CONSEQUENCES
TRIO
New York Contemporary Five
Consequences
Fontana : 1963

Archie Shepp, tenor sax; Don Cherry, trumpet; John Tchicai, alto sax; Don Moore, bass; J. C. Moses, drums.

The New York Contemporary Five barely lasted a year all told, but they recorded five albums that shaped the jazz to come. They were a supergroup after the fact – the stellar frontline of Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai all being relative newcomers at the time. Cherry had recently left Ornette Coleman and was only starting to stretch into world music. Shepp was fresh off a stint with Cecil Taylor and had just found his voice as a composer and performer. And Tchicai was virtually unknown, period.

Their scorching music – aided by the supple and hard-hitting rhythm section of Don Moore and J. C. Moses – is a thrilling mix of adventurous soloing and post-bop structures, memorable heads and go-for-broke improv. Shepp and Tchicai offered two different ways forward for sax players. Shepp privileged texture, density, and fragmentation. A pointillist take on Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, perhaps. Tchicai was a master of melodic invention, teasing out hard and bright phrases that seem unpredictably off-kilter.

What’s still remarkable about these tunes is their sense of internal tension. They’re wound tighter than a magnet coil – without sacrificing any  spontaneity. There’s little that’s strictly free about this jazz, but it’s full of reckless and unexpected drama all the same. “Consequences” is the record’s barnburner, built on fiery performances and climaxing with a Don Cherry solo that sounds like the aural equivalent of a fifty foot skid mark. Their version of Bill Dixon’s “Trio” is contemplative by comparison, offering a loping groove, overlapping textures, and a series of wonderfully sustained solos that show off the stylistic strengths of each player.

Not many jazz fans may have picked up their records, but there’s no doubt that their fellow musicians were listening closely to the New York Contemporary Five. (For a fascinating and informed look at what came next for John Tchicai, here’s Bill Shoemaker on the New York Art Quartet, just published in Point of Departure.)

* * *

What are your favorite super groups?

SIDE TWO
The Revolutionary Ensemble
Manhattan Cycles
India Navigation : 1973

Leroy Jenkins, violin, viola; Sirone, bass; Jerome Cooper, drums, percussion, flute, bugle, metal hoops, tape recorder.

“Feel the wrath of my bombast!” said Mark E. Smith in the mid-’80s. And it can stand as an unfortunate motto for just about every public figure — politician, artist, soldier, spy — since. We live in an age of bombast; the internet itself thrives on it. Bombast is the primary currency of political discourse. It can sometimes seem as though it’s the very reasonableness of the current American president that is his main shortcoming, if also one of his more rare and remarkable qualities.

In contrast — and opposition — to the wide spread of bombasticity, we present the second half of one of the earliest records by the wonderful Revolutionary Ensemble. Recorded on New Year’s Eve, 1972/73, there was doubtless plenty to be bombastic about at that time. But what we get instead is as un-bombastic as it gets. This is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect: no foreground, no background, a cooperative enterprise that enlists every technique at the artists’ disposal. And that includes pre-recorded sound — Billie Holiday makes an appearance on side one, and check the bebop tune just before the runout groove (“Now’s the Time”?) at the end of side two.

The entire performance is a model of interplay, but the piece above is notable for the room allotted to Sirone, who died last year at 69. A major loss, though we were at the time unable to put together an adequate memorial post. Thankfully, David Grundy at Streams of Expression more than made up for it with a superlative and deep tribute to the late bassist. We heartily encourage those of you moved by the track above to hit it, hard, forthwith. It goes to show that those with the most bomb(a)s(t) need not carry the day.

MORGAN’S MOTION
Tony Williams Lifetime
The Joy of Flying
Sony : 1978

TW, drums; Cecil Taylor, piano.

Here’s a deep cut that not many people know about. Tony Williams’ eclectic Joy of Flying is an R&B inflected album filled with collaborations with the likes of Jan Hammer, George Benson, Tom Scott, and even rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose. To be honest, it’s not a particularly memorable set. But tucked away at the end is a total anomaly: A fiery duet with Cecil Taylor that’s worth the price of admission, and then some.

In the book Future Jazz, Greg Tate cites “Morgan’s Motion” as one of the all-time great jazz performances. It’s prime Cecil, his essence boiled down to a tightly coiled eight minutes. By this point, Tony Williams’ salad days were already behind him, but the track shows that he could still summon his best work when challenged.

We won’t go so far as to say his performance here is definitively better than, say, Sunny Murray, Ronald Shannon Jackson, or Tony Oxley — but Williams’ explosive drumming frames Taylor’s music in an entirely different way than any of his esteemed peers.  Like his best work with Miles Davis, Williams’ performance is both sensitive and aggressive, not afraid to get in Cecil’s face, to give as good as he gets. The results generate fireworks and lyricism.

“Morgan’s Motion” doesn’t devolve into pugilism, but it does recall the conventional wisdom that ballet dancers are as tough as boxers. It’s a shame these two never repeated the encounter. “Morgan’s Motion” is one hell of a dance.

What other gems are hidden in the Tony Williams discography?

NA ENU IGWE
Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye
Egwu-Anwu (Sun Song)
India Navigation : 1978

JJ, tenor and alto sax, sopranino, flutes, bass clarinet, conch, vibraphone; FDM, drums and other percussion, bailophone, conch, whistles, horns, marimba.

Rare things: Successful utopias. Hen’s teeth. Really good linguine con vongole. Giant pandas. And, apparently, silence. There’s something of a micro-genre springing up, with recent books devoted to searching out the world’s quickly disappearing quiet places. Noise pollution as heir to air pollution.

The value of silence is something the AACM was onto decades ago. Not for them the pure scream of Pharaoh Sanders or the wall-to-wall wail of Albert Ayler. Jarman and Moye, two of the first wave of AACMers, fully embraced the association’s pursuit of sound in ALL of its permutations. One of the memorable passages concerning Jarman from George Lewis’ magisterial history of the AACM captures this beautifully. Here’s Anthony Braxton talking about one notable rehearsal:

We play “NN-1″ [a (Muhal Richard) Abrams composition]. I say, I’m going to show these motherfuckers what it’s all about — thirty-second notes, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor. I finished my solo, and Jarman stood up and said [sings] Bwaaaah! [silence], Oom [silence], Pfffft! I said this motherfucker is totally out of his motherfucking mind, and this is the baddest shit I’ve ever heard in my life.

With the twenty-minute “Na Enu Igwe,” the concluding movement of a duo concert, we can hear something of Jarman and Moye’s open-ended approach to the full spectrum of sonic possibility, about ten years after Braxton’s AACM indoctrination. Ranging from relatively straightforward sax and drum duets to a concentrated pas de deux of little instruments, honking horns, and percussion, this multi-part track captures the fearlessness and grace Jarman and Moye bring to live performance. And the quiet passages here speak as loudly as anything else.

PEACE (FOR DAKOTA AND JASON)
ANGELS WING
ANCIENT PLACE
Larry Young
Love Cry Want
New Jazz : 1997 (rec. 1972)

LY, organ; Nicholas, guitar, synth; Joe Gallivan, guitar, synth, drums, percussion; Jimmy Molnieri, drums, percussion.

Destination: Out’s Dept. of “Believe It or Not”:
We belatedly kick off the New Year with some insane electro space rock from Larry Young. This remarkable ensemble faced the wrath of none other than Richard Nixon, who personally ordered his staff to pull the plug on one of their concerts.  But more on that in a minute.

