Ivesy Divey

Race In Jazz: Early, Gillespie and Sudhalter

2011-01-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

A great recent essay on race by a black American jazz critic is Gerald Early’s “White Noise and White Knights: Some Thoughts on Race, Jazz, and the White Jazz Musician”. I found it through Ken Burn’s “Jazz: A History of American Music”, a companion book to the more well-known documentary.

In this essay, Early attempts to show how the white jazz musician both perceives himself and is perceived by both the critical community and general listening public. He asks some very difficult questions about race in jazz and indeed the very definition of jazz itself in an open and honest way that I find refreshing. Specifically, he is willing to engage a book dedicated to informing the public of all the white jazz musicians that have been neglected over the years. The book in question is Richard Sudhalter’s “Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945”. Unlike other black critics who might take the opportunity to start “driving the thresher” (to quote Stanley Crouch), Early simply acknowledges the “unavoidable anger” that inevitably surfaces about such a book, and moves on to the bigger questions.

Sudhalter and Early each bring up questions about the nature of jazz. Can any one race be said to have invented it? Are blues and swing essential elements of the music? Who contributed them? Can we make generalizations about race in this music? I am relatively new to Gerald Early as a critic, so I was a bit surprised at some of his opinions. Early detects a shift after World War II toward increased critical reception to jazz music that saw itself as “an expression of major black aesthetics.”

I am a little more lost when he claims that most jazz fans and critics are most suspicious of music played by whites. “Cool” or “West Coast” jazz always struck me as quite popular, and is it really held today in lower esteem than the black avant-garde music of the 60s? Early seems very aware of the fact that jazz has largely lost its black audience, a very crucial point. Without an enthusiast black listening public, can we really be certain we are getting the whole story?

This is a major reason why I love Dizzy Gillespie’s autobiography To Be or Not to Bop. Stan Kenton is discussed a great deal in the book, though seldom is the content of his music engaged. This is Al McKibbon:

“I think had Dizzy been white—Here it is a guy comes along with a new style of playing, a new style band, a new style of dressing, a new way of talking. Now, man, suppose Stan Kenton had all those things? Dizzy would have been a rich man.” (pg. 334)

And later (this is Dizzy himself now):

“Progressive jazz came after our music, bebop. You see you can’t leave out the fundamentals like Stan Kenton did. The major fundamental of our music is rhythm, a great and definite rhythm. If you leave out these fundamentals it’s just as if you took a tree with a trunk and something crept out on a limb and kept going until it fell off.”

It’s clear to me that Dizzy felt passionately about this, since it is within the last ten pages of his autobiography. Dizzy also claims a number of other offenses for Stan Kenton throughout the book. These include the assertions that white bands like Kenton’s were more commercially successful in America, and that Kenton put a conga drummer in his band after hearing Chano Pozo with Gillespie.

There’s even a story about Kenton drunkenly telling Gillespie he can his music better than him!

So I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised to learn that Kenton angrily wrote in to protest the exclusion of white jazz musicians in a 1956 Downbeat Critics Poll, and there is plenty of discussion of Kenton’s right-wing political and racial views throughout the article. Hilariously, we are also told that the Stan Kenton Fan Club wrote “KKK”, “Keep Kenton Kicking” on all their letters!

This may be an extreme case, but no doubt these conflicts are still being played out to this day. It makes me sad that these two great musicians let skin colour get in the way of enjoying each other’s music.

Le Mepris

2010-01-05T23:12:00.000-08:00

Well there's been a lot of changes in life in the past little while, the biggest being that I am back in Vancouver after 14 months in Montreal. It was fun to experience a different city and come back maybe a bit wiser and travelled.

One of the things I'll miss most about Montreal is the french speaking culture. By the end of my stay I was pretty close to fluent, teaching guitar lessons in the east end of the city en francais. One of the ways I practiced was by watching great French movies.

To celebrate my return, I'm going to try to post about my favourite French New Wave films. I've only been interested in them for a couple years so I'm no expert, but I do enjoy them. The first movie is Jean-Luc Godard's "Le Mepris":

Le Mepris (usually translated as "Contempt") is one of Jean-Luc Godard’s best known films. The plot of the movie revolves around a screenwriter Paul and his wife Camille, who get caught in a cycle of contempt and suspicion while the audience is never aware of the degree of infidelities (if there are any at all) going on.

Always intent to let his audience know they are watching a movie, Godard uses a voiceover to recite the credits while a cameraman is seen shooting a woman walking. To emphasize the point, the narrator recites a quote attributed to film theorist Andre Bazin (a big influence on the French New Wave) while the camera points directly at the audience, letting them know they are entering its world.

One thing I love about Godard’s movies is his use of process. The opening scene uses a progression of red filtered lens to open lens to blue filter while the music starts and stops throughout the scene, corresponding to the sudden changes. Godard uses this technique in many of his films, sometimes cutting out the soundtrack completely (see the famous “silent scene” in Bande a Part).

Indeed, the music starts and stops often throughout the film, rarely corresponding to the beginning or end of a scene. Even more striking is the fact that the same music recurs throughout the entire film, oblivious to the emotion being portrayed by the dialogue. This act of stasis is strangely fitting and though the music itself may be derivative, the score remains one of my favourites.

