Within You is a World of Spring

[Serial_Apologist]

Check the J to Z link below for the significance of this week's thread heading.

Sat 12 Mar
5pm - J to Z
Jumoké Fashola introduces a session from vocalist/violinist Alice Zawadzki and her quintet, recorded last year at Snape Maltings. Alyn Shipton, presenter of Radio 3's Jazz Record Requests, shares some inspiring tracks, including music by Fats Waller and Maria Schneider.

This is a repeat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001018x

12midnight - Freeness
Kim Macaria with new jazz and improvised music. Plus guests, today with composer, pianist, organist, and band leader Alexander Hawkins sharing favourite pieces of music and discussing his latest release, Break a Vase.

Shabaka Hutchings is in Alexander Hawkins's new quartet - I rate Alex very highly among the now-no-longer-so-young generation of British free pianists.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00154t8

Sun 13 Mar
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001551w

Ah yes, and next week's Composer of the Week deals with Debussy's music during his, er, mysogynistic phase. Great music, but... great man???

[cloughie]

Check the J to Z link below for the significance of this week's thread heading.

Sat 12 Mar
5pm - J to Z
Jumoké Fashola introduces a session from vocalist/violinist Alice Zawadzki and her quintet, recorded last year at Snape Maltings. Alyn Shipton, presenter of Radio 3's Jazz Record Requests, shares some inspiring tracks, including music by Fats Waller and Maria Schneider.

This is a repeat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001018x

12midnight - Freeness
Kim Macaria with new jazz and improvised music. Plus guests, today with composer, pianist, organist, and band leader Alexander Hawkins sharing favourite pieces of music and discussing his latest release, Break a Vase.

Shabaka Hutchings is in Alexander Hawkins's new quartet - I rate Alex very highly among the now-no-longer-so-young generation of British free pianists.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00154t8

Sun 13 Mar
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001551w

Ah yes, and next week's Composer of the Week deals with Debussy's music during his, er, mysogynistic phase. Great music, but... great man???

Might as well be but can hang you up the most!

Indeed music-wise there are few better - possibly Ravel but I’ll never tire of hearing ‘La Mer’ - as this is a Jazz thread have you heard J louissier’s take on his music S_A?

https://youtu.be/nMthLFcadhg

[Serial_Apologist]

Might as well be but can hang you up the most!

Indeed music-wise there are few better - possibly Ravel but I’ll never tire of hearing ‘La Mer’ - as this is a Jazz thread have you heard J louissier’s take on his music S_A?

https://youtu.be/nMthLFcadhg

Thanks but if jazz had been around in 1886, when Claude-Achille composed his two Arabesques, he would I think have doffed his hat in its direction and remained silent. There are very few successful jazz adaptations of classical pieces, even in my view including Ellington's - or even the Swingle Singers, fun though they were - which do not involve wholesale deconstruction or at least thoroughgoing reconceptualisation, and Mr Loussier is frankly a bit of a punning euphemism as far as I and I imagine a few others hereabouts are concerned.

[cloughie]

Thanks but if jazz had been around in 1886, when Claude-Achille composed his two Arabesques, he would I think have doffed his hat in its direction and remained silent. There are very few successful jazz adaptations of classical pieces, even in my view including Ellington's - or even the Swingle Singers, fun though they were - which do not involve wholesale deconstruction or at least thoroughgoing reconceptualisation, and Mr Loussier is frankly a bit of a punning euphemism as far as I and I imagine a few others hereabouts are concerned.

Certainly with Arabesque 1 why mess about with perfection - Tomita’s version of it is very good but I think he stays true to the original score but just plays it on a different keyboard - no doubt some hreabouts would say ii is HUPP!

[Ian Thumwood]

There are very few successful jazz adaptations of classical pieces, even in my view including Ellington's - or even the Swingle Singers, fun though they were - which do not involve wholesale deconstruction or at least thoroughgoing reconceptualisation, and Mr Loussier is frankly a bit of a punning euphemism as far as I and I imagine a few others hereabouts are concerned.

I think the above statement needs to be challenged.

Jacques Loussier was quite clever with what he managed to produce but there was a massive trade-off with the jazz element being sacrificed. The improvisation in some of the Bach pieces actually has nothing to do with the source material with Loussier sometimes just reverting to a 12-bar Blues. I can understand why it was popular at the time but this was sixty years ago and most people's ears are now sophisticated to understand what was happening. The use of ground bass as a source of improvisation means that Baroque composers using this device are always going to lend their compositions to jazz interpretation because they have done half the work of spelling out the harmony.


Even in the 1960s, I think jazz has already made better attempts to remodel classical music with musicians like Art Tatum producing equally virtuosic performances. The vogue started in the mid 1930s and I do not think it would be at all difficult to produce a list of performances where this was successful from the 30s, 40s and 50s. It is ages since I heard the Ellington re-imagining of the Tchaikovsky "Nutcracker Suite" and "Peer Gynt" but am aware that the former has been subject to revisionist appraisal that has been really favourable. I think it highlights one approach which is effectively to recast the melody - in this case producing something where Ellington's musical identity is clearer than the original composers. I would also have to add that I think Ellington is the more significant and important composer because of his importance to jazz. He was instrumental to the evolution of the music and jazz's first "great" composer whereas I would argue that both Greig and Tchaikovsky were both pretty minor, popularist composers who had nothing to do with musical evolution. The original source material is pretty lightweight to begin with and Ellington and Strayhorn expertly re-cast the music in their own image. I do not believe it represents Ellington at his finest yet it is distinctive and has his identity stamped all over it.

