Lawrence Kumpf

Akio Suzuki

Amelia Cuni

Marcus Pal

Aki Onda

Blank Forms 09

The third issue of Blank Forms' journal is released in conjunction with Freedom is Around the Corner, a retrospective exhibition and performance series devoted to the work of pioneering Danish composer and artist Henning Christiansen (1932-2008).

Freedom Is Around the Corner

Henning Christiansen

One of the world's most singular guitarists, Loren Connors has wrung distinct shades of ephemeral blues from his guitar, its sound ever-shifting while remaining unmistakably his own in more than 100 records across almost four decades. In the mid-80s, Connors took a partial break from music and focused instead on the art of haiku, for which he received the Lafcadio Hearn Award in 1987. With his wife Suzanne Langille he also co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, "The Dancing Ear," published in the Haiku Society of America's journal. It was during this period that Connors penned the material that appears in Autumn's Sun, a chapbook first published by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley's Glass Eye in 1999. The text features diary excerpts from 1987, lyrically fragmented observations interspersed with haiku-like poems that paint an idyllic impression of the passing seasons in his home of New Haven, Connecticut. With synesthetic perception, Connors gazes from tranquil domestic streets. Sycamore, elm, and catalpa trees are activated by the breeze and made to rustle in unison with their natural and artificial surroundings, including the howling dogs from which Connors derived his 'Mazzacane' moniker. As summer fades to winter, Connors portrays death as an undramatic certitude, the flux of his own maturation reflected in musings on his son's. Like his music, Autumn's Sun is tender without being sentimental, conjuring those rare, delicate moments when time stands still. This edition includes "The Dancing Ear" and an introduction by Lawrence Kumpf.

Autumn's Sun

Organic Music Societies

Blank Forms 6

Archival documents and new writings on the intermedia collaborations of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry Don Cherry and Moki Karlsson met in Sweden in the late '60s. They married and began to perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmental activism, children's education and pan-ethnic expression "Organic Music." Their home in Tågarp became a locus of artistic production, attracting free-spirited musicians, poets, actors and artists with the promise of collective life. There, Keith Knox assembled Tågarp Publication Number One to document the collectivistic practices blooming under the Cherrys' guidance. Reproduced here, the text includes interviews with Terry Riley and Cherry, a piece on Pandit Pran Nath, a report on the Bombay Free School and a survey of the esoteric Forest University by Bengt af Kintberg. This book explores Don Cherry's work of the period through additional interviews by Knox, a piece on his Relativity Suite and an essay by Fumi Okiji. Moki's writings on her workshops are featured alongside full-color reproductions of her tapestries, used as performance environments by Don's ensembles. Cherry collaborators Bengt Berger and Christer Bothén contribute travelogues from the era.

Lawrence Kumpf

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