Famously, this film corresponds very closely to Godard’s own life at the time. He was going through marital troubles with actress Anna Karina and collaborated with an Italian film producer (rendered into Jeremy in the movie) who insisted he cast Bridget Bardot as the lead to draw in an audience, Bardot being the infamous “sex kitten” from And God Created Women. As a result the opening scene features female lead Bridget Bardot sprawled out naked on a bed, asking Paul whether he loves specific parts of her body. According to Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard by Richard Brody, Godard shot this opening scene last, after he considered the film complete. In any case, it is hard not to read it as a thumb of the nose to his producer, who Godard surely had no patience for. It’s almost as if he is saying to audience “Ok, we’ve seen the naked girl. Now can we get on with what’s really important?” (A similar moment occurs at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.)

And get on to what’s important he does, with a brilliant improvised fantasy on love, lust and the integrity of the artist. Just try to get tired of it; it remains fresh every time.

Vancouver

2009-10-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm spending the very first two weeks of October in Vancouver. Coming back to Vancouver from Montreal always feels like a breth of fresh air, even if sometimes it feels like "where is everybody?". All the musicians I came up listening to are here, and I always try to see as many of them as I can.

Tonight I'm going to check a band at a certain loft venue called "the big much". The band features bari saxophonist Chad Makela, drummer Bernie Arai and guitarist Dave Sikula. I saw them back in May when I was here last and it was very cool. It's always so cool to see Chad play the saxophone because he really embodies many qualities I am trying to get into my own playing. I've studied with Chad and I hope to take a lesson with him while I'm here.

I've always been able to set up a few of my own playing situations. Next Thursday I'll be playing at a bar called El Barrio where my friend Cole Schmidt is curating a weekly gig. I'll be playing with Mike Kennedy on bass and Cam Stephens on drums. I know Mike from playing in a children's band led by Gord Grdina called the "Bluesberries". There was a very memorable tour we did to Kelowna where we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast complete with tennis courts and our own barbeque.

Then Friday I'm playing improvised music with two musicians I owe a lot too, guitarist Jared Burrows and drummer Stan Taylor. I'm really looking forward to next week.

Happy Birthday Roscoe Mitchell

2009-08-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

There are a certain number of concerts I could have easily gone to, but didn't. These concerts include Tim Berne's Caos Totale, Jim Black's AlasNoAxis, a Bill Frisell concert, a Kurt Rosenwinkel concert and Drew Gress's 7 Black Butterflies band. I also wish I had gotten tickets to both sets of a mindblowing Sonny Fortune and Rashied Ali duo hit but maybe that would've just been too much.

At any rate, the concert I regret missing most is Roscoe Mitchell at the Vancouver Jazz Festival. Roscoe turns 69 today and I still don't know that much about his playing, though I have been making a conscious effort to listen to alot of his and other AACM music. (One day I will read George Lewis' book, "A Power Stronger Than Itself")

Here is a list of the records I enjoy that feature Roscoe Mitchell's playing:

Roscoe Mitchell - Sound, Noonah
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Reese and the Smooth Ones, Nice Guys

There is much, much, much more. Getting into this music took time, though it surely rewards thorough listening. Nonetheless, I can't but feel that getting into it would've been easier after seeing the man live and in the flesh. This music just makes more sense that way. I don't know whether I'll ever get a chance to see Roscoe Mitchell and once he's gone, decoding his message will be that much harder, for both future improvisors and myself.

There is a great interview with the man here.

Le Spectacle, Tim Berne and the Saxophone

2009-06-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today I saw a concert featured in the L'OFF Festival de Jazz de Montreal. This city has two very fine jazz festivals that run basically back to back, the next being the International Montreal Jazz Festival, where I will be seeing Wayne Shorter's Quartet at what I'm told is a nice, intimate, good-sounding theatre.

The concert I saw tonight was a quartet of four famous Quebecois jazz musicians. They were:

Michel Cote - Tenor Saxophone
Alexandre Grogg - Piano
Pierre Cote - Bass
Pierre Tanguay - Drums

I had heard all kinds of things about Pierre Tanguay before coming here, and I'm not too sure why I hadn't seen him play until tonight. I could tell by the way the musicians walked onstage that it was going to be a great concert. There is a certain kind of authority and "This is going to music" type attitude that really comes across (at least to me).

The music consisted of simple but memorable compositions strung together with various levels of free playing. There was atleast a vague resemblance of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet (especially in the styles of Alexandre and Pierre Cote) but the music was clearly their own. One of the striking things about the band was how content Michel Cote seemed to be to play his own melodies, blow a little bit and step back and see what would happen. His sound was beautifully personal and reminded me of Charlie Rouse at times (it took a while to figure this out). The other interesting thing was the use of recordings of French people speaking, often several overlaid on top of each other, which Michel initiated as interludes, several times during Pierre Tanguay's drum solos and once over a piano drone created by striking mallets against the strings on the inside of the piano. This effect could've been tiresome but instead felt perfectly authentic and uncontrived.

All in all I was very inspired by this concert and must make an effort to see more jazz on this level in Montreal (it's clearly out there).

