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Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Happy 90th to electronic music pioneer Herb Deutsch

Herb Deutsch, the trumpeter-pianist-Theremin player-composer-Moog synthesizer co-creator and jazz inspired improviser turns 90 today, February 9, 2022,

Robert Moog, l., and Herb Deutsch at the Moog modular synthesizer

and a hearty Happy Birthday to him! In celebration, Moog Music has produced a video interview with this emeritus professor of Hofstra University, where he taught composition and electronic music, as the first of a series titled Giants.

He’s been less often mentioned in the story of the revolution in musical possibilities wrought by physical architecture for generating and processing electronic sound waves than his friend the synth inventor Dr. Robert Moog, or West Coast designer Don Buchla, or their predecessor Leon Theremin. During the mid ’60s burst of electronic music by such visionaries as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley and Morton Subotnick, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock and Jimi Hendrix, Deutsch was there, leading an improvising electro-acoustic ensemble at Manhattan’s Town Hall and the Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden.

Immediately as this text was posted came news of the death of composer, educator and Synclavier developer Jon Appelton at age 83; his electro-acoustic works include Human Music from 1970, a series of interactions with trumpeter Don Cherry. All due respects.

Hear Deutsch at 14:18 tell of developing the modular synth for such basics of sound-shaping as control over its attack and decay. He conceived the keyboard interface for triggering sonic events, and personally enfolded evocative social-political content into multi-dimensional narratives of sound organized in time.

That Deutsch was (and remains?) a jazz enthusiast dedicated to real-time improvisation puts the cherry on the top, as far as I’m concerned, of his reputation as a key figure in 20th century musical innovation and re-conception. His recordings collected on From Moog to Mac sort of a best-of, with “Jazz Images, a Worksong and Blues,” (1965 — credited as the first composition for a Moog) featuring bluesy piano and (overdubbed?) horn intersected interwoven with thick and thin electronic lines, unnaturally long fades, whirling sirens, white noise, delays and maybe backward tape. A Christmas Carol (1963) his prescient mix of found sounds, spoken word and haunting ambiance, was a contemporaneous response to the Alabama church bombing that killed four young girls and also drew profound comment from James Baldwin, John Coltrane and Dr. Martin Luther King. Deutsch’s composition still has power, and reminds me of Ilhan MimaroÄŸlu’s devastating Sing Me The Song of Songmy (1971), electronics, readings and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s band with Junior Cook and Kenny Barron.

“From the very beginnings of Moog music,” says Deutsch, “Bob and I understood one thing very clearly: The designer of the instrument must understand the needs of the artist, must understand the minds and the creativity and the thoughts of the artist. And the artist should then recognize the designer’s ability to produce what that artist needs. . . .This instrument has changed the way people think about what music should be.”

POSTSCRIPT Beyond jazz — I was curious as an early teenabout weird electronic music in continuum with other unconventional, experimental and hyper-expressive arts. I found the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center album, started listening and didn’t stop. I was delighted when attending Syracuse University to be able to play (study? learn?) at its Moog studio, which took up a loft in Crouse Hall. I don’t know if it’s still there. Here’s my bit on that experience, soundtrack from ’71.

If I’ve put this up before, forgive me. Is it over-wrought? I’m currently going nuts with a Korg Minilogue and Monotribe and Arturia Microfreak.

Freddie plays, Freddie talks

My NPR appreciation of the late, great Freddie Hubbard — with Freddie talking about himself, and music examples. 
And for prime mid-period Hubbard hear his out-of-print 1978 album Super Blue, especially the tracks “Take It To The Ozone” and “Theme For Kareem” (the original unfortunately not available from Amazon as an MP3 — this version is from his final recording, On The Real Side). 

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Celebrating Freddie Hubbard, the intrepid fox

Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died last night around 2 a.m. in Sherman Oaks Hospital (Los Angeles) of complications following a heart attack he had suffered on the night before Thanksgiving (November 26), not November 30 as previously reported. He was 70 years old.

Gifted with powerful technique, abundant melodic imagination, rhythmic drive and a deep bluesy feeling, Hubbard emerged in the 1960s as one of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and recorded timeless music throughout that decade with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Andrew Hill and many others — as well as leading his own crackling sessions for Blue Note and Atlantic Records. He was not ideologically an avant-gardist; his compositions such as “Up Jumped Spring” had a lyrical playfulness. But he also excelled at expressing urgency with tunes such as “Crisis” and “Breaking Point.” 

[Read more…]

Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard ailing

L.A.-based jazz consultant Ricky Shultz (who directed one of this year’s most innovative label rollouts for Resonance Records) writes: “Freddie Hubbard suffered heart failure last Sunday and is in ICU. One of Freddie’s past bandmates spoke with his wife yesterday a.m. He is being worked on to revive certain organs’ function. I’m told there were some encouraging signs but his condition remains critical. Share some love with all that great Freddie music and keep him in your thoughts.”

Trumpeter Hubbard has been a jazzman’s jazzman and a jazz listener’s, too, bringing bravura chops and visceral feeling to acts of creative daring as a form of popular entertainment (and sometimes art) for 50 years. What follows is my feature article on Freddie Hubbard in “authorized” form, slightly different than the version published as the cover story in Down Beat last June:

On the second of four nights at Freddie Hubbard’s record date with the New Jazz Composers Octet in December 2007, the star trumpeter didn’t commit a note. He improvised poses, faces and witticisms, but no lines on his horn. He didn’t even venture into the isolation booth Tony Bennett’s sound engineer had prepared for him…

[Read more…]

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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