Larry Kart

You're kidding about Pete Brown, right? Two utterly different people of the same name, but then again you're just being EDC? Procope? I don't see that at all -- Spaulding was an improviser, Procope a nice sectionman, color-maker within an orchestral frame, though he could play some. The contexts are way too disparate. Spaulding and Irving Fazola? Ronnie Matthews is worth mentioning. Heard him lots on record over the years, always to medium to null effect, then caught him as a side man on (I think) a latish Teddy Edwards disc and was beguiled by his lovely, loving comping and quite good solo work as well. Went around for a while thinking how wrong I must have been all these years, then decided that it's quite possible that both things were true. Which bring me back to Mr. Spaulding. I heard him live one night in 1969 at Ahmad Jamal's club in Chicago, the Tejar, with Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Barron, Junie Booth, and Louis Hayes, and JS took the paint off the walls. One night of glory, and as a sideman to be sure. No doubt it wasn't the only such night and that there were others not like that night.

Maybe it's not a perfect parallel, but where is Pete Brown's "Day Dream" or "Relaxin' at Camarillo"? Some distinctive players have a nice run for a while, and then, for any number of reasons, that's about it. In that respect, and also because there are stylistic similarities, I'd lump Spaulding in with, say, Frank Strozier and Bunky Green. Green I've always found fairly boring -- that aggressive harmonic system! -- though there is one album where it came together for him IMO (on Vanguard with Randy Brecker); Strozier had his own thing but eventually gave up the alto for the piano, then I believe left music entirely; and Spaulding is Spaulding. I'm feeling kind of tired myself.

I definitely agree. That's a great record! Who's the vocalist on "April In Paris"? One Jean Louise. Talbert: "Jean Louise was so great; she had perfect pitch. You could write any kind of intro you wanted. I think she was married to the piano player Frank Patchen [later of the Lighthouse All-Stars]. She played piano as well and was working as single when I came back to LA in the 1970s." Quote from Bruce Talbot's fascinating bio "Tom Talbert: His Life and Times" (Scarecrow), which I picked up as a remainder a few years ago. I recommend every Talbert album, especially his 1956 Atlantic classic "Bix Duke Fats." The bio BTW comes with a CD of previously unreissued Talbert tracks.

Isabella Rossellini as the Baroness?

It's a flageolet? Actually, looking at what Hogarth did, don't you know exactly how it sounds?

To quote from a post on another list: > Will Friedwald (New York Sun) wrote: > > In 1942, Mercer (1909-76) had been living in Hollywood for about six > years, and though he was a few seasons away from winning his first > Academy Award (for the original song for 1964's "Charade") "This is five times wrong. Mercer's four Oscar-winning songs all came before 1964: On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe (1946), In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening (1951), Moon River (1961) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962). Charade was nominated in '63 but didn't win." What the hell was Friedwald smoking?

Check out the clips from the album (and elsewhere) on Brown's site -- the most effective in excerpt probably being "The Lighthouse" (written for Greg Gisbert) and "The Touch of You." Be sure too to click on the links in which Brown gives some background for each piece. Also, while these performances were done in the studio, they were, out of economic necessity, all complete unedited takes.

Not to play one woman off against another (which I don't think I'm doing), but one of the most impressive big band albums I've heard in recent years is this 2003 effort from Anita Brown, "27 East": http://www.anitabrownmusic.com/ First, Brown (who happens to be the daughter of vaunted Tristano-ite tenor saxophonist Ted Brown and Phyllis Brown, also a onetime Tristano student) draws on the some of the same pool of NYC freelancers that Schneider does. Second, Brown's music is also fairly programmatic at times, though IMO she's one those rare composers who language gifts are spurred by programmatic setups (references to the sea, lighthouses, etc.) rather than being illustrative of them. Finally, (again IMO) she has a much more adventurous, sharp-edged musical mind than does Schneider, plus a wider range of colors and moods. And her band plays its collective ass off for her.

Hi Joe -- Was just thinking today whether to order it, but my current Mosaic buy (the John Patton Select and Blakey's "Hard Bop") led me to hesitate, plus a partial re-listen to MS's "Concert in the Garden" left me with much the same feeling about that one as before, and I gather that the new one continues in that vein.

Not exactly our kind of thing, but this documentary about recording the soundtrack for "The Incredibles" is interesting and includes some pretty remarkable playing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgl2g0XhBTE

I like what I've heard of Farinacci and Intorre with Krivda on record.

