Wondered if you had ever read Vic Berton's book ' Remembering Bix' which is a good read regardless of the alleged inaccuracies? The third Berton brother was a singer of French chanson and there is a chapter in that book which explains how white jazz musicians if that era had an ear open towards the then contemporary composers. I remember reading about Poulenc in that book and I can recall reading about how the Chicagoans devoured Ravel. Many musicians of that era were really switched in to Ravel and the whole Impressionist influence is explicit in Bix' s ' in a mist.'
I am not savvy enough to understand the music theory but I think the cadences in alot of recordings by musicians such as Bix, Bill Challis, Venuti & Lang and Adrian Rollini always struck me as unexpected. They still have a tendency to sound 'wrong. ' from a rhythmic perspective they were behind the curve whereas harmonically I feel they were modern by the standards of the day. It is no less wierd than Zappa being championed by Pierre Boulez . You usually associate the music of Ravel with the writing of Gil.Evans and pianists like Bill Evans or even Phineas Newborn as per the sample posted in here a few months back. For me, I feel Ravel had a far wider reach going back into 1920s jazz as well.his George Gershwin. The jazz community had been checking out Ravel for about 30.years by this point.
In retrospect , it would be fascinating to read how wide jazz musicians were casting their net with Classical influences in the 1920s. I think that the conclusions would make fascinating reading in 2024. Also worth recalling that there were books on jazz orchestration that were published pre 1925 which saw the future of jazz / dance music as being notated. I believe Paul Whiteman had already written a book about orchestration by that point and recollect he was not unique. An article on the future of jazz written in 1925 would come to some surprising conclusions and I would guess that the influence if French composers in writing would be writ large.
I am not savvy enough to understand the music theory but I think the cadences in alot of recordings by musicians such as Bix, Bill Challis, Venuti & Lang and Adrian Rollini always struck me as unexpected. They still have a tendency to sound 'wrong. ' from a rhythmic perspective they were behind the curve whereas harmonically I feel they were modern by the standards of the day. It is no less wierd than Zappa being championed by Pierre Boulez . You usually associate the music of Ravel with the writing of Gil.Evans and pianists like Bill Evans or even Phineas Newborn as per the sample posted in here a few months back. For me, I feel Ravel had a far wider reach going back into 1920s jazz as well.his George Gershwin. The jazz community had been checking out Ravel for about 30.years by this point.
In retrospect , it would be fascinating to read how wide jazz musicians were casting their net with Classical influences in the 1920s. I think that the conclusions would make fascinating reading in 2024. Also worth recalling that there were books on jazz orchestration that were published pre 1925 which saw the future of jazz / dance music as being notated. I believe Paul Whiteman had already written a book about orchestration by that point and recollect he was not unique. An article on the future of jazz written in 1925 would come to some surprising conclusions and I would guess that the influence if French composers in writing would be writ large.
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