Mark Stryker

I hear what you're saying re: Work Song -- put another way, he's stripping back to the core values of the soul-jazz minor blues groove. I dig "Work Song" more than the duet and do not think RRK outplays him, especially on a conceptual level, though I can understand that point of view. (Or maybe, Kirk, in the top hat and tux is so far beyond everybody in the layers of irony and role playing that it qualitifes as conceptual art -- swinging conceptual art. How many masks can one man wear and symbolize? But I digress.)

At the risk of pushing this thread further down the rabbit hole of a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on Sonny's post-second sabbatical career, I think his playing on these performances is not inspired at all and, as someone who generally thinks Sonny has made a ton of great music since 1970 and who has heard him play like a God on more than one occassion in this period (and also heard some truly awful sets too -- pays your money; takes your chances) -- the period this show encapsulates is my least favorite of Sonny's, starting with the incessantly cloudy-buzz of his sound. I also don't hear rhythmic treachery here; I hear stuck-in-the-mud spinning, though, again, I've heard treachery in plenty of other performances. Having said all that, the Down Beat show performances en masse are great fun and it's interesting that even as late as 75 we still had jazz on TV in this way. Now, in the spirit of can't we all at least agree on something. Here's Sonny in 1965 with NHOP and Alan Dawson playing rhythm changes. Holy shit -- this makes a lot of other very good musicians sound like children. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=59...h&plindex=0

Larry (and all).l Here's the review. from that 1988 gig. I copied it from Nexis... JOHNNY GRIFFIN SWINGS SAX AND GIVES JAZZ A LITTLE KICK BYLINE: By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer. SECTION: CHICAGOLAND; Pg. 9; ZONE: C LENGTH: 502 words Writers about jazz often are on the lookout for images that will help to explain the music's magical methods of creation. And Wednesday night, listening to an exceptional set from tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, I think I came up with a pretty good parallel. Imagine that you're walking along at a steady pace and kicking a stone as you go-the idea being to keep the stone on the sidewalk, to kick it in such a way that you break stride as seldom as possible, and then, once you begin feeling foxy, to throw in some sly, variant kicks that will test your imagination and physical grace. Those who have engaged in that homemade little game may recall that when things are going well, the stone seems to take on a life of its own-as though its progress down the sidewalk were a thoughtfully exploratory act, and that each time your shoe came into contact with it, the stone would relay news about what it had seen and felt since the last time you'd given it some impetus. Well, the making of a jazz solo has something in common with that process-as Griffin and the rest of his fine band (pianist Michael Weiss, bassist Dennis Irwin and drummer Kenny Washington) demonstrated with particular flair on their version of Billy Strayhorn's moody "Isfahan." Originally part of Duke Ellington's "Far East Suite," the piece was still rather new to Griffin-which is why he had the sheet music for "Isfahan" in front of him and why he let Weiss take the first solo. But as the pianist's ideas unfolded with an appropriate Ellington- Strayhorn blend of romance and wit, one could detect Griffin mapping out the path he would follow during his own chorus-the way a golfer is said to "go to school" on the putt of the man who shoots before him. Or, to return to our original image, Weiss' solo line was serving as Griffin's stone- showing him what the road ahead was like and proposing attractive variations on the more obvious choices of route. That something of that sort was going on could be detected all over Griffin's face, as an especially nice Weiss idea led the leader to raise his eyebrows in bemused pleasure and inspired a preparatory rattle of fingers on saxophone keys. And with what Weiss had played in mind, one could hear how the stone had been neatly transferred from one man to another, with each man giving it his personal stride and spin. Before this, Griffin had begun with an informal Charlie Parker tribute- playing two of Parker's favorite tunes, "Just Friends" and "If I Should Lose You," with a darting grace that was exceptional even by Griffin's high standards. Thelonious Monk's "Coming on the Hudson" was next-written when Griffin was a member of Monk's band, and a piece he plays so well that Monk probably wrote it for him. At once bouncy and mournful, a mood that the whole band evoked, "Hudson" was balanced off by the strains of "Limehouse Blues"-brisk, happy, not a blues at all and the perfect ending to a perfect set.

