Jean-Luc Ponty interview

[Serial_Apologist]

Lots here that will interest Ian T and Joseph K, if for different reasons, I think:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/jean-luc-ponty-imaginary-voyages-part-1

Part 2 follows on from the bottom of this page.

[Ian Thumwood]

I will read later. At the cricket.

[Ian Thumwood]

I am pretty sure that I saw JLP at Vienne several years ago. I cannot remember who else was i the group but thinking it could have been Kyle Eastwood. For me, he is a fringe player and not someone I ever investigated. The jazz -rock link was something that I found off-putting and it does distort the picture from where a lot of French jazz violin playing is at the moment. Thinking of players like Dominique Pifarely. I remember catching a band perform an open air gig in Le Mans in the early 1990s who has a line up tha resembled the HCdF but who played post-bop who were really interesting. A lot of French jazz goes right under the radar here and although there is the same issue with certain musicians being flavour of the month, there is something of a legacy of mixing ideas from Classical and even African music which has a long precedence over there. The idea of the amplfied violin conjures up nightmare images of Nigel Kennedy. It is wierd but I still think that the HCeF still has an influence in France whether with musicians who slavishly follow the originals or others who have pushed the concept in to some very progressive areas. Players like guitarist Sylvain Luc are almost unknown in the UK.

I had no idea that JLP had origins in acoustic jazz and had certainly never made connections to John Coltrane.

[Jazzrook]

I am pretty sure that I saw JLP at Vienne several years ago. I cannot remember who else was i the group but thinking it could have been Kyle Eastwood. For me, he is a fringe player and not someone I ever investigated. The jazz -rock link was something that I found off-putting and it does distort the picture from where a lot of French jazz violin playing is at the moment. Thinking of players like Dominique Pifarely. I remember catching a band perform an open air gig in Le Mans in the early 1990s who has a line up tha resembled the HCdF but who played post-bop who were really interesting. A lot of French jazz goes right under the radar here and although there is the same issue with certain musicians being flavour of the month, there is something of a legacy of mixing ideas from Classical and even African music which has a long precedence over there. The idea of the amplfied violin conjures up nightmare images of Nigel Kennedy. It is wierd but I still think that the HCeF still has an influence in France whether with musicians who slavishly follow the originals or others who have pushed the concept in to some very progressive areas. Players like guitarist Sylvain Luc are almost unknown in the UK.

I had no idea that JLP had origins in acoustic jazz and had certainly never made connections to John Coltrane.

The Coltrane-influenced Polish jazz violinist Zbigniew Seifert(1946-79) deserves to be better known.
Here's his 'City of Spring' with Joachim Kuhn, Cecil McBee & Billy Hart from the 1976 album 'Man of the Light':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=VUC4apBAYVU

JR

[Joseph K]

Lots here that will interest Ian T and Joseph K, if for different reasons, I think:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/jean-luc-ponty-imaginary-voyages-part-1

Part 2 follows on from the bottom of this page.

Thanks for this. This paragraph is especially perspicacious:

And as a composer, my influences were mostly classical composers, impressionists, you know, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, and Satie and so on, Stravinsky. And so I was missing that then. And I didn't know how to go about it until I arrived in California and got to meet Zappa and then later on John McLaughlin who was not in California, and different [musically], but who were not afraid to do whatever they felt their intuition told them to do musically. And not afraid to mix elements of different styles of music either. Big-time with Zappa, and McLaughlin as well whose influence was mostly Indian music, but who were also fond of classical music. You could hear that in some of their work. And that's what I understood. I said [to myself], that's the way, that's what I have to do. I just have to let my inspiration come through and write whatever comes to my mind, regardless of whether or not it sounds post-bop, because what I was writing at the time did not sound like jazz at all. I was coming up with structures and odd meters and changes of meters in the middle of tunes. And so meeting progressive rock musicians, and these bands at the time they were daring and exploring and experimenting, and they drew [music] from me. I said, that's it. I just write whatever I feel. And regardless of whether it fits in a specific type of music or not. And it was possible in those years, because in the late sixties, early seventies the leaders on the business side of music were passionate. They were either musicians themselves, or maybe not quite good enough to become professional, but at least passionate about music. And they would look for artists who were innovating, as opposed to what happened soon after.

I have highlighted in bold where he really hits the nail on the head. I think it's a narrow-minded person who worries about what label the music they're listening to is.

[Ian Thumwood]

Never heard of Zbigniew Seifert before but it was curious to hear just how influenced he was by Coltrane. Really like this track and totally different from the kind of jazz violinists I tend to listen to. More a fan of Billy Bang than anyone else. Kuhn also very impressive on this record too. I have always thought it was a shame that the difficulty with pronouncing the Polish names has created a barrier for some in appreciating jazz musicians from this country.

Picking up on the point about musical classification, I get that entirely but also worth pointing out that this is only as applicable if the music retains it's integrity. For me, that is the whole point of Fusion as this was perhaps the only point other than the Swing Era when jazz lost it a bit.