I am a composer, improvisational guitarist, painter, and philosopher interested in freely improvised music with a focus on generating extended sound statements within the options afforded through solo performance. What I do is referred to, especially in Europe, as ‘Free Jazz’, totally improvised sound expressions with emphasis on deconstruction of structure and pattern, upon which one can become comfortable and rely on during a performance, while generating a narrative of the moment. I am interested in the textural aspects of the sounds, in the physical dimensioning of each note, of the geometric quality of the sound. I am also concerned with the timbre of every note and passage, and with the rhythmic structure of the relationship of each note to its neighbors within the musical neighborhood. Compositions are improvised extemporaneously on solo electric guitar without the use of tape, tape dubbing, computers or synthesizers. The idea is to utilize a few basic tones and then present relational possibilities inherent in those tones. The improvised compositions often incorporate sonorous multi-tonal qualities, dense, interwoven passages embellished with harmonic and micro-tonal sound statements, or silence further defined by irregular syntaxed rhythms and primitive beats. These extempore compositions incorporate complex musical riddles wherein are displayed the qualities of multiple instrument arrangements, incorporating voicings that bring to mind horns, sax, chimes, cello and strings, and percussion as well as various guitar timbres: All in the service of exploring, exposing, exhuming, and exploding the human GEIST. In fact I have been credited with inventing a new approach to playing guitar[1]. I have recorded and released seven albums of extended sound statements that have received considerable air play on alternative and college radio across North America, Western and Eastern Europe, along with reviews in leading trade journals and press. Tours have included festivals in Russia and Lithuania, where I was awarded fourth place at the Vilnius Jazz Festival. My music was invited for performance consideration at the American Pavilion during the 1991 Bienal-Sao Paulo, in Sao Paulo Brazil. A high point during my concert tour in Russia was when a veteran of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan came up after the performance and indicated that he had been comforted and relieved of a great sense of loss over the death of a fellow soldier and friend through what he experienced from what I had played. While I have enjoyed acclaim, most of my musical work is not easily accessible, nor aimed at a mass market. Rather it could be said to be very cutting edge and an acquired taste, demanding much on the part of both myself as presenter and the audience.
I find supplemental expression through painting[2] and computer generated art. Figurative images have explored the emotional aspects of the human experience, painted in oil done in a style that incorporated the use of my fingers in lieu of brushes; abstract images have explored the definition of the surface, as”well-as color. I have exhibited in several shows in New York City and Washington, DC, as-well-as, shows in Chicago, Minneapolis, Missouri, Maryland, Maine, and Virginia, with positive reviews in the local art-press.
My experiences, encountered while participating in the popular music business from the inside via associations with individuals at Columbia Records (while living in New York) greatly disillusioned me to the belief that the importance of the quality of talent counted as a value considered in the priorities regarded as essential by A&R (Artists and Repertory) executives to achieving ‘Fame and fortune’ as a rock star, as-well-as exemplifying the tremendous shallowness of the whole popular culture within our society. This moved me to look more closely at jazz and ‘free jazz’ as practiced in Europe, by established artists such as Ornatte Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, and by certain young artists at the time beginning to work in Alphabet-city on New York’s lower East side, some of whom I have since shared performance billings with; music expressions that place great value on quality of talent, originality, and uniqueness, as the appropriate voice for my sound statements (a good deal of the time I think in terms of sounds).
I hold a BA in Philosophy Magna Cum Laude from the University of Southern Maine. I was a National Student Exchange participant at the University of Oregon, and have a Certificate in Legal Studies from Antioch School of Law. My philosophy background combines focus on both Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy. I have conducted my continued philosophical interests within a focus that considers examining philosophical questions from both perspectives. Philosophers of interest include: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Geach, P. Strawson, Fodor, Davidson, Block, Andy Clark, Searle, Carruthers, Tye, and Boden. I am interested in issues in the Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness, Philosophy of Psychology, The Self, Thought, Creativity, Imagination, Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), Epistemology, Logic, Perception, and Time. I have continued to read and do research in these areas. Recent areas of attention have focused on issues that involve consciousness, quantum physics, and cognitive science including: questioning the notion of time-bundling with regard to neuronal firings as correlates of consciousness and the adequacy of modularity of mind theories in view of recent research that has shown that there is not a direct correlate of mental activity, neuronal firings within a specific area of the brain, with specific thought, when observation has been MIR verified for both male and female test cases[3]. The fact that these studies display a disjunctive neuronal firing pattern that does not appear to be modular situated raises serious questions regarding the notion of modularity as being basic to brain functionality, as specified in Evolutionary Psychology Theories of Mind, or as being the prime basis for a Philosophy of Mind as one reading of Fodor can imply. These investigations have also raised questions regarding the correctness of Representation Theories and memory storage of tokens. Other discussions have revolved around the issue of the non-locality of consciousness, when one considers the essentialness of information as an element of Phenomenal-consciousness and the difficulties with the localization of information. Currently I have been working on a manuscript examining the role of Imagination as the foundation for thought, drawing on theories of creativity and improvisation through spontaneous thought expression. I have also recently been focusing on the issue of Artificial Intelligence and the notion that Access Consciousness, as flushed out by Ned Block, might serve as a foundation for ascribing a form of consciousness, emphasizing the functional process of making information available to the central control process (executive program) module, unique from human consciousness, to AI. My undergraduate senior thesis on Solipsism, Consciousness, and Philosophy of Mind was published by Rowman & Littlefield as a 136 page monograph in Philosophy titled: Genesis: Involvement: Generation.[4]
Additional occupations and life experiences have included; work as a Mental Health Worker attending to the developmentally disabled in a state institution, providing first hand observation of the effects of various illnesses and adverse conditions upon the mind and the development of consciousness in each of these individuals in particular and as applied to the notion of what constitutes a person in general, twenty-five plus years of experience in the legal profession as a Paralegal in a general practice firm where I managed the firm’s Social Security Denial Appeals cases, Legal Analyst for the Justice Department’s Naval Shipyard asbestos cases defense[5], and Chief Paralegal for an ERISA[6] law firm, work in auto parts and tobacco warehouses, textile factory, funeral home, day-laborer, jewelry salesman, jewelry engraver, watch repairman, museum assistant in the Curatorial Department at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, political campaign worker, art organization board director and advisor, producer of record demos, sound technician, and street urchin. I have published poems in poetry rags in Maine, Texas, and New York, as-well-as a volume titled Gleanings for Monday. I share with the late Columbia Records Producer and Jazz impresario John Hammond, Sr. the distinction of being the subject of a volume of poems, titled John Poems, by the former New York and Nashville poet El Gilbert. I have lived in Maine, New York City, New Jersey, Oregon, The District of Columbia, and Maryland. I have traveled extensively throughout the US and Eastern Canada. International travel has included: Mexico, Russia, Lithuania, and Ireland.
