Dave Brubeck - "A life in time."

[CGR]

All I am saying is that jazz has moved on. "Interstellar Space" isn't some ultimate conclusion in jazz and the music has moved on in the intervening 50 years. If you want to look at musicians pushing the boundaries of what jazz can do or be, we are now in a much different place than in 1959 or in 1967. For what it is worth, from what I have listened to my personal experience Steve Coleman is actually more successful as a formal composer than Ornette's efforts in this field. I was really disappointed with stuff like "Dedication to writers and poets" and much preferred the work with the quartet, Jazz has been an evolving process since it's second decade in the 1920s. In a 100 years we have gone from a point where writers have had to grabble with how to write for a large ensemble and how to make saxophone sections swing through the likes of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn fully realising what a standard big band could achieve until the point you arrive at more analytical composers like Threadgill, Steve Coleman and Braxton. The innovative elements within the music are always changing - "Interstellar Space" is just a midway point in the history of the recorded music.


Yes, the point is to express individuality but I am suggesting that the innovations in jazz are now coming from people who write as opposed to purely performing.

Surely all that really matters is that it sounds good and that it swings.

[Joseph K]

Ian, I know Interstellar Space is not some kind of conclusion or the be-all and end-all. I was just using it as an example to show how wrong you are in thinking free jazz 'abandoned' harmony, melody etc. It seems you have a tendency to denigrate one kind of music in order to praise another.

[Ian Thumwood]

Ian, I know Interstellar Space is not some kind of conclusion or the be-all and end-all. I was just using it as an example to show how wrong you are in thinking free jazz 'abandoned' harmony, melody etc. It seems you have a tendency to denigrate one kind of music in order to praise another.

Joe

Not at all. I just think that you do not listen to wide enough spectrum to jazz to get a broader perception of what is happening. I like loads of the kind of jazz you are always posting on here (except for some of the fusion stuff which I feel that I tended to grow out of) but can see that there is a bigger picture. I like a lot of free stuff but I also think at this point in time the big driver in jazz is composition. This is where the music is really interesting at the moment . I am not saying the new stuff is superior to anything from the past (and I would add that my taste in earlier jazz will go well beyond the kind of stuff you listen to) but what I keep trying to do on here is draw people's attention to a lot of things which are tending to ignored despite being what I would envisage as being right at the coal face of what jazz is now doing. As I said, the Coltrane stuff you listen to is broadly mid-way between the history of the music. Even the stuff McLaughlin produced that was influenced by Indian classical music with the sign signature that seem unorthodox to Western ears is nearly fifty years old.

I have never said that Free jazz has abandoned harmony. To ignore how composition has shaped jazz is a massive folly and, given how wide ranging composition can be nowadays, think that this is where jazz us now at it's most interesting. Even Brubeck evolved to compose choral and more "formal" compositions. Composition has always been a component of jazz and I think that the issue of jazz composition is an element which has shaped the music throughout it's history as much as Armstrong, Parker, Coltrane, etc. It has always been there although not quite as significant as it has now become. To get back to the original topic, the Brubeck experiments with time signatures was hugely innovative at the time and what he was doing is now common place. I would recommend that you check out someone like Steve Coleman whose music seems to me like a logical conclusion of the germ of the idea released by Brubeck. I am not stating that these ideas are superior but I think Coleman's concept is more complex and sophisticated.

incidentally, the last Coleman live disc employed spontaneous compositions based certain concepts the musicians were given to improvise on.