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Blaise Siwula, born 02-19-1950 in Detroit, MI. about Blaise Siwula.

I have been involved with the arts for most of my life. I began studying the alto sax at the age of 14 in middle school and have been playing/ studying in varying capacities since. After periodic explorations of drama, poetry, architecture, visual art, a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. and a stint in Europe, I arrived in NYC in 1989 with my family and an alto sax.

In the past 18 years I have been actively involved with the NYC Improv Scene: Amica Bunker, the Improvisers Collective and most recently the C.O.M.A. series at ABC No-Rio.

As a composer I have incorporated traditional musical scoring techniques with visual/graphical and performance oriented presentations and a simple philosophy- sound and vision are inter-related in life and art resulting in communication. Although primarily an alto saxophonist I play a number of reed, flute, percussion and string instruments at varying degrees of competency per composition requirements and recently began including computer altered sound files in performance as background for improvisation. Currently my instruments of choice are: Alto, Tenor &amp, Soprano Saxophones, Bb Clarinet, Eb Alto Cl &amp, Bb Bass Clarinet.

This has resulted in my performing and collaborating with an extreme variety of types of improvised musicians including… David Haney, Richard Russo, Guitarist Sten Hostfalt,Saulo Ferreira, Danny Martin, Paul LeGrande and Stuart King, Doug Walker’s Alien Planetscapes, Cecil Taylor’s Ptonagas, Microtone composer and guitarist John Gilbert, William Hooker’s Ensembles, Judy Dunaway’s Balloon Trio, Rowe Siwula Miano Trio, Dialing Privileges Trio with Dom Minasi and John Bollinger, BCJ Trio with Chris Welcome and John McCellan, A + B2 with Robert Marsh, Market Street Jazz with Ken Simon, Hal Onserud, Karen Borca and Jackson Krall, Dagaz Trio with William Parker and Michael Evans, BE Duet with Evan Gallagher, Tan Dun, Katsuyuki Itakura, Michael Khoury, The Improvisors Collective (NYC), Glass Factory with Donald Miller, Duet with Ravi Padmanabha, The B & B Duet with Bob Meyer, Erie Nites with Robyn Siwula, HSM with Gary Hassay and Toshi Makihara, Trio with Eyal Maoz and Dale Miller, The Jeff Platz Ensemble, Joseph Scianni, Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, Music in the Foreground with Ge-Suk Yeo, the Slam trio with Adam Lane and Toshi Makihara, The Lower Eastside Social Club with Matty Paris, Gregory Wildes, Christobal Jacques and Drew Gardner, Expositions of Freedom Now! with Vattel Cherry and Jeff Arnal, MAMBO MANTIS with Bonnie Kane, Chris Welcome and Ray Sage.

Projection: Zero

Blaise Siwula (alto/tenor-sax)  | Carsten Radtke (guitar)

Recorded August 30th, 2007, Spencer Studios Brooklyn, NY. The compositions were spontaneous between the two of us. Cover art by Honyo Ohte (Tako Productions)

Tracklist:  1. WuWei Ways 2. Chance Meeting 3. Was It The Eastside 4. There Are No Goodbyes 5. Whoz Surprise 6. LynBrooklyn 7. If I Saw This 8. It Happened Tomorrow Total Time: 58:16

Download listen to Blaise Siwula and Carsten Radtke | There Are No Goodbyes

This music is the result of a casual session at my studio in Brooklyn. Carsten has been visiting NYC for the past few years in August and attending the improvised music series I curate – C.O.M.A. that takes place on Sundays at ABC No-Rio on the Lower Eastside. We had some interesting encounters during the open sessions and I suggested we meet at my place before he returned to Munich. Afterward Carsten thought since we had no expectations an appropriate title would be “Projection: Zero”. As we both have an interest in Zen Buddhism it made sense… the music…the titles…the concept… The unique sound on this recording comes from our different backgrounds and approaches to music.

Carsten has been performing composed 20th century classical/ new music for a number of years while I have been immersed in the improvised/free jazz/new music scene. But to analyze this even further …the intense listening that afternoon and the spontaneous compositions became Projection: Zero.— Blaise Siwula

Music can be great in little things.