This molten recording wasn’t released until 1997 and even then it quickly disappeared from sight. That’s a shame because Love Cry Want is one of Young’s greatest sessions, straight up. It offers a more concise and ragged version of the blown-out kozmigroov explorations of the great Lawrence of Newark and even trumps the speaker-damaged assault of Tony Williams Lifetime’s Emergency! Strong words, but hearing is believing.

“Peace” is a bare-knuckled track that mixes manic funk rhythms, percussive organ swirls, and heavy distortion. “Angels Wings” offers some cascading riffs before grinding its feathers into storms of bracing industrial noise. The languid “Ancient Place” features some seriously futurist electronic graffiti that slowly coalesces into a heady ritualistic groove.

In 1972, this group took up residence in Lafayette Park with the intention of levitating the nearby White House. The Yippies hadn’t managed the trick with the Pentagon in 1968, but Nixon was no fool. If any music stood a chance, this was it. Taking no chances, he personally ordered H. R. Haldeman to pull the plug on the concert. Check out WFMU’s always excellent Beware of the Blog for the full scoop.

We can’t but wonder where the “music as a weapon” ethos of avant jazz has gone. Who would you like to see levitated and who could pull it off?

DREW LeDREW (aka JEFF GOLICK):

SCOTT PILGRIM vs. THE UNIVERSE
By no means an 09 phenomenon — though volume 5, vs. the Universe, did come out early in the year — 2009 was nevertheless the year of Scott Pilgrim for me. I don’t think I derived more pure pleasure from any other reading experience, nor looked forward to future volumes — future anything – with more expectancy. These were passed to me one by one, handed off by a friend and work colleague, with the kind of shared passion that recalled nothing more than teenage fandom for a new favorite band. An utterly refreshing look at relationships between a group of North American twenty-somethings, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s sparkling series combines anime, band member frictions, young love lost and found, evil ex-boyfriends, and and some serious ass-kicking into a beguiling, totally winning long-form story. Bonus points for making me feel slightly pervy for flashing these covers on the Brooklyn-bound 4 train. Coming in 2010: the eagerly awaited concluding volume 6, and, inevitably, the (if we must) movie. Bonus Pilgrim material can be found at O’Malley’s SP site, but I strongly recommend starting from volume 1 and going from there.

Also (literally) discovered this year in comics: Daniel Clowes’ David Boring, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, and Twentieth Century Eightball, all seemingly being discarded by someone on my block. I say seemingly because I still find it hard to believe a person would toss pristine copies of these three books! For me, having only read Ghost World at the time, a mammoth discovery. I recommend all wholeheartedly, especially Velvet Glove, which had my jaw dropping in amazement over and over again — Lynchian weirdness on an intimate scale. Intense.

GEOFF DYER CAN DO NO WRONG
Dyer is the kind of author who is terribly hard to sell to other people. No two of his books are that much alike, and the “hooks,” such as they are, are varied and usually a little sketchy sounding. I’ll say this: I don’t think anyone else writes a more engaging sentence than Dyer. He is a joy to read, no matter the subject. He’s easily the best writer going when it comes to describing the difficulties of writing itself; he makes not being able to write seem like a noble endeavor. Or at least a worthwhile one. He’s also one of the least pretentious, and least ponderous, of literary types, even if he can be a bit precious. So Jeff in Venice: it’s a two-part affair, as the title suggests. In the first, an art journalist named Jeff is in Venice to cover the Bienale, and has an intense romp — very sexy — while in the second half, an unnamed protagonist (maybe the same Jeff?) plays spiritual tourist at the religious dumping ground that is Varanasi, ultimately losing track of himself. Sex, identity, belief, connection, cultural tourism, death — it’s all here. Though, again, it’s much better than that sounds. I’m glad I’m not his publicist.

Other books of note: Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist; the Parker novels of Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake), currently being reissued by U Chicago Press; Said Sayrafiezadeh’s amazing memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free. It almost goes without saying that this was a great year in music books, too, the only problem being that I’ve only made progress on George Lewis’ fab (so far) history of the AACM. We look forward to tackling the others on the pile: Robin D.G. Kelley’s Monk bio, the Robert Palmer anthology, more Giddins on jazz, The Jazz Loft Project, Terry Teachout’s Pops…

PHINEAS AND FERB
Watched a lot of kids’ TV this year. My favorite show featured at least one musical number per episode. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the evil Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz:

Am I a little old to be watching and actively enjoying this program? Yes, yes I am, Joe.

THE AWL

I really whittled my blog reading way down this year, possibly too far down. But I always made room for The Awl. I have a lot of love for this site, which often felt like a little gift basket I got to open in the middle of each work day. Though there are running themes — a strong dose of international news; the “animal interest” story; the state of journalism and movies and culture-making in general — it’s the general unexpectedness that really gives the Awl its bite. That, and the unbelievably high standard of writing — informed, funny writing — with a hit rate that is really unparalleled online. I shudder to think of the work involved in this venture, and am saddened (sometimes) to think at how un-reproduce-able a model it is, depending entirely on the wit, brains, and stamina of its chief contributors and editors. But I do thank my lucky stars it’s around now. The commentariat also pull their weight, somewhat annoyingly.

CHILLY JAY CHILL (aka JEFF JACKSON)

Like many folks, I was entranced by albums by the xx, Animal Collective, Amadou and Miriam, Broadcast and The Focus Group, Sun O))), Micachu and the Shapes, etc. I was riveted by movies like Hunger, The Limits of Control, The Hurt Locker, Summer Hours, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Lorna’s Silence, etc. And I obsessed over Lost and laughed my ass off at It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But here are some more rarefied enthusiasms, a few things that might have passed you by.

WALLACE SHAWN’S MASTERPIECE
When people reexamine this year decades from now, I won’t be surprised if Wallace Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors is one of its key markers. This visionary play was by far the most impressive piece of art I came across. A decade in the making, it’s the culmination of Shawn’s brilliant – if often overlooked – career as a playwright. The joyful dystopian story melds bioengineering, anthropomorphic fairy tales, transgressive sex, and noblesse oblige into a dazzling narrative that’s formally daring and emotionally devastating. It’s impossible to shake off the play’s mysterious allure, mythic resonances, and haunting implications.

This was a good year for literature in general with Dennis Cooper’s Ugly Man, Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Cesar Aira’s Ghosts, Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas, My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, Roberto Bolano’s 2666, The Complete Stories of JG Ballard (R.I.P.), and much else.

THE FILMS OF JEFF KEEN
The BFI deserves an ovation for releasing this lavish 4-disc set of little-known British filmmaker Jeff Keen. What might initially seem like folly and overkill quickly reveals itself to be essential and long overdue. Since the mid-60s, Keen has expertly mixed camp narratives and kinetic animations, creating fistfuls of short-form masterpieces like White Dust and Dreams and Past Crimes of the Archduke that are ravishing, dreamy, trashy, fun. Elements of Kenneth Anger, Terry Gilliam’s animations, and John Waters are compacted into a singular aesthetic that Keen has dubbed “Kino-blatz!” Delirious and deliriously entertaining.

Other essential DVDs: John Cassavete’s best film, Husbands, was finally released in its full version; Antonioni’s eye-popping and unfairly maligned  Zabriskie Point proved to be ahead of its time; American Treasures IV: Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 offers the best deal — 26 exceptional and uber-rare films, carefully restored with new scores and lavish packaging, at recession-friendly prices.

