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MomsMobley
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Posts posted by MomsMobley
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Have ya'll heard the Bang Sirone Ensemble side on Silkheart with Gayle (on alto & tenor) and Tyshawn Sorey on tubs?
VERY interesting, not least to hear Charles hangs, enlivens in idioms the reductionists imply he couldn't.
Can't find any youtube clips but it's an excellent date.
Gayle & Papa Joe together would have been a terrific multi-instrumental meeting, actually, unfortunate never happened, parallel worlds etc, though obviously Mat & William Parker played together often.
Thing about Gayle also that should be emphasized is he's been back for 25 years now with a pretty diverse discography-- the solo sides as powerful in their ways as the trios/quartets etc...
... And as the beginnings of this thread indicates, it's entirely possible some folks who wrote off early Gayle as one dimensional scorcher (he wasn't but I understand the impression) would come around to his various other guises, "Streets" included (whose character, whether one indulges him or not, is utterly fascinating to consider, like where did Charles get that idea-- let alone the gumption to make it 'jazz' (& not 'jazz') theater?)
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I'm not sure I get your reference to Mats Gustafsson, but after thinking about it, it seems to me that Mats and Gayle have more in common than they have differences. They are both renowned for their fiery playing, but they also like to change up their instrumentation and their sound, presenting different aspects of their music, from small to large ensembles.
And yet, I've seen both in concert multiple times, and except for the ability to blow hard, I don't get any sense of a deeper similarity in how they actually sound or play. One has not recalled the other to my ears when I've heard them. Maybe that's something to listen for.
Lee, only making 'comparison' because for people with interest, Mats is generally well-praised w/o qualification or smirks; he's rarely my bag but OK, he fills his roles, the duo with Brotzmann is bracing when you want a brace etc.
The frequent patronizing of Gayle + pigeonholing as mere hard blower is taxonomically incorrect &/or reflective of some other issues on part of the 'listening artist' (I use the term very loosely in some cases).
Check out the solo live in Moscow 2003, "No Bill" for some his most exceptional piano playing.
Now if someone wants to argue Gayle sucks or is tiresome on ALL his instruments, all contexts... that'd be an odd take but at least a consistent, synoptic one.
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...some classical training...Chopin...
Faint praise.
^^^^ Ah, a 'sophisticate'! Almost suggested Godowsky/Chopin but that seems unlikely, if not impossible.
We'll get to the possible/probable Scriabin influence anon.
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I lucked into copies of two FMPs recently-- Berlin Movement For Future Years and Abiding Variations. Listening to the former my first though was "what's the point, really? Is there a point to this?" but as the CD went on I began to hear something in it, it began to hold together. So I think immersion in his longer, fiery improvisations is required to get the gist. I have no doubt there's something technical happening there, but perhaps his music is the greatest embodiment of Ayler's ideas about this music being more about sound and shape than notes and harmony (I can't track down the quote-- and I think it may have been Donald, actually, who said this). Also, Michael Wimberly and Michael Vattel are kind of weird, insular players. A very unique group when you listen hard.
I think there's A LOT more to those Gayle sessions than first appears-- and I had a similar reaction at first; the received summary of early Gayle and some of his statements contributed to trying pigeonhole Gayle as some mere blowtorch, which is far far FAR from the case. There are Gayle piano outings, btw, that definitely betray some classical training-- maybe as a kid, maybe more-- who knows, but there are passages that suggest he's thinking of Chopin in addition to Cecil. The Bruckner comparison made earlier remains apt, btw, despite differences between symphonic composition and trio improv (forget 'graphic score' gimmicky, even if some people do occasionally do it well, cf. Brotzmann "Alarm" (but very rarely the Chicago Tentet etc, who's cacophony alternating w/ small groupings is predictable & often trite.)
Michael Wimberly is no slouch btw--
http://www.drummagazine.com/hand-drum/post/michael-wimberly-master-of-global-grooves/
nor Vattel Cherry--
http://www.activebass.com/ar450--Vattel-Cherry
Not pointing fingers but that people pay lip service to say Mats Gustaffson and can there yet be Charles Gayle skeptics is uttterly laughable (unless there are extra musical considerations involved, i.e. dragged about Charles' evangelism).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld4Nrjh9Sek
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This one.
