Gerry Hemingway- Nagual Music News

Welcome to the news page, its last been updated on November 20, 2009 - please visit Tours/Performances page for up to date performance info

In December (09) I will be back in NY to close out the year for two performances both at the Cornelia Street Cafe. On December 4th I'll be there with the newest manifestation of my quintet with Oscar Noriega, Ellery Eskelin, Terrence McManus and Kermit Driscoll. The following day the same group will be in the studio for a recording of all new works. On Sunday BassDrumBone will be there performing some recent repertoire that we recorded in August of this year. The page that receives the most regular attention on this site is the tours page, which is frequently updated with new performance activity, and there is alot coming up in the coming months and year.

Avant (Mode) records will release a 4 cd set in beginning of 2010 of myself and Anthony Braxton in duo, its title will be "Old Dogs". We recorded the material in the summer of 2007 in four one hour long (note the hour glass in the picture) sessions recorded at Wesleyan University. Jon Rosenberg was the engineer. Anthony played his entire family of saxophones no clarinets this time, and I had marimba, vibes, steel drum, electronics and of course trap set for my pallette. Each hour for me retained a definitive character at the same time as exploring an extremely wide range of material. Other than a short encore at Ulrichsberg I have not played with Anthony since the final performance of the quartet in early 1994. I can not convey what a connection I experienced in this reunion. There is a sense of mutual understanding that runs very deep in these explorations, informed both by the many years spent together on the road and from where are paths have led us since that time. I am very grateful that this occured. I will keep you informed about the release of this material.

In October the occassion to return to the US for a weekend of performing was first set in motion with an invitation from Evan Parker to perform in trio with Mark Dresser at the Stone as part of a two week Evan fest that NY enjoyed for the beginning of October. We were joined on the second set by Herb Robertson and the whole concert was recorded by WKCR for future broadcast. I haven't heard the recording but the evening was an exceptional musical experience, that follows only one other occassion where we had played as a trio in the Knitting Factory many years ago. The weekend also included a performance by Mauger with Rudresh Mahanthappa and Mark up in my home town of New Haven, CT.

Its back!!! Songs, the 2002 release on between the lines out of print for almost 6 years !!

US re-release date October, 2009, European re-release date: September 2009 - its available from me directly via this site: check here:

Songs

Gerry Hemingway

Lisa Sokolov-voice
James Emery-guitars
Kermit Driscoll-ac/el bass
Gerry Hemingway-drums, sampler, voice
John Butcher-tenor sax
Ellery Eskelin-tenor sax
Thomas Lehn-analogue synthesizer
Herb Robertson-trumpets
Wolter Wierbos-trombone

1. Succotash 6:25
2. Anton 5:01
3. In Your Arms 7:04
4. Up in You 5:31
5. Hall of Mirrors 7:57
6. Cheap 4:46
7. Out of the Trees 7:02
8. Thump It 6:41
9. Going Down 6:32
10. Rain 5:30
11. Emperor 6:02
12. Time to Go 8:21

Total Time 76:55

All Music & Lyric by Gerry Hemingway
Original Release 2002, its been out of print for 5-6 years

"A rich, atmospheric disc, with an intelligent approach to the shape, exuberant in the interplay and splendidly played.

Paolo Curtabbi (All About Jazz- Italy)

"I won't give up so easy, the search for answers that might lead to a cure
A way to heal the wounds, and get back to what's natural and pure
A need to raise up, not freeze up, just ease up, the reason for consequence
Without wizards or witches or hucksters polluting our own common sense"

hatOLOGY 673
Gerry Hemingway Quintet : Demon Chaser
(remastered reissue of hatART 6137)
Michael Moore –alto saxophone, clarinet & bass clarinet
Wolter Wierbos –trombone
Mark Dresser –double bass
Ernst Reijseger –cello
Gerry Hemingway –drums, steeldrums

A live concert recording at Ottenbrucher Bahnhof, Wuppertal-Elberfeld on March 2nd, 1993.
With Demon Chaser, Gerry Hemingway has written himself into the history of this great music with a script that fulfills both the requirements of complete contemporaneousness and absolute legibility. He has signed his name in the Big Book. – from liner notes of Brian Morton

