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C'mon man, I'm only on the internet for the violent antagonism. With regard to what Jim says--keep in mind I'm not dumping on Bley so much as trying to articulate a kind of ambivalence I have toward much of her work. The comparison with Threadgill is is meant to underline how two people who can and do use similar source materials wind up on completely different sides of reality. The socio-politics of this are one thing, and the musical content is something else entirely. When Threadgill interfaces with idiomatic blues tropes, you get "I Can't Wait Till I Get Home": When Carla Bley does, you get this: In all fairness, there's a lot of harmonic meat in the second example that might be considered archetypal Bley (that nebulous-sounding descending octave line in the horns, for one). And the Threadgill example is and isn't paradigmatic Threadgill, since it's less inflected than a lot of the Sextett stuff. But--and this is important, at least to me--there's a kind of stiltedness when Bley mixes into the 6/8 thing that is just impossible to ignore. The solos are relentlessly professional, the harmonies perfectly balanced and articulated, the timekeeping precise and unobtrusive. When working with more recalcitrant players--like a Motian or Andrew Cyrille--the edges start showing, but it's almost in spite of the charts rather than because of them. I think it's up for debate whether these issues are merely a matter of choosing the "right" sidemen or something intrinsic to the music itself. And maybe I was wrong to imply that Bley's approach is somehow less personal, but I do maintain that there's an overriding dispassion and distance in so much of Bley's work that the remove begins to feel like a decision rather than an accident. I always feel like Threadgill is being real with the audience and the performance; Bley, much less so.

I admit my sentiments above aren't the most carefully worded, so let me put it another way--I don't think there's any mutual exclusivity between the practice of vacationing in genres and the notion of being a careful, or even artful, curator of said genres. I seldom get the sense that Carla has an intimate relationship with much the music she is arranging--at worst it's just well-crafted pastiche, and even at it's best there's often a kind of remove that I have a hard time listening past--but I concede that there's often an awareness there. As with "Rawalpindi Blues"--the text is mostly inscrutable, as I'm assuming was Haines's intent, and the vague world music elements are, as I said, kind of hammily done and not very deeply engaged. That blues rock section--which I love--is kind of ersatz Lifetime. It does feel kind of dilettante-ish, but I sense that this is exactly the point--that the Don Cherry that appears on Escalator, for example, is not the same Don Cherry from Eternal Now, but rather a reference to or impression of him. I'd invoke "postmodernism" in the truest sense but I also think that the reality is slightly more mundane than that--that things like Escalator are more about the task and practice of colliding things together rather than doing any of those things, individually, particularly well.

As a brief aside, I find it interesting that, oftentimes, the people most inclined to say things like "we don't need an audience" are either (a) artists who've already been outright rejected by a broader listener base or (b) people who've been blessed with an exceptional number of opportunities and a great deal of appreciation, striving/hard work/hustle aside. Irony aside, too, of course. As for the basic sentiment of "I don't care if you like it or not," I feel like that's kind of how it should be, especially with regard to intrinsically non or uncommercial music. Appreciate it for what it is rather than what it isn't or can't be. I do find something appropriationist about some of the quiet storm/smooth jazz stuff that Jim links to here, and I don't invoke that word with the intent of inflaming factionalist sentiment--I think it just is what it is. And I feel this way about a lot of Bley's music--the number of records or projects that feel like they claim a specific conceptual identity, rather than just a general impression of eclecticism or series of habits in the way of arrangement, are few. Tropic Appetites maybe? But, again, I don't think it really matters here. Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but the contrast with Threadgill is pretty extreme--when he interfaces with R&B, blues, soul, etc.--it feels vivid and personal, like a part of the genetics; Bley always seems to me like she's vacationing in the genres she toys with. The politics of this are one thing, but the music is another, and I actually come out of it on the positive side of things. In a world that has a deep-set deficit in the way of treating women with a nuance, reality, and inclusiveness, I like that Bley comes out of it with her own kind of story. To go back a bit on what I just said, and talking about Bley as a musical identity rather than just some kind of abstract figure, I don't think the successes of something like Escalator can be understated--not just in the way of this doom-y, fun house mirror-type big band arrangement, but in the consideration and subtlety behind the genre play. I've said here and elsewhere that the post-Cream work of Jack Bruce is some of the very best and most inventive of its kind, and both Michael Mantler and Bley know how to use his talents--not just in the way of utility voice or bass but also with regard to the implications of using a genre superstar in something as heterogeneous as Escalator. Escalator pushes Bruce's voice to its absolute limits, and the things that he's often criticized for in rock circles--the overbearing operaticism married to "proper" vocal technique, the frequent flatness--enhance the notion that this project is both a reversal of the rock opera (classical musicians playing at rock, rather than the other way around) and a kind of faux, not-to-be-taken-seriously work of art music. I can't find a link to an actual recording of the song on youtube, but the segue from Bruce's agonized vocals to the kind of junky sounding "blues rock jam"--featuring half of Lifetime, by the way, plus Paul Motian and Bley--is the kind of heightened irony--but sublime musicality--that I have all day for. I am 100% in support of that kind of shit.

