From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V2 #558 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 Thursday, December 17 1998 Volume 02 : Number 558 In this issue: - Re: One more thing about free jazz Re: Gayle Re: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv) Re: One more thing about free jazz Re: new question bible launcher Music/Arts Education RE: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv) Re: Gayle/Ware etc Re: new question bible launcher Re: Gayle/Ware etc what is Marty Ehrlich up to these days? Zorn and Lacy ex-equo Re: Free Jazz (semi-longish) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:55:33 -0500 (EST) From: Brent Burton Subject: Re: One more thing about free jazz On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, William York wrote: > That's why I put popularity in quotes, because no one doing this is > popular by most people's standards. And I could see how you might take > these comments as snobbery, because I certainly wasn't born into this > stuff. But from my point of view, working at a college radio station, > Shipp/Parker/Ware get about as much attention as anybody else in improv > combined all i can say is that those guys prove it on the road. i saw william parker here in d.c. 3 times in the last 18 months and matthew shipp was here twice. they are willing to tour and it pays off. b - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:39:50 -0600 (CST) From: "Joseph S. Zitt" Subject: Re: Gayle On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, DR S WILKIE wrote: > While the comparision with Ayler will be misunderstood/perceived as > odious, I must say that Gayle's quartets in 1993 with William Parker > represent a purple patch for me: I feel the same way about Ayler in > 1964, tho' I haven't much time for the rest of his work ... This may be a regional idiom thing: does "a purple patch" mean you liked it, you didn't like it, or it sounded like Prince? - - ---------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: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:01:28 -0600 (CST) From: "Joseph S. Zitt" Subject: Re: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv) On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Dan Given wrote: > Oddly, I think the stuff that gets played most in my house are albums I am > less interested in, stuff that I can ignore and use as background. I don't > really have the time that I want to devote to close listening, so the > things that get the most play are things I less need to focus on. Either > things I've heard a lot (i.e. classic jazz like Nonk, Mingus, Ornette), or > newer stuff that is good, but no surprises. Masada is good for this, so is > Ware, Parker, etc because I usually know where it is going, and can tune in > and out as needed. Yup, I find that too. In pulling together a list of favorite music (a thread which is happening on the phiba-improv list (though, fortunately, not as as much of a torrent as happened here a while back)), I find that the stuff that I listen to most on CD doesn't correlate with what I think is the best. I tend to listen to stuff that is easily familiar when I'm not doing a serious listen, which means that I tend to get to pop stuff easily while my "not listened to yet" rack has bunches of Cecil Taylor, crunchy electroacoustics, sound poetry, and the like. I don't seem to have time for much full-attention listening nowadays. I find that different musics work well on CD as opposed to live. Comma's next CD (if all goes as planned) will be ah hour-long piece that I particularly envision as a recording. It's somewhat steady-state though gradually evolving, and I don't know that an audience would want to sit still for the whole thing; it also should retain its coherence for people who wander in and out of attention, as the home/work listener tends to. Similarly, we do some work live that I don't think would work as well as a CD for repeated listening, or would be a very different experience as a recording. On the other hand, I'm listening to the Braxton Willisau right now at work, where it's making the transition for full-attention material to familiarity -- though I do keep stopping to listen harder and steal ideas :-) - - ---------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: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:55:33 -0500 (EST) From: Brent Burton Subject: Re: One more thing about free jazz On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, William York wrote: > That's why I put popularity in quotes, because no one doing this is > popular by most people's standards. And I could see how you might take > these comments as snobbery, because I certainly wasn't born into this > stuff. But from my point of view, working at a college radio station, > Shipp/Parker/Ware get about as much attention as anybody else in improv > combined all i can say is that those guys prove it on the road. i saw william parker here in d.c. 3 times in the last 18 months and matthew shipp was here twice. they are willing to tour and it pays off. b - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:49:53 -0800 From: "Dave Egan" Subject: Re: new question bible launcher I have the Tzadik release. I bought it new in a regular retail store, so I'd assume it saw a regular release at one time. The disc timing is 49:35. I don't know it's edited or whether it's new material, but I can say that it contains some of the most vile evangelistic blather I've ever heard. Maybe the thing to do Michael, would be to do a tape trade so we could compare versions. One more tidbit about the Tzadik version: the catalog number - Tzadik TZ 7402, is now assigned to Ken Butler's _Voices Of Anxious Objects_ (a very fine and fun album by the way). Why did Zorn (or whoever is in charge of such matters) assign a new CD the same catalog number as an old deleted one? Is he trying to pretend this never existed? If so, why? - - Dave - -----Original Message----- From: Michael Howes To: zorn-list@lists.xmission.com Date: Wednesday, December 16, 1998 11:58 PM Subject: RE: new question bible launcher >>I think the one on Tzadik just ended up being a rerelease >>of the other one, though I don't know for sure. >>The sample track on that site is on the Tzadik release. >>However, the site mentions that the other release is over >>an hour long, while the Tzadik one is about 50 minutes. > > I have the original (never knew the Tzadik release saw the light of day) >and the original is 62 minutes. I think the Tzadik one is the "censored" >version, where they removed a lot of the samples of the preachers for fear >of getting sued. Which would honestly destroy the listening pleasure of >this CD for me. > > mike >mhowes@best.