---------------------------------------------------------------

I check Ethan Iverson's blog a little more than I'd like to admit (probably every day). Often I feel like quite a nerd for doing this, but not today when he posted a gigantic interview with Tim Berne, one of my favourite saxophonists ever.

I've already read this interview twice and it is incredibly illuminating. Highlights for me include knowing that Julius Hemphill used Sigurd Rascher's book Top Tones for the Saxophone.

In Vancouver I took not many more than a few lessons with a great baritone saxophonist Chad Makela. Chad definately believes in playing the saxophone in a very specific way that is definately "the real deal", for lack of a better way to describe it. This comes from his teacher Stan Karp, who studied with Buddy Collete and Joe Henderson among others. Many saxophonists from Vancouver have studied with Stan and everyone I've talked to has praised his methodical teaching methods (I also studied with Stan for about a year).

I remember telling Chad after seeing Bloodcount at the last Vancouver Jazz Festival that I saw Tim Berne playing with some kind of mouth guard in his mouth (This is true. I'd be curious to know if it's a regular or one-time thing. It isn't mentioned in the interview). Chad immediately replied: "Oh really? Suddenly I'm anti-Tim Berne. You can't play the saxophone with that shit in your mouth." I pushed the topic a bit further by saying that surely since studied with Julius Hemphill he must be legit. Chad replied by saying he had never heard Julius Hemphill play a straight long tone in his life and made some disparaging remark about the World Saxophone Quartet.

Now I respect Chad's position. Anyone who has heard him play the bari will attest that he knows what he is talking about. He also knows these Tim Berne records (though I doubt he has listened to much of Julius Hemphill or the World Saxophone Quartet.) Even though I will always aspire to play the saxophone as legitimately and with as much dedication as him, I can't deny the authenticity of Tim Berne and the pure bravado it takes to go your own way at any expense. I also believe that Chad too would acknowledge this on some level.

But the fact that Julius Hemphill was fully aware of and taught out of the Top Tones book (the same book Stan and Chad swear by; I also practice out of this book everyday) seems to refute the assertion that Julius Hemphill never played a "straight long tone" in his life (Tim Berne also admits to practicing long tones for 45 minutes every day religiously.)

As much as Stan and Chad value a strong tone (and they do), Stan once told me that as much as he is a stickler about sound, he is an even bigger stickler for time. (I never studied with him long enough to get as much time information from him, though the sound information was invaluable.)

Though I can assert that Tim and Julius practiced long tones, it is harder for me to assert that they would've practiced playing with the metronome in any serious way. (There is no mention of the metronome in the interview). Indeed, it seems that both Julius and Tim's sense of groove, which Tim admits to having a huge thing for, comes through osmosis from listening to soul and R and B music, music that has very little to do with jazz. It seems like this lack of a serious jazz beat is what would make Chad skeptical of Tim Berne and Julius Hemphill more than anything.

One of the records I bought when I was in Vancouver last month was Branford Marsalis' Contemporary Jazz, which features Tain Watts on drums. It's a good record; i hope to study it in greater depth at some point. One of the highlight tracks is the third, Elysium. It begins with 15 seconds of the most "out" Branford I would guess you would ever hear, complete with overblown multiphonics. After those fifteen seconds though, this idea is abandonned for straight ahead lines in a rubato Coltrane quartet setting, before moving towards a more complicated compositional structure in time. The free playing does return several times, admittedly, but never as blatantly as in those first fifteen seconds.

The track is fifteen minutes long and I'm not sure I understand what's really going on structurally, but I don't doubt that that (and Tain and Branford playing some fierce up-tempo swing) is what is important about this track. The free, or outside playing, just sounds tame to my ears, in a way that I know it wouldn't if Julius Hemphill were playing. I will probably always love this track though because to me it declares that this type of (free) music is going on 50 years old and even the so-called conservative axis of the music accepts it.

Related to this point is the part of the Tim Berne interview where they are discussing Julius Hemphill's famous Dogon AD record (which I have only this past year begun to study thanks to the McGill Library's vinyl collection complete with many Arista Freedom records) and Tim Berne states that it "probably wouldn't be as interesting with someone who plays the shit out of 11." There is some tribal element to that record where even though I feel that Julius and Baikida never really outline the 11 at all (Chad Makela might go as far as to say they aren't hearing it), their playing is still strongly authentic. I certainly wouldn't want to trade out Hemphill for Chad Makela (who CAN play the shit out of 11) on Dogon AD.

Interestingly, Chad Makela plays a Tim Berne-like role in bassist Tommy Babbin's band, Benzene. He definately sounds good, no question. Check out your body is your prison on his myspace.

There's definately more I could say about this but honestly I wasn't expecting to even write this much. There is plently more juicy material in that interview though, including Tim Berne's account of Dewey Redman and his thoughts about lifting solos and consciously trying to copy someone else.

Over the past few months I have been trying to explore Tim Berne's earlier music and his collaborations with Herb Robertson and Hank Roberts more since I was introduced to his music through Bloodcount. It's taking a big of adjustment but recently his stellar tribute to Julius Hemphill, Diminuitive Mysteries, has really clicked, but there is still lots more to investigate.

