Larry Kart

One nice Collette ballad/mood piece -- "Crystal" -- plus his charts on "Sophisticated Lady" and Hancock's "Theme From 'Harlem Nights," the first and the last of these featuring Collette on tenor. Also, there's his fine setting of "Satin Doll," which reminds those (like me) who can't take that tune that it depends on what you do with it. Again, while Collette is his own man, as a composer-arranger his grasp of the Ellington and Strayhorn universes is special. About the Lab Band Mafia thing, perhaps I should have been more explicit above, but this is largely an African-American band with a few exceptions -- alto man Ray Reed, tenor man Steve Carr, trumpeters Ron King and John Swan, and guitarist Al Viola -- and you can tell the difference. There's a warmth to the timbres that no neo-Kenton crew would go for, while the execution is top-drawer. Speaking of the Lab Band Mafia again, though I can't imagine any conceivable Lab Band could play this stuff, I also picked up on a whim the Fresh Sound/Jazz City 2-CD collection of Pete Rugolo's Mercury material from 1956. Some of it is a bit silly, but overall the elan of the playing and writing is quite striking -- gorgeous Don Fagerquist, and there's a feature for Frank Rosolino, "Don't Play the Melody," that may be the most delerious thing he ever played. In fact, delerium is often the word that comes to mind here, and Rugolo courts it with eyes wide open.

Picked this up on a whim at a Borders during their recent three for two jazz sale and am very pleased/intrigued. Rec. 1990 but issued in 2006, this features one hell of a distinctive sounding (warm-toned, almost Ellington-esque reed section), beautifully rehearsed, 20-piece, L.A.-based band (Bobby Bryant, Red Callender on tuba, a fine trombone section -- Thurman Green, Garnett Brown, George Bohanan -- Al Viola on guitar, et al). playing 78 minutes of mostly Collette compositions, plus Ellington material and H. Hancock's "Theme from 'Harlem Nights.'" The band itself is special, as is Collette's subtle, Strayhorn-ish writing, and his tenor playing is a bit different than what I recall from Chico Hamilton days -- kind of half-way between Lucky Thompson and Benny Golson, but he's his own man. His flute work of course is excellent, and he also takes a nice clarinet solo. Only possible drawbacks are a Betty Roche-ish vocalist, Cheryl Conley, on two tracks (she's fine, but some people don't like Roche-ish vocals), and the fact that the sound IMO calls for a substantial bass cut and treble boost. I need to go back and find some more latter-day Collette. The label for this one is UFO Bass: www.ufo--bass.com the man behind the scenes apparently being bassist Richard Simon.

Here's a report to a friend on an August 2006 Herculaneum performance. I've heard them since and feel better disposed toward McDonnell and liked everyone else even more, Ryan especially: As for Herculaneum, I'm not a fan of one of the horn soloists, Dave McDonnell (whose one of those "How hot can I get how quickly" altoists, though he was a bit less that way than last time), but I do like Broste and what little I've heard of Newberry, who combines a formidable technique wwith what seems to me to be a thoughftul, relaxed, unflashy temperament. I need to hear more to be sure, but he may be special. The main interest, though, is Dylan Ryan, in his mid 20s I'd say, who is a fair bit different than any other drummer I know, with the possible exception of New York-based Dan Weiss. Ryan has two tom-toms, one of them rather small and high-pitched, and typically he spends a lot of time on it, on its rim (especially), and on cymbal crowns, creating a continuous, multi-pitched, timbale-like chatter. This sounds like it might be annoying and intrusive, but in fact Ryan is very much a listener and/or, in this more or less comping role, the virtual leader of the band -- a la Horace Silver from the keyboard. My only doubt -- and this may be lack of understanding of what he's up to, having only heard him twice -- is that Ryan can seem a bit sloppy, not in terms of time but of cleanness/crispness of stroke (though in his style, how much cleanness/crispness would be right?) I see from the group's new CD "Orange Blossom" (482 Music), which I bought last night but haven't listened to yet, that all the band's pieces are by Ryan, so I guess he is the leader. P.S. Yes, Ryan is the de facto leader. I like "Orange Blossom," but the onstand impact of Ryan's drumming is not really captured there.

Moving, very candid reminiscence from Brecker's friend since their Indiana U. days, trumpeter Randy Sandke: http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/

Caught Como live in the late '70s or early '60s at the Mill Run Theater in Niles, Il. He had very good time.

