Composition in Real Time, and Reminiscence
Interview with Lawrence 'Butch' Morris
by John Farris

Theorist, composer and conductor, Butch Morris has conducted more than 4,000 musicians and others in over 62 cities in 22 countries in the past 20 years. This February, beginning Tuesday the 1st with a big band at the Knitting Factory and ending on Monday, the 28th at nublu with the nublu Orchestra, Mr. Morris will conduct a number of ensembles at different venues (see website) throughout the city nightly for the entire month. Arriving in New York in 1976 to work with saxophonist and composer David Murray, Mr. Morris has collaborated with visual artists, filmmakers and theater directors as well as other composers, and has evolved a theory of making music and a method of conduction that is uniquely his. With a resume that reads like a Who's Who of contemporary culture, Morris has been instrumental in the reconfiguration of the ways in which music might be composed and presented. This series will mark the culmination of a project that began at the Kitchen in 1985, and is to be a celebration of that effort. Says Morris, ìIn 1968 I had this notion that music could be read like a book. You know, you might pick up a book you don't know and arbitrarily turn to a page and start reading perhaps there is a story there, or something that sparks your interest then you go to another page, and there is something else, maybe a description of a character. If you buy the book you can read it all. To me, art is the life of the imagination. I went to a painting and immediately focused on a particular detail; that detail became the entire painting. All of this because at the time I was asking myself, How can I make the music I'm writing more flexible? History has it that once it's written down, that's the way it goes.î He continues: ìI picked up some music notation that I had written and approached it the same way I did that book and that painting and I isolated several areas; I then took each area and developed them through improvisation. (I am not crazy about that word, either I prefer to think of an improviser as an intuitor, and the act of improvising as intuiting but I'll continue to use the word ìimprovisationî in this text. I read (a) piece left to right, left to right, down (as one would read notation.) It worked quite well, but I found myself wanting to tell the instrumentalist to stay in this or that area longer, or change the articulation, dynamic, or pulse of the phrase. I resisted, but I was beginning to hear a new life for my notations.

December 27, 2004. Sitting in the tiny, tidy Lower East Side apartment of Lawrence D. Morris better known as 'Butch', we interface with a wall of mostly neo-expressionist art. Holding their own with a Miro print are works by Ellie Ali, Alison Saar, Nancy Ostrovsky, Elena Del Rivero and James Gilroy, because in the words of the master theorist and conductor, ìThere's got to be a man in there somewhere.

JF Butch Morris. I've watched you throughout the years, your performances with many bands and quite a few of your experiences with conduction. What are you up to now? I hear you have a whole month of something coming up in February.

BM Oh, Black February. Black February is many things. Of course it's a celebration of Black culture and the Black aesthetic if there is one. It's about this method conduction and how it works in different communities, and with different styles. Each night I'm going to conduct a different ensemble; and I'm going to do that for the whole month. Each ensemble will meet four times. For me it will mean many things. It's a defining act. It's the finish of a particular stage of conduction. After that, I plan on moving on to a new stage. But in February I will conduct a new music ensemble, a jazz band, I'll conduct a more of a how can I call it an ambient new music ensemble, I'll conduct a small big band, I'll conduct New York Skyscraper that's a 27 piece ensemble with strings, woodwinds, percussion and electronics and I'll conduct 15 voices reading text.

JF Oh, each of these band will appear four times, but there are more categories.

BM Oh yeah. The big band starts on Tuesday, the first of February. And it plays every Tuesday.

JF That's the 27 piece band

BM No, that's the 22 piece big band at the Knitting Factory. The 27 piece band plays at the Bowery Poetry Club on Sunday afternoons. And so actually February is very symmetrical. It starts on Tuesday and ends on Monday the 28th. Every Tuesday I play with the big band every Wednesday the ambient electronic and string ensemble, every Thursday I conduct the voices so you see, every band meets four times.

JF Tell me about the personnel of the bands

BM To tell the truth I don't know who's going to be in the ensembles yet. I mean, I have an idea, but I haven't actually put together the ensembles yet. I have an idea.

JF How do you choose your personnel?

BM Usually from people who've worked with me before, and who works and who doesn't work.

JF What do you mean?