Mauger enjoyed a fantastic March 2009 tour of Europe (picture from a performance in Venice at Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, March 23....). The group is preparing for some West Coast activity in February of 2010. Check Tours & Performances for updates

I have just posted some recent in depth interviews from 2008 and 2009, including a radio interview on Taran's Free Jazz Hour out of Paris (listen here), the first for El Intruso with Sergio Picirilli (in English) and also an interview with Rogelio Peirera Conde for Oro Molido which will be published in hard copy in January 2009, you can find here (in English).

On the lighter side for those of you who are aware of my interest in rural traditional music's of the Americas I did radio show with Kurt Gottshalk on WFMU, which you can listen to any time by visiting this link which is the playlist of the whole show. From there you can easily navigate to the audio of the show, as you will see from the playlist I start about a little over an hour into the show, my section lasts about one and half hours.

This past summer (09) I finally found a chance to record with composer/komungoist Jin Hi Kim in duo. We used the bucolic setting and excellent acoustics of my brother's house in Shutesbury, Massachusetts on a sublime summer afternoon. The recordings are in production and I will post news of their progression towards release. Jin Hi Kim I performed earliar in the spring of 2009 at the Detroit museum (from where this picture comes from). We also returned to Korea in November of 2008 for two duo performances in Seoul. You can now see excerpts of a performance of Jin Hi Kim's "Sanjo Ecstasy" performed in Jeunju City, Korea in 2003 ("UnKnot" "Sanjo Ecstacy"). The group included a number of outstanding Korean Traditional musicians including the extraordinary Haegum player Kang Eunil and Kayagum master Ji Aeri. More recently there is also a clip of our duo from a performance in Vigo, Spain at the Museo do Mar from the summer of 2008 (Digital Buddha excerpt).

The other duo recording that happened in recent months was with pianist Marilyn Crispell. This duo emerged out of many years of playing with Anthony Braxton, and was very active in the early 90s. We performed in Baltimore at An Die Musik in March of 2009 and did a multitrack recording of the concert. The production is finished and we our currently working on a few options for release, hopefully in 2010.

In August (08) Auricle Productions kicked into high gear with two duo recording sessions, one with Ellery Eskelin and the other Terrence McManus. You can find two YouTube videos of the duo with Ellery in 2008 (Part One, Part Two). Terry & I have also posted some video earliar in 2008 from a performance at RUCMA (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four). In addition I have also been recording a tremendous amount of solo material. Not sure when this will all see the light of day, but you will be sure to hear about it.

Three, count'em 3 new releases!!! (both Auricle releases available from this site)

"Buffalo Pearl" is culled from a performance in April 2005 with myself and John Butcher and marks the 7th release on my own Auricle Record label (AUR-7) which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary. John and I worked collaboratively on the multi-tracked mixing and editing to put this together and simultaneously we have organized a second recording taken from two nights earliar at Roulette in NYC. Each performance retains a different character, perhaps in part as the Buffalo performance was a new electronic setup for me, or perhaps it was the club atmosphere, whichever this performance has a lot of material that favors higher, faster energy.

"kinetics" is the third release of Tom & Gerry (also on Auricle records, AUR-8), the other ongoing duo of myself and Thomas Lehn. These performances come from Ulrichsberg, Austria; Köln, Germany and the Densités festival in Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. Thomas recorded these performances multitrack with his excellent equipment and so the quality of the recording is very high. Additionally we also worked collaboratively mixing and editing these recordings, a process that takes months and engages us in a very detailed discussion of converting these performances into an audio experience. The result, in this case, has produced a recording that for the first 45 minutes is primarily very quiet and delicate. The listening experience is rich in detail, sounding fantastic on very good headphones or turned up loud on a quality sound system. The final 15 minutes, assuming you dont turn it down, is one of the more explosive, earth moving and viscerally intense expositions of extremely dense and rhythmically intense material we have offered so far in recordings. I particularly find this performance to maintain an exceptional state of tension, both in the quiet and loud sections. Not for the casual listener!! Thomas and I are almost done with a second cd that will come from four different performance venues in the US.