Un-lurking because I was unpacking this while doing dishes this morning. I actually really enjoyed the Iverson piece, if only because there's so little discussion of Bley as a figure inside of new/avant-garde jazz. I only ever see her discussed as a pure iconoclast and something apart from that historical movement, and I know that there were some tensions therein (as referenced in an article I read a while back, where she spoke dismissively of Brotzmann and co.). In terms of the quote above ("...easy meat when making a mash-up"), I think it's worth noting that the critical narrative, especially insofar as concerns a guy like Iverson, is a work in progress. Iverson has gone from poster boy for populist postmodernism to mediator between contemporary composition and jazz formalism--a tension that was always evident in the Bad Plus, as far as I can tell--and there needn't be any more reality or utility to this kind of reductionist talk (vis-a-vis "triadic structures) than is relevant to the narrative the writer is trying to put forward. And I say this as someone who agrees in a pretty fundamental way with what you (Allen) say. In other words, I'm ok with the editorializing in this instance not because it's "true," but because the picture it is painting says something relevant (if not necessarily useful) about the world that both Iverson and Bley inhabit. Of course things like rock, bluegrass, gospel etc. are more complex and nuanced than Iverson says--but not here, and not in this way. Listen to the Threadgill Sextett, for example, for something that engages equally with social musics and Euro and American classical traditions in a meaningful way. That shit is complex--but it operates within a sound world and conceptual framework that is just alien imagination to someone like Bley--and that's maybe kind of the rub. I adore the first Liberation Music Orchestra and mostly like the others. I think Escalator Over the Hill is a mess that touches greatness more often than it doesn't, and I can give or take a lot of the later music--but Iverson does make one really specific and good point. The brutal, often ironic, cabaret-like color of Bley's music really, really works when there are individualistic voices in the band--and I like the connection to Ayler that Bley brings up partway through. The first LMO album is supposed to be this series of ambling Spanish strains that teeters between chaos and unity--in a metatextual, overtly revolutionary way--and it works because of the disharmony between the players and the material. This type of thing isn't always what the doctor orders--and it can be absolutely desultory when both the music and the underlying programmatic content have nothing to say--but that concept in the hands of Barbieri, Cherry, Haden, Motian, etc. is sublime art.

I never met Cecil in person, never got to study or play with him, only saw him live once--in a very forbidding environment--but his presence was absolutely monumental in this music, and I can't imagine anyone who inhabits free jazz or creative music or whatever not feeling this sudden, encompassing sense of loss with CT's passing. Virtually all of the key innovators of early American free music are gone now. Consider this--the chapter spotlights in Valerie Wilmer's As Serious As Your Life include Trane, Cecil, Ornette, Sun Ra, Ayler, and the AACM, in addition to shorter features on people like Bill Dixon, Dennis Charles, Ed Blackwell, etc. Ekkehard Jost's Free Jazz includes chapters on Trane, Mingus, Ornette, Cecil, Shepp, Ayler, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, and the AACM. If you have a chance to see Shepp or the early wave AACM guys who are still around, drive 500, drive 1,000 miles to do it. As a scholar, listener, or musician, you absolutely owe it to yourself to inhabit a little bit of history so long as it still graces this planet. I've detailed my personal connection to this music elsewhere, but suffice it to say that the kind of dogged iconoclasm at the heart of Cecil's music is not something to be taken lightly. I remember hearing a certain august improviser say of Derek Bailey, "He made a lot of sacrifices," and I imagine, without being privy to much in the way of private insights, that this was true of Cecil, too. Cecil's example emboldens even as it cautions, though, as to fight and survive and flourish in this music--and for so long--you need to come from a place of love, and joy, and purpose. That's something I have to remind myself of every day. I liked Ethan Iverson's invocation of the "if there hadn't been X, we would have needed to invent him" truism, because it's absolutely appropriate in this case. There's a spectrum of technical practice that encompasses "free jazz piano" and emanates outward into territories like bassless trios, large group free jazz, and especially vague categories like "energy music" that is marked by Cecil's innovations. Versions of CT's alphabetic notation are everywhere among a certain generation and category of improvising musician, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that this kind of elaborate restructuring of traditional notational strictures helped pave the way for the normalization of graphic scores in contemporary jazz. And while I'm sure many are much better equipped to detail Cecil's contributions to the lexicon of modern piano, it needs to be said that his innovations--in parallel and in consort with Albert Ayler--in the way of liberating jazz harmony, timbre, and especially rhythm section praxis are absolutely monumental. That's broad-stroke, macro stuff that isn't limited to free jazz. And man, the highs were crazy high--we can spend lifetimes of boards and threads taking apart things like Unit Structures, Air Above Mountains, One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye, 3 Phasis, Akisakila, Spring of Two Blue J's, and on and on and on. Just 1,000,000x thanks.

