odeya photo: ian byers-gamber
zach photo: michael-jamar jean francois
Nov25
ZACH>>
the Repeat Until True (RUT) improvisation protocol comes out of me getting a little tired and frustrated with generic, "free improvisation", mostly for myself, you know, but also in communities that I've been in. I feel like it's a sound that all three of us are probably familiar with and, at this point, it's a culture, it's a lineage to engage in, and I appreciate that about free improvisation and improvised music in general.
But I was struggling with it. I was just feeling bored about being able to play everything, anything, all at once. So I started putting limitations on myself in my improvisations, whether it was with an ensemble or by myself. They were pretty basic things, the kind of thing you see
sometimes in 20th century classical music - Fluxus music - like one note, one string, one hour, that kind of thing. These concepts already exist, but I was just applying it to myself and seeing how far I could take certain things.
And I ended up writing a bunch of "tunes", with a specific concept in mind to challenge myself to see if I could make a really interesting piece of music with really minimal input and improvising. And so that started, I think, in 2016 - maybe 2015 - but the first time I started doing it was for bass, and it made its first released appearance on a on a tape side that I did for RVNG Intl. They did a box set called Peaceful Protest, and it was a limited edition mini cassette box set that they sold
at Moogfest. I think that was 2017 and the first four movements - actually, one of them is not in anymore - but three of the six movements first appear on this release for RVNG Intl. book ending a guitar piece that does a similar thing.
And then I kept exploring it in collaborations with choreographers at the time.It was always in my back pocket: if I had a gig opportunity, I might get into it. And anytime I'd be improvising by myself or with an ensemble, I'd get into
that mode of playing. And then January 2022 I guess - a little while before we met Giles - I recorded the bass version of this piece and really dialled in the way that I was thinking about it. While I was doing this, I realized that it would be really cool to get some other musicians playing this stuff, especially people that are strong and developed improvisers, just to see how they would engage with this work. So I started to think who's around that I admire? I arrived at Odeya Nini and Maria
Chávez, two folks whose work I've been following for a long time. I first met Odeya in Asheville at a Black Mountain College Museum concert. Odeya - and I don't know if y'all were married at the time - but your now
husband, Archie, y'all both did sets that night, and were just so incredibly impressive to me. I was really blown away by the show, particularly Odeya's. I think everybody was floored and so I came up and said hello.
And you know, that was pretty much it.
I guess it was probably after January 2022 that I properly reached out to Odeya about this project, and we got into it together and started to explore the ways in which someone else could get into this work. Odeya did an incredible session of Lewis Pesacov, embodying this piece in a way that is wholly her. This was like a proof of concept for me. It was like a Dr. Frankenstein moment of like, "wow, it's alive!" But for me, this concept works. It's repeatable, like, it's not something that only I can do. It was such a cool
feeling. So now that I had a proof of concept, I felt like I could expound upon this. Since working with Odeya on this, that's what I've been doing, continuing to hone the score and and the protocol
and trying to expand it into different ensembles. Once we had our finished mixes of the voice and bass versions, I got in touch with Maria to see if she'd be interested in participating in this project and using our
recordings as her score and material for this.
Maria Chávez
And she was into it.
So now, Maria uses our two RUT records in every show that she performs. So it's really cool to like be in the process of developing a language for myself in improvisation and composition, and trying to bring other people in to engage with it, to see how they engage with it, and how it expands on their own language.
GILES>> What was your instinctive reaction to the discussion with Zach about this project?
ODEYA>> I've done a lot of Fluxus type music for scores, but I know that once I begin, something else will happen. I can't know what that is until I just go for it, you know. So for this project, I just thought, "Okay, let's see what's gonna happen!" Repetition is something in my practice, but - I mean, this was recorded several years ago already - since then, as a vocalist and embodied vocalist, repetition and trance practices where I'm doing something again and again, how that affects my breath and my body and my mind, that's become a bigger part of my practice. Even if you're just sitting in meditation - ok you're not doing anything again and again - but it feels like it's that same thing, like you're just going to sit there, and the thoughts might come into your mind and keep sitting with you and you just keep doing it and being there, and then suddenly you're flying, you're gone, something happened by just being with something for a long time, especially when there's a rhythmic repetition.
