do, discuss, repeat…
play talk play
Electronic musician Rodrigo Costanzo visited Philadelphia in early April as part of a brief tour of the US Northeast. Friend and collaborator Bryan Jacobs was kind enough to introduce me to Rodrigo, with the suggestion that we record a video in Rodrigo’s ongoing play talk play series.
The premise of play talk play is simple - Rodrigo and a guest record a video together, starting with an improvised musical performance, continuing with a conversation, and ending with another performance. It’s something of a high-wire act: no advance planning, no rehearsal, one take, and in our case, a first meeting, all with the imperative of producing two compelling pieces of music and a thoughtful discussion. (Rodrigo also goes out of his way to use a different musical setup for each recording - which on this occasion included borrowing my electric guitar for tabletop use).
Revisiting the video, I’m struck by the cumulative nature of Rodrigo’s chosen format. Our conversation, ranging across syntactic, structural, and relational aspects of improvisation (without ever using those fancy words), grows directly out of the music we’ve just played. And the second performance - sharply contrasted with the first - very much reflects the preceding discussion (including a deliberately “refused ending”), and reminds me yet again of the many ways in which social interaction informs musical interaction. “Play” - in every sense - and “talk” are both key to my conception of musicianship, and it was a pleasure sharing and documenting those experiences with Rodrigo.
Some full-nerd footnotes: in the second piece, I’m adding a Sirkut SNB (with modifications by comrade J. Soliday) to my setup - a device with a delightfully strong personality, and something I now use often (albeit in very different ways) with Bridges of Königsberg. And the artwork behind us is from a series of prints by Milwaukee colleague Lane Hall - which is also to say that this video was shot in the confines of my workroom. It was a pleasure to set this recording in my domestic space, and allow me to shout out to my wonderful and very patient rowhome neighbors who tolerate these noisy escapades.
At the workbench
This week I’m putting the finishing touches on some mixes for a forthcoming Bridges of Königsberg album (and hope to be able to share more news on that front soon - exciting things afoot). I’m incredibly excited about the new tracks - a collection of short improvisations, with day-glo textures, fractured rhythms, and a buzzing intensity. I’d say I am surprised that we are able to pull off this material while recording remotely (with Peter in the UK and David in the Pacific Northwest), but then I remind myself that a decade of experience playing and touring together makes all the difference.
I’m also busy sketching artwork ideas for the record. Those sketches are… not ready for public consumption just yet (which is a polite way of saying, *cough*, they need a lot of work). Insert David Byrne’s “you can’t see it ‘til it’s finished” here (with all the layers of irony very much intended).
Nonce
Cartoonist John Granzow knows that for all the hats I wear (musician, artist, educator, etc.), at this time of year, everything revolves around the Phillies cap…
Thanks as always for listening and reading - yours,
Christopher
Christopher Burns
sfsound.org/~cburns