What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Bert]

Wonderful!

Can't get the version of 'I Shot The Sheriff' out of my head!

[Bert]

Miles Davis - The Lost Septet

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - The Lost Septet

Whoever made that record put the track-breaks at the wrong points.

[Joseph K]

I never knew this band existed!

[Jazzrook]

Billy Mitchell with Barry Harris, Sam Jones & Walter Bolden playing Joe Henderson's 'Recorda Me' from the hard-to-find 1978 album 'Colossus of Detroit'(Xanadu):

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=zCbnpc5LD9w

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

My curiosity was piqued by a CD by Katya Apekisheva of Impromptus composed by Scriabin, Faure and Chopin. It is a fascinating choice of repertoire because these three piano composers cover a large part of the harmonic territory subsequently occupied by jazz pianists - especially those who followed in the wake of Bill Evans.

The piano playing on this record is absolutely incredible and I have really enjoyed listening to this even though I have not yet had the opportunity to really scrutinize what is going on. I am intrigued by the idea of classical composers improvising and given that this music originates from a period broadly 50-100 years before Bill Evans, it is intriguing how they approached improvisation in a solo piano format. The Chopin material is pretty familiar but the revelation on this disc are the seven pieces by Scriabin. I used to have a book of Scriabin Studies which were far too difficult for me to play although they were really exciting because of the sense of harmony and the fact that he liked mixing up the phrasing in the left and right hands. I still think he is the most interesting classical composer Russia produced - avoiding the sugar-coated worlds of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff and the efficient coldness of Stravinsky. These Impromptus are unfamiliar to me yet I think that, even at a young age, Scriabin was making important contributions to the piano repertoire. I believe that Scriabin had synesthesia which would help explain why jazz pianists such as Chick Corea are fans of his work.

The Faure pieces are also played superbly and manage to bring out the best in his music. Although I am not familiar with Katya Apekisheva, she absolutely nails these pieces by a composer I always think is quite elusive. I have always felt that Faure is more dependent on a pianist understanding his music than anyone else because , if the soloist is not perceptive, the music becomes quite ordinary. Kathryn Stott is another pianist who excels in performing Faure's work.

Picking up on the comments made before Christmas regarding the improvising approach of Keith Jarrett, this CD offers a glimpse at how an earlier generation tackled improvisation on the piano.

[Joseph K]

My curiosity was piqued by a CD by Katya Apekisheva of Impromptus composed by Scriabin, Faure and Chopin. It is a fascinating choice of repertoire because these three piano composers cover a large part of the harmonic territory subsequently occupied by jazz pianists - especially those who followed in the wake of Bill Evans.

The piano playing on this record is absolutely incredible and I have really enjoyed listening to this even though I have not yet had the opportunity to really scrutinize what is going on. I am intrigued by the idea of classical composers improvising and given that this music originates from a period broadly 50-100 years before Bill Evans, it is intriguing how they approached improvisation in a solo piano format. The Chopin material is pretty familiar but the revelation on this disc are the seven pieces by Scriabin. I used to have a book of Scriabin Studies which were far too difficult for me to play although they were really exciting because of the sense of harmony and the fact that he liked mixing up the phrasing in the left and right hands. I still think he is the most interesting classical composer Russia produced - avoiding the sugar-coated worlds of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff and the efficient coldness of Stravinsky. These Impromptus are unfamiliar to me yet I think that, even at a young age, Scriabin was making important contributions to the piano repertoire. I believe that Scriabin had synesthesia which would help explain why jazz pianists such as Chick Corea are fans of his work.

The Faure pieces are also played superbly and manage to bring out the best in his music. Although I am not familiar with Katya Apekisheva, she absolutely nails these pieces by a composer I always think is quite elusive. I have always felt that Faure is more dependent on a pianist understanding his music than anyone else because , if the soloist is not perceptive, the music becomes quite ordinary. Kathryn Stott is another pianist who excels in performing Faure's work.

Picking up on the comments made before Christmas regarding the improvising approach of Keith Jarrett, this CD offers a glimpse at how an earlier generation tackled improvisation on the piano.

I don't like to get into ranking, but suffice to say, I too love Scriabin, especially his late works like the last five piano sonatas. It's true that his harmony would be of interest to jazz musicians in his use of synthetic scales like the octatonic scale, which is also an aspect of Stravinsky's music that interests jazzers (just yesterday I saw a video of Herbie Hancock stating his favourite composition is the Rite of Spring - it makes him cry) also Stravinsky's rhythmic language must surely be of interest. I've seen some guitarists taking an interest in Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition.

