What music did you buy today?

[Larry Kart]

13 hours ago, Steve Reynolds said:

He’s always a highlight in the many terrific Vandermark large ensemble recordings. 

OTOH, I can't stand Vandermark; musically, I think he's close to a charlatan, although he did play a significant role in getting the Chicago scene on its feet by (I believe) pouring a good deal of his MacArthur Award money into supporting others. 

[Steve Reynolds]

3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

OTOH, I can't stand Vandermark; musically, I think he's close to a charlatan, although he did play a significant role in getting the Chicago scene on its feet by (I believe) pouring a good deal of his MacArthur Award money into supporting others. 

I’ve heard this before. He’s not my favorite reed player by a long shot but I think you are selling his compositional abilities with a large ensemble short. I know you’ve seen and heard them. I also know once I get a fixed idea about what’s what I have a hard time letting it go. I still can go where you are when I hear KV in the same group as Rempis or Gustafsson or maybe especially with Brotzmann. 

I try to focus on his strengths rather than his weaknesses which are tone (especially on either of the clarinets he plays) and his lack of flexibility on the tenor. I still get a charge out of his riff based playing - especially on the baritone - but I may be a minority in that view.

[Larry Kart]

Yes, his compositions are IMO less objectionable/inept than his solo work, but for me they also are rather faceless, at time bordering on a kind of willed industrial ugliness, as though ugliness were in itself a sign of authenticity. And that endless string of upscale arty dedications -- to the likes of Samuel Beckett, Michel Foucault, et al., with, unless I'm recalling incorrectly, an occasional doff of the cap to someone like Charlie Patton. I'm guessing that in KV headquarters there's a wheel that he spins, a la Vanna White, to come with the name du jour.

[David Ayers]

Pfui. In the line-up Brotzmann, Gustafsson, Vandermark, it is KV who attends to the task of holding the music together. He's also become a great blower, bit like one of those ‘bar walkers and honkers’. 

[ghost of miles]

Anthony Braxton and a lot of other top-notch musicians don't seem to find KV a "charlatan," which is quite a charge to level against him--a little heavier than simply saying he's not aesthetically developed to one's tastes.  As for the dedications, some may find them pretentious, but they've always struck me merely as KV's attempt to hip people to the artists he admires.  Worse crimes have been committed in the history of jazz.

[jlhoots]

2 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Anthony Braxton and a lot of other top-notch musicians don't seem to find KV a "charlatan," which is quite a charge to level against him--a little heavier than simply saying he's not aesthetically developed to one's tastes.  As for the dedications, some may find them pretentious, but they've always struck me merely as KV's attempt to hip people to the artists he admires.  Worse crimes have been committed in the history of jazz.

Agree!!

[JSngry]

Let's leave Vanna White out of this, ok? She's done no wrong.

[mjazzg]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

Anthony Braxton and a lot of other top-notch musicians don't seem to find KV a "charlatan," which is quite a charge to level against him--a little heavier than simply saying he's not aesthetically developed to one's tastes.  As for the dedications, some may find them pretentious, but they've always struck me merely as KV's attempt to hip people to the artists he admires.  Worse crimes have been committed in the history of jazz.

Thanks for making this point so well. It needed to be said. 

To bring the conversation back to Rempis, I've generally preferred KV when they play together. Happy to be in a minority on that.

[Larry Kart]

3 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Agree!!

The dedications, I venture to say without proof  are or were someone else's idea, not KV's. As for KV's playing, I like David Ayers' term "blower." I say charlatan because IMO his cachet in some/many quarters far exceeds his accomplishment, and I wouldn't be surprised if KV kind of knows this. In detail, while changes mean little or nothing to him, which is certainly the case with many vital figures of recent times, he also doesn't seem to me to be a (or much of a) "free" player -- here Rempis is a both good and a fair point of comparison I think. Rempis is by and large a truly "free" player (of a specific type that I won't try to define right now), a creator of striking individual/novel  formally interactive shapes, while KV's shapes are, thanks again to David Ayers, fairly well reminiscent of those of bar walkers and honkers but without the grease and with roughed up with avant-gardish trimmings. As for his riff-based playing (Steve Reynolds' point), in my experience those riffs don't swing (and perhaps that's not the goal) but rather just chug. And chug-chug-chug is not a rhythmic flavor I have much taste for.

