There is a great musician in New York who has as his bio three words: blah blah blah. Inside this sarcasm there is wisdom, the recognition that describing the work of a musical artist in a couple hundred words is about as easy as picking up mercury. And yet it must be done.

James Falzone, like many musicians of his generation, has a varied and complex career touching equally on areas of performance, composition, and teaching. His music does not fall easily into a prescribed genre and he is rather difficult to categorize. In a day when so much music is neatly packaged for easy consumption, James’ wide interests and experience is something to celebrate.

What follows is a rather lengthy (but enjoyable to read we hope) narrative on the work of James, presented in the form of an interview. The point here is to present a deeper sense of who James is and how all the music making he is involved in ties together.

If you’re looking for a more standard bio, something that gets to the points a bit quicker for press or publicity purposes (or attention deficit ones), please refer to the Media section of the website where you’ll find more traditional bios in short and long formats.

For ease, you can navigate through the content of the interview by clicking on the subject headings below. There are also many links here to interesting people, places and things. The interview was updated in May 2009.

Allos Musica Concept
Recordings
Composing
Education
Teaching
Liturgical Work
Influences
Closing Thoughts

Yes it does, to me at least. I decided a few years ago to have an “umbrella” organization that would encompass all my work, creating some unity in what looks overtly diverse. It is all a work in progress to be sure but one I am dedicated to nurturing over the long haul and allowing it to incubate new ideas and projects.

Allos is the Latin root for “otherly” and can be found in words like allegory or allusion so for me it’s a reminder that my work is for something greater than myself, a typification if you will. I’m searching for a balance between the artist and the art remembering that music goes well beyond those who make it – a hard concept to remember in our times when music is so packaged and developed to shine light on the individual. Not that the artist is not important, the personality of the music is what often makes it worth listening to, but, again, balancing these relationships is what I am searching for. I love the quote from John Cage: “personality is a flimsy thing on which to build an art.”

In addition to being the basis for several of the ensembles I direct, Allos Musica is also home to a small imprint recording/publishing company, Allos Documents, which has released three projects at this time.

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Tell us about your recording work and where we can hear your music:

In terms of live performance folks can always tune into the Events area of the site, which is updated regularly and lists the various projects I’m performing with. I also maintain a mailing list and folks can get regular email updates from me regarding performances, projects, and new recordings.

As for recordings, I’m glad to say the last several years have produced a sizable output, all of which is described in detail in the Recordings section of the site.

Presently I’m excited about the release of Tea Music, the debut studio recording from my group KLANG. This group started in 2006 and includes Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, Jason Roebke on bass and Tim Daisy on drums. It’s probably the most “jazz” oriented project I lead and has a sense of what I call abstract nostalgia with the use of vibes and clarinet, one of the classic instrumental pairings of swing music. One can’t hear that sound and not think of Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton and all the great music of the Goodman small groups. Tea Music also features several of my tunes that were written with Jimmy Giuffre in mind, one of my great heroes. I’ve always enjoyed his early small ensemble writing, music often overlooked for his later trios (music I also greatly enjoy!). In those early ensembles Giuffre would use the drums as much as counterpoint as time keeping. I find this really interesting and tried to construct some tunes that would do the same. I think you hear this on a tune like G.F.O.P. or No Milk especially. In addition to my tunes, Jason Roebke and Tim Daisy have great contributions to the cuts on the recording.

What’s up with the title of the cd and the names of the tunes:

I’m a tea drinker and often do so when composing. It can be hard to name tunes sometimes, there was no “meaning” behind a tune like G.F.O.P. for instance, so I named it after what was in my teapot which was a black Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe from Assam India. No Milk means just that, no milk in the tea . . . and you get the point.  

Tea Music seems like quite a departure from the more chamber-like structures of 2007’s The Sign and the Thing Signified. Tell us about that recording:

The Sign and the Thing Signified, is a bit different for sure. There are several composed pieces, solo clarinet improvisations, a few group improvisations, and my cover of Henry Purcell’s When I Am Laid to Rest from the early opera Dido and Aeneas. The recording is an attempt to blend and synthesize a few of the important elements in my work – composition, improvisation, and an openness to traditions and ways of making music that are not genre specific. It was an intense project and I slogged many, many hours in mixing and editing it with Chicago engineer and musician Todd Carter. I’m quite pleased with the overall sound of the recording and, in contrast to the Already and the Not Yet, a live recording from 2000 and my first release as a leader, there is an intentional use of the studio and its powers as another compositional tool on The Sign and the Thing Signified. I’m also pleased to have documented some great performances from Tim Mulvenna, Amy Cimini, Katherine Young, Kevin Davis, and Brian Dibblee.

