George Cartwright Interview

on playing with NY Gong in France, Curlew, and Ornette Coleman

It is once again my pleasure to continue the interview series with George Cartwright. We talk about his time at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, how he met Daevid Allen and toured with NY Gong in France, how that led to his forming Curlew, and his time playing for Ornette Coleman.

George Cartwright Interview:

George Cartwright was around 21 years old, a college senior in Mississippi, when he got a few bucks from his grandmother and bought himself his first saxophone.  He had been playing piano and guitar, but his interest was now pointed directly at the avant-garde music of Ornette Coleman and others.  By the mid 1970’s he was playing in an avant-garde ensemble, and by 77 he saw an ad in a jazz magazine about the Creative Music Studio co-founded by Ornette Coleman in Woodstock NY.  George packed up his sax and left Mississippi.  

He said the Creative Music Studio was like heaven.  When he wasn’t playing music with his idols who were the teachers, he was having meals with his fellow students sharing not only food but ideas on where they were going with their music.  It was more of a community than a school.

Eventually he got the itch to spend more time in NYC.  But he knew it was already saturated with very good sax players.  He consulted with sax great Oliver Lake about this, who gave him the advice that “there’s always room for one more.”  He’s not in NY long when one of his Creative Music buddies, Mark Kramer (later simply Kramer, founder of Shimmy Disc) invited him to audition for Daevid Allen’s NY Gong band which was about to embark on a tour of France.  He’s on a plane before they can rehearse much.  

In late Sept of 1979, George climbed out of a van in Bordeaux, France.  He’s going to spend the next month traveling with Bill Laswell and the rest of the Gong crew that Daevid Allen has assembled in NY for this tour.  France is practically Allen’s home, since he’d been living there for most of the 1970’s after being refused reentry into the UK while touring with his previous band Soft Machine.  George was not at all familiar with Gong or Daevid Allen, but he did know a bit about Soft Machine, mostly from the William Burroughs books he’d read.  What he didn’t know, he was about to learn as the band got better and better every night.  As George told me, he thought playing with these guys was like “winning the prize hog.” 

The France Intinerary:

As the France tour neared its end, George and Laswell talked about forming a band.  Back in NY, George wasted no time inviting Tom Cora to join Laswell mates Bill Bacon and Nicky Skopelitis.  Curlew was born.  This lineup recorded the first Curlew album in 1980.  Two of the songs were captured live by Martin Bisi at CBGBs.  The rest of the songs were recorded in Woodstock at the Creative Music Studio with long-time Cartwright collaborator Michael Lytle engineering with help from Bisi.  I recently got out my early Curlew records and was reminded of what a great live band they were.  There must have been a consensus on this, because in 2008 this album was reissued with an additional 19 live tracks.

 In 1980, other projects would come along, including one work-in-progress created by the man perhaps most responsible for getting George to leave Mississippi in the first place … his idol Ornette Coleman.  One day Laswell informed Cartwright that he should expect a call from Ornette.  George knew this was the moment he’d been waiting for since his grandmother gave him the money to get that sax.  In a few short days he found himself playing the music of Ornette Coleman barely an arms distance away from the great sax man himself.  Ornette was going to call the project White House.  It was to be an all white cover band of his music.  Sounds strange?  You can read more here:

THE WHITE HOUSE BAND AKA ORNETTE’S ALL-WHITE COVER BAND

White House would not get past the rehearsal stage, but Curlew would evolve, releasing about one album every two years, mostly on the Cuneiform label.  George would move to Memphis, then Minnesota where he resides today in St. Paul.  He is, of course, active in the avant-garde music scene of his community where there exists a long time creative music group and performance space called Zeitgeist which got its start over 20 years ago.  George sent me a video of a recent performance that he was in with the Zeitgeist people.  The large ensemble was playing a text piece by the celebrated avant-garde composer Frederic Rzewski.  This video is a tour de force, not only of the large ensemble improvising to the max, but also of the many camera people that keep the action moving in the multiple screens presented in the video.  Take my word for it, you have to see it to believe it.  And if you have trouble finding George in the video, like I did, let me give you a hint.  He’s not playing sax.

To hear the many sides of sax man George Cartwright, including his non-sax playing, check out these pages…

Curlew:

Recent work:

DECEMBER 21, 2021 BY ZEITGEISTNEWMUSIC

Frederic Rzewski: Plan for Spacecraft