Bill Holman Band - A View From The Side

[Tom 1960]

Terrific release from start to finish. If you can find an affordable copy, pick it up.

[Clunky]

Another JVC release "Brilliant Corners" is also excellent. Both have stunning sound.

[Tom 1960]

Another JVC release "Brilliant Corners" is also excellent. Both have stunning sound.

I have that on my wish list over at Amazon. Right now the price is a bit out of my range. I will keep an eye on it though.

[ghost of miles]

Second the rec for BRILLIANT CORNERS, which might be the best big-band Monk I've ever heard.

[BillF]

Terrific release from start to finish. If you can find an affordable copy, pick it up.

Pleased to find it on Spotify!

[John Tapscott]

[BillF]

Terrific release from start to finish. If you can find an affordable copy, pick it up.

Pleased to find it on Spotify!

Oops! Looks like Spotify only has the title track :-(

[Head Man]

Terrific release from start to finish. If you can find an affordable copy, pick it up.

Pleased to find it on Spotify!

Oops! Looks like Spotify only has the title track :-(

Oh dear......more expense!

[Peter Friedman]

Both. Albums are damn good !

[AllenLowe]

I gotta admit I find it harder and harder to listen to post-1960s big bands with the exception of Julius Hemphill's one large-group CD, the occasional Mingus thing, and some Gil Evans. There is too much precision in all of these, even when well written. Though I have the feeling that I am the only one who is bothered by this.

[Steve Reynolds]

For me for post 60's (including that Hemphill recording), I prefer looser and freer large ensembles including Alexander von Schlippenbach's Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra - tight yet loose and grooving (often but not always) - Live in Japan on DIW is superb, Globe Unity Orchestra (very free), London Jazz Composer's Orchestra, Italian Instabile Orchestra, Tony Malaby's Novela (9 piece band), Barry Guy's New Orchestra, Bik Bent Braam and a few others.

[AllenLowe]

agreed on all; I also like Breuker.

[Steve Reynolds]

agreed on all; I also like Breuker.

I forgot my favorite - Instant Composer's Pool - wonderful orginal material - plus IMO no band plays Monk as well as this amazing band - even without Misha Mengelberg who now can longer play.

I saw them on Misha's last tour play the most invigorating version of Jackie-Ing one would ever want to hear. No drummer swings like Bennink when he goes down that path.

[colinmce]

I totally agree with Allen re: the slickness & precision of the later straight ahead big bands. Big problem. One record I really remember liking, though, is the Roy Hargrove large ensemble LP Emergence. I wonder if I would feel the same about it now some years later, but in my memory it was really good.

[JSngry]

Don't understand the phrase "too much precision"...perhaps not enough precision, relative to preferred pocket. But...getting in that pocket takes more precision than getting out of it does.

It's not a question of amount of precision, it's a question of placement of precision, or direction of precision.

This application of Newtonian measurement to quantum outcome seems to me to be not be solutionable.

Tell a cat that he's not making it because he's playing too precise, odds are he'll just play the same way, only sloppier. Then it will go from sounding unappealing and clean to sounding unappealing and sloppy.

Not an improvement. Not an improvement.At best a lateral devolvement, "jazzy", "authentic", anything that begins and ends with ". Goal not achieved because goal never understood to begin with, don't confuse the confused with new confusions, that's just cruel.

OTOH, if that's the collective consensus of where "it" is, this uber-"precision" that does not fall into what for me is an appealing pocket yet is fascinatingly well-written (yeah, I'm looking at you, Maria Schneider), then so be it. Different strokes and all that, and congratulations on your dreams coming true, sweet dreams, see you later, if not in my dreams, fair enough.

Like the old folks used to say, mean what you say, but like the kids say, know what you mean before you say it, and never stop finding new meanings in old sayings, old sayings for new meanings, and put that in your pipe and vape it, new breed smokers.

[MomsMobley]

[xybert]

Music i like, music i don't like. Slickness is the least of my worries, although i get what people are saying.

[Peter Friedman]

Don't understand the phrase "too much precision"...perhaps not enough precision, relative to preferred pocket. But...getting in that pocket takes more precision than getting out of it does.

It's not a question of amount of precision, it's a question of placement of precision, or direction of precision.

This application of Newtonian measurement to quantum outcome seems to me to be not be solutionable.

Tell a cat that he's not making it because he's playing too precise, odds are he'll just play the same way, only sloppier. Then it will go from sounding unappealing and clean to sounding unappealing and sloppy.

Not an improvement. Not an improvement.At best a lateral devolvement, "jazzy", "authentic", anything that begins and ends with ". Goal not achieved because goal never understood to begin with, don't confuse the confused with new confusions, that's just cruel.

OTOH, if that's the collective consensus of where "it" is, this uber-"precision" that does not fall into what for me is an appealing pocket yet is fascinatingly well-written (yeah, I'm looking at you, Maria Schneider), then so be it. Different strokes and all that, and congratulations on your dreams coming true, sweet dreams, see you later, if not in my dreams, fair enough.

Like the old folks used to say, mean what you say, but like the kids say, know what you mean before you say it, and never stop finding new meanings in old sayings, old sayings for new meanings, and put that in your pipe and vape it, new breed smokers.

Jim, how does what you said above relate to your comments about the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in it's various periods?

