Gheorghe

Sorry I can´t follow the link properly , but tell me a bit about the music ...... Is it Horace Silver tunes on it. What instrumentation ? I don´t have very very much Horace Silver in my repertory, two things I LOVE to play is "Strollin´" with a fine quintet, or "No Smokin´" a thing you really can burn on it.

I can´t say it is my favourite guitar player or in general my favourite music. I think I saw "Oregon" once since it was on schedule of a jazz festival but can´t remember much. And I never was a real guitar fan with the exception of sounds of Charlie Christian, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery and Mike Stern when he was with the 1981 Miles band...... Somehow I don´t really like acoustic guitar.

Not a recorded track but a live track: Two days ago I listened to the trio of my favourite Austrian pianist Oliver Kent ("Triple Ace" with Uli Langthaler who also plays with me on many occasions, and the great Serbian drummer Dusan Novakov) and they did a fantastic version of that old pop song "Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree" , but as a fast waltz, with extended solos of highest quality and going modal with a bit McCoy feeling, but very very individual. I could have listened for hours only for this tune. As I mentioned in my thread "A Great Day...in Vienna" I have the highest praise for Oliver, such a wonderful musician an human being, and it´s a big honour for me that he praises my own playing too.

I kinda had blinders regarding other music than jazz, but once a chick took me to that film "Last Waltz" which I remember quite well, though sure I was more interesting in dating that chick than in the music. In any case .... a remarkable career but of course it´s a drag if you disband a successful unit as early as at age 35.....

fantastic !!!!

The high noon of ECM was also in the late 70´s . "We" were that gang that listened to more hard driving or hard funky stuff, Bird Diz Monk, Messengers from the oldies, VSOP from neo bop acoustic, Electric Miles and Ornette´s Prime Time, and there was another group, more the first "alternative thinking" folks with more medidation or so, who loved only ECM, Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber and so on. This was two different worlds.

Interesting descendance. So Lituania during that time was part of the URSS ? Yeah, I also knew people who took vodca for breakfast. But gettin´ blind is a drag, really, but remarkable that he still checked his team´s work. Blind from alcool ? I heard things like that. But sure it was other causes....

From the most popular early electric "jazz-rock" formations of the ex-Milesmen Chick Corea (RTF) and Herbie Hancock (Headhunters) I think I liked them both, but I dug Headhunters more at that time. The nonplusultra Chick Corea fans were other folks then that the Hancock-folks. I think the Chick Corea fans I got to know had a more philosophical thing goin on like "Why do I live" and "How can I become a better human being" while we Hancock-fans were more "earthbound" . But both were great. It was also that the ECM buyers were other folks than the CBS, BN and Prestige-buyers. I must admit it took me decades to dig again into Chick Coreas music, when my wife chose the newer 2000´s thing featuring Jean Luc Ponty as a winterholidays present for me. I was always delighted about such surprises, which pulled my coat into other directions, like when I got "Jimmy Giuffree trio in Graz" or "Stan Kenton live 1972" , things that until then were holes in my discography. Strange that I missed to see Chick Corea live with one exception when he sat in with the Miles Davis band. I´m still pissed off that I missed the larger RTF-world tour band in 78 with Dave Liebman in it. Didn´t even find a record of that stuff...... Cumbia was one of my favourite things then, This was the times when somebody like Mingus was alive and you could find him on all European festival gigs each year. I practically witnessed the live version of the touring band since they played that almost 25 minutes long version of it with his steady quintet (Walrath, Ford, Neloms, Danny) and THEN the record still wasn´t on the market. But Mingus announced it as "Something we just recorded, it´s from a Movie Score". I think I remember the large band studio recording was a bit slower than the live version, but also the live version had all them subtitles, first the drum settin the groove, then that call and response thing with the ostinato bass, then the straight ahead passages and the Db two beat based "Mingus Rap" where he snarls "Who said Mama´s li´l baby likes shortin´ bread ?" and the strong tutti sections after that and that incredible bass solo up into the highest possible register of the bass. Wonderful, and livelong memory from the teenage days.....

