Part of the unrelenting charm of living at the southern end of the Rockies at 7,000 feet: seasonal transitions that often involve unpredictable events. A sudden plunge in temperatures last night and 2 inches of snow, for example, but with the predicted high temp today up into the 60s again. Fruit trees often push out flowers at the first sign of warmer weather and then get slammed with the return of frost and snow. Of course the indigenous denizens around here are adapted for these extreme fluctuations. It's the invaders like myself (even after 24 years I'm still not a local) who get our blossoms battered.
The view of the mist and snow in the foothills (haha, "foothills" that go up as high as 9,000 feet) from the un's apartment at sunset or in the almost-full moonlight yesterday is one way of accessing humility. Living in an environment where there are frequent reminders that we carve out a bare existence shaped by a meager generosity and vivid drama, maybe we get perspective. Having also lived in Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, as well as Bethlehem, PA, what's most apparent in Santa Fe is that humans persist in spite of the distinctly inhospitable environment, not in any dominant or prolific way but tenaciously, tentatively. Even with the relatively huge increase in population over the past 20 years, it's no wonder that New Mexico, the fourth largest state in the US, hosts a mere 2 million puny humans. Roughly 15 people per square mile. And that's artificially inflated by the few "urban" areas. The more rural areas have 4 or fewer people per square mile. Compare to the population of Manhattan, nearly equal to the population of the entire state of New Mexico, with almost 70,000 people per square mile. Or even Phoenix, AZ with about 2,800 people per square mile.
Masochist? Misanthrope? New Mexico's for you! (not the official New Mexico promotional slogan....which I think is still "The Land of Enchantment.")
Insect Trust in the background doing Glade Song, from 1970's Hoboken Saturday Night, hosting Elvin Jones on the drums. "You bring your toys to my house, I will open up the gate, we'll spend the day together making the sun shine. You bring your can to my house, I will open up the can, we'll spend the day together eating a sandwich." If anyone knows how Elvin Jones ended up on this recording, I'd love to hear the story.
My ex-wife's dog passed away Thursday. Kita (a Great Pyrenees/Akita mix) was a beautiful, noble and dignified beast with a few flashes of surprisingly clownish ways. I become massively attached to dogs; it's a sense of real loss for Kita to be gone. But for JG, I can't imagine how global a feeling it must be, as she was inseparable from Kita for 15 years.
I'll be setting up some kind of web platform to host audio files and some of the Duology duets will probably go up first. More info on that later.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
opera madness
One of my day gigs is working as an artist-in-residence (fancy huh?) for the Santa Fe Opera in their Student Produced Opera program. The format is that a theater artist and a composer visit public schools and work with groups of kids age 5-12 to help them write the libretti and music for their own operas. The projects culminate in a public performance, with one of the projects that I started back in October going up last night.
The Nava Elementary after school program was proud to present When Doom Comes Alive, the story of a magic horse who wears the Golden Wreath of Truth, the Dreadful Doctor of Doom who captures the horse because he wants the wreath, and the heroic Escogida family who are swept into the Doctor of Doom's castle by a tornado and imprisoned by meteors but somehow manage to put the Golden Wreath of Truth back on the horse's neck and lead it back to earth, followed by the Dreadful Doctor of Doom who is transformed, once back on earth, into the Daring Doctor of Daylight (who also just happens to be the family's long lost Uncle David).
Tonight, Salazar Elementary offers the world premiere of Operation: Egypt, in which the evil Queen Kryses has stolen all of the world's stories and is keeping them in her tomb and the courageous Agent 21X 006 and his Sidekick travel to Egypt, are captured by mummies, rescued by centipedes and spiders, and return the stories to the children of the world.
Somehow the kids on both projects came up with stories that are no more nor less bizarre than many swanky classic operas. The music ain't Mozart, however. But there are some surprisingly complicated bits, especially rhythmically, that the kids are managing to pull off. Like the mummy rap:
We know your secrets, secret agent
Like that clean, cotton underwear that you wear,
Glowing in the dark under there, there, there
You're really just a scaredy cat
You're really just a scaredy cat
(repeat)
The Nava Elementary after school program was proud to present When Doom Comes Alive, the story of a magic horse who wears the Golden Wreath of Truth, the Dreadful Doctor of Doom who captures the horse because he wants the wreath, and the heroic Escogida family who are swept into the Doctor of Doom's castle by a tornado and imprisoned by meteors but somehow manage to put the Golden Wreath of Truth back on the horse's neck and lead it back to earth, followed by the Dreadful Doctor of Doom who is transformed, once back on earth, into the Daring Doctor of Daylight (who also just happens to be the family's long lost Uncle David).
Tonight, Salazar Elementary offers the world premiere of Operation: Egypt, in which the evil Queen Kryses has stolen all of the world's stories and is keeping them in her tomb and the courageous Agent 21X 006 and his Sidekick travel to Egypt, are captured by mummies, rescued by centipedes and spiders, and return the stories to the children of the world.
Somehow the kids on both projects came up with stories that are no more nor less bizarre than many swanky classic operas. The music ain't Mozart, however. But there are some surprisingly complicated bits, especially rhythmically, that the kids are managing to pull off. Like the mummy rap:
We know your secrets, secret agent
Like that clean, cotton underwear that you wear,
Glowing in the dark under there, there, there
You're really just a scaredy cat
You're really just a scaredy cat
(repeat)
Sunday, March 25, 2007
wha happen?
Duology went remarkably well. Steve Schmidt from Fly on the Wall Productions did a digital recording and burned me a copy on the spot; haven't heard it yet. Somehow zeroing in on six different performers in six back to back duets worked out; especially cool because I had never done a duet with any of them. Ruth Zaporah and I met for the first time at 7:15 in front of the performance space. She called it a blind date.
I got comfortable eventually with the Yamaha grand. These expensive pianos are not properly maintained very often. Uneven action, in particular. There's a lot of great piano tuners around here because of the classical scene but where's the techs to build an even action across the octaves? Also, the preferred tuning locally sweetens the upper-mid register too much, again a reflection of classical priorities. The intonation of the lower two octaves is often so sloppy it's embarrassing. Finally, Yamahas are designed to cut through behemoth orchestras; the upper octaves are brighter than polished silver. It's a shame, because the quality of the box itself is high-- would a little warmth kill anybody? It's got that horrifying music box sound up there. I guess I need to win the lottery and buy a Bosendorfer.
Each duet presented unique opportunities and challenges. I drew the names out of a hat and Mark Weaver on tuba came up first. It's a shame anyone has to go first, really. But Mark wrestled that sucker to the ground. I had trouble hearing him for a bit and realized two things: I was playing too loud. I was in the low end too much. We locked eventually. Ruth Zaporah started behind me, out of my sightline, and yet I could feel the sphere of her energy radiating out, could listen and respond, intensely tuned (at one point the hair on the back of my neck stood up). Chris Jonas tore off the top of my head and handed me a new pair of shoes. Jeremy Bleich's oud playing brought tears to my eyes. Paul Brown's bass shifted, turned, elbowed angular lines. Mike Rowland played with astounding dynamic range and ferocious energy throughout...even in the quiet sections. I owe all of them a debt of gratitude.
Here's the thing: it's been a good while since I performed completely improvised music, especially so focused on the piano. I intentionally did not practice leading up to the show. I know that might sound strange but I decided to get in fresh, try not to bring anything at all (other than a pre-existing 25 year relationship of sorts with the piano). I had never performed a duet on piano with any of the artists and had never even met RZ. Needless to say I was completely and totally absolutely freaking out in the days leading up to this, especially yesterday afternoon. I used to drink a lot in an effort to manage those feelings of horror, nakedness, anxiety; the different thing is being with that set of demons and just riding it out. I kept chiding myself for not being able to center, to be peaceful and serene, and then I realized that was pretty damned funny.
Anyway I had a great time and the players and audience seemed to as well.
Duology Two in the works already. Jeremy suggested we try Triology One. What I wanted to do was call everyone up on stage and do a septet piece, but I didn't want to create an opportunity for noodling and aimlessness, which was mostly (miraculously) absent up until then. Maybe we can try a group piece next time.
I got comfortable eventually with the Yamaha grand. These expensive pianos are not properly maintained very often. Uneven action, in particular. There's a lot of great piano tuners around here because of the classical scene but where's the techs to build an even action across the octaves? Also, the preferred tuning locally sweetens the upper-mid register too much, again a reflection of classical priorities. The intonation of the lower two octaves is often so sloppy it's embarrassing. Finally, Yamahas are designed to cut through behemoth orchestras; the upper octaves are brighter than polished silver. It's a shame, because the quality of the box itself is high-- would a little warmth kill anybody? It's got that horrifying music box sound up there. I guess I need to win the lottery and buy a Bosendorfer.
Each duet presented unique opportunities and challenges. I drew the names out of a hat and Mark Weaver on tuba came up first. It's a shame anyone has to go first, really. But Mark wrestled that sucker to the ground. I had trouble hearing him for a bit and realized two things: I was playing too loud. I was in the low end too much. We locked eventually. Ruth Zaporah started behind me, out of my sightline, and yet I could feel the sphere of her energy radiating out, could listen and respond, intensely tuned (at one point the hair on the back of my neck stood up). Chris Jonas tore off the top of my head and handed me a new pair of shoes. Jeremy Bleich's oud playing brought tears to my eyes. Paul Brown's bass shifted, turned, elbowed angular lines. Mike Rowland played with astounding dynamic range and ferocious energy throughout...even in the quiet sections. I owe all of them a debt of gratitude.
Here's the thing: it's been a good while since I performed completely improvised music, especially so focused on the piano. I intentionally did not practice leading up to the show. I know that might sound strange but I decided to get in fresh, try not to bring anything at all (other than a pre-existing 25 year relationship of sorts with the piano). I had never performed a duet on piano with any of the artists and had never even met RZ. Needless to say I was completely and totally absolutely freaking out in the days leading up to this, especially yesterday afternoon. I used to drink a lot in an effort to manage those feelings of horror, nakedness, anxiety; the different thing is being with that set of demons and just riding it out. I kept chiding myself for not being able to center, to be peaceful and serene, and then I realized that was pretty damned funny.
Anyway I had a great time and the players and audience seemed to as well.
Duology Two in the works already. Jeremy suggested we try Triology One. What I wanted to do was call everyone up on stage and do a septet piece, but I didn't want to create an opportunity for noodling and aimlessness, which was mostly (miraculously) absent up until then. Maybe we can try a group piece next time.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
DUOLOGY one
Duology One
Peter Breslin and Friends present an evening of improvised duets.
Saturday, March 24, 8 pm. $10. O'Shaughnessy Performance Space, Benildus Hall, The College of Santa Fe, 1600 St. Michael's Drive. Call 670-1500 for more information.
Improvising performers include Jeremy Bleich, multiple instruments; Peter Breslin, piano; Paul Brown, bass viol; Chris Jonas, saxophones; Mike Rowland, drums; Mark Weaver, tuba; Ruth Zaporah, voice and movement.
Duology, the study of twos. Duets carved out of fat air. Improvisation in a fairly pure form, with no prior discussion, lead sheets, arrangements or composed themes. In the moment, of the moment, out of the moment, arising from long-standing or completely non-pre-existent creative partnerships. Breslin has never performed with Rowland (his former drum student) nor with Zaporah. Has never played piano with Brown nor Weaver. Has never played a duet with Jonas.
Each participant brings vitally fresh energies coupled with depth of experience.
Performer's Bios
Jeremy Bleich incorporates a wide palette of culture, ancient and modern instruments, traditions and forms as well as electronic manipulation into the creative process of composing, performing and recording music. His approach to the electric bass and the oud have earned him a reputation internationally as an innovator. Jeremy is focused on producing music that captures the essence and meaning behind the process of creating it. He resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he is involved with presenting new music, as well as composing and teaching. Jeremy is a member of the critically acclaimed group birth and has performed and/or recorded with Coung Vu (Pat Metheny Group), Joe Maneri, Jeff Coffen (Bela Fleck), Chris Jonas, Carmen Castaldi, (Joe Lovano), Brook Martinez (barky!), Kevin McCarthy and Nashville songwriters Rick Elias (Ragamuffins) and Jason White. He has played the oud in collaboration w/ Mustafa Stephan Dill (SAMA trio), Andrew Stoltz (laptop musician/composer), and Rahim Alhaj (Iraqi oudist). He has recorded for MCA Records, Hopscotch Records, High Mayhem and INS labels.
Peter Breslin is a percussionist, pianist, composer and teacher who has performed extensively on the east coast and in the southwest. He studied drums with Andrew Cyrille in New York and piano with Shirley Ling in Philadelphia. In northern New Mexico, he has performed on piano in several large ensemble concerts of original composed and improvised music, as well as appeared on drums with a variety of groups, including Mingus Amongus, The John Clark Quintet, The Gluey Brothers, The African Space Program, Mad Trio, Bing, The Miles Davis Electric Project and Rrake. Breslin recently organized, arranged and conducted the Miles Davis Electric Project, a cadre of 14 local musicians re-examining Miles Davis's music from 1970-1975. Currently, Breslin is an artist-in-residence with the Santa Fe Opera's Student Produced Opera Program, and writes on the arts for The Santa Fe Reporter. Breslin broadcasts a weekly creative composed and improvised music program on KSFR, 90.7 FM, Santa Fe Public Radio called "Inside Out," every Thursday from 1-3 pm.
Paul Brown has been playing music for 33 years, studying bass with
Greg Mooter and Rich Appleman at the Berklee College of Music in
Boston, and oud (middle eastern lute) with Haig Manoukian and Necati
Çelik in Mendocino, Calif. He is a specialist in Balkan and Turkish
music, especially as they relate to groove and improvisation. A
recent (re)transplant to Santa Fe, he plays with many groups across
the country, and is starting to play locally as well, with Chris
Jonas' Rrake, Polly Tapia Ferber and Round Mountain, among others.
Mike Rowland has found himself playing drums in miscellaneous weird bands, touring and doing recording projects in Pacific Northwest from 1986-1997, including work with 11 Phantoms, Delilah, Pinewood Derby, and the infamous Rockn' Rod and The Strychnines. Rowland moved to Santa Fe in Spring 1998 and hooked up with Yozo Suzuki and Dierdre Morris, forming the legendary Candy From Strangers, as well as playing in Invisible Plane. Rowland is a Board member and co-founder of High Mayhem (IDEA: Institute for the Development of Experimental Arts). Currently, Rowland plays in The Late Severa Wires. His side projects include The QT, a percussion driven experimental ensemble and guest appearances with We Drew Lightning and The Pedal Pushers.
Chris Jonas of Santa Fe, New Mexico is a composer, multimedia/visual artist and soprano/tenor saxophone player. Jonas has gained recent international attention for his work leading the New York-based ensembles The Sun Spits Cherries, the Jonas Cork Ensemble (a mixture of Irish and Congolese musicians from Cork, Ireland), the Santa Fe poly groove band, Rrake, the collective EU-US quartet amitosis, and along with co-leader and life partner Molly Sturges a neo-Ethiopian pop groove band BING (of annual silent film soundtracks at
the Lensic and Circus Luminous). He is also well known for his 1990s
tenure as a saxophone player and side-man to New York City jazz musicians
and composers Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, The Brooklyn
Sax Quartet and in Butch Morris‘ conduction ensembles. Additionally, Jonas
has also become well known for composing and guest-conducting ensembles
all over the US and Europe, receiving commissions for works for
orchestras, circus noir, soundtracks, installations and new music
ensembles. Jonas also works as an intermedia artist, combining music,
performance, video and new media into structures for performance.
Mark Weaver (an architect by profession) has been playing low-brass instruments since 1970. Primarily self-taught, Mark studied the wind instrument methods of Arnold Jacobs with his student Steve Rossé (now principal tuba, Sydney Symphony Orchestra) in 1989-90. His musical interests have been broad, leading him to involvements with a wide range of ensembles. Currently, Mark is a member of the following ensembles: Brassum, a unique brass+drums quartet performing Weacer;s original compositions, with Dan Clucas, Michael Vlatkovich, Weaver on tuba, and Harris Eisenstadt; Rumble Trio – (Mike Balistreri-dbl bass/percussion, Ben Wright-dbl bass/saw, and MW-tuba) with guests including Jack Wright, Dan Clucas, Tom Leith, Alan Lechusza, Dave Nielsen, Dave Wayne, and Sara Schoenbeck; Selsun Blue – Albuquerque street band quartet with a down-home off-beat approach, led by L.B. Smith with instrumentation including dobro, banjo, guitar, tuba, vocals, drums. Mark has performed in ensembles led by trombonist/composer Michael Vlatkovich, trumpeter/composer Jeff Kaiser, multi-instrumentalist/composer J.A. Deane, pianist/composer Christopher Adler, bassist/composer David Parlato, composer/arranger Jack Manno, percussionist/composer Harris Eisenstadt, multi-instrumentalist/composer Alan Lechusza, dbl-bassist Damon Smith, trumpeter/composer Dan Clucas, saxophonist-composer Chris Jonas and vocalist Patti Littlefield. He considers these artists to have been his teachers, in the absence of a formal music education.
Ruth Zaporah's work established her as one of the San Francisco Bay Area's pre-eminent solo performers. Zaporah recently relocated to Santa Fe, a return to her home town. She is a master of improvisational performance, a master of dramatic action. Her scripts are created in the moment-to-moment process of performance, never to be repeated. Zaporah is a dancer, an actress, a mime. She is a performer who can transform her being into characters of great variety. These characters have extra-ordinary, archetypal dimensions, illuminated by her unique use of language, gesture and her freedom of mind. She dances and sounds, creating environments and moods. Zaporah is funny; she's moving; she's entertaining. Zaporah's book, _The Improvisation of Presence_, is a vital guide to the spirit of improvisation in performance. Zaporah is a teacher of these particular skills of performing, which she calls ACTION THEATER. Ruth's training awakens spontaneity, present awareness, and a sense of play. For her audience and students alike, Zaporah's theater offers a lesson by example: Every action becomes exciting the moment we pay it our undivided attention.
