Relevant Tones: James Falzone

Clarinetist, composer, and improviser James Falzone is an acclaimed member of the international jazz and creative music scenes, a veteran contemporary music lecturer and clinician, and an award-winning composer. James performs throughout North America and Europe, appears regularly on Downbeat magazine’s Critics’ and Readers’ Polls, and was nominated as the 2011 Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist Association.

James is also a respected educator and scholar and has been on the faculty of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Deep Springs College, North Central College, and was a fellow at The Center for Black Music Research. At present James is the Dean of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.

Stephen Anthony Rawson sits down with James at Cornish’s historic Kerry Hall, where John Cage first began to experiment with the prepared piano, and where Cage met his life partner, renowned dancer Merce Cunningham. They talk about James’s life in music, the “crooked line” he’s walked as an artist, bringing to balance the Already and the Not Yet in music-making, Wayfaring’s new album, Intermezzo, and a whole lot more. 

You can listen to our conversation here.

FEATURED MUSIC:
”Bounce,” Wayfaring (from Intermezzo)
”Who Put the Blood,” Wayfaring (from Intermezzo)
”Tanka 9,” Wayfaring (from Intermezzo)
”Brooklyn Lines,” KLANG (from Brooklyn Lines… Chicago Spaces)
”Layal Bila Nawm,” Allos Musica Ensemble (from Gnossienne)