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Is Pop the Future of Jazz? Ted Gioia – The Daily Beast

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/28/is-pop-the-future-of-jazz.html?source=TDB

Is Pop the Future of Jazz?

By Ted Gioia

I’ve been hearing jazz in the most unlikely places lately.
I didn’t expect to encounter a trumpeter playing New Orleans style jazz on the new Beyoncé album Lemonade. But that’s exactly what I found on the “Daddy Lessons” track. This jazz intrusion didn’t prevent Lemonade from rising to the top of the Billboard chart. “Daddy Lessons” even showed up on the Billboard Hot 100.
A few days earlier, I was listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Untitled Unmastered album, a hip-hop bestseller that also leaped to the top of the Billboard chart immediately after its release. I was dumbfounded to hear the chord changes to Miles Davis’s “Nardis” in the background to one of the songs. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lamar frequently collaborates with jazz musicians, yet this nod to a fairly abstract 1958 jazz composition almost seemed like a coded message to the cognoscenti.
Then there was the high-profile televised jazz celebration at the White House on April 29, with Sting and Aretha Franklin in attendance—the biggest presidential jazz event in more than two decades. Three days before, Pitchfork—a periodical slavishly devoted to pop, rock, hip-hop, and R&B—published an issue of its quarterly review entirely devoted to jazz. Around this same time, Bob Dylan (http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/05/24/the-definitive-ranking-of-bob-dylan-studio-albums-from-worst-to-best.html) released his second project devoted to jazz standards. Willie Nelson is trying to match it with his recent Gershwin tribute album.
I see the same phenomenon when I look at the movie listings. Hollywood is now promoting competing jazz bio-pics. You can choose the Miles Davis movie, featuring Don Cheadle (http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/03/26/how-don-cheadle-became-miles-davis.html) , who has an acting Oscar nomination on his resume. Or you can pick the Chet Baker film with Ethan Hawke (http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/03/19/ethan-hawke-on-his-darkest-performance-yet-my-two-greatest-influences-were-lost-to-heroin.html) , who also has an acting Oscar nomination on his resume. And these come on the heels of other recent films with a jazz twist, including two other Oscar winners—the 2015 Amy Winehouse documentary Amy and Whiplash from 2014—and last year’s Emmy-winning Bessie Smith (http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2015/05/16/why-blues-titan-bessie-smith-still-kills-it.html) bio-pic on HBO.
Is 2016 the Year Jazz Came Back? Recall that January kicked off with the release of David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, on January 8. It also reached the top of the chart with jazz backing on every track. As Bowie prepared his last project, he hired some of the leading jazz musicians in the world, and gave them the freedom to push the limits of his songs. Yet far from hindering the commercial potential of the album, this jazz element only seemed to add to Blackstar’s allure and success.
Of course, all of this comes on the heels of Lady Gaga’s rediscovery of jazz last year. I learned the power of that crossover market firsthand when Ms. Gaga retweeted one of my jazz musings, and my Twitter account started ringing like a Vegas slot machine with a mega-jackpot. I soon had 5,000 more retweets, and a bunch of “little monsters” (as the Lady affectionately calls her fans) following my staid feed.
Welcome to the strange jazz resurgence of the new millennium. Jazz is definitely hot again … yet all of this is happening outside of the jazz world.
This is a peculiar turn of events. Jazz record sales are stagnant—stuck at around 2 percent of total industry revenues—and show no sign of breaking out of that tiny niche. Jazz festivals are booking fewer jazz artists than ever before. Jazz radio stations are an endangered species. I’m not exaggerating: there are more panda bears than jazz radio hosts earning a living wage.
But jazz still possesses its mystique. The mainstream audience might not hang out at the jazz club, but it still respects jazz, perhaps even more than it did in the glory years for the idiom. In an age in which much of our music-making has shifted from human beings to samples, software, and machines, these artisan performers stand out all the more. Jazz, despite its anemic economic prospects, has become a touchstone for craft and excellence. Music superstars aren’t embracing it out of charity, but to enhance their own credentials.
How do jazz insiders react to this turn of events? Many are unaware or indifferent. Others even respond with hostility. The recent ascendancy of saxophonist Kamasi Washington (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/kamasi-washingtons-giant-step.html?_r=0) , Lamar’s collaborator on hip-hop projects, to crossover stardom has generated a backlash, especially among older jazz fans. When Washington’s album The Epic won the NPR jazz poll last year, the venerable critic who organized the poll even felt compelled to publish his own vigorous dissent. (Full disclosure: I voted for The Epic in the poll, and also picked it as the most important jazz album of the year.)
The wider music audience doesn’t pay much attention to this rearguard movement in the inner circles of jazzdom. The people who buy albums from Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, and David Bowie don’t read jazz critics. And these members of the audience hold the key to the jazz resurgence of 2016. The big question remains: will a significant number of them embrace the jazz idiom after this introduction?
There’s no guarantee that jazz musicians can benefit from this new-found notoriety. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove appears on D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, which won the Grammy for best R&B album earlier this year. How did this benefit his career? When Hargrove was recently asked why he hadn’t released a new studio album since 2009, he concurred with his manager’s verdict that “nobody’s buying anything anymore.”
On the other hand, Kamasi Washington has parlayed his hip-hop credentials into jazz stardom and sold-out performances. When he fronts his own band, he plays serious jazz, undiluted for crossover appeal, yet has somehow found a huge audience for this music. There is no shortage of naysayers among older jazz fans, but it’s hard not to look at the Kamasi effect and see it as heralding the path by which the art form reinvents himself as it approaches next year’s hundredth anniversary of the first jazz recordings.
I should point out that the jazz world has been planning its own comeback, but a very different one. Many of the most influential insiders in the art form believe that jazz should be revived with non-profit organizations, jazz museums, and academic respectability. They see classical music and opera as the role models, and want to develop the future of jazz along the same lines.
I beg to disagree. Jazz should celebrate its heritage, but it can’t live in the past. It needs to bring jazz to schools and communities, and the art form deserves help from nonprofits, but when this institutionalization become the main support structure for the music, it loses much of its vitality and turns into a kind of cultural vitamin or nutritional supplement. “Take this, it’s good for you,” has never been a successful marketing campaign. The jazz revival that’s happening in 2016 isn’t taking place in a museum, and is all the stronger for that fact.
Even old-time jazz fans may be pleased with the end result of this process. I can easily envision fans introduced to jazz via Kendrick Lamar or Lady Gaga moving deeper into the art form. Strange to say, hip-hop or pop in the year 2016 might be the gateway drug for the next generation of devoted jazz lovers.
Of course, I could be wrong. There’s a risk that this resurgence will have little impact on the jazz economy, and musicians in the idiom will continue to struggle just as before. Under this scenario, jazz music will continue to represent 1-2 percent of music sales. Pop and R&B stars might enhance their artistry by drawing on jazz, but it won’t make much difference to your average saxophonist or trumpeter. Most music fans will remain blissfully unaware of the riches that jazz has to offer.
The best way for the jazz world to avoid this second scenario is for the music’s advocates to embrace these exciting new hybrids. Jazz has always benefited from a dialogue with popular music. That was true in the ’20s and the ’40s and the ’60s … and it’s still true today.
I’d like to see jazz labels and festivals create bold new paths of dialogue between old and new, insider music and mainstream styles, established pros and up-and-coming youngsters. I’d especially like to see musical exchanges in which jazz musicians are more than just window-dressing for a pop star, but help dictate the terms of engagement for new ways of thinking about commercial music.
But the first step in this process is for all participants to have an open mind. Instead of bringing back the shortsighted jazz wars of the past—in which proponents of one jazz style felt compelled to dismiss the validity of other approaches—let’s celebrate the diversity and cross-fertilization opportunities presented by the remarkable events of 2016.
This may be the best opportunity jazz lovers will ever have for bringing their case to the broader public. It would be a shame if they squandered it by elitist disdain for the very musicians who are embracing jazz and bringing it to tens of millions of new listeners.

Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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May 31, 2016 / No Comments / More

A ‘Problematic’ Sculpture Is Silenced by New York Parks Officials – The New York Times

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– Aaron Bell’s (Duke Ellington bassist) son’s profile

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/nyregion/a-problematic-sculpture-is-silenced-by-new-york-parks-officials.html?_r=0

A ‘Problematic’ Sculpture Is Silenced by New York Parks Officials

Aaron Bell at a welding studio in New Jersey with a model of his sculpture, “Stand Loud, Stand Tall.” It is “about humanity against hatred,” he said. Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
Thirteen years ago, Aaron Bell, one of the few African-Americans to have penetrated the racially hermetic world of advertising in the 1970s, discovered that he had a brain tumor. Although the lesion was benign, the surgery required to remove it left him with impaired memory and only one vocal cord. For several months, he couldn’t speak. At the time he received his diagnosis, Mr. Bell was working as a creative director at UniWorld; his disabilities compelled him to stop. In 2007, to retain his sanity, he told me on a recent afternoon, he began taking classes at the Art Students League on West 57th Street in Manhattan.
“There are many art directors who are accomplished artists,” he recalled during an interview in a welding studio in New Jersey not far from the Lincoln Tunnel. “I wasn’t one of them.” Over the past nine years, he has been printmaking, drawing, working in mixed media and making sculpture. Forced to speak softly and sparingly, he turned to art as his voice. Last year, the Art Students League honored that voice when it selected him for inclusion in its competitive Model to Monument (http://www.theartstudentsleague.org/ArtistOpportunities/ModeltoMonument.aspx?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) program. The initiative, run in conjunction with New York City’s parks department, has for the past several years, in spring, placed enormous works of site-specific public art in various places in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and Riverside Park South, an expanse of green
running below West 72nd Street in Manhattan.
In November, Mr. Bell presented to the parks department a maquette of his proposed work, “Stand Loud, Stand Tall,” a structure that would reach 16 feet high and depict a human body with a noose in the place of its head. At the center of the noose was a circle with a slash through it, a symbolic call to defeating intolerance. At the base of the sculpture was a quotation from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Our lives begin to die the day we are silent about the things that matter.”
The location in Riverside Park South where Mr. Bell’s sculpture was to go had been determined at random, but only strengthened the piece’s resonance as conceptual art. Mr. Bell had pulled a number out of a hat at the Art Students League that assigned him a spot near West 68th Street, right beneath a strip of apartment buildings on Riverside Boulevard bearing the name Trump.

