Last Night's Jazz Dream

[Teasing the Korean]

6 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

I didn´t have that and don´t think I could be happy with it...And it makes me unhappy to play if I don´t have interesting and fascinating guys I have the chance to play with.

These kind of gigs can be very valuable, because you have to keep everything going yourself for 45 minutes at a stretch.  It can be very challenging to do this.  These situations sharpen your technique and ability to move something along creatively.

I disagree with your notion that something is either jazz or it isn't. Music exists on a spectrum.  Lots of good cocktail pianists can play jazz, and lots of jazz pianists can play solo cocktail gigs.  It's not one or the other.  If you can play jazz, I'm sure you would be quite capable of playing solo standards with tasteful chord voicings.

Edited May 15, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[Gheorghe]

17 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

These kind of gigs can be very valuable, because you have to keep everything going yourself for 45 minutes at a stretch.  It can be very challenging to do this.  These situations sharpen your technique and ability to move something along creatively.

I disagree with your notion that something is either jazz or it isn't. Music exists on a spectrum.  Lots of good cocktail pianists can play jazz, and lots of jazz pianists can play solo cocktail gigs.  It's not one or the other.  If you can play jazz, I'm sure you would be quite capable of playing solo standards with tasteful chord voicings.

I think it depends a lot on the personality of somebody and his aproach to the instrument or a listening audience. Sure I could play a 45 minutes solo set with ease and do solo standards with chord voicings that are not just the basic chords, but I just couldn´t feel well if it´s only background music. I don´t think so much about playing for myself. I play first for the musicians on the bandstand and for an audience that pays to hear those musicians. 

Sure some sets of solo piano can sharpen your technique and create some special approaches and chord renditions just for the things you need to know on your instrument. 

But........:  Too much solo piano can impair your ability to listen to what fellow musicians are doing, in my case to get that constant inspiration from a topnotch drummer, bassist and hornplayers, that exitement that you get when those gentlemen lift up the bandstand so you hear something great and are right in. 

I

[Teasing the Korean]

5 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

...but I just couldn´t feel well if it´s only background music...

As a devotee of mid-century modernism, I fully embrace the concept of functional art.  The fact that music can serve functional purposes is not only acceptable, but it is a plus.

The most perfect music for me is that music which will not bore you while attentively listening, and also not annoy you while you're doing the dishes.  

Edited May 16, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[Gheorghe]

18 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

As a devotee of mid-century modernism, I fully embrace the concept of functional art.  The fact that music can serve functional purposes is not only acceptable, but it is a plus.

The most perfect music for me is that music which will not bore you while attentively listening, and also not annoy you while you're doing the dishes.  

okay, sure ! I didn´t think about the terminus "mid-century modernism". So......maybe I´m just too young, since I was barely born when the mid-century-modernism ended. So ..... being a product of the post 1968 generation maybe I take it "too serious" for people of the pre 1968 generation.

Thank you so so much for opening me the eyes on that. I didn´t think about that aspect. My main-sources and personal encouragements  in musical developement when I was just starting to become a musician were a handful of jazzmusicians like Fritz Pauer (p, born 1943), Allan Praskin (as, born 1948) and Karl Ratzer (g, born 1950), all of them can be found in wikipedia. So maybe there were exactly in the post "mid-century-modernism". 

[Daniel A]

On 5/12/2023 at 1:06 PM, Teasing the Korean said:

After the show, I was talking to Sammy and told him how much I loved his tune "Basie Straight Ahead."  I told him that the melody reminds me of Henry Mancini.  He didn't like that, and he walked away.

Oh well. 

For several years I played in a big band, and "Basie Straight Ahead" was a tune I never tired of. I don't know why, but it feels so good every time; the voicings and the interplay between the piano and the band.

I also fully support the idea that music can be everything at once. One example of things I am endlessly attracted to is Clare Fischer's arrangements for George Shearing's bossa nova album on Capitol. On the surface, it's easy listening. But if you actually listen to the voicings for the woodwinds, they are super sophisticated - and jazzy!

Edited May 17, 2023 by Daniel A

[Teasing the Korean]

39 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

For several years I played in a big band, and "Basie Straight Ahead" was a tune I never tired of. I don't know why, but it feels so good every time; the voicings and the interplay between the piano and the band.

