Recommendations
Jazz doesn't get any better
09/10/09 11:46
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Links are now included to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Recommendations – List 7
Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961
ECM
Virtually any recording by Jimmy Giuffre with Paul Bley and Steve
Swallow is worth listening to, but the best starting point would be
this wonderful double CD [a repackaging by ECM of Thesis and Fusion, two classic Giuffre recordings from 1961]. The records include several tunes by Carla Bley, and a stunning remake of what was once Benny Goodman’s signature tune, Gordon Jenkins’ ‘Goodbye’. One doubts that the dancers of the 1930s would even recognise the tune, and, after Goodman’s classically influenced sound, they would probably hate the often quirky distortions that Giuffre produces from the same instrument. But it represents an original, very personal take on the tune, and a reminder of what jazz is capable of. In the mid-1990s I played the CD to a group of students. In the hush at the end one said ‘Jazz doesn’t get any better.’ Whether he meant the record was great, or that jazz hadn’t improved since, was left open.
Extracted from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper.
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.co.uk
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.com
Clement Greenberg (1909-1994)
Homemade Aesthetics, observations on art and taste
The Collected Essays and Criticism (4 volumes)
All Oxford University Press
I’ve been reading Greenberg’s criticism for most of my adult life and, although he has his detractors – and I don’t agree with everything he says - I have found many parallels in his writing to the way we should think about jazz. Here are some examples I use in the jazz composer.
For jazz to happen in real time once, it is essential that the music should, to repeat Clement Greenberg’s words, ‘determine, through its own operations and works, the effects exclusive to itself’. As is obvious, the effects peculiar and exclusive to jazz are not the written elements, the things that can be seen, but rather the things that can’t be seen, what the musicians do with what they are given. In a word, improvising. …
There is another statement from Greenberg which is of enormous relevance to jazz: ‘the acceptance, willing acceptance, of the limitations of the medium of the specific art’.
‘When it comes to aesthetic experience, you’re all alone to start and end with. Other people’s responses may put you under pressure, but what you then have to do is go back and look again, listen again, read again.’
Clement Greenberg at Amazon.co.uk
Clement Greneberg at Amazon.com
Michel Godard
Castel del Monte
Enja
Godard – an amazing tuba player – recorded this album in a 13th century castle in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy, built for Frederick II with huge empty spaces and ‘no obvious use’. Because of the castle’s octagonal shape Godard used eight musicians (including Gianluigi Trovesi and Renaud Garcia-Fons), but most of the music was recorded ‘in the inner courtyard under the open sky’. The effects are stunning with an intermingling of the two singers and the instrumentalists which is wonderful.
Castel del Monte at Amazon.co.uk
Castel del Monte at Amazon.com
Charlie Haden
Liberation Music Orchestra
Impulse!
This CD has rightly become a classic since it was recorded in 1969. Its message of protest is played by an all star band (Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd among them) and has arrangements by Carla Bley, before whimsy overtook her. Ornette’s ‘War Orphans’ is an especial delight.
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.co.uk
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.com
Steve Harris & Zaum
Zaum
Above Our Heads the Sky Splits Open
I hope you never love anything as much as I love you
Slam
Steve Harris’s early death was a great loss to music. I have praised the music produced by his group in the jazz composer, stating that (heresy!) I much preferred it to that of Sun Ra:
‘This chapter’s dedicatees, Steve Harris (1948–2008) and his group ZAUM, have created, in their live performances and in their CDs, sets of miniatures that show distinct compositional form, with some moments of aggression, alongside some moments of pure beauty. To my ear they could have been composed, yet I am told that they were completely improvised in performance. Some of the sounds are undeniably jazz, some could have been created from music written by a contemporary classical composer. They provide a completely satisfying experience in an area where, for me – because of the risk taking? because of my preference for some kind of underlying form? – this is rare. … (As an experiment, after listening to Heliocentric Worlds, Volume 1, one of Sun Ra’s most praised albums, I put on a random track of ZAUM … I immediately felt drawn in to the sound world, and sense of form, that Steve Harris and his musicians were creating, an effect which had passed me by when listening to Sun Ra.)’