A maquette of “Stand Loud, Stand Tall” as Aaron Bell proposed it. Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
The realities of a moment in which recurring episodes of police brutality present themselves as modern day lynchings would seem to make a project like Mr. Bell’s especially purposeful, but the parks department did not embrace his proposal. In an email to the league, Jennifer Lantzas, the agency’s deputy director of public art, expressed apprehension on the part of staff members that “the image of the noose could be problematic for the borough.” Mr. Bell’s design was rejected. Sam Biederman, a spokesman for the department, told me in an email that the decision was based on a concern among parks officials that the proposed site “is adjacent to an area regularly programmed with passive recreational activities such as yoga, Pilates and senior movement.”
Continue reading the main story
Precisely when it became civic policy to guard the potential sensitivities of grown women in Lululemon is unclear, but the fate of Mr. Bell’s project, reported last week (http://www.westsiderag.com/2016/05/18/the-city-censored-a-sculpture-with-a-noose-for-riverside-park-exhibit-artist-says?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) by The West Side Rag, illustrates the ways in which a culture of emotionally protectionist politics has swelled beyond the world of Oberlin and Yale. Mr. Bell argued for his original idea in writing, but his repeated requests to speak to city officials in person were ignored. The theme for the Model to Monument exhibit this year was the public square and its responsibilities. “My interpretation of that idea is a place where people interact for the benefit of social conscience and justice,” he said. “I knew that I wanted to do a piece that would
introduce a dialogue. The piece I designed is about humanity against hatred.”
Forced to replace the noose with something else, Mr. Bell is evoking a large mouth instead, but he is not happy about it. “The mouth is simply a resolution to satisfy members of the parks department,” he told me.
Mr. Bell’s upbringing in Mount Vernon, N.Y., as the son of a prominent musician — his father was the jazz bassist Aaron Bell (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/arts/aaron-bell-82-ellington-bassist.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , who played with Duke Ellington and had a doctorate in education — did not shield him from the miseries of racial inequality. When he was a student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1968, the younger Mr. Bell was beaten up on Halloween night by a gang of white teenagers who struck him at the base of his skull with a metal bar. (A report in The Daily News about the attack described him as having been put on the “serious list” at Brooklyn Hospital.) At the time, members of Pratt’s Black Students Union complained about the failure of the police to arrest anyone five days after a report had been filed and descriptions of some of the
assailants provided. Mr. Bell said he had seizures for years after the attack. Once, on his way to see his father play at the La MaMa theater, a seizure left him passed out on the sidewalk. A police car deposited him on the steps of Bellevue Hospital Center, with all the money in his wallet removed, he said.
“Stand Loud, Stand Tall” had been a long time coming.

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May 30, 2016 / No Comments / More

A ‘Problematic’ Sculpture Is Silenced by New York Parks Officials – The New York Times

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– Aaron Bell’s (Duke Ellington bassist) son’s profile

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/nyregion/a-problematic-sculpture-is-silenced-by-new-york-parks-officials.html?_r=0

A ‘Problematic’ Sculpture Is Silenced by New York Parks Officials

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May 30, 2016 / No Comments / More

A ‘Problematic’ Sculpture Is Silenced by New York Parks Officials – The New York Times

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
– Aaron Bell’s (Duke Ellington bassist) son’s profile

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/nyregion/a-problematic-sculpture-is-silenced-by-new-york-parks-officials.html?_r=0

A ‘Problematic’ Sculpture Is Silenced by New York Parks Officials

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May 30, 2016 / No Comments / More

All the Songs Are Now Yours by Dan Chiasson | The New York Review of Books

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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/09/all-the-songs-are-now-yours/?pagination=false&printpage=true

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All the Songs Are Now Yours

Dan Chiasson (http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/dan-chiasson/)
JUNE 9, 2016 ISSUE (http://www.nybooks.com/issues/2016/06/09/)
Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374277907?ie=UTF8&tag=thneyoreofbo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0374277907)
by Ben Ratliff
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 259 pp., $26.00
http://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/chiasson_1-060916.jpg
Miguel Rio Branco/Magnum Photos

Prince performing at a music festival in Rio de Janeiro, 1991
1.
In 1939, the American composer Aaron Copland published his music appreciation guide, What to Listen for in Music. Its presumptions were suggested by its title. “Listening” was an arduous exercise in concentration, best performed in optimal conditions: the concert hall, the quiet parlor. In fact, “listening” was not enough; Copland wanted his readers to “listen for” what he called the “sound stuff” of music: to clear the mind not only of external distractions and mental obstacles, but of all nonessential sonic wadding that surrounded it. Music required targeted attention, the state of mind you might enter when doing a word-find or watching, through binoculars, for a migratory bird.
Copland dismissed the mere “sensual” experience of music, which he associated with daydreaming and escapism. The book’s slightly piqued attitude toward listeners suggested that Copland had much experience of recital halls full of people shifting noisily in their seats, looking furtively at the woman in the next row, spacing out, or simply falling asleep. Any artist in any medium who has been told his work is “relaxing” or “soothing” knows the frustration Copland must have felt. His book has a kind of clenched patience, the patience of a parent who has already had to tell his children something a hundred times.
Ben Ratliff’s Every Song Ever is a music appreciation guide for our era of free or very cheap music, instantaneously available everywhere and to nearly everyone, delivered from the cloud to tiny, relatively inexpensive devices that deliver loud, clear, and accurate sound. In the checkout line at CVS, for around $25, I can find a Bluetooth speaker that pairs wirelessly with my iPhone and will fill a medium-sized room with music. Subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal (the service owned by Jay Z and originally the only place to go to hear Beyoncé’s blockbuster Lemonade if you missed it on HBO), and you can check out music from every era and every spot on the globe, even songs long forgotten or considered lost. If one copy of an LP by Pinhead or the Decentz still exists, somebody will upload it to the cloud, and soon the melody detaches from a dusty object and enters the wide world, where it will be universally and instantly available.
You can listen to bluegrass radio from Antarctica, or reggae from Saint-Tropez. Or instantly find every jazz standards program in the world and choose among them. I just looked up every version of “These Foolish Things” and listened to them in random order, comparing renditions by Rod Stewart, Brian Ferry, and Thelonious Monk. I could record a version myself on ukulele and zither and upload it: it would exist proudly beside Billie Holiday’s and Chet Baker’s.
This is a new world. Cloud streaming represents a bigger revolution than the one brought in by CDs or MP3s, which made music merely cheaper to buy and easier to carry around. Just five years ago, if you wanted to listen legally to a specific song, you bought it (on CD, on MP3), which, assuming finite resources, meant you had to choose which song to buy, which in turn meant you didn’t buy other songs you had considered buying. Then, a person with $10 to spend could have purchased five or six songs, or, if he was an antiquarian, an album. Now, with $10, that same person can subscribe to a streaming service for a month and hear all five or six songs he would have purchased with that money, plus 20 million or so others.
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Spotify estimates that fully four million of the songs it carries have never been streamed, not even once. There is a vast musical frontier waiting to be explored, but it is already mapped: using various search methods, you could find every bluegrass song ever written with the word “banana” in it, or every Finnish death metal album, or Billy Bragg and Wilco’s recording of the Woody Guthrie lyric “Walt Whitman’s Niece,” or a gospel group called Walt Whitman and the Soul Children of Chicago, or Whitman himself, reading “America” on an album called 100 Great Poems: Classic Poets and Beatnik Freaks.
Freed from the anguish of choosing, music listeners can discover all kinds of weird, nettlesome, unpleasant, sublime, sweet, or perplexing musical paths. These paths branch off constantly, so that by the end of a night that started with the Specials, you’re listening to Górecki’s Miserere, not by throwing a dart, but by following the quite specific imperatives of each moment’s needs, each instant’s curiosities. It is like an open-format video game, where you make the world by advancing through it.
None of these lines of affinity or innuendo exists until a single person’s mind makes them, and to look back upon the path that any given night at home has taken you (a queue shows you the songs you’ve played; you can back it up and replay those songs in order, if you like) is to learn something about your own intuitions as they reveal themselves musically. Spotify will give you data about what songs or artists you’ve listened to the most. It is always a surprise; in 2015, my top song was “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” as sung by Blossom Dearie, my top album was Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, and my top artist was Bach. The person who made those choices is not a person I’m conscious of being.

