Jim Snidero

[Larry Kart]

Any thoughts? Impressed by some of his recent work as a sideman on several Criss Cross dates, I picked up his "Convergence" (Savant), with Paul Bollenback, Paul Gill, and Billy Drummond and was impressed yet again. The first thing that struck me is his perfect intonation, which sets up the rest of his style, his agile fluidity and taste for the alto's upper registers. His lines just "ping." Any other altoists with perfect intonation come to mind? Off the top of my head, Sonny Stitt perhaps?

[jlhoots]

I like Live At The Deer Head Inn.

[Larry Kart]

Thanks. Ordered it.

[Pim]

I remember Snidero from some play along cds for alto saxophone. Very clean player, too clean for me to be honest. But I never heard a real recording by him.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Pim

[Larry Kart]

On 7/29/2023 at 8:46 PM, Larry Kart said:

Thanks. Ordered it.

It arrived, excellent. Orrin Evens in fine form adds a great deal.

[Eric]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

It arrived, excellent. Orrin Evens in fine form adds a great deal.

Oh hell yeah!  Saw him at my one (and only) visit to the Jazz Showcase.

[sgcim]

Snidero is the guy who I heard interviewed on WKCR, who throughout the interview claimed he had the one secret about jazz that no one knew about (sounded like clickbait).

He finally revealed the secret, which was that jazz musicians work out their solos beforehand. He used as proof the Miles Davis Quintet albums alternate tracks he heard, and claimed that they all played the same basic solos as the tracks used on the albums themselves. I posted about this before, and someone disagreed with me by posting another interview with him, in which he said the same thing, but phrased it differently.

As far as in tune alto players, your friend Phil Woods was incapable of playing OOT, unless he was dying of Emphysema on his last albums.

Gene Quill,Jackie McLean and many other alto players can't make that same claim.

[Larry Kart]

I didn't say that PW's intonation was less than topnotch, just that Snidero's really struck me as special, in part no doubt because his tone is somewhat on the attenuated side, which tends to highlight, put an extra emphasis on, precise intonation.

The same solos? Red Garland to some degree, but Coltrane? -- Snidero's nuts. Coltrane couldn't have played the same solo twice in a row if he'd wanted to; the sheer flow of his ideas would have precluded that. Now if he's talking about someone like Johnny Hodges or Harry Edison -- and if he was, so what? Who would have wanted them or others of their vintage and ilk to proceed otherwise. And Snidero, you nudnik, what about Lester Young? No repeater pencil, he.

BTW, how many alternate takes are there of the Miles-Coltrane-Garland-Chambers-Jones quintet? Any?

[JSngry]

There are some airshots. 

[Larry Kart]

Air shots aren't the same thing as alternate takes. An alternate would be more likely to reveal whether a recorded solo had been worked out beforehand, which was the claim at issue.

[Guy Berger]

13 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Air shots aren't the same thing as alternate takes. An alternate would be more likely to reveal whether a recorded solo had been worked out beforehand, which was the claim at issue.

Milestones (quintet + Adderley) has alternate takes.  There are also the reels from the Round About Midnight sessions.

[sonnymax]

On 8/6/2023 at 8:28 PM, sgcim said:

Snidero is the guy who I heard interviewed on WKCR, who throughout the interview claimed he had the one secret about jazz that no one knew about (sounded like clickbait).

He finally revealed the secret, which was that jazz musicians work out their solos beforehand. He used as proof the Miles Davis Quintet albums alternate tracks he heard, and claimed that they all played the same basic solos as the tracks used on the albums themselves. I posted about this before, and someone disagreed with me by posting another interview with him, in which he said the same thing, but phrased it differently.

As far as in tune alto players, your friend Phil Woods was incapable of playing OOT, unless he was dying of Emphysema on his last albums.

Gene Quill,Jackie McLean and many other alto players can't make that same claim.

