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Some eight or nine years ago I brought Steve Lacy & Irene Aebi up to
Albany for a concert. Below is my little introduction for that evening
(in fact a reduced version of the liner notes I wrote for FUTURITIES,
Steve's 'opera' on poems by Robert Creeley) -- offered here, this
morning, as a first quick homage to the man & his work. Playing in the
background right now is the cd MOMENTUM, with many of Steve's long-time
sidekicks: Steve Potts on saxes, Bobby Few on piano, JJ Avenel on bass,
Oliver Johnson on drums and, of course, Irene Aebi "on" voice.
Pierre
[Intro for Steve & Irene (Albany, 94 or 5?)]
Roughly 10 years ago I was in Paris working on a radio
program about the poet Robert Creeley. Rather than fall back on the
aseptic atmosphere of the studio, I wanted to find live situations in
which to record the poet reading from his work. Creeley's poetry being
obviously rooted in jazz, the idea immediately came to me of getting
him together with my then neighbor on the rue du Temple, the great
soprano saxophonist & composer Steve Lacy — a musician I knew to be an
intelligent & passionate reader of poetry. The two hit it off
wonderfully; the program was duly recorded & went over great. It became
my habit to fall by Lacy's place every so often & over the years I was
able to witness how he wrote some of the songs based on poems.
Lacy has written hundred of songs — in fact I have heard the
rumor of 2000! — with poems (from Osip Mandelstam & Kurt Schwitters to
Anne Waldman & Bob Kaufman) or other texts as lyrics, an art that has
always fascinated me. He has walked & talked me through the development
of some of them, & here is some of what he had to say: "I've been
setting lyrics to music for almost twenty years now. It took a long
time to come to the surface — that stuff has got to age, to mellow
out... We use all kind of texts, some I wrote myself, but also
telegrams, letters, things found on the street, children's exercises,
slogans pulled off billboards — what you may call found poetry — but it
all comes down to poetry or lyrics — to word-setting. Lyrics were sort
of petering out in the fifties and that's where I came in. I guess it's
my job to bring them back." And what a job he has done of it, in terms
of composing, arranging and playing! He has of course the help of his
companion, the singer & violinist Irene Aebi. Says Lacy: "Now the
reason all this has been possible is that I have had a voice to work
with — Irene's voice, a voice like an instrument. We started from zero
together, me and her and the words made the music, but without the
voice to experiment with it wouldn't have happened. She has a gifted
voice, a voice you can't ignore or leave idle — it was my pleasure to
find things that would fit it. It's been a real adventure for about 18
years now."
Back on the topic of how one actually gets to find musical
ideas to go with a given text, Steve explained: "The thing about
setting words to music, you have to be able to deliver them over and
over again without boredom, without fatigue. You have to place them in
musical pictures so that they can be sung. A poem is said again and
again and if it is said enough times it becomes a song. That's the way
I find the music, by saying the words over and over again until it
becomes sing-song or song-sing, whatever, until it begins to take on
musical appearances." It is a few years later now, Lacy's discography —
already way over the hundred mark — has been enriched by a number of
cd's presenting primarily his & Irene Aebi's 'art songs,' & I keep
listening to them & wanting more. As a poet my concerns have a lot to
do with fixed and open forms. Lacy's songs have taught me much along
those lines. How to keep a form open, for example, while at the same
time giving it a fixed center. Pound's "Unwobbling pivot" that must not
be allowed to become a straightjacket strangling free movement &
improvisatory development.
‘Nuff said. Now for the real stuff. Please welcome Steve Lacy & Irene
Aebi.
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Keep the tempo -- Steve Lacy
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