In addition to these, you’ve released a recording of liturgical music as a response to your work with Grace Chicago Church. Tell us about that:

Sounding Grace came out in late 2007 and is a very nice documentation of the work I’ve been up to at Grace Chicago for the past 7 years. I believe what we’ve accomplished there is quite special in contemporary church music and this recording gives a taste of it, I think. The ensemble I direct at Grace has been intact now for 5 years and playing together every week has created a wonderful sense of ensemble playing and I think this is documented well on Sounding Grace. In one way the recording is for the Grace Chicago community, but I think anyone who enjoys creative music and has a sense of the history of liturgical music will find this recording interesting. It features many of my arrangements of traditional hymns as well as several of my original hymns.

Tell us about some of the recordings in which you are not the leader but an ensemble or collective member:

Goodnight Marc Chagall is the wonderful 2006 release from Le Bon Vent, the French ensemble that was founded in 2002 by my friend and close collaborator, accordionist Jeremiah McLane. This is a group I really enjoy being a part of and I think this recording came out wonderfully. It also features a composition I penned in a style I normally don’t write in, a kind of Parisian waltz gone astray called Un rêve où apparaît Marc Chagall (a dream in which appears Marc Chagall).

The Flatlands Collective, a group led by Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra and featuring a host of Chicago improvisers, has released Gnomade on the German label Sky Cap and, more recently, Maatjes on Clean Feed. Both these recordings are highly celebrated and this group has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe. I particularly like some of the textures on Maatjes, Jorrit’s compositional style being similar to mine in terms of blending minimalist tendencies with improvised ones.

Two other recordings worth mentioning are Just Like This, Keefe Jackson’s large ensemble record on Delmark. I think it’s a wonderful recording and truly highlights both Keefe’s music and the incredible community of improvisers here in Chicago at this time.

Finally, Tim Daisy’s group Vox Arcana, with myself, Tim, and Fred Lonberg-Holm, has released a very nice, limited addition recording that is available through Tim.

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You describe yourself as “clarinetist and composer” and a large part of your work is dedicated to the latter of these two. What types of composition projects have you taken on or are up to now?

It’s very true that I see myself as much as a composer as a performer/clarinetist and this has increased over the years. At the onset of my career I was often composing only for my own ensembles but, increasingly, I am composing, for other ensembles. This may have started first when I received a choral commission from my friend and colleague Ramona Wis at North Central College who asked me to create a setting of Shakespeare’s Sigh No More Ladies for her wonderful female choir. It was my first time writing for voices at this level and, interestingly, my first time creating a work I would not be performing myself. This may seem rudimentary to many composers but for someone like myself, who has always been composing but has always been involved in the final performance as well, it was a unique and important step.

That work led to several other commissions and composing projects including The Song of Roland, a children’s opera I created in 2008 for Oakton Elementary School in Evanston, Illinois. I wrote the libretto for this as well, based on the medieval French epic poem about King Charlemagne and his nephew Roland. Another commissioned work of mine for voices called Beri’ah, for 4 female voices, vielle and hand drums, was premiered and toured by Tapestry, a wonderful vocal group from New England. They premiered the work in 2007 in Denver and have performed it subsequently in Moscow, Latvia, and, here in the US, at the Kennedy Center and the Frick Museum. The work was created specifically for them involving their interests in early music and Arabic modes, two of my main interests.

I also helped to create a suite of music for kids called "A Symphony In Sneeze" based on the incredible songs and poems of children's singer/songwriter Jim Gill. This suite introduces the kids to the instruments of the orchestra in some creative ways and gets them clapping, singing, counting, and acting out jestures with the orchestra. An outgrowth of this was a book based on one of the pieces called A Soup Opera. All of this great stuff can be found at Jim's site.

As of this writing I’m working on a large-scale work for orchestra and female choir to be premiered in February of 2010 by the DuPage Symphony Orchestra. The work, who, if not I, is a setting of the ancient poem known as The Mystery of Amergin and will be a contemplation on the interrelations between humans and the environment. It is a joint commission from the DuPage Symphony and the Office of International Programs at North Central College which has taken on a multi-year study of the effects of climate change on communities around the world.

