Edgar Varèse and the jazz men

[mikeweil]

Have a look and listen here: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/06/edga...zzmen-mp3s.html

This predates Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz session by three years ...

From Noal Cohen's Teddy Charles disco:

Date: Between March and August 1957

Location: NY

Label: [private recording]

Edgard Varèse (ldr), Art Farmer (t), Eddie Bert, Frank Rehak (tb), Don Butterfield (tu), John LaPorta (as), Hal McKusick (as, cl), Teo Macero (ts), Teddy Charles (vib), Hall Overton (p), Charles Mingus (b), Ed Shaughnessy (d), Edgard Varèse (dir, con)

a. Sound Fragments unissued

This session has recently (June 1, 2009) surfaced on the internet. It involves the French composer Edgard Varèse directing a group of New York City "workshop musicians" in performing a variety of "sounds." Teo Macero was one of the organizers. Apparently, parts of this session were used in Varèse's Poème Électronique. But these fragments seem to have little to do with jazz and although some have suggested this is one of the first "free jazz" sessions, that doesn't seem accurate since Varèse was instructing the musicians as to what to play on their given instruments. (Teddy Charles remembers nothing being written out.) The original tape of this workshop is stored at The Paul Sacher Foundation. Nineteen low quality mp3 files of this workshop are available at WFMU's Beware of the Blog.

What do you think?

Edited November 20, 2009 by mikeweil

[AllenLowe]

I saw this a while ago and it's fascinating - when I was writing my 1950s jazz book Teo Macero told me about these collaborations and I always wondered if there was any documentation - sure enough, there it is.

[Bright Moments]

cool beans!!!

[Larry Kart]

Haven't listened to all of it, but based on what I've heard so far, most of this falls into the "let's make weird sounds in the practice room" bag, except when Teo is doing some of his schtick. That is, the prevailing assumption, if you want to push it this far, is that we're being random and/or giving Varese some spacy raw material for him to do with as he will -- no particular "language" feeling/drive on the part of the players that I can detect. Any comparison between this and the Tristano "free-ish" pieces or nascent Cecil or Ornette (different as those three strains may be) strikes me as being as random as this stuff seems.

[7/4]

Edgard Varèse, The present day composers get shirts!

*

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

wierd!

[Bright Moments]

wierd!

and weird too!

[JSngry]

Haven't listened to all of it, but based on what I've heard so far, most of this falls into the "let's make weird sounds in the practice room" bag, except when Teo is doing some of his schtick. That is, the prevailing assumption, if you want to push it this far, is that we're being random and/or giving Varese some spacy raw material for him to do with as he will -- no particular "language" feeling/drive on the part of the players that I can detect. Any comparison between this and the Tristano "free-ish" pieces or nascent Cecil or Ornette (different as those three strains may be) strikes me as being as random as this stuff seems.

I concur completely, but am nevertheless delighted to hear this.