Larry Kart

Stated objectives, perhaps, but Scientology was and is a con game, and Lennie's project, controlling though it could be, was not -- Lee, Warne, Sal Mosca, Don Ferrara, Peter Ind and many others are sufficient evidence of that, not to mention Lennie's own music.

Yes, Scientology, really. Don't know how long it lasted, though. As for Danko, he was and is an excellent pianist and was an ideal complement to Lee. A terrific guy, too. About Tristano's ideal state of playing from the id and Scientology's state of "clear," I think the main point of connection/similarity was Tristano's controlling personality and the cloistered world he assembled for himself and his acolytes.

You know what Desmond's lines kind of (but only kind of) remind me of at times: Billy Taylor's.

Best recording I know is this one: http://www.amazon.com/Berlioz-Damnation-Faust-Hector/dp/B00000I9WV/ref=sr_1_11?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1440007135&sr=1-11&keywords=faust+monteux "Damnation" is, in effect (or so I thought at one time), the first motion picture.

One place where Ray Turner can be heard is on Xanadu's "Bebop Revisited, Vol. 2" -- a four-track 1945 date for Manor with Kai Winding, led by trumpeter Roy Stevens.

BTW, I'm no longer sure at all that Moms is the same person as the guy whose Amazon reviews I linked to (and said were Moms') in several previous posts on this thread, who used the pseudonym Giordano Bruno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno Whoever that guy is, he certainly is smart and opinionated, quite similar to Moms in his laying-down-the-law tone, and his opinions on early music performances are Moms-like and when I've followed them seldom have led me wrong. But Mr. Bruno alludes at times to being a classical bassoonist and recorder player -- probably not a professional but a high-level amateur -- and I don't think Moms is that.

Untouched by Bird -- well, at the time Perk's running mate Kamuca seemed to be, but in fact, as later Kamuca showed, especially that lovely album he made on alto, that was not the case at all. The semi-obscure but darn good Ray Turner? A fair number of East Coat Al Cohn disciples like Eddie Wasserman. Dick Hafer. Bob Hardaway. Dave Pell. Probably a whole lot of other guys at that level and in that stylistic bag.

When he's really playing, it's more than just "charming", I think, the line goes on and on with a logic that threatens to be broken at any second but never is. Exactly. But OTOH that logical continuity IMO seldom if ever builds to peaks or reaches down to depths -- a la, say, Pepper on "Besame Mucho" or "I Surrender Dear."

I don't think that avoiding Bird was much of an issue for Perkins, who was drenched in Pres -- not much if any room or need for Bird in the vintage Perkins universe, and of course he was far from the only Pres-drenched tenorman of that time of whom this could be said. Then, of course -- which may from your point of view contradict this -- Perkins began to try to work chunks of Rollins, Coltrane, and (unless I'm mistaken) Shorter into his playing, often with IMO awkward results. In particular, my sense was that Perk was trying to transform semi-"out" harmonic moves into meaningful rhythmic angularities that he couldn't otherwise get his head and fingers around. Sometimes it kind of worked; there was a lot of sincere human struggle at work in this.

Sometimes to advantage, sometimes not so much, Desmond made a heck of a lot more use of sequences than Konitz did -- significant chunks of Desmond solos are built that way, again sometimes to charming effect, sometimes not. I would guess that if Lee saw a sequence coming on while soloing he would try to avoid it, and if he actually found himself playing one he'd be embarrassed.

What has always intrigued me about much of the album "Bearcat," its title track in particular (see link above) is (hope I'm accurate here) its romping boogaloo feel, this stoked considerably by activist drummer J.C Moses, with Jordan right there with him. So far the Sanders date leaves me cold, but that's the way I've usually felt about him. Onward to the Wilbur Ware date and Jordan's "Glass Bead Games." If the Sanders, as I expect, turns out to be the only dud for me, the set is still a plus.

9:00PM at Elastic, 3429 W Diversey, #208, 773.772.3616 ($10)Samuel Mösching Trio with Mike Harmon, Peter ManheimJarrett Gilgore Quartet with Russ Johnson, Anton Hatwich, Deric Dickens

Some representative Jordan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMb3uhtuXAg (dig drummer J.C. Moses and CJ interact) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhVXKg8SBuc (still a bit Rollins-esque in 1957, but very together) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILJq-sTkhQU (fully mature CJ)

Not IMO. Try, for evidence, "Cliff Craft" (Blue Note) -- early period for Jordan -- and "Bearcat" (OJC) -- his second phase. Lots more fine work from later years. Not every player is or can be is a giant or be "on" every time, but Jordan was a personal, creative player.

Just about to listen to the Sanders material so I can't report there. The first Jordan date (and no doubt the "The Glass Bead Games" material) and the Payne date are straight-ahead, by the standards of that time. The Blackwell with horns and Brackeen dates are about as free harmonically as early Ornette but certainly swinging. The Blackwell all-percussion date is not unlike those all-percussion Blakey Blue Note albums but IMO more successful based on what I've heard so far, if only because Blackwell is a more integrative, less dominant (albeit very inventive) figure than Blakey tended to be. On the track from that date that I've heard so far, Blackwell's interaction with conga drummer Huss Charles (brother of drummer Dennis Charles, who's also on the date) is stunning. The Wilbur Ware date I haven't yet gotten to -- my guess is that it is somewhat rough-edged, but how could it not be interesting if one loves Ware's playing?