A catalog of my works and some sound and print samples of these can be seen in the Projects/Compositions section of the site.

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Tell us about your education both formal and informal.

My education really began with my uncle, James DiPasquale, a film composer and great tenor saxophonist who has had a very diverse and interesting career. From the moment I expressed interest in music, uncle Jim has been there, introducing me to new sounds and concepts and challenging me. Though my work and career have headed in a very different direction than his, him acting as a constant sounding board has been very influential. He also introduced me to Richard Corpolongo, an incredible player in Chicago who became my first formal teacher. Rich introduced me to a great deal and established in me a sense of how deep and powerful the art of improvisation is. I’m very indebted and grateful to these two great musicians.

I did undergraduate studies at Northern Illinois University, which has always had a strong music program and was particularly strong in the years I was there. There were some great players and I had a wonderful and open-minded clarinet instructor in Melvin Warner who allowed me, though I was a classical clarinet major, to explore the instrument in any direction I wanted. My recitals were always of my own compositions and improvisations – I’m not sure many classical clarinet instructors around the country, especially in the mid 90’s, would have allowed that.

After several years playing in Chicago, traveling a bit and getting married (all of which I believe to be worth 10 years in school), I went to New England Conservatory in Boston for a masters degree and enjoyed and benefited from that experience immensely. I was part of the Third Stream/Contemporary Improvisation program and was a student of, among others, Ran Blake and Hankus Netsky.

There have been many important musicians who’ve come out of that program like Don Byron, John Modeski, Mathew Shipp and others. What is so special about the CI program there?

I’m not sure there is any one thing other than it has been set up so that a student, if they are serious and hungry, can pursue their interests from any angle they deem important to their growth as an artist. This is Ran’s genius, in my opinion: his support of his students finding their own voice and even developing courses that foster this. I was able to do course work in medieval music, Indian and Middle Eastern modal systems, composition, and many other areas. Having the opportunity to work with people like Ran, Joe Maneri, Richard Stoltzman, Steve Lacy, Hankus Netsky and many others was a great experience. A particular mentor to me was Dr. Robert Labaree, a musician and scholar working in Turkish music who is part of a wonderful organization called DUNYA. These are the types of people NEC is full of and I had a great experience there finding and working with them.

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In addition to your performing and composing life, you’re also an educator yourself. Where and what do you teach?

I’m currently on faculty at Columbia College Chicago. I teach in a unique interdisciplinary program called New Millennium Studies, a first-year seminar that engages young artists in some of the large questions we all have to ask and, well, get comfortable not knowing the answer to! I enjoy teaching a great deal and see it as an extension of my artistic work. In short, I find teaching, on a good day, incredibly creative. I try to live out my artistic life in the midst of my teaching and to put my students in touch with what it means to create as much as possible. They can resist this, wanting something more concrete and straightforward but I know of no other way to teach (or to learn).

I also do a fair bit of lecturing at colleges, conferences, and other places that are interested in my work. These lectures often revolve around concepts of improvisation either in a musical sense or, more and more, allowing improvisation to act as a metaphor for diverse areas of life: spirituality, business, family, community, etc. I continue to marvel at how what musical improvisers do can be very helpful to people in thinking about their own work.

In 2004 I had the opportunity, along with violinist Lee Joiner from Wheaton College Conservatory to speak to a high level think tank called the Strategic Studies Group at the Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island. It was a powerful experience on many levels and taught me a great deal. The folks involved in this project were very interested in how musical improvisation could help them think more creatively about fighting the ongoing war on terrorism and they were very interested in how I as an improviser might make quick changes in decisions based on circumstances – something they are seeing in various places around the world in terms of warfare. Thinking again about Allos Musica, it reminded me that what I do has meaning beyond my own knowledge of its ability. I have also lectured frequently over the years for L’Abri Fellowship and many of those lectures can be purchased via their online store.

Folks can learn more about my lecturing and teaching in the Projects/Lectures & Workshops area.

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You also have been the Director of Music and Resident Composer at a church in Chicago for several years. Tell us about this work and how you think it fits into the Allos Musica world?

