What Jazz are you listening to now?

[RichardB]

A topical choice: Miles's You're Under Arrest.

Actually it's pretty good. I didn't take much notice when it came out.

[Joseph K]

A topical choice: Miles's You're Under Arrest.

Actually it's pretty good. I didn't take much notice when it came out.

Thanks for prompting me to give this a listen. I had a similarly surprisingly good experience listening to The Man With The Horn the other year.

[Jazzrook]

Jackie McLean with Tommy Turrentine, Sonny Clark, Butch Warren & Billy Higgins playing 'Five Will Get You Ten'(a Thelonious Monk tune originally titled 'Two Timer' but never recorded by him.):

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=Xt2VXo_LLuk

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

A topical choice: Miles's You're Under Arrest.

Actually it's pretty good. I didn't take much notice when it came out.

The album came out mid-1980s and was heavily plugged. At the time I was more interested in Miles' stuff with Gil Evans and never paid it much attention when the LP was being seriously plugged in HMV. It was later selected by The Wire as one of the albums of the 1980s. I did not buy the record until a few years later and I always wonder if this album would have been his most celebrated record from the 1980s had "Tutu" not been produced and "Aura" issued retrospectively. This is probably Miles' most obvious "pop" album

The best thing about the album is "Time after time" which I have always felt was a really good pop song. "Human nature" is not bad either albeit I am not so sure that covering Michael Jackson tunes is so cool these days. A threat about jazz treatments of more contemporary pop music might be interesting. I have not listened to this album for a long while and the reviews on Amazon that it is "of it's era" probably sum it up the best. Both Scofield and McLaughlin are on the record but can be heard to better advantage elsewhere. Like so much of his work in the 1980s, I don't think we would be discussing Miles Davis had be only made these records wtih the best of the bunch, "Aura", probably being lauded to Palle Mikkelborg's writing. Picking up on Joseph's comment, "The Man with the horn" was derided by critics in the 1980s as Miles was not considered to be in good shape musically but I think this is probably the last album he made where the improvisation was more free-booting. Not convinced he was doing much more than going around the motions in some of those albums. The trumpet was more about timbre than exploring the possibility of the music. I bit like what Armstrong was doing towards the end of the All Stars era in the late 60s, I suppose.

[Ian Thumwood]

I have been listening to a lot of Classical music of late as there is a whole swathe of music that I am unfamiliar with. At the moment I am listening to some of the pianomsic by Villa-Lobos. It is really fascinating as I think the "innovation" is in it's use of rhythm. A lot of the music is small in scope and, perhaps taking it's cues from folk music in a way that was fashionable in the late 19th century. I really like his music yet the biggest impression I have got is just how much he must hve informed other Brazilian musicians such as Egberto Gismonti and Hermeto Pascoal. By contrast, there is practically nothing in his music that would lead to to make connections with Bossa Nova which came in to vogue after he had died in 1959.

The interest in music like this for me is the connection with jazz and therefore the things that I am looking for may not necessarily be those aspects which appeal to others. If Villa-Lobos sounds like any contemporary, it would be like Milhaud who, I am afraid to say, churned out copious amounts of mediocre music . It is fascinating to contrast his composition with another composer I have been listening to avidly and that is Karol Szymanowski. I am realising that there are loads of exceptional composers from the early 20th century who never get their due. KS is certainly one of these and I can see the parallels with Scriabin although I think the Russian became less expansive as he developed as a composer. I do not see Villa-Lobos as being quite on the same plain as either Scriabin or KS yet he occupies a fascinating bridge between the classical and popular. It is strnage that he has never really influenced jazz musicians as much as you would have thought. The other composer I would have to give a big "thumbs up" to is Georges Enescu. He tends to get lumped together with the likes of Kodaly as a second rate Bartok yet his music is wholly different. I think that both Enescu and Villa-Lobos by-passed the questions regarding modernity by their own , distinct routes and this has dminished their reputations in the eyes of many. You can appreciate why jazz musicians have ignored Enescu as I don't think he was an innovator or radical yet I do feel that he is probably one of the most under-rated compoers of the last century that i am aware of. The shorter scale of Villa Lobos work and his rhythmic ideas make the lack of influence for his music less understandable but I would guess that there is a sniffiness about his music given that so much was written for children.

[Bryn]

. . . If Villa-Lobos sounds like any contemporary, it would be like Milhaud who, I am afraid to say, churned out copious amounts of mediocre music . . .

He produced some real gems. A long-time favourite of mine is L'homme et son desire, especially the Vanguard recording with Abravanel in charge:

Also on QOBUZ: https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/mi.../0723918806723

[Ian Thumwood]

Bryn

Thanks very much. I will check this out.

