- cary kilner

From The Wire:
An empire is eaten from within.

From David Simon:
America is in the age of delusion.

This widespread and much discussed obsession with using technology 24/7 is simply the manifestation of the dramatization of a starvation for attention units.
Every public needs to do a Communication Course –

- cary kilner
11.10

I can imagine playing a gig where each and every tune was important when we were playing it, and forgotten as soon as it was over. Maybe that’s what Kenny Werner was getting at in his book, Effortless Mastery.

Since I have been working at singing for the past few months, I see that it is even more essential here. If the singer is into a song and can transmit the emotion, we as instrumentalists can pick up on it. Perhaps it is this quality in music that is lacking today.

People play great, but they don’t always play the song.

Cary Kilner & Larry Lofquist

This spontaneous exhibition of enthusiasm with life is sadly absent in many of our daily interactions.
Need I remind the reader that we are among the luckiest of inhabitants of this planet — being here in America at this time! So we should revel in our good fortune!
Share this with others on a daily basis, and you will not only raise their emotional tone, but yours as well. What is the greatest pleasure we obtain? That of service to others — unconditional service. We are uplifted by every individual we serve.
And then share that love of life by unalloyed enthusiasm toward others.
CK – perennial questor

Greg Hopkins

This follows that of the other outstanding quintet performance on Sunday in Portsmouth at the Press Room. Although the former was exquisitely arranged and planned while the latter was ersatz, both worked due to the excellent musicianship extant.

Tuesday nights at this belly dancing club is reserved for jazz, and they have an impressive schedule.  Ray Santisi played a couple of weeks ago and Fred Buda is playing soon! So head on up there to the Sahara Club, 7:30 – 10:30!

The audience was mostly middle-aged and older, probably 70-80 of ‘em, and they were all totally ENTHUSIASTIC!  Great lighting, sound system, two bars, great Middle-Eastern food (lamb, et. al.), it was an impressive venue inconspicuous in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

This group of old friends represents/plays what I will now call:  Intelligent Jazz

For instance, when they played warhorse standards, they reharmonized the heads, rearranged the form, added bars, inserted vamp sections.  Solos proceeded through players in many different ways. When a solo for a particular instrument would have added unnecessary time to the performance or seemed irrelevant it was passed over.  Drum breaks occurred anywhere in the tune or in the sequence of solos. Bass solos always occurred logically rather than obligatorily. John’s exceptional musicianship, of course, was essential to them working so well.

Joe has always been my favorite trio drummer, and he and John my favorite rhythm section with which to play.  The only drummer with such exquisite taste is Les Harris, Jr., and who turns out to have been a student of Joe’s as he told me last night!

Dynamics were an integral part of every performance. For instance on one tune Billy and the rhythm section were burning, then Greg came in on Harmon mute playing exceedingly quietly and everyone dropped out except John, who also then played very quietly (hence the value of a good sound system), creating a superb contrast.

Greg and Billy would spontaneously add shout choruses to other solos.  On one tune the rhythm section dropped out and Greg and Billy improvised simultaneously, playing off of each other rather than trading fours or eights.

Only mature players can manage this degree of sophistication in improvised musics. And younger players need to see and hear this in order to practice and inculcate same.  Nothing is more boring than “the standard quintet” performance. Therefore it is exceedingly refreshing for this group to create such an interesting model.

Greg’s compositions, interspersed among the rearranged standards, integrated beautifully due to his unique sense of melody, harmony, and form, that allow his complex yet musical tunes engage rather than startle, as often happens when writers try to be “too hip.”

As Cannonball so aptly said on his New York Live album:  Hipness is not a state of mind; it’s a fact of life!

Best to all,
Cary

(c) Cary Kilner, 2009, all rights reserved

Quality in goods or services need not be more expensive, however it frequently is so due to the increased cot of better materials and more time required to focus upon details of composition, manufacture, distribution, and service.

What is quality?  Quality is an Eames chair, ergonomically designed in the 1930′s so as to be comfortable for a person of any stature or physique, and beautiful to look at as well, made as it is of smoothly varnished and sanded walnut with the grain carefully lined up.

Quality is not a federalist, Colonial, or Saltbox home erected quickly on an ostentatious lot in full view of everyone.  It is Falling Waters, or Talliesan, meticulously crafted and out of sight in the woods, so carefully blended and in harmony with its environment that one has to look for it as he walks through the woods.

