Gee Hi - Spring is Here!!!

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 5 March
5pm - J to Z
Jumoké Fashola anticipates International Women's Day with a concert by Artemis - an all-star band featuring pianist Reneé Rosnes, tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover, clarinettist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Alison Miller and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. New York-based South Korean band leader and composer Jihye Lee shares her inspirations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014yg8

12midnight - Freeness
Kim Macari with improvised music exploring spoken and non-verbal communication from Italian duo Rosso Polare (Cesare Lopopolo and Anna Vezzosi), Berlin-based trio Der Dritte Stand, and Kenyan-American multi-instrumentalist Nyokabi Kariuki.

Fascinating-looking line-ups, judging by the link blurb.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014ygg

Sun 6 March
4pm - Jazz record Requests

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014ymf

[Ian Thumwood]

Jihye Lee is quite an ineresting character. I believe that she started her career in K-pop yet she studied jazz in one of the American colleges and her music shifted towards a more Third Stream approach to big band writing. Her work is well considered in the States and I think I had posted some clips of her orchestra.

[Serial_Apologist]

Jihye Lee is quite an ineresting character. I believe that she started her career in K-pop yet she studied jazz in one of the American colleges and her music shifted towards a more Third Stream approach to big band writing. Her work is well considered in the States and I think I had posted some clips of her orchestra.

If so Ian, I apologise for having overlooked them. Ms Lee's selection was most interesting. Maybe it's the present horrors on the news but I'm finding myself more sensitive than usual to music resonating with me. While obviously respectful of the Afro-American tradition I really wasn't hearing anything specifically "American" in today's selections for the programme, but moved by a common empathy through this music with somebody born into an otherwise totally different cultural background. What it seemed to remind me - and I've had this experience in other encounters from "abroad" - is that what we share in common is much more than national boundaries and cultures can separate - obvious at the intellectual level as this of course has to be. I remember first feeling something similar when a series of programmes were broadcast on the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who, in coming to music in the 1950s, felt totally alienated from his own culture, permanently tarnished as it then seemed to be to his generation by the horrors his fellow country people had committed in WW2 in the name of patriotism, and was strongly attracted to jazz, which I think he said he heard on S/W radio while serving in the army, along with the modern European composers such as Debussy, Ligeti and Messiaen that have got me listening.

Anyway, very fine J to Z today, I think - energy, freshness including in the stuff I thought interesting rather than likeable, and risk-taking in spades in all the selections, with a particularly good set from Artemis.

[Ian Thumwood]

I have to say that I found Jihye Lee's assessment of her infuence absolutely spot on and was pleased to hear someone explaining just why writers such as Jim McNeely, Maria Schneider and John Hollenbeck are so impressive. I found all three of her selections to be absolutely fascinating and it was nice to hear her analysis of this music too. For me, this is the cutting edge in jazz and really underscores for me the concept that the important and significant developments in jazz these days is happening in composition. I would also add that I feel that the tracks selected offered some exceptional examples of why , if you wanted to emphasize what jazz can do in the 2020s, big band jazz is perhaps the vehicle where boundaries are being pushed. I am a massive fan of both Schneider and Hollenbeck's work with larger ensembles as they have effectively taken the form where Duke Ellington and Gil Evans set the standard and gone beyond what was thought possible even as recently as the 1980s when I first started listenin to jazz. McNeely is certainly under the radar as far as the British jazz audience is concerned but I find his music extremely impressive whenver I have encountered it such as with the Armstrong tribute album or his work with Dave Douglas. The only name missing is perhaps Alan Ferber whose writing for big bands is no less interesting.

Regarding her own music, I think that Lee's writing was not so immediately striking but you had to admire the complexity of what she had composed. It was really interesting and I can 100% appreciate why she is getting the kudos she has received.

