Graham Collier, directing 14 Jackson Pollocks (GCM). Long before he wrote his recent book, Graham Collier’s music made it plain that Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans were profound influences on his work. Collier followed Ellington’s and Mingus’s lead in fashioning pieces with his soloists in mind rather than the common concept of arrangements into which a leader could plug whatever soloist was at hand. As for Evans, I must say that I heard in Collier’s earlier recordings more of the Evans of “La Nevada” or “El Matador” – roiling, abstract patterns under soloists — than of the tonal tapestries in, say, Sketches of Spain. I still do. Collier amalgamated his inspirations into an orchestral style that coalesced at a moment in the late 1960s when musicians and listeners in Great Britain were ready to expand their ideas about what constituted jazz.
Collier was his own bassist for years before he concentrated entirely on composing, arranging and leading. Among the members of his bands were adventurous players including saxophonists John Surman and Art Themen, trumpeters Kenny Wheeler and Harry Beckett and drummer John Marshall. In directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Collier reaches distillation of the notion that the orchestra, the written music and the improvising soloist comprise a trinity, each element inseparable from the other. The music makes obvious what the CD title means, unless you don’t know who Jackson Pollock was. The two-CD set consists of music recorded at concerts in London in 1997 and 2004. The astonishing Beckett, Themen and Marshall are among the players, along with pianist Roger Dean, bassist Jeff Clyne and others who long since absorbed Collier’s ethos of individual independence amidst collective dependence.
The music has something in common with the free jazz that emerged in the United States in the sixties, but where free jazz often fell by the weight of its pretensions of liberation from guidelines, Collier’s coalesces around his frameworks. His composing and arranging dictates, or suggests, shape, harmonic character and rhythmic direction of the solos. He infuses much of his music with wry humor at which titles like “Between a Donkey and a Rolls Royce” and “An Alternate Low Circus Ballad” can only hint. In any case, humor is only an element In Collier’s work, important but minor. He produces serious music that makes demands on its listeners and gives generous compensation to those who welcome it on its terms.
Efrat Alony, Alony (Enja). Bob Brookmeyer called my attention to this Israeli singer who has had success in Germany’s avant circles. In Brookmeyer’s words, “She is very gifted and very motivated–into electronics, arranging, always composing her own stuff. Been in Berlin for 15 years.” He thinks she deserves wider exposure. After spending a couple of hours of a long motor trip with her CD, I agree.
Alony’s voice, round and spacious, sounds classically trained. It is in the mezzo range, although she sometimes takes it higher, maintaining fullness and pitch unless she is purposely bending notes, which she occasionally does to great effect. The songs on Alony are not standards; she wrote most of the lyrics and music, with contributions from pianist Mark Reinke and one piece from the Israeli songwriter-singer Etti Ankri. In addition, Alony set to music William Butler Yeats’ bittersweet poem, “To a Child Dancing in the Wind.” Reinke and drummer Christian Thomé are the primary accompanists. They also provide electronic effects. A string quartet contributes backing and atmospherics. Alony now and then overdubs voices in unison or counterpoint. There’s a lot going on, but it’s all integrated, allowing concentration on the music as a whole. At their best, Alony’s lyrics achieve a haiku-like sensibility that distinguishes superior art songs:
Recollecting
fading shadows of joy
I slowly unlock the shackles of thought
my safeguard
freeing feelings I lost
bewitchment
delight
sweet longing
You are unlikely to find Alony at your corner record store. It is available as a download from Amazon and, evidently, as a CD only from the Enja web site. YouTube has a clever promotional video of “Lights On/Off,” the song that opens the album.
I’m not sure that there is a category for what Alony does. I’m not sure that there should be. Call it music.
We’ll have more Recent Listening soon. Well, reasonably soon.
