by Kevin Laskey

In the summer of 2021, clarinetist & composer Ben Goldberg put together a curious recording session. Instead of giving the band members music beforehand, Goldberg recorded everyone learning the music by ear on the fly. Inspired in part by blues singer/guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins, Goldberg dubbed the music “Porch Concert Material” that could be performed in flexible situations. The exciting sink-or-swim results of that session became Ben Goldberg School, Vol. 2: Hard Science, released last year:

This week, Goldberg convenes his New York-based band Glamorous Escapades at The Jazz Gallery to play this Porch Concert Material. We caught up with Goldberg last week to talk about what makes this spontaneous music work and the ineffable definition of a musical idea.

The Jazz Gallery: What are the origins of the Porch Concert Material? How was it informed by your experience of making music during the peak of COVID?

Ben Goldberg: During the height of the pandemic, I was working on a project called Plague Diary where I did my best to write a new song and record it every day. That kept me together, getting to work on stuff. I think it also shifted my focus of composing, because if you’re writing a new song every day, you’ve got to get good at sketching things. There has to be a quick sketch, get it recorded, and make it sound like something useful. Because of that, I ended up composing more on the clarinet rather than the piano. When I’m writing at the piano, I’ll find something that sounds good, but isn’t much fun to play on the clarinet because it ends up in some weird key, and the melody doesn’t fall under the fingers of the instrument. When I was writing on the clarinet, everything I wrote felt good and was fun to play.

After that, I got this idea that I was going to make a record where I would know the music, but nobody else would. I realized that in order to do that, I had to have songs that were easy for me to learn. I wanted to memorize them because if I wasn’t going to give anybody else written music, I shouldn’t walk in with written music on my own. I called up everyone from my band Ben Goldberg School and we went into the studio in July 2021. It was in one of those moments when we thought things were loosening up from the pandemic, that quarantine was over, but that proved in retrospect to be kind of a false alarm.

TJG: How did the session actually work with this kind of music?

BG: At any rate, we went to the studio, and it was a situation where I started playing and then the rest of the band just jumped in. I gave people a couple of written excerpts for tricky passages to glance at, but not bring in, and I didn’t tell people what songs these passages belonged to. It was sink or swim and that was the goal. I wanted everybody to be grabbing for stuff as best they could and had a feeling that this was going to create a sound and find something that felt good. What ended up on the record was about half first takes when nobody knew anything, and the rest we’d get another take, or I’d say “This part goes like this.” My job in the session was to hold everything together because I’m the only one that knew what the structure was beforehand. I just kept playing the melodies over and over—A section, B section, A section, B section. I trusted that there would be something cool going on if everybody else was doing their best to lunge for it.

I was nervous, but I figured that at worst, I was just wasting a day in the studio. You get into such habits in the recording studio, and they’re shaped around certain goals like getting a good take on this or that, let’s go back and fix this section. Maybe it had something to do with having been through that part of the pandemic that I felt like I didn’t want to participate in that way of going about making a record again, with hoping everyone plays the right notes. That seemed like playing it safe, and there’s more than playing all the right notes.

TJG: I really like this idea of how to reach toward true improvisation—a spontaneous reaction to an emergent situation. How did you figure out what tunes would allow for this kind of experience of playing? What were some of the musical characteristics you were drawn to?

BG: Looking back on it, I ended up writing a lot of stuff that is based on simple patterns, like two major chords a half step apart and what you can do with that. A lot of the songs originated in the sketchbook that I keep. I mean it’s not really a sketchbook because it’s all on the computer, but at any rate, it’s an ongoing collection where I write down incomplete melodic ideas that pop up during the day. When I was putting this music together, what jumped out at me were certain kinds of interesting patterns, like sequences—not always harmonic, more melodic.

If a tune sounds good to me and I like playing it and it has a clear structure, then it’s something that people can hear right away. After we made the recording and I continued to play the music, I felt that if you’ve never heard the song before, it’s pretty obvious as I play it what the structure is. Many times, there’s an A section and B section, and there’s nothing too obscure about that. So now I’m setting up a situation where all of us playing the music and everybody who’s listening to the music, we’re all able to contemplate how those different sections relate to each other when they’re played each time. Maybe that A section sounded a little longer or a little slower, or there was a bigger pause before the repeat of the A section, or the B section came in fast or suddenly or louder, or that one note was stretched this time.

One thing that I always wondered about when I was studying music in college was that teachers talked a lot about form when we studied classical compositions. But the form was always on such a long scale that it meant nothing to my ear. Like, here’s a 45-minute development section and then the second theme returns—how the heck am I ever going to hear that?

But I’m interested in form. I just don’t want it to be something that’s kind of abstractly present but doesn’t register with the ear. I want the listener to really relate to it. It was a good opportunity with this music to have something that everybody can recognize what’s happening, that there’s no mystery there. In that way, everybody can participate in how it gets opened up or mangled or turned around.