BM Well, I mean, some people work well in this kind of ensemble and some people don't work well. This is a very demanding and a very challenging way of making music, and some people don't do it very well. It's as simple as that. It's demanding in that it takes a lot of concentration. You just have to pay attention all the time or you're gonna miss something. Chances are you're gonna be responsible for the collapse of the music. So it's something that takes it goes beyond musicianship. It goes way beyond musicianship.

JF It goes to the psyche of the person playing?

BM Oh yeah. And their knowledge of music in general, and beyond their knowledge of music.

JF In what sense?

BM I mean, I've got a vocabulary of symbolic information, and you have to interpret this symbolism every second that we're playing. If I make some gestures, you've got to interpret that gesture. And 22 people interpreting that gesture can have 22 ideas, but you have to interpret it in a very definitive way.

JF Do you ever have any idea say with Skyscrapers of what you are well, driving at I mean, as a compositional whole?

BM Oh yeah, Skyscrapers that goes back to my answer to my initial question about why I even started thinking about this, back in the '70s late '60s was that I found a way to take even a song 16 bar, 32 bar melody, and to create a larger form inside the song using the notation that I have. In other words, I figured out I wanted to see how much more information I could get from the page, much like when a quartet or quintet plays a song; a jazz quartet or a quintet you play the melody once or twice and then you take solos, but the solos are elaborations on the melody or on the form, or both and I wanted to be able to do that with the whole ensemble, using only individual musicians, artists, create a larger melody, an ensemble vision of what 8 bars or 16 bars is. My initial question was, how can I take this song I just wrote and apply it to a large ensemble and create more in the direction of a symphonic form

JF Density

BM Yeah, well, not only density but more elaboration, more variation on the written music, because if I get a piece of music and I'm looking at it, it doesn't matter whose it is it could be a standard it's still the basis of what a lot of people do, or some anyway. I go through the melody and I try to get the largest understanding of that melody, and then I go through the chords and try to get the largest harmonic, melodic and rhythmic understanding of what that song is, and that's what I'm trying to do with the ensemble. You know, there's a lot of ways to play. To be a soloist is not the only way to play. You can be, uh, I mean, Johnny Hodges was a great soloist, but also he was a great ensemble player, you know what I mean he just knew the things to do to advance the music and that's what I'm trying to do with Skyscraper take notation and evolve it in such a way, or elaborate on it in such a way that we just constantly move and move on to a higher form and different structures.

JF Is that the process you use in other aggregations?

BM Well, yes and no. Something that's standard with Skyscraper that's not with my other bands in the 20 years I've been doing conduction is notation. I use notation with them. I don't always use notation with others. In other words, I just finished 143 conductions in 22 countries with different ensembles

JF Over how many years?

BM 20 years! That's what Black February is about. I've been doing this for 20 years, and it's given me a lot of information, a lot of information I wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise; without the experience of having an idea and then realizing that idea. But let me go back to what I was saying: New York Skyscraper is an idea that I bring notation to. I let them take that music home and I let them grasp the music, and I go over that music with them and then we begin the music. But we can begin the music in a lot of different ways. I don't always start at the beginning, I start in different places. I might have the violin starting at the top and the trumpet starting at the bottom, and the rhythm section or different parts of the rhythm section or whomever in various places, and I fuse these ideas.

JF That's the improvisational sense of your conduction

BM Well, that's the interpretational aspect of it. I think there is a very big difference between the interpretational aspect and the improvisational aspect. In 143 conductions, I've probably used notation three times. Other times I just used the vocabulary of conduction, but in the process of answering my question, how do I expand the notion of notation, I developed a vocabulary that helped me expand it. If I needed to slow the ensemble down, how do I do that. To get some musicians to sustain certain parts of the notation, how do I do that. If I need certain people to repeat aspects of the notation, how do I do that. So over the years actually, I've developed a vocabulary with which I can do that, or whatever I want to do. Now this is not notation, conduction is symbolic of notation as notation is symbolic of tonality of music, you understand what I'm saying?

JF Yes.

BM It's not music, it's symbolic of

JF The tone. Yes.

BM Conduction is symbolic of notation. It's a real time notation. So I give the ensemble symbolic information, gestural information, a sign, or a gesture, and they are free to interpret that. I mean, this (holds palm up) means sustain sound. Now what is a sustained sound?

