JSngry

The song seems to have had a wide appeal!

I would think that somebody would need this...I put it off for muchthe same reasons as Steve didn't re-buy it, but now that I have it...it's the difference between having a bunch of tools scattered all over the house waiting to get lost and/or forgotten and having a toolbox with everything in it. You know where everything is and you know that everything is there.

Will there be organ on this, or will it be just piano?

Yeah, that!

I would have loved to have seen Clark Terry do an episode of Sanford & Son.

What a character, what a life! A major loss in terms of linage to "the way it used to be", so many ways. RIP, full love, full respect.

$6.666666666666666666 per CD. Think about that. You think about that.

To the audience? Or to Lear? I think watching Lear getting tore down while simultaneously falling apart would make for a unique entertainment experience. Hell, people want to buy drinks for the band, go ahead and buy drinks for Lear. Show the man some love, he's having a hard time, we've all been there, right?

Do you think that chamber music, or classically oriented small ensembles -- the music itself, from baroque to modern -- has perhaps more similarities to jazz than large orchestral music? And that that is part of the appeal? That sort of small ensemble, clear interplay of the instruments, highly ornate or detailed, call and response kind of thing that is a feature of both jazz and small ensemble classical? Large orchestras have their own big-wallop appeal. And I've no particular aversion to the concert hall but I think there's a lifeline there between jazz and small ensemble classical that probably strikes a chord, pardon the pun. And I agree the kind of settings where these small ensemble performances tend to take place are often more inviting / casual / intimate than the concert hall and therefore more enjoyable in some respects. But at the same time, it seems concert halls, opera houses are trying to be more inviting. You still get the fur coat crowd but seems just as many slap on a sport coat and khakis. It's not an exnsemble-size issue for me. Hell, I've dug big bands of some type or another ever since I can remember. What I like about these two series we go to is simple - repertoire (always more modern than the DSO. , but not exclusively modern). cost (much less expensive to go to the chamber series than to the DSO. For that matter, less expensive to go to any one of the "local" orchestras than the DSO, but they're so "pops"/etc, oriented, I'll save my money thanks, and of no minor influence, genearal admission seating to the chamber events. If you do the work and leave early enough to be right at the the door when it opens, you can get primo seating, both visually and accoustically. Check this out: http://www.dallaschambermusic.org/70thseason/A four concert season, $40/ticket but if you subscribe, $30/ticket. Also this - http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/engage/event?id=148$25/ticket. I saw Alicia Weilerstein give a totally kickass solo recital, sat about20 feet away from her, could see the individual strings on her bow when she rosined it, and heard at least as well as that, for 25 bucks. If you even halfway got ears for that, you can almost certainly find some kind of 25 bucks and some kind of ride, dig? And check out the other offerings, modernish music, fresh faces, yeah, more of that, please. You can get deals from DSO, but it's...not guarantee. I had an orchestra rep (a guy named Leonard Benedettio, real nice guy) call me offering "2 Beethovens & a Mahler for $99!!!" and since we were available any night, we got floor seats for all of 'em. The DSO is a good-and-getting-better orchestra, and they Meyerson is a GREAT sounding hall, so when they play something I know I'm going to want to hear, like "2 Beethovens & a Mahler", if you want good seats, expect to pay a little on either side of $100/per, and be ready to attend an "event". I mean, it's all cool, but it's a whole 'nother thing than the chamber events., And even at the DSO, there's not the stuffiness that used to be par for the course.People come dressed up all kinds of ways, and there's a healthy number of young peoples too. There's also the "patrons of the arts" types, but hell, these arts need patrons, and these are them. What are they supposed to do, give the money and then stay at home? That's not right! Besides, I had inadvertently backed into a nice chat with the Mrs. Nasher who's know running the Nasher estate at the Weilerstein gig, and she was a very, very nice lady. I thanked her for making this kind of thing accessible to people like Brenda and me, and she all of a sudden beamed and exclaimed, "well, it SHOULD be!". That was her parent's way, art for the public, just put it anywhere for everybody, Warhols hanging in a mall, problem, Officer? So, that was cool.No, we ain't gonna go to Whataburger after the gig, but hey, she was cool. Main thing is, I'm excited to have options. Definitely not options like in Chicago or New York, but still, options. And all the podcasts and streaming radios featuring "modern" classical music and all the cheap used CDs of them available on Amazon, it's just...nice to have a sense of discovery again, not like, oh, that WAS a dog turd I just stepped in, that' what I get for not paying attention, but the kind of, wow, I didn't know this was here, and geez, looks like I'm gonna be here for a while surprise, the good kind.

One of these collections needs to include Trane playing "Manhattan" with George Russell. The first few bars of his solo are one of the most startlingly fresh entries I think I've ever heard.

Yeah, we've subscribed to two chamber music series here, one "established", the other a bit "maverick"-y, and both are very good at presenting their programs in comfortable surrounds and avoid intimidating "class-preferential" trappings, at least as much as possible. What both series offer though, is an opportunity to hear more modern musics as well as the old standbys. This is by design, obviously, The DSO, otoh, is pretty much forced into being what they are, and we'll go when there's something playing we real want to hear, but the chamber music presentations are definitely more about getting good music to anybody who wants it than it is creating/sustaining an "institution".

I'd like to thank him for all the recording projects he undertook on spec, as well as for his playing. RIP.

Champion Jack Dupree Billy Champion Spark Plug

Gary Glitter, for real? Not sure if baseball is ready for this.

