Music Review: Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber - Making Love To The Dark Ages

Jazz and improvisation have gone together like bread and butter since the first player stepped out to blow a lead. There is something about the music that just lends itself to allowing musicians the freedom to explore all a piece of music has to offer. However, it's jazz's free-form nature which seems to have worked against its integration with orchestral works. Although modern composers have drawn upon many other elements of contemporary music and technologies, orchestral and jazz haven't seemed to be able to find the comfort zone where they can blend easily.

At least that's how Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris saw it, and what prompted him to develop his system of "playing" an ensemble called conduction. Conduction is a serious of gestures, including facial expression, that allow a conductor to generate notation for his performers on the fly based on factors like what the audience is feeling, who is playing in the band that night, the backgrounds of the musicians involved, (musically and otherwise), and of course whatever is needed to fulfill the emotional requirements of the music. There are hand gestures to change the rhythm, have sections repeated, have an instrument play in a higher or lower register, to silence, and to control volume. Needless to say, in order for a band to successfully carry off this type of performance, in which there are no written scores or arrangements, everybody involved has to be completely familiar with the vocabulary of gestures and be skilled enough a player to keep up with what are rapid fire changes.

One such collective of musicians who are emulating Butch Morris are Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, who are set to release Making Love To The Dark Ages, on the Live Wired Music, March 17, '09, a disc comprised of pieces produced using conduction. Handling the conduction duties for Burnt Sugar is Greg Tate, and because this is a studio performance his job is also expanded to included those post production duties of a producer as well. However, he does more than just add a little reverb here, or clean up the pitch there, he takes full advantage of the broad spectrum of electronic music, sampling, and other "non-played" instruments now available to bands and musicians to round out the sound.

This all sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster; a mishmash of sounds that end up being discordant at best and absolute hell at its worst. Yet when you listen to pieces like "Chains And Water, A, B, and C", they sound like they have been as carefully orchestrated as any piece of music with full notation and separate arrangements for each instrument. Each part, from the vocals to the electronic effects, sound and feel as if they were carefully rehearsed for days in advance. In fact, before I read any of the accompanying press package that came with the disc, I wouldn't have been able to tell from listening the extent to which improvisation was involved in the creation of any of the pieces.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the recently published What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

Visit Richard Marcus's author page — Richard Marcus's Blog