Secret Society

Can I get an encore do you want more

Several people have written to ask if I am planning on liveblogging the Bang On A Can Marathon again this year.

The answer is simple:

OH HELLS NO.

I did my turn. It's on someone else this year. I will be there, taking notes and taking pictures, and will probably put up a little something something after the fact (amidst a wash of other rent-paying responsibilities), but I would also like to be able to actually enjoy hanging out at year's marathon without the additional stress of having to bang out a frantic liveblog update after each set concludes.

Have you seen this bass?

Nathan Peck needs you to keep an eye out.

Attention friends and musicians:

Hello, my name is Nathan Peck. Some of you know me well, some of you know me from afar or from e-mail. I am putting the word out:

My acoustic bass was stolen from in front of my apartment building in Jackson Heights, Queens, a few hours ago as I was entering.

It's in a dark blue case. The word "Pfretzchner" is printed inside as well as a sticker with the name Bill Merchant and it is a red/blondish color. This is no joke. This is my livelihood.

If anyone happens to see something matching this description please try and buy it and I'll triple your money.

I ask for you help in keeping an eye out for my instrument.

I can be reached at:
412-414-7774 cell
718-565-6514 home

Sincerely,
Nathan Peck

Let's make promises that we can keep

We just watched HBO's Recount, which was (surprisingly) outstandingly good. I would not have thought that the director of Goldmember had it in him, but the film is incredibly taut and suspenseful, despite the outcome being a foregone conclusion. All of the performances are terrific, especially Kevin Spacey's self-effacing Ron Klain, Laura Dern's pitch-perfect Katherine Harris, and John Hurt as the hapless Warren Chirstopher. It was also acutely painful to watch all of those awful moments re-enacted (or sometimes just re-exhibited -- there's an awful lot of archival TV news footage woven into the film): the networks initially calling Florida for Gore, then pulling it back, then Fox calling the state for Bush and everyone else falling in line... Gore's aborted concession... the butterfly ballots... the Brooks Brothers riot... Joe Lieberman's stab in the back (the first of many)... the appalling voter purge... that fucking chad... and of course, the greatest legal travesty since Plessy v. Ferguson.

It's hard to watch Recount without becoming completely enraged and dispirited all over again -- if anything, our national media is even worse today when they were in 2000, when they opted to pretend like the blatant theft of a presidential election was simply business as usual. It's true they failed us horribly during the leadup to the Iraq war, but for that, they invoke the post-9/11 "patriotic fever" as their excuse for not exercising more skepticism. In 2000, they had no such excuse.

What is staggering to me, though, is that this year's class of incoming college freshman were ten years old when this all went down. To me, the scars of the stolen election in 2000 and all the tragedy that flowed from that are still a gaping, open wound, to the point where I can barely think about that stuff without wanting to punch through a wall, and I can barely get through this docudrama about the recount without weeping tears of rage. But these kids graduating high school next month, starting college in the fall -- they were too young to remember much of anything about the recount. George W. Bush is effectively the only president they have known. Maybe they dimly recall something about Bill Clinton's presidency, but they would have been, like, eight years old when the Lewinsky scandal broke. George W. Bush is their normal.

That is horrifying. (Also: I feel extremely old.)

If you know an 18-year old who's excited about casting their first vote this November -- I must insist that you get them to watch Recount. (Don't worry -- if they don't have HBO, they will know how to access the video by other means.)

Pander to the marginalized

Every so often, Barack Obama delivers some seriously good fanservice:

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

"I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution," said Obama.

In my mind, I like to pretend that that call begins, "Hello, Russ?"

Soundly situated in obscurityland

Andrea LaRose poses an excellent question, in the wake of my post on fanservice:

I'm not sure I understand where the fanservice line gets drawn musically. My mom doesn't like hardcore metal, but is that because it's self-referential fanservice music or because she just doesn't like it? I mean, couldn't you chalk up any taste preferences to fanservice?

"Fanservice" doesn't just mean music with a cult following that a majority of people happen to find alienating -- that would, after all, condemn virtually everything I have ever done musically as fanservice. (Although maybe that's actually a fair assessment, I dunno.) Similarly, "fanservice" does not cover all music that is deliberately constructed to alienate people^[1], nor does it cover all music that might be a bit of a tough slog for the uninitiated.

