ep1str0phy

thank you for this info. sometimes the names are very hard to hear. Ha! My first thought was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_McCoy

Never got into "Burning Spirits," but maybe I should give it another spin. I don't think I ever gave it fair shakes... I got it around the same time as "Firebirds"--a much more "all-star" recording, which sort of overshadowed everything else. One thing is for sure: I don't think I've ever not enjoyed Clifford Jarvis in his many itinerant, non-Arkestra appearances. Regarding: "Crisis"--I remember getting an LP copy a couple years back. I thought that the vinyl rip that had been in my possession for however long was simply defective (or taken from a "not good" source)... I was sorely disappointed to hear the actual recording quality. Whatever the case, I've acclimated to it--I think it gives the album a sort of urgency/charm. It's definitely more bootleg-y than any of Ornette's other "official" live recordings, which suits the energy of the music--kind of a "I can't believe we got this on record!" vibe. I recall the essential personnel being pretty happy about this concert. Speaking of reissues--it might be nice to get "Made In America" (the Ornette doc) into common circulation. Talking about "Crisis": there's some fleeting (albeit amazing) footage of an Ornette group with Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, and (IIRC) Haden and Blackwell. Also, there's an interesting bit with Ornette and Denardo dialoguing/duoing via crosstown satellite hookup--some of Denardo's most amazing electric drumkit stuff.

Despite the general defunctness of this thread: I'm premiering a suite with my duo Grex (www.grexsounds.com is going to be up this week, but most of our debut album is still up on www.myspace.com/grexsounds), Bay Area drummer Jordan Glenn, Grammy Winner/American Indian music expert (and Jim Pepper authority)/bassist John-Carlos Perea, and Asian Improv aRts co-founder Francis Wong (whose album "Ming" is one of the all-time great documents of Asian creative music). Info: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/156553 If any of you are in SF and free on April 8 or 9 (8pm, Bayanihan Community Center: 1010 Mission Street, SF), you should come out. The code "friends" gets you a discount. Also: www.karlevangelista.com </shameless endorsement>

Probably never going to happen, but "Crisis" is a top 10 album for me. An idealized, "dream" reissue would include the Impulse! single Ornette did as an add-on. Whatever--accentuate the positive. Ornette's music (if not necessarily his playing) is completely innovative and insane these days, so happy to know there's still great "Harmolodic" music out there... There's a copy of "Rumasuma" at my local record shop for like $40. So close to pulling the trigger a while back--but, then, everything suddenly reappears. Higgins being in that band clinches it for me. Then there's crazy stuff like this: http://www.discogs.com/Byron-Allen-Interface/release/872788 That I'd be surprised people even know about. I found a copy at an SF record shop just this past Sunday; the guy at the counter said he'd sold "a few," but I can't imagine it's common stock (the info on the sleeve suggests it was pressed in SF). Every time I wonder why something as relatively commonplace as "Rumasuma" hasn't been reissued, I'm reminded that we're not really at the bottom of the LP barrel just yet.

I talked to Achyutan/Marvin about this thread, and he told me to mention that he's "still trying to kick." Even though he's more often than not playing in a mainstream bag these days, I get the sense he's still fond of a lot of what went down back then. He'll talk about his time with Pharoah, or his stint with Trane, or how Ed Blackwell was "the best," with a great deal of fondness. A lot of looking now/forward, but looking back isn't so bad (I guess) when back was pretty good.

