Harold Carr

music featuring harold

Story About Love by Marilyn Lerner (w/ Marilyn)
It's Up To You by h. carr (w/ Marilyn Lerner and Flavia Cervino-Wood)
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home :: gigs :: 2005-01-25-withAlexAtUrbanLounge.html

Wed, 26 Jan 2005

Harold Carr and Alex Caldiero at Cabaret Voltage at Urban Lounge

Last night, Alex Caldiero and I performed together for the first time. We have read on the same bill together twice in the past (once at City Art at Mt Tabor Church, and another time at a private birthday party at the now defunct Green Street in Trolley Square) but this was the first time we performed together. Actually, that is not accurate. We also performed together in Intransitive Senses, the first installment in Another Language's Interplay series. We performed simultaneously but in different rooms, but close enough to kind of hear each other. That performance perhaps planted the seed for last night's performance.

Last night we performed at Cabaret Voltage's spoken word series at Urban Lounge The evening was an mix of piano/vocals by Layna, visual works by John Bean, and poetry by Alex, Bryan Mehr and Christopher (one of the founders of Cabaret Voltage, along with Michael McLean).

Playing bass with Alex was a challenge - how to complement and contrast his words and sounds without overwhelming them while at the same time having a unique, strong and slightly independent voice? We had discussed (for one minute just before performing) some simple queues but, of course, I was lost for the start and just played by instinct and sensitivity to the moment. Just from the audience response it seemed to work.

When Bryan went on after Alex he asked me to play with him too. I played an entirely different style with Bryan, less "avant-garde", more straight ahead jazz. After Bryan's performance Christopher asked me if I could do a solo. I happily and graciously accepted.

Perhaps this is the beginning of more collaborations with Alex.

... note: ironic to call "avant-garde" a style rather than a stance.