Religioso
Mark Kramer
"RELIGIOSO", while improvised, is not within the genre of jazz. Yet, it embodies qualities which are at the root of all meaningful music, including some jazz.
"Religioso" - by direct sensation- invokes in us a sense of the VASTNESS in which we exist - i.e., what we offhandedly call “our lives.” This collection conveys and supports our deepest
"RELIGIOSO", while improvised, is not within the genre of jazz. Yet, it embodies qualities which are at the root of all meaningful music, including some jazz.
"Religioso" - by direct sensation- invokes in us a sense of the VASTNESS in which we exist - i.e., what we offhandedly call “our lives.” This collection conveys and supports our deepest ,most buried, impulses: WONDER, REVERENCE, and TO BE ACTIVELY SEEN - all even amidst the bustle of movement, instinct, and carnal passion. RELIGIOSO resonates with our deepest wish to understand "why we are?", "for what are we?" It provides answers in the form of living questions.
This music goes so far beyond style or genre that it has been given its own strange category here - "ORBIC music*" Whereas the tangentially related "New Age" music often attempts to calm our minds and bodies, and "Religious/Church music" unapologetically intends to invoke "religious" feelings, "ORBIC music" prompts us to be fully receptive (open/naïve) at the outset lest we miss its meaning entirely. We, so distracted by all around us, quickly see that we cannot be fully receptive. Fortunately, embedded within the beginning of each enclosed piece is subliminal code. It is mentioned here so as to be fully transparent. This code exactly informs/ instructs us on how we need to conform in order to understand the stories which are conveyed within the pieces. Thus, many listeners will be astonished to find themselves 1) rapidly engaged in a quiet, yet intensely active quality of attention, bodily sensation, and growing relaxation of muscles and internal organs, and 2) wishing to aid that "state of being" by trial and error.
Much of the music herein owes full debt to guru-like G.I. Gurdjieff and his general student Thomas De Hartmann (who happened to be the classical musician to whom Gurdjieff dictated a great deal of what he heard in deeply remote monasteries. ) Together they provided the Western World with a uniquely remarkable music - said to emanate from old esoteric sacred orders devoted to disseminating profound tenants of the Universe, and maps for inner self-development. Some of the music was originally meant to objectively convey the mechanics underlying the hidden animation of humanity and our Universe. Yet, the greatest body of that music - much of it improvised - supported the so called "sacred movements." The penultimate aim of these "movements" was for us to authentically acquire an ability to awaken, i.e., to be centered, free in life, and profoundly perceptive to what "actually is." This was taught through developing (or being graced with) a broadly-actively relaxed receptive attention/perception while performing complex sequences of bodily movement, involving total posture and sequential positions of each body part in rhythm. There could be no room for daydreaming - as all functions, including thought and feeling were needed to fully participate with such increasing levels of complexity. The ultimate aim - to be able repay our arising and more with the coin of authentic conscience - has all but been forgotten.
Unfortunately, original teachers and musicians died off or were forcibly retired, and the lineages gradually became distorted so as to support "teachers" and "musicians" who provided mostly hollow exercises in authoritarian perfectionism. This is nothing special, as it is found in the outer forms of all religions, indeed all human activity - including corporate .
It is only through Gurdjieff that the sense of the original music was conveyed. In those few old recordings of his that have been preserved to today we learn that the pedantic/stilted strict up and down time of European classical music - had been inappropriately imposed on the music he brought even as early as by de Hartmann himself; certainly not by Gurdjieff.
To his credit, the classically trained jazz musician Keith Jarret who recorded some of the sacred pieces for ECM, instinctively understood that the music was meant to be played with micro-complex poly-rhythms (found in Sub-Saharan, as well as most middle Eastern traditions), and with a tremendous sense of breath. This is not to say he - or most of us - understood the underlying intention of the music. Most of today's teachers of the "sacred movements", or the concertizing pianists in that genre, unintentionally handicap the music and its meaning by willfully imposing a strict metric sense to it. To this "less than subtle" disconnect can be traced a gradual involution of the music.
It was by a happy accident that I never had a metronome – nay not even one piano lesson. I never missed the metronome. even when others correctly criticized my playing as imprecise. It was; but I always felt it to be in the flow and to be expressive. It had always been natural for me to feel musical passages in terms of as many subdivisions of a beat as possible. As long as I could play with other musicians without lagging or speeding up I rationalized my imprecision (over any sequence of soundings) as my “friend.” (This was a convenient valuation, as I could not be precise – except with extreme attention. I hated Hanon. ) I certainly marveled at the discipline of concert pianists, and jazz pianists with classical chops. However, I often regarded the concert pianist’s rigid approach to music as pretentious – actually laughable. Maybe it was why Rubinstein above all spoke to me. Even as precise as Glenn Gould could be playing Bach, he often just lapsed into an organic polyrhythmic sense. I so loved that. I reckoned I would never be a jazz pianist with classical chops. So I had to learn to separate the sound of their chops from what they were playing. During one highly self-critical period I realized that most anything, no matter how banal, would sound terrific when executed precisely. I did not have that luxury. On the other hand, I valued pianistic touch. It took me forever to develop some semblance of it. That had been important and worth it. Even now a part of me has to remind itself every so often to play it like a piano, not a jack hammer.
The pieces presented herein were all improvised. Some passages would have been at home accompanying the so-called sacred movements . A defining characteristic of this collection is its 1) near total disregard for the mechanical strict up and down metronomic sense of European classical music (owing to military applications), 2) and breath. This disregard is automatically foreign to musicians who had been trained as soldiers to obey a metronome and to follow predetermined variations in tempi. Those with a technical interest will find that "numerator/denominator" designations are meaningless herein, yet not because time signatures such as 4/4, 6/8 (etc. ) aren't implied. In other words, the performances herein are not imperfect. And even if I could have been precise, I would have chosen not to be. Any "imperfections" are misperceptions, because they are required to define intrinsic meaning. That these are required in "dance music" underscores the nature of most of life in movement: polyrhythmic and in respiration. Military music, and that produced by drum machines, are the outliers. These fashionable forms, as well as the robotic automatisms of certain insect species, are received by most beings as terrifying abominations. This should be no surprise.
*Orbic Music: We – as complex beings composed of very minute packets of dynamic energy - are enmeshed in a general field of fine energy. When we are psychologically quiet, aware, and relaxed – and graced, we will directly sense this field of “energy” as bright particles in vibration. For want of a better term I experience these as a huge density of ORBS. Furthermore, for short periods, whatever is the constellation of “orbs” I refer to as “I” does intuit this orbic field as awareness (consciousness or conscience) itself. Music which takes place in partnership with these orbs, is orbic. In other words, music that occurs in this way is the music of and by consciousness. It is the furthest thing from “performance” that one can imagine.
(c) (p) Mark Kramer Trio, LTD. Mark Kramer, BMI.
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The Call 1:460:00/1:46
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Search 1:040:00/1:04
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Opening 1:390:00/1:39
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I AM 3:300:00/3:30
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Awakening 6:110:00/6:11
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Forever 2:190:00/2:19
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An Uncommon Call 11:490:00/11:49
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and Ever 6:000:00/6:00
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Holy Movement 12:260:00/12:26
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His Rest 4:130:00/4:13
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0:00/14:08
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Consolidation 2:300:00/2:30