Larry Kart

Interesting post I ran across on Amazon some time ago, and again today, about the differences between Dufay and Josquin Des Prez. Potentially of broad application, I think. The poster, who uses the pseudonym Giordano Bruno, is a performer of Renaissance and Baroque music, plays the recorder I believe: 'The history of music also suffers from a discourse of 'development'. Perceptive listeners can still be trapped in the notion that the imitative counterpoint of Josquin is more 'advanced' than the seldom-imitative polytextual polyphony of Dufay. Quatsch! Nobody has ever written more 'advanced' music than Dufay... not Josquin, not Bach, not Beethoven, not Wagner, not even Brian Wilson. You have only your two ears, you know, through which all the ambient sound funnels to your brain, and 'what you hear is what you hear.''Music in Europe did CHANGE rather dramatically in the short span of time between Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474) and Josquin Desprez (1455-1521). The most easily quantifiable change was the shift in 'prolations', from preponderantly "perfect" (triple) tempi to "imperfect" (duple) tempi. You can hear that change by comparing any performance you have of Dufay to any of Josquin's disciples like Mouton or Willaert. That change was symptomatic of a change in the most basic mode of "hearing" music, which I can describe as a change from Time to Space. The aesthetic core of Dufay's music is the passage of Time; one hears it 'horizontally' - in the flow of Time captured as immediate sensual perceptions. The consummate craft of Dufay's music is its rhythmic inventiveness. By comparison, Josquin's music is 'all about' melody, which is a sort of derived experience based on Memory. No memory, no melody! Thus Josquin's music is less about Time and more about Space, or Spaces ... music conceived architecturally and heard as much vertically as horizontally.'

Phil Schaap's liner notes are semi-illiterate in spots and feature some peculiar Schaap-isms. Details upon request. As for the music, check out track 7 on disc one.

Someone here reports that he gets a link to malware on this thread, either when he tries to access this thread itself or clicks on a link that's on the thread -- I'm not clear which. In either case, be alert. (I don't have the former problem, if that's what he means, and I'm not going to test to see if Ihave the latter.)

When you just go to the thread or when you click on a link that's in a post there? I had no problem when I just went to the thread. If it's a link in a post, why not post a warning to others not to click on that link?

Here's something informative:

Anyone know of this singer? Picked up today a recent duo album "Varuna" by her and Richie Bierach, whom I’ve warmed to a good deal in recent years. I particularly like Antonioli’s somewhat husky Irene Kral-like timbre in the lower register.

Blue Note and Prestige Monk, leaning perhaps toward the latter.

I'm by no means an HIP-trumps-other-factors person, but today I picked up what seems to me to be a remarkable HIP recording of Bolero by Anima Eterna, conducted by Jos van Immerseel. A big part of the deal here is that full account supposedly is taken of Ravel's stated but often ignored intentions as to tempo. In the words of Pierre Coppola, conducter of an early [1930] Ravel-supervised recording), Ravel's intent was that Bolero should be performed "in the tempo indicated in the printed score (crochet = 66) without deviating from that tempo right up to the end, since [Ravel] considered the 'crescendo' occurred automatically thanks to the orchestration, and the effect he judged most important was precisely this almost hallucinatory insistence on an inexorable tempo.... The public ought to know that Bolero is the easiest of all pieces to conduct, for one beats three from start to finish, like an automaton; on the other hand, its actual performance is quite difficult, indeed fraught with danger for many of the orchestra's principals, who bear a heavy responsibility when it is their turn to state the theme; I am thinking above all of the solo for first trombone." (Following this tempo brings Bolero in at, as Ravel stated his intent for its duration, about 17 minutes. Most recordings are faster (Toscanini's, for example, is 13:25, Paul Paray's a mere 13:00). Further, Ravel wrote before the first performance that Bolero consisted "entirely of an orchestral texture without music." Thus, having the orchestra play French instruments of the vintage of the time, as Immersmeel does (the winds and brass in particular) not only makes quite an audible difference, but those differences in turn make Ravel's paradoxical "Bolero consists entirely of an orchestral texture without music" no paradox at all. In fact, in this performance Bolero sounds damn radical, or perhaps that should be doggedly radical. And damn strange even scary, too, for all its latter-day familiarity -- this strangeness and scariness being among the effects that Ravel had in mind to create. Here it is, although YouTube can't do it full justice:

Avashi the trumpet player is Anat Cohen's brother. There is another brother in the family, Yuval, who plays soprano. I heard Avashi a year or more ago with Mark Turner; perhaps he was unduly restricted by Turner's constipated compositional frameworks, but the results were as undifferentiated as an asphalt sidewalk.