As far as the comment about "few successful jazz adaptions," I would simply say Gil Evans. Evans had form with this even when staff arranger for Claude Thornhill with such arrangements as the "Arabesque." Later work with Miles Davis on "Miles Ahead" with the re-casting of Delibes and the "Sketches of Spain" record show just how far the arranger had grasped the language of Classical composers so that his interpretations successfully blended the Classical with the jazz. There was no need to deonconstruct the source material and it was simply re-shaped to suit Evans' conception. This is totally different from Ellington's Swing arrangements of the inferior material. From Evans onwards. there are plenty of examples where other arrangers have followed in his wake until you end up with albums like the Belmondo's "Hyme au soleil" which rescues material by composers such as Nadia Boulanger to produce what I would consider one the best European jazz albums of the last twenty years. The Belmondo brothers and arranger Christophe Del Sasso are experts at this.

From a piano playing point of view, the success is even broader. I have an excellent album by Richie Beirach which explores a host of classical composer's works as piano solos and it is a real eye-opener seeing the parallels when the likes of Chopin, Schumann, Mompou and Debussy are explored in this fashion. The small scale of the classical source material works really well. Bach immediately lends itself to jazz yet Chopin's C minor Prelude must be one of the most jazz-adopted pieces of classical repertoire used in this fasion. It is quite easy to improvise upon and this can be said for a number of his other Preludes too. Charlie Haden's "Silence" is just a re-fashioning of the C minor Prelude. Chick Corea has also dabbled with this and done the same with Scriabin Preludes which I would deem to be a success. It is also interesting to look at the scores and see how much Corea's jazz playing takes from Scriabin. There is also the work of the Classical Jazz Quartet with Kenny Barron and Stefon Harris which extends the ideas of the MJQ by using Bach and other composers in the same style but, once again, it more reflects the sophistication of our times than when John Lewis was exploring similar avenues. (Of course, Lewis himself was far more successful than Loussier.)

I would have to say that the line between Classical Music and Jazz has become increasingly blurred. When Classical material is at it's most adaptable, I think it is when the Form is relatively simple and the under-pinning harmony follows a clear pattern or sequence of chords which are familiar to jazz musicians . The most interesting question is not so much what a skilled improvisor can do with the material but how robust that material is when you break it down to a melody and it's related harmony. (Thinking of the Tatum interpretations of Wagner which manage to cut through the German's bluster.) Ultimately, a lot of Classical music is effectively not as sophisticated as non-musicians might suspect. Nowadays, we have composer / arranger /pianists like Uri Caine who have produced some really convincing and fascinating jazz using unlikely composers such as Mahler as source material. The results are far more sophisticated than what someone like Loussier could have imagined. Caine is a really interesting bloke to talk to too and massively knowledgeable about all sorts of music.

I think that a balance needs to be struck and the dismisal of Ellington needed to be addressed. The fact that composers like Mark Anthony Turnage have a split Jazz / classical personality makes the idea of blendng the two oeuvres academic. As a music fan, I love it when jazz musicians sometimes dip their toe in Classical reperoire as it is informative with regard to both their tastes and, certainly in the case of Chick Corea, it offers a window in to their harmonic language. The recent two CD live solo concert by Chick Corea might appeal to Clloughie -nothing too outside or challenging to listen to but absolutely fascinating and fun as well. I would really recommend this disc!

[Joseph K]

As a music fan, I love it when jazz musicians sometimes dip their toe in Classical reperoire as it is informative with regard to both their tastes and, certainly in the case of Chick Corea, it offers a window in to their harmonic language.

In that case, Ian, you might like to check out one of Kurt Rosenwinkel's latest projects on the music of Chopin which I posted about on the New Jazz Releases thread.

I'm not against this sort of thing in principle, far from it - I just happen to think Loussier's Bach record is no good.

[Alyn_Shipton]

Which Loussier Bach record? The original Play Bach? Or the later ones with Andre Arpino and Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac? Because they’re very different. And what about Loussier’s work on Vivaldi (discussed on JRR a few weeks ago) or Debussy, Ravel and Satie? I was a friend of Jacques and made a six part Radio 2 series with him - the caricature of his early Bach records was abandoned in the 80s…

[Joseph K]

Which Loussier Bach record? The original Play Bach? Or the later ones with Andre Arpino and Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac? Because they’re very different. And what about Loussier’s work on Vivaldi (discussed on JRR a few weeks ago) or Debussy, Ravel and Satie? I was a friend of Jacques and made a six part Radio 2 series with him - the caricature of his early Bach records was abandoned in the 80s…

I've just youtubed it a bit and decided it must have been one of the early records that my boss incessantly played in the music shop I spent part of a summer in Jena working in, perhaps one of the Brandenburgs...