Books:

Stanley Crouch - The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity
Kyle Gann - American Music in the 20th Century
Richard Brody - Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard
James Joyce - Ulysses (in small chunks)
Homer - The Odyssey (prose translation by W. H. D. Rouse)

Movies:

Hiroshima Mon Amour
Vivre Sa Vie
The 400 Blows
Jules and Jim
Down by Law
The Seventh Seal
Wild Strawberries
True Romance

Music:

Muhal Richard Abrams - Mama and Daddy
Leroy Jenkins - Space Minds New Worlds Survival America
Yusef Lateef - Into Something
Keith Jarrett - Surviver Suite
Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder
Joni Mitchell - Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
Warne Marsh - Warne Marsh
Dave Holland - Seeds of Time

Practice Regime

2009-06-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to step up my practicing this summer. I've always been a terrible sightreader and don't have very good ears so I'm hoping to focus on sightreading and ear training alot as well as my sound and time-feel.

One of the things I'm doing to try to make this happen is keeping a practice journal. In celebration of this I'm posting my first entry here for all to see:

June 3rd, 09

10:50-11:30 Saxophone Warm-up
Mouthpiece blowing 5 mins F major Scale
Long tones middle C going to F above and G below trill “Hee”
Terrace Dynamics 4 different notes of varying register 4 different dynamic levels
“Finger Twisters” Phrygian all 12 keys three times
Overtones played with half step bends below in this order:
Fundamental-12th-Octave-2nd Octave
Then the same with three strong articulations
Overtone scales
Joel Miller Exercise Overtone Matching with metronome Octave Only mm=80 bpm
11:30-12:30 Transcribing Hank Mobley’s “Workout” Solo
12:50-1:30 Bebop Scales (3 parts) MM = 90
Scales with Metronome on 1 and 3 starting on the 6th degree on the and of 3
Pattern 3rds to 7ths w/ passing tone through cycle of dominants
Joel Miller Bebop Scale exercise Metronome on quarter notes MM= 100
Start on third, descend over an octave to seventh
Passing tone between 7th and root desc. Between 9th and 3rd asc.
1:40-2:10 Singing with Metronome Phrygian Scale and Two Phrygian Melodies from “A New Approach to Sight-Singing”
2:45-3:00 Sight-reading (3) in “Encyclopaedia of Improvisational Rhythms and Patterns” by Charles Colin
MM=100 for quarter notes and half notes, read as both concert pitch and Bb part
3:40-3:55 Etude from the Universal Method Eighth Note = 100 (Quick Breaths)
4:45-5:10 Sight-reading from the Omnibook

My chops are pretty much done after this. In the end, this isn't that much. 2 hours and 15 minutes with the saxophone, an hour lifting solos and half an hour singing.

This isn't very impressive, the hard part will be keeping it up. We'll see how I do.

Back Home

2009-06-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

I spent the last three weeks of May visiting my hometown in Vancouver. Aside from seeing family and friends, I got to play a duo gig with one of my favourite guitarists, Ron Samworth, at the Illuminate Restaurant in Tsawwassen. Ron was my guitar teacher at Capilano College (now Capilano University) when I went there for two years. He was a revelation, and we talked about everything from reharmonizing standards to Ornette to the music business and what being an artist in the present day really means. He was also the first to introduce me to artists as varied as Ligeti, Paul Bley and Lenny Breau. To this day, he remains an inspiration. Ron is up teaching up at Banff right now alongside Dave Douglas and Tony Malaby.

I also had the pleasure of playing at 1067 Granville Street, a fairly well known artists loft in Vancouver. I played original music and free improvisations with two future roommates and good friends, James Meger (bass) and Omar Amlani (drums). We did some recording after that seemed to turn out well so I will properly have some of that up.

Upon getting back to Montreal I've moved into my third and definately nicest place so far at 1968 Sherbrooke. The biggest plus is the record player and vinyl collection that my friend James left here while he spends his summer in Vancouver. His collection includes some of the very best jazz records. A few that have been on constant rotation are:

John Coltrane - Coltrane's Sound
Keith Jarrett - The Survivor's Suite
Paul Bley - Fragments
Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music
Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer
Ornette Coleman - Broken Shadows

I'm not sure if this music (which I've listen to quite a bit already on cd) sounds better on vinyl, but it sure sounds good.

Coda: Thanks to Ethan Iverson for mentioning me in his recent Blog Competition. Ethan's blog is a model for all future jazz blogs on the internet and I have learned so much just by reading his interviews and analysis. More importantly, his playing is great as is his band The Bad Plus. If you haven't checked out his blog, do it now!

Angel Song

2009-05-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

I still remember purchasing Kenny Wheeler’s Angel Song album as a young musician. Up until then I was mostly familiar with the more standard works of the jazz cannon, and hadn’t really ventured much past the 60s. My record collection mostly contained records on Columbia or Atlantic, so the cardboard packaging and dark, mysterious artwork so signature to ECM were intriguing. It was also more expensive than purchasing used classics at the place down the street.

But someone had told me of the virtues of Kenny Wheeler’s music and I was also only vaguely aware of guitarist Bill Frisell. This was also (with the exception of Birth of the Cool) my introduction to the music of Lee Konitz, who would also soon become one of my heroes. I had no idea what sounds would be contained within, but I guess I was feeling adventurous that day.

