Mark Stryker

Certainly, people laugh at the opera -- have permission to and are encouraged to do so. Something to remember, however, is that performances today are always done with translations projected above the stage or, at the Met, on digital read-out screens on the back of the seat in front of you. Even works in English are accompanied by English titles. The result is that the audience today is actually even more clued into the verbal jokes, puns, humor, etc than they often were in the past. Sometimes it can be a little disconcerting that the laughs line up more with the timing of the screens rather than the actual words coming out of the singers' mouths.

That story about Byrd and Bud is really fascinating. Thanks for sharing it. I can offer an amen on "Bouncing with Bud." LOVE it. Tremendous on every level. I I've heard some of the SteepleChase LPs and find them, like most of late Bud, uneven and not essential but also, at their best rewarding in the intensity of expression, even when the mind and fingers are not so in sync. Also, the two duo tracks with Johnny Griffin c. 1961 ("Perdido" and "Idaho") are on the same level as "Bouncing with Bud."

Thought folks would be interested in this profile of the Detroit-born drummer. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/04/18/gerald-cleaver-black-host-detroit/25952157/ (Coda: a quick shout out to my employer, the Detroit Free Press, for still devoting substantial real estate and resources to stories like this.)

This was new to me. Subtitle: "Conversations with Jazz Musicians, New York City 1964 1965" http://darkforcesswing.blogspot.com/2015/04/hey-nineteen-garth-w-caylors-instant.html

Yes, true. This is quite an astonishing piece, a quasi 3rd stream work. The liner notes (by Chris Albertson) say that Mills, who studied with Copland and Sessions, based the piece in part on his "Crazy Horse Symphony" of 1957 and in part on a "Charlie Parker Symphony" described as a work-in-progress. The Parker symphony never seems to have been completed -- at least I couldn't find anything about it. Maybe it was eventually given a different name. I read somewhere that Mills taught at the Manhattan School. Since Yusef studied there I'm guessing that's where the connection came from.

Yeah -- that link was posted a while ago. I just bumped the thread after seeing Times blurb about Kojo's residency. Here's another clip. Cell phone recording from behind drums and phasing a big off but you get the idea. He was 9 here, sitting in at the Vanguard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4E1jF9l-Oo

I see in today's New York Times that Kojo Roney is leading a three-night residency next week at Jack in Brooklyn. Nice of his father to let his 10-year-old son stay up past his bedtime to play the gigs.

Don't know ... lot of primary source work to do.

There are more than 30 YAL CDs of music listed on Yusef's website -- lots of his classical works, "jazz" recordings, Eternal Winds, freeish 'world music' etc. I had a nice conversation with Yusef's widow a couple weeks ago when she was in town for the opening of the exhibition of his visual art (I posted a piece I wrote in the Jazz in Print forum) and she told about reams and reams of his notated music that has never been played -- four symphonies for starters. I'm going to be in touch with her about trying to see some scores for my Lateef chapter in my book as well as sample some of the recordings. Some I plan to buy. (Yusef and Von Freeman together anyone?) I do own some of the YAL recordings, and I can report that "The World At Peace" with Adam Rudolph and a chamber ensemble as large as 12 players is outstanding. Sort of a multi-stream mix of all of the idioms Yusef was dealing with in the latter part of his life and often a compelling marriage of composition and improvisation and ritual.

"If I ever meet the jackass who wrote 'Proud Mary,' he's a dead man."

Apologies if this has been posted before. It was new to me. "Let me ask you something: You think Coltrane ever dressed up as a penguin?" https://vimeo.com/8905546

Inspired stuff. Dog people will love. I don't care what anybody else thinks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b8VtpDLHfc

I missed this news earlier this year. God only knows how this will turn out, but I'm certainly curious. http://articles.philly.com/2014-01-31/news/46833201_1_opera-philadelphia-gotham-chamber-opera-charlie-parker

Pat Metheny has been named artist-in-residence for the 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival. I had a nice 30-minute conversation with him Monday. Surprisingly,given how long I've been doing this, I had never spoken with him before. Here's one tidbit that didn't make it into the story that I thought I'd share here: I told him that I first heard him live in spring 1986 in Urbana as part of the "Song X" tour with Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden Jack DeJohnette and Ornette's son Denardo. Pat told me that the next night on that tour the band was in East Lansing and played an encore lasting -- wait for it -- 1 hour and 25 minutes. When they came back out for the encore, Pat looked at his watch and started to play; the next time he looked at his watch it was an hour and 25 minutes later. He noted that when the band started the encore the house was full, but when he looked up at the end "there were about four people left." I asked if a bootleg of that concert had surfaced and he said he wasn't aware of one. I wonder ... http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/03/30/pat-metheny-detroit-jazz-fest/70679148/

Thanks.

