JSngry

Truthfully, it sounds like it was being used for filler, just some basic chart and then open it waaaay up for the soloists. Nothing else on the record comes close to being this long, and Quincy seems a bit frantic in getting it going, like everybody needed to regroup before getting back to the regularly scheduled programming. I don't know about the circumstances of that tour. They had made it back to the states in 1960, but then went out again in 1961, which is when this record is from. Only some of the same players remain, and God only knows what the logistics were in the aftermath of the previous years misadventure. Dan Morgenstern notes here that BATAT had been "made" just a few weeks before this gig, but he too seems unaware that it had already been done on a 1960 Lockjaw record. Only there it was called "The Stolen Moment". Just giving the Jones record a casual listen, but other than the tempo, isn't this the same basic chart? Interestingly enough, Eric Dixon was on this record, as was Eric Dolphy!

I like it. Don't love it, but Different band, not the Fancy Free band. This band is a bit ragged, but not fatally so. Always glad to hear Eric Dixon! That might actually be Oliver's chart? BATAT is not the original version. Lockjaw Davis gets that honor, and on a big band record at that!

We have this on tap for Saturday night with the Dallas Symphony: GEMMA NEW conducts ZLATOMIR FUNG cello BORODIN Polovtsian Dances KATHERINE BALCH Cello Concerto | World Premiere STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring Maybe a little.. .jaded on Rite as far as on record, but not live. This is only the third time for us, so it's still a fresh experience. I've heard Gemma New conduct a few times before and it's always been fun. Live matters! Also very intrigued be the program notes for the world premier piece: https://www.dallassymphony.org/productions/the-rite-of-spring/ The winner of the 2020–21 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Balch was nominated for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award by violinist Hilary Hahn. Balch, who earned advanced degrees in music from Yale and Columbia, is currently a visiting assistant professor of composition at the Yale School of Music. Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the London Sinfonietta, and Ensemble Intercontemporain, among many other prominent orchestras and ensembles. Dubbed “some kind of musical Thomas Edison” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Balch constructs distinctive sound worlds unique to each new composition. The prolific young composer engineers an eclectic but efficient sonic code, precisely calibrated to the needs of a particular project, incorporating everything from toy instruments to tuned crystal water goblets, earthenware pots, and pianos prepared according to painstakingly detailed instructions involving color-coded graphs and elaborate symbols. In the score for Balch’s new Dallas Symphony Orchestra co-commission whisper concerto, every element of the sound is mapped to the minutest detail, right down to images of all the specific objects that she used to modify the strings of the prepared piano. She provides specific instructions for most of the other instruments, too, whether it’s col legno battuto bowing for the strings, which requires the musician to strike the strings with the wooden part of the bow normally held by the fingers, or a passage where the cello’s bow is swapped out for a bamboo chopstick. Elsewhere she calls for nontraditional variations on traditional techniques such as pizzicato or flutter tonguing. In some glorious version of an afterlife, John Cage and Henry Cowell are surely smiling. Composed in 2022, whisper concerto is true to Balch’s style in that it sounds at once perfectly idiomatic and utterly strange. Beautiful—sometimes even conventionally tonal—melodies commune lovingly with shameless noise. Virtuosity gives way to entropy only to catch its breath and come back weirder and wilder, transformed by the volatile power of orchestral collaboration. Shards and fragments of free jazz mysteriously reassemble themselves, against all odds, into a peculiar chorale. “The end of my concerto deals with elements of Ligeti’s noise-based cadenza, but in a different, more tonal context,” Balch explained in a recent interview with Rita Fernandes of The Strad magazine. One challenge that she confronted while composing her cello concerto was maintaining some kind of fruitful equilibrium between the solo instrument and the orchestra. ‘The cello’s low register can be difficult to balance, and I really wanted to honor the integrity of the instrument’s tessitura,” she told Fernandes. “It’s never a battle between cello and orchestra. I want them to fit together in a way that provokes intimacy between them.” The Composer Speaks “whisper concerto is named after the bristling, agitato ‘whisper cadenza’ of György Ligeti’s cello concerto. Like Artifacts, my concerto for violin and orchestra, this piece is not meant as a showcase for cello alone, but for the orchestra as a whole, which reacts to and augments the soloist. “whisper concerto is a working out of several musical contradictions I find expressively intriguing: how can an andante be agitato? A presto, dolcissimo? How can a cadenza play (and be playful) with the evolving demands and expectations of performer virtuosity? How can a simple chorale become the shadow of a desperate, fluttering, noisy scorrevole? In folding together these musical opposites, I hope to have captured some of the kinetic virtuosity of Zlatomir’s playing, for whom this concerto is dedicated, along with his kindness, playfulness, gentleness of spirit, and warmth. —Katherine Balch Balch is but 32, so not just a living composer, but a YOUNG one at that!!!

This is a really good record.

I wish they'd have used a Cigar Mingus for the cover. That looks was iconic l.

Chinen clearly states that he has not been affiliated with JY for years. And nowhere does JT say that there will be no more white contributors. In fact, given their oopen solicitation of management submissions. I suspect there will end up being quite a few. Chinen was just rabblerousing, " just asking a question". Thanks, Leonard!

Infested, eh? Better call Orkin!!!

I heard some things the other day that sounded like AI "jazz". Really short things that sounded like disjointed soft jazz.

Nope. This one:

As is the saga behind it.

Hey.

There was that reissue of the strings records that had a cover painting that made him look, not like Frog, but just a frog

And now there's the Algorithm Era!!! https://www.vulture.com/2023/04/spotify-discover-weekly-songs-essay.html#_ga=2.191221098.1546804939.1681851317-570768843.1681851316

Would love to hear this group live, if this is any indication.

I went to their website and the lead story was about Karl Berger!!! Apparently they now do print quarterly and regular web updates in between.

Did you know that JAZZIZ is still in business?

Subscription is free, paid subscription adds bonuses.

Plus, I usually need to be incentivized by something to sample at all

Pops Poopadeaux is now up for preorder.

Are there even going to be record reviews? Or records, for that matter?

Their fastest seller ever. Seems that people are hungry for discovering forgotten badasses after all!

Don't feel bad. I blinked and missed the Bill Barron 💤

Up!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds like a press agent's dream! But who will do the record reviews? And what is Nate Chinen all Crow Jimmy about? I'm really out of the industry loop (noose), so this is the first time I've seen this. It sounds like a recipe for a 21st Century reboot of 1940s Down Beat. Oh boy!!!!!!! Can't wait to see Allen Lowe at home! Make it sexy for the kids, big guy!