Mike Westbrook Jon3 25.iv.11

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Newsletter for Jazz On 3

Mike Westbrook 75th Birthday Concert

Monday 25 April – at 11.15pm on BBC Radio 3

Sin, apocalypse, talking animals… we’ve got it all covered tonight as we celebrate a true English original, Mike Westbrook. The composer and pianist has had plenty to celebrate recently: as well as turning 75, he has just clocked up 50 years as a leader of his own jazz ensembles. To mark this doubly special occasion we bring you the world premiere of his new work The Serpent Hit, which he calls the beginning of a whole new era in his career. The piece began as a modern day fable written by his wife Kate, and Mike uses its five-verse structure to run the gamut of swing styles. There are nods to his hero Duke Ellington, but the chamber sparseness of the instrumentation (saxophone quartet plus percussion and Kate’s vocals) keeps up an uneasy tension throughout. Beforehand, you can hear Mike telling John Fordham how an art student with no musical training managed to become such a unique and versatile composer.

I’ll also be paying tribute to the great jazz violinist Billy Bang, who died on April 11 aged 63. A player with a free and passionate approach, Billy was variously a soldier, a political radical, and a member of Sun Ra’s band. His harrowing experiences in Vietnam stayed with him throughout his life, though in his later years he found ways to confront these in music.

Over recent weeks we've been featuring each of the BBC Introducing acts who will be appearing at the Cheltenham Festival next weekend. Tonight it's the turn of tenor saxophonist and composer Trish Clowes: I'll be playing a track from her Gwilym Simcock-produced album Tangent. And we've got the latest from the jazz guitar wars, after Charlie Hunter's criticisms of John McLaughlin's playing (in our show a few weeks ago) caused quite an email furore…

If you have comments about the show, or requests for music you’d like to hear, do get in touch at jazzon3@bbc.co.uk

Join me tonight from 11.15pm on BBC Radio 3.

Jez

Coming up:

2 May – the first UK performance by free-jazz ensemble the Peter Brˆtzmann Chicago Tentet
9 May – the first of our Cheltenham Festival programmes, featuring Django Bates’ new work specially commissioned by Jazz on 3 and Radio 3 for rising stars on the UK scene
16 May – we present four of the brightest new UK jazz artists, performing on the BBC Introducing stage at the Cheltenham Festival
23 May – The Tord Gustavsen Ensemble at the Cheltenham Festival, performing material from their acclaimed album Restored, Returned

i confess that i shall not be listening as i have never appreciated the Westbrook offerings

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm very much looking forward to this programme. Mike Westbrook has long been a critical favourite of mine: he sets and meets very high aims for what jazz can stand for, a latter day jazz Holst planetarian he represents another musical link to a utopian English socialist lineage overlooked by most of the neo-Trots, and through the aesthetics of a jazz no longer in thrall (due to his & his generation's efforts) to American models, because free jazz remained to bring out the individual/universal dialectic incipient in jazz practice and make it transcendent of race.

Some I know cite Kate is their particular thorn in the Westbrook cannon flesh - but not me; can't speak highly enough. But then I would imagine your non-appreciation is more generally-based, Calum?

[Ian Thumwood]

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Westbrook's music can be devisive but I think his approach to music is almost uniquely English. I should be more familiar with his work but whenever I have seen him, granted there has always been an element of theatre in the music, but the quality if his writing always stands out. No one else quite managed to achieve this although I have seen someone like Laurent Cugny nearly pull this combination of jazz and theatre off as well as Westbrook.

