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Post by captain on Jun 30, 2009 12:40:34 GMT 10
That Zilber stuff is bitter crap. Politics aside everyone knows there's no way you would mistake his music for someone else. Not a sound innovator? Gimme a fucking break. Love him or hate his guts, that's one of the most instantly recognizable trumpet sounds on the planet.
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Post by captain on Jun 30, 2009 12:43:13 GMT 10
'Actively working against it' is he?? Jazz at Lincoln Center: Cecil Taylor-New AHA 3 & John Zorn's Masada Event News Posted: 2007-02-10 [Post Comment] Comments [Print It!] [Subscribe!] |
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Post by bobbob on Jun 30, 2009 18:40:27 GMT 10
I don"t think by sighting a musician who"s been a jazz icon since the 60's and a guy who's major contributions were established in the 80's says much about supporting new music in the jazz world. Is this the best he can come up with?
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Post by captain on Jun 30, 2009 18:47:51 GMT 10
But once again that's such a dumb argument, because at what point does anything become irrelevant? You've basically just portrayed Taylor and Zorn as passe, so where is the cut off point for 'new music'?
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Post by bobbob on Jun 30, 2009 19:10:27 GMT 10
I don't think they are passé, just not the people to use if you're talking about new music.
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Post by isaacs on Jun 30, 2009 19:13:24 GMT 10
What amazes me is nearly 1000 thread views with so few people talking! That does show there are a lot of people regularly checking this thread. I'm shutting up because I talk too much and have said enough. Are there other voices with something to say? Over and out for a bit longer....
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Post by bobbob on Jun 30, 2009 19:14:29 GMT 10
I also don't think having a recognisable trumpet sound, when played in the context of a classic, hard-bop setting can be described as sound innovation. He's very very good at playing in that style, for sure. Just not that creative in the big picture of music making, surely. Anyway, whatever.
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Post by captain on Jun 30, 2009 20:59:33 GMT 10
Hard bop? You are just winding me up now right.... You must be very unfamiliar with the music. Unless you are talking about Art Blakeys band circa 1981. Please explain to me how the 6/4 vamp on the first track of 'majesty of the blues' is hard bop, or the 5/4 new Orleans groove on 'sunflowers'.
If you'd like to debate the artistic merit of this music, at least listen to some of it first.
Gil Evans' quote was 'sound innovation', not 'style innovation'.
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Post by bobbob on Jun 30, 2009 21:44:14 GMT 10
Well, I do know the Sunflowers track and to me it sounds like a mixture of Bop and Ellington retro, which is OK if you're into that, but still sounds like Bop to me, quite reminiscent of the feels and vamps that Max Roach uses on things like Freedom Now Suite I think. Anyway, to me it sounds very conservative and as creative music in the 21st C. I don't think it stands up at all. Nicely executed nostalgia though.
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Post by punter on Jun 30, 2009 22:12:37 GMT 10
I reckon Wynton is a beautiful trumpet player with a recognisable sound etc etc... but he is not a major voice in the music in the way that Miles is, or Lester Bowie or Louis Armstrong or Kenny Wheeler, or a number of other players. He's just not. He simply hasn't taken the music anywhere, and Zilber is not being bitter, he is trying to work out the enigma that Wynton represents. The whole article is really interesting, I'll post it if anyone's interested.
It would all be absolutely fine (there's nothing wrong with 'just' being a fantastic trumpet player) but for the crap Wynton spouts about what jazz is and is not. So what if Cecil and Zorn were booked in the Lincoln program... they attract an audience and it's a business. Beyond that, Wynton's pronouncements are unequivocal: he's incredibly conservative and narrow minded.