Did they find his Sophie Tucker and Belle Barth sides?

But he obviously was needed for the session since he appeared under his real name Anthony Sciacca. Tony Scott was under contract with RCA Victor at the time. John Lewis would probably have not bothered with the legal problems involved if he did not want him. I don't get "obviously needed." Lots of guys at that time, when jazz musicians of some prominence had exclusive contracts with labels, appeared under pseudonyms on labels other than the ones they were signed to. Mike Fitzgerald's website has a long list of such e.g. Art Farmer (Kunst Bauer), Jimmy Cleveland (Jimmy O'Heigho), Lee Konitz (Zeke Tolin). All I was saying in any case, is that for me (not a Scott fan) he sounds pretty weak and twiddly here, while Aaron Sachs ("obviously needed"?) is in fine form. The only need here was for an improvising New York-based modern clarinetist who could negotiate some tricky charts. I suppose Sol Yaged or Peanuts Hucko might not have filled the bill. As for John Lewis's role, my guess is that Norman Granz was responsible for Getz's presence, while Schuller chose the bassonist, flute player, and Janet Putnam, though God knows who urged her/let her try to imitate a rhythm guitar. I'd be curious as to who came up with that particular instrumentation. Off the top of my head, I don't recall Lewis ever again using woodwinds that prominently, with the possible exception of "European Windows" (and maybe that was just strings, rhythm, and Ronnie Ross?) Certainly it was writing for brass that Lewis proved to have a special gift for.

Don't know Ursula Rucker, but I do like Geri Allen and, thanks to you, Monday Michuro. On the other hand, MM seems to me to be representative of her own intensely musical self and doesn't strike me as being about not "conquering" things, while if there's some aura of feminine "family warmth" to Allen, the main thing is that she can think and play.

Joe -- I assume that piece is on the new one, which I haven't heard yet. I'm thinking in particular of "Choro Dancado" and "Buleria, Solea Y Rumba" from "Concert in the Garden."

Listened again: Lewis's writing for the three woodwinds (clarinet, flute, and bassoon) sounds very awkward, sour, and muddy to me, especially on "Midsommer," but then that whole piece is pretty limp; by contrast Schuller handles those instruments on the pieces he arranged, ""Django" and "The Queen's Fancy," with professional expertise, though also a bit blandly. The rhythm section does come close to stasis at times, but that mostly seems to be because harpist Janet Putnam is trying to be Freddie Green. J.J. is in very frigid form IMO, as is Getz (who sounds like he might just be stoned out of his gourd). Lucky Thompson is excellent, and so is Aaron Sachs, who probably gets more into the pieces he plays on (in terms of putting them over as pieces) than anyone else.

Bought it when it first came out, always wanted to like it, but that rhythm section on that day was broken. Also, IIRC Tony Scott was far from an asset here. Again IIRC it felt like parts were not fitting together, and I'd bet that John Lewis didn't chose all of those players or the instrumentation either; his writing sounds rather awkward here compared to earlier mixed-ensemble work for J.J. or many later things under his own name for horns and rhythm.

Haven't heard the new one yet, but I cared much less for the last one than for the first two, in part because the sense of pictorial moodiness being in the driver's seat was so strong there. I don't ask this casually, carelessly, or provocatively. But... ...to what extent could this "sense of pictorial moodiness" perhaps, perhaps, be a distintively "feminine" - a "modernly" feminie - approach to the music? And, is it possible that we're seeing a new "perspective" emerge from some female jazz musicians where trying to do it/prove that they are "just as good as the men" is no longer a motivator? I know it's a loaded question, but still I wonder. I hear what you're referring to in both Mitchell's & Schneider's music, but it strikes me as being less, for lack of a better term, "easy" than it seems to strike you. And I really do think that the "guy thing", that repeated climbing of the mountains just to prove that you can climb them combined with the veni, vidi, vici thing of surveying the land from above once you have, is, if not exactly played out entirely, desperately in need of some tempering at this point in time. And not just in music... A little "travelling around", paying attention, and allowing one's self to be affected by what one sees instead of instinctively trying to "conquer" it ain't always a bad thing, ya' know what I'm saying? Jim -- I think that the real musical preferences/habits/what have you that we've both been talking about here, and that terms like "pictorial" seem to fit up to a certain point, begin to break down when you push the metaphorical aspect just that much further with "repeated climbing of mountains just to prove that you can climb them" (masculine) versus "a little 'travelling around,' paying attention, and allowing one's self to be affected by what one sees" (feminine). That is, while I recognize music that kind of fits the former description, the latter seems rather vague (though unobjectionable) to me and I'd be hard pressed to think of any particular music that fits it. Is, say, Monk's music "paying attention and allowing itself to be affected by what it sees"? And what in this scheme would "travelling around" be? Ingesting and reshaping more or less pre-existing musical flavors from other lands or cultures? Schneider certainly does a good deal of that, but her taste for Latin gestures seems rather auto-pilot-like to me.

