The show tonight was one of the best ever. Just a fantastic concert, I could rave endlessly about it.

Water Shed 5tet opened with a nice set, featuring among other things some Braxton in honor of his appearance here next month (with Ghost Trance Music) for which they'll again open. Ben wrote the title of the Braxton piece (from the 1976 stuff) they played on the board in the lecture hall Yves Citton made available through his Italian language department at theUniversity of Pittsburgh (these concerts were put down as department seminars for the bureaucrats). Ben played a lot of soprano saxophone, I'm not sure I heard him much on it previously. He also had his theremin along. There's a show in a few weeks where Sunny Murray and Sonny Simmons are coming and 2 other duets will be featured, including Ben and somebody, and Anne LeBaron and her partner, and Anne said she'd play some theremin through a vocoder. Anne also told me she'd look into getting Geri Allen's masters thesis from the music library for me.

Anyway, Clusone just got over the ocean, this was the first of a good many shows in North America. Unfortunately a lot of their stuff didn't come with them. Bennink played Jay Matula's kit, and Moore was without his clarinet. Reijseger spread music out on the floor all around him, and Bennink got crazy right from the start, running in and out of the room, joking around, and killing the drums. Despite all the music Moore and Reijseger had (lots of short scraps, just the heads primarily - Love Henry was marked Trad arr B Dylan which was news to me - but a couple long things) they scarcely ever seemed to be reading. The music was continuous, just tremendously creative inventions on whatever ideas were around. Bennink did all the things I'd heard about and then some. He played on various items (late in the show he went into the audience and played on the floor, down along empty rows, andextensively on the seats), used clothing, pulled the snare and stool out front a couple times for extended minimal usage and also played on just the hi-hat for long periods, made lots of noises in addition to facial expressions, joked around, swung his legs around, put his feet up on the instruments, played with the sticks in his mouth, bounced the sticks off the floor, etc. but not only played fairly straight a lot of the time but was also a neverending source of rhythm. That's what really defined him, he was rhythm and my leg bounced the whole show. His unconventional playing and clowning probably keeps people from appreciating his enormous skills. But he is unbelievably entertaining.

Meanwhile, Reijseger is phenomenal. He spent the greatest amount of time playing his cello like it was a guitar, but he also provided strong bass playing with it as well as making it sound like a cello at times. Plus some percussion. He has a gorgeous tone and clean clear strong lines. And no shortage of ideas. That is also true of Moore, who plays the main role of presenting the music. His tone is big and strong. For the third encore they did Love Henry, in a much more rousing version than on the CD, and Moore's sound reminded me of David Sanborn (I apologize for making some people sick, but he really is able to play the alto) in cutting through the thickness, but with a lovely full tone instead of the grating artificial sound Sanborn uses so often. Moore also played some nice piccolo and a few other little instruments, but his alto was the sound of the night. He ranged from sounding like Bird for a few seconds to Hodges to complete wailing and everything in between.

On the effects epidemic front, Moore once used the bell against the thigh move, and Bennink used his squeaky stool. Of course, there were numerous other effects, but for the most part they were very tastefully done in context. The thing I noticed most was how creative these 3 musicians were, or else what they do is simply novel to me. They didn't seem to rely on too many of the fundamental structures/forms/cliches most everybody relies upon, and made it all up as they went (that's a big exaggeration of course) and did so beautifully. Not just craftsmen.

I bought a CD from Moore, on what I take to be his label, Ramboy Disc #01, just titled Clusone 3. They do some improvised things of course, as well as some Moore tunes, along with Neil Hefti's Girl Talk, a couple Herbie Nichols tunes, a Mengellberg piece and some other things. Not like too many other bands. The Hefti tune is one of the most recognizable standards, right, but you might not catch it here.

I chatted briefly with Bennink afterwards, asking him about why he didn't used to come to the states. He talked about the work permit thing that I'd heard, but I still don't really understand it. He refused to pay for a work permit because Americans didn't have to do so in Europe, or something like that. Fortunately somebody is paying for it now. Although he isn't going to appear in Lafayette LA, he will be getting lots of other places. Chicago, Ann Arbor, etc. coming up next, eventually out west to LA, Vancouver, Banff, etc. They should not be missed under any circumstances.

I passed along greetings to Bennink from Ed Beuker, and Bennink recalled their conversation about the 64 dates with Dolphy, and Sepik Huisman who took some photographs that Ed got from him now. Bennink said Huisman is a university professor. I didn't want to bug him about Dolphy stuff. He was extremely sweet and nice to talk with briefly, despite coming off as a scary lunatic at times when he was performing. :-)

He was thrilled to be here in Pittsburgh performing in front of what he said was a big audience for them (it was maybe 60-70 people) in Kenny Clarke's home town. Between us we listed lots of other people from here, including Beaver Harris who he said he knew well from when Harris was with Archie Shepp in Europe. During the concert though I was struck at his resemblance to Max Roach, in the way he kept adding beats on top of what was already there. He doesn't appear to be disciplined because of his unorthodox behavior, but he plays quite complex stuff like Max, just without the serious tone. A lot of the time he bangs away it seems, but Isuspect careful listening would reveal that there's a lot going on there as well.

Early in the set Bennink got up after somebody walked in late as the music continued and amused us by the way he wrote on the board that they'd be selling CDs after the concert. His distinctive handwriting appears on many of his albums. Stylish, lovely guy making challenging exciting lovely stylish music.

Clusone is a town in Northern Italy, not far from Como, who is a local boy from Canonsburg.