Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now

Rewind: CMN!

When we last left our hero, he was on a train somewhere between Baltimore and Philadelphia. We resume our story about 20 minutes from Wilmington station, where our hero suddenly has a stunning revelation . . .

J likes to remind me that every time I travel there seems to be something that goes wrong. Flights canceled/delayed, ticket being voided mysteriously, luggage getting lost, and so on. I really don't think I have bad luck travelling--more like I've been cursed since she said that! Well, bad luck, curse, or whatever, it was with me again on that train to Philadelphia for Hybrid Groove Project's concert as part of the Chamber Music Now! series.

Now, before I travel anywhere--especially for concerts--I always make an exhaustive list of what I need, lay it out neatly on the floor, and then cross each item off the list as I pack it away. The night before, I layed everything out, but didn't make my list. About 20 minutes from the Wilmington train station, just as I was settling into the soothing comfort of the train gliding across the tracks on a cold, rainy, and dreary day, I had a sudden panic attack, feeling as though I'd forgotten something. I went over the list in my head: saxophone (soprano + alto), check; wireless microphone, check; camera, check; laptop, check; music, check . . . wait a minute, let's break this down a little more (Erik's pieces, yes; Richard's piece, yes; ter Veldhuis, yes; Beglarian, yes; and . . . ). THE GLASS PIECE! How could I possibly forget that?! The music is huge! Instantly, I thought to myself, "Can I play the concert without it?" The answer: no, it's 12 minutes long. Well, there was going to be no way around it--I had to get back to Baltimore . . . and fast.

I ran to find the conductor, who filled me in on the train schedules. The gods must have been with me that day because when the train pulled into Wilmington, there was another headed back to Baltimore just about to leave on the other side of the platform. I jumped on, the conductor was sympathetic and didn't make me pay for that train, and I called Jihwan to let her know the situation. Even luckier was was the fact her boss had called her earlier and said she didn't have to go into work until later than she was scheduled. If that didn't happen, she would have been gone, and there would have been no way for me to get the piece. 고마워, 자기야.

Hybrid Groove Project in Philadelphia

Although I arrived in Philly a little later than planned, I was finally there with Glass in hand. And everything was ok. On with the show.

Let there be no doubt that new music is alive and well in Philadelphia. And I think that that fact is due in no small part to the evangelical efforts of Richard Belcastro and David Laganella, the directors of the Chamber Music Now! recital series. Now in its fourth season, CMN! has established itself as a new music pulse of sorts in the City of Brotherly Love with its innovative programming and willingness to take musical risks. It's a formula that's obviously worked, judging by their loyal fanbase and the curious first time concertgoers, both of which made up the incredible audience that night.

CMN!'s theme this season of "new music and rock and roll" was a perfect fit and a great vehicle to launch Hybrid Groove Project, a unique non-traditional chamber ensemble comprised of myself on saxophones and DJ Dubble8 (a.k.a. Erik Spangler) on turntables. I'm excited about this band because of the possibility for it to appeal to a variety of audiences. HGP plays composed music (our current repertoire includes music by Erik, Eve Beglarian, Jacob ter Veldhuis, and Philip Glass), improvises, and adds a popular twist with Dubble8's beats and remixing.

Dubble8 warms up the Ethical Society

The show, which actually began with a 45 minute Dubble8 solo set, included compositions by the folks mentioned above as well as a new piece by Richard Belcastro called Collage No. 1: bits of Bowie, written for the occasion and reminiscent of John Oswald's plunderphonics. It was a great show for a very appreciative crowd on an amazing new music series. Richard and David deserve a huge round of applause for CMN!

West-sidenote

I've been meaning to post these photos from a field trip J and I took to my old neighborhood, where you can see many familiar sights from Season 1 of The Wire. Maybe I should run a tour of the area with opportunities to pose by spots from the series. Or maybe not. If you think this looks funny, this looks even funnier!

Glamour shot

Unexpected overnight flights. Waiting 45 minutes for a cab home at 4:30 a.m. A couple of the less glamorous aspects of life as a performer.