JF Dahhhhhhh

BM Well yeah, that's an idea of a sustained sound, but that's not

JF (making tones that are more repetitive)

BM Wait man, you just started now your've got you've gotta answer that a hundred times, two hundred times. Every situation won't call for the first one or the second example you just gave me. There are many interpretations of this. Are you with me?

JF Yes.

BM So when I say 'sustain' to somebody, they've got to interpret that. When I

JF Give me an example.

BM I don't think it's necessary, because that's one thing I don't do in my rehearsals, I don't give examples, because human nature and human behavior is such that if I give examples, they're going to replicate my example, and that's not what I want I want them to answer the question like you answered the question. It doesn't make sense for me to say, 'sustain' is like this, or like that. Because then I'm defining it in such a way that I'm making the parameters of possibility smaller rather than larger. See what I'm talking about? So that means 'sustain'. This means 'repeat' (Holds hand palm forward in the shape of a U), and 'repeat' has several meanings many meanings, actually. But in the rehearsal I explain them, so that when I give that sign they know exactly what I mean. Their interpretation's going to be fine as long as they understand the definition of the gesture (Gesturing). Do you understand what I mean? I'm trying to open the field, but I'm still trying to keep it at least the principle of conduction wide enough so that when I go to do this I'm going to make music. And the music should be the collective intelligence of the ensembles, whether I do it with a classical ensemble or a string ensemble or whether I do it with a jazz band, it doesn't matter, because the collective identity of each ensemble will come out. Do you understand?

JF Yes.

BM In other words, if it's a jazz band, it will sound like jazz, if it's a new music ensemble, its still going to sound like music.

JF Varying with the vocabulary of the musicians.

BM Yes. That's where we meet.

JF What is the worst situation for you what is the worst scenario?

BM To me, I've had good conductions and I've had bad conductions, and the one thing that I know at this point that defines one from the other is when an ensemble understands what is happening and when an ensemble doesn't understand what is happening, because it is easy to misunderstand certain things. It's another theory. It's another method of working. Sometimes I've only had a couple of hours to teach them things. In other situations I've had five to ten days with the ensemble, and that's where you get to the real crux of what this is. Somebody can maybe teach you to drive in two hours, but that won't make you a good driver. Do you understand what I mean?

JF Yes I do.

BM So when I the more we work on it, the larger the field becomes in terms of understanding. So to answer your question, I think it's better if I answer it that way. A bad situation is when I'm confronted with someone who has no idea what I'm talking about or misses what this means, or what that means, or wants to solo their way through, because it just doesn't work.

JF A bad interpretation stamps the music indelibly, you can't recover from it.

BM Exactly. But I must say, for the most part, as far as I'm concerned all of them have been pretty successful.

JF You've managed to do that. I've seen you do that. It's a bit like walking a tightrope or flying a plane.

BM For some people it's a lot like, um

JF Then, I've talked with some people who've worked with you who say it's no different than working with any big band, you've got to watch the conductor, and you have to pay attention to what you're doing.

BM That might be what they say after working with me one time. The second time they work with me I demand a lot more. It's impossible to demand so much from someone I've only worked with for an hour. I don't expect the music I always expect the music to have a qualitative amount of content. In other words, if I say play, I expect you to play within this particular sonic environment, I expect you to play what you want to play, and I expect you to elevate the music everytime you enter the music. I expect every musician to elevate the music. If they play what I might consider some dumb shit, then they're stuck playing some dumb shit but it's their dumb shit.

JF Well I thought when that fellow told me that that it was a bit more demanding than just reading the music and watching the director. You really have to be sensitive. The musician has to really give himself up to you without forgetting his musical palette.

BM Yeah. Yes and no. They don't have to give themselves up to me, they have to give themselves up to the music that we're making. I mean, they have to pay as much attention to me as they would to, let's say, a piece of notation that they're seeing for the first time. I mean, to be diligent, or to sight read some music for the first time in performance, you have to be that diligent and that aware while we're working on the bandstand.

JF And you have to be aware of what other people are playing as well

BM Oh sure look this is the nature of music, to be aware. I'm not interested in any random stuff.

JF You mentioned standards. Do you work with them at all?

BM I have, in the past David Murray's music, in the big band, when I used to work with them that's very much standard music; let's say, very standard form, with chord changes, yeah, sure but I've been able to isolate certain things, I've been able to freeze the ensemble in certain rhythmic areas, melodic areas that I wanted to let's say , detail, certain information; then we carry on with the form we run the form down. There are a lot of ways to deal with notation that other people haven't worked out haven't dealt with. That's part of my idea, and to still work with the notation, but I want to take notation to a different level.

