What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Ian Thumwood]

Kenny Dorham 1964 in the Olso home of Randi Huitin, patron,friend and accommodation provider for a host of US musicians, particularly Sonny Rollins. There's a fine book of her remembrances plus cd. This is "Fairweather", Kenny's own, not the Golson tune, just Kenny singing and playing piano. Very informal but lovely.

It also showed up (how?) in the Round Midnight soundtrack played by Chet and Herbie...http://youtu.be/xqvCDwKikGQ?feature=shared

I really like that tune. Small group jazz composition from the 1950s and 60s does not really get the credit much of it deserves. The focus tends to be on the likes of Monk, Silver and Mingus with the likes of George Russell being thrown (correctly) in to the pot as someone who was looking beyond more formulaic writing. It always pleases me when the likes of Herbie Nichols or even Richard Twardzik are mentioned as they were offerring an alternative to Monk in more eccentric styles. If I am being a bit partisan, you will have to forgive me but I feel that Kenny Dorham was an original and deserved wider recognition. I have Walter Davis Jr's "30 compositions by kenny Dorham" which I quickly snapped up once as it keeps going out of print. When collated like this, you start to appreciate just what a fine writer Dorham was. "Fairweather" does not feature in this book which is largely made up of material written for the group with Joe Henderson as well as the material from "Whistle Stop."

There are a number of compositions from obscure KD discs such as "Two horns- Two rhythm" (With Ernie Henry) and "Blue Spring" - neither of these are famiiar nor discs I can recall anyone writing about. The liner notes by Michael Cusuna are enlightening insofar that Dorham's reputation as a composer was recognised by other musicians performing his compositions even when KD was not part of the line up. The notes also explain that Dorhams career took in Be-bop, Hard Bop, Avant garde as well as fusion. I think it is also salient that the notes in the music book refer to KD working with big bands - perhaps the ultimate format for a jazz musician concentrating on composition ?

[Gargoyle]

ENJOYING THIS VERY MUCH!

[Ian Thumwood]

ENJOYING THIS VERY MUCH!

I can remember this getting really good reviews when it was released. From recollection, it was playted on Humphrey Lyttelton's "Best of Jazz" at the time. I had never seen the album cover before and it took me a while to appreciate that the zebra was photographed upside down. It is quite an arresting image.

No one appears to have picked up upon the sad passing of Steve Voce. Getting in to jazz in the 1980s, his columns in "Jazz Journal" always seemed to be controversial and out-spoken. His earlier reviews for the magazine were more in favour of the then contemporary scene but you get the impression that his views hardened somewhat with the passage of time. There was a clear indication that he knew his stuff whilst he was scathing of more modern styles of jazz. As a teenager in the 1980s, I have to admit that I felt his views were very conservative and purposely contrarian. (My Dad also liked "Jazz Journal" yet would be riled by Steve Voce's prejudices. ) The almost hagiographical treatment of Stan Getz was something that stuck out for me at the time although I can recall the sense of disappointment when Getz released an album with a largely orchestral accompaniment. ("Apasionado?" ) In some ways, he reminded me of Trevor Cooper who used to post on this forum.

I always used to think that with jazz it was possible to appreciate the earliest recordings from New Orleans and also listen to more avant garde artists like Lester Bowie. For a long while, there did not seem to be much of a disconnect for me between earlier and the then contemporary styles of jazz emerging in the 1980s. Nowdays, I feel a lot of contemporary jazz has lost it's edge although I still like a wide range of the music. I always felt that Steve Voce was of the opposite opinion albeit I seem to recollect that he could be as dismissive of some earlier jazz as with the contemporary stuff. I did not share his views and felt that he often put them across in his articles that were purposely drafted to provoke comment. I would probably appreciate his perspective more these days whereas when I was an avid reader of JJ the articles he wrote seemed ignorant of what was going on in jazz outside of his limited taste. As I have grown older, I would probably have to concede that I would resepct Steve Voces' opinion more whilst disagreeing with him on a lot of things. There have been British journalists whose output has expressed positions that I do not agree with. A prime example would be Stuart Nicholson but there are other journalists out there like Roger Farbey who I feel have a perspective of the music which often does not align with my own. Neither of these journalists seem to have been quite as controversial as Steve Voce nor have had quite the same staying power even if those readers holding similar views as his must have become an ever decreasing number. I think Steve Voce was a writer you would want to read albeit always knowing that you were going to vehemently disagree with his perspective and, more often than not, be provoked by what he had to say. From recollection, wasn't he one of the main detractors of "Loose tubes" back in the 1980s ? Judging from the letters from readers, Steve Voces' contribution must have kept the post bag full as he took aim at some of jazz's sacred cows.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Being of an "age" I do remember a long ago spat between Voce and Val Wilmer where she dismissed something as "goodtime music to just keep the people happy". To which he responded, "The purpose of jazz is to make people bloody miserable then, who knew?" Or something similar. Not a meeting of minds or I suspect politics. I never "appreciated" him or Benny Green etc.

