reviewJ. B. Floyd

Much of pianist/composer/improviser J. B. Floyd’s music is keyboard centered and in the last 10 years he has explored the fascinating musical possibilities of the YAMAHA Disklavier in his works. The music presented here combines voice and other instruments with the Disklavier and, as in all of Floyd’s work, reveals his abiding interest in jazz and free improvisation. The musical materials are developed from and gently guided by a serial plan.

A Transporting Transmittance for Transverse Flute and Disklavier was written for Lisa Hansen. The piece captured the feeling of an improvisation in a dialogue between the flute and piano. Though all of the notes are written, the performers should feel the experience of spontaneous creativity.

From: A Hundred Little 3-D Pictures
These Daniel Moore poems describe a mystical world of spirit and fantasy, street scenes and death and vividly guide the composer in his search for musical representations.

Improvisations on Robert Ashley’s “El/Aficionado” for Disklavier and E-Mu Sampler
This most successful opera by Robert Ashley began its life with a 2-piano accompaniment and was performed for three years in this version. Mr. Ashley agreed to this experiment, adapting the 2-piano score for YAMAHA Disklavier and Sampler and replacing the vocal solos with keyboard improvisations.

Solos and Sequences II
This composition reveals a strong influence from my early infatuation with Boogie-Woogie. The working title used throughout its creation was PETE AND ALBERT, referring to the great Boogie piano team of Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. There are at least two versions of “Solos and Sequences II”, as a Disklavier solo and as a duet for Disklavier and marimba/vibraphone.

Reviews

The main working medium for Floyd is the Yamaha Disklavier, a programmable grand piano able to reproduce any part a composer could conceive. You'd expect something similar to Conlon Nancarrow's piano player masterpieces...Not this time, as J.B.Floyd's scores maintain a "human" character that's pretty evident throughout this excellent release. I found particularly beautiful the three poems by Daniel Moore, of which I appreciate both the melodic choice in the vocal lines (by Thomas Buckner) and the involving harmonic context, underlined by arpeggios and chordal colours that had me thinking - you won't believe this - to Christian Vander's solo sections with Magma and Offering. Also noteworthy the excellent flute textures in the initial "Transporting transmittance", courtesy of Lisa Hansen, while the variations on two Robert Ashley's pieces are pretty easier but keep their own strong spiritual meaning in the overall record design. The CD ends with the boogie-influenced "Solos and Sequences II", where intertwining patterns and tangent runs result in a very exciting tapestry, the perfect signature on a surprising discovery by your reviewer. - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

On Transporting Transmittance, the American composer J.B.Floyd presents a sample-card of his music composed around the Yamaha Disklavier. The first half of the CD emphasizes the 'classical' aspect of his work as a composer and performer, in which the Disklavier is being used exclusively as a normal piano.
The musical language is cautiously contemporary and avoids extreme dissonance. The pieces are easy to follow and clear in form. The various movements are easy to distinguish and melodies and rhythms frequently emerge again.

A Transporting Transmittance for Transverse Flute and Disklavier is the most 'classical' piece on this CD. The dreamy opening of the flute melody quickly changes into faster, more nervous passages while even a jazzy rhythm emerges in the piano part. An impressionistic atmosphere is prominently present in From-A Hundred Little 3-D Pictures' songs for baritone and piano on texts of Daniel Moore. The indeterminate chords, the slowly developing melodies and the cloudy arpeggios that define the general trend, leave enough room to give each song its own character.

New York New York drifts on a piano ostinato and is part spoken word. Floyd answers references to death in the text and title of 'The 3-D picture' with the recurrence of the Gregorian Dies Irea motif which has an association with death. This is later accompanied by the typical 2 note accompaniment of the Death March.
A Golden Stone is musically the most interesting when the piano part is being built up from rhythmically different layers into a metrical labyrinth. Many possibilities of the Disklavier are being utilized. It's a pity that baritone Thomas Buckner misses the warmth which is so essential in the art of song.

The last three tracks on the CD are dedicated to the Disklavier. The improvisations on fragments from Robert Ashley's opera 'el Aiciando' combine a classical piano sound with the sound of a vibraphone and ethereal synthesizers. The simple design (a theme and improvising on that theme), the pure tonality and the 'fade out' at the end give the music something 'sticky'. For the most part, Floyd is able to avoid this in the more percussive sounding Solos and Sequences II: short, nervous motifs thunder repetitively and are being stacked and then taken away which reminded me of Keith Jarrett's solo work. The droning bells that make the middle movement sound like out of control chimes are an example of how a Disklavier doesn't have to sound flat. A nice conclusion. - Koen Van Meel, Kwadratuur.be

