Laura Steele – video
Rosi Hertlein – violin & voice
Greg Glassman – trumpet
Stacy Dillard – tenor & soprano saxophone
Mitch Kessler – flute, bass clarinet John Esposito – Roland electric keyboard, electronic loops & drums
Emma Alabaster – bass & voice
Hilliard Greene – bass
Peter O’Brien – drums

Friday Night:

1. Void – 3:42
2. Vulcan – 10:57
3. Ley Lines – 3:18
4. Dolmen – 4:24
5. Water – 9:08
6. Fire – 3:44
7. Seismic – 6:02
8. Wind – 5:12
9. Humanity – 7:52

Saturday Night

1. Void – 3:15
2. Vulcan – 11:39
3. Ley Lines – 3:56
4. Dolmen – 4:15
5. Water – 6:58
6. Fire – 3:46
7. Seismic – 6:38
8. Wind – 4:39
9. Humanity – 7:31
   

Recorded by Scott Petito October 2013 at Second Ward, Hudson, NY
Edited, mixed & mastered 2022 by Scott Petito at NRS Studios, Catskill, NY
CD package design: Dana Faconti Studio
Video images: Laura Steele
Cover Photo: Malin McWalters
Inside photos: Eve Alpert, Pete Mauney, Malin McWalters
All compositions c 2024 John Esposito
p 2024 Sunjump Music BMI
www.sunjumprecords.com

A Book Of Five Rings, written by Musashi Miyamoto, the Sword Saint of Japan, is the summation of his lifetime’s study of strategy. The gifted and driven Musashi could have limited his training solely to swordsmanship but instead espoused the study of the Way Of All Things. He trained himself as a painter, calligrapher, sculptor, and farmer. His five areas of fencing strategy were symbolized by Water, Air, Ground, Fire and Void. During my forty years of Fu Jow Pai Kung Fu training, I’ve gone back to his book many times for inspiration and to reexamine Musashi’s insights. What I learned in those studies has applied to my music in many ways.
I formed the ensemble A Book Of Five Rings for a studio record date and two nights of concerts sponsored by ESP Records at the Knitting Factory, NYC in 1997. That was when I started connecting segments of different kinds of music into a long, continuous performance. I also worked this way in the bands of Jayna Nelson and Franklin Kiermyer ( captivating a young audience at a San Francisco Rock club as well as the Jazz audience at Yoshi’s) during that period.
My intention for the ensemble and this concert in particular, was to freely apply this idea of openness to using all things in the making of a performance. This meant including a variety of approaches to free improvisation and a variety of approaches to written composition. In some sections rhythms were written and pitches improvised or the reverse. The electronic sounds were pre-recorded, designed so that the musicians could spontaneously interact with the sounds and fill in the details of the composed landscape.
The relationship between the music and Laura Steele’s video constantly changed: each was reactive to the other at points and there were sections of long silences on Seismic ( reduced in duration on this CD recording) during which the audience could concentrate on watching without listening. Fire was pure sound with no imagery. The immersive nature of the installation and music can only be fully experienced live. As Eric Dolphy said “ After you play music, it’s gone in the air, never to be captured again.”
Over the years, A Book Of Five Rings has evolved into my “everything” ensemble: through- composed, improvisational with chaos and silence, using acoustic instruments with electronic sounds and interacting with video, all with roots in Jazz, European Classical and Asian and African folk musics as well as whatever else I happened to be taking in through books, films and just living.
I’ve worked with this extraordinary group of musicians in many other settings and other kinds of playing. They are all composers as well as performers and I think that allows me to trust their ability to take a loose framework and to shape the compositions as we go. Scott Petito did his always expert work both recording this complex wall of sound and getting rid of the usual PA buzzes and microphone pops.
These two nights at Second Ward, a beautiful gallery/performance space in Hudson, NY were an incredible live confluence of video installation and live music. Laura Steele’s video imagery creates the feeling of moving through multilayered, scrolling, constantly morphing paintings. The
dividing line between the visual and auditory begins to disappear. Ideally, all dividing lines begin to fade. Laura Steele’s work is music for the eyes. These musicians make pictures for the ears.
John Esposito