Search Results for: Kenny Wheeler
Kirchner’s List
For his advanced composing and arranging students, saxophonist, composer, arranger and educator Bill Kirchner recently compiled a list of recommended big band CDs recorded since 1955. Kirchner teaches at The New School and Manhattan School of Music in New York City and New Jersey City University. Bill agreed to let me share the list with Rifftides readers, who may find some of their favorites but not others.
RECOMMENDED BIG BAND CDs, 1955-PRESENT–Bill Kirchner
Muhal Richard Abrams: The Hearinga Suite (Black Saint)
Count Basie: April in Paris, Frankly Basie (both Verve), Chairman of the Board (Roulette)
Carla Bley: Big Band Theory (Watt)
Bob Brookmeyer: New Works–Celebration (Challenge)
Miles Davis-Gil Evans: Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain (all Columbia)
Duke Ellington: The Far East Suite, …and His Mother Called Him Bill (both RCA/Bluebird)
Don Ellis: Tears of Joy (Columbia/Wounded Bird)
Gil Evans: The Complete Pacific Jazz Sessions (Blue Note), The Individualism of Gil Evans (Verve)
Clare Fischer: Thesaurus (Atlantic/Koch)
Stan Getz: Big Band Bossa Nova (arr. Gary McFarland), Change of Scenes (w/ the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band) (both Verve)
Joe Henderson: Joe Henderson Big Band (Verve)
Woody Herman: Giant Steps (Fantasy/Original Jazz Classics)
Thad Jones-Mel Lewis: Consummation (Blue Note)
Stan Kenton: Contemporary Concepts (Capitol)
Joe Lovano (with the WDR Big Band arr. by Mike Abene): Symphonica (Blue Note)
Charles Mingus: Let My Children Hear Music (Columbia)
Mingus Big Band: The Essential Mingus Big Band (Dreyfus)
Gerry Mulligan: Verve Jazz Masters 36 (Verve)
Oliver Nelson: Verve Jazz Masters 48 (Verve)
Buddy Rich: The New One, Mercy, Mercy (both Pacific Jazz)
Maria Schneider: Evanescence (Enja)
Vanguard Jazz Orchestra: Up From the Skies (arr. Jim McNeely), Monday Night Live at the Village Vanguard (both Planet Arts)
Kenny Wheeler: Music for Large and Small Ensembles (ECM)
I suggested to Kirchner that, despite Bill Holman’s splendid work on the Kenton Contemporary Concepts album, one of Holman’s own CDs should be on the list. He replied,
As much as I respect what he’s done on his own, I think that the Kenton CC album shows him at his very best–and is for students the best introduction to Holman’s work. (In the same way that Stravinsky did great things all during his career, but never wrote anything “better” than The Rite of Spring.)
If you submit a suggested addition to Bill’s list, kindly give a musical justification. For our purposes, “I like it” is not justification. Please use the Comments link at the end of the item. When we receive enough replies, we’ll post a followup.
Links Fixed
Some readers have reported a problem with the links to CD sources in the recent Rifftides piece about Kenny Wheeler and Don Thompson. The links have been remade and should be working fine.
Graham Collier On The Web
The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a
thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier’s eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be played while the visitor roams the site. It is a clever teaser, making the roamer want to hear more of Collier’s daring writing played by superb musicians, among them trumpeters Kenny Wheeler, Ted Curson, Tomasz Stanko and Harry Beckett; pianist John Taylor; saxophonist John Surman; drummer John Marshall; and Collier himself on bass. I have made no secret of my admiration for Collier’s work. From a review last year of his 1967 album Dark Blue Centre:
His writing for a pianoless seven-piece ensemble had economy, daring and just enough whimsy to prevent the music from perishing of an overdose of self-regard, the fate of so much avant garde jazz of the sixties.
To read the whole thing, go here. Later, there was another Rifftides piece about a Collier reissue:
The looseness and cogency in Collier’s arrangements are in ideal balance to contain the wildness, daring and–it must be emphasized–good humor of the soloists. There is no trace of the anger and willfull distortion that marred so much avant garde playing in the final decades of the twentieth century.