Delayed

I'm in a bad mood. One of my least favorite places on the planet is the McCarron International Airport in Las Vegas (LAS), which in my travels I try to avoid like the plague, and which just happens to be where I'm stranded right now at 1:41 a.m. Sometimes you have to go through security again just to get to the next terminal to catch your connecting flight. Sometimes you have to take a shuttle to another terminal to catch your connecting flight. Usually, nobody can give you accurate information about what gate your connecting flight will leave from. And sometimes, like tonight, the monitors tell you to go to the A terminal to catch your connecting flight, where you arrive only to look at the monitors there and see that your flight is now departing from the B terminal, at which time you run back to the B terminal only to discover that your connecting flight that was originally scheduled to depart at 12 a.m. is now delayed by 2 hours. Add a slew of idiots, who in the span of their 2-day getaway to Las Vegas have convinced themselves that they are indeed badasses of the universe, throw in a several know-it-all teenagers that talk too loudly, and top it off with the never-ending chiming from the slot machines and you've got a recipe for some serious annoyance.

A la recherche

Every concert season seems to have a "hell month"--a month in which the number of concerts and amount of music to be learned for those concerts simply outnumbers the amount of days and time that I have to prepare and simply sit down to collect my thoughts, much less blog frequently. Last year April was that month for me. But this year--if you haven't already noticed from the lack of activity on SLN recently--February took the prize. It began with Hybrid Groove Project playing on the Chamber Music Now! series in Philadelphia, continued with a performace of Mike Djupstrom's Walimai at the biennial meeting of the North American Saxophone Alliance, and just concluded with a series of three performances as a featured guest artist at the SPARK Festival of electronic music and art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Each of these events was very exciting and rather than lump them all together in one mammoth post, my next three posts will be devoted to each event.

A good one

Flutist Brian Luce, a colleague of mine at the UA, had one of the best one-liners today. As I was rearranging my office furniture, I uncovered what appeared to be years of dust behind bookshelves and filing cabinets. I went downstairs to the main office to locate a vacuum, which I brought back up to my office. On my way back up the stairs, Brian was talking with someone. He looked at me carrying the vacuum and said, "I won't ask." To which I replied, "Oh, there's a lot of dust in my office that I want to get rid of." He then deadpanned, "I thought surely you were going to use that for a performance of something." Very funny. At least I don't think he was being serious!

3 G's

Now this sounds cool: I am a Grammy-winning concert saxophonist. That's right. Last night, William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience, a CD on which I am the saxophonist, won three Grammy's, including Best Classical Album and Best Contemporary Classical Composition. I'm one of only a handful of concert saxophonists (you too, Chris) to have won the accolade--Robert Black being perhaps the most recognizable, winning with the Chicago Pro Musica Orchestra's recording of William Walton's Façade. I felt like Robbie McEwen taking Stage 5 at the 2005 TdF.

Correction: My colleague on the Bolcom recording, saxophonist Christopher Blossom, debunks earlier claims (buzz kill, dude), which stemmed from a source who will remain unnamed, and provides evidence of other Grammy achievements among concert saxophonists: 1977 - Best Engineered Recording - Classical - Ravel: Bolero (Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony); 1980 - Best Classical Album; Best Opera Recording - Berg: Lulu (Complete) - Pierre Boulez conducting the Orchestre de l'Opera de Paris (solos: Teresa Stratas, Yvonne Minton, Franz Mazura, Toni Blankenheim); 1985 - Best New Artist (Classical) Chicago Pro Musica (Bob Black); 1996 - Best Orchestral Performance - Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony - Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet (Scenes from the Ballet)

Off to Philly

A few words

New interview available at PhiladelphiaClassicalMusic.com.

Clarification

Hybrid Groove Project's concert this Saturday is at the Ethical Society, not presented by it. The concert is indeed presented by the illustrious Chamber Music Now! New Music Series. I'm glad we've cleared that up.