Ken Vandermark's tribute last night

[Larry Kart]

so to speak:

9:00PM at Elastic, 2830 N Milwaukee, 2nd Fl, 773.772.3616 ($12)

Celebrating the Midwest School : The music of Anthony Braxton, Julius Hemphill, Roscoe Mitchell, and Henry Threadgill

Ken Vandermark, Nick Mazzarella, Mars Williams, Dave Rempis, Josh Berman, Jeb Bishop, Jason Adasiewicz, Nate McBride, Tim Daisy

All Vandermark arrangements. Pieces included Mitchell's "Nonaah," Braxton's "6C," Threadgill's "Untitled Tango," and Hemphill's "The Hard Blues." Some strong playing, especially from Rempis, Bishop, and Mazzarella; other than that my lips are sealed. If Chuck had been there, he might have had a heart attack.

[jlhoots]

Recorded???

[Larry Kart]

Recorded???

Yes.

[jostber]

Sounds like a great musical happening.

[Larry Kart]

Sounds like a great musical happening.

Not so much, IMO. Also, the implicit "revivalization" of music that I'm old enough to have heard the first time around was kind of creepy. My "one for the history books" in the thread title was meant to be ironic.

[JSngry]

Ironic is the new ironic.

[Larry Kart]

Ironic is the new ironic.

Right -- or rather "right."

[johnlitweiler]

What didn't you like, Larry, was it just badly played? Sorry I missed this, some favorite players were there. Some songs by these Chicago composers are so good that they should be standards, like Monk, Golson, Ornette songs. So in principle I favor Vandermark's and Mike Reed's bringing them back.

Vandermark won me over at a Lester Bowie memorial concert shortly after Lester died. People like H. Bluiett and Roscoe played there (Roscoe had even recorded some Bowie songs on his own albums) but Vandermark was the only one all evening who thought to actually play one of Lester's songs.

[Werf]

What didn't you like, Larry, was it just badly played? Sorry I missed this, some favorite players were there. Some songs by these Chicago composers are so good that they should be standards, like Monk, Golson, Ornette songs. So in principle I favor Vandermark's and Mike Reed's bringing them back.

Vandermark won me over at a Lester Bowie memorial concert shortly after Lester died. People like H. Bluiett and Roscoe played there (Roscoe had even recorded some Bowie songs on his own albums) but Vandermark was the only one all evening who thought to actually play one of Lester's songs.

New York Is Full Of Lonely People. That was the highlight of that night for me.

[Larry Kart]

What didn't you like, Larry, was it just badly played? Sorry I missed this, some favorite players were there. Some songs by these Chicago composers are so good that they should be standards, like Monk, Golson, Ornette songs. So in principle I favor Vandermark's and Mike Reed's bringing them back.

Vandermark won me over at a Lester Bowie memorial concert shortly after Lester died. People like H. Bluiett and Roscoe played there (Roscoe had even recorded some Bowie songs on his own albums) but Vandermark was the only one all evening who thought to actually play one of Lester's songs.

What I didn't like was that Vandermark's arrangements, while not outright wrong-headed (except in one case, which I'll mention below) were not very imaginative and had that "revivalization" vibe. In no sense that I could detect did one have the feeling that this music inspired him to create much of anything (as Threadgill, for one. and Edward Wilkerson, for another, were inspired by their encounters with music from "the past" to create new vital new music that stepped off from that prior music. Rather, KV's apparent goal was to not besmirch what he was paying tribute to, but IMO, not to do much with it either. The one wrongheaded IMO exception was "Nonaah." KV was working with Roscoe's famous Willsau solo performance, issued on Nessa, where Roscoe faced a crowd that was hostile because they were expecting Braxton to be the performer that night. Aware of this hostility, Roscoe of course met it head on by playing the brief gist of the "Nonaah" theme over and over on alto with eventual increasing force for maybe five minutes or more -- an immensely long time experientially -- as the hostility to what he was doing mounted, then seemingly mutated into a blend of respect and curiosity (though the hostility clearly remained present as well) and then finally exploded into fascinated overwhelming approval as Roscoe, feeling that he had made his point, let his solo itself explode into cascades of fierce invention. So what KV did was have Mars Williams begin by playing Roscoe's opening figure at Willsau note for note -- a terribly unenviable task that Mars pulled off in one sense up to a point, . . . but what, musically or dramatically, was the point? That is, what Roscoe played at Willsau can't be separated from what the situation was at Willsau, and that was totally not the situation at Elastic, where a respectful audience was there to witness an act of "tribute." Further, Mars played Roscoe's figure for far less time than Roscoe did at Willsau, and without IIRC much of Roscoe's increase in vehemence (the latter again being a response to a daunting real-life situation, not something to be re-created note-for-note, even if that were possible for Williams). Thus the essential drama of the performance of "Npnaah" upon which this one was based was not present. To substitute for it, KV had other horns join Williams with semi-parallel but vigorously roughed-up (in terms of timbre) lines. Jeb Bishop was particularly good at this, as one would expect, but all this led to were "blowing" passages by several soloists and then IIRC a framing return to Roscoe's original Willsau figure. Nothing awful here, but why take the volcanic Willsau performance and turn it into this?

