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ep1str0phy
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Posts posted by ep1str0phy
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Johnny Dodds, John Carter. Surprised nobody's mentioned Buddy Collette. And no love for Jimmy Hamilton, people?
Great call on Collette. For my part, I'll say John Carter, George Lewis, Bechet, Giuffre, Pee Wee Russell, Perry Robertson, and Don Byron among the younger set. I'd mention strong doublers like Dolphy and any number of AACM guys, but clarinet for these folks is often part and parcel with a larger reed conception in a way that it isn't with the aforementioned.
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Yes, Marion Brown. I also thought of Trevor Watts, who kills it on John Stevens's No Fear, but I think his soprano sax playing is even more exceptional. (Bare Essentials is probably my favorite album of that school of improv, like a super minimal Interstellar Space),
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I can't believe I forgot Threadgill and Criss. Sonny's Dream alone is sufficient legacy for the latter. Threadgill, as far as I'm concerned, registers one of the few truly original and simultaneously current musical conceptions of anyone in jazz. Zooid's output has been some of the only real "blow your mind" improvised music I've heard in the past few years.
Speaking of composer/altos--good ones, but not necessarily favorites--I have been struck by Steve Lehman's octet music. I know that he hasn't gotten the best reception in these and related circles (I recall Allen not liking it), but I'm surprised there hasn't been at least some real discussion, positive or negative, on this music--considering its prominence in some of the mainstream jazz discourse (as of late). I could take or leave the brute theory of integrating spectral analysis into jazz composition, but somehow the prominence of these components in his music draws the explicit jazz aspects (harmonies, "sectional" groupings, the melodic and rhythmic content of the solos) into starker relief. It can get somewhat monotonous, but like Threadgill's music it offers a way out of the neocon/free dyad/morass that is totally constructive in character (which I endorse 100%).
Oh--and I can't stress enough that, if I'm in the right mood, I can take Dudu and blow everything else to hell. It's that powerful.
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Ornette, Dolphy, Dudu Pukwana, Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Mike Osborne, Jimmy Lyons, Jackie McLean, Bird, Julius Hemphill, Arthur Blythe. I just realized that that's a really acute modernist/postmodernist bent but, hey, whatever... I think there's another list for altos who have intermittently blown my mind but not in any sort of career spanning way (Ernie Henry, Michael Sessions, Hodges, Cannonball, Konitz, etc.)
Oh--and say what you will about James Spaulding--he kills it with Charles Tolliver and on the handful of prime Blue Notes (Solid, Components) that suit his vocalistic modal bent.
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Ugh. Death is killing me. Breuker was a master at his own table.
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Very sad to hear this. I always loved his playing with the Brotherhood and its derivative groups. His tone was a round, bursting, burnished thing--powerful and instantly recognizable. He had this sort of internal gravity that rearranged and made better every sound around him. His playing on Mike Osborne's Outback, for one, is some of my very favorite trumpet playing ever.
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Clark Terry, again with a few exceptions -- e.g. his 1955 album "Swahili" and the Riverside date with Monk and Philly Joe. Too often, later on, he just trots out his shtick.
I wonder if there are players who are better as a sideman than leader? As if the player thinks "It's not my name on it -- it won't 'cost' me anything to take chances..."
When it comes to his own name, he plays it safe: "Don't want to scare anyone away..."
As an aside on this topic, I've often thought the reverse, that in many cases a sideman/woman will reserve his/her best ideas for his/her own record. I find the cases where the sideperson stands out to be a minority, and often notable for that reason.
as for Jackie McLean - if you have problems, try listening to the live stuff from Europe (Scandanavia? Germany? can't remember) with things llike Das Dat - the absolute pinnacle of post-bop intensity and inventiveness. Amazing stuff.
Yes I thought someone would say that. You rightly infer that I never heard that stuff - it's about all of his that I don't actually own. I guess I'll buy in those Steeplechase LPs - I seem to remember Jim recommmending Montmartre. About ten years ago. Damn.
