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Camden’s silver sound – Philly.com

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** Camden’s silver sound
————————————————————

“RACE RECORDS.” Today, the term sounds prejudiced – evil in a not-quaint, old-fashioned way.

But with “Hand Me Down the Silver Trumpet,” a musical world premiering at Rutgers University Camden this week, race records are being remembered and evoked anew as a great breakthrough for and celebration of African-American culture.

“That’s what this ragtime, blues and gospel music represented in the 1920s and ’30s, when it was first being recorded and released,” said Rutgers professor and show author Kenneth Elliott. “African-Americans were proud to finally have recordings they could buy and play on their Victrolas, records made by and for their own.”

This music would also prove “highly influential and popular across the musical spectrum and color lines, both here and abroad,” added Iceland-born Rutgers prof (and the show’s musical supervisor) Stefan Orn Arnarson.

Also being celebrated in a “Sounds of Camden” exhibit of memorabilia now in Rutgers Stedman Gallery, “Hand Me Down the Silver Trumpet” has already proved an eye- and ear-opener for show performers like Donnel Treadwell Jr. It’s introduced the lead actor/singer (a college senior and music major) to “a highly expressive, personal music like I’ve never heard before,” and to a world “so completely different, it’s like diving into ‘The Chronicles of Narnia.’ ”

** Camden’s own
————————————————————

The musical could likewise go a long way to buff up Camden’s civic image and sense of self-pride, especially if the production has “legs.”

There’s a good chance of that.

Elliott has helmed his share of off-Broadway productions, and Arnarson and choreographer Samuel Antonio Reyes are recent Barrymore Award nominees.

From 1901 forward, our Jersey border town was one of America’s entertainment capitals, awash in the musical machinery and millions of discs churning out of the Victor Talking Machine factories.

Founded by Eldridge Johnson (1867-1945), and building on technology he’d licensed and evolved from Gramophone inventor Emile Berliner, Victor grew to encompass 10 Camden city blocks and employ as many as 4,000.

Two recording studios operated “virtually around the clock, attracted many of the most famous artists from around the world,” Elliott shared. “African-American musicians were recording from the start, but initially it was repertoire targeted to a white audience. Then, with the great waves of black migration north, Victor began targeting the market with music they could call their own.”

** Treasures in the attic
————————————————————

Treadwell leads the musical’s journey back in time, playing a contemporary kid going through his great-grandmother’s attic after her death.

“I come upon these amazing old records that magically transport me back to the time and place where they were recorded, a 1928 recording session at Victor Records,” he said.

Elliott said they lit on that year “because we found a catalog from 1928, that listed all the recordings Victor had put out on the [African-American centric] Black Label.”

Rutgers grad student Bashawn Moore and guest artist Mike Weeks play a pair of jazz singers who become Treadwell’s guides. Another guest artist, Langston Darby, plays a preacher man, modeled after the Rev. F.W. McGee, who “recorded sermons like ‘Jonah in the Belly of the Whale,’ distilled down to three minutes – that were very strong sellers back in the day,” Elliott said.

So, too, were gospel numbers like “Hand Me Down the Silver Trumpet,” source of the musical’s title, plus lots of hardscrabble blues – “as political as that music would get,” noted Arnarson – and double-entendre blues and ragtime tunes dreamed up for Victor by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton, Alberta Hunter, Louis Armstrong and an especially prolific and rascally Fats Waller.

One of Waller’s favorite winky ploys was writing songs ostensibly about eating but really about sex – “Rump Steak Serenade,” “All That Meat and No Potatoes,” “Hold Tight, I Want Some Seafood Mama.”

“We’ve put them together in a food medley,” Elliott said.

Digging up the vintage material wasn’t all that hard. It’s certainly a city disgrace that Camden doesn’t have a big repository of Victor stuff, that the Johnson Victrola Museum is located in, ugh, Dover, Del. (The company founder was born in Wilmington and attended Dover Academy.)

But Rutgers’ campus in Newark houses a huge jazz library, including some original period arrangements that proved “extremely helpful” for Arnarson in recreating his period-correct arrangements for the show’s 12-piece orchestra and cast, which also includes Davonna Patterson, Adeja Rice, Markenzie Johnson, Malcolm Ortis and Linda Ibeneche.

And some of the songs listed in that 1928 Victor catalog actually turned up on YouTube, of all places.

“Record collectors are great at sharing their treasures,” Elliott said. “They put up videos of the music playing on their windup Victrolas.”
————————————————————

Walter Gordon Theater, Rutgers University Camden, 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $15, $10 seniors and Rutgers alumni, $7 non-Rutgers students, 856-225-6211, rugerscamdentheater.com.