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:42:29 -0500 From: Mark Saleski Subject: Music/Arts Education Chris Tonelli wrote: >This relates back to the recent education issue, not only does the >standard education (or resources to educate yourself) deprive students of >a lot of valuable music but it does not encourage people to verbally >express musical experiences. >In the end if these "indie kids" really don't get anything out of >it after a lengthy experimental period other than a feeling that somehow >it is benefiting them by osmosis they'll tire of it and leave you with >less people paying the cover. it really is too bad that music/arts education is overlooked in the U.S. i remember when i was in 8th grade we had this music class where we did things like listen to popular music ( an example at the time was Steve Wonder's "Living For The City") and discuss what the lyrics were getting at. we also would listen to orchestral music and attempt to identifiy the instuments...and discuss their respective functions. i thought it was pretty damn cool. does _anything_ like this go on in schools anymore? by the way, this was at a middle school right down the hill from Braxton's Wesleyan in Middletown, CT. - -- Mark Saleski - marks@foliage.com "Everything you can imagine is real." -- Picasso - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:29:15 -0800 From: "Benito Vergara" Subject: RE: Bailey/Wire (was something about improv) > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-zorn-list@lists.xmission.com > [mailto:owner-zorn-list@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Dan Given > Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 5:25 AM > I scanned over some of Bailey's comments in Wire while at a > friend's house, > and don't remember seeing the bit about listening to a record > once. Here ya go: (interview conducted by Ben Watson for _The Wire_, Issue 178, December 1998) [After listening to Nancarrow's "Study for Player Piano No. 42," with other comments about the piece deleted, including how he doesn't understand "the whole culture of listening to records"]: "If you could only play a record once, imagine the intensity you'd have to bring to the listening! In the same way that if I play something, I can only play it once. There might be a great similarity between each time I play, but I cannot repeat what I play. If you could only listen to it once, don't you think it might concentrate the eardrums?" Too much time on my hands, Ben http://www.bigfoot.com/~bvergara/ ICQ# 12832406 - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:48:43 -0500 (EST) From: Brent Burton Subject: Re: Gayle/Ware etc On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, John Howard wrote: > Another thing, one of the by-products of the new po-mo indie kids liking the > music is that they are so reverent that they will accept most improv > uncritically and at the same time not engage it on > a...ummm..spiritual?...level. I have called it "broccoli syndrome", they > know its good for them, so they endure it, never questioning whether (or > what) it communicates to them. gee, i wonder if you could make your generalizations any broader? you sound like an old curmudgeon. "why kids these days don't listen to improv correctly..." what a load of crap! god forbid that anyone younger than 45 start listening to improv. i think this would fall under zorn's "jazz snob eat..." category. b - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 12:26:35 +0100 From: Yves Dewulf Subject: Re: new question bible launcher > I have the original (never knew the Tzadik release saw the light of day) > and the original is 62 minutes. I think the Tzadik one is the "censored" > version, where they removed a lot of the samples of the preachers for fear > of getting sued. Which would honestly destroy the listening pleasure of > this CD for me. So why did Tzadik delete it, if it was already heavily censored ? YVes P.S. How many tracks are there on the original ? - - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:58:56 -0800 From: "Christian Heslop" Subject: Re: Gayle/Ware etc Ok now. A broad generalization would be a very bad thing. I'll try to be charitable enough to read "some" when John says "they". Honestly, I have seen this same phenomenon. I have seen it enough that I have become frustrated to the point of not discussing music with people my age at these kinds of performances. I've seen a kind of anti-criticism phenomenon going on in people at or under my age. It doesn't seem to be driven by any kind of idea other than maybe a tender sensitivity to examination. At the same time, I am a very passive listener. I make no movements or other external indicators of being involved in the music. I can't even speak when I listen. I stand there silently with hostility to any kind of distraction and I resist discussion or reaction in the few tender moments of silence that follow a piece. My feelings are best represented by this line from T.S. Eliot's poem, "Portrait of a Lady" So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul Should be resurrected only among friends Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room. I only mention my personal listening strategy because of what John said about the static and seemingly vacuous approach of "po-mo indie kids" to music appreciation. His description resembled my own approach to much to not defend. But I have seen this approach to improv and noise music. I have known people that put on performances in which they intended to duplicate that kind of music, when they really didn't think of it as anything more than an easy way to get onstage. - ---------- > From: Brent Burton > To: zorn-list@xmission.com > Subject: Re: Gayle/Ware etc > Date: Thursday, December 17, 1998 6:48 AM > > On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, John Howard wrote: > > > Another thing, one of the by-products