Oh não! mais um blog sobre jazz!!

Improvisação, a 2ª vida do acaso

2012-01-25T21:02:00.006Z

"C’est l’occasion qui électrise le génie créateur,- car l’occasion est l’électrochoc de l’inspiration ; mais c’est pour le génie créateur que la rencontre, au lieu d’être une occurrence muette, devient une occasion riche de sens. Et c’est justement cette causalité réciproque, ce rapport-paradoxal de l’effet-cause à la cause-effet, cette contradiction de la causa sui qui donne à l’improvisation la profondeur d’un processus créateur. "
(Jankélévitch)

1 / 5

Sam Rivers (25 Set.1923 – 26 Dez. 2011)

2011-12-27T22:14:00.002Z

Mais um dia triste.

Depois de Paul Motion e Bob Brookmeyer é Sam Rivers que se vai embora.

Um músico ENORME e um mestre nunca devidamente valorizado.

Vi-o em 1977 no festival de Chateauvallon (França), um concerto que foi incrivelmente importante para mim, na altura.

Fica aqui o bootleg desse concerto como forma de celebrar a música originalíssima de Rivers.

Sam Rivers-saxes tenor e soprano, flauta, piano

Dave Holland-contrabaixo

Oliver Johnson- bateria

(Festival de Musique Ouverte de Châteauvallon/1977)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21566364/Sam%20Rivers%20Dave%20Holland%20%20Oliver%20Johnson_%20Chateauvallon%201977.rar

Surdez e atenção (ou falta dela...)

2011-10-24T00:53:00.010+01:00

Com certeza muitos conhecerão este teste . Não? então é de experimentar fazê-lo. O resultado é surpreendente.
Um equivalente auditivo do teste é apresentado neste estudo onde se estabelece o conceito de "surdez de desatenção" (tradução minha de "inattentional deafness”) determinado pela sobrecarga numa tarefa visual.
Este estudo poderá dar um contributo para uma melhor compreensão do efeito da leitura musical (partitura/cifra) no contexto de improvisação.

"Se alguma coisa eu fiz ao longo da minha carreira foi dar atenção a cada nota e cada palavra que eu canto. Eu respeito a canção. Se não consigo projectar isto para o ouvinte, então falhei..
Frank Sinatra

"Um homem que consiga guiar com segurança enquanto beija uma linda rapariga não está a dar ao beijo a atenção que ele merece."
Albert Einstein

The Long String Instrument

2011-10-02T01:46:00.000+01:00

The Long String Instrument

Em 1981 Ellen Fullman iniciou o projecto "Long String Instrument", uma instalação de dúzias de arames de cerca de 15 metros de comprimento friccionados com os dedos revestidos de resina.
Ellen gravou este instrumento fora do comum colaborando com figuras como Pauline Oliveros, o coreógrafo Deborah Hay, Kronos Quartet, Keiji Haino e Francis-Marie Uitti.
Em 2000 foi-lhe atribuído o prestigiado prémio DAAD para uma residência artística em Berlim.
A sua música foi apresentada nos eventos The American Century; Art and Culture, 1950-2000 no Whitney Museum, tocando em festivais na Europa, Japão e América do Norte tais como Instal, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Other Minds, o Walker Art Center e Donaueschinger Musiktage.
O seu CD "Ort", com o músico berlinense Jörg Hiller, foi selecionado como um dos top-50 gravações de 2004 pela The Wire .Deu conferências e escreveu artigos sobre o seu trabalho na Songlines Series, Mills College, MusikTexte (Cologne 2002), e MusicWorks (Toronto 2003).
A sua colaboração com o percussionista Sean Meehan no Instal 2006 foi a peça mais baixada do site do Festival e foi editada pela Cut (Suiça).
Em 2007 recebeu o convite para uma residência de 5 meses no Japão Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission/NEA Fellowship .
Fullman é actualmente Artista residente no Headlands Center for the Arts, onde instalou o seu instrumento no que foi o antigo espaço do ginásio.

Trailer Empty Building from françois boetschi - NU Films on Vimeo.

Mais sobre a artista: www.ellenfullman.com

The Bird speaks

2011-10-02T01:30:00.001+01:00

Dois meses depois do último post, aqui fica a entrevista de Paul desmond a Charlie Parker. Dois dos grandes saxofonistas altos da história do Jazz. Onde (entre muitas outras coisas) se prova que o Parker também estudou o Klóse.

Noise: the Political Economy of Music

2011-10-02T01:00:00.001+01:00

"Noise : The political economy of Music" de Jacques Attali.
Depois de um início destes antevê-se um livro que deixará a sua marca.
Vale a pena transcrever o início. Brilhante!

"For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world.
It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing.
It is not legible, but audible.
Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate
meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work
noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited.
Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.
Today, our sight has dimmed; it no longer sees our future, having constructed
a present made of abstraction, nonsense, and silence. Now we must learn to
judge a society more by its sounds, by its art, and by its festivals, than by its
statistics. By listening to noise, we can better understand where the folly of men
and their calculations is leading us, and what hopes it is still possible to have.
In these opening pages, I would like to summarize the essential themes of this
book. The supporting argument will follow.
Among sounds, music as an autonomous production is a recent invention.
Even as late as the eighteenth century, it was effectively submerged within a
larger totality. Ambiguous and fragile, ostensibly secondary and of minor importance,
it has invaded our world and daily life. Today, it is unavoidable, as
if, in a world now devoid of meaning, a background noise were increasingly
necessary to give people a sense of security. And today, wherever there is
music, there is money. Looking only at the numbers, in certain countries more
money is spent on music than on reading, drinking, or keeping clean.

Music, an immaterial pleasure turned commodity, now heralds a society of the sign, of the immaterial up for sale, of the social relation unified in money.
It heralds, for it is prophetic. It has always been in its essence a herald of
times to come. Thus, as we shall see, if it is true that the political organization
of the twentieth century is rooted in the political thought of the nineteenth, the
latter is almost entirely present in embryonic fonn in the music of the eighteenth
century.
In the last twenty years, music has undergone yet another transformation.
This mutation forecasts a change in social relations. Already, material production
has been supplanted by the exchange of signs. Show business, the star system,
and the hit parade signal a profound institutional and cultural colonization.
Music makes mutations audible. It obliges us to invent categories and new dynamics to regenerate social theory, which today has become crystallized, entrapped,moribund.
Music, as a mirror of society, calls this truism to our attention: society is
much more than economistic categories, Marxist or otherwise, would have us
believe.
Music is more than an object of study: it is a way of perceiving the world.
A tool of understanding. Today, no theorizing accomplished through language
or mathematics can suffice any longer; it is incapable of accounting for what is
essential in time-the qualitative and the fluid, threats and violence. In the face
of the growing ambiguity of the signs being used and exchanged, the most wellestablished concepts are crumbling and every theory is wavering. The available
representations of the economy, trapped within frameworks erected in the seventeenth century or, at latest, toward 1850, can neither predict, describe, nor even express what awaits us.
It is thus necessary to imagine radically new theoretical forms, in order to
speak to new realities. Music, the organization of noise, is one such form. It reflects
the manufacture of society; it constitutes the audible waveband of the vibrations
and signs that make up society. An instrument of understanding, it prompts us to decipher a sound fonn of knowledge.
My intention here is thus not only to theorize about music, but to theorize
through music. The result will be unusual and unacceptable conclusions about
music and society, the past and the future. That is perhaps why music is so rarely
listened to and why-as with every facet of social life for which the rules are
breaking down (sexuality, the family, politics)-it is censored, people refuse to
draw conclusions from it.
In the chapters that follow, music will be presented as originating in ritual
murder, of which it is a simulacrum, a minor form of sacrifice heralding change.
We will see that in that capacity it was an attribute of religious and political
power, that it signified order, but also that it prefigured subversion. Then, after
entering into commodity exchange, it participated in the growth and creation of
capital and the spectacle. Fetishized as a commodity, music is illustrative of the
evolution of our entire society: de ritualize a social form, repress an activity of
the body, specialize its practice, sell it as a spectacle, generalize its consumption,
then see to it that it is stockpiled until it loses its meaning. Today, music
heralds-regardless of what the property mode of capital will be-the establishment
of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore. But at the
same time, it heralds the emergence of a formidable subversion, one leading to
a radically new organization never yet theorized, of which self-management is
but a distant echo.
In this respect, music is not innocent: unquantifiable and unproductive, a pure
sign that is now for sale, it provides a rough sketch of the society under construction,a society in which the informal is mass produced and consumed, in which difference is artificially recreated in the multiplication of semi-identical objects.
No organized society can exist without structuring differences at its core. No
market economy can develop without erasing those differences in mass production.
The self-destruction of capitalism lies in this contradiction, in the fact that
music leads a deafening life: an instrument of differentiation, it has become a
locus of repetition. It itself becomes undifferentiated, goes anonymous in the
commodity, and hides behind the mask of stardom. It makes audible what is essential in the contradictions of the developed societies: an anxiety-ridden quest
for lost difference, following a logic from which difference is banished.
Art bears the mark of its time. Does that mean that it is a clear image? A strategy
for understanding? An instrument of struggle? In the codes that structure
noise and its mutations we glimpse a new theoretical practice and reading: establishing relations between the history of people and the dynamics of the economy on the one hand, and the history of the ordering of noise in codes on the other;predicting the evolution of one by the forms of the other; combining economics and aesthetics; demonstrating that music is prophetic and that social organization echoes it.
This book is not an attempt at a multidisciplinary study, but rather a call to
theoretical indiscipline, with an ear to sound matter as the herald of society. The
risk of wandering off into poetics may appear great, since music has an essential
metaphorical dimension: "For a genuine poet, metaphor is not a rhetorical
figure but a vicarious image that he actually beholds in place of a concept." 1
Yet music is a credible metaphor of the real. It is neither an autonomous activity
nor an automatic indicator of the economic infrastructure. It is a herald,
for change is inscribed in noise faster than it transforms society. Undoubtedly,
music is a play of mirrors in which every activity is reflected, defined, recorded,
and distorted. If we look at one mirror, we see only an image of another. But
at times a complex mirror game yields a vision that is rich, because unexpected
and prophetic. At times it yields nothing but the swirl of the void.
Mozart and Bach reflect the bourgeoisie's dream of harmony better than and
prior to the whole of nineteenth-century political theory. There is in the operas
of Cherubini a revolutionary zeal rarely attained in political debate. Janis Joplin,
Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix say more about the liberatory dream of the
1960s than any theory of crisis. The standardized products of today's variety
shows, hit parades, and show business are pathetic and prophetic caricatures of
future forms of the repressive channeling of desire.
The cardinal importance of music in announcing a vision of the world is
nothing new. For Marx, music is the "mirror of reality"; for Nietzsche, the
"expression oftruth";2 for Freud, a "text to decipher." It is all of that, for it
is one of the sites where mutations first arise and where science is secreted: "If
you close your eyes, you lose the power of abstraction" (Michel Serres). It is
all of that, even if it is only a detour on the way to addressing man about the
works of man, to hearing and making audible his alienation, to sensing the unacceptable immensity of his future silence and the wide expanse of his fallowed
creativity. Listening to music is listening to all noise, realizing that its appropriation
and control is a reflection of power, that it is essentially political."

2011-06-05T20:23:00.000+01:00

Hard selling Artists

2011-06-05T14:52:00.006+01:00

MASTERCLASS DE HAL GALPER

2011-06-01T16:17:00.006+01:00

Kempff vs.Horowitz

2011-05-28T18:23:00.013+01:00

Não espreite os resultados antes de votar!

Improvisação e narrativa

2011-05-28T17:47:00.005+01:00

Para além de um dos mais interessantes e criativos pianistas da nova geração, Vijay Iyer é um estudioso da performance improvisada. Alguns dos seus temas preferidos são a colaboração na improvisação,a temporalidade, a corporização da experiência musical ou a narrativa na improvisação.
Muito interessantes (para quem gosta destes assuntos) os seus artigos "Improvisation,Temporality and Embodied Experience." Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (2004) ou "Sangha: Collaborative Improvisations on Community." (2006) Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation 1(3).

Achei especialmente interessante o seu artigo (2004) "Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation" (The New Jazz Studies, ed. Columbia University Press)onde, partindo de uma conversa entre Coltrane e os seus colegas durante a gravação do tema "Giant Steps" no disco "The Heavyweight Champion", Vijay elabora sobre a narrativa no solo improvisado, sobre verdade/mentira e sobre outras questões éticas e culturais presentes no solo improvisado.
A conversa foi transcrita por Vijay Iyer e Steve Coleman.
A tradução do original é do autor deste blog.

"Durante a gravação de Giant Steps ocorre um momento revelador e de descomprometido á-vontade entre os músicos presentes no estúdio.
Enquanto ensaiavam o tema especialmente difícil com que foram inesperadamente confrontados, ouve-se Coltrane dizer aos seus esforçados colegas:
“I don’t think I’m gonna improve this, you know . . . I ain’t goin be sayin nothin, (I goin do) tryin just, makin the changes, I ain’t goin be, tellin no story. . . Like . . . tellin them black stories.”
Entre um murmúrio indistinto de assentimento dos outros membros da banda, um deles diz:
“Shoot. Really, you make the changes, that’ll tell ’em a story.” Surpreendido por esta ideia, Coltrane responde: “You think the changes’re the story!”
Sobrepondo-se á sua voz outro membro da banda diz: “ that’ll change all the stories ” . Rindo-se Coltrane responde: “I don’t want to tell no lies (on ’em).”
Todo o grupo ri e o 2º colega acrescenta :“(The) changes themselves is some kind of story (man I’m tellin you).”
Estes poucos segundos de troca de palavras poderiam alimentar um simpósio: esta conversa antífonal, em vários registos, rica de elementos culturais sugere uma definição de como as histórias musicais podem ser contadas.
“Making the changes”—ou seja, negociar o labirinto harmónico que constitui a estrutura harmónica do tema - constitui apenas uma faceta da construção em tempo real de um texto improvisado neste idioma (jazz). Uma lista de outros ingredientes convencionais da linguagem incluem a produção de um "momentum" rítmico contínuo ("swing"), a projecção de um timbre instrumental rico e pessoal, a construção de fraseado melódico original bem como a estruturação destas frases num todo convincente.
Da preocupação em não estar contando a história certa (" I ain’t goin be, tellin no story") é fácil supor que Coltrane estaria a pensar nestes parâmetros, tentando criar um solo "coerente", o arco narrativo de que Gunther Schuller fala . Contudo a sua referência ás preocupações de relacionamento cultural (“tellin’ them black stories”) a natureza académica (étude-like) daquela complexa estrutura harmónica inclusivamente projectando-se para além da sua noção de coerência de composição.

Com estas palavras Coltrane parece querer produzir um statement musical em que a comunidade possa ouvir refletida toda a sua própria multiplicidade narrativa. Com efeito, a sua incessante procura desse ideal está documentada ao longo de dúzias de takes. Para além disso, a sua é uma busca pela veracidade: “I don’t want to tell no lies on ’em.” Poderiamos refletir sobre que notas, acordes e ritmos são "a verdade" e poderemos ser tentados a interpretar o riso que esse comentário provocou como uma manifestação de quanto absurda é esta ideia.
Mas , de facto, esta ideia é de uso corrente entre músicos e a explosão de riso talvez tenha um significado de concordância.

Há poucas semanas atrás ouvi um colega músico criticar um outro elemnto da banda por "mentir" em palco. De acordo com esse meu colega o músico estava a tocar o que ele julgava que o leader gostaria de ouvir em vez de produzir um solo genuinamente pessoal. Para Coltrane "mentir" musicalmente poderia querer dizer tocar de um modo excessivamente consciente, premeditado ou construido de uma forma que soasse a falso aos seus ouvidos.

Este comentário sugere que Coltrane esforçava-se por criar uma representação autêntica da sua comunidade ao contar a sua história com toda a veracidade possível.

Esta busca de veracidade tem uma larga implicação com a política de autenticidade e o seu papel da narrativa na música negra. Há uma clara relação entre "contar a sua história" e "ser verdadeiro" (“ ")
O meu interesse nesta conversa entre Coltrane e os seus colegas (aquando da gravação de "Giant Steps") centra-se especialmente na observação de um dos seu sidemen
“Really, you make the changes, that’ll tell ’em a story” ("a sério, se tocares a progressão harmónica estás a contar-lhes uma história")

Talvez o colega de Trane queira posicionar a narrativa que o seu leader procura não só ao nível do imperativo filosófico colocado "na música" mas também no acto de realizar a progressão harmónica momento-a-momento.

O facto de Coltrane se esforçar por manter o seu equilíbrio musical perante esta difícil progressão é eloquente e rica de significado simbólico.
Aquilo que nos é dado ouvir resulta de muito esforço, tempo e trabalho (com todas as resonâncias que esta palavra possa ter).

Esta noção altera efectivamente o ponto de vista. Implica uma alteração de uma enfase assente numa noção top-down de coerência narrativa para uma visão bottom-up da narrativa que emerge de pequenos actos laboriosos dos quais se alimenta a actividade musical.

E realçando estes factos e os rigores que eles pressupõe esse comentário pode ser entendido como uma celebração de um atletismo musical presente na performance musical negra(ou talvez a celebração dos valores performativos presente num atletismo musical negro)

Um improvisador está envolvido numa forma de actividade física altamente disciplinada da qual só ouvimos o resultado sónico.
Se admitirmos este facto, seremos levados a considerar as implicações narrativas deste trabalho físico como música. Certamente a disciplina deste processo corporalizado nos contará "uma qualquer espécie de história"
Vijay Iyer

Wynton Marsalis - Retrato do artista enquanto Jovem Leão

2011-05-26T02:51:00.000+01:00

Wynton Marsalis 1985 Profile: "Catching a Snake" from Wynton Marsalis on Vimeo.

A Improvisação na música turca

2011-04-24T16:37:00.002+01:00

Cinuçen Tanrıkorur foi um mestre do oud e um dos grandes compositores clássicos turcos, musicólogo e crítico musical para além de professor da Universidade de Selçuk .
Foi o criador de um novo modo, o Makam Şedd-i sabâ, que está representado numa suite clássica em 6 andamentos.
Este é o seu workshop sobre Improvisação (TAKSIM) na música turca no New England Conservatory em Bostonem 1994.

music

48

2011-04-24T04:15:00.002+01:00

Especialmente aos jovens que ainda não perceberam o que mudou em Portugal com o 25 de Abril de 74, aconselho vivamente este filme. É provavel que muitos não o vão ver. Não se vai ver este filme para nos divertirmos. Não há pipocas, não há música e é todo a preto e branco. Ás vezes só temos mesmo uma tela negra á nossa frente. Mas aquelas vozes e aquelas fotos contam sem artifícios o que foi viver naquele Portugal de então e passar 10, 15, 20 (24 anos num dos casos) na cadeia sob um regime de tortura só porque imaginavam um país diferente. Todos nós, de direita, de esquerda ou doutro lado qualquer temos muito a agradecer a estas pessoas.

Os 3 desejos

2011-04-24T02:54:00.009+01:00

A Baronesa Pannonica de Koenigswarter ficou para a história do Jazz como a grande mecenas de alguns dos mais importantes músicos e Jazz da era a que se convencionou chamar Be Bop. Theloniuos Monk e Charlie Parker foram alguns dos seus protegés, este último tendo mesmo falecido em sua casa. Para além disso tinha por hábito perguntar aos músicos com quem convivia - e registar num caderninho - quais seriam os seus 3 maiores desejos na vida.

Retirado do seu livro "Three Wishes" aqui ficam alguns dos desejos dos músicos :

Os 3 desejos de Sonny Rollins:
1. ‘Dinheiro’
2. ‘Ser .’ capaz de fazer no instrumento tudo o que quero'
3. ‘Ter uma maior afinidade com a Natureza.’

Charlie Rouse (saxofonista de Monk):
1. ‘Ser um excelente músico.’
2. ‘Ter um clube de onde programaria muito bom jazz’
3. ‘Que a América reconhecesse o Jazz como uma forma artística’

Sonny Clark (pianista):
1. ‘Dinheiro’
2. ‘Todas as gajas do mundo.’
3. ‘todos os Steinways.’

Thelonious Monk:
1. ‘ter sucesso musical.’
2. ‘Ter uma família feliz.’
3. ‘Ter uma amiga doida como tu!’

Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley:
1. ‘Que a discriminação racial fosse erradicada da Terra fosse em relação a que raça fosse.’
2. ‘Que o Jazz fosse apoiado como uma forma artística de modo a que a música não fosse distorcida pelas dificuldades económica de quem cria música.’
3. ‘Saúde e uma feliz vida em conjunto com a minha mulher.'

Miles Davis:
1. , 2. e 3. ‘Ser branco!’

The Orrin Keepnews Collection

2011-04-24T02:07:00.006+01:00

Produtor de alguns dos mais importantes discos da história do Jazz Orrin Keepnews e as estórias por detrás destes discos. Para quem gosta muito destas coisas...