JF So of your 143 conductions, can you recall moments you really felt some extraordinary measure of success you know, that made you feel really good?

BM Sure! Many.

JF Can you recall just a couple?

BM Sure. When I started doing the series at the Bowery Poetry Club. I think we reached

JF That was Skyscraper.

BM Skyscraper. That was in 2002. I think we went way beyond some of my expectations in terms of interpreting the notation. I think that the project up at Aaron Davis Hall was very interesting, and I also think that what happened last year at the Venice Biennial was great with Sheng Skyscraper the Asian and African instruments the electronics. That was quite a feat, as far as I'm concerned.

JF I've seen elements of that. I've seen you working with, uh, people from different countries different cultures.

BM Yeah, sure.

JF with their own cultural vocabularies, and you use that

BM Well it's not me using their cultural vocabulary it's them using their vocabularies.

JF Sure.

BM I'm using the same conduction vocabulary. That's the point of Black February. All these groups are being exposed to the same information, they will just interpret it differently.

JF Well, obviously Black February I mean, I know your birthday is in February and you're Black and everything, and you also began these conductions in February, but uh, this isn't your I mean, it's Black History month but according to your definition what occurs can't be confined to the Black experience.

BM Oh no, it's not exclusively Black, but I am Black and this is just my idea of how I want to present music. Now it's called Black History Month. I am part of Black History, and if I may say so, if I'm going to be remembered for anything. I'm going to be remembered for taking some steps in music that it seems like other people didn't want to take.

JF Elaborate.

BM Well, if I take this idea this method this theory and I do something with it and I'm a Black person what else is there to say about it, what else is there to elaborate on? But it's many things. I told you it's also a celebration of the 20th anniversary of these conductions. Conduction #1 happened at the Kitchen down on Broome Street in 1985, on February 3rd, 1985. It didn't have anything to do with Black History Month. It just happened in that month, and I was, as you mentioned born in February, so I it just happened then, and I've written two songs called ìBlack Februaryî. One for the TV show A Man Called Hawk, and one for David Murray and Don Pullen. Two different songs, both of them called ìBlack Februaryî, and I'm going to play both in this month of doing stuff. But the whole thing has no more meaning than that.

JF How did this series come about how did it happen I mean the venues and everything

BM Well, I started playing nublu every Monday night, and Kenny Wollesen asked me to conduct his band at Zebulon on Tuesday nights. Then some people came down to nublu and said, this is really happening, a lot of people are talking about this. So I said, well, let me give 'em something to talk about, and I decided on 7 days a week for the whole month. Then I made some calls to some other clubs, and said to so and so, well I would like to play at your place on Thursday, is that a possibility, and if it's not a possibility what, night is, and every place I went to was very open to this. But remember, February is one of the coldest months, it's the shortest I went to was very open to this. But remember, February is one of the coldest months it's the shortest

JF Nobody really likes to go out

BM Nobody really does good business in February, it's right after the holidays and all of that, so to be a part of this bigger idea all they had to do was give up one night a week, and I started early enough so far in advance that just about everybody said, I like this idea. So and I told them, I'm going to play every week with the same band, other nights of the week I'm going to play with a different ensemble, so it's not like some club will say, Oh you're playing there or there the night before or you're going to play the next night at such and such. Nobody really got into that. Everybody said yes, you can have every Tuesday, or yes, you can have every Wednesday. So it was a done deal. Now I have to put together the bands. A lot of people have heard about it and are excited about it, volunteered to play, whom I like working with, uh, they're helping me fill the ensembles.

JF Uh, what people are you particularly excited to work with?

BM Well, I'm not going into personnel right now. Not just yet. One of the projects I'm working on, the projects I'm working on, that I'm definitely excited about is New York Skyscraper, and I'm definitely excited about working with the, uh, actors reading text.

JF What text will you use?

BM I'm not sure yet.

JF Oh, okay

BM Well, the title of the whole, the month long thing at the Medicine Show Theater up on 52nd Street is ìLove and Other Mysteriesî, so I'll be dealing with that theme for the whole month. In other words, the first might will be about 'love'. The following three weeks will be about other mysteries 'Love' is a mystery, 'God' is a mystery, 'Peace' is a mystery 'peace' is a great mystery.

