Larry Kart

http://www.discogs.com/Woody-Herman-Herd-The-Road-Band/release/3899187

Make that Harold Gomberg as the oboist I was curious about in Bernstein's Mother Goose Suite. Ralph Gomberg, his brother, was the principal oboist with the Boston Symphony.

Been on a something of a Bernstein kick lately -- his Mozart Requiem, his Beethoven 6th, and an old and cheap Columbia LP of some Ravel -- Mother Goose Suite, Rapsodie Espagnole, and La Valse. Got it to see what NYPO oboist Ralph Gomberg would sound like in the second movement of Mother Goose Suite, but put on La Valse first and was blown away. A bit over the top at times, but what intensity and insight.

Picked up a copy for 50 cents at a local library sale today of Robin Eubanks' 1994 album "Mental Images." The lineup includes Randy Brecker, Dave Holland, Kevin Eubanks, Antonio Hart, Michael Cain, et al. and the feel is Afro-Beatish at times. The leader himself, not my favorite trombonist, is in good form, but what knocked me out was the drumming of Gene Jackson, interacting with African percussionist Kimati Dinizulu. What a groove they get, and it's more than just a groove -- Jackson's playing is really orchestral. Best 50 cents I'll ever spend probably.

Holliger, on the expressionistic side, coupled with an excellent performance of the Berg Chamber Concerto: http://www.amazon.com/Schoenberg-Chamber-Symphony-Berg-Concerto/dp/B000009IMT/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1372625633&sr=1-3&keywords=holliger+schoenberg Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, immaculate but not too much so: (link to that DGG recording won't take for some reason). Robert Craft on Naxos, swift at 20:10, captures a certain "blow top" frenzy at times, especially at the very end, which I like: http://www.amazon.com/Pierrot-Lunaire-Schoenberg/dp/B000MRP1S2/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1372625878&sr=1-2&keywords=craft+schoenberg+pierrot Horenstein's on Vox is very slow (more than 26 minutes), but there are things he gets that I can't forget. http://www.amazon.com/Till-Eulenspiegel-Merry-Pranks-Strauss/dp/B000001K5U/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1372626395&sr=1-5&keywords=Horenstein+schoenberg

And I'll ask Adorno the next time I see him.

I like the idea of Sir Charles. Hyman, maybe, but so much of his work has been emulative -- not that he doesn't have his own thing, but those were the gigs he found himself in or took. Dorough and Frishberg aren't much to my taste -- the former clever hip on a good day but not enough vocal ability, the latter too often too cute both as a songwriter and performer. Mark Murphy -- I'd rather be covered in honey and tied down on a pile of red ants. Williams I haven't been knocked out by but don't have enough experience to feel sure.

I prefer Chambers as a drummer and composer to Cyrille, but Cyrille is certainly worthy, and Chambers hasn't been on the scene over the years as much as one would wish -- certainly not as much as Cyrille, I believe.

I favor: Roscoe Chuck Cuscuna Threadgill Bobby Bradford Gary Burton (not my favorite player, but he belongs) Billy Hart Joe Chambers DeFranco (already named an NEA master) Tyner (ditto) G. Wilson (ditto) Woods (ditto) A lot of the others mentioned above are worthy figures but not masters IMO

Roscoe Mitchell

Description of the book at that link is a bit odd: "Jackie McLean (1931-2006) was one of the finest alto players and a legend of jazz. This book looks at the man and his work, his influences, and why his records have such enduring value."

I once had a dream in which Jack Teagarden was playing "Stars Fell on Alabama" while Paul Desmond embellished the melody.

The late Chicago writer J.B. Figi wrote a superb profile of Bland that ran in Down Beat in 1969. I remember editing it there as a newbie with my mouth hanging open.

Anyone hip to Dutch singer Ann Burton (1933-1989)? I fell years ago for her album "New York State of Mind," intrigued by her smoky contralto-ish voice (not unlike Irene Kral's), by her fine time, and by her sometimes faint, sometimes prominent Dutch accent, which gives her work a world-weary flavor, a la a hip Marlene Dietrich (not that Dietrich wasn't hip in her own way): http://www.annburton.com/e-index.htm There's more Burton on YouTube.

Hmm -- the Washington Post's editorials when it comes to wide range of topics, foreign policy especially, are a neo-con festival. Its coverage of public education has smelled funny since the days it embraced cheating faux reformer Michelle Rhee (an embrace that hasn't let up). Its economic columnist Robert Samuelson is a joke. The post-Zell Trib does have its problems (I'm a former Trib employee of pre-Zell vintage), but on good days it's still a better newspaper than its bosses deserve -- lots of good people still work there -- except when its trying to demonize school teachers and other public employees (but, again, that's the paper's editorial board and its masters wagging the dog's tail). Can't speak about other papers the Trib Co. owns.

But wouldn't he have sed that of you as a jazz fan anyway? Yup. I have a picture in my mind of Adorno losing his lunch at a vintage JATP concert.

What I said in my previous post (or so I thought) was that IS's reaction to Diaghilev's personality had a great deal to do with what IS thought and said about him. What I also said or implied is that D's patterns of favoritism toward his emotional satellites was an important and often off-putting manifestation of D's personality in IS's eyes. That there might have been some sexual aspect to this on one or both sides invalidates that speculation? BTW, I did once write, modifying a remark by the late Gilbert Sorrentino, that "people always think that artists have complicated personal reasons for doing what they do, when in fact that have complicated artistic reasons," so I'm not necessarily an agent from the enemy camp. But I think that in this particular case there is no enemy camp, no attempt being made (certainly not by me, I believe, and perhaps not by Craft) to smear IS or to explain (or explain away) any of his music as a direct byproduct of a homosexual relationship. Why I do think the relationship with Delage, if true, might be interesting in regard to IS's personality and to some of his behavior I explained above several times over. Don't see how this is Pitt and Lopez at the check-out counter stuff.

