robertoart

Great LP but I'd actually file it among the then-burgeoning New Haven creative music scene. Maybe so, but was Michael Gregory not on the Wildflowers comp, perhaps there was some cross-polinisation going on? In the spirit of the OP's enquiry maybe you could elaborate? Well, New Haven and NYC aren't too far from one another... a number of New Haven cats played at the New York Musicians' Festival, so sure there was regional cross-pollination. And Gregory is an especially interesting character because he got into the Black Rock thing in the '80s with a group called Signal, which played in NY (and elsewhere). But Clarity is a very New Haven LP, even if it's not CMIF-related. (CMIF = New Haven musicians collective, Creative Musicians' Improvisers Forum) That's interesting. How does the approach differ between New Haven music, and music one might have encountered in a NYC loft. I have a few Michael Gregory/Oliver Lake albums, and also a very lovely - almost folk/jazz Lp, with a lot of singing. A very interesting musician indeed. Who I believe has started playing publically again recently. He was a bit of a mystery man from this far away actually. And a very talented guitarist/improvisor. Okay, the caveat being that the NYC lofts and the New Haven scene had a variety of musical approaches going on within them and that I am a bit young to have experienced it in the flesh, Leo Smith was an ex-AACMer living in New Haven and brought his particular sonic approach to a crew of young, like-minded New Haven musicians. The splintering of the AACM between Chicago and New York in the 70s certainly affected the lofts greatly so that leaderless ensembles developed with a more spacious approach to improvisation that I'd say was a far cry from the energy music of the '60s (though there were obviously holdouts). Egalitarian roles, little instruments and self-reliant spaces and musicians' organizations seemed to flourish more in New York at that time, and I think it is in great part due to the influx of Chicagoans. The New Haven scene was removed a bit from NYC and with Smith a kind of guru for those guys, a more studied granularity emerged in those musicians' work. Keep in mind that later Braxton collaborators like Gerry Hemingway and Ray Anderson were part of the New Haven scene, and Braxton paid frequent visits to town. This New Haven music is something I'm very interested in and researching as time allows. That's very interesting. Look forward to reading the research one day.

....seems to be a mis-reading of Adorno here. This sounds like Donald Kuspit's Negative Sublime take on Adorno's Negative Dialectics. There is much that is still relevant about Adorno. Especially in the moderately intellectual climate that contemporary Jazz/improv seems to be. The irony being that Adorno thought of Jazz the same way most would view Britney (or whoever the lowest common denominator is now).

Representing again are you Allen?

Well fairly old actually. But new to youtube none the less.

The radicalisation of the picture plane from a three dimensional to two dimensional 'surface', should not be equated with a move from 'harmony' to free. The difference between Coubet and Pollock is far greater than the distance between Parker and Coleman. 'Art' has always been the domain of the rich and powerful be it practitioners or academics. Jazz developed in far different circumstances. The history of Art avant-garde negations has and did serve different purposes to those eminating from a specific Black cultural expression in the more compacted social and formal history of Jazz.. Just look at the exclusion and distance Black people have had in 'The Visual Art Story'. Because of social segregation and poverty just to begin with. So called traditional Jazz improvisation and harmony has far greater relevance to the forms and considerations of 'pre-Modern Art' if only in terms of it's huge depth of skill and muscle memory construction - than it does with the Formal 'dumping' of 'Abstract Expressionist' painting, where visual integrity is achieved more through stealth than through preconcieved rules and knowledge. One interesting comparison however might be in the cut between the History of Visual Culture to be adressing 'Nature' and the Modernist turn to be addressing 'Culture'. ie. the 'fully played out and explored' domain of Harmony via Bop and Modal as 'Nature' as opposed to a Free Jazz expression as a 'Representation', where Culture has primacy over Form. As in the perjorative arguments the anti-Shorter guy was making. Whereby he was saying Shorter was merely 'representing something - "Culture' - rather than actually playing something real, ie 'Nature'. Then we have 'two' kinds of representation of 'Culture'. In the differing ways an Evans might be representing 'Culture' - as opposed to the way David Murray might be representing Culture.

Larry Young Trio with James Blood Ulmer on guitar - circa mid-70's. Apparently they played a gig at Berklee at least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EDjNG7fses

Personally, I don't think the comparisons between representational and non-representational art and free/experimental - harmony based improv are really useful anymore. And they were misguided at the actual time of their so called relevance anyway. It was a way to analougise Modernism to a point across different artforms. But the things that drove radical expression in Visual Art cultures and those that drove radical expression in Jazz, were different animals. Although the 'modern' world they both existed in certainly influenced them both.

To me, Mostly, the music sounds like empty gestures coming from these guys

Looks like they'll get to it soon

It seems smoking is less popular on Free Jazz covers but here's one,

Me, too. Do you like Mostly Other People Do The Killing and the trio with Halverston and Weasel Walter Larry?

Payton's a rebel with a cause. Perfect! Problem solved! What's the problem?

Good old Van. Now headlining at a 'Jazz Blues and Roots' festival close to you.