Hank Shteamer on Andre 3000 and the spiritual-jazz-aissance

[ghost of miles]

Andre 3000 at the Blue Note

[mjazzg]

Having been blown away by Botofasina, Mercereau and Niño live I can imagine how good this might have been.

I like the Andre album, it's a bit long, but glad it was made and good to see him leap some genre boundaries

[clifford_thornton]

^ I'm with you. It's not an album I "need" but it's cool and seems genuine.

[Rabshakeh]

Andre 3000 is coming out with a piano record now. 

Matthew Shipp wrote a review on Facebook:

"so a friend called me up and mentioned that Andre 3000 has a piano album out--i was like what. I checked it out on youtube -- my impression of it. I think it is complete and utter crap -horrific-god awful insipidly wretched nothing. oh my fucking god this is some atrocious shite --- is he some type of fucking asshole ? is he a complete and utter dilletante ? I could go into detail about why each cut is stillborn --but why bother --it does not even deserve the attention of a critique it is so dreadful. the guy is not a pianist -that is the beginning and the end of it ---what an ugly piano sound -- lets not even talk about telling a story with harmony ---sounds like he listens to a bunch of music gets a couple of gestures in his head sits down in a stream of consciousness and gets at some gesture for a few bars of something that he has not internalized -and barely knows on the most superficial level and then he loses the thread--of course there is zero composition going on in the improvisations --no language to speak of just a few cliches in his head that he can't actually play the cliche but he hits and tries at it until he peters out quickly --- wow -- he is so horrible at playing harmony --so many horn players that piano is not their instrument play so much better --- this sounds to me like pure fraud what a lack of respect for the discipline by someone who in my opinion is a complete asshole for doing this -- it is depressing that this garbage will get any attention because he has a name and fame --- there is nothing refreshing about the naivety of it --it is just downright dreadful and awful--true fucking crap insipidly wretched nothing -"

It's a shame that he didn't say what he really thought of it. Hard to tell whether he liked it or not. 

[mjazzg]

It's the sitting on the fence that's so annoying

[Rooster_Ties]

Yeah. Such dithering. Pick a side!

[T.D.]

Eek. 

Raises the question: Should I check out the Facebook sample referred to?

Probably will sooner or later, but not up for it right now.😶

[T.D.]

I listened to the "Hotel Lobby Pianos" on Youtube. I won't be purchasing any recordings. The piece is awful in places, but fairly listenable most of the time (it's largely a takeoff of Take Five). Not being a trained pianist, he doesn't have enough of a grasp of harmony to be consistently enjoyable, and it's outright dissonant in a few places.

He's already gotten a shedload of reviews, e.g. NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, ..., so I suppose he'll do well with it.

[Digression] Far from the worst thing I've heard...A couple of decades ago, Salvatore Sciarrino was a super-trendy contemporary classical composer. I enjoyed many of his works and bought several recordings. Then he released some solo piano recordings that totally repelled me (and I dig stuff like Ustvolskaya, Cage, etc). I listened to this piece 👎and decided that the Emperor was bare-ass. You can find a funny review on classicstoday, for example.

Edited Saturday at 01:56 PM by T.D.

[HutchFan]

Ethan Iverson's review is just like Shipp's. 

Not something I'll be seeking out.

 

[Ken Dryden]

I will pass on Andre 3000 without sampling him. Just the name reminds me of someone who is trying to get attention who isn't deserving of my time. 

 

 

[felser]

3 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Yeah. Such dithering. Pick a side!

At least Shipp was brief and concise, LOL!

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Ethan Iverson's review is just like Shipp's. 

Not something I'll be seeking out.

 

It ends with a list of reviews from publications, all glowing, and then comments left on the YouTube video. 

[rostasi]

2 hours ago, T.D. said:

[Digression] Far from the worst thing I've heard...A couple of decades ago, Salvatore Sciarrino was a super-trendy contemporary classical composer. I enjoyed many of his works and bought several recordings. Then he released some solo piano recordings that totally repelled me (and I dig stuff like Ustvolskaya, Cage, etc). I listened to this piece 👎and decided that the Emperor was bare-ass. You can find a funny review on classicstoday, for example.

An interesting analysis here.

and a faster version here that makes it somewhat easier to perceive the progression:

 

[Rabshakeh]

Mind you, I would still take Andre 3000's anodyne piano music to the releases by other legacy hip hop artists this week...

