McCaslin/Reed/Pino Trio-Community Music Center, SF CA; 7/26/17

While hanging out in the lead up to our Outsound Summit performance at Community Music Center, Amy Reed coined the phrase "more river" while improvising a graphic notation that she half-jokingly suggested that we memorize, a few minutes prior to our designated set time. The drawing, shown below, is really lovely.
I guess that there was no time to perform said memorization, but we did stick to our agreed parameters, worked out during last week's KFJC Pit show, of cleving to quieter sounds and leaving tons of space. During Animals & Giraffes' set, writer Claudia La Rocco described "...the kind of Minimalism where you don't do anything...", and I had to giggle a bit. I can't say that we did absolutely nothing, but there were indeed passages made up of some pretty silent parts throughout. Again, we had spoken about that, and planned it, so, for me, it was right on the money.
I spent the first quarter of the set trying to ground, struggling a bit with keeping focus; after that, though, it seemed as though I was able to find a good balance between silence and action. There were some more fun moments of roto tom drumming along with Amy's guitar soloing, and commenting upon CJ's soprano playing with stacked layers of resonant metals on top of the drum. I also felt like I got some good, almost consonant notes with the water phone at times.
Satisfying trio interplay during our six pieces, after which I felt a fine sense of musical intimacy had been achieved.

There's what is obviously a much more objective review here:
http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2017/07/introspective-free-improvisation-from.html

Below: Amy's great drawing, my gear

Above: the lovely Community Music Center stage
Below: McCaslin/Reed/Pino Trio live (photo by Amanda Chaudhary, http://www.catsynth.com/, thanks Amanda!)

All told, another fun night playing and seeing friends and acquaintances!
Time to get myself over to the Surplus 1980 rehearsal for tomorrow.