Links
Anthony Braxton interview: Part One, Part Two
This next one is new to me, but not new in the just-published sense:
Amina Claudine Myers article/interview by George Lewis
A video preview of an upcoming documentary about Teo Macero
The Listener: "As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a science of empathy takes on new dimension."
I just finished Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia: interesting if not as engaging as the other reading I've completed recently on music cognition, most notably in a similar accessible writing style, Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music. Heavy on the case studies, which are fascinating, but a little too light on presenting new or interesting theories and ideas about the cases themselves. If you're interested in all things music cognition, there's a blog that might be of interest to you.
Critical Improv Intensive by David R. Adler: An article about Ajay Heble and the "Improvisation, Community and Social Practice" (ICSP) research project.
Woody Herman opens for Led Zeppelin (05/1969)
There's lots of great music to be had in Chicago around the holidays.
Nicole Mitchell is playing the Chicago debut of her Xenogenesis suite that she debuted at the Vision Festival this year at the Chicago Cultural Center this Friday on December 7th at 7 PM.
At the Velvet Lounge we have two rare appearances by Famoudou Don Moye of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, playing with his own group on the 10th and the 17th.
Dee Alexander and Warren Smith are doing an Abby Lincoln/Max Roach Freedom Now Tribute on the 14th and 15th.
Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake are leading a group including Nicole Mitchell, Josh Abrams, and Jeff Parker on the 21st and 22nd.
Ms. Mitchell will also lead her own groups on the 28th and 29th.
Gerald Cleaver makes a rare Chicago appearance to play the Gallery 37 Downtown Sound series on December 17th.
Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang will play their annual Winter Solstice concerts at Links Hall on December 21st through 23rd, bright and early at 6 AM at Links Hall. If you've never been, it's a fantastic event and a great way to welcome the winter.
Peter Brötzmann continues his run of shows all over the city this week, including many members of his Chicago Tentet.
The Engines will play a record release show at the Hideout in support of their new release on Okka Disk.
Von Freeman will ring in 2008 at the Green Mill, as has become the tradition.
Not a bad run of music to close out the year.
In the meantime:
George E. Lewis is profiled in advance of a trip to Glasgow
Tyshawn Sorey is named a rookie of the year by Francis Davis. Mr. Davis also agrees with my assessment of Amir ElSaffar's Two Rivers recording, which you may have read about recently here on the 'slope.
Dave Douglas has offered up a track for remixing. You can be sure I'm going to dub Moonshine into the stone age, and I'll post the results here.
The New York Times writes about what I've always suspected: rocks may have consciousness.
Amina Claudine Myers was profiled in advance of her visit to Vancouver.
More soon!
A slew of interview links I've been hoarding
Paul Berliner, author of Thinking In Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. He's also an expert in the mbira music of the Shona of Zimbabwe. A lot of the interview relates jazz and mbira music to each other:
Despite the features that distinguish the languages of jazz and mbira music, there are similarities. You might think that because the interlocking aesthetic of mbira music dictates a very tight mesh between the kushaura and kutsinhira parts, that that might inhibit improvisers, compared with the parameters jazz musicians typically work within. Paradoxically, when mbira players establish a powerful groove within the complementary interlocking relationship, it generates a great feeling of mutual support which inspires greater freedom of expression. At such moments, artists describe a flood of ideas coming to them, and they begin departing from their pre-composed parts to experiment with developing new figures, trying out new cross-rhythms, taking harmonic liberties.
Ornette Coleman - "I just keep trying to find better notes. For me, better notes make my day." Ornette on the word jazz:
That's not a bad word. It's not the only word in English. And probably for sound, when you say jazz, that's a style. It doesn't represent sound. It just represents style. And that's the same for classical music. It represents a style. But sound itself doesn't really have to have a title for it to have meaning. I've heard "it sounds good" and "it sounds bad." You'll know if it sounds good or sounds bad because of how it makes you feel emotionally.
Ben Ratliff on his new Coltrane bio. Discussing the topic of Fear of Jazz:
I think because it’s serious, because it has a long history, because it has intellectual overtones, but also because it’s sort of earnest. Part of the reason jazz doesn’t fit within pop culture anymore is because it can’t really be self-consciously rebellious and shocking, which is very standard stuff now. And I guess that’s why there’s this cliché that you turn thirty and all of a sudden start to think, “Maybe I should learn about jazz, because now I’m old enough.”
An interview with producer Don Was. The Was (Not Was) album What Up Dog? still gets some play on my stereo. Sounds like Detroit was a happening place in the 60s, where Was grew up:
I remember going downtown [in Detroit] where there was a poet [and] cultural leader named Jon Sinclair in Detroit who had Pharaoh Saunders jamming with members of the MC5 on acid one night. And it was a rich culture. George Clinton played at my high school. Biggie and The Stooges played at my high school. All these guys were doing something that no one had ever done before. So that’s the aesthetic that I come from. My band, Was Not Was, is kind of an amalgamation of all those disparate elements, and we’re always looking to break down the barriers.
A report from Columbia's Harlem Festival of Global Jazz. I wish there was more detail but it certainly sounds like a conference I would have liked to attend.
A rare Kidd Jordan interview. Also check out this 2006 account of helping clean out Kidd Jordan's hurricane ravaged home.
There's a David S. Ware blog with updates about his whereabouts, pictures, etc.
Sun Ra interviewed in 1981. Wynton Marsalis interviewed in 1996.
A fascinating look at possible parallels between the work of Ornette Coleman and the Dutch Situationist architect known as Constant.
The Turtle Island String Quartet is interviewed in regards to their album covering John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. [youtube].
Black Jazz in the Digital Age by Greg Tate.
It's a bit difficult to read, but David Adler has been blogging from Columbia's Jazz Journalist conference today. You can see what happened here, but you have to login: the username and password are guest/guest.
More of substance and a new look for Soundslope.com coming this week.
Steve Coleman is M-Base blogging
Deconstructin(g) Jazz Improvisation: Derrida and the Law of the Singular Event
Making money out of music: how can regional music economies remain successful (who wouldn't want to know that!)
Rudresh Mahanthappa interviewed
Apologies for the tumbleweeds around here of late. Life and daily responsibilities have grabbed me by the proverbial cajones (without my permission might I add) and left behind very little in the way of spare brain cycles or luxuriant blogging time.
“My own feelings about the direction in which jazz should go are that there should be much less stress on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content, on what might be termed humanity in music and the freedom to say all that you want.”
~ Booker Little
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