Larry Kart

BTW, even though I thought the logic of what was actually happening onstage supported my sense that she was chastising the Lithuanian soprano saxist for playing too much and not giving Boykin a chance (though I chalk up what was happening to that point to Boykin's diffidence, not to any piggishness on the Lithuanian player's part), I've since found out that the off-the-wall lady was a Lithuanian fan of the very good soprano saxist, and thus she may have wanted Boykin to not play at all. Weird.

Last night at the Hungry Brain, final night of the Umberlla Fest, Matt Wilson solo (IMO he's the Elmer Fudd of the drums, utterly square) and the Mary Halvorson Quintet, with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, altoist Jon Irabagon, a bassist whose name I can't recall, and drummer Ches Smith. Halvorson was fine, Finlayson has a nanny-goat tone, nor was anyone else in the band much to my taste -- their playing rather New York athletic, "Is it my turn in the spotlight now?" which didn't fit Halvorson's compositions.

So sorry.

Hope I'm not being a jerk here, but that's not a pun but a play on words. As I've said before, every pun is a play on words, but not every play on words is a pun. A pun is a joke whose punch line is a play on words, e.g. the one that ends, "It's a long way to tip a Raree." Or "Halt, boy-foot bear with teaks of Chan!" (Nothing will get me to tell either of them.) I'd like to hear the setup for this: "Transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises."

Well, Tantric ... OK, then.

What? You don't dig Chris Connor? Ah, well... Audrey Morris:

Jim -- Can't find a clip of Connor singing the same song, but jeez, Merrill's notes just hang there, almost static, while Connor's at a similar tempo really flow: Merrill has "cabaret singer" time, and even by those standards she's no Jeri Southern or Audrey Morris. to name two.

Merrill's appeal escapes me. Timewise, she seems hapless to me -- not that in the sense that she makes mistakes, but there's very little sense of air around, or propulsion within, her phrases. Place her alongside, say, Chris Connor -- who is arguably somewhat comparable in approach and sensibility -- and to me there's no comparison. Merrill sounds so studied.

Mazzarella was on fire, has taken the biggest step forward in the shorrtest span of time of any player I think I've ever encountered. Suddenly there's implied space and time around every note, whereas before that was much less the case -- and all of this now is language, takling to us and itself. Wow. Butcher has great instrumental gifts but does it amount over time to more than a string of effects? Sometimes it did IMO, mostly it didn't. Berne I left part way through -- in part because I was tired, in part because he seemed to be trudging

That's how it may have looked, but in fact at that point in the concert Maksimowicz had been playing much of the time and Boykin not so much. But again, I felt that was because Boykin sometimes tends to be a bit diffident.

9:00PM at Elastic, 2830 N Milwaukee, 2nd Fl, 773.772.3616 ($15) 6th Annual Umbrella Music Festival Nick Mazzarella Trio, with Anton Hatwich, Frank Rosaly John Butcher Solo Tim Berne Trio, with Devin Hoff, Ches Smith

I was there but too far back to catch what the lady was saying. If she meant, "Give David Boykin a solo," she must not have been aware that the talented Boykin is frequently somewhat unwilling to step into the spotlight, if in fact that's what this musical situation called for. But then Boykin did get to take some strong solos here, and Maksimowicz was impressive.

Larry: Not to get this too far off course, but John Towner Williams, according to AFM contracts, did in fact only play on two Cole recording sessions, one in 1957 and another the following year. Sorry -- you're right, one on 11/20/57 and one on 6/20/58. Must have been off my meds.

A year ago I heard a setting of "Meditations" at the Manhattan School of Music with their jazz orchestra (augmented big-band instrumentation, plus strings), with Dave Liebman and Randy Brecker as featured soloists. Liebman and the setting, yuck (IMO) -- Brecker was quite good.

Again, just to be clear, the John Towner Williams who played piano on a good many Cole sessions (not just one or two), is the eventual film composer and conductor of the Boston Pops and not to be confused with John Williams the talented/gnarly pianist who was a sideman with Stan Getz and recorded on his own for EmArcy. West Coast or East Coast, Sir Charles was not a studio date/orchestra guy, AFAIK.

In the first photo, the look of alertness on his face and the fact that Cole is singing suggests he's a proper pianist.

The four years later shot gave me some ideas -- because it's in the studio with Cole, and Cole didn't play piano himself on most studio dates, maybe it's Cole's regular piano player, whose name understandably wouldn't have been publicized. But looking through the personnel of Cole recordings from those periods, the only names I come up are Jimmy Rowles, Lou Levy, Milt Raskin, John Towner Williams (yes, Mr. "Star Wars") et al., and it's clearly not one of those guys. There is Gerald Wiggins on some dates, but the guy in the photo looks even less like Wiggins than he does like Ronnell Bright. Quite unlikely that it was Sir Charles. He didn't do West Coast studio work.

Image of Bright: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Recordings-1956-58-Ronnell-Bright/dp/B002J0QGUM/ref=sr_1_9?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1320201540&sr=1-9 I dunno now, but for some reason he was my insistent first thought.

Waldron wouldn't have been in that context. My guess is Ronnell Bright.

Paul Rutherford's "The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie"

I agree with Allen; this stuff is dishwater. A fair point of comparison I think would be a number of Poulenc's works for solo piano, his sonata for piano/four hands, and some of his chamber works (e.g. the Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoon), which leave Zimmerli in the dust when it comes to rhythmic energy, melodic invention, and harmonic wit, all within a similarly "light modern" context.

For the opposite of this, Pops recommended Swiss Kriss.

You should try to find Carisi's own version of the piece from 1956, for a trumpet (Carisi himself, a very interesting player) trombone, alto, tenor, baritone, rhythm (with guitar) ensemble, recorded for RCA in 1956 and belatedly released in 1988 on the now o.o.p. "RCA Victor Jazz Workshop: The Arrangers." It has a different feel, and you can hear much more detail. If you find that album, also check out the original version of "Springsville," which is very diifferent from the Davis-Evans version, almost ballad-like.

Some more remarkable/alarming Wolpe:

Also, though not directly relevant, here's my favorite Wolpe composition, his Chamber Piece No. 1 (from 1964), in a superb performance by Arthur Weisberg and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. It certainly has some kind of rhythmic power: