Adam

I was at that show as well, and that wasn't just any house, it was the Schindler House, now called the MAK Center, designed & lived in by Rudolf Schindler. And it was right after (or just before) Grimes's move back to NYC. And it was a beautiful concert. But I have a vague recollection of him saying that he had largely left music making (or at least recording) for a number of years, and was just returning to it. His concerns had gone in other spiritual and artistic directions. His spiritual concerns were an integral part of the music he played that night.

Double checked with my friend who was closer. He said he was definitely playing electric bass but playing in upper registers.

I wasn't in teh 2nd row - I was in row O, and lots of folks in row N left. The program said elect bass, which I'm sure gave Heckman his review. i thought it sounded like a guitar as well

I was there too - great show. Didn't stop most of the folks in the row right in front of me from leaving in the middle. Subscribers to the jazz series who didn't know what they were getting. I thought that Coleman was almost not going to play the violin, but he did on the penultimate song. Yes, "Lonely Woman" for the encore. I caught the Star Spangled Banner as well, but don't know what it was fitting in to. Then just got back from seeing Wadada Leo Smith's Silver Orchestra at the Hammer Museum. As he said at the end of the show, not jazz, not classical, not rock, not funk. But a Silver Orchestra. Lots of Cal Arts people in it. Vinny Golia in the audience (which was nowhere near full, even though the show was free). I liked it, but very sparse in some ways, rich in others, and not jazz. And it seemed a little under-rehearsed. Oliver Lake at the Jazz Bakery tomorrow.

Huzzah! Criterion is bringing out "Two-Lane Blacktop" in December!

Just received this: Dear Friend, The CDs hatOLOGY 610 and 639 are on the way to the distributors: ANTHONY BRAXTON PERFORMANCE (QUARTET) 1979 hatOLOGY 610 Reissue of the concert of September 1st, 1979 at Jazzfestival, Willisau by Anthony Braxton-reeds, Ray Anderson -trombones, John Lindeberg -double bass & Thurman Barker -percussion. Total Time 71:13 AAD Barcode 752157061021 ***** in All Music Guide to Jazz! The great advantage of having complete live concerts on record is that we can hear also those intriguing spaces between the compositions: the improvisations which take the group from point A to point B are also the areas in which some of Braxton’s most radical notions have first been voiced. As we shall see, Performance (Quartet) 1979 is of particular interest in this regard. – Graham Lock, 2007 Le grand avantage de disposer sur disque de concerts live dans leur intégralité est de pouvoir entendre également ces espaces fascinants entre les compositions : les improvisations qui portent le groupe du point A au point B sont aussi ces temps durant lesquels certaines des notions les plus radicales de Braxton se sont préalable- ment exprimées. Comme nous l’entendrons, Performance (Quartet) 1979 est d'un intérêt particulier à cet égard. – Graham Lock Der große Vorteil von Alben mit kompletten Live-Mitschnitten von Konzerten liegt darin, dass wir auch diese faszinierenden musikalischen Räume zwischen den Kompositionen hören können: Diese Improvisationen, die das Quartett von Punkt A nach Punkt B führen, sind nämlich auch die Passagen, in denen einige von Braxtons radikalsten Vorstellungen von Musik zum ersten Mal umgesetzt wurden. Wie wir noch feststellen werden, ist Performance (Quartet) 1979 in dieser Hinsicht von besonderem Interesse. – Graham Lock OLIVER LAKE TRIO ZAKI hatOLOGY 639 Reissue of the live perfomance of September 1st, 1979 at Jazzfestival, Willisau by Oliver Lake -saxophones, Michael Gregory Jackson -guitar and Pheeroan akLaff -drums Total Time 56:34 AAD Barceode 752156063926 Lake’s trio functioned on a democratic basis. “I‘m not the boss. One of our concepts is that we try to have an interplay. It’s not me being accompanied by the others. Pheeroan may start something that I’ll pick up on. From that Michael may add something, and then it will just keep on evolving and changing. We will sound like one flowing thing. It’s me (and sometimes Michael) writing the tunes, but we are all on an equal level in terms of where the music is coming from. We’ve been working together for three and a half years and are very sympathetic to each other. I feel very, very comfortable. We tune into each other and are very open inside. We play a melody and then try to go into other areas. I don’t like to structure the middle part because that’s where improvisation comes in. A preconceived structure would restrict us.” – Jürg Solothurnmann Le trio de Lake fonctionnait de manière démocratique. « Je ne suis pas le patron. Un de nos concepts propres est de tenter de générer une interaction. Ce n'est pas moi, accompagné des autres. Pheeroan lancera quelque chose que je vais adopter. A cela, Michael ajoutera autre chose, et puis le jeu musical continuera d’évoluer et de se transformer. Et sera entendu comme une sonorité unique et fluide. C’est moi (parfois Michael) qui écrit les airs, mais au moment de jouer nous sommes tous à un même niveau d’égalité. Nous avons travaillé ensemble durant trois ans et demi et sommes très solidaires. Je me sens très, très à l’aise. Nous nous accordons les uns aux autres et sommes très ouverts dans notre fort intérieur. Nous jouons une mélodie, puis essayons de pénétrer d’autres niveaux. Je n'aime pas structurer la partie intermédiaire parce que c'est là qu’intervient l’improvisation. Une structure préconçue nous limiterait. » – Jürg Solothurnmann Lakes Trio arbeitete auf demokratischer Basis. „Ich bin nicht der Boss. Eines unserer Konzepte lautet nämlich Interaktion und nicht, dass ich von den anderen begleitet werde. Pheeroan kann mit einem musikalischen Gedanken einsetzen, den ich dann aufgreife. Michael kann dem Ganzen etwas hinzufügen, und so entwickelt sich alles einfach weiter und verändert sich ständig. Unsere Musik ist also immer im Fluss. Zwar schreibe ich die Stücke (manchmal macht das auch Michael), aber musikalisch betrachtet sind wir alle gleichberechtigt. Wir arbeiten seit dreieinhalb Jahren zusammen und kommen wunderbar miteinander aus. Ich fühle mich sehr, sehr wohl. Wir harmonieren wirklich gut und sind unserem inneren Wesen nach sehr offen. Wir spielen eine Melodie und versuchen dann, in andere musikalische Räume vorzudringen. Ich halte nicht viel davon, den Mittelteil zu strukturieren, weil genau dort die Improvisation ins Spiel kommt. Eine vorher festgelegte Struktur würde uns nur einschränken.“ – Jürg Solothurnmann Best regards, Werner X. Uehlinger Hat Hut Records LTD. Box 521, 4020 Basel, Switzerland wxu.hathut.com@bluewin.ch Phone +41.61.373.0773 http://www.hathut.com The Journey Continues the 33rd Year too! Hat Hut Records Ltd. benefits from its partnership with the Fondation Nestlé pour l'Art, Lausanne.

