Sounds Impossible: The Mancuso-Suzda Project

Map It:  Grosvenor 

IN AMONG THE sellers of broken iPods and seekers of D/D-free HWP SWPFs, Craigslist also features people attempting to do constructive things.

Such was classical percussionist Simone Mancuso, who had recently come to Silver Spring from Sicily. He posted to the D.C. section of Craigslist in the spring of 2006, looking for someone with whom to improvise. Jeff Suzda, a jazz saxophonist who had recently come to Silver Spring from Chicago, was intrigued by the idea of a classical musician wanting to cut loose on some freestyle and shot Mancuso an e-mail.

The result?

The Mancuso-Suzda Project, purveyors of heady, intoxicating experimental jazz.

The Project finishes up a monthlong residency for emerging artists at the Mansion at Strathmore with a concert on Wednesday and is putting the finishing touches on a self-produced CD, to be released in mid-November.

Amazing what the Interweb can do when it really tries.

The duo's focus is on sound: they improvise with "the sound, with the timbre, with the colors," said Mancuso, "the instruments that we choose."

Suzda, who doesn't have as much choice in instruments as Mancuso, subtly changes his color during melodic improvisation and tries "to get new whooshing sounds and airy sounds out of the saxophone that aren't normally explored."

Mancuso spends a lot of time on the vibes, whose sound he varies by changing mallets or varying his attack. But Mancuso also can choose from a cornucopia of gongs, drums and chimes, along with his secret weapon: the amplified cactus. Mancuso mastered the cactus for a John Cage piece called "Child of Tree," which the composer specifies must be performed with living plants. Suzda said that "when he mentioned that he had played this piece before, I said, 'We have to do that — we have to incorporate the cactus somehow.'"

The two spent a day bewildering plant store owners as they searched for a suitable instrument, and Suzda was the one who got to spend five hours using Magic Markers to indicate the needles' pitches "and getting many cuts."

The amplified cactus sounds something like a haunted, monochrome harp. Suzda accompanies it with quiet clicks and unearthly whispers from his sax.

A single-minded focus on sounds can sometimes stifle other musical elements, but Mancuso and Suzda typically interject some metrical interest as well. Suzda had been experimenting with improvisation in mixed meter, but he knew Mancuso "would fully embrace that; [he] would say, 'I'm up for the challenge of trying to play something where every bar is in a different time.'"

Thus, many Project pieces don't move particularly quickly but nevertheless feel like they are constantly shifting, with Mancuso nailing the rhythms on his instruments while Suzda skates melodies over the evolving pulse.

But it wouldn't mean a thing if these two didn't enjoy playing with each other so much.

"When he can take his world of improvisation, of rhythms and colors and timbres," Suzda said, "and I can take mine of melodies and harmonies, and we can lock them up, that's when our music really happens. We allow each other into each other's creative space."

Mancuso agreed and said their playing is "a conversation between us. I listen to him, and I respond."

You can hear it in the music, too — as unfamiliar as the materials may be, you can follow the music because everything flows from their interaction.

Tonight's concert features both a guest appearance from vibraphonist and D.C. jazz legend Chuck Redd and a new work that Strathmore commissioned from the duo. Called "Counterpoints," the commission will feature the duo playing with a tape loop — a texture inspired by avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, with whom Mancuso has worked in his classical life.

The Project's game on the tape is taking "very, very short sounds and expanding them," Suzda said. "Sounds as short as a nail falling. Or a cactus prick. Or one tap on a drum, and expanding it over seven or eight minutes. And at the same time taking very, very, very long sounds — an hour, two hours long — and condensing them to two or three seconds. Imagine a Beethoven symphony in just two seconds."

As if that tape track weren't enough, Mancuso and Suzda will also have loop pedals available so they can record snatches of their own improv and play with those. It's an ambitious setup, but a fitting one for a duo whose motto is "I've never tried it before, but let's give it a whirl," Suzda said.

The Project has enough skill and chemistry that they just might pull it off and make something truly unforgettable.

» Mansion at Strathmore, 10701 Rockville Pike; Wed., 7:30 p.m, $10; (301) 581-5100. (Grosvenor)

Written by Express contributor Andrew Lindemann Malone
Photos by Luk Photography & Design Studios