[sonnyhill]

20 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

The dedications, I venture to say without proof  are or were someone else's idea, not KV's.

What does "I venture to say without proof" mean?  If you have no proof, how can you make the assertion that the dedications were someone else's idea?

[Larry Kart]

I'm pretty sure I know whose idea they were, but I don't want to say here.

[ghost of miles]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

The dedications, I venture to say without proof  are or were someone else's idea, not KV's. As for KV's playing, I like David Ayers' term "blower." I say charlatan because IMO his cachet in some/many quarters far exceeds his accomplishment, and I wouldn't be surprised if KV kind of knows this. In detail, while changes mean little or nothing to him, which is certainly the case with many vital figures of recent times, he also doesn't seem to me to be a (or much of a) "free" player -- here Rempis is a both good and a fair point of comparison I think. Rempis is by and large a truly "free" player (of a specific type that I won't try to define right now), a creator of striking individual/novel  formally interactive shapes, while KV's shapes are, thanks again to David Ayers, fairly well reminiscent of those of bar walkers and honkers but without the grease and with roughed up with avant-gardish trimmings. As for his riff-based playing (Steve Reynolds' point), in my experience those riffs don't swing (and perhaps that's not the goal) but rather just chug. And chug-chug-chug is not a rhythmic flavor I have much taste for.

That seems like a very fair critique of Vandermark's playing--but it sounds as if the import of your original post is to suggest that he's overrated, rather than "close to a charlatan."  Wiki's definition of "charlatan":  

A charlatan (also called a swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick or deception in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception. Synonyms for "charlatan" include "shyster", "quack", or "faker".

So perhaps this seems like splitting semantic hairs, except that "charlatan" pretty clearly connotes somebody knowingly deceiving others and proactively inflating his/her reputation for some kind of personal gain, whether it be financial reward or critical approval.  I don't get the sense that KV goes around doing that, or touting his saxophone prowess.  I've only talked with him at length once, for about an hour (it was an interview for WFIU), and he seemed pretty down to earth about his own abilities as a player.  

FWIW I agree that Rempis is an outstanding musician.  I've heard him live only twice, once with Tyler Damon and once in some sort of Vandermark context (that escapes my memory at the moment--it might have been KV5, many years ago here in Bloomington), have several of his recordings, and find him a joy to listen to.  

 

[jlhoots]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

I'm pretty sure I know whose idea they were, but I don't want to say here.

Vandermark certainly is not the only one that has done this dedication thing.

I'd really like your take on Joe McPhee.

[Steve Reynolds]

Fwiw we had a similar discussion on the old JCS board regarding KV back some 18 to 20 years ago. I know it became clear to me as a newish listener to freeish jazz that Vandermark was not in the same league as an improvisor as people like Evan Parker, Joe McPhee, Brotzmann, Gustafsson, Paul Dunmall, Fred Anderson, Mark Whitecage, etc. Glad we are having this discussion. I remember somewhere Vandermark stating (not even paraphrasing as it’s foggy in my mind) that standing next to Mats & Peter could make him feel unworthy. Yet of course both of those 2 clearly great or arguably historically great players deemed Vandermark worthy to release multiple recordings of them as a trio called Sonore. Of course in my view the strength of KV’s playing in that context are the riffing which seem to work as a glue to the music. 

Surely by now Ken’s playing has advanced but also it is in some ways very similar to what it was 20-25 years ago. Plus now we have a whole new generation of exciting saxophonists/reed players like Rempis, Keefe Jackson & Greg Ward (among others from Chicago - and many I’ve become much more familiar with in NYC being that I’ve lived nearby. Ingrid Laubrock, Ellery Eskelin, Tony Malaby, Briggan Krauss, Josh Sinton, Darius Jones, Rob Brown are just a few of the now well seasoned brilliant players who to my ears are also clearly greater players than Vandermark. Doesn’t mean he’s not worth listening to him - and I listen to his music quite often. It just means quite a few play free/creative saxophone at a very high level.

 

Of course *I* view McPhee as another one of the historically great players - on any of his saxophones (especially on tenor) and also magical on that little pocket trumpet he plays.