TJG: I’m struck by how you’ve talked about alternating A and B sections, rather than something that’s more rounded like ABA, with that return being more of a punctuation like in many classical forms. I’m struck by how that AB form is the most common structure in fiddle tunes that were also devised to be learned by ear, and could loop for as long as dancers wanted to dance to it. Was this structure something you were thinking about from the beginning, or did it come out organically as you were writing melodies?

BG: When I was writing, I was just thinking, “What comes next?” That’s always the question. Some of them have a third section, but the requirement of memorizing the music led me to certain forms.

TJG: You talked about having harmonic structures earlier, like two chords a half step apart, and I was struck in general about the clear harmony in certain pieces. For me, clear harmony is a tricky thing in open improvisational contexts because it requires a degree of simultaneity, or a guiding hand. I was wondering how you thought about harmony in these pieces, and whether you guided the players on that front, or if you invited them to provide harmony based on what the melodies implied?

BG: I would say two things about that. One of the tunes called “Porch Concert #3” [PCM 3] starts with something that’s basically a version of the standard “Cherokee.” It’s not exactly “Cherokee,” but it’s a form and progression that “Cherokee” participates in. I love chord changes, I’m crazy about harmony, I love tonality, messing around with tonality. So this was a situation where I said that this was a section in the key of D-flat and it’s basically the chords of “Cherokee,” which are really the same chords from a bunch of popular songs from the 20th century.

On the other hand, I’m crazy about melodies that imply multiple harmonic interpretations. Some of these songs have some basic harmony, but because it’s a melody, rather than me saying “E dominant seventh flat nine” or something like that, if everybody’s messing around with the melody, they can draw their own harmonic conclusions. That’s something I really enjoy doing with other people.

When I’m in an open or free improvisation context, I’ll sometimes just wander off into some harmony. Like I love finding something that moves through the circle of fifths. I don’t need other people to jump in on it and participate in what I’m doing. But if I do something that feels compelling or intentional on its own, then I’m taking care of my business and I feel that it can work in relation to whatever anybody else feels like doing.

TJG: This leads me to think about the notion of what makes something a clear musical “idea.” Is a melodic motive a musical idea? Is a color an idea? Is a single chord an idea? I feel like someone can hear when there’s a distinct musical idea, but when you delve into what makes that thing an idea, it’s hard to describe specifically. So what makes something a musical idea to you?

BG: Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about that. One thing I tell my students starting out in improvisation is that something is a musical idea if you can see the ending before you start. That’s just a working definition, and it’s definitely not the only definition. But I like to make sure they don’t start playing until they know how it will end. And that means you’re going to play something short, because who can imagine that far into the future. I want to help them avoid getting into a situation that I know we’ve all found ourselves in from time to time, which is we start playing, it feels great, and then you’re in the middle of the river and have no idea which direction to go. That’s a terrible feeling and I’ve thought a lot about how we can avoid it.

The other thing I emphasize is playing something were you have the feeling of meaning it—make sure that you mean it when you play. Keep it short, make a statement, then stop. Practice stopping. You can play the whole thing—2 notes, 3 notes—but play with the full feeling of it.

TJG: I like that notion of a musical idea is something that has a defined ending because it leans into the fact that music is a temporal medium. Even something like a piece of sound art that might keep one texture indefinitely has a defined ending when the listener exits the space.

BG: Totally. But I think now, based on what you just said, I feel like I should specify that my sense of a musical idea is more of a melodic idea. Having a texture that could go on for a long time and you’re not exactly sure how it ends—that’s a beautiful idea too.

TJG: You’ve played this porch concert material a lot in different contexts—solo, with the band on the record, and now this more New York-based band at the Gallery. Have these musicians played the pieces before, or is this going to be a fresh experience like when you first made the record?

BG: Yeah, good question. Just a quick note about the evolution of the Porch Concert Material. The first time anybody ever played that music was at that recording session. Then after, I started playing that as solo clarinet music. That’s where I got new Porch Concert Material, because my family and my brother’s family were up in the Rocky Mountains, and there was a little cabin there with a porch, and so every day I put on a porch concert. I started thinking that was a cool name for the music I had just recorded.

The band at the Gallery is called Glamorous Escapades, which is a band I’ve been working with over the years when I was in New York. I thought it would be fun to play this music with this band. We’ve played this music once before at The Stone last summer, and I gave everyone the music for that. So all these people have played the music at least once, and it worked out so well that I wanted to do it again when I got the Jazz Gallery date.

Ben Goldberg’s Glamorous Escapades play The Jazz Gallery on Thursday, March 23, 2023. The group features Mr. Goldberg on clarinet, John Ellis on tenor saxophone, Michael Coleman on synthesizer, Will Bernard on electric guitar, Ben Allison on bass, and Allan Mednard on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. E.D.T. $30 general admission ($15 for members, $10 for student members), $40 reserved cabaret seating ($25 for members), $20 for livestream access ($5 for members) for each set. Purchase tickets here.