea and if you look for it you can see it everywhere: the herd, squadrons of birds in flight turning as one, the body in which all organs work as one, minds thinking as one, dancers dancing as one. Mathematically 13 is just as easy and just as hard as leading and following at the same time. 13 is the number of the trio, 14 the number of the quartet, 122 the number of the 22 piece Accidental Orchestra. The reason this concept of simultaneity is so hard to understand is because it represents dimensions that are not obvious to how we appear to live in the three-dimensional world. We feel alone but seek belonging. Belonging in the sense of 13, or 14, or 122 for example represents the number of dimensions. It is a religious concept of belonging in the spiritual sense to a force larger than oneself.
13 is the name of our trio. It means three in one. The three of us play as one and music is the result. When we do not play as one, when we are not practicing close listening, it is no longer music but noise. To reach the higher dimensionality of 13 the members of the trio have to lead and to follow, trusting that the others are leading and following at the same time.
Free jazz artistically and aesthetically means entanglement of individuality within a dimension that always exists in potentia yet must be attained. This is why it is hard to play freely. Free is not free unless the individuals play as a group–simultaneous and at the same time individual; individual and at the same time simultaneous. The quantum physics mathematical representation of entanglement in which the part and the whole are one thing in itself, Immanuel Kant’s philosophical concept of the ding an sich, on the level of particle physics is the simultaneous participation of entangled subatomic particles interacting at a speed which is faster than light. They are no longer time-like or space-like because the action of one entangled particle or of more than one entangled particles is also the instantaneous action of all the other entangled particles. The action of entanglement is FTL, super luminous, acausal. The action of musical entanglement is that of the one and the many all acting as one.
The reason free jazz is so hard to play, to listen to, or to understand is that the individual must lead and follow simultaneously. The ego and the lack of ego must simultaneously exist. There is a dissolution of ego into a larger ego and the music on this level moves and exists as one. Time becomes relativized. Time is not linear but non-linear–free jazz strives to inhabit this experience of non-linearity, where the past is present, the future is present, and notes do not just line up but open up into the higher dimensions. Higher in sense of not our familiar three plus one dimensions in which spacetime exists but higher because these three plus one dimensions of three dimensions plus the dimension of time are enfolded within a higher number. The accomplishment of improvisation in a group is to bring this mathematical dimensionality into our common world. Any performing group does this–orchestras, dance troupes, country music festivals, music festivals. Where you have individuals becoming entangled there is this mystical sense of belonging to a larger group.
This is what I mean when I name our trio 13. We are individuals acting as one on the higher dimensionality of the three in the one and are entangled. It is also what I have referred to as faster than thought. I cannot think fast enough to improvise and to make music. I cannot act alone. I have abandoned myself to this higher purpose. It is the army, the navy, the act of war. In the musical sense 13 is the act of peace, understanding, sensitivity to others, respecting others, living with others both as an individual and as a group. As with any mathematical concept of dimensions there is no moral sense and action as one can be as good or as evil as we want or wish it to be. We act consciously to make it so. If our intent is to take this mystical acting as one and to destroy we are Lucifer and His armies. If we are bringing life and spirit into the world we are God and His legions of angels. God in the mathematical sense is not moral. It is our humanity which makes God into an avenging God or a merciful God. It is up to us to act as one to be good or to be evil. The difficult part is acting both consciously to bring something good or evil into the world at the same time we act unconsciously as a group to do so.
Once we decide to go in a direction the forces act upon us and we are no longer in control. Which is why it is so hard to maintain the level of musicality on what we instantly recognize as being on the right level. Good music, what I call music, not sound or noise, brings together not only the musicians but all who participate in the listening to this music. We have mirror neurons in our brains to facilitate the coming together of individuals, which fire sympathetically in the presence of others and allow us to speak, to mimic, to feel the feelings of others, and to express our feelings so that others can feel how we feel. We are usually unconscious of the action of mirror neurons so to make them manifest in conscious ways takes an act of courage and sacrifice; courage to take that first step, sacrifice to abandon ourselves to forces that are normally unconscious and out of conscious control.
So it all comes down to mathematics as a foundation and humanity as a moral force, dance and music as manifestations of entanglement, and feeling good when we belong to something greater than ourselves.
