The Squid's Ear Magazine


Stapp, Ben / Joe Morris feat. Stephen Haynes : Mind Creature Sound Dasein (Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!))

Splitting his time between Portugal and NY, tuba and euphonium player Ben Stapp's association with guitarist Joe Morris and cornetist Stephen Haynes started in 2011, including participating in their Improvisations series, leading to this trio performing Stapp's compositions with musical forms based on the narrative structure of his novel "Mind Creature Sound Dasein".
 

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Personnel:



Ben Stapp-acoustic tuba and euphonium, acoustic items

Joe Morris-electric guitar, pedals

Stephen Haynes-cornet


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UPC: 5905279364417

Label: Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!)
Catalog ID: FSR 03 | 2019
Squidco Product Code: 27460

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2019
Country: Poland
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Firehouse 12 Studios, in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 25th, 2017.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"When it comes to abstract art, it can be a challenge to escape figurative norms, storytelling, and programmatic signposts. After all, the purity of material, whether visual, sonic, or textual, is a heavy thing to take on its own. Navigating abstraction, or "going to the center" as the late trumpeter Bill Dixon said, requires a massive amount of commitment. But sometimes a guide into these realms is necessary, and tubaist Ben Stapp is not afraid to give equal heft to narrative association and complex free interplay. An international presence since 2007, Stapp's work thus far has culminated in a dystopian psychological opera, Myrrha's Red Book. Stapp has also written a science fiction novel, and often draws imagery from the worlds that occupy his imagination: spiritual, transcendent, yet regularly beset by unnerving and unseating forces.

In this improvised setting, thematics were provided to guitarist Joe Morris and cornetist Stephen Haynes, and the musicians let fly with inspiration. Stapp first began working with Morris and Haynes in 2011 and developed a formidable language of expanded techniques and detailed, rugged interplay. Utilizing a range of mutes, objects, circular breathing, and tonguing approaches, Stapp surges and belches and chortles with the best of 'em, but also has a command of the rhythmic and tonal personality that quantifies his instrument. Coupled to Morris' skittering acoustic vitality (including a range of horizontal scrapes and subharmonic flecks, along with occasional pitch-dividing scumble) and Haynes' narrow screams, they present a range of colors and alien analogues fit for a journey into the center of the mind. Whether one listens with a joyous ear to the sounds' commingling or with pictorial inquisition, the results will stagger."-Clifford Allen



"Jazzarium interview with Ben Stapp by Piotr Wojdat

We are talking to one of the most interesting instrumentalists of the young generation, the tubist Ben Stapp, about a joint album with Joe Morris and Stephen Haynes, his live in Portugal and the United States and we are also trying to find out what Theta Scales is.

How did it happen that you met Joe Morris and Stephen Haynes?

Ben Stapp: Stephen invited me to play in a brass quintet - a joint project with Steve Swell - during the summer of 2011 at the University of the Streets in NYC. I was subbing for Joe Daley. Herb Robertson (who I'd done a record with in 2007 with Alipio Neto's group including Michael T.A. Thompson, Ken Filiano for Clean Feed) was in the group, also the great Mark Taylor on French Horn. I knew Steve Swell from working in his Nation of We ensemble. It was a conventional brass quintet configuration but sounded nothing remotely close. Stephen wrote about the event in his blog. Later that year, Stephen asked me to participate in the new Improvisations series - curated by Joe Morris and Stephen Haynes. The concert was in Hartford (where Haynes lives) and our quartet included violinist Yasmine Azaiez. This was my first encounter with Joe Morris. Stephen continued to bring me up to Connecticut to play in different settings and, in 2013, included me in a new quintet with Joe, William Parker and Warren Smith. We performed at The Stone and at Firehouse 12 - where we recorded the Pomegranate album (New Atlantis Records.

What was the main idea for recording "Mind Creature Sound Dasein"?

BS: There were two main ideas that inspired Mind Creature Sound Dasein (MCSD). The first was my ongoing fascination with fiction and how narratives can be abstracted to create forms in music. This I had explored when I wrote the story to my opera Myrrha's Red Book. The second idea developed in 2015, as I prepared for a solo tuba show on at Cisco Bradley's Jazz Right Now Series curated by archivist/critic Clifford Allen. I had just finished reading the fascinating space opera trilogy, Light, by Jon Harrison. I created a set of twelve movements that represented certain ideas presented in the book. For the sound world, I chose to focus primarily on extended techniques of the tuba.

This synergy of fiction and form captured my imagination! I decided to write my first sci-fi novel: Mind Creature Sound Dasein. The idea was generative: create a narrative work that would serve as a basis for the development of new musical forms and performance/recording projects. The novel is densely packed with hidden meaning - specifically around forms in music, theta harmony, and an invented religion. The concept for the recording rose from the book and the CD shares the title - Mind Creature Sound Dasein. The ten titles on the album correspond to ten levels of consciousness propagated by a nefarious cult in the book. The eleventh track, Epilogue, is a commentary on this troubling spiritual journey. The sound world and forms of each track are based on specific extended techniques of the tuba. The listener may also understand what I am doing as language development leading to a new syntax reflective of the literary source point of the novel.'

[...]


