Saxophonist Coat Cooke
directs the sprawling,
tl.5-piece NOW, Orchestra.

:NOW festival
a hothouse
for the
avant-garde
Hear It Now Festival
Featuring Marilyn Crispell
Western Front, Nov. 25 to27

BY GREG BUIUM

ff

he New Orchestra Workshop's annual series of
new and improvised
music began Thursday as it
almost always does - with a performance by its flagship big band,
the NOW Orchestra, and a
famous international guest,
pianist Marilyn Crispell.
t _And once again this year, the
ttear It NOW festival acted as a
snapshot of the organization's
reach, with each of the other
bights devoted to a different
member's group.
'
, Yet H the programming
seemed self-evident, the course
of events produced something
far more subtle.
Indeed, over three rainy
November evenings, the Western
Front became a kind of hothouse
for the avant-garde, where the
hazy space between improvisation and composition seemed to
make perfect sense.
Certainly the NOW Orchestra,
under saxophonist Coat Cooke's
µirection, set the tone on opening night with its two sets of
large, multi-layered compositions.
At times, the sprawling 15piece group can be unwieldy. It
specializes in a wild, supersonic
rumble - thanks largely to the
trombonist, Brad Muirhead, and
a ~airpfbassist~, Clyde Reed 1and
pQfmaney.
Melodic claritv often eluded

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em
ursday and ensemble'
a ages were sometimes quite
agged.
But with NOW, that's nearly
eside the point.
Cooke exerted a quiet , and
sometimes coarse, control over
~ovement, working with a menu
of cues, as the group' splintered,
kaJ~ered and subdivided once
~gam.
Things crept up on you. A duo
re out of the ensemble - saxohone and drums, perhaps d soon a trio formed and a coliective improv began._ Passages
!:hat were fractured and oddly out
pf sync could create an immense
swirl of shifting textures before
oming together in a bit ofbeauifully crafted writing.
Crispell, the Woodstock, N.Y.ased guest, took up this chalenge with a piece she composed
or the event, Yin Yang, a strucured improv where alternating
roups emerged from the ensemle.
In such a small room, this '
icroscopic network of sounds '
roved particularly intense and >
pleasurable. Even the furthest )
seat was just a few metres from \
the band.
1J This intimacy certainly wasn't I
Wasted on cellist Peggy Lee's 1
~and Friday night.
' \
t ,IfNOW's work can sometimes s
fe'el a shade cerebral, Lee's music
is more broadly appealing; she's
p-tactically incapable of writing
art unattractive line.
J
21A.nd her approach to composi- f
~ n and improv is entirely fluid,
too. Pieces are often tied togeth- I
er in pairs, with a long opening \
1 prov dissolving into a line,
other improv, before a differ- ill~!!
t melody finally appears. asJ<
spite a series of short breaks
music had the inner logic of
ng suite.
ndeed, this six-year-old sextet
itting such a high level of
raction that it's absorbed a
member (guitarist Ron Samorth) without a hint of discom-

E
r.

~hat kind of understanding is
mething granrojo, the festival's
· inal act Saturday night, only
ound in spells.
The four - piece electrocoustic group, with NOW's
ey and Cooke plus two lap,P artists, still feels like an
xperiment. Parts were terrifially powerful, with a variety of
ed and string instruments
urned inside out by electronic
ops; other pieces, however, deserately needed some shape, parlyzed, as they were, in ambient
f-absorption.
~N

/r.J~'-'\lYZ...<;"; Greg Buium is a
~~;c;ver music writer.

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