Hmm. Do we detect a theme? If you decide to explore Collier’s music, that new site is a good place to start. Be aware that the audio montage is a slow loader, even if you have a high-speed connection.
Winstone Alert
I know, I know; Doug’s Picks is overdue for new entries. They’ll be coming along, but the Rifftides staff is engaged in a number of projects, including preparation of a reading from Poodie James, with strings. More about that later. Among other things, I’m writing the notes for a forthcoming CD co-led by Charlie Shoemake and Terry Trotter. It is a delight. I’m not at liberty to tell you about it except to say that its title is Inside and the music, uncompromising but accessible, is a delight. It will be released later this year.
In any case, since Norma Winstone’s latest CD is one of the current picks (see the center column), it seems fitting to let you know that Bill Kirchner (pictured) has prepared a Winstone spectacular for his next broadcast, which will be streamed on the internet. Here is his announcement:
Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From The Archives” series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).
Britain’s Norma Winstone (b. 1941) is not exactly a “well kept secret” (though that’s the title of one of her albums), but she’s much less known than she deserves to be, given her stature as one of the finest vocalists in current jazz. She’s capable of singing everything from standards to challenging original material. And she’s a first-rate lyricist as well.
We’ll hear Winstone with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, reed players Tony Coe and Klaus Gesing, pianists Jimmy Rowles, John Taylor, and Glauco Venier, bassist George Mraz, drummer Joe LaBarbera, and Wheeler’s big band.
The show will air this Sunday, September 28, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time. NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.
CD Catchup, Part 3: Graham Collier
Graham Collier, Hoarded Dreams (Cuneiform). Here we have further, but not recent , adventures of the pioneering British composer, arranger and leader. Hoarded Dreams is a seven-part suite commissioned by the Bracknell Jazz Festival in 1983. Following its one performance by a band of European stars plus trumpeters Kenny Wheeler (Canadian) and Ted Curson (American), the music has languished in a tape archive for twenty-four years. Collier is in a league with George Russell and Charles Mingus in the demanding discipline of writing for large ensembles populated by musicians whose improvisation goes beyond the fringe of standard harmony.
Graham Collier
The looseness and cogency in Collier’s arrangements are in ideal balance to contain the wildness, daring and–it must be emphasized–good humor of the soloists. There is no trace of the anger and willfull distortion that marred so much avant garde playing in the final decades of the twentieth century. The quality of solos and interchanges by familiar players like Curson, Wheeler, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and the baritone sax powerhouse John Surman is equaled by musicians who deserve to be better known outside the British Isles. Among them are guitarist Ed Speight, drummer Ashley Brown, tenor saxophonist Art Themen and trombonist Conny Bauer. Bauer manages to combine elements of Bill Harris and Roswell Rudd, to startling effect. There is so much happening in this music, I suggest that you give it two or three hearings to begin to absorb its dynamics, complexity and subtlety and to sort out which parts are written and which improvised. It’s worth your time. For thoughts on a previous release by Collier, go here.
Good Old Graham Collier
In an attempt to keep my head above the rising tide of incoming CDs, in the next few posts I will offer impressions of a few recent arrivals.
Not all recent arrivals are new. Graham Collier’s Deep Dark Blue Centre (disconforme) has been around for forty years, but it is as fresh as last week. A bassist, composer, arranger and leader, Collier made British jazz more interesting in the 1960s and has helped to keep it that way. The album title is part of what Hoagy Carmichael is said to have answered when he was asked about the future of jazz. Whatever happened, he replied, he hoped the music would always keep its deep dark blue centre. In 1967, Collier succeeded in his exploration of new possibilities by holding that vital center (centre if you spell in British).