13=1 + 3=4=1
13=mossteinmeyer
- THE OLD ONE (35:54)
I INCEPTION (9:32)
II BRIDGE/DORJE (2:45)
III QABBALA / TREE OF LIFE (3:33)
IV BARDO THÖDOL / ANGELS AND DEVILS // WIZARDS AND DEATHEATERS (3:42)
V THE MIND OF GOD / STREAMING–>THRONE OF GOLD (15:42)
- SEE SHARP OR BE FLAT/C# or Bb (20:29)
Pianist Steve Cohn has performed his own works in venues including New York City’s Miller Theatre, New Works October Series, the Newport JVC Festival, Sweet Basil, The Great American Music Hall, NORVA Performance Hall, Norfolk Virginia, Puffin Cultural Arts Forum, and performed and recorded many times in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, on WBGO-FM, WFDU, WKCR, KJAZ, WNUR, WBUR, KPOO, and Stanford University radio.
Bassist Larry Roland has performed at parks, street corners, outdoor theaters and private living rooms. He toured throughout the Northeastern part of the US, New Orleans, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Roland has recited his poetry at Harvard University, Boston University, MIT, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Vision Festival in New York and at many other schools, festivals, and events in and around the northeast and Canada.
Drummer Chuck Fertal performed with a panoply of stellar jazz artists throughout the US. Fertal has been on radio for WBUR-FM (BOSTON), WERS-FM (BOSTON), WBAI-FM (NY), WBGO-FM (NEWARK). He toured Sun Valley, Idaho, Great American Music Hall (San Francisco), Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society (San Francisco), Cooper Union (NYC), Sweet Basil, Village Vanguard, 7th Avenue South, Blue Note, Tin Palace and Lincoln Center, all in NYC, New Orleans, military tours through Corpus Christi, Texas, Biloxi, Mississippi, Atlanta, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama.
Reed player Michael Moss has been leading groups that have performed in multiple colleges and universities on the East Coast and Mid-West, curated and promoted seven Westbeth Music Festivals from 2007-2013, and collaborated with other jazz lofts in NYC as President of Free Life Communication, a musicians cooperative in New York City, producing two Loft Jazz Music Festivals in the ‘70s. He presented three Loft in the Sky Music Festivals in upstate New York for Art Awareness in the ‘70s, and was on the Board of Directors of the Madison Musicians Cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin in the ‘80s at the same time he was in the University of Wisconsin—Madison Ph.D. program in the Counseling Psychology Department; Moss was graduated with a Ph.D. in 1991. Radio appearances: WKCR-FM, WBAI-FM and WNYC-FM in New York City, WMFM-FM, WORT-FM and WHA-FM in Madison, WI, WLAV-FM in Grand Rapids, MI and others. Moss appeared in the Annual Westbeth Music Festival (NYC) 2007-2013, PS 122 (NYC), Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2005 & 2006, and in the Fishtastacon Music Festival 2005 & 2006 (Philadelphia). As part of a tour sponsored by Pro Helvetia–a Swiss foundation, Moss played the Swiss Embassy (Washington, D.C.), Convergence Centre (Philadelphia), the Swiss Institute in NYC, and at Piano Magic in NYC. As President of Free Life Communication, Inc., a NYC musicians cooperative, Moss coordinated with other NYC jazz lofts including Studio Rivbea, Environ, Space for Innovative Development, Sunrise Studio, The Brook, Jazzmania, and Studio WE in the First and Second New York Jazz Loft Celebrations. Moss has led groups in the New York Musicians Jazz Festival, Isthmus Jazz Festival (Madison, WI), the Jazz and Blues Festival at Grand Valley State College (Michigan), Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY), SUNY at Stony Brook opposite Anthony Braxton, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and at Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago).
Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxophones, flute–western and bansuri), Steve Cohn (piano, shakuhachi, Hichiriki, trombone), Larry Roland (bass, words/poetry), Chuck Fertal (drums, percussion)
Music is an art that exists only in time. Unlike painting and literature, it cannot be appreciated without the passage of time. One cannot freeze it to study it. You cannot stand in front of a piece of music and examine every detail for as long as you want, at least not the actual sound element of music. A music score is not music; it is merely a visual representation of how to play a written piece. Therefore, one must enter into a time continuum to experience music, whether it be completely notated/composed music or completely improvised music, as is practiced by the New York Free Quartet.
Why the preamble? Merely to point out that the time taken to create this music is the exact amount of time it will take to hear it. One must enter into a contract with this type of music. Is the time worth it? Absolutely. Consider all the reasons why that is true.