Listened to Hill on Spotify. I was wrong about him being flashy; to me he's just bland. Coloring-inside-the-lines music, and that restrained mellow vibe makes me want to scream. Has Chris Botti met his match?

Damn -- he was a fine player. Liked his stuff from "Circle Waltz" on.

I'll try to give it a listen.

Fitzgerald's paternal grandfather was Archbishop of Manchester.

Read it and don't know quite what to make of Ratliff's rather vague ruminations on the Chicago-ness of these musicians. About the only point at which, so it seems to me, he returns to earth is: "Above all, the rent and the stakes are lower [in Chicago] than in New York. It's cheaper to learn, develop, branch out and stay put," and when he quotes something that altoist Greg Ward (a player I very much admire) said to Chicago Reader critic Peter Margasak about his return to Chicago after a year-long sojurn in New York: "I would only play a gig under my own name maybe four times a year in New York. I really missed the community thing here [i.e. the sense of community on the Chicago scene]." To this I would add that a vital aspect, practical and spiritual, of the Chicago scene, which Ward alludes to, is number of places to play and that at many of those Chicago places to play most or even all aspects of the venue are controlled (directly or more or less) by the musicians. I recall seeing Ward in New York a few years at the Cornelia St. Cafe, and aside from the music itself, it was a truly unpleasant experience. Patrons had to wait all jammed together upstairs in the bar area for a good length of time (maybe 40 minutes) before being admitted to the downstairs music area, where one faced not the bandstand but one side wall or other (there was no room in this space about the width of a bowling alley lane to turn your chair sideways). Further, the bandstand was minuscule -- the members of Ward's quartet almost had to stand on top of each other -- food and drink were expensive, and the wait staff was rude. That's not what happens at any Chicago jazz venue I'm aware of. (Well, it happens at one place, but I don't go there.) And I don't recall too many other New York City jazz venues in recent years that were comfortable, not terribly expensive, and hospitable. A lot of this comes down to space and real estate and the resulting pressures, I suppose, but still. My favorite instance of NYC club attitude came at the otherwise pleasant Jazz Gallery, when I mentioned to the guy taking my money that I'd very much enjoyed a performance there several years before by a Mark Helias-led band that included trumpeter Herb Robertson and tenor saxophonist Mark Shim. He said, "Mark Shim has never played here," and when I assured him that he had, he said, quite harshly, "You're wrong." Absolutely insane. Back to Ratliff's piece. I've already said that I admire Ward's music. As for the others, no doubt I'm in the minority, but much of the time when Jeff Parker is the leader, he pretty much puts me to sleep, though I did hear him play at least once with demonic intensity and inventiveness, backing Japanese altoist Akira Sakata several years ago. My sense is that Parker is a somewhat diffident person, and that when the spotlight is on him so to speak, he tends to withdraw. Marcus Hill I haven't heard that much, but when I have heard him he seemed rather flashy and (perhaps) artificially hot, a la another would-be Chicago hotshot, Corey Wilkes. McCraven has a lot of energy, but I've never heard a performance from him as a leader that was an overall cohesive success. On the other hand, the edgier side of the Chicago scene, which is what Ratliff is talking about (by "edgier" I mean, among other things, musicians who are not into recreating the jazz past) is full of excellent, quite individual players -- drummers Mike Reed and Tim Daisy, cornetist Josh Berman, bassist-composer Jason Roebke, bassist Junius Paul, vibraharpist Jason Adasiewicz, ciarinetist James Falzone, alto and baritone saxophonist Dave Rempis, altoist Nick Mazzarella, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, cellists Fred Lonborg Holm and Tomeka Reid, flautist-composer Nicole Mitchell, and the list could go on and on. Further, returning to Ward's reference to community, while I sure don't know in detail how everyone on the Chicago scene behaves toward everyone else, time after time I've seen examples of musicians not only treating each other with genuine warmth but also going out of their way to set up/open up playing situations where other players can grow musically. Is that kind of communal feeling that common in NYC, where gigs under one's own name, as Greg Ward says, can be very hard to come by? You tell me. In that regard, note Ratliff's rather smug "the stakes are lower [in Chicago]." One knows what he means, but for a jazz musician in NYC these days who is not already famous, where, when and how are those supposedly high stakes to be grasped? Or could it be that they no longer even exist?

