New (y)Ears Roundtable 2020

Photo by Susanne Baltes

We asked the writers at the Free Jazz Blog to share their thoughts on this past year. Lee Rice Epstein posed the two questions "what will I remember when I look back at this year" and "what was listening like this year." Considering the unusualness of the past year, we added a catch-all "anything else" to the list and then gathered replies. Below you have responses from 12 contributors, in order of receipt ... and we'd like to hear from you as well in the comments.

Colin Green

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Frankly, as little as possible.

What was listening like this year?

More time than usual, although I’m not sure that equates with better listening. Music provides some comfort but it’s increasingly difficult to prevent the outside world from impinging.

Anything else?

In a number of respects, predictions about the future are now more speculative than they have ever been. Looking forward however, I think there are likely to be some big changes in the world of free jazz/improv. There’s usually a delay of a year or so between a recording taking place and its release as an album. For much of this last year we’ve been hearing pre-Covid material, some of it unearthed from archives, etc. in order to generate additional income in the absence of live dates. As with new movies and TV drama, I expect this supply to diminish further during the next year and for there to be a corresponding increase in “home-made” recordings and releases. I predict, perhaps rashly, that when it comes to considering albums of the year next December a significant proportion will have been recorded in someone’s living room, though there may be an increase in historic/reissued albums.

The possibility of live dates, from which many albums are pulled, is also troubling, see: this item from the New York Times about the state of the performing arts generally. I suspect the position in other countries is much the same and that previously available public funding will be harder to come by. 

Free jazz has never been a money-spinner and musicians will be suffering the economic consequences of Covid restrictions for years to come, as indeed will many of those who purchase the albums. Expect a marginal market to become even more marginalised. There may even be some big names from whom we will not hear again. As with so many aspects of our lives we have reached a watershed and I can see nothing particularly rosy about the years to come. I know it’s easy to be a doom and gloom merchant at the moment, but it’s difficult to imagine anything other than a very bleak future for all of us. Sorry. 

Martin Schray

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Of course I will remember that my life has changed. As a teacher I had to teach in a very different way, and I discovered that it was not the way I've always liked teaching. What was more, my whole adult life I've gone to concerts which now was hardly possible anymore. In the summer months I went to some live events but mostly I just wanted to have the live feeling again. To be honest, the concerts themselves were mostly mediocre. I also noticed that concerts were more than the mere live act, they are often also about talking to other visitors and talking to the musicians - especially at festivals. To quote Joni Mitchell: "You don't know what you've got til it's gone".

What was listening like this year?

If it comes to listening I have to admit that after ten years of listening almost exclusively to freely improvised music I've started to listen to other musical genres much more often - blues, country, hiphop, new wave. Free Jazz has lost a bit of its fascination to me. I don't know if this is because I'm longing for a certain harmony in these days and if this reflects in my musical preferences, it's just the way it is. If I listen to free jazz it's quite often historical recordings or re-releases like the Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe, Rashied Ali's releases, Cecil Taylor and The Black Unity Trio.

Anything else?

I miss meeting Paul.

Matthew Banash

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Music saved my life, again...

What was listening like this year?

Deep and resonant

Anything else?

Saigyo in poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in the tea ceremony - the spirit that moves them is one spirit.

Paul Acquaro

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

That somehow there was less time in all of the extra time. In early spring when everything began shutting down, I thought, it's time to get going on all those projects. However, I seemed to spend more time at the computer working, clicking, working, clicking than ever. I will remember cleaner air and long walks and exploring my neighborhood in hyperlocal detail.

I think what this year highlighted for me was that the importance of live music is more than just the music itself, but the small conversations and unanticipated interactions. As anyone who has been at it for a while knows, the scale of this music makes it possible to feel a part of a community.

I also feel a lot of angst for everyone's whose livelihood and the musical venues that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. On the other hand, I also ended up seeing more of some artists than ever ... and this example isn't free jazz by any means, but I have watched several broadcasts of Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift doing weekly concerts from their living room. It's a powerful connection of old approaches and new mediums.

What was listening like this year?

The summer offered a nice reprieve, I saw some live music and took in as much as I could outside. I tried going to one show inside and felt uncomfortable and decided to split. That was an odd experience, especially since I looked forward to seeing the band.

As for recordings, I don't think I listened to more than I have in other years, though the situation would seem to support doing so. I did of course continue to discover new music and am absolutely bowled over by the amount of music that was made and released this year.

Anything else?

