...been on a real Blue Note bender since around Christmas. Picking up a nice selection of ‘80s McMaster transfers and Connoisseur series pressings. NP: Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – The Big Beat Label: Blue Note – CDP 7 46400 2 Format: CD, Album, Reissue Country: US Released: 1987 Genre: Jazz Style: Hard Bop Bass – Jymie Merritt Drums – Art Blakey Piano – Bobby Timmons Tenor Saxophone – Wayne Shorter Trumpet – Lee Morgan Recorded March, 6 1960 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Just like sitting at the piano stool gives you an entirely different piano sound than any recording, sitting within a string quartet is also a unique musical experience Chamber music was originally composed for the musicians in their parlors, in their homes. Not for the concert hall with an audience in rows of seats. Not for the church.
Peter Brotzmann Tentet: American Landscapes 1 & 2 Full band from 2007 with it's first pass at music without charts Times are transposed on the 2 volumes / part 1 showing 52:44 while part 2 is showing 43:39 on the disc while the packaging is the opposite Both were recorded live in 2006 and released in 2007 on Okkadisk It took me years to enter this world of freely improvised music from this large ensemble. I loved the band when I first heard them and saw them live twice - to this day the best 2 concerts I’ve ever seen of any type of music ever. I was initially irritated when they dropped the written charts, Hamid Drake left and was replaced by Nilssen-Love. Still 2 powerhouse drummers and I now worship all of the recordings of the awe-inspiring Tentet where they just play off each other. Like nothing in this world. The later recordings are even better but this pair are worth hearing. The drums don’t come through like they would on the great 3 Nights in Oslo Box or on the last release Love, Walk, Sleep. Since they are no more, maybe we’ll get some more archival releases but I’m glad we have what we have. With: Ken Vandermark Mats Gustafsson Joe McPhee Johannes Bauer Per-Ake Holmlander Fred Lonberg-Holm Kent Kessler Michael Zerang Paal Nilsson-Love
Personally, I can't imagine anyone not being moved by Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15, that's just one of the most intensely emotionally moving piece of music in the Western canon, or the original string sextet version of Schoneberg's Transfigured Night (not a quartet, but the sound is similar), or Schubert's Death and the Maiden -- a lot of composers seem to have done some of their most nakedly emotional work in the format. For something completely different, I love contemporary, maybe @Kevin Davis would be intrigued by John Luther Adams' The Wind in High Places is an incredible string quartet exploiting natural harmonics and open strings that's been recorded beautifully by the Jack Quartet. I don't know if that would be @Kevin Davis' cup of tea, but you're right, the range of music written for the format is basically the range of music.
It wasn't meant to be a flip dismissal, and I never like to put hard limits on what I will and will not listen to (keep in mind this whole conversation snowballed from a minor sticking point on a record I really like), only an observation that seems to reflect a consistent trend in my tastes. I have certainly never actively sought out music of this variety in any detail, and am open to having my ears swayed (I'll check out some of the stuff you mentioned later tonight to see if my ears process it any differently), but I am being honest about my circumstantial experience.
Beethoven's 15th is long, about 45 minutes in all, but the famous third movement, Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, which he wrote after think he was going to die from some kind of stomach infection or something, is just emotionally intense.
Just to add to what ATR said, Bartok String Quartet #4 is relatively short (20-25 min or so) and sounds like something Robert Fripp listened to very closely before composing some classic King Crimson works like Lark's Tongues 1 & 2 and other angular pieces in their catalog. Shostakovich String Quartet #8 is a particularly intense work even for a composer who doesn't shy away from revealing his inner torment in his music. The outburst of the 2nd movement will surely make an impact on you - I know it did for me! Other beautiful works worth spending time with are Debussy's lone String Quartet and Schubert's String Quintet in C (obviously not a quartet but close enough).
It's been released on cd in the US (1989) and in Japan and Europe. Discogs shows these releases. Grant Green - Talkin' About It was also released on cd in the Larry Young Mosaic set.