This is one of the most amazing things about streaming music. Not that you can listen to Albanian bluegrass or child yodelers from Maine, but that you can recreate your past with a level of detail never before possible. Or, taking it a step further: you can recover experiences from your past, passions, insights, shames you’d forgotten. I’m forty-four; everything I heard before I was twelve or so forms a kind of musical preconscious that was only occasionally accessible, in flashes and glimpses, before streaming came along. It is as though a box of photographs was discovered of my childhood. Not just the events these photographs capture, but the entire ambient world of the past, its ashtrays and TV trays, the color of the carpet, my mother’s favorite sweater: all of it comes back, foreground and background, when you rediscover the music that was on when you were a child.
The brutal winnowing of the past, selecting perhaps two dozen pop songs a year, a few albums—this vast oversimplification, this canceling of all that the culture deems tangential or unimportant—is now itself a thing of the past. Kids growing up in this environment are having a genuinely new human experience: nothing in the past is lost, which means temporal sequence itself—where the newest things are closest and most vivid, while the oldest things dwell in the dark backward and abysm of time—gets lost. Everything exists on one plane, so it is harder than before to know exactly where we stand in time.
2.
Every Song Ever is a brilliant guide to listening to music in this new environment, where concentration must become aware of itself as its criteria shift abruptly from genre to genre, composer to composer, culture to culture. Ratliff proposes a “language” that will allow such lateral moves between unlike compositions. It is, as he writes, “not specifically musical,” referring, instead, to “generalized human activity”:
Therefore, perhaps not “melody,” “harmony,” “rhythm,” “sonata form,” “oratorio.” Perhaps, instead, repetition, or speed, or slowness, or density, or discrepancy, or stubbornness, or sadness. Intentionally, these are not musical terms per se…. Music and life are inseparable. Music is part of our physical and intellectual formation…. We build an autobiography and a self-image with music, and we know, even as we’re building them, that they’re going to change.
It is part of the astonishment of our current era that a statement that might once have seemed an empty, Music 101 platitude—“music and life are inseparable”—is now an acute observation with important technical ramifications. It is now possible for a person to synchronize the outside world to music, to make the world a manifestation of the music she chooses to hear. A record of those choices, viewed years after the fact, suggests the fine-grained emotional and imaginative lives we live while apparently doing nothing, or nothing of note. Play the songs you heard on February 2, 2013, in the order in which you played them, and you can recreate not just the emotions but the suspense and surprise of emotion as it changes in time.
When I see a movie for the fifth time, I see new things in the movie. When I hear a song for the fiftieth time, I remember the wall color of my studio apartment on Mt. Vernon Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1996, and I remember how cold the awful landlady kept it, and I remember her shivering whippet scratching at my door so that he could come in and curl up in the hollows of my giant furry Newfoundland.
Ratliff structures his book around these new musical terms, from “repetition” and “slowness” to “the perfect moment.” A term like “silence” allows him to discuss musical experiences that we cannot keep apart, since they have us in common. It also allows him to yoke persuasively a minuscule musical event and, at the other end of the spectrum, a large claim:
You realize the power of a short silence when you hear it in a song. You realize it in the middle of Metallica’s “All Nightmare Long,” in the tiny break before James Hetfield takes a gulp of air to keep singing, or at the end of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” after the strings finish rising and before the final chord; and all through Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” where the silences seem to swing because they last a fraction of a second too long, or Erik Satie’s Sarabande no. 1, where the one-beat rests break up the waltz time so often that you might never experience the song as being in three, or in any particular rhythm at all. Silence confounds, enriches, clarifies.
Of course nobody goes to a single piece of music to hear silence, or speed, or discrepancy, or any other of Ratliff’s terms. In Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” the song’s speed is one choice made by an artist as a consequence of other choices, which in turn necessitate still more choices. The outcome of all of those choices is the song. But it may make more sense, Ratliff suggests, to move from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” not to “Visions of Johanna,” an exceptionally slow song that has Dylan in common, but to Outkast’s “Da Art of Storytellin’ (Part 1)” or Scarlatti’s Sonata in B Minor, both of which lack Dylan but have speed, its risks, its meanings in the body and in the mind. To play another song by Dylan would be one response to hearing “Subterranean Homesick Blues”; Ratliff’s book gives us a palette of other potential responses.
Every Song Ever is made possible by the world it describes. Nobody could have drawn these lines before free, or cheap, streaming; and once you’ve read about them in Ratliff’s book, you can listen (a playlist is appended helpfully to every chapter). If you upload the playlist to Spotify and choose the right settings, the playlist will grow while you sleep, as other users add their own fast, slow, repetitive, loud, or silent songs.
David Bowie died on January 10. When I woke up the next morning and heard the news, I finished this review while playing his Seventies masterpiece, Low. The album isn’t one I know well; I have no important emotional associations with it. Or I didn’t have: now the album will be associated forever in my mind with this morning and these sentences.
But this sentence, which I added later, a week or so after Prince died on April 21, was written while I listened to Purple Rain on an old, damaged CD. Prince, who declared in 2010 that the Internet was “completely over,” isn’t on Spotify, though, like Beyoncé, he is on Jay Z’s Tidal. Some artists, it would appear, are still powerful enough to make it hard for people to hear their music.

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All the Songs Are Now Yours by Dan Chiasson | The New York Review of Books

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Inside the Trove of the Genre-Buster Arthur Russell – The New York Times

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Inside the Trove of the Genre-Buster Arthur Russell
By BEN RATLIFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ben_ratliff/index.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) MAY 27, 2016
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A sampling of Arthur Russell’s tapes, scores, letters and photographs included in the archives given to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Credit
Krista Schlueter for The New York Times
The public assessment of Arthur Russell, from near-footnote to new-paradigm master, is one of the most curious stories in music of the last half-century.
Russell, a singer-songwriter-cellist-composer, was born in Iowa, dropped out of high school, lived for a time in a Buddhist commune in Northern California and moved to New York City in 1973, settling in the East Village. He died from complications of AIDS in 1992 (https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/14/obituaries/charles-arthur-russell-jr-40-cellist-dies.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , at 40. During his New York period, he was known in various not-very-overlapping circles: the avant-garde music scene around the Kitchen and Experimental Intermedia; the D.J.s, producers and dancers who gathered in the Paradise Garage to hear his disco tracks like “Go Bang! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Vr2RRcsWo&version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) #5,” recorded
under the name Dinosaur L; the Danceteria-going, new-wave types interested in the guitar-pop band the Necessaries (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoTcx71TB2w&version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , in which Mr. Russell had a short and rocky tenure. Philip Glass, Allen Ginsberg and David Byrne all championed Russell in various ways. The New York Times published reviews of several of his performances, as well as a short obituary (https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/14/obituaries/charles-arthur-russell-jr-40-cellist-dies.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) after his death.
He was noted; to say more would be pushing it.
But Russell was ahead of his time: genre-agnostic in a way that we are perhaps only now getting accustomed to, and preoccupied with process. He was a pop and dance-music songwriter and a constructor of musical systems based on pitch-matrices and linguistics. He composed works for hybrid chamber ensembles, like “Instrumentals,” which was performed at Moogfest this month (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/arts/music/moogfest-festival-north-carolina.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) by a group led by his old friend Peter Gordon. And in 1986, he released “World of Echo,” an album of mantra-like, free-ranging songs for voice, cello and digital echo effects, which has become a kind of secret handshake among musicheads.
Since his death, he has been the subject of tribute records, scholarly works, a film documentary (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/movies/26wild.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) and repertory ensembles. Kanye West recently sampled the “World of Echo” track “Answers Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Xz_o_ukyU&version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) ” for “30 Hours,” on his new album, “The Life of Pablo.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/arts/music/kanye-west-life-of-pablo-review.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) Russell’s song “A Little Lost” appeared in Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series, “Master of None.”
And especially since 2004, when Steve Knutson’s Audika label started issuing carefully prepared releases of Russell’s known and unknown music (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/arts/music-the-many-faces-and-grooves-of-arthur-russell.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , he has become central to the education of young pop bands and musicians looking toward pop’s center from the outside. Those include Grizzly Bear, Julianna Barwick, James Blake, Cate Le Bon, Mica Levi and Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/arts/music/review-blood-orange-and-friends-at-the-apollo.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) . And the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will announce shortly that it has acquired Russell’s archives,
giving a new generation an unusual opportunity to try to decipher the work of a musician The Times called (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/arts/music/review-red-hot-arthur-russell-pays-funky-introspective-tribute-to-a-composer-and-musician.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) “the kind of genre-busting artist who defined downtown New York City in the 1970s and ’80s.”
Concerning the archive, Ms. Barwick wrote in an email recently that “it will be like a look into his mind,” adding: “I want to know more about his process. With such varied works, were the processes similar? Or were they different every time?”
She’ll soon be able to find out.
The library acquired the archive — 166 linear feet — from Russell’s estate, which is shepherded by Tom Lee (http://gothamist.com/2008/12/05/tom_lee.php?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , Russell’s partner. (The library doesn’t comment on the terms of its acquisitions.) It includes a thousand-or-so reels, cassettes, DATs, Beta and VHS tapes with hundreds of hours of unreleased and probably unreleasable material, representing how Russell made his work — laying down individual tracks, or practicing, or jamming — often in long sessions, and with musicians who may have had little idea what they were working on at the time. He kept many versions of songs. One example in the collection, recorded on a TDK-90 cassette tape over remixes of Salsoul-label disco by Walter Gibbons, contains a version of Russell’s song “My Tiger My Timing” sung with Jennifer Warnes. It becomes a
long mantra of blissful pop hooks: practice becoming ritual, extended over a whole side of a tape.
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RELATED COVERAGE
MUSIC REVIEW | ‘LET’S GO SWIMMING’  A Tribute to Arthur Russell: Singing a Songsmith’s Praises MAY 19, 2008    (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/arts/music/19russ.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/arts/music/review-red-hot-arthur-russell-pays-funky-introspective-tribute-to-a-composer-and-musician.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click
  Review: ‘Red Hot + Arthur Russell’ Pays Funky, Introspective Tribute to a Composer and Musician MAY 31, 2015    (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/arts/music/review-red-hot-arthur-russell-pays-funky-introspective-tribute-to-a-composer-and-musician.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/arts/music/moogfest-festival-north-carolina.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click
  CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK  At Moogfest, a Demonstration of What Human and Machine Can Accomplish MAY 23, 2016    (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/arts/music/moogfest-festival-north-carolina.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click)
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These sorts of items may be crucial to understanding Russell. After the paper material is assessed and cataloged with the proper metadata some months from now, anyone interested will be able to come to the library’s division of music and recorded sound to look through it. All the tapes will be digitized and cataloged as well — a process that may take as long as a year, according to Jonathan Hiam, the library’s curator for the project — but then will be available for onsite listening. (While the library has been collecting broad amounts of American-music material back to the 1930s, including the papers of John Cage, Henry Cowell, Benny Goodman and Pauline Oliveros, Mr. Hiam said that its next major focus is music of the late 1970s and beyond, both popular and classical; the Russell archive may be a test case for how to do it right.)

