etnobofin

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.

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)

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

A short musical interlude. Icelandic pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs wrote a piece today marking the recent birthday of Thelonius Monk: interesting to read the perspectives of a contemporary jazz musician on her relationship to Monk’s music.

She also found some really nice video clips to illustrate her article. I particularly liked this one – the Bill Evans Trio playing Round Midnight in Sweden in 1970. It’s rare to see acoustic jazz of this era filmed in colour, and still in such good condition. Eddie Gomez is the bass player, Marty Morell is on drums.

For an insight into Monk’s life, music and idiosyncrancies, Leslie Gourse’s biography Straight No Chaser is highly recommended.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow mark the 40th anniversary of the New York recording sessions that produced Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. The album was released in April 1970.

I really shouldn’t say much more about the record. But I still think it’s a miraculous piece of work. I found a copy in a friend’s dad’s LP collection as a teenager (the vinyl had hardly been played) and made a tape of it which I thrashed to death.

I took the tape on a school trip to the USA, and have distinct memories of playing it on a long bus trip across the high desert of Arizona. Kerouac’s Visions of Cody was in my bag, and the redness of the desert stretched out like the surface of that other planet Miles and his crew were trying to reach with this music.

As I’ve written before, it was heady times for a teenager. I’d like to think I haven’t completely lost that particularly notion of existence that formed in the apex of those three forces meeting: Wayne Shorter’s solo on Spanish Key, the vastness of the American continent with signs pointing to Albuquerque and Kerouac’s love poem to the vanished idea of a friend.

This video (found via Jean François at Jazz Frisson) actually made me cry, it’s so good. The Count Basie Orchestra provide a lesson in ensemble articulation, and the opening trumpet solo by Thad Jones is electrifying.

Last night was as the French would say, un moment fort. A strong moment – hearing Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack deJohnette play together under the pines at Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d’Azur. It was a 6 hour round-trip from Montpellier, (of which more in a separate post), and worth every minute. Here’s a long post about it.

The Keith Jarrett Trio’s been together for 26 years, and has played Juan-les-Pins for for ten consecutive years. You’d forgive the guys if they treated their annual French appearance as a cushy retirement gig. But on the basis of what I heard in July 18th, 2009, these greying musicians are really, really still on the top of their game.

The setting at Juan is extravagantly romantic: an open-air stage with the Mediterranean as the backdrop, the audience gathered under stone pines as cicadas chirp into the evening and the hills behind Cannes fade to purple.

But this is France, and nothing is totally perfect. In my section, the arrival of the trio onstage was spoiled by a brief, sharp argument between a man and a woman as to whether she was allowed to smoke during the concert. But the crowd settled and Jarrett’s opening cantata eventually threaded into On Green Dolphin Street.

The first few numbers were stretching exercises, three musicians slowly reconnecting. Critical mass was acheived three songs in, as they teased Johnny Mercer’s I Thought About You to a slow-burning climax. Keith’s phrasing on the second four of the head (the “I thought about you” lyric) was witty, held back an extra millisecond just like Miles used to do in the 60s. The guys were smiling – you could tell they were enjoying themselves, and this song was possibly the musical highlight of the evening.

Seeing these musicians on stage somehow makes you hear new and different aspects of their music. In the flesh, Keith Jarrett’s debt to Ahmad Jamal and Bud Powell is more blatantly obvious than on the ECM albums.

These days, Gary Peacock looks for all the world like a gangly grandfather from Florida, in sweatpants. On record he sounds fluid, almost ethereal, and yet live on stage his phrases are as metrical as a Bach fugue.

Heard live, you realise Jack deJohnette is not a kit drummer – he’s a guy whose central business is, simply, to play his snare drum. The other items on stage with him are placed there to make Jack’s snare drum sound even better.

The second half was full of references to the Trio’s past, including Clifford Brown’s Sandu – recorded on the Trio’s 1999 Paris album. It started at medium-up, propelled by Jarrett’s rollicking blues chops, before Gary and Jack curbed Keith’s enthusiasm and pulled it back to a stately hard-swinging medium: proof that even masters can disagree on tempo, and they can make flawless mid-course corrections.

Later on, a balladic outro melded into a 10-minute long ostinato groove, like a gamelan cycle on a single chord. Jarrett’s insistent pentatonic runs recalled the best of his Köln Concert-era solo work. It seemed clear that this passage of play was a completely unplanned part of the concert, and the grins on stage confirmed it.

After a cleverly-disguised version of Round Midnight (Monk’s music always appears in the Trio’s concerts, noblesse oblige), the show was over. But the crowd was having none of it, calling the group back for THREE (count’em) encores.

First up, Butch and Butch was a twisty bebop showpiece for Jack’s drumming. More standing ovations brought the guys back for When I Fall in Love (sort of the Trio’s theme song), and it seemed that the tender ballad was meant to lull the audience into heading home quietly while contemplating the play of lights on the waterfront.