*************************************************************************************
in other news:
Okay, so I finished drafts of all 4 sections of the Santa Fe Reporter's Annual Manual. You know those ideas that hit you and you never do anything about them? The idea I had last year was to collect all the news related to the four sections I did then, (same as this year-- Jobs and Business, Education, House and Garden, Health and Wellness) and have all of that info at my fingertips for the 2007 versions. Of course, I never did this, not even for a week or two after I finished last year. That meant hours of research into news archives, City Council web pages, State of New Mexico government pages, a huge number of websites regarding housing, commerce, real estate, water conservation, alternative energy, health care laws, etc. It's Wednesday morning and I've already forgotten just about everything I knew yesterday. Then there's the strange necessity of double checking city and state web sites by calling info and other numbers on the phone...for example, 6 weeks after local School Board elections, the Santa Fe Public Schools had not updated their website information on the new Board members or officer positions. Santa Fe charm. Land of Manana. Stupid.
Spinning now: Lester Bowie's solo about 17 minutes into "Oh, Strange" from The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Live in Paris, recorded October 5, 1969. It's one of my favorite Lester Bowie statements from any AEC recording. I've had the two album vinyl from Affinity since about 1980; Emery sent along the 2003 2-CD set from Charly. The vinyl is nearly unplayable, so it's amazing to have yet another resurrection experience. Small appreciation: many CDs of extended improvised performances blend the LP sides together on the reissue. It's great to hear the set unfold over something closer to its entire length without having to flip the LP.
Sunny and warm. That's the weather.
Peter Breslin and Friends present an evening of improvised duets.
Saturday, March 24, 8 pm. $10. O'Shaughnessy Performance Space, Benildus Hall, The College of Santa Fe, 1600 St. Michael's Drive. Call 670-1500 for more information.
Improvising performers include Jeremy Bleich, multiple instruments; Peter Breslin, piano; Paul Brown, bass viol; Chris Jonas, saxophones; Mike Rowland, drums; Mark Weaver, tuba; Ruth Zaporah, voice and movement.
Duology, the study of twos. Duets carved out of fat air. Improvisation in a fairly pure form, with no prior discussion, lead sheets, arrangements or composed themes. In the moment, of the moment, out of the moment, arising from long-standing or completely non-pre-existent creative partnerships. Breslin has never performed with Rowland (his former drum student) nor with Zaporah. Has never played piano with Brown nor Weaver. Has never played a duet with Jonas.
Each participant brings vitally fresh energies coupled with depth of experience.
Performer's Bios
Jeremy Bleich incorporates a wide palette of culture, ancient and modern instruments, traditions and forms as well as electronic manipulation into the creative process of composing, performing and recording music. His approach to the electric bass and the oud have earned him a reputation internationally as an innovator. Jeremy is focused on producing music that captures the essence and meaning behind the process of creating it. He resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he is involved with presenting new music, as well as composing and teaching. Jeremy is a member of the critically acclaimed group birth and has performed and/or recorded with Coung Vu (Pat Metheny Group), Joe Maneri, Jeff Coffen (Bela Fleck), Chris Jonas, Carmen Castaldi, (Joe Lovano), Brook Martinez (barky!), Kevin McCarthy and Nashville songwriters Rick Elias (Ragamuffins) and Jason White. He has played the oud in collaboration w/ Mustafa Stephan Dill (SAMA trio), Andrew Stoltz (laptop musician/composer), and Rahim Alhaj (Iraqi oudist). He has recorded for MCA Records, Hopscotch Records, High Mayhem and INS labels.
Peter Breslin is a percussionist, pianist, composer and teacher who has performed extensively on the east coast and in the southwest. He studied drums with Andrew Cyrille in New York and piano with Shirley Ling in Philadelphia. In northern New Mexico, he has performed on piano in several large ensemble concerts of original composed and improvised music, as well as appeared on drums with a variety of groups, including Mingus Amongus, The John Clark Quintet, The Gluey Brothers, The African Space Program, Mad Trio, Bing, The Miles Davis Electric Project and Rrake. Breslin recently organized, arranged and conducted the Miles Davis Electric Project, a cadre of 14 local musicians re-examining Miles Davis's music from 1970-1975. Currently, Breslin is an artist-in-residence with the Santa Fe Opera's Student Produced Opera Program, and writes on the arts for The Santa Fe Reporter. Breslin broadcasts a weekly creative composed and improvised music program on KSFR, 90.7 FM, Santa Fe Public Radio called "Inside Out," every Thursday from 1-3 pm.
Paul Brown has been playing music for 33 years, studying bass with
Greg Mooter and Rich Appleman at the Berklee College of Music in
Boston, and oud (middle eastern lute) with Haig Manoukian and Necati
Çelik in Mendocino, Calif. He is a specialist in Balkan and Turkish
music, especially as they relate to groove and improvisation. A
recent (re)transplant to Santa Fe, he plays with many groups across
the country, and is starting to play locally as well, with Chris
Jonas' Rrake, Polly Tapia Ferber and Round Mountain, among others.
Mike Rowland has found himself playing drums in miscellaneous weird bands, touring and doing recording projects in Pacific Northwest from 1986-1997, including work with 11 Phantoms, Delilah, Pinewood Derby, and the infamous Rockn' Rod and The Strychnines. Rowland moved to Santa Fe in Spring 1998 and hooked up with Yozo Suzuki and Dierdre Morris, forming the legendary Candy From Strangers, as well as playing in Invisible Plane. Rowland is a Board member and co-founder of High Mayhem (IDEA: Institute for the Development of Experimental Arts). Currently, Rowland plays in The Late Severa Wires. His side projects include The QT, a percussion driven experimental ensemble and guest appearances with We Drew Lightning and The Pedal Pushers.
Chris Jonas of Santa Fe, New Mexico is a composer, multimedia/visual artist and soprano/tenor saxophone player. Jonas has gained recent international attention for his work leading the New York-based ensembles The Sun Spits Cherries, the Jonas Cork Ensemble (a mixture of Irish and Congolese musicians from Cork, Ireland), the Santa Fe poly groove band, Rrake, the collective EU-US quartet amitosis, and along with co-leader and life partner Molly Sturges a neo-Ethiopian pop groove band BING (of annual silent film soundtracks at
the Lensic and Circus Luminous). He is also well known for his 1990s
tenure as a saxophone player and side-man to New York City jazz musicians
and composers Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, The Brooklyn
Sax Quartet and in Butch Morris‘ conduction ensembles. Additionally, Jonas
has also become well known for composing and guest-conducting ensembles
all over the US and Europe, receiving commissions for works for
orchestras, circus noir, soundtracks, installations and new music
ensembles. Jonas also works as an intermedia artist, combining music,
performance, video and new media into structures for performance.
Mark Weaver (an architect by profession) has been playing low-brass instruments since 1970. Primarily self-taught, Mark studied the wind instrument methods of Arnold Jacobs with his student Steve Rossé (now principal tuba, Sydney Symphony Orchestra) in 1989-90. His musical interests have been broad, leading him to involvements with a wide range of ensembles. Currently, Mark is a member of the following ensembles: Brassum, a unique brass+drums quartet performing Weacer;s original compositions, with Dan Clucas, Michael Vlatkovich, Weaver on tuba, and Harris Eisenstadt; Rumble Trio – (Mike Balistreri-dbl bass/percussion, Ben Wright-dbl bass/saw, and MW-tuba) with guests including Jack Wright, Dan Clucas, Tom Leith, Alan Lechusza, Dave Nielsen, Dave Wayne, and Sara Schoenbeck; Selsun Blue – Albuquerque street band quartet with a down-home off-beat approach, led by L.B. Smith with instrumentation including dobro, banjo, guitar, tuba, vocals, drums. Mark has performed in ensembles led by trombonist/composer Michael Vlatkovich, trumpeter/composer Jeff Kaiser, multi-instrumentalist/composer J.A. Deane, pianist/composer Christopher Adler, bassist/composer David Parlato, composer/arranger Jack Manno, percussionist/composer Harris Eisenstadt, multi-instrumentalist/composer Alan Lechusza, dbl-bassist Damon Smith, trumpeter/composer Dan Clucas, saxophonist-composer Chris Jonas and vocalist Patti Littlefield. He considers these artists to have been his teachers, in the absence of a formal music education.
Ruth Zaporah's work established her as one of the San Francisco Bay Area's pre-eminent solo performers. Zaporah recently relocated to Santa Fe, a return to her home town. She is a master of improvisational performance, a master of dramatic action. Her scripts are created in the moment-to-moment process of performance, never to be repeated. Zaporah is a dancer, an actress, a mime. She is a performer who can transform her being into characters of great variety. These characters have extra-ordinary, archetypal dimensions, illuminated by her unique use of language, gesture and her freedom of mind. She dances and sounds, creating environments and moods. Zaporah is funny; she's moving; she's entertaining. Zaporah's book, _The Improvisation of Presence_, is a vital guide to the spirit of improvisation in performance. Zaporah is a teacher of these particular skills of performing, which she calls ACTION THEATER. Ruth's training awakens spontaneity, present awareness, and a sense of play. For her audience and students alike, Zaporah's theater offers a lesson by example: Every action becomes exciting the moment we pay it our undivided attention.
*************************************************************************************
in other news:
Okay, so I finished drafts of all 4 sections of the Santa Fe Reporter's Annual Manual. You know those ideas that hit you and you never do anything about them? The idea I had last year was to collect all the news related to the four sections I did then, (same as this year-- Jobs and Business, Education, House and Garden, Health and Wellness) and have all of that info at my fingertips for the 2007 versions. Of course, I never did this, not even for a week or two after I finished last year. That meant hours of research into news archives, City Council web pages, State of New Mexico government pages, a huge number of websites regarding housing, commerce, real estate, water conservation, alternative energy, health care laws, etc. It's Wednesday morning and I've already forgotten just about everything I knew yesterday. Then there's the strange necessity of double checking city and state web sites by calling info and other numbers on the phone...for example, 6 weeks after local School Board elections, the Santa Fe Public Schools had not updated their website information on the new Board members or officer positions. Santa Fe charm. Land of Manana. Stupid.
Spinning now: Lester Bowie's solo about 17 minutes into "Oh, Strange" from The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Live in Paris, recorded October 5, 1969. It's one of my favorite Lester Bowie statements from any AEC recording. I've had the two album vinyl from Affinity since about 1980; Emery sent along the 2003 2-CD set from Charly. The vinyl is nearly unplayable, so it's amazing to have yet another resurrection experience. Small appreciation: many CDs of extended improvised performances blend the LP sides together on the reissue. It's great to hear the set unfold over something closer to its entire length without having to flip the LP.
Sunny and warm. That's the weather.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
a break from copy whoring
The un several days before Christmas in La Mision.I've got several thousand words of copy due to the Santa Fe Reporter for the special Annual Manual issue, a comprehensive guide to living in Santa Fe, by Wednesday (with my own personal goal of getting the sections in early). What does it say about this crazy mountain town that two of the shortest sections are Education and Jobs/Business? And two of the longest are Health and Wellness and House and Garden? I can guess, but all I know is that I'm working on all four.
The last of the Emery shipments arrived last week and I haven't had time to listen to many of the albums, but Clifford Brown's work with the French musicians, 1953, very interesting. More about that soon.
Back to work with me...Sarah Vaughan taking Black Coffee for a ride, with a slinky arrangement that just barely avoids being the corniest thing ever.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
the new originals
A key feature of the "neo mainstream" movement and even certain projects from people outside that movement is to revisit jazz compositions and styles from past times. Honestly, I usually find these revisions or excavations a waste of time (or much worse), as the results rarely have the vitality and urgency of the originals.
Even the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for example, loses me on those Dreaming of the Masters recordings from the 1990s. The cover of Purple Haze, for example, is painful, in my opinion. (Zombie is pretty good as is Creole Love Call).
But there are and have been exceptions. When Sun Ra's band started playing Fletcher Henderson charts in the '80s I was blown away. I love what Steve Lacy and friends did with Monk tunes. The Duke/Strayhorn duets between Lacy and Mal Waldron are absolutely stunning. Duke's own tendency to reach back in his catalogue often had vital results, such as Ellington '55. David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Dave Burrell and some (some!) of Paul Motian's retrospective approaches really grab me. When I'm in the mood, Charlie Haden and Hank Jones' Steal Away works just fine. Dave Holland's bands echo various post-1960 (or so) compositional and improv approaches and his stuff is interesting. Tim Berne's post-modern cut and paste jumpcuts are often intriguing and seem more sincere and less gimmicky than Zorn's earlier work.
The tendency of a lot of the younger neo mainstream players to echo '60s Blue Note approaches (so-called "hard bop") is truly unfortunate, as the original recordings are always far more varied, energetic and natural-sounding. Why would I spin Donald Harrison etc. if I can just check out Turrentine, Blue Mitchell or Lee Morgan?
Here's a (very) short list of revival or back catalogue work I'd be interested to hear:
The Herbie Nichols songbook arranged for a quintet or larger ensemble. I think Rudd's groups used to include some Nichols tunes but I don't have any of those recordings. Perhaps an extensive excavation of Andrew Hill compositions with new approaches/arrangements as well.
A new and improved Skies of America; a better recording with a more enlightened and sympathetic orchestra and conductor.
Re-arrangements and performances of Cecil Taylor compositions for various ensembles.
Art Ensemble of Chicago compositions could be an interesting legacy in the right hands.
A revisiting of James Blood Ulmer and Ronald Shannon Jackson compositions for various formats. Jackson and Ulmer's groundbreaking work went by pretty quickly.
Somebody I admire having a go at a new arrangement of Dogon AD.
Just some thoughts. The Vandermark 5's "Free Jazz Classics" really didn't do it for me, to put it mildly, but that doesn't mean there isn't potential for relevant and vital contemporary stuff to be done using a more judicious and less "corporate bopper" approach.
Even the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for example, loses me on those Dreaming of the Masters recordings from the 1990s. The cover of Purple Haze, for example, is painful, in my opinion. (Zombie is pretty good as is Creole Love Call).
But there are and have been exceptions. When Sun Ra's band started playing Fletcher Henderson charts in the '80s I was blown away. I love what Steve Lacy and friends did with Monk tunes. The Duke/Strayhorn duets between Lacy and Mal Waldron are absolutely stunning. Duke's own tendency to reach back in his catalogue often had vital results, such as Ellington '55. David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Dave Burrell and some (some!) of Paul Motian's retrospective approaches really grab me. When I'm in the mood, Charlie Haden and Hank Jones' Steal Away works just fine. Dave Holland's bands echo various post-1960 (or so) compositional and improv approaches and his stuff is interesting. Tim Berne's post-modern cut and paste jumpcuts are often intriguing and seem more sincere and less gimmicky than Zorn's earlier work.
The tendency of a lot of the younger neo mainstream players to echo '60s Blue Note approaches (so-called "hard bop") is truly unfortunate, as the original recordings are always far more varied, energetic and natural-sounding. Why would I spin Donald Harrison etc. if I can just check out Turrentine, Blue Mitchell or Lee Morgan?
Here's a (very) short list of revival or back catalogue work I'd be interested to hear:
The Herbie Nichols songbook arranged for a quintet or larger ensemble. I think Rudd's groups used to include some Nichols tunes but I don't have any of those recordings. Perhaps an extensive excavation of Andrew Hill compositions with new approaches/arrangements as well.
A new and improved Skies of America; a better recording with a more enlightened and sympathetic orchestra and conductor.
Re-arrangements and performances of Cecil Taylor compositions for various ensembles.
Art Ensemble of Chicago compositions could be an interesting legacy in the right hands.
A revisiting of James Blood Ulmer and Ronald Shannon Jackson compositions for various formats. Jackson and Ulmer's groundbreaking work went by pretty quickly.
Somebody I admire having a go at a new arrangement of Dogon AD.
Just some thoughts. The Vandermark 5's "Free Jazz Classics" really didn't do it for me, to put it mildly, but that doesn't mean there isn't potential for relevant and vital contemporary stuff to be done using a more judicious and less "corporate bopper" approach.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
jazz death part 2
Just want to keep the conversation happening. Lots of folks say to me, "This is boring! There have been so many discussions of whether or not jazz is dead. Get over it." I take that as a good sign. If there have been so many discussions about it, why aren't the results more crystalline? Cogent?
Part of the problem is the yutes of today. They ain't got no respect. The whole idea of tradition is anathema to them. Everything springs full blown and unrooted out of the present moment. There's little if any sense of music history informing their listening or appreciation. Maybe this rant should be saved for my new blog, "Git Offa Mah Yahrd!" (the blog that will pave the way for my inevitable descent into snarling senescence and violent curmudgeonhood).
But really, a lot of what I hear that's being done now just sounds like stuff I've already heard. A lot of my younger friends don't seem to have that baggage. "It's nice," they say and kind of shrug. Why get all lathered up over Branford Marsalis' execrable "version" of A Love Supreme, for example? I mean, if you haven't heard 'Trane's, what difference does it make. And even if you have, so what? It's all good. Shrug. "It's nice."
No, it's not fuckin' nice. It's horrifying.
Well, maybe not. Maybe we're just spoiled in different ways. I'm spoiled by thinking that great artists did great things at various times that are still great and still worth knowing fairly intimately. They're spoiled by the fundamental idea that no one is any more or less great than anyone else and it's all...nice. Shrug.