Fanservice is more specific than that -- it's a marker or signifier that serves no legitimate aesthetic purpose, but is there to stroke those in the in-crowd while simultaneously alienating even the most sophisticated and open-minded newbies.

Of course, the devil is in the details -- what counts as a "legitimate aesthetic purpose"? -- etc, etc. There is also the inconvenient truth that fanservice works -- it's fun to be part of a clique, even if your clique is widely regarded as uncool. (Sometimes especially if.) It's fun to spot obscure in-jokes or references that go over everyone else's head. It's fun to feel like you and your friends are musically knowledgeable/sophisticated/progressive/hardcore and everyone else is a bunch of pikers. Basically, it's fun to be pandered to.

So here are some examples of what I'd consider fairly unambiguous musical fanservice:

• ensemble orchestrations of classic jazz solos (Supersax, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, etc). The only example I can think of where this actually works is Hal Overton's chart on "Little Rootie Tootie" from the Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall record.

• stopping the opera dead in its tracks just so the tenor can sing nine more high C's.

• Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You, Across The Universe, and every other jukebox musical ever.

• Dread Zeppelin, Hayseed Dixie, Is It Rolling Bob?, Gold Sounds, etc.

• all of the hoary rituals surrounding classical concertgoing -- the no-clapping-between-movements rule, the taboo against speaking to the audience, the ridiculous tuxedos, various and sundry other bits of formalized pandering.

• playing the head to "Donna Lee" displaced by one beat.

• the spiteful parody of Shostakovich 7 in the fourth movement of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, which is never actually funny. (Okay, almost never. But it's still a nasty bit of fanservice that seriously detracts from my enjoyment of what is otherwise one of my favorite Bartók works.)

• that new Weezer video.

• Milton Babbitt. "The Composer As Specialist" (aka "Who Cares If You Listen") is essentially one long defense of fanservice.

[And here is the official fanservice component of this post: add your own examples in comments!]

Keep in mind, some of the above I have actually enjoyed at one time or another -- I am certainly not immune to fanservice. And if the thing as a whole is good, it's easy to forgive the occasional burst of fanservice, even if it detracts or distracts. It's only when the entire work/subgenre/scene is built around creating and rewarding fanservice that we start to have a problem.

A commenter going by the name of medrawt said something else that I think is very pertinent:

Somewhere online I read someone say that essentially the "ideal" reader of Iron Man or Spiderman has ready every issue of the comic, has read all crossover issues with different titles, recalls all of them, and has the additional capacity to spontaneously forget those issues whose continuity would render the current issue unintelligible, until such time as some future writer chose to reference them in some way.

Here's one failsafe way you can tell if you, as a artist, are indulging in fanservice -- if you ever find yourself thinking anything remotely like this:

The ideal listener of my music has heard and analyzed everything I've ever created, is intimately familiar with all of the works that have ever influenced me and everyone I've ever collaborated with, has read all of the written statements I've made about my music, recalls all of this, and has the additional capacity to spontaneously forget those works and/or statements which have no bearing on my current output, until such time as I chose to revisit that creative period in some way."

-----
1. Okay, if you clicked that link, I know you want to listen. I have been "enjoying" The Most Unwanted Song for many years, long before it became an internet phenomenon -- Society co-conspirator actually owns the CD, and likes to break it out at parties.

The In Crowd

Isaac and I had coffee earlier in the week and got to talking about the problem with the aesthetics of exclusion, or, more accurately and less pretentiously, the problem of fanservice.

I'm not talking about the gratuitous panty-shot variety of fanservice. I'm talking about the impenetrable, continuity-heavy storytelling-fanservice that plauges mainstream superhero comics -- the barrage of needlessly insular and obscure references that make it impossible for the average reader to pick up an issue of a big-label comic book and have the slightest fucking clue what is going on. This kind of incomprehensibility isn't just a side-effect of long-form serial storytelling. It is deliberate -- a conscious strategy to reward hardcore comics readers who come to the table with an encyclopedic knowledge of the last 20 years of comics continuity, and to drive away everyone else.

