Beginning yesterday afternoon and continuing until noon Saturday, WKCR-FM, which broadcasts from Columbia University, is celebrating the centennial of Papa Jo Jones—the “greatest drummer who ever lived,” according to the station’s Phil Schaap—in the best possible way: they’re playing his music (with Count Basie, Billie Holiday, et al.), and nothing but his music, 24 hours a day. Breakfast, he’s on; lunch, he’s on; dinner, he’s on; bedtime, he’s on—and it’s all free.* Is this a great life, or what?
Here at MCOTD, we’re celebrating Papa Jo, too—with this clip, a favorite.
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He doesn’t pummel the beat, the way so many drummers do.
He pulls it out of the air.
Jo Jones (“Papa Jo” [as distinguished from “Philly Joe“]), October 7, 1911-September 3, 1985
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lagniappe
[W]hat really distinguished the great drummers I heard growing up, what really attracted me to men such as Sonny Greer, Chick Webb, Sid Catlett, Jo Jones and Kenny Clarke was that they all thought like composers, they all had their own way of hearing a band. They were all original thinkers who identified themselves when they played. And they stood out. They played like leaders.
—Max Roach
(Originally posted 8/5/10.)
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*“Free” is a bit misleading; it costs money to keep this daily miracle on the air, so, periodically, WKCR-FM solicits contributions. If you tune in and like what you hear, perhaps you, too, could kick in a few bucks.
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Lester Young/Charlie Parker birthday marathon
—John Coltrane birthday broadcast
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads(Kevin Nutt, gospel) —Airborne Event (Dan Bodah, “electronic noise to free jazz, drone rock to a capella African song”)
—Give the Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis, web only)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)
—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)
The other night, as I listened to the radio,* this (“Patient Observation”) floated out of the speakers.
Falling From Trees, Neon Productions, music by Peter Broderick
Premiered at The Place, London, 1/09
Excerpt, Part 2, “Patient Observation”
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Full Length
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Falling From Trees is a 30-minute production set in a psychiatric hospital that delves into the mind of a resident patient. The piece explores how a neurological disease can alter your sense of self and relationship to the world and people around you. Peter Broderick’s score has been created solely on piano and strings; it is also the first time Broderick has created music specifically for dance.
With some forms of musical expression, value is tied to scarcity: the smaller the number of people who can do something, the more highly it’s prized. But with others, the opposite is true: the more readily other folks can join in, the greater the value.
The other night, after falling asleep, my older son Alex (now 22) had an unexpected visitor—this guy showed up and began to play.
Vijay Iyer Trio (VI, piano; Marcus Gilmore, drums; Stephan Crump, bass)
“Galang,” recording session (Historicity), New York (Systems Two Studios), 2009
(Originally posted 6/30/10.)
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Someday, just as I sometimes do with my own father, who’s been gone for over thirty years, my older son Alex, now twenty-three, will recall occasions, after I’m gone, when he and I went out to hear live music together, like, for instance, last night, when we saw this group, from Africa, who are on their first U.S. tour.
One of many remarkable things about the world we live in is the variety of ways you can die. It’s easy to imagine a world in which there was just one cause of death—say, heart attack. But here we have strokes, too. And there is colon cancer, and liver cancer, and breast cancer, and brain cancer. Don’t forget infectious diseases: pneumonia, tuberculosis, AIDS. Daily folks depart in car crashes. You could also drown. If death were a product sold in stores, imagine how many aisles it would occupy.
Don Byron New Gospel Quintet (DB, tenor saxophone & clarinet; DK Dyson, vocals; Xavier Davis, piano; Brad Jones, bass; Pheeroan akLaff, drums), “Precious Lord” (T. A. Dorsey), live, Brazil (São Paulo), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Last night I heard these folks live at the University of Chicago. Whenever I go out and hear someone, I’m reminded, again, that even (especially?) today, when records and the ’net make more music more available than ever before, there’s no substitute for live music. No recording offers the textures and nuances of a great live performance. (Never, for instance, have I heard a recording that truly reproduces the sounds of a drum kit, much less the interplay between horn and drums.) Not only is there more to hear live, your focus is sharper: you know you won’t have another opportunity to experience these sounds. And when you go to a club or a concert hall, you become, for that night, a member of an ad hoc musical community—something you can’t do sitting in your living room.
Imagine a long, narrow hallway with paintings—subtle, shimmering abstracts by Mark Rothko—hung along both walls. Imagine walking through the hallway, stopping to examine one painting closely before moving on to the next. Imagine the hallway extends for three miles without an exit. This should give you some idea of what listening to For Christian Wolff is like. What might be hell to some people could be an all-too-brief time spent in paradise for others.
—Art Lange, Fanfare, July/August 2009
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At the beginning of Morton Feldman’s “For Christian Wolff” at the Alternative Museum last Sunday afternoon, Nils Vigeland – who played the piano and celesta to Eberhard Blum’s flute – invited listeners with other engagements or expired patience to leave at will.
The few who did walk out before this three-and-a-half-hour musical experience was over neither insulted the spirit of the late Mr. Feldman’s piece nor necessarily missed anything. This music, with its trancelike exposition of simple intervals, can haunt one as much in one hour as it can in three.
“For Christian Wolff” is music whose internal clock has stopped. It offers us the moment, invites us to forget what has already happened and discourages any curiosity about the future. Mr. Wolff was on hand to honor his late colleague. His introductory words – which said little about either the music, the composer or himself – seemed terribly appropriate to the occasion.
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“For Christian Wolff” . . . gives us a deflected image of silence. Like the shadows of Plato’s cave, it is a corporeal flicker of pure nothingness – the kind of music that in the heavens surely sets the toes of gods to tapping.