Sensitive listeners attuned to creatively improvised music don’t need to be told that this is an exceptional quartet who has delivered a superb collection of music with “Promotional Copy.” For those who may be coming to this music for the first time, I can only express envy. This experience is like no other.
Carl Baugher January 2017
Monk Meets East Meets West 11:20 https://www.soundcloud.com/stream
On Their Shoulders 13:19 https://www.soundcloud.com/stream
24-8 Aren’t We All? 6:03 https://www.soundcloud.com/stream
Fun Key 5:25 https://www.soundcloud.com/stream
In Between Gigs…Can You Dig? 12:30 https://www.soundcloud.com/stream
Spirits Here And Not Hear 8:00 https://www.soundcloud.com/stream
Band Website: https://www.facebook.com/MossCohnRolandFertal/
Music is an art that exists only in time. Unlike painting and literature, it cannot be appreciated without the passage of time. One cannot freeze it to study it. You cannot stand in front of a piece of music and examine every detail for as long as you want, at least not the actual sound element of music. A music score is not music; it is merely a visual representation of how to play a written piece. Therefore, one must enter into a time continuum to experience music, whether it be completely notated/composed music or completely improvised music, as is practiced by the New York Free Quartet.
Why the preamble? Merely to point out that the time taken to create this music is the exact amount of time it will take to hear it. One must enter into a contract with this type of music. Is the time worth it? Absolutely. Consider all the reasons why that is true.
“Cage” is a moody, introspective meditation of sorts that slowly shifts between tones and timbres. Bass clarinet probes and bubbles while percussion and contrabass drive the momentum forward. The piano frames the music only to dissolve into the spirit of shakuhachi. The overall effect may be internal but each individual listener will take their own mood from the hearing of it. Micheal Moss reaches into his own personal history to briefly quote Mussorgsky. What does it mean? It means that he exists in the music. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Dorje” begins in much the same way but this time there is a deepening of the meditative quality of the music. A guttural voice beckons and the instruments slowly enter the swirl. Inventive, extended techniques can be heard from all four musicians. The effect is akin to a summoning. Something is going on and it is serious but it is not simple nor is it commonplace. Rather, the music is a lovely tangle of texture and emotion.
“Trane Blew What He Knew” features Larry Roland’s poetic utterances on the historic impact of John Coltrane’s artistic presence in the world. The musical framing of the poetry does not imitate Coltrane, however, except in the most general way. The improvisations leave plenty of space and each of the musicians is mindful of what the others are doing. Their interactions are dovetailed as opposed to leading or following. As things get more active, a special group aesthetic emerges that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the great Trane. A suitable tribute, to be sure. Roland’s delivery is idiomatic and dramatic while never sounding contrived or pretentious. It’s clear that his poetry is struck with the same talent as his bass artistry.
We are slowly drawn into a progressively shifting melange on “Diamondback Dragonfly.” Steve Cohn suggests an almost timeless melding of modern textures with the insistent presence of the blues always working as an undertow in the musical currents. Moss’s flute is precisely probing while Chuck Fertal provides the kind of rhythmic momentum and commentary at which he always excels. In fact, it should be pointed out that much of the quartet’s success could be attributed to Fertal’s ability to listen, react, instigate and direct the music while accompanying his cohorts with solid, sympathetic and inspired contributions. This piece also benefits from Cohn’s dynamic and unfettered trombone playing. Needless to say, his improvisations are unique and his phrasing will be recognizable to those familiar with his pianism. Inside this web of creation, Roland’s active and articulate bass points the way and, like all the members of this improvising ensemble, he both leads and follows with equal eloquence. One of the most impressive features of this extended improvisation is the degree to which the quartet leaves space between their phrases. When improvisers are confident in their abilities, they have no need to play every lick they know in every performance. This seasoned, veteran ensemble is the embodiment of that virtue.
The quiet grace of “Birthday 41” arrives on waves of pianistic expansion and it clearly exemplifies the unique approach of Steve Cohn. For years, commentators have attempted to compare Cohn’s style with other popular and well-known artists. Most of those comparisons are invalid because Steve sounds like nobody but himself and has worked a lifetime to make sure his playing stays that way. Michael Moss brings the warmth of clarinet lyricism into the picture before things get more agitated and excited but this music surges and recedes as a matter of course. Listen to the way Roland and Fertal enter and lay out throughout this piece. Masterful. The aggregate effect is pointillistic but moody to a degree and perfectly illustrative of the dreamlike quality of the whole session.