Stedman Gallery, Fine Arts Center, 314 Linden St., 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Monday and Saturday, until 8 p.m. Thursday, 856-225-6350, rcca.camden.rutgers.edu.
————————————————————

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November 12, 2014 / No Comments / More

Camden’s silver sound – Philly.com

** Camden’s silver sound
————————————————————

“RACE RECORDS.” Today, the term sounds prejudiced – evil in a not-quaint, old-fashioned way.

** Camden’s own
————————————————————

The musical could likewise go a long way to buff up Camden’s civic image and sense of self-pride, especially if the production has “legs.”

There’s a good chance of that.

Elliott has helmed his share of off-Broadway productions, and Arnarson and choreographer Samuel Antonio Reyes are recent Barrymore Award nominees.

From 1901 forward, our Jersey border town was one of America’s entertainment capitals, awash in the musical machinery and millions of discs churning out of the Victor Talking Machine factories.

** Treasures in the attic
————————————————————

Treadwell leads the musical’s journey back in time, playing a contemporary kid going through his great-grandmother’s attic after her death.

“I come upon these amazing old records that magically transport me back to the time and place where they were recorded, a 1928 recording session at Victor Records,” he said.

Elliott said they lit on that year “because we found a catalog from 1928, that listed all the recordings Victor had put out on the [African-American centric] Black Label.”

“We’ve put them together in a food medley,” Elliott said.

And some of the songs listed in that 1928 Victor catalog actually turned up on YouTube, of all places.

Walter Gordon Theater, Rutgers University Camden, 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $15, $10 seniors and Rutgers alumni, $7 non-Rutgers students, 856-225-6211, rugerscamdentheater.com.

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BBC Radio 4 – Dr Hepcat and the Hepster’s Dictionary

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In 1938, the singer and band leader Cab Calloway became the first known African American to publish a book and call it a dictionary. His book of jive talk, Cab Calloway’s Hepster’s Dictionary, translated some of the lively and inventive slang being used among musicians and entertainers in New York’s Harlem, for a new audience of jazz fans who weren’t yet ‘hep to the jive’.

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BBC Radio 4 – Dr Hepcat and the Hepster’s Dictionary

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Impersonation Instead of Interpretation – WSJ

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** Thelonious Monk III On Miles Davis and His Late Father’s Legacy
————————————————————

Late Jazz legend Thelonious Monk is known across the world as a musician, bandleader, composer and vocalist. With his signature “bebop” jazz sound and his diverse repertoire, younger jazz musicians looked up to him as a profound and prolific thinker about jazz music and its historic institution.

So much so, says his son, Thelonious Monk III, that a young Miles Davis would often visit their house in hopes that Monk would teach him new improvisational techniques and approaches to jazz in their frequent jam sessions. In a recent on-camera interview with the WSJ, the younger Monk recalled answering the door to an eager Davis, and what it was like to see his father help groom Davis, who also became legendary.

“Most people think that Miles and Thelonious were peers. They were not peers. Not at all. There were almost 10 years between them,” Monk III he said.

“It varied as to what would happen once Miles came in. But Miles was like a mouse around Thelonious. Sometimes he would sit down on the piano and Thelonious right up and they would get right into it,” he recalled. “But other times, Miles would come in and sit on that piano, and my father would be in the room, 10 feet away, with his hand over his head, laying on the bed.”

“And he might lay like that for an hour and a half. And you know what Miles did? He sat there on that piano, with his horn next to him, and waited. He waited for Monk to get up to show him the stuff. Because Thelonious was like the root-source preacher man for that whole generation.”

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Impersonation Instead of Interpretation – WSJ

** Thelonious Monk III On Miles Davis and His Late Father’s Legacy
————————————————————

“Most people think that Miles and Thelonious were peers. They were not peers. Not at all. There were almost 10 years between them,” Monk III he said.

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Impersonation Instead of Interpretation – WSJ

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Impersonation Instead of Interpretation

Have recordings harmed piano-playing?ENLARGE
Have recordings harmed piano-playing? Getty Images/Hemera

By
Stuart Isacoff

Nov. 10, 2014 6:40 p.m. ET
Recordings have made possible the wide dissemination of marvelous musical works performed by the greatest players in history. Today, we can hear Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations (either one) or Oscar Peterson’s improvisations any time we like—and we can do this at home, or in our cars, or while jogging in a park. In what other age has so much rich musical heritage been so available? Still, this bounty comes at a price. In some ways recordings have had a negative impact on the art of piano-playing.

