Jazz....pass the buspass on the left hand side

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Interesting little piece on the jazz audience ~ the crisis of : pt65, by Phil Johnson in todays Indy on Sunday

Can't put a link in as my Smartski phone is Soviet made. Worth a look though as it reflects some of the concerns here.

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

My computer was stitched together by left oppositionists in the gulag

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/with-crowds-low-and-the-average-fan-age-high-we-ask-is-jazz-a-dyingart-form-8929400.html

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Thanks for that SA. I agree with most of that article and its implications.

Stand by for angry Ian to come a kicking and a stamping!

BN.

I'm off to Denmark to dig the Danes and hard bop rollmops.

[Ian Thumwood]

Well, I think the article is a pretty simplistic view of things. It's not quite my perception of the audience even if I still find that I am sometimes one of the youngest members in the audience at some gigs.

Where I do agree is that the same faces seem to crop up in bands these days and groups never seem to stick around longer than to promoe an album during a tour of the festivals in the summer. It is pretty predictable and you can almost second guess who is going to be a Vienne sometimes by who has an album out at the time. However, I wonder how much the media is to blame for this. Look at a number of recent records (take Nichol Mitchell's "Ice Crystals" ) and you can appreciate that although this is a regular working group of some year's standing, it is unlikely that the record company will want her to release a new disc with the same group. It is a shame that really good bands rarely get a chance to develop beyond one album. Those that do (Melhdau, Moran, Douglas, Holland, Shorter, Motian, etc) seem to enjoy a high level of esteem by fans yet how often will such bands be augmented by a "special guest" on a subsequent album? Where I agree 100% is that a dumbed-down jazz press is setting the agenda ~ i can't recall ever reading a negative review on "all about jazz" Make you wonder if jazz musicians have really good lawyers these days?


I think jazz is changing and the audience is getting more sophisitcated. It is no longer the case that people really want to hear a horn player perform with a house rhythm section. Some of the article is correct but a sift through the better albums of 2013 does make me feel positive about the future of jazz even if this might not be the more obvious examples. Younger audiences want to hear Robert Glasper and not older performers. I feel that the "jazz is dead" argument is pretty boring these days and if you head for somet5hing like "Jazz Mix" at Vienne, the kids are list5ening to jazz musicians performing with people using DJ's and t5urnt5ables. They don't want to be hearing someone playing "Body & Soul."

[Serial_Apologist]

Younger audiences want to hear Robert Glasper and not older performers.

If that ageist view of jazz viability be true, then don't make a career in jazz or at fifty it'll be back to the 1980s for you - the era that forgot those who trailblazed British jazz onto the map.

[Quarky]

From my limited exposure to live performances recently, I would say audiences in London are youngish/ middle aged, whereas audiences in the provinces are middle aged / pensioners.

A couple of simple truisms. As a nation, we are all getting older (hurricanes permitting) and old-timers have more free time on their hands. So they may want to enjoy the music they heard in their formative years- bop etc.

Younger people want to socialise with people of their own age group- they don't want to mix with people old enough to be their grand parents. So they will go in search of music where the audience is generally young. This will probably be music of inferior quality, but they need to feel comfortable.

In my youth, we had blues, funk, Soul, R&B, on which youngsters could cut their teeth on, and Jazz would be a natural progression. But hip hop to free jazz does require something of an intellectual leap.

Groups such as Sons of Kemet, winner of MOBO award, and New Orleans bands, can bridge the gap. But they probably feel they need to reduce the intellectual content of their music.

[burning dog]

The link between black popular music and jazz seems to be broken. Those who try to bridge the gap either seem uneasy wtih the Pop side of it, or where they do seem to have an affinity, hardly seem cutting edge when compared to a lot of early 70s music, or as Pop as the Acid jazz or whatever it was called, of the 80s.


Small jazz venues seem to be going through a crisis of confidence at the moment. Attendance is falling but the efforts to attract a younger or wider audience can make matters worse, because they seem to be an "add-on". There always has to be a vocalist (usually psuedo soul) , or a "World music" angle, but it doesn't attract a new crowd and risks losing the exisiting one. I would love to hear an equivalent of the Indo jazz fusions of old, but that's rarely what's on offer. Maybe the New Couriers could play a 30 minute version of Night in Tunisia and call it "Arab-Jazz fusions"?

The people who do get a young middle-age and more female crowd are the very people that article derides, old fashioned "jazzy" crooners, like Trevor Cooper's favourite girl singer



An important point is................
The audiences at sit down concerts (except the very largest) are getting older across the genres

and before we condemn ourselves for terminal unhipness the greatest rise in popularity is for tribute rock bands where they dress up like famous dead people, recreate 1975 dry ice, and display giant inflatable pink lobsters. I'll put up with "Alan Barnes plays Cannon and Ball " - Groove on Tommy! - rather than that. Unless he dons an Afro wig....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it is a dumb article poorly written and a very standard hack piece to start the LJF

why should we be interested in the thoughts of a writer who commits this sentence to the page?