I don't agree at all with the comment about free jazz making the music transcendent of race. For me, the whole aspect of kicking out the "black elements" such as swing, groove, blues feel, timbre, etc, etc in much free jazz has mean't that European practictioneers have strayed too far away from the very ingredients that made jazz unique. Granted the ability of white musicians as soloists and innovators has probably been of no discernable difference for a very long time now and the like of Westbrook is a prime example of how jazz can be refracted in a European fashion, I feel that by distancing themselves from the more obvious "jazz sounds" free music in Europe seemed to morph into something else entirely different and lost something in the process. A lot of free improv loses the humanity that your find in jazz and tends to take itself too seriously although I concede that this is not always the case. Players like Derek Bailey tend to leave me cold but someone like Westbrook is not too ashamed to take his cues from Ellington and even Jelly Roll Morton so that his music is still very much rooted in jazz whilst still managing to sound totally original. We can, of course, celebrate Westbrook's "Englishness", but he coud not have existed without Duke. Taking SA's comment to it's extreme conclusion almost denigrates the contribution of black musicians to this art form as well as suggesting that White players had nothing to contribute prior to the 1960's as well. I concede that the contribution of white players has definately played a part in the history of the music almost since it's inception but we shouldn't forget that it is the Black American tradition (s) that made the music what it was.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

gut based usually, i just turn away and have never wondered why i don't like it ..... feel much the same about Britten ... to be honest it is not that i don't like it ... i dislike it ....

[burning dog]

Westbrook embraces Black American Pop?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbIc9rjZ9jM

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't agree at all with the comment about free jazz making the music transcendent of race.

Where did I say it had??

For me, the whole aspect of kicking out the "black elements" such as swing, groove, blues feel, timbre, etc, etc in much free jazz has mean't that European practictioneers have strayed too far away from the very ingredients that made jazz unique.

I find this in the 1974 edition of Berendt's The Jazz Book - (not unassailable as source of wisdom, but I wholeheartedly agree here):

"The path for an independent developmenty of European jazz was cleared only when jazz in general freed itself from the rule of the constant pulse, of conventional functional harmonies, of symmetrical periods and phrases. Once again the stimulus came from America, from musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Sun Ra - who created "free playing" around the turn of the fifties. But this stimulus had an incomparably deeper and more lasting effect in ERurope than in the U.S.; it sems to have falen on especially fertile soil in the Old World - primarily because "atonality" (using the concept in its widest sense) is far morer shocking to Americans than to Europeans. For quite some time, avant-garde concert music had been opening European ears to atonal music activity and - in contrast to the U.S. - had been fully integrateed in concert hall and radio programs. What in the U.S. was realized by only a few conoisseurs was widely known among more musically aware audiences in Europe: Meaningful and artistic music is possible also outside the realm of functional harmony handed down from romanticism ...

And...

"The new European drummers ... Pierre Favre ... and ... Han Bennink, have transcended the image of the conventional jazz drummer. They no longer deriv e their intensity only from the black tradition ... but from all sourcs in the world that generate ecstasy and convey ritual power and trance - i.e., swing is only one of many sources! ...

"What had been approaching folr so many years finally did happen: the creative European jazzman [sic] has ceased to imitate Americans. he has stopped competing with them in the fields - mainly swing and the black tradition - where he will never be able to match them. But he has discovered his own realms, of which the vast majority of the American public as yet has no idea and which finally have put European jazz on its own two feet".

Granted the ability of white musicians as soloists and innovators has probably been of no discernable difference for a very long time now and the like of Westbrook is a prime example of how jazz can be refracted in a European fashion, I feel that by distancing themselves from the more obvious "jazz sounds" free music in Europe seemed to morph into something else entirely different and lost something in the process. A lot of free improv loses the humanity that your find in jazz and tends to take itself too seriously although I concede that this is not always the case. Players like Derek Bailey tend to leave me cold but someone like Westbrook is not too ashamed to take his cues from Ellington and even Jelly Roll Morton so that his music is still very much rooted in jazz whilst still managing to sound totally original. We can, of course, celebrate Westbrook's "Englishness", but he coud not have existed without Duke. Taking SA's comment to it's extreme conclusion almost denigrates the contribution of black musicians to this art form as well as suggesting that White players had nothing to contribute prior to the 1960's as well. I concede that the contribution of white players has definately played a part in the history of the music almost since it's inception but we shouldn't forget that it is the Black American tradition (s) that made the music what it was.