Yes, it would be nice to meet up with Martin and hit that over-priced record store again.

Keith Prosk

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Certainly the pandemic and the isolation it brought, racial inequity bubbling up into mass consciousness, and the depravity of leadership in the US. On a more personal level, my wife and I were able to purchase a home with easy access to the city but far enough in the hill country to have very little noise and light pollution, with lots of windows and natural light, and a big yard rich with life, all of which have done wonders for my psyche. It was also our first full year with our (giant!) labrador/pyrenees, Hildegard, who has brought immeasurable joy to my life.

What was listening like this year?

I experienced a bit of listening anhedonia for the first third of the year. I started listening to a podcast (yuck!) for Street Fighter and other fighting games; the only new improvised music I regularly returned to was Joanna Mattrey's Veiled; I found a bit of joy in Oval's Scis, Vladislav Delay's Rakka, and an AE_LIVE update; and I listened to some Andy Stott, Carly Rae Jepson, and Ariana Grande from 2019. In the early summer, releases from Nate Wooley, Carl Testa, Sabine Vogel, Matthias Muller, and Michael Thieke got me re-engaged with improvised music and from there I haven't been able to keep up. I wouldn't say that the pandemic had any effect on my listening habits this year. I would say that I've slowly developed an especial appreciation for acoustic drone that emphasizes harmonic interactions. I also started to familiarize myself a bit more with southeast Asian scenes of improvised music (though I still have a very long way to go). Right now, I'm catching up with some 2020 releases from Marshall Trammell, Weston Olencki, Andrew Smiley, Ruth Anderson, Ian Power, and Roger Tellier-Craig; I got my wife (and really me too) a beginner viola for Christmas so I've been listening to a lot of Julia Eckhardt; and I'm trying to expand my horizons in stuff closer to the spheres of classical music, so a lot of Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, Eliane Radigue, Ash Fure, Catherine Lamb, James Tenney, Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Edgard Varese for now.

Anything else?

As always, a massive thank you to Paul, Stef, the rest of the collective, and the readers for making this blog what it is.

Nick Metzger

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

It's difficult to say what will really stick to the ribs over the long haul, but what I remember off the top of my head is the warmth of spending extra time with my immediate family. The horrible emotions, uncertainty, and coping mechanisms of the first few months of lockdown. MacGowran Speaking Beckett. Watching my kids and their teachers struggle to make the best of virtual learning. The strength of my wife. Homemade masks. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. The political and social ugliness. Working from home. A Zoom chat with Paul Lytton. Standing in line for hours to vote. Virtual holidays and missing family and friends. Hope for the future.

What was listening like this year?

It was more difficult for me as I normally have a fairly long drive to work and listen to a lot of music then, so I had to make time for it at home which actually made me listen closer. I spent more money on digital music this year trying to help out on Bandcamp Fridays. The deluge of releases by artists that couldn't tour means we've definitely missed some great stuff, so I'll be mining 2020 music for some time to come. Virtual festivals and concerts kept our minds and ears busy and I've definitely come out of this year with new artists I'll be watching for.

Nick Ostrum

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

The absurdity of it all, and a lot of musicians (and artists, and gig workers, and more traditional workers, and, well, almost everyone) who were denied their traditional modes of living and working and were forced to do nearly everything outside the nuclear household remotely. At least, for a time.

What was listening like this year?

Intimate. I carved out my own little soundworld of choice records and CDs and a lot of new music recorded or released during the pandemic. Many of these were close-mic solo efforts, some meant to barely reach perception and others meant to fill the room with sound. I am not sure how much of this was really new 2020, but, as a listener, I was listening more attentively and with greater intention to relate personally to the music. I am pretty sure something changed with the sender(s); I am absolutely certain the receiver had been altered and was more attuned.

Anything else?

Cheers to all of those engaged in this tiny corner of the music world (musicians, labels, distributors, venues, record stores, and, yes, Bandcamp), who took a terribly adverse situation and made it tolerable for themselves and for us.

Gary Chapin

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

How Bandcamp became the most important platform for this kind of music. How the pandemic led to a flood of archival releases that -- by me, at least -- were very welcome. How much I miss being in a room with humans. How out of my depth I feel reading the Free Jazz Collective because of the sheer amount of material out there that I have (literally) never heard of.

What was listening like this year?

For me it was a series of deep dives. Rather than sampling widely and shallowly, I found myself fixating on a musician or group or theme and just going insanely deep. This has happened in the past, but not for a long time, and it was honestly a welcome phenomenon. I paid attention to a lot less, but paid attention much more closely.