Quality is my grandfather’s home in Midland, Michigan, carefully sculpted in a neighborhood of nice homes with curving streets and varied architecture, the grounds exquisitely designed and integrated with the home itself by Alden Dow, landscape architect and son of Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical Company.

The floor of the home is heated from below by pipes embedded within it carrying hot water; the effect produced being very cozy, with extremely uniform heating.  The walls are so sturdy that they do not move when struck, and every window fits perfectly year after year.

Quality is a VW Jetta TDI, equal in intrinsic value to a BMW or Audi at twice the cost.  The rich red pain is obviously carefully burnished at the factory; no lapses can be found anywhere on the body.  Every moving part fits very carefully together, with no extra play to erode performance at 100,000 miles and beyond.  Every feature manifests careful consideration to utilitarianism while being in itself elegant, and has obviously been very thoughtfully considered from the design stage forward.

What is quality?  Quality is my Yamaha C-3 grand piano from the old Jazz Workshop in Boston.  It is dented and scarred and well-traveled in getting to my house, but it sings the soul of jazz at the slightest provocation.  Its touch is crisp and clean, as if just off the showroom.

Quality is my Rectilinear Studio Monitor floor speakers, bought used 25 years ago, one at a time for $50 and $75, at two different locations in a coup I still revel in.  These $600 speakers have a richness and warmness that flatter any music played through them.

What is quality?  My Mac PowerBook 3400 has a cover hinge which is still tight and holds the screen in place where you position it, after thousands of opening and closings.

What that our young people be introduced to quality early on, as quality is self-promulgating.  Where are they to see it, to feel it, to smell it, to examine it, to experience it?  The Bauhaus is a good place to start.  We must maintain the aesthetic of quality for our progeny, or it will be lost amidst our society of consumerism.

Cary Kilner, written 8/19/03
(c) 2003-2020, all rights reserved

There was a nice piece on NPR last evening about the demise, yet endurance, of record stores vs. “big-box” stores.
That was because yesterday was “National Record Store Day.”

Billy-Bob Thorton of the BoxMasters (band) spoke poignantly about his experience as a kid going to Paula’s Record Shop in his home town, and how it inspired him to pursue music entertainment as a career.

He spoke about buying at least 2000 CDs from the Waterloo Record Store everytime he played Austin, TX.
The first record he bought when he had money to do so was the 45 RPM of the Beatle’s I Want to Hold Her Hand.
The NPR piece closed with his band’s rendition of that same song.

I was taken back to my forays hitchhiking from Romeo at 32-Mile Road into downtown Detroit to visit Edith at The Land of Hi-Fi, on the corner of Livernois & Grand River.

There I purchased my whole collection of Blue-Note LPs in monophonic sound for $2 each, when they were
re-released on the new technology, stereophonic sound, dig?

I also befriended Billy McCoy, a young black boy of about my age, who worked there. He occasionally took me back to his home up Grand River Ave in the middle of inner-city Detroit. His father worked in the Ford plant, his mother taught public school.
It turned out that Billy was actually interested in chemistry as well and also was an aspiring jazz pianist.

We would often leave the store and go across the street to J. L. Hudson’s Department Store where we would go up to the 10th floor to the Piano Department and play for each other. The salespeople knew and dutifully indulged us.
I’d play something, some chord or harmony, and he’d jump up and ask “how did you play that?”
But then he’d play some gorgeous Herbie Hancock line and I’d jump up and ask “how did you play that?” We had great fun!

From Billy I learned about many new jazz artists I had not yet heard, since he spent hours in the store listening to whatever caught his interest. But WCHD, the Detroit jazz FM station, came out to Romeo and it was playing at my house all of the time, so I usually went in with a list of LPs to check out.

This marked the beginning of my transition from science to spending ten years playing music in Boston after college and before returning to my first love, chemistry.

As my dear friend James says, “None dare call it nostalgia!”

Yours in musics,
Cary

Today on a very pleasant April morning walk to campus from where I park in the country, I formulated this new mantra, which looks like it will serve me well.

It seems to resolve some of my ongoing concerns about money, status, womens, ego:

Freedom is the highest goal.
I earn my freedom through good works.
I don’t require acknowledgment.

Cary Kilner

This is not necessarily bad — just that it will be jarring and irreversible. People who adapt to change will find it hard but doable. These people — us — realize that life IS change. And we will continue to value those intangibles around which life really revolves. We will value people, living things, our work, life itself.

People who resist change will have a very hard time of it, and will make things very difficult for the rest of us.

That’s enough for now –-

Cary Kilner