of the new po-mo indie kids liking the > > music is that they are so reverent that they will accept most improv > > uncritically and at the same time not engage it on > > a...ummm..spiritual?...level. I have called it "broccoli syndrome", they > > know its good for them, so they endure it, never questioning whether (or > > what) it communicates to them. > > gee, i wonder if you could make your generalizations any broader? you > sound like an old curmudgeon. "why kids these days don't listen to > improv correctly..." what a load of crap! god forbid that anyone > younger than 45 start listening to improv. i think this would fall under > zorn's "jazz snob eat..." category. > > b > > - - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:24:17 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: what is Marty Ehrlich up to these days? I just realized that Marty Ehrlich has been quite "discographically" silent these past few years. Anybody (from the city) knows what is he up to these days? Thanks, Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:32:50 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Zorn and Lacy ex-equo About ten years ago, in an interview, John Zorn was making fun at Steve Lacy and Anthony Braxton for putting out so many records. This month, John has reached 243 records with his name on. This number happens to be the one that Steve Lacy has been stuck to for a quite a while (his production having cooled down quite a bit in the past two years). Patrice (who has time to waste with such anecdotal facts...). - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:13:37 -0800 From: Tony Reif Subject: Re: Free Jazz (semi-longish) >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? Steve, you've got me thinking about this, and it seems to me that they're both similar and different in some important ways. Certainly both language and music are parts of the pre-existing social system and culture that we're born into and that shape our identities. But everyone speaks a language, not everyone plays music. And the semantic nets of language - whether straightforward prose or anything other than "concrete" or "random" poetry (if the latter exists...the equivalent perhaps of Cage's methods of determining musical pitches by chance?) - are different from the structures and means by which music affects us. Unless we're talking about program music, film music etc., music doesn't have to represent anything; it's a thing in itself and not an arbitrary system of sounds-as-signs (even most onomatopoeic words are not close sonic representations of what they signify...just see how much they vary from language to language). And of course music and language are processed in different parts of the brain (is anyone here a neurologist? what's the current understanding about how music is perceived and made meaningful?) So to say that musics are languages is to use a metaphor that may obscure some of the differences. I sometimes think that music is an escape from language... It's debatable whether American writers of the 1990s are using the same language as British writers of the mid-19th century, but in any case they haven't invented a new languge, whereas it is possible to invent/discover new systems of music and music-making (say, serialism, or computer musics...or free improv). BTW a society *can* very quickly evolve a new language system under certain conditions. Creoles - hybrid languages with their own, new grammar (as distinct from pidgin "languages" whose grammar I think is pretty much the same in all cases, and very very simple) - are I believe usually created by the young in a single generation, but it's a communal process; a language can't exist if it's socially incomprehensible, music-as-sound can... But if what we're concerned about here is stylistic development versus the possibility of more radical innovation, the questions I have are: what constitutes innovation in music these days, and what is "being said" when one adopts/adapts a well-established style as one's own. Hmm. Even with the quotation marks it seems it's hard to avoid questions of signification after all, I guess because under most circumstances we expect music to communicate something, and most people respond to music they like emotionally, investing it with personal meaning. My own opinion about young players using "languages" or styles of previous generations to make their own statements is that a) you have to do it anyway to some extent just to get heard, and also as preparation for creating something that's your own, but b) it's hard to do anything with the impact it had when that style was on the cutting edge...and I think there are several reasons for that. I do think it's important for the health of the music that free jazz as it's evolved over the last 40 years or so is still inspiring both to young performers and new listeners. But let me ask the question to those of you who weren't around in the 60s: does anything that's being done today that's akin to the free jazz of those days compare to Trane, Ayler, Dolphy or Ornette? And if not, why not? Is it that you can somehow feel those guys breaking new ground, even through all the music that's been made since and that you may have heard first? That their music has an authenticity that younger players who model it can never claim, an authenticity that grew out of those artists' response to their society, their times? And maybe (a related point) that they were inwardly stronger and more determined creators of the new and pillagers of the old? Who was it said we're now living in the post-postmodern age? Just about everthing imaginable has been fused or at least cut-and-pasted with everything else...is there *anything* left to do that hasn't already been done and probably done better? I'm sure there is, but it's from this starting point that creative musicians today have to find their path, work on their means of expression, say what they have to say in the "languages" and "dialects" available, and say it with heart. And what then? (These thoughts come to mind as I listen to Chris Speed's new Yeah No record, which should be out in April.) > >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. The proof is in the particular instances and finally is pretty subjective to each listener and player. But I