He knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement.
Ahmad Jamal Trio (AJ [1930-], piano; Israel Crosby [1919-1962], bass; Vernel Fournier [1928-2000], drums), “Excerpts From The Blues” (not “Ahmad’s Blues”), TV show, 1959
never enough
Von Freeman, tenor saxophone (1923-2012, MCOTD Hall of Famer); Jodie Christian (1932-2012), piano; Rufus Reid (1944-), bass; Jack DeJohnette (1942-), drums; “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (E. Maschwitz & M. Sherwin), live, Harrisburg, Penn., 1994
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Your sound is who you are; it is what makes you different from me and any other saxophonist. We all have the same 12 notes. The only thing that differentiates us, one from the other, is our tone. If you don’t have a sound you can play a thousand notes and no one will hear you, but if you have a sound you can play only one note and everyone will hear you.
Jose James, “Do You Feel”
Live, KCRW Berkeley Street Session, Santa Monica, 12/17/12
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
R&B?
Jazz?
Pop?
We need a new vocabulary—or maybe none at all.
Rock drummers trying to play jazz usually sound like, well, rock drummers trying to play jazz. Jazz drummers trying to play rock are no different; they typically sound like tourists pretending to be natives. This guy, no matter the idiom (rock, jazz, gospel, whatever), sounds right at home.
Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, live, Chicago, 3/14/13
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lagniappe
reading table
Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must really understand that it is right here, right now.
—Taizan Maezumi, Appreciate Your Life (2001)
Monk
Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM [1917-1982], piano; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; Ben Riley, drums), 1968
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lagniappe
reading table
opening day . . .
green of the field
through the ticket gates—Randy Brooks (Baseball Haiku, Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura, eds.)
I think I’m in love—with the sister in the middle, that is.
Andy & The Bey Sisters (with Kenny Clarke, drums), “Smooth Sailing” (A. Cobb), live, Paris, c. 1964
heaven, n. a place where each morning you’d be awakened by a different combination of musical instruments.
Living By Lanterns (Mike Reed, drums; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone; Tomeka Reid, cello, et al.), live, Switzerland (Zurich), 2013
Happy (83rd) Birthday, Ornette!
Ornette Coleman Quartet (OC, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums), live, Spain (Barcelona), 1987
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.
***
It’s not that I reject categories. It’s that I don’t really know what categories are.
***
You take the alphabet of the English language. A to Z. A symbol attached to a sound. In music you have what are called notes and the key. In life you’ve got an idea and an emotion. We think of them as different concepts. To me, there is no difference.
***
The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.
***
I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.
*****
radio
All Ornette, all day: WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
serendipity
Something I just bumped into.
Trio WAZ (Ed Wilkerson, tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki, bass; Michael Zerang, drums), live, Michigan (Lakeside, concert presented by Portoluz), 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Color.
Texture.
Density.
Sometimes they’re more important than melody, or harmony, or rhythm.
*****
reading table
“The Snow Man”
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Kidd Jordan Quartet (KJ, tenor saxophone; Billy Bang, violin; William Parker, bass; Hamid Drake, drums), New York (Vision Festival), 2008
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
We tend to take musical instruments for granted, as if their existence were inevitable. But the fact that something exists doesn’t mean it had to. We could’ve been born into a world that never heard a violin.
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reading table
“What kind of heaven is that, you can’t have your records?”
—Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue
music clip of the day 