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Chris Lydon’s interview this week on Radio Open Source is with composer Yehudi Wyner. It’s a fascinating hour spent with an American “classical” composer  – he spends time discussing his influences, the way he approaches composition  and deconstructs some of his works on the piano.

Image: Boston Globe

As with many 20th century American composers, Wyner is open to the influence of “popular” forms on his work – particularly gospel and jazz. But as Stravinksy and Ives did with ragtime and marching band tunes, Wyner’s compositions refract these sources through his own personal tonal lens.

Wyner has been writing music since since his childhood in the 1920s, so he’s learned a thing or two about how creativity happens. I particularly liked his description of the compositional act – and the responsibility that comes with inspiration:

“When you stumble on these thickets of interesting material, you’re confronted with the most terrifying task of all, which is somehow living up  to it, continuing it, recognising not only that nugget is of value, but that nugget is of no meaning unless it’s in a proper context, unless it’s really enveloped in understanding and development.”

Wyner’s insight could apply to all creative acts – writing, painting, creating a business, raising a child. Most of us only experience very short and occasional moments of true inspiration. The real work of creativity is how we put context and create flow around these small original ideas.

I commend this conversation to you – the music is wonderful, the conversations surrounding it are enlightening, and Wyner’s critique of contemporary popular music is penetrating without being bigoted.

Thelonius Monk Quartet in Paris, 1969, playing “I Mean You“. Charlie Rouse on tenor is particularly strong on this performance: melodic and concise, never overpowering Monk’s composition. He reminds me a little of Dewey Redman… in fact, it would’ve been awesome to hear Redman play with the Monk Quartet!

Thelonius Monk (pn), Charlie Rouse (ts), Nate Hygellund (b), Paris Wright (d)
Salle Pleyel, Paris: 15th December 1969

John Dankworth passed away on Saturday. Here’s a recent performance of his arrangement of Duke Ellington’s It Don’t Mean a Thing, still going strong at 81 at the 2008 North Sea Jazz Festival, and only hung up his saxophone in December.

This clip epitomises a lot of what Dankworth’s music meant to me – his close partnership with his wife Cleo Laine (one of the great voices of the 20th Century), his penchant for tight, witty ensemble writing, and his consistent ability to connect with a wide audience well beyond the regular jazz public.

The Café de la Danse in the Bastille district was full to capacity last night for Laura Veirs‘ first show in France for a very very long time. It’s a slightly odd venue – terraced seating make it feel like a high school auditorium, and the fact the audience had to sit on the floor added to the impression of being on a class trip.

One way to keep the costs of touring Europe to a minimum is to ensure that half your band is the support act. The show resembled a showcase for the Pacific Northwest’s indie-folk scene, opening with short solo sets by Nelson (of Old Believers) and Eric Anderson (Cataldo) before they both joined Laura and Keeley Boyle (also of Old Believers) onstage as a quartet for the main event.

To my ears, Nelson’s solo songs lacked lustre and gazed largely shoe-wards. But Eric’s set picked up the pace a bit with some well structured songs and clever melodies: his band recording Signal Flare is well worth checking out.

Laura’s set rolled out in an atmosphere of relaxed bonhomie, without ever quite catching alight. It seems a challenge for anglophone artists to really cut through to French audiences, although the audience sure liked the music, and even taught Laura (6 months pregnant with her first child) how to say “Je suis enceinte.”

The set-list understandably centred on material from the new album July Flame (see my earlier post). Carol Kaye was an unexpected choice of opener, but it worked well.  And the immediate follow-up with The Sun is King and Where Are You Driving (two of my personal favourites of this new crop of songs) kept this particular audient happy.

The quartet provided a remarkably rich sound, with all four musicians rotating between bass, guitars, banjos, percussion and keyboards – and when an extra layer was required (for example on To the Country), the crowd was split in two to sing the backing vocals. The Paris audience played along with the game, although they preferred clapping along when Laura and Keeley stretched out on hoedown based around Cluck Old Hen.

