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direct line to the soul.”
Technically, all three CDs of Spark Of Being
were created in a five-day frenzy of recording
both with the film and without at the Center for
Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at
Stanford University. Multiple versions of each
piece were recorded in an attempt to get better
matches, some of them not making it beyond the
experimental phase. The musical process that
the band Keystone engaged in—full of tight,
interactive movements and fiery, unpredictable
outbursts—was the result of having that week in
one room. Those lightning-fast musical conversations
were buttressed with the added element
of musique concrete and electronic sound manipulation.
As Douglas states in notes about the
session, this addition became “an extended part
of that palette, making this electric band play with
the interactivity and subtlety expected of acoustic
groups. Spark Of Being, the session, put all the
pieces in place so that we could really play that
game at the highest level.”
Along the way, Douglas enjoyed the opportunity
over long periods to work with DJ Olive
and Adam Benjamin to get that added electronic
benefit for Spark Of Being. Much of the work involved
finding sounds, tweaking them to make
sure they fit with the overall musical expression.
Benjamin’s work with GarageBand and Olive’s
with Ableton Live software apps, incidentally,
ended up being a learning curve for Douglas
himself, as he applied his own laptop dimensions
to the music. This helped them all when it came
time to improvise with the rest of the band in “this
entirely new sonic environment.”
Addressing the concern about too much music,
Douglas states, “I wouldn’t have released
three CDs if I didn’t feel all the music stood up
by itself. When there are multiple versions of a
tune, you’ll quickly hear that they are radically
different in approach.” He goes on to add, “I like
to work with improvisers in unusual ways. In the
same way you might ask a saxophone player to
play a solo on the chords to ‘Donna Lee,’ you can
ask an electronic musician to use various strategies
and forms in their work. So a lot of the approaches
stem from considering the pieces from
different angles. That kind of mixture creates a
richness and a tension that I like. I want the listener
to wonder where the tune ended and where the
improvisation began. Or maybe, to say it better,
that there would really be no difference between
what is written and what is not written.”
story about Dave Douglas today must dis-
A cuss his label, Greenleaf Music, and how
it relates to this series of recordings. Asked how
the relationship between Greenleaf’s policy of
streaming their catalog and this project with video
will bear fruit, if at all, Douglas says, “Greenleaf
modified its listening policy earlier this year
and is now offering full catalog streaming to our
subscribers only. There’s even a subscription
level for folks who just want to stream the catalog.
This allowed us to include all of Greenleaf’s
digital releases, including multi-night sets from
our live series.”
And, in case anyone’s wondering what’s next
for the always developing Dave Douglas, Keystone
will be supporting Spark Of Being (performing
with and without the film) in the United
States and Europe this fall and next year, and he’ll
be back in Europe with his Brass Ecstasy band in
the spring. Douglas will continue to develop his
other new projects, including his big band work
on the heels of the album A Single Sky with Jim
McNeely and the Frankfurt Radio Bigband and
his Trio Sentiero, which premiered at I Suoni delle
Dolomiti in the Italian Alps this past summer.
But it is Spark Of Being that preoccupies
Douglas nowadays. As he says in his notes to
Expand: “Science now pervades every aspect of
human activity. Music and the arts are no exception.”
Indeed, Dave Douglas seems determined
to make sure believers in science and lovers of
the arts, specifically music, note that one of the
most fundamental and eternal questions about
existence the author Mary Shelley faced (and we
all face) is, “What does it mean to be human?”
Spark Of Being is about the story of Frankenstein’s
monster, but it may also be about all of us
as well. DB
NOVEMBER 2010 DOWNBEAT 41