Peter Evans

[colinmce]

I think Foxy is what it is, so I feel like "overindulgent" is a non-starter as a criticism. He set out to do his own personal "Chasin' The Train" and that's what it is. It's no challenge to Sonny, Trane, Sam Rivers, et al, just an homage. It's also just as much a showcase for Barry Altschul who is relentlessly good on it. I can maybe see why you might not want to listen to it, or even might have problems with some of his moves. I'm held rapt by it, personally. Different strokes, but the suggestion that its arrogant or showy seems a little off the mark, or even beside the point. Just my two cents, of course.

[Steve Reynolds]

I think Foxy is what it is, so I feel like "overindulgent" is a non-starter as a criticism. He set out to do his own personal "Chasin' The Train" and that's what it is. It's no challenge to Sonny, Trane, Sam Rivers, et al, just an homage. It's also just as much a showcase for Barry Altschul who is relentlessly good on it. I can maybe see why you might not want to listen to it, or even might have problems with some of his moves. I'm held rapt by it, personally. Different strokes, but the suggestion that its arrogant or showy seems a little off the mark, or even beside the point. Just my two cents, of course.

Problem with it is I couldn't listen to it. Wearying to the maximum

And on the right day I can listen to the 76 minute Parker, Guy, Lytton, Schlippenbach, Lovens 2 x 3 : 5 which is as intense or moreso yet Even when Evan goes on a 15 minute tear, it is very listenable.

I found myself begging Irabagon to stop playing within 10 minutes. When I realized he was never going to stop, I knew he was making some sort of statement but the music as well as the messy sloppy recording almost made me throw the damn disc out my window.

The ability to improvise at length on the saxophone is not for every saxophonist. To my ears it takes a lifetime to really be able to make it happen for 10 to 20 minute plus statements.

My guys for that sort of thing are Evan Parker, Paul Dunmall and the late, great Fred Anderson

All very different from each other yet all know how to build things and none of them would think it would be interesting to play 70 minutes straight full bird the whole time.

Why anyone would is really beyond me

[Quasimado]

Sounds a bit like a rebel without a cause.

Hopefully Nicholas Payton and Peter will get together to ensure jazz's future.

Q

Payton's a rebel with a cause.

Perfect! Problem solved!

What's the problem?

Jazz's future!

Q

[Noj]

?

[clifford_thornton]

I can't believe people are seriously questioning the musical value of Evans' work (or Wick's). Give me a break.

[Steve Reynolds]

I can't believe people are seriously questioning the musical value of Evans' work (or Wick's). Give me a break.

Ask them about Keith Rowe

[uli]

I let my man Fred Lonberg-Holm speak for me on where I think this discussion might be heading to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYBNrcTyl9E

Edited June 25, 2013 by uli

[Noj]

I can't believe people are seriously questioning the musical value of Evans' work (or Wick's). Give me a break.

If this is in regard to my posts, I'm actually not. Nor do I question Rothko's. I'm just genuinely curious. And I was curious if a parallel could be drawn to painting of a less representational nature. My questions are questions, not indictments.

I've heard some of the EAI releases on our friend Jon Abbey's Erstwhile label. I'm not entirely unfamiliar. The appeal simply hasn't been clear to me. Is it offensive to want it spelled out?

[clifford_thornton]

No I was looking at D** G****. Not you - you are correct that nonrepresentational painting is a good parallel, and genuine curiosity is ideal!

[Larry Kart]

For a sound, no b.s. guide to Rothko, see Robert Goldwater's essay in:

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Rothko-STC/dp/1556705506/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372181097&sr=1-3&keywords=rothko+tate

FWIW, Rothko approved of Goldwater's piece.

[robertoart]

Personally, I don't think the comparisons between representational and non-representational art and free/experimental - harmony based improv are really useful anymore. And they were misguided at the actual time of their so called relevance anyway. It was a way to analougise Modernism to a point across different artforms. But the things that drove radical expression in Visual Art cultures and those that drove radical expression in Jazz, were different animals. Although the 'modern' world they both existed in certainly influenced them both.

[clifford_thornton]

As an art historian and jazz historian I'd have to disagree with you there. Clement Greenberg's definition of Modernism is apt:

The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methodes of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.

Although Evans, Weasel Walter, and their acolytes are perhaps diverse enough in their musical influences and approaches to lie slightly to the left of Modernists (I'm not so sure post-Modernism is relevant here), they are extraordinarily self-critical (as in "criticizing the practice of music and instrumental performance) in their work and to that end, the practice of Modernist evolution is not foreign.

[Larry Kart]

Another county heard from:

'What Theodore Adorno is most concerned with is ... the negativity of high modernism, which "expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure." Modern art de-aestheticizes itself by presenting neither harmony nor formal unity but dissonance and fragmentation.'

OTOH, while I see Adorno's point, I experienced (poor benighted soul that I was and am) a whole lot of high modernist art's dissonances and fragmentations as thrilling acts of harmony and order of new sorts. But then Adorno might say that in this I was dupe of the culture industry.