Songs from earlier in Laura’s career were spread out through the set, including a solemn version of Spelunking, with its disturbing and slightly desperate plea (If I took you darling/to the caverns of my heart/would you light the lamp dear/and see fish without eyes/and bats with their heads hanging down towards the ground/would you still come around?).

Although she didn’t play Parisian Dream (from 2005’s Year of Meteors), there were a few nods to French culture: Rapture, which references Monet and his gardens at Giverny, as well as Sleeper in the Valley, a new song inspired by Rimbaud’s Le dormeur du val. The gesture was appreciated, but I think the audience would have equally liked another hoedown instead.

I may be getting old, but there’s one feature of gigs in Paris I really appreciate: they start early, and finish early – I was home by 10.30pm, in time for a good night’s sleep before orchestra rehearsal. An evening with Laura Veirs is an evening well-spent, and there are few things on stage more beautiful than a pregnant woman with banjo.

When I found this on YouTube, I knew I had to post it… it’s the opening sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. I’ve never seen a film quite like it before or since, and the first 7 minutes set the mood perfectly – mysterious, subtle and playful, drawing you into Alexander’s world.

Alexander is played by Bertil Guve, and Grandma Ekdahl by Gunn Wållgren (who was suffering terminal cancer throughout the filming). The music at the start is the 2nd movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44.

Thursday 14th January was trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s 80th birthday. John Fordham in the Grauniad offers a review of the Birthday Concert that was held this week at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Image: Juan Carlos Hernandez

It sounds like it was a predictably wonderful evening – with a monster band assembled to pay tribute to this most modest of master musicians: including Dave Holland, Evan Parker, John Taylor, Stan Sulzmann and Norma Winstone… all players with long histories of fruitful collaboration with Wheeler.

To catch some of the atmosphere, try out these recordings of Kenny Wheeler with the Colours Jazz Orchestra, recorded in Verona, Italy in February 2006.

As far as I know, the Verona date has never been released commercially, but you can pick up the superb Nineteen Plus One (recorded with the same orchestra) if you like what you hear.

Happy Birthday K.W.!

(Edit: for those of you who don’t want to download, Yann sent me the link to Kenny Wheeler on Deezer)

This week’s back-and-forth on the RER has been accompanied by the new Laura Veirs album, July Flame. The ice and snow of the past few weeks has largely disappeared, and this rich, summery music seemed to bring a little warmth to the air.

With its electric guitars and rich sound pallette, the title track belies the simplicity of the rest of the album. Laura’s previous album Saltbreakers felt like a “band” record, with plenty of layers, vast electrification and a triumphal, full sound thanks to the production of Tucker Martine.

By contrast, July Flame is stripped back, and the songs benefit from it. You’d have to go back to 2003’s Troubled by the Fire to hear Laura Veirs songs in a similarly “simple” setting. The approach is epitomised by Carol Kaye, a tribute to the eponymous bassist, the “Everett, Washington girl” with “10,000 sessions” to her name – a song which, cannily, features no bass:

And on the occasions when the orchestration gets fancy it’s always groovy, rather than lush: the gorgeous Wide-Eyed and Legless is woven together with clever string arrangement, and Summer is the Champion fair stonks along (what’s that? a drum kit AND horns?).

Where Are You Driving and The Sun is King are as good songs as Laura has ever written. And what’s even better, she’s playing in Paris at the end of the month. It’s one show I really don’t want to miss.

Laura Veirs & The Hall of Flames / Old Believers / Cataldo
29 janvier 2009: 20h
Café de la Danse
5 Passage Louis-Phillippe 75011
Métro Bastille

More student howlers, to round off the weekend…

“Jazz has the technique of classical music, the feeling of blues, and the hope of children everywhere.”

“I know what troubles musicians now when I watch and listen to them play.”