Hmmm - I may have lain myself open rather to accusations of over-generalisation; but so have you in this instance, Ian! My point about the contribution of jazz musicians - of all colours and none - up to the point at which British and European jazz started to emancipate itself from slavishly following American models - would be that it was they, the American pioneers and innovators that non-Americans felt obliged to follow in some quest for "authenticity", had brought the evolution of jazz to the point at which its practice and means of expression had become universalised; had, in other words - to its not unconsiderable credit! - gone beyond its own disapora, and associated gestural communicative means, to be free to be taken up and expressed through by peoples all over the world in their own ways.

S-A

[burning dog]

Musicians weren't slavishly copying the American model IMO, they were using THE jazz model. Viewing from today it may seem they were denying their Britishness, becoming Amercianised, but I doubt it seemed that way back then.
Maybe Brits shouldn't be able to swing like New Orleans or New Yok Cats but what about Amercans from Des Moines or Cherokee?

The basic model of jazz was American, there is no NEED to have a different model (nothing wrong with having one either) but one can just carry on playing JAZZ and by incremental devleopements it can become English French etc etc Id say by the mid late sixties there was British jazz that was still closley related to American but had its own flavour. However, I don't think it was MORE classical than the post bop of Davis Shorter Hancock and Hutcherson

I truly think free improv is a different case and gets confused with the Euro jazz argument. The Free Impov crowd either cant swing and dont care or can but choose not to (but actually sometimes do)

The contemporary argument seems to be about Scanda Jazz stuff and also those who play head solo head but overuse Classical techinques, either too much dissonance (often at odds with the head/theme) or overuse lush, late romanticism. it's daft for Amercians to use this as evidence about Europeans in general (as i have heard them) because its a recent develpement, after difficulties with dance band stiffness "Over here" the Brits and others started to swing pretty damned well. I doubt MIles and Cannon recruited Europeans because they wanted a white face around and anyone who would argue the big fella was after a Euro sound is on a sticky wicket


SA do you agree with Berendt that "classical" atonality and serialism is much more popular in Europe than in the US? it may be more written about over here but "difficult" modernism doesn't seem that popular anywhere (as opposed to even some Avant Garde electronic, expermental, noise stuff and of course minimalsim). And could it be a case that a number of the new generation of Europeans came from a different background, more academic than 'jobbing musician', another thing is there any evidence that many free improv players were influenced by it (as opposed to discovering it later) I imagine some were, but most? I thought it (IMprov) was more about total democracy and lack of hierarchy than being difficult for the sake of it.

PS I see the book was from 74 so I suppose the difference between European Free jazz and Free Improv hadn't worked itself out yet

I added this after the post below

[burning dog]

I find this in the 1974 edition of Berendt's The Jazz Book - (not unassailable as source of wisdom, but I wholeheartedly agree here):

"The path for an independent developmenty of European jazz was cleared only when jazz in general freed itself from the rule of the constant pulse, of conventional functional harmonies, of symmetrical periods and phrases. Once again the stimulus came from America, from musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Sun Ra - who created "free playing" around the turn of the fifties. But this stimulus had an incomparably deeper and more lasting effect in ERurope than in the U.S.; it sems to have falen on especially fertile soil in the Old World - primarily because "atonality" (using the concept in its widest sense) is far morer shocking to Americans than to Europeans. For quite some time, avant-garde concert music had been opening European ears to atonal music activity and - in contrast to the U.S. - had been fully integrateed in concert hall and radio programs.


What in the U.S. was realized by only a few conoisseurs was widely known among more musically aware audiences in Europe:

"Meaningful and artistic music is possible also outside the realm of functional harmony handed down from romanticism ..."

S-A

After what I thouht was advocacy for free improv, he comes up with a sentence that hardly any straight ahead jazz fan would disagree with. Jazz doesn't NEED functional harmony and especially not handed down from romanticism.


