Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and NS Designs Forge Ahead

21st century eclectic bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells continues his partnership with NS Designs with dates in US and EU

During the upcoming months, twenty-first century eclectic bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells will find himself behind NS Designs basses in both the US and EU. Starting with a trio set at South Harlem’s freshest venue Silvana (300 W. 116th Street, SW corner of Frederick Douglass Blvd/8th Ave) that promises to be as close to a Machine Gun reunion as ever. Robert Musso; guitars, Elliott Levin; saxes, flute and voice, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells on NS Designs NXTa and electronics plus a very special appearance by poet John Lunar Ritchey. They start at 7PM and won’t play for long so please come early and get a good seat. Admission is free.

September 29th will find guitarist/banjoist/conceptualist Dr. Eugene Chadbourne, the Belgian harmonica virtuoso Steven De Bruyn and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells in Degenfeld, Germany at Der Rätche for an evening best described as: “Sonny and Brownie from Mars”. The three improvisors will barnstorm through The Great American Songbook, its relatives and OMFUG (other musics from the underground). More info here: https://www.raetsche.com/programm/eugene-chadbourne-steven-de- bruyn-jair-rohm-parker-wells-sonny-and-brownie-from-mars/

The highly acclaimed Miche Fambro Trio will be on MS Silja Serenade for the month of October. Sailing between Stockholm, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland, the drummer-less Jazz trio will be performing Standards and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells originals under the moniker “Beautiful Music for Beautiful Places”. The trio features vocalist/guitarist Miche Fambro and Romanian pianist Aurel Dragalina.

Jair-Rohm Parker Wells plays both the NS Designs NXTa and WAV electric upright basses. His processing chain differs from performance to performance and can include any number of boutique and common stomp boxes to homemade software processors (mostly coded in Csound). He plays German bows of graphite by Glasser and various vintage wooden bows. His amplification is by Phil Jones Bass and Line 6.

photo by: Agata Urbaniak

Hurraay a new #blacbuc video is up!

I’m very excited to announce that a new #blacbuc promo video is now available. Just surf over here and get a taste of the latest adventure in sound from the body of work that is #blacbuc. The piece is entitled “Cast Down Your Buckets Where You Are” and references Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech of 1895.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!

 

Getting ready…

I’ll be doing a solo set at Bitcoin Meets Art tomorrow (Saturday August 23rd) here in Stocholm. I’m posting a few tracks from my rehearsal. All recorded in Ecasound. The gear i’ll be using is (as always) my NSD WAV bass with the Glasser bow (German, of course), the magnificent Zoom B3 and my iPad Mini running Filtatron and Animoog. Please drop by if you can and tip 🙂

“Salo”

“Klaus Kinski”

“Rachel”

Terra firma…

Wow, it’s done. I’m back on land and preparing for the next phase. I spent the last two months on a cruise ship playing improvised music and popular songs from the mid-twentieth century with pianist Doru Apreotesei and vocalist Deborah Herbert. It was a fantastic time of growth and exploration. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, there will be sound clips from those gigs posted here from time to time in relation to various topics.

Now the work turns to preparing for a concert series that i’ll produce that focuses mostly on my presentation of solo works for bass. Some of the pieces i’ll perform have been composed for me. Some will be by composers i admire and have been greatly influenced by (e.g., Cage, Braxton, Sun Ra, Ayler). Stay tuned here for the where and when.

Partial list of Sun Ra charts

Some music…

I’ll be starting to post some new music here now. By “new”, i mean clips from gigs that i’m doing currently. Most recently, i’ve been playing in duo with the pianist Doru Apreotesei. As i mentioned in my post “The Audience Gets It“, we’ve been playing – mostly – improvised music in an environment that is generally reserved for the squarest of square: a cruise ship piano bar. The track here is “Blue In Green” co-written by Miles Davis and Bill Evans.The playing on this clip is pretty “inside”. There will be others that aren’t 😉

The Manhattan Lounge on MS Color Magic where i’m working right now.

Dynamics…

As with all Music, dynamics play a very important role in improvised music. Dynamics can (and should) be used very effectively as a structural/organizational device. We’re not just talking about volume here.  Getting back to an earlier post on this blog, eleven aspects of improvisation are delineated. Each of these parameters can be dynamically modulated. In other words, one can vary the amount of any of the defined parameters one utilizes in a phrase, note or statement. This is to apply Braxton‘s eleventh (of the twelve types) “Gradient Formings” – the serialization of dynamics.

One very, very good illustration of this is the “Pulse Track” of Braxton’s Composition #108B. This graphic score may be freely applied to volume and/or pitch.

Braxton describes #108B as “a series of possible curve line sounds or curve line dynamic changes” (311), implying that the lines can indicate pitch and/or volume… – Graham Lock

 

Another album…

Here’s an album that i’m featured on. It’s by the German saxophonist Biggi Vinkeloe. There is some really amazing music by some of the most inspired improvisors around. The entire album is available as a free download. Check it out 🙂

 

Moving forward…

It’s all about moving forward. Forward. “Left, right, left…” Think about it.

More about methodology soon.

 

Machine Gun…

Wow, we did our first gig together in 1986. Time flies.

 

Us at the Court Tavern ca. 1986

The “J” word…

Before i continue with my discussion of solo and group improv methodologies, i wanted to mention that i’m giving some serious thought to abandoning the “J” word. The term “Jazz” appears to do the opposite of what language is supposed to do.

As much as the word is a part of my identity – both personal and cultural – i question very seriously its ability to communicate anything remedial about the subject to which it’s applied.