I've just finished writing a piece of music - as a vehicle for jazz improv - influenced by Scriabin.

[Bert]

I never knew this band existed!

I've come across it, but couldn't really find any recordings .....

[Joseph K]

I've come across it, but couldn't really find any recordings .....

Probably because they never made one.

I keep seeing new uploads recently on youtube, particularly relating to John McLaughlin - so much so, in fact, that I hardly have time to listen to them! But then, I have my own ambitious practice schedule to keep. Here's one I just today discovered (which for me links next onto yet another John Mc vid, uploaded a mere hour ago!) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_DQ1O9QEm0

[Bert]

Probably because they never made one.

I keep seeing new uploads recently on youtube, particularly relating to John McLaughlin - so much so, in fact, that I hardly have time to listen to them! But then, I have my own ambitious practice schedule to keep. Here's one I just today discovered (which for me links next onto yet another John Mc vid, uploaded a mere hour ago!) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_DQ1O9QEm0

Great link. The more I listen to McLaughlin, the more I think he's a sort of genius.

[Stanfordian]

‘Newk's Time’ - Sonny Rollins
with Wynton Kelly, Doug Watkins, Philly Joe Jones
Blue Note (1957)

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't like to get into ranking, but suffice to say, I too love Scriabin, especially his late works like the last five piano sonatas. It's true that his harmony would be of interest to jazz musicians in his use of synthetic scales like the octatonic scale, which is also an aspect of Stravinsky's music that interests jazzers (just yesterday I saw a video of Herbie Hancock stating his favourite composition is the Rite of Spring - it makes him cry) also Stravinsky's rhythmic language must surely be of interest. I've seen some guitarists taking an interest in Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition.

I've just finished writing a piece of music - as a vehicle for jazz improv - influenced by Scriabin.

"The Rite" came in for a lot of knocking awhile back on this forum - the theme of a young girl dancing herself to death in a piece of imagined primitive ritual. But, I have to say, were it not for the uncomfortable inspiration on composer, choreographer, set designer Massine and Diaghilev, we wouldn't have probably had the rhythmic/metrical experiments and their harmonic counterparts that went a lot further than Ravel had in his "Daphnis & Chloe" of around the same time - though another French contemporary composer acknowledged by Stravinsky, Florent Schmitt, had been moving along anticipatory lines some 6 years earlier in the finale to his giant symphonic poem "La tragédie de Salomé". The latter, composed a few years after Strauss's sensational opera, amounted to another case of erotic dancing in front of men, with the added lure of "female power", ? then being exercised in a ghastly overplaying of the mythology of the "woman scorned". Some of us are old enough to remember the popularity of Beadsley's Salome poster print, often seen on bedsit walls in the late 1960s. (I didn't own that one, but I did have the set of Picasso Indian ink designs of bull fighters). But in pre-WWI Paris there was a lot of interest in artistic and, er, scientific circles in "the primitive" - a sort of lurid aftermath of Empire in its manifold manfestations: think Brancusi's sculptures (which I happen to think arose from his genuine admiration for African sculpture) and that coincidental (not) juxtaposition of primitivity with the semi-abstractified prostitutes in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - one of the most important precursors of Cubism - Pablo was a friend of Igor, it may be noted.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"Stravinsky and Jazz", a Radio 3 examination from 2011 (Alex Hawkins etc)...

http://youtu.be/JJwzhpw-D8M

[Joseph K]

Some of us are old enough to remember the popularity of Beadsley's Salome poster print, often seen on bedsit walls in the late 1960s. (I didn't own that one, but I did have the set of Picasso Indian ink designs of bull fighters). But in pre-WWI Paris there was a lot of interest in artistic and, er, scientific circles in "the primitive" - a sort of lurid aftermath of Empire in its manifold manfestations: think Brancusi's sculptures (which I happen to think arose from his genuine admiration for African sculpture) and that coincidental (not) juxtaposition of primitivity with the semi-abstractified prostitutes in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - one of the most important precursors of Cubism - Pablo was a friend of Igor, it may be noted.

Funny you should mention this, for recently at meal times I've been reading Art: The Whole Story, mostly the sections on the art from 1850-1950, and have been acquainting myself with the various -isms from this epoch, like primitivism.

[gurnemanz]

I was listening to some early Sidney Bechet yesterday. Clarence Williams Blue Five from 1924 including Louis Armstrong on cornet. On one track Bechet plays a weird-sounding bassy rumbling sarrusophone. Not entirely surprising that the instrument never caught on. Reading sleevenotes (Proper Box) I learnt that he first came across a soprano sax in a Wardour St shop window during his stay in London in 1920.