I think you bring up a pretty good point, which is that it's impossible for me to understand exactly how it feels to be a cis white male in this cultural environment. I can appreciate that we're in the midst of a big pivot in the way that criticism interfaces with cultural production, but I think it's important to recognize that all parties are confronting this pivot in different ways and with different considerations in mind. The way in which many white writers seem to be coming to terms with addressing and advocating on behalf of marginalized groups is interesting to me in that this is the universe that most people of ostensibly oppressed groups or minority descent (for lack of a better term) have had to live in for a very long time. None of this is to say that a person like me can't share that experience to a certain extent--e.g., I think that many males of color have lately had to deal with, to dredge this up again, the kinds of misogyny embedded in our cultures. It's only that when I have to watch this cycle of constant remonstration, guilt, and self-censorship, I feel peripheral to the conversation--as if it has more to do with the self-censored rather than the marginalized group in question. There are a ton of illustrative anecdotes I could bring up, but a historical (and relevant) one comes to mind. There's a (paraphrased) quote from Dudu Pukwana--something that he said to an African American musician--which was this: "I am African. You are American." Dispensing for a moment with discussions of Diaspora and the value of the term "African American"--this was Pukwana's self-made distinction, and it was said with the intention of establishing a narrative that few people had really bothered to explore. South African does not equal African American does not equal African, necessarily, etc. etc. All this goes to say that the important distinction in this case was made by the marginalized person, which is more or less how it always goes. There's a reason that George Lewis was the one to write the definitive AACM book, or why we still read the Miles or Mingus autobiographies--or something like Notes & Tones--years after better scholarship has been made available. You can really only speak for your experience. I wish it were easy enough to say something like "don't presume and don't be a dick to others and listen to other people when they try to tell you things about themselves" and get the proper effect. Obviously that is not the case. What I do firmly believe to be true is that the current climate of political and cultural shaming isn't sustainable, because (too put it maybe too simply again) a culture predicated on fear is more or less a flower bed for actual, substantive hatred and oppression. I wish absolutely anyone knew a credible way out of this conundrum, but as we get years past 2016 I begin to worry that we're just getting angrier.

Wanted to chime in on this one. I've been largely absent from discussion in main because many of the most incendiary dialogues are (now) skirting dangerously close to my immediate peer group, which has given me a new and somewhat uncomfortable perspective on the paradigm of audience (as recipient) v. performer. Weird waking up to the notion that what I thought was casual, largely objective discussion on legendary musicians existing at a kind of remove is actual casual, largely subjective discussion about real people who you may or may not have lunch with at some point. We've reached a weird punctuation mark in the reception of culture whereby almost every discussion seems to demand an avowal or disavowal of a certain set of political beliefs--which shouldn't read as anything new, since jazz has always involved issues of race, ethnicity, class, etc.--but I think it's beginning to have a negative impact on the broader critical discourse. I feel weird having to pull the "as a X of X" card, but as a binational person of color who is baldly preoccupied with progressive causes in my "real" life, I've begun to tune out most conversations about cultural sensitivity in jazz because they're almost invariably about introspection on the part of the interlocutors rather than anything, well, musical. Remember when there was that gigantic Twitter kerfuffle involving Ethan Iverson and Robert Glasper? The Do the Math blog has been running interviews and essays on female musicians for months now and I've barely heard a word from social media. Not that Iverson should necessarily be congratulated for normalizing this kind of representational journalism--it's the kind of stuff that jazz should have been doing for forever now--but when you expend a ridiculous amount of social energy on dragging one guy down for his cultural transgressions--and then say more or less nothing when he attempts to fix said transgressions--then the problem has as much to do with the dialogue as it has to do with the people talking. This gets into even harrier territory, but as someone who can only really understand white guilt as an observer and not a participant, I'm a little taken aback at how many conversations about minority groups tend to devolve into a (rhetorical, but not necessarily literal) dick measuring contest between, to put it bluntly, self-flagellant white cis males and aggressive men's rights/white victim folks. (Just to clarify before people freak out, I'm not lumping anyone here into one group or the other--I'm describing the general tenor of a conversation I'm seeing unfold everywhere, and not just on the internet.) There's a place for this kind of dialogue--and it's a necessary one, I think--but this is a conversation that runs parallel to critical appraisal. You're living in a toxic environment when Jim feels the need to explain his feelings on one musician just because her cross-section of demographics is so politically charged. All this goes to say that there's a distinction to be made between how music is received as an embodied piece of technical practice v. how music is received as representational cultural artifact. There is absolutely intersection therein but I'm frankly tiring of the mandate that we need to preface every critical conversation over, say, women in jazz with a declaration of our purposes and inclinations. If you really want to get into the conceptual nightmare of addressing the political implications of every single work of improvised music, then come strapped--let's talk about how the critical response to Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra is tied into embedded homophobia among midcentury jazz communities, or how cultural treatment of South African jazz musicians is embedded in our privileged conflation of ethnic and national identities, or how dealing with women in jazz has to do with an ethos of judging masculine-coded musical practices v. feminine-coded musical practices, etc. etc. I and many people on this board can do this all day, but to what end--and who actually benefits?

