Larry Kart

As I think I may have said, especially for Tristano's own playing.

All of those sound interesting, but what an oddly limited list in terms of era and style.

"Silver Bells" is the soundtrack for Armageddon.

Speaking of Willie Dennis, there were at least two other rather saxophone-like (probably inspired in part by Lester Young) trombonists who preceded him by a bit -- Earl Swope and Eddie Bert. Swope in fact recorded with Tristano and tenor man Emmett Carls in 1946. Also, FWIW, I believe that Bert said that one his key influences was Trummy Young.

The "controversy" arose because Andre Hodeir wrote a censorious piece that went into some detail about what a travesty of the great original performances (and "Koko" in particular) the performances on the Bethlehem album were.

The Stephen Riley sounds interesting to me. Followed him for a while but haven't kept up with the steady flow of Riley CDs on Steeplechase. (Can anyone get me on their mailing list? ) Normally I'm somewhat put off by guys who are as specifically drenched in "the tradition" as Riley is, but he certainly seems to be making it up as he goes along (I feel much the same about Grant Stewart), and for me that makes a difference.

Very nice, though I think Janet Baker has a bit more in the tank. Do you know what recording this is from? Upon further review, probably Stephen Layton's on Hyperion.

BTW, I'm addicted to books like "Choral Music on Record" and "Opera on Record," with all their sometime flaws. One of my favorite lines ever comes from "Opera on Record II," where the guy (don't recall his name) who's comparing versions of Bartok's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" says something like the final "door" of Boulez's recording was so exciting that Sony thought of releasing it as a single.

That other "Messiah" might have been Andrew Parrott's, in which countertenor James Bowman tried to sing that aria. It can be heard on Spotify, and it's not that bad, though awfully "careful." No, the one I'm thinking of was a female alto. OK -- it was Anne Gjevang: with Solti, whose recording perhaps surprisingly (it was surprising to me) has a lot going for it otherwise, Kiri Te Kanawa's soprano arias in particular. Gjevang in the more coloratura passages sounds like a battleship trying to turn around in a bathtub, but then she's handicapped because the word-setting there would be awkward for anyone, let alone someone whose native language is Norwegian. About Mackerras' EMI "Messiah," which came out at the same time Colin Davis's Phillips recording did and thus was obscured by it, Teri Noel Towe has this to say on "Choral Music Record: "M's first recording was the first to offer a substantial number of alternative versions. Subsequent theories of baroque performance practice have made this recording sound a bit dated. The 'rules' are often over-applied .... yet this detracts not one whit from a performance of what was and is a wonderful Messiah."

Not sure. Wouldn't be surprised if some HIP recordings use a male alto there. My impression from other recordings is that the phrase "get thee up into the high mountains etc." is a beast for most contraltos, their voices being too deep and/or not agile enough to handle that passage. Silly, perhaps, to focus on that one part of one part of the oratorio, but I recall owning another otherwise fine "Messiah" (don't recall which one any more), and when the singer got to that passage her rather plummy voice pretty much disappeared. Never wanted to listen to that recording again and had the same experience once at a concert performance. When I ran across the Mackerras, which has many other virtues, and heard Baker, I was sold.

I vote for Mackerras, the EMI one from the '60s with Janet Baker: http://www.amazon.com/Charles-MacKerras-Ambrosian-Orchestra-Elizabeth/dp/B000T31S6S/ref=sr_1_4?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1418049832&sr=1-4&keywords=messiah+mackerras Among many other virtues, Baker's the only alto I've heard who can handle "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MB9cjf1cNU&spfreload=10

Neo Rauch in NYC at the Zwirner Gallery in early November. Great stuff. Also went to a lot of other gallery shows that day, but Rauch's was the best. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/11/06/at-the-well-four-paintings-by-neo-rauch/

My wife made the most delicious meat loaf last night, a recipe from Arthur Rubinstein's wife Nela -- not passed on personally but delicious nonetheless. It's one of those meatloafs that has two hard-boiled eggs inside, which is fun, but that's not why it's delicious. http://www.amazon.com/Nelas-Cookbook-Nela-Rubinstein/dp/039451761X

I'm a great admirer of Lee. I met her backstage once in the mid-'80s; it seemed as though the closer one got to her, the more indistinct her features became.