Art Pepper -notes from a jazz survivor

2011-04-24T02:02:00.001+01:00

Nica's Dream - o sonho da Baronesa

2011-04-24T01:29:00.002+01:00

Como complemento (não menos interessante) o excelente documentário "Storyville - the jazz baroness" conta a vida, sonhos e desilusões da mais famosa mecenas do Jazz e dos seus músicos, a Baronesa Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, conhecida no millieu do Jazz da altura como Nica.

"Straight no chaser" de Clint Eastwood

2011-04-24T01:20:00.004+01:00

O extraordinário documentário de Clint Eastwood em versão integral. Uma hora e meia de puro prazer.

Concurso público para o cargo de Músico-Saxofonista no Município de Arapongas (Brazil)

2011-04-23T01:52:00.003+01:00

Conheça o teste apresentado há menos de um ano aos candidatos a Saxofonista em Arapongas.

Exatus Pr 2010 Prefeitura de Arapongas Pr Musico Saxofone Prova

O que torna a Música expressiva ? Faça o teste

2011-04-20T22:46:00.002+01:00

A Psicologia da Música é uma área em expansão . As formas como nos manifestamos musicalmente ou como a Música nos afecta têm merecido uma cada vez maior atenção por parte da Ciência . Uma das áreas abordadas relaciona-se com a Expressão musical. Cientistas tentam determinar quais os elementos responsáveis pela expressão musical numa dada performance.
Nesse sentido o Dr.Daniel Levitin, director do laboratório de Percepção musical da Universidade de McGill elaborou um teste que pode ser feito aqui.

Encontrará o artigo completo aqui .

Gangsta Rap goes to College

2011-04-20T02:05:00.005+01:00

Promovendo um muito saudável diálogo entre estilos, a sala 36 da Universidade de Ciências Aplicadas e Artes de Lucerna alberga os cursos de Jazz, Teoria Musical e Gangsta Rap .

Não me tendo informado da estrutura deste último curso poderei sempre imaginar que dele possam fazer parte cadeiras teorico-práticas como Assalto á Mão Armada I, II e II, seminário de Gestão de Gangs ou as disciplinas (fundamentalmente práticas) de Canos Cerrados (cadeira semestral) e Técnicas de Introdução de Substâncias Ilícitas em Estabelecimento Prisional (semestre par) e bem como a disciplina (anual) de Estética (dividida nos módulos "Fio de Ouro", "Cachucho" e "Técnicas Avançadas de Tatuagem"
O recital de fim de curso, para o qual os estabelecimentos prisionais de Lucerna costumam colaborar autorizando a saída precária dos alunos finalistas, costuma ser muito concorrido. Nunca faltam os gangs rivais apoiando acaloradamente os seus membros a exame.
Um eficaz sistema de emergência médica permite manter o número de baixas dentro de limites aceitáveis para um evento do género.

20.000 visitas...

2011-04-20T01:45:00.002+01:00

O "Oh Não! mais um blog sobre jazz!!" chegou ás 20.000 visitas .

Parabéns a ele!

Bora beber uma mine. Paga o bloger...

Greg Osby

2011-04-20T00:33:00.003+01:00

Uma entrevista de bastidores datada de Maio de 2003 em que, para além de pianistas e boquilhas, Osby fala do seu processo de estudo e desenvolvimento de linha melódica. (sorry...não tive tempo para traduzir...)

ET: You were born in St. Louis. How did you come to play saxophone?
GO: Well, you know (in) the junior high school band, 7th grade, 12 years old; there was a choice of playing trombone or clarinet. And of course I jumped to the clarinet because it looked more interesting. And one year later, this is 1972 actually, I got my hands on a saxophone and immediately fell in love with that because it was applicable to more contemporary situations. But I stuck with the clarinet as well because of the challenges. So I was doubling. And a year later I got a flute. So, by the time I was 13 I was playing saxophone, flute and clarinet. So, I took to it very rapidly because I enjoyed it so much. And after two years from the beginning, I was good enough to play with some the local bands. I was playing in Blues band, pop bands and soul bands, and R&B. Because you know in the 70′s, they didn’t have synthesizers so they had to have a horn section. So, I learned to play in the soul bands, and to play in a section. It was really good. It was important.
ET: Do you come out of a musical family?
GO: No, no musicians at all. It was just a stroke of fate, and I’m really happy that it happened that way. Because I would stand out and it was unique and music posed a whole set of challenges, and it gave me something to work on and to work towards.
ET: You mentioned that you played with local R&B bands and such. What brought you to jazz?
GO: Well, I guess while I was playing in those bands, it was frustrating for me. Although we did take solos it was usually over one chord like a groove or some vamp. And even though I didn’t know much about the higher properties of music, I knew that there was a lot more that could be done. There was a lot more potential. So, a friend of mine, he gave me a Charlie Parker record and I had never heard anybody play like that. I never heard saxophone played so intricately and with so much complexity. So, I got my hands on every Charlie Parker record I could. And then Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Stitt followed. You know, technicians. Players of my instrument. So that started it. Because I said; “Wow! I didn’t know that this was possible.” And then I studied on my own and I questioned a lot of the older players around St. Louis. I asked a lot of questions. Not formal study, but badgering them. Actually, following them and being a pest. And when you you’re young you have to be shameless and full of will. You can’t be shy. And you can’t be afraid of rejection and you can’t be afraid to expose the fact that you don’t know something. Wherever the information lies, you have to go for it. From players in your peer group, or players who have been playing a little longer, or older players. So, I just jumped in headfirst.
ET: Who were some of the older players in the St. Louis area?
GO: People like Willie Aikins, and Freddy Washington, and E. O’Harra Spearman, these were local players in St. Louis, though. People really don’t know them, but they were very inspirational to me, because I was able to see at a young age, players on that level, of that caliber, on a professional level. They were actually very generous with the information (they gave me). They told me exactly what I needed to study, and what I need to approach and do. So, it was good. I was informed properly at an impressionable age.
ET: You studied at the famous Howard University and Berklee College of Music. Could you tell us what were the greatest “highlights” of what you got out of these institutions?
GO: Well, interestingly enough, while I was there (Howard Univ.) I was very resistant to what was being taught. The fundamentals that were being presented were primarily Western European choral writing, counterpoint and things like that. I was resistant because I didn’t see the value in that. I couldn’t see how that could be applicable to any kind of contemporary situation. I called it “powdered wig” music.
[Outburst of laughter]
[Terri Lynne Carrington: “Powdered wig” music?]
Yeah, I said; “I can’t make any money playing this. I’m not going to play in any orchestras playing saxophone.” So, then I became very impatient after my second year and visited the Berklee College of Music. I had some friends studying there. And after sitting in on a couple of ensembles there, those teachers wrote letters of recommendation about me to the Directors of Admissions. So, I got a scholarship to go there. So, I transferred from Washington, D.C. to Boston. There was a higher caliber of players, there were more players and it was much more intense because it wasn’t a university, but a music conservatory. So, it was great. Now, in retrospect to look back at the things I learned initially, the choral writing, figured bass, and all that· now, that encompasses a great deal of how I approach music. Dealing with form and structures.
ET: Now that you found a medium where you actually can apply it, it makes sense.
GO: Yeah. So, it’s all relative. There’s really no such thing as disposable information for me. Some things you may not see the purpose for or value in, but there are various ways you can incorporate that information into your craft.
ET: You display a phenomenal technical ability on your instrument. Do you have a certain type of philosophy about how you approach the saxophone on the technical aspects?
GO: Well, during my formative years, the years I was in college, I endeavored to try to develop a technique that was unique, that was exclusive to me, that was readily identifiable. When people heard it, they would know that it was me. This was as a young player. I really had no business thinking that, but that is what I wanted to do. I knew I would be up against legions of saxophone players, all going for the same gigs, and I said; “What can I do?” So, as opposed to be exclusively studying Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins and other established players of my instrument, I also studied a great deal of piano players. It almost superceded my study of saxophone. I transcribed a lot of Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, Herbie Nichols, um… Nat Cole, Fats Waller, Teddy Edwards, Phineas Newborn, Errol Garner, like really technical… Jaki Byard, those kind of players.
ET: It’s funny that you mention that, because that’s my impression when I hear you play. To me it sounds like you’re trying to play piano. I mean, I can hear the influence.
GO: That’s right on the head. I’m trying to play polyphonic technique on a monophonic instrument, like a two-handed duality kind of thing. A pianist can play in different directions, they can “comp” with themselves, and they can do different kind of things because they have two hands and ten fingers. So, I’m playing a simulation of that. You know, jumping registers and doing real technical kind of things and larger groups, and smaller intervals and smaller clusters· so, that’s exactly what it is. I would take a 4-bar, or 8-bar or 16-bar phrase from Bud Powell, so to speak· transcribe that. Sometimes the whole solo but more likely, exactly what
I wanted which would be a great run, or a great passage. And I would put that on the top line of some manuscript paper and consequently, I would transpose it into all twelve keys. So, as opposed to working on that line in one key, I would work it in all keys. So, I would work on that until I have it under my fingers, for a week or two. Then I would that take same line and start altering accidentals, changing rhythms, changing the stress points and accents, and stuff. So, that by the time I had modified it after a month or two or so, it no longer sounded like the original line. It sounded more like a Greg Osby line. So, therefore I could retain it a lot more readily on the bandstand or in a jam session because it sounds like something that I made up, but its origins came from somebody who really knew what they were doing.
ET: So, you were really going through the process of getting the most out of the material that you were picking up.
GO: Sure. It’s an evolution, it’s like theme and variations and it taught me how to modify things and think quickly on the spot. Say, for instance, you’re on a tour and you’re playing the same songs in the same sequence every night. You have to figure out different approaches.
ET: Right.
GO: So, by doing that, if you have four variants of the same line, I have four different ways of doing it. I can change rhythms and delete things, add things, and stagger things, you know, it’s endless. So, it really baffles me when I hear younger players say; “I don’t know to practice.”, “I don’t know what to study.” You know, there is a great deal to be done with smaller fragments of information. You can just change rhythms, you can add accidentals, and you can delete things but you have to have an imagination and just say to yourself “What if?”
ET: Along the way, did you have any saxophone instructors that were most memorable to you, or had the biggest influence on you?
GO: When I was playing in these funk bands in high school; we were playing exclusively by ear. We would learn Earth, Wind and Fire songs, Tower of Power, you know, we played them from records, we were playing by ear. So there was no written music. So I developed a great ear, so that I can hear things and play it back. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we had this turntable that was really temperamental. The turntable was a belt-driven turntable. It was affected by humidity, and heat. If it was too hot, it would run fast, if it was to cold it would run slow, so the key was always different. So, if the tune was in “C”, we would invariably play that tune in “B” or “C#”. If it was “F”, it was “F#” or “E”. So we’d always played tunes in the most difficult keys, with the most sharps and flats. We didn’t now. We didn’t know any better, we just thought that all tunes were in “C#”, and “F#”. So, that gave me a great deal of facility in these really difficult keys. I developed a great deal of fearlessness, when I saw key signatures, because I didn’t know any better. And I also learned to play saxophone in a very unorthodox way, because I didn’t have formal instruction until I got to college. I was fingering things really uniquely and unorthodox, it was quite interesting. So when I did get to Howard University, there was classical instruction, you know, all the saxophone majors had to study classical. And I was really resistant because I really didn’t like the sound of that French school of classical saxophone. I didn’t like the discipline, you know, they tried to make me play a small mouthpiece with a really soft reed and all that. I just didn’t like it. So, I was reluctant but I did it anyway just for the grade. But in retrospect, he helped me out a lot. There were keys on the saxophone I didn’t even know what they were for. I played all my “Bb’s” with two fingers and a side key. I didn’t even use the “bis” key at all, or even “one-to-one”. So, I had the most difficult fingering for real easy things. When I learned other options, I had a lot of alternate fingerings and that’s what I do now. I have alternate fingerings for different keys, different passages, different tempos and stuff, which allowed me a greater flexibility than some players who had only one way of doing things.
ET: What advice would you give a young saxophonist today, according to the instrument and to playing music in general?
GO: Well, first of all, I’d encourage any player, young or old, to try to maximize what they are working with. “Play the hand you are dealt.” A lot of players have this illusion that if they buy an Otto Link mouthpiece, they are going to sound like Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon or whomever. Not only has that been done to death, there is no guarantee that you will succeed. These players were dealing with a very personalized physiology; their oral cavity, chest cavity, lung capacity, bone structure, those issues factors into how they sounded.
ET: It all pays a role.
GO: Right. So, the thing is to really examine how you play, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and capitalize on the strengths and to develop and hone the weaknesses. So, you have to be honest. If your technique is faulty or if your tone is weak, or you don’t have any endurance, you can work on these things. It’s pointless to drill yourself in areas where you excel. If you can play your scales flawlessly, and play your arpeggios great, there’s no point on doing that everyday. What you need to do is work on the stuff that is weak. If your high register is thin, you need to work on your long tones. If in your low register you have to honk out notes, you need a softer reed. A lot of people won’t do that. They’re playing the setup that their idol played, not realizing that Cannonball was a really big guy, and Charlie Parker had a lot of power, you know that kind of thing. You have to deal with your sound, and polish it. The sound that I’m playing with is basically the sound that I’ve always had. It might be stronger now, and more centered and focused, but it’s basically the same sound. I never endeavored to sound like Sonny Stitt.
ET: There’s a certain “Kernel” to your sound that’s always you, because it is you. It’s your jaw, your teeth…
GO: It’s like your speaking voice you can’t change it. You can’t really change it. So the best thing to do is, you try to enunciate and try to have as much focus and proper musical diction as possible. It comes from dealing with articulation, you know, tonguing exercises, and good reading, good posture, good attack, not to be sloppy and not developing lazy and bad habits. My saxophone teacher· I’m happy now, at that time I was really angry at him. He used to hit our hands with a ruler. Gary Thomas, and me we were at college at the same time, so we had the same teacher and he was into the “sticky fingers” technique, where your fingers don’t leave the keys too much. That’s the Charlie Parker technique. He used to say, “Don’t flap your fingers”, “Don’t show people what fingerings you’re playing”, “Don’t use excessive body movement”, you know, focus. My other teacher at Berklee, Andy McGhee, he would talk about; “Play to the exit sign”, “Don’t play to the people in the first row, play to the people in the back row. Throw your sound back there.” I want to give the simulation that, if you’re a smaller framed cat, like me· if somebody hears me on tape, they should think that you weigh 300 pounds. He wanted your sound to be wide, and fat, and broad and distinct… projecting. You don’t want it to come out of the bell and let it drop to the floor, you want to throw it like a ventriloquist. To the back. So, those types of things, you get a visual picture and· it was some very helpful information. He never told me what to do and what not to do. He said, just follow your instincts and just be honest. If you know that you need work on in a certain area, you have to do the work.
ET: No one else is going to do it for you.
GO: The results are directly reflective of the work.
ET: Who was your instructor at Howard?
GO: At Howard, his name was Reginald Jackson. He was a renowned classical cat on alto. He made the alto sound like…it didn’t even sound like an alto anymore.
ET: More like a cello probably.
GO: Yeah, it was a Buffet and he had half-moon cork in the low Bb and B keys and when he played he just had so much control. He could whisper a low Bb and come from complete silence. I just marveled at his control. However, he could never improvise, he couldn’t sight-read jazz rhythms, -syncopation. He used multiphonics and played tricky fingerings. He was from the French school. He studied in France. So, I listened to him and extracted from that experience what I could. But I never wanted to pursue that as a lifestyle. But there are still remnants of those studies still in my playing. The control. Even though, I don’t fancy myself as a practitioner or die-hard fan of classical saxophone.
ET: I noticed also when I hear you play; I hear a lot of classical saxophone technique, as far as the control is concerned. I had wondered if you had seriously spent any time doing that.
GO: That may be by default. I never really paid attention, even when I was studying.
ET: That’s why I didn’t assume. It could happen without having to deal with…
GO: Sure, because I would just cram for the lesson an hour before. [Outburst of laughter] I had a whole week to study the stuff, and I tried to shed an hour before, because I hated it. So, it’s just by default.
ET: So hey, that about wraps it up. It’s been a great pleasure talking with you and you’ve shared a lot of great information. Many thanks to you Mr. Greg Osby.
Greg Osby is one of the most innovative voices of the saxophone and of jazz today. You can visit Greg at www.gregosby.com. You’ll find MP3 and MIDI files to download, photos, more interviews and more.

The Mel Lewis tapes

2011-03-25T09:56:00.002Z

Um ano da sua morte, o baterista Mel Lewis foi convidado por Loren Schonberg da rádio WKCR radio de Nova York para uma série de entrevistas acerca das figuras relevantes na história da bateria de Jazz.
Durante 20 anos essas entrevistas estiveram acessíveis apenas a um número restrito de pessoas e em ... cassette. Por altura do 50º aniversário do PAS Drum Set Committee John Riley e Loren Schoenberg doaram essas entrevistas de forma a serem digitalizadas e publicadas no site do PAS.
Um documento riquíssimo sobre a história da bateria, sobre a evolução da forma de tocar o instrumento e sobre o Jazz em geral.

AQUI

Boletim do Hot Club nº3

2011-03-07T18:18:00.003Z

O Jazz nacional nos idos de 1975.

Naquele ano o Festival da Figueira da Foz foi um acontecimento e teve um enorme impacto no futuro de alguns dos nosso "jazzmen".

O Boletim Informativo do Hot Club dava conta dos grupos que lá tocaram.

As bios, fotos e algumas declarações de princípios desses músicos num documento que, a começar pelo grafismo (?) da capa, reflete a época que se vivia.

L'improvisation, la seconde vie du hasard

2011-03-06T19:12:00.004Z

A improvisação, é, nesta primeira década do milénio, não só uma prática infiltrada em toda a actividade humana (artística ou não).
Cada vez é maior o interesse que o seu estudo suscita mas a improvisação revela-se isso sim, uma forma privilegiada de pensamento.
Um trabalho do programa "Nouveaux Chemins de la Connaissance" (France Culture) sobre este assunto (que ainda não ouvi ao momento deste post) mas que valerá certamente ter em conta.
"L'improvisation, la seconde vie du hasard" com Clément Canonne,e o pianista Karol Beffa

5 emissões cujos links aqui se postam

1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , e 5

"Um Toque de Jazz" - The End

2011-03-01T16:25:00.003Z

Com a emissão nº 1042 terminou "Um Toque de Jazz", um dos mais interessantes e regulares programas dedicados ao Jazz na Rádio portuguesa, no ar desde 1993.
Manuel Jorge Veloso (MJV), crítico, programador e um dos mais empenhados divulgadores de Jazz no nosso país foi o seu criador. Para mim, grande parte do interesse de "Um Toque de Jazz" residia na atenção dada para ao Jazz contemporâneo especialmente ao Jazz produzido na Europa. Sem uma visão estilística compartimentada e com conhecimentos musicais muito acima da média dos encontrados em criticos de Jazz (da sua ou mesmo da mais recente geração de críticos) MJV deu-nos, com um "Toque de Jazz", muitas e boas horas de audição do melhor Jazz actual.
Manuel Jorge Veloso mantem o site "O sítio do Jazz"

Wayne

2011-03-01T16:06:00.000Z

As entrevistas com Wayne Shorter não só ajudam a compreender um pouco melhor a sua música como são momentos de partilha de uma sabedoria rara, profunda sobre a Vida.

Shorter é um Jedi. E nunca perturba o silêncio sem que valha, realmente, a pena.

Uma série de entrevistas:

Aqui aqui aqui aqui e aqui

Detido falso músico

2011-02-18T02:45:00.004Z

A Polícia Judiciária (PJ) anunciou, esta quarta-feira, a detenção de um falso músico. A prática ilícita decorria, pelo menos, desde 2006, nos palcos das regiões da Grande Lisboa e Algarve, e centrava-se em auditórios municipais, clubes de jazz, casamentos e festas particulares, diz a PJ em comunicado.

A detenção ocorreu, após «oito buscas domiciliárias e não domiciliárias, designadamente, a quatro bares com música ao vivo». Durante as diligências, a PJ apreendeu um «vasto acervo documental relacionado com a prática criminosa» tais como Real Books, playalongs e muitas partituras avulsas.

O falso músico atraia algumas dezenas de ouvintes aos seus espectáculos. De acordo com comunicado da PJ, tratavam-se, maioritariamente, de pessoas com idade avançada, a maioria dos quais com graves deficiências auditivas, mas também um largo número de jovens convencidos de que estariam a assistir a um concerto de vanguarda.

O detido está indiciado pela prática dos crimes de usurpação de funções, falsificação de documentos (cartão da GDA) e burla. Foi presente a interrogatório judicial e ficou com a medida de coacção de termo de identidade e residência. Fica ainda proibido de se deslocar aos clubes, bares e palcos e a «quaisquer locais onde se exerça actividade musical», de contactar fornecedores de material musical e de exercer qualquer actividade relacionada com a música.

Inspirado nesta notícia

Stan Getz 4tet featuring Roy Haynes

2011-02-17T20:10:00.004Z

Roy Haynes ! Moderno há 70 anos.... (parece um anúncio, não parece ? mas é mesmo verdade !)
Steve Swallow ...de contrabaixo e bigode!
Vintage Jazz Deluxe Mint condition!

