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Ethan Iverson in The New Yorker


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1 hour ago, Guy Berger said:

What's the core thesis?

That between Bill Eavans and "jazz education", jazzzzzzzzzzzzz has largely become a codified music for dorks and nerds who can't get laid except among their own kind?

I mean, he's essentially right, but he's also waaaaaaay late to that game, which in itself is full of the delicious irony of unintentionally proving it's own point? :g

 

 

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But seriously...it reads to me like another in a long line of "where jazz went wrong" pieces, this time from a younger(ish) person. The undertone being that all these educated white folk took a living culture and turned it into something you could learn by simply...get ready...DOING THE MATH!

Well OF COURSE you can do the math. The question is - whose math are you going to do?

The correct answer is that nothing "went wrong" as much as it is just that shit happened, and will always continue to happen, so cast your lot in line with where you want to end up and own it, period. Not saying to not evolve, but...keep your core even as you build out from it.

This bit, however, cracks me up beacuse it's at once so accurate and so...snobby:

The pianist and composer Anthony Coleman, who followed the Ellington band in their last few years and heard them at the Rainbow Grill many times, told me recently that Evans’s approach makes “In A Sentimental Mood” dangerously close to the banal: “Those cutie-pie hits together forty seconds in, for example, send me into a reverie where Jamal degenerates into Ramsey Lewis, with Oscar Peterson nodding approvingly towards André Previn, and Johnny Mandel observing the whole thing.”

I mean, ok on the one hand he's "bemoaning" the loss of the connection between the street and the academic, the popular vs the esoteric, and then he turns around an allows for the dissing of people who were VERY popular, and here again, I think he's aiming wrong. I know I've mentioned a few times that the cool thing about a Cannonball Adderley gig in the 70s (which was when I saw him was that there was a buttload full of different "audience4s" all in the same room at the same time and they all came away with something that was what they came for. This kind of popularity has nothing to do with "art" and everything to do with a msuic being able to exist in many different forms simultaneously, with points that converge as readily as they diverge.

But...it's too late, what's done is done, looking back gets us nowhere, let's do shit now. Well, not me, because I've gotten to the point where I seriously don't give a fuck anymore. But you know, people that are doing it, just fucking DO IT. Do. It.

I can't believe this shit is still dragging on, that we're using 50 year old comparisons to do what, exactly? Scold? Bitch? Presentate? Collect a fee? Gain profile amongst people who want to be hip by being told what's not hip? That's for the old and useless. That's o-baord level shit, not The New Yorker. Or maybe it is, hell, Whitney Balliet.

Like the man says, tell me something I don't know.

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"The change was the shape of the container. Bach and Parker built structures based on internal counterpoint, where the melodic impulse was true in every dimension, while Beethoven and Coltrane offered fast-scale passagework over varied textures.
 
Leaving Coltrane aside for the moment, if you think that Beethoven was about offering "fast-scale passagework over varied textures" -- good grief!
 

 

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8 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

This bit, however, cracks me up beacuse it's at once so accurate and so...snobby:

The pianist and composer Anthony Coleman, who followed the Ellington band in their last few years and heard them at the Rainbow Grill many times, told me recently that Evans’s approach makes “In A Sentimental Mood” dangerously close to the banal: “Those cutie-pie hits together forty seconds in, for example, send me into a reverie where Jamal degenerates into Ramsey Lewis, with Oscar Peterson nodding approvingly towards André Previn, and Johnny Mandel observing the whole thing.”

 

"Cutie pie hits"?  Is he talking about Philly Joe?  And what does Johnny Mandel have to do with it besides writing Emily.   (BTW I saw Johnny Mandel, who was in his '90s lead a big band a couple of years ago and they rocked.   I've  also seen The Bad Plus and they didn't-- I got free tickets because the venue couldn't sell them and didn't want to have a completely empty house.)

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On 8/25/2017 at 1:33 AM, medjuck said:

"Cutie pie hits"?  Is he talking about Philly Joe?  And what does Johnny Mandel have to do with it besides writing Emily.   (BTW I saw Johnny Mandel, who was in his '90s lead a big band a couple of years ago and they rocked.   I've  also seen The Bad Plus and they didn't-- I got free tickets because the venue couldn't sell them and didn't want to have a completely empty house.)

why the negativity? I thought this was verboten from your point of view.

