Good bananas indeed. I know that generation of jazz legends are all at the far end of the actuarial table, but it's still jarring to see the obituaries keep popping up.
I hadn't been keeping up with Coleman's recent stuff, but one amazing thing about these guys, and that makes their deaths even is how good they are when they are really really old. Wayne Shorter is over 80 now; I saw him last year and he was absolutely, incredibly great still. Over 80!
Yeah, I saw the Sun Ra Arkestra a couple years ago when Marshall Allen was either 88 or 89 and he killed it.
Just so I understand the rules: you can no longer masturbate to Ornette Coleman qua object of desire, but you can still use his music as your wank soundtrack, right?
Not that I would do that; I'm asking for a friend.
I think it would be more sad if somebody kept trying their whole life to get really good but never got there until just once when they were nearly 90 and then they died.
2. Yes, I saw Stephane Grappelli a couple of years before he died. He was in his middle/late 80s and maybe a pro violinist could have told me where he'd slowed down since the Hot Club days, but I sure as hell couldn't hear it.
Coleman wasn't my favourite style, but he was rivettingly good at what he did all the same.
Likewise, I heard Jimmy Scott in his early 80s, and he was brilliant.
Fred Kaplan at Slate has a link to Rollins jamming with Coleman, 2010 I think, 20+ minutes. Another today article has a link to "Lonely Woman" off Shape of Jazz to Come
1) For the most part, my playlist is about background to reading, so tends toward the mellower. A lot of exceptions from Megadeth to Mingus, but Dexter Gordon is more my style, and Coleman is on the edge of my comfort level, Ayler and Dolphy a little past it.
2) It is a prejudice, but the linked piece (compare to "Lonely Woman") is an example of why I tend to focus on an artist's prime. Experience, craft, and maturity are no substitutes for youth, anger, and hunger. An exception might be Pepper's Vanguard Sessions, but he was hungry.
But I do listen to something like Coleman every night.
(learned who GG Allin was today)
This might be a place to troll with last night's playlist. Is this stuff good? Yeah it's all good.
Janet McGarry
Etta James
Brighter
Editors
Beatles
BB King
T-Bone Burnett
Goose Creek Symphony
Beatles
Midnight Sun
Triumvirat
Nick Drake
Linda Thompson
Billie Holiday
Joni Mitchell
Nora Jean Bruso
Flying Burrito Bros
Chicago
Sonny Rollins
Jimmy Thackery
Roches
Darden Smith
Angela Strehli
David Bowie
Motorhead
Rosemary Clooney
Pat Metheny
Wizards of Kansas
Alice Cooper
Doug Sahm
Hank Thompson
Count Basie
Antal Dorati, Detroit Symphony, Firebird
The Wigmore Hall has a date coming up with two pianists doing the Rite of Spring, that would likely be awesome just to *watch*.
Aw man.
The Shape of Jazz to Come blew my fucking mind when I was a junior saxophone nerd. Some kids were terrorising their parents with gangster rap lyrics; I was gleefully evoking suppressed lip curls from my sax teacher by telling him I wanted a plexiglass horn like Ornette's.
Peace out, you excellent weirdo.
Un Muy Bonita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=405MdvmBoAU
Aw man.
The Shape of Jazz to Come blew my fucking mind when I was a junior saxophone nerd. Some kids were terrorising their parents with gangster rap lyrics; I was gleefully evoking suppressed lip curls from my sax teacher by telling him I wanted a plexiglass horn like Ornette's.
Peace out, you excellent weirdo.
Un Muy Bonita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=405MdvmBoAU
Aw man.
The Shape of Jazz to Come blew my fucking mind when I was a junior saxophone nerd. Some kids were terrorising their parents with gangster rap lyrics; I was gleefully evoking suppressed lip curls from my sax teacher by telling him I wanted a plexiglass horn like Ornette's.
Peace out, you excellent weirdo.
Un Muy Bonita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=405MdvmBoAU
First of all: for fuck's sake, how did that even happen.
Back on the old jazz musician topic, I saw Cecil Taylor when he must have been in his mid seventies, and aside from playing well, the physical energy coming off this guy was incredible. I wouldn't want to fight him.
Also saw Melvin Sparks in his late 50's which may not be so impressive age-wise but what surprised me, only knowing recordings from his 20s/30s was how clearly better he had become in the intervening years; I mean, he was good then but had become twice the musician since.
Mack Rebennack and Emmanuel Ax both going strong on fairly recent evidence.
17: Dunno. My parents saw Dr. John a few weeks back and my mom can't stop talking about how frail he seemed. But no complaints about the music!
Yes, the trip to and from the keyboard looked dicey, but musically he's still all there.
I think, sadly, Sonny Rollins is more or less the last man standing. He's in semi-retirement, I think, due to ill-health, but was totally killing it up until very recently.
My favourite quote from Rollins, re: being an old musician, is that when he was younger he used to be a ferocious practicer, but that now he was in his 80s, he could only do a couple of hours a day. A couple of hours a day! From a guy who was already a monster player in the 1940s, and who played the saxophone like he did in his prime. There's a reason these old guys are shit hot into their old age.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323809304578430733765013790
re: 12
I have that album, if it's the Bizjaks? Is pretty good, but I think I was vaguely hoping for something more.
Coming back to the two piano Rite of Spring, there were a few things that annoyed me about it. Just listened again on the way to the train station.
What's so great about those early Stravinsky ballets is his orchestration and his use of rhythm. So you can have all of these superficially clashing voices and rhythms but they are both completely clear and separable, but at the same time they cohere together. Largely because of how brilliant he is in his use of the tone colours of the different instruments.
Stick that on two pianos and you lose all of that. It would take pianists with very fine control of touch and tone, and superb rhythmic sense to convey the same clarity and coherence. The Bizjaks use a very bright piano sound, and they play everything with loads of attack, and there's not much in the way of dynamics. Things that are pianissimo in good orchestral recordings are all a bit bashy and harsh. So on the more rhythmically and harmonically complex movements from the Rite, they sometimes sound like two people randomly bashing at pianos.
The historically informed recordings of the Rite, e.g. the Les Siecles version and the new Znman recording [which has vesions of both the 1913 autograph score, and the more commonly played but changed later Stravinsky score] bring out the tonal sophistication, and it all sounds more subtle and less confused.
That all makes complete sense, I've never heard the piano reduction although am told we have a couple of recordings knocking about the place. Still think it would be a great show to watch a couple of pianists bushwhacking their way through it! Certainly playing the Rite is tremendous good fun in every dimension, but particularly rhythm and color.
I'm not much of a jazz guy, but seeing Sonny Rollins play the Sweet Pea festival ('86, I think) is a lifetime highlight.
This was pinned up in the office and it made me laugh a great deal,