(“Hi Colin!”)
I also write music, in addition to this blog.
My compositions are my distilled nature.
My nature can be anything but distilled.
Frenetic. Random. Circular. Long-winded. Schizophrenic.
I’m all that.
Quite simply: My full name is Colin Alexis Dennis Grigolia Gleason.
This story skips my naming and jumps forward 20 years to a composition classroom in Rohnert Park, CA…
Under the influences that I chose, I would turn in my homework using my newly-minted nom de plume. Without fail, and I mean every time, our instructor would quizzically ask: Who is Alexis D. Grigolia? And I would raise my hand, sometimes higher than other times.
It seemed that my creativity at this base level was unappreciated, because it made grading via the roll entirely too complicated. He did impart a suggestion which I have both heeded and ignored. Make sure to KISS.
Keep It Simple, Stupid. kiss. I have always been at math’s mercy. Whatever it wanted, I have never been able to deny it. Bank account? perpetual zero. Weight? more more more. One hit? how bout 2. 3. 4. fade to black. It’s not that I’m bad at math. I just think I’m good at it. I’m not saying I’m bad at math. I’m just saying I’m not as good at math as I think I am. It always wins.
Some say that music is math, or math is music. I don’t really know which they say, but I won’t be the one to disagree with them. I’ll just say that when I write music, and I happen upon a certain mathematical symmetry, whether created or discovered… I worry. Sometimes the zen-simplicity is so deep that I have to explore it. And it can lead to some seriously strange musics. I think 12-tone rows and anything Anthony Braxton fall in this eventual category.
Holmes said to Kiss though. And for many occasions, this is true. If life’s arc is long (and it often isn’t anywhere as long as you expected it to be), there is plenty of time to build into a complex composition. Start off soft and add ingredients. So, inspired by a particularly hallucigenic trip listening to Mr. Braxton at Claremont Yoshi’s (now an ice-cream office building): I decided to write a few jazzkoans. Leggos. Little connector pieces that could glue one song seamlessly to another, and enable the music to continue for as long as I wanted.
100 koans later, I had done way to many drugs for my body to handle and I freaked out. It took a few years to chill out. And another few to talk again. And then some more to graduate from community college. Then 5 more for a BA. And all this time, the koans were wrapped together in a giant book of sheet music (18 staves, 11″ x 17″) on my shelf. Waiting for the moment I’d remember the idea of “vamping ’til cue…”
Last year, I ended the band I led of 3 and a half years. I dropped out of 3 or 4 other bands. All to focus on my new band: The Colin Gleason Quartet. (sic) It is now a quintet with 20 or so people in it. And by a 20-person quintet I mean: Sax-Chords1-Chords2-Bass-Drums. And I fill those spots with a pool of 20+ peeps. That will hit 40 sooner than later. Guaranteed. But I love the musicians who endure my confusing handsignals and take us from one koan to another.
If you haven’t figured out the little green fortune I gave you by now, shame on you! I want you to listen my music. If at all possible: in person. If not: on the information superhighway. Just remember: be yourself. If you like it, let me know. If you hate it, let me know. If you could care less, recycle the little green fortune. Preferably by giving it to someone who may care. That’s the spirit of it.
KISS
