Ken Vandermark

[Lazaro Vega]

KV "Some pieces, like “D,” utilize displaced patterns (reminiscent of Feldman) as a foundation strategy, others, like the monumental “R” (clocking in at over 18”), focus on static timbres of the organ and cymbals. Superficially this music has an introspective character, but when the listener’s focus is properly directed the tension and intensity of these performances come across with full force. "

Yes, this is what a listener not familiar with either of these artists, let alone the "genre" of improvised performance, needs to hear, needs to have as a peg to hang their hat on. The job of a writer is to open doors into the musical experience and the four-stall garage door into improvised music is the main point of the second sentence. In other words, when music has reached a point where anything is possible, the challenge to the musician is "what will hold your improvisation?" and the challenge to the writer is identifying the answer to that question for an uncomprehending public.

People in general do not have a lot of patience with an 18 minute melody-less, motionless, arrhythmic hunk of sound. Yet when facing an abstract painting, for instance, there's a docent or brochure helping the viewer understand where an artist's head was, what their intent was, or just what was the big idea behind what you're now viewing. Why is this a difficult thing to allow for in music? The entertainment element, that's what: to face a performance as representative of an idea is foreign territory to much of the press. Writers are generally about "I like it" or "I don't like it" which is ego tripping and minimal help to the artists or the listener. And then, of course, writers write: Jesus, I just read something I wrote that alluded to a "sprinting hi-hat." When one clarifies the metaphor by writing, a quick rhythm played on the hi-hat, or 380 beats per minute on the hi-hat, then we're getting past writing and back into the subject at hand.

What Ken is written here is a HUGE help, regardless of his OPINION -- there are concrete musical elements to focus on. And, frankly, I want to hear a writer's opinion, just so the next guy can come along and incant "rich chocolaty goodness" in agreement, or tear into him as this fellow has pretty much denigrated Ken's opinion as hackneyed. Opinion is what makes a horse race.

Yes, a writer is to set the music in historical perspective, yet that element of music writing is way over the top in importance these days, especially in the jazz "mainstream."

For instance, Kalaparush and The Light recently toured through Grand Rapids and the band's press was full of notices about this "free jazz" trio. Well, no. The music isn't free -- it is loose, but the extended scales, which serve as the basis for much of how the music is organized, are evolutionary ideas from Sam Rivers and Sonny Rollins, two musicians who greatly impacted Kalaparush. Not to mention the multiple grooves Ravish Momin, one of Andrew Cyrille's students, is able to deploy.

So, anyway, writers CLASSIFY information if the subject at hand is too daunting to handle all at once. That is what writers are trained to do, that and implied comparison. In school I spent the better part of a year comparing the Bible to The Odyssey to the Romantic Poets and how themes of God's relationship to man changed or didn't through all of them. I don't think musicians do that. They might see how Beethoven reacted to or added to what went before yet the comparison there may be more syntactical, i.e. musical/structural, than thematic.

Bottom line, Ken's review (which was intentionally brief and not all inclusive from the onset) is full of MUSICAL references as they specifically correlate to the performance under review. That is where it is.

Ultimately if writers were to be that specific we'd all be further along the path of entering this music prepared. Instead of saying "free jazz" or whatever, if a writer could identify specific musical ideas by specific artists, the way Ken here identifies Ornette's ideas, I say more power to them.

[Jon Abbey]

Lazaro wrote:

Originally Posted by Lazaro Vega

if a writer could identify specific musical ideas by specific artists, the way Ken here identifies Ornette's ideas, I say more power to them.

here's the sentence in Ken's review you refer to:

"Perhaps his unique history has given Tilbury the insight and ability to eliminate the distance between musical foreground and background (an idea proposed decades ago by Ornette Coleman) to a degree as yet unrealized by almost all other improvising musicians participating in the scene today."

maybe this reminds Ken of Ornette's idea, but I know John pretty well, and it's quite possible that he's never even heard Ornette's music (Eddie, on the other hand, I'm sure is quite familiar with Ornette's work). Ken is filtering what he's hearing through his own sensibility, even though Ornette's ideas have little to do with John, as he's quite possibly not even aware of them, and he's certainly far from working in that tradition, now or ever. all of this is fine, I'm just trying to point out that a "hobbyist" is a very relative term.

look, obviously we all have to filter what we hear through what we're familiar with. my point is that in choosing this record and these artists to write about, Ken inadvertently falls into the same trap that he accused writers of earlier, unless he's far more familiar with them then he's conveyed in this review. now if he were to review a Brötzmann CD, for instance, he's obviously deeply familiar with his work, and could lend some real insight. in my opinion, I think something like that would be a far better example.

[Lazaro Vega]

Yes I see your point, yet Ornette put things in motion that may have filtered through to your friend in an indirect way and still be relevant to the music at hand. In fact, Ornette blew the doors open, releasing the floodgates of exploration that are going on in myriad rivers, rivulets and puddles. He is to improvised music what Louis Armstrong was to swing. One could say Emmett Berry really wasn't in the realm of Armstrong disciple that Buck Clayton was, but it would be hard to argue that Emmett's swing feel didn't come out of Armstrong's example of that rhythm. There is a difference in sound, but feel...

