AllenLowe

I've been working on the cues for the new documentary, musical interludes to be inserted into the film. This is called Do Not Go Gentle Into that Operating Room; me on tenor, Ethan Kogan drums, Colson Jimenez bass. All freely improvised:

never mind....just figured it out -

I should add that, after my first 12 hour surgery I stopped sleeping (this was 2021). Six months went by; I was sleepless and suicidal until I discovered THC which, in small dosages, has kept me sane since September 2021. Thank goodness it was legalized and I recommend it; it kept me out of the looney bin (so far at least).

Just turned 72; I would say the cancer thing aged me about an extra 10 years. It's strange getting old; I can out-play and out-compose most younger musicians, but the industry sees me as aged out, nearing some kind of unofficial retirement age. But after almost dying and then losing about 5 years I am just getting started. Though I am going to start liquidating my CD collection (though I don't know, yet, how). PTSD after 25 surgeries is the killer, night terrors, waking up; then being told that Chemo damaged my inner ear and is why I tend to get dizzy - so another thing is trying not to fall. Which is also a little scary, especially since I am in NYC a lot climbing subway stairs. But musically: fuck it all, there is a documentary coming out about me, I have a 3-CD set coming out, and a new group called the Avant Roots Quartet that is as good as any in the world. Really. So I am not going gentle into that retirement home. Gigging maybe 4 times a year, which sucks, but that's the way it's gonna be.

I hear Texas has enormous cockroaches.

well....I downloaded a sample on Kindle, maybe 40-50 pages worth and I think it's pretty awful. The intro is a waste of time, and the first section makes the same mistake every author, unedited, seems to be making these days. The writer has mistaken research for writing, and it is so overloaded with detail about - well, everything, Texas insects, the family history (could have been cut to about 3 pages), land deals, political battles - everything but Kenny Dorham himself. And written in a totally dead style, like a listings section of a newspaper. Sorry, this is probably not a popular opinion, but this weirdness is everywhere in current jazz bios and music bios in general. The writer(s) seems to thing that merely describing something is the same as having insight into it. I just am so tired of how badly music bios are done - unless they are by Robin DG Kelley of John Szwed. I gave up on this one (and I haven't even described one particular howler of mistake, which may be an editing mistake, but that just shows there was probably no editor).

Zieff was brilliant; he used to call me every once in a while and complain about a critic I knew. By far his best work is on this: https://www.discogs.com/release/14448931-Bob-Zieff-The-Music-Of-Bob-Zieff can't get the picture to appear, but that's the CD to get -

Try the Strings Attached record he made with Jimmy Rainey. Al aways had a beautiful touch but he just didn't get modal playing like some others of his generation.

I love Mary Lou, but playing that solo she reminds of Al Haig when he was trying to play in a "contemporary" way - the line never gets going and is built around repeated patterns. For her best playing I always go back to the '30s and '40s. She was always, harmonically, the hippest of the hip, but to my ears she never successfully made the rhythmic transition from swing to bebop to post-bop. the energy us unfeigned - this was where she was comfortable. and here; she was picking up the harmonies, post-Tatum, but when it came to line she needed the old-style feel:

I admire Bickert but don't know enough about him to be of much help, but no one seems to have noticed that he played a Fender Telecaster, which is extremely unusual for a jazz guitarist. It is more likely the choice of a rock or country musician. Different kind of sound (potentially).

thanks, I will see if if I can locate a phone number.

I will tell you a weird story - years ago I was on my way to a club in Midtown Manhattan. I was walking (I was about 19, so this might have been 1973) and who did I see ahead of me but Budd Johnson. I was thrilled; I walked up and introduced myself, and Johnson said "I want you to meet my friend, Big Al Sears (who was standing next to him)." I was very excited about this, wish I'd had a camera.

last I spoke to him he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. I had been talking to him for a while since his wife stuck him in a facility without telling him what she was doing, and while he was still very cognizant. At that point he got a lawyer and was sent back home. He had started to fade, and when I did last call, a caregiver came on the phone and said he was doing ok. That's the last contact I had. I imagine he is in some kind of care facility and probably totally out of it by now. He does have a son but I cannot remember his first name, so I know of no way to reach him, sadly enough.

thanks for saying that, not everyone here agrees that I am a benign presence.