This is a bit of a digression from the thread concept, but there have always been folks who tend to knock me out more as "sidepeople" than when they're in the "lead" role. Bill Frisell is the name that immediately springs to mind here. I *love* his playing, have thoroughly enjoyed most of the live performances I've witnessed, but many of his own recordings tend to leave me unmoved. In fact, my favorite is still Rambler on ECM, which was a long, long time ago...
I'm somewhat of this mindset. Fred Frith (a master of sound production on the guitar, of all types) hipped me to Frisell a while ago; I'd taken him to be kind of drossy up until then, only now and again popping up (as on the much-maligned Fragments, which I actually quite like) as a force to be reckoned with. He is, of course, mired in this Americana thing these days, which I've come to appreciate as very accomplished on a technical level (within its own parameters)... but then a friend gave me a copy of Paul Motian's The Story of Maryam, and it completely blew my mind. That type of playing, in a free jazz-type idiom, is stone free in the best possible way--a realization of the guitar as a dynamic, timbrally flexible frontline instrument.
I'm not the hugest fan of his aesthetic, necessarily, but in terms of sheer technical prowess, Frisell is the MF of all MFs. That level of sound production/pedal mastery is totally limitless. His volume pedal technique is flawless, and his extremely well-elided, seamlessly integrated pedal work operates at a very high level. More than that, it's easy to forget just how difficult it is to control the nuances of a solid body electric guitar with jacked up treble (especially on the Telecasters that Frisell seems to favor), but he does it very, very well. Something that has impressed me about Frisell (and Frith, too, for that matter) is just how little erratic noise there is in their playing--all the little clicks, blips, and squeaks that jazz guitarists often hazard are almost totally absent in their playing--and a lot of that is good volume pedal technique.
...so I regard Frisell as a virtuoso in his own right--not often (or even half of the time) the kind of listening that I'll go to (as a leader), but something I'll always appreciate and love to hear when the fire is lit.
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RIP. I'm glad so much of his music was recorded, as of late; he leaves a fine legacy and a lot, yet, to learn from.
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Thanks, B.
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Just like to mention that I picked up Weight/Counterweight yesterday. It has to be the best new(er) release I've heard in a long, long time. Sparse, completely unforced, simultaneously dynamic and subdued... in some weird way, it captures the special "vibe" of Get Up With It-era Miles with 100% more flexibility. Ambient free jazz might be the best way to put it--a completely different idiom--even more so than the Soul Note group recordings (which I love). It's a testament to the man's continued development...
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I didn't and still don't know his music in and out--he certainly feels like the most elusive of the first wave "free" innovators. Even listening to a minute of his music, it's certainly hard to ignore the sense that his was a dark, complex, beautiful energy. Sad that he's gone, but his music is a gift that keeps giving... I think he'll be listened to for a long time to come, and it's likely (speaking for myself) that I'll never get to the end of how deep that music was/is.
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Although I enjoy both Coltrane and post-Coltrane phases of Tyner, I find the former to be muscular and precise while the latter to be almost icily virtuosic, maybe a little blustery. He has always had a sort of distant, diamond-hard quality (especially compared to Trane's vocalistic passion), but it's almost too tough post-Blue Note--amazing to hear, but difficult to "warm" to, if that makes sense.
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The Expression version of Coltrane's "Ogunde." I never understood the simple elegance of it until now.
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FWIW, Roscoe & Henry have quite different "warmth levels" in terms of projecting a vibe to a "general audience".
Point taken, but I still don't want to buy the Mosaic just to find out the music doesn't really speak to me. I think even the recent 4 CD set might be too much.
I am a bit more interested in the John Carter Select. I do have Castles of Ghana and a few others, but I still don't reach for them that often. I am trying to re-prioritize and maybe having hundreds of CDs on the shelves that I never listen to isn't the way I should play out the second half of my life. I have one bookcase of the most important CDs (maybe 300) and I could sell all the rest off and probably never notice the difference. I've been thinking about that a lot lately, especially as the second hand CD market looks set to collapse as well.