Hey, folks--I disappeared up the crevice for a while and so I'm not sure how much weight this recommendation brings, but this reissue is legit. I say this with full acknowledgment for the fact that Clifford's been a friend and supporter for a long time--I speak purely to musical considerations, since ultimately that's all that matters. I went on an obsessive box binge over the holidays, and the clear winners were this one and the Joe McPhee Nation Time recording box from a few years back. I think that the music of this vintage arrived at moment when the exigencies of spontaneity and identity affirmation had to confront, by virtue of time and external realities, things like structural innovation and technical achievement. The AACM guys are the deserving, historically acknowledged masters of this era, but it's deeply instructive to peek in on all these regional scenes to see how the same philosophical and conceptual considerations were being dealt with in different, often divergent ways. I've been listening, too, to Sunny Murray's music in the wake of his passing, and I'm reminded a bit of something the former Marvin Patillo said to me once--that many of the guys from this vintage "could not play" and this was a well-traded truth. The people who could, or whose concepts were coherent enough to survive the era--capital letter people like Ornette or lesser known lights like Noah Howard--found ways to adjust or pivot out of the pure, dispersive free thing of the 60's. The rub against this is the (controversial) reality that people with incomplete technical concepts--like McPhee, who started playing tenor in '68 and recorded Underground Railroad in '68-69 (!)--can and did make substantive contributions to the embodied intellect of the music. This speaks a little to Cosmic's music but also, I think, says a lot about some of the reservations I have about both contemporary free jazz and the composite picture of modern day avant-garde composition/improvisation. There's just a lot of flail-y, unrealized free jazz and a lot of overwrought, technically sterile avant-garde stuff traded about. There's also a lot of deeply brilliant regional and "big city" music that goes unheard because of the philosophical dint of modern jazz criticism. I can only imagine my excitement at hearing something as bloody and real as the Cosmic/Musra group or Nation Time in the early 1970's--and take stock in the understanding that there's a lot of similarly exciting music happening everywhere, right now. This is all a circular way of saying that things like Peace in the World are absolutely invaluable documents of both the era and the un-dimming spirit of (in the romantic sense) unheard music. I was only peripherally attuned to this music before, and I can hear the debt to things like the early AACM music, the Paris guys, and Center of the World, but it's absolutely it's own thing--played with conviction and energy and its own ragged precision, and not so dissimilar to, say, the wilder experiments of the UGMAA or earlier William Parker. It's big, blustery, loping music, but there's a clear compositional and technical impetus at play, and most important of all, it's as far away from boring as the needle can get.

Well, (maybe) yes, and it's partly for that reason that I wonder why the political subforum hasn't been reinstated. At the same time, I acknowledge the fact the broader national discourse has become deeply toxic and that some leakage into everyday mechanics is/was inevitable. That being said- The thing that I find kind of gross about these kinds of conversations is our, I think, inadvertent reluctance to acknowledge our (as a music) culpability in the construction of modes of oppression. I don't want to drag that dude back into the mud because I think he's at heart a good guy whose stardom came to outsize his words, but this ties a bit into the Ethan Iverson debacle re: female musicians. There were a lot of people calling bullshit on Ethan about hiring and documenting female musicians who I know were just as responsible, in a practical sense, for perpetuating that kind of macho jazz insularity. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with four dudes playing jazz, but throwing stones and glass houses and not addressing the root problem and all that. A lot of jazz has a lot of longstanding history tethering itself to progressivism and activism, but as many of you know, it was not and is not some noble artform absent rampant racism, homophobia, misogyny, and generalized bigotry. I've seen a lot of this shit firsthand, and I trust many of you have, too. So--and I say this with much love for the greater discussion here--this is not a harmless conversation between bystanders. We made this as a community. Look, if you want to be a conspiratorial misogynist or a not-at-all-stealth alt righter, go nuts--we live in America and you're owed those freedoms. I also hope that someone is there to fight you every step of the way, and I say that as someone with plenty of liberal friends but also many conservative intimates. But yeah, this is not a harmless discussion, and if we were to properly pull on the thread and follow it to its logical conclusion, it would unravel a lot of what is supposedly magical about this music. And maybe it's time to stop compartmentalizing that.

