Listenin' to Jazz and Conversation

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lonson, Sep 1, 2016.

  1. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    NP The Jazz Crusaders at the Lighthouse (Pacific Jazz) silver on blue stereo label
    A little upbeat happy music to contrast Survivor Suite.
     
  2. Rhubarb Records R/R 103 - Mike Barone Big Band "Metropole" - rec. 2006 - Engineer: John Stother

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  3. Stu02

    Stu02 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    I spent some time comparing Both the Free Jazz and Perpetual Frontier books. I have played guitar and i sing in a choir but all amateur and self taught. Given that , it seemed Free Jazz was more likely the better book given my limited knowledge.. i find when I read about a jazz musicians approach even as a non musician I still find it helpful and enriching. I am sure I dont get all of what Braxton is about but understanding he has his own idiosyncratic language is a helpful starting point - for instance. I once surprised a musician friend by being able to recognize modal jazz on 9 or 10 samples of music so I have some inherent listening abilities however untrained which likely helps. Plus ( though we have debated opposite sides previously) I find music extremely connective and reachable on a purely emotional level as well so not fully getting the intellectual underpinnings is a bit less crucial from a listener who is obsessed with the more primal personal emotional aspects , some of which the player may not be aware of themselves.

    I am most curious myself how much I will get from this book ....
     
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  4. Discovery Records DS 790 - Barone - Burghardt Orchestra " Maiden Switzerland" - rec. 1976 (Zürich) - Engineer: Rolf Borrman

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  5. Bradd

    Bradd Now’s The Time

    Location:
    Chester, NJ
    It’s been extensively discussed on the Tone Poet aka BN thread.
     
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  6. Mister Charlie

    Mister Charlie "Music Is The Doctor Of My Soul " - Doobie Bros.

    Location:
    Aromas, CA USA
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    1976 Phil Woods orchestral jazz with a Latin beat. Best song IMO: Jesse, Janis Ian's tune.
     
  7. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I think Braxton's writing is often barely penetrable, and he rarely uses direct, commonly shared, lucid language, when seemingly unnecessarily self-created, complex and oddly idiosyncratic usage will do.

    You have to really unpack his, dense and I think unnecessarily "inventive" language to get to the ideas underneath (which, to the extent that I have worked to penetrate them, don't usually seem anywhere near as daunting as they appear on the surface of his language). I wish he'd just spit it out already.

    Reading through his composition notes and going through albums in particular his '76 Moers solo performance, helped me enter his work, which I never really could before reading the stuff. But I'm not someone who has delved super deeply into the world of Braxton.

    I find the two bookd kind of opposites in a way in their type, which is why I asked, because I wonder how others read them.

    Free Jazz is a book analyzing specific music as performed and recorded by a bunch of major free jazz figures. It's history and criticism and analysis

    Perpetual Frontier is a book about how one might go about playing "free." It's more like a "how to think like a chef" cookbook. It's not about what went on in specific recorded performances, or about music history.

    But I found it very helpful and thought provoking for me as a listener. I felt like after reading it, and even despite all my years of familiarity with "free" music, I understood the nature of free music and how it is played and the choices musicians might make and what to listen for when people are performing it it better than I did before.

    With Jost's book, I found his breakdown of Unit Structures fascinating, his talk about Ornette Coleman's intonation interesting. But it is much more specific about some classic examples, more of a history and analysis book.

    Perpetual Frontier is, in some ways, a little more like Aaron Copland's What to Listen For in Music (although it's written for players not listeners), than it is a history or breakdown of specific performances. And it helps me listen into the multiway aspects of every new performance I encounter.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2021
  8. Ahh I see. Hopefully I didnt misinterprete you too much. I belong to the "old figs" generation and I dont find access to the younger people you have named here. Time will show if they remain and are remembered by the next generation. Times run fast as do tastes.
     
  9. Which one? I have the '69 live and this has a different cover.
     
  10. StarThrower62

    StarThrower62 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Syracuse, NY
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    1957 Bethlehem

    Just got this one yesterday. It's been on my Mingus to get list forever. I forgot Bill Evans is on this album. Also some great alto playing by Shafi Hadi.
     
  11. Stu02

    Stu02 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    You referred to yourself as a musician in a previous post ( pls correct me if I am wrong) and if so I am not sure you can still remain in the ‘listener’ category you just placed yourself in. Maybe I am wrong but are you able to completely switch off the musician knowledge and simply be a listener. I may try Perpetual Frontier but as you describe it as “ how one may go about playing free” it is of less interest to me as a non musician reader.

    Though it’s possible I guess if it is written more openly for non muscician readers , that could be an interesting perspective...
     
  12. Stu02

    Stu02 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Braxton... I am not sure why I am drawn to his music, but I am.

    I agree with you , my initial foray into learning more about his language ( though basic - my understanding was), did help me look at it from a layer I had not before, and I definitely want to read more about free jazz because of that.

    However , your frustration described above re his language , may be precisely because you are a musician and thus feel more compelled to understand how it works, whereas for me I just enjoyed the wild ride he took me on without the musical theory baggage .