Sofia Gubaidulina: "A improvisação era um sonho íntimo"

2011-02-09T19:17:00.003Z

Jornal Público
09.02.2011 Entrevista de Cristina Fernandes

A compositora fotografada por Miguel Manso

Vê a arte como aproximação ao Absoluto e, como nem tudo é possível fixar numa partitura, defende a espontaneidade do intérprete. Figura maior da composição contemporânea, Sofia Gubaidulina, que em 2011 completa 80 anos, está pela primeira vez em Portugal e diz sentir-se fisicamente mal quando ouve música ligeira (mesmo quando é boa).

Quando o violinista Gidon Kremer estreou em 1981 o Concerto Offertorium, de Sofia Gubaidulina, o mundo ocidental ficou deslumbrado com a criatividade e a espiritualidade da música compositora russa, que havia de se afirmar nas décadas seguintes como uma figura maior da criação contemporânea. Com a progressiva abertura do regime soviético na década de 1980 e a mudança para a Alemanha da compositora em 1991, fomos descobrindo pouco a pouco uma obra fascinante e sempre variada, onde se cruzam heranças eslavas, tártaras, judaicas e ortodoxas russas, a influência da música electrónica e das técnicas de improvisação, instrumentações fora do comum ou a paixão por Bach e Webern.

"A vida reduz o homem a tantas peças que não conheço outra missão mais séria do que ajudar através da música a reconstituir a sua integridade espiritual." Esta é uma das frases recorrentes de Sofia Gubaidulina, que vê a arte como forma de aproximação ao Absoluto. A compositora cumpre 80 anos em 2011 e encontra-se pela primeira vez em Portugal no âmbito de um ciclo A Hora da Alma, programado pelo CCB, com direcção artística do pianista Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro. No dia 5 ouviu-se uma memorável interpretação do Cântico do Sol de S. Francisco de Assis pelo Coro da Rádio da Letónia e pelo violoncelista David Geringas, e hoje, às 21h, o Ensemble Schostakovich apresenta um programa com obras de Webern (Seis Bagatelas op. 9) e Schostakovich (Quinteto com Piano op. 57) e obras de câmara de Sofia Gubaidulina como Reflections on the theme B.A.C.H., Dancer on a tightrope e À Beira do Abismo (com a compositora tocando aquafone). No sábado, a compositora conversou com o P2 - contando com a colaboração de Svetlana Poliakova como intérprete, já que preferiu expressar-se em russo - sobre o seu percurso, a sua obra e a sua maneira de ver a música e o mundo. Com uma grande generosidade, relembrou memórias de infância e a sua preocupação com uma humanidade que perdeu a capacidade de concentração em formas de arte mais profundas, preferindo a fugacidade superficial do entretenimento.

Que recordações musicais guarda da sua infância?
A primeira impressão e a mais forte não foi um concerto ou um evento, mas a vinda para casa de um piano de cauda. O facto de ser um piano de cauda e não vertical foi muito importante, pois assim podia ter acesso não só ao teclado, mas também às cordas. Essa aproximação ao instrumento constituía um momento de grande teatralidade. Não era apenas um novo instrumento que chegava a casa, era também todo o ambiente do concerto. Na altura eu tinha cinco anos e a minha irmã oito, ela já estudava piano e assim podíamos fazer música em conjunto. A minha irmã accionava os pedais e eu fazia sons com as cordas. A maior excitação foi a possibilidade da própria criação, poder ser eu própria a criar um quadro musical. Isto permaneceu toda a vida.

A criação foi sempre para si mais importante do que a interpretação?
O primeiro impulso foi este. Depois é difícil dizer o que foi mais importante, pois tanto a criação como a interpretação sempre estiveram presentes. Entrei numa escola de música especial [em Kazan] e fui incentivada a ser a melhor pianista possível. Mas tinha sempre um sonho escondido, um sonho íntimo, que era o da improvisação. Entretanto tive a possibilidade de entrar na classe de um compositor profissional e prossegui a formação como compositora no Conservatório de Moscovo.

Em 1975 fundou o Ensemble Astreya dedicado à improvisação em instrumentos tradicionais. Qual a importância da música não erudita na sua formação como compositora?
Ao contrário do que muitas pessoas pensam, eu não cresci no campo, mas sim numa cidade industrial, com uma vida musical formatada. As impressões que tinha da música tradicional na época tinham mais a ver com o canto do que com os instrumentos. A possibilidade de tocar e de improvisar em instrumentos não convencionais e da tradição popular só apareceu mais tarde, por ocasião da criação do grupo Astreya. Fazer música em instrumentos não convencionais foi uma tendência dos anos 80 mais ligada à improvisação do que a possíveis apresentações em concerto. As pessoas encontravam-se informalmente para tentar sentir o som e a mesma tendência ocorria em vários pontos da Europa. Verifiquei, por exemplo, que os jovens em Oslo também tinham esta prática: músicos que se juntavam para tocar o que não sabiam tocar e assim experimentar o som.Era uma forma mais livre de abordagem da criação, sem estar condicionada pelas convenções da aprendizagem formal?
Sim, mas esse gosto tem também outra explicação. Era uma reacção contra a industrialização. Se pensarmos numa orquestra e no ambiente clássico de produção musical, esta funciona como uma fábrica, é uma instituição que exige muitos meios, muito profissionalismo e cujo resultado tem de ser apresentado com grande qualidade. No entanto, é muito importante para o ser humano não esquecer que as primeiras manifestações musicais não tinham esse objectivo. O que se fazia era explorar a sonoridade e a sua natureza. A experiência do Ensemble Astreya e de outros grupos tinha a ver com a descoberta do som em si, afastando-se da forma como este era apresentado no dia-a-dia.

De que forma incorpora a improvisação nas suas obras escritas?
Nas minhas obras é muito importante o papel do intérprete e constato que muitos intérpretes têm um enorme potencial criativo. É quase um crime não deixar vir isso à superfície. Às vezes, aquilo que um intérprete consegue fazer na improvisação livre provoca sonoridades muito mais ricas do que aquelas que se podem escrever. Coloca-se aqui a questão da cultura oral e da cultura escrita. Nem tudo é passível de ser fixado na partitura. Em muitas obras procuro reanimar a espontaneidade do intérprete.

A escrita restringe a criatividade e a espontaneidade?
Quando alguém deu a notícia a um sábio egípcio sobre o aparecimento da escrita, ele respondeu: "Mas que pena, a humanidade vai começar a perder a memória." Não podemos negar os enormes benefícios trazidos pela escrita ao desenvolvimento cultural, mas também não podemos esquecer que, adquirindo a escrita, estamos a perder algo como a espontaneidade da cultura oral e a capacidade de memorização. Na cultura actual, alguém que vai fazer uma comunicação normalmente prepara-a por escrito e lê, perdendo-se o momento da comunicação espontânea. Quando a pessoa tem coragem de virar as costas à escrita e começar a comunicar oralmente, nasce um clima completamente diferente de entrega da parte de quem dá e de quem recebe. Mas também sei que a maior parte das obras da história da música ocidental nunca poderiam surgir da cultura oral. A Nona Sinfonia de Beethoven não podia aparecer sem cultura escrita. O que quero sublinhar é a importância de recuperar a experiência da pré-existência da cultura escrita.

As duas componentes estão presentes na sua obra...
É muito importante que o instrumentista que está a interpretar a parte escrita de uma das minhas obras de repente tenha a possibilidade de se destacar e começar a fazer a sua interpretação. Usei este método em algumas peças, por exemplo nos 10 Prelúdios para Violoncelo solo. Em nove peças o violoncelista toca exactamente o que está escrito, na décima tem uma melodia escrita e entre parêntesis momentos destinados à improvisação. O objectivo inicial desta obra não era o palco, mas sim a experimentação. No entanto, ela acabou por ser interpretada e gravada muitas vezes. Nalguns casos há resultados tão fantásticos que eu própria não os conseguiria escrever numa partitura. Contudo, também usa métodos muito rigorosos na sua escrita, como a proporção de ouro e a série de Fibonacci [série matemática, em que a um número é adicionado o que lhe é imediatamente anterior - 1,1,2,3,5,8, até ao infinito].
O uso da série de Fibonacci é muito tortuoso, exige muito tempo. Como sou muito espontânea, trata-se de uma regra que imponho a mim própria, mas o processo é demorado e difícil. Às vezes dá bons resultados, outras não funciona, outras não há tempo, é algo que continua a ser uma experiência.

Que música da Europa Ocidental chegava à URSS antes da Perestroika?
Boulez, Stockhausen... os mais importantes chegavam sempre, normalmente através de convidados do Ocidente que partilhavam partituras e discos. Por exemplo, o director da editora Philips, que se tornou depois um grande amigo, trazia-me frequentemente gravações não só de música clássica, mas também de músicas do mundo, como a de Java.

Como era criar num regime que tentava impor directrizes aos compositores, sobretudo para alguém que dá tanta importância à componente espiritual da música?
Era um desespero. Muitas vezes os intérpretes estavam já com a obra na mão e preparados para a interpretar e saía a proibição. Todavia, por estranho que pareça, neste período sentia-se uma enorme vontade de trabalhar. Não havia passividade, mas muita produtividade. Era também uma forma de protesto.

Porque escolheu a Alemanha para se instalar quando deixou a Rússia em 1991?
A Rússia foi vencida na Guerra Fria. Em 1991 fez-se um balanço e a perda nessa guerra era algo equivalente à Alemanha ter perdido a II Guerra Mundial. A Alemanha ficou em ruínas depois de 1945 e a Rússia sofreu a mesma coisa, mas na Guerra Fria. Na década de 1990 a Rússia foi deixada à mercê de destruição e do saque e o nível moral desceu ao mais baixo. Mas não é essa a razão da minha saída. Mais importante foi a possibilidade de poder viver num ambiente de aldeia e não de uma grande cidade industrial. A vida nos grandes centros industriais levou a uma grande nostalgia da árvore que está ao lado. Recebi as mais importantes prendas para quem precisa de criar: o silêncio, a aproximação à natureza e a completa ausência de industrialização à volta. Será que não era possível atingir o mesmo na Rússia? Tentei várias vezes, mas a criminalidade era muito grande, não era uma opção segura. Vir para o Ocidente abriu-me horizontes e a possibilidade do encontro com intérpretes. Permitiu-me outra orientação no mundo, aceitar convites, viver a minha obra interpretada e depois voltar ao silêncio de casa.

A sua paixão por Bach e Webern é bem conhecida, assim como por experiências musicais que vêm de outras culturas. Mas quais são as tendências musicais de que não gosta ou que recusa?
Em geral o mundo da música ligeira, pois esta tornou-se muito agressiva. Quando me encontro num ambiente de relaxamento e surge música pop, sinto-me mal fisicamente, nem sei explicar bem porquê. Gosto de algumas obras de Piazolla, que Gidon Kremer interpreta muito bem, mas quando vou aos seus concertos dedicados a este compositor sinto-me alegre a ouvir a primeira peça, calma na segunda e a partir da terceira a vida começa a ficar mal... E estamos a falar de boa música ligeira. É precisamente a música ligeira que domina os hábitos musicais da maior parte da população, a música erudita é ouvida por um grupo restrito e a música contemporânea por um subgrupo ainda mais restrito.

Como vê esta situação?
Há dois pólos de compreensão humana que são a concentração e a desconcentração e que guiam não só o mundo artístico, mas também a sociedade em geral. A tendência da desconcentração é cada vez mais financiada e isso é perigoso. O ser humano está a perder cada vez mais união com algo de mais absoluto, com a sua essência. É importante apoiar a tendência para a concentração em algo de mais profundo, nomeadamente na música e arte. Há que salvaguardar a capacidade de concentração do ser humano, mas será que isso ainda é possível na sociedade contemporânea? Na minha opinião é algo talvez mais importante do que toda a vida económica, mas na verdade grande parte das pessoas não sente que precisa disso, não se quer concentrar, não sente necessidade de algo mais.

Esse algo mais tem a ver com a espiritualidade, com a religião, tão importante na sua obra?
A minha perspectiva da religião tem a ver com "re-ligio" (no sentido de religar), é a reunião de um laço, a recomposição da integridade espiritual através da música. O ouvinte que se concentra nessa experiência encontrará também esse elo. Mesmo no caso de um compositor não crente, quando ele sente a necessidade de compor uma forma e toma em consideração esse acto de religar, está a aproximar-se de um critério de espiritualidade, quer o reconheça ou não.

Ao contrário de outros compositores que usam formas originárias do ritual religioso como a Missa, a Paixão, as Vésperas, etc., no seu caso essas referências são incorporadas em composições livres...
Uso as referências aos rituais como metáforas. O que tento fazer é reconstituir o impulso para a sensação religiosa, como por exemplo no Concerto para Violino Offertorium. Não preciso da integração concreta, o que é importante não é a tradição, mas sim o impulso donde partiu essa tradição.

Costuma dar aulas de composição? Como vê a transmissão do acto da criação artística?

Só dei aulas uma vez. Era um menino de 12 anos, a mãe pediu-me para lhe dar orientação para ser compositor. O menino queria criar e ofereceu-me muitas descobertas e partilhas. Quando andava pela rua, ouvia tudo como sons, mas logo que chegava a casa fechava a porta e tudo acabava. Pedia-lhe para escrever o que estava a ouvir, mas o resultado não era interessante. Descobriu-se gradualmente que o talento que tinha não era suficiente para guardar aquilo que ouvia e conseguir pô-lo no papel. Fiquei com muita pena deste rapaz, não insisti que continuasse como compositor, disse-lhe que seria mais proveitoso para ele seguir uma carreira de intérprete. A partir daí sempre recusei propostas para ensinar.

Downbeat versão digital

2011-02-08T02:39:00.004Z

Agora que a crise nos aperta o cinto, a bolsa e mais uma série de coisas muito desagradáveis de serem apertadas há que evitar despesas.
Ler a á borla aqui

Kenny G tem um novo emprego

2011-02-03T10:39:00.001Z

Soprano Talk

2011-01-18T10:16:00.004Z

O saxofonista Sam Newsome mantem um blog especialmente dedicado ao seu instumento : o saxofone soprano.
Óptima notícia. Bora vasculhar.

ÓPTIMA OPORTUNIDADE DE GIG !

2011-01-18T09:29:00.003Z

Mensagem recente colocada num Google-group sobre Jazz:

"Great Jazz Opportunity
My name is Ndugood. I am a wealthy Nigerian prince who loves the jazz of music.
I am seeking your help to move $200,000,000 from my checking account
here in Nigeria to the United States. I too love the jazz of music
and am planning to flee to America to open many jazz clubs at which I would like you to perform.
You will receive $42,000 a night, plus a meal.
My new "Tribal Village Vanguard" clubs will be of great success and you will become rich like the rest of American jazz musicians.
I have already applied for building exemptions to allow thatched stages and the spearing of live animals. But I desperately need your help.

My tribe, the Swindlisi, a peaceful jazz-loving people, has been horribly oppressed by the ruling military junta, which despises the jazz of music.
My father, an exiled king and booking agent, was recently imprisoned under the Draconian "three gigs - you're out" law, and now I must flee my beloved country with all of my improbable wealth - But I need help in moving it.

I have so much money that it will not fit in the allotted two checked bags and one carry-on. I am therefore want to transfer the money through your ATM system (The Nigerian ATM system cannot exchange international currencies; it only converts "antelope to money").
So please to just provide me with your full name and address, social security number, bank account and PIN numbers, and you will become incredibly (literally) rich from playing many jazz gigs.

Note: normal Nigerian Musician's Union rules apply: three hour performances, two 15 minute breaks allowed, musicians to provide their own mosquito nets, one open fire per bandstand, one free meal plus anything you kill).

Act now.
The first ten musicians to respond will receive a free copy of the Nigeria's Greatest Jazz Hits CD, by our beloved 'Disoriented'
Gillespie Band, which contains the hits:

> >The Night Has A Thousand Flies
> >Goodbye Shrunken Head
> >Here's That Rainy Season
> >Just Tribesmen (Lovers No More)
> >Take the 'A' Trail
> >When I Fall In Quicksand
> >Half-Nelson Mandella
> >Blue Monkey
> >Leopard Skins and Moonbeams
> >Blue Mombossa
> >Almost Like Being In Lagos
> >Sunny Side of the Goatpath
> >I Didn't Know What Century It Was

Thank you for your many help.
Your inordinately wealthy Nigerian brother...
Prince Ndugood"

What Are We Doing, and Why Do We Do It?

2011-01-16T10:42:00.004Z

Tinha prometido compensar o facto de o meu post anterior não abordar o Jazz nem nehuma outra questão musical.
Espero que o texto que reproduzo a seguir, da autoria de Jim Mcneely e apresentado no Simpósio Internacional de compositores de Jazz na Universidade de South Florida em 2008, cumpra o prometido.
Jim Mcneely é um dos mais importantes arranjadores e compositores de Jazz actuais e um dos meus preferidos e trabalhou repetidas vezes em Portugal com a Orquestra de Jazz de Matosinhos.
A esta comunicação/reflexão sobre o trabalho do compositor Jim decidiu chamar "O que fazemos e porque o fazemos".
Para quem gosta destas coisas....
(Retirado do seu site)

"Thank you, Chuck Owen, for inviting me to be a part of this terrific event. I look out and recognize a good number of you. It’s good to see both faces that I know and faces that are new to me. We’ve all come together for these three days, driven by our love of jazz and our love of composing. We’re here to talk, to listen, and to hear music; to let our colleagues know what we’re doing, and to find out what they are up to. We’re here to learn, and to be inspired.

I would guess that most of us have beginnings as performers, playing in groups ranging in size from duos to big bands. We know that performing has a social aspect: you work together to achieve a group sound; you hang out after the gig; you travel together on the road. Composition, on the other hand, is typically a solitary activity; it’s easy for all of us to get holed up in our individual studios, in our individual heads, with our pencils and erasers, with our keyboards and computers. And I dare say that this has always been one of the big attractions for me about composition. It’s 2 am, I’m alone in my music room, there’s paper all over the place; the ideas are flowing, I’ve found a little countermelody that is so unbelievably slick; I’ve got my little universe where I am God, and this note will be a Bb, I don’t care what the rules say; and I smell the eraser, and I’m in the zone, and that glass of whatever that I poured 3 hours ago remains untouched because I’m so into this piece! I’m completely one with my inner geek, I’ve hit that point where the little fire in my gut has been lit, and I say, “Damn, I can’t wait to hear this! This is gonna be great”; and there’s no one else there, and I don’t have to talk to anybody!

Paradise! But before I start to sound I live like the Unibomber—I do have a wife and three kids, and we’re all normal enough—let me also say that it is important for composers to get together and talk to one another, whether in individual settings of teacher/student or mentor/protégé, or a workshop (such as the one I direct at BMI in New York), or a salon, or informal “hangs”. We discover how others may have solved problems that we grapple with; we can get inspired to try some new direction; we might discover new music to listen to, or to analyze, that might open new doors for us; and sometimes, articulating your own point of view to someone else simply helps to clarify it in your own mind. So with this symposium we have the mother of all “hangs” for jazz composers!

Many Questions, a Few Answers

In preparing these remarks I started to articulate questions that I might try to answer. I found that certain questions led to more questions, and sometimes the answers are hard to nail down.

What is jazz composition? Is it composing jazz, or jazzing (jassing) the compositional process?

In its early days, “jazz” was a verb; it was primarily a process applied to existing forms of music. You played a song/rag/blues and you jassed it, with improvisation and a new kind of rhythmic feel. So maybe as jazz composers we’re jassing more established compositional technique? Or, maybe we are composing frameworks that allow jazz to happen?

Jazz is largely improvised, right? How do you compose improvisation? Is that even what we do when we compose jazz? What is composition, anyway? And what’s the difference between composition and improvisation? Between composition and arranging?

When I was in music school at the University of Illinois back in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, one of the never-ending debates that raged was whether improvisation and composition were the same, or two facets of the same process, or different processes; or was one better than the other, or more legitimate? No one really won this debate, of course; a proponent of any one viewpoint simply proceeded as if he or she were correct, and dismissed the others. One of the wiser souls I encountered back then was the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl. He proposed that, instead of arguing about the relative merits of composition and improvisation, we regard a piece of music as a model. This model contains certain elements that are created ahead of time, and other elements that are created during the performance. When you think about it, every piece of music has a balance between the two. An Indian raga, a Brahms symphony, and a jazz performance of “I’ve Got Rhythm” all have certain pre-determined elements that must be there in order for the result to be called that particular piece, and not something else. Other elements are determined in performance, by the performer. With the Brahms symphony, almost every element was determined years ago by Brahms himself; the spontaneous elements may be the conductor’s choice of tempo, or the length of a fermata, or an issue of balance; with “I’ve Got Rhythm”, certain of Gershwin’s original elements must be there. But the jazz esthetic allows for most of the musical details to be created in the act of performance.