Or, even more wacky, that Lester Bowie's rhythm and blues grounding notwithstanding, his sound world IS related to King Oliver's yapping mute work. Oliver was not about parody, as far as one can tell, and sarcasm didn't seem to play a part in his blues, so there is a huge difference in the emotional content of Bowie's music as it relates to Oliver's, yet in the realm of "freak" trumpet sounds Bowie's radical individualism was a personal reflection on Oliver's early example.

Which invites a punch in the mouth from Stanley Crouch, so there you go.

The point is we're on the knife edge of music in the moment here and there are very few people outside of the artists themselves and their close circle of friends who really know what is going on. Bringing in Ornette as an example isn't quite "wrong," because the idea transcends Ornette's version of the idea: the breaking down of expected parts for instruments to play in the ensemble is part of the creative aspect of jazz, whether it is Ellington deciding Jimmy Blanton's bass may be heard on equal footing with the entire big band, or Ornette's re-imagining of the world of instrumental assignments through harmolodics, or the Art Ensembles blurring of the composed and improvised forms throughout a performance.

I don't read it as a gaff on Ken's part, even though it obviously comes from his filter as you've pointed out.

Most times an artist is able to write about his/her peers the larger world is enriched with insights. Would be interested to hear what Ken might say about Gustaffson's "The Education of Lars Jerry" for example, and how such a solo saxophone record is different or the same as Ken's "Furniture Music." Another example of perhaps unintended historical similarities: Gustaffson's saxophone as percussion instrument approach and Coleman Hawkin's earliest recordings of "slap tongue" technique.

Then there was this notice about Muhal Richard Abrams and Malachi Favors, generally thought of as avant-garde musicians, playing with Coleman Hawkins in Chicago. p.386-87 of "The Song of the Hawk": "At the North Park Hotel session on Sunday 20 April 1969 Hawk and Roy [Eldridge] were backed by the same team who had worked with them on the television show -- Barry Harris on piano, Truck Parham on bass and Bob Cousins on drums -- plus pianist Richard Abrams and bassist Malachi Favors." Here's a picture of a post card for the concert: http://my.execpc.com/~penumbra/hawkins.html Hell, Muhal Richard Abrams and Malachi Favors playing (as guests) with Coleman Hawkins in 1969 as recently discussed on the chi-improv list is another example of how the tradition may be more ingrained and flexible than folks generally percieve it.


Those types of broad stroke comparisons are hard to cull from writings about jazz today, yet I think they are there even if unintentionally. When a jazz composer brings his music to the bandstand does he really know how it is going to sound? Not if his band is awake with their own ideas. Maybe that's not the best comparison, but when a recording is brought to an awake public, there may be unintended insights that heighten the experience of the music for all involved, even though the artist was thinking along very different lines.
?

[Ken Vandermark]

Hi Lazaro,

Your understanding of my statement is more to the point. Many people who come to a concert of jazz today (I'm using this term in it's broadest sense in order to cover the largest range of styles of improvised music) have listening backgrounds that don't include or focus on the idea of improvisation. And many listeners today expect the music that they go and hear live to resemble or duplicate what they hear on an album. There needs to be an appreciation that the pool for the new jazz audience is very unfamiliar with it's history and how the music works. This does not, in any way, mean that this new audience can't get to what's happening today or in the past, just that many of these listeners are coming to improvised music as MUSIC fans, predominantly from a background based on hearing indie rock.

Described simply, people who play most popular forms of music use the studio as a tool to help construct an ideal version of their music, whereas improvising musicians use the studio to document what they do from night to night, or they may release performances from an actual concert. These are very, very different approaches to the use of recording. Since in both cases the end result is a single artifact there is a current tendency to feel that that document is the idealized version of the music, whatever approach is made in the method of documentation. My point is that there is not an idealized performance by an improvising musician since their music, by design, is supposed to be open to change.

-Ken.

Originally Posted by Lazaro Vega

Walt, not to pick on you, or answer for Ken, but he wrote, "The real musicians who play improvised music search for something new to say during every performance, whether on stage or in the studio, but it seems that only a small percentage of the audience is willing to regularly participate in that evolving creative process." and your response: "I'm not sure what this means."

Maybe what he's talking about is how an audience, conditioned by recordings, expects a band to play the same way every night, just like the recorded version (?). That certainly is true of the majority of music listeners.

[Ken Vandermark]

Hello again!

Lazaro, do you know when George Lewis' book is going to be published? I've been waiting for it since he mentioned it to me a couple of years ago. If anyone is going to be able to assemble an effective set of perspectives and definitions for what's been happening in the last 30 years, even if the primary focus remains solely on the AACM and doesn't end up encompassing other threads of activity in the world during this period, it's Mr. Lewis. Thanks for the help!

-Ken.

Originally Posted by Lazaro Vega

Ken wrote: "One of the big problems the writers are faced with is the fact that almost all the musicians that are playing this music now, my age and younger, are influenced by and have played many, many different kinds of music- not just jazz other forms of improvised music. Dealing with these influences and realizing that old terms fit less and less well in today's context are issues serious critics are going to have to face sooner, hopefully, than later."