[AllenLowe]

I'm a little late to the party here - but I always liked what Richard Gilman said about modernism - to paraphrase, great modernists tell us what we will be thinking next, before even we realize it.

this works with a lot of music in particular, but also other forms.

as for Greenberg, that quote makes sense, though I do see a lot of modernism as subversive of prior forms.

[AllenLowe]

I like the work Evans' is doing, in principal. Though I always, with musicians like him, wish they had gone a little bit further to solve the content side of the old form and content argument. Not long ago I was critical of what I consider to be the new formalism - in which artists think that, having reached solutions as to development of form, they have solved the larger problem of expression. Which they, at least to my way of thinking, have not. But that's me, as I like things more strictly organized and less randomly chosen,

[uli]

. But then Adorno might say that in this I was dupe of the culture industry.

But wouldn't he have sed that of you as a jazz fan anyway?

I probably should not ask that as it's been a long time since I've red any of his thoughts on jazz, probably did not fully understand them when I did and it's still discussed in accademia.

Edited June 25, 2013 by uli

[Larry Kart]

. But then Adorno might say that in this I was dupe of the culture industry.

But wouldn't he have sed that of you as a jazz fan anyway?

Yup.

I have a picture in my mind of Adorno losing his lunch at a vintage JATP concert.

[Quasimado]

“Peter is the latest flowering in the line of great trumpet improvisers commencing with Louis Armstrong and developing through Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown”.

I presented this as the conclusion to my illustrated lecture on jazz trumpet at last night’s therapy group, and it was well received by those who were listening. My doctor also appeared encouraging, indicating that he would recommend increasing my medications “as from tonight!”

I would therefore be most grateful if some of the more grounded, sensitive and visionary voices here, perhaps even Chuck himself, could corroborate my findings. This could, I feel, go a long way to improving my relationship with several members of the group, particularly those who were involved in equipment damage towards the climax of Peter’s extended solo – and may also further encourage the doctor concerning my medications.

Q.

[robertoart]

The radicalisation of the picture plane from a three dimensional to two dimensional 'surface', should not be equated with a move from 'harmony' to free. The difference between Coubet and Pollock is far greater than the distance between Parker and Coleman.

'Art' has always been the domain of the rich and powerful be it practitioners or academics. Jazz developed in far different circumstances.

The history of Art avant-garde negations has and did serve different purposes to those eminating from a specific Black cultural expression in the more compacted social and formal history of Jazz.. Just look at the exclusion and distance Black people have had in 'The Visual Art Story'. Because of social segregation and poverty just to begin with.

So called traditional Jazz improvisation and harmony has far greater relevance to the forms and considerations of 'pre-Modern Art' if only in terms of it's huge depth of skill and muscle memory construction - than it does with the Formal 'dumping' of 'Abstract Expressionist' painting, where visual integrity is achieved more through stealth than through preconcieved rules and knowledge.

One interesting comparison however might be in the cut between the History of Visual Culture to be adressing 'Nature' and the Modernist turn to be addressing 'Culture'.

ie. the 'fully played out and explored' domain of Harmony via Bop and Modal as 'Nature' as opposed to a Free Jazz expression as a 'Representation', where Culture has primacy over Form. As in the perjorative arguments the anti-Shorter guy was making. Whereby he was saying Shorter was merely 'representing something - "Culture' - rather than actually playing something real, ie 'Nature'.

Then we have 'two' kinds of representation of 'Culture'. In the differing ways an Evans might be representing 'Culture' - as opposed to the way David Murray might be representing Culture.

[AllenLowe]

yes, but is he gay?

[clifford_thornton]

No, Peter isn't gay.

[robertoart]

Representing again are you Allen?

[David Ayers]

Another county heard from:

'What Theodore Adorno is most concerned with is ... the negativity of high modernism, which "expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure." Modern art de-aestheticizes itself by presenting neither harmony nor formal unity but dissonance and fragmentation.'

OTOH, while I see Adorno's point, I experienced (poor benighted soul that I was and am) a whole lot of high modernist art's dissonances and fragmentations as thrilling acts of harmony and order of new sorts. But then Adorno might say that in this I was dupe of the culture industry.

No it is a good point - Adorno's take on modernism now seems of its time.

[robertoart]

....seems to be a mis-reading of Adorno here.

This sounds like Donald Kuspit's Negative Sublime take on Adorno's Negative Dialectics.

There is much that is still relevant about Adorno. Especially in the moderately intellectual climate that contemporary Jazz/improv seems to be.

The irony being that Adorno thought of Jazz the same way most would view Britney (or whoever the lowest common denominator is now).

[Mark Stryker]

I like the work Evans' is doing, in principal. Though I always, with musicians like him, wish they had gone a little bit further to solve the content side of the old form and content argument. Not long ago I was critical of what I consider to be the new formalism - in which artists think that, having reached solutions as to development of form, they have solved the larger problem of expression. Which they, at least to my way of thinking, have not. But that's me, as I like things more strictly organized and less randomly chosen,

Leaving aside Evans, whose work I really don't know well enough to evaluate, I agree with the general thrust of this.