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Tag: Jaki Byard

2011

Sunday, 10/2/11

Here, at Luther Vandross’s funeral, Stevie testifies.

Stevie Wonder, “I Won’t Complain”
Live, New York (The Riverside Church), 2005

**********

lagniappe

For as long as you’ve got a harp in your heart, God’s got a hymn for your hurt. And as long as you’ve got a hymn, then you’ve got hope.

—Maurice O. Wallace (funeral sermon, quoted in Karla FC Holloway, Passed On: African American Mourning Stories [2002])

(Originally posted 10/11/09.)

*****

listening room: (some of) what’s playing

• Coldcut, 70 Minutes of Madness (Journeys by DJ)

• Mahmoud Ahmed, Ethiopiques, Vol. 6: Almaz (Buda Musique [import])

• Staff Benda Bilili, Tres Tres Fort (Crammed Discs)

• Louis Armstrong, Hot Fives & Sevens (JSP [import])

• Jaki Byard, Solo/Strings (Prestige)

• John Carter & Bobby Bradford’s New Art Jazz Ensemble, Seeking (hat Art)

• Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch (Blue Note)

• Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Riverside)

• The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (Verve)

• The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings Of Charlie Parker (Mosaic)

• Sun Ra, Sleeping Beauty (Phantom Sound & Vision [import])

• The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air (Mosaic)

• Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet (Tzadik)

• Bela Bartok, String Quartets Nos. 5 & 6, Takacs Quartet (Hungaroton [import])

• David Behrman, On the Other Ocean (Lovely Music)

• Morton Feldman, Crippled Symmetry, Eberhard Blum, flute; Nils Vigland, piano, celesta; Jan Williams, glockenspiel, vibraphone (hat Art)

Morton Feldman, For Christian Wolff, Eberhard Blum, flute; Nils Vigland, piano, celesta (hat Art)

• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa) (available as a download from Amazon for 89¢)

• Morton Feldman, For Samuel Beckett, San Francisco Contemporary Players (Newport Classic)

• Morton Feldman, Triadic Memories, Markus Hinterhauser, piano (Col Legno [import])

• Morton Feldman,  Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, Members of the Ives Ensemble (hat Art)

• Ingram Marshall, Kingdom Come (Nonesuch)

• Maurizio Pollini, piano, Arnold Schoenberg (The Solo Piano Music, Piano Concerto), Anton Webern (Variations, op. 27) (Deutsche Grammaphon)

• Dimitri Shostakovich, String Quartets Nos. 5, 6, & 7, Borodin Quartet (Melodiya)

• 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)

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2011

Friday, 4/22/11

Happy (89th) Birthday, Mingus!

Charles Mingus, bassist, bandleader, composer
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979

In celebration of Mingus’s birthday, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is playing his music all day. We’re celebrating by revisiting some favorite clips.

**********

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.

That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.

Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964

**********

lagniappe

I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)

(Originally posted 12/1/09.)

**********

No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.

Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?

Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.

Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964

“So Long, Eric”

*****

“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”

*****

“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)

**********

lagniappe

. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)

*****

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

***

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

***

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

—Charles Mingus

(Originally posted 4/22/10.)

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2011

Tuesday, 1/4/11

Talk about a one-two punch.

9/10
The MacArthur Foundation awards him a “genius grant.”

12/10
The Village Voice, in its annual Jazz Critics’ Poll, names his album Ten the year’s best. 

Jason Moran (piano) and the Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums), live, Virginia (Rosslyn), 9/11/10

Vodpod videos no longer available.

**********

lagniappe

fathers and sons

While still a teenager, Moran began studying with Jaki Byard—a relationship that lasted four years.

*****

reading table

I’m interested in how close our orderly lives are to utter chaos.

—Scott Spencer

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2010

Saturday, 11/6/10

replay: clips too good for just one day

No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.

Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?

Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.

Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964

“So Long, Eric”

*****

“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”

*****

“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)

**********

lagniappe

. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)

*****

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

***

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

***

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

—Charles Mingus

(Originally posted on 4/22/10.)

**********

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.

That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.

Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964

**********

lagniappe

I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)

(Originally posted on 12/1/09.)

Leave a comment
2010

Thursday, 10/28/10

So many ideas and so much feeling, so much energy and so much technique—it’s a wonder he doesn’t burst apart at the seams.

Jaki Byard, June 15, 1922-February 11, 1999

Live (with Reggie Workman, bass; Alan Dawson, drums), Germany (Berlin), 1965

Part 1 (“Free Improvisation”)

***

Part 2 (with Earl Hines, “Rosetta”)

Want more of Jaki Byard? Here and here (with Charles Mingus).

**********

lagniappe

In conversation (Cleveland, 1985):

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2010

Thursday, 4/22/10

Happy Birthday, Mingus!

No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.

Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?

Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.

Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964

“So Long, Eric”

*****

“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”

*****

“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)

Want more? Here.

**********

lagniappe

. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)

*****

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

***

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

***

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

—Charles Mingus

*****

Radio Mingus: all Mingus, all the time

In celebration of Mingus’s birthday, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is playing his music all day.

Leave a comment
2009

Tuesday, 12/1/09

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.

That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.

Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964

**********

lagniappe

I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)

Leave a comment