This was a new issue in the 70's: when the AACM first came to New York in what George Lewis calls "Downtown I," Robert Palmer and Gary Giddins admitted that traditional jazz criticism was not able to deal with the breadth of music they were encountering, especially the music Lewis was programming at The Kitchen. There's a great discussion of this in George Lewis's upcoming book on the AACM in New York.

[Lazaro Vega]

Not sure when it will be out, but I've read a big chunk of it in Columbia University's "Current Musicology, Numbers 71-73, Spring 2001-2002" which is a special issue on jazz studies honoring Mark Tucker. 550 pages.

The George E. Lewis article is around 57 pages, which includes footnotes, and called "Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM In New York, 1970-1985."

This is everything you'd expect it to be. Incredible. The notion of "radicalized individualism" was copped from this essay. Needless to say, contrary to Ken Burns, the AACM's international influence goes far beyond "white college students -- in France." Hahahahahahaha. That's so wrong. I mean, Burns was seen by 2.5 million people, so one has to deal with it some kind of way, and I've freely used it in classrooms with the help of the in-depth curriculuum set up on their web site. But the story line he follows after the swing era is largley away from music with an eye on commerce as being the arbiter of artistic value. Lewis shines bright radiant light of knowledge over the this whole period, and in fact does so in a way that is a much informative as arugementative. Sure, he casts the story toward his aesthetic view point, but it is a viewpoint shared by many artists over a long period of time, and the artist perspective trumps the intitutionalized commercialization of jazz since the '60s. He doesn't short sight the jazz developments in New York in the period discussed in order to make his point, he covers all the ground. It is a beautiful thing to read.

In fact, this is how he brings it home: "...the increasingly interdisciplinary and mulitcultural landscape in which present-day artists find themselves wreaks havoc with the logic of those who would confine African American musicians to nativist (re) presentations of a narrowly constructed "blues idiom" while arrogating to themselves the right to consider Picasso, Rothko, de Kooning, Proust, Stravinsky salient to their deliberations. Throughout the past century, African American musical artists have persued an ongoing engagement not only with Eurological forms, but with the world of art and music as a whole, in full awareness of their position in a world of art-making traditions. As with the work of earlier generations of African American artists, the current generation is free to assimiliate sounds from all over the world, even as they situate their work in a complexly articulated African American intellectual, social, and sonic matrix. In this regard, Julius Hemphill's challenge to the tradition bandwagon is particularly apt: 'Well, you often hear people nowadays talking about the tradition, tradition, tradition. But they have tunnel vision in this tradition. Because tradition in African American music is as wide as all outdoors...Music is bigger than bebop changes. I don't feel like being trapped in those halls of harmony' (McElfresh 1994).'"



To get a copy, if they are still available it would be very much worth it, the whole thing is interesting, here is the contact:

Cathy Cox,
Executive Editor,
Current Musicology
Department of Music
614 Dodge Hall, MC 1812
New York, NY 10027

curmus@music.columbia.edu

There's a chapter on The Enterprise Lounge and Von Freeman in the 70's (not by George Lewis, but part of this book from Columbia) which is a little suspect. I mean, the writer breaks down the room by race, but talking to Chuck Nessa about his days going there (Chuck is mentioned in the chapter) he said there was no break down by race, it was ALL black, that in his years of going their the only other white folks he saw were with him. Yet the discussion of Von's way of handling a room is cool.

Lewis is going to be the book to situate jazz in the present, again, in this new century. The mind of jazz is a very advanced thing (how Jungian) and Mr. Lewis has an incredible grasp of the concepts of music put forth in the period. One important thing to note, his research shows the AACM did not set out to create "avant-garde" music per se, the group's founders weren't that self conscious about being "new," they were focused primarily on making their own music, original music, in a concert setting. I love bar gigs, too, Ken, but in the 70's when Anthony Braxton was artist in residence at Michigan State University (and Gary Lane, or Laine, was broadcasting on WKAR in East Lansing) and Roscoe Mitchell was living in Bath, right outside of MSU, the whole trip was as a concert vibe. Other forms of jazz were being played in the clubs -- Mingus, Miles Davis, Chick Corea's Return To Forever, Freddie Hubbard, even Sun Ra -- but the AACM in Michigan establishing ties via The Creative Arts Collective was about concert music. That's how it appeared to me, anyway, as a teen age proto-jazz fan in Grand Rapids.

Of course I thought that was another world as Grand Rapids was really into the classic sound: Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington appeared regularly in Grand Rapids, and in the early to mid-70's Grand Valley State University dedicated their new concert venue "The Louis Amstrong Theater." I think it was an obit for Mercer Ellington I wrote for the Grand Rapids Press much later where the paper found a file photo from their own archive of Duke playing at Interlochen in the 70's. I didn't know they were going to do that, so it was a trip to see it.

But the dynamic was, GR -- big name stars; MSU, cutting edge concert music. And everyone knew about the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Fesitval, though my parents wouldn't let me near that scene.

