Albert Ayler website

[Joseph K]

joseph

I will clarify. The point I made is that is you take away the abrasive, extended techniques of Ayler's playing, the choice of notes is not as "sphisticated"

Ian

I think this is the crux of the issue. You don't take away that crucial aspect of Ayler's style. One might as well say "You take away Coltrane's phenomenal command of harmony and he sucks" etc. etc.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ian

I think this is the crux of the issue. You don't take away that crucial aspect of Ayler's style. One might as well say "You take away Coltrane's phenomenal command of harmony and he sucks" etc. etc.

I would recommend to Ian reading this interview with Evan Parker - a musician highly regarded by players across the alleged straight/free "divide", including Kenny Wheeler, Alan Skidmore, Stan Tracey and Henry Lowther.

http://www.james-saunders.com/interview-with-evan-parker/

Apart from fellow forumite Richard Barrett I can think of no better explainer of musical processes, what lies behind them, and what goes into creating them.

[Joseph K]

Thanks, SA. That looks interesting.

[Ian Thumwood]

Ian

I think this is the crux of the issue. You don't take away that crucial aspect of Ayler's style. One might as well say "You take away Coltrane's phenomenal command of harmony and he sucks" etc. etc.

Joseph

You keep criticising me for what you think I have written as opposed to what I have posted. I never made any comment about "Alyer sucks."

Go back and re-read my posts and then maybe go and listen to Albert Ayler yourself as opposed to basing your assessment on what Coltrane had said. You also might wish to listen to the other musicians I mentioned and then see how that makes you feel about Ayler's playing. As I said, I like his music ("Ghosts" is a composition I would consider to be an ear-worm) but this does not mean that I listen to it uncritcally. Perhaps if you listened more broadly you might be more tolerant of people who donot share your opinion.

[Joseph K]

Joseph

You keep criticising me for what you think I have written as opposed to what I have posted. I never made any comment about "Alyer sucks."

Go back and re-read my posts and then maybe go and listen to Albert Ayler yourself as opposed to basing your assessment on what Coltrane had said. You also might wish to listen to the other musicians I mentioned and then see how that makes you feel about Ayler's playing. As I said, I like his music ("Ghosts" is a composition I would consider to be an ear-worm) but this does not mean that I listen to it uncritcally. Perhaps if you listened more broadly you might be more tolerant of people who donot share your opinion.

Ian

Go back and read my post - then you'd realise that I have listened to Ayler.

I too do not listen uncritically.

One last thing - I do think there is something in what SA has said about the kind of music made in the 60s and leading up thereto and the political situation of these times and afterwards - certainly with the rise of neoliberalism and concomitant creation of hip-hop as a reaction to the retrenchment of New Deal welfare. This is not to say that there isn't resistance to this, nor that aesthetics can be reduced to a matter of economics, but it certainly has its role in what gets made and what people want to listen to.

[Jazzrook]

Albert Ayler interview with Daniel Caux in 1970:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=dVjE9pURobs

JR

[Jazzrook]

Albert Ayler's complete 1970 Foundation Maeght concerts to be released on LP & CD in April:

https://www.ayler.co.uk/html/what_s_new.html

JR

[Jazzrook]

Reviews of Richard Koloda's recently published 'Holy Ghost: The Life And Death Of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler':

https://www.ayler.co.UK/html/what_s_new.html

https://londonjazznews.com/2022/10/31/richard-koloda-holy-ghost-the-life-and-death-of-free-jazz-pioneer-albert-ayler/?amp=1

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

JR - thanks very much for these 4 links. The main point I would make is that the question of timbres as exploited by musicians or for that matter composers (to take false issue with Richard B elsewhere) is that the avant-garde was in fact very interested in timbre, to whit the constituent sonorous or acoustic elements making up sounds and indeed sound in general. Stockhausen made detailed investigations into sonorities and the partials constituting them before he went on to create sounds artificially, and then combine them with natural or distorted natural sounds, basing procedures on polarities, ranging from pure sinusoidal tone (as produced by a sound oscillator) to white noise - massed adjacent partials or overtones sounded together to produce the well-known "hissssshhhhh"-like sound density - with sliding or stepped scales of values in-between. Jazz players adventuring this territory often strayed by purely empirical means into this area - I would go so far as to argue that Ayler and others, such as Evan Parker, offer a fascinating association between what earlier jazz players such as Ben Webster were achieving by overplaying or injecting the voice into notes played in such ways as to recreate the rasp of old and not-so-old time blues singers, were, intentionally or not, providing a link between these parallel avant-gardist explorations. One could go into further realms of speculation with regards to the furthermost of the new re-connecting to the profoundest universals of natural sound production as a spiritual endeavour. And before dismissing this with a query on what this might have to do with harmony, ie of relating pitches acccordant with theoretical models and orthodoxies, a group of initially primarily French composers known as the Spectralists have made investigating the inner nature of sounds a radical new basis of re-formulating harmony. Until one appreciates that the "right" moment for this to happen was "in the air" at the time, or in other words conjunctural, it might come as a paradox that many of the results are easily identifiable by even the casual listener with music in the French modernist tradition going back to Debussy by way of Messiaen's "prismatic" polychordal combinations.

[Jazzrook]

Chris May's review of Albert Ayler's 5-LP/4-CD set 'Revelations' which topped the 2022 'Jazz Reissue Of The Year Poll' in 'Jazzwise':

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/revelations-albert-ayler-elemental-music

JR

[Jazzrook]

New Albert Ayler album:

Lost Performances 1966 Revisited

Release Date: 13 Jan 2023

https://www.ayler.co.uk/html/what_s_new.html

JR

[Joseph K]

https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/why-albert-ayler-s-creative-spirit-still-comes-roaring-out-of-the-speakers-more-than-50-years-after-his-untimely-death?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1674649996

[Jazzrook]

Albert Ayler's 'Spiritual Unity' revisited on the ezz-thetics label:

https://www.ayler.co.uk/html/what_s_new.html

JR

[Jazzrook]

At last, some footage of the Albert Ayler Quintet with Don Ayler, Michel Samson, Bill Folwell & Beaver Harris at the Sigma Festival, Bordeaux on 14, November, 1966 the day before the legendary LSE concert(filmed and tapes wiped by the BBC):

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=0KItOU5jBuk

https://www.ayler.co.uk/html/what_s_new.html

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

At last, some footage of the Albert Ayler Quintet with Don Ayler, Michel Samson, Bill Folwell & Beaver Harris at the Sigma Festival, Bordeaux on 14, November, 1966 the day before the legendary LSE concert(filmed and tapes wiped by the BBC).

JR

This would probably have been one of their "straighter" numbers, where they sounded closest to the NO marching bands. Amazing discovery nonetheless, for which huge thanks JR!