Category: Thoughts

Hearing free jazz and improvisation

I had the pleasure of hearing a wonderful performance by Kidd Jordan, William Parker, and Alvin Fielder last night in New Orleans at a club called King Bolden’s. The club is pretty small. It was fairly crowded and the acoustics were good. I could really hear what each musician was playing. I heard things in their music last night, that I had not heard before. I think that is due mainly to my growth as a listener.

In most contexts, I tend to listen in broad terms, hearing shapes and motion and ideas, more than specific notes or harmonies.While listening to free improvisations, my broad listening style does a good job of capturing the vibe and energy of a performance, but it can also let a perception of chaos take over. Last night I heard the interactions within the broader perceived chaos. I could hear melodic lines being passed back and forth between Kidd’s tenor and William’s bass. These lines were not the only notes Kidd or William were playing, but they were contained within all of the other notes that were happening. I could hear some part of Alvin’s set having a rhythmic conversation with some range of Kidd’s tenor. Again, each musiccian was also playing other material, but these parts were closely tied musically.

I equated it to seeing a large crowd, like at an outdoor concert or sporting event. When you look at the broad overview of the people, it could seem like chaos. Then imagine that someone starts a beachball bouncing through the crowd. You can follow the beachball as it passes around the people, eventhough there are many other things happening as well. Then, if you look closely at any given spot in the crowd, you realize that it is not chaos at all, but a seemingly endless number of small spontaneous personal interactions happening simultaneously. Now you can perceive the crowd in whatever fashion you’d like: as chaos, as single individual interactions, or as a collection of those interactions. It all depends of how you focus your sight.

Likewise with the performance last night, it all depened on how I focused my listening. I could hear chaos, singular specific musical interactions, and the collection of those interactions. Plus you can hear all of that at once if you let yourself.

Sometimes, it’s not what you play, but who you have played it with

This AAJ review of Curtis Fuller and Louis Hayes at Jazz Standard made me think about one of the ways we often discuss and write about jazz artists.

We often define players in terms of who they have played with, instead of what they have played. Curtis Fuller is more noted in the article for having played with Coltrane, than for being one of the greatest jazz trombonists of all time. Louis hayes is also described by his companions more than his music.

I don’t mean this as a knock on the writer of this particular article, because it is common practice. But I still wonder, Why do we do this? Are we so obsessed with personality or celebrity that we can only take an artist’s music seriously if he has received the endorsement of being allowed to perform with someone more famous than himself?

An economist visits New Orleans. By Tyler Cowen

This Slate article looks at New Orleans universities post-K.

An economist visits New Orleans. By Tyler Cowen

You would never guess that Xavier University in New Orleans sat under 8 feet of water. Sure, the student center is being gutted, and some of the grand Gothic Revival doors have searchers’ spray paint still visible. But for the most part it looks like any other midsize Southern American university. The students, back from their semesters away, are gathered on the quads. The faculty members are back in the classroom and the laboratory. Energy is in the air. Yet the neighborhood across the street still lies in ruins.

I teach at Xavier, and it is a surreal feeling to look out of a fourth floor window and not see any occupied homes in what used to be lively urban neighborhoods.

It has been almost 8 months.

An economist visits New Orleans. By Tyler Cowen

Shacks and shanty-towns as the economic saviors of New Orleans…he might be half-joking, or he might be right. I have always maintained that access to affordable housing should be the primary concern in rebuilding New Orleans.

An economist visits New Orleans. By Tyler Cowen

Instead, the city should help create cheap housing by reducing legal restrictions on building quality, building safety, and required insurance. This means the Ninth Ward need not remain empty. Once the current ruined structures are razed, governmental authorities should make it possible for entrepreneurs to put up less expensive buildings. Many of these will be serviceable but not all will be pretty. We could call them structures with expected lives of less than 50 years. Or we could call them shacks.

Is Jazz chamber music?

This NewMusicBox article by Joel Harrison addresses the discussion of whether or not Chamber Music America should fund jazz. I like his take on it.

Does jazz fit into CMA’s mandate? Does the jazz world need CMA? Must we define chamber music? Would that tell CMA what to fund and not to fund? Do we then have to define jazz?

Allow me to grab my megaphone and shout this as loudly as I can. WE SHOULD NOT EVEN BE HAVING THIS DISCUSSION. The partisans of style over substance are fighting a lonely, pointless battle when they attempt to value one kind of music over another.

Another favorite line…

Rigid stylistic fault lines are the refuge of scoundrels. Defining chamber music, jazz, or any other style of music is a dreary, pointless undertaking. It’s the job of undertakers, not life-givers.

Tomorrow night I am playing a concert with the New Orleans New Music Ensemble (no-nme). The groups is essentially a chamber orchestra. The focus is really on the compositions, all of which were written this year or last, but one piece is totally guided improvisation. Does that make it a jazz show? Does it matter?

As I have said before, music, like the human race, is better off when it isn’t segregated.

All the ingredients except an audience

This article is about the Women’s Music festival at Cal State Fullerton, but it made me think of some other issues as well.

All the ingredients except an audience – Los Angeles Times

At her performance, Pamela Z made one wonder all over why she is not better known to a broader audience. She is a mainstay on the new-music circuit; she arrived Friday having just finished touring Europe. Her performances use her sonorous voice and electronics.

How many performers or composers, male or female, that are “mainstay(s) on the new-music circuit” are at all well known to a broader audience? People are scared of stuff they don’t know, and that goes for music as well. A few weeks ago I overheard a Chicago Symphony usher practically have to talk a lady down from the edge because there was Hindemith on the program. Fortunately she survived the Hindemith, and the Brahms arrived as promised.

Next year, the festival has invited Meredith Monk, but the school’s vocal department, the panel announced, doesn’t want her giving workshops, lest she confuse the students. But it seems to me those few enthusiastic students who attended Pamela Z and Ethel weren’t confused at all. They knew a very good thing when they heard it.

So instead of exposing students to varied or extended techniques, they are “protecting” them from confusion. Do they have that little confidence in the intelligence of their students? How will anything new happen tomorrow, if the students of today are only exposed to the music of 2 centuries ago?