Larry Kart

I'm not aware of Will Bradley, Jr. appearing on any other dates of note than these, though he may have been a member of a road band or two of that era, like a lot of other guys whose sympathies were basically hard-boppish. His father, trombonist Will Bradley, co-led a popular big band ("Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar," "Celery Stalks At Midnight," et al.) of the early '40s with drummer Ray McKinley.

Pullman specifically, and I think wisely, does not try to do that. Rather, he gathers and carefully sifts through on a purely factual basis (I know "purely" is a problem, but it will have to do until you read the book) every bit of information about what Powell did when, and who did what to and with Powell when, that can be gathered (for example, the various diagnoses/comments of the psychiatric personnel who dealt with Powell are present in book verbatim; nothing is suppressed), plus tons of relevant social and jazz scene of the times context. This approach was crucial and wise, I think, because there is so much gross factual misinformation out there -- some of it malicious, some of it not openly malicious but drenched in romantic fantasies -- and also because one just can't "know" what was going on inside the head of a man like Powell or Monk; therefore, in a case where so much ground needs to be cleared, a mingling of carefully sifted fact and authorial speculation might be pernicious . The level of factual detail is just mind-boggling, almost all of it relevant and fascinating. Finally, those of us who do want or need to speculate can do so now with much more clarity than before, just as one could speculate far more clearly about Bix after reading Sudhalter and Evans' biography of him.

More like two.

Thanks Larry. Now my curosity is really peaked! Can you give us a clue as to what is included? Does it read like a biography? More like an academic analysis of the music? What's Pullman's approach? Post of mine from May 2007 on this thread: I've been playing something of an informal advisory-editorial role here. The book is completed and is IMO excellent -- everything one could wish for when it comes to nailing down facts, sorting out myth from reality, establishing social context, etc., etc. Pullman's labors here are almost awe-inspiring in their thoroughness, and no less important, their scrupulousness. In particular (and I think this was a very wise choice), Pullman doesn't presume to be able to read Powell's mind. Also the book is not, nor is it intended to be, a book in which Powell's music is analyzed. Pullman writes very well. The density of information is at a very high level when such information exists and can be dug up (and information of that density is what most people like us would want, I think), but the book certainly flows and has moments of high drama.

Yes. Most recent news is good news. It will take time for the book to emerge, but all barriers other than the practical ones that stand in the way of production of all books, and academic press books in particular, have been removed. The book itself is better than most of us would have dared hope.

That's what I tried to do in my initial post on this thread, which speculated about what that "something else" might be and how the length of Opus 82 might be related to Webern's extreme concision.

Well... he seems to have taken the idea from the Stockhausen of Gruppen which is for three orchestras and conductors, and from other post-Darmstadt multi-conductor works. What you get in Gruppen and in Webern is intensity and economy. These are both very tightly composed works - masterpieces. Anyone who doesn't know Gruppen but is disappointed or puzzled by the Braxton should still make a point of checking out the Stockhausen piece - same for Webern. As for the thirty minute cut don't even get me started... David -- Just to be clear, are you saying that Opus 82 is essentially derivative of the Webern of the Symphony and the Stockhausen of Gruppen and aso inferior to those works because what "you get in Gruppen and in Webern is intensity and economy" and what you get in Opus 82 is ... (you fill the blank)? I know the Webern Symphony very well; my recording of Gruppen is not accessible to me now.

Would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when things like "In Between The Heartaches" were recorded. Is there much information anywhere on how Bacharach-Warwick worked in the studio?

I heard her in person in the late 70s or early '80s twice -- once she was horrendous, once she was great. My impression was that the bad time she was really stoned. [Added in edit: IIRC she was literally staggering around the stage at times.] FWIW, the gist of this thread was intended to be a look at the music as found on record, since there is a "conceptual" thrust to so much of it, a specificity of "presentation" to a degree that live performance of this material in this form would be musically redundant at best, unnecessary and/or anti-climatic at worst. This is a distinctly different aesthetic that that of the "recording as document" school, and one may or may not find it valid to whatever degree, but it is a reality nevertheless. Now, having said that, I'll go ahead and say this again - "In Between The Heartaches" is a perfect piece of jaw-droppingly original music in every regard, and that originality grows, not decreases, in my estimation with each listen. Hearing it in person may be a painful experience or an ecstatic one, depending on any number of variables, but my point is that that is not a particularly relevant point when one is evaluating the record. For stuff like this, 99% of the time, the record is the point of it all. Agree with your points above about the conceptual power of those recordings as recordings. I was responding to Chris's post and recalling my estimate at the time of what might have been making a difference in those two in-person Warwicke performances I heard.

Very few of those Riverside medium-sized to big band dates came off IMO. Engineering, Keepnews, some routine-oriented players, etc.

I heard her in person in the late 70s or early '80s twice -- once she was horrendous, once she was great. My impression was that the bad time she was really stoned. [Added in edit: IIRC she was literally staggering around the stage at times.]

Agree about that Cowell album and the trombone player.

Moved my post to the "Let's talk about the music" thread.