Oh yeah. For a Harry Partch student, he sounds nothing like him. His (classical) music is a departure from all that minimalism and Asian influence that most folks associate with microtonal music. Kepler Quartet sequenza21 article A Conversation with Ben Johnston The Microtonal Piano music is amazing, a bit different from what others have done with the piano and microtones. Less of the hymnotic drone and more of the abstract splat. Thanks for bringing up Ben Johnston's music -- I adore this music. The Kepler's CD is the first of what I believe is a projected three CDs of Ben's 10 quartets -- a heroic project. Thanks to a Kronos recording from some time ago, the best known is No. 4, a mesmerizing set of microtonal variations on "Amazing Grace." The earlier works are basically atonal and idiosyncratic in their use of avant-garde techniques. The later works return to tonality with more references to the past. I recall the 9th as being particularly warm hearted. All of his music is profoundly human, often witty. Ben was still teaching at the University of Illinois when I arrived on campus in 1981. He retired a couple years later and I unfortunately never got to know him.

"That's the definitive jazz album. If you want to know what jazz is, listen to that album. That has all you'd ever want to hear. It embodies the sprit of everyone who plays jazz." -- Tony Williams. FWIW, " Milestones" has long been one of my two favorite records of all time, the other being Sonny Rollins' "A Night at the Village Vanguard." I play "Milestones" way more than "Kind of Blue" and I wonder if others do too. The latter may be the more important and influential record historically but "Milestones" is a lot more fun and if I could only have one, there's no question which one I'd choose. If "Milestones" turns 50 this year, then "Kind of Blue" turns 50 next year -- get ready for the onslaught of anniversary stories. Ugh. 'Course, I'll probably end up writing one myself. Sigh. Anniversaries are like crack to journalists. Can't break the habit.

Great thread gang -- peoples' enthusiasms have me anxious do explore music I don't know (Imbrie, Rawshtorne, Bax, Bridge). And Berger rocks ... Re: Rochberg -- his music has never thrilled me either but, historically, as the first big-name American serialist who morphed into a neo-romantic, he became a key figure in helping to topple the hegemony of serialism, paving the way for the post-modern age. The 3rd Quartet (1972) is the turning point. My contribution to the discussion is Leon Kirchner, still underrated but coming on strong, whose four quartets comprise a really profound cycle. The Orion String Quartet is in the process of recording all four, but it's not available yet. Meantime, you can get the first three on this indespensible disc: http://www.amazon.com/Kirchner-Historic-Re...6826&sr=8-2 I heard the Orion play all four quartets in a single evening here last summer and it was one of the great concert experiences of my adult life. Here's how I wrote it up. I don't usually gush this much but it was something else ... LEON KIRCHNER GETS ROYAL TREATMENT AT GREAT LAKES FESTIVAL ORION FOURSOME PLAYS COMPOSER'S 4 STRING QUARTETS BY MARK STRYKER FREE PRESS MUSIC CRITIC June 20, 2007 The Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival traditionally features a concert devoted solely to its resident composer for the year. It's always a treat, but Monday's traversal of all four of Leon Kirchner's string quartets - a 57-year autobiographical arch from 1949 to 2006, with the 88-year-old composer in attendance - was one for the ages. Bristling with a revelatory sense of discovery and thrilling authority, the evening underscored the Kirchner zeitgeist. Neglected for decades, the 88-year-old American composer's uniquely personal modernism is in the full flush of being rediscovered. The Great Lakes festival engaged several Kirchner champions this year, including the Orion String Quartet, whose fiercely committed and polished performances Monday upped the ante even further. The concert was a repeat of the Orion's March program for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, where Kirchner's music was celebrated all season. Why Kirchner and why now? Perhaps because his music fills a niche in today's pluralist scene. For listeners who find high-modernist complexity too bullying, minimalism too simple, neo-romanticism too mushy and post-modernism too derivative or affected, Kirchner's tautly argued but communicative music satisfies both the mind and heart. Though a student of Arnold Schoenberg, Kirchner remained an ear composer rather than a system composer. His four quartets balance sinewy textures, pugnacious rhythms and ambiguous harmony perched on the edge of atonality with a lifelong addiction to beauty, intuition and a storyteller's command of tension and release. The String Quartet No. 1 (1949), for example, lurches forward in a tremendous rush of coiled energy, recedes into rhapsodic solos and then splinters into free counterpoint rife with tannic dissonance and aggression. The piece was famously called Bartok's Seventh Quartet by Hungarian violinist Josef Szigeti (Bartok wrote six), but its high-strung carriage also sounds like music born of the atomic age. The Second Quartet (1958) is a masterpiece. Its three movements, played without pause, total 15 minutes and pack a concentrated punch. The music is dense with thematic ideas that grow in tightly organized but never predictable patterns. Textures are thinner than in the earlier quartet, with a darkly hued, almost Brahmsian luminescence hovering in the adagio. Scurrying chromatic lines turn the finale into a dervish. The final gesture, a sweetly tonal chord that turns deliciously sour is typical Kirchner. Scored for string quartet and electronic tape, the Third Quartet (1966) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967, but it has not aged as well as the earlier works. The bleeps, bloops and blats sound too much like a 1950s version of the future. At Kirchner's suggestion, the Orion Quartet segued directly into the Fourth Quartet, which was written for them last year. The effect was stunning, as the final 13 minutes felt like a homecoming, the composer returning to clarified textures, romantic melody and shimmering harmony. The Orion Quartet brought an intensely focused blend, plangent warmth and technical aplomb to all of the music, alert to the mercurial shifts of mood and expression. They were met with rapturous applause, and in a touching coda, ended the evening by walking down the center aisle to shake the composer's hand one by one.