And aren't clowns supposed to be funny, even when most of them aren't? It depends on how you are defining tragedy. I've seen lots of comic things that aren't funny, in that they didn't make me laugh out loud. But they were still incredible affecting comedy. And besides, a mime isn't a clown.

Anyone familiar with this book? Is there already a thread on it? What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists, by Eric Porter Music of the African Diaspora, 6 Available for sale at UC Press, and I'm debating whether to get it. -------- More information: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/sale/pages/9426.html 425 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 16 b/w photographs January 2002, Available worldwide Categories: Music; History; United States History; American Studies; African American Studies; American Music; Contemporary Music; Jazz Description | Table of Contents | Awards | About the Author | Related Books Downloadable eBook version available: Adobe E-Reader at ebooks.com, $15.95 Read the Chapter 1, "A Marvel of Paradox" "Among the many books on the history of jazz. . . an implicit division of labor has solidified, whereby black artists play and invent while white writers provide the commentary. . . . Eric Porter's brilliant book seeks to trace the ways in which black jazz musicians have made verbal sense of their accomplishments, demonstrating the profound self-awareness of the artists themselves as they engaged in discourse about their enterprise."–Susan McClary, author of Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form "With What Is This Thing Called Jazz Eric Porter has given us an original portrait of black musicians as creators, thinkers and politically conscious individuals. This well-written, thoroughly researched work is a model of a new kind of scholarship about African American musicians: one that shows them as people who are both shaped by and actively shaping their political and social context. One of the book's most important contributions is that it takes seriously what the musicians themselves say about the music and allows their voices to join that of critics and musicologists in helping to construct a critical and philosophical framework for analyzing the music. Professor Porter's work is rare in it's balanced attention to the formal qualities of the music, historical interpretation and theoretical reflection. His is a work that will certainly shape the direction of future studies. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? is an extraordinary work."–Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday "A major contribution to American Studies in music, Eric Porter's lucidly written book is the first to thoroughly analyze and contextualize the critical, historical and aesthetic writings of some of today's most innovative composer-performers. Placing the vital concerns of artists at the center, this work provides academic and lay readers alike with important new insights on how African-American musicians sought to realize ambitious dreams and concrete goals through direct action--not only in sound, but through building alternative institutions that emphasized the importance of community involvement."–George E. Lewis, Professor of Music, Critical Studies/Experimental Practices Area University of California, San Diego Description (back to top) Despite the plethora of writing about jazz, little attention has been paid to what musicians themselves wrote and said about their practice. An implicit division of labor has emerged where, for the most part, black artists invent and play music while white writers provide the commentary. Eric Porter overturns this tendency in his creative intellectual history of African American musicians. He foregrounds the often-ignored ideas of these artists, analyzing them in the context of meanings circulating around jazz, as well as in relationship to broader currents in African American thought. Porter examines several crucial moments in the history of jazz: the formative years of the 1920s and 1930s; the emergence of bebop; the political and experimental projects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; and the debates surrounding Jazz at Lincoln Center under the direction of Wynton Marsalis. Louis Armstrong, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Yusef Lateef, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith, Mary Lou Williams, and Reggie Workman also feature prominently in this book. The wealth of information Porter uncovers shows how these musicians have expressed themselves in print; actively shaped the institutional structures through which the music is created, distributed, and consumed, and how they aligned themselves with other artists and activists, and how they were influenced by forces of class and gender. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? challenges interpretive orthodoxies by showing how much black jazz musicians have struggled against both the racism of the dominant culture and the prescriptive definitions of racial authenticity propagated by the music's supporters, both white and black. Contents (back to top) Acknowledgments Introduction 1 "A Marvel of Paradox": Jazz and African American Modernity 2 "Dizzy Atmosphere": The Challenge of Bebop 3 "Passions of a Man": The Poetics and Politics of Charles Mingus 4 "Straight Ahead": Abbey Lincoln and the Challenge of Jazz Singing 5 Practicing "Creative Music": The Black Arts Imperative in the Jazz Community 6 Writing "Creative Music": Theorizing the Art and Politics of Improvisation 7 "The Majesty of the Blues": Wynton Marsalis's Jazz Canon Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments of Permissions Index About The Author (back to top) Eric Porter is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Perhaps in another forum, but I thought I'd throw it in here as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/arts/mus...;pagewanted=all Sonny Rollins Strips for Action Sonny Rollins in the studio in 1957 and in performance in 2007. He will be performing with just bass and drums at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, just as he did there 50 years ago. By BEN RATLIFF Published: September 16, 2007 SONNY ROLLINS didn’t just influence other saxophone players. He produced a half-century of close listeners. The long, idiosyncratic tenor saxophone solos that he started developing around 50 years ago — bulging sacks of brilliant thematic improvisation, as well as slangy humor and quotations — became a genuine American rhetoric, delirious and ecstatic; audiences reoriented their imagination, and their sense of patience, around them. But his greatest work from the 1950s and ’60s trained many of them to want what he was later unwilling to give. Some would like him to play small rooms every once in a while, so they could hear his tone better; or to perform into a standing microphone, without a clip-on microphone on his horn; or with no amplification at all. Some want him to play fewer calypsos. Some want him to banish the electric bass from his stage. Perhaps the most abject hope has been that he simplify things and play again the way he often did in the late ’50s and ’60s, with only a bassist and drummer. These fantasy-league visions have never stopped, and he has never paid them much attention. So when Mr. Rollins, who turned 77 this month, announced this summer that he would play at Carnegie Hall on Sept. 18, and that for part of the concert he would play in a trio with the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Roy Haynes, all those who watch jazz closely stepped back and took a deep breath. What’s so special about Sonny Rollins and trios? When Mr. Rollins decided not to hire a pianist while making the record “Way Out West” in March 1957, jazz shifted a little bit, if mostly in his direction. “What I got out of it,” he explained in an interview a few weeks ago, “was that, for better or for worse, I had an opportunity to play what was in my head. I was free.” The veteran tenor saxophonist Lew Tabackin was in his late 20s and living in Philadelphia when he first heard Mr. Rollins play in a trio. “It had a huge impact,” he said. “It set the basis for what I was trying to do as a young man. I had the greatest jazz experiences I ever had while listening to Sonny in a trio.” He quickly tried it himself, and leads a saxophone trio today. “You try to become part of the drum set, become part of the bass,” he said. Most of the tenor saxophonists who have followed Mr. Rollins in leading trios — that list would include Mr. Tabackin, Joe Henderson, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, David Murray and David S. Ware — have had to think long and hard about his example. Though only a small portion of his discography uses the saxophone-bass-drums format, it encompasses some of his very best records, and some of the best records in all of jazz. After “Way Out West” Mr. Rollins kept at it. In early November 1957 he played at the Village Vanguard in New York with the bassist Wilbur Ware and the drummer Elvin Jones; some of the music was recorded and released as “A Night at the Village Vanguard.” In February 1958 he recorded “Freedom Suite” with Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach. He played lots of trio music after that until 1966, live mostly. Afterward he rarely returned to the form. Among those great trio recordings was one that has gone largely unheard: the three songs Mr. Rollins played during his first performance at Carnegie Hall, on Nov. 29, 1957, with Wendell Marshall on bass and Kenny Dennis on drums. The show was recorded by Carnegie Hall as part of a multiple-artists benefit concert; the tapes from that night, discovered at the Library of Congress in 2004, have already yielded the superb CD “Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.” Next week’s concert at Carnegie Hall will take place nearly 50 years after the 1957 show. If all goes according to plan, he will play the same songs he played in 1957, record the concert and subsequently release both the 1957 and 2007 performances on a single CD, through his own label, Doxy. So the CD will contain the same three loose frameworks for improvising — “Sonnymoon for