Jon3 12.ix.11 Fete Quaqua, recorded at the Vortex on 22 August 2011

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...one for fans of free improv

details

taster ...

[Serial_Apologist]

Ooooooh! Really looking forward to this one!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

tonite!

from newsletter

If the Romans had invented free jazz…

…they might have talked about 'quaqua' – a Latin word meaning going in any direction from a central point. Tonight's music certainly does that, in a series of one-off encounters that throws everything into the moment.

Festival organiser and guitarist John Russell is as good at recruiting top players from the UK and beyond as he is at coming up with titles. Alongside UK stalwarts Lol Coxhill, Hannah Marshall and Roger Turner are more exotic talents. Ute Wassermann's voice is a real box of tricks, conjuring all sorts of bird-like and percussive sounds. The pipa (a four-stringed Chinese instrument) and the rabeca (a Brazilian folk fiddle) , along with Russell's trademark guitar sound, add different flavours to the string section, to say nothing of Adam Bohman's table of electronic fun – check out the photo on the playlist for the programme!

The first and last pieces of the performance find all 13 musicians crammed onto the stage, and in between Russell gets his calculator out to create smaller combinations that haven't ever played together before. It's fascinating listening to the pieces take shape, nowhere more so than at the start of the second set – a clarinet/piano duet that was played with amazing purpose and really made a mark on the Vortex audience. Musician Steve Beresford is my studio guest, helping us chart a course through this complex yet colourful music.

Join us at 11pm tonight on BBC Radio 3, or listen on iPlayer for 7 days after broadcast.

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[handsomefortune]

yes, but last week's 'european jazz festival' looked exciting ........... at least on paper. hope this week's jo3 is (a lot) better.

as it was, only half of the festival was 'jazz', and it was a global affair, rather than 'european'.

jez's patronising programme opening nearly made me turn off - but i weathered through, though at points like a deaf pit pony. extra chirpy jez opened with these words: 'no power point presentation on harmolodic theory, or academic scrutinising of the latest research into circular breathing'.

no - arguably just jez, in waffle-lite mode...and to end a confused/ing programme, was the ever more hurried dabble, and ongoing snippets of debate, around music journalism ....'should it ideally be done by amateurs' or not?

judging by this edition of jo3, amateurs will be 'ideal'? apparently, pat methaney disagrees - (but then we all know he's considered 'old fashioned') whereas young audiences like and want pontless nonsense, instead of journalists worth their salt. (spot the cunning stunt)!

anyway, onward and ....onward -

tonight's got to be better, logically. ideally, we should all write, asking jez for a programme about 'circular breathing'....but as for the power point - what would be the point of this on the xxxxxy radio?! so, jez might like to sack his jo3 continuity script writer, for this senseless audio gaff! (though slightly worryingly, i don't think jez noticed that what he read out was total nonsense - which makes him look robotic, in my book)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

some THIN else innit

[Serial_Apologist]

Did anyone listen? I must confess I was lulled to sleep during the first 45 or so minutes, and will have to re-listen again tomorrow maybe. From what I did hear, I thought maybe Phil Minton might have laid out of some of the group playing, where his quasi-electronic vocal effects rather dominated what was otherwise what one might describe as post-Webernian, inasmuch as being pointillistic, though his contribution was just fine for the final and, for me, best session with Lol Coxhill, in which Lol's singular instinct for making some sort of melodic sense of whatever is being passed to and around him resulted in what almost amounted to a folorn sort of concerto for himself.

[hackneyvi]

I went on the last night, SA, but haven't heard this recording yet. My feeling was that the music lacked nerve.

I didn't know this was his name but Lol Coxhill (seeming frail in his persistently rattling anorak) played something characterful and sympathetic to the moment - though I have a sense he bided his time. Likewise the violinist who squeaked and raked like the rest for the most part but finally produced a long sharp-sweet melody. The pipa player merited her solo; wish there'd been more of them (as a broad rule, I find that the larger the instrumental group, the less interesting the outcome). I'm beginning to feel free music gives musicians an opportunity to perform but often in a form that thwarts something crucial in their musicianship. Much of the produced music is the equivalent of mixing every colour in the paintbox and then pretending to be pleased when the result is always brown. Alot of good musicians effortfully producing alot of banal music.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

hi hackneyvi ...thanks to you and S_A for your comments i can now give it a miss .... i loathe meandering squawky squeaky doodling .... whilst i admire the resolve of free improv artists to risk the banal or the awful i do not share it ... and i must have missed the good bits in consequence ... alas i weep not ...

[Serial_Apologist]

hi hackneyvi ...thanks to you and S_A for your comments i can now give it a miss .... i loathe meandering squawky squeaky doodling .... whilst i admire the resolve of free improv artists to risk the banal or the awful i do not share it ... and i must have missed the good bits in consequence ... alas i weep not ...