Zaum at Amazon.co.uk
Zaum at Amazon.com
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Links are now included to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Recommendations – List 7
Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961
ECM
Virtually any recording by Jimmy Giuffre with Paul Bley and Steve
Swallow is worth listening to, but the best starting point would be
this wonderful double CD [a repackaging by ECM of Thesis and Fusion, two classic Giuffre recordings from 1961]. The records include several tunes by Carla Bley, and a stunning remake of what was once Benny Goodman’s signature tune, Gordon Jenkins’ ‘Goodbye’. One doubts that the dancers of the 1930s would even recognise the tune, and, after Goodman’s classically influenced sound, they would probably hate the often quirky distortions that Giuffre produces from the same instrument. But it represents an original, very personal take on the tune, and a reminder of what jazz is capable of. In the mid-1990s I played the CD to a group of students. In the hush at the end one said ‘Jazz doesn’t get any better.’ Whether he meant the record was great, or that jazz hadn’t improved since, was left open.
Extracted from the jazz composer, moving music off the paper.
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.co.uk
Jimmy Giuffre at Amazon.com
Clement Greenberg (1909-1994)
Homemade Aesthetics, observations on art and taste
The Collected Essays and Criticism (4 volumes)
All Oxford University Press
I’ve been reading Greenberg’s criticism for most of my adult life and, although he has his detractors – and I don’t agree with everything he says - I have found many parallels in his writing to the way we should think about jazz. Here are some examples I use in the jazz composer.
For jazz to happen in real time once, it is essential that the music should, to repeat Clement Greenberg’s words, ‘determine, through its own operations and works, the effects exclusive to itself’. As is obvious, the effects peculiar and exclusive to jazz are not the written elements, the things that can be seen, but rather the things that can’t be seen, what the musicians do with what they are given. In a word, improvising. …
There is another statement from Greenberg which is of enormous relevance to jazz: ‘the acceptance, willing acceptance, of the limitations of the medium of the specific art’.
‘When it comes to aesthetic experience, you’re all alone to start and end with. Other people’s responses may put you under pressure, but what you then have to do is go back and look again, listen again, read again.’
Clement Greenberg at Amazon.co.uk
Clement Greneberg at Amazon.com
Michel Godard
Castel del Monte
Enja
Godard – an amazing tuba player – recorded this album in a 13th century castle in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy, built for Frederick II with huge empty spaces and ‘no obvious use’. Because of the castle’s octagonal shape Godard used eight musicians (including Gianluigi Trovesi and Renaud Garcia-Fons), but most of the music was recorded ‘in the inner courtyard under the open sky’. The effects are stunning with an intermingling of the two singers and the instrumentalists which is wonderful.
Castel del Monte at Amazon.co.uk
Castel del Monte at Amazon.com
Charlie Haden
Liberation Music Orchestra
Impulse!
This CD has rightly become a classic since it was recorded in 1969. Its message of protest is played by an all star band (Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd among them) and has arrangements by Carla Bley, before whimsy overtook her. Ornette’s ‘War Orphans’ is an especial delight.
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.co.uk
Liberation Music Orchestra at Amazon.com
Zaum
Above Our Heads the Sky Splits Open
I hope you never love anything as much as I love you
Slam
Steve Harris’s early death was a great loss to music. I have praised the music produced by his group in the jazz composer, stating that (heresy!) I much preferred it to that of Sun Ra:
‘This chapter’s dedicatees, Steve Harris (1948–2008) and his group ZAUM, have created, in their live performances and in their CDs, sets of miniatures that show distinct compositional form, with some moments of aggression, alongside some moments of pure beauty. To my ear they could have been composed, yet I am told that they were completely improvised in performance. Some of the sounds are undeniably jazz, some could have been created from music written by a contemporary classical composer. They provide a completely satisfying experience in an area where, for me – because of the risk taking? because of my preference for some kind of underlying form? – this is rare. … (As an experiment, after listening to Heliocentric Worlds, Volume 1, one of Sun Ra’s most praised albums, I put on a random track of ZAUM … I immediately felt drawn in to the sound world, and sense of form, that Steve Harris and his musicians were creating, an effect which had passed me by when listening to Sun Ra.)’
