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Zorn List Digest          Sunday, May 3 1998          Volume 02 : Number 352



In this issue:
-
       Re: David's incredibly detailed account of befuddlement at Steve's review
       CDs anyone? also: Sonic Youth/Milford Graves  and: Masada
       Re: Books (was David's incredibly ...)
       john zorn's attitude
       Re: Victo festival
       Tim Berne

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 03:46:21 -0400
From: Steve Smith <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: David's incredibly detailed account of befuddlement at Steve's review

David Newgarden wrote:

> Given your intellect and diverse tastes, and with all your analyzing and
> discussing of these 3 Mitchell pieces, I'm surprised that you're so
> baffled by them, and that you're vexed by the brevity of the program
> notes(!?)  It's one thing to not enjoy a concert [snip]

Hmmm, I think something must have gotten lost in the translation, David!  I'm
certain I was clear that I enjoyed the concert (if I hadn't I guarantee I
wouldn't have written about it for the Zornlist or anoyone else), and that in
fact there's no chance I would ever have missed it.  I don't recall writing
anywhere that I dismissed the concert completely, and I'm a bit taken aback
that that's how you read it.

Also, I'm far from unaware of the "other" side of Roscoe's output and have
explored much of it; the particular album of the repertoire in question was
one that I had missed (being from Texas and all), but one of the few.  I
wasn't exactly vexed by the overall lack of program notes, either; it's just
that lacking the identification of what Roscoe was aiming at in "LRG," all I
could go on was the actual sound events that comprised the piece, and those
events did not add up to a satisfying piece of absolute music to this one
listener at that particular time.

I think even given the notes printed on the sleeve of the album, to which you
eventually refer in your own overview of the music, I would have had a better
idea of how best to frame my reactions to "LRG."  Roscoe's "snapshots" analogy
is well suited (your own "slideshow" analogy even more so) to what we heard.
Seen in that light the piece in theory "works" just fine, which still does not
make it in retrospect a pleasurable listening experience for me.

> LRG seemed to me to be a study of timbre, texture, articulation, tension,
> 'flow', 'space' 'sound'  [snip]  Stripped of melody, harmony, rhythm,
> tempo, polyphony  (or 'ensemble work' as you put it), the music's like a
> magnifying glass or an x-ray isolating particular musical aspects.

A very illuminating description, which I can understand and appreciate.  (You
always were an outstanding reviewer at CMJ!)  I wish I'd felt as positively
about the music of "LRG" as you but there's not a lot I can do about that.
But you provided the reasoned rebuttal I'd hoped for.

> I can dig your comparison to Tony Conrad, focusing on the texture of
> Conrad's
> violin bowing...

No, no... I only compared "S II Examples" to Conrad (and Feldman), both for
the emphasis on texture and for the smeared, slurred, indeterminite tonalities
and near-constant legato phrasing.  "LRG" didn't remind me of Conrad at all.

> I would think of very different comparisons to ballpark it  -- How about:
> Giancinto Scelsi solo instrument compositions
> Braxton For Alto Saxophone
> Zorn  Classic Guide To Strategy
> solo Derek Bailey

Now these I can see as analogous in a variety of ways to the "LRG"
experience.  It also opens up a whole 'nuther can of worms... the nature of
the true relationship between improvisation and composition.  In each of the
examples you cite - all music I know and admire - there is virtually no
audible difference between the music identified as being in one or the other
category.  The arrival of aleatoric music and extended technique in modern
composition rendered the two performance practices indistinguishable at
times.  A piece by any number of modern composers can either be structured so
loosely and so open to interpretation as to sound like an improvisation each
and every time it is played, or so rigorously and with such technical detail
that it may sound like improvisation but can be more or less exactly
duplicated by any performer with the requisite skills.

Perhaps the only consistent element in composition from ancient times to the
present is the presence of some form of physically stated preconception as to
what the piece is intended to be prior to the moment in which it is being
played and heard, whether we are talking about notes on staves, elaborately
rendered pictographic diagrams or Braxton's "You must become the dog."  To
varying degrees the Scelsi, Zorn and Braxton examples you cite all fit this
description.