Go ‘head with your sexual preferences, fellow humans. Enjoy. Far be it from me to judge – UNLESS OF COURSE you’re Chuck Berry and one of those preferences is fucking TAPING women in the bathroom without their consent. Then you’re a pure unadulterated creep, a realllllll dirty bird, just disgusting, and I reserve the right to point it out whenever I see fit. There’s always been something a little off about Chuck – some subversive shit that gives me the creeps, and I’m not just talking about his perm. I have ears and a soul, so obviously I enjoy the riffs, the pacing, the chord progressions, his fondness for super hip white women who love black music (ahem), and the fact that he’s a southern black man who is actually given credit for being an originator of southern black man music and has profited from his own creations for decades now. (I also really loved the casting of Mos Def in that otherwise pretty terrible Chess movie.) But then Chuck goes and writes “Back in the U.S.A.,” a song about 1959 Americuh being nothing but sock hops and jukeboxes and hamburgers on the grill, some real fucking whitewashed Happy Days nonsense, a full 6 YEARS before Missouri became desegregated. (I had hoped he wrote the song for purely financial reasons, to appeal to white kids buying 45s, but nope – the lyrics are as earnest as can be.) Now Chuck’s always wearing that creepy captain’s hat like creepy old Hugh Hefner and this does nothing to lessen the creep factor. CREEP. Christ, those RIFFS, though. Those riffs.
Kim Fowley does the intro, Chuck makes nice with the hippies, LET ME HEAR YOU SAY PEACE!!
That's me playing rhythm guitar. The drummer and the bass player were from a local Toronto band called Nucleus and I was from another local band, and they pulled us together backstage literally 15 minutes before the set. We just walked on stage and stood behind Chuck waiting for him to say or do something. We weren't even introduced to him before hand and we had no idea what he was going to play or what key the songs were in.
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with... Christian McBride et al
with... Marc Ribot, other clips have Gayle on bass, Marc on electric & acoustic except you can't see Gayle, just edge of bull fiddle now & then
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There are some rumors floating but nothing I've been able to definitively nail down.
Hello.
Ted Jones--
Ted Joans, comes onstage at 2:38--
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I recommend the Gould DVD set. It's as good as the Bernstein Young People and Harvard lectures. Indispensable.
I don't find core repertoire dull at all, Moms. I find it to be a never ending font of inspiration. It's a huge part of my life. But maybe that's because I'm dull myself. (But you sure wouldn't think that if you were with me on a Saturday night!)
Bigshot, we agree there, absolutely-- and I'm not at all suggesting we forsake the Austro-German, Chopin & other heritages, just that though a few of his recordings are quite good, most of Perahia's output is merely accomplished, pleasant and does NOT offer significant interpretative insights, this timidness reflected by his lack of enterprise. (Present illuninates the past & vice-versa etc.) The Murray case especially galling because he records rather prolifically, we're not talking eccentrics like Radu Lupu or Nelson Freire (who at least does Villa-Lobos) etc.
to the extent baroque repertoire has canon, I'm grateful for the multiple recordings of, say, Rameau "Hippolyte & Aricie"-- the 1965 Anthony Lewis set with Janet Baker is marvelous, despite research-in-progress on how to perform such a work.
meanwhile, compare & contrast. the instruments heighten the differences, yes, but...
for what earthly purpose (besides ego & $$$) would Murray make a recording like this?
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go down moses
woodchoppers ballo
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A medieval/renaissance/baroque musician could easily spend their career researching, performing, recording works that have rarely or never been heard for 100s of years. Advances-- and that's generally what they are-- in performance practice also make a goodly % of re-recordings viable.
Now you aren't arguing against Perahia, you are arguing against recording core repertoire at all. For me, I can hear differences in individual performers' performance approaches, even if I have heard the piece played in the same general style before. Horowitz, Gould, Rubinstein, and yes even Perahia can all play the same piece and I will get something a bit different out of each one. When I listen to classical music, I am listening for the differences that make a performance unique, not looking for some absolute correct approach that makes any further recordings superfluous.
There are aspects of Perahia's playing of Mozart that I find quite unique. It has a languid, fluid beauty that I admire. Maybe you want it to be masculine and angular and powerful. Well, I might too. But that doesn't mean I don't like Perahia's approach too.