Some of this has been an unavoidable consequence of freezing a moment in musical time—of bestowing stultifying permanence on an art form that, to stay alive, must breathe, dance, surprise itself, and, yes, even stumble. Because of recordings we have come to adopt a perverse view of musical performance as something disembodied—absent the physical presence of the artist—and comprising merely discrete quantifiable elements, like sets of pitches, articulations and dynamics. In this we lose sight of many essentials: the theatricality of a performance, the interrelationship of artist and listener, the full experience of spontaneous, unbridled creativity.

A performance should be unpredictable—an adventure. Today we often demand instead that an interpretation be unblemished, “correct”—something to be memorialized and imitated. (Those of us who teach can attest to the number of students who see their job as learning to duplicate exactly a particular recording of a work by a recognized artist.) This has produced false expectations that haven’t served audiences or artists very well.

It is interesting to consider that a century ago, wrong notes were often looked on with favor. Pianist Claudio Arrau reported that early audiences regarded them as a sign of genius—of giving oneself entirely up to the muses, with a resultant loss of control. Even memory slips were thought acceptable. Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham recounted a Beethoven concerto performance he gave with pianist Alfred Cortot, whose slips were notorious. “We started with the Beethoven, and I kept up with Cortot through the Grieg, Schumann, Bach and Tchaikovsky,” he reported, recounting his struggle to follow the errant pianist who was landing on all sorts of other pieces while desperately attempting to regain his place in the score. “And then he hit on one I didn’t know, so I stopped dead.” Wouldn’t it be worth having a recording of that?

The pervasive editing used today—the extensive slicing and dicing in an attempt to find perfection—can also rob a piece of the organic quality of a live performance, where one phrase logically leads to another. Many of us know of recordings—even by jazz artists, where spontaneity purportedly rules—with thousands of edits, with a result that is horribly unnatural.

The history of recording tells us that serious distortions were present from the beginning. Consider, for example, the influence of piano rolls on the playing of Art Tatum, a jazz artist who was known for dazzling technical feats. As a youngster listening to various rolls in the early years of the 20th century, he was unaware that they could be edited, and that often, after a roll had been cut, editors punched additional holes to make the musical texture fuller and more complex. Tatum played as if he had three hands because the piano rolls he heard sounded as if they were made by three hands, and he thought that was the normal way to play. In this instance, the deception led to great things.

But it hasn’t always. The sound of the recorded piano will unavoidably be at a remove from what audiences in a natural setting might expect. In the earliest days of recording, dynamic shading was impossible—and because of the primitiveness of the technology involved, sometimes the worst piano actually worked best. Pianist Gerald Moore, recounting his first recording experiences, revealed that he was instructed to play with unvarying dynamics and loudly. Later Moore expressed shock at what he considered an excess of “passionate fervor” in some of Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s recordings and concluded that Paderewski must have been forced to play with a “consistently penetrating forte” in order to record successfully.

But Paderewski was also a product of the “grand style,” which favored the kind of largeness of expression that is no longer considered proper. A wholesale shift in aesthetics was responsible—a shift in keeping with the sensibility that comes with recording technology.

The modern style suppresses “all emotional qualities and all unnotated changes of tempo and expression,” wrote composer Arnold Schoenberg in 1948. He blamed the influence of popular dance music for this effect. But the great social critic Lionel Trilling had a different explanation.

In his lecture series and book “Sincerity and Authenticity” (1970), Trilling noted the move away from the idea of sincerity as something good and trustworthy—it now stands on shaky ground. We all sense this. When we get a coffee at Starbucks and the person behind the counter smiles and says, “Have a nice day,” we recognize that he or she probably doesn’t mean it. For all we know, that server might be a serial killer. We grow suspicious.

So sincerity and romanticism are now out. At the least, we can trust only something that appears to be free of sentiment—something “objective.” Hence the observation of James Joyce that in modern art the artist’s personality “finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself.”

No wonder there is a fashion for so-called urtext editions—printed musical scores that purportedly restore the composers’ original intentions, free of tampering by other hands. But urtext merely sanitizes, removing traces of humanity. Recordings have contributed to an urtext worldview. The music has become objectified, treated like a specimen in a glass jar. That is always a danger when a document is mistaken for the embodiment of a living tradition.

Mr. Isacoff’s latest book is “A Natural History of the Piano” (Knopf/Vintage).