“My ties to jazz were through Bleeding Gums Murphy, a character on TV show called the Simpsons. It comes on at 8pm on Sunday nights.”

“I was surprised to find out about the different styles of jazz like hard, be, and post bops.”

“I thought that jazz was a certain amount of instruments that you played and was composed for you, not believing that it was their improvisation and the jazz musicians who made up the music on the spot doing what they wanted to do with the tunes. I know this is hard to explain but it is true.”

“When I try to play jazz, I mess around with the instruments pounding out random notes that were just me making nonsense up and it sounding like a big pile of crap.”

“Jazz is more profound when it doesn’t help pay the bills.”

“The first thing I learned in jazz history that happy birthday is the most played jazz classic. You want to hear happy birthday in swing BAM! You got it You want to hear happy birthday in classic jazz BAM! You got it. You want to hear happy birthday in be bop BAM! You got it. It’s great! The second thing I learned is free jazz is where its at. I think that I could be a free jazz musician cause it all sounds like a drunk 7 year old jamming down on some notes and making the sweet sweet music fly. Free jazz was defiantly the best part of the class but unfortunately you didn’t play free jazz enough. My one suggestion for your next class is that you start out every class with a 5 minute free jazz intro. Over all and all, I defiantly learned a lot in jazz history class.”

“Hip hop and pop are fine, going out for fame and bling bling. Jazz has been around for a while, is out of style, but can really sing.”

“Jazz musicians sing and play music because they can’t contain their passions. Their music starts in the soul radiates out in every direction.”

“Jazz is a very dynamic kind of music. Loud and Soft.”

“Swing makes you want to get up and dance and free jazz just makes you want to get up.”

“If any kind of music can calm a hectic day, its cool jazz. If you feel like going out and dancing, however there is ragtime.”

“In conclusion, jazz is music.”

“Jazz has come from the fields of New Orleans to my 2pm class, and beyond.”

“Unlike other forms of music, jazz is listened to by old people as well as us.”

“I learned what intros and outros were in this class. Now I look for them when I go searching for good music.”

“I went to do my (jazz) listening report at the house of blues.”

“Jazz has taught me a lot about the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.”

“I thought of jazz as a thing of the past, something old African American men listened to on old record players while sitting on their front porches smoking cigars.”

“Steve Turre has taught me that sea shells should be left on the ground instead of his mouth.”

“Over the course of the semester my knowledge of jazz has gone from nothing to practically nothing.”

“Even though I probably won’t listen to jazz after this semester, it has given me a greater appreciation of movies.”

“My favorite person to study was Sonny Rollins. He knew that he had to throw his saxaphone off the bridge when he heard how good Charlie Parker was.”

“Jazz to me was the shoo opps. From groups in streets downtown in the olden, golden days.”

“Happy birthday: That song is just amazing to me.”

“My all-time favorite jazz artist to listen to was Buddy Baldwin, AKA the jazz king. I think I’m going to go out and buy a couple of his CDs.”

“I was surprised to find musicians with such odd names such as Vilage Von Guard.”

“Jazz is not as popular with all of the adolescence going around.”

“I like jazz more in books than on cds.”

“I remember coming into class with no facts but a whole plate of bullshit to dish out.”

“I found myself learning about Blues, Early Jazz, Dixieland, Swing, Be Bop, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, Cool Jazz, Hard Bop, Free Jazz, Third Stream, Japanese, Post Bop, Fusion, Smooth, Modern Jazz, and the list goes on.”

“Call and Respond is where one musician plays and the other one tries too hard to figure out what he’s doing.”

“The people in Dixie Land originated jazz music.”

“Jazz is now a part of me from 2pm-3:15pm every Tuesday and Thursday.”

“Jazz started in the fields where they used hand-me-down instruments and wore hand-me-down clothes.”

“If Wynton Marsalis said jazz was dead in the 1970’s, what was he playing at the time?”

“Weather Report was the final big band back in the day.”