That someone would be me. Here's your original statement:

On 6/27/2022 at 4:41 PM, sgcim said:

...Then you have Jim Snidero saying in an interview on WKCR that the secret to jazz is that based on his study of alternate takes of Miles Davis' Coltrane period Quintet/Sextet albums, none of that stuff was improvised. Every take had the same solos (at least by Trane and Davis) that appeared on the records. Snidero claims that this is true of all the jazz records he and his contemporaries make today. No improvisation...

I asked you for proof that he made such an outlandish claim. You said you heard it on the radio and told me to search the station's archives for it. I did that and more and found nothing. Your comeback? "I heard it on the radio". 

You then went on to make the same claim on another forum, and I replied with the following:

[QUOTE=jazzshrink;1263299]You've made this same claim on other forums over the past year or so. I don't believe that's what he said and when I inquired, you couldn't provide a link to your source. So, I did some research of my own and found this recent Snidero interview in which he said: 

"There’s often a misunderstanding when it comes to jazz improvisation, that somehow you’re making it all up as you’re going along out of thin air. I am part of a tradition established by the greatest jazz improvisors - Bird, Miles, Coltrane, Rollins, etc … - which is that there is plenty of pre-conceived material that is used when improvising. You hear it time and again on recordings of jazz greats, the same language on multiple recordings. The trick is to be in the moment, listen, react, and most importantly, be musical. 

There will be times that you play something that you’ve played many times before, times when you’re playing variations of things you’ve played before, and times when you play something entirely new. It’s about how you put it together and how in the moment you are when improvising."

I hope you'll agree that this statement is not the same as "the top players didn't improvise".[/QUOTE]

Your response?

[QUOTE=sgcim;1263478]That's not what he said in the interview. He said that they played the exact same things that they played on the out takes. He called it the "great secret about jazz improvisation". He was only referring to the Miles Davis group with Trane at the time. What you[re saying sounds more reasonable.[/QUOTE]

So, now you're here peddling the same crap, claiming: "someone disagreed with me by posting another interview with him, in which he said the same thing, but phrased it differently." What happened to "What you're saying sounds more reasonable."?

I don't understand you, sgcim. You're an accomplished musician, arranger, etc. Snidero's description of the improvisation process in the print interview is spot on, imo. I would think someone with your experience would recognize this, and seriously question what you thought you hear him say on the radio. At the very least, I hope it would discourage you from spreading misinformation without providing any proof beyond, "I heard it."

[sgcim]

6 hours ago, sonnymax said:

That someone would be me. Here's your original statement:

I asked you for proof that he made such an outlandish claim. You said you heard it on the radio and told me to search the station's archives for it. I did that and more and found nothing. Your comeback? "I heard it on the radio". 

You then went on to make the same claim on another forum, and I replied with the following:

[QUOTE=jazzshrink;1263299]You've made this same claim on other forums over the past year or so. I don't believe that's what he said and when I inquired, you couldn't provide a link to your source. So, I did some research of my own and found this recent Snidero interview in which he said: 

"There’s often a misunderstanding when it comes to jazz improvisation, that somehow you’re making it all up as you’re going along out of thin air. I am part of a tradition established by the greatest jazz improvisors - Bird, Miles, Coltrane, Rollins, etc … - which is that there is plenty of pre-conceived material that is used when improvising. You hear it time and again on recordings of jazz greats, the same language on multiple recordings. The trick is to be in the moment, listen, react, and most importantly, be musical. 

There will be times that you play something that you’ve played many times before, times when you’re playing variations of things you’ve played before, and times when you play something entirely new. It’s about how you put it together and how in the moment you are when improvising."

I hope you'll agree that this statement is not the same as "the top players didn't improvise".[/QUOTE]

Your response?

[QUOTE=sgcim;1263478]That's not what he said in the interview. He said that they played the exact same things that they played on the out takes. He called it the "great secret about jazz improvisation". He was only referring to the Miles Davis group with Trane at the time. What you[re saying sounds more reasonable.[/QUOTE]

So, now you're here peddling the same crap, claiming: "someone disagreed with me by posting another interview with him, in which he said the same thing, but phrased it differently." What happened to "What you're saying sounds more reasonable."?