"People Time," the 2-CD duet album with Kenny Barron recorded about three months before Getz died in 1991, just kills me. Getz's melodicism is so extraordinary -- every phrase as natural as breathing, and the pair just seems to float so ebulliently through the swinging tunes. I'm fond of the late records with McNeely, but for me nothing compares to the depth of expression on "People Time" ... Speaking of "Captain Marvel," if you haven't seen this, go now: http://youtube.com/watch?v=v5u747pBucM Larry, I'm extremely jealous that you saw this band live around the same time ... I'd love to see the rest of this tape. I remember reading a story in Down Beat around 76-78 and somebody -- maybe Stan's wife? -- said something that always stuck with me, that (paraphrasing) Stan and Miles were the youngest 50 year olds in jazz. Jim: I haven't heard the CD of "Captain Marvel." Your comment suggests a new mix or radically changed sound from the LP. Can you elaborate?

Well, I didn't start this thread as a thumbs up or thumbs down referendum on Cosby, and I'm staying out of it. I thought the tale was funny and was especially interested in what the context of the telling says about the relative place of jazz in the culture. However, I will add one thing in response to Debra's comment. I don't think jazz was presented at all as Dr. Huxtable's eccentricity or as a museum piece. In fact, the best part of the show as it related to jazz was that the music was seen not as weirdly exotic but simply as part of the everyday life of these people and ingrained into their culture. Cliff's father had been a professional trombonist. The family often went to hear jazz in clubs. The names of musicians like Miles Davis came up organically in dialogue. Theo had a poster of Wynton Marsalis in his room. I recall Cliff one time singing a big chunk of "Moody's Mood for Love." Etc. One of the great moments in the whole series actually was a spot at the end of one program when Cliff and Claire dance romantically to Coltrane -- "Dear Lord" if memory serves. The music is never named and nobody makes a big deal out of it. It's just there in the center of their home, as it is for many.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgcQydWWeE Was sent this wonderful clip today -- Bill Cosby telling a long story about trying to sit in with Sonny Stitt as a kid. Beyond the hilarious story -- and Cosby's hilarious storytelling -- I was struck by how hip you could be on a talk show in those days, especially on Cavett's show. Dig how Cosby warns him before he starts the story that it might be too inside for the room and Cavett's response is to go ahead, and then he takes about 8 minutes to tell the whole story. MS

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...030514/1035/ENT Oliver Knussen's name has come up on the board occassionally in passing, mostly in admiration I recall, so here's a link to a story we ran about him today in the Detroit Free Press. He's conducting a fabulous program this coming weekend with the Detroit Symphony -- Stravinsky's "Fireworks" and "The Fairy's Kiss" with Knussen's own "Flourish with Fireworks" and his Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz, who just played it in Chicago with Esa-Pekka conducting. The concerto is a terrific piece; you can get it as a download from the DG website. Anybody have memories of hearing his music live (or, alternatively, hearing him conduct)? MS

In the mid '70s my middle school band played at a jazz festival in Fort Wayne, Ind. with Woody's band as the guest. There were individual instrument clinics during the day and Frank did the one for saxophonists. What I remember most was that he was adamant that the best thing we could do to improve our sound on saxophone was to take up the bassoon. Any double reed instrument would do, he said, but especially bassoon. At 13, we thought the advice (and him) were among the weirdest things we had ever heard.. I mean, we could barely play the saxophone and here he was telling us to take up the bassoon. Anyway, it was only much later that I began to understand what he was surely getting at -- since a double reed instrument is played with a "double lip" embouchure you have to have your diaphragm-breathing-air column together or you can't produce a full sound or stay in tune. The idea is to transfer that air column to the saxophone, where many players bite down too hard on the top of the mouthpiece, constrict the air flow, cause intonation problems and don't produce a full or even sound in all registers. I had a saxophone teacher once who suggested practicing double lip for the same reason.