“My girlfriend and I both agreed the next morning that jazz-club food was something we could’ve done without.”

“Jazz agitates me.”

“I like jazz, but I need something else besides rhythm, melody, and harmony.”

“I had no clue that so many (musicians) used drugs. Thinking about that, there is no doubt that they are living the life I dream of.”
“They are spending money on things that they don’t really need or even want.”

”I noticed that there weren’t many jazz women in our textbook until I looked to see that the author was a guy. All guys are sexist, women bashers, who don’t ever give us our credit.”

“The part I most enjoyed was studying and appreciating slavery.”

“Its hard to imagine where Winton Marsalis gets his ideas from.”

“I’d like to see midgets getting bribed in every jazz club. Not just with Birdland. I’m of course talking about the jazz club, not Charlie Parker.”

“We’ve had our share of good times and bad times over the semester. By bad times, I mean my tests.”

“Count Bassie WAS the swing era.”

“This class increased my intelligence with aptitude.”

“Duke Ellington had the ability to turn jazz compositions into pure magic.”

“Swing died in World War II when the soloists took over.”

“I could go on and on about jazz, but I won’t.”

“Tony Williams was my favorite drummer because his group, Lifetime, is the same name as my favorite channel that I watch.”

“How do the musicians know what to play when their eyes were closed the whole time? And what was with the piano player talking while played his solos. His musician friends must have been thought he was crazy.”

“I technically wasn’t in your class but I was happy to be along for the ride.”

“I was in jazz band in high school but we didn’t play jazz music.”

“Dizzie Gillespie was the one who jammed on the drumss.”

“I thought doing our listening report would be a painful sort of torture.”

“I was bummed out at the beginning of the semester because I thought Louis Armstrong was going to be one of the guest lecturers.”

Jelly Roll Morton and his band, discussing their new release BloodSugarSexMagix

I received these by email a little while ago. They are (apparently) quotes from American students in a college jazz history class, extracted from the essay topic, “What I learned over this semester in jazz history.” These are all (apparently) genuine responses, completely unaltered.

They are all 18+ year old students; not high school or middle school age kids. None of them are music students; they all took this class as a gen. ed. credit.

———–

“Free Jazz is an era that I wished I had never learned about.”

“Free Jazz. Wow; what a sound it makes. An awful, horrible sound. I don’t see how that can actually be called a sound. My 5 year old nephew could pound on the piano and make the same sound! He may even make a better sound. To be honest, that sound is one big mess.”

“With swing, it’s kind of up in the air for me. I must say I tried like hell to keep up with it.”

“My favorite jazz has a bluesy, Mexican feel to it.”

“Though Jazz started in New Orleans, it traveled all around the world picking up and dropping off things along the way.”

“One thing that confused me was Jelly Roll Morton. Did he play with the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I didn’t think that they were around back then.”

“Jelly Roll (Morton) bridged the gap between piano and ragtime.”

“My grandpa likes it, but I think scat stinks.”

“Chick Corea, Dizzie Gillespie, Bix Biderbeck, and the monk created the first cool group.”

“I wished Don Cherry would put his trumpet back in his pocket.”

“There is not enough space in my head to fit all that I learned.”

“This class taught me about a lot of things that I never knew about.”

“Some of the big jazz musicians we learned about were: Lous Armstrong, Duke, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Cillespic, T. Mark, Ken Barns, Buddy Baldwin, Jellyroll Mortin, Sydney Bichai, Fats Waller, Earl Hines, and many many more.”

“Coming into class on the first day, I assumed there would be a boring professor standing in front of the class droning on and on about jazz. Here’s where it started; this is who played it; and here we are today; blah, blah, blah. I now realize that my assumption wasn’t all that wrong.”

“I assumed that jazz had started in the African-American community only because it fulfilled a multi-cultural course that I was required to take.”

“I really enjoyed hearing the big band, Frank Foster’s Arrangement.”

