Russ Gershon: Time Traveler, Four Million Years Later

AAJ: Crouch would probably punch you.

RG: [laughs} That's right. You know, Stanley Crouch used to be a drummer before he became a writer, and I was in New York in about '77, and I was at a jazz loft where they had some incredible concert—it might have been [saxophonist] Julius Hemphill or somebody. I was sitting beside a Japanese aficionado who didn't speak English, and of course I didn't speak Japanese. He had a notebook of many shows he'd been going to in New York, and he was showing me the lists of all the different players. He'd been going to shows every night for months. He was a total maniac. He got to one where Stanley Crouch was on drums. I'd heard about Stanley Crouch, and I'd read some very interesting stuff he'd written in the Village Voice. I pointed to the names of the different people in the band, and the Japanese fellow was, like: "Oh, [saxophonist] David Murray, wow!" I get to Stanley Crouch and I point to his name and the guy goes: "Stanley Clouch! Ho ho ho ho ho!" That was his review of Stanley's drumming. [laughs] I'm not sure, but perhaps Stanley got out of the playing end of the business just in time.



AAJ: That's a funny story. Getting back to Mood Music for Time Travelers, it was recorded at various times between '07 and '10. Is this a reflection of your writing process, or is it a reflection on the difficulty of getting a dozen people, who all play in other bands, together at the same time?

RG: [laughs] It's more the latter, and also the difficulty of being understaffed. I wouldn't call myself a one-man operation, but I have most of the responsibility for all the administration and production. It is a big production to get ten people into the studio to record. If we had a record contract, a producer whom I trusted and somebody paying for it all, then I'm sure we would be producing a record a year, at least, because we have plenty of music we haven't recorded.

AAJ: You set up Accurate Records in the late '80s. How much satisfaction have you got from Accurate records as a parallel career to the Either/Orchestra?

RG: It's intrinsically very satisfying. I like the process of creating recordings, from concept to packaging. I have been in love with almost all Accurate releases at some point in the process, and I think they are good works which deserve to be heard. Almost like having a large ensemble, a record label is almost an archaic construct [laughs], and it's frustrating because you're bucking the tide of history in many ways. As a business, it's hardly a business. A business is what a businessman puts together in order to make money. What I do, I've done to get great music to listeners, to help artists focus their vision. Some of it has also made some money. [Laughs.] It's had its ups and downs, but as a body of work, mostly from people in Boston representing a couple of generations of musicians, I think it's great.

AAJ: What's coming up for you and the Either/Orchestra?

RG: We have the second 25th anniversary concert in New York on February 11 at Le Poisson Rouge, a modern multimedia venue in the same space that used to house the historic Village Gate. We played there in 1988, after our first tour. In March we have a couple of dates with Mahmoud Ahmed, the great Ethiopian singer whom we've worked on and off with for the last few years. We've been recording those gigs as we go, and if we do a good job on these shows we may have a whole live album in the can with him. In 2010 I got a commission from Chamber Music America to write some music for the Either/Orchestra, and it's nice to have that vote of confidence. Now I have to get busy and finish it! The music has explicitly Ethiopian influences in it. There's another big project in the works with another Ethiopian singer called Teshome Mitiku. We have a grant application in to fund us to write enough music for a full concert and premiere the music in Boston, New York, Washington and Addis Ababa. He hasn't been back home since he left the country in '70 at the point of a gun, so it'll be a big deal for him as an expatriate who was a big star there in the '60s to return 40 years later with ten pan-American sidekicks. I also have an album's worth of my original compositions done, and it's a question of finding the time to record them.

AAJ: Will you be recording the 25th anniversary concerts?

RG: Both concerts are being extensively documented on multitrack recording and also on video, too. After the first concert, I knew that we have something that's worth producing into a DVD or CD. The work just goes on and on. Looking back on it, so much is founded upon the human relationships. Everybody has enjoyed playing together and having an adventure together, and nobody ever wants to end that.

Selected Discography

Either Orchestra, Mood Music for Time Travelers (Accurate Records, 2010)
Mahmoud Ahmed & Either/Orchestra, Ethiogroove (Buda Musique, 2007)
Either/Orchestra, Live in Addis (Buda Musique, 2005)
Either/Orchestra, Neo- Modernism (Accurate Records, 2004)
Either/Orchestra, Afro- Cubism (Accurate Records, 2002)
Either/Orchestra, More Beautiful than Death (Accurate Records, 2000)
Either/Orchestra, Across the Omniverse (Accurate Records, 1996)
Either/Orchestra, The Brunt (Accurate Records, 1994)
Either/Orchestra, The Calculus of Pleasure (Accurate Records, 1992)
Either/Orchestra, The Half-Life of Desire (Accurate Records, 1990)
Either/Orchestra, Radium (Accurate Records, 1988)
Either/Orchestra, Dial "E" for Either/Orchestra (Accurate Records, 1987)

Photo Credits

Pages 1, 2, 6, 9: Courtesy of Russ Gershon
Pages 3: Eric Antoniou
Page 4: Phil Stiles

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