blue lake

Prof. Anthony Braxton's Small Ensemble will play on Wed., Dec. 8, 'O4 at 8 p.m., and his Large Ensemble on Fri., Dec. 1O at 8 p.m., at Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT). If you can get there, admission is only $5. Information: 86O-685-3355, www.wesleyan.edu/CFA/fall.html#crowell, http://events.wesleyan.edu/?cat_or_date=music

DENNIS GONZALEZ w/ FARUQ Z. BEY and the NORTHWOODS IMPROVISERS SEPTET November 20 Performance begins at 8 PM Texas Trumpeter (and Silkheart Recording Artist) Dennis Gonzalez joins Faruq Z. Bey (Ex-Groit Galaxy) and the Northwoods Improvisers in a unique collaboration. The ensemble will be exploring the compositions of both leaders in an evening of creative music. Band members include; Mike Carey (Tenor/Flute/BS. Clarinet), Skeeter Sheelton (Tenor/Soprano Sax), Mike Gilmore (Vibes/Marimba), Mike Johnston (Bass), Nick Ashton (drums). Tickets: $10 for UICA Members $13 for the General Public © 2004 Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts 41 Sheldon Blvd SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 www.uica.org

The New York Times has discontinued the "Arts & Leisure Guide," the comprehensive weekly listing of cultural institutions and events that has been an integral part of the Sunday cultural section for decades. If you believe this invaluable guide to New York's cultural landscape must be restored there's a petition to sign asking The New York Times to "save the listings" at: http://www.savethelistings.com

In his forthcoming book “Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York, 1970-1985,” George Lewis (the trombonist, etc.) is writing about “New Music and Hybridity” with a paragraph dedicated to the critical writing of John Cage (“History of Experimental Music in the United States”) and subsequent histories and reference works which deal with “pan-European high culture music.” He writes, “Musics by people of color (in particular, the high-culture musics of Asia) were most often framed as ‘sources.’” Lewis continues, “However, the development of a notion of ‘experimental’ and ‘American’ that excludes the so-called bebop and free jazz movements, among the most influential American experimentalist musics of the latter part of the twentieth century, is highly problematic. This discursive phenomenon can be partly accounted for by the general absence of discourses on issues of race and ethnicity in criticism on American experimentalism. In later years, this aspect of denial in new music’s intellectual environment tended to separate it from both post-1960s jazz and from other contemporary work in visual art, literature, and dance. More directly, it could be said that part of white-coded experimentalism’s on-going identity formation project depended in large measure upon an Othering of its great and arguably equally influential competitor, the jazz tradition, which is also widely viewed (and views itself) as explicitly experimental. The transcribed orature of musicians endorsing the importance of exploration, discovery, and experiment is quite vast and easy to access; it spans virtually every era of jazz music, and includes nearly every improviser of canonical stature before the rise of Wynton Marsalis in the mid-1980’s. (Footnote to Arthur Taylor’s “Notes and Tones”).” Bowie made a great point above, and Lewis confirms it. So let's listen to what Max Roach has to say about the jazz tradition, or Jackie McLean, or Ornette, while they're still alive and talking. Those are the musicians who created it in the first place and they're still here. Let's not look to our children one day with blank faces when they ask, "Why weren't people paying attention to the aesthetics of free jazz when the pioneers were still alive to help illuminate it?" There is an entire section in Lewis' book called “In the Tradition?” which you may want to read when this book is published. BTW thanks to Mike F. for hipping us to the “Current Musicology” pulication that contains this excerpt.

You mean "All Music"?

Great article. Lacy was so prolific over such a wide geography and long expanse of time he touched thousands if not millions of people and his music leaves a lot for rediscovery. As an artist of process over style, as someone who took the lessons of Monks (i.e. harmonics as they relate to voicing the ensemble) and personalized them, as an artist who blurred the boundary lines between jazz and other music in the world, as an artist who was always on the offensive bringing his music to the people not trying to second guess the people's desires from a defensive, re-active position, Steve Lacy will be remembered for the integrity of his career. As someone who worked with Rex Stewart and Cecil Taylor he remains a musician to be emulated. Not to mention how well he could improvise or the personal sound of his horn.

by Francis Davis Albert Ayler's Holy Ghost http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0441/davis.php by Francis Davis Matthew Shipp's Harmony and Abyss and The Trio Plays Ware http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0441/davis2.php by Francis Davis ICP Orchestra's Aan & Uit http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0441/davis3.php

David, how did it go?

