Francis Davis--progress in jazz

[montg]

I came across this quote in a recent FD article in the VV. All the growth in jazz is in composition and context rather than in the language of improvisation. Not sure what to make of this strand of thinking, which I seem to have come across before. Are players in the hard bop idiom like Eric Alexander just picking over the bones of the past? Can you be inventive in the hard bop idiom but not innovative? Is that good enough? The most innovative jazz is stuff like Uri Caine and Bill Frisell?

fd on uricaine

Coltrane took jazz harmony as far as it could go, and everything since has been a refinement of his methods or a reversion to Charlie Parker's. But that's only if we're talking about improvised solos, which is where we've been taught to listen for breakthroughs. What's been expanding over the last several decades, beginning with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians' emphasis on collective interplay in Coltrane's wake and continuing with the reemergence of composition as a vital force near the tail end of the loft era, hasn't been the language of improvisation but the context surrounding it. So much so that in the case of eclectics like Uri Caine, Don Byron, and Bill Frisell—who all feel free to incorporate whatever strikes their fancy from the pop and longhair music they listened to between Blue Note LPs while growing up in the '60s and '70s—a good way to recognize today's most innovative jazz is hearing complaints that it isn't jazz at all

[Chalupa]

Paging Clem....