I didn't take it as being flip. I took it as not having listened to much chamber music and it could be that you just don't like the sound of a string ensemble. The recording that Oliver Lake did with Flux is excellent. I would recommend in general anything recorded by Arditti Quartet, they have an old recording on Gramavision with Beethoven's Grosse Fugue along with some more contemporary compositions. Arditti String Quartet* - Arditti A personal favorite of mine is the LasSalle Quartet selection of 20th century music here:Lutosławski* • Penderecki* • Cage* • Mayuzumi* - Lasalle Quartet - String Quartets . Ligeti also wrote two string quartets which appear on a disc with string duos, also played by Arditti, György Ligeti / Arditti String Quartet* - String Quartets And Duets , and the 'ultimate' in 20th century quartets are the Carters on Nonesuch Elliott Carter - The Composers Quartet - String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 . With music that you're not sure is your thing I agree that youtube is the way to go. Have fun.
Don’t forget the Debussy, Ravel, and Berg SQs! Also, I wouldn’t say that Bartók’s SQs are completely ‘based in folk music’ per se. I think that’s one of the influences behind them, but they were written in a modern musical language to be certain. Like, for example, it has been suggested that Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 had been influenced by the Second Viennese School, which I do hear Schoenberg and co. in the writing. Janáček’s SQs are also quite different than Bartók’s. The language of Janáček, while rooted in Czech folk music (more specifically Moravian folk music), had Modernistic tendencies, but the lyricism of Romantic music is not too far away in the writing. Other composers who wrote some fantastic SQs besides the afore mentioned composers, IMHO: Shostakovich, Martinů, Ives, Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Weinberg, David Diamond, Britten, Kurtág, Schnittke, Malipiero, and Stravinsky (although he didn’t write much in the medium, but what he did write was awesome).
I hear a lot of reverb, particularly on the piano, and sometimes it does sound like the drums are down the hall, possibly in an echo chamber--but I get the sense that this was a deliberate experiment. Sound manipulation was big in 1967. Later the producer Alan Douglas would become infamous to Hendrix fans for messing with his tapes after Jimi died. In the early '70s he also produced The Last Poets, John McLaughlin, and the experimental Hooteroll? album for Jerry Garcia and Howard Wales; but, before working with LaRoca, he'd most recently produced the sessions for Eric Dolphy's Conversations and Iron Man. I think he might have been keen on trying some unusual treatments that would make the record sound more psychedelic or avant-garde. The echo really helps give Chick Corea's piano on "Bliss" an eerie, haunting quality. It even reminds me a bit of the Halloween score.
Good stuff Fright! It’s possible because the drums are so overtly echo-y. I like the song Sin Street best.
I saw this band in the Village in NYC in 1979. I think there were fewer than 200 people. One of the best concerts I ever saw.
Playing this album yet again: Pat Metheny with Charlie Haden & Billy Higgins: Rejoicing (Japan SHM-CD)
Only play this mint vinyl version very very occasionally, but as soon as I put it on it blows away all other versions. The detail compared to even the EMI master is staggering. Makes a classic album even more classic. Humbled.
It was great! Really fantastic. The title track, in particular, had some mesmerizing moments, especially when Jaki Byard came in towards the end with his improvisation. This album is a bit difficult to track down, but if you can find one for a reasonable price, jump on it!
I just got hipped to the Onyx Collective, don't know how I missed this profile in the NYT this summer: For Experimental Jazz Group Onyx Collective, the Only Rule Is ‘No Rules’ , never mind missing the buzz around NY, but I've been kind of out of it the last couple of years. Streaming Lower East Side Suite Part One this evening and loving it. Does the LES proud. Membership I guess is a real free floating collective, with a music and visual arts vibe. I'm going to have to see these guys perform. Oh to be young again.
Bill Frisell: Unspeakable Apparently, Frisell won a Grammy for this album (not that this in any way, shape, or form means it’s a good album), but it’s nice to see him get the recognition and, as it turns out, it’s a superb album.
Though this will probably sound callous I don't really mean this to be but why would the childhood home of a musician be of any historical significance?