But the crowd wasn’t leaving. Keith, Gary and Jack re-emerged and re-ignited the stage with a long, gospel funk version of God Bless this Child. Everything came together. The swaying groove revived the ghosts of Jarrett’s 1970’s American Quartet with Gary digging deep into the pocket. Jack’s snare and hi-hat summoned memories of the lines he laid down exactly 40 years ago on Bitches Brew, just a couple of weeks after Aldrin and Armstrong came back to Earth.

If this wasn’t the best concert I’ve ever heard, it was close. For these musicians, age does not seem to weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun on the Mediterranean coast, even the cicadas in the pine trees shut up and listen.

(Musician images taken at soundcheck at Juan-Les-Pins in 2008 by Guillaume Laurent. Creative Commons license.)

Sunday night was the summer solstice, and France celebrated the Fête de la Musique. Basically, nearly every hamlet, village, town and city is turned into a giant venue for multiple free concerts and spontaneous jam sessions for the entire evening. In Montpellier, part of the tram network is shut down so stray trombonists or dreadlocked djembe-players don’t get run over, and several hundred thousand people pour into the centre of town to wander, drink, dance and listen (roughly in that order of priority).

All in all, it’s rather less about the musique, and more about the fête.

Like most nationally-celebrated events in France, the Fête de la Musique is a central government initiative, launched by Jack Lang, François Mitterand’s Minister of Culture in 1982. Several French friends told me rather proudly that the concept has been “exported” to many other countries, however no other country can rival the enthusiasm and napoleonic ubiquity witnessed in France every June 21st.

The atmosphere in Montpellier was amicable chaos, and the quality of the music varied from determinedly-average to actually-pretty-darn-good. I was disappointed by the number of covers bands, and lack of original local music: it seemed madness that a magnificent outdoor setting like la Promenade de Peyrou should be given over to an Air Guitar contest (mais oui) and musical tributes to Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana. Music fans had to search elsewhere for gems.

Down on the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle, a Devo tribute band was competently belting out disco-rock to a disinterested early-evening crowd. FauxDevo were so loud I almost walked straight past the Stick Jazz Trio without noticing. Set up among the tables outside Chez Boris, the SJT is based around Jean-Jacques Koto Bekima’s 10-string “stick” guitar, an instrument that allows bass and solo guitar lines to be played simultaneously.

They played great, opting for the sort of intricate modal bop that suits guitar-led groups. Saxophonist Sebastian Debloos trades in a nice Lovano/Brecker tenor style, the hallmark of jazz school graduates. But SJT was energetic, intelligent and held a decent crowd despite competition from the nearby stages.

When I got down to the Opera House on the Comédie, a local batucada group were finishing off a wandering samba session through the old town. They weren’t that great: I’ve heard better batucada in New Zealand – this particular group just weren’t tight or particularly swinguant.

Fellow Montpellierain jcverdie filmed their progress through town (see above). The video is less interesting for the music than for the impression it gives of the streets and architecture of the Ecusson for those who haven’t visited Montpellier before. [Edit: the video above apparently is not Onda Maracatu. You can watch Onda Maracatu here.]

Montpellier’s not a big city. It seemed inevitable that I’d bump into a friend among the crowds. On rue St Guilhem I got pulled aside by Dany, who was insistent: “Richard, tu viengs boire un pot avec nous?” (Dany is from Sète, and is the most typically southern Frenchman I’ve met – chauvinist, eternally tanned and incredibly friendly).

From then on the proceedings evolved into a rather typical Montpellier evening out:  I met more people from Brittany (I swear 80% of the inhabitants of Montpellier are Breton), we went to a taverna owned by one of Dany’s friends for tapas and sangria (80% of Montpellierains have a friend who runs a taverna), and my French improved after a few drinks.

A little flamenco performance in an alleyway drew our attention for a few minutes. Some of my friends from the CRS swaggered past. The officers seemed determinedly unmoved by the music going on around them. “Ah, mais les flics, tu sais, ils dansent à l’intérieur“, whispered Dany. The cops, he assured me, were dancing on the inside.

Dany had to drive back to Sète, so I slowly made my way back to the tram, past some music school students jamming to Canteloupe Island (mais oui) on rue de Candolle, and an enthusiastic set of nouveau-swing by Le Comptoir des Fous at Place Albert 1er. Finally, I’d found a band singing in French! And singing French songs !

As Francis Cabrel describes it, “La nuit a été chaude en alcools…“. The crowd in the square were well-oiled by this stage, swigging 2 Euro rosé straight from the bottle, and homeless people were dancing in front of the stage with their dogs. Even if the cops weren’t smiling, everyone seemed pretty darn happy. It was, after all, la fête, quoi.