I don't see core repertoire as a static thing at all. In the hands of a gifted interpreter, the performer himself can be almost as important to the work as the composer. I'm not looking for accurate and proper performances. I want unique ones that are consistent to their own aesthetic, not my expectations.
In theory, yes, but those are NOT the interpretations you're getting. Compare Murray in any single piece he recorded to one by, say, the brilliant, highly individualistic Ernst Levy. They're not even on the same planet.
And again, to explain the relative dullity of Murray's mind, how telling it is that ** NOTHING ** except the so-called "core" engages him? Not one even piece? Just the same exact crap (& brilliance) recorded dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times before.
40 years of Murray isn't a "box" it's a coffin.
A testament to marketing and one pianist's unquenchable ego: Murray against 100 years of cylinders, shellac, vinyl, tape & digital data whatsis.
Perahia's career is everything that's wrong with classical music-- a vast & vastly more diverse, entertaining, humorous, sublime, thorny, just plain weird & thrilling place then he cares to even suggest (Natch, for doing so would unflatteringly reveal himself.)
This may be an engaging issue for psychology or literature (think Murray will find his Thomas Bernhard or Janice Galloway*?) but until/unless he acknowledges co-existence in the world of Faure, Medtner, Rzewksi & (just to keep it "jazzy") Stefan Wolpe's "Passacaglia," George Flynn "Trinity" etc etc (Murray could/should offer us his own examples, as these have been well recorded already) he's a blight on music, anomalous Bartok recital included.
I like York Bowen a lot, as did Sorabji--
i usually prefer Dussek on fortepiano but just to show what Murray could do with any gumption--
* Scottish novelist, here thinking of her great historical fiction on Clara Schumann--
http://www.amazon.com/Clara-A-Novel-Janice-Galloway/dp/0684844494
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Why does a performer have to do works by living performers?
Fair question. Lack of interest in life? In others? In musical possibility? In the things that any educated person knows about music?
There are musicians who play nothing but Baroque music. Are they lesser performers too?
It seems to me that the vast range of repertoire in classical music makes the territory big enough that a great artist could narrow it down to just romantic piano music, or modern music, or opera, or early music or even just Bach... and still have enough of a territory to explore to not repeat themselves in a single human lifetime. I don't see lack of living composers in a performer's book as being a negative at all. There are people that specialize in just living composers I'm sure, and I wouldn't criticize them for not playing Mozart.
Yet he's fucking pianist who will, however, waste his time & everyone's butchering Bach, Handel, Scarlatti on a piano.
You suddenly stopped being convincing altogether. In an instant, I switched from thinking about Perahia and his tastes, to thinking about you and yours. It's much better to make convincing arguments with examples like you did in your previous post.
A medieval/renaissance/baroque musician could easily spend their career researching, performing, recording works that have rarely or never been heard for 100s of years. Advances-- and that's generally what they are-- in performance practice also make a goodly % of re-recordings viable.
Q: has Perahia shown ANY-- the least-- intrepidness in his choice of repertoire? Does he sprinkle in some Dussek, say, or C.P.E. Bach or even-- & we'll get to piano v. harpsichord again in a bit-- Soler or Frescobaldi or Couperin or John Bull or Chambonnieres or Bohm etc etc?
Q: has Perahia had the benefit of major label promotion, $$$, agents etc etc for 40+ years thus making such inquisitiveness risk free?
Q: while baroque repertoire on piano is a viable alternative-- Marcelle Meyer, Glenn Gould, Samuel Feinberg (listen both to his Bach WTC ** and ** his series of modernist piano sonatas)-- if that's your only cornball go at re-imagining the music of past & present times...
That's pretty weak sauce & no amount of 'elegant prestidigitation' can compensate for the loss of overtones, registration effects, ** TUNING ** !! (Hugely important issue to discuss elsewhere).
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Anyone interested in George Walker should be aware of Ethan Iverson's multipart exploration of Walker's music, including an essay, interview, plus as a coda a series of reviews and related pieces that I've written over the years that touch on Walker. http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-george-walker.html
Last week Iverson also posted an update. http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/2014/10/george-walker-update.html
Thanks, Mark, I had no idea! Ethan has bugged me with some things in the past but much respect for him taking the time with George Walker... I don't agree with the way he framed some questions (if asking about Whitman "Lilacs," why not ask George what he also thinks about its meaning as Lincoln threnody), tho' I can appreciate his perspective on Greek myth... anyway, if Ethan sees this, kudos, and also to you Mark for pendant.