Two,” “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Moritat (Mack the Knife)” — performed 50 years apart. Mr. Rollins likes the symmetry of the idea, and the discovery of the old Carnegie Hall recording gave him a reason to revisit the trio format. (He admitted, though, that given his propensity for excessive self-criticism, he hasn’t been able to bring himself to listen to the 1957 tape just yet.) Outside of that he was not especially conscious of doing anything different then. As he put it, he was “always trying to experiment with some other ways of getting closer to my best performance expression.” “Playing by myself, and hearing all the instruments in my head, was not something unknown to me or unusual to me,” he explained. “I had always been a person that liked to practice by myself. I found great comfort and enjoyment in it. I was able to play for hours and hours alone, and I used to go to secluded places to practice.” Those places included the Williamsburg Bridge walkway in New York City, and the long solitary sessions helped him develop himself as a long-form improviser capable of leading a band without another horn player. “When I was playing with Miles Davis” — who first hired Mr. Rollins in the late ’40s — “I remember we used to do a thing we’d call stroll, where we’d have the piano lay out so that just drums and bass played with the horn player,” he continued. The absence of the piano, a naturally dominating instrument, let Mr. Rollins assume a much different role in the band. “One horn player is almost compelled to follow the pianist,” he explained. “There are exceptions, but generally the pianist plays a more than equal role to the horn player.” Branford Marsalis, who has played a lot of saxophone trio music, said he thinks Mr. Rollins’s best bands were trios or other pianoless groups. “It’s really hard to find piano players with imagination,” he said. “A lot of piano players tend to go home and practice, then play what they practice, which has a certain preordained feeling. A guy like Sonny — really more than anybody in jazz — can’t really be around that kind of stuff. He can’t be locked in a box. When you think about the way he plays, it’s completely logical that he would play in trio. He’s such a stream-of-consciousness player. So he gets to set the harmony, he can make the chords be whatever they want to at any given time.” What made Mr. Rollins’s saxophone trio so special in 1957 wasn’t just the lack of a piano. (Gerry Mulligan had a quartet with no piano in 1951, but it made very meticulous music, with two horns, baritone saxophone and trumpet, creating contrapuntal harmony.) Nor was it the number three. (Nat King Cole’s group, with piano, guitar and bass, had been famous since 1940, and in the late ’40s Mr. Rollins himself used to lead a trio with piano and bass when he opened shows for Miles Davis.) It was those particular instruments. Without a chordal instrument (piano or guitar) or any other front-line player, the saxophonist in charge has more elastic possibilities. The absence of chords, which bind and determine the harmony, let the saxophonist play a greater range of ideas without fear of clashing. And though by the late ’50s the tenor saxophone was already linked to a kind of American masculine charisma — there had been Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon, all playing the role of threshers in the long grass — the tenor saxophone trio encouraged a new level of solitary stamina in jazz: developing a narrative across long stretches of time, ultimately being heroic. All of that requires an unusual amount of energy. Mr. Marsalis first tried trio playing in 1988, when the pianist in his quartet had his own record to promote. “I finished a solo,” he remembered, “and I realized, ‘O.K., what do we do now?’ ” Then Bob Hurst, the bassist, took a solo, “and I figured, I never did like that formatted thing where everyone plays a solo on every song,” he continued. “So then I said, damn, I have to play longer. It hit me immediately that the second player is a foil. And when the foil is gone, it’s just you.” Mr. Tabackin, interviewed a few weeks ago, was about to travel to Japan to play 15 gigs in 16 days with his trio. “It’s really physically demanding,” he said. (Mr. Tabackin is 10 years younger than Mr. Rollins.) “You have to cover a certain amount of space, almost physical space. It’s mainly the breathing thing that’s the problem. But if you play every night, it gets easier.” He paused. “I’m saying that now. In a few years I might have to change my mind.” Mr. Rollins, typically, is philosophical on the subject. He acknowledges that there can be more space to fill during trio performances. But he maintains that it’s up to him to decide how much to fill it. “Strange as it seems,” he said, “sometimes I’ve found it easier, less physical, to play with a trio. With other instruments, one would think, gee, I’ve got others to help support me, to take up some of the space, so I don’t have to play everything. “But actually it works to the reverse. On the occasions when I’ve done the old favorite of drums and bass, I end up less physically fatigued and more exhilarated.”

