During a two-day encounter in Houston in 2012, visiting improviser & guitarist Keith Rowe and double bassist Damon Smith combined with guitarist Sandy Ewen, on day 1 joining with her all-female experimental music ensemble Lady Band (of Various Fruit Names) to perform works from the 70s London ensemble Scratch Orchestra; on day 2 recording two uniquely creative improvsations as a trio.
Format: 2 CDs Condition: New Released: 2021 Country: USA Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels CD 1 recorded at 14 Pews, in Houston, Texas, on October 11th, 2012, by Ryan Edwards.
CD 2 recorded at KUHF, in Houston, Texas, on October 12th, 2012, by Ryan Edwards.
2. Gooseberry Marmalade - Plays Scratch Orchestra 42:42
CD2
1. There Guide The Spindle, And Direct The Loom 45:24
2. Where The Juncture Knits The Channel Bone 18:38
sample the album:
descriptions, reviews, &c.
"Lady Band (of Various Fruit Names) is an all-female experimental music ensemble founded by Sandy Ewen in 2009. Performances are singular, often site-specific events, featuring a rotating lineup (and different fruit-themed name for each show), with members contributing graphic and text-based scores for structured improvisation.
Drawing parallels between Ewen's group and Scratch Orchestra, the 1960s-70s London experimental music ensemble Rowe was involved in, Smith hatched a plan for Rowe to collaborate with the group on a concert of Scratch Orchestra scores in 2012: "During a previous trip of Keith's to Houston, we were at the Alabama IceHouse and talking about Fluxus, the (Ben) Patterson was up or had been up (at CAMH), and (Keith) talked about Scratch Orchestra. So I made the connection to have him do those pieces with Sandy's group when he wanted to play with Sandy and me."
Gooseberry Marmalade was up for the task. Meeting over tea the night before the show, Rowe's quiet intensity opened an infinite world of possibilities for staging the works. Seven scores were chosen to be performed as an uninterrupted suite, some of the titles bearing code names devised for inclusion in Nature Study Notes, a compendium of scores and "Draft Constitution of the Scratch Orchestra" published in 1969. Also chosen were Christian Wolff's Stones and p. 80 from Cardew's Treatise - realized here as a chorus line of pantomimed gestures and pedestrian movements, heard only on the audio recording as an extended silence punctuated with the padding of footsteps across the polished wooden floorboards of 14 Pews, the converted chapel/cinema/performance space where Ewen and Smith were in residency.
Moments of physical- visual-experiential magic abounded. Marilyn, Cressandra Thibodeaux's then 80-year old mother and bartender of 14 Pews, handed each performer a flower to begin CFIRNTFM145 - Flowers. Chewing on a rose, thorns and all, Regina Agu languidly paced the aisles while carnations were sung to, bits of poetic verse drifted into consciousness and petals were strewn about the stage. The performance ended with Desire, its thought-provoking text echoing in our minds intently as recited by Rowe the night before:
"Want to do something; Do it. Do something without wanting to. Do something wanting not to. Be done to. Be done."
"-Rebecca Novak
"The double album Houston 2012 captures a two-day encounter in October 2012 between English tabletop guitarist Keith Rowe and the experimental-music community of Houston, Texas. Rowe's visit came about thanks to the initiative of Saint Louis double bassist Damon Smith, who lived in Texas at the time. While there Smith developed a strong working relationship with Sandy Ewen, who's not only a splendid, unconventional guitarist but also an organizer committed to facilitating women's access to the arts. In 2009 she established Lady Band (of Various Fruit Names), an all-female experimental ensemble whose political roots and widely varying experience levels bear similarities to the mixture of trained and amateur participants in the egalitarian-minded Scratch Orchestra, an experimental-music ensemble Rowe had played in 40-odd years earlier.
The album's first disc documents that convergence. First Rowe, Ewen, and Smith improvised a thrilling set of negotiations among Rowe's finely abraded textures, Ewen's more eruptive attack, and Smith's groaning drones. Then a ten-strong Lady Band, using the name Gooseberry Marmalade, played a series of Scratch Orchestra scores that they'd workshopped with Rowe. Their performances reconcile rigor and playfulness, sounding by turns like a brawl in a metalworking shop, a convention of stocking-footed mimes, and a straight-up dance party. The second disc is just the trio, recorded when they reunited in the studio the next day. The resulting improvisations are much more austere than their first, reducing each musician's signature sound to elemental expressions of electricity and friction enacted upon a vast field of sonic emptiness."-Bill Meyer, The Chicago Reader