She turned out to be the perfect choice, having a tremendous range, both musically and emotionally. Introduced to me by John Greaves, an old cohort of mine, she had worked with him and in many different contexts, including the French cult rock-jazz band Magma. Our first occasion to work together was at a concert in Paris during 2014 with the Chaos Orchestra of composers Daniel Yvinec and Arnaud Petit. This collaboration resulted in a lengthy work entitled Oiseaux de Guerre (Birds of War), which dealt with atrocities of the Iraq war. Continuing from there, wanting to explore the voice and the general theme further, I worked on creating Comment c'est.
I have always kept my musical life as abstract as possible, never directly related to programmatic influences or themes, such as world politics, news items or personal life events. In hindsight, that was only partially successful. After all, I participated in the early Liberation Music Orchestra projects with Charlie Haden. For me, however, it was more the musical experience that counted, rather than the expression of political views. Of course, at the time, one marched on Washington, demonstrated against Vietnam and, in general, behaved anti-government, anti-business and anti-establishment.
Certain critical political-sociological world-views eventually began to appear from time to time in my work, such as in Cerco Un Paese Innocente (I search for an innocent land - another song cycle, this one in Italian), and especially in the extended sort-of-an-opera The School of Understanding, with some of its songs resurfacing, extensively revised, in this current project.
No longer able to ignore outrageous recent world events, it had simply become impossible to continue creating music without reacting to this overwhelming and pervasive environment of hatred, greed and corruption. Comment c'est therefore concerns itself quite specifically with a range of serious subjects, such as war, terrorism, hostages, migration, poverty, fear and the generally sorry state of our contemporary world.
I have always wanted to simply create music that is beautiful and that perhaps reveals something that might be deep within us all. Yet, with this music, in particular, I hope not only to touch those elusive feelings but also to more concretely tell How It Is.
He has recorded many albums for WATT with varying instrumentations and soloists. Appearing infrequently live, he mostly concentrated on composing and recording. He has often worked with texts of contemporary authors (among them most prominently Samuel Beckett) featuring well-known singers from diverse backgrounds of jazz and popular music, including Jack Bruce and Robert Wyatt.
in 1991 he left the United States and returned to Europe. Continuing to cross the borders between jazz and contemporary classical music with his distinct instrumental and vocal compositions, he recorded new albums, now for ECM Records, including "sort-of" an opera, pieces for chamber ensembles, a large work for full symphony orchestra, suites of songs with words by Giuseppe Ungaretti and Paul Auster, a series of instrumental solo concertos and a collection of guitar/piano duets. His 2014 recording, The Jazz Composer's Orchestra Update, revisited and revised compositions written in the 1960s.
Comment c'est was recorded at the Porgy & Bess Studio in Vienna (April 2016) and Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, France (June and July 2016). Live performances of the music followed in Vienna in September 2016.