In the ever-blurring lines between uptown and downtown, fixed composition and free jazz improvisation, acoustic music and electronic music comes this disc of music by composer/pianist/disklavierist J. B. Floyd. At times sounding like serial music from the '50s or '60s and at other times echoing jazz chords and riffs, Floyd's music is neither. Taking its inspiration from among other things, the very downtown conceptual operas of Robert Ashley (which form the basis of his subtle "Improvisations on Robert Ashley's 'eL/Aficionado'"), vivid New York poems by Daniel Moore which are both spoken and sung here by baritone Thomas Buckner (A Hundred Little 3-D Pictures), Floyd's music is the result of a plethora of influences that could only happen in America in the early 21st century. In Solos and Sequences II, Floyd manages to combine boogie woogie riffs of '40s piano greats Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons with the contemporaneous mystical primitivism of John Cage's early prepared piano music and turn it all into an exciting up-to-date post-minimalist keyboard showcase.
FJO

A Transporting Transmittance for Transverse Flute and Disklavier (9:48)

From - A Hundred Little 3-D Pictures
I New York, New York (4:56)
II The 3-D Picture of Death (8:06)
III A Golden Stone (4:25)

Improvisations on Robert Ashley's "el/Aficionado" for Disklavier
I A Simple Border Crossing (7:19)
II Viva's Boy (6:20)

Solos and Sequences II (7:59)

- New Music Box

In 1975 an extraordinary concert at Northern Illinois University by pianists David Rosenboom and JB Floyd was recorded and issued by ARC Records as Suitable for Framing. Since then, Rosenboom's reputation has been consolidated, both as a composer of major work such as computer music epic Systems of Judgement (Centaur) and as an improvisor, as on Two Lines (Lovely), his duet with saxophonist Anthony Braxton. But Floyd's profile has been low, making Transporting Transmittance all the more welcome.

In recent years Floyd has been investigating the potential of the Disklavier digital piano, used on all seven pieces here. A Transporting Transmittance For Transverse Flute And Disklavier is performed with flautist Lisa Hansen, who sprightly tackles a convoluted line, while the keyboard follows a steadier complementary harmonic path. On From-A Hundred Little 3-D Pictures, Floyd is joined by baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner for its trilogy of settings of poems by Oakland Sufi Daniel Moore, founder in the mid 1960s of the legendary mixed media group, Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, whose members included Angus MacLise. The Disklavier again provides harmonic enhancement, while Buckner brings customary clarity and richness to his interpretation.

Improvisations on Robert Ashley's el/Aficionado for Disklavier and E-Mu Sampler adapts two sections from Ashley's fabulous espionage and interrogation opera. The adaptation was made from its initial scoring for voice and double piano accompaniment, preserving its mysterious mood in sonic shadows that hang in the air around Floyd's sensitive melodic improvising. On Solos and Sequences II, a high energy, neo-Baroque, boogie woogie extravaganza, Floyd pays homage to boogie greats Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons, with an interlude that replicates prepared piano sonorities. This varied sample of Floyd whets the appetite for more, and reissuing Suitable for Framing would make a fine start. - Julian Cowley, The Wire, December 2003

This recording of JB Floyd's music for Yamaha Disklavier, the player-piano of our digital age, sets up a philosophical conundrum not encountered since the days of John Cage in his prime. Just as a recording of, sat, 4'33" undercuts the atmospheric essence of the piece, how is a recording of a computerized self-playing piano different from recording any other piano?

That dilemma makes itself apparent in the opening piece, A Transporting Transmittance For Transverse Flute And Disklavier, a fully composed work that calls for 'for the feeling of an improvisation' in which the performers 'should feel the experience of spontaneous creativity'. Transverse Transmittance has a lot of things going for it, including a fine sense of proportion and otherwise adept performances from Floyd and flautist Lisa Hansen, but spontaneity is not one of them. What could one reasonably expect, however, when only half of the duo has the freedom to be spontaneous, and even then must adhere to a prior conception of mood and tempo?

Once into the recording, however, Floyd reveals a much more attuned creative sense that moulds the rhythmic and harmonic trappings of jazz into a richly personal compositional language. Baritone Thomas Buckner falls into more comfortable territory in three selections from A Hundred Little 3-D Pictures, fashioning their clear inspirations from jazz and musical theatre standards into something resembling a cerebral cabaret set.

All told, though, Floyd fares best on his own. A pair of improvisations from Robert Ashley's opera eL/Aficionado adapts the original two-piano score to disklavier, with the vocal tones replaced by keyboard improvisations, and Floyd's performances of his own Solos and Sequences II sounds like boogie-woogie riffs played on a prepared piano. What I'm still trying to figure out though, is how layering separate performances on a disklavier is different from making plain, old-fashioned, multi-track recording.
- Ken Smith, Gramophone, January 2004