More UnBritish Activities from Westbrook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fWTZkM1ev8

Not quite Jack Johnson, maybe Alan Minter?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka4dQK3MeF4

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

did anyone listen?

[Serial_Apologist]

I think I may have heard some of these pieces performed at The Vortex last year. The ensemble consisted of two saxes (neither of which was Chris Biscoe), trumpet, tuba (played by Westbrook) and Kate. The place was packed _ I hadn't booked and had to stand at the back. Nevertheless as on that occasion I felt that Kate's words as set against the dense textures in the broadcast were hard to make out, which was either a problem of the scoring or bad balancing. It would seem that Westbrook's direction has taken a turn away from the allegorical and more directly towards political statement - one might surmise under Kate's influence - and this is to be welcomed, however bleak and unredemptive the Westbrooks' message: I remember Mike being interviewed in one of the early editions of The Wire magazine, and admitting slightly awkwardly to an underpinning Christianity that had not surfaced in the way it seems to have in his two most recent works, though it was always implicit in the periodic returns to the Blake settings he began making in the early 1970s. I find coincidental parallels with Vaughan Williams and Holst being highlighted in Holst's happening to be Composer of the Week this week. Nevertheless, Westbrook's very personal idiom is, I feel, better served by the wider range and differentiation of timbres he usually espouses.

S-A

[Chris_T]

Nevertheless as on that occasion I felt that Kate's words as set against the dense textures in the broadcast were hard to make out, which was either a problem of the scoring or bad balancing.

S-A

Sadly it was a case of bad balancing rather than scoring. Apparently the BBC no longer remix after they record. Apart from an adjustment to the levels of the spoken parts by the band, the recording was left pretty much as it was when it was recorded. I was at the performance and unfortunately a couple of the pieces weren't balanced too well there either. The BBC made a better job of one part of The Serpent Hit when the band played it live in the studio for "in Tune a few days before.

[Alyn_Shipton]

Chris T
Let's get this straight. In house BBC recordings are multi-tracked as a rule and remixed if needed. I can attest that my Buck Clayton Legacy Band was multi tracked and the opportunity available for remixing when we played at Gateshead a month ago for JLU. (In fact the excellent 2 track mix that the BBC engineers achieved on the night meant we did not have recourse to the multi-track option, but it was there if needed.) The majority of the in-house produced sessions for Radio 3 that I have presented over the last 22 years have been similarly recorded by BBC Resources.
Jazz on 3, however, is recorded by Somethin' Else.
For whatever reason, they aim for an immediate stereo mix, and seldom record on multitrack. In the case of Mike's work, and I can say this with experience of Bar Utopia, among others, a day spent at Maida Vale remixing the results invariably produces a better broadcast. I suggest this is something to take up with Jez and his cohorts.

[Chris_T]

Chris T
Let's get this straight. In house BBC recordings are multi-tracked as a rule and remixed if needed. I can attest that my Buck Clayton Legacy Band was multi tracked and the opportunity available for remixing when we played at Gateshead a month ago for JLU. (In fact the excellent 2 track mix that the BBC engineers achieved on the night meant we did not have recourse to the multi-track option, but it was there if needed.) The majority of the in-house produced sessions for Radio 3 that I have presented over the last 22 years have been similarly recorded by BBC Resources.
Jazz on 3, however, is recorded by Somethin' Else.
For whatever reason, they aim for an immediate stereo mix, and seldom record on multitrack. In the case of Mike's work, and I can say this with experience of Bar Utopia, among others, a day spent at Maida Vale remixing the results invariably produces a better broadcast. I suggest this is something to take up with Jez and his cohorts.

My apologies Alyn, I had forgotten that it was Somethin' Else on this occasion. Overall the sound captured by them was good and whereas at the concert the saxes were one side of the stage with Kate at the other, the recording had the saxes spread out with Kate at the centre. This certainly enabled Mike's writing for the saxes to be heard better on the recording. A shame then that for one part in particular Kate's voice was a bit lost in the mix.