Simon8

Reissued by NYRB, coming out next week. Haven't read it yet: how is it ?

Recently found this funny Paul Bley business card anecdote: http://mattpavolka.com/paul-bley,-a-remembrance.html A number of years ago (at least ten, maybe more like fifteen) the great Argentine pianist Ernesto Jodos, who was staying with my wife and me in New York at the time, went to Birdland to see Paul Bley. I believe the band was Paul's trio with Paul Motian and Gary Peacock. I don't recall that I was able to attend that night but I did see that group on other occasions and there were always at least moments of incredible beauty and power that only they could attain. Truly one of the great piano trios in music. Anyway, after the show Ernesto approached Bley (a not un-intimidating man) to ask him about taking a lesson. Paul was very friendly. He gave him a card and explained that he would be in New York for a while and that he should give him a call. My friend put the card in his wallet and headed back to Brooklyn, excited at the prospect of studying with one of his idols. Upon arriving back at our place he got out Bley's card to show to me. it was a corporate-looking business card with flourescent trees embossed on a white background. The text printed on it was: "Paul Bley, Innovative Travel Concepts". That was all, nothing else. No phone number, nothing.

Mark Levinson's post following Peter Hum's article (http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/music/jazzblog/r-i-p-paul-bley): "Hard to believe Paul Bley has passed. Paul gave me a gig as his bass player (with drummer Barry Altschul) when I first came to NY at age 18 in 1965. A few weeks later he offered me a gig going to Europe on tour for 9 months! It was an amazing and life changing experience and education to know, travel and play with Paul for a few years. He was one of the most inventive and innovative musicians of all time as his recordings show. He could also be the biggest curmudgeon, meshugana and pain in the ass! After the turbulent years with Annette, it was good to hear that he settled down and found stabilty and happiness with Carol et al. Paul Bley and Bill Evans were the two main root inspirations for jazz pianists from the 1960's onwards. There is big chunk of Paul in Vanessa for sure. Vanessa, your dad's love is in your heart and with you always."

A last salute to my hometown hero. Ben Ratliff summed it up quite well: "In the final reckoning, PAUL BLEY's influence over the last 50 years of jazz - and it continues - will be enormous.... Deeply original and aesthetically agressive, Mr. Bley long ago found a way to express his long, elegant, voluminous thoughts in a manner that implies complete autonomy from its given setting but isn't quite free jazz. The music runs on a mixture of deep historical knowledge and its own inviolable principles."

Jaki Byard (Here's Jaki, Hi-Fly)

I'll make The Hunters my next Salter read. Light Years was a somewhat frustrating read: brilliant, often gorgeous writing at the service of insufferably bourgeois characters and settings. But beautiful, nevertheless.

Long time since I read it, but I recall it as one of the best of the Greenes I just started, but there's from the get-go that understated scene and character-setting mastery that really impressed me in The End of the Affair (the only other Greene novel I read).

Le Mépris (Moravia/Godard)

The End (bis)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc5xXYzEKAs From Charlie Haden's Montreal Tapes, with Paul Bley & Paul Motian (1989). Bley's clarion call release (3:08-3:15) after a wicked crescendo (from 2:38) makes me wanna shout for joy every time.

Thanks for the heads up. There something with Argentinian writers and jazz (see Cortazar's "The Pursuer", based on Charlie Parker)! Aira's "An Episode in the LIfe of a Landscape Painter" was a fascinating read.

A first for me, never read him before. Auspicious first chapters, lively, well-drawn.

For £0.19 (!)

An interesting take on the subject from Ethan Iverson: "What makes [Monk] so hard to play? For my money he is the most poorly-performed jazz composer. Walking around defeatedly after the gig, I came up with some possible answers. Monk's material is always derived from the purest of jazz traditions, but his displaced accents and stark voicings are sometimes thought of as connected to European modernism. Indeed, Monk is a father figure to the avant-garde. But Monk’s own music is not pointillist, Webern-esque, or even particularly abstract. It is hardcore jazz with roots in the blues and Kansas City swing. Getting abstract with Monk can work -- the George Russell/Eric Dolphy "'Round Midnight" comes to mind -- but to do so takes serious consideration. Monk’s surrealism has been interpreted as clowning around or startling. “Oh, look! I just clanged a minor second! Isn’t that funny!” The Tom Lord discography lists songs called, “Monkin’ Around,” “Monkin’ Business,” “Monk-ing Around,” and “Monking Business.” To the composers of these works I say: Fuck you. Monk never monkeyed around or did any monkey business. Sure, some of his renditions of standards like “Remember” or “Just A Gigolo” are among the greatest examples of jazz surrealism ever recorded. But they are still serious. And his clanging minor seconds come straight from boogie-woogie and Harlem stride, not the circus. Monk’s music is more specific than many realize. Monk had very little to do with paper, although he could read music very well and write it, too. He just thought that paper missed the point, because you needed to learn it from him to get it all, and how was paper going to help you do that? Beginning with Miles Davis, many Monk interpreters have muddled the details. Monk’s rhythmic concept is strong, obvious, and profound, and if you take that away, you miss the point entirely. Once in a while a ballad is out of tempo, although, even then, there is never any doubt as to where “one” is. Most of the time it marches and undulates, and there is also an Afro-Cuban or Caribbean element, brought out on Danilo Perez’s aforementioned Panamonkand Jerry Gonzales and the Fort Apache Band. But Perez and Gonzales really know what they are doing. The average jam session version of "Bemsha Swing" rendered as a humorous latin number evades the deeper meaning of Monk's special feel. Am I saying that no one but Monk should play his music? No, he’s a great composer and a signal stylist who should be fair game for anybody. Still, there are only two Monk tribute albums that I keep in steady rotation, and both of them feature special performances by great drummers. Evidence by Steve Lacy and Don Cherry has a divine turn by Billy Higgins. The horn solos are excellent, too, although they incorrectly reduce the melody of “Evidence” to a simple hemiola. (Who is Carl Brown? This mysterious bassist plays great, too.) I also appreciate Tommy Flanagan’s thoughtful Thelonica with George Mraz, especially for a rare occasion to hear Art Taylor swinging so hard in the early 80’s. However, Flanagan was regrettably part of one of the least successful Monk performances I’ve ever experienced, the duo with Barry Harris in the movie Straight, No Chaser. It’s not that Flanagan and Harris aren’t heavy, or that this version of “Well, You Needn’t” is so bad. In its way it’s very good -- How could it not be, with Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris playing the piano? But after an hour of Thelonious Monk on video, Flanagan and Harris look and sound like cocktail pianists. Monk is a major 20th Century stylist and artist: Every word, every suit, every song title, and (especially) every note was thought out and delivered with maximum intensity. It would have been unfair to make any other modern jazz pianist follow Monk and play one of his tunes in Straight No Chaser. To their credit, Flanagan and Harris couldn’t get on a bandstand without swinging. Martial Solal can swing, too, but he doesn’t seem to take that technique seriously enough. At least, I could have used a bit more of it from him last night, especially after he said that Monk couldn’t play the piano." Much more here : http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/variants-on-a-theme-of-thelonious-monk.html