Jef Gilson 1926-2012 RIP

[HolgerFreimutSchrick]

The French pianist and Bandleader Jef Gilson has died last week. In his band has played musicians as Bill Coleman, Bernard Vitet, Jean-Louis Chautemps, François Jeanneau, Michel Portal, Jean-Luc Ponty, Bernard Lubat, Lloyd Miller and Henri Texier.

see

http://www.tsfjazz.com/tsf-en-bref.php?id=1574

or

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Gilson

[clifford_thornton]

Dang. RIP.

[king ubu]

r.i.p. Jef Gilson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwPCXsGKnhY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=375qcQ5oSyU

[sidewinder]

Very sorry to hear this - RIP.

[brownie]

I took part in a panel about Albert Ayler in the late '60s shortly after Ayler's concerts at Salle Pleyel.

Jef Gilson was very much against Ayler's music. I was on the opposite side.

Never was a fan of Gilson's music after that!

[clifford_thornton]

Really? That's interesting.

[king ubu]

Yeah! Any memories about what bothered Gilson, brownie?

[brownie]

A sample from the controversy (in French) from the Ayler.co;uk website), as published in Jazz-Hot in February 1967:

La Musique Contre Nous

Buin was also a participant in the debate...

[king ubu]

Très intéressant!

[Ehsan]

Remembering JEF GILSON

[Hardbopjazz]

In English

About the passing of Albert Ayler in the third Paris Jazz Festival, Yves Buin meets Jef Gilson and Claude Lenissois after their stand resolutely hostile

MUSIC

AGAINST WE

I have not had the opportunity to know - once, it seemed the honor - Jef Gilson and Claude Lénissois. Jef Gilson I appreciated - given the difficult conditions of the birth and existence of a French jazz - various albums published by the Club of the Exchequer, I attended the concert in Antibes in 1965 . He received also my full support, when he said - but perhaps he been loaned this sentence? - About the "Glass Enclosure" Bud Powell, that this was the finest piano recording of jazz history. I understand, however, that my interest in his music gives Jef Gilson neither hot nor cold. As for Claude Lénissois, I can not claim to know him after a few sentences of the bass clarinet, played in unison, I heard of him.

But, either. We have two musicians, highlights of this quality, which we talk about music. But what they never admit to a critical, they released their Revolver. We expected an accession or a reasoned protest, even the hated middle of caution, we find only contempt. Total contempt expressed in terms defamatory. We believed we discuss music, we are in full subjectivity: "We, we do not like it at all." End of story. So subjectivity to subjectivity, I liked it, liked it. To believe our authors, so I am to fall into the category of "fans who are afraid of being overwhelmed and rolled forward in the ambient shit." Will I be offended? No. When you take it so low, we must strive to raise the matter a bit.

So Lénissois Gilson and I admire you very much. You have courage. However without a second thought. You strangle Ayler - before history. (Note by the way, were there no one in front. Erhenbourg him, one day, found André Breton in his way. He understood that you could not write anything.) Finally, you take responsibility the gravedigger. You say out loud what many are thinking.

Writings remain, you know. Also, reading your few lines in "our" magazine, I wanted to find a precedent in the history of music criticism. But, excuse me, I'm not serious, much less that Albert Ayler which you find the seriously alarming. I have not had the courage to consult the list of errors 253 582 music critics. But remember, for example, that the most famous Parisian critic of the time - it seems - has criticized Berlioz: bring on stage, his cows, sea horse, his goats and their bells. The critic has fallen into oblivion, into dust. But Berlioz? You also remember the tone of those who received in 1954, in Paris, "Desert" of the great Edgar Varese. Admit that you are on familiar ground and that your words are also inappropriate to aesthetics than convincing. Indeed, we pass the "poo" - already mentioned - the "rumble" through "early senility."

I admire you so, you commit too strongly, to get by putting people on your side "sensible" and the other suckers in a lot of snobbery. But there is no courage, there are only small courage. You could have one to go and tell us what you Ayler deliver now. Your tone, you allowed your intransigence. Maybe have you done? So, hats off. Otherwise, it was possible. I have witnessed in Antibes such a meeting. An amateur after "Love Supreme" Coltrane came to see him and said what he thought of his music. This gave: "I do not like your music. You only range on range, etc.. ". Coltrane replied: "Do you want me to pay you" and take out his wallet. Then, they continued. A little. Dialogue, in short. I doubt that Albert Ayler has responded to your "critical", and he does not care and probably never will read these lines. Perhaps had he loved franchise. This seems a kind, as they say. He expects nothing of us. You will scream, but his music is not for us. He does not try to convince us. He comes, he plays. Take it or leave it. So you say, why he played in Paris with us? Well simply because for some organizers - they like or do not like Albert Ayler is one of the boiling points of contemporary jazz. Detestable to a concert, Ayler, however, is "My name ... "" Ghosts "," Spirits Rejoice ", etc.. Deplore it, you're entitled. Let others rejoice without treating them as "unconscious". They will return the favor and, as you aupposez, we will continue to fly high.

