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From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest)
To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com
Subject: Zorn List Digest V2 #555
Reply-To: zorn-list
Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com
Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com
Precedence: bulk
Zorn List Digest Wednesday, December 16 1998 Volume 02 : Number 555
In this issue:
-
Re: Penguin Guide/IMPROV
Re: Penguin Guide
Re: Improv/Penguin (state subsidies)
Re: Improv/Penguin
Penguin/Improv/How Does Zorn Pay for It
Re: Penguin Guide
Re: Free Jazz
dragon blue/ thanks to the list
question about bible launcher
Re: Free Jazz (semi-longish)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 19:24:39 EST
From: IOUaLive1@aol.com
Subject: Re: Penguin Guide/IMPROV
> I totally disagree with your assessment of the free community (lack of
> stagnation). I think that the freshness is not there anymore (except if you
> identify freshness with amateurism), and performances are becoming
catalogues
> of cliches (inherited from the glorious hours of the genre). [....]
> I don't think there is anything wrong with a genre reaching saturation
(hey!
> bebop did not even last 20 years), what is wrong is the rosy message that
> improv is defying the laws of thermodynamics and keeps on getting younger
> and younger.
These statements seem to be a bit close-minded, and also seem to indicate that
the person has heard *everything* thats happening these days in improvised
music. What about Joe Schmoe, who gigs every Thursday night down at Bar X.
Have you heard anything John Dough has done lately? I'm naming people that
dont exist, while others have made references to people actually making
records, but the point is still the same. I mean, have you heard it ALL?? Do
you think its possible that you could hear something improvised today and
think "wow, this is fresh"? And if so, would you feel better classifying this
as a new genre of music....
There are still *great things* happening in improvised music today. Perhaps
you just havent heard these things. Of course, its all opinions when talking
about whats "good"; far be it from me to cast my opinions in a matter-of-fact
way.
Jody
- -
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 23:25:01 -0300
From: Rick Lopez <bb10k@velocity.net>
Subject: Re: Penguin Guide
Tom Pratt wrote:
>
> Well *are* they upholding a tradition?
How the hell should I know?
> More options? Not if you limit yourself
First, I lurk mainly because I have no time for *this*. (not being
smarmy, just busier than a cat trying to cover shit on a marble floor.)
"Not if you limit yourself"-- Well I'm not. So I'm not sure who you're
talking to. I don't disgree that some do. So what.
Improv has more options. Less stringent rules. More places to go. I
never said, and never would, that there aren't some who plumb the same
places relentlessly.
> I'm pretty confident I won't buy another
> Parker/Guy/Lytton CD for instance and it might take some talking into to buy any
> more solo Bailey (I love both of them to death of course).
Personally, I'm obssessive about certain voices, and I need to
understand them, and so I would PREFER to hear every note, for instance,
that Ms. Crispell plays. They need not be all sublime. I want the
clunkers too. It's the individual style/voice/sound-world I'm after. I'm
a focus-down type. I want in.
> If free improv professes the concept of freedom of all pre-established structure
Says who? I thougt it just meant you needn't follow the rules of others,
that you can make your own rules, parameters, style choices, note-combos
rhythmic feels, etc., in addition to plundering all that's gone before.
> why is it that so much of it sounds alike?
Why is it that so much of it sounds different?? Depends on what you're
listening to.
> It's because there is a form that has
> been established. (I like Patrice's Bailey quote) There are cliches. There are
> pre-established ideas which are engrained concepts of what free-improv *should* be.
I don't disagree with this. I don't think everyone resorts to them
though. I think you're batching here. (I *think* you are, okay? I'm
probably wrong, so don't bother correcting me:-)
> It makes it pretty obvious why groups like AMM were/are really important - while
> much of their music was similar to itself, it was nothing like anything else going
> on.
Sure, but I hear *lots* of folks carving out these places.
(I also, in agreement with what you sayeth before, know that many are
those who carve out the same big black hole that everyone else has been
scraping around in. I just don't get the tone that makes me feel you're
saying this is the rule.) Or is me misinterpreting? (right, I probably
am, so don't...)
