People's Music Supply is proud to offer this workshop from living legend Joe Morris, an outstanding educator and world renowned musician. This workshop will last roughly 3-4 hours and will be followed in the evening by a concert featuring Joe and friends.

Tickets will be available shortly, sliding scale $25 to $50. Ticket sales will be capped at 20, so please act fast. Workshop tickets include complimentary entrance for the concert.

This program is presented with support from the Rotunda, Philly Music Factory, and the Free Range Concert Series.

----------------- FROM JOE!-------------------------

In this workshop we will examine the non-harmony based materials that are consistently used and redefined by improvising musicians. Includes the study of four seminal methodologies, (Unit Structures, Harmolodics, Tri-Axiom Theory and European Free Improvisation), with the focus on how they inform individual and group improvisation. Students will perform compositions that reveal improvisational properties and use that material to improvise.

While it is especially useful for instrumentalists with experience with improvisation. Anyone, including musicians from any style of music and non-musicians, can take these workshops. Reading music is helpful but not necessary. All of the material can be put to use without playing the notated composition.

It's all very positive, informative and easy going. Our objective is to gain specific skills that enable clear identifiable actions in open form improvisation and to expand our creativity.

The Properties of Free Music: what we cover in this workshop

Explanation of meaning of the term, “Free Music”, its application here, and how it will inform our collective point of view. Explanation of the idea of a non-linear/ontological perspective and the analysis of how it compares to the traditional linear historical perspective in music.

Approach. Development of Technique, Platform, Aesthetics and Community. We will examine the way in which Free Music musicians consider and configure their values, and their technique, as well as the configuration of a unique community of collaborators to perform their music, and the creation of a performance platform.

Synthesis, Interpretation and Invention and how the percentages in the use of these properties can be employed. We will also examine the myriad of aesthetic values that are at work in music that can be classified under the “Free Music” heading.

BIOGRAPHY

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane's OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the '70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Between 1975 and 1986 he was active on the Boston creative music scene as a performer and concert and music community organizer. He composed music for his first trio in 1977. In 1980 he traveled to Europe where he performed in Belgium and Holland. When he returned to Boston he co-founded the Boston Improvisers Group (BIG). Over the next few years through various configurations BIG produced two festivals and many concerts. In 1981 he formed his own record company, Riti, and recorded his first Lp Wraparound with a trio featuring Sebastian Steinberg on bass and Laurence Cook on drums. Also in 1981 he began what would be a six year collaboration with the multi-instrumentalist Lowell Davidson performing with him in a trio and duo. Between 1986 and 1989 he lived in New York City where he performed at the Shuttle Theater, Club Chandelier, Visiones, Inroads, Greenwich House, etc. as well as performing with his trio at the first festival Tea and Comprovisation held at the Knitting Factory. In 1989 he returned to Boston where he lived until 2001. In 1994 he became the first guitarist to lead his own session in the twenty year history of Black Saint/Soul Note Records with the trio recording Symbolic Gesture. In 2000 he began playing upright bass and in 2001 he returned to the New Haven, Connecticut area.

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