Castles of Ghana--or, really, any of those later Gramavision albums--are actually pretty different from Carter's earlier (pre-90's efforts). Even the earlier Dauwhe, which is from the same "series" of albums, comes across as slightly more organic, warmer, and musically self-contained (the programmatic qualities of the "Roots and Folklore" cycle seem to grow in prominence with the later albums). While it's fascinating to hear Carter delve into this actually pretty unique language--nothing really sounds like those Gramavision albums--his earlier sides with Bradford (from the duos on Emanem to the material that will be included on the box) are certainly somewhat "tastier" and maybe easier to digest on a casual basis. Instrumentation-wise there is, of course, a strong post-Ornette component, but both Carter and Bradford come from such unique harmonic bags that the similarities are really only facile; the music sounds changes-less but develops with its own sense of logic (that is--if you're attuned to Atlantic Ornette at all, it's not really the same thing).
On a completely different level, Carter was a great sax player but an even more virtuosic clarinetist. His sax work on the earliest sides with Bradford, anyway, is nothing to be embarrassed about--it does any number of Ornette (or Coltrane, for that matter) clones to shame. But his clarinet stuff is unparalleled in this context. (Bradford told me how Carter had been playing with a collapsed lung in the final stages of his life; apparently, it took a doctor's visit for him to even realize that he'd be blowing with a crippling respiratory problem for some time...)
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Anybody hip to The Beatles Remixers Group?
Can't say that I am--good stuff?
Some, yeah. Some real remixes, using all sorts of tools and sources, and some mashups. Not all of it works, but when it is good, it is good.
Here's a mashup - not perfect, but almost:
http://www.youtube.c...feature=related
Whoa--the missing Em-A7 in the first line is a real harmonic mindf**k. I mean it resolves, but--for a second--it's kind of floating there.
The "stroke of genius" for me is the guitar solo. For real.
And oh yeah - that bridge is nice too. Real nice.
Amazing. All the subtle time manipulations and the reharmonizations--beautiful. Superimposing that guitar solo into a new context--I almost don't notice that it's flown in from somewhere else.
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Anybody hip to The Beatles Remixers Group?
Can't say that I am--good stuff?
Some, yeah. Some real remixes, using all sorts of tools and sources, and some mashups. Not all of it works, but when it is good, it is good.
Here's a mashup - not perfect, but almost:
Whoa--the missing Em-A7 in the first line is a real harmonic mindf**k. I mean it resolves, but--for a second--it's kind of floating there.
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Anybody hip to The Beatles Remixers Group?
Can't say that I am--good stuff?
This is interesting, at least:
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I had no idea Ornette stuff was a part of the Orchestrion project--maybe I should pay closer attention this time. Agreed on Song X, by the way. That duo track never fails to blow my mind. I think Metheny may come after only Cherry and Redman as a frontline player capable of meeting Ornette on his own melodic terms.
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A 3rd vote "for" Pat Metheny.
have you checked out 80/81? Some incredible blowing from Pat, Mike Brecker and Dewey Redman. "Every Day (I Thank You)" is one of Pat's best tunes melodically and harmonically. You really shouldn't ask me though b/c I own just about everything Pat has recorded as a leader
. Can't wait to see him live in October on the "Orchestrion" tour.Granted I'm a big fan of Pat in certain doses (Song X--which is still the most facile translation of Ornette's phrasing to the guitar anyone has ever done--the trio with Haden and Higgins), I got 80/81 in the midst of a big Dewey Redman binge and found myself kind of perplexed at the completely unironic smooth jazz flourishes in Metheny's writing and playing. It's completely not my bag, but I wholeheartedly respect and, in some perverse way, support Metheny's reluctance to go down any clearly defined, conventionally "tasteful" career path.
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He did play some bass clarinet, too, no? (I seem to recall him doing obbligatos under one of Pharoah's improvisations on Live at the Village Vanguard Again!.
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My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world. Honestly, this isn't even necessarily a hypothetical because (1) it may yet happen and (2) it may be happening without us noticing it. And by qualities I'm not talking jawline or facial structure--it's not even an exact science--more like a general intellectual focus, physical/psychological drive, an acute drive toward technical improvement...