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Post by vickibonet on Jul 1, 2009 0:11:40 GMT 10
Did they really can Kind Of Blue?? (If so : bastards!) That could be a jazz myth. I've no evidence to hand but have often heard 'informed' people state that. I understand that Miles was pissed that he only got 3 stars when Ornette got 5. Apparently he never got over it. (Yes, I know they didn't use stars in 1959, but you get my drift?) I'm fairly sure Ornette was getting a bit more attention at the time. Yet, to this very day some artists obsess about the number of stars at the top of their reviews! Maybe you are right Captain. Things never change! Punter: Lester Bowie, I caught him at Ronnie Scotts a few times. Wow! |
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Post by punter on Jul 1, 2009 0:56:36 GMT 10
Yeah Lester Bowie is amazing. I heard him once myself with Brass Fantasy and his sound really stays with me... Now, I hate to keep thumping the same tub but Lester said of Wynton, "Everyone knows this cat ain't got it." Just found one last article that might be of interest (especially, I imagine, to Mark)... "When I ask if he felt hurt by the comments Miles Davis and the avant-garde trumpeter Lester Bowie made about him (Davis: "that motherfucker's not sharing a stage with me". Bowie: "everybody knows this cat ain't got it") he replies "not at all." He then goes on to describe Davis as "a genius who decided to go into rock, and was on the bandstand looking like, basically, a buffoon", and Bowie as "another guy who never really could play." ... Unfortunately, such forthright condemnations of post-Sixties developments (which Marsalis would deny were jazz) have come to define him as a purveyor of negativity rather than a celebrator, or curator, of jazz history. He is intensely frustrated that the focus is always on what he doesn't do rather than what he does do. Speaking about Ken Burns's mammoth television series Jazz, which was criticised for detailing the early years but skipping through the last 40, Marsalis could be talking about himself. "It's like I come to your house and you lay out a banquet for me and then I'm mad because I don't like the cigar you gave me at the end. Maybe the cigar wasn't that good, but why should that dominate the conversation about the meal?" And then, in a statement that does reflect the divide between him and his critics over post-Sixties jazz: "Maybe you went through that meal just to get the cigar. Me, I wasn't going to smoke that cigar at all." www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/wynton-marsalis-miles-davis-he-was-a-rock-star-601414.htmlOK I'm going to shut-up about it now... |
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Post by captain on Jul 1, 2009 5:34:00 GMT 10
This is fun.
Bob - please point me toward the specific Ellington and 'bop' pieces that 'sunflowers' sounds like. It would be something I'd love to hear. Off the top of my head I can't remember any Charlie parker albums with horns trading phrases over major seventh vamps.
Also would like to hear some examples of cutting edge 21st century jazz in your opinion, particularly some music that doesnt in any way reference any precedents.
Punter - I'm sorry, but 'he's just not' doesn't cut it as an objective and rational reason as to why one musician or another doesn't make the cut.
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Post by bobbob on Jul 1, 2009 6:32:47 GMT 10
Bop = Charlie Parker. oh please. Like I said, I think that track sounds like some of Max Roach's music I've heard over the years and the piano style sounds very Wynton Kelly-esque, especially the comping. I call all that part of the school of Bop. I'm not against precedents in music. That has never been my point. It always just been about the pontificating of Mr Marsalis as to what is and isn't jazz, his conservative backwards looking asethetic and his dubious value as a PR godsend for Jazz.(I've seen him play a few times and I think he's not a bad trumpet player). That's all.
Some modern Jazz that I've heard where people are trying to develop new instrumental sounds and approaches to form... hmm.. off the top of my head.. In the trumpet world in particular I think Peter Evans is very interesting. (mind blowing strong technique). Franz Hautzinger in Austria also. I think some of the music Hamid Drake is involved with lately. Marc Ribot also seems to be getting into some interesting areas quite outside the 'down town' thing he has been doing before. Last time I heard Anthony Pateras's band they sounded like they were playing a new and very original type of jazz to me. (They might disagree that it is jazz, but it sounded like jazz to me). I don't really feel like getting into making stupid lists. Anyway, there's stuff out there.
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Post by captain on Jul 1, 2009 7:09:40 GMT 10
I'm sorry to come across as combative but describing the piano playing on 'Sunflowers' as sounding like Wynton Kelly is like me saying Anthony Pateras sounds like Cecil Taylor.
You are (the royal 'you', lest I be anonymously accusing someone anonymous of ignorance) just showing your ignorance of the music. Now, there as absolutely no rule that is says you need to like it, or even bother checking it out. But to make sweeping statements such as 'Wynton plays hard bop' and 'it sounds like a mix of bop and Ellington' (Is Ellington hard bop now?) is just totally nonconstructive and at worse naive.
The saying goes 'there is nothing new under the sun'. Of course you can't make some stupid list of cutting edge stuff. Every music references some other music, so can't we once and for all chuck out this ridiculous ideology based around 'The Newer The Better'.
So you agree with Lester and Miles? I could truck out dozens of quotes from Jazz greats who love Marsalis and his music; Elvin Jones, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Betty Carter, Roy Haynes, but who cares!!!
Give you YOUR opinion based on specific issues with the MUSIC not some ideology.
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