Haven't heard the new one yet, but I cared much less for the last one than for the first two, in part because the sense of pictorial moodiness being in the driver's seat was so strong there.

Picked up this compilation of two 1968-9 Atlantic albums for a song at Half-Price Books, opened it up and was a bit distressed to discover that these were seemingly very commercial Joel Dorn-produced dates -- two Beatles' covers, lotsa funk rhythms, strings sections etc. Actual listening dispelled much or all doubt, however -- Fathead is in fabulous passionate form throughout, the arguably commercial gestures seem to stimulate him further most of the time (that the funky drummers are Bernard Purdie or Bruno Carr certainly helps), there's some really tasty keyboard work from Joe Zawinul, and, for those who care, some lovely oboe playing by George Marge on "The Children of Abraham" (I mention this because it is lovely playing and also because Marge is misidentified as a member of the string section in the personnel listing). Maybe I'm nuts, but in some ways this music moved me more than any of the fine recent Fathead Highnote albums I've heard -- I think because there's a hard to define edge of hope to his playing here -- hope that he's about to make it big commercially while still remaining himself. That it didn't quite happen we know, but there's something about the way Fathead plays the bejesus out "Yesterday" and "And I Love Her" that's at once anomolous and thrilling, as though he doesn't know that he shouldn't be lavishing so much soul and zest on two Beatles covers. And, in that pocket of time, he was right to care that much in that way. At one point, listening to Fathead, I could imagine Bird playing those pieces more or less that way.

This actually answers a follow up question I thought about asking. I interpret the above to mean that you respect her flute playing and may be willing to hear her in other settings such as in Frequency with Edward Wilkerson Jr. or as a sideperson, but her conception for her own music, i.e. the Black Earth Ensemble, does not entirely move you? Exactly.

I was going to say Mingus, but I'm not sure about that for several reasons. First, that side of Mingus is pretty heavily indebted at times to Ellington's example. Second, Mingus's use of/susceptibility to mood or moodiness, while often quite dramatic, dosn't often seem programmatic to me; rather, it's as though the drama element is often quite personal, even dreamlike. There is no external "key" or point of reference, other than the sometimes Ellingtonian sensuous lushness; Mingus is dreaming up his own dramas. Bob Graettinger?

OK Mark -- To exaggerate a good bit, if you're writing some music that's meant to accompany images of Snidely Whiplash behaving like Snidely Whiplash or a lush tropical paradise being all lush and tropical, you're probably going to be drawing on a more or less agreed upon stock of sounds that suggest such things, which usually doesn't lead to or allow much room for significant musical invention. I'm not saying that Mitchell's music is all that way or that simplistic, but as tasty as her ear is and as technically gifted as her flute playing is, for my taste I hear too much upfront programmatic thinking in her music. YMMV.

By "travelogue-ish" I mean that the music often strikes me as overtly pictorial/illustrative in mood, like the soundtrack for a travelogue, and not as concerned with what might be called "language principles" as I would wish. That is, if one's goals are dramatic/illustrative and the "plot" elements/what is to be illustrated are more or less pre-determined, then you'll be making musical choices more on the basis of what will tell on those fronts, which however tasty your ear might be will often be stuff that you and your audience already know/recognize/associate with the moods involved. For an Ellington, of course, a whiff or more than a whiff of the programmatic/illustrative often drove him to the compositional heights, but in my experience that's uncommon among composers (Berlioz might be another one of those). I guess the difference is that with those two the presence of external drama/program fired their musical imaginations as much or more than anything else. But IMO that's a rare thing.

Based on what I've heard, right where it should be. She's certainly OK but a bit travelogue-ish for my tastes.