Culture right now has all the vitality of McMurphy after he's lobotomized in Kesey's "Cuckoo's Nest."
Not sure what this has to do with jazz being dead. Dead as roadkill. Dead as dead can be. If I didn't keep nailing it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies. It's an EX-genre. It's rung up the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
Part of the problem is the yutes of today. They ain't got no respect. The whole idea of tradition is anathema to them. Everything springs full blown and unrooted out of the present moment. There's little if any sense of music history informing their listening or appreciation. Maybe this rant should be saved for my new blog, "Git Offa Mah Yahrd!" (the blog that will pave the way for my inevitable descent into snarling senescence and violent curmudgeonhood).
But really, a lot of what I hear that's being done now just sounds like stuff I've already heard. A lot of my younger friends don't seem to have that baggage. "It's nice," they say and kind of shrug. Why get all lathered up over Branford Marsalis' execrable "version" of A Love Supreme, for example? I mean, if you haven't heard 'Trane's, what difference does it make. And even if you have, so what? It's all good. Shrug. "It's nice."
No, it's not fuckin' nice. It's horrifying.
Well, maybe not. Maybe we're just spoiled in different ways. I'm spoiled by thinking that great artists did great things at various times that are still great and still worth knowing fairly intimately. They're spoiled by the fundamental idea that no one is any more or less great than anyone else and it's all...nice. Shrug.
Culture right now has all the vitality of McMurphy after he's lobotomized in Kesey's "Cuckoo's Nest."
Not sure what this has to do with jazz being dead. Dead as roadkill. Dead as dead can be. If I didn't keep nailing it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies. It's an EX-genre. It's rung up the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
slash and burn
There's a whole class of plants, usually found in extremely xeric, harsh desert climates, called "geophytes." (There are some lavishly "pretty" and more coddled geophytes as well: Iris, crocus, amaryllis, tulip...bulbs, basically. In this post, "geophyte" refers to the rougher, hardcore xeric types).
Geophytic plants are characterized by having a significant portion of their living tissue underground, usually in the form of a tuber, caudex or various subterranean structures of other kinds. Many desert plants evolved to have the vast majority of their living tissue buried in the cool dark, safe from predation, fires, light frosts, plant collectors with anything less than pickaxes, etc. In Madagascar, for example, where slash and burn farming techniques periodically result in as much as 30 percent of the island being in flames at one time, the many geophytic caudiciform succulents growing there survive, sending up new life in between blazes.
A fine example of a geophytic cactus from the US is Peniocereus greggii, the "night blooming cereus" of the Southwest, pictured above. The stems look like dead sticks and sometimes are completely broken off, killed by rare frosts, or burned in brush fires. Underground, an old specimen of Peniocereus greggii can have an enormous tuberous root, weighing 100 pounds or more.
P. greggii specimens in the wild give themselves away 1 or 2 nights a year when they flower. The fragrance is legendary, apparently detectable from a single plant for as much as a 1 mile radius.
Who are the geophytes in music? Stems camouflaged, dead-looking, largely underground. We don't know who they are by their above ground parts. The trick is to be buried. The flowers seem to come out of nowhere, actually resulting (briefly) from the dark itself, a darkness painstakingly guarded, nurturing, protective.
(musings partly dedicated to Leroy Jenkins, 1932-2007)
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Jazz Death?
Jazz is dead. Isn't it? In the immortal words of Lester Bowie, that depends on who you ask. From one point of view, jazz is a cultural artifact, a museum piece originating from a particular time, and whatever is going on now is recycled and derivative. No longer culturally relevant. (I'm reminded of the guy outside the bank in Falling Down: "NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE.")
There's slightly more subtle viewpoints than the above. For example, the "neo-mainstream" "movement" has temporarily lobotomized jazz by trying to make it hold still. Or post-modern cut and paste, collage styles have temporarily "ironified" jazz into a series of witty cliches, pastiches and homages. Or "jazz" itself died in 1959, (or 1940 or 1945, etc.) really, and ever since then god only knows what we've had. Or "contemporary jazz" musicians are too much a product of the schools and have lost any vital connection to the streets, replaced by hip hop etc.
My outrage at the misrepresentation of "free jazz" (a form which is actually fairly expensive) repeated by the guardians of culture has stirred all of these opinions (and more) up from the murky bottoms of Lake Revision.
Sometimes, when I hear so-called "contemporary jazz," I wish it (and when I'm feeling melodramatic, I) were dead. Is there any music worse than bad jazz? To my ears, the slicked out, blanched, over-produced music that passes for "jazz" in most record catalogues these days is among the worst music ever made in human history. The recent wave of "jazz chanteuses," for example, wouldn't know what to do with a great song if it popped right out of their decolletage. An acquaintance of mine recently uttered this sentence: "I'm going to Borders to buy the new Norah Jones...go home, build a fire, listen to some jazz." One of my colleagues at KSFR did a "best of 2006" "jazz" show last month and selected Bob Brookmeyer's Spirit Music CD as the "best of the best." When I started my show immediately after, a caller rang the studio to say "what the hell was that? That's quaalude jazz!"
Here's a possibly even more subtle look at jazz death: it's part and parcel of genre death in general. When I taught secondary school students, they had an unbelievably detailed and often arcane universe of hair-splitting genres. "Iron and Wine isn't Emo! It's shoegazer!" "Dude, are you nuts? Iron and Wine is anti-folk!" Etc. In this digitally-abetted explosion of genres, many of which are contained esoterically within other genres (think Chinese doll), what meaning do the big genres (jazz, classical, rock, pop) have anymore? Jazz already had an unwieldy number of subgenres as long ago as 1970. On freejazz.org, a raging debate sometimes erupts on the relative merits of "free jazz" versus "free improv." These heated arguments are highly entertaining, and a definite sign of the proliferation of hair-splitting categories about which NO ONE CARES except a small group of rabid aficionadoes. (Not that I'm not one of those rabid sorts, as I think the discussion of "free jazz" versus "free improv" is interesting....)
In a relatively conservative cultural climate such as Santa Fe, where there are several high-brow presenting organizations constantly programming the same old Western composed orchestral, vocal and chamber music (we used to be able to say "classical" and be done with it), no one blinks an eye at absolute and completely unswerving predictability. Mozart's 250th birthday went on endlessly, forever, eternally here in this largely blue-hair, rich, ossified arts market. In this context it is a RISKY VENTURE to book Wynton Marsalis. This is jazz death, more surely than any other reality.
There's slightly more subtle viewpoints than the above. For example, the "neo-mainstream" "movement" has temporarily lobotomized jazz by trying to make it hold still. Or post-modern cut and paste, collage styles have temporarily "ironified" jazz into a series of witty cliches, pastiches and homages. Or "jazz" itself died in 1959, (or 1940 or 1945, etc.) really, and ever since then god only knows what we've had. Or "contemporary jazz" musicians are too much a product of the schools and have lost any vital connection to the streets, replaced by hip hop etc.
My outrage at the misrepresentation of "free jazz" (a form which is actually fairly expensive) repeated by the guardians of culture has stirred all of these opinions (and more) up from the murky bottoms of Lake Revision.
Sometimes, when I hear so-called "contemporary jazz," I wish it (and when I'm feeling melodramatic, I) were dead. Is there any music worse than bad jazz? To my ears, the slicked out, blanched, over-produced music that passes for "jazz" in most record catalogues these days is among the worst music ever made in human history. The recent wave of "jazz chanteuses," for example, wouldn't know what to do with a great song if it popped right out of their decolletage. An acquaintance of mine recently uttered this sentence: "I'm going to Borders to buy the new Norah Jones...go home, build a fire, listen to some jazz." One of my colleagues at KSFR did a "best of 2006" "jazz" show last month and selected Bob Brookmeyer's Spirit Music CD as the "best of the best." When I started my show immediately after, a caller rang the studio to say "what the hell was that? That's quaalude jazz!"
Here's a possibly even more subtle look at jazz death: it's part and parcel of genre death in general. When I taught secondary school students, they had an unbelievably detailed and often arcane universe of hair-splitting genres. "Iron and Wine isn't Emo! It's shoegazer!" "Dude, are you nuts? Iron and Wine is anti-folk!" Etc. In this digitally-abetted explosion of genres, many of which are contained esoterically within other genres (think Chinese doll), what meaning do the big genres (jazz, classical, rock, pop) have anymore? Jazz already had an unwieldy number of subgenres as long ago as 1970. On freejazz.org, a raging debate sometimes erupts on the relative merits of "free jazz" versus "free improv." These heated arguments are highly entertaining, and a definite sign of the proliferation of hair-splitting categories about which NO ONE CARES except a small group of rabid aficionadoes. (Not that I'm not one of those rabid sorts, as I think the discussion of "free jazz" versus "free improv" is interesting....)
In a relatively conservative cultural climate such as Santa Fe, where there are several high-brow presenting organizations constantly programming the same old Western composed orchestral, vocal and chamber music (we used to be able to say "classical" and be done with it), no one blinks an eye at absolute and completely unswerving predictability. Mozart's 250th birthday went on endlessly, forever, eternally here in this largely blue-hair, rich, ossified arts market. In this context it is a RISKY VENTURE to book Wynton Marsalis. This is jazz death, more surely than any other reality.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Jazz in the Schools
In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts put up a "classroom resource" for teachers who wanted to do a jazz curriculum. Curious to check out the party line, I investigated. Imagine my astonishment at discovering the web project was produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center (and funded by Verizon Wireless).
Why does the mugshot of Dana Gioia on the "Welcome" page creep me out as much as it does?
No matter. Down to brass tacks. Let's look at the curriculum. Hmm, it appears to be nearly identical to the Ken Burns jazz documentary! And, for that matter to just about every other "history" of jazz ever written, from the perspective of the guardians of culture. (for a very telling snapshot, check out this Lesson Objective from Lesson 1, from the Teacher's Guide: "Students will identify the major early New Orleans jazz musicians, name the various roles they played (e.g., entertainer, teacher, transmitter of cultural tradition), and be able to describe their activities and achievements." Entertainer, teacher, transmitter of cultural tradition. Man, does that have Marsalis sauce all over it or what?)
But you all know what I'm most interested in. Once you get past the King Oliver, the Louis worship, the Bix and Benny and even Parker and Diz, golly, how will this National Endowment for the Arts/Jazz At Lincoln Center/Verizon Wireless curriculum make sense of all that Crazy Experimental Freedom?
Let's go to Lesson 4, "From the New Frontier to the New Millenium," and look at the list of Major Artists. Betty Carter. Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane. Wayne Shorter...hey, hang on a second kids! We missed one! How could we have skipped Wynton Marsalis?? And the perspicacious wisdom of his quote: “Jazz is an art form,” trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has said, “that gives us a painless way of understanding ourselves.” I have a painless way of understanding how Marsalis could be listed as a Major Artist with the likes of Betty Carter, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter...it involves scrolling down to the bottom of the page and being reminded that the educational materials have been Produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. As the Verizon Wireless guy would say, "Can you hear me now?"
Check out these "Jazz Lesson Objectives" provided for teachers:
"Well, sonny boy, read page 4 of the essay that goes with lesson 4, "From the New Frontier to the New Millenium," of the National Endowment for the Arts/Jazz at Lincoln Center/Verizon Wireless Jazz In The Schools Curriculum."
"Well teacher, it says:
"It turned out that, while the commercial vitality of mainstream jazz was fading during the free jazz and fusion eras, a younger generation of jazz musicians was being quietly cultivated not in urban lofts or in experimental ensembles but in colleges, universities, and music conservatories. By the early 1980s, the ranks of the “neo-mainstream” movement, as this new direction in jazz came to be called, were being filled in large part by talented young musicians who had undergone a rigorous program of instruction encompassing the entire history of mainstream jazz. In 1983 and 1984—after paying his dues as a sideman with the veteran drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the pianist Herbie Hancock—a young trumpeter from New Orleans, Wynton Marsalis, won two Grammy Awards, in both the jazz and classical categories. He was a convincing spokesman for jazz, and his music balanced inventiveness with tradition, group interaction with personal expression. The publicity he earned helped launch the careers of a score of likeminded performers—Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Peyton, Geri Allen, Cyrus Chestnutt, James Carter, and Joshua Redman, among others—whom the press collectively dubbed the Young Lions."
"That's right, sonny boy....but, keep reading, it gets better."
"For the many critics and fans who had been fearing the demise of jazz, the music of the neo-mainstream movement was a welcome revival of the music’s core values. Others worried, however, that jazz was now in danger of being confined to a narrow orthodoxy that would blunt the music’s cutting edge. Their concerns would soon prove to be unwarranted, however. During the 1990s, as musicians such as Don Byron, Cassandra Wilson, Dave Douglas, Brad Meldhau, and Jason Moran—whose styles variously incorporate the full spectrum of American and world musics, from country blues to Baltic folk songs to hip-hop—joined the fray, it became clear that contemporary jazz was a big tent that could accommodate a huge variety of aesthetic approaches."
(our courageous student begins to ask what "being confined to a narrow orthodoxy that would blunt the music's cutting edge" really means, but decides against it...and reads on):
"Meanwhile, having already secured a prominent place in the academic arena, jazz began receiving recognition and support both from the government and from private foundations. In 1982 the National Endowment for the Arts created the NEA Jazz Masters program to honor individuals who have contributed to the advancement of jazz; as of 2006 more than 80 artists had received awards. In 1986, four years after the death of the brilliant pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, his family established the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz, which quickly became a potent force both for jazz education and for the recognition of aspiring young jazz musicians (its annual jazz competition has become the preeminent event of its kind in the world). And in 1987, Lincoln Center, New York City’s premier arts complex, added jazz programming to its lineup; less than 10 years later, Jazz at Lincoln Center, with Wynton Marsalis at its helm, took its place alongside the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic as a full-fledged constituent, introducing a full concert season, a permanent jazz orchestra, and a broad range of educational programs that reach audiences of all ages.
"Well, sonny boy, if you ask to ask, you'll never know...."
Why does the mugshot of Dana Gioia on the "Welcome" page creep me out as much as it does?
No matter. Down to brass tacks. Let's look at the curriculum. Hmm, it appears to be nearly identical to the Ken Burns jazz documentary! And, for that matter to just about every other "history" of jazz ever written, from the perspective of the guardians of culture. (for a very telling snapshot, check out this Lesson Objective from Lesson 1, from the Teacher's Guide: "Students will identify the major early New Orleans jazz musicians, name the various roles they played (e.g., entertainer, teacher, transmitter of cultural tradition), and be able to describe their activities and achievements." Entertainer, teacher, transmitter of cultural tradition. Man, does that have Marsalis sauce all over it or what?)
But you all know what I'm most interested in. Once you get past the King Oliver, the Louis worship, the Bix and Benny and even Parker and Diz, golly, how will this National Endowment for the Arts/Jazz At Lincoln Center/Verizon Wireless curriculum make sense of all that Crazy Experimental Freedom?
Let's go to Lesson 4, "From the New Frontier to the New Millenium," and look at the list of Major Artists. Betty Carter. Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane. Wayne Shorter...hey, hang on a second kids! We missed one! How could we have skipped Wynton Marsalis?? And the perspicacious wisdom of his quote: “Jazz is an art form,” trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has said, “that gives us a painless way of understanding ourselves.” I have a painless way of understanding how Marsalis could be listed as a Major Artist with the likes of Betty Carter, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter...it involves scrolling down to the bottom of the page and being reminded that the educational materials have been Produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. As the Verizon Wireless guy would say, "Can you hear me now?"
Check out these "Jazz Lesson Objectives" provided for teachers:
- Students will understand how jazz reflected the political and racial turbulence of the 1960s.
- Students will learn about trends in jazz during the 1960s and 1970s, including free jazz, fusion, and neo-mainstream.
- Students will learn how jazz earned its place as a significant American art form that today enjoys the support of government programs, private conservatories, and major cultural institutions.
"Well, sonny boy, read page 4 of the essay that goes with lesson 4, "From the New Frontier to the New Millenium," of the National Endowment for the Arts/Jazz at Lincoln Center/Verizon Wireless Jazz In The Schools Curriculum."
"Well teacher, it says:
"It turned out that, while the commercial vitality of mainstream jazz was fading during the free jazz and fusion eras, a younger generation of jazz musicians was being quietly cultivated not in urban lofts or in experimental ensembles but in colleges, universities, and music conservatories. By the early 1980s, the ranks of the “neo-mainstream” movement, as this new direction in jazz came to be called, were being filled in large part by talented young musicians who had undergone a rigorous program of instruction encompassing the entire history of mainstream jazz. In 1983 and 1984—after paying his dues as a sideman with the veteran drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the pianist Herbie Hancock—a young trumpeter from New Orleans, Wynton Marsalis, won two Grammy Awards, in both the jazz and classical categories. He was a convincing spokesman for jazz, and his music balanced inventiveness with tradition, group interaction with personal expression. The publicity he earned helped launch the careers of a score of likeminded performers—Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Peyton, Geri Allen, Cyrus Chestnutt, James Carter, and Joshua Redman, among others—whom the press collectively dubbed the Young Lions."
"That's right, sonny boy....but, keep reading, it gets better."
"For the many critics and fans who had been fearing the demise of jazz, the music of the neo-mainstream movement was a welcome revival of the music’s core values. Others worried, however, that jazz was now in danger of being confined to a narrow orthodoxy that would blunt the music’s cutting edge. Their concerns would soon prove to be unwarranted, however. During the 1990s, as musicians such as Don Byron, Cassandra Wilson, Dave Douglas, Brad Meldhau, and Jason Moran—whose styles variously incorporate the full spectrum of American and world musics, from country blues to Baltic folk songs to hip-hop—joined the fray, it became clear that contemporary jazz was a big tent that could accommodate a huge variety of aesthetic approaches."