Here's a long piece about Feldman by composer-critic Kyle Gann: http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/200...ciency_fel.html

I did some fun listening over the weekend to some early Juilliard recordings and tried to flesh out the details of the discography. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good discography online. I have in my files about half the Juilliard's complete Columbia/CBS/Sony discography in the form of a 12-year old fax from some publicity guy with Sony/Juilliard, but for some reason it cuts off with the letter "M," which is really a drag. Anyway, I was a bit off in my previous reference to the Juilliard's time with RCA. It started earlier than I remembered, in 1957, with the Mozart and Haydn recordings (before Korff was replaced by Cohen as second violinist), and seems to have lasted into 1962. The Dvorak/Wolf RCA has a 1964 copywright date on the back of the jacket, but it must have sat in the can for a couple years. It is certainly true that by 1963, the quartet was back with Columbia because I have a Mozart "Haydn" box from that year that was recorded in 1962 and released in 1963. I've got some Mendelssohn (1963) and Schubert from around this time as well, though, interestingly all of these were issued on Epic rather than Columbia Masterworks. Anybody know why that might be? I also wondered why the split with Columbia happened in 1957 and have thought that aside from the obvious answer (money), it may have had something to do with the Juilliard's desire to record standard repertoire and the fact that Columbia had long been committed to the Budapest String Quartet in Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. For the first decade or so of its existence, the Juilliard was really known as a contemporary music group. Its first recording project was the Bartok cycle, which was issued in 1950, and it was followed by Second Viennese recordings of all four Schoenberg quartets, plus Berg Op. 3, Webern Op. 5 and other new stuff by Milhaud, William Bergsma and surely others. Since the first RCAs were Mozart and Haydn and the quartet started what appeared to be the germ of a Beethoven cycle, perahps the standard rep. issue had become a source of conflict with Columbia. On the other hand, there's a fabulous 1953 LP by the Juilliard that couples Mozart's No. 20, K. 499 and No. 21, K. 575. But then, maybe that was just a one-off to prove that the Juilliard could play mainstream literature as well as the contemporary stuff. Maybe nobody cares about this stuff but me, but I find it interesting. Here's something else: The back of that Mozart LP lists some previous Juilliard recordings and one is the Ravel with a catalog number of 2202; another is the Berg "Lyric Suite" (2148). These appear to be 10-inch LPs. I've never seen nor heard these and they've never been reissued to my knowledge. Some Googling turned up the Ravel for sale but not the Berg. Anybody know anything more about these recordings? Obsessively, MS