It was just beautiful. Actually, it felt like a skeleton that was given to me, like it's not alive. And then it was "OK, here I go". And then it felt like the flesh was returning and bringing the skeleton alive.
MARIA>> I loved the opportunity to work with instruments that were physically separate as records. Over the 2 years of using them as part of my solo performance vocabulary I really got to know them at various speeds and directions. I really love performing Zach's solo upright bass record on 78 RPM. It makes his gestures more upbeat and jazzy. And I love manipulating Odeya's vocal work with the Screw Method, slowing down her vocals so much that you can hear the details of the vocalizations. It was the perfect project for me and I'm excited to perform it live with them in Durham this Dec. Odeya's description of it as a skeleton is great! For me, I saw it as a fun multitracking tool that can adapt to different settings within my performances.It can live so many lives in so many ways. Sometimes it can be moody, other times brighter.
Odeya Nini
Zach Cooper
zach photo: michael-jamar jean francois
GILES>> When I'm playing the cello, it takes a whole lot of concentration. So, maybe this question comes from my lack of experience of improvisational playing, but how do you bring together those technical elements that require concentration and the free thinking of improvisation?
ZACH>> I think that's a bridge that folks cross in their own time. You know, just like with your fluency on and facility with your instrument, you know what I mean? Man, both cello and contrabass string instruments are a tough lot, man, but I think squaring and balancing your technique with the flow state just comes with time.
For me, these repeat until true pieces all come out of the way that I already improvise and that comes out of, something that I've been developing for years. For example, I was in an artist residency for the month of March this year, and wrote 40 new RUT pieces that are within the protocol of this project. I just improvised every day that I was there for a few hours and anytime something came up, where I was like, "what was that, what just happened there?" I would take a moment to record myself and dial it in.
ODEYA>> I had actually recorded it as part of a session I was recording for a sound meditation album of mine. And it was tagged on to the end of that session so I was already, like, in the zone. I think that's really when the magic happens - when there is space, but just like a little bit of structure, and then, you know, here's your house, this is where you are, and then you can just bring it to life with your energy. I just remember that at the end, I was like "wow, that really took me somewhere that I didn't expect." I knew I would go somewhere just because, as an artist, I do take myself somewhere, but here I didn't know where it would take me. I think what's beautiful in the process of repetition like that is that you get to a point of "okay, here I am. I've been led in the door and I've been given this phrase. I'm going to sing it once" and I'm still allowed to be in my thinking mind. I'm going to stay here and then I'm going to leave it, right? As opposed to, if it's continuous, you gotta be on at every moment, because it just keeps evolving.
It's similar to a meditation practice where I'm sitting: I'm gonna fail if I think that I'm going to be deep in meditation from the moment I close my eyes. I mean maybe that happens....maybe... but usually I have to be in my head for a bit to get out of my head and breathe and just think actually, so that I can stop thinking. This doesn't really happen in free improvisation. You have to enter Zero Thought and you have to discover every moment as you're in it. With the repetition approach, there's a pleasure and satisfaction in that I'm entering my head and then I know I'm gonna just fly and completely transform into something that I don't know. I'll just discover what that is.
So it just comes from that balance of what I'm good at with my hands and what I can do with my hands without thinking, so that I can just do it. You know what I mean? That's a question for for any improviser - how do you get your technique to the point where you just feel comfortable just going free. And then also, I know by that same token, Ornette Coleman's son was his drummer from, like, the time that he was nine years old. He wasn't a drummer per se, but he had an innate sense of musicality that his father encouraged in him.
GILES>> as you got talking about the project and ideas started flowing, did it evolve a way, or did it stay true to the origins?
ZACH>>I would say it stayed pretty true in the process of producing the bass and the vocal versions. Once we got to working with Maria, I had to work out in my mind what exactly is this form and whether that stretch within my mind was an "acceptable compositional stretch" to me.
