Larry Kart

To "describe the music" in the "sounds like" sense you seem to mean would be redundant -- just listen to any of it and you'll know right off. Anyhow, though, it is not "over-the-top-in-your face sounding," except at a few points (and not really that much so there except by contrast); it is predominantly sparse (except for the spatial aspect, which is present but not as much as one would wish, you'd probably never know that 160 musicians were involved); it is not IMO " ponderous/boring" but essentially delicate; it is not a music of peaks and valleys; and while some might find it static sounding, I found it full of interesting detail if you can find the right place for you yourself to stand as a listener in relation to it (I speculated about that in a previous post).

Listenable, yes, but I often find my attention wandering. And I'm not comparing him unfairly, I think -- I'd rather hear, say, Red Garland. On the other hand, a good many gifted pianists have said that from a pianistic point of view, there are depths to Jamal that I'm just not getting. So I'm still prepared for an eventual moment of revelation.

Odd, but in good ways - at least to my ears. I agree.

I found that to be very interesting (and astute). Interesting because I've been studying out of a book called "Forward Motion", by pianist Hal Galper in which this point forms the main thesis of the entire book: that strong lines are created when chord tones (either given or superimposed) are syncronized with the strong beats of a measure (1 and 3), while color tones are lined up with the weak or "off" beats. Bach's music is perfectly clear in this regard, as is Raney's. I wish we had more time in Chicago to talk about stuff like this, but so it goes. Back on topic. I'm glad to hear you say that because there's so much I don't know about music technically, but I think I hear pretty well a lot of the things I don't have the names for.

featuring Bob Brookmeyer is a nice one. And it sounds a good deal better here than it did on LP. Among later Raney albums, this one is very good: http://www.amazon.com/Master-Jimmy-Raney-Q...pd_bxgy_m_img_c There's also a LP only so far MPS trio album from the '70s with Richard Davis and IIRC Alan Dawson that's special. But there's a lot to love. The Jamey Aebersold label Raney plays duos with himself record is fantastic, and both father and son Doug play beautifully on the several albums they did together. If you can put up with the sound, the two CD set of Raney live at Bradley's in the '70s has some great playing from him. Just to be clear, I see that there are two Raney discs from Aebersold. This is the one I mean: http://books-videos-music.musiciansfriend....k-CD?sku=906694

David -- I like the clips up on your MySpace site. Different band, I know, but fine music.

Be (or continue to be, if I have been so far) a good father to my son. I think a good part of my "legacy" (and my late wife's) will be through him and what he goes on to do. Otherwise, I have at least one writing project in mind, and I'd better get started on it soon.

Will Bradley Jr. IIRC is on at least one album by that Wallington band, though not "Jazz for the Carriage Trade."

Coleman Hawkins' "The Hawk Relaxes" (Moodsville) with Andrew Cyrille. IIRC Cyrille, then 21, restricts himself to very simple, almost mindlessly uptight brushwork -- what used to be called "what to do?" patterns -- as though this were a hotel dance gig.

Then there's the album that I dreamt about some 50 years ago and listened to in the dream. It had a front line of Jack Teagarden (the leader) and Paul Desmond.

Dick Johnson Quartet Dick Johnson (as) Dave McKenna (p) Wilbur Ware (b) Philly Joe Jones (d) NYC, October 30, 1957 Riverside RLP 12-253 Odd several ways at once.

I'm not aware of Will Bradley, Jr. appearing on any other dates of note than these, though he may have been a member of a road band or two of that era, like a lot of other guys whose sympathies were basically hard-boppish. His father, trombonist Will Bradley, co-led a popular big band ("Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar," "Celery Stalks At Midnight," et al.) of the early '40s with drummer Ray McKinley.

Pullman specifically, and I think wisely, does not try to do that. Rather, he gathers and carefully sifts through on a purely factual basis (I know "purely" is a problem, but it will have to do until you read the book) every bit of information about what Powell did when, and who did what to and with Powell when, that can be gathered (for example, the various diagnoses/comments of the psychiatric personnel who dealt with Powell are present in book verbatim; nothing is suppressed), plus tons of relevant social and jazz scene of the times context. This approach was crucial and wise, I think, because there is so much gross factual misinformation out there -- some of it malicious, some of it not openly malicious but drenched in romantic fantasies -- and also because one just can't "know" what was going on inside the head of a man like Powell or Monk; therefore, in a case where so much ground needs to be cleared, a mingling of carefully sifted fact and authorial speculation might be pernicious . The level of factual detail is just mind-boggling, almost all of it relevant and fascinating. Finally, those of us who do want or need to speculate can do so now with much more clarity than before, just as one could speculate far more clearly about Bix after reading Sudhalter and Evans' biography of him.

More like two.

Thanks Larry. Now my curosity is really peaked! Can you give us a clue as to what is included? Does it read like a biography? More like an academic analysis of the music? What's Pullman's approach? Post of mine from May 2007 on this thread: I've been playing something of an informal advisory-editorial role here. The book is completed and is IMO excellent -- everything one could wish for when it comes to nailing down facts, sorting out myth from reality, establishing social context, etc., etc. Pullman's labors here are almost awe-inspiring in their thoroughness, and no less important, their scrupulousness. In particular (and I think this was a very wise choice), Pullman doesn't presume to be able to read Powell's mind. Also the book is not, nor is it intended to be, a book in which Powell's music is analyzed. Pullman writes very well. The density of information is at a very high level when such information exists and can be dug up (and information of that density is what most people like us would want, I think), but the book certainly flows and has moments of high drama.

