Ingrid Laubrock

[clifford_thornton]

As a sometime critic (less so in the past year or so), I can say without question that I continually find myself asking whether something will matter or be worth holding onto a few years much less decades down the road. I have done that a lot with my CD collection lately - stuff I've reviewed and liked, as well as stuff I wasn't sure I liked but felt like it was something necessary to understand the context in which creative music is now played. This has resulted in a lot of culling, but Ingrid's records are all still here. I think they are really good, and her voice is one that is interesting to watch/hear maturing.

Henderson for sure; to me I feel like she's also found the point of interaction between the vocabularies of Wayne Shorter and Evan Parker.

Agreed with Ayers upthread on what the Zurich music is designed around. The compact disc also excises some aspects that may have damaged the "flow" (no spoken bits) and I am sure it's been mastered for home stereo/stoner phones digestion. I found no problems with the sound. Also, I saw the group (at the stone) before hearing the record.

[Hot Ptah]

Bev, I wrote a post here on Organissimo once about this very thing. I wrote that some of the music of Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton thrilled me, but I have no idea what they are doing, and whether it is successful artistically within the genre in which they work. It sounds good to me, but is it actually good, if you are a musician and know music theory?

The response I received from the musicians on the board was to just sit back and enjoy it. I didn't really understand why they could not provide a written explanation of what would constitute a successful performance within Threadgill and Braxton's genre of music and whether Threadgill and Braxton achieved it--and more importantly to me, why or why not they were successful.

I think that almost no one writing about jazz has ever really understood the music. I think almost all jazz writers have been enthusiastic fans who fall back on factual history or colorful metaphors to mask their lack of musical knowledge.

When I read Lewis Porter's book, "John Coltrane: His Life and Music", I had the feeling that I was reading the work of an author who actually understood the music and could articulate insights about it to a lay reader. On the other hand, as an uninformed lay reader, he could have been stating very simplistic, obvious, or even incorrect, statements about the music and I would not have known the difference.

[A Lark Ascending]

As a sometime critic (less so in the past year or so), I can say without question that I continually find myself asking whether something will matter or be worth holding onto a few years much less decades down the road.

Not questioning your reaction; but what criteria do you use to differentiate between what is lasting and what is ephemeral?

I know you are writing from a deep involvement with the music.

[A Lark Ascending]

Bev, I wrote a post here on Organissimo once about this very thing. I wrote that some of the music of Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton thrilled me, but I have no idea what they are doing, and whether it is successful artistically within the genre in which they work. It sounds good to me, but is it actually good, if you are a musician and know music theory?

The response I received from the musicians on the board was to just sit back and enjoy it. I didn't really understand why they could not provide a written explanation of what would constitute a successful performance within Threadgill and Braxton's genre of music and whether Threadgill and Braxton achieved it--and more importantly to me, why or why not they were successful.

I think that almost no one writing about jazz has ever really understood the music. I think almost all jazz writers have been enthusiastic fans who fall back on factual history or colorful metaphors to mask their lack of musical knowledge.

When I read Lewis Porter's book, "John Coltrane: His Life and Music", I had the feeling that I was reading the work of an author who actually understood the music and could articulate insights about it to a lay reader. On the other hand, as an uninformed lay reader, he could have been stating very simplistic, obvious, or even incorrect, statements about the music and I would not have known the difference.

I was attending a free event last year and got talking with a visitor from the US. I said that the problem I had was differentiating between what was good and what was not. He said, just 'go with the flow'.

I did and thoroughly enjoyed the event. But I couldn't articulate why.

People enthusing about X, Y and Z cause me no problems in this situation because it is so hard for most of us to know why we are responding to one musical situation and not another.

People who assert that X is crap and we really should be listening to Y wind me up no end! (you may have noticed!!!!!)

Edited October 3, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[JSngry]

You can't win with this one. If you talk theory or intervals or micro-macro structures or specific instrumental technique, much less print score excerpts or solo transcriptions, you get the cries of woe from the "hey, I'm no musician, this is of no interest to me" crowd. And then when you go off into subjective reactions, you get hit with the "oh, you're just projecting" line.

Frankly, I think both crowds protest too much. It never hurts to learn the basics of anything you're interested in, things don't just happen by magic. And it never hurts to be open to a pure subjective reception either. That's more or less an essential act of humanness. And really, a well-balanced/disciplined human will proceed from one direction into the other, and back again, for as long as the fascination holds/grips. Pretty much a sucker's game to refuse to be educated and interested at the same time.