Having not participated in a forum discussion with this degree of heat for some time, I'm (only sort-of) bemused by all this. Not a knock on OP, obviously, or really/necessarily any single poster here, but this reads to an outside observer like a baldfaced political debate. I admit that this probably isn't the proper place for meta commentary on board culture, but I've noticed quite a bit of covert politicization on here as of late--and yeah, understandably so, because interpersonal tension tends to roil over into even the most mundane things, and yesterday's mundane things (like casual internet commentary) seem to have become some kind of potshot-y battleground for the nation's soul. This thread may not be the best example, because the topic is inherently heated--but it hasn't escaped notice that folks have been using seemingly lackadaisical discussion as a vehicle for espousing sociopolitical rhetoric (and thereby, weirdly, attempting to contravene some kind of systematized strangulation of values). The funny thing to me is that the larger body of commentators here comprise the same few--and maybe I'm stretching here--demographically homogenous people who were having civil conversations about Mosaic sets and Lou Donaldson discographies maybe one or two years ago. Not that I'm saying that we should resist this kind of discussion, since it's a healthy part of the jazz and greater cultural narrative, but there's a bizarre, bitter irony in the regularization of culture warring on a jazz forum--in an era where the broader cultural resonance of the music is greatly diminished.

Crushing loss. I spent scarce little time with the man, but he left an indelible mark on my creative sensibility. The week or so he spent at Mills a little under ten years ago was one of the formative educational experiences of my entire life. I will absolutely never forget the duo concert he played with Roscoe the last night, which still figures among the most exciting nights of music I've ever had the privilege of experiencing. Talk about a life changing life. Thank you for absolutely everything, sir.

There's an enclave on the left--one which I do inhabit rather frequently--that is eager, and maybe overeager, to protest microagressions. I feel like a lot of the proportional response to this phenomenon has something to do with trying to dismiss or diffuse what is perceived as oversensitivity, so we bandy about terms like triggered and outrage culture to further entrench ourselves in given behaviors. I do wonder whether most of the dialogue regarding cultural representation and misrepresentation is of secondary value in a political climate where lives are (literally) at risk. As someone who works very often in Asian-American jazz circles, I'm attuned to the intersection between the musical work and the cultural work, and while a big part of me respects Terumasa as a trumpet player (even as I question his actions in this instance), the other part of me is thinking, "how long in this thread before there's some kind of racialized pun?" So while I wasn't disappointed in this instance, I can also acknowledge the relative harmlessness of dad humor in an era where an ill-timed protest means either avoiding my local market or being prepared to engage in active self-defense. I know this isn't a political forum so I'll stop there and hope I'm understood--otherwise, hey, find me elsewhere or let's take it to PMs.

And the usual transliteration is bushido. Even as an Asian/Pacific Islander who frequently aligns with progressive causes, I'm not really keyed into outrage culture and think there are bigger priorities that demand attention, but if I never saw samurai delicatessen again, it wouldn't be too soon.

Bay Area local and active performer. Bebop's recommendations are legit, and if you're looking for a more comprehensive listing that hews closer to pure improv/free jazz, check out this listing: http://www.bayimproviser.com/ I'll shamelessly plug my own stuff and say that I'm playing the Starry Plough in Berkeley this Friday (9/29) with my primary project Grex and two very interesting groups (torch song project Qualia and the the unbelievable Sacramento-based avant prog band Gentleman Surfer). Monday 10/2 I play the Make-Out Room in San Francisco with Scott Amendola (TJ Kirk, Nels Cline Singers) and bassist Jason Hoopes (the bassist in Fred Frith's current trio), Thursday 10/5 I play Berkeley Art Museum with Scott's ridiculous big band (featuring Ben Goldberg, Fred Frith, members of ROVA, and more). Not sure when you're leaving, but I play the aforementioned Bird and Beckett on Sunday, 10/15 with Lewis Jordan and Music at Large (Lewis was in the band United Front with Anthony Brown, Mark Izu, and George Sams). Other general places to check out--and where the "meat" of the scene is, as far as genre intersection and the really innovative stuff is concerned--include the Luggage Store Gallery in SF, Studio Grand in Oakland, and Octopus Salon in Oakland. A lot of the medium-sized rock clubs are also pretty good hubs for interesting music--e.g., the Elbo Room, Hemlock Tavern, the Night Light. Bebop's list of jazz clubs covers a lot of the big ones, but I'll also add Woods Bar and Brewery. FWIW, Duende no longer exists, and Cafe Van Kleef is pretty unreliable these days.