Let's say you are a smart, sophisticated, cultured person who nonetheless enjoys a well-crafted bit of pop culture entertainment, like, say, the Iron Man movie. And let's say you happen to be walking by Rocketship and think, "You know, that movie was really cool -- I don't normally read comics, but what the heck, why don't I just step in here and pick up a comic that has Iron Man in it?" In all likelihood, you will quickly regret your decision, because mainstream comic books are, by and large, not set up to reward people who like exciting, tight narratives and vivid characterization and witty banter and engaging visuals and all the other things you'd normally want from your slice of pop culture entertainment. They are set up for one thing and one thing only: fanservice. Mainstream superhero comics are a closed loop, catering only to the specific nostalgia needs of longtime fans, and everyone else can go screw.

Of course, smart comics fans who would actually appreciate the opportunity to read some superhero comic books featuring exciting, tight narratives for a change are as pissed off as anyone at the way blatant fanservice drives away any potential new readers, and has almost completely supplanted actual craft.

What does this have to do with music? Well, nobody except the most hopeless, pathetic mouth-breather actually thinks the preponderance of fanservice in superhero comics is respectable or defensible. But when the exact same variety of insular, exclusionary, pointless pandering to the the in-crowd goes on in our favorite music (jazz, improv, new music, indie rock, hiphop, whatever), the people being pandered to -- that would be you know, us -- tend to get their backs up whenever anyone suggests that there might be something unsavory about circling the aesthetic wagons, or wondering whether practices that are deliberately designed to alienate intelligent, sophisticated, open-minded listeners from outside your little scene are really such a good idea.

These thoughts were sparked by a post [via Phil Freeman] by the English music critic and author Simon Reynolds on the "anti-epiphany" he had back in 1989:

I got a most peculiar sensation reading the Epiphany column at the back of the latest (June) issue of The Wire--an account of a life-changing gig written by improvising cellist Mark Wastell--which was I went to this show, didn't I? In fact it's a gig the whereabouts and whenabouts of which I've been trying to remember for a while now. Now I know precisely: March 12th, 1989, the Royalty Theatre, Holborn, London; Evan Parker as support act to the headlining trio of Anthony Braxton, Adelhard Roidinger, and Tony Oxley.

Reading the column, the mirroring effect was quite uncanny: Wastell's reactions to the performances correlated bizarrely with my own (but how he reacted to those reactions ultimately being totally different). An unusual venue, never been to before, never been to since? CHECK! Slightly aghast at the audience, an all-male miasma of thick sweaters, brown cardigans, bad hair, face foliage? CHECK! Bemused bothered and bored witless as Parker's fingers run rapidly up and down, up and down his soprano saxophone for approx 40 minutes, the resulting shrill, gratingly sibilant patterns repetitious in the extreme yet never falling into anything that resembles groove or melody? CHECK! Very very slightly more taken by the abstrusities of the headliners (at least there's three levels of incomprehensibility going on at once) but literally pained by Oxley's compulsion to swipe his drumstick against his cowbell every few minutes, producing a really nasty metallic scraping sound? CHECK!

[…]

Where Wastell rose to the challenge, I sank from it, shrank from it. The show was an anti-Epiphany, a Turning-Off Point. Well, not quite as dramatic as that, but certainly it helped to cap and confirm a mounting feeling of being not-attracted/not-convinced by that whole area of music (which I'd dutifully checked out, as you do--a Company recording here, an Incus release there--because some smart people with otherwise sharp taste are really into this shit). The gig at the Royalty Theatre contributed to the turn-off partly for sociological reasons (having had a good up-close sniff of the audience, would I really want to be the kind of person into this thing? Or even stand in the same room as them on a regular basis?), but mostly for musical ones: I honestly could not hear the music in it.

I'm sure Reynolds's post will make a lot of readers of this blog furious, but he is no slouch and much of what he says is worthy of serious consideration -- you should read the whole thing, of course -- as well as Phil Freeman's response -- but I was especially struck by this bit:

My interest was actually piqued by a piece in another issue of The Wire, a few months back, the March cover story on John Butcher. I really warmed to the opening quote from Butcher:

"This music is here in opposition to other music. It doesn't all co-exist together nicely. The fact that I have chosen to do this implies that I don't value what you're doing over there. My activity calls into questions the value of your activity. This is what informs our musical thinking and decision making."