Really, no-win, which I personally think is bullshit. And I think a lot of the "projecting" is done as much by the people claiming that they are being projected on, just as the cries of over-technicality are often coming from those who realize that they really could/should be able to learn a few basics and just haven't bothered (for whatever reason). But it is what it is, always has been, always will be. It never hurts to try to figure out why you like or don't like anything, but it also doesn't hurt to simply like or not like that thing first, worry about it later, if at all.

[A Lark Ascending]

I also think there is a tendency to confuse why a musician matters historically with why you enjoy them.

I've read enough on Beethoven down the years to have an inkling as to why he matters historically - what he did structurally, in terms of shifting the emphasis from abstract 'beauty' to internal, personal expression etc. etc,

But the reason I listen to him is because I find his music moving. Part of that has resulted from reading about why others feel he matters, part from a visceral reaction to his music.

The same could be said of Charlie Parker - I've a hazy idea of his historic innovations but through repeat listenings I've come to find his records exciting.

I just get the feeling that we sometimes need the music we like to be considered historically significant. Which might explain all this 'who's best?' anxiety.

[clifford_thornton]

Eh, I don't care about who is best, since that seems to be the canon we're all fighting against/trying to expand.

The criteria by which I measure someone is certainly in part whether they've been there doing the work for a long time (recognized or not), but also whether the work has the conviction behind it to stand next to the diverse body of valuable work that has come before.

Take someone like Paul Flaherty. He's certainly far from being canonized in the realm of free music, but he's been dedicated to his craft, unwaveringly so, for decades and has the track record to prove it. Laubrock is a totally different player, but I can see/hear the long view in her music already. I also know from listening to her that the music she hears is beyond what she plays (in other words, she's reaching for something). So work - really doing the thing, and seeing beyond the thing - I'd say are essential to whether I feel like I should be paying attention. And certainly I still miss people hanging onto any such criteria.

I also don't have to "like" an artist's work to appreciate their contributions to the music and the work they've put into it. Like Bill Dixon said, "okay, you don't like Napoleon - are you going to rewrite history and leave Napoleon out of it?"

[David Ayers]

Good discussion.

The specific thought I had in mind was not only the Laubrock review but the DB review culture in general, as well as my more general observations on review culture, and also the thread here on the 'wife' reviewing her husband's records.

DB is evidently aimed in part at musicians, since it carries advertisements for instruments and equipment. I notice that many of the reviews are quite technocratic, by which I don't mean technical, but that they simply report in a summary fashion on the effectiveness of (usually) each individual musician in achieving goals which are not often discussed. At random more or less form the issue I have to hand: 'the horn men weave in and out of each other's message'; 'the band plays loose and out of time behind Lawrence's commanding solo'; 'the band is extremely tight in the execution of Rosenboom's ideas' . OK I picked weaker examples and the reviews do contain important information, but I did find these very quickly on a random dip.

It is hard to write about music and I am not knocking it, and indeed these kind of comments are well within the reality of much jazz that it is based on solo, 'interaction', tightness to agreed structures. Yet the step back which 'wife' takes to how and what this is and how to hear it seems to me often missing, once the basic goals are taken for granted. And the reason this is important is that all the people who try to do something else with the 'jazz' tradition - and I have said before that I think 'jazz' unites things that are much more disparate in terms of function than the term allows for, and I mean the notion of a jazz story that goes from NO to Swing to Bebop, let alone what follows - that those people who have done something else are returning not to the question of innovating based on the tradition but to a more fundamental question of what we hear, how we hear it, and why.

So with IL's Zürich Concert you plainly have to hear it in terms to other than that of the individual voice and the conventionally assigned role. In fact it is composed music and the point of comparison might be more Quartet for the End of Time than the John Coltrane Quartet, if you see what I mean. Laubrock's projects call on you to listen and not just to expect, and returning to the DB review I notice that he (Alain Drouot) brackets this by saying that it was a 'brave decision' to concentrate on ensemble rather than individual as 'fans' might be a bit disappointed not to hear the soloists 'stretch out'. Yet his review maintains this by picking out the accordion player who 'leaves the strongest mark', but he struggles to give much voice to what he has heard when he writes 'the instrumentalists' lines are juxtaposed or interlocked and, as a result, can sound a tad premeditated.' Hm. As in a composition, one might say. Now, I do not criticise this (three star...) review as it got me interested albeit by reaction against, but it did raise for me some of the questions I am attempting to articulate.