JF Mencius said that 'Peace' is an interval between wars. (Laughter) Uh, you mentioned nublu, and the germ of this particular idea being generated at nublu. How did you meet Ilhan?

BM I met Ilhan I used to see Ilhan when he was working at Sweet Basil, but I didn't know him. I met him when he used to play at Save the Robots. Remember that place?

JF Yeah. I had a free lifetime membership.

BM So did I. And I was going back and forth to Turkey in '92, and I knew a couple of people that knew him, so we were introduced. Then, I suppose even before that he had moved into the neighborhood, and I used to go over there and hang out. Then he said he wanted to start a club, so I gave him as much support as possible, and it's worked out for him. And too, I love the way he plays.

JF Have you encountered any particular problems you know working with the nublu band?

BM No, uh, Ilhan kind of put together that ensemble for me, and it changes every week changes every performance for that matter, but we've had some very stimulating experiences that one at the Delacorte Theater this past summer, and a couple at Joe's Pub and certainly the stuff that we've done down at nublu has been, in many ways, stimulating, but the thing now is to get a fixed ensemble, because on many nights we've got people showing up with their horns saying, Man, can I play with the band, and I say, well, have you seen us work before, and they say no and I say, well, you've got to look at what's going on first. There's no time to rehearse, and I don't want you to just get on the bandstand when you don't know what's going on. But it's interesting because I've gotten some really good players like that, who just show up with their instruments and want to play, and its happening.

JF But as you said, that could be a problem. For example, you say you're never sure of who's going to show up for the band yet, kind of like Black February.

BM That's only because I haven't gotten on the phone yet. That's the only reason I don't know who's going to be in those bands yet. I know to some degree who's going to be in them, but it doesn't make sense to say one person's name and not another's. But nublu has been a great place for me to see how far I can push this idea with people who don't have much knowledge of what I do. So it's kind of like the Lower East Side's Minton's right now. We're bringing in a lot of stuff, and a lot of stuff is coming out of that. I get calls from people that say, Well, can you come and conduct my band will you come and listen to the band, and sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. Like I told you, Kenny Wollesen asked me to conduct his band.

JF Drummer with Love Trio.

BM Yeah, and its been great. We did it last night.

JF Oh, at Zebulon.

BM Yeah. We do it every Tuesday. But I'm going to stop now

JF What's he got out there a quintet?

BM God no he's got a 21 piece band!
JF I didn't know that-

BM Yeah, it ranges from 12 to 21 people, and last night it was 21 pieces, and it was a great experience. It was a wonderful ensemble.

JF So I know you have some people who are not all that experienced. How do you deal with that?

BM Well in the case of one young fellow, well, he wanted to play and I let him play. After we play, I tell him what his shortcoming are. One was his attention span, and I told him, look you have to bring yourself to some creative level all the time. If you pay attention and you give to the ensemble, I'll make it work because I'll put you so far in the mix that nobody's going to hear you anyway, or I'll bring out the best in you because I know that's something that I can do. In this system of working I can bring out the very best. There are a lot of musicians that are so far into themselves that they don't even know what we did. Do you understand what I mean? They're approaching music from the perspective of 'entertainment' more than a musical or an aesthetic value. By the very nature of what I do, I bring these people along: It puts demands on people. I don't care if a cat knows five chords. If he understands the way I work, he can contribute to the overall construction of what we're doing. But if a person is only into themselves for the for the entertainment value or just to be performing, it's not moving the music along. Do you understand me? I want to move the music along. Now a lot of people who have very limited ability to contribute or to concentrate, to think or listen, I use them to the best of my ability and then I say, okay, you do that? Well, we're gonna do something else, and that will play a major part in the cementing of that idea. To further this idea, just let me say this: a person with more knowledge of music doesn't mean that person can contribute more to the overall landscape of what I'm doing. So there are a lot of people I've heard it many, many times in many countries they say, oh, we want you to come here and conduct an ensemble and I say, what are the musicians like, and what are their backgrounds; and they say, Oh Butch, don't worry we've got some of the best musicians in the world but the best musicians in the world, because they're the best musicians in the world don't make it good for the possible parameters of what we might be doing at that particular time because a lot of them don't get it. Now you know I get a lot of press, and I can show you a lot of press it's like, oh, the classical musicians that I used were good because they're used to following a conductor. Bullshit. That is bullshit, and I'll tell you why it's bullshit: because when they rehearse in classical music, that's what they perform. What I rehearse is not what I perform. Do you understand what I'm talking about?