And arrangement vs. composition. The processes exhibit many similarities, yet are quite different. An arrangement is a process applied to an existing song; the song is the main character of the drama; the piece is all about the song. A composition may or may not have a recognizable song. Characters might be a melody, a phrase, a player in the ensemble, or a texture. A character might be developed beyond recognition; may enter into conflict with another character; may well die before the piece ends. An arrangement is a portrait of a character; a composition is the dramatic development of one or more characters. Still, the line between the two can be very vague, especially in the hands of a master. Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement of “Artistry in Rhythm”, or Gil Evans’ arrangement of Kurt Weill’s “The Barbara Song”; Bob Brookmeyer’s “My Funny Valentine”, or Bill Holman’s “Just Friends”; these all straddle the line. The song to be arranged has become the main character of the drama; all are tremendous pieces of music.

As jazz composers, are we therefore creating pre-determined structures that contain points-of-departure for improvisation? Does this, by itself, mean that a piece could be called a “jazz composition”? And what makes a piece a “jazz composition” anyway?

We’d most likely not call Brahms’ Symphony #2 a jazz piece. Why not? And what about “I’ve Got Rhythm”? Or “Dolphin Dance”? Is jazz composition simply music that is written by jazz musicians? Or played by jazz musicians? When Sonny Rollins played “I’m an Old Cowhand”, did it become a jazz composition? Is “Lush Life” a jazz composition? If you play it note-for-note just as Billy Strayhorn wrote it–verse and chorus–and don’t improvise a single note, is it still a jazz composition? Is a piece’s jazz nature determined more by the perfomance than any intrinsic quality? Is Thad Jones’ “Don’t Get Sassy” jazz as played by the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra? As played by a horrible junior high school band? Or if it were to ever be played by Marilyn Manson?

And all of this leads us both forward to and back to that most fundamental question: “What is Jazz?” No, I’m not going there today!

So, what is it that we all do that makes us jazz composers? I would propose several things. We generally—although not always—employ rhythmic language developed through jazz performance. This applies not only to “swing”, but to melodic phrasing, accents and articulation. We generally—although not always—use drums and bass in the way that they function in a jazz group: laying down a rhythmic and harmonic foundation over which everything else happens. We generally allow room in our music for improvisation—mostly by individuals, sometimes by groups. We consider the balance between the pre-composed and improvised to be a central issue of what we write. Finally, we write music that sounds like we have listened to jazz, and have played jazz, and heard a jazz piece at one time and said, “I want to write like that!” That’s very vague and personal, I know, but the boundaries between what is jazz and “non-jazz” are vague and personal. And, frankly, the more we venture beyond those boundaries, the stronger we are when we return to the jazz center.

We also speculate. Stravinsky said that one of the main jobs of a composer is speculation. We ask “What if?” and follow our instincts searching for an answer. I think that this is important, especially in an era in which many people seem to be asking “May I?” or “Is it in the tradition to…?” I’m certainly not advocating weirdness or rebellion for its own sake. But jazz, like any art form, is fluid, and it grows and enriches itself through the efforts of speculators, both performing and composing, whose inner voices demand that they try a different path. Sometimes that speculation leads you outside of other people’s boundaries, where you go at your own risk. It takes courage to follow your speculation. Sometimes the speculation takes you down a dead end road, sometimes it succeeds. But the alternative is stagnation.

My Own History

I started my own speculations around the age of 15. I suppose my first big question was “What if I wrote a big band arrangement?” I was in my second year at Notre Dame High School for Boys, just outside of Chicago. I’d chosen that particular school because they had a “stage band”. The director was a priest named George Wiskirchen, and he is one of the main reasons that I stand up here today. He was a Basie fanatic; he’d gotten to know Frank Wess, and was able to get a few charts from the Basie book into our library. I must have indicated my desire to write an arrangement to my father; he bought me a copy of the Russ Garcia book. I devoured it! Then I found the lead sheet to an Ernie Wilkens blues, and decided that I’d arrange it for the school band. Fr. George was very encouraging about the whole endeavor. I finished the arrangement, copied out the parts and brought it in to a rehearsal. They started to play it. Wow, those sax voicings sounded great! Russ was right, you don’t have to put the root at the bottom. Hmm, it’s hard to hear the melody in the tutti. Maybe I screwed up. Hmm, that shout chorus with those slick eighth-notes-inside-quarter-note-triplets never seems to come together. In listening to the rehearsal I realized that some of the chart sounded good, and some of it didn’t. I resolved to continue doing the good stuff, and to find different approaches to the parts that didn’t work. This is essentially the process that has driven me to this day. Put it on paper, listen honestly; pat yourself on the back for the good stuff, fix or get rid of the bad; then go on to the next piece.

I remember that at some point in my late teens DownBeat would print reproductions of pencil big band scores in the middle of the magazine. I don’t remember whose charts they were, but I remember that the ledger lines excited me. And they looked like a lot of work went into them. That excited me, too. I was such a geek, that while my school friends were checking out other kinds of centerfolds, my big turn-on was the ledger lines in a lead trombone part!

So I wrote a lot more for my high school band. By my senior year, my best friend Nick Talarico and I were writing marching band shows. Wiskirchen had a 6-line template that we would use; we’d write the arrangements, then he would copy out the parts. I used to play saxophone, and one time he wanted a chorus of “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage”, segueing into Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things”, with me squawking away on soprano sax. You don’t just call up Alfred Music and buy that kind of stuff off the shelf! This was also my first experience of writing to a deadline. Little did I know how twisted and neurotic my relationship to the deadline would become later in my life. It was during my senior year that I also heard Thad Jones/Mel Lewis on Daddy-O Daylie’s radio show. I realize now that a little flame had been lit inside me.

In 1967 I entered the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, because they had a great big band, led by John Garvey. I was pretty intimidated about writing for them at first. There was a grad student there named Jim Knapp who was composing and arranging music that, for me, remains some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever heard. Jim is still quite active in Seattle; he’d thankfully left the U. of I. in the early ‘70’s. I finally got my courage together to write for the band. In addition, I was a composition major, and wrote a lot of chamber music combining contemporary classical and jazz elements. I also took seminars in Persian classical music and African music with Bruno Nettl. I started learning about how jazz wasn’t the only music to included improvisation, and that there were other ways to generate improvisation besides playing on chord changes. All in all, those were very ear-opening years!

Moving to New York in 1975, I was pursuing a career as a pianist. I wasn’t writing for large ensembles, but I was writing tunes for quartets and quintets, and made a couple of recordings featuring mostly my own music. I figured that I’d spent a number of years as a student, playing in big bands, and now wanted to concentrate on smaller groups. But I always felt that Thad and Mel was the best big band, with the hippest writing, and an important role for the piano. So when Mel asked me to join the band in 1978 I jumped at the chance.

I didn’t immediately start to write for the band. While Thad was there, I was intimidated; here I was playing great music written by him, and Bob Brookmeyer, and who was I to try to jump into that pool? But after Thad left in early 1979, I once again got my courage up and wrote an absolutely dreadful chart for Mel’s band. I was pretty discouraged, but Brookmeyer, who had come in as the band’s musical director, was very encouraging—he pointed out a couple of sections that worked pretty well, and said that I should write another one.

I did, and it was okay. In fact the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra recently recorded it for their most recent CD. The third piece I wrote for Mel, “Blue Note”, worked pretty well, and Mel’s band recorded it in 1986.

It was around this time that my long, fruitful relationship with the big band scene in Europe began. It started with UMO in Helsinki; in ’87 I began a seven-year stint with the WDR Big Band in Cologne. That band was my real workshop group, and I learned an incredible amount from them. I’ve also worked with the great Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra in Holland, and spent five years as chief conductor of the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. Currently I am artist-in-residence with the HR Big Band in Frankfurt. These are all great ensembles; most of them have been around for 40+ years, have a number of terrific players, and have been a great resource for Americans like myself, Maria Schneider, Bob Brookmeyer, John Clayton, Bill Holman and many others. You simply cannot talk about the current state of the modern big band without including these groups, and I wish that the American jazz press would wake up to that fact.

By about 1993 I was a minor celebrity around Stockholm and within the listening area of the WDR in northwest Germany, but hardly known as a writer in the US. When I started to write arrangements for the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, I began to get a reputation on this side of the Atlantic. In 1996 I’d rejoined the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and they asked me to write an album for them. The resulting CD was called “Lickety Split”. It helped both the band and me. By this time I was writing a lot. I remember in 1998 I was in the middle of two projects: a George Gershwin retrospective for the Danish Radio, and a Chick Corea concert with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. In one month I wrote 270 pages of big band score. It was an exciting, exhausting, exhilarating time. Someone later asked me, “What did you do when you got stuck?” I thought about it and realized that I never got stuck; I simply didn’t have time! Composition and arranging are essentially decision-making processes. We can get stuck when we have the luxury to put off making a decision. If the deadline is imminent, we make a decision, living with its consequences, and move on.

The Process

Much of the music I write begins with a question. Sometimes it’s about a musical detail: “What if a unison “E” grew into a chromatic explosion?” “What if I constructed lines in which each successive interval was a half-step larger or smaller?” “What if a song repeats over and over, getting more chromatic and intense each time?” More, though, it begins with an image: “What if a big band started to melt in the middle of a line?” “How would a tenor player react if he felt lost in the middle of a solo?” “What if Mel Lewis came back?” “What would it sound like if a band fell down a flight of stairs?” “What would loud sandpaper sound like?” If not a question, there might be a one- or two-word description of the piece: “moving rondo”, “burn”, “exhaustion”, “exuberance”, “chewy”, “ahhhhhh”, “glow”, “vulnerable”, “help me”.

The speculation is the first step in what I call the “high level”, conceptual issues. If I am writing for a specific group I keep them in mind. Each group with whom I work a lot has its strengths and weaknesses; time feel and timbre; lead trumpet sound and collection of soloists. If I’m not familiar with the sound of the group I write for, I create one in my head. It’s better to connect the piece to some kind of “virtual” ensemble, rather than none at all.

I decide how long the piece will be, if only in a general sense. I decide on the “surface sound” of the music—this is more or less “what a dog hears”—high, low, loud, soft, rough, smooth, dense, open, screechy, woofy. I also decide on issues like the harmonic palette, and timbral palette (open brass, flutes and mutes). I decide on who will play solos, and where they will occur in the piece. For larger pieces I make a time line to indicate the length of the piece, and indicate certain events along the line. I also decide on the general shape of the piece. I will admit that much of what I have written conforms to the ideal defined by Ray Wright in “Inside the Score”—that a piece usually peaks at somewhere around 80-something % through the piece. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

At the same time I start to work with the “low” level issues: specific musical ideas. These might be a motive; a vamp; four bars of a progression; a three-note group, a chord voicing; or anything else that might occur to me. Sometimes I walk into my studio, thinking about the sandwich that I just ate, or the conversation I just had with my wife; anything but music. Then I sit at the piano, put my hands on the keys and hear what comes out. I try to hear the result with the same un-connected ears that the other six billion people on earth have, not my own ears.

At this point there is a list of “don’ts” I refer to:

• Don’t judge your idea as good or bad. It is neutral; a gift. Write it down. • Don’t start by telling yourself that you are going to write the greatest piece of your career. This is one of the best and quickest ways to kill the music. • Don’t worry about who might be playing this idea. If there is an instrumental or ensemble sound associated with it, great. If not, great. Either way, you’ve got something happening.

• Don’t worry about whether this idea will fit into the piece. It either will or it won’t. Right now you need to see how to develop the idea, and see where it leads you. • Don’t worry about where this idea will fit into the piece. As you work with it, you may find where it goes. If you don’t, put it aside. • Don’t think that every idea must be put into the piece. • Don’t take your original ideas at face value. Work with them. I think if them as physical objects, like pieces of clay. They can be stretched, cut up and recombined, rolled into different shapes, flattened, thinned, and replicated. Imagine being a kid playing in a sandbox. If, after all of that, you decide to go with your original idea, at least you do it knowing what some of the other possibilities are. • Don’t get wrapped up trying to obey all the rules. If a rule doesn’t serve you anymore, make up a new rule.

I start to work with my ideas, and develop them. Make some melodic lines; extend progressions; transpose vamps. Whatever I can think of. I never say “no” to a possible variation or development or re-working of an idea. I just write it down. My goal is to create enough material so that I can throw most of it away. What remains is something that I absolutely believe in. It’s not perfect, not “amazing”. But I believe it.

As the low level starts to develop, the high level starts to get more defined. Details of the form and shape begin to emerge. One of my big concerns is to take my time getting to the first solo. When you are young and starting out, it is a laborious process just to score the “head” of the arrangement. So, BAM, next thing is a tenor solo; after the painstaking task of writing voicings and making orchestrational decisions, it’s such a relief to just write some slashes! But I believe that the first solo should start only when the music is ready for it. As writers we are exercising a lot of control over all elements of a piece, and with the first solo we relax some of that control. Wait until the time is right. It might occur before there’s any written music; it might not occur until five minutes into the piece. But make sure that the time is right.

At this point I also begin to think of myself as a kind of playwright. I’m creating characters, and thinking about how they might develop through the course of the piece. Besides the many jazz and classical composers who have inspired me, I would also have to pay tribute to writers like William Shakespeare, August Strindberg and Tennessee Williams. So many of Williams’s plays are set in the south—“Orpheus Descending”, for example. You can feel the humidity dripping off the willow trees. The men drink a lot and don’t work much, and the women, at the primes of their lives, have resigned themselves to their lot. Halfway through the first act enters Val, “The Young Stud”, from some far-off place. Said stud upsets the balance that has been agreed upon by the local folks; the women shoot him surreptitious glances and have vapors, and the men start looking for their shotguns. The resulting tension and resolution drives the rest of the play. When tickets to a Broadway play hover around $100 a head, you don’t pay that kind of money to see people sitting around a table having a pleasant conversation about the weather. Give us conflict! And so it may go in music. Let the piece go on for a while, then introduce a new, unexpected character into the mix, and see what happens!

So as the high level becomes more defined, and the low level develops, I’m usually ready to start sketching, which is where I make most of my decisions about voicings and orchestration. I still use pencil and paper. I’ve tried “real composing” on the computer, but feel that it gets in the way. I end up looking at a picture of the music. Pencil and paper are physical, tactile substances that give me more of a feeling of being connected. Besides, for me it’s more fun to erase than to hit “delete”.

Technology and Computers

I use Finale for writing my scores now, mostly for the incredible convenience of editing, archiving, and sending via e-mail. But I still have some reservations about it. As with any tool, we have a tendency to adapt our behavior in order to use the tool more easily. With pencil and paper, we can draw almost any shape imaginable. Yet certain shapes are still difficult on the computer. With pencil and paper, all of us older folks learned how to make a good drum part, with relative ease. Those of you who know me, know that I could spend the next half hour kvetching about the drum parts I see in students using Finale or Sibelius. One of the problems is that we use these programs to tell the players what is easiest to say via the software, and not what really needs to be said in the score or in the part.

There’s also a bigger issue, and I’d like to share with you an excerpt from an article I read on the plane flying down here. It’s from the latest Atlantic Monthly, in an article by Nicholas Carr entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

“Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. ‘Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,’ the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his ‘”thoughts” in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.’

‘You are right,’ Nietzsche replied, ’our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.’ Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzche’s prose ‘changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.’”

And I’m sure that Nietzche wasn’t the first person to notice that the new technology fostered a difference, not only in his output, but also in his thinking. This is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing. But therein lies a problem. A tool may make certain things easier; make us more productive; give us greater insight and flexibility. On the other hand, that same tool, especially if not used properly, can hinder us from expressing well many of those creative things we might do better without the tool, and ultimately limit us. A chain saw, when used properly, can be a useful, powerful tool. In untrained hands, however, it can cause horrible damage. In other words: if you, as a professional composer, are going to use Finale or Sibelius, learn how to use the program, and learn it well. Look at the user manual. Seek help from more experienced users. Apply the same standards to software as you would to your musical instrument. It is your musical instrument! Would you show up at a gig not knowing how to finger an F#? It’s simply not enough to say, “Gee, this trumpet doesn’t let me do that!”

Another computer-related problem is that we now have the ability to play back, and play back, and play back, ad infinitum. You can make the flutes sound as loud as you’d like, and you can make that fourth trumpet player play his double high “G” at pianississimo. Trombones can play without taking a breath, and everyone is perfectly in tune. Better yet, all of your intricate interlocking rhythms are performed with no problem at all. The problem is that some inexperienced composers are convinced that this is the way their music must sound at the first read-through. Worse, a few get really angry when real humans can’t play the music as precisely and perfectly balanced as their computer. We all must learn how to get through that first read- through. You may have a piece that you have lived with for months, and played back over and over on the computer. But the human players see only dots on a page. It’s going to take them time to assimilate all of the information on the paper, and if it is notated poorly or unclearly, all the worse.

What Are We Doing, and Why Do We Do It?

So, here we are—all jazz composers. Why do we do it? I’m sure that each of us has our own reasons. But music is a universal human phenomenon. Every culture has music to accompany religious rites and secular ceremonies. And many cultures have an “art music”: music that may have had utilitarian origins but is now performed for a listening audience. People want to hear music. They are drawn to it. And contrary to the attitudes of many school boards and politicians, music is an important, alternative way in which humans communicate and connect. And music needs composers. Performing musicians need someone to give them at least that “point-of-departure”, if not an entire score. Ever since the days of Jelly Roll Morton, jazz musicians have realized that the more players there are in a band, the more important it is for someone to organize the music and the players’ roles in that music. Sometimes we function as the ones who say, “Hey, guys! Here’s a melody for you to play together!” Or, “Hey, I’ve got an idea! First the clarinet plays a solo, then there’s a two-bar drum break!” And so forth. Jelly Roll seemed to have the idea that music was better if it was interesting; if it had dramatic twists and turns. What a concept! “Without breaks you don’t have good jazz”, he said. And so on through Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, up to today.

We composers play a crucial role in human musical culture; and as jazz composers we play a crucial role in the most important musical form to have emerged in the 20th century. At a minimum we help entertain listeners, giving them an artistic pause in their daily lives. And we give performing musicians “something to play”, so that they can sound good. We may even give them a little employment. But at our best, we challenge listeners to put aside their preconceptions, and offer them a chance to enter our world and hear something that they haven’t heard before. We inspire listeners to feel something that they haven’t felt before. At our best we challenge performers to stretch; to reach a little deeper for something they haven’t done before, and inspire them to a higher level of performance. I firmly believe that to compose music, and to do it well–jazz or otherwise–is a most noble profession.

We are all blessed to be musicians. We spend a great deal of our time doing something that we love, and that many other people would love to do, but can’t. We earn the bulk of our living from activities that many people consider a hobby, or something they’d love to do once they’ve retired. On the other hand, sometimes I wonder about the larger social contexts of our lives. It is one thing to get “in the zone” as a composer; it is something else to hide one’s head in the sand and avoid living the rest of one’s life. Bob Brookmeyer once said to me, “Society doesn’t owe you a living just because you have musical talent.” So it’s not enough to just write music. You need to think about the larger context: responsibilities to your family, to building your career. Remember, Bach was a musical genius who continues to inspire today. Bach also always made sure he had a gig, and a good one at that. He had a lot of mouths to feed! There is also a multitude of ways to get involved in the many other aspects of life: charitable, political, social, artistic, and so on. It’s not enough to simply write a tune, call it “George Bush Is An Idiot”, and think that you’ve done your job. Writing a dynamite big band piece, in itself, will probably not bring peace to the Mideast, justice to Darfur, or reverse global warming. But it could get some people thinking; might start an argument; and might even spur the composer to take some further action to help the cause. It may take some time, but music can make a difference. We can make a difference (“Yes, we can!”)

In Closing

We have a lot of music on tap for the next three days. I’m looking forward to the evening concerts, of course; but I’m really looking forward to hearing what all of you have brought to this event. I’m hoping to be surprised, challenged, soothed, and inspired. And by the end of Saturday I trust that we will all be fueled and fired up to go back to our own studios and take it to the next step. In the words of Billy Strayhorn: “Ever Onwards and Upwards!”

Thank you! "

"A NOSSA VIDA NO REINO DO ECONOMÊS" -Luis Fernandes

2011-01-11T00:33:00.007Z

Desculpem os que contariam com mais um post sobre Jazz mas não é disso que este trata.Prometo compensar no próximo.
Este artigo foi publicado no jornal "Público" de 10 de Janeiro e posto-o aqui pelo facto de traduzir muito do que eu penso. O Luis Fernandes é, em minha opinião, um dos mais insteressantes e esclarecidos colaboradores do "Público". Pela forma estruturada do seu pensamento e pelo desassombro de opiniões é sempre um prazer ler os seus textos . Escreve habitualmente sobre temas relacionados com assuntos de carácter social como reinserção, toxicodependências, assimetrias sociais, etc. Mais dos seus textos podem ser encontrados aqui. O texto que aqui deixo vale especialmente a pena e espero não estar a violar nenhum direito autoral ao públicar este scan.
Se estiver, logo se vê. Basta clicar ma imagem.

Sonny Rollins - A ponte

2010-12-27T00:13:00.002Z

Não creio que possa haver alma mais sincera, música mais visceral e humana que a de Sonny Rollins.
Este filme revela Rollins e duas das suas relações mais profundas: a ponte de Williamsburgh e o saxofonista Paul Jeffrey, seu companheiro de travessia.