I didn't like "California, Here I Come" either, and the Turn Out the Stars sessions were bootleg recordings that had inferior sound recording. Why anyone would bother to listen to or criticize them is beyond me. As I said before, to characterize BE's recorded output as erratic because of poorly recorded bootleg albums made when he was at death's door is not even worth commenting on... As I'm sure you know, the "Turn Out the Stars" set was lavished with praise when it came out. Also, it was not a bootleg I'm pretty sure ("original sessions produced by Helen Keane," it says in the booklet) and was professionally recorded by Malcolm Addey. You and I both think that BE often is in harried form there, but we're apparently in the minority. OTOH, much though TOTS makes my teeth grind, I find that BE is in quite good form for his latter days on much of "The Last Waltz" -- performances that were dubbed off the mixing board at the Keystone Korner by Todd Barkan and that took place much closer to the very end (8/31-9/8 '80) than what's on TOTS (6/4-6/8 '80). (BE died 9/15 '80). When I first heard TLW, I expected the worst; its virtues were a surprise. I call any recording of BE that he didn't approve, bootleg, and I've never listened to TOTS so I shouldn't have commented on the recording quality. Helen Keane was both a curse and a blessing for BE; while she made his music available to a wider audience and took care of ALL of the business aspects of his career, she wasn't a musician, and shouldn't have made every decision for him. i think he did veer off from his original direction on the "New Jazz Conceptions" due to her, but without her, he might have wound up as a violinist who worked with him back then found him: banging his head on the piano because he was so disgusted with the wedding gig he was playing! Helene Keane became BE's personal manager in 1962 -- by that time "New Jazz Conceptions" and the the style associated with it were distant specks in the rearview mirror. Heck, by that time, the music of the LaFaro-Motian Village Vanguard trio also was a thing of the past.

I didn't like "California, Here I Come" either, and the Turn Out the Stars sessions were bootleg recordings that had inferior sound recording. Why anyone would bother to listen to or criticize them is beyond me. As I said before, to characterize BE's recorded output as erratic because of poorly recorded bootleg albums made when he was at death's door is not even worth commenting on... As I'm sure you know, the "Turn Out the Stars" set was lavished with praise when it came out. Also, it was not a bootleg I'm pretty sure ("original sessions produced by Helen Keane," it says in the booklet) and was professionally recorded by Malcolm Addey. You and I both think that BE often is in harried form there, but we're apparently in the minority. OTOH, much though TOTS makes my teeth grind, I find that BE is in quite good form for his latter days on much of "The Last Waltz" -- performances that were dubbed off the mixing board at the Keystone Korner by Todd Barkan and that took place much closer to the very end (8/31-9/8 '80) than what's on TOTS (6/4-6/8 '80). (BE died 9/15 '80). When I first heard TLW, I expected the worst; its virtues were a surprise.

That's my impression of "California Here I Come" -- or it was, don't think I have the records anymore. I agree about the "Turn Out the Stars" recordings, too.

Buying my eighth-grade stepdaughter a new basketball after I noticed her old one was almost worn smooth in spots. She's a darn good player and a great teammate -- last year her seventh-grade team won the county championship in a playoff series that was right out of a John R. Tunis sports novel -- but this year, with several key players gone elsewhere (including the tall, swift daughter of Chicago Bulls assistant coach Adrian Griffin) or playing other sports (like tennis), they're getting beat a lot. Maybe the new basketball will help. Ordered a new set of CD shelves; when they're full, that's all she wrote. The dog we got at a shelter in August continue to be a joy.

