Tin/Bag recently played a couple of shows on the East Coast to celebrate the release of our new CD Bridges. The first was at the Montague Book Mill, a tranquil little spot in the middle of the woods in Western Massachusetts, a former saw mill now filled with the smell of coffee and used books and the constant lull of a waterfall outside. Sounds about perfect, and it was. Singer/songwriter H. Nathan Hobbs played an opening set that really knocked me out – spinning brilliant lyrics and melodies like little delicate jewels. Mike and I played the second set, introducing a couple of new compositions as well as arrangements of music by Hank Williams, Joe Cunningham (of Blue Cranes) and Willie Nelson. Hartford music critic Richard Kamins wrote this glowing review of the show, and it was also featured in a preview on masslive.com.
The next day we were back in New York, and I spent the afternoon wandering through Queens to visit the Louis Armstrong House Museum, something I’ve always wanted to do. The lush Japanese-inspired garden and the A/C inside were a welcome reprieve from the god-awful heat wave that inundated most of the city that weekend.
Bridges continues to gather enthusiastic reviews and Mike and I are planning a series of concerts on the West Coast in October. Check my events page for details.
Bridges is now available! This is the third album from Tin/Bag, my ongoing duo project with New York guitarist Mike Baggetta. This music was recorded in January of 2010 at Systems Two in Brooklyn (click here for the recap) and features a suite of five compositions (backstory here) that were recorded with the help of a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum, as well as a couple of new originals by Mike and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman.” Really proud of the music on this one… it’s certainly got the most pristine sound of anything I’ve ever recorded (thanks to the golden ears of engineer Joe Marciano), and it is the most honest and accurate document of this duo to date.
The entire record is available for streaming, download, or physical purchase at tinbag.bandcamp.com. It’s also on iTunes and Amazon.com. We are gearing up for a couple of CD release shows on the East Coast this week – Wednesday night at The Bookmill in Montague, MA and Thursday night sharing a bill with Trio Caveat at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (Critics’ Pick in Time Out New York). In October, Mike will be on the West Coast for a quick tour with stops in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Sacramento, and the Bay Area.
Don’t miss these… we will be performing music from the album plus a few new compositions and music by Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, and my friend Joe Cunningham (from the Portland-based group Blue Cranes).
It was great to revisit this project, as we have only played together once since our last extensive tour in the Fall of 2007. Just three performances were slated for this trip (Syracuse, NY – Pittsfield, MA – New York, NY) but they all went quite well; the old music felt fresh again and we were able to get a good handle on some new material. There is an audio recording (and photos, apparently) from the Syracuse show, and a forthcoming All About Jazz review of the NYC show, so I will update this post when all of that becomes available. The photos from the Pittsfield show above are courtesy of Caleb Hiliadis of the Kaleidoscope of Environments blog.
Our studio session couldn’t have gone better. Joe Marciano and his crew at Systems Two are all fantastic, the room sounds amazing, and you would not believe the gear they have on hand. My mic setup was a blend of a vintage RCA 44 ribbon mic (abt 20%) and an RCA 77-DX (abt 80%) which once belonged to John Coltrane and was reputedly in use on many of his classic RVG sessions (see the pics above… they also put up a modern condenser mic that we didn’t end up using). This was absolutely the best trumpet sound I’ve ever gotten in a studio! And audiophiles take note: everything was mixed live to two-track, with practically zero postproduction aside from a few slight dynamic tweaks. We are aiming for a late 2010 release on this, more details coming soon…
Here is a preview some of the music we recorded. This is “Maslow” from my Transpersonal Suite, a series of compositions each dedicated to and inspired by the writings of a different theorist/philosopher/guru. This suite was the basis of my proposal for the Subito grant:
In all, eight originals were recorded; I had one other composition in addition to the 5-part suite, and Mike brought two new pieces. The ninth and final track on the album is “Just Like A Woman”, a Bob Dylan song that we have been performing together for several years. This was the last thing we tracked, and I finally had the good sense to turn on the video camera as we got into it. Enjoy…
The Transpersonal Suite is a series of compositions that I have been working on for several years. I have performed them with a number of different ensembles, but they have acquired a particular focus in recent performances by Tin/Bag, my longstanding duo with New York guitarist Mike Baggetta. During the more than five years I have been performing with Tin/Bag we have developed a musical rapport that has enabled the ongoing creation and performance of these very special compositions. The inspiration for these works may lie in the world of books and ideas, but the music itself is the product of years of exploration and dedication to the project of uncovering a very personal, intuitive, and compelling musical language for creative improvisation.