Hey, guys- Sorry for the radio silence on this--I've been on tour and there's been a great deal of vagueness on this issue in the past few days. That being said, it looks like Roscoe is safe! Here's an email I just received (an open letter--many of my colleagues got the same one): Dear All:Mills College has decided not to terminate my current three-year contract. I would like to take this time to thank everyone for all your letters and words of support. I am honored and humbled by the time and effort each of you have taken to stand with me, and I’m truly inspired by your impassioned, coordinated efforts to loudly proclaim your respect for the work being done by myself and my colleagues at Mills. My hope is that your actions will pave a way for us all to move forward with increasing focus, during this ever-crucial period for music, art, and other creative endeavors. I feel that all of you have demonstrated how powerful we can be when we contribute our efforts towards a common goal, and I encourage each of you to seek out and seize opportunities generated in this important era we are now living in.I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had the support of teachers, students, musicians, music lovers, and all others who spoke out to defend the value of creative music and the arts at-large. That said, I would like to acknowledge those of my fellow professors who Mills chose to let go, in spite of the outpouring of support for them and alternate plans proposed by dedicated individuals seeking a more favorable outcome. A great number of you put so much work into trying to persuade the college that firings were not a necessary component of their Financial Stabilization plan. Again, I want to express how grateful I am to you for taking the time to write on our behalf and/or show your support at public hearings held at Mills. I truly wish the outcome had not left anyone who worked for the college by the wayside.Though this has proven to be a disruptive period of time for me, I am glad to put it behind me and look forward to resuming my work as a composer, performer, and pedagogue. I thank all of you for helping to provide me with secure footing, so that I may now devote my time to practicing, writing, preparing for next year’s classes, and coordinating exciting events like the upcoming concert of my new orchestral works at the De Young Museum in September. I’m thrilled to see my music performed and enjoyed by people like you, who wrote in to make known your passion, curiosity, and creativity. I cannot thank each of you enough.All the best,Roscoe Mitchell

In all seriousness, it's a matter of rousing discontent and getting the word out. If anyone has a line on a news outlet in the Bay or elsewhere, getting an article published helps (I've been working on this). Emailing the parties in my first post is very useful if you're an alum, but outside pressure from others (whether it be press or fellow musicians or fans) can't hurt. Most of the dialogue has been on Facebook, but communicating about this on Twitter, Instagram, and so on is useful. This is in many ways a PR battle. As for what you say, Jim--yes, I agree that the world does not share our outlook on life, but Mills has proven in many ways that it is a hospitable environment for that kind of outlook. It's astonishing just how many world class musicians have occupied Roscoe's chair over the years--Braxton, Xenakis, Lou Harrison, Pauline Oliveros, Curran, and so on. The systematic disassembling of that kind of positive atmosphere is troubling, since so few outlets are left.

Here's an article that clarifies a bit of Chris's statements (above): https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/06/07/jazz-pioneer-roscoe-mitchell-marked-for-dismissal-at-mills-college/ Lest it go unsaid, the issue has nothing to do with retirement and something to do with whether or not a musician of Roscoe's caliber should have the right to dictate the terms of his own continued employment and exit. As the article mentions, this would effectively end the Milhaud Chair--a position started in 1978 that has brought a series of prestige hires to the institution. These individuals have been hugely important to the musical legacy of the department--Roscoe, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Lou Harrison, Xenakis, Alvin Curran, and Joelle Leandre among them. These are hands on teachers who have made an invaluable impact on the dynamics of the department. A lot of the value of the department--the graduate program in particular--is predicated on students having the opportunity to work with these musicians. There is reason to be concerned for what Roscoe's possible dismissal means for both the quality of education in the department as well as the appeal for potential enrollees and the viability of future hires. Less immediately relevant but true: as one of my fellow alums pointed out, Roscoe is one of the most prestigious educators of color on the entire Mills payroll--and there's already a fraught history with this dating back to before he was hired. Two things to keep in mind: (1) mass outcry stands to make a difference in this instance, as it has in the past, and (2) this doesn't just have to do with Roscoe, whose legacy is unimpeachable regardless of the outcome of this debacle. This is in many ways the outcome of a long-waged war over the soul of both this school and the broader Bay Area. I'm an LA kid at heart but I consider myself an actual local, having arrived well over a decade ago and before the recent tech boom enveloped SF. Trust me, there has been tension with the school over overpaid admin positions and crappy business decisions for the entirety of my relationship with Mills. It seems with every passing year that those in a position of influence out in these institutions are more and more oblivious to the content of culture and more preoccupied with keeping pace with the playground of gentrification that so much of the Bay has morphed into as of late.

I'm glad to hear that he's hopeful about it--I can't believe he found out about this on tour. All of the faculty has been pushing pretty hard for letter writing--and the extended community is pretty up in arms about it.

