sounds of Chicago
Tonight these guys, who play all over the world, will be at a little club on the city’s northwest side, the Hideout, as will I.
DKV Trio (Hamid Drake, drums; Kent Kessler, bass; Ken Vandermark, reeds), live, Italy (Sant’Anna Arresi Jazz Festival), 2008
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Joy—no one gives me more than Hamid Drake.
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lagniappe
reading table
God keep me from ever completing anything.
—Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick
two takes
This is, to these ears, exhilarating.
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil,* “Cornered (Duck)”
Live, New York (The Stone), 5/8/13
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Live, Washington, D.C (Atlas Performing Arts Center), 10/9/13
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music should be no more complex than it needs to be. And no matter how complicated it may actually be, it should never seem that way to the listener. If it does, immediacy has deteriorated into abstraction.
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*TB, alto saxophone; Oscar Noriega, bass clarinet, clarinet; Matt Mitchell, piano; Ches Smith, percussion.
passings
Jim Hall, guitarist, December 4, 1930-December 10, 2013
With Joe Lovano (tenor saxophone), “In a Sentimental Mood” (D. Ellington), live, Italy (Umbria Jazz Festival), 1996
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With Bill Evans (piano), Undercurrent (“My Funny Valentine,” “I Hear a Rhapsody,” “Dream Gypsy,” “Romain,” “Skating in Central Park,” “Darn that Dream,” “Stairway to the Stars,” “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”), 1962
When I was in college in the early ’70s, this album was a frequent late-night companion. Since then I’ve listened to it more times than I could count. It never grows old.
sounds of New York
Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone), William Parker (bass), Marvin “BuGaLu” Smith (drums), with Brandon James Lewis (tenor saxophone, 10:10-), live, New York (Whole Foods, Union Square), 2012
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lagniappe
art beat
Robert Frank (1924-), New York, 1947
passings
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, saxophonist, March 26, 1936-November 9, 2013
From the New York Times obituary (Nate Chinen, 11/14/13):
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, a saxophonist who was a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a pioneering Chicago avant-garde coalition, died on Saturday in the Bronx. He was 77.
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Present at the association’s first meeting in 1965, Mr. McIntyre later articulated its objectives in an in-house newsletter, The New Regime. The priority, he wrote, was creative autonomy. But he also touched on sociopolitical issues: “We are trying to balance an unbalanced situation that is prevalent in this society.”
Maurice Benford McIntyre was born on March 24, 1936, in Clarksville, Ark., and raised in Chicago. His father was a pharmacist, his mother an English teacher. He studied music at Roosevelt University in Chicago until a drug habit derailed him, leading to a three-year stretch in prison, in Lexington, Ky., where he later said he got most of his musical education.
After returning to Chicago, he met the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, who were developing an aesthetic revolving around strictly original music. Mr. McIntyre became a fixture in Mr. Abrams’s Experimental Band and appeared on Mr. Mitchell’s 1966 album, “Sound,” the first release under the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians banner. Mr. McIntyre released his first album, “Humility in the Light of the Creator,” in 1969, the year that he adopted the name Kalaparusha Ahrah Difda, a confluence of terms from African, Indian and astrological sources. (He later modified it to Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre.) Like many of his fellow association musicians, he began performing in Europe.
He moved to New York in 1974 and spent a productive stretch at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock. But his career foundered in the ’80s and ’90s, and he took to busking — a practice he continued even after making several comeback albums, notably “Morning Song,” in 2004.
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Talking and playing, New York, 2010
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Live (with Karl Berger, vibes, piano; Tom Schmidt, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums; Jumma Santos, drums, percussion), “Ismac,” Woodstock, N.Y., 1975
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Recording (with J.B. Hutto, vocals, guitar; Sunnyland Slim, organ, et al.), “Send Her Home to Me,” 1968
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Recording (with Malachi Favors, bass; M’Chaka Uba, bass; Thurman Barker, drums; Ajaramu [A. J. Shelton], drums), “Humility in the Light of the Creator” (Alternate), 1969
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
A human life. A series of notes. Which is more permanent?
three takes
This guy, like Monk, could take a familiar form, open it up, and create something both old and new.
Julius Hemphill (1938-1995), “The Hard Blues”
Live (with members of the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra and the Either/Orchestra), Boston, 1989
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Recording (JH, alto saxophone, flute; Baikida E.J. Carroll, trumpet; Hamiet Bluiett, baritone saxophone; Abdul Wadud, cello; Philip Wilson, drums), recorded 1972 (first released on Coon Bid’ness, 1975)
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Recording (Julius Hemphill, alto saxophone; Marty Ehrlich, soprano and alto saxophone, flute; Carl Grubbs, soprano and alto saxophone; James Carter, tenor saxophone; Andrew White. tenor saxophone; Sam Furnace, baritone saxophone, flute), 1991
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lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt (1913-2009), New York, c. 1940
two takes
“I Thought About You” (J. Van Heusen & J. Mercer)
Jeanne Lee (vocals) with Mal Waldron (piano), et al.
Live, France (Marciac), 2000
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Mildred Bailey (vocals) with Benny Goodman (clarinet), et al.
Recording, 1939
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lagniappe
art beat
Garry Winogrand (1928-1984)
sounds of Chicago
Art Ensemble of Chicago (Roscoe Mitchell, saxophones, percussion; Joseph Jarman, saxophones, percussion, electric guitar; Lester Bowie [MCOTD Hall of Famer], trumpet, percussion; Malachi Favors, bass, percussion; Don Moye, drums, percussion [first clip])
Live, Chicago (Jazz Showcase), 1981
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Recording (“Rock Out”), 1969
less is more*
Rashied Ali (drums), Leroy Jenkins (violin), “Swift Are the Winds of Life,” 1975
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*Sometimes, anyway.
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