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Impersonation Instead of Interpretation – WSJ

Impersonation Instead of Interpretation

Have recordings harmed piano-playing?ENLARGE
Have recordings harmed piano-playing? Getty Images/Hemera

By
Stuart Isacoff

Mr. Isacoff’s latest book is “A Natural History of the Piano” (Knopf/Vintage).

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November 11, 2014 / No Comments / More

Impersonation Instead of Interpretation – WSJ

Impersonation Instead of Interpretation

Have recordings harmed piano-playing?ENLARGE
Have recordings harmed piano-playing? Getty Images/Hemera

By
Stuart Isacoff

Mr. Isacoff’s latest book is “A Natural History of the Piano” (Knopf/Vintage).

Jazz Promo Services
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Brian Lemon – obituary – Telegraph

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11211004/Brian-Lemon-obituary.htm (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11211004/Brian-Lemon-obituary.html)

Brian Lemon – obituary
Brian Lemon was a British jazz pianist for whom a special record label was established to bring his music to a wider public

The British jazz pianist Brian Lemon

5:46PM GMT 05 Nov 2014Comments4 Comments

Brian Lemon, who has died aged 77, was one of Britain’s finest-ever jazz pianists. He had a particular flair for sensitive accompaniment and this, combined with his famously undemonstrative nature, kept him out of the limelight; but his name was known to dedicated jazz lovers throughout Europe and he drew extravagant praise from the star soloists he accompanied.
Brian Lemon was born at Nottingham on February 11 1937 into a musical family, his father being a semi-professional violinist. He began learning the piano as a child and continued to study it through his teenage years. On leaving school he began playing professionally at Nottingham Palais de Danse and other local venues. Aged 19, he moved to London to join the Dixieland band led by the trumpeter Freddie Randall.
This was precisely the time when the jazz audience in Britain was growing rapidly, and the demand for musicians growing with it. The success of Lemon’s career over the following decade or so can be deduced from the quality of the musicians with whom he regularly worked: Sandy Brown, George Chisholm, Danny Moss, Alex Welsh — the cream of what came to be known as “mainstream” jazz. From 1961 to 1963 he led his own trio at Peter Cook’s fashionable Soho club, the Establishment.
In the 1960s the restrictions, amounting virtually to a ban, on the appearance of American musicians in Britain crumbled. As a result, a regular flow of famous jazz names circulated around the nation’s jazz venues.
This was when Lemon’s remarkable talent as an accompanist, together with his encyclopedic knowledge of the classic American song repertoire, came to the fore. Among the many he accompanied in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, Milt Jackson and Harry “Sweets” Edison.
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He later formed a close association with an American musician of a later generation, the tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton .
The critic Benny Green maintained that Lemon’s character was reflected in his love of cricket — “always the sign of a true artist and a gentleman”. Green used to tell an anecdote that summed this up: some time in the early 1970s, the songwriter Johnny Mercer was to appear on the BBC Two programme Late Night Line-Up. The producer, assuming that all songwriters were also pianists, led him to the piano, only to be informed that Mr Mercer did not play the piano. Lemon, who happened to live near the studio, was urgently sent for. “He arrived,” Green recalled, “sat quietly at the piano and awaited instructions. Mercer suggested I’m Old Fashioned in E-flat and off they went. The recording went beautifully, with Brian playing as though he’d spent his whole life working with Mercer. He then said good night and went home.”

In all this time, Lemon had recorded only one album under his own name, and that had more or less sunk without trace. However, in 1994 a jazz-loving retired businessman, John Bune, happened to catch a television broadcast by Scott Hamilton, with Lemon as the pianist. He was struck by his playing and, after hearing him in person, resolved to record him for a CD.
Thus was born Zephyr Records, a label devoted mainly (and at first entirely) to presenting Brian Lemon to the world. The first disc, But Beautiful, was released in January 1995, and by the end of that year there were seven, all in their distinctive lemon yellow packages. The fourth, A Beautiful Friendship, was named Best New CD in that year’s British Jazz Awards.
Altogether, Lemon recorded on 27 Zephyr albums in the space of a decade, although not billed as leader on all of them. “For most of the sessions,” recalled Bune, “there wasn’t a sheet of manuscript paper in sight, and very little in the way of pre-arrangement or even rehearsal. The whole thing revolved around Brian’s piano, and I’m convinced there’s no other musician in the country who could have achieved these results.”
During the same period Lemon toured with package shows, such as Lady Sings the Blues and The Best of British Jazz ; played in a jazz quintet led by the Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts, and the Pizza Express All-Stars; and took part in many radio broadcasts and general recording sessions.
In 2005 osteoarthritis in his hands forced Lemon to give up playing the piano and he retired from music.
Brian Lemon married, in 1965, Debby Holley. They later separated but never divorced, and she survives him with their son. He is also survived by his partner, Susan Burgess.
Brian Lemon, born February 11 1937, died October 11 2014