What a great and intimate musical interaction between two artists who understand each other well this record is! Blaise Siwula’s alto and Carsten Radke’s guitar seem to be made for each other, both in tone and in musical approach. They also demonstrate how improvised music can go well beyond any patterns and harmonies without sounding dissonant. Quite on the contrary, it is at moments amazing to hear how they create the piece together, moving in the same direction, coming together even without falling into patterns. This is gentle, sensitive, organic music. Because they had no preconceived notions when starting to play, they called it “Projection: Zero”. Both musicians are also interested in Zen Buddhism, and the first track is aptly titled “Wu Wei Ways”, describing their approach to music, with Wu Wei being the state of “action without action”, to let things move with natural grace, without forcing things, let things grow out of themselves. And this latter organic thing is precisely what you hear. Siwula listens to Radke, Radke listens to Siwula, notes and phrases, sometimes rhythms are created, repeated, echoed, supported, expanded, … gently, subtly. That does not mean that everything is always nice and peaceful, or slow. There is speed at moments, there is tension too because many unexpected things happen, yet it is because of this that variety and sometimes differing views that other and new things happen, but in full control, with lots of disciplined freedom. Masterful.— stef freejazz-stef.blogspot.com

Saxophonist Blaise Siwula

has been an active participant in New York’s ‘underground’ jazz scene for the past two decades. Although he released several recordings on independent labels, it wasn’t until the millennium that he started garnering attention. Siwula is a committed free player and his highly unique sound couples a dry throaty wail with a command of his instrument’s entire range and a wavering vibrato that’s very effective. Projection: Zero is an all-improvised duet session between Siwula and German guitarist Carsten Radtke. Radtke not only plays improvised music, but is also an interpreter of 20th century guitar literature, having performed and recorded the works of Berio, Davidovsky, Brouwer and others. On this disc he displays a clean, jazz-based tone with a rich harmonic sense. Occasionally, he’ll click on an effects box but that is not his dominant mode. He and Siwula are well matched, engaging in a conversational dialogue and all of the give and take that implies. There are solo passages, moments where one takes lead and the other comments and also some remarkable synchronous interplay. Yes, Siwula occasionally reaches for the intensity for which he is known but this set is remarkably relaxed. It’s a real joy to listen to and also presents a side to Siwula’s art that has heretofore only been sporadically documented. — Robert Iannapollo www.allaboutjazz.com

14 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide

FULGORNATUS

Blaise Siwula – (saxophone) |  John Gilbert – (guitar)

Tracklist: 1. Orange Sails 2. People never met passing 3. 4 Challenges can Count 4. Turned Time in retrograde 5. Continual A Rise 6. Can’t see the fine print 7. Dream State Relevance 8. Dot Dot Be Dot…

Download listen to Blaise Siwula and John Gilbert | People never met passing

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Fulgornatus – “ornate lightning” from Latin roots- was recorded 10-4-08 in Brooklyn, NY. The song titles refer to reflective responses of the structures ie spontaneous compositions. This partnership began via the internet. John Gilbert guitar is a resident of Tampa, Fl and Blaise Siwula alto/tenor sax and clarinet is in Brooklyn, NY. They met at Blaise’s studio in Brooklyn with two microphones and a HD recorder and performed the concepts that had been inferred via email and phone calls. 20th century classical music … microtonal approaches in composition… Messeian…. Thelonious Monk. John Gilbert- guitarist and musical innovationist, serialist of microtones & death metal guitarist. Blaise Siwula – Saxophones/Clarinets adherent of free original music in any medium or genre.