Hmm -- maybe I really AM dumb.

Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't that there is anything to "get" (as in a particular double meaning; if you're thinking along the lines of "Jazz-o-PEE-ters," you need to take a cold shower) about the "Jazz-OP-aters" pronunciation (which I'd guess is a compression of "Jazz Operators") -- just that the way I used to say it, "Jazz-o-PAY-ters," is impossible and "Jazz-OP-aters" is nice and probably what was intended. In fact, I'd like a card stating that I'm a cerified Jazzopater.

Listening with delight to the first disc of the Mosaic Ellington Small Group Sessions, a light suddenly went on in my head. I'd always pronounced the name of the marvelous group that recorded "Clouds in My Heart," "Caravan," "Frolic Sam," and "Stompy Jones" (Barney Bigard and His Jazzopaters) like this: Barney Bigard and His Jazz-o-PAY-aters, which always seemed a silly and awkward name to me, but what the hell -- the names given to recording units back then often were etc. This time, though, it hit me: Barney Bigard and His Jazz-OP-aters, which isn't silly or awkward at all IMO, but sly, subtle, and kind of cool.

Had a nice/weird Willie Nelson experience once. In the early '80s perhaps wrote what I thought was fairly insightful review of a Nelson show at some big Chicago-area outdoor theater -- Poplar Creek, I think. A month or so later I get a call from some semi-blown away woman who says that she's Mrs. Willie Nelson and would I hold the phone because Willie wants to say something to me. I'm thinking "sure" and almost hang up when a fair amount of time passes, but damned if Willie himself (pretty completely blown away) doesn't get on the line to say that some phrase in the review (which he quoted) really tickled him, and he wanted to tell me that.

It's not J.R., it's JR (for his nickname "Junior" -- from "Frank Anthony Monterose Jr." -- not for initial letters).

Another "Why Patterns" list response to the two SQ II recordings, from Glenn Freeman: I prefer the MODE version just a bit (they are both very good). For me the MODE version sounds better over the longer period of time (better "pacing", if that is the correct term). Also, the sound on the MODE DVD is quite amazing (better than CDs) and no need to change 4 CDs. The performances are not that much different, when viewed at the motive (small) level (I did not listen with a score ... perhaps John Story will do this). At the beginning of the work I found the Flux Quartet to be more "Stravinskian" in rhythm, with a generic Dorothy Delay-type of "Julliard" expressivo string sound ... which I do not like for Feldman! But then, surprisingly, I preferred the Flux's sensitivity (and pacing) over time as they delved further into the work. If you prefer a more "mature/cool/objective" sound at the small level, then the Ives Ensemble might be the better choice.