Of course that was before I went to the Chicago Jazz Festival and heard Bud Freeman's homecoming concert from his exhile in London the same night as Anythony Braxton with Leo Smith and Ray Anderson did their thing. It became clear to me at that moment that Bud and his band were representin' for the cutting edge music of their time, and Braxton of his, in this marvelous simultaneous present.

Best, LV

[Ken Vandermark]

Hey Shawn,

There are clearly many factors that have affected the current enviornment for improvised music in today's society. I've been presenting some issues that I feel need to be addressed by the people directly involved with this music (musicians, listeners, presenters, record labels, writers, etc.) and that, from my perspective, have been either overlooked or misunderstood.

If we try and look at the reality of jazz as a cultural force what do we find? What's the percentage of all improvised music recordings bought in a store or downloaded relative to music as a whole? Less than 5%? Musicians who are widely respected as creative geniuses, like Evan Parker, are happy when one of their albums sell one thousand copies worldwide. One Thousand, Worldwide. Some of the recordings I am involved with sell about twenty five hundred. So the response here can be, "Well you and Evan Parker are peripheral artists, few people even know about you who listen to jazz."

What's interesting to consider is that our records sell close to the same number as many improvised music albums released on Blue Note and Columbia, which have major label support through distribution, publicity, and advertising. Almost all of the recordings they release probably don't make enough money in sales to cover their expenses, in many cases they probably send out as many publicity copies as they actually sell. From a business standpoint, it is not a system that can support itself. This would explain why so many interesting artists like Henry Threadgill, Tim Berne, and Davis S. Ware get dropped- the person who signed them and supported their artistry gets fired, someone looks at the balance sheet and says, "Why in hell is someone that sells three thousand albums on our roster?" and the artist is canned.

The labels that musicians like me and Evan Parker (aside from ECM) work with are small, independently run operations directed by a single individual who does pretty much everything. So, guess what, these records can turn a profit. Without major worldwide distribution, budgets for hundreds to thousands of promotional cds, publicity, etc., the labels who put out my albums sell nearly as many copies as most recordings released by labels with the majors' support, and since their overhead is so much lower they make money doing it. What's wrong with the way the majors' are approaching the sales of their artists' recordings? It would seem pretty much everything.

Challenging music is not going to be embraced by the mass media or public. It demands too much, like listening. Most people treat music like wallpaper, they like to have it their house but they don't pay attention to it. Major labels are trying to sell music to this audience which explains their enthusiasm for an artist like Norah Jones over David S. Ware. Jazz was only really part of the lives of the status quo when you could dance to it, sing to it, and it was on every radio station all the time- the Big Band era. The music of Ornette Coleman and the later work of John Coltrane did not pull jazz out of the public consciousness, it was pretty much gone by that point. People were dancing, singing, and listening to other music on the radio by that time.

If improvised music is an art form, which I firmly believe it is, why is there so much interest in finding a new star that's going to put it back in the public eye? To save it from what, obscurity? Why is Norah Jones put on the cover of Downbeat a couple times in a year when even she would probably admit that she's not a jazz artist? Norah Jones became popular with an audience that knows nothing about jazz and without the assistance of jazz magazines like Downbeat. I would suggest that part of her marketing campaign (which was clearly a success) was dependent upon giving Norah Jones artistic credence by suggesting her relevence as a jazz artist. The label organized publicity in jazz magazines and public radio so that people WHO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT JAZZ would embrace her as more than the adult contemporary music artist she clearly is. People in their mid 30's and 40's who use music as atmosphere want to be cool too, and the IDEA of jazz is cool to them. They've moved on with their "listening" habits. The rock music they turn to for the rest of their lives will likely be what they heard as teenagers and when they were in their twenties because there is a social attachment for them there that's beyond music. The popular rock music of today doesn't speak to them, not because corporate music is aesthetically different from what they were listening to before, but because they're not hanging out with their crew of friends and listening to it is social enviornments. They're probably raising a family or having dinner parties instead- this needs a new background music, hence artists like Norah Jones.

If jazz is art, leave it alone. Improvised music isn't going to suddenly sell one million records or one hundred thousand records- which is what a major label needs to really start making a big enough profit on their investment. And they're pretty clearly not interested in art despite they say- art isn't about homogenization of culture. What can happen, though, is that improvised music can reach many, many more people than it already does WITHOUT changing the nature of its various aesthetics. What needs to change is the PERCEPTION of those aesthetics. Ironically, this is about marketing. If I was twenty one years old today and had never been exposed to jazz, would I want to go listen to Johnny Griffin or Joe Lovano? My perception would probably be that that music is just part of someone else's past. I've had more luck reaching an audience without a listening background in improvised music because I've been willing to play where that audience usually goes to hear a concert, not (as some people seem to believe) by changing the principles of what I do. By putting our work in the same enviornment as other music they listen to it's perceived as MUSIC, which is a start towards getting them interested. Some of this audience keeps coming back, buys our albums, and asks questions. These are the people I am trying to reach- MUSIC fans. People who actively go out and seek music because it excites them. They'll get to the substance of improvised music because they've already found it in other forms of music they're passionate about. This is a small percentage of the population, but it's a hell of a lot bigger than the percentage of listeners that the jazz media is concerned about.

