What Jazz are you listening to now?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I'll check it out. I'm not a big fan of OPs original cello playing (as opposed to the bass); plucked and not well amplified it always seemed lumpy and out of place, guitarlike without any of the required resonance. The compositions however should be fine.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Spent a good part of this evening listening to OP on Youtube but been struggling to find the record that introduced me to his music as a teenager and always impressed me. I had a feeling it was a version of A K Salim's "Normania" but OP seems not to have recorded this tune and I think it was this composition:-

Shame that the cheap 5 CD collection of his music that is available excludes any personnel. However the music is exceptional.

I tend to feel a bit sorry for composers like Pettiford and Dameron as they were really distinctive but jazz moved at such a pace that around this time that they became over-looked. For me, OP occupies the bridge between swing and bebop and this is an idiom that has a kind of unique magic about it. I've also been listening to some of the Metronome All-star recordings which are pretty impressive too. It was a shame that OP died prematurely and that the music produced was overtaken by the rapid developments in jazz after 1960. You can understand how his music became so over-looked but it is also abundantly clear that the neglect was totally undeserved. As Bluesnik said, he had a knack for a good tune.

[Ian Thumwood]

Wasn't aware of this recording but this is pretty useful too:-

[Ian Thumwood]

This is another favourite of mine. Shame that Bunny Berigan's records are so hard to come by these days:-

Bizarre that the screen shot clearly shows Benny Goodman though BB might be one of the trumpeters in the background.

[Ian Thumwood]

I had forgotten that Berigan had also recorded this piece of Ellingtonia. It is a really good arrangement (Joe Lippman or Ray Conniff?) and is pretty intriguing to understand that other bandleaders were really switched on to the Duke as early as 1937. There appears to be a bass clarinet in there too which must be an early appearance for this instrument although Carney was using one in the 1930s, I believe.

[elmo]

Elmo / Bluesnik

As fans of Oscar Pettiford, wondered if you were both aware of this record? It seems quite interesting.

http://jazztimes.com/articles/171484...ik-friedlander

Ian

I will track that album down.... thanks

elmo

[elmo]

Been playing Archie Shepp, Frank Lowe and the Albert Ayler's "Spiritual unity" recently released with a version of "Vibrations" which has been very difficult to get hold of but it has been well worth the wait.

ESP are releasing a double album of the "Bells and "Prophecy" with an extra 5 tracks from the "Prophecy" session with the same line up as "Spiritual Unity" (Ayler, Peacock, Murray)

Interesting that both Frank Lowe and Archie loved the old masters - Frank Lowe with Chu Berry and Archie with Ben Webster.

Roswell Rudd's arrangement of "Naima from Four for Trane with a superb Shepp solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03g2zR8E5xs&feature=player_embedded

elmo

[Ian Thumwood]

Elmo

For me the most interesting thing about the "avant garde" is that connection with the past. Curious to think that someone like Chu Berry was more recent in connection to these records that they are to us in 2016 !

I quite like Ayler and have heard Frank Lowe perform impressively with the likes of Billy Bang. I'm not too convinced by Shepp who has materialised in to an increasingly mainstream player in recent times. You can also hear elements of Webster in players like David Murray who was in decidedly excellent "mainstream" form when I heard his perform in concert last time.

I have been tempted by the Friedlander album too having been listening to the likes of Tomeka Reid a lot of late. It is strange how the cello remains such a marginal instrument in jazz whereas the expressive range that is available would make it ideal. I think is it perhaps the one instrument that is screaming out more than any other to be introduced as a mainstream one in jazz. There are some amazing cello pieces in Classical Music (the slow movement from "Quartet for the end of time" ) and whenever I have heard a cello in a jazz context it has always been impressive. I have never found it a "lumpy" instrument and have enjoyed the likes of Hank Roberts, Ernst Reijseger and Tomeka Reid on the cello.

[Serial_Apologist]

Elmo

For me the most interesting thing about the "avant garde" is that connection with the past. Curious to think that someone like Chu Berry was more recent in connection to these records that they are to us in 2016 !

I quite like Ayler and have heard Frank Lowe perform impressively with the likes of Billy Bang. I'm not too convinced by Shepp who has materialised in to an increasingly mainstream player in recent times. You can also hear elements of Webster in players like David Murray who was in decidedly excellent "mainstream" form when I heard his perform in concert last time.