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New York Times music critics discuss Mr. Russell’s wide-angle, slow-release significance. (http://podcasts.nytimes.com/podcasts/2016/05/27/arts/music/27popcast-pod/052616-popcast-final.mp3) 24:35
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It has been said by those who knew him that Russell had a resistance toward finishing things. (He might have been very interested in how Mr. West continued to revise “The Life of Pablo.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/arts/music/kanye-west-life-of-pablo-tlop.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) ) But what the paper archives make clear, through Russell’s personal notes — often written in small music-composition notebooks — is how much he sought to incorporate a conscious sense of openness and flexibility into his work. Some of his most useful notes, probably from the early 1980s, deal with “World of Echo.” Here he wrestled with the idea of form and completeness in fascinating ways, often using the notation “p Idea” (the p may have stood for parenthetical). Such as:
(p Idea: the construction of structure which can be abandoned at any moment, and that is transparent — W.O.E.)
and
(p. Idea: the use of W.O.E. to demystify the process of presentation, packaging and glamor of the music at the same time as mystifying it)
The papers and notebooks include scores, personal correspondence, grant proposals, gig fliers and lyrics to hundreds of songs. Among those are some from “World of Echo,” which are hardest to decipher — including the extraordinary “Soon to Be Innocent Fun/Let’s See,” as well as “Answers Me,” the song Mr. West used. The handwritten material shows Russell as a mixture of things: abstracted, articulate, ambitious, very serious and very funny. Next to the notes about presentation and packaging, he wrote: “send nude photos to critics.”
Since the early ’90s, the papers have been divided among Mr. Lee, Mr. Knutson of Audika and a storage space in Queens. “I think the notebooks show his daily life,” Mr. Lee said in a recent telephone interview. Russell always carried a pen and paper; a lot of lyrics and melodies that eventually found their way to a song are hastily notated, as if subject to change.
“For me, it’s fascinating to look at those books,” Mr. Lee continued. “I’m always seeing the germ of something that became a song. Because I’m so attached to him, after he died I wanted to get inside his head so badly. When you’re living with someone you’re not thinking, how are you creating your work? But after he died, I thought, who is this guy I lived side by side with? That could be revealed through the books and tapes.”
Other than Mr. Lee and Mr. Knutson, one of the few people to have seen this material is the composer and scholar Matthew Marble, who just a couple of months ago defended his dissertation on Russell (“Buddhist Bubblegum: Esoteric Buddhism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell”) for a doctorate in philosophy at Princeton. It was a considerable labor: In focusing on Russell’s shift from esoteric systems to the relative freedom of his later work, Mr. Marble had to try to decode Russell’s methods of musical and numerical notation.
“Arthur never worked,” Mr. Marble said in an interview. “So he had nothing but time to work on music, which most people assume means honing cello skills or playing concerts — but the archive shows that he spent a lot of time working mental alterations on music. He got fixated in this kind of Rube Goldbergian way: His mind functioned like that. He craved complexity.”
But later he seemed to crave uncertainty. The percussionist Mustafa Ahmed told Mr. Marble that Russell used a mantric alphabet to come up with sung melodies; that could be a key to the flexible construction of the “World of Echo” lyrics, which were often written down with three possibilities for a single word, and mumbled all the same. (“NON-VERBAL/POP FEEL,” says another note to self in the composition books.)
One of the library’s interesting challenges may be in how to catalog Russell’s work. For starters, neither the terms “popular” or “classical” really describe him. A group of his lyrics on a notebook page might apply to more than one known and recorded piece of work; a tape of a practice session might or might not be leading toward a finished take. (Mr. Hiam, the curator, said that this was the first time the library has had such a large number of recorded materials demonstrating a composer’s creative process.) He revised and rerecorded and wrote new material in old notebooks. Traditional modes of definition may only help to show the ways that Russell resisted them.
A version of this article appears in print on May 29, 2016, on page AR15 of the New York edition with the headline: Inside the Trove of a Genre-Buster. Order Reprints (http://www.nytreprints.com/?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) | Today’s Paper (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) |Subscribe (http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY&version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click)

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Inside the Trove of the Genre-Buster Arthur Russell – The New York Times

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To Really Appreciate Louis Armstrong’s Trumpet, You Gotta Play it. Just Ask Wynton Marsalis | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian

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To Really Appreciate Louis Armstrong’s Trumpet, You Gotta Play it. Just Ask Wynton Marsalis
Credit: Leah L. Jones
It’s not always the white-glove treatment; some artifacts live on through performance
By Roger Catlin (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/author/roger-catlin/)
smithsonian.com
May 23, 2016