Larry Roland delivers more poetic wisdom and street-level reality in “In Between Gigs…………..You Dig?” The musical accompaniment is sophisticated and shifting as the piano rumbles and the drums scamper. Larry’s pithy statements reflect the daily trials and tribulations of the working musician in New York City. There is also a palpable sense of unity between the words and the musical elements in this piece. This is carefully considered composition, both premeditated and inspired in the moment. When Moss joins the fray the music swirls and propels the poetry to a new level. Cohn’s trombone seems to mark out the boundaries of the ensemble parameters. The walking bass comes and goes and the sense of movement and activity evokes nothing more than the evolution of the struggle to create.
“For Roy” effectively conjures the spirit of the late, creative trumpeter Roy Campbell in a fitting tribute. Michael Moss gets things underway with a beautiful tenor saxophone introduction whose tender lyricism is contrasted with Cohn’s sensitively abstract piano work. Again, Fertal and Roland give the excursion shape with rhythmic jabs and silences. But this quartet is always concerned with forward momentum. Despite the spaces they all leave for each other, they continually push forward and effectively avoid even momentary instances of coasting, the bane of some improvising groups. Moss calls up the spirits of Coltrane and Ayler here but never in an imitative fashion. As the piece comes to a close, it becomes fittingly dramatic and declamatory, with all four musicians blending their statements with great unity.
The album ends with the appropriate “Shaku Yaqui” and a sense of calm conclusion is conveyed. Moss and Cohn blend flute and shakuhachi in a dreamy melange of almost ceremonial intensity. The flow is carefully ramped up and pulled back with percussion punctuating over a continuous arco contrabass background. The timeless quality of this last track is maintained by what can best be described as “group think.” In other words, everyone is on the same page.
Sensitive listeners attuned to creatively improvised music don’t need to be told that this is an exceptional quartet who has delivered a superb collection of music with “Dream Time.” For those who may be coming to this music for the first time, I can only express envy. This experience is like no other.
Carl Baugher
January 2017
Open-form extended group improvisation as practiced today has become a highly evolved art. It is as hard to do right, without a safety net, in the full public eye, as anything humanity has taken on in its history. It takes decades of dedication to come together and really play, to make all the difference between a good record and one that is truly transcendent, beyond the given and into a higher plane.
The New York Free Quartet does it–some prime examples of the art, as set down on a live recorded gig (cd entitled FREE PLAY released in 2015) in the heart of New York, on a summer day, July 29, 2014.
When you hear the results in all subtlety and expression, it should come as no surprise that these four artists have put in significant time, both together and in a myriad of similar playing situations. Reedist Michael Moss has been interacting with pianist and multi-ethnic instrumentalist Steve Cohn and bassist Larry Roland for some time now. And Steve’s association with drummer Chuck Fertal goes back 30 years. They all have been musical gladiators in the fight to make improvised music anew for a long time. Mike’s key experience in the early loft scene in Manhattan is only a part of the involvement of all in the music of the trenches. So that by now they well know who they are and how they can channel the experience of the history of improvisation, the wide world of musics, the musical heritage of the eternal Afro-diaspora, the world slipstream that we all still participate in. The music you hear is the culmination of all that.
Then there are the poetic utterances that we get an excellent taste of here, with Larry’s evocative recitations. Like the music it is about being there, becoming in the spirit of creation, surviving a world mostly disposed to have you “eat, lay eggs and run,” to live like roaches, with no room for what else there can be unless like the NYFQ you insist on a repeating soundings of the depths. In spite of it all.
But most of all this is about totality, total sound generation. You can hear them speak with the sure vocabulary and eloquence of masters long apprenticed, chained to the lodestone of woodshedding, gigging, communicating in the classroom, on the stage, in the streets. It all leads up to this moment in July when the New Free Quartet gives out with definitive individuality-in-togetherness. Check Michael Moss on bass clarinet or any instrument in his reed arsenal, flowing out with the very together freedom that takes years to reach. Steve Cohn as the pianist who by touch and thought brings significance into sound like very few pianists alive can do. Larry Roland on bass, never wasting a note, making it all mean something. Chuck Fertal on drums, a master of tone, everything hit in just the right place, with second-splitting soul science.
And the more of it, the totality of collectivity. You don’t get what the NYFQ achieved that day in July without all the jousts of life in alleys and cold-water flats combined with the extended free-thinking togetherness of group playing that comes only with much time, talent and perspiration. It’s all here. All on this recorded set. Just sit back and listen!
– Grego Applegate Edwards