I have been tempted by the Friedlander album too having been listening to the likes of Tomeka Reid a lot of late. It is strange how the cello remains such a marginal instrument in jazz whereas the expressive range that is available would make it ideal. I think is it perhaps the one instrument that is screaming out more than any other to be introduced as a mainstream one in jazz. There are some amazing cello pieces in Classical Music (the slow movement from "Quartet for the end of time" ) and whenever I have heard a cello in a jazz context it has always been impressive. I have never found it a "lumpy" instrument and have enjoyed the likes of Hank Roberts, Ernst Reijseger and Tomeka Reid on the cello.

I have to say I've been quite disappointed in what Andy Sheppard has been putting out for some time now, but back in the early 1990s (I think it was) he had a very interesting trio with Ernst Reijseger and Nana Vasconcelos which I saw at the Bath Festival. Have you seen Ernst play, Ian? You may well have encountered him on records, but seeing him in concert is something else! At one point he heaved the cello across his lap as if about to give it a good spanking, and instead proceeded to strum it like an acoustic guitar! The thing was, he did this, not in the technique-dissing way some of the Dutch freesters engage in, but with real virtuosity and precision - while all the time wearing a kind of butter-wouldn't-melt-in-the-mouth expression of innocence. Those Dutch guys eh? ... Utterly unforgettable!

[Ian Thumwood]

I saw that group with Andy Sheppard on a double bill in 1990 at one of the London venues. I agree about his music even though he is something of a local hero, living at one time in Salisbury, I believe and a regular visitor to Southampton before fame beckoned.

The Dutch scene is a but mixed. I love some of the player like Misha Mingelberg and Han Benninck but the scene is supposed to be mixed with less capable players who have been subsidised by the Dutch state. I have always enjoyed Willem Breuker too.

From recollection, I might have also seen Reijseger in another group with Walter Wierbos led by a free jazz drummer from around the same time. Might have been Barry Altschul but I can't be sure.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I was only critical of the cello in the case of Pettiford ( and there for the way it was crudely amplified at the time). I also think cello should work and can recall tracks (but not names) where it has. Ron Carter was never that convincing although the pairing with Dolphy was an interesting experiment. Fred Katz was just kind of kitch. Fred Kitch?

"Fred Katz plays Kitch, Live at the Kitchen" Sink Records.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Coleman Hawkins started off playing cello and I often wonder how much influence the string instrument actually had on his tenor playing.

I didn't think that Katz was that bad although Abdul Wadid is probably the first time I heard it treated in a contemporary setting on the Arthir Blythe album with Bob Stewart on it.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Not "listening now", but just watched the trailer to the new Miles biopic (sic), " Miles Ahead". Or as Organissimo seem to suggest, a bad episode of Starsky and Hutch. Don Cheadle directed and plays Miles, Ewan McGregor plays a Rolling Stone reporter after Miles' life story. There is a load of guff about a missing tape, car chases and Miles with a gun. Cheadle says he doesn't care much about chronology and it shows. Kind of Blue is in 1969. Good news for Coltrane eh?

The trailer is on YouTube. Happy viewing jazz campers.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Not "listening now", but just watched the trailer to the new Miles biopic (sic), " Miles Ahead". Or as Organissimo seem to suggest, a bad episode of Starsky and Hutch. Don Cheadle directed and plays Miles, Ewan McGregor plays a Rolling Stone reporter after Miles' life story. There is a load of guff about a missing tape, car chases and Miles with a gun. Cheadle says he doesn't care much about chronology and it shows. Kind of Blue is in 1969. Good news for Coltrane eh?

The trailer is on YouTube. Happy viewing jazz campers.

BN.

The 1969 album was switched from "Bitches Brew" to "Kind of Blue" because the former wasn't considered to be politically correct and would have caused offence to any female members of the audience who weren't familiar with Davis' music.

I suppose that you won't be looking out for Idris Elba's portrayal of Thelonious Monk either?

[Serial_Apologist]

The 1969 album was switched from "Bitches Brew" to "Kind of Blue" because the former wasn't considered to be politically correct and would have caused offence to any female members of the audience who weren't familiar with Davis' music.

I suppose that you won't be looking out for Idris Elba's portrayal of Thelonious Monk either?

Would "Kind of Blue Tits" for a biopic about Bird have been politically incorrect? They're all around this building and I can't take my eyes off them.