Larry Kart

Many memories

....with that mega-inviting Joe Dailey set!!!!!! Joe Daley

Stefan Wolpe Chamber Piece No. 1

Sounds interesting to me.

Never heard them. There's lots of Brandenburgs that I've never heard. OTOH, what Pinnock I have heard, especially his solo recordings, I didn't like much or at all (e.g. his Partitas).

Been on a Brandenburg kick lately, am open to a fair number of styles. Favorites: Benjamin Britten, English Chamber Orchestra (London) Szymon Goldberg, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (Philips) Renaldo Alessandrini, Concerto Italiano -- HIP, very zippy ((Naive) Positive so far but not sure yet: Richard Kapp, Philharmonia Virtuosi (their 1991 recording on ESS.A.Y; they did an earlier one for Sony) Trash: Phiilp Pickett, New London Consort (L' Oiseau-Lyre) -- I endorsed this on another thread some ways back; boy was I wrong Need to listen to more or again: Casals, Marlboro (Columbia) -- Concerto 1 was turgid, but IIRC there are revelations further on Karl Ristenpart, Chamber Orchestra of the Saar (Nonesuch) -- fondly remembered

Not an "obligation," but what happened there in, so to speak, human terms is something that I and others have wondered about since it happened -- that's all.

Several years ago, after a good deal of comparative listening and somewhat to my surprise, I settled on the Guarneri (RCA), now o.o.p. OTOH, the last time I looked, their early, middle and late LP sets can be found on Amazon at modest prices; CDs, I dunno. Their later Beethoven traversal on Phillips I haven't heard.

Listening just now to this one, I was struck by how vividly recorded it is, I assume by unnnamed Japanese engineers. The presence on Sam Jones is especially notable.

Bought the original album when it came out, love it. Some excellent Webster, fine rhythm section (Rowles, Kessel, Mondragon, Stoller). IIRC, this band backed Billie Holiday on a Granz date just before or just after this recording was made.

Picked up this previously unheard by me Red Rodney live Steeplechase album today and endorse Mark Stryker’s opinion: SCCD 31252 Red Snapper / Red Rodney Quintet “… at 62, he plays with the ebullient spirit more typical of men half his age…His group [Dick Oatts, Gary Dial, Jay Anderson, John Riley] is with him every step of the way… push, cajole and goad Rodney into playing to his limit…his execution seems to have become sharper, and he’s playing with more abandon now than ever …” (Mark Stryker, Cadence) In addition to “abandon,” I would add that Red’s ideas are quite fresh and coherent.

The money thing, I would say, came as much or more from (in the case of Bird for sure) record companies like Savoy not wanting to pay royalties to the publishers of the standard songs that Bird's lines were based on.

"The real genesis of this thing was/is to get a few extra pennies, and if they were lucky (and the publishers always were) dollars. Who gets money from Donna Lee? Not the writers of Indiana." You can't be serious. The "real genesis" of all those bop and Tristano-school lines etc. was to make "a few extra pennies"? No, it was to make new pieces of music to play on/jump off from that one found both musically and emotionally more attractive/more compatible with one's own already burgeoning musical style and sensibility.

I'm no etymologist, but I would quess that "contrafact" is simply "contra" (against, opposite, other) plus "fact" (do). That it has no verb to go with it is neither here nor there. What's the verb that goes with "sidewalk"? Now if snotty young "educated"jazz guys were throwing around the term contrafact and expecting extra credit for doing so, I'd whack their pee-pees too. But until then... BTW, bassist Steve Wallace is a guy I have a lot of respect for. I'll take a look at his thoughts on "contrafact."

A "reharm" and a contrafact are not and/or need not be the same thing. Again quoting Andy Laverne (who is not necessarily the font of all wisdom but did produce an excellent album of contrafacts: "I realized that for many years musicians had been enhancing the harmonies of standards by way of substitute chords and reharmonization. The flip side of this process is what fueled many bebop players: taking standards and creating new melodies over the extant harmonic structure, a technique known as contrafaction." In particular, many "reharms" leave the original melody of the reharmonized tune relatively or wholly intact. Most contrafacts do alter the harmonies of the original tune as well as its melody, but one can imagine a contrafact in which the melody is new while the original harmonies remain intact.