I am really glad that J-Z featured this music which does not get enough attention in my opinion because jazz has become more adventurous in this form than in any other in recent years. Big band writing for me is where jazz is getting really serious and where it is truly questioning what is possible. It is a format that I have always had affection for and which has covered all sorts of bases from the days of Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington and through the Swing Era and on towards writers as diverse as Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, George Russell, Muhal Richard Abrams and Mike Gibbs. I do not feel that there are many other formats in jazz that are pushing the boundaries as has been happening with the likes of Bob Brookmeyer started to question what a jazz orchestra could do in the 70s and 80s. There are composers like Henry Threadgill, Steve Lehman and Steve Coleman who I feel have been instrumental in questioning what jazz is about but the contemporary big bands are not really getting the credit they are owed from many fans. I hope that J-Z was a bit of a wake-up call for many. I really loved the music that was played tonight.

[Serial_Apologist]

Five minutes late home from my walk I switched on halfway through the Yazz Ahmed track, unaware of the International Women's Day theme to this week's JRR, quite convinced what I was listening to was some probably late 70s/early 80s Gill Evans that had passed me by. So I've just listened on iplayer to Sarah Vaughan's Shulie a Bop for the first time since I was 15, having first come upon the track on an album of mostly just drum solos, possibly titled "Drummerama" - Cozy Cole, Sid Catlett, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, from memory - while at school. But it included this one complete track - this was before having consciously heard any bebop, but I immediately remembered SV calling out "Roy... Haynes" for his drum break, so it obviously made an impression.

Having yesterday talked up Jihye Lee I was a bit abashed to find myself self-cornered into agreeing with Ian's post above, though from other citations from him I think my agreement would have to remain based on her selection for the programme rather than his in past messages. We come respectively to the present from different vantage points - Ian puts more emphasis on the big band in jazz evolution terms than I do, and at present I am more and more inclined towards considering the new syncretic developments he would certainly regard as outside jazz as offering ways forward. One of those new directions will involve big bands though, so I guess we will shake hands again along the way.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

No need to apologise.

For me Big bands are an essential part of understanding jazz. It always struck me as being nuts when Trevor Cooper would make statements about jazz musicians being liberated by big bands and why Bebop was necessary in this respect. I just think that this field of music is so broad that you miss a significant part of jazz if you ignore it.

[Serial_Apologist]

SA

No need to apologise.

For me Big bands are an essential part of understanding jazz. It always struck me as being nuts when Trevor Cooper would make statements about jazz musicians being liberated by big bands and why Bebop was necessary in this respect. I just think that this field of music is so broad that you miss a significant part of jazz if you ignore it.

With big bands I go most for the more experimental/free end, as you can probably imagine: the larger Mingus groups, JCOA, Art Ensemble of Chicago, London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Globe Unity, Brotherhood of Breath, Anthony Braxton's Creative Music Orchestra, Keith Tippett's Ark (and later Tapestry), Spirits Rejoice and other Louis Moholo-led outfits, Django Bates Delightful Precipice, Brian Irvine Ensemble.

[Ian Thumwood]

With big bands I go most for the more experimental/free end, as you can probably imagine: the larger Mingus groups, JCOA, Art Ensemble of Chicago, London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Globe Unity, Brotherhood of Breath, Anthony Braxton's Creative Music Orchestra, Keith Tippett's Ark (and later Tapestry), Spirits Rejoice and other Louis Moholo-led outfits, Django Bates Delightful Precipice, Brian Irvine Ensemble.

I don't think that the likes of Schneider and Hollnbeck are any less experimental, to be honest. Mingus owes a massive amount to the influence of Duke Ellington and i would always consider him to be very much part of the tradition and perhaps even anti-free jazz.