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Brian Lemon – obituary – Telegraph

Brian Lemon – obituary
Brian Lemon was a British jazz pianist for whom a special record label was established to bring his music to a wider public

The British jazz pianist Brian Lemon

5:46PM GMT 05 Nov 2014Comments4 Comments

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November 11, 2014 / No Comments / More

Brian Lemon – obituary – Telegraph

Brian Lemon – obituary
Brian Lemon was a British jazz pianist for whom a special record label was established to bring his music to a wider public

The British jazz pianist Brian Lemon

5:46PM GMT 05 Nov 2014Comments4 Comments

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Remembering Camden at 78 rpm

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Remembering Camden at 78 rpm

Stefan Arnarson, music instructor and a co-curator of the “Sounds of Camden” exhibit at the Stedman Gallery at Rutgers-Camden, puts a record of his grandmother´s onto a Victrola record player. CLEM MURRAY / Staff Photographer
Kevin Riordan, Inquirer Columnist

Posted: Sunday, November 9, 2014, 11:59 PM

Stefan Orn Arnarson gently places his grandmother’s Victor Red Label 78 on the turntable and under the stylus of the Victrola.

The bittersweetness of Fritz Kreisler’s violin pours from the machine, which – like the original recording itself – was made in Camden nearly a century ago.

“Goose bumps,” says Arnarson, a sound designer who first heard Kreisler’s haunting rendition of “Deep in My Heart, Dear” at his grandmother’s home in Reykjavik, Iceland.

“The technology for recording, and playback, that was developed here was revolutionary,” adds Arnarson, 45, a Collingswood father of three who joined the Rutgers-Camden faculty in 2005. “Camden was the Silicon Valley of its time.”

The ingenuity, artistry, and manual labor that made possible millions of records and players – and helped develop radio, TV, and film audio technology as well – are the heart of “The Sounds of Camden” exhibit at the Stedman Gallery.
Sponsored by the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, the show includes spoken-word recordings of work by Camden poets such as Nick Virgilio; listening stations for samples of vintage musical recordings; and a mini-studio where city students and other visitors can digitally record a brief message.

It’s as if “they’re inserting themselves into the history of the city,” says Cyril Reade, director of the Center for the Arts. Adds museum educator Miranda Powell: “Some students have read prepared statements and poems. . . . Others have rap and freestyle a bit.”

The exhibit also features “Camden Rounds,” a new electronic piece by Rutgers associate professor of music Mark Zaki that includes PATCO trains and other ambient sounds of the city.

An original musical-theater production titled Hand Me Down the Silver Trumpet, with live interpretations of classic Victor recordings, was produced at the Gordon Theater on campus in October; the Stedman exhibit continues through Dec. 18.

“This exhibit is just a little taste. It should be 10 times as big,” says Arnarson, a self-described “geek” who is also a classically trained cellist.

“Microphones like the ‘crooner mike’ were developed here,” he adds. “The quality of the technology developed here was better. The first television test signals in the world were sent between Camden and Collingswood. This story needs to be told.”

For much of the 20th century, the sprawling downtown complex of the Victor Talking Machine Co., later RCA-Victor and finally GE, was a hub of innovation. At its World War II peak, the operation included 31 buildings on 56 acres and employed 20,000.

World-class recording studios, including one in a former Cooper Street church, attracted luminaries such as Enrico Caruso and Duke Ellington.

“Some of these records and record players are 100 years old, and they still work perfectly,” Arnarson says, showing me the vintage Victrolas, radios, and TVs in the exhibit. “The craftsmanship is gorgeous.”

At one point, he notes, 400 cabinetmakers worked for the company in Camden. “I seriously doubt,” he wryly adds, “whatever technology we’re using to listen to music 10 years from now will be around in 100 years.”

Although a proposal to build a “Museum of Recorded Sound” on the Camden waterfront went nowhere a decade ago, Arnarson believes it ought to be revived. I agree.

Sound – not just musical, but of all sorts – is “such a part of American culture,” he adds. “It deserves a permanent museum. In Camden.”

kriordan@phillynews.com
856-779-3845 @inqkriordan

www.inquirer.com/blinq

For more information on the exhibit, go to rcca.camden.rutgers.edu.

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November 10, 2014 / No Comments / More