Yesterday I bought Osie Johnson's "Swingin' Sounds" (Jazztone). 1955, A beautiful, swinging record. Mid-sized ensembles, lots of Basie guys, great early Thad Jones and Frank Wess (flute). One mystery: A trumpet player is listed as "Chiefy Salaam." Doesn't solo. (That name also appears in the personnel of the Blakey big band side on Bethlehem.) Anybody know anything about Mr. Salaam? Is that a pseudonym? An adopted Muslim name? Appreciate any info ...

The Accompanist -- William Matthews Don't play too much, don't play too loud, don't play the melody. You have to anticipate her and to subdue yourself. She used to give me her smoky eye when I got boisterous, so I learned to play on tip- toe and to play the better half of what I might. I don't like to complain, though I notice that I get around to it somehow. We made a living and good music, both, night after night, the blue curlicues of smoke rubbing their staling and wispy backs against the ceilings, the flat drinks and scarce taxis, the jazz life we bitch about the way Army pals complain about the food and then re-up. Some people like to say with smut in their voices how playing the way we did at our best is partly sexual. OK, I could tell them a tale or two, and I've heard the records Lester cut with Lady Day and all that rap, and it's partly sexual but it's mostly practice and music. As for partly sexual, I'll take wholly sexual any day, but that's a duet and we're talking accompaniment. Remember "Reckless Blues"? Bessie Smith sings out "Daddy" and Louis Armstrong plays back "Daddy" as clear through his horn as if he'd spoken it. But it's her daddy and her story. When you play it you become your part in it, one of her beautiful troubles, and then, however much music can do this, part of her consolation, the way pain and joy eat off each other's plates, but mostly you play to drunks, to the night, to the way you judge and pardon yourself, to all that goes not unsung, but unrecorded.

"Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you, wherever you may be." If you are 65 years old or younger, then Vin Scully has been broadcasting Dodger games for at least one year longer than you've been alive. Starts his 66th season next week.

Today would have been Moody's 90th birthday. As it happens, just yesterday I finished a freelance project in which Moody appeared as spirit, sage and metaphor ... Here's Kenny Barron's ballad "Morning Joy" from one of my favorite Moody LPs, "Feelin' it Together" (1973) the second of two great LPs he recorded for Muse in the early 70s that marked a real turning point in his evolution. Go Moody. Go Moody. Go Moody.

Was just posting "It's Time!" when I see Cali beat me to the punch ... Game, set and match to Jackie McLean.

Heard the Wayne Shorter Quartet Friday in Detroit. Wasn't going to write on it but after hearing the concert, I felt I had to document what went down. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/arts/mark-stryker/2015/03/21/wayne-shorter-quartet/25143431/

Thought some here would find this interesting from my neck of the woods. Aaron Dworkin, a MacArthur Fellow and founder of the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization that promotes minorities in classical music, has been named dean of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan. This is a big story in the arts world, with important implications for the future of arts education at the university level, particularly in music. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/arts/2015/03/19/aaron-dworkin-michigan-dean/25036985/ …

Did you know that in addition to everything else he accomplished in life, Yusef Lateef made drawings? I didn't either until writing about this exhibition that opens Friday in Detroit. http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/arts/2015/03/17/yusef-lateef-drawings-trinosophes/24910249/

From the Miles interview: "Now, it's sickening, because everybody plays the cliches they played 5 years ago and & they're mod-ren (sic) musicians." Feather: What do you think of the West Coast guys? Miles: They can have that. Feather: Is it relaxed emotion? Miles: I think it's the heat. ... I like Chico; he's a good friend of mine, but his band makes me sick. Feather: Some of it is not jazz. Miles: I don't know what it is. I'd rather listen to Raymond Scott's old quintet Feather: Well, Shorty started out as though he was trying to play like and then I don't know what happened to him. Miles: That's an insult.

Wow!! Composer Steve Lampert just hipped me to Leonard Feather archives at Univ. of Idaho, including 50 raw audio tapes of blindfold tests going back to the 50s. Miles (58), Cannonball & Nat, Dizzy, Art Farmer, Blakey, Duke, Wayne, dozens more. http://digital.lib.uidaho.edu/cdm/blindfoldtests/collection/lfc