His writing for a pianoless seven-piece ensemble had economy, daring and just enough whimsy to prevent the music from perishing of an overdose of self-regard, the fate of so much avant garde jazz of the sixties. Collier was aided by his choice of musicians. His sidemen included the young Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, the Rhodesian trombonist Mike Gibbs, and drummer John Marshall, all to become important figures in jazz. Reed and woodwind experts Dave Aaron and Karl Jenkins and guitarist Philip Lee are equally important as soloists and as contributors to the ensemble work in this still vital recording. Remastered in digital sound for the CD version, this is a perenially interesting introduction to Collier’s work.
The Mulligan Strain
To provide harmonic guidance, bands in early jazz, swing and bebop included banjos, guitars or pianos. There were exceptions, notably some of the New Orleans bands that rode in the beds of trucks or marched for funerals and parades, That practice continues with outfits as traditional as the Onward and Olympia brass bands and as up to date as the Dirty Dozen. In general, though, after 1930, as jazz became more and more a soloist’s art, players depended on pianists or guitarists to supply the chordal basis for improvisation.
The harmonic aspect of bop was often complex, even unto altered changes for the most basic material–the blues and pieces based on simple standard songs like “I Got Rhythm” and “Oh, Lady Be Good.” When the baritone saxophonist and arranger Gerry Mulligan unveiled a band without a chording instrument, it seemed to some listeners incomplete. Others thought it brought openness and freshness to a music that had grown increasingly involved and demanding. Mulligan’s quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker, bassist Carson Smith and drummer Chico Hamilton was a popular success in the pre-rock-and-roll early 1950s, and came to have a lasting influence in the music. Before the decade was out, Ornette Coleman was further reducing dependence on chording instruments, in fact on chords themselves, with instrumentation identical to Mulligan’s save that Coleman played alto rather than baritone sax. Groups patterning themselves on Mulligan’s emerged through the years. Paul Desmond’s quartet with guitarist Jim Hall and later with Ed Bickert may have been the most successful.
Fascination with the Mulligan quartet and its achievements continues in the new century. Three fairly recent CDs make the point. Trumpeter John McNeil’s East Coast Cool (Omnitone) is the newest and most experimental, taking Mulligan’s concept beyond conventional song-form harmony into freedom that often verges on Coleman territory. He includes only one piece, “Bernie’s Tune,” from Mulligan’s repertoire. In it, he expands the famous introductory triplet phrase by half, then doubles it, takes the bridge into waltz time and elasticizes the meter in the improvised choruses. The metric foolery in this and other selections is possible not only by way of McNeil’s celebrated instrumental and cerebral virtuosity, but also that of baritone saxophonist Alan Chase, bassist John Hebert and the magical drummer Matt Wilson.
The rest of the twelve pieces, except for Kenny Berger’s Mulligan-like “GAB,” are by McNeil. Some have what sound (deceptively) like conventional chord changes. Some seem to have none, but depend on rhythmic regularity. Throughout, there is a large dollop of McNeil’s wryness and wit, but they never overwhelm his musicality. “A Time To Go,” which apparently means to poke fun at the conventions of accessible melodicism in the West Coast Jazz of the 1950s, is nonetheless melodic and accessible. “Delusions” alternates between sections of uplift and menace and features amazing extended press-roll dynamics by Wilson.
Two duets by McNeil and Chase sound totally improvised, but with McNeil you can’t always be certain what is worked out and what is off the cuff. In “Duet #2,” the trumpet discreetly uses what I presume to be tape-loop echo while Chase, closely miked, manipulates the saxophone’s keys without blowing into the instrument, producing a hollow effect something like that of the drums called boo-bams. The track is intriguing and judiciously short; too much of this would have been precious. Other highlights: a piece called “Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto,” built of twelve-tone rows, also brief and effective; a truly beautiful semi-free ballad called “Wanwood;” and “Waltz Helios,” which is wistful and touching. McNeil extends Mulligan’s concept into regions of free and modal jazz without going so far out as to lose the cogency or the sense of fun that helped make Mulligan’s quartet a model upon which to buld.