Interestingly, given his earlier comments, Reynolds actually likes this oppositional, exclusionary attitude. I think it's completely appalling. It reeks of the worst kind of fanservice.

UPDATE: Here is an excellent example of the not-atypical reactions of someone jumping back into superhero comics after a long absence:

Up until about ten years ago, if DC Comics published something with Batman in the title, I bought it. It was about this time, a decade ago, that I well and truly left comics behind, seemingly forever. Things change.

[…]

Except for some of the early issues of Superman/Batman, I’d not bought a Batman comics in ten years when I bought Batman #676, the first chapter of “Batman, R.I.P.”

So, naturally, I was confused out of my skull.

I’m sure something happened in this issue, but I’m not sure what. There’s a moody introduction with a secret society. There’s a car chase with the latest incarnation of the Batmobile. There’s Tim Drake asking Alfred if Bruce is completely mental. There’s Bruce Wayne’s new girlfriend (whose name isn’t given for several pages, so if you didn’t know who she was, the first page with her is going to be confusing as hell). There’s a scene of Bruce and his girlfriend at the Wayne family cemetary plot. And then there’s a sequence with the Joker, which I’m not entirely sure was a dream or reality. I’m thinking dream.

It sounds like a lot, and I suppose it is. It’s all set-up.

[…]

For a first issue of a storyline, questions are raised and none are answered. For a new reader, there’s a lot here that’s impenetrable; there are undoubtedly things that I’ve completely missed.

And this is an issue written by Grant Morrison, who is usually one of the better comics writers around.

Whether we are talking about comics or music or any other artform, taking pride in creating work that goes out of its way to be deliberately impenetrable to the non-initiate is perverse.

When I wake up in the morning I pour the coffee read the paper

My age +1.

(Also, guys? Robert Moog? Still dead, I'm afraid.)

There's a party in my mind

I've been a huge fan of Rachel Maddow since the star-crossed launch of Air America Radio back in early 2004.  She is now the last host standing from Air America's initial slate, and also the only host to emerge from the network who has successfully cracked the mainstream media bubble -- she is a regular commentator on MSNBC, and last Friday was invited back for her second stint guest-hosting Keith Olberman's Countdown.

Her radio program -- the best news show on the radio -- has been linked to in the "Redeye Newsfix" portion of the sidebar since back when her show was broadcasting at 5 AM Eastern. It now airs 7-9 PM most places -- but the best way to get it is to subscribe to the free podcast, courtesy San Fransisco's Green 960AM. (What you want is Hours Two and Three, which are 100% Rachel -- Hour One is a simulcast of MSNBC's Race to the White House.)

In addition to being an incredibly astute political commentator (Rhodes scholar, D.phil in political science) and entertaining radio host, Rachel is also a serious classic cocktail aficionado, one who is, like all right-thinking drinkers, especially partial to the whiskey drinks. So yeah, basically I am completely smitten with her, which is inconvenient as we are both taken, and also she is a lesbian.

Anyway, last night on her show, Rachel broke with format to deliver a long, incisive, and chilling analysis of where the Democratic race is headed if we don't have a candidate before the Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on May 31. If that happens, then the process ball will start rolling on the question of what to do with the results of the disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida. And once that ball starts rolling, it essentially cannot be stopped until the Democratic National Convention in late August.

I think Rachel is essentially correct -- Hillary Clinton has shown no intention whatsoever of dropping out of the race, and shows every sign of using the uncertainty her campaign has created around the fate of  the Michigan and Florida delegations as justification to take this fight all the way to the convention in Denver. That means that unless something incredibly dramatic happens with the superdelegates over the next nine days, we are in for three and a half more months of infighting, with no official Democratic candidate, culminating in what is sure to be a bloodbath on the convention floor.

I do not think this scenario bodes well for the eventual nominee's chances versus John McCain in November.

