all tracks recorded live in the studio on Bb clarinet by Madison Greenstone, August 29-30, 2022
1.
ecstatic consciousness i 03:26
2.
aeolian harp i 03:40
3.
flicker 03:26
4.
glass horn (acoustic shadows) 03:22
5.
aspects beyond thought i 02:25
6.
aspects beyond thought ii 03:05
7.
hidden name 02:51
8.
aspects beyond thought iii (shadow presence) 02:30
9.
ecstatic consciousness ii 03:26
10.
smell of the moon 04:23
11.
aeolian harp ii 03:45
As I came to appreciate, and then to savor, the seemingly infinite varieties of the color ‘black’ in the paintings of Diego Velázquez in museums, I also came to appreciate the seemingly infinite varieties of natural sound within the environments in which I found myself—-for instance, the variations within the endless dream-chord of wind and metals from the abandoned gas station and hardware store seen through the North-facing window of my shack outside New Braunfels, Texas, where I worked for about 3 months helping a friend set up a micro-brewery. I would lock into that dream-chord, as if strapping myself into and holding onto the safety bar of a roller coaster before starting my ride, and then follow its variations, as if walking a dry creek bed in uncharted territory and then following it way beyond the point where I knew where I was, excited by the sense of discovery and of the infinite variety of, and the infinite combinations among, the various sense impressions, simultaneously a symphony, an exhibition, a kaleidoscopic smorgasbord of tastes and smells and textures. It was all about turning off expectations, shutting down filters, and continuing a deep investigation of the possibilities of consciousness while rooted in a controlled element: the path of the dry creek bed.
I must have brought that way-of-perception to this recent album by Madison Greenstone because this series of investigations into the possibilities of resonances (to a non-musician lay-person such as myself, in the area of reed instruments, I tend to think of the overtones/harmonics/whatever in the playing of an Albert Ayler or a Frank Wright, or the rigorous examinations of these possibilites in the work on reed-player/composer/theorist Massimo Magee) produced by the Bb clarinet.
When the young soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber studied with the master, Sidney Bechet, in the 1940s, Bechet would have him play the same “note” in as many ways as possible. When you play it 10 ways, and don’t think you can go any further down that road, force yourself to approach it from 10 more directions, and make each one different in some way….then you discover the many potential ways to be different that you may have either taken for granted or not have ever conceived of before. Then force yourself to conceive of 10 more ways, etc. etc.
As Greenstone writes in the notes accompanying this release, “Each of these studies takes as its basis a mode of resonance latent in the Bb clarinet. This album collects iterative and essayistic reflections on the self-generative qualities of these resonances. The instrument becomes a site of indeterminacy. What happens when resonance overflows? Each resonance has some form of inner agency, some form of emergent phenomena that I search to breathe into being. This demands a continually renewed attunement to the liveliness of the sound: to its wildness, recalcitrance, and roughnesses. I sense that which seeks passage on the current of the breath. What wanders between? I fasten the conditions so that some other thing can emerge– without seeking to control, but merely to influence, to follow where it leads. Who follows during this passage?”
It’s also interesting that Greenstone uses the term ECSTATIC CONSCIOUSNESS for this project in that the creation of the sound paintings involves the letting go and following the untamed, as-yet-undefined flow wherever it leads, as in glossolalia (speaking/chanting in tongues). These resonances also seem to take on a life of their own, which the sensitive musician needs to dance with, rather than attempt to fully control.
This new album from Madison Greenstone is a fascinating and aesthetically satisfying exhibition of 11 related sound-art canvases that ride the exciting and unpredictable wave created when artists place themselves in that delicious grey area between control and loss of control. I can’t imagine this album ever getting old. Congrats to Ms. Greenstone for creating a work devoted to the possibilities of a particular reed instrument that is as forward-thinking in 2024 as Anthony Braxton’s FOR ALTO was to me in 1971.
You can sample some tracks and order your own copy of the album here: https://relativepitchrecords.bandcamp.com/album/resonance-studies-in-ecstatic-consciousness
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Be sure to pick up a copy of my newest poetry book…
STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute
KSE #421, 125 pages, 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, softcover, $6.95 cover price
published 2 January 2024
available for immediate order in the USA from https://amzn.to/48GeYC5
Kendra Steiner Editions (Bill Shute) 