The success of Cafe Oto in London’s Dalston, which has made its reputation programming free music from around the world to a crossover audience, shows that jazz can renew itself.

never heard of Sam Rivers eh .... or the Little Theatre Club come to that

During the 1970s, Rivers and his wife, Bea, ran a jazz loft called "Studio Rivbea" in New York City's NoHo district. It was located on Bond Street in Lower Manhattan and was originally opened as a public performance space as part of the first New York Musicians Festival in 1970.[4] Critic John Litweiler has written that "In New York Loft Jazz meant Free Jazz in the Seventies" and Studio Rivbea was "the most famous of the lofts".[5] The loft was important in the development of jazz because it was an example of artists creating their own performance spaces and taking responsibility for presenting music to the public. This allowed for music to be free of extra-musical concerns that would be present in a nightclub or concert hall situation. A series of recordings made at the loft were issued under the title Wildflowers on the Douglas label.[6]

must be a mucker of Kevin

[Ian Thumwood]

Calum

It is a bit lazy as an article in some respects but alot of jazz journalism is. There was an interview with Lonnie Plaxico I read last month which outlined how jazz festival organisers were and frequently are miss~directing when highlighting where the best jazz is to be found. Regular working groups are no longer the norm and jazz reflects the more widespread fashion to constantly find something that is new.

Concerning the age of jazz audiences, I do find myself being amongst the youngest (at 46!) however the youngesters are not necessarily ignoring the music. The audience for the "new" players I got into in the 80's has grown older too wherea today's nippers want Robert Glasper or Gerald Clayton. Many of the 30 ish generation playing today are producing top quality jazz. The CD's I've bought this year by Binney, Nichols, Adasiewizc or Shorter have been as good as anything recorded in 1959. It is a matter of knowing where to look.

[Tom Audustus]

But there is a long tradition in jazz of mix n' match when it comes down to putting musicians on the stand or into the studio. Just think of all those great Blue Note recordings that would never have been made if those musicians have been in longterm groups !!!

The last thing I want to hear is a band that has had all of the risk rehearsed out of the set and turn up and play the exactly the same arrangement and solo note-for-note at every gig like many rock/pop bands.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

But there is a long tradition in jazz of mix n' match when it comes down to putting musicians on the stand or into the studio. Just think of all those great Blue Note recordings that would never have been made if those musicians have been in longterm groups !!!

The last thing I want to hear is a band that has had all of the risk rehearsed out of the set and turn up and play the exactly the same arrangement and solo note-for-note at every gig like many rock/pop bands.

hmmm perhaps with the notable exceptions of The Duke Ellington Orchestra; The Count Basie Band and The Modern Jazz Quartet .... but a well taken point Tom

[Ian Thumwood]

Tom

I think that the better bands work because the musicians are familiar with each other. Just because they might be familiar doesn't equate tp playing charts pr running through the motions. Even the Blue Note records often came from a relatively small range of musicians. It can be interesting to hear unfamiliar musicians ounce ideas off each other but there is no substitute for a regualr band with a degree of pedigree. The better musicians usually have a good working band and there are only a small number of players who have made great jazz with irregular line ups over a period of time. May6be Sonny6 Rollins is the best example of this but 90% of what he records is great because of him!

There was an article about this on "All about" jazz last5 week in respect of a comment made by Steve Coleman. Pick up bands are greatly over-rated in my opinion.

[Serial_Apologist]

Tom

I think that the better bands work because the musicians are familiar with each other. Just because they might be familiar doesn't equate tp playing charts pr running through the motions. Even the Blue Note records often came from a relatively small range of musicians. It can be interesting to hear unfamiliar musicians ounce ideas off each other but there is no substitute for a regualr band with a degree of pedigree. The better musicians usually have a good working band and there are only a small number of players who have made great jazz with irregular line ups over a period of time. May6be Sonny6 Rollins is the best example of this but 90% of what he records is great because of him!

There was an article about this on "All about" jazz last5 week in respect of a comment made by Steve Coleman. Pick up bands are greatly over-rated in my opinion.

Most of those Blue Notables in the 60s were of course in longterm relations bandwise with musicians other than the ones on the recorded one-offs. However there is a lot of controversy among free jazz practitioners regarding the value of overfamiliarity - some taking the Derek Bailey position that once is the only time to get together because overfamiliarity leads to predicability, whereas for others such as Keith Tippett and Evan Parker this danger can be overcome with right attitude, ie always remaining alert, and longevity speaks of friendship and mutual growth. It may be equally true that fixed personnels can lead to growth or self-limitation within their contexts. It's also probably worth consideration that few one-offs manage to get recorded, and of course the one-off with no intended follow up may turn out to be be the start of something more permanent - everything has to start off as a one-off - the below clip from a 1970 recording was such a start for two of the musicians involved - Dave Holland was, ahem, "busy" at the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJHF9b9SySc