Larry Kart

Well, maybe not you, but that's what happened to me. Seriously? MG No -- but look at what "JazzDrummer" says in the post just above: "It's nice to see that many jazz musicians would like to come to Andalucia and jam with me! Come on! I will pick you at Gibraltar airport (low coast on British Airways and other european companies). I'm trying to organize a network for jazz musicians around the world: bed, food, drinks and music for some days..." Hmmm.

Two Morton Feldman passages about Boulez: "It is Boulez, more than any other composer today, who has given system a new prestige -- Boulez who once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only in how it is made. No painter would talk that way.... The preoccupation with making something, with systems and construction, seems to be a characteristic of music today. It has become, in many cases, the actual subject of musical composition." (1965) "Yes everybody keeps saying that ["One must learn the rules if it's only to" -- or "in order to" -- "break them"]. I've never understood it. I never understood what I was supposed to learn and what I was supposed to break. What rules? Boulez wrote a letter to John Cage in 1951. There is a line in that letter I will never forget. 'I must know everything in order to step off the carpet.' And for what purpose did he want to step off the carpet? Only to realize the perennial Frenchman's dream ... to crown himself Emperor. Was it love of knowledge, love of music, that obsessed our distinguished young provincial in 1951? It was love of analysis -- an analysis he will pursue and use as an instrument of power. "....You were asking about the rules. There's a parable of Kafka's about a man living in a country where he doesn't know the rules. Nobody will tell him what they are. He knows neither right nor wrong, but he observes that the rulers do not share his anxiety. From this he deduces that the rules are for those who rule. What they do is rule. That's why all my knowledge doesn't make me understand what Mozart did that I should also do in order to reach a state of artistic grace." (1967)

This is some of most ridiculous (in the common sense of the term) playing imaginable: http://www.danielsmithbassoon.com/ Click on the links to this guy's two "jazz" albums.

BTW, any of you Michiganders know/know of violinist/violist Christina Fong? She seems to be based in Grand Rapids.

I also highly recommend this somewhat related disc from the same source: http://www.amazon.com/Maria-Alvear-Fuerzas...pd_bxgy_m_img_b

It's my impression that much sorting out needs to be done with A.H., but this one is a gem (works and performances): http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Hovhaness-Violi...a/dp/B00005RL83

"Porgy" was written by Fields & McHugh for the revue "Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1928," which of course featured African-American performers -- notably Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Elizabeth Welch, and Mantan Moreland. In addition to "Porgy," addressed by a woman to the by then familiar main character in the popular Dubose Hayward novel (pub. 1924), the score includes "Diga Diga Doo," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", and "I Must Have That Man," all by Fields & McHugh.

Well, maybe not you, but that's what happened to me.

From an email I wrote to a friend today: My problem, leaving Ross aside for the moment, is that the score took itself so seriously in such a self-conscious manner. Among other things, all that "The coalescence of a wide range of notes into a monomaniacal unison may tell us most of what we need to know about the crushed soul of the future tycoon Daniel Plainview" crap from Ross ignores what to me is the most obvious and dramatically inappropriate fact about the relationship between Greenwood's music and what we're seeing -- the music wears "a modern, or formerly modern, European art music" badge (if not by outright intent, that's where those sounds come from directly or indirectly: Bartok filtered through '50s-60s Polish angst a la Pendercki) and thus it says among other things, though to me it says this quite strongly: "These sounds we're hearing come from another world than the one we're seeing and in which Plainview and the rest are acting [A higher one? A future one that's looking back and judging Plainvew's behavior and his early 20th Century mileu? Etc.], and don't you forget it." I'm not saying that such a dialogue between a soundtrack and what we're seeing couldn't be meaningful, even marvelous, if it were done just right; I'm saying that here it sounds to me like neither Anderson nor Greenwood understood what the likely effect of that "classy" modern music ansgt would be on the film -- or they thought that that it would have one sort of effect whereas, for me at least, it very much has another. As for Ross, this piece seems to me to be another example of him whoring after, in at least three directions at once, the holy grail of relevance. Modern music still has a "real" role to play, damn it, he says, stamping his foot -- and even better, it comes here from Mr. Radiohead, so it's relevant in the sense that you and your kids are really on kind of the same page here, if only you knew it and/or were awake enough to smell the coffee -- as Ross is here to tell us he is.