That ealy '60s Debussy/Ravel is a m.f. -- maybe the finest edition of the Juilliard at its absolute peak. RCA reissued it late in the LP era in its digitally remastered Legendary Performers series at midprice. It's still my favorite recording of these works. There were just five years or so in the early '60s when the Juilliard was signed to RCA and those LPs are are all stunners -- there's an incredibly intense Beethoven Op. 131; the Carter 2nd/William Schuman 3rd; Schubert "Death and the the Maiden"/"Quartettstz"; Haydn Op. 74, No. 1/Op. 77 No. 1; Mozart K465 and K387; and the Berg Lyric Suite/Webern Five Pieces Op. 5 and Six Bagatelles Op. 9. (The Berg/Webern has a great cover: sky blue background with the four guys in tails seated and standing and Bobby Mann looking lean and a bit like JFK.) Update Friday morning: I left out two LPs. There's also a Beethoven Op. 95/135 and a Dvorak, Op. 61/Wolf, "Italian Serenade."" I've had fun collecting all of the LPs but I've also taken the plunge on a couple of the Testament CDs -- the Beethoven Op. 131 coupled with the Schubert Death and the Maiden; the Berg/Carter/Schuman -- and nobody who invests will be disappointed. I wish this edition had recorded the entire Beethoven cycle, especially the Late Quartets, but by the time they got to it for Columbia in the mid and late 60s, Carlyss had replaced Cohen. That said, I adore that first Beethoven cycle for its mix of guts and insight, plus enough beauty when they need it. By the time of their last remake in the early 80s (live at the Library of Congress I believe) the later problems that Larry mentions are in evidence. But I will say that on a good night in concert (or good day in the studio), the later Juilliard could still bring it. With some trepidation I just bought a LP box of the Mozart "Haydn" quartets recorded in the early '80s and was pleasantly surprised to hear just how supple the ensemble sounds; some of the Juilliard grit is still there but in a soulful way. Sorting out all of the records is too daunting at this hour, but its worth mentioning that the early '60s Bartok cycle (with the Cohen line-up) remains incomparable. It's a crime that it's not available domestically and hasn't been for eons, but I'm pretty sure you can get it as an import. When I worked in a classical record store in Champaign in the mid '80s you could still get it as a 3 for the price of 2 LP box. The Juilliard's early '50s mono LPs (the first complete Bartok cycle on record, yes?) are a gas too. More raw, less settled and less sweeping than the later versions; sort of like Bird's first Now's The Time as compared to the great remake on Verve. The final digital Bartoks by the Juilliard late in the game on Sony have the same issues as the later Beethovens. God, I loved this quartet in its prime. Larry's got it right -- it's a heterogeneous blend in which you can hear all of the individual parts and personalities of the players without sacrificing a basic ensemble unity, along with that fierce rhythmic energy and edge and the interpretive imagination they bring to the notion of a composer's intent. The balance of individualism and ensemble is a truly American approach, and in many ways analogous to a jazz band. There are other great quartets no doubt and of those that came of age in the Juilliard's early years, the Hollywood remains especially underrated -- that group is another passion of mine. But the Juilliard is special. Bobby Mann is a particular hero, even with the sound and intonation problems that came up late in the game. Somebody once called him the most important American-born chamber music player ever and I think it's a pretty fair statement. When he finally retired (at 76 or 77), I wrote a story about him in which I quoted Juilliard cellist Joel Krosnick comparing him to Larry Bird. Mann was never the most naturally gifted violinist in terms of flawless technique or opulent tone, but through hard work, intellect and sheer force of will he transformed himself into a world-class musician. Bird was similar said Krosnick. "Can't run, can't jump, slow, but he scores 26 points a game, 12 assists, 13 rebounds and his team wins the NBA championship."

John Campbell is a hugely underrated pianist and he plays his ass off on Vol. 29, including a supersonic, swinging, bracingly melodic and rhythmically flexible bebop romp through "Just Friends" that opens the concert in which he oscillates between C and G-flat every half chorus. "Emily" is the other standout track, which alternatives between 3 and 4 and also has more key change twists. Both ideas descend from Bill Evans but it's way past imitation here. Full disclosure: He's a friend, but this is the kind of playing that should make better-known pianists nervous. I don't think the records he's made, with the exception of this one, capture the excitement he can generate live. http://www.amazon.com/Live-Maybeck-Recital...976&sr=1-11

I should check out those records again -- always a fascinating experience to go back to music that you loved very early, before you really knew anything, and see what your current ears tell you.

Not to hijack this thread from Pete Condoli, but http://www.jaycorre.com (but of course) seems to indicate he's living in Hollywood, Fla. (suburban Lauderdale-Miami). Corre was pretty much the first tenor saxophone soloist I got to know since my first jazz record at age 10 was Buddy Rich's "Big Swing Face" and Corre is the featured tenor man. I've got all of those old World Pacific sides by Buddy's band but haven't listened to them in a long, long time. I recall Corre's sound as deep and warm and his melodic concept sort of out of Stan Getz but very muscular.

EDC: I apologize if you find my reasonableness intimidating, but we all resort to our strengths in the heat of battle, and, besides, I'm hoping to hone my skills enough to become a member of the board's elite. This is one of those disagreements in which I think much of your position can be best characterized by paraphrasing Ben Franklin's epithet for John Adams: You mean well for your country, are always an honest man, often a wise man, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of your senses. I won't dive back into the fray at this point, but I will note that, leaving aside the recorded evidence, I've seen Herbie live several times in various contexts the last seven or eight years and only once was it out-and-out disappointing (a meandering night with Hargrove, Brecker, et. al.), and a trio concert with Kenny Davis and Gene Jackson contained some of the most daredevil piano playing I've ever heard (speaking of color and texture ...) I'm not saying that one great night absolves all, but if you heard what I heard, you would have dug it. Jim: I see what you're driving at re: harmony/texture, though I'm not sure the line is always clear. When Herbie is inspired I think that what often happens is that he starts abstracting the harmony in a functional way and then "breaks free" into purely textural ideas that extend and/or mask form.

