aworks :: "new" american classical music

India (1961). John Coltrane /the story of a sound/

I'm reading Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff. The first half of the book was dazzling; a cogent description of how Coltrane's music developed and evolved during his career. The second half is more complicated and tries to make sense of the influence he and his music had on others.

The book has lots of interesting writing. The first thing that struck me was, following a description of how Coltrane was clearly trying to be something beyond entertaining and yet not be deliberately provocative, was this passage:

His position was not antisocial. There is no question that Coltrane's intent was generosity, and that he wasn't interested in the shocking-diversion aspect of modernity, or even particularly art for its own sake. I have searched through his written and spoken comments and unless I'm mistaken, Coltrane never used the word "art" on the record.

Then via Sound and Space, Richard Taruskin writes a book review castigating Julian Johnson's Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value:

The primary assertion, made on the first page of Johnson's introduction and reiterated endlessly thereafter, is that classical music is uniquely distinguished by "its claim to function as art, as opposed to entertainment." The whole book is an elaboration of this categorical, invidious, didactically italicized, and altogether untenable distinction, the purpose of which is to cancel the claims of consumers on the prerogatives of producers.

Here's India from Live at the Village Vanguard including Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet and Ahmed Abdul-Malik on oud. I've listened to it five times this evening and haven't even gotten to such "hits" as Chasin' the Trane, Naima, and Greensleeves.

India (A) by John Coltrane

Jupiter Variations (1967). John Coltrane /populist versus language/

Taking Jon Carroll's recent SF Chronicle column on accessibility in poetry to task, Ron Silliman makes fascinating points in his recent blog post...:

• Jon Carroll wants "an effortless, artless form" allowing the emotions to flow.
• "But when it comes to poetry, he’s like the guy who got into a boxing match with a kangaroo & lost."
• 12th century troubadours developed genres in the manner of technology companies today.
• Why should poetry be used to tell stories when the novel and the cinema are narratively superior?
• "a poetry centered around poems for other poets, around which exist various “popular” variants, perpetually crumbling at its margins as the popular genres & poets (Edgar Guest & Ogden Nash in one generation, Ted Kooser & Billy Collins in another) prove to be short-lived as social phenomena – goes on, generation after generation."
• Ted Kooser and Billy Collins are not Jewel.
• The world needs Pete Seeger, John Coltrane, Bela Fleck, Lou Reed, Meredith Monk, Tuvan throat singing, and maybe even John Denver. 

...as do the commenters:

• Jon Carroll was the first editor of the American version of the magazine Oui.
• The avant-garde in music is inherently easier than in poetry e.g. people own John Coltrane's A Love Supreme even if they can't fathom Jupiter Variation (from Interstellar Space).
• "One man's ceiling is another man's floor. - Paul Simon from There Goes Rhymin' Simon"
• Poetry is an adventure, not a daily column.
• Silliman is on the "Elliott Carter side of whatever poetry divide may exist."
• Newspaper managing editors want every page to be read by every reader but that was hard to do with a Webern review.
• Language poetry (as opposed to populist poetry) is like downtown contemporary music, "except that it got a PhD."
• At least one Art Ensemble of Chicago musician chose both avant-garde jazz and Motown. (1)
• 'Writers who "write down" to an imagined "common man" usually end up ruining their own inspiration.' (2)

(1) I think the Art Ensemble reference is instead about Steve Reid who has played with Sun Ra, Kieran Hebdan, and Ornette Coleman as well as doing Motown sessions. Original member Philip Wilson did leave early on to play with blues musician Paul Butterfield.

(2) Aaron Copland is the obvious musical counter-example to that last "writing down and losing inspiration" comment.

Naima (1959). John Coltrane /classic jazz and classic rock meet on the internet/

Friday and Saturday, I was listening to the music of composer Jacob Druckman. After several months of the timbral richness of Terry Riley and Keith Fullerton Whitman, maybe it was time for something with more formal structure.