> I agree with Jon Abbey that there's some great improv happening now (and I would
> second the handful of his suggestions that I've heard), but what makes them
> important is that they are new uses of free improvisation outside of what's now
> become traditional.
Why sure. Then we agree.
So I don't think for a second that just because some disc says "FREE!
I'M FREE!!" means it's going to be transformative. Quite the contrary. I
think that improv is the furthest a musician can go, and so also the
most dangerous as far as what happens when they get there. So I'm picky
as hell. I get in these zones where the only thing I can stand for a two
month stretch is Cecil Taylor, and get everything else the fuck away
from me please. It's just how I operate. I've really only heard my
discog subjects and their side-people for the past two-plus years now.
I'm also working steadily toward the complete Cecil, with sidebars to
Malik, Braxton, and that's prety much it. I also just heard, by default,
AALY Trio w/ Vandermark's Hidden in The Stomach last month and that's
had me buzzing wildly. But I *often* get turned onto similar things that
just do not connect with me one witt. It's like my temporary focus-spots
do double-duty as blinders or something.
Anyway, there's a great deal of exceptional improv in the world. And
tons of shit. But we can say that about any realm.
Hey boys, that's all for me.
What Penguins?
Thanks,
RL
- --
Marilyn Crispell, Susie Ibarra, Sam Rivers, Matthew Shipp, David S.
Ware, and Reggie Workman discographies--Samuel Beckett Eulogy--Baseball
& the 10,000 Things--Time Stops--LOVETORN--HARD BOIL--etc., at:
http://www.velocity.net/~bb10k
***Very Various Music For Sale:
***http://www.velocity.net/~bb10k/4SALE.html
- -
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 19:30:01 PST
From: "Scott Handley" <c123018@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Improv/Penguin (state subsidies)
Just a tidbit:
I had the opportunity to talk to Evan Parker once, in a group, and he
said that the advent of the Euro had been and would likely continue
making things tighter than they had in the past. The day before this
conversation I heard Kevin Whitehead do a public reading from NEW DUTCH
SWING, and his little mini book tour, as well as the Dutch-represented
Empty Bottle Fest, was generously underwritten by the Dutch government.
It appears gilders--at LEAST--are still flying. And I don't know if Leo
Feigin is subsidized, but god bless that mofo, among many others. Chris
Cutler too. And Tim Berne. And JZ. And anyone WITHOUT a crossover
audience.
- --s
JBivins wrote:
I suppose the Euro/U.S. thing boils down, in many cases, to a
question of
funding. As most of us know, some of the major European
labels
(like Hat)
receive state funding, and a lot of promotions/booking
organizations in
regional scenes get buttloads of grant money. I was
shocked, on
reading
Kevin Whitehead's marvellous "New Dutch Swing", just how
many
guilders
were flyin' around at one point in the 70s and 80s
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
- -
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 22:37:40 -0500
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@humansystems.com>
Subject: Re: Improv/Penguin
Tom Pratt wrote:
> the European free improvisors that pioneered the idiom
> are still around and playing while the Americans from that period seemed to
> have disappeared?
Hmm. Can Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe
Mitchell, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Milford Graves, and Andrew
Cyrille, just to grab names from immediate memory, be said to have
disappeared? It seems to me that most who are still alive (a number
which is, unfortunately, not as large as we might like) are still
quite visible and active.
- --
- ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ===== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Maryland? = <*> SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List <*> = ecto \||
|/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt ====== Comma: Voices of New Music \|
- -
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 22:39:12 -0500 (EST)
From: William York <wyork@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Penguin/Improv/How Does Zorn Pay for It
> I've always wondered how it is that JZ manages (financially, that is) his
> prodigious output and label-overseeing. More power to him.
On the Tzadik radio hour promo he says that Tzadik is non-profit, which
I suppose means they get money from somewhere (?) Or is it his money?
The money thing baffles me too, but his CDs always sell, even things
like Ganryu Island which by else wouldn't even be in most stores that I
know.
Another thing I've noticed is that less and less stuff seems to be coming
out on Avant and more and more on Tzadik. I wonder if this is part of a
plan and/or if it means anything about how the label is doing
financially. Maybe I'm thinking outloud, or does anyone have any ideas on
this?
