What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Joseph K]

Ant Law - The Sleeper Wakes

[Joseph K]

Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch

Nice being reminded how incredible this is. Although Miles Davis apparently failed to appreciate Dolphy, there is in this music aspects that foreshadow Davis's music of just a few years later - this tune is similar to 'Frelon Brun' - both have Tony Williams on which helps. And there is that funkiness which often threatens to break out into freer realms. But an intoxicating, irrepressible, convulsive swagger present on this tune and a few others on this album is unbelievably good - not to mention the surreal pointillist textures the vibraphone helps produce.

[eighthobstruction]

Jonas Hellborg et al. - Icon

I think I'm the only person round these parts who appreciates this (and other similar albums by these artists). Oh well, it's incredible.

....i'lll give it a go...

[PatrickMurtha]

Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch

Nice being reminded how incredible this is. Although Miles Davis apparently failed to appreciate Dolphy, there is in this music aspects that foreshadow Davis's music of just a few years later - this tune is similar to 'Frelon Brun' - both have Tony Williams on which helps. And there is that funkiness which often threatens to break out into freer realms. But an intoxicating, irrepressible, convulsive swagger present on this tune and a few others on this album is unbelievably good - not to mention the surreal pointillist textures the vibraphone helps produce.

Dolphy was extremely interested in all the developments in contemporary classical music. I recall that he referred to Bartok and Berg in interviews that form part of his LPs’ liner notes.

Beyond that, what an amazing man and musician! I love what Coltrane said about him: “Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.”

[Serial_Apologist]

Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch

Nice being reminded how incredible this is. Although Miles Davis apparently failed to appreciate Dolphy, there is in this music aspects that foreshadow Davis's music of just a few years later - this tune is similar to 'Frelon Brun' - both have Tony Williams on which helps. And there is that funkiness which often threatens to break out into freer realms. But an intoxicating, irrepressible, convulsive swagger present on this tune and a few others on this album is unbelievably good - not to mention the surreal pointillist textures the vibraphone helps produce.

From what I recall, in a blindfold test with Downbeat Miles said words to the effect that Dolphy overplayed, thereby not offering others in a group the opportunity to respond or allow for interplay: "You've got to listen as well as just play for yourself" or words to that effect. In his way he was right as regards several recordings made prior to Out To Lunch where a kind of relentlessness seemed preordained in Dolphy's extending of Parker's improvisational disciplines; however, the lie to that misguided generalisation was already offered in those wonderful duets with Mingus, which maybe Miles did not know of. There were to my mind two main kinds of listening involved in where jazz was moving in the 60s - one the one hand conscious pre-agreement to try to exclude or minimise resort to musical habit by paying the closest possible attention to ongoing detail, which would lead to much free improvisational practice, beginning with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble; and the other to build up levels of complexity "in the heat of the moment" to a point where the whole issue of responsiveness was effectively seconded to some notion of a collective subconscious source of deep inspiration only available at that level in the act of collective engagement. In retrospect one could of course argue that the latter principle had always highlighted two opposing pulls within the music; the sociopolitical contradictions internalised in jazz had always threatened to propel the music beyond containable boundaries with idiomatic tropes serving as a safety valve suited to marketisation, the way rock 'n' roll could all too easily be adapted. Think maybe of all those cutting sessions of the 1940s and 50s helping in preparing the ground for more daring explorations transcendent of normative status quo shackles.

[Joseph K]

....i'lll give it a go...

Awesome.

[Joseph K]

Dolphy was extremely interested in all the developments in contemporary classical music. I recall that he referred to Bartok and Berg in interviews that form part of his LPs’ liner notes.

Beyond that, what an amazing man and musician! I love what Coltrane said about him: “Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.”

And of course Gazzelloni the flautist...