Eddie Gale (and he remembers a lot of this vividly) Marvin Patillo/Achyutan (guy on Pharoah's First, Staying on the Watch, and subbed for Elvin in Coltrane's Quartet. Not really interested in playing free anymore.) Plenty of the PAPA/UGMAA guys are hanging around and making awesome music these days

I'm kind of awed, at the turn of the century (or maybe it's too far past at this point), how easily formulae factor into genre expectation. In BB's case, it might just be lack of conventional swing + electric instruments = jazz rock, since--with some thought, as you conveyed above--I've tried to dissect precisely what makes the lost quintet "jazz" v. BB's jazz rock and there's nothing more than a textural/hierarchical difference really separating the two, content-wise. I think it's kind of telling how the often unmetered, often irregular pulse of free jazz, replete with totally denaturing, fuzzed-out acoustic sounds, was ultimately more conveniently integrated into an overarching definition of "Jazz" than were free-sounding backbeats and distorted electric instrumentation. -->(Obviously there are dozens of ways to qualify that statement, but I offer the Crouchian jazz rock/fusion opprobrium v. complete canonization of the free jazz-inflected 2nd quintet as evidence. If it had never gotten farther than the Lost Quintet music in haute couture--v. jeans and daishikis, which surely hipped "the man" to the idea that "some shit is up"--the jazz rock label might have been a non-starter. Also, compare varying opinions on Mary Halvorson and, say, [the band] Kayo Dot--each entity equally rock-inflected in different ways, with widely varying degrees of compositional/improvisational balances between albums/pieces, and each occupying completely different genre strata. Like science, though, it's hard to prove anything, easy to disprove everything.) I may just be particularly sensitive to this subject, considering I'm a) an electric guitarist and b) occupy a large proportion of my professional endeavors in a guitar/piano duet. I got slapped in the face with ludicrousness recently when I realized (arranging the music for quintet) that adding swung-time drums to the arrangements--changing absolutely nothing else--would lead a large proportion of the audience to listen to it as "jazz." Such are the times/the era in which we live?

CD copy of Dewey Redman: Look for the Black Star. I didn't even know this existed, but I didn't pay that much for it. Sce-ore. (Hot on the heels of purchasing a similar Japanese Freedom import of Ornette's Who's Crazy--vols. 1 & 2, which was also surprisingly reasonable in price.) Also purchased recently: Don Cherry: Live at Cafe Montmartre 166 Vol. 2 Majestic Ragas--Bismallah Khan: The Enchanter

Don Cherry: Tibet ...which I later discovered was Eternal Now--lame issue, awesome music. This week: Michael Mantler: No Answer George Russell Sextet (w/Don Cherry): At Beethoven Hall Ornette Coleman: Crisis All Don Cherry these days...

I just played a gig with David Ewell (the Focus Trio bassist)--unreal player. I actually hadn't heard him before that (save for hearing the Focus Trio, momentarily). The local talent here can be very, very intense (Ewell and Dan Seamans--of the Lost Trio and New Klezmer Trio--are two of the best bass soloists I've heard in person, period).

I played a set with Eddie Gale's band at the Oakland Yoshi's a few months back (part of a package tribute deal to a local trumpet/pedagogy patriarch)... the evening culminated in an all-star, more or less "locals" jam--Eddie, Bobby Hutcherson, John Handy, Marcus Shelby, Steve Turre, Winard Harper--and Najee. According to my ears (in the 20 mins. or so that jam lasted), I could completely understand how a musician of Najee's particular nature could fit in with the likes of Pullen (who has/had as multifaceted a voice as any piano player in modern jazz)--Najee was a completely reputable, if not necessarily "challenging," mainstream blues player. Maybe it's a George Benson kind of deal... you put any measure of time in to music, there's a lot in there you learn, a lot you probably never use. Not a particularly odd pairing, but I've always been fascinated by Sun Ra's work with Walt Dickerson and the apparent empathy two so different musicians seem to have shared... yes, they're both "progressives" in some sense, but Dickerson's music hews as much to dry, hard bop earthiness as Ra's does to early jazz, swing, and reverb-y cosmic abstractions.

After doing some listening recently, can I just say that the man had a baaaad left hand? The right hand isn't bad either. Both hands good.

That's the one I have. It's all splendid.