One of the standout musical artifacts to go on view at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (http://nmaahc.si.edu/) when it opens this fall is the elegant 70-year-old brass trumpet from Louis Armstrong.
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One of dozens he played through his five decades of performing, it came to life when Armstrong played it. “Satchmo,” as he was known, was not only one of the most popular musicians of the 20th century, he also helped steer jazz to a new direction—one of inventive soloing, done with a heart that connected to millions.
Blending popular song with the blues and an unerring assurance and tone, Armstrong is credited with helping shape the distinctly American art form.
“He is the beginning and end of music in America,” Bing Crosby once said (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/books/music-bing-crosby-the-unsung-king-of-song.html?pagewanted=all) .
“You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played,” Miles Davis said (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong) .
Writer Nat Hentoff has said (http://www.gadflyonline.com/home/archive/MarchApril00/archive-louisarmstrong.html) : “I have never known a distinctive jazz music who was not dedicated to his instrument, but none made his horn the constant center of his being as intensely as Louis did.”
Made by Henri Selmer of Paris, Armstrong’s trumpet now in the collections of the National Museum of African American History, is among a few to be inscribed with his name. (NMAAHC)
As Armstrong put it (https://books.google.com/books?id=Rd82AAAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PA1903&lpg=RA1-PA1903&dq=%E2%80%9CWhen+I+pick+up+that+horn,+that%E2%80%99s+all.+The+world%E2%80%99s+behind+me,+and+I+don%E2%80%99t+feel+no+different+about+that+horn+now+than+I+did+when+I+was+playing+in+New+Orleans.+louis+armstrong&source=bl&ots=k44PjoTNGY&sig=-lWd0MyrBtPNk6isRYlr4QQfPKg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7q__Phc7MAhVM74MKHYg-BP0Q6AEIKDAC#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWhen%20I%20pick%20up%20that%20horn%2C%20that%E2%80%99s%20all.%20The%20world%E2%80%99s%20behind%20me%2C%20and%20I%20don%E2%80%99t%20feel%20no%20different%20about%20that%20horn%20now%20than%20I%20did%20when%20I%20was%20playing%20in%20New%20Orleans.%20louis%20armstrong&f=false) : “When I pick up that horn, that’s all. The world’s behind me, and I don’t feel no different about that horn now than I did when I was playing in New Orleans. That’s my living and my life. I love them notes. That’s why I try to make them right.”
Armstrong was born in New Orleans August 4, 1901—not July 4, 1900, as he often boasted—in a poor part of the city, the grandson of slaves. He tooted a tin horn working on a junk wagon, before earning enough money to play his first horn. “I kept that horn for a long time. I played it all through the days,” he recalled (https://books.google.com/books?id=K18BLpc53NgC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=i+give+my+horns+about+five+years+louis+armstrong&source=bl&ots=JH3HHx1B__&sig=L-WllmLbHu-bMYDlhU9mM8NTk7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHi9HQi87MAhUB7YMKHcUyBqkQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=i%20give%20my%20horns%20about%20five%20years%20louis%20armstrong&f=false) in a memoir.
When he shot his stepfather’s pistol on New Year’s Eve on a dare, Armstrong, at 13, was arrested (http://www.notablebiographies.com/An-Ba/Armstrong-Louis.html) and sent to a reform school where he learned some horn skills from a teacher there. While still in his teens, he got into the band of his hero, Joe “King” Oliver, transplanting him to Chicago and then New York, where he had become a sensation in 1925, changing jazz from its syncopation to true sophistication. “No one knew what swing was till Louis came along,” trumpeter Max Kaminsky said (https://books.google.com/books?id=XaLQk8DvrcEC&pg=PT19&lpg=PT19&dq=%E2%80%9CNo+one+knew+what+swing+was+till+Louis+came+along,%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=ujOZmwC4K7&sig=XDuY5eleFvUkFcrcQc7BoAo0t7k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTi734penMAhULWh4KHdpLCMAQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CNo%20one%20knew%20what%20swing%20was%20till%20Louis%20came%20along%2C%E2%80%9D&f=false) .
Armstrong’s success continued through the century, until he became one of the first African-Americans to host his own national radio show, and was a frequent guest on TV and in musicals, one of which, Hello Dolly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7N2wssse14) gave him a No. 1 hit that knocked the Beatles out of the top spot for the first time in three months, and won the Grammy for song of the year.
And though Armstrong funded Civil Rights movement efforts and supported it, some activists saw him as being part of the old guard.
“I grew up knowing who he was,” Wynton Marsalis says. “I didn’t necessarily like his music, because I grew up in the Civil Rights era and the post-Civil Rights era and we felt like he was an Uncle Tom, always smiling with a handkerchief. His image was not something that was popular at that time. So I didn’t discover his real genius until I was 18.”
Marsalis was part of a storied New Orleans family led by teacher and pianist Ellis Marsalis and at age 14 played traditional jazz with the New Orleans Philharmonic, becoming at age 17, the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center.
Still, he wasn’t a fan of Armstrong until his father sent him a tape. “He had been telling me for years, ‘Man, you need to learn about Pops.’” Marsalis says.
So he listened.

“‘Jubilee’ was the name of the song. I tried to learn that song one night when I was 18 and I couldn’t make it through the song,” he says.
“We thought back then that if you played fast and did a lot of fancy things like Freddie Hubbard played, that you were a good trumpet player. Louis Armstrong played more straight notes. It wasn’t considered difficult.”
“But when I tried to learn one of his solos, just the endurance it took, let alone the type of soul and feeling he was playing with, it was revelatory for me. And then I began to study his music.”
The previously resistant Marsalis spent the rest of his teens listening to the early records. “Before that time, being from New Orleans, we didn’t follow New Orleans jazz. We grew up with it around us, but we were largely ignorant with what it meant culturally,” Marsalis says. “Even with a father that was fairly well informed, I managed to remain ignorant.”
That all changed when he heard and studied the music. “I love him,” Marsalis says of Armstrong. “And being a trumpet player, it was not hard to study the greatest trumpet player ever.
“If you love jazz, you have to love him,” he says. “It’s like a classical musician talking about Bach and Beethoven’s music. They’re the foundation of a lot of good music, so it’s only natural that a jazz musician would be interested in the foundation of his style.”
Louis Armstrong by Harry Warnecke, 1947 (National Portrait Gallery)
Naturally, he was interested when he was invited to play the Smithsonian’s Armstrong horn on the occasion of the installation of Smithsonian’s 13th director, David J. Skorton, in a ceremony last fall, accompanied by the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/landing/smithsonian-jazz-masterworks-orchestra.aspx) .
“It sounded better than I thought it would sound,” Marsalis says of the historic instrument. “In terms of music, his horn sounded good because of him. When he’s not playing, you don’t think you’re going to pick up Louis Armstrong’s trumpet and sound like him.”
Although Armstrong played dozens of instruments, the Smithsonian’s horn (http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=louis+armstrong+trumpet&tag.cstype=all) , made by Henri Selmer of Paris (http://www.selmer.fr/) is among only a few to be inscribed with his name. It was ordered in 1940 by his friend and manager Joe Glaser. A correspondence from Glaser to the Selmer instrument company dated Feb. 22, 1946 noted that Armstrong had been using a Selmer trumpet manufactured in 1932 and wanted “an exact duplicate.”
Armstrong said (https://books.google.com/books?id=K18BLpc53NgC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=%E2%80%9CI+give+my+horns+about+five+years.%E2%80%9D+%E2%80%9COf+course+I+look+after+them,+run+hot+water+through+the+instrument+every+night+so+you+know+it%E2%80%99s+going+to+percolate) once he went through trumpets fairly regularly. “I give my horns about five years. Of course I look after them, run hot water through the instrument every night so you know it’s going to percolate.”
“It will last forever if you keep it cleaned out, like your stomach,” Armstrong said
(https://books.google.com/books?id=K18BLpc53NgC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=%25E2%2580%259CI+give+my+horns+about+five+years.%25E2%2580%259D+%25E2%2580%259COf+course+I+look+after+them,+run+hot+water+through+the+instrument+every+night+so+you+know+it%25E2%2580%2599s+going+to+percolate.%2522&source=bl&ots=JH3IGA6DY1&sig=0aoj1PDkExE-GikSAnSq0OvxVb8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNiZ-6p-nMAhWCqR4KHYk7CQwQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%25E2%2580%259CI%2520give%2520my%2520horns%2520about%2520five%2520years.%25E2%2580%259D%2520%25E2%2580%259COf%2520course%2520I%2520look%2520after%2520them%252C%2520run%2520hot%2520water%2520through%2520the%2520instrument%2520every%2520night%2520so%2520you%2520know%2520it%25E2%2580%2599shttps://books.google.com/books?id=K18BLpc53NgC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=%25E2%2580%259CI+give+my+horns+about+five+years.%25E2%2580%259D+%25E2%2580%259COf+course+I+look+after+them,+run+hot+water+through+the+instrument+every+night+so+you+know+it%25E2%2580%2599s+going+to+percolate.%2522&source=bl&ot
s=JH3IGA6DY1&sig=0aoj1PDkExE-GikSAnSq0OvxVb8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNiZ-6p-nMAhWCqR4KHYk7CQwQ6AEIHDAA%2523v=onepage&q=%25E2%2580%259CI%2520give%252) . “So I could keep my trumpets longer, but I use a horn a lot and that’s how long I usually give ‘em.” The ’46 Selmer, acquired by the Smithsonian in 2008, did hold up, allowing Marsalis to get a bright sound out of it nearly seven decades later. “It was a great playing instrument. It played fantastically,” Marsalis says. “I really enjoyed it.”
It’s not often he plays a museum object, but Marsalis said he was cautious with it.
“When you play anybody else’s horn, you’re always careful,” he says. “Like when you take care of somebody else’s kids, you’re going to be definitely more careful than you are with your own. But it’s not like I’m doing that much with it. I’m just going to play it. The horn was not in danger.”
There was some adjustments he had to make, however.
“I didn’t have a mouthpiece to play with it, because on my horn, the mouthpiece is connected to the horn,” Marsalis says. “So one of the members of the band gave me a mouthpiece and I played it with another mouthpiece. Which gave me a little bit of challenge.”
Still, Marsalis, a nine-time Grammy winner (http://wyntonmarsalis.org/news/entry/wynton-marsalis-shares-his-lifelong-connection-to-jazz-music) who wrote the first jazz piece to win a Pulitzer, says he usually plays a Selmer trumpet as well—and like, Armstrong, he gives his instruments away after about five years as well. “I didn’t know that’s what he did too, but that’s generally what I do,” he says.
There were some preparations needed to make the horn playable, says Dwandalyn Reece, culture curator for the museum. “The trumpet came to us in pretty good condition,” Reece says, though she added, “It wasn’t playable when it got here. And there was some treatment to put it in that condition.”
A conservator and tuner were brought in to deal with some of the trumpet’s issues, says Renee Anderson, the museum’s head of collections. “There was a lacquer coating on it to help prevent tarnish. We looked to see if there were any spots where the lacquer impacted the valves,” Anderson says. “There were areas where the valves were a little sticky so we wanted to make sure they would flow freely.”
Playing an historic instrument from the museum’s collection was a first, says Reece.
But musical instruments are different than other historic items in the collection, she says. “Instruments are interesting things in that their sole purpose in life was to be played and to live in that kind of way. The National Museum American History brings out a couple of instruments that get played every once in a while. But it’s a kind of tug of war, between the conservation needs of the object and whether it can be played without any damage.”
“There’s a deep philosophy and set of considerations behind playing original, historic instruments in a museum’s collections,” adds John Edward Hasse, the curator of American music at the American History Museum. Hasse notes that John Coltrane’s saxophone (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/saxophone-supreme-john-coltrane-legendary-instrument-joins-collections-american-history-museum-180950274/) was brought out of the collections and played during a concert of the renowned saxophonist’s music.
“An instrument exists for one fundamental reason,” Hasse says, “to make music that can be heard.” But it’s a careful balance in preservation and allowing an instrument to achieve its potential, he says.
The Armstrong horn passed its test so it could be played by a jazz giant of his own era.
“It was exciting to hear it and to see that connection of the generations of this pivotal instrument from this person who was so important not only to jazz, but to American music,” Reece says.
UPDATE 5/25/2016: A previous version of this story reported that the trumpet was the first to be inscribed with his name. We regret the error.
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Roger Catlin is a freelance writer in Washington D.C. who writes frequently about the arts for The Washington Post and other outlets. He wrote for many years at The Hartford Courant and writes mostly about TV on his blog rogercatlin.com.
Read more from this author (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/author/roger-catlin/) | Follow @rcatlin (https://twitter.com/rcatlin)
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To Really Appreciate Louis Armstrong’s Trumpet, You Gotta Play it. Just Ask Wynton Marsalis | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian

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LondonJazz: BOOK REVIEW: Andrew Cartmel – The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax

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BOOK REVIEW: Andrew Cartmel – The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax

Andrew Cartmel – The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax
(Titan Books, 477pp., £7.99. Book Review by Chris Parker)

From Lesley Thomson’s cleaner sleuth Stella Darnell to Brian Eastman’s gardening detective Rosemary Boxer and Elizabeth Peters’s Egyptologist Amelia Peabody, the specialist, amateur investigator has provided a rich seam in crime fiction ever since G. K. Chesterton first set Father Brown loose against the criminal underworld in 1910.

Andrew Cartmel will be familiar to visitors to this site, courtesy of his erudite reviews of vinyl releases, and to the wider world via his involvement with TV classics such as Midsomer Murders and Doctor Who (for which he was a script editor), so his charity-shop-haunting, record-fair-regular vinyl obsessive with an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz is a natural and welcome addition to the genre’s pantheon.

As early as page three, indeed, we are deep in a discussion of deep grooves and flat-edge pressings, triggered by a Gil Mellé Blue Note featuring Max Roach, Red Mitchell and George Wallington, and the plot itself centres on our intrepid and resourceful hero’s increasingly fraught and dangerous search for a series of albums released by an obscure (fictional) Californian label at the height of the West Coast jazz boom. It also involves a highly entertaining cast of supporting characters ranging from a feisty mystery woman and an obnoxious DJ to a dope-growing sound-reproduction technician and an accident-prone stoner with a grape addiction – not to mention a pair of utterly convincing cats which effortlessly steal every scene in which they appear.

Of course the success of such novels depends on the degree of naturalness with which the specialised knowledge of its protagonist is deployed in the service of the plot, and here Cartmel scores heavily, weaving his obsession with the minutiae of vinyl fetishism uncontrivedly into a racy account of amateur derring-do opposed to corporate ruthlessness. In short, this is a sharp, amusing and compulsively readable detective yarn packed with witty asides dealing with everyone from Sun Ra to Elvis Presley, as enjoyably accessible to the jazz obsessive as it is to the general reader.

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LondonJazz: BOOK REVIEW: Andrew Cartmel – The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax

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BOOK REVIEW: Andrew Cartmel – The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax

Andrew Cartmel – The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax
(Titan Books, 477pp., £7.99. Book Review by Chris Parker)

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Harry Arnold & Danish Radio Big Band with Anni-Frid Lyngstad, long before ABBA – YouTube

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Via Marc Myer’s JazzWax (http://www.jazzwax.com/2016/05/harry-arnold-live-c-1966.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=FeedBlitzRss&utm_content=Harry+Arnold%3a+Live+c.+1966)

Harry Arnold: Live, c. 1966

Following my post (http://www.jazzwax.com/2016/05/this-is-harry-the-mystery-band.html) earlier in the week on Swedish arranger-conductor Harry Arnold, I figure you might want a see him in action. In the following clip, he’s leading the Danish Radio Big Band on a TV show from around 1966. Joining him was vocalist Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who in 1972 would become a founding member of ABBA, and Carli Tornehave, who looked and sounded eerily like a Tony Bennett cover act. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-bIYOjFPlE) the clip…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-bIYOjFPlE

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May 28, 2016 / No Comments / More

Harry Arnold & Danish Radio Big Band with Anni-Frid Lyngstad, long before ABBA – YouTube

Harry Arnold: Live, c. 1966

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May 28, 2016 / No Comments / More

Introducing Guiding Hands – CONAN on TBS – YouTube

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May 25, 2016 / No Comments / More

Introducing Guiding Hands – CONAN on TBS – YouTube

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/v6Wpc9s35ZY

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RIP Jeremy Steig (September 23, 1942 – April 13, 2016)

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Apparently, according to his web site in Japanese http://jeremysteig.info/, he passed away.

He had been living in Japan for over 20 years after leaving jazz behind to become a visual artist. His passing slipped under the radar, how sad not only for his demise but that wasn’t reported…Wiki shows him still alive

Jeremy Steig (September 23, 1942 – April 13, 2016)

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May 25, 2016 / No Comments / More

RIP Jeremy Steig (September 23, 1942 – April 13, 2016)

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Apparently, according to his web site in Japanese http://jeremysteig.info/, he passed away.

Jeremy Steig (September 23, 1942 – April 13, 2016)

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What John Coltrane (& Others) Told Ralph Gleason

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http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2016/05/what-john-coltrane-others-told-ralph-gleason/

What John Coltrane (& Others) Told Ralph Gleason

By Larry Blumenfeld
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2016/05/393402711f3bd70360c84460a059b691.jpg
I’m slowly working my way again through “Conversations in Jazz: The Ralph J. Gleason Interviews (http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300214529/conversations-jazz) ,” which will be published May 24 by Yale University Press. As the Yale press web page explains: “The co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Ralph J. Gleason was among the most respected journalists, interviewers, and critics writing about popular music in the latter half of the twentieth century.”
To which I’d add that Gleason did those things when a journalist, interviewer and critic could, by virtue of his or her work, earn a broad and deep measure of respect. And when a co-founder of Rolling Stone could delve deeply into jazz as more than just hobby or affectation. Yale’s site also mentions that Gleason was “the only music journalist included on President Richard Nixon’s infamous ‘Enemies List,’ which Gleason himself considered ‘the highest honor a man’s country can bestow upon him.’ I haven’t gotten to the explanation of that tidbit yet, but I’m hoping it’s contained in the Jann Wenner’s foreword to a companion volume, “Music in the Air: The Selected Writings of Ralph J. Gleason (http://yalebooks.com/search/node/Ralph%20Gleason) .” Both editions were edited by Gleason’s son Toby, himself a forty-year veteran of the music business.
“Conversations in Jazz,” has a foreword and introductory notes by Ted Gioia, which frame these encounters nicely and wisely. I’m bound in there, too, in the front matter, with an advance word of praise I’d happily provided Yale editor-at-large Steve Wasserman (whose list also includes Scott Timberg’s “Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class,” the best book I’ve read on the contemporary context, or lack thereof, for culture in this country).
http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/files/2016/05/e2798d8e052085dfc34efddb2e8f6ee8.jpg
Here’s what I wrote:
As music, jazz takes shape through what exceptional musicians play. As social history and philosophy, it is often best revealed through what these musicians say—provided there’s a conversation partner with a firm grasp of how jazz gets played and laid-back attitude toward how life gets lived. Ralph Gleason, an influential music critic, brought jazz into countless American living rooms during the 1960s through his TV series “Jazz Casual.” Yet the one-on-one discussions in Gleason’s own Berkeley, California living room—tape recorder rolling, Gleason and one or another of jazz’s greats sitting in overstuffed leather chairs—tell deeper stories. Here, framed with a wise and light touch by writer Ted Gioia, we get windows into personal worlds: John Coltrane on the cusp of a breakthrough; Sonny Rollins entering a period of reclusion; “Philly” Jo Jones sharing drumming tradecraft and history; Duke Ellington explaining why, in music as in life, problems are opportunities.
Last night, I found myself focused on Gleason’s May 1961 interview with John Coltrane. As Gioia points out, Coltrane was “at a turning point in his career,” having left Miles Davis’ group, and was soon to begin his important relationship with a newly launched Impulse! record label. I love this excerpt below for several reasons, including: the humility with which Gleason asks his question and Coltrane answers; the relevance of this exchange now, a half-century later, in terms of a “globalized” notion of jazz (http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2016/05/from-the-white-house-south-lawn-an-expansive-view-of-jazz/) ; the power, as expressed by Coltrane, of jazz culture “in the air”; and the hints here—“something that’s coming”—of the introspection that contributed to Coltrane’s masterpiece, still four years off, “A Love Supreme.”
Gleason: There is another question I want to ask you, too, which is kind of a vague thing, but I’ve always been curious about it. If someone were to come from a foreign country and say what does this music mean to you that you are devoting your life to, how would you answer them?
Coltrane: That’s a very good question. That’s a question which I’ve asked myself too, and when I can fully answer that question, if I’m ever able to do it, maybe you would just be able to get my answer from just listening to the music, because it just started as a thing that I heard around me. Like everybody in this country, you can grow up and hear this music all the time and it’s really part of you from the time you’re just a baby because it’s being played all day in some form. It just happened to be a thing I liked at first, then it happened to be a thing that I felt that I had some of it in me to do this, and it came to the point where I wanted to be very good at it and I wanted to excel and now it’s reached the point where I’m asking the questions, what does it mean. In order to really try to get down and present what I honestly feel is really the way I look at the music and what it means to me, it is my only means of expression. I don’t voice opinions much about
anything because I’m usually in the middle, I never make up my mind on anything, which is the way I am except in music and sometimes I’ll vacillate in that. I usually have to say something and I will get it together and eventually come out and say something about it. I don’t know, someday I’m going to answer this question for you
RJG: This began as fun?
JC: Yeah, and it still is, it’s sort of a thing where I get the fun. With playing I have a good time, have a ball.
RJG: But it’s more serious now?
JC: Yeah. Now I’m wondering about the things like you say, responsibility to this and that. And I’ve found that sometimes just me having a good time isn’t enough for people at all times. There are some things that have to be considered, too. Maybe I get a kick out of staying up playing the hardest song I can find or doing some things that are to me very clever where this man here don’t know nothing about it. It might not touch him, he don’t know up here what it is, it might not mean anything at all to him. So I’ve had to think about those things, too. As to what I want to actually convey, what I really want to say with the music, I haven’t gotten it together yet. It’s something that’s coming. I know that whatever I begin to think about, that is going to influence the melody or the rhythm or the lack of rhythm or the harmony or lack of that, because it’s going to have to be more than just academic or exercises.
Views expressed on this blog, which is hosted on BlouinArtinfo.com but produced independently of it, do not necessarily reflect the views of BlouinArtinfo.com.

