Following their 2019 debut CD Routes, Paths, Courses (Pfmentum), The Present Quartet offers this new album featuring three guest vocalists, each a pillar of Los Angeles underground improvised music. Traveling in words and sounds from the Hollywood Hills to Afghanistan and from Darmstadt to the Cotton Club, The Present Quartet and Voices documents these captivating performers.
Organized by bassist Jeff Schwartz, the Present Quartet includes flutist Ellen Burr, harpist Anne LeBaron, and multi-instrumentalist Charles Sharp. They function primarily as an improvising collective, but have also worked with compositions and structures. All four are non-dogmatic players, willing to interpret any type of score, conversant in a variety of idioms, and ready to respond to the improvisational needs of any moment or environment. Each brings a wide range of sounds: Ellen plays piccolo to bass flutes, Charles draws from a large collection of European and East Asian winds and little instruments, Anne and Jeff are interested in preparations and extended technique, and Anne and Charles sometimes use electronics. All four also teach or write about music: Ellen has a thriving private flute studio, Charles and Anne are faculty at California State University Fullerton and CalArts respectively, and Jeff has published books on free jazz with Routledge and SUNY Press. Their overlapping interests and experiences evoke late 1960s improvising groups at intersections of multiple genres and communities, such as the Music Improvisation Company, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, AMM, Gentle Fire, and many AACM projects.
For this second album, the Quartet gathered on July 25, 2021 at Architecture Studio, the home base of Kronos Quartet sound engineer Scott Fraser, along with three eminent guests. Bonnie Barnett studied with Kenneth Gaburo and Pauline Oliveros and since has organized public participatory hums in the tradition of Oliveros’ tuning meditations. She regularly performs with free jazz musicians in LA and New York, working with both texts and extended vocal techniques. Along with Charles Sharp and Kid Methuselah, she hosts Trilogy on 88.9 KXLU, LA’s radio home for experimental music. She brought a Gary Snyder poem and her own writing to the session. Will Salmon organizes the Open Gate new music series and multidisciplinary performance troupe. He brought flutes and a harmonica, as well as his voice. Despite decades of regular performances in LA, this is his first recording as a vocalist. Vetza is the face and voice of internationally celebrated noise pioneers the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) but is rarely heard outside of that loud and dense context. She also played cello and interpreted several original texts.