-Ken.

Originally Posted by shawn-m

Hi Ken,

Switching gears for the moment, I’ve been wondering about something lately:

Some think late period Coltrane and Ornette were the reason “jazz” fell away from the public’s heart. Some believe rock and roll and simple economics are to blame. They’re certainly valid points but I’m not sure they fully address the core issue.

Popular music seems to be an arena where solos –improvised or not– are minimized or completely absent, and vocals dominate along with major chords over simple time, more so now than ever. Isn’t the deck is stacked against jazz from the get-go and what does it say about the general public?

Only so many hours are in day and people’s lives are full of priorities. School, work, bills, kids and lord knows just how many other things consume attention and energy. With the limited time and funds left over, we (non-musician enthusiasts like myself) find hobbies to escape into, to find meaning in. A weekend fisherman will go on at length about the joys and intricacies of tying one’s own flies, but it’s of little meaning to me –my leisure time is devoted to other things. On the rare occasions I’ve been fishing, well, my appreciation of the sport is limited to the surroundings and the time to knock back a beer or two or…

So the average Joe is forced to choose between a myriad of pastimes and interests to explore in varying degrees of detail. Assuming I’m not far off the mark, can the general public’s interest be captured by the substance of jazz that lays beneath surface impressions?

If jazz finds common ground with the public, does it cease to be jazz?


P.S. I’m with Saundra and hope you check in from time to time after August.

Double P.S. clifton, pick up Elements of Style. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

[Ken Vandermark]

Hi Michael,

The fact that as a writer you're about to quit because you've been asked to review so many recordings that you don't enjoy is a perfect example of why the existing system for covering improvised music doesn't work. I've heard this complaint from a number of other writers I know. The fact is, even with covering so much material, EVERY release is not going to get a review in each magazine- there's too much out there. Wouldn't it be better to allow the writers the space to cover the music they choose they way they want to? Personally, I'd rather read an insightful, in-depth review of a recording from 1946 than a two paragraph statement about the new John Tilbury album- wouldn't you? In general, the great work ends up being discussed one way or another, a two bit review isn't going to really change anything.

If finding that space in a published journal is impossible, why not set up an online journal? Get a dozen interesting writers, rotate the job of editor each month, let each person author an article of their choice twelve times a year, charge a small fee for subscribing, try and get some advertisers interested and split the net budget equally- if it becomes the source for information on improvised music that it could be, are you telling me that the writers would get paid less than they are now for their work? And they'd have the freedom to really WRITE.

-Ken.

Originally Posted by Michael Bettine

While I agree that there is an abundance of places for the "jazz" or "free jazz" musician to play as some others have stated, you are right in saying that the chance to be in the same town more than one night is very slim. The chance of making a lot of money is also slim in many cases. Most musicians like Ken either self release or release their music on small labels that don't have deep pockets for tour support. Sometimes you can pick up some funding to assist, but mostly you are on your own to a great extent.


What a crazy story, but it makes a good point.



As both a performing musician/composer and a writer/critic (yeah, what a combination), I've seen both sides of this issue. As a critic, I would hope my editors would pay enough attention to who I am and what I tell them I want to write about. Still, they send me piles of smooth jazz (it may be smooth, but it ain't jazz to me) and Latin jazz CDs - both not my cup of tea. I try to inform them of the things I feel qualified to review and stick to that. I feel that my background allows me to write an insightful critique of the things I know and love. It's gotten to the point where I have nearly stopped doing CD reviews because of the material they are sending me.

So yes, in a perfect world all critics would be qualified to review the music they are sent or assigned. Still, we do the best we can as both musicians and critics....

Michael Bettine

[Ken Vandermark]

Hi Nate,

If a critic and/or editor is not going to even bother to at least fact check their work and make corrections when necessary, why write? What's the point? Why not, as most people do, listen to the music, enjoy it, and discuss it with friends? What's the motivation to write about the music if you're not serious enough to take care of the basics? Free cds? A chance to be part of a scene? Sorry to sound callous, but if musicians take the same kind of lax attitude about there work they should be, and often are, rightfully called on it.

For me, the money thing doesn't wash. Yes, writers are underpaid, so are the musicians. If most players calculated the number of unpaid hours for practicing, rehearsing, never mind travelling (a number of musicians I know have stated that in their head they get paid to travel and they play for free), they would probably go mad. The ones who really care about it aren't motivated by financial reasons. It would seem that, in too many cases, if someone's got access to the internet they consider themself a writer. This is an insult to the critics who take their job seriously. Why are so many writers willing to cut other writers slack? Is paying a bad writer more money going to make them take their work more seriously? Is paying a bad musician more money going to make them a better musician? If you can't make a living as a writer get another job to pay the rent and develop your writing. Almost every musician I work with from the United States has a day job because they can't afford to make a living playing creative music. Why should I have a more sympathetic viewpoint towards the financial difficulties of the people who cover their music? If a critic isn't willing to do the work and take the music as seriously as the people who play it they simply shouldn't write. Everyone's got opinions and voicing them is fine, buy why does a hobbyist think their opinions are important enough to set down for posterity?

