Search - Derek Bailey :: Music & Dance

A response to an earlier review

Frank Dean Lehouillier | Buffalo, NY United States | 03/14/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"What did you expect?! This music is IMPROVISED. Derek Bailey has always deliberately avoided any semblance of traditional music from time structures to doing so much as repeating a phrase. Every note that he has ever played so far as can be determined by his recorded work is through composed. The basic idea that the liner notes try to explain is that for Bailey this music represents a collaboration in that he is interacting both with the movement and sound of Min Tanaka dancing as well as with the environment, the sounds of rain and cars moving outside, the sounds we ear all the time but never hear as music. To say this is just noise is like saying that Frank Lloyd Wright just made boxy houses, taking no notice of the environment in which they are built. This being said I should also mention that the music has a very serene quality to it. There is not so much of the frenetic energy that Bailey is sometimes capable of but instead he chooses to set a mood which in some ways contrasts with the intensity of the dancer and the rain. It almost makes the rain sound violent. This music was recorded in 1980 I'm glad to have an opportunity to hear its beauty now."