[1] He invented a new technique of playing while continuously changing the pitch of his electric guitar. Svetlana Korel'skaya, ARKHANGEL'SK, Arkhangel'sk, Russia.
[A] composer working to create a new voice for the electric guitar...creating a new approach to the instrument. Tim Brady, Opus Novus, Bradyworks, Codes d'Acces, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
[R]efreshing to hear music of such originality and quality for a change. Don Reimus, WOUI Radio, Chicago, IL.
[H]is playing is a lot less predictable than that of many guitar warriors, and the best of it has a savage beauty that Eddie Van Halen couldn't achieve with six months of overdubs. Mark Jenkins, WASHINGTON CITY PAPER, Washington, DC.
The music is clearly developed, powerful, and expressive. Rick Petrie, WITR Radio, Rochester, NY.
An aggressive, wailing guitar sound--astonishing and extremely individual--that one has never heard before. Grigory Valov, TIF, Arkhangel'sk, Russia.
The thing that strikes first about John Bruce Wallace’s solo improvised guitar style is the sizzling electric distortion pervading his tone. It's like the empty room filled with the electric guitar world of a man deeply abstract and introverted. It’s a personal world, one of thought and space, and gestures full of meaning. No trace of rock rhythmic structures, just rhythms growing out of and into feedback, twisting its way through questions answered by spaciousness or even silences. His thick and saturated tone captures a kind of steel industrial sound, gently relating to the development of the urban situation, and technological society on which he comments, and to the worldly issues faced by modern development. Wallace’s music comes out like a giant question with no apparent answer, just titles such as Afternoon, Early Evening, Evening, yielding the practice of meditation on guitar a way of tapping the human interior’s post pro-harmonic feedback. Notable too is the full-color reproduction of a painting of Wallace’s, depicting a man reaching and withdrawing simultaneously to what is revealed behind the curtain of the soul. Reflective. ”L[a Donna] S[mith], 138 the improvisor March, 96 Birmingham, AL.
[2] Notable... is the full-color reproduction of a painting of Wallace’s, depicting a man reaching and withdrawing simultaneously to what is revealed behind the curtain of the soul. Reflective. ”L[a Donna] S[mith], 138 the improvisor March, 96, Birmingham, AL.
[3] Fox News article By Miranda Hitti, reviewed by Louise Chang, MD., SOURCES: Bell, E. NeuroImage, articles in press. News release, University of Alberta. “The results jumped out at us,” Bell says in a news release. “Sometimes males and females would perform the same tasks and show different brain activation, and sometimes they would perform different tasks and show the same brain activation,” she says. Bell’s colleague, psychiatrist Peter Silverstone, MD, also commented in the news release. “It is widely recognized that there are differences between males and females, but finding that different regions of the brain are activated in men and women in response to the same task has large potential implications for a variety of different clinical situations,” Silverstone says. December 2, 2005.
[4] Deals with the philosophical issues concerning the problems of solipsism: the search for the “self” and its relation to the world. Addressing such traditional questions as the nature of epistemological certainty, metaphysics, and the adequacy of logic and science as foundations of thought, the author expands his investigation to include an examination of the individual and the social sciences. The author draws upon the thought of various philosophers, contending that both metaphysical and epistemological solipsism are faulty notions seeded in an equally faulty endeavor The Quest for Certainty, concluding that it is necessary to return to the Socratic maxim, “Know Thyself”, as a pluralistic field of consciousness. (Review from Amazon.com book listing. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0819116904/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_23/102-7512133-5830531?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155, 12/14/2005)
[5] These cases involved litigation by shipyard workers against United States Navy Shipyards where ship maintenance and repair placed the workers in direct exposure to asbestos. I was responsible for preparing a two volume analysis of critical documents presented by the plaintiffs in these cases. This analysis involved a digest of document contents and statement of relevance to the pros and cons of the plaintiffs’ case in chief for thousands of documents.
[6] ERISA stands for Employee Retirement Income Security Act. This act creates labor-management collectively bargained multi-employer, union pension and welfare funds.