[JSngry]

I listened to as much of the YouTube videos as I could take and think that it's not as horrible as the Poobahs are ranting about.

But it's not very good either. At least not by my standards. It sounds like any number of people who learn a little bit of piano and then play at parties full of people who don't play any piano, who are then dazzled by a few non-triadic chords and non-diAtonic modulations. Wow!

But still and all... it's amateur, but it's not incompetent. Those are two different things.

People just need to chill out and everybody play their own gigs. You choose your own path and then do your best to maximize it. Andre 3000 is not stealing audiences from Matthew Shipp and Ethan Iverson. 

They should be happy about that, actually...

[Rabshakeh]

I do find it a bit weird how the negative crits have focused on how he is "not a pianist" rather than that he can't play piano well or an interesting manner.

Plenty of good piano jazz records out there by non-pianists (e.g. Mingus).

[JSngry]

I don't see why they even need to bother with it at all. It's not relevant to them of them to him.

I guess it's one way to get "attention". But that's not going to sell them more records or lead to better paying gigs. If Andre 3000 dropped dead right now, what impact would it have in them. None, probably.

[Rabshakeh]

39 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I don't see why they even need to bother with it at all. It's not relevant to them of them to him.

I guess it's one way to get "attention". But that's not going to sell them more records or lead to better paying gigs. If Andre 3000 dropped dead right now, what impact would it have in them. None, probably.

His Paul Horn flute record did eat a lot of jazz column inches, and he is headlining jazz festivals these days, so it does affect the likes of Iverson a bit, I guess. Probably more Kamasi Washington than Iverson, but that record has had a big impact on the kids.

Probably not Shipp, so much, as you say, but then Shipp has strong ideas, particularly about piano, which don't stop at the merely musical, and I guess he finds Andre 3000 acting the piano dilettante to be offensive. 

[JSngry]

How about a Bobbi Humphrey Comeback Tour, a duet with Andre 3000 on piano?!?!

Shipp...he makes noise to get attention. He admitted as much after he went after Herbie Hancock so viciously.

I'm very much a believer in looking for what you can get and not wasting time looking for what you will never get, unless you're willing to do what it takes to get it.

[Rabshakeh]

I missed the Herbie thing. Sounds undignified.

[mjazzg]

This whole episode (not this thread) is just making me smile. So much hot air from the self-appointed defenders of the faith.

Andre 3000's press people must be loving it.

[JSngry]

7 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I missed the Herbie thing. Sounds undignified.

Quite. But he owned it.

[Ken Dryden]

19 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I do find it a bit weird how the negative crits have focused on how he is "not a pianist" rather than that he can't play piano well or an interesting manner.

Plenty of good piano jazz records out there by non-pianists (e.g. Mingus).

The difference is that Charles Mingus could both play piano and compose, he chose to focus on the bass. Many artists played piano as a second instrument, including Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Stephane Grappelli, Phil Woods and Dizzy Gillespie, for starters. Mulligan played piano exclusively when he appeared on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, while Grappelli, Woods and Gillespie doubled on it when they were guests on the show.

Phil Woods appeared on Piano Jazz twice, though he only played piano on some selections on his second visit, which was a special fundraising edition.

[T.D.]

23 hours ago, rostasi said:

An interesting analysis here.

and a faster version here that makes it somewhat easier to perceive the progression:

 

Thanks. The analysis is indeed interesting. [Most of the Sciarrino liner notes, etc. I read were impossibly gaseous.] Though the author makes a point that the sonatas are "among the most rebarbative piano scores of the last hundred years" (granted the typography is a big factor).

This performance is a lot more enjoyable and I can better hear the progression. But it's just not something I want to hear multiple times. I do listen to Ustvolskaya now and then, and greatly prefer her in the "relentless clangor" category.😉 There are plenty of "minimalist" pieces with progressions that I find more pleasing.

I haven't followed Sciarrino since the early oughts, but I very much like Un Immagine d'Arpocrate (which is kind of a piano concerto), Sei capricci (solo violin) and Lohengrin (opera).

[JSngry]

"Flute" is a thing that is so ancient and universal that using it to tap into SOME kind of "vibe" shouldn't be too difficult with a little bit of purpose.

Keyboard in general, and piano specifically...not so much.