JF Yes.

BM Because all I rehearse or all I workshop, and I prefer to say workshop is the conduction vocabulary. This means this, this means this, this means this and so forth, and then I run them through it. I run them through the way it works, and then I try to build up the speed of if so they know what it feels like having to create from information they have to transpose instantly. When we go to the stage it's completely different. The information is the same, but we cannot interpret the symbolism in rehearsal and then take it to performance.

JF Because what someone has done determines what you're going to do next in performance.

BM I start the rehearsal one way; when I go to the stage, I'm not going to start it like rehearsal, do you understand what I mean I mean I might listen, I might take a sound that comes from the audience, (violently shaking a piece of paper) and I'll tell the whole ensemble, do that. To the best of their ability. And then I'll say, repeat that sound on their instrument. And on their instrument they have to come close enough to that sensibility, to this timbre, to this texture as possible, and make that same sound for that duration. They'll go (makes chugging, rustling sound), then they'll repeat it. Do you understand? So if I've got 22 people that understand they have to replicate this sound on their instrument whether it's an oboe or a bassoon or a drum or a piano or whatever, you try to come as close as you can to the rhythmic idea, the dynamic, and the timbre.

JF Which brings us to another question: you've worked in how many countries?

BM 22.

JF 22 different countries. That's how many different languages?

BM 22. (Laughs)

JF Is language ever a problem?

BM No. I've never only one time and I don't want to get into it because it's a long story. No, it's not a problem. Find of all.

JF Is speaking English a requisite?

BM Well, I'm speaking English because I don't know anything else. I speak a little French, I speak a tiny bit of Italian, a tiny bit of German, a tiny bit, a tiny bit. Not enough. But there's always, always, always someone in the ensemble who understands English. A lot of times I send the conduction vocabulary ahead so it can be translated into these languages. No. I've never really had a problem. I've had a problem with people making the transfer or making the transfer or making the leap from what they've been taught to what I want them to understand in terms of the concept of working in this way. Then they can't for a lot of musicians it just doesn't work, and especially, the more they've been trained, the more it gets in the way. Beause you know, in 143 conductions let me say 141, 140, I never talk about what tonality it's in, what key it's in, what form, I never gave them any written music, I just say, this means one continuous sound, and I've got 30 people I just give a down beat and already it's harmony. Because 22 people are going to have 22 ideas whether I like it or not. Even if 5 out of 22 are playing the same note, it doesn't matter do you understand what I mean? It really doesn't matter. The act of doing something in concert or doing something in unison, something together, itself makes it valid. And that's not something they're taught in music. There are many things timbre, intensity, duration, you know very important things just like harmony and melody. That's why if I say, this means one particular sound, if someone comes in one second or two seconds behind the downbeat, I stop the whole thing. I say, you've got to come in with us.

JF You'll stop the idea in performance?

BM Not necessarily in rehearsal, when I'm explaining this.

JF Okay.

BM In performance, I see how far I can push the thing, though some ensembles can't be pushed. They're very fragile. A lot of people, sometimes, in the process of doing this, their concentration will break down. Some ensembles, their concentration will break down. Some ensembles, their concentration will break down in two minutes, or five minutes, or twenty minutes. Once you see that most of the ensemble's concentration is lost, you've got to stop it, let them get their focus back. Because you've taken so much even people that profess to play free music, or free jazz they have as big a problem with what I'm doing as people who come from a strictly classical background.

JF Why do you think that is?

BM I think that's because they're used to being 'free'. And the first thing that I tell people that work with me is, if you don't think you can do this, just don't do it. You will scuttle the whole idea. You eliminate all of our possibilities. This is a very specific discipline. Because I call on your very nature. This whole idea calls on all your knowledge, but not on your knowledge of music, it calls on your knowledge of many things.

JF Of community

BM Yeah. I'm saying this is your information, you create from it. We're going to take this information and we're going to develop it in a lot of different ways. We're going to build it up and then we're going to break it down. A lot of cats don't want to go there. And that's a lot of people have come into the ensemble whose only intention was to sabotage it.