When I got home I was not disappointed. I still remember my fascination with the opening guitar chords which state the first melody. Sonically, the record seemed in a whole other world from what I knew. The music seemed to float along gently at its own pace without drums, and I didn’t miss them at all since most of my early experiences playing jazz music were in drummer-less duos anyway (I simply couldn’t find anyone to play with).

Little of the music on the record swings in the traditional sense. Indeed, it contains some of the best rubato playing I have ever heard. The line between time playing and rubato playing is also continually blurred. After a brief introduction from the guitar, the first half of Nicolette is played out of time by the trio of Wheeler, Frisell and Holland before stepping into a tentative waltz as Konitz takes the second half of the melody. I remember being shocked when asking a local professional drummer who admired Wheeler’s music about the album. He didn’t know it, no doubt because of the absence of drums. This seemed like heresy at the time but I can understand it now.

One of the truly great things about Kenny Wheeler’s music is his economic use of compositional materials. The music on Angel Song can be seen as one long suite, and harmonic and melodic material is carried over throughout.

The best example of this is the composition Kind Folk, a 32 bar piece in 9/8 time featuring a simple ostinato played throughout by Dave Holland. The first half of the composition is simply repeated up a minor third with a slight reharmonization. Because of this, a coherence is obtained that I feel is often missing from much modern jazz composition.

Despite the strength of the compositions, the musicians get plenty of say. It is worth noting that even though every composition on the record is extremely strong and bears the stamp “this music could only be written by Kenny Wheeler”, the individuality of the sidemen is consistently just as striking. This combination of strength plus flexibility is a big reason why this music is so successful, and no doubt the reason that Wheeler can employ musicians as diverse as Michael Brecker, Evan Parker, Stan Sulzmann and Jan Garbarek to name only four horns players who have worked with the trumpeter-composer.

One of the great mysteries of this record occurs on Unti, which I suspected was originally untitled. The tune begins with a Frisellian vamp in Gm before moving into a more complex composition that alternates between 4/4 and 3/4 time. For Wheeler’s solo, this fairly oblique structure is repeated, but when Konitz steps up to blow all that is used is a vamp alternating between Gm and Ebmaj7. No other version of this tune does such a thing and I even had the opportunity to ask Mr. Konitz about the session and the reason for the vamp. An absurd question, no doubt, and I got no answer. The solo is almost unrelentingly melodic in Konitz’s “truly improvised” style; a casual listen wouldn’t tell you anything has changed, and the form returns for the guitar solo. This moment remains one of the highlights of the record.

Consider too the diversity of improvisational approaches and backgrounds that comes together on the record. Where else could Lee Konitz’s dedication to Lennie Tristano’s ideal of true improvisation sit so comfortable next to Frisell’s unmistakable blend of Monk and Americana and still sound unquestionably like “Kenny Wheeler Music”?

But then again, it is not too much of a stretch to think of Lee Konitz applying his ten step method to a Kenny Wheeler tune. The melodies are just that strong.

Newcomers to this album might also miss just what a competent instrumentalist and improviser Kenny Wheeler is. His tone on the flugelhorn is full and distinctive. He regularly employs held long tones which alternate with quick flurries in odd groupings, and from time to time he will soar into the instruments stratosphere with ease while never compromising his extremely round, singing tone.

Has anyone seriously considered Wheeler as a trumpeter? He is undoubtedly a “true improviser”. Just listen to his extended dialogue with Konitz on Onmo, the closest thing to a blowing tune on the record. There is also an immediacy to his playing that is hard to fake. You can regularly hear him thinking about what to play next, and he is not afraid to take risks and let it all hang out. His playing is also flexible enough to fit almost any situation, from a big band down to solo playing and duos. I recently heard a trumpet trio of Leo Smith, Lester Bowie and Kenny Wheeler that was killing. He seemed right at home.

Ostinatos are also an integral part of Kenny Wheeler’s music, so it makes sense that almost every Kenny Wheeler record worth considering features Dave Holland, one of the best ostinato players ever. Here he handles his role with extreme grace, giving the music momentum and melodic counterpoint at all times. It seems as if this is the type of bass playing that Lennie Tristano’s music could always have benefited from, as Holland is not afraid to add rhythmic and melodic commentary to the soloist.

This concept really soars in the absence of drums. It is hard to imagine this record with Jack DeJohnette thrown in. I don’t know if the music would suffer, per se, but the sonic freedom is clearly welcome by these four, and the dialogue is really something. As a result, this is also the only ECM record I can think of where the reverb doesn’t seem to get in the way. A great record well worth careful study.

Winter Kept Us Warm

2008-10-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

(T. S. Eliot reading "The Waste Land" here and here)

Last night I got a taste of what's to come, heavy snowfall. Having left my jacket at work, it was very cold indeed.

I recently met a grad student at McGill in Sound Engineering and have done two recordings in the past week with a great bass player and friend, James Meger, also from Vancouver. The first was recorded in McGill's Pollack Hall and was all improvised pieces of acoustic bass and tenor saxophone, except for one piece James brought in. The second, which took place from 12-7 am yesterday morning, features James on electric bass, laptop and sound manipulation and myself on tenor and electric guitar. We each brought in more compositions for this session and did more overdubbing. I also brought in an Aphex Twin tune called Alberto Balsalm which was particularly interesting. James did a really great job doing processed saxophone live while I played. Very cool. I hope to have some recordings up soon. We may even have enough stuff for a full record.