I am Director of Music for Grace Chicago Church and have been since 2002. Liturgical music is always challenging in its need to balance art and purpose but I enjoy it very much and see it as a further extension of my work. I compose music weekly for the service either in the form of special music at communion or prelude and have also developed a small cache of original hymns. The pastor, Robert Ried, is a great lover of music and the arts and allows me much freedom in how I approach the music, but we work together to craft a worship service that is aesthetically pleasing while at the same time achieving what a worship service is supposed to achieve, transcendence. As I mentioned above when discussing the recording we put out, I believe we have something quite special going on at Grace Chicago, something I’m hard pressed to explain, really. I’ve also involved improvisation a great deal in the service and the Grace Consort which I direct is made of some fantastic local players including percussionist Tim Mulvenna, guitarist Marty Metzger, violinist Rebekah Cope, cellist Karen Schulz-Harmon, and vocalist Davin Youngs.

Who and/or what are some of the influences on your work?

Sometime I’m not sure how to answer this question, you know. Everything I’ve ever heard, seen, felt, smelled, tasted, . . . stepped in. On another level, though, and I don’t mean this to seem too obtuse, but I’ve always thought that what I’m really after, both as a clarinetist and as a composer, is a particular sound and a major influence toward this goal is the late author/radio host/icon Studs Terkel. He is a real hero of mine on a number of levels but hearing his voice was the first time I realized I really was a musician who thought about the “sound of the thing” primarily, from my individual instrument to the “sound” of the composition or arrangement.

Can you explain this – sorry but that is pretty obtuse!

Yeh I know, sorry, but it really is true. Here is the story. When I was 10 and had been playing clarinet for about 5 months, my father bought me a stereo for Christmas. The first night I set it up and turned it on (it was one of those types with a receiver, turntable, and cassette deck all in one), I heard Studs Terkel on the local Chicago classical radio station, WFMT. He was interviewing an author who, if I remember correctly, wrote modern fairy tales. It wasn’t so much the words that were being spoken as it was the sound of the voices, the raspiness in Studs’ voice contained worlds to me and I was mesmerized by the soundscape it created. I had earphones on and at times you could hear Studs doing other things, lighting a cigarette for instance, and the sound of the sulfur igniting would come over the earphones. I listened every Sunday night for years, all through high school and now own as many of the released recordings of those radio interviews as I can find. In addition to this sound world, of course, I was introduced via Studs’ show to a whole world of artists, writers, thinkers, etc whom I would never had been exposed to otherwise, certainly not in public school. I remember him interviewing John Cage, for instance, and though I didn’t know who that was, I was pretty sure I should from the deep
ideas he was expressing.

OK – that’s very cool but seriously, can you give us a few music names that you think have made an impact on your composing and playing.

Ok, I give. It would be hard to discuss my music without mentioning Olivier Messiaen. His tonal, harmonic, and conceptual landscapes have been very important to me. And like him, I’m very intrigued with music acting as a metaphor for mystery and trying to find particular ways to represent this in form, rhythm, harmony, etc.

On a jazz side of things, Jimmy Giuffre is rather important both as a clarinetist and as a conceptualizer about how to make jazz without it having to be about power and showmanship.

In a wider, non-individual sense, the whole early music movement has had a great impact on me. I am drawn to the sound of a viol consort much more than I am to, say a jazz quartet or big band and I confess my Ipod has more Machaut than Miles Davis (though there is plenty of Miles too!). And this music is so akin to various global music practices, which have caught my ear, particularly in the last few years, Maqam and music of the Middle East. All of these interests and many more I have not mentioned come together and are at work in my music. I’m not interested in how exactly, but I do believe a musician is the sum total of all he or she takes in.

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Closing this interview out, how would you like people to think of your work if their first exposure is through your website?

Well I would first thank them for reading – goodness with all the interesting music in the world, a few minutes spent on my stuff is something I’m grateful for. Beyond this, I would certainly encourage listening and hearing, which is not always the same thing of course. Spend some time with my recordings or check out some live music.

More philosophically, however, I hope for people to do for my work what I hope they will do for all creative artists, which is to go the extra mile with them. By this I mean to follow the totality of their output and not simply pigeonhole them, which is a great travesty in my mind. Keep an open mind about what music is and how it can function and I hope there will be a few surprises in the work I am up to. And my hope goes further, the essence of Allos Musica, that my work may lead the listener someplace else. Where they go is the grand mystery of it all and that is why I keep on.

Updated May 2009