Here is Rachel's post on this, which outlines her argument in detail:

The Clinton strategy, as best as I can tell, is to stay in the race. You can't win if you don't play -- conceding the nomination is sure defeat, not conceding means there's still a chance.

The way for her to avoid conceding is for her to avoid conceding that the race is resolved.

As long as the Florida and Michigan dispute is alive, and it is being used as the basis of Clinton's claim that the nomination is unresolved, we should expect that Senator Clinton will stay in the race.

We should also expect that if the Democratic Party's committee system takes up the Florida and Michigan dispute through its rules as they stand now, Clinton's campaign will be able to keep the Michigan and Florida dispute alive until the convention. If there's a secret Democratic-insider plan to keep that from happening, it's time for that plan to become un-secret.

The pundit corps has been counting Clinton out and saying the race is over -- but saying it doesn't make it so.

If Clinton fights to stay in until the convention -- which seems utterly plausible to me -- then I believe the Democratic Party's nominee (Obama or Clinton) will lose the general election to John McCain. This last point is of course infinitely debatable -- but my take is that in November, the party that's had a nominee since February/March, beats the party that only got a nominee the last week in August.

There appears to be one, slim hope remaining to avoid this nightmare scenario:

[I]f the Democrats are to avoid a divided convention, the Florida and Michigan dispute will have to be taken off the table -- settled in a way that avoids the risk of a rules dispute that stretches the nominating contest out through the convention. I can think of only one way to do that, but there may be others.

Here's my way: based on my read of NBC's delegate math, I think if the Clinton campaign won 100% of what they wanted on the Florida and Michigan dispute, Obama could still clinch the nomination -- even according to the most pro-Clinton math -- if 90 of the remaining 210-or-so undeclared superdelegates declared for Obama.

If they so declared before May 31st, the Rules and Bylaws committee would have no reason to take up the Florida and Michigan dispute because it would be a moot point -- Obama's camp could concede every Clinton demand on the subject and still win the nomination.

Read the whole thing. Or (better), listen to the episode where Rachel lays out her argument in full (which begins at the 13:00 mark).

Rachel concludes by noting that the last three disputed conventions -- in 1968, 1972, and 1980 -- were complete electoral catastrophes for the Democrats. I really don't think we can afford to go 0 for 4.

UPDATE: Well, okay, sure, that is one way we could avoid a disputed convention. I'm not sure it would exactly be my first choice...

Seriously, Hillary, WTF?

No, really:

W.

T.

F.

Especially coming on the heels of this.

Hanging around in the lost and found

Remember how, due to catastrophic technological failiure, there was one set missing set from the MP3's I posted of our two-night, four-set stand at the Jazz Gallery last month? Well, thanks to Rio and Russell at the Gallery, it's not missing anymore.

So here it is: everything I've ever written for Secret Society, performed over two nights (including a much livelier version of Zeno -- it's a tough chart, but we are getting there).

Now I gotta write me some new shit.

Affinity

Bill Evans makes people a bit crazy. He is, unquestionably, the most influential white musician in jazz history, and this has, at times, made it difficult to disentangle his symbolic status from his actual musical legacy. Surely this is part of the reason why Brad Mehldau kind of flips out every time someone compares him to Bill Evans, or why the 1961 Village Vanguard recordings are viewed with almost religious adulation ("This is it. The breakthrough. The pinnacle of spontaneous musical communication")^[1], or why Stanley Crouch takes such evident delight in denigrating Evans as a "punk" and "all Debussy" and claims he "didn't understand jazz rhythm."

Evans is too complicated a musician to be reduced to one of the two prevailing stereotypes -- "greatest genius in jazz" (because he "elevated" it by making it more "classical") or "painfully introverted, non-swinging nebbish" (because he was too "classical"). One of the most clear-headed Bill Evans advocates I've encountered is André White, who was one of my teachers at McGill. It's not just that he's spent many years studying the Evans discography -- he's hardly alone there -- but he is also equally accomplished as both pianist and drummer, and as such he has unique and profound insights into Bill's approach to the time and his relationship to rhythm sections over the years.