-Ken.

Originally Posted by Nate Dorward

Hm, no mention I think so far of Whitney Balliett's crit? Or do his florid literary renderings of idealized solos bother people?

You can't blame reviewers of CDs for being concerned primarily about recorded history rather than live performance; or for not defining loose generic catchall terms like "free jazz" & "free improvisation" in the space of a brief review (you could write an entire book on the differences & affiliations--witness Derek Bailey's Improvisation). Terms are defined by usage after all & I'm not a big believer in the ultimate authority of dictionary definitions (the bizarre idea that the dictionary dictates rather than responds to usage). In reviewing standards of writing & factchecking are often lower than you'd like because the reviewers are paid little or nothing & the editors are similarly strapped, or in some cases don't care (I've have some miserable experiences with one online site in particular, whose editor for instance sloppily edited a review I did of a Kyle Bruckmann disc so it looked like I was saying that the only interesting musician on it was Tim Daisy... & then refused to correct this despite repeated requests). A lot of people are just fans, yes, & don't have a lot of musical expertise, & it shows (examples are legion). Still, I don't think there's reason to jump too hard on in-the-trenches reviewers: it's so economically marginal an activity--it's probably the only activity I've ever engaged in that's been actually slightly less financially remunerative than publishing a poetry magazine, which I also do--that you can't really demand a lot of these people in terms of professional rigorousness unless you can also propose an institutional mechanism (involving financial incentive!) for greater professionalism.

On the other hand there are more formal (& more durable) forms of writing on jazz. "Jazz journalism" isn't the same thing as more formal scholarly projects like Porter's Coltrane book or DeVeaux's bebop book. I like those books, in part because of their smart combo of sociological & musical analysis. I'm not aware though of enough writing on free jazz that does this: mostly it seems to be pure text, no musical analysis, even when it's done by musicians. Sometimes this is great--Derek's book--& in the more biographical/historical studies it's fine, but it does set limits to what you can discuss. For instance, I'm currrently working through two books: the drummer Eddie Prevost's Minute Particulars (largely a veiled screed against Keith Rowe & the e.a.i./lowercase genre, though eventually it completely loses its bearings & starts going on about the decline of modern football, the loss of traditional English pubs, & the general falling of the sky); & The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, a collection of essays emerging from the Guelph jazz festival edited by Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble (some of them of interesting though the format makes me groan, right from the standard-issue colon-ized titles: "[lame wordplay or resonant quotation]: X, Y, and the ___ of Z"). The thing that strikes me most about the two books together is that neither of them contains a single printed musical example, even though many of the contributors to the latter are musicians, & both books avoid even mild doses of technical discussion. I suppose I don't mind all the "theory" & often passionate debate about musical community in both books, but I can't help feel there's a huge missing GAP in both books as a result.

Probably more I should say & should rework the above but it's time to get the day going. Coincidentally, handing in a couple reviews I have to finish....

[Nate Dorward]

Ken--you'd said earlier that musicians do what they do "for love". Jazz criticism is done for exactly the same reason--because people care about the music. But you don't seem happy with the results of that situation, indeed are largely scornful of the results. So I have really no idea what you want.

[Nate Dorward]

Originally Posted by Ken Vandermark

If finding that space in a published journal is impossible, why not set up an online journal? Get a dozen interesting writers, rotate the job of editor each month, let each person author an article of their choice twelve times a year, charge a small fee for subscribing, try and get some advertisers interested and split the net budget equally- if it becomes the source for information on improvised music that it could be, are you telling me that the writers would get paid less than they are now for their work? And they'd have the freedom to really WRITE.

There are plenty such online journals available for free (Bagatellen, One Final Note, Paris Transatlantic, Squid's Ear, Ink 19, Dusted....), offering generelly pretty good content, so the idea of subscriptions is a no-go. A few, like OFN, do take advertisements, though.

[xricci]

Originally Posted by Michael Bettine
As a critic, I would hope my editors would pay enough attention to who I am and what I tell them I want to write about. Still, they send me piles of smooth jazz (it may be smooth, but it ain't jazz to me) and Latin jazz CDs

This makes no sense.

I can only speak for All About Jazz, but I pair CDs with writers who I know are (a) knowledgeable about the music (b) will enjoy the music (c) will feel compelled to write about it.

AAJ reviews plenty of music each month (close to 200 CDs spanning all styles). A good 30% of what we cover would fall under the category of modern/avant-garde/free (whatever) jazz. That's close to 60/month. Most of them are quality reviews written by knowledgeable people.

Michael B., if you're interested in writing reviews for AAJ, fill out this form...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com./php/submit_cdrequest.php

Tell me what you want and I'll do my best to send them to you.

Mike R.

AAJ CD REVIEW CENTER
http://www.allaboutjazz.com./php/review_center.php

[Saundra Hummer]

I can't help but wonder, what star was Ken born under?

This thread has hit some raw spots, or so it seems! Fascinating, it really is, and then there is the realization as to how many posters are getting up, and out there, over all sorts of things.