WY
- -
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:43:54 -0500
From: Steve Smith <ssmith36@sprynet.com>
Subject: Re: Penguin Guide
Patrice L. Roussel wrote:
> We might argue on the added value of Gayle's achievements to free-jazz.
I have to admit I'm on Patrice's side here. I just can't seem to get especially
engaged by most of the Gayle I've heard. This proved somewhat problematic -
internally, of course, as I am a *professional* shill! - when I was the publicist
for the Knitting Factory, which of course feels that Gayle can do no wrong.
My own experience with live Gayle has been of a fairly inchoate blaster without
the sense of direction or internal logic one hears in either the classic '60s
tenors mentioned by Patrice or even such players as Parker, Brotzmann, Butcher and
the Rollins-modelled Ware at his best.
> > this is captured on Touchin' On Trane, which I think is one of a handful of
> > the best American jazz records of the nineties. I saw this trio (William
> > Parker and Rashied Ali) a couple of times and they floored me. and the
> > performance of Gayle, Parker and Milford Graves at the first Vision Festival
> > was the most powerful concert in this style I've ever seen.
>
> I definitely missed these shows.
Me, too, in the case of the Parker-Ali shows. And I've been feeling for years
that I need to hear the "Touchin' on Trane" disc if only for the critical
hosannas. As for the Vision Festival performance, I'd agree that it was very
powerful. (Jon didn't mention that the unheralded New Orleans free jazz pioneer
saxophonist Kidd Jordan was also part of that set... perhaps understandable as he
was woefully under-amplified.
I have only heard Gayle live a handful of times, but I've heard most of the
records. Perhaps it is only when he is heard in the company of first rate
musicians that he truly shines... when I've heard him live, Vision Festival aside,
it's been with the likes of Vattel Cherry and Michael Wimberley, who are certainly
serviceable but no Parker or Ali. I enjoyed his playing at the Vision Fest (even
if the performance did veer into performance art spectacle after Graves joined
Gayle at the piano and Gayle then moved to the drums). I also enjoy Gayle's work
on Cecil Taylor's "Always a Pleasure."
But in general I fail to recognize Gayle's overall importance.
Steve Smith
ssmith36@sprynet.com
- -
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 02:23:15 EST
From: JoLaMaSoul@aol.com
Subject: Re: Free Jazz
Wow...some very interesting discussion of late! I've tended to "lurk" around
in the mirk and not say a whole lot, mostly because there's no time...but
always enough time to read! (Actually, most of my posts are more PR related,
as a person who is working actively to promote the music....I'm sure that
drives some people nuts, as this is really more of a discussion list)
I recomend that everyone check out the new Sabir Mateen Trio record on Eremite
(with our own killer Boston rythm team of John Voigt - bass and Laurence Cook
- - drums!). I personally think it's brilliantly sequenced, for one
thing...great dynamic variation and nice alternation between really great free
expression (everything from Sabir's completely original, completely grounded
individuality to that "ecstatic" NYC thing as someone put it, in the best
possible ways) with some broad strokes of the classicism of the 60's/70's
avante-garde. Also check anything with Daniel Carter in it (most notably
"Other Dimensions in Music" where Carter is joined by Roy Cambell, W. Parker
and Rashid Bakr). Matin and Carter play also together in the group Test, along
with the brilliant young bass player Matt Heyner No Neck Blues, APSU Ensemble,
etc) and drummer Tom Bruno. They are both exceptional multi-instrumentalists
(reeds, flute, trumpet, etc) who play off of each other and EVERYONE I''ve
ever seen them play with the amazing ability to make the OTHER sound better!
(And so, themselves...) They are also remarkably under-recorded given their
abilities and length of time on the scene in NY (both for well over 20 years,
if not 30). If anyone lives in or near Boston, BTW, Carter will be playing
with Boston's "Saturnalia String Trio" (who are recording a disc with Carter
for the Sublingual label, to be released in early 99), APSU Ensemble (which
features Daniel along with members of Test, The Gold Sparkle Band, etc),
nmperign (Bhob Rainey & Greg Kelley), drummer Tatsuya Nakatani, and x art-punk
guitarist turned prepared piano improvisor Roger Miller at a show I'm
organizing this Saturday 12/20. Feel free to email me for info.
