The resident blogger is flattered that so many readers stick up for the rights of reviewers to do what they do. He’s also amused at one reader’s suggestion that John Zorn regards professional opinions so highly he’d prefer to suppress them.<\/p>\n
The resident blogger is flattered that so many readers stick up for the rights of reviewers to do what they do. He’s also amused at one reader’s suggestion that John Zorn regards professional opinions so highly he’d prefer to suppress them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-77","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-1f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":80,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/03\/musicians_dread_words.html","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":0},"title":"Musicians dread words","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"John Zorn asked writers not to review his performance opening the season at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, though he was pleased we wanted to attend. How can\/should an arts journalist comply? Publicist Blake Zidell, no stranger to the particularities of musicians, presenters, freelance critics and others on the New\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":346,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2010\/10\/manhattan_music_loft_roulette.html","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":1},"title":"Manhattan music “loft” Roulette takes big chance on Brooklyn","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"October 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Roulette, since 1978 a formerly humble Manhattan-based presenter of avant-garde \"intermedia,\" has signed a 20-year lease on a former YWCA art deco 600-seat theater in Brooklyn. This\u00a0\u00a0Next weekend (Oct. 7, 8, 9) is the space's three-night benefit \"Easy Not Easy,\" assigning emerging (read: little known) artists presumably simple scores by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":109,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/07\/avantgarde_alert_brooklyn.html","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":2},"title":"Odd noise music alert, Brooklyn","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"July 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A concert sponsored by The Onion -- so expect to be amused, Wednesday July 30, starting at 6:30 pm, free in a tent by the Brooklyn waterfront:\u00c2\u00a0John Zorn's \"Cobra\" -- an intricate musical game performed best by quick-witted improvisers with a handle of tactics governing the Avalon Hill board wargames\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"avant garde concert\"","block_context":{"text":"avant garde concert","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/tag\/avant-garde-concert"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":392,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2011\/04\/creative_music_studio_woodstoc.html","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":3},"title":"Creative Music Studio, Woodstock at Columbia U and East Village","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"April 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"My\u00a0CityArts - New York column\u00a0is about the Creative Music Symposium, organized by\u00a0Karl Berger, pianist\/vibist with his wife Ingrid Sertso, who cofounded with free-thinking Ornette Coleman of the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock NY (1972-1984). The symposium at Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies (directed by trombonist and digital music innovator\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1065,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2012\/10\/macarthur-ignores-jazz-musicians-and-improvisers.html","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":4},"title":"MacArthur ignores jazz musicians and improvisers","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"October 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The new list of MacArthur fellows, just released,\u00c2\u00a0features not one musician from the world of jazz among the 23 distinguished Americans who will receive $100,000 a year for five years. Two musicians are named among the fellows: Claire Chase, flutist and founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble\u00c2\u00a0(ICE) and Chris Thile,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/claire-chase.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/02\/butch_morris_jazz_conductor.html","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":5},"title":"Butch Morris, jazz conductor","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"February 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"(slightly corrected version)Conductor of improvisation Lawrence Douglas \"Butch\" Morris is an East Village charmer, now-too-infrequent cornetist and internationally-known instigator of large ensemble music made spontaneously in real time by free-from-convention individuals. During a radio interview for the NPR show News & Notes, Butch identifies himself as a jazz musician not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere may be no upside to well-known composer\/performers suffering reviews of their work from journalistic critics — that seemed to be what John Zorn was saying by asking for no reviews of his season-premiering performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse, and that seems to be what the bulk of commentators to my previous posting about this strange request assumed. If there’s a benefit resulting from reviews, it’s for the reader, who may be a future or actual audience member, anticipating hearing a given artist or evaluating their persona experience of music against the published\/posted report.
\nThe report itself is evidently assumed by some musicians to be filled with words words words — words that cannot adequately represent the music or intentions behind the music they seek to make. Zorn doesn’t say that outright — he has some<\/i> interest and belief in words, having published two interesting volumes titled Arcana<\/i><\/a>, essays by musicians on music.
\nThe case for disdain of words, especially those accumulating around the keyword “jazz,” was voiced most recently by saxophonist Tim Berne, who at a Portland jazz festival panel inveighed against “jazz” (and especially its variant “free jazz”) as terminology that keeps away people who might actually like what he plays, because they expect it to be old-fashioned “ching-chingaling” pre-bop. Trumpeter Cuong Vu chimed in on this discussion, insisting that swing — which he characterized similarly as that “ching-chingaling” rhythm — has no place in his band, and that he tells his drummers if he hears them “swinging,” he’ll fire them. I felt compelled to point out that Cuong had swung like mad the night before in his rampant phrasing over the hard-driving (swinging?) Be Bread<\/a> band, sort of the Mahavishnu Orchestra<\/a> as reconceived by composer-keyboardist Myra Melford<\/a>.
\nTim Berne, throughout his panel discourse, used some words loosely, in particular vulgarities which he could have consciously curtailed had he been thinking about the panel’s potential broadcast audience and a few little kids in the crowd. He would not have been so casual about notes he’d use in a composition or solo. Cuong Vu, I think, accepts too limited a definition of words like “swing” and “jazz.” I take those both as liberating, not imprisoning, concepts, and think if the terms have been co-opted by invidious traditionalist forces, it’s up to advocates of jazz-beyond-jazz to reclaim them as our own. Butch Morris, as I mentioned in a previous post, agrees. From what I heard on that Portland panel, so do the members of the Bad Plus<\/a> (of course, they can speak for themselves, as they do on their blog Do The Math<\/a>.
\nPlease understand: I do not expect composer\/performers to embrace what I’ve said in reviews about their efforts, though I’m gratified if they do. It pleases me if they think I’ve described something they’ve done accurately or insightfully, if they personally get something out of what I’ve said, and if they happen to think it’s advisable to adjust their work in line with my judgments (that has happened very rarely if ever, and I try to review the show I hear, not the one I imagine and can’t myself create). What music reviewers may be doing (if they’re doing their job well) Is constructing a history of performance from the perspective of the time and place where it’s unfolded. We witness what happened, and try to place it. It is our mission and compulsion, as it is the musicians’ to make music. I quite agree with Joe Foley, who writes: “Musicians play\/reviewers review.” What else would I do?
\nI am indeed disposed to admire John Zorn’s music, and I seldom write anything very toxic even about the most insufferable b.s. That’s just the kind of critic I am, the kind kind. I don’t think of his reluctance to be reviewed as a First Amendment<\/a> issue (no law’s involved, it’s a request, he’s not censoring me, more like asking for my indulgence), but instead as a projection of profound shyness trumping defensive attitudinizing. There is something strong about artists willing to countenance the response of the people they create for — not that artists have to or ever should<\/i> bend to others’ points of view. I typically ask for free tickets so I can experience something that I hope to be able to and want to write about. That’s why I got into this business (sic: business) — not for the free tickets but for the experiences I might want to write about. I ask for the professional courtesy because I’m covering a beat that I’d go broke fast paying my way into (I’ve gone broke, regardless). I cover it as if the performance of music is news. A musician wants me to hear something, but not write about it — it’s like being a scientist asked to observe an experiment but not think about its complexities.
\nI’m holding to the agreement (though Nate Chinen, in the New York Times, wrote a very generous music review<\/a>). About Zorn’s music at St. Ann’s: not a hint of my<\/i> opinion.
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