In these single-page compositions the compositional objective is to compress as much potential recombinatorial value into as few notes as possible, creating a melodic contour which can function as a theme in the traditional sense but can also be expanded systemically by the improvising performer. The individual pitch and rhythmic elements may be divided, reorganized, repeated, rerouted (via jumping repeat zones), reversed, condensed, aggregated to create distinct chords or harmonic centers, and/or otherwise elaborated upon. The outer simplicity of the composition is such that each performer may immediately and effectively grasp the basic materials, though the internal compositional logics will ultimately yield an array of possible connections.
Each of these compositions has been named in honor of a writer, philosopher, or spiritual thinker whose work has motivated the kind of intuitive and integrated processes that inform and enrich my aesthetic world: Sri Aurobindo, Abraham Maslow, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Osho, and Lama Anagarika Govinda. Within each composition I have embedded certain distinctive systemic relationships that embody some dimension of the philosophical world view of each writer.
The Transpersonal Suite (consisting of the first five compositions in this series)was recorded by Tin/Bag in New York City in January of 2010 with the support of a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum. That recording is scheduled to be released in late 2010.
The first composition from this series to be completed was “Aurobindo”. This composition was recorded by the Empty Cage Quartet in July, 2006 and released in 2007 on the CD Stratostrophic (Clean Feed Records CF103) – that recording is embedded below. It consists of flugelhorn, alto saxophone, and contrabass working from the written melodic material, with electronically processed percussion improvising on the rhythmic relationships:
“Maslow” is the next composition in the series. Embedded below is a video recording from a live performance by Tin/Bag in Boston during the Fall of 2007. The audio quality is not ideal, but it should provide an adequate representation of how these compositions work:
This performance begins with solo trumpet playing the theme, at first unadorned, then gradually expanding and improvising upon some of the repeated areas before the guitar enters with a chordal accompaniment based on pitch aggregations derived from the various melodic fragments. Both instruments then engage in a bit of free melodic counterpoint alternating with sustained tones and guitar harmonics. This opens up into a more improvisational middle section, which eventually settles back into the melodic material of the third and fourth staves. Trumpet then drops out as solo guitar meditates for a moment on the theme. When the trumpet re-enters, the pace slows dramatically, and we end by focusing on the last six written notes of the theme (G-Ab-F-G-G-F).
In this particular case the only decision that was agreed upon beforehand was that we would begin with a trumpet solo. Every other performance decision is made in the moment, with regard to the flow of the music and the information that is contained within the piece.
In 2009 I received a Subito Quick Advancement Grant from the Los Angeles/SF Bay Area chapters of the American Composers Forum to fund the recording of the full Transpersonal Suite with Tin/Bag at Systems Two studios in Brooklyn. I wrote about that session and the brief Northeast tour that preceded it in this post. Here is the audio from the master recording of “Maslow”, recorded on January 16, 2010:
Following are the remaining three compositions in the series in their order of completion: “Inayat Khan”, “Osho”, and “Govinda”. I would be happy to discuss these in the comments section below if anyone would like any further information.
Click on a thumbnail image to view the larger version:
January 16/18 – Tin/Bag | Studio Recording @ Systems Two | Brooklyn, NY
January 17 – Tin/Bag (+ Kirk Knuffke-tpt/Jesse Stacken-piano) | Cornelia Street Café | New York, NY | 8:30pm
Tin/Bag (Kris Tiner-tpt/Mike Baggetta-gtr) will once again be touring the East Coast, this time supported by a Subito Quick Advancement Grant from the Los Angeles/SF Bay Area chapters of the American Composers Forum that will fund a studio recording of a new set of compositions at Systems Two in Brooklyn.
Keep an eye on the space below for updated links to various press and media connected to this trip. You can also follow me on Twitter (and follow Mike Baggetta too) for all the up-to-the-minute details…
Tin/Bag Quartet performs in New York City, January, 2007
Recourse to Unison was written in February, 2006 and later recorded by the Tin/Bag Quartet (Kris Tiner-trumpet, Mike Baggetta-guitar, Brian Walsh-clarinet, Harris Eisenstadt-percussion) in Los Angeles, CA. Premiere performances took place in Los Angeles in July, 2006, and in New York City in January, 2007. It was released on the CD And Begin Again(Evander Music Em 044) in April, 2007.
The composition utilizes an open-clef expandable staff which may be played by any number of unspecified instruments; the recorded version was arranged specifically for trumpet/clarinet/guitar/percussion.
