Another oldie, just happened to dig it up and it seemed fun since I hadn't touched it in many years. I was really interested in parallelism and in quartal harmony at the time, and I enjoy how this walks the line between new agey stuff and something a little darker. 

Nixie

Another oldie, I can't remember precisely what inspired the name but it was liner notes for maybe a Keith Jarrett album, I thought it was the Vienna Concert and maybe a Rilke poem but Google has not yet unraveled this mystery. It was a few lines from a poem about a black sun and the sadness and implied beauty it brought the viewer, and the phrase and poem-feeling lingered even if the specifics have long since been forgotten. It's a 16 or so bar lead sheet melody, in this case broken up by with sparse atonal improvisations of different lengths.

The Black Sun Rises

I've always loved Richard Tee and sometimes when I improvise I try to move toward his really hard to imitate gospel purity. I never quite get there but it's a fun push in a different direction and intentionally trying to move around triads and really pure kinds of harmonies. This is basically an 8 bar or so melodic chunk inspired by my first dog, a sweet, awesome soul, and after about that many bars, it can be pretty different every time as I fill in the blanks different ways. (Still miss my old buddy Watson though...)

Papa Dog

This is an older thing I wrote; it's a simple Ornette Coleman type head and I've done it as a swing song, as a spiraling jazz funk jam song, a bunch of other things, and now as a pretty free solo piano thing. It's a sort of Monk-like idea at heart, simple motifs stretched and pulled, and I try to develop the little melodic snippets in this when I play it rather than just 'blowing.' Always ends up being fun.

Wilhelm's Revenge

Live recording from Southpaw in Brooklyn in 2003 or 2004 with Pete Miser's band, good times. Ivan IVE09 Katz on drums, Jeremiah Hosea subbing on bass, Robert Muller on keyboards, Blowout on DJ and vocals, the one and only Pete Miser out front. 

Endure + freestyle intro (Pete Miser)

Written by Robert Muller. From the 2016 Kodama Trio CD, www.kodamatrio.com

Milespost 22

This is a totally unscripted recording session at Frogville Studios in Santa Fe, NM, featuring Andy Zadrozny on bass, Robert Muller on keyboards, and Arne Bey on drums. 

robertmuller

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