Your musicologist is wrong; contrafacts involve changes to the musical material of a song (harmonies, melodies), not to lyrics. I first became aware of the term while reading Andy Laverne's liner notes to his excellent 1993 album of standards and contrafacts based on those standards, "Double Standards" (Triloka). Laverne: "I realized that for many years musicians had been enhancing the harmonies of standards by way of substitute chords and reharmonization. The flip side of this process is what fueled many bebop players: taking standards and creating new melodies over the extant harmonic structure, a technique known as contrafaction." I don't find the term pretentious but useful in its specificity, especially because there is no other one word I'm aware of that does the same job. P.S. Sorry -- Your musicologist was right about what contrafactum was in Medieval music (as Lipi has explained) but not about what a contrafact now means/refers to in jazz. And Jim -- yes, of course people don't need to know the term to do it, but until and unless here's another word for doing that thing, what's the problem? Seems to me like the anti-pretentiousness police are out of control here.

"A contrafact is a musical composition built using the chord progression of a pre-existing song, but with a new melody." E.g. "Donna Lee"/"Indiana," "Casbah"/"Out of Nowhere," thousands of lines based on "I Got Rhythm," etc. Tristano and his associates generated many contrafacts.

Trying to find one that works across the board. The much touted '54 EMI Karajan, with a mewling Schwarzkopf, I can't stand, nor can I go for the much-touted EMI Bohm from the '60s, even though Schwarzkopf there is less mannered; Bohm's conducting is characterless, as are the men, and without their involvement there's no opera. In terms of conducting, the orchestra, and much of the cast, Jochum on DGG is superb, but Irmgard Siefried by that time sadly couldn't sing Fiordilgi, and a "Cosi" without Fiordiligi... Leontyne Price, with Leinsdorf, certainly can sing Fiordiligi, and Troyanas is a fine Dorabella, but Sherill Milnes (blustery) and Ezio Flagello (rather faceless) are not what's needed, and while Leinsdorf is better than one might think, after you've heard Jochum... Come to think of it, I have a DVD of a modern-dress production with Barenboim that much to my surprise was quite good.

Thanks for the reports, Dan and T.D.

From Maxine Gordon.com: "In 1978, Maxine and Woody Shaw became the parents of Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III. Eventually, Maxine and Woody Shaw (Woody III's father) separated..."

Hope not to have my throat jumped down for asking this, but does Gordon have much to say in the book about her relationship with Woody Shaw and how her relationship with Dexter evolved while ( I think it was "while") Shaw was the trumpeter in the group that was put together for Dexter by Cuscuna? Could be I have some facts wrong here, but if not, there would seem to be a story to be told, especially in light of Shaw's eventual demise and the fact that Gordon is the mother of Shaw's son.

Me, too. Not what it should have been by a long mile IIRC, though I recall that Miles was pretty good as Jesse Florian.

happy birthday!

I was going to write the notes for that reissue (with outtakes added) of "One of a Kind" and had begun to do research on Joseph's life (interviewing younger Staten Island colleagues of Joseph and a few survivors from the old days who now are gone -- e.g. Med Flory, Hal McKusick, or are still with us, Gene Di Novi -- but I had to back out because of sudden family turmoil, thinking that I would get back in if those things subsided (as they did, thanks be). But in the meantime Sunenblick changed/expanded his plans to a multi-disc set that would include "One of a Kind" plus sessions by figures like trombonist Sonny Truitt and others, and the link between us frayed and faded for that and other reasons -- interacting with Sunenblick could be challenging to say the least.| As a great admirer of Joseph's music, I still feel guilty about the whole damn thing.

This is the only Bach from her I know. I like it a lot. On the measured side at times (but dig her Allemande below), with a lovely sense of repose when that suits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-yd18F1knk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYIR3yserNA More samples are on YouTube.