I know that he is constantly working, so maybe he is too busy to worry about it. I am hoping to do a duo album with him at some point.

not gonna get into the OP vs everybody, but I am a little shocked that no one else hears this genius as I do. I can deal with it, but be aware that in New York everyone who has heard Esteban recognizes what I recognize, which is that he is far from just a technician, but a brilliant consolidator of styles, in the same league as Jaki Byard. It's possible that non-musicians don't recognize his skill, but I think it's clear that he is one of the best ever, and I have heard everyone, live or on record, from, I would say, 1923 forward. We can hear bits of Tristano, Monk, Bud and Tatum in his playing, but masked by his originality, and I have heard no other pianist - including, I would add Jaki Byard, who I loved - who can sit, relaxed at the piano like that, with such incredible focus, comprehensive technique, and just plain feeling. Part of the problem is that we have to distinguish between technique and facility (and btw I like Gene Harris a lot but not OP). But Esteban is just on another level, it's almost mystical the levels of creativity that he achieves.

no one's interested in this incredible pianist? Come on folks.

I honestly think the narration is not particularly interesting or important. What is interesting and important is that Armstrong, in these performances, breaks out of the formulas he had gotten into as a matter of touring. They made him a star, but THIS made him an artist. yes, this has been released in a few formats. And any discography that is dismissive of this, one of Armstrong's great post-War efforts, ought to be tossed in the garbage, after being burned.

There's a young pianist in NYC named Esteban Castro, young, just out of Julliard. I will state this directly: Esteban is one of the greatest jazz pianists who ever lived, and I mean ever, and I say this unequivocally, after a lifetime of listening to everything from 1920 to the present. I am trying to think of how to describe his playing - it is historically comprehensive, but never in a self conscious way. He just sits at the piano with casual ease and turns out phrase after phrase of brilliant, compelling, artistically meaningful music. In term of musical attitude he has some resemblance to Jaki Byard, but that is primarily in the ingenious way in which he incorporates his incredibly varied, but always personal, ideas of playing. He is astounding. We recorded together not too long ago, and I basically knew what he can do, but he still surprised me - bits and pieces of Tristano, an amazing Fats-Waller-into-stride passage that just blew me away, and a deep understanding of Bud Powell. He can read, he can play inside/outside/upside down, harmonically speaking. He even did an uncanny summoning of Monk on one piece that was not Monkish in the usual sense, but instead a personalization of Monk's way of fusing melody and harmony. Another thing I love about his playing is that it is non-ideological: no systems, no repetitive patterns, no blues cliches. He is the real thing. I will post some more of his stuff eventually, but here's a clip from a few years back which gives a sense of his incredible reach and sense of line:

it likely was around that time, yes.

I met her twice, and the personality difference was....well, bizarrely radical. First time, she played for John Szwed's course at Yale - it must have been mid 1980s? She wasn't very famous yet. I drove her to the train to go back to NYC and she was very "regular," young, friendly, unaffected, casual dress. Even knew some of my work. Second time - at a Jazz conference in NYC. I do not remember the year, but it was probably in the 20-teens. Well...a different personality entirely. Dressed formally in a "look at me" way, like she was going to the Oscars. I did talk to her (sort of) because Bob Neloms, an old friend of mine, who at this point was unwell, had been her mentor when she was growing up near Detroit. He was a mess, and I suggested that he might welcome a phone call. She was...strange, distant, disinterested, indifferent. Kinda like a politician meeting a constituent whom they don't think is particularly important, but whom they have to pretend to care about. Carried herself like she was a diva, maybe Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Cordial, but regal and not quite there, clearly didn't care about what I was saying. She was a great pianist, though.

I have returned, like MacArthur (the general, not the award); I am relatively happy but a bit sidetracked by PTSD. But I am, hopefully, done with surgery (25 to date). Not a lot new to report. Still annoying people. Trying to finish a film (long story in and of itself). Just did a really nice recording session in which Leo Wadada Smith played four tunes. Will be part of the soundtrack to the film. Health is ok though not terrific. Tried to find Larry Kart, though I suspect, based on his prognosis and the fact that his phone no longer works, that he is permanently hospitalized, which makes me very sad. All I do is compose and practice. Beats working for ICE.

https://allenlowe.substack.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-series-of-chemo

ok. Though I should mention that I heard a young group recently that I think is the best thing in jazz in the last 10 years. They are on Instagram as Numusic.

If your implication (as others have made) is that I put down other music to elevate my own....well, you haven't read enough of my writing. There is a strange historical parallel here, of writers and others who wrote fiction/plays and who also wrote critically of other writers: Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, Richard Gilman, George Bernard Shaw, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Harold Rosenberg - I doubt if you would criticize them in the same way though they were much more aggressive than I am. It's part of a give-and-take which few people engage in any more; criticism tends to read, these days, like press releases. But before you think ill off me for doing this kind of critical work, get a better sense of the history of American writing. There was a whole movement of the '40s and '50s called the New York Intellectuals, and my work is quite mild compared to theirs, though I am inspired by their willingness to question conventional wisdom, which is rampant in the jazz world. And I haven't mentioned Brecht, whose attacks on contemporary theater were detailed and devastating. And the truth is that much of what I say is agreed to by others who do not want to go public. I get private messages to this effect all the time.