I like to think that to some extent Jazz happened because the possibilities for the black population were so limited at the time; many of those who might have become great, say, rocket scientists or dozens of other things, more or less involuntarily chose music and then jazz as the way to express their talents... and that they wouldn't become musicians today...
That does in a way serve to emphasize the point. It's hard to take seriously the notion that we/I/one as a jazz musician is playing music of the "now" when the very social constructs that facilitated its emergence in the forms we now celebrate have transformed and/or been rendered obsolete. There certainly is an aspirational quality to Coltrane's music as I hear it--and that may be why people often respond to it on a level so far removed from the technical intricacies of the music itself... it speaks to energies outside of itself--and, for that matter, hints at something other than what it is.
No one but Trane, obviously, can speak to Trane's personal experience. Perhaps I still see the creative possibilities of that legacy in musical terms because it's a route that I chose (after my parents made the sacrifices that allowed me to make a choice).
This does remind me, to speak in even more abstract terms, of what happened to the notion of "culture as a weapon of struggle" after the end of Apartheid; the SA government began to move away from aggressive/inflammatory art the minute the formal institutions of Apartheid were technically done away with. None of this, obviously, meant that the struggle was over. It also speaks to the fact that there is still place for harrowing, powerful creativity in an environment that doesn't necessarily call for speaking in tongues (or bebop, or whatever, for that matter)--"contemporary" art will have to address its times to a certain extent, which is why I do like Jim's response to the hypothetical, above. A luta continua.
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Surely I'd be looking at it a different way if I were around back then. It still sounds clear to me that even Alice's early post-John music (like A Monastic Trio) sounds very different from the Quintet stuff--but it's got an ethos of its own, I think. Cosmic Music has a weird compilation feel to it for that reason, but all of what's there sounds miles more interesting than a lot of epigonal, Trane-like music from even the extended family (Rashied, later Alice, a lot of Pharoah, etc.). It's mixed like shit, to be sure, but the playing is amazing. Now Infinity, I can understand...
I do like Yoko, by the way, in much the fashion that I like Alice. On that level, I don't in the slightest believe that any of Alice's music could speak, definitively, to what John would have done or where he was going (which is not to say that Alice did or would think that, either)--and, for those reasons, I definitely vibe the onus on Infinity, especially. As a remix project, great--but, in that instance, Alice seems to have been playing her (very well-educated) guess/what-if, just like everyone else; calling it a John Coltrane album is kind of questionable. Now, the reason I might want to defend Infinity is that, as music, it's actually kind of interesting to me. No way in hell is it a John Coltrane album, though--no more than Bird Up is a Charlie Parker album (to speak nothing of the quality therein).
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My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world.
In all seriousness, I think they'd have a laptop and would know how to use it.
Of course, the realm of in-some-form-digital musical production is still in its infancy, contrasted to Trane's world of wholly analog music-making being quite advanced (to the point of almost having completed it's true "evolution"), so we're sort of comparing apples to pears here...but still, I think that's your answer.
Lots of peoples not gonna want to hear that, or even conceive of that, but there it is anyway.
I think you're totally right, and this simultaneously frightens and invigorates me. Again, the writing is on the wall. The time I spent at Mills slowly, gradually hipped me to this--I was on a totally acoustic thing--which may or may not, as it sometimes or often does, come back around--for a bit, but the forces propelled me toward working (at least) with people who had an understanding of some form of electronic manipulation (whether that be pedals or sampling or whatever...). Among the things that made me think twice were (1) Roscoe's responding very favorably to a soundscape piece created by a friend of mine (soon to perform at the 2010 International Supercollider Symposium with, incidentally, other friends of mine)--the first instance, I'd found, of him wanting to collaborate with one of my peers on what seemed to be something like a professional level during my tenure there, and (2)--I can't stress enough--Flying Lotus's latest music which, genetics be damned, gets closer to the Coltrane vibe than any jazz, I'd wager, of at least the last 15 years.