Despite its merit in some respects (I much preferred Jazz Monthly), JJ used to employ some oddballs & insular people. I remember a Bob someone who didn't appear to like much after Lester Young. And to "lend authority" would preface his criticisms with "as a semi pro pianist myself". How I smirked.

[Quarky]

Miguel Zenon & Dan Tepfer

Internal Melodies / A thing and its opposite / Freedrum ......

[Serial_Apologist]

Being of an "age" I do remember a long ago spat between Voce and Val Wilmer where she dismissed something as "goodtime music to just keep the people happy". To which he responded, "The purpose of jazz is to make people bloody miserable then, who knew?" Or something similar. Not a meeting of minds or I suspect politics. I never "appreciated" him or Benny Green etc.

Despite its merit in some respects (I much preferred Jazz Monthly), JJ used to employ some oddballs & insular people. I remember a Bob someone who didn't appear to like much after Lester Young. And to "lend authority" would preface his criticisms with "as a semi pro pianist myself". How I smirked.

Bob Dawburn? Barry McRae, writing for Jazz Journal, was someone I had a lot of time for, being one of the first British critics not only to embrace Ornette Coleman but to stay aboard and champion later Coltrane and his younger acolytes, giving us the merits of useful insights into the whys, hows and wherefores, and forewarning of the potential traps of jazzrock laying it wait, although in the light of what would transpire later recanting as and when warranted. Jazz Journal later became a much better informed periodical, though in those days he must have felt pretty isolated.

Everyone had to learn to keep up back then, unless you got the message from the start. Even Trevor Watts told me that Ornette had sounded "strange" when he first heard him on record, whereas Paul Rutherford "got it all" straight away as a natural progression that needed to overturn ossified procedures and assumptions. With so much contemporary jazz now slickened into professional smoothness as an alternative to orchestral and chamber music playing the same old same old classics demanded by the promoters and radio programmers, and even session work being outmoded by VR simulations, the ever-lengthening jazz lineage can easily and understandably fade into a seeming miasma of similarity in which tweak and nuance was all that happened in the name of change and advance at given moments. But picking up the sign givers, the Armstrongs, Lester Youngs, reminds that jazz was and can be a prescience, intuiters of what is on the way, like birds pre-announcing approaching storms, that they are the preparers and beneficiaries of the practices embedded in jazz performance as grass roots, by virtue inbred in opposition to commercialisation, that make it both suited and contributive to social and political as well as musical and aesthetic change.

[Ian Thumwood]

Bob Dawburn? Barry McRae, writing for Jazz Journal, was someone I had a lot of time for, being one of the first British critics not only to embrace Ornette Coleman but to stay aboard and champion later Coltrane and his younger acolytes, giving us the merits of useful insights into the whys, hows and wherefores, and forewarning of the potential traps of jazzrock laying it wait, although in the light of what would transpire later recanting as and when warranted. Jazz Journal later became a much better informed periodical, though in those days he must have felt pretty isolated.

Everyone had to learn to keep up back then, unless you got the message from the start. Even Trevor Watts told me that Ornette had sounded "strange" when he first heard him on record, whereas Paul Rutherford "got it all" straight away as a natural progression that needed to overturn ossified procedures and assumptions. With so much contemporary jazz now slickened into professional smoothness as an alternative to orchestral and chamber music playing the same old same old classics demanded by the promoters and radio programmers, and even session work being outmoded by VR simulations, the ever-lengthening jazz lineage can easily and understandably fade into a seeming miasma of similarity in which tweak and nuance was all that happened in the name of change and advance at given moments. But picking up the sign givers, the Armstrongs, Lester Youngs, reminds that jazz was and can be a prescience, intuiters of what is on the way, like birds pre-announcing approaching storms, that they are the preparers and beneficiaries of the practices embedded in jazz performance as grass roots, by virtue inbred in opposition to commercialisation, that make it both suited and contributive to social and political as well as musical and aesthetic change.

I agree with a lot of this although I think that the Classical world has moved away from familiar material to pursue less obvious composers from all eras which has refreshed the repertoire. The problem with jazz is that no one is really interested in it any more and the media from the 1990s onwards seemed to throw it's hat behind musicians who did not really generate a lasting following. There is a lot of really good stuff around but you have to search it out as opposed to relying on publications like Jazz Journal to point you in the right direction. A lot of the really interesting jazz now appears on more obscure labels or is released through the artists. In my opinion, the role of magazines like Jazz Journal has been somewhat by-passed. There always used to be an excitement of buying wire / Jazz Journal / Jazzwise to discover new recordings or listen to re-issues . These magazines supplemented programmes like The Best of Jazz. JRR is now unique insofar that it is the ony programme catering for the whole gamut of jazz. I rarely buy magazines these days as I tend to read online views. I am not sure that a prickly reviewer like Steve Voce would fit in to somewhere like All about Jazz which seems to favour more vanilla writers like Roger Farbey.

Regaring the journalism in JJ, I always felt that part of it's charm was the fact that it was amateur. I can recall Barry McRae's contributions but i always felt that it was the reviews by Simon Adams that highlighted the kind of jazz I grew up listening to. Many of the reviewers were actually done by people who had other jobs or authors of books on other subjects. It was a very broad church when it came to reviews albeit the interviews seemed to feature more bebop / swing / players and especially lesser known musicians like Nathan Davis or Don Lanphere. At the time, this used to frustrate me as there was so many new names emerging in the 1980s that the magazine sometimes seemed behind the times and a bit quaint. It always amazed me that "classic" records initially had indifferent reviews in JJ and it was staggering how often, esepcially in the early days, they got things so seriously wrong! You can read the old reviews on line and they are amusing. I would never have associated JJ as being ahead of the curve yet I think it did cater for an audience which had grown up with swing / bebop and whose tastes are not really reflected in today's generation. Now it has gone on line, the homespun appeal of the magazine has disappeared. I always saw Steve Voce as JJ's "maverick" voice and thought of him as a kind of puritanical figure that would throw out the odd controversial comment to exercise the readership and prompt letters to the editor. He was also a long time radio presenter in NW England when the BBC regional programmes featured jazz. Those people who I knew to be readers of JJ always had a similar view of Steve Voce and also saw him as a writer who was always direct and too set in his ways to be taken that seriously. Some of the views he took almost seem as eccentric as Sinclair Traill, the magazine's founder and definately the kind of "oddball" to which Bluesnik referred.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Slightly off "jazz" but in terms of "What are you listening to" , I listened to the "premier of Joan Armatrading's Ist symphony" on R3 tonight,

The Guardian was far too polite, it's not only jazz that succumbes to high profile banality.


"Joan Armatrading world premiere review – how did a brilliant pop melodist produce such a baffling mess?
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Armatrading’s first symphony, premiered by Chineke! conducted by Andrew Grams, was underdeveloped and dull. Neither composer nor ensemble come out well from this..."

[Serial_Apologist]

Slightly off "jazz" but in terms of "What are you listening to" , I listened to the "premier of Joan Armatrading's Ist symphony" on R3 tonight,

The Guardian was far too polite, it's not only jazz that succumbes to high profile banality.


"Joan Armatrading world premiere review – how did a brilliant pop melodist produce such a baffling mess?
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Armatrading’s first symphony, premiered by Chineke! conducted by Andrew Grams, was underdeveloped and dull. Neither composer nor ensemble come out well from this..."

Have to agree, sadly. After the performance they played one of her 1970s soul/funk numbers, which turned out a lot more interesting purely from a musical point of view where its uneven measures coupled effectively with instrumentation, than the symphony. The performance of the symphony was also somewhat untogether and certainly lacking in spark, though whether that was down to the score or not could be another matter. The audience was rapturous, however, "Ve haf veys to make you clap ze crap", it being so thrilling that a pop star is capable of composing a SYMPHONY, no less, everyone!

Oh, and why FIRST symphony?

[Jazzrook]

I can remember this getting really good reviews when it was released. From recollection, it was playted on Humphrey Lyttelton's "Best of Jazz" at the time. I had never seen the album cover before and it took me a while to appreciate that the zebra was photographed upside down. It is quite an arresting image.

No one appears to have picked up upon the sad passing of Steve Voce. Getting in to jazz in the 1980s, his columns in "Jazz Journal" always seemed to be controversial and out-spoken. His earlier reviews for the magazine were more in favour of the then contemporary scene but you get the impression that his views hardened somewhat with the passage of time. There was a clear indication that he knew his stuff whilst he was scathing of more modern styles of jazz. As a teenager in the 1980s, I have to admit that I felt his views were very conservative and purposely contrarian. (My Dad also liked "Jazz Journal" yet would be riled by Steve Voce's prejudices. ) The almost hagiographical treatment of Stan Getz was something that stuck out for me at the time although I can recall the sense of disappointment when Getz released an album with a largely orchestral accompaniment. ("Apasionado?" ) In some ways, he reminded me of Trevor Cooper who used to post on this forum.