I don't understand you, sgcim. You're an accomplished musician, arranger, etc. Snidero's description of the improvisation process in the print interview is spot on, imo. I would think someone with your experience would recognize this, and seriously question what you thought you hear him say on the radio. At the very least, I hope it would discourage you from spreading misinformation without providing any proof beyond, "I heard it."

I'm just saying what he said in the radio interview. I'm not agreeing with him.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

https://15questions.net/interview/jim-snidero-about-improvisation/page-1/

Snidero: "There’s often a misunderstanding when it comes to jazz improvisation, that somehow you’re making it all up as you’re going along out of thin air. I am part of a tradition established by the greatest jazz improvisors - Bird, Miles, Coltrane, Rollins, etc … -  which is that there is plenty of pre-conceived material that is used when improvising. You hear it time and again on recordings of jazz greats, the same language on multiple recordings. The trick is to be in the moment, listen, react, and most importantly, be musical."

I read this as Snidero saying that every good improvisor has their favorite licks and sounds -  not that they solo the same all the time. I think I know what he means because when I listen to music on the radio, I'm always trying to figure out who is playing and it's often a sound or pet lick or a combination of the two that gives me the clues as to who it is. This doesn't mean that they repeat themselves, just that they often use the same devices that make them sound like they do.

[JSngry]

It's language, and all that comes with that. 

[GA Russell]

I remember when Mosaic released its two Chet Baker PJ studio and live boxes. the promotional material mentioned that Michael and Charlie were stunned by the fact that Chet's solos were not like one another for the alternate takes.

[sonnymax]

13 hours ago, sgcim said:

I'm just saying what he said in the radio interview. I'm not agreeing with him.

No. You accuse Snidero of saying something without any proof. Whether or not you agree with this false statement is irrelevant.

12 hours ago, JSngry said:

It's language, and all that comes with that. 

Exactly! A language used to create a narrative. Everyone's narrative is slightly different, but these stories often contain similar themes, phrases, timing, etc. that speak to shared experiences. At least that's how I listen to the music and connect to an artist.

[mjzee]

But sgcim says he heard it on the radio.  How, short of having somehow decided to record it beforehand, could he have proof?  Why not just recognize it as, literally, "heresay," and move on?  Not everything needs to be agreed-with.

[Daniel A]

A problem with all recent jazz (as in post 1970s) is that we never get to hear any alternate takes, so we cannot evaluate the inventiveness of soloists. I suppose that would take an expanded "reissue", but that does not ever seem to happen in the world of streaming (or vinyl, for that matter).

[sgcim]

1 hour ago, mjzee said:

But sgcim says he heard it on the radio.  How, short of having somehow decided to record it beforehand, could he have proof?  Why not just recognize it as, literally, "heresay," and move on?  Not everything needs to be agreed-with.

Yeah, I guess it won't hold up in the Organissimo court of law. I declare this a mistrial, and

  find the defendant Snidero innocent of all charges. Court Adjourned!

"But your Honor, I hoid it on the radio!"

"Guards, escort this joker out of my courtroom, before I hold him in contempt of court!"

"Alright,alright; just don't touch me; I don't like to be touched..."

[mjzee]

The real problem with Jim Snidero is: he should have dropped the "o" and passed himself off as Twisted Sister's Dee Snider's brother.

[sgcim]

2 hours ago, mjzee said:

The real problem with Jim Snidero is: he should have dropped the "o" and passed himself off as Twisted Sister's Dee Snider's brother.

Darn, I should've presented that as evidence in the case!

[sonnymax]

On 8/9/2023 at 3:52 PM, sgcim said:

Yeah, I guess it won't hold up in the Organissimo court of law. I declare this a mistrial, and find the defendant Snidero innocent of all charges. Court Adjourned!

More like the case should be dismissed with prejudice for a lack of evidence. 🥸

[sgcim]

6 hours ago, sonnymax said:

More like the case should be dismissed with prejudice for a lack of evidence. 🥸

If I could just find that interview...😁