Blaise Siwula and John Gilbert

John Gilbert

an exceptional grade musician in the highest of the finer arts and musics, contemporary extemporaneous composer-musician highly skilled at composing with a dart and dartboard. But seriously folx, John’s been putting on the guitar for more years than 20 some years…When HE discovered microtonal thinking in the early 2000’s the ideas just kept coming to him, long walks in the woods and a headphone system with Olivier Messiaen got him to wonder about poly-modal microtonal scales thus leading him to discover the ability of nature to produce millions of actual distinct harmonies recognized by him. In the late period of 1999 John recorded an instant classic entitled “SHEER ON THE BOONDOCK” After this time the record label Sign Here at the X was born also known as X______ since it dawned on him the oddness of always having to sign at the X. As times began to change, music changed rapidly for us in the beginning of the millennium. Inspired insipidly by Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony and Messiaen’s Haiki both conducted by the great Pierre Boulez, and with the aid of CHRONOCHROMIE to distinguish time from sound and effectually separate their unity by crystallizing the time element by geometry, John began putting bits and pieces of the puzzle together overcoming obstacle after obstacle and eventually leading himself on a CD called ORNATE LIGHTNING which translated to latin becomes Fulgornatus with Blaise Siwula a legendary saxophonist. Introducing the SYNTHESIZED MICROTONAL FRETTED GUITAR in 2007 at NYC’s ABC no RIO led to a discovery of the actual proportions of time and space in regards the human perception of chords, dissonances and perplexities of sound called beating. The JND scale theory or just noticeable differences of microtonality were discovered by him, maybe not the first, but a leader in the serialistical promise that these dissonances of danger introduced to him.

Anonmist existed after a period in time when John Gilbert was tuning into extra-terrestrials for some while. Never once skeptical, John noticed that they were watching him as he pummeled through the sonicscapes of the LASER INVERSION FREQUENCY TONE SPECTRUM which cannot be described at length here but in his forthcoming and highly anticipated “NOTHING SOLID” book in which theories upon theories of extra-terrestrial sound is indeed microtonal frequencies and relations which have not cropped up yet in the Universal History Of Music mainly because all of the letters of the alphabet were consumed in focal points to become the Do-Re-Mi of our heritage of the arts in the West and Occident. Robert Helps, Carl Ruggles, Arnold Schoenberg, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Anton Webern, Durufle, Ussachevsky, Harry Partch and Scriabin not withstanding the music of the Father of Music, J.S. Bach especially the Art of Fugue counterpoint series. Excessive music theorizing does not reveal the essence of the unseen and the true avant garde experimental musicians of the past did not themselves profess to be knowledgable in the area of such things, although ideas that do persist in these studies of John Gilbert’s are aesthetic for numbers, serialism and dissonance, absolute chromaticism, and relative pitch harmonies based entirely from the stars in space.

Linguistical research in the fields of metronomy, the dialectic of SOCRATES, and the expulsion of John’s A$$ from Music School in 1999 to further find pursuit among the Intellectuals in an art dept. Recently converging the simplest thoughts of his past into the poems of the future by means of extensive diaries of his notes being made available for the public free of charge because He feels that they are the art of the future. It is no great loss however to die the philosopher’s death.

Currently in pursuit of creating materials to help the pursuit of guitarists away from modal thought into the new form of geometry called sound, that is, the use of relationships of tones rather than combinations of chords in a simplistic way that is founded in the natural harmonic element of the OUTER SPACE. New releases include ANONMIST – ART, FULGORNATUS, TEMPERAMANCY, ISIS UNVEILED AUDIO BOOK, ART OF FUGUE I for Electric Shred Guitar, THE NUTMEG TREE among others…visit me online at http://www.temperamancy.net

14 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide

New York Moments

Blaise Siwula (alto-saxophone, tenor-saxophone)  | Dom Minasi (guitar) | Nobu Stowe (piano) | Ray Sage (drums)

Tracklist: 1. Quartet IIa 2. Quartet IIb 3. Trio I 4. Quartet IIIb 5. Trio II 6. Quartet IIIa 7. Quartet I

Download listen to Siwula, Minasi, Stowe and Sage | Quartet IIa (excerpt)

Recorded at The Studio N.Y., 2/18/2006. Recorded by Katherine Miller and Shinobu Mitsuoka. Mixed by Ray Sage and Katherine Miller. Produced by Manfred Schiek. All music was spontaneously composed/improvised by Blaise Siwula, Dom Minasi, Nobu Stowe and Ray Sage. All music is published by Pochi Neko Ongaku Syuppan (BMI). Cover paintings design by Honyo Ohte (Tako Productions). Inner sleeve painting by Jakuchu Ito.

