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$64​,​000 LITMUS TEST 6​/​20​/​2019

by PETER ZUMMO

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about

The first time I saw Peter Zummo play or even heard of him, was in the early 2000s. I don’t remember where the gig was, but he was playing in a band called Birdbrain. I hadn’t moved into the city full time yet but I was making the trip from Stonybrook, where I was living with my parents in a kind of post-grad school dropout fog, into town to see music whenever I could. Birdbrain was the brain-child of Yvette Massoudi (then Perez), who sang and wrote songs arranged for the unusual instrumentation of just two saxophones and trombone. Tim Noe of Cleveland, Ohio (like Zummo) and Dancing Cigarettes fame, was the tenor player. At the time, I was volunteering a few days a week at The Living Museum, an art therapy day program at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens Village where Tim also worked and that must’ve been how I ended up at the gig. Another member of the Cigs, Don Trubey, played alto and the trombonist was, of course, Peter Zummo. The horns made interlocking patterns of honks and bleats, a beautiful kind of hocketing which periodically blurred and fused into bold faced harmonized melodies. Something about the percussive attacks of the horns reminded me of the bamboo tubes played in Haitian Rara music, rhythm and tonality inseparable. Peter’s sound was incredible and I’d later discover “Zummo with an X”, his music for dances by Trisha Brown and of course his long history of collaborations with Arthur Russell, which includes everything from dancefloor bangers to dreamy pop songs to chamber music. Zummo’s back catalog is storied and well documented at this point, but I recently discovered “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s liner notes* to “Zummo with an X” to be an illuminating guide into Zummo’s history and thought processes. Highlights include a theory of standing waves gleaned from Roswell Rudd and conceptualizing musical groups as small scale social models.

Ok, but what the hell is a $64K Litmus Test? Like the spoken interludes in this set, the title seems to come from some unconscious place, where language exists but without “sense”. The music here contains all of Zummo’s known angles. It’s made up of modular cells, deceptively limited materials that make room for individual choices, humor, nods to the pop song, and melodies growled out in his unmistakable tone, here doubled and refracted into the higher partials by Brian Groder’s deft trumpet playing. The three percussionists make for a distinct rhythmic heavy-ness, with fellow Arthur Russell collaborators Bill Ruyle (traps) and Ernie Brooks (bass) providing the foundation, while vibraphonist Danny Tunick outlines the melodic shapes with crystal clear bell tones and conga player Michael Evans weaves expertly in between. The grooves are real and it’s its own kind of funk. There were noise improvisers in the audience headbanging to this shit.

I saw Birdbrain several more times over the years but with the exception of that first encounter, Yvette, Peter, Tim and Don were always joined by Michael Evans on percussion. When Michael died unexpectedly a few weeks ago it hit a lot of us hard. He was a fixture on the scene and had contributed to so much great music, from East Side Percussion to God Is My Co-Pilot to his uncategorizable duos with his partner, dancer Susan Hefner. It was another loss in a year already so full of losses. He was all over the place musically and to be able to share a little bit of that picture here is a bittersweet honor. Michael was a lifer, dedicated to his craft. He studied the percussion traditions of the world religiously, from Cuban Bata to Indian music, and for a time with Professor Milford Graves. I remember once walking into the Williamsburg record store, Earwax, to find Michael behind the register practicing the cas casº, a West African instrument that consists of a pair of small spherical gourds filled with pebbles and connected by a short length of cord, out of which a skilled player can somehow coax mind-boggling polyrhythms. Michael often brought the kitchen sink to the gig, both in the material and conceptual senses, and his crazy drum sets seemed as sculptural as they were musical. But Michael’s rig in Birdbrain was conspicuously restrained. At one gig the rest of the band laid out and Michael improvised one of the most fantastically bizarre solos I’d ever seen. It was hard to comprehend in the moment and is even harder to describe now, more like an energetic imprint than a memory. Standing up with a small metal doumbek hugged between his knees and a garland of brass bells hangings around his neck, he unleashed an impossibly frenetic cloud of ringing, thumping and cracking sounds, his fingers, hands and wrists moving like a wave from the drum up the bells and the body and finally, into the air. - C.C. 9/3/21

* www.dramonline.org/albums/peter-zummo-zummo-with-an-x/notes
º www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEDOWZ6w5c

Peter Zummo on Bandcamp:
peterzummo.bandcamp.com

Birdbrain on Bandcamp:
birdbrainnyc.bandcamp.com/album/i-fly

credits

released September 3, 2021

Peter Zummo: $64,000 Litmus Test:
Ernie Brooks: bass guitar
Michael Evans: percussion
Brian Groder: trumpet
Bill Ruyle: drums
Danny Tunick: vibraphone
Peter Zummo: trombone and compositions

Recorded at Outpost Artists Resources, June 20, 2019
Live sound and recording: Ian Douglas-Moore, David Weinstein
Front of house: Eta Demby, Ruth Kahn
Mix: Peter Zummo
Design, Series Producer: Che Chen

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Fire Over Heaven Queens, New York

Fire Over Heaven is a monthly concert series at Outpost Artists Resources in Ridgewood, NY organized by Che Chen. This Bandcamp page, started during our nearly two year pandemic hiatus, features selections from the 80+ sets in our archives. All funds will be used to expand the archive, commission new recordings and support our live programming. ... more

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