    I am not saying total ignorance is the best path forward , and I do believe knowledge absolutely enriches our understanding of art , but perhaps a little ignorance can be like that sweet spot in darts. Before you finish your third pint and you are alert but relaxed...

    ( just before one becomes useless..:))
     
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  13. ATR

    ATR Senior Member

    Location:
    Baystate
    Not to butt in here but Joe wrote this book for everyone, not just musicians or people interested in musical theory and procedures. I don't want to speak for Joe, and I do know him personally, but I'll say about him that he simultaneously wants to demystify free music and elucidate how deep it is. In other words, they're not just making it up as they go along. As George Lewis has said, the one thing that musicians and listeners alike have in common is that they are both improvisers. Of course having said that you may or may not find the book to your liking.
     
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  14. Stu02

    Stu02 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Thanks ATR , That is great to hear, I will definitely pick it up then
     
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  15. dennis the menace

    dennis the menace Forum Veteran

    Location:
    Montréal
    Thanks, you just got me, found a copy on eBay. Hoping it's as good a reading as Val Wilmer's As Serious As Your Life.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2021
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  16. ATR

    ATR Senior Member

    Location:
    Baystate
    Different focus and different generations. Wilmer’s book is more about who these people are/were. Morris’s book is about how and what their music is. Both good to know. Enjoy.
     
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  17. frightwigwam

    frightwigwam Talented Amateur

    Location:
    Oregon
    Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers/ Child's Dance (1973)

    Blakey flirts with spiritual jazz; it sounds like the band had been immersed in their Coltrane and Tyner records. The title track is credited to Ramon Morris on the YT page, although it sounds like they just lifted Donald Byrd's "Kofi"--which wasn't released until 1995, but maybe Morris or Blakey heard it some other way. "Song for a Lonely Woman" also seems to be based on "500 Miles High"; we probably could thank Stanley Clarke for that.


    "Child's Dance"

    Art Blakey - drums ; Woody Shaw - trumpet ; Ramon Morris - tenor sax ; Manny Boyd - flute ; George Cables - piano, electric piano ; Stanley Clarke - bass ; Ray Mantilla - congas.
     
  18. Beatnik_Daddyo'73

    Beatnik_Daddyo'73 Music Addiction Personified

    ...dredging through a long week of work to get to the promised land, a week off :D. This is hitting the spot.

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    Rahsaan Roland Kirk ‎– Bright Moments

    Label:
    Rhino Records (2) ‎– R2 71409
    Series:
    Atlantic Jazz Gallery
    Format:
    2 × CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered
    Country:
    US
    Released:
    28 Sep 1993



    Recorded live at Keystone Korner, San Francisco, California on June 8 & 9, 1973.

    This album was originally issued as Atalantic #2-907, January 9, 1974.
    ℗ 1974 © 1974 & 1993 Atlantic Recording Corp.
     
  19. inaudible

    inaudible Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York


    Immanuel Wilkins’ favorite Mingus record (I asked him in an Instagram q&a) and I’m pretty smitten with it. This is one that I hadn’t heard but it’s one of my favorite of his live records of his now. This track is a standout from his catalogue.
     
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  20. btf1980

    btf1980 Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    The Complete Columbia J.J. Johnson Small Group Sessions

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  21. Reid Smith

    Reid Smith Forum Resident

    Location:
    N Ky/Cincinnati
    McCoy Tyner with Ron Carter and Jack Dejohnette and some special guest..Released 2008
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    Here with Bela Fleck..maybe the title should be Guitars and a Banjo :)
     
  22. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Yeah Joe Morris book strikes me as a better, easier read for none musicians than Jost's book. Totally different books with totally different focuses but the Jost book seems more theory and technique focused. I thought it remarkably readable and valuable for a lay listener. But I'm not purely a lay listener so I wondered if I had a mistaken impression.
     
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  23. Bradd

    Bradd Now’s The Time

    Location:
    Chester, NJ
    Earlier today.

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    He is solo on part of I Want to Talk About You”. Sometimes solo saxes work and sometime they don’t but it brilliantly works here.
     
  24. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Well, that's why I asked. My mother started me with piano lessons when I was 7. While I've never been a pro musician, I have some training, I've gigged on multiple instruments, I've done sessions, I've produced other artists so I'm never sure if what I'm getting out of something is purely as a listener or something more, but my impression of Morris' book was that it was ostensibly written for practitioners but was not only completely accessible to not practitioners -- more so that a lot of books on music I've read that weren't ostensibly written for practitioners or by practitioners -- and valuable as a guide to, sort of, how to listen.
     
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  25. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Yeah, I'm a musician, but not a pro, and I have some training but not lots of training. My frustration with Braxton's writing is principally as a reader. But I also spend professional decades as a writer and editor, so I get frustrated on that level too. In terms of wanting to understand, I don't think it necessarily has to do with being a musician, I'm just the sort of person who always wants to understand, whatever it is I'm interested in. Like here on this audio forum, I'm not an electrical engineer or an audio engineer, but I've read audio engineering texts, modified a lot of my audio gear, I just always want to understand. That's my urge -- to understand. That's the way I enjoy things. And learning is what I think I enjoy most.
     

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