Time was that if you
lived in Edinburgh it felt like you could see drummer Chris Corsano
play live pretty much any night of the week. During his time living
in the capital in the mid to late noughties, the New England-sired
drummer whose collaborators range from former Sonic Youth guitarist
Thurston Moore to free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker was a ubiquitous
figure here.
Having hooked up with
the city's fecund Noise scene, shows ranged from teaming up with
assorted affiliates of the Giant Tank disorganisation, to duos with
pedal steel vixen Heather Leigh Murray or bass player Massimo Pupillo
of Italian power trio, Zu, to taking part in Arika's Resonant Spaces
project. All this while touring the world with Bjork, whose Volta
album Corsano appeared on.
One particularly busy
couple of weeks in 2007 saw Corsano play Edinburgh with female Noise
duo Hockyfrilla, another Edinburgh date in a duo with former
Geraldine Fibbers and Evangelista vocalist Carla Bozulich, supporting
Faust at the Bongo Club with the Vibracathedral Orchestra's Mick
Flower prior to a solo show at Optimo in Glasgow, and somehow
managing to squeeze in a recording with Bjork for Jools Holland's
Later programme broadcast the same weekend.
Seven years on, Corsano
returns to Edinburgh with Flower this weekend for the duo's only
Scottish date as part of a ten-date UK tour sandwiched inbetween a
slew of European shows with the likes of Danish saxophonist Mette
Rasmussen and Indian-trained Finnish musician, Antti Solvi.
This current burst of
activity follows some rare time out for Corsano, who, when not on
tour, now lives quietly in upstate New York, “half-way between New
York and Canada. I'd just had a hectic winter, and wanted to spend
some time at home. I never really play in the town I live in. I don't
know why, but Edinburgh was different.”
Sunday night's return
will also continue a collaboration that began almost a decade ago
when Corsano was living in Newcastle.
“Mick and I had
played on the same bill,” Corsano recalls. “He was playing with
the Vibracathedral Orchestra and I was playing with Paul Flaherty,
and Mick asked me if I wanted to come over to Leeds.”
The result has been a
long-term artistic marriage of Corsano's busy use of the drum kit
alongside Flower's drone-based extrapolations from an electric shruti
box and Japanese banjo.
“I like playing with
Mick,” says Corsano, “because I like listening to him. I'm a fan.
We go off and do our different things, but then when we get back
together it's still really exciting. It it wasn't working I guess we
wouldn't have pursued it as much as we have, and things do change. I
can be playing with Mick, and then think, 'Oh, I haven't heard that
before'.The synergies have always been in that state, which is one of
pushing and pushing.
“There's a certain
kind of comfort there as well, because if the acoustic of a room is
difficult, or if a crowd is hard to please, you know that because
you've worked together so much that there's something to fall back
on. But you always want to keep trying things out, and want to keep
it exciting and alive. It's the same with any relationship, personal
or otherwise.”
Corsano's point about
how much he enjoys listening to Flower is telling about Corsano's own
approach. His playing is so sensitive to whoever else he's on stage
with that, rather than dominate as a lesser drummer might with an
over-riding clatter, Corsano's opens out a sea of space for others to
fill, even as he pulses things along.
“I think we've
practised once, maybe twice,” says Corsano of his and Flower's
approach. “Everything else has been playing shows or recording. As
what we do is improvised, you try to catch whatever's going on in the
room and how the audience are. The key thing is to support the other
person, and when you hear something that might be useful, you pick it
up, so you're always trying to get better.”
The duo set-up is
something that seems to suit Corsano. As well as his alliance with
Flower, Corsano has long-standing partnerships with veteran
saxophonists Paul Flaherty and Joe McPhee.
“The duo setting can
be so much fun,” according to Corsano. “You learn so much about
that one person you're playing with. A person like Joe McPhee, for
instance, he subverts the idea of music in terms of what do I do to
respond to what he does, which surprises the hell out of me still.
But I don't think Joe would call himself a jazz player. There are
some really angry things in what he does, but it can be really
haunting as well.”
More recent
collaborations include an ongoing partnership with artist and
multi-instrumentalist Jenny Graf under the name Soliton, as well as
with Rasmussen.
“That's a new duo,”
Corsano says of the latter, “and it still feels really fresh. It's
great you can still jump into something new and build from that. I
didn't know Mette from before, but now I'm the older one finally. I'm
not the young drummer anymore.”
One partnership that is
unlikely to be rekindled is with Bjork. While Corsano enjoyed the
experience, playing stadiums ans the main stages of festivals was “a
different reality to what I was used to. You're playing all these
major stages around the world, and then you wake up and think, 'Did
that just happen?' I don't know if I'd do anything like that again,
to be honest. There was never enough time to get the sound right at
these places, and you'd be all over the place, drumming, and trying
not to get lost. In a way it's kind of validated my position playing
small, underground places.
It was some carry-on,
but I guess I'm out of that one now.”
While Corsano appears
on a multitude of recordings, both solo and with numerous
collaborators, including five releases in 2013 alone, given his
tireless range of activity, gaps remain in his back-catalogue.
“A lot of stuff does
get lost,” he says, “but it's refreshing when someone steps up
and wants to release something I've done, but even then things slip
through the cracks.”
However many Cdrs and
short-run releases Corsano and associates might put out, experiencing
him play live is something that can never be fully captured on
record. This is something Corsano more than anyone seems to
recognise.
“I'm kind of a
creature where a live setting is where I feel most at home,” he
says. “That ephemeralness seems central to the improvisatory
aspects of playing live, and I kind of live for that. I always end up
doing different things with different people, and I'm always trying
to surround myself with people better than me. So far, I think I'm
doing pretty well.”
Braw Gigs present the
Flower-Corsano Duo with Ashley Paul and Acrid Lactations, Wee Red
Bar, Edinburgh, April 13th.
The List, April 2014
ends
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