Tomorrow (Tuesday, July 28) night at 8pm I have the great pleasure of performing with Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris at the Stone in New York.  It’s along with some great string players including violinist Cornelius Duffalo from the string quartet “Ethel” and cellists Okkyung Lee and Alex Waterman among others.  After an intense rehearsal today I’m very excited to be sharing the stage with these other musicians, most of whom are on the forefront of New York’s new music scene.  It’s going to be fun.

If you don’t know his work, Butch Morris employs a technique called “conduction” which is a process in which musicians read signals and improvise on the material that derives from it.  Butch uses the hand signals to generate the basic musical germs, then shapes the material into larger structures and he often includes his own written music too. In addition to being an act of spontaneous compositional virtuosity, his work is a testament to individual creativity in a group setting..not to mention requires a lot of focus…after three hours of it today, I am pretty exhausted.

If you’d like to read more about Butch and his music, click here…..

– Michael