JF What do you mean?

BM Well, what do you think I mean?

JF I don't see that. I mean, wouldn't someone want to do their best?

BM They would want to do their best, outside of the parameters of what this is.

JF The whole thing.

BM Some people it doesn't matter what musical style they play some people are only interested in getting off. And some people only know how to solo. Some people don't know how to construct, and some people don't know how to compose on their instrument. They know how to solo, or they know how to play free, let's put it like that. You know, they have no sense of commitment, or they have no sense of the harmonic unity it takes to have an ensemble that works in this way. It might work in some sense, but not in this particular sense.

JF It's like making conversation.

BM Exactly. And you have to know what conduction is, first of all.

JF I should have asked before what is conduction?

BM The definition is on my website. I'll read it to you: ìConduction's a vocabulary of ideographic signs and gestures activated to modify or construct a musical arrangement or composition. Each sign and gesture transmits generations of information for interpretation by the individual and the collective. It has instantaneous possibilities for altering or initiating harmony, rhythm, articulation, phrasing, and so forth.î So then Black February is the sum of twenty years of the use of the conduction vocabulary. In the future I will return to notation.

JF Wow Thanks Butch. See you at nublu and I'll see you in Black February!

www.conduction.us

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LAWRENCE D. "BUTCH" MORRIS:

ìNothing compares to (or prepares one for) the magnitude of Morris' personal vision of conductionîÖ.. ìMorris brings context to improvisationî. Sam Prestianni, Metroactive Music

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is one of the leading innovators in the
confluence of jazz, new music, improvisation and contemporary
classical music. Mr. Morris's work redefines the roles of composer,
conductor, arranger and performer, and bridges the gap between the
composer, interpreter and improviser.

Since 1974, his career has been distinguished by unique and outstanding
international contributions to television, film, theater, dance, radio,
interdisciplinary collaborations, concerts and recordings. He has
worked with countless musicians and composers, choreographers,
visual artists, writers, theater and film directors and performers.
As a composer, he is widely known for his notated compositions and
has been especially acclaimed for pioneering and developing the art
of Conduction:

Conduction (conducted interpretation/improvisation) is a vocabulary
of ideographic signs and gestures activated to modify or construct a
real-time musical arrangement or composition. Each sign and gesture
transmits generative information for interpretation, and provides
instantaneous possibilities for altering or initiating harmony, melody,
rhythm, articulation, phrasing or form.

ìThe universal nature of Morris' Conduction Vocabulary is obviousÖ.but the unorthodox beauty is what resonates the mostî.
(CD Review, April 1996)

Employing more than 4,000 musicians in 22 countries and 62 cities,
resulting in 22 CDs over a 20-year period, Conduction has amply
demonstrated its capacity for cultural diplomacy by uniting communities
and serving as a powerful example of a new social logic based
on collective interpretation and personal interaction.

What Morris accomplishes is a work so vast in its tonal spaces and colors, recordings can barely contain it. In Morris' egoless conduction, new tone poems and symphonies are being structurally erected as multilingual towers of expression and collective architecture where tonality is the bendable surface from which the foundation emerges.
In conduction ó and perhaps only there ó is it possible to achieve the feat of a musical community dissolving its separate identities in order to communicate in freedom as an individual unit of creative expressionî. ALL MUSIC GUIDE

ARTIST STATEMENT

Jazz has driven the 20th century literally from one end to the other, and it has given birth to many offspring, re-inventing it/self time and again. No matter how many times it has changed, however, jazz has always been a medium for individual expression and collective interaction with its own characteristic spirit, which is swing, or rather the essence of swing. Born from the elements of spontaneity, momentum, combustion, ignition and propulsion (a sense of continuity), this essence has been called the "extra dimension."

The orchestral community has often sought out this extra dimension in hopes of rejuvenating its traditions. Yet for all the orchestral works written in the past century, only a handful have brought jazz and music for orchestra closer together or attained the monumental status that each tradition holds. In an age when the term "interactive" has come to mean "human and machine," it seems reasonable to hope that an acoustic medium of collective interpersonal intelligence could achieve a greater degree of cross-cultural dialogue and trans-social communication than it has to date.