do ask myself what it means to say something in jazz when I hear the groundbreakers of 40 years ago still strongly reflected in the music of many of today's best and brightest. What's the difference between paying tribute (a positive thing), quoting, and imitating (a negative thing)? between adopting and adapting? These can be fine lines. If someone plays a Coltrane-like phrase, uses some of Trane's or Ornette's melodic-harmonic-rhythmic strategies as models, what if anything are they "saying" at that moment? And does that depend on whether it pops up in the course of an improvisation rather than being part of a composition or of some pre-determined design of a solo? What if a musician's "way of speaking" is pretty much a composite of various classic models or stylistic elements, as is typically the case with both good and not so good jazz players? Apart from novel or felicitous solutions to the challenge of creating right there on the spot something interestingly organized and compelling, what is really being "said" in this reworking of one's stock of ideas, this spontaneous construction (whether according to some blueprint or not)? Words at least have denotations, but music can be experienced so many different ways depending on the knowledge and awareness of the listener. And are the feelings and intentions of the performer also part of their statement? In more traditional (especially Afro-American?) jazz contexts a player may be testifying and his audience may understand his specific intentions very accurately. But most avant-jazz these days seems to occupy another, less defined space, and although many listeners and players may agree when the music felt good, and that a "dialogue" was taking place, other metaphors sometimes seem more telling. (I was at an AMM concert once that seemed more like a visitation than a conversation. At the more quietly intense end of avant-jazz perceptions can become heightened almost to the point of hallucination, a haunting or inner possession...) Another similarity/difference: the vocabulary and syntax of verbal languages can be used for many purposes, and patterns someone else has left us can be built on and developed into new thoughts, into richer and more complex (sometimes more elusive or ambiguous) expressions of experience and meaning. But even though jazz, like much poetry or fiction for example, thrives on references and a kind of intertextuality or dialogue with the past, it seems that process is often more limited somehow in music than in linguistic texts, exhausted sooner. I think that's the problem I have with a lot of free jazz and improv too: even though they're supposed to be open they've long since been circumsribed by their own methods, and saying something fresh or surprising may require not only close listening and a good internal editor but also an ability to play around with the unstated rules and expectations of the situation. (It seems that all forms of jazz, a complex social artform with a rather long apprenticeship, have their staunchly defended traditions....) Since even free jazz and post-modernism, the "revolutions" of the 60s and 80s, are now reduced to classic stylistic options, where should today's jazz musicians look to break new ground, come up with music that strikes us with the force of a personal vision? Spontaneous paraphrase of traditions with engagement and a sense of adventure is always cool. But I appreciate it more when artists take time out to focus on the musical ideas that matter most to them, and continue to work with their best ideas to develop their own musical structures, contexts, and the expressive terrain in which they and their bandmates can speak. Obviously traditionalism/originality and improvisation/composition are complementaries in jazz, but if music is after all a kind of language, at its best a language spoken soul to soul, where it falls on these coordinates may not be among the most important issues. What matters most is that it take me deeper and deeper into itself and my response to it till its unfolding radiates an irreducible, untranslatable beauty and intensity... (I didn't mean this to become a mini-essay but as usual it has. Sorry for the length!) >(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.") I think it's something else as well: a suspicion that no matter how genuine your admiration for Mozart's style or how thorough your understanding of the way his late symphonies work as narratives of internal conflict and resolution, you can't really create something significant or authentic, no matter how beautiful it is, by trying to work within a historical-cultural context that's so far from your own, and whose forms are so identified with their period. That somehow everything that could be said using its styles was indeed said back then, so that your work is inevitably something of a pastiche. This is also a typical judgment about attempts to complete Mozart's Requiem (or other works by classical masters left unfinished or in sketch form). But here the argument is that it's an impossible task to second-guess what Mozart would have done, even taking into consideration everything else we have of his, because what he would have done would have been in some way different than what he'd done up till then, so therefore the more the reconstruction seems typically Mozartian and accurately represents the subtleties of his methods the more it may in fact be a scholarly, well-meaning betrayal; on the other hand the less it seems typically Mozartian, very simply the clumsier a fabrication it is; you can't win either way! All this does I guess have something to do with western concepts of individual genius and historical evolution in the arts, but even in much more traditional cultures I think it would be unusual to create a piece of music strictly in the style of 200 years ago. Tony Reif (Songlines Recordings) - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V2 #558 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@lists.xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "zorn-list-digest" in the commands above with "zorn-list". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from ftp.xmission.com, in pub/lists/zorn-list/archive. These are organized by date. Problems? Email the list owner at zorn-list-owner@lists.xmission.com