(our courageous student begins to ask what "being confined to a narrow orthodoxy that would blunt the music's cutting edge" really means, but decides against it...and reads on):
"Meanwhile, having already secured a prominent place in the academic arena, jazz began receiving recognition and support both from the government and from private foundations. In 1982 the National Endowment for the Arts created the NEA Jazz Masters program to honor individuals who have contributed to the advancement of jazz; as of 2006 more than 80 artists had received awards. In 1986, four years after the death of the brilliant pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, his family established the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz, which quickly became a potent force both for jazz education and for the recognition of aspiring young jazz musicians (its annual jazz competition has become the preeminent event of its kind in the world). And in 1987, Lincoln Center, New York City’s premier arts complex, added jazz programming to its lineup; less than 10 years later, Jazz at Lincoln Center, with Wynton Marsalis at its helm, took its place alongside the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic as a full-fledged constituent, introducing a full concert season, a permanent jazz orchestra, and a broad range of educational programs that reach audiences of all ages.
When, in 1997, Marsalis’s epic oratorio Blood on the Fields became the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize, the vital role of jazz in American culture in the coming millennium seemed assured. It’s true that jazz was no longer the nation’s dominant form of popular music as it had been during the heyday of the Swing Era, but in fact jazz had in some ways transcended the popular realm and had become a form of expression equal in stature to classical music, fine art, and literature."
"But teacher," says our courageous student, "I still don't understand how jazz earned its place as a significant American art form that today enjoys the support of government programs, private conservatories, and major cultural institutions?""Well, sonny boy, if you ask to ask, you'll never know...."
Sunday, February 18, 2007
deserts, oceans, reissues
An ancient barrel (Ferocactus cylindraceus) just south of El Rosario, Baja California Norte.
Rancho Santa Ynez, near Catavina in the Central Desert. Sign by Gary Larson.
Playa Saldamando, off the toll road from Tijuana to Ensenada, with tent sites right on the Pacific. Typical of off season experiences, we were the only people camping. There are a couple hundred tent sites.Dizzy Gillespie reissue on Prestige called "In the Beginning" now spinning. Double album with recordings from 1945 to 1950. There seem to be errors in the titles and personnel, so I'll have to dig a bit. Some tracks seem correct, including early work by Dexter Gordon, Al Haig, others. Dizzy's world is a flashing mix of adventure and entertainment. There are some funny moments of sudden transitions on here, including some discordant and ballsy big band performances followed by stuff like Oop Bop Sh'Bam.
Cut to Arthur Blythe's "Illusions," from Blythe's Columbia period, 1980. This is a Behearer selection and I can instantly hear that. I didn't catch much of what Blythe and some of his colleagues were doing in the late '70s/early '80s, as I was more focused on Cecil Taylor and the FMP stuff at the time. I was tired of explicitly composed music and suspicious of the Columbia catalogue in general. I'm deeply admiring of the playing by the personnel on here: James Blood Ulmer, Steve McCall, Fred Hopkins, Bob Stewart, Abdul Wadud. It seems funny that I thought of this music as "commercialized" at the time. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but the larger aesthetic impacts get lost in elitist judgments such as the ones I used to make with great certainty.
With the wisdom of hindsight what amazes me is that a major American label put this music out at all.
Friday, February 16, 2007
various survival analogies
the whole point to the alkaloids is to make creation possible. I mean, if you're eaten before you can set seed, you've just been an herbaceous blip.What's reprodcutive age for an American artist? Cecil Taylor performed at Newport in '55, I think, and won a MacCarthur in 1990 (I think...it was the early '90s, at any rate).
Camouflage is important too. If your flower is too showy you can give yourself away amongst the protective grass.
The above left is a Toumeya papyracantha, probably about 20 years old. The type locality for this bizarre cactus with grass-like spines is Santa Fe. Hardly anybody who lives here knows it exists.
On the Galapagos Islands, without predation, Opuntia echios v. gigantea, which otherwise may have remained just another "prickly pear," grows into a 30 foot tall tree with a 30 foot wide trunk. It's something like a trust fund plant, or a grant recipient, or a plant with patronage.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
attitude
Images...mp3's and music files in general, soon. I want to be high tech, I really do. Especially, since I don't have any recordings out or available anywhere, I want to convert old cassette tapes to digital and archive them. Funny to look at the whole pile of recordings of concerts I did and see it change to CDs after about 2000 or so.The above represents the two main defense strategies of cacti in a harsh environment. Spines out the wazoo in the back row. From left to right: Thelocactus bicolor v. falvidispinus, Thelocactus bicolor, Glandulicactus wrightii. The front row...don't they look tasty, inviting, chewable? The stems are loaded with toxic, bitter alkaloids. From left to right: Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus v. macdowellii, Ariocarpus fissuratus, Ariocarpus trigonus.
So which are you? Spines or alkaloids? (Not to say some cacti don't have both...)
Friday, February 09, 2007
The Kings of Jass
Paul Whiteman spinning as I write this, a collection called The Bix Beiderbecke Legend, on French RCA. These are 1928 sessions, possibly unmarketable were it not for Beiderbecke's presence. The overall effect is refined flour pancakes coated with margarine with three times the optimum syrup, except that certain spare and inventive solos briefly poke through the sucrose. Interesting to note the lead lines that Whiteman often gave to Beiderbecke and how much muscle he brings to otherwise unbelievable fluffy music. I am by no means an expert on '20s and early '30s jazz, and I know there are those listeners out there who are obssessive about these early recordings. But in comparison to Armstrong's Hot 5's and 7's, which I have heard, or Duke's efforts from roughly the same period, this is remarkably soft and genteel music. Whiteman's dense yet unswinging and predictable charts get some small part of "jazz," and the rest is treacle. The two feel is unrelenting, underpinned by the constant 4. There's an offbeat, but the main thrust of the rhythmic motif is on 1 and 3. The dotted 8th note choppiness is unrelenting and overall the phrasing is extremely tidy. The vocal numbers are nearly unlistenable. The strings goop around, providing a tiny bit of fairly tidy melisma. I wonder...if I had decided to play this music 80 years ago would I have also begun to drink myself to death?
But this music must have been extraordinarily easy to dance to. The expropriation of just enough of the more blatant facets of a "jazz" style is balanced quite skillfully with absolutely explicit and unsubtle THUMP thump THUMP thump. The proceedings are fairly well-recorded, and I assume that, relatively speaking, there was money for Whiteman and his orchestras. Is this the first example of white jazz? And did the guy really have to be named Whiteman? The music gods have a sense of humor, for sure.
There a few tracks of Beiderbecke with Hoagy Carmichael and a few of Beiderbecke's own 1930 band with the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Peewee Russell. The Hoagy Carmichael instantly has a different feel from Whiteman. It's funkier, it hops more. But the version of "Rockin' Chair" is sullied by the minstrelsy mugging of the vocals. "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" is a manic and extremely discomfiting "novelty number." Beiderbecke's own band provides a happy go lucky version of one of those searingly ironic tunes, "Deep Down South," a paean to...well, the Deep South. In general, Beiderbecke's own 1930 ensemble recordings feel closer to Whiteman than to Carmichael's syncopation. Except for more of a two-beat feel (one TWO one TWO) and more space for some inventive solos.
When I read Reading Jazz, the anthology edited by Robert Gottleib, it struck me how much romanticization and hero-worship young Beiderbecke received from a generation of "jazz" musicians from roughly 1940 to 1960 or so. The racism inherent in many comments about Beiderbecke is glaring. One famous musician said, "Beiderbecke helped to make jazz civilized." Is this not a deflected way of saying he helped to make it whiter? I'll stand by the queasy feeling I get of "making jazz safe for The Man," and the veiled "great white hope" whistfulness behind Bix worship, despite, of course, not being able to substantiate it.
Bix hagiography also reminds me too much of Dave Douglas's recent odd comments regarding the "crazy experimental freedom" of the '60s and '70s and how improvising musicians now are "harnessing" all that. It is important for creative musicians to remember that only the most blatant ploys (or natural tendencies) toward instant digestibility result in significantly greater sales figures. "Harnessed" CEF is still CEF, and has a very high LD 50. The handful of "jazz" musicians who make any real money (and they are not "jazz" musicians, really, most often) present few if any challenges to the listening public. Even a smidgeon of "crazy experimental freedom," just the slightest hint of it, and one's career is suddenly below the radar. I often innocently pick tracks for my radio show that I am convinced are non-threatening and "inside," perfectly mainstream, and have gotten feedback that "it's just too weird for me, too noisy/strange/hyper/dissonant." The general American listening public has all the sense of adventure of Immanuel Kant.
Having waded through the enjoyably odd Bix sides, it's now Charlie Parker/Fats Navarro/Curley Russell/Bud Powell/Art Blakey, execrable recordings captured live at Birdland, June 30, 1950. Twenty years after Goldkette, Whiteman, Carmichael, Bix. Dirge-like 'Round Midnight. Crazy.
But this music must have been extraordinarily easy to dance to. The expropriation of just enough of the more blatant facets of a "jazz" style is balanced quite skillfully with absolutely explicit and unsubtle THUMP thump THUMP thump. The proceedings are fairly well-recorded, and I assume that, relatively speaking, there was money for Whiteman and his orchestras. Is this the first example of white jazz? And did the guy really have to be named Whiteman? The music gods have a sense of humor, for sure.
There a few tracks of Beiderbecke with Hoagy Carmichael and a few of Beiderbecke's own 1930 band with the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Peewee Russell. The Hoagy Carmichael instantly has a different feel from Whiteman. It's funkier, it hops more. But the version of "Rockin' Chair" is sullied by the minstrelsy mugging of the vocals. "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" is a manic and extremely discomfiting "novelty number." Beiderbecke's own band provides a happy go lucky version of one of those searingly ironic tunes, "Deep Down South," a paean to...well, the Deep South. In general, Beiderbecke's own 1930 ensemble recordings feel closer to Whiteman than to Carmichael's syncopation. Except for more of a two-beat feel (one TWO one TWO) and more space for some inventive solos.
When I read Reading Jazz, the anthology edited by Robert Gottleib, it struck me how much romanticization and hero-worship young Beiderbecke received from a generation of "jazz" musicians from roughly 1940 to 1960 or so. The racism inherent in many comments about Beiderbecke is glaring. One famous musician said, "Beiderbecke helped to make jazz civilized." Is this not a deflected way of saying he helped to make it whiter? I'll stand by the queasy feeling I get of "making jazz safe for The Man," and the veiled "great white hope" whistfulness behind Bix worship, despite, of course, not being able to substantiate it.
Bix hagiography also reminds me too much of Dave Douglas's recent odd comments regarding the "crazy experimental freedom" of the '60s and '70s and how improvising musicians now are "harnessing" all that. It is important for creative musicians to remember that only the most blatant ploys (or natural tendencies) toward instant digestibility result in significantly greater sales figures. "Harnessed" CEF is still CEF, and has a very high LD 50. The handful of "jazz" musicians who make any real money (and they are not "jazz" musicians, really, most often) present few if any challenges to the listening public. Even a smidgeon of "crazy experimental freedom," just the slightest hint of it, and one's career is suddenly below the radar. I often innocently pick tracks for my radio show that I am convinced are non-threatening and "inside," perfectly mainstream, and have gotten feedback that "it's just too weird for me, too noisy/strange/hyper/dissonant." The general American listening public has all the sense of adventure of Immanuel Kant.
Having waded through the enjoyably odd Bix sides, it's now Charlie Parker/Fats Navarro/Curley Russell/Bud Powell/Art Blakey, execrable recordings captured live at Birdland, June 30, 1950. Twenty years after Goldkette, Whiteman, Carmichael, Bix. Dirge-like 'Round Midnight. Crazy.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
shelter, longitude, fantasy
Some days here if you stand just right, against a wall or in an outside alcove, when the sun is shining at the right angle, it's warm, like spring. You suddenly feel like you've traveled hundreds of miles south, or it's 8 weeks from now. The body goes into a strange swoon in moments like these, having been clenched against the cold or artificially warmed for months. Every cell comes alive and the energy of escape, of mad release, of being free, finally, from the limitations of winter cascades like snowmelt.
Maybe it's a moment or two like this that makes me mellow, makes me look back at a winter of carping and criticizing and wonder why I don't post more positive posts. I hear Kenny Davern and Steve Lacy with Swallow and Motian on the radio in the morning and I think "no wonder people think they don't like creative improvised music...this is aimless, wandering trash. Clever, soulless mindfuck music." I hear Branford Marsalis and company from Crazy People Music on the radio this afternoon and think "The Coltrane Quartet on a really bad night. Trane has a canker sore and Elvin's using the wrong sticks. No, it can't be Trane, not when that opportunity to burst through the fog is glaringly missed, not when the piano playing completely lacks direction or spine, not when the whole band falls apart when the tenor takes it too far away. Ah, it's Branford! Now what the fuck was the point of that crap?"
It's hard being me, stuck with my carping negativity every day, day in, day out. There's lame and lazy Freddie Hubbard on the stereo right now. Philly Joe Jones wasting his talents again. A version of Body and Soul that's a total miss. With personnel like Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Reggie Workman and Philly Joe, how can Hubbard fuck up? I don't know, but he manages it.
And what possesses someone like Archie Shepp to record a bunch of duets with Neils Henning Orsted-Pedersen of Charlie Parker tunes? Just play Shepp, Shepp. Goddamn this slack and faltering. Where's The Magic of JuJu Shepp?
I keep thinking of Miles Davis in his last, most famous Blindfold Test with Leonard Feather. Here's his full reaction to the famous trio recording of Duke's Caravan on Duke/Mingus/Roach, Money Jungle:
"What am I supposed to say to that? That's ridiculous. You see the way they can fuck up music? It's a mismatch. They don't complement each other. Max and Mingus can play together, by themselves. Mingus is a hell of a bass player, and Max is a hell of a drummer. But Duke can't play with them, and they can't play with Duke. Now how are you going to give a thing like that stars? Record companies should be kicked in the ass. Somebody should take a picket sign and picket the record company."
This is from the Blindfold Test where he basically hates every single recording and most of the musicians Feather puts on, except The Fifth Dimension's Prologue, The Magic Garden. ("That record is planned, you know. It's like when I do things, it's planned and you lead into other things. It makes sense.") Davis has kind words for The Electric Flag and Stan Getz as well.
I can be just about that ungenerous and irrational. The Davis Blindfold Test was in June, so you can't blame seasonal bitterness for that. But I'll use it as an excuse. Elvin, Elvin, Elvin...who talked you into doing watered down afro-cuban fusion hard bop in 1973? Was it Jan Hammer and his little Moog? Just play Elvin, Elvin.
The strange thing is I like all of these recordings. Not the Branford Marsalis, actually. I can't imagine ever listening to that a second time. But Lacy is a hero of mine. Shepp's duets have a spare, muscular strength and wit. Money Jungle is gorgeous and Miles was wrong, the three of them could play together (although I think Caravan is the weakest cut). Hubbard's sides are great to relax into. Elvin's early '70s recordings are wildly adventurous and take some real risks. And give you a chance to hear Pepper Adams.
I do fantasize about being chill. About enjoying everything. About warming up, thawing out, lightening up. Maybe next month.
Maybe it's a moment or two like this that makes me mellow, makes me look back at a winter of carping and criticizing and wonder why I don't post more positive posts. I hear Kenny Davern and Steve Lacy with Swallow and Motian on the radio in the morning and I think "no wonder people think they don't like creative improvised music...this is aimless, wandering trash. Clever, soulless mindfuck music." I hear Branford Marsalis and company from Crazy People Music on the radio this afternoon and think "The Coltrane Quartet on a really bad night. Trane has a canker sore and Elvin's using the wrong sticks. No, it can't be Trane, not when that opportunity to burst through the fog is glaringly missed, not when the piano playing completely lacks direction or spine, not when the whole band falls apart when the tenor takes it too far away. Ah, it's Branford! Now what the fuck was the point of that crap?"
It's hard being me, stuck with my carping negativity every day, day in, day out. There's lame and lazy Freddie Hubbard on the stereo right now. Philly Joe Jones wasting his talents again. A version of Body and Soul that's a total miss. With personnel like Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Reggie Workman and Philly Joe, how can Hubbard fuck up? I don't know, but he manages it.
And what possesses someone like Archie Shepp to record a bunch of duets with Neils Henning Orsted-Pedersen of Charlie Parker tunes? Just play Shepp, Shepp. Goddamn this slack and faltering. Where's The Magic of JuJu Shepp?
I keep thinking of Miles Davis in his last, most famous Blindfold Test with Leonard Feather. Here's his full reaction to the famous trio recording of Duke's Caravan on Duke/Mingus/Roach, Money Jungle:
"What am I supposed to say to that? That's ridiculous. You see the way they can fuck up music? It's a mismatch. They don't complement each other. Max and Mingus can play together, by themselves. Mingus is a hell of a bass player, and Max is a hell of a drummer. But Duke can't play with them, and they can't play with Duke. Now how are you going to give a thing like that stars? Record companies should be kicked in the ass. Somebody should take a picket sign and picket the record company."
This is from the Blindfold Test where he basically hates every single recording and most of the musicians Feather puts on, except The Fifth Dimension's Prologue, The Magic Garden. ("That record is planned, you know. It's like when I do things, it's planned and you lead into other things. It makes sense.") Davis has kind words for The Electric Flag and Stan Getz as well.