W.....ell, why not just give it a go. 90 minutes? I'm sure you won't need to justify to St Peter when you reach the pearly gates.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...er cos like the retro jazzbo that i am i am listening to Shelley Manne & His Men ...More Swinging Sounds especially Mr Mariano



Alto Saxophone – Charlie Mariano
Bass – Leroy Vinnegar
Drums – Shelly Manne
Piano – Russ Freeman
Trumpet – Stu Williamson


...it is not pastiche .... mercifully unselfconscious and it has a viewpoint

[Old Grumpy]

hi hackneyvi ...thanks to you and S_A for your comments i can now give it a miss .... i loathe meandering squawky squeaky doodling ....

Dear Mr Da Jazbo

I find I entirely agree with you. I did try to listen to this programme during the live broadcast, but lasted about 5 seconds on each occasion! Had Mrs Grumpy been in the room at the time it probably would have been 1 second!

I must admit that I do find that probably the majority of the output of Jon3 is too "free" for my taste.

OG

[Serial_Apologist]

Dear Mr Da Jazbo

I find I entirely agree with you. I did try to listen to this programme during the live broadcast, but lasted about 5 seconds on each occasion! Had Mrs Grumpy been in the room at the time it probably would have been 1 second!

I must admit that I do find that probably the majority of the output of Jon3 is too "free" for my taste.

OG

Well, Old grumpy, Hackneyvi found the music "banal". I can't find an answer to give him. The essence of free improvised music is that it concerns itself with the unexpected, the sound of surprise. But if the unexpected become the expected, that logically could be said to subvert the original intention.

Perhaps appreciating this kind of music comes down to a matter of how it is aproached, rather than...listened to?

[hackneyvi]

Well, Old grumpy, Hackneyvi found the music "banal". I can't find an answer to give him. The essence of free improvised music is that it concerns itself with the unexpected, the sound of surprise. But if the unexpected become the expected, that logically could be said to subvert the original intention.

Perhaps appreciating this kind of music comes down to a matter of how it is aproached, rather than...listened to?

I agree with you, SA. I think that sometimes - the Shabaka Hutchings gig at Oto last month explained this to me - musicianship can be stifled by free music. Alot of liberated behaviour - in any aspect of life - is often a response to a simple desire for acceptance and I wonder if there isn't a free music conformity that is afraid of the lyric. Lol Coxhill was the most enjoyable player throughout the night, the other musicians had only moments and all of those moments seemed like Hutchings' to come late and in something resembling more conventional solos.

To say it was 'banal' isn't intended to affront the musicians or their musicianship but the interesting free music I've heard has been duos; from trio upwards, the the overlays of the lines comes to sound to me like a shambles of dirt wall graffiti.

Maybe it's also the Cage effect of popped balloons being sold as explosions when they're really just shreds of latex?

[Serial_Apologist]

I agree with you, SA. I think that sometimes - the Shabaka Hutchings gig at Oto last month explained this to me - musicianship can be stifled by free music. Alot of liberated behaviour - in any aspect of life - is often a response to a simple desire for acceptance and I wonder if there isn't a free music conformity that is afraid of the lyric. Lol Coxhill was the most enjoyable player throughout the night, the other musicians had only moments and all of those moments seemed like Hutchings' to come late and in something resembling more conventional solos.

To say it was 'banal' isn't intended to affront the musicians or their musicianship but the interesting free music I've heard has been duos; from trio upwards, the the overlays of the lines comes to sound to me like a shambles of dirt wall graffiti.

Maybe it's also the Cage effect of popped balloons being sold as explosions when they're really just shreds of latex?

There's lots of stuff been written about this form of music making, hackneyvi - some of it by Yours truly, which I'll try & get to you when we next meet up. Suffice to say for now there is an aetiology to this music - how it came together in part out of free jazz and from experimental classical music in the 1960s. For some practitioners it's a question of extending pre-existing techniques and finding their applicability in an area requiring intimated attention to details; for others aesthetic considerations are at work, the creation of previously unheard sounds; for still others the music has a quasi political significance: the possibility that "modernism", otherwise confined to compositional specialists, be made available to non-"experts". There's even an idea of music as an extension of body language intercommunication, extended by sound sources transcendent of style or era; of a quasi-spiritual collective awareness akin in the complex modern context encoded in commercialisation to a denial of "easy solutions", negation of negation, and the concomitant embrace of marginality to stay true.

Pseud's Corner would have a field day with what I've just written!

[Old Grumpy]

There's lots of stuff been written about this form of music making, hackneyvi - some of it by Yours truly, which I'll try & get to you when we next meet up. Suffice to say for now there is an aetiology to this music - how it came together in part out of free jazz and from experimental classical music in the 1960s. For some practitioners it's a question of extending pre-existing techniques and finding their applicability in an area requiring intimated attention to details; for others aesthetic considerations are at work, the creation of previously unheard sounds; for still others the music has a quasi political significance: the possibility that "modernism", otherwise confined to compositional specialists, be made available to non-"experts". There's even an idea of music as an extension of body language intercommunication, extended by sound sources transcendent of style or era; of a quasi-spiritual collective awareness akin in the complex modern context encoded in commercialisation to a denial of "easy solutions", negation of negation, and the concomitant embrace of marginality to stay true.

Dunno mate, but thanks for replying...

I guess it's a bit like "modern art" - I don't get most of that, however I approach it or look at it.

OG