Larry Kart

Not THAT blind, at least at that time -- or are you saying that McPartland wasn't that attractive and Joe wouldn't have known it? But, hey, she was good enough for Jimmy, who seems like a man who would have had many options.

Why? or is this an npr thing? Well, it's only by riffling through the book that I discovered that McPartland and Joe Morello were an item when he was her drummer. Vital information.

Last night, caught this band in Chicago in the back of an antique store on Lincoln Ave.: Aakash Mittal (alto), with Andrew Trim (gtr.), Russ Johnson (tpt.) , Kurt Schweitz (bs.), Devin Drobka (dr.) You heard it here first, unless you've heard it before -- Mittal is someone to reckon with. From Boulder, Colo., of Indian (i.e. subcontinent) descent, he's a friend of (or acquainted with) Rudresh Mahanthappa and Vijay Iyer, but even though he's not yet as powerful or fully formed as Rudresh, he does something with his somewhat similar Indian-related compositional frameworks (lots of complex and/or additive time signatures/patterns) that I, based on arguably limited experience, prefer. Where Rudresh and Iyer seem to place those frameworks in the foreground and keep them there for the most part, Mittal plays off and around them in a push me/pull you manner that I think of as jazz-like. That is, he accents within and where the pattern does and also away from it -- meaningfully. Russ Johnson, as usual played like a f---ing angel, and drummer Devin Drobka nailed all of those unusual time signatures and roiling patterns -- this even though the band had only seen Mittal's music that day.

Based on the way they handle other things and the quality of their house brands, if I had to chose between Sam's Club and Costco, I'd go with Costco. OTOH, if you have a rather complicated prescription, as I do, I'd go with an individual opthomologist and optometrist whom you know and trust. Dealing with a prescription and a pair of glasses that's not right for you is a big pain in the eyeballs. I got f----- up once by an opthomologist who fiddled with/jumped up my prescription so much that what he prescribed had the effect of overriding my dominant eye, which left me dazed and confused. Fortunately my veteran optometrist caught the problem, though not until he'd made my new glasses and I'd complained about their effects. When I went back to the optholomogist for redress, because I'd now had to pay for another pair of glasses to replace the ones with the too aggressive prescription, he said tough ---t. And he was no bargain- basement opthomologist either, just a jerk.

I haven't been knocked out by her own leader dates, but a few years ago at the Chicago Jazz Festival, as a member of the medium-large ensemble that Mike Reed assembled to play some rediscovered/reassembled music by Sun Ra, Halvorson was on fire.

Larry, can you tell me how you managed to imbed this youtube video please. I'm going nuts trying to work it out. I just copied the URL into my message and posted it.

Yes, indeed.

Maybe "Skylark" -- both the main strain and the bridge (supposedly Bix inspired) and how they fit together.

Christophe Schweizer:

Tim Hagans

You can check it out in Spotify, if you have access to it. Try the Symphony.

at Berkshire Record Outlet: http://www2.broinc.com/search.php?row=0&brocode=&stocknum=&submit=Find+Item&text=LA+PERI+fournet+netherlands&filter=all And Dukas' music is darn hard to get right.

Speaking as a former journalist, that's the best novel, maybe the best book period, about journalism I know. Sad, touching, hilarious. Every character in that book is damn close to a person I know or knew.

Lotsa rain.

Don't know if anyone has much tolerance for Cleo Laine, but figuring why the hell not? I picked up this 1994 album at a library sale today for $1: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000003FVO and so far am very impressed by the charts -- by Dankworth and in one striking instance, by Stan Tracey -- and also by the performance of the Mercer-led Ellington orchestra.

Last night Brötzmann/Adasiewicz/Drake at The Hideout were very fine. Brötzmann on alto, metal clarinet, and his taragot-like regular clarinet was, as usual, strong like bull; Drake was boldly and aptly/compositionally responsive, as was Adasiewicz. Only complaint, which could be made of many venues -- in the 40-odd minutes after the audience was seated and before the band played, one was subjected to pop music (albeit arguably good pop music) at an ear-splitting volume that made conversation impossible and literally made one's head hurt. As a friend said, "First time I ever looked forward to hearing Brötzmann as a sonic relief." Tonight: 9:00PM at Elastic, 2830 N Milwaukee, 2nd Fl, 773.772.3616 ($8) John Niekrasz Solo Percussion James Falzone, Nick Mazzarella, John Niekrasz

Years ago, maybe in the late 1970s, I heard McPherson at a Sunday afternoon jam session in San Diego, where I believe he was living at the time. What he played that day was not as Parker-like as usual and very beautiful. Perhaps he was stimulated by the presence of another San Diego-area altoist whose name I can't recall -- he had an Italian-American name, was about the same age as McPherson, had worked for years in Vegas show bands, and sounded like a descendent of Joe Maini with latter-day Trane-ish trimmings. Bought a privately produced album that guy had on sale, but if I still have it, I don't know where it is on the shelves because I don't recall his name. In any case, he and McPherson certainly stimulated each other to give of their best. Lots of fun for me, too. In town to interview Sammy Davis Jr., I didn't expect to find music this good in San Diego at all, let alone on a Sunday afternoon.