Music:

Sonny Rollins - Live at the Village Vanguard
Miles Davis - Filles de Kilimanjaro
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats, The Grand Wazoo, Waka/Jawaka, Absolutely Free, Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, Joe's Garage, Apostrophe, Overnite Sensation
Jimmy Giuffre 3 - Fusion, Thesis, Free Fall
Paul Bley - Open, To Love
Charles Lloyd - Voices in the Night
Crosby, Stills and Nash - Crosby, Stills and Nash, Deja Vu
The Band - The Band
Joe Lovano - Live at the Village Vanguard
Gyorgy Ligeti - Lontano
Steve Reich - Eight Lines
Charlie Haden - Etudes
Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold as Love
Tim Berne - Mind Over Friction
Steely Dan - Aja
Aphex Twin - ...I Care Because You Do
Ornette Coleman - Change of the Century
Lou Reed - Transformer
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers, Let it Bleed
Bela Bartok - Violin Concerto No. 1, String Quartet No. 1
Alban Berg - Violin Concerto, 3 Pieces for Orchestra
Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 5
Sun Ra - Jazz In Silhouette, The Magic City, Atlantis, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol. 1 and 2, The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra
The Pixies - Doolittle

Books:

Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Albert Camus - La Chute

Movies:

Easy Rider

It's not just the horn

2008-10-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

"...Look. Miles changed the world. More than once. That's true you know. Birth of the cool was first. Then when it all went wrong Miles called all the children home with Walkin'. He just got up there and blew it and put it on an LP and all over the world they stopped in their tracks when they heard it. They stopped what they were doing and they just listened and it was never the same after that. Just never the same."

"What is so incredible about what Miles does is whoever comes after him, whenever, wherever, they have to take him into consideration. They have to pass him to get in front. He laid it out there and you cant avoid it. It's not just the horn. It's a concept. It's a life support system for a whole world. And it's complete in itself like all the treaures have always been."

-Ralph J. Gleason, Original Bitches Brew Liner Notes.

Amen.

Andy Warhol and Les Automatistes

2008-10-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today I went to le Musee des Beaux Arts to see the Andy Warhol exhibit. I've never really been that interested in Andy Warhol's art and this exhibit didn't really change that. Not much information was really provided about the specifics of his process in making what I assumed were stenciled prints. The most interesting things were his stylized portraits using distortions of colour. There was also evidence of a strong influence from American composer John Cage.

Warhol attended a premiere concert in New York of Erik Satie's composition Vexations which consists a short chordal passage to be repeated 840 times. The piece, played by a group of pianists including David Tudor and John Cale of Velvet Underground fame, lasted around 18 hours and surely had an impact on Warhol. I recall a quote of him saying he would sit in his infamous "Factory" and listen to various sounds including typewriters and city traffic, clearly interpreting this to be music happening around him. This, as far as I know, is one of the main innovations of John Cage. Warhol is also well known for doing artwork for many album covers of the 60s (the image above being a famous example), but I also learned that he has done a few Blue Note records, specifically Johnny Griffin's The Congregation (a favourite) and a Kenny Burrell record whose name I can't recall. And let's not forget Sticky Fingers, the first "interactive" album cover, featuring a real zipper.

(Joan Miro's The Tilled Field)

A bit disappointed by the Warhol exhibit, I headed downstairs to the contemporary collection, which I had visited quickly when I visited Montreal the summer of '07. A good portion of the collection features a group of Quebecois painters known as Les Automatistes. Led by Paul-Emile Borduas, the group was inspired by abstract expressionists like Joan Miro but with a strong seperatist agenda. Most of the artists studied in Montreal at l'Ecole des Beaux Arts, explaining their being featured in the musuem. Feeling stifled by the rigid academic constraints of the school, they looked for ways to develop a rawer, purer form of expression. Borduas found this in the french poet and theorist Andre Breton, who strove in his own work for what he called "pure psychic automatism" and wrote the "Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924. When Borduas met younger painters Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Fernand Leduc, he provided them with the ideas they were searching for.

So what does a hard-edged French seperatist looking to start a new art movement do? Write their own manifesto, of course. Borduas' was Le Refus Global (Global Refusal) which he required all who wished to join Les Automatistes to sign. You can read the manifesto here (and here in French). It's fascinating to know that this type of radicalism was going on over 20 years before the October Crisis, among intelligent artists no less. The manifesto is riddled with phrases like "the limits of our dreams" and "shades of hopeless bondage". Looking at the FLQ's manifesto (here) which was demanded be broadcast by CBC on October 8th 1970 during the October Crisis, it's hard to not notice the similiarities (compounded over 20 years and with a more overt political stance).

The painter who really knocked me out, more so than Borduas, was Jean-Paul Riopelle. His painting called "The Wheel" is above. Approximately 8 by 10 feet, this painting stares you down in a way that I can only imagine a Pollock must. The painting is made up of small cubes of colour, created with a pallete knife rather than a brush. It seems to be abstract expressionism at it's finest.