I actually heard this before the BN albums. I love both, but I think my opinion of this one might have been colored a little differently had I gotten to it second. I think I may prefer the BN rhythm sections, but this one is no slouch. The compositions may also be a little less resonant here, but the playing is top notch and they're at least as harmonically colorful as the BN stuff. Only going off of memory here, but something about Nichols's harmonic palette brings to mind Horace Tapscott's trio music--dense sounds with tons of harmonic color and rhythmic muscle. I think it's "Every Cloud" (on the Nichols album) that has some interesting Maj7 motion--really reminds me of some of Tapscott's harmonies.

Completely not your normal blowing date. I think Rudd's leadership makes the date, since there seems to be a preference for stasis and sustained subtlety on the album--not so much frantic blowing, though it does show up now and again. The reedmen are mostly color; everything is weighted toward the bottom end. It's like an entire album's worth of "Beauty is a Rare Thing," kind of, mixed in with the general vibe and corrosive wonkiness of Giuseppi Logan's ESP albums.

Brown was at least an interesting standards player, although I don't ever think I'd find his changes playing as coherent or even as melodically lucid as his playing in freer terrain or modal territory. I think part of the problem may have been the incidental nature of most of his rhythm sections--star-studded things that may have lacked the finesse of either consistency or a unifying, clear musical concept (the latter of which was more of Brown's issue as a leader in later years). The quartet with Brandon Ross, November Cotton Flower, Soul Eyes--I have to confess that I tune out almost everything that isn't happening during Marion's solos, which may have lost their direction now and again but not their lyricism or quirky tenacity. Vista is kind of like a more jazz-oriented version of The Pavillion of Dreams--extraordinarily subdued, groove-oriented, harmonically resonant, and light on blowing (or rather with light blowing)--sounding for all the world like a middleweight Strata East album. I think that Brown's dry tone might sit better with a more muscly rhythmic concept, but I have a hard time hating any of this stuff. Sometimes the diversity of Brown's albums comes across as genuine aesthetic catholicism (everything up to the like the late 70's), sometimes (or really just later on) a lack of artistic identity. Anyway, his most remarkable album outside of a more traditional free 60's vein (for me)--Afternoon of a Georgian Faun--is almost totally unprecedented in the afrocentric continuum--even more minimal than Muhal's or Braxton's early music (which is pretty remarkable). The lack of unfiltered free blowing on the first track almost suggests AMM egoless-ness, but it's warm and personally aware in a way that the AMM guys wouldn't touch with a pole. Stuff like the pseudo-Coltrane blowing on Sweet Earth Flying is very derivative but somehow comes out sounding like a unique mix (I chalk this up to sheer bottom-heaviness, skewed against a very light horn sound--which is something maybe specific to Brown's later Impulse music). The freer sounding music on the Calig albums arrives at a nice middle ground between an AACM group concept and total free blowing. On the other hand, Geechee Recollections--which is a solid listen, sounds a bit too much like makeweight Art Ensemble concept at times... maybe a little too much reflexivity.

Interesting thought. So many peaks and troughs and hands in all manner of important things (Ascension, Archie's band, ESP-disk, the French and German scenes, interactions with the early AACM/very prescient soundscape/ethno collages, Wesleyan teaching, improv/contemporary music interactions with Elliott Schwartz and Harold Budd...) He also fell into the maybe inevitable post-bop reversion that happened to some of the best free players (though I think he did it with a poise and dignity that can't be reserved for some of his peers). When he was finished playing, he was more or less finished playing. I do think that the spottiness of his catalog is a testament to what is maybe (in hindsight) the most appealing feature of early American free jazz for me, which is a definite sense of "working things out"/apparent difficulties reconciling the urge to freedom with an unwillingness to eschew very overt idiomatic conceits. I was driving to LA for a show last night, and I was bored to death by everything except for "Music from Big Pink" and "Three for Shepp." A weird combo, but it's telling that both albums tap into this seemingly 60's zeitgeist-y thing about working questions of genre out before anyone can tell you exactly what kind of music you're playing. "Three for Shepp" is for me the best of the his albums in this vein (I may like "Sweet Earth Flying," "Afternoon of a Georgia Faun," and maybe one of the Caligs as much or better), mainly because it's both so clearly "60's FREE JAZZ" (caps) and present in this very liminal idiomatic space (the first track is named "New Blue," for heaven's sake--and totally unironic, in contrast to similar reclamations of material on the part of the near-contemporaneous Europeans). There's some cheeky stride/showtune type stuff, a Rollins-esque calypso, a free ballad that teeters on the brink of the Blue Note school of grainy pastoralism... it's an album that I'd think you'd be proud to make decades after the fact--it still sounds fresh and s**ts on completely nothing.

Heavy loss. I sometimes do wonder why a foregoing 40 or so years of free altos often lack so much personality--what a collection of beautiful oddballs in those first steps: Brown, Tchicai, Logan, Marshall Allen, Jimmy Lyons, Charles Tyler, to say nothing of Ornette... although the arc of Brown's career is kind of a testament to how the now-hallowed trappings of energy music were really just incidental to these amazing stores and certainly not the full picture. He essayed some of the very best music of the post-Coltrane mode (Why Not, Porto Novo, etc.) and went on to invent and reinvent his career in a way that is legitimately mindblowing--running parallel to the AACM in an amazing ethno/free mix (Afternoon of A Georgia Faun, the duets with Wadada, some of the Calig stuff), crafting interesting inside/out modal music (Sweet Earth Flying)... I have to confess that I'm not completely enamored with the last 1/4 or so of his recorded legacy, but that tone is true and the sheer, lovely stasis in his tone never left (which I think may have been the emotional core of his sound). Even if he hasn't really produced in the past couple of decades, there was so much music in the past and so much music clearly still in there--as a part of his person--that the loss is so profound. Heavy loss.

CONGRATS! Oh yeah--thanks!

Keep in mind I'd only use the fire music thing since it tends to denote something that has at least some socially-agreed-upon significance (i.e., 70's electric Miles generally not fire music, Archie Shepp probably fire music). I don't really give about the term, though--I recall that Trane radio documentary saying that the title was Archie's but the right was Trane's... so this is an instance of taxonomic rigor totally collapsing/laziness, since there are obviously problems with the "free" thing, too... As far as Haden bashing is concerned--I know an equal number of players with nothing but good things to say about his playing--though that has nothing to do with his general artistic choices, questionable as they have been to certain parties as of late. I'm not sure that "star" status has really helped anyone's reputation in the trenches. For my part, I favor his playing over most free bassists in really open situations, though I'll take Malachi, Fred Hopkins, Harry Miller, Mbizo, Barry Guy (and even Gary Peacock, despite his particular career trajectory--he catches a lot of negative press, too) on any number of days. Haden is a fine straight ahead player, for sure, but he really sparkles when the music is weird... compare, even, the new duets album with the Jarrett duet on Closeness--beautiful stuff, but a lot of that has to do with the musicians blending into this very personal, very well-defined, folksy/rubato idiom (rather than your basic jazz balladry). (And those duet albums are a testament to Haden's improvising versatility, which is out of the toolbox less and less these days.)

Actually, Jim, I kind of vibe that as being a problem of a lot of post-80's free players in general, for whatever reason. Tons of technique and facility, less full-bore originality or personality. Like anything else, the context and the vocabulary have been learned, so there has to be some ossifying agent in there. Paradoxically, it's like the more options that have been discovered for soundmaking, the harder it is to sound like "yourself"... I recall Keith Jarrett kind of backhand complimenting Haden on not reaching outside of his technique, and there is some truth to that in a very positive sense.

A series of factors have led me to more closely examine Charlie Haden's recorded output recently, not least of which is my fiancee's unbelievable enthusiasm for the first, epic Liberation Music Orchestra Album--probably for me the most perfect blend of the JCOA axis's heavily arranged, often baroque ensemble music and fire-ish, free rhythm 60's improvising. A lot of the success of that first LMO album has to do, in my estimation, with Charlie Haden's very self-contained (that is, "personally" idiomatic) bass playing--multi-stops, strumming, shifting pedals, etc. I've heard a lot of free-school bass players rip in to Haden's technique, and I can understand this--he isn't a terribly flashy technician, and there are a lot of fine "ear" bassists that have integrated into Ornette's music with more impressive dexterity (LaFaro, Izenzon--hell, Tacuma, MacDowell). I'll admit to being partial to Haden's folkish self-containedness, though, since it's one of those idioms that can be sort of superimposed onto anything and color said anything with a very clear sense of personality. (Or maybe I'm just sick of blunt, colorless technique... no knock to the aforementioned or any free bass players I haven't mentioned--just a general feeling. The opposite of all this is someone like Barry Guy, who has ridiculous technique and sounds like Barry Guy no matter where he goes. He probably buys coffee like Barry Guy.) Here, though, I'm mainly curious about opinions on Haden's free playing in more typical "fire music" settings--if only because the recorded evidence is so rare and his playing is soooo different from what any other free bassist was doing at the time. A bit of this crops up in more familiar settings--his apocalyptic wrangling with Denardo on the heartstopping Crisis comes to mind, since that album has something outside of a typical Ornette ensemble "sound"--but it's in really strong evidence on only a a handful of albums: the first LMO album, Gato Barbieri's The Third World, Archie Shepp's Mama Too Tight, Alan Shorter's Orgasm, Roswell Rudd's Everywhere, (to a lesser extent:) some of Keith Jarrett's freer stuff, Don Cherry's Brown Rice, Leo Smith's Divine Love, and a few other things I've doubtless failed to mention. The bookending tracks on Orgasm are brilliant essays in what can make free jazz rhythm sections truly interesting. Muhammad Ali's time is intensely loose and Haden's apparent tendency is to lock the time in, so the effect is something akin to The Empty Foxhole or other work with Denardo--a really fascinating sort of push-and-pull. Ali is free to power through without operating with any sort of metronomic imperative--it's actually Haden who is the propulsive force, since that shifting pedal thing he does is what produces the forward momentum. With a drummer like Blackwell or Higgins, it could sound like a free fall--fast, intense, and dangerous, with a definite direction and just the right hint of danger. With a guy like Ali, though, it sounds more like steamrolling--moving, moving, moving, but with a clear sense of tension and violence. Anyway, I wish Haden had done more work like this in the past. Not to take away from anything he's done since or, of course, his classic work with Ornette or the Jarrett quartet, but this kind of music is just fun to listen to.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I feel like the notion that there's any sort of interchangeability between "serious jazz" and contemporary composition is totally flawed. Which doesn't mean that there haven't been examples of jazz/free improv-y improvisation in contemporary composition or vice-versa, but, rather, in most prominent cases, this has been an instance of exchange/interaction rather than a matter of just swapping out procedures (e.g., Ornette's chamber/orchestral excursions, Braxton writing for orchestras--largely composed concerti with improvising soloists who have firm jazz roots--exceptions include the work of Roscoe Mitchell and Barry Guy, who do seem to attract the rare contingent of musicians who might identify in equal parts with concert music and improv--but never, really, concert music and jazz--and then, on the other end of the spectrum, stuff by Alvin Curran, Gunther Schuller or Terry Riley, which uses "jazz" soloists as jazz musicians rather than orchestral adjuncts--or, in Riley's case, improvisation in a way that harkens to non-Western routes in a way that doesn't really synthesize with any sort of Western concert tradition... and then things like Treatise or Cage's more open-ended music, which often employ traditional orchestral musicians but are at the same time totally devoid of things like melodic propulsion or melodic development in the fashion of jazz or a lot of free improv...) The point being that a lot of times the procedure is the music. If Threadgill wanted this stuff read down, he could do what Roscoe does and just notate all the music (like some of the version of "Nonaah")--but this changes the basic premises of the music. You could write out everything Liberty Ellman played, but you'd still have his tone, articulation, attack, etc. (which are, for any number of reasons, jazz-dervied, descended, or informed, whatever...)--you expect a degree of self-expression and personal initiative, often suppressed in contemporary performance praxis, when you use that guy. By that token, if you're going to go ahead and assemble a group of musicians with extensive backgrounds in improvisation, why don't you use that? I mean--and this is a huge issue--one of the problems with the compositional dictate is that it (usually) isn't a collaborative process; if you make music in this way, you don't give it to a group of people who are improvising most of the week, right? Maybe Threadgill doesn't compose his music because he thinks it wouldn't sound right that way? And it is a sound thing, since I'm sure a lot of improvisers would agree that spontaneous decision making, self-expression, etc. do filter into sound (and, hence, the music becomes these factors... remove these factors and it just isn't there anymore).