Don't have it (or the Ives Ensemble recording) myself, but here's John Story's review of it from the Feldman "Why Patterns" list that compares it to the Ives Ensemble recording: FELDMAN String Quartet No. 2 . Flux Quartet . MODE 112 (5 CDs or 1 DVD 6:06:07) This is one of the monuments of modern music, both in ambition and in sheer length. Written for the Kronos Quartet in 1983, it stretches every possible parameter of the string quartet. Both of Feldman's string quartets are enormous. The first lasted a hundred minutes at the premiere (the recording drops about thirty minutes off that, possibly simply by playing at Feldman's stated tempo - I have never compared the score to the recording). Presumably feeling he needed to top himself in what is the most exalted medium of Western music, Feldman's second string quartet is his largest work. Taken at the slower of the tempo range given in the score it runs just under five hours. Taking it at the faster option reduces the overall playing time about fifteen minutes. The most obvious difference in this, the work's second recording, with the first by the Ives Ensemble on Hat(now)Art is that the Flux Quartet take about an hour and ten minutes more over the music, dropping the tempo down to about quarter note=50 from Feldman's specified 63-66. As it turns out this is perhaps the least significant aspect of the performance, one that is quite different from that given by the Ives Ensemble. As Christian Wolff points out in his notes to the present recording, the perception of passing time is virtually identical between the two. There is also not much of a price differential since the Ives set of four CDs retails for the same forty dollars as the Flux Quartet's five (or single DVD which allows the listener to hear the performance uninterrupted as in a concert situation). For those unfamiliar with Feldman's late style and his music for strings in particular, the work is perhaps paradoxically derived from the concentrated early music of Anton Webern. Modules are presented, varied, discarded to be taken up again, perhaps an hour later, in a continuing mosaic of sound that recalls the experience of examining Feldman's beloved oriental rugs at close range. His ability to glue this together to make a genuinely continuous whole is one of the many remarkable things about the late music and there is no music I know of that explores more thoroughly the process of memory. String Quartet No. 2 and the almost equally enormous For Philip Guston that followed in 1984 form the climax of what might be called the late music with the very late music effectively beginning with For Bunita Marcus in 1985. With that work Feldman pared his materials down to the absolute minimum, something that is presaged in the second string quartet's extended second half which is almost entirely chordal, without dynamic changes beyond occasional decrescendos. For all that Feldman notated all his late works quite precisely, his spoken and published statements offer obvious contradictions to the notation, particularly in works such as the pieces for instruments that involve potentially flexible tuning. To a pianist, G double flat is identical in pitch to F natural. To a string player (or brass player or a singer) there is a tradition of shading the note so that the two notes are slightly different. James Fulkerson has gone into print a number of times with his belief that in Feldman the two notes should be the same, if for no other reason then that Feldman composed at the piano which of course does not offer any tuning options whatsoever, but Feldman suggested otherwise in his published writings. He also only used the elaborate system of double sharps and flats in instruments that were capable of playing them, which suggests he wanted them heard as well as seen. Similarly Aki Takahashi has commented that Feldman's famously finicky rhythms were intended to indicate a kind of continuous rubato, so that patterns were never repeated exactly, rather than intended to be followed precisely, something she in fact does not do in her own performances which are as exact as anyone's. Finally there is the question of string vibrato. In his writings Feldman seemed to express a preference for string playing without vibrato but in the performances he himself conducted, most notably the gorgeous Viola in My Life I-III, Karen Philips plays with the same vibrato that she would use in any other music. So there you have it. The Ives Ensemble plays consistently without vibrato and, if anything, emphasizes the tiny gradations of tuning. The Flux Quartet offer a much more conventional string quartet sound, including vibrato selectively applied which makes the tiny shifts away from even tempered tuning much more discrete. The result adds a degree of sensuous beauty to the music that is deeply seductive. How they do in live performance is anyone's guess, but in the relatively easier confines of the recording studio, the Flux Quartet maintain their level of tone production and their rhythmic control throughout which again goes a long way towards making their slower tempo not seem slow. They are aided in this by the recorded sound which is more distant than the Ives Ensemble receives from Hat(now)Art. Not only does this increase the glamour, if you will, of the quartet's basic sound, it also makes the dynamic changes, which range in the score from ppppp to ff, easier to register in playback. The flip side to this is that the Ives Ensemble makes the music sound newer, stranger, much less connected to the long tradition of Western music for string quartet. Feldman wrote about the quartet as dialectic between opposites. This utterly gorgeous performance and recording sets up its own dialectic with the Ives Ensemble's approach. In an ideal world one should own both performances, the Ives Ensemble for their modernist fervor, the Flux Quartet for making the link to the long tradition of Western music, that Feldman so emphatically felt himself to be a part of, explicit. Obviously the highest recommendation.

Just finshed listening to the Louis Goldstein recording of "Triadic Memories." Wow. I've heard that the Marilyn Nonken recording is also excellent. Goldstein's recording apparently can be obtained only through him now. Here's his email address: http://www.wfu.edu/music/People/Faculty/fa...-goldstein.html Here's a link to an excellent Feldman site: http://www.cnvill.demon.co.uk/mfhome.htm Under "texts" on this site I particularly recommend a look at No. 16 by Catherine Hirata. There's also a link on this site to a Feldman discussions list "Why Patterns."

Avoid the earlier single disc issue. It plays at the wrong speed. Chuck, just to be sure, you mean that the 1990 Cuscuna-produced Capitol-EMI CD plays at the wrong speed? And the version in the 4CD box plays at correct speed? Sorry -- I asked Chuck this question off-list, too. The answer is that the 1990 CD plays at the wrong speed and that this was corrected on the 4CD box.

I thought that was a secret.

Not me.

All the more reason to try and convince him to have them published in book form. Maybe we'll have to stage an intervention.

