Nate Dorward

Hm, never really got hooked on tyhis one like Santuerio or the disc on Music & Arts with Workman & Hemingway, but I shold give it another spin. She's a marvellous pianist, even though I'm not sold on the recent ECM trios.

Wow. That's journalistic masochism on a par with an all-McDonalds diet for a month.

I don't know the earlier Braxton standards performances, but I've just been listening a lot to side b of Trio/Duo on Sackville (from 1974)--& jeez, those are some of AB's best standards performances. The virtually unrecognizable "Embraceable You" in particular. Re: volume of discs getting released: yeah there's a hell of a lot of stuff. Perhaps the scariest thing is that in terms of quality there's a surprising amount of really good stuff out there--it's not just a mountain of dreck with a few rare gems. But I find the amount of reissued material in many ways more daunting..... & we can't blame current musicians' fecundity for that! Even just to buy every new Mosaic release that appears would vastly exceed my small budget at the moment, & that's just the start...

montg: hm, I don't know, I even feel uncomfortable about the word "rules" in application to just about any kind of jazz. I spent a period of my life trying to play (conventionally beboppish) piano & somehow it didn't feel like I was trying to learn "rules" exactly. You were trying to learn (& come up with for yourself) ways of thinking & reacting & behaving--it seems to me procrustean to call that process "learning the rules". None of which is to say you gotta like the avantgarde stuff: I know it's not going to appeal to everyone. But I just get bothered by the idea that it's primarily about a willful (& unsubtle) failure to meet expectations.

Allen--actually I was thinking narrowly of the classical music tradition & how a lot of people I know seem to treat it as pleasant, uncontroversial background music nowadays. Yeah, one of my prizes in my collection is an anthology of material from the Bristol Sessions from 1927--some scary stuff on there!

Jeez, so much agreement . Thanks for the reference Larry! I'm kind of fascinated by the way that the modernist rupture has set in place, so that Schoenberg & Gertrude Stein (e.g.) still sound/read as weird & "difficult" even now. Though in some ways I find it even more enigmatic how pre-modernist music has become less strange with the passage of time, rather than more so.

Eeehh, I never really like this model of the avantgarde as just trying to mess with expectations/"rules"/whatever. That's one thing that the avantgarde can do but it's not the whole story: I'm not sure things are usually that programmatic or wilful: it's about proposing & defending (often highly personal) ways of seeing/thinking/hearing rather than just being pointlessly "different". -- The analogy to language just seems strained because (1) music is not a symbolic system communicating a paraphrasable message; (2) whereas English as a language has centuries of history, millions of speakers, & arguably many aspects of syntax are hardwired into the human brain, jazz as a genre has a comparatively short history & a relatively small number of serious parcipants (in terms of both musicians & listeners), so the idea of "rules" seems odd given that any putative rules are so new & not all that consensual. In many ways jazz as a genre, a mere century or so after its birth, is still malleable/up for grabs, which is why arguments about what it is & what are the significant musicians & movements still seem important. Did you deliberately allude to Chomsky there by the way ("slept angrily")? I'm not sure this would help your argument since Chomsky's point was that you could generate a perfectly grammatical (rule-obeying) sentence that was perfect nonsense.

Prestige tended to get in quick, record a hell of a lot, & then once the artists (inevitably) moved on they could continue to release "new" material for years afterwards.... Stockpiling, really. As witness the record-as-much-as-possible approach to Dolphy (discussed in skeptical detail in Stuart Broomer's fine review of the Prestige box). Maybe I missed it on a quick skim of the thread to date but given Miles' strong reservations about Monk, who was actually responsible for putting the date together?

Haven't heard that one by Crispell--is that the early one with Paul Motian? I mean before ECM got hold of her. I don't know what of hers you've heard but basically anything up to the mid-1990s I've heard has been excellent. The trios on Music & Arts with Guy or Workman & Hemingway & the quartet Santuerio on Leo are very fine, for instance. I've never gotten a huge amount out of Gaia, despite Cook/Morton's enthusiasm, & Live at Yoshi's is impressive but unsatisfying I find (in part because of the soupy Bill Evans stuff on there--& she doesn't even get "Turn Out the Stars" right, accidentally chopping off the last 4 bars of every chorus). I kind of turned off circa the shift to ECM & Intakt, though many people I know love the stuff. (I expect to see the soporific new one with Helias & Motian clean up on the yearend top-tens.....) My big Xmas present this year was the Thomas Chapin box set Alive--slowly working through it. A remarkable set: get it while you can (it's on the defunct Knitting Factory label).

The limitations for just plain old readers' participation in the polls aren't all that strict. But for reviewers submitting top-tens you're only allowed to list things reviewed in Cadence from December of the previous year to November of the present year. This becomes a real problem for reissues because, e.g., Cadence doesn't usually get review copies of reissues from RVG/Blue Note, Columbia or Verve, for starters. Because of the limitation to the reissues covered in the mag, basically one has the choice of the Chronological Classics, Fresh Sound, Mosaic, Hatology & a few other labels. Plus Nessa, fortunately! It's a quirky mag but, yes, it's far better than the glossies A good run of interviews lately.

Good to hear--the disc deserves all the press it gets. It's actually the only disc I included in my "reissues" list for Cadence--everything else that would have gone in got excluded by the journal's strict criteria . Otherwise I certainly would have added Andrew Hill's Black Fire & probably some of the reissues on Hatology (notably the Giuffre concerts from Germany). Oh well.

...I assume we're excluding Japanese players...

Yes the disc came out too late for virtually all published best-of-2004 lists: most journals require the lists to be submitted in early November. I think I sent my two lists (for Coda & Cadence) on Nov 6th. You can order Pi discs through Cadence (www.cadencebuilding.com) or just through Amazon. Or direct from them at the Pi website.

Glad you liked it! Just got a reply to my query from Mahanthappa about the 3 tunes on the disc not from the Mother Tongue project--he says Interesting--would be great to hear those bands. A friend tells me Lehman's a guy to check out, esp. the new one on FSNT. It's a shame The Preserver hasn't been issued yet--I hope some enterprising label picks it up.

Yes, I've got Blood Sutra--terrific disc. It's not as strange & perverse as Mother Tongue, but if anything it's hotter: the version of "Hey Joe" is quite apocalyptic. Incidentally I came across a mention on the web of an unreleased album by Mahanthappa, The Preserver--I take it that must be the source of some or all of the three tunes on Mother Tongue that aren't based on transcribed speech.

The bonus track is fine, I just wish the track marking were in a different location! (between the final cadences of the piece & the taped voices, rather than between the opening alto solo & the entry of the group).

Round 2-- 7) "Konkani"--a hustling bassline, a one-chord jam. That kind of strange "dead" repetitive melody (we're back with the transcriptions)--not, I think, one of the better tunes on here, but it's only 2:40... 8) "Tamil" begins with a slow, complex call-&-response theme rather than the twiddling bands of notes typical of the other tracks. A broken-down Iyer solo over the widely-spaced accompaniment. 9) "Malayalam": an almost hectoring tune pitched high. A daisychain of solo, & the most striking moment comes when Iyer on his 2nd solo responds to Mahanthappa's frenzy with a laconic & almost serene solo, & I get the impression that the track works backwards from this point to a kind of calm, & the head is noticeably less strained. 10) "Change of Perspective": a surprise: a lovely a cappella alto solo at the start which is straight out of Dolphy's "Tenderly" at points (the fluent arppeggios). It's a little sweeter & more--sentimental, even--than I'd expect from Mahanthappa, & the tune itself is dreamy & major-key, a softly undulating theme that reminds me of the ending track on Iyer's Panoptic Modes, or even one of Pharoah Sanders' beatific moments. It gradually gathers urgency & force--this is the longer track on the disc, nearly 8 minutes--& discharges itself (like lightning) in a whirling-dervish theme. (Couldn't keep away from the abyss too long.....) When the slow theme returns at the end Mahanthappa's tone reminds me a lot of one of Charles Lloyd's ethnic-instrument performances at one point. There's a bonus track: an audio collage of all the taped speech used for the basis of 7 tunes: I think the "English" extract is Mahanthappa's own voice, actually. Final thoughts: it's a very good disc. As with Coltrane or certain other musicians (Steve Coleman e.g.), you could fault it for a lack of humour: it's a very insistent disc. & I actually like the 3 ordinarily composed tracks best--though this isn't to criticize the others, just to note that the non-musical nature of the sources of the transcribed-speech tracks does make them seem kind of similar despite the ingenious variations of rhythms & harmonizations & so forth. I haven't heard Black Water, & should obviously get a hold of it.