News From Blueport by the Andy Panayi Quartet (Woodville Records) closely observes the Mulligan ethos and repertoire. With trombonist Mark Nightingale, bassist Simon Woolf and drummer Steve Brown, baritone saxophonist Panayi approximates the edition of the Mulligan quartet that had Bob Brookmeyer on trombone. Veterans of British studios and jazz clubs, they achieve the Mulligan-Brookmeyer blend. Except in short stretches of Bill Crow’s title tune, the band does not deviate from straight time or leave conventional harmonic arenas. Yet, it is not a mere replication of the Mulligan group. However skillfully Panayi has adapted certain of Mulligan’s mannerisms, he occasionally departs into growls, honks and slurs that announce his individuality.
Nightingale plays the slide trombone, not the valve version of which Brookmeyer is the undefeated champion. A precisionist of the J.J. Johnson school, he nonetheless glories in his instrument’s ability to whoop and holler. The tune list is predominantly from the Mulligan book–“Blueport,” “Line for Lyons,” “Sun on the Stairs,” “Festive Minor” and others–but it also has nice changes of pace in Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks,” Pepper Adams’ “Reflectory” and “Em ‘N En,” a Nightingale line based on “There Will Never Be Another You.” Woolf and Brown are new to me. Their work in support is admirable, and Woolf demonstrates both ardor and technique, including plenty of double stops, in his bass solos. This is a Mulligan tribute album that will introduce many non-Britains to four impressive musicians. This CD seems to be hard to find in the U.S. The link above is to a British seller.
The Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava’s Full Of Life (CamJazz) also embraces Mulligan, but with more subtlety than the Payani group and less overt adventuresomeness than McNeil’s. Rava is one of many European trumpeters influenced by Chet Baker and Miles Davis. He also has some of the free radical genes of players like Kenny Wheeler and Don Cherry. Javier Girotto is the baritone saxophonist. Although his soloing is more elliptical than Mulligan’s, and he works within a narrower dynamic range, when he and Rava heat up their counterpoint on “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” they achieve a symbiosis remarkably like that of Mulligan and Baker.
The CD contains no Mulligan compositions, but Rava pays tribute with “Moonlight in Vermont,” using the essential outline of Mulligan’s famous version with Baker. It is a langourous, reflective, enchanting performance, but “Nature Boy” outdoes it for sheer passion that reaches the simmering intensity of slow flamenco in Rava’s solo and in Girotto’s on soprano saxophone. As for the rest of the tunes, Rava’s and Girotto’s originals are as intriguing as some of their titles; “Boston April 15th,” as an example, “Happiness is to Win a Big Prize in Cash” as another. Those pieces, “Miss MG,” “Full of Life,” “Visions” and “Mystere” have harmonic structures that inspire lovely solos from both horns and, often, daring ones from Rava. Like Kenny Wheeler, he is prone to making surprising interval leaps into the stratosphere without sacrificing his lyricism.
Bassist Ares Ravolazzi and drummer Fabrizio Sferra present further evidence that superb rhythm section players are everywhere in Europe these days. Full of Life is an apt title for this consistently satisfying album.
Readers’ Choices, Part 3
Here is the third report on the survey of what Rifftides readers are listening to these days.
·Today I have two CDs in my car player: A lovely duo recording by Randy Sandke and Dick Hyman, and a CD reissue of one of my favorite LPs, Boss of the Blues, with Joe Turner and a dynamite studio band arranged by Ernie Wilkins.
Bill Crow
New City, New York, USA
·I’m currently knocked out by a net recording from website Dimeadozen from Vienna’s Opera House in June 2006 of Sergio Mendes current band. How he has manged to update his sound after 40 years amazes me. The Austrian audience is grooving, just shows how Brazilian music can get to the most staid (assumed) audience.
I’ve also just discovered Duke’s Cosmic Scene, great stuff, Gonzalves and Terry are sublime.