Got my set today, don't recall and can't check right now how much of it I have on LPs (most of it but not all), but I decided to jump in at what may be the deep end and listened to Opus 82. Quite an amazing feat all around (kudos to members of the four orchestras and their conductors), though I wonder what it might be like if it had been posssible to semi-totally capture in the recording process the spatial element. About the piece itself, if that's the way to put it, I'm reminded of what it was like (being about the same age as Braxton -- AB born 1945, me born 1942 -- and probably having encountered Second Viennese School music at about the same time -- age 16 or so for me) to hear that music for the first time: the making-strange effect, so to speak, being turned into the made normal and utterly sensible effect and then somehow back into both making strange AND made normal and sensible. That is, that SVS music, and perhaps even more the process of coming in touch with it at that time, somehow retains over the years its "for the first time" sensuous tangible mystery. If I'm right about this, Opus 82 might be thought of as a "fetishizing" of that process, though by "fetishizing" (normally a negative term) I don't mean anything negative at all. What I have in mind is that Opus 82 (Braxton being a remarkable musician with an equally remarkable ability to hear) not only captures and makes his own every aspect of SVS music that attracts or attracted him, but he also conveys in this music (i.e. the music of Opus 82) the power of those initial encounters I mentioned above, the meaning of the union of making strange and finding that strange to be lucid and normal. Also, but I can't explain why yet, I think this has something to do with the relatively extreme length of the piece -- evocative at times of Webern's Symphony, it's maybe ten or twelve times as long. Could it be that Opus 82 is in that respect an attempt to respond to a musical world of almost self-consuming concision by saying that it could instead expand, even (in all but the most practical recording-industry-determined terms) need never end. Finally, how to listen to it? There are two obvious ways, I think, and I spontaneously found myself trying both: (1) assume total continuity, think of every sound and gesture as a prelude to the next; (2) listen for what seem to you to be the beginning and the end of shapes or gestures and as much as you can absorb of what's in between (often that means that the "units" are fairly small) and ask in effect "What is/was that all I'm hearing?" I prefer option (2), because the answers are so rich in detail and (can't think of a better word) refreshing, and eventually there is abundant continuity too.

The Dragon Konitz LP "Sax of a Kind," mostly concert performances with Swedes from 1951, includes a 1953 Kenton aircheck of "Lover Man" (from a Swedish concert) where Lee's solo is an out-of-body experience -- for Lee I suspect as well as for the listener. In fact, assuming I'm right about the "for Lee" part, I suspect that it's such experiences (it couldn't have been the only one) that led to the somewhat more rational or rational-ized playing of Lee's next phase. To be so erruptively inspired that one might have felt afterwards something like "Was that me?" would not have been something that Lee, I would guess, was prepared to accept for long. The "me" in his playing, I think, pretty much needs to be "him" to him.

Very annoying, as I thought might be the case from records, but I had to hear what he sounded like in-person 'cause sometimes that makes a big difference and so many good people (including good musicians) dig him. Roughly, a "farther out" Joe Lovano without even the sub-interest of handling changes with some deftness, plus that hoarse, gargly neo-Trane sound that I can't stand -- the one where the player sounds from the first note like his eyes are half-shut in ecstasy. I walked. What did you think of Nasheet Waits? Good, I guess, but hard to tell because I didn't like what he was interacting with. I've liked him on record, heard him once before in person with Brotzmann. That night he was explosively loud, but it fit the situation. Heard his Dad once in person, with Billy Taylor. What a beautifully slick drummer!

"After we moved, I met Marshall Robbins, whose family also lived on the fifth floor of the [Lombardy] hotel. Marshall and I were the same age, 12. His father was Jack Robbins of Robbins Music, the big music publisher. Jack used to take Marshall and me around to see all the big-name bands in the late 1930s. I knew by then I wanted to play a horn. It had to be a trumpet or saxophone, something you kissed."

This was posted on another jazz board, and some European guy got very upset, saying that what we hear is a mis-translation of the original German (you think?), and that Hitler et al. are not a fit subject for comedy.

No, it's that "colored people" were one market by and large and "white people" were another in 1951, and if you could corner a fair portion of the former (and such cornering was possible, or easier to envision as possible, for an independent label like Savoy), you could make a good living. Examples abound.

Very annoying, as I thought might be the case from records, but I had to hear what he sounded like in-person 'cause sometimes that makes a big difference and so many good people (including good musicians) dig him. Roughly, a "farther out" Joe Lovano without even the sub-interest of handling changes with some deftness, plus that hoarse, gargly neo-Trane sound that I can't stand -- the one where the player sounds from the first note like his eyes are half-shut in ecstasy. I walked.

Carla, our daughter was there too and said it was a great show. She said she saw Kart and Tesser, went at the break to greet them and you/they were gone. Darn. On the other hand, I was so tired I might not have been able to put two sentences together.

Tonight, if I have the energy: 10:00 PM at the Hungry Brain Tony Malaby's Tamarindo, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Nasheet Waits

So can we expect jazz rock to be deployed in the war on terror? I think they used (or tried to use) those techniques some time ago on Noriega in Panama.

The thing about Miles and loudness in his comeback period was the prevelence of low, low frequencies from Marcus Miller. I recall a 1981 concert in Chicago at the Auditorium Theater during which, part way through, I was alarmingly overcome by a sudden wave of deep depression (utterly novel to me). A while later I mentioned this to Martin Williams, who said he'd had a similar experience with that band and added that a CIA guy he knew had told him that the CIA had determined that large doses of ultra low frequency sounds (below the level of audibility) can cause sudden onsets of depression, and that the CIA had (or planned to) make use of these techniques.

What ejp626 said. It was great to meet him and Rachel and to see the guys in the band again, though there little time for them to talk between sets, and I was too tired to stay for more than one. Reinforced my longtime feeling that this is a band that can make its points with and over virtually any talky audience but can be listened to at whatever level of subtlety you can and want to bring to them. Stuff is happening all the time -- not unlike vintage Horace Silver that way -- and it leads (no small matter) to internal group zest and satisfaction.