Jazz - "J to Z" New R3 programme replacing JLU from 7 April.

[uncleboko]

Quite frankly much of the squeaks and squawks masquerading as "jazz" at the present time is little more than pretentious noise, unlike the usually tuneful banjo pumping trad jazz.

[Jazzrook]

I am not sure which programme Uncle Boko above has been listening to when he says: "just partial sets of live performance in 2 blobs... - both Jazz Now and Jazz On Line had become increasingly guilty of this in recent months." (I assume Jazz On Line is JLU?) As Executive Producer of Jazz Now I'd just like to confirm that of recent concerts we broadcast: Tommy Smith, 53 minutes of continuous concert; Zehnya Strigalev, 54 minutes; Kit Downes, 53 minutes; Markus Stockhausen/Florian Weber, 45 minutes; Julian Siegel, 74 minutes and Django Bates 74 minutes. In several cases there might have been a two minute interview within the concert, but as a general rule the concert set has gone out as an entity. Soweto, Al, Emma and the production team are all committed to presenting full concerts wherever possible. However tomorrow's Ivo Neame set is a little shorter than usual in order to accommodate our obit to Cecil Taylor, whose recent death has been somewhat ignored elsewhere on BBC Radio.

Thanks for your brief, but excellent tribute to Cecil Taylor on 'Jazz Now', Alyn.
The deafening silence from other BBC music programmes and most of the media on the passing of this unique and influential pianist has been quite depressing.
Perhaps Geoffrey Smith could devote a programme to his music?

JR

[Old Grumpy]

Quite frankly much of the squeaks and squawks masquerading as "jazz" at the present time is little more than pretentious noise, unlike the usually tuneful banjo pumping trad jazz.

Whilst I don't agree entirely, I can certainly see where you are coming from!
The Off button has to be deployed during some broadcasts of JLU (as was)/J to Z and Jazz Now. (Jazz on 3 was full of squeaks and squawks, but that was somethin' else)

OG

[cloughie]

Quite frankly much of the squeaks and squawks masquerading as "jazz" at the present time is little more than pretentious noise, unlike the usually tuneful banjo pumping trad jazz.

Mebbe so, but tuneful banjo can go on too long, about two pieces and that's enough! Perhaps trad is the A to H!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Just been watching The (enthusiastic) Clyde Valley Stompers play "Peter and the Wolf" on YouTube (September 1962 - Number 23 in the hit parade). Top tune (Prokofiev) and TOP banjo "clank". And tartan lapels. This was the year the squeaky Sonny Rollins released "The Bridge", Joe Harriot, "Abstract" and Jackie McLean "Let Freedom Ring", with not a banjo amongst the lot of them. The decline of the form is thus easily traced.

[Quarky]

Well, the banjo may not be entirely dead in Jazz - Bela Fleck & Chick Corea : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RysgwKMylWk
But I can't see it catching on with the current generation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, the banjo may not be entirely dead in Jazz - But I can't see it catching on with the current generation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcnNhSzSH8

[Serial_Apologist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcnNhSzSH8

The tune may take some mastering on any instrument, but the most noticeable thing about that clip (for which thanks, ferney), is that however elaborate it may be, the tune itself (like most in bebop) was based on a traditional 32 bar ABA song structure, so the improvisation here, being pre-bebop in its idiom (or references, as one says) is, in effect, a revisionist take on it, rather as Chris Barber's trad version of the Modern Jazz Quartet's Golden Striker was, back in 1962. There's nothing New in Postmodernism!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

All my relatives are relatively relative. There are no longer any Macro narratives, only Macaroni nutrients. My wife is so post-modern, she's past pleasing. Progress is an illusion, filled with sadness and confusion (Professor Jimmy Ruffin). Blame it on the Bossa Nova.

[Ian Thumwood]

The tune may take some mastering on any instrument, but the most noticeable thing about that clip (for which thanks, ferney), is that however elaborate it may be, the tune itself (like most in bebop) was based on a traditional 32 bar ABA song structure, so the improvisation here, being pre-bebop in its idiom (or references, as one says) is, in effect, a revisionist take on it, rather as Chris Barber's trad version of the Modern Jazz Quartet's Golden Striker was, back in 1962. There's nothing New in Postmodernism!

I think you find that the form is AABA.

The track reminded me a lot of gypsy jazz but I wouldn't be quite so critical. You hear musicians do this kind of thing really frequently but the underlining harmony comes from "Honeysuckle Rose" which dates from 1929. I concur in part with this assessment and just think that Charlie Parker is now very much part of jazz's past. The need to re-visit earlier jazz probably began with Benny Goodman's "Carnegie Hall Concert" when the recorded history of the music was barely 2 years old. It is an interesting concept and one that has thrown up many exceptional records. I don't have a problem with this. Wondered if you had heard Bob Brookmeyer's exceptional "Traditionalism Revisited" which also features Jim Hall and Jimmy Guiffre ? One of the best jazz albums of the 1950s. More contemporary approaches include Josh Berman's "Here now" which is a free jazz tribute to Eddie Condon. I am particularly enamoured by this approach but Chris Barber is very much the tip of the iceberg.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Round my way people are already chalking "Bird = C#stard LoL" on the walls. He has no possible relevance to the our uber sophisticated post Jazz Journey, past, tomorrow, yesterday, or whenever. Who cares for this simplistic Parker crassness (and awful suits) when Mark Jay-jay Cornelius has another tectonic plate shifting self released CD on his bathroom based CalCatapult label, "Maroon Moves & Macaroon Muses". Buy it. Twice.