PSYCHEDELIA FROM AROUND THE WORLD
When it comes to music, the past seems inexhaustible. A cadre of industrious small labels has been exploring the far reaches of so-called world music and finding gold where indigenous musics started to adopt psychedelic textures. Revelations have run the gamut from Welsh Rare Beat to fuzzed-out Turkish folk to Benin’s hypnotically funky Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou. For an expansive sampler of the phenomenon, check out this fall’s excellent Psych-Funk 101.

Recently, I’ve been knocked out by Dirty French Psychedelics, a compilation of Gallic tunes from the 1970s that evokes an enchanted era of briefly glimpsed utopias and unusual possibilities, a sleeve in time somewhere between punk and disco where chanson singers and classical composers briefly shared the same avant-pop sphere.  The tunes are seamlessly sequenced and by the end you can almost draw the outlines of a time period that has evaporated like smoke and may have only existed in the compiler’s minds – and now in yours.

Another rich vein has been Brazil’s Pernaumbuco scene. This wild and woolly underground was tangentially inspired by Tropicalia, but concocted it’s own far-flung mix of ethnic music, guitar-drenched psych blowouts, and free jazz. The main touchstone is Lula Cortes and Ze Ramalho’s epic Paebiru (1974), but Time-Lag Records has also unearthed highly worthwhile works involving Lula Cortes like Rosa de Sang and Satwa.

Maybe I’m just reliving some acid-flashback teenage freakout, but what’s most striking about these historic excavations is how forward looking the music remains.

GARY PANTER
Picturebox’s massive Gary Panter tome was a visual neutron bomb dropped on my head. Although it skimped on his great comix work, his paintings, sketches, posters, and sculptures were more than enough to leave a permanent and pleasing dent in my psyche. File it between the Jumbotron and the African sculpture.

CRY OUT
Darius Jones Trio
Man’ish Boy (A Raw and Beautiful Thing)
AUM Fidelity : 2009

DJ, alto sax; Cooper-Moore, piano, Rakalam Bob Moses, drums.

You know what you need? Another freakin top ten list, that’s what.

While we don’t pretend toward comprehensiveness in our listening, we thought it might be of moderate interest to D:O’s abnormally well-informed and good-looking readership to know of some discs that, if you haven’t already heard them, would be worth your valuable time and cents, in our estimation.

A bunch of these were ones that we previewed here on the site and that’s no mistake. We try to only feature music that we think is extraordinary. So here, in alphabetical order, are ten 09 recordings of note:

Darcy James Argue’s Secret Socity. Infernal Machines.
(New Amsterdam)
We don’t necessarily get the steampunk trappings, but we get that these tunes swing in unexpected and beautiful ways.
Amazon | DJA blog

Bill Dixon. tapestries for small orchestra.
(Firehouse 12)
Tectonic sound slabs in concert, in motion, creating low-rumble earthquakes.
Amazon | previously on D:O

Vijay Iyer Trio. Historicity.
(ACT)
The future is now.
Amazon | previously on D:O

Darius Jones Trio. Man’ish Boy.
(AUM Fidelity)
The future is tomorrow. Taking the rough with the smooch.
Amazon|

Steve Lehman Octet. Travail, Transformation, and Flow.
(Pi Recordings)
In case you’re wondering what’s so special about spectral.
Amazon | previously on D:O

Ben Perowsky Quartet. Esopus Opus.
(Skirl)
Making the old new again.
Amazon|

Wadada Leo Smith. Spiritual Dimensions.
(Cuneiform)
This was the year of Wadada. This expansive two-fer offers both acoustic abstractions and electric grooves. But don’t sleep on America, his duet with Jack DeJohnette, or the reissued lost classic Procession of the Great Ancestry.
Amazon |

Tyshawn Sorey. Koan.
(482 Music)
What is the sound of one drummer composing?
Amazon | previously on D:O

Henry Threadgill Zooid. This Brings Us To, Volume 1.
(Pi Recordings)
Making a group move.
Amazon | previously on D:O

David S. Ware Quartet. Shakti.
(AUM Fidelity)
Making the new old again.
Amazon |

The most accurate statement concerning jazz in late 2009 is one we read recently: paraphrasing, it’s a great time to be a jazz fan/consumer, but a particularly rough time to be a jazz musician.

There were MANY more jazz albums that gave us tremendous enjoyment over the past year, among them: Arve Henriksen, Cartography; Linda Oh, Entry; Joe Morris, Wildlife & Colorfield & Today on Earth & MVP LSD; Talibam!, Boogie in the Breeze Blocks; Chad Taylor, Circle Down; Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things, About Us, Fantastic Merlins, A Handful of Earth. Does Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics’ buoyant Inspiration Information 3 count as jazz? If so, slap that on our short list, too. Also dug on The Bad Plus’s “Long Distance Runaround,” with Wendy Lewis.

Of course there are also PLENTY of things that we’re still catching up on, chief among them: Dave Douglas’s recent work, John Zorn’s latest, Evan Parker’s The Moment’s Energy, and Cleaver/Parker/Taborn’s Farmers By Nature. And that doesn’t even get into reissues (hello, Congliptious).

What’ve we missed? What are your favorites for the year?

We’re thrilled to welcome back saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman for a special guest post detailing some of the recent contemporary classical music that’s influenced and inspired his work. It’s a sonic world that’s new to us and we hope you’ll be as intrigued by this selective overview as we are.

Most mentions of so-called contemporary classical music in the (jazz) blog-o-sphere tend to focus on people like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Milton Babbitt, and their work from the 1950s and 1960s. Sort of like using Dave Brubeck and Ornette Coleman as a yardstick to measure the current state of jazz. A lot of fascinating and provocative music has happened since then – much of it in recent decades.

It’s not easy to get information about this music and find your bearings outside of a quasi-institutional context, so we’re especially grateful to Steve for serving as such a trustworthy tour-guide. Many of these compositions can be hard to sink your teeth into, but the tracks he’s chosen are consistently accessible and engaging. Take it away, Steve…

* * *

When Travail, Transformation & Flow, my most recent recording, was released in June 2009, I started to receive a pretty steady stream of inquiries about spectral music and my use of spectral harmony. And they came from all over: colleagues, mentors, critics, engaged listeners, and students, among others. I first came into contact with spectral music in 2001, while getting my M.A. in Music Composition at Wesleyan University. And a good deal of my engagement with the current landscape of contemporary Western art music, and its associated milieus, has been facilitated by major academic institutions like Wesleyan, Columbia University, and The Paris Conservatory (CNSM).

For that reason, I thought it might be nice to share a bit of information about some of the musical communities that I’ve been exposed to over the past 10 years. And in particular, to highlight those European composers, who emerged after 1970, whose work has helped me to think about both composition and improvisation in new ways.

PARTIELS
Gerard Grisey
Les Espaces Acoustiques
Kairos : 2005

GONDWANA (edit)
Tristan Murail
Gondwana; Desintegrations; Time and Again
Montaigne : 2004

Composers Gerard Grisey and Tristan Murail are more or less universally viewed as the so-called “founding fathers” of spectral music. There are, of course, historical precedents for their music (Debussy, Scriabin, Varese, Messiaen, and Ligeti, among others) as well as parallel streams (The Romanian Spectral School), but the emergence of their work in the 1970s, and its subsequent evolution, seems to represent a real point of definition in the last 40 years of contemporary Western art music. When I first encountered Murail and Grisey’s music, I was blown away by the unique, otherworldly nature of their harmonic language, and immediately started looking for ways to integrate spectral harmony into my work as an improviser. Murail and Grisey have composed a lot of seminal works in the past 40 years, but Partiels (part of Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques cycle), in particular, provides a really clear and compelling example of the timbre/harmony hybrid that permeates spectral music.

