Donaueschinger Musiktag program notes
In November 2023, during Phill Niblock’s final composing session, he completed BLK+LND. This piece, written for acoustic bass, bass clarinet, and playback, is dedicated to bassist Robert Black and me, Neil Leonard.
I first heard Phill’s music in the mid-1980s and began collaborating with him in 2005. In 2014, Phill composed Ronet for me, based on recordings of my tenor saxophone. We performed Ronet at the Tate Modern, documenta 14, and for Phill’s final performance, held on the winter solstice at Roulette in NYC in 2023.
Robert Black was a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, a virtuoso bassist, and a pioneering experimental musician. Robert recalled meeting Phill at the New Music America Festival in Connecticut in 1984, it was a a turning point in his early career. In 2022, reflecting on Phill’s impact on him, Robert approached Phill with the idea of composing a piece. Phill suggested a duo for Robert and me. BLK+LND is the final piece commissioned by the Robert Black Foundation.
Phill was enthusiastic about Robert and me working together. Our first in-person recording session took place at Berklee College of Music in August 2022. This was during the tail end of the COVID lockdown, and we started our session with N95 masks on. Although the recording session went well, Phill, who was nearing 90, made slow progress on the composition. Then, in June 2023, Robert passed away. I assisted Phill in finishing the work remotely and found him an assistant in NYC to help finish BLK+LND. In late November 2023, Phill completed the piece, and we began discussing potential venues for the premiere.
Phill constructed BLK+LND by recording Robert and me playing a small set of sustained pitches in unison. He then layered dozens of these notes, detuning them to create a continuous sound lasting 20:43 minutes. The electronic track acts as a kind of meta-note, gradually thickening with modulating timbres and shifts in microtonal tension. Phill requested quadraphonic playback in reverberant spaces, allowing the piece to interact with the venue's architecture. In these spaces, the sound varies significantly as audience members move in their chairs, turn their heads, or change locations in the room.
Phill’s instructions, given in person, typically included listening to the electronic track, playing long tones, often walking through the audience, and, in Phill’s words, “playing behind their heads.” When I played with Phill, I blended with the prepared track or added pitches that created tension with the electronics.
Phill and I shared a deep love for jazz across all eras and communities. We often chatted about the joys and minutia of this music. As our collaboration deepened, I began to view performing his woodwind pieces as creating a variation on the sound of Duke Ellington, whom Phill admired, photographed extensively, and listened to almost daily. In Phill’s music, what started as something akin to an Ellington chord was sustained beyond the limits of a single player’s breath with microtonal enhancements gradually emerging. The piece revealed resonances in the venue's architecture that became apparent only when playing his music at the colossal volume he preferred.
On January 6, 2024, two days before his passing, Phill called me to discuss the premiere and tour of BLK+LND. To distract him from his rapid decline, I engaged in his touring plan, only for him to reveal that all the details were still in his head and none of the events had been confirmed. He was entrusting the project to me.
Phill would have been thrilled and honored by this concert at the Donaueschingen Festival. The thought of one more performance with Robert Black, whom he greatly admired, presenting his new work for low-pitched instruments that he was particularly fond of, and reconnecting with old and new friends in Donaueschingen would have meant the world to him.
Neil Leonard, August 2024
Comments