And then there is the completely free improviser such as Derek Bailey.  I
would posit that Bailey is every bit as much a composer as "fill-in-the-blank"
- - the difference being he does not preconceive his works and does not write
them down for posterity and future performance.  Those things aside, I think
Bailey places each and every note with care and precision - his music contains
a certain inevitability that I find very compelling.  (Which is certainly not
to preclude the possibility that Bailey's pieces as recorded could not be
physically transcribed and duplicated by a guitarist with the patience, skill
and craft to transcribe them from recordings, developing along the way a
notation that I suspect might look rather like "Book of Heads" by the time it
was done.)

I confess that it represents a shortcoming in my openmindedness, but I freely
admit, as a veteran of hours and hours of new music both composed and
improvised, that any knowledge of what Mitchell intended to communicate in the
composition "LRG" would have had an effect on the way I heard the music.  The
simple words "photo snapshots" (from the Mitchell notes you quote later in
your message) convey volumes.  Lacking that, I could only hear the piece with
a completely open mind -- and it was in precisely that mindset that I found
"LRG" an unsuccessful totality.

The beauty of aesthetic judgments, however, is that there are simply no
absolutes.  I *am* right about how I heard "LRG," and so *are* you.  *We* will
both agree that Roscoe Mitchell's lifework is more important than James
Horner's, yet 250 thousand people a week have outvoted both of us with their
wallets since December.  You and I see eye to eye on a great number of things
but not absolutely everything.  Would any of us want to be on a list, or a
planet, where there was complete agreement?

> I think it's very sad that you and your friends
> equate 'cerebral' with 'dislike.'

May lightning strike me if I ever in my life do this!  Remember, I'm the one
whose favorite *rock* band is King Crimson! :-)  I do think, however, that
"LRG" is not music given to naturally cause a visceral or emotional response,
and therefore cerebral (as in "we were all scratching our heads...") seemed to
be not a dig but an accurate description.  We were wondering what was going on
up there, to put it simply.

> It seems to me that your need to judge
> the piece on your specifications of 'pure music' (not to mention your
> expectations of what Leo Smith should do) is reactionary and 'moldy
> fig-ish'...

In the sense in which I used it, "pure music" does not amount to a graphic
breakdown and analysis of the music's structure -- much the opposite, in
fact.  Rather, it is the notion of hearing a piece with absolutely no
preconceived notion of what it is meant to be.  In the days of the Romantic
composers "program music" was that music which required you to know the story
or idea represented by the music in order to "understand" the piece - think
Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" or Lizst's "Les Preludes."  Yet without
knowing the storylines these pieces are quite lovely and acceptable as simply
musical compositions.

Similarly, the level of organization of notes in the typical composition of
Webern or Xenakis, to name two examples, is extraordinary, and frequently such
composers need the listener to know just what processes went into the writing
of the music to "fully" convey the depth of the piece.  Yet I find the average
Webern piece to be a beguiling and perfect little sonic gem without ever once
wanting to ponder its serial rigors, and with Xenakis I find I have a visceral
response to the sheer violence and power of the music without having to know
the mathematical schemata behind the piece's processes.

To have had a clue as to what was intended in "LRG" would have meant a better
grasp of what was unfolding before my ears.  Lacking that, all I had was the
sounds the performers were playing, and on the basis of that alone, the only
musician whose efforts I enjoyed were Lewis's.  To have found only a portion
of the piece in any way satisfying despite (or perhaps because of) all the
years of music I have absorbed and assimilated, I was left with but one
option: to state that I didn't like the piece.

But you must understand: if I call a piece unsuccessful, it is what I alone
believe.  Even if several others chimed in with agreement (and I surely
expected and even expressed a wish for rebuttals) I would never hold my
opinion to be universal truth.  Critics on whatever level and in whatever
medium, from internet mailing lists to the New York Times, perform a valuable
and necessary function in the arts world, that of fostering thought and
debate, but that hardly means that they/we/whoever speak universal truths.

Your "moldy fig" analogy is faulty in that I didn't express what the music
"should have been," as the moldy figs demanded that bop was unsuccessful
because it wasn't swing (to make things simple).  If I'd demanded that it be
an Art Ensemble set and declared it unsuccessful on the grounds that it was
not an Art Ensemble set then you'd be correct.  But again, I think you wrote
this under the impression that I didn't know of Mitchell's work outside the
Art Ensemble.