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May 23, 2016 / No Comments / More

What John Coltrane (& Others) Told Ralph Gleason

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http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2016/05/what-john-coltrane-others-told-ralph-gleason/

What John Coltrane (& Others) Told Ralph Gleason

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What John Coltrane (& Others) Told Ralph Gleason

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http://blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes/2016/05/what-john-coltrane-others-told-ralph-gleason/

What John Coltrane (& Others) Told Ralph Gleason

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Jazz Loft, Housing a Trove of Memorabilia, Opens in Stony Brook – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/nyregion/jazz-loft-housing-a-trove-of-memorabilia-opens-in-stony-brook.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160520

Jazz Loft, Housing a Trove of Memorabilia, Opens in Stony Brook
By KARIN LIPSONMAY 20, 2016

The exterior of the Jazz Loft, which is housed in a two-story stone building. Heather Walsh for The New York Times
As a teenage trumpeter who loved jazz, Tom Manuel would visit the Dunton Inn, a local spot in East Patchogue where a group of old-timers — some of whom had played alongside Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Louis Armstrong — would let the untried kid from Lake Ronkonkoma sit in during weekly jam sessions.
“I was terrible, compared to them,” said Mr. Manuel at the Jazz Loft, an exhibition, preservation and performance space in Stony Brook that celebrated its grand opening on Saturday. Mr. Manuel, now a 37-year-old musician, teacher and jazz historian, founded the loft, which houses a vast assemblage of jazz memorabilia, including musical instruments, archival photographs, original sheet music, personal letters, master recordings and vintage LPs.

Tom Manuel at the Jazz Loft, an exhibition, preservation and performance space he founded in Stony Brook. Heather Walsh for The New York Times
On June 2, Mr. Manuel will lead the Jazz Loft Big Band in a concert. The 17-member group will present music by Count Basie and Duke Ellington. He also plans to schedule performances throughout the year.
How did this come about? It was partly serendipity (more on that later) and partly a result of Mr. Manuel’s moxie — a trait that no doubt helped win over those jazz veterans he performed with some 20 years ago at the Dunton Inn. (The spot still has live jazz; Mr. Manuel, who lives in St. James, performs there monthly.)
“I was smart enough to know when to play and when not to,” said Mr. Manuel of his neophyte days. The jazz pros, in turn, “were flattered” by his attention, he said: “Some of them thought, Well, maybe I can pass along some music to this kid and keep it alive.”

A piano with a framed portrait of the singer Arthur Prysock. Heather Walsh for The New York Times
Those sessions, and his subsequent career, led to some lasting friendships and eventually to the trove of memorabilia from musicians or their families that are on display or preserved in archives at the Jazz Loft.
Continue reading the main story
The collection includes material associated with both the stars and the stalwart sidemen of jazz: Among them are Armstrong, Ellington, John Coltrane, the vibraphonist Teddy Charles, the cornetist Warren Vaché, the singer Arthur Prysock, the trumpeter Chuck Genduso and the society bandleader Lester Lanin. (Mr. Lanin was not strictly speaking a jazz man, but the Loft is open to other jazz-tinged genres).
There are old Decca Records masters by Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Hoagy Carmichael, Les Paul and others, archived in a kind of cabinet of music wonders in the research library. Even a three-tiered bandstand has history: It was constructed of wood from the dance floor of New York’s erstwhile Roseland Ballroom. The bandstand is the centerpiece of Club Q, a performance area named after Vincent Quatroche, a jazz-inspired visual artist from Greenport who died in 2011. Examples of his work are also on view.

On display are photographs of jazz musicians by Bernard Seeman. Heather Walsh for The New York Times
Some items may surprise visitors. In a display case in the library, for example, sits the handwritten sheet music for “It Is Written in the Stars,” a little-known song by Billy Strayhorn, whose work “Take the A Train” was made famous by Ellington. Explaining how he acquired the composition, Mr. Manuel said of Strayhorn that he “didn’t like the music,” so he gave the song to Lloyd Trotman, a bassist, who passed it along to Mr. Manuel, who then commissioned its orchestration.
Hard as it is to imagine, the Loft’s contents were once stored in Mr. Manuel’s home. “I had stuff everywhere,” he said, estimating that his collection includes at least 10,000 pieces. “It was in the laundry room, in the shed, in the garage, in the basement.”
The material got its new home (here’s where the serendipity comes in) after Gloria Rocchio, the president of the Ward Melville Heritage Organization in Stony Brook, read aNewsday article (http://www.newsday.com/long-island/li-life/trumpeter-s-amazing-trove-of-long-island-jazz-memorabilia-needs-permanent-home-1.8272352?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) about Mr. Manuel in 2014. “I picked up the phone and called him,” Ms. Rocchio said. “You’ve got the collection, we’ve got the building. Let’s talk,” she recalled saying to him.

Louis Jordan memorabilia, donated by his wife, Martha Jordan. Heather Walsh for The New York Times
So they talked. The two-story stone building, which once housed a museum, was vacant. When Mr. Manuel presented his proposal for use of the space to the organization’s board, “the energy was unbelievable,” Ms. Rocchio said. “Everybody in the room felt, that’s the man.”
The building was renovated with around $420,000 in donations of cash and services, Ms. Rocchio said. The organization now leases the property to the Jazz Loft for $1 per year and is providing promotional support.
A few weeks ago, the Jazz Loft was still a work in progress, with some of its educational programs still in the planning stages. But Mr. Manuel’s goal of preserving jazz history had already become a reality.
“When I walk through and see these things, it’s very personal to me,” he said. “It’s passing the torch,” he added — just as the old jazz men of his youth had hoped.

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May 23, 2016 / No Comments / More

Jazz Loft, Housing a Trove of Memorabilia, Opens in Stony Brook – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/nyregion/jazz-loft-housing-a-trove-of-memorabilia-opens-in-stony-brook.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160520

Jazz Loft, Housing a Trove of Memorabilia, Opens in Stony Brook
By KARIN LIPSONMAY 20, 2016

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Jazz Loft, Housing a Trove of Memorabilia, Opens in Stony Brook – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/nyregion/jazz-loft-housing-a-trove-of-memorabilia-opens-in-stony-brook.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160520

Jazz Loft, Housing a Trove of Memorabilia, Opens in Stony Brook
By KARIN LIPSONMAY 20, 2016

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May 23, 2016 / No Comments / More

Editor’s Choice: Ralph J. Gleason’s writings and jazz interviews – Buffalo News

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http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/editors-choice-ralph-j-gleasons-writings-and-jazz-interviews-20160522

Editor’s Choice: Ralph J. Gleason’s writings and jazz interviews

Music in the Air: The Selected Writings of Ralph J. Gleason, foreword by Jann Wenner, introduction by Paul Scanlon, Yale University Press, 328 pages, $30; Conversations in Jazz by Ralph J. Gleason, Yale University Press, 328 pages, $30. Ralph J. Gleason was an authentic hero among jazz and pop music critics. It was Gleason who gave Jann Wenner $2,000 to launch Rolling Stone magazine. Gleason was genuinely interested in young critics – so much so that I can personally attest to his writing, out of the blue, to a young critic 3,000 miles away at a newspaper so that he could deliver an “attaboy” for something he liked.