Boletim Informativo do Hot Clube - Janeiro de 1975

2010-12-26T22:41:00.011Z

O 1º número do Boletim Informativo do Hot Clube de Portugal aqui fica de Janeiro 1975 (desculpem o pouco respeito pela cronologia...)
Abre com uma resenha do que foi a 4ª edição do Cascais Jazz pela pena de José Duarte adoptando uma estéctica ML (*)absolutamente actual, na altura...
Seguem-se preciosos elementos biográficos de Rui Cardoso, um dos pioneiros nacionais do saxofone Jazz e um extenso artigo/entrevista sobre Archie Shepp.
Lá pelo meio o anúncio de concertos em Castelo Branco e Lisboa do grupo de Red Rodney com o português Nuno Gonçalves no contrabaixo.
(*) ML, para quem é demasiado novo para o saber ou para quem já esqueceu o espírito do tempo, significa "marxista-leninista"

A curiosidade pelas circunstâncias em que estes concertos foram agendados e pelo que se passou no "terreno" levou a que abordasse o Nuno Gonçalves,um dos decanos do contrabaixo jazz portugueses e uma simpatia de pessoa, para que soubessemos mais sobre como foi tocar com esse grande trompetista próprio, alguém que tantas vezes partilhou o palco com "Bird".
Como era de esperar, Nuno, amávelmente, respondeu ás questões que lhe coloquei:

"Onobsj!!:Como chegaste ao contacto do Red?
N.G.:Foi o Duarte Mendonça que empresariou os concertos com o RR, que tinha cá estado no festival de Jazz de Cascais. Veio agora acompanhado do Art Themen (sax tenor), simpático, excelente musico, e médico otorrino inglês.
Os concertos com o Red Rodney foram 3 no Hot Clube e um em Castelo Branco, no Cineteatro Avenida. Estava agendado mais um no teatro ABC, que não se chegou a realizar.
Eu era o único português da banda. Os outros músicos da secção rítmica eram o Kevin Hoidale, pianista norte americano que vivia em Portugal nos anos 70 e o Adrien Ransy, baterista belga que na época integrava o Quinteto Académico.
Para as sessões no Hot, o Kevin trouxe o seu piano Fender Rhodes, pois o piano do Hot da época, que era um piano acústico antigo vertical muito estafado. Este Rhodes era uma grande novidade na época, porque era uma adição muito recente à musica de Jazz.
Onobsj!!:: O Red Rodney mandou os temas antes ou foi á 1ª vista? algum original? que dicas deu ou exigências ( musicais ou outras) fez?
N.G.:O Red Rodney enviou uma carta com uma lista de temas a fazer nas sessões, todos standards bonitos. Fizemos (só a secção rítmica) um ensaio prévio no Hot Clube, para passar os temas da lista.
Onobsj!!:: Alguma "estória" ou detalhes interessantes que tenham ocorrido durante os ensaios e/ou concerto?
N.G.:Red Rodney contou nos concertos, no intervalo entre dois temas em que apresentava os músicos da banda, o episódio da sua parceria com Parker, em que num gig num bar que era reservado apenas a pessoas de raça negra, ter apresentando Red Rodney como “Albino Red”. (Vi uns anos mais tarde este episódio no filme Bird, de Clint Eastwood).
Para além dos concertos no Hot, o ultimo concerto foi no Cineteatro de Castelo Branco organizado por um aficionado do Jazz, o Luis Pio, dedicado ao irmão, que tinha falecido num acidente de automóvel e que era também um grande aficionado do Jazz.
Forma-se uma comitiva, com alguns notáveis do Jazz Luso como o Luis Vilas Boas e o Zé Duarte, que se dirige para Castelo Branco por montes e vales por uma estrada sinuosa e em mau estado.
Na época as coisas eram ainda mais artesanais do que hoje e, quando chegámos para ensaiar o som, só havia o piano, um chaço de piano vertical que, além de não tocar algumas notas, estava super-desafinado!!! Aparelhagem sonora inexistente e um frio de rachar numa sala deserta (3 bilhetes vendidos) num edifício antigo e húmido, completavam o quadro surrealista... Ainda se tentou remediar o piano com uma iniciativa heróica pelo Zé Duarte, o Vilas Boas e de mais uns bravos, que foram tentar ir buscar em braços um piano de cauda que estava num museu. Claro que desistiram quando viram o peso e o concerto teve que se fazer mesmo com o piano que havia e a aparelhagem que não havia. Coisas do improviso à portuguesa, que na época era mais incipiente ainda do que é hoje.
O regresso a Lisboa foi, para compensação, super divertido com a companhia e o senso de humor do Luís Vias Boas!
Foi a realização de um sonho poder tocar numa formação destas e com estes músicos, um deles, uma lenda viva que tinha tocado com o “deus” Charlie Parker, temas dele, reproduzir aqueles sons que se ouviam nos discos..."

Obrigado Nuno. Grande abraço!

Nuno Gonçalves in facebook
Red Rodney on MySpace

2010-11-22T22:27:00.000Z

Jackie McLean on Mars from Ken Levis on Vimeo.

Tempo, Espaço, Ritmo

2010-11-03T23:40:00.001Z

Um muito interessante artigo sobre tempo, ritmo e espaço no blog de Ronan Guilfoyle mostly music .

O segredo está na massa!...ou será nos acordes?!

2010-10-30T23:31:00.006+01:00

Com quatro acordes apenas se escreve a palavra SUCESSO!

A SÉRIE DOS HARMÓNICOS

2010-10-30T13:03:00.012+01:00

Um assunto que sempre me interessou e que "vasculho" há muito tempo é o que se refere ás implicações musicais da série dos harmónicos. Fenómeno puramente acústico, a série dos harmónicos consiste no conjunto de frequências ressonantes que acompanham qualquer som, musical ou não.

Assim, quando tocamos um Dó num piano, por exemplo, para além dessa nota ressaltam simultâneamente outras notas: alguns Dós, sóis, mis, um Si bemol (meio "desafinado"), um ré e por aí fora numa sequência de notas de cuja análise poderemos extrair importantes conclusões.

A intensidade (volume) dessas outras notas é menor. Por isso e pelo facto de haver, nessa série, um maior número de dós do que qualquer outras notas) a nota que ouvimos é realmente um Dó, funcionando musicalmente como tal. Mas a organização interna desses sons harmónicos e a relação matemática entre as suas frequências é todo um mundo em si (neste caso, em Dó...).
Este fenómeno físico tem implicações musicais mais do que muitas e muito importantes. Não foi por acaso que Arnold Schonberg decidiu começar o seu livro de Harmonia por este assunto livro publicado em 1922 e que é ainda hoje uma ferramenta de trabalho importantíssima.
"A Monk's Musical Musings" auto-intitula-se como um blog Semi-Hemi-Demi-Semi-Erudito de teoria musical e guitarra.
Deixando para os guitarristas a informação que lhes é destinada, sou um visitante regular dada a qualidade do trabalho teórico publicado.
Precisamente sobre o assunto de que falo - as implicações musicais da série de harmónicos - encontram-se publicados no blog 10 posts/capítulos que, segundo o autor serão posteriormente editados em livro.
Deixo aqui os links para cada um dos capítulos bem como o meu agradecimento pelo trabalho partilhado.

Thanks Hucbald , for your great work.

Introdução

Capítulo 1

No Beginning No End

2010-10-29T01:12:00.006+01:00

A perda de um filho é, provavelmente,a maior dor que alguém poderá ter de suportar. Na composição "No Beggining No End" Kenny Werner reune 3 dezenas de músicos e os solistas Joe Lovano e Judi Sivano em torno da memória da sua filha Katheryn, de 16 anos desaparecida num acidente de automóvel. Com música de intensidade invulgar da qual transborda a dor da perda mas também o de aceitação e paz inspirado pela filosofia Budista que Kenny segue há muitos anos, este disco recebeu o prémio Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Music Composition em 2010 e, segundo Kenny, ajudou-o a encontrar um novo patamar, até aqui nunca atingido na sua busca de expressão musical.
A entrevista de Kenny Werner aqui
O cineasta dinamarquês Soren Jensen captou imagens e entrevistas sobre todo o processo para um documentário cuja preview pode ser vista aqui
É um previlégio poder partilhar de tal intensidade e intimidade enquanto ouvinte.

Vijay Iyer

2010-10-28T23:11:00.003+01:00

Vijay chegou.
Pianista de incrível originalidade para além de académico citado em inúmeros artigos científicos sobre psicologia da improvisação, Vijay Iyer congrega na sua música os sons de todo o planeta.
Tecno-indo-funk-trance-dance-punjabi-trash-galactic-reggae-jazz. Para mim este sr. é uma das melhores surpresas musicais do sec. XXI.

P.S: Já agora ouçam o tema seguinte e digam-me se não vos faz a energia e a vibração da música dos L.U.M.E. (Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble) ?
Ah, ok...Ainda não conhecem a música do L.U.M.E.
Temos de tratar disso...

Boletim Informativo do Hot Clube - Abril de 1975

2010-10-23T02:22:00.006+01:00

Mudar de casa é o que dá. Mexe-se em papelada, abrem-se caixas de cartão há muito fechadas, re-encontram-se coisas qeu julgavamos perdidas para sempre, pára-se a ver fotografias e a tentar relembrar o nome de uma ou outra pessoa.
Numa ocasião dessas vieram ter-me ás mãos algumas revista de Jazz editadas pelo Hot Clube em ... 1975.
Preciosidades! Documentos de uma pré-história do Jazz em Portugal que, agora que tantos dos praticantes ainda não têm 25 anos, podem dar uma ideia do que era o Jazz nesses primeiros tempos do pós- 25 de Abril.

Jam dos 70 anos de Herbie Hancock

2010-10-11T23:47:00.003+01:00

Então é assim. Chris Potter está ao piano, Kurt Rosenwinkel na bateria , Linda Oh no contrabaixo. Esta late, late night jam organizada por Jeff "Tain" Watts, que também faz scat no tema no City Winery para celebrar os 70 anos de ...Herbie Hancock . Herbie com 70 anos, imagine-se! Saxofonista não identificado....

KURTição

2010-10-05T20:27:00.003+01:00

Uma amostra do que ontem se ouviu no Lux.
Inspirador.

2010-10-05T11:46:00.001+01:00

Ok. Respiro fundo. Já passou. Não volto ao assunto.

Música de Expressão Portuguesa II

2010-10-05T11:16:00.004+01:00

Correndo o risco de me repetir, regresso aos plágios do Tony (e do Michael, que isto de talento está no sangue...).
É lindo (e viciante) descobrir estes tesourinhos. Tipo coleccionar cromos, tão a ver?Espero que me passe, em breve.
Entretanto...
O tema seguinte está registado na SPA (Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores) com o nº T-045554643-6 NAS HORAS DE DOR TONY CARREIRA Compositor/Autor

e agora ouçam este:

a

O "talento" para o plágio é hereditário como provam o próximo tema - registado na SPA com os nº:

T-045711977-5 DO YOU LOVE ME INDEFINIDO MICKAEL Compositor
T-045711977-5 DO YOU LOVE ME INDEFINIDO RICARDO Compositor/Autor

Entretanto passem pelo blog http://copiadoemportugal.blogspot.com/
Há pra todos os gostos.

Festival de Música de Expressão Portuguesa??

2010-10-03T21:52:00.022+01:00

A editora "Espacial" realizou no Coliseu dos Recreios em Lisboa, este fim de semana, aquilo a que decidiu dar o nome de "1º Festival de Música de Expressão Portuguesa". Tomei conhecimento do evento,que será registado em vídeo para posterior edição, através do Telejornal e fiquei pra morrer.
Quem representa esta expressão portuguesa?
Marco Paulo, Toy, Santamaria, Ana Malhoa, Pedro Miguel, Lucas & Matheus, Augusto Canário, Ricardo & Henrique, Suzana e Adriana Lua.
Estou chocado. Música de expressão portuguesa.!!???
Mais importantes do que gostar ou não destas canções convém lembrar que a (esmagadora) maioria das canções que cantam não são mais que plágios descarados de canções popularizadas por cantores da mesma área "estilística" de vários países como a Venezuela, Brasil ou França , geralmente de países com grande comunidade emigrada.E intitulam-se de representantes da música de "expressão portuguesa"??!!

Nã. A maioria destes "artistas" duvido que seja capaz de compôr uma canção.
O País, enfim, deixa-se enganar ou nem questiona isso. Que lhe interessa que a canção seja o Quim ou do Tonho? Já o caso com a SPA (Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores) é mais grave. O seu papel deveria ser o de impedir este tipo de situações e fazer reverter os direitos de autoria e interpretação para os legítimos autores.
Pensarão os respectivos públicos destes vídeos que a música é da autoria de quem a canta? Provávelmente o público alemão achará que é uma canção típica da música de expressão alemã.

E esta?
Canção de expressão típicamente portuguesa, não é? Expressa sem dúvida a nossa alma lusitana, única e irrepetível na Europa, no fundo a nossa contribuição mais importante para o mosaico cultural da União Europeia. É, não é?

Mas ouçam as seguintes

Ondé que eu já ouvi isto?

Estou a começar a gostar disto.
Aí vai mais um par delas. É a verdadeira queda prá música a deste Carreira...

Conheço isto de algum lado!!

Não. Não dá pra parar agora...Mais um "original"

Não me cheira que tenha sido a Alannis a copiar os miúdos ca da terra.....

Nunca me canso quando estou a divertir-me. Mais uma....

Já adivinharam...

And now for something completely different

Enfim.
Uma delícia.
De referir que estas autoria estão registadas na SPA
Que se copiem uns aos outros, não é o que me preocupa. Que o público pense que os Tops Mais ou Menos são,cândidamente, o reflexo real dos gostos do público tanto faz.
Mas por favor não me comam (a mim e aos outros que estão atentos) por parvos. O negócio da música, aquele negócio em que roda dinheiro "á séria" é um assunto demasiado importante para ser deixado para... os músicos.
Agora Festival de Música de expressão portuguesa, os....
Aquilo de português não tem nada.
É assim que se aniquilam gerações de autores que nunca chegarão ao Coliseu ou aos números de discos vendidos por esses gajos, que se vai dando cabo da música (verdadeiramente) portuguesa de qualidade e se vai transformando a cultura deste rectângulo este país numa loja dos 300. (por falar nisso continuarei a escrever rectângulo com "c" até ao fim dos meus dias. Qual acordo, qual caraças...)
E agora está a apetecer-me ouvir qualquer coisa de português, qualquer coisa de genuíno, qualquer coisa que vomite por sobre o palco do Coliseu neste triste fim de semana.
Até logo

Um bem-haja ao blog "O verdadeiro Tony" donde grande parte destes links foram retirados.

Evan Parker sobre Coltrane

2010-10-01T09:40:00.004+01:00

Conversa de Evan Parker a 5 de Agosto 2006 integrada no Jazz Em Agosto 2006 (Lisboa)

"I follow the school of thought that says there are basically three phases in Coltrane’s musical life. I would identify his activities from the beginning up to 1961 as one phase. From ‘61 onward to ‘65 or ‘66 there is the period where he was leading his own group, especially what’s now often referred to as the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. At the end of this phase, there is the transition period where Coltrane’s determination to keep moving forward, finding new possibilities, strained the quartet to the point where Elvin was unhappy with the addition of other drummers and McCoy Tyner probably couldn’t hear himself anymore. These are all matters of public record and I don’t think it’s wrong to talk about them. This transition led to the late period of Coltane’s life which, although you would think that the area that I might be most expert on, it is actually the area that I know least about. That’s partly because it overlaps with my own entry into a full-time relationship with music, attempting to be a professional musician, which, for me, started probably around ‘65, and ’66. There was no clear beginning for me between playing with student bands and then gradually earning some money by doing that and then gradually meeting the players that I thought I wanted to play with. All of this was happening during the last period of Coltrane’s life. At that time, his music from that period was available to us only through recordings. The last tour that Coltrane was supposed to have made of Europe was scheduled for 1966 but it was cancelled. His health was already suffering at that point and that’s probably the reason that last tour was cancelled. So we in Europe never got to hear those late Coltrane performances, the type that were documented during the tour of Japan. It’s hard to imagine what the response would have been in England; but I’m fairly sure that itwould have been pretty hostile. By then, Coltrane’s music was a step too far for many people.

I remember in ‘61, the time that he did come with his own group to England, I think the only time that he did play in England, there was already a division of ‘this is going too far...we liked Milestones, we liked Kind of Blue, we liked those things but this is too much’. And of course Dolphy was in the group. I heard that group play and it was, to me, a revelation. An amazing experience because it was Coltrane in the moment, not Coltrane six months later when the record arrived or a year later when the record arrived. But Coltrane at that point, in 1961. As I say, that to me is a key moment and it was literally one week after the recordings at the Village Vanguard. Originally, there was just one LP of material released from these performances. Over the years, especially since Coltrane’s death, interest in his work has become more and more intense, resulting in bigger and bigger editions. The final version of the Village Vanguards is four whole CDs , including multiple versions of some pieces.

At the time, many people thought Coltrane’s “Chasin’ The Trane,” which was included on the original Village Vanguard LP, was his most radical performance to date because of what was considered its extraordinary length and intensity, and the fact that Coltrane was accompanied by only bass and drums. But, there are other versions of this same idea, a blues played with just bass and drums that goes all the way back to a piece he recorded in 1957 for Traneing In with Paul Chambers called “Bass Blues,” although that’s a more straight ahead tune. Something that took me a while to realize is that “Blues To You” on Coltrane Plays The Blues, which he recorded in 1960, is also a trio blues that basically has the same approach to the structure. The blues was a very natural form for Coltrane, which must have grown out of his work with rhythm and blues bands in the early period of his professional life. Like most musicians looking for a chance to play and earn some money, Coltrane played with various rhythm and blues bands almost as soon as he was discharged from the Navy, where he went to study. That was an approach that my generation of musicians and that a generation before me, took in England, too. There was John Stevens, the drummer, Paul Rutherford, trombone player, Trevor Watts, saxophone player, Chris Pyne, very good trombone player. Some of these people are no longer alive, some are still active, but they all got their musical training by joining the military. In the case of the English guys it was usually the Royal Air Force. Coltrane went to Honolulu with the Navy and was based there. Some of the very earliest recordings of Coltrane playing were made there in 1946, when he was still playing alto. These recordings include performances of “Ko-Ko” and “Now’s The Time,” so it natural that you hear very much the influence of Charlie Parker in his playing. Obviously, Charlie Parker was still alive at that point -- more than still alive, I mean, he’s right in the middle of his musical life. When he got back from Honolulu, Coltrane started to do these rhythm and blues bands and that must be where he developed that profound relationship with the structure called the blues, the 12 bar form, which is stretched very far in “Chasin’ the Trane.” It’s a collision between a very simple form, or the integration of a very simple form, with a very sophisticated saxophone technique.

I will now risk digressing, first by talking about the slave trade. There’s a book – The slave trade : the story of the Atlantic slave trade, 1440-1870 by Hugh Thomas – where I found this: “By 1730 we find 6,000 slaves in North Carolina.” That’s where Coltrane was born.”Though most of them were probably not shipped, but carried in as a result of purchase in Virginia. The colonists mostly paid by barter.” The colony complained since it had no direct deliveries from Africa. Here’s a quote from a local politician of the time “they received the refuse, the refractory and distempered Negroes, bought from other governments, other states.’’ This is one of many 18th and 19th Century documents collected by an American academic, Elizabeth Donnan, which are now housed at Yale University. I’m not even sure what the words “refuse,” “refractory” and “distempered” exactly mean in this context, but I guess it means they were hard to handle, they weren’t wanted in Virginia, and so they were sold in North Carolina. It’s very interesting to think of Coltrane as being a descendent of these slaves.

Some more quotes: “After changes in the tax laws concerning shipping slaves, Bristol entered the trade as a port in 1712. Between then and 1807, more than 2,000 separate slave trade voyages were made out of Bristol.” That’s particularly interesting to me since I was born in Bristol, England. Here’s another: “Lisbon is a center for Portuguese dealings with Africa in general and the slave trade in particular.” This will be better known to you than to me. But in that same book I was astonished to discover that at least 100,000 slaves were removed from Africa already in the 15th and 16th centuries. We’re talking about history that ties us all together in ways that we sometimes try to forget, but I think it doesn’t do any good to forget. The great work that Mandela is doing at the moment is based on ideas of truth and reconciliation; we’ll come back to that a little later on. There’s another quote: “African Muslim slaves were more difficult to control, for, as the Brazilians found in the 1830’s, in particular, some of them were at least as cultivated as their masters and capable of mounting formidable rebellions.”