I can be just about that ungenerous and irrational. The Davis Blindfold Test was in June, so you can't blame seasonal bitterness for that. But I'll use it as an excuse. Elvin, Elvin, Elvin...who talked you into doing watered down afro-cuban fusion hard bop in 1973? Was it Jan Hammer and his little Moog? Just play Elvin, Elvin.
The strange thing is I like all of these recordings. Not the Branford Marsalis, actually. I can't imagine ever listening to that a second time. But Lacy is a hero of mine. Shepp's duets have a spare, muscular strength and wit. Money Jungle is gorgeous and Miles was wrong, the three of them could play together (although I think Caravan is the weakest cut). Hubbard's sides are great to relax into. Elvin's early '70s recordings are wildly adventurous and take some real risks. And give you a chance to hear Pepper Adams.
I do fantasize about being chill. About enjoying everything. About warming up, thawing out, lightening up. Maybe next month.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Cecil Taylor versus Behearer
Mwanji Enzana's blog recently featured a note on the continued interest in behearer.com, the wonderful re-accounting of (loosely speaking) "jazz" during the Dark Ages (click on the link for the timetable for the Northsea Jazz Festival, July 1982) of disco and Flock of Seagulls, etc., namely, 1970-1990. Dave Douglas, Ethan Iverson and others went into a kind of list-making frenzy, and the results are generally excellent. If I could figure out how to edit the galldurned lists by year, I would add several recordings by a major figure in American music during this period, someone whose compositional and pianistic strategies emerged in a wholly new way (on record anyway) and then went through at least two other major transitions during this period: Cecil Taylor
Not that Taylor is ignored by the Behearer project. 9 of his recordings are listed for this 20 year period. Compare that, however, to Mr. Taylor's discography for the same period: at least 25 recordings, and that's counting the 11-CD FMP 1988 marathon as one release (the FMP box set is listed on Behearer, in its entirety, as one entry, "Berlin '88.")
Taylor recordings that were essential to me during this period and that I think could easily be argued belong on the lists include:
1973- Indent, Akisakila, Spring of Two Blue J's
1976- Dark Unto Themselves, Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within)
1978- Cecil Taylor Unit, One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye
1979- Max Roach/Cecil Taylor Historic Concerts
1980- It Is In The Brewing Luminous
1981- The Eighth
1984- Segments II: Orchestra of Two Continents Winged Serpents/Sliding Quadrants
1986- Olu Iwa
1990- Double Holy House
Notes by year:
1973
Indent (and its equally stunning counterpart, "Solo," an obscure Japanese release on Trio Records) heralds the "new" Taylor brilliantly. It stands in stark contrast to any of his earlier periods and makes for fascinating listening A/B-ed with "Praxis," another obscure solo piano recording, supposedly from 1968. Akisakila features unbelievable and unrelenting energy and inventiveness from a bare bones trio with Andrew Cyrille and Jimmy Lyons. Some of the most remarkable "free jazz" drumming in the history of the music. Spring of Two Blue J's is simply gorgeous.
1976
Dark Unto Themselves (sometimes erroneously called "Dark to Themselves," an error Inner City Records made that lingers) is absolutely ripping and features the buzzsaw drama of David S. Ware, ballsy trumpet from Raphe Malik, and the roiling and precise drumming of Marc Edwards. The composition is extraordinary as well, and meticulously arranged. Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) is yet another revelation in the solo Taylor catalogue, somehow managing to be a flood-like onslaught of ideas yet minimalist.
1978
Two recordings spotlighting the landmark Unit of CT, one of the greatest groups in the history of jazz: Jimmy Lyons, Raphe Malik, Ramsey Ameen, Sirone and Ronald Shannon Jackson. The Cecil Taylor Unit is the New World Records counterpart to "3 Phasis," which is listed at Behearer. It's especially remarkable to follow the much more ballad-like swells and tidal shifts on this one. As for One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye, it is, quite simply, one of the all time great albums, regardless of style, time period, what have you. It's an epic, even in its edited three record original release, clocking in at more than 2 hours. The CD resissue includes some stunning solos and duets that were a prelude. I've owned this recording since it was released and have yet to absorb it. Every time I sit with it I hear new things.
1979
The Max Roach/Cecil Taylor duets from 1979 are *essential listening* for anyone and everyone. Hard to believe this recording is not on the list.
1980
It Is In The Brewing Luminous is a gorgeous set featuring both Sunny Murray and Jerome Cooper, with particularly stunning solos from Jimmy Lyons and a great, massive yet delicate overall swing.
1981
The Eighth, originally released as "Calling It The Eighth," in edited form, is especially worthy due to the constantly surprising and sensitive interplay of William Parker and Rashid Bakr.
1984
Winged Serpents/Sliding Quadrants...How could this not be on the list as a shoe in? Relatively brief excursions featuring Taylor's indelible mark as composer and arranger. Great ensemble playing. Burnin' solos. In some ways this is a distillation of everything Taylor had done to this point.
1986
Olu Iwa is a fascinating, layered recording. It marks yet another transition for Taylor into different territory. Check the personnel: Earl McIntyre, Peter Brotzmann, Frank Wright, Thurman Barker, William Parker, Steve McCall.
1990
A new chapter in Taylor's solo approach is represented by Double Holy House. His ritualized spoken word and percussion is dubbed over solo piano. The piano atmospheres are more spacious, more explicitly bluesy, gloriously percussive and rumbling with low notes.
Admittedly this is a lot of Taylor. But one could argue that the period from 1970-1990 was his most prolific, his most unrelenting and tenacious in the face of overwhelmingly depressing antithetical forces in America. Sad that almost all of these recordings were recorded or released in Europe. But maybe including more Taylor from 1970-1990 on Behearer is some slight way to remedy that.
Wrapping up this Taylor-like, epic post, I'm spinning "The Eighth." Jimmy Lyons! I had forgotten that the proceedings are launched by a Lyons solo. The fiery and sure backing of Parker and Bakr, and Taylor's earth-rattling dialogue with Lyons: simply not to be missed.
Not that Taylor is ignored by the Behearer project. 9 of his recordings are listed for this 20 year period. Compare that, however, to Mr. Taylor's discography for the same period: at least 25 recordings, and that's counting the 11-CD FMP 1988 marathon as one release (the FMP box set is listed on Behearer, in its entirety, as one entry, "Berlin '88.")
Taylor recordings that were essential to me during this period and that I think could easily be argued belong on the lists include:
1973- Indent, Akisakila, Spring of Two Blue J's
1976- Dark Unto Themselves, Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within)
1978- Cecil Taylor Unit, One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye
1979- Max Roach/Cecil Taylor Historic Concerts
1980- It Is In The Brewing Luminous
1981- The Eighth
1984- Segments II: Orchestra of Two Continents Winged Serpents/Sliding Quadrants
1986- Olu Iwa
1990- Double Holy House
Notes by year:
1973
Indent (and its equally stunning counterpart, "Solo," an obscure Japanese release on Trio Records) heralds the "new" Taylor brilliantly. It stands in stark contrast to any of his earlier periods and makes for fascinating listening A/B-ed with "Praxis," another obscure solo piano recording, supposedly from 1968. Akisakila features unbelievable and unrelenting energy and inventiveness from a bare bones trio with Andrew Cyrille and Jimmy Lyons. Some of the most remarkable "free jazz" drumming in the history of the music. Spring of Two Blue J's is simply gorgeous.
1976
Dark Unto Themselves (sometimes erroneously called "Dark to Themselves," an error Inner City Records made that lingers) is absolutely ripping and features the buzzsaw drama of David S. Ware, ballsy trumpet from Raphe Malik, and the roiling and precise drumming of Marc Edwards. The composition is extraordinary as well, and meticulously arranged. Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) is yet another revelation in the solo Taylor catalogue, somehow managing to be a flood-like onslaught of ideas yet minimalist.
1978
Two recordings spotlighting the landmark Unit of CT, one of the greatest groups in the history of jazz: Jimmy Lyons, Raphe Malik, Ramsey Ameen, Sirone and Ronald Shannon Jackson. The Cecil Taylor Unit is the New World Records counterpart to "3 Phasis," which is listed at Behearer. It's especially remarkable to follow the much more ballad-like swells and tidal shifts on this one. As for One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye, it is, quite simply, one of the all time great albums, regardless of style, time period, what have you. It's an epic, even in its edited three record original release, clocking in at more than 2 hours. The CD resissue includes some stunning solos and duets that were a prelude. I've owned this recording since it was released and have yet to absorb it. Every time I sit with it I hear new things.
1979
The Max Roach/Cecil Taylor duets from 1979 are *essential listening* for anyone and everyone. Hard to believe this recording is not on the list.
1980
It Is In The Brewing Luminous is a gorgeous set featuring both Sunny Murray and Jerome Cooper, with particularly stunning solos from Jimmy Lyons and a great, massive yet delicate overall swing.
1981
The Eighth, originally released as "Calling It The Eighth," in edited form, is especially worthy due to the constantly surprising and sensitive interplay of William Parker and Rashid Bakr.
1984
Winged Serpents/Sliding Quadrants...How could this not be on the list as a shoe in? Relatively brief excursions featuring Taylor's indelible mark as composer and arranger. Great ensemble playing. Burnin' solos. In some ways this is a distillation of everything Taylor had done to this point.
1986
Olu Iwa is a fascinating, layered recording. It marks yet another transition for Taylor into different territory. Check the personnel: Earl McIntyre, Peter Brotzmann, Frank Wright, Thurman Barker, William Parker, Steve McCall.
1990
A new chapter in Taylor's solo approach is represented by Double Holy House. His ritualized spoken word and percussion is dubbed over solo piano. The piano atmospheres are more spacious, more explicitly bluesy, gloriously percussive and rumbling with low notes.
Admittedly this is a lot of Taylor. But one could argue that the period from 1970-1990 was his most prolific, his most unrelenting and tenacious in the face of overwhelmingly depressing antithetical forces in America. Sad that almost all of these recordings were recorded or released in Europe. But maybe including more Taylor from 1970-1990 on Behearer is some slight way to remedy that.
Wrapping up this Taylor-like, epic post, I'm spinning "The Eighth." Jimmy Lyons! I had forgotten that the proceedings are launched by a Lyons solo. The fiery and sure backing of Parker and Bakr, and Taylor's earth-rattling dialogue with Lyons: simply not to be missed.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
New and Improved
The second box of vinyl arrived from my friend Emery. Now playing: The World Saxophone Quartet Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, December 1985, an '86 release on Black Saint. Somehow my ear has been tuned to pick out the now-clear separation between Hemphill and Lake, which in past hearings of the WSQ was never particularly clear to me.
The list, ones I've heard:
Oscar Peterson in Russia- two lp's with Jake Hanna and Orsted-Pedersen...more on Peterson in an upcoming post
David Murray Trio, The Hill- Joe Chambers and Richard Davis
David Murray, Spirituals- Dave Burrell, Fred Hopkins, Ralph Peterson, Jr.
Metheny/Coleman, Song X- On first re-listen, I don't like it. Can't stand Metheny's playing. Go figure.
Oliver Lake, Heavy Spirits- unbelievably gorgeous. Olu Dara playing some lines clearly influenced by Freddie Hubbard; quite surprising. More on this recording in the future too, probably.
Albert Mangelsdorff, Hamburger Idylle- with Elvin Jones, Eddie Gomez, and the unfortunate Wolfgang Dauner on piano...otherwise, killer stuff.
Albert Mangelsdorff, The Wide Point- even more killer, no piano this time; a wonderful multiphonic version of Mood Indigo
not listened to yet:
Fats Navarro w/Tadd Dameron- 2 records on Milestone
Archie Shepp and Orsted-Pedersen- Looking at Bird (duets, 1981)
Jimmy Smith, The Sermon!
Sun Ra, Nothing Is
Ronald Shannon Jackson/Decoding Society, Eye on You
RSJ/Decoding Society, Decode Yourself!
Arthur Blythe, Illusions
Dizzy Gillespie, In the Beginning (amazing looking 2 record set, recordings from 1945 and 1946)
Rashied Ali/Frank Lowe, Duo Exchange- who knew there was a Lowe/Ali duet recording?
The Genius of Bud Powell- 2 records on Verve
Duke Ellington/Ella Fitzgerald, The Stockholm Concert, 1966
Charlie Parker, One Night at Birdland (2 records, June 30th 1950)
The Bix Beiderbecke Legend, 2 records on RCA, mostly Bix early with Goldkette and Whiteman
Bill Evans, Montreux II, live 1970
Dizzy Reece, Manhattan Project- I'm not even sure I've ever heard Dizzy Reece.
Eddie Palmieri, Sueno
Eddie Palmieri, Palo Pa Rumba
John Coltrane, Coltrane Time (the legendary session with Cecil Taylor...my vague memory is it didn't really work, musically, so I look forward to hearing it again)
Henry Threadgill Sextet, Just the Facts and Pass the Bucket
The Quintet: VSOP (Hancock, Hubbard/Carter/Shorter/Williams)
James Blood Ulmer, Freelancing
Fats Waller, Piano Solos 1929-1941
Teddy Wilson, Statements and Improvisations 1934-1942
Lester Young/Roy Eldridge, The Jazz Giants '56 (2 records, Verve)
Fletcher Henderson: A Study in Frustration (4 records from Columbia, looks like it spans 1923-1928. What possessed Columbia to put this amazing set out?)
Oliver Lake/Julius Hemphill, duets "Buster Bee" on Sackville, 1978
Charles Mingus, Mingus and Duke- a 1957 performance and a 1964 performance
Freddie Hubbard, Here to Stay- one of the old double album Blue Note reissues, including Hub Cap and some previously unreleased stuff
Elvin Jones, The Prime Element- another Blue Note reissue double album; what's strange is none of the material was released before this album was put out...
Jelly Roll Morton, 1923/24, includes all of the classic Gennett recordings
Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder
David Murray Big Band, Live at Sweet Basil, Vols. 1 and 2...I was there 2 of the 3 nights, at the callow age of 23.
As with the last box, this list astounds me. I haven't included about 9 records that I have but that are in unplayable condition, replaced with pristine copies. Thank god Emery not only has impeccable taste but also took meticulously excellent care of his vinyl (as opposed to me over the years, especially a trip across the country in August with 115F temps and the resulting catastrophic warping).
I'd write more but now I'm checking out Dameron's arrangements and Navarro's lead lines.....
The list, ones I've heard:
Oscar Peterson in Russia- two lp's with Jake Hanna and Orsted-Pedersen...more on Peterson in an upcoming post
David Murray Trio, The Hill- Joe Chambers and Richard Davis
David Murray, Spirituals- Dave Burrell, Fred Hopkins, Ralph Peterson, Jr.
Metheny/Coleman, Song X- On first re-listen, I don't like it. Can't stand Metheny's playing. Go figure.
Oliver Lake, Heavy Spirits- unbelievably gorgeous. Olu Dara playing some lines clearly influenced by Freddie Hubbard; quite surprising. More on this recording in the future too, probably.
Albert Mangelsdorff, Hamburger Idylle- with Elvin Jones, Eddie Gomez, and the unfortunate Wolfgang Dauner on piano...otherwise, killer stuff.
Albert Mangelsdorff, The Wide Point- even more killer, no piano this time; a wonderful multiphonic version of Mood Indigo
not listened to yet:
Fats Navarro w/Tadd Dameron- 2 records on Milestone
Archie Shepp and Orsted-Pedersen- Looking at Bird (duets, 1981)
Jimmy Smith, The Sermon!
Sun Ra, Nothing Is
Ronald Shannon Jackson/Decoding Society, Eye on You
RSJ/Decoding Society, Decode Yourself!
Arthur Blythe, Illusions
Dizzy Gillespie, In the Beginning (amazing looking 2 record set, recordings from 1945 and 1946)
Rashied Ali/Frank Lowe, Duo Exchange- who knew there was a Lowe/Ali duet recording?
The Genius of Bud Powell- 2 records on Verve
Duke Ellington/Ella Fitzgerald, The Stockholm Concert, 1966
Charlie Parker, One Night at Birdland (2 records, June 30th 1950)
The Bix Beiderbecke Legend, 2 records on RCA, mostly Bix early with Goldkette and Whiteman
Bill Evans, Montreux II, live 1970
Dizzy Reece, Manhattan Project- I'm not even sure I've ever heard Dizzy Reece.
Eddie Palmieri, Sueno
Eddie Palmieri, Palo Pa Rumba
John Coltrane, Coltrane Time (the legendary session with Cecil Taylor...my vague memory is it didn't really work, musically, so I look forward to hearing it again)
Henry Threadgill Sextet, Just the Facts and Pass the Bucket
The Quintet: VSOP (Hancock, Hubbard/Carter/Shorter/Williams)
James Blood Ulmer, Freelancing
Fats Waller, Piano Solos 1929-1941
Teddy Wilson, Statements and Improvisations 1934-1942
Lester Young/Roy Eldridge, The Jazz Giants '56 (2 records, Verve)
Fletcher Henderson: A Study in Frustration (4 records from Columbia, looks like it spans 1923-1928. What possessed Columbia to put this amazing set out?)
Oliver Lake/Julius Hemphill, duets "Buster Bee" on Sackville, 1978
Charles Mingus, Mingus and Duke- a 1957 performance and a 1964 performance
Freddie Hubbard, Here to Stay- one of the old double album Blue Note reissues, including Hub Cap and some previously unreleased stuff
Elvin Jones, The Prime Element- another Blue Note reissue double album; what's strange is none of the material was released before this album was put out...
Jelly Roll Morton, 1923/24, includes all of the classic Gennett recordings
Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder
David Murray Big Band, Live at Sweet Basil, Vols. 1 and 2...I was there 2 of the 3 nights, at the callow age of 23.