So I was very happy to see this post over at Peter Hum's blog, Thriving on a Riff, which has extensive commentary from André. There's lots of great stuff there, from his comments on Bill's late-period trio with Philly Joe Jones -- "[Jones] didn't need to adapt his style to play with Bill, and I think that's why some people respond negatively to him, because he plays his way no matter what. I'm sure that's what Bill loved about him" to a qualified defense of Eddie Gomez: "Eddie gets bad-mouthed by a lot of musicians too, because of intonation, and his busy-ness. But really, his style is so unique, and he is such a great improviser that these concerns should be mumbled quietly in the background."

Read the whole thing.

André is the person who persuaded me to listen to late-period Bill Evans with an ear towards the masterful rhythmic displacements embedded into his fluid lines. One of my favorite example of this is Bill's solo on "Nobody Else But Me," from 1977's I Will Say Goodbye. I still don't think I will ever exactly love late-period Bill Evans, but thanks to André I have a much deeper appreciation of its virtues.

Bill Evans is a tangent in Ethan Iverson's recent five-part Tristano epic. Ethan writes:

All In the Mix:  I like to hear a black bass player get in Bill Evans’ way and be a funky counterpoint to his impressionism more than I like to hear Evans with the long line of white virtuoso bassists he would soon specialize in. (Not that I don’t admire Scott LaFaro, Eddie Gomez, and Marc Johnson, but my preferred LaFaro, Gomez, and Johnson records are somehow never with Bill Evans!)  My favorite Evans is the comping he did with Miles Davis and Oliver Nelson with Paul Chambers on bass, my favorite Evans trio record is Everybody Digs Bill Evans with Sam Jones on bass, and my absolute favorite Evans piano solos are on this Half Note date with Garrison on bass.  (Of course, there are white bassists who play more in that tradition, too;  I would have loved to have heard Charlie Haden or Dennis Irwin play with Evans. Teddy Kotick on the very first Evans record sounds great, too.)

In light of this, I'd like to point out an often-overlooked recording featuring Bill Evans with a hard-charging black rhythm section: Charles Mingus's East Coasting (rec. August 1957). Yeah, that's right -- Bill Evans with Mingus and Dannie Richmond! (Clarence Shaw, Jimmy Knepper, and Curtis Porter round out the sextet.) It is fascinating to hear Bill adapt his approach to fit the needs of Mingus's music -- "Guess the piano player on 'West Coast Ghost'" makes a great blindfold test.

-----

1. I've always been a bit perplexed by this -- to my ears, Portrait In Jazz is clearly a much stronger and more exciting representation of the Evans-LaFaro-Motian trio.

The Wacky World of Mass Transit

No seriously, this is exactly what the Montreal metro is like:

[via Loren]

Is it a "term of art," are we bound by it...

On listening to Henry Threadgill's ZOOID (= Dana Leong, cello; Liberty Ellman, guitar; Stomu Takeishi, acoustic bass guitar; Jose Davilla, tuba, Elliot Humberto Kavee - drums) at the Jazz Gallery last night:

Elusive and elliptical ensemble music woven from interlocking, purposeful, overlapping bursts, full of disorienting back-and-forth volleys and barely concealed tension, it felt a bit like watching an old-school David Mamet play performed at twice the normal speed. After injecting meth.

Todd Sickafoose @ Tea Lounge, 16 May 2008

Todd Sickafoose's writing is just like his playing -- warm-hearted and propulsive, smart and subtle, extroverted and and conversational, patient and unerringly directional. I hear so much music out there right now that falls into one of two equally alienating camps: either it's joyless, torturedly complex, and inward-looking, or it's unremittingly, self-consciously "badass," with no room for the music to breathe or grow. Both are a chore to sit through.

So it was an incredible relief to hear Todd's band last night at the Tea Lounge. Todd's music earns its momentum honestly, as his ideas gradually evolve and adapt to a changing musical environment. Best of all, everyone in the band -- including Society co-conspirators John Ellis (tenor sax) and Alan Ferber (trombone), plus Brian Coogan (keyboards), Mike Gamble (guitar), Jenny Scheinman (violin), and Ben Perowsky (drums) -- seemed precisely attuned to the leader's wavelength.