Mauger is a collective trio with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mark Dresser & myself that began over three years ago. This studio recording was done in December of 2006. All three of us contributed compositions and as well some collective inventions are included. The group gets its name from a letter scramble of the first two letters of each of our names and is a preposition defined, "in opposition to, notwithstanding" which seems appropiate to creating art in our time. I like that we found this word and by alchemy brought it to new life from its more prevalent use in Shakesperean times.

Anders Jormin/Verneri Pohjola/Gerry Hemingway & GH/John Butcher in Raahe, Finland July 26, 2008

In the summer of 2008 I performed at the Raahe festival in Finland (July '08), where I also recorded and performed with Swedish bassist Anders Jormin and Finnish trumpeter Verneri Pohjola. The recording done in a lovely, soon to be lost, vintage movie theater was for TUM records, and in the same building I performed in duo with John Butcher in our first performance together since 2005.

In September (08) a performance with Earl Howard and Anthony Davis was recorded for Roulette TV on September 28th. It is finally posted for viewing at Roulette's website [www.roulette.org]. There is a long list of recent performances on the TV page and you need to scroll down to next to the bottom of that list to find the performance. The piece features Earl's exceptional live sampling work, and his unique compositional way of utilizing the resources of extended vocabulary and

I am delighted to report the release of "Clepton" on New World Records this past December (07). This project which is directed and primarily composed by synthesist Earl Howard features the title work which was refined and developed in the Sudwestfunk studios in the fall of 2006 and was in collaboration with the GRH trio (Georg Graewe, Ernst Reijseger, and myself). It combines Earl's synthesis and live sampling with pre-determined textures and improvisations in various orchestrations of the trio and Earl. Also included is a collectively improvised work and I am very happy to see included a duo with me and Earl that I recorded in 1987 in Rochester, NY called "Rosebud". On this work Earl is playing his first sample set up, the AKAI S-900 which was a classic sampler of the time. The work contains one of the most wonderful electro-acoustic crescendo's that I have ever heard or played.

You can find it in "How to get Recordings" or Auricle Records page on this site has had a major upgrade (& update), have a look here.

Toward the end of February (08) I participated in a recording for Mode Records of an older work of Bob Ashley called Trio III. The recording features the violinist Conrad Harris and will include a number of early works by some of the well known rebel composers of the 1960s including Alvin Lucier and Alvin Curran. Trio III is a piece featuring violin and text regarding the history of the violin accompanied by two other instruments in this case myself and pianist Blue Gene Tyranny. The recording session was also taped in Surround Sound and video taped for DVD release at Systems 2 in Brooklyn.

The work on my solo video and audio recordings progresses slowly, there were performances in April and in June (08) at the Spoleto festival, August in 2009 in NY, and some more coming up soon (January 2010) in Europe.

Not enough can be said about the celebration of BassDrumBone's 30th Anniversary (now 32 going on 33). Our first concert happened at the Educational Center for the Arts in the early fall of 1977. A chemisty was evident to all of us from the start, but none of us could have predicted that our music could evolve and sustain a musical partnership that remains as vital now as it was from the start. BassDrumBone is a recent grantee of Chamber Music America New Work's program. Nine new works (3 by each of us) were created reflective of our thirty year collaboration. The works were premiered at the "Sculptured Sounds" festival in February of 2007 and also at the "Discover Jazz" festival of Burlington, VT. In the fall of 2007 there was an article for the Europe based ARTe TV about the trio featuring recent interviews and performances as well as some vintage footage. BassDrumBone's most recent release is on Clean Feed recorded in April of 2005 called "The Line Up". Samples of that release can be found on this site mp3s page. Keep your eye on the Tours page for announcements of upcoming BDB performances as we enter our 33rd year in 2010. We recently recorded in August 2009 the material we developed via the CMA grant.