So I reminded myself that this piece is all about repetition of these melodic cells, and improvising on those melodic cells without improvising melodically. That is the basic framework.
and if we're continuing a cycle, then these records are basically doing that portion of the score for Maria, because we've got a spinning platter and a needle that's just dragging those notes along as they come, the same way that we did on our recordings.
And then the improvisation comes in with the way that Maria manipulates
playback technology.
So, you know, it didn't seem like too much of a stretch then and it still doesn't now. But I'm probably the only one that gives a fuck about not necessarily honoring the written word of my score, but I also don't hold the written word of my score in the kind of
esteem that that, say, a traditionally classical situation where the composer and score is king, follow the score, interpret within reasonable bounds, you know.
For me, this is very much a living and breathing project, especially now that I'm in the process of developing a piano trio version of this music- like a traditional Jazz Piano Trio - upright bass, drums, etc. And I got with a couple of guys that I absolutely love, and they're playing, and we start getting into it, and I'm like "what do I do about a drummer?" Because the drummer is not playing pitched notes.
So I was like "all right, I don't know, it's play time!" I adore the piano player that I got, I adore his playing. I'm really interested in seeing what he does with this score, but at the same time, I also want to hear him blow on this, you know. So, that's what we did. I was like, "all right, well, let's just treat these melodies like a head and take it from there". Basically a Time, No Changes approach. So, that's pushing me to take this further. Similarly, other ensembles that already have a great rapport together as improvisers and interpreters, I wouldn't want to cut them off at the knee so to speak.
I thought of something that they already do amazingly well together and how could I make this piece into something to help accentuate that greatness, as opposed to limiting it. I think this is part of why I think this work is special and unique, at least for me.
So I'm in the process of weighing those two conflicting forces of wanting to constrain notions and instincts of improvisation as a compositional force with the strengths of of the players that I'm working with.
You continue the note sequence and you develop improvisation
rhythmically with duration, with amplitude, texture, tone, idiom you know.
Anything you can
think of to use
as an improvisational engine, other than melody.
- zach
zach photo: michael-jamar jean francois
coincidence
chance
failure
It became an additive to my practice and a regular part of my performance vocabulary.
I am such a fan of it.
-Maria
beauty
abstract
GILES>> What did you learn about yourselves during this project?
ODEYA>> I think continuing to trust that process when we are given these very simple instructions. It's actually a gift. It's like, you're not giving me a lot, you know?
When it feels like it's a simple outline, then it feels like there's more room, actually, to open that space up and bring yourself into it, rather than when there's more on the page. I mean when it's completely open book, it's not a compositional instruction.That would be like coming into a free improv - let's just play, let's see where it goes - and that's thinking of it as a different thing.
It is a composition with an instruction and a structure, but it's very simple, and that allows space for more to happen and for us to bring more to it, you know. And as an improviser, I can see that and I feel comfortable in that place.
There are people that might see this, and feel that they can't go there because it's maybe too limiting, or it's not enough, or it scares them, because there's space.
But it makes me realise that I've actually been given space to create here. It's not limiting me. It's actually giving me more space to give and create and that's why I love being an improviser. I feel like it ripples into our lives, and, for me, it makes me realise that there is so much that I can create, you know.
I don't need a lot of stuff, you know. I actually need more space, and that space is freeing. I mean, I'm looking at my house. I need my structure - the roof over my head, the right food. But we don't need, I don't know.... I'm looking at my kids toys right now, and I I'm someone at every birthday party, I'll say, "Please, no gifts, you know". I get them the stuff that they want and need. They are not deprived of things. But just all the stuff... it really does something in my body and makes me not want a lot, just give me space to create my home and create for that.
GILES>> Just as you were talking there, it made me wonder about how it's affected your view of consumerism?
