Very much a work in progress, which will never be finished...
Jazz Artists and CDs
Geir Lysne’s Listening Band (www.lysne.no)
Listening to Korall from Norwegian Geir Lysne’s CD of the same name, I find it inhabits a different world from most of the big band writing we hear today. Although he can be more complex elsewhere, his orchestral writing in this piece is very simple and light, and always interesting. Rather than relying on orchestration to make his point Lysne approaches the piece in a conceptual way, making the featuring of his three soloists in different ways the core of the piece. Improvisation rather than writing become its reason. Which is where he parts company from many of his contemporaries.
The band have three CDs on ACT: Aurora Borealis - Nordic Lights; Korall and Boahjenįsti - the North Star (which has just won the German record critics' award). www.actmusic.com
Roberto Bonati
A Silvery Silence, subtitled ‘fragments from Moby Dick’, by Roberto Bonati and the ParmaFrontiere Orchestra, was sent to me by the Italian critic Claudio Bonomi. It was my first exposure to the work of Bonati and I’m sure it won’t be my last. Current pressures prevent a longer review, which will follow in due course. But check the CD out, and add the composer to the list of great European jazz composers.
www.jazzprint.it (no connection to the British jazzprint who have released several of my recordings) and www.parmafrontiere.it
Some other jazz composers' names to check out (more on them and others here when time permits!):
Jon Balke
Christoph Cech
Paul Grabowsky
Christian Muelbacher
Books on jazz and other subjects
T.J. Clark. ‘The Sight of Death: An experiment in Art Writing’.
I was turned on to this book by a review in the Observer, and by my previous readings of books by the same writer, art critic T.J. Clark. His new book, ‘The Sight of Death: An experiment in Art Writing’ (Yale University Press) is a diary of his thoughts and experiences while looking at two paintings by Poussin. On the surface nothing to do with jazz, but as a friend wrote recently ‘most composers/improvisers can benefit from wise words of non-musician artists’ and I found that Clark’s close analysis of the two paintings - supported by the copious excellent reproductions throughout the book - gave me a new experience of looking, really looking at art. And provided some parallels with my own approach to jazz composition: ‘Significant form is a matter, above all, of reduction - of saying complex things in the fewest syllables, with nuance and implication doing most of the work.’
And: ‘“Economy” here means happening on a moment when suddenly you realise as you are doing it (or better, you see) that enough is enough - that any more would destroy the openness to different (compatible) readings...’
As well as my connection of this to my own composing, I read this as summing up something that we can see is missing in the verbosity of much of today’s jazz. And one can also see the connection between that - and the general level of writings about jazz - with the final sentences of Adam Phillips’ Observer review: ‘It is not incidental that at a time when there is more visual art than ever before, most writing about the visual arts is either mind-numbingly pretentious and cliquey or boringly descriptive and without vision. Clark’s book could not be more timely.’
Other recommendations
Paul Klee and Malcolm Lowry - jazzers in all but name
These two geniuses of the twentieth century are joined together by a short article in Writings, which will explain my claim that they are ‘jazzers in all but name’. Klee’s work is widely available and anyone who goes to the Klee museum in Basle will know how prolific a painter he was. Lowry was far less prolific, creating only one masterpiece, Under the Volcano, but the other books he wrote are well worth checking out also: try his novella Forest Path to the Spring for starters, where he speaks of 'a break by Bix in Frankie Trumbauer's record of Singing the Blues that had always seemed to express a moment of the most pure spontaneous happiness.'
For more on my saxophone pieces based on Klee paintings see here.
For more on my compositions inspired by Malcolm Lowry see The Day of the Dead and Lowry, Jazz and The Day of the Dead.
Web sites
All About Jazz
The most comprehensive site about jazz on the web. Its Bulletin Board is required reading, ranging as it does from Releases, Recommendations and Reviews (British jazz reissues is a particularly strong thread), 'Catching up with...' (a chance to talk on the net with various notables including, soon, myself) and Current Events, where one of the threads is the impeachment of President Bush...
Fly, Global Music Culture
I came across Fly when I was interviewed after a recent talk in Ray’s Jazz in London. The subsequent review started with ‘At 70, this guy is still the hip dude who [recorded] ‘Aberdeen Angus’ in 1969...’ which was good enough for me, but the website is an exhaustive coverage of all kinds of music from all over the world. Their subhead global music culture says it all.
(The URL for the Ray’s Jazz review is http://www.fly.co.uk/fly/archives/europe_features/graham_collier_words_and_music.html)
Rifftides
The 'blog' of Paul Desmond biographer Doug Ramsey with a remit that ranges far and wide around the jazz scene and sometimes beyond. His recent praise for Deep Dark Blue Centre, Graham's first record, was a sign of his range and perspicacity.
Vortex Jazz Club
Now in new premises the club continues its policy of putting musicians on because of their music, with the hope that 'if we promote it, the audience will come.' Their web site carries comprehensive CD reviews from Chris Parker, 'let go' from the Times despite (or because of) his being one of Britain's best jazz critics. (His recent rave review of Hoarded Dreams has nothing to do with this. That was paid for by a pint when I was in London recently!)
More, much more, as time permits