Second problem -- and this may just be me because others feel strongly otherwise about his playing -- is that KV's solo contributions on clarinet (and I think a bit on bass clarinet, but no tenor) in the first half of the concert (I didn't stay for the second) were quite weak, almost as though he weren't moving nearly enough air through the instrument(s). Yes, I wouldn't necessarily want to get up on the stage and in terms of sheer instrumental power deal with the likes of a reedman like Davis Rempis or Nick Mazarrella, but still.... Finally -- and again this may be just me -- I was kind of bugged by KV's at once bashfully toe-digging and ego-rich announcements. Several times he spoke about what this "music of the '70s" meant to HIM, which is fair as far as it goes, but this soon edged into statements like "This is why I stayed in Chicago in 1992 instead of going back to the Boston area" (in which case, the implication was, not only KV's own history but also HISTORY in general would have been quite different), and at this point I'm thinking Mingus-like thoughts, a la "If Henry Threadgill were a gunslinger..." etc. Further in this vein, KV told a story about how in his callow days he went down to U. of Illinois for a Braxton workshop and played him a tape of some of his own stuff, to which Braxton reacted with great encouragement and enthusiasm, which gave KV the emotional boost that he needed at the time. But then KV added that he soon realized that Braxton being who he was, he reacted in much the same way to almost everything that hopeful young musicians played for him. A good story -- but while I may be misunderstanding something here, it seemed to me that KV told this story in such a way that Braxton's initial "validation" of KV's youthful efforts remained central, and that we too were meant to regard it as a genuine validation rather than one of those momentary life-giving jokes that life can play on us. But enough -- I've now earned my Boy Scout "grouch" badge several times over.

[johnlitweiler]

Thanks, Larry. Glad it was recorded, maybe we'll hear it on cd. Your description makes it look like an interesting but outside approach to Nonaah, that is, a spectator's arrangement rather than that of an insider who started with Roscoe's themes. Especially odd since the themes are so provocative on their own. OTOH I wonder if Roscoe might have created more variations of that recorded repeated-phrase movement, perhaps at other places in his Nonaah solos, on other occasions. Also, the perpetual-motion movement of his quartet version (same CD) is analogous.

Jason Stein was at his best tonight, very melodic. Especially in the first set his time was slippery like a Tristanoite and later on Keefe Jackson sometimes played long Warne Marshlike phrases. The tunes were mostly Konitz and Monk songs. Marcus Evans was quite a discrete drummer.

[Captain Hate]

I'd be surprised if this doesn't get released as a Vandermark "Free Jazz Classics" add on disc like he's done sporadically with the Vandermark 5; usually as a "bonus" disc that is in limited release ie. he sells them at concerts and through a few select places like DMG. Also I appreciate the background story for Nonaah. I haven't listened to it in ages and frankly my ears and head weren't ready for it at the time but I always figured there was something that was driving the live performance and it would be good to revisit it. Not that music can't stand on its own.

Plus I appreciate the subjective view of what Vandermark's done; if I don't totally agree with everything I certainly understand where it's coming from.