WHAT WE LIVE WITH TURKISH IMPROVISING VOCALIST SAADAT TURKOZ October 12, UICA, 41 Sheldon Blvd. Grand Rapids, MI Enjoy luscious Turkish mezze and wines before an evening of improvised music with What We Live, the collective trio from California, and special guest vocalist, Saadet Turköz, Tuesday, October 12. The reception is at 6:30 PM, and the concert is at 8 PM. The three-person musical collective features Lisle Ellis, bass; Larry Ochs, saxophones; and Donald Robinson, drums and percussion. The daughter of Kazakh refugees, Saadet Turköz grew up with the rich oral and musical traditions of the highlands of Central Asia. When she was 20 she moved to Switzerland where she experienced the new world of music: free jazz, improvisation and experimentation. Tickets are $35 for the general public and $30 for members. (Tickets for just the concert can be purchased for $10 for members and $14 for the general public.) Sponsored in part by the Turkish American Cultural Association of Michigan, Pro Helvetia fondation suisse pour la culture and Days Inn Downtown. www.uica.org

WHAT WE LIVE WITH TURKISH IMPROVISING VOCALIST SAADAT TURKOZ October 12, UICA, 41 Sheldon Blvd. Grand Rapids, MI Enjoy luscious Turkish mezze and wines before an evening of improvised music with What We Live, the collective trio from California, and special guest vocalist, Saadet Turköz, Tuesday, October 12. The reception is at 6:30 PM, and the concert is at 8 PM. The three-person musical collective features Lisle Ellis, bass; Larry Ochs, saxophones; and Donald Robinson, drums and percussion. The daughter of Kazakh refugees, Saadet Turköz grew up with the rich oral and musical traditions of the highlands of Central Asia. When she was 20 she moved to Switzerland where she experienced the new world of music: free jazz, improvisation and experimentation. Tickets are $35 for the general public and $30 for members. (Tickets for just the concert can be purchased for $10 for members and $14 for the general public.) Sponsored in part by the Turkish American Cultural Association of Michigan, Pro Helvetia fondation suisse pour la culture and Days Inn Downtown. www.uica.org

Oh wow, that drum/saxophone duo section near the end of "Have No Fear" is killin', as exciting as Trane with Roy Haynes doing "Impressions" at Newport, for that matter, which is not something you'll hear on the new Premonition recording. Damn! Yes, I need a Bomba -- this lp is getting on in days.

Watts is all over the new Alice Coltrane Cd on Impulse (along with Jack DeJohnette).

This saxophone, violin and rhythm section band is playing the Velvet Lounge and Katerina's in Chicago soon. The hour long radio program taped last winter is now available to download under the "Digital Media" area of Zach Brock's web page. Please have a listen. http://www.zachbrock.com Lazaro Vega Blue Lake Public Radio WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9 www.bluelake.org

The story continues..... Dear Lazaro, Thanks for writing. Wow! What a long time ago. Maybe too long. So I'll make you a deal. Send me a copy of my review (which I only vaguely recall, and don't have a reference copy of) and I'll try to respond intelligently. I do remember that at the time, my inclinations were very much toward Cecil, and in Chicago we had a group of players who were finding Cecil-like free music through invented game structures (a 1971 recording of the Ghost Opera Company is soon to be re-issued on CD). About Ascension, maybe I didn't understand the music well enough, or resonate at that time with the principles of extended modality. I do resonate with it now, of course -- most clearly in my own music. But even now I suspect the real contribution of Coltrane doesn't consist in the technical or theoretical aspect of his music. His real leap of genius was psychological and spiritual, and he used what was at hand, probably as a natural outgrowth of the way he practiced his horn. (I think, a few years earlier, and farther west, the same was true for Bird.) So send me a review (and a copy of Ascension if you can-mine seems too have disappeared-or I'll buy another) and I'll say something perhaps more useful. Allaudin (Bill) Mathieu

Have you heard Garrett with Roy Haynes do "Little Suede Shoes" as a duo?

Umm, chocolate and gingham -- recipe for viewership.

That the Chicago Jazz Fest does not keep it to one style is to their credit, makes people stay in their seats to hear something because of what's coming next and thereby exposes them to more music. Because in the end the music on stage is of a high caliber regardless of taste in style. They've pretty much always done that and it is to their credit that they haven't tried to second guess the audience's reaction and just programmed the music. In that way I heard Bud Freeman in the same evening as Anthony Braxton and it set the music historically better than any lecture, book or record could ever do.