[John Tapscott]

I wouldn't say that the clip Moms Mobley posted above of the Kenton Band is an example of slick.The road bands (Ellington, Basie, Herman, Rich, etc) played together so much that they went beyond slick to something else, I don't know - the heart of the music perhaps? Yes, they were together but their togetherness went beyond slick and became somewhat loose again.

IMO slick comes from the bands that don't play together all the time, but are made up of musicians who can read "fly sh*% on paper" as they say, who go into studios for one off type projects. It's great to be able to play that way and pull off some really difficult music at short notice, but more slickness comes from that kind of scenario than from the true road bands (of which there really aren't any there days).

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra is somewhere in the middle of this I think, not quite a true road band, but certainly far from a studio band, and if I had to take a few of their recordings to a desert island, I think I would choose the live dates.

Edited November 8, 2014 by John Tapscott

[JSngry]

Don't understand the phrase "too much precision"...perhaps not enough precision, relative to preferred pocket. But...getting in that pocket takes more precision than getting out of it does.

It's not a question of amount of precision, it's a question of placement of precision, or direction of precision.

This application of Newtonian measurement to quantum outcome seems to me to be not be solutionable.

Tell a cat that he's not making it because he's playing too precise, odds are he'll just play the same way, only sloppier. Then it will go from sounding unappealing and clean to sounding unappealing and sloppy.

Not an improvement. Not an improvement.At best a lateral devolvement, "jazzy", "authentic", anything that begins and ends with ". Goal not achieved because goal never understood to begin with, don't confuse the confused with new confusions, that's just cruel.

OTOH, if that's the collective consensus of where "it" is, this uber-"precision" that does not fall into what for me is an appealing pocket yet is fascinatingly well-written (yeah, I'm looking at you, Maria Schneider), then so be it. Different strokes and all that, and congratulations on your dreams coming true, sweet dreams, see you later, if not in my dreams, fair enough.

Like the old folks used to say, mean what you say, but like the kids say, know what you mean before you say it, and never stop finding new meanings in old sayings, old sayings for new meanings, and put that in your pipe and vape it, new breed smokers.

Jim, how does what you said above relate to your comments about the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in it's various periods?

They increasingly moved into a pocket that was less to my immediately liking.

[AllenLowe]

Jim is basically right, and maybe my choice of words was inaccurate - what I look for is not imprecision so much as a way of breathing the music - once again, inexact terminology. In a way this describes the difference between early black and white big bands; the black bands were together but sounded so much looser. With the occassional divergence, but they always swung with unity, I like the sense that the music is always on the verge of coming apart, though that's far from the only criteria. But that sense of deep unity - Ellington, Basie, Lunceford, Gil Evans/Thornhill - is different than the kind of unity I hear in post-60s big groups. It may be generational, a way of hearing. It may be the jazz education movement. I don't know.

btw, I love that Kenton London concert.

Edited November 8, 2014 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

What I've come to terms with is that group playing is at its best when everybody is playing it like they feel it, which is not always going to be how I feel it. Now, can I come to appreciate it and not feel it? Yes, sometimes, and sometimes that appreciation can turn into respect, which can then turn into a kind of objective admiration, maybe even a platonic love, but you know, if something hits you in the guts straight off, well, hey, that's where the personal "it" is, ok, and I make no apologies or look for any justification to note when something is - or isn't - there.

Cases in point - all those conventional local/rehearsal type bands on Seabreeze, oooh, I rabidly avoid those as much a possible, because what their "it" is and what my "it" is...irreconcilable differences, your honor.

But this Holman thing, yeah, uber-clean, and recorded with surgical precision, but....he's being totally true to himself, ya' know, and he had a band playing his music the way he wanted it played. The content is not cheap or trifling, even if the soloists have that "West Coast Studio" vibe to their playing (and so do the ensembles), but hell, that's who those people are, that's how their lives have been lived. These are not people, nor is this an esthetic, forged in, around, and by what has now become The Traditional Great American Jazz Paradigm, if you know what I mean. So they're pocket is not going to be THAT pocket...I could go on, but to no particularly more productive end.

Same thing, though, with Toshiko. If you're going to hear her writing, you're going to have to accept that it's going to be played by - and written for - people who don't fit many of the stereotypical jazz molds. If that's a deal-breaker, so be it, fair enough, but if it's not, DAMN, that woman displayed a lot of substance, imagination, and awareness. Given that, I credit her, and Holman, with triumphs of substance over style, which I hesitate to do, because it gives a lot of people whithout nearly as much to say - and/or skills to say it with - a false sense of "rightness" about their shallowness. But dammit, credit due where credit due, if credit is to have any meaning at all, correct?

As far as Kenton...I have made my piece with Kenton, on precisely those terms, and because when he had a band and a book that were equal to each other's challenges (which was nowhere near as often as I wish it was), well, that was a vision being realized. The convolutedness of both the vision and the mechanics of realization aside, hey, that was just how it happened, and if nothing else you can say that Stan Kenton's best bands playing their best material made a statement, a big, loudassnasty STATEMENT. The more that 20th Century music crawls into the 21st Century as limpotent auditionees for local tourist clown-museum space, the more I appreciate an essentially misanthropic roar that might not really understand too much beyond NO, but by god, it's a NO that will not be gotten past, and god love'em for that much.