> It's pretty amusing (and a feather in Mitchell's cap) for a confused
> audience member to walk out muttering at him in 1998... It makes me
> chuckle that you find this guy noteworthy and that a (sympathetic) nitwit
> in the audience yelled 'Shut Up! ' about 10 times louder than the
> mutterer. (Mitchell's liner notes to the live Noonah album includes an
> amazing description of his 'battle' with the audience). Did you, too, ask
> for your money back?

David, this paragraph, more than anything, makes me concerned that you misread
my original posting or only saw fragments of it cited in the replies of
others.  I found the "protester" noteworthy for precisely the same reason you
did, no more, no less.  And to suggest that I might have wanted my money back
after reading what I actually wrote is frankly preposterous, but let me state
it again very clearly:  I disliked "LRG," I liked the remaining three pieces
(including the final collage which included "LRG") very much, I felt grandly
honored to be in attendance at such an extraordinary musical event, and had I
paid five times as much for my ticket I would still have been quite happy with
the sum total of the experience.  If you surmised anything other than that
then I am a shitty journalist.

> If you require some legit critical nudging, I'll recommend checking out
> John Litweiler (The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958)

This book for me was grad school, master's degree level, between two covers.
I've read it roughly every two years since around 1986.  For all free jazz
novices there is no better companion than this book.  (Doctoral candidates
will proceed from there to Ekkehard Jost's "Free Jazz" and John Corbett's
"Extended Play.")

> Litweiler has a lot to say about Mitchell
> and devotes two pages to these specific pieces (much more enthusiastically
> and eloquently than me). Here are a couple of excerpts:
>
> "While the twentieth century is the era of percussion compositions, from
> Varese to Stockhausen and Wuorinen, they all seem naive tours de force
> next to the immense skill and finesse of The Maze...  a startling
> composition...The Maze is a rich chiaroscuro of clearly defined, mobile
> wood and metal textures, with a great elegance of detail.

"The Maze" was a marvelous composition, as I stated, but "Ionisation" is no
naive tour-de-force.  I agree with Litweiler's sentiment regarding "The Maze"
but also find it unfortunate in the extreme that he has to praise it by
damning its European predecessors.  Smells like liner notes...  Furthermore,
it's apples and oranges... I doubt Varese ever anticipated writing for a
facepainted musician improvising on a pair of crutches.

> L-R-G is an existentialist statement, a condition of life, a state of
> being; it is Mitchell's most intimate revelation."

Wishy washy, namby pamby, the kind of prose usually ascribed to "apologists."
It's liner note puffery, that's all.  It says nothing substantive, and poetic
language can't hide that.  Your own few lines of description told me more
about the music of "LRG" than this little quasi-haiku did.

David, I really think you must have misread what I posted.  Let me know if you
want me to send it again (it's one of the few reviews I've ever posted that
I've felt compelled to save a copy of), and by all means, for the sake of the
others on the list, let's take this to private e-mail if there's anything left
to debate.

Steve Smith
[e-mail]





- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 13:55:07 PDT
From: "Scott Handley" <[e-mail]>
Subject: CDs anyone? also: Sonic Youth/Milford Graves  and: Masada

This was mentioned not too long ago, but WHEN and WHERE are the
Youth/Graves shows going to be?

And the last I heard, the prospects for the masada box coming out this
year were pretty good.  Anyone know the news on this?

The below might be considered SPAM, and for that I'm sorry, but this is
semi-urgent.  Go no further if you do not wish to see what I'm
moving.....


*********************************************************

I have CDs for sale.  All prices inc. shipping.  E.mail me.
Miles Davis Quintet, each $7, whole set $30, all condition very good
NEFERTITI
ESP
SORCERER
FILLES DE KILIMANJARO
MILES SMILES

Ornette Coleman: BEAUTY IS A RARE THING, 6 CD box, very good cond.,
      some writing on bottom of box; $54

Tribe called Quest: MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS; $7, very good

Peter Brotzmann / Hamid Drake / Mahmoud Gania : The WELS Concert
      mint cond., 70 min, $12

Loren Mazzacane Connors: CALLODEN HARVEST,  solo elec guitar, '97
      cracked case, but not bad; $6

FUSHITSUSHA: Double live (PSF 15/16) 2cds, barely played, mint, $31

I would need a check by this Thursday.  The goods would go out Friday.
No bull.  Excellent deal if you buy the entire lot (plus I'll throw in
Masada's ALEF or Azonic's HALO for an additional $4).