I have to admit that the stuff by Milhaud I have explored is uneven. At one stage I was really interested in his music and even learned a piano peace which featured each clef playing in a difference key and what was effectively a variation on "Frere Jacques." The familiar stuff is well known for a reason and is really good but you can scratch around and find compositions like " the household muse" and the Madame Bovary stuff which is really dire. This is on an early Naxos CD I bought and it put me off investigating Milhaud having been forewarned that he was inconsistent. There are some chamber orchestra pieces which are inoffensive but I was really put off by the piano compositions with narration which are underwhelming, I think he was another composer like Martinu who churned out volumes of music, not all of which was remarkable. The earlier, jazz influenced stuff is more interesting , especially when you consider what kind of jazz he must have been listening to as this would have been pre-Armstrong and acoustic -era recordings when he visited the States.

I think that there is a similar issue with someone like Gottschalk who is also lumped into the category of composer who was influenced by either pre-jazz or early jazz. The way jazz developed makes the fascinating and I feel that jazz fans are listening to their music selectively. Alot of Gottschalk's earlier work consists of Victorian parlour songs and is woefully dated - again crossing the boundary between serious and the popular music of the time. I will probably have to give Milhaud another listen to see just how wrong my perception was. It is fascinating to listen to composers who have been influenced by earlier styles of jazz and to see what they got out of it. With Milhaud, I believe that he retained his enthusiasm for the rest of his life yet the influence never manifested itself as much as in "LCdM" and "LBSLT." Of Les Six, I always like Poulenc best of all and although he was an admirer of the likes of Edith Piaf , his interest in popular music never seemed to stretch in to jazz.

[Serial_Apologist]

Bryn

Thanks very much. I will check this out.

I have to admit that the stuff by Milhaud I have explored is uneven. At one stage I was really interested in his music and even learned a piano peace which featured each clef playing in a difference key and what was effectively a variation on "Frere Jacques." The familiar stuff is well known for a reason and is really good but you can scratch around and find compositions like " the household muse" and the Madame Bovary stuff which is really dire. This is on an early Naxos CD I bought and it put me off investigating Milhaud having been forewarned that he was inconsistent. There are some chamber orchestra pieces which are inoffensive but I was really put off by the piano compositions with narration which are underwhelming, I think he was another composer like Martinu who churned out volumes of music, not all of which was remarkable. The earlier, jazz influenced stuff is more interesting , especially when you consider what kind of jazz he must have been listening to as this would have been pre-Armstrong and acoustic -era recordings when he visited the States.

I think that there is a similar issue with someone like Gottschalk who is also lumped into the category of composer who was influenced by either pre-jazz or early jazz. The way jazz developed makes the fascinating and I feel that jazz fans are listening to their music selectively. Alot of Gottschalk's earlier work consists of Victorian parlour songs and is woefully dated - again crossing the boundary between serious and the popular music of the time. I will probably have to give Milhaud another listen to see just how wrong my perception was. It is fascinating to listen to composers who have been influenced by earlier styles of jazz and to see what they got out of it. With Milhaud, I believe that he retained his enthusiasm for the rest of his life yet the influence never manifested itself as much as in "LCdM" and "LBSLT." Of Les Six, I always like Poulenc best of all and although he was an admirer of the likes of Edith Piaf , his interest in popular music never seemed to stretch in to jazz.

Interesting to read your comments on Villa-Lobos, whose harmonies in the 1920s and 1930s, combined with Brazilian rhythms, seem so remarkably prophetic of those of a great deal of 1960s jazz, and not only that in a Latin vein. Milhaud's early music on the other hand, before his adoption of, first, Brazilian elements and then early jazz, was (to me) at its best before Milhaud became almost fixated on polytonality, as would his one-time teacher Charles Koechlin. In Koechlin's case the potential drawbacks were more than mitigated by his remarkable gifts as an orchestrator, whereas Milhaud's soundworld sometimes tended towards muddiness. One early Milhaud work I recall Calum da Jazzbo really loving was the second violin and piano sonata Op 40 of 1917, with its pastoral character so redolent of his native Provence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCP-hBEwH8I

[Ian Thumwood]

I think there is something like 500 compositions by Milhaud. Of the music of his I am familiar with, it is the earlier stuff which is more distinctive and fun. I have only listened to a small fraction of it but I just think it is uneven. I am still dipping my toes in to Villa Lobos but have to say I really like his piano music.

[Joseph K]

Bill Evans - Portrait In Jazz

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Little Johnny Jones - "Chicago Blues", Flare Records 1953.
Magnificent stuff when done as hard as this. Jones was Elmore James' pianist and had worked with Tampa Red etc.

"You better watch your woman, I believe she just winked her eye at me, I've been drinking Joe Louis whiskey, and I'm just as (indistinct!) as a man can be". Poetry.

http://youtu.be/WtEHyZ4nxfs

[Joseph K]

Giving One Moment, the latest Paul Dunmall album, another spin...

[Joseph K]

Bill Evans - Waltz For Debby

[Joseph K]

Bill Evans - Sunday At The Village Vanguard

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - Miles In Berlin