Paul Motian dies aged 80

[Guest]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but:

Paul Motian, the legendary drummer whose shadowy, ethereal playing was one of the most singular and identifiable styles in all of jazz, died at 4:52 a.m. in New York City, as confirmed by a representative from ECM Records. He was 80; a cause of death has not been disclosed.

(Jazz Times)

The Ottawa Citizen's Jazz Blog has more, including some fine videos of Paul in action.

He's not particularly shadowy and ethereal on this one:

[Byas'd Opinion]

Fuller obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/ar...ead-at-80.html

Motian with Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell and Marc Johnson:

[charles t]

Motian was unique inasmuch as his own-led groups always sounded 'of the moment', 'contemporary', modern.

And I have just about all of those ECM's through the decades.

Somewhat in shock realizing there will be no others....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yes charles a bit if a stunner ....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I think he'd been unwell for a while and not travelling?

I'm no great fan of his ECM albums but with Bill Evans he was perfect. (as was Philly Joe with a very different style).

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Really sad to hear this as Paul Motian was one of my heroes. I think he is one of the few musicians in jazz who consciously tried to change his style of playing.

Odd how he is still so associated with Bill Evans' trio as there was really so much more to his playing. He also worked with the Liberation Music Orchestra and there are some very good early Keith Jarrett records which figure his drumming. However, I think that the trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano as one of THE great bands in jazz of the last thirty years. I think the phrase "the world's most swinging, unswinging drummer" really summed up his playing and he definately push contemporary jazz in a direction which immediately the music played by many 1980's New-Neo's totally redundant. The records this group made for ECM were probably made to reflec Eicher's more introspective requirements but the albums on JMT deserve to be in any decent Jazz Library. The Monk and Evans tribute records are exceptionally fine but I also have a Live @ Village Vangaurd which has moments where the music is extremely edgy and coruscating- as abrasive as anything recorded by the New Thing in the 1980's with Frisell's guitar stepping outside of the perfect marrige with Joe Lovano's tenor to produce sounds of almost industrial ferocity. As good as Evans' trio with Motian and LaFarro was, the Paul Motian trio existed for nearly 30 years and produced a wide and varied body of extremely consistent work. This , to my ears at least, was his finest achievement and, for that matter, one of the finest regular bands in the 90-odd year history of jazz.

As the clips with the Electric BeBop band show, Motian was also a brilliant composer and I think this aspect of his work was sorely under-rated. The themes could vary from tender ballads to almost off-the-cuff be-bop themes which served as launchpads for free-jazz exploration.

I was staggered by the fact that Paul Motian was so old as his music always sounds so contemporary. The music his recent bands produced could absorb the more lyrical and nostalgic feel of the music be produced with Bill Evans and he was just as adapt at playing standards as his old boss. That said, I have always associated him with always being an adventurous player and if he could also namecheck an earlier drummer like Jimmy Crawford (from Jimmie Lunceford's band) as an inspiration, I always felt that he was continually on the search for the new and challenging.

[Tenor Freak]

Yes, very sad to hear of his recent death. I enjoyed his trio with Lovano and Frisell, and was toying with the idea of requesting something from the LP Monk in Motian on JRR. I remember reading a few years ago that he'd given up touring for health reasons.

Didn't he play at Woodstock with Arlo Guthrie?

RIP

[Ian Thumwood]

Yes, very sad to hear of his recent death. I enjoyed his trio with Lovano and Frisell, and was toying with the idea of requesting something from the LP Monk in Motian on JRR. I remember reading a few years ago that he'd given up touring for health reasons.

Didn't he play at Woodstock with Arlo Guthrie?


RIP

1, Exagerated story.

2. True.

If you read this interview, you can also read that he performed with Herbie Nichols too:-

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21536

The Monk tribute album on JMT is terrific, the combined horns of Lovano and guest Dewey Redman sound like a couple ofStuka dive-bombers on "Straight no chaser." I've been playing one of the recent ECM records ("Time and time again") in my car all week and this gets better with each listen. I love the angular fashion in which the group creates the music and there is so much going on that every listen yields another discovery.

[charles t]

Ian: Thanks for confirming - CONFIRMATION - the impact of Paul's latest 'bands'...unbelievable.

An excerpt follows from Ben Ratliff's interviews with jazz musicians, including Motian (held in Motian's NYC apt. and Paul would jump out of his chair and play whatever came to mind during the interview).

If you want to search the Motian chapter, use -Search This Book -on left-hand side...type: Paul Motian (from Page 169 onwards)...

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Ear-Conversations-over-Music/dp/0805081461/ref=sr_1_53?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323639564&sr=1-53#reader_0805081461