______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 11:32:59 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Caleb Deupree)
Subject: Re: Books (was David's incredibly ...)

At 03:46 AM 5/2/98 -0400, Steve Smith wrote:
>
>> If you require some legit critical nudging, I'll recommend checking out
>> John Litweiler (The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958)
>
>This book for me was grad school, master's degree level, between two covers.
>I've read it roughly every two years since around 1986.  For all free jazz
>novices there is no better companion than this book.  (Doctoral candidates
>will proceed from there to Ekkehard Jost's "Free Jazz" and John Corbett's
>"Extended Play.")

I'm always interested in books which discuss interesting contemporary
music, and I've already requested these at our local library.  I'd like to
know if there are other books which might also be pertinent to jazz or
other varieties.  In particular, I've been seeing a lot of references to
Jacques Attali's book _Noise: _The_Political_Economy_of_Music_, and I'd be
interested in some opinions on this, if there are any.

- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 12:12:05 -0400
From: ROLAND JOST <[e-mail]>
Subject: john zorn's attitude

>Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 13:55:40 -0400
>From: Glenn Lea <[e-mail]>
>Subject: Masada Snit

> =

>
>> For what we pay for his
>> >CDs, and how many of them I'm sure a great deal of us own....its real=
ly
>> >starting to make me wonder..

>Oh please.  You buy a CD, you have the CD.  End of transaction.  Buy man=
y,
you
>have many.    Ditto.  No artist "owes" you anything further.  =


first of all, i'm not in the u.s. of a. - so getting a freebie is out of
the question for me.
however, you're right, no artist "owes" us anything. *and* i don't owe
anything to any artist.
john zorn (who's releasing albums at a rate of about 100 new ones a week)=

would be
well advised to remember who's bread he eats.

i mean, i do religiously buy every album that mr. zorn releases. never
faltering once.
the least i (or in this case, his fans in the u.s. of a.) can expect, is
not being treated
like shit by mr. zorn. i've seen a few of his gigs and one (about the onl=
y
one for that
matter) thing that is getting on my nerves with him, is his punk attitude=

(i like punk,
just not from mr. zorn). i've seen him screaming at the audience, trying =
to
kick
journalists etc. (o.k. if it were the sex pistols - they're a tired old
bunch of farts anyway).

i will buy john zorn's albums in future as well, but even my patience is
ending one
day, be it from the sheer mass of albums he releases (and i ought to buy)=

or from the
way he's behaving himself towards us (his fans). mr. zorn, there's lots a=
nd
loads of
good music out there and other artists would like to get your share of th=
e
sales.

cheers
roland

- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 13:40:59 -0400
From: Dora Agiotis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Victo festival

I am going to the Victoriaville Festival as well.  I live near it too, so it won't be hard getting there.  Yeah, I think the Zorn/Patton?Mori show
will be very interesting.  I can't wait.
hope to see you there.
Dora Agiotis


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 14:44:34 EDT
From: Nastifyer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Tim Berne

Hello, I will be seeing Tim Berne's Paraphrase tonight at chief Ike's Mambo
Room here in Washington D.C. I'm a big fan of both his playing and his
compositional work, however I haven't bought anything of his since he was
dropped by JMT. I figure he'll be selling some of his new screwgun stuff at
the concert and I was wondering if anybody had any recommendations. I would
buy it all if I had the money, but my funds are limited. One of the things
that most attracts me to Berne's work, aside from the excellent music, is the
recording quality of his releases. From the CIMP discussion I've gathered that
because many of his recordings are done live, he has moved away from the close
miking techniques that were used on his earlier recordings. I'm thinking
specifically of Joe Ferla's excellent engineering and recording on Nice View.
Does anyone know what techniques are used for the live recordings. The last
three Bloodcounts on JMT, which I own all sound excellent, so I guess what I'm
asking is do the screwgun recordings sound as great as his older stuff.
                    Eric Gordon

- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #352
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