Hagiography is certainly an issue in jazz crit; I've been guilty myself. Lord knows, Herbie's uneven output demands the most level-headed assessment one can muster. Has anyone else in jazz had the talent, nee genius, to fly as high and then stoop so low? But at the end of the day, his contributions still rank among the most important of any on his instrument since 1960, even if you accept the premise that he produced nothing of real value after 1968 (which I don't). EDC is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The idea that the Blue Notes "were hardly all that" and the patronizing attitude oozing through a statement like "Herbie might have once had something, sort of," profoundly downplays the scope of his achievement and influence on the sound of contemporary jazz -- reconciling Powell, Garland, Kelly, Jamal, Evans, blues, impressionist and modern classical harmony with his own melodic imagination, quick ears, progressive temperament and swing. The Blue Notes are fundamental to the DNA of jazz, and "Empryean Isles" and "Maiden Voyage" particularly are masterpieces, especially, for me, the former, where Herbie's spontaneous linear invention, harmony, rhythmic flexibility and touch have a sweeping authority that remains state of the art. And that's leaving aside the compositional ideas, the quick-witted accompaniment, the contribution with Miles and the "team player" aspects (which, in fairness, EDC acknowledges) and the extraordinary number of great records that he elevates with his presence ("Speak No Evil," "Oblique," "Search for the New Land" for starters.) At his best, I don't think there's been anyone greater. Now, how often he has been at his best is a different issue, or whether the positives of this or that later project outweight the negatives or whether he's coasting on his natural talent or truly digging deep or talking jive about "possibilities" but really just looking to cash a big check, not that cashing a big check doesn't hold some allure. For myself, I've developed a great love for the Mwandishi band and live Head Hunters (check out "Flood." Whew!). The former is pretty damned abstract and not commercial at all; and while there's obviously a populist thrust to Head Hunters, at its most inspired the funky grooves and adventurous blowing form an alluring marriage in which the aesthetic tension or paradox of the means actually makes the end results more compelling. The cats are playing. VSOP is, um, well, let's move on ... Actually, my problem with VSOP has never been Herbie, who to my ears often sounds great. It's the weirdly proportioned balances -- could Tony bash any more indiscriminately and could Ron's bass sound any louder or more rubbery? -- and the overall lack of taste. (Jesus, Freddie, if you play that lip-slur thing one more time I'm going to scream.) Those concerts were all played in big outdoor venues and to play in those places you have to fill up the space in way that precludes the kind of subtleties that lent so much magic to their previous work in intimate clubs or recording studios. That's not to excuse the excesses of the music but the circumstances, including cheering crowds, didn't help. For the record, I like much of the new Joni Mitchell project; there's some exquisite, communicative playing between Herbie, Holland and Shorter, and I even like some, not all, of the singers. Of course, the marketing is a tsunami. This is America and Herbie and Joni are stars. But I'm not responding to that; I'm responding to my ears. Unlike "Possibilities," which was trash, this is a serious record, albiet not to everyone's taste. Jim: What do you mean by harmony as harmony as opposed to harmony as texture? Any specific examples?

Larry: Re: not part of the solution then part of the problem. I see your point and I agree. Equating novelty and quality is a danger, though I didn't mean to imply they were of equal value in my original piece. I was simply trying to point out the danger of such a regressive programming philosophy. While I do believe that adventure in and of itself is of great value in the concert experience, ultimately as a critic and a listener I suppose I am in favor of good new music and against bad new music. But until we hear a piece, how can we know for sure whether it is successful? One of the things about new music is that it has to get played for the distinctions to be made. There is no received wisdom about the latest from Carter or Riley, though I am willing to agree with with your conjecture that Carter's 5th outstripped the quality of what the Kronos played on this particular concert, though I wouldn't go so far as to say that none of those composers could ever write with more than a smidge of Carter's quality. Ultimately, I think that performers need to be allowed to play the music that they believe in most passionately because that's what produces the best performances and makes the best case for the composers' vision. I wouldn't expect to hear the Kronos play Carter and and I wouldn't expect the Juilliard Quartet to play Reich. But audiences should be able to hear the best music of any style. We can then all decide what we like and debate the aesthetic merits of high modernism vs. minimalism vs. post-modernism, etc. There's room for all in the marketplace of concerts.