JAZZ FESTIVAL REVIEW `Reflections' serves neither Coltrane Ravi's composition falls far short of father's epic By Howard Reich Tribune arts critic Published September 2, 2004 On purely musical terms, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane's performance Tuesday night at the Chicago Jazz Festival offered moments of real substance and lyric inspiration. But the world premiere of his "Reflections on `A Love Supreme'"--a response to the most celebrated album of his father, jazz icon John Coltrane--proved a monumental disappointment. So much, in fact, that the younger Coltrane would have done himself, and his audience, a greater service simply by avoiding any references to John Coltrane's epic, four-movement suite, "A Love Supreme." Recorded 40 years ago this December, John Coltrane's signature album has come to hold a prized position in American musical culture, its themes of sin and salvation, spiritual crisis and redemption reaching audiences far outside the realm of jazz. Though steeped in blues vocabulary and innovative improvisational techniques, "A Love Supreme" has spoken to pop audiences, rock artists and anyone else open to its extraordinarily candid exploration of one man's journey toward the divine. No doubt any musician attempting to address this work would face a formidable challenge, all the more when the protagonist happens to be John Coltrane's son. So one had to admire Ravi Coltrane's gumption in accepting a commission from the Jazz Institute of Chicago, which shrewdly conceived the idea of marking the forthcoming 40th anniversary of "A Love Supreme" by inviting the 39-year-old saxophonist to attempt to scale an Everest of jazz. Even if Ravi Coltrane had produced a noble failure--trying vigorously to wrestle with the message of "A Love Supreme" but ultimately falling short--no one could have held it against him. The original is simply too imposing to be matched by mere mortals. The value of the exercise would be in beholding the struggle. But Ravi Coltrane barely took on the challenge at all, fronting his sextet at the Harris Theater. Offering a comparatively slight jazz tune that was dwarfed even by individual movements of "A Love Supreme," Ravi Coltrane gave neither the original composition nor the bold commission from the Jazz Institute serious attention. Instead, he simply closed an over-long concert with a grandly titled work that amounted to little more than a sizable encore. The opening passages of "Reflections on `A Love Supreme,'" however, had seemed promising. Pianist Luis Perdomo's lush solo evocatively recalled Elvin Jones' percussion statements at the start of the original album, and Ravi Coltrane's subsequent statement--with its wide-open intervals and twisting melodic paths--suggested that an intellectually hefty discourse was about to commence. Better still, the predominantly major scales and sustained rhythmic serenity of the opening pages implied that Ravi Coltrane was picking up where his father's album ended, a potentially ingenious idea. Rather than try to cover the same ground as "A Love Supreme," in other words, the new "Reflections" would head off into new directions. Fair enough, but what followed were merely workmanlike solos, long stretches of rhythmic torpor and a nearly complete lack of thematic cohesion or purpose. This was remarkable, considering the nature of the rest of the program, in which the virtuosity of Coltrane's sextet and the rigor of his compositions were beyond question. The sheer elegiac beauty of his "For Zoey," a new work, and the plangent lyricism of his "Narcine" attested to the man's skill as jazz composer. With intelligently constructed, sleekly delivered solos from trumpeter Ralph Alessi and exquisitely layered rhythms from percussionist Luisito Quintero, drummer E. J. Strickland and bassist Drew Gress, this band elegantly conveyed multiple strands of sound. Some of the ensemble's best work rang out in John Coltrane's intricate "26-2," its irregular meter crisply telegraphed by six players functioning almost as one. Unfortunately, as far as the commission went, Ravi Coltrane may owe the Jazz Institute a refund. Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

http://assets.marsalismusic.com/files/4/et...nernotesweb.pdf

http://assets.marsalismusic.com/files/4/et...nernotesweb.pdf

The Okka Disk will be on this Wednesday at midnight. The concert recording will take a little longer. Thanks for asking!

This from Chicago Improv. I managed to hear the first set of Sonore in Toronto on Friday and it was just as good as the reviewer here described. The blend that they achieve is magnificent, and by using different horns they create many different textures. I was also struck by how they had rejected the traditional sax quartet roles, although Vandermark sometimes tried to resurrect them. It was also good to hear Gustafsson on bari again; the last few times I heard him he stuck to tenor and alto, no doubt hindered by the airlines. His contributions on the flutophone were amazing--I have no idea how he can control the pitch so well. The energy was overwhelming! Piotr -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Piotr Michalowski Dept. of Near Eastern Studies 2068 Frieze Building University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 Office phone: 734-764-0314 www-personal.umich.edu/~piotrm/HOME%20PAGE.htm

Thanks for those! How was the music?

You bet Werf. Sorry you couldn't make it. Hope folks in the other cities go to hear this band. They did well on Wednesday at the Empty Bottle, around 250, and Kalamazoo's audience was great, just under 200, but there to LISTEN and respond. Sonore played around 8 or 9 pieces through the night. Encountering this music leaves one searching for ways to articulate the experiance. At the start of their run as a band they were asked to bring their horns to a radio station in Montreal to play "a little something" on the air, which they liked, so they put together a few concert appearances in Europe, including Verona, and liked that enough to record an album (which is coming with them on the tour, it is that new). "No One Every Works Alone" takes its name from a Kenneth Patchen poem. These guys have played together in the sax section of Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet (which was suprisingly theme/solos/theme based music until they'd been together a while) but as "Sonore" they have evolved and stabilized a concept of group improvisation which this type of music wholly rests on because there are no pre-set patterns. And that concept of group improvisation is sonically varied in the extreme. Hearing a band that has stayed together long enough to grow into a real ensemble as they improvise a concert is as exciting as music gets. Isn't that what jazz is all about?

y-zat?