Tips

"Nous n'aurons jamais de repos.
Le présent est perpétuel."

Text: 14 aphorisms by Georges Braque, from "Le jour et la nuit, Cahier de Georges Braque" (1917 - 1952) - Gallimard

"The french text is a selection from the notebooks of Georges Braque. These are aphorisms, speculations, observations, but especially, advice to himself as an artist, and to all other artists. Braque's sayings were an enormous help to me, in my own development; and as I kept repeating these things to myself, over a period of many years, they began to seem like little tunes.

Fifteen years ago, I took 14 of these phrases, and set them, in a chosen order, for voice and soprano and alto saxophones. Illustrated by the improvised sections, the result is a sort of 'casebook cantata', and a working examination into the nature of free play, in these case between two saxophonists, but also about preparation and spontaneity, and of music and information.

Braque's Tips to artists can, of course, best be understood in the context of his painting, somewhat related, also, to the work of Paul Cézanne, to whose memory this piece is dedicated."

Steve Lacy (reprinted from Findings)

References

Selective discography

• Tips (Hat Hut, 1979)

  Tips G-H-I-J:

• Findings (Outre Mesure, 1994)

Note: please use the interactive discography for additional discographical references.