[shawn·m]

Very true, Saundra. Personally, and with all the lucid observations, I’m absolutely fascinated with this thread. No doubt Ken has a gift for articulating his point of view as do the other posters –which probably accounts for this thread drawing so much attention in a relatively short period of time.

Ken, I realize posting isn’t second nature for you, but I hope you choose to keep this going past August –as time and interest permit, of course.

[Saundra Hummer]

A brainy group, our jazz musicians!

[jasonguthartz]

Originally Posted by Ken Vandermark

There needs to be an appreciation that the pool for the new jazz audience is very unfamiliar with it's history and how the music works.

Originally Posted by Ken Vandermark

there are a number of listeners who don't really understand what improvised music really means, people constantly come up to me and asking if everything is written down or memorized

I think this is a central problem: while (and because) most of us here in this AAJ forum already "get" what improvisation is about and have a good understanding of its history, we tend to become preoccupied with whether *this* recording/performance is better than *that* recording/performance, etc., and forget that in society-at-large, 9 out of 10 may be able to identify the brand of hair conditioner used by Celine Dion, while you'd be lucky to find 1 out of 100 who knows that "Cecil Taylor" is a musician.

Without giving undue praise to our academic institutions, allow me to make this analogy: If a good critic is like a good teacher, we need music critics who can satisfy the needs of a survey course as well as those of an advanced seminar. A good critic can expand knowledge/understanding/experience of non-mainstream musics, can be an advocate on behalf of the work of particular musicians/groups, and can write pieces addressed to newcomers as well as to those already "in the know". And while the age of a particular drummer may not be the most important aspect of one's argument, one's credibility is not enhanced by misstating facts easily checked. In our Information Age, it's too easy for a dumb error to be repeated and repeated until it becomes fact.

[On that note, a quick tangent about Lazaro's posting (in #83) regarding Coleman Hawkins crossing paths with Malachi Favors and Muhal Richard Abrams, prompted by a query I posted to the chi-improv list:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group...v/message/7528
Hal Rammel responded that he was at that concert and doesn't remember Abrams & Favors performing with Hawk, but rather that they performed with others in a different set that same afternoon. So at this point, either Hawk did in fact perform with Favors & Abrams, or the author of that book, John Chilton, passed along bad information or inadvertently turned a vague bit of info (e.g., someone could have told him Hawk played "on a bill" with Abrams & Favors) into a definitive statement about something else. In any case, until I or others do more research to resolve the issue, I don't think this "fact" should be perpetuated without qualification about its veracity.]

Unfortunately given the limited resources for arts education and discourse, we place an unreasonable burden on critics to cover all this territory, from adult education to doctoral thesis. The problem is not unique to jazz and can be observed in all the arts, perhaps most acutely in that other great 20th-Century artform: cinema.
(You think "jazz/improv" or "avant-garde" music has it tough? Not that's its much comfort, but take a moment to consider the challenges faced by those trying to get a handle (or eye) on any of the works of important filmmakers like Peter Kubelka, Gregory Markopoulos, Michael Snow, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, and even Andy Warhol, whom most can identify but not as a filmmaker.)

Good criticism will never be outdated. The forms may change (liner notes and newspaper reviews may be obsolete), but critical writings about art and aesthetic experience will always be useful in making the familiar unfamiliar and vice versa. A good critic can verbalize aesthetic responses, provide cultural/historical contexts, and point out formal relationships -- a practice which seems as worthwhile as music (or film, dance, etc.) itself as a way of discovering and celebrating aspects of life and a means of sharing our experiences with one another.

On a different note, how about musicians and record labels reviving the practice of releasing "alternate takes"? File sharing/downloading over the Internet makes it easier to supplement "official" albums with such material, and the availability of multiple takes of a particular composition (whether from a particular recording session or from various live dates) might help listeners get a little closer to the "6-months-at-the-Five-Spot" experience, though still lacking the crucial visual aspects (aspects which DVD may help address?). It might make it easier for writers and listeners alike to identify the essence of what jazz/improv musicians do: simultaneously generating, altering and navigating parameters during the course of performance, sometimes with highly effective results, sometimes not-so-much.

While I'm typing, a recommendation for another jazz/improv book: Graham Lock's "Blutopia"
and a book which did more for me in expanding my appreciation of art in all its forms: John Cage's "Silence"


-Jason G
Chicago, IL


Q: Are you Catholic?
Michael Snow: No.
Q: Are you religious?
Snow: No.
Q: Do you believe in anything?
Snow: Anything? Yes, I believe in anything.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issue..._feature2.html

[Lazaro Vega]

Thanks for that clarification, Jason.

[clifton]

Ken - Thanks for responding to my first post. I was most impressed by your discussion of what I call the "internationalization" of jazz. I firmly |
believe that the course of jazz innovation and growth in the 21st Century is something I'd like to call "diversity" or "inclusion", in which improvising, or jazz, musicians draw from their own cultures to create new and fresh jazz idioms. I'm thinking, for example, of the Italian trumpeter Pino Minafra, whose music, at least to my ears, sounds like a street carnival that swings, sort of. If internationalism represents musicians from other nations coming to terms with American music and its implications, it also represents American jazz musicians coming to grips with other musics and integrating them with jazz performance. (i hope this makes sense.)

