I had the pleasure of taking in a Beanbender's extravaganza double bill featuring Barre Phillip in a solo bass performance followed by the awesome duo of Mathew Shipp & William Parker. Beanbender's is a Berkeley creative arts series that is presently housed in a rather nondescript multipurpose venue. The venue is a converted bank that now serves as performance center/vocational training/art gallery. It was absolutely jammed packed on this evening (capacity is around 300). I know virtually nothing about Barre(it's pronounced Bar, not Barray as I would have thought), except he has a reputatation as an extreme virtuoso equally at home in the classical and improvised music world. He is orginally from the Bay Area, but has lived in Europe for many years (France, I think). As a rule, everybody seems to be originally from the Bay Area. That is except for the people who now live here--they are all from points elsewhere.

The show was scheduled to start at 8 PM, and 10 minutes after that this sixty-something year old gentleman walks on stages and fiddles with his bass and then walks off without anyone much noticing. He returns about 15 minutes later for the start of the performance. Phillip has the appearance of a golf pro on the Seniors tour. He played a rather energetic 75 minute set of improvised music. The set featured himing playing bass with a bow and without a bow (I confuse arco & pizzicato). The opening piece consisted of a set of minimalist sketches that hinted at a range of styles. (The pieces merely reflect pauses rather than compositions). This was followed by a lengthy arco piece covering more than 40 minutes. In this piece, Barre used a wide range of effects of percussive and bowing effects to create a range of sounds. He would rub the body of the bass, tap the neck, pluck the strings with his thumbs and used a host of other devices. I was alternately fascinated and bored by it. I was impressed by the sounds he was able to coax from his instrument, but didn't find it sufficiently grounded in any musical context. It was a very interesting, but not always enjoyable performance. Shipp and Parker played an interesting and intense 80 minute set of improvised music. Unfortunately, Parker's bass was undermiked and it was hard to hear him above Shipp's roar. If I listened really intently to Parker (almost tuning out Shipp), I could follow what he was doing. He's a very powerful and agile bassist and can make his presence felt (even at low volumes) on arco or pizzicatto bass. I had seen Parker play before with Roy Campbell and he was immensely impressive then. This was my first Shipp experience (though I have a couple of his recordings). Shipp was just awesome! He is extraordinarily inventive and energetic improvisor who is obviously strongly influenced by Cecil Taylor. But his playing covers a much wider range of styles and influences. He played for some 80 minutes virtually without pause and was consistently interesting to listen to. I can't imagine that many young pianist could improvise for lengthy periods of time without resorting to much repetition and cliches. Shipp and Parker have played together for some time and have recorded together as well.

Unfortunately, the sound problems prevented me from getting a sense of their interplay. Nevertheless, it was a very fine performance.