Of all Les Automatistes that I saw, Fernand Leduc stood out as the odd man out. Though he signed Borduas' manifesto, he also adopted many ideas from Les Plasticiens, a countermovement happening in Quebec by the mid-50s. This is the style of the paiting above, concerned only with pure abstraction, line and colour.

The Theory of Automatism

Automatism, or automatic writing, is the ideal which all these artists (excluding Warhol) strove for. It was first used by painters Joan Miro and Salvador Dali as an attempt to get the rational mind out of the way and express the under workings of the subconscious. Improvisation seems to play a large part in this process, as the painter strives to paint from scratch each time, with no preconceived notion of the end result. Automatism avoided representation at all costs, often replacing it with illusionistic or dream-like forms instead.

I don't think it's too big of a stretch to compare this type of process to those of tenor saxophonists like Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders. Critics accused Coltrane of "speaking in tongues" and albums like Meditations and Ascension show a definite attempt to get to a more abstract, irrational process of improvising where traditional melodies notes are replaced with pure sound abstractions in unknown, altissimo register of the saxophone. Coltrane was most influenced in this period by the aforementioned saxophonists, with Sanders being a regular member of his group for a time. The common element of improvising makes the comparison all the more apt, as it is often easier to get a purer, raw form of expression with just the right ammount of reckless abandon.

A Night at the Movies

2008-10-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

Got my pop culture fill last night as I went to see the new Michael Cera movie, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Flashbacks of high school ensued.

On October 30th I will be going to see David Byrne play with Brian Eno, two of my favourite "New Wave" musicians. They are playing at Metropolis on Ste-Catherine. Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts have recently become important albums for me.

I'll be wrapping up Ulysses today. Molly Bloom's soliloquy takes up the last 50 or so pages of the book, and contains a mere 8 sentences that explore her inner thought processes. I wonder if Samuel Beckett, who was a big fan of Joyce, used it as an inspiration for this.

I have some time off from my flyer job, and plan to enjoy the long weeked. My uncle will be coming from Ottawa to visit me tomorrow. I've even got Thanksgiving dinner covered on Monday.

Ce qui se passe

2008-10-03T17:24:00.001-07:00

I surprised myself today when I was able to speak authoritatively to one of my students in French. As far as he knew, I was fluent, though I'm not (yet).

I'm very excited beacuse I am going to hear Steve Swallow play tomorrow at Upstairs with Steve Kuhn and Billy Drummond. I've never heard Steve Kuhn or Billy Drumond, but I recently saw Steve Swallow play at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival with the John Scofield trio. This was at the Center for the Performing Arts, so I am excited to hear Swallow in an intimate club setting. Hear's hoping for masterful standard-playing.

I'm also reading one of the greatest books ever written. Ulysses by James Joyce contains some of the most dense and varied prose I've ever read, yet is a completely logical progression from earlier works like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. The only thing crazier is probably Finnegan's Wake, which I've wanted to read for the past 5 years (and have tried several times). It might finally be possible after digesting Ulysses.

3 Weeks

2008-09-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

I can scarcely believe that I've been living in Montreal for three weeks. I remember telling myself, in the time leading up to the move and during my 2 weeks spent in Ottawa with my Uncle after securing a place, to savour the transitional period. I knew it would be over soon as time has a way of going by. My place is even starting to feel a little bit like home. Overall, I'd say not much has changed in terms of my life, but I feel positive about the move and getting to do the same thing across the country in a very different (and awesome) city.

I've got a job teaching a music school out here, as well as several private students. In the music school I work with students individually before they work with a jazz band all together, playing tunes like C Jam Blues and Route 66. They even do a Duffy tune called Mercy. They will become the youngest band to ever play in the Montreal Jazz Festival come this summer. Overall, the attitude is very positive and there are some great young kids (7 or 8 years old) taking some pretty good solos. I am happy to be part of the team helping.

My flyer delivering job has continued to disappoint by not providing alot of work. I really like the job itself (though I don't think I shall continue it into the winter), but I scarcely work more than 2 or 3 days a week. The days are extremely long and tend to peter out near the end. Case in point, my last working day I delivered 1100 flyers from 7:30-3:00, followed by 100 from 3:00 to 6:30. This wasn't because I ran out of steam.

I've always done some article writing and general web-work for my dad and his company, but it seems like that is starting to pick up now that I actually could use the money, and I'm very excited about this. It should allow me to do what I love, MUSIC!

Musically not too much is happening, which I'm kind of comfortable with for now. They was a period of almost 3 weeks where little practicing got done, and now is catch-up time. I've still been going to the jam sessions, and even met a bass player from my theory class at Cap last year. I had no idea how great a bass player he was. He is doing his first year in the graduate program at Mcgill and him and his friends were killing. Got to play a tune with them. If I could be playing with people like that, that would really be something. Of course, everyone in Montreal is really burning anyway.

