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The Awkward Hour live! with Eric Granato, Distribution Manager of SLUG Magazine! Awkward tales of (literally) slinging ink! Monday 7-9pm MTN
Watch live here!

This Interview was conducted over email, but I didn’t get his answers back by deadline, so this didn’t appear in Salt Lake City Weekly; instead there is a link at bottom to the article I wrote about his work instead of this.

BS: What were your early musical inspirations, and how did they inform the music you have created?

PM: My family had a huge impact on me. My brother Mike is an excellent trumpet player, as is my dad, and my grandfather was a professional trumpet player as well. Also, growing up in rural Missouri was pretty huge for me in terms of a sense of scale, and being near Kansas City was huge in that I was able to start working with great musicians at about age 14. And the Kansas City scene at that time was fantastic, I had played hundreds of gigs with great players by the time I left there when I was 17.

BS: How has your style of playing and composing changed since your early work on ECM? How do those early works still resound in what you are doing now?

PM: I am more of someone who accumulates and gathers rather than redirects. I rarely, if ever, throw things out from my past interests, it is more like adding on new rooms to a house, rather than building a new house. Kind of everything that I have ever gotten to over the years is still viable for me.

BS: How is Orchestrion a departure stylistically from previous works, and how is it an extension of recent progressions in your playing?

PM: It allows a set of options that are unique. i have no desire to stop doing all the other things i have done, but this does bring the idea of vision into a different kind of focus.

This is such a unique project in every way that I can’t really compare it to anything else. It is kind of 360 degree experience for me in that I am responsible for every aspect of every note of it all, whether improvised or written. That is often largely true by degrees in other situations as well where I am the leader, but because I am functioning as a kind of mulit-instrumentalist in this environment, it challenges me on many other levels. The total concept of this was kind of “improvised”, so that fits in there too. It is hard to break it all apart.

Structurally, the record really is thematically connected. And the kinds of development that are invoked here are certainly related to the kinds of long form writing that appears often in “classical music”. But I think it is really hard to find a way of describing this piece that is directly connected to anything else. That quality is one of the most fun things about the project; I have had to make up a lot as I have gone along since there were not really many places to look to see how others had done this before.

BS: Where did you get the idea for the Orchestrion project, and more importantly, why were you so driven to pursue it? How did the use of instruments change your compositional techniques, if at all?

PM: The idea has been knocking around in my brain for about 30 years. Every year I would look around and say “Wow, no one has done it yet”. It is just something that I have been fascinated with since I was a kid.

Yes, there was a period when the instruments started finally coming in where I had to find out what they were good at. And like anything else, you want to write for the strengths of any given situation.

BS: What statements might the project make about the emotive power of music, as well as the role of technology in the world today?

PM: It is simply a different medium, in this case one that has rarely been explored. Behind this or any other musical effort the basic qualities of spirit, soul, feeling and of course a high level of content harmonically, melodically and rhythmically must be there, at least for me. It is easy to get lost in a discussion here about the “how” rather than the actual music. For me, the satisfaction in what this has been so far has been 98% musical and about 2% for the tech/”how” aspect.

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Comparison of Pat Metheny vs. Captured By Robots, another musical entity who makes use of mechanized instruments, played Burt‘s Tiki Lounge recently (capturedbyrobots.com):

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My article in City Weekly
Here

Last nite’s show and all Awkward Hour podcast video archives are available at:
Ustream.tv

Awkward Hour Live tonite! #72 Thurs 7-9pm MTN

@TheSonosopher Alex Caldiero wizard and wordshaker!

http://www.facebook.com/sonosopher?ref=ts

Watch LIVE & Archived HERE!

Just a reminder, all Awkward Hour episodes are still available to view:

NEWS RELEASE:

This Thursday the Awkward Hour live! takes another foray into the world of cookery with veggie chef Matt Crane, tempered by local stand-up comedian Cody Eden, who is headlining a show July 12 at Mo’s. Watch Thurs Live 7-10pm at:

The Awkward Hour on Ustream.tv!
All previous episodes going back to Andy Patterson in March are archived there on video too, if you want to catch up on any of them.

Just a few words on the latest Awkward Hour episodes I uploaded yesterday:

Episode 40 Pt 4 may be the most bizarre hour of podcasting in the short history of the medium: solo rant vs. chatroom, playing “what body part is this?,” (“this is my brain: pretty dark inside there huh”), consumed with imbibery to the point of being temporarily permanently affixed to the floor, writing & conducting a ‘feedback symphony’  and last but not least, listening to the first hour of the show & commenting on it.

THIS EPISODE IS NOT SUITABLE LISTENING FOR ANYBODY!

The other 12 or so hours of me ranting to the chatroom aren’t quite as ‘experimental,’  but come close: asking ‘who are anyone of us really’ in addition to fake internet identities,  repeating words until they sound like nonsense, and frightening away both listeners and dogs. I didn’t even get to play the Found Magazine interview yet, watch for that soon.

Also two brief clips of song demos I wrote for an album I working on in the studio beginning later this month.

Any comments at all you have about it are very welcome & I can read them on the show or not, whichever you prefer.
It could be delightfully awkward!
Thanks for all your support and enjoyment of the show,
Brian

Have you ever had a night when you couldn’t sleep at all?

That was last night, catching up on uploading shows going clear back to May’s interview with brilliant local artist John Bell, which I hesitated even posting for a long time since it was derailed by the third wheel. Never again! Proceeding to three new episodes with just me ranting, and the chat room retorts.

Over 10 hours of just me, all you could possibly ever want to know about me! You can go through the entire friendship cycle of meeting, interest, fun, anger, boredom, disgust and bitter falling-out without meeting me personally! All the tedium, none of the halitosis! As always, not appropriate for work or children! Or dogs when I crank up the feedback!

If you haven’t subscribed to The Awkward Hour on iTunes yet, now is an excellent time! It can’t get any cheaper, unless I paid you to watch. And I do owe a couple of people $5 dollars from that one time I did, don’t let me forget about that.

Also see video if you are like me, and like to have pictures with your stories:
The Awkward Hour archives at Ustream.tv!

Watch for this week’s show Thurs July 9, 7-930pm cooking show with veggie chef Matt Crane & comedian Cody Eden. Live on Ustream.tv!

Watch for other exciting guests & special events later this summer!

A Couple News Updates:

If you missed any of the riveting episodes (and I DO mean riveting–you will have to procure either metal cutters or a welding torch to unfasten your metal-fuzed eyeballs affixed to screen) of the Awkward Hour, you can still go back and watch them:

• Last show Episode #38 with Mike Brown of SLUG Magazine!

As for the Awkward Hour, June 18 will feature Circus Brown from KRCL fm he recently moved his indie music show to Friday nights! Looking for a guest for June 11, so I don’t have to talk to myself again–I already do that pretty much all day long anyway! Watch for some super special guests I’m working on booking, also some great events to make your Summer an Awkward one!

thanks for all yr support,
B.

This week’s Awkward Hour live! Thurs 7-10pm Guest Mike Brown of SLUG Magazine, talking about SLUG, his Leviathan Zine, his band the Fucktards & working the door at Urban Lounge. This week streaming from a very special location, you will want to catch this one!!!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-awkward-hour