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

chug-chug-chug is not a rhythmic flavor I have much taste for.

Nor me. It needs one more chug in order to be effective.

 

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

That seems like a very fair critique of Vandermark's playing--but it sounds as if the import of your original post is to suggest that he's overrated, rather than "close to a charlatan."  Wiki's definition of "charlatan":  

A charlatan (also called a swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick or deception in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception. Synonyms for "charlatan" include "shyster", "quack", or "faker".

So perhaps this seems like splitting semantic hairs, except that "charlatan" pretty clearly connotes somebody knowingly deceiving others and proactively inflating his/her reputation for some kind of personal gain, whether it be financial reward or critical approval.  I don't get the sense that KV goes around doing that, or touting his saxophone prowess.  I've only talked with him at length once, for about an hour (it was an interview for WFIU), and he seemed pretty down to earth about his own abilities as a player.  

FWIW I agree that Rempis is an outstanding musician.  I've heard him live only twice, once with Tyler Damon and once in some sort of Vandermark context (that escapes my memory at the moment--it might have been KV5, many years ago here in Bloomington), have several of his recordings, and find him a joy to listen to.  

 

I say "charlatan" ("a person falsely claiming knowledge or skill" says my dictionary)  because, as I said or implied in a prior post, I find it hard to believe that KV, given all the listening   to other players he almost certainly has done over the years, does not know that there is a significant gap between his own musical efforts and those of a host of other stylistically comparable players, including many on the Chicago scene -- his own sidemen in particular, whom of course he has heard night after night. Yes, it's possible that KV doesn't hear the difference between his own playing and that of others, but I think that's unlikely, in part because KV doesn't seem to be person with a big ego. I think the underlying problem here -- and/or the key to the situation -- has to do with the early  (late '90s) days of the current Chicago scene. I wasn't there from the very first, but my memory is that things began/started to coalesce at the Empty Bottle, a venue on Western Ave. near Division St. that featured local edgy rock acts and drew a young audience of counter-culture coloration (though I don't think "counter-culture" was a term being used at the time. My son often was in the audience at the Bottle and later on played there in his "Math Rock" band Crush Kill Destroy.)

 Savvy, hip promoter John Corbett, who had a connection with KV and with the people who ran/booked the Bottle, got them to devote (IIRC) one night a week to a KV-led ensemble, and "mirable dictu" that music, which initially could be taken as having some overlap in mood, tone, and gesture with Heavy Metal etc., soon came to be accepted by much of the Bottle's already existing audience as a novel homegrown extension of things they already liked. Further, the idea that such a socio-musical transmutation was occurring, as in fact it was, was in itself quite titillating to those who had become anxious about the fate  re: contemporary audiences of any jazz-related music, let along jazz with an avant-garde coloration. Important too to some of us (guess I mean people like myself) was the fact so many of KV's sidemen were or soon would become among the brightest lights on the burgeoning Chicago avant-garde scene (e.g. Rempis, altoist Aram Shelton, trombonist Jeb Bishop, cornetist Josh Berman, along with still young veterans like bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Tim Mulveena) and many more) though in the initial flush of this titillating transformation it did bother some of us (again, I guess I mean people like myself) that the actual leading figure, KV, was not only not at all up to  the musical level of his sidemen but also understandably regarded as THE leading figure in this phenomenon. Then, and I'm not sure of the timeline here, came KV's being awarded the 1999 $265,000 MacArthur fellowship.

As I've said above, KV deserves much credit for spreading a good deal of that MacArthur fellowship largesse around to support other players on the scene. But as over time KV put out lots of CDs and became in effect the international face of the Chicago scene, some of us (people like myself) began to wonder about the disparity as we saw it between KV's relative eminence and his actual musical merit. Also, as titillating as the Empty Bottle-based socio-musical transmutation/seeming conversion of a young rock audience into fans of the avant garde, that began to fade way I believe as KV began to tour a good deal and as the Bottle crowd began to find his music rather same-y upon regular exposure.