I have 6 of them (Bechet, Hines, Teschmacher, Hawkins, Norvo, Waller), all under $10, 3 still in plastic wrap when I got them, the others looked like never played. And they are all still largely unplayed. I need to get them out...

Sorry to ask, but what exactly is the question? If you have both, are you able to listen to both to see if it sounds like they have edited something on the 2001 CD version?

I saw that Criterion is reissuing and expanded version of Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes." I wonder if that means they will be reissuing their other Hitchcock titles. I still have the old one; guess I should eBay it. In the meanwhile, I look forward to receiving "La Jetee/San Soleil." And I really look forward to their issue of 'Days of Heaven" in November.

I wish I had seen that beer the first time.

Actually, you do have 160GB available, if 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes. See the "consumer confusion" discussion here. 160 * (1000*1000* 1000) = 160,000,000,000 bytes ---> divided by (1024*1024*1024) = 149 GB Well, if 1 GB = 1,000,000,000, then 160 of them will be 160 GB. If you define GB alternatively as 1,073 million, then 160 GB = 1,173,800,00 At any rate, 160 GB = 160 GB, no matter how you define GB. I think I will wait until the iPod Touch has a larger drive than 16 GB, or is that 16 GB?

That list price from Sony for a 6 CD set is really quite ridiculous - $140 is the full list (I know one would never have to buy it for that) - $23+ per disc.

Solitude is on emusic...

Wikipedia is also not a failsafe source, as anyone can add anything to any page.

Happy Birthday Mr. Solal! Looking forward to seeing you again.

I have, and corresponded with one of teh writers. It is quite nice; mostly pictures.

According to CD Universerse at this time (following the link above), Midnight Special is by Anita Baker.

What are these concepts, specifically?

I saw the Anita O'Day film in June at the LA County Museum of Art and also enjoyed it a lot, i didn't really know much about her. I've seen the Jackie Paris film as well, and might screen it here in Los Angeles.

It was a documentary about Stax, not about Memphis or about other labels. Jeez guys, look at the title of the show! That is what was sold, what PBS wanted, and what was made. Sure there should be a doc about all those other labels, but this wasn't it! And I think (as a doc maker) that it is ridiculous to criticize a doc for not being about some other topic. And when you include too many topics in one film, it just waters down that doc so that it isn't a good film about anything. OK, done venting now. Thank you for your patience.

Because it was a documentary about Stax, not about Memphis. And there was just another doc on Ahmet Ertugen and Atlantic records, with plenty of Aretha, also on PBS. Both of these films also just played at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Alas, I missed them on the big screen.

He was a wonderful part of the LA jazz scene for many years as an educator, player. i remember seeing him and Horace Tapscott in concert, especially a duet show once at LACMA on a rainy day, when they brought the concert indoors, with people packed on the floor oand on teh balcony overlooking them. I also saw him attending a variety of shows. Very sad.