Regarding your statement on attending live performances as opposed to dependence on CD's, I wish I could attend more concerts, but I'm seriously disabled and I don't travel well. But in my CD reviews and AAJ posts I'm hoping to establish some competence as a music critic. We'll see. Oh yes. IMHO means "in my humble opinion", sorry 'bout that.

[Ken Vandermark]

Hi Clifton,

Sorry for the length of time it has taken me to respond, I've been kind of buried. I can't speak for other artists, but I approach recording as an attempt to either document ongoing ensembles on a yearly basis in order to indicate their developments, or as a way to document special projects that might not be occur again. It would be absolutely ridiculous for me to expect that an individual should seek out and buy every one of my recordings, despite how much effort I, and the other people involved, put into each production. Certain records appeal to certain listeners, some of the audience likes most of what I do, some of it likes almost nothing.

Like you, I like a wide variety of music so I go to a wide variety of concerts and buy as many recordings as I can afford by different artists. Certain artists are more important to me, so I own pretty much everything I can find by Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Joe Morris, Eric Dolphy, Ab Baars, and Thelonious Monk. This doesn't mean that I'm not listening to Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Coleman Hawkins, Jimmy Lyons, Derek Bailey, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Sun Ra, Stan Getz, Cecil Taylor, Dexter Gordon, Misha Mengelberg, Charles Mingus, Lennie Tristano, Joe McPhee, Archie Shepp, Misha Mengelberg, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Axel Doerner, and Joe Maneri [to keep it to improvised music]. My point is, a variety of perspectives are more interesting to me. The issue is that there seems to be an assumption that a listener can fully appreciate a musician's work from a few albums, then move on. Players develop and change, I find this fascinating and want to hear as much of it as I can. But with the number of recordings available to the public, both past and present, it means that an individual is going to miss some things. That's why I rely on friends who know much more than me about certain genres of music to help point me in the listening direction that might be most useful to me when it comes to these styles.

I'm not familiar with Maria Schneider's disk you mention, and with Artist Share. Can you describe what it's all about?

-Ken.

Originally Posted by clifton

Ken: One of the factors I have to contend with is the sheer abundance of excellent music on CD. I gather that digital technology has made it less expensive to record, and as a result, many more musicians are making their work available. But even though I receive promotional copies from AAJ (2 on Atavistic in my latest batch), I want to hear everybody, including Italian musicians like Carlo Actis Dato and Dutch musicians like Eric Boeren. Because CD's aren't cheap, I've got to spend my CD dollars intelligently.

I bought two Vandermark Five CD's on the Atavistic website, and I don't regret it. But my next record purchase: I could buy more Vandermark, but I also dig William Parker, and Dave Douglas, and many "straight ahead" artists, not to mention reissues. With so much to choose from, what do you recommend a jazz listener do?

In addition, I quite admire what Maria Schneider is doing with her CD "Concert In The Garden" and with Artist Share. Are you familiar with Artist Share and if so, could you please comment on its goals and procedures?

http://www.artistshare.com

[Ken Vandermark]

Hello Walt,

Just a quick note regarding the merchandise table at the Empty Bottle Festival last year. Kurt Kellison, who runs Atavistic, volunteered to run the table. He brought the current improvised music recordings Atavistic has released, plus albums from the Unheard Music Series that John Corbett has helped archive. Kurt put out and sold any recordings that musicians performing at the festival had brought with them. Very many of them did not have their recordings- this was the responsibility of the musicians, not Kurt Kellison or the festival, so the lack of representation by contemporary albums at the festival was because many of the musicians present didn't have the business sense to bring them along.

-Ken.

Originally Posted by Walt Davis

I think young people (or old people) discovering Ornette et al should be encouraged to discover current artists (which as you note Ornette and Cecil still qualify). If they already know current artists, that's grand.

To put it another way, I've met many fans of older jazz who know nothing about current artists. I have never met a fan of current jazz who does not eventually explore past jazz. (I've met a couple who didn't like it, but they gave it a try)



Because the music of the present will speak to them because it is music of their time.

Remember also Ken's point that today's musicians draw from all the music they've encountered and the categories of the past may not apply well. Listeners without knowledge of Ornette et al will still find many familiar reference points in today's music.



I didn't say anything about 'cross over'. But the better way to 'cross over', IMHO, is from present to past. The only other musical genre that relies so heavily on its past is classical and that's another musical genre that has a teeny, tiny audience for new works. (though classical presenters are beginning to discover that there is an audience out there for new work outside of their traditional audience) Jazz has been trying to build its audience for contemporary performers through an emphasis on classic jazz for about 40 years now ... and look where it's led us.

I was at the 2003 Empty Bottle fest. Three nights of great contemporary performers. At the merch table, at least half of the cds available were of music recorded 20-30 years ago, most of it not by the artists performing (a couple of whom had nothing on sale). For a festival of such forward-looking music, the merch table was a serious disappointment.

Recall Ken's anecdote about the Lytton fans arguing. Ken puts the blame on recordings. I would put the blame on fetishization of the past (or over-fetishization if you prefer).



I can't argue with that.