Dreaming of the Masters

Reedman extraordinaire and all-round artist Joseph Jarman passed away on January 9, 2019, at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey.  His passing was announced by the New York chapter of the AACM on their website. He was 81.

Jarman was a founding member of the AACM and of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, but was also involved in Zen Buddhism and the practice of aikido. He began his study of aikido in the early 1970s and began studying Zen in 1990.  He visited various monasteries in Eastern Asia and a few years later opened Jikishinkan ("Direct Mind Training Hall"), his own dojo/zendo, in Brooklyn. He later became a Shinshu priest and held a fifth degree black belt in aikido.

We only saw Jarman perform once, a late 1970s Art Ensemble gig at Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square, normally a folk-music club.  Highlights of the set included the members of the band wandering the stage, picking up random instruments from the small arsenal they had up there with them, play only a few notes on each and then put it back down to pick up another.  But experienced improvisors that they were, there were no gaps, no "dead air," between their random sounds.  At another point, they were all playing in unison, but one note, over and over, in 4/4 time, for something like five minutes.  Just a groove they somehow spontaneously fell into.  Wild.  

We saw his Art Ensemble bandmate, Roscoe Mitchell, last year at Big Ears, a 12:00 noon performance that blew the clouds off of a rainy day.  

Did Joseph Jarman have an influence on us?  Consider this:  Jarman composed the song Dreaming of the Master, from which we take the name of this regular Friday feature.