Other than practicing, I've also been checking out the Martin Duchow Music Library at Mcgill, a great resource for records, scores and books. I've read incredible books of interview with two of my favourite saxophone players, Lee Konitz and Steve Lacy, discovered incredible recordings I had always wanted to hear, and checked out the score to one of my favourite minimalist pieces of all time, Steve Reich's "Tehillim". The Lee Konitz book was especially insightful as I got the incredible chance to work with him for a week at the Stanford Jazz Residency in Palo Alto, California just over a year ago. It was an experience I won't soon forget.

Music:

Miles Davis - The Sorcerer, Tribute to Jack Johnson
Wayne Shorter - Adam's Apple, Speak No Evil
Sonny Rollins - East Broadway Rundown
Conlon Nancarrow - String Quartets No. 1 and 3 (Arditti Quartet)
Charles Ives - Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 4 "Children's Day at the Camp Meeting"
Charlie Haden - Liberation Music Orchestra, The Golden Number

Books:

Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art by Andy Hamilton
Steve Lacy: Conversations by Jason Weiss
Ulysses by James Joyce

Movies:

Brazil
À Bout de Souffle

Pas des Colporteurs

2008-09-08T18:50:00.001-07:00

Walking around in Laval delivering flyers, you see alot of "No Soliciting" property signs on people's homes. Common signs read "Pas de Circulaire" or "Pas de Publicité", but every once in a while those most worried about having to deal with unwanted advertising reveal themselves, with a sign that reads "Pas des Colporteurs".

Desperate to keep myself amused throughout the 9 hour+ of delivering flyers (the final count today was 1696, or just under $136), I thought (with Nabokovian glee) of one the greatest contributers to the Great American Songbook, Cole Porter. I came with a list of my favourite interpretations of his songs. Coincidentally, they are all heavy on the sax players. I don't have my record collection here, so I'm not going to really say much about them.

Joe Henderson - Night and Day (Inner Urge, 1964) - This is the first Joe Henderson record I ever heard, and quite possibly still my favourite.

John Coltrane - I Love You (Lush Life, 1958) - Love what Art Taylor plays for the intro. Diminished patterns. Time and sound from Trane.

Dexter Gordon - Love for Sale (Go! 1962) - There are other great versions of this tune from around the same time (Something Else and the 58 sessions) but I always forget about this one. I remember some very hip grace notes in the melody. I need to buy this album again. I also love "A Swingin' Affair" A year later, same great band.

Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan - Anything Goes (Getz meets Mulligan, 1957) - I really love this record. Both sound like they're singing straight through their horns. Mulligan sounds unusually good here (don't always like his sound). These guys can burn, creating singable melodies over standard changes at fast tempos. They're totally in tune with each other thematically, playing at the same time on the last tunes, Scrapple from the Apple in particular. A great collection of seldom-played standards. Plus, it's Ray Brown. Enough said.

Steve Lacy - Easy to Love (Soprano Sax, 1957)

Paul Motian - Just One of Those Things (On Broadway Vol. 3, 2004) - This one's the odd man out, but I love these records, and with Lee Konitz it's just great. It's interesting to hear Paul Motian and Lee Konitz play fast tempos late in their careers. The On Broadway were also my first introduction to Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. Check out what Frisell plays right off the bat of his solo. Too funny. This band is so weird. I love it.

So in the end, I never figured out why the French don't like Cole Porter. I think he's great, though.

Montreal

2008-09-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

I've been in Montreal for the past 5 days now, living in a town house in Cote des Neiges. My roommate is an Austrian exchange student from just outside Vienna, going to the University of Montreal for business.

I saw Vancouver band Fond of Tigers play Tuesday night at a venue called Casa Del Popolo and they blew me away. Very tight, minimalist composed stuff mixed with free improv and rock. I was much more impressed than when I saw in Vancouver at the Commodore opening for the Grande Mothers (Frank Zappa's former band). Barry Guy and Lori Freedman are each playing at this venue early next week so I plan to check those out and hopefully find out more about Montreal's improvised music scene.

I've checking out a few of the city's jam sessions and meeting some of the kids going to McGill. Monday night was the Upstairs Jam session led by Chet Doxas (possibly filling in for his brother, Jim) where I brought my tenor, and I got a chance to play a very nice smaller scale ES-335 (I think) at Grumpy's wednesday night after the show.

I've also found a job distributing flyers door to door in Laval. It is nice, outdoors type work, good exercise, and satisfactory pay.I'm still getting back into a good practice routine, something that will be essential for things to go well as far as I'm concerned. I also feel good about there being people to play with here. All in all, a successful endeavour so far. I hope I get better at this blog thing.

Music list:

Thelonious Monk - Plays Duke Ellington

Hank Mobley - Soul Station

Sonny Rollins - The Sound of Sonny

John Coltrane - Africa Brass

Miniature - I Can't Put my Finger on It

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Soundgarden - Down on the Upside

Clutch - Blast Tyrant

Alfred Schnittke - Cello Concerto No. 2 and Concert Grosso No. 2

Pierre Boulez - Piano Sonata No 1 and Sonata for flute and piano

Books:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

L'Etranger (en Francais) par Albert Camus

Samuel Pepys' Diary

David Hume - Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Movies:

Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Take the Money and Run, Crimes and Misdemeanours, 8 1/2, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, The Silence, Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men, For Your Consideration, Dead Man, The Godfather Part II, Last Year at Marienbad, Citizen Kane, Clerks, Slapshot