Further Listening:
Les Espaces Acoustiques – Gerard Grisey
Vortex Temporum – Gerard Grisey
Gondwana – Tristan Murail
La Mandragore – Tristan Murail

Reading:
–“Guide to the Basic Concepts and Techniques of Spectral Music” (Joshua Cody). In Contemporary Music Review Vol. 19, Part 2 (2000)
–“Tempus Ex Machina: A Composer’s Reflections on Musical Time” (Gerard Grisey). In Contemporary Music Review Vol. 2 (1987)
–Compositeurs d’Aujourd’hui: Tristan Murail (Edited by Peter Szendy)
L’Harmattan Press (2002)

STRING TRIO
Michael Finnissy
Catana; String Trio; Contretanze
Etcetera : 1987

Not unlike Anthony Braxton, Michael Finnissy’s output is so vast, that it’s hard to know exactly how to begin talking about it. In addition to his work as a composer, Finnissy is a virtuoso pianist (he’s produced definitive recordings of his own piano music and music by his contemporaries as well), and for that reason, his music always seems to stay rooted in the physicality of live performance, no matter how complex it gets. And it does get complex! Finnissy’s name comes up a lot in discussions of the “New Complexity” movement (mostly for his use of unusual rhythmic ratios and tuplets), which includes other European composers like Brian Ferneyhough, Richard Barrett, and James Dillon, among others. Finnissy has also written relatively “simple” music and also dedicated pieces to master improvisers like Cecil Taylor. String Trio is one of my favorite Finnissy pieces and one that I find very accessible for a lot of different reasons: the use of quarter-tones to create a kind of imaginary folk music, the way that relatively simple playing techniques are used to create a one-of-a-kind sound world, and the fact that the form and structure of the piece work really well and keep the piece interesting from start to finish (the piece lasts 30 minutes).

Further Listening:
String Trio
Red Earth
English Country Tunes
Contretanze

Reading:
–Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy (Edited by Brougham, Fox & Pace) Ashgate Press (1997)

GRAN TORSO
Helmut Lachenmann
Grido; Reigen Seliger Geister; Gran Torso
Kairos : 2008

Helmut Lachenmann coined the term “musique concrete instrumentale” to describe his music, and it gives a pretty good idea of the innovative sound world that he has developed over the past 40 years. Building on the work of Italian composers like Giancinto Scelsci and Luigi Nono (Lachenmann took formal lessons with Nono), Lachenmann makes extensive use of non-idiomatic instrumental playing techniques (often referred to as “extended techniques”), and has developed a highly influential compositional syntax around the resulting sounds. The string quartet, Gran Torso, gives a great example of Lachemann’s writing for strings, and shows how these “concrete” instrumental sounds can be orchestrated and arranged to create an all-encompassing musical universe. Not unlike the work of people like Mark Dresser and Evan Parker, Lachenmann’s music provides a kind of never-ending wealth of information about the transformation of new instrumental practices into new musical languages and new musical meanings.

Further Listening:
Gran Torso
Air
Tableau
Guero

Reading:
–“Resistant Strains of Postmodernism: The Music of Helmut Lachenmann and Brian Ferneyhough” (Ross Feller) In Postmodern Music / Postmodern Thought (Edited by Lochhead & Auner) Routledge Press (2002)

STILL
Beat Furrer
Nuun; Presto Con Fuoco; Still; Poemas
Kairos : 2000

Beat Furrer is a composer that I got turned onto when I started the doctoral program in Composition at Columbia in 2006. And what impresses me most about his music is the way that he orchestrates traditional and non-traditional playing techniques to create really unusual and compelling sound worlds. The other thing that jumps out about Furrer’s work is his use of repetition and compositional loops. To a certain degree, this is inherited from American Minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but that influence manifests itself in a pretty unique way in Furrer’s music. And Furrer is actually part of a loosely connected circle of influential German-speaking composers (Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger, Mathias Spahlinger, Beat Furrer) whose work deals with repetition and/or memory in some important way. Based on what I’ve heard, thus far, Furrer is the most gifted orchestrator of the group, and probably not by coincidence, the most widely known. Furrer also founded one of Europe’s preeminent New Music ensembles (Klangforum Wien) in 1985, and, as a result, has had the good fortune to receive remarkably polished and well-rehearsed performances of his very demanding music…and this recording of Still is no exception…!

Further Listening:
Still
Fama

Watching:
A short interview with Beat Furrer about his music.

* * *

If you’re interested in hearing how Lehman synthesized all of this in an improv context, we’ve re-upped a track at our then-preview post for his album Travail, Transformation, and Flow.

PART II
Ornette Coleman
Chappaqua Suite
Columbia : 1966

OC, alto sax; Pharaoh Sanders, tenor sax; David Izenzon, bass; Charles Moffett, drums; Joseph Tekula, orchestral arranger; plus 11 studio musicians.

Several key Ornette Coleman albums have fallen through the cracks, but none have been quite as cursed as his soundtrack to the movie Chappaqua. For starters, his elaborate 80-minute score wasn’t even used in the film!

The story goes like this: First-time director Conrad Rooks spent four years globe-trotting to make his cult film Chappaqua. The intriguing cast included Moondog, Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar and French theater legend Jean-Louis Barrault. The descriptions make it sound like a Beat version of El Topo, avant la lettre. Clearly it’s some kind of headtrip movie when you’ve got William S. Burroughs playing the part of “Opium Jones.”

Once the main filming was almost complete, Rooks approached Coleman about doing the score. Ornette hesitated but finally was convinced to tackle the enormous project. He took his outstanding trio of Izenzon and Moffet into a New York studio with arranger Joseph Tekula and a small orchestra to record for three intensive days. It was Ornette’s most ambitious musical endeavor to date – creating four seamless longform compositions that successfully blended his harmolodic jazz with a classical orchestra and matched the images of the film.

Everyone involved was immediately struck by the results. Chappaqua Suite contains some of Ornette’s most passionate and fluid playing, in addition to the fascinating compositional structures and unusual sonic textures. Although it plants the seeds for his orchestral Skies of America project, in many ways it remains a singular album in his vast discography. Even his 1991 soundtrack for Naked Lunch – which shares sonic affinities with this – is far less expansive and complex.

Here’s where the story gets strange. Upon hearing the finished soundtrack, Conrad Rooks freaked out. The album’s liner notes state that he was worried about using “music so beautiful in itself. Should not its strength do harm to the picture instead of serving it? Should not the pictures wrong such a musical achievement?” The upshot: Rooks rejected Ornette’s score and got Ravi Shankar to do it. It was likely little consolation that Ornette got to appear in the film as the “Peyote Eater.”

This rejection was either (1) a strange case of artist humility with Rooks realizing that Ornette’s score was far superior to his own movie and that it deserved its own life or (2) a case of giant brass balls with Rooks thinking up some bullshit to wiggle out of a situation that he had struggled to create. We’re not sure what to believe, especially as “Part II” shows that Ornette’s soundtrack could be effortlessly moody and cinematic.

Although the album was given its own life, it quickly went out of print. Chappaqua also fell into obscurity and today the movie may be even less known than the record, though it’s probably a close call. Life went on. Later that year, Ornette’s trio recorded both volumes of their acclaimed At The “Golden Circle” Stockholm albums for Blue Note.

EXTRA:

–Pharaoh Sanders is listed as appearing on the album, but apart from some stray moments in “Part IV,” we don’t hear it. Anyone have definitive info on this? Is he buried in the mix? Or are we going deaf?