As for the "charlatan" label, given KV's relative eminence, I suppose it comes down to 1) does KV, relatively speaking, significantly lack musical skills?; and 2) does he in some sense know this? If the answer to both those question is "yes," I think we have at least the making of a "charlatan"-like situation. 
BTW lurking in the back of the minds of some of us is the relationship between the KV phenomenon in its early days and the music of Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble. Unless I'm mistaken KV played some some with the NRG Ensemble, whose regular reedmen -- Russell himself, Chuck Burdelik, and Mars Williams -- were in my IMO far superior players. And one can't help but wonder what would have happened if Russell, who died in 1992, could have brought his explosive, shaggy, brilliant music to the same sort of audience that KV brought his music to a half a decade later. Sour grapes on my part you might say, but if history belongs to the winners in one sense, each of us has to/gets to decide what winning finally means and who really did so.

[Д.Д.]

Larry, thanks for providing an overview of the development of the Chicago new jazz scene.

I am not a fan of Vandermark either, and share your reservations about his playing (to be fair, I have not heard anything he recorded in the last 15 years), but I also strongly object to the "charlatan" label. He is not a self-promoter that you would expect a charlatan to be, he seems to be a very unassuming guy, and, as you noted, his generosity and organizational skills helped the scene tremendously (I assume he financed the Brötzmann Tentet, for example). It is not his fault that he was (and I am not sure whether he still is) considered by many to be the leading light in the new music. Are we to expect everybody who is not a top-tier player to stop playing / performing? The guy enjoys what he's doing, he plays with good people (and gives them ample opportunity to get a worldwide exposure), there is nothing about it that would make him a "charlatan". A lot of people of modest talent get over-hyped for various, often not related to the music, reasons. William Parker, anyone? Or Rahsaan Roland Kirk?                  

Edited September 16, 2019 by Д.Д.

[mjazzg]

12 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Vandermark certainly is not the only one that has done this dedication thing.

I'd really like your take on Joe McPhee.

Similarly, Anthony Braxton and Larry Ochs (Fictive Five) have dedicated tunes to other artists. Are they to be branded with partial charlatanism for doing so? Maybe this is only a "crime" if you're playing not up to snuff at the same time.

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, mjazzg said:

Similarly, Anthony Braxton and Larry Ochs (Fictive Five) have dedicated tunes to other artists. Are they to be branded with partial charlatanism for doing so? Maybe this is only a "crime" if you're playing not up to snuff at the same time.

With KV, the dedication process, which I obviously find irksome, is both a matter of degree (i.e how much of this there is) and, at times (or so it seems to me), the pretentious of the choices. Is there anyone on the scene who rivals KV along those lines?

To answer a previous question, while I don't have as much Joe McPhee as I would like to have and probably should have, I do like what I have and was definitely impressed by him in live performance.

In any case, I've been thinking again about the roots of my obviously intense irritation with KV. As I said in a previous post, part of it goes back to the achievements of Hal Russell and the fate of those achievements and/or his legacy in the Chicago scene and in general. Can't expect many (or any) other people to feel that way (perhaps Chuck does, given his crucial/fruitful relationship to Hal and his music), but I can't erase my feelings there, however twisted and unfair they might seem to others. One wants the course of aesthetic history to play out in real time in such a way that that which is valued highly by and large is in fact highly valuable. When that doesn't happen, and one thinks one knows how things should have gone, one can get more than a little pissy. By the same token, I think of Roscoe Mitchell's long career, which hasn't always been smooth but has been one where achievements and rewards have matched up over time, or so it seems to me.

I've also mentioned -- and this doesn't seem unfair to me -- my quite spontaneous and genuine negative response to KV's playing back in the day, versus the playing of his sidemen and other comparable figures on the Chicago scene. One has to trust one's judgment, and when I felt that gap, it bothered me -- I felt that the jazz scene in which I was most directly involved was at once flourishing in terms of creativity and  somewhat out of whack in terms of what might be called collective public response re: KV. Are such matters anyone's business? I felt they were mine.