Hey, I want to be accessible -- at least in the sense of not adopting a tone that leaves a potentially interested party on the outside looking in.

I've got a three-LP box of the major Dvorak quartets played by the Panocha and think it's excellent -- certainly far superior to the other performances of most of these works that I had at the time on DGG (the Prague Quartet?) and then dumped. On the other hand, the Panocha performances I have (rec. 1982-5) don't seem to be the ones that are in the box you're thinking of -- those date from 1993 or so.

A Terry Martin anthology would be a blessing. Though I don't know how much there is to chose from, everything I've read of Terry's is not only brilliant but also different/unique. In particular, there's great stuff on Coleman Hawkins, Art Pepper, and Ornette Coleman -- the last written not too long after Ornette emerged. I recall asking Terry about the likelihood of collecting his work, and I think he said that he had doubts about having the time and also felt that the time he did have would better be devoted to archival responsibilties/tasks at the Jazz Institute of Chicago/University of Chicago collection. Terry is on the faculty at the U. of C.

Thanks, David. I see that it's still available through the Amazon portal -- new, used, and remaindered -- and elsewhere too I'm sure. Accessible and engaging -- that's me. P.S. Every time I glance at the book's cover -- a circa 1957 bandstand shot of Ira Sullivan, Johnny Griffin (both on tenor) and bassist Nevin Wilson at a Chicago club -- I'm pleased. To me it's one of the great jazz photographs, at least in terms of conveying the mood of an era, and that was the era I first knew.

Avoid the earlier single disc issue. It plays at the wrong speed. Chuck, just to be sure, you mean that the 1990 Cuscuna-produced Capitol-EMI CD plays at the wrong speed?

Jeez, Larry, you're old! But what I wouldn't do to have been there with you. I'm 64 but feel about a year younger.

Hello Danielle -- Frank Rosaly, one of Chicago's best drummers (I'm a Chicago-area person), grew up in Arizona and played with the Northern Arizona U. band. Here's his website: http://rosalywelcome.blogspot.com/ I caught the fever in seventh grade and early in eighth grade got to go to a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert that included Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, and Dizzy Gillespie. It felt being in the same room with Zeus or Apollo.

