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
two takes
Julius Eastman (1940-1990), Evil Nigger (1979)
Julius Eastman, Frank Ferko, Janet Kattas, Patricia Martin, pianos; live, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), 1980 (Unjust Malaise, New World Records, 2005)
*****
Jace Clayton, electronics; David Friend & Emily Manzo, pianos (The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, New Amsterdam Records, 2013)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Today’s composer, because of his problematical historical inheritance, has become totally isolated and self-absorbed. Those composers who have gained some measure of success through isolation and self-absorption will find that outside of the loft door the state of the composer in general and their state in particular is still as ineffectual as ever. The composer must become the total musician, not only a composer. To be only a composer is not enough.
*****
reading table
Ecstasy affords/the occasion and expediency determines the form.
—Marianne Moore (1887-1972), “The Past is the Present”
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.
Feel like floating?
Steve Reich (1936-), Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
eighth blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, et al., live, Chicago, 2011
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.)
The other night, as Mitsuko Uchida was performing two of Mozart’s piano concertos (17, 27) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, there were moments so pure, so open, I would have liked nothing more than to disappear into one of the spaces between the notes and stay there.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV. 466; Mitsuko Uchida (piano and conducting), Camerata Salzburg, live, Germany (Salzburg), 2001
I love the way he plays Mozart. Simply. Directly. There’s nothing fussy here. Nothing fey. Melodies unfold with the ease and grace of a bird flying from branch to branch.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Piano Sonatas & Fantasia,* Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), live, Germany (Munich), 1981
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*Program (courtesy of YouTube):
0:00 – Nº4 in E flat major, K.282
14:35 – Nº9 in D major, K.311
32:58 – Nº12 in F major, K.332
55:54 – Fantasia nº4 in C minor, K.475
1:06:55 – Nº14 in C minor, K.457
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
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