A recent discovery for me was pianist Dick Twardzik's remarkable and fascinating composition 'The Fable of Mabel' which has been described as Twardzik's magnum opus. A JRR?
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Howard Riley did a programme on Twardzik a few years ago - and Charles Fox back in the '80s - I still have that D90. I think "The Fable" was played on both occasions. Graham Collier once told Keith Tippett that he sounded very like Twardzik - it must have been before Keith developed his characteristic style - I think he said at Barry: "I hadn't hearrrd of Dick Twarrrrdzik" he told us in his thick highly-polished Bristolian broguesOriginally posted by Jazzrook View Post
, but I was surprised that Howard Riley named him as an early influence.
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I will throw a hand grenade in to the mix. I think that Twardzik would have ended up as one of the principle avant garde jazz musicians had he lived in to the 1960's. I bought a CD by him about ten years ago which was on the Lone Hill label and this included a number of studio performances as well as some privately recorded free improvisations.
Listening to his piano playing it is obvious that he was in the thrall of Bud Powell yet I feel he was certainly up for taking the music in a mire extreme direction than his idol. ""The fable of Mabel" is an incredible piece of writing and it is hard to believe that he was in his early 20's when he was producing this music. Nowadays he is more recognized than Chet Baker with compositions such as "The girl from Greenland". However, he would have hit maturity as an artist by the time jazz was pushing it's boundaries in the mid 60's and I could see that, had he lived, the music he may have produced would have eclipsed anything else he produced either with Chaloff, Baker or himself. I could even envisage a counter-factual future whereby his work would Baker would have been considered uncharacteristically conservative. Rather than considering Twardzik to be a contemporary of Chet Baker, maybe it would be better to consider the few recordings he made as juvenilia with a future career path more akin to Andrew Hill or Cecil Taylor. I like "idiosyncratic" pianists like Monk, Hope and Nichols although I would suggest that Twardzik had the greater potential of this 1950's quartet to evolve in to freer forms of expression. Had be been around today, Twardzik would probably be considered a young talent more than a fully, formed mature artist. Twardzik's piano playing was amongst the most startlingly original in the early 50's out he hadn't really got started until he killed himself through drugs. He could still have been performing today had he lived.Comment
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It was his birthday yesterday oddly... 30/4. If he had lived he would have been 83.
Some interesting stuff/Boston memories on the net around Jack Chamber's biog.
BN.Comment
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The biog by Chambers "Bouncing With Bartok" is a very good book. Gives a lot of background to DT's very unorthodox childhood.Comment
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