It's on my bedside to-read pile. Her book about her father and uncles, "The Knox Family" I think is the title, is superb, as are her novels of course. Her father was editor of Punch, and her two uncles were famous convert Catholic prelate Ronald Knox and Evoe Knox, one of the key codebreakers of WWII. Her paternal grandfather, IIRC, was no less than an Anglican Archbishop, perhaps even of Canterbury? Also very good is her biography of the excellent and eventually suicidal poet (she killed herself by drinking a drain-cleaner) Charlotte Mew.

BTW, the last time I did such an informal, or if you prefer semi-half-assed, survey of some of the scene (maybe five years or so ago?), things seemed a bit less varied and less individual than they do this time. Just my impression, based on two random samples -- the prior one also included my sense of a fair number of gigs I heard. Both of my samples do not include all the Chicago players I heard/hear fairly often. That scene remains as fresh and individual now as it did them IMO.

I was in Half-Price Books the other day and noticed that someone had sold them a bunch of newish used jazz CDs on indie labels like Positone and Origin and Destiny — all of them being sold for $2 each. So I swept up a good many of them that looked like they might be interesting, almost all of them by players, except for an occasional sideman, that I’ve never heard of, in the hope of taking some random estimate of some of the current scene. I can always donate the ones I don’t like to my local library’s sale. One that I like so far is by bassist-composer Marcos Varela: https://www.amazon.com/San-Ygnacio-Marcos-Varela/dp/B01APR1KXS?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 He’s got some veteran sidemen — George Cables (who’s in very fine form — and I’ve never been much of a Cables fan), Billy Hart, and Clifton Anderson — and some younger guys who are or might become interesting — altoists Logan Richardson and Arnold Lee (Bassist Bill Lee’s other son). Another one that caught my ear is: https://www.amazon.com/Intersection-Lenny-Sendersky/dp/B01ADPIVDE/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1467155195&sr=1-2&keywords=lenny+sendersky from Russian-Israeli alto and soprano saxist Lenny Sendersky and guitarist Tony Romano, with Steve LaSpina and Matt Kane on bass and drums. Agile, brainy linear stuff, albeit somewhat same-y. So far I feel luke-warm about this from drummer-composer Kenneth Salters Haven: https://www.amazon.com/Enter-Exit-Kenneth-Salters-Haven/dp/B015YDYERC/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1467155541&sr=1-1&keywords=kenneth+Salters+Haven but one of his sidemen, trumpeter Matt Holman, makes a nice personal impression (he has a pretty sound), and Myron Walden, whom I know of on alto, is tasty on bass clarinet. A tad conventional so far, a la the Hubbard-Fuller edition of the Jazz Messengers, but still interesting is: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_12?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=david+gibson+inner+agent&sprefix=david+gibson%2Caps%2C151 Gibson seems to have been influenced by Fuller, who supplies a blurb; his pianist Theo Hill is nice comper and soloist, kind of McCoy-ish but with an individual, attractively agitated style of articulation. Also, though out of the current scene/players I dont know bag, there was this from Jerry Bergonzi: https://www.amazon.com/Three-All-Jerry-Bergonzi/dp/B002ZIABPY/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1467156838&sr=1-1&keywords=bergonzi+three++for+all I’ve always found Bergonzi interesting at first, then a bit formulaic, though his formulas/patterns are quite personal in a post-Trane/Wayne/J. Henderson bag. But on this one he seems significantly looser and more varied rhythmically (that makes a big difference for him and/or for me) than I've ever heard him before. Was surprised to find a 2-CD Monk tribute concert that I'd never heard of, with Muhal the leader on one disc and Barry Harris the leader on the other, with an imposing lineup (Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Charlie Rouse, Roswell Rudd, Richard Davis, and either Ben Riley or Ed Blackwell). Pretty much a mess, though -- Cherry either doesn't know or can't play on these pieces, and Rudd is in a similar place. Rouse is OK, only Lacy of the horns is on form. The pianist-leaders are themselves, thanks be. One suspects there were no rehearsals and perhaps some behind the scenes or on the bandstand friction. Possible further reports on other stuff from this batch, if you can bear it.