ODEYA>> Well, yesterday I was volunteering at my kid's school, and there's a program called Loose Parts. I mean, this is that thing, okay? And it amazed me. So, it's at a playground at the school, so there's a lot of concrete. And so the kids might think "well, what am I going to do?"I mean, they can always figure something out, find something to do, but they might be like "what am I gonna do here? What am I gonna play with?" And then this Loose Parts program has literally trash. I mean, there's cardboard boxes, tyres, shipping tubes, torn fabric and crates. The kids were sprinting from the other side of the playground.
So my first time volunteering (I do it once a week now) and they just got straight to work. There were maybe six elements there, and the stuff they were creating, was amazing. I was looking around and there was not one moment where they were wondering what they were going to do. They were just like, boom, you know, they just created so much from these things. I was there with another mom who had started this program. I was just so moved by it. We have the potential and kids know that.
And as adults, we shouldn't forget this.
Such a simple thing.
Just do this, and you'll see so much.
There's so much that you can create from yourself. We have to remember that kids know that. When you have got just a few elements, you can create a whole world out of it. As adults, we need the stuff, we need the objects, we need this, we need that, we need the games that tell us exactly how to do this, and yeah, that's great, it's fun and I engage with that too, but.....
.....let's remember that we don't NEED a lot. There's so much that we can bring from ourselves. Repeat Until True - THAT! That's the truth. We are energy, vibration, love. Let's just get to the place where we can remember that we are beyond the material world. You can love some materiality but remember that it's not the truth.
GILES>> I find that adults are - generally - less curious these days. Like, when we are kids, we have this unlimited curiosity and interest in learning about new things...just like you described with the Loose Parts project.
And I think many of us lose that instinctive curiosity as schooling takes hold and it becomes about passing your exams, getting ready for getting a job blah blah, and even more so now that people are so intensely focussed on survival and navigating their day to day life, that they don't have time for being curious.
ODEYA>> Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking that as adults, life is also about being efficient with our time. We're like, I gotta complete this, I got to work this and that, you know, as quickly as I can.
Just thinking of this piece where it's just repeat it until you're done. There's no 'repeat this for five minutes' or 'do this and now it's okay'. There is a beginning and there is an end and maybe a bell rings at the school and now we're out, you know. But in that timeframe between the beginning until you've decided that the bell is ringing, you can just let yourself be in that space.
I think, as adults - and I'm a part of this too - we focus on needing to get stuff done. But that's why, through music and through art and through experiencing these things, we can remember to loosen that up a bit. Yes, I need to go through my to do list, but let me not forget that, there's a bigger picture and I can do it a little bit differently, or I can break from that frame.
The system literally trains kids to be that way
and it's really hard to see that as a parent and as an artist. I mean, there's love, there's care, but they still want them to be in the box, so that they can be successful, so that you can get that good job. But can't they do the things they love now? I dunno where I'm going with this, but these are the feelings this brings up.
As an improviser, I feel very comfortable in that space
-odeya
original photo: adeline newmann
ZACH>> Couldn't have said it better myself. I do want to just tap into a couple things that y'all were talking about. My kids had a music teacher who was absolutely brilliant. In the top three music educators that I've ever been around. She was simultaneously teaching the parents how to engage with the kids over music, sound, dance and movement. It was amazing. She always talked about this study about genius in children, and the way genius is defined which is obviously a dictionary definition that refers to resourcefulness. And with kids, they say that if a kid - or anyone actually - can find, for example, 33 ways to engage or work with a ball - so if it's a ball, you can play catch, or you can roll it like you're pretending you're going bowling, or you can bounce it like you're playing basketball, or swing it around your body, how far you can throw it up in the air - that's considered a mark of genius. They measured the genius in these kids across the years. I think this is exactly what you were just talking about. But, could that be part of RUT? You know what I mean? Can you play this in 33 different ways? Maybe that's something to bring into this protocol. I mean, the score requires a minimum of four minutes of playing this stuff. But as Odeya says, you could play this forever. Play it until it's true.
I guess it's trying to encourage genius behaviour in an improviser - how can you vary this or how can you make this interesting for yourself when one of your arms is tied behind your back, you know?
