Cafe Oto

[Tenor Freak]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/02/cafe-oto-italian-vogue?INTCMP=SRCH

Interesting article about a venue I had heard of only recently.

Some interesting artists are playing there soon including Matthew Shipp, on next Friday. Any first hand accounts from boredees about visiting? Do you have to spend half your time looking past hipsters' asymmetrical hairdos to watch the action? Is the beer overpriced Japanese lager?

[MrGongGong]

Cafe Oto is wonderful
great and inspiring programme run by committed folk !
and fantastic Chinese restaurant over the road in an old pie and mash shop

[Quarky]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012...ue?INTCMP=SRCH

Interesting article about a venue I had heard of only recently.

Some interesting artists are playing there soon including Matthew Shipp, on next Friday. Any first hand accounts from boredees about visiting?

The venue is just right, but I would advise to be careful of the acts you go to hear.

I mean no melody, no structure, no song - in fact the antithesis of music as I understand it - enough to put you off Jazz for life.

[MrGongGong]

The venue is just right, but I would advise to be careful of the acts you go to hear.

I mean no melody, no structure, no song - in fact the antithesis of music as I understand it - enough to put you off Jazz for life.

That's three good reasons for going for starters
go on give it a go , what's the worst thing that could happen ?
and if it's not to you taste try the Shanghai over the road in an old pie and mash shop, the best soft shelled crab i've had in London



Oto is a prime example of what we do really well in the UK, along with Aldeburgh, Huddersfield and a few others
initially small scale and driven by passion and commitment to MUSIC rather than some nebulous idea of "national culture"
which is why it would be much better to avoid the whole Jubolympic nonsense and head to Dalston

[Serial_Apologist]

rather than some nebulous idea of "national culture"

Wot you mean I won't get to hear a jazzed up version of The Lark Ascending there?



(PS The beer at CO was a bit dear and only bottled the last time I went - and, in truly British style - warm!)

[MrGongGong]

this is more like it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeBzG2JBQdc

[heliocentric]

this is more like it

Oh no! that's put me off Jazz for life.

[MrGongGong]

Oh no! that's put me off Jazz for life.

What's "Jazz" ?

[Quarky]

Free improvisation is not necessarily Jazz.

Improvisation is generally present in Jazz, but it may only be a subtle or minor element in a performance.

May be a Jazz performance must in some way have some aspect which can be traced back to its original New Orleans roots - African music (rhythms), European (French) structures, combined in a loose improvisational framework.

Just guessing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4wUy2GIudE

[MrGongGong]

Free improvisation is not necessarily Jazz.

Improvisation is generally present in Jazz, but it may only be a subtle or minor element in a performance.

indeed

It often strikes me as odd that many people regard improvised music as Jazz , it can be BUT not necessarily

[Byas'd Opinion]

I suppose a lot - though by no means all - of the first generation of free improvisers were originally from jazz backgrounds, and in terms of history it can be regarded as a development from sixties free jazz. But it's developed its own aesthetic and tradition, I think, and a lot of improv sounds nothing like jazz at all. The first album by Les Diaboliques, to me, sounds more like a Kurtag song cycle than anything from the jazz tradition.

I've been glancing through some of my back issues of The Wire, and I've just come across an interview with Keith Rowe and Lou Gare of AMM in which, despite being ex-members of one of Mike Westbrook's bands, they talk about "jazz people (such as Evan Parker and John Stevens)". So they don't see themselves as jazz musicians, but still seem to see some other musicians involved in the improv scene as jazzers.

There are some musicians - Keith Tippett and Gerd Dudek for instance - who seem able to function equally well as jazz players and as non-jazz improvisers; but equally the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra always insist that they include musicians from a number of backgrounds including jazz but also including classical and experimental pop.

[heliocentric]

I suppose a lot - though by no means all - of the first generation of free improvisers were originally from jazz backgrounds, and in terms of history it can be regarded as a development from sixties free jazz

Two things:

Firstly, some of the very first groups dedicated to free improvisation - Group Ongaku (around 1960), Larry Austin's New Music Ensemble (from 1963), Nuova Consonanza (from 1964), Musica Elettronica Viva (from 1966) and others - were principally conceived and put together by musicians from an avant-garde composition background (although most also had members who approached the music from the jazz direction).

Secondly, many of the more jazz-oriented members of the "first generation" would aver that much of the inspiration for their sound-language came from modern composition - Derek Bailey, for example, not only learned a great deal from studying Webern but also worked on his own version of Stockhausen's Plus Minus (as an exercise for himself, I think, since I don't believe it was completed or performed).

I'm not trying to say that the origins of free improvisation have nothing to do with jazz, but I also think that viewing it as "a development of sixties free jazz" is a less accurate and interesting way to look at it compared with the idea that it arose from a convergence or confluence of ways of musical thinking which came from many different directions at a certain point in time. (Like jazz itself, or serial composition for that matter.)