An interesting one, on Pi. Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto sax Vijay Iyer, piano Francois Moutin, bass Elliot Humberto Kavee, drums 1) "The Preserver". This has the burning crying-in-the-wilderness quality of a Coltrane uptempo modal piece circa 1965 ("One Up One Down", "After the Crescent", e.g.) filtered through Osby/S. Coleman. Rhythmically it's something else again, alternating between a blurred-motion rhythmic cycle which I can't count at all & a more down-to-earth rocking-three feel. The theme itself's like a short fuse to a big firecracker. 2) "English", the first of the tracks based on transcribed speech. A mean funk number, though again I can't really count it. The tune itself, like all the pieces based on transcriptions, is more like a transmission than a tune, happening within a narrow band with a lot of repeated notes, rather like pulses along fibreoptic cables. As with all the pieces on the album there's no obvious "alto solo / piano solo / bass solo / drum solo" structure--entries and exits aren't what this music's about, they're all unmarked. The tune is all about ominous holding-back, & then there's a transitional section to something that's more unhinged but actually almost a relief after all that buildup.... Tight alto + rhythm & Iyar's piano is wriggling edge-of-hysteria inkspill stuff. 3) "Kannada", out-of-a-trance slow piece, the bass almost tunelessly stalking around, the alto & piano like chimes. Mahanthappa lays down (very briefly) some intricate false-trail saxophone in the spirit of Coleman/Osby (I can't follow these lines with the ear): a deliberately "unnatural" sound with little relationship to singable melody, so that you feel you'd have to slow it down & transcribe it to actually follow it. That's not a criticism, it's just a comment on style. Even with Braxton I could actually sing you back phrases after hearing a solo but with this kind of playing it kind of overloads my senses & makes me lose my bearing--there's something very odd & slippery about it. Anyone get this feeling listening to this stuff (e.g. to Osby)? 4) "Gujarati". Like several tracks here it starts with a laconic intro by Mahanthappa--in fact so short (three notes) that rather than easing you in it actually unsettles you further as you're not expecting it to be so short. This tune has wider intervals than the previous two--I don't know Gujarati but I take it this reflects something of the different sound of the language. This is a plangent, baleful, slightly neurotic piece & again the improvs come almost as a relief....! This is the first extended feature for the leader, broken in two by a dancing figure that he can join in at will. The doubletime lines come so on-the-beat it's almost bruising. Iyer is quite lightfingered & cools things off, the first moment on the album to suggest whimsicalness (temporarily!) 5) "Telugu", again baleful but this time rather langorous; Iyer's comping is almost sensuous. A waltz-time section with a pop-music feel (makes me think of Hendrix or the Beatles--the chords are a little like a passage in "A Day in the Life" I think). Iyer's solo, though has a monstrous, bumpy quality, all dark protuberent bass & crumpled funky bits. He's got the "Jason Moran run" (did Moran invent it? who?)--the blithe glittering offhand zip up the keyboard. Mahanthappa keeps to more of a "swing" feel rather than the insane unfollowable doubletime lines elsewhere on the disc. 6) "Circus", which is the 2nd tune on the album not based on transcription, & it's like a breath of fresh air, much the happiest-sounding thing on the disc, with a softly rising/falling feel to the chord changes. will write more later... (there are 10 tracks)

The worst thing so far is that one LP of my dad's three-LP set The Blues Box is missing. I think I must have left it at the radio station where I used to have a show. Has this ever been reissued? It was a really nice set of stuff, & I'm still depressed I lost it.

You really like The Grass Is Greener? I'd thought it a real dud, actually--an old review of it-- http://www.ndorward.com/music/parker_grass.htm

FWIW there's a new Territory Band disc out, too--leftovers from the same session, I believe. It's a double CD but it's only just over 80 minutes of music between the two (including one alt-take). I've only listened to the 1st disc, it's OK without really doing a lot for me.

Is Tokyo Encore the same as Landscape? I have the latter--recorded with Cables/Dumas/Higgins, Tokyo, 16 + 23 July 1979. It's got a nice "Over the Rainbow" & a few other things but Art struggles through "Straight Life" compared to the classic rendition on Meets the Rhythm Section. "Long Ago & Far Away" is one of the strongest tracks on Intensity & also the Omegatape session with Perkins. Pity if the rerun on the later album isn't up to snuff. I think one reason for this is because it was a favourite genre of Laurie Pepper's (cf. the title "What Laurie Likes").

I don't know this one, but am a fan of Pepper in general--mostly the work up to 1960, though the later stuff is interesting too. What sets this one apart from the rest of Pepper's latterday output? I've always liked "Straight Life" as a tune--a nifty reworking of "After You've Gone". I only have the version of it on Meets the Rhythm Section & a version from a late concert in Japan where it sorta gets the better of him.

Yes, it's a very interesting disc, though if you've not heard other Butcher solo discs you should check those out too. I'm told Fixations (Emanem) is the strongest, but haven't heard it. I do have Thirteen Friendly Numbers & Invisible Ear though, both of which are excellent.

A (largely negative) review here: http://www.onefinalnote.com/reviews/m/mcin...hs-to-glory.asp