This reminded me of the question that Frank Kofsky, a Marxist critic who did one of the best interviews with Coltrane, in my opinion, asked Coltrane about Malcolm X. “Were you impressed by him?”, Kofsky asked him. Coltrane said “Quite impressed.” Now talking from my own position, I heard Malcolm X speak in Birmingham University in England I think it was in the summer of 1964. By that time he was no longer connected with Elijah Mohammed and was an independent force in Black politics in America. He was actively concerned with the development of a Pan-African social and political sensibility. Everything he said made perfect sense to me. He was not a man of violence, as he was often portrayed, but a speaker of awkward and unwelcome truth. I found out also that when Kofsky was a student at Berkley University, he asked Coltrane to play a concert to raise money for an organization for improving the situation for Black students in the University system there. Coltrane was agreeable to that idea but the University then forbade the organization to exist. This is as recently as 1961, so it’s important to remember and to keep our eye on what people are telling us we can’t have today. Two million people on the streets of London saying they didn’t want a war, but one man and his friend in America decided it was a good idea, and now we have to live with the consequences of that for the rest of our lives. Coltrane spoke to the Vietnam War in the same interview: “This music is an expression of higher ideals to me, so therefore, brotherhood is there. I believe with brotherhood there would be no poverty, and with brotherhood there would be no war.” So Coltrane is no longer a jobbing musician at this point, he’s feeling the weight of responsibility that comes with his position, his new position as being considered one of the leading voices in the music and he’s using that situation to speak up.

The weight of responsibility Coltrane felt in large part stemmed from his sprituality, which was awakened after Miles Davis sacked him because he was drunk and drug addicted and unreliable. For Coltrane, being fired by Davis must have come as a very profound shock, as well as he was playing, because he always played very well. But clearly he felt something had to be done about this and so the famous story of him going to a room in his auntie’s house and shutting the door and staying there until he had broken his addiction to heroin. I suppose that’s what he’s referring to when he said: “During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.” At this point Coltrane was clearly moving towards a sense of his own destiny and perhaps even a sub-conscience intimation that his life would not be a long one. An urgent sense of purpose begins to motivate all of his playing. And I think at this point we also hear that he’s moving away from the conventions of the day.

During that first period, up to ‘61, Coltrane’s approach to improvisation was mostly playing over predetermined chord sequences. So you could characterize that music as problem-solving. The improvisation was constrained by a particular series of note choices which would fit; some things would fit, some things wouldn’t fit. Coltrane was always looking for new elements in that language – how to play over harmonic sequences and how to add to what’s already there, a whole system of superimposing chord on chord. But again, it’s all basically problem solving, which reaches its highest point of development with the “Giant Steps” type of approach, where the complexity of the chord sequence is such that, if the chords are going to be marked clearly in the course of the improvisation then there’s very little freedom to move. If you compare the various takes of “Giant Steps” you’ll hear the same patterns recurring at the same points in each chorus and even recordings of the tune which are done more or less a year apart you’ll hear those same patterns. So although the precise nature of the solo is improvised, it’s based on a very well studied set of materials, and memorized. As far as I know there are no live versions of Coltrane playing “Giant Steps.” “Giant Steps” epitomizes the idea of etude and the idea of studio. These were etudes for the studio.

I think that there’s a very clear sense that he’s gone as far as he can possibly go in that direction towards the end of the period of his recording for Atlantic. This was a period where Coltrane was effectively a leader, but before he could go out on the road with his own band. Recording for Atlantic, he could function as a bandleader, hire musicians of his choice, play his tunes, choose material when they played standards, and used his altered versions of the chord sequences, especially using that formula, the “Giant Steps” formula in the place of other standard harmonic formulas. I think that there’s a very clear sense that he had gone as far as he could possibly go in that direction because the sense of improvisation is canceled by the complex nature of the problems within which the improvisation has to take place, namely the chord sequences, those chord sequences.

For me maybe the final statement on the Atlantic period is the B side of My Favorite Things, the LP, where he plays “But Not For Me” and “Summertime” and there’s a looseness; he’s still using that “Giant Steps” formula for substitute chord elements, but with a looseness, a degree of working informality almost, and it’s working toward the next phase. So there’s never any clear, sharp lines in Coltrane’s development. If I seem to give you the feeling that I think there are hard markers in this story, I don’t. It’s one continuous story and we’re backtracking; the way time works, the way memory works, the way we think of the future, the way we remember the past. All of that is there and it is decipherable in the music if you listen and if it means enough to you and if you get taken by the story that Coltrane’s whole life has to tell, then you will gradually learn to interpret anticipations, repetition, moments where he’s seeing ahead, moments where he’s thinking backwards – all of that is moving along a timeline dynamically and that timeline itself is very short. From the point of view of a 62-year-old man – I’m already 20 years older than Coltrane was when he died – I can’t imagine how somebody could fit so much into such a short space of time.

But there does seem to be a sense of, which I referred to before, a sense of how long you’ve got. If you think about musicians like Clifford Brown or Booker Little or Scott La Faro, all of these people died absolutely tragically young - but somehow they did enough in the time that they had, so that we still talk about them and still revere what they did. I believe the same thing is true of Dolphy and Coltrane – that they were aware of, at some level, of the time that they had available to them. So, the last record for Atlantic was Olé with the quartet plus Eric Dolphy – who is called George Lane for presumably contractual reasons. There’s a great record shop in London called Ray’s and for many years there was a postcard on the wall and it said “Why George Lane?” Previously, Charlie Parker had called himself Charlie Chan and Art Pepper called himself Art Salt and so on. So, usually there was a way of figuring out who it really was. Everyone who listened to Olé knew it was really Eric Dolphy but nobody could work out why George Lane? That record is, in a way - could equally well have been the first Impulse record. It’s quite different from all the other Atlantic recordings for me.

Olé is already moving towards the feeling of some of the tracks from the Village Vanguard, with Dolphy there, two bass players. But, something more important is happening. The emphasis on improvisation as problem solving is being left behind, and Coltrane is moving toward the use of improvisation as a test – the testing of the predetermined structures to their limit, to their destruction. It is a dialogue between the activity of improvisation and the structure upon which the improvisation was nominally based. That really characterizes the shift in Coltrane’s music for me at that point, more than anything to do with sheets of sound. Somebody asked me about sheets of sound yesterday and as far as I understand, that was a very specific period, probably best documented on the early recordings with Miles and his own recordings for Prestige. It was a particular phase that he was working on, especially with this stacking of chords on chords, so you ended up with very long arpeggio forms, and very hard to fit into regular 8th note groupings. When you see Andrew White’s transcriptions of these things – long brackets over groups of 7, 11 notes, 15 notes – it’s very hard to notate because he’s not really thinking in terms of 8th notes in that way but just “How can I fit all these notes into this bar before the next downbeat?” And that really only occupied him for a certain period. By the time you get post 1961, you’re really not dealing with “sheets of sound”, in that sense, anymore.
I said already that Coltrane came to Europe for the first time in 1961, a week after the Village Vanguard recordings. The tour began in England and continued in continental Europe until December the 2nd. Music from this tour gradually became available because the concerts were not officially recorded. Coltrane had recently signed with Impulse and they made no provision to record the European tour. The playing is of an amazingly consistent high standard, which I think is connected with a mouthpiece issue. I’ll come back to that. At first there were only unauthorized recordings with plain white sleeves, unmarked labels and various titles from a P. O. Box in Sweden There may be a couple of you who remember Live At Mt. Meru, Volumes 1-5. I was such a stickler for correct behavior that I refused to buy them because they were, in effect, stolen material at that point. But gradually people would say “you’ve got to hear this, you’ve got to hear that,” especially a version of “Bye, Bye Blackbird” on the one that had a yellow label, which is just amazing. But fortunately now, most of that stuff is available officially on a Pablo box set of the European tour. The playing from the ‘61 tour is of a consistently high level even by Coltrane’s standard of creativity. Frank Kofsky asked him about what happened after the Village Vanguard, because Coltrane made a record of ballads, a record with Johnny Hartman, the singer, a record with Duke Ellington, all of which were considered to be less adventurous than this marker that was set by Africa/Brass and then especially with the Village Vanguard recordings, the first two records for Impulse. Kofsky was always looking to blame capitalism, so he basically asked if the record company was making him do this. But Coltrane said in effect, “No, no, it’s more complicated than that. I had a very nice mouthpiece and I ruined it.”

This going to get a little nerdy now for non-saxophone players but we’re famous for talking about reeds and mouthpieces. Coltrane used a metal Otto Link mouthpiece. That’s a brand of mouthpiece, most of the time from 1961 onwards but there’s an ebonite (hard rubber) mouthpiece on the cover of the Impulse studio recording The John Coltrane Quartet Plays with “Brasilia.” A mouthpiece has many potential variables: the facing, the surface, on which the reed is fixed with a holding device called a ligature. It’s made to a fairly standard set of dimensions in order that the reeds may also be made to standard measurements. All other dimensions are potentially variable. The tip opening, how much material in the body of the mouthpiece, the width of the rails – the sides of the mouthpiece on the inside we call the rails. The length of the curvature from the tip opening to the facing, so that can be over a long curve or or short curve, also called the spring, affects the reed behavior. The internal shape and dimensions of the so-called tone chamber, which may be with or without a baffle. A baffle is something about the shape of the roof of the tone chamber. All manner of adjustments may be made to standard mouthpieces in order to change their playing characteristics. I’ve been told that Coltrane relied on Frank Wells, a craftsman man working in the Saxophone Shop in Evanston, north of Chicago. Coltrane may have also worked on his mouthpieces himself. Dolphy was known to work on his. So, it’s possible that Coltrane worked on his, but he speaks in the interview of having work done. By filing and sanding the different parts according to personal formula, it’s possible to adjust the way they sound and feel to play. This tradition is full of trade secrets and practices that may, in part, be mutually canceling. It’s possible, for example, to increase the tip opening so that the reed has to vibrate across a wider arc making it physically harder to blow. But then to make the tone chamber smaller by adding a baffle inside, making it easier to blow. This approach is often taken in the adjustment of any mouthpiece, which would otherwise have little in the way of baffle. I can’t be sure that that’s the way Coltrane’s adjustments were designed but it’s possible. It’s certainly true of a lot of people I know that played metal Link mouthpieces. They adjusted them in this way to make them a bit more open, then they changed the tone chamber inside to make it more edgy and bright, so it also makes it easier to blow. So it’s like you’re looking to get the maximum variability for what the reed can do and especially to get good, solid, centered bright sound. Certain musicians are known for their obsessive relationship with this work. Time and again a mouthpiece is gradually improved by a sequence of small adjustments until finally so much material has been removed that the tip of the mouthpiece breaks off. And I think the way my talk is advertised in the poster gives the impression that I’m talking about Coltrane playing on a broken mouthpiece. That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying he made adjustments. It was very interesting. Later, he made too many adjustments and the mouthpiece broke but that’s not interesting. The broken mouthpiece is not interesting. The adjusted mouthpiece is interesting. The late Dick Heckstall-Smith, maybe some of you know him from Colosseum or as a kind of rhythm and blues player, was in search of the perfect mouthpiece all his life, and destroyed many Berg Larsen stainless steel, so-called “duckbill mouthpieces” – the model used by his hero, Wardell Gray, and this process is a kind of Holy Grail, that you never arrive, you never quite get there. Usually something happens and the mouthpiece breaks because you’ve made it so thin. But last weekend, talking to bass clarinet specialist Rudi Mahall, I discovered that he too is involved with such a quest. Not only does he play a very open mouthpiece but he also uses a very hard reed. This is the mythic combination – very rare. It is what they always say people do but most people don’t; they usually do one thing or the other. If it’s a hard reed, its a close mouthpiece; it it’s an open mouthpiece, it’s a soft reed. But there are a few characters who can play hard reeds on big, open mouthpieces and Rudi Mahall is one of them. So, the laws of physics mean that if the reed is stiffer, harder in the jargon, then it will take more air to make it vibrate. Beyond a certain stiffness, it will simply not be possible to blow hard enough, then, with pressure from the jaw, it would be necessary to close the tip opening, the effective tip opening, to a smaller gap where the air column can sustain the vibration. I don’t know if this is like hieroglyphics to you or if it’s put in a way that means something, but it’s not going to go on for much longer. Some players like that feeling – they like the feeling of pressure, so that, effectively, they’re closing the mouthpiece down. They have to do that before the reed can vibrate across the gap. Again, I’ve got no way of knowing for sure about Coltrane, but at least I have outlined the variables. Some players like this feeling; in Rudi’s case it produces the loudest volume from the bass clarinet that I’ve ever heard. But there are some tradeoffs – he’s loosing subtlety at the bottom end and certain kinds of dynamic control. I myself use as little jaw pressure as possible now, so that the reed has to vibrate across the full width of the tip opening and I use softer reeds as a consequence. Steve Lacy took this approach to an extreme, using the biggest possible opening, and the softest reed, a custom-finished ebonite Link with a tip opening of around 11 or 12 , so he had it opened up really big but then played an extremely soft reed. A Number 1 Marca cane reed softened down to almost less than a 1. I’ve seen Steve sand on a a Number 1 reed. Very unusual. I’m not sure but I presume he used a fairly relaxed embrochure.

It was Steve Lacy who famously introduced Coltrane to the soprano saxophone and by doing so led to a revival of its fortunes. I’m sure that neither Kenny G nor Evan Parker would be playing soprano were it not for that fact. However, an interesting, additional fact is that I heard Sidney Bechet play soprano in Brussels, at the Expo in 1958. That was the first time I’d ever been outside of England. And I also heard Xenakis’ electronic music for the Philips Pavilion I leave it to you to work out quite what effect that combination of inflences may have had!

Some philosophy: This is from Lewis Mumford’s The Myth of the Machine. “Man has formed a curiously distorted picture of himself by interpreting his early history in terms of his present interests in making machines and conquering nature. Ritual and language and social organizations were probably man’s most important artifacts. To give form to the human self using only tools that could be constructed out of the resources provided by his own body” Ah, Dreams! Images! And sounds!

This is from a poet, a Scottish poet called Kenneth White, from the Atlantic edge, the other side of the Atlantic edge: “What we’re after is a world of expanded intelligence expressed with poetic force and clarity.” Coltrane said to Valerie Wilmer in 1961. “All a musician can do is get closer to the sources of nature and so feel that he is in communion with the natural world.” Coltrane’s language is very elegant. I find that sentiment most touching. “Life is whatever you make it, the traveler is the journey, what we see is not what we see but who we are.” You know who wrote that? It’s translated from Portuguese into English. That’s Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquiet. Don Cherry used to say to his kids “We’re there already,” when they would ask him “When are we going to get there?” We’re there already. And thanks, Don. I played with Don at the Baden Baden New Jazz Meeting in 1968 and never again after that, what a shame. We got on very well. He soon realized that I was very interested in Coltrane and said, “I have some stuff for you; I’ll give it to you before I go.” So I assumed that these were practice notes, materials, patterns to practice on. The day I said good-bye to Don I said “You got the stuff?” And he said, “What stuff?” I said, “The Coltrane stuff.” He said “Oh, no, sorry, I forgot.” And he fished in his bag and gave me an unpublished Ornette Coleman piece. Which was very nice, you know, but I wanted the Coltrane stuff. .

Well, for your homework students, please go home and listen to “Chasin’ The Trane” from beginning to end. I think you can hear the tension between the structure and the tempo, elements are required to hold each chorus together, and the elements which are really being stretched, for this, I think at the time was an amazing revelation that Coltrane would use this approach, and I think it was even a surprise to him because Kofsky asked him, “Did you ever listen to that record again?” And he said, “Well, I did, only at the time it came out, I used to listen to it and wonder what happened to me.” “What do you mean?” “Well, it’s a sort of surprising thing to hear this back because, I don’t know, it came back another way. It was a little longer than I thought it was and it had a fairly good amount of intensity in it, which I hadn’t quite gotten into a recording before.” Fairly good intensity … I think that’s quite an understatement, especially if, you know, you can put that into context back then, when it was issued.

I’d like to go to the third period which I would say started ’65-‘66 - the important marker would be when Coltrane’s contract with Impulse came up for renewal. There was a period where it seemed like he wasn’t going to renew with Impulse - that he was going to make his own label. And in fact he issued one record himself, the first version of the record called Cosmic Music. There are aspects to that that I would like to talk about. First of all, the cover was Coltrane’s design so, of course, it was not a very slick looking record. We didn’t have Photoshop and all of that in those days so it was pretty funky kind of graphics – a handmade look and design. But the important thing to me was what the design was trying to convey. You had a photograph of Coltrane paying homage to the victims of Hiroshima on the back, a memorial to Hiroshima. So, that speaks enormous volumes about Coltrane’s distance from American official behavior in the world. We want to try and make an analysis of the postwar period, all of that, how that war was brought to an end, but I think there are certainly good reasons to think that it was absolutely unnecessary for those bombs to be dropped. The war was won at that point and the bombs were dropped because it was a good time to test such a thing. It’s an awful thing to think, but that seems to be not an exaggerated interpretation of the history. Coltrane clearly felt the need to make this public prayer for peace. It is clearly important to him because he ties that photograph to his first record for his own label. The other elements, which are very important, very significant, are the elements associated with the major religions – from the Crescent of Islam to the Star of David, the Cross and so on. He is speaking about the need for religious leaders to deal with the realities of where we are at this point. If there’s one God, and they’re all saying there’s one God, but they all think, as Bob Dylan put it “God’s on their side.” I don’t think Coltrane had that naive view of religion. He was interested in what can we do next? Which he believed in some general way, that life on this Earth, has meaning, has purpose. How can we encourage our so-called leaders to behave more responsibly? It seems the very worse people are the ones that decide to be politicians or decide to be religious leaders. Until the people distance themselves from this stupidity – as I said before – 2 million people on the streets of London saying “This war is absurd,” but one man could take the country to war. It’s wrong. And that one man can still be in power. It’s wrong but there’s no mechanism to get rid of him. OK. That’s rather heavy.

Let’s talk more at the level of the practical affairs of a musician – Coltrane saying, “I want certain things.” He was also saying, I want to be able to help younger musicians. He had already established relationships with the players on Ascension like Pharoah Sanders, but he wanted to do more. And he wanted to have the record company support them. And in the end Impulse did agree to a series of Coltrane Presents kind of thing, and they did, I think, just the one record, Archie Shepp’s Four for Trane. As far as I know that was the end; of course by that time you’re coming close to the end of Coltrane’s life. I think if he’d lived longer he would have carried on further in that direction. He also talked about the limitations of playing in nightclubs. That made me think about the Village Vanguard, which is a nightclub, and some of the other, most fantastic music that they made, the Classic Quartet, was in the Half Note. I don’t know if you know those recordings? but some of them have been officially issued now as One Up, One Down. They’ve been floating around as pirate, bootleg recordings for a long time. But the Half Note must have been an even smaller club than the Village Vanguard. And then you think about, for example, the Bill Evans trio with Scott La Faro and Paul Motian at the Village Vanguard, again. All of this music made against the sound of people rattling their ice in their glasses, to cite Mingus, or chatting among themselves, you know. Cash register: ping, ping, ping. But somehow these places are OK for the music, the music survives and even thrives. I don’t know what you made of that film, ‘Round Midnight, where Dexter Gordon plays an amalgam of Bud Powell and Lester Young – I would rather have seen a film about Dexter Gordon, personally – but, that strange idea that the club is a struggle and what the musicians really want is to play for a football stadium full of people and bright lights - I think that’s wrong. That film seems to suggest that all these guys really needed was bigger venues and audiences. I think the very best music Coltrane made was in small clubs. And Coltrane I think would have come up against some interesting struggles with Impulse if he’d lived longer. I’m sure that they would have been pressing him to make some changes. The way he was taking the music was definitely away from commercial attitudes.

There’s just a thing about Ascension I would like to mention. I wonder if the title has as much to do with athe small island in the Atlantic between Africa and South America as was with the Biblical connotation? There was a slave ship called Ascension, one of 32 slave ships that left Newport, Rhode Island for Africa in 1794. That puts the Newport Jazz Festival in a bigger context than its founders envisioned. Charles Mingus, a man in touch with his emotions if ever there was one, may have had this in mind when he organized the Newport Rebels. Coltrane, in the last period of his life, expressed the simple desire to be a force for good. His profound interest in astrology and the roots of religion connect in my mind with the scientist-philosopher Charles Arthur Muses I made some photocopies of diagrams you might find interesting. As a young man Muses set out to debunk astrology as being nothing more than superstition. However, his research led him to the opposite conclusion. That’s quite interesting, you know, the French scientist Michel Gauquelin made a big analysis of the birth records of French citizens – thousands and thousands of cases analyzed and found that there were patterns there which justified some of the basic assumptions of astrology – that there are forces at work, holding this universe together; things are much more complicated than we know. It seems that, in previous ages, there was much more understanding of those things. More respect for astrology. I don’t know quite where I stand on it – it’s not as though I’m an astrologer and I don’t go to an astrologer and I don’t know much about astrology. What I do have is respect for the complexity of things, and for me the universe is held together by a sequence of miracles, and if you know the idea of fractals, fractal relationships, then there are miracles at every level of fractality from what keeps this table here to what keeps this planet in relation. To the Sun. All of these things and the forces at work to create and maintain them are miraculous – everything is alive. And I think Coltrane’s music was tapping into that kind of sensibility, a universal sensibility with emphasis on brotherhood and religion, on spiritual development. And on doing your best – “I want to be a force for good.”, he said. This is very simple language but it says everything.