A bemused review I wrote of a 1982 Jarrett solo concert: KEITH JARRETT If the “human potential” movement (est, Scientology, and all the rest) develops a need for liturgical music, Keith Jarrett should be its Bach. Seated at the piano Saturday night at Orchestra Hall, Jarrett celebrated the self (not his own self as much as the self) with a neo-religious ecstasy that was both impressive and ... I was about to say appalling, but let’s leave it at “impressive” for the moment, and I’ll fill in the blank later on. Jarrett’s concerts typically consist of two completely improvised solo-piano ruminations, which on Saturday amounted to about seventy minutes of music, separated by an intermission. He began with (and often returned to) a rumbling bass pattern that sounded as though it had been abstracted from a spiritual. Transformed into a soft, graceful stomp, this motif traveled in the direction of gospel music (a short trip, to be sure) before branching off in two different directions--first a hint of bluegrass twang and then a solemn, deeply chorded hymn that resolved with a nutlike sweetness. At this point, the ten-minute mark or thereabouts, Jarrett stopped, bothered by some coughs from the audience. Still lingering in the air, that sweet cadence may have been the goal of Jarrett’s journey, as a friend later remarked; but now the pianist had to take a long detour in order to find it again. And this side trip was, for me, the most fascinating part of the concert. Picking up the hymn-tune feel again, Jarrett swiftly expanded it into a piano version of a Bach organ chorale. Increasingly chromatic and increasingly intense, this passage began to acquire some of the choked eroticism of Cèsar Franck, with the erotic aura highlighted by Jarrett’s passionate groans and moans, not to mention his standing pelvic thrusts at the keyboard. One already knew that extreme chromaticism and the physical side of romance have been closely associated since the days of Wagner’s Tristan. But as Jarrett pushed his musical odyssey toward early Schoenberg, it seemed he was out to give the audience a kind of Tubby the Tuba tour of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century classical music. What made this both impressive and (I’ll fill in the blank now) weird, was that the sounds Jarrett produced apparently were directed at himself as much as at the audience. A pianist of great technical expertise, Jarrett is also, in some massively naïve way, his own audience--a man determined to forget all that he knows of the musical past each time he sits down at the keyboard, yet a man who, in the act of improvisation, tries to remember as much of that past as he can. Of course this leaves the rest of the audience at the mercy of Jarrett’s wayward memory, with our kicks depending on whether the things he “discovers” are, on any given night, discoveries for us, too. So if his music is to have its proper effect, it calls for an audience as naïve as he is--either that or an, audience that can will itself into naïveté, as Jarrett seems to do. In either case, a kind of romantic tampering with the self is the goal--an attempt to wipe the mind clean and then discover, with an innocent, newborn bliss, a “you” that’s better than the one you forgot.

Uther Pendragon -- you heard it here first.

Have a small bone to pick with Koester about his liner notes to one of the two recent Art Hodes sets of mostly unissued material that he acquired from Euphonic Sounds, "Art Hodes: Tribute To the Greats." The music is terrific and the the sound is, too, but Bob doesn't mention in the very general notes when the music was recorded (it is mentioned on the back of the disc, 1976 and '78) or where. Also, stating that Hodes "collected clarinetists" and "found a place for more obscure artists," Koester adds, "Would we remember clarinetists Bujie Centobie and Rod Cless ... if it werent for Art?" Don't know about Centobie, but Cless was a fairly prominent player who made more than a few recordings, e.g. with Muggsy Spanier's Ragtimers on RCA-Bluebird. Hey, Bob, that was a famous band of its kind and on a major label, and those were celebrated sides.

IMO, Kisor and Gisbert are rather faceless as soloists -- technically assured, stalwart big-band section guys who can nicely fill a solo role within a story-telling chart that's built around them (as Gisbert does, for example, on Anita Brown's "The Lighthouse" from her fine album "23 East") but who are again rather faceless IMO when they're leaders or sidemen in a "blowing" framework. Just don't hear much individual personality from either of them. They strike me as latter-day versions of, say, Nick Travis, and Travis actually did have his own thing pretty much.

Yes to Swana, though as with Wendholt I haven't heard him for a while.

Brötzmann/Adasiewicz/Drake on Wednesday at The Hideout.