Trios for Piano and Percussion
Listen to “Euphorbia” from Full Bloom
W. A Mathieu, piano
Jennifer Wilsey, marimba and percussion
George Marsh, drum set and percussion
Purchase and download the digital version of Full Bloom
Purchase the CD version of Full Bloom
Full Bloom, our trio’s second CD, is arranged into four acts full of emptiness. The way we improvise has been shaped by Viola Spolin, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and the Unabridged Compendium of The Sacred Etcetera.
George Marsh and Allaudin Mathieu have been improvising together since the 1960s; George and Jennifer Wilsey since the 1980s; George, Jennifer, and Allaudin as a trio since the 1990s.
We call some of these pieces “little worlds.”
In a musical little world, a collective idea embellishes itself, permutes itself, and recombines with itself variously — a thing made complete out of small stuff. Some pieces are simply free playing. Some pieces are just wild flowers. There is some scattered melancholia, a few jokes, and a tribute to our friend Fred Kaz, the great pianist, recently departed.
Fullness and Emptiness
Buddhist writers may write “emptiness” — the quotes point to an emptiness full of potential, a positive, nourishing space.
When physicists talk “vacuum” these days it’s about a latent domain where matter — presto! — arises, disappears, then appears again.
When musicians “listen to the silence” they know that from silence music will emerge just as surely as purple will emerge from a lobelia seed. Silence is our wild garden.
Listening to “empty” space is what The Bloom Trio does best. The quotes around “empty” are what bind us.