This is a group that really knows how to ride the crests and shoot the curls, and together they make some of the most exciting new jazz I've heard in a while.

Here's the opening track from Todd's upcoming (June 10) release Tiny Resistors (on Cryptogramophone), a disc I wholeheartedly recommend.

MP3: "Future Flora," Todd Sickafoose (click to listen, right/ctrl-click to download)

(MP3 courtesy Cryptogramophone/DL Media)

More pictures below the fold...

RIP Bob Florence (updated with Ingrid Jensen's reminiscence)

More info at All About Jazz and the Ventura County Star.

I knew him only slightly -- although I met him once at IAJE, our interactions were mostly via email -- but I was deeply impressed and flattered that he took such intense interest in what "the kids" were writing these days.

UPDATE: Ingrid Jensen writes in from Alaska:

Bob and I met a few minutes before we were to play on a faculty presents concert at the Port Townsend Jazz workshop, five years ago this summer. Alan Jones (drummer- Portland) and I were both curious and admittedly skeptical as to how the hit would go as we were both A) embarrassingly unaware of Bob's depth and legacy and B) wanting to hit hard and go "places."

Alan and I started in duo, rather ripping tempo-wise, as Bob and the bass player (Chuck Deardorf) hung out while we spun our little ego-wank for a minute or five. I played the head to cue things and when Bob came in on the B with, what is now famously referred to as the "chord of doom," we all about fell off the stage! He basically played the entire bridge of "Alone Together" with one massive sound that just about brought the roof down.

The rest is history and both Bob and his incredible wife, Evie became part of the beautiful family circle that I am so fortunate to be involved in.

When Jon and I married, Bob and Evie accepted our invitation and came all the way to Nanaimo to party with us.

Bob wrote this very sweet song (click to listen, right/ctrl-click to download) that he played during the service, a piece he presented to us the next day at the gift opening, written by hand in very large and perfectly executed calligraphy.

What a darling man and musician! One of my all-time favorite pianists ever, and an absolute joy to share the stage with.

With sadness and gratitude,

- Ingrid Jensen

Reactions from around Blogdonia:

jazz@centrum
Larry's Improv Page
Bish's Beat

Cut me short

TYFT (Hilmar Jensson, Andrew D'Angelo, Chris Speed, Jim Black)
30 April 2008 @ The Stone

short take: Andrew D'Angelo still kicks ass.

(Also: he is selling t-shirts with a CT scan of his brain on them. I bought one.)

Making Music: Frederic Rzewski (with Stephen Drury and Opus 21)
01 May 2008 @ Zankel Hall

short take: Steve Ben Israel owns "Attica."

Mohair Time Warp with Corey Dargel
8 May 2008 @ Joe's Pub

short takes: Corey's irresistible songs are even subtler than you think. Don't believe William Brittelle when he claims to be out of his fucking mind.

Redhooker, Build, and Oliphant
13 May 2008 @ Lit Lounge

short take: Three new-to-me indie classical bands with three very different approaches (saturated, limpid, refractory) to building textural music.

Earful

Sweet Jeebus, Ethan, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. Especially when that something is a five-part, feature-screenplay-length essay on the original nerdcore pianist, Lennie Tristano, and his musical progeny.

I just read the the whole thing in one sitting, at my computer. I do not recommend this approach. Fercrissakes, print the damn thing out (and reduce the font size or you risk exhausting your paper supply). Only go back to the machine when you need to listen to one of the musical examples. Reading that much text on a computer screen bites, so you'll want to take the dead-tree option instead -- but you do actually need to read the whole thing. Yeah, all five parts. It is absolutely worth it -- the piece is provocative, insightful, well-argued, and very entertaining to read, although many of you will find much to disagree with in there, I am sure.

Iverson doesn't flinch from the issues of race and identity that are inexorably entwined in any discussion of Tristano, Konitz, and Marsh & co. -- even when you're not talking about that, you're conspicuously not talking about it, right? So I'm throwing the comments here open for discussion of Mr. Iverson's treatise and related issues. All I ask is that you kindly read the whole thing -- yes, dammit, all 18,000 words -- before commenting.