To find a common ground between orchestral and improvised music, I believe one must return to the fundamentals to identify what is necessary for the two traditions to co-exist: that is, the opportunity for improvisers to improvise and for interpreters to interpret the "same material."

As musicians we all speak a common language. We may speak in different dialects, vocabularies, categories or styles, but the language is music, and music, whatever the tradition from which it springs, has certain intrinsic properties (beyond harmony, melody and rhythm). Although these properties may ultimately resist analysis, music will always allow musicians to communicate from vastly differing perspectives.
Is this information sufficient to begin a new era of investigation and collaboration? I believe that the answer is yes!

The most common misunderstanding concerning Conduction is that it is only for improvisers from the jazz or improvised music community. This is not true. Although Conduction was incubated within the improvised music community, it grew not only to encompass the ideas of that community but also to expand beyond them.

In order to maximize the potential of existing and probable musical direction, I needed to be able to make real-time modifications to written scores, to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct compositionsóto change the pattern or order of sounds and, consequently, the larger form. The Conduction vocabulary made it possible to alter or initiate rhythm, melody, harmony, form/structure, articulation, phrasing and meter of any given notation. Once this lexicon had been established, it then became possible to eliminate notation altogether to pursue ideas based on collective interactive confrontations for the purpose of constructing composition in real time.

A process of encounter emerged to address composition from an interpretive and/or improvisational point of view as two dimensions of continuous territory. The result is a music that can reflect all known and unknown facts relevant to the sonic world while raising cognition, creativity and potential to capacity; a legitimate relationship between a defined compositional logic and collective musical needs that applies to each community I work in.

In its present stage of evolution, Conduction is a vocabulary/lexicon, a process and a product. It serves as a conduit for the transmission of symbolic information. The process motivates musicians not only to render, arrange and construct, but also to evolve their own vision, model and tradition, placing idea with idea; working toward a collective organizational goal with responsibility dispersed throughout the decision-making process. Thus spontaneity, momentum and combustion all work together to produce ignition, propulsion and convection.

To call Conduction an experiment is a grave error. Any time you synchronize the spirit and still give it liberty, you open many doors to the primus, where the intimate necessity of possibility reigns, where we find and realize our individual and collective freedoms.

From the perspective of the conductor, the act of Conduction is the art of*environing*: the organization of surrounding things, conditions or influences. My task is not only to illustrate (teach) Conduction in the workshops (rehearsals), but also to observe the cultural, social, and historical potential, both in the individual and the collective, and to arrive at a specific momentary logic that will organize itself into the structures and many substructures that (can) exist in a composition.

Jazz is my heritage, my condition, and my tradition. I have inherited it; I will carry it on.... At the same time, I am advocating an ensemble of musicians from diverse traditions who share a common ground and goal as servants to music, who's aim is an extra dimension that will represent a point where all musicians can create on equal footing.

This common ground is not as untested as it may seem. Indeed, Elliott Galkin, in his History of Orchestral Conducting, shows that Conduction and the classical tradition share the same roots. What I learned from this book, years into the development of Conduction,is that "chironomy" existed as far back as 1500 BC, or even earlier: "In its earliest applications... chironomy was intended to indicate the course and characteristics of melody through the use of specific spatial movements. In effect, it served as a substitute for notation. The gestures that were devised at that time constituted the earliest system of visual signs by which musical direction was achieved."

In recent years, Lucas Foss (Improvisation Chamber Ensemble), Leonard Bernstein (ìThree Improvisations for Orchestra,î Columbia Records LP 6133), Sun Ra, Frank Zappa, Alan Silva, Doudou Ndiaye Rose and Charles Moffett are but a few who have broken ground in this area, with others coming to the forefront in the last 19 years.

After more than one hundred-fourty Conductions, averaging three to five workshop/rehearsal days before a performance, I see only potential: potential for Conduction and for the future of music and musician; potential because there has never been enough time to realize every requirement, or total understanding, within workshop limitations. When I began I couldn't imagine where the music and the musician are now. But today I can imagine light years into Conduction, both as concept and process, and I can envision many more levels that can be achieved.

By no means do I suggest Conduction as an alternative to existing musical-educational methods or styles, but rather the investigation of a new social-logic that can unite and enhance existing traditions, a neo-functionalist approach to ensemble music, a process and a music that stands, more than ever, as a viable supplement for music, musician and education. I offer this as my contribution to the extra dimension.