I'm a little late to the party here, but without going too deep down this particular rabbit hole and with apologies to others who might have made these points in the preceding five pages, I wanted to add 2 cents and then post a piece I wrote about four years ago after an incident here in Detroit. First, the moral mandate that Holland was speaking of in his original review -- an aesthetic stance that downplayed aural pleasure for other values -- is not really the same as what Peter perceives to be a you-must-eat-your-spinach approach to programming on the part of his local chamber music society. The first has to do with the nature of the art itself; the second is an issue of presentation and programming philosopohy. I think that Holland's point, and there is merit to it, is that the line of atonal and serial composers -- Schoenberg, Webern and the post-war avant-garde like Boulez, Babbitt, Stockhausen, Carter (not serial but similarly "difficult"), Wourinen, etc. -- wrote music that was not only baffling to a wide swath of the classical audience but also sprang from a destroy-the-past, who-cares-if-you listen ideology. Now, I happen to really like some of this music, though I'm more than willing to admit that there is nothing worse than bad serial music or squeak-fart music, with the exception of Yanni and George Winston. But having been in school in the early '80s (late in the game as this war goes), I can attest firsthand to the ivory tower academic composers still around who railed against anything that smacked of tonality, convinced they were saving music for the rest of us. I'm just glad that the this particular war is over and nobody has to take sides anymore. I love Carter and Adams (sorry EDC). I was just interviewing some great young classical musicians last night who have formed a new music ensmble and play the shit out of everything from Glass and Reich to Stockhausen, Rzewski, and Ligeti. They made the same point; they are just so relieved that the scene is so wide open today that they feel free to enjoy the best of it all. I think audiences are beginning to feel the same way. The piece I mentioned earlier relates to the other issue of programming. It ran under the headline: "Two String Quartet Concerts: One Reactionary, the Other Triumphal." ---------- By Mark Stryker Free Press Music Critic For the record, the Pacifica Quartet gave well-played, fervid performances of Dvorak, Hindemith and Mendelssohn on Saturday. But the news of the evening was the cowardly 11th-hour decision by the Chamber Music Society of Detroit to cancel what would have been the Detroit premiere of Elliott Carter's Fifth String Quartet. Here was the chance to hear a terrific young American quartet tackle the latest from Carter, still active at 95 and considered by many America's greatest living composer. Carter's corpus of five quartets ranks with Bartok's six and Shostakovich's 15 as perhaps the most substantial contributions to the genre in the 20th Century. But society president Lois Beznos asked the Pacifica to drop the Carter quartet for fear of alienating those subscribers who complained after a November concert by the Juilliard String Quartet that included 20th-Century atonal works by Viennese modernist Anton Webern. This is lunacy. Never mind that Carter's Fifth (1995) is a brilliant work in the composer's late style, muscular but communicative, full of spry dialogue and texture. Never mind that the Pacifica's reputation is based partly on its passionate advocacy of Carter. Never mind that removing Carter to placate a few reactionary patrons drives a stake through the heart of the society's artistic integrity and tightens the noose more securely around the future of classical music. If you do not play the music of today, to paraphrase composer Gunther Schuller, there will be no masterpieces for tomorrow. And if you cut off Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert from the oxygen of contemporary currents, you slowly suffocate their life force, turning the canon into a wax museum. It is also a remarkably shortsighted approach to audience building. Sitting next to me at the concert was a couple from Grosse Pointe who specifically came to hear Carter. They were livid. "We won't be coming back," said William Cox. "It's obscene." The irony is that the society is sold out through subscriptions and has a waiting list. If playing Carter means the defection of a few patrons who think music stopped developing around the time the Titanic sank, then we should say good riddance and welcome in some fresh air. The most recent piece to be performed during the society's 2003-04 season now becomes a woodwind quintet by Samuel Barber written during the Eisenhower administration. Carter's Fifth lasts 20 minutes. The nine concerts this season total about 15 hours of music. What's the purpose of a chamber music society unwilling to invest 20 minutes out of 15 hours in the future of its art? Thankfully, the University Musical Society believes in chamber music as a living art form. UMS presented a captivating program Sunday by the Kronos Quartet called "Visual Music." The concert folded 10 diverse pieces into a seamless 90-minute multimedia production. Collaborating with the Kronos were scenic and projection designer Alexander Nichols, lighting designer Larry Neff and sound designer Mark Grey. Not every piece worked, but the precise staging, the committed playing and true integration of aural and visual elements left a lasting impression. The set included four huge wire sound sculptures and a large screen. The quartet at times played in front of the screen and at times behind it. For Krzysztof Penderecki's "Quartetto per archi" (1960), the players -- violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Jennifer Culp -- turned their backs to the audience and read the huge graphic score as it rolled across the screen, producing tapping bows, harmonics and other sonic delights. In the opener, Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music," the musicians swung microphones through the sculptures creating cuckoo-like feedback. It proved a funny prelude to John Zorn's "Cat O' Nine Tails (Tex Avery Directs the Marquis de Sade)," a nutty score in which snippets -- "Tea for Two," cartoon music, a hoedown, Beethoven allusions -- are smashed into a collage. A glimpse of Bugs Bunny on the screen was a riot. More sobering was Scott Johnson's "How It Happens," in which post-minimalist pulsing music merged with sampled narration by the radical journalist I.F. Stone, who intones phrases like, "There's nothing more unholy in human history than a holy war." The indeterminate film imagery turned into a ghostly airplane at the close. Terry Riley's "One Earth, One People, One Love" also made a humanist statement, with the mournful cello melody adding unexpected poignancy to the NASA images. On a brighter note, Conlon Nancarrow's hyper "Boogie Woogie No. 3A," based on a work for player-piano, was a rush of smiling adrenaline. I was less taken with Grey's "Bertoia I" and "Bertoia II," which found the players waving their hands in front of the wire sculptures to trigger ambient electronic sounds. But overall, the concert bristled with adventure and relevance. There will always be a place for traditional string quartet concerts like the one the Pacifica Quartet gave on Saturday, but the juxtaposition of the Kronos Quartet explorations with the Chamber Music Society of Detroit's unwillingness to engage with the music of its own time left no doubt that if you're not part of the solution in classical music, you're part of the problem. --MS

