Archives for March 25, 2009

Marc Myers, the proprietor of the blog called JazzWax, audited one of the polymath Mr. Kirchner’s classes at the New School and filed a report that begins:

Bill’s two-hour class took his 40 students through Miles Davis’ bio and recordings, complete with 13 prime audio examples. The sound system in the New School’s fifth floor “performance space” is sensational. Each digital recording was vivid and exciting and rich with warm sonic detail. In between tracks, Bill filled in the blanks with authoritative notes:

Marc’s piece includes Kirchner’s list of recordings used in the class and appends video of a latterday Davis performance when Miles was well into his electronic period. To see his report, click here. I’m not ready to agree that Davis’s performance is a work of art, particularly in comparison with the other tracks on Bill’s list, but it is worth seeing and hearing. Once.
If you missed the saga that began with Kirchner’s list of big band recordings since 1955, see the Rifftides exhibit two below this one. It will link you to the previous installments.

I would go to the library and borrow scores
by all those great composers, like Stravinsky,
Alban Berg, Prokofiev. I wanted to see what
was going on in all of music. Knowledge is
freedom and ignorance is slavery, and I just
couldn’t believe someone could be that close
to freedom and not take advantage of it.

It was because of Bill [Evans]’s influence, I
think, that I always had classical music on
around the house. It was so soothing to think
and work by. I mean people would come by
and expect to hear a lot of jazz on the box,
but I wasn’t into that at the time and a lot of people
were shocked to hear me listening to classical
music all the time, you know, Stravinsky, Arturo
Michelangeli, Rachmaninoff, Isaac Stern.

I don’t like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

You cant play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, (Louis Armstrong) not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang

.
Photo © Jamie Parslow, 1970