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I'm not attacking a fellow musician( I'm not a musician)  or a member of this board. I'm defending Johnny Mandel who probably reads that New Yorker.  And it was on topic.  But you're right I didn't need to bring up the concert I saw to do that. (Actually I thought Bad Plus was ok though sort of  boring. ) 

 

 

 

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actually, Joe, I'm just pulling your chain. Nothing wrong with your opinion of the Bad Plus (i saw them once in concert and it was like watching an annoying cartoon; though I think Ethan is a terrific pianist). I actually think people tend to to think 'criticism' is bad until they find something that really bugs them, like Donald Trump or Kenny G.

Edited by AllenLowe
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3 hours ago, ctuck1 said:

 I have to say it seems folks very quickly get their teeth on edge about Ethan.  

Well, that's one way to look at it, you know, ooooh, CONTROVERSIAL!!!! I just think he's boring too often for his own good, doesn't get my "teeth on edge" (I guess not, although I don't know what that means, really. my teeth hit on many surfaces that have edges, like a good piece of pie).

Then again, I'm probably old enough to be his father, don't buy his records, don't read The New Yorker these days, and only read his blog when somebody brings it up here, so, I don't know that he'd really give any more of a fuck about what I think any more than I do him. I was also pissed of about a lot of the things that seem to put his "teeth on edge" (what kind of teeth are we talking here, anyway?) back when they were actually happening, and whatever need to happen to stop it didn't happen, so, really, what's done is done. I don't care if it's Wynton or Ivanton, what's done is done, and if you think there's a future in bitching about it, you're right, but I got better ways to spend my time, like taking the next....

That train never went off the tracks!

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Well, that's one way to look at it, you know, ooooh, CONTROVERSIAL!!!! I just think he's boring too often for his own good, doesn't get my "teeth on edge" (I guess not, although I don't know what that means, really. my teeth hit on many surfaces that have edges, like a good piece of pie).

Then again, I'm probably old enough to be his father, don't buy his records, don't read The New Yorker these days, and only read his blog when somebody brings it up here, so, I don't know that he'd really give any more of a fuck about what I think any more than I do him. I was also pissed of about a lot of the things that seem to put his "teeth on edge" (what kind of teeth are we talking here, anyway?) back when they were actually happening, and whatever need to happen to stop it didn't happen, so, really, what's done is done. I don't care if it's Wynton or Ivanton, what's done is done, and if you think there's a future in bitching about it, you're right, but I got better ways to spend my time, like taking the next....

That train never went off the tracks!

LOLOLOLOLOL!!

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Well, that's one way to look at it, you know, ooooh, CONTROVERSIAL!!!! I just think he's boring too often for his own good, doesn't get my "teeth on edge" (I guess not, although I don't know what that means, really. my teeth hit on many surfaces that have edges, like a good piece of pie).

Then again, I'm probably old enough to be his father, don't buy his records, don't read The New Yorker these days, and only read his blog when somebody brings it up here, so, I don't know that he'd really give any more of a fuck about what I think any more than I do him. I was also pissed of about a lot of the things that seem to put his "teeth on edge" (what kind of teeth are we talking here, anyway?) back when they were actually happening, and whatever need to happen to stop it didn't happen, so, really, what's done is done. I don't care if it's Wynton or Ivanton, what's done is done, and if you think there's a future in bitching about it, you're right, but I got better ways to spend my time, like taking the next....

That train never went off the tracks!

I think I hear a sample of "Train To Skaville" by The Ethiopians at the start of this Wevers clip.

Amirite?

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18 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Some of you take all of this kind of stuff too seriously. Maybe I take it too seriously.

Iverson has been excellent (IMHO - got to be careful) with Konitz, Tootie, etc.

Can't we just all get along???

I can't get along with someone who says, and does so in a pontificating manner, something as  at once flippant and just plain stupid as "... Beethoven ... offered fast-scale passagework over varied textures.” Yes, Iverson can play, and he has a nice blog for the most part, but sometimes when he tries to think/starts to type, it's a train wreck. Who cares, in one sense, but if there is one person out there who ends up thinking, because someone said it in The New Yorker,  that offering "fast-scale passagework over varied textures” has anything to do with any of the music that Beethoven is known for ... aiee!

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