–We’ve only managed to catch a few stray minutes of Chappaqua. We were impressed by the remarkable color cinematography of fave photographer/filmmaker Robert Frank, but otherwise didn’t see enough to have an opinion. Has anyone out there seen the full thing?

HD, percussion; MG, reeds.

On the day Don Cherry died — 19 October 1995 – Drake and Gustafsson took the stage in Chicago and recorded a forty-minute set that is remarkable for its sensitivity and resonance. Though it is unclear whether the duo were aware of Cherry’s passing before taking the stage, there is nevertheless a depth of feeling that it’s all too easy to ascribe to the loss of a musical master. And in Drake’s case, a musical mentor.

Drake and Gustafsson have since gone on to record a number of dates together, principally as members of Peter Brotzmann’s Chicago Tentet. But this first recorded meeting retains a significance that goes well beyond the hyper-limited OkkaDisk run of 600-odd CDs.

For those who enjoy the playing here, we can recommend many (more readily available) recordings by these two gentlemen. Drake has made several wonderful discs with bass player William Parker, including one of the great albums of the decade, Sound Unity, and a live set with the David Ware Quartet — one of the Live in the  World CDs. We also dig Gustafsson’s work with fuzzsters The Thing, notably on Garage (Sonics cover!) and Action Jazz (Lightning Bolt cover!). Jason G at Restructures has fortunately been chronicling the careers of both Mats and Hamid; their discographies can be found here and here.

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Oddly enough, we recall where we were the day that Don Cherry died. Thurston Moore announced Cherry’s passing from the stage at a Sonic Youth show and dedicated a magnificently extended version of ‘The Diamond Sea” to him. Maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as first hearing about JFK’s assassination (not that we’re old enough to know) or even Kurt Cobain’s suicide (not that we’re admitting we got weepy), but it was a touching moment nonetheless.

What jazz deaths have most affected you?

MOTORCYCLE ‘66 [alt. take]
Bill Dixon
tapestries for small orchestra DVD
Firehouse 12 : 2009

BD, orchestration; Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet, flugelhorn; Graham Haynes, cornet, flugelhorn; Stephen Haynes, trumpet, cornet; Rob Mazurek, cornet; Glynis Lomon, cello; Michel Côté, contrabass clarinet; Ken Filiano, bass; Warren Smith, vibraphone, marimba.

Maybe we’re reading the wrong periodicals or Twitter feeds or wherever people get their information these days, but it looks to us as though Bill Dixon slapped down easily one of the most generous slabs of music of the year a couple of weeks ago, to very little notice — even in some of the old familiar places. This is perhaps nothing new for Dixon, who somehow occupies a sidelong place in the official jazz narrative despite authoring one of the crucial moments of the new New Thing (to name only one such career landmark).

But, y’know, fine. Though a bit late in getting to this ourselves, we are nevertheless extremely chuffed to be able to present an exclusive alternate take of “Motorcycle ‘66,” one of the major statements from this thoroughly stunning 2-CD set. We have no idea if the title is a Dylan reference, but are quite clear about its emotional impact.

Taken from a performance that’s included on the bonus DVD (let’s hear it for hard goods!), it carries a solemn mood lightly across its fourteen minutes. While not as concentratedly spare and ruminative as the master take, this version is a glorious reminder of Dixon’s talents as orchestrator and sound explorer.

Loving the low end, Dixon presents gorgeous, slow-moving tableaus, highlighting the range of sounds and textures that the trumpets and cornets can produce. Charged yet sedate, unhurried in the extreme yet never ponderous, it’s mature music that is all too aware of the passing of time; the passing of time is in part what this music is about.

Thanks to some wonderful notes by musicians Taylor Ho Bynum and Stephen Haynes, and to the homey documentary that is included with the CD version, the sessions are very well documented. S. Haynes also blogged during the recording sessions in summer 2008; his entries are well worth your time. Further documentation, if you’re looking for more:

–a comprehensive, sensitive, and thoroughly enjoyable feature on Dixon by Clifford Allen
–the best, most cogent review of tapestries we’ve yet seen
–why not become a fan?

While you can download this album at Amazon, and also at eMusic, and elsewhere, you are going to want to order it directly from Firehouse 12 — for the DVD; for the price (cheaper than Amazon’s CD!); for the direct benefit to F12. Makes a wonderful stocking-stuffer!

Before we go, here’s a trailer of the doc, to whet your appetite for more:

Our thanks to Scott at Improvised Communications and the Firehouse 12 crew for facilitating this post.

INSPIRATION

FR, bass; Hariprasad Chaurasia, Indian flute; Sabin Khan, tabla.

We’re pleased to present the final installation of Brian Roessler’s exploration of the visionary jazz of François Rabbath.This extended Indo-Jazz fusion track is so fluent that it could even make Don Cherry jealous. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out part one and part two. And below you’ll find some of Brian’s own extraordinary music.

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The track featured in this post features François Rabbath pushing his exploration of jazz and world music on the double bass about as far as it can go. This is a beautiful improvisation performed by Rabbath along Hariprasad Chaurasia on Indian flute, and Sabin Khan on tablas. It was recorded at a June 1987 concert called “Les Rencontres de Paris,” held at Espace Cardin.

Rabbath’s technical prowess is evident, but as usual we find much more. This is an extraordinary conversation between artists of different cultures, languages, and wildly different musical styles. It is also a world-music-fusion of a different stripe than we usually find – in this case we find Rabbath leaving his musical home to work in structures foreign to him (the so-called “world music”). I asked Rabbath about the origins of this track and he shared his memories of the process with me:

This one it was a concert given in Paris. And it was an encounter between French and Indian. So, when they say to me that I’m going to play in the same concert with [Hariprasad] Chaurasia … it’s fantastic. And I say immediately “Yes, I’d like to do something.” So he comes to my house to see how we can play together. And I found out that … in a way, he can not come to my world. I must go to him, to his. And I say we don’t do any rehearsing, we’ll go there and we improvise. What do you think? And he say “Yes.” So, he do his first act, I do the second act … and he come and we improvise the last 20 minutes together. Sometime you don’t know who was playing because I was playing artificial harmonics. That was fantastic.

As a final treat in this series of posts about François Rabbath, I’d like to share a couple videos with you. This first one is Rabbath reenacting a somewhat legendary episode from his childhood. As the story goes, his first bass was an absolutely terrible instrument. As the young François progressed, he became deeply frustrated by the limitations of playing this piece of crap. In typical teenage style, he came up with a plan to get a new bass that was marvelous in its simplicity and stupidity…..

As I mentioned in the previous post, to this day all Rabbath’s concerts begin with him performing “Poucha Dass,” usually solo. Here is a very recent video of him from the Three World Bass Festival in Poland. In it he performs “Poucha Dass”, his “Concerto No. 3″ (accompanied by his son Sylvain on piano), and a final piece, which, I reluctantly admit, I don’t know the name of. Watch for the celebratory spin of the bass at the end.

* * *

Brian has graciously allowed us to share some of his own music. No doubt you’ll hear Rabbath’s influence in his playing, but there’s much more besides. The dramatic title track from the second Fantastic Merlins album shows just one side of the quartet, fueled by propulsive rhythms and solos.

A HANDFUL OF EARTH
Fantastic Merlins
A Handful of Earth
Fantastic Merlins : 2009

BR, bass; Nathan Hanson, tenor saxophone; Jacqueline Ultan, cello; Peter Hennig, drums.