[Quarky]

An interesting discussion, but I feel that far more interesting as regards musical quality, are original compositions "fusing" classical and jazz. There's a ton of it around, but how about Pete Rugolo's "Impressionism" for example ?

[Serial_Apologist]

An interesting discussion, but I feel that far more interesting as regards musical quality, are original compositions "fusing" classical and jazz. There's a ton of it around, but how about Pete Rugolo's "Impressionism" for example ?

Yes this is roughly where I agree. Reflecting on it I've always felt jazz has done enough with the Euroclassical tradition when adapting its means on its own terms and conditions; jazz can best respect its own traditions by either elevating song materials from Broadway and Pop, or creating its own answer to forms from classical etc music; but using its actual themes is a step too far, unless the materials have been so abstracted from the originals as to be unrecognisable - the way especially modern straight composers have devised variations on original themes - otherwise the results either come across like parodies or excuses.

[Tenor Freak]

Sun 13 Mar
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001551w

Nice to see Joanne Brackeen on JRR this week. I was listening to some of her '70s material as a trio and with M. Brecker, very good indeed.

[cloughie]

https://youtu.be/5vmsJ2UGewI

I rather like this bit of Franck's Sym in D given a Billy May arrangement.

[Ian Thumwood]

Nice to see Joanne Brackeen on JRR this week. I was listening to some of her '70s material as a trio and with M. Brecker, very good indeed.

There was some really interesting music on JRR this afternoon. The best track in my opinion was the Stan Getz one. I have never heard this record before as it is the kind of jazz I rarely find interesting but I think it is one of the best Getz records I have heard. When I was getting in to jazz I had a record he made with Brookmeyer and I think ELvin Jones on drums but that was never as modern sounding as this track. It was fascinating to hear him perform with Gary Burton and see the effect of the vibes opening up the music more. I agree that Roy Haynes was exceptional on this record and he really made this track for me. Getz is an enigma for me. The earlier Bop records are almost jazz by rote whereas his flirtation with Bossa has always struck me as being a fore-runner to Smooth Jazz. Hearing him in a more "open" context was fascinating insofar that the rhythm section seemed to offer more freedom. I was interested in the way Getz phrased as there were still elements of Bop in his playing despite the other three band members clearing looking towards a different direction.

The Iro Haarla track reminded me a lot of Paul Bley and I agree with your point, Bruce, aboiut Joanne Brackeen. It would be fascinating to hear her play stride paino in 5/4 .

[Jazzrook]

Nice to see Joanne Brackeen on JRR this week. I was listening to some of her '70s material as a trio and with M. Brecker, very good indeed.

Joanne Brackeen was the only female member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
She recorded one album with them, the hard-to-find 'Jazz Messengers '70' with Carlos Garnett, Bill Hardman & Jan Arnet.
Here's 'What The World Needs Now Is Peace And Love':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=YLY0KRWG_mg

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

https://youtu.be/5vmsJ2UGewI

I rather like this bit of Franck's Sym in D given a Billy May arrangement.

I was not aware of this album. When I was small I had loads of records by this reformed Casa Loma orchestra which was effectively a top flight sutdio prchestra led by Glen Gray. The line iup is a whose who of West Coast jazz musicians dorm the 1950s including the Candolis. Sorty Sherrock, Milt Bernhardt , Plas Johnson , Nick Fatool, Conrad Gozzo and Gus Bavona . This is a really good arrangement but the orchestra was initially assembled to recreate the music if the Swing bands from the 30sand 40s for Time Life Magazine. The first album recreated the music of the original Casa Loma orchestra which was a big band that I was obsessed with when I was about 14 because it was the first big band that I discovered who pre-dated Benny Goodman. No one ever seems to mention Glen Gray these days yet the arrangements written by Gene Gifford for this co-operative big band hugely influenced big band writing in the early 1930s. They tend to get slated for being a bit mechanical which reflected the fact that the band constantly rehearsed to overcome the inconsistancies amongst the line up. Gifford's arrangement relied upon a string of effective and catchy riffs with the best soloist being Clarence Hutchenrider who is totally forgotten these days albeit something of a pre-cursor to Benny Goodman. Faced with competition from better bands, Glen Gray ultimately changed their style to more of a dance band yet they were still able to produce effective charts like " No Name Jive" which was a two-part blues much more in the kin of jazz. I never fully appreciated just how Glen Gray managed to break in to the studio scene in the 1950s but he produced quite a few LPs with the reformed unit and I think that alotof them never made it to CD. I was not aware that Billy May made new arrangements for them but would not have been surprised if he was responsible for the transcription of earlier material.

Billy May is one of those arrangers who was extremely talented but often worked outside of jazz. His original orchestra from the early 1950s always seemed a bit tiresome to my ears with the distinctive saxes sound but this record strikes me as being really good. I was not appreciative that this record existed . I am pretty sure that there is a chapter on him in the Gene Lees book. Within the music industry of the time, May was hugely respected.