Armed with a saxophone, an Organelle, and an aluminum can, Caroline Davis spent a month in Wyoming making her debut solo record—and thinking about freedom in all its forms.
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Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Caroline Davis, a saxophonist and composer based in New York.
Her new album, Fallows, just came out on Ropeadope Records. Caroline made it alone during a residency in Ucross, Wyoming - improvising and recording in a cabin, using prepared saxophone techniques and a unique little instrument called an Organelle to process and build sounds she'd never put to tape before. The result is twelve tracks that use the saxophone as raw material rather than a lead voice.
We talk about how that music got made, what it means to deliberately avoid the sound of your own instrument, and Caroline's work teaching music inside Sing Sing prison.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Caroline Davis’s album Fallows )
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00:00 Introduction
01:30 The genesis of Fallows and the Ucross residency
03:19 Prepared saxophone and the aluminum can experiment
04:28 The Organelle: building drum sequences and processing sound
07:18 Why the Organelle sounds organic and wooden
08:43 Solitude, community, and the rhythm of residency life
10:39 Nature at Ucross and the Ralph Waldo Emerson method
13:11 Extended technique: venting, multiphonics, and Christine Abdelnour
18:38 James Falzone and the clarinet
19:17 Anna Webber, Sam Newsome, and soprano saxophone multiphonics
21:15 Cross-disciplinary community and Tulu Bayar's paper art
24:41 Ancestral figures: Geri Allen, Steve Lacy, and Connie Crothers
28:59 Why a saxophonist avoids saxophone music
32:31 Current listening: Annette Peacock, James Blake, and Juana Molina
35:34 Wyoming, Indigenous land, and the Ucross Native fellowship
42:55 Prison abolition, Musicambia, Sing Sing, and Freer Records
47:44 Closing
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Visit Caroline Davis at https://www.carolinedavis.org
Purchase Caroline Davis's 'Fallows' from Ropeadope Records → https://ropeadope.com/store/fallows-cd
Bandcamp → https://carolinedavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/fallows
or Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/fallows-caroline-davis/qghrer6cqo8ir
and listen on your [streaming platform of choice → https://lnk.to/fallows
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