The other thing I wanted to mention - and Odeya has been hinting at it throughout - is an unspoken, spiritual quality of this work that I don't lead with for personal reasons. But all of this, for me, comes from not just developing improvisation or developing meditation and affirmation all at once. This is basically like saying the same thing over and over again, and that's what makes it like yogic or scientific - you don't need to believe it, you just need to do it over and over again. And if you do it over and over, you don't need to believe it to start with, you do it until you believe it. It's a fake it till you make it. It's like two plus two equals four.
You didn't have to believe that until you put it together.
And now we know it as a mathematical truth.
I guess what I'm getting at is, this whole thing is about repetition and what repetition, like Odeya was saying, does to your body, your brain and your playing. I came across something today, actually, it was Charles Curtis writing about Éliane Radigue's work. Radigue has been super influential to me, especially with the way that she has iterated her, Occam Ocean project. I'm definitely taking cues from her, and also John Zorn's Masada project of these iterative works that can be performed by various groups in various instances. But Charles Curtis was referring to Radigue's sustained tones as a medium and all of the interplay of overtones and all this stuff as being activity on top of that medium. It brings what is the foreground, what is the background, etc, etc into the conversation.
I was confronted with this in a recent composers lab that I was part of. Another improviser that I really like, after encountering this work, asked in a very playful and, you know, wanting to understand way, 'what does repetition mean to you?' And we can say all the things about trance and shamanic practice and stuff like that. We understand that by saying something over and over again, something loses meaning. But what I arrived in that conversation - and what I saw echoed in this - was that repetition is like creating a field or, in the case of Radigue, is creating a medium. So when you are repeating these notes over and over again, you're actually creating a harmonic medium in the air. The way that we engage with this particular RUT protocol as improvisers is similar to the example of foreground and background or a medium or playing around a medium.
Zach. Contrabass.
Repeat Until True
GILES>> How do you think people will - or want people to - listen to the record? Because it's not a "traditional" 12 tracks/38 minutes record, right?
ZACH>> I'm calling it a triple album because that's kinda how I see it, but I also see that it doesn't play down like an album, really. It plays down like three different albums. And in that way, I see it as some sort of archive or a research device or something like that, you know what I mean?
I also don't claim to fully understand why I've been so driven towards this for some years now
but I'm just following it and it feels like the right thing. There's been very little that I've done where I've gotten the kinds of reactions that I have about this work and this is from people that I know, people that I don't know, who've said something unexpected to me after encountering this work.
So, yeah, so I'm just thinking, "All right, well, there's something in there."
original photo: michael-jamar jean francois
original photo: elena ray
GILES>> I'm so intrigued why we are attracted to certain styles of music. I don't mean who influences us but what, in our bodes, attracts us to certain sounds - like a rapping style, or a particular guitar style, or why we love the piano more than trumpet. What you are doing makes me think about how we consume music. When I started listening to music, I would spend hours examining the sleeve, the lyrics, the photos and listening to the record. Now, it has become such a non-intentional practice. Find, consume, move on. Thirty second soundbites.
ODEYA>> I think a lot about that. When I first started doing experimental music, coming from the jazz world, and starting to do free improv, I feel like that people think they don't like experimental music. They just don't want to walk into that room.
When I started getting into sound baths, I thought, people are just having these transformative experiences listening to sign tones, basically. It felt that something was wrong with the way people are just being open and invited into the space. Because if something's communicating, if there's an intention, if there's a vibration, you know, if all that stuff is in place, it doesn't matter what the music is, it's going to reach you.
But, the artist has to approach it a certain way and have that intention and care, but then the audience has to come and want to be open to an experience.
And so in my performances, I thought, all right, how do I get people to just realize something's happening here? Like, let's not try to analyze this. Hear it in a certain kind of way. I'm not even hearing it. I'm feeling it. Something is happening, and I'm feeling it in my body, and I'm experiencing it, and it's moving me. I'm being touched by vibration and sound.
I think a lot about the difference between the recorded medium and the performance. In the performance, we can do something that we can't quite do when it's recorded.