I particularly like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Bones-Quill-Gene/dp/B0002MOMUU which is available again. Quill is the one who, when someone said to him (I'm paraphrasing here), "You're just a Bird imitator," replied (paraphrasing again): "You think that's easy to do?" Actually, though Quill was drenched in Bird, he had an easily identifiable, personal voice -- its hallmarks being a penetrating, slightly (but attractively) acidic or acrid tone and exceptional rhythmic fluidity. Quill's fate was a sad one -- he was mugged in 1977 in Atlantic City, ending up in blind one eye and partially paralyzed; he died in 1988. He's in great form on "The Ballad of Tappan Zee" from Johnny Richards' "Wide Range." The album above pairs him with the trombone section from the Richards band -- Jimmy Cleveland, Jim Dahl, and Frank Rehak -- and that may be one reason it's so together.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musi...crmu_music_ross BTW, when I say "awful" I mean that it was IMO awful in its own right but mostly awful as a score for that film -- grossly obtrusive, imposing a sense of soupily sentimental, "moody" narrative that was at war with what director P.T. Anderson seemed to me to be up to -- but then I didn't like the film much either, so what do I know? But Ross watchers will want to take a look at this paen.

Watch out -- they're just luring you to Andalucia to beat, rob, and rape you.

Far be it from me to defend the Flowbee, but it didn't really suck your hair off. The idea was that it vacuumed it upright to the length you'd selected (by picking one of the plastic tubes), and then ... well here's the deal: http://www.flowbee.com/ Just the thought of it still frightens me. Also, as one of the three moderators here (with Jim sitting above us when needed), I want to say: We are watching you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kean_(musical)

I'm the zec.

That Willie Jones's son is a good drummer too -- Willie Jones III is, I think, what he goes by. Willie Jones III is a very cool-looking name; the "III" obliquely echoes the "illi" of "Willie."

This doesn't make sense to you? (Remember, we're talking about Vienna, not too long before the outbreak of World War I).

Most minimalist music I've heard (but probably not all MM) has a steady, even motoric pulse -- one can hear a beat or beats, and this beat or these beats are key structural principles. "Cells" made of a few shifting shapes many later Feldman works have, but I can't think of a single Feldman piece that has a beat to it in the sense that many or even most minimalist pieces do. If I'm wrong about there being no Feldman piece that has a beat it in the sense I mean, I'm pretty someone will tell me about it.

Never even heard of that one. I'm interested.

I'm not aware of any stylistic label that fits. While Feldman certainly was inspired by Cage at one brief point (or rather, Feldman found that what he already wanted to do and had begun to do was legimatized by Cage's example and approval), I don't see much resemblance between his music and any of Cage's except Cage's String Quartet, nor do I see much resemblance between Feldman and Earle Brown or Christian Wolff. As Feldman himself more or less said, the composer to whom he may be most closely related is Schubert. There's a Feldman quote that I'm no doubt messing up, but it may go like this: "In this piece I'm waving goodbye to Schubert." Louis Goldstein's great recording of "Triadic Memories" sure gives me a late-Schubert feeling at times.

Seems like Mr. Keillor is a bit out of touch with the *new* music of today...there's a lot of contemporary composers influenced by the minimalism of Glass, Reich, Feldman and others. I'd hardly think of Schoenberg as mainstream...influential, certainly. Contemporaries of Cage like Harry Partch and fellow Schoenberg student Lou Harrison had more than a bit of an impact on the new music of today. Feldman is no minimalist, either in terms of his own practice or in terms of IMO meaningful influence on the people who commonly are given that label.

Yes, that was sad to hear. It made the newspaper obits here. The house trumpeter for the Muppet Show - and trumpet linch-pin of many a UK TV orchestra (ATV etc). And Zoot the Muppet saxophonist was Danny Moss?

Some of the nicest Gryce is on Dutch accordionist Mat Mathews' Dawn album "The Modern Art of Jazz," with Art Farmer, Dick Katz, Oscar Pettiford, and Kenny Clarke. Mmmm -- Pettiford and Clarke. And Mathews was a nice player. Just a beautifully relaxed date, though it doesn't take up the whole album. It's available here: http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/catalogue...label_id=10#874

I bought a nice new amp a ways back, a Creek 5350: http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/327/ Imagine my surprise when I realized that it has no tone controls. In practice, this had proved to be no problem; it kicks the best out of whatever you put into it to such an extent that very seldom do I think about the lost ability to tweak, but not being an equipment nut, I wonder whether the lack of tone controls is common on amps above a certain price.

I believe that Georgia could really play the organ.