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What music did you buy today?


tonym

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12 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I have another half dozen Aerophonics and will probably fill in most of the holes. I am a fan.

I’m filling the holes as well. I’m veer towards the groups with drummers. The two drummer group with a Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten is one of my favorites. I saw Dave in a trio with Brandon Lopez & Ryan Packard this past summer. Excellent set and the recording is also very good. 

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Now that I think of it, I've been following Rempis for almost 20 years now. There's a consists "right thereness" to his playing that is very satisfying. Also, he's just a damn  good player of the saxophone(s) -- power, projection, intonation, you name it. And a very nice guy to boot. There's a lot of them on the Chicago scene.

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2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Now that I think of it, I've been following Rempis for almost 20 years now. There's a consists "right thereness" to his playing that is very satisfying. Also, he's just a damn  good player of the saxophone(s) -- power, projection, intonation, you name it. And a very nice guy to boot. There's a lot of them on the Chicago scene.

He’s always a highlight in the many terrific Vandermark large ensemble recordings. 

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13 hours ago, Steve Reynolds said:

He’s always a highlight in the many terrific Vandermark large ensemble recordings. 

OTOH, I can't stand Vandermark; musically, I think he's close to a charlatan, although he did play a significant role in getting the Chicago scene on its feet by (I believe) pouring a good deal of his MacArthur Award money into supporting others. 

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3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

OTOH, I can't stand Vandermark; musically, I think he's close to a charlatan, although he did play a significant role in getting the Chicago scene on its feet by (I believe) pouring a good deal of his MacArthur Award money into supporting others. 

I’ve heard this before. He’s not my favorite reed player by a long shot but I think you are selling his compositional abilities with a large ensemble short. I know you’ve seen and heard them. I also know once I get a fixed idea about what’s what I have a hard time letting it go. I still can go where you are when I hear KV in the same group as Rempis or Gustafsson or maybe especially with Brotzmann. 

I try to focus on his strengths rather than his weaknesses which are tone (especially on either of the clarinets he plays) and his lack of flexibility on the tenor. I still get a charge out of his riff based playing - especially on the baritone - but I may be a minority in that view.

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Yes, his compositions are IMO less objectionable/inept than his solo work, but for me they also are rather faceless, at time bordering on a kind of willed industrial ugliness, as though ugliness were in itself a sign of authenticity. And that endless string of upscale arty dedications -- to the likes of Samuel Beckett, Michel Foucault, et al., with, unless I'm recalling incorrectly, an occasional doff of the cap to someone like Charlie Patton. I'm guessing that in KV headquarters there's a wheel that he spins, a la Vanna White, to come with the name du jour.

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Anthony Braxton and a lot of other top-notch musicians don't seem to find KV a "charlatan," which is quite a charge to level against him--a little heavier than simply saying he's not aesthetically developed to one's tastes.  As for the dedications, some may find them pretentious, but they've always struck me merely as KV's attempt to hip people to the artists he admires.  Worse crimes have been committed in the history of jazz.

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2 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Anthony Braxton and a lot of other top-notch musicians don't seem to find KV a "charlatan," which is quite a charge to level against him--a little heavier than simply saying he's not aesthetically developed to one's tastes.  As for the dedications, some may find them pretentious, but they've always struck me merely as KV's attempt to hip people to the artists he admires.  Worse crimes have been committed in the history of jazz.

Agree!!

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1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

Anthony Braxton and a lot of other top-notch musicians don't seem to find KV a "charlatan," which is quite a charge to level against him--a little heavier than simply saying he's not aesthetically developed to one's tastes.  As for the dedications, some may find them pretentious, but they've always struck me merely as KV's attempt to hip people to the artists he admires.  Worse crimes have been committed in the history of jazz.

Thanks for making this point so well. It needed to be said. 

To bring the conversation back to Rempis, I've generally preferred KV when they play together. Happy to be in a minority on that.

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3 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Agree!!

The dedications, I venture to say without proof  are or were someone else's idea, not KV's. As for KV's playing, I like David Ayers' term "blower." I say charlatan because IMO his cachet in some/many quarters far exceeds his accomplishment, and I wouldn't be surprised if KV kind of knows this. In detail, while changes mean little or nothing to him, which is certainly the case with many vital figures of recent times, he also doesn't seem to me to be a (or much of a) "free" player -- here Rempis is a both good and a fair point of comparison I think. Rempis is by and large a truly "free" player (of a specific type that I won't try to define right now), a creator of striking individual/novel  formally interactive shapes, while KV's shapes are, thanks again to David Ayers, fairly well reminiscent of those of bar walkers and honkers but without the grease and with roughed up with avant-gardish trimmings. As for his riff-based playing (Steve Reynolds' point), in my experience those riffs don't swing (and perhaps that's not the goal) but rather just chug. And chug-chug-chug is not a rhythmic flavor I have much taste for.

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