As with the last box, this list astounds me. I haven't included about 9 records that I have but that are in unplayable condition, replaced with pristine copies. Thank god Emery not only has impeccable taste but also took meticulously excellent care of his vinyl (as opposed to me over the years, especially a trip across the country in August with 115F temps and the resulting catastrophic warping).
I'd write more but now I'm checking out Dameron's arrangements and Navarro's lead lines.....
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Talking with the QT
Quincy Troupe visits town February 15 courtesy of The Lannan Foundation and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and I'm working up a preview piece for the Reporter. I reached him at "the Historic Sundy House" hotel in Delray Beach Florida, where he's staying while participating in a poetry reading and workshop. (The Artist in America very occasionally snags these luxurious gigs...) "When would be a good time to interview you?" I asked. "Right now! I haven't even unpacked my bags, just got here, just walked in the door. I'll be here until Sunday but we can do the interview now!"
That was a surprise. I hadn't done my homework. I know Troupe from two books: the Miles Davis autobiography and Troupe's own account of the experience of working with Mr. Davis, Miles and Me. I remembered vague trumpetings (sorry) about his poetry, including that he had won the Heavyweight Slam Championship at the Taos Poetry Circus a couple of times (1994, 1995).
Usually I try to keep my "look good" happening. This time, for some reason, I heard myself say "well, I'd love to do the interview right now, but I haven't done my homework-- I've never read any of your poetry and I know you only through the Miles Davis books." (There was that other little voice, in my head, saying "what the hell are you doing?? don't say that!!" etc.).
Fortunately Troupe found that hilarious and, referring to his writing career as "schizophrenic," he launched into the interview at full steam. An hour and fifteen minutes later the proceedings temporarily concluded. I hope we can also do a prerecorded discussion of music that I can run on my radio show. The print interview will run February 14th and I'll link to it. Troupe was by turns hilarious, passionate, insightful, distractable and had all the energy of a Sunny Murray performance.
That was a surprise. I hadn't done my homework. I know Troupe from two books: the Miles Davis autobiography and Troupe's own account of the experience of working with Mr. Davis, Miles and Me. I remembered vague trumpetings (sorry) about his poetry, including that he had won the Heavyweight Slam Championship at the Taos Poetry Circus a couple of times (1994, 1995).
Usually I try to keep my "look good" happening. This time, for some reason, I heard myself say "well, I'd love to do the interview right now, but I haven't done my homework-- I've never read any of your poetry and I know you only through the Miles Davis books." (There was that other little voice, in my head, saying "what the hell are you doing?? don't say that!!" etc.).
Fortunately Troupe found that hilarious and, referring to his writing career as "schizophrenic," he launched into the interview at full steam. An hour and fifteen minutes later the proceedings temporarily concluded. I hope we can also do a prerecorded discussion of music that I can run on my radio show. The print interview will run February 14th and I'll link to it. Troupe was by turns hilarious, passionate, insightful, distractable and had all the energy of a Sunny Murray performance.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
You call yourself a jazz musician?
The first box of vinyl finally arrived two days ago from my old elementary school friend, Emery. The deal is that he sends the records he has transferred to digital and I pay shipping. It's a windfall kind of deal considering the sonic riches he's tossing over my way. Like winning the lottery.
For now I'll just list and maybe make a few brief comments.
In the first box, listened to already:
The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concert, January 1943 (three records)
Money Jungle- Ellington, Roach, Mingus
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: The Ellington Suites
Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins
Other Aspects- Eric Dolphy
The Apartment- Dexter Gordon Quartet
As Long as There's Music- Charlie Haden/Hampton Hawes
Sargasso Sea- John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner
Album Album- Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition (Purcell, David Murray, Rufus Reid, Howard Johnson)
Big news: prior to this afternoon I had never heard Ellington's _Black, Brown and Beige_, which is included in a spliced version on the above-mentioned Carnegie Hall album. I had also never heard the Ellington Suites. I should go back to age 12 and redact every single time I said I was a "jazz fan" or a "jazz musician." As I've mentioned before, every time I hear Ellington now I'm blown away, and Miles Davis's statement to Leonard Feather that everyone "should get down on their knees and thank Duke" sounds more and more reasonable.
Is there a stranger album in the entire history of "jazz" than Dolphy's Other Aspects? And to add strange to strangest, it turns out the lead composition is not titled Jim Crow but Personal Statement, and is by none other than Bob James. (And the vocalist is not a woman but a countertenor named David Schwartz).
Album Album---- from the days of free-wheeling multifaceted small group jazz albums (1984) that weren't shy about enthusiasm, interesting compositions and arrangements and spirit. This is sort of a "standard" jazz album that is endlessly entertaining while at the same time taking creative risks. What the fuck happened to those?
Sargasso Sea- O dark dark dark! I had completely forgotten the moody, brooding pull this murky album had for me when I was in high school. The Sorrows of Young Werther indeed. It's also gorgeous and inventive, if somewhat leaden and/or capricious in spots.
Dexter Gordon makes me happy. So does drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath, who takes flight on The Apartment.
Also in the first box, not yet listened to:
A Love Supreme- Recorded live in concert Europe 1965
Virgin Beauty- OC and Jerry, dude! I already have this on vinyl but it's unplayable
Body Meta- this OC I also have on vinyl but it's unplayable
Ornette Coleman: Town Hall 1962- bass, three violins, cello and drums...45 years ago
Benny Carter: Jazz Giant- BC with Ben Webster, Frank Rosolino, Andre Previn/Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinnegar and Shelley Manne
Marion Brown: Solo Saxophone- live recording from 1977 on the megalabel "Sweet Earth Records."
Porto Novo- Marion Brown with Han Bennink and Maarten van Regteben Altena, also one I have that's unplayable and that I remember as being absolutely ripping
In the Tradition- Anthony Braxton w/Montoliu, Pedersen/Heath
The Great Pretender- Lester Bowie, one of his outings I completely missed somehow
The Third Decade- Art Ensemble
Phase One- Art Ensemble, another one of mine that got destroyed. Especially looking forward to hearing "Ohnedaruth" again.
Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village- another one I used to have that got trashed.
I think there's 3 or 4 more boxes coming. Rants, raves, revisitations and re-evaluations forthcoming...
For now I'll just list and maybe make a few brief comments.
In the first box, listened to already:
The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concert, January 1943 (three records)
Money Jungle- Ellington, Roach, Mingus
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: The Ellington Suites
Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins
Other Aspects- Eric Dolphy
The Apartment- Dexter Gordon Quartet
As Long as There's Music- Charlie Haden/Hampton Hawes
Sargasso Sea- John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner
Album Album- Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition (Purcell, David Murray, Rufus Reid, Howard Johnson)
Big news: prior to this afternoon I had never heard Ellington's _Black, Brown and Beige_, which is included in a spliced version on the above-mentioned Carnegie Hall album. I had also never heard the Ellington Suites. I should go back to age 12 and redact every single time I said I was a "jazz fan" or a "jazz musician." As I've mentioned before, every time I hear Ellington now I'm blown away, and Miles Davis's statement to Leonard Feather that everyone "should get down on their knees and thank Duke" sounds more and more reasonable.
Is there a stranger album in the entire history of "jazz" than Dolphy's Other Aspects? And to add strange to strangest, it turns out the lead composition is not titled Jim Crow but Personal Statement, and is by none other than Bob James. (And the vocalist is not a woman but a countertenor named David Schwartz).
Album Album---- from the days of free-wheeling multifaceted small group jazz albums (1984) that weren't shy about enthusiasm, interesting compositions and arrangements and spirit. This is sort of a "standard" jazz album that is endlessly entertaining while at the same time taking creative risks. What the fuck happened to those?
Sargasso Sea- O dark dark dark! I had completely forgotten the moody, brooding pull this murky album had for me when I was in high school. The Sorrows of Young Werther indeed. It's also gorgeous and inventive, if somewhat leaden and/or capricious in spots.
Dexter Gordon makes me happy. So does drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath, who takes flight on The Apartment.
Also in the first box, not yet listened to:
A Love Supreme- Recorded live in concert Europe 1965
Virgin Beauty- OC and Jerry, dude! I already have this on vinyl but it's unplayable
Body Meta- this OC I also have on vinyl but it's unplayable
Ornette Coleman: Town Hall 1962- bass, three violins, cello and drums...45 years ago
Benny Carter: Jazz Giant- BC with Ben Webster, Frank Rosolino, Andre Previn/Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinnegar and Shelley Manne
Marion Brown: Solo Saxophone- live recording from 1977 on the megalabel "Sweet Earth Records."
Porto Novo- Marion Brown with Han Bennink and Maarten van Regteben Altena, also one I have that's unplayable and that I remember as being absolutely ripping
In the Tradition- Anthony Braxton w/Montoliu, Pedersen/Heath
The Great Pretender- Lester Bowie, one of his outings I completely missed somehow
The Third Decade- Art Ensemble
Phase One- Art Ensemble, another one of mine that got destroyed. Especially looking forward to hearing "Ohnedaruth" again.
Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village- another one I used to have that got trashed.
I think there's 3 or 4 more boxes coming. Rants, raves, revisitations and re-evaluations forthcoming...
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
facing the music
Another change in music criticism brought about by the internet: you might just invite a rebuttal from the musician. On the freejazz.org site (see sidebar, look for post Unity: A Lack Thereof-New Year's Eve 2006, William Parker and Friends. Check out the 117 comments so far....), Dr. Yusef Copeland wrote a negative review of a live show featuring William Parker, Roy Campbell and others. Lo and behold, Mr. Campbell took the time to wade into the fray. (My grandfatherly advice to Campbell was to quote William Blake: "The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow." Wasn't that clever of me?)
This sort of thing may have happened all the time on the NY scene, for example, but there's something interesting in the breakdown of a wall that often stood in public-- that between critic and musician. Who knows how many times musicians have decked writers outside the Village Vanguard or wherever, but the debate rarely got conducted publicly.
On the internet, for example when I post here, I'm aware that whoever it is I'm writing about might see it. The only change that brings about is for me to take responsibility for my opinions, to avoid the slimy ad hominem and the insinuated backhand, formerly in great currency among jazz writers. (a writer on Miles Davis's On the Corner when it was first released, in a two star Downbeat review: "I hate to think that anyone would be so easily pleased as to dig this record to any extent.")
This sort of thing may have happened all the time on the NY scene, for example, but there's something interesting in the breakdown of a wall that often stood in public-- that between critic and musician. Who knows how many times musicians have decked writers outside the Village Vanguard or wherever, but the debate rarely got conducted publicly.
On the internet, for example when I post here, I'm aware that whoever it is I'm writing about might see it. The only change that brings about is for me to take responsibility for my opinions, to avoid the slimy ad hominem and the insinuated backhand, formerly in great currency among jazz writers. (a writer on Miles Davis's On the Corner when it was first released, in a two star Downbeat review: "I hate to think that anyone would be so easily pleased as to dig this record to any extent.")
Monday, January 22, 2007
Everyone's a critic....
Literally, according to Brian Raftery of Idolator.com, in an NPR story by Jacob Ganz from January 5 with the headline "Voice Music Poll Undermined by Internet":
"I feel like it makes a little more sense for an online property to be doing this," says Brian Raftery, an editor of Idolator.com, a blog in the Gawker media network. In November, Idolator announced a critics poll of its own, to be called Jackin' Pop. Raftery and his co-editor Maura Johnston -- like many bloggers -- both work from home. In a Manhattan cafe, just a dozen blocks away from The Village Voice offices where Harvilla will put together Pazz and Jop, Raftery argues that the web has changed the very nature of music criticism.
"I think right now the world of music criticism -- whether it's blogs or alt weeklies or newspapers putting their stuff online for free everyday -- the day to day, hour to hour metabolism of talking about music is only found on the Internet," Raftery says."
Of course the Village Voice poll referenced in the headline is Pazz and Jop, long the pet project of Robert Christgau, fired from the Voice after the paper changed owners. The article continues:
"Robert Christgau, who says he will vote in both polls this year, has been a witness to that change. He's seen the critical establishment grow from just a few dozen writers into a new world where everyone with an Internet connection can sample the music of the day and post an opinion on it. When everyone's a critic, what's the point of a critics' poll?
"Has the Internet made the rationalization of critical opinion easier? Not in my opinion. I don't think so. Because there's simply too much for anybody to digest. You need gatekeepers," Christgau says."
So on the one hand you have Raftery's "day to day, hour to hour metabolism" and on the other you have Christgau's "rationalization of critical opinion." (We'll ignore the "gatekeeper" comment.)
Never mind that the edge had long dulled for the Pazz and Jop poll, long before Al Gore invented that new fangled interweb thang. (Admittedly, last year's Pazz and Jop, topped by Kanye West, had a few curveballs, including both Astor Piazzolla and the Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman reissue Song X topping Shakira's Oral Fixation Vol. 2.) Never mind also that Idolator's poll, oddly titled Jackin' Pop, is as dull and predictable as music polls in general are these days. If Jackin' Pop is supposed to represent some sort of blogger revolution, it's a dismal failure. The greatest thing about the music blog universe is the proliferation of unusual, outre, under-distributed and underground music. The Jackin' Pop poll reads pretty much exactly as one would expect any major media poll to read. (Although it is interesting to disaggregate Jackin' Pop's demographic, perhaps one very effective tool at the "rationalization" of critical opinion that doesn't require a "gatekeeper," just a pull down menu. For example, by age, the under 30 voters have Clipse, Joanna Newsome and Ghostface Killah in the top 5 albums, the over 40 voters pile it on for Dylan, Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, etc. Cross reference at a glance to media outlet: newspaper critics? There's Dylan and the Dixie Chicks again (admittedly with Clipse and Ghostface Killah in the top 5 as well). Alt.weeklies? TV on the Radio, baby. Finally, blogs? Almost identical to the top 5 albums selected by writers under 30. Draw what conclusions you will).
The point is that Christgau has a point. There is too much to digest, even poking around simply in the tiny internet realms of creative improvised and composed music, let alone the entire field of jazz. Entirely by accident, I've stumbled on orgasmic encomia about Chris Botti shows and strange claims referencing recently deceased Michael Brecker as the greatest tenor saxophonist since Coltrane. I've read essays by the children of jazz greats (Professor Darius Brubeck) calling into question the legacy and artistic integrity of geniuses such as Ornette Coleman. (Whose 2006 release, Sound Grammar fares thusly on Jackin' Pop: invisible except for voters over 40, who placed it at 16). I've waded through jaw droppingly passionate 60-comment firefights waged between musicians, critics and onlookers over the musical merit of figures like Bill Dixon, who, no matter his uncontestable brilliance is virtually unknown to the general public. The sea of words swells every day and it does sometimes feel...indigestible. Comment strings are howlingly funny sometimes, simply idiotic at others. (Witness someone named simply "jazzlunatic" responding with typical internet bluntness to Taylor Ho Bynum's guest post at destination-out, for example.)
On the other hand, I have grown fond of Raftery's "day to day, hour to hour metabolism." In the short time that I've been checking into jazz and so-called "free jazz" blogs, I've had many eye and ear opening experiences. But what the NPR article neglects to mention is the impact of the audio blog, the MySpace page, any and all internet outlets where the music itself is instantly accessible, without middleman and with a minimum (or complete absence) of critical opinion. The most amazing resource is the mp3, certainly. Who needs a music critic when you can download the music yourself and simply listen? This alone has changed the nature of music criticism. Let's say you've occasionally heard ecstatic murmurings about a legendary genius, but have never heard any music by him or her, maybe someone like Japanese madman Karou Abe He's out there (on the net I mean) and thanks to Web 2.0 you can hear him, see for yourself if the myths and legends are borne out.
Perhaps it's underground and already marginalized forms of music that ultimately will benefit most from the blogosphere. From this perspective, it's laughable that the NPR article makes a big deal out of a critic's poll on a blog owned by a media company challenging the supremacy of a critic's poll in the Village Voice.
The NPR article concludes:
"The Village Voice will release this year's Pazz and Jop in February. Idolator's list is scheduled to be posted today. Young acts like TV on the Radio and Joanna Newsom are expected to do well.
But don't count out the veterans. Asked to predict a winner, both Harvilla and Raftery picked Modern Times, the 31st studio album from Bob Dylan."
Let me guess: both Harvilla and Raftery are, like yours truly, over 40.
"I feel like it makes a little more sense for an online property to be doing this," says Brian Raftery, an editor of Idolator.com, a blog in the Gawker media network. In November, Idolator announced a critics poll of its own, to be called Jackin' Pop. Raftery and his co-editor Maura Johnston -- like many bloggers -- both work from home. In a Manhattan cafe, just a dozen blocks away from The Village Voice offices where Harvilla will put together Pazz and Jop, Raftery argues that the web has changed the very nature of music criticism.
"I think right now the world of music criticism -- whether it's blogs or alt weeklies or newspapers putting their stuff online for free everyday -- the day to day, hour to hour metabolism of talking about music is only found on the Internet," Raftery says."
Of course the Village Voice poll referenced in the headline is Pazz and Jop, long the pet project of Robert Christgau, fired from the Voice after the paper changed owners. The article continues:
"Robert Christgau, who says he will vote in both polls this year, has been a witness to that change. He's seen the critical establishment grow from just a few dozen writers into a new world where everyone with an Internet connection can sample the music of the day and post an opinion on it. When everyone's a critic, what's the point of a critics' poll?
"Has the Internet made the rationalization of critical opinion easier? Not in my opinion. I don't think so. Because there's simply too much for anybody to digest. You need gatekeepers," Christgau says."
So on the one hand you have Raftery's "day to day, hour to hour metabolism" and on the other you have Christgau's "rationalization of critical opinion." (We'll ignore the "gatekeeper" comment.)