Following the recording session on September 4th 2005 which produced the Konnex Records release “BLAISE SIWULA, NOBU STOWE & RAY SAGE – Brooklyn Moments” (KCD 5177), Blaise, Ray and I decided to keep the trio as a regular-working unit. Mostly due to the distance between NYC (Blaise & Ray) and Baltimore (myself), we had to wait awhile to perform together again. The chance came when we had a gig at Kavehaz in the Chelsea district of Manhattan almost four months after. For this gig, we were joined by two guest musicians: the Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time guitarist, Bern Nix, and the up-and-coming viola player, Robyn Siwula.

The Kavehaz gig indicated the potential of having additional players to the basic trio. So when Ray proposed to finance another recording session, I quickly suggested adding the fourth member …the master guitarist Dom Minasi, specifically. Dom and Blaise have been collaborating on and off since mid 90’s. So I knew that they would work beautifully together. I expected Dom’s angular phrasing and passionate guitar style would match perfectly with Ray’s powerful drumming. My task was to retain structural cohesiveness and melodic spontaneity of total-improvisation within a lager frame work of abstract free-improvisation from the three master improvisers.

SIWULA, MINASI, STOWE & SAGE went into “The Studio” in SOHO on February 18th 2006. The session was the first ever meeting of this quartet and was beautifully recorded by Katherine Miller and Shinobu Mitsuoka. All four of us hit right on from the begging. The QUARTET successfully expanded the concept seeded during the earlier trio (SIWULA, STOWE & SAGE) sessions. Even compared to the trio recordings, the quartet managed to come up something fresh and original. Dom brought an intriguing linear perspective to the music. The good chemistry between Blaise, Dom and Ray were clearly evident…and I believe that I succeeded to provide an individual melodic and structural touch to their abstract mysticism. So…what’s next?—Nobu Stowe, October 2006

14 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide

Brooklyn Moments

Blaise Siwula (alto-saxophone, tenor-saxophone, bass clarinet, bamboo flute)  | Nobu Stowe (piano) | Ray Sage (drums)

Tracklist: 1. Part I 2. Part II 3. Part III 4. Part IV 5. Part V

Download listen to Siwula, Stowe and Sage | Part I

Recorded at Wombat Studio Brooklyn, 9/4/2005. Recorded by Ross Bonadonna. Mixed by Blaise Siwula and Ross Bonadonna. Produced by Manfred Schiek. All music was spontaneously composed/improvised by Siwula, Stone and Sage. All music is published by Pochi Neko Ongaku Syuppan (BMI). Cover paintings/design by Honyo Ohte (Tako Productions).

I first met Blaise Siwula

back in January 2005, when I played at ABC NoRio (located in Lower East Side of Manhattan) with the superlativebassist Vytis Nivinskas from Lithuania. Since 1998, Blaise has been hosting C.O.M.A., a weekly creative music series there. I had just moved to Baltimore from Chicago and was looking for like-minded collaborators in the East Coast, especially in NY, with whom I could expand my musical horizon. So I asked Blaise to introduce me to musicians who would like to perform with me. Blaise kindly replied that he himself would like to do so.

By that time, mostly inspired by Keith Jarrett’s solo works, I had been practicing ‘total-improvisation’ for several years: total-improvisation is a genre of fully improvised music which requires the performer not only to experiment with ’sound textures’ but also to spontaneously create ’songs’ (melodies with tonal harmonies). Because of the natural melodic tendency, my improvisation works have been mostly within the ‘inside’ domain. But knowing Blaise’ superb ability to go ‘out,’ I thought it would be a tremendous experience to collaborate with him. Blaise and I planned to have a ‘pilot’ gig at C.O.M.A.. Irequested to have a drummer for this gig and Blaise suggested Ray Sage.