LK, I did note Murray's Bartok as his anomolous-- and admittedly pretty good, but he had Solti there to goose him-- foray into modernity but Sonata for Two Pianos + Percussion was 1937, Murray born a decade later, 1947.
Mo' Albany: it's not "Four Saints In Three Acts" but "Mother Of Us All"-- supplanting the previous recording on New World-- isn't ignorable--
Curious if J.J. Johnson knew Walker's 'bone concerto also; I'd guess yes but...
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Albany's promotion of George Lloyd has led me to disregard them. I've heard Lloyd only on recordings and don't rate him. It feels like there's a reason no-one ever mentions most of the composers promoted by that label. Of course there could be much there that would interest me, but Lloyd stands over the whole operation like a head on a spike.
I'm not esp. engaged by Lloyd either but it's not like he's a fraud; file in line with Havergal Brian, even William Mathias or Robert Simpson-- the list goes on. (I am, however, something of a Baxian.) And the reason you don't hear of most composers on Albany is because many are American, though hardly to exclusion.
David Hurwitz is cranky on x # of subjects but he knows orchestral music & rates Lloyd highly--
http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-12975/
The Roy Harris symphonies, on the American side, are especially interesting (circling back to Bernstein who was great champion of the 3rd)--
I might prefer Walter Piston or Paul Creston or especially Lou Harrison overall but doesn't mean Harris (or Virgil Thomson) isn't worth knowing.
And Albany has an excellent, extensive Charles Wourinen series on on the other side of the modernist divide.
opposite Lloyd, Albany's Leon Kirchner recordings (+ complete string quartets) are excellent btw--
+ Leo Ornstein, Leo Ornstein, Leo Ornstein!
(on Albany & elsewhere.)
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I like that George Walker clip a lot, and I like what I buy on Albany.
Albany is really a heroic operation, I honestly don't know who their audience is except maybe that % of faculty/students at American music schools (both conservatory & within large college/university) who are compelled by passion & curriculum maintain interest. (When travelling & in college towns, I've found it very pleasurably to attend all sorts of recitals; what some lack in final polish/virtuosity they nearly always make up for in programming & the sense of living vital musics, past & present.)
Albany covers a lot of ground, of course & one can't not like rags & enjoy this but I love their William Bolcom complete rags set--
Compare to Bolcom's etudes btw, recorded by Marc-Andre Hamelin & released on New World--
Seems like those New World folk know something about piano music? (Joke question obviously, I'm just hoping there's x # of Cecil lovers turned onto Bolcom & vice-versa.)
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should start a dedicated Nino Rota thread sometime but meanwhile, though not 'boxed' there's a recent, terrific three 2-cd Rota series on Decca that 1) I imagine someday they will be and 2) if you don't care to wait--
http://www.amazon.it/Orchestral-Works-Vol-1-Nino-Rota/dp/B00B9YDT18
http://www.amazon.it/Orchestral-Works-Vol-2-Nino-Rota/dp/B00D052BUO
http://www.amazon.it/Nino-Rota-Orchestral-Works-Vol-3/dp/B00FMEKK7C
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Perahia is frequently insipid & has devoted a career of vast privilege to but occasionally diverting dead horse non-invention.
Artur Schnabel didn't record contemporary music, true, but he composed it and, in his amazing Mozart cadenzas, performed it.
"Pathetic," on further thought, is an understatement. There's a HUGE plurality of very good to great to genius classical piano music written in the last 70 years and Murray peforms, records, promotes NONE of it? Fucking none?
Yet he's fucking pianist who will, however, waste his time & everyone's butchering Bach, Handel, Scarlatti on a piano. If he played harpsichord and virginal, would he likewise ignore Martinu and Roberto Gerhard? (Analogy not exact, none are.)
OK, Anthony Braxton isn't under-recorded (to say the least) but why not Murray performing Beethoven + Braxton, that would be the "safe," establishment (AB highly lauded, puts dots on paper) choice.
