Andrew Cyrille, Elliott Sharp & Richard Teitelbaum - Evocation

Evocation is what all writing about music must be about and may be the mission of music itself. To create an impression, to summon a memory or tender a suggestion of presence using materials that are not substantially those of the endeavor’s subject – isn’t that the fundamental purpose of any art?

Not to be pretentious or obscure the thing itself: It must be said that master drummer Andrew Cyrille, guitarist-reedist Elliott Sharp and Richard Teitelbaum, the pioneering electronic music composer-performer and pianist, improvised this music on October 13, 2011 entirely in the moment – which is also the best way to experience it now. The three had prior personal associations, for sure, and were alert to the greater world, of course, but they had no necessary intention, expectation or obligation to refer to anything beyond being onstage, right then, as invited by curator-vocalist Thomas Buckner to his Interpretations Series at Roulette, the presenting organization of exploratory music in its first season out of a downtown Manhattan loft to a new, large Brooklyn performance space.

It’s entirely normal that Cyrille, Sharp and Teitelbaum would take the responsibility of performing a set of spontaneous, unpremeditated, aurally focused creative engagement before an attentive audience as an occasion to use their instrumental skills and aesthetic sensibilities to act, feel, think, react. As musicians, to simply be.

“We just went in to have a conversation,” says Cyrille, clearly remembering the concert 11 years after its occurrence. “We were open to what would be brought up by any of the three of us and responding back and forth, like we were talking.”

But not only talking: “Great music comes from great listening,” Cyrille continues. “All music will be good or great if it’s made by talented people who listen. The point is to have it be equilateral, to be able to hear each other and yourself in context of the whole.

“That’s the way I think,” he asserts. “I try to listen and play with and through each others’ music.” Yet few humans can or do respond immediately to anything without registering at least fleetingly
what a given trigger is reminiscent of, seems like or means, to them and possibly to others. This
trio least of all would indulge in anything as glib or staid as programmatic music, which attempts to literally depict a scene or act with sound. Individually and as a unit just this once, Cyrille, Sharp and Teitelbaum don’t seek to represent life so much as to explore and discover how sounds arise from and contribute to it. Of course, they draw on and emit noises we can describe
as to pitch, timbre, rhythm, density and phrase. Those aspects of sound(s) as they manifest here cohere as relatable fragments and even evolve into stories, although whether that’s due to the musicians’ attentions or to the workings of our own subjective minds – or both – is debatable.

To provide some context in which this music emerged (without insisting it be taken into account, and using present tense to emphasize the music exists only that way, documented at its birth and restored to life when listened to): Roulette has an almost square, unadorned hall with a slightly raised stage backed by an arch, facing long rows of basically serviceable seating, capacity 400. Cyrille sits behind trap drums and sometimes stands from them to try the percussive potentials of objects nearby. Teitelbaum, professorially rumpled, seemingly non- chalant, tends a table of keyboards and computers amid wires and cables, within reach of the grand piano. Sharp is shaven-headed, thin, wearing black, strapped with a custom 8-string guitarbass, bass clarinet in a stand, pedals at his feet.

What else he brought to the situation: “On the guitar I use a number of extended techniques plus various objects to excite the strings as well as an electronic bow [and similarly utilize] extended techniques on the bass clarinet including circular breathing, singing into the horn and using the keys like an electronic filter.

“I also ran a feed to Richard who could then sample my sounds and reintroduce them into the mix, Sharp says. “He did this with Andrew as well, creating a well-integrated conceptual feedback system whereby any of us could recycle our own and the others’ ideas.”