I always used to think that with jazz it was possible to appreciate the earliest recordings from New Orleans and also listen to more avant garde artists like Lester Bowie. For a long while, there did not seem to be much of a disconnect for me between earlier and the then contemporary styles of jazz emerging in the 1980s. Nowdays, I feel a lot of contemporary jazz has lost it's edge although I still like a wide range of the music. I always felt that Steve Voce was of the opposite opinion albeit I seem to recollect that he could be as dismissive of some earlier jazz as with the contemporary stuff. I did not share his views and felt that he often put them across in his articles that were purposely drafted to provoke comment. I would probably appreciate his perspective more these days whereas when I was an avid reader of JJ the articles he wrote seemed ignorant of what was going on in jazz outside of his limited taste. As I have grown older, I would probably have to concede that I would resepct Steve Voces' opinion more whilst disagreeing with him on a lot of things. There have been British journalists whose output has expressed positions that I do not agree with. A prime example would be Stuart Nicholson but there are other journalists out there like Roger Farbey who I feel have a perspective of the music which often does not align with my own. Neither of these journalists seem to have been quite as controversial as Steve Voce nor have had quite the same staying power even if those readers holding similar views as his must have become an ever decreasing number. I think Steve Voce was a writer you would want to read albeit always knowing that you were going to vehemently disagree with his perspective and, more often than not, be provoked by what he had to say. From recollection, wasn't he one of the main detractors of "Loose tubes" back in the 1980s ? Judging from the letters from readers, Steve Voces' contribution must have kept the post bag full as he took aim at some of jazz's sacred cows.

A short obituary of Steve Voce(1933-2023) by Mark Gilbert, online editor of Jazz Journal:

https://jazzjournal.co.uk/2023/11/25/steve-voce-1933-2023/#google_vignette

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

Have to agree, sadly. After the performance they played one of her 1970s soul/funk numbers, which turned out a lot more interesting purely from a musical point of view where its uneven measures coupled effectively with instrumentation, than the symphony. The performance of the symphony was also somewhat untogether and certainly lacking in spark, though whether that was down to the score or not could be another matter. The audience was rapturous, however, "Ve haf veys to make you clap ze crap", it being so thrilling that a pop star is capable of composing a SYMPHONY, no less, everyone!

Oh, and why FIRST symphony?

This was promoted on one of the drive programmes on Radio 3 this week. It piqued my interest but I forgot to log on to listen as I was preoccupied with doin some work that I had brought home from the office. I think that there is likely to be a second symphony judging by the comments. Did JA orchestrate this performance or did she get someone else to do it for her like Paul McCartney did with Carl Davis ?

I have listened to a bit of Radio 3 this week in a replacement car whilst mine was in the garage being fixed. Without a CD player I listened to the radio and tuned in to Radio 3 as I was tired of all the bad news on Radio 4. It has been a while since I had listened as I am not a fan of Petroc Trelawny or the camp Irish bloke in the evening. It does seem to have dumbed down a bit . Katy Derham's questions to the young scottish jazz pianist this week being particularly inept and fluffy.

[Serial_Apologist]

This was promoted on one of the drive programmes on Radio 3 this week. It piqued my interest but I forgot to log on to listen as I was preoccupied with doin some work that I had brought home from the office. I think that there is likely to be a second symphony judging by the comments. Did JA orchestrate this performance or did she get someone else to do it for her like Paul McCartney did with Carl Davis ?

What I gathered from what was the presenter's totally inadequate by past standards introduction to the piece, Joan had done all the work herself, orchestration included. I found it all very turgid and bitty.

[Jazzrook]

Sahib Shihab with Phil Woods, Benny Golson, Bill Evans, Oscar Pettiford & Art Taylor playing ‘Blu-a-Round’ in 1957:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=U8Krzo_DOPQ

JR

[eighthobstruction]

Oscar Peterson, Piano Ben Webster,, Tenor Saxophone Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Bass Tony Inzalaco, Drums Recorded December 14th 1972 at the 84th NDR Jazzworkshop in Studio II, Hannover, Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhVwDgHmHEg ....marvellous as you'd expect

[Padraig]

Oscar Peterson, Piano Ben Webster,, Tenor Saxophone Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Bass Tony Inzalaco, Drums Recorded December 14th 1972 at the 84th NDR Jazzworkshop in Studio II, Hannover, Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhVwDgHmHEg ....marvellous as you'd expect

Just listened to first track -Poutin' - a good old 12 bar Blues, with drum breaks. Will be following up during the week. Great stuff eighth.