[CGR]

... and just think that Charlie Parker is now very much part of jazz's past.

Parker heads are quite popular at our local pub jam night and not a banjo in sight, thank goodness.

[greenilex]

If you listened to Parker in your youth, it will come back to haunt you.

Just wait.

[Ian Thumwood]

I love Be-bop but, 70-odd years on, it really seems like something from jazz's history and heritage. The heads produced by Parker and his ilk still seem ferociously difficult to play and therefore I take my hats off to the guitar player and banjoist in the clip. They are clearly having great fun playing this music and where is the problem with that ?

The thing that interests me about Charlie Parker is that he seems like the culmination of a lot of what had been happening in jazz in the 1930's. It remains a hugely fascinating period in the music with so many developments taking place between 1925 and say 1960 that, in retrospect, singling out Bird isn't quite as obvious as it might have been in 1948. However, I personally see Charlie Parker as very much of the process of the development of the music of those generations relevant at that time as opposed to the more contemporary stuff which probably hinges around Coltrane / Davis / Ornette.

An interesting thing about jazz is the respective time it takes curtain compositions to enter the mainstream of gain currency. Performing "Scrapple from the apple" in 2018 is little more radical than playing "Royal Garden Blues." Both tunes can fit into a variety of contexts such as Benny Goodman's or Branford's treatment of the latter. Even Monk was quickly absorbed in to the mainstream even if his music still has sufficient interest to contemporary performers. Even Ornette Coleman tunes crop up increasingly amongst album discographies and even amongst decidedly mainstream musicians. They have been quickly assimilated. Other composers like Herbie Nichols seemed to be forgotten until the 1990s . Andrew Hill still seems pretty niche.

[Serial_Apologist]

I love Be-bop but, 70-odd years on, it really seems like something from jazz's history and heritage. The heads produced by Parker and his ilk still seem ferociously difficult to play and therefore I take my hats off to the guitar player and banjoist in the clip. They are clearly having great fun playing this music and where is the problem with that ?

The thing that interests me about Charlie Parker is that he seems like the culmination of a lot of what had been happening in jazz in the 1930's. It remains a hugely fascinating period in the music with so many developments taking place between 1925 and say 1960 that, in retrospect, singling out Bird isn't quite as obvious as it might have been in 1948. However, I personally see Charlie Parker as very much of the process of the development of the music of those generations relevant at that time as opposed to the more contemporary stuff which probably hinges around Coltrane / Davis / Ornette.

An interesting thing about jazz is the respective time it takes curtain compositions to enter the mainstream of gain currency. Performing "Scrapple from the apple" in 2018 is little more radical than playing "Royal Garden Blues." Both tunes can fit into a variety of contexts such as Benny Goodman's or Branford's treatment of the latter. Even Monk was quickly absorbed in to the mainstream even if his music still has sufficient interest to contemporary performers. Even Ornette Coleman tunes crop up increasingly amongst album discographies and even amongst decidedly mainstream musicians. They have been quickly assimilated. Other composers like Herbie Nichols seemed to be forgotten until the 1990s . Andrew Hill still seems pretty niche.

I suppose as the scene broadens for reasons we've discussed many times on here it will produce areas of greater complexity which are taken on board and maybe pushed further because the advance suggests previously unforseen further possibilities at the time by an initially self-selecting few who then become message brokers or not, according to milieu and the chances of a hearing which, in themselves, are then in-part dependent on the purse string holders to publicity. In the process some areas get more attention than others; in the modern classical music world look at the huge spin made out of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" for the next 30 years, at which point serialism started attracting attention as the next step, even though it had been around since the early 1920s. And so with jazz. My take on Parker is that it was his improvising methodology, as admitted by Gillespie as showing them the way, that re-shaped the formal relationships of what followed in ways Parker himself could not himself foresee, and that this was subliminally political in terms of a music that challenged the white establishment elite view of the classical lineage on its own terms. Both sides in this equation - the improvisational re-shaping the compositional - impacted on big band arranging, of course, but I have always argued this was less radically the case than happened in the more flexible, malleable context of small group playing. Barry Guy had lots of interesting things to say back in the 1970s and '80s about how big band arranging had generally lagged behind advances in improvisational language, but while I don't doubt there's a hidden legacy ripe for investigation, if it doesn't take account of the organic inseparability of the improvised, transactionally, and the composed, it's like putting a Victorian fireplace in a 1930s semi and marketing the property as having "attractive period features". I hope this doesn't offend anyone here, by the way!