Finally, there were all the times I heard a KV ensemble -- brightened by sterling contributions from Rempis, Jeb Bishop, Aram Shelton, et al -- and in the course of the performance I more or less had to mentally leave the room while KV took a solo. Addenum: It's hard to quantify this without citing specific recorded solos, and that I won't take the trouble to do, but (and again this may be just me) there is something peculiarly enervating and disturbing, especially in the midst of a piece where KV's solos are flanked as I've described above, about being subjected to (yes, that phrase is tendentious and perhaps a sign of nuttiness on my part, but that's how it felt to me) an extended swatch of music that was IMO that much out of whack. One wants, one expects, in, say, an Ellington band performance a certain high degree of homogeneity on the part of the soloists, a coherence of quality and, in effect, collective musical storytelling. Were that not the case -- if, say, Ellington's own frequently vital pianistic contributions to the piece were instead delivered in the style of Carmen Cavallero or Crazy Otto --one might begin to feel that a good part of the musical universe were sliding off a cliff and taking you the listener with it.

Why do I take things so personally, you ask? Don't know; I just do. But if, say, I didn't feel the presence of the person Lester Young or the person Sonny Rollins in their playing, I don't know why I would or should even bother.

[JSngry]

18 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

 But if, say, I didn't feel the presence of the person Lester Young or the person Sonny Rollins in their playing, I don't know why I would or should even bother.

I'm realizing lately that music for me is not a "thing" (although it certainly is that) to enjoy as an "identifier"as it is a method of personal communication (no matter what the message is). To that end, if I'm not hearing music "say" anything to me that draws me in at that level, it pisses me off, actually. Like, here I give you the time to tell me something I either don't know at all or already know but enjoy the way you tell it and...all you got for me is THIS?

And yeah, it kind of pisses me off.

I realize that might sound arrogant on my part, but the more musics I listen to that come from other places than a "jazz narrative", the more I realize that I don't have to spend my time listening to blahblah music just because it's "supposed" to be something I should like because it and I are of the same "type". If there's a cord to be cut, there it is, that one.

And to counter that possible arrogance, all I can say is that if confronting all the great music that has emanated from all people of Earth, regardless of time and place, is not an at times cripplingly humbling experience, then....that's a problem. But not as much a problem as being expected to be down with the blahblah.

[Steve Reynolds]

listening today to “The Early Bird Gets” which is Rempis with Brandon Lopez & Ryan Packard. This is the trio I saw this summer. Recorded mostly on March 2nd, 2018 @ Elastic - last track June 28th, 2018.

honestly this performance is a bit stronger than when I saw them live which doesn’t happen much to me. Usually I might tend to be overly impressed with an up-close viewing/hearing of a great improvising group. Maybe a couple of you Chicago guys saw one or both of these shows. Great new trio of Dave's. 

[Justin V]

This month:

Mars Williams/Tollef Østvang - Painted Pillars

Jack DeJohnette - Irresistible Forces

Joe Lovano - From the Soul 

Jonah Jones - Jumpin' with Jonah

Drew Gress - 7 Black Butterflies

Michael Brecker - Pilgrimage (replacing a battered copy that is MIA)

Ralph Alessi - Imaginary Friends

 

 

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Justin V

[Steve Reynolds]

Back to the thread topic - here are some/most of my most recent buys:

Gard Nilssen’s Acoustic Unity Live in Europe

3 CD set - trio on the first disc, augmented by others on discs 2 & 3

I normality avoid Clean Feed but reviews on this were strong. In the Que by this weekend

Anthony Braxton Quartet (New Haven) 2014 - 4 CD set

with Taylor Ho Bynum, Nels Cline & Greg Saunier

Momentum 3: quartet of small form improvisation on Leo records

Fire! Trio plus Jim O’Rourke: Unreleased?

ingrid Laubrock: Ubatuba 

Pere Ubu: The Long Goodbye

 

 

 

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Steve Reynolds

[CJ Shearn]

4 hours ago, Justin V said:

This month:

Mars Williams/Tollef Østvang - Painted Pillars

Jack DeJohnette - Irresistible Forces

Joe Lovano - From the Soul 

Jonah Jones - Jumpin' with Jonah

Drew Gress - 7 Black Butterflies

Michael Brecker - Pilgrimage (replacing a battered copy that is MIA)

Ralph Alessi - Imaginary Friends

 

 

 

Did you get the DeJohnette off discogs?

[Justin V]

3 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:

Did you get the DeJohnette off discogs?

No, I found it for $3 at a store in my hometown.  Why?