Never mind that the edge had long dulled for the Pazz and Jop poll, long before Al Gore invented that new fangled interweb thang. (Admittedly, last year's Pazz and Jop, topped by Kanye West, had a few curveballs, including both Astor Piazzolla and the Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman reissue Song X topping Shakira's Oral Fixation Vol. 2.) Never mind also that Idolator's poll, oddly titled Jackin' Pop, is as dull and predictable as music polls in general are these days. If Jackin' Pop is supposed to represent some sort of blogger revolution, it's a dismal failure. The greatest thing about the music blog universe is the proliferation of unusual, outre, under-distributed and underground music. The Jackin' Pop poll reads pretty much exactly as one would expect any major media poll to read. (Although it is interesting to disaggregate Jackin' Pop's demographic, perhaps one very effective tool at the "rationalization" of critical opinion that doesn't require a "gatekeeper," just a pull down menu. For example, by age, the under 30 voters have Clipse, Joanna Newsome and Ghostface Killah in the top 5 albums, the over 40 voters pile it on for Dylan, Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, etc. Cross reference at a glance to media outlet: newspaper critics? There's Dylan and the Dixie Chicks again (admittedly with Clipse and Ghostface Killah in the top 5 as well). Alt.weeklies? TV on the Radio, baby. Finally, blogs? Almost identical to the top 5 albums selected by writers under 30. Draw what conclusions you will).
The point is that Christgau has a point. There is too much to digest, even poking around simply in the tiny internet realms of creative improvised and composed music, let alone the entire field of jazz. Entirely by accident, I've stumbled on orgasmic encomia about Chris Botti shows and strange claims referencing recently deceased Michael Brecker as the greatest tenor saxophonist since Coltrane. I've read essays by the children of jazz greats (Professor Darius Brubeck) calling into question the legacy and artistic integrity of geniuses such as Ornette Coleman. (Whose 2006 release, Sound Grammar fares thusly on Jackin' Pop: invisible except for voters over 40, who placed it at 16). I've waded through jaw droppingly passionate 60-comment firefights waged between musicians, critics and onlookers over the musical merit of figures like Bill Dixon, who, no matter his uncontestable brilliance is virtually unknown to the general public. The sea of words swells every day and it does sometimes feel...indigestible. Comment strings are howlingly funny sometimes, simply idiotic at others. (Witness someone named simply "jazzlunatic" responding with typical internet bluntness to Taylor Ho Bynum's guest post at destination-out, for example.)
On the other hand, I have grown fond of Raftery's "day to day, hour to hour metabolism." In the short time that I've been checking into jazz and so-called "free jazz" blogs, I've had many eye and ear opening experiences. But what the NPR article neglects to mention is the impact of the audio blog, the MySpace page, any and all internet outlets where the music itself is instantly accessible, without middleman and with a minimum (or complete absence) of critical opinion. The most amazing resource is the mp3, certainly. Who needs a music critic when you can download the music yourself and simply listen? This alone has changed the nature of music criticism. Let's say you've occasionally heard ecstatic murmurings about a legendary genius, but have never heard any music by him or her, maybe someone like Japanese madman Karou Abe He's out there (on the net I mean) and thanks to Web 2.0 you can hear him, see for yourself if the myths and legends are borne out.
Perhaps it's underground and already marginalized forms of music that ultimately will benefit most from the blogosphere. From this perspective, it's laughable that the NPR article makes a big deal out of a critic's poll on a blog owned by a media company challenging the supremacy of a critic's poll in the Village Voice.
The NPR article concludes:
"The Village Voice will release this year's Pazz and Jop in February. Idolator's list is scheduled to be posted today. Young acts like TV on the Radio and Joanna Newsom are expected to do well.
But don't count out the veterans. Asked to predict a winner, both Harvilla and Raftery picked Modern Times, the 31st studio album from Bob Dylan."
Let me guess: both Harvilla and Raftery are, like yours truly, over 40.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
composing
From Joe Phillips' Pulse, this interesting composer's symposium. (With my own attempt at lucidity interspersed...)
PULSE Composer’s Salon #1
The Audience
“The public is a thick skinned beast which must be continually beaten to let it know you are there.”—Walt Whitman
“Historically, the artist has been a slave, an unregarded wage earner, a courtier, clown and sycophant, a domestic, finally an unknown citizen trying to arrest the attention of a huge anonymous mass public and compel it to learn his name.” —Jacques Barzan from The Use and Abuse of Art
"I. In an interview (New Voices by Geoff and Nicola Walker Smith, Amadeus Press, 1995), Laurie Anderson says that her work/composition is not complete until it has been observed or heard [and subsequently] evaluated by an audience. She goes on to say that the measure of a good work of art is one that (as you experience it) “makes you want to jump up and get out of there” and go and create something yourself. How do you view this statement (especially in relationship toward how your own compositions are received by the public)?"
Anderson's first comment makes me think about completion more than anything else. My understanding is that Anderson is not an improvising artist. For me, as an improvising composer (not that I'm entirely satisfied with that phrase), my experience is that pieces emerge out of practice/rehearsal/performance opportunities, take a few different shapes, sometimes hang around as themes or get transfigured or transliterated into different formats and settings, and then mysteriously (either abruptly or slowly) disappear. The life of certain "composed parts" of an improvised piece peregrinates through many audiences, live and recorded. I just played some solo piano stuff I did in 1986 for the unnarrator and it had a completely different feel to it than I had ever heard before. So for me completion isn't really possible, at least not on my own terms. With this in mind, and remembering (for example) that a friend of mine has a huge box full of Cecil Taylor scores which have never been played or have only had performance in sections, I end up wondering about what Anderson means by "completion." On the one hand, there's a lovely aspect to performance, especially in composition with significant improvised sections and a huge amount of leeway even in the reading of composed sections. Performance always has mysterious energies. Things arise that were inconceivable in rehearsal. Energies are unleashed or redirected. My favorite phenomenon in live performance is the long silence after a piece is finished. If that's there, it feels that sound, space and time have worked themselves out into the mystery they are.
On the second comment, I generally agree that this interactive, inspirational muse experience, this sense of having a fire lit under one's ass to make something, seems common to my experience of many of the works I admire the most. But I wonder about it because I am also sometimes just a consumer. There are art forms that are good to be there for, like dance, but they don't always make me want to run out and make something.
II. One premise of the book Hole in Our Soul by Martha Bayles (Free Press, 1994) is that with the rise of modernism (in art) in the early 20th century, there came a disconnect with audiences—an “antagonism” between the artistic creator and the consumer of the art. Before this perverse (her words) turn of events, the relationship between creator and consumer was not so great. (At least in jazz) high art and the commercial and popular were not always mutually exclusive. As Gary Giddins states, people like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong had the “…ability to balance the emotional gravity of the artist with the communal good cheer of the entertainer…” However, with the advent of such movements as Dadaism or Abstract Expressionism in painting, the literary explorations of Gertrude Stein, Virginia Wolff, and James Joyce, and in music the dodecaphonic and serial explorations of Arnold Schoenberg, chance and aleatory music of John Cage and in jazz the rise of bebop and free jazz, large audiences mostly tuned out. Jazz critic Philip Larkin is quoted in Hole in Our Soul stating, “To say I don’t like modern jazz because it’s modernist art simply raises the question of why I don’t like modernist art…I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by (Charlie) Parker, (Erza) Pound, or (Pablo) Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor to endure.”
Do you agree or disagree with Bayles’ and/or Larkin’s statements/premises? How do you as a composer/performer, balance artistic and commercial viability in your own work? In the presentation (i.e. performances) of your works? What other composers/performers do you feel balance artistic and commercial viability well? Is this even necessary?
I heatedly, passionately disagree with Larkin. (I haven't read Bayles, but the way her thesis is stated here it sounds like a simple statement of fact, more an observation than a lament, with the caveat that the "antagonism" just arose and was not intentional in many cases). For those who are interested in more of Larkin's rant, his essay "All What Jazz?" is anthologized in Reading Jazz:A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage and Criticism from 1919 to the Present, an excellent if cautious and generally moldy-figgish collection edited by Robert Gottlieb. ("All What Jazz?" originally appeared as the introduction to Larkin's 1970 book collecting all of his jazz reviews that he had written for The Daily Telegraph). Larkin shows himself to be an insufferable idiot, willfully hoi polloi and proudly dumb as a box of rocks. His fetishistic fondness for Bix, Louis, that good old Nawlins jass, is revealingly framed as a nostalgia for his simple minded college days. There is great, acid, biting humor in Larkin's essay and one suspects that his queeny claws-out bitch-rant is meant at least partly ironically and definitely is suffused with his usual alcohol-soaked self-loathing. Not the best milieu for any kind of insightful criticism of Modernism, let alone jazz after 1938. His two central complaints about Modernism are worth spending some time with, however. The first, the "irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction to life as we know it" begs the question: who the fuck is Larkin's "we"? Perhaps more to the point, what would irresponsible exploitation of technique mean?
Larkin and other critics of Modernism (not to mention the avant garde, whatever that is) fail to talk about aesthetics. This is the fatal flaw in every critique of art that focuses on the moral character of the artist, or the solipsism or self-indulgent idiosyncrasy of the artist, or the "failure of the artist to communicate," or the favorite fallback for scared, murine little-eared reactionaries of all stripes, the "charlatanism of the artist." These critiques confuse initial shock or unfamiliarity with the presence of something wrong with the art or inherently suspect about the artist's methods or intentions. The height of irresponsibility is to ignore one's own taste.
Which leads me to Larkin's second major statement: "it (Modernist art) helps us neither to enjoy nor to endure." Again, who the fuck is "us"? And again, more importantly, I'm living proof that Larkin's wrong. An Art Ensemble of Chicago performance at the 9:30 Club in DC in 1982 saved my life. For example. So did ditching school my senior year in high school and staying home reading everything by James Joyce I could get my hands on.
General things to think about:
-As a composer and/or performer how do you generate audiences for your performances? How does audience reaction to a piece affect your future writing? your programming? Do you think about the audience when writing?
-Can you recommend any composer, group, or recording that balances the artistic with the popular (or at least commercial successful)?
I generate audiences by promoting my own shows. I have sometimes felt quite discouraged by lack of audience or poor audience reaction. Discouragement has sometimes taken the form of many months or even years of not performing. (This was of course my own choice in regard to the matter). I don't think about the audience, but I do think about a few admired people.
I can't find a meaningful way to respond to the last question. It sets up a false dichotomy to begin with.
Great questions, though...look forward to more...
PULSE Composer’s Salon #1
The Audience
“The public is a thick skinned beast which must be continually beaten to let it know you are there.”—Walt Whitman
“Historically, the artist has been a slave, an unregarded wage earner, a courtier, clown and sycophant, a domestic, finally an unknown citizen trying to arrest the attention of a huge anonymous mass public and compel it to learn his name.” —Jacques Barzan from The Use and Abuse of Art
"I. In an interview (New Voices by Geoff and Nicola Walker Smith, Amadeus Press, 1995), Laurie Anderson says that her work/composition is not complete until it has been observed or heard [and subsequently] evaluated by an audience. She goes on to say that the measure of a good work of art is one that (as you experience it) “makes you want to jump up and get out of there” and go and create something yourself. How do you view this statement (especially in relationship toward how your own compositions are received by the public)?"
Anderson's first comment makes me think about completion more than anything else. My understanding is that Anderson is not an improvising artist. For me, as an improvising composer (not that I'm entirely satisfied with that phrase), my experience is that pieces emerge out of practice/rehearsal/performance opportunities, take a few different shapes, sometimes hang around as themes or get transfigured or transliterated into different formats and settings, and then mysteriously (either abruptly or slowly) disappear. The life of certain "composed parts" of an improvised piece peregrinates through many audiences, live and recorded. I just played some solo piano stuff I did in 1986 for the unnarrator and it had a completely different feel to it than I had ever heard before. So for me completion isn't really possible, at least not on my own terms. With this in mind, and remembering (for example) that a friend of mine has a huge box full of Cecil Taylor scores which have never been played or have only had performance in sections, I end up wondering about what Anderson means by "completion." On the one hand, there's a lovely aspect to performance, especially in composition with significant improvised sections and a huge amount of leeway even in the reading of composed sections. Performance always has mysterious energies. Things arise that were inconceivable in rehearsal. Energies are unleashed or redirected. My favorite phenomenon in live performance is the long silence after a piece is finished. If that's there, it feels that sound, space and time have worked themselves out into the mystery they are.
On the second comment, I generally agree that this interactive, inspirational muse experience, this sense of having a fire lit under one's ass to make something, seems common to my experience of many of the works I admire the most. But I wonder about it because I am also sometimes just a consumer. There are art forms that are good to be there for, like dance, but they don't always make me want to run out and make something.
II. One premise of the book Hole in Our Soul by Martha Bayles (Free Press, 1994) is that with the rise of modernism (in art) in the early 20th century, there came a disconnect with audiences—an “antagonism” between the artistic creator and the consumer of the art. Before this perverse (her words) turn of events, the relationship between creator and consumer was not so great. (At least in jazz) high art and the commercial and popular were not always mutually exclusive. As Gary Giddins states, people like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong had the “…ability to balance the emotional gravity of the artist with the communal good cheer of the entertainer…” However, with the advent of such movements as Dadaism or Abstract Expressionism in painting, the literary explorations of Gertrude Stein, Virginia Wolff, and James Joyce, and in music the dodecaphonic and serial explorations of Arnold Schoenberg, chance and aleatory music of John Cage and in jazz the rise of bebop and free jazz, large audiences mostly tuned out. Jazz critic Philip Larkin is quoted in Hole in Our Soul stating, “To say I don’t like modern jazz because it’s modernist art simply raises the question of why I don’t like modernist art…I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by (Charlie) Parker, (Erza) Pound, or (Pablo) Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor to endure.”
Do you agree or disagree with Bayles’ and/or Larkin’s statements/premises? How do you as a composer/performer, balance artistic and commercial viability in your own work? In the presentation (i.e. performances) of your works? What other composers/performers do you feel balance artistic and commercial viability well? Is this even necessary?
I heatedly, passionately disagree with Larkin. (I haven't read Bayles, but the way her thesis is stated here it sounds like a simple statement of fact, more an observation than a lament, with the caveat that the "antagonism" just arose and was not intentional in many cases). For those who are interested in more of Larkin's rant, his essay "All What Jazz?" is anthologized in Reading Jazz:A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage and Criticism from 1919 to the Present, an excellent if cautious and generally moldy-figgish collection edited by Robert Gottlieb. ("All What Jazz?" originally appeared as the introduction to Larkin's 1970 book collecting all of his jazz reviews that he had written for The Daily Telegraph). Larkin shows himself to be an insufferable idiot, willfully hoi polloi and proudly dumb as a box of rocks. His fetishistic fondness for Bix, Louis, that good old Nawlins jass, is revealingly framed as a nostalgia for his simple minded college days. There is great, acid, biting humor in Larkin's essay and one suspects that his queeny claws-out bitch-rant is meant at least partly ironically and definitely is suffused with his usual alcohol-soaked self-loathing. Not the best milieu for any kind of insightful criticism of Modernism, let alone jazz after 1938. His two central complaints about Modernism are worth spending some time with, however. The first, the "irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction to life as we know it" begs the question: who the fuck is Larkin's "we"? Perhaps more to the point, what would irresponsible exploitation of technique mean?
Larkin and other critics of Modernism (not to mention the avant garde, whatever that is) fail to talk about aesthetics. This is the fatal flaw in every critique of art that focuses on the moral character of the artist, or the solipsism or self-indulgent idiosyncrasy of the artist, or the "failure of the artist to communicate," or the favorite fallback for scared, murine little-eared reactionaries of all stripes, the "charlatanism of the artist." These critiques confuse initial shock or unfamiliarity with the presence of something wrong with the art or inherently suspect about the artist's methods or intentions. The height of irresponsibility is to ignore one's own taste.
Which leads me to Larkin's second major statement: "it (Modernist art) helps us neither to enjoy nor to endure." Again, who the fuck is "us"? And again, more importantly, I'm living proof that Larkin's wrong. An Art Ensemble of Chicago performance at the 9:30 Club in DC in 1982 saved my life. For example. So did ditching school my senior year in high school and staying home reading everything by James Joyce I could get my hands on.
General things to think about:
-As a composer and/or performer how do you generate audiences for your performances? How does audience reaction to a piece affect your future writing? your programming? Do you think about the audience when writing?
-Can you recommend any composer, group, or recording that balances the artistic with the popular (or at least commercial successful)?
I generate audiences by promoting my own shows. I have sometimes felt quite discouraged by lack of audience or poor audience reaction. Discouragement has sometimes taken the form of many months or even years of not performing. (This was of course my own choice in regard to the matter). I don't think about the audience, but I do think about a few admired people.
I can't find a meaningful way to respond to the last question. It sets up a false dichotomy to begin with.
Great questions, though...look forward to more...
Sunday, January 14, 2007
RIP Turiya (and Brecker)
Sad to get the news that Alice Coltrane has passed. Surprised she was "{only" 69 years old.
Amazed by the following excerpt from an article on her on the AP wires:
"> "As fascinating — and influential — as her later music was, it
> tended to obscure the fact that she had started out as a solid,
> bebop-oriented pianist," critic Don Heckman told The Times on
> Saturday. "I remember hearing, and jamming with, her in the early '60s
> at photographer W. Eugene Smith's loft in Manhattan. At that time she
> played with a brisk, rhythmic style immediately reminiscent of Bud
> Powell.