Today, it's back to the more improvisatory with John Coltrane. No surprises in what I am hearing although the biggest discovery, via Evan Tobias, was finding JazzTube:

This site is devoted to giving you the best videos on Jazz that have been collected by Jazz lovers thru out the world  and made available on the great YOU Tube Web Site

Several hundred jazz artists are listed.

In hindsight, this is an obvious idea and probably something Google can't complain about. Note also companion sites to come include Blues Tube, Soul Music Tube, Rock Music Tube etc. although no Classical Tube, let alone Contemporary Classical Tube.

The Jazz Tube Coltrane page supplies six videos, including Naima although one needs to go directly to YouTube to find the code for embedding the video:

Wikipedia reports Butch Trucks' nephew has recorded Naima. To parse through the connections, Butch Trucks helped found the Allman Brothers Band. Derek Trucks, the nephew, just played guitar in San Jose with Eric Clapton (who phoned it in according to Joel Selvin's SF Chron review). I don't much care for Eric Clapton even though some of his best work was with the late Duane Allman. And the other Allman Brothers guitarist, Dickey Betts, wrote the fine In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (naturally, it's on YouTube). And I shouldn't be surprised but the Wikipedia page on In Memory... gets us back to John Coltrane:

Allman cools off into a reverie, then starts up again, finding an even more furious peak. It was this long, masterful solo that drew comparisons of Duane to jazz immortal John Coltrane. Duane uses one of his standard "licks" here, a quick three-note lick.

youtube: the recently departed michael brecker playing a solo version of naima

Giant Steps (1959). John Coltrane /clickety click/

The Fretful Porpentine, after seeing this robot  play John Coltrane's Giant Steps, isn't worried about robotic takeover of the music world:

Making music will remain a human endeavor for eons to come. It's the metaphysical soul that is the engine for musical soul.

It's a fun performance nonetheless. And for those so inclined, Wikipedia has Coltrane's substitute harmonic progression. Not sure if the robot understands the theory behind what he or she is playing.

Song of Praise (1964). John Coltrane /aws: part 2 of 8/

Continuing Sunday's Alarm Will Sound concert in Berkeley trip report...

I had extra time before the show and since it was raining, I headed towards the slightly seedy Mediterranean Cafe on Telegraph Avenue. I ended up listening twice to Song of Praise by the John Coltrane Quartet (Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison, Jones). 

Earlier, I had been listening to the light bop of 1951's Good Groove, one of the earliest extant recordings of Coltrane  playing with Dizzy Gillespie. With hindsight, one can extrapolate from that piece to Coltrane's ultimate achievements; I was listening to 1965's Song of Praise to see if, in the opposite direction, I could still hear the bop roots in his intense exclamations and overtones. Kind of.

To my surprise, McCoy Tyner's emphatic piano technique stole the song. His fast yet grounded runs made Coltrane sound superflous and flighty in comparison. I was almost disappointed when Coltrane came back in at the end of Tyner's solo. Still, the saxophonist is arguably, as the CD suggests, jazz's "last giant."

Mars (1967). John Coltrane /classic jazz?/

Jack Reilly posts about improvisation, composition, learning and teaching. In the middle of all that, he says:

What is the jazz? It is a twentieth century American phenomenon. Jazz stopped evolving after 1963. From that date to the present we have witnessed nothing more than a synthesis. What is left to teach is what has already been done.

I haven't listened to enough jazz in the last twenty years to say if this is true or not. If I hadn't heard Matthew Shipp in the last year, I nonetheless might have been inclined to agree. I'd also quibble about the cutoff being 1963 as it ignores late Coltrane, early electric Miles etc.

Maybe this explains how I ended up following contemporary classical music but not contemporary jazz.

Giant Steps (1959). John Coltrane

Via Anil Dash, a fun and colorful animation by Michal Levy, set to John Coltrane's Giant Steps.