Edited October 3, 2014 by David Ayers

[JSngry]

Yeah, "history" inevitably takes care of itself in accordance with whatever manner the lens is directed at any given time. Very few genuine "unknowns", just.a lot of people who haven't been looked at yet. So anybody who wants to leave a trail now to be looked at later, can't blame them for that. And unless and until all documentation of any given time/place is completely destroyed by natural or forced means, there's always hope. Centuries, even eons, of it.

As far as "the best"...I don't know what that means, outside of executing any given set of parameters more thoroughly than anybody else, and even then, how do you know that it won't be done better by somebody else at some point. I mean, ok, Bird is definitely "the best" but he's not even been dead 75 years yet, and at some point, those parameters (which ultimately have to do with spatial & dimensional fluidity trough the physics of sound) will either no longer matter at all (god forbid), or else the means by which consensually desired execution of those parameters will have changed so dramatically that the meat will be lost and all that will be observed is the skeleton upon it once resided.

I hope to not live that long, and maybe that time will never come. But it might. and even if it doesn't, hey, you still got Bird morphing Newtonian into Quantum, so...deal with it. Or not. I don't care.

I'll create (or more accurately, discover) my own history, thank you, and it will "matter" or not depending on how many intersection points there are with everybody else who is doing/has done/will do the same. Not gonna cry if/when that's not very often, nor feel like God Made Manifest when it does. Safety In Numbers vs Lemmings, who wins? Depends on how far away the cliff is, I suppose.

[David Ayers]

And incidentally - what I realise is the central thing I am thinking but didn't state - is the thought that what is heard represses what is not heard. That a stabilised music represses hearing. Stated in this way, in its broadest form, in terms of its widest implications, and to cite again Adorno.

[JSngry]

And incidentally - what I realise is the central thing I am thinking but didn't state - is the thought that what is heard represses what is not heard. That a stabilised music represses hearing. Stated in this way, in its broadest form, in terms of its widest implications, and to cite again Adorno.

Oh, that seems a little too much...a stabilized listener represses hearing. Doesn't matter if that listener is executing or receiving the music. Stabilized in, stabilized out out. I don't think music itself can stabilize anybody who isn't already (or is wanting to become) stabilized. What are you hearing in your life? What are you listening for? Where have you set your finish line?

Everybody looks for a scapegoat, ya' know. Start with self, fix that, and then go from there. Blame "the system", boo hoo. "The system" exists because it's the easiest way for most people. If you're not one of those people, proceed accordingly and don't worry about "repressed hearing" in anybody but yourself.

This Adorno guy, he seems like a real pain in the ass, honestly, like a scoldy prick, probably be right in place with so many of the HuffPost Live hosts I see today (talk about a let down...) Seems to treat the "symptoms" rather than the "disease", which is simply that throughout history (which to me indicates some very distinct possibility of hard-wiring) most people really don't give all that much of a shit. So proceed accordingly.

You know what I found out from a few years of eating really healthily? This is what I leaned - that shit does not stink because it's shit and has no choice. Shit stinks because the waste of "improper" diet stinks. so, if you don't want stinky shit, don't let your body get that stinky shit inside itself. Totally Newtonian Principle Of Shit Smell #1.

However, I like the food that makes the stinky shit, so my shit generally stinks, sometimes cruelly so. But that's on me, not on my shit. I own my shit-stink, and would not have it any other way.

[David Ayers]

And - why not - references on the above for those interested:

"Die stabilisierte Musik" (1928) "Stabilised Music"

"Über den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Hörens" (1938) "On The Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Hearing/Listening"

The latter in the anthology of Adorno, "Essays in Music", the former maybe not translated, not sure.

Edited October 3, 2014 by David Ayers

[mjazzg]

And incidentally - what I realise is the central thing I am thinking but didn't state - is the thought that what is heard represses what is not heard. That a stabilised music represses hearing. Stated in this way, in its broadest form, in terms of its widest implications, and to cite again Adorno.

Can i put my hand up and admit I don't understand this but would like to as I've enjoyed following this discussion thus far

David, is it possible to explain the phrase "stabilised music" to this layman in layman's terms? And also to elaborate a little on the phrase "what is heard represses what is not heard". Don't worry if not and I realise it's a bit of a thread diversion.

I'll look forward to reading a response in the morning by which time the discussion will have lost me even more

[clifford_thornton]

Not knowing Adorno too well, I'd assume that the attention focuses too much on the past (having been heard) or the future (what one expects to hear) rather than what's being experienced/heard currently. I would also say that a dedifferentiated listening approach (cf. Ehrenzweig) allows one to take in a variety of parallel stimuli on a level auditory field, in real-time.