Plus a lovely record by Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi Fellini Jazz with Chris Potter, Kenny Wheeler, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Lovely stuff from all concerned with some exquisite themes.
Don Emanuel
Kent, England
·I have been utilizing my aging El Camino recently. Its tape deck won’t play bebop. That said, I’ve been listening to a home-made compilation of Benny Goodman material from the 1940’s Columbia era, with the likes of Mel Powell, Sid Catlett, Vido Musso, Cootie Williams, Billy Butterfield, Dave Tough, Peggy Lee, Lou McGarrity and those fine Eddie Sauter arrangements such as “Benny Rides Again,” “Perfidia,” “Scatterbrain,” “The Man I Love,” if you will. Indeed, at the end of the day I’m ready for some Artie Shaw.
R.H. Godfrey
Wenatchee, Washington, USA
A virtuoso double trifecta of words and phrases. Bravo, Mr Godfrey.
·Listening to Erik Truffaz’s Face a Face
Kevin Wehner
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
·Lee Morgan, Tom Cat (car)
John Coltrane, Live Trane: The European Tours (iPod)
Patrick J. Whittle
Washington, DC, USA
·The car CD changer currently has on:
Trio de Paz, Somewhere
Very recently:
Louis Armstrong, In Scandinavia Vol 1
Bryn Terfel, An Die Musik: Schubert favorites
Charlie Parker Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 discs C & D
Oscar Peterson Trio At the Stratford Shakespearean Festival
Fredrik Ullen, Ligeti Complete piano music
Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus
Karrin Allyson, Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane
Garret Gannuch
Denver, Colorado, USA
·Pianist Frank Kimbrough’s new CD Play, and: Various Artists: From Ragtime to Rock: A History of American Music This rare LP (supposed only 100 were pressed) features live performances from the January 13, 1970 Today Show, including Lionel Hampton, Bud Freeman, Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and more. Issued by Mrs. Paul’s Kitchens!
Ken Dryden
Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
·Right now, I’m listening to and enjoying Change Of Heart by Martin Speake Quartet on ECM, and the Dutch Jazz Orchestra’s 1996 collection of Billy Strayhorn compositions, Portrait Of A Silk Thread. Also, Brad Mehldau’s and Renee Fleming’s Love Sublime on Nonesuch, but I don’t know how I feel about that one yet. I enjoy Rifftides. Thanks for keeping it going.
Chuck Mitchell
Kinnelon, New Jersey, USA
·Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band at the Olympia, Paris, Nov.
19, 1960, a 2-CD set.
Jon Foley
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
·Reuben Rogers, The Things I Am
Tim Garland, If The Sea Replied
Frank Kimbrough, Play
Ray Brown, Something For Lester
Fay Claassen is a wonderful and extremely inventive singer. Her recording titled RHyTHMS & RHyMeS ( yes, that’s the correct typeset ) is very fine indeed with a wonderful arrangement of “Seven Steps to Heaven,” but the whole recording is at a very high standard. Toots Thielemans; Joe Locke; Steve Davis; Kenny Werner assist.
Tom Marcello
Webster, New York USA
Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff has a day of rest. The final batch of listeners’ choices will appear on Monday, so if you have been holding back, now’s the time to send yours.
Comment: Maynard Ferguson
John Salmon writes about the Rifftides review of Maria Schneider at Jazz Alley:
I’m amazed that anyone could write a piece on big bands and not mention Maynard Ferguson’s band, which is on the road 200 days a year. How is it possible to do a piece on big bands and ignore the one touring band still out there? Yes, there are larger groups that don’t tour (MF has 10 pieces, including himself), but who’s reaching the public, especially young people, for jazz?
Many critics like to dump on Maynard, but almost any MF album, other than the last few he did for Columbia in the 70’s, (when Freddie Hubbard and many other jazzmen were doing similarly dubious albums), is at least good. Some, like his Roulette era albums of 1958-1962, and are unrivaled by anyone, including Basie and Ellington. I love Maria Schneider, but name one kid drawn into jazz by her music. And many of the guys in her bands came up through MF’s bands.
