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Tabula Rasa
and The Evolution of Neon Egypt's Music
Neon Egypt's departure from mainstream jazz began in 1992 when percussionist Steven Miller and
8-string guitarist Ron Thompson formed the performance art collaborative
Tabula Rasa (from the Latin meaning literally "erased tablet", or
more colloquially, "blank slate") along with artists Harrison Goldberg, saxophone, and
Troy Silveira, keyboards. This four piece ensemble undertook an
intentional regimen of mental and musical exercises designed to reach
beyond the players' musical programming as jazz musicians, and augment
it with the pure ability to create - by inspiration as it were - through
attentive, intuitive listening. (See
Intuitive Music) Each weekly session was recorded and
copies distributed for review to the participants the following week.
The earliest experiments were hesitant and clunky, as the musicians struggled
to escape their usual and familiar chordal and rhythmic jazz frameworks
and "patterns" of playing, while attempting to create something unknown,
something truly fresh. As they continued to work this process week by
week however, new, natural "patterns" began to emerge and assert themselves. For
example, the four players found that they would consistently create
musical pieces that had apparent structure. Thirty-five to forty minute
musical pieces would materialize that had three or more clearly defined
movements, each with an easily discernable beginning, middle, and end.
As the process of refined listening continued, a continual stream of new musical information began
to flow through and inform these flexible movements, seemingly regulating
itself in some unknown manner, so that the players would each fully
exercise their creative contributions, and yet all somehow end up in the
same musical "place" consistently. Previous constraints such as time
signature and key signature became essentially irrelevant, as the
musicians began to play in unusual, mixed keys and rhythms. Pure,
coordinated inspiration became the new "glue" holding the pieces together.
It was always apparent when a particular musical piece was complete, and the
players would reach a natural ending together and simply stop playing, at
once.
The fruit of these years of musical experiment and growth are now
represented in Neon Egypt, a continuing collaboration of two of the
original members of Tabula Rasa. Neon Egypt's
music revisits certain sound-forms and characteristics of jazz, yet is fully and spontaneously improvised, and recorded live without
overdubs or retakes.
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