Maybe you guys have read the James Newton interview posted on Do the Math--among other things, he parallels the conservative turn in the politics of the 80's with the "conservative" turn in the music. I do think that in a financially conservative environment all sorts of art--including less demanding/historical fare--is imperiled, but there's something to be said for the notion that music that is particularly "strange" or "challenging" is often the first on the chopping block when this kind of stuff happens. Bebop hits the nail on the head when mentioning the institutional importance of the college, and it's also worth noting that the balance of the arts programs at the school is very delicate. It's one of only a handful of national institutions where music that is (sometimes) self-consciously esoteric is given an environment to flourish. I cannot understate the value of spending one hour free improvising, the next running tonal analysis of Brahms, and the next woodshedding Nonaah with Roscoe giving me tips in person. That's insane--and it's also the sort of thing that helps develop craft, rigor, and discipline. It's also helped me develop the tools to sustain life as a working musician, and I would not hesitate to send another burgeoning professional in this music to that same school. These programs--here, at Cal Arts, at Wesleyan--are rare, and they're worth protecting as both institutions of rare fabric and infrastructural viability.

(Clearly) I speak on no one's behalf other than my own, but this mayhem comes on the heels of a series of deeply perplexing and questionable logistical and financial decisions on the part of the administration. This cost cutting is nothing new--the most public of these measures being the undergraduate dance department, which was saved by the raised ire of many alums and compassionate/interested parties--but it comes on the heels of years of questionable financial allocations with regard to both failed enterprises (the business school) and upper administration salaries. The tactical mishaps are manifold and extend far outside of the realm of these capital letter issues. The idea to make the school co-ed is really strange--and I say this as a man who was only granted admission into the school because the graduate music department is, well, co-ed. Stuff like this and the business school reflect the administration's extreme obliviousness to what makes the school unique--i.e., that it has long been a bastion for a certain kind of liberal arts education and (literal) psychology. Turning it into just another community college might not even save the school--it runs the risk of driving off both enrollees and faculty who have an interest in the intimacy and overriding philosophy of the institution. The long and short of it is that efficiently functioning entities like the music department have been saddled with the shit situation of the larger school's financial woes. The secret history of the place is that Mills College (and folks like Roscoe and Fred and Braxton and Zeena and so on) have been feeding the domestic creative music community for freaking years now. The broader list of Mills music grads both on the West Coast and elsewhere (NY in particular) is actually pretty mind-boggling--comparable to Wesleyan, for perspective.

Hey, folks- I know there's likely an open thread on Roscoe somewhere on this board--and out of deference and respect to the admins, please feel free to move as necessary. This issue is fairly urgent/critical, so I thought it necessary to grant it as much exposure as possible. As many of you may know, I'm a Mills College alum--I was in the performance MFA, and I had the privilege of studying with and among the likes of William Winant, Chris Brown, Maggi Payne, Zeena Parkins, and many others. I worked very closely with Fred Frith and Roscoe Mitchell, and the time I spent with those two has greatly informed a lot of my subsequent endeavors. Mills is undergoing some pretty severe financial troubles--a lot of this, honestly, tied to some terrible and very public business decisions and gross mismanagement dating back to my time and possibly earlier. All that being said, there have always been some tremendous people and minds working at the college, and since they're in such dire straits, it's basically open season on longterm faculty. Roscoe is apparently being targeted for dismissal. I know that Roscoe must mean a lot to many of you here (for musical and/or personal reasons), and many of his recent creative endeavors have been tied to resources and relationships fostered at the school. Roscoe has been a big part of the prestige of the institution the past decade or so--not, obviously, the other way around. Roscoe would be Roscoe either way; Mills College without Mr. Mitchell would not mean the same thing to its student body or faculty. Please spread the word and consider the words of Chris Brown (added below, for reference). -- Subject: Roscoe Mitchell targeted for dismissal at Mills College I am hoping to reach everyone who has studied with Roscoe Mitchell at Mills College, or who has otherwise been positively affected by his presence at Mills and in the Bay Area, to inform that as part of its Financial Stabilization Plan Mills has targeted his postion as well as the jobs of 10 other ranked and/or tenured faculty for elimination, effective this July. I am requesting that letters of protest for this action, and support for Roscoe in his position at Mills be sent to the following administrators as soon as possible: Beth Hillman, President of Mills College email: ebeth@mills.edu Chinyere Oparah, Dean of Faculty email: jcoparah@mills.edu Katie Sanborn, Chair of the Board of Trustees email: ksanborn@mills.edu Please address the importance of Roscoe Mitchell to your education at Mills, and describe how you feel his dismissal will affect the interest of other potential students in studying music at Mills. Including your personal experiences of Roscoe at Mills will be very valuable. The history of financial problems at Mills is a long one, but this proposed solution radically strikes at the heart of its reputation for innovation and excellence in the arts. Roscoe has been a leading composer, performer, and teacher since the 1960s when he was a founding member of the AACM and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. His influence on contemporary music has been strong and deep, both nationally and internationally. Most recently his works for symphony orchestra have been performed by BBC sponsored concerts in Scotland, in Iceland, New York, Bologna, and more. It has been an absolute gift to have him as a colleague in the Music Department. Please help us to appeal the plan to dismiss him from our community! Sincerely, Chris Brown Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM)