Or if not AB, why not George Walker? Largely ignored save the stalwart Albany label. Can't begin to imagine why George Walker would be underknown but wait three seconds & I'm sure someone might whisper that he's "difficult." (Code for ???)
I'm not bothering to look it up but maybe Murray has been commissioning new work & for whatever reasons, just doesn't perform/record it? OK, that's something... if true. (Which I doubt but I could be wrong.)
The intro is (way) too long but this wonderful Charles Rosen lecture starts at 11:30--
If Murray can find so little in contemporary life to engage him, what makes anyone think his engagement with the past is any more inspired or empathetic?
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I shouldn't have, but I squeezed in before the end.
Now that's a great set, even if not every recording (esp. in Mozart, Bach) is tip-top... Damn near worth it for the Nielsen and American recordings alone... But there are near endless discoveries to be made in this set, Bernstein's own music included...
Which only heightens the Perahia Conundrum... cf. he will likely die, 40+ years a star, not having recorded anything more recent than that one Bartok recital?!
What a waste of talent, resources, opportunity.
If someone wants to counter with say Artur Rubinstein they're wrong because tho' he didn't do tons of contemporary works, here's a list of LIVING COMPOSERS he did record--
* Szymanowksi
* Stravinsky
* Prokofiev
* Poulenc
* Villa-Lobos
* Rachmaninov
* Falla
* Ravel
* Faure
If we add the list of composers living while Artur was also alive but not yet recording, we can add
* Albeniz, Granados, Scriabin, Debussy
# of living composers Murray Perahia has recorded: ZERO
# of composers once alive at same time as Murray that he's recorded: ZERO
Uh... Murray?
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Is Miller the man responsible for those "Johnny Reb" records?
Unfortunately, yes--
http://www.discogs.com/label/155968-Reb-Rebel
I mean, in a way I'm glad these things exist as (further) evidence but...
And yet this is J.D. Miller also--
dub quality here is a little rought but...
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i'm using fictional examples only because the realiy is too mortifying/infuriating still. but there's (obviously) a VAST history of German-inspired Amerian anti-Semitism (from late 19th c. on) & Nazi this/that that many (most?) people would rather not recall. Given that-- though I'm not otherwise familiar with this type of disguised heirloom-- anything is possible. (And don't forget the great blues/cajun/swamp pop producer & music store proprietor J.D. Miller of Crowley, Louisians (just off I-10) also recording & selling-- under the counter in later days-- Klan records too.)
interviewer is dim & I agree w/ PR that the book is not veiled allegory etc, which is actually insult to plural realities of both time periods.
The book is excellent, the audiobook likewise if you indulge.
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comments sections on youtube tuba battles are often excellent too
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Someone should attempt to replicate the MOPDTK version of KOB as exactly as possible and release it, and then someone should try to replicate that version as exactly as possible and release it, and then someone should try to replicate that version etc in to infinity!
Whoa.
And make YouTube videos of people watching people watching people watching people listening to it, on to infinity. And then do a deluxe box set of all these replications that includes a free webcam so you can watch yourself watch yourself listening and watching to other people listening to and watching it.
I mean, you really don't have to leave the house to be entertained these days, the thrills just keep multiplying on their own, and all you have to do is watch from home.
Perfect world!
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a great, unfairly maligned record, estimable even in its imperfections etc-- too bad circumstances disallowed pursuing further & other beat/electronic collaborations, belated respect to Ware for recognizing he'd overblown himself into unsustainable, less than challenging corner with acoustic quartet (regardless the drummer)--
Kalevi Aho
in Classical Discussion
Posted
VASTLY more than a cult, for those with an interest he's among handful of greatest living composers of symphonies, concertos +++, brilliant inheritor of all worthy 20th streams, his assimilation of which can irritate cornball neo-tonalists & academic ersatz modernist both but like any artist of great merit, he does what he likes. in profligacy, invention one might compare him to Villa-Lobos, with dashses of Buxtehude, Telemann, Ravel & a far more colorful Hindemith; Messiaen in the sauna with Sibelius; Schoenberg playing ping pong with George Gershwin; Shostakovich before Zdanov etc.
Recent, awesome, with the possibility of thrilling lots of people who likely don't know it exists
http://yle.fi/radio/yleradio1/ohjelmat/uudetlevyt/theremin_haastaa_konserttomestari_ahon/7434157