Buy a copy of A Handful of Earth HERE.

This provocative cover of Albert Ayler’s “Bells” doesn’t try to match the ecstatic blowout of the original. Instead Brian and Nathan Hanson miniaturize the entire tune, managing to convey its beating heart with a series of small gestures.

BELLS
Nathan Hanson & Brian Roessler
Bellfounding
Community Pool : 2009

NH, saxophone; BR, bass.

Buy a copy of Bellfounding HERE.

BREIZ
POUCHA DASS
THYOSANNE
François Rabbath
Multibasse
Emen : 1974

FR, bass on all tracks; Michel Delaporte, percussion (“Breiz”);  Jean-Pierre Drouet, percussion (“Poucha Dass”); Jean-Pierre Drouet, Christian Garros, and Armand Molinetti, various percussion including tabla and marimba (“Thyosanne”).

We’re thrilled to present part two of Brian Roessler’s exploration of the visionary jazz of François Rabbath, based on new interviews and archival research. This is important and overlooked music. If you haven’t already, check out part one here.

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The late ’60s and early ’70s found François Rabbath expanding his musical palette and career in many ways. Rabbath’s compositions transformed quickly, incorporating more elements of world music and western classical music into jazz. This was in keeping with other trends in jazz  at the time, but Rabbath works with these elements in a style very unlike his contemporaries. There continues to be a sparseness and gritty edge to his music, in addition to the obvious virtuosity, that sets it apart.

In addition to some oddball pairings (an evening he shared with The Moody Blues, for instance), Rabbath began a fruitful partnership with the Spanish singer and guitarist Paco Ibanez, which led him, really for the first time, to make a musical impact outside France. This collaboration with Ibanez led Rabbath to tour South America and Europe, and more importantly, to work for human rights and against fascism at concerts benefiting the people of Spain, Chile, and Argentina. In 1976 Pop Hebdo published these words from him:

I am here tonight for the Argentine people. It is not even a question of politics … it is quite simply intolerable to know that this people is facing, all alone, a total and revolting repression. They are persecuted, murdered, forced into exile. This people resists in a desperate struggle that must be known by all.

In 1971 Rabbath played in concerts in Vallauris and Paris, France to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pablo Picasso. Rabbath composed and performed “War and Peace,” inspired by the Picasso murals at Vallauris. Rabbath also began performing solo concerts around this time which drew wild critical praise, including what were probably the first performances of the J. S. Bach suites for solo cello on double bass at their original pitch. That live recording I mentioned in the previous post was made in Paris in June 1971, at a series of three concerts with Ibanez attended by around 5,000 people each night.

However, the vast majority of Rabbath’s work was in the studio writing and playing on film scores. Among these scores is Salut a l’Aventure, Le Bateau sur L’Herbe, L’Invasion, and Omer Pacha. His film work has continued to the present – notably with his soundtrack to the wonderful movie Zaman, The Man from the Reeds, the first film made in Iraq after the 2002 U.S. invasion.

The three tracks featured this week come from Multibasse, a compilation of some of the music he made in the late 60s and early 70s. It was later re-released in a collection simply titled 70. At this time, Rabbath was writing and recording for his own pleasure and musical growth, not sponsored by a label. Pieces he wrote sometimes found their way into films. Of the three featured in this post, only “Thyosanne” was written for a film (about African art). Since he continued to own the rights to all his own music, he was able to use them in films or release records as he saw fit:

I was recording for films. And each time that I write something I put it in different movies. And I keep all the rights for me. So I have the opportunity to take all these recordings from different [sessions], like ‘My Father’ (‘Papa Georges’) goes in a movie. It was the soundtrack of a movie [Venda Teres].

In the tracks featured in this post we hear tablas from India, percussion from Africa, and the sounds of the Breton pipehorn all incorporated into Rabbath’s writing and playing. But this music still falls squarely into the category of jazz. There’s an open and improvisational style, a clear continuation and elaboration of the work Rabbath began with his first two records.

The short piece “Breiz,” from 1972, is the former name of a province in Bretagne in northwestern France. It was written using Rabbath’s innovative techniques to explore the sounds of other instruments and sounds from other parts of the world. Rabbath explains:

“Breiz?” I write it because I like to have the pipe horn and it inspired me to do this kind of sound, you know? … in fact, all what I write its exploring all the possibilities of the bass. And each time that I write something I found out that it can represent the pipe horn or the sitar. So when I found something like that I write a piece to, not just to make an effect … So I write a piece complete to not just make an effect, you know? In a way, it becomes noble.

“Poucha Dass,” from 1968, opens every Rabbath performance to this day. It was the first piece of his that I ever heard, and it is a marvel of sensuousness and musical magnetism. It was not written for a film according to Rabbath, but was instead for his own interest and musical exploration. In keeping with the Zelig-like way Rabbath has of working with many of the most important musicians of our time yet remaining under the radar, he explained the origins of the piece:

Its simple. Because I see Ravi Shankar one day and we planned to play together in the future. And I hear his sitar and the sound, I like it very much. And I say, with the double bass, with the arco we can imitate this. So, I write “Poucha Dass” for that.

“Thyosanne,” also from 1968, is a piece reminiscent of his earlier work – moody, sparse and biting, featuring just bass, percussion and drums. In fact, when I asked Rabbath about it he told me “Thyosanne” was from his first record. Maybe it was recorded for that album, more likely his second one, and not included? Or, more likely still, written for those first albums but not recorded until later? At any rate, it is a wonderful illustration of his unique sound on the bass and his unmistakable style of writing.

The textures of this piece are sultry and absolutely unique. The percussion arrangement, the use of tabla and marimba, sounds somehow inevitable and at the same time avant (in the most loving use of that term) and completely fascinating.

* * *

The record from which these tracks are culled, Multibasse, is happily available in a reissue on the Red Mark label in a version now called Multibass ’70. YOU CAN (and should!) BUY A COPY HERE, HERE, OR HERE.

* * *

COMING ON WEDNESDAY: François Rabbath rips it up live on stage in Paris with a couple of Indian musical virtuosos.

KOBOLDS
PRELUDE A L’ARCHET
DESERT
François Rabbath
The Sound of a Bass
Philips : 1963

FR, bass; Armand Molinetti, drums.

We’re thrilled to present a special three-part post about extraordinary French bassist and composer François Rabbath. His contributions to jazz have been widely overlooked both within jazz circles and by his own fans. His early recordings form a visionary body of work. It’s fertile territory still to be explored.

Brian Roessler, bassist for the Fantastic Merlins, put these posts together, conducting a new interview with Rabbath and drawing on rare documents and scholarship. Take it away, Brian…

* * * *

I am not alone in the reaction I had when I first heard François Rabbath. I was completely astonished. I thought: There is no way this guy is playing the double bass. And: No way is it just one bass player playing live. I played the disc for anyone who would sit still to listen to it. I puzzled and wondered what was going on here and why had I never heard of him before?

As it turns out, I had radically underestimated what could be done on the bass. And I have no good answer to why I hadn’t heard of him before, why he isn’t well known outside the circle of bass players to whom he is a legend.

After I heard that first recording, which was a live disc recorded in the seventies, I began to search around. There were rumors of some very early jazz recordings he made, but I couldn’t get my hands on them. After looking for years, I finally did get them in reissues put out by a very small label in France. It’s only in recent months that those shocking and beautiful records have been officially reissued on CD by Philips, the label that originally released them.

