{"id":2000,"date":"2010-03-11T11:13:06","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T19:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=2000"},"modified":"2010-03-11T11:13:06","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T19:13:06","slug":"correspondence_broadbent_and_m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2010\/03\/correspondence_broadbent_and_m\/","title":{"rendered":"Correspondence: Broadbent And Monk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the Ornette Coleman birthday posting three items down, Alan Broadbent sent the following:<\/p>\n

Now, this one’s absolutely true, I was there and it’s never made the books.
\nMonk’s quartet came to NZ on his “64 world tour and I and my friend Frank Gibson had good seats at Auckland’s beloved Town Hall to see him. After the concert I was elected to drive Larry Gales in my ’53 Ford Prefect to the Musician’s Union where we held a little party for the band. Well, would you believe it, there was Thelonious all by himself standing in a corner, keeping to himself. Mostly, I think, because everyone must have been afraid to approach him. I remember him wearing a turban and occasionally doing a little twirl, which must have been somewhat intimidating to everyone, not the least me. Frank started nudging me. “Go on, Alan, go ask him something.”<\/p>\n

Being a lad of 17 and discovering all kinds of new things to listen to in jazz, even in 1964 New Zealand, I had been listening to Ornette and Charlie, trying to comprehend the new “free form” jazz. I had read the term in Down Beat, I believe.<\/p>\n

Well, I made my way through the crowd toward his little corner of the world and looked up at what seemed to me a giant of a man in more ways than one. After gingerly introducing myself, I somehow managed to tell him I was listening to Ornette and asked him if he had an opinion about this new “free form” music.<\/p>\n

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Thereupon he looked down at me and said in a low, quiet voice….<\/p>\n

“Well…. first you said FREE….. then you said FORM.”<\/p>\n

Whereupon I thanked him and melded back into the crowd.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On this CD<\/a>, Broadbent plays Monk’s “‘Round Midnight.” I hoped to find video of him performing a Monk piece but had no luck. Instead, here he is with Charlie Haden’s Quartet West in a 1999 concert in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Haden, bass; Broadbent, piano; Ernie Watts, tenor saxophone; Larance Marable, drums. Bizarrely, the YouTube<\/em> clip identifies the tune as “The Long Goodbye.” Maybe they’d had too many Heinekens. The piece is, in fact, Charlie Parker’s “Dexterity.” <\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n

Mr. Broadbent adds that rumors of Larance Marable’s death are greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

Larance suffered a stroke a few years back, but, although he can’t speak and is infirm, his friends might like to get in touch with him at West Side Health Care<\/a> where he is very much alive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the Ornette Coleman birthday posting three items down, Alan Broadbent sent the following: Now, this one’s absolutely true, I was there and it’s never made the books. Monk’s quartet came to NZ on his “64 world tour and I and my friend Frank Gibson had good seats at Auckland’s beloved Town Hall to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}