Zaum at Amazon.co.uk
Zaum at Amazon.com
Showing the way
17/08/09 09:17
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bill Evans: Peace Piece from Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Gil Evans: Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess; La Nevada; Zee Zee (from Svengali)
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
Hugh Fraser: ‘Dusk’ from Big Works
Jan Garbarek: Officium
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Stan Getz: Focus; Anniversary
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be making a list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bill Evans: Peace Piece from Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Gil Evans: Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess; La Nevada; Zee Zee (from Svengali)
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
Hugh Fraser: ‘Dusk’ from Big Works
Jan Garbarek: Officium
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Stan Getz: Focus; Anniversary
Miles, a Dane, some Italians and Duke
13/07/09 13:00
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, Live at the Plugged Nickel
Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra: Jazz is like a Banana
Dolmen Orchestra: Sequenze Arminiche
Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band, Money Jungle
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, Live at the Plugged Nickel
Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra: Jazz is like a Banana
Dolmen Orchestra: Sequenze Arminiche
Duke Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Band, Money Jungle
Coleman, Collier & Coltrane
22/06/09 11:43
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Ornette Coleman: Lonely Woman
Graham Collier: Aberdeen Angus
John Coltrane
Malcolm Cowley
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Ornette Coleman: Lonely Woman
Graham Collier: Aberdeen Angus
John Coltrane
Malcolm Cowley
Cavafy’s jazz connection
04/06/09 09:29
Recommendations – the rationale
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Christoph Cech: Die Launen des Capitan
T. J. Clark
June 22nd 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records that I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Christoph Cech: Die Launen des Capitan
T. J. Clark
June 22nd 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
Bartok, Beckett and Bonati
04/05/09 10:00
More Recommendations
As I said in previous blogs the inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bela Bartok: String Quartet No. 6, Concerto for Orchestra
Harry Beckett
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia
Carla Bley/Paul Haines: Escalator Over the Hill
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bonati: un sospeso silenzio and A Silvery Silence
Betty Carter, Geri Allen, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette
Feed the Fire
C. P. Cavafy
Curios (Tom Cawley): Closer
June 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail
More recommendations will follow in a week or so.
As I said in previous blogs the inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Bela Bartok: String Quartet No. 6, Concerto for Orchestra
Harry Beckett
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia
Carla Bley/Paul Haines: Escalator Over the Hill
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bonati: un sospeso silenzio and A Silvery Silence
Betty Carter, Geri Allen, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette
Feed the Fire
C. P. Cavafy
Curios (Tom Cawley): Closer
June 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail
More recommendations will follow in a week or so.
Adès, Aiken and the AAO
05/04/09 09:07
The inclusion of Hoarded Dreams as one of the 200 in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ Core Collection, described as ‘a basic library of jazz records which readers… might consider as their first priority purchases’, was not only a well received accolade, but has prompted me to try something similar.
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Thomas Adès: Asyla
Conrad Aiken
Australian Art Orchestra: ‘Strange Meeting’
Jon Balke: Jøkleba! Live
May 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .
Over the next however long it takes I’ll be adding to this list of my Core 200 or so of tracks or records which I wouldn’t want to be without. It will be a mixture of jazz and classical, with perhaps some unexpected choices for a jazz composer to make. Also folded in will be some books and authors, painters and other artists, I have particularly liked and/or been influenced by. As such it will, in time, replace the Recommendations sections of this site.
The recommendations will start here in occasional blogs. After a while the core names will stay with the content being moved to Recommendations where they will be alphabetically listed by artist, with a composite list at the top of the page.
Thomas Adès: Asyla
Conrad Aiken
Australian Art Orchestra: ‘Strange Meeting’
Jon Balke: Jøkleba! Live
May 1st 2009: content moved to Core 200 detail .