Well, interesting you had the same encounter with Kind of Blue. My very first LP was "Steamin´" but I would consider "Round Midnite" in the same range, same period, same personnel, same style, so this is practically identic. Silent Way, I love it but I think I bought it after Bitches or On the Corner. About "digestible" well my second LP (3 LPs in one album) was "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus" (with Dolphy, Byard, Cliff Jordan, Danny Richmond) and this was my most semnificative entry in jazz, because I must have had that thing in me about more so called "difficult" jazz (I don´t see nothing difficult in it) . I mean that Mingus thing with Dolphy opended the way to the more free forms of 60´s avantgarde, and .... damn, I got to Bird thru Dolphy and Mingus ! Bird with Diz or Fats and Bud, Monk absolutly...... What I didn´t really like was more "easy listening comfortable" music like an Oscar Peterson trio, mainstream swing, westcoast stuff and so on, it always had to "burn" .......😉

turkish coffee as I do always in the morning, in the afternoon or even after dinner if I know it will be a long night of playing or just partying.......

He will be missed, really a tragedy to die that way. But I would have died much earlier since I can´t stand the smell of cheese, I mean especially them wheels of hard cheese . The only cheese I enjoy and eat very often is the "feta" from sheps which we call "telemea" , I like it together with black olives, with slices of capia (those long mild peppers) and Transilvanian salam, or as a "greek salad". Dying at work. I remember Mingus told that during his Monterey concert while cocluding his Ellington-Medley with "A Train" he felt something like a pain in his chest and was afraid of dying from a heart attack. I hope I´ll not die on stage, because I fear this would be embarrasing for the other musicians and the audience. But with 64 I still have a lotta plans and future I´m sure.

You might kill me for the sacrilege I say now but by all consciousness that this is one of the all time most important albums in jazz history, I had a wrong start here 50 years ago. There were not so many jazz records in the regular record stores, many went OOP in the 70´s but I was a stone Miles Davis fan and tried to find what I could. But after hearing the three albums I had (Steamin´ , "Carnegie Hall 64" and "Bitches Brew" ) I was a bit disappointed. For the old stuff, I had preferred Philly J.J on drums and Garland on piano to Jimmy Cobb and Bill Evans, though I liked Kelly on "Freddie Freeloader" . I preferred Coltrane only and though I admitted that Cannoball is great, I thought as so much music Trane creates, he cannot be topped, and Cannonball had another sound than what I am used to on alto (more the McLean Thing). After hearing "So What" and "All Blues" first as the Carnegie Hall versions, the original versions sounded a bit too tame for an early teenie. As a newbie just at the beginning, maybe I was not ripe enough for the more quiet, more subdued stuff. About really slow stuff like "Blue in Green" , I did like ballads, but more with a bit a more sharper thing in it like the "Round Midnight" with the stuff borrowed from the old arrangements of the Gillespie Big Band like you hear it on the first CBS album Miles made, or .....still more......the "Funny Valentine" from Carnegie Hall........ I also dare to say that I was a too difficult and restless kid and even grown up to really get into the more introverted and meditative way Bill Evans plays...... another sacrilege.....

I have that record but I think I have not listened to it for decades. Somehow it didn´t really get to me, I considered it more third stream or how you call it. I think it was a bit over-produced. Maybe I was and still am too much into Mingus happening on stage. There were at least two albums that disappointed me or didn´t really reach me. This one, and also on CBS the "Mingus at Carnegie Hall", where I often asked myself "where is THE Charles Mingus?". Also some early 70s albums seem "lame duck" to me like most of the 1970 "America" Sessions, allthough they have some beautiful McPherson on it, but it is a very subdued Mingus, barely audible and even the presence of Byard and Richmond do not help to make things "happen"....

Yes, I heard that when I was in the States and dudes told me about it. Well I was never on the West Coast. My main McPherson impressions were with Mingus after Dolphy´s death, on "Mingus at Monterey" and "My Favourite Quintet" and on some of the 70´s albums, I think he was on the "Carnegie 1974" on those to jam tunes, and maybe on "Me Myself and I" or "Something like a Bird". I think I had an album where he was the leader, it could have been around 1972 and I think it had the standard "While we were young" on it, very fine 1970´s "third generation bop" . But I fear I never saw him live.

