Posted on July 27, 2022
Here is a release for listeners who want to hear Duck Baker performing music that is right out on the cutting-edge of the avant-garde, even 40+ years after the fact. John Zorn has just released Fencing 1978 on his Tzadik label, and we have copies of the CD for sale from the online store. Here is how the record is described in the Tzadik press release:
Two extremely rare live recordings of the classic Zorn composition “Fencing” from the early days of the Downtown scene. Featuring two realizations of the piece – one recorded at Zorn’s artist loft The Theatre of Musical Optics with Eugene Chadbourne, Duck Baker, and Randy Hutton on guitars – and the other at Bard College with Chadbourne, Polly Bradfield, and John Zorn, a legendary concert that took place with George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, and Roscoe Mitchell in the audience. The music is astonishing – strange sounds, odd juxtapositions, stark silences, sudden explosions, all held together by a bizarre overarching compositional logic.
Featuring a 16-page booklet replete with photos, scores, and extensive notes and remembrances by Zorn, Chadbourne, Baker, and George Lewis, this is a collector’s dream. Vexing and powerful sounds from the 1978 New York Underground!
(The track featuring the Chadbourne-Baker-Hutton Guitar Trio is just under 30 minutes long.)