I may or may not have more to say at a later date, time permitting. Thing is, I was never much of a Tristano-head, despite the sincere efforts of some of my piano teachers. And Warne Marsh's playing, however impressive, has always felt very "inside baseball" to me -- not sure I've ever encountered a bona fide Marsh fan who wasn't a saxophonist. Lee Konitz I like a great deal, as does most everyone, but I am especially partial to his musical activities since 1990 or so. So I'm going to turn over the floor to the people who have a stronger emotional connection to (and more detailed knowledge of) these players than I do.

I will say, though, that in light of this discussion, I think it might be interesting to compare 1955's Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh side-by-side with the criminally underappreciated Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer recordings of the mid-sixties -- two extremely contrasting approaches to twisting, sinewy eighth-note lines and double-barreled counterpoint.

Gravity on me never let me down

Did y'all catch Matana Roberts being interviewd on WNYC's Soundcheck last week? It's a good interview, with some nice commentary on her recent CD The Chicago Project. If you missed the broadcast, you can listen here.

During the interview, the seemingly inevitable "women in jazz" question came up. This isn't really a topic that lends itself to radio-friendly soundbite answers -- Matana rightly points out that there are a lot of first-tier female horn players on the jazz scene right now, but for the more fully-realized version of her thoughts on gender and music, you should check her new video blog -- I am not yet ready to use the word "vlog" in earnest.

Yes, the video is split into four quadrants of Warholian colors -- if that bugs you, you can always, you know, avert your eyes and listen to the words.

Matana's new (or new to me, at least) drummerless trio GRACE (Gabriel Guerrero, piano; Kevin Tkacz, bass) is at the Jazz Gallery on May 31.

Also at the Jazz Gallery, this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday -- Henry Threadgill's ZOOID, a sextet that was first unveiled on the 2001 disc Up Popped The Two Lips. The band still features guitarist Liberty Ellman and cellist Dana Leong, but the 2008 edition adds a few new players to the mix, including the fearsome Stomu Takeishi on electric bass.

If you're not planning on catching this gig, I'm honestly not sure why you are reading my blog.

Nice place to visit

An Italian man who was trying to visit his American girlfriend was denied entry, then denied the right to return to Rome, and instead locked up in a Virginia prison for 10 days without charge or access to a lawyer.

Though citizens of those nations do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

[…]

Ms. Cooper said that at the airport, when she begged to know what was happening to Mr. Salerno, an agent told her, “You know, he should try spending a little more time in his own country.”

Another agent eventually told her to go home because Mr. Salerno was being detained as an asylum-seeker.

[…]

Ten days after he landed in Washington, Mr. Salerno was still incarcerated, despite efforts by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and two former immigration prosecutors hired by the Coopers.

[…]

Luis Paoli, a lawyer hired by the Coopers, said there was no limit on detention while waiting for an asylum interview. But even after officials agreed the asylum issue had been a mistake, Mr. Salerno was not released.

America, fuck yeah.

[via Atrios]

I got questions the kind that got no clues

Mike McGinnis has questions. Do you have answers?

1) What things do you think are important to teach in regards to improvisation and more specifically jazz improvisation?

2) What is jazz vocabulary?

3) Is jazz vocabulary important?

4) Why is jazz vocabulary important or not important?

5) Should it be taught?

6) If yes, how do you teach it?

7) If yes, how do you learn it?

8) If no, why not?

9) Is teaching something different than learning something?

10) Or if you have learned something yourself can you save a student time or increase progress by showing them methods to learn something that you had to figure out yourself?

11) If vocabulary is important... whose vocabulary? Everyone's? Just certain people's? (Louis Armstrong, Hawk, Bird, Miles, Trane, etc.) What about when a student encounters harmonic or rhythmic patterns in newer music that a particular vocabulary doesn't fit with?

12) If vocabulary is not important, what is important?

13) Why is it important to teach this other thing (something other than "vocabulary")?

14) How is it learned?

15) How do you teach it?

Mike originally circulated this questionnaire to a handful of musicians (including myself) via email. I asked if he wouldn't mind my sharing it with the blog and he said "sure." If you have any thoughts on any of this, please weigh in in comments.