Another county heard from: 'What Theodore Adorno is most concerned with is ... the negativity of high modernism, which "expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure." Modern art de-aestheticizes itself by presenting neither harmony nor formal unity but dissonance and fragmentation.' OTOH, while I see Adorno's point, I experienced (poor benighted soul that I was and am) a whole lot of high modernist art's dissonances and fragmentations as thrilling acts of harmony and order of new sorts. But then Adorno might say that in this I was dupe of the culture industry.

For a sound, no b.s. guide to Rothko, see Robert Goldwater's essay in: http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Rothko-STC/dp/1556705506/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372181097&sr=1-3&keywords=rothko+tate FWIW, Rothko approved of Goldwater's piece.

I got one of these (don't recall which one, maybe the second level up): http://www.ringmat.com/pricelist.htm# when I got a new turntable several years ago. It came highly recommended by the outfit that sold me the turntable, and IIRC I heard a significant difference over my old mat.

I didn't say that it affected "the tenor of Stravinsky's work over a lifetime," nor did Craft FWTW. The relationship, if such there was, took place while IS was writing "Le Sacre." Among the points of possible interest here to me is what light this relationship, if such there was, might throw on what we know was IS's certainly crucial for some time and intermittently troubled (to say the least) relationship with Diaghlev and his circle, in which homosexual favorites and favoritism abounded. I mentioned above IS's disparaging latter-day remarks about Markevitch and Diaghlev in that regard, which is not to say that IS was right about the facts there, only that he made those remarks and wanted to make them, because they were published between covers in a book that had his name on it. In any case, it's fairly clear that IS had strong feelings about that aspect of life around Diaghlev, and prior to this it has commonly been assumed that this was because IS disliked favoritism per se and that he also was, in temperament and behavior, far from inclined toward Diaghlev's ways of life, so to speak. That he was, according to Craft's account, involved with Delage at the time he was writing "Le Sacre" suggests, among other possibilities that previously IS did not always keep Diaghlev at arms' length (Craft suggests this was the case), and, more important, that in the wake of whatever may have happened between IS and Delage, what I assume was IS's basically heterosexual temperament and his undoubted strong desire to assert his independence and individuality in the face of any controlling figure like Diaghlev (and Diaghlev was in the top class there by all accounts) began to come to the fore. A footnote and some speculation: If Diaghlev did come on to IS, whatever the results, he probably did so in a controlling, implicitly master-disciple manner because that was his pattern. OTOH, if there was anything between Delage and IS, my guess is that it either was a relationship between relative equals emotionally or one in which Delage looked up to IS. If so, that could have given some necessary emotional fuel to IS in his continuing struggles to assert himself. In that regard, see the anecdote of the time in which IS reacts with rage when his mother stated to her son that in her view he was in thrall musically to Scriabin.

Yes, but if you're emotionally involved with someone who has, as Delage did, an "interest in South and East Asian music" or any other sort of novel musical interests/ideas ... need I say more? Why must we build these walls, insist that such things are merely "a litany of who slept with whom"? As for Craft's claims being impossible to substantiate at this date, of course, but as I said above, he was a part of the Stravinsky household for some 60 years and maintained a close relationship to IS's widow Vera, which would seem to have given him a pretty reasonable chance to know a whole lot of things. OTOH, as Chuck said, Craft seems to have a lot of mirrors. BTW, I have that Upshaw disc. I'll have to check out those Delage pieces.

The young Maurice Delage: http://www.last.fm/music/Maurice+Delage/+images/85996315 As for "I'm sure people feel exactly the same" about Brad and Jennifer, why of course, you've nailed it!

Times I've heard him live, I didn't care for him that much -- rather New York-ish I thought in his taste for seemingly competitive "hotness," not a terrific listener/interactor, at least by the current Chicago standards I'm used to. On tenor, I prefer Keefe Jackson, if comparison must be made. Or Jason Rigby, among New York-based players of that general vintage. But I'll certainly keep listening to and for Irabagon, in the hope that...

Yes, but Mendelssohn, Schubert, Stravinsky, et al., were people as well as great musicians, and (on a selective basis, depending on one's own nature, knowledge, general sense of things) very interesting people. It's not necessary then, or so I think, to take information about their lives solely in terms of whether or not it informs one's understanding of their music. To draw the line indelibly on an "either it informs their music or I don't want to hear about it" basis seems to me to perhaps spring from an understandable distaste for mere gossip or cheesily romantic interpretations, but the answer to that, I think, is to not traffic in mere gossip or indulge in cheesily romantic interpretations, not to place oneself and "the music itself" in some sort of mutual isolation chamber. To shift the ground some, I for one will never cease to be interested in what I feel to be the divide (or if you prefer, the relationship between) the frequently sublime music of Artie Shaw and the evidence that Shaw the man was a narcissistic jerk in the very top class. Does my sense of the latter damage or drastically alter my sense of the former? No. But I am interested in human behavior as such, and that an artist of the kind I feel Shaw at his best was could also be the sort of man that I think he was seems to me to say something interesting about the nature and range of human possibility.