Hey, you've got HRH's prose style down pat.

Working my way through, I'm intrigued so far -- though the Strata-East recordings have their sonic problems (they're on the linen-closet side, and the piano is no bargain), my ear readily adjusts. Any date, like the first Jordan one, that has a bass team of Wilbur Ware and Richard Davis is going to be interesting, and I was especially caught, on this date and the Cecil Payne one, with much the same personnel, by the comping and solo work of Wynton Kelly (on both piano and organ on the Payne date, at times at once)-- certainly the boldest and most advanced (or if you will "advanced") comping I know of from him. It's like he's been listening some to Tyner, but it's all Kelly in the end, two years before his too early passing. Anyone who digs Kelly needs to hear him here. Charles Brackeen is Charles Brackeen, which is fine with me, and Don Cherry plays his ass off with Brackeen and on the newly issued, two-tune Ed Blackwell date. The first Blackwell all-percussion band track, which is where I'm at, is sensational. Onwards to the land of Pharoah Sanders.

Pretty sure the adjustment/tweak worked. The audiologist noticed that on my old aids the db level of the music program was set several dbs higher than the level of the normal speech program. She adjusted the new aids' music program accordingly, and I then A/B'ed the results with my old aids' music program, listening in her office to some stuff on You Tube. At first the new aids' program was too "hot" compared to the old aids' program (though there was plenty of "bloom" on the sound now), but eventually, adjusting the new programs' db level downwards one db at a time, we got them to pretty much match. At home listening has confirmed that judgment so far, though I might eventually want her to take the db level one further notch downwards. In any case, I'm in the ballpark now, thanks be. Now I just have to pay for the suckers.

... I just ran across. For reasons that were not explained, she was adamantly opposed to any attempt to discover the location of the North Pole.

At home and at live gigs, though sometimes the amplification at the latter is such that the normal setting sounds better. I'm going back to the audiologist this afternoon for some adjustments/tweaks. I'll bring my old aids along and see if we can get the old and new music programs to match. Can't bring my sound system and some CDs along, but I can call up some music on YouTube on her office computer and probably A/B the old and new aids to a reasonable degree. At least the audiologist seems very simpatico so far -- eager to get things right, willing to spend time on the problem, fairly certain that the problem can be solved. Most important, perhaps, she seems to understand what I'm saying about the subjective realities of listening to music.

Thanks, Dan -- I'n very confused too. Yes, the audiologist did first program the old aids, as well as the new demo aids, to my current pattern of hearing loss. Spoke to the audiologist just now, and she said that she had spoken to the Seimens rep and that he said that the algorithms for the music program in the old model and and the new aids are not significantly different, but that there are ways to alter or tweak the settings for the new aids' music program that should (one hopes) bring it into line with the settings for (and quality of -- as I perceive it) the old aids' music program. What I hear on the new aids' music program sounds like some form of clipping or limiting is at work there -- again, squished sound stage and frequency response, almost no "air" around the sound. Not what I want at all, and not what I had/have in my old Siemen aids' music program. If clipping or limiting is afoot, maybe that was introduced to the new aids' music program in attempt to protect geezers from feedback and other potential forms of sonic overload. If so, one can understand why, from a corporate perspective, geezers would rule, because the majority of their customers probably are geezers. I qualify as one by age, but not otherwise.

About six years ago I discovered I had significant upper register hearing loss and was led to buy top of the line Siemens hearing aids, which had three different built-in programs/settings -- so-called universal (i.e. normal speech), noisy places, and music. Noisy places works by narrowing the sonic information from 360 degrees to what's right in front of you, music works by boosting bass and treble -- each program being fitted, via a computer chip, to compensate as much as possible to the pattern of your individual hearing loss. My old hearing aids aren't working so well any more, especially when it comes to normal speech (I'd been told when I bought the aids that six years or so was their normal life span) so I went to an audiologist who tested my hearing anew and gave me a demo model of the new top of the line Siemens aids to try out, these having been programmed to the current pattern of my hearing loss. Pleased to find that I could hear normal speech much better with these new aids, I was dismayed and also bewildered to discover that the music setting was just awful -- much less frequency response than before, soundstage had shrunk significantly, no "air" around the sound, etc. By comparison, the music setting on my old Siemens aids continues to be excellent. How, I wonder, could the personalized programs on these new aids be so good for speech and so bad for music, especially when the speech program on my old Siemens aids no longer fills the bill at all, while its music program remains excellent? Could Siemens, for some damn reason, have changed the nature or style of their music program to suit some generic idea of how most people listen to music -- from, say, a relatively "audiophile" approach to one that's like a mediocre car radio? Sounds that way to me. Anyone have any thoughts or advice?

The thing about the Messiah is that it's pretty much a one off -- a living sacred tableau or frieze -- while most of the best oratorios, including the two Moms linked to above, are pretty close to operas, works of intense, story-telling drama in which key characters are tested/evolve/express their sorrows and passions. The Messiah has none of that, though what it does have is glorious.

Handel Harpsichord Suites — Scott Ross https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfL04JFw4U Concerto Grossi Op. 6 and 3— Harnoncourt (Teldec). Not always immaculately played but balls to the wall; the only recording I know that gets the crucial rhetorical aspect of the music. Messiah — Mackerras

Yep, that's the recording. I also have their recording of Reger's arrangement of the Bach Suites for Orchestra.