I believe Testament bought the rights to the HSQ material, as they have bought the rights to many other things -- some vintage Juilliard Quartet recordings, for example -- so there we are.

Everything the HSQ recorded has been reissued on Testament and can be found on Amazon, though some items are pricey. The Judith Aller Quartet's recording of the Debussy String Quartet can be found on Spotify and You Tube. It's not only the best performance I know but also, so I feel, a revelation of the work's true art nouveau spirit. The music sounds like it's made of actively intertwining vines.

Here's Aller playing the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Hollywood String Quartet:

As are record producers. A particular Victor Aller gem is this recording of Hindemith's "The Four Temperaments" and Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano and Trumpet: https://www.amazon.com/Victor-Aller-Shostakovichâ-Hindemith-record/dp/B00Q519D8I/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1466982488&sr=1-5&keywords=victor+aller The trumpeter is none other than Mannie Klien.

Victor Aller (March 26, 1905, New York City – May 1977, in the area of Los Angeles, California) was an American pianist. He had a successful career behind the scenes in the film industry, and he taught piano in Hollywood, where his students sometimes included actors preparing to depict musicians on screen, such as Dirk Bogarde and Cornel Wilde. His present fame, however, rests primarily on his performances in acclaimed 1950s-vintage Capitol Records recordings with the Hollywood String Quartet, including accounts of piano quintets by Johannes Brahms, César Franck, and Dmitri Shostakovich, and the Brahms piano quartets. Aller had family and professional ties to the quartet. His sister, Eleanor Aller, was its cellist, and her husband, Felix Slatkin, was its first violinist. They and the other quartet members were all musicians with the Hollywood studios of the era, and Victor Aller was the orchestra manager at Warner Bros. during the 1940s; by 1949, his hourly earnings amounted to $19.95 according to company records. Aller was married to violinist Ester Heller whom he met while both were attending Juilliard. A Warner film in which Victor Aller had direct input was The Beast with Five Fingers. Mr. Aller made a piano arrangement for the left hand of the Chaconne from J. S Bach's Violin Partita in D minor, and, according to a press release, he spent 200 hours training actor Victor Francen in proper technique. Victor Aller's hand was used when the hand plays the piano in the film. Victor sat underneath the piano, wearing black velvet on his arm, so that the hand appeared disembodied. For Song Without End Victor provided technical instruction to Dirk Bogarde, who played the leading role of Franz Liszt. Aller's musical heritage lives on with relatives in succeeding generations. His daughter is concert violinist Judith Aller, a student of Jascha Heifetz; his nephew, son of Felix Slatkin and Eleanor Aller, is noted American orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin. Leonard's brother, Frederick Zlotkin, an outstanding cellist, is the principal solo cello of the New York City Ballet, and a member of the Lyric Piano Quartet. References[edit] Library of Congress authority record citing birth and death dates [1] Neil Lerner, Music’s Role in Hollywood’s Social Erasure of the Disabled Body: Two Case Studies ( Kings Row and The Beast with Five Fingers ) Archived November 20, 2004, at the Wayback Machine. Judith Aller biographical Web site [2] Chicago Quarterly Review: Vol 15 The Beast with Five Fingers [3] P.S. If you remain curious, go to Victor Aller's Wikipedia site and click on the link to his daughter's memoir of him "The Beast With Five Fingers" in the Chicago Quarterly Review, which then can be read using the "Look inside" feature on Amazon. It's quite a story, and she is quite a writer.

At one point a few years ago -- after my first wife died and after this woman's second husband died -- I had a brief, volatile relationship with a brilliant violinist (a onetime Heifetz pupil) whose father was Eleanor Slatkin's brother, Victor Aller, a brilliant pianist who recorded with the HSQ when they were recording works that called for a pianist and who also recorded on his own (he also was a major figure on the Hollywood film studio music scene). BTW, my former flame absolutely despised Leonard Slatkin, both as a musician and as human being. A woman of strong opinions, she was. Among other things, she claimed that her father coached the HSQ in many of their interpretations. I suspect that there was some truth to that -- her anecdotes about this were fleshed out with much telling detail -- but it should also be said that she pretty much worshipped her late father and felt that the Slatkins, individually and collectively, failed to give him the credit that she thought he deserved.

Anything's possible.

Bought a sealed LP copy last year to replace my beat-up original. Terrific music.