[David Ayers]

Adorno is talkin in the 20s about the neoclassical reaction against expressionism, and his principal topic at that time is Hindemith and then Stravinsky. In the 30s he is talking about the stabilisation of classical and 'light music' in the context of the culture industry. The regression essay can be directly downloaded from this link: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCoQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.warwick.ac.uk%2Ffac%2Fsoc%2Fphilosophy%2Fnews%2Fcalendar%2Flydia_goer_postgraduate%2Fadorno_on_the_fetish_character_-_double-language.doc&ei=BwwvVNqgKa6f7gb__IDQCQ&usg=AFQjCNEOdz6-OF509CafFEPe7_H8VMGdBw&bvm=bv.76802529,d.ZGU

[JSngry]

Action/Reaction = ways of everybody being happy and unhappy, just not all at once. It's only a "big deal" if you think you're entitled to be happy with everything all the time. Otherwise, it's just the way life works, even when the pendulum is allowed to turn into an anvil. Sucks when that happens, but...it happens anyway, because it makes some people happy.

[A Lark Ascending]

I also don't have to "like" an artist's work to appreciate their contributions to the music and the work they've put into it. Like Bill Dixon said, "okay, you don't like Napoleon - are you going to rewrite history and leave Napoleon out of it?"

You can't write Napoleon out. But you can argue endlessly about what part he played - the driving 'Great Man' or someone swept along by broader social, economic and cultural forces. And that's before you consider if what he did was a good thing or not.

I can see your point about valuing musicians with conviction, the long view, the willingness to look beyond etc. But where does what the music actually sounds like come into that?

I don't know the music of Max Reger apart from hearing things every now and then on the radio, but would imagine he'd fit into the conviction/long view frame. Yet his music hardly gets played or recorded. I've no doubt there are listeners who love his music and feel he's overlooked. But you get the impression that for all that striving to be serious and contribute to the tradition he's missed the thing that connects him with even the bulk of the dedicated classical music audience.

**********************

Back to the Zurich concert - I'm intrigued as to how recent the music is. I remember her performing an extended piece for large ensemble at Cheltenham about ten years back. The fact that she has recorded it with many of the people she was playing with in Europe before relocating makes me wonder if it has evolved from that. I remember it being rather hard to get your head round.

Edited October 4, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[David Ayers]

Zürich Concert was recorded in 2011. It is on Spotify, although in common with other Intakt issues on Spotify the longer tracks are excluded. I'd say it is hard to get your head round not because it is busy or raucous - it is not - but because it is, as more than one reviewer has called it, 'enigmatic', that is, ambiguous as to mood and direction.

[A Lark Ascending]

Yes, I know it's that recent. Just curious if the composition is also new or whether it started with the lengthy piece I heard. That was never recorded at the time. My aural memory isn't that good - it usually take me a few listens to a piece to realise that music early in a piece is returning later on (unless it's in an obvious form like a sonata). So when I listened to the Zurich record in the summer I couldn't recall any of it. May be totally new.

'enigmatic', that is, ambiguous as to mood and direction

I think that describes most of her music since the mid-noughties.

Edited October 4, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[Steve Reynolds]

Mysterious, ambiguous, and enigmatic also describes Capricorn Climber.

I think Kris Davis writes more interesting music, fwiw.

Then again, my mind is still affected by that live Anti-House show when they didn't meet MY expectations!!!

I am hesitating bringing a friend who is just a bit familiar with avant-garde or free jazz.

Tim Berne or Tamarindo would be a much more apt live introduction to this broad range of music we are discussing

Edited October 4, 2014 by Steve Reynolds

[xybert]

I had a bit of a listen to some Anti-House and Paradoxical Frog on Spotify... found nothing wrong with it but it's just not grabbing me. I'm totally a slow learner with certain artists, and i still wouldn't say that i've given Laubrock a decent enough listen yet. I'll come around for another pass at some point and maybe then i'll have my 'click' moment, then again maybe not.

It's a hard one though. Just to pick a couple of 'avant garde' artists out of the air, Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton didn't make complete sense to me at first, but something about their music grabbed me and kept me listening until i dug it. With Laubrock it's just not grabbing me enough to want to persevere, but i don't know why. Horses, water, the heart wants what it wants and doesn't want what it doesn't want, nothing personal etc.

[David Ayers]

One thing about Laubrock is she never shouts at you. But she is waiting for you.

[clifford_thornton]

Totally. And when she does shout it has knocked my socks off.

[AllenLowe]

my socks are still on.

[David Ayers]

Gets cold where you live though. Brr.