wednesday (playing solo sets)

A while ago Reona texted me. She was doing the Venas Rotas residency in May and asked if I would play a solo set and also play with Annominatio, a group with Federico Sánchez, Aarón Flores, and Alonso López Valdés. The band is great, so I said yes. I thought about saying no to doing a solo but I wouldn’t say no to Reona so I didn’t.

Do you know what Venas Rotas is? It’s a record store in Roma Norte. They have shows, either punk or experimental or some combination, from Wednesday through Sunday. It’s not the most traditional or the most ideal venue, but it is a vital lifeline - a broken vein - for the scene here. If you are planning a visit, first learn some Spanish, then learn that your actions have consequences that are your responsibility, then figure out how you’re going to visit Venas Rotas and Jazzorca, two vital hubs for the community. It doesn’t matter who’s playing.

Anyway the last time I played a solo show was in October 2025. Marco had invited me to his series. The show was in a puppet theater in Coyoacán. One person, my student Emi, came to watch. Later the guy who runs the theater told me, play here whenever you want. Later I learned that he says that to everybody. But it still felt special.

I’ve played a lot of solo sets over the years. I’ve done tours playing solo, in the US, Canada, and Europe. I’ve always devised some kind of performance for these sets to function as a kind of screen between myself, the public, and my alone-ness. The performance becomes a sort of collaborator, something to react to, direct, redirect, etc. The first set was one where I slowly took the trumpet apart and ended up singing. The second set I turned a valve around and performed a whistling, hissing sound for 20-25 minutes straight before the trumpet filled up with liquid and stopped sounding. The third set turned into feel, released on Thin Wrist in 2019, a kind of endurance exercise that became more and more emotional as I did it. The fourth was a literal song and dance number where I played parts of “Summertime,” then sang the lyric but turned it into a daddy thing while marching around the room. I think this was not a great performance but I made some nice scores for it.

Anyway since 2019 I haven’t done many solo sets. Improvising is about playing with other people and if you can’t improvise with other people - if you can’t interact in a large improvising ensemble - you can’t improvise, period. People who only play solo, or in very small groups, cannot improvise. I didn’t want to be one of these deluded narcissists who pretend to improvise when they’re really just regurgitating whatever licks they’ve been practicing in their padded white practice room, alone, for hours and hours a day, instead of, I don’t know, eating lunch. Music is about life experience and these people do not live. I feel strongly about this and I feel strongly about not being one of those people.

But I guess I took it a little overboard and refused to play solo pretty much ever. My next solo was at CENART in like, 2022? I was upset about something and poured that upset into the piece. I made a kind of structure, I was going to attempt a certain idea over and over and over again and made some gesture to mark my progress. I did this piece twice. At CENART it was successful, the gesture was to stomp my boot against the wooden floor and this worked. At Venas Rotas, which I think had just moved to Roma at that point, the performance didn’t work. I tried to stomp but the floors are carpeted.

I didn’t play another solo until October of last year, the one at the puppet theater. I decided not to think too much about what I was going to do and was happy with what I did. This time I didn’t think at all about what I was going to do. Instead I spent the day thinking about how I am a failure, a joke, pathetic, etc. I took my dog for a walk, I went to the gym for the first time in weeks, I did a little bit of yoga, I decided I am just going to live with these thoughts instead of heroically battling against them. You know, like they always say in meditation videos, just watch those thoughts happen and avoid engaging.

Usually I wear something special when I perform, this time I didn’t. I wore a flannel shirt because it’s chilly at night right now. Venas Rotas was packed and hot. I found a chair because I still hadn’t thought about what I was going to do, I let that insecurity live with my other ones, unengaged in a corner of my brain. I sat in a chair because certain textures are physically demanding enough that I am in danger of fainting if I’m not already sitting down. Maybe I would play them, maybe I wouldn’t.

There’s a two-minute Reel on Venas Rotas’s Instagram page of the performance and I’m glad there’s nothing else. It was a good performance, I was happy with it, it was exhausting, I sweat through my flannel and thought about taking it off. It happened and about 25 people saw it packed into small hot room and that’s the way it should be. Not everything needs to be recorded. If you didn’t see it you didn’t see it. There’s lots of things you won’t see and that is fine, that is the difference that frames your experience.

Now I’m wondering, could I do a string of solo sets and not think about them? Or would I settle into some form inevitably? Would I be disappointed with myself for settling into a form, or would I view it as inevitable? What would the form be? Would I be afraid of changing the form? In 2005 or something my friend and choreographer Christine Elmo gave me my favorite instruction I’ve ever seen: repeat this figure until you are afraid to stop. Would I be afraid to stop? Would I recognize my fear and stop because of it? and now I’m thinking, I should do another tour of solos, maybe in November. Right?