“I learned in this class that, contrary to my mom’s opinion, Kenny G is a joke. A really non-funny one.”

“I fell in love with that tune, Stablemates. It really hits home.”

“Jazz musicians don’t play for women any more.”

“I learned that going to jazz concerts gets me in good with my girlfriend.”

“I learned a lot about Be Bop, Swing, Drugs, and Fusion.”

“I found new respect for Miles Davis. He was adamant about not using drugs when everyone else was trying to get him to try some.”

“I liked hearing the Original Dixieland (Jazz) Band, and how they were the original Dixieland band.

“You might want to mention to future classes that jazz brings true romance to a scene.”

“I’m glad I took this class, because I feel more comfortable to talk about jazz in its awesomeness.”

Put it back in your pocket, Don.

“Drugs caused many artists their careers in many ways.”

“Jazz is a style of music that is almost very sober.”

“I figured jazz started in the 1960s, but to my surprise, it started back in the late 18th century.”

“Smooth jazz now just plain old angers me.”

“A lot of the things that I learned were facts that I never new about, not only in jazz, but in life as well.”

“I got really excited by the tenor sax, soprano sax, baritone sax, but not so much the alto sax.”

“I can’t believe that blacks had time to invent jazz if they were hanging out in the whorehouses with Jelly Roll Morton.”

“A lot of black jazz musicians were very talented, which probably came from them not having anything else to do.”

“When blacks and whites finally decided to get together to make jazz, it was a big hit.”

“Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz were two guys who would sit down and enjoy cool jazz.”

“Going to the club gave me jazz sensations.”

“I hear the hard-bop jazz influence on bands today such as Matchbox Twenty and Dave Matthews Band.”

“James Crow worked to bring the slaves together with the creoles.”

“Learning jazz has helped me beat my mom at Jeopardy. She had no idea who a blind pianist from Toledo, OH was for $800.”

“I learned the definition of supreme technical virtuosity is to play like Louie Armstrong.”

“Charlie Parker was a famous jazz musician who played saxophonists.”

“Getting 81% (on a test) is all well and good until you see that dumb guy next to you who picks his nose getting 91%. I then started studying and coming to class.”

“I asked the drummer what the names of the names and styles of the tunes that he played but he didn’t seem to know.”

“TV has become more jazzy to me now.”

“Studying jazz has been a coming out party for me.”

“I loved the vibrational solos of Clifford Brown.”

“When I think of tradition and instruments, I think of Fiddler of the Roof.”

“I learned a lot from the different guest speakers in class, whether they were an experienced piano player, a director of music at a major motel, or a guitar player with an oddly placed hankerchief in his pocket.”

Clifford Brown: vibrational

Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg seem a strangely appropriate duo: America’s pop wunderkind of the 1990s teaming up with the daughter of one of France’s most famous performing artists.

Heaven Can Wait is the first single off Gainsbourg’s new album Master’s Hand, but it sounds like a Beck song through and through. And the video is completely fabulous:

Although officially it’s on a Charlotte Gainsbourg disc, Heaven Can Wait sounds almost like a return to form for Beck. He’s frankly showing a little of his age in this video, but the music contains some of the hallmarks of his classic period: honky-tonk beat-making, lyrical bricolage and a story of misfits played out under the sun of East Los Angeles.

The video even contains sly visual clues to Beck’s earlier work (and the visual is almost as important as the music with Beck). See if you can spot:

• The hemp rope guitar strap (from the interior album artwork on Mellow Gold)
• Guy in a horse mask (a Human Jackass partly made his Odelay tour of 1997 such a gas. Still the best concert I’ve ever seen.)
• The goat skull that’s another reference to cover of Mellow Gold

(Don’t know if I should confess that Mellow Gold was the first CD I ever bought. Given that the first cassette I bought was Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of…, I’m not sure if my taste improved. But I do own all of Beck’s albums. Including the pre-Geffen indie obscurities).