Which two albums? Maybe "Jackie McLean and Co." and "Consequence," with a wistful nod to "New Soil." Other albums probably are more important, but these touch my heart ("Consequence" partly because I wrote the notes for the first LP issue of the date back in 1979).

Rollins/McLean is about as close as you can get, I would guess.

Mark: About falling love with the earliest mature version of the player, two somewhat contrary instances from my experience would be Coleman Hawkins and Earl Hines. I love/admire them from all periods but feel that late Hines (all those stunning solo albums) was his finest work and that the best of late Hawkins (up to the point where ill-health/weakness became an issue) was often astonishing and even unexpected (the depth of blues feeling) -- especially his work on Swingville (e.g. "Hawk Eyes" with Charlie Shavers) his Felsted album, his live performance at the Playboy Jazz Festival, the "Mood Indigo" from Impulse album with Ellington, etc. Also, on a selective basis (because there are lots of ups and downs there, and the musical and emotional differences are so great than one might almost be talking about two different people), I think I might prefer Billie Holiday of the '50s to her vintage '30s work. About projecting ourselves into the listening experience and the minds of the artists, I think that's unavoidable, at least as a starting point. It's like falling in love -- not a rational act and it can't be done in cold blood but one hopes to bring a fair amount of common sense, fairness, decency, you name, it to the party as needed and when possible. Was it Ross McDonald who wrote: "Never sleep with a woman who's crazier than you are"?

Yes, the early versus late Pepper analogy to McLean looks like it might be a sound one, but I don't think so because a preference for the "balance and poise" of the earlier Pepper over the (sometimes) "groping expressionism" of later Pepper is not IMO "just the opposite from the views being expressed about Jackie." In particular, the "balance and poise" of 1955-60 Pepper was not preceded by a period of "groping expressionism" on his part. Rather, the balance and poise of that period of Pepper involved a considerable expansion/loosening up of his previous musical-emotional resources, lovely and moving though his prior playing could be. See Terry Martin's essay in "The Art Pepper Reader" on this. As for McLean, as I said before, later McLean seemed to me involve a kind of ironing-out process on his part. More orderliness of a sort but less immediacy. In any case, late Pepper certainly involved no ironing out or "normalization," nor do I think there was there any such ironing out in 1955-60 Pepper, quite the opposite -- though one could argue that, in the light of what was to come next, there might have been some ironing out or "normalization" of things in pre-1955 Pepper. If there was any of that, though, I think it was basically a function of the development of a relatively young man and the musical environments in which he found himself. ​BTW, as you might guess, I'm basically an admirer of 1955-60 Pepper, though I've heard some latter Pepper that was superb, especially in person.

Allen -- I hear the same difference(s) that you do. Here is that sense of air, space, meaningful hesitations, self-reflection (if you will) that I mentioned or alluded to in a previous post on the thread.

Yes, that was a lucky semi-accident. That Rosen essay "Bach and Handel" is in an old Penguin collection of essays by various writers, "Keyboard Music," and I'd always been intrigued by the passage I quoted because Rosen makes a point there that undermines so many "modern" keyboard Bach performances of the time (e.g. Glenn Gould's) in which the entrance of each fugal voice typically is picked out and thrust at the listener. "It is remarkable {Rosen writes] how often Bach tries to hide [the successive entrances of a fugal theme] by tying the opening to the last note of the previous phrase, how much ingenuity he has expended ...in keeping all aspects of the flowing movement constant." (My emphases). Rosen goes on to sat that because Bach's keyboard works (organ music aside) were not conceived for public performance but were intended for the educational/pleasurable use of the player himself, there was no need to emphasize those fugal entrances because the player in effect was the audience and could scarcely not know when each new voice entered because it was his fingers that were, so to speak, doing the walking. In any case, remembering what Rosen had said (I quoted a lot more, maybe too much), it seemed like it might apply to the Tristano of "Line Up" and "C Minor Complex," so I threw that whole long passage in there.