Just something observationally interesting, but I recall a debate between a couple friends of mine--one an electronic musician/rock bassist and the other, predominantly, an improviser and concert composer over whether or not there was anywhere left for jazz "to go"... the former said yes, the latter said no. Keep in mind the latter was, I'm fairly sure, much better versed in the conventions of contemporary jazz... the point being that, in this case, an outsider's sense of a awareness and facility in an alternative medium = "jazz possibilities," whereas the converse was true for someone very "in" the jazz thing. I'll always favor listening to jazz but, at this point, I'm feeling increasingly awkward and irrelevant playing it.
Complete and total tangent, but why do people hate Cosmic Music so much? I think it kicks ass.
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Ornette music w/o Trane I can imagine...post-Ayler...not so sure...maybe, maybe not.
The whole question of "what if", though, is really kind of, uh...feigned potency in the face of true impotency. I mena, what if Christopher Columbus had been born a dog? What if Alexander The Great had discovered electricity? What if? What if? What if? What might have happened if?
I mean, c'mon...there's real things that have happened, still need to be dealt with, haven't been (not particularly), and don't show any signs of going to be dealt with.
Like - after all and everything, do we really need "tunes" any more? As one of many options, yeah, great things, sometimes. But lord have mercy, if that's all we've learned after all these years, if all we can do is still play little ditties with recurrent structures that smile, sigh, or cry in predicted intervals, if we go there not just because we want to , but because that's all we volunteer to have at our mental, emotional, and spiritual disposal, then...
Let's play this one, then - what if the 20th Century had never happened?
Yeah, let's play that one.
My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world. Honestly, this isn't even necessarily a hypothetical because (1) it may yet happen and (2) it may be happening without us noticing it. And by qualities I'm not talking jawline or facial structure--it's not even an exact science--more like a general intellectual focus, physical/psychological drive, an acute drive toward technical improvement...
So maybe it's more like this--what happens to the Coltranes today? I don' think this is the same issue as "are there still giants in jazz" or "who is the new Coltrane" or whatever--I mean what musical routes are available for younger musicians--coming of age--looking for something genuinely creative to deal with?
I mean the catch 22 of jazz in this atmosphere is that (1) you could stare down the nose of decades of happenings in the music, realize that "progress" has been an illusion (at best) or that everything has "been done" (at worst) at just realize that self-aware innovation just isn't happening anymore, or (2) you could not focus on the issue and just go about the process of creating (which is and isn't a Coltrane thing... whether or not he agonized over creating a "new" relevant thing, as Miles seems to have, he did have an eye on creating something he understood as a universal music). Either way--and this is the hazard of coming to terms with where we are now--it's ridiculous to grow up digesting the rhetoric of free music, for example, as confrontational and new (as I have, to a certain extent) and then realize that it is maybe the former but most definitely not the latter--not anymore. Some people are just fine with watching the world turn and go about making their music--but there's way too much writing on the wall, everywhere, right now, to just sit with that.
Seriously, though--I lived and breathed two years along the lines of Roscoe Mitchell saying "people ain't doin' shit" to just think that anyone could be happy with the rote avenues history hands us. Not that there's necessarily a "big thing" around the corner--but we/you/I are definitely, without a doubt not looking hard enough if we're caught up in questions of "how do we save jazz" or "is it jazz" or "does it swing" or--even--"is this the next big thing in jazz." I mean, take a sledghammer to this shit--seriously--DO we need tunes anymore?
And before this comes out as a sheer nihilistic rant, keep in mind I've been trying to think constructivist. What's killing jazz is the Heisenberg principle of cultural awareness--it becomes "Jazz" the minute it stops being something mutable. And we aren't at the time, historically, to take this for granted. Dolphy could say something like "I'll never leave jazz" because the streets were on fire, for heavens' sakes--it just isn't an issue then. Now that we're in the sandbox, and we can see shit for what it is, maybe we should start taking it apart? Or step outside?
Who's your favourite clarinet player?
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Welcome--and, also, good call on Tardy. I think that last Hill album is a gem.