Anything else?

I fell in love with YouTube reaction videos. I know! I was surprised, too. Are there reaction videos out there for Free Jazz? Something about watching someone else hear a piece of music for the first time allowed me to feel as if I were hearing it for the first time -- which I never knew that I was craving. I would love a reaction video for AEC, "Nice Guys."

Lee Rice Epstein

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

We bought a house earlier this year, after our landlord surprised us by putting our rental up for sale. And, we definitely imagined we would start a few home projects during the first year, but we had no sense of how much time we would be able to put into the house. By year's end, we have almost completely transformed our space, now a middle school, an elementary school, and two offices, in addition to a dining room, a living room, a vegetable garden, a fruit orchard, and a pasture for a small flock of chickens. We filled our house with as much life as we could, and praised the silver lining that meant more time with our children than we would normally have at these ages.

Waves of scares, losses in extended family and friends' family and friends, we of course escaped nothing. And yet, with slightly more time spent online, several acquaintances evolved into friends, and many friendships deepened, as days and weeks of text chains and lazily winding phone calls wore on.

Maybe this was the worst year. But maybe, too, it had some bright spots.

What was listening like this year?

I listened much more this year than normal, with quieter work days at home. Music played in the background more often, not always with headphones on, many days on the stereo. I dipped into loads of older albums, spending the summer revisiting Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie, reading detailed stories about past lynchings and present crimes against Black Americans. And I spent a lot of time chatting online with other listeners and musicians, discussing all the great music that channeled the wildly complex emotions from this year. It was conversely a more private and public listening year, and each new album felt glorious, a heartfelt triumph against the day.

Stef Gijssels

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

The painful solitude of so many musicians in lockdown, coping with declining revenues, cancelled concerts, and reduced record sales. At the same time it led to many solo (living room) performances and new creative approaches to co-create music digitally and without physical presence

What was listening like this year?

Also a solitary experience. I usually sit a lot in my car in traffic jams or on the road, in planes and hotel rooms, the ideal moment to listen to music. This year has been in lockdown mostly, with no access to offices and no travel whatsoever. It required to re-organise the time to listen too. I've heard wonderful new albums. The crisis did not diminish the in-flow of new albums. Many musicians and labels decided to check their archives and bring out existing performances and recordings. I listened a lot, and wrote little.

Anything else?

What struck me this year is the high visibility and strong quality presence of female musicians: Ingrid Laubrock, Susan Alcorn, Lina Allemano, Susana Santos Silva, Elsa Nilsson, Anna Högberg, Rhonda Taylor, Samara Lubelski, Judith Hamann, Okkyung Lee, Satoko Fujii, Hermione Johnson, Luise Volkmann, Katharina Ernst, Tomeka Reid, Kaja Draksler, Jaimie Branch, Rachel Musson, Alexandra Grimal, Cath Roberts, Catherine Sikora, Elisabeth Harnik, ... and I'm just browsing through our posts of this year.

Antonio Pošćić

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Like for many others, 2020 will be a year I'd rather forget than remember. The death of close ones. Multiple terrifying and devastating earthquakes in my home country. The global pandemic and all of its consequences.

Instead of remembering anything from it, I choose to sublimate the year into an idea of change—a thought of metamorphosis born from all this chaos and negative energy. Indeed, 2020 laid bare all the inadequacies and inequalities of our current system and ushered a timid flame—a hushed but insistent announcement—of a paradigm shift.

We're living one of those moments in history when the doors behind which transformation awaits creaked open. A moment not meant for reminiscence, but for envisioning a different, more empathetic and compassionate, fairer, and sustainable future. A future worth fighting for.

What was listening like this year?

With concert spaces closing, and some of them disappearing for good, listening became an even more intimate and isolated activity for me.

The suffocating claustrophobia of lockdowns then forced me to look towards musical extremes, both dark and light. The forlorn, aggressive, and pained side of the spectrum provided me with friends in despair, while their luminescent counterparts showed me glimmers of hope when I needed them most.

Anything else?

I'd like to salute and take a bow to essential workers, artists, and cultural workers all over the world. Our societies rest on their shoulders, and they deserve to live without worrying how they'll survive another day.

Stephen Griffith

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

That I couldn't see live music.

What was listening like this year?

More limited than normal.  There were still good releases that came out but not as many as usual.  I still had difficulties listening to as many things as I wanted to.