How did I (re)find my way to it? Literally, by walking to it. Long story shorter (HA!) - about a year and a half ago, had an iPod full of blogosphere illicities and was running through them in alphabetical order while walking each evening. One summer's eve (hope I don't sound like a douche for saying that), it was Toscanini's Beethoven 9. Well sir, I was already planning on a long walk through a very quiet neighborhood, and....I don't know, right place, right time, whatever it was, that sucker literally took me to another place (and it didn't hurt that T's accelerated tempos made the shit sound like Zawinul to me on that initial listen, hello, Arrogant Austrian Brilliance!)...I looked up at some point and realized that I had walked into some streets that I had nver been on before. But rather than freaking out or anything, I just told myself that I'd figure it out later and went right back into the music. One thing quickly led to another, and this was around the time than Branford told the world that Fathead was not a jazz musician. A little thereafter, I heard a passage in, I don't remember, some Janacek thing(?) where the line sounded to me exactly like the kind of logically insane melodic/harmonic modulation that Ornette would do. So again, right place, right time, open to suggestion, suggestion offered, context considered, suggestion accepted. Now believe me, I studied "classical music" in school - theory, scores, conducting, performance practices, basic playing skills on all instruments, had to pass a piano jury as well as a saxophone on, same thing every music ed student goes thorugh, just at a really good school with a bar so high that I got over it, but not without struggle, and not without some scaryass near-misses. The music itself was not unknown to me. But for years, decades, I didn't want any part of it because the jazz thing was still alive/expanding/whatever. I saw no need to engage this "other" music, jazz and it's cultural familials were offering me every intellectual and emotional opportunity as both player and listener I could handle. Whatever challenges and satisfactions I looked for, there they were. Always. But something began changing a few years ago. Playing got predictable-ish for me, I got disillusioned by how easily "gesture" could create "emotion", it didn't have to be real as long as it seemed real. Not jsut for others, but for self. That's too long to get into now (and probably is not anything I'd want to ever get into too deeply with anybody in public...it's a personal thing and runs deep for me, so...onward). And then, all the records started sounding like something I already knew or answers to questions that I'd already asked myself and had either found my own answer to or were on my way to finding my own answer to. Some notable, profound exceptions, of course, but overall, just got too "familiar". And then, oh Fathead's not a jazz musician, that was the final straw, I was actually liberated by that, because hey, I didn't leave the party, the party left me, ok? Then, as per the seek/find paradigm, all this wonderfully spirited music is just there, dirt cheap as often as not, because as few people pursue jazz records, I think even less go after classical, especially so-called "{modern" classical, which is really what I'm finding my way into right now. I can go straight from Bach to Beethoven to Wagner to R. Strauss without really missing all the in-betweens (although, the consistently momentary surprises of Brahm's harmony continues to get my ear), but all the stuff that probably had (and still well may) have "traditionalists" all WTF? in any combination confusion and/or rage, that's the sort of thing that is getting to me the same way that the best jazz of any era still does, that whole spirit of doing it this way because that's how it has to be, I love that, whether the end results are spectacular or fail miserably, or even end up being mediocre as all hell, it's ok, I'm not looking for "greatness", I'm looking for people who need to be doing something. Fuck "great", "great" is for history to decide. I'll be dead by then, right? Not gonna matter to me what history decides about any of this. "Right side of history"? Right side of NOW, ok? Hard to hit a moving target, etc. and if somebody's not shooting at you, hell, aim at yourself and fire away, get those terpsichorean chops RACING! Would also like to add that I have been the beneficiary of some invaluable guidance, generosity, and wisdom about this whole sphere of music from a handful of some of the best musical minds I have ever had the privilege to communicate with. Like the man said, I don't want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I'll get it myself. But there's a lot of doors, and these people continue to be nice enough to open them. For that, I feel both blessed and indebted. Some of them come from within the ranks here, so...need to offer a thanks here as well. And yes, I am still as distrustful of any world in which Elliot Carter gets all sorts of institutionalized supports on all kinds of levels and, for just one example, Herbie Nichols gets..what, some occasional hipster cred and the occasional serious playing? But that's another thing entirely, quite apart from the genius that comes through loud and clear in the actual music of each. At some point, I think you have to be honest about music itself, music, take it out of the cultural trappings (which are not the same thing as the culture itself, culture gives life, trappings just give...traps) and hear it as music, hear the life in it. Not everybody has an equal life, but everybody has life equally (at least while they have it), and that's from whence the good stuff springs, any of it. All of it.. So, yeah, life goes on, eh?

"This Side Of Paradise"...am I supposed to pull for Kirk? If so, I'm gonna have to do so on something other than "our duty is to destroy paradise because paradise is for lazy people who don't more than perfection"-ish logic. I mean, I can pull for a man who is stuck and does what he has to do to keep going, but somebody who thinks it's his duty to break shit just to give his inner repairmen a gig, not so much. If there's an obvious attempt at stirring ambiguity in this episode, I guess I missed it.

Considering that Lewis was one of the earliest "champions" of Ornette Coleman, I suppose that Dolphy could be forgiven for expecting different ears out of him than he got.

Out with the old, in with the new!

Why are we thinking that Zooid is becoming over?

MUCH better!

Also in the Jazz Masters series, Martin Williams' "Jazz Masters of New Orleans" and Richard Hadlock's "Jazz Masters of the Twenties." Could it be that the "Jazz Masters of the 40s" volume by Ira Gitler is being given short shrift here? Why? I may be biased because this was the first I read from that series (haven't read all of them yet anyway) and this was in my "formative years" so it had an impact but at any rate I Iike to revisit it from time to time, even though some of its findings may not reflect the latest state of the art anymore.B Jazz Masters of the Forties has a hallowed place on my bookshelf, as to to a lesser extent, does ...of the Fifties. As you say, they do date from my "formative years". I thought Ira's book was mentioned here under its current title "Swing To Bop." Whatever, it's essential. Those are different books, albiet ones about the same general subject matters, are they not?