I also fully support the idea that music can be everything at once. One example of things I am endlessly attracted to is Clare Fischer's arrangements for George Shearing's bossa nova album on Capitol. On the surface, it's easy listening. But if you actually listen to the voicings for the woodwinds, they are super sophisticated - and jazzy!

I love the key change in "Basie Straight Ahead" in the last two bars of the first chorus.

One of the Mancini similarities I hear is the melodic phrase in bars 5-6 of the "Basie Straight Ahead" A section, similar to bars 6-8 of the A section of "Fluter's Ball." 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

What Shearing album has Clare Fischer charts? 

[Teasing the Korean]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

What Shearing album has Clare Fischer charts? 

The Bossa album on Capitol, the one that was pictured on the blue Capitol inner sleeve that came with Meet the Beatles and The Beatles' Second Album. 

[Daniel A]

 

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

The Bossa album on Capitol, the one that was pictured on the blue Capitol inner sleeve that came with Meet the Beatles and The Beatles' Second Album. 

The blue one, right? 

Yep. 

[Teasing the Korean]

3 minutes ago, JSngry said:

The blue one, right? 

Blue inner sleeve, yes. 

[JSngry]

And the terrifying bad needle ad. 

[Teasing the Korean]

30 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And the terrifying bad needle ad. 

Haha!

[Teasing the Korean]

I dreamed I was listening to a piano player in a bar.  There was a grand piano.  Imagine that - a bar that actually has a grand piano.  He was playing a tune in a minor key, and when the tune was over, after he hit the final chord, I jumped up and exclaimed, "That is my favorite voicing of a minor chord to end a tune!" 

The voicing in question, top to bottom, goes like this:  root, 11th, 7th, 3rd, 9th, 5th.

[JSngry]

What did the bartender do? 

[Teasing the Korean]

10 minutes ago, JSngry said:

What did the bartender do? 

I would like to think he gave us a free round, but I woke up at that point. 

[Gheorghe]

dreamed that my mind was somehow blurred and I played the wrong bridge on a song , much for the discomfort of the leader who told me that during intermission....

[Gheorghe]

last night I dreamed I had seen Joe Henderson live in a small club, which is quite impossible. 
I saw Henderson live quite often and he was one of my favourite tenor voices. 
But I have not spinned much music recently and didn´t have Joe Henderson on mind, quite a shame as great as he was, but see......last night I dreamed about him.

[JSngry]

Last night I had a dream about heating a reel-to-reel tape of me practicing in college, found in a lake house, mini cyclones starting up on that lake, and secret recordings of Joe Biden phone calls involving picking his dad up at the airport on the other side of that tape.

This is the first "playing",dream I've had in many many years. 

[sonnymax]

18 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Last night I had a dream about heating a reel-to-reel tape of me practicing in college, found in a lake house, mini cyclones starting up on that lake, and secret recordings of Joe Biden phone calls involving picking his dad up at the airport on the other side of that tape.

This is the first "playing",dream I've had in many many years. 

Sounds like late-night tamales to me.

[JSngry]

I wish... 

[Teasing the Korean]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Last night I had a dream about heating a reel-to-reel tape of me practicing in college, found in a lake house, mini cyclones starting up on that lake, and secret recordings of Joe Biden phone calls involving picking his dad up at the airport on the other side of that tape.

This is the first "playing",dream I've had in many many years. 

Did you mean "hearing" a  reel-to-reel, or "heating," as in baking a master tape?

[JSngry]

Hearing.

Phone typing sucks. 

[Teasing the Korean]

30 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Hearing.

Phone typing sucks. 

I heat ya.

I mean hear.

[Teasing the Korean]

I dreamed I was a in a room full of friends, some of whom I knew in the real world, some of whom where exclusively dream world people.

Someone mentioned the 1970s Time-Life Swing Era series, and I remarked that Billy May was one of the artists behind this series.

Then, someone was getting ready to put The African Beat by Art Blakey on the turntable, and he asked me what I thought of it.  I replied, "I really don't like the Art Blakey percussion albums that much, and I'll tell you why."  At that point, everyone started talking about different topics, and I never got to explain why I didn't like it.