In 2002, about five years after I first heard that recording, my wife and I sold our house, took our two-year-old son and two dogs, and moved to Paris so I could study with François Rabbath. François always says I am crazy for doing it, but it seemed like the most obvious decision in the world to me.  Since the first time I heard Rabbath play I had been nurturing a secret fantasy that someday I would study with him. Five years later I was actually on the phone with this man. He told me I should come to Paris. “I’ll try,” I said. “Don’t try, do it,” he replied. Nine months later, I was there.

* * *

BEGINNINGS
François Rabbath was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1931. He developed his groundbreaking double bass technique entirely on his own – there were no other bass players in Aleppo, or in Beirut where he later moved with the family band. When he first began playing bass in the band, his oldest brother told him to just play any note at all, as long as he kept the rhythm going.  Occasionally, by complete luck, he played the right note – a miracle of consonance! He figured that there must be some way to make it happen more often, so he practiced, exploring the instrument with no idea that there were things he wasn’t supposed to be able to do. By unknowingly breaking all the rules, he became almost certainly the greatest virtuoso the double bass has ever had.

Rabbath and his brothers moved to Paris in the 1950s. He entered the Paris Conservatory, but didn’t last long there. He was too busy playing, making a living, and developing the musicality and technical prowess that would make him famous. He was in demand as a sideman and music director, most notably serving as both for French star Charles Aznavour.

DRUM AND BASS
It seems like a bit of a miracle that Rabbath’s first album, released in Europe as The Sound of A Bass and in the U.S. as the bizarrely titled Bass Ball, was ever made at all. This is a record made in 1963 on which the only instruments are bass and drums. It probably goes without saying that this had never been done before.

ENTER QUINCY JONES
To add another layer of oddity, the idea for the record came from Quincy Jones. He heard Rabbath playing by himself backstage at a Charles Aznavour concert and asked François if he had ever made any recordings. When Rabbath said no, Jones asked him to make some demos for him. Rabbath booked the Philips recording studio in Paris.

PHILIPS SAYS GO CRAZY
He told the folks at Philips that he was making some demos at the request of Quincy Jones. They told him that he didn’t need Jones – they would write a record contract for him right there. Which they proceeded to do, asking Rabbath to submit a few demos for consideration for this upcoming record.  Rabbath submitted three pieces: One by his brother Pierre, one by Roland Vincent, and “Desert” – the first composition Rabbath had ever written.  Philips liked “Desert” best, and asked him to write eleven more pieces for his record.

WHAT THE HELL HE WAS THINKING
Asked what his idea was for making an album with just bass and drums, Rabbath said, “I was trying to prove that two instruments, bass and drums, can make something by themselves, because always the bass was accompanied by the orchestra when it made solos, always a few little bars of solo, improvisation, and I decide to do all the record without piano, without harmony, nothing.”

In probing further to get a sense of what on earth inspired these records, I came up empty. I know that François considers them to be jazz, because when I purchased the old reissues from he him he said something like, “Ah, you want to hear the jazz records.” But what kind of jazz was he hearing at that time to lead him to make these?  I asked him about what seemed to be two likely suspects for inspiration – Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman.  No, he wasn’t familiar with the work of either one at that time.

ENTER ORNETTE
At any rate, the record was an unqualified success, attracting attention around the world. It led to a long relationship with Ornette Coleman who looked Rabbath up when he was in Paris. Coleman appeared at his apartment one evening and the two proceeded to play for hours, late into the night.  Rabbath told me his neighbors were screaming and pounding on the walls, but the two kept playing. It was the first of many encounters between them, including a duet at Rabbath’s Carnegie Hall debut in 1975. I can hardly imagine what those sessions must have sounded like – I asked Rabbath if there are any recordings available of the two of them:

“No, I have 2 or 3 tries at home,” he said. “I have them even in video. But we never released them. He came to my house with a tape and he recorded I don’t know how many hours. Each time that he came we put the camera and we played just for that, for us. We are not thinking about making commerce.  This was for our happiness, you know.”

INDUSTRY RULE #4080
In 1964 Rabbath recorded an outstanding follow up bass-and-drums disc for Philips titled, appropriately I guess, No. 2. Excited about the success of The Sound of A Bass,

[Philips was] asking me to give the copyright to them. And I refused that.  I said ‘It belongs to me, the copyright. Why you like to have them?’ They said ‘Because if we’re going to release it in the States we must have all the copyrights.’ That means they want to screw me. Like every musician is screwed by the company, you know? So I didn’t want to do that because I like to keep all my writing, it belongs to me… If somebody would like to play [my music] I don’t ask them to pay money. I do that for pleasure, I don’t do that just for money. So Philips, when they see that I don’t give them the copyright, they canceled the contract.

THE TRACKS
The music on both these records is shockingly beautiful, dramatic, gripping, and technically jaw-dropping.  More than forty-five years later, bass players hear this stuff and think, “How the HELL is he doing that?”  There’s no one else who plays bass or writes like this. The radiant sparseness of the music is unlike anything that was made in 1963 or since.

The more I hear these concise tracks, the more I feel like I am getting a view into a kind of alternate reality – a direction jazz could have, but didn’t, go.  Instead of trying to give a detailed description of what you’re about to hear, allow me to present the terse and colorfully impenetrable descriptions of the tracks from the original liner notes:

The Dream-World:

- “Desert” : Blindman’s Bluff with life and death

- “Prelude a l’archet” : a love-dream

Everyday Experience:

- “Kobolds” : Magic transposition of the ambiguity of every day life

* * *

Next week: Part Two explores Francois Rabbath’s increasingly experimental and unusual jazz recordings of the early 1970s.

In the meantime….

-Buy the newly remastered THE SOUND OF A BASS.

-Buy the newly remastered NO. 2.

WHEN WILL THE BLUES LEAVE
KING KORN
Paul Bley
Footloose!
Savoy : 1964

PB, piano; Steve Swallow, bass; Pete La Roca, drums.

We’re pleased to present another stellar guest post from longtime friend of the site Ethan Iverson, of The Bad Plus. A reminder that Do The Math remains essential reading for any jazz fan, for Ethan’s wide-ranging interviews, surveys, and much more. So in honor of Paul Bley’s birthday this week, take it away, Ethan…

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Footloose! is the first mature Bley record as a leader. He told Bill Smith in an interview:

I was always the poorest player in every band and that situation existed for years. As a matter of fact I didn’t make a record that I could say, “check this one out,” until about 1962 or ‘63, which was the Savoy record with Pete La Roca and Steve Swallow. I think that record took ten or twelve years of listening and trying to play…

Because it was the first album with Bley at full power, it’s possible that Footloose! is Bley’s most influential recording. It certainly made a big impression on certain pianists the time: Most famously, Keith Jarrett has never denied his debt to Bley and Footloose! in particular. This natural progression is somewhat controversial. Insiders commonly snark that Jarrett should give Bley royalties, and perhaps Bley himself is a bit bitter about how Jarrett became such a superstar using some of the tools Bley invented. After hearing Jarrett’s 2000 free jazz release Inside Out, Bley joked to me that “Now, after all these years, Keith has finally figured out how to sound exactly like I did in 1964.”

I don’t agree! Bley and Jarrett are really different musicians; it’s impossible to mistake one for the other. But the assertion that Keith stole from Paul is more reasonable than a certain careless statement I overheard at party recently, that “Keith could do everything Bley did but better.” When he is on, Bley’s improvised phrases have a kind of surreal purity and effortlessness that no-one else can do better, including Jarrett.