Muses also made a big study of shamanism. The same scientist, very interesting man. In one paper he talks about shamanism as the “root religion” and traces back all of the established religions we now think of as being the prominent religions in the world, all have their origins in a past where the understanding of cosmic relationships was much higher in their development. Especially in Egypt, but going back before that- the whole relationship between Egyptian culture and African culture. The things that the Dogon people in Africa knew – planetary relationships, especially with the idea that Sirius was a binary star and all of that, these things are impossible to explain except by some previous period in human history on this planet- as having had knowledge – access to knowledge which we have lost. And where it seems to be best preserved is in the cultures that we treat with the most awful disrespect: the Aborigine cultures of Australia, the Native American cultures, the South American Indian cultures, African traditional cultures, the Siberian, the Inuit, all these people know stuff that we don’t know. And they’ve been telling us about it for hundreds of years but we’ve been ignoring that. I think maybe I’m now starting to rant with messianic zeal.

The major documented material on this so far is the chart of 12 tones related to the Zodiac, a copy of which he gave to Yusef Lateef and which is reproduced in his book of scales and patterns. But there are many other fragments of Coltrane’s notes and titles where Coltrane attempts to relate musical and astrological concepts. I think we deserve better in terms of documentation than we’ve got somehow. I’m not an academic and I don’t have the time to work on this . The existing fragments used to decorate CD covers simply do not do justice to the profundity of the man and his work.

I’d just like to finish by saying Coltrane’s music and life remain an inspiration for good. "

Evan Parker©2006

Retirado de http://www.pointofdeparture.org

Steve Lacy - Lift the Bandstand

2010-09-30T23:01:00.004+01:00

Este blog funciona assim como um bloco de notas em que vou postando aqui que quero ver com atenção nos dias seguintes. Ainda sem ter visto estes 20 minutos de puro prazer aqui fica, nestes videos, a história de Steve Lacy contada na 1ª pessoa.
Um conceptualista da improvisação e um discípulo incondicional de Bechet e Monk, Lacy ficou com o seu nome ligado á estória do Jazz em Portugal já que foi dele a primeira gravação de Jazz ao vivo em Portugal: o disco Estilhaços, gravado em 1972 por altura do 6º aniversário do programa "cinco minutos de Jazz" de José Duarte e produzido por Manuel Jorge Veloso.

Conheci-o no club "Sunset" em Paris aquando da festa/concerto/jam session que organizou para celebrar a sua mudança de Paris para Berlim, onde viveu, creio eu, até á sua morte. Foi de uma simpatia inesperada para comigo. Falamos de Villas Boas - que conheceu muito bem e de quem tinha muitas saudades, do Hot e de Portugal.
Nessa noite tocou com John Betsch (bateria) e o fabuloso Jean-Jacques Avenel, um dos contrabaixista mais melódicos e com um dos sons mais incríveis de contrabaixo que já ouvi, apesar de ser o tipo de som precisamente oposto ao que costumo gostar. Mais tarde na noite chegou o seu parceiro inseparável, Steve Potts. A música deste saxofonista sempre me deixou sentimentos ambivalentes desde a primeira vez que o vi ao vivo em 1977 (Chateauvallon). Confesso que a única vez que realmente gostei de o ouvir foi num dos programas "Jazz a preto e branco" produzidos por José Duarte, gravação essa da qual esta é a única referência que encontrei. Lacy e Potts a capella, e foi muito bom. Bem que gostava de ter o audio deste programa. Se a gravação andar pelos vossos lados, avisem por favor.
Obrigatório (para os que estudam estas coisas da improvisação) o livro de Lacy "Findings: My experience with the soprano saxophone"

"We don't determine music,
The music determines us;
We only follow it
To the end of our life:
Then it goes on without us."

Steve Lacy

THREE QUARTETS ao vivo no Blue Note

2010-09-24T20:31:00.006+01:00

Dos discos de Chick Corea que mais gosto, para além do fabuloso "Now he Sings now he Sobs" , "Three Quartets" ocupa um lugar muito especial. Comprei o disco (vinil, claro) pouco tempo depois do seu lançamento e talvez já seja dificilmente imaginável quanto moderna a música soava em 1978 ou 79.
Estas composições, agora que as acabei de ouvir (tocada ao vivo no Blue Note provavelmente em 2001) provam a qualidade do seu ADN musical e o potencial de modernidade e recriação que encerram.
Calculo que um público um pouco mais jovem possa considerar esta sonoridade um pouco passada, demodé, gone, not-hip. De resto o Brecker, não está nada na moda, pois não? Agora, neste Outono-Inverno usam-se tons mais escuros. Mas...don't worry. O mundo roda em espiral e não tarda nada, estaremos a passar por aqui again ...and again... and again...
Num próximo post colocarei a 2ª encarnação deste grupo "Three Quartets" com Bob Berg no sax.

happy birthday, John!

2010-09-23T15:20:00.003+01:00

John Coltrane faria hoje 84 anos.
Obrigado Trane !

Parabéns Sonny Rollins!

2010-09-14T11:05:00.003+01:00

Nasceu a 7 de Setembro de 1930! Celebrou os seus 80 anos no Beacon Theater no passado dia 9 num concerto com muitos convidados entre os quais Ornette Coleman.Extraordinário encontro e extraordinária música.

2010-09-14T11:01:00.000+01:00

2010-09-14T11:00:00.000+01:00

2010-09-14T10:59:00.000+01:00

Notas Pedal

2010-09-12T21:19:00.001+01:00

Charles Lloyd por Dorothy Darr

2010-09-02T09:17:00.002+01:00

Retirado daqui

Um post Parkeriano

2010-08-28T21:43:00.000+01:00

No "Jazz em Agosto 2010" o Electro-Acoustic Ensemble de Evan Parker.

EVAN PARKER (saxofone soprano)

PETER EVANS (trompete, trompete piccolo)

KO ISHIKAWA (shô)

NED ROTHENBERG (clarinete, clarinete baixo, flauta shakuhachi)

PHILIPP WACHSMANN (violino, electrónica)

AGUSTÍ FERNÁNDEZ (piano, piano preparado)

BARRY GUY (contrabaixo)

PAUL LYTTON (percussão, electrónica)

JOHN RUSSELL (guitarra acústica)

PETER VAN BERGEN (clarinetes contrabaixo e piccolo)

ALEKS KOLKOWSKI (stroh viola, musical saw)

LAWRENCE CASSERLEY (processamento sinal)

JOEL RYAN (sample, processamento sinal)

WALTER PRATI (processamento sinal)

RICHARD BARRETT (electrónica)

PAUL OBERMAYER (electrónica)

IKUE MORI (electrónica)

MARCO VECCHI (projecção som)

KJELL BJØRGEENGEN (projecção imagem)

Aqui os primeiros 60 minutos
do concerto.

Chet dixit

2010-08-28T16:07:00.000+01:00

"It takes a pretty great drummer to be better than no drummer"

Chet Baker

Trane + Winton Kelly trio

2010-08-28T15:34:00.001+01:00

"Letters from Evans"

2010-08-26T22:10:00.005+01:00

O "Letters from Evans" é o resultado da paixão de Win Hinkle, contrabaixista de Boston, pela música de Bill Evans. Obscura publicação em 26 números com valiosíssima informação biográfica e técnica sobre Evans mas também artigos e entrevistas com gente importante para nós (you know who we are...)

Download aqui.

Mais recursos sobre Bill Evans:

http://www.billevanswebpages.com/

Win Hinkle blog

Werner wisdom

2010-08-26T02:48:00.004+01:00

Um artigo de Ken Werner com o título "Playing for the Right Reasons" publicado na obscura publicação online "Letter from Evans" (dentro de algum tempo postarei aqui todos os 26 números publicados)

"I played for all the wrong reasons. I played to impress and to manipulate. I played to create self-esteem where there was none. I lived and died by my last solo. These reasons still exist in some part of me today, for the old self doesn't die easily, and I need love and approval as much as the next person.

But today something more sustains me: I play to love and nurture myself, to discover my higher self. I celebrate life when I play, often thinking while the music is going on, that all thanks goes to the spirit that makes this possible. I'm so glad to be one of the ones chosen to carry this message.

Recently, I've become more and more aware of the true purpose of the music and the people who play it: to heal and unite the planet. Music is one of the most tangible manifestations of spirit today. And in a technological world driven by intellect and ego, spirit is a hard thing to comprehend.

At concerts I see people who have come to be entertained and who leave just a little enlightened. It is the widening of the eyes in wonder, the melting of the heart, and the opening of the soul that is the true purpose of the musician. But to be this kind of vehicle, the person playing the music must put his own house in order. He must prepare by emptying himself of personal goals and self will so that the music may fill him and spill out of him again. To be able to let whatever wants to come out to do so -- that's the thing. (You see, such spiritualism is possible, even for an American on a straight salt-and-sugar diet.)

It is a simple path for complicated people. The piano is a mirror that reflects the temperament and spiritual condition of the player. If one witholds love and approval from oneself, then the piano is an unforgiving, complicated machine with too many choices and no owner's manual. The player feels a wave of anxiety just by approaching this instrument. If you could watch him making his approach without the piano in view, you wouldn't know whether he was about to play music or defuse a bomb; the look would be similar.

But when Horowitz plays the instrument and the camera shows him from the shoulders up, he looks like a kindly old man waiting for a bus.

The fact is that if music is approached with commitment to effortlessness over excellence, it is possible through the years to develop an ease that is truly marvelous. I like to say that I have more trouble tying my shoes than making music, and the piano chair (I gave up that bench business a long time ago: too much effort to sit up straight) is the most comfortable chair in the house.

I can remember when this was not so. I would contort my face and body and do any damage that was necessary to squeeze some little extra juice out of the music. Had I not met two people, Madame Chaloff and João Assis Brasil, I would have continued down that destructive road.

Madame Chaloff was a legend among music students in Boston. She was supposed to have taught Keith Jarrett and Herbie Hancock and other luminaries at one time or another. But what she was mainly revered for was some secret mystical approach to playing the piano. I went to Madame Chaloff, a woman in her 80's with the demeanor of an angel. Her golden hair had a halo quality, but I've always been susceptible to those kinds of visions. "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" were two of my favorite movies. But, as all who knew her agree, she was one God-inspired lady.

Until I met Madame, I thought you pushed the music out by the sweat of your brow. I thought that if you didn't practice at least two to seven hours a day, you weren't accomplishing anything. This belief was a major problem for me: I had problems practicing two to seven minutes a day. Music was a burden. And in Boston, where I was studying, the popular saying was, "I gotta take a semester off and get my head together!" The implication was that there was so much material to absorb that one needed to isolate oneself completely and do nothing but woodshed! Of all the material being taught, very little was actually showing up in anyone's playing. Of personal musical expression, there was none at all. But when I heard Madame Chaloff speak of "the secret of playing music" and how it centered around learning to play just one note correctly, I was greatly intrigued. Being basically a lazy person with no discipline whatsoever. I was hearing what sounded a lot more realistic than those hours and hours of practice. But it turned out to be much more difficult (or simple, perhaps?) than I had thought. Her concept of playing a note correctly was to "defy gravity," as she put it. This was to be done with complete effortlessness. The concept baffled me. It made perfect sense in light of her presence, but as soon as I got back to my room, I scratched my head and wondered what had really just taken place.

At the time I met Madame Chaloff, I was hardly ready to surrender to the meditative study of one note. It just seemed beyond me. We worked together for six months and I couldn't get it. Also, Madame was coming from such a high place that she didn't take into account all my neuroses, the head trips that got in the way of effortless concentration.

But this lady was definitely a prophet, a mystic, and a forebearer of my goals in music. Even though I missed the message of Madame Chaloff, it seems the powers that be wanted me to get this thing because they sent not one, but two guides to help. That was pretty amazing when you consider that her point of view is so rare.

A year after my experience with Madame, I had the good fortune to play in Brazil, where I met my second guide, Juao Assis Brasil, brother of the great saxophonist Victor Assis Brasil. He had been a concert pianist. His story was that he was really showing promise as he toured through Europe entering piano competitions when, suddenly, he had a nervous breakdown. Over-achievement (eight hours a day of practicing) had finally taken its toll. They sent him back to Brazil, where he lived with his parents and recuperated. He was in therapy five days a week and was practicing from scratch, just trying to do five minutes at a time of "effortless non-goal-oriented playing" (a phrase that rolls off the lips rather nicely). He had a little exercise: a teacher in Vienna had showed him how to relax completely his arms and fingers and just drop the fingers onto the keyboard, one through five. He talked of effortless piano, but his head wasn't in the clouds, as Madame's was. Because of his own pain, he could relate to mine; he knew that the torture of piano neurosis is mentally damaging and, if not dealt with, physically also. I have since come to believe that it is also the result of a spiritual malady. He was well versed in the ways a person could beat on himself trying to make music. He knew the obsession involved.

One day we were listening to Horowitz play on record. Juao was sitting there conducting in the air and enjoying himself. I was sitting with eyebrows furrowed, obsessively biting my fingernails as I suffered over Horowitz's greatness. I was thinking. Yeah, wow, that's great playing. I feel horrible. I'll never play like that. But wait. If I start practicing now, five hours a day maybe, by the time I'm X years old I'll be able to --- Juao must have been reading my mind, or I was probably much more transparent than I thought, but just at the right moment he startled me by putting his hand on my shoulder and saying, "kind to yourself. Enjoy the music." This was nothing short of a revelation. I instantly relaxed my whole body, which I had been unaware was tense in the first place. I've since realized that I had trouble listening to good music because it hurt so much. Oh, I could listen to the immortals and hang with that OK, but when a contemporary of mine really sounded good, man, that was hard to take. That sense of comparison had blocked me from much beauty. It took me years to detoxify myself of the belief that I had to be the greatest pianist in the world or nothing at all. You really have to avoid listening to a lot of music to believe this fairy tale about yourself.

Juao told me that after his breakdown he had to use the words "be kind to yourself" many times each day. Sometimes, in a fit of expectation, he would have to retreat into the bathroom and with clenched lips repeat to himself over and over, "I must be kind to myself, I must be kind to myself."

At the time I met him he had been practicing this philosophy and the five-finger relaxation exercises for a couple of years. He was able to take it easy on himself mentally while practicing with grace at the piano, and it all blended beautifully. What I observed was a loving, comfortable, and productive person who could now practice for ten hours with more ease than I could for fifteen minutes. He told me that if I practiced five minutes a day of effortless concentration, those five minutes would become ten; ten would become twenty, etc., until I could practice as long as I wanted. This was another revelation. Also, at times, it was hard for me
to believe it. But I realized that my life was dysfunctional because I expected so much from myself. These five minutes a day could reprogram me to focus on whatever I was doing and not about the overall result. I had thought that I was on some sort of timetable that was crucial to my success. But this concept contradicted that.

He had me try an experiment that would convince me once and for all that this was the path for me. He told me not to play anything but the five-finger exercise for no more than five minutes at a time. The exercise, which I have since shown to many people, requires just sitting at the piano, unloading all the excess baggage that you're carrying, and dropping each finger onto the keys. (I have described the exercise in greater detail in my last article for "Organica"). But he wanted me to do this for two weeks. I thought he was insane. Sit at the piano for only five minutes and then walk away? I had to prove my pianisthood every time I sat down. I had to convince everyone of my worth. But he was telling me to release the whole game and relax my mind and body and just sink into the key. I was sure I was going to lose my chops and forget everything. But because it was his home I was living in and because I was greatly influenced by him, I decided to give it a try. It was an uncomfortable feeling, on the one hand, because I felt I was doing nothing at all. But, on the other hand, I had never succeeded at fulfilling any other teacher's practicing requirements.

I finally broke down and played at a party of some friends. When I got there I had no idea what I would sound like, since I had done next to nothing (or so I thought) for five days. Then the miracle happened. My playing had gone through a complete metamorphosis. My sound was totally different, something like Bill Evans' touch. My lines sounded fresh and tasty and very economical. My chords were either completely changed, or they just sounded that way. There was a balance and control in my playing that I seemed to little to do with. It was as if I had swallowed some magic pill that transformed me into perfection. And the tape confirmed it. Right then and there I became a believer and disciple. It's been about fifteen years since that experience and as I continue on that simple path, the freedom and joy continue to grow, and to flow through my life, widening my view of life itself.

As the years have passed, the concept has changed to reflect my experience with it. Now it goes something like this: I am an empty vehicle, ready to be loaded with music which I let flow through me unobstructed so that it may reach its intended parties. The joy I receive more than compensates for the apparent loss of control. I try to stay in a state of gratitude. This I do quite imperfectly, but I try nonetheless, because in that state, the responsibility to play great falls not on me but on God. And just who is God? For me, God is the groove, the wind at my back, the life energy that envelops me and nurtures me if will simply fall into it. Although it's just an earth groove, I can tense it up and shake it off, or I can kick back and let it flow.
What could be easier for a lazy guy like me?"

Happy birthday Wayne Shorter

2010-08-25T12:02:00.003+01:00

Wayne Shorter faz hoje 77 anos. Obrigado por alguma da mais incrível música do planeta. Yeah!

"To a Young Jazz Musician" de Wynton Marsalis

2010-08-24T12:38:00.004+01:00

Excerto do livro

"To a Young Jazz Musician"
de Wynton Marsalis e Selwyn Seyfu Hinds

The Humble Self

"Dear Anthony,

Today would have been a good day for you to hang with us. We just pulled into Maine for a performance. Did the usual bit: check in at the hotel, head to the venue for sound check, back to the hotel to change for the show. Oh, and look for lobster. I also had a chance to talk to some kids about playing. They were high school age, a bit younger than you. People filled the school auditorium—dads, moms, brothers, and sisters, cousins. All watched the kids in the school’s jazz band. Those kids did okay. It touched me to hear them play so earnestly, to watch them listen so intently in their effort to get better. And I love the feeling of pride and expectation that pours out from the families as they enjoy the results of hard work on display. You should have seen the drummer; fifteen years old. Trying to be so cool we called him Ice. He looked great, but damn sure wasn’t swinging. Afterward, I ended up telling ’em the usual: stay encouraged, play with each other, and keep practicing. I wonder sometimes if saying “practice” is enough. Practice what? Talking with those kids brought to mind something someone once asked John Coltrane, “Trane, when do you practice?”

“I only practice when I’m working on something,” he replied.

Yeah, man, you can play tunes forever. Play enough, play every night, and you’ll get to blow on a lot of songs. Experienced players get to know the changes and play a lot of standards. But you, and those kids in Maine, don’t have Coltrane’s experience. Y’all need to practice—and practice the “something” Trane talked about. It could be your sound, a deeper swing, solo construction, or just hearing bass lines. The bottom line is practice”something” every moment you can. Don’t just sit around and wait for something to happen, that same something is waiting on you.

So, I spent some time thinking about what we should talk about in this first letter, and I came to the notion of humility. You consider yourself humble? Ever really think about it? Let me tell you, humility is the doorway to truth and clarity of objectives for a jazz musician, it’s the doorway to learning. Check it out.

When you start playing, you’ve got to have objectives: What are you playing? Why are you playing it? How do you want to sound, and how will you achieve that sound? When you have those things clear in your mind, it’s much easier to teach yourself, and ultimately, that’s what you have to do. No one’s really going to teach you how to play.

I’ve been lucky: Early on in my career I spent a good deal of time around great musicians, for instance Art Blakey. You might ask me, “What did Art Blakey teach you?” And I’d tell you “nothing,” at least in the way your probably meant the question. Art didn’t say “play your scales” or “play a G on this.” You’d start playing, and he would tell you something like, “You need to be more physical.” Or he would come in and say, “You’re bullshitting.” That was your lesson. What did that mean? Stop bullshitting. That’s Art. That’s what he taught you.

Today you have all these universities putting out loads of jazz musicians. But these institutions breed misconceptions, particularly the one that says you need great technique. How many times have you heard of an older cat grumbling that these young kids can’t play nothing but fast nothing? But what they really mean is that everyone’s being educated into believing that fulfilling a few technical objectives is actually playing. Style over substance. Like a lot of academic writing, piles of big words that add up to one response: “Huh?” If you wanted to become an engineer, certain basic, fundamental levels of technical expertise would just be assumed when you showed up for the job.

In jazz, scales and chords are belabored ad infinitum as is playing fast, meaningless lines. Thinking that practicing rudimentary techniques is advanced study will not take you where you need to go to develop musicianship and your personal direction, to develop your conception, and to unleash your own personal power.

In fact, it’s a question relevant to just about any situation in which you find yourself: How do I unleash my personal power? It could be in your family. It could be when you relate to your kids. Most relationships will require you to address the issue of how you participate as yourself without being selfish. And in jazz, the power in this sense is your unique creativity. Unleashing your personal power is the result of codifying, articulating, and projecting your own hard-earned objectives in playing.

You learn a piece in class. And you do it again and again—eight thousand times. You’ll be so tired of doing it that every time you gotta do it again, you’ll say to yourself, “Man, not this!” And if it’s part of a course of study in school, maybe you’ve done it for five or six years now. What if it had been for twenty-five years? You can repeat something forever or you can look for things. “Things” are possibilities in jazz, and possibilities in jazz never run out. That’s why the music lives on. Consider just the rhythm section alone. They can slow down. They can speed up. They can be solo-specific and change grooves. And you, playing with them, you realize the different things you could do on your own. You can interact with your drummer. You could modulate to another key. You could do a million things with it.