Yes. Most recent news is good news. It will take time for the book to emerge, but all barriers other than the practical ones that stand in the way of production of all books, and academic press books in particular, have been removed. The book itself is better than most of us would have dared hope.

That's what I tried to do in my initial post on this thread, which speculated about what that "something else" might be and how the length of Opus 82 might be related to Webern's extreme concision.

Well... he seems to have taken the idea from the Stockhausen of Gruppen which is for three orchestras and conductors, and from other post-Darmstadt multi-conductor works. What you get in Gruppen and in Webern is intensity and economy. These are both very tightly composed works - masterpieces. Anyone who doesn't know Gruppen but is disappointed or puzzled by the Braxton should still make a point of checking out the Stockhausen piece - same for Webern. As for the thirty minute cut don't even get me started... David -- Just to be clear, are you saying that Opus 82 is essentially derivative of the Webern of the Symphony and the Stockhausen of Gruppen and aso inferior to those works because what "you get in Gruppen and in Webern is intensity and economy" and what you get in Opus 82 is ... (you fill the blank)? I know the Webern Symphony very well; my recording of Gruppen is not accessible to me now.

Would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when things like "In Between The Heartaches" were recorded. Is there much information anywhere on how Bacharach-Warwick worked in the studio?

I heard her in person in the late 70s or early '80s twice -- once she was horrendous, once she was great. My impression was that the bad time she was really stoned. [Added in edit: IIRC she was literally staggering around the stage at times.] FWIW, the gist of this thread was intended to be a look at the music as found on record, since there is a "conceptual" thrust to so much of it, a specificity of "presentation" to a degree that live performance of this material in this form would be musically redundant at best, unnecessary and/or anti-climatic at worst. This is a distinctly different aesthetic that that of the "recording as document" school, and one may or may not find it valid to whatever degree, but it is a reality nevertheless. Now, having said that, I'll go ahead and say this again - "In Between The Heartaches" is a perfect piece of jaw-droppingly original music in every regard, and that originality grows, not decreases, in my estimation with each listen. Hearing it in person may be a painful experience or an ecstatic one, depending on any number of variables, but my point is that that is not a particularly relevant point when one is evaluating the record. For stuff like this, 99% of the time, the record is the point of it all. Agree with your points above about the conceptual power of those recordings as recordings. I was responding to Chris's post and recalling my estimate at the time of what might have been making a difference in those two in-person Warwicke performances I heard.

Very few of those Riverside medium-sized to big band dates came off IMO. Engineering, Keepnews, some routine-oriented players, etc.

I heard her in person in the late 70s or early '80s twice -- once she was horrendous, once she was great. My impression was that the bad time she was really stoned. [Added in edit: IIRC she was literally staggering around the stage at times.]

Agree about that Cowell album and the trombone player.

Moved my post to the "Let's talk about the music" thread.

Got my set today, don't recall and can't check right now how much of it I have on LPs (most of it but not all), but I decided to jump in at what may be the deep end and listened to Opus 82. Quite an amazing feat all around (kudos to members of the four orchestras and their conductors), though I wonder what it might be like if it had been posssible to semi-totally capture in the recording process the spatial element. About the piece itself, if that's the way to put it, I'm reminded of what it was like (being about the same age as Braxton -- AB born 1945, me born 1942 -- and probably having encountered Second Viennese School music at about the same time -- age 16 or so for me) to hear that music for the first time: the making-strange effect, so to speak, being turned into the made normal and utterly sensible effect and then somehow back into both making strange AND made normal and sensible. That is, that SVS music, and perhaps even more the process of coming in touch with it at that time, somehow retains over the years its "for the first time" sensuous tangible mystery. If I'm right about this, Opus 82 might be thought of as a "fetishizing" of that process, though by "fetishizing" (normally a negative term) I don't mean anything negative at all. What I have in mind is that Opus 82 (Braxton being a remarkable musician with an equally remarkable ability to hear) not only captures and makes his own every aspect of SVS music that attracts or attracted him, but he also conveys in this music (i.e. the music of Opus 82) the power of those initial encounters I mentioned above, the meaning of the union of making strange and finding that strange to be lucid and normal. Also, but I can't explain why yet, I think this has something to do with the relatively extreme length of the piece -- evocative at times of Webern's Symphony, it's maybe ten or twelve times as long. Could it be that Opus 82 is in that respect an attempt to respond to a musical world of almost self-consuming concision by saying that it could instead expand, even (in all but the most practical recording-industry-determined terms) need never end. Finally, how to listen to it? There are two obvious ways, I think, and I spontaneously found myself trying both: (1) assume total continuity, think of every sound and gesture as a prelude to the next; (2) listen for what seem to you to be the beginning and the end of shapes or gestures and as much as you can absorb of what's in between (often that means that the "units" are fairly small) and ask in effect "What is/was that all I'm hearing?" I prefer option (2), because the answers are so rich in detail and (can't think of a better word) refreshing, and eventually there is abundant continuity too.