Transparent Productions presents.. PRACTITIONER with Ben Goldberg and Michael Coleman

Ben Goldberg says: “In 1985 I took a lesson from Steve Lacy. I was in Paris a lot and would go to the Sunset to hear Steve and politely beg for a lesson. Finally he relented, saying, ‘I have a soft spot for clarinetists.’ We spent the afternoon at his place on Rue du Temple and Steve prescribed some exercises for investigating the basic elements of music. At the end of our meeting he gave me a copy of a new record of his, called Hocus Pocus.. Hocus Pocus (Book H of 'Practitioners') is a collection of six etudes for soprano saxophone composed by Steve Lacy. Mr. Lacy writes: "Deliberately made so as to be hard to play, they also contain many of the characteristic ‘licks’, which comprise the language that I use, in the the different kinds of improvisational musics that I perform in. Each piece is also a portrait of, and an homage to, a distinguished practitioner of a particular art.”

As Michael and Ben studied and recorded the compositions over a period of three years, they began to envision a kind of dreamlike multidimensional sonic collage. The Chicago Reader says "Goldberg impresses with his handling of Lacy’s complex, jagged lines, but it’s even more fun to hear him and Coleman re-envision them as modular experiments, juggling repeating and refracting phrases."