Trombone Sunday

This afternoon, Josh and I went to Brechemin Auditorium in the music building of the University of Washington campus to hear a recital by Stuart Dempster, a friend and bandmate of mine. It was a “40 year retrospective” put on as part of something called “Northwest Trombone Weekend 2006″ - I would say that it barely scraped the tip of what this incredibly active septagenarian has been doing the last 40 years but was pleasant nonetheless - and we had the afternoon free and went on a lark after reading Delaurenti’s writeup in the Stranger. He performs frequently enough around here but I don’t go as much as I wish I could, and I try not to let too many months pass between opportunities to be in the same room with this wonderful human (I figured we’d see his wife Renko too- two for one super-people-checkins).

The Program:
Ricercare a 5 for Trombones (1966) by Robert Erickson
Three Sketches for Trombone and Piano (1967) by Andrew Imbrie
Sequenza V for Trombone Solo (1966) by Luciano Berio
Dhrupad selection (a traditional piece of Indian music performed by Stuart on JDBBBDJ and Greg Powers on Trombone)
General Speech for Solo Trombone (1969) by Robert Erickson

A lovely program. I was about to type a bit about how I liked such-and-such a thing, but really I liked it all very much, almost increasingly in order of appearance. And though I do have a soft spot for Berio, I couldn’t pick a favorite. It was nice to see some friends in the audience from local new music circles concentric to both mine and Josh’s, like “Skip” Milford, Tom Swafford, Byron Au Yong, Angelina Baldoz, Christopher DeLaurenti, Jim Knapp, Wally Shoup, Gavin Borchert, and others we didn’t get to greet. Oh also, a happy coincidence that we caught a story in today’s New York Times giving a pleasing thumbs-up to Loren’s loft/performance space Chez Bushwick, and were able to take it to Renko. (Loren is the youngest Dempster son and my cellist of choice.)

I gotta get faster with putting pics up. I’m a bit behind and can’t comment in a timely way.

Oh and this is neat - Brian Eno & David Byrne have reissued My Life in the Bush of Ghosts under a Creative Commons license, and very publicly invite collaboration and remix. Should be fun to play with and fascinating to watch (/listen for) the reinventions!