I have also begun what I expect will at least be about a multi-year project in interviewing the musicians who were involved in CMIF pool

the very vital music scene of New Haven, Connecticut in the 1970's. I am eventually interviewing everyone I can find who is still alive about their impressions of what for me was a catalytic period of activity; a crossroads where I and many others began many musical relationships that remain active to this day. I am interested in hearing from anyone who I have lost touch with who was active in the New Haven musical scene in the 1970's or who knows someone who was involved at that time. I am doing my interviews both in video and audio anticipating that the culmination of this project may be in more than one format. I have for some time felt strongly that what occured in New Haven in this period was historically significant and deserving a more complete investigation and documentation.

There is another collaborative project initiated by reedist Michael Lytle (bass/contrabass clarinet) along with Nick Didkovsky (guitar and digital processing), and myself on drums with a little processing as well. It was performed at Experimental Intermedia in NYC in mid March of 06 and we succeeded in making a very nice multitrack recording of the concert which Nick has distilled into an excellent cd. It is about to be released in two formats, as limited release CD available from this site and also as a download (more info and links for this will available shortly on "Getting Recordings" page. It is called "Swim This" and its cover art is a collaboration between myself and my son Jordan Hemingway, who is rapidly becoming a very talented photographer.

The GRH (Graewe/Reijseger/Hemingway) trio's recording for Winter and Winter was released in the spring of 2006. We will be touring in the fall of 2009 (our twentieth anniversary!!!) I can not recommend it enough. We had an opportunity to create this CD under ideal circumstances, a room with superb acoustics, completely silent) with a great piano, super marimba and percussion equipment (it is the rehearsal room for the Munich Opera). The technical part of the recording was equally ideal with Adrian von Ripka at the helm and Stefan Winter as our producer. We recorded three hours of music and this CD is the distillation of that effort. You will not be dissappointed. As always with Winter & Winter productions it is beautifully packaged. The trio touried briefly in the fall of 06 with performances in the UK and the aforementioned project for the SWF radio with composer/electronic musician Earl Howard.

There are a number of articles about the two recent quartet and quintet releases in AllAboutJazz. There are two related articles by Kurt Gottschalk who did a feature article in April 2005 which is available online (check it out), he also reviewed this recording and the new quartet recording (recent review AAJ-NYC). There was a flurry of touring, cd releases and performances in the spring of 2005. My quintet with guests, Peggy Lee on cello and Mark Helias on bass as well as Frank Gratkowski and Wolter Wierbos performed at the 20th Vancouver Jazz Festival in June (2005). In Europe the new quintet cd entitled "Double Blues Crossing" on Between the Lines, was released in the beginning of May, it is distributed by Allegro in the States starting late this summer. My quartet had a successful two and half week tour in Europe in May with many performances in Paris, as well as appearing on the Ulrichsberg Kaleidophon. "The Whimbler" was released mid-May 2005 on Clean Feed Records from Portugal (see below for more details - hear some excerpts).

As of Oct 2006 you can download some of my earliar LPs as mp3s at the JazzLoft site. I will provide a direct link to these items from my How to Get Recordings page. A CDR release of my solo recording of 1988, "Tubworks" is now available from this site. The LP has long been out of print, and the label that released it (Sound Aspects) has all but disappeared (anyone of news of the label or its producer Pedro de Freitas please contact me). If you have not already checked out Graewe/Reijseger/Hemingway 10th anniversary tour release, "Counterfactuals" on Nuscope Recordings I highly recommend you do. For more info see the page devoted to the trio (GRH Trio).

I am working on a multimedia page featuring my collaboration with video artist Beth Warshafsky. It will be a page we jointly develop. Meanwhile I highly encourage you to visit her web site B-Sky which has some samples of our work.

My second orchestral work,"Sideband", a Concerto for Three Improvisors and Orchestra was given it's world premiere at Cal Arts on March 8th of 2003. Anne LeBaron and David Rosenboom joined me as the concerto soloists along with the Cal Arts New Millenium Ochestra under the baton of Marc Lowenstein. This piece was created with funding from the Paul Simon Guggenheim Foundation. I am hunting for future opportunities to perform this work and will keep you posted.