Saw the Threadgill show at Herbst last night. Sadly underattended, but the audience that was there showed up to listen. I sure as hell hope that this doesn't bode poorly for booking more adventurous acts at SF Jazz, the latter of which is notorious around here for the general conservatism of its lineups and tendency to avoid local acts. Moving tickets is important, yes, but I'm glad the institution took some chances this year and brought Threadgill to an audience that has been STARVED for star power of the so-called "free jazz" variety. It was a fine concert. Highlights: (1) I'll second Philly's statements in that we need a current recording of this group, if only because the new cello player is killing it. And not a weak link in the band. (2) They're an even stronger performing unit live than on recording, although the band was very, very poorly served by the hall. The mic'ing helped, but didn't fix things. The sound was overwhelmingly bass-y and tended to swallow up the higher frequencies of the less trebly instruments (i.e., flute, bass). (3) The first of only a handful of alto pieces was arguably the strongest performance of the night and maybe one of single most amazing alto performances I've seen in my life. The whole band did a fine job, but Threadgill was amazing on that one. I recall the Penguin guide discussing Miles's "knife fighter" restraint, and Threadgill had that in spades here. I also remember discussion about Miles's ability to "bring the band" to himself, which is clearly a skill that Threadgill has mastered. His playing on alto is so detailed, so dynamic (both in terms of volume and conceptual flow)... the closest thing I've heard to Dolphy's solo on "Mendacity"--something brutal, tough, and true, kind of lugubrious but fluid and unstoppable. Like mud (in a good way). Some Sonny Criss in there, Benny Carter, even a bit of Ayler. Just ecstatically powerful. (4) Kavee. I'm not sure how much direction Threadgill gives the band in terms of groove or rhythmic approach--and I do think that it is a strength of this ensemble precisely how countable/rhythmically lucid it all is, and how harmonically clear it can be, in spite of all the detail--but Kavee is kind of the living dictate to "groove" in this band. The way he displaces accents, turns the beat all around, and propels with stasis is very similar to the way a skilled laptop producer can turn a regular beat into something really malleable and alive. The difference is that he's doing it live and his sound is the thing of a jazz drummer. Regarding the debate above... this is improvised music in nature, so I feel like whether or not you could make the same sounds by composing is kind of a non-issue. Zooid is very science-y in quality and unfinished in a way that none of Threadgill's bands seem to have been in the past. Whatever the case, part of the crux of this music seems to be how and that it can happen in this kind of improvised situation. The band sounds as large as an orchestra with as much timbral detail as a chamber ensemble--and can push with the dynamism of a jazz band--moving between extremes with something that sounds really spontaneous. You can't write that feeling out--I do hesitate to call it magic, but it's "jazz." These improbable, spontaneous unison downbeats, crescendos/decrescendos, transformations in time feel, sound completely technically right but improvised and alive in a way that relates much more closely to, say, the Jazz Messengers than anything else. (Also, you can't have the "rhythm section" working like this and keep it closer to the realm of composition. It just won't work. It would take ages to write it out in just the right way, and you'd have to get a jazz drummer, or at least a classical percussionist with extensive jazz experience, to play it right. That's a lot of ifs.)

RIP. There's something special in all of it, though the quartet music with Frank Wright holds a special place for me. I'd venture to say that it's in the top tier of energy music.