It’s crucial to remember how good and generous a man Ralph J. Gleason was when you consider everything else he did as a jazz and pop music critic and cultural commentator in his wretchedly brief time on earth (1917-1975.) He had one of the legendary jazz TV shows in America (“Jazz Casual”), wrote classic liner notes for records (that’s Gleason on Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew”) and conducted some of the best interviews ever of great jazz musicians– a tribe, in general, of human beings who often have to put up with mind-blowing cluelessness from admirers. It was Gleason’s goodness, sensitivity and generosity that made him such a great interviewer.

In one of the happier publishing surprises of the year, Yale University Press has decided to reintroduce Ralph J. Gleason to America in two volumes, the best of which is, by far, a book of his interviews with an Olympus of jazz musicians: John Coltrane, Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis, Percy Heath, Connie Kay, Sonny Rollins, Philly Joe Jones, Bill Evans, Horace Silver, Duke Ellington, Les McCann and Jon Hendricks. The Yale book of Gleason’s selected writings is a bit more troublesome than the interviews for a simple reason: as widely and importantly read as he was in the San Francisco Chronicle in his time, the paper itself was seldom, if ever, up to the level of its best employees or the city it served. So no matter what the subject – jazz, Lenny Bruce, the Beatles, Bob Dylan –Gleason was better than his circumstances and less than he was elsewhere. Nevertheless, an authentically great man, great to encounter again. – Jeff Simon

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May 22, 2016 / No Comments / More

Editor’s Choice: Ralph J. Gleason’s writings and jazz interviews – Buffalo News

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http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/editors-choice-ralph-j-gleasons-writings-and-jazz-interviews-20160522

Editor’s Choice: Ralph J. Gleason’s writings and jazz interviews

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May 22, 2016 / No Comments / More

Editor’s Choice: Ralph J. Gleason’s writings and jazz interviews – Buffalo News

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http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/editors-choice-ralph-j-gleasons-writings-and-jazz-interviews-20160522

Editor’s Choice: Ralph J. Gleason’s writings and jazz interviews

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May 22, 2016 / No Comments / More

Listening and Playing – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/books/review/listening-and-playing.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160520

Listening and Playing
By JOHN WILLIAMSMAY 20, 2016

Duke Ellington and friends. Columbia Pictures/GAB Archive, via Redferns — Getty Images
In “How to Listen to Jazz,” the music critic and historian (and pianist) Ted Gioia confesses: “I’ve offered both praise and put-downs to many an artist over the years, but I’ve never actually outlined in detail the standards I apply in making these evaluations.” His new book is an effort to correct that, and to teach casual listeners how “careful listening can demystify virtually all of the intricacies and marvels of jazz.” As part of his instruction, Gioia points readers to certain recordings, including inferior ones. “You can perhaps learn more about swing from listening to the bands that fail to achieve it,” he writes.
“Murray Talks Music,” another of several new books about jazz, brings together some of the writer Albert Murray’s interviews and essays about music. In Apprise magazine in 1990, he talked about improvisation as a form of resilience, an ability to change and deal with new circumstances that was indicative of the American character. “If you’ve got it all nailed down, and you know where all the notes go, and you do all that, and all you have to do is have the director come up and tell you, ‘Do that,’ you’re not dealing with American experience, you see.”
Hearing from the most accomplished jazz musicians themselves is a humbling reminder that their skills ultimately exist in a realm beyond words. “Conversations in Jazz” collects interviews conducted by Ralph Gleason, a founding editor of Rolling Stone who died in 1975, with John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins and others. Dizzy Gillespie told Gleason that only the most difficult songs occupied his thoughts when he wasn’t performing them. “You get them hard things and you have to figure certain things,” he said. “But most numbers, man, you just go up and start playing.”
Quotable
“But now I’m 40 I just thought: I spent my 20s and 30s in a dark room writing — this year I’m going to put on a big outfit and go to a party.” — Zadie Smith, on attending this year’s Met Gala, in an interview (http://www.refinery29.uk/2016/05/109914/zadie-smith-interview-met-ball?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) with Refinery29
The Vocabulary of Pleasure
This week, Mark O’Connell reviews “Unforbidden Pleasures,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/books/review/unforbidden-pleasures-by-adam-phillips.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) by the psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips. In an interview at the London Review Bookshop in London last November, Phillips spoke about his latest subject. “How much time can you spend doing forbidden things?” he asked. “Not that much.” Even serious transgressors, he surmised, get a majority of their pleasure from innocent activities like, say, drinking coffee. “There’s lots of exciting language about exciting, dangerous pleasures, but there’s very little language about most of the ordinary pleasures,” Phillips said. “We’re being instructed about what to desire by the forbidders, and I think that’s a shame, because it’s so limiting.”

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May 22, 2016 / No Comments / More

Listening and Playing – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/books/review/listening-and-playing.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160520

Listening and Playing
By JOHN WILLIAMSMAY 20, 2016

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)

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Warwick, Ny 10990
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May 22, 2016 / No Comments / More

Listening and Playing – The New York Times

http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/books/review/listening-and-playing.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160520

Listening and Playing
By JOHN WILLIAMSMAY 20, 2016

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)

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May 22, 2016 / No Comments / More

Joe Temperley, Velvety Baritone Saxophonist, Dies at 86 – The New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/arts/music/joe-temperley-velvety-baritone-saxophonist-dies-at-86.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160519

** Joe Temperley, Velvety Baritone Saxophonist, Dies at 86
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By NATE CHINEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_chinen/index.html?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) MAY 19, 2016
Continue reading the main story (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/arts/music/joe-temperley-velvety-baritone-saxophonist-dies-at-86.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160519&nlid=16833052&tntemail0=y#story-continues-1) Share This Page
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Joe Temperley with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Richard Perry/The New York Times

Joe Temperley (http://www.jazz.org/JLCO/joe-temperley/?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , a Scottish baritone saxophonist who anchored the reed sections of some of the most prominent big bands of the last half-century — notably the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, in which he played for 25 years — died on May 11 at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.

The cause was kidney failure and complications of cancer, his wife, Laurie Temperley, said.

During a seven-decade career that began with dance bands in Glasgow and carried him to concert halls across the world, Mr. Temperley maintained a personal trademark of soulful professionalism. He had a deep sonority on the baritone, softening the instrument’s stentorian brawn with a smooth, almost velvety tone. He could blend to the point of invisibility within a saxophone section, but he was also a gallant soloist with a special gift for ballads.

Though he was fluent in a range of modern jazz styles, his great hero on the baritone saxophone was Harry Carney (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqxEdwsTQs&version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , a stalwart of the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1927 until after Ellington’s death in 1974. At Mr. Carney’s funeral later that year, Mr. Temperley played a signature ballad in tribute, “Sophisticated Lady.” The performance so impressed Mercer Ellington, the maestro’s son, that he asked Mr. Temperley to succeed Mr. Carney in a legacy edition of the band.

Mr. Temperley remained with the Ellington orchestra for more than a decade, until accepting an invitation from Wynton Marsalis to join the new resident jazz orchestra at Lincoln Center in 1991. After Mr. Marsalis, the founder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Mr. Temperley had the longest tenure of any member of the band.

Joseph Temperley was born on Sept. 20, 1929, in Lochgelly, a mining town in the county of Fife. The son of a bus driver, he was a self-taught musician, starting on cornet. He switched to tenor saxophone in his early teens, joining a dance band led by his older brother, and then forming his own, the Debonairs.
Continue reading the main story

At 17 Mr. Temperley left for Glasgow, where he found work in local nightclubs and with a first-rate band led by Tommy Sampson, billed as “Scotland’s King of Swing.” He soon moved to London, where he further proved himself with several successful bands, notably the Jack Parnell Orchestra.

But Mr. Temperley’s most prominent work in England came in the popular band led by Humphrey Lyttelton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5odaPQ0eVo&version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , a trumpeter from an aristocratic family who later enjoyed a long career as a radio broadcaster. After joining the band as a substitute tenor saxophonist in 1957, Mr. Templeton shifted to baritone at Mr. Lyttelton’s suggestion, and found it an ideal fit.

He left the band amicably after eight years, moving to New York. After serving a stint in Woody Herman’s big band he became a freelancer, working in recording studios and on Broadway. For several years he was a member of the influential Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.

In addition to Ms. Temperley, his wife of 32 years, he is survived by his sister, Helen Frazier, and a stepson, Matthew Lurin. His first marriage ended in divorce.

Mr. Temperley, who played soprano saxophone and bass clarinet in addition to baritone, made a handful of suavely authoritative albums, including “Nightingale (http://www.mtv.com/artists/joe-temperley/discography/155347/?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) ” (1991) and “A Portrait” (2006). But his reputation largely rested on his work in big bands, and one in particular.

At a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert in Mr. Temperley’s honor last fall (http://www.npr.org/event/music/402060370/celebrating-joe-temperley-in-concert?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click) , Mr. Marsalis hailed him as “a man who has been the foundation of our orchestra since our inception.” The program included “Joe’s Concerto,” a three-part suite by Mr. Marsalis, along with selections from the Ellington repertoire. It concluded with one of those: “The Single Petal of a Rose,” played by Mr. Temperley on bass clarinet with a tender and unhurried solemnity.

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May 20, 2016 / No Comments / More