>
> "Like a few other people who'd heard her either at the loft or
> during her early '60s gigs with Terry Gibbs, I kept hoping she'd take
> at least one more foray into the bebop style she played so well," he
> said.
Okay, Don Heckman.
My favorite Alice Coltrane performance is the live two album set with Reggie Workman and Roy Haynes, Transfiguration.
Just a few days ago I was listening to Billy Cobham's Crosswinds and said to myself, "Self, who is that on tenor sax?" It is, of course, Michael Brecker. Gifts come in all sorts of packages.
As for Alice Coltrane...imagine being John Coltrane's pianist after McCoy Tyner. Imagine carrying on a completely unique and immediately recognizable musical (and pianistic) style after John Coltrane's death. Yeah, Heckman, really too bad she didn't play that bop again.
Amazed by the following excerpt from an article on her on the AP wires:
"> "As fascinating — and influential — as her later music was, it
> tended to obscure the fact that she had started out as a solid,
> bebop-oriented pianist," critic Don Heckman told The Times on
> Saturday. "I remember hearing, and jamming with, her in the early '60s
> at photographer W. Eugene Smith's loft in Manhattan. At that time she
> played with a brisk, rhythmic style immediately reminiscent of Bud
> Powell.
>
> "Like a few other people who'd heard her either at the loft or
> during her early '60s gigs with Terry Gibbs, I kept hoping she'd take
> at least one more foray into the bebop style she played so well," he
> said.
Okay, Don Heckman.
My favorite Alice Coltrane performance is the live two album set with Reggie Workman and Roy Haynes, Transfiguration.
Just a few days ago I was listening to Billy Cobham's Crosswinds and said to myself, "Self, who is that on tenor sax?" It is, of course, Michael Brecker. Gifts come in all sorts of packages.
As for Alice Coltrane...imagine being John Coltrane's pianist after McCoy Tyner. Imagine carrying on a completely unique and immediately recognizable musical (and pianistic) style after John Coltrane's death. Yeah, Heckman, really too bad she didn't play that bop again.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
year end frenzy
I notice many blogs, music and otherwise, engage in a year end retrospective. For some reason this didn't occur to me as something to do until I visited destination-out's "Top Downloads" and Mwanji's couple of posts of what grabbed him last year and the *unbelievable* list of live shows he attended.
On the playing side, the year began with Bing's work with Circus Luminous, followed by The Miles Davis Electric Project, followed by the Live Music/Silent Film Festival, followed by work with Chris Jonas in Rrake. As predicted, things came to a sudden halt after Rrake. There is no lack of interesting projects here in Santa Fe, but the issue is sustainability. The usual pattern is a high speed ramp up involving short(ish) notice, lots of rehearsals (when possible) and a high profile appearance or two followed by months of deafening silence and zero dollars. The lack of venues, the busy lives of all of us struggling to survive, the utter lack of funds for ongoing and remunerative initiatives all contribute to this vexing pattern.
In the offing: perhaps more silent film work? Perhaps another Miles Electric configuration? Perhaps a duets concert of improvisations? Who knows.
Listening has taken many fascinating twists and turns this year, spurred largely by the radio show and the imperative of developing a library. Rediscoveries abound with many thanks to destination-out and other bloggers. Huge swaths of music that were firmly in the center of where my ears were at various times in the past, but that I somehow missed, mix with constant revisiting of work that I am hearing with new ears.
Here's a top ten list for the past year:
1. Duke. Anything and everything. I never gave Ellington's music the comprehensive hearing it deserves. In fact, the only Ellington I owned for many years was Ellington '55, an attempt by Capitol Records to position Ellington as a more commercially viable option by having him revisit great compositions. The goal this year is to continue on the quest for anything and everything Ellington did.
2. Brotherhood of Breath/Chris MacGregor. I somehow missed MacGregor's work entirely. Destination-out posted a couple of pieces from the first album. I was already somewhat familiar with Dudu Pukwana and Mongezi Feza, but I look forward to hearing more.
3. Evan Parker. In general, the Euro free scene was only represented for me by a few FMP's of the Brotzmann/Van Hove/Bennink trio and the Globe Unity Orchestra. I am glad to get closer to Parker as well as Breuker/Schlippenbach/et al.
4. Andrew Hill. This seems to be Hill's year, what with the praise for his new recording and so on. I have long had Point of Departure but it's been great hearing much more of his other work.
5. Elmo Hope. The Blue Note reissue that includes dozens of tracks is definitely head turning.
6. Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley. This great trio recording is perhaps not warmly received by Cecil Taylor fans, but I am impressed by it. In general, rediscovering Bill Dixon has been a splendid adventure.
7. 1960s Blue Note and Capitol funky jazz. In my callow youth I always wrote this form off as "less than." In fact there is some great arranging, soloing, and a wonderful groove on much of it: Blue Mitchell, Stanley Turrentine, Cannonball, etc. Much of what passes for "contemporary jazz" is a pale and insipid imitation of this period.
8. Art Ensemble of Chicago's pre-Paris stuff. Again thanks to destination-out, Carefree, Tatas-matoes, etc. Great, funny, vital and groundbreaking.
9. Mal Waldron. A renewed appreciation for his architectural deliberateness, his note placement, his direct honesty. The duets with Steve Lacy are remarkable.
10. Randy Weston. The only exposure I had to Weston previously was African Cookbook. As is the case with many other musicians lately, the question is: How did I go so long without tons of Weston in my life?
A pattern: this seems to have been at least partly the year of the piano. Duke, Cecil, Hill, Weston, Hope, Waldron. Part of the fascination of the mid-60s Blue Notes is the pre-fusion appearances of Hancock, Corea, Zawinul.
Anyway I could list a top 100, given how much has opened up for me in music this year. I could also revisit the year's favorite rants (the jazz culture wars, for example). But I have to do the dishes.
On the playing side, the year began with Bing's work with Circus Luminous, followed by The Miles Davis Electric Project, followed by the Live Music/Silent Film Festival, followed by work with Chris Jonas in Rrake. As predicted, things came to a sudden halt after Rrake. There is no lack of interesting projects here in Santa Fe, but the issue is sustainability. The usual pattern is a high speed ramp up involving short(ish) notice, lots of rehearsals (when possible) and a high profile appearance or two followed by months of deafening silence and zero dollars. The lack of venues, the busy lives of all of us struggling to survive, the utter lack of funds for ongoing and remunerative initiatives all contribute to this vexing pattern.
In the offing: perhaps more silent film work? Perhaps another Miles Electric configuration? Perhaps a duets concert of improvisations? Who knows.
Listening has taken many fascinating twists and turns this year, spurred largely by the radio show and the imperative of developing a library. Rediscoveries abound with many thanks to destination-out and other bloggers. Huge swaths of music that were firmly in the center of where my ears were at various times in the past, but that I somehow missed, mix with constant revisiting of work that I am hearing with new ears.
Here's a top ten list for the past year:
1. Duke. Anything and everything. I never gave Ellington's music the comprehensive hearing it deserves. In fact, the only Ellington I owned for many years was Ellington '55, an attempt by Capitol Records to position Ellington as a more commercially viable option by having him revisit great compositions. The goal this year is to continue on the quest for anything and everything Ellington did.
2. Brotherhood of Breath/Chris MacGregor. I somehow missed MacGregor's work entirely. Destination-out posted a couple of pieces from the first album. I was already somewhat familiar with Dudu Pukwana and Mongezi Feza, but I look forward to hearing more.
3. Evan Parker. In general, the Euro free scene was only represented for me by a few FMP's of the Brotzmann/Van Hove/Bennink trio and the Globe Unity Orchestra. I am glad to get closer to Parker as well as Breuker/Schlippenbach/et al.
4. Andrew Hill. This seems to be Hill's year, what with the praise for his new recording and so on. I have long had Point of Departure but it's been great hearing much more of his other work.
5. Elmo Hope. The Blue Note reissue that includes dozens of tracks is definitely head turning.
6. Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley. This great trio recording is perhaps not warmly received by Cecil Taylor fans, but I am impressed by it. In general, rediscovering Bill Dixon has been a splendid adventure.
7. 1960s Blue Note and Capitol funky jazz. In my callow youth I always wrote this form off as "less than." In fact there is some great arranging, soloing, and a wonderful groove on much of it: Blue Mitchell, Stanley Turrentine, Cannonball, etc. Much of what passes for "contemporary jazz" is a pale and insipid imitation of this period.
8. Art Ensemble of Chicago's pre-Paris stuff. Again thanks to destination-out, Carefree, Tatas-matoes, etc. Great, funny, vital and groundbreaking.
9. Mal Waldron. A renewed appreciation for his architectural deliberateness, his note placement, his direct honesty. The duets with Steve Lacy are remarkable.
10. Randy Weston. The only exposure I had to Weston previously was African Cookbook. As is the case with many other musicians lately, the question is: How did I go so long without tons of Weston in my life?
A pattern: this seems to have been at least partly the year of the piano. Duke, Cecil, Hill, Weston, Hope, Waldron. Part of the fascination of the mid-60s Blue Notes is the pre-fusion appearances of Hancock, Corea, Zawinul.
Anyway I could list a top 100, given how much has opened up for me in music this year. I could also revisit the year's favorite rants (the jazz culture wars, for example). But I have to do the dishes.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
como se dice?
More snow last night, admittedly not all that much but ridiculous. Side benefit: softens the bone jarring drive over ruts and mounds of solid ice sometimes a foot thick. I'd be more sanguine if my 1991 Honda Civic weren't randomly and quite mysteriously stalling. It's an avant garde stall, as it only occurs when the car is well warmed up, and seems usually to be when I go a constant speed in one gear for any stretch. I have vague hopes it's dirty fuel injectors or water in the gas or the old vapor lock phenomenon (about which I of course know nothing) but also vaguely suspect there might be a more serious problem.
The most serious problem is $5,000 in unpaid federal taxes, fines and penalties from two chaotic years, 01/02, when I lived in astonishing disarray and did not file at all. I have attempted a few times to settle the matter but the IRS decided to levy my savings account over the holidays. Pathetic, really, as it had less than a grand in it and I qualify for temporarily uncollectable status but just didn't jump through the necessary hoops to get that officially settled before leaving the country. The situation makes me regret that I returned. Is there anything more romantical than a tax exiled improvising musician living in Mexico? I'm sure Mexico needs another drummer, ex-teacher and sometime writer.
Speaking of Mexican music...I have to admit my almost complete bafflement at Mexican popular song. Well, the forms represented loudly by the employees or owners of Daggett's campground on Christmas Eve, by the Mexican patriarch who parked his family in front of our tent the night after Christmas (howling out of his tinny car stereo, complemented by the constant beep beep beep of his "door open" alert), by car stereos and stores/businesses with music blasting. Most of what I could place was indistinguishable from mariachi music to my ears. Brass was unrelentingly featured, usually with a front line and a second line underpinned by tuba or synth tuba. All of the singers were male. Tonally, the singing contrasts with the brass in several different inflections that are microtonally flat or sharp, giving the music a drunken, swaggering, jangling cast. Sometimes the arrangements seemed to have a New Orleans/Chicago jass influence, sometimes more clearly a US country music feel. But otherwise it was impossible for me to hear many other influences. The accordion was not as present in the mix as I would have liked, nor the drums. The overall tonally glaring and garish effect is highlighted by the music's unrelenting IV-V-I diatonicism. Also emphasized by the inevitably horrible stereos on which I heard it, often turned up to volumes that created searing distortion.
Admittedly, a small sample that was most often a sonic assault in otherwise quiet (sometimes mystically so) surroundings. And other than the way my interest was piqued-- tonal inflection, trying to catch lyrics with my abysmal understanding of Spanish, the very occasional switch up of the formula-- my impression was of a music absolutely lacking in any trace of sophistication, isolated from the past decades of musical and technological changes elsewhere, cloyingly pathetic (encapsulating some of the feeling of the blues but with absolutely none of that music's irony). It is rare, in my smoothed out so-called open-mindedness, for me to encounter music to which I respond with blind rage. But such was my feeling at times. It's been a while since music made me want to commit violent acts. Even when I hear the worst of "jazz" (syrupy, bland, limp garbage) I don't generally want to smash things, set fire to villages, bulldoze the world to rubble. But Mexican popular music eventually led me to these dark places in my soul.
The most generous place I was able to go was "how quaint." But that racist dismissal also rankles. It is all too easy for an American to view Mexican culture and people as "quaint." I could vaguely sense (was I projecting? of course) something strained and darkling in many interactions with hotel, store and gas station employees. I kept thinking that if I knew Spanish I would not stir up this oddly polite resentment, a standoffish mutual bemusement. No doubt US "tough on immigration" policies have provided Mexican citizens with additional reason to despise a bumbling Yankee such as myself, waving pesos around and obviously using their country as a playground.
One can be aware of these many layers of political and economic injustice and still think the local popular music is horrifying.
American popular music is horrifying too. That's fair. I remain politically correct. nyaa nyaa nyaa.
The most serious problem is $5,000 in unpaid federal taxes, fines and penalties from two chaotic years, 01/02, when I lived in astonishing disarray and did not file at all. I have attempted a few times to settle the matter but the IRS decided to levy my savings account over the holidays. Pathetic, really, as it had less than a grand in it and I qualify for temporarily uncollectable status but just didn't jump through the necessary hoops to get that officially settled before leaving the country. The situation makes me regret that I returned. Is there anything more romantical than a tax exiled improvising musician living in Mexico? I'm sure Mexico needs another drummer, ex-teacher and sometime writer.
Speaking of Mexican music...I have to admit my almost complete bafflement at Mexican popular song. Well, the forms represented loudly by the employees or owners of Daggett's campground on Christmas Eve, by the Mexican patriarch who parked his family in front of our tent the night after Christmas (howling out of his tinny car stereo, complemented by the constant beep beep beep of his "door open" alert), by car stereos and stores/businesses with music blasting. Most of what I could place was indistinguishable from mariachi music to my ears. Brass was unrelentingly featured, usually with a front line and a second line underpinned by tuba or synth tuba. All of the singers were male. Tonally, the singing contrasts with the brass in several different inflections that are microtonally flat or sharp, giving the music a drunken, swaggering, jangling cast. Sometimes the arrangements seemed to have a New Orleans/Chicago jass influence, sometimes more clearly a US country music feel. But otherwise it was impossible for me to hear many other influences. The accordion was not as present in the mix as I would have liked, nor the drums. The overall tonally glaring and garish effect is highlighted by the music's unrelenting IV-V-I diatonicism. Also emphasized by the inevitably horrible stereos on which I heard it, often turned up to volumes that created searing distortion.
Admittedly, a small sample that was most often a sonic assault in otherwise quiet (sometimes mystically so) surroundings. And other than the way my interest was piqued-- tonal inflection, trying to catch lyrics with my abysmal understanding of Spanish, the very occasional switch up of the formula-- my impression was of a music absolutely lacking in any trace of sophistication, isolated from the past decades of musical and technological changes elsewhere, cloyingly pathetic (encapsulating some of the feeling of the blues but with absolutely none of that music's irony). It is rare, in my smoothed out so-called open-mindedness, for me to encounter music to which I respond with blind rage. But such was my feeling at times. It's been a while since music made me want to commit violent acts. Even when I hear the worst of "jazz" (syrupy, bland, limp garbage) I don't generally want to smash things, set fire to villages, bulldoze the world to rubble. But Mexican popular music eventually led me to these dark places in my soul.
The most generous place I was able to go was "how quaint." But that racist dismissal also rankles. It is all too easy for an American to view Mexican culture and people as "quaint." I could vaguely sense (was I projecting? of course) something strained and darkling in many interactions with hotel, store and gas station employees. I kept thinking that if I knew Spanish I would not stir up this oddly polite resentment, a standoffish mutual bemusement. No doubt US "tough on immigration" policies have provided Mexican citizens with additional reason to despise a bumbling Yankee such as myself, waving pesos around and obviously using their country as a playground.
One can be aware of these many layers of political and economic injustice and still think the local popular music is horrifying.
American popular music is horrifying too. That's fair. I remain politically correct. nyaa nyaa nyaa.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Relapsin' with the Miles Davis Quintet
The above blog header was the peak of hilarity while driving the sandy flats south of Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja last week, the eversnerkling unnarrator's splendid idea for a headline, blog post header, maybe even a CD title. But there was no relapsin' to be had on this miracle of excursions, a sojourn I was formerly in the habit of using as an excuse to marinate in a veritable Sea of Cortez of tequila and beer.
There will be more about The Baja Trip. For now, I figured I would just sort of...get warmed up. Only fitting considering that mere days ago the un and I were hot and sunscreened on the long hook of playa called La Gringa and we have returned to 2 feet of snow here in the City of Holy Faith. Que lastima.
I didn't feel like listening to a shred of music of any kind almost the entire trip. One goes through these things from time to time. Moratoriums. toria? Uh, silences.
Today's show was hilarious as I simply grabbed whatever came out of the CD case and tried to make some sense of it. It was a fine moment, finally playing The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Duffvipels (well, an excerpt anyhow).
Much Baja regalia and perhaps very little music to come.
There will be more about The Baja Trip. For now, I figured I would just sort of...get warmed up. Only fitting considering that mere days ago the un and I were hot and sunscreened on the long hook of playa called La Gringa and we have returned to 2 feet of snow here in the City of Holy Faith. Que lastima.
I didn't feel like listening to a shred of music of any kind almost the entire trip. One goes through these things from time to time. Moratoriums. toria? Uh, silences.
Today's show was hilarious as I simply grabbed whatever came out of the CD case and tried to make some sense of it. It was a fine moment, finally playing The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Duffvipels (well, an excerpt anyhow).
Much Baja regalia and perhaps very little music to come.
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