On reflection, however, Albert Ayler is ahead of you. Like Rimbaud, he put the beauty in his lap and he was murdered. Because - maybe not you not agree? - Our beauty for some black Americans whose Ayler, this is rubbish. They are done with the music all sounds harmoniously organized. They are not the only, I admit. For Ayler, music is learned more - (there Is also learned one day?) - The academy. He knows that music goes beyond music. Rest assured, I will not make a revolutionary Ayler. Talk about avant-garde. The avant-garde, political term, applied to a class organization, was never valid in terms of aesthetics. Use it only leads to confusion. More simply, Albert Ayler tells me "something" about African Americans. Like Coltrane, Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Coleman. What? you ask. Obviously, I could answer with the effects of cuff, quote Lukaks, talk about what unites development, refinement and decadence. But I give up. And Comolli has it all fit and so well. I prefer to tell you qu'Ayler awake and Co. 'something' (again) in me that I can not find anywhere else. Not in our music, or in our poetry, nor in our literature. And this fluid - perhaps tasteless, I grant you - leads me to believe that Shepp, Taylor and Ayler, of course, are more true (1) that most of our great contemporaries West, this opinion that engaging Me also. You see, I give you some nice weapons, now you refuse the marsh subjectivist, the top of the music. But you do not, however, avoid the choices you sooner or later impose and now, the "New Thing", the "band" in Coleman and Taylor, as heterogeneous as they are. The jazz was taken over you, it was taken. Rollins took over the Getz November 13 (2).

Yes, when comparing Getz and Rollins, hesitation - out of pleasure - is not possible. One, great musician arrived, actor, wielding his audience of his demagogic winks, the other indifferent solitary, with his music. Rollins, Taylor, Ayler tell you, you should understand that you have to do the jazz that we expect - not that of Getz, but that of Bix or Charlie Haden: White Jazz. And do not tell me about reverse racism, it's an old refrain that one. Bob Dylan himself, did not sing in the style of Big Bill Bronzy. He "invented" a white blues. Instead, you see, you musicians, not without pleasure, that part of the public left the room. In your place, I'm wary. As recalled by Michel Delorme, the same thing happened to Bernard and Barney Wilen Vitet very recently. How can you approve of a certain Poujadism latent transforming its public misunderstanding, the gulf separating it from the creator, in a poor folk. "To me, it does not do it. I paid, I must be served. "

The "band" in Taylor and Coleman still has a dedicated quality misunderstand or do not understand or even that you do not want to talk. Naked violence. You lack it. I do not blame you. I'm like you. Have you seen me participate in a battle of Hernani this Sunday, November 13? Have I challenged to a duel? No. There is little chance that I die for music. But Shepp, Coltrane ... Ayler are filled with violence that is the best: that's all or nothing (white is white, black is black), one of derision (lead Dada to surrealism, anti-music music), that the disillusionment, the inability to communicate, potholes dug by other hands than ours white. This violence, as Trotsky noted about morality, that "their music is not ours." Are we going to prevent these jazzmen so disconcerting to their music singing supporters or to decree the death of the blues? The fluid I mentioned earlier, it was this violence. Violence - I agree - that borders on chaos. Still, the Free Jazz was born in France of this too: our violence, and also unformulable unformulated it may be. We Chautemps, Wilen, Vitet Thollot, Tusques, Portal, etc.. What will he eat, that Free Jazz? I do not know more than you know for Ayler, a scandal so strong that racism no doubt. Which one? Market crisis refrigerators, Brigitte Bardot chairing a meeting of Tixier-Vignancour, strike the Tobacco Authority. How do I know?

Anyway, Ayler us trapped. You write, I will answer. Like it or not, it is exemplary. It dares what Shepp and Taylor (Cecil) did not dare: emotion in total derision. You hit just once, when you make a believer out of nothing. But you are pejorative. Yes, Ayler takes the form of a negative phenomenon, perhaps it follows a deadlock unexplored will fill the future. AYLER denies. We agree. For you, it will still - still - a little sand that the wind will sweep. For many - and Ayler is not the only - this is a negotiation that requires a fundamental affirmation no less fundamental. The end of an era and the birth of another. When are we losing ground with all that is preparing, will or will not? I wish you were wondering, for all of us, before the first meteor. But really, you read, we think that music is too serious a matter to be entrusted only to musicians.

Yves BUIN.

____________

(1) If you ask me what does this "unity", I refer you to Luigi Nono, as a musician, asked about the social purpose of his music. See "Nouvel Observateur" No. 99 and "Sinistra" No. 1.

(2) And by the way, I am surprised that you did so that "very few interventions" Sonny when he improvised a long, too short, indeed, our common taste.