The whole concept of writing is really interesting it is would be really easy to rattle off all sorts of names of composers and arranger who have been innovative in writing for larger ensembles since the 1920s onwards whether we are talking about the likes of Paul Whiteman or Stan Kenton and his fixation with 20th century classical music. Even more orthodox bands like Benny Goodman employed the likes of Eddie Sauter to modernise his band. I think that Gil Evans represented a watershed in jazz orchestration - something that always struckme as bizarre given his 20 year background with commercial dance orchestras. Personally, I feel that Ellington occupies a role within jazz that is akin to Bach in Classical music as his writing is so fundemental to what followed afterwards and he still managed to exert an influence 50 years after his death. I like many of the bands you have listed but, when it comes to orchestration and making the big band truly stretch it;s capabilities, some of the larger, Freer big bands always strike me as being less sophisticated. A good example is the recent Taylor Ho Bynum group which recieved loads of kudos in an online review but struck me as being pretty naive in comparison with Alan Ferber's big band whose record I bought around the same time. Bynum's groups was full of "improvising musicians" but i felt Ferber gave his musicians far more to get their teeth into. I just feel that arrangers putting ideas of paper as opposed to a large ensemble free-for-all will always generate more innovative and creative ideas. The Bynum disc quickly became boring.

[Joseph K]

I just feel that arrangers putting ideas of paper as opposed to a large ensemble free-for-all will always generate more innovative and creative ideas.

That's not a very jazzy opinion to hold. Also something of a false dichotomy? I'm no expert, but Coltrane's Ascension featured some ideas on paper - however minimal - as well as a great deal of free-for-all improv.

[Ian Thumwood]

That's not a very jazzy opinion to hold. Also something of a false dichotomy? I'm no expert, but Coltrane's Ascension featured some ideas on paper - however minimal - as well as a great deal of free-for-all improv.

Joseph

My post was made in the context of big bands but I think the addition of writing in all styles of jazz generally benefits the music. The role of improvisation is always going to be open to debate and I am equally happy listen to a lot of freely improvised music. When it works, it is extremely exciting. However, I keep coming back to the idea of big bands being essential to understanding jazz. They have been a fundemental part of jazz from the off and even during the early Pre-jazz days of the likes of James Reece Europe. It is a bit like discounting symphonies and arguing that chamber music represents Classical music in it's purest form. The argument does not wash.

I would concede that there is a point at which jazz and big band music overlaps and other areas where the music produced by big bands only has a tenuous relationship with jazz. This is something you could argue as being prevalent during the 1920s through to 1950s where big bands could also serve a dance function. Some bandleaders had a foot in each camp and even more jazz-orientated bands had to pander to the whims of record companies and popular taste. I think that there have always been larger jazz groups who have pushed the music forward and this was ever more the case after the pioneering efforts of the likes of Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, Bill Challis and Benny Carter before Ellington first started to realize the potential. The whole notion about Be-bop liberating jazz is over-egged as you could easily rattle off a host of names like Woody Herman, Bill Eckstine, Count Basie, the early forties Goodman band anf Dizzy Gillespie as being hot-beds where the music clearly evolved parallel and sometines in advance of what was happening in smaller groups. For me, the salutary point was reached with Gil Evans in the late 1950s after which the possibilities seemed to expand. Afer the records with Miles Davis and up to 1977's "Priestess", I feel Evans was right at the forefront of larger jazz ensembles yet in the next decade there seems to have been a point at which the baton was passed to the likes of Mike Gibbs, George Gruntz , Bob Brookmeyer etc so that orchestras no longer seemed to follow one particular model. Even before this, I think that there was a broad range of styles of writing throughout the 50s and 60s which produced an impressive array of arrangers such as Brookmeyer, Nestico, Quincy Jones, Thad Jones, Bill Holman, Don Ellis, etc, etc not to mention the coterie of writers who arrayed themselves around Stan Kenton.

For me, I strongly identify with the idea that as each generation of jazz musicians asserts itself, there is a parallel development in big band writing. The styles you can encounter as so varied that it is never going to become boring whether you are listening to Vince Mendosa or Richard Muhal Abrams - the latter being someone I am begininng to think was seriously under-appreciated. (Anyone who can misx serialsim with Duke and make it work has got to be worth listening to.) I am glad that J-Z ran the feature that it did because it was overdue. Whilst I admit to liking freer approaches in larger jazz ensembles (and we are now at a point where even the mainstream incorporates these ideas) , you are never going to get the level of sophistication by leaving things by chance to improvisoers that you would get with an arranger who can hone his craft and still incorporate room for improvisation. It is not an either / or option.