Well maybe this is one of the reasons why I didn´t go there, First of all during that time I never heard a mentor tellin me about Dorothy Donegan, they might tell me to listen to Tatum, Bud, Monk, Garland, Wynton Kelly, McCoy, Cecil Taylor, Herbie Hancock etc. , but I think Donegan was not mentioned much among musicians or even music lovers of the scene then or now. And.....as it was told to me it was over-pianistic, while I want to hear if a piano player connects well with the bass player and the drummer, each of the instruments very important to me. It also may explain, why Mr. Axel Melhard (boss of Jazzland) later complained, that there was not enough audience for Dorothy Donegan. Some one told me that when she banged the final chord of a tune, she lost her "peruca" (don´t know how you say for artificial hair), it was a tragic-comic thing with a woman too "overdressed" for a small cellar club.

Oh man, Dolphy ! My first alto I heard as a kid. Damn, I heard and fell in love with Dolphy before I had heard a note of Bird !!!

I have two Alamacs I think. Bird with the Herd and Bird 1949 . I bought them in the 70´s and was a bit astonished they were so expensive and had quite modest cover design, no liner notes . The Bird with the Herd is quite funny though the more heavy swing style rhythm of the drums doesn´t fit to Bird, but it is a fun record. I saw Jay McShann at Jazzland and it was great. Dorothy Donegan also played once ore twice at Jazzland but I must admit I hadn´t ever heard her name. I learned that she was a very tehnical pianist and brought up as a wunderkind, could play licks of Errol Garner and others but seem´s to have been quite absent in the active jazzscene were you play and record in different groups . The boss of Jazzland, Mr. Melhard once told me it was quite stressy with her, since she thought she must have hundreds of evening robes to play and didn´t understand that this is just a smaller but outrite fine cellar club. She travelled with much luggage with robes and stuff and seemed to be lost away from the piano. Brought up as a wunderkind and kept that way..... Dick Wellstood´s photo is also on the walls of Jazzland, but this must have been before my time or a style earlier than what we heard and studied.

If I´m in the mood for some good old hard bop it´s very possible that I spin "Sonny´s Crib" (for the participation of Trane) or "Cool Struttin". Maybe I couldn´t listen to more in about the same kind of style, but they are great, especially since they have some of my favourite horn players on it. One thing that always was in my mind is that the Bud on "Scene Changes" sounds so close to Sonny Clark that at first listening I couldn´t believe it´s Bud. I think I got that from the widow of a late friend. I remember it´s very very hot playing, Griff in top form and going a bit into new areas on "Tunisia".....right ? But it seems to be a very very obscure label.

It was bumped by me since I always wanted to post a photo of me on stage but it took me months to have time to manage to make photos smaller, so this and the Peter Pullman-Photo in the "Jazz in Newspapers etc." had to be posted much later, just yesterday. Glad you are successfull with stretches. In my case it would hurt my hands, but I think I can reach 10th because of more than 60 years playing piano (I started to lay my fingers on piano when I still was in (how you say, "pampers" didn´t exist in the early 60´s ). My dad could "play" a handful of pieces, one was some sonata in Db by Beethoven or so with very deep notes, and one was I think a funeral march written by Chopin and to the surprise of my fatha I jumped on his lap and played the line with my little hands. At 4,5 I was pissed off that my hands are so small I can´t reach what I have in my head. So I think 60 years of playing, 45 years of active playing on stage, and somehow the hands get adapted, especially the left hand for decimes if you play a solo ballad or so.

Glad you like it ! The photo was shot by the club management. I´ll play there next week, a fine unit with tp, as, p, b, dr.....always nice to be there, so many young jazz students there, that´s really good audience......

