Last night I played percussion with several other Bay Area improv musicians for Theatre of Yugen's performance at Matcha. It was quite an intense experience - to be honest, I haven't played regularly for several months, and knew going in that maintaining some of the faster rhythms (esecially at low volume) was going to be a challenge - which it was.

I don't have a huge background improvising - at least not in this context. In college we drunkenly mimiced the musical attack Peter Brotzman (and I threw coins at my drums) but really, we weren't paying attention to each other. Later on, in a band, I improvised quite a bit as a percussionist, but usually within a set song that I knew the structure of beforehand. So for me, great moments consisted of those breaks or changes where all of us were spot on.

At Matcha, everything was wide open, and I think for me one of the greatest challenges was trying to determine when things were working and when it was time to try something new. That comes with experience, I guess - and listening. I haven't been so focused in a long time - there are whole swaths of the night where the only thing I have a memory of is a variegated musical form of some sort, and the image of Allen Whitman's grinder with a contact mic attached, because that's what I was staring at as I tuned into the sounds.

Suki, the other intrepid musical leader herder, had charted out a a sound "escalation" for the night - a "jo-ha-kyu" build for the music. As it turns out, we did fall into a "build, escalate, release" pattern, but it was the more immediate "natural" one that happens, for example, in the clapping exercise (everyone's in a circle, and with eyes closed, people try to clap together. Invariably, people find the common rhythm, speed up, then slow down, then speed up again, then slow down).

Being able to "tame" (or wrangle?) the natural build-and-release-and-build-again cycle is something that is a central element in Noh Theatre (educated conjecture there); it happens with all beginner drummers (they speed up, then get tired and slow down). And it's something that I believe is a goal of "organized" improvisational music, and dance, and theatre, etc. The idea seems very Zen: yes, you're following a very big stream in a very small boat, but you do have oars. You follow the stream but you also exercise some power over when you arrive.

Some good inspiration as Balé Tech goes into our second weekend intensive training, featuring a crash course in Suzuki/ Viewpoints work and then contact improv.

(Much thanks to Theatre of Yugen and Suki and Allen for creating the welcoming space to perform. Suki and Allen's blog is here; previous encounters with them here. More coming on this multi-headed musical creature being formed as Orchestra Yugen).