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!

 

The Wire…

Last year, the new music publication The Wire did a feature on me and also previewed some tracks from my upcoming release “Koheleth” . You can read a blurb and listen to the previews here.

I’m especially proud of the album “Koheleth” and for this reason, had refused to release it digitally. As it was conceived and produced as an album – a gesamtwerk  – i wasn’t going to compromise it by having it disassembled and lost in the sea of “download only” singles that are all too overabundant on the Internet. I started a crowdfunding campaign on Patreon to raise the money to finance a proper release. It has yet to produce the result i aspired to. I’ve considered abandoning the Patreon campaign and then something happens to inspire me to press on. So, for the time being, i’ll continue working on that.

In the meantime, #blacbuc continues to get closer to a premiere. Watch this blog for updates and info and, of course, more music.

 

 

 

 

Blac Buc, Blac Buc!!!

Bassist Jair-Rohm Parker Wells composes “Blac Buc” on the Buchla 200e

The realization of the multi-disciplinary work “Blac Buc” on the EMS Buchla 200e system.

Stockholm, Sweden

NS Designs bassist/Composer Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, in residency at EMS in Stockholm, Sweden, has crafted a significant social/political work utilizing the Buchla 200e modular synthesizer system.

The 50 minute multi-media/multi-disciplinary work is called “Blac Buc”. The title is a play on words referencing the Reconstruction era racial slur “Black Buck” and the name of the modular synthesizer system that the piece was realized on: the Buchla 200e modular synthesizer. The work promotes and inspires the consideration that Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” rather than W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Niagara Movement” held the best solution for post-Reconstruction America and the advancement of its Black people. The work was produced entirely using GNU, free and open source software. The completed work will be presented live as a fixed media performance incorporating projections, the voices of Ayn Rand, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, dance and live NS Designs bass. A CD of the music as well as digital downloads/streaming will also be available.

Quotes:

…thinking man’s hip hop with cascading political indignation BEN WATSON (Music journalist/AMM-All Stars)

Let it now be known that the modern day “Freak-Bass Philosopher” has arrived – Jair-Rohm Parker Wells. I remember the Buchla well from my days at NYU (in the mid-80s!), so to hear it today through Jair-Rohm’s impassioned and well-informed “techno-logical touch” is a welcome sonic sandwich. Blessings for Bass. Thank you, Mr. Parker Wells. MARQUE GILMORE the inna-most (DRUM-FM / Kult-U-Real™) – April, 2017

“For Jair-Rohm, being called a virtuoso is too limiting. It’s being current that makes what he does so relevant. I think the measure of an artist goes beyond the hands that make the art. Jair-Rohm just doesn’t play the instrument, he creates a language using it.” — JEFFERY HAYDEN SHURDUT (artist/ producer/ director)

“…an innovative mix of electronica, EDM, jazz and spoken word that will move your feet and open your mind.” – KARL FURY (electronic musician)

“Music where acoustic and electronic instruments meet ,and where you sometimes can´t hear the difference will be tommorrows music. This is a good example of it. Nice bassplaying. It fits perfectly into the machines groove.” — THOMAS KLINTEBY (Composer , musician in ‘Upside’)

“…we experience the full range of pitch, timbre, precision, warmth, harmony and chaos, Whiteness, Blackness, noise and music that mirrors the complexity of 150 years of post-slavery social evolution. Prepare for a ride, and not one that brings you back safely to rest. It is meant to shake and move you to a different place, and regain lost momentum.” — LAWRENCE DE MARTIN (acoustic luthier)

“This is a fearless confrontation of history and music technology. It builds on the works of pioneers like Sun Ra & Joe McPhee in terrms of both the embeded social issues as well as the boundless experiments with sound.” — DAMON SMITH

Trailer

Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and NS Designs WAV electric upright bass at the Buchla 200e system at EMS Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo credit: Henrik Jonsson)

I went to Iran…

more soon 🙂

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”

Modelling…

I’m surprisingly satisfied with the sound of the Zoom B3. Digital modelling has arrived. I actually made the decision this week NOT to invest in any more sexy analog gear because on listening back to recordings from my last gigs, i’m not only impressed with but also surprised at how good it sounds. My current insights fly in the face of even my own prior principals.

Life can be like that…

 

The Zoom B3 with continuous control pedal.

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