I would make that argument too, except that there's been a noticable lack of the "intellectual" counter-balance in far too much of that music, which is, to me, a huge part of what made jazz the special thing it was back when it was what it was. Now, I don't meant to sound like I'm entirely blaming jazz for leaving the streets. The street over the last 25 years or so have gotten significantly nastier than they used to be, When I was out and about on them, a guy like me could get by by just following some simple, common-sense, rules. You could definitely get vibed stronger than was comfortable, and ther were even then certain pockets into which you did not tread w/o "proper accompaniment" (and one or two that you didn't, even with), but if you could handle walking among pimps, hookers, pushers, junkies, cons, and hoods w/o acting like a punk and/or a fool, you could get where you needed to go, and once there, get down to whatever business was at hand. Automatic weapons, drive-bys, crazed crackheads, and children playing Capone weren't a part of the equation then (give me 100 junkies - and 500 winos - over one crackhead any day. Seriously.) So I can understand. Earlier, I used the phrase "abdication of responsivility", and that might have been too much, given the realities. But I do question, not that people moved, but what they did once they moved. We rightly criticize government and "the majority" for abandoning the streets, writing them off and leaving them for dead. But what about the musicians? Couldn't they feel the raw enegry and the (often blunted) real intelligence coming out of all that "noise" that was coming from what they left behind? Didn't they feel at least some affinity/empathy for what was making it all go down like that? I mean, shit, I did, I heard Public Enemy back in the day when I was pretty much a "jazz purist", and said, "Yeah, I can understand this". But like too many others, I had lost my direct sense of connection (which was admittedly nowhere near as direct/constant/organic as many), and therefore any real sense of responsibility to in some kind of way find a way to look for a conduit, to let some of that into my world as something other than what "other people" were doing. I can chalk some of that up to my age, my maturation in marriage/family/etc., but some of it I have to admit was due to simply not "being there" any more and just not feeling the need. Hey, things were going well, i was making music, a lot of it the kind I wanted to make, so what if there was all this other shit going on? It could get along just fine without me, right? Well, yeah, it could get along fine w/o me, but I look at how many other "me"s there were, and how many of them had a lot more immediate conection to all this than me, and I'm thinking now that to not actively engage all this energy and raw intelligence in at least some form or fashion was a mistake. A lot of us were (and still are) hung up on the technology, and the ease with which "non-musicians" were making "music". Well, ok, we all have our vanities, egos, and conceits, but it soon became apparent that this was the way things were going to go, nothing we could do about it, so we pretty much said, "fuck it", and quit even pretending to be connected, instead looking backwards to the good ol' days when the wino on the corner had a heart of gold and some convoluted yet cosmically profound wisdom to drop on you if only you'd listen to him in the right way. That was a mistake, I think, and now where are we? Street music has continued to grow and evolve, and I hear so much of (but not on the radio or tv) it trying to grow, expand, to stretch out musically. But they just don't have the tools to get to where they sound like they're trying to get to, and whose fault is that? When are "jazz musicians" going to reach out and say, "hey bro, that's a nice loop you got going there, but why don't you try variatin' it a little, maybe like this..." or "that's a bad rap you got going there, but why don't you put this underneath it to give it a little more meat, give it a little more dimensionality"? Contrary to what "we" like to think, the possibilities are damn near endless, not claustrophobically limited. More to the point - how many "jazz musicians" of today would have the cred to make suggestions like that that would actually work? And how many of them would deem the effort "worthy" of their "talents" in the first place? "We" like to bitch about shallowness and superficiality, but at what point does that cross the line into simple curmodgeonry, of not being able to enjoy a simple pleasure on its own terms w/o feeling "contaminated" by it or some wack shit like that? We whine about the Barbarians taking over, but how much resistance are the getting these days, how many alternatives are being proposed out there where the ideas are formed long before the records get made? Have the connections been so strongly broken that there's no re-connecting, ever? Probably so, and we're all fucked long-term (other than those whose connection to music doesn't extend beyond enjoying 30+ year old reissues in the comfort of their living rooms) if they have been, but I'm not making a definitive answer just yet. In the meantime, like I said above, we need more people like Mike Ladd (in no ways "jazz", but a seriously intelligent mofo w/a serious sense of musicality). And we need to stop "training" people to play like Bird & Trane. Instead, we need to be encouraging players to pay attention to what's going on and to actively engage it on equal terms. The two things that "jazz" is largely lacking right now is a sense of immediacy, and a sense of relevancy to anything other than itself. And the two things that street music is largely lacking right now is musical depth and a perspective of life beyond itself. You'd think that there'd be some sort of hookup, nature abhoring a vacuum and all, but there are not necesarily natural times in which we live... Admittedly my knowledge of the street music of today and recent times is limited and fragmentary, but much of what little I've heard leaves me with the impression (early Geto Boys would be one exception) that in terms of musical tools/habits (rhythmic tools/habits especially) and also, though perhaps not to the same degree or in the same way, sensibility, the divergence between jazz (no matter how broad we stretch that net) and the street music of today and recent times could hardly be more fundamental. However aesthetically valid "what's going on" might be, I get the impression that in terms of musical tools/habits and sensibility, a newly arrived Martian might think that the street music of today and recent times arose as in specific opposition to anything we might want to think of as jazz -- again in terms of musical tools/habits and sensibility. Of course, that's not (or hardly at all) literally the case; and though the incorporation/use of jazz "beats" does speak of a certain curiosity, it could just as well have to do with a vagrant impulse to alter/expunge via appropriation. Again, I'm not saying the street music of today and recent times isn't or doesn't deserve to be "what going on" aesthetically; but based on what I've heard, I see room for little or any musical congress beyond the level of decoration or mere literal (let's lay thing one on top of the other and see what we get) co-existence. Is the belief that it is or ought to be otherwise in part based on the racial makeup of today's street and the racial makeup of the streets that gave rise to jazz and furthered its development? One would think or hope that there would have to be/should be some overlap along those lines, but in terms of musical tools/habits and sensibility, I just don't hear it (which may be my problem/my ignorance). But if it doesn't have to do with the belief/hope that today's street links up with the streets of the past, and it is instead primarily a musical tools/habits and sensibility thing, then to me it's as though the polka were somehow in our world as sophisticated and edgy/street as can be. Would that then mean that jazz and the polka (arguably having so little in common in musical terms) still needed to work something out?