Chris Abrahams & Mike Cooper - Praxis (2020)

A Note From Mike Cooper

This session was recorded at Bohemian Grove in Hibernian House an artists communal loft studio in Sydney. It was part of a tour where I took no guitar with me, travelling light with just a small suitcase of electronics and borrowing guitars from good friends who trusted me with their instruments. For this session I borrowed Chris Abrahams electric guitar and he is playing the Waldorf Q+ keyboard and not his usual acoustic piano.

It was an interesting exercise for me playing different instruments as each one proved a different challenge. I also had an iPhone with one of my favourite apps loaded; a virtual steel guitar app with a choice of six, eight and two ten string instruments, all tuneable, that I have grown to love.

This is the most recent of many session that we have played together since 2006. I toured Australia in various contexts starting in 1995 and met Chris at a concert organised by saxophonist Jim Denley, coincidently at the same Hibernian House which was a different venue on a different floor of the same building in those days, where I was working with the film maker/manipulator Louise Curham. Chris, realising I was staying close to where he lived, invited me to drop by and improvise together, resulting in many live concerts and several cds. Chris is a joy and inspiration to play music with and I think we do it very well together and hope to do more in a future where we can.

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In praxis there can be no prior knowledge of the right means by which we realise the end in a particular situation. For the end itself is only specified in deliberating about the means appropriate to a particular situation(Bernstein 1983: 147). As we think about what we want to achieve, we alter the way we might achieve that. As we think about the way we might go about something, we change what we might aim at. There is a continual interplay between ends and means. In just the same way there is a continual interplay between thought and action. This process involves interpretation, understanding and application in ‘one unified process’ (Gadamer 1979: 275). It is something we engage in as human beings and it is directed at other human beings.