In my recent interview, Jarrett said Footloose! was like “Sort of like Ahmad [Jamal] with certain kinds of drugs.” This initially surprising comparison makes sense when you consider how inside Steve Swallow and Pete La Roca Bley is on Footloose! Unlike many leaders of piano trios, Jamal, Bley, and Jarrett all want to get as close to the bass and drums as possible, even willing to “accompany” rather than always insisting on “being accompanied.”

Swallow was a familiar associate of Bley during this era. They were part of Jimmy Giuffre’s early-60’s trio, the same one that was so inspiring to the founder of ECM, Manfred Eicher. What an exciting time for these musicians! In the same week, they could first gig with the straight-ahead masters (Sonny Rollins for Bley, Art Farmer and Thelonious Monk for Swallow, who appears on the recently issued Monk disc Live at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival) and then meet each other in the studio to explode convention.

The inclusion of La Roca, however, is fairly unique in Bley’s discography. For all of his delightful idiosyncrasies, La Roca is at heart a straight-ahead drummer best known for powering hard bop Blue Note dates with leaders like Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, and Freddie Hubbard. The other drummers Bley went on to record with in the 60s — Paul Motian, Milford Graves, and, most notably, long-term associate Barry Altschul — would be just as happy or even happier playing free tempo as time. Not La Roca. There isn’t a track on Footloose! where he doesn’t start swinging hard in the improvising, even if the head suggests something freer.

Bley sounds good with a swinging drummer, and in a way it’s a shame that at some point he lost interest in hooking up with players as uncompromising as La Roca. (A rare exception are a couple of 80s dates with Billy Hart, who offers a similar kind of perspective on serious swing that La Roca does.) Of course, unlike many drummers so devoted to swing, La Roca and Hart are musicians who do appreciate free playing, which is why putting them in combination with Bley works.

In fact, some consider La Roca’s 1959 solo on “Minor Apprehension” on the Jackie McLean album New Soil to be the first free-form drum solo. That solo still has the power to shock. Also, both of La Roca’s albums as a leader from the 60’s are somewhat experimental affairs. The more familiar Basra on Blue Note uses Swallow, Joe Henderson, and Steve Kuhn for a solid “inside/outside” session. D:O! readers will probably be even more interested in a hypnotic quartet date on Douglas with John Gilmore, Chick Corea, and Walter Booker called Turkish Women at the Bath. From that date, “Bliss” shows Corea at his most spacious and Bley-influenced. (It would be hard to guess the pianist on this number as Chick Corea!)

Not just Jarrett and Corea but a whole generation of mostly caucasian post-1970 NYC jazz pianists checked out Footloose!: Richie Beirach, Joanne Brackeen, Jim McNeely, Marc Copland, Kenny Werner, Fred Hersch, etc., all seem to have made room for Paul Bley to hang at the same table that Bill Evans presides over. Bley’s peers Steve Kuhn and Denny Zeitlin seem to have paid attention, too. I suspect that not all these comparatively straight-ahead musicians paid the same kind of attention to more hardcore classic Bley albums like the ferocious Barrage or the minimalist Ballads. But since Footloose! is so swinging, it has always been interesting to just about everybody. Indeed, I believe that Bley’s influence crossed the color line with Geri Allen in the 80s and that now he is considered a resource for any curious musician regardless of background.

Speculation aside, Bley’s message is certainly interesting to me! When I was younger I tried to own every one of his records. This proved impossible — his discography was too vast and ultimately a bit repetitive — but I ended up knowing a lot about Paul Bley. I’ll never completely shake his profound influence on my worldview.

Footloose! has actually never been one of my personal favorites. If forced to choose when exiting the burning building, I’d leave that one behind while grabbing discs that have greater sentimental value: Ballads, Closer, Ramblin’, With Gary Peacock, Barrage, Diane, and, especially, the first Bley record I ever got, Hot.

Hot is a live 80s quartet date with John Scofield, Steve Swallow, and Barry Altschul. I obsessed over this record in a very serious way. What’s strange is that the tracklist on Hot is more or less identical to Footloose!, down to a magnificent themeless deconstruction of Gershwin’s “How Long Has This Been Going On” in duo with Swallow (on Footloose! it’s called “Cousins,” and on Hot it’s called “How Long.”) It’s like a bizarre temporal anomaly: Unlike everybody before me, I got Footloose! Mk.II instead of the original to study. When I finally chased down Mk. I, my first thought was, “Oh, I know all of this already.”

Anyway, the original Footloose! remains dolefully out of print, and because Keith Jarrett honorably references it in interviews, young pianists always want to check it out. Here’s a pair of tracks where you can hear the “proto-Keith.”

WHEN WILL THE BLUES LEAVE. Bley learned this song from the composer Ornette Coleman when his quintet at the Hillcrest Club in L.A. was Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. Stanley Crouch has often said that Bley is to Ornette the way that Bud Powell was to Charlie Parker, both finding a way to put the innovative alto sax language onto the keyboard. That’s true. Indeed, Bley and Bud are two of the greatest masters of “blowing” into the piano: they somehow make the big box sound like a wind instrument.

Bley would go on to play and record this quintessential “Hillcrest-era” Ornette blues many times. Here, both Swallow and Bley honor the 12-bar form, but it’s interesting that the piano solo seems modulated up a step from F to G by the beginning of the bass solo. It’s that free a harmonic situation! Bley’s phrases reference Monkish motivic development, the white hillbilly blues, and something he learned from Ornette, “erasure phrases,” where you negate the key and tempo with a fast atonal flurry: It’s a way to begin again, even in the middle of a solo.

KING KORN. Bley somehow ended up married to not just one but two major jazz composers. (Has anyone else of either sex managed this feat? Bley tells his side of the story in his biography Stopping Time.) Most of the non-standard tracks on all the greatest Bley albums are by either Carla Bley or Annette Peacock. The memorable “King Korn” is by Carla. It’s really just a little collection of classical cadences to get going: maybe these cadences are a little “korny.”

This piano solo shows how Bley can take his time, with lots of room to enjoy the bass and drums. Note how he finishes (at 2:14) with a pure Louis Armstrongish blues shout before the final abstracted classical “kadence.” There’s no set form, but Swallow and Bley listen closely to each other: the atmosphere isn’t really atonal, but “pan-tonal” or something like Ornette with Haden. Swallow’s brilliant abstract solo is arguably the most atonal moment. La Roca swings away, but — crucially! — is immediately ready to stop on a dime and return to the rubato head to take it home, something that few of his Blue Note peers would have managed as convincingly.

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When I finally met Paul Bley a couple of years ago, I was about to go onstage with his old associate Charlie Haden. Bley was rather chilly at first handshake. These days he’s a famous contrarian, and I sensed I needed to not grovel but respond in kind. I leaned into him and told him, viciously, “I had all your records at one point. But you know what? I can’t play like you, and why would I want to? I gave all your records away when I was 24. I turned my back.”

Bley looked astonished, but then he grinned. “I’m glad you got rid of all my records, that’s what I tell all pianists to do.”

I responded, “Yeah…good. Well, recently I got some of your records, and I decided to love you again.”

Bley said, “That was a mistake. Get rid of my records.”

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Ethan is playing next week with his own swinging drummer of the old school. Those in and around New York City should definitely try to check out Iverson with Ben Street and Albert “Tootie” Heath down at Smalls. D:O is planning on making the Wednesday hit.

[ Spotted: Mandatory Attendance. A new, NYC-centric blog that answers the ever-lovin' question, "I wonder where the good jazz shows are at tonight." A much needed and convenient resource. ]