Maynard’s drawn many thousands, as players and listeners, into this music. Before you scoff at Maynard as a player, note that Ellington wanted him on his band, and asked him to join several times. The question is, will jazz be “art music” solely, with no broad audience, or will it be music that retains at least enough popularity to employ all the music school graduates you spoke of?
I could list all the great players that came up through Maynard’s bands, but just talking about tenor players there are-Wayne Shorter, Joe Farrell, Don Menza, Carmen Leggio, Nino Tempo, Lou Tabackin, Mark Colby…and writers including Bill Holman (who you mentioned), Quincy Jones, Al Cohn, Johnny Mandel, Don Sebesky, Mike Abene, Jaki Byard, Kenny Wheeler, and dozens of others.
I’m upset about this, because the failure to mention Maynard is symptomatic of the cliquish nature of writing about the music. It’s not “Maynard or Maria”-it’s both. What about Chris Botti? Far too popular to get a mention here, no doubt. A fine player who deserves all the kudos he can get…and a far more interesting player than Wynton Marsalis.
Jazz’s endless taste wars are foolish and destructive. Dixie v. swing? Why not both? Bop v. swing? Why not both? Coltrane or Getz? Why not both? Why do we have to choose? For a while there, no critic had a word to say about any tenor player not named Coltrane.
Why not also promote talented people who are producing good music and who are able to maintain what little public interest there is in jazz? Unless there’s simply more snob appeal in being a fan of, and writer about, unpopular music.
—John Salmon
http://magrittejbs.blogspot.com
I disagree with little in Mr. Salmon’s comment, but I am not content to be set up as the straw man he wants to knock down.
I did not write “a piece on big bands.” I wrote a piece on Maria Schneider’s big band, prefacing the review portion with a few remarks on changed economic circumstances that generally keep big bands off the road.
My not mentioning Ferguson is not “symptomatic of the cliquish nature of writing about the music.” It is symptomatic of the fact that Ferguson does not now have a big band, regardless of its name (Big Bop Nouveau). Ten pieces add up to a medium-sized band, fourteen or more to a big one.
“Many critics” may “like to dump on Maynard.” I do not. Nor can I recall ever “scoffing at him as a player.” As an owner-operator of trumpets, I would be drummed out of the trumpet corps.
If Mr. Salmon thinks I fall into the category of critics who categorize music and promote “endless taste wars,” he hasn’t read much of my stuff. I invite him to do so.
CamJazz
I intended to mention in the Rifftides ad hoc survey of recent trio CDs some by the Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi. Pieranunzi is another pianist who has retained the Bill Evans ethos and used it as the foundation for a style of his own. As if to remind me, today the mailbox disgorged the reissue of a selection of film music by Ennio Morricone, used for improvisation by Pieranunzi, bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Baron. The album has U.S. distribution from Sunnyside Records and is available here.
Much of Pieranunzi’s work, including the first Morricone CD and Play Morricone 2, is on CamJazz, a classy Italian label. He, Baron and Johnson, Evans’ last bass player, work together with unity of purpose. They give the music, by turns, intensity and ease that perfectly suit the Morricone pieces. It may surprise listeners who associate Morricone’s music only with the mournful soundtracks of spaghetti westerns that some of his themes are as hip as bebop originals. The CamJazz catalogue is worth exploring for other Pieranunzi CDs, among them his recent duets with Jim Hall, the restlessly exploratory dean of modern jazz guitar. There is also a Pieranunzi collaboration with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Enrico Brava, John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz and the intriguing pianist Salvatore Bonafede are other CamJazz artists.
CD Reviews, DVDs & Snyder In Academia
Reissuing important music in impeccably produced editions, Mosaic Records continues to thrive. Its most recent box set is The Complete Clef/Verve Count Basie Fifties Studio Recordings. I just finished a long review of the album for Jazz Times. Watch for it in the September 35th anniversary issue.