But I guarantee you, twenty-five years from now, you will go all over the world and you will play with people, and they’ll play the same basic vocabulary held by the people who play jazz now. Melody, a string of too long solos, then you’ll play a long one (even though you know better), then a bass solo. Everyone will play his or her own version of the common vocabulary. So start now, don’t accept this for yourself. Unleash the unlimited freedom in the music for your unique articulation. Don’t just stand up and play clichés all the time, all night, the same patterns. Use your ingenuity and your creativity.

And to do this, you must develop some objectives. When you have objectives, when you understand what you’re trying to do, then you try things as you’re playing. They might sound sad at first, but you have an objective—you’re working those things out. It’s important to understand that in order to be different, you have to do something different. The first inkling of difference comes with thinking in a different way. Then, make sure that that thinking reflects how you truly feel.

Let’s rap about your favorite musician for a second, Charlie Parker. Whenever Charlie Parker used to play Jazz at the Philharmonic with other all-star musicians, they would always play these loud, obnoxious riffs behind him. He didn’t like it, but they did it anyway. Why is that? Maybe, unconsciously, the others didn’t want to hear Parker’s playing because it stoked a kind of anxious competitiveness in them. They didn’t want to deal with the weight and power of what he was playing, and they most likely didn’t know what they were doing. They were’nt purposefully thinking, “He’s playing great. Let’s play loud.” It’s just the psychological impact of being on a bandstand with a musician of real genius.

Parker had specific themes to his art—for example, his root music, the Kansas City blues—and a fleet-footed conception of melodic virtuosity, absolute technical clarity—a way of playing the shuffle rhythm in a manner distinct from Lester Young. Bird was a great musician and he had a different mind for music, but the bottom line on the vocabulary and the objectives were clear. That’s why so much of Charlie Parker’s early material is the blues, the American popular song, and originals that have song form.

But at a certain point, all of that became unimportant to his acolytes. How can I explain? Well, when somebody puts on a two-thousand-dollar suit, you look at the suit and not the person. Charlie Parker’s surface style was fast, and it had a certain type of flash to it. Underneath, it possessed soulful melodies and the blues—Midwestern swing and other earthy elements that are comprised the foundation of his required to successfully carry that level of sophistication. But you could not see that. The flash blinded you.

That’s where education is needed, to open your eyes. When root objectives are lost, it becomes impossible to contribute. The best that you can hope for is to create some new form with an entirely different meaning. The proof sits before us. For all the talk of innovation, we don’t hear as much as we should, given the mountains of talents out here. People are not being moved the way Parker or Armstrong or Erroll Garner moved them. The late, great composer John Lewis once told me he would go to hear Charlie Parker and there would be all types of people listening: longshoremen, policemen, people who simply heard his sound and were touched by it. Lewis would be hurrying home and just happen to stop in a club for a second. But Charlie Parker’s playing was so gripping it made him stay.

When we teach Charlie Parker, that’s what we should focus on. What gave him this relationship to his environment? What gave his playing such power? You need to evoke that or some portion of it to get a good grade. The style comes after. With Parker there came a point where style was elevated over substance, conventions over objectives. Don’t confuse conventions with objectives. Don’t confuse conventions with the actuality of the form. For example, after Charlie Parker, everybody started trying to play his melodies on their instruments. Trombone players started playing like Charlie Parker; bass players wanted to play Charlie Parker; piano players wanted to play Charlie Parker. Granted, a lot of piano players sounded great in that style, but one of the strongest aspects of the piano is its capacity to voice separate melodies simultaneously when played with two hands. Now, because Charlie Parker played with a single-voice instrument, no pianists are gonna stride with two hands? Or take the three-horn New Orleans counterpoint. ’Cause Bird didn’t do it, was it no longer worth doing? Or not modern? You see, that’s the problem with following something as if it’s the whole thing. Who are you: a part of a fad, or a jazz musician?

As you grow older, self-knowledge becomes one of the hardest things to acquire. In our context, as jazz musicians, it’s more difficult than you think—to know what you will play; how your playing will evolve; whether you might say, “Yeah, I’m standing up here, trying to be hip.” Much like those cats playing with Bird, riffing all loud. They probably didn’t articulate that thought. But something said, “Get in Bird’s way.” Thus, “Mess the music up.” The first level of mastery must occur over self. And the first test of mastery over one’s self is humility. True humility. You look at yourself and say, “Man, I don’t want to be sad anymore. I want to learn how to play.” True humility has nothing to do with me, your friends, your lady; and it’s in such short supply out here, man.

Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there’s one simple test: The humble exhibit greater growth and development over time. Because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, “I know the way.” Of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of musicians that I’ve worked with, I’ve seen true, continuous development in eight or nine. That’s in twenty, twenty-five years, man. In most of my experiences with musicians, I hear them when they’re fifteen or so and I think, “Damn, this guy’s unbelievable.” Then all the obstacles of life appear, and by the time they’re twenty-five or twenty-six, I think, “How did that happen? How did you start with this much ability, this much genius, and this much creativity, and end up here ten years later?” Man, it’s hard out here.

Understand something, Anthony: You will hear the same thing over and over again, but you have to develop the requisite humility to learn, to love to learn. Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance puts blinders on. It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves, so you don’t stand in your own way. You realize this: It’s all about you. Your learning won’t live or die with your school or me. You have to become the center of your education. Once you realize that, you’ll understand that learning means figuring out what you need to do to get where you want to be. I hope I’m not beating the point to death, but I have to make you understand the importance of your personal involvement in your own growth and development.

Some people don’t show up for class. In truth, they don’t want to go to school. But that has nothing to do with any teacher. It’s your own time and opportunity lost. What if the commitment was a job? You might have been told to show up at 9:00 a.m., or hand in paperwork by Friday. And you don’t. So they fire you. Your employer is not going to have much interest in asking, “Why didn’t you show up on time?” That’s for your parents, or people who love you with such intensity that they feel a sense of personal loss when you give bullshit.

Real life won’t work that way. A jazz musician’s life won’t work that way. People don’t know, or care about your issues. They spend hard-earned money to go out and enjoy some music that they want to hear. They don’t have a personal involvement with you, or me. So it’s incumbent upon you to figure out: “What do I want to do? Will I kill myself to learn how to play this difficult music and develop my voice so that I can play something provocative enough for people to want to hear it enough to hear me play? What do I have that I can present to people that will make them feel better about being alive?

This is a tough thing we do, a tough road we travel. It demands your respect and commitment; it lives through your humility. Man, listen: Whether you’re a grizzled veteran like me, or a nineteen-year-old like you, or in high school like those kids back in Maine, as jazz musicians we’re engaged in the same thing—grown folks’ business. So treat it seriously, man. ’Cause it damn sure will treat you seriously.

In the spirit of swing."

Coreia do Norte

2010-08-10T02:04:00.003+01:00

Com os 7 a zero que Portugal deu á Coreia do Norte no Mundial imediatamente me interroguei quanto aos castigos que os pobres dos jogadores e treinador seriam sujeitos quando chegassem a casa. Afinal não foi tão mau como imaginei. 6 horas de castigo em pé defronte do Palácio da Cultura de Pyongyang para os jogadores e (a esse correu pior...) trabalhos forçados para o treinador. Mais pormenores aqui.
De passagem, um documentário inglês sobre a Coreia do Norte que vale a pena ver. Incrível!
links nos "comentários".

Estamos em saldos !

2010-07-09T00:38:00.008+01:00

Instrumentos e outro material musical

para venda

aqui

Treino auditivo

2010-07-09T00:30:00.003+01:00

treino auditivo

e já agora um pouco de teoria

Mundo da Canção

2010-07-08T23:42:00.008+01:00

O MC-Mundo da Canção foi uma das (a?) mais importantes revistas musicais do Portugal pré-vintecincodeabril.
Para além da qualidade do texto crítico, deu a conhecer muita música e muitas ideias em contra-corrente á "moral" e "bons costumes" do tempo da "outra senhora" (nunca percebi quem era a "outra senhora" mas todos sabemos ao que se refere a expressão) .
Foi uma publicação inovadora, agitadora, inconformista (que palavra tão fora de moda...) e provocadora do regime. Nas palavras do editor a revista surgiu "com o objectivo de lutar contra o cançonetismo apodrecido e ajudar a construir uma canção diferente. MC não aconteceu por acaso mas sim por uma convicção forte e baseada num pensamento que se julgou e se constata colectivo. Não se faz para determinado público, é concebida para todos. Usamos uma linguagem directa, sem eufemismos nem subterfúgios: negro é negro, encarnado é encarnado. Adoptamos uma atitude crítica: “propomo-nos à crítica e, implicitamente, somos matéria crítica".
Grande Avelino Tavares ! A falar desta maneira num país de gajos obedientesinhos, cumpridores e temerosos. Falar como ele falava (ainda por cima por escrito e publicado) dava direito, naquela altura, a ficar com a vida estragada, a ir parar á António Maria Cardoso ou á rua do Heroísmo (pra quem não sabe, era a sede da PIDE no Porto) ou se o dr. juiz estivesse mais atacado da gota, viajar até ao Tarrafal. Hoje dá mesmo vontade de rir ao (ou)ver uns tipos que se têm na conta de revolucionários/lideres da classe operária só porque levantam uma questãozeca que eles hajam mais "ousada"...
Falava eu da MC.
Isto porque passei pela página do "Jornal da Madeira" online e em fim de texto da notícia fiquei a saber que "O Funchal Jazz Festival é organizado pela Câmara Municipal do Funchal em parceria com o MC- Mundo da Canção. "

Foi inevitável vir-me á cabeça o bwana da Madeira. Um personagem que sempre me fez envergonhar de ser português. Um personagem ao qual eu assisti, corado de vergonha, um e outro presidente da República, um e outro primeiro-ministro, subservientemente, beijarem a mão.

A ilha não devia ter espaço para dois personagens tão opostos: O bwana e o Avelino Tavares.

Grande Avelino, já que lá estás e já que nenhum dos eleitos pelo povo teve tomates para mandar o bwana á merda, manda-o tu e diz que vais da minha parte.

um abraço

Law of Balance

2010-07-02T13:38:00.009+01:00

Steve Coleman está (para mim) constantemente envolvido em mistério. Mistério sobre como toca , como pensa, onde e com quem estudou. Na sua bio Steve Coleman afirma ter sido influenciado por - além de Charlie Parker, obviamente -Von Freeman (que
conheço mal), Sam Rivers e pelo baterista Doug Hammond (que desconheço de todo).
Aterrei, já não sei bem como, neste video e neste tema que mais uma vez, reforçou a sensação de mistério á volta da música de Coleman
"O QUE É ISTO??!!" foi a primeira reacção.
Alguma alguma paciência depois, cheguei ás conclusões que aqui partilho (as quais estão completamente em aberto para serem discutidas/melhoradas)
Este tema baseia-se num ciclo de 15 tempos sobre um outro de 12.
Ou seja uma frase de 15 tempos (na choca tocada por Coleman) sobre uma frase de 3 compassos em 4/4 e que aparece mais á frente, na tarola.
O ciclo retorna a encontrar-se ao fim de 60 tempos (4x15=5x12).
O fascínio pela matemática Pitagórica está concerteza, aqui presente .

Nas palavras de Steve Coleman:

"We live in a world of immense beauty. There are a multitude of forms with countless variations on simple themes. I want to speak here about balance and make some comments about how balance can be achieved musically. There are countless ways that architectural balance can be musically achieved from the micro to macro level. Since attention to detail has always been an important factor for me, and these things are not usually discussed, I would like to initiate some dialog on this subject. The most obvious kinds of balance that come to mind are the various forms of symmetry (i.e. bilateral, etc.) that can be applied musically, using intuitive and logical methods. Symmetry is a fact of nature and one of the oldest fascinations of humanity. Some of the more obvious ways in which symmetrical musical balance could be realized are through melody, rhythm, tonality, form, harmony and instrumentation. As well as the structural considerations of symmetrical musical forms I will also discuss these structures from a dynamic point of view, i.e. as they progress through time." o texto continua aqui

Mais sobre Steve Coleman aqui

I Want to talk about you

2010-06-25T23:25:00.000+01:00

Parabéns Eric Dolphy

2010-06-20T22:33:00.006+01:00

Ele que saiu de cena aos 36, faria hoje 82 anos.
Parabéns Eric.

Obrigado José.

2010-06-20T22:31:00.001+01:00

Bone to be wild !!

2010-06-12T04:01:00.001+01:00

Ensemble de Jazz da Univ. de Évora

2010-06-10T20:09:00.004+01:00

O curso de Jazz da Universidade de Évora prepara-se para encerrar o seu 2º ano de actividades lectivas. Os exames começarão dentro de poucos dias e neste momento (digo eu...) toda a gente está á volta das matérias, das escalas, dos temas e exercícios que iram ter que dominar perante o júri.
Uma das actividades desenvolvidas este ano foi a criação do Ensemble de Jazz da Universidade. O grupo representou o curso na 8ª Festa do Jazz (teatro S. Luiz. Lisboa) em Abril e voltou a tocar no auditório do departamento de Música da Universidade de Évora em Maio. Desse concerto aqui fica um clip. Encontrarão mais no blog do Ensemble

Bill Evans Trio - Finlandia 1970

2010-06-10T13:26:00.001+01:00

A música acalma....

2010-06-04T18:43:00.003+01:00

Memorizar temas

2010-06-04T13:40:00.006+01:00

Tirado daqui:

"Here’s one method that’s geared towards memorizing chord changes that was given to me by trumpeter John McNeil. This involves playing the piano.

1. Play the first chord to the song on the piano in time (maybe using a metronome or tapping your foot).
2. While playing the first chord of the song, say the 2nd chord out loud.
3. Play the 2nd chord in time.
4. Say the 3rd chord out loud, etc.

I’m sure that you all see the pattern that’s taking place now. This exercise is designed to allow you to “think ahead” when improvising. This way you are more equipped to anticipate the chord changes instead of playing in a reactionary mode (not saying that that is bad, you just add another asset to your playing with this).
Jason Palmer "

AS AULAS DE HAL GALPER

2010-06-03T22:42:00.006+01:00

Hal Galper é, para além de um extraordinário pianista e compositor, um dos importantes pedagogos do Jazz, um pensador incansável do processo de improvisação e crítico atento de todas as contradições e armadilhas que o ensino do Jazz encerra ("If you have to ask, you'll never know" - Louis Armstrong).
Em http://www.halgalper.com/ estão acessíveis entrevistas, artigos, polémicas e reflexões sobre aspectos centrais á práctica e aprendizagem. A não perder...
Entretanto ficam aqui uma série de aulas onde o sr. Galper partilha ideias e conclusões de enorme valor para todos nós que estudamos música e Jazz especificamente.

Hank Jones e Marilyn Monroe

2010-05-31T00:07:00.007+01:00

Contado pelo saxofonista Allen Lowe:
"Hank Jones contou o seguinte talvez por volta de 1976: Um dia o pianista Al Haig veio ouvir o Hank num club onde ele tocava. Acho que era o Beefsteak Charlies na 7th Ave. Hank tocava em duo com o contrabaixista Richard Davis.
Depois do set juntamo-nos e o Hank mencionou que é ele o pianista que acompanha Marilyn Monroe no famoso clip em que ela canta Happy Birthday a John F. Kennedy no Madison Square Garden. Contou também que depois subiu no elevador com ela e com e com o ex-marido Arthur Miller. Ela estava muito bêbada e Miller estava furioso e ciumento. Hank conta que lhe deu uma bofetada.

Este post de alto nível (ao nível da "Caras" ou do "Correio da Manhã") teve como motivação uma causa justa: publicar a fantástica foto de Marilyn Monroe no seu justíssimo vestido....

Prometo que o próximo post será mais substancial. Abordarei Kierkegaard, o pós-estruturalismo ou até o contrato de Mourinho com o Real Madrid, mas por agora fiquemos apenas pelo vestido da Marilyn

Yoga e performance musical

2010-05-30T12:49:00.001+01:00

2010-05-17T21:46:00.003+01:00

Parabéns sr. Satie.
Faz hoje 144 anos ! bonita idade . E ainda tão fresco... E não perdeu esse seu ar inocente que esconde a rica peça que você é...Confesse lá...se pudesse tinha varrido Paris a tiros de canhão...ou pelo menos, a bengaladas com um dos seus 100 guarda-chuvas.
Enfim...quer queira quer não durante os próximos tempos vamos ser companheiros. Não digo amigos...seria pedir muito. Iremos, isso sim, palmilhar umas ruas (e muitos becos) juntos. Espero que a minha companhia não o mace. Antes pelo contrário, o distraia. E se tudo correr bem, que o faça rir... Adorava Fazê-lo rir...
Até Setembro, sr. Satie

2010-05-17T21:29:00.005+01:00

Morreu hoje, 2ª feira, o pianista de jazz e compositor Hank Jones. Tinha 91 anos.
Era irmão do trompetista e arranjador Thad Jones e do baterista Elvin Jones, que fez parte do clássico quarteto de John Coltrane.
Tocou em centenas de discos com alguns dos maiores nomes da música americana, entre eles Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Charlie Parker e Coltrane.
Em 2009, então com 90 anos , ao receber um dos muitos prémios que lhe foram atribuidos ao longo da sua vida, disse: "Isto é uma honra para mim e também um incentivo para ser cada vez melhor".
Todos nós, apaixonados pela música e pelo jazz em particular, ficamos hoje um pouco mais pobres.

I'd do anything

2010-05-11T21:00:00.002+01:00

LENA HORNE (1917-2010)

2010-05-11T16:38:00.002+01:00

25 DE ABRIL SEMPRE !

2010-04-25T04:01:00.001+01:00

KONNAKOL II

2010-04-23T20:25:00.008+01:00

Esta coisa do konnakol cola-se á cabeça, definitivamente.

Dou comigo a falar sozinho e , ainda por cima, o que que digo é absolutamente incompreensivel por quem calhe de me ouvir: "takadimi, takachuna, takittakita takataka takadimi takachuna". Não é suposto, na minha idade....Enfim.
Para excomungar esta koisa, fiz um "tema" partindo do konnakol (linguagem rítmica do sul da Índia). Mas nada...não passou...continuo a takadimiar por aí...

KONNAKOL

2010-04-22T20:59:00.003+01:00

Zappa e o jazz

2010-04-16T15:20:00.002+01:00

Dia Mundial da Voz

2010-04-16T14:19:00.007+01:00

O mais incrível instrumento, o mais expressivo, aquele que, todos nós, pobres instrumentistas, sonhamos em imitar e quando, com algum sorte, conseguimos, dizemos: "encontrei a minha VOZ".
Enfim, aqui publicamente confesso a minha inveja da(o)s cantora(e)s.

BETTY !!!! CARTER !!!

CATHY BARBERIAN

THE "VOICE"

LADY DAY

JAMES TAYLOR

SASSY !!

BOBBY MCFERRIN

JOÃO

O MANO CAETANO !!

ZECA

2010-04-08T19:50:00.002+01:00

"When someone puts on a Gillespie record, I go someplace else.
It's already done. Almost everything I play, I say, "Oh, man,
I could have played that better. I could have used better taste."

-- Dizzy Gillespie

RICHIE COLE

2010-04-07T00:54:00.004+01:00

Richie Cole começou a carreira pela mão de Phil Woods, de quem foi aluno durante muito tempo. Fiel á linguagem do mestre, Richie deu nas vistas enquanto jovem virtuoso e cedo desapareceu da "cena". Algumas décadas depois - e muita luta com a adição a substâncias mais ou menos (i)legais - Richie parece voltar aos concertos e gravações. O seu virtuosismo (quase) circense emploga plateias transformando os solos em autênticos rodeos que (me) deixam sem fôlego só de ouvir.

Conta um user do saxontheweb.com:
"30 years ago I played a regular Fri-Sat dinner music gig at the Rusty Scupper in New Jersey. One weekend we are bumped by Ritchie. Though I had been playing for only about 2 years I had the nerve to go to the restaurant, and ask to sit in with him. He asked what I wanted to play. I said Cherokee. Sure, he says, and launches into it a capella, very up tempo, After tearing it up for a couple of choruses the band consisting of experienced NY guys comes in, smoking. He plays a couple more, then leaves it to me. I start to play, in a state of momentary confusion I think my horn is actually broken. Then to my dismay, I figure out that he's playing it in B natural, which he hadn't mentioned and which I am not prepared to navigate. Shell shocked, I crawl off the bandstand. 20 years later I was lucky to play a gig with him. I mentioned it, but he'd didn't remember as clearly as I did. We did get a laugh."

Pgraves in
http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?66451-Richie-Cole

Cherokee (Richie Cole)

Band of Gipsys @ Fillmore

2010-03-27T10:59:00.001Z

Theodore & Monk

2010-03-26T20:47:00.000Z

Miles no tenor??!!!

2010-03-26T20:34:00.003Z

Miles na palhaçada com o sax de Wayne Shorter após um concerto em Milão a 12 de outubro de 62.

John Scofield

2010-03-26T20:13:00.002Z

Entrevista com John Scofield (mediateca da Cité de la Musique). Aqui