Final word: it is, indeed, on record (well, not record--yet, or tape--but it was documented). Went into the studio on Monday with the great Myles Boisen, in and out in five hours (including lunch break). Legitimately the smoothest session I've ever participated in. Hopefully it's out in the world before too long!

Thanks for the kind wishes, guys! Rumor has it that some of this may make it on tape. For now, looking forward to doing some summoning this weekend!

Hey, all- I haven't posted with great avidity lately--and late notice, I know--but it occurs to me now that this project may be of interest to some of you. My art rock trio Grex, alongside LA trumpeter Dan Clucas, is rearranging A Love Supreme. Why A Love Supreme? We're taking the opportunity to reassess what it means to play a tribute--to take something impossibly universal and iconic and make it new and personal. It's a challenge masquerading as a Catch-22--i.e., you either try to make a personal statement of of music that is already, itself, deeply personal, or you make impersonal music that compromises the integrity of the composition. Mostly Other People Do the Killing ran headfirst into oncoming traffic by taking semi-sacred music (Kind of Blue) and doing absolutely nothing with it--the end result being that they both solved the Catch-22 (above) and satisfied absolutely no one. My alternate solution was to not solve the problem at all--that is, to reduce the music to what I perceived to be the germ of itself and write something completely new. Sitting in the volcanic aftermath of this music is absolutely everything that is impregnable 50+ years after the fact--stuff like basic structure, harmonic mechanics, and, yes, sincerity. I've called it a "non-tribute" before, and I hold to this--in a culture that often treats original music with suspicion and canonical music with almost scientific distance, this is neither of those things. A Love Supreme/Not A Love Supreme. Details: Grex Plays A Love Supreme feat. Song & Dance Trio Saturday May 27, 8:00pm (7pm doors) @ California Jazz Conservatory (2087 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704) $15 cover Tickets: https://cjc.edu/concerts/?eid=20122 Grex Plays A Love Supreme w/Byron Colborn, Kyle Motl (SD) Sunday, May 28, 7pm @ Gold Lion Arts (2773 Riverside Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95818 $10 Grex: http://grex.bandcamp.com Song & Dance Trio: https://karlevangelista.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-kingmans-ivy-room Byron Colborn: https://www.soundcloud.com/byron-colborn Kyle Motl: http://kylemotl.com

I may in fact be looking at this through a more contemporary lens (i.e., applying modern standards to "premodern" sentiments), but I also think that that's instructive with regard to this particular conversation. Part of the reason that this Glasper incident exploded so horrifically is that Iverson was reluctant to editorialize the interview. He even invoked Notes and Tones in one of the response posts ("That's the tradition I want to be in, and frankly the tradition I most respect: "Warts and all."), the implication being that honesty affords is its own sort of accolade. That's fair and well, and I think that a music entrenched in complicated racial, political, sexual, etc. dynamics benefits from a degree of candor--but, and I'm sure many will agree, contextualization has always been important. I mean, that Art Blakey quote about Buddy Rich ("The only way he can swing is from a rope.") is absolutely incendiary, but it sounds far less militant--natural, even--within the framework of the actual interview. Apropos of that--and to add some actual nuance to my initial criticism--Joe Henderson, like Blakey, gets a pass, sure. Henderson's music emanates from a historical and social continuum, a time period, and performance practice that necessitates that one address gender equality as exceptional rather than obvious. In terms of what Joe actually says within the context of that conversation--quizzical at best, at least for 2017. Martin was prompting Henderson, so the weirdness is dialogic--but the fact that the conversation shifted so quickly to softness vs. hardness, manhood vs. womanhood, delicacy vs. indelicacy, etc. is unfortunate. When he talks about the pianist who would assert the "Yang" part of herself to the degree that she was "neglecting" her own delicacy as a woman--he's basically saying she's a basher, yes? I can't imagine him saying that J.C. Moses, or Beaver Harris, or Bobby Battle, etc. "brought too much manhood to the table"--he'd probably just say that that dude was heavy-handed or something. My problem isn't with Joe, who is comes across as presciently progressive within the context of his hiring practices--it's more the tenor of the conversation, and the notion that, again, unrepentant honesty is its own biblical fact/is its own virtue, which is bullshit.