Another recent Mosaic gem is The Complete Argo/Mercury Art Farmer, Benny Golson Jazztet Sessions. Farmer and Golson were in the thick of the hard bop movement of the 1950s and early sixties. Together, they transcended hard bop’s orthodoxies, Farmer with his incomparable melodic inventions on trumpet and flugelhorn, Golson as a writer of memorable tunes and pungent arrangements and as a lusty tenor saxophonist under the spell of Don Byas and Lucky Thompson. They reached what Gene Lees described in Down Beat in 1960 as “a balanced amalgam of formal written structure and free blowing — the long-sought Grail of jazz.†That balance is responsible for the music’s sounding fresh more than forty years later, along with remarkably undated playing by the leaders and their changing cast of sidemen.
The pianists were McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton and Harold Mabern; the bassists Addison Farmer, Herbie Lewis and Tommy Williams; the trombonists Curtis Fuller, Tom McIntosh and Grachan Moncur III; the drummers Lex Humphries, Tootie Heath and Roy McCurdy. The seven CDs in the Mosaic box encompass everything the Jazztet recorded in its 1960-’62 incarnation (Farmer and Golson reassembled the band briefly in the 1980s), as well as individual dates by the leaders. They include four of the best quartet albums of the decade, Golson’s Free and Turning Point and Farmer’s Art and Perception. Both of Farmer’s and one of Golson’s quartet dates have Tommy Flanagan, the other Golson has Wynton Kelly, two of the most influential pianists in modern jazz. The box also contains Listen To Art Farmer And The Orchestra with Oliver Nelson’s arrangements, and Golson’s clever Take A Number From 1 To 10, in which he starts alone and adds one instrument per track until he has a tentet. In the twenty-page booklet, Bob Blumenthal contributes a deeply researched essay and track-by-track analysis.
With the Farmer/Golson bonanza coming on the heels of its monumental Complete Columbia Recordings Of Woody Herman And His Orchestra & Woodchoppers 1945-1947, Mosaic is having a good run. As usual. The label’s Mosaic Select series of smaller boxes brings together in three CDs five Bob Brookmeyer albums from the fifties. It includes two rarities, Brookmeyer’s ten-inch 1954 Pacific Jazz quartet album with John Williams, Red Mitchell and Frank Isola, and The Street Swingers with guitarists Jim Hall and Jimmy Raney, bassist Bill Crow and drummer Osie Johnson. Mint copies of The Street Swingers LP have gone to Japanese collectors for hundreds of dollars. It’s good of Mosaic to rescue it from the archives for listeners of more modest means.
Brookmeyer long since passed safely through what he has called his “music to make your teeth hurt†period. For an idea of what he is up to these days, I recommend his Waltzing With Zoe for writing in a league that he and Bill Holman, among contemporary arranger-composers, occupy alone. Maria Schneider and Jim McNeely are stars of the farm club.
For Brookmeyer’s small group work on valve trombone, try Island, a challenging collaboration with Kenny Wheeler, possibly the most surprising trumpet soloist alive. John Snyder has revived his Artists House as a nonprofit organization and taken it into leading-edge multi-media production and education. Artists House includes in The Island package not only the CD but also a DVD with scenes of the recording session, interviews with the musicians and printable scores. To find Island on the Artists House website, click on “Contact” on the right side of the screen.
Snyder just completed his first academic season as Conrad Hilton Eminent Scholar and Director of Music Industry Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans. In case those Artists House and teaching involvements don’t keep him busy enough, he has also taken on stewardship of a series of musicians’ master classes at New York University. The Artists House web site presents streaming video of classes conducted by Benny Golson, Cecil Taylor, Percy and Jimmy Heath, Barry Harris and Clark Terry. The only one I’ve seen all the way through is Taylor’s. His question and answer session with NYU students is, like his music and his life, intriguing performance art.