Though I could sing the praises of so many great NY free players, I'm really
proud to say that Boston has an absolutely THRIVING improv scene. In many
ways, I'm much happier to be working, playing, and living here than in New
York (though I love NYC). We have, of course, the more well known (and
brilliant!) players such as Joe and Mat Maneri, Joe Morris, the
afforementioned Voigt and Cook, etc, as well as a host of up and coming young
players/groups such as Saturnalia, Jane Wang, Dan DeChellis, Bhob Rainey, Greg
Kelley, Debris, etc. A bunch of upstart labels, too, including my own
Sublingual label, Tautology, Sachimay, Hao Records...also larger ones like
Accurate, (Gunther Schuller's) GM....
Other American labels that are consistently putting great free jazz out
(these guys are the saints of our times regarding their tireless mission for
this music) are Aum Fidelity, No More Records, Eremite...tons more, really,
but these are the most focused on what's been discussed so far...
The discussion of European vs. American players and sensilbilites was
interesting I thought....a common one on this list in the past 3 years I've
subscribed. I love alot of the European guys, and yea, I think the funding
there has been better historically (though it's even getting grim there, I've
heard) On the Euro side I think Mats Gustaffson is a great young sax player,
as is Gianni Gebbia...would like to get hipped to more string players there
though....suggestions?
ANYWAY, I'm like the guy who's been released from his 3 year silence
here...I'll stop rambling on....that's my 2 cents....
{}
{{}}
{{{{{}}}}}
Jonathan LaMaster
Sublingual Records & UnSound Productions
Info@sublingual.com
http://www.sublingual.com
{{}} {{}}
{{}} {{}}
- -
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 23:20:44 -0800
From: <sheepherder@uswest.net>
Subject: dragon blue/ thanks to the list
sorry to break up the wonderful discussion on the merits, or
increasing lack thereof, of "free" music/jazz, but i have a
question im hoping someone might be able to answer..... but
FIRST!!
i would like to thnak everyone for the stimulating
discussions of late in the group. very intellectual and
well recieved (by myself at least).... thanks for the good
reading material!
now my question......can anyone tell me more about Dragon
Blue? are there any other releases other than HadesPark
(avant). what about tenko...what else has she done???
thanks alot
patrick in portland
- -
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 09:15:43 +0100
From: Stefan Verstraeten <stefan.verstraeten@advalvas.be>
Subject: question about bible launcher
Hi Zornies,
I've been listening some time to bible launcher (Thank you Yves...)
But I have a little question about this album: why was it deleted (i
suppose copyright problems, isn't it?), what was the concept of this
album, does this band have other albums as well,....
Best wishes
- --
Stefan Verstraeten
- -
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 03:15:41 -0500
From: Steve Smith <ssmith36@sprynet.com>
Subject: Re: Free Jazz (semi-longish)
William York wrote:
> > [Patrice wrote] Kids
> > who discovered jazz four years ago when Thurston Moore and Henry Rollins
> > told them that there was music besides rock?
>
> I have all of these same suspicions, not to say that I don't like some of
> this stuff a lot (M. Shipp's "Prism" for ex.), but its 'popularity' does
> certainly owe something to this recent hipness. These folks have been
> around for 20-25 years and people are treating it like its a new thing.
Yes, perhaps, but there's nothing really wrong with the paradigm of young and
impressionable listeners taking hints from those artists they've come to most
admire (read: trust). It's probably the most common way that anyone comes to jazz
unless blessed with a jazz loving parent or parents who played it in the house,
I'd guess.
I mean, given how badly arts education SUCKS in American public schools (and I am
tightly focused on the USA, Patrice, so your mileage may vary), I'm amazed that
any young American comes to any music more esoteric than Sonic Youth and Black
Flag (I'm surely showing my age with that statement). So if Henry or Thurston
lead someone to check out Charles Gayle or Matt Shipp or Sun Ra or whoever,
they've done more for expanding that kid's mind than his/her education did.