Get additional information at Jazzarium.pl

Artist Biographies

"Composer and Tubist, Ben Stapp, although classically trained with Tommy Johnson and Roger Bobo while pursuing his love for jazz tuba, Ben further opened up his horizons while living in Portugal, hanging out at Clean Feed's record store. Since then he's been living in New York since 2007 and experienced the diversity of New York's music scene including engagements with Steven Bernstein's Universal Melody Brass Band, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), toured with Red Barrat, played with the Garden State Philharmonia at Carnegie Hall, with Slavic Soul Party, Mario Pavone's Accordion Project, playing Earle Brown with the ECCE Ensemble at MIT, frequent traditional jazz and brass band freelancer, Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain, tubist for the Chelsea Symphony, with TILT at Lincoln Center to Premier John Luther Adam's Sila, for Eli Yamin's Blues Band, Sousaphone player for Jacob Sac's live Heavens Trombone Choir, plays tuba in Stephen Haynes Quintet with Joe Morris, Warren Smith, and William Parker, and dedicated Colombian-music tubist with Martin Vejarano's Cumbia River Band, Chia's Dance Party, Pablo Mayor's Folkore Eurbano, and the experimental Alejandro Florez' Tin Throat Ensemble."

-Ben Stapp Website (http://www.benstapp.com/wordpress/)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Joe Morris was born in New Haven, Connecticut on September 13, 1955. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane's OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent most of his time day and night playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17. Drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the '70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Between 1975 and 1978 he was active on the Boston creative music scene as a soloist as well as in various groups from duos to large ensembles. He composed music for his first trio in 1977. In 1980 he traveled to Europe where he performed in Belgium and Holland. When he returned to Boston he helped to organize the Boston Improvisers Group (BIG) with other musicians. Over the next few years through various configurations BIG produced two festivals and many concerts. In 1981 he formed his own record company, Riti, and recorded his first LpWraparound with a trio featuring Sebastian Steinberg on bass and Laurence Cook on drums. Riti records released four more LPs and CDs before 1991. Also in 1981 he began what would be a six year collaboration with the multi-instrumentalist Lowell Davidson, performing with him in a trio and a duo. During the next few years in Boston he performed in groups which featured among others; Billy Bang, Andrew Cyrille, Peter Kowald, Joe McPhee, Malcolm Goldstein, Samm Bennett, Lawrence "Butch" Morris and Thurman Barker. Between 1987 and 1989 he lived in New York City where he performed at the Shuttle Theater, Club Chandelier, Visiones, Inroads, Greenwich House, etc. as well as performing with his trio at the first festival Tea and Comprovisation held at the Knitting Factory.

In 1989 he returned to Boston. Between 1989 and 1993 he performed and recorded with his electric trio Sweatshop and electric quartet Racket Club. In 1994 he became the first guitarist to lead his own session in the twenty year history of Black Saint/Soulnote Records with the trio recording Symbolic Gesture. Since 1994 he has recorded for the labels ECM, Hat Hut, Leo, Incus, Okka Disc, Homestead, About Time, Knitting Factory Works, No More Records, AUM Fidelity and OmniTone and Avant. He has toured throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe as a solo and as a leader of a trio and a quartet. Since 1993 he has recorded and/or performed with among others; Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Joe and Mat Maneri, Rob Brown, Raphe Malik, Ivo Pearlman, Borah Bergman, Andrea Parkins, Whit Dickey, Ken Vandermark, DKV Trio, Karen Borca, Eugene Chadborne, Susie Ibarra, Hession/Wilkinson/Fell, Roy Campbell Jr., John Butcher, Aaly Trio, Hamid Drake, Fully Celebrated Orchestra and others.

He began playing acoustic bass in 2000 and has since performed with cellist Daniel Levin, Whit Dickey and recorded with pianist Steve Lantner.

He has lectured and conducted workshops trroughout the US and Europe. He is a former member of the faculty of Tufts University Extension College and is currently on the faculty at New England Conservatory in the jazz and improvisation department. He was nominated as Best Guitarist of the year 1998 and 2002 at the New York Jazz Awards."

-Joe Morris Website (http://www.joe-morris.com/biography.html)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Stephen Haynes-trumpet: "I am an improvising composer, teaching artist, arts organizer and advocate; a product of the historic and fertile Black Music Division at Bennington College, directed by Bill Dixon. My early foundational studies were with the wonderful Frank Baird, who chaired the brass department at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus during the sixties and seventies. I currently lead several ensembles: Parrhesia (a trio w/Joe Morris and Warren Smith) and Pomegranate (a quintet with Ben Stapp, William Parker, Joe Morris and Warren Smith. My debut recording as a leader, Parrhesia, is on the Engine Studios label. With Joe Morris, I curate the long-running music series, Improvisations, at Real Art Ways. I am very concerned with the plight of the local artist in his/her hometown and region, and with the importance of well-developed support for those of us who enjoy working close to home and being treated properly. Over the years I have worked with a range of musicians, with a primary interest in large ensembles and composition: Bill Dixon, George Russell, LaMonte Young, Butch Morris, Rhys Chatham, Adam Rudolph, Leroy Jenkins, JD Parran, Gunter Hampel, Cecil Taylor and the Dells."

-Stephen Haynes Website (https://www.blogger.com/profile/07577057100629967398)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. The Fire Door Opens 02:27

2. Pretas Create a Puppet Show 04:13

3. Alebrijes Come For Their Hosts 10:41

4. The Nuclear Demigods 05:03

5. The Sound of 32 Fairy Expressways 07:23

6. Dreams in Dissolving Water 04:01

7. Giant Unicelluar Water Slug Calls 06:05

8. Climbing in the Windy Trees 04:10

9. Cutting Up and Filing Away 05:51

10. Back into the Fire it Goes 02:24

11. Epilogue 10:13

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Listen! Foundation (Fundacja Sluchaj!).


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