I hope that people can hear these things as a recording, or they're in this space where it can reach them in the same kind of way, like it can grab them and be like, I am still here. What's happening? I ask those questions. I don't know exactly what this is, but I'm feeling it. And why is that particular song doing it for me? I don't know but it did something to me.
GILES>> You've made me think about the differences between live and recorded performance/ I feel live is much more about an immersive experience, where the sound envelops you....
ODEYA>> A live show is a real, palpable exchange. That happens as well with recordings but, as musicians, we are already open to it, maybe I'll sit in a certain way and I'll take it in, you know, but the average person who doesn't have experience of a relationship with sound the way a musician does, might just not have the tools to hear something a certain way, but when you're in the live space, it doesn't matter who you are and what your experiences are.
As an artist, I can create a space that holds everybody, one that pulls everyone in and they feel it, because it's a very human experience in sound and music. It's rhythm, dynamics, tone, texture, breath. Things that every human being has. We have that in the way we move around the world.
And so music is just a way to organize it in a certain way. So we have the ability to experience things in a very expansive way, but we just might not have the tools to know how to enter that experience
GILES>> How do we give people those tools?
ODEYA>> I give them those tools in the performance and the performance, so in the performance, yeah, the performance, and it's an intention, it's what you're thinking about when you're playing music, is so the music, I mean, especially as the vocalist, I mean, it's riding the waves of my, you know, my the sound.
But also, if you're playing the child, anything you're playing, if you're not moving that through your own body, and then out through the insert, through the sound, it's like a note is, you could play the same note and think about something and have an intention, and then and it'll sound like something else, like it'll land on someone's body a different way than if you're just playing that note, and you're like, I'm trying to get this pitch.
You know, it really is a real thing.
So I feel like when people are in the spaces, whether it's a sound meditation or performance or music or jazz, or all these different spaces, when we're there and the artist is moving, something is able to channel that energy.
And it's not about me, it's like the energy, it's the sound, move it through your instrument. As an artist, like, can, you know, we're just a bit more open to that, but it's just a channel, it's just an opening, and then it's, then it's a very shared experience. The people in the room that are their energy, their you know, you're there together, and you're all experiencing something, and you're being moved together. And then people like, feel that. They're like, wow, I really, really felt that, you know, and then they may, they want to feel more of that, or something was different. And then an image might come up, a memory, a feeling, an emotion, might overwhelm them, and you're like, I didn't know I needed that. I didn't know I felt that I didn't, you know, it's things that aren't like the I know it's just gone and it's, I mean, it's a different I know it's like, I know because I am here, you know, because I'm breathing, because I'm because I'm because I'm energy, I know, but it's not like I know what's going on with me right now, or I know what this is, or I know I like this song, or what I'd like and don't like. It's like all of that just hopefully leaves when we're in that, when we're really deep in the music or dance or a painting I see behind you, when we're in the flow state, you know, yeah, then, like, Ah, okay, I can, you know, really experience something differently. And that's when we're, that's, that's the pleasure and this transformation and the joy. I mean, it can happen with anything.
original photo: sam lee
MARIA>> For me, this depends on the format of how the recorded performances are being played back. While I am more a fan of live performances I have had some very special experiences of listening to recorded performances back in specialized studio spaces, like my studio that recorded my part of the project, Astral Sound. My audio engineer, Andrew Fox, developed his studio to play over 12 speakers at once, which has been very helpful for when I develop my multi-channel sounds for installations in art spaces. One can learn a lot when playing back a live performance in a setting like that, So it just depends what the goal of the listener is.
GILES>> final one for you, Maria! How did you bring the elements of chance and surprise into the project?
MARIA>> my performance practice is based on chance and surprise. I never listened to the record all the way through. I discovered them in real time while performing them live in front of an audience. I prefer to get to know my records this way, so that chance is really guiding the moment, not my intentions.
These records adapted seamlessly into my performance vocabulary which is rare. Some records don't offer enough room, composition wise, for me to be able to dissect moments out of it to make a new statement.
But Zach's project did.