Larry: A lot of fresh insight and close listening here, thanks. It really is the difference between the great nights and the average nights that is worthy of study; God is in the details an all that. I don't have the CD so I'm just responding through your ears, but the out of phase issue you describe really might come down to whether the cats could hear each other. You suggest it might be due to the set-up required for stereo recording, but it may well be an issue of capricious acoustics. Concert halls are notorious in this regard, especially for jazz since they weren't built for drum sets. You're describing sensations I hear all the time in concert halls (and festival settings) -- even with monitors, the sound on stage can be weird enough to fuck up the time. Or the band can actually be together but the balance in the hall is so screwy -- do all of today's sound engineers have ears of stone or just those at concerts I happen to attend? -- that it sounds out of phase to those sitting out front. OP and company would not have had monitors of course, and excessive separation could certainly have exacerbated problematic acoustic issues on stage. The extra swift tempos would certainly play into this too. I don't know much about the technical issue of recording in those days -- lots of extra physical separation would have been needed for stereo? MS

Another fascinating but overlooked piece from the first half of the 20th century is Karol Szymanowski's Second Violin Concerto (1933) -- ripe with Polish folk melody folded into a late-romantic sound world redolent of Scriabin and Strauss. I heard Leonidas Kavakos play this recently with the Detroit Symphony and was quite taken by him and the piece. MS

God yes, the Ligeti! It's a masterpiece. I spaced out on that in my list. Good grab, David.

A few thoughts: *I didn't see the Berg Violin Concerto on your list and it's among the most ravishing works in the repertoire -- it's a 12-tone work but the row is set up to exploit tonal relationships and Berg's sublime romanticism is a constant miracle. *Among brand new concertos, I'm in the John Adams camp. He's written two -- the first has a more traditional cast (though in his language, of course) and the second, "The Dharma at Big Sur" is for electric violin and is very jazz oriented. *I heartily endorse Larry's recommendation of the Dutilleux, and would add that he recently completed a second concerto, "Sur le meme accord," for Anne-Sophie Mutter, who recorded it a couple years ago for DG. It's only 9 minutes long but it's a real sweatheart of a piece. It's coupled on CD with Mutter's earlier recordings of the Bartok Second and Stravinsky. (Related note: Don't miss Dutilleux's Cello Concerto either, "Tout un monde Lointain.") *I like Takemitsu's "Far Calls, Coming, far!" (1980). It's in the stream-of-conciousness, impressionistic tradition coming out of Debussy, similar in many ways to the Dutilleux in that it's not really goal-oriented. You can sort of split 20th century Violin Concertos into two big camps -- the virtuoso, heroic works growing from the 19th century tradition (Barber, Bartok, Nielsen, Adams, etc.) and those that are more chamber music writ large (Dutilleux, Takemitsu, Berg). *Some others I can suggest in widely varying styles; Kaija Saariaho, "Graal Theatre" (fantastic colors, textures, impressionistic, darting -- akin to the Dutilleux ) Bernstein's "Serenade" (Americana) Elliott Carter's Violin Concerto (super high modernist density) Oliver Knussen, Violin Concerto (neo-Stravinskian) William Bolcom, Violin Concerto (gutsy, post-modern eclectic).