[Joseph K]

From what I recall, in a blindfold test with Downbeat Miles said words to the effect that Dolphy overplayed, thereby not offering others in a group the opportunity to respond or allow for interplay: "You've got to listen as well as just play for yourself" or words to that effect. In his way he was right as regards several recordings made prior to Out To Lunch where a kind of relentlessness seemed preordained in Dolphy's extending of Parker's improvisational disciplines; however, the lie to that misguided generalisation was already offered in those wonderful duets with Mingus, which maybe Miles did not know of. There were to my mind two main kinds of listening involved in where jazz was moving in the 60s - one the one hand conscious pre-agreement to try to exclude or minimise resort to musical habit by paying the closest possible attention to ongoing detail, which would lead to much free improvisational practice, beginning with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble; and the other to build up levels of complexity "in the heat of the moment" to a point where the whole issue of responsiveness was effectively seconded to some notion of a collective subconscious source of deep inspiration only available at that level in the act of collective engagement. In retrospect one could of course argue that the latter principle had always highlighted two opposing pulls within the music; the sociopolitical contradictions internalised in jazz had always threatened to propel the music beyond containable boundaries with idiomatic tropes serving as a safety valve suited to marketisation, the way rock 'n' roll could all too easily be adapted. Think maybe of all those cutting sessions of the 1940s and 50s helping in preparing the ground for more daring explorations transcendent of normative status quo shackles.

Thanks for the info. By the way, in my above post I refer to 'this tune', by which I meant 'Hat And Beard'. That's what you get for thoughtlessly copying and pasting from facebook.

[JasonPalmer]

Listening to jazz on the classical mix tape.
Alexander Tsfasman


Jazz Suite: Snowflakes

Performer: Ludmila Berlinskaya. Performer: Arthur Ancelle.

• GEORGE GERSHWIN; ALEXANDER TSFASMAN: 2 PIANOS.
• MELODIYA.
• 2.

[PatrickMurtha]

Bunny Berigan was only five years younger than Bix Beiderbecke, and the similarities are spooky, but everyone knows about that. I like the fact that Bunny recorded his own version of Bix’s piano composition In a Mist, and other pieces associated with him, as a hat tip in 1938.

Since it was Berigan’s birthday today, I listened to the wonderful old compilation LP that Epic marketed variously as “Take it, Bunny!” and Bunny Berigan & His Men.

I like this comment from fellow trumpeter Joe Aguanno, who played in Berigan’s band: “No one ever played like he played…The sound was so rich and so soulful. There’s something that us trumpet players used to hear in Bunny. When he would attack a certain note, it would sound . . . it makes you cry. The sound that came out of Bunny’s horn was just like the type of person he was. He was such a fine, lovable guy… a big man, nice-looking.”

[Joseph K]

I think this might be my favourite of any performance from The Cellar Door Sessions. It's incredible...

Miles Davis - Directions (Cellar Door 1970) - YouTube

[Tenor Freak]

Tony Bianco (d), Paul Dunmall (ts), Simon Picard (ts) - Utoma Trio

[Joseph K]

Tony Bianco (d), Paul Dunmall (ts), Simon Picard (ts) - Utoma Trio

It's cool that you have the same album! Paul always has a box of CDs available to buy after the gig - a fiver each and they don't have any change, nor usually a card reader, so I am obliged to buy two with the tenner I invariably have, and I picked Utoma Trio out a bit by random, I think maybe because it has Bianco on it and I liked the title of the tune 'Oceans in Space', sounds trippy...

[Tenor Freak]

It's cool that you have the same album! Paul always has a box of CDs available to buy after the gig - a fiver each and they don't have any change, nor usually a card reader, so I am obliged to buy two with the tenner I invariably have, and I picked Utoma Trio out a bit by random, I think maybe because it has Bianco on it and I liked the title of the tune 'Oceans in Space', sounds trippy...

It is, as the late Walter Becker observed when promoting the album Apogee by Warne Marsh and Pete Christlieb (which Becker co-produced with Donald Fagen when taking time off between Steely Dan records), "an album for tenor freaks". And now you know where I got my user handle.

[PatrickMurtha]

It is, as the late Walter Becker observed when promoting the album Apogee by Warne Marsh and Pete Christlieb (which Becker co-produced with Donald Fagen when taking time off between Steely Dan records), "an album for tenor freaks". And now you know where I got my user handle.

I am a huge Steely Dan fan and I did not know that!