Well I reach a 10th but I still think that my hands are small if I look at this photo with me on stage

Hello Friends ! You all know the famous photo "A Great Day in Harlem". In one of our 3 important jazz clubs in Vienna, the "ZWE" which is run by the wonderful Mr. Christoph Klein, there is a large copy of that legendary photo near the bandstand. But let me start my story : This spring in April I got a message from N.Y. from the author of the famous book about Bud Powell "Wail", Mr. Peter Pullman. He wrote me that he will come to Vienna for vacation, together with his wife and will bring a signed copy of his book for me. I suggested that we spend an evening at ZWE, were my favourite Austrian pianist and composer Oliver Kent was scheduled with his wonderful quintet "Worry Later" featuring the creme de la creme of Austrian Jazzmusicians. It´s the Wendesday Jam Session "Let´s Groove" so I was sure that Mr. Pullman will here some great music. I had told Oliver and the Clubmanager about our visiting guest and asked Mr. Pullman to bring also a book for Oliver Kent. Mr. Pullman arrived at the club with his wonderful wife, was greated by Christopher Klein, the club boss, and imediatly told us that he likes the club, it reminds him of "Small´s " in N.Y. and he was very pleased to see the "Great Day in Harlem" picture on the wall. He told us some insider anecdotes about the making of that famous picture. Finally the music started and was great as ever. I knew that I had not promised Mr. Pullman too much, he really was fascinated by the playing of Oliver Kent p, Daniel Nösig tp, Thomas Kugi ts, Uli Langthaler b, and Dusan Novakov dr (the name of the group is "Worry Later" ). During intermission (the core band plays the first set, after intermission the second set is jam session) Mr. Pullman was asked on stage to give me and Oliver the signed copies of the book, and Christoph Klein made a photo of us three (from left to right: Oliver, me and Peter Pullmann). At the beginning of second set I got on stage to sit in on two numbers( in honour of Mr. Pullman it was Bud-related numbers like Ornothology and April if I remember right). Some days later I got a mail from Mr. Pullman who announced me that he is back in N.Y. and how much had enjoyed that evening. He wrote that he had traveled much all around the world but never before had seen such a fine club so far away from NY. I also got a hell of a compliment as Mr. Pullman wrote about my own playing that "be bop flows so easily from my veins into my fingers". I´ll never forget that fine spontanous event.

I don´t remember, yeah it must have been around 1977, so I was a bit older, 18. It had a colour photo of Miles, but obviously from much later, from the Bitches Brew time, and I liked the first LP, ok on the 2´nd LP I liked what Mobley and Trane do on "Someday...", and maybe there was a standard blues in F, but in general I liked the groups with Philly J.J and then with Tony Williams much more than the more polished Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb thing. Somehow for me something was missing . I had bought before the Miles at Antibes 1963 and it was the greatest for me.

Thank you so much, @david weiss: Great performance, I hope I´ll see you at some time if you do Vienna (I missed the 2018 gig at Porgy@Bess) but I still hope it will happen some day. Thank you also very much for the rhythmic advice of the tune. Yes, that´s also what I thought: not a typically 9, but more a 4-5. When I heard it the first time in 1978 I couldn´t figure it out. But knew it is something great, special.

Interesting story about your wife 😄 Well, I am a maniac only when playing with damn good musicians. My "collection" habits are very very loose. I listen only for the music and the sources come from anywhere they come from, old LPs, CD´s bought in the early 2000´s and some new ones, but without "washing" them, I never heard about it, but I´m very very loose about things like that and don´t care very much. I usually listen to one certain record at some point, maybe each late afternoon in the cold anotimp after coffee, and the only thing is she askes me to not spin it too loud. But somehow I learned to hear quite well even if it is not as loud as on stage, I only have to close my eyes and don´t let anything disturb my concentration.... My wife sometimes gets dissappointed if I play too much, and then still want to go out to listen to other boys or jam with them....., she often comes with me but if it´s freezing or raining and makes it hard time for the cigarette in front of the club door during intermission..... That Art Pepper thing of Vanguard: Well fantastic trio with some of the best musicians in NY during that time. But I wasn´t really happy with the sound of Art Pepper. It´s too piercing, I mean I LOVE let´s say Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Arthur Blythe , but this somehow causes pain in my ear and sometimes sounds orientationless. I think there was also an original titled "My Friend Stan". But sometimes Art Pepper´s compositions are just too long, too many bars. You get a hard time to improvise on a tune if it has "felt 320 bars" . I get easy along even with longer tunes like the changes of "cheek to cheek" which has 72 bars and don´t have to look at the music , but this is just too long and I don´t think Art Pepper was the very best composer. It sounds more "written on paper just to be written"....sorry....