I really do believe that. My own way into jazz was when I heard Peter Criss
(original drummer of Kiss and my first idol, for those who don't recognize the
name) took a few lessons with Gene Krupa. I therefore HAD to check out Krupa.
That early experience set the stage. Later, it was like Sting mentioned "In a
Silent Way" or Bill Bruford said "you must hear 'A Love Supreme.'" I did exactly
as they suggested, and it was valuable advice.
To address Patrice's strongly-worded post, I don't view the phenomenon as any kind
of WASP guilt... more that the options are not laid out in the educational system
and certainly not in the mass media, so if someone hears about a musician or style
from a favorite "popular" musician it's a blessing and perhaps one of the few
solutions to the above mentioned obstacles available.
> I was just listening to the recent William
> Parker In Order To Survive CD, which is good, but compared to Nefertiti,
> done 37 years earlier, I don't know. I feel like it (Parker's stuff) gets
> more predictable and has more of a tendency to dead end than what Taylor
> and co. were doing, which to me is not a sign of refinement.
I've enjoyed the Parker CD you mention more than any previous Parker-led release
I've heard (not that many, I admit), but I see the point you make.
Yes, the "language" (I'm going to extrapolate on this notion, so bear with me)
used on that record, and many others, including all David S. Ware records and all
Charles Gayle records, and many, many others, is a language that has existed for
quite a long time, and so, while there may not be very many free jazz repertory
bands, there in fact are a great number of bands playing music in a language that
was developed many years ago.
Language is perhaps an important distinction, though... Don DeLillo's "Underworld"
is written in the same language as was "Middlemarch," and yet we don't fault
DeLillo for having not invented a completely new language in which to to say the
things he said in the book - and what he *said* was in fact new.
Are written/spoken languages really that much different from those languages given
voice in music?
After all, in music such languages do also develop. The period of
Haydn-Mozart-early Beethoven is known in music history jargon as the "Era of
Common Practice" because all composers were in fact supposed to stick to the
commonly-accepted rules. That this probably had quite a lot to do with the fact
that their work was funded by moneyed aristocrats just indicates that the general
rule has always been "give the people (paying customers) what they want..."
But once a language is developed, it does not totally negate the possibililty of
an artist making a completely new statement worth hearing. If Ware or Gayle
speaks the language of Coltrane, it doesn't mean he's not *saying* something new.
If Berne speaks the language of Hemphill it doesn't mean he can't create something
you needn't "read" or that Hemphill didn't "say." If Fugazi sounds like Wire it
doesn't mean there's nothing worth "reading" in their work.
(Of course, popular tastes change with the times. If a young composer wrote a
genuinely beautiful new piece in the language of Mozart today, he/she'd surely be
widely ridiculed, even if the piece was as fine as Mozart's six final
symphonies... this gets into the music critic's demand for "the shock for the
new.")
William is right to point out that [free improv] "has avoided reportory, but a lot
of it reaches the same conclusions in terms of the dynamics and development (I
know its wrong to generalize but...)." He's exactly right and it's not a
generalization. But there is a place for artists who create new music in a
familiar language - I think Braxton, for all of his esoteric vagueness in general,
really hit the nail on the head with his "restructuralist" and "stylist"
appelations - and if an artist is creating valuable music in 1998 in a language
generally invented in the '60s (or earlier) it's still valuable music, perhaps all
the more so if it's the first music in this style to engage the imagination of the
new listener sent to it by suggestion or education or whatever.
And perhaps this is also merely a sort of nostalgia, but while I appreciate why
Tom Pratt may never again buy another solo Bailey disc due to knowing in advance
what it will bring, it is for the same reason exactly that I will never miss one.
I know the language well, but won't miss the latest diary entry. And Bailey's is
a more personal language than most, but there are certainly others trying to speak
it at least on occasion.
(It doesn't escape my notice, however, that this is more or less the exact same
reason I will eventually be going to see the new Star Trek movie.)
Just thinking out loud,
Steve Smith
ssmith36@sprynet.com
- -
------------------------------
End of Zorn List Digest V2 #555
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