SIWULA, STOWE & SAGE performed together for the first time on July 24th 2005 at ABC No Rio. I was immediately struck by the ‘fire’ which Ray could create. Besides the superb outside playing, Blaise surprised me by his inside sensitivity. Inspired by these two great free-improvisers, I clearly went much more far-out than I ever played before. Yet, I managed to stay truthful to my inside nature…which in turn seemed to inspire Blaise and Ray. In any case, the potential of the TRIO was quite obvious. So we decided to document the music.

This CD contains the result of the second meeting of SIWULA, STOWE & SAGE which happened at Wombat Studio in Brooklyn on September 4th 2005. While there are some ‘rough’ moments, all three of us were clearly inspired in the studio. The high inspiration was vividly captured by the talented engineer Ross Bonadonna. The result is an interesting mix of inside and outside improvisation approaches and is reminiscent of the spontaneous melodicism of Keith Jarrett, the avant energy of John Coltrane/ Cecil Taylor and the structural cohesion of J.S. Bach decorated with touches of world music. Importantly, I believe that the music sounds foreseeingly original. I hope you can also feel the creative fire sparked at this second meeting.– Nobu Stowe

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Blaise Siwula

Live in London | spontaneous composed muisc

Blaise Siwula - tracks 1-5 and 7-9 | tenor saxophone | track 6 | clarinet Duet track 9 | tenor saxophone | with Alan Wilkinson | baritone saxophone

Warm thanks to Alan for initiating these shows, Jim Dvorak @ Cross Kings and Paul Hession | nofrillsmusic.com | nfm-001

Tracklist: Dec. 9th 2008 | The Jazz Rumours @ Cross Kings 1. Stutter’s Waltz (2:56) 2. On The Plains Of Brooklyn (4:02) 3. Transparent Dialogue (3:03) 4. Old Friends (6:18) 5. Time One Down (1:16)

Tracklist: Dec. 17th 2008 | FlimFlam @ Ryan’s 6. Slide Line (5:58) 7. Foregone Ballad No. 1 (7:02) 8. Ryan’s Shuffle (7:21) 9. Times Up (10:01) Total Time: 48 minutes

Download listen to Blaise Siwula | On The Plains Of Brooklyn

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New York Encuentro

Katsuyuki Itakura - piano | Blaise Siwula – alto and tenor saxophone | Richard Gilman-Opalsky – drumset, whistle and various percussion.

Recorded July 6, 2006 at Wombat Studios Brooklyn, New York.

Tracklist: 1. Water Drops [7:34] 2. Mountain Temple [9:29] 3. In Your Eyes [5:46] 4. Great Incept [6:43] 5. Toy Box [11:45] 6. New York Encuentro [5:04] 7. Intergalactica (For Humanity) [7:37] 8. Red trout [7:48]

New York Encuentro was recorded after several tours with Katsuyuki Itakura and Blaise Siwula in Japan and the USA. Originally formed as “Big Hearts” they found a kindred spirit in Richard Gilman-Opalsky a drummer who also has several degrees in political philosophy. Pianist Katsuyuki Itakura (b. 42) or “Kats” (as he’s more commonly known) has been playing jazz piano in Japan since his teens. He met saxophonist Blaise Siwula at the C.O.M.A. series in NYC in 2004 and a partnership was born which produced the “Big Hearts” cd release on Cadence Jazz Records in 2006. “New York Encuentro” steps ahead and covers a new spectrum of jazz music from the smoky ballad to full force free jazz and a few references to Eric Satie by Kats. Richard’s drums are a constant reminder that improvised music should maintain a concise direction. The title – New York Encuentro was Richard’s inspiration.

Encuentros were the meetings, or “encounters” the Mexican Zapatistas organized in Chiapas after their rebellion in 1994. People from outside Mexico came together for the encounters for a unique moment to exchange ideas and try to build something together, then they dispersed. The Zapatistas also sometimes called these meetings “Intergalacticas”, since they were all in one space but exceeded the boundaries of that space.

Download listen to Siwula, Itakura, Gilman-Opalsky | Water Drops (excerpt)

14 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide